Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXVIII ENGLAND (1602-1609) JUST before or shortly after the beginning of the reign of James I. (1602), a Separatist church was formed at Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, under the leadership of John Smyth. As this church was a few years later to adopt believers' baptism and to become the mother of English General Baptist churches, it claims a place in this narrative. Of Smyth's childhood nothing is known. As he matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, in 1571, we may infer that he was born somewhere between 1550 and 1555. On the completion of his course for Bachelor of Arts in 1575-6, he was chosen Fellow in his college and proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts in 1579. He seems to have been strongly inclined to Puritanism as early as 1585, for in this year he preached a lenten sermon on Sabbath-keeping that caused him some trouble. Somewhere about 1590 he was preacher in the city of Lincoln and was afterward beneficed at Gainsborough. After a long period of anxiety and questioning as regards the propriety of separating from the corrupt establishment and a conference on the subject with a number of his brother ministers, he withdrew from the Established Church about 1602 and organized a congregation of believers at Gainsborough. Smyth and his followers covenanted together "to walk in all his ways, made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them." This church was in every way a most remarkable one. GAINSBOROUGH AND SCROOBY 377 It embraced Helwys and Murton, along with Smyth destined to be the fathers of the General Baptist movement. John Robinson, the Father of the Pilgrims, who was to become pastor of a Separate church at...