CHAPTER - RESPECTING THE ANCIENT INTERCOURSE AND FINAL GEOGRAPHICALLY ECCLESIASTICAL JUNCTION OF THE ALBIGENSES AND THE VALLENSES SINCE on all hands it is admitted, that the Vallenses were not Manicheans, whatever might have been the case with the Albigenses: it is, I think, palpably clear, that, if the latter had really been Manicheans (as the Papists delight to represent them), they never could have had any religious intercourse with the former, and still less could ever have finally been absorbed into their Society. Yet both these matters rest upon historical testimony. Hence we are again brought to our old conclusion: that the Albigenses could not have been Manicheans.

I. We have more than one notice, that the Albigenses and the Vallenses mingled with each other, in the way of brotherly fellowship, prior to their final ecclesiastical union in the same country. 1. About five hundred years before the year 1655, or (to specify the precise time) in the year 1165, a large body of Frenchmen, driven from their own country by persecution, emigrated and planted themselves in the Valleys of Piedmont, chiefly in that of Pignerol: where they were kindly received as brethren, and where they settled among the ancient Vallerises without any objection being raised and without any impediment being contrived. Now who could these gallican sufferers from persecution have been?

Certainly, they could not have been the French Proselytes of Peter Valdo.

For he himself only exchanged a barren hereditary speculation for a spiritual personal faith in the year 1160: and it is highly improbable, that his converts in the course of five years, even if he made any in the lapse of that period, should either be so numerous or attract such attention, as to emigrate in a large body on account of a furious persecution. Accordingly, the historian Thuanus distinctly tells us, that the sect of the French Valdenses or the Poor Men of Lyons, as instituted by Peter the Valdo, did not commence until the year 1170. 2 This is precisely what we should expect. In the first instance, I suppose, the pious merchant’s converts were neither very abundant in number nor very complete in organization.

They were a small and feeble flock: and, if they drew any notice, they would probably be deemed nothing more than the germ of one of those Religious Orders which the Roman Church has ever sagaciously patronized as the safety-valves of fanaticism. But, in the year 1170, they had become regularly embodied as a Society of Missionaries. Whence that year was not unnaturally pitched upon, as affording a satisfactory date for the commencement of the French Valdenses under the aspect of an organized sect of new heretics. Such a chronological view of the matter precludes the possibility, that the gallican emigrants to Piedmont in the year 1165 could have been proselyted disciples of Peter Valdo. It may be added too, that a permanent settlement of this description was directly contrary to the very plan of the institution of the Poor Men of Lyons.

They were strictly a body of wandering Missionaries, not a body of settled colonists: and, as such, they remained in one place no longer, than, like the Apostles of old whom they professed to imitate, the Lord might have a work for them to perform. Agreeably to this studied arrangement, when persecution was at length stirred up against them at Lyons, instead of settling corporately in some one less disturbed district, they were dispersed, as Nicolas Eymeric the Inquisitor assures us, through the various regions of France and Italy, where they made numerous converts, and where, in this province and in that province, they disseminated what that pontifical agent denominates their errors. But, if the gallican emigrants to Piedmont in the year 1165 were not French Valdenses, they could only have been French Cathari or Albigenses, who fled from the persecution stirred up, during the first half of the twelfth century, against the Petrobrusians and the Henricians.

Here, then, we have a distinct case, of the ready amalgamation of the Vallenses of Piedmont and the Albigenses of France: an amalgamation, which, I suppose, could never have occurred, had the latter, as their enemies would misrepresent them, been Manicheans. 2. A few years still earlier than the emigration of the year 1165, we find Peter of Clugny giving a very intelligible hint, that the barbarous theology (as he terms it) of the Cottian Alps was substantially the same as that of the Petrobrusians or Albigenses.

The impious heresy, taught by Peter de Bruis, says he, addressing himself to the Archbishops of Arles and Embrun, through the grace of God exciting and assisting your desires, has somewhat removed itself from your parts of the country. Yet, as I have heard, it has migrated only, into places sufficiently near to you: for, being driven out of your Languedoc and Dauphiny, it has prepared secret dens, whither it may retreat, in the province of Gascony and the adjacent regions. — This report stirs me up the more to my present undertaking: the report, to wit; that the slippery snake, having escaped, or rather through your prosecution having been expelled, from your districts, bas betaken itself to the province of Narbonne; and that its mere timid sibilations among you, in deserts and in petty villages, have been changed into daring predications in large assemblies and in populous cities. I once thought: that the cold Alps, and their rocks covered with perpetual snows, had introduced among your people this barbarism; and that a land, unlike all other lands, had created a race unlike all other races: whence, through the clownish and untaught manners of the individuals, a foreign dogma might the more easily have crept in.

But this my opinion stands confuted, by the furthest banks of the rapid Rhone, and by the circumjacent plain of Toulouse, and by the city itself more populous than its neighbors: a city, which ought to be the more cautious against false theology, in proportion as, by the assiduity of persons who frequent it, and by its trial of manifold doctrines, it may be the better informed. So far as I can judge, language such as this imports: both that the existence of a barbarous theology (as the refined Abbot of Clugny speaks), in the Cottian Alps bordering upon the diocese of Embrun, was well known to Peter the Venerable; and likewise that this theology so closely resembled that of the Petrobrusians or Albigenses, as to produce, at the first blush, an impression of the Albigenses themselves having borrowed their religious system from the Subalpines or Vallenses. 3. As for the Poor Men of Lyons or the French Valdenses, they, from the very first, so intermingled themselves with the Albigenses, and became so identified with them both in community of teachers and in identity of doctrine, that, on one memorable occasion, we find also an interchange of nomenclature.

In the years 1205 and 1207, at Verfeuil and Pamiers and Montreal and other places in the South of France, a prolonged public disputation, or a succession of public disputations, according as we may view the matter, was held with the dissident religionists, who swarmed throughout Dauphiny and Languedoc and Guienne and Gascony, and who were protected by the then powerful houses of Toulouse and Foix and Comminges. (1.) Now who were these dissident religionists?

That they were Albigenses, there cannot be a doubt: for the fact is demonstrated, both by their geographical locality, and by the circumstance of the disputations immediately preceding the horrid popish war of plunder and extermination, conducted, under the auspices of Innocent III and his successors, by that blood-stained disgrace to humanity, Simon de Montfort. Accordingly, Nicolas Vignier, who gives a full account of the disputation held at Montreal in the year 1207, distinctly tells us. that the speakers on the and-papal side were the Pastors of the Albigenses. 5 Yet William of Puy-Laurens, who also gives an account of the previous disputation at Pamiers in the year 1205, tells us, no less distinctly, that it was held by the Romanists against the Valdenses specially: while he adds, without any absolute distinction of the parties concerned, that the disputation at Verfeuil, in the same year, was maintained against the pontifical faction of his own friends by heresiarchs generally, who openly (to the great scandal of mild and tolerant Popery) assembled under the evident protection of their lords, and whom he boasts to have been confounded by the admirable reasoning of their opponents, though he is constrained to admit that they were not converted. 6 It may perhaps be said: that this is nothing more than the confusion, into which the Jesuits Gretser and Mariana fell in a later age, and which led them erroneously to apply the name of Valdenses to those who were really Albigenses.

So, peradventure, at the first sight, it might appear. But the language of William of Puy-Laurens forbids such a supposition: for he tells us, as we have seen, that the disputation at Pamiers was held against the Valdenses specially. His words, therefore, plainly imply; that, as, in the general series of disputations which were prolonged at different places through two years, the Valdenses and other heresiarchs acted as mutual friends and allies; so, in the particular disputation at Pamiers, it was agreed, that the business of the day should be conducted by the Valdenses or the Missionary Poor Men of Lyons exclusively. Nor is this all. While, on some occasions, the Valdenses acted separately; and, on other occasions, the Albigenses acted separately likewise. on one memorable occasion, that of the dispute at Montreal in the year 1207, they joined their forces; their Pastors appearing, as the joint Pastors and Representatives of both Churches. (2.) This last matter deserves a somewhat more full elucidation.

Upon the two parallel narratives of Popliniere and Vignier, evidence of a very peculiar kind is attendant’ for it goes to prove, that one of the leading Pastors at the disputation, though certainly a Pastor of the Albigenses because he was the Pastor fixed at Lombers one of the chief albigensic settlements, was himself, nevertheless, individually, a Valdensis of the missionary stock of the Poor Men of Lyons. Whence it would obviously follow’ both that the French Valdenses were mingled with the French Albigenses; and likewise that the doctrine of the latter, so far from being a form of Manicheism (as the popish writers, and their followers even among Protestants, absurdly pretend), was, in truth, substantially the same as the doctrine of the former.

