Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists

Affiliation

Catholic priest; people's priest at the Grossmünster, Zürich, from 1519; leader of the Swiss Reformation

Appears in

Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists, The Radical Reformation

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Life

Toggenburg, Basel and Vienna

Huldrych Zwingli was born on 1 January 1484 at Wildhaus in the Toggenburg valley, in the eastern Swiss Confederation, the son of a prosperous farmer and local magistrate. His uncle, a priest, took charge of his education. He studied at Vienna and Basel, where he took his master's degree in 1506 and absorbed the humanism of the age, and was ordained priest that year.

Glarus and Einsiedeln

From 1506 to 1516 he was parish priest at Glarus. He taught himself Greek, read the Church Fathers and corresponded with Erasmus, whom he met in 1516 and revered. Twice he went with the Glarus troops as chaplain to Italy, where Swiss mercenaries fought for the Pope, and the slaughter at Marignano in 1515 turned him into an opponent of the mercenary trade. From 1516 he was priest at the pilgrimage shrine of Einsiedeln, where he preached against the abuse of pilgrimages and indulgences, though he had not yet broken with the Church's doctrine. He later admitted to a sexual lapse during his years at Glarus and Einsiedeln, which nearly cost him his appointment at Zürich.

Zürich

On 1 January 1519, his thirty-fifth birthday, he became people's priest at the Grossmünster in Zürich. He announced that instead of following the lectionary he would preach through the Gospel of Matthew from beginning to end - the lectio continua that became a mark of the Reformed tradition. Later that year he nearly died of the plague, which deepened his sense of dependence on God's providence.

The break with Rome

In Lent 1522 a group of his friends, meeting at the house of the printer Christoph Froschauer, ate sausages in defiance of the fast; Zwingli, who was present but did not eat, defended them in a sermon, On the Choice and Freedom of Foods. That year he also married Anna Reinhart, a widow, in secret, making the marriage public in 1524. In January 1523 the city council held a public disputation at which Zwingli defended his Sixty-seven Articles, and the council resolved that he should continue to preach from Scripture. A second disputation in October 1523 debated images and the Mass. Images were removed from the churches in 1524, and at Easter 1525 the Mass was abolished and replaced by a simple communion service, with bread and wine on wooden plates carried to the people in their pews.

The radicals

Among Zwingli's most ardent early followers were young men, including Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz, who wanted him to move faster and to abolish the Mass without waiting for the council. When at the second disputation he deferred to the council's timetable, they broke with him. They came to reject infant baptism, and in January 1525 began baptising adults. Zwingli opposed them in writing, and the council imprisoned and banished them; in March 1526 it decreed death for rebaptism, and Manz was drowned in the Limmat in January 1527. Zwingli supported the council's measures.

Marburg

Zwingli's view of the Lord's Supper as a memorial brought him into conflict with Luther. After years of pamphlet warfare, Philip of Hesse brought the two together at Marburg in October 1529, hoping to unite the Protestants politically. They agreed on fourteen of fifteen articles but not on the presence of Christ's body and blood in the Supper. Luther chalked "Hoc est corpus meum" on the table, and at the end refused Zwingli's hand of fellowship as a brother.

Kappel

Zwingli worked for an alliance of the Reformed cities and pressed Zürich to use force to open the Catholic cantons to evangelical preaching. A first war at Kappel in 1529 ended without battle. In 1531 Zürich imposed a food blockade on the inner cantons, which responded by attacking. On 11 October 1531 the Zürich forces were defeated at Kappel, and Zwingli, who had gone out as chaplain and armed, was killed on the field.

Key dates

• 1 January 1484 - Born at Wildhaus
• 1506 - Ordained; parish priest at Glarus
• 1515 - Chaplain at Marignano
• 1516 - Priest at Einsiedeln; meets Erasmus
• 1 January 1519 - People's priest at the Grossmünster, Zürich
• Lent 1522 - The affair of the sausages
• January 1523 - First Zürich disputation; the Sixty-seven Articles
• October 1523 - Second disputation
• 1524 - Images removed; marriage to Anna Reinhart made public
• Easter 1525 - Mass abolished in Zürich
• 1525 - Commentary on True and False Religion
• 1527 - Felix Manz drowned
• October 1529 - Marburg Colloquy
• 1531 - Zürich Bible (Froschauer) completed
• 11 October 1531 - Killed at Kappel

Teachings and claims

Scripture alone

Zwingli taught that Scripture is clear and sufficient, and that whatever is not commanded in it is to be removed from the Church's worship. He applied this more strictly than Luther, who retained what Scripture did not forbid.

