Their treatment of females in their religious assemblies was liberal and courteous in the extreme. They were not only allowed to preach, but bore an equal part with the men in all the business of the church; and the deeper we go into antiquity the more evident does this appear.
Against war, capital punishment, and oaths, they were decided in expressing their disapprobation. Their opposition to bearing arms, and to war in all its operations, was unanimous and unequivocal. Whoever commanded them to the field they refused to obey, alleging that they could not conscientiously comply. No contingencies would induce them to assume the weapons of death; and this peculiarity was well understood by all the world, and made the onsets of the inquisitors and crusaders upon these weaponless Christians the more cruel and contemptible. Concerning oaths, they appear to have adopted the language of our Saviour in a literal sense, where he commands his disciples, "Swear not at all."
Such were their rules. Whatever deviations there might have been were exceptions. Such deviations, it is natural to suppose, frequently occurred; but they generally came from those portions of the community who had been educated in the faith of Rome.
As it relates to their Baptist character I shall produce but one quotation, although a multitude might be given.
"As the Catholics of these times baptized by immersion, the Paterines, by what name soever they were called, as Manicheans, Gazara, Josephites, Pasaginians, &c., made no complaint of the mode of baptizing; but when they were examined upon the subject, they objected vehemently against the baptism of infants, and condemned it as an error."[28]
Of their doctrinal sentiments we can know but little, as no other portion of their history is involved in so much obscurity. Reinerus Saccho, however, represents them as believing rightly in everything pertaining to God and the Apostles' Creed. And they must have been evangelical Christians; for, when we see religious societies, century after century, holding on to their principles, and persisting in their religious practices, amidst the severest persecutions that were ever experienced, there is irrefragable evidence that they were built on a firm foundation. Indeed, it is hardly probable that among people whose religious teachers were obliged to depend upon manual labour for a livelihood, there would be much time wasted in unprofitable discussions about abstract points of theology.
The locality of these Christians, before they were dispersed by persecution, was in the principality of Piedmont, which derives its name from the singularity of its situation at the foot of the Alps,—a prodigious range of mountains that form a natural boundary between Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. It is bounded on the north by Savoy, on the east by the duchies of Milan and Montferrat, on the south by the county of Nice, and on the west by France. In ancient times it formed a part of Lombardy, but recently it has become an appanage of the Sardinian monarch, whose capital is Turin, one of the finest cities of Europe. It comprises an extensive tract of rich and fruitful valleys, embosomed in mountains, which are again encircled in mountains, intersected with deep and rapid rivers, and exhibiting, in strong contrast, the utmost beauty and luxuriance with the most frightful spectacles of barrenness and desolation. The country is an interchange of hill and vale, mountain and plain, through which four principal rivers wind their way to the Mediterranean. Besides these, there are eight-and-twenty smaller streams, which, winding their courses in different directions, contribute to the beauty and fertility of these Eden-like valleys.
The Pyrenees are another huge mountain range, that separate France from Spain, and extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of at least two hundred miles by a breadth of one hundred. This surface, like the former, is wonderfully diversified with hills and dales, mountains and valleys, in which places, and all along the borders of Spain, throughout the south of France, among and below the Alps, along the Rhine, and even to Bohemia and Passau, thousands of Christians were found, even in the darkest times, who preserved the faith in its purity, rejected the traditions of men, took the Scripture for their guide and rule of conduct, and were persecuted only for righteousness' sake. This place, in the desert, mountainous country, almost inaccessible and unknown to the rest of the world, was probably the place especially meant in Revelation, as prepared of God for the woman, where she should be fed and nourished during the reign of Antichrist.
These people were deeply imbued with the spirit of missions; but in this, as everything else, they closely adhered to apostolic example. They had none of the cumbrous machinery of modern times in their arrangements for disseminating the light of the gospel. They knew nothing of supporting in worldly state expensive teachers in foreign countries, or of building costly chapels for them to preach in. But, in the simple style of itinerating merchants or peddlers, their missionaries travelled from country to country, carrying with them a few pages of the Scriptures in manuscript, holding little meetings, ordaining deacons, and sustaining the hopes and faith of the persecuted and tempted ones.
Of their modes of worship we know but little. Their churches, however, were divided into compartments, such as in modern times are called associations; and these were again subdivided into congregations. They generally assembled for worship in private houses or in the shade of groves. Their churches contained from two to fifteen hundred members. In times of persecution they met in small companies of six, ten, fifteen, or twenty, but never in large assemblies. Besides these churches established in their mountain fastnesses, the Waldenses, or Passagines,[29] had instituted churches in nearly all the principal cities in the south of France and the northern parts of Italy. At Modena their place of meeting was in a large manufactory, which was owned and worked by the brethren. In Milan they occupied almost an entire street, and their church is said to have contained nearly two thousand communicants. In 1056, their church in Avignon contained six hundred members, and a remnant continued, notwithstanding various reverses of fortune, so late as 1698. We are also informed that there were churches of the same order at Brescia, Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Romandiola, and many other places. For many centuries they remained untroubled by the state; but the clergy preached and published books against them. In the eleventh and twelfth century they comprised the bulk of the inhabitants of Lombardy, and several men eminent for rank, station, and talents, belonged to their communion. It is to these that M. de la Roque refers when he says, "We have had many worthy and pious men, well instructed in science and the history of the Fathers, who were neither ashamed nor afraid to adopt both the practice and defence of the observation of the seventh day against their opponents; and, contrary to popular custom, withstood every allurement and temptation that the enlightened and persecuting ages could afford. The observation of the Sabbath remained not with them a matter of doubtful disputation, as that of the first day did with the Rev. Dr. Watts, and many others who were engaged in the controversy upon that subject." A modern French writer, in treating the history of the Gallican church, observes that it is well known that all Lombardy, the south of France, and even the mountainous district in the north of Spain, were infested by a class of heretics, who not only derided all the festivals of the church, but kept the Jewish Sabbath; "and I have heard," he continues, "that the primitive Waldenses were guilty of the same practices."