WALDO'S LABOurs.

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It does not appear that Waldo had at first any intention of leaving the Romish communion. As he grew in the knowledge of the Scriptures, however, he discovered many doctrines and usages of that church which seemed at variance with the word of God. He first rejected transubstantiation, and then lifted up his voice against the arrogance of the pope and the vices of the clergy. These efforts aroused the hostility of the archbishop of Lyons: their tendency could not be mistaken: he resolved, therefore, to apprehend and imprison the offender. For some time, however, his attempts to take him failed, and during three years Waldo* lived concealed from his foes in his native city; a result which must be attributed in part to the number of his friends and converts, and in part to the universal esteem in which his character was held.

At length, however, the attention of pope Alexander III. was called to his proceedings, and he at once anathematized both Waldo and his adherents, and commanded the archbishop to take measures against them with the utmost rigour. Waldo was, therefore, compelled to leave Lyons; his flock also were scattered, but

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they went everywhere preaching the word." Numbers of them found an asylum in Piedmont, where they took with them their new

It seems certain that Waldo rather took his name from the Waldenses, than gave his name to them; the party at all events existed centuries before. The name is taken either from a Latin word, meaning one who lives in a dense valley, that is, a dalesman; or from a German word, meaning one who lives in a wood.

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THE BOHEMIANS.

translation of the Bible. There they united with others of the same faith, and are known in history as the Waldenses, or Vaudois. Waldo himself retired into Dauphiné, and thence into Picardy, where he laboured with much activity. Driven thence, he proceeded into Germany, carrying with him in all his wanderings the glad tidings of salvation. At length he settled in Bohemia, where the fruit of his labours was seen, after many days," in the rapid extension throughout that country of the principles of the Reformation. In Alsace, and along the Rhine, his doctrines also spread extensively, and stirred up, as usual, the hostility of the Romish authorities. At Bingen, eighteen persons were consumed in one fire; at Mentz, thirty-five, and at Strasburg, eighty; their only offence being that they read and believed the Bible. As many as eighty thousand are said to have been put to death in Bohemia in the fourteenth century. In each case, the "blood of the martyrs" became, as we shall see," the seed of the church."

What has become of Waldo's version is not certainly known. A copy of it was presented to the pope at the Lateran council, in 1179; and at the council of Toulouse (1229) the work was condemned and prohibited, on account of its being written in the vernacular tongue. It is not known that any copy has reached our times, but Dr. Gilly has shown that the text of his version is most probably preserved in the six Romance manuscripts of Scripture which still

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exist in the libraries of Dublin, Grenoble, Munich, Lyons, and Paris.*

The history of the revival of religion in southern France is not materially different from its history in other places. In Italy, Claude of Turin, and Arnold of Brescia, had already preached the gospel, and explained the Scriptures. A large body of people had attached themselves to these faithful men, and the name of Paterines, by which they are known, (from pati, to suffer,) indicates the treatment they received at the hands of the ruling powers. In the Lower Danube, and in Germany, a purer faith than that taught by the church of Rome had long prevailed, preparing the way for the Scriptural teaching of Waldo. Somewhat later, Wycliffe commenced and carried on a precisely similar work in England. The Bible was

*The canon of the council of Toulouse is the first on record against the reading of the Bible. It ordains that no "layman should have the books of the Old and New Testament; only they who out of devotion desire it, may have a Psalter, a Breviary, and the Hours of the Virgin.' But even these are not on any account to be translated into the vulgar tongue.See "Jortin's Remarks," vol. iii. p. 311.

A hundred and forty years before (1080,) Gregory had told the king of Bohemia, who wished to have the offices of the church translated into the Sclavonic, that he knew not what he asked, and that the word of God, to be revered, must be concealed.-Basnage, "Histoire de l'Eglise," vol. ií. p. 1575, quoted in Townley's "Anecdotes," p. 124.

Pope John VIII. was of another mind. "We approve," said he, in 880, "of the Sclavonian letters, invented by Constantine, and we order that the praises of Christ may be published in that language. It is not contrary to the faith to employ it in the public prayers of the church, and in reading the Holy Scriptures. He who made the three principal tongues, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, made the rest also for his own glory."— Fleury, quoted by Jortin, vol. iii. page 104.

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LESSONS TAUGHT BY ROME.

translated; an attempt was made in parliament to condemn the translation, but failed through the manliness of John of Gaunt. He boldly affirmed that Englishmen "would not be the dregs of all, seeing other nations have the law of God, which is the law of our faith written in their own language." In 1408, however, the translation and the perusal of the Scriptures were formally prohibited in a convocation held at Oxford under archbishop Arundel.

These revivals of religion-all connected, it will be noticed, with the use of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue, and the explanation of them to the people-had various results. Among the first was an appeal by the pope to the people of northern France to suppress, by force of arms, the heresy which had sprung up on their southern frontier. To encourage such a movement, he offered to the superstitious pardons as ample as had been offered, a century before, to the deliverers of the holy sepulchre. To the profligate, he offered the fertile and wealthy cities of the heretics. In answer to this appeal, a "war, distinguished even among wars of religion by its merciless atrocity," destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with it the literature and national existence of the most opulent and intelligent part of Europe. Rome also bethought herself of other plans for strengthening her policy; she instituted the order of Francis and the order of Dominic-friars grey and black and set up the tribunal of the

THE REFORMATION BEGINS.

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Inquisition, hoping thus to fortify herself by the gratitude, if she might, and at all events by the terror, of mankind. Among the lessons taught her by this history-the history of the revival of religion before the Reformation—was the power of the Bible, a power which she now began to regard with a dread she has never subsequently lost.

Two hundred and fifty eventful years bring us to the time of the Reformation. During that interval the papacy underwent painful changes. The pope had been seized in his own palace by the soldiers of the king of France, and carried off to Avignon. Two claimants of the supreme power in the church, each with a doubtful title, had made Europe ring with their mutual recriminations and anathemas, and men's minds had become everywhere unsettled. This danger to the influence of the papacy, however, had passed away. The council of Constance put an end to this unseemly dispute, and once more united the Catholic world under one head. The Albigenses, and other heretics, had been slaughtered in great numbers; the Lollards had been put down in England; none dared to " peep or mutter," so complete seemed the re-establishment of the papal authority.

The times, however, had also changed. The church had no longer a monopoly of learning; lawyers, and educated men generally, viewed her encroachments with suspicion. In most of the towns of Europe the burghers had made