The Lord's Supper

He taught that in "This is my body" the word "is" means "signifies", that Christ's human body, ascended into heaven, is at the right hand of God and cannot be present in many places, and that "the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). The Supper is a memorial of Christ's death, a thanksgiving (eucharist) and a public pledge by which believers declare their faith and their membership of the body. In his later writings he spoke of Christ being present to the contemplation of faith.

Baptism

Against the Anabaptists he defended infant baptism as a covenant sign, the successor to circumcision, by which children of believers are marked as belonging to God's people. He did not, however, hold that baptism conveys grace.

Providence and election

He taught a strong doctrine of providence and of God's free election, and held that God might elect even virtuous pagans; he expected to see Socrates and other ancients in heaven.

Church and state

He saw the Christian city as one community, in which the magistrate, guided by the preacher, orders the outward life of the Church.

Christology

To defend his eucharistic teaching, he used a figure of speech he called alloeosis, by which what Scripture says of one of Christ's natures is attributed to the other. Luther believed this divided the person of Christ.

Documented controversies

The Anabaptists

He supported the persecution of his former followers, including the death penalty for rebaptism. Mennonite and Baptist historians, and many Reformed scholars today, regard this as a grave wrong.

Marburg

His disagreement with Luther divided Protestantism permanently. Luther believed his teaching on the Supper and on Christ's person to be a different spirit; Zwingli regarded Luther's view as a remnant of the papacy.

War

His advocacy of armed force against the Catholic cantons, and his death on the battlefield, were criticised by Luther and others as the fruit of mixing the gospel with the sword.

Death

He was killed at the battle of Kappel on 11 October 1531, aged 47. The victorious Catholic troops found his body on the field, tried it as a heretic and traitor, quartered it and burned it with dung, so that no relics would remain.

Legacy

Zwingli is the founder of the Reformed tradition, though its classic form was given by Heinrich Bullinger, his successor at Zürich, and by John Calvin, who modified his eucharistic teaching to affirm a true, spiritual feeding on Christ. The Consensus Tigurinus of 1549 united the Zürich and Genevan churches. His memorial view survived among the Anabaptists' successors, the Baptists and the free churches, and is now the common view of most evangelical and non-denominational churches. His lectio continua, his simplified worship and his ideal of a reformed Christian commonwealth shaped Reformed Protestantism for centuries.

Measured against the creeds

Zwingli confessed the creeds and the doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ, and his preaching recovered the reading of Scripture in the language of the people.

His teaching on the Supper, however, departs from what the Church had confessed since the Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist "the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ"; Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyril of Jerusalem and Augustine all confessed that the bread and cup are Christ's body and blood. The Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran churches hold to the real presence, and the Anglican Articles reject a "bare figure" (Article 28 speaks of partaking of the body of Christ). Luther's response, in Confession Concerning Christ's Supper (1528) and the Formula of Concord (Article 7), was that Zwingli's argument from the location of Christ's body divided His person and made human reason the judge of His words. The Formula of Concord rejects the teaching that the words of institution are to be taken figuratively.

On baptism, he defended the practice of the Church but emptied it of its gift; the historic churches confess "one baptism for the remission of sins". And in the persecution of the Anabaptists, the Reformed churches, like the Lutheran and Catholic, share a guilt that their modern heirs have acknowledged.

Major writings

• Sixty-seven Articles (1523)
• Commentary on True and False Religion (1525)
• On Baptism, Rebaptism and Infant Baptism (1525)
• On the Lord's Supper (1526)
• Friendly Exegesis (1527)
• Fidei Ratio (1530)
• An Exposition of the Faith (1531)

Affiliation

Professor at Wittenberg and Luther's senior colleague; later a Reformed theologian at Basel

Appears in

The Radical Reformation, Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists

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Life

The Wittenberg professor

Andreas Rudolff-Bodenstein was born in 1486 in the town of Karlstadt am Main in Franconia, from which he took his name. He studied at Erfurt and Cologne and in 1505 went to the new University of Wittenberg, where he became a doctor of theology in 1510, archdeacon of the Castle Church and a leading member of the faculty. A scholastic theologian of the Thomist school, he was Luther's senior colleague; in October 1512 he presided over the ceremony at which Luther received his doctorate. In 1515-16 he studied law in Rome.

