al to surrender the
Scriptures was also an offense that Rome could not tolerate. She
determined to blot them from the earth. Now began the most terrible
crusades against God's people in their mountain homes. Inquisitors were
put upon their track, and the scene of innocent Abel falling before the
murderous Cain was often repeated.

Again and again were their fertile lands laid waste, their dwellings and
chapels swept away, so that where once were flourishing fields and the
homes of an innocent, industrious people, there remained only a desert. As
the ravenous beast is rendered more furious by the taste of blood, so the
rage of the papists was kindled to greater intensity by the sufferings of
their victims. Many of these witnesses for a pure faith were pursued
across the mountains, and hunted down in the valleys where they were
hidden, shut in by mighty forests and pinnacles of rock.

No charge could be brought against the moral character of this proscribed
class. Even their enemies declared them to be a peaceable, quiet, pious
people. Their grand offense was that they would not worship God according
to the will of the pope. For this crime, every humiliation, insult, and
torture that men or devils could invent was heaped upon them.

When Rome at one time determined to exterminate the hated sect, a bull was
issued by the pope, condemning them as heretics, and delivering them to
slaughter.(107) They were not accused as idlers, or dishonest, or
disorderly; but it was declared that they had an appearance of piety and
sanctity that seduced "the sheep of the true fold." Therefore the pope
ordered "that malicious and abominable sect of malignants," if they
"refuse to abjure, to be crushed like venomous snakes."(108) Did this
haughty potentate expect to meet those words again? Did he know that they
were registered in the books of heaven, to confront him at the judgment?
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren,"
said Jesus, "ye have done it unto Me."(109)

This bull called upon all members of the church to join the crusade
against the heretics. As an incentive to engage in this cruel work, it
"absolved from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general and
particular; it released all who joined the crusade from any oaths they
might have taken; it legitimatized their title to any property they might
have illegally acquired; and promised remission of all their sins to such
as should kill any here