kPXdjeQuweI

Okay, well, I realized last time that we were talking a lot about Puritans, and I'm just assuming that everybody knows what Puritans are. And of course, if you've been to previous lectures, you know what Puritans are. But we've got several new folks here now, so I thought maybe I should back up and just run through that very, very quickly.

I have an entire lecture at the college where I teach while doing Western Civ, and the lecture is entitled The Unusual Case of England in the Reformation. And basically, in a nutshell, whereas you have all these other groups throughout the Reformation have bloodshed warfare, what am I doing wrong?

Okay. Okay. Right here. Okay. Okay. Basically, now where the heck was I? England's most unusual case, and that is because. The Reformation in England, at least starting off, was relatively bloodless. Well, with the exception or two. Henry VIII, we all, I think, know a little bit about the history of how Henry is going to switch from being a Catholic to a Protestant, but not for religious reasons.

Now, that's a mouthful what I just said there. He was not satisfied with his wife, who, of course, was a former princess of Aragon, which is in Spain, and she was the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, who was the politically most powerful man in the world at the time.

Not only that, he was the richest man in the world. And, you know, how does Henry get rid of some of his wives? I think we all know this. Beheading them. But do you behead the aunt of the richest, most powerful man in Europe? No, you don't. And of course, being a very enthusiastic Roman Catholic, remember he wrote a book attacking Luther, and the Pope was so proud of the book he wrote, he bestowed upon him the title Defender of the Faith.

And even after he left the faith, he is so proud of the title that he kept it, and every reigning monarch of England has that title to this day, Defender of the Faith. But of course, Henry, he, of course, you know, Catholics annul, and the Pope said no, because it turns out Charles was already mad at the Pope.

In fact, he was sacking Rome at the time that the pick him off. You know, Henry, however, if you know anything about Henry, is he the sort of person you say no to? Maybe that's it. So anyway, Henry, of course, switches to being a Protestant. Now, in most countries, you switch from Catholic to Protestant, you have a war.

In England, you know, it's almost, it took a lot more time than this. You know, you go to a tower overlooking the people, huge crowd of people. My good English people, today we're good Roman Catholics. Next Sunday, we're all going to be good Protestants, and you're going to love it.

And pretty much that's what happened. All right? Well, Sir Thomas More was a little bit upset, but he chopped off his head. And you know what? After that, nobody else protested. Okay? Now, I'm being a little facetious here, but it really was remarkable what he pulled off there.

And, of course, next Sunday you go to that Protestant church, who's going to be the priest? Same priest as there last Sunday. In fact, what's the service going to be like? Same service you had last Sunday. You're still going to have the statues, you're still going to have the vestments.

Not really anything changed other than who's now head of the Church of England? Henry. And of course, he now is going to expropriate all the lands of the church, which actually was a good thing. Remember, the church, Jesus, he said, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to what?

Lay his head. But of course, the Roman Catholic Church throughout the medieval ages gained property after property after property. And pretty much by the time of Henry VIII, the church owned almost all the places to lay your head. Okay, so this land is going to be redistributed, and that, of course, is very popular as well.

Long and short of it is, you're going to have so-called Protestant Anglican Church, which is the same thing as the Church of England, means the same thing, but it was really an Anglo-Catholic church. Okay? And that's the way it is under Henry. Remember, this is the guy that's going to execute William Tyndall, who comes out with one of the better English translations of the Bible.

And for that crime, he's going to have him executed. Now, Tyndall, as he's being burned, shouts out. Lord, may you open the eyes of the king. And amazingly, just a few years later, Henry, now a Protestant, orders that the Bible be printed in English and distributed in every church in England and be read to the people.

And guess what version of the Bible it was? Well, they had this little commission get together to come up with this English Bible, but actually almost like 90% of it was Tyndall's Bible. Isn't that amazing? So, you have Henry, you know, brings in Protestantism sore through the back door, and then he dies.

And I can't get this to work. So, any idea? Hmm. Well, forward to slide. You can go ahead and go another slide. Or did I do that? All right, now, Henry dies, and of course, you know, he went through a bunch of wives, chopped off head Anne Boleyn.

And of course, Anne Boleyn was who he had future Queen Elizabeth with. Of course, he didn't know that she would ever succeed him, and he was very disappointed. Turns out she's the best monarch England ever had. And we ruled for 40 years, but he did manage to finally have a male heir.

And that's this young guy here, Edward, Edward VI. Now, I wish the two youth were in here for this one moment to say, young people, you can have an influence beyond your wildest dreams. I would say it is very possible that we can almost thank him that we can sit in here and be real Protestants today.

