Neander says[224] the Paulicians wholy rejected the outward observance of the Sacraments and maintained that by multiplication of external rites and ceremonies in the dominant church the true life of religion had declined. That it was not Christ's intention to institute water baptism as a perpetual ordinance and that by baptism he meant only baptism of the Holy Spirit and that he communicates himself by the living waters for the thorough cleansing of the whole human nature; that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ consists in coming into vital union with him.
In the ninth century one hundred thousand Paulicians were martyred at once in Armenia, accused of heresy and denying the Sacraments.[225]
For the same offence untold numbers were put to death during previous and subsequent centuries and in widely distant countries.[226]
Their enemies represent that these Paulicians were loving, spiritual and peaceful, and diligent in reading and circulating the Scriptures, but they were heretics and not worthy to live.
Were not these dissenting martyrs a remnant or seed of the living church and their baptized enemies the real heretics?
The history of these inhuman persecutions reveals a sad condition of the dominant church and its ruling clergy of the ninth century.
Some Ecclesiastics who presided over a flourishing theological institution at Orleans, claimed to have been awakened by the writings of St. Augustine and St. Paul, particularly the later. Many of the nobility and others of eminent piety and benevolence became their adherents.[227]
They rejected external worship, rites and ceremonies and placed religion in the internal contemplation of God and the elevation of the soul.
They rejected water baptism and held to a baptism of the Spirit, also to a Spiritual Eucharist by which all who had received spiritual baptism would be refreshed and find their spiritual needs completely satisfied.