Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today [1868]

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PART SECOND.


XIX. Learning and Controversy of Protestant Ministers.

— At first sight, Protestant ministers appear to be very learned men; but by following them close, very little solidity is to be found in their learning, which is all Protestant, — that is, negative; it is a belligerent knowledge, not inspired by the hallowing love of truth, but by the powerful hatred of whatever is Catholic.

In dispute and controversy, they bring along an interminable array of books, quotations, texts, facts, and dates. The audience, dazzled by such light (?), feel disposed to think that the gentlemen are really prodigies of learning.

Nothing of the kind. There are exceptions, indeed, and I know some distinguished men among them, hard students. You will find them in Germany, and among the High Church men of England; and some in this country. Their studies lead them nearer and nearer to Catholic faith. Willing as we earnestly are to render homage to men learned and friendly to truth, we must say that they are few in number. In France, the erudition of ministers is confined, generally speaking, to a certain number of passages from the writings of the Fathers, garbled after the minister's own view; some facts of doubtful authenticity, apparently in opposition with some Catholic dogma, or practice; lastly, a thundering storm of quotations from the Bible.

We cannot be fooled by such people. Hundreds and thousands of times have those objections, the same which Martin Luther offered, been refuted, in a most conclusive way, by Bellarmin, and Suarez, and St. Francis de Sales, and Fenelon, and Bossuet, etc., etc., etc. For the lack of better weapons, they tread on the same ground over and over.

It must be admitted that unless one's studies have been extensive, and unless one is endowed with an extraordinary memory, a well-instructed Catholic, and even a priest, can be very easily startled by a telling quotation. The least chance for examination or research would very easily afford a reply; but the discussion allows of no respite, and the momentary embarrassment is proclaimed a defeat. There is honesty for you.

From what we have said it can be very easily understood why the Church, sure as she is of possessing divine truth in her doctrine, and of the futility of heretical assertions, commands her children to keep clear of controversies with Protestant ministers, and forbids us to listen to their sermons or to read their books, without a special authorization. It is no fear on her part; it is prudence, and prudence begets security.

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PART SECOND.


XX. Why do not Catholic Priests marry as Protestant Ministers do?

— Once a Protestant minister reproached a young student for his misconduct; to which the latter replied: "Very easy for you to talk so, sir. Luther has declared that it is as impossible to keep from marriage, as to go about without clothes, or live without nourishment; after this, his opinion, you have married. I would marry too, had I the means; but I am only twenty, and the government and the evangelical societies give me nothing, as yet, wherewith to keep house; so, meanwhile, I do the best I can."

It would prove interesting to know what reply was given by a parson married on the Protestant principle, that celibacy is against nature.

A Catholic priest would have replied: "Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ" (1 Cor. xi. 1). Be chaste, as I am, and say not that it is impossible, because, what one can do another also can.

Celibacy enables the priest to devote himself wholly to his ministry. On embracing the ecclesiastical state priests pledge themselves with free will, and, after due probation, to observe perfect continence. Although this obligation is not a divine institution, it is, nevertheless, one of marvellous wisdom. The Church well knew what she was about, when she changed the evangelic and apostolic counsel of celibacy into an absolute command for her priests;* and the devil knows very well what he is about when he protests against this salutary institution.

Were our priests married, do you think they would sacrifice themselves as they do every day? Do you not believe they would hesitate before they entered a place of loathing and contagion, and leave directions concerning their bank accounts with next kin and neighbor? And who are the kin and kith of a married man but his wife and children?

It is out of the question. We can never be reconciled with the idea of a Catholic priest being married. Christian priesthood and the wife's teakettle will never harmonize. The Protestant parsonship, which after all is only a caricature of the priesthood, drags after itself its household like a cumbrous cannon-ball. Nothing more laughable than what a certain pastor, Mr. Bost, tells of himself in his Memoirs.* The history of his apostolic excursions, of his preaching, of his divers vocations, of his change of convictions, is interlarded with ludicrous histories of matrimonial cares, of tin pans, and cooking-stoves. With his wife, eleven children, two servants, one piano, and two canary-birds, the unfortunate apostle parades all around, for fifteen or twenty years, thirteen thousand pounds of evangelic baggage.

