THE BAPTISTS IN ENGLAND.
In England the Baptists were for a long time treated with extreme severity on account of their supposed connection with the fanatical fraction of the German and Dutch Anabaptists. A number of them who had fled from Holland were condemned to death or exiled (1535 and 1539). Latimer speaks, in a sermon before Edward VI., of Anabaptists who were burned to death under Henry VIII., in divers towns, and met their fate 'cheerfully and without any fear.'
Under Edward VI. they became numerous in the south of England, especially in Kent and Essex. Two were burned--a Dutchman, named George van Pare, and an English woman, Joan Boucher, usually called Joan of Kent. These were the only executions for heresy during his reign. The young king reluctantly and with tears yielded to Cranmer, who urged on him from the Mosaic law the duty of punishing blasphemy and fundamental heresy. Joan of Kent, besides rejecting infant baptism, was charged with holding the doctrine of some German and Dutch Anabaptists, that Christ's sinless humanity was not taken 'from the substance of the Virgin Mary,' who was a sinner, but was immediately created by God. She resisted every effort of Cranmer to change her views, and preferred martyrdom (May 2, 1550). Several of the Forty-two Edwardine Articles were directed against the Anabaptists.
Under Elizabeth a congregation of Dutch Anabaptists was discovered in London; twenty-seven members were imprisoned, some recanted, some were banished from the kingdom. The two most obstinate, John Wielmaker and Henry Terwoort, were committed to the flames in Smithfield, July 22, 1575, notwithstanding the petition of John Foxe, the martyrologist, who begged the queen to spare them, not indeed from prison or exile (which he deemed a just punishment for heresy), but from being 'roasted alive in fire and flame,' which was 'a hard thing, and more agreeable to the practice of Romanists than to the custom of Evangelicals.' [1622] These Dutch Anabaptists were charged with 'most damnable and detestable heresies,' such as that Christ took not flesh from the substance of Mary; that infants ought not to be baptized; that it is not lawful for a Christian man to be a magistrate or bear the sword or take an oath. These are evidently doctrines of the Mennonites, afterwards adopted by the Quakers, and now generally tolerated without any injury to society.
During the reigns of James and Charles the Baptists made common cause with the Puritans, especially the Independents, against the prelatical Church, but withdrew more completely from the national worship, and secretly assembled in woods, stables, and barns for religious worship. They began to organize separate congregations (1633), but were punished whenever discovered. Many fled to Holland, and some to America. Their earliest publications were pleas for liberty of conscience. [1623]
With the Long Parliament they acquired a little freedom, though their views were opposed by Presbyterians and Independents, as well as by Episcopalians. They increased rapidly during the civil wars. In 1644 they numbered seven congregations in London, and forty-seven in the country. Cromwell left them unmolested. He had many of them in his army, and some even held positions in his experimental Broad Church. [1624] Milton is claimed by them, on the ground of a passage unfavorable to infant baptism, but with no more justice than Arians, Unitarians, and Quakers may claim him. [1625]
After the Restoration they were again persecuted by fines, imprisonment, and torture. They suffered more severely than any other Non-conformists, except the Quakers. Among their most distinguished confessors, who spent much time in prison, were Vavasor Powell (d. 1670), Hanserd Knollys (d. 1690), [1626] Benjamin Keach, and John Bunyan (d. 1688).
The Act of Toleration (1689) brought relief to the Baptists, and enabled them to build chapels and spread throughout the country. Since then they have become one of the leading branches of Dissenters in England. They have produced some of the most eminent preachers and authors in the English language, such as John Bunyan, Andrew Fuller, Robert Hall, John Foster, Joseph Angus, C. H. Spurgeon.