en they
caught him, of what avail was his quiet, peaceable spirit to him? Under
martyrdom, at which the imagination shudders, he was forced to resign
his soul into the hands of the Creator. Need I remind you of the noble
spirit of Seguier, how heroically he died and only scorned the cruel
ingenuity of the executioner? But how then do you forget the wholly
innocent people, who often assembled in the fields to worship God in
secret and were put down by the faithful, as they call themselves, or,
as it often happened, massacred, women and children not excepted? And
you no longer remember, how parents who were suspected had their
children torn from them to be brought up as Catholics, how the mothers
never saw them more and how those under age, who then remained faithful
to the Gospel, were ill-used, suffered martyrdom, or were doomed to
languish in a dungeon? All then has escaped your recollection, what
those priests of the pulpit and the altar have uttered against us, and
the ban and the curse, and that we are no men and unworthy of
commiseration, when we were still constrained to attend their mass? and
is it even permitted that gentleness, virtue, consideration, humanity
and pity, should be observed towards these bloodhounds? No, verily, we
are ruined if we do not pay them in their own coin, return evil for
evil, blood for blood, death for death, rage and fury for their
inflexibility and severity. As they have been mild and compassionate
towards us, let us respond to it; let the Christianity that they
preach, fall burning down upon their own heads, let us dive into their
hearts and entrails, to see where they have concealed pity and the
feelings of humanity. Wherever our name resounds, they must turn pale,
and when we set all against all, we shall then be able to know whether
we lose, or win, we shall extirpate them, or they us; and if we cease
to exist, so may the wasted wilderness, the depopulated land, the
ruined palaces, and burnt-down temples and horror and desolation,
announce to the after-world what we have suffered and done. What are a
priest, country or king in comparison to my faith, in comparison to the
fire that kindles through all my veins and burns in every fibre? Do you
think you are permitted to reason and be men of the ordinary world?
This is precisely what makes our adversaries strong and prepares so
many defeats for us, because we still turn our looks back upon the
world and its wisdom. Here stand our pro