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 honours 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 Manichèans. 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, before our God day and night.

which accused them

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*.

* Rev. xii. 10, 11.

CHAPTER II.

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 *.

* Tibricæ igitur, legationis obeundæ caussa, apud Paullicianos diu moratus, sæpe disputando cum illis sum congressus, illorumque arcana omnia per Catholicos etiam ibi degentes curiosè investigavi: atque ab ipsismet impiis et delirantibus cognovi; quod, e suo conciliabulo, missuri essent, qui in Bulgaria quoscunque possent a Catholica Religione ad suam exsecratam et nefariam sectam averterent. A sacris enim literis facto præconii sui initio, præsidentes opinantur facile se posse

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

puræ sinceræque sementi infelix lolium hæreseos permiscere. Amant enim hoc impii sæpenumero factitare, ut omnem moveant funem, nullumque recusent periculum, quo damnatarum opinationum suarum pestem quibuscumque possint, infundant. Petr. Hist. Archepisc. Bulgar. nuncupat. p. 31.

The reader will not fail to observe, in this passage, two important admissions on the part of Peter Siculus: the one, that he picked up some of his tales respecting the Paulicians from the neighbouring Catholics, as prejudiced bigots, no doubt, as himself; the other, that these hated religionists made the Sacred Scriptures the basis of all their attempts at proselytism.

It will be recollected, that the Sacred Scriptures, thus systematically made the basis of their zealous preaching, are those very Scriptures, which Peter Siculus himself, as well as Cedrenus three centuries later, admitted them to have possessed and used uncorrupted and unmutilated, so as precisely to correspond with the accredited copies used by the great Body of Christians in the Church at large.

Thus perpetually does falsehood defeat its own ends by its own inconsistency: and thus wisely is it ordered by the righteous moral Governor of the Universe, that, to fabricate a lie, which shall so compactly hang together in all its parts as to laugh at detection, is perhaps nothing less than an impossibility.

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 neighbourhood of Albi, they received the appellation, by which they are now most commonly known, of Albigenses or Albisenses or Albigeois *.

:

*The progress of the Paulicians westward is very well given by Usher but, without any sufficient grounds, so far as I can judge, he adopts the familiar calumny, that they and their successors in Europe were Manichèans. See Usser. de Eccles. Success. c. viii. § 17-22. Those successors I have, throughout this Work, styled Albigenses: a name, sufficiently definite, and certainly of all others the most familiar to modern ears. As to the time when it was first imposed, different opinions have been entertained. The Benedictine, who wrote the General History of Languedoc, contends, that it is not older than the year 1208, having been given to the religionists of Southern France at the commencement of the crusade against them. He supposes, that they were thus denominated from the circumstance of their having been condemned as heretics in the Council held in the year 1176 at Lombers in the diocese of Albi. Hist. Gener. de Langued. livr. xix. § 4. vol. iii. p. 4. It is a point of no great moment, save to the antiquary. I may add, that Ricchini, the editor of Moneta, has given a very good summary of the diffusion of the Paulicians through well nigh the whole of western and middle Europe. Ricchin. Dissert. de Cathar. c. i, ii. Like the rest of his fraternity, relying on the somewhat insecure authority of Bossuet, he rapidly decides, that the Albigenses were incontrovertibly Manichèans. c. i. § 1. c. ii. § 5.