Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“In the full statement of Waldensian doctrine and practice made to
Ecolampadius, the reformer of Basle, by George Maurel, a delegate from the
old reformers to the new … he says that sometimes, to avoid detection,
Waldensian parents offered their children to the Catholic priest to be baptized.
The most natural inference is, that though they did not believe in infant
baptism, rather than suffer unnecessary persecution they allowed it.” f392
Ludwig Keller, a very late, careful and original investigator (Lutheran) of
highest authority, says:
“Very many Waldenses considered, as. we know accurately, the baptism on (
profession of) faith to be that form which is conformable to the words and
example of Christ. They held this to be the sign of a good f393 conscience with
God, and it was certain to them that it had no value only as such.” f394
As Vedder properly observes: “This belief would logically exclude infant
baptism.” f394 Keller says: “Mostly they let their children be baptized, yet with
the reservation that this ceremony was null and void.” Probably by Romish
priests the baptism was done. Keller farther says:
“The Waldensians ever held to the baptism upon faith; wherever they omitted
it, it was owing to the stress of painful circumstances.”
“Throughout the fifteenth century, up to 1536, they observed the baptism of
adults as a f393 sign and seal of covenant ‘twixt good f393 conscience and God,”
f395 To this Dr. Grimmell on Keller’s authority, adds: “At different times, in
different parts of Europe, their trial reveals that they held to baptism in adult
years and upon a profession of fellowship with Jesus.” f395
Peter Vecembecius, in an oration delivered in the academy of Jenna in 1585,
on the Waldenses and Albigenses, said they caused their men to be baptized.
Perrin, a Pedobaptist historian of the Waldenses, whom Todd and other
Pedobaptist scholars have convicted of otherwise distorting Waldensian
history, substituted for “homines baptizari,”: “saisoyent baptizer leures
enfans,” thus making Vecembecius testify they practiced infant baptism!
Because Jones, in his Church History, quotes this as it is, in the Campbell and
Rice Debate, Rice tried to convict Jones of purposely perverting testimony!
Pope, a Congregationalist, in his debate with McGuire, a Romish priest,
correctly quoted it, sustaining Jones and convicting Perrin. But until Dr. S.H.
Ford, a few years ago, from the British Museum, copied the original of this
oration, there was some question as to who had falsified history. f396 But Perrin
is now convicted as basely perverting history, to prove the Waldenses
practiced baby baptism — a thing which would have been unnecessary had
there been sufficient other evidence to prove it. Armitage: “Almost all the
Roman Catholic writers agree with Cardinal Has-sins, who says the’
Waldenses rejected infant baptism.’” f397 Addis and Arnold declare of them: