Perversions of Popery
Several months ago, while preaching on the doctrine of the church, I took time to brush up and hone my skills in this critically important doctrine. I have never made apologies for being a Baptist and have often said if others who disagree are right, I will gladly abandon my dogmatism to be right as well. We should favor no doctrines or insist upon any teachings that cannot be supported by the scriptures.
As I was studying, I was reminded of an old book I have had for years. It was passed to me by my father when I inherited his library. This book was written by one of his professors in Bible college and is entitled The Church and the Ordinances. The author was Buell H. Kazee, a well-respected churchman who was born in 1900 and passed away in 1976. I barely remember him, but I do remember visits to his home and his church. Through the years, his book has been a great help in understanding some of the nuanced issues of the church and how it was formed. I cannot say I agree with all his conclusions, but I am impressed by his willingness to arrest his dogmatism on points of scripture that are not inarguably clear. There are times he expresses an opinion from the preponderance of evidence but still admitted there is room to adjust and accept better arguments. I must be clear, however, that none of his unsure positions affect major doctrines of the faith. These are more of the sort that we cannot know as all the practices of the church were in the developmental stage in the New Testament. Not until the New Testament canon was complete was the church fully formed without apostolic oversight.
Many who have attended Berean for years know that I have long been a student of Baptist history. While studying Kazee’s book, I did further research as I found his book was also posted on the Baptist History homepage maintained by the John Leland Baptist College. While visiting this site, I read through some of the offerings and found a link to Baptist periodicals and journals written in the 19th century. With curiosity, I opened a link to a scanned copy of one of these journals published in the year 1810. This copy was a British journal that began with a history of Baptists in England. Prominently displayed was the outright rejection of Roman Catholicism’s claim that they were the first to bring the gospel to the British Isles. Three headings caught my attention: The First British Christians Were Baptists, The First British Martyrs Were Baptists, and The First British Protestants Were Baptists. Obviously, the early 19th century Baptists did not believe the Reformation was the beginning of people called Baptists. Although not known by this name until the 17th century, all notable church historians agree that Baptist doctrine is found in every century to the first. The gospel of Christ reached England before the end of the first century and thus churches of England held Baptist beliefs more than 300 years before Augustine began persecuting Baptists in the 4th and 5th centuries.
When Augustine arrived, he tried to convince and convert the Saxons to Catholicism. The Saxons would not give up their pagan practices, so pragmatic popery sanctioned their idolatry. To pull the Saxons into the Roman church, Pope Gregory issued an order to Augustine. The Baptist journal quotes Gregory with alarm: “Whereas there is a custom among the Saxons to slay abundance of oxen, and sacrifice them to the Devil; you must not abolish that custom, but appoint a new festival to be kept either on the day of the consecration of churches, or on the birthday of the Saints, whose relics are deposited there; and on those days, the Saxons may be allowed to make arbors round their temples, changed into churches, to kill their oxen, and to feast as they did while they were yet Pagans!” The journal commented, “Nor do we consider it at all impossible, that Austin (Augustine), to secure his popularity, might now and then sit down with his disciples, and eat at the devil’s table.”
The article then comments that church and state sanctioned these pagan feasts and thus Roman Catholicism became the state church. Further, as a reward for his meritorious services, Augustine was made a saint. “If anyone should observe, that at this time Popery was not arrived at the full measure of the stature of Antichrist; we reply, that in its earliest infancy, Popery was a Mystery of Iniquity.” (emphasis in the original)
I will spend more time perusing these periodicals. We are aghast that the accepted history of the church by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike is that Rome was once the true church. Read this testimony of the early Baptist churches again. From “…its earliest infancy, Popery was a Mystery of Iniquity.” These Baptists did not buy the fantasy of imagined Roman Catholic history and still had congregations extant from the earliest days of the gospel to refute it. We Bereans steadfastly refuse to have our history defined by 16th century Protestantism. Did we protest? Yes, but not from within Catholicism but apart from it in its earliest days as it sucked up pagans under Constantine and formed them into the murderous monstrosity of the Dark Ages and the corruption-riddled perversion of the present.
These historical observations are pertinent to the identification of the true New Testament church. Christ promised His church would prevail—never apostatizing and never needing a complete overhaul of reformation. Not reforming, but always conforming to the doctrines of Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone, and the prophets and apostles in whom the foundation was laid.
Pastor V. Mark Smith