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the women in the middle surrounded by men on foot, and the latter by men on horseback; and during the sermon, the governor of Paris placed soldiers to guard the avenues, and to prevent disturbances. The morality of this worship cannot be disputed, for if God be worshipped in spirit and in truth, the place is indifferent. The expediency of it may be doubted: but, in a persecution of forty years, the French protestants had learnt that their political masters did not consider how rational, but how formidable they were.

The Guises, and their associates, being quite dispirited, retired to their estates. and the queen regent, by the chancellor's advice, granted an edict to enable the protestants to preach in all parts of the kingdom, except in Paris, and in other walled cities. The parliaments of France had then the power of refusing to register royal edicts, and the chancellor had occasion for all his address, to prevail over the scruples and ill humour of the parliament to procure the registering of this. He begged leave to say, that the question before them was one of those which had its difficulties, on whatever side it was viewed; that in the present case one of two things must be chosen, either to put all the adherents of the new religion to the sword; or to banish them entirely, allowing them to dispose of their effects; that the first point could not be execut d, since that party was too strong both in leaders and partisans; and though it could be done, yet as it was staming the king's youth with the blood of so many of his subjects, perhaps when he came of age he would demand it at the hands of his governors; with regard to the second point, it was as little feasible, and could it be effected, it would be raising as many desperate enemies as exiles: that to enforce conformity against conscience, as matters stood now, was to lead the people to atheism. The edict at last was passed, [Jan. 1562.] but the house registered it with this clause, in consideration of the present juncture of the times: but not approving of the new religion in any manner, and till the king shall otherwise appoint. So hard sat toleration on the minds of papists.

A minority was a period favourable to the views of the Guises, and this edict was a happy occasion of a pretence for commencing hostilities. The Duke, instigated by his mother, went to Vassi, a town adjacent to one of his lordships, and, some of his retinue picking a quarrel with some protestants, who were hearing a sermon in a barn, he interested himself in it, wounded two hundred, and left sixty dead on the spot. This was the first protestant blood that was shed in civil war. [Mar. 1, 1562.]

The news of this affair flew like lightning, and, while the Duke was marching to Paris with a thousand horse, the city, and the provinces rose in arms. The chancellor was extremely afflicted to see both sides preparing for war, and endeavoured to dissuade them from it. The constable told him, it did not belong to men of the long robe, to give their judgment with relation to war. To which he answered,

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that though he did not bear arms, he knew when they ought to be used. After this, they excluded him from the councils of war.

The queen-regent, alarmed at the Duke's approach to Paris, threw herself into the hands of the Protestants, and ordered Conde to take up arms. [Aug. 1562] War began, and barbarities and cruelties were practised on both sides. The Duke of Guise was assassinated, the king of Navarre was killed at a siege, fifty thousand protestants were slain, and, after a year had been spent in these confusions, a peace was concluded. [A. D. 1563.] All that the protestants obtained was an edict which excluded the exercise of their religion from cities, and restrained it to their own families.

Peace did not continue long, for the protestants, having received intelligence, that the Pope, the house of Austria, and the house of Guise, had conspired their ruin, and fearing that the king, and the court, were inclined to crush them, as their rights were every day infringed by new edicts, took up arms again in their own defence. [A. D. 1567.] The city of Rochelle declared for them, and it served them for an asylum for sixty years. They were assisted by Queen Elizabeth of England, and by the German princes, and they obtained, at the conclusion of this second war, [Ą. D. 1563] the revocation of all penal edicts, the exercise of their religion in their families, and the grant of six cities for their security.

