Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

(7.) Laying all this aside, I have already proved that the Hill Cliffe and other
churches have a history far back of the time of John Smyth; and that two years
before Smyth organized his church he spent nearly all night “in debate with
elders” of the Crowle church, which existed in 1599, how long previous, no
one knows.
Thus, I have inconfutably demonstrated that there were Baptist churches, and
many of them, in England long before and up to Smyth’s time. Hence, Dr.
Howard Osgood, one of the most eminent authorities on Baptist history, says:
“If we would make the first Baptist church to appear under Helwise, in 1614,
then we must deny the historical evidence of the conventicles of Baptists in the
previous century. If we make the church founded in London in 1633 the first
Calvinistic Baptist church in England, we assume that all the Baptists and
Baptist churches of the sixteenth century were Arminian in their views, which
has never been shown, and is contrary to all probability. Baptists were found
in the north and west but principally in the east of England. Under the
dreadful persecution of the Tudors, the churches knew little of each other,
unless they were situated near together. f803 We hear more of the Calvinistic
church formed in 1633, because it was situated in London and performed an
important work in the following years. Joan Bucher, who was a member of the
Baptist church in Eyethorne, Kent, burned by order of Henry VI, held this
doctrine.” f804
If any one set up the claim that persecution had rid England of Baptists before
Smyth’s time, let him turn back and read the previous part of this chapter, in
which he will see that instead of this being true, it was, as with the churches of
the first three centuries, that “Semen est sanguis Christianorem” — the blood
of martyrs is the seed of the church — they lived in spite of persecutions. As
Dr. Osgood remarks: “No persecution was severe enough to extirpate the
Baptists from England, though it caused them to keep their meetings and their
views very quiet. f805 Banishment, whipping, or death at the stake awaited any
public exhibition of their ‘conventicles.’ f805 Before hand was laid to the
reformation of the established churches in England, Baptists were numerous in
the kingdom, and the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth are
blotted with the blood of martyred Baptists.” f806
Universal Knowledge — Chamber’s Encyclopedia — says of the Baptists:
“This denomination of Christians refuse to acknowledge any great name as
the founder of their sect. They trace their origin to the primitive church itself,
and refer to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, as, in their opinion,
affording incontestable evidence that their leading tenents had the sanction of
inspiration. When Christianity became corrupted by the rise of anti-Christ,
they point to the maintainance of their Scripture practice among the Cathari
and the Albigenses and other sects of the middle ages, who, in the midst of