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IX.

well as believed and felt the precious truths contained in the doctrinal chapters of the same epistle. The blood of the martyrs was, in this case, as formerly, the seed of the Church: a succession of teachers and congregations arose, and a person named Sergius, who laboured among them thirtythree years, is confessed by the bigoted historians to have been a man of extraordinary virtue. The Theodora, persecution had, however, some intermissions, till during the at length Theodora, the same empress, who fully minority of established image-worship, exerted herself beyond Michael any of her predecessors against them. Her inquisitors ransacked the lesser Asia, in search of these Empress, sectaries; and she is computed to have killed by the established gibbet, by fire, and by sword, a hundred thousand imagepersons.

her son

III.

ruled as

and fully

worship.

History

of the

to

A. D.

845.

We have brought down the scanty history of Such is the this people to about the year 845. To undergo a constant scene of persecution with Christian meek- Paulicians ness, and to render both to God and to Cæsar. their dues all the time, at once require and evidence the strength of real grace. Of this the Paulicians seem to have been possessed till the period just mentioned. They remembered the injunction of Rev. xiii. 10: He that killeth with the sword, must be killed with the sword: here is the faith and patience of the Saints. Let Christians believe, rejoice in God, patiently suffer, return good for evil, and still obey those whom God hath set over them. These weapons have ever been found too hard for Satan : the Church has grown exceedingly, wherever they were faithfully handled; and the power of the Gos pel has prevailed. This was the case very eminently with the Church, in the era of Dioclesian's persecution. She not only outlived the storm, but also, under the conduct of Providence, became externally as well as internally, superior to her enemies. If the Paulician's had continued to act thus, similar consequences might have been rationally expected. But

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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.

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.

manly vigour she exerted, the Lord co-operating *, 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 Apos

tolic See?

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.

VOL. III.

+ Concil. Lab. Nic. Ep. xiv.

P

CENT.

IX.

CHAP. eighth century, had been transplanted into Thrace, II. 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 Paulicians. 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, satisfactory 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; tot 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*,

CII A P. III.

THE OPPOSITION MADE TO THE CORRUPTIONS
OF POPERY IN THIS CENTURY, PARTICULARLY
BY CLAUDIUS, BISHOP OF TURIN.

CHAP.

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 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 hom the reader will hear in the next Chapter, with Wickliffites, Lutherans, and Calvinists. Ile 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.

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