But I pass over this to our author's account of the Acephali; "Who," he says, 66 were a headless kind of heretics, who owned neither bishop, priest, nor sacrament, like our modern Quakers." I know not what grounds our author had for this, for he never cites any particular writer throughout his whole Index; but I know Alexander Rosse said the same before him, and he is one of this gentleman's learned authors. I know also that some popish writers* object it to the Lutherans, that they are like the old Acephali, because they have no bishops for their leaders; and I am apt to think Alexander Rosse took it, right or wrong, from some of those popish writers. But Alexander has the misfortune to contradict himself; for he says in the very same breath, That Severus, bishop of Alexandria, (he meant Antioch,) was author of this sect of Acephali, under Anastasius the emperor, anno 462. And that they were called also Theodosians, from Theodosius their chief patron, and bishop of Alexandria. Strange indeed! that they should have bishops for their authors and patrons, and yet be without bishop, priest, or sacrament among them! Our author was aware of this rock, and had the wit to avoid it; and therefore here he fairly and wisely dropped his guide, and left him to shift for himself with his contradictions; telling us the first part of the story, but not the latter, which would have spoiled his parallel between the Acephali and the Quakers. But how would he make out, if he was pressed hard to it, that the Acephali had no bishops, or were named Headless, from the want of such heads among them? For my part, I never met with any ancient writer that gave this account of them. Liberatus says,† They were called Acephali, because they would not receive the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria, nor follow him as their head, nor yet any other. But these were bishops, who would neither take Cyril patriarch of Alexandria, nor John patriarch of Antioch, for their head, and were therefore called Acephali, because they would follow neither patriarch as their leader. For as those bishops were called Autocephali, who had no patriarch above them, but were a sort of patriarchs themselves, and independent of any other; so those bishops who were subject to patriarchs, and withdrew their obedience from them, were called Acephali, because they were no heads or patriarchs themselves, and yet refused to be subject to any other. Patriarchs were then heads of the bishops, as bishops were heads of the people; and these are quite different things; for bishops to be called Acephali, because they rejected their patriarch, and people to be called Acephali, because they had neither bishop, nor priest, nor sacrament among them. I am not fond of defending ancient heretics, but I think all men ought to have justice done them, and not be charged with more heresies than they were really guilty of. It is allowed on all sides, that these Acephali were Eutychians, and enemies of the council of Chalcedon; and as such, Leontius ‡ also writes against them; but he says not a word of their being without bishops, priests, or sacraments; and therefore it lies upon our author to produce some ancient voucher, better than Alexander Rosse, for the charge he brings against them. 66 I insist not on his little grammatical error in his account of the Saccophori, "Who," he says, were a branch of the Encratites, so called because they carried a long bag, to make the people believe they led a penitent life." They were indeed a particular sect of the Manichees, who are condemned under that name in several laws of the Theodosian Code,§ where the several branches of the Manichees are proscribed under the distinguishing names of Solitarii, Encratitæ, Apotactitæ, Hydroparastatæ, and Saccophori, which names they assumed to shelter themselves against the severity of former laws made against the Manichees under the name of Manichees only. But now these Manichean Saccophori were not so called from carrying a long bag, but from wearing sackcloth, and affecting to appear with it in public. Saccus indeed will signify a sack or a bag, as well as sackcloth; but what has a long bag to do with a penitent life? It is fitter to describe a philosopher than a penitent: but sackcloth and a penitent life will consist very well together. However, the church did not allow any to affect this garb, though some monks, like the Manichees, were very fond of it, and loved to appear publicly with chains or crosses about their necks, and walked barefoot, and wore sackcloth out of mere singularity and affectation: who are therefore often severely censured for these things by the ancients, Epiphanius, St. Austin, St. Jerom, Palladius, and Cassian, as I have showed more fully in another place: || but I never heard of any, either monks or heretics, censured for carrying a long bag, as an indication of a penitent life; and I am of opinion, this gentleman, when he considers it again, will reckon this such another slip as Index Hæreticus; which are but small failings in comparison of what I have now further to object against his Index, which turns catholics into heretics in several instances both of former and later ages. See Mason's Defence of the Ordination of Ministers beyond Seas, p. 129. Oxon. 1641. + Liberat. Breviar. cap. 9. Hos esse puto authores Acephalorum, qui neque Cyrillum habent caput, neque quem sequantur ostendunt. Leont. de Sectis. Action. 