Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – The Paulicians – 100k Executed by Empress Theodora – Part Three of Three

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Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – The Paulicians – 100k Executed by Empress Theodora – Part Three of Three

During the greater part of the eighth century these people were severely persecuted by the emperors of Rome. In 795, the Emperor Nicephorus restored to them their civil and religious privileges, at which time they widely disseminated their opinions and became quite formidable in the East. In 811, the persecution laws were renewed and enforced with redoubled fury. Capital punishment was inflicted upon such as refused to return to the bosom of the “church.” These decrees drove the Paulicians to resist, and their power was such as to suggest the policy of allowing them to enjoy tranquility and worship in their own way.

In 845, the Empress Theodora passed severe decrees against them, which were executed with unsurpassed cruelty. It is said that one hundred thousand of them were put to death during this wicked persecution. As a result they became somewhat scattered, but the spirit of independence was not subdued. It is said that in conjunction with the barbarous Saracens they maintained a war with the Grecian nation for one hundred and fifty years. We find that they existed in large numbers in various parts of Europe during the eleventh century. If we may believe what their enemies have written concerning them, it is admitted that they held to some erroneous notions, but we can but admire their zeal in opposing the Catholic church, which had become so basely corrupt during this period as to beggar description.

It is very strange that Protestant historians, who denounce the Roman Catholic Church as being manifestly anti-christ, the “Man of Sin,” and the “Son of Perdition,” and who teach that there has ever been those who dissented from her evil practices since the second century and would have no communion with her, are so presumptuous as to trace the history of the church of Christ through her line of descent and thus acknowledge her to be the church of Christ from the time of the first division down to the Reformation of the sixteenth century – a period of thirteen hundred years! How very absurd! The question arises at once, Why do they thus plunge into the absurdity of self-contradiction? The answer is self-evident. To acknowledge the dissenting party of Ana-baptists, as they were termed during this period, to be the true successors of the apostolic church, would be to destroy at once their own claims and admit the claim made today by the Primitive Baptists. Therefore, they choose to contradict themselves, rather than admit the just claims of a “sect that is still everywhere spoken against.”

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: Elder John R. Daily, Primitive Monitor, 1897, pp. 366-69