crowded the streets, covered the roofs, and hung upon the walls and balconies. Never had so many relics been paraded. The relics of the Sainte Chapelle were then brought out. Then followed the head of St. Louis, a piece of the true cross, the true crown of thorns, a real nail, and the spear-head which had pierced our Lord.

"Then came St. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. The cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, in their robes, took their places. The king in person followed them bareheaded, and carrying a lighted torch. The nobility, burgesses, and parliament closed the procession. The king, seated on a throne at the palace of the archbishop, made an address to the court and the clergy, and then protested that he would not pardon the crime of heresy even in his children. His religious frenzy had evidently been worked up to the highest point. If one of his own limbs were infected, his own hand,' he said, 'should cut it off.' On his return to the Louvre, he witnessed the horrible scene to which the procession was the prelude, and six of the Huguenots were executed. The boldest of them had their tongues cut out, to hinder their dying words, so contagious among the witnesses on previous occasions of the same kind. They were then put to death by the estrapade, a movable gibbet, which, alternately rising and falling, plunged the victim into the fire, or raised him aloft in the air. An ordinance was published, which decreed the extermination of the heretics, and pain of death to those who should conceal them. But Protestantism was by no means subdued. In the remote provinces a large proportion of the nobles entertained the new opinions. It was calculated that nearly a sixth of the whole population was imbued with them. In Normandy, Picardy, Flanders, as well as Languedoc and Dauphiny; and all the great towns, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, abounded with them. Many of the ecclesiastics forsook the Church of Rome. The scholars engaged in business; the regular clergy taught the doctrines of the Reformation. The Bible and religious books printed at Geneva were distributed in vast numbers by the colporteurs. One of these men, in 1546, who was taken at Paris, was broken on the wheel, and burned. But his execution, far from deterring others, served to show them by what agency the Reformation could be carried on most effectually. Pierre Chapot reasoned so well upon the scaffold in favour of his principles, that the doctors of the Sorbonne made a formal complaint, that were the heretics allowed to speak, all would be lost! The parliament resolved that all the condemned, without exception, should for the future have their tongues cut out!"

WHOLESALE ATROCITIES OF PAGANISM.

229

What atrocities are these! It is only by denying freedom of speech and freedom of the press, that Romish superstitions can maintain their ground. This is the disgraceful process still pursued in Austria, Italy, France, Spain, and, in fact, wherever false religion rules with a high hand. What a noble contrast is presented in the free press and free Bible of countries truly Christianized! But not only were individuals singled out for slaughter, but whole districts, wherever true Christianity prevailed, were given over to destruction.

"A public decree ordered that they should be exterminated as rebels; their goods confiscated, their houses destroyed, and even their plantations dug up. Everything was horrible and cruel,' says the historian De Thou, 'in the sentence pronounced against them, and everything was still more horrible and more cruel in the execution. Twenty-two towns or villages were burned or sacked with an inhumanity of which the history of the most barbarous people hardly presents an example. The unfortunate inhabitants, surprised during the night, and pursued from rock to rock by the light of the fires which were consuming their dwellings, escaped one snare, only to fall into another. The pitiful cries of old men, the women, and the children, far from softening the hearts of soldiers mad with rage like their leaders, only served to point out the places whither to direct their fury."

The horrible atrocity of St. Bartholomew is well known. That event brought out clearly the terribly persecuting nature of paganized Christianity. It was just in proportion to the being a "good son of the Church," that a man was cruel.

Here, some Frenchmen proved themselves irreligious in the eyes of "the Church." Montmorency, a nobleman of high rank, was invited to join in the holy festival of St. Bartholomew. He refused to participate in a measure so abhorrent to the nature of a gallant soldier. "He left Paris in horror, on the first intimation of the intended massacre; and his name was placed among the proscribed in consequence. It is not without reason that a recent French historian represents his countrymen as the mere instruments fanatically excited to the commission of what he terms 'the Italian crime.'"1

But are St. Bartholomews confined to civilized countries only? Let us see. What do we find in Otaheite, in the case of the "Bure Atua," or "the prayers to God"? Just what was the fact in the case of those who prayed to God in the time of the French St. Bartholomew. Here in Otaheite is its exact counter

Marsden, 392.

part; with the happy exception of the failure of the horrid plot.

The influence of the "Bure Atua" in the nation, from the rank many of them held, and the confidence with which they maintained the superiority of their religion, together with the accession that was daily made to their number from various parts of the island, not only aroused the latent enmity against Christianity which the idolaters had always cherished, but awakened the first emotions of apprehension lest the new word should ultimately prevail, and their gods, the temples, and their worship, be altogether disregarded. "To avoid this," says Ellis, " they resolved on the total annihilation of every one in Tahiti who was known to pray to Jehovah.

"A proposal was made to the pagan chiefs of Pare, Matavai, and Hapaiauo, to assassinate in an instant every individual of the Bure Atua. The persecuted party was already formidable in point of numbers and rank, and the idolaters, in order to insure success in the murderous design, invited the chiefs of Atehura and Papara to join them. The time was fixed for the perpetration of the bloody deed. At the hour of midnight they were to be attacked, their property, their houses burned, and every prisoner secured to be slaughtered on the spot. The parties who for a long time had been inveterate enemies to each other, were made friends on the occasion, and cordially assented to the plan of destroying the Christians. The intended victims of this treachery were unconscious of their danger until the evening of the 7th of July, when, a few hours only before the horrid massacre was to have commenced, they received secret intelligence of the ruin that was ready to burst upon them. At this remarkably critical period, the whole of the party having to attend a meeting either for public worship or for some other general purpose, assembled in the evening near the sea. No time was to be lost. Their canoes were lying on the beach. They were instantly launched; and hurrying away what few things they could take, they embarked soon after sunset, and reached Eimeo in safety on the following morning, grateful for the happy and surprising deliverance they had experienced. The different parties of their enemies, who arrived towards midnight, learned, with no ordinary disappointment, that their prey had escaped beyond their power."

