e Vaudois teaches one lesson at least, which
we Protestants would do well to ponder at this hour. The measures of the
Church of Rome are quick, summary, and on a scale commensurate with the
danger. Her motto is instant, unpitying, unsparing, utter extermination
of all that oppose her. Twice over has the human mind revolted against
her authority, and twice over has she met that revolt, not with
argument, but with the sword. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
Waldensian movement had grown to such a head, that the dominion of Rome
was in imminent jeopardy. Had she delayed, the Reformation would have
been anticipated by some centuries. She did not delay. She cried for
help to the warriors of France and Savoy; and, by the help of some
hundred thousand soldiers, she put down the Waldensian movement as an
aggressive power. The next revolt against her authority was the
Reformation. Here again she boldly confronted the danger. She grasped
her old weapon; and, by the help of the sword and the Jesuits, she put
down that movement in one half the countries of Europe, and greatly
weakened it in the other half.

We are now witnessing a third revolt against her authority; and it
remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she
now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,--she that
never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched
in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,--that put down the
Reformation in France by one terrible blow,--that by the help of
dungeons and racks banished the light from Italy and Spain,--will that
Church, we ask, spare the Protestantism of Britain? What folly and
infatuation to think that she will! What matters it that, in rooting out
British Protestantism, she should shed oceans of blood, and sound the
death-knell of a whole nation? These are but dust in the balance to her:
her dominion must be maintained at all costs. Her motto still is,--let
Rome triumph though the heavens should fall. But she tells us that she
repents. Repents, does she? She has grown pitiful, and tender hearted,
has she? She fears blood now, and starts at the cry of murdered nations!
Ah! she repents; but it is her clemency, not her crimes, of which she
repents. She repents that she did not make one wide St Bartholomew of
Europe; that when she planted the stake for Huss, and Cranmer, and
Wishart, she did not plant a million of stakes. Then the Reformation
would not have be