Cardinalis Apostolicæ Sedis Legati et assessorum ejus), quod quidam falsi fratres, Raimundus videlicet, et Bernardus Raimundi, et quidam alii hæresiarchæ, transfigurantes se in angelos lucis cum sicut Sathanæ, et Christianæ Fidei contraria prædicantes, multorum animas falsa prædicatione sua decipiebant et secum traxerant ad inferos. Qui cum invitati fuissent, ut ad præsentiam Cardinalis sociorumque ejus venirent, ut fidem suam confiterentur, responderunt: se ad illorum præsentiam venturos, si eundi et redeundi haberent securitatem. Data itaque eis securitate eundi et redeundi, venerunt coram prædicto Cardinali et Episcopis et Comitibus et Baronibus et Clero et Populo qui aderant : et in medium protulerunt quandam chartam, in qua FIDEI SUÆ ARTICULOS conscripserant. Quam cum prolixius perlegissent, quædam verba videbantur in ea suspecta existere, et, nisi plenius exponerentur, hæresim quam prædicaverant possent velare.-Itaque, de Articulis Fidei Christianæ examinati, responderunt super omnibus Articulis Fidei ita sanè et circumspectè, ac si Christianissimi essent. Quod cum Comes Tolosa, et cæteri qui prius audierant ipsos Christianæ Fidei contraria prædicasse, audissent; vehementi admiratione commoti, Christianæ Fidei zelo succensi, surrexerunt, et eos plane in caput suum mentitos fuisse manifestius convicerunt: dicentes, se audisse a quibusdam illorum, quod duo Dii existerent, alter bonus et alter malus; bonus, qui invisibilia tantum, et ea quæ mutari aut corrumpi non possunt, fecisset; malus, qui cœlum, terram, hominem, et alia visibilia, condidisset. Alii autem affirmaverunt se, in illorum prædicatione, audisse, corpus Christi non confici per ministerium sacerdotis indigni aut aliquibus criminibus irretiti. Alii autem dicebant: se audisse ab eis, in prædicatione sua, virum cum uxore non posse salvari, si alter alteri debitum reddat. Alii autem dicebant: se ab eis audisse baptismum parvulis non prodesse; et alias quamplures contra Deum et Sanctam Ecclesiam atque Catholicam Fidem blasphemias protulisse, quas pro abominabili earum enormitate tacere utilius est quam referre. Hæretici autem illi hæc con tradicebant, illos falsum dixisse adversus eos testimonium. Dicebant enim PUBLICE, coram prædicto Cardinali et Episcopis et universis astantibus; et confitebantur ; et firmiter asseruerunt: quod Unus Deus Altissimus omnia visibilia et invisibilia condidisset; et penitus denegabant duo esse Principia. Confessi sunt etiam quod sacerdos, sive bonus sive malus, justus vel injustus, et talis etiam quem adulterum aut alias criminosum indubitanter esse scirent, corpus et sanguinem Christi posset conficere; et, per ministerium hujusmodi sacerdotis, et virtute divinorum verborum quæ a Domino prolata sunt, panis et vinum in corpus et sanguinem Christi verè transubstantiabantur. Asseruerunt quoque: quod parvuli vel adulti, nostro baptismate baptizati, salvantur ; et nullus, sine eodem baptismo, potest salvari: omnino inficiantes, se aliud baptisma aut manus impositionem, sicut eis imponebatur, habere. Affirmaverunt nihilominus: quod vir et mulier, matrimonio copulati, si aliud peccatum non impediat, licet carnaliter alter alteri debitum reddat, propter bonum matrimonii excusati, salvantur. Hæc omnia, licet prius dicerentur negasse, juxta sanum intellectum se intelligere asserentes, prædictus Cardinalis et Episcopi præceperunt, quod ipsi jurassent, se ita corde credere, sicut confitebantur. Ipsi vero, sicut homines tortæ mentis et intentionis obliquæ, tandem hæresim noluerunt relinquere, ubi, crassum et sopitum intellectum eorum alicujus auctoritatis superficies videbatur juvare, occasione verbi illius, quod Dominus in Evangelio dixisse legitur: Nolite omnino jurare. Quod cum illi, in arcum pravum conversi et mente perdita indurati, facere recusarent, prædictus Cardinalis et prænominati Episcopi, in conspectu totius populi, eos iterum, accensis candelis, una cum præfato Pictavensi Episcopo et aliis religiosis viris qui cum illis in omnibus astiterunt, excommunicatos denunciaverunt, et ipsos, cum suo auctore Diabolo, condemnaverunt. Roger. Hoveden. Annal. fol. 327, 328. Vide etiam Epist. Petr. Cardin. de S. Chrysog. Ibid. fol. 328, 