The Pastor, in question, was Arnold Hot or Arnold Ottho or Arnoldtot, as his agnomen, in connection with his name Arnold, is variously expressed by Vignier and Ribeira and Popliniere: the last of whom gives us the information, that he was the Minister of Lombers; where, as we have seen from Roger Hoveden, the remarkable examination of the Albigenses took place in the year 1177, and where their memorable and orthodox profession of faith was publicly recited. Now, who was this Arnold?

As yet, we know only: that, in the disputations of the years 1205 and 1207, he was a leading Pastor among the Albigenses; and that, while his wider sphere of ministration was the province of Languedoc and its vicinity, his settled and peculiar charge was the Albigensic Congregation at Lombers.

But, in addition to these positively-known particulars, we may say, unless I greatly mistake, that he was also the friend and proselyte and fellowmissionary of the venerable Peter Valdo himself. At least, both in name, and in character, and in ministerial locality, and in the vital point of chronology likewise, the Arnold of Valdo perfectly agrees with the Arnold who was the Pastor of Lombers and who disputed at Montreal.

Peter Valdo, the ringleader of the Valdenses, says Thuanus, leaving’ his own country went into Belgium: and, in Picardy, as they now call the province, obtained many followers. Passing thence into Germany, he long sojourned among the Vandalic States, and finally settled in Bohemia: where those, who, at the present day, embrace his doctrine, are, on that account, called Picards.

Valdo, for his associate, had also had Arnold. This person, journeying in a different direction, descended into Languedoc; and fixed himself at Albi: from which place the Albigenses derived their name, who, in a short time, pervaded the whole of Toulouse and Roussillon and Cahors and Agens. The identity of name and character and geographical sphere of ministration, in the case of Arnold the Valdensis of Lyons and Arnold the Pastor of the Albigenses at Lombers which was close to Albi, will, of course, be immediately obvious. No remark, therefore, is necessary, save a single one upon the vital point of chronology, in order to bring out the quadruple presumption, that the two Arnold, were one and the same individual.

Peter of Lyons became a spiritual instead of a merely speculative, Christian, in the year 1160: his Poor Men began to attract notice, as a sect, in the year 1170: and he himself is supposed to have finished his labors, and to have been called to his rest, in the year 1179.

Hence, in order to allow due time both for the formation of his band of missionaries at Lyons and for his subsequent journeys which terminated in Bohemia, we may fairly assume the mean year 1174 to have been about that in which he and his friend Arnold set out on their respective pilgrimages, himself choosing Picardy and Belgium and Germany, while Arnold bent his steps southward to Languedoc and Albi and Lombers. In the year 1174, then, we may reasonably say, that Arnold would be about thirty years of age. On such a supposition, he would have been sixty three years old in the year 1207, when the disputation was held at Montreal: an age, which fully agrees with the circumstances at that time attendant upon Arnold the Pastor of the Albigenses at Lombers; for we may be sure, that, to manage an important disputation, men of full age and ripened experience and extensive knowledge in theology would be carefully chosen. 4. The large intermixture of the Albigenses with the Poor Men of Lyons or the French Valdenses is yet further evident, not from the error of Gretser and Mariana who in a later age pronounced the Valdenses and Albigenses to be absolutely identical, but from authoritative documents of the very period respecting which we are now treating.

These documents mix up together, as heretics closely associated in the same country, and as holding with some small differences the same faith, both the Cathari or Paterines or Arnoldists on the one hand, and the Insabbattati or Humiliati or Poor Men of Lyons or Valdenses on the other hand; the Arnoldists being evidently so called from the zealous Valdensic Pastor of the Albigenses in Lombers, who made so conspicuous a figure in the disputation at Montreal. (1.) To this effect speaks the decree of Pope Lucius III. in the year 1184, when he met the Emperor Frederick I. at Verona.

In order to abolish the pravity of diverse heresies, which, throughout many parts of the world, have, in modern times, begun to pullulate, ecclesiastical rigor ought to be excited: by which, with the powerful aid of imperial fortitude, both the protervity of heretics in the very efforts of their falsehood may be dashed to pieces, and the catholic simplicity of truth, resplendent in the Holy Church, may show it to be every where expiated from all execration of false doctrines. We, therefore, supported alike by the presence and rigor of our most dear son Frederic always Augustus the illustrious Emperor of the Romans, agreeably to the common counsel of our brethren, with other Patriarchs and Archbishops and many Princes who have come together from diverse parts of the Empire; rise up, according to the general sanction of the present decree, against the heretics themselves; upon whom a profession of diverse falsehoods has conferred a diversity of appellations; and, by our apostolic authority, through the series of this constitution, condemn every heresy under whatever name it may be enrolled. In the first place, we decree: that the Cathari, and Paterines, and those who falsely call themselves the Humiliated or the Poor Men of Lyons, and the Passagines, and the Josephines, and the Arnoldists, are subjected to a perpetual anathema. And, because some, under the semblance of piety, denying (as the Apostle says) the power thereof, claim to themselves the authority of preaching (though the same Apostle asks, How shall they preach, unless they be sent?): therefore we bind, by the knot of a perpetual anathema, all, who, either prohibited or not sent, shall either publicly or privately presume to preach, without authority received either from the Apostolic See or from the Bishop of the place; and likewise all, who, concerning the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, or concerning baptism, or concerning the confession of sins, or concerning matrimony, or concerning the other ecclesiastical sacraments, shall not fear to think or to teach otherwise, than the holy Roman Church preaches and observes; and moreover, in general, whomsoever the same Roman Church, or the several Bishops through their respective dioceses with the advice of their Clergy, or the Clergy themselves during the vacancy of the See with the advice (if necessary) of the neighboring Bishops, shall judge and pronounce to be heretics. Furthermore, we decree that their harborers, and defenders, and all equally who shall afford any patronage or favor to the aforesaid heretics for the purpose of cherishing in them the pravity of heresy; whether such heretics be called the Consoled or the Perfect, or whether they be distinguished by any other superstitious names; shall be subjected to the same sentence. (2.) To a similar effect speaks the decree of Alphonso of Aragon, in the year 1194.

Alphonso, by the grace of God, King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, Marquis of Provence; to all Archbishops, Bishops, and other Ecclesiastical Prelates of the Kingdom; to Counts, Viscounts, Knights; and to all the Commonalty of his Kingdom and Sovereignty; health and a sound observance of the Christian Religion.

Since God has willed that we should preside over his people, it is right and just; that, for the salvation and defense of the same people, we should, according to our power, feel a continual solicitude. Wherefore, in imitation of our predecessors, and in due obedience to the canons; since they have judged that heretics, who are cast out from the sight of God and of all Catholics, ought every where to be condemned and persecuted: therefore, as enemies of Christ and the Christian Religion, and as public foes both of ourselves and of our Kingdom, we command forthwith to depart and banish themselves, those who are called Valdenses or Insabbatati or Poor Men of Lyons, and all other heretics without number who have been anathematized by the Holy Church; so that they should evacuate the whole of our Kingdom and Lordship. (3.) To the same effect again, still more precisely, speaks the Decretal Epistle of Pope Innocent III addressed, in the year 1199, to the Prelates of Aix, Narbonne, Vienne, Arles, Embrun, Tarascon, and Lyons, with their several suffragans.

We have heard: that in your province, certain persons who are called Valdenses and Cathari and Paterines, or who are distinguished by any other names whatsoever, have pullulated to so vast an extent, as to entangle in the snares of their error, and to corrupt by the ferment of their falsehood, an innumerable multitude of people. Since, therefore, to catch these small foxes which demolish the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, having a diversity indeed of semblance, but having their tails bound to each other, because concerning vanity they are agreed, we have thought it right to send into the countries themselves, that the rod of Moses may devour the phantasms of the magicians, our beloved son Friar Reinerius, a man of approved life and honest conversation, through the divine gift powerful in deed and in word, and with him our beloved son Friar Guy, a man fearing God and studying the works of charity: we commit them, through the apostolic writings, to your fraternity, and strictly charge you, that, receiving and treating them with benignant affection, you do so assist them against the heretics, that by their means they may be recalled to the Lord from the error of their way; or if, by chance, any cannot be converted, that they be excluded from your borders, lest the sincere part of the flock be drawn away after them. II. These early interminglings and associations prepared the way for the final geographical and ecclesiastical amalgamation, of the joint French Valdenses and Albigenses of Languedoc, with the primeval Vallenses of Piedmont and Dauphiny on either side of the Cottian Alps. 1. A large body of the French Valdenses, harassed by incessant persecution, emigrated about the middle of the fourteenth century: and took up their abode with their brethren, the Vallenses of the Cottian Alps, in the Valleys of Piedmont and Dauphiny, which, eastward and westward, stretch into the dioceses of Turin and Embrun.

