the anxiety of inquiry; the eye would seem to penetrate beyond the sphere of his existence, and to scrutinize a world far, far beyond the scan of ordinary men. He is seated near the margin of the ocean; and a beautiful child, at a small distance from the prelate, seems to be equally intent upon his own occupation. He has a large shell with which he appears determined to draw off the waters of the ocean and to pour them on the land.

The saint relates that one day when endeavoring to form some idea of the nature of the infinite and eternal Creator, and led in his contemplations to try find some objects of comparison and to discern the mode of the Triune existence of the Almighty; after many a fruitless effort, he saw that a child thus occupied was the best emblem of an aspiring mortal who would endeavor, with his limited faculties, to grasp infinity. It reminded me of the solemn and sublime address of the Lord Himself to the wise, the patient, and the contemplative Eastern:

"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God made joyful melody, who shut up the sea with doors when it broke forth as issuing out of the womb? When I made a cloud the garment thereof, and wrapped it in a mist as in in swaddling bands, I set my bounds around it, and made it a bar and doors; and I said: Hitherto thou shalt come, and shalt go no further, and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves." 1

1 Job, c. 88, v. 7-11. ̧

I HAVE found the following article in a Protestant

paper:

"AN OLD CONFESSION OF FAITH.

"Where was your religion before Luther?' is a standing interrogatory, fabricated for the double purpose of sustaining the pretensions of the Papacy to universal Catholicism, and to tantalize unlettered Protestants, by assuring them that their religion is of a very modern origin. The question, however, can be triumphantly answered. But, without attempting it at present, we shall merely adduce the Confession of Faith which was adopted by the much-persecuted Waldenses more than 400 years before Luther.

"There are several confessions of the faith of these Christians of the valleys, some of them bearing a very early date, still extant. Sir Samuel Morland has fixed the date of the earliest in the year 1120; it reads as follows:

"1. We believe and firmly maintain all that is contained in the twelve articles of the symbol, commonly called the Apostles' Creed, and we regard as heretical whatever is inconsistent with the said twelve articles. 2. We believe that there is is one God, Father, Son, and Spirit. 3. We acknowledge, for canonical Scriptures, the books of the Holy Bible. (The books enumerated correspond exactly with our received canon; the Apocrypha is excluded). 4. The books above mentioned teach us that there is one God Almighty, unbounded in wisdom, and infinite in goodness, and who in His goodness has made all things; for He created Adam after His own image and likeness: likeness: but, through the enmity of the devil and his disobedience Adam

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fell, sin entered into the world, and we became transgressors in and by Adam. 5. That Christ had been promised to the fathers who received the law, to the end that knowing their sin by the law, and their unrighteousness and insufficiency, they might desire the coming of Christ to make satisfaction for their sins and to accomplish the law by Himself. 6. That at the time appointed by the Father, Christ was born; a time when inquiry everywhere abounded, to make it manifest that it was not for the sake of any good in ourselves, for we were all sinners, but that He who is true might display His grace and mercy towards us. 7. That Christ is our life, and truth, and peace, and righteousness, our shepherd and our advocate, our sacrifice and peace, who died for the satisfaction of all who should believe, and rose again for our justification. 8. And we also believe, that there is no other mediator or advocate with God the Father but Jesus Christ; and as to the Virgin Mary, she was holy, humble, and full of grace. And this we also believe concerning all other saints, namely, that they are waiting in heaven for the resurrection of their bodies at the day of judgment. 9. We also believe that, after this life there are but two places, one for those that are saved, the other for the damned, which two we call paradise and hell, wholly denying that imaginary purgatory of Antichrist, invented in opposition to the truth. Moreover, we have ever regarded all the inventions of men in the affairs of religion as an unspeakable abomination. before God; such as the festival days and vigils of saints, and what is called holy water, the abstaining from flesh on certain days, and such like things; but, above all, human inventions which produce distress, (probably meaning penance), and are prejudicial to the liberty of mind. 12. We consider the sacraments as signs of holy things, or as the visible emblems of invisible blessings. We regard it as proper and even necessary, that believers use these symbols and forms when it can be done. Notwithstanding which, we maintain that believers may be saved without these

10.

signs when they have neither place nor opportunity of observing them. 13. We acknowledge no sacrament as of divine opportunity but baptism and the Lord's Supper. 14. We honor the secular powers with subjection, obedience, promptitude, and payment.'

"Several subsequent confessions of the Waldenses are of similar tenor, recognizing all the fundamental doctrines of the Reformation; but some parts of them are more pointedly directed against the errors of the Romish Church, such as the restricting of the use of the Scriptures to the clergy, the infallibility of the Pope, &c. The Waldenses seem at all times to have laid particular stress upon the point of the Church of Rome being the Antichrist, the harlot of Babylon, the man of sin, the son of perdition, spoken of in the New Testament prophecies; and they insisted strenuously upon the necessity of separation from her communion, though they nevertheless inculcate obedience to their Popish rulers."

Before entering into the particulars of this confession, it may be as well, supposing the truth of its date, to consider its claim to the term old. The present is the year 1837 from the birth of our Saviour, that is to say, 1804 from the descent of the Holy Ghost and the establishment of the Christian Church. Now, supposing the correctness of the date fixed by Sir Samuel Morland, 1120, this confession is 717 years old, and 1087 years after the establishment of the Church; that is, 370 years nearer to our day, than to that of the descent of the Holy Ghost. This is no great evidence of its Christian antiquity!

Again, it is said to be more than 400 years before Luther. Now Martin Luther was born on the 10th of November, 1483, that is 363 years after the supposed date of this confession, and I am indeed at a loss to discover how 363 is more than 400.

But this is not all. The writer tells us that it is the confession of the Waldenses. Everybody knows that the Waldenses were so called because they were the disciples

and the followers of Peter Waldo, who did not begin to form any disciples until after the year 1160, that is forty years after the period assigned for the date of this confession of faith, and thus the period of more than 400 years must be reduced to 323 at the most before the birth of Martin Luther; and this gentleman was not more than thirty-four years of age when he began to assail the Church. I believe that it can be shown by good evidence that the document called "The Old Confession of Faith," an abstract of which is given above, and a more full copy of which I have lying on the table before me, was not formed until about twentyfive years after the year 1160, which would reduce the more than 400 years to less than 300 years before Luther.

My object is not to diminish the value of this very old confession, by detracting from its antiquity, but to show the danger of loosely dealing in general assertions when persons are treating of facts. Another object is to show the danger of trusting to loose writers, when a person undertakes to give the copy or even the substance of such a document as a confession of faith.

I shall now supply a few omissions, not denying that in the form above given there is a pretty accurate description of some of the articles, but totally denying that the formu

lary is either perfect, complete, adequate, or full, in

representing the doctrines of the followers of Peter Waldo, at any moment after they drew up anything like a confession of their belief.

A considerable portion of the above formulary is taken from their book called "The Spiritual Calendar ;" more is taken substantially but not verbally from the description or history of Perrin. For instance, Article 3 is not taken exactly as a copy, but substantially and not very accurately; but Articles 12 and 14 are literal translations, the original of which we give as a literary curiosity:

"12. Nos cresen que li sacrament son segnal de la cosa sancta o forma vesibla de gratia non vesibla, tenent esserbon que li fidel uzan alcunas vecs duquisti dict segnal, o forma