tibvavy of fch* theological gmimxy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U.S. A, 
 Department of History 
 
 Presb. B'd of Pub. COll. 
 
 |3, £3? 
 
MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 <& ■ ' 
 
 '-V- 
 
 FOE 
 
 1954 
 
 THE TRUTH. 
 
 BY 
 
 .1?LI 
 
 WILLIAM S.TLUMER, D.D. 
 
 Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and 
 shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. — JE6U3 
 Christ. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 1334 Chestnut Street. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OP THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Westcott & Thomson, 
 Stereotypers, Philada. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Strange Things 5 
 
 II. What Some have Said of Persecution 8 
 
 III. What is Persecution? 11 
 
 IV. For What do Men Persecute each Other ? 14 
 
 V. Persecution is Forbidden 18 
 
 VI. Who is a Martyr? 24 
 
 VII. How Many Martyrs have there Been 29 
 
 VIII. The First Five General Persecutions 33 
 
 IX. The Last Five General Persecutions 40 
 
 X. Later Persecutions 45 
 
 XI. A Remarkable and Authentic Document 48 
 
 XII. A Reply, with Reflections 54 
 
 XIII. A Modern Martyr 69 
 
 XIV. Romanism in Rome.. 73 
 
 XV. Rome a Persecuting Power 90 
 
 XVI. Louis Montrevel, or the Huguenot Martyrs.. 109 
 
 Appendix 171 
 
 3 
 
MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 FOR THE TRUTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 STRANGE THINGS. 
 
 THE word of God leads us to expect that 
 truth and piety will always be opposed 
 while there are in the world wicked men. 
 The hatred of the ungodly to the friends of 
 truth is ever deadly. The first man that 
 was born of a woman killed his own brother, 
 only because his own works were evil and his 
 brother's good. It was malice against those 
 who looked for Christ to come into the world 
 that made the Egyptians so cruel to the 
 Israelites. Saul's malice against David was 
 very much of this nature. Wher he wished 
 for a tool of his vengeance against the inno- 
 cent, he found him. One of his most brutal 
 
 1* 5 
 
6 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 minions was Doeg, the Edomite. This bloody 
 monster, at Saul's bidding, fell upon the 
 priests at Nob, and slew on one day four- 
 score and five (that is, eighty-five) persons that 
 did wear a linen ephod. The good men 
 mentioned in the Old Testament were terribly 
 hated and hunted. They were tortured, re- 
 fusing to save their lives by denying their 
 God. They had trial of cruel mockings and 
 scourgings — yea, moreover of bonds and im- 
 prisonment. They were stoned, they were 
 sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with 
 the sword ; they wandered in sheepskins and 
 goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. 
 They wandered in deserts and mountains, and 
 in dens and in caves of the earth. This is 
 the true history of many of the people of 
 whom the world was not w r orthy. They died 
 at the hands of the men for whose salvation 
 they prayed. 
 
 Nor did the coming of Jesus Christ put an 
 end to deeds of blood against the saints. 
 The Lord Jesus himself was put to death in 
 the most malignant and shameful manner. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 7 
 
 All his faithful apostles also died by violence, 
 except one, and he was saved only by miracle. 
 Indeed, our Lord Jesus candidly told his 
 disciples that they should be hated of all 
 men for his name's sake; and that the time 
 should come when those who should kill 
 them, would be so filled with rage and blind- 
 ness that they should believe they were do- 
 ing God service. The apostles no less faith- 
 fully warned all who would live godly in 
 Christ Jesus that they must suffer persecution. 
 
 Let no one, therefore, be offended at the 
 Christian religion because of malice, slander 
 and persecution for Christ's sake. The seed 
 of the bond woman has always hated the seed 
 of the free woman. Holy and fallen angels 
 cannot work together, for they are not agreed. 
 Neither can men who hate Christ Jesus love 
 those who would lay down their lives for the 
 Son of God. 
 
 These things are indeed strange. ^Vhy 
 do men in spirit still cry, Release Barabbas 
 and crucify Jesus ? The reason is, that the 
 carnal mind is enmity against God. 
 
MABTYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT SOME HAVE SAIJ> OF PERSECUTION. 
 
 I HAVE thought the young reader might 
 be pleased here to see how some great and 
 good men have despised the malice and cruel- 
 ties of those who sought to frighten them out 
 of their avowed love to Christ, and what 
 others have said of these things. 
 
 Stephen, the first Christian martyr, dying, 
 offered two prayers. One was for himself: 
 " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The other 
 was for his foes : " Lord, lay not this sin to 
 their charge." 
 
 Paul said : " The Holy Ghost witnesseth in 
 every city, saying that bonds and imprison- 
 ments await me. But none of these things 
 move me, neither count I my life dear unto 
 myself, so that I might finish my course with 
 
 joy." 
 
FOPw THE TRUTH. 9 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen said : u Do they cast us 
 out of the city ? They cannot cast us out of 
 that which is in the heavens. If they who 
 hate us could do this, they would do some- 
 thing real against us. The only thing we 
 have really to be afraid of is fearing anything 
 more than God." 
 
 To the king of Navarre, Beza said : " Sire, 
 it belongs truly to God's Church rather to 
 suffer blows than to strike them ; but let it 
 be your pleasure to remember that the Church 
 is an anvil which hath worn out many a 
 hammer." 
 
 Leighton said : " The church has sometimes 
 been brought to so low and obscure a point 
 that if you can follow her in history it is by 
 the track of her blood, and if you would see 
 her, it is by the light of those fires in w T hich 
 her martyrs have been burnt." 
 
 Jortin remarks : " To banish, imprison, 
 plunder, starve, hang and burn men for re- 
 ligion is not the gospel of Christ, but the 
 gospel of the devil. Where persecution be- 
 gins, Christianity ends. Christ never used 
 
10 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 anything like force or violence, except once ; 
 and that was to drive bad men out of the 
 temple, and not to drive them in." 
 
 Milner says: "Persecution often does in 
 this life what the last day will do com- 
 pletely — separate the wheat from the tares." 
 
 Spencer says : " Let the Church's enemies 
 plough never so deeply, and make furrows on 
 the backs of God's people never so long ; yet 
 God's ends are grace and mercy, and peace to 
 do them good in the latter end." 
 
 Bowes says : " If you are made to suffer for 
 religion, see that religion do not suffer by 
 you." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 11 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 WHAT is peilsectjtion? 
 
 PERSECUTION is of three kinds : 
 1. Mental. A wicked spirit is the root 
 of all bitterness. Out of the heart are the 
 issues of life and of death. Every man is 
 what he is inwardly. Cain had never hurt a 
 hair of Abel's head but that he first conceived 
 mortal enmity against him. 1 John iii. 12. 
 The Jews never would have clamoured for the 
 death of Christ had they indulged no deadly 
 malice against him. Matt, xxvii. 18; Mark 
 xv. 10. The patriarchs, moved with envy, 
 sold Joseph into Egypt. Acts vii. 9. Every 
 malignant passion is in its nature persecuting. 
 Envy is a fearful incitement to wronging 
 others. Yet it is very common. James iv. 
 5. And although it torments and even slays 
 
12 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 its subject (Job v. 2), and is a rottenness in 
 the bones (Prov. xiv. 30), yet it is busy in 
 all lands and in all hearts where the grace 
 of God reigns not. It is the parent of much 
 evil. " Where envying and strife is, there is 
 confusion and every evil work." James iii. 
 16. It is a base passion, often condemned in 
 Scripture. Prov. xxiii. 7; Rom. xiii. 13; 
 Gal. v. 21. Another form of wickedness 
 leading to persecution is bigotry. The very 
 ignorance of these hot zealots only makes 
 them the more intractable. Watts : " In 
 philosophy and religion the bigots of all 
 parties are generally the most positive." 
 Bigotry is full of spleen and spite. It con- 
 stantly tends to violence and cruelty. Bigots 
 do every day commit murder in their hearts. 
 Some are bigots by nature, others by trade. 
 Narrow, contracted views are the foster-pa- 
 rents of wrath and wrong. A wrong creed, 
 and a creed blindly adopted, often lead to the 
 same result. Bigotry is not dead. Perhaps 
 it never flourished more than in the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 13 
 
 2. Persecution is often by the tongue. 
 " The words of the wicked are to lie in wait 
 for blood." Prov. xii. 6. " The words of a 
 talebearer are as wounds." Prov. xviii. 8. 
 He who has never felt the power of scornful 
 and contumelious language, of irony, sarcasm, 
 ridicule, calumny, detraction and evil sur- 
 misings, knows not the anguish of good men 
 hunted and hounded by the wicked. There 
 is " a persecution sharper than the axe. 
 There is an iron that goes into the heart 
 deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers and sar- 
 casm, and pitiless judgments and cold-hearted 
 calumnies — these are persecutions." Well 
 does Paul put down "cruel mockings" along- 
 side of scourgings, bonds, imprisonments and 
 death in its most dismal shapes. Heb. xi. 36, 
 37. " If God's people were not strangers 
 here, the dogs w r ould not bark at them." 
 11 Woe unto you, when all men shall speak 
 well of you ! for so did their fathers to the 
 false prophets." Luke vi. 26. "Blessed are 
 ye when men shall revile you, and persecute 
 you, and shall say all manner of evil against 
 
 2 
 
14 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be 
 exceeding glad : for great is your reward in 
 heaven." Matt. v. 11, 12. 
 
 3. Again, persecution breaks forth into acts 
 of cruelty and murder. It arrests, fetters, 
 whips, banishes, plunders, confiscates, smites, 
 tortures, burns and hangs. It gloats over 
 the misery of its victims. Sometimes it 
 expresses great compassion for the sufferer, 
 but all this is sheer hypocrisy. It is as ma- 
 levolent as hell. It riots in carnage. It 
 delights in groans. To make its power felt 
 is its feast of fat things. 
 
FOR THE TEUTH. 15 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TOR WHAT DO M EN PERSECUTE EACH OTHER ? 
 
 PERSECUTION may be for any cause, or 
 without cause. It is commonly on al- 
 leged grounds of difference in science or lite- 
 rature, politics or religion. The scorn and 
 violence of one school of letters toward 
 another is sometimes amazing. Persecution 
 for difference in science is matter of history. 
 The case of Galileo always comes up when 
 this subject is named. Whately says : " Galileo, 
 probably, would have escaped persecution if 
 his discoveries could have been disproved and 
 his reasonings refuted." Political differences 
 commonly engender great animosities. A 
 party long out of power, at last gaining the 
 reins of government, and fearing that their 
 tenure of office will be short, commonly stirs 
 
16 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 up the passions of men to an intense glow of 
 heat. Rev. xii. 12. But on no subject is 
 passion so violent and prejudice so potent as 
 on religious differences. Yet seldom do men 
 avowedly persecute others for the real opin- 
 ions they hold or the actual usages they prac- 
 tice. They often charge something foreign 
 from the real ground of animosity. Persecu- 
 tors dress their victims in the skins of wild 
 beasts before they set the dogs on them. The 
 anaconda smears its prey all over before 
 swallowing it. 
 
 The prophets predicted that the coming of 
 Messiah should engender the spirit of love 
 and concord in all who were heartily subject 
 to him ; that the mountains should bring 
 peace to the people, and the little hills by 
 righteousness; that he should break in pieces 
 the oppressor ; that he should come down like 
 rain upon the mown grass, as showers that 
 water the earth ; that under his glorious reign 
 the wolf should dwell with the lamb, and the 
 leopard should lie down with the kid, and 
 the calf and the young lion and the fatling 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 17 
 
 together ; and a little child should lead them. 
 And the cow and the bear should feed ; their 
 young ones should lie down together ; and the 
 lion should eat straw like the ox. And the 
 sucking child should play on the hole of the 
 asp, and the weaned child should put his hand 
 on the cockatrice' den. God says that in that 
 blessed day they shall not hurt nor destroy 
 in all my holy mountain. Ps. lxxii. 3-6 ; 
 Isa. xi. 6-8. 
 
 2* 
 
18 MABTYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 PJEMSJECUTION is forbidden. 
 
 JESUS CHEIST condemned and forbade a 
 fiery, persecuting spirit. When the Samari- 
 tans thought that Christ had decided, or was 
 about to decide, against them the controversy 
 betwixt them and the Jews, they did not re- 
 ceive him. " And when his disciples, James and 
 John, saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that 
 we command fire to come down from heaven to 
 consume them ?" Luke ix. 54. These Samar- 
 itans were ignorant idolaters, schismatical 
 and heretical. John iv. 22. They refused to 
 receive the Lord from heaven. Yet Christ 
 would not allow his followers even to impre- 
 cate judgments on their enemies. Christ says 
 the very temper displayed by these disciples 
 was all wrong. He says he came not "to 
 destroy men's lives, but to save them." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 19 
 
 Tillotson : " He came to discountenance all 
 fierceness and rage and cruelty in men one 
 toward another ; to restrain and subdue that 
 furious and unpeaceable spirit which is so 
 troublesome to the world and the cause of so 
 many mischiefs and disorders in it; to beget 
 a peaceable disposition in men of the most 
 distant tempers." So when Peter drew his 
 sword, even in defence of Christ's sacred per- 
 son, the Master said, " Put up again thy 
 sword into his place, for all they that take the 
 sword shall perish by the sword." Matt. xxvi. 
 52; John xviii. 11. 
 
 The apostles carried out the principles 
 inculcated by Christ. They taught, w r arned, 
 rebuked and reproved with all long-suffering 
 and doctrine. They called on the early Chris- 
 tians to follow peace and holiness ; in meek- 
 ness to instruct those that fell into error, that 
 they might be recovered from the snares that 
 entangled them ; to lay aside all malice and 
 guile, and envies, and wrath, and bitterness, 
 and evil-speaking ; to be gentle toward all 
 men ; to bless and not to curse. 
 
20 MARTYRS AKD SUFFERERS 
 
 That for centuries the early Christians held 
 the same views is clear from their writings. 
 The primitive Christians carried out the 
 teachings of Scripture, opposing all compulsion 
 in matters of religion. 
 
 Ignatius says : " Count them enemies and 
 separate from them who hate God, but for 
 beating or persecuting them, that is proper 
 to the heathen, who know not God nor our 
 Saviour ; do you not so." 
 
 Speaking of Christians, Origen says : " We 
 ought to use the sword against no one." 
 Tertullian : " It is no part of religion to com- 
 pel religion." The same is taught by Cyprian : 
 " The Father has given to the Son what no 
 one can claim to himself — to dash in pieces 
 with a rod of iron the earthen vessels, or 
 become the avenger." Lactantius : " Force 
 and injury are not needful, for religion cannot 
 be compelled. Torture and piety are exceed- 
 ingly diverse ; nor can either truth be joined 
 w 7 ith violence or justice with cruelty. For 
 religion is to be defended not by killing, but 
 by dying ; not by severity, but by patience." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 21 
 
 Bernard : " Faith comes by persuasion, not by 
 being thrust upon men. Heretics are to be 
 won, not by arms, but by arguments. Attack 
 them with the Word, not with the sword." 
 Gregory of Rome : " To beat in faith with 
 stripes is a new and unheard-of kind of 
 preaching." Indeed, Du Pin, who has col- 
 lected many like authorities, says, "The 
 ancients taught with unanimous consent the 
 unlawfulness of compulsion and punishment 
 in religion." And Owen says : " The Chris- 
 tians of those days disclaimed all thoughts of 
 such proceedings." 
 
 Persecution belongs to paganism, infidelity, 
 superstition and atheism, not to the temple of 
 Jehovah. It was born in malice, superstition 
 and devilish cruelty. It has been used a 
 thousand times against the truth more than 
 against error. When wielded against heretics 
 it has done far more mischief than has ever 
 been said of it. Owen says that persecution 
 " brought fire and faggot into Christian reli- 
 gion, making havoc of the true Church of 
 Christ and shedding blood of thousands." 
 
22 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 Again : " For three hundred years the Church 
 had no assistance from any magistrate against 
 heretics ; and yet in all that space there was 
 not one long-lived, far-spreading heresy, in 
 comparison of those that followed." 
 
 Besides the arguments already dropped 
 against persecution, Doddridge has at length 
 and successfully maintained these proposi- 
 tions : 
 
 1. "Persecution for conscience' sake — i.e., 
 inflicting penalties on men merely for their 
 religious principles or worship — is plainly 
 founded on an absurd supposition that one 
 man has a right to judge for another in matters 
 of religion." 
 
 2. " Persecution is most evidently inconsist- 
 ent with that obvious and fundamental prin- 
 ciple of morality that we should do to others 
 as we could reasonably desire they should do 
 to us." 
 
 3. " Persecution is evidently absurd, and is 
 by no means calculated to answer the ends 
 which its patrons profess to intend by it." 
 
 4. " Persecution evidently tends to produce 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 23 
 
 a great deal of confusion and mischief in the 
 world." 
 
 5. "The Christian religion, which we 
 here suppose to be the cause of truth, must, 
 humanly speaking, be not only obstructed, but 
 destroyed, should persecuting principles uni- 
 versally prevail." 
 
 6. " Persecution is so far from being 
 required or encouraged by the gospel, that it 
 is most directly contrary to many of its pre- 
 cepts, and indeed to the whole genius of it." 
 
 No man can too deeply abhor both the 
 spirit and practice of persecution. Nor can 
 any one be too much afraid of the guilt of a 
 persecutor. Had Saul of Tarsus known what 
 he was doing when he was persecuting the 
 Church, his damnation would have been as 
 certain as it would have been just. 1 Tim. 
 i. 13. Compare 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. 
 
24 MARTYRS AKD SUFFERERS 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHO IS A MARTTK? 
 
 THE Greek word from which we get our 
 word martyr occurs more than thirty- 
 times in the New Testament, and is commonly 
 rendered vntness, in the plural witnesses — twice 
 record and thrice martyr or martyrs. It is 
 applied to judicial witnesses in Matt. xvii. 16 ; 
 to one who testifies to the truth of what he 
 sees hears or knows, Luke xxiv. 48 ; Acts i. 
 8, 22 ; and to one who not only testifies to 
 the truth, but lays down his life for the truth, 
 Acts xxii. 20 ; Rev. ii. 13 ; xvii. 6. In the 
 Scriptures this is the least common meaning 
 of the word, but for centuries ecclesiastical 
 writers have used it in no other sense. All 
 witnesses are not martyrs, but all martyrs 
 are witnesses of something. A martyr, then, is 
 one who by his death bears witness to the truth 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 25 
 
 of his principles and belief. In strictness 
 of language, according to South, " To be a 
 martyr signifies only to witness the truth of 
 Christ ; but the witnessing of the truth was 
 then so generally attended with persecution 
 that martyrdom now signifies not only to 
 witness, but to witness by death." Dr. J. 
 W. Alexander says : " A witness is called in 
 Greek a martyr. We have borrowed the 
 word and made it sacred in our tongue." 
 Colton says: "He that dies a martyr proves 
 that he is not a knave." He gives the high- 
 est proof of his sincerity. 
 
