Foundations

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"FOUNDATIONS"
"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

- Psalm 11: 3

"We are Puritans of the Puritans, descended throughout many generations of believers."

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Puritans Lampooned

F

or over a century now, the Authorized Version of Scripture has suffered attack from almost every quarter. From the field of natural science (falsely so called), atheistic scientists have called its entire testimony into question, denouncing it as a mere collective propagation of ancient mythology and folklore, long since dispelled by the theories of Darwin. From the ranks of Liberalism and Modernism, Higher Critics have likewise attacked it at its linguistic sources, the Greek and Hebrew texts, shredding its unity and diving entire books into composite productions arranged from fragmentary sources. From the arena of Lower Criticism, the minority text - the Critical Text of Westcott and Hort, the Nestle-Aland Greek text and the United Bible Society Greek text - have undermined its integrity, denigrating it as inferior through its Received Text foundation. From within Fundamentalism, men long associated with the defense of the faith have lent their talents to the support of Lower Criticism in the endeavor to dethrone the King James's Bible's place of primacy among English translations of Scripture. Leading this assault, we find C. I. Scofield, using his pernicious and wicked footnotes in the Scofield Reference Bible to disparage its textual integrity. In his train, we find a host of local church pastors, some with scarcely a minor in Greek, presuming to correct and improve upon its translation at every step of the way and instruct us into what "a better translation would be."

On a different front we find that our national heritage as a Christian nation has come under attack. Long before Barack Obama denied our identification as a Christian nation, historians had already begun the revision of United States history. Godly Founding Fathers such as Washington who spoke frequently of God and attributed our liberty from England to his providential intervention underwent reinvention, coming out as Deists, at best indifferent to God, the Bible ad Faith, and at worst, actually hostile to Christianity, using it only as a political tool when necessity called for it. In the literary world, the attack goes perhaps further than anywhere else, with authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne actually vilifying the Pilgrim Fathers and distorting them into unrecognizable caricatures in literary lampoons fully intended as an assault upon biblical Christianity itself. In more recent days, the entertainment world has carried on this tradition with film's such as Disney's Pocahantas, which portray the early colonists of the New World as the most extreme and narrow-minded of ignorant and malicious bigots, filled with contempt and hatred for anyone unable or unwilling to support their greedy and exploitive agendas.

What do these two separate fronts have in common? What common ground lies between the King James Bible and the foundation of the United States of America? The answer lies in a name so maligned throughout history, that today, even independent Baptists have taken up the battle cry against it and sought to disassociate themselves from it entirely. That word is Puritanism.

The Puritan Legacy
It saddens me to see independent Baptists today mounting the same bandwagon that Hollywood and the entertainment industry have long ridden and lured the American public at large into boarding. For, not only did Puritanism give us our King James Bible and establish the settlements that would eventually lead the way in the formation of the United States of America, but it has a place in Baptist history that should make the word very dear to our hearts.

At this point, someone will inevitably bring up the public flogging of Obadiah Holmes and the persecution of Roger Williams and John Clark. And, based upon these grounds, they will proceed to denounce Puritanism as a pedobaptistic matrimony of church and state that strove to suppress entirely the propagation of our Baptist faith. Accordingly, anyone who speaks a positive word about Puritanism then becomes an ignoramus entirely uneducated in the grand tradition of our Baptist heritage.

Now, that these events indeed transpired, only blind prejudice would deny. But, as the case often stands with history, there is more to the story than just certain isolated events. Nor can we apply the same censure against Puritanism as a whole that applies strictly to a specific faction of Congregationalist

extremists that settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. We cannot blame the Puritans of every denomination on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean for the wrongdoings of a select few settlers in the New World. Indeed, the Congregationalists in old England chided the New England Congregationalists for intolerance, much to the dismay of the latter.i In contrast, the English Puritans not only supported religious liberty and sought to further it,ii they actually admired and came to the aid of persecuted Baptists.iii Indeed, it was the influential English Congregationalist John Owen who, not only rebuked the New England Congregationalists for their intolerance,iv but arranged for his own publisher to print the very first edition of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.v Bunyan wrote it and - humanly speaking - Owen made it famous.

