GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
INTRODUCTION
"...the
church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
(1 Tim 3:15)
The following will prove a very acceptable
historical contribution to the masses of the people. It will be to
history a sort of elementary work, yet replete with historic facts,
and the biographies of the leading witnesses of Jesus in the darkest
ages of the world.
In this little work, the general reader
will find, traced by a graphic pen, the bold outline of the history
of the people now called Baptists. Like an experienced woodsman, the
author has blazed the rough and bloody track of our people back into
the wilderness, even into the "remotest depth of antiquity,"
but in these dark depths he loses not, like Mosheim, their "trail,"
but pursues it until it leads out into the unclouded light of the
first century, where he finds the footsteps of the apostles and the
Son of God himself, mingling with those of the first Christians,
leading still back toward the banks of the Jordan, upon which the
colors of the new kingdom were first unfurled, and a people to
receive the coming Son were first prepared by his herald, John.
Some
may object to the mode selected by the author in pursuing his
inquiry, and, because it is novel, regard it as unnatural and
unphilosophical.
Such an objection is not well founded. The
author designed this for the outline of an original investigation of
his subject, and he has therefore selected the more real and genuine
method of procedure.
Says Rawlinson: "In every historical
inquiry it is possible to pursue our researches in two ways; we may
either trace the stream of time upward and pursue history to its
earliest source, or we may reverse the process, and, beginning at the
fountain-head, follow down the course of events in chronological
order to our own day. The former is the more philosophical, because
the more real and genuine method of procedure; it is the course
which, in the original investigation of the subject, must, in point
of fact, have been pursued; the present is our standing point, and we
necessarily view the past from it, and only know so much of the past
as we connect more or less distinctly with it." (Bampton Course,
1859, Lecture ii, p. 49.)
This work is timely, and we think
will be gladly received by the masses, since it furnishes them, in a
condensed form, with authentic historical facts, with which to meet
the questions and charges every day cast into their faces by the
descendants of those who murdered our ancestors: "Where did the
Baptists come from?" "Baptists originated with Roger
Williams, and their baptisms with his informal baptism."
"Baptists at best are but the descendants of the fanatical
Anabaptists of Munster, and have no history before their day,"
and other like charges. Multitudes of our people have never been
furnished with the facts of history with which to disprove these
charges. They have ever opened at the third of Matthew, and
triumphantly pointed to a body of Baptists in Judea, gathered by
"John the Baptist," and to the Church on the Mount of
Olives, to which Christ gave the commission to the Church at
Jerusalem, and to all the Churches planted by the apostles, all
manifestly Baptist Churches; but the thick darkness of eighteen
centuries, to the multitude, rolls between the apostolic period and
the present. It should be a matter of devout thanksgiving to Almighty
God, and be hailed as the harbinger star of near millennial day, that
every year is pouring increasing light into that darkness,
discovering to the inquiring gaze of the world who have been the true
followers of Christ, and who "the witnesses of Jesus,"
contending earnestly for and maintaining with martyr courage the
faith once delivered to the saints, and the ordinances as they were
at first committed to the Church. The light that is pouring upon the
obscurity that has so long rested upon the wanderings of the Bride of
Christ, in the wilderness into which she has been driven by her
bloody persecutors, may be the earnest of the fulfillment of the
prophet's vision when he saw a woman, the symbol of the Church,
coming up out of the wilderness, leaning upon the arm of her Beloved,
fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible, to her enemies, as
an army with banners.
O, that the Lord would fulfill that
vision in our day! We wait, we long for it as one who watcheth for
the morning. Then shall be sung, in full vision, the song an
oppressed and suffering Church has long sung in faith
only:
Triumphant Zion, lift thy head
From dust and darkness
and the dead!
Though jumbled long, awake at length,
And gird
thee with thy Savior's strength.
Put all thy beauteous garments
on,
And let thy excellence be known:
Deck'd in the robes of
righteousness,
The world thy glories shall confess.
No more
shall daring foes invade,
And fill thy hallow'd walls with
dread;
No more shall hell's insulting host
Their victory and
thy sorrow boast.
