Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
There certainly was evidence of the identification and the excommunication of heretics before Trent. That was part of the Church’s job; it was a great part of what she had to do.
The Paulicians The Albigenses The Paterines The Petrobrussians The Henricians The Arnoldists The Hussites The Waldenses The Annabaptists
Amen. Don't forget the Huguenots...
And all that persecution could have been avoided had they simply chosen to remain illiterate --- Biblically illiterate.
I’m just enjoying the audacity someone had to put “Foxes Book of Martyrs” on a website called “sacred-texts.com.”
LoL...
What about Foxes work do you not like?..
Shall we take them in order?
The Paulicians: The cardinal point of the Paulician heresy is a distinction between the God who made and governs the material world and the God of heaven who created souls, who alone should be adored. They thought all matter bad. It seems therefore obvious to count them as one of the many neo-Manichaean sects, in spite of their own denial and that of modern writers (Ter-Mkrttschian, Conybeare, Adeney, loc. cit.; Harnack, “Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschicte”, Tübingen, 1909, II, 528). But there is a strong Marcionite element too. They rejected the Old Testament; there was no Incarnation, Christ was an angel sent into the world by God, his real mother was the heavenly Jerusalem. His 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.
The Albigenses: The Albigenses asserted the co-existence of two mutually opposed principles, one good, the other evil. The former is the creator of the spiritual, the latter of the material world. The bad principle is the source of all evil; natural phenomena, either ordinary like the growth of plants, or extraordinary as earthquakes, likewise moral disorders (war), must be attributed to him. He created the human body and is the author of sin, which springs from matter and not from the spirit. The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God. The latter is the creator of human souls, which the bad principle imprisoned in material bodies after he had deceived them into leaving the kingdom of light. This earth is a place of punishment, the only hell that exists for the human soul. Punishment, however, is not everlasting; for all souls, being Divine in nature, must eventually be liberated. To accomplish this deliverance God sent upon earth Jesus Christ, who, although very perfect, like the Holy Ghost, is still a mere creature. The Redeemer could not take on a genuine human body, because he would thereby have come under the control of the evil principle. His body was, therefore, of celestial essence, and with it He penetrated the ear of Mary. It was only apparently that He was born from her and only apparently that He suffered. His redemption was not operative, but solely instructive. To enjoy its benefits, one must become a member of the Church of Christ (the Albigenses). Here below, it is not the Catholic sacraments but the peculiar ceremony of the Albigenses known as the consolamentum, or “consolation,” that purifies the soul from all sin and ensures its immediate return to heaven. The resurrection of the body will not take place, since by its nature all flesh is evil.
The name Anabaptists, etymologically applicable, and sometimes applied to Christian denominations that practise re-baptism is, in general historical usage, restricted to those who, denying the validity of infant baptism, became prominent during the great reform movement of the sixteenth century. The designation was generally repudiated by those to whom it was applied, as the discussion did not centre around the question whether baptism can be repeated, but around the question whether the first baptism was valid. The distinctive principles upon which Anabaptists generally agreed were the following:
They aimed at restoring what they claimed to have been primitive Christianity. This restoration included the rejection of oaths and capital punishment and the abstention from the exercise of magistracy.
In a more consistent manner than the majority of Protestant reformers, they maintained the absolute supremacy and sole sufficiency of the canonical Scriptures as a norm of faith. However, private inspiration and religious sentiment played an important role among them.
Infant baptism and the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone were rejected as without scriptural warrant.
The new Kingdom of God, which they purposed to found, was to be the reconstruction, on an entirely different basis, of both ecclesiastical and civil society. Communism, including for some of them the community of women, was to be the underlying principle of the new state.
The question of the validity of baptism appears in two great phases in ecclesiastical history. The first controversy raged at an early date (third and fourth centuries) and regarded the minister of the sacrament (baptism conferred by heretics). It was at a much later date that the second discussion originated, in which the subject of infant baptism was the point controverted. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Petrobrusians rejected infant baptism and they and many subsequent medieval heretics (Henricians, Waldenses, Albigenses, and Bohemian Brethren) held views resembling in some respects the tenets of Anabaptists. There is, however, little if any historical connection between the Anabaptists and those earlier sects. Luther’s principles and examples exercised more influence over the new movement. Private interpretation of the Scriptures, however, and inward teaching by the Holy Ghost could be claimed by any individual, and logically led to the extreme Anabaptist views.
