ities; the very altars which had once protected Christians from
pagans were polluted by Catholic executioners. Ladies jested with
unfeeling mirth over the dead bodies of murdered Protestants. The very
worst horrors of which the mind could conceive were perpetrated in the
name of religion. And then, when no more victims remained, the King and
his court and his clergy proceeded in solemn procession to the cathedral
church of Notre Dame, amidst hymns of praise, to return thanks to God
for the deliverance of France from men who had sought only the privilege
of worshipping Him according to their consciences!

Nor did the bloody work stop here; orders were sent by the Government to
every city and town of France to execute the like barbarities. The utter
extermination of the Protestants was resolved upon throughout the
country. The slaughter was begun in treachery and was continued in the
most heartless cruelty. When the news of it reached Borne, the Holy
Father the Pope caused a medal to be struck in commemoration of the
event, illuminated his capital, ordained general rejoicings, as if for
some signal victory over the Turks; and, assisted by his cardinals and
clergy, marched in glad procession to St. Peter's Church, and offered up
a solemn Te Deum for this vile and treacherous slaughter of sixty
thousand Protestants.

In former lectures I have passed rapidly and imperfectly over this awful
crime, not wishing to stimulate passions which should be buried, and
thinking it was more the fault of the age than of Catholic bigots; but I
now present it in its naked deformity, to be true to history, and to
show how cruel is religious intolerance, confirmed by the history of
other inhumanities in the Catholic Church,--by the persecution of
Dominican monks, by the slaughter of the Albigenses, by inquisitions,
gunpowder plots, the cruelties of Alva, and that trail of blood which
has marked the fairest portions of Europe by the hostilities of the
Church of Borne in its struggles to suppress Protestant opinions. I
mention it to recall the fact that Protestantism has never been stained
by such a crime. I mention it to invoke gratitude that such a misguided
zeal has passed away and is never likely to return. Catholic historians
do not pretend to deny the horrid facts, but ascribe the massacre to
political animosities rather than religious,--a lame and impotent
defence of their persecuting Church in the sixteenth century.

But this atrocity