Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

extension already acquired, of firm establishment and tranquility and duration
which this poem ascribes to the Vaudois? It appears to me that any impartial
mind will find much more difficulty in admitting all these things without
evidence, as those are obliged to do who maintain that the Vaudois are
descended from Valdo — than in admitting that they were anterior to him on
the testimony of this work, dated in the year 1100 and of the authors of the
twelfth century, whom we have quoted. The difficulty becomes an
impossibility if we hold to the date of the Nobla Leycon, and there is nothing
to set it aside, or if we merely admit it was composed before 1180; for
nothing at that period can explain the production of it by the disciples of
Valdo. The latter is not only not named in it, but there is not the least allusion
which can be supposed to refer to him. This … is very extraordinary if its
composition was owing to his direct influence, and if it was produced by his
disciples.” f634
Herzog, Gieseler, Neander, Todd, et al, put the Noble Lesson at the end of the
twelfth century. f635 But both Dieckhoff and Muston say this: “would evince the
existence of the Vaudois long before the time of Valdo.” f636
Nor does Dieckhoff agree to the method of dealing with the Noble Lesson, by
which Herzog, Neander, Gieseler, Todd and others attempt to get rid of its
earliest date.:
“He cannot believe that the eleven hundred years are to be reckoned from any
other period than the beginning of the Christian era; he rejects this as an
unnatural interpretation of the line.” f637
Dieckhoff’s words are: Rechnung auf diese viel zio kunstlich — the reckoning
of this is much too artful. Kunstlich is from kunst which means ‘trick.’ I,
therefore, here submit, first, admitting that the Noble Lesson was not written in
or about A.D. 1100 — that it was not written as Todd, Neander, Gieseler, M.
Schmidt and others claim — but Herzog finally dated that 1400 — until about
a century later, it demonstrates the existence of the Waldenses before Waldo’s
history. But, second, Dieckhoff himself being witness that the method of
dating the Noble Lesson on the latter part of the twelfth century is but
artificial, a trick — kunstlich — we have the date of that poem, as once near
universally claimed, showing the Waldenses to have existed before Waldo’s
time. Herzog also, “maintains that the Noble Lesson is certainly of Vaudois
origin in opposition to Dieckhoff.” f638 Because a copy of the Noble Lesson was
found to have the date 1400, the term four being partially erased, Herzog gave
up the date of about 1200 and accepted Dieckhoff’s position, that no
Waldensian literature can be given a date earlier than 1400. f639 But Todd was
not convinced that this MS. date of 1400, is correct, but held it as undecided.
f640 His forgetting that other copies should have weight, illustrates how such
men as Herzog have drawn their conclusions. Just as this conclusion had been
formed came Preger, of Munich, another specialist in this department of