If anyone has any familiarity with the booklet called "The Trail of Blood" (link ==> here), you may have noticed a quote on the first few pages, from a man known as Hosius Stanislaus. This quote has caused some dispute, as its supposedly from a work titled "Apud Opera". I will add, that while I am no historian or scholar, my impression of the Trail of Blood, is the author may be making some leaps to label so many groups as Baptist. The Author, JM Carroll does however, on page 10 acknowledge "Let it not be thought that all these persecuted ones were always loyal in all respects to New Testament teachings." That said, Carroll does provide numerous other quotes that echo my sentiments in general as well, that there have always been those that stood on the same doctrine of (1) Salvation by faith alone, without works and (2) Baptistm, while important, does not save. They might not have always had buildings with signs out front, nor respected among the establishment, but they were there. Some individuals may have been, at some points members of the Catholic church, but from the beginning there were those that would not adhere to those that would eventually become the Catholic church. They refused to attend their councils and their demands to baptize their babies. They preached the Gospel though pains of persecution and death.
On the subject of the works of Hosius Stanislaus, one work I did manage to find of his is titled "A Most Excelent Treatise of the begynnyng of herefyes ". If anyone is familiar with the recent troubles at the Archive.org website, it might not surprise you when I say that website is having trouble still. The work in question was originally written in Latin in 1565, but was translated into English (early modern/late middle) by another high-ranking Catholic cardinal named Richard Shacklock in about 1601. A screenshot of the cover I provide below. I can no longer locate this on Archive.org for some reason, but there is another copy (see link ==> here) which is actually more readable, but one needs to create a (free) account on archive.org to access the content. Another copy on the University of Oxford website is here (see link ==> here). In this book, the author makes numerous mentions of Anabaptists and connects them with the same doctrine dating all the way back to the time of Augustine (of Hippo), eg. 350AD. Just one more tidbit to illustrate that Baptists are not "protestants", for they were around well before the "reformation".
This is what the original copy of Richard Shacklock's translation looked like.
Here is sample scan of just one of the pages I found interesting. Out of the mouth of a high-ranking Catholic, they are connecting Baptists all the way back to the time of Augustine (of Hippo most likely, eg. 350 AD). I've tried to highlight the portion of the text I'm referring to. The text says (in summary) that the doctrine of the Anabaptist reigned also in the time (tyme) of saint Augustine.
