the extirpation of heresy, as it flattered the court and the clergy, came into vogue. Jus divinum was the test of sound orthodoxy, and this reasoning became popular argumentation, Princes MAY put heretics to death; therefore theyOUGHT to put them to death.

Richlieu, who had wriggled himself into power, by publishing a scandalous libel on the protestants of France, advised the king to establish his authority, by extirpating the intestine evils of the king. dom. He assured his majesty that the Hugonots had the power of doing him mischief, and that it was a principle with them, that kings might be deposed by the people. The protestants replied to his invectives, and exposed the absurdity of his reasoning. Richlieu reasoned thus: John Knox, the Scotch reformer, did not believe the divine authority of kings Calvin held a correspondence with Knox, therefore Calvin did not believe it. The French reformed church derived its doctrine from Calvin's church of Geneva, therefore the first Hugonots did not believe it. The first Hugonots did not believe it, therefore the present Hugonots do not believe it. No man who valued the reputation of a man of sense, would have scaled the walls of preferment with such a ridiculous ladder as this!

The king, intoxicated with despotical principles, followed the fatal advice of his minister, and began with his patrimonial province of Bearn, where he caused the catholic religion to be established, 1620. The Hugonots broke out into violence at this attack on their liberties, whence the king took an opportunity to recover several places from them, and at last made peace with them on condition of their demolishing all their fortifications except those of Montauban and Rochelle. Arnoux, the Jesuit, who was a creature of Richlieu's, was, at that time, confessor to Lewis the just.

The cardinal, not content with temporal power, had still another claim on the protestants of a spiritual kind. Cautionary towns must be given up to that, and conscience to this. He suffered the edict to be infringed every day, and he was determined not to stop till he had established an uniformity in the church, without the obtaining of which, he thought, something was wanting to his master's power. The protestants did all that prudence could suggest. They sent the famous Amyraut to complain to the king of the infraction of their edicts, 1631. Mr. Amyraut was a person proper to go on this business. He had an extreme attachment to the doctrine of passive obedience, this rendered him agreeable to the court; and he had declared for no obedience in matters of conscience, and this made him dear to the protestants. The synod ordered him not to make his speech to the king kneeling, as the deputies of the former synod had done; but to procure the restoring of the privilege, which they formerly enjoyed, of speaking to the king, standing, as the other ecclesiastics of the kingdom were allowed to do. The cardinal strove, for a whole fortnight, to make Amyraut to submit to this tacit acknowledgment of the clerical character in the popish clergy, and of the want of it in the reformed ministers. But Amyraut persisted in his claim, and was introduced to the king as the synod had desired. The whole court was charmed with the deputy's talents and deportment. Richlieu had many conferences with him, and if negociation could have accommodated the dispute between arbitrary power and upright consciences, it would have been settled now. He was treated with the utmost politeness, and dismissed. If he had not the pleasure of reflecting that he had. obtained the liberty of his party, he had, however, the peace that ariseth from a consciousness of having used a proper mean to obtain it. The same mean was tried, some time after, by the inimitable Du Bosc, whom his countrymen call a PERFECT ORATOR, but alas! he was eloquent in vain.

The affairs of the protestants waxed every day worse and worse. They saw the clouds gathering, and they dreaded the weight of the storm; but they knew not whither to flee. Some fled to England, but no peace was there. Laud, the tyrant of the English church, had a Richlieu's heart without his head, he persecuted them, and, in conjunction with Wren, and other such churchmen, drave them back to the infinite damage of the manufactures of the kingdom, 1634. It must affect every liberal eye to see such professors as Amyraut, Chappel, and De la Place, such ministers as Mestrezat, and Blondel, who would have been an honor to any community, driven to the sad alternative of flying their country, or of violating their consciences. But their time was not yet fully come.

Cardinal Richlieu's hoary head went down to the grave, 1642, without the tears of his master, and with the hatred of all France. The king soon followed him, 1643, complaining, in the words of Job, my soul is weary of my life. The protestants had increased greatly in numbers in this reign, tho' they had lost their power; for they were now computed to exceed two millions. So true it is, that violent measures in religion weaken the church that employs them.

Lewis XIV. was only in the fifth year of his age at the demise of his father. The queen-mother was appointed sole regent during his minority, and cardinal Mazarine, a creature of Richlieu's, was her prime minister. The edict of Nantz was confirmed, 1643, by the regent, and again by the king

at his majority, 1652. But it was always the cool determination of the minister to follow the late

Cardinal's plan, and to revoke it as soon as he could, and he strongly impressed the mind of the king with the expediency of it.

Lewis, who was a perfect tool to the Jesuits, followed the advice of Mazarine, of his confessors, and of the clergy about him, and as soon as he took the management of affairs into his own hands, 1661, he made a firm resolution to destroy the protestants. He tried to weaken them by buying off their great men, and he had but too much success. Some indeed, were superior to this state-trick, and it was a noble answer which the marquis de Bougy gave, when he was offered a marshal's staff, and any government that he might make choice of, provided he would turn papist. Could I be prevailed on, said he, to betray my God, for a marshal of France's staff, I might betray my king for a thing of much less consequence; but I will do neither of them, but rejoice to find that my services are acceptable, and that the religion, which I profess, is the only obstacle to my reward. Was his majesty so little versed in the knowledge of mankind, as not to know that saleable virtue is seldom worth buying ?

The king used another art as mean as the former. He exhorted the bishops to take care, that the points in controversy betwixt the catholics and calvinists should be much insisted on by the clergy, in their sermons, especially in those places that were mostly inhabited by the latter, and that a good number of missionaries should be sent among them to convert them to the religion of their ancestors. It should seem, at first view, that the exercise of his majesty's power in this way would be formidable to the protestants, for, as the king

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