The pastor of the flock, a Cambridge graduate, John Smyth, studied his Greek New Testament with unusual care and discovered that the practice of baptizing babies never appeared in its pages. If babies were not included in the covenant of grace—only mature believers in Jesus Christ—then shouldn’t churches be constituted by confession of faith rather than ties of covenants? Smyth and forty members of the Amsterdam congregation answered, “yes,” and were baptized upon the profession of their personal faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, the first English Baptist church was born. The year was 1609.