The pope, the king of Spain, and the Guises, finding that they could not prevail while the wise chancellor retained his influence, formed a cabal against him, and got him removed. [June, 1568.] He resigned very readily, and retired to a country seat, where he sp nt the remainder of his days. A strange confusion followed in the direction of affairs; one edict allowed liberty, another forbade it, and it was plain to the protestants that their situation was very delicate and dangerous. The articles of the last peace had never been performed, and the papists every where insulted their liberties, so that in three months time, two thousand Hugonots were murdered, and the murderers went unpunished. War broke out again. [A. D. 1568.] Queen Elizabeth assisted the protestants with money, the Count Palatine helped them with men, the Queen of Navarre parted with her rings and jewels to support them, and, the Prince of Conde being slain, she declared her son, prince Henry, the head and protector of the protestant cause, and caused medals to be struck with these words: a safe peace, a complete victory, a glorious death. Her majesty did every thing in her power for the advancement of the cause of religious liberty,and she used to say,that liberty of conscience ought to be preferred before honours. dignities, and life itself. She caused the New Testament, the catechism, and the liturgy of Geneva,to be translated,and printed at Rochelle. She abolished popery, and established protestantism in her own deminions. In her leisure hours, she expressed her zeal by working tapestries with her own hands, in which she represented the monuments of that liberty, which she procured by shaking off the yoke of

the Pope. One suit consisted of twelve pieces.
On each piece was represented some scrip-
ture history of deliverance; Israel coming
out of Egypt, Joseph's release from prison, or
something of the like kind. On the top of
each piece were these words, where the spi-
rit is there is liberty, and in the corners of
each were broken chains, fetters, and gibbets.
One piece represented a congregation at Mass,
and a fox, in a friar's habit, officiating as a
priest. grinning horribly and saying, the Lord
be with you.
The pieces were fashionable
patterns, and dexterously directed the needles
of the ladies to help forward the reformation.

After many negotiations a peace was concluded, [1570] and the free exercise of religion was allowed in all but walled cities, two cities in every province were assigned to the protestants; they were to be admitted into all universities, schools, hospitals, public offices, royal seigniorial, and corporate, and to render the peace of everlasting duration, a match was proposed between Henry of Navarre, and the sister of King Charles. These articles were accepte 1, the match was agreed to, every man's sword was put up in its sheath, and the queen of Navarre, her son, King Henry, the princes of the blood, and the principal protestants, went to Paris to celebrate the marriage. [Aug. 15, 1572] A few days after the marriage, the Admiral, who was one of the principal protestant leaders, was assasinated. [Aug. 22] This alarmed the king of Navarre, and the prince of Conde, but the king and his mother promising to punish the assassin, they were quiet. The next Sunday. [Aug. 9, 24] being St. Bartholomew's day, when the bells rang for morning prayers, the Duke of Guise, brother of the last, appeared with a great number of soldiers and citizens, and began to murder the Hugonots; the wretched Charles appeared at the windows of his palace, and endeavoured to shoot those who fled, crying to their pursuers, Kill them, kill them The massacre continued seven days, seven hundred houses were pillaged; five thousand people perished in Paris; neither age, nor sex, nor even women with child were spared; one butcher boasted to the king that he had hewn down a hundred and fifty in one night. The rage ran from Paris to the provinces, where twenty five thousand more were cruelly slain; the queen of Navarre was poisoned; and, during the massacre, the king offered the king of Navarre, and the young prince of Conde, son of the lat prince, if they would not renounce Hugonotism, either death, mass, or bustile: for he said he would not have one left to reproach him. This bloody affair does not lie between Charles IX., his mother Catharine of Medicis, and the Duke of Guise; for the church of Rome, and the court of Spain, by exhibiting public rejoicings on the occasion, have adopted it for their own, or, at least, have claimed a share.

Would any one after this propose passive obedience and nonresistance to French protestants? Or can we wonder, that, abhorring a church, who offered to embrace them with hands reeking with the blood of their brethren, they put on their armour again, and commenced a fourth

civil war? The late massacre raised up also another party, called Politicians, who proposed to banish the family of Guise from France, to remove the queen mother, and the Italians, from the government, and to restore peace to the nation. This faction was headed by Montmorenci, who had an eye to the crown. During these troubles, the king died, in the twenty-fifth year of his age. [1574.] Charles had a lively little genius, he composed a book on hunting, and valued himself on his skill in physiognomy. He thought courage consisted in swearing and taunting at his courtiers. His diversions were hunting, music, women, and wine. His court was a common sewer of luxury and impiety, and, while his favourites were fleecing his people, he employed himself in the making of rhymes. The part which he acted in the Bartholomean tragedy, the worst crime that was ever perpetrated in any Christian country, will mark his reign with infamy, to the end of time.

