issued by Emanuel Philibert, for the final extermination of the heretics of the valleys, the Count de la Trinité, at the head of a considerable army, took the field against them. The resistance made by the Vaudois was desperate; and, protected by their natural fortresses, they succeeded in baffling the ruthless foe, till the rigours of an Alpine winter compelled him to retire to the plains. The conflict was renewed with increased fury and cruelty in the spring; but ultimately, the Duke of Savoy called off his troops, and the valleys were permitted to enjoy a considerable interval of tranquillity. In 1665, the slumbering rage of persecution was again awakened; and the inhabitants of the valleys were saved from extermination only by the spirited remonstrance of Oliver Cromwell, which he threatened to support, if necessary, by force; and a collection was made in England for their relief, to the amount of nearly 40,000l. From that time till the year 1685, they enjoyed comparative immunity. But in that year, Louis XIV., having revoked the Edict of Nantes, prevailed with Victor Amadeus II. to make another effort to force the Vaudois to submit to the papal yoke, offering to support him with 14,000 French troops. In the following year, operations were commenced, which the Vaudois were prepared to resist; and on the 23d of April, 1686, they repulsed and drove back their French assailants on the side of St. Germain. On the next day, they succeeded in giving a check to the army of the Duke of Savoy on the heights of Angrogna. But, on the third day, whether seized with a sudden panic, or exhausted by these heroic efforts, or influenced by unexplained inducements, they surrendered themselves to the Duke of Savoy, who, instead of being conciliated by their unhoped for submission, crowded his prisons with his captives. According to Henry Arnaud, their patriotic historian, the entire population of the valleys, amounting to 14,000 persons, were thrown into dungeons; 11,000 of whom rapidly perished, either by disease or by the hands of the executioner; and the remaining 3000 were banished, their lands being in part assigned to a colony of Irish, who had emigrated from their country during the Protectorate. Of the

survivors, about 800 accepted of the offered protection of the Elector of Brandenburg; but the greater part settled in the Palatinate. There, however, they were not long suffered to remain unmolested; and the invasion of that province of the empire by Louis XIV., in 1689, led to one of the most extraordinary and successful enterprises that were ever achieved by a band of determined men. In August of that year, they assembled, to the number of 800, in the forest of Nyon, and, under the command of one of their pastors, (Henry Arnaud, above-mentioned,) crossed the Lake of Geneva, on the night of the 15th, to commence a march of nearly 200 miles over a mountainous and hostile country, for the purpose of recovering their possessions sword in hand. After boldly attacking and defeating the Marquis de Larrey at the head of 2400 regular troops, at the bridge of Salabertran, they ascended by moonlight the almost inaccessible face of the opposite mountain, whence they descended into the valley of the Clusone; and on the following morning, having routed a detachment of the enemy, re-entered, as glorious victors, their native land, from which, little more than three years before, they had been ignominiously led captive.

The present inhabitants of the valleys are the descendants of these heroic men. During the reign of Napoleon, they enjoyed a complete equality of civil privileges, and their pastors were provided for by the Government. But when replaced, by the Congress of Verona, under their ancient sovereign, they again became victims of an oppression, the more galling from contrast with their short-lived prosperity. The royal pension which their pastors had for more than a century received from the British crown,* was illiberally withheld by the Administration of the day, on their becoming the subjects of France (in 1796); and it was not till after repeated memorials and representations on their behalf, that, in 1826, the stipend was restored. In the mean time, their claims upon the liberality of their fellow Protestants had come to be generally recognised; contributions for their relief had been raised in France, in Prussia, and in the Netherlands,

First granted by William and Mary.

as well as in this country;* and the religious wants of this interesting and long-neglected community have at length received attention, and been partially met by a supply of the Holy Scriptures, and the formation of schools, for want of which they were fast sinking into ignorance.

The population of the Vaudois communes amounted, in 1816, to rather more than 20,000 persons, of which 1700 were Roman Catholics. In ancient times, a synod of as many as 120 pastors is stated to have been annually convened in the recesses of these mountains, whence missionaries were sent forth to preach in every part of Europe.† Now the pastors of this

* The Emperor, Alexander I. of Russia, transmitted a munificent benefaction of 12,000 francs, towards the erection of a hospital and a new church; and the King of Prussia presented 10,000 francs towards the support of the schools, the clergy, and their widows. The case of the Vaudois was first brought under the notice of the British public and government by the General Body of the Three Denominations of Dissenting Ministers in London in 1816; and a fund was raised for their immediate relief. It was not till nine years after this, that the Vaudois had the good fortune to engage the sympathy of some of the clergy of the Established Church; and in 1825 a committee was formed to raise subscriptions for their benefit.

