This great execution upon them together with the diligence of Luther and other Divines to inform their minds did for some time much compesce [to restrain] that evil spirit and so much fright him out of all the bounds of upper Germany, that he did never since that time stir much in these Quarters: but behold his behavior elsewhere. Being rejected of Luther and his Disciples, he went to try Zwingli and his friends: unaware, and upon a sudden great numbers of Anabaptists did arise in Zurich, Bern, Basle, and many other parts of Switzerland: at the beginning they dissembled [lied about] the worst of their tenets [beliefs], they dealt earnestly with Zwingli to gather out of the churches he had reformed new separate congregations: many remonstrances [complaints] did they make to him against the profanity of the common multitude, and for the holiness that ought to be in every church member; they alleged a necessity for the saints to put themselves in new distinct churches (S). The same things did they press upon Oecolampadius at Basle, but when these grave men had rejected their motion, and demonstrated the iniquity of their schismatic way: then without more ado having seduced multitudes by their corner and night sermons, they did themselves erect without any permission either of the magistrates or ministers, their separate congregations (T), and for a visible distinguishing character of their way they publicly anabaptized all who did enter into their society (V). For these insolencies the magistrate was offended and put some of them in prison, presently they cried out loud of persecution for conscience (X), and of unjust condemnation before their cause was tried: hereupon many public disputations were instituted, Zwingli and others in Zurich many days from morning till evening did debate with them in presence of the magistrate and all who pleased at great length upon all their tenets; this same did Oecolampadius in Basle, and others in Bern, the arguments and answers with the consent of both sides were written and published, by this means many received satisfaction, many also remained obstinate in their error and became tumultuous in their practices, which caused the most of them to be banished out of these States. To this severity the magistrate was forced by the danger of their principles, and their usual walking accordingly, where fear kept them not in order: in Christian Commonwealths they counted magistrates unlawful, they took their enthusiasms and revelations for Gods express commandments, and it was one of their prophets ordinary revelations to cut off by the sword all magistrates, and whosoever opposed their way, though father, mother, brother, or dearest friend, yea so powerfully did Satan insinuate himself in their ordinary raptures, that no man could be secure from their cruelty, as by this example is visible.
At Saint gall in Zwitzerland in the year 1526. Feb. 8. Thomas Skyker having spent the whole night with a company of Anabaptists in their religious exercises, in the morning he was filled with an enthusiasm, and before his father, mother, and whole company, he commanded in the name of God his German brother Leonard Skyker to kneel before him, and having gotten obedience thus far, his next prank was before them all to cut off his brother’s head, avowing he had an express warrant from God so to do (Y).
Many such private murders and divers public uproars, made the magistrate every where to keep a severe hand over them; yet for all that could be done, they got into their hands the town of Munster; here the wisdom and patience of God permitted them to act to the full, all their speculations. A Story recorded by many, and needful to be remembered to the world’s end, for a memento unto all men to be very wary of an erroneous spirit, though he do appear at the first in the habit of the greatest piety and innocence; the matter was thus:
In the year 1533 and 1534 by the labors of Bernard Rotman and some Hessian Preachers, Munster the greatest and strongest town of Westphalia was persuaded to cast out the Popish corruptions; while the work of Reformation was there going on apace, the Anabaptists came in and mixed themselves according to their custom; for this has ever been the way of schismatics, like drones and wasps to fall upon the labors of others; they use not any where to be the instruments of any Reformation or conversion, but when that work by the labor of others is done, then they come in to spoil all, pressing upon a reformed and a converted people their fancies (Z).
When the Gospel was flourishing in Munster, a certain Taylor of Leiden in Holland, one John Becold did come to Town, who at home in his own country, had drunk in all the Anabaptist ravery [madness]: the man was of a quick and subtle wit, a great dissembler [liar], insinuating himself in the favor of the ministers, he did propone [put forward] at first only by way of scruple his arguments against infant baptism (AA): but in the mean time in his secret conventicles over all the city, he did instill the whole mystery of Anabaptism: The chief Minister Rotman did at the beginning preach zealously against that way (BB), but after that one Stapreda, a violent Anabaptist had eropen [?] in to be his colleague, Rotman was gained to that party, and at a public disputation declared himself for them, notwithstanding the other Ministers did confute so clearly the Anabaptists grounds, that the Town Senate remained satisfied, and by that Edict commanded all the Anabaptists to depart the City (CC). But this Statute was so slackly executed, that the most remained still in Town, and did in their night meetings so diligently advance their cause, that a great many more were conquered; upon which strength waxing confident they defied their opposites, and came to a public insurrection (DD).
