Featured The term "Reformed"

As I wrote above, no one has patented the term 'Reformed' so you can call yourself that if you want to, but it seems to me to be making the term so vague as to be meaningless. I suppose I shall have to start calling myself a Confessional, Covenantal Reformed Baptist to explain what I believe, which seems a bit of a mouthful!

 

This simply isn't so, and you must know it. We established on a previous thread that Kiffin and Knollys were both Independent Congregationalists before becoming Baptists and collaborated in a book with another paedobaptist.

 

The first Particular Baptists came out of Independent churches when they became convinced of Believers' Baptism.. They spread rapidly as freedom of religion was permitted in Cromwell's New Model Army and evangelists spread the PB message all through the country. By the time persecution set in again after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, PBs were well established.

I sometimes speak at Newhouse Baptist Church in the village of Smeatharpe, Devon which traces it history back to 1653. Google it up if you're interested.

 

Always reforming seems to mean always searching the truth to me

 

If you go to the 'Baptist History' forum and scroll down a bit, you will find a thread entitled The earliest Particular Baptists were Protestant. There you will find the various arguments of 'Biblicist' and myself on this subject. That probably makes more sense than repeating them here.

 

Today paedobaptists are being saved and/or converted as saved persons by baptist missionaries and being formed into baptist churches. The fact they were former paedobaptists does not mean the Baptist church they were added unto or the missionary baptizing them were paedobaptists.

Likewise, there is ample evidence that the seven Baptist Churches of London were formed by previous existing baptist ministers who had come into London after being driven by persecution from the country side. We have testimonies for that and I have posted them and Martin has never been able to answer them.

We have several English Baptist churches that date their beginning from the 14th and 15th centuries that perfectly coincides with the records of Baptist "conventicles" under Queen Elizabeth's reign and before her.

None of those early Baptists claimed origin with paedbaptists.

None of the earliest English Baptist historians claimed their origin was with paedobaptists but unitedly claim they never were part of the Reformation, Protestant Rome or Rome.

So the earliest sources to the period repudiate Martin's view.

 

Nobody denies that the members were formerly paedobaptists and in paedobaptist assemblies so your argument is false and misleading.

We also established on that same thread that both denied the churches which were formed were formed by paedobaptists ministers but were formed by baptist ministers coming in from outside London. They also claimed that Baptists were in England "before" the reformation when the episcopal church was in the "height of its glory" and that is not true in the period of 1603-1643 but would have to place them at least in the reign of Queen Elizabeth along with the many documented cases in her reign of anabaptist conventicles as all Baptists were called "anabaptists" in England until the late 1600's.

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“I say that I know by mine own experience (having walked with them), that they were thus gathered; Viz., Some godly and learned men of approved gifts and abilities for the Ministry, being driven out of the Countries where they lived by the persecution of the Prelates [Episcopalians-R.E.P] came to sojourn in this great City, and preached from house to house, and daily in the Temple, and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ; and some of them having dwelt in their own hired houses, and received all that came unto them, preached the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concerns the Lord Jesus Christ. And when many sinners were converted by the preaching of the Gospel, some of them believers consorted with them, and of professors a great many, and of the chief women not a few. And the condition which these Preachers, both publicly and privately, propounded to the people, unto whom they preached upon which they were to be admitted into the church was by Faith, Repentance and Baptism. And whosoever. . . .did make a profession of their Faith in Jesus Christ, and would be baptized with water, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were admitted Members of the church; but such as did not believe, and would not be baptized, they would not admit into Church communion.”- Hensard Knollys - A Moderate Answer Unto Dr. Bastwick's Book Called Independency not God's Ordinance; London, 1645. – (emphasis mine)

Knollys specifically states that the particular Baptist Church in London was not self-constituted by former pedobaptists, but was constituted by qualified men from the country that entered into London and preached from house to house.

