140 ROME AND HER CHURCH. 



James I., a conspiracv truly worthy of hell and Rome ! Let her relate 

 the massacre of Paris, on St. Bartholomew's Day, in which about thirty 

 thousand Protestants were butchered in cold blood.* 



" Let her relate the massacre of Ireland, in the reign of Charles 1., 

 in which above one hundred and fifty thousand Protestants — I say above 

 one hundred and fifty thousand Protestants — were barbarously mur- 

 dered in the space of two months, chiefly by the Popish priests. Let 

 the same faithful hand paint the slaughter of about forty millions— I say 

 forty times ten hundred thousand — poor Americans, on pretence of their 

 resisting the attempts made for their conversion, as well as on accounts 

 purely political. 



"And let her pencil draw, if it can find adequate colours, the horrors 

 of that infernal slaughterhouse, the Inquisition, where all that the ima- 

 gination of demons can invent, or the malignity of demons inflict, to 

 insult and torture, and, if possible, to damn the miserable victim, is 

 practised in terrible perfection. Let history proceed to rehearse ; but 

 nature sickens at the story, — religion turns away her ear with abhor- 

 hence, and groans for her suffering and bleeding children ! Let us hasten 

 to a more comfortable theme. Let us speak as we promised to do, in 

 the third place, of that glorious deliverance wrought for these nations 

 from the delusion and persecution of Popery, which your piety, my 

 reverend fathers and brethren, hath taken care to preserve the particular 

 remembrance of, within your immediate circle, by appointing discourses 

 relative to it to be preached before you from time to time. The appoint- 

 ment with which you have honoured me, on this head, I now obey with 

 pleasure. I rejoice with you, and all the friends of religion and liberty, 

 in the noble triumph obtained by both, at the blessed periods of the refor- 

 mation and the revolution. I rejoice with the whole kingdom of light, 

 in the victories then gained by the combined powers of Christianity and 

 public zeal. Adored be that all-inspiring and all-supporting providence, 

 which raised up and cairied, with a spirit truly wonderful, those re- 

 ligious and civil heroes who made so illustrious a stand for the interests 

 of truth and of mankind ! 



"Would your time permit, with what delight could we enter into the 

 detail, and point out to your admiring view that honourable band of first 

 reformers, who, throwing off their mental fetters, broke from the dun- 

 geons of Popish superstition, led forth the everlasting gospel, long de- 

 faced and imprisoned there, displayed her in her ancient honours, and 

 raised her banner before the nations ; proclaiming, as ' the Captain of 

 Salvation' himself had formerly done, — proclaiming, in his name, 

 ' liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to them that were 

 bound, — proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord.' Immediately 

 after, we might show you multitudes M'ho had been sleeping in their 

 chains, and dreaming they were free, awakening at the animating call, 

 wondering at the enchantment that held them so long, bursting their 



• " It is worthy our observation, that no sooner did the news of this day's dread- 

 ful work arrive at Rome, than the Pope went in procession to the church of St. 

 Lewis, and there returned public and solemn thanks for it to the merciful Parent 

 and Saviour of men. And the same shocking scene was represented in a splendid 

 picture, with this inscription, 'THE TRIUIWPH OF Tilt: CHURCH !'" 