As yet the orthodox were the greater part, but the schismatics were the more witty [intelligent] and industrious, they managed so well their smaller strength, that they became not only considerable, but so formidable, that their adversaries were glad to indulge them their liberty and toleration which they had long desired (EE); but behold the issue of that indulgence. They who of a long time had made it their great work to cry down persecution and up toleration, when they had obtained that desire, they did not stand there, but went on every day to add new members to their society, til at last finding the great increase of their strength within the city, they did invite by messengers and letters their associates abroad from all quarters to join with them. These summons made many strangers to slock [to entice] to the town, upon whose appearance without farther delay a public proclamation was issued for all to be rebaptized, or else immediately to depart the city under the pain of death (FF). Many of the best did flee, whose houses and goods were seized, yet many good people were forced to stay, for the Bishop of Munster had then blocked the City, whereby divers of those who offered to get out were killed and spoiled, and the rest were frighted from attempting any escape to the country.
The Anabaptists becoming absolute masters of the town, made it their first care to discharge all the former magistrates, and to substitute in their place a new senate of their own faction (GG), over which they did set two consuls, Knipperdolling and Kippenburgh, two of their most forward friends.They seised on the goods of all and killed whom they would. About that time a certain Baker of Harlem, Jan Mathis did make himself a great prophet among them, this man one day did deliver as a revelation from heaven, that every one should bring together all his books and papers, the Bible only excepted, of all these he made a fair bonfire (HH). His next command was, that every one should bring forth all his money and goods under the pain of death, that all might be common (II): none durst [to dare] be bold to disobey, justice was so quick and severe amongst them. One Truteling a smith for a merry [humorous] word against the prophets was brought forth before the people and shot dead by the Prophet Mathis own hands (KK); after this Mathis pretending a commission from God went out his alone, with confidence to overthrow the whole camp of them who besieged the city, but by the first of the enemy’s soldiers the false prophet was killed (LL).
Robert Baillie | Anabaptism, The True Fountain of Independency, Brownisme, Antinomy, Familism, and the most of the other Errors Which For The Time Do Trouble the Church of England, Unsealed (London, 1647), 6–10. NB: For ease of reading and because archaic spelling tend to make older writers seem unintelligent, the spelling has been modernized and some typos have been corrected.
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The title claims to address Particular Baptists, but the content deals exclusively with Anabaptists. Surely the editor understands that these two groups are not the same, either historically, doctrinally, or in practice.
David,
If you look at the title, you’ll notice that this is part of a series. There is much more to come. If you click on the link to the original document you can read the full work for yourself.
Baillie is just getting warmed up.
He’s beginning with the Anabaptists because he, like Featley and most of the rest of the Reformed in the period, saw the Particular Baptists as an outgrowth of the Anabaptist movement. That’s why the Particular Baptists protested that they weren’t Anabaptists because that’s how the Reformed saw them.
Hi Dr. Clark,
The full title of Baillie’s work indicates that viewed Anabaptism as the source from which sprung ‘Indepency’ and ‘Brownisme’. So, does this also indicate that Baillie (like Featley and most of the rest of the Reformed in the period) the Independents or Congregationalists (such as Thomas Goodwin) as also sharing in the ‘errors’ which troubled the church of England? Without reading Baillie’s work, the title suggests that the Dissenting Brethren at the Westminster Assembly were contaminated with the errors which flow from Anabaptism.
Thanks,
Spencer
Not necessarily.
“Brownism” was a form of rule by the congregational meeting which was condemned by the majority of Congregationalists who taught elder rule, which in the early Congregational period was described as “Barrowism.” The Brownist-Barrowist divide was largely ended when Robert Browne, the main exponent of his system, returned to the Church of England and accepted Anglican worship.
