GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
CHAPTER
IX
Century Eight
Retrospect
Let us number up the
way-marks we have passed. From the persecutions in Virginia just
preceding the Revolution, we ascended the stream of colonial history,
and found Baptists in the Old Dominion at the time that Holmes, and
Clark, and Knollys, were planting the standard of truth and freedom
in the wilds of New England. From Virginia and Rhode Island we
entered the jail of Bunyan,and beheld Keach on the pillory. With the
rise of Luther, and Calvin, and Cranmer, we found Baptists starting
forth from their concealment, pouring down like torrents from the
mountain fastnesses in every part of Europe. Long before Luther
lived, or the Reformation was born, we found them in the vales of the
Alps, in the mountains of Wales, and in the forests of England.
Henry, Peter de Bruis, and Arnold of Brescia, were among the
torch-bearers in the darkness of the middle ages.
In the
lovely land of Italy, under the very shadow of the Vatican, the
Paterine Baptists were condemned by the persecuting Pope, and
described by the classic historian.
From Italy to
Constantinople, and from Constantinople to Armenia and Syria, we have
traced the Paulician Baptists. From these we again take our line of
departure in our search for the head-spring. But ere we proceed, let
us ascend some historic hight and glance over the surrounding
prospect. We are up among the Paulicians in the mountains of Armenia,
in the middle of the seventh century. Amid those sublime hights where
the family of Noah looked down on a world covered with the slowly
receding waters of the deluge, let us take a passing survey of a
world now mantled in spiritual night. What a sad, yet not hopeless
sight, the world in the seventh century presented. In the distant
West, where the tall Alps rise above the glassing lake; where the
children of freedom find safety within those mountain walls, the
green foliage of the "tree of life" is blooming, the
flowers in "the garden of the Lord" send forth their sweet
perfume, and the dew of blessing descends on the few and banished
children of Christ who are dwelling there together in unity. Still
farther west, and among the Pyrenees, the descendants of the banished
Novatians, branded as Anabaptists, live in quit peace, devoted to
their sovereign Lord. And yonder, in those western isles, where white
cliffs gleam in the setting sunlight, a scene of striking interest
may be witnessed. Let us look at it.
From Asia Minor, through
Paul, or some of his co-laborers, the gospel was carried to Britain.
When civil dissension had weakened the power of Rome, and the wild
Picts and Scots were continually making inroads upon the helpless
inhabitants, when Rome could not defend them, the protection of the
hardy Anglo-Saxons was sought; they drove back the Scottish invaders,
but became in their turn the owners and rulers of the island. A Saxon
kingdom of Pagans was established, and the old British Christians
were driven toward Wales. Pope Gregory sent a monk named Austin to
convert these Saxon Pagans, who came with his tribe of muttering and
persecuting monks to carry out the commands of his ghostly lord. He
won over the Saxons. He made disciples of them by wholesale baptisms.
His next step was to attempt the conversion of those apostolic
churches over to Christendom, that is, Popery and infant baptism. The
old British Churches differed in regard to baptism, as well as in
many other things, with those Romanist missionaries. An old British,
or rather Welsh pastor, named Deynock, whose opinion in
ecclesiastical affairs had the most weight with his countrymen, when
urged by Austin to submit in all things to the ordinances of the
Roman Church, returned the following remarkable answer:
"We
are all ready to listen to the church of God, to the Pope of Rome,
and every pious Christian; that so we may show to each, according to
his station, proper love, and uphold him by word and deed. We know
not that any other obedience can be required of us toward him whom
you call the Pope, or the father of fathers. But this obedience we
are ready to render to him and to every Christian." (Neander,
vol. iii, p. 17).
A council or convention was afterward held
between Austin and the Welsh preachers, at which the latter declared
that they could do nothing without a full representation from their
churches. Finally the Britons refused to enter into any terms of
agreement with Austin. "Well, then," said the haughty
priest, "as you will not have us as friends, you shall as foes,
and experience the vengeance of the Saxons." (Neander's Eccl.
Hist. Ang. Fuller's History English Churches, vol. i).
His
threat was carried out. The college at Bangor was destroyed; the
preachers were massacred, and over two thousand of these primitive
Christians in Hereford were sacrificed to the demon of apostasy.
(Dupin, Eccl. His., vol., p. 90. Fox's Martyrs, vol. i, p. 135).