7. Bibl. Patr. Gr. Lat. t. 1. p. 522. Book VII. chap. 3. sect. 6. § Cod. Theod. Lib. 16. Tit. 5. de Hæreticis, Leg. 7, 9, 11. do Among the ancients, he does great injustice to Eustathius, the famous bishop of Antioch. For in giving haan account of the Eustathian heretics, he says, "The Eustathians were the spawn of the Sabellian heresy, and had their name from Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, who was deposed in a council held in his own city, about the middle of the fourth century, for holding those principles." I take no notice of his parachronism, in saying that he was deposed in the council of Antioch about the middle of the fourth century; for though we cannot well call the year 327, or 329, when that council was held, the middle of the fourth for century; yet this is but a small mistake, into which he might easily be led by Baronius, or the corrupt copies of Athanasius and St. Jerom, which place that council in the reign of Constantius, instead of Constantine, as the best critics, Valesius,* Gothofred,† Pagi,‡ and Dr. Cave,§ are fully agreed; and as appears plainly from all the historians, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Philostorgius. But the thing I complain of is this, that he makes this Eustathius a Sabellian, and his followers a spawn of the Sabellian heresy. Whereas, in truth, he was the great defender of the catholic faith against the Arian heresy in the council of Nice: the council itself translated him from Beræa to Antioch; and he was the first man that opened the council, with a panegyrical oration to Constantine: as this author, forgetting himself, fairly owns in his Account of the Eight General Councils, p. 476. Athanasius gives him this character, That he was a noble confessor, and orthodox in the faith, Tv πíotiv evσeßès, and exceeding zealous for the truth.|| How then could he be a Sabellian, unless Sabellianism was the true faith, and Athanasius a Sabellian also? To open this matter a little further, and undeceive this gentleman, and his readers also: this Eustathius was only abused in his character out of spite and malice by the Arians, who were his implacable enemies, because he was a resolute defender of the Nicene faith against them. They therefore endeavoured to make him odious, by falsely charging him with Sabellianism, and several other crimes, upon the strength of which calumnies they deposed him in one of their own councils at Antioch. Socrates and Sozomen ** say expressly, that this council of Antioch was an Arian council that deposed Eustathius, upon a pretence, that he was more a defender of the Sabellian doctrine than of the Nicene faith: which was a usual trick of the Arians, whereby they endeavoured to undermine Athanasius also. Now, this being only a mere calumny and slander of so great a man, imposed upon him by his professed enemies, the Arians, it does not become any one, who takes upon him to give unlearned readers an account of the ancient heresies, to fix this character upon him, without giving some authority, or at least an intimation, that he was deposed only in an Arian council. I do not suppose this gentleman had any ill design in what he wrote about this matter; but he was either imposed upon by some modern historian, or did not sufficiently consider what he found delivered by ancient writers: which should make him the more cautious for the future what guides he follows, and learn to write with judgment, when he takes upon him the office of an historian for such as cannot contradict him. 1 a He commits the same fault in giving an account of the Essenes, “Who,” he says, "were a sect of Christian heretics at Alexandria, in the time of St. Mark." Now, there seems to be a little more of wilful mistake in this; for he could not be ignorant, whilst he was transcribing my Origines, that I had alleged the authority of Epiphanius, Eusebius, and St. Jerom, to show that they believed them to be the orthodox church, and not a sect of Christian heretics, at Alexandria, in the time of St. Mark; and he himself, in his epitome, refers his readers to these authorities also. I said, further, (which he leaves out,) that some learned modern writers, such as Valesius, Scaliger, and Dallæus, question whether they were Christians; whilst Bishop Beveridge and others maintain the common opinion. But all agree that they were not a sect of Christian heretics; however this author came to despise all authority, both ancient and modern, in fixing that character upon them; for if they were heretics, they belonged to the Jews, and not to the Christians. In his accounts of modern heretics (which he might have spared in a book of Ecclesiastical Antiquities) he is much more injurious to the reader, as well as to the pious memory of great numbers of many excellent men, and to the protestant cause in general, when he puts the Albigenses, the Hussites or Bohemians, the Lollards, the Waldenses, and the Wicklevites, all into his black list of heretics; ascribing to them such monstrous opinions as they were certainly never guilty of, but only stood falsely charged with