THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 28 ^ THE MASSACRE AT THE CARMES IN 1T92; WHEN AN AECHBISHOP, TWO BISHOPS, AND ABOUT TWO HUNDRED PRIESTS SUFFERED MARTYRDOM FOR THE FAITH. BY ROBERT BELANEY, M.A., Cambridge. i* « ^ ’ Late Vicar of Arlington, Sussex. LONDON: EDWARD LUMLEY, 126 , HIGH HOLBORN. 1855 . ADVERTISEMENT. / The profits of this book will be given towards the erection of a church to be built in a most needy part in Ireland. LONDON : TRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMEORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. -V d IB e ill' t a 1 1 0 n TO THE RIGHT HON. BERTRAM ARTHUR TALBOT, EARL OF SHREWSBURY, WATERFORD, AND WEXFORD. My Dear Lord, There is one part of a book, the Dedication, which usually speaks but one language, and that is, the language of flattery, — a drug which the great Edmund Burke describes as being destructive to the giver as well as the receiver. I wish to dedicate the follow- ing pages to your Lordship, not because you bear the ancient and noble name of an English Earl, but in token of my sincere regard, and of my deep interest in your welfare and happiness ; and this I can do without the aid of flattery. The act on my part, whatever it is worth, I will not attempt therefore to make more or less worthy, by converting what I wish to be considered a token of my personal regard into what the world would consider an instance of homage. If the Superior of the Carmes, who urged me to undertake this little work, the materials for which he could so well supply, had written it himself, as it was my original wish he should when the subject was first proposed to me by him, he intended, as you are aware, to have dedicated it to your Lordship. This circumstance must plead my excuse, if any be needed, for dedicating a publication to you, which has no right to claim for itself any mark of distinction above the crowd of little books which are, to the dismay of persons 4.*:s6346 IV DEDICATION. who desire to read every thing, issuing from the press eveiy day, except that it is written (however defectively) to promote truth, the Truth of Religion, and to commemorate virtue, the heroic virtue of Martyrs for the Catholic Faith. I am, my dear Lord Shrewsbury, With much regard. Very sincerely yours, ROBERT BELANEY. Paris y October 21, 1854. P K E F A C E. For reasons it is needless to state, the Scripture quotations in the following work are mostly taken from the English Version of the Bible, witli which Protestants are best acquainted. It is due to the Abbe Cruice, to state here also, that in the Chapter on Martyrdom, there are many passages taken, with httle more than verbal alte- rations, from a beautiful Sermon of his, preached some years ago at the Madeleine, on the subject of Martyrdom. The same author’s Life of Monseigneur Affre, late Archbishop of Paris, has also been freely used in more than one instance. Paris, October 21, 1854. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/massacreatcarmesOObela CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE CONVENT. Monastery of the Carmes — Character of the monks — Monastery con- verted into a prison — The clergy — The republicans — Chapel of the Martyrs — Massacre of the priests — Eejection by the clergy of the Civil Constitution — Religious enactments of Henry VIII. — Erection of new Anglican sees — Submission of English clergy to the State — Anglican sympathy — Parallel between French and English clergy Page 1 CHAPTER II. THE PRIESTS. Burke’s eulogium on the French clergy — The Archbishop of Arles — The States-General — The two La Rochefoucaults — Constitution of the Gallican Church — Opposition of the Clergy — Bull of Pius VI. . . 10 CHAPTER III. THE ARREST OF THE CLERGY. Sacrifice of the Swiss Guard — Imprisonment of Louis XVI. — Municipal authorities excite the mob against the Clergy — The Abbe Reingard — Orders to seize the Priests — The Archbishop of Arles — The two La Rochefoucaults — Refusal to take the Oath — The Bishop of Auxerre — The Reign of Terror — Resistance of Clergy to the interference of the State — Sufferings of the Clergy — The Dames Anglaises 22 CHAPTER IV. THE PRIESTS IN THEIR IMPRISONMENT. Tyranny of those placed over them — Humanity of the National Guards — Cruelties exercised towards the Priests ^ Archbishop of Arles — Insults offered to him — His great patience and benignity — The Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais — Cruel device — The populace of Paris — Delusive promises of Manuel — Precautionary measures adopted by the Sections — Priests sentenced to be butchered en masse — Revival of religion in France 32 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE MASSACRE OF THE PRIESTS. Preparations for the massacre — Thirty priests transferred to the Ahhaye — The mob excited by the soldiers — Attack on the priests — Arrival at the Abbaye — Slaughter of the Swiss Guard — Murder of the Princess de Lamballe and a number of priests — The massacre at the Carmes — Suspension of the massacre — Mock trial, and execution of the prisoners — About twenty escajte, saved by a commissary — The priests willing sacrifices to the Faith : Difference between the present state of religion in France, and in England and Germany, is owing to their firmness in resisting the civil power — Church independent of civil power. Page 47 CHAPTER VI. MARTYRDOM. Necessity of suffering inculcated by Our Saviour : St. Paul : St. Peter : St. Augustine — Love of Suffering — The Spirit of Martyrdom : St. Paul in the Hall of Caiaphas : St. Peter : St. Andrew : St. Ignatius — Napoleon I. — Napoleon III. — French Missionaries — Protestant Mis- sionaries — Comparison of French and English Clergy — Comparison of Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches — Dissenters — The late Archbishop of Paris — Chapel of the Martyrs — Conclusion .. 76 THE MAS8ACEE AT THE CARME8. CHAPTER I. THE CONVENT. Monastery of the Carmes — Character of the monks — Monastery con- verted into a prison — The clergy — The republicans — Chapel of the Martyrs — Massacre of the priests — Rejection by the clergy of the Civil Constitution — Religious enactments of Henry VIII. — Erection of new Anglican Sees — Submission of English clergy to the State — Anglican S3unpathy — Parallel between French and English clergy. The monastery of the Carmes was built in the be- ginning of the seventeenth century (1610). The ground upon which it stands was given by Nicholas Vivien (Maitre des Comptes) to some Carmelite monks, who had come from Italy to found their order in Paris. The church attached to the monastery is the first church dedicated to St. Joseph in France. The cha- racter of the Order is largely impressed on the whole building. Severity is the prevailing feature. Its long and dark cloisters ; its small cells, seven feet by ! seven ; its square courts, into which the rays of the sun never enter ; its numerous chapels, ornamented with frescoes and carved wood ; its large wainscotted chapter-rooms ; its Latin sentences written on the walls and doors ; — all these remind you of the sanctity of the place, and the severity of the Order to whom it owes its existence. B 2 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. I. This monastery was occupied until 1792 by these Carmelite monks ; their time being whoUy devoted to prayer, study, and works of charity. Five hundred poor were weekly fed by them : Saturday, in honour of the Blessed Virgin, was the day on which a weekly distribution was made. They were loved and es- teemed for their spirit of mortification, their zeal for the salvation of souls, and particularly for their mode- ration. Outwardly and inwardly they lived in perfect peace. Their convent, to adopt the words of a vener- able recluse, was like the nest of the halcyon built on the waves of the ocean. The bird sits quiet in it, though in the midst of tempests. Such was the happy state of this convent : though surrounded by a stormy world, it was the asylum of peace and charity ; in the midst of war and strife it enjoyed repose. In 1792 this monastery was converted into a prison, in which were immured one archbishop, two bishops, and two hundred priests — a portion of that noble clergy of France who refused, at the peril of life, to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; preferring death to sub- mitting to the interference of the civil power in spiritual matters. At a later period, when these were no longer the occupants, a body of republicans (not, as has been stated, Girondists) were imprisoned in the house. What the principles of these men were, the inscrip- tions yet to be read on the walls of the garret in which they were confined, written in their own blood, but too plainly disclose. A spirit of stoic indifference seems to have been the leading characteristic of them all. There is no distinct evidence that any of them believed in Christianity. If we descend from the Chap. I. CHAPEL OF THE MAKTYRS. 3 garrets of the house to the cellars under ground, we find ourselves confronted with many things which cannot he seen without recalling the sad and appalling events of those times. Here the damp pits and wells, now closed, are still to he seen into which the prisoners were thrown. In the lowest of these cellars is a flight of steps, connected at the bottom with a low archway, leading to the catacombs of Paris. But the most remarkable place connected with the monastery is a small chapel, barely forty feet by twenty, at the far- ther end of the garden, which is called, from the glorious deeds that were achieved there, the Chapel of the Martyrs {Chapelle des Martyrs). In this chapel an archbishop, a bishop, and from sixty to seventy priests were massacred on the 2nd of September, 1792. Their blood is still to be seen on the walls, on the pavement, and on the benches. We can trace on one of these benches the exact impression of the neck of one of these martyrs ; the wretches who had cut off his head, having placed it there, but from what motive we have no means of ascertaining, though it is im- possible to attribute any good motive for an act ap- parently so fiendish. The garden in which this chapel is situated was the scene of a yet more extensive car- nage. No otherwise treated than if they had been wild beasts, about a hundred and thirty priests more were here shot down from the trees in which they had sought a hiding place, or stabbed in the walks. A simple monument, in the shape of a small stone pillar, marks the spot where one of these holy men was put to death as he sat on a stone bench saying his office. It is not to be wondered at that strangers should B 2 4 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. I. often visit a place like this. Members of the English Church, and members of the English Universities, not a few, come to see it. “ With these,” says the present Superior of the convent, “ I have often con- versed, and it has often been a pleasure to me to find the professors of another religion giving vent to their feelings of admiration for the French clergy^ and more especially for those most heavenly-minded men who died martyrs for the faith within these hallowed precincts. When I have seen the deep sympathy which the conduct of those martyrs called forth from them, I have been wont to remind them, that those martyrs, whose divine heroism they so much admired, died because they rejected that Constitution which the government attempted to force upon them. Their admiration on such occasions being rather increased than diminished by what they heard, naturally recalled to my remembrance that a similar sympathy was generously manifested to the French clergy by people of all creeds in England during those days of persecu- tion in France.” “ The intercourse which I have had with these members of the Anglican communion — with these in- habitants of a country whose religious condition no foreign Catholic can look upon hut with deep and painful interest, has led me to reflect on the many points of similarity which exist between the religious enactments of Henry YIII., and the Civil Constitution which the French government of 1792 endeavoured to impose upon the clergy of France, hut from which the latter purchased their deliverance by the blood of our martyrs.” Chap. I. EELIGIOUS ENACTMENTS OF HENRY VIIT. 5 That there are those points of agreement which constitute a sort of parallelism between the two cases, the least reflection will show. The French Convention assumed every species of power, ecclesiastical as well as civil. It broke up dioceses which had been formed, time immemorial, by the Church herself, and which had acquired a venerable character from their great antiquity. It reconstructed new ones, and filled them with men on whose principles it could count, limiting and regulating, as it pleased, the jurisdiction of those who should in future occupy the sees. It introduced a mode of electing bishops and cures, which rendered the Church wholly dependent upon the State. It is a striking fact that the same system was intro- duced into England under Henry YIII., where it has continued to this day. In 1539, on the 23rd of May, an Act of Parliament empowered Henry YIII. to erect six bishopricks, Westminster, Peterborough, Waltham, &c., some of which still survive, though some lived but for a short time. The power of creating new sees — and this without any attempt to ascertain the will or feelings of the clergy of the establishment in their corporate capacity respecting it — has of late years been manifested in the erection of Anglican sees in the BritiSi colonies, to the number of from twenty to thirty. It has set up a new bishoprick in Jerusalem. It put down ten ancient sees in Ireland fifteen or sixteen years ago ; and it has taken from one see and given to another in England, till scarcely one retains its ancient terri- torial dimensions. I take into no account here the power exercised by the State in any redistributions of the temporalities of the Church of England, which have 6 MASSACKE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. I. taken place under the authority of the crown, as not being necessarily connected with my subject. Another enactment of the Enghsh parliament, which does hear immediately upon it, is one which is known under the name of An Act for the Submission of the Clergy to the King' s Majesty f of the date of 1534. What is meant by that submission, a single expression in the preamble of the hill makes sufficiently clear : — ‘‘ The King's Majesty justly and rightfully is, and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England, and so hath been recognised by the clergy in their Convocation." The great Protestant annalist, Strype, informs us with what reluctance the clergy submitted to the king : — ‘‘ The king made them buckle -to at last. It was another high block and difficulty for the clergy to get over, to reject the pope’s power in England, and to acknowledge the king supreme head and governor in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil ; but that at length they unwillingly yielded unto.” Another eminent writer of unquestionable authority in the English church. Archbishop Wake, says, ‘‘ By this act of submission, 25 Henry VIII., the king’s prerogative in this parti- cular was somewhat enlarged, and the metropolitan’s authority not a little abridged, for from henceforth the archbishop was restrained from assembling his pro- vincial synod without the king’s writ to license and authorize him.” Let these extracts suffice to show what the clergy in England did when they were required by the civil power under certain penalties to yield to its usurpa- tions upon spiritual things. It is important to observe how they acted, if we would rightly appreciate the Chap. I. ANGLICAN SYMPATHY. 7 very different conduct of tlie French clergy when under circumstances exactly similar. Greatly in favour of the French clergy as the con- trast is — these resisting, the Anglican clergy submitting to, a species of interference on the part of the State, which was totally incompatible with the divine foun- dation and independent character of the Church — the more to be admired is that generosity of sentiment which the Superior so often witnesses with pleasure, in those Englishmen who visit the place and con- verse with him about it. No Catholic, he has found, could express greater admiration than they uniformly do for the French clergy both as indivi- duals and as a body : nor could any speak with greater fervour of those noble qualities by which so great a number of them were distinguished at a juncture when the life of the Church in France (com- monly speaking) was at stake — when so many persons of both sexes preferred imprisonment and death to liberty and life at the expense of the Faith. Per- suaded that that sympathy and interest, which has so frequently been expressed to him, proceeded from principles which do not come and go as the individuals happen to be on the French or on the English side of the Channel, the Superior is of opinion that a short account of the massacre of the clergy which took place at the Carmes more than sixty-two years ago, will be interesting to many in England and perhaps useful to some ; with this view he has supphed me with all the particulars respecting it which have been preserved. Some of these particulars are taken from a private narrative written at the time, but which has remained 8 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. I. unpublished, among other documents belonging to the monastery. Had I consulted my own feelings I should have declined the task he has laid upon me of con- necting them together, believing myself incompetent to do the subject justice ; for I feel that, not only for every fact of any moment, but that for the whole interest which the narrative may possess, the reader will be indebted to him and not to me : my share in the work extends rather to the authorship of any defects it may contain than of the work itself; for these I feel myself to be the person solely responsible. The reader will understand that I here allude chiefly to that portion of the work in which reference is made to the English side of the contrast, where contrast is made between the conduct and character of the clergy of the two countries. In making the observations into which I am naturally led, I dare not allow lovo of country to blind me to the love of truth ; notliing, however, is more repugnant to my feelings or farther from my thoughts than any sort of prejudice disposing me to compliment one body of men of another country at the expense of another body of my own — the Catholic clergy of France, at the expense of the clergy of England, Catholic or Protestant — in the time of Henry VIII. or of the present day. I will further say, so far as regards my own part in this publication, I have but one motive actuating me — that of the sincerest charity towards the members of that communion, to which, till between two and three years ago, I myself belonged. My single desire is to do them, as many as shall cliance to read the following pages, a service, if they .will accept a service at my hands. My convic- Chap. I. CONDUCT OF FKENCH CLERGY. 9 tion is (and this must be my excuse where my language may be opposed to their national prejudices), that if they could but divest themselves of those prejudices which blind them to the Catholic religion — so blind them that they can neither do justice to its principles, nor to those who hold them — every work like the present, however humble, would be received with gratitude, inasmuch as it supplied the best of all materials for forming an opinion upon questions of vital importance to them. The con- duct of the French clergy who suffered at the close of the last century, if dispassionately considered, and impartially weighed against that of the English under similar circumstances, could hardly fail to lead many hack to the church from which, to their great damage, they are unhappily dissevered. It is not only because that conduct reflects glory upon the clergy of France, but because, I conceive, it demonstrates the truth of the Catholic religion, that I am induced to call attention to it at this time. That it has produced its fruits in France is a fair reason for presuming that it may, in course of time, extend them to England also, and other countries, which only know the Catholic religion from the accounts of its enemies, and the enemies, not unfrequently, of all religion — the Volneys, the Vol- toires, the Gibbons, the Paines, and all the other writers, philosophers, and poets who have, for the last three centuries, laboured to rob mankind of the blessings of the Christian Eevelation. 10 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. II. CHAPTER II. THE PRIESTS. Burke’s Eulogium on the French Clergy — The Archbishop of Arles — The States-General — The two La Rochefoucaults — Constitution of the Gallican Church — Opposition of the Clergy — Bull of Pius VI. Before saying what these noble men suffered, and did, it may be necessary to tell the reader what they were, so far as their individual histories are known to us. And at the outset, common justice demands, that it should not for a moment he supposed that they acted under a spirit of factious opposition to the civil power, or that they brought upon themselves the trials and persecutions which befel them, by an improper resistance of the law. Eeligion and con- science, higher laws than man’s, alike laid upon them the necessity of resisting, and they could not have acted otherwise than they did without a direct viola- tion of the divine law. As it is higlily important that their motives should on this point be well under- stood, I will call in the evidence of one, whose name and character will be the best guarantee that the account he gives is to be rehed upon. The great Burke, a staunch Protestant, in his Eeflections on the French Eevolution, thus writes of them : — “ When my occasions took me into France towards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable part of my curiosity. So Chap. II. BURKE ON THE FRENCH CLERGY. 11 far from finding (except from one set of men, not then very numerous though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body, which some publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no pubhc, or private, uneasiness on their account. On further examination I found the clergy in general, per- sons of moderate minds and decorous manners ; I in- clude the seculars and regulars of both sexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy ; but in general I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. With some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the rest in that class, very good means of information. They were almost all of them persons of noble birth. They resembled others of their own rank, and where there was any difference, it was in their favour. They were more fully educated than the mihtary noblesse ; so as by no means to disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and open; with the hearts of gentlemen, and men of honour ; neither insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct. They seemed to me rather a superior class ; a set of men among whom you would not be surprised to find a Fenelon : I saw among the clergy in Paris (many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men of great learning and candour ; and I had reason to believe that this description was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places I know was accidental ; and therefore to be presumed to be a fair sample. I spent a few 12 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. II. days in a pro^dncial town, where, in the absence of the Bishop, I passed my evenings vdth three clergy- men, his vicars-general ; persons who would have done honour to any church. They were all well informed ; two of them of deep, general and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, oriental and western ; particularly in their own profession. They had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected ; and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is since dead, the Abbe Morangis. I pay this tribute without reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person ; and I should do the same with equal cheerfulness to the merits of the others who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve. “ Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by^ all titles, persons deserving of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from me, and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their hands, I hope they will beheve there are those of our nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no common sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth. Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, I will pay it. No one shall prevent me from being just and grateful. The time is fitted for the duty ; and it is particularly becoming to show our justice and gratitude, when those, who liave deserved well of us and of mankind, are labouring under popular obloquy, and the persecutions of oppressive power.’’ Chap. II. MONSEIGNEUR DU LAU. 13 Again: — '‘Yon had before your Eevolution about a hundred and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue. I believe the instances of eminent depravity may he as rare amongst them as those of transcendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may be picked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in the investigation which leads to such discoveries . . . When I was in France, I am certain that the number of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals among them not distinguishable for the regularity of their lives, made some amends for the want of the severe vndues, in their possession of the liberal ; and were endowed with qualities which made them useful in the Church and State.’’ I might quote many other authors of great name, whose testimony perfectly coincides with that of Mr. Burke. But the brevity of this work does not allow it ; nor do I deem it necessary to adduce further proof The first and most remarkable personage in this illustrious band of martyrs is Monseigneur Du Lau, Archbishop of Arles. Among the French clergy of that period he was most renowned for his virtues, his learning, his eloquence, and his wisdom. Doctor, in theology, he had been promoted, while young, to the highest dignities, the duties of which he had dis- charged with great zeal and prudence. When the Archbishoprick of Arles became vacant, contrary to common practice, he was raised from the rank of a priest to the Archiepiscopal See, at once. By a 14 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. II. singular coincidence, he was consecrated the same year in which Pius YI. was chosen to fill the chair of St. Peter, and Louis XVI. was crowned King of Prance. In 1789 he was unanimously chosen by his clergy to he their representative in the States-Greneral. Pew persons, taking any interest in the affairs of Prance, require to he informed that the dominant element of that assembly was democratic or republican in the extreme. The extent to which it pushed its usurpations will be seen from what follows. It con- stituted itself a national assembly^ and pretended to rule the kingdom, scarcely recognising the authority of the king at all. It appointed an ecclesiastical commission for the management of ecclesiastical afiairs ; it nominated the Archbishop of Arles one of the com- missioners. Its object in placing him in this prominent position was to secure for itself, under so great a name, a credit, to which its secret purposes gave it no right, among the clergy, who were the great objects of its jealousy and hatred. The quicksighted archbishop was not long in seeing this, nor was he one to purchase peace at the expense of his conscience, or the interests of the Cathohc Chm'ch. He opposed with as much determination as eloquence, resolution after resolution proposed in committee ; and when he found that his opposition availed notliing there, and that the committee, altogether regardless of his opinions, had laid the fruits of its labours, in a series of Articles inimical to religion, before the States- General, with a recommendation to adopt them, he wrote an address to Louis XYI., which drew tears from his eyes, while he read it. This address he also 16 MASSACKE AT THE CAKMES. Chap. II. ness and humility, so contented, that he had not the least wish to change his condition. The nobleman asked him if he was in any way related to the Duke of La Eochefoucault. He answered that he had under- stood from his father, long since dead, that the Duke of La Eochefoucault was not very distantly related to him, and said that through a variety of misfortunes he had come down to that humble state of life. He added that he had documents in his house relating to his family, which Monsieur de Val took and examined on the spot. These documents proved him to be cousin to the Duke of La Eochefoucault. On the fol- lowing day this nobleman paid a visit to the Duke, and showed him the papers. The Dul^e seemed happy, and offered at once to assist his poor relative, requesting of Monsieur de Val advice as to the best mode of render- ing his assistance. Monsieur de Val was of opinion that it was best to leave the good old man to end his days as he had begun them, in the humble condition of life in which he had so long lived in contentment and happiness. But he suggested that something might be done for his two httle boys, whereby they should be raised above the low position into which their grandfather’s disasters had sunk them. The Duke was pleased with the suggestion, which Monsieur de Val followed up, by proposing to take them into his own house and to educate them with his own children, with whom they had become playmates. To this pro- position the Duke agreed, but only on condition that he should be allowed to give a certain sum annually to defray the expense of their education. These two boys grew up, and afterwards became, the one. Bishop Chap. II. THE TWO LA KOCHEFOUCAULTS. 15 published at the same time ; and by so doing, made himself so much the more obnoxious to the opponents of the Church. It showed them clearly that in him they had an adversary, and the Church a champion, whose talents and principles rendered him a most formidable antagonist. From that time he became a marked man, with nothing to hope for from the re- publicans, and much to fear, should they succeed in attaining what they were then employing every artifice to attain — the overthrow of the constitution and the destruction of the Cathohc Church. The two other bishops which come into this sadden- ing narrative, are the two La Eochefoucaults, the one Bishop of Beauvais, the other Bishop of Saintes. The history of these martyrs is full of interest. They were born in a village, near Angouleme. Close to their native place were the domains of a rich nobleman, called De Val. From a window in his chateau, this nobleman one day observed his children playing with two little peasant boys. He came down and found fault with them for doing so. The children excused themselves by saying, the little boys were so good and amiable ! He approached the lads, who were brothers, and struck with their innocent and intel- ligent countenances, enquired their name. La Roche- foucaults, they replied. When he heard it, he was much astonished ; yet still more, when he learnt that their father, the bearer of one of the greatest names in France, was a carpenter in a village close at hand. He desired to be conducted to the house of this man. There he found him working, like St. Joseph, for the support of himself and his family, in perfect cheerful- Chap. II. CONSTITUTION OF THE GALLIC AN CIIULCH. 