subjected, have preserved great integrity of manners; and it cannot be said that they threw off the reins of authority in order to yield to the impetuosity of the passions.”
We now proceed to the teaching of the Vaudois on another and equally important subject—namely, on the ceremonies and rites of their Church.
They admitted infant baptism, as they still continue to do, and the administration of the Lord’s Supper in both kinds, deeming it essential that each rite should be administered by an ordained minister.
With regard to ordination, “it was their custom from the earliest period on record,”; says the historian Gilly, “for the barbes or pastors to assemble in synod once a year, in the month of September, when they examined and admitted to the holy ministry such students as appeared qualified, and also named those who were to travel to distant churches.” From the same authority we learn that in later times “they held assemblies from all parts of Europe where Vaudois churches were established.” As many as one hundred and forty pastors were thus assembled in the valley of the Clusone on one celebrated occasion.
The bull of John xxii. declares: “It has come to our ears, that in the valleys of Luserna, Perosa, etc., the Waldenses, heretics, have increased so as to form frequent assemblies in a kind of chapter, in which they meet to the number of five hundred.” This bull was issued at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
We are not told of the precise manner in which the ordination was conducted by the early barbes, beyond the simple fact that it was performed by the laying on of hands; but as the customs of the Vaudois are, as those of the Medes and Persians, little given to change, it may interest our readers
