History of the Church of God

                                                 Sylvester Hassell


                             Chapter XVII-SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The seventeenth was the century, during its first half, of the continued fearful storm of the
early morning; and, especially during its second half, the century of the fierce raging of the
fires of persecution, at last extinguished under the advancing light of day.

This was the century of the last religious wars in "Christendom, " the Thirty Years' War in
Germany, fomented by the Jesuits, reducing the people to cannibalism, and the population of
Bohemia from 4,000,000 to 780,000, and of Germany from 20,000,000 to 7,000,000, and
making Southern Germany almost a desert, terminated by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
securing a legal basis for Protestant rights on the continent of Europe; and the century of the
Great Rebellion, in England, against the haughty, cruel and Romanizing Stuarts, of the
Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, the Restoration of the Stuarts, and the "Glorious
Revolution of 1688, " under William and Mary, foiling the intrigues of despotism and
Jesuitism, and finally establishing the constitutional freedom and the Protestant character of
England, the Toleration Act of 1689 legalizing dissent, and being the charter of freedom for
non-conformists. The seventeenth was the century of the final deliverance of central Europe
from Turkish invasion by the heroism of the Polish King, John Sobieski, who, in 1683, with
about one-fifth their number, disastrously routed 300,000 Turks then besieging Vienna; the
century of the secularization of politics; and of the almost universal prevalence of Roman
Catholic Jesuitism in Southern Europe, crushing out by means of its Expurgatory and
Prohibitory Indexes of Books, and its Inquisition, and its Propaganda or Missionary Society
and Schools, nearly every vestige, not only of Protestantism, but also of Jansenism (a
revived Roman Catholic Augustinianism), in Spain, France, Italy and Austria; of Louis XIV's
infamous dragonnade "conversions, " and his virtual banishment of 500,000 Huguenots from
France, and his deprivation of two million others of almost every right, by the Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes (in 1685, the Edict having been issued in 1598 by Henry IV., and granting
civil and religious rights to his Protestant subjects)-to all this barbarity and stupidity Louis
XIV. having been instigated by the Jesuits, who urged him thus to seek atonement for his
gross immoralities; the century of the almost total extermination, under the same baleful
influence, of the Bohemian Brethren in Germany; of the similarly instigated martyrdom of Cyril
Lucar, "the Patriarch of Constantinople" (in 1638), who had attempted a Calvinistic
reformation of the corrupt Greek Catholic "Church; " of the numerous trials, condemnations
and executions, in England and New England, of persons, generally feeble or lunatic
females, accused of witchcraft, which judicial murders had reached their climax in continental
Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; of the severe persecution of the Waldenses
in Piedmont, of the Covenanters in Scotland, of the Protestants in Switzerland and Ireland,
and of the Dissenters in England and North America. The seventeenth was the century of the
publication of the King James or Authorized Version of the English Bible (in 1611), the best
and noblest of all the translations of the Bible ever made in any language;  of the formation,
in England and North America, of Independent (or Congregational) and Baptist Churches,
and of the Societies of Friends (or Quakers); of the learned, quasi-ecumenical Synod of Dort
(in 1618 and 1619), which, without plunging into Supralapsarianism, emphatically
condemned the five erroneous points of Arminian doctrine; and of the  Westminster
Confession of Faith, the most able, elaborate and influential of all Protestant Confessions,
adopted by the Westminster Assembly (1643-1649) called together by the Long Parliament,
and composed mostly of learned and devout Presbyterian ministers, one hundred and
twenty-one in number, who met in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey-the
Confession ranging from the eternal decrees to the final judgment, and while sublapsarian,
yet more Calvinistic than the Thirty-nine Episcopalian Articles of "Archbishop" Whitgift (1595),
or the Irish Articles of "Archbishop" Ussher (1615), and adopted by the Presbyterians of
England and America, and, with changes as to church government, but also as to the proper
subjects and "mode" of baptism, by the Regular Baptists of England and America, the
doctrinal substance and language being the same in all these Confessions. The seventeenth
was the century of the expulsion of the intriguing and casuistical Jesuit missionaries from
Japan; of the Dutch pretended conversions of five hundred thousand heathen in Ceylon and
Java, these first organized, commercial, Protestant missionaries baptizing all who could
repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and the Governor conditioning not
only office but governmental protection upon signing the Helvetic Confession; and the
century of the earnest, humble, self-denying and devoted labors of John Eliot (born 1604,
died 1690) among the American Indians, his translation of the Bible into their language (in
1633-the first Bible printed in America), the ordination of twenty-four Indian preachers, and
the formation of thirty Indian churches in New England; the establishment, by the Long
Parliament (in 1649), under the stimulus of Eliot's labors of, a "Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in New England, " revived with a royal charter in 1667, Eliot giving the poor and
sick Indians nearly all the annual salary of fifty pounds (or $250) sent him by the Society, and
proving himself in every way the Indians' best human friend; and this was the century of the
establishment, in 1698, of a "Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" in England and in
the Colonies. The seventeenth was also the century of the rise and rapid growth and wide
prevalence of modern Arminianism (a low Arminianism, low morality, and High-Churchism
together distinguishing England during the latter part of this century); and it was the century
of the rise and early progress of modern philosophy, latitudinarianism, naturalism, deism,
rationalism, materialism, pantheism and atheism, which potent germs of evil have so grown
and expanded, and have been so fruitful of darkness and corruption, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.

My space will permit only a brief treatment of but a few of these matters.

James Arminius, of Holland (1560-1609), an able, learned and amiable man, was a disciple
of Theodore Beza, and at first a strict Calvinist but, through the combined influences of the
rationalism of Peter Ramus, the synergism of Philip Melanchthon, the Semi-Pelagianism of
Robert Bellarmine, and the liberalism of Theodore Koornhert, he came to believe and
advocate that the election of the sinner to eternal life is not absolute, but is conditioned on
the sinner's foreseen faith and perseverance. Still he inconsistently maintained the total
depravity of human nature since the Fall; that "man, in his natural condition, is dead in sins;
that his mind is darkened, his affections depraved, and his will refractory; that the will of man,
with respect to true good, is not only wounded, bruised, inferior, crooked and attenuated, but
that it is likewise captivated, destroyed and lost, and has no powers whatever, except such
as are excited by grace; that the grace of Christ is simply and absolutely necessary for the
illumination of the mind, the ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the will to that
which is good; that it infuses good thoughts into the mind, inspires good desires into the
affections, and leads the will to execute good thoughts and good desires; that it goes before,
accompanies and follows; that it excites, assists, works in us to will, and works with us that
we may not will in vain; that it averts temptation, stands by and aids us in temptations,
supports us against the flesh, the world and Satan; and that, in the conflict, it grants us to
enjoy the victory; that it raises up again those who are conquered and fallen, establishes
them, endues them with new strength, and renders them more cautious; that it begins,
promotes, perfects and consummates salvation" (Watson's Theological Institutes, Vol. 2, pp.
46 and 47). It has been truly said that "James Arminius was much less Arminian than his
followers." The latter, after his death, being continually reproached as Pelagians, had their
creed drawn up in Five Articles by one of their preachers, James Mytenbogaert, and
presented, as a "Remonstrance, " to the States of Holland and West Friesland, in 1610. This
original Arminian Creed, which sets forth a carefully restricted Semi-Pelagianism, is as
follows:

"ARTICLE I. That God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ His Son, before
the foundation of the world, hath determined, out of the fallen, sinful race of men, to save in
Christ, for Christ's sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost,
shall believe on this His Son Jesus, and shall persevere in this faith and obedience of faith,
through this grace, even to the end; and, on the other hand, to leave the incorrigible and
unbelieving in sin and under wrath, and to condemn them as alienate from Christ, according
to the word of the gospel in Joh 3:36, and according to other passages of Scripture also.

"ARTICLE II. That, agreeably thereto, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men
and for every man, so that He has obtained for them all, by His death on the cross,
redemption and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of
sins except the believer, according to the word of the gospel of Joh 3:16, and in the First
Epistle of Joh 2:2.

"ARTICLE III. That man has not saving grace of himself, nor of the energy of his free-will,
inasmuch as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself neither think, will nor
do anything that is truly good (such as saving faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he
be born again of God in Christ, through His Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding,
inclination or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will and
effect what is truly good, according to the word of Christ in Joh 15:5.