But to say that the Puritans simply tolerated or even supported Baptists would be to misstate the issue at stake here as well as the facts of history. The argument is not that Puritanism supported Baptists. The argument is that Baptists created Puritanism, that although Puritanism eventually spilled over into other denominations, to include Anglicanism, Congregationalism and Presbyterianism, it began as a Baptist movement, not after the Protestant Reformation, but before. As the great Baptist Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon - sometimes regarded as the last of the great Puritansvi - put it, "We are Puritans of the Puritans, descended throughout many generations of believers."vii

The idea of a Baptist origin for Puritanism may startle some. Nevertheless, it stands with the facts of history, and especially with the Baptist trail of blood. In fact, at a time when Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Anglicans repudiated this term, the Baptists of London claimed it unashamedly, identifying themselves as "Puritans, the unspotted lambs of the Lord."viii

The Novatian Cathari
The title certainly doesn't originate in London though. It goes back further, deep into the remote depths of the Dark Ages and beyond, to the year 251 A. D., at a time when the early purity of Apostolic Christianity had begun to give way to corruption and abuse. The churches of that period had slipped into a neglectful condition. As in the modern churches throughout the United States today, the practice of church discipline had begun to fade into forgotten obscurity, and the church's separation from the world had greatly deteriorated. As in the modern churches throughout the United States today, worldliness and hypocrisy began to thrive. As in the modern churches throughout the United States today, professing believers practiced a convenient Christianity, easily discarded whenever discomfort and persecution threatened. Under the pressure of the Decian persecution, many believers had buckled, denying the Lord and offering incense to pagan deities.ix But when the persecution softened and conditions improved, they returned to the church, seeking readmission to fellowship, much to the scandal of those who had paid the high price of constancy in the face of extreme suffering and misery.

Onto this ecclesiastical stage emerged a man named Novatian of Rome. Novatian led a group of Baptistic Christians that came to be known as the Novatians. These ancient Baptists maintained and advocated churches that opposed the increasing corruption and even apostasy of their day.x Following Novatian's example,xi they insisted upon strict church discipline and separation. Gradually, tensions between the Novatians and the compromising party compounded. Matters came to a head when Cornelius, a lapsed believer received the appointment to the throne of the Roman bishop. Novatian and his followers resisted this selection. When neither party would acquiesce, the Novatian churches determined to break away from the Catholic Church, rather than remain part of a religious body led by a corrupted leadership.xii

This new movement for purity found widespread acceptance in churches scattered throughout the Empire and spread rapidly. By 254 A. D., the Novatianist movement had spread into France.xiii They actually flourished throughout the Roman Empire on into the fifth century, surviving afterwards under a variety of names as a clandestine movement until the rise of the Protestant Reformation.xiv Schaff indicates that they assimilated the Montanists into their constituency,xv a statement confirmed by Robinson.xvi

It is to these early Baptists that we find the name of Cathari first applied. They either adopted or received this designation because of their insistence upon the purity of the church. The term comes from the Greek word “katharoi,” which comes from “katharos,” meaning “pure.”xvii “Cathari” is translated as “Puritan” by Armitage,xviii Cramp,xix Jones, xx Mosheim,xxi Orchard,xxii Robinson,xxiii Vedder and even the online Roman Catholic encyclopedias, New Adventxxiv and The Original Catholic Encyclopedia.xxv New Advent states that they selected this name for themselves in distinction from the Catholic Church, which they called Apostaticum, Synedrium or Capitolinum.xxvi Vedder asserts that the Cathari preferred this title over all the other names that were applied to them.xxvii

The Donatist Cathari
A century later, a new leader arose to champion the cause of purity among the people of God. In northern Africa, history repeated itself when Felix, the primate of Aptunga participated in the ordination of Caecilian to the office of bishop of Carthage in 311 A. D. Felix had turned over copies of the Scriptures to the Roman authorities under Diocletian's persecution of the church, thereby earning for himself the baneful and odious stigma of traditore. He had betrayed the church. And yet he remained a bishop and helped ordain Caecilian.

Compounding this insult, Caecilian himself represented a faction in North Africa that contended for a less rigid attitude towards the traditores as a whole, and for reduction of the careful terms upon which the church restored them to fellowship. Thus, Felix's participation in his ordination foreshadowed far greater compromises to come should it go unchallenged. A powerful and influential faction led by Donatus opposed these compromises and seceded from the compromising side. They appointed Donatus as bishop of Carthage and appealed to Constantine for redress of these grievances.

Constantine turned the debate over to a committee of bishops and then to the synod of Arles. When both groups rejected the Donatist's petition, they appealed once more to Constantine.xxviii The Online Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent describes the conflict as follows:

"In 313 the Donatists came to Constantine with a request to nominate bishops from Gaul as judges in the controversy of the African episcopate regarding the consecration in Carthage of the two bishops, Cæcilian and Majorinus. Constantine wrote about this to Miltiades, and also to Marcus, requesting the pope with three bishops from Gaul to give a hearing in Rome, to Cæcilian and his opponent, and to decide the case. On 2 October, 313, there assembled in the Lateran Palace, under the presidency of Miltiades, a synod of eighteen bishops from Gaul and Italy, which, after thoroughly considering the Donatist controversy for three days, decided in favor of Cæcilian, whose election and consecration as Bishop of Carthage was declared to be legitimate."xxix

