Scanned pages from Thomas Helwys’ A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity


Persecution against Separatists increased


and this


resulted in the Separatist congregation led by John Smyth, which included Thomas Helwys, escaping to Amsterdam around 1608. Amsterdam was a free city practicing religious toleration, and it had already received a number of separatist-type groups. It was here that the Separatist congregation led by John Smyth adopted what we see now as a Baptist way of being the church. Helwys and Smyth had serious theological disagreements and agreed to separate. Smyth’s church applied to join the Mennonites and Helwys returned to England to start the fi rst Baptist church on English soil, at Spitalfi elds in London.


HELWYS’ PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM


Helwys’ plea for religious freedom is truly remarkable because nobody was really discussing it at that time in England. It is important to see that someone putting this forward in that context would not only be guilty of spreading dangerous religious ideas, but would be seen as threatening the security of the state. King James believed in his “divine right” to rule his


subjects, including determining their religion. So it is indeed remarkable that in the midst of Helwys’ polemical book comes this unqualifi ed plea for religious freedom:“Let them


12 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE


be heretics, Jews or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”


HELWYS’ LEGACY of 17th


The historian John Coffey, from his study century religious life in England, has


identifi ed three “political visions” that Baptists have adopted in their history on this question of religious freedom and its limits.1


The fi rst is what


he calls a radical separationist view, as espoused by Helwys and Roger Williams. The state is a purely civil institution and “its purpose is not to promote a particular faith but to govern and order a multi- faith society, in which Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, pagans and even atheists enjoy the full rights of citizenship and dwell together in peace.”2 Coffey estimates that this position has only been held by a minority of Baptists over the centuries.


King James believed in his “divine right” to rule his subjects, including determining their religion.


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