How vividly all this represents primitive Christianity, Saint Paul and his staff!

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PART SECOND.


XXI. How our Saviour and his Apostles differ on the Point of Sacerdotal Celibacy from Protestant Ministers.

— Few questions are better defined by the Bible than that of religious celibacy. The church only repeats what our Saviour and his great apostle, Saint Paul, have taught on this delicate subject.

The Pharisees question Jesus about marriage, and our Lord solemnly proclaims its indissolubility. The apostles, alarmed at the hard condition of married folks, consult him in their turn: "If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry." "But," he said to them, "not all take this word, but they to whom it is given." Then he adds: "There are such who deprive themselves of marriage for the kingdom of heaven. He who can take it, let him take it." (Matt. xix. 10, etc.)

It seems as if the ministers, although very evangelical, are not of those to whom it is given to take the word; whereof our priests, papists though they be, ignorant as they are said to be of the genuine word of God, take it. They understand the counsel of the Master, and have heart enough to follow it.

The doctrine of virginity and celibacy is none the less beautifully defined by St. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, seventh chapter. The principles are so distinctly set down that Mme. de Gasparin, in her anti-Catholic zeal, declares, with charming ingenuity, that it is evident that such passages of the epistle as refer to celibacy are not inspired. "Inspiration returns," says she, "when St. Paul passes to other subjects."

Well, the apostle says: "Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord; but I give counsel, as having obtained mercy of the Lord, to be faithful." Just what the Catholic Church teaches; she forces no person to a life of celibacy. True, she makes a law of this counsel, a strict law for her ministers, but she forces no one to embrace the priesthood; and when a Christian expresses his intention to become priest, he acts on his perfectly free will, and it is only on his spontaneous determination that he accepts the condition of a perfect chastity.

The motives of this conduct of the Church will be also found in St. Paul. After showing that matrimony is good and honorable, he adds: "I would have you without solicitude. He who is unmarried, careth for the things of the Lord, how he may please God. But he who is married is solicitous about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit. But she that is married, thinketh of the things of the world, how she may please her husband." And the apostle concludes thus: "Therefore both he that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well; and he who giveth her not, doth better." Bene facit; melius facit.

There is the argument summed up. Marriage is good, celibacy is better. What have the ministers to say to this? It is not I that speaketh, but the Bible. Let us be candid. They care naught for the Bible, but they detest the priests, the only true ministers of the Gospel. They wish them to marry, that they may be unpriest ed. They are chagrined, because they cannot deprive them of that angelic celibacy, which crowns them with a holy halo, and justly secures to them the confidence and the veneration of the people.

Cunning Philistines, they would like to rob Samson of his strength, through their Delilahs! But, warned by the example of the first Samson, the latter will not give in. They reject Delilah, and fight against the enemies of God's people the unconquerable battles of faith.

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PART SECOND.


XXII. About the Jesuits.

— Calvin looked upon the members of the Company of Jesus as his most deadly enemies, and said that it was necessary to get rid of them. In his usual impudent style he wrote: "They must be destroyed, and if it cannot be done quietly, they must be chased away, or crushed under the weight of falsehoods and calumnies." Jesuitas vero qui se maxime nobis opponunt, aut necandi, aut, si hoc commode fieri non potest, ejiciendi, aut certe mendaciis et calumniis opprimendi sunt.

The children of Calvin, and, in later times, the followers of Voltaire, have most piously and most faithfully taken up the cry, and have been so industrious, and have lied so skilfully, have so terribly slandered the Jesuits, that they have succeeded in making a number of people believe that those holy priests are only impostors, hypocrites, villains, conspirators, traitors, obscurantists, assassins, perverse and dangerous men.

Is it necessary to assert that the Jesuits are nothing of the kind? They are grave and admirable religious people, burning with zeal, indefatigable in the service of the Church and of souls, always ready to help a good work. They are in the Church a chosen troop. Protestants and infidels know it well. Hence they detest them, and have been heaping on them every kind of calumny for the last three hundred years, with a will, and with all their power.

