Identifier: 07244119.1178.emory.edu
Title: A dictionary of religious knowledge (electronic resource): for popular and professional use, comprising full information on Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical subjects
Year: 1875 (1870s)
Authors: Abbott, Lyman, 1835-1922 Conant, Thomas Jefferson, 1802-1891
Subjects: Theology Religion
Publisher: New York : Harper
Contributing Library: Emory University, Pitts Theology Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Emory University, Pitts Theology Library

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nev-er added to by faiths borrowed in realityfrom heathen worship. The creed and therites of the Apostolic Church, if we may be-lieve their story, were maintained uncor-rupted during the dark ages which inter-vened between the origin of Christianityand its final enfranchisement in the sixteenthcentury. However that may be, it is certainthat in the eleventh century there existedin the valleys of the Piedmont a peoplewhose ritual was exceedingly simple, andwhose faith was as child-like as it was ear-nest and devout. Their home was amongthe wildest and most secluded of those Al-pine fastnesses which lie between the Clu-soue and the Pelice, two mountain torrentswhich fall into the river Po. Subjects ofthe King of Sardinia, and inhabitin»- a terri-tory on the frontiers of France, they were nei-ther exactly French nor altogether Italianin manners, customs, religion, or lansjnao-e.Their entire territory embraced scarceTv six-teen square miles. The three valleys which WALDENSES 9G1 WALDENSES
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61 WALDENSES 962 WALDENSES they occupied never could have, containedmore than a population of twenty thousand.A confession of their faith, bearing date a.d.1120, still exists in MSB. in Cambridge, En-gland. A catechism of a little later date—the thirteenth century — is also preserved.The authenticity of these documents is un-doubted. They exhibit a faith not material-ly different from that of the later Reformers.They show that as early as the twelfth cen-tury, if not, as they claim, from the earliestages, the Waldenses held to the doctrine ofthe Trinity, the inspiration of the Scriptures,original sin, salvation through Christ, a fu-ture life of punishment andreward, a univers-al Church, and the two sacraments of Bap-tism and the Lords Supper; and that theyEmphatically rejected salvation by works,the intercession of the saints, the adorationof the Virgin Mary, holy water, mass, andthe five additional sacraments of the BornauCatholic Church. They maintained that sal-vation consisted

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