Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

which were essentially Baptistic, we must conclude in spite of the whole
catalogue of errors with which Satan has never hesitated to blacken their
character.
Thus, the Paterines are charged with opposing marriage. But, this being a
charge so generally made by the Romish church of those times against those
who denied marriage a “sacrament,” and now, Romish theologians, presuming
Protestant marriage invalid, as the charge originated with Romanists, it is not
probably true. In an age when it was popular to do so, Roman Catholics with
great effectiveness blackened all who did not regard marriage a sacrament as
rejecting marriage. On 100 and 101 of Benedict’s History of the Baptists will
be found an illustration of how the Mennonites were charged by Romanists of
denying baptism and marriage, simply because they denied they are
sacraments. Since no moral people can perpetuate itself without marriage, the
Paterines being by historians pronounced a people of the purest morals, should
brand this charge an infamous slander. Robinson positively refutes this charge:
“That they denied the seven sacraments of the church, of which matrimony is
one, is admitted; but they denied these only in the sense in which the
Catholics affirmed them, as all Protestants do. That they married and had
families is beyond all doubt, for in an authentic trial of Arman Punzilupe of
Ferrara, who had held office among them, his wife and the wives and children
of many more are mentioned.” f277
The serious errors which Mosheim and others record against the Paterines, so
far as true, necessarily applies to others called Peterines and not to the moral
ones, since their acknowledged morality and life, being the result of belief,
clearly necessitates freedom of a part of the Paterine churches from the
charges. We have already, from historic facts, refuted most of these charges,
when charged on the Paulicians. Yet, the better part of the Paterine churches,
being Paulicians, were free from those errors charged.
As to the charge against them of opposition to ecclesiastical and civil law,
Hase says:
“The name Catharists, by which this sect was usually designated. … The
accounts we have respecting them are almost exclusively from their enemies,
or from apostates from them, and are consequently full of errors and
calumnies. All agree in describing them as absolutely opposed to the Catholic
church and all its pomp, in consequence of what they professed to he, an
immediate communication of the Holy Ghost, exalting them above all
necessity of ecclesiastical or civil laws.” f280
As we know they believed in New Testament laws, exalting themselves above
all necessity of ecclesiastical or civil laws is, evidently, a Romish intentional