When, by the just judgment of the Almighty, "all the world wondered after the beast;" and the kings and princes of Christendom, established the authority of the Pope and Church of Rome, appointing to slaughter and destruction such as denied the horrid blashemies and errors maintained by them: it occasioned many good Christians to detest their superstitions, as unknown to the Apostles and the primitive church. And the first we hear of, was one Berengarius, who boldly and faithfully published the true religion contained in the Scripture, and discovered the falseness of the Romish. He lived about the time of William the Conqueror coming into England, about which time his followers being taken notice of, as dissenting from many of the common received opinions of those times, they were branded with the odious name of heretics.
About twenty years after this, one Peter Bruis was a famous preacher among them, and taught them publickly at Tholouse in Savoy. In a short time after, they were grown to so great a multitude, that the Popes of Rome were resolved, if possible, by any means, to extirpate and destroy them. To which end, they at first incited several of the most learned of their party to write against them, and warned divers princes to have a care of them, and to banish them out of their territories.
The first then that flung away the spiritual keys, and began valiantly to brandish the bloody sword of persecution against them, was Pope Alexander the 3rd, who began to hack, hew, and murder the poor Waldenses; so named, from Peter Walgo, or Wildo, of Lyons in France, who appeared very courageous in opposing the many corruptions of the Romish Church:—as, holy oil—consecrated images—Popes' indulgences—candles—merits—auricular confession—the supremacy of the Pope—fake miracles—Purgatory—praying for the dead—prayers to saints—extreme unction—and many other fopperies of the Popish communion. This persecution of Waldo and his followers, (who were increased to a very great number,) began in France in the year 1060. Waldo being compelled to fly into the moantains of France, among the savage inhabitants, to whom he taught his doctrine; others fled into Picardy, from whence they were called Picards; several into Flanders and Alsatia, and thereby, for the safety of their own lives, they spread their doctrine into all places.
King Philip of France, being incited by the eclesiastics, raised arms against them, and destroyed 300 gentlemen's houses; and likewise wasted towns. And those that fled to Flanders escaped little better; for they were persecuted, and many of them for their religion put to death. The bishops of Mayence and Strasburgh raised great persecutions against those who fled thither, there being thirty-five citizens of Mayence burned in one fire, and eighteen in another, who suffered death with great constancy. And at Strasburgh, at the instance of the bishop, fourscore were likewise burned for professing the same truth; and yet by the exhortations, constancy and patience of these martyrs, there were such multitudes who entertained their doctrines, that in a few years after, in the county of Passau and in Bohemia, there were above fourscore thousand persons that made profession of the same faith. Some of them likewise fled into England for shelter, but were more barbarously and cruelly put to death at Oxford, by the Papists there, than ever any Christians were before that time, for matters of religion. Three years after, Pope Alexander the 3rd, made a decree in the Council of Tours, in France, that these Gospellers, and all their favourers, should be excommunicated; and that none of them should buy or sell, according as it was foretold, in Revel. xiii. 17.
One Giovanni, with his wife and child, were thrown down from a very high rock, the mother holding the child in her arms; and three days after they were found dead, but the child was alive, and clasped so fast in the mother's arms, that they could hardly get it out. They took another at the same place, and put out his eyes, exposed him some time as a miserable spectacle; and he being yet alive, they flayed off his skin, and hung it in the windows of four principal houses in Lucerne, after they had divided it into four pieces. They took out the brains of Daniel Cardon, and frying them in a pan, eat them up like cannibals and then cut open his breast also, that they might eat his heart, but were frighted by some Protestant troops that were marching that way. They buried four women between 8(illegible text) and 90 years old alive; they cut divers to pieces, and gave their flesh to dogs. In another place, having taken eleven Protestants, they heated a furnace, and forced them to throw one another into it, till they came to the last man whom they threw in themselves.
They stabbed some with poisoned knives in the legs and feet, and so left them in torment till they died. One Gros, a minister's son, being taken by them, they cut off his flesh in small goblets while he was alive, and in the presence of his wife and children, whom they murdered likewise before his eyes. A woman with seven children were all barbarously murdered in their beds. One Daniel Rambout, because he refused to say Jesu Maria, or pray to the Virgin Mary, they first cut off one finger, then another, till they had cut then all off, then they cut off his hands and arms, till after this manner he was cruelly mangled to death. Others they shut up between two stone walls, and starved them to death. And to conclude, there was no manner of death, no kind of cruelty or torment, that these first-born of hell could invent or devise, but were executed with the utmost severity upon the poor miserable Protestants; and it would be almost endless to give a particular account of all that were murdered, drowned, burned, shot, starved, smothered, knocked on the head, and cut in pieces, by these barbarous Papists.
These horrid and inhuman practices made the rest of the Protestants fly to their arms, in the natural defence of themselves and their families, against the rage and fury of lions, tygers, and bears, in the shape of men. But those that were so brisk at massacring and murdering such as did not resist them, were mere cowards at fighting, and the Protestants prevailed against them with small numbers, and defended themselves against their cruelty.
But at last, by the mediation of the Switzers, Hollanders, and other Protestant Princes, and especially the English, who contributed above thirty thousand pounds to the relief of their wants and miseries, the breach was made up; but yet so made, that the poor remaining Protestants live under the tyrany of their Popish task-masters; being forbid all manner of traffic, wronged of their estates and goods, their ministers banished, their virgins ravished, the women affronted, the men beaten and abused, and the vallies are become the dungeons in which they are kept as slaves, and secured by strong forts and garrisons of Papists; so that they are even dying while they live, and have cause to cry out,—"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood," Rev. vi. 10.