Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

accept the testimony of the ‘Catholic’ witnesses. But he refuses to adopt the
method adopted by Gieseler, Neander and Herzog, of dealing with the date of
the poem itself. He cannot believe that the eleven hundred years are to be
reckoned from any other period than from the beginning of the Christian era;
he rejects this as an unnatural interpretation of the line. ‘Eimnal namlich wird
die Rechnung auf Weise viel zu kunstlich.’ Moreover, he adopts, as of great
weight upon this point the argument of Muston, from the descripton of the
Vaudois given in the poem, that it cannot have been composed within aim
years of the origin of the sect and agrees with him that if it could be proved to
have been composed, as Gieseler, Neander and Herzog suppose, in the end of
the twelfth century, it would evince the existence of the Vaudois long before
the time of Valdo. f613
“Romish writers are the main witnesses Dieckhoff arrays against Waldensian
antiquity. To this Dr. Montgomery well replies: Herzog
“blames Dieckhoff, however, for accepting so completely and unhesitatingly
the accounts given of them by their Catholic adversaries. For although, as to
the relation of the Vaudois to Valdo, Dr. Herzog still proceeds upon the
testimony of these authors, as when he wrote the Academic Programma he
does not think it right to receive as perfectly accurate all their statements
concerning the doctrines and character of these heretics whom they so
cordially hated … and contradicts the assertion of Bossuet, so often made by
popish writers, that they had more in common with Catholicism than with
Protestantism.” f614
Again:
“We have seen already by what a fallacious argument it is that Dr. Herzog
persuades himself to receive the testimony of the popish authors, who assert
Valdo to have been the founder of the Vaudois.”
Dieckhoff is also driven to concede that Romish writers are “liable to much
suspicion.” f615 Yet, in the face of this, on the uncertain theories of Dieckhoff
and Herzog, together with, that of Todd and like critics, some histories,
encyclopedias, and certain professors of church history, having, in servility to
the spirit by which some American scholars ape “higher critics” of Germany
on their criticisms on the Bible, swallowed the statements: “feathers and all,”
that Valdo originated the Waldenses, we are asked to believe that: “late
researches” have demonstrated that the antiquity of the Waldenses is a: “mere
fable” and that Baptists are but of Rome — as other sects. Thus, dear reader,
the chip is lifted off the: “bug” which some highly reputed authorities (?) have
made many think was death to Baptist Church Perpetuity; and that: “bug” turns
out to be a composition of so-called: “higher criticism” and Romish slanders
— a humbug!