Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“They denied that baptism is necessary for salvation and maintained that
infants are saved without baptism and by the blood of Christ. f462 But baptism
is necessary for church membership.” f464
As infants thus appear to need the “blood of Christ” it thus appears that these
Anabaptists believe that infants are depraved, a belief clearly demanded by the
Scriptures and maintained by all well instructed Baptists.
I will close this by the testimony of Dr. Philip Schaff, as to various points of
Anabaptist belief.:
“The reformers founded a popular State church; the Anabaptists organized on
the voluntary principle, select congregations of baptized believers, separated
from the world and from the State. … They were cruelly persecuted by
imprisonment, exile, torture, fire and sword, and almost totally suppressed in
Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic countries. The age was not ripe for
unlimited religious liberty and congregational self-government. The
Anabaptists perished bravely as martyrs of conscience. Luther calls them
martyrs of the devil. … They preached repentance and faith, baptized
converts, organized congregations, and exercised rigid discipline. … They
accepted the New Testament as their only rule of faith and practice. … They
were generally orthodox. … Their demand of rebaptism virtually unbaptized
and unchurched the entire Christian world. … These two ideas of a pure
church of believers and of baptism of believers only were the fundamental
articles of the Anabaptist creed. … It is unjust to charge the extravagant
dreams and practices upon the whole body. … The Anabaptist psalms and
hymns resemble those of Schwenkfeld and his followers. They dwell on the
inner life of the Christian, the mysteries of regeneration, sanctification and
personal union with Christ. They breathe throughout a spirit of piety,
devotion, cheerful resignation under suffering and readiness for martyrdom.
They are hymns of the cross, to comfort and encourage the scattered sheep of
Christ, ready for the slaughter in imitation of the divine Shepherd. … The
blood of martyrs is never shed in vain. The Anabaptist. movement was
defeated by fire and sword, but not destroyed; it revived among the
Mennonites, the Baptists in England and America, and more recently in
isolated congregations on the continent. The question of the subjects and the
mode of baptism still divides Baptists from the Pedobaptist churches; but the
principle of religious liberty and separation of church and State, for which the
Swiss and the German Anabaptists suffered and died, has left its imprint upon
the course of history, has triumphed in America and is making steady
progress in Europe.” f467
The genuine Anabaptists were exclusive immersionists. Of the Anabaptist age,
says Dr. Philip Schaff:
“The controversy between the reformers and the Ana-baptists referred only to
the subjects of baptism. … The mode of baptism was no topic of controversy,
because immersion was still extensively in use, and decidedly preferred by