2. About the year 1110, a preacher, named Peter de Brueys, began to declaim against the corruptions of the dominant church and the vices of the clergy. As a missionary, he labored chiefly in the south of France, Provence, and Languedoc. And, what may seem strange to us, he was allowed to disseminate his new doctrines with impunity for about twenty years. The enemy could neither silence nor kill the witness until his testimony was finished. But as nearly all we know of such men comes to us through the writings of their adversaries, we only hear of what were called their heresies. The venerable abbot of Cluny wrote a treatise against Peter's followers—thence called Petrobrussians: they are charged with many offenses, but which may be reduced to the following—opposition to infant baptism, to the mass, celibacy, crucifixes, transubstantiation, and the efficacy of prayers for the salvation of the dead. But nothing which the founder of this sect did or said seemed to rouse the public feeling against him until he burned a number of crosses bearing the image of Christ. The priests then succeeded, a popular tumult was raised, and he was burned alive at St. Gilles in Languedoc. But his protest was not so easily consumed. Divine light may be overshadowed for a time, but it can never be extinguished.