THE CHURCH OF ROME. 173 



mark, in the early part of 1521, he had caused upwards 

 of six hundred persons to be put to death ! 



To conclude. In reading this short sketch of the atroci- 

 ties of the northern tyrant, one is almost inclined to believe 

 that the intriguing and artful Catherine of Medicis, mother 

 of Charles IX., in causing the butchery of the unfortunate 

 Hugenots, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, in the year 

 1572; that Philip II. of Spain, in recklessly persecuting and 

 slaughtering his Flemish subjects, on account of their leaning 

 to the doctrines of the Reformation ; and more recently that 

 the monster Robespierre, in consigning to the knife of the 

 guillotine thousands of people of all grades, had taken the 

 cruel Christian for their model ! And yet it is remarkable, 

 that among so many innocent victims, the arm of a Brutus 

 should not have been found to avenge the cause of outraged 

 humanity. 



These disgusting sacrifices of human life were, however, 

 (with the exception of the executions in France, during the 

 Reign of Terror, 1793-4) effected at the instigation and 

 through the instrumentality of the Court of Rome, which, 

 thinking that the Catholic Church was in imminent danger 

 through the rapid progress of the Reformation, fulminated 

 excommunications and edicts, inciting bloodshed in every 

 country where the least symptoms of defection were percep- 

 tible ; hence the scenes of slaughter so profusely enacted, 

 in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 



