For a master copy of the outline, click here: Baptist Church History
11. The Anabaptists (3rd - 16th Century)
A. The Anabaptists as a named group arose in the early 1500s in Germany.
i. The term Anabaptist means one who re-baptizes.
ii. Anabaptist - 1. lit. One who baptizes over again, whether frequently as a point of ritual, or once as a due performance of what has been ineffectually performed previously. 2. Ch. Hist. Name of a sect which arose in Germany in 1521.
B. There were Christians who were called Anabaptists throughout time going back to the third century because they re-baptized converts who had been "baptized" as infants.
i. "Osiander says, our modern anabaptists were the same with the Donatists of old." (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 87)
ii. "In 1522 Luther says: “The Anabaptists have been for a long time spreading in Germany.” The late E.T. Winkler, D.D., quoting the above, says: “Nay, Luther even traced the Anabaptists back to the days of John Huss [1369-1415], and apologetically admits that the eminent reformer was one of them.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 303)
iii. "Dr. E.T. Winkler says: “It is well known that the Anabaptists of Holland disclaimed any historic connection with the fanatical Anabaptists of Germany, but claimed a descent from the Waldenses.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 306)
iv. "Dr. Osgood says of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century: “The persecution of centuries had taught them concealment,” plainly implying their existence centuries before the days of Luther..." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 306)
v. "Cardinal Hossius, President of the Council of Trent, which met Dec. 15, 1545, and one of the most learned Romanists of his day, said:... “If the truth of religion were to be judged of by the readiness and cheerfulness which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinion and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptists, since there have been none, for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally punished, or that have more steadfastly under-gone, and even offered themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people. … The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect, of which kind the Waldensian brethren seem to have been. Nor is this heresy a modern thing, for it existed in the time of Austin.” Thus this great Romanish scholar concedes the sameness of the Waldenses and Anabaptists, and that they already existed in 354, the time of Austin." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 307-308)
vi. "The Quaker, Robert Barclay, wrote: "We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptists took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that on the continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the Apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a lineage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church." (Dr. Phil Stringer, The Faithful Baptist Witness, page 115)
C. The Anabaptists believed in total depravity and election.
i. "The Anabaptists believed children inherit the moral depravity of their parents. Denck [a great Anabaptist leader] said: “There is something in me that strongly opposes my inborn inclination to evil.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 187)
ii. "The Anabaptists had no sympathy with the doctrine of infant damnation. “They denied that baptism is necessary for salvation and maintained that infants are saved without baptism and by the blood of Christ. But baptism is necessary for church membership.” As infants thus appear to need the “blood of Christ” it thus appears that these Anabaptists believe that infants are depraved, a belief clearly demanded by the Scriptures and maintained by all well instructed Baptists." (W.A. Jarrel (quoting Dr. Schaff), Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 193)
iii. "These Anabaptists believed in election: [quoting Denck] “Christ, the Lamb of God, has been from the beginning of the world a mediator between God and men, and will remain a mediator to the end. Of what men? Of you and me alone? Not so, but of all men whom God has given to him for a possession.” John Muller, another Anabaptist leader, in 1525, wrote: “Since faith in the free gift of God and not in every man’s possession, as the Scriptures show, do not burden my conscience. It is born not of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God. … No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him. The secret of God is like a treasure concealed in a field which no man can find unless the Spirit of the Lord reveal it to him.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 188)
D. The Anabaptists rejected the heresy of baptism regeneration.
i. "They utterly rejected “sacramental salvation.” Grebel, a great Anabaptist leader, said: “From the scriptures we learn that baptism declares that by faith and the blood of Christ our sins have been washed away, that we have died to sin and walked in newness of life; that assurance of salvation is through the inner baptism, faith, so that water does not confirm and increase faith as Wittenberg theologians say, nor does it save.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 188)
