the witnesses of Jesus wherever they were found throughout the western empire.

How early they began to send out missionaries to propagate their doctrines is not known. There were, from 1050 to 1250, great numbers of Paulicians, Publicani, Albigenses, and other dissentient preachers of the gospel throughout Lombardy, France, and Germany, and not improbably many bearing those names were Waldenses. In 1179 several of the disciples of Peter Waldo, of Lyons, a Waldensian emigrant, applied to pope Alexander III. to license their preachers in the missions in which they were already engaged, and in which they probably met obstructions from prelates and princes. They desired a license, doubtless, simply as a protection from persecution, not because they regarded themselves as unauthorized to preach without the pope's permission. From that period they and their converts at Lyons sent missionaries in great numbers throughout Italy, France, and Germany, and soon drew the notice of the papal court; were persecuted through near four hundred years, and fulfilled the office of witnesses with a fidelity and constancy worthy of the disciples of Jesus. Several of their works which still survive, that were undoubtedly written as early as the twelfth or thirteenth century, present the most decisive evidence on the one hand that they held the great truths of the gospel, and on the other, rejected the false system of the Catholic church. In their treatise of Antichrist, written probably in the thirteenth century, they exhibit the errors and idolatries of the papacy as the great characteristics of that apostate.

His first work they say is, that the homage which is due only to God, he perverts to himself, to departed saints, their images and relics, and to the eucharist, which he worships equally with God and Christ. His next work is that he robs Christ of his merits, and imputes regeneration, sanctification, and remission to his own authority. His third work is that he ascribes regeneration which is wrought by the Holy Spirit to the mere rite of baptism. His fourth, that he resolves the whole of religion into the mass. His fifth is avarice and ambition. His sixth an official allowance and license of sin. His seventh the employment of the secular power to compel a reception of his apostate doctrines and idolatrous rites; and his eighth, that he hates and persecutes the disciples of Christ.1

This testimony against the false doctrines, idolatrous worship, and impious tyranny of the nationalized church, they uttered

'Faber's Ancient Vallenses, pp. 379–384.

still more emphatically in the thirteenth century. They are represented by Pilichdorf as teaching that God alone should be praised and invoked, as holding that the saints do not intercede for us nor acquire a title to blessings except for themselves, as rejecting the imaginary sanctity of churches and cemeteries consecrated by superstitious rites and the presence of relics, and discarding indulgences, pilgrimages, the mass, purgatory, the worship of images, and the veneration of the cross, and denouncing the pope as the head of apostates.1

These doctrines they continued to maintain through the ages that followed. Claude Seyssel represents that they regarded the Scriptures as the only rule of faith, denied the right of synods to legislate over the divine laws, and thence ascribed no authority to the decrees and sentences of prelates; that they placed their sole reliance on Christ for salvation, denounced the Romish church as the great harlot and mistress of all errors, denied the power of the priest to forgive sins, and rejected the mass, the worship of saints and images, the homage of relics, transubstantiation, purgatory, and the consecration of places by pagan and idolatrous rites. Such is the testimony also of Thuanus.3

By the confession thus of their enemies, their testimony against the errors and idolatries of the antichristian church was for several centuries before the Reformation as clear and emphatic as that which was at that period uttered by the Protestants themselves; and they have continued to adhere to the truth without variation through every subsequent age, while the Lutheran and Reformed churches on the continent have either apostatized to a false faith, or turned to infidelity.

A similar testimony to the truth was uttered by the Wicklifites, Lollards, and Bohemians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was as characteristic almost of those dissentients, as it was of Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, and their followers, that they held the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith, and relied on the sacrifice of Christ for salvation in contradistinction from rites and works, denounced the pope as the man of sin, and the Roman church as apostate, condemned the homage of saints, images, and relics, and rejected the mass.

There is thus satisfactory evidence that apart from the Paulicians during the period in which they fulfilled their office in the eastern empire, there have been two lines of teachers and recipients of the word of God who have maintained its truth in opposition

Faber's Ancient Vallenses, pp. 415-420.

2 Ibid. pp. 424-431. Thuani Hist. lib. vi. tom. i. pp. 185-189, lib. xxvii. tom. ii. pp. 13, 14, 15.

to antichrist, and in great numbers sealed their testimony with their blood;-the Waldenses in Piedmont, and the Albigenses in France, until their dispersion in the thirteenth century, and subsequently their disciples and successors, the Wicklifites, Lollards, Bohemians, and Protestants.

It is no proof that these dissentients from the apostate church were not the witnesses of God, that they fulfilled their office but inadequately, that their views on the subjects of their testimony were often imperfect, and that they fell on others into errors. It was not necessary in order to their being witnesses, that they should understand and proclaim all truth, or be wholly free from imperfections. Such qualifications no uninspired teacher ever possessed. It was enough to constitute them witnesses, that they understood in a good degree and proclaimed the great truths which indisputably formed the peculiar subjects of their teachings, and that they denounced the opposite errors of the apostate worshippers.

And finally, the civil and ecclesiastical rulers whom they thus denounced, endeavored to injure and destroy them, assailed them with obloquy, trampled them down with oppression, subjected them to the most cruel torture, and put myriads and millions of them to death in the most ignominious and horrible forms.

