gust 22. This alarmed the king of Navarre, | nation of them both. He boasted of being a and the prince of Conde, but the king and his chief adviser of the late massacre, and the Promother promising to punish the assassin, they testants abhorred him for it. The papists were quiet. The next Sunday, August 9, 24, hated him for his adherence to the Hugonot being St. Bartholomew's day, when the bells house of Bourbon, and for the edicts which he rang for morning prayers, the Duke of Guise, sometimes granted in favour of the Protestbrother of the last, appeared with a great num- ants, though his only aim was to weaken the ber of soldiers and citizens, and began to mur- Guises. The ladies held him in execration der the Hugonots; the wretched Charles ap- for his unnatural practices: and the duchess peared at the windows of his palace, and en- of Montpensier talked of clipping his hair, and deavoured to shoot those who fled, crying to of making him a monk. His heavy taxes, their pursuers, Kill them, kill them. The mas- which were consumed by his favourites, excitsacre continued seven days; seven hundred ed the populace against him, and, while his houses were pillaged; five thousand people kingdom was covering with carnage and drenchperished in Paris; neither age, nor sex, nor ing in blood, he was training lap dogs to tumeven women with child were spared; one ble, and parrots to prate. 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 late prince, if they would not renounce Hugonotism, either death, mass, or bastile: for he said he would not have one left to reproach him. This bloody affair does not lie between Charles IX., his mother Catherine 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.

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 re"The ligion. The chief articles were three. defence of the Catholic religion. The esta blishment 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.

Would any one after this propose passive obedience and non-resistance 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,, Guise's pretended zeal for the Romish reliwho proposed to banish the family of Guise gion allured the clergy, and France was filled from France, to remove the queen mother, and with seditious books and sermons. The preachthe Italians, from the government, and to re- ers of the league were the most furious of all store peace to the nation. This faction was sermon mongers. They preached up the exheaded by Montmorenci, who had an eye to cellency of the established church, the necesthe crown. During these troubles, the king sity of uniformity, the horror of Hugonotism, died, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, 1574. the merit of killing the tyrant on the throne, Charles had a lively little genius; he composed (for so they called the king) the genealogy of a book on hunting, and valued himself on his the house of Guise, and every thing else that skill in physiognomy. He thought courage could inflame the madness of party rage. It consisted in swearing and taunting at his cour- is not enough to say that these abandoned tiers. His diversions were hunting, music, clergymen disgraced their office; truth obliges women, and wine. His court was a common- us to add, they were protected, and preferred sewer of luxury and impiety, and, while his to dignities in the church, both in France and favourites were fleecing his people, he employ-Spain. ed himself in the making of rhymes. TheThe nearer the Guises approached to the part which he acted in the Bartholomean tra- crown the more were they inflamed at the gedy, the worst crime that was ever perpe- sight of it. They obliged the king to forbid trated in any Christian country, will mark his the exercise of the Protestant religion. They reign with infamy, to the end of time. 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

Henry III.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 affected the pomp of an eastern king: and so mean that he often walked in procession with a beggarly brotherhood, 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 assassi

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 parliaiments 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!

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 pa pist: 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.

When his majesty got to his palace in Paris, he thought proper to conciliate his new friends by showing them particular esteem, and played 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 killing the fatted calf for the prodigal son, provided you do not sa-The Edict of Nantz, which was called per crifice the obedient son to make the better en-petual and irrevocable, and which contained tertainment for the prodigal. I dread those ninety-two articles, besides fifty-six secret arbargains, in which things are given up, and ticles, granted to the Protestants liberty of con nothing got but mere words; the words of those science, and the free exercise of religion; many who hitherto have had no words at all." 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

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 a hypocrite, and refused to insert 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 frailty of humanity by renounc ing Protestantism, yet he extricated himself and his subjects from the fatal labyrinths in

liament 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 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.

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 must be given up to that, and conscience to this. He suffered the edict to be infringed every day, and he was determined not to stop till he had established a uniformity in the church, without the obtaining of which, he thought, that something was wanting to his master's power. The Protestants did all that prudence could suggest. They sent the famous Amyraut to court to complain to the king of the infraction of their edicts, 1631. Mr. Amyraut was a proper person to go on this business. He had an extreme attachment to the doctrine of passive obedience. This rendered him agreeable to the court: and he had declared for no obedience in matters of conscience, and this made him dear to the Protestants. The synod ordered him not to make his speech to the king kneeling, as the deputies of the former synod had done: but to procure the restoring of the privilege, which they formerly enjoyed, of speaking to the king, standing, as the other ecclesiastics of the kingdom were allowed to do. The cardinal strove, for a whole fortnight, to make Amyraut submit to this tacit acknowledgment of the clerical character in the Popish clergy, and of the want of it in the reformed ministers. But Amyraut persisted in his claim, and was introduced to the king as the synod had The politic Richlieu invariably pursued his desired. The whole court was charmed with design of rendering his master absolute. By the deputy's talents and deportment. Richlieu one art he subdued the nobility, by another the had many conferences with him, and, if negoparliaments, and, as civil and religious liberty tiation could have accommodated the dispute live and die together, he had engines of all between arbitrary power and upright consorts to extirpate heresy. He pretended to sciences, it would have been settled now. He have formed the design of re-uniting the two was treated with the utmost politeness, and churches of Protestants and Catholics. He dismissed. If he had not the pleasure of redrew off from the Protestant party the dukes flecting that he had obtained the liberty of his of Sully, Bouillon, Lesdeguieres, Rohan, and party, he had, however, the peace that ariseth many of the first quality: for he had the world, from the consciousness of having used a proand its glory to go to market withal; and he per mean to obtain it. The same mean was had to do with a race of men, who were very tried, some time after, by the inimitable Du different from their ancestors. Most of them Bosc, whom his countrymen call a PERFECT had either died for their profession, or fled out ORATOR, but alas! he was eloquent in vain. of the kingdom, and several of them had sub-The affairs of the Protestants waxed every mitted 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 worse and worse. They saw the clouds gathering, and they dreaded the weight of the storm: but they knew not whither to flee. Some fled to England, but no peace was there. Laud, the tyrant of the English church, had a Richlieu's heart without his head; he persecuted them, and, in conjunction with Wren,.. and other such churchmen, drove them back, to the infinite damage of the manufactures of the kingdom, 1634. It must effect every liberal eye to see such professors as Amyraut

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Cardinal Richlieu's hoary head went down to the grave, 1642, without the tears of his master, and with the hatred of all France. The king soon followed him, 1643, complain-reformation, which all the clergy in France ing, in the words of Job, my soul is weary of my life. The Protestants had increased greatly in numbers in this reign, though they had lost their power: for they were now computed to exceed two millions. So true is it, that violent measures in religion weaken the church that employs them.