especially absurd declarations upon the subject, and even coincided more or less with Berenger in opinion, is sufficiently apparent from what Leger* and Mosheim† have stated. The former refers to Matthew Paris and Cardinal Benno as authorities; the latter to a treatise by Berenger, published by Martene in his Thesaur. Anecdot. tom. iv. p. 99, 109;--by which it appears that Gregory consulted the Virgin Mary, by means of a confidential friend, in this urgent and perplexing affair; whose pretended answer to the pontiff was very unfavourable to the established doctrine of the church of Rome; for according to the pontiff's assertion-" whether Gregory was fanatical enough to confide in this answer, or rogue enough to forge it;"-the Blessed Virgin, having heard, answered him to this effect, "that nothing should be thought, nothing held, respecting the sacrifice of Christ, except what the authentic scriptures maintained, to which Berenger entertained nothing repugnant." "A. B. Maria audivit et ad me retulit," says the credulous or wily pontiff," nihil de sacrificio Christi cogitandum, nihil esse tenendum, nisi quod tenerent authenticæ scripturæ, contra quas Berengarius nihil habebat."

* Hist. Generale des Eglises de Piémont, p, 151.
+ ii. 565-6.

The unhappy Berenger, it seems, overwhelmed by the fear of a cruel death, had been guilty of dissimulation, and induced to subscribe at one time to a confession that he abhorred, at another to one couched in ambiguous language; but when the imminent danger of death by the hands of his persecutors was over, he re-asserted his real opinions, and humbled himself in private for his dissimulation and inconstancy.

P. 36. "Tudême, Pierre de Bois, (Blois) et le docte Rosalin." "Rosalin," or Roscelin, was "a profound dialectician, and the most eminent doctor of the nominalists."*

Leger alludes to those writers as favourable to the doctrine of Pierre de Bruys; "qui fut puissamment soutenu par Theucholin ou Tudême, Pierre de Blois, Jean Rosalin, personnage trèsdocte, un des principaux restaurateurs de l'université de Paris," &c.

"

P. 36. Celui qui fit plus de bruit que tous les autres, et dont la voix étonna le vatican, c'est Henri de Thoulouse, qui de moine étant devenu ministre de l'évangile," &c. This celebrated reformer was a native of Italy, who successively visited Lausanne, Mans, Poitiers, Bourdeaux, and Thoulouse in the year 1147, bearing solemn testimony against the errors and corruptions

See Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. ii. 585-7.

M

introduced by the church of Rome. In the year 1148 he was committed to prison by order of Pope Eugenius III. and he soon afterwards died.

P. 39. "Arnaud de Bresse." Arnold of Brescia, who so strongly protested against the pomp and wealth of the Roman hierarchy, was a monk, “whose promotion in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as an uniform of obedience."* His wit, his eloquence, his bold invectives against the inordinate ambition and immense possessions of the bishops and abbots and other abuses that marked the degenerate Roman church, whilst they procured him a number of admirers and followers amongst the laity, raised a host of enemies, who eventually accomplished his death. his death. Whether this disciple of Abelard was intimately acquainted with the Vaudois may be doubted. He should be ranked rather as a political than a religious reformer; at least he entered vehemently upon the subject of political reform, and was as much the patriot as the preacher, when "blending in the same discourse the texts of Livy and St. Paul,". "his eloquence thundered over the seven hills," and he ex

......

* Gibbon's Hist. xii. 271.

horted the Romans "to assert the inalienable rights of men and christians; to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the name of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd, (the pope) to the spiritual government of his flock."* A political revolution was the consequence of those exhortations. For ten. years, from 1144 to 1154, the popes were deprived of that temporal authority they had so long usurped; till Adrian IV. succeeded in first banishing Arnold, and afterwards procuring a sentence of death against him, when being brought back to Rome, he was burnt, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.

The Vaudois historian, Leger,† ranks Arnold of Brescia amongst the Vaudois pastors, as the moderator Peyran does, and states that the prior Rorenco, considers that the Vaudois were called Arnaudistes after Arnaud de Bresse ; but in another part of his history of the church of Piedmont, Leger derives that denomination from an Arnaud who went from Flanders to Cologne, where he held a public disputation with the Rhemish Divines, and (as related by Cæsarius Heisterbach) was burnt with nine of his disciples.

P. 40. "Valdo fort riche, &c....... Ayant acquis quelque connoissance des langues il traduisit une partie de l'écriture en langue vulgaire; et fit des passages des Pères un recueil." Mosheim however states, not that Waldo was the translator, but, that he "employed a certain priest, (Stephanus de Evisa) about the year 1160, in translating from Latin into French the four gospels, with other books of Holy Scripture; and the most remarkable sentences of the ancient doctors." The catalogue of MSS. brought from Piedmont to England, by Sir Samuel Morland, and deposited in the public library at Cambridge, affords evidence that translations of portions of scripture into the vulgar tongue were made by the ancient Vaudois; and one of the MSS. is styled "Doctor, ou diverses sentences et témoignages des Pères touchant la repentance."

P. 41. "Le septième est Viclef." It is evident that in enumerating these seven great reformers, of whom Wicliffe is the last in order, as Waldensian "Pastors," the author meant to establish the fact, that these great leaders had imbibed more or less the opinions of the Vaudois, and were more or less influenced by, and connected with them.