The Connection of the Witnesses

 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 12
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reader's mind the interesting fact of an early connection between them and the Waldenses, if not the Paulicians. Bohemia and Moravia continued in heathenism as late as the ninth century when they received the gospel from Eastern missionaries; probably also from the Paulicians. Peter Waldo, in the twelfth century, driven from Lyons by persecution, found a refuge in Bohemia, where he labored for twenty years with great success. In the fourteenth century his followers in Bohemia and Passau are said to have amounted to eighty thousand, and throughout Europe to about eight hundred thousand. The court of Rome, irritated by the zeal and offended by the practices of the united Paulician, Waldensian, Bohemian, and Moravian Christians, resolved on their subjugation to the Roman yoke. Celibacy was enjoined, the cup forbidden to the laity, and the church service performed in Latin. A struggle commenced, the Bohemians protested, Rome persecuted, and though many continued firm, others gradually declined, and lost much of their original purity of doctrine and simplicity of worship. So things continued for about three hundred years, when John Huss and Jerome of Prague again raised the standard of truth, witnessed against the corruptions of Rome, and kindled by the flames of their martyrdom a light which soon spread throughout Europe, and which continues to shine in our day, through the good providence of God. The mysterious way by which the light traveled, we must now trace.
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