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tion in habits of sound interpretation. The text is a sign or motto, after announcing which the preacher glides into a gentle train of commonplaces, or a series of thoughts which, however ingenious and interesting and true, have no necessary connection, continuous in their discontinuity, like the sand-thread of the hour-glass.""

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We have left ourselves no space for expressing an opinion of the manner in which the editors of the volume have discharged their task. How far the merit may be shared by each, we are left to guess; but suffice it to say, that by simply holding up the mirror to the man, by acting the part of kind and faithful executors, they have produced between them a fascinating and useful book, and raised a monument to the memory of their venerated friend, worthy of the genial spirit that has winged its flight to "the mountains of spices," and of the sacred dust that sleeps below.

ART. VII. 1. Histoire Générale des Eglises Evangéliques des Vallées de Piémont, ou Vaudoisees. Par JEAN LEGER, Pasteur et Modérateur des Eglises des Vallées. A Leyde, 1669.

2. Histoire de la Rentrée des Vaudois dans leurs Vallées du Piémont. Par H. ARNAUD, Pasteur et Colonel des Vaudois. Neuchatel, 1845.

3. Histoire de l'Eglise Vaudoise. Par ANTOINE MONASTIER. Toulouse, 1847.

4. History of the Old Waldenses anterior to the Reformation. By JEAN PAUL PERRIN. Philadelphia, 1847.

5. Some Remarks upon the Ecclesiastical History of the Ancient Churches of Piedmont. By PETER ALLIX, D.D. Oxford, 1831.

6. Waldensian Researches. By WILLIAM STEPHEN GILLY, D.D., Prebendary of Durham. London, 1831.

7. The Vaudois: comprising Observations made during a Tour to the Valleys of Piedmont in the Summer of 1844. By E. HENDERSON, D.D. London, 1845.

8. Sketches of the Waldenses. London Tract Society.

9. Report of London Vaudois Committee. London, 1845. 10. Letters on the Waldenses in "News of the Churches," Nos. IX. and XI.

1854.

SIR SAMUEL MORLAND, before setting out in 1655, on his famous mission from Cromwell to the court of Turin, to intercede in behalf of the persecuted Vaudois church, was invited

to an interview with the venerable Usher, then Primate of Ireland. "He gave me a very serious and strict charge," says Morland, "to use my utmost diligence in the inquiry after, and to spare no cost in the purchase of all those MSS. and authentic pieces which might give any light into the ancient doctrine and discipline of those churches, adding, there was nothing in the world he was more curious and impatient to know, as being a point of exceeding great weight and moment for stopping the mouths of our popish adversaries, and discovering the footsteps of our religion in the dark intervals of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. This serious injunction of that reverend and worthy man," he continues, "together with mine own real inclinations, caused me to leave no stone unturned, nor to lose any opportunity during my abode in those parts, for the real effecting this thing; and although the pope's emissaries had already gathered the more choice clusters and ripe fruits, yet I met at least with the grapegleanings of the vintage,-I mean divers pieces of antiquity, some whereof had been a long time buried under dust and rubbish, others had been scattered about in the valley, some here, some there, in desert and obscure places, and without a singular providence had never come to light."

There evidence that these documents, consisting of twentyone volumes and a box of papers, severally marked with the letters of the alphabet, were deposited in the University library of Cambridge in 1658; but the strange fact is, that seven of these volumes, with the box, have disappeared, and that Morland's general description of them leaves the impression that the abstracted volumes were the most valuable of the mass, and would have enabled us to trace the continuity of doctrine and worship in this mountain-church in a broad line of light up to the earliest ages. A comparison of facts fixes the date of this abstraction to some time in the reign of James II., and leaves little reason to doubt what were the motives that had guided the hands of the sacrilegious pilferers. But while base attempts like these, and similar acts of ecclesiastical vandalism repeatedly committed in the valleys themselves, have diminished, they have not destroyed or even rendered doubtful the proofs on which the Vaudois church rests her claim to the highest antiquity. The venerable document, known as the "Noble Lesson," and which contains in it all the elements of an evangelical Protestantism, carries us back to the year 1100, and at once disproves the interested assertion of Romanists, to which some Protestants have given an indolent assent, that Peter Waldo was the founder of the Vaudois community. He did not flourish till nearly three ages after the publication of the "Noble Lesson," nor were his

disciples ever known in his own times as Waldenses, but as "Poor men of Lyons."

The bold labours of Claude of Turin, within whose diocese the valleys of Piedmont were situated, and whose principles are admitted by Bellarmine to have prevailed throughout his diocese, and to have been identical with those afterwards taught and practised in the Reformed churches, carry us several centuries nearer to apostolic times, namely, to about 820. And the history of this "Protestant of the ninth century," as Waddington has justly styled him, not only proves the existence of evangelic light in the valleys at this early date, but that the light had shone there so long before, that the errors of Popery were denounced by him as innovations and their advocates as a new sect. Strong in this conviction, the brave iconoclast commanded the images which he found in the basilics and temples of Turin to be torn from their pedestals and niches, and committed to the flames; and proclaimed in the streets of his capital the central doctrine and rallying cry of the Reformers, "justification by faith."

