A Question In Baptist History

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: allowed immersion to stand, it is likely that nobody in their communion would have employed it. But their sentiments were too decided even to allow it to stand. Twenty-five went against it, while only twenty-four were willing to concede that it was one of the modes by which baptism might be administered. (John Lightfoot's Works, London, 1824, Vol. 13, p. 300.) This was the most radical action against immersion which up to that time had ever been taken by one of the larger denominations of Christendom. Thus it will be seen that though England moved at some distance in the rear, she moved nevertheless. The immersion of infants was practically extinct in the Church of England by the year 1600. By the year 1644 the Presbyterians of England and Scotland had even traveled far enough to decide by a formal vote in the Assembly at Westminster that immersion was not a proper form in which to administer baptism, an extreme to which the Church of England has not yet advanced. The immersion of adults had become so far unknown that it could be stated without reservation in the Jessey Church Records for the year 1640 that "none had then so practiced in England to professed believers." BAPTISM AMONG THE ANABAPTISTS OP THE SIXTEENTH AND EARLY PORTION OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND. A NABAPTISTS first appeared in England in the 2 earlier portion of the sixteenth century. On the 25th of May, 1535, 19 men and 6 women, all of them from Holland, were arrested on the charge of being Anabaptists. (Stowe, Chronicle, p. 571.) The city of Muenster was at that moment under siege, and was captured a month later. In 1538 six others were taken, who were also from Holland. (Stowe, p. 576.) Fuller, in his Church History, intimates that they had come over in the hope of finding protection on accoun...

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