Thomas Helwys (c. 1575 – 1616) was an English barrister, theologian, and religious reformer. His theological beliefs is one of the forming basis of the Baptist tradition. In the early 17th century, Helwys was the principal formulator of a demand that the Church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have freedom of religious conscience. This advocacy of religious liberty could be dangerous at that time. He died in prison as a consequence of the persecution of English Dissenters under King James I, and is considered a martyr. Edmund had sold his plot of lands in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire and had taken a lease on Broxtowe Hall in Bilborough, Nottinghamshire. In 1590, Helwys's father died and was buried on 24 October, wishing to be buried "in the chancel, or near the pue door, with arms showing his marriage above". Helwys then assumed control of the estate in Bilborough.
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In early 1592, Helwys temporarily left the care of the estate in the hands of his father's friends and began studies in law at Gray's Inn on 29 January, one of the four Inns of Court in London. His family was on the rise in London. Geoffrey Helwys, his uncle, was a successful merchant, an alderman and the sheriff of London. His cousin Gervase Helwys was knighted by King James before becoming lieutenant of the Tower of London. After completing his studies at Gray's Inn, Helwys spent some time in the capital.
Marriage and Puritanism
Helwys married Joan Ashmore on December 1595, at St Martin's church, Bilborough. They had seven children over the next twelve years and lived at Broxtowe Hall. The sea captain with the men boarded sailed to Holland, but the ship with women and children boarded got stuck in mud, and horsemen came to seize them. They were briefly imprisoned, but later were authorized by the magistrates to sail to the Dutch Republic. Helwys allowed his family to remain in England, assuming their safety. However, Helwys' house in Bilborough was seized and his wife Joan was arrested by order of Tobias Matthew, then Archbishop of York, and after refusing to take the oath in court she was imprisoned in York Castle, but was banished after three months.
The Amsterdam Church
Helwys and the other Dissenters travelled to the safety and tolerance of the Dutch Republic with their followers and supporters. The former Gainsborough church settled in Amsterdam, whereas the former Scrooby church settled in Leiden.
Beginning of the Baptist tradition
It was in the exiled Amsterdam church, in the Dutch Republic, among the English émigrés, that a distinctive Baptist theology started first to emerge, and Helwys was one of the pioneer theologians. In the conclusion of the Coventry conference, Helwys embraced the theological concept of regenerate church and that church membership was only of believers. In January 1609, Helwys, along with Smyth, taking a logical conclusion of this doctrine, adopted a different opinion concerning the baptizand on the sacrament of Baptism, arguing that if water Baptism makes a person member of the visible Church, then only believers should be admitted to it—and not infants.
Since they were baptised as an infant, Smyth—in the absence of another minister in higher office—rebaptised 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, the dissenting Puritans in Amsterdam became credobaptists and those in Leiden 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 the local Mennonites to abandon the doctrine of predestination, but he refused. 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. 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."
Return to England
Despite the obvious risks involved, Helwys with the other 12 émigrés, in 1612, returned to England and settled the church in White's Alley, Spitalfields, East London, considered the first Baptist church in England. Helwys brought The Mistery of Iniquity with him, and one copy of it was delivered to King James, with a handwritten inscription arguing for liberty of conscience. "The King", Helwys said, "is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them." Helwys and other members of the congregation were thrown into Newgate Gaol, where they wrote a petition to the king. Persecution for Religion Judg’d and Condemn’d was written in Newgate in 1616, either by Helwys or John Murton.
Death and legacy
Helwys died around 1616 at about the age of forty.