E. The Anabaptists believed in believers' baptism, and that it adds one to the local church.
i. "In an Anabaptist confession of faith, called the "Schleitheim Confession," made in 1527, we read: “Baptism should be given to all those who have learned repentance and change of life, and believe in truth that their sins have been taken away through Christ.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 192)
ii. "Fuller knew the English Baptists only as immersionists. He says: “These Anabaptists, for the main, are but ‘Donatists’ new dipped.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 214)
iii. "Hubmeyer [a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s] said: “In order to live a Christian life there must be a change in the natural man, who is by nature sinful and with no remedy in himself by which the wounds that sin has made can be healed. … When a man has received this new life he confesses it before the church of which he is made a member according to the rule of Christ; that is he shows to the church that, instructed in the Scriptures, he has given himself to Christ to live henceforth according to his will and teaching. He is then baptized, making in baptism a public confession of his faith. … In other words, in baptism he confesses that he is a sinner, but that Christ by his death has pardoned his sins, so that he is accounted righteous before the face of his God.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, pages 190-191)
iv. [Quoting Hubmeyer, a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s]: "‘Where there is no baptism there is neither church nor ministry, neither brothers nor sisters, neither discipline, exclusion nor restoration. As faith is a thing of the heart, there must be an external confession by which brothers and sisters can mutually recognize each other.’ Replying to Zwingli, Hubmeyer said: ‘We must do as God pleases, consult the word, not the church; hear the Son, not Zwingli or Luther." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 185)
F. The Anabaptists were persecuted by Luther and the Protestants.
i. "“That some of these preferred and practiced immersion we infer from the fact that their persecutors, who delighted in fitting the penalty, as they cruelly judged it, to the fault, put many of them to death by full immersion, swathing the sufferers to large sacks with their living contents into huge puncheons where the victims were drowned. So the Swiss, some of them, at least, immersed in rivers. This appears from the work Sabbata of Knertz, a contemporary Lutheran.” The translator of Luther’s Controversial Works, speaking of Luther’s sermon on Baptism, on p. 8, of his Introduction, says: “The sermon and letters are directed principally against the Anabaptists, a fanatical sect of reformers who contended that baptism should be administered to adults only, not by sprinkling, but by dipping.” A writer who has given this special investigation, says: “And thus it is through the whole book of Luther on the sacraments. I have read it over and over again, years ago, and marked all the places in controversy concerning the Anabaptists, and in not one single instance is there the remotest hint that they practiced sprinkling and pouring. … When the Anabaptists spoke of the sprinkling of the Lutherans they called it ‘a handful of water,’ doubtless in derision; and when they alluded to the dipping of Luther, without faith either on the part of the administrator or the subject, they called it ‘a dog bath,’ also in derision. Nothing satisfied them but the immersion of a professed believer.” Robinson says: “Luther bore the Zwinglians dogmatizing, but he could not brook a reformation in the hands of the dippers. … Notwithstanding all he had said in favor of dipping, he persecuted them under the names of re-dippers, rebaptizers, or Anabaptists.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 195-196)
ii. "Gastins was wont to say, with ghastly sarcasm, as he ordered the Anabaptists to be drowned: ‘They like immersion so much let us immerse them,’ and his words became a proverb. Zwingli used to call them ‘bath fellows.’" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 197)
iii. ""It is true, indeed, "says the same writer [Mosheim - a Lutheran], "that many Baptists suffered death, not on account of their being considered rebellious subjects, but merely because they were judged to be incurable heretics; for in this century, the error of limiting the administration of baptism to adult persons only, and the practice of re-baptizing such as had received that sacrament in a state of infancy, were looked upon as most flagitious and intolerable heresies. Those who had no other marks of peculiarity than their administering baptism to the adult, and their excluding the unrighteous from the external communion of the church, ought to have met with milder treatment."" (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 362-363)
G. The Anabaptists were not persecutors like the Catholics and Protestants.
i. [Quoting a tract written by Hubmeyer, a prominent Anabaptist in the 1520s]: "From this and many other passages of the Holy Scriptures, it appears that persecutors of heretics are themselves the greatest heretics. For Christ did not come to butcher, to kill and to burn, but to deliver and improve all. It is necessary, therefore, to pray for the improvement of the erring, and to look for it as long as a man lives. The Turk, or the heretic, can be overcome, not by fire or sword, but only by patience and instruction. Burning heretics is, therefore, nothing less than a sham confession and actual denial of Christ. … The chief art consists in testing errors, and in refuting them by the Holy Scriptures.” (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 186)
12. Baptist Churches in England (1st -21st Centuries)
A. There is evidence that Christianity made it into Britain in the 1st century.
i. "Rev, Francis Thackeray, A.M., formerly of Benbrooke College, Cambridge, from his Researches Into the Ecclesiastical and the Political State of Great Britain, is quoted: “We have reason to believe that Christianity was preached in both countries, Gaul and Britain, before the close of the first century. The result of my investigations on my own mind has been the conviction that about 60, A.D., in the time of St. Paul, a church existed in Britain.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 317)
ii. "Bede says: “The Britains preserved the faith which they had received uncorrupted and entire in peace and tranquility until the time of the Emperor Diocletian.” Diocletian died A.D. 313." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 318)