 A martyr differs from a confessor only in 
 this, that the confessor avows the truth, and 
 his love for it, in the face of danger and 
 when he expects to die for his confession, but 
 in some way his life is spared. A martyr is 
 a confessor who actually lays down his life. 
 In the primitive Church were many con- 
 fessors — " men that had hazarded their lives 
 for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 Acts xv. 26. Indeed, in many ages of the 
 world it has been worth all a man's earthly 
 
26 MAETYKS AND STJFFEEEKS 
 
 possessions, and life itself, unflinchingly to 
 avow the simple truth as it is in Jesus. The 
 first martyr was Abel. He being dead yet 
 speaketh. Heb. xii. 4. That is, every refer- 
 ence to his sacrifice and death declares the 
 necessity of an atonement for sin; that if 
 sinners would be accepted of God, they must 
 come penitently confessing their transgres- 
 sions and asking for mercy through the great 
 sacrifice of Calvary; that justifying right- 
 eousness is by faith — a faith that obeys as 
 well as relies ; that a believer's inheritance is 
 in a better world ; that we must be willing 
 to forfeit the favour and incur the malice of 
 even our own kindred, if we would please 
 God ; and that the dying testimony of mar- 
 tyrs is not useless. Posthumous usefulness 
 has marked no class of men more than the 
 martyrs. To this day they have been pre- 
 eminently serviceable in keeping alive a 
 knowledge of the saving truths of Scripture. 
 Testimony sealed with blood God has greatly 
 owned to the salvation of men. " The blood 
 of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 27 
 
 The faith and constancy of one sufferer for 
 the truth has in one day won hundreds to the 
 Redeemer, 
 
 IS EVERY TRUE CHRISTIAN AT HEART A 
 
 martyr? If the meaning of this question 
 be, whether at all times God's real people are 
 in such a frame as that, without warning and 
 special preparation, they would universally 
 yield up their lives rather than deny Christ, 
 we must answer in the negative. Peter, 
 Cranmer and others denied Christ and his 
 truth. They were found off their guard. 
 They were taken by surprise. But if the 
 meaning of the question be whether, upon fail 
 notice and after due consideration, a real child 
 of God will yield his life rather than be false 
 to his profession and treasonable to Christ, 
 the answer must be in the affirmative. So 
 Christ has himself determined. Luke xiv. 
 26, 27, 33. That man is not to be regarded 
 as an established Christian who, upon the 
 call of God, is not willing to be found in a 
 minority of one against millions. Lot was a 
 good man, and, though he dwelt in Sodom, 
 
28 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 he was not a sodomite, but the surrounding 
 wickedness vexed his righteous soul from 
 day to day. Noah stood alone in testifying 
 against the wickedness of his times. Caleb, 
 Joshua and Phinehas wrought righteousness 
 and obtained a good report by intrepidly op- 
 posing the unbelief and wickedness of the 
 great mass of their nation. The truly faith- 
 ful stand firm even among the faithless. 
 They are not governed by popular suffrage, 
 but by the Word of God, which liveth and 
 abideth for ever. " I can do no otherwise," 
 said Martin Luther, "God help me!" 
 The apostles said, " We ought to obey God 
 rather than man." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 29 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW 3TAJST MAMTYBS HAVE THERE BEEX? 
 
 IT is impossible to answer this question with 
 arithmetical precision. There seems to be 
 no reason for seriously doubting that the 
 whole number in all ages exceeds fifty mil- 
 lions. From the days of Abel there have 
 been many outbursts of the bloody spirit of 
 persecution. What torrents of righteous blood 
 were shed before the deluge we know not. 
 One stroke of the pen of inspiration tells all 
 we know : " The earth was filled with vio- 
 lence." This expression comprehends all 
 kinds of murders as well as of martyrdoms. 
 If in those times the wicked shed each other's 
 blood, it is not credible that the pious escaped 
 their malice. So ft the history of the Jews 
 martyrs abounded. * It was not a rhetorical 
 figure in Stephen to cry out : " As your 
 3* 
 
30 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 fathers did, so do ye. "Which of the prophets 
 have not your fathers persecuted ? and they 
 have slain them which showed before of the 
 coming of the Just One ; of whom ye have 
 been now the betrayers and murderers." Acts 
 vii. 51, 52. Indeed, of the sufferings of the 
 saints, both by Jews and heathen, Paul speaks 
 when he says, " that through faith they 
 stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the 
 violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword ; 
 out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
 valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies 
 of the aliens. Women received their dead 
 raised to life again ; and others were tortured, 
 not accepting deliverance, that they might 
 obtain a better resurrection ; and others had 
 trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, 
 moreover of bonds and imprisonments : they 
 were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were 
 tempted [some read, were branded; some, were 
 burnt alive ; some, were mutilated; and some, 
 were impaled or transfixed'], were slain with 
 the sword ; they wandered about in sheepskins 
 and goatskins; being deslitute, afflicted, tor- 
 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 31 
 
 mented (of whom the world was not worthy) ; 
 they wandered in deserts and in mountains, 
 and in dens and caves of the earth." Heb. xi. 
 33-37. In some respects we have not a 
 more wonderful history of sufferings for the 
 truth than that we find in the books of 
 Maccabees and in Josephus, relating to the 
 cruelties practiced by Antiochus Epiphanes. 
 
 After the death of Christ, the first martyr 
 was Stephen, the history of whose intrepidity, 
 loving disposition and glorious death is 
 given in Acts vi., vii. Many things respect- 
 ing the close of his earthly existence are 
 worthy of special note, but they are either 
 given in the inspired narrative or are sug- 
 gested by the practical commentators on the 
 record. 
 
 This was but the beginning of the shedding 
 of the blood of saints; for "at that time there 
 was a great persecution against the Church 
 which was at Jerusalem ; and they were all 
 scattered abroad throughout the regions of 
 Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." 
 Acts viii. 1 Stephen's martyrdom is com- 
 
32 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 monly supposed to have occurred the same year 
 as our Lord's ascension to heaven. From 
 this time, for near three hundred years, with 
 occasional cessations, the blood of the saints 
 flowed like water. Besides many persecutions 
 confined to villages, cities or provinces, there 
 were ten general persecutions against the 
 Christians in the Roman empire. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 33 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FFBST FIVE GEXEBAE PEItSECUTIOXS. 
 
 THE history of these bloody days is indeed 
 appalling. The first general persecu- 
 tion was under the emperor Claudius Dorui- 
 tius Xero, the son of an ambitious woman, 
 who said, " Let my son slay me, if he may 
 but be emperor." He put on the imperial 
 purple and grasped the imperial sceptre 
 when young, A. D. 50. At first he seemed 
 mild, humane, and even tender-hearted. 
 When first called to sign a death-warrant, he 
 seemed much moved and expressed the wish 
 that he could not write. But he soon became 
 licentious, cruel, vindictive and extremely 
 malignant. He inhumanly put his own 
 mother to death. He cared for neither justice 
 nor mercy. He was the author of many 
 intolerable oppressions and wrongs to his 
 
34 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 people. He cared not how much he degraded 
 any class of Romans. Under him Peter and 
 Paul suffered martyrdom. To him Paul is 
 supposed to refer in 2 Tim. iv. 11, as a lion. 
 His persecutions of the Christians as a class, 
 began A. D. 64, and lasted till his death, 
 which occurred in June, A. D. 68. He caused 
 Rome to be set on fire, that he might have the 
 pleasure of seeing a spectacle like that of the 
 burning of Troy, and then charged the awful 
 crime on the Christians. So fearful was the 
 havoc made in the Church that one might see 
 cities full of the bodies of dead men and 
 women cast out uncovered in the open streets. 
 Such crime and cruelty cannot always proceed. 
 If Christian long-suffering forbears and divine 
 mercy withholds direct thunderbolts of wrath, 
 wicked men themselves will not always be 
 idle. High and low at last conspired to rid 
 the world of the intolerable burden of this 
 one man's crimes and iniquities. Seeing con- 
 dign punishment awaiting him, overwhelmed 
 with anguish, forsaken by those who had 
 applauded his vices, and lashed by a guilty 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 35 
 
 conscience, he committed suicide, and rushed 
 unbidden into the presence of the God whose 
 martyrs he had slain. Then for a time 
 God's people had less annoyance. 
 
 But in A. D. 94 a second general perse- 
 cution of the Christians in the Roman empire 
 began. It raged with great violence, and 
 gave the crown of martyrdom to multitudes. 
 It was under the authority and instigation of 
 the emperor, Titus Flavius Domitian. Like 
 Xero, his early history promised well. He 
 seemed to have an almost feminine gentle- 
 ness, an uncommon mildness of disposition. 
 At length his mind took a turn toward 
 cruelty. At first he tortured flies with a 
 bodkin. Soon he became wanton in his in- 
 flictions of suffering on men, till in the forty- 
 third year of his age his cruelties burst forth 
 in flaming and indiscriminate wrath against 
 God's people. His pride was insufferable, 
 his arrogance like that of Nebuchadnezzar. 
 He required his own image to be worshipped. 
 His malice was not a little excited against the 
 great men of his empire. He had a special spite 
 
36 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 against all the descendants of David, and par- 
 ticularly the near kinsmen of our Lord. In 
 this persecution there was a resort to nearly 
 every conceivable device for inflicting pain 
 and begetting terror. This persecution was 
 also more cunning than that of Nero, inas- 
 much as all the arts of deception were em- 
 ployed in inventing false charges against the 
 Christians to cover up the foulness of the 
 murders perpetrated under forms of law. It 
 was alleged that Christians held Christ's 
 kingdom was of this world ; that all public 
 calamities were owing to the impiety and 
 atheism of Christians; and that the Christians 
 practiced great wickedness, of which no proof 
 was ever submitted. But God at length had 
 mercy on his poor suffering people, took his 
 almighty hand off the hearts of some wicked 
 men, and let loose their horrid passions on 
 Domitian. After two years of persecution of 
 Christians, Domitian was assassinated A. D. 
 96. Thus ended one of the most cruel and 
 extensive persecutions ever waged against 
 truth and righteousness. Bloody and deceit- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 37 
 
 ful men shall not live out half their days. 
 Bat the Church had rest for only a year or 
 two ; for though Domitian was succeeded by 
 the wise and mild Cocceius Nerva, who lived 
 but a short time, yet there soon came the 
 brave and brutal, the popular and persecuting 
 M. Alpinus Crinitus Trajan, whose sensibili- 
 ties had probably been blunted in the Asiatic 
 campaigns of Vespasian and Titus, and w r ho 
 probably confounded Judaism and Christian- 
 ity. Under him, in A. D. 98, began the 
 third general persecution, which lasted 
 much longer than those under iSero and 
 Domitian. It was exceedingly dreadful, be- 
 cause, though without the capricious and fit- 
 ful cruelty of some others, it had the awful 
 severity of the worst, and swept multitudes 
 into eternity. Trajan reigned about twenty 
 years. From his death, A. D. 118, there was 
 no general and legal hunting and murdering 
 of God's people till after the death of Anto- 
 ninus Pius, w 7 hich occurred in A. D. 161. 
 
 Soon after began the fourth general 
 persecution under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 
 4 
 
38 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 who had married Faustina, the daughter of 
 Antoninus Pius, and who reigned nineteen 
 years, with great severity of conduct toward the 
 Christians, although his treatment of his pagan 
 subjects won for him unusual popularity. His 
 son, the feeble, debauched and cruel Commodus, 
 succeeded him and kept up the persecution 
 for twelve years longer, and then perished by 
 poison given him by his concubine, Marcia. 
 One of his last victims was a Roman senator. 
 After the death of Commodus the Church had 
 comparative rest for twelve or thirteen years, 
 till after the middle of the reign of Lucius 
 Septimus Severus, when the fifth general 
 persecution began. This emperor was bold, 
 enterprising, and for more than ten years of 
 his power seemed to consult the good of all his 
 subjects. But at length his Cainish malice 
 was roused, perhaps by false and slanderous 
 accusations against the Christians. About 
 A. D. 205 the number of martyrs slain was 
 immense. On all hands was slaughter. But 
 in Africa the number of victims was frightful. 
 Severus died in A. D. 21 1, but it is not cer- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 39 
 
 tain whether in Germany or in Britain — 
 whether by violence or by disease. His end 
 terminated this flow of precious blood for 
 about twenty-four years. 
 
40 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TXJE ZAST FIVE GENERAL PERSECUTIONS. 
 
 OAIUS JULIUS VERUS MAXIMI- 
 NUS was the next great persecutor. He 
 was the son of a Thracian peasant, then a 
 successful soldier, then emperor. He was in 
 frame and strength a giant; in temper and 
 conduct wanton and cruel ; to good men an 
 object of detestation ; to his country a curse. 
 He was raised to imperial power by the army 
 rather than by the senate. He had hardly 
 put on the diadem of the Caesars until a new 
 Iliad of woes opened on the Church. Under 
 him occurred the sixth general persecution 
 of Christians. While it lasted it was indeed 
 dreadful. The authorities at hand are not 
 agreed as to the exact time of his death. It 
 is well known that his career of crime and 
 cruelty was not very long (some say three 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 41 
 
 years), and was terminated by the very sol- 
 diers whom he had made familiar with scenes 
 of murderous carnage. The triumph of the 
 wicked is short. 
 
 The seventh general persecution was 
 begun under Decius, who became emperor 
 A. D. 249. The havoc he made of the Church 
 was truly frightful. His rage knew no bounds. 
 He came into power by killing his master 
 Philip, who had been just and even kind to 
 the Christians, and had confided the public 
 treasure to Fabian, a Roman bishop. Per- 
 haps this very circumstance made Decius the 
 more furious against God's people. Although 
 he was emperor but two years, yet it is proba- 
 ble that more martyrs suffered in those twenty- 
 four months than in any equal portion of 
 time under any other of the Caesars. One 
 sober writer compares the number of martyrs 
 to the sands on the seashore. Decius was 
 victorious in battle against the Persians, but 
 soon after perished with his army in a morass 
 fighting against the Goths. His successor 
 was C. Vibius Gallus, who soon took up the 
 
 4* 
 
42 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 business of persecutor where his predecessor 
 had left it. In his character was nothing to 
 admire. He died a violent death : his sol- 
 diers assassinated hirn. 
 
 For a few subsequent years God's people 
 had considerable quiet under Publius Licinius 
 Valerianus. But ere long, about A. D. 257, 
 began the eighth general persecution. Va- 
 lerian's mind became poisoned, it is said, 
 through the influence gained over him by an 
 Egyptian. It is probable also that some 
 professed Christians committed indiscretions 
 and showed too great fondness for the world, 
 though there is no evidence that they plotted 
 or perpetrated any crime. The end of this 
 monster was dreadful. He waged war against 
 the Goths, Scythians and Persians. The 
 Persians captured him, carried him through 
 their country as a spectacle, and at last, by 
 the order of Sapor, king of Persia, he was 
 flayed alive and his skin, tanned, was hung 
 up in a Persian temple. This fearful end 
 and the providence of God over the mind of 
 his son and colleague, Gallienus, moderated 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 43 
 
 his ferocity, though he did not wholly stop 
 the effusion of innocent blood. He was him- 
 self assassinated, A. D. 268. 
 
 The ninth general persecution was begun 
 by the emperor Aurelian, the son of an II- 
 lyrian peasant. He has been famous for his 
 conquest of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and 
 infamous for his intended cruelties against the 
 Christians and for his crimes against his own 
 blood relations. He had prepared, but never 
 actually signed, a decree of persecution against 
 the Church. While meditating these awful 
 calamities against his best subjects, God let 
 loose the passions of Pagans against him. 
 After reigning four years or less, he was 
 assassinated A. D. 275. But during his 
 reign, and under Tacitus and Florianus, the 
 numbers of Christians who suffered imprison- 
 ment and who expected death was very great. 
 
 The tenth and last general persecution 
 bears the name of Dioclesian. Caius Valerius 
 Dioclesian was of an humble family in Dal- 
 matia. He became emperor A. D. 284. 
 He ohose as his colleague Galcrius Valerius 
 
44 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 Maximian, a Thracian shepherd. These united 
 with them two others, Galerius and Constan- 
 tius. These four men seemed to be just and 
 mild, and for a considerable time were very- 
 prosperous in public affairs. At length suc- 
 cess engendered pride, and pride is impiety. 
 Dioclesian began his fearful course by requir- 
 ing divine honours to be paid to him. This 
 was soon followed by the sacking and demol- 
 ishing of churches and by the burning of the 
 Holy Scriptures. These acts were followed 
 by persecuting decrees sent forth in rapid 
 succession, until, in extent, terror and cruelty, 
 there had been nothing in history like the 
 Dioclesian persecution. Serena, the emperor's 
 wife, herself became a victim. In every cruel 
 form, for ten years together, these four men, 
 with others like them, stained every part of 
 the empire with the blood of the saints. Dio- 
 clesian lacked neither talent nor force of cha- 
 racter, but all this made him the more danger- 
 ous enemy to the Church of God. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 45 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 ZATEB persecutions. 
 
 SIXCE these ten general persecutions there 
 have been many horrible slaughters of the 
 saints. It seems to be generally admitted that 
 not less than a million of the Waldenses were 
 put to death in France. Xearly as many 
 orthodox Christians were slain in less than 
 forty years after the establishment of the order 
 of Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted that 
 in his short career in the Low Countries he had 
 caused thirty-six thousand to be put to death 
 by the common executioner. And so it has 
 been in all times of persecution. When the 
 wolves have gotten among the flock, they have 
 glutted a mighty raven ere they lay down to 
 rest. Persecutors have no pity. There is no 
 flesh in their heart. Like death and hell, they 
 are never full. The United States of America 
 
46 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 and Mexico do not this day contain as many 
 souls as have been slain for the word of God 
 and the testimony of Jesus. 
 
 There is a general impression in the Chris- 
 tian world that yet other bloody persecutions 
 await the Church. This is probably correct. 
 More than one prophecy of Scripture indicates 
 that before the close of the present dispensa- 
 tion the passions of malignant men will be 
 let loose in the direst manner to afflict the 
 saints. But it is not germane to the object of 
 this work to go at length into the considera- 
 tion of prophecy. 
 
 Some have suggested that probably in the 
 wasting of future persecutions God's people 
 in America may be exempt from the fiery 
 trials that shall come on the churches of the 
 Old World. Perhaps this is rather a kind 
 wish than a judgment founded on any teach- 
 ing of Scripture. If the people of this country 
 have not shed much of the blood of saints, 
 they are in many cases the descendants of 
 persecutors. The law of retribution is still 
 in force. The causes which disturb the pas- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 47 
 
 sions of men and arouse the malignity of 
 mankind have, and will probably continue to 
 have, as full sway and as fell swoop in America 
 as in any other part of the world. Coming 
 across the Atlantic is no cure for the enmity 
 of the human heart against godliness and 
 Christian simplicity. The combinations of 
 the elements of wickedness are easily formed. 
 Where men feel heart to heart the distinctions 
 of birth, sect or nationality are easily set 
 aside; and bad men, moved by a common 
 impulse, are easily fused into a molten mass 
 of spite and wrath, desolating everything in 
 its track and burying whole provinces in 
 indiscriminate ruin. 
 
48 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A MEMAMKABJLE AND AUTHENTIC DOCU- 
 MENT. 
 
 PLINY'S LETTER TO TRAJAN. 
 
 C^CILIUS SECUNDUS PLINY was 
 the nephew of Caius Secundus Pliny, the 
 philosopher, who wrote the Natural History, 
 and lost his life A. D. 79, by making too 
 near an approach to the crater of Vesuvius 
 during an eruption. Csecilius Pliny is com- 
 monly called Pliny the Younger. He had 
 the best advantages of education, having 
 Quintilian for his instructor. He was greatly 
 esteemed for his general good character. He 
 was a fine writer and a favourite of the emperor 
 Trajan. He died A. D. 113. During the 
 third general persecution he was governor 
 of Bithynia, and wrote to Trajan the following 
 letter : 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 49 
 
 "C. Plixy to the Emperor Trajan, 
 wishes health. 
 