I have at command a mass of eulogies bestowed on the Jesuits by Protestants whose partiality in their favor cannot be suspected. But I will only quote the spirited as well as most conclusive testimony of Henry IV. To the Parliament and to the University of Paris, who had charged the Jesuit Fathers with all the crimes, for which they have been constantly and perseveringly traduced ever since, he replied: —

"I thank you for the care which you take in behalf of my person and of my State. You say, the Sorbonne has condemned the Jesuits; but it was done, as in your case, before it had known them; and if the old Sorbonne did not act from jealousy, the new one has improved on the old, and boasts of it.

"You say that the most learned among the members of your Parliament have learned nothing of them; if the most learned are the oldest among you, it is true, for they have made their studies before the Jesuits were known in France. If the best studies are made among you, how does it happen, that, in consequence of their absence, your university is become deserted, and that students flock, in spite of your orders, to Douay, to Pont-à-Mousson, and to places out of the kingdom?

"Again you say, that they draw the youth of fine disposition and make choice of the best: for this I think the more of them. Do we not choose the best of soldiers to fight our battles?

"You say, they come in the best way they can. So does everybody; and have I not entered my kingdom the best way I could? At the same time we must acknowledge that they are possessed of an admirable patience, and I, for one, admire it, for with patience and good life they achieve everything.

"You say, that they are great sticklers for their institute; that is just what will preserve them. Thus I would change none of their rules, and thus I wish them to keep them.

"As for the ecclesiastics, who find fault with them, it is the old story of ignorance assailing learning, and I know very well that when I spoke of re-establishing them, two kinds of people particularly opposed me; those who belong to the so-called reformed religion and ecclesiastics of dubious morals. Just what made me think more of them."

The Jesuits have always been persecuted and will always be. Their founder has besought for them, on his death-bed, the crown promised by the Lord in his sermon of the mountain, touching the eighth beatitude, — "Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice's sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly for my sake. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven." — (Matt. v. 10, etc.)

There you have the history of the Company of Jesus written in advance of its existence. The special hatred with which heretics and infidels have always persecuted its members is their best eulogy.

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PART SECOND.


XXIII. Mixed Marriages.

— When one party is Catholic and the other is not, the marriage is called mixed.

The Church grieves at such marriages. They exhibit great indifference in matter of religion, and often entail the non-Catholic training of the offspring. For my part, I cannot understand how a Christian, a Catholic, can be so forgetful of objects divine, as to choose for a companion in life a heretical woman, to be the mother of his children, the directress of his domestic life.

The Church leaves no means untried to make us feel how repugnant these marriages are to her. She refuses them the enhancing majesty of her wedding ritual, and positively forbids her ministers to take any other part in them but that of a witness. Hence such marriages are contracted outside the Church, in the vestry, — no blessing, no prayer, no holy water, no surplice, no stole. Moreover, the betrothed, on both sides, must bind themselves, beforehand, and under a solemn oath, to raise in the Catholic Church all the children that may issue from their marriage, both boys and girls. Unless this oath is taken, the Church will not permit a mixed marriage to be contracted.

When you then meet the child of a mixed marriage raised in Protestantism, know that the parents have perjured themselves.

And were even all conditions requisite for such deplorable unions fulfilled, and the matrimonial bond signed before a priest, let it be known that the Catholic party is forbidden to go before a Protestant parson. It would be a participation with heretics in sacred things, and a culpable allowance in favor of heresy.* Once married in the Catholic Church, what do you need at the meeting-house? Not the matrimonial bond, for you are already joined in it. If you only go for the purpose of hearing some fine passages of the Bible relating to matrimony, it is not worth the scandal you give, and you can as well read them at home.

Protestants, you know, do not consider matrimony a sacrament, and if the reverend gentlemen still insist upon "couples" coming before them, it is for the sake of a fee.

Mixed marriages are a token of weakened faith. No Christian will ever stoop to such a religious incongruity, unless he be lost to all sentiments of Catholic dignity.

