John Smyth (1570-1612)

John Smyth (c. 1570 – c. 28 August 1612) was an early Baptist minister of England and a defender of the principle of religious liberty. Historians consider John Smyth a founder of the Baptist churches.

Smyth is thought to have been the son of John Smyth, a yeoman of Sturton-le-Steeple, Nottinghamshire. He was educated locally at the grammar school in Gainsborough and in Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1594.

Smyth was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1594 in England. He preached in the city of Lincoln in 1600 to 1602. Soon after his ordination, he broke with the Church of England and left for Holland where he and his small congregation began to study the Bible ardently. He briefly returned to England.

In 1609, Smyth, along with a group in Holland, came to believe in believer's baptism (thereby rejecting infant baptism) and they came together to form one of the earliest Baptist churches. Baptists generally believe that baptism is a sign of obedience to God. Baptists also believe that baptism by immersion is pictorially symbolic of cleansing from sin and spiritual regeneration. Likewise, they believe that baptism does not save one from sin, but is a believer's identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the beginning, Smyth was closely aligned with his Anglican heritage. As time passed, his views evolved.

First, Smyth insisted that true worship was from the heart and that any form of reading from a book in worship was an invention of sinful man. This rejection of liturgy remains strong among many Baptists still today. Prayer, singing and preaching had to be completely spontaneous. He went so far with this ideology that he would not allow the reading of the Bible during worship on the grounds that a translation was "...the worke of a mans witt...& therefore not to be brought into the worship of God to be read." This idea stemmed from the belief that worship should be ordered by the Spirit.

...
Wikipedia