 " Sire : It is customary with me to consult 
 you on every doubtful occasion ; for where 
 my own judgment hesitates, who is more 
 competent to direct me than yourself or to 
 instruct me where uninformed? I had no 
 occasion to be present at the examination of 
 the Christians before I came into the pro- 
 vince ; I am therefore ignorant to what extent 
 it is usual to inflict punishment or urge prose- 
 cution. I have also hesitated whether there 
 should not be some distinction between the 
 young and the old, the tender and the robust ; 
 whether pardon should not be offered to re- 
 pentance, or whether the guilt of an avowed 
 profession of Christianity can be expiated by 
 the most unequivocal retraction ; whether the 
 profession itself is to be regarded as a crime, 
 however innocent in other respects the 
 prisoner may be; or whether the crimes 
 attached to the name must be proved before 
 they are made liable to punishment. 
 
 " In the mean time, the method I have pur- 
 
 5 
 
50 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 sued with the Christians who have been 
 accused as such has been this. I interro- 
 gated them, Are you Christians? If they 
 affirmed, I put the same question a second 
 and a third time, menacing them with the 
 punishment decreed. If they still persisted, 
 I ordered them to be immediately executed ; 
 for I did not doubt, whatever was the nature 
 of their religion, that such stubbornness and 
 obstinacy certainly deserved punishment. 
 Some that were afflicted with this madness, 
 because they were Roman citizens, I reserved 
 to be sent to Rome, to be tried at your tri- 
 bunal. 
 
 " In the discussion of this matter, accusations 
 multiplying, a diversity of cases occurred. A 
 list of names was sent me by an unknown 
 accuser, but when I cited the persons before 
 me, many denied that they were or ever had 
 been Christians ; and they repeated after me 
 an invocation of the gods and of your image, 
 which for this purpose I had ordered to be 
 brought with the statues of the deities. They 
 burned incense and offered libations of wine 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 51 
 
 to the gods, and blasphemed Christ ; none of 
 which things, I am assured, a real Christian 
 can ever be compelled to do. Others, named 
 by an informer, at first acknowledged them- 
 selves, and then denied it, declaring that 
 though they had been Christians, they had 
 renounced their profession some three years 
 ago, others still longer, and some even twenty 
 years ago. All these worshipped your image 
 and the statues of the gods, and execrated 
 Christ. 
 
 " And this was the account they gave me of 
 the nature of the religion they once had pro- 
 fessed, whether it deserves the name of crime 
 or error : namely, that they were accustomed 
 on a certain day to assemble before day, and 
 to join in singing hymns to Christ as God ; 
 binding themselves as with a solemn oath not 
 to commit any kind of wickedness ; to be 
 guilty neither of theft, robbery nor adultery ; 
 never to break a promise nor to defraud any 
 man. Their worship being ended, it was 
 their custom to separate, and meet together 
 again for a repast, promiscuous indeed, and 
 
52 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 without any distinction of rank or sex, but 
 without any act of evil ; and even from this 
 they deserted since the publication of my 
 edict, in which, agreeably to your orders, I 
 forbade any societies of that sort. 
 
 "For further information I thought it neces- 
 sary, in order to come at the truth, to put to 
 the torture two maidens. But I could extort 
 from them nothing but the acknowledgment 
 of an immoderate superstition ; and therefore 
 desisting from further investigation, I deter- 
 mined to consult you ; especially as the num- 
 ber of those who were in danger from your 
 decree was great. Informations are pouring 
 in against multitudes of every age, of all 
 orders and of both sexes ; and more will be 
 accused, for this infection has crept not only 
 into cities but also into villages, and even 
 into farm-houses. Yet I think it may be 
 checked ; for in many places the temples of 
 the gods, once almost desolate, now begin to 
 be frequented, and from every quarter they 
 bring sacrifices to be sold, whereas formerly 
 very few were found willing to buy them. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 53 
 
 From this I infer that many might be re- 
 claimed if time and space were given them, 
 and the hope of pardon on their repentance 
 absolutely confirmed." 
 
 5* 
 
54 MAETYKS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE KEPZY, WITS JREFIECTIONS. 
 
 TO this letter Trajan replied: 
 "My Dear Pliny: You have done 
 perfectly right in managing as you have the 
 matters which relate to the impeachment of 
 the Christians. No one general rule can be 
 laid down which will apply to all cases. 
 These people are not to be hunted up by in- 
 formers, but if accused and convicted, let 
 them be executed ; yet with this restriction, 
 that if any renounce the profession of Chris- 
 tianity, and give proof of it by offering suppli- 
 cations to our gods, however suspicious their 
 conduct may have been, they shall be par- 
 doned. But anonymous accusations should 
 never be heeded, since it would be establish- 
 ing a precedent of the worst kind, and alto- 
 gether inconsistent with the maxims of my 
 government." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 55 
 
 Pliny's letter and the emperor's reply call 
 for a few remarks : 
 
 1. The enmity of the human heart against 
 God and his people is exceedingly dreadful. 
 It balks at nothing. It is the same from 
 age to age. It knows no bounds. In the 
 populace it assumes the form of brutal rage ; 
 in the unprincipled it breaks out in clandes- 
 tine informations; in the philosophic and 
 generally humane it still persecutes even unto 
 death. It is a deadly malice, a mortal hatred, 
 seeking the utter extinction of true religion 
 from the face of the earth. All infidels are 
 in inclination pagans and persecutors. Because 
 the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is 
 enmity against all that is called by his name 
 or shows forth his glory, or preserves alive 
 the memory of his being, wisdom, power, 
 holiness, justice, goodness, truth and mercy. 
 Its malice rages no less against a youth or a 
 woman than against one of the stronger sex 
 and in the prime of life. It despises the 
 ties of nature, the bonds of affection. Jesus 
 said it should be so. Matt. x. 21, 22 ; xxiv. 
 
56 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 9-13; Luke xxi. 16, 17. Good men need 
 trials, and therefore feel no surprise at out- 
 bursts of popular rage, nor at the schemes of 
 cruel and cunning politicians for tormenting 
 the saints. The ignorance and fierceness of 
 the ungodly would swallow up all piety in a 
 day if it were possible. 
 
 2. While a hypocritical pretence to piety, 
 or a mere form of religion without its power, 
 frequently passes unreproved, it is not possi- 
 ble for true vital godliness to escape the 
 scorn or even bitter resentments of the 
 wicked. A good confession of Christ is, 
 after all, the greatest offence one can offer to 
 a gainsaying world. 
 
 " I asked them, Are you Christians ? If 
 they avowed it, I put the same question a 
 second and a third time ; if they persisted, I 
 ordered them to be immediately executed," 
 says Pliny; and Trajan says, " You have done 
 perfectly right." The offence of the cross has 
 not ceased. Pure religion and undefiled is 
 the greatest crime man can commit in the 
 eyes of the ungodly and unsanctified. It was, 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 57 
 
 and again may be, a " capital offence for any 
 one to avow himself a Christian." 
 
 3. It is clear, from this letter and from 
 many monuments of antiquity, that in less 
 than a century after the death of Christ his 
 doctrine was extensively embraced and his 
 followers were very numerous. The temples 
 in Bithynia had become " almost desolate." 
 Victims had nearly ceased to be brought 
 thither for the want of purchasers. 
 
 While things went thus in one region, in 
 Syria the spread of the truth seems to have 
 been no less rapid. In a letter to Trajan, the 
 governor Tiberianus says : " I am quite 
 wearied with punishing and destroying, accord- 
 ing to your order, the Galileans, or those of 
 the sect called Christians. Yet they never 
 cease to profess voluntarily what they are, 
 and to offer themselves to death. Where- 
 fore I have laboured, by extortions and threats, 
 to discourage them from daring to confess to 
 me that they are of that sect. Yet, in spite 
 of all persecution, they continue still to do it." 
 Indeed, from the beginning of the second 
 
58 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 century to the time of Constantino, the simple 
 withdrawal of the Christians from the empire 
 would have left a " a hideous gap," an awful 
 desolation, not only in some inconsiderable 
 places, but in many famous cities and prov- 
 inces. God's word ran very swiftly. Even 
 in Paul's time " their sound went into all the 
 earth, and their words unto the ends of the 
 world." Rom. x. 18. 
 
 4. Idolatry and true religion can never be 
 reconciled. Fire and water are not more 
 opposed. Idolatry stops at nothing. It 
 addresses religious homage not only to gods 
 many, supposed to be in heaven, but to bulls 
 and cats and onions on earth. Not only the 
 image of Jupiter, but the image of Trajan, 
 must be worshipped. It multiplies the sor- 
 rows of all who hasten after it. It murders 
 not only its enemies, but also its friends. 
 Against such a system pure religion and 
 undefiled must be antagonistic. It denounces 
 all the pomp and pageantry of the most 
 solemn rites of heathenism. It is utterly 
 opposite to its doctrines, its morals and its 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 59 
 
 worship. The two can never agree. They 
 are contrary the one to the other. Modern 
 idolatry in power does as ancient idolatry 
 practiced. It is as cruel and as devilish in 
 Madagascar in the nineteenth century as in 
 Rome in the first or second century. 
 
 5. We should not be surprised at apostasies. 
 They are no novelty. The trials of successive 
 ages vary in their form, sometimes being 
 seductive and sometimes terrific, but poor 
 human nature, if left to itself, can resist none 
 of the assaults of the wicked. Seduction is 
 often more potent than persecution. Demas 
 seems to have withstood the latter, but to have 
 been overcome by the former. False brethren 
 have been found in the church in all ages. 
 An apostle thus explains the whole matter of 
 wilful apostasy : " They went out from us, 
 but they were not of us ; for if they had been 
 of us they would no doubt have continued 
 with us : but they went out, that they might 
 be made manifest that they were not all of 
 us." 1 John ii. 19. In every age apostasies 
 have occurred. There have always been men 
 
60 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 who wished to wear the crown, but could not 
 bear the cross. " It is no new thing for men 
 to desert the profession of the truth, to which 
 they have formerly appeared to be attached, 
 through the fear of man or the love of the 
 world." 
 
 6. Pliny's letter shows that from the first 
 Christianity was, as it is now, a pure system, 
 and was so understood by those who heartily 
 embraced it. Even torture could produce 
 nothing to the damage of the blameless lives 
 of the early Christians. They never com- 
 mitted theft, fraud or adultery. Their word 
 was sacred. They never denied a trust. 
 Such fruits heathenism had never borne. 
 They are the product of Christian morals. 
 Blessed are those professed followers of Christ 
 who by well-doing put to silence the ignorance 
 of foolish men, and against whom the enemy 
 can say nothing evil unless he say it falsely. 
 Even apostates themselves said nothing worse 
 of the character and doings of Christians than 
 that one could not continue in good standing 
 among them unless he led a holy life. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 61 
 
 7. It also appears that the early Christians 
 were of a quiet spirit, and even gave up for 
 a time their public meetings in the day-time 
 when they were by edict forbidden. They 
 w r ould not have their good evil spoken of. 
 They quietly met before day, that they might 
 not disturb the peace of neighbourhoods. And 
 although they were so numerous that they 
 could have made successful resistance by the 
 sword, they never once resorted to violence, 
 even in self-protection. 
 
 8. From earliest ages the divinity of Christ 
 has been a fundamental doctrine received by 
 all true Christians. The martyrs and confes- 
 sors sung " hymns to Christ as God." They 
 received him as their Lord, and worshipped 
 him. This was the secret of all their power 
 and intrepidity. Never would they have 
 joyously died for Christ if he had not been 
 to them all in all, the chiefest among ten 
 thousand, the Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty 
 God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince 
 of peace. They worshipped him because 
 they knew that as God he was with them, 
 
 6 
 
62 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 even where two or three were met in his 
 name. 
 
 9. In yielding their civil and social rights 
 Christians may often go far, but they cannot 
 yield their convictions — they cannot surrender 
 their consciences. The governor and his 
 creatures thought they required but little 
 when they called on the Christians to repeat a 
 few words of invocation to an image or to 
 throw a little incense on the fire ; but there 
 was principle involved. Good men could die 
 for Jesus, but they could not sacrifice or pray 
 to idols. The dictates of conscience, enlight- 
 ened by the word of God, cannot and ought 
 not to be unheeded. We must obey God 
 rather than men. 
 
 10. There are many reasons why Christian- 
 ity is unpopular. One is, that it inflexibly 
 maintains the unity of God, 1 Tim. iv. 10 : 
 "Therefore we both labour and suffer re- 
 proach, because we trust in the living God." 
 Another is, that its author was hanged upon a 
 tree, 1 Cor. i. 23. Another is that it spares 
 no sin, no lust, but demands self-denial and 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 63 
 
 holiness of all, Matt. xvi. 24; xii. 11; 1 Pet. 
 i. 15. Another is that it denies the possibil- 
 ity of salvation by any works or merits of 
 the sinner himself; but points him to the 
 righteousness of Christ as the sole and suffi- 
 cient ground of acceptance with God, Rom. 
 ill. 20 ; Gal. ii. 16 ; Rom. x. 4. To all these 
 we must add that Christianity has always 
 been exclusive, and has denied fraternity to 
 any and every form of idolatry and of false re- 
 ligion. This is but carrying out in their true 
 import the precepts of the first table of the 
 law. The same objection was made to pure 
 Judaism. Celsus tells the whole story : " If 
 the Jews, on these accounts, adhere to their 
 own law, it is not for that they are to blame ; 
 I rather blame those who forsake the religion 
 of their own country to embrace the Jewish. 
 But if these people give themselves airs of 
 sublimer wisdom than the rest of the world, 
 and on that score refuse all communion with 
 it as not equally pure, I must tell them that 
 it is not to be believed that they are more 
 dear or agreeable to God than other nations." 
 
64 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 Had the Christians merely proposed their 
 creed as one of many systems which might 
 be advantageously followed, and their Sa- 
 viour as one of many whose favour might be 
 supplicated, they would have incurred very 
 little odium. It was the fact that their sys- 
 tem claimed an exclusive divine origin, and 
 regulated their conduct accordingly, that 
 made Tacitus, when he wrote of the burning 
 of Rome, call Christians " persons convicted 
 of hatred to all mankind." He and thou- 
 sands believed that it was a higher proof of 
 love to let your neighbour alone in his sins, 
 and to fraternize with him in his false wor- 
 ship, than it was to tell him the truth, give 
 him faithful warning and refuse to be a par- 
 taker of his abominable idolatries. 
 
 11. The world has never understood the 
 real principles and motives of God's people. 
 Even Trajan and Pliny, with all their natu- 
 ral good sense and fine talents, misunderstood 
 their whole character and behaviour. Stern 
 and unbending integrity is commonly ad- 
 mitted to be a fine quality. Close adherence 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 65 
 
 to our enlightened convictions of right ought 
 to command respect and even admiration. 
 But the steadiness of the early Christians in 
 adhering to their Master and his cause was 
 regarded as a crime worthy of death. "I 
 was persuaded," says Pliny, " whatever the 
 nature of their opinions might be, a contu- 
 macious and inflexible obstinacy certainly 
 merited correction." And Trajan tells him 
 he judged right. So they wrapped it up. 
 If we may call all zeal, madness ; all princi- 
 ple, absurdity ; all firmness, contumacy ; and 
 all intrepidity, rashness and obstinacy, we can 
 be at no loss for grounds on which to con- 
 demn all goodness on earth. The same blind- 
 ness and perverseness which kept the world 
 from rightly judging respecting Christ him- 
 self, perpetuate false judgments respecting his 
 people. Acts iii. 17; 1 John iii. 1. "The 
 world knoweth us not, because it knew him 
 not." This blindness is not the less criminal 
 because it is natural, universal, and by human 
 wit and power invincible. 1 Cor. ii. 14. Car- 
 nal men cannot understand spiritual things, 
 
 6* 
 
66 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 cannot rightly estimate holy motives and 
 principles. 
 
 12. It is common for the wicked to perse- 
 cute the righteous under false pretences — to 
 find pretexts in something foreign from the 
 Christian life and character. There is as 
 much difference between firmness and obsti- 
 nacy, between fortitude and contumacy, as 
 there is between light and darkness, between 
 vice and virtue. Because the Christians 
 could not defile their consciences they were 
 said to have the very spirit of rebellion 
 against political authority. Then too they 
 were held answerable for all the public calami- 
 ties that befel the empire. Tertullian says, 
 " If the city be besieged, if anything happen 
 ill in the fields, in the garrisons, in the lands, 
 immediately they cry out, 'Tis because of 
 the Christians. Our enemies thirst after the 
 blood of the innocent, cloaking their hatred 
 with this silly pretence, that the Christians 
 are the cause of all public calamities. If the 
 Tiber flows up to the walls ; if the Nile does 
 not overflow the field ; if the heavens alter 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 67 
 
 their course; if there be an earthquake, a 
 famine, a plague, immediately the cry is, 
 Away with the Christians to the lions." The 
 favourite slanderous charge against God's 
 people is, that they are disaffected toward the 
 government, because they announce unwel- 
 come but seasonable truths, because they 
 stand aloof from the fury of the masses, or 
 dissent from the foolish and wicked course of 
 those in power. Thus of Jeremiah it was 
 said, " Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans/' 
 Jer. xxxvii. 13. Thus Amaziah sent to 
 Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying : "Amos hath 
 conspired against thee in the midst of the 
 house of Israel : the land is not able to hear 
 all his words." Amos vii. 10. Thus men 
 accused Christ and his apostles. Pretences 
 are never wanting to wicked and bloody men. 
 They know that nothing is more odious 
 than unfaithfulness in the civil relations of 
 life ; and when they lack all true ground of 
 accusation in this behalf, they invent some 
 story, or frame some law, or devise some 
 test which good men abhor, that in some way 
 
68 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 they may enrage the populace, prejudice 
 rulers and have their spite on the objects of 
 their murderous malice, their diabolical envy, 
 13. It would be well, even in Christian 
 countries, if all in authority would so far fol- 
 low the example of Trajan as to refuse to pay 
 attention to anonymous accusers, frown from 
 their presence malignant and unprincipled 
 slanderers, and, instead of hunting up informers 
 and maligners, would cast the shield of public 
 law over all well-disposed and quiet people 
 who obey all the laws and quietly mind 
 their own business. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. G9 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A MODERN MARTYR. 
 
 MODERN civilization has been sadly dis- 
 graced by both the spirit and practice 
 of persecution. At the close of this book 
 will be found a short list of books where may 
 be found full accounts of these awful tragedies. 
 One is here given as a sample of what human 
 and diabolical malice will do, as also of what 
 divine grace can enable its subject to accom- 
 plish. The intelligent will not wonder at the 
 selection of 
 
 JOHN BRADFORD. 
 
 This faithful and eminent servant of Christ 
 fell a victim to the malice and bigotry of 
 Bloody Mary of England. She determined 
 to establish popery in her dominions at any 
 cost. 
 
70 MAETYKS AND SUFFEKERS 
 
 So powerful a preacher was he, and so 
 desirous was the infamous Bonner, bishop of 
 London, to induce him to return to the 
 Romish Church, that more pains were taken 
 with him and more patience exercised than 
 with any. other professor of the Reformed 
 faith. 
 
