Madigan describes two types of reform movements that became associated with heresy. The first type of reform movement had characteristics that were so completely different from orthodox Christianity that it was more than obvious that it included heretics. The groups in this category held different theological and cosmological opinions that were radically different with those defined in the established church. They were often seen as simply “good people” or knowledgeable practitioners of apostolic Christianity, who were closely related to the apostolic exemplars than clerics within the established church. The second type of reform movement that became associated with heresy was inspired by the faith of the newly ascendant New Testament and the life of Jesus and his apostles depicted within. They began as neo-Donatist agitator’s living in new urban communities and influenced by Gregorian ideas. These groups were rarely dogmatically deviant at their beginning. However, they began to change into anti-clerical and anti-institutional, which were movements made on returning to the church to New Testament austerity. They believed that all Christians should copy the life of the apostles, meaning it would imply a commitment to a life of preaching the gospel. This group usually became more radical and then theologically dissident, after ecclesiastical repression.

Out of the fifth waterpot, there will come the heretics who shall appear toward the end of the world, speaking through Paul, “the Spirit manifestly saith that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving” (Ebrewin 128). From the sixth waterpot the faithful will be “filled to saticty, strengthening them against him who shall undoubtedly be revealed amid this departure from the faith, to wit, that son of sin, the man of perdition, ‘who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshiped, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity’” (Ebrewin 128). The fifth and sixth waterpot address the issue of evil and false doctrine, and how those in faith must stand strong and resist these false doctrines and everything that goes against God. There must be strong defense against the indifference and perversity of falsity in brethren. Eberwin is asking Bernard to draw from the fifth waterpot and publically stand against the new heretics who almost all boil up from the hell. Eberwin is asking Bernard to analyze all of the heresy of those people, set them against the arguments and authoritative texts of faith, and ultimately put an end to all of the heresies.

In Cologne, the heretics say that their theology and doctrine, and theirs alone are the Church, and that they alone follow in the footsteps of Christ. The heretics are true imitators of the apostolic life, seeking not things which are of the world, meaning they obtain no house, land, or anything of their own as Christ had no land nor allowed His disciples to have the rights to possessions. They defend themselves by saying that others of the church have houses, fields, and seek things that are of this world. But the heresies themselves continue to say that they are like sheep amidst wolves (Matthew 10 reference) and are persecuted like the apostles and the martyrs even though they live a strict and holy life (being not of this world). The heresies also argue that the established church are lovers of the world and have peace with it because they are of the world, seeking own interest and falling astray from the true path. The people of Cologne may have interpreted the heresies approach to death as a positive thing, meaning that being killed for your faith was honorable. The heresies are embodying the impulse to live exactly like the apostles in the Bible which was what Madigan traced about heresies living like good men who are perfect practitioners of apostolic Christianity.

Peter Waldo was a rich man of the city Lyons before his spiritual life that was curious about the gospel when he first heard it read to him. He got a priest to translate it, and another to write what was translated. After his spiritual transformation, he gave away all of his riches and went through villages and preached the gospel everyone while telling others to do the same. He was convicted by the gospel, proposed to observe evangelical perfection as Jesus’ apostles, preaching the gospel everywhere he went. This story of Waldo intersects with the widespread medieval fascination of apostolic life in that Waldo takes on the example of the apostles and mimics their lives, doing the same things that they did (giving away personal belongings, being against the world, preaching the gospel).

David describes the motivations and character of the Waldensian movement as negative, expressing that the movement (heresy) interpreted the words of the gospel in their own sense while disrespecting the power of the established church, teaching those (even of young age) wrong interpretations of the gospel. David says that they do not take the Old Testament for what it is, a book of faith, but rather only take bits and pieces from the Old Testament in order to attack and defend themselves by saying that when the gospel came through Jesus, all the old things passed away. I personally think that this movement was popular because the heresy picked out words from Sts. Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Isidore, and passages from their books that proved their points and resisted the established church, making the heresy persuasive and appealing even though many of those points from well-known people were taken out of context.