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I.

CHAP. peared, at different periods, a people who bore a striking resemblance to each other, both in their faith and manners.

15. They considered Jesus Christ not as the founder of a temporal hierarchy, but as a pattern of piety and virtue: hence they placed religion not so much in doctrines and outward forms of worship, as in purity of heart and a virtuous practice; and hence they bore a uniform testimony against vice, and the established orthodoxy of the standing priesthood.

16. Many of them chose a life of continence, others did not they allowed each other liberty of conscience, that each might live according to their own faith, and they persecuted none who differed from them. They took no oaths, bore no arms, and patiently endured persecution for the testimony which they held.

17. And what was all this, but a standing memorial of the nature and tendency of the true gospel, and a witness against the corrupt religion established by human authority? Not that either the doctrine or manners of those virtuous people were formed into any system, or conveyed, by any external authority, from one to another; but being influenced by the same invisible Spirit, however disconnected they might have been, as to external things, their faith and practice were essentially the same in nature, though not always in degree.

18. Wherever such a faith and practice were manifested, they never failed to reprove and condemn that which was of a contrary nature; and such was then the true work of God for that purpose; therefore, as vice and wickedness increased among the great orthodox Christians, virtue was elsewhere practised, under some other name, sufficient in degree to expose the kingdom of the beast in its proper colours.

19. Thus, while the door of the catholic church stood open to all characters, and the universal depravity of priests and people, destroyed every real distinction between virtue and vice in that apartment, the people taught by Novatian, stood as a living reproof of their libertine government. Some exclaimEccl. Reed, "It is a barbarous discipline to refuse to re-admit 'people into Christian communion because they have

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p. 127.

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lapsed into idolatry and vice." Others finding the CHAP. inconvenience of such a lax discipline, required a repentance of five, ten, or fifteen years.

20. But the Novatians said, "If you be a virtuous believer, and will accede to our confederacy against 'sin, you may be admitted among us by baptism, or if any Catholic has baptized you before, by re-baptism. 'But mark this, if you violate the contract by lapsing into idolatry and vice, we shall separate you from our community, and, do what you will, we shall nev་ er re-admit you. God forbid we should either injure 'your person, your property, or your character, or even judge of the truth of your repentance, and your future state: But you can never be re-admitted to 'our community without our giving up the best and only coercive guardian we have of the purity of our 'morals."

21. This Novatian discipline, Eusebius says, "rent the unity of the church." Truly it showed that the church of Christ and a wicked idolatrous world could never be united. But when Antichrist had completed the union between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, and a whole empire was christianized at once, by a mere change of human government, the state of the world, thus united to the church, might have appeared unspeakably glorious, had not God reserved a people, whose virtuous practice should expose the universal deception of the self-stiled Catholics.

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P. 194.

22. "Certain it is, (says Robinson,) the virtuous Eccl. ReManicheans thought they were only Pagan schismatics, acting vice in the name of the most virtuous of beings, Jesus Christ, whose character must sink in proportion as theirs rose."

23. Thus Faustus, the Manichean, said to Saint Augustin: "How dare you call me a Pagan schismatic? The Pagans honour God, they think, by • building temples, by erecting altars and images, and by offering sacrifice and incense. I have quite other notions. I consider myself, if I be worthy, a rational temple of God. I honour Jesus Christ, his Son, as his express image. A well instructed mind is his altar, and pure and simple adoration the accept⚫able sacrifice to God."

CHAP.

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* Ghosts.

Eeel. Re

P. 327.

24. "For your parts, you have substituted the cer'emonics of your love feasts in the place of sacrifices, < martyrs instead of idols, and you honour them as the Pagans do their deities, by votive offerings. You appease the manes of the dead by wine and festi 6 vals. You celebrate the feasts of paganism by ob 'serving days: and in regard to their morals, you pre 'serve them entire, and have altered nothing. Itis you then, and not we, who are Pagan schismatics, and nothing distinguishes you from the rest of the heathens, but your holding separate assemblies." 25. You ask me whether I believe the gospel? Is that a question to put to a man who observes all the precepts of it? I might with propriety put the question to you, because your life gives no proof di it."

