ing up of the Roman
empire by the incursions of the Teutonic nations." And this leads to
another question. Why did these people leave their homes in the fertile
plains and betake themselves to the less temperate climate and the rugged
soil of a mountainous region? Plainly there must have been some very urgent
cause, and that cause may be readily perceived in the record of the
persecutions against the Christians under the Pagan emperors during the
second, third, and fourth centuries.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] E.G.--In a memorial to Philibert Emmanuel, A.D. 1559, they say, "This
religion which we profess is not only ours ... but it was the religion of
our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and other yet more ancient
predecessors of ours, and of the blessed martyrs, confessors, prophets, and
apostles; _and if any can prove the contrary, we are ready to subscribe and
yield thereunto_."

CHAPTER IV.

We come now to the creed and organization of the Waldensian Church. First,
as regards the rule of faith, it expresses its belief in the supremacy of
the Word of God in terms precisely identical with the Sixth Article of the
Church of England. And, in a document previously referred to, declares, "We
do protest before the Almighty and All-just God, before whose tribunal we
must all one day appear, that we intend to live and die in the holy faith,
piety, and religion of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that we do abhor all
heresies that have been and are condemned by the Word of God.

"We do embrace the most holy doctrine of the prophets and apostles, as
likewise of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. We subscribe to the four
councils, and to all the ancient fathers, in all such things as are not
repugnant to the analogy of faith." They protest against the assumptions
and the encroachments of the papacy much in the same way as do the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England; they also accept the
opinions of evangelical Christendom in relation to the fall of
man--justification by faith alone; redemption through the merits of the
lord Jesus Christ; regeneration by the Holy Spirit; fruitfulness in good
works as the necessary result of a living faith; the character of worship
acceptable to God; the obligations and privileges of the Lord's day, and
of the two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, as appointed by the
Lord Jesus Christ, and binding upon the grateful observance of His
believing people