Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

The laws prohibiting conventicles clearly imply that they were often churches.
Thus they read:
“That if any person, upwards of sixteen years, shall be present at any
assembly, conventicle or meeting under colour or pretence of any exercise of
religion, in any other manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the
Church of England … the offender shall pay five shillings for the first
offence.” f800
Perkins, the leading Puritan writer of the Elizabethan age, says: “The church of
the Papists, of the … Anabaptists … are no churches of God.” f801 Thus Perkins
says that the conventicles claimed that they were genuine churches. Says Dr.
Winkler:
“Owen says (Works, vol. 13, p. 184.) ‘The Donatists rebaptized those who
came to their societies because they professed themselves to believe that all
administration of ordinances not in their assemblies was null, and that they
were to be looked upon as no such thing. Our Anabaptists do the same
thing.’”
Owen having lived from 1616 to 1683, Dr. Winkler adds:
“Should any one object to the late date or the pertinency of Owen’s testimony,
we commend to his consideration the contemporaneous description of the
conventicles of Essex and Kent, which were prosecuted by the orders of the
council in the year 1550. ‘These congregations,’ says Underhill, ‘were
supported by the contributions of their members; (Struggles and Triumphs of
Religious Liberty, p. 113) mutual instruction was practiced and the fellowship
of the gospel regularly maintained.’”
(6.) The name “Anabaptist” inevitably implies Baptist church organization.
Baptist means one who baptizes. The name “Anabaptists” was given to
Baptists because all who joined them from other denominations were received
into their churches by “rebaptism.” The very name Anabaptist, therefore, so
clearly and inevitably implies church organization that only the reluctance to
admit the existence of Baptist churches, long before and up to Smyth’s day,
seems sufficient explanation for the resort to the evasion, that while there was
a continuity of Baptists long before and up to the time of John Smyth, they
were not churches! Baptist persecutors of those bloody times would have been
glad had they been Baptist only in name — that they were not churches. Thus,
in 1550, occurred the visitation in the diocese of Ridley, wherein the officers
were to ascertain
“whether any of the Anabaptist sect or others use notoriously any unlawful
and private conventicles wherein they do use doctrine or administration of
sacraments separating them-selves from the rest of the parish.” f802