Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“They rejected baptism and in a more especial manner, the baptism of infants,
as a ceremony that was in no respect essential to salvation. They rejected, for
the same reason, the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.” f234
Whatever Mosheim may mean to teach, this statement must be taken in the
light of its phrase, “As a ceremony that was in no respect essential to
salvation.” Just as in cent. 11, part 2, chap. 5, sec. 4, he says: “They considered
marriage as a pernicious institution, and absurdly condemned without
distinction all connubial bonds,” which a foot note to the same page thus
explains:
“The eleventh article is scarcely credible, at least, as it is here expressed. It is
more than reason-able to suppose these mystics did not absolutely condemn
marriage, but only held celibacy in high esteem, as a mark of superior sanctity
and virtue.”
The truth is, while this note hits the mark as to their not rejecting marriage, it
misses it as to the explanation of the charge. The explanation in this and in the
case of baptism and the supper is: The Romanists accused them of rejecting
both marriage and the two ordinances because they denied them as sacraments
— rejecting them only as saving institutions. Mosheim’s explanation of their
meaning, in cent. 9, part 2, chap. 5, sec. 6, yet more clearly shuts us up to this
interpretation:
“They refused to celebrate the holy institution of the Lord’s supper; for as
they looked upon many precepts and injunctions of the gospel to be of merely
figurative and parabolic nature, so they understood by the bread and wine,
which Christ is said to have administered to his disciples at his last supper, the
divine discourses of the Savior, which are a spiritual food and nourishment
for the soul, and fill it with repose, satisfaction and delight.”
Taking baptism and the supper as “merely figurative and parabolic,”
symbolizing the great truths of the gospel, is the Baptist position of all ages,
for which, by those who look to them as saviors, from Campbellism to its
mother Rome, Baptists have been unceasingly misrepresented and reproached.
Mosheim makes the same blundering interpretation in cent. 12, part 2, chap. 5,
sec. 4, where, treating them as Catharists — from not knowing they were
Paulicians — he says, they held “that baptism and the Lord’s supper were
useless institutions, destitute of all saving power.” Just as Campbellites and
other Romanists, to-day, charge Baptists with making these two ordinances
“useless,” simply because they can see no use in obeying Jesus unless the
obedience saves from hell. Benedict gives us an illustration of the same
charge, made in a discussion, against the Baptists, at a time when no one
doubts that they baptized and observed the supper. In this discussion, between
a Baptist and a Romanist, the Romanist says: