RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Beelzebub Beghards
(1883); Commentary on Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon (1890); Through Christ to God (1892); The Firm Foundation of the Christian Faith (1892); The New Life in Christ (1895); Nature and Christ (New York, 1896); Key to Unlock the Bible (1901); Transfiguration of Jesus (1905); and Manual of Theology (1906).
BEETS, betz, HENRY: Christian Reformed; b. at Koedijk (a village near Alkmaar, 20 m. n.w. of Amsterdam), Holland, Jan. 5, 1869. He came to the United States at an early age, and studied at John Calvin College and Theological Seminary of the Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Mich. After graduation in 1895, he was pastor at Sioux Center, la., until 1899, and since the latter year has been pastor of the Lagrave Street Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids. He has been secretary of the Board of Heathen Missions of his Church since 1900, stated clerk of its synod since 1902, and a member of the joint committee of American and Canadian Churches for the revision of the Psalms in meter since 1902. In theology he is a firm Calvinist, adhering strictly to the creeds of the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Standards. He has been associate editor of De Gereformeerde Amerikaan, a monthly, since 1898 and editor-in-chief of The Banner, a weekly, since 1904. He has written Het Leven van Pres. McKinley (Holland, Mich., 1901); Sacred History for Juniors (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1901); Sacred History for Seniors (1902); Compendium of the Christian .Religion (1903); Primer of Bible Truths (1903; in collaboration with M. J. Bosma); and Kerkenorde der Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk (1905; in collaboration with W. Heyns and G. K. Hemkes).
BEGG, JAMES: Minister of the Free Church of Scotland; b. at New Monkland, near Airdrie (10 m. e. of Glasgow), Lanarkshire, Oct. 31, 1808; d. in Edinburgh Sept. 29, 1883. He studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh; was ordained minister at Maxwelltown, Dumfries, May, 1830; became colleague at Lady Glenorchy's Chapel, Edinburgh, Dec, 1830, minister in Taisley 1831, at Liberton, near Edinburgh, 1835, and, after the Disruption in 1843, at Newington, a suburb of Edinburgh. In 1865 he was moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church. He began his career as an ardent supporter of evangelical views and a decided opponent of the " moderate " party in the Church. He was strongly opposed to lay patronage and to voluntaryism. He strenuously resisted the aggressions of the civil courts on the jurisdiction of the Church and was disposed to continue the fight within the Establishment; but in May, 1843, he left with his brethren. (See the section on the Free Church of Scotland in the article Presbyterians.) In the Free Church he became the leader of a minority opposed to all change and when he was charged with standing in the way of progress he gloried in his steadfast adherence to the ideas of his youth; his followers were most numerous in the Highlands. He was an advocate and supporter of popular education and was interested
in a movement to secure better homes for the working classes. He wrote much for periodicals and edited several journals at different times (The Bulwark, for the maintenance of Protestantism; The Watchword, against the union with the United Presbyterians; The Signal, against instrumental music in worship). Among his larger publications were A Handbook of Popery (Edinburgh, 1852); Happy Homes for Workingmen and How to Get Them (London, 1866); Free Church Principles (Edinburgh, 1869), and The Principles, Position, and Prospects of the Free Church of Scotland (1875).
Bibliography: T. Smith, Memoirs of James Begg, 2 vols , Edinburgh, 1885-88; DNB, iv, 127-128.
BEGHARDS, BEGUINES.
Origin (§ 1).
The Early Communities (§ 2).
Extension during the Twelfth Century (§ 3).
Relation to the Mendicant Orders (§ 4).
The Male Communities (§ 5).
Persecution as Heretics (§ 6).
Surviving Beguinages in the Netherlands (§7).
Beghards and Beguines are the names applied to certain religious communities which flourished especially in the Middle Ages. The Beguines were women and earlier in origin than the male associations, the Beghards (also called in France Beguins). As early as the thirteenth century the authentic tradition as to the origin of the Beguines had been lost, so that it was possible in the fifteenth for the belief to gain acceptance that they had been founded by Begga, the canonized daughter of Pepin of Landen and mother of Pepin of Heristal.
i. Origin. This belief was supported by several scholars in the early seventeenth century, and approved at Mechlin and at Rome. In 1630 Puteanus (van Putte), a Louvain professor, produced three documents supposed to date from 1065, 1129, and 1151, relating to a convent of Beguines at Vilvorde, near Brussels. The view as to the date of their origin which these documents supported was prevalent for two centuries, and is presupposed in the modern works of Mosheim and of Lea; but the researches of Hallmann proved finally in 1843 that Puteanus's documents were forgeries, probably belonging to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The origin of these communities is now, accordingly, almost universally placed in the twelfth century, and attributed to a priest of Liege, Lambert le Begue (q.v.).
The scarcity of information about the earliest period has caused the significance of the movement to be underestimated or misconceived. As a matter of fact, the career of Lambert has many points of affinity with those of his younger contemporaries Peter Waldo and Francis of Assisi. Like them, he renounced his property, to endow with it the hospital of St. Christopher at Liege and the new convent of Beguines there. He felt his special mission to be the preaching of repentance, which brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities when he attacked the vices of the clergy, but had an enduring influence especially on the women of Liege. By 1210 there is con-
Beg-bards