There has been much discussion recently on Baptist views regarding religious toleration. The discussion has covered issues such as: whether religious toleration was widely held among early Baptists, whether religious toleration is essential to Baptist identity, whether arguments for religious toleration were merely a response to the persecution that early Baptists faced rather than something more essential to Baptist theology, and whether Baptists today must affirm religious toleration in a manner similar to early Baptists. Many of these debates stem from current social and political concerns about the secularization of the West, how Christians ought to engage in the political process, and what role the government might play in enforcing the doctrinal and ethical teachings of the Bible.
This essay will not address many of those contemporary concerns. Instead, I will focus on a more fundamental issue that must be addressed first: are early Baptist views on religious toleration accidental to early Baptist theology? The conclusion of this essay is that religious toleration is the natural conclusion of the early Baptists’ understanding of the nature of the Old and New Covenants, which informed not only their views on religious toleration but also their views on believers’ baptism and regenerate church membership.[1]
The Essence of Baptist Political Theology
Some of the earliest arguments for universal religious toleration in the English context came from General Baptists.[2] In A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1612), Thomas Helwys went well beyond what the Act of Toleration (1689) would grant seven decades later when he contended: “Neither may the King be judged between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”[3] Other English Baptists (some considered below) made similar arguments throughout the seventeenth century. In the American context, Roger Williams defended religious toleration in The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), as did John Clark in Ill Newes from New England (1652). My focus here, however, will be primarily on the early English Baptists Thomas Helwys and John Murton.[4]
Yet one might reasonably ask, “Why were arguments for religious toleration in early seventeenth century England promulgated primarily by Baptists?” Some have argued that the notion of religious toleration, even among Baptists, finds its origins in figures such as John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers. But the answer cannot be that early Baptists’ views on religious toleration were the result of Enlightenment thinkers, such as Locke, since some of the earliest Baptist arguments for religious toleration precede Locke’s work by over half a century.[5] If anything, Locke would have depended on the early Baptists (which he seems to have done) rather than the other way around.[6] Others have argued that early Baptists argued only for religious toleration because they were a persecuted religious minority. None of these explanations are ultimately satisfactory since they all imply that religious toleration in early Baptist thought is accidental to early Baptist theology and ecclesiology rather than being a natural corollary of it.
By examining early Baptist arguments for religious toleration, we can see the direct connection between their view on religious toleration and their overall theology of the nature of a true church, the proper candidates for baptism, and regenerate church membership.[7] Their understanding of these doctrines was directly informed by their emphasis on certain discontinuities between Old and the New Covenants, which also led them to reject the analogy between the nation of Israel and subsequent nations or kingdoms. In this way, early Baptists consciously diverged from the Magisterial Reformers as a direct result of their distinct interpretation of the Old and New Covenants.[8] I share Caleb Morell’s conclusion that, “Baptists did not argue for religious toleration because they were a persecuted minority, or because of some inflated view of human conscience, and much less because of religious indifference or enlightened skepticism.”[9] For the early Baptists, religious toleration was the natural conclusion of Baptist ecclesiology, which stemmed from their understanding of the nature of the Old and New Covenants.
Beyond English Separatism
Mere separation from the Church of England (as in English Separatism) was no guarantee that one would favor religious toleration. English Separatists such as Robert Brown and Henry Barrow argued for a “gathered congregation, composed of presumably regenerate members, and the holy community abstracted from the nation” yet they still maintained that the congregation would be “in close partnership with a godly prince.”[10]
Even John Smyth, who later argued for religious toleration, did so only after he had embraced believers’ baptism and regenerate church membership. From his newfound understanding of the nature of the Old and New Covenants did Smyth argue for religious toleration. This point is most evident in The Character of the Beast. As Timothy George points out, “The first indication of Smyth’s unease with the Puritan-Separatist view of the magistrate appears in his treatise of 1609 entitled The Character of the Beast in which he denounced the practice of infant baptism.”[11] George further argues, “The practice of believer’s baptism thus removed the Baptists from the whole nexus of presuppositions undergirding a national church and completed the logic of separation inherent in earlier Separatist ecclesiology.”[12]
The same can be seen in Helwys’s A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity when he argues against paedobaptism as “the root error which overthrows the covenant of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its first foundation, bringing in the seed of the flesh of the faithful by carnal generation for the seed of promise, instead of the seed of the faith of Abraham by spiritual generation.”[13] Helwys went on to say, “You are making infants that are begotten of the faithful after the flesh members of the body of Christ and heirs of the covenant of the New Testament (which is the covenant of faith through repentance) through the faith of their parents.”[14] Richard Hooker had made this argument previously when he wrote, “There is not any man of the Church of England but that same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England.”[15] The result, according to Helwys, is that “the wicked and ungodly” are made “heirs of the covenant by natural birth which our Savior Christ says (John 3) can in no way be but by new birth. . . . Thus you utterly destroy the holy covenant of the Lord, the holy baptism, and the body of Christ.”[16] From this understanding of believers’ baptism and regenerate church membership did early Baptists argue for religious toleration.
