tuity of a line which shall doctrinally connect the Reformed Churches with the Primitive Church; as there is to deny the perpetuity of the Roman Church, in regard to the promised continual presence of Christ with some one or other Branch of his Church Catholic.

BOOK II.

THE ALBIGENSES.

CHAPTER I.

THE PAULICIANS OF ARMENIA.

FOR the purpose of exhibiting the Albigenses of Southern France in the character of hereditary Manichèans, 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 dextrous 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 *.

Mosh. Eccles.

* Boss. Hist. des Variat. livr. xi. § 7-70. Hist. cent. ix. par. ii. chap. 5. § IV. Of the Manichèism of the Albigenses Bossuet is so sure, that he defies all the Protestants

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 Manichèans, they were themselves originally Manichèans 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

in the world to produce a sect in Europe, anterior to Peter Valdo, which were not a branch of the old Manichèans. Hist. des Var. livr. xi. § 91.

*Fuit, imperante Constantino (seu Constante) Heraclii nepote, non procul a Samosatis, Armeniæ indigena quidam, Constantinus nomine, vicum incolens Mananalim, quem ad hunc

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

usque diem habitant Manichæi. Hic diaconum quendam captivum, qui e Syria in patriam revertebatur et Mananalim forte præteribat, tecto excepit, aluitque dies aliquot domi suæ. Diaconus ergo, ut hanc quasi gratiam hospiti suo rependeret, codices duos, quos e Syria secum tulerat, Evangelium scilicet, Paulique Epistolas, dono dedit Constantino. Petri Siculi Hist. de vana et stolid. Manichæor. hær. in Biblioth. Patr. vol. ix. par. post. p. 36.

* At ille, qui jam pridem nefariam atque impuram hæresim suam propter impia dicta foedaque flagitia, quæ Manichæorum scriptis continentur, omnibus odio atque horrori esse animadverterat, uti pietatem, magnopere pestem illam renovare iterum ac latius diffundere, in animum induxit; dæmone, ut par est, instigante, librum deinceps, præter Evangelii et Apostoli codices, nullum attingere : hoc spectans nimirum, ut mali labem universam, eorum ope, obtegeret; quemadmodum, qui noxia pocula propinant, eadem melle obliniunt atque obducunt. Et quidem ille, cum Manichæorum libris omnes jam cujusque impietatis artes percepisset, tantum mox Satanæ ope assecutus est, ut, Evangelii Apostolique sensus perperam interpretando,

D

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.

facile omnes in rem suam, quo vellet et pro libidine, detorqueret. Sylvanum se illum jactabat, cujus mentio in Pauli Epistolis, quique, tanquam fidus discipulus, a Paulo missus est in Macedoniam : ostendensque discipulis suis Apostoli codicem quem a diacono accepterat: Vos, aiebat, Macedones estis; ego, Sylvanus, ad vos a Paulo missus. Atque id ille, post sexcentos annos quam a Paulo hæc scripta sunt, dicere non dubitabat. Petr. Sic. Hist. p. 36.

Ut a nobis in prolixiore opere commemoratum, cum de Paulo et Joanne Samosatenis, Callinices filiis, ageremus: de illo, inquam, Paulo, a quo Paulliani pro Manichais, mutato nomine, appellari coeperunt. Ibid. p. 37.

This Paul was an ancient Manichèan of Samosata, long prior to Constantine-Sylvanus and, as the proselytes of Constantine rejected for a purer faith the Manichèism of their forefathers; so, consistently, they declared, that Constantine, not Paul the Manichean, was the teacher from whom they derived their doctrinal system.

Οὗτοι, μετὰ χρόνους πολλοὺς τῆς διαδοχῆς τοῦ δε τοῦ Παύλου, ἕτερον ἔσχον διδάσκαλον Κωνσταντῖνον καλούμενον, τὸν προῤῥηθέντα Σιλουανον. Τοῦτον ἔχουσιν ἀρχηγὸν τῶν διδασκαλιῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ οὐχὶ τὸν Πᾶυλον. Cedren. Histor. Compend. vol. i. p. 341. Venet. 1729.

Since they disowned this Paul as their teacher, and since they formally renounced (as even their enemy Peter Siculus confesses) the Manichean Scheme, they could not have called themselves Paulicians from him, but must have assumed the name from that Apostle whose writings thev peculiarly esteem