Because this teenager, from everything I've read about him, seems to have actually been a sincere Christian. And even though he's a teenager, he is the one that really makes the Anglican church, shall we say, more truly Protestant. See, Henry wouldn't even allow the Anglican priests to marry. They still had to be celibate.

He allows the Anglican priests now to marry just like other Protestants allowed. And more importantly, he's going to allow theologians from Europe, particularly from Geneva, so guess what theology they were? Calvinists, yes. And so he allows Calvinists to come and teach at Oxford and Cambridge, professors. And they are going to have a huge, profound effect upon hundreds and perhaps thousands of young college students throughout the time.

And it's from this that you start. Having the emergence of what we call Puritans. Now, I want you to know the word Puritan actually was kind of an epitaph. It was sort of like trying to make fun of somebody or even ridiculing them. Because it comes from the fact that the Puritans, being, you know, of a much more, shall we say, Protestant background in terms of their learning and theology, they want to continue the reforms of the Anglican Church, which still had quite a bit of Catholic elements, and make it more truly Protestant.

And so they would say, in wanting to do this, that they wish to purify the church. They wish to purify it. And so their enemies would say, those Puritans, you know, almost spit it out, Puritans. And but actually, they embraced the name, the Puritans. And of course, they are going to spread all over England because these young men, you see, in those days, you go to college, you're part of the clergy.

And most of these young men were headed towards becoming pastors. And quite a few of them become pastors of churches. And this shows, once again, TMAI has a great idea. If you can win the pastors and have them train in good doctrine, it's going to have a multiplying effect that's just Absolutely incredible.

And so you could say this was sort of like an early version of that, you know. And so these Puritan pastors are going to have a profound effect on England. And Puritans have a profound effect. They never are a majority of the population, but they have an influence that's totally way out of proportion to their numbers.

Because you see, the first thing a Puritan wants you to do is learn how to read the Bible for yourself. Now, that means you've got to read, which we take for granted today, but back in the 1600s, how many people could read? Very few. But if you become a Puritan, you can now read and write, and that means you're educated.

And that meant all sorts of other things that they didn't even intend. They become the middle class of England. They become the lawyers, the doctors, of course, many of them, the pastors, the preachers, and they take over the merchant marine. They're just incredibly successful economically as well. So the Puritans have this huge influence.

But unfortunately, their patron here, the young Edward, dies still very, very young. He got the fatal disease, TB, tuberculosis. And so he dies. This portrait is kind of interesting. Notice what Henry came back up. Oh, doggone it. I've got to get this thing to work. There we go.

Or did you back it up for me? Go back all the way to Henry. No, well, you didn't. No, that's what, that's it, Henry. James, you don't mind walking down here and get this thing working for me, and then we can go after that. Get back to Henry there.

I want to show something. What's he got in his hand there? If y'all look at the picture, they get the picture back there for you. He's got a glove in his hand. Some of his other portraits, he's got a dagger or he's got a sword in his hand.

Fast forward to young Edwards. What's he got in his hand there, folks? He's got a Bible in his hand. You blow it up, it says Bibla on the edge of it there. So, quite a difference there. Okay, but young Edward dies, and he, of course, is replaced by this lady, his half-sister from the first marriage, Mary Tudor.

And her mother was raised Roman Catholic. She was never supposed to ever come to the throne, and so Henry allowed her to be raised the way the mother wanted to raise her, which, of course, is Roman Catholic. And, of course, Mary thought that one of her greatest accomplishments would be to return everyone in England back to Catholicism.

And I think I told you last time she started. Off when the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Anglican Church, who is a Protestant, refuses to recant, she publicly burns him at the stake to start off her campaign of persuasion. I don't think you call this friendly persuasion, right?

In fact, this, she's probably more than any other person responsible for why Anglicans, which ironically, of all the Protestant sects out there, Anglicans are most close to Roman Catholicism, and yet they probably despise Roman Catholicism more than any other Protestant group because they have such a bad memory of her persecution of the Puritans and Protestants of any stripe.

And especially Baptists, by the way, there's already a few around at her time, and she executed quite a few of them. So I wish I had time to explain some of her other decisions that got her in so much hot water. But basically, she is going to die.

She had this, she thought she was pregnant. Unfortunately for her, she had a uterine tumor. And when she gave birth to that, it mentally unstabilized her. And she kind of went off her rocker and physically was in bad shape as well. And then she dies. You know, she doesn't look too happy, even in that portrait there.

And she's replaced by this spectacular lady. You know, this is Queen Elizabeth. And Queen Elizabeth had no children. Choice but to be a Protestant because, you know, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, she would always be viewed as illegitimate. They have a not nice word for that, which, you know, they would use back then, but she would be illegitimate.

