tions of the Hugonots, previous to the deed in question, we are convinced the sensible reader will agree with us, that the less the bigotted opposers of Catholicism say about the matter, the better it will be for their characters. This massacre, of which so much is said, was occasioned by a struggle between two parties for political ascendency; the one having had the ascendency for some centuries, and the other wishing to obtain it by force or fraud. Religion itself, as we have before said, having no concern in the business, no further than the two parties making it a cloak for their proceedings, and thus scandalizing that sacred name which they pretended to hallow. That neither hatred to the religion of the Hugonots, nor affection to the creed of the church of Rome influenced the king, or rather the queen regent, in this transaction, may be gathered from the proclamation issued out on the very day of the massacre, in which the king declared, that "all had been done by his express orders; and that he had been prompted to it, not by any hatred of their religion, but to obviate the wicked conjurations " of Cologni (the admiral) and his friends." Thuan. 1. 52. That the king had received great provocation cannot be denied, for in addition to the facts we have related at some length on the authority of Dr. Heylin, Maimbourg asserts, that the Hugonots actually threatened the king with the indignities of whipping and binding him apprentice to a trade. What would be said were the Catholics of Ireland, who have groaned under a system of persecution for three hundred years, to offer such indignity to the monarch of these realms? Why "ascendency" would never be tired in ringing the changes upon such audacity; and yet for the purpose of slandering the Catholics, and making them the fautors of the crimes produced by the pretended reformation, facts are suppressed on the one side, and falsified on the other, to hoodwink and delude the public.

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The admiral is stiled by the editors of Fox a "virtuous man;" but could that man be virtuous who recommended and practised perfidious and treasonable acts? Could he be a man of virtue, when he was guilty of violating his most solemn promise by a stratagem as base as it was dishonourable? The relation of this fatal day by the editors of the Book of Martyrs is evidently high-coloured, and, of course, not correct. It is a picture overdone, and consequently must rather disgust than convince the rational mind. Who can credit, for example, the statement that the admiral's head, in the midst of the massacre, was carefully prepared, in order to be embalmed with spices and sent to the pope. The holy father, we will venture to say, cared as little for the head of the traitor Coligni as he did for the archpatriarch of the disgraceful commotions produced by the pretended reformation, Martin Luther. To be sure we are told by these editors that "when intelli46 gence of the massacre was received at Rome, the greatest rejoicings "were made. The pope and cardinals went in solemn procession to "the church of St. Mark to give thanks to God. A jubilee was also published, and the ordnance fired from the castle of St. Angelo. To "the person who brought the news, the cardinal gave 1000 crowns. "Like rejoicings were also made all over France for this imagined "overthrow of the faithful." Faithful victims truly! But on what authority is this statement made? Where are the records of the jubilee,

and the procession, and the rejoicings? Not one single authority is there produced to substantiate the assertion, and will the people of England be so credulous as to take all for granted, however improbable, that the editors of this work may think fit to put forth? But allowing that the pope and cardinal did go in procession to return thanks, it does not follow that Catholics are answerable for such conduct. Every act of a pope is not binding on Catholics, any more than the lies of John Fox are to be believed by every Protestant. Catholics are not responsible for the acts of individuals, and were the pope to order a jubilee for the restoration of Ferdinand and the inquisition in Spain, the Catholics of England and Ireland would not be bound to join in it. But have not the editors of this Book of Martyrs heard of a Protestant country where a massacre took place in this same month of August, about five years ago, when many persons were killed and hundreds wounded without any redress being made to the latter, or punishment inflicted on the perpetrators. Nay, the managers of the slaughter were publicly thanked in the name of the king of the country, who was also head of the church established there by law. It is therefore clear that massacres are not peculiar to Catholic countries. We have seen that the Hugonots could murder unoffending Catholics previous to the slaughter of these sectarians at Paris; and we have likewise seen that Protestants can, in these enlightened days, have recourse to the sword when they think the possession of the good things of this world is in danger. It was not a question of religion, but of property and security, that prompted the king of France to the deed of darkness; and so it was that led to the late massacre above hinted at. There was, however, a considerable difference in the two cases. In that which occurred in 1552 there was the greatest provocation given on the part of the sufferers; whereas in that which took place in 1819, the law had not been violated by those who were the victims; yet the act was justified on the ground of alarm being excited in the minds of the partisans of those who were in power.

