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him whom living every man in France had feared, 'Lie there,' said he, 'poisonous serpent, thou shalt shed thy venom no more.' The head was afterwards severed from the body and carried to the queen, with a large sack full of papers found in pillaging the house. The poor miserable trunk was exposed to all the insults which the terrific violence of an infuriated and fanatical mob can lavish upon the objects of its detestation. Mutilated, half-burned, dragged through the dirt and mire, kicked, beaten, and trampled on by the very children in the street, it was lastly hung by the heels upon a common gibbet at Montfaucon. Such was the fate of that honest patriot and true Christian, Gaspard de Coligny.

"The murder completed, the Duke of Guise sallied from the gate followed by all the rest, crying out, 'Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others. For the king! It is the will of the king; the king's express command!' At that moment, the tocsin of the Palace of Justice began to sound, and then a loud and terrible cry arose, 'Down with the Hugonots! Down with the Hugonots!' and the massacre in all its horrors began.

"Dreadful was the scene that ensued. The air resounded with the most hideous noises: the loud huzzas of the assailants as they rushed to the slaughter; the cries and screams of the murdered; the crashing of breaking doors and windows; the streets streaming with blood; men, women, and children flying in all directions, pursued by the soldiers and by the populace, who were encouraged to every species of cruelty by their dreadful chiefs-Guise, Nevers, Montpensier, and Tavannes, who, hurrying up and down the streets cried out, Kill! Kill! Blood-letting is good in August! By command of the king! Kill! Kill! Oh, Hugonot! oh, Hugonot!'

"The massacre within the Louvre had already commenced. Some scuffling had early taken place between the guards posted in the courts and neighbouring streets and the Protestant gentlemen returning to their quarters, and the general slaughter of all within the palace speedily followed.

"I had slept but an hour,' continues Margaret, 'when I was startled by the cries of one striking with hands and knees against the door, and calling loudly, Navarre, Navarre. My nurse ran to it and opened it, when a gentleman called M. Tejan rushed in, having a sword wound in his elbow, and one from a halbert in his arm, and pursued by four archers; he threw himself upon the bed from which I sprang, and he after me, catching me in his bloody arms, both of us screaming with terror. At last, by God's help, M. de Nancay came in, who, finding mẹ in that situation, could not help laughing. He scolded the archers for their indiscretion, and having ordered them out of the room, he granted me the life of the poor man, whom I hid in my cabinet till he was cured. While I was changing my night-dress, which was covered with blood, M. de Nancay told me what was going on, assuring me that the king my husband was in the king's own apartments, and that he was safe; and throwing a cloak over me, he led me to the chamber of my

sister De Lorraine, where I arrived more dead than alive. As I entered the ante-chamber, the doors of which were all open, a gentleman named Bourse, flying from the archers who were pursuing him, received a blow from a halbert and fell dead at my feet. I swooned in the arms of M. de Nancay, who thought the same blow had struck both at once, and was carried into my sister's room; soon afterwards two gentlemen, M. de Miossons, and D'Armagnac, valet to my husband the king, came to entreat me to save their lives: I went and threw myself at the feet of the king and queen, and at last my petition was granted.'

"The above gentlemen were almost the only ones who escaped of the numbers that night within the palace. Flying from room to room, the murderers butchered the Calvinist nobility, gentry, and servants, without mercy or distinction; dragging them from their beds, and flinging their bodies out of the windows. Others, attempting to escape, were pushed into the courts between files of the guards, who struck them down with their halberts as they passed. The stair-cases and galleries were slippery with blood and defiled with the mangled bodies; and vast heaps of the dead were accumulated under the king's windows, who from time to time came to look out upon this horrid spectacle. As a proof of the barbarous insensibility of those dissolute, yet beautiful and accomplished women, who formed the chief attraction of Catherine's court, it must be related that numbers of them might be seen examining the dead bodies of their acquaintances, and amusing themselves with ridiculous remarks upon the miserable remains."Reformation, vol. ii. p. 363.

"All efforts to stop the slaughter were useless. The demon of popular insurrection is easily summoned in aid of political measures; but the power which has conjured is ineffectual to lay it; that hideous population, which exists in the narrow streets and obscure quarters of Paris, and with the characteristic and still existing features of which some late French writers have made us but too well acquainted; that population grovelling in obscure vice and misery till some fearful revolution summons it into action; and which has taken such a tremendous part in every one of those convulsions with which that city has been visited, was now thoroughly aroused, and had taken the matter into their own hands. In spite of every effort, which was at last in sincerity made by the citizens, soldiers, and superior classes, to restrain them, they raged through the streets and continued their barbarous slaughters.

"Seven long days was Paris one scene of pillage, outrage, and cruelty, which would have disgraced a horde of the wildest savages. Brutality was bred of brutality, cruelty grew from cruelty. Four monsters,— Tanchou, Pezon, Croiset, and Perier,-stood for three days in turns at a gate near the river, and taking all that could be found, poignarded them and flung them into the water with every sort of outrage. Men might be seen stabbing little infants, while the innocents smiled in their faces and played with their beards. Even children might be seen slaughtering children younger than themselves. Pierre Ramus, a man of learning,

is torn out of his study, thrown out of the window, and his body, all broken and mangled, is dragged along in the mire by the younger scholars, incited to it by his rival, named Charpentier. Lambin, a royal lecturer, and a bigoted Catholic, dies of horror at the sight."-vol ii. p. 373.

According to different historians, from 70,000 to 100,000 perished at this time; and Pope Gregory XIII. ordered thanksgivings for the victory of the faithful; and a medal was struck to commemorate the event, with the head of the pope on one side, and a representation of the massacre on the reverse.

