reatened by the archiepiscopal city, the Protestants of
Cateau, afraid to go to the French preaching-places, sent for Monsieur
Philippe, minister of Tupigny, and held the reformed services just outside
of their own walls. Alarmed at the progress of Protestant doctrines in his
diocese, the Archbishop convened the estates of Cambray, and, on the
eighteenth of August, 1566, sent three canons of the cathedral to persuade
his subjects of Cateau to return to the Papal Church, and to threaten them
with ruin in case of refusal. Neither argument nor menace was of any
avail. The Protestants, who had studied their Bibles, were more than a
match for the priests, who had not; and, as for the peril, the Huguenots
quaintly replied: "Rather than yield to your demand, we should prefer to
have our heads placed at our feet." When asked if they were all of this
mind, they reiterated their determination: "Were the fires made ready to
burn us all, we should enter them rather than accede to your request and
return to the mass." These were brave words, but the sturdy Huguenots made
them good a few months later.

[Sidenote: The images and pictures overthrown.]

Scarcely a week had passed before the news reached Cateau (on the
twenty-fifth of August) that the "idols" had been broken in all the
churches of Valenciennes, Antwerp, Ghent, Tournay, and elsewhere. Although
stirred to its very depths by the exciting intelligence, the Protestant
population still contained itself, and merely consulted convenience by
celebrating Divine worship within the city walls, in an open cemetery.
Unfortunately, however, the minister whom the reformed had obtained was
ill-suited to these troublous times. Monsieur Philippe, unlike Calvin and
the great majority of the ministers of the French Protestant church, was
rash and impetuous. Early the next morning he entered the church of St.
Martin, in company with three or four other persons, and commenced the
work of destruction. Altars, statues, pictures, antiphonaries, missals,
graduals--all underwent a common fate. From St. Martin's the iconoclasts
visited in like manner the other ecclesiastical edifices of the town and
its suburbs. Upon the ruins of the Romish superstition the new fabric
arose, and Monsieur Philippe preached the same day in the principal church
of Cateau, to a large and attentive audience.

[Sidenote: The Protestant claims.]

And now began an animated interchange of proclamations on the one hand,
an