They despise the sepulchre of the Lord and the sepulchres of the Saints *.

They say that services for the dead, masses for the defunct, oblations at funerals, visitations of tombs, and suffrages for the departed, are no way profitable to souls †.

All these errors they hold, because they deny Purgatory: saying, that there are only two ways; one, of the elect to heaven; another, of the damned, to hellt.

They say that one Pater Noster is worth more, than the jingling of ten bells and the Oblation of one Mass §.

Rogationum et funerum, respuunt.

p. 301.

Reiner. de hæret. c. v.

* Item, sepulchrum Domini, et sepulchra sanctorum, contemnunt. Reiner. de hæret. c. v. P. 301.

+ Item dicunt, quod exequiæ mortuorum, Missæ defunctorum, oblationes funerum, testamenta, legata, visitatio sepulchrorum, vigiliæ lectæ, anniversarius, tricesimus, septimus, suffragia, non prosint animabus. Reiner. de hæret. c. v, p. 301.

Hos omnes errores habent, quia negant Purgatorium : dicentes, tantum duas vias esse; scilicet, unam, electorum, ad cœlum; aliam, damnatorum, ad infernum. Reiner. de hæret. c. v. p. 301.

§ Item dicunt, quod unum Pater Noster plus valeat, quam sonus decem campanarum, et plus quam Missa. Reiner. de hæret. c. v. p. 301.

It may not be useless to subjoin the summary of their doctrines, which has been given by Thuanus.

Eorum hæc dogmata ferebantur : Ecclesiam Romanam, quoniam veræ Christi fidei renunciaverit Babylonicam Meretricem esse, et arborem illam sterilem quam ipse Christus diris

These are the dutiful and conforming sons of the Church, with whom Bossuet is so delighted, that I must needs, in conclusion, repeat his well-merited eulogium.

When the Poor men of Lyons, says the Bishop of Meaux, separated themselves from the Church, they had only very few dogmas contrary to our own: perhaps, indeed, none totally.—Their system was, in truth, a species of Donatism.

Certainly, a contented mind is one of the greatest of earthly blessings.

devovit at revellendam esse præcepit; proinde minimè parendum Pontifici et Episcopis, qui ejus errores fovent; monasticam vitam Ecclesiæ sentinam ac plutonium esse; vana illius vota, nec nisi fœdis puerorum amoribus servientia; Presbyterii Ordines magnæ bestiæ, quæ in Apocalypsi commemoratur, notas esse; ignem purgatorium, solemne sacrum, templorum encænia, cultum sanctorum, ac pro mortuis propitiatorium, Satanæ commenta esse. His præcipuis ac certis eorum doctrinæ capitibus alia afficta, de conjugio, resurrectione, animæ statu post mortem, et de cibis. Thuan. Hist. lib. vi. § 16. vol. i. p. 221,

BOOK IV.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.

CHAPTER I.

RESPECTING THE ANCIENT INTERCOURSE AND FINAL GEOGRAPHICALLY ECCLESIASTICAL JUNCTION OF THE ALBIGENSES AND THE VALLENSES.

SINCE on all hands it is admitted, that the Vallenses were not Manichèans, whatever might have been the case with the Albigenses: it is, I think, palpably clear, that, if the latter had really been Manichèans (as the Papists delight to represent them), they never could have had any religious intercourse with the former, and still less could ever have finally been absorbed into their Society. Yet both these matters rest upon historical testimony. Hence we are again brought to our old conclusion that the Albigenses could not have been Manichèans.

I. We have more than one notice, that the Albigenses and the Vallenses mingled with each

other, in the way of brotherly fellowship, prior to their final ecclesiastical union in the same country.

1. About five hundred years before the year 1655, or (to specify the precise time) in the year 1165, a large body of Frenchmen, driven from their own country by persecution, emigrated and planted themselves in the Valleys of Piedmont, chiefly in that of Pignerol: where they were kindly received as brethren, and where they settled among the ancient Vallenses without any objection being raised and without any impediment being contrived *.

Now who could these gallican sufferers from persecution have been?

Certainly, they could not have been the French Proselytes of Peter Valdo. For he himself only exchanged a barren hereditary speculation for a spiritual personal faith in the year 1160: and it is highly improbable, that his converts in the course of five years, even if he made any in the lapse of that period, should either be so numerous or attract such attention, as to emigrate in a large

*Morland's Hist. of the Church of Piedm. p. 12, 289. Morland erroneously speaks of these emigrants as Valdenses: for he falls into the mistake, so justly pointed out by Bossuet, of styling, as it had become common in the time of the Jesuits Gretser and Mariana, all the dissident religionists of France, by the general name of Valdenses, as if they had universally sprung from the disciples of Peter Valdo.

body on account of a furious persecution. Accordingly, the historian Thuanus distinctly tells us, that the sect of the French Valdenses or the Poor Men of Lyons, as instituted by Peter the Valdo, did not commence until the year 1170*. This is precisely what we should expect. In the first instance, I suppose, the pious merchant's converts were neither very abundant in number nor very complete in organisation. They were a small and feeble flock: and, if they drew any notice, they would probably be deemed nothing more than the germ of one of those Religious Orders which the Roman Church has ever sagaciously patronised as the safety-valves of fanaticism. But, in the year 1170, they had become regularly embodied as a Society of Missionaries. Whence that year was not unnaturally pitched upon, as affording a satisfactory date for the commencement of the French Valdenses under the aspect of an organised sect of new heretics. Such a chronological view of the matter precludes the possibility, that the gallican emigrants to Piedmont in the year 1165 could have been proselyted disciples of Peter Valdo. It may be added too, that a permanent settlement of this description was directly contrary to the very plan of the institution of the Poor Men of Lyons. They were

Petrus Valdus, locuples civis Lugdunensis, anno Christi circiter 1170, Valdensibus nomen dedit. Thuan. Hist. lib. vi. § 16. vol. i. p. 221.