Converted to Augustine

In 1517, after reading Augustine, he turned against scholastic theology, and in April of that year, months before Luther's Ninety-five Theses, he posted 151 theses on grace and the will. He became one of Luther's most energetic allies. At the Leipzig Disputation of 1519 he debated Johann Eck for a week before Luther took his place, and in 1520 the papal bull threatening Luther with excommunication named him also.

The Wittenberg movement

While Luther was hidden at the Wartburg in 1521-22, Karlstadt led the reform in Wittenberg. On Christmas Day 1521 he celebrated the first evangelical communion, without vestments, in German, omitting the sacrificial prayers and giving the cup to the laity. In January 1522 he married Anna von Mochau, a girl of fifteen; the city council adopted an ordinance abolishing private Masses and removing images, and in the following weeks images were destroyed in the churches. The disorder alarmed the Elector, and in March 1522 Luther returned and, in his eight Invocavit sermons, reversed much of what had been done, insisting that changes must be made in love and with regard for the weak.

Orlamünde

Karlstadt withdrew from academic life. He renounced his doctorate, dressed as a peasant and asked to be called "Brother Andrew". In 1523 he took the parish of Orlamünde, which was attached to his archdeaconry, and there carried out his reforms: images removed, infant baptism dropped, the Supper as a memorial. In August 1524 Luther, on a visitation tour, met him at the Black Bear inn at Jena; after a heated exchange Luther gave him a gold gulden as a pledge that he should write against him openly. Shortly afterwards the Elector expelled Karlstadt from Saxony.

Exile

He travelled to Strasbourg, Basel and Zürich, publishing tracts against the real presence which Luther answered in Against the Heavenly Prophets (1524-25). During the Peasants' War of 1525 he was at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, where he was suspected of sympathy with the rebels. Destitute and in danger, he wrote to Luther, who sheltered him secretly in his own house in Wittenberg in June 1525 on condition that he submit his writings for approval. He lived for some years as a farmer and shopkeeper near Wittenberg, under restrictions, but in 1529 he fled again.

Basel

After time in Holstein and East Frisia, where he took part in the sacramental controversies, he went to Zürich in 1530, where Zwingli found him work, and in 1534 became preacher at St Peter's in Basel and professor at the university, where he spent his last years in comparative peace.

Key dates

• 1486 - Born at Karlstadt am Main
• 1510 - Doctor of theology at Wittenberg
• October 1512 - Presides at Luther's doctoral promotion
• April 1517 - Posts 151 theses on grace
• 1519 - Leipzig Disputation with Eck
• Christmas Day 1521 - First evangelical communion in Wittenberg
• January 1522 - Marries; the Wittenberg ordinance
• March 1522 - Luther returns and reverses the reforms
• 1523 - Pastor at Orlamünde
• August 1524 - Meeting with Luther at Jena
• September 1524 - Expelled from Saxony
• 1524-25 - Luther's Against the Heavenly Prophets
• June 1525 - Sheltered in Luther's house
• 1529 - Flees Saxony
• 1534 - Preacher and professor at Basel
• 24 December 1541 - Dies of plague at Basel

Teachings and claims

Images

Karlstadt taught that images in churches are forbidden by the first commandment and must be removed, and that the magistrate and the congregation have a duty to remove them without waiting for the weak.

The Supper

He came to deny that Christ's body and blood are present in the sacrament. In "This is my body", he argued, Christ pointed to His own body, not to the bread (the Greek touto, "this", being neuter while artos, "bread", is masculine). The Supper is a remembrance of Christ's death, and its benefit lies in the believer's ardent remembrance of it.

Baptism

He held that baptism without faith is of no value and gave up the baptism of infants at Orlamünde, though he did not practise rebaptism.

