Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

first propagandists on Holland soil, of these views, in their flight northward
from persecution in France and Italy. It has been said by one of the early
Mennonite writers that the oldest families of the Mennonites, in certain towns
of Holland, had names of Waldensian origin, and claimed to be the progeny
of such exiled forefathers. Venema, himself a Pedobaptist, living in Holland, a
theologian and scholar of such eminence that Adam Clarke said of his …
Commentary on the Psalms, that it was a Goliath’s sword as described by
David, ‘There is none like it;’ — this eminent scholar, beyond the reach of
denominational bias, and speaking of the ancient history of his own country,
ascribes to the Baptists of Holland an origin earlier than the time of the
Munster orgies, where too many would cradle them.” f695
Bishop Latimer, … speaking of some Ana-baptist martyrs from Holland …
makes the remark: “that these glad sufferers at the stake were but like those old
heretics, the Donatists of early ages.” f696
Venema, above quoted, says:
“The immediate origin of the Mennonites is, in my judgment, more justly to
be traced to the Waldensians and to those of the Ana-baptists who wished a
renewal of the innocence and purity of the primitive church, and that the
reformation of the church should be carried farther than Luther and Calvin
had arranged it. The Waldensians, apart from the question as to the origin of
Christ’s human nature, in the chief articles had, in almost all things, like
views with the Mennonites, as is evident from their history as I stated it in the
twelfth century. … To find other beginnings as the source of Mennonism is
needless, much less those inviduous ones, placing them in fellowship with the
men of Munster and other like fanatics. From these they cleared themselves,
both in old time, and now through a long space of years have so vindicated
and justified themselves, in life and institutions that longer to confound them
with that class can be done only by notable injustice and gravest insult.” f697
Again says Dr. Williams:
“In 1500, at the opening of the century, when Martin was ignorant as yet of
the Bible and soon to enter an Augustinian monastery, the Moravian brethren
possessed two hundred places of worship. They were the inheritors of the
labors of Huss and Jerome, of British Lollards, of Wickliffe and Waldo and
laborers yet earlier than these and whose rewards are safe with God.” f697
Again: “There were Anabaptists and Anabaptist martyrs in Holland before
Menno himself had left the Roman communion.” f698 Says Armitage:
“The great Baptist movement on the Continent originated with no particular
man nor in any one place. It seems to have sprung up in many places about
the same time, and its general growth was wonderful, between 1520 and 1526,
half a century.” f699