Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

fourth proclamation “appointing Cranmer and eight others to make diligent
search for Anabaptist men, books and letters.” f792
Under this, Goadby says: “Like the Israelites in Egypt, ‘the more they were
afflicted the more they multiplied and grew.’” f793 Under the reign of Edward
VI, 1537-1548, Goadby says that in spite of their persecutions “their numbers
increased.” Strype tells us that “their opinions were believed by honest
meaning people;” and another writer affirms that the articles of religion issued
just before the king’s death
“were principally designed to vindicate the English Reformation from the slur
and disgrace which the Anabaptists’ tenets had brought upon it, a clear proof
that the Baptists were at that period neither few nor unimportant.” f794
Remember this was before John Smyth’s baptism.
Of the English Baptists, of the seventeeth century, Goadby says:
“All these are scions of this stock of Anabaptism that was transplanted out of
Holland in the year 1535, when two ships laden with Anabaptists fled into
England, after they had missed the Enterprise at Amsterdam.” f795
To add many other testimonies to the existence of Baptist churches in England
long before and at the time of John Smyth’s baptism is an easy task. There is,
to this, a most superabundantly overwhelming mass of proof. But I rather owe
an explanation for having already produced such an avalanche of proof. That
explanation is: Owing to John Smyth being so persistently thrown up to the
Baptists as the founder of English Baptist churches, I have given this vast
amount of refuting proof to silence forever every honest man who has been
throwing John Smyth’s baptism up against Baptists. In other words: This mass
of testimony is given because so many think the English Baptists, of the early
part of the seventeenth century, were the first Baptist churches in England
since very early times.
There remain two objections or evasions. The first is: Is there proof that the
Baptists who antedated Smyth were organized into churches and that these
churches were in existence in England when he was baptized?
Notwithstanding that the foregoing shows this can be answered only in the
affirmative, to not leave any possible room for doubt, I add the following:
(1.) Just as the principles of a political party, of any secret society necessarily
bring into organization their adherents, so Baptist principles organized their
adherents into Baptist churches.
(2.) Just as the principles of anything are dependent on organization for their
perpetuity operation and dissemination, so the perpetuity and the dissemination