The account of the massacre at Paris is followed by the detail of several others at various places in France, but as we have no authorities stated to give currency to the relation, we shall pass them over with one observation. While these editors are publishing stale and authenticated accounts of massacres said to have taken place in France two hundred and fifty years ago, scenes of a similar nature, though on a smaller scale, are yearly occurring in Ireland in these days, where the Orange disciples of "Protestant-ascendency," infuriated with religious bigotry and prejudice, seize every opportunity to glut their vengeance on the Catholics, and oftentimes escape the hands of justice through the perjury of juries composed of the same faction. Now, we will here ask the reader, if the editors of Fox had not better remove this real stigma from "Protestant-ascendency" before they again attempt to fix cruelty and persecution on the Catholic religion? To shew the accuracy observed by these editors in stating historical facts, we will here notice their account of the death of one of their martyrs. They say, "The prince of Condé, being taken prisoner, and his life pro"mised him, was shot in the neck by Montisquius, captain of the duke of Anjou's guard." Now Dr. Heylin states that this prince lost his

tages for the performance of the articles of the present agreement, "to be changed at the end of every three months, if the king so pleased: "it was also condescended to in favour of particular persons, that all "lords of free manors throughout the kingdom might in their own "houses lawfully celebrate marriage and baptism, after their own manner, provided that the assembly exceeded not the number of ten; "and that there should be no inquisition upon men's consciences, li"berty being given to such as had no mind to abide in the kingdom, "that they might sell their lands and goods, and live where they pleased.'

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How far the editors are correct in attributing the evils that afflicted France to the tyranny of Charles IX, let the reader judge, when he has read the following summary of the conduct of the Hugonots, extracted from the historian aforesaid.-"Such," he writes, were the actings "of the French Calvinians, as well by secret practices as open arms, during the troublesome reign of Francis the second and Charles the "ninth, and such their variable fortunes according to the interchanges " and successes of those broken times, in which for fifteen years toge"ther there was nothing to be heard but wars and rumours of wars; "short intervals of peace, but such as generally were so full of fears " and jealousies, that they were altogether as unsafe as the wars them"selves. So that the greatest calm of peace seemed but a preparation "to a war ensuing; to which each party was so bent, that of a poison "it became their most constant food. In which distraction of affairs "died king Charles the ninth, in the five and twentieth year of his age, " and fourteenth of his reign, leaving this life at Paris on the 30th of May, 1574."-After stating the succession of Henry, the brother of Charles, to the throne of France, and the policy he acted upon to manage the two parties, the doctor goes on, About this time (1574), "when all men stood amazed at these proceedings of the court, the "state began to swarm with libels and seditious pamphlets, published by those of the Hugonot faction, full of reproach, and fraught with "horrible invectives, not only against the present government, but more particularly against the persons of the queen and all her chil"dren. Against the authors whereof, when some of the council pur"posed to proceed with all severity, the queen-mother interposed her power, and moderated by her prudence the intended rigours; affirming, as most true it was, that such severity would only gain the greater "credit to those scurrilous pamphlets, which would otherwise vanish "of themselves or be soon forgotten. Amongst which pamphlets "there was none more pestilent than that which was composed in the way of a dialogue, pretending one Eusebius Philadelphus for the au"thor of it. Buchanan building first upon Calvin's principles, had pub"lished his seditious pamphlet De jure Regni apud Scotos, together "with that scurrilous and infamous libel which he called The Detec"tion, replete with nothing but réproaches of his lawful sovereign. "But this Eusebius Philadelphus, or whosoever he was that masked "himself under that disguise, resolved to go beyond his pattern in all "the acts of malice, slandering, and sedition; but be outgone by none "that should follow after him in those ways of wickedness. He first "defames the king and queen in a most scandalous manner, exposes

