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Waldenses
51
itinerants. If the light of truth were allowed to shine unobstructed,
it would sweep away the heavy clouds of error that enveloped the
people; it would direct the minds of men to God alone, and would
eventually destroy the supremacy of Rome.
The very existence of this people, holding the faith of the ancient
church, was a constant testimony to Rome’s apostasy, and therefore
excited the most bitter hatred and persecution. Their refusal to
surrender the Scriptures was also an offense that Rome could not
tolerate. She determined to blot them from the earth. Now began the
most terrible crusades against God’s people in their mountain homes.
Inquisitors were put upon their track, and the scene of innocent Abel
falling before the murderous Cain was often repeated.
Again and again were their fertile lands laid waste, their
dwellings and chapels swept away, so that where once were flour-
ishing fields and the homes of an innocent, industrious people, there
remained only a desert. As the ravenous beast is rendered more
furious by the taste of blood, so was the rage of the papists kin-
dled to greater intensity by the sufferings of their victims. Many of
these witnesses for a pure faith were pursued across the mountains,
and hunted down in the valleys where they were hidden, shut in by
mighty forests, and pinnacles of rock.
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No charge could be brought against the moral character of this
proscribed class. Even their enemies declared them to be a peaceable,
quiet, pious people. Their grand offense was that they would not
worship God according to the will of the pope. For this crime, every
humiliation, insult, and torture that men or devils could invent was
heaped upon them.
When Rome at one time determined to exterminate the hated
sect, a bull was issued by the pope condemning them as heretics,
and delivering them to slaughter. They were not accused as idlers,
or dishonest, or disorderly; but it was declared that they had an ap-
pearance of piety and sanctity that seduced “the sheep of the true
fold.” Therefore the pope ordered “that the malicious and abom-
inable sect of malignants,” if they refuse to abjure, “be crushed like
venomous snakes.” Did this haughty potentate expect to meet those
words again? Did he know that they were registered in the books
of Heaven, to confront him at the Judgment? “Inasmuch as ye have