Rome, so late as the sixteenth century, presented numberless examples of men, whose lives were a tissue of vices which cannot so much as be named, who yet, at the risk of life, would fight in defence of a ceremony, for the preservation of a consecrated vase, or a gift devoted to a monastery.

To shew that it is possible to be zealous for religious opinions, without being religious, we need not look back to the persecuting powers of pagan or papal Rome; nor need we select our instances from the disciples of Dominic ;* nor from such monsters as Catherine di Medici; nor from such sanguinary bigots as the narrow-souled Mary, nor the darkminded Philip. Examples from persons less abhorrent from human feelings, more mixed characters, the dark shades of whose minds are blended with lighter strokes, and whose vices are mitigated with softer qualities, may be more profitably considered as approaching nearer to the common standard of human life.

That a prince may be very zealous for religious opinions and observances, and yet be so defective in moral virtue as to be both personally and politically profligate, is exemplified in our second James, who renounced three kingdoms for his religion, yet neither scrupled to live in the habitual violation of the seventh commandment, nor to employ the inhuman Jefferies as his chancellor.

Harlai, archbishop of Paris, distinguished himself by his zeal in attacking heresy; so all religion was called, except that of the Jesuits. His activity

The founder of the monastic order which bears his name; and also of the inquisition, that will render that name infamous, though enrolled in the calendar of Roman saints. He was born in Spain in 1170, and died in 1221.-ED.

+ Francis de Harlai, or Harlay, was born in 1625, and died in 1695.-ED.

proceeded from no love of piety, but from a desire to make his way at court, where zeal, just then, happened to be the fashion. His religious activity, however, neither prevented, nor cured, the notorious licentiousness of his moral conduct.* The king, his master, fancied, that to punish Jansenism, was an indubitable proof of religion; but to persecute protestantism, he conceived to be the consummation of piety. What a lesson for princes, to see him, after the revocation of the edict of Nantz, gratefully swallowing the equally false and nauseous compliments of his clergy, for having, to borrow their own phrase," without violent methods made the whole kingdom of one opinion, and united all his subjects to the faith of Rome!" Iniquitous flattery! when FOUR MILLIONS of those subjects were either groaning under torture, or flying into exile; turning infidels, if they resolved to retain their property; or chained to the galleys, if they preferred their conscience to their fortune!

As the afflicted Hugonots were not permitted to carry their complaints to the foot of the throne, the deluded king fancied his bloody agents to be mild ministers, and the tortured protestants to be mischievous heretics. But, though the kingdom was, in many parts, nearly depopulated by exile and executions, the sword, as usual, made not one proselyte. The subjects were tortured, but they were

It was a fact well known in the court of Versailles, that Madame de Montespan, during the long period in which she continued the favourite mistress of the king, (by whom she had seven children,) was so strict in her religious observances, that, lest she should violate the austerity of fasting, her bread, during Lent, was constantly weighed.

[Françoise Athenaise, wife of the marquis de Montespan, supplanted the duchess de Valiere in the favours of Louis XIV., and was supplanted in turn by the duchess de Fontanges. She died in 1707.-ED.

not converted. The rack is a bad rhetorician. The galleys may harass the body, but do not convince the understanding, nor enforce articles of faith.*

Under all these crimes and calamities, Louis, as a French memorialist observes, was not ashamed to hear, what Boileau was not ashamed to sing,

L'univers sous ton regne a-t-il des malheureux ?

Colbert, who was a wise man, might have taught his royal master, that in this persecution there was as little policy as piety, and that he was not only injuring his conscience, but his country. By banishing so many useful subjects, he impoverished the state doubly, not only by robbing it of the ingenuity, the manufactures, and the labour of such multitudes, but by transferring to hostile countries all the industry and talents which he was driving from his own. If the treachery of detaining the protestants under false promises, which were immediately violated, is to be charged on Louvois, the crime of blindly confiding in such a minister is to be charged on the king.

How little had this monarch profited, by the example given, under similar circumstances, by Louis XII. When some of the pious Waldenses, while they were improving his barren lands in Provence by their virtuous industry, had been grievously persecuted, through false representations, that prudent prince commanded the strictest inquiry to be made into their real character; the result was, that he was so perfectly convinced of their innocence, that he not only protected them during the rest of his reign, but had the magnanimity to de

Louvois and his master would have done wisely to have adopted the opinion of those two great ministers of Henry IV. who, when pressed to persecute, replied, that they thought "it was better to have a peace which had two religions, than a war which had none."

clare, that "they were better men than himself and his Catholic subjects."

Happy had it been for himself and for the world, if the emperor Charles V. had instituted the same inquiries! Happy, if in the meridian of his power he had studied the character of mankind to as good purpose as he afterwards, in his monastic retreat, studied the mechanism of watches! Astonished to find, that, after the closest application, he never could bring any two to go just alike, he expressed deep regret at his own folly, in having bestowed so much time and pains in the fruitless attempt of bringing mankind to an exact uniformity in their religious opinions. But the discovery was made too late; he ended where he should have begun.

CHAPTER XXXV.

The Reformation.

IN order to increase the royal pupil's reverence for Christianity before she is herself able to appreciate its value, she should be taught, that it did not steal into the world in the days of darkness and ignorance, when the spirit of inquiry was asleep, but appeared in the most enlightened period of the Roman empire;-that its light dawned, not on the remoter regions of the earth, but on a province of that empire whose peculiar manners had already attracted much notice, and whose local situation placed it particularly within the view of surrounding nations whereas the religion of Mahomet, and the corruptions of popery, which started up almost together, arose when the spirit of investigation, learning, and philosophy had ceased to exert itself;— that, during those dark ages, both Christianity and human learning were nearly extinguished; and

that, as both had sunk together, so both together awoke from their long slumber. The restoration of letters was the restoration of religion also; the free access to the ancient authors being one grand instrument of the revival of pure Christianity.

The learning which existed in the church antecedently to the Reformation was limited to very few, and was, in the general, but meagre and superficial; and the purposes to which it was confined, formed an effectual obstacle to substantial improvement. Instead of being employed in investigating the evidences of Christianity, or in elucidating the analogy of Christian principles with the laws of the natural and the exigences of the moral world, it was pressed into the service of what was called school-divinity; a system, which perhaps had providentially been not without its uses at a previous period, especially when under the discretion of a sound and upright mind, as having served both to elicit and exercise the intellect of a ruder age. Study and industry, however they may be misapplied, are always good in themselves; and almost any state is better than hopeless inanity. men, perhaps, sustained the cause of religion, when she might utterly have sunk, though with arms little suited to make their support effectual, or to produce solid practical benefit, either to the church or the people. Some of the earlier scholastic divines, though tedious, and somewhat trifling, were, however, close reasoners, as well as pious men, though they afterwards sunk in rationality as they increased in quibbling and subtlety. Yet, defective as their efforts were, they had been useful, as they had contributed to oppose infidelity, and to keep alive some love of piety and devotion, in that season of drowsy inactivity. But, at the period to which we refer, their theology had become little better than a mazy labyrinth of trivial, and not seldom of per

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