Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Helwys would not unite with Smyth in this movement, but excluded him from
their fellowship and warned the Dutch church not to receive him.” f812
Armitage enters upon an extended discussion of “whether Smyth dipped
himself,” “whether he was poured,” etc. f813 Refuting some slanders against
Smyth, Armitage says:
“There is not a particle of evidence that he 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 head, shoulders
and chest.” f814
“Some time before Smyth’s death he frankly retracted his error in baptizing
himself and them.” f815
In view of all this, well does Armitage, agreeing with Cramp, say: “Whether he
dipped himself is not clear.” f816 These accounts, are so far obscure and
contradictory that, to use them as conclusively proving that Baptist churches
originated in self baptism, comes nearer proving the cause of the one who uses
them hard pressed than it comes to proving a discreditable origin of Baptist
churches.
(4.) The proof is very strong that the charge of self baptism and of a new
baptism among Smyth’s followers is a slander. Crosby, than whom there is no
higher authority on this period of Baptist history, says:
“I do not find any Englishman among the first restorers of immersion in this
latter age accused of baptizing himself but only the said John Smyth; and
there is ground to question the truth of that also. Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Jessop,
and some others, do indeed charge him with it; but they write, as has already
been observed, with so much passion and resentment, that it is not unlikely
such men might take up a report against him on slender evidence, and after
one had published it, the others might take it from him without any inquiry
into the truth of it. The defenses which he wrote of himself are not to be met
with; and in the large quotations that his adversaries take out of them I do not
find one passage wherein he acknowledges himself to have done any such
thing, or attempts to justify any such practice; which, surely, had there been
such, would have hardly escaped his notice. …”
Says Mr. Smyth:
“A man cannot baptize others into a church, himself being out of the church,
or being no member. Here are two principles laid down by Mr. Smyth which
contradict the account they give of him. That upon the supposition of the true
baptism being lost for some time, through the disuse of it, ‘tis necessary there
should be two persons who must unite in the revival of it, in order to begin the
administration thereof; and that the first administrator be a member of some
church, who should call and empower him to administer it to the members