Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

CHAPTER 12. — THE ALBIGENSES.
I will introduce the treatment of the sects, between century ten and century
sixteen, in the following words of Mosheim:
“We find from the time of Gregory the VII. several proofs of the zealous
efforts of those who are generally called by the Protestants the witnesses of
the truth; by whom are meant such pious and judicious Christians as adhered
to the pure religion of the gospel, and remained uncorrupted amidst the
greatest superstition; who deplored the miserable state to which Christianity
was reduced, by the alteration of its divine doctrines, and the vices of its
profligate ministers; who opposed with vigor the tyrannic ambition both of
the lordly pontiff and the aspiring bishops; and in some provinces privately,
and others openly, attempted the reformation of a corrupt and idolatrous
church, and of a barbarous and superstitious age. This was, indeed, bearing
witness to the truth in the noblest manner, and it was principally in Italy and
France that the marks of this heroic purity were exhibited.” f255
From those reformers were derived great hosts of recruits to the Baptist
churches. The influence of Baptist churches created a great desire among the
members of the Romish church for reformation. Out of Baptist influence
originated Martin Luther’s Reformation.
The name Albigenses was one of the designations of the Paulicians from “the
beginning of the eleventh century to the middle of the thirteenth century.”
Coming from Asia, where they were known as Paulicians, they crossed the
Balkan Peninsula and reached the Western empire. In the tenth and the
eleventh centuries, under the name Paulicians, but especially Albigenses, from
the town of Albiga in Southern France, and Cathari — from their pure lives —
they filled and moulded both France and Italy, affecting in a less degree, other
parts of Europe.
The Albigenses — and others, too, — are, in this book, treated under
distinctive heads; not because they were not identical with their predecessors
and contemporaries, but for the sake of clearness, to conform to the usual
classification — a classification that recent researches demand should be
abandoned. Here I remind the reader of a necessary caution:
“It ought always to be borne in mind, however, that for the larger part of our
information regarding those stigmatized as heretics, we are indebted, not to
their own writings, but to the works of their opponents. Only the titles remain
of the bulk of heretical writings, and of the rest we have, for the most part,
only such quotations as prejudiced opponents have chosen to make. That
these quotations fairly represent the originals would be too much to assume.”
f257