the court."* As Cranmer was insisting on her death, he was deeply affected with the reply of the young King, who said, "if I do wrong, since it is in submission to your authority, you shall answer it before God." But neither the arguments of justice, the plea of mercy, or the tears of youthful royalty could avail to stay the hand of a bigotry, which in such cases, extinguished all the sympathies of human nature.

From some remarks of Sir James Mackintosh, it seems to be a clear point, that though the Baptists suffered from persecution in the reign of Edward VI, yet the Papists were comparatively free.

"The fact," he says, "that the blood of no Roman Catholic was spilt on account of religion in Edward's reign, is indisputable.”+

It is said by Bishop Burnet, that none of the events of this reign tended so much to injure Cranmer, as the part he took in the burning of George Van Pare. His manly virtue, his consistent piety, his serenity at the stake, won the sympathies of the people, so that when Cranmer himself was burnt in Mary's reign, "they called it a just retaliation."

From Bishop Burnet, we learn that in 1549 there were many Anabaptists in England, who

* Strype's Ecc'l Mem. vol. II, p. 214.

+ Mackintosh's History of England, II, 271, 318

had fled from Germany. "They held, that infant baptism was no baptism, and so were rebaptized."* Many books were written against them; but in 1550, they were denied the mercy which was dispensed to others; for "last of all," says Burnet, "came the King's general pardon, out of which those in the tower or other prisons on account of the State, as also all Anabaptists were excepted."+ This is very similar to what took place in the preceding reign, when the Baptists were excluded from the act of grace, published by Henry VIII, under whose direction too, in 1536, was issued the national creed, approved by "the whole clergy of the realm," declaring that "infants must needs be christened, because they be born in original sin, which sin must needs be remitted, which cannot be done, but by the sacrament of baptism, whereby they receive the Holy Ghost, which exerciseth the grace and efficacy in them, and cleanseth and purifieth them by his most secret virtue and operation." Is it not remarkable that the Baptists of that day were the chief defenders of the doctrine of infant salvation, as it is now held, and drew down on their heads

* Burnet, II, p. 143.

+ History of the Reformation abridged, p. 13. History of the Reformation, II, p. 143. London, 1750. See Strype, M. II, 1, 369.

the thunders of the hierarchy, because they made no distinction "between the infant of a Christian and a Turk," but said that all might be saved without baptism?

We have already noticed a fact connected with the dissemination of Tyndal's translation of the scriptures in England. No man of his times did more than he, to break the power of tradition over the human mind, by rousing a spirit of inquiry, and exalting God's word as the only rule of a christian's faith. Coming from the borders of Wales, where the spirit of Wickliffe still lingered, he seemed to be clothed with that spirit as with a garment, and to walk in the light of that morning star of the reformation. Firm in the belief that the bible in itself possessed the redeeming principle which was needed to renovate a benighted and worldly church, and charmed with the beauty of truth in its own simplicity, he contemplated with grief the state of christendom; while he was musing the fire burned, and he was possessed with a zeal which mocked resistance, to spread through his country the gospel of Christ in the vernacular tongue. He fell a martyr in the best of causes, being burnt as a heretic in Flanders, in 1532, while preparing a new edition of the bible. Although we know of no instance of Tyndal's immersing any on a profession of their faith, yet it is certain

that in his writings he set that distinctly forth as the true baptism which the scriptures inculcate.*

Although the Baptists of that age had no historian of their own, and the allusions to them by various writers are tinctured with prejudice, yet sufficient evidence of their number and their power exists, in the declarations of their opponents, and the edicts of courts. The testimony of a man like Bishop Latimer, ought not to be overlooked, who in a sermon before Edward VI, referring to the Baptists of the preceding reign, said, "they who were burnt here in divers parts of England, as I heard of credible men, (I saw them not myself,) went to their death even intrepid as ye will say, without any fear in the world, cheerfully. Then I have to tell you what I heard of late, by the relation of a credible person and worshipful man, of a town of this realm of England, that hath above five hundred heretics of this erroneous opinion in it as he said."+

A fact like this must strengthen very much the position of those who say that a large pro

*The obedience of all degrees proved by God's worde, imprinted by Wyllyam Copland, at London, 1561. See Appendix C.

portion of the followers of Wickliffe and the Lollards were Baptists. Certain it is, that the writings of Wickliffe were soon carried into Bohemia, and quickened the spirit of reform which was glowing in the bosoms of Jerome of Prague, and John Huss. A letter written from that country to Erasmus in 1519, directly states that the followers of Huss received no rule of faith but the bible, and admitted none into their communion but those who had been immersed, rejecting at the same time the rites and ceremonies of the church. Indeed, the council which condemned Wickliffe, convened at Blackfriars in 1382, accused him of saying that the infants of believers could be saved without baptism, and "that none were members of the church visible, who did not appear to be members of the church invisible; and that none had a right to church membership who did not make a public profes sion, and profess obedience to Christ." Various protestant and catholic writers agree in saying explicitly that Wickliffe rejected infant baptism, and thence support the opinion that his sentiments were the same as those of the modern Baptists. Starck, court preacher at Darmstadt, in his History of Baptism, says, as the Bohemians who were Wickliffites, rejected infant baptism, it is probable that he did so himself.*