Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Child, an infidel, says:
“The members of their party were forbidden to receive presents from the
reigning powers. The corruptions resulting from the union of church and State
became their favorite theme of eloquence. They traced all degeneracy to the
splendor and luxury of the times, and railed at bishops whose avarice led them
to flatter princes.” f206
The Donatists, like the Novatians and the Montanists, in the following, were
Baptist. Petillian, one of their most eminent ministers, said:
“I baptize their members, as having an imperfect baptism, and as in reality
unbaptized. They will receive my members … as truly baptized, which they
would not do if they could discover any fault in our baptism. See, therefore,
that the baptism which I give you may hold so holy that not any sacriligious
enemy will have destroyed.” f207
So, Baptist baptism, only, has, in all ages and in all countries, been universally
conceded to be gold.
As to the action of baptism, as Benedict remarks:
“It may be proper to notify the readers that not only the Donatists, but all
others then, whether Catholics or dissenters, practiced immersion; and the
practice also was prevalent with all parties of requiring faith before baptism.”
f208
To the slander, that the Donatists believed in suicide, I let Benedict reply:
“In his correspondence with Dulcitius, he, Gaudentius, was requested to
surrender his church to the Catholics. In his reply to this request the resolute
bishop addressed the Tribune in these terms: ‘In this church, in which the
name of God and his Christ is always invoked in truth, as you have always
admitted, we will permanently remain as long as it may please God for us to
live.’ This is the whole of the threatened suicide of Gaudentius. The whole
story which has gone the rounds of church history originated in the perverted
language of Augustine. ‘You,’ said he to Gaudentius, ‘declared with other
words I grant, that you would burn your church, with yourself and people in
it.’” f209
In this contemptible and malicious charge, coming from where all the slanders
against that whole band of witnesses for Christ came, we see the necessity of
examining the charges against the Donatists and other ancient Christians with
great allowance and care.
Prof. Heman Lincoln, D.D., recently Professor of Church History in Newton
Theological Seminary, wrote: