PROOFS FROM THE LIGHT OF NATURE. 



merable cases in which the justice of God, and 

 the impartiality of his procedure, would be liable 

 to be impeached, if this world were the only 

 scep of rewards and punishments. We behold 

 a poor starving wretch, whom hunger has im 

 pelled to break open a house, in order to satisfy 

 his craving appetite, or to relieve the wants of a 

 helpless family, dragged with ignominy to the 

 scaffold, to suffer death for his offence. We be 

 hold, at the same time, the very tyrant by whose 

 order the sentence was executed, who has plun 

 dered provinces, and murdered millions of human 

 beings, who has wounded the peace of a thousand 

 families, and produced universal consternation 

 and despair wherever he appeared regaling 

 himself in the midst of his favourites, in perfect 

 security from human punishments. Instead of 

 being loaded with fetters, and dragged to a dun 

 geon, to await in hopeless agony the punishment 

 of his crimes, he dwells amidst all the luxuries 

 and splendours of a palace ; his favour is courted 

 by surrounding attendants ; his praises are chant 

 ed by orators and poets ; the story of his exploits 

 is engraved in brass and marble ; and historians 

 stand ready to transmit his fame to future gene 

 rations. How does the equity of the divine go 

 vernment appear, in such cases, in permitting an 

 undue punishment to be inflicted on the least of 

 fender, and in loading the greatest miscreant 

 with unmerited enjoyments ? 



Again, in almost every period of the world, 

 we behold men of piety and virtue who have 

 suffered the most unjust and cruel treatment from 

 the hands of haughty tyrants and blood-thirsty 

 persecutors. It would require volumes to de 

 scribe the instruments of cruelty which have 

 been invented by these fiend-like monsters, and 

 the excruciating torments which have been en 

 dured by the victims of their tyranny, while 

 justice seemed to slumber, and the perpetrators 

 were permitted to exult in their crimes. The 

 Waldenses, who lived retired from the rest of 

 the world, among the bleak recesses of the Alps, 

 were a people distinguished for piety, industry, 

 and the practice of every moral virtue. Their 

 incessant labour subdued the barren soil, and 

 prepared it both for grain and pasture. In the 

 course of two hundred and fifty years they in 

 creased to the number of eighteen thousand, oc 

 cupying thirty villages, besides hamlets, the 

 workmanship of their own hands. Regular 

 priests they had none, nor any disputes about 

 religion ; neither had they occasion for courts of 

 justice ; for brotherly love did not suffer them to 

 go to law. They worshipped God according to 

 the dictates of their conscience and the rules of 

 his word, practised the precepts of his law, and 

 enjoyed the sweets of mutual affection and love. 

 Yet this peaceable and interesting people be 

 came the victims of the most cruel and bloody 

 persecution. In the year 1540, the parliament 

 of Provence condemned nineteen of them to be 



burned for heresy, their trees to be rooted up, 

 and their houses to be razed to the ground. 

 Afterwards a violent persecution commenced 

 against the whole of this interesting people, and 

 an army of banditti was sent to carry the hellish 

 purpose into effect. The soldiers began with 

 massacring the old men, women, and children, 

 all having fled who were able to fly ; and then 

 proceeded to burn their houses, barns, corn, and 

 whatever else appertained to them. In the town 

 of Cabriere sixty men and thirty women, who 

 had surrendered upon promise of life, were but 

 chered each of them without mercy. Some 

 women, who had taken refuge in a church, were 

 dragged out and burnt alive. Twenty-two vil 

 lages were reduced to ashes ; and that populous 

 and flourishing district was again turned into a 

 cheerless desert. Yet, after all these atrocities 

 had been committed, the proud pampered priests, 

 at whose instigation this prosecution was com 

 menced, were permitted to live in splendour, to 

 exult over the victims of their cruelty, to revel 

 in palaces, and to indulge in the most shameful 

 debaucheries. If the present be the only state 

 of punishments and rewards, how shall we vin 

 dicate the rectitude of the Almighty, in such 

 dispensations ? 



In the reign of Louis XIV. and by the orders 

 of that despot, the Protestants of France were 

 treated with the most wanton and diabolical cru 

 elty. Their houses were rifled, their wives and 

 daughters ravished before their eyes, and their 

 bodies forced to endure all the torments that in 

 genious malice could contrive. His dragoons 

 who were employed in this infamous expedi 

 tion, pulled them by the hair of their heads, 

 plucked the nails of their fingers and toes, prick 

 ed their naked bodies with pins, smoked them in 

 their chimneys with wisps of wet straw, threw 

 them into fires and held them till they were al 

 most burnt, slung them into wells of water, dip 

 ped them into ponds, took hold of them with red 

 hot pincers, cut and slashed them with knives, 

 and beat and tormented them to death in a most 

 unmerciful and cruel manner. Some were hanged 

 on the gallows, and others were broken upon 

 wheels, and their mangled bodies were either left 

 unburied, or cast into lakes and dunghills, with 

 every mark of indignation and contempt. Ma- 

 reschal Montrevel acted a conspicuous part in 

 these barbarous executions. He burnt five hun 

 dred men, women, and children, who were as 

 sembled together in a mill to pray and sing 

 psalms; he cut the throats of four hundred of the 

 new converts at Montpelier, and drowned their 

 wives and children in the river, near Aignes 

 Mortes. Yet the haughty tyrant by whose or 

 ders these barbarous deeds were committed, 

 along with his mareschals and grandees, who as 

 sisted in the execution instead of suffering the 

 visitations of retributive justice, continued, for 

 thirty years after this period, to riot in all the 



