who supported their party, destroyed some walled towns, and drove the inhabitants into Flanders. Not content with this, he pursued them thither, and caused many of them to be burned." "In Alsace and along the Rhine, the Gospel was preached with a powerful effusion of the Holy Spirit: persecutions ensued, and thirty-five citizens of Mentz were burned at one fire in the city of Bingen, and at Mentz eighteen. The Bishop of Mentz was very active in these persecutions, and the Bishop of Strasburg was not inferior to him in vindictive zeal; for, through his means, eighty persons were burned at Strasburgh." y In the beginning of the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III. instituted the Inquisition: "And the Waldenses were the first objects of its cruelty. He authorized certain Monks to frame the process of that court, and to deliver the supposed heretics to the secular power. The beginning of the thirteenth century saw thousands of persons hanged or burned by these diabolical devices, whose sole crime was, that they trusted only in Jesus Christ for salvation, and renounced all the vain hopes of self-righteous idolatry and superstition. "From the year 1206, when it (the inquisition) was first established, to the year 1228 the havoc made among helpless Christians was so great, that certain French Bishops, in the last mentioned year, desired the Monks of the Inquisition, to defer a little their work of imprisonment, till the POPE was advertised of the great numbers apprehended; numbers so great, that it was impossible to defray the charge of their subsistence, and even to provide stone and Mortar to build prisons for them."z

▾ Milner's Church History. v. 3. p. 480-2.

But

the cruelty of Popery is insatiable, and therefore it felt no relentings at the misery of the pious Waldenses, but put them to death in the most dreadful manner. When, therefore, "the castle of Menerbe on the frontiers of Spain, for want of water, was reduced to the necessity of surrendering to the Pope's legate; He and the infamous Earl Simon of Montfort, because they adhered to their faith, "caused a great fire to be kindled, and they burned a hundred and forty persons of both sexes." In the year 1380 Frances Borelli armed with a Bull from the Pope, signalised himself by persecuting the Saints. "In the space of thirteen years he delivered a hundred and fifty persons to the secular power, to be burned at Grenoble. In the valley of Fraissiniere and the neighbourhood, he apprehended eighty persons who also were burned." About 1460" in the valley of Loyse, four hundred little children were found suffocated in their cradles, or in the arms of their deceased mothers, in consequence of a great quantity of wood being placed at the entrance of the caves and set on fire. On the whole, above three thousand persons belonging to the valley were destroyed, and this righteous people (the Waldenses) were in that place exterminated. "-In 1488 Innocent VIII. by means of his agents with large forces, attacked these pious people with the sword: And in 1560 Pope Pius IV exercised the most savage barbarity upon them in Calabria, and caused great numbers to be tortured and murdered; and to complete his cruelty, caused Lewis Paschal to be burnt alive at Rome in his own sight, a And in 1572 a general Massacre was made by the Papists of all the Protestants throughout the kingdom of France; And in England, not many

a Miluer's Church History. v. 3. p. 538-49.

b

years before, during the short reign of Mary, 800 victims were burnt by the cruel Papists. From this detail of historical facts we see how the little Horn— the Popedom-did persecute and wear out the Saints, and make war against them; and as it increased in power, so it increased in cruelty and oppression. But it may be necessary still to adduce more instances in confirmation of our subject.

Next to idolatry, the distinguishing features of Popery is, the prohibition of the Scriptures, in what are called the vulgar languages, and its persecution of those who have dared to read them in their native tongue. Hence, in the reign of Richard II. of England, Arundel, Archbishop of York, excited the king as much as possible, to persecute those" who should dare, in their native language, to read and study the Gospels of Jesus Christ." And, in the reign of Henry V. the Archbishop of Canterbury "partly by exile, partly by forced abjurations, and partly by the flames, domineered over the Lollards; and almost effaced the vestiges of godliness in the kingdom. And, in the diocese of Kent, "whole families were obliged to relinquish their places of abode, for the sake of the Gospel. " c In the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. the most horrid cruelties were inflicted upon those who read the Scriptures, or opposed popish superstitions; they were burnt to ashes, and neither age nor sex were spared. Nor should we omit to mention the burning of John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, by the order of the council of Constance: These godly men opposed the wickedness of the Popedom, and soon found its power and cruelty in the

b

Tytler's elements of General History. v. 2. p. 224. Edit. 6.

c Milner. v. 4. p. 138, 169, 170, 171. 173.

flames. And as Huss was treated, so were his devout followers; for they were declared unworthy of the common rights of subjects; and, in the depth of winter, were driven out of the cities and villages, with the forfeiture of all their effects. The sick were thrown into the open fields, where many perished with cold and hunger. Various sorts of torture were inflicted on the brethren: numbers were barbarously murdered; and many died in the prisons. "d Of Pope Pius V. Bower says, "He was by principle, a principle which he had imbibed in the horrid school of the inquisition, as bloody a persecutor as a Nero, or a Dioclesian, and a most zealous assertor of the pretended privileges of his See. When raised to the Popedom he spared none, who were but suspected of approving the new doctrine. Peter Carnesecchi, a man of distinction in Florence, was, by his order, condemned to the flames, being convicted of corresponding with some of the reformed religion in Germany. And, Antonius Palearius, one of the best writers of his age, underwent the same fate, for saying, that in some things the Lutherans were excusable, and that the inquisition was the bane of all learning." Pius also " encouraged Charles the ninth of France to make war upon his Protestant subjects." e

We shall close this detail, by an abstract from the very learned Mede's explanation of the war which the Beast, in the book of the revelation, should make against the Saints; and which is the same war, that the little Horn of Daniel, under discussion, should make against them.

d Milner. v. 4. p. 264.

"The Beast, (i. e. the little Horn) did not at its first rise carry on this war, but, after it had attained its aim; during the twelfth century. Its first expedition was against the Albigenses and Waldenses, and whoever were the true worshippers of Christ; ot whom there was so great a slaughter made, that in France alone, ten hundred thousand men were slain. For not only were they persecuted by being burnt alive, by confiscation of property, and exile; but whole armies were set in motion against them with incredible barbarity and fury for seventy years. A war of no less magnitude than had been carried on against the Saracens, was decreed against them: the event of which was, that they were slain, exiled, and deprived of their property and honours, rather than driven from their sentiments. They fled amongst the Alps, and into Calabria; where they continued till the Pontificate of Pius IV. a part fled into Germany, and fixed their residence in Bohemia, Poland, and Livonia; and others found a refuge in Britain. Should any one reckon, he would find, that the number slain during four hundred and fifty years exceeded those that were destroyed in the ten heathen persecutions. From the origin of the Jesuits to the year 1480, i. e. in about thirty years, nine hundred thousand orthodox Christians were slain. In Belgium alone, the duke of Alva, that cruel champion of the Roman See, boasted that he had by the hand of the common executioner, dispatched thirty-six thousand Souls, within a few years. In about thirty years the Inquisition destroyed, by various kinds of tortures a hundred and fifty thousand Christians: And Sanders himself confesses, that an innumerable multitude of Lollards and Sacramentarians were burnt throughout all Europe. " f

1 Mede. p. 503, 4. I suspect some error, where Mr. Mede says,