The work of men's hands."

his bleeding and mutilated body was thrown upon the blazing fagots. He
had a younger brother, Peter Leclerc, a simple wool-carder like himself,
who remained at Meaux, devoted to the same faith and the same cause.
"Great _clerc,_" says a contemporary chronicler, playing upon his name,
"who knew no language but that which he had learned from his nurse, but
who, being thoroughly grounded in the holy writings, besides the
integrity of his life, was chosen by the weavers and became the first
minister of the gospel seen in France." An old man of Meaux, named
Stephen Mangin, offered his house, situated near the market-place, for
holding regular meetings. Forty or fifty of the faithful formed the
nucleus of the little church which grew up. Peter Leclerc preached and
administered the sacraments in Stephen Mangin's house so regularly that,
twenty years after his brother John's martyrdom, the meetings, composed
partly of believers who flocked in from the neighboring villages, were
from three to four hundred in number. One day when they had celebrated
the Lord's Supper, the 8th of September, 1546, the house was surrounded,
and nearly sixty persons, men, women, and children, who allowed
themselves to be arrested without making any resistance, were taken.
They were all sent before the Parliament of Paris; fourteen of the men
were sentenced to be burned alive in the great marketplace at Meaux, on
the spot nearest to the house in which the crime of heresy had been
committed; and their wives, together with their nearest relatives, were
sentenced to be present at the execution, "the men bare-headed and the
women ranged beside them individually, in such sort that they might be
distinguished amongst the rest." The decree was strictly carried out.

[Illustration: Burning of Reformers at Meaux----188]

It costs a pang to recur to these hideous exhibitions, but it must be
done; for history not only has a right, but is bound to do justice upon
the errors and crimes of the past, especially when the past had no idea
of guilt in the commission of them. A wit of the last century,
Champfort, used to say, "There is nothing more dangerous than an honest
man engaged in a rascally calling." There is nothing more dangerous than
errors and crimes of which the perpetrators do not see the absurd and
odious character. The contemporary historian, Sleidan, says, expressly,
"The common people in France hold