Thomas Helwys - Helwys’ Christian Mission

Helwys’ Christian Mission

Inevitably, the Church authorities were unable to tolerate any significant degree of puritan independence. In 1607, the High Court of Ecclesiastical Commission resolved to clamp down on the Gainsborough and Scrooby dissenters. Sometime later in the winter of 1607/08, Thomas Helwys, John Smyth, and around forty others from the Gainsborough and Scrooby congregations fled to the safety of Amsterdam in the more tolerant Dutch Republic. Protestant dissenters in England still faced being burnt at the stake for ‘Heresy’. On April 11, 1611, Baptist Edward Wightman became the last religious martyr to be burnt. Assuming their safety, Helwys allowed his family to remain in England. Unfortunately, his wife was soon arrested and, after refusing to take the oath in court, she was imprisoned. It is likely that she was banished after three months in prison.

It was in the Dutch Republic that a distinctive Baptist faith first emerged amongst the English émigrés. Open debate amongst the émigrés, and close contact and interaction with earlier English exiles and continental Protestants, led the congregation to question the meaning and practice of baptism, among other things. John Smyth became convinced that baptism should be for Christian believers only and not for infants. The other English émigrés agreed. However, at the same time as Smyth started to embrace Mennonite doctrines, Helwys and a dozen or so others began to formulate the earliest Baptist confessions of faith. This "confession" became the twenty-seven articles in A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611).

In the next twelve months or so, Helwys wrote three more important works: an argument for Arminianism (A short and plain proof, by the word and works of God, that God’s decree is not the cause of any man’s sin or condemnation: and that all men are redeemed by Christ; as also that no infants are condemned), a polemic explaining his differences with the Mennonites, and, most importantly, A Short Declaration on the Mystery of Iniquity, a critique and apocalyptic interpretation of the Papacy as well as criticisms of Brownism and Puritanism, and possibly the first ever English book defending the principle of religious liberty. For Helwys, religious liberty was a right for everyone, even for those he disagreed with.

Despite the obvious risks involved, Helwys and twelve Baptist émigrés returned to England to speak out against religious persecution. They founded the first Baptist congregation on English soil in Spitalfields, east end of London. Early in 1612, Helwys was able to publish A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity. He wrote an appeal to King James I arguing for liberty of conscience and sent him a copy of his book. "The King," Helwys said, "is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them." The King had Helwys thrown into Newgate Prison, where he had died by 1616 at about the age of forty. Helwys’ presentation copy of A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity is still preserved in the Bodleian Library.

Thomas Helwys is honoured with the Helwys Hall at Regent's Park College, Oxford. Thomas Helwys Baptist Church, in Lenton, Nottingham is named after him. Broxtowe Hall, the Helwys' family home, is now only a remnant but in nearby Bilborough Baptist Church there is a simple plaque to his memory.