Arnold of Brescia was a rabble rouser and an agitator against the Church, but a minor league agitator. According to him, the Church had become corrupt in the persons of covetouss and simoniacal priests, bishops, and cardinals, and was no longer the true Church. “The pope,” he says, “is no longer the real Apostolicus, and, as he does not exemplify in his life the teachings of the Apostles, there is no obligation of reverence and obedience towards him.” The unworthy clergy lose the right of administering the sacraments, and the faithful need no longer confess” to them. It is sufficient that they confess to one another. His disciples, i.e. those whom the thirteenth-century documents call the Arnoldists, or Arnaldists, taught other errors no less serious, for which, however, Arnold cannot justly be held responsible.
These are not Christian Churches; they are heretical sects. Many of their heresies are being repeated upon these boards today. If the Church does not enforce scriptural and doctrinal purity, then we are going to wind up with thousands of differing churches, each proclaiming a gospel often in opposition to another.
Only Satan wins; Christianity loses and so do all those poor bastards whose ears are ringing from the din.
Just a manner of fuelling a fire whose combustable materials are constantly running low.
My reading of it, is that the early Christian martyrs are reasonably well documented. The few chapters that deal with opposition to the Catholics are hysterical and shrill and bereft of much of the specific documentation that went in the early chapters.
They appeal to emotion; not to the intellect. How I would characterize the appeal of the Reformation to the masses; the appeal of the Reformation to the upper class was wealth and power.
I agree.
As Christians we should always strive to resolve our differences peacefully.
Shrill, hysterical, poorly-documented or entirely-undocumented, crafted to propagandize and radicalize rather than inform, untrustworthy, exaggerated, etc. Much like the Protocols in their intent to foment distrust and hate.
Thats Exactly what makes one a Protestant..
Protesting against scriptural heresy and cultism.. i.e. RCC
AND WHY Sola Scriptura is important.. You know... guarding against CULTS..
Unfortunately Protestant cults and so-called Orthox cults abound..
Cults are self sorting Sheep Pens(John ch10)..
Absolute genius on Gods part.. I would say...
For.... those that follow Jesus voice are the FREE Sheep..
Clearly not Christian behavior and I would say those that defend it should examine their relationship with our LORD and SAVIOUR.
It is the history nobody wants to recognize. It's so much easier to act as though it never happened.
True righteous anger should be slow merged with forgivness..
But For the grace of God, we all would be in some kind of Cargo Cult..
Is the GOD you worship different than mine? The Son of my GOD can kill with a word, or look from his eyes. My GOD can sort it out. The indwelling HOLY SPIRIT is not to be trifled with either.
Also, GOD has given us the SCRIPTURES to serve as a guide.
Only Satan wins; Christianity loses and so do all those poor bastards whose ears are ringing from the din.
Who is doing Satan's work. Those seeking a better understanding of SCRIPTURE, a fuller relationship with our LORD, or those that would put them to death for the sake of their exclusive view of doctrinal purity. The latter group sure looks like the Islamists today doesn't it.
I thought that with lawyers, that all men are innocent, until proven penniless. :)
Actually, Dr. E, if you read the motives and the reasons behind the flocking of the German, and then the English and other European nobles to the Reformation was power, pure and simple.
They wanted local control bereft of what they saw as an interfering temporal ruler in Rome.
Actually, that would be quite interesting.
I find myself on the side of folks in certain threads that I have vehemently argued against in certain other threads.
I’d suggest a 2-D matrix rather than a simple tally. Possibly a 3-D matrix, given the complexity of some of the beliefs here.
I am, as always, astounded that we humans can banter around such figures so casually. Does it really matter if it’s 15 million or 50?
That’s a bunch of people who were killed. I believe that it was Stalin who said that if one person was killed, it was a tragedy. If a million people were killed, it was a statistic.
Believe it or not, Mark, all this has been rehashed many times over on these threads. To no avail. The so-called Reformed are the ones who say that others are "blind" and "deaf" yet it is them who cannot see the plain truth.
Unless you can work miracles, the best thing to do is to leave them and pray that they be healed and comprehend that plain truth, because I still believe it is not their reason but spiritual pathology that drives them.
I think that our conversation should remain quiescent for some time.
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