leaven of the Dutch Baptists in that part of England from which these early colonists came. Robert Browne, who is the reputed founder of English Congregationalism, advocated his peculiar views after dwelling for some time in a Dutch Anabaptist community. Here he promulgated his ideas. A part of his congregation fled to Middleburg, a Baptist stronghold. After two years he quarreled with these folks and returned to England, where he became reconciled to the Established Church and for forty years afterward administered to an Established Church parish. The Baptist principle, however, had been stamped upon the few years of his ministry when he started a new order. At the close of the sixteenth century most of the Anabaptists in England were Dutch. Slowly, however, English Baptists were coming into existence, and they soon formed themselves into small groups. Browne did not go so far as the Baptists, but in church government he took their New Testament position. As far as is known, the first definite English Baptist church was organized in London in 1611, with Thomas Helwys as pastor. The members had been exiles in Holland and were baptized there by Rev. John Smith, the famous Se-Baptist, formerly a Church of England clergyman. This English Baptist church formulated a confession which contains the first declaration of faith to include, as the teaching of Christ, the absolute separation of Church and State. The magistrate by virtue of his office, is not to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, nor to compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine; but to leave the Christian religion free to every man’s conscience. Prof. Mason says: It was, in short, from their little dingy meeting-house, somewhere in old London, that there flashed out, first in England, the absolute doctrine of religious liberty. These of whom mention has just been made, were called General Baptists. In 1644, the Particular Baptists issued a confession, equally explicit and clear. Religious liberty to them was the right, and good citizenship the duty, of every Christian man. Their historic confession, a confession of seven associated churches, was the first declaration, in England or in Christendom, by a body of associated churches on the question of absolute religious liberty. Many of these Baptists were imprisoned.