So she really had no choice. She had to be a Protestant in order to claim legitimacy. And she turns out just to be absolutely spectacular. 40-year reign. I wish I could talk about it, but our purposes today is the Puritans flourish under her. Now, she wasn't really crazy about Puritans.

She was much more Anglican than she was Puritan, but she tolerated them. And that's all the Puritans needed to flourish. And she pretty much, you know, got along with them. And then when she dies, as we talked about last time, we get to this gentleman. And I had had someone read what he says there, which shows we're going to have trouble here.

You know, this is, he says this in an address to the English Parliament, you know. And he would say very nasty things about Parliament constantly. Now, the Puritans were so excited when James became king because he was Presbyterian. You know, it was from Scotland. And so that meant they thought, well, we're Calvinists, he's Calvinists.

The new millennium. The millennium has arrived, all right? Thousand years, you know, peace and all this. And so, a group of Puritans meet with him at Hampton Court right before he's actually coronated, you know, made king, and they present to him the millenary petition, millenary millennium, right? And they had all their hopes and dreams of what they thought he should do to reform the Anglican church to make it into a truly purified Puritan church.

And oh boy, it doesn't go the way that they thought it would go. Because while he doctrinally was Calvinist in terms of, what's that fancy word, polity, church government, he loved the Episcopal structure, which is the same structure as the Catholic Church, where everything's from the top down, and that means who runs everything?

He does. He's a control freak. And so he basically cussed out the Puritans. And we know that I love English, you know, their humor, understated. You have the Secretary to, I believe it's the Archbishop of London there. And obviously the Archbishops are there because guess what the Puritans want to do with bishops and archbishops?

That's top on their list. Get rid of them. We don't want archbishops and bishops. And so I'm sure they're there to make sure the Puritans don't get their way. And the Secretary is writing home. He's Secretary of this Archbishop writing home to his wife. And he says, Honey, the archbishop was so impressed with the new king.

He said he was inspired by the Holy Spirit when he upbraided those horrible Puritans. He says, Well, wife, all I can say is if it was by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit was mighty foul-mouthed. You get their humor there. In other words, obviously, it wasn't inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The king, you know, just cussed them out. Very brutal language. But they did get one thing that has benefited you and I. What comes out of that meeting? King James Bible. He agreed with the Puritans, one of the few things he agreed with them, that the present English translations, you know, there are a lot of errors.

None of them were authorized versions, which meant bootleg printing presses were chunking them out, and you had all kinds of mistakes. One of the most notorious ones was what they call the adultery Bible, because when it got to the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, they forgot and left out the not and it said, Thou shalt.

Okay, so you know, obviously they need to clean this up. And so he authorized the King James Bible, but unfortunately, unfortunately, he never even paid the men that did the translation. And this was the height of the English Renaissance. Some of the best English scholars in history. This is, you know, right at the end of Shakespeare.

Just incredible, incredible, beautiful English. And I would say it was one of the most beautifully translated works of English to this day, the King James Bible, the beauty of that language. And so, anyway, so the Puritans, they're going to be tolerated by James, but he's not really happy with them.

And therefore, a lot of the Puritans are now really disappointed. They have been disappointed repeatedly, actually, and they now come to the conclusion, a small minority of them, that if we're going to wait on the government to purify the church, it just isn't going to happen. So they decide what we need to do is separate from the Anglican church.

Now, you've got to understand, you reject the church back in those days, you're not just rejecting the church. Who else are you rejecting? You're rejecting the king. And so, and you already saw what he thought about himself. You know, he's God's God on earth, literally, and therefore, you're going to be committing blasphemy, which is punishable by capital punishment, and you're going to be committing treason, which is punishable by capital punishment.

It is a very serious thing, you see. It is a state church. Church and state are wedded together. And we, as Americans, just have a real tough time comprehending that. It was a really, really dangerous thing. And so you're going to have the beginnings of the separatism. And one of the first separatists is a guy named Brown.

I'm not going to go into that in too much detail, but you had groups out there calling themselves Brownists because you want to separate from the church, although ironically, he comes back for it's all over with. But then you have a host of other characters, and two that's really important for Baptists are these two: John Smith.

No, not the one that came to Jamestown. No Pocahontas involved with this one. Okay. And Thomas Helways. And there's controversy about how you pronounce that, but that's the best pronunciation I've found so far. Thomas Helways. Now, these guys, they, well, they both were, well, Helways was not, but it's John Smith.

