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THE DEVELOPMENT OF BAPTISM IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

By Jacob D. Gerber

Of the many changes that took place in the church during the English Reformation, the

evolution of the theology and practice of baptism was one of the more significant. Though not

so significant in shaping history as its sacramental cousin, the Lord's Supper, some of the

modifications to the institution of baptism were considered so radical that the innovative found

themselves persecuted. So, in an attempt to map our the changes that took place, this paper will

survey confessions of faith spanning from the dawn of the English Reformation to its dusk,

roughly 150 years later, examining King Henry VIII's 10 Articles (1536), the 39 Articles of the

Anglican Church (1571), the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church (1646),

and the Second London Confession of the Particular Baptists (1689).1 By examining the different

modes and subjects of baptism, the theological understandings of the efficacy of baptism, and the

implications of baptismal theology and practice on the respective ecclesiologies, these

confessions serve as useful landmarks as we plot the changes that took place through the

reformation that still affect Protestants around the world.

On the first subject, concerning the proper modes and subjects for baptism, there is

surprising unanimity among most of our different denominations. From the 10 Articles,

Protestant churches have largely deferred to the traditional baptismal practice of Christianity,

“That the promise of grace and everlasting life (which promise is adjoined unto this sacrament of

baptism) pertaineth not only unto such as have the use of reason, but also to infants, innocents

and children.”2 The Anglicans commend the baptizing of young children, calling it “most

1 Creedal information taken from Gerald Bray, ed., Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, UK:
James Clarke & Co., 1994).
2 10 Articles, Article 2.3.
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agreeable with the institution of Christ.”3 Even the usually contentious Presbyterians follow suit,

stating explicitly that “Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ,

but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized.”4 Without a trace of

reservation, all three confessions affirm the practice of baptizing infants.

That there is such agreement on this issue might be surprising, especially in light of the

sentiment expressed by David F. Wright: “There is no doubt in my mind that infant baptism was

the single most substantive constitutive element of the church that the Reformers perpetuated

from the Old Church without explicit biblical authorisation.”5 Nevertheless, the consensus of

Henry, the Anglicans, and the Presbyterians was not shared by everyone within England's

Protestant Christendom in the 16th and 17th centuries. During this time the Baptists arose,

founded mainly in opposition to this nearly-universal baptismal practice. Rather than baptizing

on the basis of the faith of a parent, Baptists insisted that baptism be limited only to those

capable of professing faith in Jesus Christ: “Those who do actually profess repentance towards

God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus, are the only proper subjects of this ordinance.”6

By demanding a profession of faith, infants were obviously excluded from being

baptized, but the further implication of this belief led Baptists to count their own infant baptisms

as void—that is, they did not believe that they had been baptized at all because they had not been

baptized properly. So, Baptists began (re-)baptizing believers who could now make a credible

profession of faith. Because of the Anabaptists, this practice was already widespread enough to

trouble Henry to the point that he included a specific statement in his 10 Articles mandating his

3 39 Articles, Article 27.2.


4 Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), Article 28.4
5 David F. Wright, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” in The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century,
Vol. I, ed. Ligon Duncan (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2003), 183.
6 2nd London Confession, Article 29.2.
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belief “That children or men once baptized can, nor ought ever to be baptized again.”7 The 39

Articles do not mention the issue, but the Westminster Confession sides with Henry, stating that

“The sacrament of Baptism is but once to be administered to any person.”8

The Baptists, however, did not stop with fencing the font—they also had to make the font

a great deal larger because they proclaimed that immersion in water is the only valid method for

baptizing a believer: “Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due

administration of this ordinance.”9 This innovations was based on Baptists' exegesis of the

biblical passages that discuss baptism as an identification with Christ by symbolizing death,

burial, and resurrection. Presbyterians, however, were not convinced by these arguments, and

they specifically addressed the issue in their confession: “Dipping of the person into the water is

not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the

person.”10 A. A. Hodge is helpful in interpreting the non-Baptist position on this issue: “The true

position maintained by other Christians is, that Baptism is a simple and single command to wash

with water, in order to symbolize the purification wrought by the Holy Ghost. Hence the mode

of washing has nothing to do with it.”11 Nevertheless, Baptists to this day practice baptism by

immersion only for professing believers only.

