CHAPTER - THE PAULICIANS OF ARMENIA FOR the purpose of exhibiting the Albigenses of Southern France in the character of hereditary Manicheans, the Bishop of Meaux has produced a considerable variety of authorities. The learned Mosheim, indeed, denies them to be, upon this point, the true sources of knowledge’ and, at the same time, charges the dexterous Prelate, with having, by the spirit of party, been manifestly led even into voluntary errors. But, doubtless, on a hasty survey, the authorities in question have a somewhat startling aspect. Of the more modern Albigenses of France, the ancient Paulicians of Armenia were clearly, I think, the theological ancestors.

Hence the first point of inquiry must obviously be this:

Whether, from the beginning, the Paulicians were a Community of sound believers, who faithfully maintained all the grand essential truths of the Gospel; or Whether, springing mainly as they did out of a Society of Manicheans, they were themselves originally Manicheans also, though afterward, having migrated into the west, they protested (if I may employ the language of Gibbon) against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the Bible as the alone authoritative rule of faith, and purified their once erroneous creed from all the visions of the Gnostic Theology.

I. About the middle of the seventh century (I take up the History of Peter Siculus), Constantine, a native of Armenia and an inhabitant of Mananalis, received from a Deacon, whom he had hospitably entertained while returning from captivity in Syria, a present of two volumes: the one, containing the four Gospels; the other, the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul. To the perusal of these sacred books, hitherto locked up from him, he diligently applied himself the perusal of them led, both to a great revolution in his own sentiments, and to the founding of a new Church on the principle of a reformation from error: proselytes rapidly gathered around him: and, from their special admiration of the great Apostle of the Gentiles (the name of whose friend Sylvanus he had assumed), rather than from an obscure and disowned individual of Samosata denominated Paul, they seem evidently, I think, to have adopted or received the title of Paulicians. 1. In the holy volumes, then, which he had thus obtained, Constantine, surrounded with the growing superstition of the age, honestly sought for the genuine creed of early Christianity; and, what he learned himself from those volumes, he was eager to communicate to others.

That a diligent perusal of the hitherto unknown new testament, even under the defective form wherein our inquirer originally possessed it, should lead a person to reject the worship of the Virgin and the Saints and the Cross, and to deny the material presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of the Eucharist (for such is evidently the purport of the furious declamation of Peter Siculus): it is quite easy to conceive and to understand. 4 But the unsuspecting reader, who happens not to have particularly studied this part of ecclesiastical history, will probably be surprised to learn: that the process of reading, with care and attention, the four Gospels in connection with the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, actually converted Constantine into a Manichean; and that the same process, universally and unanimously (so distinctly is Manicheism written in the New Testament), either confirmed or introduced, according to the nature of their previous opinions, the gnosticizing system of Manes among his variously proselyted followers!

It is true, indeed, that Constantine, deeply imbued with the discourses of Christ and with the writings of Paul, openly rejected the books of the ancient Manicheans: it is true also, that this disciple of Manes, as he is termed by Peter Siculus, discarded the theology of Manes, together with the whole theory of the thirty celestial eons and the marvelous formation of rain-water. Still, nevertheless, if we may credit the historian, nothing can be more clear and more certain, than, that, from the study of the New Testament, whence he had learned the catholic doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ’s godhead and incarnation, the man rose a hardened and inveterate Manichean! Accordingly, though his ministerial success was not confined to his gnosticizing neighbors round Mananalis, it appears to have lain very eminently among them: for these, no doubt, whatever might be the ease with the converted Catholics, reasonably thought, as we gather from the veritable narrative of Peter Siculus, that the most effectual mode of preserving and improving their long cherished system was to flock round a teacher, who had avowedly rejected their books, and who had unreservedly and unceremoniously discarded Manes himself!

Yet this extraordinary adhesion of the original Manicheans, all the while actually remaining Manicheans, to the new Sylvanus, who so rashly acknowledged his preference of St. Paul to the slighted and disregarded heresiarch of Persia, is not the only paradox, wherewith, in the present strange eventful history, we are destined to be encountered.

As Constantine, though the undeniable disciple of Manes, avowedly renounced Manes; while though a decidedly confirmed Manichean, he openly rejected the whole theological system of Manicheism: so, with beautiful consistency, the Manicheans, who joined themselves to him, and who in his person venerated a true apostolical follower of St. Paul, with prompt minds (I use the very words of the careful historian), spat upon and detested Scythianus and Buddha and even Manes also, who were notoriously the princes of the whole sect; while yet, like their innovating reformer Sylvanus, they remained such staunch Manicheans, that, rather than renounce the creed of Manes which however they had already renounced, and rather than express an eternally-saving penitence which however they had already expressed, these most inexplicable religionists chose impiously to die as heretics in their already rejected and detested heresy! But we have not yet come to the end of this wonder-loving narrative.

Constantine, while he discarded Manicheism without ceasing to be a Manichean, furthermore, while he led a life of most exemplary godliness, diligently, on scriptural authority, inculcated all the abominations and impurities of the gnostic Basilides. Like the primitive Christians, who were similarly accused by the soberly inquiring Pagans, he had clearly learned these abominations and these impurities from an habitually diligent perusal of the New Testament: and his acquiescent proselytes, at once unremittingly studying the Blessed Gospel themselves, and warmly recommending the study of it to the Laity as well as to the Clergy, with ready conviction adopted, from the sacred volume, the moral corruptions, which their master had thence taught them both by precept and by practice! In short, most diabolically and most cunningly to boot (as Peter Siculus remarks), the Paulicians, for the better establishment of their bad principles and worse conduct, were wont to insist: that both priests and people are in duty bound to the constant perusal of the Gospel; that God wishes all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; and that the priests of the day adulterated God’s holy word, garbling and concealing and omitting a great part of its contents! 7 Nevertheless (so runs the testimony of our judicious and consistent historian), although these strangest of all strange Manicheans absolutely learned nothing from their professed rule of life, the Gospels and the Epistles, save the flagitiousness of Basilides: yet they peremptorily rejected every base lust; exhibited, in their whole practice, a consistent piety; and declared themselves, while alleged by their enemies to be the vigilant guardians and the unflinching champions of the speculative dogmas of Manicheism, entirely free from all the falsely imputed abominations of the Gnostic Theology. Such were Constantine and his Paulicians. As for their historian Peter, who in the year 870, spent nine months among them at Tibrica, he is fairly graveled with the oddity of the case. 9 But he offers a solution of the difficulty; which, since in all parallel cases of this perplexing description, it is uniformly adopted by the sagacious Bishop of Meaux, must needs be both respectable and satisfactory. The solution is this: All their specious piety was mere hypocrisy; and they themselves were undoubted wolves in the decent garb of harmless sheep! 2. In an age of burning zeal, it was not likely, that the affair could be suffered to rest here. The divine and orthodox emperors (as Peter speaks) had, to their other illustrious deeds, already added the meritorious process, of consigning to the flames, wherever they could be found, the books which were used by the older Manicheans, of slaughtering without mercy the culprits themselves, and of dooming to well-deserved death and confiscation all who should presume to give them harbor. 11 But now their holy activity extended also to the Paulicians; that extraordinary race of new Manicheans, who had so undeniably established their right to the title by rejecting Manes and Manicheism.

A bloody persecution was, accordingly, raised against them: and Simeon, an imperial officer, was dispatched with orders to put Constantine to death. He was charged, at the same time, to disperse his disciples, singly or in small companies, throughout the Church: that so, however obstinately determined to the contrary, they might be duly instructed, and thus finally converted to the full sincerity of well accredited Catholicism.

The ringleader, with his associates, was soon taken: and a command was forthwith issued, that the Paulician apostle should be stoned to death by his own disciples. All his proselytes, however, save one, disobeyed or evaded the sanguinary decree: but, in that one, a new David was not wanting to slay a new Goliath. Among the earliest converts of Sylvanus, was the disciple Justus. This highly-privileged instrument of divine vengeance, whose name (as the historian well remarks) so happily agrees with his deeds, repenting of the Manicheism in which he had long been deeply steeped, discharged a stone at his heretical seducer, and rapidly sent him into the pit which had been dug most appropriately by himself. II. But, from the martyrdom of Constantine, as from the martyrdom of Stephen, another Paul was raised up in the late persecutor Simeon. Three years, amidst the pleasures and blandishments of a court, he resisted his convictions: but, at the end of that term, he left all that he possessed, and fled privately from Constantinople. Peter Siculus promptly sets down his unaccountable conduct, as a clear case of diabolical possession. Whatever may be the value of that ingenious conjecture, Simeon became the successor of the man, over whose martyrdom he had presided: and, in imitation of Constantine who had assumed the name of St. Paul’s friend Sylvanus, the new Paulician borrowed the appellation of St. Paul’s disciple Titus. Meanwhile, the apostate murderer Justus seems, upon a profession of repentance, to have been unsuspectingly readmitted into the Society: for we find him disagreeing with the now spiritual ruler Simeon, as to the true import of a remarkable text in the Epistle to the Colossians. (Colossians 1:15-17.) This led to an act of what looks very like intentional treachery.

In consulting the Bishop of Colonia as to the sense of the litigated passage, he gave, to that prelate, a full account both of himself and of his fellows and of the discipline of the community. The bishop communicated the confession to the emperor: and the emperor, forthwith collecting together the Manicheans (as Peter calls them), devoutly burned all, who were pertinacious in error, upon one enormous funeral-pile. A certain Paul, however, with his two sons, having, some considerable time before, retired to Episparis, had thus fortunately made his escape: and, in him, and in his son Genesius upon whom he bestowed the name of St. Paul’s disciple Timothy, the indomitable impiety revived and was continued. 15 In despite of internal dissention which too often showed itself, the sect still increased and flourished: and the historian has recorded the names of Zacharias and Epaphroditus and Bahanes (if the first ought not rather to be deemed an ambitious intruder), as its principal ministers or ecclesiastical superiors. III. At length, on the death of Bahanes, the Community fell under the spiritual government of Sergius, who took the scriptural name of Tychicus. Thirty and four years, this new Prelate (himself a convert, as it might seem, from among the Catholics) labored in the paradoxical vineyard of unmanicheanised Manicheism. He supplied his people with books written by himself in the form of epistles; which, though Peter Siculus declares them to be full of what he at least deemed all pride and impiety, were held in high veneration: he incessantly acted the missionary, in the same towns and through the same regions as those which had formed the oriental theater of the great Apostle’s exertions; a circumstance which led (I suppose) to the transmission of the already mentioned pastoral epistles: and he thereby, as our historian pithily observes, turned many from the orthodox faith, and made numerous converts to the devil. 18 His active life he closed by martyrdom, being cut into two pieces with an axe: a remarkable instance, according to Peter Siculus, of the just judgment of God; that he, who had divided the Church, should himself be divided, and that thus his unholy spirit should be consigned to eternal fire. 19 After the death of Sergius, the historian gives us the names of Michael and Canacares and John and Theodotus and Basil and Zosimus and Carbeas and Chrysocheris.

Under the administration of Carbeas, the Community so greatly increased in number that they migrated to a new settlement which they called Tibrica and, while Chrysocheris was their chief pastor, Peter Siculus, in the service of the Imperial Court, spent, at that place, as I have already observed, nine months among them. IV. At this time, to their originally defective new testament, which, as received by Constantine from the deacon, contained only the four gospels and the fourteen epistles of St. Paul, they had added the acts of the apostles, the catholic epistles of James and Jude, and the three Epistles of St. John’ so that, with the exception of the two Epistles of St. Peter and the mysterious book of the Apocalypse, they then, in its full completeness, possessed the entire volume.

Nor did they only possess it, thus far numerically complete what is absolutely and inherently fatal to the malignant calumny of their pretended Manicheism, they possessed it likewise, as their hostile historian himself admits, free from all interpolation and erasure and corruption, in the precise words of the genuine copies used by the whole church catholic.

This, I need scarcely remark to the theological student, is a matter of prime importance: and thence, in the way of testimony, it must carefully be borne in remembrance. From their readiness to add what they originally wanted, I venture to believe, that they would have been equally glad to possess the remaining books of the New Testament: though their intemperate historian declares, that They reviled the Prince of the Apostles, and the key-bearer of the courts of heaven. His very phraseology shows the true nature of what he characteristically styles their evil-affectedness toward St. Peter: the Sicilian Divine was indignant, that the supremacy of Peter and his successors should be denied by the bold heretics of Armenia. Their theological descendants in Europe obtained that Apocalypse, which their asiatic forefathers had wanted: and, in the features of the predicted Babylonian Harlot, those descendants readily traced the lineaments of the corrupt and persecuting church of the seven hills.

