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Historically Baptists Are Not Protestants
Protestants date from the sixteenth century. They are the Lutherans, the Reformed, and others who were once Roman
Catholics and left the Roman Catholic faith to start denominations of their own. The Baptists never left the Roman
Catholic church as did Luther, Calvin and Zwingli. They never left because they were never in. They did not begin
their existence at the time of the Reformation, but hundreds of years prior to the Reformation.
Baptists make no effort to trace a historical succession back to the age of the Apesties. Their only claim is that
at every age in church history there have been groups that have held to the same doctrines that Baptists hold
today. These groups may or may not have been connected and they have been known by various names. There were the
Montanists (150 A.D.), the Novatians (240 A.D.), Donatists (305 A.D.), Albigenses (1022 A.D.), Waldensians (1170
A.D.), and the name Anabaptists came into prominence just before the time of the Protestant Reformation. Full
historical data immediately refutes the view that there was only one religious group -- the Roman Catholic church
-until the time of Martin Luther. Anyone who claims this simply has not done his homework.
l wish to purposely introduce non-Baptist testimony to the great antiquity of Baptist people. Cardinal Hosius
(1504-1579) was a Roman Catholic prelate who had as his life work the investigation and suppression of non-Catholic
groups. By Pope Paul IV he was designated one of the three papal presidents of the famous Council of Trent. Hosius
carried on vigorously the work of the counter-reformation. If anyone in post-reformation times knew the doctrines
and history of nonCatholic groups, it was Hosius. Cardinal Hosius says, "Were it not that the Baptists have been
grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past 1,200 years, they would swarm in greater number
than all the Reformers" (Letters Apud Opera, pp.112, 113). Note carefully that this knowledgeable Catholic scholar
has spoken of the vicious persecution Baptists have endured, that he clearly distinguishes them from the Reformers,
and that he dates them 1,200 years before the Protestant Reformation.
It is also evident that the Baptists were not Protestants because they were fiercely persecuted by the Protestant
Reformers and their followers. Uncounted thousands of them lost their goods, their lands, and their lives in these
persecutions. Konred Grebel died in prison in 1526. Felix Manz was drowned by the authorities at Zurich in 1527.
Noted Baptist leader Baithauser Hubmaier was burned alive at the stake in Vienna March 10, 1528. Three days later
his wife was drowned by being thrown over the Danube bridge with a stone tied to her neck. The facts
abundantly attest that historically Baptists are not Protestants.
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