Here the great body of them settled: but, still preserving their missionary character as the Poor Men of Lyons, they shot forth, as the Inquisitor expresses it, their sad branches into Liguria and Italy and beyond them into Apulia. It is worthy of note: that the language of this Inquisitor exhibits, what might seem at first a contradiction, but what is readily explained from the general and extended view of the old Vallenses which we have now obtained.

In the instrument, which was drawn up shortly after the year 1489, he mentions, on the evidence of the examined themselves: that they had been settled in the Valleys, for at least a century, and likewise through a succession of ages so long as to be beyond the memory of man. These two depositions seem, at first, to be scarcely compatible: yet they are easily reconciled.

The century of inhabitation respects the French Valdenses or the Poor Men of Lyons: who, at the beginning of the instrument, are said to have been driven from France into the Valleys by stress of persecution.

The time beyond the memory of man respects the native aboriginal Vallenses: who had been settled in the range of the Cottian Alps from the very days of primitive Christianity.

After this, the instrument goes on to state their doctrinal system.

That system, I need only add, is precisely the same, as the system which was ever held by the Vallenses. Hence it serves to corroborate the evidence already adduced, in regard to the nature of their religious tenets at and shortly after the Reformation of the sixteenth century. 2. With respect to the much enduring Albigenses, it is no part of my plan to write their history. For my own object, it will be sufficient to state the regions whither the poor remnant of them fled from the exterminating sword of the detestable Simon de Montfort and from the racks and fires of the still more detestable Popish Inquisitors in the course of the thirteenth century. For this purpose, I shall avail myself of the testimony afforded by the historian Thuanus.

When exquisite punishments were of no avail against them; when the evil seemed to be only embittered boy the remedy, which had been unseasonably applied; and when their number daily increased: regular armies were at length enrolled; and a war of no less magnitude, than that which had previously been carried on in opposition to the Saracens, was decreed against them. Its end was: that they were slaughtered, routed, everywhere despoiled of their property and their dignities, and scattered in this direction and in that direction, rather than convinced of their error and brought to repentance. Those, therefore, who at, first bad defended themselves with arms, being finally conquered by arms, fled into Provence and the neighboring Alps of the French territory: where they found secure concealment, both for life and for doctrine. Part migrated into Calabria: and there they remained, down even to the Pontificate of Pius IV. Part retired into Germany: and fixed their seats in Bohemia and in Poland and in Livonia. Others, directing their course westward, found a refuge in Britain. From this time, so far as I am aware, we hear no more of the Albigenses separately and collectively. Their name was lost: and they themselves were gradually absorbed into the sister Church of the Vallenses.

Upon the fact of their absorption, a considerable degree of light is thrown by the testimony of Vincent Ferrier. In the year 1405, that person traveled out of Dauphiny into the Valleys of Piedmont, for the purpose of preaching Popery to the inhabitants: and from him we learn, that the two Churches of the Vallenses and the Albigenses, amicably (since the crusade of Simon de Montfort) subsisting together in the same mountainous district, had, down to that time, continued distinct; for he found there, not only the Valdenses, but likewise a numerous body of the Cathari or Albigenses. Yet, subsequently to the year 1405, the absorption has at length, become complete: and no organic separation, under the discriminating names of Albigenses and Vallenses, I believe, now subsists among the uniform religionists of the Valleys.

The whole of this is precisely what we should expect. Each sister Church would, very naturally. for a season be attached to its own familiar, though theologically indifferent, peculiarities: but the mingled operation of time and local intercourse and painfully endearing fellowship in perpetual persecution would gradually form, into a single united Communion, the members of the two substantially symbolizing Societies. Accordingly, we are told: that, during the space of three centuries anterior to the visit of Ferrier in the year 1405, the French Valdenses, who began to emigrate into Piedmont in the twelfth century, encountered no disturbance. And, in perfect congruity with such a circumstance, we are also told: that, down to that year, the Albigensic Refugees had continued to possess the character of distinctiveness. But, when a series of tormenting persecutions commenced, the character of distinctiveness was soon lost: and the two harmless and equally suffering Churches of the Piedmontese Valleys, like two drops of rain, were soon drawn and blended together by a perfectly intelligible power of attraction. Henceforth, then, secure in the recesses of the Cottian Alps, that part of the Albigenses, which, from its greater compactness, became the only just representative of their Church, formed an inseparable union, both doctrinal and geographical, with the primitive Church of the Vallenses: so that, from this time forward, the true title of the Church seated in the Valleys of Piedmont and Dauphiny became, if I mistake not, THE CHURCH OF THE UNITED VALLENSES AND ALBIGENSES.

CHAPTER - RESPECTING THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE SCRIPTURAL PROMISES OF PERPETUITY TO A SINCERE CHURCH, IN THE CASE OF THE TWO ANCIENT CHURCHES OF THE VALLENSES AND THE ALBIGENSES.

AT an early stage of the present inquiry, it was stated: that Christ has made two distinct promises to his Church.

The one promise respects its perpetuity: under the aspect of a Church, immovably built upon the rock of Peter’s doctrinal confession.

The other promise similarly respects its perpetuity: but under the additional aspect of a Church, always (so far as respects the grand essentials) pure both in doctrine and independent practice, and always thus exemplifying the spiritual presence of the Lord even unto the end of the world.

Hence it was inferred: that the entireness of the complex promise could only receive its accomplishment in some particular Branch or Branches of the Visible Church Catholic; inasmuch as FACTS have shown, by the common consent of all men, that the whole original Church Catholic, in every Branch, has not corresponded with the full terms of the complex promise in question.

Furthermore, in corroboration of this inference, it was remarked’ that the concurrent voice of Prophecy completely and definitely establishes its propriety; inasmuch as Prophecy describes a state of things, in which the Sincere Church should he reduced within narrow limits, while the great Body of the Visible Church, lapsing into an apostasy of a very marked character, should be brought under the dominion of a person or a succession of persons emphatically denominated The Man of Sin and The Son of Perdition. I. At the point where we have now arrived, the last remark, which at the beginning of the present discussion, was thrown out as a mere illustrative hint, assumes a high degree of applicatory importance and interest. 1. By the prophet of the Apocalypse, our Lord’s promise of a spiritual as well as of a doctrinal perpetuity to his Sincere Church is explained after a manner which bears so peculiarly upon the subject of our late inquiries that the coincidence cannot be overlooked.

During a long and dark period of 1260 prophetic days or 1260 natural years; a period, to be reckoned, as we are concurrently taught by Daniel and St. John, from a delivering of the saints, into the hand of a most remarkable Ecclesiastical Power, by the concurrence of ten Kingdoms, among which the Western Roman Empire was doomed to be partitioned: during this long and dark period, the visible Church General is described as being a Harlot under the government of a False Prophet; and the nature of her harlotry is exhibited under the perfectly intelligible imagery of a relapse into the superstition of the Gentiles, characterized by a worship of demons or canonized dead men, and by an insane veneration of idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood which can neither see nor hear nor walk.

While this dreary period evolves, where is Christ’s promise of his perpetual spiritual presence to his sincere Church built immovably upon the rock of Peter’s doctrinal confession?

Truly, the promise is neither forgotten nor unaccomplished.

The new race of Gentiles, indeed, tread the holy city under foot during the cognate term of forty and two prophetic months: but the temple and the altar and they that worship at it are carefully measured; while the outer court, like the wide extent of the city itself, remains unmeasured.

Who, then, are the worshippers within the measured precincts, that stand so broadly distinguished from the idolatrous Gentiles of the unmeasured outer court and holy city?

Clearly, they are the persons, in whom alone we can deem Christ’s promises to have been accomplished.

But these promises respect, not mere insulated individuals, but a visible Branch or visible Branches of the entire visible Church Catholic.

Assuredly they do: and accordingly, the inspired seer intimates; that, during the evolution of the 1260 years, the Lord would give power to his two witnesses, who should courageously, though in sackcloth, prophesy, or propound, in harmony with the predictions of the ancient prophets, the great essential truths of the Gospel.

Who or what, then, are these two Witnesses, thus remarkably characterized?

The oracle tells us, that they are two Candlesticks standing before the God of the earth: and, at the same time, leaves us in no doubt as to the intended meaning of the symbol, by distinctly teaching us, that a Candlestick represents a Church. Such being the ease, the two Witnesses, who are defined to be two Candlesticks, are thence, of plain necessity, defined also to be two Churches.

Consequently, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, or the Revelation communicated by Jesus Christ to his servant John, distinctly and unequivocally explains to us, HOW the promises of the Lord to his Church were destined to receive their accomplishment.

