tion they undoubtedly put upon the passages relating to the Lord's supper, baptism, the Old Testament, and some other subjects. Besides the New Testament, the epistles of one Sergius a great doctor of the sect were in high esteem among them. 6. The entire creed of this sect, though doubtless consisting of various articles, is nowhere described by the Greeks; who select from it only six dogmas, for which they declare the Paulicians unworthy to live or to be saved. I. They denied that this lower and visible world was created by the supreme God, and distinguished the creator of the world and of human bodies from the God whose residence is in heaven. It was on account of this dogma especially, that the Greeks accounted them Manichæans, and yet this was the common doctrine of all the scets denominated Gnostics. What opinions they entertained respecting this creator of the world, and whether they supposed him to be a different being from the prince of evil or the devil, no one has informed us. This only appears from Photius that they held the author of evil to have been procreated from darkness and fire; and of course he was not eternal or without beginning. II. They contemned the virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ; that is, they would not adore and worship her as the Greeks did. For they did not deny that Christ was born of Mary, because as their adversaries expressly state, they taught that Christ brought his body

1

1 Photius, ubi supra, lib. ii. p. 147. It is manifest that the Paulicians, with the Oriental philosophers, those eternal matter to be the seat and source of all evil. And this matter, like many of the Gnostics, they supposed to be endued from eternity with motion and an animating principle, and to have procreated the prince of all evil, who was the former of bodies which are composed of matter; while God is the parent of souls. These opinions are indeed allied to the Manichæan doctrines, yet also differ from them. I can believe this sect to have been the offspring of one of the ancient Gnostic parties, which though sadly oppressed by imperial laws and punishments, could never be entirely suppressed and exterminated. [As the Paulicians were great friends to allegories and mystical interpretations, and held certain hidden doctrines which they made known only to the perfect, and as we are in possession of no creed nor of any other writing of their doctors, we must always remain in uncertainty whether they understood these Gnostic-sounding doctrines literally, and so were actually a branch from the old Gnostic stock. And for the same reason we cannot place much confidence in the Grecks who wrote their history; and we should always remember that these writers were liable, from misapprehension if not also from party feelings, to misstate their doctrines. At the same time we discover as to most of their doctrines, that they had in several respects more correct ideas of religion, of religious worship, and of church government, than the prevailing church at that day had; and that they drew on themselves persecution by their dislike of images, and by their opposition to the hierarchy, more than by their other religious opinions. -So Semler judges of them, in his Selecta Capita Hist. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 72, and 365.- Schl.

parents of the Gnostic and Manichæan sects, considered

with him from heaven, and that Mary after the birth of the Saviour had other children by Joseph. They therefore believed with the Valentinians, that Christ passed through the womb of his mother as water through a canal, and that Mary did not continue a virgin to the end of life;- -a doctrine which must have appeared abominable to the Greeks. III. They did not celebrate the Lord's supper. For believing that there were metaphors in many parts of the New Testament they deemed it proper to understand by the bread and wine, which Christ is stated to have presented to his disciples at his last supper, those divine discourses of Christ by which the soul is nourished and refreshed. IV. They loaded the cross with contumely, that is, as clearly appears from what the Greeks state, they would not have any religious worship paid to the wood of the cross as was customary among the Greeks. For believing that Christ possessed an etherial and celestial body, they could not by any means admit that he was actually nailed to a cross and truly died upon it; and this led them of course to treat the cross with neglect. V. They rejected, as did nearly all the Gnostics, the books composing the Old Testament, and believed that the writers of them were prompted by the creator of the world and not by the supreme God. VI. They excluded the presbyters or elders from the government of the church. The foundation of this charge beyond all controversy was, that they would not allow their teachers to be styled presbyters; because this title was Jewish and suited only to those who persecuted and wished to kill Jesus Christ.3

9 The Greeks do not charge the Paulicians with any error in respect to the doctrine of baptism. Yet there is no doubt that they construed into allegory what the New Testament states concerning this ordinance. And Photius (Contra Manich. lib. i. p. 29,) expressly says that they held only to a fictitious baptism, and under stood by baptism, i. c. by the water of baptism, the Gospel.

3 These six errors I have extracted from Petrus Siculus, Hist. Manich. p. 17, with whom Photius and Cedrenus agree, though they are less distinct and deflnite. The reasonings and explanations are my own. [The Romanists have invariably represented the Paulicians as Manicheans, and as chargeable with all the gross errors which the prejudiced and bigotted contemporaries of this sect among the Greeks have attributed to them. Mosheim here takes a more favourable view of their tenets, though he still considers them as tinctured with Gnostic errors to a greater degree perhaps than was really the case. He seems not to have weighed with sufficient care the considerations, afterwards urged by his disciple Schlegel as given in a preceding note. (Note 1, on this page.) Gibbon in the 54th chapter of his Decline and Fall, &c. takes nearly the same view of the Paulicians as Mosheim, and Hallam, while adopting it, says of that chapter-" it appears to be accurate as well as luminous, and is at least far superior to any modern work on the subject." Middle Ages, 8th edit. vol. ii. p. 440. Milner however in his

