Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

churches of the first centuries, and those of the present, they were colored by
their times.
By the test of Dr. Armitage and of all other weak-kneed brethren on Church
Perpetuity, Baptist churches have no continuity from Christ to the present time,
and, but few now known as Baptist churches are really Baptist churches, But
dropping their test and applying the test by which we recognize, though not
what they ought to have been or what they ought to be, all churches of the first
century and the English and the American Baptist churches as genuine Baptist
churches, Baptist churches have a continuous existence from the first century
to the present.
That all true Baptists, when the true test is applied, with scarcely a dissenting
voice among them, agree that Baptist churches have never ceased to exist since
the first century, I believe true. Thus, Dr. Armitage, in the sentence I quoted
from his letter to me, as much as says he believes in Church Perpetuity:
“From early in the third century to about the twelfth, there was scarcely a
denomination of Christians in any land, in all points, great and small, who
would be held in full fellowship with the regular Baptist churches of to-day.”
“Scarcely,” as in the sentence: “If the righteous scarcely be saved” — 1
Peter 4:18 — implies that those churches, not-withstanding their incidental
errors, were essentially Baptist churches.
At the expiration of from one to five centuries from now — saying nothing of
from ten to fifteen — to prove from a historical contrast of the life and the
practices of the churches of this century with those of that time that, in:
“doctrine, practice and polity” they were not,: “in all points, great and small,”
such as could be fellow-shipped by each other, were they contemporaneous,
would be an easy thing to do. In other words, by Dr. Armitage’s test, by which
he denies Baptist Church Perpetuity, the superior life of the Baptist churches of
a future age proves the same churches of the past age were not Baptist
churches.
I thank God that the history of the church shows such growth in the divine
knowledge and such improvement towards the high standard of perfect New
Testament life that future churches hesitate to own their own denomination of
the past. For the same cause, in the future world, to own we are the same
children of God that we were here will be yet more difficult. — See
Ephesians 5:27.
Only by a man’s habits or regular course of life are we to know he is not a
child of God. Likewise, isolated, occasional and brief aberrations, even in
essential matters, can not alter the nature of a church or prove it not a Baptist
church. In the preceding remarks and Scripture references, in this chapter, this