With respect to the Old Testament, the language of the historian inevitably imports, though he plainly meant not to convey any such idea, that they were well acquainted with it. He tells us, that they admitted it not. Now this assertion, even if it be correct, implies, of necessity, a familiar knowledge of its contents: for a person can scarcely be said actively to reject a code, with which he is altogether unacquainted. His very objurgation, indeed, distinctly, from the mere terms in which it is conveyed, demonstrates their familiarity with it: for, in his wonted exaggerating and intemperate phraseology, he tells us, that they stigmatized the ancient Hebrew prophets as robbers and vagabonds. The existence, then, of the prophets was fully known to them: and, that they, who had read in the New Testament the attestations of Christ and the evangelical writers to their true character, should speak of them as Peter Siculus describes, will probably be more than doubted by all save those who wish to believe evil of the Paulicians. 22 For my own part, as they were indisputably acquainted with the Old Testament, so I think they likewise possessed it. The admission of the one circumstance seems, by a necessary consequence, to draw after it the admission of the other circumstance.

V. It will now, in conclusion, be useful to sum up the evidence, which, in regard both to the doctrines and to the principles of the much calumniated Paulicians, may be gathered from the history of Peter Siculus. 1. When the self-destroying violence and the determined misrepresentation and the undaunted inconsistency of this writer are put aside, the real and actual amount of his unwilling testimony to their doctrinal system will be as follows. The Paulicians, though perpetually by their enemies charged with the Manichean heresy, uniformly denied the justice of the accusation; and always rejected, with strong expressions of abhorrence, both Manes and Manicheism. They held the allied doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation: but they renounced the worship of the Cross and of the Virgin and of the Saints; while they evidently disbelieved that material presence of the Lord’s body and blood in the consecrated elements which finally received the name of Transubstantiation.

The God-denying speculation, which explains away the doctrine of the trinity and which asserts Christ to be a mere man, they abhorred.

Their laborious teachers, such as Constantine and Simeon and Sergius, they revered, as faithful ministers of Christ, and as devout imitators of the Apostle Paul.

They were anxious to make converts; on the ground, that they proclaimed the sincere doctrines of the Gospel: while, consistently, they had ever the sacred volume in their hands; and while they always contended, that it ought not to be exclusively locked up among the Priesthood, but that it ought to be freely open to universal perusal.

Nor did they derive their scheme of doctrine from a mutilated or interpolated or corrupted New Testament. The ancient Gnostics and Marcionites and Manicheans, conscious that their own allied systems and the genuine Gospel could not subsist together, were notorious for their unprincipled erasures and adulterations. 25 To the exhibition of anything like even a moderately plausible case, such management was absolutely necessary. Gnosticism or Manicheism, however modified, could not advance a step without it. Hence, where real Manicheism existed, there also was a garbled and spurious Gospel, arranged and prepared to suit the purposes of innovating heresy. But the Paulicians confessedly used the genuine Gospel: for, though, when the historian wrote, they had not as yet been able to complete the sacred volume by the sole requisite addition of the two epistles of St. Peter and the apocalypse of St. John; still their copies of the books which they possessed were free from all corruption, and verbally corresponded with the copies used by the whole Church Catholic. Now this single circumstance alone, independently of all other evidence, is amply sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of their pretended Manicheism. Had they been Manicheans, their copies of the New Testament would have been variously curtailed and interpolated and corrupted, in order to suit the palpable necessities of their system. But their copies were, confessedly, genuine and unadulterated. Therefore, unless universally, they were absolute fools, they could not possibly have been Manicheans.

The proof acquires additional force from yet another circumstance. They did not receive their admitted genuine Gospel unwillingly, as a document, which they disliked indeed, but which they found it impracticable with any show of decency to reject. On the contrary, they were so fully convinced both of its truth and of its vital importance to salvation, that, rather than abandon it and embrace the unscriptural superstitions of their persecutors, they readily submitted to death under its most appalling aspect and under its most painful nature.

How persons, thus characterized even by an enemy, can have been Manicheans in doctrine, certainly exceeds my own skill to explain. 2. As little, moreover, am I able to explain, how they can have been Basilidians in practice. The historian’s reluctant attestation to their moral and religious principles is, I think, quite decisive and altogether satisfactory.

In their conduct, they were so grave and holy and consistent, that nothing is left for their enemy, save to pronounce the whole of their specious piety mere hypocrisy.

As they openly rejected with abhorrence the doctrinal errors of Manes: so they indignantly disallowed the allegation, that they were tainted with the impurities of Basilides.

In their labor of proselytizing they were so successful, that not only converts from among the less educated Laity, but even numbers of more learned Monks and Priests, joined their Community. These became preachers of the faith which they had adopted: and the fact itself experiences no change from the characteristic assertion of the historian, that they were transmuted from sheep into wolves, and that they learned to be devourers of men. The firmness of their religious adherence to principle was marked by their frequent and ready submission to martyrdom. Hundreds of them were burned alive upon one huge funeral pile: two, out of three more eminent presidents, were severally stoned and cut in sunder with the axe: and the third, that very remarkable character Simeon or Titus, after a full deliberation of three years amidst the honors and pleasures of a court, from a persecutor became a steady convert, appeared as the successor of the very man over whose martyrdom he had presided, and finally submitted himself to the flames rather than abandon the faith which, by a sacrifice of all his worldly goods and prospects, he had embraced.

In short, such mingled violence and inconsistency and absurdity, as distinguish the writer now before us, may well make a sober inquirer pause, before he admits the Paulicians to have been a sect of Manicheans.

Palpable misrepresentation runs through every page of the work of Peter Siculus: and, upon my own mind at least, its effect is precisely the reverse of that which it was intended to produce. In listening to his rabid declamation, I seem to hear some furious modern popish priest, bellowing against Luther, and childishly propounding his manifest connection with Lucifer. The school, to which these calumniators belong (for, in every age, calumny has been the regular staple of an apostate church), is, graphically no less than prophetically, exhibited by the inspired seer of the apocalypse.

I heard a loud voice, saying, in heaven: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him, by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony: and they loved not their lives unto the death. (Revelation 12:10,11.)

CHAPTER - THE ALBIGENSES OF SOUTHERN FRANCE WEARIED out with incessant persecution in the East, the suffering Paulicians meditated, at length, a retreat into the West.

