Paulicians Protest Eastern Apostasy

In closing this chapter, we again go back to the seventh century to note briefly the remarkable story of the Paulicians in the territory of the Eastern church.AGP 212.1

“While the Christian world, as it has been the fashion to call it, was thus sunk into an awful state of superstition—at a moment when ‘darkness seemed to cover the earth, and gross darkness the people’—it is pleasing to contemplate a ray of celestial light darting across the gloom. About the year 660, a new sect arose in the east under the name of Paulicians.” “The History of the Christian Church,” William Jones, chap. 3, sec. 5, p. 239.AGP 212.2

The name of this body of zealous Christians seems to imply that they claimed to be followers of the great apostle Paul, through faithfulness to the instruction contained in his epistles. Be that as it may, the Paulicians appear to have been the descendants of those churches established in the earliest centuries in the region of Armenia. Wylie says concerning their origin:AGP 212.3

“Some obscurity rests upon their origin, and additional mystery has on purpose been cast upon it, but a fair and impartial examination of the matter leaves no doubt that the Paulicians are the remnant that escaped the apostasy of the Eastern church, even as the Waldenses are the remnant saved from the apostasy of the Western church.” “History of Protestantism,” J. A. Wylie, Vol. I, p. 33.

A great awakening, and a new spiritual life, courage, and zeal came to these Christian people in the latter part of the seventh century by the conversion and preaching of one Constantine, an Armenian. They carried on an extensive missionary enterprise, and gained great numbers of adherents in many countries.AGP 213.1

The Paulicians protested against the immoralities that were permitted among the clergy and the churches. They also opposed the worship of the Virgin Mary, the adoration of saints and images, and reverence for so-called sacred relics. Infant baptism they rejected as unscriptural.AGP 213.2

“It appears, from the whole of their history, to have been a leading object with Constantine and his brethren, to restore, as far as possible, the profession of Christianity to all its primitive simplicity.” “The History of the Christian Church,” William Jones, chap. 3, sec. 5, p. 239.AGP 213.3

Thus they were branded as heretics by the leaders of the Eastern church in which they were located territorially, and became the victims of “the most deadly persecution which ever disgraced the Eastern church.” But they withstood all the imperial edicts and penal cruelties that were brought against them. They increased in numbers, and traversed great regions in their missionary activities. The Paulicians form another of those connecting links between the primitive Christian church and the Reformation of Wycliffe, of Huss, and of Luther, that followed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.AGP 213.4

With this historical picture of the Novatians, Donatists, Waldenses, and Paulicians before us, we are now prepared to seek further for evidences of God’s endowing with the power of the Spirit men of His choosing as leaders in reform.AGP 213.5