Matrimony is a great sacrament; on it generally depends the happiness and salvation of husband and wife. Woe to them who do not contract it according to God's laws, and let family arrangements, wealth, and sentimentality trample on their faith!

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PART THIRD.


I. What prevents honest Protestants from becoming Catholics?

— The ignorance of the teachings of the Church, an almost unconquerable prejudice against the Church, the stronger because imbibed at their mothers' breast, confirmed by education, and never combated. With the best faith in the world, they look upon the Church as a school of superannuated superstitions;* her holy authority a tyranny, an usurpation; her priests cunning fellows who cheat the people; her children so many dolts who believe whatever they are told to believe.

Bossuet, after having battled with the ablest ministers of his time, came to the conclusion that ignorance was the greatest obstacle in the way of conversion from Protestantism. After such an experience he published his Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine, which took all ministers by surprise. Astonished to find dogmas, qualified by them as ridiculous and superstitious, so simple, so evident, so great, they charged Bossuet with having disguised the truth to serve his cause. Whereupon he submitted his work to the Pope, and to almost all the Bishops of France, and published a second edition with an authentic approbation of the Holy See, and of about fifty Bishops. It brought back to the Church the great Turenne, the Marquis de Dangeau, grandson of that Duplessis-Mornay who was called the Pope of Huguenots, together with a train of distinguished men.

The ignorance of Protestants in regard to Catholic doctrine is beyond all belief. Do they not assert that we worship the Blessed Virgin, look upon her as a goddess, attribute to her a divine power? Do not many among them charge us with adoring the Pope, selling the Body and Blood of Christ, setting a tariff on confession, and affirm such absurdities as they should be ashamed to impute to men of sense and education?

The Catechism is the most available book to place in the hands of Protestants, — the book we put in the hands of children.

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II. About the idolatrous Adorations, with which Protestants reproach Catholics.


— "Catholics allow creatures the adorations they owe to the Creator," — an oft-repeated charge made in pamphlets and books by the parsons, and re-echoed from their pulpits. We may repeat it over and again, that the Catholics adore only God; no use, — they know we are idolators, duly convicted, no more nor less than the Hottentots and the Cochin-Chinese.

Yet let us protest once more: We adore God, God alone, — we adore our Lord Jesus Christ, because he is God, — we adore neither the Virgin Mary nor the saints, — we honor and venerate them, we give them what is due to the mother and friends of our Lord and King. We beseech them to pray for us, because their prayers are more worthy and more acceptable to God than ours. What can be more simple? It must needs be an evil-minded spirit that will find in it an occasion for launching anathema against the Church.

The malignant slander that we adore the Pope is too ridiculous to deserve an answer.

They force themselves into seeing an adoration in every genuflection of ours. They exhibit no great proof of good sense in that. We go on our knees, because the humble and devout posture of the body has an influence over the soul, and disposes it to a prayer more recollected, and to a religion more profound. Who ignores the great influence of the body over the soul?

It is, moreover, very natural, that a heart penetrated with reverence, humility, and repentance, should bring the body to bend low, and thus agree in the worship of the spirit.

It is thus that we love to kneel, not only before our Lord Jesus Christ, to adore and beseech him, but even at the feet of his Blessed Mother, whom we respect so much, before the honored relics of martyrs and saints, and before the sacred image of the cross. In his law God does not forbid to venerate holy things; but he forbids to worship them. No Catholic will ever be found who adores a picture of Mary, a crucifix, or a relic, thereby confounding God with them.*

Let us then go on our knees, with an humble love, before the hallowed objects of the true worship of the true God; and likewise at the feet of the Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ, at the feet of Bishops and of God's priests, that we may receive their holy blessing; which is not the benediction of man, but of Jesus who dwells in them, and who, through them, blesses, enlightens, and sanctifies the world.

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III. A Word about Protestant Pamphlets and Tracts.

— With two kinds of tracts do Biblical Societies overflow the land.