B. The Waldenses were in England in the 11th century.
i. "Of the beginning of the eleventh century in England, Crosby says: “Though the baptism of infants seems now to be pretty well established in this realm, yet the practice of immersion continued many years longer; and there were not persons wanting to oppose infant baptism. For in the time of William the Conqueror and his son William Rufus, it appears that the Waldenses and their disciples, out of France, Germany and Holland had their frequent recourse and residence, and did abound in England." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 318)
ii. "Says Benedict, quoting Jones: “Towards the middle of the twelfth century, a small society of these Puritans, as they were called by some, or Waldenses, as they were termed by others, or Paulicians, as they are denominated by an old monkish historian — William of Newbury — made their appearance in England. This latter writer speaking of them, says: They came originally from Gascoyne, where being as numerous as the sand of the sea, they sorely infested all France, Italy, Spain and England.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 327)
C. The Lollards, who were Waldenses, and who were also know as Wickliffites (John Wycliffe) came to England in the 14th century.
i. "In the time of King Edward the II., about the year 1315, Walter Lollard, a German preacher, a man of great renown among the Waldenses, came into England. He spread their doctrines very much in these parts, so that afterwards they went by the name of Lollards.” Fuller: “By Lollards, all know the Wickliffe’s are meant; so that from Walter Lollardus, one of their teachers in Germany … and flourishing many years before Wickliffe, and much consenting with him in agreement.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 319-320)
ii. "As to the action of baptism, Wickliffe was certainly a Baptist. Says Armitage: “He always retains the preposition ‘in’ and never with ‘in water,’ ‘in Jordan.’” Says Armitage: “Froude finds a resemblance between some of Wickliff’s views, and others have claimed him as a Baptist.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 321)
iii. "“That the denial of the rite of infants to baptism was a principle generally maintained among the Lollards or followers of Wickliffe, is abundantly confirmed by the historians of those times. Thomas Walden, who wrote against Wickliffe, terms this reformer ‘one of several heads who arose out of the bottomless pit for denying infant baptism, that heresies of the Lollards of whom he was the ringleader.’”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 321)
D. The English Baptists were of the same faith and order as the ancient Donatists.
i. "Fuller, the English church historian, asserts, that the Baptists in England, in his days, were the Donatists new dipped: and Robinson declares, they were Trinitarian Anabaptists." (G.H. Orchard, A Concise History of Foreign Baptists, page 87)
13. The Welsh Baptists of Wales, England (1st - 21st Centuries)
A. Christians (Baptists) were in Wales, England as early as the 2nd century where they were persecuted by the Roman Catholic church.
i. "Including Wales, Bede says the Britains were converted to Christianity in the second century and that they “preserved the faith, which they had received uncorrupted and entire, in peace and tranquility, until the time of Diocletian, A.D. 286.” In the year 603, Augustine, called also Austin, was sent to convert the Welsh Baptists to the Romish church. Bede records that they met him, charging him with pride, contradicted all he said, and that he proposed to them: “You act in many particulars contrary to our custom, or rather the custom of the universal church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three points, viz.: to keep Easter at the due time; to administer baptism, by which we are again born to God, according to the custom of the Roman Apostolic Church; and jointly with us preach the Word of God to the English nation, we will readily tolerate all the other things you do, though contrary to our custom.” Bede says: To this “they answered, they would do none of these things, nor receive him as their archbishop; for they alleged among themselves that ‘if he would not rise up to us, how much more will he condemn us, as of no worth, if we shall begin to be under his subjection?’ To whom the man of God, Augustine, is said in a threatening manner, to have foretold, that in case they would not join in unity with their brethren, they should be warred upon by their enemies; and if they would not preach the way of life to the English nation, they should at their hands, undergo the vengeance of death. All which, through the dispensation of divine judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted.” But Bede states that fifty of their ministers “escaped by flight” from the slaughter of “twelve hundred” of their ministerial brethren. These were amply sufficient to propagate the true gospel; thus, preserving the perpetuity line to the Reformation." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 363-364)
B. There is strong evidence that Christianity was introduced into Wales in the first century by Pudens and Claudia, two of Paul's converts (2Ti 4:21).
