Paulicians
Excerpts: Jesus' work consisted only in his teaching; to believe in him saves men from judgment. The true baptism and Eucharist consist in hearing his word, as in John, iv, 10. But many Paulicians, nevertheless, let their children be baptized by the Catholic clergy. They honoured not the Cross, but only the book of the Gospel. They were Iconoclasts, rejecting all pictures. Their Bible was a fragmentary New Testament. They rejected St. Peter's epistles because he had denied Christ. They referred always to the "Gospel and Apostle", apparently only St Luke and St. Paul; though they quoted other Gospels in controversy.
The whole ecclesiastical hierarchy is bad, as also all Sacraments and ritual. They had a special aversion to monks. Under the apostles and prophets were "fellow-workers" (synechdemoi) who formed a council, and "notaries" (notarioi), who looked after the holy books and kept order at meetings. Their conventicles were called, not churches, but "prayer-houses" (proseuchai). Harnack sums them up as "dualistic Puritans and Individualists and as "an anti-hierarchic Christianity built up on the Gospel, and Apostle, with emphatic rejection of Catholic Christianity" (Dogmengeschichte, II 528).
Since Gibbon the Paulicians have often been described as a survival of early and pure Christianity, godly folk who clung to the Gospel, rejecting later superstitions, who were grossly calumniated by their opponents. Conybeare (op. cit. ) thinks they were a continuation of the Adoptionists. Dr. Adeney calls them "in many respects Protestants before Protestantism" (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). This idea accounts for the fact that the sect has met among modern writers with more interest and certainly more sympathy than it deserves.
My one posting: apposite Scriptures cited = eleven
Your two responses: apposite refutational Scriptures cited = zero
Sometimes the offhanded is the most revealing, isn't it? But we're just living our two mutually exclusive religions, aren't we? God-centered Biblical Christianity on the one hand, man-centered tradition-bound sectarianism in your case.
Your living illustration showed more than ten posts from me could have done. Thank you.
Dan