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"next that flourishing kingdom for a prey to strangers; and finally lays down such seditious maxims, as plainly tend to the destruction " of monarchical government. He tells us of the king himself, that he "6 was trained up by his tutors in no other qualities than drinking, whoring, swearing, and forswearing, frauds, and falsehoods, and whatsoever else might argue a contempt both of God and godliness; that as the court by the example of the king, so by the example of the "court all the rest of the kingdom was brought into a reprobate sense, even to manifest atheism; and that as some of their former kings were "honoured with the attributes of fair, wise, debonnaire, well-beloved, &c. 66 SO should this king be known by no other name than Charles the trea"cherous. The duke of Anjou he sets forth in more ugly colours than " he doth the king, by adding this to all the rest of his brother's vices, "that he lived in a constant course of incest with his sister the princess Margaret, as well before as after her espousal to the king of Navarre. "For the queen-mother he can find no better names than those of Frede66 gond, Brunechild, Jezabel, and Messalina; of which the two first are as "infamous in the stories of France, as the two latter in the Roman and "sacred histories. And to expose them all together, he can give the 66 queen-mother and her children, (though his natural princes) no more "cleanly title than that of a bitch-wolf and her whelps; affirming, that in luxury, cruelty, and perfidiousness, they had exceeded all the tyrants "of preceding times; which comes up close to those irreverent and "lewd expressions which frequently occur in Calvin, Beza, Knox, &c. "in reference to the two Marys, queens of England and Scotland, and "other princes of that age, which have been formerly recited in their "proper places. The royal family being thus wretchedly exposed to "the public hatred; he next applies himself to stir up all the world against them both at home and abroad. And first he laboureth to ex"cite some desperate zealot to commit the like assassination on the king then reigning, as one Bodillus is reported in some French his"tories to have committed on the person of Chilprick, one of the last kings of the Merovignians, which he commemorates for a noble and "heroic action, and sets it out for an example and encouragement to some gallant Frenchman for the delivery of his country from the tyranny of the house of Valois, the ruin whereof he mainly drives at in "his whole design." What can the sensible reader say to this conduct? Is this the spirit of Christianity? Is this the way to insure the peace society, and the security of property? Are these the maxims of the gospel? Is this the pure light which the reformers had undertaken to disseminate? If so, can we wonder that the Catholics fled to arms in defence of their religion and civil rights? Can we be surprised that outrages were committed, and prejudices excited, when such scenes were daily exhibited before them, and the happiness of the realm threatened by such outrageous fanatics?

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Before we proceed in our review of this book, we will take leave to observe, that had such been the conduct of the Catholics of England and Ireland, how many would have been the volumes written to transmit it down to posterity? That they have been represented as such characters, and from principle too, we have great reason to complain, but never was the charge fairly fixed upon them; and we can safely

say it never will be. At this moment the Catholics are engaged in a struggle to gain their civil rights and religious freedom, secured to the Irish by a solemn treaty, which was violated almost as soon as signed by "Protestant-ascendency." But in this struggle we see none of those despicable arts and open violences which mark the behaviour of the Hugonots towards their sovereign and country in the sixteenth century. The Catholics certainly pursue their cause with manliness and activity, but it is by peaceable and constitutional means; by reason and argument-by the quill and the tongue and the press--and not by broils, massacres, and perfidiously selling their country to a foreign power. Were the Catholics to resort to such illegal and unjustifiable means, we would be the first to renounce their advocacy; and it is on the same principle that we expose the disgraceful proceedings of Fox's pretended martyrs, who were clearly rebels to their king, and destroyers of their countrymen, and therefore more to be execrated than held up as examples of Christian suffering for the sake of conscience. Conscience, truly! why what conscience could those men have, who could issue forth such slanderous imputations and foul falsehoods as are related by Dr. Heylin in the foregoing passage from his history?

"6 THE MASSACRE AT VASSY, IN CHAMPAIGNE."

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Under this head, the editors of Fox have given us such a delectable specimen of romancing-of a total contempt for the understandings of their readers, and of gullibility in those who give credit to their tales,— that though it is of considerable length, we cannot forbear inserting the whole account, that our readers may have on record one proof at least, of the capacity of "Protestant-ascendency" at lying: The duke of " Guise, on his arrival at Joinville, asked, whether the people of Vassy "used to have sermons preached constantly by their minister? It was answered, they had, and that they increased daily. At the hearing of "which report, he fell into a violent passion; and upon Saturday, the "last day of February, 1562, that he might the more covertly execute "his conceived wrath against the Protestants of Vassy, he departed " from Joinville, accompanied with the cardinal of Guise, his brother, "and those of their train, and lodged in the village of Dammartin, “distant about two miles and a half. The next day, after he had heard mass very early in the morning, he left Dammartin, with about two "hundred armed men, passing along to Vassy. As he went by the "village of Bronzeval, which is distant from Vassy a quarter of a mile, "the bell (after the usual manner) rang for sermon. The duke hearing it, asked those he met, why the bell rang so loud. A person "named La Montague told him, it was for the assembling of the Hugonots; adding, that there were many in the said Bronzeval who fre"quented the sermons preached at Vassy; therefore, that the duke "would do well to begin there, and offer them violence. But the duke "answered, March on, march on, we shall take them amongst the "rest of the assembly.'

"Now, there were certain soldiers and archers accompanying the "duke, who compassed about Vassy; most of them being lodged in "the houses of Papists. The Saturday before the slaughter, they were seen to make ready their weapons, arquebuses, and pistols; but the