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CHAPTER V.

The Subject continued.

In through many provin
N the eleventh century, Europe was greatly infested CHAP.

ces. They were reputed Manicheans: In Italy they
were called Paterini or Cathari, that is, the pure: In
France they were called Albigenses, Bulgarians, and
other names, sometimes according to the names of
the country in which they resided.

V.

2. Their dangerous doctrine was first discovered Eccl. Hie by a certain priest named Heribert, and a Norman no- tory, vol. ü. p. 565. bleman, upon which ROBERT, king of France, assembled a council at Orleans, to devise methods for reclaiming those harmless people, not, truly, from the error, but, from the innocence of their ways; but they remaining obstinate, were at length condemned to be burnt alive.

3. Their enemies acknowledge the sincerity of their ibi. piety; and say, they were blackened by accusations p. 566. which were evidently false. But they were deemed. unsound in their speculations concerning God, the Trinity, and the human soul. Such also were the heretics of the succeeding centuries called, Brethren and Sisters of the free spirit, that is, free from the law of sin and death; the Massalians and Euchites, i. e. a people who pray; the Bogomilans, i. e. such as call for mercy. In some countries the same class of heretics were called Beghards,

4. Catholic writers have tried to enumerate the errors of these heretics, but they were considered too numerous; the fact is, their faith and practice were contrary to the Catholic establishment in every thing; of course it would be endless to calculate their supposed errors concerning baptism, the eucharist, the sanctity of churches, altars, incense, consecrated oil, bells, beads, bishops, funeral rites, marriages, indulgences, and the wood of the cross.

5. Basilius was a reputed Manichean, and founder of the sect called Bogomilans. This aged and venerable man, being treacherously induced to unfold

ibid.

Vol. X.

p. 106. Sve Rob

V.

CHAP. his doctrine to the bloody emperor ALEXIAS, was condemned as a heretic, and barbarously burnt at Constantinople, which was but the beginning of sorrows to his harmless followers.

tory, vol.

Eccl.His- 6. Peter de Bruys was another who, in the twelfth P112. century, troubled the Catholic peace, and supplied the heresy-hunters with fresh blood. They say "he 'attempted to remove the superstitions that disfigur'ed the beautiful simplicity of the gospel." He would baptize only such as were come to the full use of their reason.

ibid.

.113.

ibid.

114.

jbid.

7. He rejected the notion of the real body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, the virtue of the wooden cross, and other instruments of superstition. He was followed by great numbers, and after a laborious ministry of twenty years, was burnt at St. Giles's in the year 1130, by an enraged populace set on by the clergy.

8. The next public disturbance arose from Henry, from whom came the Henricians. He travelled from place to place declaiming, it is said, with the greatest vehemence and fervour against the vices of the clergy; at length, being seized by a certain bishop, and condemned before pope Eugenius, he was committed to a close prison in the year 1148, where he soon after ended his days; leaving a train of heretics behind him in France, to supply the ravenous priesthood with blood and carnage.

9. In Brabant similar commotions were excited by the illiterate Tanqueimus, “who drew after him a 'numerous sect." Some of his enemies speak the worst things of him, others say, these infamous charges are "absolutely incredible-that these blasphemies were falsely charged upon him by a vindictive priesthood." They say he treated with contempt the external worship of God, and the sacraments, held clandestine meetings, and, like other heretics, inveighed against the clergy; for which "he was assassinated by an ecclesiastic in a cruel man'ner."

10. Arnold a man of extensive learning, and remarkable austerity, excited new troubles in Italy. By his instigations, it is said, the people even insult

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ed the persons of the clergy in a disorderly manner. CHAP. He was, however, seized in the year 1155, publicly crucified, and afterwards burnt to ashes; leaving be hind him a great number of disciples, to perplex the priesthood about their overgrown opulence, papal revenues, and ungodly authority.

11. Spain had long been teeming with heresy ; even from the time that Mark the disciple of Hierax went into that kingdom. Sometimes these heretics were called Gnostics, sometimes Manicheans, sometimes Priscillianists; and they flourished here, under the last name, during a period of more than eight hundred years.

searches

p. 239.

12. Robinson says, "This body of people knew no 'crime of heresy, (among themselves;) they suppo'sed very justly, that persecution was oppression, that killing for the faith was murder. If ecclesias- Eccl. Re 'tics had never created a virtue called orthodoxy, the 'world would never have heard of a crime called heresy." Councils never could suppress heresy in Spain, but the inquisition did. Innumerable heretics resided in Spain, till they were rooted out by that iniquitous. institution.