17 of Beauvais, and the other, Bishop of Saintes.^ They were renowned for their zeal and charity, and their labours to promote ecclesiastical studies. Chosen by the clergy of their respective dioceses, to defend their rights and the rights of the church in the States - General, they most strenuously opposed the interfer- ence of the government in religious matters. When the government, in defiance and contempt of all oppo- sition, brought forth and promulgated the famous Constitution of the Gallican Church, and demanded its acceptance upon oath by the clergy of France, these bishops, true to their divine office, wrote to their clergy entreating them not to accept it, and rather than do so, to abandon their posts, leaving themselves to the care of God.f * One of the sons of Monsieur de Val, who was brought up with the La Rochefoucaults, left two daughters who are still living in the town of Saintes. It is from these noble and aged ladies that the Superior received this account, as also a Rochet which belonged to the Bishop of Saintes, and which is to he seen at the Chapel of the Martyrs, at the Carmes. t Alison, perhaps the greatest of modern historians, will, without any suspicion of Catholic bias, he heard on this point : “ Inflamed with resent- ment, the Assembly at length fixed a day for the adherence of all the clergy in France, and upon its expiring, the decree of forfeiture was univer- sally and regularly enforced. In this extremity, and when the adherence of the clergy to their oath, or the sacrifice of their benefices was unavoid- able, the clergy, dignified and ordinary, of France, evinced a disinterested spirit and grandeur of character worthy of the illustrious church to which they belonged, and which almost makes us forget th.Q previous corruptions which had been instrumental in producing the Revolution. The Pope had refused his sanction to the civil constitution of the clergy, as esta- blished by the Assembly, and had written to two of the bishops to that effect ; and, in addition to this, a consistory had been held of the whole bishops in France, by whom it was unanimously agreed, one archbishop and four bishops only dissenting, that they would not take the oath to be faithful to the constitution, as it vested the whole nomination of the priests and bishops in a simple numerical majority of the several parishes C 18 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. II. In a letter, addressed to the Superior of the College of Saintes, the Bishop of Saintes says, '' Our only object must be to do our duty, and obey Grod. Let us not despair of His Providence ; let us he assured that, after trying our faith. He will find a way of succouring us in our misfortunes. But if He has determined that we must perish in so noble a cause, let us rejoice in Him that He should have thought us worthy to suffer for His sake.” The reply of this Superior having informed him that every member of the college, one excepted, had refused to take the oath tendered by the government, he was overcome with joy, and wrote as follows to the Abbe de Eupt : — I beg of you to ex- press to those priests the great admiration I feel for their courage and steadfastness. The circumstances in which we stand demand great fortitude ; but when one is penetrated by this grand and important truth — that one thing alone ought to occupy us while on earth, that is, the care of our salvation, to what sacrifices ought we not to submit for its accomplishment ? However appalling our condition may become, we must still thank Grod for judging us worthy to suffer on His account. Casting our eyes on the crucifix of our divine Saviour, we shall find many sources of con- solation for all the evils with which we are afflicted. or dioceses, to the entire exclusion of the appointment or control of the Church. It had become a matter of conscience with the clergy to refuse the oath.” In Paris, to the infinite honour of its clergy, only one cure could be induced to take it. Once awakened to the danger to which the Church was being exposed by a number of vain attempts to keep in terms of peace with the civil powers of the day, they drew back, though too late to arrest the democratic rage their resistance exasperated against them. “ So fell,” says the same historian, “ the Church of Rome, and never, certainly, did it more worthily evince the divine spirit of its faith.” Chap. II. BULL OF PIUS YI. 19 May He grant us the grace of bearing them meekly in atonement for our sins.’’ The same language was used by his brother, the Bishop of Beauvais. In several letters, addressed to his clergy, he beseeches them to stand by their sacred obligations, to sacrifice all worldly interests to their duty. In other letters, he applauds the holy fortitude of those who refused to take the oath ; and seeing the privations and persecutions to which their faith- fulness exposed them, he reminds them that the highest honour and dignity of a priest is to suffer for the truth. Among the 200 priests (200, or thereabouts) whose glorious death I am about to describe, many, besides these three bishops, were distinguished by their birth and learning, and all by their virtues. Several be- longed to the illustrious Society of J esus ; some were Benedictines ; others were members of the Holy Society of St. Sulpice. The destruction of papers which followed the effusion of blood in those terrible times has made it impossible to know the particulars of every one. But where men have ended their lives as these one and all did, we feel that they have a claim upon our interest and regard, quite independent of what they had done, or what they were during their lives. Their last act stamps their whole exist- ence. In what light the See of Eome viewed gene- rally the conduct of the clergy of France at that period, the bull of Pius VI., then addressed to them, will show. The extract I shall take from it settles the point (if there are any who could question it) as to whether the clergy were justified in opposing as c 2 20 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. II. they did the attempts of the civil power to subject religion to its control, and to put the Clergy of France, as Henry YIII. had put the English, under the State, instead of being under the Pope, as required by the sacred canons of the Church Catholic : “ It is impos- sible,” says Pius VI., that an assembly merely political should have the right of changing the uni- versal discipline of the church ; of annulling the de- cisions of the holy fathers, and the decrees of councils ; of breaking the order of the hierarchy ; of regulating according to its own pleasure the elections of bishops ; of suppressing sees, and of substituting in the church of Christ new and corrupt practices for her own an- cient and venerated customs.” His Hohness, in con- cluding, adds, “We address ourselves to you, venerable brethren, who all, to the exception of a very small number, have so well known your duty towards your flocks ; who, regardless of your temporal welfare, have made a public profession of sound doctrine ; and who have rightly judged that your cares and labours at this time of trial should be equal to the occasion. We apply to you that eulogy which the great St. Leo applied to the Catholic bishops of Egypt, then exiles at Constantinople. Though we sympathise with all our heart in the calamities you have sujffered in de- fence of the Catholic religion, though the outrages you have endured on the part of heretics are as much felt by us as if done to ourselves, still we are confident that we ought rather to congratulate you than to condole with you ; because, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, you have remained steadfast and im- moveable in the doctrine of the Grospel ; and, driven Chap. II. BULL OF PIUS VI. 21 from your churches by the enemies of the faith, you have preferred the fatigues of a long voyage to the danger of being soiled by the taint of impiety. This manifestation of your virtue is for us a most sweet consolation. We exhort you most earnestly to per- severe in your noble resolutions. Retrace in your minds the holy ties of that spiritual marriage which unites you to your churches, and which can be broken only by death or by our apostolical authority, accord- ing to the practices prescribed by the holy canons. Continue inviolably attached to them. Do not ever abandon them to the mercy of devouring wolves. In- flamed by the same ardour as you have heretofore been, let your voices continue to be raised against their ravings.’' These are the men who, obedient to their spiritual authorities, expelled from their places, reduced to poverty, and insulted wherever they appeared in public, are now to be arrested like felons, and cast into prison. 22 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. 111 . CHAPTER III. THE ARREST OF THE CLERGY. Sacrifice of the Swiss Guard — Imprisonment of Louis XVI. — Municipal authorities excite the mob against the Clergy — The Abbe Reingard — Orders to seize the Priests — The Archbishop of Arles — The two La Rochefoucaults — Refusal to take the Oath — The Bishop of Auxerre — — The Reign of Terror — Resistance of Clergy to the interference of the State — Sufferings of the Clergy — The Dames Anglaises. On the lOtli of August, 1792, Louis XYI. was be- sieged in his palace by the mob. The Swiss Guard, and certain noblemen who tried to defend their sove- reign, were every one slain. The defenceless monarch fled from the Tuileries to the house of the National Assembly, where he remained many hours with his family hearing nothing but the insulting language of the deputies. Thence he was led, as a prisoner, to the old tower du Temple, and in this place he was kept till the 21st of January following, when he only left it to be beheaded. That awful day, the 10th of August — a day never to be forgotten in France — had not come to its close, when the municipal authorities sent to the various sections of the town a list of the bishops and priests who had not taken the oath, with orders to arrest them immediately, and conduct them either to the convent of the Carmes, or to the seminary of St. Fir- min, one or other of which had been destined to be the place of their imprisonment. A pretext was ne- cessary to excite the mob against them, who, bad as Chap. III. DEVICES FOR EXCITING THE MOB. 23 the leaders of it were, had themselves no particular hatred for the clergy, especially the inferior orders of that body, till it was infused into them. A pretext that would turn the whole tide of the worst passions of the worst class of men throughout France against the priesthood, that would drive it on, so that it should spare neither monk nor nun, church nor chapel, youth nor age, but sweep away every person as well as every thing sacred, required some invention. The most effectual thing for the attainment of this end that could be devised by the most ingenious wickedness was devised. A report, for which there was not the smallest foundation, was spread over the whole city of Paris, and thence conveyed into every town in the country, that priests had been seen at the Tuileries fighting with the Swiss Guard and firing on the people. It was added, by way of con- firmation, that Le Pere TEnfant, preacher to the king, had been killed, and man}^ others, who had been caught in the act. Other priests, it was said, had been seized patrolling before the palace, two of whom had the names St. Far and Abbe Bouillon given them. These reports were totally void of truth. Le Pere TEnfant was still alive ; St. Far had left France years ago ; and I’Abbe Bouillon never existed at all. Another device was made use of with the same view of exciting the mob against the clergy, and enhsting it on the side of the revolutionists. Heads of persons who had defended the king in his extremity were carried through the town stuck upon pikes * It was not only into houses where priests might he supposed to reside, but where persons resided who might be suspected of affording them pro- 24 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. III. and one of these, it was said, was the head of I’Ahhe Beingard, cure of St. Germain I’Anxerrois : the in- dhddnal, who bore the pretended head, proclaiming every now and then, “ This is the way that the nation punishes rebellions priests, and the traitors who joined the Swiss Guard against their country.’’ Now this Abbe Eeingard was still alive. A month later he appeared before his section, and demanded a passport. The astonishment was great on seeing him, and, hut for the generosity of some one or two men who had influence enough to get him off, he would most cer- tainl}^ have been jDut to death; the party who had practised the imposture on the town in boasting that it was his head they had cut off, and were carrying about on the end of a pike, being most furious against him. He got his passport, and escaped to England. The next morning,’ the section of St. Sulpice (or Luxembom'g) collected its most turbulent and violent emissaries, and gave them instructions to seize the priests. Divided into bands, and armed with pikes and guns, they went forth, so distributing themselves that no part of the city should escape their search. As they went they gave out that they were in search of the enemies of the country. One of the first arrested was the Archbishop of Arles. He was led to the tection, or of favouring the court party, that these gangs of insolent in- quisitors forced their way, to the dismay of the occupants. An Irish officer, Col. O’Toole, who had entered the French army in early life, as much distinguished for his Catholic piety as for his military talents and achievements, was surprised in his house one evening by a visit from one of these perambulating hordes of ruffians, carrying the head of a person on a pike. Somewhat awed by the dignity of his manner, and the tone in which he addressed them, they withdrew. He had made up his mind that his head should be transferred from his neck to one of their pikes, to be carried about the streets in triimqffi. Chap. III. SEIZURE OF THE PRIESTS. 25 section of St. Sulpice, who, acting as a sort of court under the revolutionists, locked him up in a room, where he was soon joined by many priests, seized in that same parish. In those inquisitions for priests, no distinction was made between those who had been engaged in public ministries and those who had not. It was enough to be a priest, and not to have taken the oath, to entitle the person to he arrested. In those parts of the town where priests were known to reside, these armed hands were to be seen roaming about the streets, with lists of priests in their hands, knocking at the doors of every house in which any might be found, and dragging them forth triumphantly, amid bitter insults and execrations, to the section. Such was the spirit by which these agents of the civil authorities were possessed, that, just in proportion as their victims had been distinguished for their attainments or their virtues, was their eagerness to discover them. In the parish of St. Sulpice hved a zealous priest, who was occupied night and day in administering to the sick. Nine times did they come to his house in search of him, and, not finding him, they took another priest, whom they found, in his stead. The Abbe Guillon, a priest most distinguished for his learning, the author of a book on civil revolutions, which had made him peculiarly obnoxious to the anarchists, was searched for with great ardour. Three times they came to his house, hut, failing to discover him, they went into a private chamber, where they found a hed-ridden eccle- siastic, in a very bad state of health. Moved to pity, they left him. They were sent back to fetch him. 26 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. HI. but^ seeing him so ill, they were still withheld from taking him. On their return they were reproached and reprimanded for thefr conduct^ and others were despatched to do what they had failed to do. These others went, and, dragging the dying man out of bed, brought him prisoner to the section. The two bishops, the illustrious La Eochefoucaults, were visited on the 11th by one of these bands of armed rujSians. Their purpose was only to take the Bishop of Beauvais, against whom they vehemently clamoured, but the Bishop of Saintes presenting him- self to them, with heroic fortitude said, “ I am united to my brother by the most endearing ties of nature, and also by my attachment to the same cause. And now, as his love for religion and his horror of perjury, are his only crimes, I beg of you to believe I am not less guilty. It would be impossible for me to see my brother taken to prison, and not to follow him, to keep him company. I request I may be arrested with him.” They were then both taken away and lodged in the room of the section, where the Archbishop of Arles and forty-six priests were detained. Many of them had had no food the whole day. At 10 o’clock they were all marched off to appear before the tri- bunal of the section at St. Sulpice. There the presi- dent asked them, one by one, if they had taken the oath^ or if they were disposed to take it. The reply of all was that they had not taken it, and that they could not take it. When tendered to them formally, they, every one, rejected it. Upon that they were ordered to be taken to the church of the Cannes, and to be shut up there as prisoners, their persons having Chap. III. SEIZUKE OF THE PRIESTS. 27 been previously searched, as if they had been common thieves. Thus, at midnight, were these innocent and holy men led away and locked up where they had nothing to lay their exhausted and wearied bodies upon but the hard floor, or a few chairs placed together. Their number was much increased by next day’s arrests. By the 14th they amounted to 120. All were in the greatest distress from want of food and rest, some having been there two days, with little or none of either. Many of them had been suddenly arrested in their beds and hurried off with no money in their pockets to purchase provisions. Their desti- tution, and the wonderful resignation which they manifested along with it, touched the heart of one of the principal guards, who had till that time treated them with great harshness and insolence. This man ordered every thing, which the care of some friends without had sent for their use, to be admitted, precau- tions being taken that no arms should be introduced. He even went himself to the neighbouring houses to beg food for them. When it became known that the doors of the Carmes were open to receive provisions for the prisoners’ relief, they were no longer suffered to be in want. The good people around the Carmes were but too happy to administer to the necessities of such men. Beds, mattresses, blankets, and linen were brought in abundance. A respectable restaurateur was engaged to supply them with food. One lady undertook to maintain twenty as long as they remained prisoners. Money was also sent to them. After a few days their friends were allowed access to them. The pious desire to console them led even many who 28 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. III. personally knew them not, to visit them in their imprisonment. Others went that they might he edified by their conversation, and the patience with which they bore their sufferings ; in both of which respects they afforded an example worthy of the martyrs of the first ages of the church. On the 1 5th of August {the Feast of the Assumption) the searches, which had begun on the 10th, still con- tinued. A great number of priests had been arrested and lodged in different prisons. A hand of the inqui- sitors, bearing the name of the Marseillaise, finding nothing more to do in Paris, went off to the suburban seminary of St. Sulpice at Issy. On that day the Bishop of Auxerre had been dining in the house. One of the directors of the seminary, the Abbe Courtad, having accompanied that prelate to the gate, heard a loud noise in the street. Oh ! ” said he to the Bishop, don’t venture to go out, there is great tumult in the village.” They retreated and went through the grounds behind. The Bishop, taking a hasty leave of the Abbe, made his escape by a private path. The Abbe on his return was accosted by these men, who, with ferocity in their looks, were roaming through the grounds and gardens of the seminary, as if the whole place had been their own, and the owners intruders. One of the directors of the College going up to them said, What right have you to come here ? Were you acting according to the law, the mayor of the town would be with you.” What have we to do with the mayor?” replied one of the ruffians. “ What is a mayor ?” added another. ‘'So it seems, citizens, you mean to resist.” " No ! ” answered the director ; Chap. III. SEMINAKY OF ST. SULPICE. 29 “ if this is your way of acting, we do not. To violence we offer no resistance.” All the directors and eccle- siastical students were thereupon arrested, and taken to a house in the town where they were kept till preparations were made for their removal to Paris. The whole of them, with the exception of three, whom the mayor got off on the plea of their being in bad health, and the Superior of the seminary, who was, the mayor urged, wanted to take care of the house, which was the property of the government, were con- ducted to Paris as prisoners, surrounded by a multi- tude of ruffians, as void of all feeling for man, it would seem, as they were of all fear of Glod. Amid the yells and imprecations of this merciless mob, preceded by a body of drummers, they arrived, after a rapid march of six miles, at the section of St. Sulpice, which was a sort of court established by the Revolutionists in the different parishes of Paris ; thence they were led to the Carmes, where they underwent an examination. Each was asked his name, his province, his occupation, his title, and particularly if he had any relatives who had emigrated, which was a capital offence. When they had undergone this scrutiny they were separated. Those in holy orders were confined in the church of the Carmes, with the three bishops and the priests who were already there. The others, being ecclesias- tical students, and not yet bound by religious vows, were locked up for the night in one of the chapter- rooms of the convent, with nothing but the benches to sleep upon. On the morning of the next day these were set at liberty. Among the last that were arrested and brought to the Carmes were some old and vener- 30 MASSACKE AT THE CARMES. Chap. III. able ecclesiastics belonging to the society of St. Francis de Sales. With these added, the whole number under arrest in that place could not be less than 200 ; it might be more. The object of this work being only to speak of the massacre of the Carmes, the reader must not conclude that it was only in Paris, or only at the Carmes, that the priests suffered for the faith during the period which is now historically known as the Reign of Terror. What these 200 prisoners endured at the Carmes others experienced else- where, throughout the greater part of France. I confine myself to what took place at the Carmes, because it affords a beautiful example of the most noble resistance on the part of the Clergy to the inter- ference of the State in religious affairs. There is no reason to believe that the sufferings of the priests who were imprisoned in the other wards {sections) of Paris, and in a great many other towns in France, at this very time, were less than those of the priests at the Carmes. Instances not a few might be found where the treatment of these, most shocking as it was, would be considered humane, compared with the manner in which priests were treated elsewhere. The limited nature of this work equally prevents me from saying anything of the particular sufferings undergone by multitudes of nuns and other hcdy women, who, at that time, as at all other times in the Church’s history, were to be seen perilling their lives at the foot of the cross. A general idea of those sufferings may be formed from the fact, that in this very city a whole convent of nuns {Dames Anglaises) remained under sentence of death for some time ; a mere accident, it Chap. III. CRUELTIES TO THE NUNS. 31 seemed, saved them. The order for their execution, which had been already given, was revoked, without any assignable reason, after the nuns had made them- selves ready for death. A deep trench had been dug in the chapel, extending from the one end of it to the other, and lain open for three days, in the hope that the sight of it would induce the inmates to seek escape from the horrors before them, by yielding to the demands of the Church’s enemies ; hut the effect of it was only to inspire them with greater contempt for the pains of death.* * To such a pitch of ferocious madness was the populace raised against nuns generally — the most inoffensive of all peojde on earth — that in a cer- tain town of France it was not thought enough to butcher them, and then strip them of their clothes : while they were yet warm, their skins were taken off, and converted, by the ordinary process of tanning, into gloves, which sold at a high price, being held superior to gloves of any other kind. 32 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. IV. CHAPTEE IV. THE PEIESTS IH THEIE IMPEISONMENT. Tyranny of tliose placed over them — Humanity of the National Guards — Cruelties exercised towards the Priests — Archbishop of Arles — Insults offered to him — His great patience and benignity — The Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais — Cruel device — The populace of Paris — Delusive promises of Manuel — Precautionary Measures adopted by the Sections — Priests sentenced to he butchered en masse — Eevival of religion in France. They divided tlieir time between prayer and pions conversation. Tlie boly sanctuary being left unoccu- pied they bad tbe altar always to retire to for prayer. When tbe guards set to watcb tbem allowed it tbey bad mass, at wbicb tbey all assisted ; but tbey were sometimes forced to deny tbemselves tbis dbune con- solation, owing to tbe borrible blasphemies wbicb it gave occasion to on tbe part of some of tbe guards, wbom tbe sight of a priest ministering at tbe altar quite infuriated. It seemed as if tbey felt, when present at tbe celebration of that divine Sacrament, what was felt by tbe evil spirits of Gadara, when tbey found tbemselves in the actual presence of our blessed Saviour : — “ lYliat have we to do vuth thee,” said tbey ; art thou come hither to torment us before tbe time ? ’’ They arose early in tbe morning, and went through their stated meditations with as much calm- ness and exactness as if tbey bad been at their own homes. None who saw tbem could have supposed that tbey were in a state of captivity : tbe friends, and other persons who bad access to their presence occa- Chap. IV. HUMANITY OF THE NATIONAL GUAEDS. 33 sionally, were astonished as well as overjoyed to see men in such a condition as theirs was so perfectly free from all anxiety or trepidation in their demeanour. During the day they said their office, some in the sanctuary and some in the garden, where they were permitted to walk two hours each day — one hour in the morning, and the other in the evening. This relaxa- tion was granted them on the score of health, their medical attendant having prescribed it. At the bot- tom of the garden was a small oratory, with a statue of the blessed Virgin in it ; to this sanctuary they resorted for prayer always during the time they were allowed to walk in the garden ; and little, then, did they think that, in that very place, so many of them would in a few days shed their blood. What supported their courage most was the pre- sence of the three bishops. It seemed as if Providence had placed those venerable prelates there to inspire the others with fortitude. Nothing could be more perfect than the example they afforded of a tranquil heart and joyful spirit under evil treatment, and out- rages of the most vexatious kind ; for, to make their imprisonment the more painful, their guards were con- stantly changed. The Marseillais, the Federes, and the Sans Culottes were placed over them in succession ; and there was no tyranny which these pitiless bands of savage men did not take pleasure in exercising. The National Guards were more humane ; several of them were touched with compassion for the sufferings they witnessed. Some of them even expressed their indignation, denouncing such imprisonment as most unjust. The priests, instead of encouraging this feel- D 34 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. IV. ing in their own favour, or of turning it to their own advantage, as they might, used every means to calm it, telling the soldiers that they had much happiness, and many consolations for which they were more to be envied than pitied, and that their very sufferings were a source of infinite joy, since they suffered for God and the defence of His church. It was hut seldom that they were called upon to repress any sympathy for their sufferings on the part of those sent to guard them in their imprisonment. The national guards, among whom there were many men of better dis- positions, had but seldom the charge of them. A. little incident, which hefel one of the priests as he was walking in the garden, gives a tolerably fair idea of the barbarous treatment they generally experienced at the hands of their guards. A tile dropped at his foot, which he felt certain must have been thrown with intent to injure or kill him, by one of the mob on the roof of the convent. He complained to the guard of the outrage. “ What matter,” said the guard, “ your job had been the sooner over.” Another priest, aged and infirm, who had been taken prisoner and ordered to be sent to the Carmes, came in much bruised by the blows he had received ; as he could not walk except at a very slow pace, the men who conducted him had pushed him on with their guns. The good man bore it all, as his Divine Master had done before him, with- out a murmur ; and, as he acted in tliis instance, so did they all : from first to last a reproachful word never escaped the lips of any one of them. It mattered not what their persecutors did or said to them, they had but one return to make — forgiveness and meekness. Chap. IV. THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARLES. 