sistance from the princes of the Latin church, or dered mass to be celebrated in one of his churches according to the form used in Rome. The people with great indignation protested, that they would rather see the Turks in their churches, than the hat of a cardinal.

. The history of the Waldenses, though well known, cannot be too often repeated. In the twelfth century, a merchant of Lyons, named PeterValdo, dissatisfied with the pomp and cere monies of the Romish church, ill suited, in his opi nion, to the humility of a Christian, retired to a desart in the high country of Provence, with seve. ral poor people his disciples. There he became their spiritual guide, instructing them in certain doctrines, the same that were afterwards adopted by the Protestants. Their incessant labour subdued the barren soil, and prepared it for grain as well as for pasture. The rent which in time they were enabled to pay for land that afforded none originally, endeared them to their landlords. In 250 years, they multiplied to the number of 18,000, occupying thirty villages, beside hamlets, the work of their own hands. Priests they had none, nor any disputes about religion: neither had they occasion for a court of justice, as brotherly love did not suffer them to go to law: they worshipped God in their own plain way, and their innocence was secured by incessant labour. They had long enjoyed the sweets of peace and mutual affection, when

1

when the reformers of Germany and Geneva sent ministers among them; which unhappily laid them open to religious hatred, the most unrelenting of all furies. In the year 1540, the parliament of Provence condemned nineteen of them to be burnt for heresy, their trees to be rooted up, and their houses to be razed to the ground. The Waldenses, terrified at this sentence, applied in a body to Cardinal Sadolet, bishop of Carpentras ; who received them kindly, and obtained from Francis I. of France, a pardon for the persons under sentence of death, on condition of abjuring heresy. The matter lay over five years; when the parliament irritated at their perseverance, prevailed on the King to withdraw his pardon. The sentence was executed with great rigour; and the parliament, laying hold of that opportunity, broke through every restraint of law, and commenced a violent persecution against the whole tribe. The soldiers began with massacring old men, women and children, all having fled who were able to fly; and proceeded to burn their houses, barns, and corn. There remained in the town of Cabriere sixty men and thirty women; who having surrendered upon promise of life, were butchered all of them without mercy. Some women who had taken refuge in a church, were dragged out and burnt alive. Twenty-two villages were reduced to ashes: and that populous and flourishing district became once more a desart.

Το

in

To conceive this horrid scene in all its deformity, the people persecuted ought to be compared with the clergy their persecutors: for the civil magistrate was the hand only that executed their vengeance on the one side, an industrious honest people, pure in their morals, and no less pure their religion on the other, proud pampered priests, abandoned without shame to every wickedness, impure in their morals, and still more impure in their religion-the world never furnished such another contrast. Had the scene been reversed, to make these wretches suffer persecution from the Waldenses-but that people were too upright and too religious for being persecutors. The manners of the Christian clergy in general, before the Reformation, enlivens the contrast. The doctrine promulgated during the dark times of Christianity, That God is a mercenary being, and that every person however wicked may obtain pardon of his sins by money, made riches flow into the hands of the clergy in a plentiful stream. And riches had the same effect upon the Christian clergy that they have upon all men, which is, to produce pride, sensuality, and profligacy: these again produced dissipation of money, which prompted avarice, and every invention for recruiting exhausted treasures *. Even as early as the eighth century,

VOL. III.

Ee

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, many of the clergy became merchants; and, being free of taxes, engrossed all. In

the

century, the Christian clergy, tempted by opulence, abandoned themselves to pleasure, without moderation; and far exceeded the laity in luxury, gluttony, and lust. When such were the pastors, what must have been the flock Rejoice, O Scotland, over the poverty and temperance of thy pastors. During that period, the clergy could read, and, like parrots, they could mumble prayers in Latin in every other respect, they rivalled the laity in ignorance. They were indeed more cunning than the laity; and understood their interest better, if to covet riches at the expence of probity, deserve that name. Three articles were established that made religion an easy service. First, That faith is the essence of religion, without regard to good works; and hence the necessity of being strictly orthodox, which the church only could determine. Second, Religious worship was reduced to a number of external ceremonies and forms, which, being declared sufficient for salvation, absolved Christians from every moral duty. Remark, that a priest is always the chief person in ceremonial worship. The third article, That God is a mercenary being, is mentioned above, with its necessary consequences. These articles brought about a total neglect, both in clergy and laity, not only of morality, but of every essential

religious

the Netherlands particularly, there was a great cry, that monasteries were converted into shops and warehouses, and the mansions of secular priests into tap-houses and inns.

religious duty. In fine, there never was a religion that deviated more from just principles, than that professed by Christians during the dark ages. Persecution reached none but the sincerely pious and virtuous. What a glorious tolerating sentiment doth Arnobius* throw out, and what profusion of blood would have been prevented, had it been adopted by all Christians! "Da veniam, "Rex summe, tuos persequentibus famulos: et "quod tuæ benignitatis est proprium, fugientibus ignosce tui nominis et religionis cultum. Non

66

est mirum, si ignoraris: majoris est admirationis, "si sciaris +." The following parable against persecution was communicated to me by Dr Franklin of Philadelphia, a man who makes a figure in the learned world. "And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his "tent, about the going down of the sun. And "behold a man, bent with age, coming from the

66

66

way of the wilderness leaning on a staff. And "Abraham arose, and met him, and said unto him, Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, "and tarry all night; and thou shalt rise early E e 2

66

* Lib. 1. Adversus Gentes.

" in

+ "Forgive, Almighty Power, the persecutors of thy ser"vants; and in the peculiar benevolence of thy nature, pardon "those men whose unhappiness it is to be strangers to thy "name and worship. That they should be ignorant of thy "divine nature, is less the subject of wonder, than that any "finite being should presume to know thee aright!"