First, and the more numerous, contain insipid tales, of a clammy and languid religiosity, wherein we are invariably treated with conversions performed at the mere sight of the Bible, women dying a most holy death, without confession, sacraments, or priest; an everlasting sanctimonious parson, very tolerant, with a honeyed and Biblical tongue; or a dame, very religious, all zeal for the Gospel, running from hut to hut, comforting the poor with a chapter of the Bible. In these tracts the Catholic Church is not openly attacked. Oh, no! The danger is only negative. It lies in that the ideas of the readers are puzzled by having presented to their admiration and imitation examples of a religion altogether opposed to genuine Christianity. The very silence about the Catholic Church is an attack made in perfidiousness. This premeditated silence, vaunted as a part of moderation, is inimical; and it has a purpose, — it leads people to ignore the Church, and let it slide. Happily, these stories are badly written, and mortally sickening; for which God should be thanked.

Tracts belonging to the second class are distributed with more judgment, and boldly attack the Holy Church. They are, for the most, violent disquisitions on what religion holds most venerable and holy; shameless calumnies against the clergy, blasphemies against the Mother of God, and falsehoods so revolting that they cannot be attributed to mere ignorance. As we read in a solemn warning by the Bishop of Strasbourg, they bear, at times, a Catholic title, and, to cover the snare, are adorned with pictures of Our Lady.

Protestants look upon the spreading of these tracts as a meritorious work, carried on with great unanimity by divided sects. They assume increased proportions every year. The old carrier, who formerly went about carrying his bundle, is transformed and multiplied. The fair sex becomes every day more and more interested in the enterprise. Rail-road cars are thronged with evangelists in petticoats. Cramming their pockets, their work-baskets, their bandboxes, with tracts written by their respective parsons, these women start for the crusade, determined to destroy the empire of superstition. They offer their little papers, distribute them, cast them abroad, intrude them upon you, or drop them. They slide them through Venetian blinds, thrust them under doors, and pin them on rails, or on trees, on the highways.

Nor is this a newfangled apostolate. Luther was not ashamed to follow it. He added the sting of caricature to the defamatory libel which he would write in the heat of his imagination, and with a system led by a genius not less malicious than brutal. Melancthon, the angelic, his favorite disciple, was his chief assistant in this cowardly business. Libels were they, and caricatures, prompted by such noble motives, and written in a revolting and sickening style. Although certain slippery points, upon which Luther could, so naturally, balance himself well, are somewhat roughened in modern tracts, yet we prefer to believe that those devout travellers, anxious as they are to thrust them upon the people, do not read them beforehand.

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IV. How certain Protestant Pamphleteers should learn the Art of Verifying Dates.


— Among those pamphlets which covertly attack Catholicity, some pretend to be able to silence the Catholic Church forever, by convicting it of innovation, and quote the precise, absolutely verified date of the invention of each Catholic dogma.

This practice would not be, after all, so very disastrous to them, were they only able to agree with each other; whereas, they contradict each other, and baffle each other's schemes. As they quote dates at hap-hazard, only a miracle could help them to meet on one and the same point. Let us take up two chronologies, one published in England, by Bulington and Bulton Horncastle, with the title, Dates of the new Doctrines added to the Church of Rome, the other published in Angers, A.D. 1846, by the facetious Rev. Mr. Puaux, under the title, Extracts of Origins.

Now see how these two historians of good faith agree together: —

The English Historian. / The Rev. Parson Puaux.

Invocation of Saints invented in 700 / Worship of Saints invented in 875

Supremacy of the Pope, 1215 / Primacy of the Pope, 600

Apocryphal Books, 1547 / Apocryphal Books, 1564

Seven Sacraments, 1547 / Seven Sacraments, 1160

And so on. Indeed, "Iniquity hath lied to itself." (Ps. xxvi. 12.)

Outside the Puaux chronology, there are other dates established with uniformity enough to fix the origin of the pretended additions made to our dogmas and religious practices.

Thus, as regards confession, which has been their constant bugbear, they fix the institution thereof in the year of grace 1215, and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the year 1854. They throw those dates into our faces with an air of triumph, and exclaim, "That's the way your dogmas are manipulated."