i. "Davis says: “About fifty years before the birth of our Savior the Romans invaded the British Isle, in the reign of the Welsh king, Cassibellan; but having failed, in consequence of other and more important wars, to conquer the Welsh nation, made peace and dwelt among them many years. During that period many of the Welsh soldiers joined the Roman army and many families from Wales visited Rome, among whom there was a certain woman named Claudia, who was married to a man named Pudence. At the same time Paul was sent a prisoner to Rome and preached there in his own hired house for the space of two years, about the year of our Lord 63. Pudence and Claudia, his wife, who belonged to Caesar’s household, under the blessing of God on Paul’s preaching, were brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, and made a profession of the christian religion. Acts 28:30; 2 Timothy 4:21. These, together with other Welshmen, among the Roman soldiers, who had tasted that the Lord was gracious, exhorted them in behalf of their countrymen in Wales, who were at that time vile idolators. … The Welsh lady Claudia, and others, who were converted under Paul’s ministry in Rome, carried the precious seed with them, and scattered it on the hills and valleys of Wales; and since that time, many thousands have reaped a glorious harvest. … We have nothing of importance to communicate respecting the Welsh Baptists from this period to the year 180 when two ministers by the name of Faganus, and Damicanus, who were born in Wales, but were born again in Rome, and became eminent ministers of the gospel, were sent from Rome to assist their brethren in Wales. In the same year, Lucius, the Welsh king, and the first king in the world who embraced the christian religion, was baptized. … About the year 300, the Welsh Baptists suffered most terrible and bloody persecution, which was the tenth persecution under the reign of Dioclesian. … Here, as well as in many other places, the blood of martyrs proved to be the seed of the church.” Of A.D. 600, Davis says: “Infant baptism was in vogue long before this time in many parts of the world, but not in Brittain. The ordinances of the gospel were then exclusively administered there according to the primitive mode. Baptism by immersion, administered to those who professed repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Welsh people considered the only baptism of the New Testament. That was their unanimous sentiment as a nation, from the time that the christian religion was embraced by them in the year 63, until a considerable time after the year 600. They had no national religion; they had not connected church and State together; for they believed that the kingdom of Christ is not in this world.” Here Davis gives the account quoted in the foregoing, of Augustine’s attempt to convert them to infant baptism and to the Romish church and of the persecution ensuing from his failure to do so. From this persecution Davis says: “The majority of the Welsh people submitted to popery; at that time more out of fear than love. Those good people that did not submit, were almost buried in its smoke; so that one knew but little of them from that time to the Reformation.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 367-369)
ii. "We know that the reformers were for mixed communion, but the Olchon Baptists received no such practices. In short, these were plain, strict apostolical Baptists. They would have order and no confusion — the word of God their only rule. The reformers, or reformed Baptists, who had been brought up in the established church, were for laying on of hands on the baptized, but these Baptists whom they found on the mountains of Wales were no advocates of it. … The Olchon Baptists … must have been a separate people, maintaining the order of the New Testament in every generation from the year 63 to the present time.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 370-371)
14. American Baptist Churches (17th - 21st Centuries)
A. Rodger Williams is credited with starting the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence in 1638.
i. The claims that Williams even started the First Baptist Church of Providence are questionable.
a. "Mr. Adlam, one of the highest authorities on this subject, says: “The general opinion of Roger Williams being the founder and pastor of the first Baptist church, is a modern theory; the farther you go back, the less generally it is believed; till coming to the most ancient times, to the men who knew Williams, they are such entire strangers to it, that they never heard that he formed the Baptist church there. The first, and the second and the third, and almost the fourth generation must pass away before men can believe that any others than Wickenden, Brown, etc., were the founders of that church.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376)
b. "S. Adlam, than whom no man has given this subject more investigation, says: “I can see no evidence that Roger Williams, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, established a Baptist church in Providence.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380)
c. "Armitage says: “In view of the fact that Williams remained with the Baptists but three or four months, some have seriously doubted whether he formed a church there after that order at all.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380)
d. "Prof. J.C. C. Clarke says: “If Mr. Williams formed a Baptist church, no clear evidence of such act remains.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 380)
ii. If Williams did originate the church in Providence, then it wasn't a true church because Williams was never properly baptized or ordained.
a. "Williams, while a Baptist in some points, was not a Baptist in so many others, that he never was a Baptist in an ecclesiastical sense. Instead of any orderly Baptist church recognizing any one as a Baptist, who had let an unbaptized man who was a member of no church, baptize him, and then, he in turn, had baptized his baptizer, and, thus originated a church, it would unhesitatingly refuse him any church fellowship, and disown his acts. Yet this is the history of Roger Williams’ baptism and so called church." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376-377)
iii. Williams didn't remain a "Baptist" for long because he thought that the church had perished from the earth after the Roman Catholic apostasy.