them by the implacable malice of their Romish adversaries, who treated them just as the Arians did Athanasius and Eustathius in former ages. It might have become a protestant heresiologist and historian, either to have omitted these names, or at least to have told his readers what excellent vindications and apologies ⚫ Vales. Annot. ad Euseb. de Vit. Const. lib. 3. cap. 59. Pagi, Critic. in Baron. an. 327. n. 3. et 340. n. 18. Athanas. Epist. ad Solitarios, t. 1. P. 812. + Gothofred. Dissert. in Philostorg. lib. 2. cap. 7. Socrat. lib. 1. cap. 24. have been written by the most learned protestant authors of the two last ages, to clear their character of those black and odious imputations, which their adversaries falsely and industriously threw upon them If he knew nothing of these vindications, he was very ill qualified to act the part of an historian in this case: if he did know them, he was more unpardonable still, in concealing from his readers what in all justice both to them, and the church, and the memory of the saints, who were so traduced, he ought carefully to have laid before them. If he had thought fit to have looked into my Scholastical History of Baptism, as carefully as he has done into the Origines, he might there have found the venerable names of some of those worthy men, who have done justice to the protestant cause, in vindicating those witnesses of the truth from the false aspersions that are cast upon them. For his and the truth's sake, I will once more transcribe them, with a little addition, and more particular reference to the books and places containing those vindications. Crankanthorp, Defensio Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ contra Spalatensem, cap. 18. p. 100. Usserius de Christianarum Ecclesiarum Successione et Statu, cap. 10. quæ est de Albigensium et aliorum qui Ecclesiæ Pontificiæ adversati sunt, Historia. Albertinus de Eucharistia, lib. 3. p. 976. ubi agit de Wicklevistis, Waldensibus, Lollardis, Taboritis sive Bohemis. Sir Samuel Morland, History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont. Lond. 1658. Fol. Dr. Allix, History of the Albigenses. Lond. 1692. 4to. 2 vols. Joachim Hesterberg de Ecclesia Waldensium. Argent. 1668. 4to. Paul Perrin, History of the Albigeois and Vaudois. Lond. 1624. 4to. Balthasar Lydius, Waldensia, sive Conservatio Veræ Ecclesiæ demonstrata ex Confessionibus Taboritarum et Bohemorum, 2 vols. Roterod. 1616. 8vo. Cave, Historia Literaria. In Conspectu sæculi Waldensis sive Duodecimi. Dr. Tho. James's Apology for John Wickliffe, showing his Conformity with the now Church of England. Oxon. 1608. 4to. Dr. Henry Maurice's Vindication of the Prim. Church, p. 374. Ratio Disciplinæ Fratrum Bohemorum. Hagæ. 1660. Hen. Wharton, Appendix ad Cave Hist. Literar. p. 50. in Vita Joan. Wicklef. p. 50. The Life of Wickliffe, by a late author. Lond. 8vo. Comenii Historia Persecutionum Ecclesiæ Bohemicæ. Lug. Bat. 1647. 8vo. It. Historia Ecclesiæ Slavonic. &c. Anton. Leger, Histoire Vaudois des Eglises des Vallées de Piedmont. Lug. Bat. 1669. Fol. Waldensium Confessio contra claudicantes Hussitas. Basil. 1566. 8vo. See also in the Fasciculus Rerum, &c. tom. 1. Conrad. Danhauerus, Ecclesia Waldensium Orthodoxia Lutheranæ Testis et Socia. Argent. 1659. 4to. Pet. Wesenbeccius, De Waldensibus et Principum Protestantium Epistolis huc pertinentibus. 1603. 4to. Now, is it possible, among such a number of fine discourses and elaborate pieces upon this subject, a person who writes the account of heresies, should never have met with or heard of any apologies that were made in the behalf of these men; but he must needs take his accounts crudely, as delivered by their professed enemies? If the account of Rainerius, their adversary, but an ingenuous popish writer, be taken, it does them abundantly more justice than this author. For though he calls them a sect, yet he says, it was an ancient sect; for some said, it had continued from the time of Pope Sylvester; and others, from the time of the apostles: and whereas all other sects were accompanied with horrible blasphemies against God, which would make a man tremble; this of the Leonists had a great show of piety; they lived uprightly before men, and believed all things aright of God, and all the articles contained in the creed: only they blasphemed and hated the church of Rome. Were these the Waldenses, "That rejected episcopacy, and the Apostles' Creed, and all holy orders, and the power of the magistrate, and approved of adulterous embraces, and practised promiscuous copulation," as our author represents them, styling them, by way of contempt, "the religion-mongers, and pious reformers of the twelfth century ?" If our author were put to apologize for himself, he would lay all the blame upon Alexander Rosse: for he is his learned author from whom he te: transcribed. And Alexander tells us ingenuously, he had his accounts from Baronius, Genebrard, Sanhe ders, Gualterus, Bellarmine, Viegas, Florimundus Raimundus, Prateolus, Gregory de Valentia, and such other writers, who were noted papists, and inveterate enemies of the Waldensian and protestant religion. And should an author, who writes about heresies, have given his accounts, designed for the use of procar testant readers, out of