Baptists are Not Protestants Part 3 of 3 Conclusion

Christian wrote of the Anabaptists: “The beginnings of the Anabaptist movement is firmly rooted in the earlier centuries. The Baptists have a spiritual posterity of many ages of liberty-loving Christians. The movement was as old as Christianity; the Reformation gave an occasion for a new and varied history.”

The statement of Mosheim, who was a learned Lutheran historian, as to the origin of the Baptists, has never been successfully attacked. He says:

The origin of the sect, who from their repetition of baptism received in other communities, are called Anabaptists, but who are also denominated Mennonites, from the celebrated man to whom they owe a large share of their present prosperity, is involved in much obscurity [or, is hid in the remote depths of antiquity, as another translator has it.] For they suddenly started up, in various countries of Europe, under the influence of leaders of dissimilar character and views; and at a time when the first contests with the Catholics so engrossed the attention of all, that they scarcely noticed any other passing occurrences. The modern Mennonites affirm, that their predecessors were the descendants of those Waldenses who were oppressed by the tyranny of the Papists; and that, they were of a most pure offspring, and most averse from any inclinations toward sedition, as well as all fanatical views.
In the first place I believe the Mennonites are not altogether in the wrong, when they boast of a descent from these Waldenses, Petrobrusians, and others, who are usually styled witnesses for the truth before Luther…

Robert Barclay, a Quaker…, wrote:
We shall afterwards show the rise of the Anabaptists took place prior to the Reformation of the Church of England, and there are also reasons for believing that on the Continent of Europe small hidden Christian societies, who have held many of the opinions of the Anabaptists, have existed from the times of the apostles. In the sense of the direct transmission of Divine Truth, and the true nature of spiritual religion, it seems probable that these churches have a linage or succession more ancient than that of the Roman Church (Barclay, The Inner Life of the Societies of the Commonwealth, 11,12, London, 1876).

These statements might be worked out in circumstantial detail. Roman Catholic historians and officials, in some instances eye-witnesses, testify that the Waldenses and other ancient communions were the same as the Anabaptists. The Augustinian, Bartholomaeus von Usingen, set forth in the year 1529, a learned polemical writing against the “Rebaptizers,” in which he says that “Anabaptists, or Catabaptists, have gone forth from Picardism” (Usingen, Contra Rebaptizantes. Cologne, 1529). The Mandate of Speier, April 1529, declares that the Anabaptists were hundreds of years old and had been often condemned (Keller, Die Waldenser, 125, Leipzig, 1886). Father Gretscher, who edited the works of Rainerio Sacchoni, after recounting the doctrines of the Waldenses, says: “This is a true picture of the heretics of our age, particularly of the Anabaptists;” Baronius, the most learned and laborious historian of the Roman Catholic Church, says: “The Waldenses were Anabaptists” (D’Anvers, Baptism, 153). Baronius has a heavy and unreadable chronicle, but valuable for reference to original documents.

Cardinal Hosius, a member of the Council of Trent, A.D. 1560, in a statement often quoted, says:

If the truth of religion were to be judged by the readiness and boldness of which a man of any sect shows in suffering, then the opinion and persuasion of no sect can be truer and surer than that of the Anabaptists since there have been none for these twelve hundred years past, that have been more generally punished or that have more cheerfully and steadfastly undergone, and even offered themselves to the most cruel sorts of punishment than these people. (Hosins, Letters, Apud Opera, 112-113, Baptist Magazine CVIII, 278, May 1826).

That Cardinal Hosius dated the history of the Baptists back twelve hundred years, i.e. 360, is manifest, for in yet another place the Cardinal says;
The Anabaptists are a pernicious sect. Of which kind the Waldenses brethren seem to have been, although some of them lately, as they testify in their apology, declare that they will no longer re-baptize, as was their former custom; nevertheless, it is certain that many of them retain their custom, and have united with the Anabaptists (Hosius, Works of the Heresaeics of our Times, Bk. I. 431. Ed. 1584).

From any standpoint that this Roman Catholic testimony is viewed it is of great importance. The Roman Catholics were in active opposition to the Baptists, through the Inquisition they had been dealing with them for some centuries; they had every avenue of information; they had spared no means to inform themselves, and, consequently, were accurately conversant with the facts. These powerful testimonies to the antiquity of the Baptists are peculiarly weighty. The Baptists were no novelty to the Roman Catholics of the Reformation period.

The testimony of Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformers, is conclusive. Luther was never partial to the Baptists. As early as 1522, he says: “The Anabaptists have been for a long time spreading in Germany” (Michelet, Life of Luther, 99). The able and eloquent Baptist, the late Dr. E.T. Winkler, commenting on this statement says: “Nay, Luther even traces the Anabaptists back to the days of John Huss, and apologetically admits that eminent Reformer was one of them.”

Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer, is more specific than Luther. From the beginning of his work he was under the necessity of dealing with the Anabaptist movement. He says:

The institution of Anabaptism is no novelty, but for three hundred years has caused great disturbance in the church, and has acquired such strength that the attempt in this age to contend with it appears futile for a time.

No definite starting place can be ascribed to the Baptists of the Reformation, for they sprang up in many countries all at once. (Christian, Vol. 1, pp.83-86)


Works Cited

Armitage, Thomas. A History of the Baptists. Watertown, Wisconsin: Baptist Heritage Press, 1988.

Christian, John. A History of the Baptists. Texarkana, Texas: Bogard Press, 1926.

Estep, William. The Anabaptist Story. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996.

Hershberger, Guy, ed. The Recovery of the Anabaptist Visions. Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1957.

Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.