21-Back to England

In 1609, John Smyth came to the view that infant baptism is wrong, that it
is contrary to the New Testament practice of the baptism of believers only.
Having come to this understanding, the Gainsborough church which was
now settled in Amsterdam, under Smyth, drew the logical inference that
the infant baptism which they had received in the Church of England was
no baptism at all, and they needed to be baptised properly. But not only
that, they had failed miserably in what they had been trying to do, which
was to reform the church, and set up the New Testament order. They came
to realise that baptism is inseparably linked to church life; it is not only a
personal and private matter for the individual. They saw that their baptism
as infants, and the teaching which went with it, had effectively obscured, if
not obliterated, this scriptural emphasis. As a result, they needed to think
through the whole question of church life right from the beginning. Their
intentions had been good, but they had gone astray from the very start in
that they had not used the New Testament method to become a church. To
put it bluntly, the Gainsborough church was not founded properly. There
was only one thing for it – they must begin all over again!