answering so prolix a writing. He was answered with fair speeches and many promises of a patient hearing. He then discoursed upon the subject for four days, with such perspicuity, fluency and precision, such order and forcible reasoning, that a powerful impression was made upon the minds of the audience. He finally called upon the Catholics for their defence, when the Bishop of Villeneuse declared that the conference must be broken up, because the army of the crusaders was approaching, and near at hand. What he asserted was true. The papal armies advanced, and all points of controversy were instantly decided by fire and fagot. It is estimated that not less than two hundred thousand of these innocent people perished in the short space of two months. The war of extermination continued twenty years, and one million persons were put to death. These disastrous scenes occurred in the commencement of the twelfth century, and three hundred years previous to the dawn of the Reformation in Germany. During this long period, the circumstances of the Waldenses were always afflictive, but at some times and in some countries more so than in others. The Church of Rome, with the armies of crusaders who were always at hand, and always ready to lend their assistance for the extirpation of heresy, and the monks of the Inquisition, who were never more numerous and active, seemed determined to exterminate them from the face of the earth. But the contests of the Catholic states among themselves, the quarrels of the popes with the secular princes, whose affairs they attempted to control, combined with other causes, afforded these victims of ecclesiastical tyranny some short and temporary seasons of repose. Of the multitudes who perished beneath the iron power of the Inquisition, we have little account. Nevertheless some details of cases of individual suffering have been given to the world, and multitudes of others lie concealed among the manuscripts preserved in ancient libraries. From records of this kind, Philip de Mornay, a French author of some distinction, composed a work purporting to be the memoirs of celebrated Waldensian martyrs, in which detailed and circumstantial narratives of many trials were given, together with the interrogatories and answers of the criminals, and the heresies of which they were accused. According to these statements they were perpetually accused of Judaism, of practising circumcision, and observing the Jewish Sabbath. The former charges they repelled with disdain. Of the latter, they generally replied that God had commanded the observance of the seventh day, which command was binding upon Christians, as much as Jews, since neither Christ nor his Apostles had ever commanded its abrogation. Some of these accounts are very interesting, and the Sabbatarians reasoned in precisely the same manner as we do now.