Henry II who succeeded his brother Charles, was first despised, and then hated, by all his subjects. He was so proud that he set rails round his table, and affectel the pomp of an eastern king: and so mean that he often walked in procession with a beggarly Frotherhood, with a string of beads in his hand, and a whip at his girdle. He was so credulous that he took the sacrament with the Duke of Guise, and with the cardinal of Lorrain, his brother; and so treacherous, that he caused the assas sination of them both. He boasted of being a chief adviser of the late massacre, and the protestants abhorred him for it. The papists hated him for his adherence to the Hugonot house of Bourbon, and for the edicts which he sometimes granted in favour of the protestants, though his only aim was to weaken the Guises. The ladies held him in execration for his unnatural practices: and the dutchess of Montpensier talked of clipping his hair, and of making him a monk. His heavy taxes, which were consumed by his favourites, excited the populace against him, and, while his kingdom was covering with carnage and drenching in blood, he was training lap-dogs to tumble, and parrots to prate.

In this reign was formed the famous league, [1576] which reduced France to the most miserable condition that could be. The chief promoter of it was the duke of Guise The pretence was the preservation of the Catholic religion. The chief articles were three. "The defence of the Catholic religion. The establishment of Henry III. on the throne. The maintaining of the liberty of the kingdom, and the assembling of the states." Those who entered into the league promised to obey such a general as should be chosen for the defence of it, and the whole was confirmed by oath. The weak Henry subscribed it at first in hopes of subduing the Hugonots; the queen mother, the Guises, the pope, the king of Spain, many of the clergy, and multitudes of the people became leaguers. When Henry perceived that Guise was aiming by this league to dethrone him, he favoured the protestants, and they obtained an edict for the free exercise of their religion;

[1576] but edicts were vain things against the power of the league, and three civil wars raged in this reign.

Guise's pretended zeal for the Romish religion allured the clergy, and France was filled with seditious books and sermons. The preachers of the league were the most furious of al sermon mongers. They preached up the exceliency of the established church, the necessity of uniformity, the horror of Hugonotism, the merit of killing the tyrant on the throne, (for so they called the king) the genealogy of the house of Guise, and every thing else that could inflame the madness of party rage. It is not enough to say that these abandoned clergymen disgraced their office; truth obliges us to add, they were protected, and preferred to dignities in the church, both in France and Spa n.

The nearer the Guises approached to the crown the more were they inflamed at the sight of it. They obliged the king to forbid the exercise of the protestant religion. They endeavoured to exclude the king of Navarre, who was now the next heir to the throne, from the succession, They began to act so haughtily that Henry caused the Duke and the cardinal to be assassinated. [1588.] The next year he himself was assassinated by a friar. [1589.] Religion flourishes where nothing else can grow, and the reformation spread more and more in this reign. The exiles at Geneva filled France with a new translation of the Bible, with books, letters, catechisms, hymns, and preachers, and the people, contrasting the religion of Christ with the religion of Rome, entertained a most serious aversion for the latter.

In the last king ended the family of Valois, and the next heir was Henry IV. of the house of Bourbon, king of Navarre. His majesty had been educated a protestant, and had been the protector of the party, and the protestants had reason to expect much from him on his ascending the throne of France: but he had many difficulties to surmount, for could the men who would not bear a Hugonot subject, bear a Hugonot king? Some of the old faction disputed his title, and all insisted on a christian king. Henry had for him, on the one side, almost all the nobility, the whole court of the late king, all protestant states, and princes, and the old Hugonot troops: on the other, he had against him, the common people, most of the great cities, all the parliaments except two, the greatest part of the clergy, the pope, the king of Spain, and most catholic states. Four years his majesty deliberated, negotiated, and fought, but could not gain Paris. At length, the league set up a king of the house of Guise, and Henry found that the throne was inaccessible to all but papists; he therefore renounced heresy before Dr. Benoit, a moderate papist, and professed his conversion to popery. Paris opened its gates, the pope sent an absolution, and Henry became a most christian king. [1594] Every man may rejoice that his virtue is not put to the trial of refusing a crown!

