RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baptists
and knoweth aright how to administer in the outward church, for the benefit of others: yet God is not the author of confusion but of order and therefore we are in the outward church to draw as near the first institution as may be in all things; therefore it is not lawful for every
brother to administer the word and sacraments " (81). The following declaration on liberty of conscience is especially noteworthy: " That the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but to leave Christian religion free to every man's conscience. . That if the magistrate will follow Christ and be his disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ: he must love his enemies and not kill them, he must pray for them and not punish them, he must feed them and give them drink, not imprison them, banish them, dismember them, and spoil their goods " (84—
85). Going to law before civil magistrates, marriage with unbelievers, and the taking of oaths are forbidden to Christians. Community of goods in times of need is recommended.
Smyth died in Aug., 1612, after a long period of decline during which he manifested a wonderful degree of charity toward all true believers. He expressed the profoundest regret for his bitterly censorious writings against the Church of England, the Separation, and Helwys, and showed the utmost aversion to everything controversial. In his Retractation of his Errors and the Confirmation of the Truth, published a year or two after his death, along with the confession of faith from which extracts have been given, and a brief account of his life and death, he restates the points at issue in the controversies in which he had been engaged, and in a thoroughly judicial and irenic spirit indicates what he is still constrained, without controversy,
to maintain, as well as what he feels 6. His Last inclined to surrender. Helwys had Utterances, been so intemperate as to charge him
with sinning against the Holy Ghost in receding from the position he had reached regarding the independent inauguration of baptism and church organization. The point at issue was not the necessity of succession in the administration of baptism and the organization of churches, but whether " although there be churches already established, ministers ordained, and sacraments administered orderly, yet men are not bound to join these former churches established, but may, being as yet unbaptized, baptize themselves (as we did) and proceed to build churches of themselves, disorderly (as I take it)." Smyth points out that Helwys's contention would involve a recognition of the right of any two or three private persons (even women), in a community where rightly constituted churches abound, to disregard these churches and baptize and organize themselves. " Concerning succession, briefly thus much: I deny all succession except in the truth; and I hold we are not to violate the order of the primitive church, except necessity urge a dispensation; and therefore it is not lawful for every one that seeth the truth to baptize, for then there might be as many churches as couples in the world, and none have anything to do with other, which breaketh the bond of love and brotherhood in churches; but, in these outward matters, I dare not any more contend with any man, but desire that we may follow the truth of repentance, faith, and regeneration, and lay aside dissension for mint, comin, and annis
seed." Helwys understood Smyth to deny with the Mennonites that Christ received his flesh from Mary. He now points out that while once inclined to distinguish between the first and second flesh of the infant in the womb and to hold that the former was not derived while the latter, the product of nourishment, was derived from Mary, he has now reached the conviction that it is better to attribute his flesh to Mary without going beyond the Scriptures in curious inquiry " whereof Christ's natural flesh was made." He thinks it far more important that " we should search into Christ's spiritual flesh, to be made flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, in the communion and fellowship of the same spirit."
By 1611 Helwys and his associates reached the' conviction that flight in persecution and voluntary exile were absolutely unjustifiable. Late in 1611 or early in 1612 they returned to England and settled in London. Helwys was not content to carry out, with his company, his own con- 7. Helwys victions; he published (1612) A Short Returns to Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity,
London. in which " in great confidence and passion " (Robinson) he held up to reproach all the English dissenting refugees in the Netherlands, charging that in seeking to avoid being " sheep in the midst of wolves " the falsehearted leaders had fled into strange countries to save their lives and had drawn other people after them, leaving the true believers who could not thus save their lives without leadership and leaving their native land without gospel testimony.
In A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611), set forth by Helwys and his associates, while Christ's righteousness is said to be imputed to all (general redemption), men are declared to be " by nature the children of wrath, born in iniquity, and in sin conceived even so now being fallen, and having all disposition unto evil, and no disposition or will unto any good, yet God giving grace, man may receive grace, or may reject grace. " It is further taught, " That God before the foundation of the world hath predestinated that all that believe in him shall be saved, and all that believe not shall be damned; all which he knew
8. His before. And this is the election and Doctrines, reprobation spoken of in the Scriptures, concerning salvation and condemnation; and not that God hath predestinated men to be wicked, and so to be damned, but that men being wicked shall be damned." It is taught " That man may fall away from the grace of God,i and from the truth. That a righteous man
may forsake his righteousness, and perish." Civil magistracy is recognized as " a holy ordinance of God " and magistrates " may be members of the church of Christ, retaining their magistracy." From this confession, as well as from Helwys's Proof that God's Decree is not the Cause of any Man's Sin or Condemnation, published the same year, it appears that Helwys held to a moderate type of Arminianism, while Smyth had become almost Socinian in his doctrine.
Little is known of the careers of Helwys, Murton,
Baptists