., who hid under a sanctimonious guise the boundless
ambition and quenchless malignity of Lucifer, was the first to blow the
trumpet of extermination against the poor Vaudois. And from the middle
of the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century they suffered
not fewer than thirty persecutions. During that long period they could
not calculate upon a single year's immunity from invasion and slaughter.
From the days of Innocent their history becomes one long harrowing tale
of papal plots, interdicts, excommunications, of royal proscriptions and
perfidies, of attack, of plunder, of rapine, of massacre, and of death
in every conceivable and horrible way,--by the sword, by fire, and by
unutterable tortures and torments. The Waldenses had no alternative but
to submit to these, or deny their Saviour. Yet, driven to arms,--ever
their last resource,--they waxed valiant in fight, and put to flight the
armies of the aliens. They taught their enemies that the battle was not
to the strong. When the cloud gathered round their hills, they removed
their wives and little ones to some rock-girt valley, to the caverns of
which they had taken the precaution of removing their corn and oil, and
even their baking ovens; and there, though perhaps they did not muster
more than a thousand fighting men in all, they waited, with calm
confidence in God, the onset of their foes. In these encounters,
sustained by Heaven, they performed prodigies of valour. The combined
armies of France and Piedmont recoiled from their shock. Their invaders
were almost invariably overthrown, sometimes even annihilated; and their
sovereigns, the Dukes of Savoy, on whose memory there rests the
indelible blot of having pursued this loyal, industrious, and virtuous
people with ceaseless and incredible injustice, cruelty, treachery, and
perfidy, finding that they could not subdue them, were glad to offer
them terms of peace, and grant them new guarantees of the quiet
possession of their ancient territory. Thus an invisible omnipotent arm
was ever extended over the Vaudois and their land, delivering them
miraculously in times of danger, and preserving them as a peculiar
people, that by their instrumentality Jehovah might accomplish his
designs of mercy towards the world.

Nor were the Waldenses content simply to maintain their faith. Even when
fighting for existence, they recognised their obligations as a
missionary Church, and strove to diffuse over the surrounding co