Two Covenants, Two Realms
The primary arguments employed for the role of the magistrate in the church and matters of faith were drawn from perceived parallels between the nation of Israel and its kings with modern kings and nations. As one scholar explains, “The magisterial Reformation defence of religious coercion had rested foursquare on the analogy between ancient Israel and Christian nations.”[17] For Roger Williams, the origins of a state-sponsored church are not found in the New Testament but in the age of Constantine. In Williams’s assessment, “Christianity fell asleep in the bosom of Constantine.”[18]
Arguments for magistracy in England also rested on the analogy between Israel and the nation of England. Therefore, early Baptist arguments against magistracy focused their efforts on disproving what they believed to be a false analogy between Israel and England. These early Baptists saw a distinction under the New Covenant between the temporal and spiritual realms. In the temporal realm, an earthly king or magistrate rightly ruled in civil matters. Yet in the spiritual realm, that is, in matters of faith, Christ alone ruled as king. England was not the nation of Israel since “the principle of covenant continuity no longer holds.”[19] This hermeneutic (what Timothy George calls “an asymmetrical hermeneutic”) led early Baptists to reject the notion that civil authorities have the right to set up “spiritual lords and laws.”[20] The King of England does not function in the same capacity as Old Testament kings.[21]
The key turning point in history for establishing this distinction was the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant. Early Baptists referred to everything after Christ’s coming using phrases such as “these Gospel times.” When Roger Williams argued for universal religious toleration, he did so on the basis that “It is the will and command of God since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus” to permit it. The response to false religion and even atheism “since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus” was “that they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in soul matters, able to conquer: to wit, the sword of God’s Spirit, the word of God.”[22] For these early Baptists, the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant have resulted in a distinctly “New Testament vision of the church,” as well as the relationship between the church and the state.[23]
Obedience to and the Role of Magistrates
These same early Baptists were equally clear in their willingness to obey the magistrate in civil matters. Few Baptists in the early seventeenth century spoke more critically of the Church of England in stronger language than Thomas Helwys who identified the Church of England as the second beast (Rev. 13), aligned with the first beast, which Helwys believed was the Roman Catholic Church. Both, in Helwys’s estimation, stood in opposition to God and His people.
