to press, stand the gentle objects of his earthly love, endeared by the tie that death cannot sever. He is questioned concerning his hope he declares it to be wholly centred in Jesus who died upon the cross for sinners: he is asked of his faith in the power of the so-called church; in the authority of her priests to absolve from sin and to save a soul alive, or to bind that soul in chains that Omnipotence cannot break; he is asked of his confidence in the merits and intercessory efficiency of dead women and dead men; and, finally, he is required to submit himself to the Roman Church, as of divine authority; to bow down and adore a consecrated cake, as the very Jesus, the All sufficient Saviour whom he has just confessed.

To each and all of these queries and demands, he returns a calm, firm negative; striving at the same time to set forth the grounds of his scriptural dissent: but experience had taught the persecutors the impolicy of suffering the truth to be heard; and with fierce clamour they condemn him to the burning flames. A shorter interrogation suffices with the women; it is enough that his faith is theirs, his hope, his joyous readiness to suffer and the son of peace passes out, to ascend the pile already prepared by eager hands, well accustomed to the task, and perfectly aware that a victim once seized was already condemned, even though proof should fail that he had ever borne the brand of heresy.

The flames ascend; the priests in awful mockery of God chaunt their jubilate round the scene of death; and warriors clash their shields and wave their banners, in joyous accompaniment, while the curling smoke ever and anon dividing affords them a glimpse of what is within. The son of peace is there: the Prince of peace is there also, invisible to man, but oh how sensibly

present to His suffering yet rejoicing servants, now in the act of putting off the scorched tabernacles of their mortal bodies, and to join the noble army of martyrs, resting in the abodes of everlasting peace.

Persecution and affliction are not the necessary por tion either of a church or of an individual believer. The Lord assigns the lot that He sees best suited to the circumstances in which he has placed them. Even under heathen rule, and in the midst of many adversaries, there was a period of which it could be recorded, "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria;" and instead of any declension attending this peaceful state, we read, that they " were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." In like manner, it sometimes pleases God to add outward prosperity and domestic happiness, unalloyed by any great drawback, to the spiritual blessings wherewith he enriches his children; until, perhaps, the doubting soul makes a cross of the absence of crosses, asking, 'Can I be living godly in Christ Jesus, while I suffer no persecution!' These are exceptions, indeed, to a general rule, but they should excite no misgivings : it often seems good to the Lord to try our faith and humility and love, by prosperity as well as by adversity; and perhaps it is the harder trial of the two.

A single believer in an ungodly, dissipated family; a pious man, obliged to abide among scoffers, as a soldier in a regiment, or a sailor in a ship; a little flock of true Christians walking consistently with their profession in a church where spiritual life is otherwise extinct, and where the rulers are not faithful to their trust; these must indeed look for persecution as severe as the restraining power of Protestant toleration will allow;

and where the religion of the Bible is gradually giving way to a religion of forms and ceremonies, vain traditions and unwarranted assumptions, we may be assured that the hour is not far off when such toleration shall cease to exist together with the root that bears it. In the case of the afflicted Albigenses, the sure word of prophecy had foretold their delivery into the power of the Beast, and his successful war upon them ; but it is probable that very few among them possessed, and fewer still applied to themselves, what had been revealed to the apostle John. It was enough for them that God had shewn them the all-sufficiency of the one great sacrifice offered on the cross; and the Holy Spirit strengthened them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free, resisting unto death the entanglements of that yoke of bondage which would have enslaved them to a system utterly opposed to the truth of the gospel-a mystery of iniquity, the direful workings of which they beheld on all sides; not only in the profligate lives of its ministers, and the hardened sinfulness of its votaries, but in the deeds of blood and savage cruelty perpetrated under its direct sanction, as a rendering unto God of most acceptable service.

The land was now again thrown out of cultivation; for war had once more burst upon its borders, and it was well known that Blanche of Castille, the queenmother of France, had promised to put a finishing hand to the work of her predecessors. The young Count Raymond was beforehand with her; after the affair of Bécéde, which was all that the last invasion had accomplished, he took the field with a considerable army, met the enemy's forces, obtained a decisive victory, and gave the most conclusive proof of the extirpation of what was called heresy among his followers by prac

tising the most barbarous cruelties on his prisoners, who were mutilated and tortured to death by the victors. A second successful battle was followed by the same atrocities, giving evidence that even the restraining influence formerly exercised by the presence of true Christians among the troops was withdrawn, and that the spirit of revenge had taken place of that noble devotion to a better cause which once characterized the Toulousians. A thousand piles of burning faggots, heaped with martyred Albigenses, would not have afforded to Rome such a triumph as did these cruelties of a successful foe: in the former case, she could but kill the body, and after that had no more that she could do in the latter, she saw her own venom infused into the soul, and the victims were her's and the dragon's for ever.

The signal punishment which followed these acts on the part of men who could not plead ignorance of better things, was a finishing blow to the wars of many years. Here again we meet with the indefatigable emissary of Satan, Fouquet, who encouraged Humbert de Beaujeu, the commander over whose troops Raymond had achieved these deeply-tarnished conquests, to advance upon Toulouse with a powerful reinforcement of crusaders, brought together by the strenuous efforts of the bishops and preaching-brotherhood. Guilty and terrified, the Languedocian troops threw themselves into their ancient city, and prepared to defend it as best they might; but here again Fouquet triumphed by means as contrary to the commandment of God as they were odiously barbarous towards man. He caused the crusaders to assemble each morning close under the walls of Toulouse, the better to attract the attention of those within; and then, instead of

assailing its fortifications, to disperse ; each troop under its own leader, and each daily by a new route, across the plains, through the vallies, over the mountains, deliberately cutting down, uprooting and utterly destroying the fruit trees, and every vegetable growth that could give promise of a future supply to the wretched proprietors and labourers of the soil. Not a vestige did they leave of aught that could yield harvest, or vintage, or gleaning of any kind; while, so far as their ingenuity could effect it, the very ground was rendered barren and worthless. From their towers and walls the people of Toulouse looked forth upon this fearful novelty in the warfare to which they had been so long accustomed; for a novelty it was, because the united energies of a large army were devoted exclusively to the work, so long as there lay within leagues around a spot wearing the aspect of present or future fertility. The citizens dared not venture forth, well knowing their inability to cope with the enemy, and the danger of leaving their gates with a diminished guard. The garrison, recently returned from the battle-field, was paralysed with conscious guilt: they had shown no mercy and could but expect tenfold retribution from a foe to whom for the first time they had given real cause of offence. Three months thus passed, without a day's cessation from the work of ruin, sufficed. Winter had arrived, and no harvests were housed, no vintage gleaned, no hope, for years to come, of that supply without which the wealthiest among them must perish. God's saints were the salt that preserved the mass so long; they were gone, and nothing remained but natural corruption, eating its way through the abandoned body.

Raymond VII. made the best terms he could; and