Next we come to the more substantive question concerning baptism within the English

Reformation: What exactly happens in baptism? The 10 Articles are a great place to start, since

they reflect the traditional belief within the church, that baptism “is offered unto all men, as well

infants as such as have the use of reason, that by baptism they shall have remission of sins, and

7 10 Articles, Article 2.5.


8 WCF, Article 28.7.
9 2nd London Confession, Article 29.4.
10 WCF, Article 28.3.
11 A. A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession: A Commentary (Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth Trust, 2002),
340.
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the grace and favour of God, according to the saying of Christ...; that is to say, Whosoever

believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”12 Baptism is an indispensable part of salvation, “a

thing necessary for the attaining of everlasting life, according to the saying of Christ,”13 For

infants, baptism is especially important “because they be born in original sin, which sin must

needs be remitted; which cannot be done but by the sacrament of baptism, whereby they receive

the Holy Ghost, which exerciseth his grace and efficacy in them, and cleanseth and purifieth

them from sin by his most secret virtue and operation.”14 Essentially, baptism is the only means

by which God cleanses a person from sin.

The development of this doctrine reflected in the 39 Articles is important, but subtle. The

Anglicans still understand baptism as the way by which God “doth work invisibly in us, and doth

not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him,”15 but they insert a degree of

separation by using language that understands baptism as a “sign.”16 Because the Presbyterians

essentially carried the same baptismal theology into their own confession,17 I will rely on Hodge

to explain the significance of this new, Calvinistic understanding of the efficacy of baptism:

Every sacrament consists of two elements—(1.) An outward, sensible sign; and (2.)
an inward, spiritual grace, thereby signified. In Baptism the outward sensible sign
is—(1.) Water, and (2.) The water applied in the name of the Triune God to the
person of the subject baptized. The inward, spiritual grace, thereby signified is—
(1.) Primarily, spiritual purification by the immediate personal power of the Holy
Ghost in the soul; and hence, (2.) Secondarily, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost,
hence the union of the baptized with Christ, hence regeneration, justification,
sanctification, perseverance to the end, glorification, etc.—i.e., all the benefits of

12 10 Articles, Article 2.2.


13 Ibid., Article 2.1.
14 Ibid., Article 2.4.
15 39 Articles, Article 25.1.
16 Ibid., Article 27.1.
17 Wright, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” 161: “Baptism did not provoke any of the Westminster
Assembly's momentous debates....Nor can the Westminster divines be said to have made any remarkable
contribution to the church's understanding or practice of baptism.”
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the new covenant.18

This distinction between the outward sign and the inward grace that is signified is important

because the two are not necessarily linked. In other words, baptism by water does not always

save.

Presbyterians would insist on this nuanced understanding of the efficacy of baptism in

order to make it clear that baptism is a vital part of salvation, but that baptism in itself cannot

save:

The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments, rightly used, is not conferred
by any power in them; neither doth the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the
piety or intention of him that doth administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit,
and the word of institution, which contains, together with a precept authorizing the
use thereof, a promise of benefit to worthy receivers.19

In this theology of baptism, the doctrine presented by the 10 Articles would be rejected because it

does not sufficiently distinguish between the sign and the grace signified, but rather conflates the

two so that there can be neither Holy Spirit baptism without water baptism, nor vice versa. This,

in effect, gives more power to the sacraments themselves than they are due. Hodge puts it this

way:

This grace is not contained in the sacraments themselves, nor is it “conferred by


any power in them.” According to the Romish and Ritualistic view, the grace
signified is contained in the sacrament itself, as qualities inhere in substances, and
it is together with the outward sign presented in a real, objective sense, to every
recipient, whether believer or unbeliever. They also hold that the sacrament
confers this grace upon every recipient who does not positively resist...by the sole
force of the sacramental action, as hot iron burns.20

By delineating a distinction between the sign and the signified, Anglicans and Presbyterians took

a step—but only one step—away from the baptismal theology of the medieval church, which

18 Hodge, The Westminster Confession, 329.


19 WCF, Article 27.3.
20 Hodge, The Westminster Confession, 333.
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Henry had continued into his own confession.

