Doctor Dermont, chaplain to the king of Holland, and Doctor Ypeij, professor of theology at Groningen, a few years since received a royal commission to prepare a history of the Reformed Dutch Church. That history, prepared under royal sanction, and officially published, contains the following manly and generous testimony to the antiquity and orthodoxy of the Dutch Baptists. “We have now seen that the Baptists, who were formerly called Anabaptists, and in later times Mennonites, were the original Waldenses, and have long in the history of the church received the honor of that origin. On this account, the Baptists may be considered the only Christian community which has stood since the Apostles, and as a Christian society, which has preserved pure the doctrines of the Gospel through all ages.” Hist. Ref. Dutch Ch., Ed. Breda, 1819. See Ency. Relig. Knowledge, Art. Mennonites.
Mosheim says of the persecutions of this people in the sixteenth century, “Vast numbers of these people, in nearly all the countries of Europe, would rather perish miserably by drowning, hanging, burning, or decapitation, than renounce the opinions they had embraced.” And their innocency he vindicates thus: “It is indeed true that many Anabaptists were put to death, not as being bad citizens, or injurious members of civil society, but as being incurable heretics, who were condemned by the old canon laws. For the error of adult baptism was in that age looked upon as a horrible offense.” That was their only crime. Eccl. Hist., Cent. 16, Sec. 3. Part 2, Ch. iii. Fuller’s Ch. Hist., B. 4.
This testimony is all the more welcome, because it comes from those who have no ecclesiastical sympathies with Baptists, but who, in fidelity to history, bear honest testimony to the truth which history teaches. The circumstances under which their evidence was produced give it additional force.
Cardinal Hossius, chairman of the council at Trent, says: “If the truth of religion were to be judged of by the readiness and cheerfulness which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinions and persuasions of no sect can be truer or surer, than those of the Anabaptists; since there have been none, for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more grievously punished.” Orchard’s Hist. Bap., Sec. 12, part 30, p. 364.
Many thousands of the Dutch Baptists, called Anabaptists, and Mennonites, miserably perished by the hands of their cruel persecutors, for no crime but their refusal to conform to established churches.[2]
the english baptists
At what time the Baptists appeared in England in definite denominational form, it is impossible to say. But from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, many of them suffered cruel persecutions, and death by burning, drowning, and beheading, besides many other, and sometimes most inhuman tortures. And this they suffered both from Papists and Protestants, condemned by both civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, only because they persisted in worshiping God, according to the dictates of their consciences, and because they would not submit their religious faith and worship to the dictates of popes and princes.[3] In 1538, royal edicts were issued against them, and several were burnt at the stake in Smithfield.
Brande writes that: “In the year 1538, thirty-one Baptists, that fled from England, were put to death at Delft, in Holland; the men were beheaded, the women were drowned.” Hist. Reformers. See Benedict’s Hist. Bap., p. 303. Neal’s Hist. Puritans, Vol. I., p. 138. Note, Vol. II, p. 355, Sup. What crime had they committed to merit such treatment as this?
Bishop Latimer declares that, “The Baptists that were burnt in different parts of the kingdom went to death intrepidly, and without any fear, during the time of Henry VIII.” Lent Sermons. Neal’s Hist. Purit., Vol. II, p. 356.
Under the rule of the Popish Mary, they suffered perhaps no more than under that of the Protestant Elizabeth. During the reign of the latter a congregation of Baptists was discovered in London, whereupon several were banished, twenty-seven imprisoned, and two burnt at Smithfield.[4]