I am a student of Dr. McGoldrick and reading this book was a requirement of his class. It was a rather enlightening book which gave a brief overall picture of the history of the Bible. It starts with pre-Tyndale times and factors in Robert Barnes and Martin Luther and then follows through with Myles Coverdale acquiring permission from King Henry VIII to publish a version of Tyndale's Bible. It is a matter-of-fact book which helps to view the struggles of those early translators of the Bible.

McGoldrick in the introduction of his book,on page 5,sums it all with his statement "The author of this book is thoughly convinced that the New Testament affirms the doctrine of the universal church, and he therefore feels no oblication to reconstruct the past in such away as to find ancient and medieval sects that might be called Baptists." As McGoldrick should know the Baptist name comes from Believer's Baptism, which separated them from most Anabaptist. This distinction put salvation in Jesus not "the church". Baptist have always put scripture above tradition. Most baptist today would say many of the early fathers held many baptist tenets. We see many ancient heretics we would call brother. Cheif among those tenets are the authority of the holy scriptures only. Next to this the independance of the local church from alll man made authorities. McGoldrick's in error when he tries to define Cathari, Albigensed, Waldenses, and Anabaptist. These groups had many and veried tenets many of which could be claimed by baptist today. Todays baptist hold many and varied beliefs. What makes us baptist is believers baptism and local authority.

Brother James E. McGoldrick has written an interesting work on a controversial subject. It is admirable that he freely admits the fact that he is a former Landmark Baptist who has abandoned Landmark Baptist ecclesiology in favor of Protestant ecclesiology. He performs a valuable service by pointing out some of the historiographical weaknesses and errors found in a lot of pro-Landmark Baptist literature and provides some excellent primary sources deserving of further investigation.

The major weakness of this book, as I see it, is that he paints the churches in the free church tradition (e.g., the Novatians, Donatists, Albigenses, Waldenses, and Anabaptists) with too broad a brush instead of acknowledging that there were many doctrinal and practical differences within each of these groups and between these groups. They were not nearly as monolithic as he portrays them. Landmark Baptists do not contend that all of the churches in the free church tradition subscribed to all of the things Landmark Baptists believe and practice today, but one might get this impression from reading this book. Their major contention is that there have been, ever since the time of Christ's earthly ministry, Bible-believing New Testament churches on earth that have preached the true way of salvation and practiced the true way of baptism. These New Testament churches have been neither Catholic nor Protestant, but they have been bitterly opposed by both of these groups at times.

The sine qua non of Landmark Baptist ecclesiology is not the denial of any and all forms of a universal church, as this book might suggest, for a large percentage of the 19th century SBC Landmarkers believed in either the present or future existence of a church larger than the local, visible assembly or congregation. The essence of Landmark Baptist ecclesiology is ecclesiastical separation from churches that do not qualify as true New Testament assemblies. A rejection of alien baptisms, open communion, and pulpit affiliation lies at the heart of Old Landmarkism, and this is not brought out clearly enough in this volume. In effect, then, Brother McGoldrick often builds Landmark Baptist straw-men, then proceeds to tear them down.

William Whitsitt's modernistic theory of Baptist church history is too readily accepted by the author of this book. He would do himself and the rest of us a great favor if he would approach the study of Baptist history without these liberal presuppositions, and he has the training and expertise to write some really valuable books on this subject from a more objective viewpoint. As it stands, he has overreacted to some of the excessive subjectivity one finds in some Landmark Baptist writings by being overly subjective himself and biased against Landmark Baptist ecclesiology.

This book to me was a breath of fresh air. While I am not a Baptist (but at one time was affiliated with a non-landmark Baptist Church), my interest in this book was not so much for the purpose of refuting landmarkism, but to examine the various Christian or quasi-Christian bodies deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, and heralded as heroes of "true christianity" by Foxe's book of Martyrs, Dave Hunt, and the others who, denying that the Catholic Church is a Christian body, have to stay faithful to the words of Christ in Matthew 16:18 (and in doing so, label gross heresies and anti-Christian groups as "true Christians", calling that which is evil good).

The scholarship is excellent, as McGoldrick is careful to use original sources when possible, and when not, he honestly addresses the credibility of his secondary sources and is careful to extensively footnote everything.

For this purpose I am greatly indebted, as the book is useful to this end as well. The fact that McGoldrick misunderstands Catholic soteriology can be forgiven, as that was not the scope of this work. I highly recommend this to every honest Christian, regardless of denominational affiliation.