Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“Those who wrote against the Baptists after 1640, make no distinction on the
matter of immersion between the Baptists of that period and those who had
continued down from 1610, nor report any change among them, from
affusion, or perfusion, to dipping. On the contrary, they speak of them as one
stock, from Smyth downward. … Uniformly in contempt they call them
‘Dippers,’ Barbone says in his Discourse: They want a ‘Dipper’ that had
authority from heaven.’ Featley bitterly complains that they ‘Flock in
multitudes to their Jordans, and both sexes enter the river and are dipped after
their manner.’ … There is not a particle of evidence that Smyth affused
himself, and it is a cheap caricature to imagine that he disrobed himself,
walked into a stream, then lifted handfuls of water, pouring them liberally
upon his own shoulders and chest. We have the same reason for believing that
he immersed Helwys, as much as that he dipped himself.” f505
Mason writes: “Heluissies’ folk differed from the Independents generally on
the subject of infant baptism and dipping.” He thinks that Busher was a
member of that: “congregation” in 1614, the man who described a baptized
person as one “dipped for the dead in the water.” f506
Wilson’s History of Dissenting Churches, (pages 29-30) says of Smyth: “He
saw grounds to consider immersion as the true and only meaning of the word
baptism.” f506
Neal says that Smyth” plunged himself.” f507
That the English Baptists were closely related to the Dutch and German
Baptists is well known to the historian. The Dutch and German Anabaptists
being immersionists is assurance of the English Baptists practicing only
immersion. Of Smyth’s time Evans says: “There were Baptists in Holland,
those who administered the ordinance of immersion.” f508
Evans thus quotes from the editor of John Robinson’s works: “The Dutch
Baptists, by whom they were surrounded, uniformly administered baptism by
immersion,” and Evans adds: “There was a portion of the Dutch Baptists who
uniformly administered baptism by immersion.” f509 Hence, Rev. W.W. Everts,
Jr., says: “The English Baptists practiced immersion and the first of them came
from the continent.”
That any early English Baptist church ever changed from affusion to
immersion there is not even a shadow of proof. In the name of all reason I ask:
Who can believe that they could have made so great a change without leaving
one mark of it on history’s page?
That the genuine early English Baptists were exclusive immersionists is
beyond all’ reasonable doubt. (The italics of this chapter are mine.)