And you're going to see a lot of these leaders. In fact, a lot of the pastors who later become Baptists were all educated at Cambridge. That was a hotbed of Puritanism. And later on, quite a few of those go into separatism. And that means separating from the official state church.

Well, you have. Smith, let's stick with him first. He goes to Cambridge. He was influenced by a professor there named Johnson, Francis Johnson, who later will also separate and form a separate church. But he at first gets a position with the Anglican church, but he then began criticizing the church, although he's doing it from within.

This makes the Anglican hierarchy not very happy with him, and they basically fire him. And long story short, he separates, they start a separatist church. The church, because of its size, had to split. One group meets at, how do you like that name, Scooby, England, Scooby Manor, and his church was meeting at Gainsborough, which was his hometown.

They went back to. Well, both these churches are immediately in deep water because they're breaking the law. And, you know, James had announced that he's going to harry separatists out of the land or put them all in prison. And so basically, these two groups are going to leave and go to the Netherlands.

Now, the Netherlands was a lot more friendly because it's reformed. And the Netherlands were just more open politically as well. So both groups are going to go to the Netherlands. Francis Johnson had already started a church there, which for some reason they call the ancient church. It wasn't ancient, it's actually quite new, but that's what they called it.

And briefly, both these groups apparently attended there, but then they split up separately. And the group led by John Robinson is going to move up to Leiden, also in the Netherlands, and they form a church there. And you've got some names here. Some of you may remember from your American history classes.

You got William Brewster and William Bradford. Bradford at the time was a teenager, and they're at Leiden. Now, they're separatists, and part of the reason they went to Leiden was apparently they did not get along with the Smith group. And that's because Smith, about this time, starts moving towards becoming what we now call Baptists.

And that's because he came to the view that baptizing infants was not scriptural. However, most of the Puritans still were baptizing infants, and they weren't willing to go that step further. They would separate, which is what Baptists initially do. They separate from the state church. So they're kind of heading the Baptist direction.

But then this thing about, you know, doing Way with infant baptism, that was just culturally speaking, they couldn't conceive of that, even though it was totally not scriptural. We've already been through that. So, anyway, you have a split occurring there. Apparently, Smith didn't get along with the Francis Johnson group for the same reason, so they form a separate church.

And he is now joined, Smith that is, by Thomas Helways. And apparently, Helways was fairly, well, he is wealthier. I don't know how wealthy he was, but I think he was funding a lot of this. And they, of course, they're in Amsterdam, and they're meeting in a bakery where they'd hold their worship services.

And Smith and Helways baptize themselves, starting off. But then Smith meets up with these Mennonites. They call them the Waterlander Mennonites. There's apparently all kinds of groups of Mennonites. And he became convinced that baptizing himself was something he should not have done. And I really don't want to get into too much detail about this, but the problem is what they call successionism.

I'm not talking about the historical school thought. I'm talking about this idea. It sort of goes back to the apostolic succession idea that the apostles appoint the first pastors of these different churches, and then by laying on the hands, and then that pastor would. Lay on hands of the next pastor on and on and oh, and they call it apostolic succession.

Well, even though the Baptists are supposed to be going strictly by the Bible, and apostolic succession is nowhere in the Bible, they were still hung up with this. And so, since he believed that the Mennites had this succession, he decides my first baptism is no good. I need to have the Mennonites baptize me.

And then he got talking more with the Mennonites, who are Anabaptists, by the way. You know, we've already talked about the differences of Anabaptists. And he decides, well, I think we should all join these Anabaptists and become Mennonites. Okay? And remember, the Mennites also have believers' baptism. At least at this point, they do.

And so, and by the way, when I say baptism, they're still doing effusion. You know what that means? It's not immersion. Immersion means you go all the way under the water, come back up. They're still sprinkling. They're baptizing, but adults, only adults, not infants. And that's what these Mennonites were doing.

Well, anyway, Smith basically takes the majority of this group of English Baptists, and they have now become Baptists because they've all agreed to adult baptism, and they go off and join the Mennonites. However, that's not totally. Correct because the Mennonites, having been warned that Smith was somewhat divisive, at least he'd been accused of that, they hold off and keep questioning him.

In fact, by the time they get ready to baptize him, he dies. He's never baptized. The others, I think it took them, I forget how many years, but years later, the remnants of his congregation are allowed to be baptized and become, they're, you know, subsumed by the Mennonites.

But a smaller group led by Thomas Helways decide we don't want to be Mennonites, we want to remain Baptists. And so he and about 10 adult males, and we don't know how many females and children, they returned to England, which was a very risky thing to do, and they formed the First Baptist Church in England.