We must look farther back then, it is evident, than the days of Claude, for the dawn of the gospel in those Alpine regions; and did we hesitate in this opinion, the testimony of inquisitors and the concessions of adversaries would be sufficient to confirm us. The reports of those agents of the secret tribunal always bore one complexion,-that the heresy in the valleys was unchecked, and that it appeared to have been rooted there from immemorial times; and the Waldenses themselves, from the earliest days, and in the most depressed condition, never failed to appeal, in assertion of their liberty of worship, to charters that had been granted to them before the existence of those royal houses which sought to violate or abridge them,charters whose authenticity and antiquity were unquestioned by their accusers, and which from their very nature must have been conceded ere Popery had yet become dominant in Italy.

Passing upwards, then, from the days of Claude, let us now suppose ourselves coming down upon the north of Italy some time in the fourth century. Ambition and superstition have even at this early period done much to secularise and corrupt the church; but still there are multitudes, both among the people and the clergy, to oppose the current of will-worship and of erroneous belief. Among these is Vigilantius, a native of those parts, who has lately returned from the east, disappointed at many things that have crept into the churches there, which are alien from the simplicity that is in Christ, and misleading and perilous to souls. He grieves that his remonstrances and arguments have found little sympathy even from men like Jerome, and that there is a growing unwillingness to return

to apostolic faith and practice. He longs for some to whom he can unbosom his mind, and among whom his fretted spirit can find peace. At length his footsteps are guided to the midst of the Cottian Alps, and there he finds a people likeminded with himself,-not Paulicians, as Gibbon insinuates with careless and disdainful glance, but guarding and cherishing with vigilance the sacred fire which Christ and his apostles had first kindled. It is to be remarked, that Church. history does not describe Vigilantius as giving the gospel to this people for the first time; he found them in the fourth century an organised church with a primitive faith; and on this account he cast in his lot with them. This being the case in the fourth century, we are led back to search for their origin, if not in the days of apostles, at least in the days of men who had conversed with apostles. We know that at Lyons, in France, there were many Christians so early as the second century, and that their bishop was Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple of John. Now, as the road from Italy into Gaul lay across those Alps at the foot and in the bosom of which the Vaudois church is placed, may it not have been that Irenæus, or even an evangelist prior to him, preached the gospel to those mountaineers? There is a tradition that Paul passed by this same route into Spain, and that God, who always caused him to triumph in every place, honoured him to gather the first-fruits of the gospel in those secluded regions. Or, it may be that the first whose beautiful feet were beheld upon those mountains, publishing the glad tidings of peace, were some of the early refugees who had fled from persecution under the Roman emperors, and that they then lighted a fire among those Alpine fastnesses, which, by God's help, has never gone out. This is the opinion of Arnaud, the illustrious military pastor of the Vaudois, and of their earlier native historians; and the rocky and inaccessible nature of many parts of the country offering a natural asylum for the persecuted, gives high probability to the opinion.

But whatever amount of truth there may be in these more detailed conjectures, we have said enough to prove that there has existed from the earliest times, in this corner of the Alps, a church which never allowed itself to be corrupted or enthralled by Popery, or, as the Vaudois themselves are accustomed strongly to express it, "that never sucked the milk of the wolf of Rome." Romanists have done their utmost to escape from this conclusion, aware of the powerful weapon of defence which it puts into the hands of Protestants. They have often asked with an air of triumph, "Where, if not at Rome, before the so-called Reformation, was the church to whom the promise was verified that the gates of hell should never prevail

against her?" The church of Christ was where the truth and the Spirit of Christ were; and there accordingly, in that wondrous people," dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations," keeping alive amid storm and gloom the heavenenkindled flame, protected a thousand times from the decrees of extirpation issued by Rome and the Inquisition, we recognise the features of the bride of Christ. Rome has accomplished far other prophecies, in the foretold apostasy, in the Antichrist sitting in the temple of God and professing himself that he is God, in will-worship and tyranny, in persecu tions that have made her drunk with the blood of saints; but in this Vaudois church driven into the wilderness, prophesying in sackcloth, passing through the storms of eighteen centuries, we see the living archway between primitive Christianity and Protestantism,-the golden candlestick that has never been removed out of its place,-the rock-built edifice that has resisted the gates of hell,-the bush that has burned but never been consumed.

In thus tracing the evidence of the high antiquity of the Vaudois church, we have intentionally restricted our view to the few valleys embosomed in the Piedmontese Alps, because we believe this region to have been their birth-place and stronghold. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the adherents of the Vaudois faith, and even the bearers of the Vaudois name, were always restricted to such narrow boundaries. In the neighbouring plains of Saluzzo, in the valley of Pragela, in the beautifully situated district of Susa, upon which the modern traveller descends into Italy from the Mount Cenis pass, the faith and worship of this apostolic church were long triumphant. On the other side of the Alps, in the French provinces of Dauphiné and Provence, were to be found the sister churches of the Albigenses, identical with our Italian Vaudois in belief and practice, and numbered by tens of thousands, until persecution under Francis I. almost rooted them out, or drove them in scattered fragments across the icy frontiers to Piedmont.

The spirit of proselytism is in fact characteristic of all living churches, and can be seen working vigorously for centuries in those churches of the Alps, and sending forth men, not only to the neighbouring plains, but to remote provinces and countries. The often-repeated story of the pious Vaudois pedlars bringing forth their jewels and ornaments, and after they had gained the confidence of the household, and received their pledge of secresy, offering to show them one stone more precious and wonderful than all the others, which shed so bright a lustre that it illuminated the soul of him that found it, and gave so great a heat that it warmed

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