Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“It is, besides, asserted that his orthodoxy was liable to suspicion respecting
the eucharist and infant baptism. In consequence of these various charges he
was condemned by a Lateran council in 1139 A.D.” f316
Of Arnold Wadington further says:
“To diminish the privileges, to reduce the revenues of the church, to deprive
the pontiff of temporal power and all civil jurisdiction, and to degrade (should
we not rather say exalt?) his stately splendor to the homeliness of his primitive
predecessors; these were the projects preparatory to the political regeneration
of Rome.” f318
Says C. Schmidt, regarded as one of the main authorities on this subject:
“But comparing the first Christian congregation, the church of the Apostles,
with the church of his own time, he felt scandalized at the difference. The root
of all evil he found in the wealth of the church. All the vices and all the
worldliness of the clergy he ascribed to their riches. … He was a gifted man,
upright and fervent. The frightful corruption of the church naturally struck
him, and in the Bible itself he found the corrective.” f319
To the charge that Arnold was turbulent and a creator of mobs and other
disorders, the reader must bear in mind that any one, on behalf of liberty and a
pure church, could not then speak out against such evils as he protested
without being so charged. Church and Stale then being united, the people,
under the pretence of taxation, were robbed to enrich a licentious clergy and to
build up vast houses of ecclesiastical prostitution and kindred abominations. f317
Why, no greater praise could be accorded any one than that he made
troublesome times for such a church and such a clergy. Treason against such
government can but be loyalty to God. If, as reported, there were disorders
attending Arnold’s agitation, what were they but such as attended all great
movements, from wicked men taking advantage of the state of war; or, more
likely, from an outraged people being no longer able to control themselves, a
thing for which not Arnold was to blame but the corrupt clergy and the church,
from which the cause of outrage proceeded. Arnold:
“exhorted the people to organize a government similar to the ancient Roman
republic, with its consuls, its tribunes and equestrian order. But they,
provoked by the treachery and opposition of the papal party, and disunited
among themselves, gave way to the grossest excesses.” f320
As Cramp observes:
“Had it not been for the support derived from the imperial power, Italy would
have been Protestant before the Reformation. The success of Arnold of
Brescia was an impressive warning. In the year 1143 he established a new
form of government in Rome, which wrested the civil power out of the hands
of popes and compelled them to content themselves with the management of