Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“Many of the Welsh writings, which were far more important than gold, were
destroyed about the year 285.” f93
“Diocletian’s strict orders were to burn up every Christian, every meeting
house and every scrap of written paper belonging to the Christians, or
anything that gave any account of their rise and progress.” f94
Modern misrepresentations and slanders of Baptists illustrate the sifting
necessary in taking the accounts of ancient Baptists as given by their enemies.
Thus, in a letter from Leipsig, Germany, January 4, 1881, Prof. D.G. Lyon, of
Harvard University, wrote:
“Closely akin, indeed, another form of persecution, is the social ostracism
which Baptists here must endure. They are regarded as the lineal descendants
of the Anabaptists of Luther’s time, and the word ‘Wiedertaufer’ f95 is the
German synonym for all that is low and evil. Persons who have social
standing would lose it by visiting Baptist churches. A lady who attended a
Baptist Sunday-school festival in Hanover, two weeks ago, was not willing
for her name to be known. She had heard that it was there customary to turn
the gas off and indulge in general kissing. In another place a lady whose
husband intended visiting a Baptist meeting was fearful lest he should be won
to Baptist views. When he persisted she warned him not to drink any of the
coffee — which is sometimes served — evidently supposing that the coffee
contained some secret winning power.”
If in scholarly Germany such slanders are now made and credited against the
Baptists, what of the ages of darkness preceding!
If the reader asks: “Why the diffiulty of tracing a succession of Baptist
churches from apostolic time to ourown?” in the destruction of records, the
forgeries and the slanders of Baptist enemies he has the answer to his question.
3. The degree of proof necessary to historically prove a continuity of Baptist
churches from the apostolic age to the present.
Prof. Haeckel, an infidel and an eminent scientist, says:
“What do we know of the essential nature of electricity, or the imponderables
generally, whose brief existence is not proved? What of ether, upon which our
science of light and optics is founded; and what of the atomic theory on which
our chemistry is built? We do not certainly know these things.”
Yet what scientific man would question these sciences? Who can prove the
present animal and vegetable world, by every link, to have descended from the
creation? Who can prove the facts, link by link, in the doctrine of the
correlation of forces and the conservation of energy? Who can prove his
descent from Adam? More: Who can prove his genealogy ten generations back
— even five? Yet who would deny these things until historically proven, year