Editing Baptists (section)

===Perpetuity and succession view===
{{Main|Baptist successionism}}

Traditional Baptist historians write from the perspective that Baptists had existed since the time of Christ.{{Sfn | Torbet | 1975 | pp = 18–9}} Proponents of the Baptist successionist or perpetuity view consider the Baptist movement to have existed independently from Roman Catholicism and prior to the Protestant Reformation.<ref name="H. Leon McBeth pages 59-60">{{citation|first=H Leon|last=McBeth|title=The Baptist Heritage|pages=59–60| place = Nashville | publisher = Broadman Press|year= 1987}}.</ref> This view has been characterized as "apologetic and polemical" and "without consideration of a critical, scientific methodology".{{Sfn | Torbet | 1975 | p = 19}}

The perpetuity view is often identified with ''[[The Trail of Blood]]'', a booklet of five lectures by [[James Milton Carroll]] published in 1931.<ref name= "H. Leon McBeth pages 59-60" /> Other Baptist writers who advocate the successionist theory of Baptist origins are [[John T. Christian]] and [[Thomas Crosby (Baptist)|Thomas Crosby]].<ref name="H. Leon McBeth pages 59-60" />{{Sfn | Torbet | 1975 | p = 18}} This view was held by English Baptist preacher [[Charles Spurgeon]]<ref>{{citation |title= The New park Street Pulpit|volume=VII|page= 225}}.</ref> as well as [[Jesse Mercer]], the namesake of [[Mercer University]].<ref>{{cite web| first =Jesse | last = Mercer|title= A History of the Georgia Baptist Association|pages = 196–201 | year =1838|url= http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/1811cl_mercer.html}}</ref> In 1898 William Whitsitt was pressured to resign his presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for denying Baptist successionism.<ref name="James H. Slatton pages 278-293">{{citation|first=James H.|last=Slatton|title=W.H. Whitsitt – The Man and the Controversy|pages=278–279| place = Macon | publisher = Mercer University Press|year= 2009}}.</ref>