Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“If you behold the cheerfulness in suffering persecutions the Anabaptists run
before all other heretics. If you will have regard to their number it is like that
in multitude. They would swarm above all others if they were not grievously
plagued and cut off with the knife of persecution. If you have an eye to outward
appearance of godliness, both the Lutherans and Zwinglians must grant
that they far surpass them. If you will be moved by the boasting of the word
of God, those be not less bold than Calvin to preach, and their doctrine must
stand above all the glory of the world; must stand invincible above all power,
because it is not their word, but the word of the living God. Neither do they
cry less boldly than Luther that with their doctrine they shall judge angels,
and surely, however, so many have written against this heresy whether they
were Catholics or heretics or reformers, they were able to overthrow it, not so
much by the testimony of Scripture as by the authority of the church.” f711
Hossius farther says:
“If the truth of religion were to be judged of by the readiness and cheerfulness
which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinion and persuasion
of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptists, since there have
been none, for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally
punished, or that have more steadfastly under-gone, and even offered
themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people. … The
Anabaptists are a pernicious sect, of which kind the Waldensian brethren
seem to have been. Nor is this heresy a modern thing, for it existed in the time
of Austin.” f712
Thus this great Romanish scholar concedes the sameness of the Waldenses and
Anabaptists, and that they already existed in 354, the time of Austin.
The Romish Bishop Baltes, of Alton, Ill., indirectly concedes the apostolic
descent of the Baptists, when he thus concedes he cannot find any human head
for them:
“If you go to the dictionaries of religion you will find the name of the founder
of every other denomination than the Catholic. The only objection I have met
with as to this proposition is a Baptist; he contended that you could not find
any one who founded the Baptist denomination.”
The Bishop did not so much as venture to deny this statement. f713
Hase:
“The Waldenses were, reduced in numbers because they had been burned by
their persecutors, but some congregations still remained in the south of France
and in the secluded valleys of Piedmont. … In the commencement of the
fifteenth century heretical congregations of almost every kind were scattered
and broken up. But it was only in secret that those forms of opposition were
maintained or organized which in the sixteenth century came forward under
the name of Anabaptists.” f714