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Since the 3rd Century AD

Reference Study Material

Book Review

“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren”

by Leonard Verduin

Book Review

by Pastor Edward G. Rice

Available on the internet at

www.gsbaptistchurch.com/baptist/bookreview122804.html

Available in file form at Ed Rice File c:\awp\doctrine\reformers.sxw

“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren” by Leonard Verduin (@1964 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan) is a MUST READ for any Independent Baptist Preacher. Any public library can get the book for you and if all you get to do is read the first chapter it will enrich your understanding of your non-protestant Baptist heritage and the necessity to preach the Cross of Jesus Christ to all enemies both foreign and domestic. This is not Baptist history book, and Verduin is not a Baptist, but his work, funded by the Calvin Institute so documents the efforts of the “heretics” (predominately the Anabaptists and Donatists) against the “Constantinian sacralism” of the “fallen Church” that it dwarfs any Baptist History book's I have seen. Verduin goes on to elegantly show the reasons the protestant reformers butchered Baptists with the same mind set and were thus unsuccessful at pulling from or reforming the “fallen Church.” You will not understand the error and deep roots of sacramental salvation in Catholicism and Protestantism until you read this book. You cannot know what separation of Church and State means without it. You will not understand 1,970 years of “Church” history until you own it. Don't skimp on this one, at least get your library card.

Verduin's regular references to Menno Simons makes this book of keen interest to our Mennonite brothers also as they share most of our Anabaptist heritage. The division between Mennonites and Baptists falls primarily in the interpretation of Christ's description of us being “in the world but not of the world.” We Baptists, participate in a society, they withdraw from the vestiges of a society and form their own.

Verduin's introduction sets in place the language of a second front that embattles the 15^th century reformers calling them 'reformers stepchildren', 'evangelicals', 'restitutionalists' 'neo-donatists', 'heretics', 'anabaptists' or 'believers.' The stage is set to step back through history and find why these 'stepchildren' so opposed Luther, Calvin and Zwingli as they came so close to the truth, yet failed to deal with the systematic errors of Catholicism adequately enough to stay these Bible Believers.

Chapter 1 “Donatisten! My kingdom is not of this world .. . John 18:36” (pp 21-62) addresses why the Reformers labeled the baptist believers neo-Donatists. In so doing Verduin reconstructs the whole fall of the Church under Constantine and expertly outlines the theological, exegetical and soteriological catholic error that led to the Donatist Rebelion. This chapter documents the doctrine of the “two swords” of the medieval times with such clarity that one can comprehend history from 300 AD up to 1776's insistence for a first ammendment to the yet unsigned Declaration of Independence. Here is defined the distinguishing root of the error, the coercive 'sacrilism' vs. Biblical 'volunteerism.' Here are the roots exposed, the embryo of error found in Augustine is so addressed as to understand the tentacle of error with a strangle hold on John Calvin himself. Although funded by the Calvin Institute, Verduin pulls no punches when it comes to painting the Protestant nails that held Baptists to the burning stakes because reformers would not lay down the “doctrine of the two swords.”

Chapter 2 “Stabler! Else would my servants fight ... John 18:36” (pp 62-94) Here Verduin establishes that ...(I shall quote extensively from his book in this report. These quotations are for my own reference, are not for re-publication and are made without Verduin's permission but with no expectation of copyright infringement.)

“We have seen, in the previous chapter, that “The Sword was welded to the cross” at the time of the Constantinian change. Form this point on the cause of Christ had the benefit, if benefit it was, of a second sword, one made of steel. And we have begun to point out that the Reformers were not minded in their day to sweep this alien weapon out of the Church. The men of the Second Front, however, were convinced that the Constantinian change had perverted the Gospel, admitted a foreign body that had to be removed if suppuration were to cease.

“The sword of steel is basically a weapon with which to coerce. The Constantinian change, therefore, caused the technique of coercion to be imported into the affairs of the Church. Because of it the cause of Christ lost the dimension of voluntaryism, which is native to true Christianity, and with it the cause of Christ picked up the dimension of coercionism, which is foreign to the true faith. It is with this matter of coercionism versus voluntaryism that we shall be engaged at the present time.” (p. 62)

Verduin does engage this completely in this chapter.

