GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
CHAPTER
I
Century Eighteen
Baptists in Virginia
In 1775, the Baptists first
appeared in this mighty West. It was at a period the most momentous
in the world's history. The storms of Revolution were sweeping over
the colonies, spreading calamity and gloom. Nowhere did the contest
rage more fearfully than in Virginia, and nowhere did the opposing
parties put forth mightier efforts. It was the battle of truth, of
principle, of national life, fought not for America alone, but for
the world. The dark hour was succeeded by the sunrise of freedom.
In
the midst of this conflict, and ere the storm had subsided, the West
rose into being, like the fabled spirit of beauty, from the waves of
the agitated sea. The principles which triumphed in the revolution
were the elements of her existence, and the men who had suffered most
from oppression, and had lifted up their voices for freedom from the
jails of Virginia, were the first settlers in the valley of the
Mississippi.
Lewis Craig had been followed by his sympathizing
church to the gates of Fredericksburg jail. He was followed by that
same church through the Cumberland gap, to plant that gospel barrier
amid the tangled wilderness of the "dark and woody ground."
The principles which actuated him and them, and which have ever
characterized the Baptists, had been working silently, but
effectually, for a century previous in Virginia.
Of the names
of those prosecuted for those principles little need be said. Let one
scene suffice. It was the trial of Lewis and Joseph Craig and Aaron
Bledsoe. They had been indicted for preaching the gospel of the Son
of God in the colony of Virginia. The clerk was reading the
indictment in a slow and formal manner; when he pronounced the crime
with emphasis - "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of God in
the colony of Virginia," a plainly-dressed man who had just rode
up to the court-house entered, and took his seat within the bar. He
was known to the court and lawyers, but a stranger to the mass of
spectators, who had gathered on the occasion. This was PATRICK HENRY,
who, on hearing of this prosecution, had rode some fifty or sixty
miles from his residence in Hanover county, to volunteer his services
in their defense. He listened to the further reading of the
indictment with marked attention, the first sentence of which that
had caught his ear was, "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of
God." When it was finished, and the prosecuting attorney had
submitted a few remarks, Henry arose, reached out his had and
received the paper, and addressed the Court:
"May it
please your worships: I think I heard read by the prosecutor as I
entered this house the paper I now hold in my hand. If I have rightly
understood, the king's attorney of this colony has framed an
indictment for the purpose of arraigning, and punishing by
imprisonment, three inoffensive persons before the bar of this Court,
for a crime of great magnitude-as disturbers of the peace. May it
please the Court, what did I hear read? Did I hear it distinctly, or
was it a mistake of my own? Did I hear an expression as if a crime,
that these men, whom your worships are about to try for a
misdemeanor, are charged with-what?"-and continuing in a low,
solemn, heavy tone, "For preaching the Gospel of the Son of
God!"
Pausing, amid the most profound silence and
breathless astonishment, he slowly waved the paper three times around
his head, when, lifting his hands and eyes to heaven, with peculiar
and impressive energy he exclaimed, "GREAT GOD!" The
exclamation, the action, the burst of feeling from the audience, were
all overpowering. Mr. Henry resumed:
"May it please your
worships: There are periods in the history of man, when corruption
and depravity have so long debased the human character, that man
sinks under the weight of the oppressor's hand, and becomes his
servile, his abject slave; he licks the hand that smites him; he bows
in passive obedience to the mandates of the despot, and in this state
of servility he receives his fetters of perpetual bondage. But, may
it please your worships, such a day has passed away! From that
period, when our fathers left the land of their nativity for
settlement in these American wilds, for LIBERTY, for civil and
religious liberty, for liberty of conscience, to worship their
Creator according to their conceptions of Heaven's revealed will;
from the moment they placed foot on the American continent, and in
the deeply imbedded forests sought an asylum from persecution and
tyranny, from that moment despotism was crushed; her fetters of
darkness were broken, and Heaven decreed that man should be free-free
to worship God according to the Bible. Were it not for this, in vain
have been the efforts and sacrifices of the colonists; in vain were
all their sufferings and bloodshed to subjugate this new world, if
we, their offspring, must still be oppressed and persecuted. But, may
it please your worships, permit me to inquire once more, for what are
these men about to tried? This paper says, 'For preaching the Gospel
of the Son of God.' Great God! For preaching the Gospel of the Savior
to Adam's fallen race." And in tones of thunder, he exclaimed:
"WHAT LAW HAVE THEY VIOLATED?" while the third time, in a
slow, dignified manner, he lifted his eyes to heaven, and waved the
indictment around his head.
The Court and audience were now
wrought up to the most intense pitch of excitement. The face of the
prosecuting attorney was pallid and ghastly, and he appeared
unconscious that his whole frame was agitated with alarm; while the
judge, in a tremulous voice, put an end to the scene, now becoming
excessively painful, by the authoritative declaration, "Sheriff,
discharge those men."
