us Godhead.

The Duc de Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly
cruelties practised by Louis XIV. on the Huguenots, "without the
slightest pretext or necessity," characterizes this forced
participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly,
notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the
practice. "From simulated abjuration," he says, "they [the Huguenots]
are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the
divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that
they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the
general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. From torture to
abjuration, and from that to the communion, there were only
twenty-four hours' distance; and the executioners were the conductors
of the converts, and their witnesses. Those who in the end appeared to
have become reconciled, when more at leisure did not fail, by their
flight or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended
conversion."[15]

[Footnote 15: "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," Bayle St.
John's Translation, iii. 259.]

Indeed, many of the new converts, finding life in France to be all but
intolerable, determined to follow the example of the Huguenots who had
already fled, and took the first opportunity of disposing of their
goods and leaving the country. One of the first things they did on
reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congregation of their
brethren, and make "reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their
repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to
the Roman Catholic Church.[16] At one of the sittings of the
Threadneedle Street Huguenot Church in London, held in May, 1687--two
years after the Revocation--not fewer than 497 members were again
received into the Church which, by force, they had pretended to
abandon.

[Footnote 16: See "The Huguenots: their Settlements, &c., in
England and Ireland," chap. xvi.]

Not many pastors abjured. A few who yielded in the first instance
through terror and stupor, almost invariably returned to their ancient
faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform
and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income by
one-third, and if they became advocates or doctors in law, to dispense
with their three years' study, and with the right of diploma.

At length, most of the pastors had left the countr