Withstood Rome a Thousand Years

But the bishops in the region of Piedmont and the adjoining provinces did more than decline to go to Rome for ordination.AGP 208.2

“In the year 590, the bishops of Italy and the Grisons (Switzerland) to the number of nine, rejected the communion of the pope, as a heretic.” Dr. Allix’s “Remarks on the Ancient Churches of Piedmont,” chap. 5, p. 32, quoted in “The History of the Christian Church,” William Jones, chap. 4, sec. 1, p. 244.AGP 208.3

About a century later, Paulinus, Bishop of Aquileia, in Italy, stood firmly against the domination and the innovations of the papacy, and was joined by other bishops in condemning the worship of images as idolatrous.AGP 208.4

Turin, an important city a short distance to the west of Milan, was the center of an important diocese at the beginning of the ninth century. About the year 817 A. D. Claudius was appointed Archbishop of Turin, by Emperor Louis. Of him we read:AGP 208.5

“This man beheld with dismay the stealthy approaches of a power which, putting out the eyes of men, bowed their necks to its yoke, and bent their knees to idols. He grasped the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and the battle which he so courageously waged, delayed, though it could not prevent, the fall of his church’s independence, and for two centuries longer the light continued to shine at the foot of the Alps.” “The History of Protestantism,” J. A. Wiley, Vol. I, p. 21.

This is all supported by Lawrence, the learned essayist, who writes:AGP 209.1

“Here, within the borders of Italy itself, the popes have never been able, except for one unhappy interval, to enforce their authority. Here no Mass has been said, no images adored, no papal rites administered by the native Vaudois. It was here that Henry Arnaud, the hero of the valleys, redeemed his country from the tyranny of the Jesuits and Rome; and here a Christian church, founded perhaps in the apostolic age, has survived the persecutions of a thousand years.” “Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, p. 199.

“Soon after the dawn of Christianity, they assert, their ancestors embraced the faith of St. Paul, and practiced the simple rites and usages described by Justin or Tertullian. The Scriptures became their only guide; the same belief, the same sacraments they maintain today they held in the age of Constantine and Sylvester. They relate that, as the Romish Church grew in power and pride, their ancestors repelled its assumptions and refused to submit to its authority; that when, in the ninth century, the use of images was enforced by superstitious popes, they, at least, never consented to become idolaters; that they never worshiped the Virgin, nor bowed at an idolatrous Mass. When, in the eleventh century, Rome asserted its supremacy over kings and princes, the Vaudois were its bitterest foes. The three valleys formed the theological school of Europe. The Vaudois missionaries traveled into Hungary and Bohemia, France, England, even Scotland, and aroused the people to a sense of the fearful corruption of the church. They pointed to Rome as the Antichrist, the center of every abomination. They taught, in the place of Romish innovations, the pure faith of the apostolic age. Lollard, who led the way to the reforms of Wycliffe, was a preacher from the valleys; the Albigenses of Provence, in the twelfth century, were the fruits of the Vaudois missions; Germany and Bohemia were reformed by the teachers of Piedmont; Huss and Jerome did little more than proclaim the Vaudois faith; and Luther and Calvin were only the necessary offspring of the apostolic churches of the Alps.” Id., pp. 200, 201.

With these illuminating statements may be placed this interesting and significant sentence:AGP 210.1

“In lands beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, there existed for many centuries bodies of Christians who remained almost wholly free from papal corruption.” “The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan,” p. 63.