such authors, when he might have had recourse to one or more of such a number of excellent protestant writers, who have cleared up the character of the Waldenses, and vindicated their me memory out of their own writings and confessions of faith, which are the most certain evidences of their religion? It is amazing to think how any ingenuous writer, who pretends to the least knowledge of books and learning, should give such a black character of those excellent confessors and witnesses of the truth, without suggesting the least tittle of what so many learned men have said, or what may be said, in their vindication. I will not suspect our author of any sinister designs of advancing popery; but I will be bold to say, he could hardly have taken a more effectual way, had he designed to do it, than by instilling into the minds of those who can look no further than his accounts, such an odious character of those men, e of whom so many thousands laid down their lives for the cause of true religion, in those very points wherein protestants stand distinguished from papists at this day. I had once an occasion to make this same reflection in a former book* on another writer, who is much superior to our author in learning and ingenuity; and I never heard that he took it unkindly at my hands for so doing; for an historian's business is only to find out truth as well as he can, and then deliver it to others fairly without disguise, or any false colours put upon it. And therefore I hope our author will take occasion to amend this grand error, whenever he has opportunity to write any thing further upon this subject. His time would be much better employed in reading and considering the books of some of those excellent writers I have referred him to, than in collecting a heap of rubbish from Alexander Rosse or any other such injudicious writers. 3. But there is one thing more I must put this author and his readers in mind of: That whilst he bears so hard upon the poor Waldenses, and Albigenses, and Wicklevists, and Hussites, and Lollards, he has not one syllable in all his Index of the grand errors of the Romanists or papists, under any title or denomination whatsoever. He cannot pretend they fell not directly in his way; for he treats of modern sects and heterodoxies as well as ancient. Neither did he want his guide here; for Alexander Rosse has a whole section of fifty pages in his book upon the subject. Or if he had said nothing upon it, yet it might have become a new heresiologist to have taken notice of the errors of the Romanists upon some title or other. Their errors are as considerable and dangerous as most other modern sects; why then have they no place in the Index? Is transubstantiation no error? Is idolatry, in its various species of worshipping saints, angels, images, relics, the host, and the cross, no crime? Is not the Hildebrandine heresy, as our writers style it, that is, the doctrine of deposing kings, an error worth mentioning? nor the pope's pretence to infallibility and universal power over the church, worthy of a protestant's censure? Is it no crime to exempt the clergy from the power of the civil magistrate? nor any wrong done them to impose celibacy upon them? Have the people no injury done them in keeping the Scriptures locked up in an unknown tongue? or being obliged to have Divine service in a language they do not understand? or in being deprived sacrilegiously of one half of the communion? or in having the absolute necessity of auricular confession imposed upon them? Is there no harm in the use of interdicts and indulgences? Are private and solitary masses, and the doctrine of purgatory, with many other errors, such innocent things, that it was not worth an historian's while to give his readers any notice of them, or caution against them? Our author knows, I have fairly combated most of these things, and showed them to be novelties and great corruptions, in the several parts of my Origines, as I had occasion to meet with them. Therefore the least he could have done, had been to refer his readers to those parts of his own epitome, or my Origines, where these things are treated, if he was not minded to give them in one view in his own collections. But he is as favourable to the anti-episcopal men, or presbyterians, as he is to the papists; for he gives them no place in his catalogue neither. I suppose he was in haste for the press, and considered not that he had made such an omission. But he should now consider, that he who falsely objects it to the Waldenses, that they rejected episcopacy, (which they always carefully maintained,) should not have passed over in silence those men who oppose episcopacy, when he might with justice and truth have charged them with it as their proper heterodoxy, from which their denomination of anti-episcopal, or presbyterian, is taken. But this is not all the defect of his Index. Scholiast. Hist. of Baptism, Part I. chap. 1. p. 97. If this author would have given a perfect catalogue of all the original heresies from the first ages of Christianity, together with the more remarkable heterodoxies which appeared in these later times, he should have inserted many other names, both ancient and modern, which are now omitted in his catalogue. In the first century, the