They battled on for truth and soul
freedom; and their fortitude, their courage, and final triumph have
been recorded by their foes. They were republicans from principle.
Says the Episcopalian, Hawkes: (Hawkes's Protestant Episcopal Church
in Virginia, p.121.)
"No dissenters in Virginia
experienced, for a time, harsher treatment than did the Baptists.
They were beaten and imprisoned, and cruelty taxed its ingenuity to
devise new modes of punishment and annoyance; but the men, who were
not permitted to speak in public, found willing auditors in the
sympathizing crowds who gathered around the prisons to hear them
preach from the grated windows. "Persecution had taught the
Baptists not to love the establishment, and they now saw before them
a reasonable prospect of overturning it altogether. In their
Association, they had calmly discussed the matter and resolved on
their course; in this course they were constant to the end; and the
war they waged against the church was a war of extermination. They
seem to have known no relentings, and their hostility never ceased
for seven-and twenty years. They revenged themselves for their
sufferings by the almost total ruin of the church; and now commenced
the assault, for, inspired by the ardor of patriotism, which accorded
with their interests, they addressed the Convention, and informed
that body that their religious tenets presented no obstacle to their
taking up arms and fighting for the country; and they tendered the
services of their pastors in promoting the enlistment of the youth of
their persuasion. A complimentary answer was returned, and the
ministers of all denominations, in accordance with the address,
placed on equal footing. This, it is believed, was the first step
toward religious liberty in Virginia."
A century anterior
to this, a statute was enacted in the colonial Legislature of
Virginia, which runs thus:
"Whereas, Sundry and divers
persons, out of adverseness to the establishment orthodox religion,
or out of new-fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions,
refuse to have their children baptized. Be i enacted, that whosoever
shall thus refuse when he might carry his child to a lawful minister
within the country, shall be fined two hundred pounds of tobacco,
half to the informer, and half to the parish." (Herring's
Statutes).
The persons against whom the legislative thunder
was hurled in the name of God and King Charles II., were Baptists.
Here, then, in the interior of Virginia, at the time when Rhode
Island was organizing, and with no intercourse with that distant
little colony, we find Christian immersionists, Baptists. Where did
they come from?
One year previous, in the colony of
Massachusetts, a "poor man by the name of Painter," as we
are informed by Mr. Hubbard, "was suddenly turned Anabaptist;
and, having a child born, would not suffer his wife to carry it to be
baptized." He was complained of for this to the Court, and
enjoined by them to suffer his child to be baptized. But poor Painter
had the misfortune to dissent, both from the church and the court. He
told them that infant baptism was an antichristian ordinance, for
which "he was tied up and whipped."
Gov. Winthrop
tells us that Painter was whipped "for reproaching the Lord's
ordinance."(Backus, vol. i, p. 147).
The persecutions at
this time were so numerous in this pious Pedobaptist colony, that a
letter was addressed to the "Governor, Assistants, and People of
Massachusetts, exhorting them to lenient measures toward the
Dissenting brethren." About this time, we are told by Gov.
Winthrop, that "the Anabaptists increased and spread in
Massachusetts; and this fearful increase which could not be checked
by argument or insult, led to the following act for their
suppression:"
"Forasmuch as experience hath
plentifully and often proved that the Anabaptists have been the
infectors of persons in the main matters of religion, and the
troublers of churches in all places where they have been; and that
they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually
held other errors therewith; and whereas, divers of this kind have,
since our coming into New England, appeared among ourselves, and if
they should be connived at by us are likely to be increased among us,
it is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this
jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of
infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation
or use thereof, or purposely depart from the congregation at the
ministration of the ordinance - every such person of persons shall be
subject to banishment." (Winthrop, p. 211).
Of the malice
of these "tender mercies" of Pedobaptist orthodox churches,
a passing glance is sufficient. The connection of infant baptism and
oppression is so intimate, that in no spot on earth has the former
prevailed that the latter has not followed. But pursuing our inquiry;
the statute shows one fact: that from the first settlement, (or, as
the act reads,) "since our coming into New England have appeared
among ourselves divers Anabaptists." Five years anterior to the
enactment of the above law, in 1638, Hanserd Knollys, a name
enshrined in the temple of soul-liberty, gathered together a Baptist
church; and John Smith, John Spur and four others, were arrested in
1639 for attempting to organize a church at Weymouth, fourteen miles
south of Boston. Before Roger Williams was baptized, or his Church
organized, there were Baptist Churches and Baptist ministers
throughout New England. The principles of this down- trodden people
Roger Williams adopted, and in advocating them, defending them, and
suffering for them, he has stamped immortal honour on his name. The
glory of that name we would not, even could we, tarnish. Not a green
leaf would we pluck from the imperishable laurels that wreathe his
brow. Every lover of freedom, every one imbued with the spirit of
Jesus Christ, as he follows the turbid stream of history and searches
for that vital principle which first enlarged the soul of humanity on
this continent, will have his footsteps arrested, and will pause with
delight as he watches the developments of principle on the colony of
Massachusetts.
