Treating Of The Divinely Appointed Office And The Fully Corresponding Character Of The Two Ancient And Long Suffering Churches Of The VALLENSES AND ALBIGENSES, Is, With Every Sentiment Of Respect And Admiration, Fitly Inscribed, BY THEIR SERVANT IN CHRIST, THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE THE Bishop of Meaux, the very able and acute Bossuet, has constructed an ingenious argument from the Prophetic Promises of Christ, which is for ever to establish the Roman Church and the Churches in communion with her as the sole visible Church Catholic, while it is for ever to exclude the Protestant Churches from all share and participation of that venerable title.

His argument cannot be given with more of fairness and propriety than in his own words.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SUBSISTS IN FOUR POINTS: THE CONNECTION OF WHICH IS INVIOLABLE. The first point is: that The Church is visible. The second point is: that It always exists. The third point is: that The truth of the Gospel is there always professed by the whole Society. The fourth point is: that It is not permitted to depart from its doctrine; or, in other terms, that It is infallible. The first point is founded upon the constant fact: that The term CHURCH, in Scripture and thence in the common language of the Faithful, always signifies A VISIBLE SOCIETY.-- The second point, that, The Church always exists, is no less certain: because it is founded on the Promises of Jesus Christ, respecting which all parties are agreed.

Hence we clearly must infer the third point, that The truth is always professed by the Society of the Church for the Church being only visible in the profession of the truth, it follows; that If it always exists, and if it is always visible, it cannot possibly do otherwise than always teach and profess the truth of the Gospel. Whence, with equal clearness, will follow the fourth point: that We cannot be permitted to say, that The Church is in error, or that It has departed from its doctrine. And all this is founded upon the Promise, which is confessed among all parties. For the same Promise which causes that, The Church should always exist, causes likewise that It should always be in the state imported by the term CHURCH: and, consequently, it causes also, that The Church should always be visible, and should always teach the truth. Nothing can be more simple and more clear and more consecutive than this doctrine.

This doctrine is so clear, that the Protestants cannot deny it: and it imports their condemnation so clearly, that they have also not been able to acknowledge it.

Therefore it is, that they have thought of nothing, save to throw it into confusion. To what particular Promise or Promises of Christ the Bishop alludes, he does not distinctly specify: but I conclude that he can only refer to the two following texts.

Thou art Peter: and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18.) Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Such is the celebrated argument of Bossuet: and such, If I mistake not, are the promises, upon which it claims to be founded. I. Now, with these promises before us, it seems only reasonable to inquire: How far the Roman Church, — the term being used to denote collectively both the Diocesan Church of Rome and all the various National Churches or Fragments of Churches in communion with her, — can be viewed as answering to their descriptive requisitions.

As the promises are two in number, so are they two-fold in nature.

Whatever may be the precise reference of the term ROCK, the first promise clearly imports: that Christ would never cease to have a Visible Church upon earth. Consequently, the first promise is a promise of Visible Ecclesiastical Perpetuity.

The second promise declares: that Christ would always be spiritually present with his Church, through the medium of a succession of faithful Pastors from the time of the Apostles down to the end of the world.

Consequently, the second promise is a promise of Ecclesiastical Purity both Doctrinal and Practical.

That the first promise is a promise of Visible Ecclesiastical Perpetuity, requires no proof: though there may be a diversity of opinion, as to the character and nature of this Perpetuity, involved in the import of the word ROCK.