The perpetuity of his sincere Church, as alike sound in the great fundamental doctrine of Peter’s confession, and as privileged with the unceasing spiritual presence of the Divine Head, is described, as being effected in the channel of two visible Churches: which, abhorring the apostasy of the gentilizing tenants of the outer court and the degraded holy city, firmly and faithfully proclaim the true Gospel in chronological concurrence with a state of things widely marked by the worship of dead men and their images.

This is the explanation of Christ’s own pro-raises, as afforded in Christ’s own Revelation. 2. Now many centuries have elapsed, since ten gothic nations erected ten several kingdoms on the platform of the divided Western Empire; and certainly, from that time, it is a mere naked historical fact, that the doctrines and practices of the visible Church General, whether in the Western or in the Eastern Patriarchate, have but too faithfully reflected the announcements of descriptive prophecy.

But was the whole Church General, in all its Branches, thus apostolic, thus grievously degenerate?

If it were so, the promises of Christ would have failed of their accomplishment. But not one word or one tittle of his declarations can come to nought. While both the East and the West were playing the harlot after a new race of tutelary Baalim or Demon-Gods, exactly two Churches were found to protest, even unto the death of the protesting individuals, against the antichristian abominations with which they were surrounded.

One of them, itself a Church built upon the very principle of reformation, and by an extraordinary providence of God collecting many of its members from among those who had once professed a paganizing heresy of the worst description, sprang up in the East during the course of the seventh century: but, expelled by incessant persecution brought on by its firm testimony against the rapidly-increasing corruption of the times, it migrated into Europe; and there also, in the midst both of unfounded calumny and of suffering carried at length to the verge of extermination, it showed itself a faithful witness for the truth in opposition to the still more gross demonolatry of the Western Patriarchate.

The other of them, justly claiming and honestly glorying in the title of an Unreformed Church, was always a denizen of Europe: and, while the two conjointly, during all the middle ages, acted the part of resolute witnesses on behalf of the Gospel; this Occidental Society, under the precise aspect of a Church Unreformed, because it never required reformation, forms the chain, which, in an unbroken series, connects the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century with the Apostolic Primitive Church, and thus exemplifies the accurate accomplishment of our Lord’s two-fold or complex promise. 3. With these facts under our eyes while the roll of prophecy lies unfolded before us, it is, I think, well nigh impossible not to conclude: that the two Churches of the Albigenses and the Vallenses are the two symbolical Candlesticks or the two Witnessing Churches of that Apocalypse, which at once predicts the future fortunes of the entire Church Catholic and authoritatively explains the mode in which Christ’s promises of perpetuity and purity would be fulfilled.

In truth, if these two Churches be not the two apocalyptic Churches, I see not where, between the decuple partition of the Western Empire and the times in which we are now living, the two latter Churches can be found in History: and thence, since the apocalyptic prophecy is evidently a virtual comment upon our Lord’s promises, I see not, how those promises can be said to have ever been accomplished.

Their pretended fulfillment, in a Church so notoriously corrupt and apostatic and secularized and blood-stained and unscriptural as the Roman, is, both to the Bible and to common sense, too monstrous an insult to be for a moment tolerated’ and almost as little can we endure the supposition of their accomplishment in the Greek Church or in any one of its dependent Asiatic or African Churches. But prophecy teaches us: that the promised perpetuity and purity were to be carried on and transmitted through the instrumentality of two Churches; characterized, in a manner which instantaneously excludes the gorgeous and temporally prosperous Roman Church, by a long-continued prophesying in sackcloth, or, in unfigured language, by a long-continued predication of the true Gospel in a depressed and afflicted and despised condition.

And history responsively teaches us: that exactly two Churches, precisely so characterized both circumstantially and locally and chronologically, have actually appeared upon earth; and have actually subsisted through all the middle ages.

The conclusion from such premises is obvious: and, as I perceive not how it can be avoided, so likewise I perceive not how it can be rejected without a consequential admission, at least on the part of the Reformed Churches, that the promises of Christ have failed in their accomplishment. For, if they were not accomplished through the medium of the Vallensic and Albigensic Churches: let any Protestant, if he be able in consistency with his own principles, point out, how they were accomplished, during the period which elapsed, between the days of the uncorrupted Primitive Church, and the times of the sixteenth century.

II. But, in the prophetic account of the two Witnessing Churches, there is a very remarkable circumstance announced, which will throw yet further light upon the present subject.

They are exhibited under the two-fold aspect of two not precisely identical conditions: for they are exhibited under the aspect, of prophesying in sackcloth, or of preaching the Gospel in a depressed and afflicted condition; and they are also exhibited under the aspect, of bearing their martyria, or of attesting the truth even to martyrdom itself.

Now we are told: that, when they should have finished, not the former of these, but the latter, they should be slain in their ecclesiastical capacity, or should be dissolved as Churches, for in no other mode can a Church be slain; that their dead bodies, or the constituent members of the dissolved Communities, should lie unburied, or should not be consigned to invisibility and oblivion, during the time of three prophetic days and a half or three natural years and a half, upon the platform of that great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, and which mystically bears the name of Babylon; that, at the end of three years and a half, the breath of life from God should enter into them, so that they should stand again upon their feet, or that they should be restored to their condition of visible corporate Churches; and that, finally, they should ascend to heaven in a cloud before the face of their enemies, or should obtain a legalized establishment, though still under the cloud of affliction, inasmuch as they had still to accomplish the remainder of the appointed term during which they should prophesy in sackcloth.

These are all very peculiar and very distinctly marked circumstances: nor is it easy to conceive, how they could ever occur in strict simultaneity, unless the two Churches had previously, in point of geographical location, been so amalgamated, as to form one mingled Church of both the Albigenses and the Vallenses. But exactly such an amalgamation took place about the middle of the thirteenth century, in consequence of the bloody popish crusade conducted by Simon de Montfort. Hence, if the two Churches of History be the two Churches of Prophecy, we may expect a congruity, in regard to the above-mentioned circumstances, at some indefinite time after the middle of the thirteenth century. 5 It is obvious, from the very terms of the prediction’ that the absolute martyrdom, or the testification even unto death on the part of the two Witnesses or the two Churches, is brought to a close, when the announced circumstances occur; so that, notwithstanding, even after their legal establishment, they still continue to prophesy in sackcloth, they are no longer exposed, to the horrors of a direct brutal butchery instigated by the Romish Priesthood and perpetrated by the Romish Laity. Hence, if we find. indications that such direct butchery has ceased, we may conclude: that the circumstances in question, on the supposition of the two historical Churches being the two prophetical Churches, must have already occurred. 1. In order to satisfy ourselves on this point, we must, in the first instance, recur to the annals of direct sanguinary persecution.

The exterminating crusade, waged against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century, with its remarkable effects, has already been noticed. At this point, we must advert to the persecutions, carried on jointly against both them and the Valdenses, with whom they had now become inseparably amalgamated.

A recent historian of the Vallenses has given a very useful list of the successive persecutions to which his people have been exposed: and, as this list merely details a succession of facts, I may resort to it with the strictest propriety.

In brief, the various bloody assaults, to which the united Vallensic and Albigensic Church of the Cottian Alps was exposed, from an early part of the thirteenth century down to the latter part of the seventeenth century, comprising a term of nearly five hundred years, amount in number to about twenty-six, and consequently average about five in each century, or about one in every twenty years. But here, through divine mercy, they are brought to a close: and nothing, save vexation and bigoted annoyance, has occurred subsequently to the year 1690.

It is true, indeed, that an edict was passed in the year 1698, which proscribed a portion of the Vallenses, who had advanced, I suppose, beyond their strictly limited boundaries’ it is true, moreover, that, in the year 1730, Victor Amadeus banished from his dominions all save the native Vallenses. But, as Dr. Muston styles this the last persecution which they had to undergo; a persecution, however, not amounting to martyrdom. so Mr. Acland, speaking of persecutions stained with the blood of the martyrs, justly remarks, that that, which commenced with the year 1686, was the LAST and most oppressive persecution of the Vaudois; and he subsequently adds, that, from the time when the edict was passed which banished those who were not natives, the only distinguishable features in Vaudois history are resignation to an oppressive government and adherence to their faith and the practices inculcated by it. Thus, from naked facts, it seems clear: that the blood-stained testimony or martyrdom of the two Churches ceased at the latter end of the seventeenth century. Hence, the circumstances, of their violent ecclesiastical extinction, and of their complete ecclesiastical revival at the end of three years and a half, and their legal though afflictive establishment subsequent to their revival, must apparently, if the two Churches of History be the two Churches of Prophecy, have occurred, when the seventeenth century was drawing near to its conclusion. 2. The question, therefore, now is; a question, be it observed, of naked matter of fact: the question now is; Whether, at that time, any such circumstances occurred?

