THE WITNESS.

PART II.

(ix. Cent.) THE age in which image worship was fully and finally established in the church of Rome, is likewise remarkable for the truly antichristian spirit of persecution which raged under the authority and sanction of her pontiff, Nicholas. The Paulicians were the sect who became obnoxious to the corrupted faith and intolerant spirit of this period. A celebrated historian informs us, that for the space of* "one hun

*"But faith and patience at length failed," under these complicated sufferings. The Paulicians

"dred and fifty years, these servants of Christ underwent the horrors of

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persecution with Christian meekness "and submission; and if the acts of "their martyrdom, their preaching, and "their lives, were distinctly recorded,

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there seems no doubt but this people "would appear to have resembled those "whom the church justly reveres as having suffered in the behalf of Christ during the three first centuries. During all this time, the power of the Spirit of God was with them; and they practised the precepts of the 13th

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chapter to the Romans, as well as "believed and felt the precious truths "contained in the doctrinal chapters of "the same Epistle. The blood of the

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martyrs was, in this case, the seed of "the church. A succession of teachers "and congregations arose, and a person "named Sergius, who laboured among

were driven to extremity by their cruel persecutors, against whom they took up arms, and waged a war of bloody reprisal. (See Milner's Eccl. Hist. vol. iii. -Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol ii.)

"them thirty-three years, is confessed by the bigoted historians to have been a man of extraordinary virtue. The per"secution had, however, some intermissions, till at length Theodora,* the same empress who fully established image

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* "Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary "fame of Theodora. It was in cruelty alone that "her soldiers could equal the heroes of the cru"sades, and the cruelty of her priests was far "excelled by the founders of the inquisition; an "office more adapted to confirm than to refute "the belief of an evil principle. The visible assem"blies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, (Albigenses,) "were extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleed"ing remnant escaped by flight, concealment, or "catholic conformity. But the invincible spirit "which they had kindled still lived and breathed "in the western world. In the state, in the church, "and even in the cloister, a latent succession was "preserved of the disciples of St. Paul: who pro"tested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced "the Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their "creed from all the visions of the gnostic theology. "The struggles of Wickliff in England, of Huss "in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but "the names Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are "pronounced with gratitude as the deliverers of "nations." (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. liv.)

worship, exerted herself beyond any "of of her predecessors against them. "Her inquisitors ransacked the lesser

Asia in search of these sectaries; "and she is computed to have killed by "the gibbet, by fire, and by sword, a "hundred thousand persons!

Theodora was succeeded by her son Michael. Her cruelties and super"stitions deserved the applause of Ni"cholas, who became pope of Rome in "858. In a letter he highly approved "her conduct, and admired her on ac"count of her implicit obedience to the holy see. We learn from the biographer of the emperor Michael, what Theodora had done to call forth the

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eulogiums of this pontiff. She re"solved,' says he, 'to bring the Pauli"cians to the true faith, or cut them all

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off, root and branch.' Pursuant to that resolution, she sent some noblemen "and magistrates, not preachers or missionaries, into the different provinces of the empire, and by them some of "those unhappy wretches were cruci

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"fied, some put to the sword, and some "thrown into the sea and drowned.

Thus

"were they slaughtered to the number "of one hundred thousand, and their goods "and estates confiscated. The pope

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alluded to this bloody massacre, when "he commends Theodora, in the same letter, for the manly vigour she exerted, Domino' co-operante,' (as he blasphemously adds,) against obstinate "and incorrigible heretics..... And "here I am not disposed to suppress,

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that, from the pope's own words, it

appears, that the apostolic see had its "share in the glorious exploit just men"tioned; for the pope, after telling her "that the heretics dreaded, and at the "same time admired her resolution and "steadiness in maintaining the purity "of the Catholic faith, adds,' and 'why 66 6 so, but because you followed the direc"tions of the apostolic see?"

The historical reader is well aware of the calumnious charges brought against the early disciples of our blessed Lord by their unrelenting pagan persecutors.