God from on high has heard thy prayer,
His
hand thy ruin shall repair,
Nor will thy watchful Savior cease
To
guard thee in eternal peace.
Southern Psalmist.
Nashville 1860
J.R.G.
WHERE DID THE BAPTISTS COME FROM?
Milestones by
the Track of Time
This is an age of inquiry and tireless
research. To the questionings of an imperative curiosity the very
rocks have rendered an account of themselves, and the leaves that
fell before the flood, have been made to tell their story. Not a
time-worn mark, or hieroglyphic, but has been cleared from the dust
of centuries and deciphered. Not a crumbling monument, or a buried
city, or perished people of the dead, past, but has been reproduced
on the canvas of living history. Naught escapes the sleepless eye,
the persevering industry of modern research. Now, there is a class of
people in our midst, numbered by hundreds of thousands - found,
indeed, wherever soul-freedom is, and the gospel is, a people marked
and peculiar, whose principles and influences have told, and must
still tell on the character and destiny of society. This people are
called BAPTISTS.
Their distinguishing peculiarities are, an
uncompromising avowal and advocacy of soul-liberty, enlightened, and
guided, and governed only by the Eternal King. That earthly priests,
and kings, and governments, ranged hierarchies and mitered fathers,
are but as those "that peep and that mutter." "To the
law and to the testimony," is their watchword; "if any man
speak not according to these things, it is because there is no light
in him," that no mortal has the right to decide the church
relations of any human being. In a word, that Christianity demands
voluntary obedience; and to forestall, control, or fetter this, is
antichristian. This is the prominent peculiarity of the people of
whom we speak. And the profession of this voluntary surrender to the
Lord of life is avowed by a burial by baptism into his sacred
name.
Now, this people, so well known and so rapidly
increasing among us, as a distinct class, originated somewhere. Some
spot witnessed their beginning; some period in the march of time
noted the birthday of these Baptists. Can the place of their nativity
be found? Can the record of their origin be traced? Is the energy of
human research, with all its triumphs, to pause breathless here, and
acknowledge itself baffled and defeated? NO, no! The question can and
must be answered, or history is a dead, a dumb thing. Let its voice
but be heard as it tones distinctly through the mists of ages, and it
will be forever decided - WHERE DID THE BAPTISTS COME FROM?
But
in vain shall we seek among the authoritative records of the past,
for one kind word concerning them. Crushed beneath a powerful and
persecuting hierarchy; few, feeble, and what the world calls
unlearned, yet lifting up their voice in defiant tones above the
storms of execration and violence; protesting, in the name of truth
and freedom, against the universal domination of the State Church,
and a proud, tyrannical clergy; sounding out through the grates of
filthy prisons the joyous notes of redeeming mercy, and melting the
hearts of those that mockery attracted to the spot; scattered
defenceless, without State patronage, or the prestige of noble names,
or great leaders; with no earthly head, or strong central government
to give direction to their aims; with the Word of God their only
guide; yet rising in the strength of God above the crested waves,
battling with the storm, steadily, steadfastly, onward, upward, until
now, in the words of the eloquent Chalmer:
"Let it never
be forgotten of the Baptists, that they form the denomination of
Fuller, and Cary, and Ryland, and Hall, and Foster; that they
originated one of all missionary enterprises; that they have enriched
the Christian literature of our country with an authorship of the
most exalted piety, as well as of the first talent, and the first
eloquence; that they have waged a noble war with the hydra of
Antinomianism; that, perhaps, there is not a more intellectual
community of ministers, or who have to their number put forth a
greater amount of mental power and mental activity in the defense and
illustration of our common faith; and what is still better than all
the triumphs of genius and understanding, who by their zeal and
fidelity, and pastoral labour among the congregations which they have
reared, have done more to swell the lists of genuine discipleship in
all the walks of private society, and thus both to uphold and extend
the living Christianity of our nation." (Dr. Chalmers's Lectures
on Romans.)
Such are the people whose origin we would trace,
and whose origin surely can be found.