We have thus endeavoured to give a short sketch of the characters which influenced an important crisis in history; we recommend our readers, however, to judge for themselves. The book

suggests many subjects for reflection, and gives many hints for the present time. There is still fierce confusion and civil war, and the foundations of the earth are out of course, and there is still the secret power of Romanism endeavouring to shape all changes to its own purpose, and employing every agent to fulfil the will of the Church, and bring all men into subjection to the spiritual power. The pope is shaken as a temporal prince, but as a spiritual power he is the same as ever. The individual pope, like an individual monarch, is often but a name, while the power resides in the body of his satellites, and is dispersed throughout the world, with every Roman Catholic priest as its sworn agent. Alva and Lorraine were only doing the work of the Church, and assisting her spiritual authority, when they led Catherine and Charles to believe that the extirpation of heresy was lawful and expedient; and we believe there are thousands at this moment in the British Islands who would use the secular arm to carry out their own ends, if the power of the state were once in their possession.

"Ranke's Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," is a work of great research and gives most valuable historical information. The notes are full, and contain long quotations from contemporary authorities; but the Reformation in France will be read as a book of amusement; and while the author, by long references to contemporary writers, increases our information, and gives us an opportunity to acquire more by consulting the authorities, the style of the narrative is animated and the characters well sustained. History is improving where it is true, but private life and individual character have an interest beyond historical detail, and our author has happily combined both. We only hope that the promise in the advertisement may be realized, and that we may soon have a continuation of the history through the reign of Henry IV. to the Revocation of the edict of Nantes.

ART. II. Vindicia Symbolica; or, a Treatise on Creeds, Articles of Faith, and Articles of Doctrine. By THOMAS WILLIAM LANCASTER, M.A., Vicar of Banbury, and formerly Bampton Lecturer. Vol. I. Oxford: Vincent. London: Rivingtons.

THE Christian religion, like the temporal governments of the world, has been assailed in these latter days by agencies altogether different from those which menaced its earlier stages of existence. Heresy has been replaced by various forms of scepticism in the one case, as dynastic revolutions have been superseded by social revolutions in the other. But in both alike, the concealed object is to emancipate the individual from the necessity of submitting to the ordinances of God. The tendency of the whole movement is to Atheism, though there are many stages on the way-the objector to creeds not being always prepared to doubt the inspiration of Scripture; and the reasoner against the inspiration of Scripture not being prepared to reject Christianity in the gross as a fable; and the denier of Christianity not being willing always to deny the existence of the Deity, or the obligations of moral duty. But though men are restrained by their own wilfulness, or by their resolution not to see the logical consequences of their opinions, from reaching the goal of either incredulity, still it is the duty of Christians at all times, and, we will add, more emphatically in the present times, when the enemy of souls is at work in a thousand forms for the subversion of faith-to be awake to the tendencies of opinions and principles bearing on the truth and the stability of the Christian faith.

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Orthodoxy has often been sneered at by secret unbelievers, and is in little favour with what is called "the world." It conveys the mind of too many persons, the notion of a stiff, rigid, hard, unbending, and arrogant system-a collection of words, forms, logical niceties, devised for the purpose of imposing the opinions or the terminology of a certain set of men on the rest of the world. Now we are far from denying that orthodoxy has sometimes taken a form in which, to a mere spectator, it must present very little of what is inviting. Orthodoxy may exist where little of real practical religion exists. It may be combined with pride, uncharitableness, a harsh, intolerant, and bitter tone of controversy, and much else that cannot be approved. And yet it would be very unreasonable to infer, that because orthodoxy is sometimes united with such tempers and conduet, it is in itself incon

sistent with the character of real Christianity. While human nature continues to be what it is, the cause of truth is at all times liable to be injured by the faults of its adherents.

But if Christianity be a real substantive religion at all-if it possesses any tenets or institutions distinguishing it from other religions, or from a merely negative and sceptical philosophy-it is clear that there is a right and a wrong as regards Christian doctrine. The creed may be extensive, or it may be restricted; but whatever its tenets are, they are the tenets of the Christian religion, just as there are certain tenets which belong indisputably to the Mahommedan religion, and do not belong to the Brahmin or the Parsee, and vice versá; and to attempt to divest Christianity of dogmas altogether, would be just as reasonable as it would be to divest Mahommedanism or Heathenism of all doctrines or tenets. Human ingenuity can, of course, find difficulties in any case, however clear and evident to the common sense of mankind: there is absolutely no proposition, however self-evident, which may not be assailed by sophistry capable of involving it in doubt and perplexity. It is thus that much subtle and ingenious reasoning has been expended in proving what, after all, no one believes, that Christianity has no doctrines. The mind revolts from the ultimate conclusion, and the Unitarian possesses his creed, just as much as the Catholic believer.

It is, therefore, more easy than consistent, in any professed believer in Christianity to sneer at orthodoxy, or to pretend that it is a matter of indifference what religious tenets are held by Christians. But the case is made infinitely stronger, when it is admitted by all those whom we have in view, that Christianity is, in fact, a religion revealed by God-a system of moral and spiritual truths designed for the highest welfare of man. According to this, the Christian religion possesses an obligation on conscience, and ought to be received in its integrity by every one to whom it is made known. Be the tenets of this religion what they may, man has no right to alter, or to deny, or to regard as needless or superfluous, what God has revealed.

The question, then, of orthodoxy, or of the duty of believing those doctrines, whether of a speculative or a practical nature, which God has actually revealed, is a very simple one. It is really marvellous to see such examples of the way in which the common sense of men may be perverted by sophistries, as we sometimes do see in the case of persons of intelligence, and not without religious belief, who have been led to join in the prejudice against creeds and articles of faith as such, and any fixed or settled code of belief. Persons who think and talk in this way, are frequently very little aware of the real substratum of prin

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