The earliest flight of expatriated emigrants seems to have occurred in the year 755, during the reign of Constantine the son of Leo Isauricus. These fugitives were followed by others: for, shortly after the community was visited by Peter Siculus in the year 870, a considerable body of them passed over, from Asia into Thrace, whence they advanced into Bulgaria; and, if we may judge from the historian’s monitory address to the Archbishop of the latter province, he appears to have known and anticipated their intention. But, in Bulgaria, as might be expected from its dependence upon the Constantinopolitan Empire, they found little rest for the soles of their feet. Some, however, notwithstanding the persecution which there again relentlessly dogged them, still remained in that district: while others, fondly hoping, I suppose, to experience greater kindness in the papal regions of Europe, migrated further westward into Germany and Italy and France. Here they were distinguished by a variety of names, such as Patarins, Publicans, Gazarians, Turlupins, Runcarians or Dungarians apparently from Hungary, and Bulgarians certainly from Bulgaria: among which, that of Cathari or Puritans seems chiefly to have predominated, until, at length, from their abounding in the neighborhood of Albi, they received the appellation, by which they are now most commonly known, of Albigenses or Albisenses or Albigeois. In accordance with their acquisition of this last name, a very large proportion of them settled in Gascony and Languedoc and Provence and Aquitaine: and their original number was swelled by the rapid addition of myriads of native converts, whom the disciples of St. Paul successfully proselyted throughout those districts of Southern France, which, long maintaining a sort of independence upon the papacy, zealously opposed the idolatrous ordinances of the second Nicene Council, and showed small inclination to adopt the wild reveries of the nascent Transubstantialists.

Here, at the beginning of the eleventh century, they attracted the notice of the dominant Church: and the language of the Council of Tours which sat in the year 1163, concurring with that of Pope Innocent III in the year 1199 and with that of the Archbishop of Narbonne in the year 1213 and with that of Louis IX in the year 1228, distinctly intimates, both that they had already been long in the country, and that their doctrine had infected well nigh the entire population. But, though their chief establishment appears to have been in the South of France, they had, on the whole, in the twelfth century, no fewer than sixteen Churches loosely scattered over the country which extends from Bulgaria to Gascony. Of these, the names and locality are given, with much precision, by the Inquisitor Reinerius: and that writer, who is commonly said to have composed his Work about the year 1254, additionally remarks; that, while the entire regularly associated Community scarcely amounted to four thousand members, those more loosely connected proselytes, whom they styled Believers, were absolutely innumerable. Every calumny, which had assailed them in the East, attended them into the West: and Peter Siculus himself cannot be more violent, than the multiplicity of concurring authors adduced by Bossuet. Those authors he cites, for the purpose of showing, that they were profligate Manicheans; and thence that they cannot be safely claimed by the Reformed Churches as part of an ecclesiastical succession in which the promises of Christ have been accomplished. But, in every point of view, there is such a mass of inconsistency in the evidence, that, if any person wishes to frame his belief upon it, he will find himself beset with difficulties and contradictions, which are more sensibly felt than they are easily surmounted.

I. The first difficulty, by which he will be encountered, may be stated in manner following.

The Albigenses are asserted to have been habitually guilty of the vilest abominations: nevertheless, as Bossnet himself is constrained to allow, while they themselves invariably repelled, with a firm denial, the charges brought against them; their very accusers admitted, that these monsters of profligacy and impiety might always be known by the peculiar strictness of their walk and conversation. 1. Most curious is the effect produced by bringing together the discordant statements in question. (1.) Let us begin with the testimony of the universal doctor, Alan the Great.

These heretics are variously styled Catharri, from the word Catha which signifies a flux; on account of their utter abandonment to dissoluteness of manners: or Cathari, as it were Casti; because they pretend to be chaste and just: or Catari, from the word Catus; because they are in the habit of kissing the hinder parts of a cat, under the form of which animal, as we are well assured, Lucifer is wont to appear to them. (2.) After Alan, let us proceed to hear Bernard of Clairvaux.

It is asserted of them, that in secret they practice unutterable obscenities. — In order to hide their real baseness, they make themselves remarkable by a vow of continence. — Yet is their familiarity with women so scandalous, that no one can believe them to be chaste. (3.) We may next attend to the apostate Inquisitor Reinerius, who gives us some yet further insight into their base practices.

They make a cake of meal mixed with the blood of an infant. If the infant dies’, it is deemed a martyr: if it lives, it is styled a saint.

They meet together naked to pray, both men and women promiscuously. 7 Many of their believers of both sexes, scruple no more to approach their nearest relatives, than their respective wives or husbands. 8 It is their common opinion, that marriage is a mortal sin: but they think, that no person is hereafter more severely punished for adultery and incest, than for lawful matrimony. 9 Whatever sins they have committed before their making a profession of heresy, they never repent of them. This is manifest from the circumstance, that they never make restitution of what they have gained by usury or theft or rapine. Rather, indeed, they reserve it: or else they leave it to their children and grandchildren remaining in the worm, because usury, they say, is no sin. (4.) Yet, to this very same Reinerius, are we indebted for the following most graphic account of those identical Cathari, whom, immediately before, he had been busily describing as the worst and most profligate of mankind.

Heretics are known by their manners and their words. In their manners, they are composed and modest. They admit no pride of dress: holding a just mean, between the expensive and the squalid.

In order that they may the better avoid lies and oaths and trickery, they dislike entering into trade; but, by the labor of their hands, they live like ordinary hired workmen. Their very teachers are mere artizans. Riches they seek not to multiply, but they are content with things necessary. They are chaste also: a virtue, in which the Leonists particularly excel. In meat and drink they are temperate.

They resort, neither to taverns, nor to dances, nor to any other vanities. From anger they carefully restrain themselves. They are always engaged, either in working, or in learning, or in teaching: and, therefore, they spend but little time in prayer. Under fictitious pretences, nevertheless, they will attend church, and offer, and confess, and communicate, and hear sermons: but this they do merely to cavil at the preacher’s discourse. They may likewise be known by their precise and modest words: for they avoid all scurrility and detraction and lies and oaths and levity of speech. (5.) Much of the statement, respecting their occasional conformity, I suspect to be pure misrepresentation. Reinerius, however, goes on to give us a very curious account of the mode, in which this vile and rustic and illiterate race (as Bernard contemptuously styles them 12 ) made converts even among the great ones of the earth: a mode so successful, that they are known to have proselyted, not only the Princes of the House of Toulouse with other nobles, but likewise the King of Aragon himself; proselyted them, that is to say, if we may believe the calumniators of the Albigenses, to the doctrinal follies and the practical impurities of Manicheism.

