ing the Christian church is not national, but consists of many particular congregations, not determined by any outward judge in matters of conscience, those pretended church revenues, as they have ever been, so they are likely to continue, matters of endless dissension between the church and the magistrate, and the churches among themselves; there will, therefore, be found no better remedy for these evils, otherwise incurable, than (after the example of) the most incorrupt counsel of those Waldenses, our first reformers, to remove them as a pest-an apple of discord in the church; for what else can the effect of riches be, and the snare of money in religion? and to convert them to more profitable uses; considering that the church of Christ was founded in poverty rather than in revenues, stood purest and prospered best without them, received them unlawfully from those who both erroneously and unjustly, sometimes impiously, gave them, and so was justly ensnared and corrupted by them."-" The Waldenses, our first reformers, both from the Scriptures and primitive example, maintained those among them who bore the office of ministers by alms alone. Take their very words, Our food and clothing is sufficiently administered and given to us by way of gratuity and alms, by the good people whom we teach.' As for church endowments and possessions, I meet with none considerable before Constantine, but the houses and gardens where they met, and their places of burial and I persuade myself, that from thence the ancient Waldenses, whom I deservedly cite so often, held that to endow churches is an evil thing,' and that the church then fell off and became the whore sitting on that beast mentioned in the book of the Revelation, when, under pope Sylvester, she received those temporal donations. So the forecited Tractate of their doctrine testifies."

Thus far Milton; on which it may be observed, that to such as have studied the annals of the Christian church, and are in any tolerable degree aware how much the avarice, pride, and ambition of the clergy, have in all ages contributed to promote the corruptions that have prevailed in it, both in doctrine, discipline, and worship, the view that he gives us of the humble and self-denied deportment of the Waldensian pastors, must be considered as one of the strongest evidences that can be afforded of the purity of the communion of their churches, and of their close adherence to the pattern left them for imitation in the approved examples of the New Testament. But Milton was not singular in the commendation that he has given to the confessors of Piedmont; for thus writes the candid JORTIN, in perfect consistency with our great poet. "The Waldenses taught that the Roman church departed from its former sanctity and purity in the time of Constantine the Great; they therefore refused to submit to the usurped powers of its pontiff. They said that the prelates and doctors ought to imitate the poverty of the Apostles, and earn their bread by the labour of their hands. They contended that the office of teaching, confirming, and admonishing the brethren, belonged in some measure to all Christians, &c. Their discipline was extremely strict and austere; for they interpreted Christ's discourse on the mount according to the literal sense of the words, and they condemned war, law-suits, the acquisition of riches, capital punishments, oaths, and [even] self-defence." Again, the same writer remarks, that "THE HONEST WALDENSES very plainly discerned that the powers usurped by the popes and ecclesiastics were tyrannical and antichristian, and consequently that the decretals which established some of those notions must have been impudent forgeries. Why could not the popes discern

the same? Because profaneness, pride, ambition, and avarice, hardened their hearts, and blinded their eyes; because they would neither examine, nor let other people examine." But not to enlarge further on this particular, I shall close this section with a few general remarks.

An impartial review of the doctrinal sentiments maintained by the Waldenses; the discipline, order, and worship of their churches, as well as their general deportment and manner of life, not to mention their determined and uniform opposition to the church of Rome, affords abundant evidence of the similarity of their views and practices to those held by Luther, Calvin, and the other illustrious characters, whose labours, in the sixteenth century, contributed so eminently to effect the glorious Reformation. Most of the catholic writers, who lived about the time of the Reformation, and the age which succeeded it, clearly saw this coincidence between the principles of the Waldenses and those of the reformers, and remarked it in their works. The following are instances of this.

CARDINAL HOSIUS, a learned and zealous champion for the papacy, who presided at the council of Trent, lived during the Lutheran reformation, and wrote a history of the heresies of his own times, in which he says, "the leprosy of the Waldenses spread its infection throughout all Bohemia-and following the doctrine of Waldo, the greatest part of that kingdom separated itself from the church of Rome."

LINDANUS, a catholic bishop of the see of Ghent, who wrote in defence of the tenets of the church of Rome, about 1550, terms Calvin "the inheritor of the doctrine of the Waldenses."

MEZERAY, the celebrated historiographer of France, in his Abridgment of Chronology, speaking of the Wal

* Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. iii. p. 303.

denses, says, "They held nearly the same opinions as those who are now called Calvinists."

GUALTIER, a Jesuitical monk, in his chronographical tables, drew up a catalogue consisting of seven and twenty particulars, in which he shews that the principles of the Waldenses, and those of the Calvinists coincided with each other.

THOMAS WALDEN, who wrote against Wickliff, says, that the doctrine of Peter Waldo was conveyed from France into England-and that among others Wickliff received it. In this opinion he is joined by Alphonsus de Castro, who says that Wickliff only brought to light again the errors of the Waldenses. Cardinal Bellarmine, also, is pleased to say that "Wickliff could add nothing to the heresy of the Waldenses."

ECCHIUS reproached Luther, that he only renewed the heresies of the Waldenses and Albigenses, of Wickliff, and of Huss, which had long ago been condemned. With him may also be classed Claude Rubis, who wrote the History of the city of Lyons, in which, adverting to the principles of Luther, he says, "the heresies that have been current in our time are founded upon those of the Waldenses," and he calls them "the relics of Waldo."

ENEAS SYLVIUS (afterwards pope Pius II) declares the doctrine taught by Calvin to be the same as that of the Waldenses. In this opinion he was followed by John de Cardonne, who, in his life of the Monk of the Vallies of Sernay, thus quaintly expresses himself,

"What the sect of Geneva doth admit,

The Albigenses did commit."*

To these impartial testimonies, which are more than sufficient to settle the question of family likeness, I shall

• Perrin's Hist. des Vaudois, b. i. ch. viii, where the references to these authors are given.

only add that of the learned LIMBORCH, professor of divinity in the university of Amsterdam, and that of DR. MOSHEIM, the ecclesiastical historian. The former, comparing them with the Christians of his own time, says, "To speak candidly what I think, of all the modern sects of Christians, the Dutch Baptists most resemble both the Albigenses and Waldenses." * The latter, notwithstanding the flimsy, confused, and, in many instances, the erroneous account which he has given of the Waldenses, yet has expressly owned, that "before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay concealed, in almost all the countries of Europe, persons who adhered tenaciously to the principles of the modern Dutch Baptists."+

SECTION V.

Some account of the rise and establishment of the Inquisition, with reflections on its general spirit and operation.

THE preceding sections will have enabled the reader to form a tolerably correct judgment concerning the religious principles and general character of that denomination of Christians called Catharists, Paterines, Albigenses, or Waldenses; and I should now proceed to a more detailed account of their history, subsequent to the times of Peter Waldo, and especially of the dreadful persecutions and complicated sufferings which came upon them in consequence of their adherence "to the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus;" but it will be proper, in this place, to take a glance at the origin, the establishment, and the operation of that monstrous system of cruelty and oppression, gently called by the Catholics "the holy

* Limborch's History of the Inquisition, Vol. I. ch. viii.

+ Mosheim's Eccles. History, cent. xvi. sect. iii. part ii. ch. iii.