Rome has established, and of punishing to the uttermost all who shall be found guilty, or even suspected, of such deviation, it will not be considered impertinent to introduce the subject with a few remarks on persecution for conscience' sake.

There can be nothing more certain, than that the genius of Christianity is hostile to persecution in every form. The gospel is addressed to the understanding, and to the heart of man, with this very solemn intimation, “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned." The condemnation of unbelief, which is the only deadly heresy, is not committed to fellow-creatures for the purpose of being executed upon the persons of unbelievers in the present life. Unbelief is not a sin against men, but against God, whose testimony it rejects, and whose veracity therefore it impeaches. He reserves the judgment in this case to himself. He has commanded no man to interfere in the matter; and no man, and no church, has a right to interfere in it, farther than to declare, that he who rejects the divine testimony, can have no part in any divine ordinance. He is therefore, with propriety, excluded from the fellowship of the visible church, but he ought not to suffer damage either in his person or property.

But there are persons who do not reject the divine testimony, but who really receive it, and who ought to be acknowledged as belonging to the household of faith, whose minds are but partially enlightened, with regard to many things connected with the faith and obedience of the gospel. Now it was never meant by Christ, or taught by his apostles, that such persons should be compelled, by force, to think rightly upon every religious subject. The thing is absurd and impossible, for mind will not yield to any external pressure; and the word of God authorizes no means for removing mistakes from the human mind, but instruction and persuasion; and these have often been found successful, while the world may be challenged to produce an instance of conviction of truth, having been effected by brute force.

The use of compulsion, in relation to religious opinion, originated with the enemies of the truth, who, conscious that they could not maintain their ground by fair argument, had recourse to the power which they possessed in the strength of their arm, or the number of their adherents. Cain stands at the head of the black catalogue of persecutors. He was sadly mistaken with regard to the character of God, and the way of approaching to him with acceptance. Abel thought rightly on this most important subject; but it does not appear that he ever thought of compelling his elder brother to adopt more just ideas, or of murdering him if he did not. It was then, as in all subsequent ages: He that was after the flesh persecuted him that was after the Spirit. Every false religion excites its adherents to persecute the true religion, or to oppose it by force; but the spirit of Christianity is most remote from this; and, if any real Christian ever thought of promoting truth, or opposing error by other means than instruction and persuasion, he had learned his lesson, and taken his example, from antichrist.

The primitive Christians suffered much from the Jews and the heathens, especially the former, who, as they were the murderers of the Lord of glory, were also the most furious persecutors of his disciples. After the subversion of their nation, and their being deprived of the power of persecuting to any great extent, the work of wholesale murder

was taken up by the Roman emperors, by whom many thousand Christians were destroyed for no crime but that of being Christians, which in Roman reckoning was enough to incur the sentence of being thrown to be devoured by wild beasts. It was not long after Constantine had taken Christianity under his protection, that persons, called Christians, began to persecute one another; but by this time the glory was departed. The word Christian had acquired a different meaning from that which it bore when first applied to the disciples at Antioch. Augustine and other early fathers strongly condemned violence on account of religion; but their voice was not heard. Heresy was considered a crime of the first magnitude; this was often a mere nickname of the truth, and the abettors of it were devoted to destruction. But persecution in every hideous form was never so completely reduced to a system, as after the pope was seated upon his throne, showing himself as a god, having all power in heaven and in earth.

"In the following ages," says Limborch, speaking of a period subsequent to the age of Augustine, "the affairs of the church were so managed under the government of the popes, and all persons so strictly curbed by the severity of the laws, that they durst not even so much as whisper against the received opinions of the church. Besides this, so deep was the ignorance that had spread itself over the world, that men, without the least regard to knowledge and learning, received, with a blind obedience, every thing that the ecclesiastics ordered them, however stupid and superstitious, without any examination; and if any one dared in the least to contradict them, he was immediately to be punished; whereby the most absurd opinions came to be established by the violence of the popes." Hist. Inq. chap. vii.

In the twelfth century it was found, that a numerous people inhabiting the valleys of Piedmont, held certain doctrines different from those which the pope commanded all men to receive, on pain of death. The people have been called Albigenses and Waldenses. The principal articles of their faith were substantially the same with those of the reformation. It is not certain when or by whom such doctrines were first promulgated among them; but I think it is probable, that the truth of the gospel found an asylum among these mountains and valleys after it had been banished from Rome, and from every other part of the world to which the pope could extend his influence. It is probable that the number of professors was very few for many ages; and, therefore, they escaped the notice of the holy see; but by the time mentioned they had become numerous; and they excited the utmost hatred of the pope and his adherents. It was with a view to extirpate them that the Inquisition was established, and that Saints Dominic and Francis, the first inquisitors, were set a-hunting after the precious lives of a simple and virtuous people, a thousand times more worthy than themselves.

