Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

CHAPTER 14. — THE PETROBRUSSIANS AND
HENRICIANS.
The Petrobrussians numbered their hundreds of thousands. In the Middle Ages
they were a great and shining light. Historians agree that the Petrobrussians
appeared in the South of France about 1104. Of their great leader — Peter de
Bruys — Kurtz says:
“He rejected the outward or visible church, and only acknowledged the true,
invisible church in the hearts of believers. In his opinion all churches and
sanctuaries should be destroyed, since God might be worshipped in a stable or
tavern. He used crucifixes for cooking purposes; inveighed against celibacy,
the mass and infant baptism; and after twenty years of continued disturbance
ended his days at the stake by the hands of an infuriated mob, 1124. He was
succeeded by one of his associates, Henry of Lausanne, formerly a monk of
the order of Clugny. Under him the sect of the Petrobrussians greatly
increased in numbers.” f300
Farther on we will see that in stating the Petrobrussians rejected the visible
church, Kurtz is as much in error as he is in stating that the only true church is
not an outward organization, but only internal or invisible. Indeed, in that he
says they rejected infant baptism, implying that they practiced adult baptism,
Kurtz confutes his own statement; since water baptism implies a visible
church.
Says Mosheim:
“A much more rational sect was that which was founded about the year 1110
in Languedoc and Provence by Peter de Bruys, who made the most laudable
attempts to reform the abuses and to remove the superstitions that disfigured
the beautiful simplicity of the gospel, and after having engaged in the cause a
great number of followers, during a ministry of twenty years continuance,
was burnt at St. Giles, in the year 1130, by an enraged populace, set on by the
clergy, whose traffic was in danger from the enterprising spirit of the
reformer. The whole system of doctrine, which this unhappy martyr, whose
zeal was not without a considerable mixture of fanaticism, taught to the
Petrobrussians, his disciples, is not known. It is, however, certain that the five
following tenets made a part of his system.
(1.) That no persons whatever were to be baptised before they were come to
the fullness of their reason.
(2.) That it was an ideal superstition to build churches for the service of God,
who will accept of sincere worship wherever it is offered, and that such
churches as had already been erected should be pulled down and destroyed.