Still, we must be careful to note that, according to an Anglican or a Presbyterian

understanding of baptism, the sign and the grace signified are indeed linked under the right

circumstances. That is, baptism as a sign is not always detached from the grace signified, just as

the two are not always attached. The Westminster Confession of Faith carefully states that

“There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the

thing signified; whence it comes to pass that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the

other.”21 So, Presbyterians may rightly attribute the baptism of the Holy Spirit to water baptism

(as long as they carefully explain that the two are not automatically linked), and they would be

wrong, by the standards laid out in the Westminster Confession, to suggest that water baptism

plays no part in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Hodge is “explicit and emphatic” on this:

The sacraments were designed to “apply”—i.e., actually to convey—to believers


the benefits of the new covenant. If they are “seals” of the covenant, they must of
course, as a legal form of investiture, actually convey the grace represented to
those to whom it belongs. Thus a deed conveys an estate, or the key handed over
in the presence of witnesses the possession of a house from the owner to the renter.
Our Confession is explicit and emphatic on this subject. The old English word
'exhibit,' there used, does not mean to show forth; but, in the sense of the Latin
exhibere, from which it is derived, to administer, to apply.22

So, while a deed is not technically an estate, nor is a key technically a house, the former are signs

of the latter and make the latter accessible. In the same way, water baptism is not the baptism of

the Holy Spirit, but water baptism makes the baptism of the Holy Spirit accessible.

In the Westminster Confession of Faith, Presbyterians add a few further clarifications on

the matter afforded to them by the hundred years of reflection they had after the 39 Articles were

written; Anglicans may or may not agree with these statements, but the explicit doctrine is not

21 WCF, Article 27.2.


22 Hodge, The Westminster Confession, 331.
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included in the official doctrine of the church. First, the Presbyterians note that “Although it be a

great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably

annexed unto it as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that are

baptized are undoubtedly regenerated,”23 which makes an important clarification on how to

distinguish between the sign and thing signified. “If,” someone might say, “the Holy Spirit

applies his inward grace by the means of the outward sign of water baptism, how would someone

gain the inward grace apart from the outward sign?” The Westminster Confession make clear

that that the Holy Spirit is sovereign over the sign, and not the other way around. So, while the

Spirit would normally use water baptism as the means of conveying saving grace, he is not

barred from saving someone before the water is poured or sprinkled.

Second, Westminster includes this passage: “The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that

moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this

ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy

Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel

of God's own will, in his appointed time.”24 The first phrase of this statement has enormous

pastoral implications. If someone who has been duly baptized in the church goes through a

period of rebellion against God, or if someone did not understand the meaning of the baptism

which he or she was receiving, that person would not need to agonize about whether they need to

be baptized again, as though the first baptism did not “take.” Instead, a Presbyterian pastor

would assure the believer that God's grace was not necessarily tied to the moment of baptism, so

that, if the person was not immediately transformed upon reception of baptism, that person need

23 WCF, Article 28.5.


24 Ibid., Article 28.6.
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not worry about being re-baptized; God, in the counsel of his own will, and in his appointed

time, will dispense his baptismal grace as he chooses. Evidence that a baptism did not

immediately take effect is not necessarily an indicator that the baptism was somehow faulty.

The second phrase of the statement speaks to the genuine nature of the promises that God

makes to a person in baptism. God does not withhold the fulfillment of these promises until he

sees some “good faith” effort from the person, as though baptism marked the beginning of a

probationary period. Rather, God genuinely offers, exhibits, and confers grace through his Holy

Spirit, in his appointed time. Taken as a whole, this article of the Westminster Confession

radically reorients baptism away from being a human-centered activity, where a good priest and

a good parishioner is all that is necessary to have an effective baptism—the Confession ties the

efficaciousness of the baptism to the grace of God, not the performance of human beings. Again,

God is sovereign over the sign, not vice versa. The normal way God uses baptism is not the only

way he might use it, and believers need to be sensitive to this fact if we are to regard baptism as

God's gift to us, not our performance for God.

If the Anglicans and Presbyterians together took a single step away from the traditional

doctrine of baptism, Baptists took the next step, describing baptism in a new way: “Baptism is an

ordinance of the New Testament ordained by Jesus Christ to be unto the party baptized a sign of

his fellowship with him in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of

remission of sins; and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in

newness of life.”25 Even a cursory examination of this statement reveals an important distinction

between Baptists and the rest of Christians on the doctrine of baptism: Baptists replace the word

“sacrament” with “ordinance.” Certainly, the Westminster Confession of Faith uses the word

25 2nd London Confession, Article 29.1.


