#29 The Baptized Church

An Ecclesiastical Succession Argument Featuring the Tewkesbury Baptist-Minded Congregation

1.) The Waldenses were also called Lollards because of the Waldensian preacher Walter Raynard Lollard (this is undisputed until the late 19th century). Lollard was a Baptist-Minded missionary to England:

•14th Century.

Concerning the Waldenses, ”In England they were called Lollards, of the name of one Lollard who taught there.” —Jean Paul Perrin, The bloody rage of that great Antichrist of Rome... ch. 3, Waldenses. 1624.

“A Lollard is also called a Waldensian heretic.” —Cornelius Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae Linguae (Antwerp: Officina Plantiniana, 1599), s.v. “lollaerd.”

“Lollards, a Set of Hereticks that abounded here in England…so called from one Gualter Lollard…the first Author of them:.” —The New World Of English Words Or A General Dictionary 1696.

“A certain Lollard was apprehended at Cologne by the name of Waltherus, master and prince of the school of heretics of that sect,..”. —Johannes Trithemius, Chronica Insignia Duo: ed. Marquard Freher (Frankfurt: Typis Wechelianis apud Claudium Marnium et heredes Ioannis Aubrii, 1601).

“concerning the Vaudois [Waldenses] against the Roman Church, and that their minister or preacher (whom he calls the new Master) was Lollard,” —La Bibliothèque Historiale. Vol. 3. Pg. 459. Vignier, Nicolas. 1587.

“the Lollards (the same Sect with the Waldenses) had their Ministers Ordained by Presbyters…. this Sect, even their Enemies witness that they were very Ancient.”  —Rule, Gilbert. The Good Old Way Defended, against the Attempts of A.M., D.D. in His Book Called, An Enquiry into the New Opinions... 1697, p. 9.

“A Lollard, sometime accounted an Heretick. Wiclevita, lollardus, haereticus Waldensis.” —Lingue Latinæ liber dictionarius ... A Latine dictionary. 1684. Littleton, Adam.

2.) The Waldensian Lollards were Anabaptists

Waldensians as Anabaptists(*)(see note below).

•1319-1320. Raymond de la Côte (Waldensian)

“The Two Errors Concerning Baptism:…that the sacrament of baptism is not valid unless the one being baptized receives it as a conscious act of personal faith. Without faith present in the recipient, the sacrament accomplishes nothing and is not binding.

He said that the baptism administered by the Roman church to infants is therefore of no value — because infants are incapable of faith, and a sacrament received without faith saves no one.”  —[From the formal charge list extracted from Raymond’s interrogations] Vat. Lat. MS. 4030, pp. XIIIv-XVIIv, Vatican Apostolic Library, Diocese of Pamiers, Inquisition of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, 1318–1325.

•1401. The Lollard John Swinderby

Swinderby was burned at the stake for heresy in 1401.

“you shall find him rather an Anabaptist, then a Protestant,..” A treatise of three conversions of England from paganism to Christian religion : Divided in 3 parts. [2]. 1604. Parsons, Robert, pg 204.

•1413. John Oldcastle

“Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham Martyr….was partly a Wickliffian, partly an Anabaptist in Religion,” —An Examen of the Calendar. 1604. Nicholas Doleman pg. 61

“Infants properly may lack faith of their own, and yet are baptized — this is rejected by those the Catholics brand as reprobate:…. the Lollards,”. — Benedictus a Benedictis, Iacula Ecclesiae Christi Catholicae ex Catholicorum Ipsisque Haereticorum Assertionibus Deprompta, p. 228 (Venice, 1608)

3.) Some Waldensian/Lollard/Anabaptists settled in Tewkesbury and became the Tewkesbury Baptist Church

•1612-1623. The church website of Tewkesbury Baptist Church (tewkesburybaptist.org.uk) records under “Our History”:

“Exactly when the Tewkesbury church was founded is unknown, but the earliest documentary evidence is a deed dated 1623 conveying property to the local Baptist cause. However, the origins of the fellowship may date back even further, as there was a strong Lollard community in the area. Lollards were a group who followed the teachings of John Wycliffe, and they were known to practice adult baptism, the practice which gives the Baptist Church its name. It is thought that the Baptist fellowship in Tewkesbury may have grown out of this movement.” — Tewkesbury Baptist Church, Our History, tewkesburybaptist.org.uk

"The Chronicle of London states, that also in England a great number, namely, of Waldenses,…and that one of them was burnt at London." Chron., page 526, col. 1.” —The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. Thieleman J. van Braght. 1660. Pg 309.

