172 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



ed or destroyed, during their continuance ; besides 

 the many thousands of men, women, and chil 

 dren, that were cruelly butchered : and 150,000,000 

 of livres were spent in carrying forward these 

 slaughters and devastations. It is said of Louis 

 XIII. who carried on these wars, by one of his 

 biographers and panegyrists, Madame cle Motte- 

 ville that, &quot; what gave him the greatest pleasure, 

 was his thought of driving heretics out of the 

 kingdom, and thereby purging the different reli 

 gions which corrupt and infect the church of 

 God.&quot;* In the Netherlands alone, from the 

 time that the edict of Charles V. was promulgated 

 against the reformers, more than 100,000 persons 

 were hanged, beheaded, buried alive, or burned 

 on account of religion. The prisons were crowd 

 ed with supposed heretics; and the gibbet, the 

 scaffold, and the stake, filled every heart with 

 horror. The Duke of Alva, and his bloody tri 

 bunal, spread universal consternation through 

 these provinces ; and, though the blood of eight 

 een thousand persons, who, in five years, had 

 been given up to the executioner for heresy, cried 

 for vengeance on this persecutor, and his adhe 

 rents, yet they gloried iu their cruelty. Philip 

 II. in whose reign these atrocities were com 

 mitted, hearing one day, that thirty persons at 

 least had a little before been burned at an auto 

 da fe, requested that a like execution might be 

 performed in his presence; and he beheld with 

 joy forty victims devoted to torments and to death. 

 One of them, a man of distinction, requesting a 

 pardon, &quot; No,&quot; replied he, coldly, &quot; were it my 

 own son I would give him up to the flames, if he 

 obstinately persisted in heresy.&quot;f 



Even in our own island, the flames of religious 

 persection have sometimes raged with unrelent 

 ing fury. During two or three years of the short 

 reign of Q,ueen Mary, it was computed that 277 

 persons were committed to the flames, besides 

 those who were punished by fines, confiscations, 

 and imprisonments. Among those who suffered 

 by fires were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, 

 eight lay gentlemen, and eighty-four tradesmen ; 

 one hundred husbandmen, fifty-five women, and 

 four children. And, a century and a half has 

 scarcely elapsed, since the Presbyterians in 

 Scotland were hunted across moors and mosses, 

 like partridges of the wilderness, slaughtered by 

 bands of ruffian dragoons, and forced to seek their 

 spiritual food in dens, arid mountains, and forests, 

 at the peril of their lives. Hunter, a young man 

 about nineteen years of age, was one of the un 

 happy victims to the zeal for Papacy of Mary 

 queen of England. Having been inadvertently 

 betrayed by a priest, to deny the doctrine of 

 transubstantiation, he absconded to keep out of 

 harn/s way. Bonner, that arch-hangman of Po 

 pery, threatened ruin to the father if he did not 



Motteville s Memoirs of Anne of Austria, Vol. 1. 



p. 98 



t Millet s Modern History, vol. li. p. 190. 



deliver up the young man. Hunter, hearing of 

 his father s danger, made his appearance, and 

 rvas burned alive, instead of being rewarded for 

 his filial piety. A woman of Guernsey was 

 brought to the stake, without regard to her ad 

 vanced pregnancy, and she was delivered in the 

 midst of the flames. One of the guards snatched 

 the infant from the fire ; but the magistrate, who 

 attended the execution, ordered it to be thrown 

 back, being resolved, he said, that nothing should 

 survive which sprung from a parent so obsti 

 nately heretical.* 



What a dreadful picture would it present of 

 the malignity of persons who have professed the 

 religion of Christ, were we to collect into one 

 point of view, all the persecutions, tortures, 

 j&amp;gt;urnings, massacres, and horrid cruelties, which, 

 in Europe, and Asia, and even in the Wes* In 

 dies and America, have been inflicted on con 

 scientious men for their firm adherence to what 

 they considered as the truths of religion ! When 

 we consider, on the one hand, the purity of 

 morals, and the purity of faith which generally 

 distinguished the victims of persecution; and, on 

 the other, the proud pampered priests, abandoned 

 without shame to every species of wickedness, 

 we can scarcely find words sufficiently strong to 

 express the indignation and horror which arise 

 in the mind, when it views this striking contrast, 

 and contemplates such scenes of impiety and 

 crime. Could a religion, which breathes peace 

 and good will from heaven towards men, be more 

 basely misrepresented ? or can the annals of our 

 race present a more striking display of the per 

 versity and depravity of mankind? To repre 

 sent religion as consisting in the belief of certain 

 incomprehensible dogmas, arid to attempt to con 

 vert men to Christianity, and to inspire them 

 with benevolence, by fire, and racks, and tor 

 tures, is as absurd as it is impious and profane 

 and represents the Divine Being as delighting in 

 the torments and the death of sinners, rather than 

 that they should return and live. But, without 

 dwelling longer on such reflections and details, 

 I shall just present an example or two of the moral 

 state of Roman Catholic countries, as a speci 

 men of the effects to which their system of reli 

 gion naturally leads. 



&quot; By their fruits shall ye know them,&quot; says 

 our Saviour. Wherever religion is viewed as 

 consisting chiefly in the observance of a number 

 of absurd and unmeaning ceremonies, it is natural 

 to expect that the pure morality of the Bible will 

 seldom be exemplified in human conduct. This 

 is strikingly the case in those Countries, both in 

 Europe and America, where the Catholic reli 

 gion reigns triumphant. Mr. Howison, whose 

 work, entitled &quot;Foreign Scenes,&quot; I formerly quot 

 ed, when speaking of the priesthood in the island 

 of Cuba, says, &quot; The number of priests in Ha 

 vana exceeds four hundred. With a lew excep* 

 * Kaim s Sketches, vol. iv. 



