BRITISH MAGAZINE,

AND

MONTHLY REGISTER

OF

RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL

INFORMATION,

PAROCHIAL HISTORY,

AND

DOCUMENTS RESPECTING THE STATE OF THE POOR,

PROGRESS OF EDUCATION, &c.

VOL. XVII.

LONDON:

J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON,

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL;

J. TURRILL, 250, REGENT STREET,

AND

T. CLERC SMITH, RECENT STREET.

MD CCCXL.

T. C. Savill, Printer, 107, St. Martin's Lane.

THE

BRITISH MAGAZINE.

JANUARY 1, 1840.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

ANTICHRIST IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.-No. IV.

(Continued from vol. xvi. p. 610.)

BEFORE We conclude this second head of the followers of Joachim, in which the adoption of his views of prophecy by the Waldensians is shewn, another observation may be added. Among the remnants of that interesting sect, whose matter and language exhibit all the appearance of authenticity, may be numbered their Novel Sermon, or New Discourse, of which Raynouard has published a mangled extract.* It concludes thus

They shall be happy who are of the perfect,

When there shall be completed the number of the elect.
The power of the Father, and the wisdom of the Son,
And the goodness of the Holy Ghost, guard us all
From hell, and give us paradise! Amen.

The attribution of those three perfections to God is common and obvious; but the assigning them to the three persons, severally and distributively, is presumptuous, seems to be utterly unfounded, and is of an heretical character. But it was the Abbé Joachim's doctrine of the three persons, to whom severally and successively appertain the three status mundi; the Father's power being displayed in the severity of the first status, the Son's wisdom in the doctrine of the second, and the love and charity of the Spirit in the freedom of the third. This curious passage (while it stamps this poem with the seal of antiquity, and separates it from the theology of the Reformation and the forgeries thence emanating) confirms in the highest degree all that has been premised on the Joachism of the authors of the Noble Lesson.

But in regarding the offensive distribution of the three attributes to the three persons as a potent evidence of their qualified Joachism, we

Poesies 2, p. 105–10. He has in like manner mutilated another noble monument of Waldism, the Novel Confort; of which the concluding lines are not unworthy of Dante :

Vene, e non atenda a la noyt tenebrosa,
Lacal es mot scura, orribla, espavantosa.
Aquel que ven de noyt, ja l'espos ni l'esposa
Non hubrire a lui la porta preciosa.

VOL. XVII.-Jan. 1840.

B