Read Ebook: A General History of the Sabbatarian Churches Embracing Accounts of the Armenian East Indian and Abyssinian Episcopacies in Asia and Africa the Waldenses Semi-Judaisers and Sabbatarian Anabaptists of Europe; with the Seventh-day Baptist Denominaton in the by Davis Tamar

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According to another account, their conversion to this creed was effected by the missionaries of the Empress Theodora, which, however, has been disputed by Assemanus.

Gibbon says that "two abunas had been slain in battle."

It has been supposed, and with reason, that many of these customs were introduced by the Jesuits, and that previous to the partial subjection of this church to the Romish authority, it was much more pure than it has since been.

The observation of Sunday was brought in by the Jesuits, who found it easier to induce them to observe both days than to consent to a substitution of the first for the seventh day.

The Abyssinians still retain the physiognomy and olive complexion of the Arabs, and afford an incontestable evidence that three thousand years can neither change the colour nor the intellectual capabilities of the human species. Under the burning sun of Africa, the Abyssinian, a branch of the great Caucasian family, has preserved the name and semblance of Christianity and civilization through the wreck and revolutions of ages, and amid the tempests of foreign and domestic dominations. Conscious of his ignorance, he once sought the fraternity of Europe for the sake of her letters and her arts. But how is it with the Nubian, whose unequivocal African descent is betrayed by his stupid features, black colour, and woolly hair, yet who enjoyed equal or superior advantages in ancient times? The history of his race would attest to the truth in this case. He has relapsed into that barbarism which seems to be his native element, and from which he appears incapable of preserving himself. The only memorials of his Christianity are a few words, of which he is incapable of understanding the sense; the only traces of his civilization a few heaps of sculptured ruins.

The negotiations of Justinian with the Abyssinians are mentioned by Procopius, John Malala, and others. The original narrative of the ambassador Nonnosus is quoted by the Historian of Antioch, and Photius has given a curious extract. Justinian reigned over the Greek empire from 527 to 565.

The present village of Anuma is conspicuous by the ruins of a splendid Christian temple, and seventeen obelisks, of Grecian architecture. According to Alvarez, it was in a flourishing state in 1520, but was ruined the same year by the Turkish invasion.

Those who desire to form an acquaintance with Abyssinian history may consult Procopius, Baronius, Cosmos, Indicopleustus, Alvarez, Lobo, and Bruce. In these works, the subject is very amply and ably treated.

It is not my design to give even an abridged account of ecclesiastical affairs as connected with this people during the many centuries of their existence, but confine myself to a consideration of the origin of their distinguishing appellation, with an account of their doctrinal sentiments and religious practices, and their terrible persecutions and dispersion.

In more recent times they were particularly distinguished in France by the name of Albigenses, from the great numbers of them that inhabited the city of Alby, in the district of Albigeons, between the Garonne, and the Rhone. After the Council of Alby, which condemned them as heretics, that name became general and confirmed. In the records of this Council the following passage occurs: "They savour of Judaism, they practise circumcision, they observe the Jewish sabbath, but say the holy Dominical day is no better than other days; let them be accursed."

Very laboured disquisitions have been written, and great pains taken, by a certain class of writers, to prove that the Albigenses and Waldenses were very different classes of Christians, and that they held different opinions and religious principles. How far this distinction extended it is impossible at present to ascertain; but when the popes issued their fulminations against the Albigenses, they expressly condemned them as Waldenses; by the legates of the Holy See they were accused of professing the faith of the Waldenses, the inquisitors formed their processes of indictments against them as Waldenses; the leaders of the crusades made war upon them as Waldenses; they were persecuted on all sides as such; nor did they attempt to rebut the charges made against them, but readily adopted the title thus imposed upon them, which they considered it an honour to bear.

The Pasaginians, or Passignes, were another branch of this same sect, who derived their appellation from the country of Passau, where it is computed that eighty or one hundred thousand of them resided. That these were all one people is evident from the fact that the provincial councils of Toulouse in 1119, and of Lombez in 1176, and the general councils of Lateran, in 1139 and 1176, do not particularize them as Pasaginians, or Albigenses, but as heretics, which shows that they existed and were generally known before these names were imposed upon them.