Yet when it came to obedience to the magistrate in civil matters, Helwys contended that it was the responsibility of every citizen to obey the magistrate, pray for him, and not to speak evil of him. This responsibility was due to Helwys’s belief that Romans 13 teaches the magistrate is a “Holie Ordinance of GOD.” For Helwys, obedience to the magistrate in civil matters was equivalent to obedience to God’s commands. Elsewhere, Helwys would argue regarding the role of the authority of the king, “Let this kingdom, power and honor fully satisfy our lord the king’s heart, and let it suffice the king to have all rule over people’s bodies and goods.” Yet he went on to say, “[D]o not let our lord the king give his power to be executed over the spirits of his people. For they belong to another kingdom which cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12.22.23.28), differing from all earthly kingdoms.”[24]
So, what was the positive role of the magistrate in early Baptist writings on religious toleration? According to Helwys, Murton, Williams, and others, the magistrate is responsible for enforcing the second table of the Law, which stands in radical distinction from the magisterial Protestant conception of the magistrate as keeper of both tables of the Law. Robert Louis Wilken’s statement about Roger Williams is equally true of other early Baptists: “[They] severed the link between the two tables of the law.”[25] The Baptists severed the link between the two tables by arguing for certain discontinuities between the Old and New Covenants and by rejecting the analogy between nation of Israel in the Old Testament and England in the seventeenth century. “We are not ignorant,” Murton wrote, “that the learned doe perswade Kings and Princes, that they have power from God, to maintaine Gods worship and service, as well as civill peace, and so are mainteyners of both Tables, and to punish false worship with imprisonment, death, or otherwise, as other malefactors of the second Table.”[26]
They argued that God simply had not given any express command to non-Israelite kings to enforce the first table of the Law. Murton freely acknowledged the magistrate’s right to “make humane Laws (that be just)” in accordance with the first table. But he resolutely rejected the magistrate’s right to enforce the first table as there was no divine command for such (a command which the nation of Israel had). Murton put his finger on “the difficultie” when he asked, “where God hath given to all Kings charge over his worship and spirituall service.”[27] The magistrate’s authority had limits—it did not extend to the spiritual realm.
Conclusion
Religious toleration in early Baptist thought was not an accidental doctrine to Baptist theology. Religious toleration was the natural conclusion of the Baptists’ understanding of the nature of the church, believers’ baptism, regenerate church membership, and voluntary association. They contended that the sword of the magistrate is not intended to and can never do the work of the sword of the Spirit. In “these Gospel times,” Christians could take the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, to all people, calling them to repentance and faith, rightly gathering baptized believers into covenanted congregations, and allowing the tares to grow among the wheat until Christ, the rightful ruler of His kingdom, separated the wheat and the tares.[28]
[1] While I was aware of Baptist covenant theology and had spent significant time reading Thomas Helwys, John Smyth, and Roger Williams, the direct connection between Baptist covenant theology and Baptist arguments for religious toleration had never struck me in such a forceful way until several years ago when I read John Coffey’s essay “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution.” I am indebted to Coffey’s research on this subject, which will be apparent throughout the paper. Caleb Morell’s excellent thesis “Radically [In]tolerant: How English Baptists Changed the Early Modern Toleration Debate” has also proved insightful.
[2] Regarding these early Baptists’ Arminian soteriology, I do not see a necessary connection between religious toleration and Arminian soteriology. As Coffey explains, “It is important to recognize this because many historians tie tolerationism far too closely to Arminian theology.” Yet puritan tolerationists – Calvinists and Arminians alike – simply did not see the connection. Whatever their differences over predestination they employed the same arguments to support toleration, arguments turning on biblical hermeneutics. There was, after all, no logical or necessary reason why the acceptance of free-will theology should oblige one to accept liberty of conscience – the doctrine was quite compatible with traditional views on the duty or right of Christian magistrates to suppress religious dissent, as the case of the Laudians illustrate. The rise of Arminianism and the rise of toleration were not unconnected – both entailed a rejection of St Augustine’s authority – but their connection is less tight than is often assumed. The debate over toleration turned on what the Bible taught about church and state, not on what it taught about free-will and predestination. The magisterial Reformation defence of religious coercion had rested foursquare on the analogy between ancient Israel and Christian nations.” John Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution” The Historical Journal 41, no. 4 (1998): 971. Timothy George makes a similar point, “[W. K.] Jordan perhaps makes too much of the role of Arminianism in the Baptist concept of religious toleration. Later, Roger Williams, as well as the Particular Baptists would embrace almost in toto the early Baptist view of toleration while retaining a high predestinarian theology.” See Timothy George, “Between Pacifism and Coercion: The English Baptist Doctrine of Religious Toleration” Mennonite Quarterly Review 58, no. 1 (1984): 43, n60.
[3] Thomas Helwys, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity in Joe Early, Jr., The Life and Writings of Thomas Helwys (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 209.
[4] However, I think the views of Helwys and Murton can be seen in the writings of numerous other early Baptists and in Baptist confessions of faith in the seventeenth century.
