You wrote:
“Completely untrue. All throughout the Middle Ages, there were many, many independent baptistic bodies of Bible believers who had no communion nor any history with the Catholic religion.”
Completely untrue - as demonstrated decisively and definitively by James McGoldrick, a PROTESTANT, in his book on Baptist Successionism. The whole “Trail of Blood” idea is nonsense and completely ahistorical.
“The Catholics tried to suppress them through violence, and when that failed, have continued to try to lie about what these groups believed and practiced, but they were there nevertheless,”
Again, nonsense. What violence was used on heretics in the 9th century by Catholics in the Roman Church? Please document that. Can you?
“...the true adherents to the apostolic Christianity, instead of the paganised “Christianity” which arose in the 4th century when Constantine tried to unite the various belief systems of the Empire together, which eventually resulted in Catholicism.”
Nonsense again. 1) Constantine didn’t try to unite “various belief systems”. He knew they were separate and kept them that way. If he did otherwise then Constantinople wouldn’t have been built as it was. All evidence defies you. 2) There is no evidence whatsoever that Christianity was paganized in the 4th century or any other century. Christians were taught to resist paganism as vigorously in the 4th century as any other. 3) The Catholic faith already existed BEFORE Constantine took power and in fact was given by Christ to the Apostles. Constantine knew this and that’s why he met with the Catholic bishop when he first entered Rome as a claimant to the throne after the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Also, Constantine’s mother was already long before that, a Christian.
Read James McGoldrick, A PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIAN, and you’ll realize the “trail of blood” idea is nothing more than a Baptist scam foisted on people to make up for 1500 years of NO HISTORY for their sect.
It seems you like to use nonsense is that because you only make sense?
Oddly enough, I'm not discussing the "trail of blood", which is a characteristic belief of what is known as "Landmarkism", and which is not accepted by most Baptist historians anywise, and which is the belief that McGoldrick is arguing against. Most Baptist historians, including the series which I'll be posting up over the next several days, and which I posted the introduction to on Friday, do not believe there is any need for the ridiculous, 2nd century doctrine of "apostolic succession". As such, you're presenting a straw man (though, to be charitable, I imagine you're doing it ignorantly, rather than maliciously)
I'm addressing the various groups which existed outside the Catholic religion all throughout history and which held to generally understood baptistic doctrines (local church, denial of transubstantiation, adult baptism by immersion, primacy of Scripture over tradition, etc.
Granted, there are a number of Catholic authors who have invented wild fantasies over the years, while posing as "impartial historians" - an example would be the "quietly overlooked sodomy and ritual murder" among the Albigenses, which is, a fabrication. Fine, you want to discount histories by Baptists? I'll discount histories by Catholics. And typically, the drivel about "Manichaean heresies" and "ritual murder and sodomy" are pumped out by trained monkeys at some Catholic university or another, and as such, don't have any real independent credibility.
Before the internet, it was easy to get by with lies and half-lies. Someone could assert anything and if you didn’t have the resources it became a matter of faith rather than truth..
I wasn't aware anyone actually believed that anymore.