[xJones]

Of course. Just speculating....

How lame, try harder.

I can speculate that the current Pope is really the anti-christ by tracing a mythological ancestry through Albigensian southern France and claim that he drinks from the Holy Grail that Himmler couldn't find because his Polish mother hid it under her bed next to the Spear of Lohengrin which was falsely claimed to be in a German mine shaft.

If we're going to speculate, we can have a really good time, Destro. BTW, your FR page is a good excuse not to post one.

[Destro]

Then why do the Protestants always bring up the Paulicans as an example of early pre-Luther Protestants?

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 their 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, and 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 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.