the apo stles. 1040. CHAP. densis (others call him Waldus), who in the time of VII. Innocent the Second, (so he says, but others place Year after him at 1160, which was the time of Alexander the Third,) reading that command of our Saviour to the 1060. rich young man, Matt. xix. 21, (some others also add, that he was also affrighted at the sudden death of one of his companions,) took a resolution of selling all he had, and giving it to the poor: and was imitated by some others, particularly one John of the city of Lyons. After a while they took on them to preach; and being forbid, (for they were laymen,) they refused to forbear, and so were excommunicated. Then they betook themselves to preaching privately; and, as he adds, out of hatred to the clergy and the true priesthood, they began out of the errors of old heretics, and adding some new and pernicious articles, to destroy, condemn, and reject all those means by which the clergy, as a good mother, do gather their children, except the 'sacraments only.' 6 6 He means, as appears by what follows, they rejected indulgences, pardons, canonical hours, prayers to the saints, &c. But if they had rejected infantbaptism, he would not have failed to have mentioned that. By which it appears, that either this man had never heard of the Petrobrusians, or else had not heard that they denied infant-baptism; or else did not take them to have been Waldenses. And in this last mentioned sense Cassander° speaks of the Petrobrusians, as a sect that, together with the salvation of infants, denied their baptism: but of the Waldenses, as practising it. • De Baptismo Infantium. [In præfatione, pag. 671. Oper. Omn. fol. Paris. 1616.] VIL Year after The Petrobrusians could not properly be called CHAP. Waldenses, because they set up their party before Waldus did his. For Peter Bruis had preached the apo twenty years when Cluniacensis wrote, as I shewed stles. before: which was 1146. And Waldus began, by the earliest account, in the time of Pope Innocent the Second, whose first year was 1130. So if we take the name [Waldenses] strictly, for one sort of men, as those old writers generally do; then there is no account that any of them were antipedobaptists. But if we take it in that large sense as many late writers do, to include all the sorts that I have rehearsed, then there is probable evidence that one sort of them, viz. the Petrobrusians, were so; but not that the general body of the Waldenses were. And that opinion of the Petrobrusians seems to have been in a short time extinguished and forgotten. VIII. Now because I take this Peter Bruis (or Bruce perhaps his name was) and Henry to be the first antipedobaptist preachers that ever set up a church or society of men holding that opinion against infant-baptism, and rebaptizing such as had been baptized in infancy; I will, for the sake of the antipædobaptists, give the history of them, so far as it is upon record. And the same thing may gratify the Quakers; for I believe they were the first likewise of all that have owned the Scriptures, (as I see no reason to conclude but this people did; though there was a report that they rejected some books of them,) that ever taught that the use of receiving the Lord's Supper is not to be continued. They were both Frenchmen. Both of mean rank 1026. 1030. CHAP. or quality: for Peter of Clugny P bespeaks them thus: Because the darkness of a mean condition VII. Year after the apo stles, 6 6 kept you obscure, had you therefore a mind by some very wicked exploit to make yourselves to be 'taken notice of? Yet they had been in priest's orders, and had each of them a place or employment in that office; but the benefices belonging to them were, it seems, but small. Because he says; If the places wherein you ministered as presbyters 'afforded you but little gain, would you therefore ' resolve to turn all into confusion and profaneness?" Peter had had a church or parish, but was turned out of it; and, as this writer insinuates, for some misdemeanour. Henry had been a monk, and had deserted the monastery. For so he adds; because one of you was for a reason (he knows why) ' turned out of the church which he had,' &c. 'The other throwing off the monk's habit, turning an apostate,' &c. The places where Bruis first made a party and gained proselytes were in that country which is since called Dauphiné. For the book, which Peter of Clugny writes against them, is by way of a letter to three bishops, within whose dioceses this had happened: and the bishops were Eberdunensis, Diensis, and Wapiensis; the bishops of Embrun, Die, and Gap. In the preface (which was written some time after P [See the works of this author, Peter Mauritius, abbot of Clugny, fol. Paris, 1522: or, in, the collection entitled Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, fol. Paris, 1612: or, in vol. xii. part 2. of the Bibliotheca Patrum, Cologne edition, fol. 1618.] q Answer to their fourth Article. [Contra id quod dicunt, Missam nihil esse nec celebrari debere, pag. 228. G. apud tom. xii. Bibl. Patr. edit. Colon, 1618.] VIL Year after the book, and after Bruis was dead) there is added CHAP. the archbishop of Arles in Provence. But it is said in the book, that the city of Arles itself was free the apo from the infection; only some parts of his province ties had een drawn into this persuasion. It was in the mountainous and wild parts of the said dioceses that it first took footing: for so Cluniacensis writes : I should have thought that it had been those craggy Alps, and rocks covered with continual snow, that • Ead bred that savage temper in the inhabitants ; * and that your land, being unlike to all other lands, Ead yielded a sort of people unlike to all others; • but that I now perceive,' &c. The time that it began, he mentions to have been twenty years before. And at the time when the 1916 book was writ, (which was 1146,) those foresaid 1946. dioceses were, he says, clear of it. By the care of the said bishops it had been rooted out there: but that the preachers, when expelled thence, had planted it in the plain countries of Provincia Narbonensis. And there, says he, the heresy which among you * was but timorously whispered or buzzed about in ⚫ deserts and little villages, does now boldly vent itself in great crowds of people, and in populous towns. And the places specified in the books are, the places about the mouth of the Rhone, the plain country about Tholouse, and particularly that eity itself, and many places in the province of Gascoigne. About the year 1144, Bruis being then in the terri-1844tory of St. Gyles, where he had made many proseytes, he was, by the zeal of the faithful people 180 Cluniacensis calls it) taken, and in that city, according to the laws then, burnt to death. The Prope initium Epistolæ. (p. 208. C. Bibl. Patr CHAP. time I compute thus: Cluniacensis had wrote that VII. letter to the bishops aforesaid; but understanding Year after that Bruis was put to death, and the doctrine the apo stles. expelled out of their dioceses, he suppressed the publishing of his letter; but hearing that Henry, whom he calls the heir of Bruis' wickedness, did still propagate it in several places, and that there was danger of its reviving where it seemed to be extinct, he put a new preface to his work and published it; 1046. which was in the year 1146. Of the morals of Peter Bruis this writer gives no account, save that he describes in how tumultuous and outrageous a way things were managed by him and his party, where they prevailed; The people rebaptized; the churches profaned; the altars dug up; the crosses burnt; the priests scourged; monks ' imprisoned,' &c. And he tells how they would, on a Good-Friday to choose, get together a great pile of crosses which they had pulled down, and making a fire of them, would roast meat at it; on which they would make a feast, in defiance of the fast kept by Christians on that day. As for Henry, after he had gone about preaching in many cities and provinces of France, he was on the year 1146 or 7 found in the said territory of the earl of St. Gyles', when St. Bernard and some bishops came to those parts to confute these new doctrines. And of him Bernard does give a character in his letter to that earl; and it is a very scurvy character for a preacher. 'The man,' says he, is a renegado, who, leaving 'off his habit of religion, (for he was a monk,) returned, as a dog to his vomit, to the filthiness of s Prope ab initio. [p. 208. A. ibid.] |