a. "Roger Williams only briefly remained a Baptist. After only a few months, he became convinced that the ordinances, having been lost in the Apostasy [when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire], could not be validly restored without a special divine commission. He declared: "There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking."" (Rodger Williams, Wikipedia)
b. "Speaking of Williams organizing his society, Vedder says: “Soon after arriving at the conclusion that his baptism by one who had not himself been baptized in an orderly manner, was not valid baptism, he withdrew himself from the church, and for the rest of his life was unconnected with any religious body, calling himself a ‘seeker.’”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 379-380)
iv. After Williams withdrew himself from the church, it soon dissolved and came to nothing.
a. "Mr. Williams’ organization, soon after its origin, came to nothing.’ Cotton Mather, who was Williams’ contemporary, says: “He turned Seeker and Familist, and the church came to nothing.” Armitage concedes: “What became of Williams’ ‘society’ after he left is not very clear.” Cotton Mather says: “Whereupon his church dissolved themselves;” and Neal that “His church hereupon crumbled to pieces.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381)
b. "Adlam: “That the church which Williams began to collect fell to pieces soon after he left them is what we should expect, and is, as far as I can learn, the uniform declaration of the writers of that day.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381)
c. "As J.R. Graves wrote: “It cannot be shown that any Baptist church sprang from the Williams affair. Nor can it be proved that the baptism of any Baptist minister came from Williams’ hand.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 381)
B. There were Baptists in America before 1638 when Williams allegedly founded the church in Providence.
i. "Rev. C.E. Barrows says: “We are informed that there were Baptists among the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay,” This statement is made on the authority of Cotton Mather." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 376-377)
ii. "Cramp, after confirming the above, adds: “It is observable that Mr. Knollys’ arrival was in the spring of 1638. Roger Williams’ baptism did not take place till the winter of that year.” He was a Particular or Calvinistic Baptist.” Prof. A.C. Lewis, D.D., of the McCormick Theological Seminary, of Chicago, says: “There were Baptists in New England before Roger Williams. Of this Cotton Mather informs us distinctly. … Numbers of them came with the early colonists. … Hansard Knollys was one of their number.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 378)
iii. "Prof. Paine, Professor of Church History in Bangor Theological Seminary, says: “There were Baptists in America before Roger Williams.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 378)
C. John Clark, a Baptist pastor, started the first Baptist church in America in Newport, RI in 1638.
i. "At the same time John Clark, another Baptist minister, was on the ground. Prof. J.C. C. Clarke says: “That Clarke brought with him the doctrine of the English ‘Particular Baptist church,’ is probable from many indications. He was a preacher in Rhode Island in 1638, but was never a preacher except according to the early Baptist practice of eldership. No change of his views is known to have occurred. His doctrinal writings preserved were very clear, and are in accord with the Baptist confessions of faith. The church which he established on Rhode Island was early in correspondence with Mr. Spilsbury’s church in London. Governor Winthrop records that Mr. Clarke was a preacher on the Island in 1638. … In another reference he calls him their minister.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 379)
ii. "The inscription on John Clarke’s tombstone reads that: “He, with his associates, came to this Island from Massachusetts, in March, 1638, and on the 24th of the same month obtained a deed thereof from the Indians. He shortly after gathered the church aforesaid and became its pastor.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 391)
iii. "Of John Clarke’s church in Newport, Backus says; “Mr. Richard Dingley,” its second pastor “in 1694, left them and went to South Carolina.” Thus, through Dingley, South Carolina inherited baptisms from the John Clarke church. John Comer, another of Clarke’s successors to the Newport pastorate, removed and gathered the first Baptist Church in Rehoboth.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 397)
D. The origin of the Delaware Baptists was a Baptist church from Wales that emigrated to America.
i. "Morgan Edwards thus gives the origin of Delaware Baptists: “To come to the history of this modern church we must cross the Atlantic and land in Wales, where it had its beginning in the following manner: In the spring of the year 1701, several Baptists, in the communities of Pembroke and Caermarthen, resolved to go to America; and as one of the company, Thomas Griffith, was a minister, they were advised to be constituted into a church; they took the advice; the instrument of their confederation was in being in 1770, … the names of their confederates follow: Thomas Griffith, Griffith Nicholas, Evan Richmond, John Edwards, Elisha Thomas, Enoch Morgan, Richard David, James David, Elizabeth Griffith, Lewis Edmond, Mary John, Mary Thomas, Tennet David, Margaret Mathias and Tennet Morris. These fifteen people may be styled a church emigrant.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 392-393)