The Donatist Cathari appealed to the Emporer on multiple occasions, but at length began to question the validity of Constantine's authority to resolve ecclesiastical disputes.xxx However, with both the civil government and the Catholic Church now aligned against them, they became the object of severe persecution. Under the pretense of suppressing the Circumcelliones, a violent group of radicals in the same region, these united powers began to exercise the same extremes of religious persecution that Christians had once suffered at the hands of pagans. The Donatists became subject to banishment, to confiscation of property and to capital punishment itself.xxxi For their part, they severed ties with the Catholic Church and established themselves as a fellowship of Christians independent of the pretended Papal authority. Like the Novatians, they insisted upon baptizing those who joined their ranks, including those that had already partaken of Catholic baptismal ritualsxxxii because they viewed the Catholic leadership as corrupt and unable to rightly administer the baptismal symbol of purity. Like the Novatians, they consequently received the appellation of Anabaptists and Puritans.xxxiii And, like the Novatians, they rejected infant baptism, practiced baptism by immersion and advocated strict church discipline and purity of life within their membership. Additionally, they defended the autonomy of the local church and liberty of conscience.xxxiv

The Paulicians, Waldensians, Petrobrusians ad Henricians
As the centuries rolled by, the centers of Cathari influence shifted. While persecution thinned their ranks in one region, they grew and multiplied in another. The ninth century saw the organization of the Paulician Church in Armenia to the east,xxxv just as Claude of Turin led his followers in the Alps to finally sever ties with the church of Rome, forming the Cathari group that would eventually become known as the Waldensian church.xxxvi In twelfth century France, Peter of Bruis and Henri of Lausanne fanned the flames of Gospel truth into a roaring inferno that shook the Languedoc for the cause of Jesus Christ. In that same century, Waldensian communities appeared in Spain and in Austria along the Danube River.xxxvii

The Puritan Language
These Cathari embraced a terminology unique to themselves, totally distinct from the vocabulary of Roman Catholicism. They referred to themselves as bon hommesxxxviii or bon hommet - good men.xxxix Additionally, they identified themselves as boni Christiani and amici.xl Divided in their numbers between two classes of believers, the younger initiates and the mature elders, they had specific designations for each. They called younger believers credentesxli and the elders perfectixlii or the perfect.xliii They designated the initiatory credentes, the catechumens, as auditores or hearers.xliv A believer became consoled, having received the Consolamentum, the laying on of hands which the Gallic Cathari identified with the reception of the Comforter.xlv

The Good Men
The Cathari found much of this terminology in their vernacular versions of Scripture. In Titus, where Paul had written of "the pure,"xlvi he had also made reference to "good men."xlvii It seems that with the story of the rich, young ruler in mind, they had come to understand the appellation of "good men" as another designation for true Christians. Christ had plainly stated that there was "none good."xlviii Yet in salvation, God would impute the righteousness of Christ to a sinner, making him a partaker in Christ's goodness and continually producing and manifesting this goodness in his life. Indeed, the same Saviour who had told the rich young ruler that there was "none good" except for God had said that the Heavenly Father caused "his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,"xlix had spoken of the good tree,l the good stewardli and, most notably, the "good man."lii Luke had identified Joseph of Arimathæa as "a good man"liii and applied the same designation to Barnabas, the son of consolation.liv And Paul the Apostle had made reference to "those that are good" in II Timothy 3: 3 as the objects of contempt in the last

days.lv The Old Testament likewise spoke of the good man, in Psalm 37: 23 and 112: 5, and in Proverbs 12: 2, Proverbs 13: 22 and Proverbs 14: 14.

The Perfect
The title of perfect also had its origins in the Word of God. In the same passage where Christ said that none was good, he had addressed the desire of the same ruler to become perfect.lvi Indeed, he had commanded all of his disciples to be perfect in the Sermon on the Mount.lvii The perfect disciple would "be as his master" he had said in a similar discourse.lviii And he had prayed for the perfection of the disciples before his crucifixion.lix Later on the Apostle Paul had declared that he spoke "wisdom among them that are perfect."lx He had commanded the Corinthians to be perfect and had described perfection as God's will for them.lxi Paul had, in fact, pointed to the perfecting of the saints as one of the primary reasons for the gifts to the church given at Christ's Ascension.lxii In Philippians he had spoken of "as many as be perfect"lxiii and in Colossians of presenting "every man perfect in Christ Jesus"lxiv and of standing "perfect and complete."lxv The purpose of inspiration was the perfection of the man of God he had said in his second epistle to Timothy.lxvi