There is nothing so mean, and at the same time so impudent, as half-learning. Protestants well-instructed are very chary in making such foolish assertions; for they know, as well as we, that, in 1215, Pope Innocent III., in the Lateran Council, only established certain rules in reference to the annual approach to the sacrament of penance, — a sacrament instituted by our Divine Saviour, and practised since the beginning of the Church; and they know that, in 1854, the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX. did not invent the belief that Mary was free from the stain of original sin; but he only proclaimed and made obligatory for all to believe the ancient doctrine of the Church. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception existed before the proclamation, even as it now exists. In fact, the feast thereof was celebrated in all Christendom, from time immemorial, with only this difference, that it had not been officially defined, and one might be deceived on the point of this doctrine without becoming heretic, as, in fact, many were deceived, who otherwise were great men, and even saints, and nourished the most ardent and the deepest love for our blessed Lady.

We might as well say that the Council of Nice invented the dogma of the Trinity, and that of the Divinity of the Word, when, in 325, it defined these two great truths against the Arians. Before the Nicene Council, the Church believed both the Trinity and the Incarnation, the same as she believed the sacrament of confession before the Council of Lateran, and the Immaculate Conception of the mother of our Lord before the eighth of December, 1854.

The Catholic dogma is the truth religious. But truth is not made, it exists eternal and immutable. The Church is the depository thereof, and, guided by her divine chief, our Lord, she proclaims her teachings accordingly as innovators dare deny them, or whenever she thinks proper to do so for the good of her children.

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V. Protestant Toleration.


— Among the many prejudices which sway the world, and reign even among demi-Catholics, one is, "although the Reformation may have been the cause of evil, may have caused man's blood to flow, and may have demoralized whole nations, it has, at least, done this much good: it has given religious toleration."

Nothing farther from truth, or less sustained by history. Wherever Protestantism has a sway, it is intolerant and persecuting. Of course not everywhere, in the same degree; but why not? Because it does not possess everywhere the same degree of power. To persecute, one must have both will and power. Fortunately Protestantism cannot always act as it has a mind to. But let it be said boldly, in fact, of intolerance, Protestantism will always go as far as it will dare.

The Reformation has always introduced itself by violence, and its first fruits, in Germany, Geneva, England, and Sweden, have been civil war, proscription, and murder. How else? The Reformation is a revolution, and whatever is revolutionary, is, of its own nature, tyrannical.

Once established, Protestantism has held its own by the same dint of violence. Everybody knows in what relation English Protestantism stands to the Catholics, — how bloody the laws, and with what ferocious despotism it crushes, this very day, faithful and unhappy Ireland.

William Cobbett, a Protestant writer, in the face of such facts could not give the lie to his conscience, and he thus testifies against the national Church: "A Church," he writes, "the most intolerant that ever existed, rampant before the world, with knife, and axe, and the instruments of cruel torture; its first steps marked with the blood of numberless victims, whilst its arm gave way under the burden of its robberies." Then he quotes the acts of Parliament, by which it is proven that in consequence of this wholesale butchery of Catholics, the population of England was diminished one-tenth its number. Death was proclaimed against any priest who should dare to enter the kingdom, or who should be convicted of having celebrated mass. Death for him who gave shelter to a priest. Death to every one who refused to acknowledge Queen Elizabeth at the Head of the Church of Jesus Christ. A heavy fine imposed on all who refused to assist at the Protestant service, and "the list of all those who were put to death, for the only crime of being Catholics, during the reign of Elizabeth, would be by far more numerous than the roll of our armies and of our navy," adds the same historian.

"Nor is the English Church changed; it has proven true to itself from the very first beginning of its existence; its cruelties in Ireland would degrade, in atrocity, those of Mohammed himself, and a whole volume should be required to chronicle all its acts of intolerance." (Lettre to Tenterden, Lord Justice, who, in Parliament, had boasted of the tolerance of the British government.)