And, that the second promise is a promise of Ecclesiastical Purity both Doctrinal and Practical requires almost as little proof: for though, of course, all due allowance must bc made for human imperfection and sinfulness: yet, if any particular Branch of the Church Catholic shall have become palpably corrupt both in Doctrine and in Practice, we shall, on any intelligible principles, find it difficult to believe, that Christ has still never ceased to be spiritually present with such a Branch. For instance, some particular Pastor, at the head of some particular Church or some particular Ecclesiastical Communion, is clearly intended by the Man of Sin: because he is described, as sitting in the temple of God, or as presiding in a See of the Visible Church of Christ; because he is stigmatized, as the governing ringleader of a great collective apostasy from the faith; and because he is awfully exhibited to us, as being the Son of Perdition, a graphical name the very same as that which our Lord himself bestowed upon a fallen Apostle, even upon the mercenary wretch who turned away from him and who for filthy lucre’s sake betrayed him to his enemies. Now, with an Ecclesiastical Community thus characterized; a Community, whose head and instructor is said to have come after the working of Satan himself, and is thence doomed to be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord’s advent, — with such an Ecclesiastical Community, apostate under an apostate governor, to suppose that Christ has never ceased to be spiritually present, is, so far as I can perceive, a direct contradiction in terms. For, what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols. (2 Corinthians 6:14-16.) And how can Christ come to destroy in his anger that which he has incessantly preserved from all doctrinal and practical obliquity by the direct influence of his spiritual presence?

Matters having been brought to this point, we may now turn to the Bishop’s argument, which, with parental fondness, he pronounces to be so clear, that no Protestant can controvert it. 1. With all respect for the very superior talents of Bossuet, his argument, on two several grounds, I cannot but deem sophistical. (1.) When he speaks of the Church, being always visible, and always existent, and always professing the truth of the Gospel, and always incapable of departing from sound doctrine: it is clear, from the immediate context, that he exhibits himself as speaking of the Catholic Church.

But what is it, that he would have us to understand by the Catholic Church, thus described and thus characterized?

Does he mean the Entire Collective Body of those, who believe in the name of Christ and who acknowledge him as their Savior, in whatever parts of the world they may be seated?

Or does he mean that Exclusive Portion of professed believers in Christ, who are in communion with the Church of Rome, and who acknowledge the Pope as their head upon earth and as the indubitable center of ecclesiastical unity?

If the former: then we may reasonably ask; Why, in that case, he and his associates stigmatize so many members of the Church Catholic, a Church described under four several points as he describes it, by the somewhat inconsistent appellations of SCHISMATICS and HERETICS?

If the latter: then we may also reasonably ask; What proof there is, beyond their own confident assertion, that the members of the Romish Church, to the exclusion of the Churches of Constantinople and Antioch and Armenia and Egypt, not to mention the various Reformed Churches of Europe and America, ALONE constitute the Catholic Church of Christ?

In putting this alternative, I speak not as entertaining any doubt, as to what the Bishop really meant by the Catholic Church. Unquestionably he would have us understand by the title that Exclusive Portion of professed believers in Christ, who are in communion with the Church of Rome, who acknowledge the Pope as their head upon earth, and who pronounce him to be the indubitable center of ecclesiastical unity. Still, however, though such is palpably the case, the sufficiently obvious remark will not therefore the less be: that, before he predicated of the Romish or Papal Church his four distinguishing points, he surely, in all fairness, ought, by something more tangible than mere confident assertion, to have satisfactorily demonstrated; both that The Romish Church EXCLUSIVELY is the Catholic Church, and that The Romish Church ALONE is the particular Church to which our Lord’s two promises are addressed. (2.) But, instead of settling these necessary preliminaries, the Bishop shows himself equally sophistical on yet another ground.

From the unvarying soundness both of her Doctrine and of her Practice, he ought, I apprehend, to have proved: that The Romish Church, exclusively of all other Churches which differ from her, is the alone Church to which our Lord’s promises are addressed; and thence all other professing Christians being either Heretics or Schismatics, or both, that The Romish Church exclusively is the Church Catholic.

But, instead of adopting this obvious and satisfactory line of argument, the Bishop exactly inverts the process: and, instead of proving his Church to be the alone true Church Catholic, from the solitary unvarying soundness of her doctrine and practice; by a singular sort of Hysteron-Proteron, he would prove the solitary unvarying soundness of her doctrine and practice, and thence her assured infallibility, from the alleged circumstance of her being the Church Catholic to the exclusion of all other Churches.