 But the attempt was vain. Bradford held 
 fast his confidence and the rejoicing of his 
 hope, and in January, 1555, after being in 
 prison eighteen months, he was tried for his 
 refusal to submit to Romanism before Gardi- 
 ner, Bonner and others, and condemned to 
 the stake. He was kept in prison till July 
 following. It was not intended to give him 
 any notice of the day fixed for his death. 
 " As he was walking in the keeper's chamber 
 with John Leof, who suffered with him, sud- 
 denly/' says Fox, " the keeper's wife came 
 up as one amazed, and seeming much troubled, 
 being almost breathless, said, ' Oh, Mr. Brad- 
 ford, I come to bring you heavy news.' i What 
 is that ?' said he. i To-morrow,' she replied, 
 'you must be burned.'" This was sudden 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 71 
 
 indeed, but it did not take him at unawares. 
 Fox adds, "With that, Mr. Bradford put off 
 his cap, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, 
 said, ' I thank God for it. I have looked for 
 the same a long time, and therefore it cometh 
 not to me now suddenly, but as a thing waited 
 for every day and hour ; the Lord make me 
 worthy thereof.' " 
 
 Accordingly, next morning, he and young 
 Leof were early led forth, a multitude throng- 
 ing the way, who sympathized deeply with 
 them ; and some near relatives, who pressed 
 forward to shake hands with and give a 
 parting blessing to Bradford, were brutally 
 used by the sheriff and his assistants. 
 
 When they came to the stake in Smithfield, 
 they laid themselves down on the ground, "one 
 on one side of it, the other on the other, pray- 
 ing to themselves the space of a minute;" in 
 this they were interrupted by one of the 
 sheriffs crying to them, " Arise, make an end, 
 for the press of people is great." 
 
 They rose, and Bradford taking a fagot in 
 his hand, kissed it and also the stake. He 
 
72 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 then requested that his clothes might be 
 given to his servant, for he had nothing else 
 to give him. He put off his upper garment 
 and went to the stake, saying, " O England, 
 England ! repent thee of thy sins, repent thee 
 of thy sins !" He was stopped by the sheriff 
 threatening to tie his hands if he would not 
 be quiet. Turning to the people, he asked 
 forgiveness of all, as he forgave all, and 
 besought them to pray for him and his fellow- 
 sufferer, to whom he said, " Be of good com- 
 fort, brother, for we shall have a merry sup- 
 per w 7 ith the Lord this night." Embracing 
 the dry rods that were bundled round him, 
 he cried, " Strait is the way and narrow the 
 gate that leadeth to eternal salvation, and few 
 there be that find it." Fire was set to the 
 pile, and two precious lives were taken away. 
 Thus these holy men went up to glory in 
 a chariot of fire. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 R02TAXISJT IX R03IE. 
 
 BY A. B. C. 
 
 AX inside view of Romanism is not easily 
 obtained, even at the metropolis of the 
 papal empire. There are so many gates 
 that are kept closed to a Protestant, and so 
 many doors not easily opened to him ; there 
 are so much glare of gold and glitter of tin- 
 selry on the outside, and so many charms of 
 music and fascinations of art ; so much stained 
 glass and "dim religious light," that between 
 the dazzle and the darkness I began to fear 
 lest my eyes might be so blinded as to be of 
 small use to me. 
 
 But I rubbed them a little and bathed 
 them in the clear water of the Divine "Word, 
 and, aided by my historical glass, I soon be- 
 7 
 
74 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 gan to see more plainly, and to survey the 
 Scarlet Lady in her interior character as well 
 as external attractions. 
 
 I do not wonder that a superstitious, en- 
 thusiastic, voluptuous people should be Ro- 
 man Catholic there at Rome — that any one, 
 almost, should be with whom a taste for the 
 fine arts transcends a love of the truth as it 
 is in Jesus. Nor yet do I wonder that ro- 
 mantic girls and imaginative, would-be-poetic 
 boys, on whom gospel truth has no firm hold, 
 charmed by the free notions of this earthly en- 
 chantress, and the exalted ideas of antiquity, 
 authority and infallibility which she incul- 
 cates, should be caught in the sweep of her 
 rustling drapery. 
 
 All that art and wealth, all that dress and 
 drapery can do, has been done for the Romish 
 Church. It is vain, as well as sinful, for 
 Protestants to enter the lists with her as 
 rivals in these things. She has the advan- 
 tage of accumulated treasures and of a thou- 
 sand years' experience, and they cannot suc- 
 cessfully compete with her. Their only hope 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 75 
 
 ifi in the counter-principles — simplicity, sin- 
 cerity and truth. Light is more powerful 
 than darkness, sincerity is mightier than 
 ceremony — the Bible than the breviary. 
 
 In its principles and pretensions the Romish 
 Church is to-day very much what it was five 
 hundred years ago. It is niediseval still. 
 Its organization is even more complete now 
 than it was then, though relatively much 
 feebler. 
 
 Two features impressed me very strongly 
 in my study of the papacy at Rome : 
 
 Its three peculiar principles and its five 
 chief institutions. 
 
 These give the clew to the exclusiveness, 
 intolerance and persecution which for a 
 thousand years have marked the history of 
 Romanism. 
 
 Of its principles, that which lies at the 
 foundation is its claim to be the only catholic 
 and apostolic Church, and that salvation is 
 not possible out of its pale. The practical 
 inference from this assumption is, that it is 
 nearly impossible for one to fail of salvation 
 
76 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 who is in it. This principle, so sweepingly 
 exclusive, necessarily makes the Romish 
 Church intolerant and persecuting. It places 
 her in direct and positive opposition to every 
 other organization that claims to be a Church. 
 And, the more fully its members accept this 
 fundamental dogma of Romanism, the more 
 likely are they to regard all means as lawful 
 for extending the one and for exterminating 
 the others. 
 
 The worth of the soul, and the importance 
 of its salvation, serve only, on this principle, 
 to intensify their zeal as proselyters. The 
 Church of Rome, to them, is the only form 
 of Christianity and the only way of salvation. 
 The hope of the world is here, and there is 
 none for it anywhere else. Nothing is of 
 such moment as the extension of this Church, 
 and the extermination of whatever co-ordi- 
 nate claimants stand in its way. For men to 
 be deluded by these rival organisms is cer- 
 tain and eternal ruin. Where the Church of 
 Rome is not, there ignorance, error and all 
 vices and crimes abound, and moral death 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 77 
 
 broods over men. But where its influence is 
 unrestrained all these have gradually disap- 
 peared, and the light of science, of truth, and 
 of eternal life have come most benignly to 
 shine. 
 
 In this false faith bigotry seizes and incar- 
 cerates its victims and confiscates their prop- 
 erty. Fanaticism lights its fagots and fans 
 its fires for the glory of God and the diffu- 
 sion of the gospel. 
 
 In an important sense the Church is a vast 
 moral power. This is the truth contained in 
 this Romish error, and is the source of its 
 influence. But the Romish Church is not the 
 Church, either exclusively or par excellence. 
 The assumption of this is its error and the 
 cause of its moral weakness. Falsehood is 
 always weak, and must fail when truth fairly 
 confronts it. 
 
 Another of those peculiar principles is its 
 claim to temporal 'power. 
 
 Christ said, " My kingdom is not of this 
 world." The Pope says, " 3Fine is." The 
 Master gave to Peter the "keys," but his 
 
78 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 reputed successor in the episcopal chair has 
 taken the sword also. Pope Pius IX., in 
 his last encyclical letter, says that " the 
 apostolic see is based on the temporal 
 power." He classes the idea that " the ces- 
 sation of the temporal power would con- 
 tribute to the happiness and liberty of the 
 Church" among the principal errors of the 
 times to be condemned and punished. And 
 the grand council of two hundred and forty- 
 five bishops, archbishops and patriarchs, 
 which assembled in Rome in 1862, " affirm 
 that the temporal sovereignty of the holy 
 see is a necessity, and that it has been estab- 
 lished by the manifest design of Providence." 
 Therefore it must by all means be retained. 
 
 This necessity looks beyond the Church as 
 a "pillar and ground of the truth" to a 
 purely political force. As a spiritual organism, 
 she can execute only spiritual pains and 
 penalties. But by her temporal sovereignty, 
 and through the political powers she controls, 
 those who fall under her ban as heretics are 
 executed as criminals. By this double action 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 79 
 
 of the Church, the State has long played the 
 part of her menial. The pope has raised up 
 kings and princes and cast them down again 
 at his pleasure — has absolved their subjects 
 from fealty and bound them to it, irrespective 
 of the will of either subjects or rulers. Power- 
 ful monarchs have bowed at his gate, abjectly 
 begging for the uplifting from them of his 
 oppressive hand. He has fomented wars and 
 declared peace. He has made treaties and 
 violated them, enthroned kings and dethroned 
 them, levied taxes, raised armies, established 
 arsenals, built fortresses and supported navies. 
 But why does this chief feeder of Christ's 
 flock need these temporal powers and this 
 enginery of war? " For the good of the 
 Church and the free government of souls," 
 say the two hundred and forty-five chief 
 papal dignitaries. " We do not hesitate to 
 declare that, in the present state of human 
 affairs, this temporal sovereignty is absolutely 
 requisite for the good of the Church and the free 
 government of souls !" — by fires and fagots, 
 by imprisonment and tortures, by gibbets 
 
80 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 and the gallows, by confiscations and auto 
 da fes ! 
 
 But did Christ, or did Peter, claimed as 
 the first pope, possess or feel the need of this 
 temporal power ? Or did any of his succes- 
 sors at Rome for five hundred years possess 
 it ? And how was this power gained ? His- 
 tory answers — her own history. Gradually 
 and through successive popedoms, by chica- 
 nery, by simony, by fraudulent deeds of con- 
 veyance and false titles, by extortion, by 
 wars and bloodshed. 
 
 And how has this triple-crowned monarch 
 used this temporal sovereignty ? In hunting 
 and harassing, for nearly a thousand years, 
 the saints of the Most High who have dis- 
 sented from his dictum or doubted the dog- 
 mas of the cardinals; by persecuting the 
 Cathari, the Lollards, the Begards, the Wal- 
 denses, the Albigenses, the Wickliffites and 
 the Bohemians ; by pursuing unto death the 
 Reformers in Holland and Hungary, in France, 
 in Germany and in England, both Lutherans 
 and Calvinists. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 81 
 
 Iii 1572, on St. Bartholomew's eve, in the 
 reign of Charles IX., the Protestants were 
 decoyed by the royal oath of safety to a wed- 
 ding festival in Paris. The queen dowager of 
 Navarre was there perfidiously poisoned, 
 Admiral Coligny treacherously assassinated, 
 and ten thousand Protestants — brave men, 
 delicate women and helpless children — fell 
 victims to the ruthless slaughter of a brutal 
 soldiery. From Paris the furor extended to 
 the chief cities of the kingdom, and from fifty 
 thousand to one hundred thousand of the purest 
 and noblest fell in this relentless massacre. And 
 when the news of this horrible carnage reached 
 Gregory XIII., the cannon of St. Angelo 
 belched out the public joy, and bonfires 
 illumined the papal city. A thanksgiving 
 mass was performed in St. Mark's Church, 
 and a jubilee from this dark centre was pro- 
 claimed throughout the Christian world. 
 
 But in the reign of Louis XIV. even this 
 merciless butchery was far exceeded in infer- 
 nal devices — tortures by burning-irons, by 
 slew roasting, hanging by the feet and by 
 
82 MART YES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 the liair of the head, plunging into deep wells, 
 suffocating with smoke, piercing with pins, 
 starving and shooting down like wild beasts. 
 And Romish priests gloated over these outra- 
 ges, and chanted the Te Deum in the midst 
 of them, and Gloria in Excelsis ! 
 
 " And I looked, and behold, a pale horse ; 
 and his name that sat on him was Death, and 
 Hell followed with him. And power was 
 given unto them over the fourth part of the 
 earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, 
 and with death, and with the beasts of the 
 earth." 
 
 " And I saw under the altar the souls of 
 them that were slain for the word of God, and 
 for the testimony which they held." 
 
 " And they cried with a loud voice, saying, 
 How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou 
 not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
 dwell on the earth ?" 
 
 This is the use which the Romish Church 
 makes of her temporal power — to enforce by 
 the sword an external harmony where there 
 is only internal discord. Is that a "free 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 83 
 
 government" whose chief function is to re- 
 press free thought, free speech and free wor- 
 ship? Is it a government "for the good of 
 souls" that closes up from them God's word 
 of life — that compels them to worship in a 
 dead language — that deludes them with " ly- 
 ing wonders," and gives them two mediators 
 where God has given but one — that changes 
 a bit of bread into the body of God, and puts 
 a priestly mass in the place of the divine 
 sacrifice ? Does the good of souls require a 
 sword in the hand of the Church to enforce 
 these dicta upon unwilling subjects ? Yet this 
 is theoretic Romanism and systematic persecu- 
 tion. And this is the philosophy of the whole 
 question of temporal sovereignty. 
 
 It changes the great issue between the 
 Church and the world. From one of faith it 
 makes it, as a finality, one of force. Christ 
 falls out of Christianity to make room for 
 Caesar — the Church drops her keys and grasps 
 the sword. She withdraws the evangelists 
 and apostles from the conflict, and relies on 
 bullets and bayonets as the chief propagators 
 
84 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 and defenders of the faith. When a Church 
 appeals from the Bible to bulls and bombshells, 
 from arguments to arsenals and armies, it 
 ceases to act in the capacity of a Christian 
 Church and becomes a mere civil power, and, 
 for all purposes of ecclesiastical rule, a perse- 
 cuting power. 
 
 It is a third fundamental principle of the 
 Romish Church, discovered by this inside view, 
 that heresy is a crime punishable with death. 
 
 This is abundantly maintained by her 
 writers on criminal law and on Christian ethics 
 and theology. And it is inculcated in all 
 their principal institutions of learning and by 
 all monastic orders. 
 
 Cardinal Bellarmine, the best of authorities 
 on the subject, says : 
 
 " Heretics can justly be excommunicated, 
 and therefore put to death. Knowing that 
 fools w T ill not be wanting who may believe 
 them, and by whom they may be supported, 
 if you confine them in prison or send them 
 into exile, they corrupt the neighbourhood by 
 their speeches and looks ; therefore, the only 
 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 85 
 
 remedy is to send them forthwith to their own 
 place." 
 
 " If the forgers of money," says Aquinas, 
 another of these authorities, " or other male- 
 factors, are justly consigned to immediate 
 death by the secular princes, much more do 
 heretics, immediately after they are convicted, 
 deserve, not only to be excommunicated, but 
 also justly to be killed." 
 
 In this third principle the two former come 
 to a practical point. It is the keystone in the 
 arch of this spiritual despotism. The pope, 
 as supreme in the one only Church, holds the 
 power of excommunication. But as a tempo- 
 ral sovereign he holds also the power to 
 execute upon the excommunicant whatever 
 penalty is judged best for the safety and 
 aggrandizement of the papacy. This has 
 been decided to be the death-penalty. Here- 
 tics ought to be excommunicated by the 
 spiritual power and put to death by the tem- 
 poral. But what is heresy ? The pope, in 
 his encyclical, answers : It is heresy to affirm 
 that " the best condition of society is that in 
 8 
 
86 MAETYKS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 which the power of the laity is not compelled 
 to inflict the penalties of law upon the vio- 
 lators of the Catholic religion, unless required 
 by public safety." This is the latest assertion 
 of this obnoxious, persecuting power, and by 
 the highest authority. It is vital still in 
 Romanism, and cannot, " except by annihila- 
 tion, die." 
 
 What is this "power of the laity?" It is 
 the temporal power of the pope. It is the 
 power of kings and all civil authorities and 
 states, that are, or ought to be subject in this, 
 to his rule. Who enacts the " law ?" The 
 pope and the cardinals. Not only at Rome, 
 but throughout Italy, France and Spain, and 
 also in Protestant England and the United 
 States, everywhere and always, the civil 
 powers ought to carry out the decrees of these 
 mitred ecclesiastics, and hang, burn or exile 
 the excommunicants of the Romish Church, 
 not as bad subjects, but as violators of the 
 Catholic religion. This is the arrogance of 
 the triple-crowned prince of the Vatican and 
 his scarlet-clad abettors, and this the humilia- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 87 
 
 tins: vassalage in which he claims that all the 
 princes of the earth ought to yield themselves 
 to him as the vicar of Christ. 
 
 The doctrine that "liberty of conscience 
 and of worship is a right of every man," by 
 the same high authority is pronounced a 
 heresy and " a delirium" which the spiritual 
 power punishes with excommunication, and 
 the temporal in all nations ought to punish 
 with death. In the purely Romish countries, 
 kings and princes have long done this bloody 
 work of the Church. And in Rome this 
 Draconic law is supreme, the persecuting 
 despotism complete. 
 
 To purchase and read the Bible or any 
 other prohibited book, without a license, is an 
 heretical act, and subjects the offender to 
 excommunication and death. All " biblical 
 societies" are classed in the appendix to his 
 encyclical as "pests," and all who counte- 
 nance them are held as " violators of the 
 Catholic religion," on whom the "penalties 
 of law" should be inflicted. 
 
 The imprisonment and exile, a few years 
 
88 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 since, of Count Guiccardiani and his compan- 
 ions, at Florence, for reading the gospel of 
 John, was a logically defensive necessity of 
 the assumptive infallibility and supremacy of 
 the Romish Church. Julian the Apostate, 
 for the same reason, forbade to the Christians 
 the study of heathen learning. " They wound 
 us/' he says, " by our own weapons ; with 
 our own arts and sciences they overcome us." 
 
 Here is the vital point in the present issues 
 of the papacy. She must retain her political 
 character, or lose her power of compelling the 
 faith of men in her sovereignty. She must 
 have executioners of her most exterminating 
 sentence, or her empire and her grandeur are 
 ended. Then would her fulminations have 
 only the force of the truth that is in them. 
 Fire and fagots and £he sword would, in 
 her pale, give place to free thought and 
 free speech. She would be obliged to meet 
 dissent with argument, light with light, and 
 spiritual foes with only spiritual forces. 
 
 This she dreads. " I will listen," says the 
 pope " to no more propositions modifying the 
 
FOR THE TZIUTH. 89 
 
 conditions of my temporal power." But in 
 the year 1866, the great prophetic year for a 
 downfall in Romanism, the emperor of France 
 withdraws his troops from Rome, and the tem- 
 poral sovereignty of the pope, sustained by 
 falsehood and fraud, vanishes from the page 
 of history. 
 
 More than half a century ago wrote Napo- 
 leon I. : " The interests of religion, as well as 
 those of the people of France, Germany and 
 Italy, all unite in compelling his majesty to 
 put an end to this temporal power, the feeble 
 remnant of the exaggerations of the Gregories 
 and others, who claimed to rule over kings, 
 to give away crowns, and to have the manage- 
 ment of things of the earth as well as those of 
 heaven." 
 
 He began the compulsory action, and his 
 astute nephew — knighted as il Defender of the 
 Faith" in Rome, on Christmas, 1850, in one 
 of the grandest displays of the Church — has 
 brought it to an end. 
 
 8* 
 
MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BOMB A PERSECUTING POWMB. 
 
 BY A. B. C. 
 
 OF the five chief institutions of Romanism, 
 a full inside view can be secured only at 
 Rome. They are all clustered here. This 
 is the grand centre. The heart of the system 
 is here, and these institutions are its arterial 
 organization. 
 
 "As St. Peter vanquished the first heresi- 
 archs on no other spot than Rome," said the old 
 Dominican inquisitor Caraffa, " so must the 
 successor of St. Peter overcome all the here- 
 sies of the world in Rome." Everywhere 
 else, from the intelligence of the people oo 
 the tolerance of another faith, it meets with 
 hindrances to its full operation. 
 
