A very interesting correspondence between the Mill-Yard Church and the General Conference of the Seventh-day Baptists in the United States has been carried on for the last fifty years. In 1844, George B. Utter, as delegate from that body, visited the brethren in England, where he was hospitably entertained. The worthy pastor of the Mill-Yard Church is, I understand, collecting materials for a history of the Lives and Writings of Sabbatarians in England, and likewise preparing a list of Sabbatarian authors, together with an account of all the books which have been published that relate to the Sabbath controversy.
From an attention to the foregoing it will be perceived that Sabbatarianism has greatly declined in England; and that decline seems to have been produced by the operation of a variety of causes. There are certainly great inconveniences, particularly in large towns and cities, connected with the observance of a day of rest so utterly at variance with the popular custom as that of the seventh day has ever been. This, with that spirit of conformity by which men are ever prone to accede to established usages, together with the fact that they never instituted any associational organization, sufficiently accounts for their early declension, without supposing any unsoundness in their creed.[35]
We have every reason to believe that formerly, and down so late as the commencement of the seventeenth century, Seventh-day Baptist churches, of considerable magnitude, existed at the foot of the Grampians, and among the Welsh mountains, but their history appears to be buried in oblivion.
I have also been recently informed that there is a Seventh-day Baptist church near Burton-upon-Trent, and nine miles from Derby. That a Mr. Witt, in 1832, officiated as pastor. That they own a large brick meeting-house, in which their meetings are solemnized every Sabbath day, and are a very respectable body of people.
[15] Historical Annals, published in Paris, 1667, p. 230.
[16] With the former inhabitants of the valleys, whom they closely resembled in principles and practices, and to whom, in times of persecution, they would naturally fly for refuge.
[17] This accusation was undoubtedly false, and reminds one of the endless charges of a community of wives, made at a later period against the Anabaptists.
[18] Here is a vast field for research, of which the world is just beginning to discover the importance. The martyrs, with the exception of those who were destroyed by mobs, by clandestine malevolence, and local crusades, were allowed formal trials according to the established usages of law, which were generally in conformity to the Roman system of jurisprudence. In these records of the old ecclesiastical courts, the charges against them, with their apologies and confessions, are detailed at length. Some of these documents have already been examined, but multitudes of others lie concealed in the galleries of ancient libraries.
[19] Reineirus, under the title of Waldenses, includes all the heretics of that period, Pasaginians, Albigenses, Waldenses, Josephists, Arnoldists, Henricians, &c., from which it appears that these names were derived from local causes.
[20] This of course included the keeping of the first day, which the Catholics unanimously declare originated with their church.