* Relatione al consiglio de Prop. Fid. Turin, 1636.
** Bibliothèque des Pères, de Gretserus Traité contra les
Vaud.
The most obstinate opponents of the antiquity of the Vaudois must give way before the authority of Claude de Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin, who has this passage in his book against us, printed by privilege of Francis the First of France: "The sect of Vaudois," says he, "took its origin from one Leon, a truly religious man, who, in the time of Constantine the Great, detesting the extreme avarice of Pope Sylvester, and the lavish expenditure of Constantine, preferred living in poverty, with simplicity of faith, to the reproach of accepting a rich benefice with Sylvester. To this Leon all attached themselves who thought rightly of their Creed." The same author, after having made useless researches after the commencement of the Vaudois sect, concludes with these remarkable words: "That there must be some important and efficacious reason why this Vaudois sect had endured during so many ages. Again; all kind of different attempts to extirpate them have been made at different times, but they always remained victorious, and absolutely invincible, contrary to the expectation of all."
The reader will observe that this expression, "during so many ages," was written by Seyssel in 1500.
I have already quoted Rorenco, one of the most zealous of the missionaries sent against the Vaudois; his family still remains in the valleys. One of his descendants bearing the title of Count of La Tour, in his Memorie Historiche, addressed to the Duke Victor Amadeus, allows that the Vaudois doctrine was not new, in the time of Claude, many persons having opposed the Roman See before him; he also asserts that their doctrine remained the same in the 11th and 12th centuries. Rorenco will not, however, allow that the doctrine was derived from the Apostles, but avows (which nearly amounts to the same thing) that there is no ascertaining when it was first received in the valleys.
In fine, Samuel Casini, a Franciscan monk, says positively, in his work entitled Victoria Triomphale, printed at Coni, 1510, that "the errors of the Vaudois consisted in not admitting the Roman to be the sacred mother church, or obeying her traditions; although he could not, for his own part, deny that they acknowledged the Christian church, and had always been and still continued to be members of it."
Now it seems to me hardly possible, after these proofs, that anyone should venture to deny the truly Apostolic succession of the Vaudois church; but as some people have supposed that the Vaudois, after receiving the opinions of the court of Rome, have subsequently been reformed, like all those who are called Protestants; let them say when and where the Vaudois reformation took place; and let them also account for the silence of all historians on such an event! But as long as the testimony above quoted, of Catholics, Protestants, Vaudois; nay, of the very edicts of their princes, and their own petitions and replies, exists, I shall consider it as proved that the Vaudois church, having received the Gospel in the earliest days of Christianity, is the parent of all the reformed churches, and has never herself been reformed.
These truths having been established by such incontestable proofs, it remains only to give a sketch of the manners of the Vaudois, and the discipline of their churches, before we come to the historical part of my labours.
CHAPTER V. MANNERS OF THE VAUDOIS
In religion, theory is nothing without practice, and of all species of knowledge none requires less speculation than that of the Gospel. Its Divine Author has declared, that the religion which he came to announce to us consists not in words, but in virtues, which important declaration at once defines the spirit of Christianity, in placing charity even above faith. However this great truth may be forgotten by many of the Christians of these days, or rendered nugatory by the pretensions of their teachers, it is not the less incontestable at the tribunal of reason and revelation, and let us hope, for the good of humanity, that it will soon prevail over the vain phantoms which have been substituted for it throughout the greatest part of Europe. Yes, indeed! I delight in believing that the march of knowledge is a guarantee of this, and that we are approaching that happy time when a man will not be required to prove he is a Christian, merely by repeating, like a parrot, the articles of belief, which have been drawn up by the chiefs of the sect to which he belongs, when it will not suffice alone coldly to admit some Evangelical truths, but when those who call themselves Christians will acknowledge—"That pure religion is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world."* It cannot be too often repeated, that this is real Christianity.