places were garrisoned with their own troops. This community was not always under leaders of sufficient foresight, and attachment to the crown. Hence, sometimes, (for the truth should not be concealed,) when civil wars or commotions broke out, this community took the side of those that were opposed to the king; engaged at times in enterprises which the king disliked; too openly sought alliance and friendship with the Dutch and the English; and undertook or aimed at other things, inconsistent, apparently at least, with the public peace and the supreme authority of the king. Hence the king, Lewis XIII., from the year 1621, waged war with the Reformed party; and the prime minister of France, cardinal Richelieu, was persuaded that France would never be safe, and enjoy peace, until this community was prostrated, and deprived of its fortifications, castles, strong towns, and high privileges. Richelieu, after various conflicts, and numerous efforts, at last obtained his object. For in the year 1628, after a long and difficult siege, he took Rochelle, the chief fortress of the Reformed community, and reduced it to subjection to the king: and this city being captured, the Reformed community in France was prostrate; and being deprived of its fortresses, could depend upon nothing but the king's clemency and good pleasure. Those who judge of this transaction, by the principles of state policy, deny that it was a violation of all justice and equity: because such communities in the bosom of a kingdom or state are pernicious, and most hazardous to the public peace and safety. And if the French court had stopped here, and had left safe and inviolate to the Reformed their liberties of conscience and religion, purchased with immense blood and great achievements, perhaps the Reformed could, and would, have borne the immense loss of their liberties and rights with equanimity. § 3. But the French court was not content with this measure of success having destroyed that form or species of civil polity, which had been annexed to the Reformed church, and which afterwards was deemed adverse to the regal power, the court 4 See Jo. le Clerc's Vie du Cardinal Richelieu, tom i. p. 69. 77. 177. 199. 269. Mich. le Vassor's Histoire de Louis XIII. tom. iii. p. 676, &c. tom. iv. p. 1, &c. and the subsequent vo lumes. Add the duke of Sully, (a friend to Henry IV. himself one of the Reformed, but not disposed to conceal the errors of his church,) Mémoires, tom. iii. iv. v. next attacked the church itself, and its religion, contrary to the plighted faith of the kings. At first milder measures were resorted to, promises, caresses, conciliatory expositions of the doctrines particularly offensive to the Reformed, and similar measures, both with the head men of the Reformed community, and with the more learned and eminent of their ministers; and Richelieu especially, spared no pains or arts which he thought might have any influence to draw the Reformed insidiously into the Romish church. But as little or nothing was effected by all these measures, the catholic bishops especially resorted to sophistry, persecution, the most unrighteous laws, and all the means which either blind passion or ingenious malice could invent, in order gradually to exhaust the people who were so hateful to them, and compel them against their choice, reluctantly to join the standard of the Roman pontiff. Many yielded, being overcome by their troubles and very grievous sufferings; others left the country; but the greatest part firmly persisted in the religion of their fathers. § 4. At length, under Lewis XIV., after all artifices, snares, and projects had been exhausted in vain, the prelates of the Gallic church and the Jesuits, to whom the king was accustomed to listen, determined that this most resolute body of people must be extirpated by violence and war, and crushed as it were by a single stroke. Overcome by their arguments and importunate supplications, Lewis, in the year 1685, with the approbation and applause of the Roman pontiff, in violation of all laws human and divine, repealed the edict of Nantes, by which his grandfather had granted to the Reformed the liberty of worshipping God according to their own consciences; and commanded his Reformed subjects to return to the religion of their progenitors. The consequence of this most lamentable decree, was, that a vast multitude of French people abandoned their country, to the immense detriment of France', and sought 5 See the excellent remarks and observations of Armand de la Chapelle, on this subject, in his Life of Isaac de Beausobre, subjoined to the posthumous Notes of the latter on the New Testament, p. 259, &c. [The edict of Nantes, which gave free toleration to the protestants, was drawn up and sanctioned by Henry IV. in the year 1598; and confirmed by Lewis XIII. the year after he assumed the sceptre, A. D. 1613. Its revocation in 1685 was preceded by the dispatch of soldiers into all the provinces, to compel the protestants to abandon their religion. Notwithstanding the great pains taken new abiding places, in various parts of Europe, in which they might freely serve God: and the others, whom the extreme vigilance of their enemies prevented from acquiring safety by flight, the soldiers compelled, by a thousand modes of torture, vexation, and suffering, to profess with their lips, and to exhibit in their outward conduct, that Romish religion which they abhorred in their hearts. From this unrighteous act of the (on other occasions magnanimous) king it may be seen how the Roman pontiffs and their adherents stand affected towards those whom they call heretics; and that they regard no treaty, and no oath too sacred and too solemn, to be violated, if the safety or the interests of their church demand it. § 5. The Waldenses, inhabiting the valleys of Piedmont, who have been already mentioned as entering into a union with the church of Geneva, were tortured, nearly throughout this century, by the very cruel devices and machinations of the instruments of the Roman pontiff; but especially, in the years 1655, 1686, and 1696, they were so oppressed and harassed as to come near to being exterminated'. Those who survived these frequent butcheries, owed their precarious and dubious safety to the intercessions of the Dutch, the English, and the Swiss, with the duke of Savoy. In Germany, the church of the Palatinate, which was once a principal branch of the Reformed community, from the year 1685, when the government passed into the hands of a catholic prince, gradually suffered so much to prevent their escape from the kingdom, some say half a million, and others say eight hundred thousand protestants found their way to foreign countries. Nearly forty thousand are said to have passed over to England; whence many of them came to the United States of America. Vast numbers settled in Holland and large numbers in the protestant states of Germany, particularly in Prussia, and in Switzerland and Denmark. See Gifford's History of France, vol. iv. p. 35. 