CHAP. faith and patience failed at length. We are ignorant of the steps by which they were gradually betrayed into a secular spirit. About the year 845, they murdered two persecutors, a governor and a bishop and a soldier called Carbeas, who commanded the guards in the imperial armies, that he might revenge his father's death, who had been slain by the inquisitors, formed a band of Paulicians, who renounced their allegiance to the emperor, negotiated with the Mahometan powers, and, by their assistance, endeavoured to establish the independency of their sect. Nicholas made pope. A. D. 85ა. Theodora was succeeded by her son* Michael. Her cruelties and superstitions deserved the applause of Nicolas, who became pope of Rome in 858. In a letter he highly approved her conduct; and admired her on account of her implicit obedience to the Holy See. We learn from the bio. grapher of the emperor Michael what Theodora had done to call forth the encomiums of this pontiff. "She resolved," says he, "to bring the Paulicians to the true faith, or cut them all off root and branch."-A resolution worthy of a truly Catholic princess!" Pursuant to that resolution, she sent some noblemen and magistrates," not preachers or missionaries," into the different provinces of the empire; and by them some of those unhappy wretches were crucified, some put to the sword, and some thrown into the sea and drowned. Thus were they slaughtered to the number of one hundred thousand, and their goods and estates confiscated t. The pope alluded to this bloody massacre, when he commends Theodora in the same letter for the *This is Michael III, and is surnamed the Sot, or the Drunkard. He was the son of the emperor Theophilus, and came to the throne A.D. 842, under the tuition and regency of his mother Theodora. + Porphyrog. IX. manly vigour she exerted, the Lord co-operating*, CENT. as he blasphemously adds, against obstinate and incorrigible heretics. Nicolas at the same time observes, that the heretics experiencing in her all the resolution and vigour of a man, could scarcely believe her to be a woman. Indeed zeal for religion had changed in Theodora, as it did in our Queen Mary, the tender and compassionate heart of a woman into that of a merciless and blood-thirsty tyrant. And here I am not disposed to suppress, that from the pope's own words, it appears, that the Apostolic See had its share in the glorious exploit just mentioned; for the pope, after telling her that the heretics dreaded, and at the same time admired, her resolution and steadiness in maintaining the purity of the Catholic faith, adds, "and why so, but because you followed the directions of the Apostolic See?t So truly was Antichristian tyranny now established at Rome!! Michael, the son of Theodora, fled before the arms of Carbeas; whose successor Chrysocheir, in conjunction with the Mahometans, penetrated into the heart of Asia, and desolated the fairest provinces of the Greeks. In the issue, however, Chrysocheir was slain, the Paulician fortress Tephrice was reduced, and the power of the rebels was broken, though a number of them in the mountains, by the assistance of the Arabs, preserved an uncomfortable independence. The ferocious actions. of the LATER Paulicians show, that they had lost the spirit of true religion: their schemes of worldly ambition were likewise frustrated. And similar consequences, in more recent ages, may be found to have resulted from political methods of supporting the Gospel. A number of this sect, about the middle of the * Domino cooperante. + Concil. Lab. Nic. Ep. xiv. VOL. III. P II. CHAP. eighth century, had been transplanted into Thrace, and subsisted there for ages, sometimes tolerated, at other times persecuted by the reigning powers. Even to the end of the seventeenth century they still existed about the valleys of Mount Hæmus. Of their religious history, during this period, I can find nothing; and, in our days, they seem to have nothing more of the Paulician sect than the name. I cannot follow the learned author, to whom I owe much for this account*, in his conjectures concerning this people's dispersion through the European provinces. Nor does there seem any good evidence of the Waldenses owing their origin to the Pauli cians. Such speculations are too doubtful to satisfy the minds of those, who prefer the solid evidence of facts to the conjectural ebullitions of a warm imagination. On the whole, we have seen, in general, satis factory proof of the work of divine grace in Asia Minor, commencing in the latter end of the seventh century, and extended to the former part of the ninth century. But, where secular politics begin, there the life