How will your church celebrate the Reformation?

The Montanists were a charismatic group who had many strange doctrines including believing in Venal sins and mortal sins later incorporated into the RCC. Before the reformation the Waldenses accepted the mass once a year. After the reformation they seemed to mostly be absorbed into Lutherism. At the diet of Worms, Luther was accused of being a Hussite. He denied it, but then realised he did not know what the Hussites believed, so he went to the library and read up on Huss. The next day he admitted that he was a Hussite. The Hussites were close to the Waldensians The Waldensians gave in the Rome before the Hussites.

 

Mine was 8 volumes 1846. Shetterton and co were in Vol 5. My grandson has it now. The Evangelical Library in London had a three volume set in old English black letter type. I think it was 1700 and something. Some of the pages had been affected by damp in the past.

If you look up Andrew Hewet died July 4th 1533, he was from my former hometown of Faversham, about 8 miles from here. It was called Feversham then. In the Domesday Book it was called Favreshant.

 

Humphrey Middleton and Co also met in Faversham before they went to Essex.

 

Wesley said he thought the Montanists were misrepresented.

 

That's because crybabies wanted any dislike or disagree emoticons removed.
There should be a full range of emoticons.

 

They want to dislike the post so they can only indicate it by laughing, or by using the prayer emoticon to say......your post missed the point so badly onlybprayer can restore you to your right mind.

 

The Martyrs Memorial, Canterbury

Only about 9 miles from here.

 

Ahh yes, the Novatians and Donatists.

That true baptist faith which said that after baptism, if you sinned, you could not repent and were out of the church.

Or the anabaptists, which taught sinless perfection

From the Augsberg Confession Article 12

The Novatians also are condemned, who would not absolve such as had fallen after Baptism, though they returned to repentance.

 

http://providerfiles.thedms.co.uk/eandapics/TK/3039762_1_1.jpg

Westgate Tower in Canterbury where a number of Martyrs were starved to death

 

I did read somewhere that Anabaptists were sprinklers and Catabaptists were dippers,

 

Obviously, all Christians can trace their faith back to the time of Christ and the Apostles. We are all Christ's posterity. It's when we try to make the incipient aspects of the faith into denominations that have lasted two millennia that we run into problems. One of the creeds of the Reformation was Semper Reformanda — Always Reforming. The Reformation did awaken truths were all but dormant. I say "all but" because movement such as the Waldensians (which you mentioned) held on to core parts of the Gospel, much to the disdain of Rome. Baptist faith and practice found itself coming out of the Reformation and took two distinct tracks. Today there are more types of Baptist groups than Baskin Robbins has flavors! The part about Landmarkism that causes me some concern is their attempt, along with Eastern Orthodoxy, to trace themselves back to the incipient stages of the New Testament Church*. If you are part of Landmarkism than you know the movement generally considers other denominations, including Baptists, of not being true local churches. You may not believe that, but one of the founding fathers of Landmarkism, J.R. Graves, did.

Here is how I prefer to view it (and I understand that this is my view. I am speaking only for myself), "the faith once delivered" came to the early church from Christ and the teachings of the Apostles. Almost directly after the time of Augustine of Hippo, the evangelical message of the Gospel began to be usurped by Roman teaching. While the Gospel never disappeared, its proclamation was harder to find and hear. The Reformation did not rediscover the Gospel, it was used by God to cause the Gospel to be preached all over the world, and where the Gospel is preached, the Church experiences growth. There isn't a Christian denomination existing today that doesn't owe its existence to the events of the early 16th century.

*When I speak of the early church, I do so in a non-Dispensational manner. I believe the Church traces its birth back to Genesis. There have always been one called-out people of God.

 

Yep, I only use the laughing when I like something that is funny.

 

All of these groups and more did contain error,sometimes many errors.
Their very existence shows that not all believers were in the Roman church.I do not know what they had to work with as far as written material and copies of scripture before the time of the printing press.
To look back and pick them apart after reading our commentaries, and 15 different versions of the bible, and multiple Google searches does not seem to be equal footing does it?
In fact we have no choice but to own those Anabaptist who were faithful to God,despite their defective theology....for similar reasons.
While the trail of blood cannot quite be proven to be sustained,the truth is somewhere close to it.

 

The problem with the Reformation was that it succeeded because it was supported politically. Gospel Christians had no freedom under Rome & were suffered accordingly. Hoped for freedom through the Reformation did not occur because the Reformed churches allied with the new "powers that be."

That situation continues throughout the world, under atheism, communism, Islam, Hinduism & all other religions, including modern Christianity increasingly.

The religion-state links continue to oppress, as seen in Acts 4, & under Catholicism with the "conversion" of Constantine & suppression of the Donatists who refused to conform. Baptism of anyone "baptised" by the Catholic church became a capital offence.

Gospel Christians should be free under any & every secular power. The problem occurs when state & religion act together, so that non-conformists & supposed heretics are seen as rebels.

The Westminster Confession declares:

23:III. (The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide, that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.
​

The Congregational/Independent Savoy Declaration reads:

24:3 Although the magistrate is bound to encourage, promote, and protect the professors and profession of the gospel, and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world, and to that end to take care that men of corrupt minds and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge blasphemy and errors, in their own nature subverting the faith and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them: yet in such differences about the doctrines of the gospel, or ways of the worship of God, as may befall men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the magistrate under the gospel to abridge them of their liberty.​

The 1689 Baptist confession has no corresponding clause, simply expecting:

24:3. Civil magistrates being set up by God for the ends aforesaid; subjection, in all lawful things commanded by them, ought to be yielded by us in the Lord, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake; and we ought to make supplications and prayers for kings and all that are in authority, that under them we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty​

 

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matt 16:18

Re-formed?