 1. Here, the sovereign pontiff, with his 
 triple crown, sits on his golden throne, the 
 
 90 
 
FOR TIIE TRUTH. 91 
 
 despotic and infallible head of the Church 
 militant. Pius IX., at first, would have been 
 a reformer had reform been practicable. His 
 accession was hailed by the Italians as the 
 dawn of a brighter day. He introduced 
 some constitutional elements into the govern- 
 ment. He granted a chamber of deputies 
 and a lay ministry. But the cardinals saw 
 the tendency, and resisted him. They ar- 
 rested legitimate measures which arose in the 
 chamber, and overrode the ministry. The 
 crisis gave him an opportunity to relax the 
 oppressive rule of the Romish Church, and 
 to signalize himself in the progress of civil 
 and religious liberty. It was in his heart to 
 do so. But he lacked courage. He was not 
 the man for his time, and he fled from a peo- 
 ple that then loved him as intensely as they 
 afterward hated him. He refused their re- 
 peated invitations to return and carry on a 
 government of his own projecting; and he 
 employed a foreign soldiery to bombard his 
 way back to a throne on which he has since 
 sat, firmly or feebly, according to the number 
 
92 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 of alien troops by which he has been sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 What a spectacle ! The professed vicege- 
 rent of Him who said, " My kingdom is not 
 of this world," battling in blood for a tem- 
 poral dominion ! The assumed representa- 
 tive of the Prince of Peace maintaining his 
 sway at the point of the bayonet and in seas 
 of blood ! 
 
 2. Here is the college of cardinals, that 
 rearguard of absolutism, that impure junto 
 of misanthropy, tyranny and sensuality. It 
 numbers seventy when full, fifty-six of whom 
 are cardinal priests, twenty-four cardinal dea- 
 cons and six cardinal bishops. The pope 
 appoints the cardinals, and they in turn elect 
 the pope, and act as his counsellors at home 
 and legates abroad. They assist him in the 
 celebration of mass, and one officiates as his 
 prime minister. Nominally, they are subject 
 to him, but in reality they are his rulers. 
 
 Examples of nobleness and philanthropy, 
 doubtless, there are among them. But ac- 
 cording to common fame and reliable testi- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 93 
 
 rnony, these are the exceptions. The revolu- 
 tion of 1848 brought several of them, for a 
 time, under the protection of our Minister at 
 Rome, and into the familiar interchanges of 
 thought and feeling, disclosing a social and 
 moral debasement the farthest removed from 
 what the Gospel requires in its teachers, and 
 which would blast the fame of any Christian 
 minister in our land. 
 
 3. The Propaganda di Fide, founded by 
 Gregory XV. in 1622, and further endowed 
 by Urban VIII., is also at Rome. It is 
 situated at the southern extremity of the 
 Piazza di Spagna. Its annual income at the 
 close of the last century was three hundred 
 thousand Roman crowns. Its printing-office 
 was one of the finest in the world, with type 
 for publishing in twenty-seven languages. 
 
 The French Revolution swept over it, and 
 its pupils were scattered, its funds appropri- 
 ated to other purposes and its founts of type 
 carried to Paris. In 1818 the college was 
 reopened, and it now numbers from seventy 
 to a hundred choice students. 
 
94 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 The scholastic dress is a long black cassock, 
 bound with a red girdle, and two broad rib- 
 bons hanging from the shoulders behind. 
 The students are entirely supported by the 
 institution, even to the expense of travel to 
 Rome and back to their native country. 
 Each one in return gives a pledge that he 
 will devote his life to the dissemination of 
 the Catholic faith. 
 
 At the annual exhibition in 1851 parts 
 were performed in fifty different languages. 
 This institution presents an illustration of 
 some of the comprehensive educational prin- 
 ciples of Romanism. It disdains the odious 
 distinctions of color which prevail in some 
 branches of the Protestant Church. The 
 blackest Ethiopian stands here on a level 
 with the fairest of the Anglo-Saxon or the 
 Latin race. It collects the materials upon 
 which it works from every nation, tribe and 
 tongue, and stimulates them to the greatest 
 zeal and energy by the highest admiration 
 and praise. 
 
 The Propaganda is the great heart of the 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 95 
 
 whole masterly missionary system of the pa- 
 pacy. By the multiform orders of monks 
 and nuns, as through so many arteries and 
 veins, noiselessly it sends out and receives 
 back its vital fluid. The whole world is 
 distinctly mapped out in its halls, and the 
 chief points of influence minutely marked. 
 A kind of telegraphic communication is es- 
 tablished with the remotest stations in South 
 Africa and Siberia, and with almost every 
 nook in our own land, to which the myrmi- 
 dons of papal power look with the most of 
 hope, and also the most of fear. It is 
 through means of this modern galvanic bat- 
 tery, set up in the Vatican, that the Church 
 of Rome has gained its power of ubiquity — 
 has made itself wellnigh omnipotent as well 
 as omnipresent. 
 
 The same forestalling, stimulating principle 
 is applied in the training of monastic females. 
 At vespers, one Sunday evening, in the 
 Church Trinita di Monte, I witnessed a ser- 
 vice by the " white nuns," illustrating this 
 feature of Romanism. 
 
96 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 They were girls, from eight to sixteen, 
 with blue frocks and white veils falling upon 
 the shoulders behind and nearly to the feet. 
 They entered the church from the adjoining 
 convent in a procession of two and two, ap- 
 proached the altar, slowly bending the knees 
 almost to the floor, and bowing in graceful 
 homage to the picture of the Virgin. Then 
 rising they turned, each to the opposite side 
 of the space, knelt again, rose and seated 
 themselves. The service consisted of chant- 
 ings and responses, genuflections and demon- 
 strations, after which the nuns retired, bow- 
 ing to the altar as when they entered. In 
 all these ecclesiastical gymnastics they had 
 been trained to the utmost exactness and 
 gracefulness of manner. 
 
 But why are these girls, at this tender age, 
 taken out of the family relations, and fore- 
 doomed to a life with which they can have 
 no natural affinities? Why this unseemly 
 haste to bind them to this single and repul- 
 sive life ? God made man male and female, 
 and in the unity of this dualism is developed 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 97 
 
 the whole humanity. The Church of Rome, 
 iu respect to the clergy, contravenes this 
 primal order. Not a few of the ills which 
 afflict fair Italy arise from this initial vice of 
 Romanism — the celibacy of the priests. They 
 are the teachers and rulers of the land. But 
 they are not allowed the family ties of hus- 
 band and father, and consequently lose the 
 humanizing, elevating influences which God 
 has connected with these hallowed relations. 
 
 4. Another characteristic institution of the 
 Romish Church, which has its centre at 
 Rome, is the Company of Jesus, or the Jesuits. 
 The general of the order resides at Rome, 
 wielding a sceptre second in power only to 
 that of the pope. To the three vows of pov- 
 erty, chastity and monastic obedience, com- 
 mon to other orders, Loyola added a fourth, 
 peculiar to the members of his society. It 
 was the vow of obedience to the pope in the 
 service of the Church, without charge for 
 their support. This procured them their in- 
 stitution from Paul III. in 1540. In nine 
 
 9 
 
98 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 years they acquired a superiority to all hu- 
 man control, except that of the pontiff. 
 
 The constitution of the society is essentially 
 military and most rigidly despotic, all power 
 being lodged with the general. In his hands 
 all are to be as " a staff/' or " as a dead body." 
 It was the boast of Ignatius that he wished 
 for only one month to secure this conquest. 
 The achievement is accomplished by means 
 of a manual called the " Spiritual Exercises." 
 " These," says Father de Ravignan, " have 
 created the society, maintain it, preserve it 
 and give it life." Hence this book is placed 
 at the threshold of the order. 
 
 The victim sits and stands, and sighs and 
 groans, and weeps and reflects, and prays, all 
 by a prescribed rule. In this way he is 
 broken to the will of the ghostly father. 
 The man is then lost in the order. Every 
 power of body and mind wears its chains. 
 His last act of freedom is his choice of this 
 perpetual bondage. Says Loyola, "If the 
 authority declares that which seems to you 
 white is black, affirm that it is black." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 99 
 
 From the life of free thoughts and free 
 words, and of an advancing Christianity, 
 men are thus taken into the close atmosphere 
 of the tombs, to be as corpses among the 
 dead. The order is a complete despotism 
 over the mind, conscience, will and estates of 
 its numbers. Espionage and inquisitions 
 reign in all grades and offices of the company, 
 except the highest. All are watched by all ; 
 and all give account to the general of the 
 order, who gives account to none. 
 
 5. Finally, the central enginery of the 
 Inquisition still works with a secret though 
 somewhat abated malignancy. This is the 
 main defensive expedient of the papacy, de- 
 vised by Innocent III. in the twelfth cen- 
 tury for the conviction and punishment of 
 heretics, and renewed at the Reformation. 
 Its processes are all secret as the grave, and 
 its cells full of dead men's bones. Within 
 the enclosures of this il Court of Death/' are 
 kept the "iron shears" of this infallible 
 Church, with which she is wont to pare the 
 faith of men into agreement with her canons 
 
100 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 and her catechism. Here is the statue of the 
 blessed Virgin, with her spike bosom and 
 her iron arms, with which this step-mother 
 was wont to receive her wayward children to 
 her fond embrace. Here, too, are the huge 
 " keys" of St. Peter, and the deep dungeons 
 and massive doors within which she locks up 
 poor temptation-tried pilgrims, to keep them 
 unspotted from the world. 
 
 Behind all, upon his bloody throne, sits the 
 dark-visaged inquisitor. His " bones are 
 marrowless," his blood " is cold," he has " a 
 lean and hungry look," and is filled " top-full 
 of direst cruelty." For this inhuman work 
 a laic must not be taken, for he may have 
 some social bands or some "dregs of con- 
 science, some milk o ? human kindness," which 
 may make him a coward. 
 
 At its reinstitution in 1542, six cardinals 
 constituted the first court, as Inquisitors 
 General ; of whom Caraffa and Toledo were 
 the chief. Its powers were absolute, save the 
 right of pardon reserved to the pope. By its 
 rules no respect was to be shown to " prince 
 
FOE THE TKCTH. 101 
 
 or prelate/' to age or sex. The suspected 
 were followed by the utmost rigour of prose- 
 cution. 
 
 The fourth rule forbids any sort of toler- 
 ance towards heretics, and especially toward 
 Calvinists. Children are compelled to be 
 informers against parents, and parents against 
 children, husbands against wives, and wives 
 against husbands. The Duchess of Ferrara, 
 except for the Salic law heiress to the throne 
 of France, was accused by her own husband, 
 and shut out from all sympathy. " The 
 mountains are between her and her friends," 
 said her keeper; "she mingles her wine with 
 tears." 
 
 Thus the most concealed germ of free 
 thought is hunted out of society and of the soul 
 by the disguised or open emissaries of the 
 inquisition. " Dishonour of the reason," says 
 Schiller, "and the murder of the soul consti- 
 tute its vows. Its instruments are terror and 
 disgrace. Every passion is in its pay, and its 
 snares lie in every joy of life. Even solitude 
 is not secure from its espionage, and the fear 
 • 
 
102 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 of its omnipresence holds freedom fettered, 
 even in the depths of the soul. All the 
 instincts of humanity it has trodden down 
 under the feet of credulity, and to it have been 
 made to yield all those bonds which men 
 esteem holiest. All claims upon his race are, 
 for the heretic, disallowed. For, by the least 
 infraction of the law of Mother Church, he has 
 destroyed his humanity. A modest doubt as 
 to the infallibility of the pope is esteemed 
 parricide. Even the lifeless body of the 
 heretic is cursed. No destiny can rescue its 
 victims, and the grave itself is no refuge from 
 its terrible arms." 
 
 During the revolution in 1848 the doors 
 of this infernal institution were torn open, 
 and its mysteries of iniquity disclosed to the 
 gaze of an indignant humanity. In the 
 Chamber of Archives were piled up the 
 records of its dark proceedings. Over the 
 door to one apartment was written, "No one 
 enters this room except on pain of excom- 
 munication." It was the Judgment Hall, 
 where the fate of thousands has been sealed 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 103 
 
 by the diabolical inquisitors. In an adjoin- 
 ing room was found a trap-door, through 
 which the condemned passes into eternity. 
 The pit is cylindrical in form and eighty feet 
 deep, within which the terrific engines of 
 death performed their demoniacal work. 
 
 The strictest literary censorship, which is a 
 part of the criminal jurisprudence, is extended 
 by the inquisitors to every department of 
 science, archaeology, philosophy, history, poli- 
 tical economy and theology. Xo original 
 investigation is tolerated divergent from the 
 prevalent orthodoxy. In 1543, Caraffa ordered 
 that no book, whatever its contents, whether 
 old or new, should be printed without permis- 
 sion from the inquisitors. All booksellers were 
 required to submit a catalogue of their stock, 
 and a few years after an index of forbidden 
 books was published and still continues to be. 
 
 In 1851, I copied the following decretum 
 from the door-post of St. Peter's, with an 
 appended list of prohibited books : 
 
 " A Decretum of the Sacred Congregation 
 of the Holy Roman Church of Cardinals by 
 
104 MAETYRS AND SUFFEKEKS 
 
 our most holy Lord, Pius IX., in which we 
 have condemned and will condemn, have pro- 
 scribed and will proscribe, the following 
 works." 
 
 Then comes a list of the books, among 
 which are — 
 
 A Historical Analysis of Christian Civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Mysteries of the Inquisition and other 
 Secret Societies of Spain. 
 
 Letters on the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. 
 
 "No one shall dare to publish, read or 
 keep in any place or idiom, any one of these 
 condemned books, under the penalties stated 
 in the ? Index of Vicious Books/ " 
 
 " That a book, in worse condition than a 
 peccant soul," said John Milton, " should be 
 made to stand before a jury ere it be born 
 to the world, and undergo, yet in darkness, 
 the judgment of Rhadamanth and his col- 
 leagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward 
 into light, was never heard before till that 
 mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled 
 at the first entrance of reformation, sought out 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 105 
 
 new limbos and new hells, wherein they 
 might include our books also within the num- 
 ber of their damned." 
 
 But there is one object on which these 
 mitred ecclesiastics look with more intense 
 anxiety than upon any other. They fear it 
 more and hate it more. It is the Bible. This 
 they regard as the fomenter of all their diffi- 
 culties. This occasions agitations and discus- 
 sions among the people, and kindles in them 
 dangerous desires to think for themselves, 
 and to know what God teaches. Here are 
 the seeds of free schools and free thoughts, a 
 free press and a free government. The Bible 
 has made England and America free. Hence 
 the Romanists proscribe it and burn it, and 
 exile, incarcerate or burn those who read it. 
 
 The massive strength of the Romish hier- 
 archy is found in the great institutions of 
 which we have taken a glimpse — the Papal 
 See, the College of Cardinals, the Propaganda 
 di Fide, the Order of Jesus and the Inquisi- 
 tion. It involves the highest constructive 
 skill, and is the fruit of twelve hundred years 
 
106 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 of experiments. But just here too, is its 
 weakness; because mere human sagacity is 
 always weak, and must, in the end, prove 
 futile against Divine Providence and the 
 Bible. 
 
 In a certain mythology of the ancients, the 
 heavens are supported by the earth, the earth 
 by an elephant, the elephant by a turtle, while 
 the turtle stands on his own feet. By a similar 
 series of supports the Inquisition stands on 
 the Propaganda, the Propaganda on the cardi- 
 nals, the cardinals on the pope, and the 
 pope on nothing. 
 
 As a spiritual despotism it must remain as 
 it is or fall. Reform is impracticable. Lu- 
 ther and Melancthon sought this earnestly, 
 boldly, but ineffectually. They did not break 
 from the Church until, for their efforts at 
 reform, she cut them off as guilty of damnable 
 heresy. Then the die was cast. They must 
 protest and fight for the truth, or perish. 
 
 The papal anathema roused the Saxon 
 monk. " You will burn me," he says, " for 
 answer to the God's message which I strive 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 107 
 
 to bring you. I take your bull as a parch- 
 ment lie, and burn that" And, proceeding 
 with it to to the east gate of Witteraburg, he 
 kindled a fire which illumined the whole Xorth 
 of Europe. " Confute me by proofs of Scrip- 
 ture," said he, " at the Diet of Worms, or 
 else by plain, just argument, otherwise I can- 
 not recant. Here I stand — I can do nothing 
 else, God help me !" 
 
 Thus the battle commenced — the great bat- 
 tle of Armageddon, of truth against error, 
 light against darkness, Christ against Anti- 
 christ. At this point the papacy closes the 
 breviary, and 
 
 " Opes the bleeding testament of purple war." 
 
 To the side of truth and freedom gather the 
 faithful and the free from every clime. They 
 are inspired by the voices of the slain wit- 
 nesses under the altar, saying, "How long, 
 Lord God Almighty, shall we not be aveng- 
 ed ?" And their final victorious requiem 
 shall be in the language of the Seer of Patmos, 
 
 " Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. 
 
108 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 " For her sins have reached into heaven, 
 and God hath rewarded her iniquities." 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! that great city Babylon; that 
 mighty city ! for in one hour is thy judgment 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 LOUIS JIOXTREVEL, OR THE HUGUENOT MAR- 
 TYRS. 
 
 BY MITA LAUDER. 
 
 ASEREXE Sabbath in June. The sun 
 looks down calmly from his sapphire 
 throne upon beautiful France, now bleeding 
 with the bitter persecution of God's people — 
 the despised Huguenots. There, in his pleas- 
 ant light, stands the little village of Mire- 
 court. 
 
 A neat temple nestles in the foliage, and 
 through the quaint old streets, and across the 
 little green squares, and past the rows of 
 freshly-trimmed shade trees, are walking a 
 goodly company in holiday attire. There are 
 old men in small clothes, with shining knee- 
 buckles and three-cornered hate, and young 
 men in gay waistcoats and glittering breast- 
 10 109 
 
110 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 pins. There are peasant women in black 
 jackets, short scarlet petticoats and tall, clear- 
 starched muslin head-dresses ; and pretty 
 grisettes in coquettish black silk aprons and 
 jaunty lace caps; while children of all sizes 
 are scattered here and there, as buds among 
 the flowers. Only a small number of faces 
 peep out from bonnets, for in this little dis- 
 trict there are not many families of wealth. 
 
 One of these few bonneted women would 
 instantly have attracted your attention ; she was 
 slightly below the middle age, with a calm, pale 
 face and soft hazel eyes. By her side, with a 
 hymn-book in his hand, is a tall, erect man 
 of benevolent countenance. Before her walks 
 a fine-looking lad of eighteen, leading two 
 little girls, and behind her two round-faced 
 boys, who might have been, the one twelve 
 and the other fourteen years of age. This 
 group constitutes the Montrevel family, one 
 of the most respectable in the place and uni- 
 versally beloved. 
 
 All these people, from different directions, 
 are drawing toward one point — the modest 
 
FOR THE TRUTH, 111 
 
 church hidden among the trees. When the 
 Montrevel family approached the entrance, 
 Louis drew back the little girls for his parents 
 to precede him, and then following with his 
 brothers, they all passed in and sat down on 
 one of the benches, Louis helping his twin 
 sisters to mount a seat each side of him. A 
 pleasant sight it was to look upon monsieur 
 and madame with their little flock, and many 
 an eye dwelt kindly on the flaxen curly-haired 
 Agnes and Marie. 
 
 The introductory services are over, and the 
 aged pastor rises to announce his text : 
 
 u Peace I leave with you, ray peace I give 
 unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto 
 you" 
 
 As he stands the re, his silver locks flowing 
 over his shoulders, and his mild blue eye 
 lighted with heavenly fire, a ray of light 
 falling on his forehead crowns him with an 
 aureole, likening him to one of the old pic- 
 tured saints of Fra Angelico. 
 