The heretics cunningly devise, how they may insinuate themselves into the familiarity of the noble and the great: and this they do in manner following. They exhibit for sale, to the lords and the ladies, rings and robes and other wares which are likely to be acceptable.

When they have sold them, if asked whether they have any more goods for sale, one of these travelling peddlers will answer: I have jewels far more precious than these, which I will readily give you, if you will secure me against being betrayed to the priests. The security being pledged, the heretic then proceeds to say: it possess a brilliant gem from God himself; for, through it, man comes to the knowledge of God: and I have another, which casts out so ruddy a heat, that it forthwith kindles the love of God in the heart of the owner. In like manner proceeds he to speak of all his other metaphorical gems. Then he recites a chapter from scripture or from some part of our Lord’s discourses. When he finds his auditor to be pleased, he will proceed to rehearse the twenty-third chapter of Matthew and the parallel passages in the twelfth chapter of Mark: wherein the Scribes and Pharisees are described, as sitting in the seat of Moses; and wherein a woe is denounced against those who shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, neither entering themselves, nor suffering the persons who wish it to enter. After this, the heretic draws a comparison between the state of the Roman Church and the state of the ancient Pharisees: applying, to the former, all that is said by Christ of the latter. Among the priests, he will remark, you can scarcely, find a single doctor, who is able to repeat by heart three chapters of the new testament: but, among us, you can scarcely find either a man or a woman, who knows not how to recite the whole text in the vulgar tongue. Yet, because we possess the true faith of Christ, and because we inculcate upon all our people holiness of life and soundness of doctrine: therefore do these modern Scribes and Pharisees gratuitously persecute us to the death, even as their Jewish predecessors persecuted Christ. Besides: they say and do not: but we practice all, that we teach. Moreover: they enforce the traditions of men, rather than the commandments of God: but we persuade persons only to observe the doctrine of Christ and the apostles. They impose upon their penitents heavy punishments, which they will not alleviate with so much as a single finger: but we, after the example of Christ, say to a sinner; go, and sin no more. Furthermore: we transmit souls, by death to heaven: but they send almost all souls to the infernal region of hell. 13 These matters being thus propounded, the heretic puts the question: judge ye, what state and what faith is the more perfect; that of our community, or that of the Church of Rome? And, when you have honestly judged, choose that which you deem the best. Thus, through their errors, is a person subverted from the catholic faith: and thus, believing and harboring and favoring and defending and for many months hiding a vagabond of this description, he learns, in his own house, the several particulars respecting their sect. (6.) A similar character of the Albigenses, though remarkably intermingled with determined prejudice, is given by Bernard.

If you, interrogate them respecting their faith, nothing can be more Christian: if you inquire into their conversation, nothing can be more irreprehensible; and, what they say, they confirm by their deeds. — As for what regards life and manners, they attack no one, they circumvent no one, they defraud no one. Their faces are pale with fasting: they eat not the bread of idleness; but they labor with their own hands for the support of life. Yet mark the fox. — Women leave their husbands, and husbands forsake their wives, in order to join their assemblies. Nay many even of the very Clergy and Priesthood, quitting their people and their churches, are perpetually form among them, unshorn and unshaven, herding with unlettered weavers. 2. Now what are the inferences, which any reasonable and sober-minded man, well acquainted with the principles and practices of the Romish Ecclesiastics, would draw from these most curiously mottled statements?

When we recollect, that, against the primitive Christians, every babbling Pagan was ready to bring charges of a nature exactly similar to those which were brought against the Albigenses; and when we note the concurrent admission, that nothing could be more exemplary than their whole conduct and conversation: we may perhaps, on our Lord’s wise system of judging a tree by its fruits, find it not very easy to believe, that these hated religionists were such monsters of iniquity as their enemies would fain have us to admit. Nor is this all. As we have heard their adversaries, it seems only fair to hear themselves.

What, then, did they say to the allegations brought against them?

By the acknowledgment of Bernard, they flatly and steadily denied their truth.

Was the Abbot of Clairvaux, when he combined their admitted conduct with their admitted denials, convinced of their innocence?

Nothing of the sort. Prejudice was far too strong for plain common sense.

In consequence of their denim of the atrocities laid to their charge, they were sagaciously subjected to the water-ordeal: and, when they found themselves unable to sink, they then, if we may credit the tales reported to Bernard, not merely confessed their impiety, but even gloried in it. On such solid and well-authenticated grounds, the tales, to wit, of an ignorant and infuriated mob of brutal persecutors, he pronounces the whole of their specious piety to be mere dissimulation: and Bossuet, at the end of the seventeenth century, was content, with high encomiums upon Bernard’s clear-sightedness, to adopt the same mode of solving the difficulty by a gratuitous hypothesis of systematic hypocrisy. II. But the Albigenses were not only pious in their lives; pious, at least, externally, as their enemies themselves admit: they also steadfastly maintained what they held to be the true faith of the Gospel; and, rather than renounce it, cheerfully suffered martyrdom even under its most formidable aspect.

Active courage in battle may, no doubt, subsist along with great profligacy of manners’ but the natural tendency of habitual vice is to weaken and destroy that passive courage, which, in cold blood, for conscience-sake, induces a man calmly to suffer death rather than relinquish what he is persuaded is the vital truth of God. Persons may live debauched hypocrites: but, I should think, few such characters would be much disposed to be burned alive from an extraordinary love for the speculations of Manicheism. Mistaken men may die for what they honestly deem the Gospel. But immoral men are not the precise individuals, who commonly lay down their lives for their faith.

How, then, in the case of the grossly profligate and hypocritical Albigenses, is this second difficulty to be solved?

Bossuet finds the task ready accomplished to his hand by the wisdom of the twelfth century, as displayed by the same most serviceable Bernard: and he might have yet additionally brought forward the sagacity of the thirteenth century, as exemplified by Lucas of Tuy; for the solution of this ingenious Prelate perfectly quadrates with that of Bernard, and is indeed, with due acknowledgments, professedly and modestly borrowed from it.

