Thomas Helwys

 ( 1570s Births ) 

In 1607, The High Court of Ecclesiastical Commission heard about the conference in Coventry. They took active proceedings in excommunicating most of the Puritans who attended the conference and expelled the clerics from their office. After their excommunications, the main Puritan leaders pastored and organized the Scrooby church, at the outskirt of Bawtry parish, led by Richard Clyfton and Robison, and the Gainsborough church, at a manor in Gainsborough, led by Smyth and Helwys. Helwys was probably ordained joint-minister by Smyth in the Gainsborough church, in the same year, and was discipled in the subjects of divinity (theology). The church was organized in Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire, authorized by the sympathetic owner Sir William Hickman, and around 70 Puritans were members.

Since they were baptised as an infant, Smyth—in the absence of another minister in higher office—rebaptism himself first, then rebaptised Helwys, John Murton, and the rest of the Dissenters within the Amsterdam church. The exiled Leiden church didn't adopt the practice and remained paedobaptist. Thus, those in Amsterdam became credobaptists and the Leiden Puritans stayed paedobaptists. Later that year, the exiled Amsterdam church, led by Smyth and Helwys, started renting a church building from a Dutch Mennonite to conduct their services. Helwys was persuaded by them to abandon the doctrine of predestination. Some members of the church accepted a heretical christology common to early Mennonites called Hoffmanite Christology (the belief that Jesus Christ's humanity was not from the Virgin Mary, his mother). Smyth and Helwys did not accept it, so they excommunicated these members for heresy.

In 1610, Smyth decided he had been wrong to baptise himself and applied to unite with the Mennonites, accepting their christology, and be re-baptized. Helwys excommunicated Smyth for heresy, wrote against it, and assumed the main leadership of the church with about twelve members. Helwys formulated what is considered the earliest Baptist confession of faith, in 1611. The confession became known as the 27 Articles of Faith or the Helwys' Declaration of Faith. In the next twelve months or so, Helwys wrote three important works:

A Short and Plain Proof, an argument for Reformed Arminianism;

An Advertisement or Admonition to the Congregations, a polemic condemning the Anabaptists as heretics, showing his difference with them, and explaining their Christology errors;

And A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity, a critique of the failings of Catholic Church, state-church Protestantism, and Puritan separatism from the Church of England. It is also a theological work, defending relevant Puritan Reformed theological doctrines such as baptismal efficacy. It was the first English book in the western civilization to defend the principle of total religious liberty.Stephen R. Holmes, Baptist Theology, T&T Clark, UK, 2012, p. 112-120 For Helwys, the liberty of religious conscience was a right for everyone, whether Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews or Muslims. The book also argued that Nonconformist ministers such as Smyth and Robinson had been wrong to take the English congregations overseas to escape persecution and that they should return to England to advocate for reformation. The historian of Separatism, Stephen Tomkins, describes A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity as the most radical and outspoken book of the age and "the most far-reaching declaration of universal religious freedom yet seen in English", but adds: "It is a pity that this most ground-breaking treatise of the Separatist movement should also be its most mean-spirited."