92. 421, &c. Schroeckh, Kirchengesch. seit der Reformation, vol. viii. p. 470, &c. Tr.] 6 No one has illustrated these events more fully than Elias Benoit, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes; a noble work, published at Delft, 1693, &c. in 5 vols. 4to. See also Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. tom. ii. p. 229. 7 Jo. Leger, Histoire Générale des Eglises Vaudoises, pt. ii. ch. vi. p. 72, &c. Peter Gilles, Histoire Ecclésiastique des Eglises Vaudoises, cap. xlix. p. 353, &c. There is extant a particular history of the calamities sustained by the Waldenses, in the year 1686; printed at Rotterdam, 1688. 12mo. [See also An Account of the late persecutions of the Waldenses by the duke of Savoy and the French king, in 1686; printed, Oxford, 1688. 4to. and Peter Boyer's History of the Vaudois, chap. xii-xxi. p. 72, &c. Tr.] diminution, that from holding the first rank, it was depressed to almost the lowest among the Reformed churches of Germany. § 6. The very great merits of the Reformed, in regard to every species of useful knowledge, are so well known to all, that we shall not dwell upon them. We shall also omit the names of the great and distinguished authors, whose works procured permanent fame for themselves, and great advantage to others; because it is difficult, amidst so great a number, to select the best. In philosophy, the sole guide and lawgiver every where for a long time, just as among the Lutherans, was Aristotle; and indeed, Aristotle, just as he is pourtrayed to us by the scholastic writers. But his authority gradually became very much diminished, from the times of Gassendi and Des Cartes. For many of the French and Dutch adopted the Cartesian philosophy, upon its first appearance; and a large part of the English chose Gassendi for their guide and teacher. This was exceedingly offensive to the Aristotelians; who every where, but most pugnaciously in Holland, laboured to persuade the people, that immense danger to religion and the truth, was to be apprehended from the abandonment of Aristotle; nor would they suffer themselves to be ousted from the schools'. But the splendour of the increasing light, and the influence of liberty, compelled the pertinacious sect to yield and be silent so that the Reformed doctors, at the present day, philosophize as freely as the Lutherans do. Yet I am not [“The list of the eminent divines and men of learning, that were ornaments to the Reformed church in the 17th century, is indeed extremely, ample. Among those that adorned Great Britain, we shall always remember with peculiar veneration the immortal names of Newton, Barrow, Cudworth, Boyle, Chillingworth, Ussher, Bedell, Hall, Pocock, Fell, Lightfoot, Hammond, Calamy, Walton, Baxter, Pearson, Stillingfleet, Mede, Parker, Oughtred, Burnet, Tillotson, and many others well known in the literary world. In Germany we find Pareus, Scultet, Fabricius, Alting, Pelargus, and Bergius. In Switzerland and Geneva, Hospinian, the two Buxtorfs Hottinger, Heidegger, and Turretin. 9 See Andrew Baillet, Vie de M. des Cartes; in numerous passages. 223 sure that Aristotle does not still exercise a secret sway in the English universities. This at least I could easily evince, that in the times of Charles II., James II., and William III., while the mathematical philosophy prevailed nearly throughout Great Britain, yet at Oxford and Cambridge, the old philosophy was in higher repute, with some, than the new discoveries. § 7. The expositors of Scripture among the Reformed, who adorned the commencement of the century, all trod in the steps of Calvin; and according to his example, they did not search after recondite meanings and types, but investigated solely the import of the words of the sacred writers. But this uniformity, in process of time, was done away, by the influence of two very distinguished interpreters, Hugo Grotius, and John Cocceius. The former, departing but slightly from Calvin's manner, investigates only the literal sense, in the books of both the Old Testament and the New; considers the predictions of the ancient prophets, as being all fulfilled in events anterior to the coming of Christ, and therefore in the letter of them, as not to be applied to Christ yet he supposes, that in some of those prophecies, especially in such as the writers of the New Testament apply to Christ, there is, besides the literal sense, a secret or mystical sense, concealed under the persons, events, and things described, which relates to Christ, to his history and mediation. Very different were the principles of Cocceius. He supposed that the whole Old Testament history was a kind of emblematic history of Christ, and of the christian church; that the prophecies of the ancient prophets, in their literal import, treated of Jesus Christ; and that whatever was to occur in the christian church, down to the end of time, was all prefigured in the Old Testament, in some places more clearly, and in others less so '. Each of these men had a multitude of followers and disciples. With the former, were, besides the Arminians, those adherents to the old Calvinistic system, who, from Gisbert Voet, the principal antagonist of Cocceius, were It is commonly said: "Cocceius finds Christ every where, but Grotius no where, in the pages of the Old Testament." The first part of the adage is most true: the last is not so true. For Grotius, as his commentaries fully show, does find Christ in many pas- |