I have now brought the matter under discussion to this point. The opponents of the Waldenses in the eleventh and twelfth centuries endeavoured to prove, that their refusal to be in communion with the church of Rome, arose out of some new and strange doctrines brought by wandering innovators from the East. The charge is reiterated by subsequent Romish controversialists, and though the first authorities for the allegation did not establish it by a sufficient chain of evidence, yet it has been repeated from time to time, until it has been believed by several of the most able of the Protestant historians. This misrepresentation is to be contradicted, and it is to be shewn, that the Waldenses stood in no need of strangers to enlighten them; that they were, at the very time in question, enjoying a radiance of spiritual light, which had continued to shine upon them for many generations, and which enabled them to keep free from the bondage of the bishops of Rome.

The facts which favour the assumed antiquity and purity of the Waldensian Church, are,

I. The traditions always current among the Waldenses themselves.

II. The situation of their country.

III. The testimony of history gathered from their adversaries, or from indifferent and unprejudiced early writers.

IV. The testimony of their own documents.

SECTION I.

THE TRADITIONS ALWAYS CURRENT AMONG THE
WALDENSES THEMSELVES.

It is providentially fortunate, that these traditions have been preserved for the most part in the pages of writers opposed to the Waldenses: they might otherwise have been disputed. The few Waldensian documents which have escaped destruction would not have sufficed to satisfy the incredulous upon this point. Of these few, the "Nobla Leyçon '," a poem of the date A.D. 1100, presents the following proof of the opinions, which the Waldenses of that early period entertained of the antiquity of their Church.

"Now after the Apostles, were certain teachers, who went on teaching the way of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Some of whom are found at this present day, but they are known to very few."

After a few lines describing the life and conversation of such teachers, the poem proceeds, "Such an one is called a Vaudois" (Vaudés).

A manuscript treatise of the same date as that of an ancient catechism, which is also dated A.D. 1100, speaks of the Waldenses as having

1 More of this valuable record hereafter. See page 132.

maintained the same doctrines, "from time immemorial, in continued descent from father to son, even from the times of the Apostles."

Transcripts of these treatises are to be found in the first Book of Leger's "Histoire de l'Eglise Vaudoise." The originals were entrusted to Samuel Morland, and by him deposited in the library of the University of Cambridge, after his return from the valleys of Piemont, in 1658. I am aware that the period of these treatises is somewhat contested, and that Allix, who felt assured of the antiquity of the Nobla Leyçon, was himself inclined to believe that the others were not written before the middle of the 13th century.

It may be granted that some of the identical copies from which Leger transcribed were not written before the middle of the 13th century, (1250), or even the 14th; but there is strong internal evidence to prove, that these treatises contained passages, which had previously formed part of religious manuscripts preserved among the Waldenses at a period more remote. For example, one of the treatises in question enumerates the various corruptions of the Roman church; it alludes to the doctrine of the real presence, and to the adoration of the Virgin Mary, and of saints. But it does not make mention of the terms transubstantiation or canonization', nor does it speak of the service of the rosary.

"Item canonizationes contemnunt." So wrote Reinerus

The term transubstantiation, hitherto unknown, was introduced and established by pope Innocent the Third': the rosary was invented by the inquisitor Dominic; at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Such notorious and offensive abuses, to say nothing of the institution of the horrible tribunal of the inquisition, which was co-eval with them, could scarcely have failed to find a place in treatises professedly written upon such subjects, had those treatises been originally composed posterior to these audacities against the understanding and religious rights of men.

I have Leger's authority for relating, (see book i. p. 153.) that the French historian De Serres, under his notice of the year 1223, said that he had in his library an old manuscript written in Gothic characters upon parchment, which set forth the reasons of the Waldenses for refusing communion with the Roman church. This manuscript made mention of purgatory, images, the invocation of saints, the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, the authority and decrees of the pope, &c. Hence I should conclude, that as the

concerning the Vaudois in 1250. As neither of these treatises contain the same term, it is to be inferred that they were composed before it came into use. The first papal bull in which the word canonization occurs was in 1165.

Transub

1 Ed. Albertinus de Eucharistia, lib. 3. p. 972. stantiation was made an article of faith by the council of Lateran, 1215.

Waldenses took the earliest notice of this corrupt doctrine, after it was formally promulgated by pope Innocent the Third under that term, that treatises upon kindred subjects, which made no mention of it, were composed at an earlier period of time.

Robert Olivetan, a native of the valleys, who translated the Bible into French in. 1535, addressed his book to the Vaudois Church in these terms. "It is to thee I present and dedicate this precious treasure, in the name of friends and brethren, who ever since they were blessed and enriched therewith by the apostles and ambassadors of Christ, have still enjoyed and possessed the same." Morland, p. 17.

A petition presented to Philibert Emanuel, duke of Savoy, and prince of Piemont, by the Waldenses, in 1559, contained the following assertion': "We likewise beseech your royal highness to consider, that this religion we profess, is not only ours, nor hath it been invented by men of late years, as it is falsely reported, but it is the religion of our fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers, and other yet more ancient predecessors of ours, and of the blessed martyrs, confessors, prophets and apostles, and if any can prove the contrary, we are ready to subscribe, and yield thereunto." Leger relates that all the pe

Morland, p. 228.