The Seventeenth Century

Organised baptist communities arose from the Elizabethan English Separatists, and perhaps, further back, from the earlier ‘Anabaptists’¹ of the continent. Two Flemish Anabaptists were said to have been burnt at Smithfield in 1575², but the extent of anabaptist influence in this country has been the subject of much debate.

There were two main groups of baptists in England. The General Baptists (who believed, with the Dutch theologian, Arminius, that Christ died for all), started in 1611 when Thomas Helwys led back to London a group who had earlier fled to Holland to escape persecution. The Particular Baptists (who believed, with Calvin, that Christ died only for the elect) arose in the 1630’s from a group connected with a Calvanistic Separatist Church in London. A third stream of ‘Strict Baptists’ were extreme Calvinists and permitted membership and communion only to those baptised as believers in their own communities³.

For years these groups were small underground movements and Parliament (notwithstanding the rapid expansion of baptist communities during the Civil War of 1642) continued to persecute Separatists. An ordinance of 1645 made it illegal for anyone to preach who was not an ordained minister of the national church and the ‘Blasphemies and Heresies Ordinance’ of 1648 prescribed death for maintaining and publishing a long list of ‘heresies’ including ‘that the baptizing of infants is unlawful or such baptism is void, and that such persons ought to be baptized again and in pursuance thereof shall baptize any person formerly baptized.’⁴

¹ William R. Estep The Anabaptist Story. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A.
²Watts, M.R. The Dissenters 1978.
³Since 1976 the Strict Baptists have been associated in the ‘Grace Baptist Assembly.’
⁴Firth C.H. and Tait R.S. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1911