Lay religion and mysticism

Influenced by German mysticism, he taught that true religion is the inward "abandonment" (Gelassenheit) of the soul to God, and he valued the lay Christian and the peasant above the learned doctor.

Documented controversies

Wittenberg 1522

His reforms, made in Luther's absence and accompanied by iconoclasm, caused disturbances which Luther and the Elector regarded as dangerous. Luther's Invocavit sermons established the principle of reform through preaching and patience.

Against the Heavenly Prophets

Luther's long reply, written in 1524-25, accused Karlstadt of making outward law of what should be freedom, of confusing the inward and outward word, and of reading his own reason into Christ's words. Luther grouped him with Müntzer and the "fanatics", which Karlstadt resented, since he rejected violence.

The Peasants' War

His presence at Rothenburg during the revolt led to suspicion that he supported it; he denied this and wrote an apology.

Death

He died of plague at Basel on 24 December 1541, aged about 55.^†

Legacy

Karlstadt has been called the first Puritan. His insistence that worship must be restricted to what Scripture commands, his iconoclasm and his symbolic view of the Supper anticipated, and in part influenced, Zwingli and the Reformed tradition. Some historians also regard him as a forerunner of the Anabaptists and of later lay and spiritualist movements. His conflict with Luther shaped the Lutheran Reformation's conservative attitude to liturgy and images.

Measured against the creeds

Karlstadt's early recovery of Augustine on grace stood within the catholic faith, and his concern for the participation of the laity and the reform of abuses was shared by Luther.

His later teaching, however, departs from the historic faith. On the Supper, he denied what the Church had confessed since the Fathers - that the bread and cup are the body and blood of Christ - and his grammatical argument from touto was rejected even by Zwingli. The Formula of Concord (Article 7) rejects his interpretation by name among the figurative readings. On images, the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) defended the veneration of images as an expression of the Incarnation, and while the Lutheran and Anglican churches did not follow Nicaea II in every respect, Luther insisted that images were not forbidden and that their removal by force was a new law imposed on consciences.

Luther's central objection remains the most searching: that Karlstadt replaced the outward word and sacrament, through which God gives the Spirit, with an inward spirituality that made the Christian's own experience the measure of the gospel. "God will not give you his Spirit without the external word," Luther wrote, "but through it."

Major writings

• 151 Theses (1517)
• On the Removal of Images (1522)
• Whether One Should Proceed Slowly (1524)
• Dialogue on the Abominable and Idolatrous Misuse of the Most Worthy Sacrament (1524)
• Apology (1525)

Affiliation

Zürich patrician and humanist; disciple of Zwingli; founder of the Swiss Brethren

Appears in

The Radical Reformation, Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists

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Life

A patrician son

Conrad Grebel was born around 1498, probably at Grüningen near Zürich, into one of the leading families of the city. His father, Jakob Grebel, was an iron merchant, magistrate and member of the Zürich council. Conrad was educated at the Latin school of the Grossmünster and then at the universities of Basel (1514), Vienna (1515-18), where he studied under the humanist Joachim Vadian, and Paris (1518-20), on scholarships from the Emperor and the King of France. His student years were turbulent: he quarrelled with his father over money, and his letters speak of brawling and dissipation. He returned to Zürich in 1520 without a degree. Vadian married his sister Martha.

Zwingli's disciple

In Zürich Grebel joined a circle of young humanists who studied Greek, Hebrew and the Scriptures with Huldrych Zwingli. In 1522 he married Barbara, a young woman of lower rank, against his parents' wishes. About the same time he experienced a religious conversion and became one of Zwingli's most zealous supporters, and his letters to Vadian show his growing conviction that the Church must be restored to the New Testament pattern.

The break

At the second Zürich disputation in October 1523, Zwingli agreed that the Mass was unscriptural but left the timing of its abolition to the city council. Grebel and his friends, among them Felix Manz and Simon Stumpf, objected that the council had no authority over the word of God. From that point they began to meet separately for Bible study. Over the following year they concluded that infant baptism had no warrant in Scripture and that the true Church was a gathered community of committed believers, separate from the state.

