The last article is clearly a butting against sacerdotal authority. In fact, anti-sacerdotalism is still the real sum and substance of the teaching. There was no explicit doctrinal, intellectual error of the first magnitude. Implicitly, however, there was; for underlying the whole Waldensian propaganda lay a heretical principle: that which bestows authority to exercise priestly functions is not ordination at all, but merit and the individual’s consciousness of vocation.[14] The Church felt Waldensianism to be a serious menace because it speedily became popular and spread rapidly. The Poor Men later came to believe themselves the true Church, from which Catholicism had in its corruption fallen away. And in support of this they were wont to point to their own personal purity. To secure godliness was ever their main concern. A simple adherent of the Waldensian creed, interrogated as to the precepts his instructors had inculcated, explained that they had taught him ‘that he should neither speak nor do evil, that he should do nothing to others that he would not have done to himself, and that he should not lie or swear.’[15] It would be difficult to find an apter summary of the ideals of Christian conduct! On certain points of behaviour the Waldenses laid particular stress—perhaps most of all upon the necessity of scrupulous truthfulness; and like many people who have a keen sense of the compelling beauty of truth for its own sake, they strongly disapproved of the taking of oaths.