Hensard Knollys could not have said this if John Spilsbury and the church at Wapping Street was of Separatist origin. William Kiffin says of these churches:


“It is well known to many and especially to ourselves, that our congregations as they are now, were erected and framed according to the rule of Christ BEFORE WE HEARD OF ANY REFORMATION EVEN AT THE TIME WHEN EPISCOPACY WAS AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS VANISHING GLORY.” Wm. Kiffin: A Brief Remonstrance of the Reasons of those People Called Anabaptists for their Separation; London, 1645; page 6.

Episcopacy was not in the "height of its....glory" during 1630-1640 but it was in its vanishing stage.

Albert H. Newman supposed that Kiffin had intended the Presbyterian reformation begun in 1640. However, Dr. John T. Christian researched this quotation and found out that it had been written to a Mr. Joseph Richart who understood Kiffin to refer to the Episcopal Reformation in the time of Henry VIII:


“Mr. Joseph Richart, who says he wrote the queries to which Kiffin replied, affirmed that he understood the Episcopal and not the Presbyterian Reformation. ‘You allege,’ he says, ‘your practice, that your congregations were erected and framed in the time of the Episcopacy, and before you heard of any Reformation’ (Richart, A Looking Glass for Anabaptists, p,7. London, 1645)


Here were Baptists churches, according to Kiffin, before the times of Henry VIII. And this fact was well known to the Baptists. Further on Kiffin makes the claim that the Baptists outdated the Presbyterians.” - John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists, Vol. II, p. 255.


Moreover, all of these Baptists commonly used the same texts that later Landmark Baptists would use to prove the continued succession of Baptist Churches from the Apostles. As early as 1649 Edward Drapes said:


“I shall now in the last place show you, how long the Ordinance of baptism was, and is to continue; wherein I shall also show, the continuance of Churches, and other Ordinances of Christ, which is, Till Christ come again the second time, without sin to salvation. Till he comes to raise up our vile natural bodies, and make them like his own glorious body, which I shall first evidence to you from the Scriptures, and then answer those objections that seem to have weight in them against it…..


Again, consider what says the Scriptures, Matt. 16:18. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now the Church of Christ were a company of Disciples baptized, professing the doctrine of the Gospel, as I shall show more clearly afterwards. Now against this Church the gates of hell should not prevail, because it was built upon a Rock…….


And though we cannot see a Church successively from the Apostles, yet I shall prove there has been a Church in all ages, Eph. 3:21. Unto him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end, Amen. Behold here a Church, in all ages. The Churches, and so the Ordinances of the Churches were not to abide only in the Apostles days, but to the end of the world, in all ages” – Edward Drapes, Gospel Glory, pp. 33, 35, 1649. – (emphasis mine)


Albert Garner as early as 1645 defended the doctrine of church succession and claimed that any teaching that denied it was Satanic:

“The Scriptures do Not Teach the Cessation of the Church or Her Ordinances

Sixthly, the Holy Spirit makes no mention in this Scripture of the not appearing of the Church, nor the loss of her Ordinances; neither will it agree to the condition of the Church of Israel in the wilderness, from whence (as I said) I conceive the allusion to be chiefly taken.

Because the Church and Her Ordinances Have Not Been Lost - We Can Know and Do the Things of Christ

Wherefore I see no reason why such a conclusion should be received: to wit, that the Church is lost, and her ordinances are lost, and therefore that we can neither know, nor do any thing until the consummation of that time of the churches being in the wilderness.

Cessation of the Church and Ordinances is a Policy of Satan

Surely such an opinion does arise, and is maintained from the policy of Satan, and not from the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Other things might have been spoken by way of answer to that objection, but what I have said (I conceive) may suffice.” – Albert Garner, A Treatise on Baptism, 1645. – (emphasis mine)

Throughout the 1650’s there were printed defenses of Baptist Church Succession:


John Spittlehouse, A Vindication of the Continual Succession of the Primitive Church of Jesus Christ, now scandesly called Anabaptists, London; 1652

Daniel King, A Way to Sion Sought Out and Found for Believers to Walk In, London, 1650 and Edinburgh, 1656


Samuel Fisher, "Christianismus Redivium, " London; 1655.