 " My dear children," he says, " we must 
 all abide as did the Israelites, with our sandals 
 
112 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 on, our loins girded and our lamps trimmed 
 and burning. Our lot is cast in a compara- 
 tively obscure part of the Lord's vineyard. 
 And as yet we have known but little of the 
 terrible sufferings our brethren and sisters 
 have endured since the revocation of King 
 Henry's edict. But when the bitter cup comes 
 to us, as come without doubt it will, may we 
 drink it submissively ! I pray that in the 
 day of adversity not one of my dear flock 
 may be left to deny his Master." 
 
 Hardly had he uttered these words when 
 the distant sound of cavalry sent a shudder 
 through the assembly, for the poor Huguenots 
 had good reason to know what this portended. 
 
 " I will look unto the hills whence my help 
 cometh," said the good man, lifting up his 
 eyes to heaven. Then extending his arms 
 toward his beloved people, he continued : 
 
 " Fear not, little flock ; it is your Father's 
 good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 
 
 " In the world ye shall have tribulation ; 
 but be of good cheer ; I have overcome the 
 world." 
 

 Martyrs and Sufferers. 
 
 Page 113. 
 
FOR TQE TRUTH. 113 
 
 More and more distinct grew the tramp of 
 the horsemen, and in spite of Father Legarrne's 
 cheering words the people were greatly agi- 
 tated. Some fled in terror, while others hud- 
 dled together at the foot of the altar. 
 
 On came the dragoons — dashing with savage 
 yells through the quiet streets, across the 
 green sward — on toward that temple of sin- 
 cere worshippers. In less time than it has 
 taken to describe the scene the Lord's house 
 is filled and surrounded. Mounting the pul- 
 pit, his sword clattering on the stairs, the 
 captain unrolled a parchment with its large 
 seals of state, and read a proclamation, the sub- 
 stance of which was that his royal majesty had 
 appointed dragonnades for the recovery of all 
 heretics to the Most Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 " In accordance with this proclamation/' he 
 continued, " you are all hereby summoned to 
 repair to the cathedral, where the priests who 
 accompany the regiment will receive your 
 recantation ; and afterward you will celebrate 
 the mass. If any refuse to obey, upon them 
 will the dragoons be quartered." 
 10* 
 
114 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 Then addressing the soldiers with a shout, 
 " Now, men, to your work \" there followed a 
 scene of indescribable terror and distress. 
 Some fled ; others were dragged through the 
 streets into the cathedral, up to the very altars, 
 while a few, sorely tempted, hastily signed 
 their abjuration, to repent of it ever after. 
 
 The houses of the recusants were filled with 
 these emissaries of the Church. All the tor- 
 ments that human or satanic ingenuity could 
 devise were made use of to force back these 
 wanderers to the arms of their cruel mother. 
 The poor victims were hung up by their feet 
 or the hair of their head ; and as if that were not 
 enough, were at the same time nearly suffo- 
 cated by the burning of damp straw in their 
 cells. They were plunged into water and 
 drawn out with a bare escape from drowning. 
 Strong drink was poured down their throats 
 through a funnel till they were intoxicated, 
 in which condition they were induced to re- 
 cant. By the ceaseless vigilance of sentinels, 
 for a whole week at a time they were pre- 
 vented from securing one minute's sleep. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 115 
 
 "Women were cruelly disfigured in the face, 
 and dragged through the streets by the hair 
 of their heads, and otherwise shamefully mal- 
 treated. Thus in every possible way were 
 they harassed and tortured, while, if they 
 attempted to flee the country, they were pur- 
 sued, and if caught punished as malefactors. 
 But the refinement of these cruelties was the 
 tearing from the arms of their parents chil- 
 dren of the tenderest age, and committing them 
 to the charge of that cold-blooded stepmother 
 — the papacy. 
 
 Upon the Montrevel family had been quar- 
 tered thirty of these remorseless dragoons — 
 an infliction, in comparison with which the 
 Egyptian plagues were a dispensation of 
 mercy. There seemed to be no species of 
 wanton or brutal violence which these holy 
 " booted missionaries" omitted from their 
 means of grace for the conversion of heretics. 
 After various ineffectual efforts with Mon- 
 sieur Montrevel, one of these fiends exclaimed 
 with an oath, "You shall swallow the host," 
 and i pening his mouth with a bayonet, another 
 
116 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 of the hellish crew put in the host, which 
 together they forced down his throat. 
 
 As Louis, the eldest son, witnessed this 
 atrocious act, he started to rush upon the 
 monsters, but an appealing look from his 
 mother and the recollection of his own impo- 
 tence arrested his motion. At this moment, 
 a Jesuit father, entering, angrily addressed the 
 heretic. 
 
 " We will yet find means to overcome your 
 obstinacy;" and nodding to the ruffians, he 
 added, " take him away." 
 
 As they were dragging him from the room, 
 he cast a parting glance at his wife and son, 
 saying, " Remember the promise, 'Be thou 
 faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
 crown of life/" 
 
 To make sure of the lambs, these ravening 
 wolves then proceeded to tear from the broken- 
 hearted wife her two younger sons and the 
 pretty twins, little Agnes and Marie, whose 
 pleas to stay with their dear mamma might 
 have moved a heart of stone. 
 
 Late the same day, as the dragoons, half 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 117 
 
 drunk, had thrown themselves down to sleep, 
 Louis went out to draw water. Hastily 
 following, his mother beckoned him into the 
 granary. 
 
 " Ah, my son, you must leave me instantly." 
 
 " I cannot, dear mother." 
 
 " There is no help for it, Louis. Your 
 father will be murdered, and the little ones 
 are all torn from me. But you may live to 
 serve the dear Master. You will find means 
 to escape to Holland and then to England, 
 where, it may be, you can prepare yourself to 
 be a minister of the blessed gospel. Perhaps 
 some of your friends will go with you ; but 
 there must be no delay. And here is a little 
 money for you." 
 
 As Louis still hesitated, she added, earnestly; 
 
 " For you to remain is torture and death, 
 or, worse still, the dreadful galleys. For you 
 will not forswear your religion." 
 
 11 Never, unless God forsakes me." 
 
 " Then farewell, my precious child. And 
 may God bless you!" 
 
 Louis hastily flung himself on his mother's 
 
118 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 neck, and without another word set forth on 
 his exile. As he came to a bend in the road, 
 he turned and took a last glimpse of his 
 beloved home. How attractive it looked in 
 the sunset-light, with its pleasant parterre, its 
 nice gravel- walks, its neat rows of trees, and 
 that indescribable air that invests home with 
 such a sacred charm ! 
 
 " It will soon be in ruins," he mournfully 
 exclaimed. But choking down his grief, he 
 went on his way. 
 
 Two of his friends, Andrew and Henry 
 Oster, lived with an uncle who was a Catho- 
 lic, and whose house, consequently, was free 
 from the hated dragoons. Being one of the 
 easy sort, he did not molest his heretical 
 friends, and if he happened to meet either of 
 the boys carrying provisions away, was dis- 
 creetly silent. They were, in fact, carried to 
 a secret cavern, where a few families, having 
 managed to elude the vigilance of the spies, 
 had hid themselves, taking with them their 
 beloved pastor, Father Legarme. 
 
 Mr. Oster had this very day assured 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 119 
 
 Andrew and Henry that there was no safety 
 for them but in flight. So Louis found them 
 prepared. 
 
 " And let us try to get off Father Legarme 
 too, for these wretches pour out their hottest 
 vials on the ministers." 
 
 Leaving the friends on their way to the 
 cavern, we will go back to the home from 
 which Louis had been driven forth, and 
 where Madame Montrevel remained alone 
 with the ruthless invaders. Innumerable 
 cruelties were practiced upon her to make her 
 renounce her religion. But in vain. Having 
 consumed all the provisions that had been 
 stored up, pillaged the premises of everything 
 valuable and demolished the house even to 
 the foundation, the savages dragged the faith- 
 ful woman before the Duke de la Pontiac. 
 
 " She shall submit !" exclaimed the duke, 
 enraged at her obstinacy. 
 
 And ordering pen and paper, one of his 
 zealous servants seized her hand and com- 
 pelled her to sign her abjuration. 
 
 "My Master w r il] pardon this offending 
 
120 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 hand," said she, looking the duke calmly in 
 the face, u for my heart is not guilty of this 
 base denial." 
 
 Is it possible, we are constrained to ask, 
 that the most bigoted zealot should have at- 
 tached any weight to such conversions ? Yet 
 most of the converts reported so triumphantly 
 to the king were of this description. It does 
 not surprise us that the good queen of Swe- 
 den, though a devoted adherent of the pa- 
 pacy, should write as she did to the French 
 ambassador at Stockholm : 
 
 " I will frankly avow that I am not quite 
 persuaded of the success of this great design ; 
 and that I cannot rejoice at it as an affair 
 very advantageous to our holy religion. Mil- 
 itary men are strange apostles. I consider 
 them more likely to kill, to ravish and to 
 plunder than to persuade ; and, in fact, ac- 
 counts beyond doubt inform us that they 
 fulfil their mission entirely in their own 
 mode. I pity the people abandoned to their 
 discretion. I sympathize with so many ruined 
 families* so many respectable persons reduced 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 121 
 
 to beggary, and I cannot look upon what 
 is now passing in France without com- 
 passion." 
 
 And to the Cardinal Azolino she feelingly 
 exclaims : 
 
 " I am overwhelmed with grief when I 
 think of all the innocent blood which a blind 
 fanaticism causes daily to flow. France ex- 
 ercises without remorse or fear the most bar- 
 barous persecution upon the dearest and most 
 
 industrious portion of her people 
 
 Every time I contemplate the atrocious tor- 
 ments which have been inflicted upon the 
 Protestants, my heart throbs and my eyes are 
 filled with tears." 
 
 Even Madame de Maintenon, that zealous 
 renegade from Protestantism, frankly admit- 
 ted, " I think that all these conversions are 
 not sincere ; but at least the children will be 
 Romanists." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Louis Montrevel and his two young friends 
 failed to persuade Father Legarme to share 
 their flight. 
 11 
 
122 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 " My poor services belong to my scattered 
 flock." 
 
 " But the horrid wolves will scent you out 
 and devour you," exclaimed Andrew, impet- 
 uously. 
 
 " Not before God's time, my son. And if 
 I am accounted worthy of a martyr's death, 
 he will carry me through it." 
 
 Having exhorted the lads to remain true 
 to their faith, whatever trials they might en- 
 counter, the good pastor prayed fervently with 
 them, and then, having received his parting 
 benediction, they set out on their journey. 
 
 Poor Louis was sadly cast down : 
 
 " I feel as if I had done wrong in leaving 
 my mother." 
 
 (t But the brutes would have torn you from 
 her. Oh how I wish the lightning would 
 blast them ! " 
 
 " Hush, Andrew ! have you forgotten how 
 the disciples were rebuked for wishing to call 
 down fire from heaven ?" 
 
 " But I can't help hating the wretches, and 
 what is more, I don't want to." 
 
FOR THE TPwUTH. 123 
 
 " Christ did not hate his persecutors," said 
 Louis. 
 
 " Well, maybe it's wrong, and yet I don't 
 see how flesh and blood can do any better. 
 It's all sham, the pretended zeal of the dra- 
 goons — or dragons, as they ought to be called. 
 I wonder if poor France will ever be free 
 from her oppressors? Oh that we had a 
 father William to fight our battles for us, as 
 those Dutchmen had!" 
 
 Looking round to discover why Louis did 
 not reply, he saw the tears rolling down his 
 cheeks. 
 
 " My sweet little Agnes and Marie !" was 
 his explanation. " How they will grieve 
 themselves to death ! The dear boys too — 
 and my noble father and mother. How can 
 I bear 'it?" 
 
 " Cheer up," said Henry, " for there's no 
 knowing what may happen. We may have 
 another king who will restore our edict, and 
 then what a flocking in there will be from all 
 quarters ! But, Andrew, suppose we shouldn't 
 get off, after all?" 
 
124 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 " The galleys perhaps," replied his brother, 
 with a shudder. 
 
 "We could, both of us, bear that better 
 than Louis, for we have roughed it more and 
 are stouter than he." 
 
 " Our heavenly Father can give us strength 
 to endure," said Louis; "let us ask his 
 help." 
 
 And kneeling down in the woods, they 
 earnestly implored divine strength and guid- 
 ance. 
 
 On reaching Paris, the boys found shelter 
 for the night in a Huguenot family in the 
 outskirts of the gay city. 
 
 " If you can only escape the notice of the 
 guards," said their host, as his wife was put- 
 ting up a lunch for the travellers, " and once 
 set your feet in Charleroi, you will be under 
 the protection of the Dutch garrison. There's 
 no knowing how soon the rest of us will have 
 to flee. But keep up, lads, for we shall reach 
 heaven all the sooner for our persecutions, 
 and thank God there'll be no dragoons there !" 
 
 Cordially shaking hands with their host 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 125 
 
 unci hostess, the boys once more set forth on 
 their exile. They had not travelled many 
 hours before they caught the sound of distant 
 troops. Leaping the hedges, they had no 
 sooner reached a place of concealment in the 
 Is than a company of dragoons rode furi- 
 ously by. It was not till long after the last 
 sound of the retreating horsemen had died 
 away that they ventured again into the high 
 road. They also encountered other perils, in 
 which their presence of mind alone saved them. 
 
 " I wish we dared sing," said Louis, " for 
 I am sure it would keep up our spirits." 
 
 " "We can recite hymns, any way," replied 
 Henry, " and that is next best." 
 
 " I have no memory of that sort," observed 
 Andrew, " but I will be your attentive audi- 
 ence." 
 
 So Louis and Henry took turns in reciting 
 Huguenot hymns, while Andrew performed 
 the part of listener. 
 
 " I always loved those hymns," he said, 
 " but somehow they seem sweeter than ever 
 before." 
 
126 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 "So they do to me," responded Louis, 
 " and I suppose it is because we are in circum- 
 stances to feel the need of the consolations 
 they breathe. I think we should also find 
 passages of Scripture more precious, for the 
 same reason. Let us make the experiment." 
 
 Having repeated a number of verses, they 
 proceeded to talk of their early life. 
 
 " This is delightful," said Henry, " even 
 if we are exiles." 
 
 " The more delightful on that very ac- 
 count," replied both the boys in the same 
 breath. 
 
 "I think we had better consult a little 
 about our plans," said Louis. " What do you 
 mean to do, boys, if we get safely out of France ?" 
 
 " I am going to learn some trade," replied 
 Andrew. 
 
 " And I have yet to decide," said Henry, 
 " whether I shall be a farmer or merchant. 
 But you, Louis ?" 
 
 " I mean to be a minister, as my mother 
 always desired." 
 
 With the mention of that beloved name he 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 127 
 
 was suddenly overcome, and for a time no 
 one broke the silence. But at length Andrew 
 said : 
 
 " I dare say your mother will be one of your 
 hearers when your hair is as white as Father 
 Legarme's, and you lean over the desk as he 
 does, as if ready to take all your flock to your 
 bosom. Dear, good man ! I wonder if we shall 
 ever see him again ?" 
 
 " Certainly, we shall — in heaven, if not 
 before." 
 
 Thus beguiling the way, they travelled on 
 in fancied security. Stopping to lunch, they 
 heard some travellers discussing the dragoons. 
 
 " I hear they are at La Platte on their mis- 
 sionary work," remarked one of them with a 
 sneer. 
 
 " Yes," replied the other, "and woe to those 
 whom they catch trying to escape !" 
 
 Xow the boys knew that La Platte was 
 near the boundary-line, and that it was a town 
 they were to pass through in approaching 
 Charleroi. In a sudden alarm they concluded 
 to deviate from their intended route, and 
 
128 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 approach their place of destination by a cir- 
 cuitous road. 
 
 Fatal decision ! which even before the day 
 was through they began to regret. 
 
 " I fear we have been very foolish, and only 
 put our heads into the lion's mouth/' said 
 Andrew, after they had walked some time in 
 silence. " Did you observe that ill-favoured 
 man that looked at us so sharply while we 
 were lunching this morning ?" 
 
 " That I did ; and I have been afraid of 
 encountering him ever since." 
 
 Entering a hostelrie, they were seized with 
 a dismal foreboding on beholding that same 
 ugly face appearing at another door. But 
 they concealed their alarm, and called for 
 supper and lodging, meaning to escape in the 
 night. They were just partaking of their 
 frugal meal when the dreaded man, who had 
 stepped out, reappeared, accompanied by four 
 gendarmes, and pointing to the lads, they 
 Were speedily arrested and brought before the 
 governor, who, after a brief examination, com- 
 mitted them to prison. Sending to Paris for 
 
FOR THE TFwUTH. 129 
 
 orders, he received a rescript requiring them 
 to be brought to trial, not only for heresy, 
 but also for being found on the frontiers with- 
 out a passport It contained directions, how- 
 ever, that the cure should labour for their con- 
 version, and, if successful, that they should be 
 pardoned and sent home. 
 
 The officer to whose charge they were com- 
 mitted, though a Catholic, did not believe in 
 persecution. Reporting to his prisoners the 
 rescript, he added : 
 
 " Xow, boys, your own consciences must be 
 your guide. All I have to say is, that if you 
 recant you will be pardoned ; but if not, you 
 will probably be sent to the galleys." 
 
 u Come what may, we will never betray 
 our faith," answered Louis, without a mo- 
 ment's hesitation. 
 
 " Then the Lord be merciful to you !" 
 
 The following morning the cure commenced 
 his pious labours. But it did not take him long 
 to discover that, whatever arguments he might 
 advance, the b )ys invariably managed to get the 
 better of him. The oftener he was discomfited, 
 
130 HAETYES AND SDFFEEEES 
 
 however, the greater became his desire for 
 success. For he reasoned within himself: 
 
 " These boys have so much pluck that if 
 they were only on the right side, they could 
 argue down multitudes of heretics as I can 
 never do." 
 
 Besides, he had become really interested in 
 them, particularly in Louis. 
 
 " It's of no use to discuss any longer, for 
 the rogues have used me up. And they've 
 read all my books; no, they haven't," he 
 exclaimed, as a sudden thought flashed on 
 him, " for there's the very best of them they 
 haven't even looked at." 
 
 And a smile dawned on his face as he 
 thought of its fair pages. After pondering a 
 few moments in silence, he broke out : 
 
 "Yes, yes, that will do it; and if one 
 yields, all will. She has become greatly 
 interested in their conversion from hearing 
 my reports. And I'll set out the case in the 
 morning so as to move her feelings. I don't 
 see any objection to the scheme. The Mon- 
 trevel family is very respectable, and Louis 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 131 
 
 is a handsome fellow, and a good one too, as 
 one can easily see, in spite of his damnable 
 heresy. And for that his parents are more 
 to blame than he." 
 
 So he went to sleep with his head full of 
 this new and subtle style of argument. 
 
 The next day the officer ushered into their 
 cell a young and pretty girl, bearing a basket 
 of grapes from her uncle, the cur6. 
 
 "Sit down and talk with these prisoners a 
 bit," said the officer, " for they are separated 
 from their friends, and know not what is to 
 befal them." 
 
 The damsel had a tender heart, and, though 
 a devout Catholic, she pitied these misguided 
 heretics. So in a friendly way she began to 
 ask questions, happening first to address 
 Andrew. 
 
 " My brother and I are orphans," the lad 
 replied, " and have no brothers or sisters ; but 
 Louis has left a great many friends, besides 
 two of the sweetest little sisters you ever saw." 
 
 " Tell me about them, please." 
 
 And as Louis, touched by her interest, was 
 
132 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 drawn to speak out of a full heart, she sat 
 listening with flushed cheek and tearful eyes : 
 
 " Oh, that I could persuade you to return 
 to the Mother Church !" 
 
