Success was various between Charles V. and some German princes: Philip of Spain and the Low Countries; the French king and his protestant subjects: sometimes losing, sometimes winning, interchangeably.
The wars and success of the Waldensian witnesses against three popes and their popish armies.
But most memorable is the famous history of the Waldenses and Albigenses, those famous witnesses of Jesus Christ, who rising from Waldo, at Lyons in France (1160), spread over France, Italy, Germany, and almost all countries, into thousands and ten thousands, making separation from the pope and church of Rome. These fought many battles with various success, and had the assistance and protection of divers great princes against three succeeding popes and their armies; but after mutual slaughters and miseries to both sides, the final success of victory fell to the popedom and Romish church, in the utter extirpation of those famous Waldensian witnesses.
God’s people victorious overcomers, and with what weapons.
God’s servants are all overcomers when they war with God’s weapons, in God’s cause and worship: and in Rev. second and third chapters, seven times it is recorded—To him that overcometh, in Ephesus; to him that overcometh, in Sardis, &c.; and Rev. twelfth, God’s servants overcame the dragon, or devil, in the Roman emperors by three weapons—the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and the not loving of their lives unto the death.
CHAP. LXVIII.
The third head of arguments from ancient and later writers.
Peace. The answerer, in the next place, descends to the third and last head of arguments produced by the author, taken from the judgment of ancient and later writers, yea, even of the papists themselves, who have condemned persecution for conscience’ sake: some of which the answerer pleaseth to answer, and thus writeth:—[176]
The Christian church doth not persecute but is persecuted.