By REV. J. P. MACQUEEN.
THOUGH articles on, and references to, the Waldensian Church have appeared, from time to time, in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, other young generations come on the scene so quickly that the older readers are readily apt to forget that these young people are not acquainted with the history of these worthy witnesses for the truth throughout the centuries. Doubtless millions of others are similarly uninformed. It is as well, therefore, at the outset to remark that the Waldensians live in the Cottian Alps, about 35 miles from Turin. The Cottians are named after a pagan king, called Cottius, who lived there in Roman times. Though possessing all the beauty and grandeur for which the Alps are world-famous, these particular Cottian mountains are off the beaten track of tourism. The French called the Waldensians, Vaudois (from vaux—valley), and in these deep and shady valleys, branching out from Luserna, a little town on the Pellice River, and running high up into the mountains, on the frontier between Italy and France, life is the same as it has always been for centuries. This is in marked contrast to its neighbouring modern city, Turin, famous for its motor industry.
In these valleys, from time immemorial, there has existed an evangelical community, truly Protestant, long before that word was heard of, to distinguish Biblical Christianity from its satanic caricature, Popery. The history of the Waldensian Church is written in blood and tears. Many books have been written about them, and many pamphlets and articles, and many otherwise trustworthy and competent Church historians have declared that the Waldensians first received the Gospel from the early missionaries of the first century of the Christian era. The probability, however, is that this part of their history has been lost in the mists of antiquity. One thing, however, is certain, as historical records prove, and that is that they have had the Gospel, in unbroken continuity, from the twelfth century till the present day, in its pristine apostolic simplicity and purity. Since the twelfth century they have been several times decimated and massacred by nations and forces in the employment of the Vatican and the devil, and yet a remnant on each occasion survived, to pass on the Gospel unimpaired to posterity—a veritable fulfilment of the truth of the emblem of the bush burning but not consumed. The Waldensian Church is also a fulfilment of the Divine promise that God would not leave Himself without witness somewhere in the world, while sun and moon endure. The story of their heroism and of their faithfulness and grim tenacity is unique in history, the Scottish Covenanters not excepted. Notwithstanding unparalleled suffering and fiendish torture, they kept the light of their historic Faith shining through the dark middle ages of superstition, idolatry, and criminal immorality. Milton’s well-known Ode regarding them was written after the massacre of “Easter,” 1655, about which also Carlyle wrote, relative to the action taken at that time on their behalf. Every town, village, and place has its tale of persecution, and every prominent rock points to a romantic episode, and every hill to its hero or heroine. At one time they had to flee for refuge to Switzerland, but returned shortly afterwards, and they were never finally dislodged, despite 36 separate wars waged by their neighbours for their extinction, at the instigation of the wicked Pope of Rome.
It is right and proper to say that if the Waldensians are in possession of their immemorial home to-day, it is due under God, mainly to the unfailing fidelity of William of Orange, who financed the expedition of Waldensians from Switzerland, and was thus successful in resettling them in their native valleys.
No country in the world has stood by the Waldensians with such unfailing steadfastness and fidelity as the British nation. After the Napoleonic wars, in the year 1821, Rev. Canon Gilly visited the Waldensian Valleys and wrote and published a book on their condition and circumstances, which fell into the hands of General Beckwith, who lost a leg at the Battle of Waterloo, and, after its perusal, he devoted his life and fortune to ameliorating the hard lot of these brave and magnanimous people. Observing the almost insurmountable difficulties of the Waldensians, scattered among almost inaccessible mountains, regarding the education of their children, he built 100 rural schools. Thus were obviated the difficulties and dangers inseparable from the children’s descent to school at Torre Pellice in winter. He also built the still well-preserved row of houses for the professors at the college, and was instrumental in providing funds for the erection of Churches in Torre Pellice, Turin, and other parts of Italy.
Centuries before the Reformation the evangelical Waldensians were sending missionaries, variously disguised for safety, all over Europe, to preach the Gospel to every rational creature, high, low, rich, poor, educated or uneducated. The preachers committed most of the New Testament to memory, as well as large portions of the Old, as it was dangerous to carry manuscripts. These students and preachers were trained in a very inaccessible spot in the mountains, called Pra del Torno, where to this day may be seen the Collegium, containing the old stone table around which the students sat six hundred years ago. In this country the Lollards received the Gospel from the Waldensians. In France, Spain, and the Netherlands they were everywhere active in the proclamation of the Truth, and to-day there are colonies and communities of them in South America and the U.S.A.