 " Do you think the means she is employ- 
 ing particularly suited to win us ?" 
 
 " I cannot tell. I always shudder when I 
 hear about the dragonnades, but uncle says it 
 is what God requires." 
 
 " But we don't believe in such a God." 
 
 Louise crossed herself quickly: "I shall 
 say prayers for you to our holy Mother." 
 
 "And on our part," exclaimed Louis, 
 warmly, "we will entreat the Lord Jesus 
 Christ to lead you into that truth for which 
 we are ready to die." 
 
 " But you must not. I cannot believe the 
 blessed Virgin requires such a sacrifice. How 
 I wish Father La Sallier were here, for he is 
 more learned than my uncle, and I think he 
 could convince you of your errors." 
 
 " Not while the holy Word is treasured up 
 in our hearts." 
 
 " Ah ! there w T as the beginning of your sin — 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 133 
 
 the daring to read and think for yourselves. I 
 shall have to say Ave Marias for you all night." 
 
 "What do you think of her?" asked An- 
 drew, when the bright apparition had van- 
 ished. 
 
 " I think she is too good to remain a 
 Roman Catholic, and I shall pray for her 
 conversion as earnestly as she does for ours." 
 
 For several successive days the maiden con- 
 tinued to visit the prison, bringing fresh 
 offerings of fruits and flowers. Xot only 
 this, but she also brought books which she 
 hoped would convince them of their errors. 
 And after each visit she went home more 
 intent on their conversion. 
 
 " Which of the lads do you say the most 
 prayers for ?" inquired her uncle one day. 
 
 " I say a great many for them all, but the 
 most, dear uncle, for Louis Montrevel." 
 
 "Why for him?" 
 
 " Because he is so unhappy about his sweet 
 sisters." 
 
 " What wouldst thou give to win him to 
 the Church ?" 
 
 12 
 
134 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 " Everything I have in the world." 
 
 " And yourself too, ma fille ?" 
 
 The girl opened her innocent eyes wide 
 upon the cur6. 
 
 " I mean would'st thou marry him, if that 
 would bring him back?" 
 
 The bloom on her face deepened as she 
 replied, 
 
 " But, uncle, he has not a thought of any 
 such thing." 
 
 " That does not prove, silly girl, that he 
 never will have. All I want to know is, 
 what thou wouldst say if he should ask thee 
 to become his wife?" 
 
 " But, uncle, I have repeated more than 
 three hundred Ave Marias for him, and he 
 does not begin to relent." 
 
 " That is not to the purpose, my daughter. 
 He may be proof against thy prayers, and 
 yet be unable to resist thyself. If thou canst 
 save him and the others too, wilt thou do it ? 
 that is the question." 
 
 "They are gallant lads, dear uncle, and 
 well worth saving." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 135 
 
 " I see how it is. "Well, to-morrc w I will 
 examine into their progress." 
 
 The next day the cure went to the prison, 
 and Louise rather reluctantly accompanied 
 him, remaining, however, by his permission, 
 in the keeper's room. 
 
 The cur£ greeted the captives kindly, 
 handing Louis a beautiful bouquet. 
 
 "That is from my poor Louise, whose 
 heart is set on thy coming back to the 
 Church." 
 
 " Give her my thanks for her great kind- 
 ness." 
 
 " And what else shall I say?" 
 
 " Say that I shall never forget to pray for 
 her." 
 
 "Dost think her a comely lass?" 
 
 " Indeed I do, and, what is better, she has 
 a tender heart." 
 
 "That she has, and a pretty fortune to 
 boot. And I will tell you what it is, young 
 man: if you will only abjure your heresy, I 
 will give her to you for your wife, dowry 
 and all." 
 
136 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 A flush of surprise passed over Louis' face, 
 and for a moment he could not speak. 
 
 " I mean what 1 say ; so take time to re- 
 cover." 
 
 "But mademoiselle?" 
 
 " Have no fear. She will not shrink from 
 anything that will effect your conversion." 
 
 " But I could not accept such a sacrifice." 
 
 " Tush, tush ! Is that the way a young man 
 talks when a pretty girl is willing to marry 
 him?" 
 
 " That is not all I would say." 
 
 " Let Louise come here," motioning to the 
 officer. 
 
 He withdrew, presently returning with the 
 maiden, who entered with an air of great 
 timidity. 
 
 " Can you find it in your heart to grieve 
 this damsel?" 
 
 Rapidly did Louis picture the two futures 
 spread out before him. On the one hand, 
 freedom, wealth, position, and, dearer than 
 all, this beautiful, loving maiden for his 
 bride; on the other a convict's fate — igno- 
 
FOR THE TBUTH. 137 
 
 rainy, suffering, death, or a galley slave for 
 life. 
 
 And he was only eighteen. Can you blame 
 him that he wavered ? Yet it was but for a 
 moment. 
 
 " I thank her with all my heart, but I 
 should not be worthy of her if I should re- 
 nounce my faith." 
 
 Louise looked at him with a mute appeal 
 not easy to resist, but he only added : 
 
 " Believe me, mademoiselle, it is not that I 
 slight you, but that I cannot deny my Master." 
 
 Her uncle would have expostulated, but 
 she prevented him, and offering her hand : 
 
 " I would have saved you if I could — fare- 
 well." 
 
 Unobserved by the cure, he took a little 
 volume from his bosom, and, giving it to 
 her, said in a low voice : 
 
 " Head it carefully for my sake. And I 
 pray God it may lead you into the truth." 
 
 u He is an ingrate," growled the uncle as 
 he strode rapidly home, his niece being 
 scarcely able to keep pace with him. 
 12* 
 
138 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 "Don't, dear uncle. He only does what 
 he thinks right. We will say prayers for 
 him." 
 
 " He shall have no prayers of mine — the 
 child of Satan ! To think of his flinging 
 back such a gift in my face! I shall de- 
 nounce him forthwith." 
 
 Louise made no reply till they entered the 
 house, when she set upon him with a flood of 
 entreaties to persuade him to connive at the 
 escape of the boys. At length he promised 
 to think it over, and not to decide till the 
 next morning. 
 
 His niece retired to her room, but not to 
 her pillow. Taking the little book out of 
 her pocket, she read on its title-page, " The 
 New Testament ." 
 
 " It must be a part of the Bible," she said 
 to herself, " for I have heard my uncle speak 
 of the Old and New Testaments. I suppose 
 he would burn it if I told him. But it can 
 do no harm if I hide it under my pillow. 
 Poor Louis ! for his sake I will keep it." 
 
 Then, kneeling before a crucifix, she be- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 139 
 
 sought the holy Mother to have pity on these 
 poor heretics, and to save them from the 
 dreadful fate that threatened them. Toward 
 morning, wearied out, she threw herself on a 
 couch, and falling into a heavy sleep, did not 
 awake till daylight was streaming into the 
 room and the convent-bells were ringing for 
 matins. She hastened down stairs, but the 
 cur6 had eaten his breakfast and gone out. 
 She was oppressed with dread, and well she 
 might be, for in that system in which she 
 trusted there were no bowels of mercies. 
 Persecution was a high duty, a great mission 
 of the Church. Heretofore she had believed 
 in this duty, though not without a struggle. 
 She was distressed at the doubts which now 
 began to creep over her. So there she sat, 
 looking out of the window with a foreboding 
 heart, which proved only too true a prophet. 
 Her uncle had hastened to the authorities to 
 denounce the three boys as hardened repro- 
 bates, under the dominion of the devil. 
 
 The day of trial was not long deferred. 
 The youthful prisoners appeared in court, 
 
140 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 and being found guilty of the charges brought 
 against thern, received sentence of condemna- 
 tion. But before this sentence could be exe- 
 cuted, it was necessary that it should be con- 
 firmed by the Parliament of Tournay. So 
 the prisoners were bound together with cords 
 and marched thither. Here they were com- 
 mitted to a dungeon, their trial being de- 
 ferred that their conversion might once more 
 be attempted. The arguments employed, 
 however, were somewhat anomalous — the logic 
 of pain, the spiritual efforts of this cur6, in 
 marked contrast with the persuasions of love 
 in the last experiment, consisting in inquiries, 
 from time to time, whether they were not 
 weary of suffering. 
 
 If they were not, it certainly was no fault 
 of their jaikrs. Rotten straw, filled w r ith 
 vermin, was the couch on which they lay 
 starving for days and weeks, the scantiest al- 
 lowance of miserable bread being thrown to 
 them through the grating. Here the poor 
 boys wasted away without the touch of any 
 loving hand — without a syllable of cheer 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 141 
 
 from any human being. Yet they had but 
 to utter one word of abjuration and their 
 prison-doors would fly open. 
 
 Wonderful was the faith that preserved 
 them from uttering that word — that gave 
 them such lofty heroism when so near starva- 
 tion ! 
 
 But temptation was to come to them in 
 still another form. Two additional prisoners 
 were one day shut into their dungeon, whom 
 they were surprised to recognize as old school- 
 mates, who had been arrested, like themselves, 
 for the crime of worshipping God according 
 to the dictates of their conscience. The faith 
 of these comrades, how r ever, was not proof 
 against the trials into which it had brought 
 them. They could sacrifice much for their re- 
 ligion, but not everything. In their case the 
 blessed seed had fallen upon stony ground ; 
 and though it had sprung up, yet for want 
 of root it could not resist the burning heat 
 of persecution. 
 
 The Mirecourt boys saw their vacillation, 
 and earnestly implored them to remain stead- 
 
142 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 fast. It was in vain. They wept over their 
 own weakness, but they yielded and lost the 
 martyr's crown. 
 
 At length came the rescript from the min- 
 ister of state, conveying the king's decree. 
 The parliament was convoked. The youthful 
 prisoners, pale and emaciated almost to 
 skeletons, were brought forth from their 
 miserable dungeon and placed in the dock. 
 Then the judge put on his black cap and 
 read their sentence : 
 
 " You, Louis Montrevel, and Andrew and 
 Henry Oster, convicted of being Huguenots, 
 and of having attempted to leave the king- 
 dom for the purpose of securing freedom in 
 your detestable heiesy, by the order of our 
 most gracious majesty, Louis XIV., I do 
 hereby condemn to the galleys for the re- 
 mainder of your natural life." 
 
 What a blow to fall on those young heads ! 
 Brave as they were, and hard as they had 
 struggled to prepare themselves for the worst, 
 their hearts quailed with dread, while drops 
 of agony stood on their pallid faces. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 143 
 
 Observing their emotion, the judge gave 
 them one more opportunity to retrieve their 
 fate. But they instantly repelled the propo- 
 sition ; they could not deny their Lord. 
 
 So the obstinate heretics were removed to 
 another city, where the gang was to be 
 formed. And here they were cast into a 
 filthy hole, where no ray of light ever pene- 
 trated, and where were crowded more than 
 thirty miserable ruffians, convicted of every 
 sort of wickedness and crime. 
 
 Dreadful companionship was this for the 
 pure-minded boys ! Assailed on every hand 
 with jeers and taunts and gibes, while their 
 ears were filled with obscene ribaldry and 
 jests and horrid profanity, they could only 
 lift up their hearts in silent prayer to Him 
 who was made perfect through suffering. 
 
 At length the gang was completed, and 
 being chained two and two, they were 
 marched together to Dunkirk. Language 
 cannot describe the sufferings of this route. 
 We have all shuddered at the appalling ac- 
 counts of " the middle passage" on board the 
 
144 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 African slavers. But this passage could not 
 have exceeded, in horrors, the fearful march 
 of the galley-slaves to their destination. Here 
 were congregated the basest, most profligate 
 characters — a company of hardened convicts, 
 " topfull of direst cruelty" — brutal, blas- 
 phemous, fiend-like. Shrieks, groans and 
 dreadful imprecations were freely intermin- 
 gled with the frequent crack of the blood- 
 bringing lash. 
 
 What must this scene have been to those 
 virtuous and high-minded boys ? To add the 
 last drop to their full cup, they were from 
 this time separated from one another. Poor 
 Louis was chained to the very vilest of that 
 vile set — a scoffing miscreant who had been 
 guilty of every species of crime, and who, 
 having twice escaped from the galleys and 
 been retaken, was now on his way there once 
 more. As may be conceived, he was in a 
 man-hating and God-defying mood. 
 
 To be thus bound to a mass of loathsome 
 moral corruption, a body of living death, 
 while his blood was chilled with the foul Ian- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 145 
 
 guage, and awful blasphemies and curses 
 poured continually into his ear, was indeed a 
 trial under which the boy's spirit quailed and 
 wellnigh sank. Then he cried unto God : 
 
 " Deliver me out of the mire, and let me 
 not sink : let me be delivered from them that 
 hate me, and out of the deep waters. 
 
 " Let not the water-flood overflow me, 
 neither let the deep swallow me up, and let 
 not the pit shut her mouth upon me. 
 
 " Hide not thy face from thy servant ; for 
 I am in trouble : hear me speedily." 
 
 And the Lord heard his supplications and 
 strengthened him out of Zion. There came 
 to his mind consoling promises : 
 
 "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust 
 also in him, and he shall bring it to pass." 
 
 "To him that overcometh will I give to 
 eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
 of the paradise of God." 
 
 Louis thought of his Saviour's patience 
 under the indignities heaped upon him, of 
 his prayers for his persecutors, of his infinite 
 pity for sinners. And there was kindled in 
 
 13 
 
146 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 his heart a tender compassion and an intense 
 yearning for the salvation of this wretched 
 being with whom he was so closely inter- 
 linked. This enabled him to bear all his 
 abuse with a divine meekness which at first 
 only exasperated the wretch to greater vio- 
 lence. 
 
 Thus with aching limbs and bleeding feet 
 did this miserable gang march side by side 
 on their dreary road, being cruelly beaten 
 whenever from weariness their steps faltered. 
 Miserably fed by day, at night they were 
 lodged in some dismal outhouse, where — 
 worse off than the beasts — they had not even 
 straw on which to lie down, while their inhu- 
 man driver seemed ever on the alert to invent 
 new modes of discomfort and torture. 
 
 Under all these trials and provocations, 
 such a wonderful patience and meekness did 
 Louis exhibit, and so kind and gentle was his 
 treatment of his fellow-convict, that at length, 
 as the constant trickling of water will wear 
 away even the granite, so that obdurate nature, 
 seemingly hardar than rock, began to soften. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 147 
 
 " I tell you what it is," he broke out one 
 day: "I can stand out against 'most any- 
 body or anything, but" (with a dreadful 
 oath) "I can't, somehow, seem to stand 
 against such an innocent lamb as you. I've 
 been thinking over those days, so long ago, 
 when my mother used to teach me my prayers 
 to the Virgin. Many's the time she's led me to 
 the grand cathedral, and taught me to sign 
 the cross on my forehead w r ith holy water, 
 the more's the pity. For when I found out 
 
 what d d fellows the priests were, with 
 
 all their flummeries and falsehoods, and 
 making money by cart-loads out of people's 
 sins, then I gave up attending mass; and 
 finally I broke away from everything good, 
 till I came to believe that God was nothing 
 but a bugbear to scare children with. So 
 now here I am, at the bottom of everything." 
 
 There was a touch of feeling in the man's 
 voice, which made Louis' heart beat quicker. 
 And as they travelled on he told him the 
 wonderful story of the Man of Sorrows, and 
 of the dark depths into which he descended 
 
148 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 for the redemption of man. He told him of 
 his holy life, his mingling with the vilest, his 
 patience under provocation, his agony in the 
 garden, and death upon the cross, with his 
 betrayal by one disciple, and his cruel deser- 
 tion by the others. Nor did he forget his 
 pardon of the dying thief. 
 
 As Duress listened his heart melted within 
 him, while a tear or two slowly rolled down 
 his cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, why could I not have heard all this 
 before?" he exclaimed in a broken voice. 
 
 And so the long days passed away, the 
 hoary sinner drinking in blessed teachings 
 from the lips of the earnest boy. 
 
 Louis had become so reduced from his 
 long sufferings, with a scarcity of food, that 
 his little remaining strength was rapidly 
 failing. 
 
 " I don't believe I shall be able to go on in 
 the morning," he said to Duress one night, 
 when they had stopped for lodging in a 
 crumbling barn; "and they will have to 
 leave me here to die of starvation." 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 149 
 
 " We don't do that, rny larnb. Here is my 
 last ration, which I don't want." 
 
 Louis protested, but was finally persuaded 
 to swallow it ; and dry and hard as was the 
 morsel, it somewhat revived him. 
 
 " Xow, if you can lay your head on me 
 you may, perhaps, catch a nap or two. I 
 know I'm not fit company for such a lamb, 
 and I'm not over clean, but I shall make a 
 better pillow than the floor." 
 
 Touched by his kindness, Louis complied 
 and soon fell into a sound slumber. But 
 when in the morning came the summons to 
 march, he was unable to stand. 
 
 " You will have to leave me, Duress." 
 
 " I'll stay and starve with you first. But 
 you keep still and I'll fix it." 
 
 When the driver of the gang came along, 
 Duress made a sign that he had something to 
 communicate. 
 
 * What's the row ?" asked the man as he 
 approached. 
 
 " Look a-here ; that's one of the Huguenot 
 cubs, and he's going to give us the dodge. 
 
 13* 
 
150 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 Now if you want to get him to the galleys, 
 I'll just take him there in spite of himself. 
 So give us the word, and I'll grab him fast/' 
 with a sprinkling of oaths all along. 
 
 " Serve 'm right — the hated cub! Yes, 
 grab him and welcome, only your chain must 
 have a longer pull." 
 
 When this was done, Duress, roughly catch- 
 ing up the boy : " Now open your mouth if 
 you dare." 
 
 The driver and his subalterns, who had 
 gathered round, broke into a hoarse laugh, 
 and with the crack of the whip and a volley 
 of imprecations the marching recommenced. 
 
 " I had to sham, or the wretch would have 
 left you there to die. And I had to swear 
 too, or I couldn't have deceived him, though 
 I knew 'twould hurt your feelings. But 
 you'll overlook it." 
 
 u It is the Master, Duress, whom it offends, 
 and you must ask forgiveness of him." 
 
 " Well, I'll try my best to break it off, 
 though it comes as natural as my breath. I 
 dunno as I'm doing you any kindness to take 
 
To the Galleys. 
 
 Page 151. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 151 
 
 you along, but I can't spare my little priest 
 yet a while." 
 
 Most tenderly Duress carried the boy, who, 
 from sheer exhaustion, fell asleep on his 
 shoulder. Whenever the driver or any of 
 his underlings passed by, they would chuckle, 
 as much as to say, " That's a good one." 
 
 " I'm afraid I have tired you out, Duress," 
 said Louis, on awakening from his long nap, 
 refreshed and able to bear his own weight 
 once more. 
 
 " Bless your heart ! you're nothing but skin 
 and bone. I've been thinking how much 
 better a load I had than most of the things 
 I've lugged ; a body murdered, for instance." 
 But seeing Louis involuntarily shudder : " I'm 
 a brute from letting on this way to such an 
 innocent lamb." 
 
 At length the toilsome march was over, 
 and Louis Montrevel and his new friend were 
 entered as slaves upon one of the six galleys 
 stationed at the port of Dunkirk. 
 
 The French galley was a vessel about a 
 hundred and fifty feet long and forty wide. 
 
152 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 On each side were twenty-five benches, to 
 every one of which was attached a long, 
 heavy oar, which was pulled by six convicts 
 chained by the leg to a bench. There were 
 thus three hundred of these rowers to each 
 galley. About fifty free marines worked the 
 sails and managed the vessel. And in addi- 
 tion were a hundred soldiers, with a number 
 of officers for general command and for the 
 custody of the slaves. 
 
