but little in spending eighteen months of their time and labor on her figment, for she well held her own with the whole learned and malignant crowd of them. Lord Riche says, that he kept her at his own house for a fortnight,' and had Cranmer and Ridley visit and reason with her daily. Ridley bent all his eloquence upon her mind, but could not shake her convictions. Her judges called her every thing but the lady which her parentage, position and character demanded, and they felt terribly grieved when her insulted patience told them the plain truth, in more polite language than their own. 'Marry,' said she, 'it is a goodly matter to consider your ignorance. It is not long ago since you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread, and yet you came yourselves soon after to believe and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And now, forsooth, you will burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will come to believe this also.' Did Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley remember her true words in the flames, and did they help to light them through the fire? Fox tried hard to save her, and to induce John Rogers to help him. Rogers refused, thought that she ought to be burnt, and spoke lightly of death by burning, but then he did not dream of being chained to the stake himself. Fox, pitying her, seized the hand of his friend Rogers and replied: 'Well, it may so happen that you yourself will have your hands full of this mild burning.' Whether he had or not, his poor wife proved the force of Fox's prophetic apprehension when she stood with her eight children and saw her husband consumed to ashes, five years later.

Joan Boucher suffered amongst the fagots, May 2, 1550, to the eternal disgrace of all concerned. Common decency might have spared her the mockery of having Bishop Scorey preach to her while at the stake and vilify her there, under pretense of pious exhortation. Yet, possibly, her last act did him a service which he much needed, and which had never been done to him before. Her sermon to him is immortal, while his to her has long since been forgotten. Listening to him just as her soul ascended to heaven in the flame, she said in reply: You lie like a rogue. Go read the Scriptures!' Much needless ink has been shed on an attempt to show that Edward stained her death-warrant with tears when he signed it, because Cranmer clamored for her life. But Hallam long since said that this royal tear-scene should be dropped from history, though detailed by Burnet. And the young Tudor well sustains Hallam from his private journal, which is any thing but tearful. With his own hand he wrote: Joan Boucher, otherwise called Joan of Kent, was burnt for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, being condemned the year previous, but kept in hope of conversion; and the 30th of April the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely were to persuade her, but she withstood them and reviled the preacher that preached at her death.' So much for his Journal, but there is no proof that Edward signed her death-warrant at all. This was seldom done by the monarch, and in her case it was issued by the Council to the Lord Chancellor. On the authority of Bruce, editor of the works of Hutch

inson, Parker Society edition, the following is taken from a minute of the Council itself, dated April 27, 1550. A warrant to the L. Chancellor to make out a writt to the shireff of London for the execuçon of Johan of Kent, condempned to be burned for certein detestable opinions of heresie.' 10

HENDRICK TERWOORT, a Fleming by birth, and of a fine mind, another Baptist martyr of note, was burned in Smithfield, June 22, 1575. He was but five and twenty, had rejected infant baptism, and held that a Christian should not make oath or bear arms. While in prison he wrote a Confession of Faith, in which he said: 'We must abstain from willful sins if we would be saved, namely, from adultery, fornication, witchcraft, sedition, bloodshed, cursing and stealing, . . . hatred and envy. They who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.' He also set forth that the 'Anabaptists' believe and confess that magistrates are set and ordained of God, to punish the evil and protect the good,' that they pray for them and are subject to them in every good work, and that they revere the 'gracious queen' as a sovereign. He sent a copy to Elizabeth, but her heart was set against him and his people, as hard as the nether millstone, and this young son of God must die because he would not make his conscience her footstool. Bishops Laud and Whitgift hated him and the Baptists, the latter dealing in this heartless slander: They give honor and reverence to none in authority, they seek the overthrow of commonwealths and states of government, they are full of pride and contempt, their whole interest is schismatic and to be free from all laws, to live as they list; they feign an austerity of life and manners, and are great hypocrites.' When he comes to the dangerous method of specification, he virtually admits his slander. berates them for complaining: That their mouths are stopped, not by God's word, but by the authority of the magistrate. They assert that the civil magistrate has no authority in ecclesiastical matters, and ought not to meddle in cases of religion and faith, and that no man ought to be compelled to faith and religion; and lastly, they complain much of persecution, and brag that they defend their cause not with words only, but by the shedding of their blood.' 11