Hence, in such an unusual mode of demonstration, there is evidently this great inconvenience. The Bishop assumes the precise point which he ought to have proved; namely, The Exclusive Catholicity of the Romish Church: and then, for the purpose of confounding the whole race of Protestants, he, from this very assumption which of course his adversaries do not admit, argues; that His Church must needs be infallible, and that Her doctrine and practice cannot but be perfectly sound.

No doubt, he would seek to establish his assumption upon the very terms of the first promise, by contending: that The Rock, upon which Christ builds his perpetually existent Church, is Peter con-jointly with his alleged line of successors the Bishops of Rome.

But this is merely to build one assumption upon another assumption, to pile an ecclesiastical Ossa upon an ecclesiastical Pelion, to place (after the manner of the Hindu legend) his spiritual universe upon the horns of the bull and the bull upon the back of the tortoise and the tortoise itself upon vacuity. WhatPROOF has the learned Bossuet, that Peter and his alleged successors the Bishops of Rome are conjointly the Rock upon which Christ promised that he would build his Church? A man of his attainments must have known full well, that the Church of the three first centuries was profoundly ignorant of any such speculation. Some of the old writers deemed the individual Peter to be the Rock; some pronounced the Rock to be Christ himself; and some, which is the most ancient interpretation, asserted the Rock to be Peter’s Confession of Christ in his two-fold character human and divine, the Messiah born a true man of the Virgin and yet the essential Son of the living God: but NONE of the writers of the three first centuries ever imagined or allowed, that the Rock is complexly Peter and his fancied successors the Bishops of Rome. The notion rests purely upon the unauthoritative speculation of a later age: and, upon that unauthoritative speculation, like the tortoise upon vacuity, rests the proof; that The Romish Church is the alone Catholic Church, and thence (as the Bishop’s argument proceeds) that The Romish Church is infallible and therefore that she has invariably been sound both in doctrine and in practice. 2. Such being the true state of the case, if a Romanist wishes to work any conviction in a mind which is little influenced by the mere boldness of assumption that forms the true basis of Bossuet’s inverted process, a Protestant will naturally invite him to demonstrate: that The Latin Church, from its invariable soundness both in doctrine and in practice, MUST be the Church to which Christ addressed his promises.

Meanwhile, until such demonstration shall be effected (which, even in pretense, the Protestant perceives to be impossible, save through the ridiculously inadmissible medium of infallibility, the medium itself resting ultimately upon a mere unproved and unproveable assumption), the Protestant, from the gross corruption both of religious doctrine and of religious practice (corrupt doctrine, as in the case of Transubstantiation, introducing corrupt practice) which characterizes the Romish Church, infers: that Christ’s second promise (the promise, to wit, that Even to the end of the world, the Lord would never cease to be spiritually present with the Church and her Pastors to whom that promise refers) can never have been accomplished in the Church of Rome.

With the Romanist, no doubt, the doctrines and concomitantly dependent practices of his Church will be no impediment to his believing: that That Church is the ALONE Church, to which the promise of Christ’s Perpetual Spiritual Presence relates.

But, with the Protestant, viewing the doctrine and consequent practice of the Romish Church as he views them, the impediment is so great, that he cannot believe the Savior to have been always spiritually present with a Church thus circumstanced: and, thence, he cannot believe, that the two promises of Christ (the one, of Visible Perpetuity; the other of Spiritual Purity) should alike have been accomplished in the Church of Rome and in the several Churches in communion with her.

II. The promises of Christ, however, cannot fail.

Therefore, since, in the apprehension of a Protestant at least, they have not been jointly accomplished in the Romish Church; we must seek some other Church or Churches, in which they have been jointly accomplished’ for, unless we can effect the object of such a search, we shall be compelled to own that the promises of Christ have failed of their accomplishment. 1. Now, that all who profess the name of Christ appertain not to that Church which alone is interested in the promises of Christ, is acknowledged, or rather indeed stiffly maintained, by none more vehemently than by the Romanists themselves.

