Thus did the Bible in those ages, veiling its majesty and its mission, travel silently through Christendom, entering homes and hearts, and there making its abode. From her lofty seat Rome looked down with contempt upon the Book and its humble bearers. She aimed at bowing the necks of kings, thinking if they were obedient meaner men would not dare revolt, and so she took little heed of a power which, weak as it seemed, was destined at a future day to break in pieces the fabric of her dominion. By-and-by she began to be uneasy, and to have a boding of calamity. The penetrating eye of Innocent III. detected the quarter whence danger was to arise. He saw in the labours of these humble men the beginning of a movement which, if permitted to go on and gather strength, would one day sweep away all that it had taken the toils and intrigues of centuries to achieve. He straightway commenced those terrible crusades which wasted the sowers but watered the seed, and helped to bring on, at its appointed hour, the catastrophe which he sought to avert. CHAPTER III. FIRST PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES. Their Unique Position in Christendom--Their Twofold Testimony-- They Witness against Rome and for Protestantism--Hated by Rome--The Cottian Alps--Albigenses and Waldenses--The Waldensian Territory Proper--Papal Testimony to the Flourishing State of their Church in the Fourteenth Century--Early Bulls against them--Tragedy of Christmas, 1400--Constancy of the Waldenses--Crusade of Pope Innocent VIII.--His Bull of 1487---The Army Assembles--Two Frightful Tempests approach the Valleys. The Waldenses stand apart and alone in the Christian world. Their place on the surface of Europe is unique; their position in history is not less unique; and the end appointed them to fulfil is one which has been assigned to them alone, no other people being permitted to share it with them.