The
question arises, were these ancient British Christians Baptists? That
they did not originate from Rome is most evident; that they never had
adopted her profane rites, her wholesale baptisms, her councils and
decretals, is unquestionable. Were they Baptists? They had not
Episcopal head or archbishop among them who could speak and act
authoritatively from the rest, as is most evident from the fact that
Deynock, the old Pastor who had so much influence among them, could
not represent and act for the churches. That they were not
Episcopalians is evident to any one who will read the account of the
convention under the oak; in which, though a large number of their
principal men were assembled to meet and confer with Austin, they
would not and could not speak for their churches; they possessing no
such authority. They evidently belonged to independent churches,
which regarded the humblest Christian as being quite as good
authority as the Pope or his church council. Such is the plain
language of Deynock, as given above. So far they were
Baptists.
Further, we are told by Neander, (and with him agree
all the more ancient church histories,) that they differed with
Austin in regard to the mode of baptism; for it appears that while he
immersed as a usual thing, he sprinkled, according to Roman
indulgence, the infant and the dying. The primitive British Churches,
therefore, must have been rigid immersionists; else how could they
have differed with Austin about the mode? But, in addition to this,
the old English Chronicle says:
"and thus hed wuneden
here
an hundred and five yere
that neure com here cristendom
i
cud i thissen londe
no belle i-rungen
no masse isunge
no
chirche ther nes i-haleyed
no child ther nes ifuleyed."
The
modern English of which is:
"And thus they dwelt here
An
hundred and five years
So that never christening
Came here to
be known in the land,
Nor bell rung, nor church hallowed,
Nor
child was there baptized."
Such is the historic chronicle
of England, the only form in which the history of that dark period
has come down to us. And the evidence is conclusive that there was no
infant baptism in England till it was brought there from Rome by
Austin and his monks. Here there were independent churches against
whose theology no complaint could be brought which rejected the
authority and formalities of Rome; believed in a spiritual birth;
rigidly enforced immersion, and knew nothing about infant baptism.
They were Baptists in church government, in theology, in practice;
uncompromising Baptists, who were ready to perish rather than yield a
principle. Where did they come from? Not from Popery; not from the
Gnostics, or Oriental sects; nor from the apostate Greek hierarchy.
It is acknowledged that the BANGOR CHRISTIANS WERE PLANTED BY THE
APOSTOLIC EVANGELISTS, whose principles an practices they maintained,
and it has been demonstrated that these primitive Bangor disciples
were Baptists. Driven back by Austin and the Saxons, they continued
under the protection of Heaven and the Welsh mountains, preaching
Christ and administering his ordinances, down through all the
changes, and darkness, and persecution of the middle ages, until,
like the descendants of the Paulicians, charging the moral atmosphere
with those elements which burst forth in the sixteenth century in the
great Reformation.
But from the point we have reached in the
regions of Armenia in the seventh century, we must inquire for the
origin of those Paulicians. After Neander had dwelt with painful
minuteness on the corruptions of the old Greek Church, he says:
"We
have yet to speak of the reaction of the Christian consciousness
within the church against this ecclesiastical system, which had been
forming by the combing Christian with foreign elements; a reaction on
the part of rising and spreading sects that stood forth in opposition
to the dominant church, presenting a series of remarkable phenomena
of the religious spirit, extending through the medieval centuries,
and accompanying the progressive development of the church
theoretical system.
"In spite of fire and sword, the
remains of those sects which arose in the early period of the
Christian Church, had been still pressed in those districts. These
sects having from the first stood out against the union of
Christianity with Judaism, now entered into the contest against those
doctrines and institutions in particular which had grown out of the
mixture of Jewish with Christian elements." (Neander, vol. iii,
p. 214).
These Paulicians were then, according to Neander, and
every other impartial historian, one of those sects which arose in
the early period of the Christian Church; one of those sects which
broke off from the majority on the first introduction of Jewish
ceremonies, circumcision, or its substitute, infant baptism,
episcopacy, priesthood, instrumental music, imitations of the Pagan
temples, and, finally, baptismal regeneration, image worship,
APOSTASY.
Manichaeus was a slanderous name, indicating that
they mixed with their Christianity some notions of the Persian
Pagans. It was a baseless calumny. "We find nothing at all,
however," says Neander, "in the doctrines of the
Paulicians, which would lead us to presume that they were an offshoot
from Manichaeism." The ancient origin and the Baptist principles
of these Paulicians are thus demonstrated. Covering the hills and
vales of Armenia, receiving fresh accessions from the persecutions of
the Greek Church, and exerting an influence which reacted on Europe
and the world; connected by the bonds of harmonious brotherhood with
the banished Donatists, the spiritual Novatians, and the Cathari, or
Paterine Baptists of Europe, these Paulicians, on the lofty
table-lands and mountain slopes of Armenia, rose like a monument
above the waste of all that was spiritual and all that was true, A
MILESTONE IN THE MARCH OF TIME.
Whence comes these people
called Baptists?