"ARTICLE IV. That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance and accomplishment of all
good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting,
awakening, following and co-operative grace, can neither think, will nor do good, nor
withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be
conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. But as respects the mode of the
operation of this grace, it is not irresistible, inasmuch as it is written concerning many that
they have resisted the Holy Ghost, Ac 7, and elsewhere in many places.

"ARTICLE V. That those who are incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby
become partakers of His life-giving Spirit, have thereby full power to strive against Satan, sin,
the world, and their own flesh, and to win the victory; it being well understood that it is ever
through the assisting grace of the Holy Ghost; and that Jesus Christ assists them through
His Spirit in all temptations, extends to them His hand, and if only they are ready for the
conflict, and desire His help, and are not inactive, keeps them from falling, so that they, by no
power or craft of Satan, can be misled nor plucked out of Christ's hands, according to the
word of Christ in Joh 10:28. But whether they are capable, through negligence, of forsaking
again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of
turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience,
of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy
Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.

"These Articles, thus set forth and taught, the Remonstrants deem agreeable to the word of
God, tending to edification, and, as regards this argument, sufficient for salvation, so that it is
not necessary or edifying to rise higher or descend deeper."

The question as to the possibility of finally falling from grace, left open in the Fifth Article, was
decided by the Remonstrants or Arminians in the affirmative during the very next year (1611).
And so, though having pronounced it both "unnecessary and unedifying," they continued to
"descend deeper" into false doctrine, until, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, large
numbers of them had logically degenerated into Pelagians and Arians; and they were but
little removed from the deism of Herbert of Cherburg, the materialism of Hobbs, the
pantheism of Spinoza, and the skepticism of Bayle. Thus error, instead of rectifying itself,
continually tends to depart more widely from the truth. "In opposition to Aristotelianism, which
had possession of the universities and schools, Modern Philosophy began its course in the
seventeenth century with the three tendencies of mystic idealism (in Jacob Bohme), inductive
philosophy (in Francis Bacon), and rationalism (in Rene Descartes); which forms of
speculation have ever since been in perpetual conflict with each other and with Christianity."
"The most powerful enemy that philosophy ever had," says Victor Cousin, "was Blaise
Pascal" (born 1623, died 1662), "the greatest genius and the best man that France ever
produced," the most evangelical and the most profound of all the uninspired defenders of
Christianity, who proves, in his fragmentary and posthumous "Pensees" or "Thoughts," that
the revelation of Christ in the Scriptures and by His Spirit furnishes the only solution to the
dark and countless mysteries of human life, the only antidote for its ills, the only relief for its
necessities. In his "Provincial Letters" he made the Jesuits' code of ethics the derision of all
Europe. He was of that small and persecuted body of Catholics called Port Royalists, or
Jansenists, or Augustinians, who heartily believed and advocated the two great Bible
principles of the nothingness of fallen man and the omnipotence of Divine grace. He showed
that all human philosophies, like all human religions, are full of vanity, follies, weakness,
errors, extravagances and contradictions; and thus that it is the part of true wisdom to look
away from all these ignesfatui, which can lead only to destruction, to the true and saving light
of the eternal Sun of Righteousness. "I find it true," says he, "that since the world began it
has been constantly announced to men that they are in a state of universal corruption; but
that a Restorer shall come. That it is not one man who says it, but a countless number of
men, and an entire people, during four thousand years, prophesying thus, and made
expressly for this purpose. Thus I extend my arms to my Liberator, who, having been foretold
for four thousand years, came to suffer and to die for me on the earth, at the time and with all
the circumstances which had been predicted; and, by His grace, I await death in peace, in
the hope of being eternally united to Him; and I live, nevertheless, with joy, either in the
blessings which it may please Him to give me, or in the ills 1 which He may send for my
good, and that He has taught me to endure by His example. I find the Christian religion as
foreshadowed in the Old Testament, and unfolded in the New Testament, altogether Divine
in its authority, in its duration, in its perpetuity, in its morality, in its government, in its
doctrine, and in its effects."-It may be mentioned that the poet John Milton, the natural
philosopher Sir Isaac Newton, and the mental philosopher John Locke, were not only
Arminians, but also Arians. The learned Dutch statesman and theologian, Hugo Grotius, was
an Arminian, and substituted, in place of the strict Anselmic theory of a real satisfaction on
the part of Christ, the idea of a Divine acquittal for Christ's sake. G. W. Leibnitz, of Germany,
the most universal genius of all time, traces, in his splendid and imposing Theodicy, all evil to
the necessarily imperfect and erring will of the creature; declares God the Alpha and Omega
of the whole order of things in time and out of time; and, like John Milton,  2 regards every
human creed as a mutilated and imperfect presentation of truth.

The National Synod of Dort (in South Holland), convened by the States-General for the
settlement of the Arminian controversy, and containing, among its eighty-four members,
twenty-eight delegates from Germany, the Palatinate, Switzerland and England, sat from
November 13th, 1618, to May 9th, 1619. All the Dutch members were orthodox. Three
Arminian delegates elected fro m Utrecht had to yield their seats to their orthodox
competitors. Francis Gomarus was said to be the only Supralapsarian delegate. Prof. Schaff
says that, in learning and piety, the Synod has never been surpassed since the days of the
Apostles. The Synod emphatically condemned all the five points of Arminianism, and
affirmed, to the contrary: 1st. Unconditional Election; 2nd. Particular Redemption; 3rd. Total
Depravity; 4th. Effectual Calling; 5th. Final Perseverance. They declared that election,
instead of being founded upon foreseen faith and holiness, is itself the very fountain of faith
holiness and eternal life; that, while the atonement of Christ is of infinite worth and value,
abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world, its saving efficacy extends only to
the elect, so as to bring them infallibly to salvation; that all men are born in the likeness of
their fallen parents, in a state of spiritual death; that faith and repentance are the efficacious
gifts or works of the Spirit of God in the hearts of all His chosen people, who are thus wholly
of God rescued from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son,
that they may show forth His praises, and glory not in themselves, but in the Lord; and that,
notwithstanding all the remains of indwelling sin, and all the temptations of the, flesh, the
world and the devil, God, their heavenly Father and unchangeable friend, who has conferred
grace upon His elect, is faithful, and will never leave or forsake them, but will recover them,
in true repentance and humility, from all their falls, and mercifully confirm and powerfully
preserve them in a gracious state even to the end.

The victorious party gave proof of the darkness still remaining in their minds by not only
deposing about two hundred Arminian ministers, but by banishing such as would not consent
to keep silent, and beheading (under a false charge of treason) the aged Advocate-General
of Holland, Van Olden Barneveldt, and condemning to perpetual imprisonment Hugo Grotius,
who escaped through the ingenuity of his wife. In 1625, after the death of Prince Maurice, the
Arminians were allowed to return and re-establish their churches and schools in Holland,
which became more and more a land of religious toleration and liberty.