The church’s own historical analysis, citing Baptist minister Thomas Wilkinson (Tewkesbury Register, 27 November 1880) and pastor Edward Bevan, states:

“The Baptist Congregation at Tewkesbury is best seen as a ‘Lollard’ continuation that emerged with the Baptist name some time between 1612 and 1623.” — tewkesburyhistory.org

Anabaptists in Tewkesbury

The 1798 map of Tewkesbury (W. Dyde) labels the Old Baptist Chapel as the “Anabaptist Chapel” — evidence that local civic memory identified the congregation with the Anabaptist tradition, not with a spontaneous Separatist innovation of the 1640s.

—A letter from Major Theodore Hartt to Montagu (at Tamworth). It reports on a tour of inspection of troops of horse in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and nearby areas. In the context of Tewkesbury, it specifically notes “a certain leaven of the anabaptist.” —Bodleian MS. Carte Calendar 30/312, 'Major Theodore Hartt [or De Hardt?] to Montagu, Tamworth: 9 May 1660', accessed on VRTI (8 April 2026).

•1655.  Tewkesbury Minutes Book

The church’s minute book records entries from 1655, at which point the church was already well established with 120 members — a size highly improbable for a recently founded congregation, confirming prior existence.

Tewkesbury Baptist Minute Book (1655) — Key Points

• Doctrines of Grace

  • Affirms God’s absolute sovereignty: “working all things according to the counsel of his own will”

  • Teaches Sound Baptist Theology

• Authority of Scripture

• Closed communion

• Inter-church association

  • Mutual recognition of Baptized Churches as true churches of Christ

  • Cooperation in counsel, discipline, ministerial support, and financial aid

  • Connected to the Midlands Association (1655)

• Regenerate church membership

  • Membership limited to professing, obedient baptized believers

• Church discipline

  • Exclusion for doctrinal error or disorderly conduct

  • Accountability maintained within the church

• Marriage restrictions

  • Prohibits marriage with unbelievers or disorderly persons

• Coded (cipher) page

  • Entire membership list written in cipher

  • Used to conceal identities during persecution

  • Demonstrates organized fellowship under external threat

—Tewkesbury Baptist Church Minute Book, 1655–1808, manuscript, Gloucestershire Archives (D10868); entries for 1655 (Midlands Association, including articles agreed at Moreton-in-the-Marsh). Digitized transcript available via the John Moore Museum, Tewkesbury.

But did these churches practice mother-daughter authority creating a chain link succession?(+) (see note below).

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(*) In Book IV, Chapter 1 of Adversus Catharos et Valdenses, Moneta of Cremona provides a detailed account of Waldensian baptismal practice, including their affirmation of believers’ baptism and rejection of infant baptism (see Adversus Catharos et Valdenses, c. 1241; ed. Thomas Augustinus Ricchini [Rome: Ex typographia Palladis, 1743], pp. 277–293.

“Item dicunt, quod infantes salvantur sine baptismo.” (“They [Waldenses] also say that infants are saved without baptism.”) —Raynerius Sacconi, Summa de Catharis et Leonistis (c. 1250), Latin text.

“they [Waldensians] affirmed that they alone were the Church of Christ and the disciples of Christ….successors of the apostles and to have apostolic authority and the keys of binding and loosing…the Roman Church is the harlot of Babylon….that a man is truly baptized for the first time when he has been inducted into their heresy….that baptism is of no value to infants because they cannot yet actually believe.” —David of Augsburg, Tractatus de inquisitione haereticorum, c. 1265-1272, in W. Preger, “Der Traktat des David von Augsburg über die Waldesier,” Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 14, pt. 2 (1878), pp. 206–207.

“I have had in my hands a very old confession of some Waldensian brethren in Bohemia, printed in the German language, in which they expressly confess that in the beginning of Christianity no infants were baptized; and that also their forefathers did not do it.”  —Montanus, Hermanus. S. Baptismi Historia: Das ist/ Heilige Tauff-Historia. Edited and expanded by Jacob Mehrning, 1647. P. 738.

