1 0F 4: Tracing "The Form of Government" Baptist-like Christians held throughout Church History.

1 0F 4: Tracing "The Form of Government"
Baptist-like Christians held throughout Church History.

Revelation xii. 6: "The woman fled into the wilderness."

Let us attempt to observe and trace any interconnected
Historical Succession of the Distinctive Principles
held by Baptist-Doctrine-like Christian believers,
who have organized into local assemblies, by the New Testament pattern,

and who have worshipped and served God, since the Apostolic times of the Bible,
even at the cost of their own lives, and throughout our current New Testament Age,

as being similar, in principal, to the Landmark or Historic Baptist Churches, of today.

I. We clearly trace among them the polity, or Form of Government,
as being similar, in principal, to the Landmark or Historic Baptist Churches, of today.

The principle of Church Independence:

Independence of State and hierarchy was universally maintained
and no higher authority than the local church was acknowledged.

Insubordination to bishops and councils was their conspicuous and unpardonable offence.

Errors of doctrine and even immoralities might be tolerated, but schism was anathematized and persecuted to the death. They maintained, therefore, a position of irreconcilable hostility to the established order.

The Montanists universally rejected the authority and ridiculed the pretensions of Rome.

The Novatians not only refused subjection to her authority, but even denied the validity of her sacraments and ordination.

The Donatists maintained total separation from her. They would not submit to edicts of emperors, nor to the more than imperial power of the eloquence of Augustine, nor would they accept the concessions of ecclesiastical councils; but maintained, as at the great conference with the Catholics at Carthage, that the "Catholic is not the true church of Christ."

When the Emperor Constantine tried to conciliate them by presents, Donatus replied to the envoy in the memorable words: "What has the emperor to do with religion?"

The Paulicians jealously guarded the equality of the ministry and the supremacy of the membership.

The Bogomiles, absenting themselves from the assemblies of the hierarchy to attend upon the ministry of men who were distinguished from the congregation neither in dress nor manner of life, rejected the rights and orders of the established priesthood, citing against them the woes pronounced by the Saviour, while humbly claiming the beatitudes for their persecuted brethren.

The Petrobrusians and Henricians, impervious to the appeals of Peter Venerable, expostulating with them against neglecting Catholic worship, persisted in their neglect, maintaining independent worship and discipline, even to martyrdom.

The first thesis of the Albigenses at the Conference of Montreal, A. D. 1206, like that maintained by the Donatists against Augustine eight hundred years before, declared that the Roman Catholic Church was not the bride of Christ, but the harlot of Babylon. Another declared that the Roman Catholic polity is neither good, nor holy, nor established by Christ. When, at the close of the Conference,
they were condemned by the Bishop of Orleans as schismatics, destroying the unity of the church, in holy indignation they denounced him as a heretic, a heartless persecutor, a ravening wolf, the priests as false witnesses, the Pope as Antichrist.

Hume says: "These most innocent and inoffensive of mankind were denounced as heretics by the Pope, because they rejected the rights of the church and opposed the influence of the clergy." They maintained the two apostolic offices in the church, and the independence of its worship and polity, but acknowledged no bishop but Christ.

The Waldenses were excommunicated by Pope Lucius III for rejecting the Lordship of Antichrist, all clerical titles and offices not contained in the New Testament, and insisting on their independence in worship and discipline.

The Lollards maintained the same strenuous protest against the encroachments of the Papacy in England, demanding freedom of worship and the independence of the churches. It was only to maintain religious rights that this and earlier communities entered into local and general movements for civil liberty.

Resistance to the State for the sake of religious liberty is not only the seed of all ecclesiastical reforms, but the germ of civil liberty and free institutions. There never can be free states without free churches.

Civil liberty can only keep pace with religious liberty. Civil rights can never be maintained, except as they are claimed as God-given and inalienable. It was thus that these religious communities, forced into intense and irreconcilable antagonism to the Papacy in spite of their peace principles, became most prominent in all movements for civil liberty throughout Europe.


It was in the preaching of John Ball, the mad Lollard of Kent, that "England first listened to the knell of feudalism and the declaration of the rights of man." The prominent part of the Lollards in the uprising of the English peasants in the fourteenth century was taken by the Taborites in the Hussite wars of the fifteenth century, and by the Anabaptists in the German Peasants' War of the sixteenth century, and by the English Baptists in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, and by American Baptists in the American War of Independence of the eighteenth century,
all primarily in pursuit of soul liberty and church independence.

The famous Twelve Articles which united the peasantry of Europe as around a Common standard, and in comprehensiveness of statement and religious spirit is equal to any declaration of rights ever written, flowed, says Stern, from the pen of Hubmeyer, a Baptist preacher.

The man whose name is synonymous with this movement, loved by the people for his stern virtues and resistless eloquence, hated by the nobles and devoted by them to hideous torture, was Thomas Munzer, another Anabaptist preacher.

Though the undisciplined hordes of peasants were easily routed with bloody slaughter, their principles of civil and religious liberty, inspired by faith and defended by the Scriptures, had been forced upon the attention of the world. In the long and bloody wars for the independence of the Netherlands, William the Silent found through the darkest hours in the Dutch Baptists the most generous support.

In the triumphant uprising of the English people against royal and prelatical tyranny,
Cromwell elevated Baptists to the highest positions in field and cabinet.

In the formative period of the American Constitution,
it was a petition of a Baptist Association in Virginia
that secured the recognition in that document of complete religious liberty.

Thus free States have arisen through free churches.

Civil liberty has been established through religious liberty.

The Dutch republic and civilization, Magna Charta and English liberties, and the Declaration of Independence and the free institutions of America have arisen from the defense of religious liberty and independent churches.

So pregnant has been The principle of Church Independence,
maintained by martyr communities before the Reformation,
and identifying them in the Succession of Apostolic, Baptist-Doctrine-like Churches,
and The Landmark Baptist, and Historic Baptist Churches, of today..

Adapted from:
The Church in the Wilderness;
or, The Baptists Before the Reformation
by W.[illiam] W.[allace] Everts, Jr.

Introduction to 1986 Edition
By Medford Caudill

Revelation xii. 6: "The woman fled into the wilderness."