The seventeenth was the great century of the prevalence of Jesuitism; and Macaulay's
unrivalled characterization of this perfection of Pharisaism and Pelagianism must now be
given. In the sixteenth century "the Pontificate, exposed to new dangers more formidable
than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which was animated
by intense enthusiasm and organized with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to rescue,
they found the Papacy in extreme peril; but from that moment the tide of battle turned.
Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all before it, was stopped in its
progress, and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before
the Order had existed a hundred years it had filled the whole world with memorials of great
things done and suffered for the faith. No religious community could produce a list of men so
variously distinguished; none had extended its operations over so vast a space: yet in none
had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of the
globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They
guided the counsels of kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions
of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises
on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms and lampoons. The
liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by
them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which
intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation. Enmity itself was
compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no
equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit.
With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of
the confessional. Throughout Roman Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and
of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country
to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan
preachers. They wandered to countries which mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever
impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found as Mandarins, superintending the
observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of
agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever
might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common cause,
unreasoning obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwelling-place
or his vocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the Arctic circle or under the
Equator, whether he should pass his life arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the
Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians under the Southern Cross not to eat each other,
were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others. If he was
wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Baghdad, he
was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some
country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbor
him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him
what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor is this
heroic spirit yet extinct. When, in our time, a new and terrible pestilence passed round the
globe, when, in some great cities, fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society together,
when the secular clergy had forsaken their flocks, when medical succor was not to be
purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections had yielded to the love of life, even
then the Jesuit was found by the pallet which Bishop and Curate, physician a bending over
infected lips to catch the faint accents of confession, and holding up to the last, before the
expiring penitent, the image of the expiring Redeemer.-But, with the admirable energy,
disinterestedness and self-devotion which were characteristic of the Society, great vices
were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which
made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also
regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means which could promote the interest of his
religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the
interest of his society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his
agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in his attachment to the fraternity to
which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in
others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted he had
achieved in the cause of the church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of
that church, rather apparent than real. He had indeed labored with a wonderful show of
success to reduce the world under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit
the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed
by Divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average
level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the
remote regions of the East; but it was reported that from some of those converts the facts on
which the whole theology of the gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that
others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods,
while internally repeating Paters and Aves. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such
arts were said to be practiced. It was not strange that people of all ranks, and especially of
the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those
confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He
showed just so much rigor as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the
Dominican or the Franciscan Church. If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in
the saintly tones of the primitive fathers; but with that large part of mankind who have religion
enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them
from doing wrong, he followed a different system. Since he could not reclaim them from vice,
it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense
dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been
written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found
doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he
might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he
might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pander was assured that a Christian
man might innocently earn his living by carrying letters and messages between married
women and their gallants. The high spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were
gratified by a decision in favor of dueling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and baser
modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their
enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole
value of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold
together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and
common humanity restrained men from doing what the Order of Jesuits assured them that
they might with a safe conscience do." "The Jesuits unfolded the doctrine of moral
Probabilism in such manner and measure," says Gieseler, "that, while they condemned sin in
general, yet in its particular excused and palliated it. At the same time, they so defined the
difference between mortal and venial sins, and made such statements upon the sufficiency of
repentance, that men's minds were cradled in complete carnal security. They elevated the
papal power above everything, since their own rested on it. Bishops and councils might err,
but the pope was infallible, and could never lapse into heresy; indeed, he was so far the lord
of Christendom that sin itself, enjoined by him, would be a duty. Thus he was elevated so far
above the human sphere that he must be looked upon as a demigod. As it was with the
doctrine about the pope, so the other doctrines assailed by Protestants were for the most
part carried to excess-the celibacy of the clergy, their independence of the civil power, the
worship of saints, of Mary, and of images, the multiplication of indulgences. To keep
dangerous light away, not only were the Indexes of Prohibited Books set to work, , but the
Indexes of Expurgated Books were also published, mutilating and falsifying the ancient
writings."

In 1622 Gregory XV., the first pope who had been a pupil of the Jesuits, established the first
great MISSIONARY BOARD in the world, the prototype of all other Missionary Boards,
whether Catholic or Protestant, the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Sacred
Congregation for Propagating the Faith), consisting of cardinals, and having in charge the
entire Roman Catholic Missionary System. This body is still in existence. The object of this
organization was and is the conversion of heathens and Protestants to Roman Catholicism
and the extirpation of heretics. For this latter purpose the civil power has been employed in
Catholic countries, and will be also employed in all Protestant countries wherever Roman
Catholicism gains the supremacy. To promote the same purpose of Catholicizing the world,
the next pope, Urban VIII., established in 1627, the Seminarium or Collegium de Propaganda
Fide (Seminary or College for Propagating the Faith), "to which young men from all nations
are brought at early age, and gratuitously instructed in languages and sciences, and fitted
out for the missionary work. This College was subordinated entirely to the Congregation of
Cardinals or Missionary Board, and a splendid palace was built for both institutions. To the
Propaganda no small part of the aggressive power of the Church of Rome is due. It has
complete military power, under the pope, over the whole missionary field, not only to send
missionaries wherever ever it is the interest of the church to send them, but to give them
special training adapted to their special work."

In addition to the Jesuit or Catholic atrocities of this century already enumerated with some
particulars, they massacred 400 Protestants at Grossoto, in Lombardy, July 19th, 1620; are
said to have destroyed 400,000 Protestants in Ireland, in 1641, by outright murder, and cold,
and hunger, and drowning; cruelly exiled 500 families of Waldenses in Piedmont, in 1601;
most diabolically tortured, outraged and massacred 6,000 of the same poor people in 1655;
and partly butchered, and partly imprisoned most foully, and banished most inhumanly
12,000 of these inoffensive people of God in 1686, thousands of them being led like sheep to
the slaughter because they would not bow down to the corrupting idolatries of Rome.

The "Church of England" for a long time imitated the tyrannical and persecuting spirit of her
old mother, Rome. "Created in the first instance by a court intrigue, " says Mr. W. E. H.
Lecky, pervaded in all its parts by a spirit of the most intense Erastianism (representing the
church to be a mere creature of the State, dependent upon the State for its existence and
authority), and aspiring at the same time to a spiritual authority scarcely less absolute than
that of the Romish church which it had superseded, Anglicanism was as from the beginning
at once the most servile and the most efficient agent of tyranny. Endeavoring by the
assistance of temporal authority and by the display of worldly pomp to realize in England the
same position as Catholicism had occupied in Europe, she naturally flung herself on every
occasion into the arms of the civil power, No other church so uniformly betrayed and
trampled on the liberties of her country. 3  In all those fiery trials through which English liberty
has passed since the Reformation, she invariably cast her influence into the scale of tyranny,
supported and eulogized every attempt to violate the Constitution, and wrote the fearful
sentence of eternal condemnation upon the tombs of the martyrs of freedom. When Charles
I. attempted to convert the monarchy into a despotism, the English Church gave him its
constant and enthusiastic support. When, in the gloomy period of vice and of reaction that
followed the Restoration, the current of opinion set in against all liberal opinions, and the
maxims of despotism were embodied even in the Oath of Allegiance, 4 the Church of
England directed the stream, allied herself in the closest union with a court whose vices were
the scandal of Christendom, and exhausted her anathemas, not upon the hideous corruption
that surrounded her, but upon the principles of Hampden and of Milton. All through the long
series of encroachments of the Stuarts she exhibited the same spirit. It was not till James II.
had menaced her supremacy that the church was aroused to resistance. Then indeed, for a
brief but memorable period, she placed herself in opposition to the Crown, and contributed
largely to one of the most glorious events in English history. But no sooner had William
mounted the throne than her policy was reversed, her whole energies were directed
subversion of the constitutional liberty that was then firmly established, and it is recorded by
the great historian of the Revolution that at least nine-tenths of the clergy were opposed to
the emancipator of England. All through the reaction under Queen Anne, all through the still
worse reaction under George III., the same spirit was displayed. In the first period the clergy,
in their hatred of liberty, followed cordially the leadership of the infidel Bolingbroke; in the
second they were the most ardent supporters of the wars against America and against the
French Revolution, which have been the most disastrous in which England has ever
engaged. From first to last their conduct was the same, and every triumph of liberty was their
defeat."

The despotic and persecuting spirit of the "Church of England" was manifested against its
own Puritan, or Non-conformist members; and against the Independents (or stricter Puritans,
who formed churches separate from the Established "Church"); still more against the
Covenanters (or Covenanted Presbyterians who entered into a compact to resist the
imposition of Episcopacy upon Scotland); and most of all against the Baptists and Quakers.
And this spirit was manifested both in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the
leading clergy of the Establishment were Calvinistic, and in the later part, when they were
Arminian; but the Arminian persecutions far surpassed the Calvinistic both in number and
atrocity-persecution being more logically consistent with Arminianism, especially when, as in
this case, the latter was blended with ritualism and sacerdotalism.