This question must, of course, be answered by a simple appeal to the record of History.

On the 31st day of January, then, in the year 1686, the Duke of Savoy, at the instigation of the French King, issued an edict: by which, on pain of death, he forbid to the Vaudois the exercise of their religion, banished all their pastors, and commanded their places of worship to be destroyed.

The effect, produced by a decree of such a barbarous description, may easily be anticipated. France and Savoy let loose their blood-hounds upon an innocent and unoffending people: murders and rapes and every abomination followed: and, the Valleys in a very short space of time having been wholly depopulated by the expulsion of their former inhabitants, the place of the fugitives was supplied by the colonizing adherents of the dominant superstition.

Thus were the two ancient united Churches completely suppressed and dissolved: a calamity, which at no former period had ever befallen them: yet, scattered far and wide, their fragments, though disunited as a body corporate, still retained their separate existence. In the course of God’s providence, they were not suffered to vanish utterly from off the face of the earth: they were not suffered to be lost and absorbed in the several Communions of those Reformed States, within whose territorial dominions they had taken refuge. On the contrary, though the two Churches were politically dissolved, their members were individually preserved from complete annihilation.

In this state they continued, during the space of three years and a half.

But, at the end of that period, the spirit of life entered into them: and they began once more to act corporately and simultaneously. Under the conduct of a very extraordinary man, Henry Arnold one of their Pastors, eight hundred of the most intrepid among them, having assembled in the Swiss Territory, secretly, on the night of the 16th of August in the year 1689, crossed the lake of Geneva: and entering Savoy with their swords in their hands, and thence advancing to the mountains of Piedmont, drove from their native Valleys the intrusive Romanists, and recovered by main force their ancient avital possessions. In this wonderful enterprise so complete was their success, that ere the month of April in the year 1690 had commenced, after a series of victories over the disciplined troops of France and Savoy, they had firmly established themselves in the seats of their ancestors.

Nor did their triumph terminate here. In the course of God’s providence, events were so ordered that the Duke of Savoy was led to desert the French Interest: and, in consequence of this new political arrangement, by an edict dated the 4th of June in the year 1690, he recalled and reestablished the remainder of the now mixed Vallenses and Albigenses; granting to them henceforth, though with many vexatious restrictions, the exercise of the religion of their forefathers.

Thus were these two ancient united Churches built up anew, and solemnly established by an act of the civil power, in those identical valleys of the Cottian Alps, where the Albigensic Church, when driven out of the South of France by the crusade of the thirteenth century, had finally joined itself to the sister Church of the Vallenses. Yet, though legally established, or, in the figured language of prophecy, called up to the allegorical heaven; and though exempt from any longer bearing the testimony of a blood-stained martyrdom to the truths of the everlasting Gospel: they still, agreeably to the divine oracle, continue to prophesy in sackcloth or to perform their functions in a depressed and afflicted condition, and thus practically indicate that the grand period of 1260 years has not yet expired.

Under the letter of this legal establishment, such as it is, the united Churches at present subsist: but instead of merely excluding them from political power, it exposes them to a perpetual succession of very serious injuries, short indeed of persecution to death, but utterly destructive of social comfort and civil prosperity.

The Vallenses are forbidden to reside or to purchase land beyond the limits of certain specified boundaries: nor can a minister visit a sick person who happens to be beyond those limits unless he be accompanied by a Romish layman; and, even then, his stay must not exceed twenty-four hours.

All correspondence with foreign ministers is prohibited: and, in order that no books should be introduced among them, immense duties are imposed, particularly on Bibles and works treating of Religion.

Any physician, surgeon, apothecary, advocate, or notary, brought up to their religion, cannot exercise his profession beyond the limits of the Valleys. They are forbidden to inclose their burial grounds with walls.

If a Papist steal the child of a Vaudois for the purpose of proselytism, or if he insult him in the public streets by calling him dog or heretic, the Vaudois has no redress.

They are compelled to abstain from work on all popish festivals, though they themselves have never been followers of the Pope’s religion’ and a refusal to uncover the head to a wooden doll, representing some saint real or reputed, when ridiculously carried in procession by its silly worshippers, subjects them to a fine or imprisonment. 10 These are the tender mercies of dominant Popery in its mildest form: and, as we all know, the well-grounded boast of Romanism is, that it never changes. The tiger, as in France, may be coerced, by the civil power: but, in nature and disposition, the tiger is the tiger still.

III. The series of facts, here detailed by the voice of History, requires but little comment.

So far as simple coincidence, between the facts and the prophecy, is concerned, a denial of such simple coincidence is plainly impossible: and, when we recollect, that, as the prediction announces the existence of precisely two Witnessing Churches, so History records the actual existence of two such Churches; we can scarcely, I think, deem this concurrence of coincidences purely accidental or undesigned.

But, if we admit that the two Churches of History are the two Churches of Prophecy, we shall then, by a necessary consequence have the plain attestation of Scripture to the important position: that Christ’s promises of Perpetuity and Purity to his faithful Church were accomplished, in the long unbroken line of the Vallenses, and (on the principle of ecclesiastical agglomeration) in the shorter line of the Paulicians or Albigenses; and that, through their intermediation and more especially through the intermediation of the never reformed Vallenses, the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century stand directly connected with the holy Primitive Church Catholic.

CHAPTER - RESPECTING THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY OF THE VALLENSES AND THE ALBIGENSES.

AS I thus pronounce the two Communions of the Vallenses and the Albigenses to be the two Witnessing Churches of the Apocalypse; and as I further contend, against Bossuet, that the Vallenses, in a more especial manner, constitute that Visible Church which connects the Churches of the Reformation with the Primitive Church: it may be expected, that I should say something, as to their right to be considered Churches at all, in regard to their possessing or their not possessing the apostolical succession.

I readily confess, that I am not able to demonstrate the circumstance of their possessing an apostolical succession, either as regularly transmitted by episcopal ordination, or as less regularly handed down by the simple imposition of the hands of the Presbytery. Yet, though a strictly legal demonstration of this matter, in the case of two Churches subjected to incessant persecution or driven into the obscurity and poverty of an alpine wilderness, may well have been thus rendered impracticable, and thence in common fairness, cannot be rigidly demanded: we may nevertheless, come so near to the point, that, in concurrence with the scriptural declaration of the assured existence of precisely two Witnessing Churches during all the middle ages, we may deem it sufficiently established for all legitimate ecclesiastical purposes.

I. Let us begin with considering the case of the Vallenses.

With respect to these long-enduring tenants of a region geographically marked out as situated between the Cottian Alps and the Adriatic Sea, we have the express testimony of Jerome: that, at the beginning of the fifth century, they were regularly organized under Bishops, and thence, of course, under a body of inferior Clergy also; though he laments, that those Bishops should have opposed themselves, to what he esteemed the orthodoxy of the age, and to what they esteemed its unscriptural and corrupt innovation.

At a later period, in the ninth century, they constituted a part of the provincial flock of the holy Claude, Archbishop or Metropolitan of Turin.

Whence, from the known ordinary constitution of the Church, we may be morally sure, that, in point of immediate government, they were ruled by inferior Bishops, the suffragans of the Archbishop of the entire Province. Accordingly, when they became completely separated from the Roman Church and entered upon their predicted function of one of the two Apocalyptic Witnesses, they still retained that primitive form of Ecclesiastical Polity, which ordains the authoritative government of the Church to be vested in Presbyters, employing Deacons as their subordinated assistants, while they themselves acknowledge the superintendence of a Bishop or General Overseer.

Of this, a remarkable instance occurred about the year 1450. Commenius, a Bohemian Bishop, who wrote in the year 1644, has stated: that The Bohemian Separatists, in their anxiety to have their Pastors ordained by Prelates in regular succession from the Apostles, sent three of their Preachers to a certain Stephen, Bishop of the Vauldois; and this Stephen, with others officiating, conferred the vocation and ordination, upon the three Pastors, by the imposition of hands. A century afterward, there were still Bishops in the Valdensian Church: for, in a Confession of Faith, presented in the year 1544 to Francis I. King of France, we find the following Article. This point is held among us as firmly determined, that the Bishops and the Pastors ought to be irreprehensible in their doctrine and in their morals. Agreeably with these historical notices, the venerable Peyrani, when asked by Dr. Gilly in the year 1823, whether, in the Vaudois Church, there had not formerly been Bishops properly so called, readily answered: Yes: and should now be styled Bishop, for my office is virtually episcopal; but it would be absurd to retain the empty title, when we are too poor to support the dignity, and have little jurisdiction save that which is voluntarily submitted to among ourselves: the term Moderator is, therefore, now in use with us, as being more consistent with our humiliation. 5 II. The case of the Albigenses or Paulicians, which I next proceed to consider, is somewhat more difficult than that of the Vallenses: it shall, however, be fairly and distinctly exhibited.

