"This was a process too slow and too partial to satisfy the unrelenting fury of the church of Rome. Bull after bull, and army after army, issued forth to the devastation of the valleys, the spirit of which may be collected from the following specimen. In 1477, Innocent VIII. having commented on the heresies of the Vaudois, commands all archbishops, bishops, vicars, &c. to obey his inquisitor, to render him assistance, and to engage the people to take up arms, with a view to so holy and necessary an extermination. Accordingly, he granted indulgences to all who would make a crusade against the Vaudois, and full authority to apply to their own use whatsoever property they could seize. Animated by these spiritual and temporal stimulants, 18,000 regular troops, and 600 uncommanded vagabonds burst upon the vallies; and had not a feeling of compunction speedily visited the sovereign, (Philip VII., duke of Savoy) the work of destruction would probably have been complete, and his successors saved from the infamy of assisting in subsequent transactions of the same character. Such was the style of the persecutions, which, at small intervals, and in different degrees, mark the whole history of this suffering and faithful people during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries."*

"This persecution was carried on with peculiar marks of rage and enormity in the years 1655, 1686, and 1696, and seemed to portend nothing less than the total destruction and entire extinction of that unhappy nation. The most horrid scenes of violence and bloodshed were exhibited on

this theatre of papal tyranny."† "Thousands were massacred, and many put to death with tortures of a more horrid and revolting nature than any recorded in the Spanish inquisition; and the most barbarous cruelty was united to indecency the most brutal and profligate. The very recital of these scenes would be sufficient to make the book that contained it a scorn and a horror to society."

An inquisitor-general testifies to the faithfulness of the witnesses; a monk records the monstrous cruelties exercised against the Albigenses: and an attested document, written by the commander of a French regiment, and which is preserved in the university of Cambridge, gives an illustration of the barbarities to

Acland, pp. 12, 13.

+ Mosheim, cent. 17, part ii. chap. 2. sect. 5.
Gilly's Narrative, p. 146.

which the faithful Vaudois were subjected, which were of so shocking a nature, that he resigned his command rather than be a participator or a witness of such iniquitous actions. "I was witness," says Du Petit Bourg," to many great violences and cruelties exercised by the banditti and soldiers of Piedmont upon all of every age, sex, and condition, many of whom I myself saw massacred, dismembered, hung up, &c. with many horrid circumstances of barbarity.'

It were loathsome to tell of children smothered in the cradle, or dashed from the rocks, or suffocated, together with their mothers, in a cave; of villages burnt to ashes, and their inhabitants exterminated ; of women flying by hundreds from a blazing church, and butchered by a brutal soldiery, or of the execrations of an infuriated mob, while the witnesses of Jesus were suffering martyrdom. But such allusions may here be needful, while Piedmont is in view, that it may afterwards be more clearly seen how righteous are the judgments of God. Milton describes the scene with the power, without the fiction, of a poet. And without looking alone to the righteous retribution which awaits iniquity, he has obviously in view the words of the prophet,—that higher inspiration which no poetry alone can ever reach.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
E'en them that kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans,
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the BLOODY PIEDMONTESE, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

* Gilly's Narrative, p. 216.

O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
An hundred fold, who, having learned the way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe!

MILTON.

The inquisition, which originated in the persecution of the witnesses, is too faithful an index of the sufferings which they endured. Its history, wherever it was established, is one tale of horror. Its victims were indeed clothed with sackcloth.

The witnesses of Jesus were questioned by torture; and their testimony to the faith led the way to the dungeon and the stake. Yet, the inquisition was but one of many modes by which, age after age, the man of sin, who exalted himself above all, sought to wear out the saints of the Most High. Power was given them to testify, though the invention of their enemies was racked to devise new modes of the most aggravated torture. And if ever the malignity of demons had full scope on earth, it was practised in vain against the anointed ones of the Lord. The shedding of their blood, that would not for ever be unavenged, served to exemplify and perfect the faith and patience of the saints. The law of the members overmastering the law of the mind, needs not a witness wherever faith is wanting. But, throughout ages, the opposite proof was given to the world, that the power which man has of killing the body, under whatever form of death, was unable to resist the faith which overcomes the world, or to extinguish in the mind the light of the gospel, or the hopes of the Christian. Manifold are the instances in which, rather than deny their Lord, the victims of papal barbarity threw themselves into the flames, and their last word was that of witnesses.

The persecution of the Albigenses and the Vaudois disseminated the doctrines which they preached

wherever they fled from the fiery inquisition. And notwithstanding the zeal of a corrupt priesthood in suppressing them, the seeds of the glorious Reformation were sown extensively throughout Europe, especially in Germany and Britain. The light of the gospel penetrated the gloom, and survived all the fires of the inquisition, though they were kindled in many countries. "The seed of the church," as at the first, sprung forth the most vigorously around the stake where the ashes of the martyrs were mingled with their blood. Even a war of extermination, which, as in France, did there extinguish the light, spread it the more rapidly into other regions, and prepared them for an easier riddance of the papal yoke than the fearful revolution which finally became the portion of that kingdom, whose territories were deluged with the blood of the saints, and which lent its power to extirpate them in other lands.

And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must, in like manner, be killed, &c. verse 5. The times and laws were to be given into the hands of the papacy, for a time, times and a half; but, it is added, the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. The cause of the martyrs shall finally prevail over that of the murderers. Vengeance belongs unto their Lord. They denounced against papal Rome, as Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth, all the judgments written in the word of God against an idolatrous church. And as the Lord said unto Jeremiah, "I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them;" so it is said, that fire proceeded out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies. God would avenge their cause by bringing not only spiritual, but temporal

judgments on their enemies. But the time of their prophesying in sackcloth had first to cease. In the

charge, or threatening, to the papal church (as symbolized by the rider on the black horse, with the yoke in his hand,) it is said, "And see thou hurt not the wine and the oil." And, in the same vision, under the representation of the saints calling from beneath the altar, (which is here measured,) they are heard exclaiming, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ?" But this appeal for the souls of them that are slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held, (the witnesses) was not made till after the rise of infidelity, or till the pale form of spiritual death had stalked upon the earth, to do his work of slaughter; and the pearance of a new enemy called forth, at last, the expostulation of the saints, and made their spirits speak. Even then it was said, (chap. vii. 11,) that they should rest YET for a little season, until their fellow servants and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. If "the analogy of faith" warrant such an appropriation, or sanction so seemingly plain a comparison of things spiritual with spiritual, instead of turning to past history for an interpretation of the sequel of the vision, the church of Christ should not be unprepared for the fact, that though the time of the testifying of the witnesses may be completed, their death may be yet

to come.

ap

On the death and resurrection of the witnesses it is said, "And the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men (or names of men,) seven thousand; and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” The illustration is not palpable (like that of all fulfilled pro