The Puritan Lollards
It was from the bosom of the Cathari church that the torch of Gospel truth and biblical Christianity cast its liberating beams across the European continent throughout the long centuries of Roman Catholic ignorance, intolerance, superstition and barbarity. It was Cathari hands that transcribed the words of Scripture in the words of the common people and preserved them for generations to come. It was Cathari feet that smuggled Bibles across the vast expanse of Europe, sometimes from the Balkan Peninsula, sometimes from the Cottian Alps and sometimes from the Pyrenees between Spain and the Languedoc to sow the seed of God's Word along the banks of the Rhine in Germany or on the fertile soil of the British Isles. Identified by a wide variety of names - Donatists, Paulicians, Albigensians, Petrobrusians, Henricians, Waldensians, Waldenses, Vaudois - in the various regions of their pilgrimage, among themselves, they shared a favored designation, their badge of honor, their emblem of purity and their cross of affliction: Cathari. Puritans.

The Cathari crossed the English Channel in 1000 A. D. Following this initial arrival, large-scale migration followed afterwards in 1154 A. D., the result of persecution in Germany. Some of these Cathari settled at Oxford, where they fell victim to the wrath of local officials. Nevertheless, six years afterward, a third wave of Cathari immigrants followed, only to taste the bitter cup of Henry II's displeasure. Henry

punished about thirty of them by branding them on the foreheads, whipping them through the streets, chopping their garments off at the girdles and expelling them into the open country, giving express orders to the surrounding villages not to harbor them or give them any food. These unfortunate martyrs suffered a protracted death through exposure and starvation, wandering across a hostile and merciless English landscape deprived of sustenance, dignity and basic human compassion.lxvii Yet in spite of all this, the Cathari influence in England took root, providing the nucleus for the Lollard movement. Lollardism grew to such an extent that Armitage cites Knighton, Canon of Leicester, as saying that half of the people of England became Lollards.

In 1823, William Stephen Gilly interviewed M. Peyrani, the leading pastor of the Waldensian churches of the day. In this interview, Peyrani claimed that the English Lollards derived from a Waldensian pastor, Walter Lollard, and that the doctrines of John Wycliffe merely reflected Waldensian doctrine that had progressed from Europe into England centuries before.lxviii This claim aligns with the earlier claim of Perrin in his History of the Old Waldensians that the English identified the Lollards with the Waldensians,lxix and the claim of Oliver Cromwell's representative to the Waldensians, Sir Samuel Moreland, that "In England, they (the Vaudois) were known by the name of Lollards, from one Lollard, who was one of their chief instructors in that isle."lxx The fourth voice in this chorus of testimony comes from Fuller who asserted that the Dutchman, Walter Lollard appeared in England during the monarchy of Edward III "from among the Waldensians, among whom he was a great bard or pastor,"lxxi a claim also made by Armitagelxxii and Thieleman J. van Braght in The Martyr's Mirror, and at least referenced by Cramp.lxxiii According to van Braght, the term originated as a pun on the name of Lollardus, one of their teachers.lxxiv

The idea of a European origin for the Lollards met with ridicule from historians in the nineteenth century who considered it destitute of historical foundation, record or evidence. The popular view of the Lollards as an autonomous religious movement unique to England and distinct from other medieval religious sects which never succeeded in establishing a presence in the British Isles found expression in scoffs and jeers. The idea seemed groundless and absurd.lxxv

The Puritan Literature

However, within a century of Herbert's sneers, a view began to emerge among scholars that reaffirmed the kinship between Wycliffe and the Lollards and the Cathari. In 1872, Alexander Vesselovsky publicized his findings of a substantial Cathari presence in England during the Dark Ages. In 1887, Moses

Gaster made the same assertion, followed by an identical claim made by Ivan Franko in 1899. Then in 1927, art historians T. Borenius and E. W. Tristram published their conclusion that the iconography of the St. Mary Church in Ampney, Gloucestershire, the churches in Stedham and West Chiltington in Sussex, Breage Church in Cornwall, the churches in Poundstok, Penwith and Lanivet, and St. Just in Penwith, all reflected traces of Cathari influence.lxxvi

Building on the work of these scholars, Georgi Vasilev, Professor of European and Medieval Studies at the State University of Library Studies and Information Technologies in Bulgaria, argues that British literature reveals traces of Cathari thought and that the Cathari did in fact influence Wycliffe and initiate the Lollard movement. According to Vasilev's view, Cathari theology influenced not only Langland and Milton, but even the Father of Our English Bible, William Tyndale himself, whom he describes as a "covert dualist."lxxvii It is known that Tyndale embraced Baptist views, including believer's baptism by immersion, saved church membership, and the denial of any extensive church hierarchy.lxxviii Thus, we have the Cathari to thank not only for the Wycliffe Bible of 1388 and the Tyndale Bible of 1537, but, by extension, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishop's Bible and ultimately, the King James Bible itself, since these last six Bibles built upon the foundation laid by Tyndale, who had come under Cathari influence.

