Likewise, Ive never heard a paedo try to deny that the hussites and waldensians practiced believers baptism.
1) I'm going to assume that this statement means that these groups are alleged to followed a practice of EXCLUSIVE believer's baptism. It was already pointed out in this thread that failure to point out that practically everyone practices "believer's baptism" creates a climate of presumption from the start of any discussion that makes communication more difficult.
I would add that once this fact is clarified, it also
removes the prejudice that ancient references to the baptism of converts must themselves be EXCLUSIVE statements. If infant baptism is not explicitly
repudiated by some group, then it remains the burden of the believer's-baptism-exclusivist to show that such exclusivism is both possible and reasonable (so as to make his point for his own side) and the most plausible conclusion based on the evidence that is actually available (so as to make his point convincing to someone open to persuasion).
2) I'm not well read enough on the Hussites to make any statements, however on this very board, in response the the claim upon the Waldensians by Manley Beasely, I pointed any interested reader to on-line available research that lays out much of the evidence, and comes to a distinctly contrary position.
Luther and Reformation - The PuritanBoard
Perhaps the single, major problem for the believer's-baptism-only position in claiming the Waldensians is that modern Waldensians (of the Piedmontese) themselves are not of that opinion, nor do they read their own history as if in the past they were once of that opinion.
3) Lastly, on the unrelated subject of "Trail of Blood" theory:
Although apparently written chiefly to address the particular errors of the Landmarkists, Dr. James McGoldrick's book,
Baptist Successionism, critiques a certain strain of historic revisionism generally as he points out the dangers of reading history in order to find what you want to find there, rather than what actually is there. (retired prof. McGoldrick now teaches at GPTS).
Obviously this holds true whether one is a Reformed-paedo-baptist or a believer's-only-baptist. But there are occasional glaring examples of tendentious readings of the evidence by Landmarkists, and the willingness to claim for "orthodoxy" literally ANY group that opposed the RCC in bygone days, on the supposition that anyone that was persecuted by Rome
ipso facto MUST have been faithful in "doctrine" and "ordinances".