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Terwoort was not an English subject, but, persecuted in his own land for his love to Christ, he fled and asked protection of a Protestant queen, the head of the English Church, and she roasted him alive for his misplaced confidence. Nor was his a singular case. Bishop Jewel complains of a large and unauspicious crop of Anabaptists' in Elizabeth's reign, and she not only ordered them out of her kingdom, but in good earnest kindled the fires to burn them. Sir James Mackintosh says that no Catholic was martyred in Edward's reign, and happy had it been could he have written that the virgin Queen also avoided a Baptist holocaust. Marsden thinks that the Baptists were the most numerous dissenters from the Established Church in her reign, and Camden affirms that she insisted on their leaving the kingdom on pain of imprisonment and confiscation of property. Yet even this did not satisfy her implacable hate, as a real Tudor. She pursued them more and more,

until they were driven in all directions, some being put to death; but the large part of them fled to Holland, where at this time they enjoyed more toleration. Dr. Some, however, an English clergyman of note in his day, informs us that they had several secret 'conventicles' in London, and that several of their ministers had been educated at the universities. In 1589, he wrote a treatise, attacking them and their faith. His charges against the Baptists were: That they insisted on maintaining all ministers of the Gospel by the voluntary contributions of the people; that the civil power has no right to make and impose ecclesiastical laws; that the people have the right to choose their own pastors; that the High Commission Court was an antiChristian usurpation; that those who are qualified to preach ought not to be hindered by the civil power; that though the Lord's Prayer is a rule and foundation of petition, it is not to be used as a form, for no form of prayer should be bound on the Church; that the baptism of the Church of Rome is invalid; that a Gospel constitution and discipline are essential to a true Church; and that the worship of God in the Church of England is, in many things, defective. For these views they were accounted heretics,' and suffered so severely that from 1590 to 1630 we find but slight trace of Baptists in England.

About 1579 Archbishop Sandys declared both of the Brownists and Baptists: 'It is the property of froward sectaries, whose inventions cannot abide the light, to make obscure conventicles,' and he would compel them to attend the Established Church. He was the more disturbed because so many 'heretical' exiles from Holland had sought refuge in England, for it is said that in 1571 there were nearly 4,000 Dutch and other foreigners in Norwich alone, many of them Dutch Baptists, from whom Weingarten thinks that Brown borrowed his best ideas of a Gospel Church. Robert Brown, chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk, and Robert Harrison, the master of a grammar school, were Puritans, and went to Norwich in 1580. There they mingled with these exiles, and formed an independent Church, but the bishops. had no rest till Brown was banished. He, with Harrison and about fifty others, in 1581, fled to Middleburg, in Zealand, and formed a Church, which became extinct because of divisions, and Brown returned to the Church of England. Elizabeth was especially set against the Separatists, and in 1593, Francis Johnson, pastor of their Church in London, with some of his flock, escaped to Amsterdam. On the accession of James I., 1603, the four sects of England were, the Roman Catholic, the Church of England, divided into the Puritans, who conformed in some things, and others who conformed in all, the Brownists, afterwards known as Separatists and Independents, and a few Baptists, who were disowned of all. The Gospel seed sown by Brown in his own country took root, and notwithstanding his return to the English Church, Sir Walter Raleigh said, in 1592, that there were 20,000 Brownists in England. John Robinson, a firmer and more steady mind, went to Norwich, then to Scrooby, 1600-1604, cast the Brownists in a healthier mold, and they became known as Independents.

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CHAPTER III.

BRITISH BAPTISTS-JOHN SMYTH-COMMONWEALTH.