Citing the testimony of William of Newbury relating to the presence of German Cathari in England in 1162 A. D., and drawing from a trial of Lollards conducted in the fifteenth century by the Bishop of Norwich, as well as from English literature such as The Vision of Piers Plowman and Paradise Lost, Vasilev builds a case against the idea that the Lollards existed independently, isolated from the European Cathari and their influences.lxxix Addressing the foreign nature of Lollardy on British soil, he writes, "The respectable Du Cange, who used 14th c. chronicles, describes the Lollards as heretics from Germany and Bel-gium and adds that "in pluribus partibus regni Angliae latitabant" ('they hide in many parts of the English kingdom'). John Oldcastle is referred to as 'Lollardus'." Elsewhere he notes that Mosheim identified the term "Lollard" as an imported word originating in Belgium,lxxx and quotes the 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica as saying, "The term comes from Middle Dutch 'lollard', a 'mumbler' or 'mutterer'; it had been applied to the Flemish Beg-hard and other continental groups suspecting of combining pious pretentions with he-retical belief."lxxxi We can summarize his position well in his own words: "Before they appeared in England to become the source of new ideas which provoked their consistent persecution by the church authorities, the Lollards were well known in Germany and Flanders. One of the explanations of the origin of their name is that it is connected with the German verb "lollen" which means "mumble", "mutter" becau-se of their habit to hum permanently their prayers."lxxxii

Let us examine these claims. We open the Wycliffe Bible to the sixth chapter of Matthew. A familiar passage to all of us. The Lord's prayer. As we begin reading, even in the ancient English, the language strikes a familiar chord within us. "Our Father that art in heavens, hallowed be Thy name." We continue reading. "Thy kingdom come to be. Be Thy will done in earth as in heaven."lxxxiii Then something jars us out of our tranquility. "Give us this day our bread over other substance." What did it say? "Over other substance?" Where did that come from? A Latin Vulgate reading perhaps? No. An ancient Cathari reading that corresponds not only with the Cathari New Testament, but also an Old Italian Version which reads “Il pane nostre sopra tucte le substantie da a nnoi oggi” or "our bread over any substance." The Lyonnais of the Albigensian Version reads “E dona a noi lo nostre pa qui es sabre tota cause” or “the bread that is above all else”.lxxxiv One surviving thirteenth century manuscript written in the ancient Provencal language,lxxxv The Codex of Lyon, which contains The Provencal Ritual of Albigeois, bears the reading ""panem supersubstancialem,"lxxxvi or "our supplementary bread"lxxxvii instead of "panem quotidianum,"lxxxviii as Jerome's Vulgate reads. And Inquisition records from Carcassonne charge Bernard Oliva, a heretical bishop from Toulouse, with quoting the Lord's prayer otherwise than contained in the Latin Vulgate, following the same reading given in the Wycliffe Bible.lxxxix In fact, Wycliff drew his translation, not from the Latin Vulgate, but from a Cyrillo-Methodian text of the same type used by the Cathari in translating their Scriptures.xc The Cathari not only rejected the Roman Catholic Church, but her version of Scripture as well. Not having access to the libraries of Europe as Erasmus would centuries later, they turned to the only resource that seemed readily available - a CyrilloMethodian version - and translated their Bible from that source.

Nor does the faulty reading here indicate that the French Cathari used an entirely depraved text. While the "supersubstancialem" corrupted the prayer by a single word, the text included a total of twenty-two words which the Latin Vulgate ommitted, but which Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza, Tyndale, and, eventually the King James translators viewed as authentic and included in their translations, following the precedent of the Old Latin Version, the Old Syrian Version and some Coptic Versions. Thus, the passage that we know today as "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen," had its counterpart in the Cathari New Testament as "Et ne nos inducas in temptationem sed libera nos a malo. Quoniam tuum est regnum et virtus et gloria in secula. Amen."xci

Further evidence appears. In medieval English literature we discover that the ancient Cathari vocabulary has inflitrated the pages of Langland's work. Langland writes of "good people," "the Perfect"

and "Spiritus Paraclitus."xcii Chaucer, the Father of English Literature himself, betrays a Cathari influence in his Roman de la Rose and even in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.xciii As we would expect, the post-Reformation Puritans abound in this kind of terminology. In seventeenth century Ireland, the learned and scholarly Puritan, Archbishop Ussher, an ardant student of the Waldensiansxciv and advocate for the preservation of their theology,xcv speaks of salvation, not merely as justification, but as consolation.xcvi In England, Thomas Watson writes repeatedly of "the good man."xcvii And the most famous Puritan author of that century, John Bunyan, frequently refers to the "good man"xcviii and "good men"xcix and writes of the "consolations of the Gospel."c To him, Apollyon is the prince and god of the City of Destruction, the Rex Mundi of the Cathari.ci Even as late as the early eighteenth century, we find Matthew Henry speaking of believers as "good men," "good people" and so on in his famous commentary.cii All of this is Cathari terminology, the language of the Lollards.ciii