Hence, of all persons, they can have no right to object, if, to the exclusion of various other professed Christians, some one particular Church is pointed out, as the depository and proprietor of Christ’s promises; for, in truth, they make precisely this exclusive claim on behalf of their own Communion; contending, that the promises have not been accomplished in the great General Body of professed Christians to which collectively they systematically refuse the name of the Catholic Church, but that they have been fulfilled in their own Communion alone upon which alone they would confer the title of the Church Catholic.

Therefore, on their own avowed and cherished principles, no valid objection can lie to the bare abstract production of a single Church, which, still on their own principles, may be alleged as the true depository of Christ’s promises.

In reality all parties are agreed: that Those promises have NOT been accomplished in EVERY Society which claims to itself the name of CHRISTIAN.

Whence it plainly must follow: that, IF accomplished, the promises can ONLY have been accomplished in some PARTICULAR Church or Churches, to the EXCLUSION of all other Societies which may make a profession of Christianity.

Such, therefore, confessedly on all hands, being the case, the simple question is: Whether the promises have been fulfilled in the particular Romish Church or in some other particular Church.

But, as I have just hinted, the whole conduct of the Romish Church, as respects both doctrine and practice, has, through all the middle ages, been uniformly such (save only, as the dreary uniformity has been varied by regularly progressive deterioration down to the crowning Council of Trent), that the most profuse credulity must be beggared in the attempt to believe: that, With the Romish Church, through all the middle ages, and through the whole course both of her teachings and of her doings, the holy and pure and merciful Redeemer never ceased to be spiritually, and therefore approvingly, present.

Consequently, the claim of the Romish Church being thus, of plain necessity, set aside, we stand bound to produce some other Visible Church whose claim may be more satisfactory: lest, otherwise, the promises of Christ himself should seem to have failed in their accomplishment. 2. Accordingly, the Church, which I would produce, is that of the Vallenses or Valde or Vaudois.

From the apostolic age itself down to the present, that venerable Church has been seated in the Valleys of the Cottian Alps. There it has never ceased to profess one and the same unvarying Theological System, thus faithfully reflecting the sincere unadulterated Gospel of primitive Christianity: and there, both ecclesiastically and morally, the practice of its members has happily corresponded with their religious profession.

This very remarkable Church forms, in the first instance, the chain of connection, between the Primitive Church and the Church of the Albigenses; for the rise of the Albigensic or Paulician Church was itself not earlier than about the middle of the seventh century: and, in the second instance, it similarly forms the chain of connection, between the Primitive Church and the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century.

Thus, in a Visible Church, the promises of Perpetuity and Purity., as made by our blessed Savior, have been punctually fulfilled: nor, in the abstract, can any objection be made to this arrangement, which does not equally apply to the arrangement that selects the Roman Church as the depository of the Promises; for, according to neither arrangement, nor indeed according to History, have the promises been fulfilled in that whole Collective body, which indifferently distinguishes itself by the common name of Christian.

Some objections, however, have been made to the proposed arrangement, which it may be proper briefly to notice and to answer. 1. In general, the Romanists object: that The Valdenses, whatever might be their antiquity, were a mere handful of sectaries, separated from the Catholic Church, and therefore out of the legitimate pale of Christian Communion.

Respecting this objection, the latter part of it is obviously founded upon a mere begging of the question: the assumption, to wit, that The Romish Church exclusively is the Catholic Church of Christ.

And, as for the former part of it, namely, The paucity of the secluded Vallenses at least during many ages: so far from occasioning any difficulty, it, in truth, is an actual corroboration of the opinion.

The voice of Prophecy, as interpreted by the Romanists themselves, distinctly states: that The real Catholic Church, or the Church of real Catholic Christians, should, during a certain disastrous period, be reduced within very narrow limits, and should be driven to preach the Gospel in a state of great affliction or depression; while the wide extent of the Visible Nominal Church should be occupied by a new race of usurping Gentiles, the determined enemies of the now grievously contracted Spiritual Church Catholic. (Revelation 11:1-3.)