Okay, now the First Baptist Church, English Baptist Church, had already been formed in Holland, but now they come to England and thus become the First Baptist Church. And they're the first general Baptist, although they're not called that yet, but they will be. And, you know, we'll see more of that as we go forth.

And so, and by the way, with Helways, his view was, you know, the baptism was valid, and we don't need the Mennonites in order to have a valid baptism. So, where's my mics? Guys, go run around and hand the mics out to a gentleman who wants to read.

Raise your hand if you'd like to read a verse for me. Brave one right here. And hand another mic to, we have ladies, too. Anyone want to volunteer to read? Okay, over here. All right. So, these, you know, we're talking about baptism. I thought we just, I mean, there's other verses I could put up here, but I thought these were pretty good.

So I'm going to read this one: Matthew 3, 13 through 3, 17. First one, got the mics. Read. 1, 2, 1, 2. Matthew. Matthew 3:13, 3, 3, 17. Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to enjoy John to be baptized of him. Is that how far you want me to go, Pat?

No, the whole thing. The whole thing, all right. But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus, answering, said unto him, Suffer it, be so now. Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.

Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straight away out of the water, and lo, the heavens were opened unto him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Right, we're using King James here, and kind of on purpose because I wanted you to get a feel for the language that they would be using back then. And what do you notice about this, though, folks? Does this look like sprinkling to you? You see? Now, you know, Tom was in Jerusalem how many years ago, Tom?

A couple years ago. And he brought back pictures. And he was showing us, how do you pronounce it? Mikvah? Yeah, the mikvahs. You know what mikvahs are? Tom, tell them what mikvahs are. Just like our baptism. Yeah. See, baptism amongst Jews was nothing unusual. They had baptistries all over the place, and they called them mikvahs.

You go to the scenes, you know, out there in the desert, they had big old baptistry there as well. It's actually an ancient Jewish practice, baptism. By the way, they immersed. You know, they're big pools. They're not little bowls, you know, where you sprinkle water over people. And, of course, you know, where did John the Baptist baptize?

In the Jordan River. Now, I wonder why in the world would you go out in the middle of the river and then sprinkle somebody? See, it doesn't even make sense. All right, so much for that one. Yes, ma'am. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father.

Of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Now, what's the problem with this one, the infant baptism? How are you going to teach a little baby?

See the point? And of course, they're noticing all this. Go ahead again. Acts 2:37-38. Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in the heart and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Okay. Now, let's see. Go for it. Go ahead and read more. All right. Acts 16:30-33, and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.

And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes. And he was baptized, he and all his, straight away. Okay, now, for those that do argue infant baptism, I included this one to show you the little crack in the door that they use to argue for infant baptism.

I believe this would be the one, the other one would be Cornelius. What's the little crack in the door? You and all your household. And so, what they say, well, there must have been children, and some of those children must have been babies. So, see, there, that's why it's okay to baptize infants.

Well, that is what you call speculation, folks. You don't build a major doctrine on speculation, but you know, usually when they go to justification, that's about the only closest they can get to it. You know, and I don't, you know, just from my own personal observation of it.

Now, getting back to Thomas Halways, as I've already mentioned, he came from a fairly wealthy family. And to show you the persecution, when he came over, he initially left his wife and kids back in England thinking, you know, they'll be okay. They just want me. But no, they grabbed her too and put her in prison.

And sometimes they do stuff like this to put pressure on the man who, you know, of course, they know is leading the separation. But he comes back, and, of course, he disagreed with Smith over this issue of becoming a Mennonite. And pastor of the remaining. Group, and they returned to Spitofils, which was just outside London.

Actually, I guess we'd say a suburb today. This first Baptist church on English soil. And then he wrote a book, The Mystery of Iniquity, 1612, which is basically a plea for religious freedom. The Baptists, these early Baptists, at the very beginning, were at the forefront of what we would later come to call separation church and the state.

Now, of course, their view of that is quite different from how it's been turned on in recent Supreme Court rulings, but basically, they did not believe that the state should be interfering in anybody's religious conscience. That the state could move in civil affairs, but matters of conscience, your personal belief, that you should have freedom of conscience, basically.

And they argue this from this doctrinal view, their view of a priesthood of the believer, which I wish I had time to get more into. Maybe if we do this next year, I'll talk about that, how important that is in American history. But they have this book, and he has a little key phrase in there.

Now, he's going to send this book to King James. Now, this is incredible. He's already been kicked out of the country. He comes back without permission. And so you think he'd want to lay low. He writes this book, actually, wrote while he was in Holland, has it printed in England, and he decides he's going to send a copy of it to King James.