While in Armenia, the Church of the Paulicians, as described by Peter Siculus, was evidently, so far as form is concerned, episcopal. Constantine acted as the first Bishop: Simeon was the second: and, after him, are enumerated many others in regular succession, among whom is specially mentioned the famous Sergius or Tychicus. When the Paulicians in a body, or at least a considerable part of the Paulicians, migrated from Asia into Europe, we still find them subsisting under an Episcopal Polity. In Bulgaria, they had an Archbishop or Patriarch: and, when they passed into Lombardy, we read of their Bishop named Mark, who first received his ordination from Bulgaria, but who is said to have afterward received a new ecclesiastical mission from Nicetas the Paulician Patriarch of Drugaria. Descending to the time of Reinerius, who during several years of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was one of their members, we find their form of Ecclesiastical Polity marked out very distinctly by that writer.

Their Clergy consisted of Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons: but the Order of Presbyters they divided into two classes, that of the seniors, and that of the juniors. All these are simple historical facts: but, when we come to the point of apostolical succession, we rest purely upon conjecture.

It is recorded, that the Church of the Paulicians originated with Constantine, a native of Armenia and an inhabitant of Mananalis.

This is all that we positively know, as to the ecclesiastical character of Constantine, the first Bishop of the Paulicians, and in their separate line the head or commencement of their succession. He may have been a Bishop, or he may have been a Presbyter, or he may simply have been a Layman. On the point of his ecclesiastical character, Peter Siculus is silent.

Hence we can resort to nothing more than probabilities deduced from the facts which have been recorded.

The facts, then, and the probabilities, are the following.

Constantine, while residing at Mananalis, hospitably entertained a Deacon, who was returning home from his captivity in Syria: and, in consequence of his receiving from this Deacon the four Gospels and the fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, with which, though a Christian (such was the lamentable darkness of the age and country), he was previously unacquainted, he forthwith collected a Church out of his neighbors, many of whom had hitherto been Manicheans.

Now, so far as probability is concerned, I should gather from these facts, that Constantine was either the Bishop or the Presbyter of Mananalis: where, pursuant to the fashion of the times, he had preached, what (according to Peter Siculus) afterward became a special abomination to the Paulicians, the superstitious worship of the Virgin and the Saints and the Cross.

Agreeably to the habits of that period, a Deacon, when returning from captivity, and when travelling homeward, would obviously, in his progress, resort to the houses, not so much of the Laity, as of the Bishops and Presbyters, bringing with him his letters of commendation or introduction. 9 Hence the natural presumption is, that Constantine was a Cleric and not a Laic.

With this presumption, both his subsequent conduct, and the ready acceptance of him by his numerous proselytes in the capacity of their Bishop or Ecclesiastical Governor, perfectly correspond. In the seventh century, lay-teaching, I should suppose, would be a thing unheard-of and unknown. The early heresies, commonly, perhaps universally, originated with speculative Clergymen: and, in this manner also, I apprehend, originated the so-called heresy of the Paulicians. Constantine himself, by his very language, seems to intimate as much. Showing to his people the sacred volume which he had received from the Deacon, he exclaimed: Ye are Macedonians; I am Sylvanus, sent to you by Paul. In these words, we may suppose him, at once to open his commission, and to answer objections, You ask me, how I come to preach so differently from mat clerical brethren: you demand my authority for so doing. The reason is this. You are just as ignorant of the Gospel, as the Macedonians of old could be, before the saving knowledge of Christianity was carried to them by the ministration of Paul and Sylvanus. Now I have received light from the word of God himself; from the four Gospels and from the Epistles of St.

Paul, which I have unexpectedly obtained, and which I have diligently studied. Therefore, I no longer preach to: you, as I have hitherto done, the superstitious veneration of the Saints and the Cross and the Virgin. But, a new Sylvanus, sent to you a new race of Macedonians, by Paul himself, whose Epistles I hold in my hand; I now call upon you to turn from all such vanities to the pure worship of the living God through Christ the only Savior and Mediator. Ye, brethren, have been blind, as well as myself: but, henceforth, the glorious light of the Gospel shall shine upon you.

I am quite ready to allow, that this is conjecture, save only the recorded address of Constantine: Ye are Macedonians; I am Sylvanus, sent to you by Paul. But it is a conjecture, which falls in with the history more naturally than any other supposition as to the anterior character sustained by Constantine.

III. After all, should what has been said be unsatisfactory, I hesitate not, so far as the Vallenses and Albigenses are concerned, to refer the matter, under all existing circumstances, to the plain will and over-ruling providence of God.

Man, in all ordinary cases, is bound: God, in the course of his overpowering moral dispensations, no less than in his more palpable interpositions through the agency of miracles, is free. We know, that God himself bestowed the name of Candlesticks or Churches upon two Communions, which are described as prophesying in sackcloth against the paganizing corruptions of the dominant Church throughout all the middle ages: we know, that the two Communions of the Vallenses and the Albigenses discharged this precise function during this precise period: and we further know, that it is vain to seek out any other two visible Communions, which, during that precise period, discharged that precise function.

Such being the ease, I cannot but think, that we have the very highest moral evidence as to the identity of those two Communions with the two Witnessing Churches of the Apocalypse. And, if this be admitted, who shall dare to refuse the name and character of Churches to two Communions, which God himself has declared to be Churches, however they originated, and however they were politied?

CHAPTER - RESPECTING THE OCCASIONAL DISCREPANCE OF THE CHURCHES OF THE VALLENSES AND THE ALBIGENSES FROM THE CHURCHES OF THE REFORMATION NO person I suppose, will imagine: that, in compliance with the captious and unreasonable demand of Bossuet, I should attempt to exhibit the Vallenses and the Albigenses, either as agreeing in all points great and small with the various Churches of the Reformation, or as holding opinions with which universally I can be expected to symbolize.

That some of these opinions are untenable, I readily admit: but, that they affect those primary essentials either of faith or of practice, which are indispensably necessary to the due accomplishment of our Lord’s promises, I strenuously deny. The opinions, in question, involve no departure from the Gospel in any of its grand requisites: and they so naturally sprang up under the peculiar circumstances wherein the two persecuted Churches were placed, that they very readily may be excused and pardoned.

My meaning will be better understood by an adduction of instances.

I. The enormous corruption and determined profligacy of the Romish Priesthood, fully acknowledged and duly censured (as we have seen) by Atto of Vercelli, caused the Dissidents to feel: that it was a moral impossibility for them to receive any spiritual benefit from such instructors, with whom they too clearly saw that Christ was not spiritually present.

But they erred in carrying this feeling to the extent of maintaining, if indeed they ever really did maintain, the opinion: that The efficacy of the Sacraments depends upon the personal holiness of the administrator.

On the present point, it will be observed, I speak with considerable hesitation: for I can, in no wise, adopt the positive language of Bossuet respecting it. 1 That the Romanists make the efficacy of the Sacraments to depend upon the intention of the ministering Priest, I assuredly know: because the doctors of the Tridentine Council anathematize all who assert; that in the administration of the Sacraments, the intention of the Priest, to do what the Church does, is not requisite. 2 But I do not feel equally certain, on the legitimate principle of adequate historical testimony, that the Vallenses, and their fraternal conreligionists the Albigenses, made the personal holiness of the administrator essential to the efficacy of the Sacraments administered.

Some speculation of this sort is, indeed, apparently laid to their charge by Reinerius and Pilichdorf; but their language is so loose, and misapprehension in regard to those who spared not the vices of the Romish Clergy was so easy, that I do not feel myself justified in adopting the confident assertion of Bossuet. In my doubts, moreover, I am greatly strengthened, when I recollect the positive disavowal of any such opinion on the part of the Dissidents, who, in the year 1176, were publicly examined at Lombers. This open disavowal is faithfully recorded by Roger Hoveden: and, though the Bishop of Meaux very prudently pretermits it, we may justly say that it is far too unambiguous to be rapidly set aside.

We believe: that he, who eats not the body of Christ, is not in a state of salvation; and that the body of Christ is not consecrated, save in the Church, and that it is not consecrated save by a Priest, whether good or bad; and that it is not more effectually consecrated by a good priest, than by a bad one. In the way of evidence, such an open confession is the more valuable and important, because it manifestly refers to this very allegation which they knew to be so frequently and so perniciously brought against them. As we receive the allegation, upon which Bossuet builds with so much confidence, purely from the determined and exasperated enemies of the Vallenses: so it may be useful yet additionally to remark, that not a vestige of the opinion attributed to them appears either in the Noble Lesson, or in the Treatise on Antichrist, or in the ancient Catechism, or in any one of the Confessions which have come under my own observation; though, what probably gave rise to such an attribution, we find, perhaps in all those Works, a warm reprobation of the vices and superstitions of the Popish Priests, and likewise a direct protestation against the favorite Romish Doctrine that the efficacy of the Sacraments depends upon their right sacerdotal administration ex opere operato as the notion is technically expressed.