Nor did the Cathari influence die on British soil. In their flights from England and Europe, the Puritans carried their unique theological language across the Atlantic Ocean, to take root on the fertile soil of the North American continent. Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, in his sermons made frequent reference to the "good man" and "good men" of Cathari doctrine,civ while Ebenezer Pemberton speaks of a dying Christian's hope as "a mighty consolation."cv But it is William Tyndale, the Father of Our English Bible, that supplies the direct link between the Baptistic Cathari and the King James Bible. Tyndale himself repeatedly speaks of "good men" and of being "perfect." Most notably, he does this with reference to precisely the same source of spiritual transformation that the Cathari did in their Consolamentum: the reception of the Holy Ghost through calling upon the Lord in prayer, “as when we say God make you a good man, Christ put his spirit in thee.”cvi And like the Baptist Cathars of old, he identifies baptism as an outward token of an inward cleansing:

“The washing preacheth unto us, that we are cleansed with Christ’s bloodshedding.”cvii

L. P. Brockett draws the literary evidence to its logical conclusion. In his work Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia, published by the American Baptist Publication Society he writes:

"The later Puritan writers, and notably Baxter, Howe, Alleine, and others, give unconscious evidence in their writings of the sources from which their doctrines and teachings were drawn. Even if there were no other evidence of the affiliation of the Puritans, both of earlier and later times, with the Bogomils, the

doctrine of a personal devil, as now held by all the Puritan churches, would be sufficient to demonstrate it.

The great movements of the Reformation under Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and Zwinglius, though absorbing considerable numbers of the Bogomil or Catharist churches in Southern and Central Europe, were in some respects for them a retrogression. Their Protestantism was purer than that of the Reformers; they had never bowed the knee to Baal, and their mouths had never kissed him; they had never held any allegiance to the Romish pope or the Greek patriarch; they had never accepted any of the erroneous doctrines of these corrupt churches; and neither the paedo-baptism nor the transubstantiation of the Church of Rome, nor the consubstantiation of the Greek and Lutheran churches, had any advocates among them. They were "Christians" pure and simple, yielding nothing to conciliate any of those who had a lingering affection for Romanism.

It is not wonderful, then, that the Waldenses in Italy and Piedmont should have maintained their independent position, nor that in England—where the original Reformation was deficient in thoroughness, and where there were in the country many of the descendants of the Publicani of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries —there should have been a revolt from the partial Reformation in the shape of that Puritanism which established a purer Protestantism there, and has been the corner-stone of free institutions in our own country.

The spiritual lineage which we have thus briefly and imperfectly traced through the ages from the tenth century to our own time is one of which every true Protestant may well be proud. Though no gorgeous temples, no stately cathedrals, have made their worship conspicuous and attractive; though no historian has described, with vivid and touching pathos, those scenes of martyrdom where scores of thousands yielded up their lives rather than deny their faith; though no troubadour has given immortality to their paeans of victory, as the flames enwrapped them in a glorious winding-sheet,—yet their record is on high, and He whose approval is worth infinitely more than all the applause of men, has inscribed on the banner of His love, which surrounds and protects the humblest of those who suffered for His sake, the legend, " BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART; for they shall see God."cviii

In short, the Baptistic Cathari did indeed establish a substantial presence in England and exerted their influence upon Wycliffe himself and, indeed, the entire island of Albion through the Lollards. Vasilev sums it well: "Du Cange provides us with the important reference to a chronicle from 1318 according to which 'Lollardus quoque dicitur haereticus Valdensis' ('they called the Lollard also a Val-densian'). Thus, the outlined spiritual kinship between the Lollards and Waldensians directs our attention to the roots of the Waldensian doctrine which lie in Catharism."cix

The immigration of the Cathari from Europe to England sowed the seeds of a renewed British spirituality that flowed naturally from the historic Baptist doctrines of Biblical authority, the priesthood of the believer and individual soul liberty - doctrines that they asserted firmly and insisted upon with dogmatic fierceness. These Puritan Baptists refused emphatically to rest in contentment as the Roman Catholic priest told them what to believe. Denouncing with zealous fervor the mediation of the Latin priesthood, the Lollards demanded a return to the Scriptures. More radical than that, they demanded the availability of the Scriptures in the common vernacular, accessible to the common man, and open to him to understand and submit to in the simple practice of its teachings, without subordination to the interpretations of the Romish clergy! cx Every believer had direct access to God and the right, not only to read the Scriptures for himself or herself, but also to come to the understanding of Scriptural truth through their own direct study of them, apart from the dictates and dogmatism of the Romish clergy!

