342 Dimensions of Baptism
bear personal witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to take part in the
evangelization of the world'. This understanding of discipleship as witness
and the defining of the Church as a fellowship of believers needs to be
understood in the light of the baptism of believers. It is to this that we now
turn.
Baptism and the Nature of the Church
Just as the early Baptists were concerned to belong to a Church which was
faithful to the New Testament, so they were also concerned to understand
and practise baptism in a way that was consistent with their understanding
of Scripture. In their quest to be a faithful Church they searched the Scrip-
tures and we can identify at least three historical and theological stages in
the development from membership of the established Church to a full
Baptist position.
- Separation from the established church in order to form a society
of believers - Separation from other such societies in the belief that true bap-
tism is the baptism of believers only - Belief that the mode of baptism should be by immersion
This process was true for both the General and the Particular Baptists.
Both separated from other congregational separatist groups. The members
of the Lincolnshire congregation led by John Smyth and Thomas Helwys
were at least distinct by 1608 when, on their emigration, they failed to join
with other congregations in Holland. Similarly, the first Particular Baptists
who left Henry Jacob's Independent congregation in the 1630s, did so
over the question of who was eligible for baptism as well as disagreement
concerning the validity of baptism received in the 'apostate' Church of
England.^25 Each step was overtly a consequence of searching the Scrip-
tures concerning the nature of the Church, the subject and then the mode
of baptism. Yet we can also see here a process whereby the nature of the
Church was clarified as a fellowship of believers.
Henry Wheeler Robinson, in the early part of the twentieth century,
argued that all forms of the rite of baptism administered to infants assume
a passive role for the recipient. He commented on the range of interpreta-
- See B.R. White, The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century (A History of
the English Baptists, 1; Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 2nd edn, 1996), pp. 28-30
and 60-61.