Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

avings of their inspired leader, they read the Scriptures publicly! They
charged them with dissolute lives, with gluttony and obscenity at their
festivals; and, in the same breath, tell us that they studiously married, drank
no wine and ate no flesh! They taught that they might eat fruit, herbs, bread,
but neither eggs nor fish. In other things they discredit their whole testimony
under ordinary rules which govern evidence.” f218
“Arnold, of Germany, Beausobre and Lardner have honored themselves and
the subject with sedate investigation and judicial candor, and have set right
many of the inconsistencies and contradictions of Photius and Siculus.” f218
Wm. R. Williams:
“The Paulicians, a later body, were eminent especially for their love of Paul’s
Epistles, which they so admired, that their teachers, many of them, changed
their names for those of some of Paul’s helpers and converts. For centuries
defamed and pursued, they held their course, testifying and witnessing. Hase,
the modem church historian, himself a Rationalist, speaks of them as
continuing under various names down quite near to our own age.” f219
Dr. Brockett, a special investigator of the Paulicians, says:
“With the proofs now at our command of the identity of the Catharists and the
Waldenses with the Bogomiles,” (Paulicianists) “this admission proves fatal to
f217 f220
the Manichaean doctrines of the whole.”
Sir William Jones, one of the most learned investigators, says:
“Their public appearance soon attracted the notice of the Catholic party who
immediately branded them with the opprobrious name of Manichaeans; but
they sincerely (says Gibbon), condemned the memory and the opinions of the
Manichaean sect and complained of the injustice which impressed that
invidious name on them.” f222
Of their great leader, Benedict says:
“From the time he got acquainted with these writings (the gospels and Paul’s
Epistles) it is said he would touch no other book. He threw away his
Manichaean library and exploded and rejected many of the abused notions of
his countrymen.” f223
So Jones substantially says. f224 Benedict:
“The religious practices of this people are purposely mangled and
misrepresented.” f223
Says Neander of the Manichaean charge against the Paulicians:
“The truth is that in their period there was a universal inclination to call
everything of a dualistic tendency Manichaean; while no one seemed to
correctly understand the distinctive marks which separated the gnostic from