[5] For more on this, see my essay “Thomas Helwys, Roger Williams, and Pre-Enlightenment Arguments for Religious Liberty” http://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/thomas-helwys-roger-williams-and-pre-enlightenment-arguments-for-religious-liberty/.
[6] Locke had, in essence, read some of these early Baptists since. As we will see, John Murton was dependent upon the writings of Thomas Helwys on religious toleration. Roger Williams read Murton and even republished some of Murton’s works. Locke then read the writings of Williams.
[7] Religious toleration is a corollary of these other doctrines because it seems that, particularly Smyth and Helwys, arrived at a certain understanding of baptism and the nature of the church before they arrived at religious toleration. On the integration of these beliefs, Tom Nettles helpfully points out that the Baptist idea of “a theologically integrated ecclesiology…developed in full awareness of its necessary connection with a network of other biblical truths. This involves believers’ baptism by immersion, regenerate church membership, liberty of conscience, separation of church and state, and the necessity of gospel proclamation in all nations.” Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Beginnings (Scotland: Mentor Imprint, 2009), 44.
[8] This argument has been made by other authors. See George, “Between Pacifism and Coercion”: 30–49; Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited,” 961–85; Caleb Morell, “Radically [In]tolerant: How English Baptists Changed the Early Modern Toleration Debate” (Georgetown University, unpublished thesis, 2016). For a more detailed discussion of Particular Baptist views on covenant theology in contrast to paedobaptist covenant theology, see Pascal Denault’s excellent work The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2013).
[9] Morell, “Radically [In]tolerant,” 11.
[10] George, “Between Pacifism,” 33.
[11] Ibid., 34.
[12] Ibid., 43.
[13] Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, 288. Marvin Jones has rightly noted in his work on The Mystery of Iniquity that, while Helwys does indeed address religious toleration, it must be seen as a corollary of his Baptist ecclesiology. In other words, The Mystery of Iniquity is not a work primarily about religious toleration. Its primary focus is Baptist ecclesiology and then religious toleration as a consequence of Baptist ecclesiology. See, Marvin Jones, The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contributions of Thomas Helwys (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017).
[14] Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, 288–89.
[15] Richard Hooker in Robert Louis Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 142.
[16] Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, 289.
[17] Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited,” 971.
[18] Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), reprinted in E. B. Underhill, ed., Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 1614–1661 (London, 1846), 154.
[19] George, “Between Pacifism,” 41.
[20] George, “Between Pacifism”; Thomas Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, 156.
[21] This point is uniquely clear in the writings of John Murton. In Murton’s Most Humble Supplication, he notes: “The learned say, that Christian Kings, have the same power that the kings of Israel had to maintaine Mose [sic] Law: in which observe, no other kings had power to charge, to maintaine that Religion, but only the Kings of Israel . . . but in these dais, diver[s] Kings say they are in the place of the Kings of Israel and say, they maintain the Religion of Christs Gospell; yet they differ so much as they count one another Idolaters and Heretiques, for maintaining his way.” And later, “May it please your Majestie to give us leave to ask of your learned, in what place of the word of God you charge standeth? We often read of your charge in civill things, and that your power is from God, and hee hath given you a sword to punish evill doers, and defend the innocent; but not to support any Religion, nor suppresse any Religion, by your earthly sword, now in the time of Christ.” John Murton, A Most Humble Supplication (1621), 33–34.
[22] John Coffey, “Scepticism, Dogmatism and Toleration in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1550–1700, ed. Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2008), 168.
[23] Coffey, “Scepticism, Dogmatism and Toleration.”
[24] Helwys, Mystery of Iniquity, 201.
[25] Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God, 154.
[26] Murton, Humble Supplication, 32.
[27] Murton, Humble Supplication, 33.
[28] The parable of the wheat and tares (Mt. 13) was one of the most common texts appealed to by early Baptists to defend their understanding of religious toleration. Whereas the parable of the wheat and tares had often been employed to defend a mixed multitude of believers and unbelievers worshiping within a national, established church, early Baptists noted that where the wheat and tares were permitted to grow together was in the world, not in the church. The church, by contrast, was to be a body of regenerate, baptized believers, gathered voluntarily. But the parable also undercut the idea of persecution in matters of faith since the tares were permitted to remain until the judgement of Christ.
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