Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

The origin of the charge is given by Sir Wm. Jones:
“One of their imputed errors is that they rejected the whole of the Old
Testament writings; a charge which was also brought by the writers of the
Catholic school against the Waldenses and others with equal regard to truth
and justice. But this calumny is easily accounted for. The advocates of
popery, to support their innovations and usurpations in the kingdom of Christ,
were driven to the Old Testament for authority, adducing the kingdom of
David for example. And when their adversaries rebutted the argument,
insisting that the parallel did not hold, for that the kingdom of Christ, which is
not of this world, is a very different state of things from the kingdom of
David, their opponents accused them of giving up the divine authority of the
Old Testament. Upon similar principles it is not difficult to vindicate the
Paulicians from other charges brought against them.’”
Says Prof. Geo. P. Fisher, D.D.: The Paulicians “did not oppose marriage.” f231
To the charge that they denied baptism and the supper, I reply,
(1.) they were accused of this by enemies, who, like Campbellites, were unable
to see the differences between denying the ordinances as ordinances and
denying them as saving institutions.
(2.) History contradicts the charge. Kurtz does not so much as notice this
charge. Neither does Wadington. See their histories. Jones says:
“In these churches of the Paulicians, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s
supper they held to be peculiar to the communion of the faithful; i.e. restricted
to believers.” f232
Gibbon is quoted: “In practice, or at least in theory, of the sacraments, the
Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship, and the
gospels were, in their judgments, the baptism and communion of the faithful.”
f233 The reader will observe
(a) that Gibbon is very uncertain as to what was the position of the Paulicians.
(b) His statement, that the “words of the gospel were baptism and communion
of the faithful,” taken in connection with the statement that they “were inclined
to abolish” the “sacraments as visible objects of worship,” implies that while
they observed the ordinances they did not look to them for a medium of
salvation, but looked to the words of the gospel. Being a poor infidel and thus
blind to spiritual things, Gibbon understood this to mean rejecting the
ordinances.
Mosheim: