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CHAPTER 8 ANTICHRIST A PERSECUTOR

ANOTHER mark of Antichrist, furnished in the Scriptures, is his persecuting spirit. “I beheld,” says Daniel, “and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them.” Daniel 7:21. The same is expressed by John —

“And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them.” Revelation 13:7.

But John is yet more explicit:

“And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints; and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Revelation 17:6.

Again,

“In her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” Revelation 18:24.

Persecution refers to those civil and temporal punishments which are inflicted upon men for opinion’s sake. That such punishments were employed among the ancient Israelites, especially in relation to idolatry, is certain. Deuteronomy chapters thirteen, seventeen and eighteen. Was it designed by Christ, that they should also be used in the propagation of the Christian faith? Certainly not.

1. He has prescribed a different punishment for the rejecters of his gospel. “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark 16:16. Eternal perdition is here denounced upon all who receive not Christ, after they shall have heard his gospel. Nor is this sentence to be executed by the minister; but simply proclaimed by him. Now if this is the punishment to be denounced against the rejecters of Christ’s gospel, the substitution of temporal or civil penalties is both inappropriate and unlawful. Error is better removed by argument, and fear excited by the threatened vengeance of the Lord.

2. Christ instituted no union between church and state. For the most part, persecution has been the offspring of the union here alluded to. Ecclesiastical censure has been enforced by the civil magistrate. The doctrine of Jesus, however, on this subject is, “My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight; but now is my kingdom not from hence.” Here all connection between church and state is expressly denied; and consequently persecution, as growing out of that connection.

3. The practice, too, both of Christ and his Apostles, utterly condemns all such methods of promoting the truth. When twelve legions of angels were ready at the call of Christ to execute vengeance upon his crucifiers, he invoked not their assistance. Matthew 26:53. And when John and James desired permission to call down fire from heaven upon a certain Samaritan village, the only response their Master gave them was, in the language of rebuke,

“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of; for the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” Luke 9:55. The Apostle Paul also asserts, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.” 1 Corinthians 10:4.

The rule, too, which he prescribes to Timothy, in all such cases, is of similar import.

“The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” 2 Timothy 2:24,25.

It is true, that daring offenders were excluded from the communion of the church; and being so excluded, they were said to be “delivered unto Satan,” 1 Timothy 1:20; or, “delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh;” 1 Corinthians 5:5; but the church proceeded no farther. Exclusion from her communion was her ultima poena; the rest she left in the hands of God. It is true, that in that age of miracles, the sentence of the Apostles was sometimes followed by divine and miraculous interposition, as in the cases of Ananias and Sapphira; but there were no physical punishments inflicted either by the church or the civil power. No such case can be found. If, then, Christ and his Apostles are to govern the Christian church, persecution, especially persecution followed by civil and executive punishments, so far from being agreeable to Christianity, is in direct violation both of its letter and spirit. Hence, during the first three centuries no such persecution existed in the Christian church. Christians then were persecuted, but did not persecute.

No sooner, however, was the unnatural alliance formed of church and state, than persecution began. “The administration of the church was divided,” says Mosheim, “by Constantine himself, into an external and internal inspection. The latter was committed to bishops and councils; the former the emperor assumed to himself.”1 Here the evil began. Church power being placed in the hands, or rather assumed by the hands of a civil officer, was exercised as all other civil prerogatives; and the emperor soon began to punish heretics as he would rebels and insurgents. “Two monstrous errors,” says Mosheim, “were almost universally adopted in this century; first, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interests of the church might be promoted; and second, that errors in religion, when maintained and adhered to, after proper admonition, were punishable with civil penalties and corporal tortures.”2 These are truly a monstrous pair of twins; and if such was the first offspring of the connection between church and state, is it wonderful, that bloodier and more dreadful things have resulted from this unnatural alliance?

The Donatists were the first to realize the effects of this civil administration of church affairs. The Numidians, and Donatus at their head, opposed the consecration of Coecilianus as bishop of Carthage. For this they were opposed by the rest of the church, and ultimately by Constantine. And so far did the latter carry his opposition, that he not only deprived the Donatists of their churches, and sent their leaders into banishment, but actually put many of them to death! Here we have the lamentable example of a Christian prince, yea, the first Christian prince, putting his own Christian subjects to death for matters of conscience and religion! Nor did matters assume a quiet aspect until the battle of Bagnia, under the reign of Constans, gave victory, the victory of the sword, to the imperial troops.

In the year 357, when the contest about Arianism was raging throughout the Roman empire, this same civil power in the administration of church affairs, interfered with the liberty of conscience in the Roman pontiff himself. Liberius was compelled by Constantius to embrace the Arian heresy.3 Here, then, we see an instance in which the civil ruler makes the creed of one of the predecessors of those illustrious popes, who afterwards made emperors hold their stirrups, and bow in their presence. So generally did the sentiment prevail in this and the following century, that religious errors were to be removed by the authority of the state, that even Augustine coolly and deliberately advocates it. The following is his language: “If you suppose we ought to be moved because so many thousands die in this way, how much consolation do you suppose we ought to have, because far and incomparably more thousands are freed from such great madness of the Donatist party, where not only the error of the nefarious division, but even madness itself was the law.”4

The same principle which began to produce such pernicious effects in the Roman empire, diffused itself also among those northern nations which subverted that empire. “The kings of the Vandals,” says Mosheim, “particularly Genseric, and Huneric his son, pulled down the churches of those Christians who, acknowledged the divinity of Christ, sent their bishops into exile, and maimed and tormented in various ways such as were nobly firm and inflexible in the profession of their faith. They, however, declared that in using these severe and violent methods, they were authorized by the example of the emperors, who had enacted laws of the same rigorous nature against the Donatists, the Arians and other sects, who differed in opinion from the Christians of Constantinople.”5 Charlemagne, too, in the eighth century, did not hesitate to wage a most determined war against the Saxons, principally with the design of converting them to Christianity.

Such where some of the early fruits of the pernicious principle, introduced under the reign of Constantine. Religion and the sword, the bishop and the sovereign, went hand in hand; and when piety could not attract, or argument convince, power was made to determine the controversy. No wonder that slavery was the result; and that Europe for centuries was made to exhibit the humiliating spectacle of enslaved millions, under the tyrannical rule of domineering and despotic ecclesiastics.

It was left however, for Rome, the Babylon of the middle ages, and the seeds of whose existence had been sowing for centuries — it was left for Rome to finish the tragedy, and to show to the world the cruelty of man to man, when bigotry rules in his bosom, and charity has forsaken his heart, and the sword stands ready at his bidding. Other powers may have slain the saints, but Rome alone “has been drunk with their blood.” It is this awful spectacle that we now proceed to unveil.

It may not be improper here to remark, that persecution, so far from being a mere accident upon the Romish system, is the direct result of the system itself. If Jesus Christ is “Lord of lords” and the Pope is his vicegerent on earth; if the spiritual power is either superior to the temporal, or in necessary union with it; if the Pope is the infallible interpreter of the word of God, and all men are bound to adopt his interpretations; if submission and not liberty is the duty of Christians; and if there is no salvation but in the Romish church — if these premises are admitted, then is persecution not only a result of Romanism, but a necessary result: it is the duty of the church to persecute; it would be unkind and disloyal to act otherwise. It is sometimes alleged, that other Christian bodies besides Romanists, have persecuted. This is true. But these persecutions, few in number, and feeble for the most part in their effect have been excrescences upon such Christian bodies. They have been their deformities, not their glories. — their injury, not their advancement. The fundamental principles of Protestant Christianity are, that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith, and that in examining the Scriptures and forming his conclusions, every man must be left to his own conscience. True, any particular body of men who substantially agree in these conclusions, may adopt the same symbol of faith, and may, if they deem it necessary, refuse communion with others, whom they may consider as putting an interpretation upon the word of God, radically erroneous and essentially different from their own. But here, save as to argument and moral influence, the matter ends; the former having no more right to force the latter to their conclusions, than the latter have to force the former to theirs. This leads of course to a separation between the two bodies; not, however, to a religious war, where the sword is made the umpire of Christian faith. It produces, if you please sects, not however crusades. It distributes the Christian Church into social combinations, formed upon the voluntary principle; it does not, however, drench Christian soil with Christian blood.

That this system, admitting as it does, of so many external varieties, is better, far better than the opposite one, no thinking man can deny. It places not only religion, but human nature itself upon the right basis. The acceptance of the gospel here, is what it always must be to be real, voluntary; and no one man, or set of men, are here allowed to lord it over others. We proceed, however, to consider the development of the contrary system — the system of oneness and of absolutism.

It will not be amiss to notice here the war of the Holy Crusades, as involving the general principle of persecution. In the latter part of the eleventh century, the Turks had taken possession of Jerusalem, and subjected Christian pilgrims to various oppressions. To repel these bitter enemies to Christians, Peter, a native of Amiens in France, and usually called the Hermit, aroused all Europe to engage in a holy war. Pope Urban the Second gave the scheme his most earnest support; the Council of Clermont decreed it. These crusades, therefore, had their origin in the church. Indeed, the Pope granted indulgences and dispensations to those who would engage in this enterprise. Of these crusades there were seven. Millions of lives were lost by them; the resources of nations were exhausted, and the greatest evils followed in their train. To justify them upon Christian principles is impossible. When Peter drew his sword in defense of his Master, the reply of that master was, “Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Matthew 26:52.

If then, it was not lawful to defend Christ himself with the sword, it certainly was not lawful to defend his sepulcher with the sword. To understand however, in what spirit these mis-called holy wars were carried on, let us notice the conduct of the crusaders, upon the first conquest of Jerusalem. “On a Friday,” says Gibbon, “at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the passion, Godfrey of Bouillon, stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. A bloody sacrifice was offered by these mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogues, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion. The holy sepulcher was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Savior of the world, and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.”6

Can any one imagine, that the Apostles Paul and Peter would have promoted, as Pope Urban did, an enterprise of this kind? Can any one suppose, that Timothy, or Titus, or Luke, would have preached as the Hermit did, a war of such exterminating vengeance against the enemies of Christianity? Can any one conceive, that the primitive church would have mixed in a scene of blood like this, with anthems and praises? Is it even possible to suppose that the Prince of peace, the author and founder of the Christian system, could sanction such conduct in his professed disciples? By no means; darkness is not more unlike light, than such bloody wars are unlike the gospel of the Son of God.

This spirit of persecution, however, in the papal church, did not confine itself to Turks and Moslems, and to the rescue merely of the holy sepulcher. Professing Christians were also made to feel its severity. In the middle ages, there lived in the south of France, a people distinguished for their civilization, refinement and elegant language. The Catholic priesthood in this country was at the time exceedingly corrupt and ignorant. So much was this the case, that no situation in life was considered meaner than that of a priest. No wonder then, that a purer faith should be acceptable to the inhabitants of Languedoc, Provence, and Catalonia. This faith was preached among them, by a people usually called Albigenses. These Albigenses, who derived their name from Albigeois, a district in France, of which the town Albi was the capital, were a set of dissentients from the Church of Rome. “They considered,” says Shoberl, “the Scriptures as the only source of faith and religion, without regard to the authority of the Fathers and of tradition. They held the entire faith according to the doctrines of the Apostles’ creed. They rejected all the external rites of the dominant church, excepting baptism and the Lord’s supper — as temples, vestures, images, crosses, the worship of holy relics, and the rest of the sacraments. They rejected purgatory, and masses and prayers for the dead. They admitted no indulgences, or confessions of sin, with any of their consequences. They denied the corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament. They held that monasticism was a putrid carcass, and vows the invention of men, and that the marriage of the clergy was lawful and necessary. Finally, they declared the Roman Church to be the whore of Babylon, refused obedience to the Pope and the bishops, and denied that the former had any authority over other churches, or the power of either the civil or the ecclesiastical sword.”7

As to their lives, the Albigenses were above reproach. Even their enemies admitted, that “they observed irreproachable chastity, that in their zeal for truth, they never on any occasion resorted to a lie; and that such was their charity, that they were always ready to sacrifice themselves for others.”8 When their Catholic neighbors were exhorted by the missionaries of Pope Innocent, to expel and exterminate them, their reply was, “We cannot, we have been brought up with them; we have relations among them; and we see what virtuous lives they lead.”

It was to this class of heretics, that Pope Innocent III. turned his sacerdotal attention. At first he sent missionaries among them. Finding this measure too tardy and ineffectual, he next published a bull, requiring their princes and sovereigns to persecute them. These princes and sovereigns being rather tardy in executing such a bloody edict upon their own subjects, the Pope next excommunicates the princes, releases their subjects from allegiance to them, and even proceeded so far as to call for a general crusade against both princes and people. To induce other European powers and Christians to enter upon so bloody an enterprise, he publishes plenary indulgences to all soldiers and others, who would engage in this war, and offers to the princes of other countries, the vanquished territories of these heretical princes. Such offers coming from such a source, were not likely to be despised. Consequently, in the early part of the thirteenth century, a general crusade was raised against the Count of Thoulouse, the Viscount of Beziers, Alby and Carcassonne, and the other princes, who had not, in every iota, complied with the bull of Pope Innocent. The Abbot of Citeaux, who was the Pope’s Legate, was placed at the head of the crusade. The number of these crusaders is variously estimated from 50,000 to 500,000. They were actuated with the greatest fanaticism; and spread ruin and slaughter wherever they went.

Raymond VI., the Count of Thoulouse, who had previously patronized the Albigenses, upon the approach of this vast multitude, attempted by concessions and penances to obtain the forgiveness of the church. He was required to surrender seven of his strongest castles, to abide the decision of his judges as to the charges preferred against him, and to be scourged upon his naked back around the altar of St. Gilles, with a rope around his neck. Roger, Viscount of Beziers, resolved to defend his territories against the fanatical hordes of the invaders. Beziers, one of his strongest fortresses, was first taken. The terrified inhabitants took refuge in the churches. These however proved but poor refuges to the fury of the crusaders. When the knights consulted the Legate, as to the proper mode of distinguishing between the heretics and catholics, his reply was, “kill them all, the Lord will know his own.” This sentence was rigidly executed; men, women, children, heretics and catholics, all being mixed in one general slaughter. In the church of the Magdalen seven thousand corpses were found; in the cathedral a greater number. “When the crusaders had slaughtered all, to the very last living creature, in Beziers,” says Shoberl, “and had plundered the houses of every thing worth carrying away, they set fire to all the quarters at once; the city was but one vast conflagration; not an edifice remained standing, not a human being was left alive.”9

When Carcassonne was captured, although the inhabitants generally escaped through a subterranean passage, yet four hundred persons were burnt alive, and fifty were hung upon gibbets. The same fate awaited the inhabitants of Lauraguais and Menerbais. When Brom was taken, Monfort “selected more than a hundred of the wretched inhabitants, and having torn out their eyes, and cut off their noses, sent them under the guidance of a one-eyed man to the castle of Cabaret, to intimate to the garrison of that fortress the fate which awaited them.”10 At the capture of Menerbe, one hundred and forty persons were burnt alive; at that of Lavaur eighty were hanged on the gallows; and when Cassero was taken, sixty more were committed to the flames.

Such was the general character of this eight years’ war against these unoffending disciples of Jesus. Princes were humbled, their cities were burnt, their fortresses destroyed, their subjects butchered, and their country wasted, to eradicate from the earth, doctrines which Apostles preached, and which the primitive church held with the strongest faith. “No calculation,” says the same writer, “can ascertain with any precision, the waste of property, and the destruction of human life, which were the consequences of the crusade against the Albigenses.” Nor let it be forgotten, that this crusade was summoned by the Pope, was conducted by his Legate, and was afterwards approved in the council of Lateran by an Assembly of Catholic divines.

In allusion to this crusade against the Albigenses, Daunou, himself a Catholic, remarks: ”We do not intend to exculpate the Albigenses from all error. But to exterminate thousands of good men, because they have committed a self-delusion, and to dethrone him who governed them, because he did not persecute them enough, is rigor to excess, and reveals he character and manifests the power of Innocent III.”11 Hallam also remarks concerning this religious war — “It was prosecuted with every atrocious barbarity which superstition, the mother of crimes, could inspire, Languedoc, a country, for that age, flourishing and civilized, was laid waste by these desolaters, her cities burnt, her inhabitants swept away by fire and sword. And this was to punish a fanaticism ten thousand times more innocent than their own.”12 Such was one of the first efforts of Rome to fill herself with the blood of the saints.

The holy wars against the Waldenses will next claim our attention. Some writers suppose that the Waldenses took their name and origin from Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons. Others, however, place their origin in a much more remote antiquity. The opinion of Beza was, that Peter of Lyons derived his name Waldo, or Valdo, from the Waldenses. “According to other writers,” says Hallam, “the original Waldenses were a race of uncorrupted shepherds, who, in the valleys of the Alps, had shaken off, or perhaps never learned, the system of superstition on which the Catholic church depended for its ascendency.”13 Shoberl traces their origin to Claude, Bishop of Turin, who, when image-worship was introduced, in the beginning of the eighth century, made a bold stand against both this and several other corruptions of the Romish church. Here, amid the valleys of Piedmont, had these truly primitive and Christian people lived for centuries, separated by their locality from the rest of the world, and unobserved by even the eye of popish jealousy.

The character of the Waldenses and their doctrines may be learned from the following quotations. “All they aimed at,” says Mosheim, “was, to reduce the form of ecclesiastical government, and the lives and manners both of the clergy and people, to that amiable simplicity, and that primitive sanctity, which characterized the apostolic ages, and which appear so strongly recommended in the precepts and injunctions of the divine Author of our holy religion.”14 “These pious and innocent sectaries,” says Hallam,” of whom the very monkish historians speak well, appear to have nearly resembled the modern Moravians. They had ministers of their own appointment, and denied the lawfulness of oaths and of capital punishment. In other respects their opinions were not far removed from those usually called Protestant.”15 Reinerus Sacco, an Italian Inquisitor, writes thus of them: “While all other sects disgust the public by their gross blasphemies against God, this, on the other hand, has a great appearance of piety. For those who belong to it, live justly among men, have a sound doctrine in all points respecting God, and believe in all the articles of the Apostles’ creed, but they blaspheme the Romish church.”16 Cassini, a Franciscan, thus speaks of them: “The errors of the Vaudois consist in their denial that the Romish is the holy mother church, and in their refusal to obey her traditions. In other points they recognize the church of Christ; and for my part, I cannot deny that they have always been members of his church.”17 When Pope Innocent VIII. had urged Louis XII., king of France, to extirpate this sect from his kingdom, the monarch sent two commissioners, one of them a Dominican, and the royal confessor, to inquire into their character and views. These commissioners deposed upon oath, that “having visited the parishes and churches of the Vaudois, we find no images, no trace of the service of the mass, nor any paraphernalia, used in the ceremonies observed by Catholics. But having also made a strict inquiry into their manner of living, we cannot discover the least shadow of the crimes imputed to them. On the contrary, it appears that they piously observe the Sabbath, baptize their children after the manner of the primitive church, and are thoroughly instructed in the doctrine of the Apostles’ creed and in the law of God.”18 Notwithstanding, however, the purity of the doctrines and lives of the Waldenses, they erred in the vital point, they denied the supremacy of Rome, and rejected her numerous superstitions. This was enough, this alone, to render them obnoxious to papal wrath.

Besides some previous oppressions and slaughters to which this people were subject, in 1487, Innocent VIII. published a bull against them, “denouncing them as heretics, calling upon all the authorities, spiritual and temporal, to join in their extermination, threatening with extreme vengeance such as should refuse to take part in the crusade, promising remission of sins to those who engaged in it, and dissolving all contracts made with the offenders. Even the inquisitors and monks were exhorted to take arms against them, to crush them like poisonous adders, and to make all possible efforts for their holy extermination. This bull also granted to each true believer a right to seize the property of the victims without form or process.”19 The result of this bull was, that the Vaudois were overrun and butchered for several months by a body of eighteen thousand troops, and a vast host of undisciplined attendants.

In 1540 an edict was published in France against a portion of the Waldenses to the following purport: “That every dissentient from the holy mother church should acknowledge his errors, and obtain reconciliation within a stated period, under the severest penalties in case of disobedience; and because Merindal was considered as the principal seat of the heresy, that devoted town was ordered to be razed to the ground; all the caverns, hiding-places, cellars, and vaults, in the vicinity of the town, were to be carefully examined and destroyed; the woods were to be cut down, the gardens and orchards laid waste, and none who had ever possessed a house or property in the town, should ever occupy it again, either in his own person or in that of any of his name or family, in order that the memory of the excommunicated sect, might be utterly wiped away from the province, and the place be made a desert.”20

In what manner this decree was executed, is related by Anquetil, a Catholic writer: — “Twenty-two towns or villages were burned or pillaged with an inhumanity of which the history of the most barbarous nations scarcely affords an example. The wretched inhabitants, surprised in the night, and hunted from rock to rock by the light of the flames which consumed their habitations, frequently escaped one snare only to fall into another. The pitiful cries of the aged, the women, and the children, instead of softening the hearts of the soldiers, maddened with rage like their leaders, only served to guide them in pursuit of the fugitives. Voluntary surrender did not exempt the men from slaughter, nor the women from brutal outrages at which nature revolts. It was forbidden under pain of death to afford them harbor or succor. At Cabrieres, more than seven hundred men were butchered in cold blood; and the women, who had remained in their houses, were shut up in a barn containing a great quantity of straw, which was set on fire, and those who endeavored to escape by the windows were driven back with swords and pikes.”

