Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Preached in the City where 4000 were Burned at the Stake – HENRY OF TOULOUSE. – Father of the Henricians

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 49m August 118, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Preached in the City where 4000 were Burned at the Stake – HENRY OF TOULOUSE. – Father of the Henricians

About the year 1125 Peter de Bruys was joined by an eloquent fellow-laborer, Henry of Toulouse. This zealous preacher had lived the life of a hermit. In the beautiful city of Lusanne he had learned the simple truths of the gospel. The idleness of the hermit gave place to the armor and toil of an ambassador of Christ. To the dwellers in the valleys of the Alps he expounded the word of God with burning zeal.

Passing across the mountains he carried the glad tidings to beautiful, yet darkened France. He was banished from Mans, Poictiers, and Bordeaux. “He passed through those cities, exercising his ministerial function with the utmost applause of the people, and disclaiming with vehemence and fervor against the superstitions they had introduced into the Christian church.” – Mosheim, p. 289.

In the quaint old city of Toulouse, where four thousand martyrs were burned in a century, the hermit hero, Henry, raised his voice against the corrupt practices of the Catholic church. The clergy woke to the danger of their craft, and Henry was drive from Toulouse. He fled to the mountains, was pursued, captured, and brought before a council at Rheims, which was presided over by the Pope. This was in 1158. Henry was condemned, sent to a dungeon, and left there to die.

His followers were called Henricians. Amid the darkness of those times the monument of his labors towered aloft, bearing the inscription of the gospel he preached, and proclaiming to us through the dim past that from a dungeon below, a noble spirit took its flight to a bright home above.

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: Elder John R. Daily, Primitive Monitor, 1897, pp. 422-425.