Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

events as to deny that traditional testimony to Waldensian antiquity is of great
value. While tradition is worthless as to the truth of doctrine and opinion, yet,
as to alleged historical facts its value is incalculably great. In controversy with
the Romish church, Protestants have often overlooked the difference between
tradition as to opinion and doctrine and tradition as to fact; then rushed as far
to one extreme as to the value of tradition as the Romish party has gone to the
other. I do not hesitate to say that the testimony of tradition to the antiquity of
the Waldenses is far stronger than all the testimony of the so called: “higher
criticism” and of the few Romish controversionalists whom Dieckhoff and
company array against Waldensian antiquity. Of course, tradition can be overthrown
by undeniably historical facts which contradict it. But no conscientious
historian will claim there is as much as one such fact unmistakably against the
antiquity of the Waldenses.
(3.) On the contrary, the facts are on the side of the antiquity of the Waldenses.
When pressed to the wall by Muston, M. Schmidt, rather a specialist as a
historian on this point, acknowledged:
“I have never maintained that there were no manifestations of anti-catholic
spirit before the days of Valdo. … Even admitting that the heresy in question
was analogous to the Vaudois doctrines, this would prove only that before
Valdo there were persons holding something similar to what he after-wards
believed.” f650
Says Muston:
“The reader will observe that M. Schmidt grants almost all I desire, for it is by
no means necessary to prove that Valdo was descended from the Vaudois; it is
enough if the Vaudois be acknowledged to have existed before his time.” f651
Says Muston:
“About the middle of the sixth century a part of the bishops of Upper Italy
refused to adhere to the decision of the Council of Chalcedon, held in 553;
and in 590, nine of them separated from the Roman church, or rather they
solemnly renewed their protestation of independence of it. The bishops being
then elected by the people of their diocese, we may presume without doing
any violence to history, that the later were imbued with the same doctrines
and the same spirit. The truth of this state of things in Upper Italy, is attested
in the seventh century by a new bishop of Milan, Mansuetus, A.D. 677. To
combat the opinion that the pope is the head of the church he directs attention
to the fact that the Councils of Nice, Constantinople and many others had
been convoked by the emperors and not by the pope. This bishop himself was
not afraid to condemn Pope Honorius as a Monothelite. And this gives us a
new proof of the independence then enjoyed by the diocese of Milan, across
which the Vaudois named, would have been obliged to pass, in order to reach
Rome. The kingdom of Lombardy was itself solicitous for the preservation of