Accordingly, the Romish Bishop Walmesley, who wrote under the fictitious name of Pastorini, very rightly, in the abstract, thus understands the sacred oracle of the treading down of the Holy City.

The Churches consecrated to the true service of God, are, at this time, so far diminished in number, or so little flied on account of the general apostasy and degeneracy of mankind, that all these Churches are here represented by St. John as reduced into one single Church or temple. The faithful ministers of God are also become so few, as to be represented as officiating at one altar in this Church: and all the good and zealous Christians make up so small a number with respect to the whole bulk of mankind, that they are shown to St. John, as collected in this one temple paying their adoration to God. There is, therefore, given to St. John a reed or a small measuring rod, as sufficient for the few inconsiderable measures he has to take: and he is told to measure the temple of God and the altar and them that adore therein, that the small size of both temple and altar may appear, and the little compass in which are comprised those who are there adoring God. But, for the court which is without the temple, that is the great multitude of those, who, for want of the spirit of religion, enter not the temple, but stand in the court without the temple, St. John is told, not to measure them, but to cast them out or to banish them from the neighborhood of the temple, because it (the court) is given to the Gentiles. 5 Thus, with whatever mistakes in regard to a singular sort of literal interpretation of the temple and the altar, Bishop Walmesley, very correctly in the abstract, views the oracle, as declaring, that the true Catholic Church of Christ, would, during a predicted season of calamitous depression be reduced within narrow limits, and that the great bulk of those, who made a profession of Christianity, would fall away into such a grievous apostasy that they would justly be deemed unworthy of being reckoned among the faithful followers of the Lamb.

Nor was this view of the matter at all peculiar to that Prelate. A celebrated Abbot of the Cestertian Order, Joachim of Calabria, in his conversation with our own lion-hearted Richard at Messina, held, at the latter end of the twelfth century, much the same language.

Certain wicked nations, called Gog and Magog, says he, shall rise up and destroy the Church of God, and shall subvert the race of Christians’ and then shall be the day of judgment. But, in the time of this Antichrist, many Christians, sojourning in caverns of the earth and in the solitudes of the rocks, shall preserve the Christian Faith in the fear of the Lord, until the consummation of Antichrist.

And this is meant by the saying of St. John: that the woman fled into the wilderness of Egypt, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days. Hence, even by the showing of the Romanists themselves, it appears: that the reduction of the sincere Church within very narrow limits, and the circumstance of its true members being driven to profess the faith in mountainous deserts and solitudes, while their enemies are mighty and numerous and triumphant, afford no just ground for denying the title of The Genuine Church of Christ to the Vallenses and the Albigenses.

Accordingly, their claim, to this very effect, produced no small wrath among the Pontificials; who, reprobating their opponents as manifest and inveterate heretics, put in precisely the same claim on their own behalf for the Vallenses and the Albigenses asserted themselves alone to be the real Catholic Church in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; and they viewed the Roman Church, which they identified with the apocalyptic Harlot, as no real or sincere Church of Christ, but purely as a Synagogue of irreclaimable Malignants. (2.) A much more serious objection is preferred by Bossuet, which, if it could be substantiated, would immediately be fatal to the arrangement here proposed.

He contends: that The Albigenses, and their predecessors the old Paulicians, were Manicheans; who, through a long succession of ages, handed down the impious heresy of a paganizing Orientalism; and who, therefore, cannot, without great want of prudence, be claimed by the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century, as a branch of their theological predecessors. And he further contends: that The Waldenses, instead of being a remotely ancient Community who had ever held much the same sentiments as those which generally distinguished Protestant Orthodoxy, were, in truth, only the comparatively modern disciples of Peter Waldo who flourished between the years 1160 and 1179, or at the most cannot be deemed earlier than the time of Peter de Bruis who lived during the first quarter of the twelfth century; and, originally, differed little or nothing, in point of doctrine, from the Church of Rome, being rather a sort of Donatists, than, in absolute strictness of speech, a sect of Heretics. Now, even if he could establish the first of these two positions; namely, that The Paulicians and Albigenses were Manicheans: he would not affect my proposed arrangement itself, unless he could also establish the second; namely, that The Valdenses were a mere modern sect, differing originally but little from the Church of Rome: for the true alleged line of Perpetuity and Purity, from the apostolic age downward, is with the Valdenses, not with the Albigenses.