All right. Now, I don't know about you, but you're out in the woods and you come upon a cave and there's a grizzly bear sleeping in that cave. Don't get a stick and poke him. But that's what he does. He pokes the grizzly. I'm going to ask Miss Edith, somebody get her a microphone because she's the English teacher and she can read this King James English really good.

And read this way, King James, a key section in what he's trying to tell King James here. Just go ahead. For me, religion to God is betwixt God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judged between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever.

It appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. Okay. So he's basically saying, King James, you know, anything involving government, you know, taxes, drafting into the army, military, any of those sorts of things, you have full rights to do that. But to tell me how I'm supposed to worship God, you have no right to do that.

Okay, basically, is what he's arguing there. And, well, you see what happened. He printed it, signed a copy, sent it to King James. By the way, it's in museum. Apparently, King James kept it. You could go look at it. And has him thrown in jail two weeks later.

I guess it took him a while to get around to reading it. And then he dies in prison. Okay? That's Thomas Helwitz. Now, Helwitz did something else. He came up with the first Baptist confession that all these General Baptists were agreeing to. And this is in 1611. He wrote this document.

And this is one of the first Baptist confessions here. And it's also sometimes called the 27 Articles. And this is where we're at with the General Baptists starting off. Notice Believer's Baptism, Closed Communion. We'll get to that in a moment, hopefully. And then Free Will. Remember, they're not Calvinists.

They had abandoned Calvinism while they were in Holland. Free will aided by God's grace. So, you know, we've got a little bit of works in there. General atonement, that's where they get their name, you know, from falling, they believe falling from grace. You know, you hear free will Baptists.

Basically, General Baptists are very similar to free will today. But everything else is going to also be what the particular Baptists believe. Confession of faith, and then public baptism, public confession, baptism. Baptism, believers' baptism, by the way, and they're not into this covenantal theology, you know, that a baby's saved because the parents are Christian, and you baptize them, and that's going to save them.

They would reject that. Church is autonomous, all right? They would have associations, but each individual church is local and autonomous, and it's congregational. In other words, the congregation meets and elects their leaders and all that, self-rule. The church members can do ordinances, but we're not going to call them sacraments, right?

And generally speaking, the ordinances were baptism and Lord's Supper. Now, a few of them would sometimes have in foot washing, but that's pretty much the same ordinances that we as Baptists have today. And, of course, they're not too big on big mega-churches, you know, also. And, of course, you're supposed to make a public declaration of faith.

Notice we do that for our baptisms. And congregational rule authority extends only to that congregation, and they had elders and deacons. And, you know, and another thing, too, participation in government is fine and good. That's always the point at which they would separate from the Anabaptists. Remember, the Anabaptists want to just totally separate from the world, and you're not allowed to even participate in government.

You're not supposed to vote if you can vote. You're not supposed to serve government office, and you never ever swear an oath. And the Baptist says, You know, that's silly. You know, we need to be part of things. And so, anyway, so that's pretty much that. A few other leaders, then we'll get to the particular Baptists if we have time.

And John Merton, it's spelled various ways, by the way, became pastor after Helwes, and he was also arrested, put in prison at a time, may have even been in prison the same time that Helwis was, but he apparently gets out. He wrote Supplication 1620, had to write it on paper with milk, and then they heat it, you know, sort of like, you know, it looked like his way to get it out past the authorities, you know.

He wrote that Christians should submit to the king in civil matters, but not in spiritual matters. He wrote, Persecution for Religion, Judged and Condemned. Actually, it's a debate whether he or Helwich wrote that. But we know he also argued for priesthood believers again. And he also wrote Description of what God hath predestined concerning men.

Now, apparently, Merton kind of got in control of his congregation because he apparently retained more of his Calvinism, you know, although most of the general Baptists did not. Now, another leader who was a layman at the church wrote Religion's Peace, which called for freedom of conscience again. And in it, he compared forced religion.

Religion, kind of a graphic illustration here, of being spiritual rape, you know, that you shouldn't force people to go against their conscience. Okay, so that's going to come up again and again. Now, after this, Grantham becomes pastor. He is converted at age 15, baptized at 19, became pastor at 22.

Guess why they're getting younger and younger? All the older guys are getting arrested and thrown in prison. So he endured persecution as well, organized several churches, wrote Christianus, Printivus, covers Baptist theology, worship. Unfortunately, I'm not too happy with this. He considered hymn singing to be a human invention, therefore strictly restricted singing in church.

By 1624, there are five congregations. By 1647, there were at least 47 congregations. And in fact, at one point, they got up to over 100. But then, about the 1690s, they start going into decline, although they still were gradually growing. And part of the reason was heresy. I wish I could get in detail about Saucinianism.

