Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

put to a bloody slaughter for their resistance. So that in the struggle nearly
fifty Baptists fell martyrs to purity in the German Sodom; and at last the
ministers and most of the people yielded to the clamor for polygamy under
this reign of terror. While this handful of madmen had not been educated in
visions, violence and indecency by the Baptist leaders of Switzerland and
Germany, others had impregnated them with these doctrines from the cradle.
For centuries these teachings and practices had filled the air. The doctrine of
wild visions, both of God and the devil, was taught in the monastic
institutions, and wonders of this sort were blazoned abroad by bishops,
cardinals and popes everywhere. The Catholic communion believed then and
still believes in new revelations from God. Saints innumerable are mentioned
who heard voices from heaven, had visits from the Virgin and Father, the Son
and angels — as Ignatius Aquinas, Teresa, Felix and Anthony. Francis was
not only inspired to read men’s minds and consciences as well as their faces,
but he received the rules of his new order of monks direct from God. Like
John of Leydon, he appointed twelve apostles, and one of them hanged
himself to boot. He also prophesied that be should be a ‘great prince,’ and be
adored over the whole earth. Bridget, Catharine and Rosa, with endless nuns,
were prophetesses. Teresa took the crucified Christ by the hand, was espoused
to him, and went up to heaven in the shape of a white dove. The Munster men
never had such dreams, raptures, apparitions, phantasms and ecstacies as the
canonized saints of Rome. Neither did Luther help the lunatics to sounder
doctrine, when he saw the devil in the form of ‘dog,’ a ‘whisp of straw,’ a
‘wild boar,’ and a ‘star;’ nor when he threw the ink-stand at his head. As to
violence, Catholics and Protestants taught them that tradition, reason and
Scripture made it the pious duty of saints to torture and burn men as heretics
out of pure love for their holiness and salvation. … Who educated these
fanatics in Christian love and gentleness? The law of their times was to repel
force with force. When the Munster men came into power they applied the
reasonings of their tutors in atrocity, saying: ‘Our bounden duty is to rid the
earth of Christ’s enemies and ours, as they would rid it of us.’ And who will
say that all these murderers did not stand on the same plane of outrage and
barbarity in this respect? As to immoralities — every pure mind shrinks from
the indecencies of Munster. And who had set them this example? They
practiced polygamy; but ten long years before this, 1524, Luther had written:
‘The husband must be certified in his own conscience and by the word of God
that polygamy is permitted to him. As for me, I avow that I cannot set myself
in opposition to men marrying several wives, or assert that such a course is
repugnant to Holy Scripture.’ About the same time he preached his famous
sermon on ‘Marriage,’ which chastity may well pass in silence, beyond this
one expression: ‘Provided one has faith, adultery is no sin.’ … And what
better example had the Catholics set the Munster men in that line of purity?
From the ninth century down, as Bowden says in his ‘Life of Hildebrand,’
‘The infamies prevalent among the clergy are to be alluded to, not detailed.’
The open licentiousness of the popes was appalling. The popes of the fifteenth
century were profligate and debased beyond belief. Innocent III. publicly