Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

CHAPTER 19. — THE BAPTIST CHURCH
PERPETUITY LINE, OR LINES FROM THE
APOSTOLIC AGE TO THE PAULICIANS, AND
INCLUDING THEM.
In the previous chapters of this book we have seen that there were Baptist
churches in all the ages from the apostolic age to the seventeenth century. This
we have seen demonstrated by the doctrine and the practice of the churches
which we have examined. The doctrine and the practices of Baptists, from the
seventeenth century to the present, being too well known to call for
examination — save as to “who are the old Baptists” — as to the Perpetuity of
Baptist churches, I now proceed to show the historical connection of the
Baptist churches which the previous chapters have examined. f535
Though the Perpetuity of Baptist churches is shown in the continuity of their
doctrine and practice, and, thus, the purpose of this book accomplished, yet, to
give the reader some conception of the abundance of proof sustaining the
position, that Baptist churches have an existence from the time of Christ to the
present, I will, also, demonstrate Baptist Church Perpetuity from the
connection which history shows that these churches sustained to the first
churches and to each other.
First. The historical relation of Montanists, Novatians and Donatists.
That Montanists, Novatians and Donatists, were in doctrine and practice,
essentially identical, appears in the previous chapters.
Neander, says of Novatian:
“His principles admit of so natural an explanation from the sternness of his
Christian character, and he was acting in this case so entirely in the spirit of a
whole party of the church in his time.” f536
Robinson says:
“They tax Novatian with being the parent of an innumerable multitude of
congregations of Puritans all over the empire; and yet he had no other
influence over any than what his good example gave him. People saw
everywhere the same cause of complaint and groaned for relief, and when one
man made a stand for virtue the crisis had arrived, people saw the propriety of
the cure and applied the same means to their own relief. They blame this man
and all these churches for the severity of their discipline; yet, this severe
moral discipline, was the only coercion of the primitive churches, and it was
the exercise of this, that rendered civil coercion unnecessary.” f537