I must be fully honest here, and tell you that the Trail of Blood, which you gave me to read sometime late last year, was the catalyst to me leaving the Baptist Church and attending the Catholic Church. Baptist Minister James Carroll tells so many lies in that book, that it would be humorous if they were not lies that are meant to attack and defame. I began researching every word of his book, and nearly every word, barring the its and buts, were fallacious and borderline libel. As we know, Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44), so I realized that Minister Carroll must have been possessed by Satan when writing this book; then, I began to wonder, what is it which Satan wants to suppress? It was shortly after putting this book down (as, I found it incredibly hard to finish it, and not worth the time sink) when I began to inquire about the Catholic faith. I profusely apologize for not letting you know about it, and feigning that the book settled my curiosity on the Catholic faith; for, it did the exact opposite, and I should have told you how many lies are in that book. Firstly, there is "Baptist successionism," which is the most historically absurd thing I have ever seen - it goes as such: First, there were the Montanists, then the Novationists, then the Donatists, then the Pauliscians, then the Cathars, then the Waldenses, then the Petrobrusians, then the Arnoldists, then the Henricians, then the Hussites, then the Lollards, and finally the Anabaptists. Firstly, this does not account for the 2nd century, therefore my point on St. Irenaeus remains, at least according to Baptist Successionists. I will go over four groups, as to not bore you, which Minister Carroll talks about, the Donatists, the Pauliscans, the Novationists, and the Waldensians. Firstly, the Donatists have nothing to do with Baptist theology; they believed in Baptismal regeneration, the real presence in the Sacraments, and even the episcopal polity of the Catholic Church. What they disagreed about, however, was if Priests could be sinful or not - in essence, they believed in order to be consecrated and to take Holy Order, a Priest must be completely without sin in order for Sacraments and Holy Orders to be valid. Of course, we all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), so this whole organization makes no sense; but, to say that it was a prefiguration of Baptists is a complete fabrication, so far away from the truth that I cannot believe Minister Carroll attempted to use it. Next, the Novationists, which similarly to the Donatists, agreed with the polity of the Catholic Church, the Sacramentology, etc, but they broke off because they believed that Christians who previously denied their faith could not receive Communion. Of course, we know St. Peter denied Jesus thrice, so this also makes no sense, but again, it is unrelated to Baptists. Thirdly, we have the Pauliscans, not much is known about this sect today (so it is truly a wonder how a Baptist Minister in 1931 could assert that they were early Baptists), but it is suspected that they were Gnostics, and had a completely different New Testament canon (removing most of the Gospels, and adding a Gnostic epistle called the Epistle to the Laodiceans); so, it is again completely unrelated to Baptists. Finally, the Walensians, which is perhaps the most like the Baptists as they rejected purgatory, sacraments, and the episcopate polity, however still adhered to infant baptism, and during the reformation, they became Calvinists. I think it is clear that, because they were around during the time of the Reformation, the fact they did not side with the Anabaptists is incredibly telling. Next, which should be a quick point, is the supposed "kill-count" of the Catholic Church, which as Carroll says, is 50,000,000 "Baptist martyrs." Ignoring the fact that they were not Baptist martyrs, as the term "Baptist" and the distinguished Baptist theology only came into existence around the 17th century with John Smyth, the Catholic Church would had to have committed around 8 and a half holocausts. The first appearance of a fifty-million kill count comes from Charles Buck from his 19th century work "Theological Dictionary, Containing Definitions of All Religious Terms." However, if we count every single war and persecution the Catholic Church has partook in (keep in mind, this even includes just wars, as well as including Catholic deaths, such as the Crusades, the Thirty Year War, and the Dutch Revolt), the kill count would be, including both just wars and Catholic deaths, 14.5 million, over the course of 1300 years; so, to average it, around 14,500 deaths a year. Of course, it is likely at least half this if you take into account Catholic deaths, 7.25 million, and then if we account for wars which were started by Protestants, such as the Dutch Revolt, then the numbers become even more fickle. This is around the point I stopped reading, as I had learned too much about the lies this author propagates for political reasons. In short, Baptist successionism doesn't exist.