It was the fashion, however, of the church of Rome then, as it has always been since, to represent those who dissented from her errors as monsters of one kind or another. They could not persuade the world that the Waldenses were monsters of wickedness; for all who knew them, bare witness that they were a peaceable and harmless people; but they did succeed in their misrepresentations so far as to make the duke of Savoy, and perhaps many others believe, that they, or at least their children, were not formed like other human creatures. At the

instigation of the pope, a cruel and murderous war had been carried on against the Waldenses, many of whom were subjects of the duke of Savoy. He seeing his country in danger of being ruined by such violent measures, found means to put an end to the war: "Nay," says the historian from whom I quote, "it pleased God so to touch his heart with compassion for that poor people, that he spoke it openly, that forasmuch as he had always found them to be most faithful and obedient subjects, he would not suffer them to be so dealt with, by force of arms in future: only for what was past, he ordered for formality's sake, that twelve of them should come to Pignerol where he then was, there to beg his pardon, for taking up arms in their own defence; the which they accordingly did, and his highness receiving them courteously, forgave them freely all that had passed during the time of the war, giving them to understand, that he had been misinformed, both as to their persons and their principles; and withal he desired to see some of their little ones, because there were some who had made him believe, that they were strange and monstrous creatures, having but one eye in their forehead, with four sets of black teeth, and many other such like fictions; whereupon some were brought before him, and he finding them, on the contrary, handsome shapen and wellfavoured, did openly profess, how ill satisfied he was with the calumnies and slanders of their malicious adversaries, and thereupon did not only confirm their privileges and liberties, but withal made them a gracious promise to settle and establish the same for the time to come. And this was undoubtedly the real intention and resolution of that prince at that time, however afterwards wrought upon (or at least deluded) by the subtle devices of the inquisitors, who took the boldness, notwithstanding all the gracious promises of their prince, to continue to persecute those poor Waldenses, laying violent hands on them, and delivering them up to the secular powers, who also, in most places, were not at all backward to lend them their helping hand." Moreland's History of the Evangelical Churches in Piedmont, folio, page 223.

Thus we see, that popish malice against the professors of true Christianity, showed itself not only in speaking evil of their character and principles, but also in misrepresenting their personal form, so as to make princes believe that they were not human creatures, but something worse than wild beasts, that ought to be run down and destroyed; and, indeed, they were run down, and murdered with a ferocity such as has never been equalled by any attempt to extirpate the most savage beasts of the forests. For which see Moreland's History above quoted, and Jones' History of the Waldenses.

"It was the entire study and endeavour of the popes, to crush in its infancy, every doctrine that any way opposed their exorbitant power. In the year 1163, at the synod of Tours, all the bishops and priests in the country of Tholouse, were commanded to take care, and to forbid, under the pain of excommunication, every person from presuming to give reception, or the least assistance to the followers of this heresy, which first began in the country of Tholouse, whenever they should be discovered. Neither were they to have any dealings with them in buying or selling; that by being thus deprived of the common assistances of life, they might be compelled to repent of the evil of their way. Whosoever shall dare to contravene this order, let him be exVOL. II-17

communicated as a partner with them in guilt. As many of them as can be found, let them be imprisoned by the Catholic princes, and punished with the forfeiture of all their substance." Limb. Hist. Inq. chap. ix. This edict is expressed in pretty intelligible language. The heretics themselves were not only to be extirpated with fire, and sword, and famine; but every man who should show them the smallest favour, were it only selling a loaf to one of them, or giving him a drink of cold water, was to be excommunicated as a partner in the guilt of heresy; and this implied imprisonment, the forfeiture of goods, and of life itself. Such are the tender mercies of the wicked; such was popery in the days of its glory; and such it is, and must be still, where it has space and opportunity to show its true character, for it is an infallible system, and, therefore, incapable of change to the better. I call upon the Papists in Ireland to answer this. They are living in peace, so far as they are able to live peaceably; they have the utmost freedom even in observing their idolatrous rites; they suffer no sort of molestation whatever on account of their religion; and yet they lately complained in a letter to the pope, that they were the victims of the most sanguinary and unrelenting persecution that ever aggrieved a Christian people. I have no desire to see the experiment tried upon them; but I think it would teach them a useful lesson, if they were placed but for one day, in the situation in which the holy father, their lord the pope, placed the Waldenses, and all who should presume, for mere humanity's sake, to give any of them a cup of cold water. They and their oratorial demagogues would then learn what the word persecution means; for at present, they do not understand what they have never felt or seen.

