Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Orchard’s suggestion, that Spilsbury was pastor during only the infancy of the
church, is unnecessary since Blacklock having been baptized by Blount and
then baptizing the others do not necessarily imply Spilsbury was not pastor at
that time. As now, owing to sickness or other causes, pastors have others
baptize for them, so Blacklock may have baptized for Spilsbury, after
baptizing him. But however this may be — of which the scantiness of the
records leaves doubt — it in no way effects the scriptural perpetuity of
baptism.
Finally, concluding the John Smyth affair, and the Spilsbury church, do not
forget that this is the account of only two churches and their successors, while
I have proved there were at that time many other Baptist churches in England.
As Armitage says of the Spilsbury church:
“The fact that a part of this congregation did not know that the immersion of
believers had been practiced in England cannot he accepted as decisive proofs
that the Baptists were strangers to that practice, still less that it had never
been known in England before 1641.” f831
Benedict says:
“The account of Mr. Spilsbury is said, in the margin, to have been written
from the records of that church; but from anything that appears there is
nothing to justify the conclusion of Mr. Crosby that this was the first Baptist
church, as the account relates simply to the origin of that particular church —
to state which, it is probable, was Mr. Kiflin’s design, rather than to relate the
origin of Baptist churches in general and which he must certainly have known
were in existence previous to that period.” f832
Benedict after saying:
“It must be admitted that some obscurity hangs over the history of the oldest
Baptist communities in this kingdom,” in a note, says: “From all the
fragments of history, I am inclined to believe that Baptist churches, under
various circumstances, have existed in England from the time of William the
Conqueror, four or five centuries prior to those of which any definite accounts
have come down to us. … Here churches in persecuting times are mere
household affairs which must of necessity be hid from public view. More than
three centuries had elapsed before the Baptists in England had any knowledge
that a church of their order existed in Chesterton in 1457. Mr. Robinson
brought the facts to light by examining the manuscript records of the old
bishop of Ely.” f833
Goadby, of the English Baptists of the seventeenth century says:
“All these are scions of that stock of Anabaptism transplanted out of Holland
in the year 1535, when two ships laden with Anabaptists fled into England.”
f834