The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

Character of Henry III.—​Assassination of the Duke of Guise.—​Cruel Edicts of Louis XIV.—​Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.—​Sufferings of Protestants.—​Important Question.—​Thomas Chalmers.—​Experiment at St. John.—​His Labors and Death.—​Jonathan Edwards.—​His Resolutions.—​His Marriage.—​His Trials.—​His Death.—​John Wesley.—​His Conversion.—​George Whitefield.—​First Methodist Conference.—​Death of Wesley.—​Robert Hall.—​His Character and Death.—​William Paley.—​His Works and Death.—​The Sabbath.—​Power of the Gospel.—​Socrates.—​Scene on the Prairie.—​The Bible.

HE seventeenth century opened with almost universal corruption, outside of the limited circle of the true disciples of Jesus Christ. The moral and political world presented the aspect of a raging sea darkened by storm-clouds, with the waves dashing upon every shore. The utmost profligacy of manners prevailed generally in courts; while the masses of the people were ignorant and degraded. The Papal Church, which had degenerated into a towering organization of worldly ambition, had become corrupt almost beyond the power of the pen to describe.

Henry III. had succeeded his miserable brother, Charles a IX., upon the throne of France. While Duke of Anjou, he had distinguished himself by his malignant hostility to the Protestants, or Huguenots as they were there called. He was as weak as he was wicked, and never hesitated to employ the dagger of the assassin to rid himself of those he feared. Impelled by his infamous mother, Catharine de Medici, he endeavored to wage exterminating war against the Protestants who had survived the massacre of St. Bartholomew. But they, led by Henry of Navarre,—subsequently Henry IV. of France,—and aided by other Protestant powers, made a vigorous defence. Wretched France was thus devastated by the most cruel civil war.

Fearing the rising power of the Guises, who were the devoted partisans of the Papacy, Henry secured the assassination of the Duke of Guise, and of his brother the cardinal. This exasperated the pope. Henry was stabbed by a fanatic monk. The Pope, Sixtus V., in full consistory, applauded the deed. He apparently wished to encourage the assassination of all sovereigns who were not obsequiously obedient to the Papacy. The regicide he pronounced, in declamatory phrase, “to be comparable, as regards the salvation of the world, to the incarnation and the resurrection, and that the courage of the youthful assassin surpassed that of Eleazar and Judith.”

The Catholic historian, Chateaubriand, declares that “it was of importance to the pope to encourage fanatics who were ready to murder kings in the name of the Papal power.” The annalist Brantome says that he saw a bull of the pope ordering the assassination of Elizabeth, the Protestant queen of England.

Upon the accession to the throne of France of Henry IV.,—who, with his mother, had been at the head of the Protestant armies of Europe,—Henry, who had been politically a Protestant, not spiritually a disciple of Jesus, found it expedient to adopt the Catholic faith, saying with nonchalance, “A crown is surely worth a mass.” He, however, continued to befriend the Protestants. In the year 1598 he issued a famous decree, called the Edict of Nantes, which allowed Protestants the free exercise of their religion, and gave them equal claims with Catholics to all offices and dignities. They were also left in possession of certain fortresses which had been ceded to them for their security.

But Louis XIV., grasping at absolute power, grew more and more fanatic during his long reign, oppressing the Protestants with ever-increasing cruelty. Edict after edict deprived them of their civil rights; and dragoons were sent into their provinces to compel them to abjure their faith. The persecution was so merciless, that, notwithstanding the king guarded his frontiers with the utmost vigilance, more than five hundred thousand Huguenots escaped to the Protestant countries of Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England.

The fanaticism of the Catholics was such, that the Edict of Nantes undoubtedly cost Henry IV. his life. The assassin Ravaillac, who twice plunged his dagger into the bosom of the king, said in his examination,—

“I killed the king, because, in making war upon the pope, he made war upon God, since the pope is God.”

Louis XIV., while assuring the Protestant powers of Europe that he would continue to respect the Edict of Nantes, commenced issuing a series of ordinances in direct contravention of that contract. He excluded Protestants from all public offices; forbade their employment as physicians, lawyers, apothecaries, booksellers, printers, or even nurses. In many of the departments of France, the Protestants composed nearly the entire population. Here it was impossible to enforce the atrocious decrees. In other places, where parties were more equally divided, riots and bloodshed were excited.

These ordinances were soon followed by others prohibiting marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Catholic servants were forbidden employment in Protestant families; and Catholics were also forbidden to employ Protestant servants. On the 17th of June, 1680, the king issued the following decree:—

“We wish that our subjects of the pretended reformed religion, both male and female, having attained the age of seven years, may, and it is hereby made lawful for them to embrace the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion; and that, to this effect, they may be allowed to abjure the pretended reformed religion, without their fathers and mothers and other kinsmen being allowed to offer them the least hinderance under any pretext whatever.”