  “...and yet it is indubitable that the Dutch Waldensians always rejected infant baptism, and only administered baptism to adults. This is definitely asserted of the Dutch Waldensians by HIERONYMUS VERDUSSEN…the Abbot A CLUGNY…and other Roman Catholic writers. Hence it is that they have been known in this country from ancient times more under the name of Anabaptists than under that of Waldensians….from consideration of this doctrine concerning holy baptism, one can explain how natural it was that, when in the sixteenth century some Anabaptists started mutinying, this crime was imputed to all Anabaptists, and all who would rather be called Baptists thereafter, were nevertheless still marked by their enemies with the hateful name of Anabaptists.” —A. Ypeij and I. J. Dermout, History of the Dutch Reformed Church, (Kingstone Press, 2025), pg. 159.

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Historical Evidences of Ecclesiastical Succession

Analogy:

A Masonic lodge cannot be created by private decision without being recognized as irregular; it must receive its authority from an existing lodge that already stands within the institution. The parallel to the institution of the Lord’s Church is straightforward: a true church becomes independent in its own government once constituted, but its origin traces back to a previously existing church. Independence does not negate lineage. A lodge that starts itself is not a lodge, and a church that starts itself is not part of the institution Christ founded.

This becomes even clearer when you consider the ordinances. The New Testament never treats baptism or the Lord’s Supper as free‑floating Christian practices that any group may perform. They are always administered by churches, and churches are always formed out of baptized believers. This creates a closed, coherent structure: only a church administers the ordinances, and the ordinances are part of what marks out a gathered body as a church. A self‑constituted group cannot administer what only churches administer, and therefore cannot constitute itself as a church.

Most importantly, the New Testament provides not one single example of a church spontaneously coming into existence without any connection to an already existing church. Every new congregation in the Scriptures arises through the activity and sending of a prior church—Jerusalem to Antioch, Antioch to the churches of Asia Minor, and so on. The pattern is consistent: churches beget churches, never isolated believers inventing one. Thus the analogy holds: a lodge must come from a lodge, and a church must come from a church, because the institution the Lord established expands only through the authority of Christ’s commission, not spontaneous creation by men.

(+) It is highly illogical to assume and assert that a practice that has been maintained for hundreds of years in the early church had ceased, started back up in the medieval era, stopped again, and started back in the early modern period until this day without a single shred of evidence.

A church begetting a church is demonstrated to be the practice of the New Testament and early church:

1st Century

• The book of Acts records that when the church at Antioch was gathered and ministering before the Lord, the Holy Spirit directed them to set apart Barnabas and Saul (Paul) for a specific work. After fasting, praying, and laying hands on them, the church sent them out from Antioch to carry the gospel into new regions. Paul’s missionary activity therefore did not begin as a private initiative but as an authorized extension of the Antioch church’s ministry. (See Acts 13:1-4).

2nd Century

• Church tradition tells us that when Polycarp was pastor of the church at Smyrna, Pothinus (and later Irenaeus) was sent to Lyon to start a church there. (See also Eusebius, Church History, Book V. Ch. 1.28 & 5.8).

• "….dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith...for the churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world."  —Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 10 (c. 180 AD).

• “Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who… assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles,”.  —Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–202 AD), Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses), Book III, Chapter 3

3rd Century

• “…He commanded the eleven others, on His departure to the Father, to “go and teach allnations, who were to be baptized into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Ghost.” Matthew 28:19 Immediately, therefore, so did the apostles, whom this designation indicates as “ the sent.””…………”They then in like manner founded churches in every city, from which all the other churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the faith, and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them, that they may become churches. Indeed, it is on this account only that they will be able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every sort of thing must necessarily revert to its original for its classification. Therefore the churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but the one primitive church, founded by the apostles, from which they all spring. In this way all are primitive, and all are apostolic, while they are all proved to be one, in unbroken….”  —Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics (c. 200) ş20.

4th Century

• Cyprian, while writing about how Catholics should not even inquire about Novatian’s character and teachings because Novatian “has lost even what he previously had been“ due to leaving the church at Rome, say he “is endeavouring to make a human church, and is sending his new apostles through very many cities, that he may establish some new foundations of his own appointment. And although there have already been ordained in each city, and through all the provinces, bishops old in years, sound in faith, proved in trial, proscribed in persecution,..” —Cyprian, Epistle Li. To Antonianus About Cornelius and Novatia, 51.24.

