Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“But after the spreading of the reformation in the sixteenth century, they
began to correspond with Geneva and other places and invited some
Protestant divines to come among them.”
The arsenal of Germany, which furnishes the source of the so-called “higher
criticism,” against the Bible, shows itself equally adapted to the work of
furnishing weapons against Waldensian history. In Germany, in 1851, A. Wilh.
Dieckhoff sends out his:
“Die Waldenser im Mittelalter; Zwei historical Untersuchungen von A. Wilh.
Dieckhoff Licentiaten und Privatdocenten der Theologie Zu Gottingen.”
While, like the works of the: “higher critics” against the Bible, this work
manifests valuable research and learning, yet, like them, it manifests equally
intemperate, reckless and wild criticism, in-temperately charging forgery and
falsification upon the authors of much of Waldensian ancient documents, and
attempting to refute the claim of Waldenses to apostolic historical descent.
In 1853 this was followed by another equally learned work, not so wild, but of
the same nature, by Dr. Herzog, entitled:
“Die Romanischen Waldenser, ihre vorreformatorischen Zustande und
Lehren, ihre Reformation im 16. Jahshundert und die Ruckwirkungen
derselben, Haupsachlich nach ihren eigenen schriften (108) dargestellt Halle.”
Five years previous, at Halle, Herzog had issued a similar, but not so thorough
a work, entitled:
“De Origene et Pristino Statu Waldensium Secundum Antiquissma eorum
scripta cum libris Catholicorum ejusdem aevi collata.”
There is room for but a glimpse at these and other works. The learned Dr.
Montgomery’s characterization of Dieckhoff’s criticism may well apply to
much of the conclusions of both Herzog and Dieckhoff:
“He applied to it the innere Kritik — a powerful weapon, certainly, but one
which requires cautious handling. … With like confidence, and on similar
grounds, his countrymen fix dates to different portions of Isaiah’s prophecies,
assigning some of them, therefore, to one author, and some of them to
another; although indeed, they differ a little in the opinions which they so
confidently advance.”
Until some other method be adduced to bring down the date of the Noble
Lesson to the thirteenth century, we may be content to learn a little from it as
to the state of things before that period. In refusing to accept the date 1100,
which so many have imagined that they found in the text of the ancient poem
itself, Dieckhoff also proceeds upon what he deems the ascertained historic
fact of the Vaudois from Valdo, concerning which he thinks himself bound to