GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
CHAPTER
VIII
Century Ten
Baptists in Italy
Paulicians
Waymarks in the
wilderness, flame-pillars in the night-desert, were these three
heroes of truth, Henry, Peter de Bruis, and Arnold of Brescia. "Nor
are the Baptists," says Mosheim, "entirely in error when
they boast of their descent form the Waldenses, Petrobrussians, and
other ancient sects."
These "ancient sects," it
has been seen, received from their foes appellations derived from
champions who were renowned, or who perished in the propagation of
their cause Truth is aggressive ever. Christianity aims at the entire
subversion and ruin of everything opposed to it in spirit or
practice. Such was the mission of the apostles. Feeble and few as
they were, they undertook the invasion of the mighty territories of
evil. They admitted of no compromise; they asked and gave no quarter.
They sought no relaxation, knew no pause, and were deaf to the word
"retreat;" but ever in the field, they "fought
manfully the battles of the Lord."
The same indomitable
energy and fearless courage characterized the Baptist
standard-bearers of the dark ages, and those who gathered around them
were called by their names. Thus the "heretics" along the
valleys of Piedmont and the Alps, were called "Arnoldists."
That Arnold was a Baptist, as well as Peter de Bruis, has been shown
by the statements of Pedobaptists.Those, therefore, known as their
followers, and who were numbered by thousands, were, also, most
unquestionably, Baptists. Where did they come from? We have now to
peer through the darkest gloom that ever settled on the world's
history. Through that mystic obscurity images appear, arrayed in the
wrappages of ecclesiastic pomp; and romantic personages, that seem
like the creations of fancy. Can we, amid that mist and darkness,
find the footsteps of God's hidden ones? We are on the track, and
shall faithfully follow it.
We have already seen, that in the
south of France were thousands of Baptists in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.
"It was in the country of the Albegeois,"
[says the classic Gibbon,] "in the southern provinces of France,
that the Paulicians were most deeply implanted. In the practice, or
at least in the theory, of the sacraments, the Paulicians were
inclined to abolish all visible objects of worship; and the words of
the gospel were, in their judgment, the baptism and communion of the
faithful," (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. v, p. 388).
[believers].
Now let us learn from Mosheim the belief of those
Paulicians:
"They maintained, in general, according to
their own confession, that the whole of religion consisted in the
study of practical piety, and in a course of action conformable to
the Divine laws; and they treated all external modes of worship with
the utmost contempt. Their particular tenets may be reduced to the
following heads:
1. They rejected baptism, and, in a more
especial manner, the baptism of infants, as a ceremony that was, in
no respect, essential to salvation.
2. They rejected, for the
same reason, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
3. They
denied that the churches were endowed with a greater degree of
sanctity than private houses, or that they were more adapted to the
worship of God than any other place.
4. They affirmed that the
altars were to be considered in no other light than as heaps of
stones, and were, therefore, unworthy of any marks of veneration or
regard.
5. They disapproved the use of incense and consecrated
oil in services of a religious nature.
6. They looked upon the
use of bells in the churches as an intolerable superstition.
7.
They denied that the establishment of bishops, presbyters, deacons,
and other ecclesiastical dignities, was of Divine institution, and
went so far as to maintain that the appointment of stated ministers
in the church was entirely unnecessary.
8. They affirmed that
the institution of funeral rites was an effect of sacerdotal avarice,
and that it was a matter of indifference whether the dead were buried
in the churches or in the fields.
9. They looked upon the
voluntary punishment called penance, so generally practiced in this
century, as unprofitable and absurd.
10. They denied that the
sins of departed spirits could be, in any measure, atoned for by the
celebration of masses, the distribution of alms to the poor, or a
vicarious penance; and they, consequently, treated the doctrine of
purgatory as a ridiculous fable.
11. They considered [Catholic
ceremonial] marriage as a pernicious institution, and absurdly
condemned, without distinction, all connubial bonds.
12. They
looked upon a certain sort of veneration and worship as due to the
apostles and martyrs, from which, however, they excluded such as were
only confessors, in which class they comprehended the saints, who had
not suffered death for the cause of Christ, and whose bodies, in
their esteem, had nothing more sacred than any other human
carcass.
13. They declared the use of instrumental music in
the churches, and other religious assemblies, superstitious and
unlawful.
14. They denied that the cross on which Christ
suffered was, in any respect, more sacred than any other kind of
wood, and, in consequence, refused to pay to it the smallest degree
of religious worship.
15. They not only refused all acts of
adoration to the images of Christ, and of the saints, but were also
for having them removed out of the churches.
16. They were
shocked at the subordination and distinctions that were established
among the clergy, and at the different degrees of authority conferred
upon the different members of that sacred body. When we consider the
corrupt state of religion in this country, and particularly the
superstitious notions that were generally adopted in relation to
outward ceremonies, the efficacy of penance, and the sanctity of
churches, relics, and images, it will not appear surprising that many
persons of good sense and solid piety, running from one extreme to
another, fell into the opinions of these mystics, in which among
several absurdities, there were many things plausible and specious,
and some highly rational."
(Mosheim, pp. 258, 259).
Let
it be remembered that this is the statement of their bitter enemy,
and even he modified it by this explanation:
"The
eleventh article is scarcely credible, at least as it is here
expressed. It is more reasonable that these mystics did not
absolutely condemn marriage." (Mosheim, pp. 258,
259).