From this demand for immediate, personal Scriptural scholarship founded upon the historic Baptist principles of biblical authority, the priesthood of the believer and individual soul liberty, grew the towering Biblical and linguistic intellectualism of the seventeenth century Puritan divines, still admired and respected by scholars and students of the Bible today for its rigorous, thorough and exhaustive pursuit of Scriptural truth. From this seedbed emerged that personal academic and biblical discipline the Puritan discipline - unmatched ever since, that flowered into full bloom with the greatest and most influential translation of the Holy Scriptures ever produced - the King James Bible. The centuries of Baptist labors, sacrifice, suffering, bloodshed and martyrdom had born fruit indeed and from the ashes of Baptist martyrs had arisen the Good Men who not only triumphed in producing the most influential translation of Scripture that the world has ever known, but also laid the foundation for a new nation from whence the lamp of Gospel truth, biblical Christianity and liberty of conscience has shined unto the uttermost parts of the earth for over two centuries.

i

Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemna: The Story of John Winthrop, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 164. Ibid. iii J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision for the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), 351. iv Christian Classic Ethereal Library < http://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen> (accessed 22 October 2012). v Packer, 351. vi Arthur Bennett, The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 9. vii The Spurgeon Archive < http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/2185.htm> (accessed 22 October 2012>. viii J. M. Gairdner, ed., Three Sixteenth-Century Chronicles (London: Camden Society, 1880), 143; quoted in J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway Books, 1994), 50. ix Robert J. Sargent, Landmarks of Church History (Oak Harbor, WA: Bible Baptist Church Publications, 2010), 1: 60. x Sargent, 61.
ii

xi

John Mockett Cramp, Baptist History (Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society, 1852; reprint, London, Ont.: Bethel Baptist Print Ministry, 2003), 44. xii Sargent, 60. xiii Ibid, 62. xiv John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (Texarkana, TX: Bogard Press, 1922), 1: 44 - 45. xv Phillip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3: 254; quoted in Robert J. Sargent, Landmarks of Church History (Oak Harbor, WA: Bible Baptist Church Publications, 2010), 1: 60 xvi Sargent, 62. xvii New Advent<://www.newadvent.org/cathari/11138a.htm> (accessed 21 October 2011). xviii Thomas Armitage, History of the Baptists (New York: Bryan, Taylor & Co., 1887; reprint, Springfield, MO: Baptist Bible College, 1977), 178. xix Cramp, 45. xx William Jones, History of the Christian Church (London, Ont.: Bethel Baptist Print Ministry, 2003), 2: 7. xxi Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical History (New York, 1981), 1: 203; quoted in Robert J. Sargent, Landmarks of Church History (Oak Harbor, WA: Bible Baptist Church Publications, 2010), 1: 63. xxii G. H. Orchard, History of Baptists, 7th ed. (Texarkana, TX: Bogard Press, 1987), 55. xxiii Robinson, Ecclesiastical Researches (Cambridge, 1792), 126; quoted in John T. Christian, A History of the Baptists (Texarkana, AK-TX: Bogard Press, 1922), 1: 44 xxiv New Advent <http://www.newadvent.org/cathari/11138a.htm> (accessed 21 October 2011). xxv The Original Catholic Encyclopedia <http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Cathari> (accessed 8 October 2011). xxvi Advent <http://www.newadvent.org/cathari/11138a.htm> (accessed 21 October 2011). xxvii Vedder, 64. xxviii Vedder, 65, 10. xxix New Advent <http://www.newadvent.org/cathari/11138a.htm> (accessed 24 October 2011). xxx Cramp, 48. xxxi Ibid. xxxii New Advent <http://www.newadvent.org/cathari/11138a.htm> (accessed 24 October 2011). xxxiii G. H. Orchard, History of Baptists, 7th ed. (Texarkana, TX: Bogard Press, 1987), 86 - 87. xxxiv Sargent, 83. xxxv Fred C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (London: Clarendon Press, 1898), 9. xxxvi Alexis Muston, The Israel of the Alps: A History of the Persecutions of the Waldensians (London: Ingram, Cooke & Co., 1853), 286. xxxvii Armitage, 284 - 300. xxxviii Georgio Tourn et al., You Are My Witnesses: The Waldensians Across 800 Years (Tourino, Italy: Claudiana Editrice, 1989), 17. xxxix Jones, 8. xl Conybeare, 162. xli Ibid, 142. xlii Jonathan Wright, Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011), 131. xliii Tourn, 17. xliv Conybeare, 162. xlv Ibid, 142, 149. xlvi Titus 1: 15 KJV. xlvii Titus 1: 8 KJV. xlviii Matthew 19: 17 KJV. xlix Matthew 5: 45 KJV. l Matthew 12: 33 KJV. li Matthew 25: 21 - 23 KJV. lii Matthew 12: 35 KJV.