35 The Archbishop of Arles being in his eightieth year, it was proposed to him to make an attempt to obtain leave for him, on the score of his infirmities, to return to his own house, where he might still be kept as a prisoner. ‘‘No, no ! was his reply ; “I am too well here and in too good company.” Considering his high ecclesiastical rank, the priests, who were impri- soned with him, naturally sought to manifest that deference which was due to him in whatever way they could ; but so little did he think of his own, and so much of others’ sufferings and privations, that he em- ployed the very authority which he possessed to defeat their generous purposes. When food was served he insisted upon being served always last : there not being a bed for every prisoner, he remained without one till the third night of his imprisonment. So great was his concern for the necessities of others that he had gone round and counted the beds ; finding one deficient, he insisted upon being the person who should go without one till it could be got ; he thought that as he was of superior rank, so ought he to suffer the more. During one whole night he sat upon a chair. His conversation was always most edifying ; his meek- ness, his piety, and his patience called forth the greatest admiration. In proportion as he was above the rest in dignity, he shared more largely in the outrages which were inflicted ; but with the benignity of a saint he bore them all, esteeming himself only so much the more honoured : accepting with gratitude every indignity that was offered to him, he converted it, as was obvious to those around him, into a source of happiness instead of mortification. The following D 2 36 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. IV. incident will illustrate this : — Their guards had deter- mined one day^ for some particular reason, to do something insulting to them, and the way by which it was agreed to do this was as follows : one of them, a gendarme, sat down near the archbishop mth a pipe in his mouth, and began to address him in terms of insolent familiarity. He talked to the archbishop about the guillotine, and the fine figure he would cut on the scafibld ; then rising, he bowed the knee before him in mockery, calling him '' Monseigneur ’’ (my Lord), and other titles which had been abolished by the National Assembly. The meek prelate, well remembering doubtless who had supplied him with a rule of acting under such circumstances, “ 'made no answer y The gendarme sat down, and putting his face close to the archbishop’s, pufied his tobacco-smoke full in his eyes. To escape from the sickening smell, which was particularly offensive to him, he rose and changed his seat mthout appearing the least discon- certed. The cruel soldier followed him, in the hope that he would provoke the venerable old man to anger ; hut seeing he could not distimh the archbishop’s patience or ruffle his serenity by anything he could do, he owned himself completely vanquished. Several times did he repeat this, vfith only the same effect upon the archbishop, before he finally desisted. An incident of another kind shows the perfect re- signation of his mind. A priest, who had been sud- denly awoke in the middle of the night by some noise in the church, thinking that the hour of death was come, called aloud to the archbishop, Monseignem’, here come the assassins.” The archbishop replied, Chap. IV. BISHOPS OF SAINTES AND BEAUVAIS. 37 with his usual calmness, Well, if God requires our life, the sacrifice must be made and saying these words, he laid himself down again, and slept tranquilly. The Bishops of Saintes and Beauvais contributed greatly also to the consolation of their fellow-prisoners. The Bishop of Saintes, who had voluntarily followed his brother, was full of cheerfulness and gaiety. He was hardly ever seen without a smile on his counten- ance ; and the same courteousness which had distin- guished him in his diocese was manifested by him here. When new prisoners were brought in, he would approach them and address them exactly as if he had been welcoming them into his episcopal palace. On some very old priests of the Society of St. Francis de Sales he bestowed a great deal of kind attention, be- cause he had heard them thanking God repeatedly that He should have prolonged their lives, and given them grace to suffer for His sake. “ I became un- conscious of my sufferings,” said one, “ when I saw the Bishop of Saintes so gay and so cheerful, making every one around him think little of his miseries.” The servant of this bishop, a zealous and clever man, had obtained leave to see him a few days before the 2nd of September, and got into the church where his master was confined. There he showed him a dress which he had brought to disguise the bishop, that he might make his escape. “ But have you a similar dress for my brother?” said the good prelate. “It would have been impossible for me,” replied the ser- vant, “to bring in two dresses.” “ Then,” said the bishop, “ I will not use mine, for I am resolved not to be separated from my brother.” 38 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. IV. Perhaps nothing that was practised upon these holy and innocent priests gives a more horrible idea of the men in whose hands their persons and lives were placed than the following : — An emissary from the National Assembly visited them. He intimated to them that they should he hberated in a few days ; but only on condition, that they should leave the country immediately. This news, so delightful to many of their friends outside, was repeated by the guards, till a general impression had been created over the whole neighbourhood of the prisoners that their release was at hand. It was further suggested to them by some of the guards, who were, as the result verified, privy to the detestable artifice, that they should lose no time in raising funds and providing clothes and other things necessary for their deportation. No sooner was it noised about that the prisoners were on the point of being sent out of the country, than money and clothes in abundance were poured in upon them. It does not seem to have been suspected by any one that the whole might be no more than a device of their enemies. Yet such only it was. The originators of the satanic device and the propagators of the report had agreed together to adopt this way of enriching the victims before they fell into the hands of whosoever should be induced to become their executioners, that the latter might have an additional motive for hastening on the bloody catastrophe, which was to free France and the world from the bondage and despotism of priests for ever. It would be a calumny upon the human species to suppose that the National Assembly, as a body, assented to a stratagem of so base a character as this. Chap. IV. THE POrULACE OF PARTS. 39 Execrable as many of its members were, and doubly execrable as all were who took the lead in directing its lawless course, yet their number was probably but small who were directly responsible for the wicked fraud which the emissary, and tlrrough him the guards, had prac- tised upon the prisoners and those sympathising friends who flew to their relief. One thing, however, besides the atrocious character of the men who could have recourse to such infamous means to expedite their ends, is manifested by the fact, which we need not be sorry to be able to observe. The readiness, nay, rather the eagerness, with which the populace of Paris rushed from one monstrous atrocity to the commission of another, during a space extending over some years, has left an impression on the mind of the reader of French history, at that con- vulsed period, that the acts perpetrated by them are wholly inexplicable, except upon the supposition that they had all at once discarded the feelings of civilised man, and acquired the ferocity of the hyaena or the tiger instead. Yet such a supposition as this cannot be maintained. There was no lack in France of civilisation and intelligence, in the ordinary sense of these terms, during the reign of Louis XVI. The taste, which had become all but national, for the sciences, for literature, for the fine arts, for the drama and works of imagination, that taste, so wide-spread, and in many respects so exquisite, could have had no existence among a nation of savages. It may gratify that class of theorists who would regenerate the world, not only without the aid, but by the extinction, of the Catholic religion, to attribute the monstrosities in 40 ]\[ASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. 1Y. which the French populace for a succession of jeai’s took, it might almost be said, delight, to the barbarism of their state ; but it would not be the true solution. Many who took a leading part both in fomenting and in executing with their o^m hands those atrocities which, we can scarcely conceive, could be committed by human beings at all, we know to have been men of, what the world would call, education and enhghten- ment. And doubtless they were so as far as men without religious belief can be said to be entitled to these attributes ; in other words, as far as men deny- ing that personal moral responsibility which is the necessary consequence of a real belief in Cathohc Ee- ligion are to be considered chulised. The true solu- tion is rather to be found in the line adopted on this very occasion. Xot only the passions which are com- mon to all men, good as well as bad, but the bad pas- sions wliich are pecuhar to bad men, had to be aroused and called forth. The very means, shocking as they were, here resorted to by the original movers of the Ee- volution, are a proof that the populace required to be deceived as well as bribed to do those acts which cause us to shudder when we look back on them, even at a distance of sixty years. Other motives than those which actuate the mere savage, it was found requisite to enhst in the work now in hand, lest, overcome by any sudden emotion of commiseration or compunction, the miserable men employed to execute it should at the last moment shrink from it, and the priests escape. Hence the necessity for the additional stimulus of filthy lucre to make sm’e of the eagerly- souglit result, mthout which the comparatively small knot of dia- Chap. IV. MANUEL. 41 bolical men who gave birth to the Eevolution felt they might at any hour be themselves its victims instead of those they destined to be such. Between these men, rather these fiends in the form of men, and their ends, the clergy stood, offering a resistance which neither the muskets nor the sword could remove as long as the latter remained alive, though torn from their altars and shut up in prison. Destroyed, therefore, the clergy must be, no matter by what means, before it could be hoped that success would crown the labours of the revolu- tionists. Unintentionally they thus gave their testi- mony, as the great Burke had given before them, to two things of some importance which it has been the fashion to doubt — the moral influence of the clergy on the side, of course, of peace and order ; and the chance of failure which was felt to exist while that influence might be brought to bear upon the sanguinary designs of the party who had thrown the country into con- fusion. Whatever reason there was for it, the fact is un- deniable that there was not a shadow of foundation for the report spread abroad respecting the release of the clergy at the Carmes. At the very moment the emissary was delivering his message to them, grave- diggers were engaged to bury them ; for which service an agreement had been made that each should receive 100 francs, and whatever portion of the spoil he could seize. Again, on the second day before the fatal 2nd of September, Manuel, one of the members of the National Assembly, visited all the prisons in Paris. The prisoners, as he went through the different prisons, -eame round him, and questioned him as to 42 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. IV. their destiny. Grentlemen/’ said he, ‘‘ I come with words of peace and consolation. In thirty-six hours, yon will receive from the municipal authorities, the regulations which have been framed, respecting your deportation, to which all persons who have not taken the oath have been sentenced. Twelve hours after you will be liberated. Fifteen days will he allowed you to prepare for your voyage. But each of you must prove that he is a priest. You may well rejoice that you should be allowed to leave France, which at this time, is a matter of envy to many.” As in the previous case, these words were uttered only to delude the poor prisoners ; for which we can conceive no other motive on the part of the Assembly, who conducted the plot against the priests, than the fear lest any steps should be taken to rescue the obnoxious victims out of their hands before the day for their slaughter had arrived. That day was to be the 2nd of September. As the former device enhsted the avarice of the assassins, and made it subservient to the perpetration of the carnage they had before them, so this latter served to pave the way for its more easy execution, because unlooked for when the hour for it should have come. On the eve of the 2nd of September, three com- missaries visited all the places in Paris in which priests were imprisoned, under pretence of taking down the names of those that were to be permitted to leave the country. In some prisons, where the priests were mixed with common felons, which was not the case at the Carmes, the commissaries demanded that the priests should enter their names in a register which had been Chap. IV. M. YALFOES. 43 provided. They were asked to do this preparatory as was stated to their liberation. In the simplicity of their hearts, every priest wrote down his name in this list. The roll was then called over, and all who were priests were immediately sent off, either to the Carmes^ or to the Ahhaye, or to St. Firmin, it having been pre-arranged that the massacre should take place at each of these places, on the following day. From the manner in which priests were thrust into these churches up to the last hour, it has become impossible to state the exact number that may have been imprisoned in each when the signal for their slaughter was given. We do not pretend to accuracy therefore on this point. We can be certain as to the minimum, but we cannot say how many more there might have been than the number we give. The awful confusion of the times, and the panic which pre- vailed generally, rendered it a difficult task for many years to investigate into matters of this sort. It is perfectly certain, for example, that there were at least 200 in the Carmes on the night of the 1st of September, only one of whom was a layman, M. Yalfors, an officer in the army. This gentleman, it deserves to be mentioned, had begged and obtained permission to stay at the Carmes, among the prisoners, that he might not be separated from his pious director, to whom he was particularly attached. His heroic virtue would not allow him to leave the company of his friend, when the danger he was in began to appear. His lot was to share his confessor’s fate ; which he did with the fortitude of a soldier, and the meekness of a saint. 44 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. IV Divers precautionary measures were taken by the sections on this same day, to prevent any interference from without marring the consummation of the terrible tragedy now on the very point of being begun. All possible communication between Paris and the country was cut off. The Seine was guarded by armed men, in boats ; and guards were placed at short distances from each other ; all round the city club meetings were held in every ward, where the dema- gogues of the day gave vent to the most atrocious sentiments in inflammatory speeches, addressed to the populace, who were but too ready to listen to them.^ These speeches all turned upon the wickedness of the priests, and the urgent necessity which existed for getting rid of them with all possible despatch. They represented the most distinguished men among the order in the worst light. The most pious according to them, were only hypocrites, who cared as little for religion itself, as for the welfare of the people whom they deluded, and of the nation which they enslaved. The eager multitudes who listened to these harangues, were told that their freedom was gone, and that now was the hour of recovering it. The downfall of Louis Capet had paved the way for it. They had but to take the matter up with vigour, and without fear. Between them and the sovereignty, which was inherent in the people, there was but one barrier, the priests ; that removed, the rest would follow in due course ; * The father of the late distinguished architect, Pugin, found no way of eluding the guards who were stationed round Paris to prevent any one from escaping, but by dropping himself into the river, and being carried by it in the night time beyond the limits of the city. Chap. IV. PHRENZY OF THE MOB EXCITED. 45 but, till France was purged of priestcraft, nothing could set her free. These sentiments found a most ready reception on the part of those to whom they were addressed, as the speakers had reckoned upon. Everywhere the feelings of the populace against the priests rose to the boiling point. At one of the meetings above alluded to, held in the Section Poissonniere, the priests were sentenced en masse to be butchered. In the Section Thermes, an orator of this demagogue tribe roused to an extra- ordinary pitch the terrors, and at the same time the phrenzy of the mob, by telling them that the Prussians, encouraged by the priests, were advancing upon Paris. Whereupon, he invoked one and all, who were capable of bearing arms, to march against the enemy. One thing, however, must be done, he proclaimed, before they quitted the city. The prisons of Paris were full to overflowing, of traitors and priests. The safety of their wives and children, who should be left behind, required that these should all be previously extermi- nated. As there was no time, so neither was there occasion for any trial. Their guilt was acknowledged ; and where their presence involved danger so imminent, it quite justifled immediate immolation. These mad- dening harangues were made at every one of the sections of the city. When one orator spoke himself hoarse, another mounted the tribune, and continued the charge against the priests, who were as uncon- scious, as they were guiltless, of the hostile designs imputed to them. Though they do not excuse the miserable populace who were carried away by them, they serve to account for the excesses of cruelty and 46 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. IV. atrocity into which they rushed on the following day, and for a continuance of some days ; excesses for which it has been found possible to discover no adequate cause, without supposing the French nation en masse, lost, at that time, to every feeling of religion and humanity, and the clergy upon whom the revolu- tionary fury most violently fell, deserving of the doom which overtook so many of them. No apology need be made for here repeating what has already been stated. Truth and justice alike forbid any such sweeping suppositions, though both have been made by writers, who think themselves bound in one way or other to solve every problem they meet with in the history of mankind. To judge of a whole nation by the conduct or manners of its populace in its capital and larger cities, in times of great excitement, would lead to as false and unjust, as well as ungenerous con- clusions, in respect to that nation, as it would to judge of an individual only by what he did when under the effects of delirium tremens, or intoxication. The rapidity and force with which religion has spread since the Emperor Napoleon, to the immortal honom' of his name, removed the civil restrictions, which for a time destroyed its influence in France, affords, perhaps, the best proofs to us of the present day, that such could not be the case. Had it been so, a revival of religion there might have been, but not the happy state of things we see. Chap. V. • PREPARATIONS FOR THE MASSACRE. 47 CHAPTEK V. THE MASSACRE OF THE PRIESTS. Preparations for the Massacre — Thirty priests transferred to the Abbaye — The mob excited by the soldiers — Attack on the priests — Arrival at the Abbaye — Slaughter of the Swiss Guard — Murder of the Princess de Lamballe and a number of priests — The massacre at the Carmes — Suspension of the Massacre — Mock trial, and execution of the prisoners — About twenty escape, saved by a commissary — The priests willing sacrifices to the Faith : Difference between the present state of religion in France, and in England and Germany, is owing to their firmness in resisting the civil power — Church independent of civil power. On the 2nd of September, at an early hour, the drums were heating in the streets of Paris. The cannon of alarm was firing. The bells of the churches were tolling. It was reported in every part of the town that Verdun was already in the Prussians’ hands, and that they would he in Paris almost immediately. The black flag was hoisted on the steeple of Notre-Dame. Hust- ings Were erected in all the most public places, and leading streets of the city, and men were called to enhst for the protection of their country and families. The shops and manufactories were mostly closed, not in honour of the day (Sunday), for by this time the day had ceased to he observed, and men worked on it as on other days, but for a very different purpose. The workmen were parading the streets in great masses, singing qa ira, or crowding round some dema- gogue who was exciting them against the priests. About two o’clock the cannon of alarm was heard the 48 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. V. second time. It was the signal for the assassins to prepare themselves for the massacre. It had been preconcerted that they should commence their hlood}^ work at the third firing. At that moment thirty priests were taken out of the Hotel de Ville, where they had been imprisoned for some time, and sent off in five carriages to the Abhaye, which, like the Carmes, had been converted into a prison for priests. The drivers were ordered at starting to proceed slowly, if they did not wish to be torn from their seats, and put to death. The doors of the carriages were to he kept open, that the people might see that the persons con- veyed were priests, and that the sight of them in the condition of criminals and prisoners might excite the popular fury against them, and lead to an attack upon them by the way. A small body of the Marseillais, armed with pikes and sabres, accompanied these car- riages, not to protect the prisoners from the mob, hut to rouse the mob to violence against them. “ These,” said they, pointing with their swords to the priests inside, “ these are the confederates of the Prussians ; these are enemies of your liberties, the tyrants who will be your destroyers^ if you suffer them to escape out of yom’ hands.” The soldiers also who escorted them, with a view of instigating the mob to do what they had not got courage to do themselves, were loud in their denunciations of them, vociferating all the way that they should never see the Ahbaye, and that the people whom they had so long deluded would slaughter them on the road. The ruffians followed up these menacing words with blows from their pikes and sabres, which were all received by the gentle captives Chap. V, THE MA8SACHE. 49 without a word of reproof or any sign of anger. The worst felons that ever entered a gaol could not have been more basely treated than these holy men were by their guards, whose great aim in all this was to stir up the populace to take the horrid work of shedding their innocent blood out of their own hands. “Here are our sabres,” said they to the mob, “ take them, and free yourselves from the danger which threatens you, if you leave these wretches alive in the city while you go to meet the enemy, now marching to the capital.” The priestshearing this, and seeing the mob rushing round their carriages with the soldiers’ sabres in their hands, attempted to shut the doors, but to their dismay they discovered that they had been made fast, and could not be closed. There was nothing: for them but to sit and be stabbed with the pikes, which were thrust at them through the open door, or be slashed with the sabres of their ruffian assailants. By the time the carriages arrived at the Abbaye the blood of these holy men was flowing from their bodies in streams ; several of them were found dead, and some were in the agonies of death. The moment of the arrival of these carriages was the signal for the massacre to commence at the Abbaye, as it had been pre-arranged. It continued till the evening of the following day. It was here that the Swiss guards who had stood by the King on the 10th of August till the revolutionists had taken both him and them, at the Tuileries, were imprisoned. They were the first to be slaughtered ; it probably being deemed politic to get a hostile body of men, skilled in the art of war, out of the way as soon as 50 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. possible. The slaughter of the Princess de Lamballe, and a great number of priests, how many none can say exactly, followed. The fire being kindled, the mob di- vided itself into many parts. One part remained at the Abbaye to execute what had already been begun there. Of the rest some went to one place where priests were imprisoned, some to another. It was not long before a party of them reached the Carmes. The priests there were not taken by surprise. A presenti- ment had prevailed among them all that day that the sword which was to slay them had left its scabbard. The guards had been changed at daybreak. Every face on which they looked was not only unknown to them, but it was easy to see was hostile to them. Among the guards of the previous day they had always found some one or two whose hearts seemed to be as much with their prisoners as the orders of the tyrants under which they acted would allow. But in those who were on this day set over them, the priests saw nothing but dark and ominous looks, full of ferocious- ness. When any question was put to them no answer was returned. It has been before stated that the priests were permitted, from the first, upon the appli- cation of their medical attendant to walk in the garden two hours daily, one hour in the morning and another in the evening. On this day they were allowed to go out for their evening walk as early as two o’clock in the afternoon. This garden is of considerable extent, consisting of from two to three English acres. Ahigli wall surrounds it on three of its sides ; the conventual buildings bound it on the fourth side, or upper end. Escape is all but impossible, except through the Chap. THE MASSACRE, 51 entrance-gate at the upper end, which had, from the time that the church was converted into a prison, been blocked up for the greater security of the prisoners. Some time after two o’clock, while the priests were walking in the garden, they perceived that the mob had got possession of the convent. Every room seemed to be filled. There were persons in every window, declaring aloud to the priests, amid yells and execrations, that the hour of vengeance was come. This tumultuous shouting, which continued for a few minutes, was the prelude to the frightful tragedy which had been for above two weeks under contem- plation. A little before three o’clock a band of men, about ten or twelve in number, armed with pikes and sabres, were seen issuing into the garden through an opening which they had made for themselves, where the garden wall joins the convent. As if pikes and sabres were not enough, they had, in addition, pistols and daggers hung by belts round their waists. They rushed full upon their defenceless prey. The priests fled in every direction, but the very limited enclosure in which they were, left them only the chance of escape for a very short space of time. The first victim who fell before this ruthless band was le Pere Girault ; he v/as sitting on a stone bench on the edge of the fountain, in the middle of the garden, saying his office. Seeing them approaching him he continued his prayers. A blow from one of their sabres cut open his head, while the pike of a young man passed through his body ; the young man, while he performed what he deemed a heroic act, saying, I am to-day seventeen years of age, and this is the seventeenth priest I have 52 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. Y. slain.” The sixteen others he had killed at the Abhaye. This young butcher of men afterwards became a butcher in Paris. His own death was very awful : he perished in a fire.'^ Like wild beasts, the priests were hunted by these armed ruffians who had broken in upon them, till many lay dead on the ground, or were shot upon the trees, among the boughs of which they had tried to hide themselves. A very few escaped by climbing over the walls. One of these who had got to the top of the wall was on the point of jumping down to the other side, when he chanced to cast his eye upon the Bishop of Saintes. In great eagerness he cried to him, “ Follow me ! ” The bishop, with perfect composure, replied, “ I will not without my brother.” Forgetting his own danger, he came down and ran off to bring the bishop’s brother. In a few seconds he was seized and carried back to the church, where he was again shut up. From seventy to eighty fled to the chapel or oratory, at the further end of the garden. Among them was the Archbishop of Arles and the Bishop of Beauvais. When they had cleared the garden the assassins rushed to the chapel, calling out, “ Where is the Archbishop of Arles ? ” The prelate was at that moment close to the Abbe Pannonie, who almost * Very different was the end of another of those assassins. He had slain fourteen priests, and many jmars after, reduced to the greatest misery, and afflicted by a terrible illness, he was dying in an hospital ; he would see no priest, and seemed in the greatest despair ; but one day the chaplain of the hospital entreated him with the most affectionate earnest- ness to open his heart. “ Ah ! you don’t know me,” said he, “ I have killed fourteen priests !” “ Well, God has given you a fifteenth to pray for you, and offer you his pardon.” The words went to his heart. He died in a most penitent state. Chap. V. THE MASSACRE. 53 miraculously, at a later period, made his escape. It is to this priest we are indebted for any details we are able to give of this dreadful day at the Carmes. My Lord/’ said this eminent ecclesiastic, addressing the archbishop, “ they are going to kill you.” “ Well,” replied the archbishop, if it he the moment for our being sacrificed, let us submit, and thank God that our blood should he shed in so glorious a cause.” The archbishop immediately requested an aged priest that stood by to give him absolution. The solemn act was just finished, when the one assassin, closing in upon the priests, who gathered around him with a view of protecting him, cried out, “ The Archbishop of Arles ! the Archbishop of Arles ! ” The priests would have been cut down themselves rather than that he should be singled out to he massacred ; but like his Divine Master, when a similar body of men, sent by His enemies, beset Him and His disciples in another garden, “ to take Him and put Him to death,” the good archbishop stepped forward and said, I am he whom you seek.” And turning to the faithful priests who stood around him, he continued, “ Let them have me ; my blood may appease them. My duty is, if by any sacrifice I can, to save you from death.” ‘'So it is, you old villain, who are the Archbishop ! ” shouted one of the ruffians ! “ You are the miscreant who has caused the blood of so many patriots to be shed in the town of Arles ! ” The archbishop mildly answered, “ I never caused injury to any one.” “ Well,” said the same savage voice, “ I will cause injury to you ; ” and so saying, he struck him a blow on the forehead with his sabre. The prelate bore it without betraying 54 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. SO much as a look of displeasure. This was imme- diately followed by a second from the sabre of another of the assassins, which opened his skull. He raised his hand to cover his eyes ; in doing which it was cut off. Two other blows stretched him on the floor of the chapel, when a pike was thrust through his body. The assassins then fell upon his trembling associates, who had fled with him to the chapel. A ball from a pistol went through the leg of the Bishop of Beauvais, fracturing it severely. A number of the others, making no resistance, were slain while they were in the act of offering up their prayers at the foot of a statue of the Blessed Virgin which stood there. Their blood is still traceable on the walls and pavement of the chapel where it was sprinkled. Whilst this carnage was proceeding in the chapel a body of ruffians came rushing into the garden, calling out : ‘‘We must not massacre in this way — we must try them first and execute them after.’’ The slaughter was thereupon suspended, and all the priests who remained alive were driven back to the church. At this moment there was one, the Abbe Gfallais, who might have effected his escape. He had got upon the wall of the garden, and was on the very point of letting himself down on the outside, when it Hashed across his mind that, while others gained, he should lose the crown of martyr- dom. He jumped down and rejoined the rest, that he might share their martyrdom, which he did that evening. As soon as they entered the church, they all knelt down in the sanctuary, and offered up their prayers and lives to God. They confessed mutually their sins Chap. V. THE MASSACRE. 55 one to another, and received in the same manner the absolution which is given in articulo mortis. They said the prayers of the agonized. They prayed especially for those who were about to put them to death. They had barely concluded these devotions when the assassins from the garden and chapel made their way to the door of the church covered with the blood of their victims. The commissary, assisted by some of the soldiers on guard, stopped them from breaking through it with great difficulty. The human blood they had shed appeared to have intoxicated them, and to have rendered them more ferocious than before. Unable to force their way into the church, all the doors being secured, they gathered round the grating and made through it several desperate attempts to get at the prisoners inside with their pikes. The priests saved themselves for the moment by with- drawing to a distance. The assassins, thereupon, poured forth a volley of execrations upon them, calling them thieves, miscreants, monsters, and murderers; at the same time adding, The sword of Justice is too slow for us. You must die by our hands. You thought to destroy us and all that belongs to us by fire and sword ; hut, now, you shall perish by us, and not we by you. We shall not delay your execution till the law has condemned you. We at this moment sentence you to death for the crimes you have com- mitted, and you shall die without an hour’s delay. The sword of the law is too slow for us. The hour of vengeance is come.” The commissary who stood by and heard all this, forbade their breaking down the door and forcing an 56 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. entrance. He made signs also to the prisoners to remain as far back as possible from the gratings. Whatever might he his feelings in regard to them^ he was, evidently, very much alarmed for his own The Bishop of Saintes not seeing his brother among the prisoners, was greatly afflicted, and inquired of all the priests near him, if they had seen his brother. At that moment the door opened, and the Bishop of Beauvais was carried into the church by four rufflans, who were calling out that he should be judged, and then put to death. The Bishop of Saintes received him in his arms and laid him on a bed. Meanwhile the mob outside became more and more violent, clamouring more vehemently for the condemnation and death of the prisoners. Taking possession of the refectory and the convent, they erected therein a tri- bunal, converting it into a judgment hall, where the priests should be tried for their crimes ! Between this refectory and the church there was a narrow passage : through this the priests were to be taken, two by two, to the tribunal. When all was prepared for this cruel mockery, the commissary opened the door of the church. The mob rushed in and called on the priests to come forth to be judged ; two of them immediately presented themselves and were led away. The indi- vidual acting as judge, asked them to take the oath and to accept the Civil Constitution; they both refused ; sentence of death was instantly pronounced. A body of rufflans gathering round them, dragged them at once out of the refectory, down the few steps which lead into the garden ; as soon as they had reached the Chap. V. THE MASSACRE. 57 outside, they were knocked down and slaughtered on the spot. Two others followed to the tribunal. Ee- fusing the oath when put to them, the same sentence was passed, and executed the next minute upon them. In this way, two by two, the greater part of them were taken before the tribunal, and underwent judgment ; or, to speak more correctly, followed their executioners to the tribunal ; for no one required to be taken by force ; all were as ready to go as their destroyers were to take them ; no one attempted to make his escape, or was heard to utter the least complaint. Life and liberty were offered to every one of them if they would take the oath and subscribe to the Civil Constitution which the government had framed for the clergy. To their eternal honour, they rejected all these offers, and were most cruelly martyred. Almost the only words that escaped from their lips while undergoing the sentence of death were, addressing themselves to their executioners, '‘I forgive you.” “ God forgive you.” A very small number as they passed the commissary besought him to rescue them, declaring to him that they had done nothing against their country, or any one, deserving of death ; the commissary drawing them aside and placing them behind him thus rescued them ; in this way many more might have saved their lives, but they preferred dying for the faith to a deliverance from death, which could only be obtained by ignoble means. They felt it was far too great an honour to die for the faith, to have any desire to evade it, when it was in their power to choose it, and when, by submitting to it, they could not only 58 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. purchase in heaven the martyr’s crown for themselves, but peace on earth to the Church perhaps for many ages. The Abbe Gallais, who had descended from the wall and joined the rest, was called on to appear before the tribunal. As he proceeded, he remembered that he had not settled with the restaurateur for the food he had procured for the prisoners. This abbe had acted as general purveyor for the others ; approach- ing the commissary, he asked leave to step aside for a few minutes to make up his accounts. This done, he came back, and, placing the amount (about 13/.) due to the restaurateur, in the commissary’s hand, begged him to pay it for him. He added, ‘‘ I am far from my family and my family have no need of me ; here is my pocket-book containing bills for 7000 francs (280/.). Distribute this money among the poor. I give you my watch for the same object.” After these arrange- ments, opening his New Testament he began to walk out, reading it as he went. He had no sooner reached the tribunal than he fell and expired under the hands of the assassins who had been for some time vociferating his name. The Bishop of Saintes was taken from the bedside of his brother. He walked up to the tribunal with a calm and cheerful countenance, spoke to those who claimed the right to judge him with the mildness of a Benelon, but declared with undaunted firmness, that he would never take the oath. As he stepped over the threshold of the refectory, he was slain. The walls on either side were stained with his blood. His appearance was the signal for liis brotlier’s death ; the Chap. V. THE BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS. 59 assassins ran into the church calling out, “ Where is the Bishop of Beauvais ? ” He was lying on a bed, unable to walk. Hearing his name, he rose up and answered, “ Here I am ! come and take me to the tribunal ; I refuse not to 2^0, but I cannot walk. Have the charity to help me to the place.'’ They seized him, and dragged him away. A few seconds determined his fate. He met it with the same magnanimity and fortitude as his brother, who had just preceded him. He was one of the last victims of this massacre. The wonderful joy and serenity which, in common with all the rest, he manifested before this seat of injustice, and even while expiring under the weapons of the assassins, drew from some of them the greatest admi- ration. The commissary was filled with amazement, and afterwards said to one of the priests, whom he had rescued from the fate of the rest, “ I cannot comprehend the conduct of your priests yesterday ; they went to death as if they had been going to a wedding.” The number of priests who escaped through the commissary's kindness, or by climbing over the walls, was about twenty. Of the former were the Abbe Berthelet, and the Abbe Bardet. Both of them wrote an account of this massacre. One of these accounts is in the possession of the Superior, and has never been published. These two priests, with a few others, were only saved by a stratagem. During the night they were led from the Carmes, where the commissary had secreted them, to the section of St. Sulpice, by a body of guards who had assisted the commissary in preserving them. The streets were filled with women. 60 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. On each side of every priest one of these guards walked, shouting as they marched along, “Long live the nation ! Long live the sans culottes I Those we have here are honest fellows. The others, who were wretches, are all killed.” The hulk of the assassins, after they had finished their hlood}^ work, remained for the night in the chm’ch of the Carmes, revelling and drinking to excess, the property they had found on the persons of their victims supplying them with the means. They soon became intoxicated. While one of them was groping about in this state, he came upon a bed, under which he discovered a young priest. The discovery being proclaimed, they all gathered round the unfortunate man and determined that his death should furnish them with amusement. With this view, he was stript naked. Then, taking their swords and pikes, they chased him round the church several times, making sport of his shrieks and agonies, wounding and piercing him with their weapons, as if he had been some savage beast which it was their duty to destroy. Covered with his own blood, he at length fell at their feet to rise no more, amid inhuman shouts of laughter. The few priests who had been rescued by the com- missary, and conducted by the guards to St. Sulpice, were locked up in a room upon their arrival. While in this place they overheard one of the assassins, who had just come from the Carmes, saying, in a complaining tone to his comrades, that he had killed many priests, but had not got a single pair of breeches for his pains. The others who laboured with him, he had seen stripping their victims and appropriating their Chap. V. THE SANS CULOTTES. 61 clothes. Yet, notwithstanding he had worked as hard as any of them to merit a share of the spoil, he had got nothing. From the tone and desperate character of this man, the priests, who were separated from him only by a door, felt certain, that if any accident should lead him to suspect they were there, their lives would go to repair the injustice of which this ruffian com- plained to his fellows, and in which they seemed to participate. A commissary coming in, and hearing their murmurs, called out, “ Long live the sa 72 s culottes ! I myself am a sa?is culotte. But though it be just to pay the sans culottes, money should not be their only concern. They should have a higher aim than their own interest.” The fellow sulkily replied, six francs were but small pay for what he had done at the Carmes that night ; and he persisted in asserting his right to a pair of breeches besides. One of the guards said that six francs were a great deal for one day, and that the soldiers in the army had not half as much. This man shortly after withdrawing, another who had been engaged in the same bloody work came in, and talked of the inadequate requital made to him, much in the same style as the other, though in a more temperate way. By some means he had extracted from the guards that a few priests were shut up in a room of the house. The guards were prevailed upon to let him in. The room was perfectly dark, it being still night. The priests were sitting on benches, and though quite exhausted, were too much alarmed for their personal safety, to fall asleep. This ruffian went round them all, feeling their clothes, to ascertain of what quality they were, and then retired, having, it 62 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. V. was inferred by them, found nothing which he cared for. Next morning, they were taken before the tribunal of the section. The same kind influence which had been exerted in rescuing them from those who would have destroyed them at theCarmes, protected them here. It was agreed that they should be allowed to remain all day, and that in the evening, as soon as it was dark, they should be set at liberty. The record does not give us the reasons for this act on the part of the authorities who were now dealing with them. As we are left to guess them, it may have been that their thirst for the blood of priests was sated for the present. Be this as it may, they were subjected to no new exami- nation. The new test or oath was not put to them. They were not asked to do, or say any thing, which in the least compromised their principles. No one questioned them about these, or called on them to renounce them, as had been done to them before, by the same revolutionary functionaries. That the favour which they were experiencing was of a very limited character, is clear from a trifling occur- rence which took place during the day. The priests begged of a commissary, that their breviaries should be sent for : they had all been left at the Carmes. This favour, though a very humble one, was denied them. Pray to God by heart, without book, if you believe in God,” was the commissary’s sullen reply. That evening they were taken to their homes, singly, that they might attract no notice, and escape the rage of the mob, which was still making havock of the priests in other parts of Paris. And with the Chap. V. THE PRIESTS WILLING SACRIFICES. 63 providential escape of these few stedfast sons of the church, from a massacre which cannot be remembered but with horror, nor read of without pain, our narra- tive may well close. It is due to the heroic sufferers, before taking fare- well of them, to say, what hardly requires to he said, that in every instance their death was a willing and joyfrd sacrifice for the faith. Over the whole of France it was the same ; the spirit of martyrdom was in them all, sustaining them all. Among the priests of the age, secular as well as regular, it was the prevail- ing spirit ; to which no intelligent observer can fail to see, is now mainly, perhaps wholly, owing the very great difference between the present state of the Catholic religion in France and the state of religion during the last three hundred years in Germany and England, as well as in many other countries. As priests, they felt it was their duty to lose their lives, rather than that their Divine Master should lose in this world that spiritual authority of which He is the sole author, and they the sole trustees and executors ; and, conscious of the honour, as well as the agony of suffering in the flesh for justice’ sake, they refused to purchase life at the cost of the smallest particle of that faith which was entrusted to them. They acted like men who knew that the authority of God, that supernatural and spiritual authority which exists only in the Catholic Church, ends where compromise of the least jot or tittle of the gospel begins. The autho- rities of the day, the powers that he, they well knew had no power to rule the Church of God. They might lord over it, they might persecute it, but govern it 64 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. they could not. They had done the former in all ages since the days of our blessed Lord’s birth at Bethlehem, and there was nothing surprising in the infidel and revolutionary powers of France, at that or any other period, doing what other civil powers, neither infidel nor revolutionary, tempted by political ambition, had so often done before them. Under the circumstances in which they were placed, during the reign of terror, the line of acting was as clear to them as it ever had been ; and they did not, from love of life or of this world, seek to evade the awful, yet glorious penalty, which fidelity to the gospel entailed : the penalty of being cruelly imprisoned and then massacred by the enemies of the Catholic Faith. Jesus Christ had founded a kingdom, like Himself, not of this world ; He had endowed it with gifts and graces, and powers not of this world, and when He was about to depart whence He had come. He entrusted it to persons selected by Himself, and qualified by Himself, to manage its affairs. When He had the choice of all the governments of the earth, when He had the power to make kings and princes “ the vassals of His will,” and the spiritual dispensers of His supernatural trea- sures to their subjects ; when He might have called the masters of the Eornan empire, instead of the fishermen of Gralilee, to the headship of His sacred ministry. He took a course exactly the reverse ; though, by doing so. He was planting. He both fore- knew and foresaw, in the world, the root of that fierce warfare between the rulers of this world and the rulers of His own kingdom, the Catholic Church, which began at His birth witli the massacre of the Chap. V, CHURCH INDEPENDENT OF CIVIL POWER. 65 Innocents, and which shall continne till His second coming. Onr business here is not to reason or philo- sophise on the wisdom of this mode of proceeding, which is, as He Himself represents it, one of the mysteries of His kingdom, which could not be under- stood by the carnal mind, however learned or intelli- gent. We are only concerned here with the fact that the kingdom of our Lord was not entrusted by Him to men in power, possessed of power, or even entitled at the time to exercise any ordinary civil power, hut to men under power, to men who were the subjects of the civil power, to men whose duty it was to obey, in temporal matters, and not to men who had a right to he obeyed in the same. He made it still more clear that the powers which are set over this world, have, by virtue of their office, no right to intermeddle in the affairs of His church ; that He made Himself sub- ject to the laws of His country, nay even to a civil authority or power (I mean the imperial power of Home), to which the rest of His countrymen, the Jews, of that period, considered it the part of a traitor to submit. When He allowed Pilate, the deputy of Caesar, to judge Him, and when He gave Himself up to be scourged, though perfectly innocent, and then to he led away to he crucified, as that minister had ordered. He gave a proof of the duty of obedience and submission to the civil authority, which had been sinful, if that authority had had no right to be obeyed, if that power had not been quite distinct and apart from the powers of His church, about to spring up in the world. But that right He settled when He said to Pilate, “You would not have had any F 66 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. power against Me, unless it had been given to you from above which words perfectly harmonize with the words of St. Paul, in which the doctrine implied in our Lord’s reply to Pilate is explicitly put forth : “ Obey every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake again, “ The powers that be are ordained of God.” On that occasion too, when our Lord wrought a miracle, that St. Peter, the head of the apostles, and the type of the Christian priesthood to the end of time, might pay the tribute-money demanded of Him by the civil power, when He might actually have claimed exemption. He gave an equally determinate proof that the civil powers of the world, no matter what form they may have taken, are wholly distinct from those spiritual powers which are inherent in the Church, and which make the Church what it really is, and what He ordained it to be, “A kingdom not of this world.” This same doctrine, namely the Church’s inalienable right to exercise her own spiritual powers, independently of the civil power, was very plainly taught, though indirectly, by our blessed Lord, when He forewarned His apostles of the persecutions they should encounter, on the part of the civil power, when they went forth to preach His gospel to the world : He said that they should be taken before its tribunals, that they should be scourged, and condemned to death. Their earthly portion was to be a state of affliction, while the world should rejoice. His counsels not to be afraid, not to be discouraged, but to be “ confident,” inasmuch as He had overcome the world, are another proof that that opposition of interests, which had its root in the enmity between Satan and Chap. V. CHURCH INDEPENDENT OF CIVIL POWER. ill the seed of the woman, should be continually mani- fested in the oppression and persecution of the Church by the powers of this world. And knowing how difficult it would be to persevere in a course of life which brought such consequences with it, He further tells His followers not to fear those who have the power to kill the body, but to fear Him, who can cast both soul and body into hell. A practical application of this doctrine is afforded us in the conduct of the apostles, when the civil power forbade them to preach in the name of Jesus. St. Peter, speaking both for himself and the rest, made answer, “ We must obey God rather than man'' It may be profitable to dwell a little longer on this point, not only because of its connection with the sufferings endured by the clergy of France at a par- ticular time, but because of its abstract importance in regard to the Church on the one hand, and the civil power on the other. In instituting His Church, our Blessed Lord did not entrust it to the civil power, because he instituted it for the whole world, and not for any one nation in parti- cular. The governments, or civil powers, of the world being very different, we do not see, indeed, how He could do so. When Grod instituted the Jewish nation. He instituted the two powers, civil and religious, and made them depend on each other ; but still we see that the religious government was independent of the civil. Each had an identity of its own, perfectly distinct from the other. Each had its own sphere to move in. The whole religious structure, from the top to the founda- tion, from the highest offices down to the lowest E 2 68 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. arrangements respecting the administration, lay beyond the civil control. The entire responsibility in these matters was vested, by a divine entail, in the family of Levi ; which again converged in the family of Aaron. If any civil power could ever be warranted, or think itself warranted, in stepping over the line between itself and the religious, we might expect it would he that which would claim a Divine Founder, as the Jewish could. On the other hand, if ever the Church could feel herself justified in submitting to the inter- ference of the civil power, it would he, we might sup- pose, where she and the civil power had, as they actually had, a common supernatural parentage. Yet the schism which took place, and rent the Jewish kingdom asunder, was owing in no small degree to civil interference ; as by an unfortunate necessity it follows, that the Church is hound to resist, whenever and wherever her proper province is invaded, be the temporal consequences to herself or the State what they may. Her resistance is, of course, as different in its nature from the resistance of any secular body, as she is different in essence and end, from all other powers in the world. These can use physical force, and draw the sword in the furtherance of their attempts upon her life. She, in return, can hut offer the necks of her children, as has been done in all ages, or forfeit her temporal rights and civil privileges. When J esus Christ came into the world to establish the law of God in all its completeness, and for the benefit of the whole human race, we see, by the figures of the Old Testa- ment and the words of the New, that the Church He instituted and destined for all nations was not to be Chap. V. CHURCH INDEPENDENT OF CIVIL POWER. 69 under the control of human government, as the religion of pagan states had always been; so far from that, human governments would do all they could (it was foretold) to oppose its progress : its temples, in short, were to owe a portion of their glory to the very cir- cumstance that they had been won not with the good- will or aid of this world’s princes or rulers, but in spite of their fiercest opposition — in the face of their most terrible persecutions. That this formed a primary condition of her growth in the world, has been verified in every part of Christendom, in every generation of Christians for these 1800 years. To go no further than Fribourg, or Piedmont, at this moment, we shall find fresh demonstrations of the fact, in most painful reality. But without dwelling on these instances, any man who refiects on the facts of Holy Scripture, must see that any nation which absorbs for itself Christianity, and turns it into a national church, that nation returns to Judaism (only under a new form) and goes out of the Universal Church which Christ established. If, for example, you examine the Church of England, where this has been done for 300 years, and compare it with the Jewish Church, you find the most striking resemblances between the two. First, its duration is dependent upon its espousals with the civil power. Dissolve that political contract and it is no more, except so far as any of the other sects, with only the insignificant difference in its favour, that it has borrowed more and originated less than they. And furthermore, in proof of this, witness its at- tachment to the Jewish idea of the Sabbath, which leads it to prefer observing the day from its ancient 70 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. Jewish sanctions, though these are not binding upon the Christian, rather than from its evangelical motives ; its great disesteem for poverty and virginity ; its high estimation of worldly prosperity and of the married life, both of which it regards (after the Jewish fashion) as the surest tests of national superiority and of the merit of individuals ; nay its often going even much farther, regarding that very worldly distinction and affluence, which we see so frequently attained by men of no particular virtue, as an evidence, all-sufficient in favour of itself — as a proof that the divine blessing rests upon it and its professors ; its desire to imitate the nakedness of the Jewish ceremonies and temples in its worship, though the reason which there was for that nakedness no longer exists — that reason being to preserve the Jews from the idolatry of the heathen nations by whom they were, down to the time of our Blessed Lord, surrounded ; hut which, however, did not in their case exclude the honouring of angels, and cannot therefore justly in ours, exclude the honouring of the Apostles and martyrs. Evils, which penetrate much deeper and extend much wider, must always result from such a system as the Anglican is. That the civil power of a converted nation should favour the Church and honour its ser- vants ; that the civil power should do this in the person of its possessors and in the spirit of its laws there can be no question, except with those who do not believe in her Divine Founder, and ever-present, indwelling, upholder Jesus Christ : in all ages Christian emperors and princes have done this ; and it is not the least glory of France of the present day, that God has given Chap. V. CHURCH INDEPENDENT OF CIVIL POWER. 