In 1655, Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, issued what is called “the bloody ordinance of Gastaldo.” This ordinance decreed, “that such of the Vaudois as would not embrace the Catholic faith, or sell their possessions to those who professed it, must within a few days quit their native valleys.” To enforce this decree, the Marquis of Pianezza entered the valleys with an army of fifteen thousand men. One of the commanders in that expedition gives the following as a specimen of its general character: — “I was witness,” says he, “to many great violences and cruelties exercised by the banditti and soldiers of Piedmont, upon all of every age, sex and condition, whom I myself saw massacred, dismembered, and ravished, with many horrid circumstances of barbarity.” Such was the cruelty of this holy war, that all Protestant Europe was excited by it. The following are extracts of a letter written by the immortal Milton, then secretary to Cromwell, to the Duke of Savoy, remonstrating with him for such barbarities. “His serene Highness, the Protector, has been informed that part of these most miserable people have been cruelly massacred by your forces, part driven out by violence, and so without house or shelter, poor and destitute of all relief, to wander up and down with their wives and children, in craggy and uninhabitable places, and mountains covered with snow. Oh the fired houses which are yet smoking, the torn limbs and ground defiled with blood! Some men decrepit with age and bedridden, have been burned in their beds. Some infants have been dashed against the rocks; others have had their throats cut, whose brains have, with more than Cyclopean cruelty, been boiled and eaten by the murderers. If all the tyrants of all times and ages were alive again, certainly they would be ashamed, when they should find that they had contrived nothing in comparison with these things, that might be reputed barbarous and inhuman.”

Such has been the character of this unnatural war, which Popery has been waging for centuries upon these inoffensive and feeble disciples of the Savior. But for the interference of Protestant states, the very name of the Waldenses had been long since blotted out from the face of the earth. And even to the present time are they persecuted and oppressed by the same unrelenting foe; their privileges being curtailed, and their territory rendered smaller and smaller by the constant aggressions of their enemies.

Let us now turn to the persecutions waged by Popery upon the French Protestants, or Huguenots. D’Aubigne not only affirms, that the Reformation in France was independent, in a measure, of that in Germany and Switzerland, but also that it was antecedent to both. “The Reformation was not, therefore, in France, an importation from strangers; it took its birth on the French territory. Its seed germinated in Paris; its earliest shoots were struck in the university itself, that ranked second in power in Romanized Christendom. God deposited the first principles of the work in the kindly hearts of some inhabitants of Picardy and Dauphiny, before it had begun in any other country of the globe.”21 The means by which the gospel made its early progress in the French kingdom were principally these three: the translation of the Scriptures into French by Olivetan, the uncle of Calvin; the conversion of the Psalms into meter by a popular poet; and the earnest and constant preaching of the reformed pastors. “The holy word of God,” says Quick, “is duly, truly, and powerfully preached in churches and fields, in ships and houses, in vaults and cellars, in all places where the gospel ministers can have admission and conveniency, and with singular success. Multitudes are convinced and converted, established and edified. The Popish churches are drained, the Protestant temples are filled. The priests complain that their altars are neglected, their masses are now indeed solitary. Dagon cannot stand before God’s ark.” These reformers also made great use of singing, employing it not only in their churches, but also in family worship, and even at their tables.

Such a state of things was not likely to exist long without opposition from the priesthood. Hence, of all Protestant churches, that in France has been chiefly drenched in blood. “No where,” says D’Aubigne, “did the reformed religion so often have its dwelling in dungeons, or bear so marked a resemblance to the Christianity of the first ages, in faith and love, and in the number of its martyrs. If elsewhere it might point to more thrones and council-chambers, here it could appeal to more scaffolds and hill-side meetings.”22

The reason why the French church has suffered more than others, is to be found in the degree to which the reformed opinions spread in France. These opinions were not extensive enough to be universal, nor were they limited enough to be inconsiderable. In England, Scotland, Germany, and some other kingdoms, the Reformation became the dominant religion. In Spain, Italy, Portugal, and some other states, it was too feeble to endanger many lives. But France occupied a middle ground. Though whole provinces became Protestant, yet the kingdom was Catholic; and though many of the princes and nobility were numbered among the reformed, yet the government was popish. This state of things placed the French church in a situation peculiarly critical, and caused her to suffer far more than sister churches of more favored countries.

The term Huguenot, usually applied to these French Protestants, is supposed to have been derived from the circumstance, that under their persecutions many of: these godly people used to meet at night for religious worship in private places, near the town of Hugon, in Tours. From these few, the whole class were called, by way of derision, Huguenots.

Persecution to blood, commenced against the Huguenots, as early as the year 1524, and it lasted, in one form or another, till 1815. Napoleon granted them toleration and equal privileges with the Catholics. But, upon the restoration of the Bourbons, popular frenzy rose so high in the province of Gard, that several hundred Protestants lost their lives. Thus, for a period of two hundred and ninety-one years, has France dyed herself in the blood of some of her best and most loyal subjects, simply because they rejected the religion of the Pope. Indeed, even to the present time, there is a species of persecution kept up against the religion of Protestants in that country.

Previously to the year 1559, when a French General Assembly was organized, there had been one hundred martyrdoms among the French Calvinists. After this event matters became much worse. Troops were sent among them, and not less than forty towns, where Protestantism prevailed, were subject to their ravages. The Protestants were burned or killed in other ways, by the hundred, five hundred, and in one instance twelve hundred are said to have suffered at one time. It was at this period that the Huguenots fled to arms. They resolved to defend their religion and their rights by the sword. This movement, be it remembered, was not ecclesiastical, but civil. Protestants composed a considerable portion of the French population. They had rights as well as others. Many of them were of the nobility and the aristocracy of the country. When, therefore, the French government, instead of defending those rights, sought to invade and overthrow them, was it not the duty of the Protestants to defend them? How could men see their property confiscated, their wives and daughters insulted, and themselves murdered, and not resist? Self-defense is always lawful; and not even the religion of Jesus was designed to annihilate its impulses. And when a lawful selfdefense was impossible, it was the duty of French citizens to protect themselves by the means that Providence had put into their hands. Petitions to the king and parliament were of no avail; the courts gave them no protection; their fellow citizens were seeking their lives and property. What could they do? Resistance was the only alternative — and they did resist. In many battles, too, they were victorious. This course brought the government to pause. Peace was made with the Huguenots, and they were allowed certain rights and privileges. The fatal doctrine, however, that leagues and promises with heretics, are not binding, caused such treaties to be several times violated and renewed. Three civil wars preceded the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s. At length, Charles and the Catholic party, instigated by Catharine de Medicis, the queen-mother, plotted the secret destruction of those who had been found too strong upon the field of battle. Margaret, the sister of Charles, was to be married to the young King of Navarre, who was one of the Protestant leaders. For a time the Protestants were loaded with favors and caresses. To the marriage all their principal men were invited. During the week after that event, they were diverted by various entertainments and shows. The marriage took place on Sabbath, the 17th August, 1572; the massacre was decreed to take place on the following Sabbath, being St. Bartholomew’s day. An attempt was first made to assassinate Coligni, the leader of the Protestant party. He was wounded, but not killed. While this illustrious man lay in bed of his wounds, and while the Protestants were all asleep, the bell of St. Germain, the appointed signal, was rung. The house-doors of the Protestants had all been marked during the night, with a white cross. Upon the sounding of the bell, the streets were all illuminated with lights from the windows of the Catholics, and the soldiers and citizens rushed forth, sword in hand, to destroy the Protestants. The scene which followed is indescribable. Men, women, children, the noble, the vulgar, were massacred as fast as found. Some were murdered in their beds, some in their parlors, some in their doors, some in the streets, and some on the tops of their houses. Multitudes were drowned or killed in crossing the Seine. “The rising sun,” says Shoberl, “never beheld a scene of more thrilling horror than Paris presented on the morning of Sunday, the 24th of August, 1572. Blood stained the doors of houses, the interior of the apartments, the walls of the churches, the streets, the public gardens. At every step corpses, mangled fragments of human flesh, lamentations and cries of anguish, the last groans of agony, the spoils of the vanquished, traces of the passages of the conquerors, exhibited all the appearances of a town taken by storm.” This terrible scene continued the greater part of the week following. It is estimated that ten thousand Protestants, including the flower of the party, perished on this occasion. The greatest possible barbarity was exhibited in this dreadful massacre. The body of the admiral, who was killed with the rest, was treated with the greatest indignity. Its members were cut off, and the mangled trunk drawn through the streets for three days, amid the mockery and insults of the populace, after which it was suspended from a gallows. The murderers also placed themselves upon piles of the murdered, and auctioned off to their afflicted relatives the bodies of husbands, brothers, and sons!

Nor was it alone at Paris that the massacre occurred. The command of Charles was sent to every part of the kingdom, to destroy in a similar manner and at the same time, all the Protestants. “At Meaux, Orleans, Troyes, Lyons, Bourges, Rouen, Toulouse, and many other places, says a historian, “the cruelty of the Parisians was emulated, and thirty thousand persons were murdered in cold blood.”23

The question now arises, what part had the Church, or rather the Pope, in these transactions? The proper answer is, every part. Charles was a Catholic, his court were Catholic, and the massacre was designed to defend Catholic principles. But more than this is true. In a letter addressed to Catharine, just after the battle of Jarnac, Pius V. “assures her, that the assistance of God will not be wanting, if she pursues the enemies of the Catholic religion, until they are all massacred, for it is only by the entire extermination of the heretics, that the Catholic worship can be restored.” It also appears, from what M. Daunou affirms, that the Pope furnished money for the destruction of these heretics. His language is, “Catherine de Medicis boasted of the devotion of her son Charles to the holy church; and she asked money, a great deal of money, because the war against heresy could not be waged without money.”24 In a letter to Charles in 1570, and just after the battle of Montcontour, the Pope urges upon the king the entire destruction of all dissenters from the Catholic faith. “The fruits,” says he, “which your victory ought to produce, are, the extermination of those infamous heretics, our common enemies. If your majesty wishes to restore the ancient splendor, power and dignity of France, you must strive most especially to make all who are subject to your dominion, profess the Catholic faith alone.” Such were the exhortations of Pope Pius V., to the immediate instruments of this massacre, just two years before it occurred.

This Pope, however, died a few months before the event occurred for which he had been preparing the minds of Catharine and Charles. How the consummation of the matter affected Gregory XIII., his successor, may be learned from the following facts. When he heard of the massacre, he exclaimed — “good news, good news, all the Lutherans are massacred except the Vendomets (King of Navarre and Prince of Conde,) whom the king has spared for his sister’s sake.” The same night the event was celebrated by bonfires and the firing of cannon in the Castle of St. Angelo. “Gregory also ordered a jubilee and a solemn procession, which he accompanied himself, to thank God for the glorious success.”25 “History speaks of a painting,” says Daunou, “which attests the formal approbation which the Pontiff gave to the assassins of Coligni, containing the following inscription: ‘Pontifex Colignii necem probat.’”26 “To this day (1790)” says Brizard, “the French, who visit Italy, behold not without indignation, this picture, which though half effaced, still portrays but too faithfully our calamities and the excesses of Rome.” Nor was this all; medals were struck at Rome having on one side an image of the Pope; on the other, the destroying angel, holding a cross in one hand, and slaughtering the Huguenots by a sword with the other; bearing also the inscription, “Hugonotorum strages.”