The churches in these valleys were formerly much more numerous. There are now only fifteen parish churches, although, in the ancient records, mention is made of eight other parishes, to which pastors were attached; these are now annexed to the fifteen. In the valley of the Clusone (Val Perosa), there were, as late as 1727, six flourishing Vaudois churches, which were sacrificed to an exchange of territory between France and the House of Savoy; all who remained faithful to their religion being forced into exile. The Vaudois were also numerous in the valleys of Queiras, Mathias, and Meane, near Susa, until entirely extirpated there by Duke Charles Emmanuel in 1603; as they were in the Marquisate of Saluzzo in 1633, where they had many churches. Five villages and the town of Lucerne, formerly attached to the parish church of St. Jean, have also been taken from them in the valley of Lucerne. Indeed, in the year 1560, the Vaudois had churches in Pignerolo, Quiers, and Turin.-Authentic Details of the Waldenses, pp. 101, 102. In the fourteenth century, the population of these valleys, swelled by emigrants from Lyons, becoming excessive, many families withdrew to Provence; others to villages in the Marquisate of Saluzzo. But the most considerable colonies formed at that time, sought an asylum in Calabria and Apulia, where they built Borgo d'Oltramontane, near Montalto, and, fifty years afterwards, on the increase of new settlers, San Sisto, Vacurisso, Argentine, and St. Vincent. The Marquis of Spinello also allowed them at last to build on his land, near the sea, the fortified town of Guardia. This colony continued to flourish when the Reformation dawned upon Italy; but, after subsisting for nearly two centuries, was basely and barbarously exterminated by the Court of Rome.-See M'Crie's Reformation in Italy, pp. 3-6, 257, 266, 282, 344. It is a curious fact, as remarked by this historian, that "the first gleam of light, at the revival of letters,

little flock are reduced to less than twenty. The continued existence of this community is, indeed, a singular phenomenon. Nothing short of necessity, or a local attachment too strong to be overcome, could, one would think, induce the inhabitants to brave the rigours of an Alpine winter, and to risk the horrors of famine, in the bleak, rugged, and barren highlands which they occupy. Their poverty is extreme; but they glory in their religious freedom and their traditional recollections. ،، We led the way in the emancipation from papal thraldom,” exclaimed the venerable moderator, M. Peyrani, to his English visiter, Dr. Gilly, in 1823. "We stood in the front rank; and against us the first thunderbolts of Rome were fulminated. The baying of the blood-hounds of the Inquisition was heard in our valleys before you knew its name. They hunted down some of our ancestors, and pursued others from glen to glen, and over rock and mountain, till they obliged them to take refuge in foreign countries. A few of these wanderers penetrated as far as Provence and Languedoc, and from them were derived the Albigenses, or heretics of Albi. The province of Guienne (then in possession of the English) afforded shelter to the persecuted Albigenses. From an English province, our doctrines found their way into England itself;* and your Wickliffe preached nothing more than what had been advanced by the ministers of our valleys four hundred years before his time. ... Ours is the Apostolic succession, from which the Roman hierarchy has departed."†

shone on that remote spot of Italy, (Calabria,) where the Vaudois had found an asylum." And it is not less remarkable, that in the mountainous corner of Piedmont, where Cottius defied the arms of Augustus, should be found the only remnant of the church of the Reformation in Italy, who have been able to maintain their stand against the power of papal Rome.

* The fires of persecution had been kindled at Turin, the scene of Bishop Claude's apostolic labours, and in the neighbouring cities, as early as the tenth century. About the middle of the eleventh, Cologne witnessed the martyrdom of several alleged heretics, respecting whose sentiments there is no room to question that they were substantially scriptural. In the twelfth century, the Cathari, or Puritans, abounded in Germany, Flanders, Lorraine, Southern France, Savoy, and Milan; and a small company of German refugees found their way from Gascony into England, where they were cruelly persecuted, and, after undergoing a public whipping and other penal severities, perished of cold and hunger. The crusade against the Albigenses was undertaken in 1209.

+ Gilly's Narrative, p. 78.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANGLICAN AND SCOTTISH CHURCHES.

Specific peculiarities of the Anglican church.-Points of approximation to the church of Rome.-Analysis of the Thirty-nine Articles.-Points of opposition to Romanism.-Fundamental difference relating to the Rule of Faith.-Authority in Controversies of Faith claimed by the Anglican church.-Principles at issue between the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Queen Elizabeth and the Puritan Divines.-Hooker's Theory of Ecclesiastical Authority.-Similar power claimed by the Scottish Reformers.-Analysis of the Westminster Confession.-Form of Presbyterial Church Government established in Scotland.-Archbishop Usher's new model.-Six points of difference between the Anglican and Scottish churches: Orders; Hierarchical Constitution; Ritual; the Sacraments; Discipline; Theological Tenets.

BETWEEN the Established Churches of England and Scotland, there exists a difference of constitution and doctrinal character, very similar to that which distinguishes the Lutheran churches from those of the Reformed communion. The Scottish church, reformed upon the model of Geneva, is, in its doctrines, rites, and polity, strictly Calvinian. The Anglican church, as regards both the spirit of its government and discipline, and its secular relations, approaches nearer to the Lutheran, that is, the German system, than to the Helvetic. Upon the great point of disunion between the Saxon and the Swiss Reformers-the Eucharist, the language of the English ritual favours the Lutheran doctrine, while that of the Articles, though Calvin and Melanchthon would probably alike have approved of it, could scarcely have been tolerated by Luther.

In its hierarchical constitution, the Anglican church differs alike from the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, with which it allows of no ecclesiastical communion. Deducing its episcopal succession from the Roman church, it recognises the validity of Romish orders, so that no priest of that