Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

historical and Bible Church Perpetuity because those churches of the past may
not have been or were not “in all points, great and small, without addition or
diminution,” what the best Baptist churches now are, would most vehemently
oppose applying the same test to English and to a large part of American
Baptists of to-day. By their test, from the standpoint of Baptists in the Southern
States, Baptists in the Northern are not genuine Baptist churches, because
Baptists North, excepting that of the Campbellites, recognize alien immersion
as valid, vice versa. Since man, “in all points, great and small, without addition
or diminution,” is not “in doctrine or practice what he ought to be,” the test, by
which these good brethren hesitate to acknowledge their Baptist brethren of the
past ages as Baptist churches, would deny that we are men and women.
In case that history related that in case the Montanist, the Donatist, the
Novatian, the Paulician, and other churches in the perpetuity line not only
retained in their membership one who had his “father’s wife,” but that they
“were puffed up and had not rather mourned “at such a state of things; that
they had teachers among them who taught that “except ye be circumcised, ye
cannot be saved,” that we “are justified by the law,” that held “the doctrine of
the Nicolaitanes,” “the doctrine of Balaam,” and were taught and led by “that
woman Jezebel,” without rebuke of the church, with what a great noise would
they be disowned as Baptists. Yet, such were several apostolic churches. —
Acts 15:1; 1 Corinthians 5:1,2; Galatians 5:4; Revelation 2:14-
15-22.
In reply to Dr. Armitage I proposed to find an error in apostolic and Baptist
churches of our own day equal to any one he could find in those claimed to be
in the Baptist line of Church Perpetuity. Of course, the good brother did not
accept the challenge. That challenge I make to any one. Yet weakhearted
Baptist brethren, as to Church. Perpetuity, are hesitating to own our own
Baptist ancestors because they may not have been or were not “in all points,
great and small, without addition or diminution,” “in doctrine and practice,”
just what the best Baptist churches now are! A very large part of the saints of
the Old Testament, tested by the lives of the best saints of to-day, were not
God’s people; and were they now living and living as they then lived, they
could retain membership in no orderly Baptist church.
Admitting that many of those in the line of Church Perpetuity could not be
held in “full fellowship” with our best churches now does not in the least
militate against their being regarded as real Baptist churches, since, as I have
just shown, the test of Dr. Armitage would cut off, as saints, the claim of the
saints of the Old Testament, of English and of many American Baptist
churches of to-day, as Baptist, and that its principle would cut off man’s claim
to be man. They were Baptist churches; but, like Old Testament saints, the