329. WHEREVER they went, the Albigenses, with no light hand, denounced alike the unscriptural errors and the personal profligacy of the Popish Clergy: while the Roman Church itself they pertinaciously stigmatised, as the blood-thirsty Harlot of the Apocalypse, or as the Synagogue of Satanic Apostacy to which the Papal Man of Sin, Antichrist ruling over Antichristianism, enacted the part of a head and ringleader. In return, the Priesthood liberally bestowed upon them the name of Manichèans; described them, as very monsters of secret wickedness; terrified the silly populace, with idle tales of their worshipping Lucifer under the specious form of a male cat; and, what was a far more serious matter than these nonsensical and malignant impertinences, wherever they could catch them, burned them alive without evincing the slightest measure of compassion or compunction. All this huge overgrown mass of grotesque absurdities, Bossuet, with most imposing gravity, affects to believe: though a man of his talents and acuteness (would that I could likewise say, of his honesty and fairness) must have slily laughed in his sleeve, at the solemn mockery of professing to establish a charge of Manichèism on the authority of the very extraordinary witnesses whom he has called into court. To demonstrate the correctness of such a view of his management, nothing more, I suppose, can now be necessary, than to mention the names of Peter Siculus, and the Actuary of Orleans, and Bernard the Saint, and Peter the Venerable, and Reinerius the Apostate, and Radulph the Ardent, and Radulph the Smooth, and, though last not least, Alan the Great, yclept The Universal Doctor, that erudite etymologist of the crabbed word Catharus, and that immortal immortaliser of the Infernal Catus or the Luciferian Boar-Cat. That Bossuet secretly laughed at his ragged regiment of witnesses, is, in truth, sufficiently clear from his deliberate suppression of really valuable evidence, when it came indeed immediately to his hand, but when unluckily it was fatal to the whole edifice of dirt and darkness which he was so industriously constructing. I say not, that an inferior artist of the Roman School might have been unprepared, through the profuse credulity of ready malice, to hold each strange tale devoutly true. But can any one believe, that the quick-sighted Prelate of Meaux, assuredly no ordinary man, after perusing the clear and valuable narrative of Roger Hoveden, could, actually and bona-fide, have been persuaded, that the Albigenses were cat-worshipping and devilvenerating Manichèans * ? * I may here remark, that the tales, associated with witchcraft, have evidently been borrowed from the older figments respecting the Albigenses; and they rest, I suppose, upon equal trust-worthiness of evidence. If the Albigenses had their infernal orgies; the witches had their diabolical sabbaths: if Lucifer visited the Albigenses under the form of a cat, which Bossuet's witnesses assure us was the case; he presented himself, as we all know, to the witches, under the aspect of the very same respectable animal: if the Albigenses worshipped the devil; the witches were not a whit behind them in selling their souls to the prince of darkness and in adoring him as a present and potent deity. In short, the witches were the plagiarised Albigenses of an age not very remote from that, in which, without the least fear of sorcery before our eyes, we ourselves securely expatiate. In the reign of Charles II. when some shrewd doubts upon the subject began to creep in, honest Joseph Glanvil, himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, set his face like a flint against what he deemed the growing Sadducism of the times yet, though in the very title of his book, as some other clerks on other topics have also done, he claims a decided victory over the sceptics; still, in despite of his learned and ingenious Sadducismus Triumphatus, witches themselves, with the belief in their existence, have totally vanished out of the land, and our faith is no longer required to be shewn by the strenuous vexing of black cats and the resolute tormenting of old women. I have certainly done my best to send the cha |