Doubtless the truth is, they denied, as all Protestants
do, that marriage was a sacrament, and stripping it of all the
ghostly ceremonies of Popery, esteemed it, as we do, a civil contract
between the parties, in the fear of God, and according to His Word.
Their denial of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper can be accounted
for in the same way. They refused to worship the host, or admit that
the words pronounced by the priest change the bread into the soul,
body, and divinity of Christ. This, to the clergy of Rome, was, of
course, a blasphemous denial of the sacrament. They were Baptists.
They were the predecessors of the Petrobrussians and Arnoldists. They
were numbered by scores of thousands. Gibbon says:
"They
conversed freely with strangers and natives, and their opinions were
silently propagated in Rome and the kingdoms beyond the Alps. It was
soon discovered that many thousand Catholics, of every rank and
either sex, had embraced the Manichean heresy."
We will
pass the Alps, and follow up the track those Baptists traveled. In
the classic land of Italy, beneath the dread shadow of the Vatican,
have lived, in every age, men, upon whose foreheads was never stamped
the symbol of the beast, and on whose spirits beamed the light of
truth, brighter and purer than their own lovely skies. The historian
Gibbon says:
"In the busy age of the crusades, some
sparks of curiosity and reason were kindled in the Western world. The
heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successively transplanted
into the soul of Italy and France. The Gnostic visions were united
with the simplicity of the gospel, and the enemies of the clergy
reconciled their passions with there conscience, the desire of
freedom with the profession of piety."
These were the
same people whose belief has been given from Mosheim, the people to
whom Arnold of Brescia belonged, and who were called Manicheans,
Paulicians, Catheri, Paterines, and Anabaptists. In Italy they were
known as Paterines. They said that a Christian Church ought to
consist of persons who had professed faith, and that it had no power
to frame general canons or creeds. And Gregory, writing against them,
says:
"The baptism which the Catholics approve, the
Paterines condemn, the baptism of children, which is condemned by the
Paterines."
They were Baptists. They had fifteen
associations in Italy. And in vindication of their principles, their
virtues, and their antiquity, let Gibbon now speak:
"The
Paulicians sincerely condemned the memory and opinions of the
Manichean sect, and complained of the injustice which impressed that
invidious name on the simple followers of Paul and Christ. The
objects which had been transformed by the magic of superstition,
appeared to the eyes of the Paulicians in the genuine and naked
colors. Of the ecclesiastical chain, many links were broken by these
reformers; and against the gradual innovations of discipline and
doctrine they were strongly guarded by habit and aversion, as by the
silence of Paul and the Evangelists. They attached themselves, with
peculiar devotion, to the writings and character of Paul, in whom
they gloried. In the Gospels and Epistles of Paul, Constantine
investigated the creed of the primitive Christians; and whatever
might be the success, a Protestant reader will applaud the spirit of
the inquiry. In practice, or, at least, in the theory, of the
sacraments, the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible
objects of worship; and the words of the gospel were, in their
judgments, the baptism and communion of the faithful. A creed thus
simple and spiritual, was not adapted to the genius of the times; and
the rational Christian was offended at the violation offered to his
religion by the Paulicians." (Gibbon's Ro. Hist., ch.
54).
Mosheim says:
"It is evident they rejected
the baptism of infants. They were not charged with any error
concerning baptism."
Dr. Allix says:
"They ,
with the Manicheans, were Anabaptists, or rejectors of infant
baptism, and were, consequently, often reproached with that
term."
Milner says:
"They were simply
Scriptural in the use of the sacraments; they were orthodox in the
doctrine of the Trinity; they knew of no other Mediator than the Lord
Jesus Christ."
That these Paulicians or Paterines were
Baptists, is by the united testimony of profane and ecclesiastical
history, placed beyond a doubt. Well, where did they come from?
Gibbon continues:
"About the middle of the eighth
century, Constantine, surnamed Copronymus by the worshipers of
images, had made an expedition into Armenia, and found, in the cities
of Melitene and Theodosiopolis, a great number of Paulicians of his
kindred heretics. As a favor of punishment, he transplanted them form
the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and, by this
emigration, their doctrine was introduced and diffused in Europe. If
the sectarians of the metropolis were soon mingled with the
promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep root in a
foreign soil. The Paulicians of Thrace resisted the storms of
persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with their Armenian
brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their preachers, who solicited,
not without success, the infant faith of the Bulgarians."
They
were transplanted from the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople.
Under the Byzantine standard they were transported to "Rome,
Milan, and the kingdoms beyond the Alps." Amid the provinces of
southern France they were found in the twelfth century, under the
leadership of Henry and Peter de Bruis. From the south of France they
passed to England and other parts of Europe, "where they
lingered," says Gibbon, "till the Reformation." And
thus is the text of Mosheim illustrated:
"Before the rise
of Luther and Calvin there lay concealed in almost all the countries
of Europe men who adhered tenaciously to the principles of the modern
Baptists."
And thus through the gloom of the dark ages
have we tracked the path along which passed the witnesses of Christ,
and have found those who, with abiding attachments, adhered to our
principles, and were members of our churches as far back as the
eighth century, and in the lands of apostolic labor and suffering.
The Paulicians, calumniated, banished as criminals, stand forth a
prominent milestone in the march of time, and that blood-stained
trace we shall still follow in our further inquiry: Where did the
Baptists come from?