The Independents, originating in England about the year 1581 under the leadership of
Robert Browne (hence first called Brownists), and being deserted by Browne, who in 1590
conformed to the "Church of England, " chose John Robinson, a pious Calvinist, as their
pastor in 1603, and in 1608, to secure liberty of conscience and worship, fled to Amsterdam,
and in 1609 to Leyden, in Holland; and one hundred and one of them, for the same purpose,
emigrated, with their Ruling Elder, William Brewster, in the Mayflower, in 1620, to Plymouth,
Massachusetts. These emigrants (forty-one men, with their families) are known as the
"Pilgrim Fathers; " they were mostly poor men and artisans; they advocated the
self-government of each local church, and the admission of none but true believers to the
Lord's Supper; and they were not much disposed to persecute others for having different
religious views and practices from themselves. But in 1629 the "Puritans, " or Episcopalians,
who wished to purify the discipline and worship of the "Church of England, " and still not
separate from that "Church, " began emigrating to Massachusetts. They consisted in great
part of the professional and middle classes; and, though establishing a system of
Congregationalism, yet like their brethren in England they set up a sort of theocratic state,
and strove to secure uniformity of worship by rigorous laws for the civil punishment of heresy
and schism. They unscripturally retained the pedobaptism of the "Church of England; " and
they therefore wreaked their peculiar vengeance on Baptists and Quakers. The "Church of
England" was established by law "in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, in Maryland after
the decline of the Roman Catholic influence, and in New York after its cession by the Dutch;
" and its tyrannical and persecuting spirit, combined with its lack of "Bishops" and its
dependence on England, caused it to languish in a country destined by providence to be the
home of religious liberty.

The Scottish Covenanters made a bold stand for civil and religious freedom especially from
1660 to 1688, during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. The persecutions that they
suffered from the "Church of England" were very numerous, and in many cases most
harrowing. It is computed that, during these twenty-eight years, eighteen thousand of them
were either banished or put to death.

The Friends or Quakers originated in 1647. They were, in some respects, the successors of
the Mystics of the Middle Ages, and the predecessors of the Methodists of the eighteenth
century. George Fox (1624-1690), a moral, meek, odd, uneducated, bold and poor man, was
their founder; Robert Barclay (1648-1690) their apologist and theologian; and William Penn
(1644-1718) their statesman and politician. They claimed, not to be founders of a new sect,
but revivers of primitive Christianity. They taught the spirituality of true religion; the
indispensable need of "the inner light" or the Spirit of Christ for the understanding of the
Scriptures; the privilege of direct access to God without the intervention of human priest or
ceremony; entire freedom of conscience and worship for all men; that the ministry need no
human education or theological training, but only the preparation afforded by the Holy Spirit,
and that they ought to preach without hire or bargaining, though they may receive voluntary
contributions from those to whom they administer in spiritual things. They steadfastly
opposed tithes, oaths, infant baptism, war, slavery, intemperance, vain fashions, corrupting
amusements and flattering, titles; and these eccentricities brought upon them the terrible
vengeance of the "State Church." It is said that, from 1650 to 1689, 13,258 Quakers suffered
fine, imprisonment, torture and mutilation in the British Isles, 219 were banished, and 360
perished in prisons, some almost literally rotting in pestilential cells; and, in New England,
170 cases of hard usage are enumerated, 47 were banished, and four (including one
woman) were hanged. These sufferings they bore with exemplary patience and heroism,
leaving their enemies to the correction of the Lord, and meekly saying that it was better to
suffer wrong than to do wrong. But, with their wonderful light, they had much spiritual
darkness. They taught that the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper were not
designed by Christ and His Apostles to be observed outwardly by the church, but only
inwardly; that Christ died for every individual of the human race, and that the inner light or
grace of His Spirit is given in sufficient measure to every human being, in all ages and
countries of the world, to save all if they obey it, and condemn them if they reject it (the
Quakers thus being the most Arminian of Arminians, and surpassing all other denominations
in their latitudinarian view of the Spirit's influence); that men are justified in their works,
though not on account of their works; and that it is possible, in the present world, to reach a
state of sinless perfection. Their four  grades of meetings for discipline-the preparative, the
monthly, the quarterly and the yearly, the latter exercising exclusive legislative and finally
appellate power over a large collection of Societies-somewhat resemble the polity of
Presbyterianism; the system has too much worldly wisdom, and too little New Testament
authority. Some of their writers, even in the seventeenth century, approached very near to
Socinianism, denying the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the vicarious nature of the atonement,
and imputed righteousness. And in 1827 a schism took place among the American Quakers,
Elias Hicks, of New York (1769-1830), openly advocating Socinianism, and drawing off into a
separate body (called the Hicksite Quakers) the most of the Quakers in the Atlantic States;
while this movement caused those called the Orthodox Quakers to adhere more closely to
the Scriptures. Each party professes to hold the views of the founders of the Society in the
seventeenth century-the name which they have given themselves not being the church, but
"The Religious Society of Friends." Towards the close of the seventeenth century they
numbered about 75,000; and they have never had as many as 200,000 members.

The most of the seventeenth century was a time of outward persecution, but of spiritual
prosperity, for the Baptists in Europe and America. By the so-called "Reformed Churches" in
the departments of Zurich and Berne, in Switzerland, hundreds of the poor people styled
Anabaptists or Mennonites were, on account of their religion, whipped, branded, robbed,
imprisoned and banished. Similar punishments were inflicted upon the Baptists by the
Episcopalians in England and Virginia, and by the Congregationalists in Massachusetts. The
last man burned alive in England for his religion was Edward Wightman, a Baptist, April 11th,
1612; just as the first man, William Sautre, burned in 1400, in England, for his religion, is said
to have been a Baptist in sentiment. The only other person bullied in England for his religion
during this century was Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, March 18th, 1612. The horror of the
people at these renewed executions for heresy caused James I. and his successors to adopt
slower and less public modes of death for heretics', -such as long and barbarous
imprisonment. Baptist ministers especially suffered from long imprisonment." "Francis
Bampfield was eight years in Dorchester jail, and spent the last year of his life in Newgate,
where he died. John Miller was confined ten years in the same jail. Henry Forty was twelve
years in prison at Exeter. John Bunyan was in Bedford jail twelve years. Joseph Wright lay in
Maidstone jail twenty years. George Fownes died in Gloucester jail. Thomas Delaune, and
many other servants of God, died in Newgate."

Samuel Howe, a cobbler and a Baptist preacher, and author of a pamphlet called "The
Sufficiency of the Spirit's Teaching, without Human Learning, " died in prison in 1640, and
was buried in the highway, because interment in consecrated ground, so called, was refused
him.