The letter to Müntzer

In September 1524 Grebel wrote, for the group, a long letter to Thomas Müntzer, whose writings they had read. They praised his opposition to infant baptism but urged him to abandon liturgical chant and German Masses for the simple Supper of believers, and to renounce the sword: "true believing Christians are sheep among wolves". The letter was probably never delivered, but it is the earliest statement of the Swiss Brethren's views.

The first baptisms

In January 1525 the council held a disputation on baptism, ruled against the radicals, ordered all unbaptised infants to be baptised within eight days and forbade the group to meet. On the evening of 21 January 1525, in the house of Felix Manz's mother in Zürich, the group prayed, and George Blaurock, a former priest, asked Grebel to baptise him. Grebel did so, and Blaurock then baptised the others present. A few days later a congregation of believers was formed at the village of Zollikon. This is usually regarded as the beginning of the Anabaptist movement.

Mission and prison

Grebel preached in Schaffhausen, St Gallen (where hundreds were baptised in the river Sitter in April 1525) and the Grüningen district. He was arrested in October 1525, tried with Manz and Blaurock in March 1526 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Within two weeks the prisoners escaped. The same month the council decreed death by drowning for anyone who rebaptised. Grebel's father was executed in October 1526 for having received foreign pensions, a charge some historians connect with the pressures of the family's position.^†

Key dates

• c. 1498 - Born near Zürich
• 1514-20 - Studies at Basel, Vienna and Paris
• 1522 - Marries; joins Zwingli's circle; conversion
• October 1523 - Second disputation; the break with Zwingli
• 5 September 1524 - Letter to Thomas Müntzer
• 17 January 1525 - Disputation on baptism; radicals ordered to desist
• 21 January 1525 - First believer's baptism in Zürich
• April 1525 - Mass baptisms at St Gallen
• October 1525 - Arrested
• March 1526 - Sentenced to life imprisonment; escapes
• Summer 1526 - Dies of plague at Maienfeld

Teachings and claims

The gathered church

Grebel taught that the Church consists only of those who have repented, believed and committed themselves to follow Christ, and that it must be separate from the civic community. Membership is voluntary and marked by baptism.

Believer's baptism

He held that baptism must follow faith and the person's own request, since the New Testament records no infant baptisms and since infants cannot repent or confess. He regarded infant baptism as the "greatest and first abomination of the pope".

The Supper

He taught that the Supper is a memorial meal of the gathered church, to be eaten with ordinary bread, without vestments or chant, and only by those living in brotherly love.

Non-resistance and discipline

He held that Christians must not use the sword, either in war or as magistrates, and that the church must exercise discipline by the "ban" of Matthew 18.

Documented controversies

Breaking from the Reformation

His insistence that the Church's reform be carried out without regard to the city council was regarded by Zwingli as sedition and by the council as rebellion. To the Reformers, the Anabaptists threatened the unity of Christian society.

Rebaptism

The act of 21 January 1525 was, in the eyes of every established church, a repetition of a sacrament already validly given, and in imperial law a capital crime. The Anabaptists held that infant baptism was no baptism, so that theirs was the first true one.

Persecution

Grebel was imprisoned for his faith, and his friends were executed: Manz was drowned in the Limmat in January 1527 and Blaurock burned in the Tyrol in 1529.

Death

He died of plague at Maienfeld in the Grisons in the summer of 1526, aged about twenty-eight, perhaps eighteen months after the first baptisms.^†

Legacy

Mennonites, Amish and many Baptists regard Grebel as a founder of their tradition, and the Swiss Brethren, who produced the Schleitheim Confession in 1527, continued his teaching. The Mennonite college Conrad Grebel University College in Ontario bears his name. Historians honour him as the first to put into practice the idea of a free church of believers separate from the state.

Measured against the creeds

Grebel confessed the faith of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and his longing for a Church of holy lives, his refusal of violence and his courage under persecution deserve respect. The persecution he and his friends suffered at the hands of the Reformed authorities was a wrong that the Reformed churches have since acknowledged; the Lutheran World Federation also asked Mennonites' forgiveness in 2010 for the persecution of Anabaptists by Lutherans.

