Melanchthon, in a letter to the Diet at Hamburg, in 1537, advised death by the sword to all who professed Anabaptist views. Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, whose statue in Zurich pictures him with a Bible in his right hand and a sword in his left, also persecuted the Baptists. On January 5, 1527, Felix Mantz became the first Swiss Anabaptist martyr by drowning at Zurich. This was a hideous parody of his belief in believers’ baptism by immersion. Heinrich Bullinger, in his book against the Anabaptists, specifies thirteen distinct sects among the Anabaptists. He mentions twenty-five points of agreement among them, including the following:
That secular authority has no concern with religious belief; that the Christian resists no evil and therefore needs no law-courts; nor should ever make use of the tribunals; that Christians do not kill or punish with imprisonment or the sword, but only with exclusion from the body of believers; that no man should be compelled by force to believe, nor should any be slain on account of his faith; that Christians do not resist, and hence do not go to war; that Christians may not swear; that all oaths are sinful; that infant baptism is of the pope and devil; that rebaptism, or better, adult baptism, is the only true Christian baptism.
In 1527, the Swiss Anabaptists issued a confession of faith at Schaffhausen. Its writer was Michael Sattler, an ex-monk who was martyred that same year. It was the first confession “in which Christian men claimed absolute religious freedom for themselves, and guaranteed absolute religious freedom to others.” This Baptist movement was the target of Protestant and Catholic persecution alike and its brave, spiritual men and women were driven to the martyr’s crown or to exile. Many fled to Holland. The torch of truth, the advanced ideas which they had received from the Waldensians and other pre-Reformation movements, were handed over to the Anabaptists of Holland. These increased in number rapidly under the toleration afforded them in that country. Menno Simons, a Roman priest, set to thinking by the martyrdoms about him, espoused their cause and doctrines. Baptized at the age of forty-four, he fled to Holland, where he became the leader of a host, which afterward bore his name, being called Mennonites. Charles V persecuted these Baptists, and fully fifty thousand were martyred. They were not exterminated, however, for God, as in other days, preserved a remnant to pass the torch of religious liberty on to others.
Bell of First Baptist Church, Providence
Baptist refugees from Holland crossed over to England. Henry VIII, when he made himself head of the Church, ordered their arrest and banishment from the kingdom, “on pain to suffer death, if they abide, and be apprehended and taken.” The fires of Smithfield and the inquisition of the Protestants could not crush this movement destined of God, at a later date, to change the world. Considered an obnoxious sect in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, they carried on their meetings secretly. They were an industrious class of skilled mechanics and introduced into England that which afterward gave that nation its commercial and manufacturing supremacy. The English passed a law that each foreign workman should take and train one English apprentice. As a result, fifty thousand English lads were trained, not only mechanically, but also in the principles of these Dutch Anabaptists. This spiritual training led to the Puritan revolution in England and to the greater movement across the seas. Each of these Dutch Baptist churches was a republic in itself, independent with its popularly elected officers, deacons, and elders. They held, as a cardinal doctrine, the separation of Church and State. From the sections in which these Dutch Anabaptists lived came fully fifty per cent of the early colonists to the New World. Fourteen English towns, in which they formed a large proportion of the population, are duplicated by New England towns of the same name. From the same district Cromwell recruited his invincible Ironsides. Back of all that was good and noble in the settlements at Plymouth and Boston and in Connecticut was the leaven of the Dutch Baptists in that part of England from which these early colonists came.
Robert Browne, who is the reputed founder of English Congregationalism, advocated his peculiar views after dwelling for some time in a Dutch Anabaptist community. Here he promulgated his ideas. A part of his congregation fled to Middleburg, a Baptist stronghold. After two years he quarreled with these folks and returned to England, where he became reconciled to the Established Church and for forty years afterward administered to an Established Church parish. The Baptist principle, however, had been stamped upon the few years of his ministry when he started a new order.
At the close of the sixteenth century most of the Anabaptists in England were Dutch. Slowly, however, English Baptists were coming into existence, and they soon formed themselves into small groups. Browne did not go so far as the Baptists, but in church government he took their New Testament position. As far as is known, the first definite English Baptist church was organized in London in 1611, with Thomas Helwys as pastor. The members had been exiles in Holland and were baptized there by Rev. John Smith, the famous Se-Baptist, formerly a Church of England clergyman.
This English Baptist church formulated a confession which contains the first declaration of faith to include, as the teaching of Christ, the absolute separation of Church and State.
The magistrate by virtue of his office, is not to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, nor to compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine; but to leave the Christian religion free to every man’s conscience.