John Smyth was the first Englishman (of record) who declared himself dearly in favor of believer’s baptism and organized a church based on the implications of that principle. Smyth, a graduate of Christ’s College, Cambridge, made the pilgrimage from Anglican to Puritan through Separatist to a Baptist position. In 1608 Smyth and his Separatist congregation fled to Amsterdam where, with other exiled Englishmen, he began to work out his doctrine of the church. Early on he differed with the other Separatists, notably Richard Clifton on the issue of infant baptism, which Smyth held to be a fundamental error of the Church of England. In his book The Character of the Beastor The False Constitution of the Church (1609), Smyth traded arguments with Clifton on the issue of believer’s baptism. An excerpt from his “Reader’s Epistle” follows.
Be it known therefore to all the Separation that we account them in respect of their constitution to be as very an harlot as either her Mother England, or her ...
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