13. After this the vallies among the Pyrenean mountains, between France and Spain, became the sequestered habitation of heretics. To these retreats they fled from the destructive arm of persecution, and as they were persecuted and driven from thence, they spread through France, Germany, and other provinces of Europe, formed societies and were called by different names, such as Paterini Cathari, Beghards, Beguines; but were more generally called Albigenses and Waldenses.

14. The Manicheans, Priscillianists, and all who sprung from the same original stock, agreed in one article, and that was baptism. They all held that the Catholic corporation was not a church of Christ, and they therefore re-baptized such as had been baptized. in that community, before they admitted them into their societies; for this reason their most common name of distinction was Anabaptists.

15. But by whatever names they might be called in different countries, all such as renounced the papal

V.

CHAP. superstition, and placed religion in the practice of virtue, were the common objects of persecution, to the Mother of Harlots.

searches,

p. 125.

16. It is truly astonishing how some ecclesiastical historians, under the darkest period of their Church history, have continued to stile this the Christian Church, with all her train of vices and cruelties; and on the contrary, have defamed and blackened the characters of those who bore a practical testimony against this motley spectacle of vice and superstition as Schismatics, Heretics, and troublers of the Church. Instances of this kind are not uncommon with Mosheim.

6

17. Mosheim, and after him Robinson, has given a fair description of what the state of this Church was Eccl. Re at the early period of the third century. "The most respectable writers of that age, have put it out of 'the power of an historian to spread a veil over the 'enormities of ecclesiastical rulers. By a train of vices they were sunk into luxury and voluptuous'ness, puffed up with vanity, arrogance and ambi'tion, possessed with a spirit of contention and dis'cord, and addicted to many other vices.-The ef'fects of a corrupt ambition were spread through ev< ery rank of the sacred order."

Ecel. His. tory, vol.

. p. 389.

18. This is the Church which the Manicheans, Novatians and other heretics so much troubled in the third century, and continued to trouble in the succeeding centuries. And if such was her corrupt state at the early period of the third century, what must she have been in the tenth?

19. Mosheim says, "The clergy were, for the 'most part, a worthless set of men,-equally enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds.-The 'pretended chiefs and rulers of the universal church, indulged themselves in the commission of the most odious crimes, and abandoned themselves to the lawless impulse of the most licentious passions with'out reluctance or remorse, and whose spiritual 'empire was such a diversified scene of iniquity and 'violence, as never was exhibited under any of those temporal tyrants, who have been the scourges of 'mankind."

V

p. 160.

20. Robinson, speaking of the supreme rulers of CHAP this universal church, the bishops of Rome in particular, says, "Of the sinners it may truly be affirmed, Eccl.Rethat they were sinners of size; for it would be diffi- searches, 'cult to mention a crime which they did not com'mit." Mosheim says, "The history of the Roman Eccl. Hispontiffs that lived in this [tenth] century, is a history of so many monsters, and not of men, and 'exhibits a horrible series of the most flagitious, tre'mendous, and complicated crimes, as all writers ' unanimously confess."

tory, vol.

ii, p. 390.

21. This is the description and character of that spiritual empire, that Christian Church, most impiously so called. It is the character of the GREAT Rev.xy WHORE who sat upon many waters ruling the nations, -with whom the kings of the carth committed fornication, and with whose wine of fornication the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk. Her gilded cup, her specious and alluring profession, was full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. She was the MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. She was drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

22. Yet those Nonconformists, who would not be intoxicated with the wine of the filthiness of her fornication, must needs be called Heretics, the only fit objects of revenge and destruction. In the progress of this beastly power, "all places of worship were Eeel. Re 'taken from heretics, and they punished for holding searches, Conventicles, though they held them in forests, and ⚫dens, and caves of the earth."

23. But in this spiritual empire of iniquity, the ru ling party from the beginning," declared themselves 'the only christians, for they believed the Trinity, and all the rest were heretics, bound over to present and eternal perdition." Notwithstanding, "thousands (says Robinson,) set all penalties at defi'ance, and lived and died, as their own understand'ings and consciences commanded them, in the practice of heresy and schism."

P. 144,

24. In the year 1210, these Nonconformists had Eccl. Re become so numerous, and so odious, that Ugo or

searches

D. 412,

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