It is also seen in medieval times:

6th Century

• Around A.D. 590, the church at Bangor granted Columbanus permission to depart with twelve companions in order to carry their work into new regions. The Vita Columbani records that “He obtained leave… and set out with twelve companions,” and from this sending came new congregations across Gaul, including the notable one at Luxeuil. Columbanus’s mission, like others of his era, began not as an isolated effort but as an authorized extension of the Bangor church’s ministry.

7th Century

• In A.D. 635, the church at Iona sent Aidan to carry the gospel into Northumbria and establish the mission there. Bede notes that “It was from this island… that Aidan was sent to preach the faith,” highlighting that his work began through the deliberate sending of an existing church rather than independent initiative. From this commissioning arose the Northumbrian mission that shaped the region for generations.

8th Century

• Quoting Sebastian Franck (Chron. Rom. Kett., fol. 64.) concerning Albert and Clement of the 8th century, Braght states “"In the year," etc.,"these two men drew to them much people in France, pretending to be followers of the apostles, and speaking..” —Thieleman J. van Braght, The Bloody Theater, or Martyrs’ Mirror, trans. Joseph F. Sohm (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1950), 230.

Continuing throughout Medieval Era

• During the Dark Ages, the Waldensian churches regularly sent out their barbes—trained itinerant ministers—to strengthen scattered congregations and establish new ones. Contemporary testimony notes that “They go about two by two, preaching…,” a pattern confirmed by later Waldensian historians. Jean Léger writes that “the Valleys were like the Seminary and Academy where one formed and from whence one drew great numbers of Pastors, who were sent from all parts even to the most distant countries to cultivate the Churches which they had there planted by means of their Barbes.” Together these sources show that Waldensian congregations did not arise in isolation but through the deliberate sending of ministers from existing churches. (See Jean Leger, Histoire générale des églises évangéliques des vallées de Piémont; ou, Vaudoises (1669), livre 1, chap. 32, p. 203).

15th Century

• In A.D. 1467, leaders among the Bohemian Brethren sought ecclesiastical authority from an existing Waldensian congregation and located a Waldensian bishop who could confer it. Their own historical record states that “They sought out a Waldensian bishop, by whom they were ordained,” and later accounts preserve the fuller narrative. John Amos Comenius reports that Michael Bradacius and two others were sent to a Waldensian assembly on the borders of Austria and Moravia, found Bishop Stephen, and that the Waldenses “conferring upon these three the power to make Ministers, create them Bishops with the imposition of hands, and send them back to their own.” The structure of the event is what matters historically: an established Waldensian church with its own bishop intentionally transmitted authority to a new community requesting it. This tradition, preserved in the reconstructed Brethren archives and echoed by writers such as Joachim Camerarius, survives only in later sources because the original documents perished in the 1546 fire at Leitomischl, yet the consistent testimony reflects a remembered act of church‑to‑church transmission. (See Historia fratrum Bohemorum, Johann Amos Comenius, pg. 18).

And early-modern to modern times

17th Century

• “That the Churches in London would send Messengers into the Country to preach the Gospel, or to plant Churches.” — A Narrative of the Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Elders and Messengers of the Baptized Churches sent from divers parts of England and Wales, which began in London the 9th of June, and ended the 16th of the same, 1690 (London, 1690).

• From the seventeenth century to the present, Baptist churches in England (and now America) have consistently multiplied by sending out members and elders (missionaries) to form new congregations. Once persecution eased and legal toleration expanded, the documentary trail becomes abundant: church books, associational minutes, and correspondence all show established congregations deliberately commissioning groups to gather daughter churches. This was not a uniquely Baptist pattern; every single Protestant denomination to my knowledge practiced the same church‑begetting‑church transmission, treating new congregations as the result of intentional sending rather than spontaneous invention. The evidence is extensive and continuous, reflecting a settled expectation that churches extend their ministry by planting other churches. In the words of Spurgeon, “Is not this the fashion after which the Gospel was originally designed to spread, and in which it can best be extended in any country and in any age?”

Today

• If anyone is not content with the evidence provided, then we offer this question. Can any one Church (Roman, Greek, Protestant, etc.) claim the hiddenness state as described in Revelation 12 as the Baptist-Minded?

Though we are not a worldly dominant empire, the Lord promises to be with us always.

In speaking to the church, the Lord said “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” —Matthew 28:18-20