Thebulians, Cleobians, Dositheans, Gorthæans, Merinthians; not to mention Demas, Hermogenes, Hymenæus and Philetus, Alexander the coppersmith, Diotrephes, and the doctrine of Jezebel, which are noted in Scripture. In the second century, Bassus, a new disciple of Valentinus. In the third century, the Discalceati, Apocaritæ, Dicartitæ, and Solitarii, which were new branches of the Manichees. In the fourth century, the Minai, Adelphians, Psathyrians, and Lucianists, two new branches of the Arians, Adelophagi, Theoponita, Triscilida or Triformiani, Hydrotheitæ, Cyrthiani, and Pythecian, new sects of Arians, Gyrovagi, Homuncionitæ, Ametritæ, Psychopneumones, Adecerditæ, Sarabaitæ or Remboth, Passionista, Nyctages, Theophronians, Metagenetæ, Sabbatians or Protopaschites. In the fifth century, the Vigilantians and Massilienses. In the sixth century, the Marcianists, or followers of Marcianus Trapezita, the Tetraditæ, and Severians, with the several branches that sprung from them, the Contobabdita, Paulians, Theodosians, Damianists, Petrites, Cononites, Corrupticola; together with the errors of Peter Moggus and Peter Gnapheus or Fullo, which made a great noise in the history of this age; as did also the practices of Zeno with his Henoticon, and Anastasius against the council of Chalcedon. In the seventh century, Joannes Philoponus and Ethicoproscopta. The eighth century was famous for the disputes between the Iconoclasts and the Iconolatre, image-worshippers and image-breakers: and the errors of the second council of Nice might have been set forth in a much more advantageous view, had our author been pleased to have acquainted his reader with the brave opposition that was made against it by the council of Frankfort, and other councils and writers of that and the following ages, in his History of the General Councils. The ninth and the tenth ages, Prateolus is pleased to say, was a perfect interregnum of heretics, a cessation and rest of the church for two hundred years and more from all heretical infestation. Others more properly call these the dark and ignorant ages, when the enemy sowed his tares, whilst men were asleep. And Baronius himself cannot forbear upon some accounts to call them infelicissima Romanæ ecclesiæ tempora et omnium luctuosissima, the most unhappy and deplorable times of the Roman church, when weak men were in danger of being scandalized by seeing the abomination of desolation set in the temple. If our author had been as inquisitive as it became him, he might have found the great idol of transubstantiation begun to be formed in the errors of Paschasius Rathbertus in these ages, though not fully completed till some ages after in the council of Lateran; and the seeds of the Hildebrandine heresy springing up in the bold attempts of the popes of these ages against the power of princes, till it came to its full maturity under Hildebrand himself, called Gregory VII.; to mention no more of the popish errors, which our author thought fit wholly to pass over. In the twelfth century he might have found the errors of Durandus de Waldach, and Petrus Abælardus, and Gilbertus Porretanus, and the Coterelli, and the Populicans, to have added to his Index. But above all, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries would have furnished him with great abundance of more remarkable errors to have filled up his catalogue, instead of the Wicklevites and Hussites, and Waldenses and Albigenses. For now appeared in the thirteenth century the errors of Abbot Joachim, and Petrus Joannes de Oliva, and John de Parma, the author of the infamous book, called Evangelium Æternum, The Everlasting Gospel, which was to supersede and set aside the gospel of Christ, under pretence of introducing the more spiritual gospel of the Holy Ghost. Eimericus has noted seven and twenty errors and blasphemies contained in this book, which the Mendicant friars in those days highly magnified. But our author needed not to have gone so high as Eimericus for them; for Bishop Stillingfleet gives an ample account of them in his Fanaticism of the Church of Rome. As he does also of the errors of Gerardus Segarelli, and the Dulcinists, and Herman of Ferraria, and the book called The Flowers of St. Francis, and another, The Conformities of St. Francis and Christ. To which may be added the errors of Raymundus Lullius, and David Dinantius, and Bugaurius de Monte Falcone, together with the errors of Joannes Guion, and Joannes de Mercuria, and Nicolas de Ultricuria, and Dionysius Soulechat, a Franciscan, and Joannes de Calore, and one Ludovicus, and Guido, an Austin hermit, with some others that were condemned in these ages by Gulielmus Parisiensis and Stephanus Parisiensis, with the concurrence of the university of Paris, and are to be found at the end of some editions of Peter Lombard, with the errors of Peter Lombard himself, under this title, Articuli in quibus Magister Sententiarum communiter non tenetur. Lombard. Sentent. Lugd. 1594. 8vo. Spondanus adds to these, the Condormientes, and Pastorelli, and Guido de Lacha, and the Humiliati, and the Ordo Apostolorum; all which appeared within the compass of the thirteenth century; besides the famous disputes between the Guelphs and Gibelines, which continued in the follow |