WALDENSES, The, their soundness or unsoundness, Sylvester Hassell In the Protestant Confessions and writers of the sixteenth century many false doctrines are charged upon the Anabaptists— such as Manicheism, Millenarianism, Arianism, Arminianism, revolutionism, communism, asceticism, psycho-pannychism, (the sleep of the soul from death to the resurrection), universalism, libertinism, and opposition to holding civil offices, to capital punishment, to keeping inns or carrying on trades. In reference to these charges, it may be said that there were numerous sects of the Anabaptists, and some of them were fanatical and apparently insane; some even professing to be so inspired as to be able to prophesy and to set aside the Scriptures; and some going so far into error as to believe (and be willing to suffer martyrdom for that belief) that David Joris (who died at Basel in 1556) was a second Christ, greater and better than the Lord Jesus; and some who bore the name rushing into the abominable excesses of Munster.
But of those who were the most like their brethren in preceding and succeeding centuries, we have two Confessions of Faith—the Swiss Confession of 1527, and the Mennonite Confession of 1580. The seven articles of the Swiss Confession teach the baptism of believers; the exclusion of unworthy members; communion of baptized believers; separation from the impure churches and the world; the support of needy pastors by the voluntary offerings of the members; the condemnation of Christians holding civil offices, but allowing others to do so, and enjoining obedience to civil magistrates, except when their commands are opposed to religious convictions; and the disuse of oaths.
The forty articles of the Mennonite Confession reject also the use of arms, lawsuits, revenge, all kinds of violence and worldly amusements, and divorce, except in the case of adultery. The Swiss Confession seems to imply, and the Mennonite Confession plainly declares, that the atonement of Christ was universal, and that election is conditional.
While the true Anabaptists or Mennonites of the sixteenth century had great spiritual light on most other subjects, Bible Baptists of today believe that they were greatly in the dark in regard to the conditionality of salvation. The bitter persecutions inflicted upon them, inconsistently and unscripturally, by the Lutherans, Calvinists and Anglicans, who professed to believe the doctrine of predestination, did not incline them to receive that Bible doctrine, nor indeed did they seem to devote any particular attention to its consideration. It was the ordination of Divine Providence for the Protestant Reformers to consider and elucidate that important scriptural doctrine.
The defense of another most important point of truth, neglected by all other religionists, providentially devolved upon the Baptists of that century—and this point was the spirituality of the church of Christ, a New Testament principle utterly inconsistent with infant or vicious membership in the church, and with alliance of Church and State. This Bible principle was in the sixteenth century regarded by Catholic and Protestant alike, as the most intolerable heresies, urgently demanding the severest vengeance of the secular arm.
The Protestants lacked sufficient confidence in God to carry out to its logical results their own fundamental doctrine, that the Bible is the only and perfect standard of faith and practice, and the inevitable corollary of that doctrine—that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Instead of thoroughly maintaining this scriptural position, it is an indisputable fact that the Lutherans and Calvinists actually corrupted the principles and practices of large numbers of the old Bohemian Brethren and Waldenses, and induced thousands of these simple-minded people to unite with themselves in the abandonment of New Testament ground in reference to the proper subjects of baptism and the apostolic strictness of church discipline.
In the early part of the sixteenth century, when, on account of persecution, those entertaining Baptist sentiments lay concealed, according to Mosheim, in almost all the countries of Europe, the intelligence of the Protestant movement caused them to come joyfully and hopefully out of their hiding places, but only to meet with bitter disappointment; for, if flattery failed to entice them from the simplicity of the gospel of Christ, they were heathenishly punished with fines, imprisonment, torture, banishment and death, and that, too, by men who professed to advocate the principles of Christian liberty.” (Hassell’s History ppg 505, 506)