Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Reformation times. They have their most probable origin in the Mennonites
or Dutch Baptists. These arose, as you know, after Martin Luther. The
forefathers emigrated into England in the time of Henry the VIII, and of
Queen Elizabeth. However, the first church known as the Baptist church
seems to have been built in London in 1606. The year 1547 is about the
earliest date set by reliable historians for the existence of a Baptist
denomination. As a sect they can not go back to a more remote date than that.
It is not sound history or good reasoning to try to connect them with an earlier
sect or heresy; though you may find some similarity between their teachings
and the teachings of the ancient Waldenses, or sects and controversies even
earlier.” — C.F. Thomas, Chancellor. (My italics.)
The reader will notice how Cardinal Gibbons, by using the word “seems” and
such phrases as “not possibly capable of an exact and very positive answer,”
concedes that no man can confidently fix a modern origin and on a modern
originator for the Baptist church.
Turning to Protestant scholars, we find the same hesitancy and confusion. Prof.
H.C. Sheldon, Methodist, Professor of History in Boston University, evasively
wrote me:
“A portion of the so-called Anabaptists who appeared in Germany in the third
and the following decades of the sixteenth century, might be called Baptists.”
(My italics.)
The Professor of Church History in the Gettysburg Lutheran Theological
Seminary, wrote me: The “Baptists were originated by ‘some Swiss, about
1523.’” (My italics.)
H. M. Scott, Professor of Church History in the Congregational Theological
Seminary, in Chicago, wrote:
“It arose in Zwickau, Saxony, A.D. 1520, under the Zwickau prophets, Storch
and others.”
A. C. Lewis, Professor of Church History in the Presbyterian Theological
Seminary, in Chicago, wrote me:
“I regret not being able to give you the categorical answers you seem to
anticipate … The questions as put do not admit of short and categorical
answers. … The first Baptist church was not formed or organized, but evolved
out of Anabaptist antecedents.” (My italics.)
Professor L.L. Paine, of the Congregational Theo-logical Seminary, of Bangor,
Maine, wrote me:
“When Luther begun his reformation ‘there were so-called Ana-baptists. But
the Baptist denomination is later. The origin of the English Baptists is very
obscure. They appear in, the reign of Elizabeth, persecuted.’” (My italics.)