five thousand is spiritually carried on in the vital union of Christ and the believer, and culminates
in the sacramental feast. Our Lord thus explains the symbolic significance of that miracle in the
strongest language; but he expressly excludes the carnal, Capernaitic conception, and furnishes the
key for the true understanding, in the sentence: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life" (John 6:63).
CHAPTER XII.
HERETICAL SECTS.
§ 131. The Paulicians.
I. Petrus Siculus (imperial commissioner in Armenia, about 870): Historia Manichaeorum, qui
Pauliciani dicuntur ( JIstoriva peri; th'" kenh'" kai; mataiva" aiJrevsew" tw'n Maniccaivwn tw'n
kai; Paulikianw'n legomevnwn). Gr. Lat. ed. Matth. Raderus. Ingolst., 1604. Newly ed. by J.
C. L. Gieseler. Göttingen, 1846, with an appendix, 1849. Photius (d. 891): Adv. recentiors
Manichaeos, lib. IV. Ed. by J. Chr. Wolf. Hamburg, 1722; in Gallandii "Bibl. PP." XIII. 603
sq., and in Photii Opera ed. Migne, Tom. II., col. 9–264 (reprint of Wolf). For the history of
the sect after a.d. 870 we must depend on the Byzantine historians, Constantine Porphyrogenitus
and Cedrenus.
II. Mosheim: Century IX., ch. V. Schroeckh: vols. XX. 365 sqq., and XXIII. 318 sqq. Gibbon: Ch.
LIV. (vol. V. 534–554). F. Schmidt: Historia Paulicianorum Orientalium. Kopenhagen, 1826.
Gieseler: Untersuchungen über die Gesch. der Paulicianer, in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1829,
No. I., 79 sqq.; and his Church History, II. 21 sqq., and 231 sqq. (Germ. ed. II. 1, 13 and 400).
Neander, III. 244–270, and 586–592. Baur: Christl. K. im Mittelalter, p. 22–25. Hergenröther,
I. 524–527. Hardwick, Middle Age, p. 78–84. Robertson, II. 164–173 (revised ed. IV. 117–127).
C. Schmidt, in Herzog2 XI. 343–348. A. Lombard: Pauliciens, Bulgares et Bons-hommes en
Orient et Occident. Genève, 1879.
The Monothelites, the Adoptionists, the Predestinarians, and the Berengarians moved within
the limits of the Catholic church, dissented from it only in one doctrine, and are interwoven with
the development of’ catholic orthodoxy which has been described in the preceding chapter. But
there were also radical heretical sects which mixed Christianity with heathen notions, disowned all
connection with the historic church, and set themselves up against it as rival communities. They
were essentially dualistic, like the ancient Gnostics and Manichaeans, and hence their Catholic
opponents called them by the convenient and hated name of New Manichaeans; though the system
of the Paulicians has more affinity with that of Marcion. They appeared first in the East, and spread
afterwards by unknown tracks in the West. They reached their height in the thirteenth century,
when they were crushed, but not annihilated, by a crusade under Pope Innocent III.
These sects have often been falsely represented^752 as forerunners of Protestantism; they are
so only in a purely negative sense, while in their positive opinions they differ as widely from the
evangelical as from the Greek and Roman creed. The Reformation came out of the bosom of
Mediaeval Catholicism, retained its oecumenical doctrines, and kept up the historic continuity.
(^752) Antipathetically by Roman Catholic, sympathetically by Protestant historians.