This whole work then of slaughter and death is to be ascribed to the Papacy, to the Roman Pontiff and his colleagues. Roman principles, Roman craft, Roman hate, and Roman instruments, produced this whole scene of woe and desolation. The cry of all this blood is against Rome, against Rome chiefly. And it is a cry, which will in time, be heard; for this city not only has in her “the blood of saints and of all that were slain upon earth;” but we are expressly told, that, in the day of wrath, that blood will be “found.”

The massacre of St. Barthlomew’s, although it destroyed, according to different estimates, from forty to one hundred thousand Protestants, yet did not annihilate the party. Many Catholics, too, shocked with the wickedness of the government and the Pope, united with them. Henry III., the brother of Charles, formed an alliance with them against the Catholic party’, called the Holy League. The successor of Henry III., was Henry IV., the King of Navarre, who had been educated a Protestant. Although Henry became a professed Catholic from political motives, yet, he did not forget the interests of his Protestant subjects. It was this sovereign, who published in their behalf, the famous Edict of Nantes. According to this edict, which was published in 1594, the government allowed to the Reformed “all the favors in which they had been indulged by former princes, and added, a free admission to all employments of trust, profit and honor; also an establishment of chambers of justice in which the members of the two religions were equal in number; and permission to educate their children in any of the universities without restraint.” Under the influence of this edict, which continued in force for ninety-one years, the Protestants enjoyed considerable prosperity. Urged however, by his Catholic subjects, and especially by the Jesuits, Louis XIV., revoked this wise and Christian Edict, on the 8th October, 1685. The removal of this protection exposed the Protestants again to all the evils, losses, insults and persecutions of the Catholic priesthood. Their churches were demolished, their preachers were banished, and their children were taken from them at an early age to be educated as Catholics. It was at this time, that from five hundred to eight hundred thousand Huguenots emigrated from France to other countries, where they could enjoy the free exercise of their religion. Even this relief, however, was soon taken from them, emigration being forbidden upon pain of death. The sufferings of the Protestants at this time are inconceivable.

Bishop Burnet, who was at that time traveling in France, gives the following account of this persecution. Writing from Nimmegen he says — “I have a strong inclination to say somewhat concerning the persecution which I saw in its rage and utmost fury, and of which I could give you many instances, that are so much beyond all the common measures of barbarity and cruelty, that I confess they ought not to be believed, unless I could give more positive proofs of them than are fitted now to be brought forth. In short, I do not think that in any age, there ever was such a violation of all that is sacred, either with relation to God or man. Men and women of all ages who would not yield, were not only stripped of all they had, but kept long from sleep, drawn about from place to place, and hunted out of their retirements. The women were carried into nunneries, in many of which they were almost starved, whipped and barbarously treated. I went over a great part of France, from Marseilles to Montpelier, and from thence to Lyons, and so to Geneva. In all the towns through which I passed, I heard the most dismal account of things possible. To complete the cruelty, orders were given that such of the new converts as did not at their death receive the sacrament, should be denied burial, and that their bodies should be left, where other dead carcasses were cast out to be devoured by wolves and dogs. The applauses that the whole clergy give to this fray of proceeding, the many panegyrics that are already writ upon it, and the sermons, that are all flights of flattery upon this subject, are such evident demonstrations of their sense of this matter, that what is now on foot may well be termed the acts of the whole clergy of France, who have yet been esteemed the most moderate part of the Roman communion.”

The above was written but eighteen months after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But matters became much worse. The following is the account of Quick, the statistical historian of the French church, and whose work was published in London in 1692.

“Afterwards,” says he, “they fell upon the persons of the Protestants, and there was no wickedness, though ever so horrid, which they did not put in practice, that they might force them to change their religion. Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and women by the hair or feet to the roofs of the chambers, or hooks of chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were no longer able to bear it; and when they had taken them down, if they would not sign an abjuration of their pretended heresies, they then trussed them up again immediately. Some they threw into great fires, kindled on purpose, and would not take them out till they were half roasted. They tied ropes under their arms, and plunged them into deep wells, from whence they would not draw them till they had promised to change their religion. They bound them as criminals are when put to the rack, and in that posture, putting a funnel into their mouths, they poured wine down their throats, till its fumes had deprived them of their reason, and they had in that condition made them consent to become Catholics. Some they stripped stark naked, and after they had offered them a thousand indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot; they cut them with penknives, tore them by the noses with red hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to become Roman Catholics, or that the doleful cries of these poor tormented creatures, calling upon God for mercy, constrained them to let them go. They beat them with staves, and dragged them all bruised to the Popish churches, where their enforced presence is reputed for an abjuration. They kept them waking seven or eight days together, relieving one another by turns, that they might not get a wink of sleep or rest. In case they began to nod they threw buckets of water in their faces, or holding kettles over their heads, they beat on them with such a continual noise, that those poor wretches lost their senses. If they found any sick who kept their beds, men or women, they were so cruel, as to beat up all alarm with twelve drums about their heads for a whole week together, without intermission, till they had promised to change. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to the bed-posts, and ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes. And in another place rapes were publicly and generally permitted for many hours together. From others they plucked off the nails from their hands and toes. They burnt the feet of others. They blew up men and women with bellows till they were ready to burst in pieces. If these horrid usages could not prevail upon them to violate their consciences, and abandon their religion, they did then imprison them in close and noisome dungeons, in which they exercised all manner of inhumanities upon them. They demolished their houses, desolated their lands, cut down their woods, seized upon their wives and children and shut them up in monasteries. When the soldiers had devoured all the goods of a house, then the farmers and tenants of these poor, persecuted wretches, must supply them with new fuels for their lusts, and bring in more substance to them. If any endeavored to flee away, they were pursued and hunted in the fields and woods, and shot at as so many wild beasts.”

