SECTION II.
CONCERNING THE DOCTRINAL SENTIMENTS AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF THE WALDENSES—THEIR SABBATARIAN CHARACTER STILL FURTHER CONSIDERED.
In giving an account of the doctrinal sentiments and religious practices of this people, we must principally depend upon the testimonies of their adversaries of the Romish church, and their own apologies, reasonings, and confessions, some of which have been handed down to us through the records of the Inquisition,[18] and by the historians of that period. Of these, Reineirus Saccho is the most celebrated. He had been for seventeen years, in the earlier part of his life, in connexion with the Waldenses, but apostatized from their profession, and joined the Catholic church, in which he was raised to the eminence of chief Inquisitor, and became the bitterest persecutor of his former friends. He was deputed by the pope to reside in Lombardy, at that time the headquarters of the Pasaginians, and about 1250, published a book, in which the errors of the Waldenses were all summed up under three-and-thirty distinct heads.[19]
To attempt any exposition of all these points would far exceed my limits, I shall therefore confine myself to what he says in reference to that particular doctrine by which they were allied to us. "They hold," says he, "that none of the ordinances of the church, which have been introduced since Christ's Ascension,[20] ought to be observed, as being of no value."
"The feasts,[21] fasts, orders, blessings, offices of the church, and the like, they utterly reject."
In the sketch which Reineirus furnishes of the doctrines of the Waldenses, there is not the slightest allusion to any erroneous opinions regarding the doctrines and principles of the gospel; and this silence on his part is a noble testimony to the soundness of their creed. He had himself been among them, was a man of talents and learning, and intimately acquainted with all their doctrinal sentiments; and, having apostatized from their faith, and become their bitterest enemy and persecutor, no one will suppose that he wanted the inclination to bring against them any accusation, which bore the least similitude to the truth. The errors of which he accuses them, are such as no Seventh-day Baptist of the present day would shrink from the charge of holding, since they all, in one way or other, resolve themselves into the unfounded claims of the ecclesiastical order, or the substitution for doctrines of the commandments of men.
In the twelfth century, a colony of the persecuted Waldenses obtained permission to settle at Saltz, on the river Eger.[22] They are represented as working upon, and despising, the holydays of the church.[23] Another eminent Bohemian author, in giving an account of the Waldenses of that country, observes, "Moreover they say that of six days, one day is as good as another, but as God had enjoined rest upon the seventh, mankind were bound to its observance."[24]
An inquisitor of the Church of Rome, who declares that he had exact knowledge of the Waldenses, at whose trials he had assisted many times, and in different countries, expressly says "that they contemn all ecclesiastical customs which they do not read of in the Gospel; such as the observation of Candlemas, Palm Sunday, the adoration of the cross on Good Friday, and the reconciliation of penitents. They despise the feast of Easter, and all the festivals of Christ and the saints,[25] and say that one day is as good as another, working on holydays when they can do so without being taken notice of."
The same testimony is borne of them by Eneas Sylvius, who ascended the pontifical chair with the title of Pope Pius II. Indeed, of all the multitude of Catholic authors of eminence, who have mentioned this people, every one bears testimony to this peculiarity in their doctrinal sentiments and religious practices. At a later period, and among more modern writers, we have every reason to believe that this feature of their faith has been purposely disguised. Nevertheless the candour of some has led them to make very important concessions upon this point. Mosheim expressly declares that the Pasaginians observed the Jewish Sabbath. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, says, "I conceive that the old Waldenses, who rejected all the festivals of the church, and went back to the original Sabbath, were much more consistent with themselves, than these gentlemen, the modern Protestants, who, though they discard all the others, still retain the Dominical day."
But, lest I weary my readers by a multiplication of testimonies, I shall add but one more quotation, which contains a concession that, coming from the quarter and at the time it does, I consider important. Mr. Benedict, in his History of the Baptists, says, that during the progress of his historical inquiries, he has met with many facts, where it seemed as if the heretics, so called, were unsound on the doctrine of the Sabbath, as established by law; but, he goes on, it is not certain that all whom the ancient inquisitors accused of being Sabbath-breakers, would come under the head of Sabbatarians.[26]