Imatges de pàgina
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on record that Luther, Calvin, and Beza, were adversaries of infant baptism.

2. That we ought, in all reason, either to deny credit to these Popish writers concerning these men, or else to believe them in one thing as well as another. If we allow them for good witnesses, then those that they describe were men of such unsound opinions in other things, as that no church would be willing to own them for predecessors. But if we account them slanderers, we ought not to conclude from their testimony, that any of these men denied infant baptism, which does not appear by any of their own confessions; and which the present Waldenses do account as a slander.

cast on their ancestors.

These considerations do, in great measure, justify those Pædobaptists who maintain that there is no certain evidence of any church or society of men that opposed infant baptism, till those in Germany about 180 years ago. The proof concerning any sort of the Waldenses [1422] is but probable; I owned before, that the probability is such as does weigh with me for the Petrobrusians, and perhaps some of the Albigenses; but for the main body of Waldenses there is no probability at all.

And now, Thirdly, That there were several sects or societies of them that did not deny the baptism of infants, is proved from this: That a great many writers against them, diligently reciting the erroneous opinions of those they write against, and that often in smaller matters, yet mentions nothing of this.

Lucas Tudensis [1136] writes largely against the Albigenses that were then in Spain; but among all the accusations of them, true or false, has nothing of this. Petrus de Pilichdorf (in the year 1995, [1295] as he himself gives the date, cap. 30) writes a book of confutation of the several pretended errors of the Waldenses of his time in 36 chapters; but has nothing of baptism, though he descends to speak of many lesser matters, and aggravates all with very railing words; yet he finds nothing to accuse them of, but such things as the

Protestants now hold, except one or two, as the unlawfulness of all oaths, &c. Enæas Sylvius wrote in [458, [1358] his Historiam Bohemicam, in which he reckons up the tenets of the Picards, a sort of these men ; but* he mentions no difference they had with the then established church about infant baptism, save that they spoke against Chrism, &c. And Fox, reciting their tenets out of him, mentions only this: "That baptism ought to be administered with pure water, without any hallowed oil." Nauclerus also in his Chronicon, written 1600 [1400], recites their doctrines particularly †, and mentions no such thing as the denial of infant baptism; yet he also takes notice of so small a matter, as that they affirmed water to be sufficient without oil. There are in Gretzer's collection of pieces, written against the Waldenses, six treatises in all (beside Reinerius and Pilichdorf, mentioned already) reckoning up their heterodox opinions; but not one word of this. One of them is a direction to the inquisitors, in the examining of these men, how to discover and convict them; for it seems they kept their opinion very close; whereas, if they had not baptized their children, nothing would have been a more ready conviction. The Magdeburgenses have a catalogue of their opinions, taken, as they say, out of a very old manuscript; and nothing of his. Bishop Usher quotes [1360] also Jacob Picolaminæus, Anton. Bonfinius, Bernard, [1395] Lutzenburgensis, and several others treating of these sorts of men, who object nothing of this.

I have, more than ever I meant to do, troubled myself in enquiring into the history of these men; and all that I can make of the enquiry is this:

First, There was a great many among them, that really held the impious opinion of the Manichees. Some of this sect were in these countries before the Waldenses, whom the Protestants own for predecessors, arose or

* Usher de Succ. Ecc. c. 6. Baxter, More Proofs, p. 38.

+ Vol. 2, part 2, pag. 265.

Bib. Pat, tom. 13. Ed. Col. 1618.

§ Cent. 12, pag. 1206.

De Success. Eccl. c. 6, pag. 155; item pag. 306. &c.

were taken notice of, which was after the year 1100. These all of them denied water baptism; so the Quakers may clain kindred with them if they please; but no Baptist, whether Pædobaptist, or Antipædobaptist, can. They had an invention of their own, which they used instead of the Christian baptisin, and which they called Spiritual Baptism; and they said, By it forgiveness of sins, and the Holy Spirit was given. It contained in it imposition of their hands, and the saying of the Lord's Prayer. Only one sect of them, the Albanenses, said the hand did no good; being, as all other flesh is, created by the Devil: so they used the prayer only."

* 66

These men were thus far on the Antipædobaptists side, that this mock-baptism of theirs they gave to the adult only. And they derided the Christians for two things; one that they used baptism with water at all; and the other, that they gave it to persons that had no sense of it, viz. infants. And this, for aught I know, might be all the ground of the Waldenses (who by the first writers are not well distinguished from these men) being accused of denying infant baptism.

This sort of men continued a considerable time [1154] Reinerius says†, in his time "there were not above 4000 in all the world that were Cathari, quite pure [or perfect] of both sexes; but of Credentes (so they called their disciples that were not yet perfect) an innumerable multitude.

Though the authors do not well distinguish the names; yet, most generally, this sort that denied all baptism, and held the other vile opinions, are denoted by these names, Cathari, Apostolici, Luciferians, Runcarians, Popelicans, alias Publicans.

2. There were another sort that held none of those impious tenets of the Manichees concerning two Gods, &c.; but they joined with the other in inveighing against the Church of Rome, which in these times began to be very corrupt; and the Papists do sometimes con+ Reinerius, c. 6.

Reinerius, c. 6.

found these with the other, and affix to these some of the opinions of the other.

If any of these that owned water-baptism, denied it to infants, and if P. Cluniacensis did not mistake their opinion upon the occasion aforesaid, it was the Petrobrusians, otherwise called Henricians. What Reinerius says of the Lyonists, is very general and obscure; and of the others no such thing is said. Especially, this is constant, that no one author that calls the people he writes of Waldenses, does impute to them the denial of infant baptism.

3. If there were any such, they seem not to have continued long, but to have dwindled away, or come over to those that practised infant baptism; for none of the latter writers concerning these men do charge them with any thing of this. This the reader will observe, if he mind the date of the year which I have affixed to each writer; and it is a manifest sign that either none of those whom we now denote by the name of Waldenses, that owned water baptism, held any thing against infant baptism; but that the elder writers imputed it to them upon the mistake aforesaid, of taking the Manichees' opinions for theirs; or upon vulgár reports, which by this time appeared to be false: or else, that if there had been formerly any such sects in that great variety, they were by this time extinguished. Pilichdorf writes against them, under the name of Waldenses. Reinerius does but once just mention that name, as denoting one sect, one can't tell which. Pilichdorf entitles his book Against the Sect of the Waldenses, and calls them at every word Waldensian Heretics; but ascribes no opinion to them that deserves that name, nor any error at all about baptism. He is the only man of their adversaries who, though he give them ill language, yet charges them with no particular opnion (or no material one) but what they themselves own in their confessions. He wrote, as I said, anno 1395, [1295] by which time their opinion must be justly and distinctly known. If they had formerly

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been mistaken to be of the same opinion with those Manichean sects, they had now had time to clear themselves from that imputation; and so we find by his words they did; for he says "The Waldenses do dislike, and even loath the Runcarians, Beghards, and Luciferians:" and they seem, by his description, to have been in the same state of religion that they were found in 150 [1425] years after by the Protestants.

And he also supposes, that from their beginning they had been free from any false doctrine about the sacraments; for in his first chapter he speaks of their original, that it was from one Peter Waldensis (others call him Waldus) who, in the time of Innocent the Second, 1040 (so he says, but others place him at 1160, [1060} which was the time of Alexander the Third) reading that command of our Saviour to the 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 forbidden (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."

He means, as appears by what follows, they rejected indulgences, pardons, canonical hours, prayers to the saints, &c. But if they had rejected infant baptism, 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.

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