71 her an emperor, who is not ashamed to place himself under, instead of over, the spiritual rule and divine government of the Church, as vested, by God’s own ordinance, in other hands than his. In this, those who rejoice in the peace and happiness which his sceptre has brought to a long-torn and disturbed nation, are but too willing to hail, after an interval of tribulation, the return of those golden times when the monarchs of France were the saints of the Church and the champions of the Cross against its enemies and perse- cutors. The no longer downcast children of the Church, whether living under his present peaceful and auspicious sway, or in other lands, acknowledge with gratitude the divine goodness which has bestowed on a mighty nation a sovereign who obviously seeks rather to be ranked with such princes as Charlemagne and Louis XIV. than to ingratiate himself with the infidel liberality of the age, by doing what his poor compromising predecessor did, to secure a throne to which he had no better claim than that which an avowed contempt for religion, and especially the Catholic, and consummate duplicity gave him. Were it then that the civil power in England only did in England what all good Catholic sovereigns have done and do towards the Catholic Church in their respective dominions ; were it only that it imitated those other great powers France and Austria, now allied with England, in their respect for the one Catholic faith, and in their desire to promote its increase among their subjects, we should have no ground to complain of any connection, however close (provided it were religiously compatible), between the State and the Church; but this 72 MASSACKE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. is exactly what the civil power in England does not do. It has erected a religions system of its own, which both its great imperial allies would tell her could not he any portion of the Catholic Church, if the religion which has descended to them he what they dare not doubt it to be, the one true religion of Jesus Christ. They and their ministers, so far as these latter are, like themselves. Catholics, manifest their favour and afford their protection to the Catholic Church, without presuming for a single moment to suppose they have a whit more right than the meanest of their people to question her doctrine, to refuse submission to her spiritual authority, or to legalise any forms of worship, or any articles of religion, to which she is no party, and to which she can he no party, without a direct violation of that divine authority which (though it is hers to possess and to use) it is still God’s to own, and therefore transferable or com- municable to no hands besides her own, in this world. They might go still further, and tell her that every drop of martyr-blood which has been shed since the day of the Crucifixion has been wasted on an object, and for an object, of no account in the sight of God or of man, if the religious system which she has con- trived, and which she has put in the place of the Catholic Church, so far as this has been done by her laws, could have its foundation where the Catholic Church throughout the world, and throughout the fifteen centuries which preceded the reign of Henry VIII., had hers. But were she not blinded, as the Jews themselves were, when Christ’s kingdom began to be preached to them, she would not want foreign Chap. V. CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES. 73 evidence to convince her that the religion of her adoption three centuries ago was not the religion established among men for their salvation by our Blessed Lord and His Apostles. Would she, and could she, hut analyse its component parts, she would confess that she had sought in vain for any traces of that spirit of martyrdom which lives, and moves, and has its being in the Catholic Church. On the other hand, instead of this, she would see a spirit of great worldlymindedness, delighting in temporal honours and wealth, in the creature -comforts of domestic life, in the pleasures of society, in marriage, and being well connected, and such like. This spirit she would find, not here and there, hut pervading all classes and all persons, with a few exceptions, from her bishops down- wards ; following her missionaries to India and Africa, and manifesting itself everywhere. But nowhere would she find that spirit which carries the Catholic missionary away from his native land, to risk his life as a matter of course, and, if need he, to lose it, in order that he may win souls to Christ. It is not here denied that men have now and then gone out from the Church of England, with its sovereigns authority, and under the protection of its captains and consuls, to preach the Gospel in foreign parts, possessing many of the noblest qualities that can adorn human nature, — fervent devotion, self-denial, disinterestedness, zeal for the salvation of souls, and, with these, a burning desire to rescue the heathen world from the ignorance and idolatry in which it is sunk, by making it ac- quainted with the divine light of revealed truth. The name of Selwyn will occur to the reader as a 74 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. V. missionary who would do honour to the Christian spirit and character under any sky. But it would he to take from him what is his, and to give to a body what is not its own, to attribute to the Church of England that heroic love of his Saviour which he has manifested in preaching among the poor savages of New Zealand for now about twelve years without intermission. But such men have also gone out from other religious bodies inferior to him in no respect. Such were Swartz and Martin ; such are many of the disciples of Wesley, and such are many belonging to other sects in England. The spirit of these men is not, it is clear, the spirit of their religion, e. of the communities to which they belong, hut a spirit of devotion peculiar to themselves. It makes them simply exceptions. For example, what has Bishop Selwyn in common with the twenty- six bar on-bishops which sit in the House of Peers, and rarely, if ever, in their dioceses make any attempt to convert or go to console a single poor man? With their great in- comes, with their habits of life, with the domestic ties which they have about them, binding them to the world, the spirit of martyrdom is just as far from them as it is from the Bank of England or the Stock- Exchange. Who, again, that knows anything of the parochial clergy of the English Church, would say it was nearer them? Polished, well-educated, amiable, charitable, and attentive to their duties as the great bulk of them are, it would be to burlesque them alto- gether to say, that as a body of men — though no professional body amounting to their number (about 12,000) could be more respectable — they have a single Chap. V. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 75 spark of that heavenly fire which has led Catholics in all ages, and which leads them still, to glory in dying in the cause of Jesus Christ and of His Holy Church. There is even much less of anything resembling this in the Church of England than in some of the sects which have crept out of her body since the time of Elizabeth, the proof of which we see in the rapid in- crease which several of these have made of late years, in spite of innumerable pains and penalties for many generations imposed on them by the State, and all the other political and religious disadvantages under wliich and against which they have had to contend, with no- thing almost but their zeal and poverty to sustain them. Whether, then, the Anglican Church is tried by what it has done at home or abroad, in her capacity as a national teacher or a converter of the heathen, she will be found wanting ; and wanting, simply because though she has the wealth of a kingdom at her feet, she has no other spirit, generally speaking, to carry her through her work than that which men at the bar, in the army, or navy are wont to have, — a spirit creditable enough in itself, yet wholly different from that supernatural, that divine, spirit which our blessed Saviour took from Himself, and gave to His Church. 76 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. CHAPTER VI. MAETYEDOM. ^Necessity of suffering inculcated by Our Saviour : St. Paul : St. Peter : St. Augustine — Love of suffering — The Spirit of Martyrdom : St. Paul in the Hall of Caiaphas : St. Peter : St. Andrew : St. Ignatius — Napoleon I. — Napoleon III. — French missionaries — Protestant mis- sionaries — Comparison of French and English Clergy — Comparison of Eoman Catholic and Protestant Churches — Dissenters — The late Archbishop of Paris — Chapel of the Martjws — Conclusion. The Son of God came into this world to suffer. He alone could expiate the sins of men. Those sins having been committed against God, their sovereign, required a divine expiation. But in making this expiation, which is perfect and complete in itself, and cannot he made more perfect and complete, it is still only so in regard to , us from onr being united to Him by sufferings. As the Christian looks on the present life as a state of being given him solely that he may acquire eternal hfe and happiness hereafter, he will, consequently, consider it the one grand object of his present existence to suffer. He knows that this doc- trine rests on the words of onr Saviour : “If any one will come after me, he must take up his cross daily, and follow me.” And again, speaking to His apostles beforehand of their mission in the world, “ Lo, I send yon forth as sheep in the midst of wolves “ yon shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake and perhaps still more significantly, “ I came not to send peace upon earth, but a sword.” While spiritual Chap. VI. NECESSITY OF SUFFERING. 77 blessings — joys that should never end, and which can- not even he conceived by the mind till it is enlarged by death — are promised to His disciples in abundance, almost the only temporal things which He foretells them shall be theirs are the things which the world looks upon as the greatest calamities that can befal man. Of so unearthly, so unworldly a character is that kingdom which He had come to plant, tliat it thus pleased Him, it would seem, in the abyss of His wisdom, to convert the world’s basest things, its brands and tokens of ignominy and punishment, into those very honours and favours which, as the garters, ribbons, and stars of an earthly sovereign, should dis- tinguish His soldiers and servants. In this way have Satan and that wicked world, by whose combined en- mity He was put to death, been, by the omnipotence of His power, cheated out of the fruits of their labours. When they planted the crown of thorns upon His head ; when they applied the scourge of the criminal to His sinless body, and bound Him, like a felon, to the pillar, as if to cover Him with disgrace, and ex- clude Him from all sympathy ; when they laid the heavy cross upon His lacerated shoulders ; when they nailed Him to the cross itself, to rob him of the very possibility of acquiring the least honour from His meritorious death ; when they had done all these things, and seasoned them with others scarcely less agonizing to soul and body, they little knew that they were constituting themselves — what, in truth, they became — the artificers of those badges of divine honour and glory which should, from that time forth, be worn by His disciples. Subjected in His own divine person 78 MASSACRE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. to every indignity, every ontrage, every torture which the fiercest malignity could inflict, He has stamped every species of suffering which is meekly endured on His account, whether it come from without or from within ; whether it be little or much ; the loss of friends, the loss of caste, the loss of liberty, or fame, or fortune, or life ; be it what it may. He has stamped it with His own image and superscription. In nothing do the children of this world, who walk by sense, differ more from the true children of God, who wallv by faith, than in this. With the former, everything is to he done to keep suffering at a dis- tance. Considering not whose image it hears, its presence, under whatever shape it comes, is the signal for sadness and sorrow. The latter, in proportion as they have risen above their natural state, and become spiritual, are ready to welcome it as something sent to them from God : sent not with a view of making them sad, but of making them joyful. The children of this world, many of those even who say “ Lord, Lord,” walking at their ease, and always seeking their ease, within the pale of the Church, think that, though sufferings may he beneficial for some, they are not necessary for all — not necessary for them. Such is not the view nor the voice of the Chm^ch herself. Speaking of her divine head, she declares, in the words of inspiration, that even He was ‘‘ made perfect through sufferings;” not “perfect” in His nature, which was perfect from the first, hut perfect as our priest, and sacrifice, and pattern. And so, by the in- evitable law of His kingdom, must His subjects he. They cannot be perfected for their eternal destiny Chap. VI. NECESSITY OF SUFFERING. 79 except through sufferings. Were words wanted to prove what almost every fact of our blessed Lord’s life, from the manger of Bethlehem to the moment of His expiration on the cross, is a living, practical ex- emplification of the words He uttered to St. Peter, when that apostle, as St. Matthew states it, “took Him, and began (in the ardour of his devotion) to rebuke Him ” for saying “ that He must .... suffer .... and he hilled"' are sufficient. “ Get thee be- hind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things that he of God, but the things that he of men.” And that the rule here laid down, and applied by our Lord to Himself in the first instance, admits of no excep- tion, and is applicable also to every member of His body, the Church, what he immediately added shows : “ Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” The distinction made in the reply of our Lord, above cited, to St. Peter, whom He had chosen to so pre-eminent a position in His kingdom, between the things of God and the things of men, is remarkable. For the things which our blessed Saviour here calls the things of God, are sufferings, humiliations, persecu- tions ending in death, and death stript of all its ordi- nary palliatives. St. Paul, building on his divine Master’s personal example as well as on His words, unfolds the same holy doctrine when he thus exhorts the disciples of Colosse (and in them all Christians) — “If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above. . . . Set your affections on things above, not on things of the earth in other words, desire and love the things of God, which unite you with Jesus Christ, and not the things of men, which dissever you 80 MASSAGES AT THE CAEMES. Chap, VI. from Him and bind you to tlie world. The same apostle elsewhere says, '‘All who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution A While St. Peter preaches the same doctrine, he even goes beyond, affirming the necessity of suffering : he proclaims it to be a ground of joy — Rejoice'' says he, “ inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings.” The dispo- sition to suffer, to suffer j oyfuUy, and to love sufferings — to do all these for Christ’s sake — is not the disposi- tion of the world, or of man in his carnal state. Such a disposition comes entirely of grace and not of nature. Moulded and perfected in the mind of Christ it be- comes the inheritance of his members only — the Church. It lias ever been their most distinguishing, their most glorious characteristic ; it is that which chiefly gives the Christian the resemblance he bears to Christ himself ; it is that which restores him, more than any other supernatural gift conferred on him, ‘‘ to the image of Him who created him.” Holy Scripture speaks of it under divers forms of expression. Christians are to be “ like-minded with Christ they are to have “ the spirit of Christ " in regard to suffer- ings ; that is, they are to bear them in their measure as He bore them ; to glory in them, and conquer through tliem as He did ; and in order that they may be able to do all this, they are to mortify the flesh, to subdue the will, to hate the world, and to be dead to its pleasures. This sublime and heavenly disposition is wont to be looked upon, out of the Church, as the mere offshoot of a heated brain, or as a phase of trans- cendentalism, tending at once to unman and paralyse the reason. But not so within. There it is, as it has ever been, 3^earned after, cherislied, and lionoured as Chap. VI. NECESSITY OF SUFFERING. 81 that very Spirit of Christ, to he without which (as St. Paul affirms) is to be without Him — is to be “ none of His.'’ Though the more resplendent manifestations of it may have been reserved for particular occasions as well as particular persons, it is not a disposition which a few only are to inherit ; less or more of it must every one possess, upon whose forehead the sign of the cross has been imprinted, if he would be like Jesus Christ here, or reign with Him hereafter ; and, however little the world may value such a disposition, the followers of Christ in all ages have viewed it as the very foundation of all spiritual greatness and sanctity, in the Church. It is clear that they formed their estimate of it in the same school where St. Paul learnt to form his ; when he spoke of his preaching as follows : — ‘'We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness ; hut to them who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Now, in what way “ Christ crucified” was the power of God, and the wisdom of God, the rise and growth and increase of the Church as a body, as well as of every individual saint, singly considered, are a sufficient illustration. I say sufficient, for it is not to he sup- posed that we should see below the surface of the Divine counsels. The life of the Church, viewed in its corporate oneness, has been a continuation of the life of Christ ; it has been a hfe of humihations and sufferings. In this respect she has had pre-eminently a fulfilment of that pledge of consolation which He gave her before His departure from the world. That pledge was, that though the world should see Him no 82 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. YI. more till He came to be its Judge, He should be with His Church to the end of the world ; that is, that He should be present in her with His whole spirit, His spirit of wisdom as well as His spirit of sufferings. The members of His church are, moreover, taught by St. Paul that this real, personal, mysterious presence through His Spirit is the very test that they are taken out of the world, and no longer subject as hitherto to its carnal power. They are reminded that they walk not after the flesh,” which shrinks from suflPerings, “ but after the spirit,” which glories in them ; telling them further that “ they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit!" How this Spiritual Presence is a test to them, what follows explains : — “ The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God ; and if children, then hems, hems of God and joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified to- gether.” Again, it is stated in the same place, that “ as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they ” (and consequently none else) “ are the Sons of God,” “ who are called according to His purpose,” “ whom He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the First-born among many breth- ren!" In another place they are warned that their real danger, now that they have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father,” lies in acting under sensible influences instead of spiritual: Walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfil the desires of the flesh ; for the flesh enticeth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary Chap. VI. NECESSITY OF SUFFERING. 83 the one to the other.” The whole matter is expressed in the few following emphatic words, '' They that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its affections and lusts.” Doubtless, we miss perceiving what constitutes the Power and Wisdom of God, as manifested in the con- stitution of His Spiritual kingdom, the Catholic Church. Nay, more ; we overlook the grand features by which that kingdom is distinguishable from every other kingdom or rule in this world, if we do not mark wherein the triumphs of the Church and of the Church’s most eminent servants, do in truth consist. These, her mightiest triumphs beyond all comparison, are the fruits of sufferings on account of the faith. Of the less ancient dynasties, ignoring Christianity altogether, perhaps the Ottoman has been the greatest ; as of the modern ones, acknowledging it, yet denying the Ca- tholic Church, the British is, if the palm does not belong to Eussia, the greatest that now exists. Soil, climate, geographical position, the peculiar genius of the people, and such like, will all come in for their share of consideration with the historian or politician when he sets out to assign the causes of that greatness in either case ; and wide as opinion may differ on many points, there will be perfect agree- ment on this one, viz., that no part or particle of that greatness is the result of sufferings for conscience sake. It would be held as impossible as it would be absurd even to suppose any such thing ; yet these have been the very foundation, given the growth, and imparted the strength of Clnfist’s kingdom on earth ; they have been at once the sources of its supernatural life and G 2 84 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. power, and the ivitnesses of its Divine origin and cha- racter : and thus they are also witnesses for the Divinity of the Catholic Church, marking her out among the many other religious communities which exist in the world as the One Religious Body upon earth on whose hands and feet, and side, and temples, are alone to he seen, in all ages, the nail-marks, the thorn-marks, and the spear-marks of a voluntary self- immolation for the Catholic Faith. And so well were the earlier separatists from the church aware of this — not only those heretical bodies who altogether denied the Divinity of the Catholic Faith, hut those who received parts of it ; that nothing was more common with infidel writers than to oppose to the sufferings of our Blessed Lord and his Disciples muster-rolls of the fanatical or pretended torments which Pagan worshippers of every country, and heretical sects of every creed, had volun- tarily submitted to for their religion. This doctrine, namely, that the Church in her members, in order that she and they may partake of the life of Christ must partake of His spirit of expiation, changed the old ideas of men in respect to suffering and death. Before, death and the pains which pre- ceded it were objects of terror. How that Christ had condescended to undergo them, the sting of death is gone ; the darkness into which it inevitably led has been turned into day by that light which sprang up when our Lord rose from the tomb ; and the grief with which its approaches were viewed has been converted into rays of joy and hope. The Hew Testament abounds with passages at once confirmatory and illus- trative of this wonderful change in the moral condi- Chap. VI. NECESSITY OF SUFFERING. 85 tion of man — a change not comprising his external relations only, hut taking in his internal also, his ideas of suffering and death. St. Paul, one of the first to realise this change with the feeling common to every sincere Christian of every age, allows it to appear in almost every page of his writings. “ 0 Death, where is thy sting ! where is thy victory ? ” That this feel- ing penetrated him and possessed him as a living, practical, and energetic principle, and that it was not a mere sentiment which could live only in the imagi- nation, or while fear of death was afar off, is most completely attested by such expressions as the follow- ing : — As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also our consolation aboundeth by Christ.’’ '' Always bearing in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” “ Por we know that if our earthly house of abode were dissolved, we have a building of Grod, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven ; . . . . For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might he swallowed up of life'' How men could become possessed of feelings so entirely above the human state as all these are, he briefly ac- counts for : — Now He that hath wrought us for the self same thing is Grod, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the spirit. Therefore we are always con- fident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” Again, else- where, the same Apostle says, ‘‘ For me to live is 86 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. Christ, and to die is gain ,*.... I am in a strait be- tween two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better.” What the holy Apostle thus realised in himself the following words plainly intimate other Christians were assumed by him to realise also — “ Unto yon it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, hut also to suffer for His sake.” ‘‘Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of Grod dwell in you . . . and if Christ be in yon, the body is dead becanse of sin, bnt the spirit is life becanse of righteonsness.” “ Know ye not that so many of ns as were baptized into Jesns Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are bnried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised np from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of lifeT In other passages he speaks of death as a voyage from one place to another ; or as we should of an emigrant’s passage from England to America. He calls death, as onr Blessed Lord had called it before him, by a new name, thereby teaching behevers that it was now a new thing. Onr Blessed Lord had said, “ He that believeth in me shall never die.'' The Apostle, building on the same doctrine, which had been taught himself by his Divine Master, is most earnest in his teaching, whether by word of month or by letters, to impress it upon others, as it was impressed upon him : “I would not have yon ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep., that yon sorrow not as others who have no hope.” Thus it came to pass in the Church in the apostolic age that where disconsolate nature, standing by the Chap. VI. LOVE OF SUFFERING. 87 grave of a dear friend, saw nothing but death in the possession of its victim, from whose dismal captivity there was no escape ; the Christian soul, qnmkened by the spirit and raised above nature, standing on the same spot, with the same dear object before it, or even some object yet more dear, could look on the sod, or the grey stone above the dead, as the mother looks upon the light coverlet which lies upon her sleeping babe in its cradle. The same spirit with regard to sufferings and death runs through the Primitive Church, as might be shown by innumerable passages in the holy Fathers ; hut, as they are generally known, I shall content myself with one from St. Augustine : — “ A Christian,” says he, “ in patience lives, but in delight dies ” {patienter vivit, delectabiliter moritur). Death is ever regarded as the much longed-for port where the soul is to land, as the termination of a voyage over a tempestuous sea. The body, the vessel which carries it, is destined to be knocked about and buffeted by the winds and waves till the shore is reached. But then, as the mariner, after a long voyage, returned to his native country, bounds from the ship in the fulness of his joy, so is the overjoyed soul represented to exult in its release, as well as in the prospect of its release, from the frail, weather- stricken bark in which it so long had been exposed to the peril of shipwreck. This love of sufferings and death in the Church of Christ, however incomprehensible to the natural man, or however new in its character, is easy to be accounted for. First, the Christian cannot love the flesh ; his whole life, as the passages above cited from St. Paul 88 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. show, is a warfare between the flesh and the spirit. Nor is the highest saint on earth exempt from this warfare. So deeply did that Apostle himself feel it, that we have him crying out, 0 wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death ? ’’ This continual conflict with the flesh, or, as the same Apostle calls it, tliis dying daily, dmectly leads to the love of suffering and of death. In the next place, the Christian naturally loves that which enables him to conquer in this his daily strife ; hut he finds nothing aids him more than the sufferings with which he may be visited ; hence in proportion as he dreads sin, or the power of Satan to tempt him into sin through the flesh, does he rejoice in what helps him on to temporal or flnal victory : hence he regards his sufferings as troops given to him to win his battles ; and when he reflects that, by the same instruments, the great “ Captain of our Salvation ’’ chose to over- come His enemies, when he might have commanded “ twelve legions of angels ” to do battle for Him, he is drawn by his very love of Christ to a love of suffer- ings — to a love of death. The very preciousness of the reward, moreover, for which the Christian con- tends, eternal happiness, cannot be sure, nor even if sure, could it he enjoyed on this side the grave. This supplies another motive for loving death, inasmuch as death does that for the soul which nothing else can ; inasmuch as it releases it of those weights which might at any hour while this life lasts prove too heavy for it, and which hinder it from making its ascent into a more glorious sphere. Wliat most gene- rally invests death with terrors, and makes it an object Chap. VI. LOVE OF SUFFERING. 89 of aversion, is the love of this world. But the sincere Christian, who remembers how the world treated his Blessed Saviour and all his faithful children in all ages, would consider it treasonable to harbour such a feeling, even did his own experience not convince him that the love of the world or of this life was in- compatible with the love of God and of life eternal. Instead of loving the world, he rather, in the words of our Lord, hates it ; and this very hatred naturally re- solves itself into a love of death, which he welcomes as a captive does his deliverer. This leaning in favour of death on his part is much increased by the fact, which is ever before him, that in its havens the Church has always found safety and peace ; while, on the other hand, she has reaped nothing but loss from the world, her implacable enemy. Nor can he view its daily living enmity against the Church as a simple enmity against a body of men. He knows the Church to be the body of Christ, and that no one can hate that without hating Him ; He therefore feels that as no one who loves Christ can fail to hate the world, so no one who hates the world can fail to love that which shall waft him out of its dangers and troubles, namely, death. These sentiments respecting suffering and death, which were implanted in the mind of the Church at its birth, we must consider as essential to her exist- ence, as the sentiments of a man are to his. Without them he would not he a man. So without them, she would not he a Church. Their presence in her (which must he a matter of proof) from the time she was called into being down to the present day, is therefore 90 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. not to be viewed as an accident, but a necessary ele- ment of her being. If their presence cannot be denied at any period — if it cannot be denied at the present day — it will follow that it cannot be denied that they are a standing test, as well as an evidence, of Catho- licity, — a test whereby the heathen, as well as persons partly accepting and partly rejecting the truth of Eeve- lation, who have still unhappily to determine for them- selves, amid many claimants, what is and what is not the Church, may be assisted in their undertaking, — undoubtedly a most necessary and solemn one. The cardinal importance of this point must be my excuse for dwelling upon it at greater length ; for as I cannot conceal from myself, I see every reason for not concealing it from others, that it contains much matter for serious reflection, especially to those whom the religious confusion of the last 300 years has drifted out of the Catholic Church. The great mother-principle of those sentiments which we have been speaking of as inherent in the Church, is the spirit of martyrdom. This was breathed into her nostrils at the moment of her creation, as the spirit of life had been breathed into Adam when God completed the work of his creation. The conduct of St. Peter in the hall of Caiaphas, ichen his master was upon trial, and the conduct of St. Peter after he had received the keys of office, and been enriched by those supernatural gifts which alone enabled him to bear them, the gifts which were poured on the head of the infant Church on the first Christian Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 91 Pentecost, cannot escape notice. The change is re» markable. In the hall he is so timid and fearful, that, when charged by a mere female domestic with being a dis- ciple, he forgets all, even his divine Master’s actual presence and recent warnings, and protests that he knows Him not. While he incurs no greater risk than that of being thought one of His followers, he is overpowered with alarm, and seeks to secure his personal safety at the expense of truth and charity. But a few weeks afterwards he appears again in the presence of the same Caiaphas. On the former occa- sion his principal care was to elude danger, by passing himself off as not belonging to Christ. How, arraigned before the tribunal of that cruel and iniquitous judge, as the head and leader of the new seet^ he is altogether another man ; he appears without fear. He addresses the court in words which show that concern for himself was no longer what it had been, a governing principle, but that on the contrary he was now as fearless in asserting himself to be a preacher of the new religion as he had once been fearful of appearing a mere dis- ciple. Let us cast our eyes upon him in this position, that we may the better appreciate his conduct. The city of Jerusalem, from one end to the other, is in an uproar. The boldness of the Apostles in propagating the religion of One who had been put to death by sen- tence of the civil power, must be curbed and punished. Already the conversions from the old religion num- bered “ about five thousand men and the number of women, if then as they are usually found to be, was jDrobably very much greater in proportion. Penal- 92 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. ties must be had recourse to, to put a stop to a state of things which was destroying the ancient religion of the country, which was working havock in every . direction, dividing husbands from their wives, parents from their children, and uprooting society, as hitherto constituted, from its very foundation. The rulers are in a state of indignation to see their civil authority disregarded, and their late rehgious decrees set aside by those whom they were set over. They had but just convicted Jesus Christ of treason against the Jevdsh religion, and seen Him expire on the cross ; and now, as if to bring their judicial office into uni- versal contempt with the people. His followers, undis- mayed by His fate, were preaching at the very gate of the Temple, “ through Jesus, the resurrection of the dead.” Such audacity was of course not to be endured. Being grieved .... they laid hands on them {Peter and John), and put them in hold unto the next day, for it was now eventide. . . . And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers and elders, and scribes, and Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together. . . . And when they had set them {Peter and John) in the midst, they asked them. By what power or by what name have ye done thisV " — referring to the miracle which they had wrought by them. “ Then Peter, with the holy Ghost, said unto them. Ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel .... be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man (the man whom Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 93 they had miraculously healed) stand here before you, whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation of any other : for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must he saved.” Struck with this boldness of St. Peter, after threatening them a second time, and commanding them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus,” they let them go. Immediately after, on a similar occasion, we read, ‘'St. Peter and the other Apostles answered and said,” in reply to the yet fiercer threatenings of these rulers, “We ought to OBEY God rather than man. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew, and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with His right hand, to he a Prince and a Saviour .... and we are His witnesses.” The future history of St. Peter, as gathered from the New Testament and ecclesiastical sources^ his seizure and imprisonment by Herod, who had just put to death St. James_, and his final imprisonment, which termi- nated in his crucifixion at Pome, is all in accordance with what we have seen. And what he was in him- self, in regard to the sentiments here claimed for him, his epistles to the Christians of Asia Minor, prove to us that in his teaching he laboured to make others : “ For this,” says he, “ is thankworthy, if a man, for conscience towards God, endure grief, suffering wrong- fully. For what glory is it, if for your faults ye shall take it patiently ? hut if when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called : because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should 94 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. follow Ills steps.’’ Again, lie describes a state of suf- fering for justice’ sake as a state of happiness or bless- edness on earth. We know but little from the inspired writers of the personal history of the rest of the Twelve. But this we do know, that hke St. Peter, they were no longer, after the outpouring of the Spirit upon them on the day of Pentecost, what they were when their Divine Master was seized in the garden. “ Then they all forsook Him, and fled.” We know that they all went forth to preach His kingdom first in Judea, and then in other parts of the world, and that they encountered the same trials and persecutions as St. Peter and St. John did from the beginning to the end of their respective missions. Testimony on this point is utterly needless. Every record of the Early Church represents the Apostles of Christ as suffering daily and hourly to the end of their lives in the most heroic spirit of faith and love, for the sake of the Gospel which they preached. The same supernatural love of suffering, in other words, the same spirit of martyrdom which carried the twelve Apostles through all their labours and trials, is as manifest in two others who were not of the Twelve. The one of these who comes first before us is St. Stephen ; the other is St. Paul. “ Full of faith and power,” says Holy Scripture, Stephen did great wonders and miracles among the people.” His wisdom and the “ Spirit by which he spake,” proved irresistible. The people listened to him with admiration, and “ a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” How ardently he laboured for the martyr’s crown the concluding part of his address to the council. Chap. VI. THE SPIEIT OP MAETYRDOM. 95 who sat in judgment upon him, determined to put him to death, bears witness — “ Ye stiff-necked and uncir- cumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers : who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it.” Hereupon the assembly, unable any longer to suppress their indignation and fury, rushed upon him, and cast liim out of the city, where he was stoned to death. The last act of his life, his kneeling down and praying to God for his murderers, saying, “ Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,” admits but of one interpretation. Harmonising in spirit with the prayer of our Blessed Lord on the cross — Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” it attests the presence of that charity — that yearning of the soul to be with God in the place of His glory, and that thirst for the salva- tion of sinners, which is characteristic of every saint in the hour of his death or martyrdom. The death of St. Stephen also attests the joy with which he welcomed tortures of the most appalling character, sent to free his soul from its earthly prison-house, and to expose to his ravished sight, “ the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.” St. Paul, before his conversion, is an instance, by no means rare, of a good and conscientious man born and brought up in ignorance of the Catholic faith, being led by the very principles which make him such. 96 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. to be a persecutor of its members. In bis case, we have not to contrast, as in that of the other Apostles, a jjrevious timidity and moral cowardice, with an after courage and resoluteness which no terrors of this world could shake. Convinced of the truth of the Jewish religion, and believing every other to be false — more especially the Christian, which he saw drawing off men by thousands, and women by tens of thousands — he was perhaps as fearless a champion of the one in his early life, as he could well be of the other, when, convinced of its truth, he went forth to preach it to the world. Still the change in him is in other respects as great and as striking as it could be in them. In the religious and moral hemisphere, whether viewed as within or without the man, no two points could be more opposite, or remote from each other, than the carnal zeal (such as St. Paul’s was) for the Jewish religion, and that Divine Spirit which he became possessed of on becoming a Christian. The former manifested itself in him as all false or sectarian zeal does, in seeking the destruction of those who oppose it, without religiously examining at all, often, much less, sufficiently, whether its opponents are not on the right side, and its own adherents on the wrong. From this point he makes, at the call of Jesus Christ, a transit to the very opposite extreme, namely, to that spirit which we have been denominating the spirit of martyrdom — a spirit or disposition which derives its being immediately from Christ, the fountain of all grace, and which manifests itself in mortifying the flesh — more especially in sufferings for Christ’s sake. To this spirit belongs also, as has been said already. Chap. Vf. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. P7 a love of death, “ a desire to migrate from the flesh and to be with Christ.” That St. Paul possessed this spirit in as large a degree as the other Apostles and saints of his day there can be no doubt. Every act recorded of him in Holy Scripture during a long and painful ministry — everything he wrote, bears witness to the fact of his continual suffering for the Gospel which he preached, and of the joy his sufferings, often of the most dreadful character, yielded him. We need not repeat the words in illustration of this, which we have already cited. The following are also descrip- tive of his state : — “ I think that God hath set forth us the Apostles last, as it were appointed to death ; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake . . . we are weak ... we are despised, even unto this present hour ” [about twenty years after his conversion] — “ we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labour, working with our own hands ; being reviled we bless ; being persecuted we suffer it ; being de- famed we entreat ; we are made the filth of the earth, the offscouring of all things unto this day.” And for what were they all these things ? For what did they endure all these things? Solely, he tells us, for Chrisfs sake/' who had not only endeared such things to the minds of His followers, but made them the pledges and tests of that hidden power by which He overcomes the world, and builds up His Church through the agency of men. The principle, moreover, of resolving all the afflic- tions and sufferings which come upon the Church, not II 98 MASSACKE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. merely into proofs of Grod’s love and good will towards them, but what is much more, into proofs of their being in the very place of childreyi, gives them a yet more divine and heavenly colouring. This principle St. Paul embodies and inculcates in the following beautiful language : — My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord ” [for it is still His, though coming from the hands of persecutors], nor faint when thou art rebuked of him ; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, then Grod dealeth with you as with sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not ? But if ye be without chastise- ment, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and notsonsL What the natural result of these senti- ments should be, and doubtless, in the primitive Church, was, is expressed by the same great Apostle, “ Where- fore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame^ and is set down at the right hand of the throne of Grod.” Though Holy Scripture is silent in regard to the particular sufferings of the other Apostles during their ministries, we know from other sources that they were quite of a piece with St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. Indeed, St. Paul tells us as much, for his descriptions often do not apply to himself more than to them. Ecclesiastical records reaching back to the apostolic Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 119 days, inform us how deeply the spirit of martyrdom was seated in the mind of St. Andrew. According to these, he was crucified at Patras in Achaia. On beholding the cross upon which he was to die, he exclaimed with devout enthusiasm, “ I hail thee, 0 precious cross, which hast been consecrated by the body of my Grod, and adorned by His members, as by precious stones. I approach thee with transports of joy; receive me in thine arms, 0 life-giving cross, embellished by the limbs of my Lord’s body. Most ardently have I wooed thee. For a long time have I desired and sought thee. My wishes are at last accomplished. Eeceive me in thine arms and present me to thy Master. May He who made use of thee to redeem me receive me from thee ! ” That the same sentiments (a love of martyrdom and a delight in death) descended from the Apostles to their next successors is confirmed, by a letter written by St. Ignatius to the Eomans. Critics may dispute the genuineness of this letter, as some of late have done ; but the passages preserved, as the words of St. Ignatius, by Eusebius, which they cannot dispute, are enough for us. The saint, as these intimate, is on his way from Syria, where he was a bishop, to Eome, where he was destined for the amphitheatre. He was per- fectly aware of his fate, as his language testifies : “ I wish already to enjoy those wild beasts which are waiting to devour me. It is my soul’s desire to meet them soon : I will inveigle them by caresses to come and devour me at once. I will coax them not to spare me with their teeth, as they have lately spared some Christians who were given to them, being so terrified H 2 100 MASSACKE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. that they would not touch them. If they refuse to attack me, I will provoke them myself ” Again, '' Let the fire, the cross, the assaults of wild beasts, the breaking of limbs, the bruising of the whole body like the bruising of corn, and let all the bodily tortures invented by the Devil, he heaped upon me, provided I enjoy Jesus ! Other testimonies might he produced from St. Justin Athenagoras, St. Ireneus, Origen, and every early church historian. Clemens of Alexandria (4th hook. Stromata) makes a long eulogium upon martyrdom. After showing that a Christian must despise death, he declares that a true martyr does not resign hfe because he fears eternal pains, or hopes for eternal rewards, but because he loves Jesus Christy and feels himself indebted to those who deliver him out of this life. The reader of the lives of saints, of the writings of the Fathers, and of Church History, knows for certain that the sentiments above expressed, have con- tinued to flow on in the Church from the beginning of her existence in the world to the present moment. And not only does he see that the sentiments always existed : he sees that they were always honoured. Nay, what is still more, he finds that the teaching of them formed a portion of Church’s doctrine. All this, indeed, may he seen, by turning to the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Protestant writer, Bingham ; from which the following passage is taken. He is explain- ing’ the epithets which were applied to the first Chris- tians by Pagan writers. “ They reproached them with the appellation of ' self murderers," because they readily offered themselves up to martyrdom, and cheer- Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 101 fully underwent any violent death which the heathen could inflict upon them. With what eagerness they courted death, we learn not only from the Christian writers themselves, hut from the testimony of the heathen concerning them. Lucian says, they not only despised death, hut many of them voluntarily offered themselves to it, out of a persuasion that they should be made immortal and live for ever. This he reckons folly, and therefore he gives them the name of ‘ kakodahnones' the ' miserable wretches,’ who threw away their lives, in which sense Porphyry styles the Christian religion, the 'barbarous boldness,’ as Arrius Antoninus styles the professors of it, ' stupid wretches,’ who had a mind to die.” In the same chapter (vol. i., book 1, eh. 2) he goes on to enumerate a variety of similar appellations, from which the same inference is clear, namely, that it was a matter of notoriety that the early Christians viewed death and its antecedents as causes of joy and not of grief, wherever their religion was at stake, and whenever the honom’ of their Divine Sovereign required it. It would he an error, however, to suppose that the members of the Early Church were alone entitled to have these terms applied to them. It was given to them to be the first who were called on to he the reflectors of that Divine person, who had come and died to redeem a lost race, and, therefore, they were, of necessity, the first to bear the cross, and to manifest in their manner of bearing it, liov) it was to he borne, how glorious it was to suffer, and joyful it was to die. But, though ihey were the firsts it was not given them to be last also. While the church militant 102 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. exists, there will be, there can he, no last martyrs. Wherever she is there will he '‘fightings without, and fears within,’’ as in the days of St. Paul, who thus speaks of her in her temporal condition. So far as her career on earth is run, this description is equally appli- cable. At one period there may he, as doubtless there has been, greater persecution directed against her than at another. The world and its powers have not always been equally fierce against her priests and people. The world has, moreover, been occasionally, by wonderful interpositions, restrained in its wrath, and as St. John in the Apocalypse had foretold, for short intervals, here and there, despoiled of its arms by a “ stronger man ” than itself. There has not always, therefore, been the same facility of obtaining the martyr’s death and the martyr’s crown. One age, one country, has often had more crowns given to it, than another, to bestow upon its champions and heroes, who had the happy opportunity of making good their claim to them. Eome, Imperial Eome, in each of the three first ages, had more than she has had during any other three. The profusion with which she dealt them out, while it exhausted her treasure, destroyed her strength. And it might be no bad representation of her Pagan fall, were some great artists to paint a female figure of gigantic proportions, sinking while extending her wearied arms to place a crown of empurpled laurels upon the head of one of her last martyrs. So England had more in the times when the Saxons, and after their conversion, when the Danes fell upon the Church. The same would apply to Germany and Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 103 France. The latter country selected the end of the last century, as England did the times of Henry YIII. and Elizabeth, to make a more extensive distribution than either of them had done for many ages : the con- sequence of which has been, as we see, that in the former, the church has penetrated deeper than ever. Her tap-root has pierced, it is obvious to all who intimately know her condition at this day, further downwards into the soil in which she grows. This is what French infidelity and anti-christian persecution have done for her. And in doing this for her, they have just done what Pagan Pome did for her in ancient times, and what Protestant England did for her during the reigns of Henry YIII. and Elizabeth. Protestant England destroyed Cathohc England for a time, as Infidel France more recently destroyed Catholic France for a time but it is clear in the one * Tlie following passage, taken from Alison, will show that the malady of infidelity had not the entire sway in France which persons might be tempted to suppose from those acts of blood and arpostasy which occupy so prominent a part of its history during the Reign of Terror. He is speaking of Pope Pius YI.’s journey through southern France to Valance, whither the impious tyranny of the republic had ordered the venerable pontiff, in the eighty-second year of his age, to he brought a captive. “ The cruelty of the Directory increased as he approached their domi- nions ; all his old attendants were compelled to leave him, and the Father of the Faithful was allowed to expire, attended only by his confessor. Yet even in this disconsolate state he derived the highest satisfaction from the devotion and reverence of the people in the provinces of France through which he passed. Multitudes flocked to the road to receive his benedic- tion, and he frequently repeated, with tears in his eyes, the words of Scripture : ‘ Verily I say unto you 1 have not found so great faith — no not in Israel.’” And indeed, the great struggle of the people of Vendee against the civil encroachments upon their religious rights, when they saw their clergy, who rejected the revolutionary oath, supplanted by a new set of men who, for the emoluments, v.^ere ready to take it, is a sufficient refutation of what has not unfrequently been assumed by writers on the religious state of France at the period of the Revolution. With these 104 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. case as in tlie other, that it was only for a time ; since there are at this moment, in England and Ireland, taking the present population of the two countries together, to the full as many Catholics as there were in the time of Henry YIII., when the whole of the inhabitants were Cathohcs. States and statesmen, and other human reasoners, have one way of accounting for such things, and the Church has another. The former ever seeking and ever resting in natural causes, which are often no causes at all in spiritual matters, regarded all the won- derful resuscitations, which the Church has had in the different parts of the earth, after periods of great suffering (such as those alluded to in France and England) as the natural result of penal laws and persecution. Nothing more, according to their philo- sophy, is wanted to produce them, but obstinate super- stition on the one hand, and political or civil persecution on the other. The church accounts for these in a very different way. She reads in them the manifestation of that principle of life which her Divine Head planted in her, when he formed her out of His own body, as He had formed Eve’s out of Adam’s, and impressed His own divine likeness and image upon her, in her inward as well as in her outward parts. The blood of the religion is assumed to be extinct, except on a scale so small that the his- torian’s eye fails to perceive it. It was far otherwise with Mr. Alison. “ They,” the people of Vendee, “ were ” says he, “ gentle, pious, charitable, and hospitable, full of courage and energy, with pure feeling and uncor- rupted manners. Rarely was a crime, seldom a law-suit, heard of among them.” The same might be said of many other parts of France, and of numbers in all parts of it, whom no contagion could sully, as was apparent when their religion ceased to be proscribed, and they could again approach its altars. Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 105 martyrs, and the other fruits of persecution (even though it stop short of the axe and the fire) are, she believes, the heavenly deiv which God has ordained to water and revive His Church, where from any moral blight or spiritual disease (such as hefel France a century ago, and England above' three centuries ago) her shoots and branches shall have decayed. Festing on the words of our Blessed Lord, which, illustrated by His own personal acts, solve all questions of this sort, she will none of that would-be philosophy, which in its presumption undertakes to solve them in a way of its own, as if there was something in being put to death for any cause, whether good or bad, whether for a violation of a just law, or the non-compliance with an unjust one, calculated to kindle in the breast a love of dying, and to spread the same from person to person, till, like an epidemic disease, it infected a whole neigh- bourhood or age. Till it is proved that men are not deterred from crimes which lead to the gallows, by seeing those who commit them publicly executed, but rather induced thereby to follow their had example, that they too may die on the scaffold, we must reject the theory that would lay upon the hook of nature a deformity, and rob religion, the Catholic rehgion, of one of its most ennobling powers, and deface one of its most distinguishing graces. We should have spared the reader these observations, which relate to a subject that ought not to be spoken of, perhaps, in a casual way, as we feel, here, under the necessity of doing, were it not that infidelity has, from the first, and especially the infidelity of France and England of the last century, directed its force against nothing so 106 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. much as this very point, and simply because it is clear that it involves an argument of the strongest kind in favour of the Catholic religion, the only real enemy which infidelity has among all the other religious systems in the world. We advance to another point, though hut to say a few words upon it. We proceed to assert that the spirit of martyrdom is a test of the true religion of Jesus Christ. First, because it is the greatest proof of charity. ‘‘ Greater love,” says our Blessed Lord, “ hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Second, because it is the greatest proof of faith. He who, behoving in Jesus Christ, gives his life for Him, cannot give a stronger testimony of his belief, since he gives his all. In the third place, because it is the greatest proof of hope; that hope supported by faith and charity, which forgets the present and transports itself into the future ; which willingly lets go all hold of time that it may grasp eternity. In all these respects, the spirit of martyrdom, which is pre-eminently the spirit of the Church, as has been seen in all ages and in all lands, demands to be most carefully considered both by those within and those without her pale. Those within cannot virtually he members of her body, unless the spirit is, at least in part, theirs. The spirit of self-love will ever reign, to the loss of the soul, where the spirit of martyrdom does not reign to the subjugation and mortification of the flesh. It is that evidence which it is of charity, which gives it its greatest claim upon our attention and admiration, inasmuch as an act of charity (such for instance, as dying to preserve the truth or any Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 107 part of that truth upon which the eternal happiness of others depends) is a more plain and palpable fact for the world to gaze upon, than perhaps any act either of faith or hope, however brilliant. It is chiefly in respect of the great charity of which martyf dom is the most undoubted evidence, that our Lord has made charity a test of true discipleship. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.'’ Again, to add the words of the beloved disciple : God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Moreover, “he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.” The world then was to know, among the many false teachers that should arise, as well as the many false communions which novelty and error, incited by ambition and pride, would beget, who were, and who were not, the true ones, by this simple mark or sign, alike intelligible to the educated and the uneducated, to a child of seven years of age and the man of seventy. Love for the brethren, involving or rather springing from love of God ; “ love ’’ that “ worketh no ill to his neighbour,” as St. Paul expresses it. But let us take that great Apostle’s entire and most perfect exposition of this divine virtue, seeing it bears so directly on the subject we have in hand. “ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal ; and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have 108 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to he burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself ; is not puffed up ; doth not behave itself unseemly ; seeketh not her own ; is not easily provoked ; thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth not in iniquity hut rejoiceth in the truth ; heai^eth all things ; helieveth all things ; hopeth all things ; endureth all things. Charity never faileth ; but whether there he prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away : for we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall he done away. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three ; hut the greatest of these is charity.’' While the world without the fold was to have this test given to it, by which it should know that the religion of Jesus Christ, as preached to it by the Apostles, and exhibited to it in the conduct of Christians, was the religion of God and not the invention of man; was the offspring, in short, of divine charity and not of political expediency, or any other mere temporal end, as the other religions of the times, all, less or more obviously, were. On the other hand those within the fold, or rather those partly within, and partly not within — within by profession, hut without in life — within hy faith, hut without by their works — had also a test presented to Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 109 them by which they might know, what was all important for them to know, viz., whether they were themselves the children of God in reality or only so in name. Another class of Christians, so called because acknowledging Christ, yet not acknowledging His apostolical administration., and hence not his spiri- tual kingdom on earth entrusted to St. Peter and his successors ; a class which has existed all along, under many forms, and never under more than in England at the present day ; that class has had, in like manner, a test by which, if they would carefully apply it, they might know inhere and what they were, whether they were within or without the walls of the New Jerusalem which Almighty God, according to His promise, has erected in this world on the foundation of the old. These may have presented instances, even not a few, now and then, of persons belonging to them, undergoing death rather than renounce the religion which they had chosen for themselves, or which they had been taught by their parents, or which (it may be) they had imbibed merely by instinct, or accident. And even if so, they have only done what the Arians for several generations, and many other early sects, whose principles were as repugnant to reason as to revelation, did before them. Among all these there were persons who, under the religious convictions they had been led into, whether by parental instruction and example, or by their own studies and predilections, would not, to save even their lives, give up their opinions. But the majestic, infallible test is wanting in all these, which is to be found in the Catholic Church. Zeal enough and 110 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. constancy, and firmness, and attachment to their own course, we have no difiiculty in discovering. So far as these qualities are concerned, there is hardly a sect out of the thousands which have sprung up and flourished for a while, since Christ set up His church in the world, which has not boasted of its confessors and martyrs. But generally speaking, a distinction wide and palpable is discernible between the character of these, and of the Churches. In the former, there is a human leader, an Arius, or a Calvin, or a Knox, or an Augsburg h confession, or a confession of faith, or some private opinion, dragging the adherents on to acts of resistance of the Catholic religion, or, as has oftener been the case, to attacks upon the lives and property of the Catholic body. There has been from the first, besides these, divers other motives, all tending to unite men of similar sentiments, in a common cause, such as we constantly see, whether it be good or bad, religious or secular, and when united to bind them to it, at the peril of all that is most dear to them on earth. Strife and not love or charity, strife often rising to the most diabolical hatred, the most super- ficial observer can however at once perceive, has a hand and an influence both on the minds and actions of such bodies, which plainly distinguish them from the sheep of Christ’s fold, however amiable and morally correct the general conduct of individual members may be. Charity, that charity which willingly and joyfully gives its life for the faith (the faith not as conceived by itself but as held by the Catholic Church) which follows no leader but Christ, no party but the Catholic body, which rejects all ^confessions' but the creeds, Chap. VI. THE SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. Ill canons, and decrees of tlie Church, which seeks only to destroy heresy because it destroys the souls of men and the revelation of Grod ; that charity, as manifested in the life of our Blessed Lord, his Apostles and all real martyrs, will be found upon careful investigation to have no place among the so-called martyrs of secta- rianism or heresy. Thus it is that the mercy of God affords to those who have been born and nursed in error, a criterion or test of truth which speaks for itself. If they will hut weigh, and reflect, and compare ; if they be but as anxious to know the truth, and to separate truth from error and the Catholic religion from the religions devised by men, as the jeweller is to distinguish a real diamond from a spurious one ; they will discover to their delight and satisfaction that they have in the martyrdoms of the Church what no other martyrdoms possess — a divine test enabling them to see with certainty, that the spirit of Christ is in the Catholic Church and in her alone, a witness of her divinity, as well as of His who is ever in her, and has been with her throughout the whole period of her past existence till now. Nor is there any thing in this assertion beyond what the words of our Divine Teacher, already cited, lead us to expect. “ By this [charity] shall all men know that ye are my disciples.” In other words, by the presence and operation of this supernatural gift in the souls of My people, the subjects of My kingdom, shall the world he taught to recognize that religion which God has given to convert it. The reader of church history knows how, viewed from this point, the religion of the first Christian converts in Asia Minor affected 112 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. tlie lieatlien by whom they were surrounded. The extraordinary feature of multitudes of men and wom^en, bound together by a “ fervent charity one towards another/’ that charity having its root in a yet higher charity binding them to One who had been put to death, and who, as the heathen would infer, was no longer alive, called forth the astonishment of Phny and many others besides, who were brought into intercourse with the early Christians. Far more than the faith, sublime as that was, which they possessed, and the worship which they rendered to Almighty God, did the charity which they practised, commend them to the clemency and toleration of their Pagan persecutors, and with themselves, their religion to that welcome it re- ceived from mankind which finally resulted in its being able to overthrow the Paganism of Imperial Pome. It will further show how the Catholic religion, viewed from this point, is capable of affecting the minds of men of the highest order, if we here give at length what the great Emperor Napoleon is reported to haxe said, when speaking of the Cathohc religion with one of his officers, at St. Helena. As he was neither a bigot nor a priest, his testimony will have the more weight with those who read it. I am not aware that any question has ever been raised respecting its ge- nuineness. Were any doubt entertainable, the mould in which the thoughts are cast would seem to point far more directly to Napoleon as their author than to any other person of that time. The extreme beauty and, it might almost be said, sublimity of the senti- ments, whoever their author were, cannot fail to make the passage welcome to tlie English reader. No one Chap. VI. NAPOLEON I. 113 perhaps ever saw more clearly than that great man the necessity of religion. The difference between him and tlie philosophers of his age, who thought any religion or no religion just as beneficial for mankind as the one true religion of the Catholic Church, is strikingly brought out in the words before us. Yet the question will arise in reading them, how came one cradled and nursed in an infidel age, read in the works of Yoltaire and Eousseau, absorbed in military affairs of unparalleled magnitude from his very boyhood, and united from first to last with many who had many of them little, some of them no, respect for religion, could at the close of his life show himself so immeasurably their superior, so competent a judge of its true springs, and be so firm and unshaken in the Catholic faith. The question is difficult to answer. But perhaps the fact that a near relative has succeeded to the empire which he raised out of anarchy and bloodshed, while the illustrious family has been swept away who had the more ancient hereditary claim, is more worthy of our consideration, and more suggestive of profitable reflections, than even the answer, could we get at it, might be. It is as remarkable, as it must ever be a matter of deep thank- fulness to every member of the Church, that in his present representative (Napoleon III.) the Catholic Church should have found a humble and faithful son, where the nation had found a generous, a noble- minded, a most wise and virtuous sovereign, while in his immediate predecessor she had at best but an insi- dious friend. “It is neither one day nor one battle which has accomplished this event ; is it the life of a man then ? I 114 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. No. It is a war, a long combat of three hundred years, commenced by the Apostles and carried on by their successors, and by the continued succession of Christian generations. Since the time of St. Peter, the thirty-two bishops of Pome who succeeded to his primacy have, like him, suffered martyrdom. Thus during the space of three centuries the apostolic chair was a scaffold which inevitably insured the death of him who was called to occupy it. And seldom indeed during that period of three hundred years was a better fate reserved for the other bishops. In that war all the monarchs, and all the powers of the earth, were placed on one side, and on the other I do not perceive any army, but a mysterious energy — a few men indeed, dispersed here and there, in all the quarters of the globe, having no other rallying point but the common faith in the mystery of the cross. What a strange symbol ! His disciples are armed with the instrument which inflicted the tortures on the God-Man. They carry the cross in the world, a sign of their faith, a burning flame, which is communicated from one to the other. ' Christ, God,’ say they, ‘ died for the salva- tion of men.’ Wliat a struggle, what a storm, do these simple words raise around the humble standard on which the God-Man suffered ! What quantities of blood have been shed on both sides ! What fury ! But here anger, and all the bitterness of hatred and vio- lence — there mildness, moral courage, a wonderful resignation. During three hundred years the mind struggles against the coarseness of animal passion, the conscience against despotism, the soul against the body, virtue against every vice. Tlie blood of the Chap. VI. NAPOLEON I. 115 Christians flows in torrents. Even when in the last agonies of death they kiss the hand of him who kills them. The soul alone protests, while the body is given up to all kinds of torture. Everywhere the Christians fall, and everywhere they triumph. Can you imagine a man after death obtaining conquests with a faithful army devoted to his memory ? Can you conceive a phantom who has at his command soldiers without pay, without hope in this world, and who inspires them with perseverance and energy under every kind of privation ? Alas ! the body of Turenne was yet warm when his army retreated before Monti- cuculli. And with regard to myself, my armies forget me though I am still living, as the Carthaginian army forgot Hannibal. Behold the power of us great men ! A single battle lost crushes us, and adversity deprives us of our friends. How many Judases have I seen around me ? Ah ! if I have not been able to persuade these great politicians, these generals who have betrayed me ; if they have disavowed my name, and denied to their sovereign the miracles of a real affection for my country, and of a fidelity which nothing could impair ; if I, who have led them so often to victory, am not able when living to re -animate these selfish hearts ; by what means then can I, when chilled by death, maintain and keep alive their zeal ? Can you imagine Csesar continuing to rule over the Boman senate, and from the depth of his tomb governing the empire and watching over the destinies of Borne? Such is the history of the invasion and of the conquest of the world by Christianity ! Behold the power of the God of the Christians, and the perpetual miracle of the pro- I 2 116 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. YI. gress of the faith, and the government of His chm’ch ! Kations pass away, thrones crninble to pieces, and the Chm’ch remains. What is then the force which sus- tains tiiat ChiHch, assailed by the furious storm of passion and of the contempt of the age ? Whose arm is it, then, that for eighteen hundred years has pre- served it against so many storms which have tlueat- ened to sweep it awaj"? We extol the conquests of Alexander ! Well, here is a Conqueror who confiscates for his own advantage ; who unites, who incorporates in himself not one nation only hut the whole human race. What a miracle ! The human soul with all its faculties becomes united vdth the existence of Cluist — and how? By a mmacle which exceeds all mu’acles. He will have the love of men ; that is. He vfill have that which is the most difficult to obtain — that which a wise man seeks in vain from his friends, a father from his childi’en, a wife from her husband, a brother from a brother — in a word, the heart ; that is what He will have ; He exacts it absolutely, and He in- stantly succeeds. I conclude from this His diffinity. Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Louis XIY., with all their genius, have failed in this point. They have conquered the world and they have not gained one single friend. I am perhaps the only one of this age who admire Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander : Louis XIY., whose reign has thrown so much lustre over France and the whole world, had not one friend in all his kingdom, not even in his ovm family. It is true we love our children, hut why so? We are but obedient to the instincts of Xature, the will of God — to that necessity which even the beasts themselves recognize Chap. VI. NAPOLEON I. 117 and fulfil ; but how many children are there who remain iu sensible to our caresses ! What cares do we lavish upon them ! How many ungrateful children there are ! Ho your children, General Bertrand, love you ? You love them, and you are not sure that your love will be returned. Neither your kindnesses or nature will ever succeed in raising in their minds such a love as the Christians felt for God. After your death your children will remember you, no doubt, while they are spending your money, but your grand- children will hardly know if you have existed — and you are General Bertrand ! And we are in an island, and you have no other pleasure than the sight of your family. — Christ speaks, and from that moment gene- rations are united to Him by closer and more intimate ties than those of blood; by a union more sacred, more binding than any other. He kindles the flame of a love which extinguishes the love of self, which prevails over every other love. On viewing this miracle of His will, how is it possible not to recognize the Word, the Creator of the world? Thus the greatest miracle of Christ, without contradiction, is the reign of charity. He alone has had the power of raising the hearts of men to the invisible world, to the sacrifice of all temporal concerns ; He alone, in insti- tuting this sacrifice, has estabhshed a bond between heaven and earth. All those who believe sincerely in him feel within them this marvellous supernatural and all-perfect love — a phenomenon not to be explained, not to be understood by reason or by the powers of man. A sacred fire is diffused over the earth by this 118 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. new Prometheus, of which, Time, that great destroyer, can neither impair the force nor limit the duration. It is that which I (Napoleon) admire most, because I have often thought of it ; and it is that which proves to me beyond all doubt the divinity of Christ. I have indeed raised an ardour in the minds of those multi- tudes who have died for me ; but God forbid that I should make any comparison between the enthusiasm of soldiers and Christian charity, which are as different as the source from which they emanate. But to obtain this, my presence, the fascination of my look, my accent, my word of command were necessary ; then I kindled the sacred fire in all hearts. I undoubtedly possess the secret of that powerful magic which raises the spirit, but I cannot communicate it to any one. None of my generals have ever received or inherited it from me : I do not even possess the secret of perpe- tuating in their hearts my name and my love, and of accomplishing great events without the assistance of material force. Now that I am at St. Helena — now that I am fixed down to this rock — who fights my battles and conquers kingdoms for me? Where are my comffiers in my misfortunes — does any one even bestow a thought on me ? Who in Europe stirs him- self on my behalf — who remains faitliful to me? Where are my friends? Yes, there may be two or three whose fidelity will render them immortal. You, my friends, I allow I have — you console my exile. Such is the destiny of great men — that of Csesar and Alexander : we are forgotten ! and the name of a conqueror, such as that of an emperor, becomes merely Chap. VI. NAPOLEON I. 119 a college-theme ! Our exploits fall under the ferula of a pedant, who either praises or insults us with his criticisms. “ What different judgments are passed on the great Louis XIV. ! Scarcely dead, this great king was left alone, in the isolation of his bedroom at Versailles — neglected by his courtiers, and, perhaps, the object of their mockery. He was no longer their master ! It was a corpse, a coffin^ a grave, and the horror of im- minent decomposition. An instant gone and this will be my own case. I die before my time, and my corpse will be given back to the earth to become the food of worms. ‘‘Behold the approaching destiny of the great Napoleon ! What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ, which is preached up, incensed, loved, adored, living in all the universe. Is that dying ? Is it not rather living ? Behold the death of Christ ! behold that of God !” ^ * This is not the place to discuss the merits or demerits of the Emperor Napoleon I. Still a word in passing may not he out of place. In Eng- land we have been accustomed for fifty years to see that Emperor repre- sented as, if not the great Antichrist himself, at least his forerunner. It must he remembered that the same writers do in this respect hut class him with some of the greatest popes, who are always impersonations of Antichrist at Exeter Hall. I am enabled by the kindness of the Supe- rior to give a copy of an address, the original of which is in his private possession, prepared by the late Archbishop of Paris (Monseigneur Affre) to be delivered when the corpse of Napoleon I. was brought to be entombed at Paris by order of Louis Philippe. The address was, for some reason or other of Louis Philippe’s, not delivered. But the impression it gives me of the founder of the new imperial dynasty is very different from the impression usually entertained in England. For my own part, I cannot but lean to the more favourable view of that most extraordinary man’s cha- racter. The fact, that amid the strongest remonstrances and opposition of all his generals and friends he restored the Catholic religion when it had been driven out of visible existence for years, is a thing which it would be 120 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. While referring thus with emotions of wonder and gratitude to the restorative power and agency dis- played by the Napoleon dynasty, it may be nowise out of place to append the following extract from the address of Monseigneur Affre, when the ashes of Napoleon I. were brought hack from the island of St. Helena : — Tandis qu’un roi sage, qui a conserve et assure encore a la France les hienfaits de la paix, lui rend aujourd’hui la depouille mortelle du plus grand capi- taine de son siecle, I’Eglise de France ne pent ouhlier son liberateur et le restaurateur de ses autels. ‘‘ Ce conquerant, dont le nom fut la terreur de TEurope, dont les victoires firent tressailler de joie as ungrateful as it would be difficult to forget, or just to ignore. There are persons alive in Paris at this day who look back with unbounded ad- miration upon the day when they beheld the doors of Hotre-Dame thrown open to receive the restorer of its worship, attended by his military staff, whom he compelled to be present with him on the occasion. They may not from that ever- to-be-honoured act blindly assume that all his other acts were good ; but neither will they deem it right to deny (as English writers and reviewers are fond of denying) that a very great debt of grati- tude is due to him by the whole Catholic world, not, of course, for the evil he did to religion, in which, alas ! he but too much resembled the men of his own times, but for the good he did to it, in which he stood almost alone, and in which, considering the intoxicating life which circumstances, as well as talent and ambition forced upon him, he is, perhaps, more re- marhdble than he is as a general. Such persons are careful to separate the good from the evil in one whom God made the deliverer of His church from a diabolical captivity. They cannot sympathise with those who, on principle, denounce him because he restored the Catholic religion, and gave it room to regain its sway. They cannot believe that man not entitled to respect who could go out of his way to make a law, that whenever any regi- ment on march met the blessed sacrament the soldiers should stop and kneel till it had passed ; and this rule in the military code of Napoleon still exists in the army of France, a wonderful legacy. The offer of the present Emperor to extinguish the whole University system of France, because of its infidel tendencies, was, perhaps, equally wonderful, considering their popularity. Chap. VI. SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 121 notre enfance, cet habile organisateur d’un vaste empire, ou il commanda le respect des lois, fonda leur unite, etablit une administration aussi savante que rapide dans son action, cet bomme prodigienx comprit qu’il y avait une autre puissance que celle du genie, une autre sagesse que celle du legislateur, une autre force que celle qui venait de triompber aux Pyramides, au Mont-Tbabor et a Marengo. Au debut, comme au terme de sa carrier e de geant, il invoque la religion : avant de saisir le sceptre, il lui demande la paix pour une nation en proie a I’anarcbie ; apres que ce sceptre est brise et avant de paraitre devant Dieu, il lui demande la paix pour son ame, pour cette ame si intrepide dans les perils, si forte centre le malheur, mais trop faible centre renivrement d un immense pouvoir. ‘‘ Les fautes du beros, les sacrifices qu il nous im- posa, la France les oublie au souvenir de I’ordre con- quis sur les factions et des magnifiques tropbees conquis sur Tetranger. L’Eglise ne se souvient plus de son independance spirituelle meconnue et de la captivite d’un auguste pontife; elle se souviendra toujours de la main liberatrice qui lui restitua ses temples, sa priere publique et la solemnite du divin sacrifice que nous aliens ofifir pour apaiser le Maitre Supreme des peuples et des rois.” It would be irreverence to doubt bow, or by whom, this spirit, power, energy, or whatever name is given to it, so transcendently above man, so like to God, so replete with self-sacrifice, was imparted to the church, and is continually preserved in her. It is in the power of man to invent many things relating to the 122 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. outward part of religion. He can even set up an^ image, or resemblance, of the true religion itself, so like the divine reality, that people, who are satisfied with outside views of things, as very many are, never discover that a great deceit has been practised upon them, till perhaps the hour of death reveal it. Forms and ceremonies, more majestic and august even than those which belong to the true church, may be the clothing in which the counterfeit systems of religion, issuing in human pride, or human fraud, shall present themselves to the world. These also, he can hang upon his image. Further still, he can plant a principle of life in it, temporal and carnal though it be, which will give it, to worldly eyes, a more imposing and fascinating appearance than the truth itself, whose beauty is not always to be seen. But he cannot give it that spirit of unextinguishahle life, that all-conquering power of God, that divine spark. Charity, which has been to the Cathohc Church what the heart is to the human body, a source of fervent affections and supernatural aspirations, which will rest satisfied, such is their nature, with no end but the glory of God, and no reward but the salvation of souls or the martyr’s crown. And so palpable has all this ever been on the face of the Church, that the words just cited from one, who was neither a bishop nor a monk, do no more than express what every unprejudiced observer, whether Catholic or not, has been forced to acknowledge, however he might ac- count for it. The admiration which persons who visit the Carmes express, when they hear the story of its martyrs, and see the blood-marks upon the floor of Chap. VI. SPIRIT OF MARTYRDOM. 123 the chapel in which they were huddled together till the assassin’s sword set them free, is hut the tribute- money, the Peter-penee which all countries have paid, willingly or unwillingly, to the majesty of that charity which lives and reigns in the Church, triumphing over the principal cities and powers of this world, and, what is more difficult than all other adversaries, even nature itself. It may he a sufficient reason for recalhng to our consideration the events which took place at the Carmes and other parts of France sixty years ago, that a growing conviction seems beginning to discover itself, not only in England hut in other countries, that where so much has been done on one hand for man, for his salvation hereafter, more on the other than he has been wont to consider, ought to be done in return by him for God, for Grod’s honour and glory. The lamentable state of things throughout France, brought about by the accumulated sins of several generations, was made the means, under Grod, of sup- plying fresh demonstration to an age abandoned to scepticism and infidelity, that in the midst of many that were false to Him, there were still not a few that were true. That demonstration came at an opportune moment, we may well believe, though we may not see why it was not given sooner. And surely France is not the only country which is called upon to observe that out of that event, her church, which she had seen laid prostrate by her enemies, wielding a lawless power over her, has come forth bedecked with fresh garlands, and invigorated with new strength. If the sight of holy men and holy women, priests and nuns, welcoming with a smile the 124 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. hand that was raised to inflict upon them the stroke of death, had the effect of recalhng men of the most abandoned lives, whose hands were stained with sacrilege and murder, back to the Cathohc Faith, to drink of its penitential waters, and escape the eternal doom their apostacy and crimes have deserved, their voluntary self-immolation in the cause of religion (and he it borne in mind the Catholic religion), by which its divine authority is so wonderfully attested, ought surely to he well considered by all before whose minds it is brought, and more particularly as it bears upon the latitudinarian views so many entertain at the present day respecting religion. In these sufferers for Christ’s authority, when that was assailed and in jeopardy, we have both the evidence and the fruit of a supernatural power, which nothing short of great infatuation or perversity can dispute. It is impos- sible to make out from the imperfect records of the times, owing to the extraordinary ways and means (many of them secret) which were resorted to, of destroying those who were true to their religion dur- ing the reign of terror, how many thousands or tens of thousands suffered martyrdom for the faith. But there is no difficulty in ascertaining how they, who were made the victims, bore their sufferings. All the evidence on this point speaks with one voice : they all showed that the same spirit which had sustained and cheered the heart of St. Stephen and other eminent saints at the moment of their martyrdom, had descended to tliem. They all expired like martyrs, praying for their destroyers. We have but to follow the crowd of missionaries Chap. VI. FRENCH MISSIONARIES. 125 which have carried the cross to China and other heathen lands in these more modern times, to see that the same spirit is still alive in all its pristine vigour. If we require to satisfy ourselves of the truth of this nearer home, we can do so by a visit to the seminary of the French Missions (Eue du Bac, Paris), where we shall see abundant proof of it. There the very instru- ments are to he seen which have been used within the last few years to put the missionaries to death who had been sent out by that most admirable Society to con- vert the Chinese. An idea of the sufferings which these holy men undergo may be formed from the repre- sentations which are given, in a few rough sketches, of the tortures inflicted on some of the last martyrs in that country by those who were on the spot and wit- nessed their death. Ingenuity is taxed to the utmost, we there see, to devise modes of taking away life by the slowest and the most sensitive and excruciating process. Nothing is done to accelerate the departure of the soul from the body in which it is subjected to the agonies of a lingering, lacerating death : on the other hand, everything is done to leave tlie poor victim (or, rather the rich victim) as long as possible, conscious of his doom, and alive to every single puncture by which the human frame is capable of being tormented. The missionaries who undergo these sufferings, we must further add, expose themselves to them with their eyes open. They do not leave their country, as the Protestant missionary does his, with a wife to comfort him and an engagement whereby he shall receive for his labours, from the government, or a missionary society, some two or three hundred a-year. Neither 126 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. can they hope to do in those countries what the Pro- testant missionary before he embarks on his mission knows he can almost always do. They cannot appeal to the civil power to protect them in the discharge of their duties : the only reward they have to allure them to the scene of their labours, the only thing they can count on with certainty or look forward to with hope, is persecution under one form or other. So far from being shielded, as the Protestant missionary commonly is, by the civil power, they have the civil power far oftener against them than for them, as must needs be the case wherever the civil power has identified itself with sectarian systems of religion. The education which these missionaries have re- ceived, and which is to fit them for the office of the priesthood, would be defective in one of the most essential points if it did not prepare them for these things. A qualification to teach and preach and to administer the sacraments of the church, would be of little use to them if they had not the martyr’s spirit formed within them besides. As in the military schools of Prance fighting and dpng for their comitry are fostered as noble sentiments ; so, in the eccle- siastical seminaries of Prance, suffering and dying for their religion are similarly cherished as noble senti- ments. That this is no mere exaggeration we need but appeal to the simple fact, that numbers of young priests voluntarily every year leave those seminaries to go to countries where they know sufferings and death must be their inevitable lot : but sufferings and death are felt to have no terrors where they are, as every Catholic believes, the immediate prelude to an immor- (Jhap. VI. CLERGY OF PRANCE. 