In February, 1631, an humble pilgrim, noble in
his appearance, yet retiring in his manners, a little more than
thirty years of age, a fugitive from English persecution, Roger
Williams, like a "light on eternity's ocean," rose amid the
darkness of spiritual depotism, then brooding over Europe and the
world. "It became his glory," says Bancroft, "to found
a State on the principle of full liberty of conscience, and to stamp
himself upon its rising institutions in characters so deep that the
impress has remained to the present day, and can never be erased."
There he stood, like freedom itself, towering above the storms of
persecution and suffering, triumphant, sublime.
But historic
facts prove beyond doubt that Roger Williams was not the founder of
the Providence Church, and further, that the church he established,
and which crumbled to pieces four months after it was gathered, was
not the first church in America. It is recorded in the minutes of the
Philadelphia Association, when the first Church in Newport was one
hundred years old in 1738, Mr. John Callender, their minister,
delivered and published a sermon on the occasion.
Williams,
indeed, touched the Baptist standard, but ere he raised it, his hand
trembled, and it fell. It was seized by a steadier hand; at Newport
it was raised, and far and near they came to it; it was carried into
the heart of Massachusetts, and a work was commenced which till the
last setting of the sun, shall never cease; and this, before we have
any evidence that a church in Providence had begun to be.
Among
the evils that have resulted from the wrong date of the Providence
Church, has been the prominence given to Roger Williams. It is
greatly to be regretted, that it ever entered into the mind of any
one to make him, in America, the founder of our denomination. In no
sense was he so. Well would it be for Baptists, and for Williams
himself, could his short and fitful attempt to become a Baptist be
obliterated from the minds of men. A man only four months a Baptist,
and then renouncing his baptism forever, to be lauded and magnified
as the founder of the Baptist denomination in the New World! As a
leader in civil and religious liberty, I do him homage; as a Baptist,
I owe him nothing.
There is another name, long, too long
concealed, by Williams being placed before him, who will in after
times be regarded with unmingled affection and respect, as the true
founder of the Baptist cause in this country. That orb of purest
luster will yet shine forth, and Baptists, whether they regarded his
spotless character, his talents, his learning, the services he
rendered, the urbanity and the modesty that distinguished him, will
mention John Clarke as the real founder of our denomination in
America. And when Baptist history is better understood than it is at
present, every one, pointing to that venerable church which, on one
of earth's loveliest spots he established, will say, "This is
the mother of us all!"
But in Virginia were Baptists ere
Rhode Island had its charter. In Massachusetts were Baptist
congregations before Williams was baptized. In the language of the
legislative act already cited, "since our coming to New
England," before Roger Williams saw it, "divers of this
kind", Baptists, pleading for soul-liberty and Christian
immersion, trod these shores of the New World, stained or hallowed by
their blood. "SOME OF THE FIRST PLANTERS IN NEW ENGLAND WERE
BAPTISTS." This is the language of Dr. Mather, their bitter foe,
who lived in that persecuting age; and his language, corroborated as
it is by colonial laws and documents still extant, is
conclusive.
Here, then, closes our first milestone up the
blood-stained path which Baptists have been forced to travel. Here we
look on the bleak, wild forests of New England and Virginia, as this
mighty nation was lifting its mountain summits into the morning mists
of historic light. And here, before Williams lived, or Clarke or
Holmes suffered and bled, we have found these Baptists.
We
subjoin the epitaph of this noble man of God, whose memory should be
held in vivid and grateful recollection by every lover of truth and
freedom.
To the Memory of
DOCTOR JOHN CLARKE,
One of
the original purchasers and proprietors of this island, and one of
the founders of the First Baptist Church in Newport, its first pastor
and munificent benefactor: He was a native of Bedfordshire, England,
and a practitioner of physic in London. He, with his associates, came
to this island from Mass., in March, 1638, O.S., and on the 24th of
the same month obtained a deed thereof from the Indians. He shortly
after gathered the Church aforesaid, and became its pastor. In 1651,
he, with Roger Williams, was sent to England, by the people of Rhode
Island Colony, to negotiate the business of the Colony with the
British ministry: Mr. Clarke was instrumental in obtaining the
Charter of 1663 from Charles II., which secured to the people of the
State free and full enjoyment of judgment and conscience in matters
of religion. He remained in England to watch over the interests of
the Colony until 1664, and then returned to Newport and resumed the
pastoral care of his Church. Mr. Clarke and Mr. Williams, two fathers
of the Colony, strenuously and fearlessly maintained that none but
Jesus Christ had authority over the affairs of conscience. He died
April 20, 1676, in the 66th year of his age, and is here
interred.
To our inquiry - Where did they come from?