But basically, they had a very some of them were attracted, same problem some of the Mennonites were into, this sort of weakened view of Christology, view of Christ. Some would even go to the extreme of saying that Christ was a mortal man. Also, Unitarianism and Universalism was a big problem.

Now, you stop and think about it, if your theology starts off with the premise that a general atonement, that Christ died for all, then some take that to the natural extreme of then everybody ultimately is going to be saved. And then that you get to this idea of universalism, of course, then why worry about sin, right?

Okay, and it just goes from bad to worse. And so that was a problem. Now, of course, with the particular Baptist, the problem there was hyper-Calvinism, you know, the opposite direction. And so, anyway, that's going to cause them big, big problems. Now, some different practices of the General Baptists.

Ministers were supposed to be ministers for life. They considered a pastor becoming a pastor like the pastor marrying the church. And we, you know, this church is unusual in Baptist churches because our first pastor was here for when I first, when I, first pastor I knew when I came here was here for 40 years.

Tom's doing a pretty good job. Where are you up to, Tom? Moved here 15 years ago. 15 years. Yeah, so maybe we're going back to that. You know, John McAuthor's done a pretty good job of that too, I might add. That's a pretty good example. Okay. So, and the thing that some of you probably wouldn't be too happy.

About, those of you guys looking around for a young lady, you had to marry only within the church. If you married outside the church, it's automatic excommunication. Of course, now, if it's another Baptist church, it was all right, but you know, so, and this goes to the being unequally yoked because these early Baptists, particularly Hellis, if you're not, you know, a member of the Baptist church, you're apostate.

You know, you're not really in a Christian church at all. And no congregational singing, except one person was allowed to sing at a time. All right. So, that's the general Baptist. Now, we get to the particular Baptists. And here, the particular Baptists come out of a congregationalist separatist church.

I know that's a mouthful. A group of Puritans decide to separate, and out of that, these guys go further and further, which was a natural progression. And one of the things they noticed that all these other people start noticing, you know, you're reading the Bible, and if you read the Bible, you're going to notice, hey, where is this infant baptism coming from?

And so, the same thing happens with these guys. They start with a pastor, Henry Jacob. Henry Jacob actually knew John Robinson, you know, Brewster and Bradford, all those. Guys. By the way, anybody knows what happened to that group? Robinson, Brewster, Robinson never made it over, but yeah, they are why we get to eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

Yeah, that little church is the group that came to America, Pilgrim's Rock. Yeah. Okay. You don't think you're affected by it? You think about it next time you eat that turkey. All right. So now they didn't become Baptists. They remained Puritans, you know, but they were Separatist Puritans.

That was one group. Well, this guy was big buzz with Robinson. He even spent something like five, six years with those guys. You know, they're all Puritans starting off. And, of course, I'm sure that he knew about the General Baptists through Robinson. You know, in fact, remember, Robinson went there to get away from Smith and those guys, right?

So he knew about all that. And by the way, this thing about influence of Mennonites and Anabaptists, definitely with the General Baptists, you have a lot of influence. Even after Hellways came back, later members of the church would even try to steal open relations with the Mennonites so they could have ordained pastors through the Mennonites.

So there's a lot of Anabaptist influence with the General Baptist, with a particular, not very much at all. So Henry Jacob, he's over there, comes back to, and by the way, starting off, he was one of the guys. At the millenary petition with James I. This guy got around.

I believe he also got in trouble once with Queen Elizabeth. He was actually live when she was alive as well. But Henry Jacob, he was there at the millennium petition. He's there with the Robinson group in Leyden. He comes back and he decides to found a separatist church in London.

And, of course, at the time they call it the Jacob Church because he was the pastor there. But he's going to be horribly harassed, even though he's what you call a moderate in his separatism. You see, a lot of these separatists, after they separate, they say the Anglican church is hopeless, it's apostate, don't even have anything to do with those guys.

He would say, well, if they're Christians, I won't have fellowship with them. You know, I don't agree that they, you know, I think they should come on out of the Anglican Church, but I know there's some Puritan groups that they really know Jesus as personal saviors, and I want to have a relationship with them.

And so he is moderate in that respect. But, you know, that still didn't get him out of trouble with the government. And so he's going to be so harassed that eventually he's going to have to leave. And, of course, we're now up to Charles I. You know, James has died.

Charles I is going to be a big, big problem for the future Baptists and even for the Separatists because he's going to appoint an archbishop. That guy, Archbishop of the Anglican Church, who actually runs the church day to day, and he was an Armenian in theology, and he despised Calvinists.