When his majesty got to his palace in Paris, he thought proper to conciliate his new friends

by showing them particular esteem, and play. ed at cards the first evening with a lady of the house of Guise, the most violent leaguer in all the party. His old servants, who had shed rivers of blood to bring the house of Bourbon to the throne, thought themselves neglected. While the protestants were slighted, and while those, who had followed the league, were disengaging themselves from it on advantageous conditions, one of the king's old friends said, "We do not envy your kill. ing the fatted calf for the prodival son, provided you do not sacrifice the obedient son to make the better entertainment for the prodigal. I dread those bargains, in which things are given up, and nothing got but mere words; the words of those who hitherto have had no words at all."

By ascending the throne of France, Henry had risen to the highest degree of wretchedness. He had offered violence to his conscience by embracing popery; he had stirred up a general discontent among the French protestants; the queen of England, and the protestant states, reproached him bitterly; the league refused to acknowledge him till the pope had absolved him in form; the king of Spain caballed for the crown; several cities held out against him; many of the clergy thought him an hypocrite, and refused to in. sert his name in the public prayers of the church; the lawyers published libels against him; the Jesuits threatened to assassinate him, and actually attempted to do it. In this delicate and difficult situation, though his majesty manifested the trailty of humanity by renounc ing protestantism. yet he e tricated himself and his subjects from the fatal labyrinths in which they were all involved, so that he deservedly acquired from his enemies the epithet Great, though his friends durst not give him that of Good.

The king had been so well acquainted with the protestants, that he perfectly knew their principles, and, could he have acted as he would, he would have instantly granted them all that they wanted. Their enemies had falsely said, that they were enemies to government: but the king knew better; and he also knew that the claims of his family would have been long ago buried in oblivion, had not the protestants supported them Marshal Biron had been one chief instrument of bringing him to the throne. The Marshal was not a good Hugonot, nor did he profess to be a papist: but he espoused the protestant party, for he was a man of great sense, and he hated violence in religion; and there were many more of the same cast. Parties, however, ran so high that precipitancy would have lost all, and Henry was obliged to proceed by slow and cautious steps.

The deputies of the reformed churches, soon waited on his majesty to congratulate him, and to pray for liberty. The king allowed them to hold a general assembly, and offered them some slight satisfaction: but the hardy veteran Hugonots, who had spent their days in the field, and who knew also that persons, who were of approved fidelity, might venture

to give the king their advice without angering him, took the liberty of reminding him that they would not be paid in compliments for so many signal services. Their ancestors and they had supported his right to the crown, along with their own right to liberty of conscience, and as Providence had granted the one, they expected that the other would not be denied. The king felt the force of these remonstrances, and ventured to allow them to hold provincial assemblies; after a while, to convene a national synod, and, as soon as he could, he granted them the famous EDICT OF NANTZ. [1598.]

The Edict of Nantz, which was called perpetual and irrevocable, and which contained ninety-two articles, besides fifty-six secret articles, granted to the Protestants liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of religion; many churches in all parts of France, and judges of their own persuasion; a free access to all places of honour and dignity; great sums of money to pay off their troops; a hundred places as pledges of their future security, and certain funds to maintain both their preachers and their garrisons. The king did not send this edict to be registered in parliament, till the pope's legate was gone out of the kingdom, so that it did not go there till the next year. Some of the old party in the house boggled at it very much, and particularly because the Hugonots were hereby qualified for offices, and places of trust; but his majesty sent for some of the chiefs to his closet, made them a most pathetic speech on the occasion, and, with some difficulty, brought them to a compliance. It is easy to conceive that the king might be very pathetic on this occasion, for he had seen and suffered enough to make any man so. The meanest Hugonot soldier could not avoid the pathos, if he related his campaigns. But it is very credible, that it was not the pathos of his majesty's language, but the power in his hand, that affected these intolerant souls.

