ites and doctrines into the church, multitudes
withdrew from the public assemblies, and worshipped apart. They retired
from the observation of their rulers and lived secluded for a long period.

Some may inquire for the historical evidence of the _time_ when such a
body withdrew. This, from the nature of the case, it may be difficult to
give. If the withdrawal of the true worshippers had been an occurrence of
so much notoriety as to be prominently historically noticed, it might have
defeated their withdrawal. It is sufficient that the prophecy makes such a
withdrawal necessary; and that at a later period such a body was found
existing as predicted. See p. 198. Says Mr. Lord:

"Her retreat into her place from the face of the serpent, denotes that the
scene of her residence was unknown to the rulers. The anger of the serpent
indicates their continued disposition to destroy her, if in their power;
while its going on to make war with such of her seed as had not retreated
to the desert, denotes that they continued, after her disappearance, to
persecute the isolated individuals that from time to time dissented from
the corrupt church, and professed the pure faith.

"As it was by spiritual aids that the true worshippers were enabled to
resist the temptations and force by which the rulers endeavored to
constrain them to apostasy, and to fly to the desert, no specific record
of those aids is to be sought on the page of history. The only evidence
that we can ask or possess, that they were conferred, is presented in the
fact that a body of dissentients from the corrupt church were in a latter
age found in a secluded scene, who had survived the endeavors of the
rulers of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and following centuries, to compel all
their subjects to conformity, and who have continued to maintain a
separate existence, and offer an unidolatrous worship to the present time.

"And such a body were the Waldenses, inhabiting the eastern valleys of the
Cottian Alps. They are known, from the testimony of cotemporary Catholics
and their own authors, to have existed there as early as the eleventh
century. It was then, and is now, claimed by themselves, and admitted by
their enemies, that they had subsisted there from a much earlier age.
These were a Christian church, having the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments, regarding them as a revelation from God, and making them the
rule of their faith; having a ministry of their own, holdin