The numbers who perished in this persecution will not be known till that day when the “books shall be opened.” Multitudes perished by torture, multitudes in the galleys and in dungeons, and multitudes by the sword. For the accomplishment of this work of inhumanity and blood, Pope Innocent XI. thus addresses Louis XIV. “The Catholic church shall most assuredly record in her sacred annals a work of such devotion towards her, and celebrate your name with never dying praises; but above all, you may most assuredly promise to yourself, an ample remuneration from the Divine goodness for this most excellent undertaking, and may rest assured, that we shall never cease to pour forth our most earnest prayers to that Divine goodness for this intent and purpose.”27

We have thus noticed popish persecutions in but one of the many European kingdoms. What if we could give the exact statistics of this persecution in all the rest? What if Germany, if the Netherlands, if Spain, if Italy, if Portugal, if Switzerland, if Scotland, if Ireland, if England, should all exhibit their bloody books? Surely, we might say with John, “the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” These books, however, would not contain the history of the benevolent deeds of Christ, but accounts of the malignity and blood-thirstiness of Antichrist.

Mede has calculated from good authorities, “that in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses there perished of these people, in France alone, 1,000,000. From the first institution of the Jesuits to the year 1580, a little more than thirty years, 900,000 orthodox Christians were slain. In the Netherlands alone, the Duke of Alva boasted, that within a few years he had. dispatched to the amount of 36,000 souls, and those all by the hand of the common executioner. In the space of scarce thirty years, the Inquisition destroyed by various kinds of torture, 150,009 Christians.” Gibbon states it as a fact, though a melancholy one, that Papal Rome has shed immensely more Christian blood, than Pagan Rome had ever done. He gives but one illustration; that, however, a fearful one. “In the Netherlands alone,” says he, “more than 100,000 of the subjects of Charles V., are said to have suffered by the hands of the executioner.”28

Nor let it be said, that much of this bloodshed is to be ascribed to European princes’ and magistrates. With equal justice might the Jew affirm, that Jesus of Nazareth was condemned by Pilate, and executed by Roman soldiers. God, however, has charged the blood of his Son upon the Jews, by whose malignity and devisings Christ was crucified. Much more then, are the torrents of blood shed in Europe to be ascribed to the Papacy, to the Catholic church. These princes and magistrates were Catholic subjects, and they only executed the mind and will of the church. They were instigated by priests, yea, by the Pope himself. They were often complained of as being too tardy and too merciful; yea, some of them were involved in ruin, along with their heretical subjects, for their forbearance. Those of them too, who were most ferocious, who effected most brutally the work of ruin, received from Catholic dignitaries, and even from the Pope, the greatest amount of commendation. Thus Monfort, Catharine de Medicis, Charles IX., (whose remorse before death caused the blood to ooze from the pores of his body!) Louis XIV., etc., were congratulated by the Gregories, and innocents of their times, as faithful and zealous sons of the church, and as worthy the peculiar favor of heaven. This alliance, however, or rather identity, between the Papacy and policy of Europe in persecuting the saints, is matter of express and repeated prophecies. “These have one mind,” says John, “and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.” Again, ”For God has put it into their hearts, to fulfill his will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.” Revelation 17.

Whether, then, the Papacy be, or be not the subject of the prophecies alluded to in the first part of this chapter, let each one judge for Himself. Was the power predicted, “to make war with the saints and overcome them?” This Rome has done. Was it to “be drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus?” No other kingdom nor power has drunken so deeply of this blood, as Papal Rome. Was the blood of all that were slain upon the earth to be found in the subject of these prophecies? Rome has been, either directly the originator, or indirectly the associate, of nearly all the wars which have desolated Europe for a thousand years past. Thus, as streams may be traced to the fountain, and rays of light to the sun, so may these prophecies be traced to the Papacy, and applied only to it. This is the “beast that made war with the saints,” — this “the woman in scarlet, drunk with their blood,” — this is ANTICHRIST.

1 Century iv.
2 Cent. iv., chapter 3.
3 Mosheim, i. 329.
4 Contra Gaudentium, Ep. i.
5 Century v., chapter 5.
6 Rome, chapter 58.
7 Persecutions of Popery, p. 20.
8 lbidem.
9 Persecutions of Popery, p. 20.
10 Idem.
11 Court of Rome, p. 129.
12 Middle Ages, chapter 1, part 1.
13 Middle Ages, chapter 9, part 2.
14 Ecclesiastical Hist. Cent. 13.
15 Shoberl, p. 60.
16 Middle Ages, ix. 11.
17 Ibidem.
18 Shoberl, p. 60.
19 Ibidem.
20 Shoberl.
21 History of the Reformation, Book xii.
22 History of the Rcformation.
23 Grimshaw.
24 Court of Rome, p. 209.
25 Court of Rome, p. 210.
26 Shoberl.
27 Lorimer’s Protestant Church of France, p. 242.
28 Rome, chapter 16.