Charles Spurgeon on Baptist History

"We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did
not commence our existence at the Reformation, we were reformers
before Luther or Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of
Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the
Apostles themselves.

We have always existed from the very days of
Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a
river which may travel underground for a little season, have always
had honest and holy adherents.

Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect,
yet there has never existed a
government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I
believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the
consciences of others under the control of man.


We have ever been ready to suffer, as our martyrologies will prove, but we are not
ready to accept any help from the State, to prostitute the purity of
the Bride of Christ to any alliance with Government, and we will
never make the Church, although the Queen, the despot over the
consciences of men."

Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1861, p.
225.