This law enabled any one to go before a Catholic court, and testify that any child had made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, or had expressed a desire to enter a Catholic church, and that child was immediately wrested from its parents, and placed in a convent for education, while the parents were compelled to defray all the expenses.

A decree was then issued, that all Protestants who would abjure their faith might defer the payment of their debts for three years; should be exempt from taxation, and from the burden of having soldiers quartered upon them. Those who refused were punished with a double portion of taxation and a double quartering of soldiers. Officers were sent to the sick-beds of Protestants, that, by importunity and urgent solicitation, they might convert them to the Catholic faith. Physicians were ordered, under a heavy penalty, to give notice if any Protestants were sick. If any convert from Catholicism were received into any Protestant church, that church edifice was immediately closed, and the further privilege of public worship prohibited; while the Catholic convert was punished with confiscation of property, and banishment from the realm.

From four to ten dragoons were lodged in the house of every Protestant. These fanatic and cruel men were ordered not to kill the Protestants with whom they lodged, but to do every thing in their power to constrain them to abjure their Christian faith.

“They attached crosses to the muzzles of their muskets to force the Protestants to kiss them. When any one resisted, they thrust these crosses against the face and breasts of the unfortunate people. They spared children no more than persons advanced in years. Without compassion for their age, they fell upon them with blows, and beat them with the flat of their swords and the butt of their muskets. They did this so cruelly, that some were crippled for life.”213

The Protestants were prohibited from attempting to leave the kingdom, under penalty of perpetual consignment to the galleys. Every book in advocacy of Protestantism, which the most rigorous search could find, was burned. When a representation was made to the king of the terrible suffering these enactments were inflicting upon two millions of Protestants, he replied,—

“To bring back all my subjects to Catholic unity, I would willingly with one hand cut off the other.”

The king flattered himself that he was thus absolutely exterminating Protestantism from France. His officers wrote him very flattering but false accounts of the success which was attending their efforts. It was reported to him, that, by the persuasive energies of this rigorous persecution, sixty thousand Protestants in the district of Bordeaux, and twenty thousand in Montauban, had been converted to the Catholic faith.

In September, 1685, Louvois wrote to the king,—

“Before the end of the month, there will not remain ten thousand Protestants in all the district of Bordeaux, where there were a hundred and fifty thousand the 15th of last month.”

The Duke of Noailles wrote, “The number of Protestants in the district of Nîsmes is about a hundred and forty thousand. I believe, that, at the end of the month, none will be left.”

Deluded by these reports, Louis XIV., on the 18th of October, 1685, signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In the preamble to this fatal act, he said,—

“We see now, with the just acknowledgment we owe to God, that our measures have secured the end which we ourselves proposed, since the better and greater part of our subjects of the pretended reformed religion have embraced the Catholic faith; and the maintenance of the Edict of Nantes remains, therefore, superfluous.”

By this act it was declared that the Protestant worship should be nowhere tolerated in France. All Protestant pastors were ordered to leave the kingdom within fifteen days, under penalty of being sent to the galleys. Protestant pastors who would abjure their faith were promised a salary one-third more than they had previously enjoyed. Parents were forbidden to instruct their children in the Protestant religion. Every child born in the kingdom was to be baptized and educated by a Catholic priest. All Protestant Frenchmen, out of France, were ordered to return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of property. Any Protestant layman or woman who should attempt to leave France, was, if arrested, doomed to imprisonment for life.

Such were the infamous decrees enacted in France but two hundred years ago. The woes they caused can never be gauged: the calamities they entailed upon France have been awful. Hundreds of thousands, in defiance of poverty, the dungeon, and utter temporal ruin, adhered to their faith: thousands, haggard with want and despair, through all conceivable suffering, effected their escape.

At the time of the Revocation, the Protestant population of France was estimated at between two and three millions. Though the edict was enforced by the government with the utmost severity, many noble-hearted Catholics sympathized with the Protestants, befriended them in various ways, and aided them to escape. Though guards were placed upon every road leading to the frontiers, and thousands of fugitives were arrested, still thousands escaped. Some, in armed bands, fought their way with drawn swords; some obtained passports from kind-hearted Catholic governors; some bribed their guards; some travelled by night from hiding-place to hiding-place; some assumed the disguise of peddlers selling Catholic relics. It is estimated by Catholic writers that about two hundred and thirty thousand escaped. Antoine Court, one of the Protestant pastors, places the number as high as eight hundred thousand. M. Sismondi thinks that as many perished as escaped: he places the number of each at between three and four hundred thousand.

The suffering was awful. Multitudes perished of cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Thousands were shot by the soldiery. So many were arrested, that the