Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

any others than Wickenden, Brown, etc., were the founders of that church.”
f868
Facts as to Roger Williams and his so-called church. First. Williams, while a
Baptist in some points, was not a Baptist in so many others, that he never was
a Baptist in an ecclesiastical sense. Instead of any orderly Baptist church
recognizing any one as a Baptist, who had let an unbaptized man who was a
member of no church, baptize him, and then, he in turn, had baptized his
baptizer, and, thus originated a church, it would unhesitatingly refuse him any
church fellowship, and disown his acts. Yet this is the history of Roger
Williams’ baptism and socalled church. If possible, Williams’ course is still
more inexcusable in view of the fact that Baptist administrators could more
easily have been procured from England than the charter he assisted John
Clarke to get from there. Why did he not, if he was a Baptist, do like
Spilsbury’s church of London, or Oncken, of Germany — send off and get the
true baptism? Yea, worse and worse, why did he not get John Clarke or
Hansard Knollys to baptize him, as they were on the ground? Cramp says:
“Hansard Knollys was then preaching at Dover … and was one of the ‘godly
Anabaptists’ mentioned by Cotton Mather.” f869
Knollys was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. As a Baptist minister
of London, after returning there, often preaching to an audience. of one
thousand hearers. Of Knollys’ coming to America, Backus says:
“Persecuted in England he fled to America. Forbidden at once to remain in
Massachusetts he went to Piscataqua, soon afterwards called Dover. Here he
met with immediate opposition, but according to Winthrop (vol. 1, p. 326) ‘he
gathered some of the best minded into a church body and became their
pastor.’” f870
Rev. C.E. Barrows says: “We are informed that there were Baptists among the
first settlers of Massachusetts Bay,” f871 This statement is made on the authority
of Cotton Mather.
As we have seen, in the case of Williams, Clarke and Knollys, Baptists, to
escape persecution for their opposition to infant baptism, fled to Rhode Island,
where they had liberty. Settling in Newport, Clarke would find Baptist
material which his faithfulness as a preacher must have immediately organized
into a Baptist church.” f873 “Mr. Hansard Knollys was minister there from the
spring of 1638 to the fall of 1641.” f874 The church was traduced from without
and was rent with dissension within, and its pastor returned to England.” f875
Cramp, after confirming the above, adds: