Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Providential call, but no one of them recognizes the others’ call as sufficiently
doing the work for which they were called, and none of them shows us what
wonderful Providence called them! — “the body, known by the appellation of
Bible Christians, began to assume an external, visible existence as a church,
about the year 1800, principally through the labors of Rev. William Cowherd.”
f61 of the German Seventh Day Baptists (?), William M. Fahnestock, M.D., of
that sect, says: “About the year 1694 a controversy arose in the Protestant
churches of Germany and Holland in which vigorous attempts were made to
reform some of the errors of the church. … In the year 1708, Alexander Mack
… and seven others, in Schwartzenau, Germany, began to examine carefully
and impartially the doctrines of the New Testament, and to ascertain what are
the obligations imposed on Christians; determined to lay aside all
preconceived” — the special plea of Campbellism — “opinions and traditional
observances. The result of their inquiries terminated in the formation of the
society, now called the Dunkers, or First Day German Baptists.” f62 Of a sect
called “The Free Communion Baptists” (?), Rev. A.D. Williams, one of its
ministers, writes: “At the close of the seventeenth century two pernicious
errors had crept into ecclesiastical matters in some parts of New England.” As
a result: “During the first-half of the eighteenth century a number of these
societies were formed in Rhode Island and Connecticut.” f63
Rev. Porter S. Burbank, of the “Free Will Baptists” (?), writes:
“Generally there was but one Baptist denomination in America till the origin
of the Free Will Baptists, a little more than sixty years ago. … The Free Will
Baptist connection in North America commenced A.D. 1780, in which year
its first church was organized.”
Then he proceeds to justify its organization, by such statements as:
“Churches were in a lax state of discipline, and much of the preaching was
little else than dull, moral essays, or prosy disquisitions on abstract doctrines.”
f64
John Winebrenner, the founder of the Winebrenarians, who call themselves
“The Church of God” — a suggestion for the Campbellites as that name is as
near as any name, which the Bible calls the church, nearer than most of the
names they have given their church — says:
“We shall accordingly notice … that religious community, or body of
believers, who profess to have come out from all human and unscriptural
organizations” — just what the Campbellite church professes — “who have
fallen back upon original grounds, and who wish, therefore, to be called by no
other distinctive name, collectively taken, than the Church of God.”