But I trust, that not one of the Bishop’s positions is tenable. I trust, that the Paulicians and Albigenses will be found, upon sufficient historical evidence, to have not been Manicheans: and I also trust, that, upon sufficient historical evidence likewise, the Valdenses may be distinctly shown, to have tenanted their Alpine Valleys from the age of primitive persecution, and to have always held a system of doctrine and practice, the same, in all grand fundamentals and essentials, as that of the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century.

The proof of these matters will, of course, form the main part of the following Inquiry.

III. Meanwhile, some few preliminary remarks may be found not altogether useless. 1. Usher and Mezeray and Allix, influenced (I suppose) by the conflicting evidence, valid or invalid, which lay before them, have stated: that, In the south of France, two entirely different classes of religionists, the one composed of what sound Protestants would deem pious orthodox believers, the other consisting of the relics of emigrated oriental Manicheans, were, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from the town of Albi, alike denominated Albigenses.

The accuracy of this division I have been led to doubt: and, from the best examination of witnesses which I have been able to accomplish, I am finally induced to believe; that no more than a single class of religionists in the South of France was distinguished by the name of Albigenses; and that the perpetually self-contradicting charges of Manicheism, brought against this single class by writers of the Church of Rome, are entirely unsubstantiated and thence unworthy of the least credit.

This one class, for there was only one class (whatever minor subdivisions there might be of the same class), consisted of the innocent descendants, either natural or theological, either hereditary or proselyted, of the innocent Paulicians.

Previous to the thirteenth century, though the number of associated Cathari, whom I take to have been the natural descendants of the oriental Paulicians, scarcely amounted to four thousand, they had Churches planted all the way from Thrace to Gascony. and their proselytes, whom they called Believers, were a multitude, the tale of which could not be calculated. 10 What finally became of their more eastern European Churches or Communities, it is not very easy to say. Their grand Ecclesiastical Settlement was in the South of France: and, after the murderous crusade of Simon de Montfort, those, who escaped the sword or the flames, with the exception of some poor wandering individuals, were finally absorbed into and united with the ancient Church of the Vallenses. 2. As for the Vallenses or Valdenses, the religionists, properly so called, tenanted, from a most remote period, the Alpine Valleys of Piedmont: whence they obviously derived their name, which is equivalent to the English Valesmen or Dalesmen.

There was, however, a French Branch of the old Italian Tree, which, as a Branch, could claim only a comparatively modern origin. These Gallican Valdenses were the proselytes of Peter of Lyons in the twelfth century: and, as the wealthy merchant either by birth or by descent was a Vallensis; he, at once, both received himself, and communicated to his disciples, the name of Vaudois, from the primeval Mother-Church of Italy.

The circumstance, of there thus being both Italian or Proper Vaudois and French or Improper Vaudois, has led to a want of precision, in sorting, if I may so speak, the Albigenses of Southern France and the Vallenses subsequent to the time of Peter the Valdo. Hence, the Valdenses have been mistaken for Albigenses: and the Albigenses have been mistaken for Valdenses. The two, in short, have been, more or less, perpetually jumbled together.

No doubt, the confusion has arisen from the humor of later writers: who, in consequence of the name of Albigenses being finally lost in the name of Valdenses, have been led, when treating of an earlier period, to call, by the general name of Valdenses, all the dissidents from the Roman Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Such was the phraseology of the Jesuits Gretser and Mariana: but its incorrectness has been very justly pointed out by Bossuet, who himself accurately distinguishes the Valdenses from the Albigenses. 11 This distinction is systematically preserved throughout the whole of the present Work.