Chapter 3 “Catharer! A people zealous of good works Titus 2:14” (pp 95-131)

“We have observed in the preceding chapters that in the Constantinian change the Church of Christ came to be viewed as coextensive with the empire. The side effects of that change were many. We shall be dealing in this chapter with the side effects which the Constantinain change had in the area of conduct, or more correctly of conductual requirement”.(p. 95)

“Luther was quite aware that protest against conductual averagism had led to the exodus of the Schwarmer, Wrote he:

From the beginning of the Church heretics have maintained that the Church must be holy and without sin. Because they saw that some in the Church were the servants of sin they denied forthwith that the Church was the Church, and organized sects .... This is the origin of the Donatists and the Cathars ... and of the Anabaptists of our times. All these cry out in angry chorus that the true Church is not the Church because they see that sinners and godless folk are mixed in her and they have separated from her .. It is the part of wisdom not to be offended at it when evil men go in and out of the Church ... The greatest comfort of all is the knowledge that they do no harm but that we must allow the tares to be mixed in ... The Schwarmer, who do not allow tares among them, really bring about that there is no wheat among themselves – by this zeal for only wheat and a pure Church they bring about, by this too great holiness, that they are not even a Church but just a sect of the devil.” (Werk, St. Louis edition, Vol. VII, p. 200) (pp107-108)

“So one could continue, Example after example leaves no doubt that one of the facets of the quarrel that had erupted at the Second Front was the disagreement as to the need for distingtiveness in conduct. Two things stand forth with unmistakable clarity. They are: (1) that in the camp of the Reformers there was no full-scale attack upon conductual-averagism that is the inevitable corollary of sacralism; and (2) that the Stepchildren made serious work of challenging the old order with its laxity in the matter of conduct – and, that they in a large way set a better pattern. Since both of these theses will strike some readers as being quite novel, we must document both of them at some length.”

And so Verduin does so in this chapter.

Chapter 4 “Sacramentschwarmer! So then faith cometh by hearing ... Romans 10:17” (pp132-159)

“The Stepchildren of the Reformation were frequently given the spiteful name of Sacramentschwarmer, or, more simply, “Sacramentarians.” It is with this term of reproach that we shall be engaged in this chapter. ...” p. 132

Verduin shows where the hedonism and paganism of sacraments come from, beginning with Plato.

“Plato has written this in his Laws: “Let this then be the law. No one shall possess shrines of the gods in private houses, and he who is found to possess them and to perform any sacred rite not publicly authorized, shall be informed against in the ear of the guardians of the law; and let these issue orders that he is to carry his private rites to the public temples' and if he does not obey, let such a penalty be inflicted as to make him comply. And if a person be proven guilty of an impiety, not merely from childish levity but such as grown-up men may be guilty of, let him be punished with death.”

He goes on with great eloquence to say:

“There is a lingering suspicion, frequently uttered in protestant circles, to the effect that Roman Catholicism is a hybrid form, authentic Christianity crossed with the pagan faith of pre-Christian Rome. At no point is the hybrid character of this offspring of the Christian mother and the ethnic father more apparent than in the “mass,” as the Agape came to be called after the Constantinian metamorphosis.

“What was the ancient institution, to which the Agape could be made to conform as men drifted toward “Christian sacralism?”

“It will be recalled that in the days of Decius [Roman Emperor 249-251 AD] every house holder had been instructed to fill out a formulary reading as follows ... 'I, N.N., have always sacrificed to the gods, and now in your presence I have, in keeping with the directive, sacrificed ... and have tasted of the sacrificial victim; and I request that you, a public servant, verify the same.' This formulary was intended to do two things. On the one hand it was part of a frantic effort to infuse new life into the dying religion of ancient Rome; on the other hand it was a device whereby each individual Christian could be located and taken in hand.

“It would be most gratifying if we could know more about the evolution of the rite which is here described, the item about “tasting the sacrificial victim.” That it was a feature of the practices associated with the cult of the so-called “mystery religions” is quite apparent. In these mystery religions (the only religious forms that had any vitality in those final days of pagan Rome), one partook of deity by ingesting a morsel of a “sacrificial victim.” By such ingesting, something of the elan of the god was said to be infused into the devotee, in a transaction know as a mysterion --- the word that has given us the expression “mystery religion.” The word mysterion was by the Latins rendered sacramentum – the direct antecedent of our word 'sacrament.'

“The important thing to notice, for our present purpose, is that in the formulary of Decius we have an attempt to procure religious homogeneity by the use of sacramentum. It must also be observed that mysterion or the sacramentum intended to bring about religious uniformity in the scheme of Decius, was a sacrifice, something done on an altar.

“It did not require a great deal of ingenuity for the fashioners of “Christian sacralism” to realize that with a few adroit alterations the Agape could be put in the place of the sacramentum and then serve the function which Decius had in mind, namely, the function of providing the monolithic society. A few alterations, a gather here and a tuck there, and the love-feast was all ready, ready to perform the function in the new sacralism which the pagan sacramentum had performed in the old.

“The first thing that had to be done was to appropriate the pagan word sacramentum (recall that it occurs nowhere in the Scriptures) and to let it replace the word Agape of the authentic tradition. This was a clever stroke; every Roman citizen knew what a sacramentum was, and what it was supposed to do and achieve; he needed only to hear the word to know the theology, that of “tasting the sacrificial victim,” a transaction signifying the participants' solidarity with the society of which he was a part.

“A second thing that had to be done was to move the table out and the altar in. This would automatically make of the officiating minister a sacrificateur, a sacrificer, a priest; and this would as automatically change the viands, the bread and the wine that had stood on the table of the Agape, into the flesh and the blood of “the sacrificial victim.”

“ A third thing that needed to be done was to eliminate as much as possible the “Take, eat” of the original ritual. This was so much a part of the authentic Christian vision; it portrayed too manifestly that in regard to the good things of the Christian faith there is always the take it or leave it.

“With these changes the love-feast was suitable to the role in the new sacralism which pagan sacramentum had played in the old sacralism.

“It is not at all surprising that all through medieval times and on into Reformation times, and beyond them, Corpus Christianum was thought of as a thing held together by “sacrament” That is what the function of the sacramenium had been in the days of old sacralism; and that was the function of the “sacrament” in the new sacralism.” (pp137-139)

Later in this chapter Verduin shows the deviations included in the Latin tongue and the necessity of the priesthood as illustrated here: (from pg 141)

“Sacramentalism also leads to sacerdotalism. If salvation came by sacramental manipulation, then the manipulator becomes extremely important; in fact, he becomes indispensable. The Church was extremely jealous of the priestly office, understandably so; for in it was lodged a great potential toward the realization and the perpetuation of “Christian sacralism.” The Church created the “sacrament of Orders,” and act whereby power to transubstantiate was allegedly transferred from the officiating priest to the head of the one being ordained. In this way the Church had its company of trusted officials, its hard core of “card-carrying party members,” who strictly speaking constituted the ecclesia. (Medieval man, unable to understand the Church's jargon (it was all done in Latin) did know this much, that at the sound of the words “Hoc est enim corpus meum” something pretty mysterious was allegedly taking place So he began to refer to any mysterious going-on as another case of hocus pocus - that is what the word of the priest had sounded like.) By this, sacradotalism revisionism was effectively precluded. By it the masses were effectively disfranchised. Only he really 'runs' who has been “sent” - and the Church was to it that she “sent” only those whom she could trust.

“In this ordination procedure the important thing was not the candidate's status as a believer and a converted man; the important thing was apostolic succession, and unbroken line of empowerment, a pedigree that ran back without a hiatus, supposedly all the way back to the Apostles. It was this that made the priest. Such predication as accompanied the sacramental manipulation was done in Latin – even though to the common man this was unintelligible. In a system of salvation by sacramental manipulation this is no difficulty; it poses a difficulty, an insuperable one, only to the man who thinks in terms of salvation by believing response to the preached Word. The Latin was the official language of the Empire; for that reason it was the prescribed language of the Empire Church. “ (pp141-142)

He goes on to show the rising rebellion against the catholic sacramental system to be “Sacramentarianism” and gives this insight concerning the Baptists:

“Although the believers of the Second Front came to be called Anabaptist, they could with equal propriety have been called Sacramentarians. One finds it impossible to say which was more definitive of the Stepchildren, their deviating views as to baptism, or their deviating views as to the other sacrament. Sometimes whole groups of them were sentenced for their Sacramentarianism, with not a word said about unacceptable views concerning baptism. Anabaptists were simply Sacramentarians who had been rebaptized. The name “rebaptized Sacramentarians” actually occurs in the sources. One can understand why Cornelius Krahn should say that “certain basic elements of the Anabaptist movement . . . of the Netherlands . . . grew out of the Sacramentarian movement.(Recovery, p. 219)

Chapter 5 Winckler! Come ye apart into a desert place ... Matt 6:31” (pp 160-188)

“Another term of reproach with which the Reformers regularly belabored their Stepchildren was the derogatory name Winckel (modern spelling Winkel) meaning a corner or an out-of-the-way place. Winckler are consequently people who gather in some corner or secluded place, for purposes of religious exercises. Such gatherings came to be know as Winckelpredigten, Winckel-Preachings. ... reading and the expounding of the Scriptures was paramount, the main dish on the menu.” (p. 160)

Verduin contains so much in this chapter that I shall only scratch its surface here. I must address three hinge pin items, Anabaptist marriages, hatred for cathedrals and pope Innocent III's address.

“The Anabaptists suffered great hardship because their marriages were looked upon as Winckelehe, illegal cohabitations. This is the final chapter in a long story. In pre-Christian thinking the marriage ceremony lies very close to the center of the religious cult, as do the rest of the things that have to do with the vital statistics. The primitive Christian Church did not take over this pre-Christian emphasis upon the marriage ceremony; it honored marriage and did all it could to restore to it the dignity it deserves. But it did not consider it a specifically religious, certainly not redemptive, institution. ... We need only to remind ourselves that the medieval “heretics” repudiated this whole sacralization of marriage, a policy that thereupon earned them the accusation that they were “against marriage.” Nor will it come as a surprise that, after the Reformers had completed their swing to the right, the old medieval concept of marriage was incorporated in their views. Marriage in the old Reformed Church Orders is an ecclesiastical affair. And it speaks for itself that the Stepchildren refused to go along with this. They made their vows before their own clergymen and so laid themselves open to the charge of Winckelehe. The noise of the Second Front in regard to marriage can be heard in the notorious Groninger Edict of 1601. This Edict (It may be consulted in the Knuttel Collection, No. 1172, of which the University of Michigan has a copy), dwawn up and promoted by the Reformed pastors of the City of Groningen, contains also this item: “All who cohabit as man and wife without the benefit of law shall be required to have themselves married in accordance with the Church Order, within one month, or face punishment as fornicators ... All who have themselves married ... outside a Reformed Church ... Shall be punished as the case may require.” Although there is, of course, not the slightest New Testament warrant for such ecclesiasticalization of marriage, one encounters remnants of it among Reformed constituencies that have not quite sloughed off their 'Christian sacralism.' ” (pp. 161-162)

Concerning the Cathedral Verduin informs us:

“The cathedral is best described as the architectural embodiment of “Christian sacralism,” as towering above the city square it casts its shadow across the path of every person dwelling in its vicinity. It is not surprising to see (one) somewhat less than completely happy at the sight of the pretentious buildings, erected at public expense We shall see that this dislike for the cathedral became a part of the heritage of the medieval “heretic”; also, that it recurred in the vision of the Stepchildren.” (p. 165)

Concerning the Winckler Verduin informs us:

“Innocent III, addressing his subordinates in Metz in the year 1199, the Metz that already then had a bad record for “heresy.” said:

Our brother, the bishop Met, tells us that in his diocese and in your city a great many lay-folk, both men and women,... have had French translations made of the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, the Psalms ... and other books, which they read together and preach from in their clandestine conventicles, vilifying those who do not attend, and resisting to their face the priests who would instruct them, arguing that they find in their books much better instruction. Now it is doubtlessly true that the desire to know the Scriptures and to exhort men to follow these in not reprehensible .... but what is to be condemned is the holding of secret assemblies... arrogating to oneself the right to preach, jeering at the ignorance of the priests. (Verduin's note here 'The “heretic” was so much better versed in the Scriptures than were the regular clergy that Saint Louis advised men not to debate with a “heretic” but rather to “thrust the sword into the man's belly as far as it will go” (Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, p. 81 quoting') For the Scriptures are of such profundity that not only the simple and the illiterate but even the learned ones cannot attain to a knowledge of it, so that it is enjoined in the Law of God that every beast that touches the holy mountain shall be thrust through with a dart ... since in the church the doctors are charged with the preaching therefore no one may usurp this office. (p. 168, Bib ref - A French translation of Innocent's letter is in Monter, Histoire Litteraire des Vaudois du Piedmont (Paris, 1885), pp. 36f.) (pp. 168)

Chapter 6 “Wiedertaufer! The answer of a good conscience toward God ... I Peter 3:21” (pp189-220)

“Another one of the terms of reproach heard at the Second Front was Wiedertaufer, a word meaning Anabaptist, which in turn means rebaptizers. The name points to the Stepchildren's practice of baptizing all who joined their congregations, even though these had been bapitzed already in the inclusive Church, a practice which to their enemies looked like rebaptism.

“The sources single out no man as the originator of sixteenth century rebaptism. In the words of Josef Beck, :”From whom the idea of rebaptism issued, of this the sources say not a word.”(Josef Beck, Die Geschishts-Bucher der Wiedertaufer in Osterreich Ungarn, being Vol. XLIII of Gontes Rerum Austriacarum (Vienna, 1883), p. IX)

“This requires an explanation. To rebaptize is to do an extremely radical thing – how radical we shall have occasion to see. How so radical a practice sprang up anonymously is passing strange – if it is assumed, as the vogue is, that Anabaptism was simply the product of the sixteenth century.

“But this silence as to who must be credited with the idea becomes wholly explicable once it is realized that what was known as Anabaptism in Reformation times was in no sense a new thing. Neither the name nor the practice was new. Nor was the philosophy that lay behind the practice in any sense new. The Anabaptists did not initiate a new school of thought; they merely re-stated an ancient ideology – in the idiom of the sixteenth century to be sure, but ancient nevertheless. No one is credited with having invented the Anabaptism of the sixteenth century for the sufficient reason that no one did.

“Rebaptizing is as old as Constantinianism. There were Anabaptists, called by that name, in the forth century. The Codes of Theodosius already prescribed very severe penalty, capital punishment, for anyone who was convicted of having rebaptized. (Codex Theodosianus, XVI, 6:1) In fact, the first Anabaptist martyrs of Reformation times were put to death under the terms of these ancient Codes.

“The very rigor practiced against Anabaptists requires our attention. To rebaptize was considered a capital crime. One gets the impression that his rigor was not born of solicitude for theological orthodoxy.

“The fact is that the Codes were as severe as they were because much more was at stake than mere theological correctness. What was at stake was Constantinianism itself. We who have lived for some time now in the climate of societal compositism will find it hard to understand how a position and a practice which in our times do not so much as raise an eyebrow should in former times have called down such wrath. To understand this rigor one must in his mind reconstruct the world of “Christian sacralism” and the place which baptism, more specifically infant baptism, had come to occupy in it.” (pp. 189-190)

This reconstruction was expertly accomplished by Verduin in Chapter 6. This chapter with chapter one, lay a bedrock of Baptist history. The understanding and rejection of the Constantinianism that producing sacralism, the rejection of catholic sacraments that produced the work soteriology, and the baptism of only believers, even if it require rebaptism, trace back not to the 4^th century, but to the teachings of Christ. The concept of the 'fallen Church' that could not be reformed, and thereby must be rejected still marks the difference between what a non-protestant Baptist is and what a Lutheran, Calvinist, Episcopal or Presbyterian Protestant carries in its baggage of Biblical errors. Every Baptist needs this chapter understood to see our heritage. Every Protestant needs this chapter understood to highlight the Biblical errors in their faith and practice, in their sacraments, infant baptisms, inclusiveness, confirmations and soteriology. Every Catholic needs this chapter understood to see that they are part of the 'fallen church', the apostate church, the Constantinian Roman Church, and not the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 7 “Kommunisten! As though they possessed not ... I Cor 7:30” (pp221-242)

“Still another area of tension between the Reformers and their Stepchildren involved what was know as “community of goods.” It finds its classic expression in Article 36 of the Belgic Confession, where we read: “Wherefore we detest the Anabaptists and other seditious folk, and in general all those who reject the higher powers and magistrates and confound that decency and good order which God has established among men.” Here the charge the the Stepchildren “reject the higher powers and magistrates” (which charge we have already weighed) is followed by the charge that they “would introduce community of goods”; and this is further expanded in the words “and confound that decency and good order which God has established among men.” (p. 221)

In this chapter Verduin addresses the villainization of Anabaptist by making them the “heretic” that would put and end to all decency. They painted the ambition of these “heretics” as (1) to “overthrow the magistracy,” and (2) to “put and end to all decency,” these two ambitions would introduce “community of goods” in their wording. He herein shows again the error in perception that Anabaptist wanted to eliminate all “magistracy” when indeed they wanted to accomplish what we call today a separation of Church and State, to take the steel sword away from the hand of the fallen Church, even if it be a fallen but Reformed Church.