But his doctrine of baptism departs from what the Church had received. The creed confesses "one baptism for the remission of sins"; the Church from the second century baptised infants (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian), and the household baptisms of Acts (16:15, 33; 1 Corinthians 1:16) and the promise "to you and to your children" (Acts 2:39) were read in that light. To baptise those already baptised in the triune name treats Christ's baptism as no baptism, which the Church had rejected in the Donatist controversy. Luther's Concerning Rebaptism (1528) argued that baptism rests on God's word and command, not on the faith of the one baptised, and that the Anabaptists made their own faith the foundation of the sacrament.

His idea of the Church as a gathered community of the visibly holy also differs from the creeds' "holy catholic Church", which the Fathers and Reformers alike understood as a mixed body in which wheat and tares grow together until the harvest (Matthew 13:24-30).

Major writings

• Letter to Thomas Müntzer (5 September 1524)
• Letters to Joachim Vadian (1517-25)
• Protestation and Defence (1524-25)

Affiliation

Church of England clergyman (ordained 1594); Separatist pastor at Gainsborough; founder of the first English Baptist congregation, in Amsterdam

Appears in

Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists

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Life

Cambridge and the Puritan pulpit

John Smyth was probably born around 1570 in Nottinghamshire or Lincolnshire; the details are uncertain. He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, then a centre of Puritan teaching, where his tutor was the Separatist-leaning Francis Johnson. He took his BA in 1590 and MA in 1593, became a fellow of the college, and was ordained in the Church of England in 1594.

In 1600 he was elected city lecturer (preacher) at Lincoln. His sermons attacked the city's leading men, and in 1602 he was dismissed for "personal preaching" - naming and criticising individuals from the pulpit. He published sermons on the Lord's Prayer (A Paterne of True Prayer, 1605) that were still conventionally Puritan and even defended set forms of prayer.

Separation

Over the next few years, under pressure from the bishops' drive for conformity after 1604, Smyth concluded that the Church of England was not a true church at all. Around 1606-07 he became pastor of a Separatist congregation at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire; a sister congregation met at Scrooby, among them William Brewster and William Bradford, later of the Mayflower. Facing arrest, both groups moved to Amsterdam in 1607-08.

Amsterdam and the self-baptism

In Amsterdam Smyth's congregation lived beside the "Ancient Church" of English exiles led by his old tutor Francis Johnson. Smyth's views moved quickly. In The Differences of the Churches of the Separation (1608) he argued that during worship no translation of Scripture should be read and no book used at all, since spiritual worship must come from the heart; the original-language text could be read before worship and translated aloud.

By late 1608 or early 1609 he had concluded that infant baptism was invalid and that the Separatists, having rejected the Church of England as false, could not keep the baptism it had given them. Since he knew of no true church anywhere from which to receive a valid baptism, he baptised himself - probably by pouring, not immersion - and then Thomas Helwys and the rest of the congregation. He defended this in The Character of the Beast (1609).

Second thoughts

Within months, Smyth met the Waterlander Mennonites in Amsterdam and concluded that they were a true church after all, with a succession of baptism. He had therefore been wrong to baptise himself, and he and most of his congregation applied to join them. Helwys and a minority refused, excommunicated Smyth, and returned to England in 1612 to found the first Baptist church on English soil. Smyth's last writings are gentle and self-reproaching; he regretted the harshness of his earlier polemics and wrote that he would no longer quarrel over outward forms.

Key dates

• c. 1570 - Born, probably in the East Midlands
• 1590-93 - BA and MA, Christ's College, Cambridge
• 1594 - Ordained in the Church of England
• 1600-02 - City lecturer at Lincoln; dismissed
• c. 1606-07 - Pastor of the Separatist church at Gainsborough
• 1608 - Moves to Amsterdam; The Differences of the Churches of the Separation
• 1609 - Baptises himself and his congregation; The Character of the Beast
• 1610 - Seeks admission to the Waterlander Mennonites; excommunicated by Helwys's group
• August 1612 - Dies in Amsterdam
• 1615 - His followers are received into the Mennonite church

Teachings and claims

The gathered church

Smyth taught that a true church is formed when believers covenant together to walk in God's ways. Membership is by profession of faith, not by birth in a parish. The church elects its own officers, and no bishop or magistrate has authority over it.

