Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Christian church ought to consist of only good people; a church has no power
to frame any constitution; it was not right to take oaths; it was not lawful to
kill mankind; a man ought not to ho delivered up to officers of justice to be
converted; the benefits of society belonged alike to all the members of it, faith
alone could not save a man,’ (faith which had not the spirit of obedience) ‘the
church ought not to persecute any, even the nicked; the church cannot
excommunicate;’ (that is in the Romish sense of cursing) ‘the law of Moses
was no rule to Christians;’ (no infant baptism or seventh day observance)
‘there was no need of priests, especially of wicked ones; the sacraments and
orders and ceremonies of the church of Rome were futile, expensive,
oppressive and wicked; with many more such positions, all inimical /o the
hierarchy. In these reasons and rules they all agreed, but in speculations they
widely differed.’” f289
Thus, as Baptists to-day do, this people rejected the whole heresy of there
being sacraments (sacraments mean saving ceremonies), priesthood, church
and State persecution, legislating for the church of Christ and of an
unconverted membership. Robinson continues:
“As the Catholics of those times baptized by immersion, the Paterines by what
name soever they were called … made no complaint of the mode of baptizing;
but when they were examined they objected vehemently against the baptism
of infants and condemned it as an error. They said, among other things, that a
child knew nothing of the matter, that it had no desire to be baptized, and was
incapable of making any confession of faith, and that the willing and
confessing of another could be of no service to him. ‘Here then,’ says Dr.
Allix, very truly, ‘we have found a body of men in Italy, before the year 1026,
500 years before the Reformation, ‘who believed contrary to the opinions of
the church of Rome, and who condemned their errors.’ Atio, bishop of
Vercelli, had complained of such people eighty years before, and so had
others be-fore him, and there is the highest reason to believe they had always
been in Italy. … Errors most gross are laid to their charge, but they scent
strongly of fable. … The adjacency of France and Spain, too, contribute to
their increase, for both abounded with Christians of their sort. Their churches
were divided into sixteen compartments, such as the English Baptists would
call associations. Each of these was subdivided into parts, which would here
be called churches or congregations. In Milan there was a street called Pataria,
where it is supposed they met for divine worship. At Modena they assembled
at some water mills. They had houses at Ferrara, Brescia, Viterbo, Verona,
Vicenza and several in Rimini, Romandolia, and other places. One of their
principal churches was that of Concorezzo, in the Milanese, and the members
of churches in these associations were more than fifteen hundred. Their
houses where they met seem to have been hired by the people, and tenanted
by one of the brethren. There were several in each city, and each was
distinguished by a mark known only by themselves. They had three, some say
four, suits or officers; the first were teachers, called bishops. John de Casaloto
was the resident teacher at Mantua; Albert and Bonaventura Belasmagra, at