E. The first Baptist church in Pennsylvania was also of Welsh origin.
i. "The first Baptist church in Pennsylvania thus originated: “In 1684 Thomas Dungan removed from Rhode Island. … This Baptist preacher and pioneer was probably accompanied with associates of his own faith. Here he founded a church of his own order, which in the end was shortly absorbed by the next company I shall name.” The next company, absorbing the church first named, was “Welsh emigrants, who settled in Pennepeck, or Lower Dublin, 1686.” This church was made up of regular Baptist members. The first Baptist church in Philadelphia was organized in 1698, of English Baptists, some of whom were of Hansard Knollys’ church “in London.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 393-394)
F. Numerous Welsh Baptist pastors emigrated from Wales and started churches in America.
i. "Samuel Jones, a Baptist minister of Wales, came to America about 1686, settling in Pennsylvania. John Phillips, a Welsh Baptist minister came to America about 1692. Thomas Griffiths, a Baptist minister of Wales, emigrated to America “in the year 1701, and fifteen of the members of the church in the same vessel.” Morgan Edwards, a Baptist minister of more than usual learning “from Wales” “arrived here May 23rd, 1761, and shortly after became pastor of a Baptist church.” John Thomas, a Baptist minister, came from Wales to America in 1703. David Evans, a Welsh Baptist minister, arrived in America in 1739. Several of the members of the Rehobeth church in Wales “went to America, and formed themselves into a church at a place called Montgomery, Pennsylvania, early in the eighteenth century.” Benjamin Griffiths, a Baptist minister of Wales, became their pastor. Nathaniel Jenkens, also, was a member and pastor of this church. Thomas Davis, a Welsh Baptist minister, left Wales for Long Island, about 1713. Cape May church had its foundation “laid in 1675, when a company of emigrants, from England, arrived in Delaware.” Abel Morgan, a Baptist minister, came from Wales early in the eighteenth century. In 1737, thirty members of a Baptist church in Wales with “their minister, came to Pennsylvania and organized the Welsh Tract church.” “Richard Jones, a native of Wales, arrived in America, and became pastor of the church at Burley, Virginia, in 1727.” Caleb Evans, a Baptist minister of finished education, of Wales, “went to America and settled in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1768.”" (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 398-399)
15. The Regular Baptists (17th - 21st Centuries)
A. Both General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists came to America from England.
B. The General Baptists died off and the Particular Baptist expanded and became known as the Regular Baptists in the early 18th century.
C. "Two strains of Baptists emigrated from England to America — the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists. The near extinction of the General Baptists, coupled with the expansion of Particular Baptists, especially through the labors of the Philadelphia Baptist Association (org. 1707), probably gave rise to the Particulars becoming the Regular Baptists." (Regular Baptists, Wikipedia)
D. "Initially Baptists were characterized theologically by strong to moderate Calvinism. The dominant continuing tradition in both England and the United States was Particular Baptist, whose confessions of faith -- the London (1688) and the Philadelphia (1742) -- were slightly altered transcriptions of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1648), with a hyper-Calvinist triple covenant being substituted for the double covenant of the Westminster confession." (Baptists, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968 Ed., Vol. 3, p.142)
16. The Primitive and Missionary Baptists (19th - 21st Centuries)
A. In the 18th and 19th centuries Baptists in America were called Regular Baptists.
B. In the late 1820's, those who became known as the Primitive Baptists withdrew fellowship from those who became known as the Missionary Baptists.
i. The main reasons for the split was that the Primitive Baptists opposed foreign missionaries, missionary boards, and Bible colleges, all of which the Missionary Baptists supported.
ii. At the time of the split until at least the beginning of the 20th century, the PBs and MBs believed the same doctrine, including the doctrine of Sovereign Grace, as the PBs still do today.
iii. Written in 1894 - "As there is no difference in doctrine between what are called Missionary Baptists and what are called Anti-mission [Primitive] Baptists, I notice only that which really divides them — missions, education, support of pastors and other religious enterprises." (W.A. Jarrel, Baptist Church Perpetuity, page 431)
17. The Minneapolis Church (2006 - Present)
A. The Minneapolis Church was constituted on October 29th, 2006 by Pastor Ben Mott who was baptized and ordained an elder in a Primitive Baptist church.
B. The Minneapolis Church is therefore in the unbroken lineage of the true churches of Christ dating back to the church which Jesus Christ built, of which He said, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Mat 16:18). Amen.
For a master copy of the outline, click here: Baptist Church History