Believer's baptism

He came to hold that baptism belongs only to those who repent and believe, and that infant baptism was "the mark of the beast" in Revelation - the sign of a false, national church. He saw the act of baptising himself as the restoration of a true church that had been lost.

Arminianism and freedom

Under Mennonite influence he abandoned Calvinist predestination, teaching that Christ died for all and that grace can be resisted. His final confession (1612) also argued that the magistrate has no authority over the conscience in religion, an idea Helwys developed into a plea for universal religious liberty.

Documented controversies

• The self-baptism. Contemporaries mocked him as the "Se-Baptist". Puritans and Separatists alike - among them Richard Clyfton, John Robinson and Richard Bernard - wrote against him.
• The turn to the Mennonites. Helwys's party regarded it as a denial of the very act that had founded their church and excommunicated him; the dispute was bitter on both sides.
• Worship without books. His refusal of translations and set forms during worship was rejected even by most Separatists.

Death

Smyth died of tuberculosis in Amsterdam in August 1612 and was buried on 1 September, before the Mennonites had completed his admission. His remaining followers were received in January 1615.

Legacy

Smyth is counted the founder of the General (Arminian) Baptists, through Helwys, and his congregation is often called the first Baptist church. Baptists today number some 100 million worldwide across many unions and conventions. His insistence on the gathered church of believers, believer's baptism and freedom of conscience became characteristic of much of English-speaking Protestantism.

His life is also a parable of the restorationist dilemma described in this section. Having concluded that the Church had lost true baptism, he could not restore it in a way that satisfied even himself, and spent his last months seeking a church with a continuous succession.

Measured against the creeds

The Nicene Creed confesses "one baptism for the remission of sins" and "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". Smyth's position required that for centuries there had been no true baptism and, in effect, no true Church - a view no ancient writer held. The early Church baptised infants; St Cyprian and a council at Carthage in 253 debated only whether to wait until the eighth day, and St Augustine treated infant baptism as the unquestioned tradition of the whole Church.

The Church has also always held that baptism is received, not self-administered: no one is the source of his own new birth. Smyth's own second thoughts - that he should have sought baptism from an existing church - came close to recognising this. His humility at the end, and his insistence that conscience cannot be forced by the state, deserve respect; his view of baptism and the Church remains the point of division.

Major writings

• A Paterne of True Prayer (1605)
• Principles and Inferences Concerning the Visible Church (1607)
• The Differences of the Churches of the Separation (1608)
• The Character of the Beast (1609)
• A Short Confession of Faith in Twenty Articles (1609-10)
• The Last Booke of John Smith, called the Retractation of his Errours (1612)

Affiliation

Nottinghamshire gentleman and lawyer; member of Smyth's Separatist church; founder of the first Baptist church in England

Appears in

Zwingli, the Puritans and the first Baptists

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Life

A Nottinghamshire gentleman

Thomas Helwys was born around 1575, probably at Broxtowe Hall near Nottingham, into a family of minor gentry. He inherited Broxtowe Hall on his father's death. He studied law at Gray's Inn in London from 1593, and in 1595 married Joan Ashmore at Bilborough parish church; they had seven children. Broxtowe Hall became a meeting place for Puritans dissatisfied with the Church of England, and Helwys was drawn towards the Separatists, who held that the national church was so corrupt that true believers must leave it.

With John Smyth

By about 1606 Helwys had joined the Separatist congregation at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire led by John Smyth, a former Church of England clergyman. Under the pressure of persecution, the congregation emigrated to Amsterdam in 1608, and Helwys was a leading member and financial supporter of the move. His wife was arrested in England and imprisoned in York for refusing to take an oath; she was later released.

Baptism

In Amsterdam, Smyth concluded in 1609 that the church's baptism, received in the Church of England, was invalid, since that church was false, and that infant baptism was no baptism. He baptised himself, and then Helwys and the others. Shortly afterwards Smyth came to believe that he had acted wrongly by not seeking baptism from the Waterlander Mennonites, a true church already existing, and he and most of the congregation applied to join them. Helwys and a small group refused, holding that any company of believers could restore baptism and that seeking it from another church implied a succession that Scripture did not require. In 1610 they excommunicated Smyth's party.