Notwithstanding that the Albigenses are somewhat incongruously described, as being ready to say and to swear anything in order that they might escape punishment: still, somehow or other, it was a public fact too notorious to be denied, that this most paradoxical race submitted, even joyfully and triumphantly, to martyrdom, rather than apostatize from the creed of their forefathers. For the marked discrepance which characterizes these two strangely inconsistent particulars, Bossuet attempts not to account: but, the naked fact of voluntary and triumphant suffering for alleged conscience-sake on the part of the sufferers, he is content to explain in the manner recommended by Bernard.

If Judas might be successfully tempted by the devil to lay violent hands upon himself: surely Satan, with at least equal facility, might tempt the Albigenses to brave death at the hands of others. This truly logical argument, from the less to the greater, must needs, with all close thinkers, be invincibly conclusive. Satan was clearly the foul inspirer of the spurious martyrdoms of the Albigenses: because their unshaken fortitude could spring from no other quarter. The contempt of death, in genuine martyrs, as Bernard judiciously makes the distinction, is true piety; but, in heretics, it is simply produced by a diabolically infused hardness of heart.

Certainly, the Bishop of Meaux, by joyfully adopting, in the seventeenth century, the cherished solution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, has shown the amiable quality of being very easily satisfied.

III. A third difficulty yet remains to be solved: the evidential difficulty, I mean, when the whole matter is fairly considered, of admitting the sufficiency and satisfactoriness of the testimony, which is adduced for the purpose of establishing the asserted fact, that The Albigenses were doctrinal Manicheans.

Like the primitive Christians, these religionists, as we have seen, were charged with the secret practice of various impurities. Yet they are admitted to have led holy and honest lives of habitual temperance and chastity and self-denial: and they are still further admitted to have always repelled the accusation, as a base falsehood concocted by their enemies.

They were moreover charged, as we have also seen, with a time-serving readiness to avow and to swear anything that might be required of them: in order that, by such unscriptural dissimulation, they might escape the punishment which was awarded to heresy. Yet, even by the confession of their adversaries, they cheerfully and triumphantly laid down their lives, rather than renounce the doctrinal system, which, whether correctly or incorrectly, they themselves at least deemed the sincere truth of the Gospel.

We have now to learn, what, by their bigoted opponents, that system was alleged to be: in order that we may judge, how far the difficulty of attaching any credit to the testimony of such inconsistent witnesses may be fairly thought capable of a reasonable solution. 1. With this view, I shall pass on to certain of those ancient accounts of the doctrinal system of the Cathari or Albigenses, which have come down to us from the middle ages: premising only, that, to avoid the wearisomeness of unprofitable repetition, I do not conceive it necessary to give the whole of them. (1.) Though the title, affixed (I suppose) by the Jesuit Mariana to the rambling Work of Lucas of Tuy, purports that it is a Treatise against the Albigenses, the author really says very little about their alleged peculiar opinions. That little, however, is sufficient to show, that he wishes to charge them with having adopted, as their creed, the impious speculations of Manicheism.

These heretics, says he, falsely assert, that the body of man was created by the devil. Glorying in the name of philosophers or naturalists, they propound many doctrines contrary to the truth.

But their object is to introduce the Manichean Heresy and to acknowledge two Gods: of whom, the malignant, as they saucily pretend, created all things visible. — Thus they assert: that every visible object in this worm was made by the devil: whence they argue, that it matters not, whether money be gained well or ill. — They likewise contend: that the Prelates of the Church can give no assistance, by indulgences of remission, to the souls of the faithful who have died in Christ; that the soul of no holy person ascends to heaven before the day of judgment; and that souls suffer no punishment, save in hell alone: adding, that they know nothing about the condition of those survivors, whom, while they lived in the body, they loved in this world. (2.) Lucas of Tuy flourished in the thirteenth century: but the testimony of an earlier writer, Radulphus Ardens, who lived towards the close of the eleventh century, is somewhat more compact and explicit.

Such, at this day, are those Manichean Heretics, who by their heresy have polluted their native country of Agenois. They falsely pretend that they lead the life of the Apostles; saying, that they will neither lie nor swear at all; and, under the pretext of abstinence and continence, condemning marriage and the eating of animal food: for they assert, that it is as great a sin to approach to a wife as to a mother or a daughter. They likewise condemn the Old Testament: but of the New, they receive some books, and not others. What, however, is still more horrible, they propound two creators of the universe: believing God to be the author of things invisible, while they hold the devil to be the author of things visible. Hence they secretly worship the devil, whom they esteem the creator of their own bodies. The sacrament of the altar they assert to be mere bread. Baptism they deny, as also the resurrection of the body: and they preach, that no one can be saved except through their hands. (3.) Much the same account is given in a fragment of the ancient History of Aquitaine, edited by Peter Pitheus, where it treats of the year 1017.

Forthwith sprang up, throughout Aquitaine, certain Manicheans, seducing promiscuously the people from truth to error. They persuaded them to deny Baptism, the sign of the Holy Cross, the Church, and the Redeemer of the world himself; together with the veneration of the Saints of God, lawful marriage, and the eating of flesh, whence they turned away, many simple persons from the faith. (4.) We may trace again the alleged Manicheans of Aquitaine and the South of France, in the account given of the Publicans or Cathari of Gascony by the monk Robert of Auxerre, who flourished during the latter half of the twelfth century.

The heresy of those, whom they call Publicans or Cathari or Paterins, denies the sacraments of Christ. This had clandestinely sprung up in many places: but, in Gascony, it had openly taken possession of the people to a very great extent. For, there, the heretics, being cut off from the catholic communion, possess many castles fortified against the Catholics: rejecting the Catholic rites and ceremonies, serving their own inventions, and poisoning by their virulence whomsoever they can. Wherefore, to crush their madness, Henry, who from being Abbot of Clairvaux had become Bishop of Alba, a man of a very eloquent tongue, was sent by Pope Alexander: and, accordingly, having gathered together, by the preaching of the word, both cavalry and infantry from various quarters, he attacked and conquered the aforesaid heretics. But his efforts were fruitless: for, as soon as ever they became masters of their own actions, they forthwith returned to wallowing in the filth of their pristine error. (5.) What, however, will perhaps be deemed the most important testimony to the Manicheism of the Cathari or Albigenses, is that of the Inquisitor Reinerius Sacco, who had been a member of their communion during the space of no less than seventeen years, who afterward conformed to the Roman Church, and who at length became a priest in the order of preaching friars. This peculiarly circumstanced individual is thought to have written about the year 1254 and, if we suppose him to have composed his treatise toward the close of a long life, he may not improbably be the Friar Reinerius, whom Pope Innocent III, in his decretal epistles of the year 1199, mentions, as being employed by him, in conjunction with Friar Guido, for the purpose of hunting out the heretical Valdenses and Cathari throughout the South of France and the North of Spain. The opinions in common to all the Cathari are these.