 

Moreover, the gospel loving Paedobaptists that Martin defends show their true colors during the period from the 1500-1660 as they rejoice openly in calling Baptists every foul name in the book, and thank God Elizabeth and others killed them: Here is a taste of the gospel loving paedobaptists:

In 1645 Daniel Featly says of them:

"This venomous Serpent (vere solifuga) flying from, and shinning the light of God’s Word, is the Anabaptist, who in these later times first showed his shinning head, and speckled skin, and thrust out his sting near the place of my residence, for more than twenty years......This fire in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King James, and our gracious Sovereign, till now, was covered in England under the ashes; or if it brake out at any time, by the care of the Ecclesiastical and Civil Magistrates it was soon put out. But of late, since the unhappy distractions which our sins have brought upon us, the Temporal sword being other ways employed, and the spiritual locked up fast in the scabbard, this sect, among others, has so far presumed upon the patience of the State, that it has held weekly Conventicles, rebaptized hundreds of men and women together in the twilight in Riverlets and some arms of the Thames, and elsewhere, immersion them over head and ears."

If you are interested in a detailed defense of Baptists in early English history here is a paper to read:

http://particularbaptistlibrary.org/LIBRARY/History/Notes on London's oldest church.pdf

 

So do you see those infant baptising churches as also bethren in Christ, as Baptists spun out from them?

 

Think early Church made it easier, just called themselves Christians!
That is a problem in todays churches, as we tend tos ee ourselves as Reformed/Baptist/Presby etc before being Christians!

 

In 1548 John Vernon translated and published Bullinger's "Holesome Antidote against the Pestilent Sect of the Anabaptists." Three years later William Turner, Doctor of Physick, devysed "a Triacle against the poyson - lately stirred up agayn by the furious Secte of the Anabaptists," London, 1551.

Why publish books against Anabaptists if they did not exist? Dr. Featly in 1645 was still calling Baptists by the title "anabaptists". Baptist confessions were still complaining of being called "Anabaptists". The term "anabaptist" was meant to be a term of reproach even in Elizabeth's reign.

"In 1589 Dr. R. Some issued "A Godly Treatise," chiefly against Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, and other Puritans, whom he charges with Anabaptistical errors. Earlier still we have evidence of their activity and numbers in the fires of martyrdom that burnt so fiercely at the beginning of that century. Latimer speaks of 300 of them in one town. In 1538 a commission was issued to the Bishops of the Southern Province to inquire after Anabaptists and to punish them. Froude tells us, with noble indignation, how fourteen were done to death because they "were faithful to their conscience." The members of the "Pilgrimage of Grace" appealed to Henry VIII that "the heresies of Luther and of the Anabaptists, should be annihilated and destroyed." For a hundred years, therefore, before we hear of Baptist Churches, we read of proclamations against Anabaptists, and of the persecution, banishment, and death, of many in the Southern counties of England, and during the reigns of all the Tudors." - Josephus Angus

 

So modern Baptists orignatd out from the AnaBaptists then?

 

Hugh Latimer in his fourth Sermon preached before King Edward on March 4,1549 said:

I speak not this against the judge’s seat; I speak not as though all judges were naught, and as though I did not hold with the judges, magistrates, and officers, as the Anabaptists these false heretics do.

Of course the Anabaptists in England had good reason to speak against the judges, magistrates and officers as they were being used to kill them.

Christ breathe his Spirit upon you, that ye may read the scripture with all humbleness and reverence, to fetch from thence comfort for your wounded consciences, not to make that lively fountain of life to serve for the feeding of your idle brains, to dispute more subtilly thereby; or else, by misunderstanding of the same, to conceive pernicious anabaptistical opinions! Hugh Latimer - Second Sermon preached before King Edward at Westminster on March 15th 1549

 

In England, during this period the term "Anabaptist" was commonly used to describe Baptists. On the mainland (Europe) there were many different types of Anabaptists (just as there are many types of Baptists in America).

However, at that period it was a term of reproach, not a compliment.