No nation ever made a more noble struggle, for recovering liberty of conscience out of the rapacious hands of the Papal priesthood than the French. And one may venture to defy the most sanguine friend to intolerance to prove, that a free toleration hath, in any country, at any period, produced such calamities in society as those which persecution produced in France. After a million of brave men had been destroyed, after nine civil wars, after four pitched battles, after the besieging of several hundred places, after more than three hundred engagements, after poisoning, burning, assassinating, massacreing, murdering in every form, France is forced to submit to what her wise Chancellor de L'Hospital had at first proposed, A FREE TOLERATION. Most of the zealous leaguers voted for it, because they had found by experience, they said, that violent proceedings in matters of religion prove more destructive than edifying. A noble testimony from enemies' mouths!

France now began to taste the sweets of peace, the king employed himself in making his subjects happy, and the far greater part of

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his subjects, endeavoured to render him so. The Protestants applied themselves to the care of their churches, and, as they had at this time a great many able ministers, they flourished, and increased the remaining part of this reign. The doctrine of their churches was Calvinism, and their discipline was Presbyterian, after the Geneva plan. Their churches were supplied by able pastors; their universities were adorned with learned and pious professors, such as Casaubon, Daille, and others, whose praises are in all the reformed churches; their provincial, and national synods were regularly convened, and their people were well governed. Much pains were taken with the king to alienate his mind from his Protestant subjects: but no motives could influence him. He knew the worth of the men, and he protected them till his death. This great prince was hated by the Popish clergy for his lenity, and was stabbed in his coach by the execrable Ravillac, whose name inspires one with horror and pain. [May 14, 1610.]

Lewis XIII. was not quite nine years of age, when he succeeded his father Henry. The first act of the queen mother, who had the regency during the king's minority, was the confirmation of the edict of Nantz. Lewis confirmed it again at his majority, promising to observe it inviolably. [1614.] The Protes tants deserved a confirmation of their privileges at his hands; for they had taken no part in the civil wars and disturbances which had troubled his minority. They had been earnestly solicited to intermeddle with government: but they had wisely avoided it.

Lewis was a weak ambitious man; he was jealous of his power to excess, though he did not know wherein it consisted. He was so void of prudence, that he could not help exalting his flatterers into favourites, and his favourites into exces-ive power. He was so timorous that his favourites became the objects of his hatred, the moment after he had elevated them to authority: and he was so callous that he never lamented a favourite's death or downfall. By a solemn act of devotion, attended, with all the force of pictures, masses, processions, and festivals, he consecrated his person, his dominions, his crown and his subjects to the Virgin Mary, desiring her to defend his kingdom, and to inspire him with grace to lead a holy life. [1638.] The Popish clergy adored him for thus sanctifying their superstitions by his example, and he, in return, lent them his power to punish his Protestant subjects, whom he hated. His panegyrists call him Lewis the Just: but they ought to acknowledge that his majesty did nothing to merit the title, till he found himself dying.

Lewis's prime minister was an artful, enterprising clergyman, who, before his elevation, was a country bishop, and, after it, was known by the title of Cardinal de Richlieu but the most proper title for his eminence is that, which some historians give him, of the Jupiter Mactator of France. He was a man of great ability: but of no merit. Had his virtue been as great as his capacity, he ought

not to have been intrusted with government, because all Cardinals take an oath to the Pope, and although an oath does not bind a bad man, yet as the taking of it gives him eredit, so the breach of it ruins all his prospects among those with whom he hath taken it.

The Jesuits, who had been banished from France, for attempting the life of Henry IV. [1594.] had been recalled, and restored to their houses, [1604.] and one of their society, under pretence of being responsible, as a hostage, for the whole fraternity, was allowed to attend the king. The Jesuits, by this mean, gained the greatest honour and power, and, as they excelled in learning, address, and intrigue, they knew how to obtain the king's ear, and how to improve his credulity to their own advantage.