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“ordinance,” and both the 10 Articles and the 39 Articles describe baptism as being “ordained”

by Christ, but it is significant that only Baptists refuse to use the word “sacrament” in their

confession. So, all Christians believe that Christ ordained, or commanded, that his church

practice baptism, but Baptists do not officially believe that there is anything sacramental about

baptism. That is, the Second London Confession is implicitly denying that there is a unity

between the sign and the grace signified; instead, the grace comes through the Holy Spirit apart

from the sign, and the sign merely symbolizes what the Holy Spirit has done. Catholics and 10

Article Protestants believe that the sign and the grace signified are inseparably linked; Anglicans

and Presbyterians believe that the sign and the grace signified are often, but not always, linked

according to the sovereignty of God; Baptists, however, believe that there is no actual link

between the sign and the grace signified.

The effect of this verbiage change again reorients the nature of baptism, but in the

opposite direction than did the Westminster Confession of Faith—baptism becomes a human act

of obedience in faith rather than a divine act of grace that humans receive by faith. Stanley

Grenz explains:

Viewing the rites of the church as ordinances rather than sacraments leads many
Baptists, finally, to understand baptism and the Lord's supper as thoroughly human,
rather than divine, acts. Instead of acts in which God imparts grace to the
communicant, baptism and the Lord's supper are seen as occasions for participants
to bear testimony to the spiritual truths symbolized in these rites. In their
commitment to uphold in this manner the language of “ordinances,” Baptists
routinely claim that they are the true heirs to Luther's insistence on the necessity of
faith to the working of a sacrament.26

So, baptism becomes an opportunity for the believer to proclaim his or her faith rather than an

26 Stanley J. Grenz, “Baptism and the Lord's Supper as Community Acts: Toward a Sacramental Understanding of
the Ordinances,” in Baptist Sacramentalism, ed. Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson (Waynesboro, GA:
Paternoster, 2003), 81-82.
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opportunity for the believer to encounter God in a saving way. God does not convey grace

through baptism, because grace comes entirely through the personal faith of the believer. To be

baptized is not the normal means of salvation, but the fulfilling of a command.

Still, some Baptists today would indeed affirm the sacramental nature of baptism.

Stanley Grenz writes, “Baptists who champion the idea that the church's rites are simply the

divinely-given means whereby believers initially affirm and subsequently reaffirm their faith

typically prefer to speak of these two practices as 'ordinances'. Baptists who see God at work in

the rites of the church, in contrast, tend to be more willing to invoke the older language of

'sacrament'.”27 In fact, Grenz believes that the shift from baptism-as-sacrament to baptism-as-

ordinance has been harmful to Baptists:

Viewed from this perspective, we must admit that the preference for the
designation 'ordinance' has not been without ill effects in both theology and church
practice. Beginning in the Age of Reason in which the Baptist movement initially
flourished, many Baptists moved sharply in the direction of reducing baptism and
the Lord's Supper to being 'merely' ordinances, i.e., acts whose chief purposes are
to demonstrate personal obedience to Christ and to bear public witness to an
already completed inward working of God, and hence acts that have no direct
connection to divine grace....Today many Baptists, who share a denominational
name derived from the initiatory rite of the church, view this act as having no real
importance beyond serving as a personal statement of faith that fulfills one of
several requirements for entrance into the local congregation.28

Regardless of what the effects may or may not have been, the Second London Confession sought

to emphasize personal salvation through faith rather than over-reliance on the signs of salvation.

Finally, we arrive at questioning the implications of these different baptismal practices

and theologies have on their respective ecclesiologies—that is, how does the way in which a

specific denomination baptizes its parishioners affect the structure, organization, and

27 Ibid., 76.
28 Ibid., 83.
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membership of the church? Before the Reformation, of course, the ecclesiology of the medieval

church was very simple: every person born in Christendom was baptized into the Church, thus

becoming a member of the Church for life, barring some sort of conviction of heresy. As noted

earlier, the medieval church placed a heavy emphasis on the efficacy of baptism, so that when a

person was baptized, that person's baptism actually regenerated them and made him or her into a

Christian—the sign of baptism was indistinguishable from the grace signified. When Henry

ordered the composition of the 10 Articles, this same basic sort of ecclesiology is apparent in the

confessional document. Interestingly, the document places its article on “The sacrament of

baptism” as the second article among the ten. The only article it follows is called “The principal

articles concerning our faith,” which includes only the most basic statements about Christianity,

so that the article on baptism in the 10 Articles is the first substantive article in the confession.

