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Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

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“Another MS. dated 1100, speaks of the Waldenses as having continued the<br />

same doctrines from time immemorial, in continued descent from father to<br />

son, even from the times of the Apostles. Besides these there are two<br />

controversial treatises, one entitled ‘Of Antichrist,’ and the other upon ‘The<br />

Intercession of the Saints,’ which seem to bear this internal evidence of their<br />

antiquity, that in enumerating the various tenets of the Roman church, which<br />

the Waldenses reject, they speak of the doctrine of the real presence and of the<br />

adoration of the Virgin Mary and all the saints, but in so doing they do not use<br />

the words, transubstantiation,’ and ‘canonization.’ Now the terms<br />

‘transubstantiation’ and ‘canonization,’ were just introduced under Pope<br />

Innocent and confirmed in the council of Lateran, A.D. 1215, and the first<br />

Papal Bull in which the word ‘canonization’ occurs is dated 1165. Nor do<br />

these treatises speak of the devotional exercises of the Rosary, introduced by<br />

St. Dominie, nor of the Inquisition which began in the thirteenth century. Had<br />

these institutions existed when the treatises were written, they could hardly<br />

have escaped the notice of the writer. MS. copies of these and other ancient<br />

documents relative to the Vaudois, amounting to twenty-one volumes, were<br />

brought to England by Sir Samuel Moreland who was sent by the Protector<br />

Cromwell as envoy to the Duke of Savoy in 1655, and were by him presented<br />

in 1658 to the library of the University of Cambridge. Moreland wrote a<br />

history of the Evangelical churches of the valleys of Piedmont, London, 1658,<br />

giving a transcript and English translation of the Nobla Leycon. P. Allix,<br />

D.D., who published Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical history of the ancient<br />

churches of Piedmont,’ in 1690, notices the MS. brought by Moreland. But<br />

now only 14 or 21 are existing in the University library and nobody can tell<br />

what has become of the rest. The Nobla Leycon is one among those which are<br />

missing.<br />

“In 1669, Jean Leger, a pastor of the Valences, published at Leyden, ‘Historic<br />

Generale des Eglises Evangelisques des Valleys du Piedmont,’ in two books,<br />

the first of which treats of the early date and continuity of their doctrine, and<br />

he gives transcripts of several of the manuscripts brought to England by<br />

Moreland. Speaking of the Nobla Leycon, the Vaudois confession, and other<br />

manuscripts of which he has just been speaking, he says: ‘There is, however,<br />

farther evidence brought forth for the antiquity of the Vaudois doctrines. …<br />

We find allusions as early as the ninth century to the existence of<br />

nonconformist churches in the borders of Italy. Jonas bishop of Orleans, in his<br />

work, ‘De Cultu Imaginum,’ addressing Charles the Bald, A.D. 840, speaks of<br />

Italian churches which he accuses of heterodoxy because they refused to<br />

worship images, and he charges Claudius, bishop of Turin, with encouraging<br />

the people of his diocese in their separation from the Catholic unity. … About<br />

1230 Reinerus, a Dominican, who states that he had been himself a heretic,<br />

wrote a treatise against heretics. … The Waldenses: Reinerus begins by<br />

saying that these were the most pernicious of all sects for the reason:<br />

(1.) because they were the most ancient, more ancient than the Manichaeans<br />

or Arians, dating their origin according to some from the time of Pope

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