It was particularly during the infamous reigns of Charles II. and James II. (1660-1688) that the
Baptists were persecuted in England. In November, 1661, John James, an excellent,
inoffensive and benevolent Seventh-Day Baptist minister in London, was on suborned and
perjured testimony as to treasonable words used by him, hanged, drawn and quartered, his
quarters being placed over the city gates, and his head set on a pole opposite the
meeting-house where he had preached the gospel. The "Act of Uniformity" in 1662, drove
two thousand conscientious ministers from the Establishment, and subjected many Baptists
to the pillory and imprisonment. The first "Conventicle Act" in 1664 forbade as many as five
or more persons, over sixteen years of age, besides the household, from meeting anywhere
for religious worship in any other manner than allowed by the liturgy or practice of the
"Church of England;" the penalty for the first offense was three months imprisonment, or a
fine of five pounds; for the second offense six months' imprisonment, or a fine of ten pounds;
and for the third offense banishment to America (the West Indies) for seven years (and
death, if they returned without per mission), or a fine of one hundred pounds. Vast numbers
suffered under this act in every part of the kingdom. The Five-Mile Act in 1665 forbade
Non-conformist ministers from going within five miles of any city or town that sent members to
Parliament, or within five miles of any place where there was stated service in the
Established "Church" also declared them incapable of teaching any public or private schools.
The penalty for each offense was forty pounds. This Act inflicted great suffering upon the
true ministers of the word and upon their families; and it caused many Baptist Churches to be
formed in villages, nooks and corners of the land, beyond the reach of the Five-Mile Act. The
second "Conventicle Act" in 1670 was still more searching and extensive than the first. "All
persons attending conventicles (or the religious meetings of Non-conformists) were to be
fined five shillings for the first offense, ten shillings for the second; the preachers were to be
fined twenty pounds for the first offense; forty pounds for the second; the owners of the
houses, barns, buildings or yards in which the meetings were held were to be fined twenty
pounds each time; the fines were to be levied by distress and sale of the offender's goods
and chattels; the money was to be divided into three parts, one-third for the king, one-third
for the poor, and one-third for the informer and his assistants; in case of the poverty of the
ministers, their fines were to be levied on the goods and chattels of any others present. If the
first Act scourged the Dissenters with whips, the second was a scorpion plague. They were
plundered and imprisoned without remorse. Many of the Bishops exerted themselves in every
possible way to enforce the Act. They sent circulars to the clergy, directing them to stimulate
and aid the civil authorities; and some of the Bishops went in person to the places where the
meetings were supposed to be held, in order to encourage the constables, or insure the
rigorous discharge of their duty. The activity of the informers was cited by the promised
share of the penalties. Their infamous trade became lucrative, and many of them amassed
large sums, mercilessly filched from the servants of God. A more degrading and detestable
occupation cannot well be imagined. They spent their time in prowling about the retired
streets and by-lanes of towns, or in exploring the recesses of woods, and wild, desolate
places, if happily they might hear the voice of singing or prayer, or watch the movements of
some straggler hastening to join his brethren. With savage glee they darted upon the secret
assembly, gloating over their confusion and distress, and specially rejoicing when they
seized the preacher, because of the heavier fine. They accompanied the constables when
they executed warrants of distress on property; and they attended the sales of the goods
seized, taking car themselves. They scrupled not to take the bed from under the sick; they
robbed of their bread children whose fathers were languishing in prison. The law created
their calling, and encouraged them in diligently pursuing it. Magistrates urged them on.
Clergymen and country squires applauded their cleverness; and judges on the bench
commended them for their zeal. There was an unholy alliance against truth and
righteousness, in which the titled and the learned were willing to associate themselves with
the meanest, the wickedest, and the most brutal of men. The prisons were crowded. Families
were ruined. Houses were desolated. Estates were impoverished or abandoned. Numbers
fled their native shores, and sought in Holland or in the American wilderness for freedom to
worship God." But all this severe persecution did not succeed in putting an end to the
religious meetings of the Dissenters in England. They met for worship in private houses, in
the lanes, in the fields, in the woods, at all hours of the day and of the night, wherever and
whenever they could best escape the vigilance of the authorities. The word of the Lord was
very precious in those days. There was a very lively spirit of faith and prayer among the
people of God; their numbers increased; it was a spiritual spring-time with them, though a
period of great outward gloom; they felt and declared that the time of the singing of birds was
come, and that the voice of the turtle was heard in the land. They blessedly realized the holy
rejoicing of the prophet Habakkuk, not in worldly prosperity, but in the God of their salvation.
Hab 3:17-19 It has been computed that, from 1660 to 1689, in England, seventy thousand
persons suffered on account of religion, eight thousand persons perished, and two million
pounds sterling (ten million dollars) were paid in fines. "The Baptists," says Sir James
McIntosh, "suffered more than any others under Charles II., because they had publicly
professed the principles of religious liberty." Bonds and imprisonment and scourging
attended the Baptists in Massachusetts. A few came over with the first emigrants, but not
making their sentiments public, were not molested for several years. In 1635 Roger Williams
was banished, and, leaving Massachusetts, founded Rhode Island. In 1639 several Baptists
were fined, or imprisoned, or disfranchised, or threatened with banishment (different
penalties being inflicted on different ones), for attempting to found a church in Weymouth, a
town about fourteen miles southeast of Boston. In 1644 a poor man named Painter, in
Boston, was tied up and whipped for refusing to have his infant child baptized. In July, 1651,
upon the request of an aged Baptist, of Lynn, named William Witter, who was not able to
travel and visit his church at Newport, Rhode Island, three members of that church, John
Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and a John Crandall, came to Lynn, Mass., twelve miles from
Boston, to hold meeting with him. While Mr. Clarke was preaching from Re 3:10, two
constables entered the house and arrested Clarke, Holmes and Crandall; and the Court
sentenced Clarke to pay a fine of twenty pounds, Holmes thirty pounds, and Crandall five
pounds, or be publicly whipped. All conscientiously refused to pay the fines, and were sent
back to prison. Some of Mr. Clarke's friends paid his fine without his consent. Mr. Crandall
was released on a promise to appear at the next Court. Mr. Holmes was kept in prison at
Boston until September, when, his fine not having been paid, he was brought out and
publicly and severely whipped, receiving thirty stripes with a three-corded whip, so that he
could take no rest for some weeks except as he lay on his knees and elbows, not being able
to suffer any other part of his body to touch the bed. While he was undergoing the cruel
strokes, the Lord gave him a more glorious manifestation of His presence than ever before,
so that he scarcely felt the outward pain, and he told the magistrates that they had struck him
as with roses, and he prayed the Lord not to lay this sin to their charge. Warr were issued
against thirteen persons, whose only crime was showing some emotions of sympathy
towards this innocent sufferer; but eleven escaped, and, while the other two were preparing
to receive ten lashes apiece, some friends paid their fines. Notwithstanding Congregational
persecutions, the Baptists increased in Massachusetts. A Baptist Church was formed in
Boston in 1665, and for several years some of the members spent most of their time in courts
and prisons. In 1643 the "Church of England" was established by law in Virginia. In 1653 Sir
William Berkeley, royal governor of Virginia, strove, by whippings and brandings, to make the
inhabitants of that colony conform to the Established "Church, " and thus drove out the
Baptists and Quakers, who found a refuge in the Albemarle country of North Carolina, a
colony which "was settled, " says Bancroft, "by the freest of the free, by men to whom the
restraints of other colonies were too severe."

Having described, in the same connection, the religious persecutions by Protestants during
the seventeenth century, I will now briefly speak of some individual Baptist Churches, Baptist
principles and practices, and a few Baptist ministers of this century.

The first English Baptist Church was formed, in 1608, of refugees in Amsterdam, under the
pastoral care of John Smyth, who had been an Episcopalian, and afterwards a Brownist
clergyman, and who has been called a Se-Baptist because he was said to have baptized
himself; but it is more probable that one of the brethren baptized him, and he then baptized
the others. This church, as shown by their Confession of Faith, published in 1611, held
Arminian views-the members being what are called in England General Baptists, because
they believe in a general atonement. In 1612, Mr. Smyth having died, Mr. Thomas Helwys
was chosen to succeed him as pastor, and he and the most of the church returned to
England, and located their place of worship in London. In 1633, September the 12th, the first
Particular or Calvinistic or Predestinarian English Baptist Church was founded in London,
under the pastoral care of John Spilsbury, from those members of an Independent Church
who rejected infant baptism; it was called Broad Street Church, and was in the parish of
Wapping, London. In 1644 they numbered seven churches in London, and forty-seven in the
country; and the same year, three years before the Westminster Confession, in answer to the
calumnies of Daniel Featley, an Episcopalian clergyman, the seven London churches
published, in fifty-two Articles, a Confession of Faith, showing that, in all important doctrinal
principles, the Baptists agreed with the "orthodox Reformed Churches." The concluding
paragraph of this Confession is most admirable. It is as follows: "Thus we desire to give unto
Christ that which is His, and unto all lawful authority that which is their due; and to owe
nothing to any man but love; to live quietly and peaceably, as it becometh saints,
endeavoring in all things to keep a good conscience, and to do unto every man (of what
judgment soever) as we would they should do unto us: that, as our practice is, so it may
prove us to be a conscionable, quiet and harmless people (no ways dangerous or
troublesome to human society), and to labor and work with our hands that we may not be
chargeable to any, but to give to him that needeth, both friends and enemies, accounting it
more excellent to give than to receive. Also we confess that we know but in part, and that we
are ignorant of many things which we desire and seek to know; and if any shall do us that
friendly part to show us from the word of God that we see not, we shall have cause to be
thankful to God and them. But if any man shall impose upon us anything that we see not to
be commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ, we should in His strength rather embrace all
reproaches and tortures of men, to be stripped of all outward comforts, and, if it were
possible, to die a thousand deaths, rather than to do anything against the least tittle of the
truth of God, or against the light of our own consciences. And if any shall call what we have
said heresy, then do we with the Apostle acknowledge that 'after the way which they call
heresy, worship we the God of our fathers,' disclaiming all heresies (rightly so called),
because they are against Christ, and to be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in
obedience to Christ, as knowing our labor shall not be in vain in the Lord." Devonshire
Square Church, one of the seven churches that published this Confession, is still in
existence. In 1656 was published, in forty-six Articles, the Confession of Somerset, signed by
the messengers of sixteen churches in Somerset and the adjoining counties. What is called
the Confession of 1688, in thirty-two chapters, by far the most important and authoritative of
all uninspired Baptist Confessions, and still generally received by all Baptists who hold the
doctrine of personal election and the certainty of the final perseverance of the saints, first
appeared in 1677 at London, and was, in 1688 and 1689, approved and recommended by
the ministers and messengers of above a hundred churches who were in session in London
July 4-11, 1689. It was adapted by the Philadelphia Baptist Association, in Philadelphia,
Sept. 25th 1742, and is hence also called the Philadelphia Confession-the latter retaining all
the old London Confession, and adding two other Articles (Chapter 23, Of Singing of Psalms,
and Chapter 31, Of Laying on of Hands). The Charleston (South Carolina) Association was
organized, in 1751, on the basis of the old London Confession; and the Kehukee (North
Carolina) Association w as organized in 1765 on the same Confession, adding, from the
Philadelphia Confession, the Chapter on the Singing of Psalms, but not adding the Chapter
on the Laying on of Hands. The practice of laying the hands of the presbytery on all
believers after baptism was first introduced among the Baptist Churches in England about
the year 1645, and became common, though not universal, among the Baptists in England
and America during the seventeenth century, and its observance or non-observance
sometimes caused bitter controversies, and even rent churches; but the practice is now
almost entirely discontinued, except in cases of ordination to the deaconship and eldership.
As the English Congregationalists had done in the Savoy Declaration in 1658, so the
Baptists, in the London Confession, followed the Presbyterian Westminster Confession both
in sentiment and in language, with very few verbal alterations, except in the doctrine of the
church and the ordinances, -for the purpose, as they said, of showing their agreement with
the Presbyterians and Congregationalists "in all the fundamental articles of the Christian
religion." And they say in their Appendix: "If any of the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ shall,
in the spirit of meekness, attempt to convince us of any mistake, either in judgment or
practice, we shall diligently ponder his arguments, and account him our chiefest friend that
shall be an instrument to convert us from any error that is in our ways; for we cannot wittingly
do anything against the truth, but all things for the truth."