This world, and all things that are in it, were created by the devil.

All the sacraments of the Church, to wit, the sacrament of Baptism by material water, and the other sacraments, profit nothing to salvation, and are false sacraments: inasmuch as they are not the true sacraments of Christ and his Church, but deceptive and diabolical and appertaining only to a Church of malignants.

Carnal matrimony is a mortal sin: and, in the future world, a person is not punished more heavily for adultery and incest, than for lawful wedlock. There is no future resurrection of the body.

To eat flesh or eggs or cheese, even in a case of urgent necessity, is a mortal sin.

The secular authorities act sinfully, when they punish with death malefactors or heretics.

No one can be saved, except through their ministration.

All unbaptized infants suffer eternal punishment no less severely, than homicides and robbers.

There is no purgatory.The additional opinions of some of the Cathari, which they entertain beside the above-mentioned common opinions, are the following. There are two principles from the Deity: a principle of good; and a principle of evil.

The Trinity, namely, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, is not one God: but the Father is greater than the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Each Principle, or each God, created his own angels and his own world.

This world, and all things that are in it, was created and made and formed by the evil God.

The devil, with his angels, ascended to heaven: and, when war there took place with Michael the Archangel, the angel of the good God thence extracted a part of the creatures of God, and daily infuses them into human and brutal bodies and even from one body into another, until the said creatures are brought back to heaven.

From the blessed Virgin, who was an angel, the Son of God took not true human nature, but only its similitude. Hence he did not truly eat and drink: neither did he truly suffer or die: neither was he truly buried: neither did he truly rise again: but all these matters were only putative or apparitional. The same must be said also of his miracles.

Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the old fathers and John the Baptist were all enemies of God and ministers of the devil.

The devil was the author of the entire Old Testament, save only the books of Job, the Psalms, Solomon, wisdom, the Son of Sirach, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor Prophets.

This world will never have an end.

The alleged future judgment has already occurred, and will never take place again.

Hell and eternal fire and eternal punishments are in this world, and not elsewhere. 2. Such, in point of doctrine, if we may credit the writers who have passed before us, were the Albigenses. According to the evidence, which in all fairness has been adduced, they were rank Manicheans. But here the question is: whether the witnesses against them are to be credited. (1.) Now, even without the adduction of any counter-testimony (which, however, shall appear in its proper place), I should fearlessly say: that no confidence can be placed in such evidence. Upon its very front, it bears impressed the dark brand of determined prejudice or of interested calumny.

We have seen how entirely Peter Siculus has failed in attempting to fix the charge of Manicheism upon the oriental Paulicians; and equally vain are the efforts of the Romish enemies of the Albigenses. Finding, that the Paulicians had most incongruously been set down as Manicheans, for the very reason, which, according to plain common sense, should have effectually determined them to be not Manicheans; namely, because a large proportion of them had, in the first instance, been actually converted from Manicheism to what was plainly the sound faith of the gospel; finding this, the prejudiced or interested bigots of Romanism readily caught up the same convenient cry against the Albigenses or Cathari; and, so far as minute particularity was concerned, had small difficulty in filling up the outline, with much specious and plausible exactness, from the ancient writings of Ireneus or Epiphanius.

Such is very eminently and clearly the case with the wretched apostate and persecutor Reinerius Sacco. His very minuteness convicts him of being a mere retailer from the works of the primitive writers against the real Gnostic and Docetic and Manichean Heresies: and his horrible appeal to god, as a witness of his veracity, serves only to throw a greater discredit upon his foully calumnious statements; for no honest historian thinks it necessary to appeal to heaven for the purpose of establishing his trustworthiness. 28 The consciousness of his apostasy (an apostasy, the guilt of which was tremendously aggravated by the persecution of his former brethren) is ever present to his view: and thrice, in a work of only ten not very long chapters, does he refer to it. 29 Having quitted his own communion for that of the Roman Church, and being forthwith required to show the sincerity of his conversion by undertaking the office of inquisitor among those with whom he had once walked in the bonds of the gospel, he resolutely determined to make out a strong case against them, both to please his employers, and to vindicate his own foul apostasy. Yet so clumsy is he in the management of that very minuteness which was designed to make most strongly against them, that he more than once blunders into gross inconsistencies or into palpable contradictions.

Thus he tells us that the Cathari rejected the sacrament of Baptism, as no true sacrament of Christ, but as a deceptive and diabolical ordinance instituted by a church of Malignants. Yet, in the judgment of these very Cathari, if we are to believe this veracious witness to what he knew from an experience of seventeen years, all unbaptized infants suffer the same intensity of eternal punishment as homicides and robbers.

Thus he asserts, that, with some considerable exceptions, they rejected the Old Testament as the work of the devil, while he is totally silent respecting any rejection of any part of the New Testament: an assertion and a silence, which evidently imply; that, like the old Paulicians, they received the latter just as the Catholic Church receives it; and that they did not, like the Marcionites and real Manicheans, corrupt it into another Gospel that so it might serve their own purposes. Yet he requires us to credit him, when he says: that, with the whole New Testament and with confessedly the greater part of the Old Testament in their hands, they deemed Abraham and the fathers to be servants of the devil; maintained, as a scriptural truth, the doctrine of two Independent Principles; adopted all the absurdities of the Docetae, respecting the visionary character of Christ; maintained, that the whole material world was created by the devil; and broached a farrago of fables, all of which are hopelessly irreconcilable with that Gospel, which they not only had in their hands, but which, by this egregious blunderer’s own confession, they could well nigh say by heart from one end to the other. A witness, thus circumstanced and thus giving his testimony, who will believe? The easy faith of Bossuet may admit his evidence: but the stubborn incredulity of a Protestant will laugh at the clumsy fraud and easily recognize the scrinia whence this compiler of calumnies has pillaged his materials. His whole account of the Cathari smacks of Ireneus and Epiphanius. From them he has borrowed a bungling account of the ancient Gnostics and Manicheans, who had fabricated for their own purposes a gospel of their own: and then, not perceiving the grossness of his inconsistency, he saddles it upon a body of Christians, who possessed the genuine Gospel, and who, instead of seeking to corrupt it, could actually say almost the whole of it by heart. (2.) But this is not all. A prudent inquirer, before he gives credit to these repeated allegations of doctrinal Manicheism against the Albigenses, will naturally ask: What answer did they themselves make to the charge?