 The galley had at her bow five guns rang- 
 ing from eighteen to thirty-six pounders. Her 
 mode of attack was to bear down heavily with 
 her oars, so as to drive her prow into the 
 enemy's stern, and then, firing her guns, to 
 board him with her soldiers and marines. A 
 part of the guns were always kept charged 
 and pointed at the convicts, in order to pre- 
 vent their taking part with the enemy, and 
 to suppress mutiny. But as mowing down 
 the rowers would leave the vessel powerless, 
 these galleys were mainly used for coasting and 
 for cutting off stragglers, though occasionally 
 they were employed for conveying official per- 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 153 
 
 sons to a distant port. Their principal use, 
 however, was as a penal infliction for those 
 convicted of capital crimes, such as murder, 
 burglary and Protestantism. 
 
 The overseer, or slave-driver, was called Le 
 Comite, and the two inferiors under him, Les 
 Sous Comites. Their badge of office was the 
 cowhide, to the lavish use of which they 
 were urged by the superior officers when a 
 greater rate of speed was desired. On the 
 naked backs of these poor fellows, labouring 
 at the oar and stripped from the waist 
 upward, thick and fast would fall the dread- 
 ful blows, bringing away strips of skin, and 
 followed by the shrieks of the victims, as the 
 blood flowed from their lacerated flesh. 
 
 So far as the hated Huguenots were con- 
 cerned, all this was neither more nor less 
 than the long iron arms of the Inquisition 
 reaching out to crush them, although under 
 the disguise of civil law. Such degrading 
 bondage ! such incessant toil ! such cruel task- 
 masters ! — separated from all refining as well 
 as religious influences, and subjected to the 
 
154 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 
 
 vilest companionship, the most loathsome 
 associations ! — what wonder, if under this con- 
 stant wear of body and soul, the faith of some 
 should at length give away ? 
 
 Nurtured by a tender mother in the bosom 
 of a refined and affectionate family, Louis was 
 ill prepared for the dreadful scenes to which 
 he was now introduced. As the future 
 spread out gloomily before him, no wonder 
 that hot tears flowed from his eyes. 
 
 " Cheer up, messmate !" said a voice behind 
 him, and turning his head he saw Duress, 
 from whom he had temporarily been separated, 
 but who was now chained to the same bench. 
 
 " You'll hardly thank me for bringing you 
 here, my lamb. But since here you are, I 
 hope I shall find some chance of easing your 
 dreadful burden, if ever so little." 
 
 " Thank you, Duress, but I cannot endure 
 looking forward to years spent in this dread- 
 ful place." 
 
 " I don't believe it'll be many years, for 
 though you've got a tough spirit, your weak 
 body can never long stand this hard work. 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 155 
 
 But have you seen that poor old fellow on 
 the bench before us? — no, not the one you 
 are looking at, but that other with white hair, 
 and just such a patient look as you Huguenots 
 all wear. I'll be bound he's one of you." 
 
 Louis fixed his eyes in the direction pointed 
 out, and having gazed intently a few minutes, 
 exclaimed in a low voice : 
 
 " Why, that is Father Legarme. My God !" 
 lifting his eyes to heaven, " have mercy on 
 the holy man !" 
 
 It was not long before he had a chance to 
 make himself known to his good pastor, who 
 soon told him his sad story. It seems that 
 after being arrested, convicted of heresy and 
 condemned to death, his sentence was com- 
 muted. So here he was in chains as a galley- 
 slave. 
 
 It was one of the saddest things in Louis' 
 sad life to see this venerable patriarch tug- 
 ging at the oars by day, and at night cower- 
 ing for sleep under his rude bench. He 
 felt as if he would gladly have performed 
 his tasks and borne his stripes. Alas! it 
 
156 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 was almost more than he could do to endure 
 his own. 
 
 Apart from the liability to those occasional 
 extra labours which involved indescribable 
 suffering, the ordinary condition of these un- 
 happy beings was painful in the extreme. 
 Constantly chained to the bench at which 
 they sat by day, and under which they slept 
 by night, exposed to all the vicissitudes of 
 the elements, covered with vermin, scantily 
 clothed, miserably fed, and degraded almost 
 below the brutes by the treatment they re- 
 ceived, they were compelled by sheer force of 
 the whip to render an amount of work at the 
 oar which under no other system could have 
 been extracted from the human muscles. 
 
 Such were the toils and such the sufferings 
 in which Father Legarme, Louis Montrevel 
 and Duress were now intimately associated, 
 the two latter being chained to the same 
 bench. The consoling passages from the 
 Divine Word which the boy repeated to his 
 companion in their chance moments of inter- 
 course fell upon his thirsty spirit with a 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 157 
 
 quickening and comforting power, while the 
 occasional counsels of the aged pastor were 
 eagerly treasured up. And a blessed comfort 
 it was to the two older Christians to see Christ 
 formed more and more distinctly in the life 
 of the late hardened reprobate. 
 
 Day after day — month after month — year 
 after year — no outward change in the life 
 of these worn, oppressed, yet trusting con- 
 victs ! But He who looks upon the hearts 
 saw that they, each and all, were fast ripening 
 for heaven. 
 
 It was wonderful that Father Legarme's 
 strength had held out so many years. Of 
 late, however, Louis and Duress had noticed 
 a failure in his powers of endurance. 
 
 It was one of those days of oppressive heat 
 in the month of August when, ordinarily, 
 labour was made light as possible. But as 
 the officers desired to reach a certain port 
 with the utmost despatch, commands were 
 given for a twelve hours' pull without a mo- 
 ment's intermission. In order to accomplish 
 this the comites, from time to time, would 
 
 14 
 
158 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 
 
 put into the mouths of the rowers pieces of 
 bread dipped in wine, which they did while 
 they were pulling, so as to prevent the neces- 
 sity of their dropping the oar. 
 
 The crack of the whip, the shrieks and 
 yells of the bleeding victims, the awful oaths 
 of the comites and the shouts of the officers 
 urging them on — what a scene of horrors was 
 there presented ! And how did Louis' heart 
 ache for Father Legarme toiling thus in the 
 burning sun ! 
 
 " The old father won't last over for another 
 such day as this," said Duress in a low voice 
 to Louis, to which he could only answer by a 
 deep sigh. 
 
 It was toward the very last of the passage 
 that the good pastor's strength finally gave way, 
 and he was obliged to slacken his efforts. 
 The comite, provoked beyond measure to 
 lose his services at such a juncture, rained on 
 him blows like hail, till the old man dropped 
 in a swoon. There he lay without conscious- 
 ness or motion till they reached their port. 
 Then the whistle was sounded ; and a dose of 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 159 
 
 opium being administered all round to ensure 
 sound slumber as a preparation for the toils 
 of the coming day, the tired oarsmen dropped 
 under their benches. 
 
 The moment their comites were out of the 
 way, both Louis and Duress, exhausted as 
 they were, sprang fqrward to see if any life 
 might be lingering in that poor wreck of 
 a body. When they found that he still 
 breathed, they almost regretted that all was 
 not over. 
 
 " Poor old fellow !" said Duress, sorrow- 
 fully ; " I thought he'd have got inside the 
 bright gates this time surely, but here he is 
 still, the more's the pity. Since he's alive, 
 though, I'm bound to take care of him. But 
 you must go straight back, my lamb, for the 
 comites, one or the other of them, may pass 
 along here any minute. And if they should 
 nab you, 'twould be a hard case." 
 
 " But I must stay and help you." 
 
 " 'Twont do, messmate. Don't you remem- 
 ber the threat they made the last time you 
 helped him out of a swoon? Besides, you 
 
160 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 could do nothing for him which I can't do, 
 for I'm an old hand in these cases." 
 
 " But you are in as much danger as I." 
 
 "You let me alone, my lamb, and give 
 heed to my words. You can see and hear 
 everything from your bench, and will be 
 within call if I want you, while now you're 
 only in the way. So, it you don't want to 
 distress me, march!" 
 
 All this time both of them had been chaf- 
 ing the old man's limbs, but thus entreated, 
 Louis tenderly laid down his hand and with- 
 drew. When Father Legarme's pulses grew 
 a little stronger, Duress tore pieces from his 
 shirt, and dipping them in water laid them 
 gently on his inflamed wounds, after which 
 he fed him from his own scanty allowance. 
 
 " It is of little use, my son," said the good 
 father, trying to smile, "to patch up this 
 poor tenement, which is fast falling to pieces. 
 I am sorry not to bear my dying testimony 
 to my Master's faithfulness before all these 
 poor creatures, but he knows I have the 
 will. Do all you can for my beloved Louis, 
 
FOE THE TPwUTH. 161 
 
 and tell him that God will never suffer him 
 to be tempted above what he is able." 
 
 " That I will, but he himself is listening 
 to every word you say." 
 
 At this point Louis came forward, and 
 pressing his lips to the trembling hand of his 
 beloved friend, said, as distinctly as his sobs 
 would allow : 
 
 " Pray for me once more, my father !" 
 
 The dying man, having offered up a few 
 broken but fervent petitions, then gave them 
 his parting blessing, when Duress insisted on 
 Louis' leaving them. Thus driven away, he 
 stole back to his station, and leaning against 
 the bench, looked gloomily around him. 
 
 It was a sad picture that met his eye. 
 Under the galley-benches were huddled, 
 one over another, the exhausted convicts, 
 buried in the deathlike slumber of opium. 
 Many of them had dropped down in their 
 weariness, without stopping to put on any 
 covering. And there in the bright moonlight 
 he could distinctly see their backs gashed and 
 bleeding from the merciless cowhide, while 
 
162 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 the mild queen of heaven looked down pity- 
 ingly on this spectacle of woe. 
 
 " Is this persecution to continue for ever ?" 
 he said to himself. 
 
 It was indeed a dreary future that stretched 
 away before him. He had often felt that 
 martyrdom would be a blessed exchange for 
 his present existence. In a fearful crisis, such 
 as occurred under the pressure of inquisitorial 
 tortures or in confronting a violent death, the 
 excitement sometimes occasioned a rallying of 
 all the vital forces of body and mind, which 
 sustained and elevated the soul to a pitch of 
 heavenly rapture. 
 
 But these days of degrading, bitter, hope- 
 less servitude — slowly revolving, one after 
 another, in what seemed an interminable 
 cycle ; these days of sickening toil and abuse, 
 in which the spirit was fettered with chains 
 dragging it in the dust; days when the 
 physical frame became too weary and worn 
 for the utterance of prayer, while no blessed 
 Sabbath rest ever came to strengthen and 
 refresh ; — oh it was this lingering martyrdom 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 163 
 
 of the soul, wearing away, little by little, all 
 its vital forces, it was this which Louis felt 
 he had not courage longer to endure. 
 
 " Will the Lord cast off for ever ?" he cried 
 out in his agony, " and will he be favorable 
 no more ?" 
 
 " Is his mercy clean gone for ever ? doth his 
 promise fail for evermore ?" 
 
 " Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? hath 
 he in anger shut up his tender mercies ?" 
 
 Then stole in upon him terrible question- 
 ings, such as the tempter well understands 
 how to suggest : 
 
 " Who knows that there is a God ? If 
 there was, and he was benevolent as had been 
 represented, would he turn a deaf ear to the 
 pleadings of his children ? Would he suffer 
 his chosen ones to be hunted from place to 
 place like wild beasts, and to become the 
 very offscouring of the earth ?" 
 
 Thoughts of the tender-hearted Louise also 
 came to him, and of her earnest efforts to 
 save him from this dreadful doom. 
 
 " And have I sacrificed all my earthly pros- 
 
164 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 pects for a mere fable ?" he exclaimed in 
 bitterness. 
 
 These doubts and questionings ran riot in 
 his bewildered mind, ploughing deep fur- 
 rows in the very centre of his being. In the 
 midst of this conflict, while great drops of 
 anguish stood on his forehead, and such rend- 
 ing sobs broke forth as no bodily torture had 
 been able to force from him, he suddenly 
 catches the clear tones of Father Legarme : 
 
 " Thanks be to God, which giveth us the 
 victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ !" 
 
 These words of the dying martyr broke the 
 tempter's hold. As at the approach of sun- 
 light the moles and bats and all the monsters 
 of darkness flee to their hiding-places, so, at 
 this single glimpse of the Sun of Righteousness 
 did all his evil thoughts melt and vanish away. 
 What a change had passed over everything ! 
 As he thought of his dismantled home, of his 
 noble father and mother, his brothers and 
 little sisters, and of the scattered flock into 
 which the hungry wolves had fastened their 
 bloody fangs, this passage was recalled to him : 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 165 
 
 " These are they which canie out of great 
 tribulation, and have washed their robes and 
 made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 
 " They shall hunger no more, neither 
 thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light 
 on them, nor any heat. 
 
 " For the Lamb which is in the midst of 
 the throne shall feed them, and shall lead 
 them unto living fountains of waters; and 
 God shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes." 
 
 Then he thought of his tried friend, Duress, 
 whom he had led to Christ, who for years 
 had borne faithful witness to the truth, and 
 who at this moment stood unflinchingly at 
 the post of danger. Was it not worth all his 
 sufferings to bring to Christ one such soul ? 
 
 As he looked round once more on that 
 pitiable sight which had lately harrowed his 
 soul to madness — the sight of wretched con- 
 victs, whose degrading bondage and fearful 
 sufferings were uncheered by any light from 
 the great future — there came a voice from the 
 infinite heights : 
 
166 MARTYRS ASTD SUFFERERS 
 
 " What I do thou knowest not now, but 
 thou shalt know hereafter. Trust to infinite 
 love, and one day all these discords shall be 
 harmonized." 
 
 " I can, I do trust," he responded, while 
 every heart-beat uttered, 
 
 " Thy' will, O God, not mine, be done !" 
 
 An ineffable calm stole over him, while the 
 bitter sorrows of the past and of that future 
 which had seemed interminable, to his now 
 cleared vision appeared only a light affliction, 
 which is but for a moment, working out a 
 far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
 glory. 
 
 The long night had dragged through its 
 appointed hours. The rising sun was just 
 tinging the waters with a faint glow. It 
 looked down upon Louis Montrevel leaning 
 quietly against his bench, his pale face illu- 
 mined with celestial light — a face which at 
 that moment no one would have taken for 
 that of a galley-slave. 
 
 It looked also upon the dying martyr and 
 upon his homely, faithful nurse. As Duress 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 167 
 
 bent over to moisten his parched mouth, those 
 white lips faltered out : 
 
 " Sing to me." 
 
 And the rough convict in a low voice sang 
 one of the sweet Huguenot hymns he had 
 learned of Louis. 
 
 Just then the comite passed along. But 
 Duress did not pause in his song. 
 
 "What are you here for? Stop your 
 infernal noise and back to your bench." 
 
 " Don't you see the good man's dying ? So 
 I must stay here and try to ease his passage 
 over Jordan." 
 
 " Over to purgatory, you mean," replied the 
 comite savagely ; adding, with a dreadful oath, 
 " We'll soon send you after him." 
 
 At the sound of that discordant voice, with 
 a startled look Father Legarme opened his 
 eyes. 
 
 "He's away now," whispered Duress 
 tenderly, " and your soul can depart in peace." 
 
 The old man looked upward, exclaiming : 
 
 "Glorious Saviour! Come, Lord, come 
 quickly !" 
 
168 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 
 
 One moment more and he had passed into 
 the celestial city. Duress folded those wasted 
 hands, and then wiping his eyes with the 
 back of his bronzed hand, returned to his 
 post, saying to Louis : 
 
 " The Lord take care of thee, my lamb, for 
 I shall soon follow the good father." 
 
 An hour had passed. The whistle had 
 roused all hands, and the body of the martyr 
 had been flung into the sea. 
 
 " The bastinado for Duress I" shouted the 
 comite. 
 
 A shudder ran round the deck, while Louis 
 closed his eyes in earnest supplication. 
 
 Being led forth, the convict was stretched 
 prostrate over a plank, while two stout galley- 
 slaves held his arms pinioned and two more 
 his legs. Then a gigantic Turk approached, 
 and with his utmost vigour applied the cow- 
 hide, with every lash bringing away a long 
 strip of skin. Not a groan escaped the sufferer, 
 but after a few blows he broke out in 
 prayer : 
 
 " O Lord ! give me strength to suffer for 
 
FOR THE TRUTH. 169 
 
 thee. Forgive iny poor comrades ; forgive all 
 my sins and take me to thyself!" 
 
 "We'll soon stop his whining/' said the 
 comite, furiously urging on the Turk to 
 greater force. 
 
 " Forgive my enemies ! forgive the comite 
 for his cruelty, and teach him thy blessed 
 Gospel !" 
 
 " The blessed cowhide shall teach you to 
 shut your mouth." 
 
 With the twelfth stroke, Duress lost the 
 power of speech, but still the comite urged 
 on the Turk : 
 
 " Faster ! harder ! Let him smart !" 
 
 The savage executioner continued till the 
 sweat rolled down his face, when he dropped 
 the lash, exclaiming: 
 
 "I am worn out: I cannot fetch another 
 stroke." 
 
 Then the comite seized the dreadful instru- 
 ment, and dealt stroke after stroke till he too 
 was exhausted, when he flung down his whip, 
 saying coolly : 
 
 " I think likely we've done for him now, 
 
 15 
 
170 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS. 
 
 though he had as many lives as a cat. Turn 
 him over, there." 
 
 He spoke the truth. The bloody instru- 
 ment had opened for another saint the gates 
 of paradise. The once hardened reprobate 
 had gone to receive the martyr's crown. 
 
 " And I saw under the altar the souls of 
 them that were slain for the Word of God, 
 and for the testimony which they held : 
 
 " And they cried with a loud voice, saying, 
 How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou 
 not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
 dwell on the earth ?" 
 
 " Revered pastor ! beloved Duress !" ex- 
 claimed Louis with clasped hands : " your 
 conflict is ended, your victory won ! help me 
 to endure till my turn comes !" 
 
 The mangled form found a kind shelter in 
 the blue waters, and Louis Montrevel, with 
 the peace of God in his soul, took up his cross 
 anew and went on his way. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The following books on persecution and martyr- 
 dom may, as they have time and opportunity, be read 
 by the young : 
 
 1. The Golden Rule. 
 
 2. Hadassah. 
 
 3. Martyr's Daughter. 
 
 4. Good for Evil. 
 
 5. The Martyred Missionaries. 
 
 6. The Bohemian Martyrs. 
 
 7. Witnesses for Christ. 
 
 8. Leila Ada, the Converted Jewess. 
 
 9. The Waldenses, illustrated. 
 
 10. Madagascar Martyrs. 
 
 11. Traditions of the Covenanters. 
 
 12. Huguenot Galley Slaves. 
 
 13. Annals of Persecution. 
 
 14. English Martyrology. 
 
 15. History of the Inquisition. 
 
 16. French Protestants. 
 
 171 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 All these books are issued by the Presbyterian 
 Board of Publication, and may be read with profit 
 by youth. They illustrate the power of sustaining 
 grace ; they show what God can enable old and 
 young to do. As the mind of the reader shall 
 mature, let him read such books as these : 
 
 1. The Cloud of Witnesses. 
 
 2. Milner's Church History. 
 
 3. SchafFs Church History. 
 
 4. Josephus. 
 
 5. Quick's Synodicon. 
 
 6. Fox's Book of Martyrs. 
 
 It is a kind wish, May you never be persecuted ; it 
 is a kinder, May you never be a persecutor. 
 
 THE END.