er employments of honor and profit, he ordered all the courts of justice, erected by virtue of the edict of Nantz, to be abolished, and, in lieu of them, made several laws in favor of the catholic religion, which debarred from all liberty of abjuring the catholic doctrine, and restrained those protestants, who had embraced it, from returning to their former opinions, under severe punishments. He ordered soldiers to be quartered in their houses till they changed their religion. He shut up their churches, and forbad the ministerial function to their clergy, and, where his commands were not readily obeyed, he levelled their churches with the ground. At last he revoked the Oct. 22. 1685. edict of Nantz, and banished them from the

kingdom.

"A thousand dreadful blows, says Mr. Saurin, were struck at our afflicted churches, before that which destroyed them: for our enemies, if I may use such an expression, not content with seeing our ruin, endeavoured to taste it. One while, edicts were published against those, who, foreseeing the calamities that threatened our churches, and not having power to prevent them, desired only the sad consolation of not being spectators of their ruin. Another while, against those, who, through Aug. 1669. their weakness, had denied their religion, and who not being able to bear the remorse May, 1679. of their consciences, desired to return to their first profession. One while, our pastors were forbidden to exercise their discipline on those of their flocks, who had abjured the

1680.

1681.

Jan.

1683.

July,

truth. Another while, children of seven June, years of age were allowed to embrace doctrines, which, the church of Rome says, are not level to the capacities of adults. Now June, a college was suppressed, and then a church shut up. Sometimes we were forbidden to convert infidels; and sometimes to confirm those in the truth, whom we had instructed from their infancy, and our pastors were forbidden to exercise their pastoral office any longer in one place than three years. Sometimes the printing of our books was prohibited, and sometimes those which we had printed were taken away. One while, we were not suffered to preach in a church, and another while, we were punished for preaching on its ruins, and at length were forbidden to worship God in public at all. Now we were banished, then we were forbidden to quit the king- 1689. dom on pain of death. Here we saw the

1685.

Sept.

1685.

Oct.

1685.

glorious rewards of those who betrayed their religion; and there we beheld those, who had the courage to confess it, a haling to a dungeon, a scaffold, or a galley. Here, we saw our persecutors drawing on a sledge the dead bodies of those who had expired on the rack. There, we beheld a false friar tormenting a dying man, who was terrified, on the one hand, with the fear of hell if he should apostatize, and, on the other, with the fear of leaving his children without bread, if he should continue in the faith: yonder, they were tearing children from their parents, while

the tender parents were shedding more tears for the loss of their souls, than for that of their bodies, or lives."

It is impossible to meet with parallel instances of cruelty among the heathens in their persecutions of the primitive Christians. The bloody butchers,

who were sent to them under the name of Dragoons, invented a thousand torments to tire their patience, and to force an abjuration from them. They cast some, says Mr. Claude, into large fires, and took them out when they were half roasted. They hanged others with large ropes under their arm-pits, and plunged them several times into wells, till they promised to renounce their religion. They tied them like criminals on the rack, and poured wine with a funnel into their mouths, till, being intoxicated, they declared that they consented to turn catholics. Some they slashed and cut with penknives, some they took by the nose with red hot tongs, and led them up and down the rooms till they promised to turn catholics." These cruel proceedings made eight hundred thousand persons quit the kingdom.

If the same actions may proceed from different principles, it must be always a hazardous, and often an unjust, attempt, to assign the true motives of men's conduct. But public actions fall under public notice, and they deserve censure, or commendation, according to the obvious good or evil, which they produce in society. The art of governing requires a superior genius, and a superior genius hides, like a lofty mountain, its summit in the

clouds. In some cases, a want of capacity, and, in others, a fund of selfishness, would prevent a subject's comprehension of his prince's projects, and, consequently, his approbation of the prince's measures; and, for these reasons, the cabinets of princes should be the least accessible, and their hearts the most impenetrable parts of their dominions: but, when the prince would reduce his projects to practice, and cause his imaginations to become rules of action to his subjects, he ought to give a reason for his conduct, and, if his conduct be rational, he will do so, for as all law is founded in reason, so reason is its best support. In such a case, the nature of the thing, as well as the respect that is due to the rank of the prince, would require us to be either mute or modest, on the motive; and the same reasons would require us to consider the reasonableness, or unreasonableness, of the law, for if it be not reason, it ought not to be law; and nothing can prevent our feeling the good or ill effects of the whole action.

To disfranchise, and to banish, to imprison, and to execute, some members of society are partial evils but they are also sometimes general benefits, and the excision of a part may be essential to the preservation of the whole. The inflicting of these punishments on the French protestants, might possibly be essential to the safety of the whole nation. Or, perhaps his majesty might think it essential to monarchy; perhaps the clergy might think it essential to orthodoxy; perhaps the financiers, and the king's mistresses, might think it essential to the ma

king of their fortunes: but we have nothing to do with these private views, the questions are, Was it essential to the general safety and happiness of the kingdom? Was it agreeable to the unalterable dictates of right reason? Was it consistent with the sound, approved maxims of civil policy? In these views, we venture to say, that the repeal of the edict of Nantz, which had been the security of the protestants, was an action irrational and irreligious, inhuman and ungrateful, perfidious, impolitic, and weak. If respect to religion, and right reason, were to compose a just title for the perpetrator of such a crime, it might call him, a most inhuman tyrant : certainly it would not call him, a most Christian king.

It was an irrational act, for there was no fitness between the punishment and the supposed crime. The crime was a mental error: but penal laws have no internal operation on the mind. It was irreligious, for religion ends where persecution begins. An action may begin in religion: but when it proceeds to injure a person, it ceaseth to be religion, it is only a denomination, and a method of acting. It was inhuman, for it caused the most savage cruelties. It was as ungrateful in the house of Bourbon to murder their old supporters, as it was magnanimous in the protestants, under their severest persecutions, to tell their murderer, that they thought that blood well employed, which had been spilt in supporting the just claim of the house of Bourbon to the throne. It was, to the last degree, perfidious, for the edict of Nantz had been given by Henry IV. for a perpetual, and irrevocable decree;