The true Doctrine is that of the Church of England, which makes the spiritual efficacy of the Sacraments to depend upon the fitness or worthiness of the recipient. 5 And, as we may not obscurely gather, even from the blundering statement of Reinerius, that such also was the real Doctrine of the old Valdenses: so, in the long Confession of the Bohemian Brethren (who, according to Eneas Sylvius, adopted the Faith of the Valdenses, though they rejected the name), presented to King Ladislaus in the year 1508, we find that: Doctrine distinctly stated and explicitly maintained. If, however, any of the Vallenses, at any time actually adopted the opinion, that The beneficial efficacy of the Sacraments depends upon the personal holiness of the administrator: I can only say, that they labored under an error. At the same time, I would add: that such an error, (a venial one, after all, I trust) was an error, which, among the less educated of them, might easily spring up under the peculiar and very trying circumstances in which they were placed. As the inspired Preacher truly said: Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.

II. The overgrown endowments of the Church, they perceived, had transmuted the Roman Pontiff and many of his Bishops into sovereign temporal Princes: while, throughout the whole Order, they had introduced, among an unmarried Clergy, the most offensive luxury, the most undisguised debauchery, the most palpable secularity, and the most jealous and persecuting tyranny.

All this was reprehensible. But the Valdenses erred, in carrying their objection so far, as to deny the legality of any endowment of the Church: a notion, at once, absurd in itself, pregnant with the worst species of mischief, and involving a national profession of infidelity.

Its absurdity is evinced: both by its direct opposition, in the abstract, to God’s own temporal arrangement of the Levitical Church, which never could have been instituted, had ecclesiastical endowments, in themselves, been an abomination; by its effective contrariety to the prophecy, that Kings should be the nursing fathers of the Christian Church, and Queens its nursing mothers; by its virtual denial, that they, who minister at the altar, should live by the altar; and by the moral impossibility (for an endowed Church is eminently the poor man’s Church), that, in a quietly settled country, any unendowed Church could supply the spiritual wants of poverty-stricken and thinly-peopled rural districts, however it might be precariously and insultingly supported by the grudged and penurious and reluctant voluntary contributions (if I may combine together terms, contradictory in speech, but not contradictory in practice) of opulent and thickly-inhabited cities.

Its direct tendency to mischief of the worst kind is evinced: both by its general certainty of producing an ignorant and ill-educated Clergy, studiously selected from among the least intellectual members of a family, confined altogether to the inferior ranks of society, and by their habits unfitted to exercise any wholesome and legitimate influence over their flocks, who would be more likely to be blind leaders of the blind, than skillful dividers of the word and able defenders of the faith when attacked by heretics or infidels; and also by its totally depriving God’s ministers of that fearless independence, by which with all freedom they may rebuke as well as exhort, and by which they may faithfully preach the Gospel, without, as respects poor weak humanity, the strong temptation to please the perverted humor of their dictatorial people, by handling the word of the Lord deceitfully, lest some governing children of Diotrephes should either tyrannically cashier them, or meanly starve both themselves and their families.

Its involution of a national profession of infidelity is evinced: by its actual basement upon the unhallowed principle, that nations, as such, ought to uphold no religion nationally, but that they ought impartially to view all modes of faith with philosophic indifference, deeming them alike equally false or equally true or equally unimportant; a principle, in the working of which, the individual members of a nation may indeed peradventure be Christians, but the nation itself is assuredly of no religion, and thence neither recognizes the authority nor looks for the support and blessing of the Deity. 1. Perhaps it may be asked: If the system of Non-Endowment be condemned as practically inefficacious, how, then, did Christianity do, previous to its establishment as the religion of the Empire?

Under the aspect of a pervadence of the worm both universal and complete, the true point now under consideration, I readily answer: that It did very ill.

Its pervadence, agreeably to the eloquent declamation of Tertullian, was, no doubt, in some sort, universal: but, in the way of leavening the whole mass, it was not complete; nor, under such circumstances, without a standing miracle, either could it or can it be thus complete. During the first ages, the chief spread of Christianity was in populous cities, or in commercial districts, or in regions where men were numerously congregated together. It might, indeed, as Pliny states, partially penetrate into the villages and fields of Asia Minor: 7 but, in the rural tracts, from the very necessity of things as they then stood, it made small progress.

Accordingly, though Tertullian, in one place of his Apology, describes the jealous Pagans as lamenting that Christians should be in the fields as well as in the castles and the islands: 8 yet he himself, even in his declamatory boast of universality, is totally and remarkably silent ill regard to their spread among the rustic population of the Empire.

We sprang up but yesterday, says he: and we have filled every place that belongs to you: cities, islands, castles, boroughs, places of general assembling, the very camp itself, tribes, decuries, the palace, the senate, the forum. Why does not the orator include the country in his enumeration? Clearly, because the country formed no part, or at least no considerable part, of his every place.

In fact, that the inhabitants of rural districts long remained idolaters after Christianity had penetrated into perhaps every town of the Empire, is abundantly clear from the very name of Pagans in its acquired or ecclesiastical sense. The word Pagani itself simply means Villagers or Countrymen or Peasants: and it acquired its now familiar superinduced sense of Gentile Idolaters, purely from the notorious circumstance, that the Pagans or Rustics held to their ancient idolatry long after the Gospel had, as Tertullian speaks, widely and generally pervaded the camp and the forum and the small trading islands and the crowded boroughs and the densely populated cities.

Now, as God, in his moral administration, usually works by second causes alone, it requires not the gift of prophecy to foretell: that the universal introduction of what now is called The Voluntary System, by turning the whole predication of the Gospel into a matter of individual buying and selling through the agency of which the poor must either personally pay the expense of a stated minister or go without him, would rapidly transmute the people of rural districts into a new race of Pagani; or, at least, that that fate could only be avoided by the introduction of a spurious Christianity, wherein, through the ghostly terrors of delusive superstition, an artful Priesthood might extract, from the wretched Peasantry, the hard-earned product of their labor. Where the machinery of superstition or fanaticism is not employed, still the most honest and the most zealous Divine cannot (save when he possesses an independent private fortune, which is rarely the case with the Clergy) subsist without an extrinsic provision of food and raiment: and, though the promise of perpetuity, made by Christ to his Church, can never fail; yet, if deprived of a regular standing ministry, which, by reason of an endowment, can offer the Gospel to the poor without: money and without price, and which at the same time is ever ready to superintend their wants and to aid their distresses and to manage their little matters of business, Christianity, in rural districts, would rapidly become either totally extinct or altogether degenerate.

I mean not to say, that such would absolutely be the case in every rural district: because, occasionally, a truly devout proprietor might stand in the gap, and stay the moral pestilence. But such, or something similar, would, in the very way of cause and effect, be most generally the case.

As for the Vallenses, who fled to the alpine mountains to escape persecution, they will form no exception which can be universally reduced to a practical account. They were animated with all the vehement spirit of a small body under actual suffering: but no such spirit would pervade rural districts in general, if, without any individual persecution, a regular stated ministry were suddenly withdrawn; and the result would be a speedy declension into something, which, to say the very least, would not be genuine Christianity. 2. It has sometimes been said: that, if ecclesiastical endowments were abolished, we should be blessed with a much more spiritual Clergy; because no one then would enter into the ministry, as a mere profession, or from consciously mercenary motives.

But this is a great delusion. It does not follow, that, what would cease to be a temptation to some, would cease to be a temptation to all. The Clergy might be lowered ill rank by such an expedient: but it: is not equally clear, that they would be raised in spirituality. To men of an inferior class, who had no prospect of legitimately elevating themselves in any other manner, an unendowed and unestablished Church would the more become a matter of artful and interested speculation simply because it was unendowed and unestablished. In that case, the cheap talent of a depraved and noisy oratory would, in the way of barter, be regularly brought to the oppidan market, mere grimace usurping the seat of genuine scriptural piety: and, while the prospect of turning the penny, by collecting large audiences in chapels let out for regular rents (which, of course, the slighted poor would be unable to pay), would be duly calculated by the ill-taught trader in his own lungs; the thinly-peopled country, which, in the way of an income, would furnish nothing worth the speculatist’s attention, would be turned over to the cheerless prospect of a resuscitated Paganism.