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26. "As for me, I have quitted father, mother searches, and children. I have renounced all that the gospel 'commands me to renounce; and you ask me wheth 'er I believe the gospel. I perceive you do not ur 'derstand the gospel, which is nothing but the dec trine and precepts of Jesus Christ. You see in m the beatitudes mentioned by Jesus Christ. I an ⚫ poor in spirit, meek, peaceable, pure in heart. Yo see me suffer sorrow, hunger, thirst, persecutios and the hatred of the world for righteousness sake 'yet you doubt whether I believe the gospel.",

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27. "I do not admit the genealogy of Christ; a 'you do admit it: You do not practise the precepts Christ; and I do practise them. Thus neither a us admit the whole gospel; but it must be allowed you have chosen the easy, and I the difficult part and that Jesus hath not annexed the promise of s vation to your part; but he hath to mine. He hath 'said, Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I com mand you; but he hath not said, Ye are my friends if ye believe I was born of a virgin."

28. The analogy between virtuous believers of evi ery age, may be seen in the general accounts, in his tory, of heretics, enthusiasts and fanatics; and th such had no relation to the Christian world, is mani fest from the history of persecutions, from NERO emperor of Rome, down to JoHN ENDICOT, gover nor of Boston.

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29. To be sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, and CHAP. worried to death by dogs, or dressed in shirts made stiff with wax and set on fire, was the fate of heretics under the reign of NERO. And for what cause was

every additional mode of torture employed by his successors, to extirpate them from the earth; imprisoning, scourging, racking, searing, burning, drowning, or tearing them piecemeal with red-hot pincers? The whole ground of their hatred may be seen from a few instances of their cruelty.

WH

CHAPTER II.

The Subject continued.

HEN the persecution in the second century began to rage at Lyons, Epipodius, a young man, was brought before the governor, and examined in the presence of a croud of Pagans. The governor at length took him aside, and with dissembled kindness, pretended to pity his condition, and intreated him not to ruin himself by obstinacy.

2. "Our deities (continued he) are worshipped by the greater part of the people in the universe, and their rulers :-we, to honour them, launch into pleasures; you, by your faith, are debarred from all that indulges the senses. Our religion enjoins feasting, yours fasting; ours the joys of licentious blandishments, yours the barren virtue of chastity. Can you expect protection from one who could not 'secure himself from the persecution of a contemptible people? Then quit a profession of such austerity, and enjoy those gratifications which the world 'affords, and which your youthful years demand.”

3. To which Epipodius replied: "Your pretended tenderness is actual cruelty; and the agreeable life you describe, is replete with everlasting death. The frame of man being composed of two parts, body and soul; the first as mean and perishable, should be rendered subservient to the interests of

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'the last. Your idolatrous feasts may gratify the mortal, but they injure the immortal part: that cannot 'therefore be enjoying life, which destroys the most Martyro. valuable moiety of your frame : your pleasures lead to eternal death, and our pains to perpetual happi'ness." For this speech, Epipodius was severely beaten, and then put to the rack, upon which being stretched, his flesh was torn with iron hooks, then taken from the rack and beheaded, April 20th, in the year 179.

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2.27.

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p. 28.

4. About the year 250, "Denisa, a young woman of only sixteen years of age, was (by order of Optimus, proconsul of Asia) given up to two libertines, to become the object of their lust: and having suffered under their brutality half the night, and being miraculously delivered, was afterwards beheaded, by order of the same tyrant."

5. "Agtha, a Cicilian lady, for refusing to gratify the lustful passions of Quintian, the governor of Sicily, was scourged, burnt with hot irons, and torn with sharp hooks, laid naked upon live coals, and carried thence to prison, where she expired. Theodora, a beautiful young lady of Antioch, on refusing to sacrifice to the Roman idols, was condemned to the stews, that her virtue might be sacrificed to the brutality of Just and for attempting to escape, was beheaded and burnt."

6. Maximilian, a likely youth, about the same time, refusing to bear arms, and saying "I am already a 'soldier of Christ and cannot serve any other power" -was beheaded. And for no other cause than for a spirit of peace and purity, were the millions of virtuous believers persecuted to death, in succeeding ages, by those who deceitfully called themselves Christians.

7. That lying spirit that could convert a vain philosophy into a gospel, a licentious priesthood into Christian apostles, and a worse than Pagan hierarchy into the church of Christ, could also corrupt the doctrines of the innocent by deceitful and mysterious language, and put a false colouring upon the practice of the virtuous, to blind the eyes of the ignorant, and retain the world in the fatal snares of vice.

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