This dangerous society was first formed [1534.] by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish deserter, who, being frightened out of the army by a wound, took it into his head to go on pilgrimage, and to form a religious society for the support of the Catholic faith. The Popes, who knew how to avail themselves of enthusiasm in church government, directed this grand spring of human action to secular purposes, and, by canonizing the founder, and arranging the order, elevated the society in a few years, to a height that astonished all Europe. It was one opinion of this society, that the authority of kings is inferior to that of the people, and that they may be punished by the people in certain cases. It was another maxim with them, that sovereign princes have received from the hand of God a sword to punish heretics. The Jesuits did not invent these doctrines; but they drew such consequences from them as were most prejudicial to the public tranquility; for, from the conjunction of these two principles, they concluded that an heretical prince ought to be deposed, and that heresy ought to be extirpated by fire and sword, in case it could not be extirpated otherwise. In conformity to the first of these principles, two kings of France had been murdered successively, under pretext that they were fautors of heretics. The parliament in this reign [1615.] condemned this as a pernicious tenet, and declared that the authority of monarchs was dependant only on God. But the last principle, that related to the extirpation of heresy, as it flattered the court and the clergy, came into vogue. Jus divinum was the test of sound orthodoxy; and this reasoning became popular argumentation, Princes MAY put heretics to death; therefore they OUGHT to put them to death.

Richlieu, who had wriggled himself into power, by publishing a scandalous libel on the protestants of France, advised the king to establish his authority, by extirpating the intestine evils of the kingdom. He assured his majesty that the Hugonots had the power of doing him mischief, and that it was a principle with them, that kings might be deposed by the people. The Protestants replied to his invectives, and exposed the absurdity of his reasoning. Richlieu reasoned thus. John

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Knox, the Scotch reformer, did not believe the divine authority of kings. Calvin held a correspondence with Knox, therefore Calvin did not believe it. The French reformed church derived its doctrine from Calvin's church of Geneva, therefore the first Hugonots did not believe it. The first Hugonots did not believe it, therefore the present Hugonots do not believe it. No man, who valued the reputation of a man of sense, would have scaled the walls of preferment with such a ridiculous ladder as this!

The king, intoxicated with despotic principles, followed the fatal advice of his minister, and began with his patrimonial province of Bearn, where he caused the Catholic religion to be established. [1620.] The Hugonots broke out into violence, at this attack on their liberties, whence the king took an opportunity to recover several places from them, and at last made peace with them on condition of their demolishing all their fortifications except those of Montauban and Rochelle. Arnoux, the Jesuit, who was a creature of Richlieu's, was at that time, confessor of Lewis the Just.

The politic Richlieu invariably pursued his design of rendering his master absolute. By one art he subdued the nobility, by another the parliaments, and, as civil and religious liberty live and die together, he had engines of all sorts to extirpate heresy. He pretended to have formed the design of re-uniting the two churches of Protestants and Catholics. He drew off from the Protestant party the dukes of Sully, Bouillon, Lesdeguieres, Rohan, and many of the first quality: for he had the world, and its glory to go to market withal; and he had to do with a race of men, who were very different from their ancestors. Most of them had either died for their pro fession, or fled out of the kingdom, and several of them had submitted to practise mean trades, in foreign countries, for their support: But these were endeavouring to serve God and mammon; and his eminence was a fit casuist for such consciences.

The Protestants had resolved, in a general assembly, to die rather than to submit to the loss of their liberties: but their king was weak, their prime minister was wicked, their clerical enemies were powerful and implacable, and they were obliged to bear those infractions of edicts, which their oppressors made every day. At length Richlieu determined to put a period to their hopes, by the taking of Rochelle. The city was besieged both by sea and land, and the efforts of the besieged were at last overcome by famine, they had lived without bread for thirteen weeks, and, of eighteen thousand citizens there were not above five thousand left. [1625.] The strength of the Protestants was broken by this stroke. Montauban agreed now to demolish its works, and the just king confirmed anew the perpetual and irrevocable edict of Nantz, as far as it concerned a free exercise of religion.

The Cardinal, not content with temporal power, had still another claim on the Protestants, of a spiritual kind. Cautionary towns

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