Meanwhile, in towns, which might penuriously purchase the services of those who might wish to sell them, what would be the inevitable operation of such a system? The fancied more spiritual ministers, who had confidently pushed themselves forward into publicity, while modest worth sensitively shrank into the background, must please the humor of their wayward and tyrannical congregations, or must lose their bread: the legitimate evangelical places of the teachers and the taught would be exactly inverted: the diotrephic lovers of preeminence, like their recorded predecessors when the infant and persecuted Church was compelled to depend upon voluntary contributions, would readily, when their slightest whim was thwarted, treat the successors of St. John, as their spiritual forefathers treated the holy Apostle himself: 10 and thus a temptation of faithlessly adulterating the Gospel, as the Gospel has evidentially been delivered down from the times of Primitive Christianity, to suit the evervarying taste of the day, would be constantly present; a temptation, which might indeed be resisted at the expense of starvation or of insolent dismissal; but yet a temptation, which ought not deliberately and systematically to be imposed upon any who undertake the awful function of Ministers of Christ.

Nor is this all. On yet another account, nothing can be more idle than to say: that spiritual pastors, and none save spiritual pastors, would enter into the Priesthood of an unendowed Church. The taking of such a step does not altogether depend upon a young person’s own choice, however both zealous and disinterested he may be. A parent’s consent must be previously asked and obtained: and, with no prospect before him save that of eleemosounary dependence (for, of course, under a voluntary system, there can be no such being as an independent Divine, unless indeed he be a man of sufficient private fortune, and thence not relying for his bread upon the meagerness of lay liberality), a prudent father would be very apt, to withhold his consent, and to refuse to his son the expensiveness of an education necessary to qualify him for becoming a competent religious instructor of others; unless, indeed, the voluntary system contemplates the existence of a Clergy, who may either dispense entirely with all theological attainments, or who, somewhat incomprehensibly, are theologians by instinct, and thence require not any preparatory education.

Yet, if Tertullian could say, that Men are made Christians, not born Christians: we may perhaps say, with equal truth, that Men are made Theologians, not born Theologians. 3. But sometimes another ground also is taken by the modern admirer of the voluntary scheme: and then it is urged; that, in all trades, wants create their own level; and that the demand will always produce the requisite supply.

Now he, who thus coarsely argues, must needs be ignorant of that very condition of man, upon which the Gospel is specially founded. Fallen man acutely perceives, when his bodily frame is disordered, or when the security of his property is endangered: hence the demand for physicians and for lawyers will always ensure a full supply of those very necessary and important individuals. But the precise spiritual disorder of fallen man, the precise actual insecurity of his alienated condition, is an insensibility to his true state and a thorough hatred of the divine remedy prescribed: hence, the greater the necessity of religious amelioration and religious security, the less will be the demand for it; and, consequently, where it is most of all required, as either by literal Pagans or virtual Pagans, there will be no demand for it whatsoever. In our lapsed state, in short, religion must be brought home even to our doors: for an indifference to, or a dislike of, the true remedy, is inherent in the very nature of our disease; or rather, we may well say, constitutes the very disease itself.

Nay, such is the absurdity of the present speculation, I may add: that, on the voluntary principle, various cases may easily be supposed to occur, where there might really be an honest demand associated with the moral impossibility of such demand producing any adequate supply. A rural district, seeing the benefit of oppidan Christianity even as degraded by the whims and humors of tyrannical democratic intervention, sincerely wish for a Cleric whose business it shall be to go in and out among them as one that devotes himself to the care of their souls. On the voluntary scheme, how is the demand here to produce the supply? The Clergy, no more than the Laity, can subsist upon air: neither, like the Israelites in the wilderness, do they enjoy the miraculous privilege, that, through forty long years of ministerial labor, their clothes should not wax old upon them, nor their shoes wax old upon their feet. Hence, the demand may be made: but poverty, on both sides, forbids the supply. Of the poor man, more especially of the poor man in the country, the peculiar proprietary Church is, specially and solely, the regularly endowed and parochially established Church. Let such a Church be swept away by the simulated friends of the poor: and, in the very way of cause and effect, those friends show their friendship, by tearing remorselessly from them the bread of life, and by dashing unrelentingly from their lips the cup of salvation. Justly may we say, that like the Jews of old, they please not God, and are contrary to all men. (1 Thessalonians 2:15.)

III. There is yet another error of the old Val-lenses and Albigenses, which, before the subject be dismissed, may very briefly be noted.

Profane swearing of the most offensive description, such as detestable colloquial oaths by God’s teeth or by God’s blood or by God’s wounds or by the sacramental Pix and Ousel, prevailed, they well knew, to an awful extent, among the adherents of the Papacy’ while yet no person, on that account, thought the worse of these daring blasphemers. Those, who will curse and lye and swear, says the ancient author of the Noble Lesson, are said and reckoned to be good and loyal men.

This the Valdenses and Albigenses justly abhorred. But, when, by a misinterpretation of our Lord’s precept, they deemed all oaths, even though taken in the fear of God and for the promotion of truth before the lawful authorities, to be utterly prohibited; and when they thence proceeded to the conclusion, that every oath of every description was to be utterly rejected by a Christian man; then, however innocently, they erred.

Yet, surely, these errors, much as we may wonder that, with honest and good men of such generally sound judgment, they should have prevailed (if, indeed, they all did prevail), affect not the: grand essentials of either faith or practice: for even the worst of them, that, which, by asserting what is now called the Voluntary Principle, at once undermines religion and unchristianizes every nation (as a nation) which adopts it, might be held without, on the part of those who held it, any consideration or perception of its true character and consequences; and I need scarcely say, that the error, as maintained in simplicity of heart, differs widely from the same error, as entertained to serve the purposes of faction, or as inculcated in the spirit of envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, the very spirit, in short, of the opposing Antichrist.

On the whole, therefore, we may safely and reasonably view the old Vallenses and Albigenses, notwithstanding such minor errors, as the appointed channel in which Christ’s promises to his sincere Church were destined to be fulfilled.

CHAPTER - CONCLUSION THE preceding Discussion is, I trust, fully sufficient to extract its sting from the very plausible though very sophistical, argument of the Bishop of Meaux.

I. Agreeably to the promises of our Savior Christ, which it has been my object to explain through the medium of an historical verification, there has never been wanting, from the very first promulgation of the Gospel, a spiritual visible Church of faithful worshippers.

Through all the worst and darkest periods, even through that century which Baronius himself calls the iron and leaden and obscure age, such a Church has incessantly existed, though often, to all appearance, on the very brink of destruction. There was a time, when, in the boasted immutable communion of the Latins, religious knowledge was at so low an ebb, that the Cardinal, during the evolution of his leaden age, is fain to pronounce Christ himself asleep, while the mystic ship of the Church Catholic was overwhelmed by the waves: and, what he thinks even yet worse than the alleged somnolency of the omniscient Redeemer, the ecclesiastical mariners snored so soundly, that the disciples, who might rouse their sleeping Lord, were no where to be found. He, however, that keepeth Israel, neither slumbered nor slept. Profound as might be the drowsiness of the whole Latin Church, respecting which Baronius so justly and so honestly complains; widely extended as might be the great apostasy from the faith, which St. Paul has so characteristically foretold’ Christ, nevertheless, was not without mariners, both fully awake, and zealously active at their post. What the Cardinal was unable to find throughout the Vast Obscure of the Papal Dominions, and the want of which might: well nigh seem to have frustrated the promises of the Savior himself, still continued to exist in the secluded and despised Valleys of Dauphiny and Piedmont.

Though incessantly harassed and persecuted by the tools of the Papacy, yet, through all those middle ages which preceded the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Vallenses were never, either exterminated by the sword of violence, or enslaved to the unhallowed superstition of the Latin Church. According to the remarkable confession of an Archbishop of Turin in the earlier part of the sixteenth age though perpetually attacked by an enemy of surpassing power, still, ill mockery of all expectation, the Vallensic Heretic of the Alps came off victorious: or, at least, if not absolutely victorious, he showed himself unconquered and unconquerable. II. With the Reformed Catholics of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the visible united Church of the Vallenses and the Albigenses, now actually existing in the Valleys of the Cottian Alps, agrees, both in all essential points of Scriptural Doctrine, and in a steady opposition to the unscriptural corruptions of the Church of Rome.

Through the medium of the Vallensic Church, which, at the very beginning of the fifth century, not to speak of even a yet earlier period, subsisted where it still subsists, in the region geographically defined by the angry Jerome as lying between the waters of the Adriatic Sea and the Alps of King Cottius, we stand connected with the purity of the Primitive Church.

In despite of the lawless innovations of the papacy, innovations which are condemned by the testimony of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, the promises of Christ have been faithfully accomplished.

III. A very subtle problem has been proposed by the Bishop of Meaux.