"The progress of Divine truth, however, was so rapid among the natives, that at the close of 1814 no fewer than three hundred hearers regularly attended the preaching of the Gospel. These

Ellis's Polynesia.

FATE OF THE BURE ATUA."

231

encouraging appearances only roused the anger of their idolatrous enemies, who, no longer content with simply ridiculing and treating with contempt the object of their hatred, proceeded to more alarming plans of resistance against the progress of these new principles which were daily gaining ground among the people. Every inch of ground was reluctantly surrendered to Christianity; and at several periods persecution raged amid the Elysian bowers of Tahiti and Eimeo, as fiercely as it had done in the valleys of Piedmont, or at the metropolis of the Roman empire. Many, in Tahiti especially, were plundered of their property, banished from their homes and their possessions, their houses were burned, and they themselves hunted for a sacrifice to be offered to Oro, merely because they were 'Bure Atua,' or the prayers to God."1

Here, then, is a complete mirror for humanity, that from the waters of the Pacific reflects the image of false religion—it is the twin-brother of unchristianized man; nor can the pagans of St. Bartholomew, of Carcassonne, and Toulouse, and Bezières,—of Smithfield, of the Quemadero of Madrid, or of the Holy Inquisition, claim any greater amount of Christianity than the ignorant persecutors of the "Bure Atua" of Otaheite-both bands were immitigably heathen. Christ had asked through His people, "Why persecutest thou ME?"

We now approach a terrible system of authorized and avowed destruction of human life; a system that has consigned to a horrible and lingering death more human beings than the Thugs and Suttees of India, the cannibalism of the South Sea Islands, the Mexican sacrificers, or the Blotmen of Scandinavia: it is the atrocious "CASTE OF THE HOLY INQUISITION." What a tremendous contradiction of terms ! The assumption of holiness, and the practice of the lusts of cruelty !-cruelty, whose secrets were taught in a treatise called "The Art of Torture." "Surely, surely," you will say, “this is all now, at least, bitterly deplored, and no one can be so inhuman as to wish a return of those days." Is it really so? Let us see! What say the organs of the true Church of France ? The Abbé Morel, canon of Angers, defends the Inquisition: he it was obliged to be severe, because of the increase of heresy. Monsieur Lauwertie, in his "Justice in the Nineteenth Century," says, that the civil authority in the sixteenth century "saved the faith of our fathers by severe laws and rigorous measures, which I hesitate not to call salutary." M. Vennillot, editor of "L'Univers," says, in 1838 (in his Pilgrimages in Switzerland), "What I regret, I frankly avow, is, not that they did not burn John Huss sooner, or

says

Ellis's Polynesia.

that they did not burn Luther at all, but that there is no prince sufficiently pious and politic to stir up a crusade against the Protestants."

Here is the true Otaheitan sacrificial taste for offering up as victims to the gods Oro and Tane, such "Bure Atua," or "Godprayers," as they can lay hold of.

It has ever been thus with the religion of man. No clime and no age of nominal civilization has escaped the curse of that godless policy. Man writes up in bold characters, "This is the way to heaven," and lo, it leads to the dungeon of Caste; and the mocked worshipper enters not the temple of light, but the dark prison-house of corporate selfishness.

But pause we here. We are now at the vast portico of the Holy Inquisition; and it well becomes us to be silent as we enter so sacred a place the holiest temple of the Church of Rome—a Church eulogized by the Tractarian, as giving "free scope to the feelings of awe and mystery ;"-it does so here at least.

"The palace of the INQUISITION, or the HOLY HOUSE," says an excellent authority, to whose work we are indebted for the following copious extracts,' "had extensive accommodation for all classes of delinquents; rooms well ventilated (light and air being admitted through iron gratings), and sufficiently large for the occupant to move about, with bed, seat, fireplace, and a few conveniences; or close, dark cells, with little air, small space, a heap of straw, no fireplace, and scarcely any kind of convenience; or, deeper still, no light, scarcely space enough to move or stand upright,―a 'littleease,' a misshapen pit, wherein the living body sank into the hollow of an inverted cone, and was fed with just enough to keep up the functions of nature, just to prevent death, and no more. Then were added, in due proportion of weight and number, those manacles, fetters, chains, and other contrivances of torment. The sworn gaoler might not speak to the suffering child of iniquity,' however summoned. To no call or entreaty, or sigh or shriek, was the 'faithful and industrious' keeper to give an answer by word or sign. No communication-no respite-no sort of pity! The inquisitor would come, or send, when it so pleased him, to put a question, tempt with a promise, or terrify with a threat. The durance being thus made perfect, in solitude and in despair, there could not be collusion with other criminals, nor corruption of the keepers, nor intelligence from the outer world, nor chance of any sort for defeating the ends of 'justice.'

Gradu

Rev. W. H. Rule, "The Brand of Dominic: " London, 1852. An admirable work, and most carefully drawn up with respect to authorities.