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The "Brethren " lived together under a regular rule, which determined their diet, dress, and the way in which they were to spend their time; but they were not excluded from the world like the monks. The members of the Brotherhood usually surrendered their property to a common fund, but in the infancy of the institution-whatever may have been the practice afterwards-this does not seem to have been compulsory. They worked for their living, but did not refuse to receive voluntary gifts, though they were forbidden to solicit them except in cases of necessity. They were not required to take any vows binding for life. In the government of the societies there was a large respect for individual liberty; and the Houses were not placed under any rigid and uniform system of laws. The Brethren spent their time in copying books, in preaching to the people, and in conducting schools in which some eminent scholars received their education. Thomas à Kempis was one of their pupils, and his De Imitatione Christi illustrates the type of mystical piety that he had seen in his teachers.

Their great prosperity extended from the beginning to the end of the fifteenth century. The invention of printing was a heavy blow to them: at first, indeed, they set up printing-presses of their own; but they had innumerable rivals, and the large income which for several generations they had derived from their work as copyists was lost. Their schools were gradually superseded; the scholars whom they had educated established schools of their own with a wider range of learning. When the Reformation came, the Brotherhoods. were dissolved. The Brethren were compelled to choose between the new faith and the old. If they chose the old, it was inevitable that the Brother-Houses should submit to a more rigid rule and become Catholic monasteries; if they chose the new, it was not easy for them to maintain their separation from the Christian commonalty around them. Luther, indeed, was their firm friend and would have been glad to see the Houses preserved. Writing to the Burgomaster and Council of Herford in Westphalia (A.D. 1531), he said :—

"Inasmuch as the Brethren and Sisters were the first to begin the Gospel among you, lead a creditable life, have a decent and well-behaved congregation, and at the same time faithfully teach and hold the pure Word, may I affectionately entreat your worships

not to permit any dispeace or molestation to befall them, on account of their still wearing the religious dress, and observing old and laudable usages, not contrary to the Gospel? For such monasteries and Brother-Houses please me beyond measure. Would to God that all monastic institutions were like them. Clergymen, cities, and countries would then be better served, and more prosperous than they now are." 10

III

Monasticism and the freer spiritual communities of the Middle Ages, such as the Beguines, the Beghards, and the Brethren of the Common Lot, were endeavours to recover that healthy social environment for the religious life which had disappeared with the ecclesiastical polity of apostolic times. The craving for the communion of saints could not be suppressed, and the Church no longer satisfied it. Devout men and women were driven to found private societies of their own-societies separated from the "world," from which the Church was no longer separated; societies composed of persons who were penitent for sin, who loved Christ, who seriously recognised the authority of His precepts, and seriously endeavoured to obey them. Only in such societies could Christian men feel that they were in their true home. Only in such societies could there exist the frankness of Christian confidence and the generous warmth of that love of the brethren which is a "note" of the true Christian life. Only in such societies could the ideal of Christian righteousness, imperfectly apprehended by the individual conscience, be illustrated and enforced by the spirit, temper, and example of a community. In such societies there was possible a freedom of brotherly exhortation not possible elsewhere. The common prayer of an assembly composed of the truly devout was something infinitely more wonderful and blessed than prayer offered in the heterogeneous crowd where the vicious and profane might largely outnumber those whose hearts had been filled with awe and with gratitude by the discovery of the righteousness and grace of Christ. What the Church, founded

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10 Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, ii. 176.

by Christ, had once been-" the house of God," the home of God's children, their refuge from the darkness and tempest and peril of the world outside-good men and women hoped to find in monasteries and free spiritual communities founded by themselves. Their hope was not altogether disappointed. In many cases it was largely fulfilled. But these voluntary associations were at the best private religious clubs-not, in the noblest sense of the words, Christian Churches. If it was their endeavour to receive into their fellowship only those whom Christ had received, many of those whom Christ had received were by the nature of their organisation excluded. They were not open to all Christians; they were open only to certain classes of Christians who were able to attempt what was generally regarded as a loftier kind of life than that which was attainable by the commonalty of the faithful. From the first they contained the elements of corruption and decay. They were the visible and pathetic signs of a deep and general longing for a society in which those who loved Christ might realise their brotherhood in Him; but they could not permanently satisfy that longing. They bore witness to the loss of the true idea of the Christian Church; but they did not restore it.

IV

Among the Waldenses, whose home was in the valleys of Piedmont, but who in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries became numerous in the south of France and in the north of Italy, and found their way even into Germany and Spain, there was a nearer approach to the ecclesiastical life and polity of apostolic times. It has been contended, indeed, with a considerable amount of evidence, that among the shepherds living in the secluded valleys of the Alps the tradition of apostolic teaching and apostolic practice had been preserved, while the rest of the Church was surrendering its original faith and freedom; and it is claimed for the Waldensian Church that it has maintained an unshaken fidelity to the simplicity of the Gospel from the earliest times to our own.

Towards the close of the twelfth century Waldensianism began to spread over southern Europe. About the year 1160

Peter Waldo," a wealthy merchant of Lyons, having an earnest desire to learn for himself the true will of God concerning human salvation, employed two priests, one a man of some learning and the other a practised writer, to prepare for him translations of the Gospels and of other portions of Holy Scripture the scholar dictated while the other wrote. Copies of these translations, which were originally made for Peter's own use, were distributed freely among the common people, and those who were kindled to religious earnestness were drawn into societies for religious instruction and worship. Laymen began to expound the Scriptures, to preach, and to conduct religious services; they heard confessions, gave absolution, and administered baptism and the Lord's Supper.12 They appealed from the tradition of the Church to the Holy Scriptures. Some of the brethren were appointed to office in the Waldensian societies, but every man that knew the Gospel was free to make it known to others. An opponent represents them as saying: "With us, men and women teach, and he who is a scholar of seven days already teaches others. Among the Catholics a teacher is rarely to be met with who can repeat from memory, letter for letter, three chapters of the Bible; but with us, a man or woman is rarely to be found who cannot repeat the entire New Testament in the vernacular language." They had preserved or recovered the great idea of the priesthood of the commonalty of the Church.

13

The earliest adherents of Peter of Lyons appear to have had tendencies to asceticism and to have believed that poverty is a necessary element of Christian perfection; but from these errors they soon escaped, and it is the distinction of the Waldensians that in endeavouring to realise the communion of saints they did not, like most of the societies described in this chapter, withdraw men from the ordinary pursuits of life.

It was no part of Peter Waldo's purpose to break with the Roman Church. Like John Wesley in later times, he was

11 Those who assert that the Waldensian Churches have maintained -rather than revived-the tradition of early Christian Churches, contend that they received their name from the valleys in which their faith had been secluded from the general corruption of Christendom, and that Peter of Lyons was not called Peter Waldo till he had received the Waldensian faith.

12 Neander, Church History, viii. 435. 13 Ibid., viii. 431.

willing to recognise existing ecclesiastical authorities, if he and those who shared his faith were permitted to preach the Gospel to the poor, and to associate themselves together for communion with God and each other. Innocent III. was disposed to treat them gently, but the bishops who insisted on severity had a truer understanding of the real nature of the Waldensian movement. It was a protest against the usurpation of the priests, and against the corruption which had infected the fellowship of the Church. It recalled the first age of the Church: it was the prophecy of the Reformation.

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