The holy church instigated several sovereign princes to commence a crusade against the poor people who were desirous of living at peace with all men; and who asked nothing of any man, but to be allowed to possess and read the word of God, and to worship him as that word dictated. This crusade was more murderous and cruel than that against the Turks for the recovery of the holy land, and similar or greater indulgences were granted to all who should take up the cross in the popish sense of the expression. Those who went against the Turks, wore the sign of the cross on their backs; but those who went against the Waldenses, wore it on their breasts. No historian that I have read, has attempted to account for this difference in the position of the popish idol. I give it, therefore, as a conjecture of my own, that when these heroic children of the pope contemplated an encounter with so fierce a people as the Turks, they had an idea, that their backs would have more need of protection than their fronts; and, therefore, they placed the idol behind, expecting, no doubt, that it would protect both itself and them, from enemies whom they could not see after they had turned about. But they knew that the Waldenses were far from being formidable as men of war; that they were better acquainted with preaching and praying than with fighting; and, therefore, they thought they might venture to look them in the face, with weapons in their hands, and their idol before them.

Be this as it may, we are informed by Limborch, who gives the popish historians Bzovius and Raynaldus as his authors, that the vast army of the cross-bearers, "every where attacked the heretics, took their cities, filled all places with slaughter and blood, and burnt many

whom they had taken captives. For, in the year 1209, Buerre was taken by them, and all, without any regard to age, cruelly put to the sword, and the city itself destroyed by flames. Cæsarius tells us, that when the city was taken, the cross-bearers knew that there were several Catholics mixed with the heretics; and, when they were in doubt how to act, lest the Catholics should be slain, or the heretics feign themselves Catholics, Arnold, abbot of Cisteaux, made answer, slay them all, for the Lord knows who are his; whereupon the soldiers slew them all without exception.

Carcassone also was destroyed; and by the common consent of the prelates and barons, Simon, earl of Montfort, of the bastard race of Robert, king of France, (whom Patavius in his Ration. temp. calls a man as truly religious as valiant,) was made governor of the whole country, both of what was already conquered, and what was to be conquered for the future. The same year he took several cities and reduced them to his own obedience. He cruelly treated his captive heretics, and put them to death by the most horrible punishments. In the city of Castres two were condemned to the flames, and when a certain person declared he would abjure his heresy, the cross-bearers were divided among themselves: some contended that he ought not to be put to death; others said, it was plain he had been a heretic, and that his abjuration was not sincere, but proceeded only from his fear of immediate death. Earl Montfort consented that he should be burnt; alleging, that if his conversion was real, the fire would expiate his sins; if otherwise, he would receive a just reward of his perfidiousness. In other places also, they raged with the like cruelty. One Robert, who had been of the sect of the Albigenses, and afterwards joined himself to the Dominicans, supported by the authority of the princes and magistrates, burnt all who persisted in their heresy; so that within two or three months he caused fifty persons, without distinction of sex, either to be buried alive or burnt; from whence he gained the name of the Hammer of the Heretics. Raynold affirms, that it ought not to be doubted, but that Pope Innocent appointed him to this office. At Paris, one Bernard, with nine others, of whom four were priests, the followers of Almerick, were apprehended; and being all had into a field, were degraded before the whole clergy and people, and burnt in the presence of the king.

"The year following, there was undertaken a new expedition of the cross-bearers against the Albigenses. They seized on Alby, and there put many to death. They took La Vaur by force, and burnt in it great numbers of the Albigenses. They hanged Aymerick the governor of the city, who was of a very noble family. They beheaded eighty of lesser degree, and did not spare the very women. They threw Girarda, Aymerick's sister, and the chief lady of that people, into an open pit, and covered her with stones. Afterwards they conquered Carcum, and put to death sixty men. They also seized on Pulchra Vallis, a large city near Tholouse and burnt in it four hundred Albigenses, and hanged fifty more. They took Castres de Termes, and in it Raymond de Termis. whom they put in prison, where he died; and burnt, in one large fire, his wife, sister, and virgin daughter, with some other noble ladies, when they could not persuade them, by promises or threats, to embrace the faith of the church of Rome." Hist. Inq. chap. xi.

All this fury and massacre would not do. It was found impossible