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endeavoured to abolish, by substituting an illegitimate and supposititious Christianity in its stead. So long as the ministers of the Church of Rome think fit to follow his conduct who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, innocence should not be deprived of the privilege of defending herself against their calumnies, while she willingly resigns to God the exercise of vengeance for the injustice and violence of those who have oppressed her."

It may possibly occur to some of my readers. that "the Portraiture of Popery," would have been a title every way as appropriate to the ensuing pages as that which I have given it. And it certainly must be admitted that the odious features of superstition and intolerance do but too prominently obtrude upon us, wherever the proceedings of that apostate church interpose themselves. The picture which invariably presents itself to the mind, is that of a power speaking great words against the Most High, and wearing out the saints of the Most High,"† or, of a woman "drunken with the blood of the saints, and of the martyrs of Jesus." It should, however, be remarked, that if the outlines of this hideous picture have been sketched in the following work, and in colours more sombre than may be pleasing to its friends, the circumstance is wholly accidental, since it is an object that

* Dr. Allix's Remarks on the Churches of Piedmont, preface, p. 6. ↑ Dan. vii. 26. + Rev. xvii. 6. VOL. I.

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was entirely foreign to the intention of the writer, further than a faithful record of well-authenticated facts might necessarily lead him to it.

In sketching the History of the Christian Church previous to the times of the Waldenses, I have gone considerably more into detail than was my original intention; but in that particular I have been actuated solely by the desire of rendering the work more generally useful to that class of readers for whom it was principally designed. After all, it pretends to nothing more than a sketch of a vast subject, and no one can be more sensible than the writer himself is, of its numerous deficiencies. Whether he may hereafter be induced to resume the subject, and fill up the outline more correctly, must depend partly upon the reception which the present attempt meets with from his contemporaries, and partly upon other circumstances which are beyond the reach of human control. For the rest he would gladly offer his apology in the words of Father Paul, the Venetian. "He that shall observe that I speak more of some times, and more sparingly of others, let him remember, that all fields are not equally fruitful, nor all grains deserve to be kept; and that of those which the reaper would preserve, some ears escape the hand or the edge of the sickle; it being the condition of every harvest, that some part remains to be afterwards gleaned.'

* History of the Council of Trent, translated by Brent. p. 2.

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It may possibly strike some readers with surprise that no notice is taken, in the following pages, of a multiplicity of sects which arose, from time to time, in what is called the christian world, and whose history occupies so very large a space in the volumes of most of our modern writers on this subject. But to speak the truth, my opinion of these in general is, that they have nothing to do with the history of the church or kingdom of Christ; and that to connect them with it, as Dr. Mosheim and others have done, is scarcely more unwise than the conduct of Mr. Humé would have been, had he incorporated the Tyburn Chronicle into his valuable History of England.

In tracing the kingdom of Christ in the world, I have paid no regard whatever to the long disputed subject of apostolical succession. I have, indeed, read much that has been written upon it by the Catholic writers on one side, and by Dr. Allix, Sir Samuel Morland, and several Protestants on the other; and I regret the labour that has been so fruitlessly expended by the latter, persuaded as I am that the postulatum is a mere fiction, and that the ground on which the Protestant writers have proceeded in contending for it, is altogether untenable. It is admitted, that the Most High has had his churches and people in every age, since the decease of the Apostles; but to attempt to trace a regular succession of ordained bishops in the vallies of

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Piedmont, or any other country, is " labouring in the fire for very vanity," and seems to me to proceed upon mistaken views of the nature of the kingdom of Christ, and of the sovereignty of God, in his operations in the earth, as they have respect unto it. Jesus himself, in reply to an inquiry put to him by the Pharisees, (Luke xvii. 20-24.) compares his kingdom to the lightning, darting its rays in the most sovereign and uncontrolled manner from one extremity of the heavens to the other. And this view of it corresponds with matter of fact. Wherever the blessed God has his elect, there, in his own proper time, he sends his gospel to save them. Que while we see it diffusing its heavenly light on a particular region, and leaving another in darkness. Then it takes up its residence in the latter, and forsakes the former. Thus, when Paul and his companions attempted to go into Bithynia, the Spirit permitted them not; but they were instructed by a vision to proceed to Macedonia, where the word of the Lord had free course and was glorified. When Paul first came to Corinth, he met with great opposition, but he was encouraged to persevere by Him who said, "I have much people in this city." When the first churches began to swerve from the form of sound words, to corrupt the discipline of the house of God, and to commit fornication with the kings of the earth, by forming an alliance with the state, we cease to trace the kingdom of Christ among them, but

we shall find it successively among the churches of the Novatians, the followers of Arius, the Paulicians, the Cathari, or Puritans in Germany, the Paterines, and the Waldenses, until the times of reformation.

If the present work contain any thing of sufficient interest to give it a temporary buoyancy upon the ocean of public opinion, and prevent its rapid transition into the gulph of oblivion-that insatiable vortex which has already swallowed up myriads of much more important publications, the author would persuade himself it must be those excellent letters of our great poet Milton, which, in the capacity of Latin Secretary to Cromwell, he wrote to the Protestant princes upon the Continent, pleading the cause of the poor, afflicted, and grossly injured Waldenses. It is a mortifying reflection, that these interesting letters should now be almost forgotten as the compositions of our great poet. Whence comes it to pass, that while Milton's Defence of the People of England is so generally known, no one ever speaks of his Defence of the Waldenses? It will be difficult to assign a more plausible reason for this, than the unpopularity of the subject. The Waldenses were "a poor and afflicted people," the subjects of a kingdom that is not of this world, and they were treated by their adversaries as "the filth of the world and offscouring of all things." But Milton understood their character, and duly appreciated it. He recognized in them