Gordon Clark: Lest We Forget (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

Note: The author signature at the bottom of this iteration is A. H. C., which is probably why this has been missed as a work by Gordon Clark. But I am confident that this was a typo for at least three reasons: 

1) By the very fact the next iteration - this one by "G. H. C." - is called a continuation: "Lest We Forget (Con't.)." One would expect a different author unless the reader was otherwise made aware of the fact. On the contrary, the first line of this continuation in this series picks up right where this one leaves off in discussing the Waldenses: "Pope Innocent VIII, in 1488, determined to persecute the Waldenses." Clark also wrote two further iterations in this series for a grand total of four (including this first one with the typo).

2) No contributing editors for this issue had the initials A. H. C.

3) The style of signature by initials (G. H. C.) fits with what Clark's was in many of his writings for The Southern Presbyterian Journal.

1959. Lest We Forget. The Southern Presbyterian Journal, XVIII.

One Lord's Day morning an American worshipper was sitting in the Reformed church in Tours, France. On the wall he saw a plaque which read, "In memory of Catherine Marechal, first martyr of this parish, burned alive 1532." 

The American wondered whether the details of those days of the Protestant Reformation are fading out of the minds of the twentieth century public. There is still some knowledge of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's eve, when in 1572 the Catholics massacred some sixty to seventy thousand Protestants. But is this the faint and only memory of a long history of persecution? Near Tours, at the castle of Amboise, the American saw the balcony from which the Catholics hanged about 100 Protestant men in 1560 and where they threw the women and children into the Loire to drown. But what had happened before 1560 and before 1532? Let us go back several centuries before the Reformation. 

The Middle Ages were saturated with superstition and Popery. But there were always a few who had some appreciation of the Gospel and who tried to dispel the errors which the priests and monks had invented to deceive the people. In the year 1000, five centuries before Martin Luther and Calvin, Berengarius preached evangelical truth in its primitive simplicity. He had a good number of converts. Berengarius was followed by Peter Bruis, who preached at Toulouse, under the protection of the Earl. By the year 1140 the number of the Reformed was so great that the Pope was alarmed. He wrote to several princes and ordered them to banish the evangelical believers from their domains. Before describing the events which the Pope's policy put into effect, some idea should be given of the ideas of these early reformers. Fairly full information is available about one of the most famous of these men: Peter Waldo, a wealthy gentleman of Lyons, who became the founder of the Waldensians. 

Waldo and his followers held that holy oil is not to be mingled with the water in baptism; prayers said over inanimate things is superstition; flesh may be eaten in Lent, the clergy may marry, and auricular confession is unnecessary; confirmation and extreme unction are not sacraments; masses and indulgences are of no value to the dead; image worship is idolatry; purgatory is a fiction; and prayer should not be offered to the saints. There are other details too, but ; the most important thing to notice is that Waldo took the Scriptures as the sole authority in matters of faith and practice. He definitely rejected the claims of the Pope and the infallibility of the Roman church. When Alexander III heard of all this, he excommunicated Waldo and ordered the Bishop of Lyons to exterminate the sect. 

For three years Waldo hid in Lyons and managed to escape the diligence of the police. Then he escaped to the mountains of Dauphiny, where he was able to make many more converts. This enraged Philip, King of France, who sent out a military expedition that destroyed some 300 properties of the well-to-do, razed some walled towns, and burned many of the reformed people. Others fled to Normandy and to Germany. 

Notwithstanding these persecutions the reformed religion flourished, and the Waldensians became more numerous than ever. The Catholics slandered them, anathematized them, legislated them out of positions of trust, honor, and profit, denied them burial in cemeteries, seized their lands, and confiscated their goods. As Peter Waldo continued to preach that the Pope was the Anti-Christ, that mass was an abomination, that the reserved host was an idol, and that purgatory was a fable, Pope Innocent III organized the Inquisition to proceed against the Waldensians. In the courts of the Inquisition surmise and slander were accepted as evidence, and the accused were soon handed over to the executioner. 

It was at this time that the Dominican order was founded, and its members have often been the principal agents of the Inquisition in many different countries. The powers of the Inquisition against heretics was unlimited. No matter how infamous an accuser was, the accusation could be accepted; even anonymous accusations were deemed valid. Some people were condemned more for being rich than for being evangelical heretics, for the confiscation of property was a profitable occupation. The friends of the defendants could not supply them with straw for bedding without the danger of being arrested as friends of the heretics. It was worth their life to give the defendant a cup of water. No lawyer dared to speak in their behalf. If a man on his death bed was accused of being a Waldensian, his estate was seized, his heirs defrauded, while the Dominicans took possession of the properties. 

In the year 1380 a monk inquisitor, Francis Boralli, was granted a commission by Pope Clement, III to punish the Waldensians in Aix, Ambrone, Geneva, and Savoy. At Ambrone he summoned all the inhabitants before him; those suspected of being evangelical were burnt to death, and their property along with the property of those who refused to appear was confiscated. The seized property was divided so that the secular executioners received one third and the clergy two thirds. 

In the year 1400 the Waldensians who resided in the valley of Pragela were, at the instigation of the priests, attacked by troops who plundered their houses, murdered many of the people, and drove others into the Alps. These latter froze to death, for it was winter time. In 1460 a persecution was conducted in Dauphiny by the Archbishop of Ambrone. The agent was a monk by the name of John Vayleti. This Vayleti was so indiscriminately cruel that even many Papists were murdered too. His excuse was that some of these Papists had expressed sympathy for the Waldensian sufferers. At length Vayleti's cruelties became so intolerable that the Papists themselves sent a petition to the King of France, Louis XI, who granted the petition and ordered an end to the persecution. Vayleti, however, by order of the Archbishop, continued the persecution and did not cease until 1487 when the Archbishop died. 

— A. H. C.