From Separatists to Baptists
In the early 1600s some English Puritans concluded that the Church of England, a state church, could not be reformed from within. They separated to form congregations bound by covenant. One such church, gathered at Gainsborough under John Smyth, fled persecution to Amsterdam around 1608.
There, studying the New Testament, Smyth became convinced that a true church is made up of believers who have been baptized on their own profession of faith, and that infants cannot make that profession. In 1609 he baptized himself and then Thomas Helwys and the rest of the congregation.
“Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.”
“But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.”
“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
These believers did not think they were founding a new religion. They were trying to follow the New Testament pattern: Gospel, faith, baptism, and a covenanted local church under Christ. Others had walked that path before them, and in Amsterdam Smyth's congregation met one such body, the Waterlander Mennonites.
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