The late Mr. J. Forbes Moncrieff, C.A., Edinburgh, the author of many books, pamphlets, and articles in evangelical magazines, including the Free Presbyterian Magazine, and especially booklets for the young, visited the Waldensian Valleys and stayed among the people there for a considerable time. Afterwards he wrote an excellent detailed history of the Waldensians and their evangelical Church, but I suppose now it is out of print, like many other history books written on this most interesting and instructive subject.
To-day there still exists the English Committee, with a branch in Scotland (Edinburgh) in aid of the Waldensian Church, thus carrying on the good work begun by Canon Gilly and General Beckwith, but I regret to say that I am not ardent in advocating support for it, for, since the present century opened, students from the Waldensian Church have come to be trained in the Modernist New College (Church of Scotland), Edinburgh. These have returned to Italy contaminated with the blasphemous poison of Modernism, which, I deeply regret to say, they are disseminating from Waldensian pulpits in many towns of Italy, as one of their own pastors told me recently in London, while paying his annual visit to this city. The Methodist Church in Italy is also co-operating with the Waldensian Church, with a Modernist virus no less deadly than that of the Church of Scotland. To make matters still worse, the World Council of Churches, a Modernist conglomerate movement of Satan, has become deeply interested in the Waldensian Church. The Waldensians thought their students would be safe in the land of John Knox and the Covenanters, and in the falsely so-called Church of Scotland, but, alas, it was a fatal mistake.
From the history of the Waldensian Church there are many lessons to learn for the benefit of the Christian Church to-day, and in all times future. For instance, its history proves that the Church of Christ is in far greater danger from Satan, through his human agents, when he comes disguised as an angel of light than when he appears without any disguise as a veritable roaring lion. Centuries of unprecedented, unremitting ruthlessness did not succeed in undermining or corrupting the Waldensian Church relative to the purity and simplicity of the Gospel, but what sword and fire could not accomplish in centuries the Modernist theological professors of the Church of Scotland and the Methodist Church have accomplished in one generation. This is a lesson we should all take seriously to heart. It also proves that the enemy within the Church is far more treacherous and dangerous than the enemy without. Those who come under solemn ordination vows to uphold the Scriptural doctrines of an evangelically orthodox Church, while not wholeheartedly in agreement with the testimony of that denomination, but secretly disguising mental reservations, are the most dangerous and subtle enemy that a true Church has to contend with.
The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has not, in the course of its history, been a stranger to this type of danger on the part of some students, ministers, and office-bearers. They became fugitives from a Scriptural Church discipline, and treated with contempt the authority of the Church courts they vowed to submit to, seeing only their frail commonplace fellow-mortals constituting these courts, sinfully indifferent to, and forgetful of the fact, that these Church courts are the Scriptural appointment of Christ, the great and glorious Head of the Church, to whom we shall all yet render our account for all the things done in the body, whether it be good or bad.
Another very important lesson to be derived from the history of the Waldensian Church is the noting emphatically of the fact that at the time of the blessed Reformation it was not necessary for the Waldensian Church to reform for, under God, they kept the true faith, worship, discipline, and government of the Church of Christ, pure, primitive, simple, and undefiled throughout the centuries. If the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland will continue till the end, as hitherto, maintaining the Scriptural doctrines, discipline, government, and worship of the apostles and reformers, it will not be necessary for our Church when the Millennium comes, to roll up its sleeves, figuratively speaking, as the Reformers had to do at the Reformation, to clear out of the professing Church of Christ the unauthorised accumulated rubbish of centuries. For a long time now Churches that have accumulated uninspired hymns and organs are perpetually quarrelling as to whose collections of hymns should be authorised in the worship of God, but owing to their different tastes in music and sentiments they never seem to agree. They had no authority from Heaven ever to introduce any of them, and the sooner they clear them out the less work they shall have to do in cleansing the Church—a Herculean task—of all its carnal accumulations when God shall arise to build again Zion. It will ever remain true, for the Scriptures cannot be broken, “Them that honour Me, I will honour.” Let, therefore, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland continue uncompromisingly faithful to its trust, and God will honour it yet, even in this world!