support of what he believed to be the truth. Commanded to appear at the Diet of Worms, he presented himself there, notwithstanding the terrible and very recent example of John Huss, with dignity, simplicity, and firmness. Far from setting Rome at defiance at the first, he wrote submissively to the Pope, and exhibited no other appearance of superiority but that of his immense knowledge over Cardinal Cajetan, and the other theologians deputed by the Court of Rome to convert him. Being an Augustinian Monk and Doctor, he had been sent to Rome on the business of his order; and there, every thing that struck his eye filled his heart with indignation. After having refused the offers of the Court, after having been the friend, the adviser, and the spiritual father of so many great men and princes, he might have acquired vast wealth; but that he did not want. Luther lived for nobler purposes, and died in a state bordering on poverty, leaving to his wife and children only the esteem due to his name. The German nation acknowledges Luther for the reformer of its literature and of its idiom. One of his first cares was to publish a faithful translation of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, from the original. It may easily be conceived with what avidity this glorious work was received, and what a general sensation it excited. "No writer, for many ages," says an admirable scholar, "had seen writings bought with such avidity, and so read, from the throne to the cottage; the popularity, the natural ease, the energy of expression which prevailed in them, and a doctrine which cheered and elevated the soul, gained him the good-will of the most upright and judicious of all classes." Luther has been accused of violence; but then, we should consider the insufferable provocation he had to endure. Had he not been ardent and vehement, how could he have become the leader of such a revolution?

Let us listen to one of the Papal invectives launched against him by Clement the Fifth: "May God strike him with imbecility and madness; may heaven overwhelm him with its thunders; may the anger of God, with that of St. Peter and St. Paul, fall upon him in this world and in the next; may the whole universe revolt against him; may the earth swallow him up alive; may his name perish from the earliest generation; and may his memory disappear; may all the elements be adverse to him; may his children, delivered into the hands of his enemies, be crushed before his eyes." Such were the maledictions of the modern Shimei; keeping in remembrance also that the Pope, according to the creed of every good Catholic, is a person of perfect and impeccable infallibility. And what a bungling attempt is the usage of penance to purchase heaven! Papists tell us, that confession to a Priest is of infinite value, and amounts to an exchange, which God allows, of the temporal punishments we have deserved by sin, into these small penitential works. Yet, it is to be feared, say they, that the penance enjoined is seldom sufficient to take away all the punishment due to God's justice on account of our sins. The balance of the account remains unpaid, and must be settled in purgatory. After confession, the penitent is ordered to say, "I beg pardon of God, and penance and absolution from you, my ghostly father." The Priest then gives the absolution, and adds, "May the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the saints, and whatsoever good thou shalt do, and whatsoever evil thou shalt suffer, be to thee unto the remission of thy sins, and the increase of grace." In conformity with this piece of priestly fraud, many poor creatures have submitted to miserable hardships: some have worn hair shirts, having given themselves a certain number

of stripes: others have taken long and painful pil grimages; and in Spain and Italy these woeful tra vellers are frequently observed, almost naked, loaded with chains, and groaning at every step. But of all the proofs which may be adduced to discover the true character of this base and fallen Church, her persecuting spirit is the most conclusive. This has always been seen. The friends to the Reformation were anathematized and excommunicated; and the life of Luther was often in danger, though at last he died on the bed of peace. Innumerable schemes were resorted to for the purpose of overthrowing the Reformed Church, and wars were waged with that view. The invincible Spanish Armada, as it was vainly called, had this end in view. The Inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century, was a dreadful weapon. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued thirty years; and the blood of the saints was said to flow like the waters of a river. Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary were similarly visited. In Holland and the Low Countries the most amazing cruelties were exercised under the merciless and unrelenting hands of the Spaniards, to whom the inhabitants of that part of the world were then in subjection. Father Paul states, that the Belgian martyrs amounted to 50,000; but Grotius observes, that at least twice that number suffered by the hand of the executioner. In France the same diabolical spirit prevailed. After a succession of cruelties, practised in various forms, a most violent persecution broke out in the year 1572, in the reign of Charles the Ninth. Many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, upon occasion of the marriage of the King of Navarre with the sister of the French monarch. The Queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was, how

ever, poisoned by a pair of gloves before the marriage was solemnized. Coligni, Admiral of France, a brave and virtuous man, was basely murdered in his own house, and then thrown out of the window, to gratify the malice of the Popish Duke of Guise. The Admiral's head was afterwards cut off, and sent to the Queen-mother; and his body, after having been submitted to a thousand indignities, was hung up by the feet on a gibbet. After this, the murderers ravaged the whole city of Paris, and, in the course of three days, butchered above ten thousand persons, among whom were several of the nobility and gentry, and others of high moral reputation. The streets and passages resounded with the noise of those who met together for murder and plunder; and a prodigious multitude of men, women with child, maidens, and children, were involved in one common destruction. From the city of Paris, the massacre spread through the whole kingdom. In the city of Meaux two hundred Protestants were thrown into prison, and, after the persecutors had ravished and killed a great number of women, and secured piles of plunder, they executed their fury upon those in confinement. Calling them out one by one, they were killed, like sheep appointed for the slaughter. In Orleans they murdered above five hundred men, women, and children, and enriched themselves with their spoil. Similar cruelties were practised at Angers, Troyes, Bourges, La Charité, and especially at Lyons, where above eight hundred Protestants were inhumanly destroyed. Children were killed while hanging on their parents' necks: parents were torn from the embraces of their offspring, and put to death ropes were put about some, who were dragged inhumanly about the streets, and thrown half dead into the rivers. What aggravated the cruelty of these scenes, and is demonstrative of the sanguinary

spirit of Papacy, is, that the news of these excesses was received at Rome with boundless satisfaction. When the letters of the Pope's Legate were read in the assembly of the Cardinals, by which he assured the Pope that all was transacted by the express will and command of the King, it was immediately decreed, that the Pope should march with his Cardinals to the church of St. Mark, and in the most solemn manner give thanks to God for so great a blessing conferred on the see of Rome and the Christian world; and that on the Monday after, solemn mass should be celebrated in the church of Minerva, at which the Pope, Gregory the Thirteenth, and Cardinals, were present; and that a jubilee should be published throughout the whole Christian world, to return thanks to God for the extirpation of the enemies of the truth, and of the Church in France. In the evening the cannon of the castle of St. Angelo were fired, to testify the public joy; the whole city was illuminated with bonfires; and no one sign of joy was omitted that was usually made for the greatest victories obtained in favour of the Romish Church. But these persecutions, though black as Erebus, were far exceeded in cruelty by those which took place in the time of Louis the Fourteenth. The troopers and dragoons, hired for the purpose, went into the houses of Protestants, where they destroyed the furniture, broke the looking-glasses, wasted their corn and wine, and sold what they could not destroy; so that in four or five days, the Protestants had been plundered of property worth a million of money. But this was only the beginning of sorrows. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into stables for horses, and treated the owners of the houses where they quartered with the greatest insolence and cruelty, lashing them about, and depriving them of food. When they saw the sweat and blood run down their