Page:The Waldensian Church in the valleys of Piedmont.djvu/40

 documents on the peculiar tenets of the Genevan Church, must also be admitted in evidence of her ancient Episcopalian training. Still, in pursuing her after-history, we shall find her equally submissive to the rule of the Presbytery, and receiving both her form of worship and her pastors (under the pressure of very extraordinary circumstances) from that body with whose ecclesiastical polity she has now, for nearly three centuries, continued in the closest connection. The union of the two Churches has been further cemented by gratitude for the sympathy and aid which that of Geneva has ever shown towards her suffering sister, as well as by the further link of a ministry trained in her colleges; the Vaudois youth having, until the endowment of their college in their own valleys, received their education in foreign seminaries. Still, under all circumstances, it must be allowed that the little Church in the valleys submissively followed the path pointed out to them in the unmistakable leadings of Providence; and if this sometimes required them to yield in matters non-essential to salvation, they never lost the characteristics of a Christian Church, so admirably defined by their own historian and pastor - namely,


 * "A simple and sincere conformity to the sacred Word;
 * A holy life and conversation;
 * Persecution, and the cross."