and simplicity of vital godliness end. When the Paulicians began to rebel against the established government; to return evil for evil; to MINGLE AMONG THE HEATHEN, the Mahometans; and to defend their own religion by arms, negotiations, and alliances, they ceased to become the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, and the salt of the earth. Such they had been for more than a hundred and eighty years, adorning and exemplifying the real Gospel, by a life of faith, hope, and charity, and by the preservation of the truth in a patient course of suffering, looking for true riches and honour in the world to come; and, no doubt, they are not frustrated of their hope. But, when secular maxims began to prevail among them, they shone, for a time, as heroes and patriots, in the false + Psalm cvi. ver. 35. * Gibbon. IX. glare of human praise; but they lost the solidity of CENT. true honour, as all have done in all ages, who have descended from the grandeur of the passive spirit of conformity to Christ, and have preferred to that spirit the low ambition of earthly greatness*. CHA P. III. THE OPPOSITION MADE TO THE CORRUPTIONS OF POPERY IN THIS CENTURY, PARTICULARLY СНАР. III. WE have seen the light of divine truth shedding its kindly influence in the east; let us now behold the reviving power of its beams in the west. We must not expect to observe it generally illuminating either of those two great divisions of the Christian world, but only shining in some particular districts. The absolute power of the pope, the worship of images, and the invocation of Saints and Angels, were opposed, as in the last century, by several princes and ecclesiastics. A council at Paris, held in the year Council at 824, agreed with the council of Frankfort in the rejection of the decrees of the second council of Nice, and in the prohibition of image-worship. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, wrote a book against the abuse of pictures and images; in which he maintained, that we ought not to worship any image of Natalis Alexander, a voluminous French historian, and more vehemently attached to the popedom than Frenchmen commonly are, couples the Paulicians and also Claudius of Turin, of whom the reader will hear in the next Chapter, with Wickliffites, Lutherans, and Calvinists. He brands them as enemies to the adoration of the Cross of Christ, which, he says, the true Church always adored, "not only the genuine Cross, but an effigy of it, as soon as the Church obtained liberty under Christian princes." Tom. V. p. 636-638. This deserves to be considered as the testimony of a learned adversary to the evangelical character of the Paulicians, and of Claudius of Turin. Paris, A. D. 824. it CHAP. God, except that which is God himself, his eternal Son; and, that there is no other Mediator between God and man, except Jesus Christ, both God and 、 man. I have already observed, that the novel notion of transubstantiation was vigorously opposed by Rabanus and Scotus Erigena, the two most learned men of the west, in this century; nor was that doctrine, as yet, established in the kingdom of Antichrist. Rabanus treats it as an upstart opinion: may be proper to add, that Bertram, a monk of Corbie, being asked whether the same body, which was crucified, was received in the mouth of the faithful, in the sacrament, answered, that "the difference is as great as between the pledge, and the thing for which the pledge is delivered; as great as between the representation and the reality." No Protestant, at this day, could speak more explicitly the sense of the Primitive Church. In Italy itself, Angilbertus, bishop of Milan, refused to own the 'pope's supremacy, nor did the Church of Milan submit to the Roman See till two hundred afterwards *. years But these are only distant and remote evidences, that God had not forsaken his Church in Europe. There want not, however, more evident demonstrations of the same thing in the life and writings of Claudius, bishop of Turin, a character worthy to be held in high estimation by all, who fear God: but so little justice, in our times, is done to godliness, that while the names of statesmen, heroes, and philosophers are in every one's mouth, the name of this great reformer has, probably, been not so much as heard of, by the generality of my readers. To me he seems to stand the first in the order of time I have thus far, in this chapter, availed myself, of the labours of Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, 3d Vol. 151, &c. In the sequel of the chapter, I make use of the remarks of Allix on the Churches of Piedmont, of the Centuriators, and of Fleury, though a Roman Catholic. |