Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“The doctrine of the Donatists was comformable to that of the church, as even
their adversaries confess, nor were their lives less exemplary than that of other
Christian societies, if we accept the enormous conduct of the Circumcelliones
which the greater part of the sect regarded with the utmost detestation and
abhorrence. The crime, therefore, of the Donatists lay properly in the
following things: In their declaring the church of Africa, which adhered to
Caecilianus fallen from the dignity and privileges of a true church and
deprived of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, on account of the offenses with which
the new bishop and Felix of Aptungus, who had consecrated him, were
charged; in their pronouncing all the churches which held communion with
that of Africa, corrupt and polluted; in maintaining that the sanctity of their
bishops gave their community alone the full right to be considered as the true,
and pure, the holy church; and in their avoiding all communication with other
churches from an apprehension of contracting their impurity and corruption.
This erroneous principle was the source of that most shocking
uncharitableness and presumption that appeared in their conduct to other
churches. Hence they pronounced the sacred rites and institutions void of all
virtue and efficiency among those Christians who were not precisely of their
sentiments and not only rebaptized those who came over to their party from
other churches, but oven with respect to those who had been ordained
ministers of the gospel, observed the severe custom either of depriving thorn
of their office, or obliging them to be ordained the second time.” f159
Who can not see in this the picture of the Baptists of our own times and see the
denunciation of Mosheim the very words of present Baptist opponents?
With Kurtz, Mosheim thus exonerates the Donatists of the violence of the
Circumcelliones:
“It cannot be made to appear from any records of undoubted authority that the
bishops of that faction, those at least who had any reputation for piety and
virtue, either approved the proceedings, or stirred up the violence of this
odious rabble.” f160
“‘You,’ said the Donatists, ‘do not trove your charges against us, relative to
the Circumcelliones.’ ‘Neither,’ said Augustine, ‘do you prove your charge
against the church’”
— thus admitting the charge not proven.
“Strange as it may appear, neither in Mosheim nor Milner, nor any other
writer who has made some lame apologies for this reputed confederacy, do we
find any mention of the important fact that the whole body of the Donatists,
both their bishops and their laity, disclaimed any knowledge of such a race of
men as the Circumcelliones, or any concern with them.” f161
While this violence was, perhaps, unjustifiable, yet it is a question as to
whether, had we as full a history of that event as of the peasants’ war of