Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

orders, and, indeed, grounds all his Christianity, which is contrary to the mind
of the Holy Spirit. This view was supported by a confession of their faith, in
fourteen articles, published about the same time. In this confession they
acknowledge the Apostles’ creed; belief in the Trinity; own the Canonical
books of the Old and New Testament; scriptural character of God, of Adam
and his fall; work of Christ as mediator; abhorrence of human inventions in
worship; that the sacraments were signs of holy things and that believers
should use the symbol or forms when it can be done; though they may be
saved without those signs; they own baptism and the Lord’s supper; and
express their obedience to secular powers.’”
Thus, we see the Petrobrussian and Henrician churches were far from being
either Campbellites or Pedobaptists, and that they believed in the visible
church. Neander says: “Henry became the leader of the Petrobrussians.” f304
Dr. J.M. Cramp says of them:
“Baptism and the church were contemplated by Peter in the pure light of the
Scripture. The church should be composed, they constantly affirmed, of true
believers, good and just persons; no others had any claim to membership.
Baptism was a nullity unless connected with personal faith, but all who
believed were under solemn obligation to be baptized, according to the
Saviour’s command. Peter was not merely what is now called ‘a Baptist in
principle.’ When the truths he inculcated were received and men and women
were received to ‘newness of life’ they were directed to the path of duty.
Enemies said that was Anabaptism, but Peter and his friends indignantly
repelled the imputation. The right performed in infancy, they maintained, was
no baptism at all, since it wanted the essential ingredient, faith in Christ.
There and then only when they professed were the converts really baptized.
Great success attended Peter’s labors. … Henry repaired to the district where
Peter de Bruys preached and entered into his labors. … This is certain that he
fully agreed with Peter on the subject of baptism and those who received the
truth were formed into ‘apostolical societies,’ or, as we should now say, into
Christian churches.” f305
Even Dr. Wall concedes that the Petrobrussians and Henricians rejected infant
baptism. f306 Of one of the slanderous reports against them, Dr. Wall says: “I
hope that those reports are not true.” Wall further quotes them:
“It is therefore an idle and vain thing for you to wash persons with water, at
such a time when you may indeed cleanse their skin from dirt in a human
manner, but not purge their souls from sins. But we do stay till the proper time
of faith, and when a person is capable to know his God, and believes in him,
then we do (not as you charge, rebaptize him) but baptize him.”
On which Wall remarks: “This is, as to the practice, perfectly in agreement
with modern antipedobaptists.” f307 Dr. Wall here reports a slander, that they
believed in infant damnation, a slander so threadbare and contradictory to what