Hist. of the Church went to an opposite extreme, and endeavoured to show that the Paulicians could not be charged with holding any erroneous opinions;-a view which was subsequently adopted by Mr. Faber in his Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, Lond. 1828. These opinions of Milner and Faber were combatted, with an excess of dogmatism and self-confidence, by Mr. Maitland in his Facts and documents illustrative of the history, &c. of the Albigenses and Waldenses, Lond. 1832. Mr. Maitland seems to belong to the Puseyite section of the English church, who are at one with the Romanists not only in many fundamental points of doctrine, but even in the lesser matters of historical criticism. According to the canons of this school, the medieval church-writers are alone entitled to credit, and all that they say of dissenters or sectaries must be implicitly received as altogether trustworthy. Mr. Maitland therefore adopts the extreme view of the Romanists, and gives full credence to every calumny which Photius and Peter the Sicilian have vented against the poor Paulicians. Shortly after, Mr. Rose's terminal divinity lecture at Durham in 1834 excited a very keen and protracted controversy on the character and merits of Milner as an ecclesiastical historian, between Mr. Maitland on the one hand, and the Rev. Messrs. Scott and King of Hull in defence of Milner, on the other. In this controversy the question regarding the faith of the Paulicians occupied a prominent place, and called forth the pamphlet of Mr. Dowling |

referred to in a preceding note; in which he united with Mr. Maitland in adopting without the least discrimination everything urged against them by their Greek calumniators and persecutors. At the close of this pamphlet war, Mr. Faber published his Inquiry into the history and theology of the ancient Fallenses and Albigenses, Lond. 1838, in which he endeavoured to support his previous opinion as to the entire orthodoxy of the Paulicians, by an elaborate examination of the testimony of Peter the Sicilian, but without any reference to that of Photius. Waddington has carefully discussed the question of their Manichæism or Gnosticism, and considers them freer from those errors than even Mosheim seems to do. See his Hist. of the Church, vol. iii. p. 208, &c. Neander takes a very favourable view of their religious character and system in his Der Heil. Bernard und sein Zeitalter, Wrench's translation, Lond. 1843, p. 254, &c. Giescler speaks of them as "being deeply tinged with the Gnostic character," but as afterwards becoming much purified in their views. Sec his Lehrbuch, &c. Cunningham's transl. vol. ii. p. 7, with the recent works referred to at the head of the section. The student who wishes to form an impartial opinion on this controversy ought to weigh attentively what is urged in favour of Milner, and on the views of Mosheim and Gibbon, by Mr. King of Hull, in one of his pamphlets entitled, Maitland not authorised to censure Milner, Lond. 1835, p. 29-38.R.

1. ALL are agreed that in this century the state of Christianity was everywhere most wretched, not only on account of the amazing ignorance and the consequent superstition and debased morals of the age, but also from other causes. Still there were not a few things which may be placed among the prosperous events of the church. The Nestorians living in Chaldea introduced Christianity into Tartary Proper beyond Mount Imaus, where the people had hitherto lived entirely uncultivated and uncivilized. Near the end of the century, the same sect spread the knowledge of the gospel among that powerful horde of Tartars or Turks, which was called Carit or Karit, and which bordered on Cathay or the northern part of China.' The activity

1 Asseman, Biblio. Orien. Clem. Vatic. tom. iii. par. ii. p. 482, &c. Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. p. 256, &c. [Mosheim, Hist. Tartar. Eccles. p. 23, 24. It is there stated that this Tartarian prince commanded more than 200,000 subjects, all of whom embraced Christianity in the year A.D. 900. The authority for this account is a letter of Ebed Jesu, archbishop of and preserved by Abulpharajus, Chronic. Syr. and thence published by Asseman, Biblio. Orient. Clem. Vat. tom. ii. p. 444, &c. The letter states that this Tartarian king while hunting one day got lost in the wilderness, and was wholly unable to find his way out of it. A saint now appeared to him and promised to show him the way, if he would become a Christian.

Meru, addressed to John, the Nestorian patriarch,

The king promised to do so. On returning to his camp he called the Christian merchants who were there to his presence, received instruction from them, and applied to the above-named Ebed Jesu for baptism. As his tribe fed only on flesh and milk, it became a question how they were to keep the required fasts. This led Ebed Jesu to write to his patriarch, stating the case and asking for instructions on the point. The patriarch directed the bishop to send two presbyters and two deacons among the tribe to convert and baptize them, and to teach them to feed upon milk only on fast-days. Mosheim thinks the conversion of this tribe of Tartars is too well attested to be called in question; bat the manner of it he would divest somewhat of the marvellous. He suggests that the saint who appeared to the king in the wilderness, might be a Nestorian anchorite or hermit residing there, who

of this sect and their great zeal for the and yet no one can suppose that the relipromotion of Christianity deserve praise; gion which they instilled into the minds of these nations was the pure gospel of our Saviour.

2. The [Tartarian] king who was converted to Christianity by the Nestorians, it is said bore the name of John after his baptism, and in token of his modesty assumed the title of presbyter [or elder]. And hence as learned men have conjectured, all his successors retained this title down to the fourteenth century or to the times of Gengis Khan, and each was usually called John Presbyter2. But all this is said without adequate authority or proof; nor did that presbyter John, of whom there was so much said both formerly and in modern times, begin to reign in this part of Asia anterior to the close of the eleventh century. Yet it is placed beyond controversy

Carith, living on the borders of Cathay, that the kings of the people called whom some denominate a tribe of Turks and others of Tartars, and who constituted a considerable portion of the Moguls, did profess Christianity from this time onward; and that no inconsiderable part of Tartary or Asiatic Scythia, lived under bishops sent among them by the pontiff of the Nestorians3.

3. In the West, Rollo, the son of a Norwegian count and an arch-pirate, who was expelled his country, and with his military

was able and willing to guide the king out of the wilderness on the condition stated.-Mur.

2 See Asseman, Biblio. Orient. Clem. l'utic. tom. iii. par. ii. p. 282.

3 The late T. S. Bayer purposed to write a history of the churches of China and northern Asia, in which he would treat particularly of these Nestorian churches in Tartary and China. See the Preface to his Museum Sinicum, p. 145. But a premature death prevented the execution of this and other contemplated works o. this excellent man for the illustration of Asiatic Christianity.

♦ Holberg's Naval History of the Danes; inserted in