By the close of the seventeenth century there were probably, in England and Wales, about
two hundred Baptist Churches with about twenty thousand members; and there were in the
present United States sixteen churches, organized as follows: First Newport, R. I., 1638;
Providence, R. I., 1639; Second Newport, R. I., 1656; First Swansea, Mass., 1663; Boston,
Mass., 1665; North Kingston, R. I., 1665; Seventh Day, Newport, R. I., 1771; South Kingston,
R. I., 1680; Charleston, S. C., 1683; Tiverton, R. I., 1685; Middletown, S. J., 1688; Lower
Dublin, Pa., 1689; Piscataway, N. J., 1689; Cohansey, N. J., 1691; Second Swansea, Mass.,
1694; First Philadelphia, Pa., 1698. Several of these churches were composed of General or
Arminian Baptists. From the most recent and thorough investigation, it is believed that Dr.
John Clark (a physician) and eleven other persons formed, at Newport, Rhode Island, in
1638, the first Baptist Church in America; Clark resigning the proposed care of the church in
1651, in order to return to England, was succeeded by Obadiah Holmes. The pastors and
members of this oldest Baptist Church in America remained strongly Calvinistic or
predestinarian until about the year 1820.-In 1636 the town, and in 1639 the Baptist Church,
of Providence, Rhode Island, were founded by Roger Williams (1599-1683). He was a
Welshman by birth, an Episcopalian by training, and had been a Congregationalist by choice,
and he was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. He came to Massachusetts in 1631,
and was for a few years assistant minister of the Congregational Church at Salem; but,
denying the right of the magistrates to punish offenses of a purely religious character, he was
banished, and, leaving his wife and children at Salem, he fled, in the depth of a severe
winter, to the Narragansett Indians, and, in gratitude to God for his preservation during
fourteen weeks of bitter wilderness wandering, he called the town that he founded
Providence and he made it a shelter for persons distressed for the sake of conscience. He
established the colony of Rhode Island upon principles of entire religious liberty-principles
which have since been adopted in all the States of the American Union, but upon which no
State before Rhode Island had ever been founded. 5 In March, 1639, Roger Williams, Ezekiel
Holliman and ten others constituted the Baptist Church at Providence. Holliman baptized
Williams, and then Williams immersed Holliman and the others. Four months afterwards,
doubting the validity of this procedure, Williams withdrew from the church, and seems never
again to have united with any religious organization, but remained a Seeker, seeking but
never finding a church of pure apostolic faith and practice. "For one hundred and thirty years
the ministers of the Providence Church were natives, bred on the spot, generally advanced
in years, worked for their daily bread, and had no special training." For a long time it was
thought that this church was the first Baptist organization in America; but the best evidence
seems to show that the Newport Church was the first.-John Miles formed a Baptist Church at
Swansea in Wales in 1649; and removing, with a few of his members and a copy of the old
church records, to America, he founded in 1663 the first Baptist Church in Massachusetts at
Swansea or Swanzy.

The Baptists of the seventeenth century acknowledged no master but Christ, no infallible
authority but the Scriptures. They advocated perfect religious liberty for all men. They
required true piety as the indispensable re requisite for church membership; and, in
accordance with 1Co 5:11 and 2Co 6:17, they excluded from their fellowship, those guilty of
immoral, unscriptural or disorderly conduct. They debarred or excluded from fellowship
persons who sold spirituous liquors; those who drank to excess; those who borrowed money
and did not repay it; those who married irreligious and disorderly companions; those who did
not treat their companions with proper love and kindness; those who told lies; those who
swore; and those guilty of unchastity. Upon thoroughly satisfactory proof of heartfelt
repentance, the churches were rejoiced to restore excluded members again to fellowship.
They silenced preachers for improper conduct which was not thought to be so gross as to
demand their exclusion; and, upon proper repentance, restored to them the privilege of
exercising their gifts in public. Some of the churches observed the Lord's Supper weekly, but
most of them monthly. Singing was not commonly practiced; and, when engaged in, it was
only at the close of the meeting, so that all opposed to it could freely go out, and the church
would not be offended. Many churches had two or more Elders or pastors. In some churches
there were "ruling Elders, " who, in the absence of the pastor, presided at church-meetings
and preached. Any preacher, whether ordained or not, could baptize. Strict communion was
practiced in most of the churches; but some admitted unbaptized persons, if pious, to
communion. They were not perfect, and did not have perfect light on all subjects. In some of
their controversies, especially on predestination and free-will, there was great virulence,
Arminians charging Calvinists with uncharitableness, and Calvinists charging Arminians with
latitudinarianism. There was, as already mentioned, a great contention on the subject of
laying on of hands, and this was by some made a bar to fellowship. Some believed in the
perpetuity of the Jewish Sabbath, but most observed the first day of the week as the day of
rest and worship. A very few churches observed the washing of feet; but this was placed
among the things indifferent, and was never made a bar to fellowship. Some churches had a
love-feast before the Lord's Supper. Only so far as the people of God have been taught by
the Spirit of Christ, have they been perfectly agreed in faith and practice.

