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priests. New victims were arrested and led to the stake, and every where ceaseless, untiring efforts were made by inquisitors to uproot the dreaded heresy.

Let us take one last look at Briçonnet as he labors now to destroy the faith which he had once so loved.

It is the year 1528. A prisoner, whose name was Denis, from the village of Rieux, was sleeping in his cell. In these days of persecution, a man condemned to death slept upon the damp slabs of his prison. His sleep was sweet and peaceful, because he had in his conscience the testimony, so precious at such an hour, that he was ready to sacrifice everything rather than deny his faith. His crime was Lutheranism. He was waiting for the crown which God places on the head of his chosen ones. The door opens. A visitor enters and awakes him. His object is to save the prisoner from certain death by inducing him to recant. The sleeping man opens his eyes, and immediately recognizes him who speaks to him. With a look full of contempt and disdain he regards his visitor, who, quailing beneath the eye of the martyr, withdrew from his cell. It was Briçonnet. Denis was executed on the 3d of July, 1528.*

Louis de Berquin was the third time accused. With a perseverance which would have done honor to a better cause, the Romish Church was determined to hunt him down. He was too eminent a man to live a Protestant. Learning, wisdom, acuteness, eloquence, united to great zeal and devoted piety, rendered him too formidable an adversary. Erasmus, who was his friend, had warned him. "They will kill you," he wrote. He was brought to trial, and condemned to have his tongue pierced; and if he * Hist. de la Ref. France, par F. Puaux, vol. i, p. 80.

would recant, to perpetual imprisonment; if he would not recant, to be burned.

It is sad to meet in such a place the celebrated William Budé, sitting as one of the judges. He was called the prodigy of France for his classical acquirements, and was the secretary and librarian of Francis I. This eminent man, desirous of preserving to the sciences and letters such a man as de Berquin, came to him and urged him greatly to recant. He at last succeeded, and de Berquin signed a recanta tion.

Hardly was the act committed when he repented bitterly, and asked to be put to death with great earnestness, (demanda la mort à grands cris,) so that he might make some amends for what he had done. Taking advantage of the absence of the king, who had gone to Blois with his court, they led him out for execution to La Place de Grève. Well remembering the effect produced by the eloquence of Pavannes, they took precautions to prevent any like occurrence again, and when de Berquin began to speak to the people hired men drowned his voice by their cries. He was burned on the 22d of April, 1529.*

Thus died, at forty years of age, a man whose loss was deeply felt by all the rising Church. His glorious death, however, was infinitely better than the apostasy of Briçonnet.

"The ideas," says the French author I have quoted, "which Bedier wished to smother under the funeral pyre of the martyr, were not such as perish in the flames. They pass over ramparts and bayonets, and even glide under the robe of an inquisitor. Men wished to know De Berquin's crime, and when they knew it many became his followers. Bedier

* Crespin, liv. ii, p. 97.

triumphed in his hate, the martyr in his principles."

Shall we pause a moment and look about us to behold the flames as they rise around so many innocent victims of the Inquisition all throughout France and Europe? How many of them are forgotten! The names of a few here and there only have come down to us, and they are almost forgotten by those who are now enjoying the blessings which, in a secondary sense, were purchased by their blood. And yet they are as worthy of a place in history as many whose names are like household words. They are more worthy than the great captains and warriors of the earth who have died on the battle-field. They lived and fell for glory; the martyrs lived and died for Christ. We will then love and revere their memory. They are our suffering brethren, suffering not only for religion but for liberty of conscience. We use again almost the words of the eloquent writer to whom I have referred:

"Louis de Berquin was the forerunner of the liberty of which England and America offer us the model. These are the men who have changed the face of the world which forgets them. O justice, justice for these founders of our liberties! Justice for their memory! Glory for their name! Let the clergy curse them; but you, who regard thought as a gift of God which no one can chain, bow with respect before the precursors of modern liberty. . . . There are crowns and palms for political scaffolds, but not a single souvenir for the Protestant funeral pyres. We leave thus in forgetfulness those who three centuries ago opened with their martyr hands the glori ous temple of our liberties."

Let the Church of Rome point to our different de

nominations if she chooses, and tell us that these divisions are the result of our liberty. We will reply, that so far from being antagonistic divisions, they are but different bodies of one grand whole-one glorious universal Church. Rome has a union of form; while Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, have a union of life and spirit; as the Churches of Corinth, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Jerusalem, Galatia were but different parts of one invisible Church in the days of the apostles. Rome with her principle of authority may make faithful automatons. Protestantism with her principle of liberty makes thinking Christians.

CHAPTER X.

A CHURCH HAUNTED.

THE efforts of the clergy seemed to be vain. The fire spread everywhere. The Lutheran ideas seemed to circulate in the air, and without consultation with each other, in a hundred parts of France at a time, serious men manifested their opposition to the superstitions of the Church.

The priests found that the death of the men was not the death of their principles. Indefatigable in their efforts, they resorted to other means of destroying heresy. The following is an example :

In the year 1530 the wife of the sheriff of Orleans died. She seemed to have received some sparks of truth, but no one suspected her of being anything but a Roman Catholic. Some days before she died she wrote in her will as follows:

"I wish to be buried without pomp, without candles, without chants."

Her husband conformed religiously to her desires, and she was buried in the church of the Franciscans, where the sheriff had a family vault.

The friars of St. Francis, who had counted upon a good round sum for the burial of one in her position, did not conceal their bad temper and chagrin at the impiety of the sheriff. The latter to pacify the Franciscans offered them six crowns, but thinking it entirely too little they resolved to have their revenge. Aided by two doctors of divinity from Paris, they trained a young novice to the part which they wished him to play. When he was properly instructed they concealed him in the vaulted roof of their church. At a signal agreed upon the novice made a noise so frightful that it was impossible to go on with the service. A superstitious terror seized the ignorant multitude in the church. The monks asserted that it was a spirit, and proceeded to interrogate it; they urged it to answer, and the novice, perfectly trained to his part, sometimes answered in words, and sometimes in making an unearthly noise. No one doubted that there was a spirit in the church. Who would dare to suspect any trickery on the part of those men of God who passed their time in praying and singing?

It was soon known all throughout Orleans that a spirit haunted the church of the Franciscans. On a set day the monks invited some distinguished persons to be present at the church, and hardly had the service commenced when the same frightful noise was heard.. The friars seemed to be terrified and astonished.

"There is no longer any doubt," said they, "that the church is haunted by an evil spirit. We must drive it out."

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