Justification, on the other hand, is the fifth article in the document. From this, I would infer that

the ecclesiology of the 10 Articles understands baptism as the most basic aspect of church

membership, certainly taking precedence over justification.

In the 39 Articles, the statement on baptism explicitly links baptism with induction into

the church: “Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian

men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or

New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the

Church.”29 Notice that baptism is considered the instrument that grafts Christians into the

church. So, baptism is not merely the act of an individual (i.e., where that individual professes to

believe in Christ), but also the act of the church community, where it brings individuals into its

fold. In some ways, this is similar to the medieval understanding of the church, where those

29 39 Articles, Article 27.1.


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baptized into Christianity were members of the state church for the rest of their lives, but we

should not forget the major differences between the Anglican understanding of baptism from the

medieval Catholic understanding of baptism mentioned earlier. Thus, entrance into the church is

not synonymous with salvation in the Anglican church, which instead comes through faith

alone.30

The Westminster Confession of Faith clarifies even more this distinction between

entrance into the church and salvation, describing baptism in this way: “Baptism is a sacrament

of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party

baptized into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace,

or his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God,

through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.”31 Notice that baptism does indeed mean

admission into the “visible Church,” but that it only serves as a sign and a seal of being ingrafted

into Christ. Again, the language of “sign” differentiates the sign from the thing signified, and the

seal really conveys the promises of the new covenant, but is not itself the new covenant. The

Presbyterian understanding of the “visible Church,” comes from their covenant theology and

relates to the people of Israel in the Old Testament. The Israelites were the covenant community

of God, but not all were actually saved. The same thing is true in the visible Church—it is made

up of the elect and the reprobate alike, but no one can know for certain who is who until the end

of the age when Christ returns to judge the world, when judgment will begin within the

household of God. This distinction plays an important role in the way they catechize, confirm,

and practice church discipline, but to go too deeply into those methods is beyond the scope of

30 Ibid., Article 11.


31 WCF, Article 28.1.
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this paper.

Baptist ecclesiology is, as would be expected, the most unique of the four denominations

we are addressing. Most importantly, baptism does not play a sacrament role in the Second

London Confession, as mentioned earlier, so there is no sense in which baptism plays any role in

saving a person. Rather, baptism is symbolic of something that has already happened. So, all

Baptists are Christians first as individuals, and only after they become free-agent Christians can

they become baptized and a part of a church. This is a completely different ecclesiology from

the other confessional documents, where baptism plays a role in conveying salvation and in

ingrafting Christians into the church, especially as the matters concern infants. Theoretically,

then, every baptized member of a Baptist church is a born-again Christian. Since they have no

room in their ecclesiology for unbelieving members (while the other denominations have some

wiggle room for this), Baptists have been very concerned with maintaining the purity of the

Church, and they have thus been more interested, in theory, in maintaining proper church

discipline. Timothy George writes:

The early Baptists follow Luther and Calvin in regarding the word purely preached
and the sacraments duly administered as the two irreducible marks of the visible
church, although they, along with other in the Reformed tradition (cf. The Scots
Confession, 1560) expanded and formalized the notae-concept to include discipline
as an indicator of the true visible church. By thus elevating discipline as a
distinguishing mark of the church, the Baptists (along with other puritans and later
pietists) defined the true visible church as a covenanted company of gathered
saints, separated from the world in its organization and autonomy and separating
back to the world through congregational discipline those members whose lives
betrayed their profession.32

Since anyone baptized has already, by definition, professed belief in Christ, the church has the

authority and obligation to practice church discipline to maintain the purity of the church.

32 Timothy George, “The Sacramentality of the Church: An Evangelical Baptist Perspective,” in Baptist
Sacramentalism, ed. Anthony R. Cross and Philip E. Thompson (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2003), 26.
Gerber 14

In conclusion, the English Reformation dramatically transformed the baptismal practice

and theology of churches in a little over 150 years. Changes arose in the proper modes and

subjects of baptism, in the theology of baptism, and in the implications of baptism upon the

church's ecclesiology. From a very traditional understanding of baptism in Henry VIII's Ten

Articles to a very radical understanding of baptism in the Second London Confession, the

Reformation left England with a different country and a different church.

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