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was the most gifted preacher of the seventeenth century, and the
most wonderfully gifted experimental and spiritual writer since the days of the Apostles. His
"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, " his "Pilgrim's Progress, " and his "Holy War, " are
the records of his own deep and varied spiritual experience. Next to the Bible, his Pilgrims
Progress has been translated into more languages, and has passed through more editions
(about four hundred), than any other book in the world. It is generally the first book after the
Bible translated into the heathen languages. The common people heard and read Bunyan
gladly. Until the present century, few except the poor and lowly and uneducated admired
Bunyan's writings; but it is now the fashion of the rich and lordly and educated to commend
them for their pure and strong English, and their simple, natural and allegorical power. Only
the spiritual can admire their spirituality. Bunyan was himself, like the Apostles of Christ
during His ministry, a poor, hard-working, uneducated man. He was a tinker, like his father.
At seventeen years of age he served a year in the Parliamentary army; and then, returning
home, married a poor orphan girl-both being so poor that they had not a dish or a spoon
between them. All the portion that she brought him was two religious books which her father
had left her, "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, " and "The Practice of Piety." He soon
experienced some concern on the subject of religion, and he began a constant attendance at
prayers and sermons, and became a strict Pharisee, a "poor, painted hypocrite, " he says,
worshiping the Established Church and all its appurtenances. He gradually abandoned his
favorite amusements, playing at tip-cat on the "Sabbath, " swearing, ringing the church bells,
and dancing, and he made some outward reformation both in his words and life, and set the
ten commandments before him for his way to Heaven, and thought that he generally kept
them pretty well; and, when he broke one, he was sorry for it, and promised God to do better
next time, and he thought he pleased God as well as any man in England. He was now
talked of by his neighbors as an eminently pious man, and he was proud of his "godliness."
But, while working at his calling, he heard three or four poor women one day talking of a new
birth, and of the work of God in their hearts, and how they were convinced of their miserable
natural state, and how God had visited their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, and with
what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted and supported against the
temptations of the Devil, and they contemned their own righteousness for its filthiness and
insufficiency. This conversation made a deep impression upon Bunyan, and he sought the
company of the same truly godly persons again and again, and he was convicted by the Holy
Spirit of his own dreadful sinfulness, and made to long and cry to God for deliverance-he felt
that he would have given ten thousand worlds, if he had them, for true conversion. But he
seemed to grow worse and worse; terrible temptations and trials assailed him for more than a
year; he feared that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and the day of grace was
forever gone with him, and he was about to sink in despair, when Christ seemed to speak
mercy and pardon to his soul. Reading Martin Luther's commentary on the Galatians, he saw
his own spiritual conflicts fully described, and he esteemed that book above all others except
the Bible as fit for a wounded conscience. His soul seemed to be filled with the love of Christ;
but, after this, he experienced many sore temptations, which, however, he was enabled to
overcome by the all-sufficient grace of Christ. The Holy Spirit taught him that his
righteousness did not consist in his own perfections or his own frames and feelings, but that
Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, today and forever, was his righteousness. Now
his chains fell off indeed, and he gloried and rejoiced in Christ Jesus as his wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification and redemption; and he was led by the Lord into the mysteries
of the union with the Son of God, and enabled to feel that he was joined to Him, and was
flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bones. Eph 5:30 He united with the Baptists (at Bedford,
forty miles northwest of London), "the most thorough-going and consistent of all Protestant
sects," says Mr. J. A. Froude in this connection. He passed through other severe spiritual
trials and temptations, and was led into the heights and depths of Divine grace, love and
mercy; and he was enabled especially to realize the sweetness of Heb 12:22-24 "Ye are
come unto Mount Sion," etc. Two years after his baptism, some of the wisest and best of his
brethren thought that they saw in him a special gift of spiritual understanding and utterance,
and they earnestly requested him to speak a word of exhortation to them at one of their
meetings. Though much abashed, he after a while consented to try to do so, yet, he says,
with much weakness and infirmity. The church was much affected and comforted, and
encouraged him to persevere, and soon ordained him to the work of the ministry. After
preaching very acceptably to the brethren five years, and working at his trade for the support
of himself and family, he was arrested and thrown into Bedford jail twelve years (1660-1672)
for "teaching men to worship God contrary to the law." He would have been released any day
if he had promised not to preach; but he felt called of God to the work of the ministry, and he
continually replied to his jailors, "If you release me today, I will preach again tomorrow." His
separation from his poor wife and his four small children, one of them a blind daughter whom
he loved with peculiar tenderness, and who died while he was in prison, was very distressing
to him. Not being able to practice his old trade, he took up a new one, that of making
long-tagged-thread laces, of which he made many thousands for the support of his family. He
was allowed to preach and pray with the other prisoners in jail, where no informers were
prowling about to catch him; and he was there providentially and graciously directed and
assisted to compose his three most influential writings, Pilgrim's Progress, Holy War, and
Grace Abounding. Thus the wisdom of God overruled the malice of Satan, and enabled His
highly gifted servant to preach to millions who would perhaps otherwise have never heard of
His name. His only books, while in prison, were the Bible and Concordance, and Foxe's Book
of Martyrs. The Bible was his constant companion, and he is said to have almost known it by
heart. "It is easy," says Mr. Froude, "to conceive a university-bred Bunyan, an intellectual
meteor, flaring uselessly across the sky and disappearing in smoke and nothingness." He
lived sixteen years after his release from prison, and remained all the while pastor of the
church in Bedford, though he visited other churches much, "animating the zeal of his
brethren, collecting and distributing alms for the poor, and settling difficulties." He rode to
London, on a preaching tour, once a year, and it is said that three thousand persons would
meet before breakfast on a dark winter morning to hear him. The learned Independent
minister, John Owen, said to Charles II. that he would gladly relinquish all his learning for the
tinker's preaching abilities. Bunyan abstained all his life from politics. He steadily refused
official, pecuniary or ecclesiastical promotion for himself or family. He did not speak of his
own talents, but was low in his own eyes; and, instead of seeking, he humbly put aside the
applause of men. "A little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear of God, "he said, "is better
than all the gifts; the Scripture does not say, the Lord gives gifts and glory, but the Lord gives
grace and glory; true grace is a certain forerunner of glory." "He was a strong predestinarian,
maintaining not only the doctrine of personal, unconditional, efficacious election unto
holiness and eternal life, but also the doctrine of reprobation, which, he s made himself. "No
man ever quickened his own soul, or had any power to take a single step in the way of
salvation, till God made him willing in the day of His power. The absolute promises are big
promises, containing in themselves all the conditional promises, with all their conditions and
all their blessed fulfillments. All that the Father giveth the Son shall come to Him; they may
say they will not, but they will be found liars, for Gods' word is true; they shall come to Him;
they shall be enabled to see and repent and believe; their hearts shall be inclined to come by
God, who worketh in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure; He will give them
power to come, and to rest in Jesus and be saved. Bunyan's last sermon, preached a month
before he died, was from the text, "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God". Joh 1:13 "They that believe," said he, "are born to it as an
heir is to an inheritance-born, not of natural privileges or desires or will (I am not a free-willer;
I do abhor it), but born of God, of the Spirit of God, raised out of the grave of sin, and
translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and made to live a new life. And the new-born
child that has life will cry; the spiritual child will cry to God for mercy, and will desire the
sincere milk of the word, that he may grow thereby, and will crave to be comfortably clothed
with the golden righteousness of Christ, and will be satisfied with the breasts of God's
consoling promises, and will bear some resemblance to his heavenly Father, and will be
trained up in the ways and house of God, the true church, and will go to God for the supply
of his necessities, and for relief and strength in trials anti temptations If you have not these
marks, you will fall short of the kingdom of God; if you are not a child of God, you will have no
heavenly inheritance. If you have these marks, you are the children of God, and you should
set your affections on things above, and not on things below; you should talk of your Father's
promises, and love His will, and be content and pleased with your worldly lot, and live
lovingly together with all the children of God, serve one another, do good to one another,
and, if any wrong you, pray God to right you; and be holy in all manner of conversation and
live like the children of the holy God." "Happy in his heavenly work and influence, which
spread over his own country and to the far-oft settlements in America, Bunyan spent his last
years in his own Land of Beulah, Doubting Castle out of sight, and the towers and minarets
of Emmanuel Land growing nearer and clearer as the days went on. Returning on horseback
from a successful journey from Bedford to Reading undertaken to reconcile an angry father
and an offending son, he was thoroughly wetted in a storm of rain, and was attacked with
chill and fever, and died in ten days, towards the end of August 1688, between two and three
months before the landing of King William." His last words were, "Take me, for I come to
Thee." The ablest writers testify that there were no nonsense, no fanaticism, and no
harshness in Bunyan. He had a horror of the Roman Catholics, whom he thought to compose
Mystical Babylon; and also of the Quakers, whom he understood to deny the inspiration of
the Scriptures, the divinity and atonement of Christ, and the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body and general judgment, and whom he understood to affirm that every man in the
world had the Spirit of Christ, grace and faith. With all Protestants, if moral and pious, he was
willing to commune, considering differences in judgment about water baptism no bar to such
communion; but could cite no plain scriptural precept or example for his open communion
views satisfactory to the most of Baptists then or since, and the natural tendency of such
views is illustrated by "the progress backwards of his own Bedford Church to infant sprinkling
and Congregationalism." The New Testament shows this practice of open communion to be
erroneous; and history proves it to be a failure. There can be no agreement between truth
and error. It is evident that even Bunyan, with his extraordinary gifts, was in darkness on the
subject of communion.

