NOTE 15. p. 87.

Hell-trained Inquisitors unpeopled Spain,

And ground the land that owned her special reign.

The downfall of Spain must in great measure be attributed to the dreadfui agency of the Inquisition which extinguished Protestantism in the Peninsula, and by the expulsion of the Moriscoes, inflicted a death-blow on the industry of the country.

NOTE 16, p 87.

A frantic throng was welcomed to her ranks;
A throned assassin won her damning thanks;

A perjured queen and tainted courtiers wrought
The deeds her precepts hallowed while they taught,

And Murder swept along his midnight path

To smite unguarded guests, and giut long smothered wrath.

The circumstances of peculiar atrocity attending the Bartholomew massacre, which Philip II. suggested, Catherine de'Medici directed, at which Charles IX. assisted, on which Gregory XIII. bestowed the papal benediction, are thus strikingly set forth by de Thou, (Hist. b. 53, cap. 1.) "He (Charles IX.) massacred his own subjects, and those committed not less to his faith than his power (non plus fidei quam potestati commissos,) bound as he was to preserve the peace which he had sworn by a recent treaty with the neighbouring kings and princes; and to lure his victims on, he abused the faith he had pledged and the holy rite of marriage, and hardly preserved his sister's bridal robe from bloodstains."

NOTE 17, p. 88.

While France as foully wronged the Huguenot!

The situation of the Huguenots from the death of Mazarin 1661, to the revocation of the edict of Nantes 1685, was one of peculiar difficulty and distress. Fraud and force were indifferently employed in their conversion.

NOTE 18, p. 88.

Gold, threats and chains but scanty converts won.

In his eager desire to diminish the number of his Protestant subjects, Louis XIV having tried severe measures in vain, had recourse to bribery. Agents were sent among them with directions to buy them over to Popery, at six livres a convert.

NOTE 19, p. 88.

He lost his children, or his soul belied.

One of the most cruel enactments against the Huguenots was the edict which declared every Huguenot child capable of forming his religious opinions at the early age of seven, and invited him to embrace Catholicism and leave his parents, who were compelled to maintain the almost infant proselyte.

NOTE 20, p. 88.

Armed ruffians to the work of grace were sent.

Allusion is made to the dreadful Dragonnades. Large bodies of soldiers, expressively denominated, La Mission Bottée, were let loose upon the Huguenot inhabitants of many provinces, and authorised to commit every species of enormity in the hope of accelerating conversion.

NOTE, 21, p. 88.

To crown each wrong, the sheltering charter fell.

The ordinance which revoked the edict of Nantes (Oct. 18, 1685) commands that every Protestant place of worship should be demolished, forbids every private assembly for the purposes of worship, and enjoins every Huguenot Minister to leave France within fifteen days, on pain of the Galleys. (See Smedley's History of the Reformed Religion in France, vol. 3. cap. 24.) This barbarous exhibition of bigotry cost Louis a million of subjects.

NOTE 22, p. 90.

To Discord's rule the hostile camp is given.

The antiquated claims which certain Oxford divines work so hard to render fashionable, are not likely to reward their pains. The mind of the age is too strong for the rotten cords wherewith they would tie it down. In vain do they bespeak outrageous power for the Church, and recommend the postponement of the Bible to the Common Prayer Book. An attack upon the freedom of man in this high state of his advancement requires from the assailant something more than courage; some originality of plan, some skill in execution is surely necessary. But nothing of this appears; they affront us with the stale inventions of Gregory VII and Innocent III, deal with our day as with the darkness of the Middle Ages, and presume upon the efficacy of these doctrines in their rash, untried, and incapable hands, with so strong an opposition to contend with in the intelligence of the times; while the genius and experience of many popes often found them unavailing against the comparative impotence of the mind of their age.

N

NOTES TO BOOK IV.

NOTE 1, p. 101.

The Priest aspired; he clamoured for the tithe.

Among the numberless evils which the alliance of king and priest have entailed upon Christianity, the exaction of tithes has proved not the least infamous aud burdensome. As to the origin I will quote the words of Sir William Blackstone a true son of the Church.-Comm. Book II. cap. 3, "I will not put the title of the clergy to tithes on any divine right; though such a right certainly commenced and I believe, as certainly ceased with the Jewish Theocracy." To use the striking language of Grattan "In the fifth century decimation began, and Christianity declined, then indeed the right of tithes was advanced, and advanced in a style that damned it. The preachers who advanced this doctrine placed all christian virtue in the payment of tithes-They say the Christian religion, as we say the Protestant religion, depended upon it, and that those who paid not their tithes would be found guilty before God, and if they did not give the tenth, God would reduce the country to a tenth."-See Grattan's speech on Tithes.

After a short but noble invective against the iniquities of such conduct, the great orator proceeds to support his assertions by quotations from St. Augustine, St. Jerome, etc.

Nothing so seriously impeded the conversion of the northern tribes as this odious exaction-The freemen of Germany and Scandinavia abhorred the Gospel in the tithe, and the arms of Charlemagne could not overcome