The Greek emperors and bishops united in the persecution of those of them who uttered their testimony in the east. They commenced the work of false accusation, imprisonment, confiscation, and slaughter, almost immediately after their existence became known; and continued it in Armenia through one hundred and fifty years, during which, vast numbers were decapitated, crucified, consigned to the flames, and plunged into rivers; and their villages and dwellings burned, their property seized, and the lives of the survivors harassed with every species of oppression and outrage.

Those of them who were transported from their native land and colonized in Thrace and Bulgaria, continued to suffer persecution from the Greek emperors through several ages, and subsequently, as they migrated into the western empire, from the princes of Germany, Italy, and France, down to the sixteenth

century.

In like manner the rulers and prelates of the west united in the persecution of those within their dominions. It was by the instigation of the pope and the subordinate prelates, that the princes of France, Savoy, Germany, and Italy, were led to inake war on them. They commenced it against Claude of Turin,

renewed it against the Paulicians immediately on their entrance into Germany, Italy, and Gaul, and continued it through five hundred years against the Albigenses, Waldenses, Wicklifites, and Bohemians, during which great multitudes were swept to the grave by the sword and the fagot. The war of violence and outrage was commenced against the Protestants also within a few years after the proclamation of the gospel by them, and continued on a vast scale for two centuries in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the British isles, never wholly ceased except during a short period after the commencement of the French revolution, and has within a few years been renewed in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Spain. Not one of the classes through that long period, who fulfilled the office of witnesses for God, escaped the vengeance of those antichristian powers.

Great numbers of these witnesses have relied solely on their testimony for defence against their enemies, contenting themselves with the profession of their faith, and vindication of the rights of God, and the proclamation of his threatenings of vengeance on antichrist; and then, without resorting to arms for the protection of their persons or maintenance of their liberties, calmly submitting to obloquy, torture, and martyrdom, for the sake of Christ.

This was as generally and conspicuously characteristic of those of them who were seized by their enemies, torn on the rack, and consigned to the flames, as was their profession of the truths of the gospel, and denunciation of the errors and idolatries of their persecutors. It was so eminent in the vast crowd of the Albigenses who were led to the stake, as to excite the wonder of their enemies, and raise the conviction that they were sustained by supernatural aids. Bernard, who had exerted himself to induce the magistrates to exterininate them with fire and sword, admitted that they met death with fortitude and cheerfulness, but had the folly and malice to ascribe it to diabolical influence. Fortitude, meekness, and joy, were displayed in an equal degree by the martyrs at Orleans, Lombers, and other places in Gaul, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Waldenses in the thirteenth and fourteenth. Those who were butchered in Calabria are related to have died with a cheerfulness and constancy worthy of the disciples of Jesus. A Catholic

'Mirantur aliqui, quod non modo patienter, sed et laeti ut videbatur, ducerentur ad mortem; sed qui minus advertunt, quanta sit potestas diaboli, non modo in corpora hominum, sed etiam in corda quæ semel permissus possederit. Bernardi in Cant. ser. 66, c. 13, tom. i. p. 1499.

spectator represents the meekness and patience with which they went to martyrdom as astonishing. And an historian of the same communion who relates, in narrating the extermination of the colony, that some had their throats cut, some were sawn asunder, and others thrown from a high cliff, adds, that while the father saw his son put to death, and the son his father, they not only exhibited no symptom of grief, but said joyfully that they should become angels of God.' And such were the courage, cheerfulness, and trust in Christ, with which with scarce an exception, the vast crowd met the trials of torture and death, who were decapitated, strangled, or committed to the flames, in Italy and Spain, through a long series of years, till they were exterminated, and in France likewise, the Netherlands, Germany, and

the British isles.

Such are the proofs, obscure and inadequate as their history is, that during the long apostasy of the visible church, God raised up teachers and communities, who have fulfilled in an eminent manner the office of witnesses for him, and presented a conspicuous fulfilment of the prophecy. Could we call up from their graves the crowds who slumber in the plains of Italy, the deep glens of the Alps, the ancient cities of Gaul, Britain, and Germany, the valleys of Spain, the glades of the Netherlands, who were represented by this symbol, and who sealed their testimony with their blood, how vast would be the army! How illustrious would they appear as witnesses for him could they repeat to us their assertion of his truth in opposition to their antichristian persecutors, and depict the trials they endured in allegiance to him! And could they reveal to us the tokens which he gave them of his approbation, the interpositions by which he upheld and often delivered them, and the great results both of mercy and of judgment which he made to spring from their agency, how majestic a verification would they form of the promise, that they should be what Moses and Elijah were both to him and to his enemies!

Grotius interprets the two witnesses of the two classes, Jews and Gentiles, of which the church at Jerusalem consisted after the building of EÆlia by Hadrian. But that is against the analogy of the olive trees and lamps by which they are symbolized, and which sustain relations to each other like those of teachers and recipients of instruction, not like those of Jews and Gentiles, each of whom embraced both classes. It is in contradiction also to the use in the next verse of the term Gentiles, to represent idolaters. The witnesses are true teachers and worshippers, in 1 McCrie's Hist. Reform. in Italy, pp. 306, 307.