Baptists.
The "Records of the Church at Broadmead, Bristol," furnish an account of the formation of a Baptist community in that place. The steps by which it reached its ultimate ecclesiastical character are minutely traced. Mr. Canne, a well-known Baptist minister, came to Bristol, and debated the matter of baptism before "an abundance of people on a green." He led the people to "step further in separation," so that they would not so much as hear any minister who "did read the Common Prayer." Thus, in language characteristic of such documents, it is said, that the Lord led them by degrees, and brought them out of popish darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel. Baptism by immersion afterwards became the practice of the Church, but still Baptists and Pædobaptists remained with each other in fellowship at Bristol, as they did in some other places.[226] Having been joined by some persecuted Welsh brethren, the Church met in "the great room" at the Dolphin, and "sometimes at a baker's house," until the city fell into the King's hands, when most of the professors were fain to journey to London under the conduct of Royalist soldiers. But the guard proved treacherous, and actually stripped and robbed the prisoners after they reached the metropolis. They commonly met at Great Hallows, but those of their number who had been baptized as adults, communed at the Lord's Table with the Baptist Church under the pastoral care of William Kiffin. When Bristol surrendered to the Parliament, the greater part of the Church returned, but soon became "a chaos of confusion." We may add that Mr. Kiffin, with whom these Bristol Nonconformists united in London, describes, in a MS. History, the formation of a distinct Baptist Church, in 1633, gathered out of the Independent community then under the pastoral care of Henry Jacob.
Some Arminian Baptists published a Confession of Faith in 1611.[227] Another confession, issued by the Calvinistic Baptists, containing fifty-two articles, appeared in 1644. The Calvinistic doctrine of predestination is distinctly affirmed, but in article xxv. the preaching of the Gospel for the conversion of sinners is declared to be absolutely free; and in article xxix. believers are defined as "a holy and sanctified people." The Congregational order of Church Government is propounded in article xxxvi. and baptism, on a profession of faith, in article xxxix. A note to article xlviii. on civil government, declares "it is the magistrate's duty to tender the liberty of men's consciences, Ecc. viii. 8, (which is the tenderest thing unto all conscientious men, and most dear unto them, and without which all other liberties will not be worth the naming, much less enjoying), and to protect all under them from all wrong, injury, oppression, and molestation."[228]
By the Parliamentary ordinance of April, 1645, forbidding any person to preach who was not an ordained minister, in the Presbyterian, or in some other Reformed Church—all Baptist ministers became exposed to molestation, they being accounted a sect, and not a Church.[229] A few months after the date of this law, the Baptists being pledged to a public controversy in London with Edmund Calamy, the Lord Mayor interfered to prevent the disputation—a circumstance which seems to shew that on the one hand the Baptists were becoming a formidable body in London, and, on the other hand, that their fellow-citizens were highly exasperated against them.[230]
Baptists.
Before we close this brief notice of the rise and early progress of the Baptist denomination, it may be remarked in connection with their conspicuous advocacy of the fullest religious toleration, that they furnish a striking example of the union of such advocacy with the maintenance of dogmatic Christianity in that which may be termed its most evangelical form. And, indeed, the same remark is applicable to many of the Independents. Nor can there be any question respecting the originality of the doctrines of religious liberty as held by the Baptists, for it is manifest that they derived them neither from the teaching of antiquity, nor from the writings of learned and gifted contemporaries. Their sentiments on the subject can by no means be considered as the expression of the genius and spirit of the age in which they lived: for intolerance was at the time all but universal in England and throughout the continent of Europe. So far as they were indebted to history for their principles of freedom, the debt was due to the sufferings of their fathers—for as Bayle says, the sect "boasts of a great number of martyrs: its martyrology is a large volume in folio."[231] And no doubt the discipline of pain in their own experience had a share in both their intellectual and moral culture, and that much of the grand lesson which they were enabled to teach had been learned in the school of affliction. The love of liberty and the endurance of oppression constituted the inheritance which they had derived from their spiritual ancestry.
What has been said of the polity and discipline of Independents will apply generally to the polity and discipline of the Baptists. These two religious denominations substantially agreed with each other; the main and almost the only difference between them, having relation to the mode of Baptism, and to the recipients of the rite. When Baptist ministers held livings they stood in the same relation to the national establishment as did their fellow Congregationalists, admitting members, exercising discipline, and conducting their business quite independently of the political powers.
Tombes—Jessy.
John Tombes, an Oxford Bachelor of Divinity of superior ability and learning, and standing high in the estimation of all parties, had felt difficulties respecting infant baptism long before the commencement of the wars. Not receiving answers to certain questions which he proposed on the subject to the Westminster Assembly, he renounced his former practice, and avowed Antipædobaptist opinions. This brought him into collision with some of his parishioners, whilst minister of Fenchurch.[232] Though forfeiting that incumbency for not baptizing infants, he was deemed eligible for the preachership of the Temple, and obtained that honourable post. But he soon lost this preferment also, in consequence of his publishing a treatise on the subject which so much occupied his thoughts. The people of Bewdley, in Worcestershire—his native town—were however allowed to choose him for their minister, and there it was that he held the public dispute with Richard Baxter, already described. Seeing no prospect of any alteration in the Establishment with regard to baptism, he "gathered a separate Church of those of his own persuasion, continuing at the same time minister of the parish." The perpetual curacy of Bewdley having become impoverished by the sale of ecclesiastical property, Tombes received the parsonage of Ross, which he subsequently relinquished for the Hospital at Ledbury. Retaining the Hospital, and removing from Bewdley, he became once more minister of the parish of Leominster, in Herefordshire, the place in which he had held his first preferment. His name appears amongst Cromwell's Triers; a circumstance involving this important consequence, that "the Commissioners agreed to own the Baptists as their brethren, and that if such applied to them for probation, and appeared in other respects to be duly qualified, they should not be rejected for holding this opinion. And hence it came to pass, that at the Restoration several parishes were found to have Baptist ministers fixed in them."[233] Yet throughout this good man's life, after he had embraced Antipædobaptist views, his peculiarities in that respect exposed him to much trouble and sorrow.