"Great as was the authority [or influence, rather] of Bunyan with the Baptists, " says
Macaulay, "that of William Kiffin was greater. Kiffin was the first man among them in wealth
and station." He was born in 1616, and died in 1701. He was an industrious, honest, skillful
and successful merchant of London, and had great influence at the courts of Charles II. and
James II., and took pleasure in using his wealth and influence for the relief and protection of
his poor, persecuted brethren like Mordecai at the Court of Ahasuerus. He was himself
arrested many times, and imprisoned once. He was for five years a member and minister in
an Independent Church, and then joined the first Particular Baptist Church formed in
England, of which Mr. Spilsbury was pastor. Two years afterwards he and those of his
brethren who thought it improper to allow ministers that had not been immersed to preach to
them, withdrew in 1640 and formed another church, which met in Devonshire Square; and of
this church Mr. Kiffin was pastor sixty-one years, until his death, being aided in his long
pastorate, at different times, by three assistant pastors. He kept aloof from politics, and
always tried to obey the powers that be, and he submitted with unmurmuring resignation to
the most painful 6 dispensations of Providence. "He left behind him a character of rare
excellence, tried alike by the fire of prosperity and adversity in the most eventful times." The
only work he ever published was a defense of Close Communion.

Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) was a poor, sickly, uneducated boy, who found peace in Christ
in his fifteenth year, and united with a Baptist Church. Three years afterwards he was invited
by the church to preach, though he did not undertake a pastoral charge till his twenty eighth
year, when he was chosen pastor of Horsleydown Church in London, and retained that office
till his death. At first he was an Arminian as to free-will and the extent of the atonement; but,
by reading the Scriptures and conversing with those who understood the truth more
perfectly, he abandoned those errors. He wrote forty-three works, polemical, practical and
poetical-some of his subjects being the laying on of hands, the lawfulness of singing in public
worship, the authority of the "Christian Sabbath, " baptism, Scripture metaphors, gospel
mysteries, the parables, the travels of true godliness and the travels of ungodliness, Zion in
distress, distressed Zion relieved, and spiritual melody (nearly three hundred hymns). The
historian, Thomas Crosby, was a member of his church, and expresses his warm admiration
of him as a man and a minister. Mr. Keach was often imprisoned for preaching, and his life
was sometimes endangered. He was a bold defender of the truth, and his books were widely
circulated. In 1644 he wrote a small book for children, called "The Child's Instructor, " in
which he affirmed that none but believers should be baptized, and he also taught the
personal reign of Christ on earth for a thousand years. And, what was especially of offensive,
he said: "Christ's true ministers have not their learning and wisdom from men, or from
universities, or human schools; for human learning, arts and sciences are not essential to the
making of a true minister; but only the gift of God, which cannot be bought with silver or gold.
And also, as they have freely received the gift of God, so they do freely administer; they do
not preach for hire, for gain or filthy lucre; they are not like false teachers, who look for gain
from their quarters, who eat the fat, and clothe themselves with the wool, and kill them that
are fed. Eze 34 Also, they are not lords over God's heritage; they rule them not by force and
cruelty, neither have they power to force and compel men to believe and obey their doctrine,
but are only to persuade and entreat; thus is the way of the gospel, as Christ taught them."
For publishing this heretical book, Mr. Keach was indicted and tried and condemned to go to
jail two weeks, and then stand in the pillory two hours in the open market place of Aylesbury,
and two hours in the open market place of Winslow; and, at the latter place, to have his book
openly burnt before his face by the common hangman, in disgrace of him and his doctrine,
and to pay a fine of twenty pounds, and then remain in jail until he found sureties for his good
behavior, and appearance at the next court, there to renounce his doctrines and make such
public submission as should be enjoined him. This shameful sentence was rigorously
executed, and Mr. Keach bore the indignities with great patience and manliness, and, even
while standing in the pillory, boldly defended the Bible doctrine that he had taught, and the
people treated him not only with respect but with sympathy.

Hanserd Knollys (1598-1691) was a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and
experienced conversion while a student there. He was first a Deacon and a priest in the
"Church of England; " but, finding that infant baptism was not taught in the Scriptures, he
gave up his salary, but continued preaching, and the subject of his discourses was "the
doctrine of free grace, according to the tenor of the new and everlasting covenant." In 1636
the High Commission Court, or Protestant Inquisition, arrested and imprisoned him; but,
through the connivance of his jailor, he escaped, in 1638, with his wife to America. He arrived
in Boston a penniless fugitive, and was treated as an Antinomian, and had to work with a hoe
for his daily bread. Going to Dover, N. H., he preached there three years, and then,
summoned by his aged father, returned to England. He settled in London, and gained his
livelihood by teaching school till near the close of his life. Commanded by the Chairman of
"The Westminster Assembly of Divines" to preach no more, he readily and boldly replied that
he would preach the gospel publicly and from house to house. In 1645 he was ordained
pastor of a Baptist Church in London, and he remained so till his death, though for a while a
fugitive in Holland and Germany. He was frequently imprisoned for preaching, even in his
eighty-fourth year being in jail six months. He was a strong predestinarian, a decided Baptist,
and was a man of great learning and preaching abilities. He wrote eleven books, one of
which was a grammar of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages His learning was seasoned
with Divine grace, so that it did not puff him up or lead him away from the simplicity of the
gospel of Christ.

"The mild, harmless, godly and persecuted Baptists, " are frequent names given by eminent
historians to the people of God in the seventeenth century.

ENDNOTES:

1 For more than half of his short life of thirty nine years, Pascal was deeply affected with
dyspepsia, or paralysis, or hypochondria, or all these combined and from his eighteenth year
he never passed a day without pain. Yet he bore his sufferings with exemplary patience and,
under the mournful darkness of Catholic superstition, he continually inflicted upon his poor
body additional sufferings. For he wore an iron girdle next his skin, armed with sharp points,
which he would drive into his flesh with his elbow whenever he felt himself assailed by sinful
thoughts

2  "Truth indeed, " says Milton in his Aeropagitica, " came once into the world with her Divine
Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when He ascended, and His
Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as
the story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good
Osyris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered
them to the four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such as durst
appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osyris, went up
and down gathering up limb and limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found
them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall till her Master's second coming.

3 As Macaulay very truly and eloquently wrote, "The Church of England continued to be for
more than 150 years the servile handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty.
The Divine right of kings and the duty of passively obeying all their commands were her
favorite tenets. Once and but once-for a moment, and but for a moment-when here own
dignity and property were touched, she forgot to practice the submission she had taught."

4 In this clause that it was not lawful "on any pretense whatever to take up arms against the
king. "This clause was expunged at the Revolution. Magna Charta had declared that kings
who violated it might be resisted. "The doctrine that kingly government is peculiarly favored
by Heaven, " says Macaulay, "receives no countenance from the Old Testament; for in the
Old Testament we read that the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a
king, and that they afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiance from him. Nor does a
this system receive any countenance from those passages of the New Testament which
describe government as an ordinance of God; for the government under which the writers of
the New Testament lives was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were
republican magistrates, named by the senate."

5 An English Baptist, named Leonard Busher, published in 1614 the first work in the English
language advocating perfect liberty of conscience. It was called "Religious Peace, or a Plea
for Liberty of Conscience."

6 One of his sons was poisoned in Venice by a Catholic priest for denouncing his religion.
And two of his grandsons the pious William and Benjamin Hewling. under the pretense of
complicity in Monmouth's rebellion were sent to the gallows by the infamous Judge Jeffries,
and hanged amid the lamentations of: the spectators, including even the soldiers on guard.
Chief Justice George Jeffries, whose name is "a synonym for a monster of bloodthirsty
cruelty, blasphemous rage, and brutish intemperance, " whose yell on the bench sounded, it
was said, like the thunder of the judgment day, and who was the fit tool of the bigoted and
unfeeling Catholic King, James II., in his notorious circuit of 1685, sentenced 320 prisoners to
be hanged, 841 to be sold into slavery beyond the sea, and a still larger number to be
whipped and imprisoned. The sufferers were, for the most part, says Macaulay, blameless
and pious, and regarded as martyrs to the truth of the Protestant religion.  



                                                     

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