How the Sabbath Truth Came to Francis Bampfield in Prison
By W. A. S.
In a collection of old tracts, bound together in one volume, in the Library of the British Museum, is a tract by Francis Bampfield, one of the seventeenth-century witnesses to the Sabbath of the Lord. The tract is entitled, “The Life of Shem Acher,” a pen name under which the author recounts his experiences. Bampfield was a graduate of Oxford University, and a clergyman of the Church of England. He was held in more than ordinary repute as a scholar and a preacher. But in the days of 1662, when the act of uniformity required subscription to every detail of service forms containing much that was papal, Bampfield, with hundreds of others, left the state church. He suffered all the rigors of the laws passed to harass and curb nonconformists, or dissenters. Laws were enacted prohibiting any religious meetings not conducted according to the state church. Bampfield was arrested and thrown into Dorchester prison, he says, “for preaching, praying, reading, and opening and applying the Scriptures, and of singing hymns, and such like parts of my office, and for not conforming to the corruption of the times in matters of worship.” Here he was held for nearly nine years, finding opportunity to witness for God even in prison. The spirit of inquiry was all abroad in those stirring times of breaking away from ecclesiastical tradition. While he was in prison, some one asked Bampfield for Bible authority for first-day keeping. This set him to study ing the Sabbath question. He found no authority for Sunday observance in either Old or New Testament, and with his determination to be loyal to the Word of God in all things, to know the truth was but to follow it. So he began to keep the Sabbath in prison. “The Life of Shem Acher” continues:— He privately observed the seventh-day Sabbath for some time, but with great difficulties and sore trials and distressing hardships in the prison. He imparts the Lord’s teachings of him to one, and then to another, privately, who gave place in them to his Word, truth, and law; and so unto some others as they were capable of receiving it. And when four or five were hopefully gained over, he could hold no longer, and could but speak the truths and things of Christ in a more open declaration and public profession; which being understood by some ministers and others, two ministers came to him in the prison, a little before the end of the sixth day, with vehement, importunate desirings, beseechings, and entreatings, and other arguings and charmings, that he would forbear, though but one day, the next day, which was the seventh day, to consult and consider of so weighty a matter, in so great a change for one week. O for one week longer! His answer was quick, short, full, and resolved, in the strength of the Lord. No; he would not put it off one day more; it was as clear as light to him through the whole Scripture, and if he should put away from him this statute of Jehovah, though but for one day, he knew not but that the Holy Spirit’s quickenings, teachings, and comfortings of him might withdraw, and convictions be darkened and deadened. From this time, though sufferings for Christ came on, yet consolations by Christ did abound, and the Scripture did look with a clearer face. Such is also the experience of many others. . . . The very next day, therefore, the seventh day, he celebrated as the weekly Sabbath day, openly witnessing to it, and publicly declaring for it, from the Word; remembering that of his Lord Christ, “to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” Bampfield was led by his study in prison to accept the doctrine of believers’ baptism, and immersion as the only Scriptural form of baptism. He says:— Convictions about this also did quickly spread in the prison, and from thence in other places. Having no convenient accommodation for dipping, under close confinement, he and two more took up resolutions to pass under that ordinance when the Lord should give his prisoner liberty. On gaining his liberty, Bampfield went to London and then to Salisbury. In the latter place he preached, and was quickly arrested and imprisoned for eighteen weeks. Soon after this, he was again in London, where he was accepted as pastor of a little company of Sabbatarian Baptists, as they were then called, or Seventh-day Baptists, as they were later known. His trials were not ended, though he had spent nine years in prison and no less zealous for the Word of God. In 1682 he was arrested again, in London; and a little more than a year later ended his days, by an illness due to exposure in prison, faithful unto death. In another tract in this collection, he tells the story of his arrest and trial. W. A. S.