Declaration and return

In 1611 Helwys's group issued A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland, in twenty-seven articles - the first Baptist confession in English. It affirmed general redemption (that Christ died for all) against Calvinist predestination, believer's baptism, the independence of the local church and the lawfulness of magistracy. Helwys became convinced that the English Separatists had been wrong to flee persecution, and in 1612 he and about ten others returned to England and founded a congregation at Spitalfields, outside the walls of London - the first Baptist church on English soil.

The Mystery of Iniquity

The same year he published A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity, which attacked the Church of England, the Puritans who remained within it, and the Separatists who had fled. Its final section argued that the king had no authority over the consciences of his subjects. On the flyleaf of a copy sent to James I he wrote: "The king is a mortal man and not God, therefore hath no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual lords over them." Helwys was arrested and imprisoned in Newgate, apparently for refusing the oath of allegiance.

Key dates

• c. 1575 - Born, probably at Broxtowe Hall, Nottinghamshire
• 1593 - Admitted to Gray's Inn
• 1595 - Marries Joan Ashmore
• c. 1606 - Joins John Smyth's Separatist congregation
• 1608 - Emigrates to Amsterdam
• 1609 - Baptised by Smyth
• 1610 - Separates from Smyth's party
• 1611 - A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam
• 1612 - Returns to England; founds the Spitalfields church; publishes The Mystery of Iniquity
• 1612-13 - Imprisoned in Newgate
• by 1616 - Dies in prison

Teachings and claims

Believer's baptism

Helwys taught that baptism belongs only to those who repent and believe, that infant baptism is invalid, and that a church may restore true baptism among its own members.

General redemption

He rejected Calvinist predestination, holding that Christ died for all and that the grace of God may be resisted. His congregation was the ancestor of the "General" (Arminian) Baptists, as distinct from the Particular (Calvinist) Baptists who emerged in the 1630s.

The local church

He taught that each congregation is a complete church under Christ, with power to choose its own officers and exercise its own discipline.

Liberty of conscience

Most remarkably, he argued that religion is a matter between God and the soul, that the state may punish crimes but not belief, and that this liberty belongs to all: "Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure."

Documented controversies

The break with Smyth

The quarrel over who could restore baptism divided a congregation of fewer than fifty people and left the two parties in mutual excommunication. Smyth's party eventually merged with the Mennonites.

Return to England

His decision to return, against the judgement of most Separatists, exposed his followers to persecution and led to his own imprisonment.

Polemics

The Mystery of Iniquity identified the Church of England with the second beast of Revelation, and condemned the Puritans and other Separatists in harsh terms.

Death

He died in Newgate prison. The date is not known, but a will of 1616 refers to him as dead.^† His congregation continued under John Murton, who also wrote in defence of religious liberty.

Legacy

Baptists honour Helwys as the founder of their tradition in England, and Regent's Park College in Oxford holds a copy of The Mystery of Iniquity with his inscription to the king. Historians of religious liberty regard his plea, extending freedom of conscience to non-Christians, as the first of its kind in English, decades ahead of Roger Williams and John Locke. The General Baptists he founded became, in part, Unitarian in the eighteenth century, while the New Connexion of General Baptists (1770) returned to evangelical orthodoxy.

Measured against the creeds

Helwys confessed the Trinity and the creeds' doctrine of Christ, and his 1611 Declaration is orthodox on these points. His defence of liberty of conscience, made at the cost of his life, has come to be widely accepted, including by the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965), and the historic churches now acknowledge their own past persecution of dissenters.

His doctrine of baptism and the Church, however, departs from the historic faith. The creeds confess "one baptism", which the Church had given to infants since the earliest centuries; to declare all such baptisms void, and to restore baptism by the decision of a small group of believers, assumes that the Church had ceased to exist - a conclusion the Lord's promise forbids (Matthew 16:18; 28:20). The judgement that a church of a few dozen could excommunicate the rest, and the speed with which the founding congregation divided, illustrate the difficulty that follows when there is no Church beyond the local congregation to which an appeal can be made.

Major writings

• A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611)
• An Advertisement or Admonition unto the Congregations, which Men Call the New Fryelers (1611)
• A Short and Plain Proof by the Word and Works of God that God's Decree is not the Cause of any Man's Sin (1611)
• A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1612)