EV. JOHN SMYTH, educated at Cambridge, became vicar of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and a determined foe of the Separatists. After examining their sentiments for nine months,' however, he renounced episcopacy as unscript ural and was cast into the Marshalsea Prison, Southwark, but being liberated, he became pastor of the Separatist Church at Gainsborough in 1602. William Brewster was a Separatist at Gainsborough, but removed to Scrooby near Bawtry, where Clifton became pastor, with Robinson as assistant. Both these little flocks, however, were driven from their homes, Smyth fleeing to Amsterdamn, probably in 1606, where he joined Johnson. Clifton and Robinson followed in 1608, settling first at Amsterdam, then at Leyden. In 1620 a portion of the Church at Leyden migrated to Plymouth, New England, with Brewster as elder, and formed the first Congregational Church in America. On arriving in Amsterdam, Smyth at first united with the 'ancient' English Separatist Church there, in charge of Johnson, with Ainsworth as teacher. At that time the Separatists of Amsterdam were in warın controversy on the true nature of a visible Church. Smyth published a work on the fallen Church, entitled The Character of the Beast,' and a tractate of seventy-one pages, against infant baptism and in favor of believer's baptism. For this he was disfellowshiped by the first Church, his former friends charging him with open war against God's covenant, and the murder of the souls of babes and sucklings, by depriving them of the visible seal of salvation.

This led Smyth, Helwys, Morton and thirty-six others to form a new Church which should practice believer's baptism and reject infant baptism. Finding themselves unbaptized, they were in a strait. They were on good terms with the Dutch Baptists, but would not receive their baptism, lest this should recognize them as a true Church; for they believed that the true Churches of Christ had perished. Besides, Smyth did not believe with them in the unlawfulness of a Christian to serve as a magistrate, nor on the freedom of the will and the distinctive points of Calvinism, he being an Arminian, which points he considered vital. He believed that the Apostolical Church model was lost, and determined on its recovery. He renounced the figment of a historical, apostolic succession, insisting that where two or three organize according to the teachings of the New Testament, they form as true a Church of Christ as that of Jerusalem, though they stand alone in the earth. With the design of restoring this pattern, he baptized

himself on his faith in Christ in 1608, then baptized Thomas Helwys with about forty others, and so formed a new Church in Amsterdam. In most things this body was Baptist, as that term is now used, with some difference. This is established by their four extant forms, of what is in substance, one confession of faith. Two of these were written by Smyth and are signed by others, and the other two came from the same company, probably under the lead of Helwys. Their theology is Arminian, they claim that the Church is composed of baptized believers only, that only the baptized are to taste of the Lord's Supper,' and that the magistrates shall not, by virtue of their office, meddle with matters of conscience in religion.

Smyth and his congregation met in a large bakery for a time, but he soon saw his mistake in his hasty Se-baptism, and offered to join the Dutch congregation of Baptists known as 'Waterlanders,' under the pastoral charge of Lubberts Gerrits. Part of his congregation, under the leadership of Helwys, would not unite with Smyth in this movement, but excluded him from their fellowship and warned the Dutch Church not to receive him. Soon after this Smyth died, August, 1612, and the Dutch body recognized his company. Meanwhile the question had arisen with Helwys and his followers whether they were doing right by remaining in Holland, to avoid persecution in England, and at the peril of their lives they had returned to London, in 1611, and formed the first general Baptist Church there, 1612-14. Little is known of its history beyond the general statement that the Dutch Baptists of London rallied around Helwys and John Murton, his successor, that it was located in Newgate, and that in 1626 it numbered one hundred and fifty persons. Helwys published a work defending their course in braving persecution, and probably translated a Dutch treatise on baptism in 1618. No account is given of his death, but Taylor dates it at 'about' 1623. Masson says, in his 'Life of Milton,' 'This obscure Baptist congregation seems to have become the depository for all England of the absolute principle of liberty of conscience expressed in the Amsterdam Confession as distinct from the more stinted principle advocated by the general body of the Independents. Not only did Helwisse's folks differ from the Independents generally on the subject of infant baptism and dipping; they differed also on the power of the magistrate in matters of belief and conscience. It was, in short, from this little dingy meeting-house, somewhere in Old London, that there flashed out first in England the absolute doctrine of religious liberty.' So far as is known, the Amsterdam Confession of the Baptists is the first which laid down the full principle of religions freedom, after the Swiss Confession of 1527. It is absolutely the first now known to take positive ground in favor of the salvation of all infants who die in infancy, from the time that Augustine taught the detestable doctrine that unbaptized infants who die are not admitted into heaven. Wickliff held that they are saved without baptism, but his doctrine was not formulated by a Christian body. Also, in defining the limits of Church and State, they came down to those foundation principles which the Inde