The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Canne Braves Reprisals to Print Overton’s Conditionalist Treatise

Brief reference must also be made to JOHN CANNE (c. 1590-1667), who first introduced marginal reference notes into our English Bibles, and was a Baptist minister, writer, printer, and bookseller. As just noted, he was the printer, in 1643, of Richard Overton’s Mans Mortallitie, and was in accord with its Conditionalist principles. His name was boldly printed on the title page, when such a procedure courted reprisals. Overton had merely used his initials, “R. O.” CFF2 169.1

Little is known of Canne’s early life. Evidently he served for a brief time in the Anglican Church after his ordination. About 1621 he was chosen as “teacher” of a company of Independents, at “Deadman’s Place,” Southwark, London, who were forced to meet secretly in private homes in order to avoid persecution. But the pressure became so intense that within a year or two Canne was forced to flee, banned from England for his Baptist convictions. He made his way to Amsterdam where, under “banishment,” for seventeen years he served “diligently” as pastor of its “ancient English Church.” ¹⁶ CFF2 169.2

“To his pulpit labours” he added writing, printing, and bookselling in Amsterdam, with intermittent visits to England. But he considered his life mission to be the preaching of the gospel and the founding of churches after God’s order. Canne strongly advocated separation of church and state, and genuine reformation in religion. About the time he printed Mortallitie for Overton, he published his own A Necessitie of Separation from the Church of England, proved by the Nonconformists’ Principles, written to justify dissent from the Church of England, to show the necessity of separation from religious error and comfortable livings, and to urge the founding of “pure churches.” It exerted a wide influence. CFF2 169.3

About 1640 he again visited England, and was for a time in Bristol. There in 1641 he found a company of Separatists seeking to worship God according to the requirements of His Word. As a “baptized man” he formed them, on April 25, 1641, into the Broadmead Baptist church, ¹⁷ which has had an illustrious history. ¹⁸ Its pastors and members suffered great persecutions under Charles II, often meeting in private homes, and visited with fines and imprisonment, with the arrest of their ministers, who at one time preached to them through a hole in the wall from another room, ¹⁹ thus avoiding “apprehension.” On another ocasion Canne was banished from Hull after being arrested in the pulpit. CFF2 169.4

But Canne returned to Amsterdam, where he published Overton’s Mans Mortallitie in 1643, which aroused much hostility against him, as well as against Overton. About this time he brought forth his own major contribution—a Bible with marginal notes, the first of its kind to be published, which formed the basis for all later reference Bibles, and for which he is best known. It was dedicated to the British Parliament and was the result of prodigious labor, extending over some twenty-one years. It was designed to help inquirers in search of truth, and was reprinted repeatedly in Amsterdam and in England. Canne’s guiding motto was that “Scripture was the best interpreter of Scripture.” He also stressed the Baptist principle that “the Bible is everything in religion,” and that every human being should study the Sacred Scriptures for himself. CFF2 170.1

Canne spent many years working on a Bible commentary but did not live to see it completed. ²⁰ However, he published some eighteen treatises. Visiting England at intervals, and becoming interested in Bible prophecy, he embraced for a time the current, widespread Fifth Monarchy principles, and in 1657 wrote a treatise on prophecy entitled The Time of the End. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1658, but was acquitted upon trial. He returned to Amsterdam from each visit to England, and died in exile from his native land. CFF2 170.2

Canne held to Life Only in Christ, and though he did not write any separate treatise thereon, he was a staunch supporter and helper of those contending for Conditionalism, as was Overton, when printing such a work was fraught with peril. But his position is evident from various allusions in his works. He adhered closely to the written Word, and said in the preface to his “Reference Bible”— CFF2 171.1

“It is not the scripture that leadeth men into errors and byways, but the misinterpretations and false glosses imposed upon it; as when men, by perverting the scriptures to their own principles and purposes, will make them speak their sense and private interpretation. Laying therefore aside men’s interpretations, and only following the scripture interpretating itself, it must needs be the best way and freest from errors.” CFF2 171.2

He endured suffering and persecution for the cause of conscience. Such was the caliber and character of men advocating Conditionalism in those stormy seventeenth-century times. CFF2 171.3