liii liv

Luke 23: 50 KJV. Acts 11: 22 - 24 KJV. lv II Timothy 3: 1 - 3 KJV. lvi Matthew 19: 21 KJV. lvii Matthew 5: 48 KJV. lviii Luke 6: 40 KJV. lix John 17: 23 KJV. lx I Corinthians 2: 6 KJV. lxi II Corinthians 13: 9 - 11 KJV. lxii Ephesians 4: 8 - 13 KJV. lxiii Philippians 3: 15 KJV. lxiv Colossians 1: 28 KJV. lxv Colossians 4: 12 KJV. lxvi II Timothy 3: 16 - 17 KJV. lxvii Christian, 182. lxviii William Stephen Gilly, Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piedmont in the Year MDCCCXXIII 4th ed. (London: C. and J. Rivington, 1827), 78 - 79. lxix Jean Paul Perrin, History of the Old Waldensians Anterior to the Reformation (Philadelphia, Penn.: Griffith & Simon, 1847), 25. lxx James Henthorn Todd , ed. The Books of the Vaudois: The Waldensian Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin (London and Cambridge: MacMillan and Co., 1865), 107. lxxi Christian, 183 - 184. lxxii Armitage, 322. lxxiii Cramp, 88. lxxiv Thielman J. van Bracht, ed., The Martyr's Mirror 2d English ed. (Scotsdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 2009), 277. lxxv Todd , 107. lxxvi Georgi Vasilev, Heresy and the English Reformation: Bogomil-Cathar Influence on Wycliffe, Langland, Tyndale and Milton (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008), 281 - 282. lxxvii Vasilev, 124. lxxviii Christian, 188. lxxix Vasilev, 97 - 98. lxxx Ibid, 8. lxxxi Ibid, 98. lxxxii Ibid, 98. lxxxiii Matthew 6: 9 - 13 The Wycliffe New Testament (1388). lxxxiv Georgi Vasilev, "John Wycliffe, The Dualists and the Cyrillo-Methodian Version of the New Testament," Heresy and the English Reformation, 2001, <http://www.bogomilism.eu/Studies/John%20Wycliffe-and-the-Dualists.html> (accessed 18 January 2012). lxxxv Conybeare, 141. lxxxvi Ibid, 160. lxxxvii The Cathars: Cathar Beliefs: Ceremonies: The Pater, 2012, <http://www.cathar.info/12011011_catharpater.htm> (accessed 28 June 2012). lxxxviii Conybeare, 160. lxxxix Georgi Vasilev, "John Wycliffe, The Dualists and the Cyrillo-Methodian Version of the New Testament," Heresy and the English Reformation, 2001, <http://www.bogomilism.eu/Studies/John%20Wycliffe-and-the-Dualists.html> (accessed 18 January 2012). xc Ibid. xci The Cathars: Cathar Beliefs: Ceremonies: The Pater, 2012, <http://www.cathar.info/12011011_catharpater.htm> (accessed 28 June 2012).

xcii

Bulgarian Bogomil and Apocryphal Ideas in Medieval English Culture (The Image of Christ as Piers Plowman in William Langland's The Visopn of Piers Plowman), 2001, <http://www.bogomilism.eu/Studies/Bogomilism%20and%20England-summary.html> (accessed 9 June 2012). xciii Vasilev, 124. xciv Todd, 198. xcv Ibid, 210 - 211. xcvi Don Kistler, ed., The Puritan Pulpit: James Ussher (Orlando, FL: Soli Deo GLoria Publications, 2006), 275. xcvii Thomas Watson, The Godly Man's Picture (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 151, 157, 173. xcviii Charkes W. Elliot, ed., The Harvard Classics: Bunyan, Izaak Walton, 62nd ed. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1909), 52, 53, 63, 66, 128, 129, 141. xcix Ibid, 82 c Ibid, 80. ci Ibid, 60. cii Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendricks Publishers, Inc., 2008), 27 - 28, 33, 598, 606, 1638. ciii Vasilev, 282. civ Don Kistler, ed., The Puritan Pulpit: Solomon Stoddard (Orlando, FL: Soli Deo GLoria Publications, 2005), 37, 78, 156, 196. cv Don Kistler, ed., The Puritan Pulpit: Ebenezer Pemberton (Orlando, FL: Soli Deo GLoria Publications, 2006), 64. cvi Vasilev, 127 - 128. cvii Ibid, 140. cviii L. P. Brockett, "Section XXIV," Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia, 1879, <http://www.reformedreader.org/history/brockett/bogomils.htm> (accessed 17 January 2012). cix Vasilev, 98. cx Armitage, 322.

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