I’m quite aware that many people who claim today to advocate Congregationalism and congregational polity wrongly believe that Congregationalism rejects elders, and the result is that many Presbyterians think that’s what Congregationalism teaches. That is simply false. If we want to know what Congregationalism teaches, we need to look to its confessions, including the 1648 Cambridge Platform which are absolutely clear on elder rule. Saying that Congregationalism rejects eldership makes as much sense as saying that Presbyterianism mandates women’s ordination because the PC(USA) does so, despite having long ago departed from the Westminster Standards.
How did that happen? The history in Puritan New England is that by the early-to-mid 1700s, the standards for ruling elders had become so high that ruling elders were expected to be ministers in all but name, doing most of the work of the pastorate except public preaching and therefore being required to meet most of the requirements for the pastorate.
An argument can be made that the Brownists, while condemned by virtually all Congregationalists in the 1600s, won out in the 1700s, precisely because the Barrowists emphasized the importance of the ruling eldership so highly that they made it extremely difficult for men to become ruling elders.
Most Reformed Congregational churches today have elders. There may be some which, as a matter of conviction, teach the older view, common in the mid-1700s to the mid-to-late 1800s, that the pastor is the sole elder, that the deacons are servants of the congregation appointed for administrative duties, and that most decisions should be made by the congregational meeting. I’ve never seen one, though I do know of churches like that pastored by Reformed men who were working to re-establish the eldership as part of a process of returning the church to confessional Calvinism.
Spencer,
The rhetoric between the various sides in the polity debates of the 17th-century did get heated but the fact that there were Independents at the Westminster Assembly suggests that not all of them were lumped together. As Darrell suggests, the Brownists were particularly radical. The Savoy is a Reformed confession (which, unlike the 1689, shared the same reading of redemptive history as the WCF etc) written by Congregationalists/Independents who were not Baptists.
The Baptists were congregationalists on steroids, but not all Congregationalists became or were Baptists. It’s not the case that congregationalism necessarily leads to a Baptist view of the redemptive history. My own federation of churches says that connectional polity is of the well being but not of the being of the church.
The other issue here was eschatology. What really united the radical congregationalists with the Anabaptists to produce the early Baptist movement (the General Baptists) was eschatology. The Brownists had an over-realized eschatology. They wanted more of heaven now than can be had in this life. They wanted a pure, gathered church that of the sort that cannot be achieved before the consummation. When they met the Mennonites they found in the Anabaptist approach to Baptism a mechanism to achieve the desired outcome.
The purpose of publishing Baillie’s critique is 1) to expose people to its existence; 2) to help people see how the Reformed originally received the Baptists; 3) to complicate the Particular Baptist narrative that they were always part of the Reformed movement. The Reformed didn’t accept them as such. The PB self-identity is problematic. What they need to do is to admit that their history is mixed and complicated and though they identify with aspects of Reformed theology, in important ways they were never Reformed and never accepted as Reformed by the Reformed churches. That’s a messier story and not a very good marketing campaign but it’s much closer to the history truth than the popular narrative and self-identity.
Spot on with regard to this, Dr. Clark: “The Baptists were congregationalists on steroids, but not all Congregationalists became or were Baptists. It’s not the case that congregationalism necessarily leads to a Baptist view of the redemptive history. My own federation of churches says that connectional polity is of the well being but not of the being of the church.”
It should be noted that Abraham Kuyper’s views on church polity were called “crypto-congregationalism” by his critics, and while that wasn’t intended to be a compliment, I don’t think they were wrong. During the early 1600s, there had been an entire English-speaking classis of English Congregational churches within the Dutch state church system composed of expatriate Englishmen, and while the Anglicans routinely complained about it, the Dutch refused to shut it down, or impose any sanctions other than telling the classis that it was not allowed to ordain ministers and could only accept ministers on transfer from other judicatories. Men like William Ames were not on bad terms with the Dutch Reformed, despite sometimes successful Anglican efforts to limit his influence and that of other English Puritans living in the Netherlands, and were actually key opponents of the Arminians.
As Dr. Clark correctly notes, there were Independents (the older British word for what in New England were called Congregationalists) invited to and participating in the Westminster Assembly. The Hungarian Reformed have had bishops essentially forever. Most Reformed people would recognize Bishop J.C. Ryle and Archbishop Ussher as Reformed men who thought Augustine was right not only about soteriology but also polity.