Their enemies confirm their identity as well as their great antiquity. Father Gretzer, a Jesuit, who had examined the subject fully, and who had every opportunity of knowing, admits the great antiquity of the heretics, and, moreover, expresses his firm belief that the Toulousians, Albigenses, Pasaginians, Arnoldists, Josephists, and the other heretical factions, who, at that time, were engaging the attention of the popes, were no other than Waldenses. This opinion he corroborates by showing wherein they resembled each other. Among other points he mentions the following: "Moreover, all these heretics despise the fasts and feasts of the church, such as Candlemas, Easter, the Dominical day; in short, all approved ecclesiastical customs for which they do not find a warrant in the Scripture. They say, also, that God enjoined rest and holy meditation upon the seventh day, and that they cannot feel justified in the observance of any other."

It is evident from all these testimonies that the Waldenses, as they penetrated into different countries, became distinguished by a great variety of appellations, which they derived from the countries they inhabited, or from the men who became their leaders at particular periods. Thus in Albi, Toulouse, Provence, Languedoc, and the neighbouring countries in France, they were called Albigenses; Vaudois, Vallenses, and Waldenses in Savoy; Pasaginians in Passau, and the adjacent regions, with other names and titles too numerous to mention here.

At the head of one of these parties was Claude, Bishop of Turin, who flourished in the commencement of the seventh century. It does not appear that this bold reformer ever separated wholly from the Church of Rome, but he denounced many of her corruptions and abominations in no measured terms, and had many followers. From the death of this eminent man until the time of Peter Waldo, of Lyons, the history of this people is involved in much obscurity. If they possessed any writers among themselves capable of giving their transactions to posterity, or if any records of their ecclesiastical affairs were committed to writing, the barbarous zeal of their opponents has prevented their transmission to our times. To the accounts of their adversaries, therefore, we must look for proofs of their existence, and here they are abundant. They are, also, uniformly represented as separated in faith and practice from the Catholic Church, and as continually multiplying in number; but further than this we have of them very imperfect statements.

During all this period the popes appear to have been too intent upon their own pleasures, and too much engaged by their own quarrels, to interfere with the despised Waldenses, and it was not until the twelfth century, that these people appear in history as obnoxious to the court of Rome. About this time one Peter Waldo, an opulent merchant of Lyons, in France, made an attack upon the superstitions of the Romish church, particularly the monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation. He commenced by causing a translation of the four gospels to be made into French, which he circulated extensively among his countrymen, particularly those of the poorer class. He soon became a preacher, gathered a large church in his native city, from which, a few years after, himself and his adherents were driven by the anathemas of the Pope. Waldo, with his numerous followers, retired into Dauphiny, where his preaching was attended with abundant success. His principles were embraced by multitudes, who were denominated Leonists, Vaudois, Waldenses, etc.; for the very same class of Christians were designated by all these different appellations at different times, and according to the different countries in which they appeared.

Driven from Dauphiny, Waldo sought refuge in Picardy, where, also, his labours were abundantly blessed. Persecuted thence, he fled into Germany, and carried with him the glad tidings of salvation. From Germany he removed to Bohemia, where he finally finished his course in the year 1179, and the twentieth of his ministry. The amazing success which had crowned the efforts of this holy man, aroused the pontiff and his legates to the most vindictive and sanguinary measures. Terrible persecutions ensued; the bishops of Mentz and Strasburg breathed nothing but vengeance and slaughter against them. Thirty-five citizens of Mentz were burned in one fire at the city of Bingen, and eighteen in Mentz itself. In Strasburg eighty were committed to the flames. In other places multitudes died praising God, and in the blessed hope of a glorious resurrection.

In giving an account of the doctrinal sentiments and religious practices of this people, we must principally depend upon the testimonies of their adversaries of the Romish church, and their own apologies, reasonings, and confessions, some of which have been handed down to us through the records of the Inquisition, and by the historians of that period. Of these, Reineirus Saccho is the most celebrated. He had been for seventeen years, in the earlier part of his life, in connexion with the Waldenses, but apostatized from their profession, and joined the Catholic church, in which he was raised to the eminence of chief Inquisitor, and became the bitterest persecutor of his former friends. He was deputed by the pope to reside in Lombardy, at that time the headquarters of the Pasaginians, and about 1250, published a book, in which the errors of the Waldenses were all summed up under three-and-thirty distinct heads.