He especially despised independents and separatists. And he's going to start purging Puritans from all church positions in England, which was a disaster, by the way. You know, and it's one of the things that's going to lead to the English Civil War. But this guy right here, well, he was not yet Archbishop at the time we're talking about, but he had just been made Archbishop of London.

Let's just say, okay? And he's going to really go after this church, which is going to eventually become the JLJ Church. The JLJ Church. Now, the funny thing about it is, it remains congregationalist for most of its history, but almost every group that separates out of it, and by the way, all the separations are friendly.

That's what's kind of funny. They're almost like church plants in some ways. All these groups that come out of it, they wind up being Baptists. Just kind of interesting. And Jacob, he has to flee to America. Once he gets there, he dies shortly there. Thereafter, he's replaced by John Lathrop.

Okay? And there's been through all that. Okay, John Lathrop. Okay, Lathrop, pastor of JL JO Church, he too is going to be horribly persecuted. In fact, he's thrown in Newgate Prison, which is the same prison that John Hallways dies in. It's a horrible, notorious prison, just terrible conditions.

He manages to survive for the time that he's there, but while he's there, his wife dies, and his kids are left abandoned. He had eight kids. They literally resort to begging on the streets. They finally come to him and say, okay, we'll let you go if you agree to leave.

And I don't mean just leave town, leave country, go to America. And so he eventually comes to America. I think he brought six of his kids. The other two were old enough to make it on their own by then. And about 30 members of the JL Church came with him.

JL Jail Church came with him because things were so bad back in London. And they're going to form a little colony in America at Barnstable, Massachusetts. Barnstable, Massachusetts. And he will marry again. His first wife, of course, had died, marries again, has, I think, like five kids by her.

She died. He marries again. Ultimately, he has 22 children. Now, the funny thing about this is, if you've got 22 children, and we're talking early colonial period here, you're going to have a lot of descendants in America. And last count was he had 80,000 descendants. Now, you know, it's kind of, you see, you have that many descendants, you're going to have some good guys, and you're going to have some not-so-good guys coming out of your family line.

You know, Jonathan Edwards, one of his grandsons was Aaron Burr. If you know anything about American history, I'm sure Jonathan Edwards was spinning in his grave over that one. But this guy, one of his descendants is going to, oh, gosh, the name just flew out of my head.

R.A. Torrey. Thomas, tell us who R.A. Torrey is. The guy, one of the main writers for the fundamentals, helped save evangelical Christianity at a time that modernism was taking over. Just fantastic guy, R.A. Torre. But the other one was Joseph Smith. Yeah. And of course, you know anything about the Mormons, they got this incredible genealogy library because, you know, if you have an ancestor who died and wasn't Mormon, they're going to get him baptized.

You know, they have this substitutionary baptism for the dead. Talk about. Baptism, and you know, so hope they might have a hope in the next life, right? Well, so they, of course, went through all this genealogy, and that's why we know about the 80,000 descendants. But the funny thing is, of all these churches, yes, sir.

Oh, you would ask me that. Both the bushes, both the bushes, Teddy Roosevelt, and I can't remember after that. Yeah, but there's some pretty good ones. Teddy's always a favorite of mine. All right, needless to say. But yeah, pretty amazing. And this, the church, of course, this was built after he died, but it's just remarkable to me to think going that far back, you actually have a physical building going back to the only physical building left of the JLJ church, which started in England, but the only physical building still existing is in America, the JLJ church, you know.

All right. Now, of course, you're going to have the Civil War. Charles I is going to get his head chopped off. And one of the interesting things about the particular Baptist and the war is that he is going to draft, actually had volunteers, a whole bunch of Baptists.

They're not Anabaptists. If it's a just cause, they're willing to fight. And so quite a few particular Baptists joined Oliver Cromwell's army. In fact, I was kind of shocked. I didn't realize how many were involved. And also, apparently, the particular Baptists used the army as a means of recruitment.

A whole bunch of people became Baptists while they were in Oliver Cromwell's army. The problem is, they want Oliver Cromwell to establish a true republic. And when he instead establishes a protectorate, which really was a dictatorship, they kind of, you know, turn on him. And his response to that was to pretty much purge all Baptists from the Cromwellian army.

And not quite full persecution under Cromwell, but they're definitely out of favor again. And I have to leave it there. Okay. But Jeff told me, go ahead and take a third time. So we'll try to finish them up. And I hope to give you some of the personalities.

Some of these early Baptist preachers were characters in a good way. And just amazing how brave they were, and how they didn't care if it was a king or whatever, they would stand for what was right. Wish we had more people like that.