There is legitimate room for debate in the Reformed world on what Scripture says about church government, and has been since the Reformation era. Not all errors are heresy, and some are legitimate disagreements between men of good will over how key Bible verses should be understood.
While I do disagree with Dr. Clark on whether Particular Baptists can be called “Reformed,” it’s hard to argue that the Synod of Dordt, which seated an English bishop as one of the foreign representatives, regarded episcopal church government as outside the boundaries of the Reformed faith. It’s also hard to argue that they would have held a similarly positive view of Baptists — the Baptists have to make the case that they are fundamentally different from the Anabaptists who were clearly condemned during the Reformation and immediate post-Reformation eras.
If that case can be made, it centers on John Bunyan and his legacy, and his relationship with John Owen. Most of the earlier Baptists likely had more in common with Anabaptists than with Bunyan, with Spurgeon, and with the modern Founders Conference.
Darrell,
Bunyan was an outlier. We can’t leverage the definition of “Baptist” by an outlier. Further. we know what the early Reformed thought the early Baptist movement. That’s why I’ve been publishing Baillie and why I did the series on Featley. The Baptists themselves recognized, in 1644, what the Reformed thought of them when they wrote in the preface to the London Confession of 1644 that they weren’t Anabaptists. Why did they write that? Because the Reformed called them Anabaptists.
The Dutch didn’t distinguish between the Baptists and the Anabaptists. They used the same word for both.
The Congregationalists could be Reformed but the Baptists can’t. The latter rejected the Reformed covenant theology and its implications. There’s no way to fix that problem.
Until just after World War II the Reformed never described Baptists as Reformed and no Reformed church has yet done so.
How can Baptists agree with what the Reformed confess to be a “detestable error” on one of the three marks of the true church and yet be Reformed?
Point well taken on this, Dr. Clark: “How can Baptists agree with what the Reformed confess to be a ‘detestable error’ on one of the three marks of the true church and yet be Reformed?”
You are a URC member and your confessions are quite strong on this. I have said many times that the Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian traditions have a fundamental difference on how they view Baptists based on different confessions, and for that reason, I do not blame those URC congregations which refuse to allow Baptists into membership. As you may know, I dealt with this firsthand and it caused major problems in my own church. There are reasons my church in Missouri is no longer in the URC and this was one of the big ones.
As you know, the comparable Westminster language is likely more moderate at least in part due to the reality of the need to avoid antagonizing Cromwell’s army which included Baptists. However, even the WCF, at best, tolerates Baptists rather than finding them detestable. I think many modern Presbyterians would be surprised by this language in their own Confession: “Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.”
A more important issue for modern Presbyterians is the ability to “take exceptions” to the confessions, unlike the Dutch Reformed tradition of strict enforcement of the Form of Subscription with no difficulties or different sentiments allowed for officebearers on any article or point of doctrine without a formal process that virtually never ends in allowing the officebearer to teach that difference in doctrine.
America’s largest confessionally Reformed denomination, the PCA, is Southern in its origins, and it seems obvious that there aren’t many people in the PCA who want to take a hard line to bar Baptists from membership, let alone to “detest” them (TFU) or to declare them to be in “great sin.” It’s pretty difficult to take a stance like that when infant baptism is so rare as to be almost unknown except for Roman Catholics, a few dying liberal mainline Protestant churches, and maybe an occasional Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church started for Germans in the South.
The confessions are on your side. I don’t dispute that.
I also know very few people in the PCA, or other conservative Presbyterian denominations, who would bar Baptists from membership or declare them to be in “great sin.” I do know a few, but not many.
It seems there is a wide gulf between the strong language of the confessions and the actual practice of not just many but most Reformed churches outside the Dutch Reformed tradition.
Featley was asked by the Assembly to write his critique of the Baptists.
Baille was a delegate to the Assembly.
There is a good argument to be made that the language about “contemning” baptism was an allusion to the Baptists.
28.4–5:
This wasn’t a Dutch conviction only. All the Reformed, English, Dutch, German, & English.
Perhaps none of the English Reformed was as friendly to the emerging Particular Baptist movement as John Owen, and yet look at what he said about those who denied infant baptism.