To attempt any exposition of all these points would far exceed my limits, I shall therefore confine myself to what he says in reference to that particular doctrine by which they were allied to us. "They hold," says he, "that none of the ordinances of the church, which have been introduced since Christ's Ascension, ought to be observed, as being of no value."

"The feasts, fasts, orders, blessings, offices of the church, and the like, they utterly reject."

In the sketch which Reineirus furnishes of the doctrines of the Waldenses, there is not the slightest allusion to any erroneous opinions regarding the doctrines and principles of the gospel; and this silence on his part is a noble testimony to the soundness of their creed. He had himself been among them, was a man of talents and learning, and intimately acquainted with all their doctrinal sentiments; and, having apostatized from their faith, and become their bitterest enemy and persecutor, no one will suppose that he wanted the inclination to bring against them any accusation, which bore the least similitude to the truth. The errors of which he accuses them, are such as no Seventh-day Baptist of the present day would shrink from the charge of holding, since they all, in one way or other, resolve themselves into the unfounded claims of the ecclesiastical order, or the substitution for doctrines of the commandments of men.

In the twelfth century, a colony of the persecuted Waldenses obtained permission to settle at Saltz, on the river Eger. They are represented as working upon, and despising, the holydays of the church. Another eminent Bohemian author, in giving an account of the Waldenses of that country, observes, "Moreover they say that of six days, one day is as good as another, but as God had enjoined rest upon the seventh, mankind were bound to its observance."

An inquisitor of the Church of Rome, who declares that he had exact knowledge of the Waldenses, at whose trials he had assisted many times, and in different countries, expressly says "that they contemn all ecclesiastical customs which they do not read of in the Gospel; such as the observation of Candlemas, Palm Sunday, the adoration of the cross on Good Friday, and the reconciliation of penitents. They despise the feast of Easter, and all the festivals of Christ and the saints, and say that one day is as good as another, working on holydays when they can do so without being taken notice of."

But, lest I weary my readers by a multiplication of testimonies, I shall add but one more quotation, which contains a concession that, coming from the quarter and at the time it does, I consider important. Mr. Benedict, in his History of the Baptists, says, that during the progress of his historical inquiries, he has met with many facts, where it seemed as if the heretics, so called, were unsound on the doctrine of the Sabbath, as established by law; but, he goes on, it is not certain that all whom the ancient inquisitors accused of being Sabbath-breakers, would come under the head of Sabbatarians.

I must confess that it gives me inexpressible pleasure to think that we have conclusive testimony, that, for so many centuries, in the midst, too, of Catholic countries, God had reserved to himself such a goodly number who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and whose mouths had not kissed him; for certainly next to idolatry is that sin which would substitute for doctrines the commandments of men, and neglect the Sabbath of God's appointment, giving preference to a man-made institution.

There is something extremely ridiculous in the manner in which modern writers attempt to explain this feature in the faith of the ancient Waldenses, and in this particular they are highly favoured by the popular prejudices of the day. They bring long quotations from ancient Roman authors to prove that the Waldenses rejected every ordinance not commanded in the Scripture, but are very careful not to inform their readers that in the opinion of the same authors, Sunday-keeping was one of those ordinances. "Because they would not observe the festivals of Christ and the saints," says an author of this stamp, "they were falsely supposed to neglect the Sabbath also." However, he suppresses the fact that, whatever title Sunday may bear in modern phraseology, in the times of which we are speaking it was neither spoken of nor regarded as the Sabbath, but as a festival of the church the same as Easter or Christmas. All authorities are unanimous in declaring that the Waldenses had been from time immemorial in the possession of the Holy Scriptures, and that all, even the children, were deeply read in them. The French Bible was translated from the original manuscript which the Waldenses had retained, according to the testimony of the translators, from the times of the Apostles, and which they handed down, in their native tongue, from generation to generation. The following quotation may serve to give some idea of their proficiency in the Scriptures:--

"In the time of a great persecution of the Waldenses of Merendol and Provence," says Perrin, "a certain monk was deputed by the Bishop of Cavaillon to hold a conference with them, that they might be convinced of their errors, and the effusion of blood prevented. But the monk returned in confusion, owning that, in his whole life, he had never known so much of the Scriptures as he had learned during the few days that he had been conversing with the heretics. The Bishop, however, sent among them a number of doctors, young men who had lately come from the Sorbonne, which, at that time, was the very centre of theological subtlety at Paris. One of these publicly owned that he understood more of the doctrine of salvation from the answers of little children in their catechisms, than by all the disputations he had ever heard before." A Dominican inquisitor declared that for the first time in his life he heard the ten commandments of the Decalogue from the mouth of a Waldensian heretic.

That the deportment and daily walk of the Waldenses was conformable with their religious profession and scriptural knowledge, we have every reason to believe. Reinerus Saccho declares that they live righteously before men, believing rightly concerning God in every particular, and holding all the articles contained in the Apostle's Creed. "The first lesson," says he, "that the Waldenses teach those whom they bring over to their party, is to instruct them what kind of persons the disciples of Christ ought to be, and this they do by the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles, saying that those only are the followers of the apostles who imitate their manner of life."

An ancient inquisitor gives of them the following account:--

"These heretics are known by their manners and conversation, for they are orderly and modest in their behaviour and deportment. They avoid all appearance of pride in their dress; they neither indulge in finery of attire, nor are they remarkable for being mean and ragged. They avoid commerce, that they may be free from falsehood and deceit. They get their livelihood by manual industry, as day labourers or mechanics, and their teachers are weavers or tailors. They are not anxious about amassing riches, but content themselves with the necessaries of life. They are chaste, temperate, and sober. They abstain from anger. Even when they work they either learn or teach. In like manner, also, their women are modest, avoiding backbiting, foolish jesting, and levity of speech, especially abstaining from lies or swearing."

It may be interesting to notice in this connexion some of the peculiarities of their religious practices.

They constantly appealed to the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament, as their only guide and rule of faith and practice as to religious duties. They are perpetually accused by Catholic writers of rejecting all human institutions, traditions, and inventions, and both friends and foes are unanimous in confessing that there was scarcely a person among them, either man, or woman, or child, that was not better acquainted with Holy Writ than the doctors of the church. They were likewise accused of being without priests. This must be understood as applying to the absence among them of a certain class of men paid or pensioned by yearly salaries for discharging the ministrations of the gospel. An old historian who was intimately acquainted with their affairs, observes, "That they severely denounce the whole body of the clergy on account of their idle course of life, and say that they ought to labour with their hands, as did the Apostles."

Another says--"Their preachers are weavers and mechanics, who get their own living, and are not chargeable upon their hearers." The same author goes on to say that even their missionaries were accustomed to travel from place to place in the character of travelling merchants; and this, he assures us, subserved to good purposes; first, they were enabled to support themselves; and second, they gained thereby readier access to persons of rank and fortune.

Their treatment of females in their religious assemblies was liberal and courteous in the extreme. They were not only allowed to preach, but bore an equal part with the men in all the business of the church; and the deeper we go into antiquity the more evident does this appear.

Against war, capital punishment, and oaths, they were decided in expressing their disapprobation. Their opposition to bearing arms, and to war in all its operations, was unanimous and unequivocal. Whoever commanded them to the field they refused to obey, alleging that they could not conscientiously comply. No contingencies would induce them to assume the weapons of death; and this peculiarity was well understood by all the world, and made the onsets of the inquisitors and crusaders upon these weaponless Christians the more cruel and contemptible. Concerning oaths, they appear to have adopted the language of our Saviour in a literal sense, where he commands his disciples, "Swear not at all."

Such were their rules. Whatever deviations there might have been were exceptions. Such deviations, it is natural to suppose, frequently occurred; but they generally came from those portions of the community who had been educated in the faith of Rome.

As it relates to their Baptist character I shall produce but one quotation, although a multitude might be given.

"As the Catholics of these times baptized by immersion, the Paterines, by what name soever they were called, as Manicheans, Gazara, Josephites, Pasaginians, &c., made no complaint of the mode of baptizing; but when they were examined upon the subject, they objected vehemently against the baptism of infants, and condemned it as an error."

Of their doctrinal sentiments we can know but little, as no other portion of their history is involved in so much obscurity. Reinerus Saccho, however, represents them as believing rightly in everything pertaining to God and the Apostles' Creed. And they must have been evangelical Christians; for, when we see religious societies, century after century, holding on to their principles, and persisting in their religious practices, amidst the severest persecutions that were ever experienced, there is irrefragable evidence that they were built on a firm foundation. Indeed, it is hardly probable that among people whose religious teachers were obliged to depend upon manual labour for a livelihood, there would be much time wasted in unprofitable discussions about abstract points of theology.

The locality of these Christians, before they were dispersed by persecution, was in the principality of Piedmont, which derives its name from the singularity of its situation at the foot of the Alps,--a prodigious range of mountains that form a natural boundary between Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. It is bounded on the north by Savoy, on the east by the duchies of Milan and Montferrat, on the south by the county of Nice, and on the west by France. In ancient times it formed a part of Lombardy, but recently it has become an appanage of the Sardinian monarch, whose capital is Turin, one of the finest cities of Europe. It comprises an extensive tract of rich and fruitful valleys, embosomed in mountains, which are again encircled in mountains, intersected with deep and rapid rivers, and exhibiting, in strong contrast, the utmost beauty and luxuriance with the most frightful spectacles of barrenness and desolation. The country is an interchange of hill and vale, mountain and plain, through which four principal rivers wind their way to the Mediterranean. Besides these, there are eight-and-twenty smaller streams, which, winding their courses in different directions, contribute to the beauty and fertility of these Eden-like valleys.

The Pyrenees are another huge mountain range, that separate France from Spain, and extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of at least two hundred miles by a breadth of one hundred. This surface, like the former, is wonderfully diversified with hills and dales, mountains and valleys, in which places, and all along the borders of Spain, throughout the south of France, among and below the Alps, along the Rhine, and even to Bohemia and Passau, thousands of Christians were found, even in the darkest times, who preserved the faith in its purity, rejected the traditions of men, took the Scripture for their guide and rule of conduct, and were persecuted only for righteousness' sake. This place, in the desert, mountainous country, almost inaccessible and unknown to the rest of the world, was probably the place especially meant in Revelation, as prepared of God for the woman, where she should be fed and nourished during the reign of Antichrist.

These people were deeply imbued with the spirit of missions; but in this, as everything else, they closely adhered to apostolic example. They had none of the cumbrous machinery of modern times in their arrangements for disseminating the light of the gospel. They knew nothing of supporting in worldly state expensive teachers in foreign countries, or of building costly chapels for them to preach in. But, in the simple style of itinerating merchants or peddlers, their missionaries travelled from country to country, carrying with them a few pages of the Scriptures in manuscript, holding little meetings, ordaining deacons, and sustaining the hopes and faith of the persecuted and tempted ones.

Of their modes of worship we know but little. Their churches, however, were divided into compartments, such as in modern times are called associations; and these were again subdivided into congregations. They generally assembled for worship in private houses or in the shade of groves. Their churches contained from two to fifteen hundred members. In times of persecution they met in small companies of six, ten, fifteen, or twenty, but never in large assemblies. Besides these churches established in their mountain fastnesses, the Waldenses, or Passagines, had instituted churches in nearly all the principal cities in the south of France and the northern parts of Italy. At Modena their place of meeting was in a large manufactory, which was owned and worked by the brethren. In Milan they occupied almost an entire street, and their church is said to have contained nearly two thousand communicants. In 1056, their church in Avignon contained six hundred members, and a remnant continued, notwithstanding various reverses of fortune, so late as 1698. We are also informed that there were churches of the same order at Brescia, Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Romandiola, and many other places. For many centuries they remained untroubled by the state; but the clergy preached and published books against them. In the eleventh and twelfth century they comprised the bulk of the inhabitants of Lombardy, and several men eminent for rank, station, and talents, belonged to their communion. It is to these that M. de la Roque refers when he says, "We have had many worthy and pious men, well instructed in science and the history of the Fathers, who were neither ashamed nor afraid to adopt both the practice and defence of the observation of the seventh day against their opponents; and, contrary to popular custom, withstood every allurement and temptation that the enlightened and persecuting ages could afford. The observation of the Sabbath remained not with them a matter of doubtful disputation, as that of the first day did with the Rev. Dr. Watts, and many others who were engaged in the controversy upon that subject." A modern French writer, in treating the history of the Gallican church, observes that it is well known that all Lombardy, the south of France, and even the mountainous district in the north of Spain, were infested by a class of heretics, who not only derided all the festivals of the church, but kept the Jewish Sabbath; "and I have heard," he continues, "that the primitive Waldenses were guilty of the same practices."

From these plain facts, and a multitude of others that might be recorded, we may conclude that a large proportion of these ancient people were Sabbatarians,--were Seventh-day Baptists. In tracing their peculiarities, I have been forcibly reminded of our own denominational traits, especially at a former period.

There is no doubt but that they continued for ages, preserving a sameness of views, and keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. When their congregations became too numerous, they separated, and formed new assemblies. They continually refused to observe any religious ordinances for which they found no warrant in the Scriptures. They refused baptism to children, only admitting to that ordinance those persons of whose repentance and spiritual regeneration no doubts were entertained. They maintained church discipline upon all, even their ministers. And though cast down, they were not disheartened; though persecuted, they were not extirpated, until the days for their prophesying were accomplished, until they had borne witness for the truth during the time appointed, when it pleased the great Head of the Church to permit their enemies to consummate their everlasting glory, by bestowing upon them the crown of martyrdom, and, from being the church militant, they were removed, almost in a body, to join the church triumphant.

What he asserted was true. The papal armies advanced, and all points of controversy were instantly decided by fire and fagot. It is estimated that not less than two hundred thousand of these innocent people perished in the short space of two months. The war of extermination continued twenty years, and one million persons were put to death. These disastrous scenes occurred in the commencement of the twelfth century, and three hundred years previous to the dawn of the Reformation in Germany. During this long period, the circumstances of the Waldenses were always afflictive, but at some times and in some countries more so than in others. The Church of Rome, with the armies of crusaders who were always at hand, and always ready to lend their assistance for the extirpation of heresy, and the monks of the Inquisition, who were never more numerous and active, seemed determined to exterminate them from the face of the earth. But the contests of the Catholic states among themselves, the quarrels of the popes with the secular princes, whose affairs they attempted to control, combined with other causes, afforded these victims of ecclesiastical tyranny some short and temporary seasons of repose.

Of the multitudes who perished beneath the iron power of the Inquisition, we have little account. Nevertheless some details of cases of individual suffering have been given to the world, and multitudes of others lie concealed among the manuscripts preserved in ancient libraries. From records of this kind, Philip de Mornay, a French author of some distinction, composed a work purporting to be the memoirs of celebrated Waldensian martyrs, in which detailed and circumstantial narratives of many trials were given, together with the interrogatories and answers of the criminals, and the heresies of which they were accused. According to these statements they were perpetually accused of Judaism, of practising circumcision, and observing the Jewish Sabbath. The former charges they repelled with disdain. Of the latter, they generally replied that God had commanded the observance of the seventh day, which command was binding upon Christians, as much as Jews, since neither Christ nor his Apostles had ever commanded its abrogation.

Some of these accounts are very interesting, and the Sabbatarians reasoned in precisely the same manner as we do now.

On the 14th of September, 1492, about thirty persons were committed to the inquisitorial dungeons of Toulouse, upon a charge of Judaism, which, as every one knows, was considered a mortal sin in Catholic countries. Of these, the most eminent was Anthony Ferrar, who had been a pastor or teacher in the Sabbatarian church of that city. After remaining in prison ten days, he received a visit from an Italian monk named Gregory, to whom his examination had been committed. He was accompanied by two other monks, who were to act as witnesses. After a long conference touching his age, property, manner of living, associates, relations, and similar subjects, Gregory at last came to the matter in question.

My limits will not permit me to transcribe the remainder of this interesting conversation. Anthony, with his associates in misfortune, were subsequently burned in the marketplace in Toulouse, and all died praising God that they were worthy to suffer for his name. Hundreds of others, of whom the names of Jean de Borgen, Matthew Hainer, Auguste Riviere, Philippe Nicola, and Henri Maison, have been preserved, were accused of and confessed to the same.

"Of the many who were burned, and otherwise destroyed for Judaism," observes a Spanish author of the sixteenth century, "it is not probable that one-tenth were of the race of Israel, but heretics, who, for persisting in saying that the law of Moses was still binding, were accused of Jewish practices, such as circumcision and sabbatizing, to the latter of which they uniformly plead guilty."

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