In good sooth, like their asiatic predecessors the Paulicians, who, as we have seen, renounced both Manes and Manicheism, the Albigenses stoutly denied the truth of the allegations. 31 Nor did they deny it merely once or twice: nor yet was the denial confined to a few individuals. It was, we are assured, their universal custom, whenever they were questioned concerning their faith, promptly to deny all the various matters of which they were suspected. The evidence, then, at present, will stand as follows.

By their enemies, the whole of whose concurrent testimony is hopelessly inconsistent and contradictory, the Albigenses are charged with having adopted and maintained the creed of Manicheism.

But, by the confession of their very enemies, it was their universal custom to deny the truth of the charge: for they disclaimed altogether any participation or approbation of that heresy; and, their adversaries themselves being judges, the strictness of their lives might well vouch for their honesty.

To which party, even as the evidence now stands, ought we to give credit?

Certainly not to the Albigenses, replies the Bishop of Meaux. From the Paulicians of the East to their Catharistic successors in the West, the whole generation are rank liars and equivocators. They may deny their Manicheism as often as they please: but a well practiced Catholic Inquisitor is not so easily cheated. Nay, the very pertinacity and uniformity of their denial, in all ages and countries, is itself a decided proof, that they ought not to be believed. It was the spirit of the Sect from its earliest commencement: and, since both Paulicians and Albigenses have invariably renounced Manes and disclaimed Manicheism, nothing can be more clear, than that the accusation is fully established by the simple and incontrovertible fact of their unvarying consistency. Now what were these unfortunate men to do? Their invariable disclaimer of Manicheism was the surest proof that they were hardened Manicheans: and their specific declaration, that they believed all the Articles of the Christian Faith, clearly demonstrated their unbelief, and thence most fully and satisfactorily established the confident assertion of their hypocrisy.

Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, from the admitted fact, that, in all ages have the Paulicians and the Albigenses invariably denied themselves to be Manicheans, does Bossuet undertake to demonstrate the asserted fact of their inveterate Manicheism.

CHAPTER - THE GROUNDS OF THE ALLEGATION OF MANICHEISM AGAINST THE PAULICIANS AND THE ALBIGENSES.

BUT it will be said: that there must surely have been some plausible ground at least for fixing, upon the ancient Paulicians and Albigenses, the particular charge of Manicheism, rather than the charge of any other heresy. Hence it will be asked: could their enemies have so pertinaciously brought against them the specific and well-defined accusation of Manicheism, if there had been nothing whatever, in their doctrinal system, which could give an apparent sanction to such an accusation?

That the charge, in the first instance, was built upon the circumstance of The infant Paulician community having been, to a considerable extent, composed of honest converts from Manicheism, is, I think, abundantly manifest: nor does the intrinsic absurdity and contradictoriness of the charge at all derogate from the certainty of the fact, when the character of blind and deaf and furious and unreasoning bigotry is considered.

From Asia, as I have already observed, the charge attended the emigrant Paulicians into Europe: and, whether from the intercourse of ordinary conversation, or from dishonestly distorted reports of occasional apostates (.such as Reinerius Sacco) eager to please their new friends, or from resolute misconstruction of unprincipled inquisitors in their examination of pretended heretics, nothing would be more easy than to fix a semblance of Manicheism, quite enough to satisfy vulgar ignorance and prejudiced bigotry, upon these hated reformers and provoking reprovers. The view, which I take of the process, will be perfectly intelligible, when a few specimens of facile perversion shall have been produced: and, by such a system of management, I will readily undertake to convict St. Paul himself, the model of the genuine Christian so specially revered by the Paulicians, of rank and palpable Manicheism.

I. It was the doctrine of the Manicheans: that there are two independent Principles; the one, good; the other, evil: of whom, the material world was created by the evil Principle, while the spiritual world was the work of the good Principle.

Now an unfortunate Albigensis, well read (as the custom of the sect was 2 ) in Holy Scripture, has been known and reported, we will suppose, to have designated Satan by the titles of Prince of this world and God of this world, to have expressed a hope that God would deliver him from this present evil world, to have declared that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, to have asserted that the world hath not known the Father, to have pronounced that the friendship of the world is enmity with God, to have intimated that the devil is come down to his own peculium the inhabiters of the earth and the sea, to have described the Evil One as the Prince of the Power of the air and as the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, to have stigmatized pharisaical hypocrites as being of their father the devil, to have spoken of a horrible worship paid to the dragon, and to have declared that he and his associates are of the Good God, while the whole world lieth in the Wicked One.

Let a hated Albigensis use this truly scriptural language: and it is quite easy to see, how malice or ignorance or a mixture of both might very plausibly exhibit him to the vulgar, as a Manichean; who believed in two Gods, a bad God and a good God; who declared the bad God to be the God and the Creator of this world, while the world to come was the work of the good God; and who worshipped the Devil or the bad God, as the Prince of the power of the air, and as the general father of all mankind so far as their material part is concerned. II. It was the doctrine of the ancient Manicheans and Docetae: that Christ was never really incarnate, his apparent flesh being a mere unsubstantial and visionary illusion; because, since matter was the work of the evil God and thence inherently bad itself, it were a contradiction to assert that Christ, the Son of the good God, could have assumed a true fleshly material body.

Some one, then, of the Albigenses happens to declare, that henceforth he knows no man after the flesh: adding, that although he had known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth he knows him no more under that carnal aspect. Or perhaps he asserts, that Christ is the living bread who descended from heaven. Or possibly he declares his conviction, that Christ is not of this world. Or very probably he may remark, that Christ walked upon the surface of the sea, and that he imperceptibly passed through the hands of those who wished to throw him down a precipice.

In such a reported ease, who does not perceive the inference, which would be joyfully drawn by a malignant Inquisitor, the iniquitous prejudger of his prisoner? The man, and the whole community to which he belongs, are, by the very purport of their own words, plainly convicted Docetae of the Manichean School. Assuredly they maintain, that the apparent body of Christ was altogether celestial, not substantially carnal. III. Through the consistent following out of their principles, it was the doctrine of the Manicheans: that Baptism by material water ought not to be administered; and that Marriage ought to be reviled and rejected.

The dreaded heretics are known to have remarked: that Baptism by