Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – The Waldenses – Baptist Peculiarity SIX – Part 13 of the series

Thomas E Kresal Admin · February 29 at 6:53 AM February 29, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – The Waldenses – Baptist Peculiarity SIX – Part 13 of the series

Sixth : Baptists observe the Lord’s Supper at his table in his kingdom. It was also be found that the ancient Waldenses possessed this peculiarity also. For the discussion of the communion question, the reader is referred to chapter thirteenth of this work. The Waldenses were often called Puritans because of their strenuous advocacy of purity in doctrine and communion. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Catholic clergy instigated Uladislaus, King of Bohemia, to issue an edict to force the Waldenses, in his kingdom, to commune with the Calixtines or Catholics.

In regard to this edict, Mr. Jones remarks: “At first the states would not allow this edict the force of law, go jealous were the Bohemians of their liberties, and it took four years to bring them to consent to a statute which prohibited the ‘United Brethren’ from holding any religious assemblies, public or private; commanded that their meeting-houses should all be shut up, that they should not, be allowed either to preach or print, and that within a given time they should all hold religious communion with either the Calixtines or the Catholics.” (Jones church history, p.316)

Not long after the passage of this cruel edict, some of these Waldenses were committed to the flames because they would neither commune with the Catholics nor with those that did commune with Rome. By this we learn that the true Waldenses were so strict in communion that they preferred death by burning to the indorsement of error by communing with false churches.

In their treatise on Antichrist, the ancient Waldenses said: “We hold communion and maintain unity one with another, freely and uprightly, having no other object to propose herein but purely and singly to please the Lord, and seek the salvation of our souls.” (Jones Church Hist. p. 254)

The Waldenses did not hold communion with Antichrist, but with one another. The fact that the Waldenses maintained that the only true church was among themselves, furnishes evidence that they did not commune with others; for they regarded communion as a church ordinance in the kingdom of Christ; they could not, therefore, give or receive the Lord’s Supper beyond the limits of the church.

Peculiarity SIX continues March 2, 2020

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: “Baptist Succession” by D.B. Ray, 1871 Edition, pg. 364-65