Chapter 8 “Rottenfeister! Fear not, little flock Luke 12:32 ” (pp 243-275)

“In his day Luther said that there had gone forth from his camp Wiedertaufer, Sacramentschwarmer, und andere Rotengeister. In earlier chapters we have busied ourselves with the first two of these terms of reproach applied to the Stepchildren' in this chapter we take up the last.

“The term Rottengeister was a sort of catch-all, an and-so-forth, to cover the rest of an allegedly evil crew. We shall therefore take up this final chapter several of the remaining features of the vision of the Stepchildren.

“In a way, the name Rottengeister leads more directly to the heart of the Second Front than most of the rest of the smear words used. A Rott is a clique, a faction, an element; and Rottengeister are clique-organizers, faction-makers, element-creators. In more spophisticated language, Rottengeister are people who agitate within a society to from a party. In our present terminology, we may say that Rottengeister are agitators whose activity leads to a composite situation. This makes them identical with “heretics.” for, As we saw, the Word “heretic” points to choice-making. In medieval times, as in any sacral situation, Rottengeister were held to be the epitome of evil because they were a threat to the monolithic society. In language borrowed from the scene of the Crucifixion they were said to be guilty of “rending the robe of Christ.” The fare that raged at the Second Front – for what the “heretic” had been in the eyes of medieval sacralism, that the Anabaptist were in the eyes of the neo-sacralists of Reformation times.

“Not one of the Reformers seems to have been aware of the fact that Christians are, and in the nature of things must be, Rottengeister. Christians are out to create a following, an element, a faction. The Church of the New Testament is by definition a sect, a following (the word sect is, as we have said, from the Latin sequor, a word of which follow is the essential idea). The very thing that sacralists want to avoid at all costs is in the Christian vision the sine qua non, namely to “choose this day whom you will serve.” It may be said that if the Reformers had been willing to be guided by the New Testament , there would never have been a Second Front; for then the Stepchildren's ambition to organize a Church that consisted of followers would not have seemed objectionable.

“The Donatists realized in their day that to eliminate out of the lives of men the “for or against” of Christianity was to make an end to Christianity. The medieval “heretic” realized it too. As did the men of the Second Front. All of these were committed to the creation of a Church consisting of Christians-by-choice, to take the place of a Church consisting of christians-by-happenstance [or christians-by-coercion] .... One must not be surprised to hear people with such a vision called Rottengeister.” (pp.243-244)

As you can tell from this introduction, in this chapter Verduin expertly concludes the book by stepping back and examining the bigger picture. An essential overview tying together history and the errors of the Reformers. The errors which haunt Protestants and distinguish Baptist to this day.

Postscript (p. 276)

“In this book we have dealt with the rift that developed between the Reformers of the sixteenth century and the men of the Second Front. This rift was the result of a problem that perennially besets the Church of Christ, the problem of how to relate that Church to its environment. It is the problem that is posed by the formula “in the world but not of the world.” The history of the Church is, to a large extent, the story of the tension between two extreme tendencies; the one extreme makes so much of the principle “in the world” that the Church loses her identity; the other extreme makes so much of the principle “not of the world” that the Church becomes irrelevant. There is a frighteningly large element of truth in a sentiment expressed by Roland H. Bainton: “If there is no accommodation [to culture] Christianity is unintelligible and cannot spread, if there is too much accommodation it will spread, but will not longer be Christianity.” The way of orthodoxy is often the way of recovering equilibrium.” (p.276)

Verduin has in this book given Baptists, the “heretics” of Catholicism and the “heretics” of the Reformation, more sympathetic treatment than has ever been want to give by Protestants. Upon my second reading of the book he even gives credit that Baptist were here all along, and right all along. Bravo Verduin, that takes unparalleled bravado for a Protestant. It should be noted here that the Roman Catholic Church has not to this day rejected the sacral formula, nor officially espoused societal compositism. Perhaps this is a step towards an official Protestant advocacy of rejecting these errors.

“The Reformers and Their Stepchildren” by Leonard Verduin “Book in Review” by Pastor Ed Rice, Good Samaritan Baptist Church, 54 Main St Dresden NY 14441

Available on the internet at

www.gsbaptistchurch.com/baptist/bookreview122804.html

Available in file form at Ed Rice File c:\awp\doctrine\reformers.sxw