By the same means did Calvinism introduce itself into France. For more than one century we hear nothing in that country but rebellions, and riots, and devastation, wherever the Huguenot doctrine gained admittance. That period is only a tissue of disorders, treachery, and cruelty. Nor is there cause for wonder, when Calvin publicly proclaimed that kings and princes must be broken, when they refuse the profession of Protestantism; better to spit in their faces than to obey them. Under the guidance of Coligny, the Calvinistic revolutionists planned the project of abducting the King of France, yet an infant. Having failed, they took possession of Orleans, laid waste the borders of the Loire, Normandy, and the Island of France. Languedoc fared the worst of all, as it became the theatre of cruelties and profanations unparalleled in history. At Montauban, Castres, Beziers, Nimes, and Montpellier, those vaunted pioneers of tolerance, and liberty of conscience forbade, under terrible penalties, all practice of Catholic worship. The world has heard of that notorious Baron des Adrets, a Calvinian leader, who, after the surrender of Montbrison, indulged in the innocent pleasure of hurling from the highest tower the surviving defenders of the post. Thus did generally fare all cities that fell into Calvinistic hands: churches desecrated, sacred vessels stolen, priests and monks driven away or killed, most barbarous atrocities committed and sacrileges most abominable. These are historical facts; they challenge contradiction, and are not denied even by Protestants, who, however, from time to time allow themselves to be caught wishing the return of the good old Protestantism of France.

It makes one's hair stand on end to read the atrocities whereof the Hollanders became guilty when striving to extend Protestantism over the Netherlands; above all, the tortures and torments with which Lamark and Sonoi, agents of the Prince of Orange, gave vent to their religious zeal. We have a faithful picture of Sonoi drawn by a Protestant pen: "The ordinary processes of cruel torture were only the lowest degree of punishment inflicted on the innocent. Their limbs were disjointed; the flesh, hanging in shreds, after a pitiless scourging, was swathed in rags dipped in alcohol, then set on fire, until, the flesh burnt and the nerves crisped, the bones were bared to view. Sometimes so much as half a pound of sulphur was employed in burning the armpits and the soles of their feet. Thus martyred, they were abandoned on the fields for days and nights without any relief, only that repeated blows drove sleep away from their eyes. No food given but herrings, or such as would create a burning thirst, whilst no kind of drink, no, not even water, was allowed. Hornets were inserted to sting their navels. Sonoi went so far as to cause rabid rats to be placed on the breasts and bellies of those martyrs, enclosed in a box made for the purpose, and covered with combustibles. Fire being applied, these vermin became furious, and would cleave a way for themselves, tearing the bowels and the hearts of the victims. The wounds were seared with burning coals, or molten lard was poured into them. . . . He had invented even more horrible torments, and he inflicted them in cold blood; cannibals would be disgraced by his cruelty; decency forbids us to say more." (Abrégé de l'Hist. de la Hollande. Kerroux, t. II., p. 310.)

Protestant tolerance of England, France, and Netherlands, finds its counterpart in Sweden. There, also, the Reformation was introduced by violence and bloodshed; the religious laws of that country have preserved as much of their cruel enactments as the spirit of the times will allow. Not long ago (in 1861) six whole families were banished the country, their goods confiscated, only because they had entered the Catholic Church. In Norway, Denmark, Prussia, and Geneva, wherever it reigns, Protestantism had ever proved itself the sworn enemy and blind hater of Catholics. Free and unchecked, it spurns all outward regards, which have often given it an appearance of moderation; openly and haughtily it claims what it wills.

At the Protestant Synod of Breme, Parson Sander, of Ebberfeld, alluding to the Jesuits and to the Pope, exclaims, "Where Protestants have the power, they should not be allowed to exist, much less to be free."

At Geneva, jealous of Catholic growth, the Protestants have formed a covenant, not to buy anything of Catholics, never to employ them, to reduce them to want, to see that Protestants alone are raised to offices and places.

And all this by men who, in terms of indignation, demand liberty and equality of worship, even where they are a small minority; by men who perpetually boast of liberty of conscience, Christian charity, and of a religion of peace and love; by men who profess to believe in Jesus Christ, and with whom one is perfectly free to be an infidel, a Pantheist, an Atheist, but not a Catholic!