127 tal crown, the sure reward of every one who willingly loses, as they do, their life in this world for Christ’s sake. They know they are certain to find a thousand- fold more than aU they can lose here in the next world, and so they go forth with courageous hearts to the scene of conflict. It is not the least remarkable feature of France, viewed with reference to its religion at the present day, that her clergy almost every where show themselves to be imbued with less or more of that divine spirit which carried so many of their brethren of the last age to choose the martyr’s death. No observant eye can fail to see this. It might not in all cases lead them to prefer death to life for the sake of their divine Master ; but it is plain that as a body they live according to other laws than those of the flesh. It is plain that they seek not and live not for the things of this world. Go from north to south, from east to west, from the house of the Archbishop of Paris down to the humblest cure or vicar of the most insignificant hamlet, and you will see hut one spirit among the clergy — a spirit of entire self-devotion to the unceasing duties of that sacred office to which they have been called. And how is this produced? Is it because they have great emo- luments for their services ? — or can it be that they are so zealous purely for the glory of God and the saving of souls, in thus “ rising up early, and late taking rest ” from their daily labours ? There is but one answer to these questions. Earthly considerations have little or no part in the matter. The compen- sation which the clergy in France receive, down from the highest to the lowest, is far too small to influence their 128 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. YI. conduct in any material degree. It has heretofore been used in England as an argument in favour of the cathedral property, that rich stalls are necessary to induce men of talents and learning to devote them- selves to the Church of England. This may he so, as doubtless it is, where men are expected to go into the clerical profession as they would into any other, army, navy, or bar, from the mere natural desire of getting on, as it is said, in the world. Where the clergy are re- garded as a grade of society, rather than a distinct order running through every grade, the ground on which they stand must be maintained, as other human positions are, by such motives of interest as worldly men can mider stand and will appreciate. But in the case of the French clergy it is impossible to say the same thing. What they receive for their services, whether they he bishops or cures, is a mere trifle com- pared with the incomes of the Protestant clergy in England and Ireland. A bishop in Prance has rarely above 400^. a year, a cure seldom 50/. Yet of these sums neither of them can caU it wholly his own ; and, perhaps, in neither case do the personal expenses of the individual amount to so much. The bishop must have his vicars-general and chaplains about him, and the cure must have, if the population exceeds a certain number, his vicars and auxiliaries, which tend by no means to make their incomes go farther. At Hyeres, for example, there is a cure with eight vicars. The cure’s salary is 48/. a year ; each of his vicars has but 12/. These salaries are allowed by the government in lieu of the property which was taken from the clergy by tlie revolutionists during the last century. Whatever they Chap. VI. CLERGY OF FRANCE. 129 have in addition to these stipends is purely dependent upon the voluntary offerings of the parishioners, the great majority of whom live by the labour of their hands. Were the whole collections, together with the stall grants, divided among these nine most admirable and indefatigable priests, who are from morning to night every day engaged in some spiritual work or other, the average income of each would not perhaps exceed 60^. a year. The fixed cost to the nation of maintaining a staff of nine clergy of the most efficient character in a town of more than 7000 inhabitants is thus not quite 150/. a year ; the smallest salary given in England to the chaplain of a gaol, and not equal to the income of a single clergyman in any town, and but few parishes, in England. Yet let any one compare the amount of spiritual work done by a single priest at Hyeres during the year with that of any nine rectors or vicars of the English establishment, and he will say that the balance is immeasm’ably in favour of the French priest. What with clothing-clubs, penny subscriptions, coal-clubs, and such like things, by which, no doubt, much temporal benefit is conferred upon poor and needy persons, and much amiable and generous feeling is expressed by the clergy, who spend their liv^es and a portion, often a large portion, of what they receive among their parishioners ; what with these employments, and many others equally temporal in their nature, the life of many an English clergyman is anything but a void. But contrasted with the priests in France (though the same remark will doubt- less apply to other Catholic countries), of what does it consist ? — anxieties about wife or children, troubles K 130 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. about domestics, efforts to mitigate poverty, to relieve bodily distress, to supply tbe sick with medicine, and the idle mth work — all most admirable in themselves, but all in Catholic France attended to, and far more effectually too, by sisters of charity, or other pious persons, among the laity of the church. On the other side of the contrast, the whole day, and often the whole night also, of the priest is occupied, in duties which have to do directly or indirectly with the spiritual good of their people — duties not of temporal but of eternal moment, duties which none but a priest can perform. It must not be supposed, however, that the income of every cure throughout France is anything like 60/. a-year. Incomes of that amount are about as rare as livings of 1000/. and 1500/. a-year are in England, perhaps rarer. The average income of a French cure (excepting cities and towns) runs between 34/. and 40/. a year. Yet if any Enghshman who has hved for any length of time in a French village, and seen the daily labours of these holy men, were to compare the spiritual work done by one of them with the spiritual work done by the general run of English incumbents, he would be forced, no matter what his creed or prejudices may be, to give the palm to the poor cure. He would perhaps go further, and say that the very idea of comparing the one’s toils and services with the other’s — the one’s almost without remuneration, or any of those domestic comforts which cheer a life of toil ; the other’s with all these encircling him from morning to night, in the most agreeable form — was simply ridiculous. Were he, moreover, to Chap. VI. CLERGY OF FRANCE. 131 go a step still further, and candidly to state which of the two orders of men, viewing them through a mere common- sense medium, afforded the best indication that the self-denying blood of the confessor and martyr circulated in their veins — which of them, in short, were the ministers of a spiritual sovereign — there can he no doubt that he would say the clergy of France, and not those of the English Church. If we ascend to the higher clergy, the bishops of France, who are above eighty in number, and compare them, their incomes, and their work, with the Pro- testant bishops of England, their incomes, and their work, the difference between the two orders becomes still more striking. First, as touching the work done by each. From morning to night the French bishop is employed in matters which all, less or more directly, hear upon the apostolic office. He gets up at six, oftener at five, and sometimes at four, o’clock. After due preparation, he proceeds to offer up the divine sacrifice, according to his Blessed Master’s command. When he has spent perhaps half an hour or an hour in silent prayer before the altar, he refreshes himself with a bit of toasted bread and a small cup of coffee, which might be got at any cafe for about \hd. Not a moment of his time is given, or required to be given, to family concerns. The affairs of the church, of the clergy, of the seminaries, of the schools, and of the poor, brought before him by letters which must be immediately answered, by priests, monks, nuns, Christ- ian brothers, and sisters of charity, who must be instantly received, then engage his attention through- out the day. Meanwhile there are devotional offices, K 2 132 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. which he would be guilty of a mortal sin were he to neglect ; and persons coining to call upon him to whom he cannot say, “ not at borne,’’ and many other little things besides, which demand of him both time and consideration. The marvel is, how he ever gets through his work ; how he ever finds time to eat, or to see a friend. Yet, as he seldom goes out to dinner, and rarely ever makes a call ; as he has no wife and children to attend to, no sons to educate, and no daughters to marry, he not only contrives to get through it, but to get through it in a way at once satisfactory to himself and to all with whom he has been concerned. His dinner, whether it be at mid- day, two o’clock, four o’clock, or at six, is a repast or refreshment, all over within the hour, and not a feast, consuming a sixth or an eighth part of the day. This repast is good and simple : all that is necessary to sustain the body, but nothing more. Though it is as unusual for him not to have some priest to dine with him, as it is for an English bishop not to have a wife and family around him at table, the frugality of the meal and the brief space of time allotted to it are never, or only upon extraordinary occasions, departed from. There is no sitting an hour or half an hour after dinner to drink wine and crowd a replete stomach with expensive delicacies. If dinner is at a late hour, it is followed by no other meal or half meal before going to bed. There is no sitting at the tea-table, to the sacrifice of another hour or half an hour, upon what he would consider a mere pampering of the body at the expense of some good object, to which the money it would cost (a considerable sum at the end of Chap. VI. FRENCH AND ENGLISH CLERGY. 133 the year) may be applied. If it is early, it is spare, and followed by another meal of the same character, with some one to partake of it who has been assisting him in the spiritual affairs of his diocese. Amid all this, time is found at different hours of the day — that is, of every day — for certain religious exercises, obligatory upon every bishop, priest, and deacon, which would be hurriedly and perhaps ill per- formed within a less space of time than a couple of hours at least. In short, he finds time for everything but to be idle or worldly, for all useful employments by which the interests of the Church, his own personal sanctity, and the spiritual good of his diocese may be promoted. Though this is but a meagre outline of the daily life of a French bishop, we feel it would be utterly ludicrous to institute any comparison between the daily life of an English Protestant bishop and it. The elements in which they move, the ends which they contemplate, the means which they employ, the agencies with which they consort and co-operate, the way they spend their incomes and their time, the sub- jects about which they discourse, the books they read, and sometimes write, form perhaps as complete a contrast as is to be found in the whole natural or moral world. Yet, when we turn from the work to the incomes of the workmen on both sides, the difference between the two classes is prodigious. There are, as has been already stated, above eighty archbishops and bishops in the French empire, some of them cardinals, whose rank is thought to confer honour on the State, but 134 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. VI. wliich entails considerable expenses on themselves. The aggregate amount of money which these eighty persons receive from the State, in lieu of their own property, taken from the Church by the State in revo- lutionary times, may be about 35,000/. a year.^ It cannot be much more. This, again, is not swelled to a much larger sum by the addition of private property, as would be the case in England ; nor have the in- dividuals who are forced to subsist upon it the ad- vantage — felt to be no small one in England — of borrowing that influence of wealth, where wealth itself is wanting to them, which a variety of favourable cir- cumstances, such as marriage, gentle birth, and con- nexion with the aristocracy, the great seats of learning Oxford and Cambridge, and the government of the day, whatever be its politics, naturally reflect upon * Since the above was written, I have learnt the present Emperor has added 2000 francs a-year to the income of every bishop, and raised the incomes of the archbishops (who are fifteen in number) to 800Z. a-year a piece. The aggregate amount is thus raised from 35,0001. a-year to about 45,000?. This desire of the f»resent Emperor to make amends to the Church and clergy for the injury done them by the revolutionists, out of whose hands the late Emperor may be said to have plucked both the Church and nation, is here, as in many other of his generous acts of re- paration, conspicuous. His line of acting is exactly the opposite of his unhappy predecessor on the throne, who, to gratify the Church’s adver- saries, and his own philosophical friends and partizans, reduced the income of the bishops to 200?. a-year less than they were when he took possession of the throne ; thus, in one particular alone, depriving an impoverished body of eminent men, whose whole energies were devoted to their spiritual duties, of 16,000?. a-year. Napoleon III., considering himself placed where he is by Divine Providence, seeks, as in duty bound, to redress the wrongs of the Church, and to promote the growth of religion among his subjects. Louis Philippe, though it is painful to recall errors he must since have deplored, added to those wrongs by taking from the clergy what Charles X. had given them, and appointing men who had no religion to be the heads of the educational establishments of the country, wherever vacancies occurred. Chap. VI. FRENCH AND ENGLISH CLERGY. 135 the clergy of the English establishment, whose tem- poral advantages, as an order of men, have no parallel — have scarcely even so much as their image — upon earth. What, on the other hand, is the aggregate income of the twenty-seven bishops of the English Church ? Certainly not less than 1 50,000^. a year. I feel certain I might put the sum much higher ; but I wish to he within bounds, where, were it but 35,000/. a year, instead of what it is, it would still present a wonderful disparity between the remuneration of a bishop in France and a bishop of the English establishment — between what the State allows in the one country and what the law has lately assigned in the other. Were it but 35,000/. instead of 150,000/., there would be in England twenty-seven men (doubtless of the first cha- racter in every moral and intellectual point of view) consuming upon themselves and a limited circle of family connexions what eighty men in France, occupy- ing positions of an onerous eminence, and discharging duties of far more bearing upon the spiritual condition of the people, contrive to subsist upon, without detri- ment to their dignity^ however it may straiten their usefulness as bishops of the chmrch. As it is, the twenty -seven on the one side cost the country four times more than the eighty cost on the other. Yet in France there are, at least, thirty millions of people who either believe with these eighty bishops, or do not believe at all. In England the nominal and actual members of the establishment, for the maintenance of which so vast an expenditure is made, if we may take tlie last religious 136 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. census as any criterion, do not amount to more tlian eight or nine, but let us say ten millions. Again, this is but a small part of the pecuniary cost of the religion of the State in England. We must take the 2 Johole in, if we would see the whole case under oui^ consideration in all its completeness. No one could well put the income of the bishops and clergy of the establishment, exclusive of their private resources, under three millions and a half a-year. It has been stated in both Houses of Parliament and elsewhere to be much above that sum, even as high as five milhons a-year. There are others again who maintain, and that with the most friendly intentions, that if the whole property of the church were in the management of the Grovernment, as the Crown lands are, a revenue of ten milhons a year might be the result — a sum equal to the whole ecclesiastical property of Prance, before the revolutionary and infidel outcry of 1798 had swept it away, the State being left to give or not to give a mere pittance in its stead. This pittance, at present, does not probably exceed form-fifths of a milhon a year, while the number of the priests who depend upon it almost entirely for their support are not less than 30,000, besides which number there are 10,000 more dependant on charity alone. It is with no view of making invidious comparisons that I put these things before the reader : I give them simply rvith a view of * The whale sum given annually for-religious purposes by the Emperor is at this moment 36,000,000 francs ; somewhat less than two-thirds of which reaches the clergy, who are charged with the cure of souls, including archbishops and bishops of course. Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 137 enabling persons wlio can appreciate facts, irrespective of any bias of tbeir own minds, to reflect upon the two systems of religion to wliicli they pertain, and of which they may fairly (if fairness is but allowed to be the guide of their reflections upon them) be considered the exponents. In aU candour I appeal to such persons (who are not, I conclude, partakers of the blessings of the Cathohc Church), and I ask them which of the two systems bears the marks of the supernatural upon it, and which the marks of this earthly state ; further, which of the two orders of the clergy who have been here contrasted gives the best evidence of having sprung from a martyred Head, and of being the lineal possessors of those Divine gifts and powers which have been floated down through 1800 years of human blood, shed by the body guards of His throne. Facts of the same sort, if people would but observe them and gravely reflect upon them, are to be found within the shores of the United Kingdom. The same two systems, and the same two orders of men — the Catholic Church with her clergy, and the Protestant Establishment with its — the former with the civil power against her, and the latter with the civil power supporting its operations and punishing its enemies, have been pitted against each other for the long period of three hundred years. All power that man can create or monarchs confer, has been in the hands of that establishment. With the Sovereign of a great and prosperous nation for its helmet, as a head-piece, a powerful aristocracy for its shield, and all the most learned men of the country as its coat of mail, it has brandished, like another Goliath of Gath, the sword of 138 MASSACEE AT THE CAEMES. Chap. YI. a giant over the head of its unarmed, despised antago- nist, during all that time. The names of fourteen mighty sovereigns, who have followed each other in uninterrupted succession, are now engraven on that helmet, and almost as many generations have, like those sovereigns, risen up and disappeared since that gigantic establishment came forth in its armour to destroy the few Catholics who had not been rooted out under the sacred sanctions of law. ‘'We are worse,” says the late Earl of Shrewsbury? “ than aliens in our native land, inasmuch as that an alien is under the protection of equal laws, which we are not. If an alien be a delinquent, or a presumed delinquent, he is entitled to a trial by his peers, and half of those peers are his own countrjrmen, and of his own religion ; whereas our delinquency, imaginary as it is, is tried by men who have no fellow-feeling with us, and who convict us upon evidence collected, pro- duced, and attested by themselves. We are condemned to endure the stings of insult and calumny, frequently without either the opportunity of reply or the hope of redress by law. We are denied the privilege of the meanest malefactor — that of being confronted with our accusers. We are excluded from the places in which the most galling and influential of the calumnies produced against us are uttered; and if we dare to answer them elsewhere our calumniators may sit in judgment upon us, and punish our audacity with im- prisonment ! ” — Reasons foi^ not taking the Test., 1828. No one who knows the history of this country for the last three centuries will say tliat tliis is an overdrawn picture. The talented author had as little reason as Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 139 propensity to exaggerate. He had suffered heavily, what all refined minds feel, the indignities which the civil power inflicted on him solely because he was a Catholic ; but it is clear that he felt much more for those who had not his private temporal comforts to make up for civil deprivations. Yet strange to say, this poor and (as in the eyes of this world) insignificant body, though beaten down to the ground ten thousand times and ridden rough-shod over by a triumphant enemy, who quartered its pri- soners, not like a generous conqueror, but as a butcher quarters his sheep, has, in some extraordinary way, survived to this day, and is at this moment, notwith- standing all its losses, all its wounds, in point of num- bers and influence, the most powerful rival power which the Establishment has in the world. When we speak of the length of time which the Catholic religion has been under the ban of the civil power of the country, or of the cruelties which its professors have for about three hundred years endm^ed in England, it might be supposed that we spoke of a state of things which the Eoman Catholic Belief Bill ” would terminate, and which therefore now could only be looked back upon as a thing past and for ever gone. A general sense of the injustice under which the Catholics of the empire groaned led to the passing of that measmre, which, it might fairly be hoped, would have put an end to all the animosity which the British nation had, time out of mind, been imbued with against a religion they did not know, and against a very large portion of their fellow-citizens, whose principles they had been taught to repudiate. But 140 MASSACEE AT THE CAKMES. Chap. YI. events, not one or two only, have shown ns since 1829 that peace and quietness in the exercise and enjoyment of their religion are blessings which (thongh allowed to all “ other persuasions ”) are yet to be denied to British Catholics. They are still to walk in and out under a portcullis which may at any moment, upon the touching of a legislative wire, drop down and leave them at the mercy of their assailants. An exemphfi- cation of this is but a few years old. The supreme ruler of the Catholic Church on earth. Pope Pius IX., was moved four years ago to confer on the Cathohcs of England what, under present circumstances, it might fairly he inferred no one would object to — a proper pastoral superintendence. This, as the world knows, was done by the appointment of a limited hierarchy, consisting of twelve or thirteen bishops. Every Protestant sect may appoint as many heads to govern the rest as there are heads within its pale. The State would as soon think of interfering with the matter as it would with the slippers worn by the Grand Mogul. But no sooner was the Papal decree seen in an English paper than the Protestant spirit of intolerance began to bubble and boil over. And so fierce were the words which were heard on all sides, both against the Pope and the eminent individual (Cardinal Wiseman) who was no doubt the Pope’s prime adviser, that many began to fear the conse- quence. In one large city, an image of the gentlest of men, the present occupant of the See of St. Peter, was paraded through the streets and then burnt amid the denunciations of an infuriated rabble, who pro- fessed their readiness to do to the living original what Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 141 they did to his representative in skin and straw. In another, figures of the Mother of onr Blessed Lord, nay, more awful still to relate, of Himself on the Cross, were treated in the same manner. The cardinal, who (divinely favoured in being burnt in effigy in such company) alone was capable of being injured by such treatment, was warned through the press that if he studied his own safety he had better not cross the Channel again. For the honour of that religion for which the Archbishop of Arles and his two hun- dred martyr-compeers shed their blood at the Carmes, the Cardinal, however, gave proof by returning that he was as ready to suffer in his day and in his country as these holy men were in theirs, if the great measm^e he had proposed and advised for the good of the Church should require it. He gave proof in so doing that he had a martyr’s spirit to stand up for what his Divine Master’s spirit of charity had inspired him to propose for the benefit of His Church ; and it is not perhaps too much to say, that if there be any one thing in the more recent history of CathoHcism in England which has more than another immediately tended to revive its drooping spirit and to rescue it from the prostrate state in which it lay, it was that great ecclesiastical achievement. Like all other great measures calculated to exalt the Church, it is true it brought upon its great promoter. Cardinal Wiseman, a burst of fury and abuse but little creditable to a civilised country. But it will perhaps be considered some small compensation to that eminent individual for the wrongs he has endured from his country while attempting to do for it in the nineteenth century what 142 MASSACKE AT THE CAKMES. Chap. VI. St. Augustine did in the seventh, that the measure has led to the conversion of many, myself among the number, who, but for it, might still have believed the Anglican Episcopate a true one, within the Church Catholic. All such will ever feel that they owe him eternal gratitude. Stricken and afflicted by the State, that Church sends her sons to fight its battles in the East, or wherever they are ordered to go. At home they cultivate the soil with as much zeal as if their church had not lost her portion of interest in the produce, and they devote themselves cheerfully to improve the resources of the country, as if the entire ownership was their own. In point of numbers they have grown to, at least, 8,000,000 within the United Kingdom, that is, about twice the entire population of England at the time when the Catholic Church and its religion, under Henry YIII. and Elizabeth, were supposed to be for ever extinguished. Now it is surely no more than what common sense in other matters would say was a very proper inquiry, to ask, what is the explana- tion of all this ? On the one hand there is a church armed with every power, its ministers endowed as no body of ecclesiastics of the same small number (at most 10,000 or 12,000) since the world began were ever endowed, and its temporal securities elevated above popular opinion in a way those of no other rehgious institution ever were ; on the other hand there is a mere handful of men and women, denounced by the laws of their country, fined beyond their capacity to pay, imprisoned, some for years and some for life, their priests, if they acted as such, under pain of death, and forbid to obey their Divine Master in doing for Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 143 their flock as well as for Himself what His gospel bound them to do ; there is this body struggling for life and living in the midst of death, deprived of its civil rights, its religious, nay even its natural rights, and all this for a period of time more than thrice as long as the Jewish captivity in Babylon, and some- what longer than the whole period over which the great persecutions under the pagan Emperors of Eome extended — there is this little body, provoking by its incurable adherence to tenets and ordinances of its own — by a tenaciousness of existence which neither the sword nor the halter could weaken, coming out as we now see it in the very country it was supposed to have been dead and buried three centuries ago, with as many holy bishops at its head and as many members in its body as were, perhaps, in Italy when the church over- threw the paganism of the Eoman Empire. Yet by what arm is it assisted? By whose but His, who has from the first made '' the weak things of this world confound the strong, and the things that are not more powerful than things that areV Can any one, to form an impartial opinion on the subject, compare the Protestant Establishment in England and Ireland with the Catholic Church, as it now exists in these two countries, and fail to recognize that the one has a life altogether unknown to the other — has within it, in short, that spirit of martyrdom whose soul is charity, while it presents without it those marks which attest its connection with the bishops and priests who have suffered for the faith in all ages and countries ? ^ And * One can hardly set foot in Ireland without being at every step reminded of her wrongs, and being struck with the infatuation of its 144 MASSACRE AT THE CARMES. Chap. VI. turning to the other side, can he say he sees the same ? Can he see more than the great majority of its own members have always seen — than the kings and queens of England for three centuries of religious strife have not only seen hut maintained, and more than the milhons of Protestant dissenters have held themselves bound at the peril of all hut then" lives to repudiate — a mere human establishment of religion, of which the civil power is the head ? Let such an one cross the Irish channel and visit some of the rude spots where this Protestant colossal engine has long been playing upon a poverty-stricken population, who have nothing but their faith to sustain them and their love of that faith to reward them ; let him go to Conne- rulers, who could hope to make people better subjects to their temporal sovereign, by forcing them to deny their religion, which they felt must be true, and rewaixling them for taking up a religion which they believed to be, at best, a mere modern counterfeit of the true. It is not that the persecutions levelled against her were all, or always, of a sanguinary character. They were, for the most part, rather aimed at the liberties than the lives of the inhabitants, — directed to destroy the manly spirit^ the masculine poivers of her sons, and to reduce them to the feelings, as well as the condition of slaves. Take, for example, as an illustration of this, the following incident of comparatively recent date : — The grandfather of the present Lord Bellew was one day stopped on the high road, as he was driving out, by a vulgar, unprincipled fellow, who offered him 51. for one of his carriage-horses ; the real value of which might be lOOZ. Yet, by offering 5?., this or any other covetous person, with the necessary quantity of insolent effrontery, if he was a Protestant, could stop the carriage of a Catholic peer, take out one of his best horses, and leave him without the means of pursuing his journey, no matter what amount of inconvenience or distress was thereby incurred. In other countries a man doing this might have been shot with impunity, as a bandit, or hanged as a felon ; in Ireland, alas ! because the owner of the horse was a believer in the Holy Catholic Church, the robber could do it, under the sanction of law — the law of a country professing to be Christian ! A religion which enables persons to bear indignities and wrongs of this sort, more aggravating, perhaps, to some than bodily inflictions, gives evidence that it possesses a life or power only second to that which carries the confessor to the stake of the martyr. Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 145 mara, and learn there from the lips of Protestants themselves what poor ignorant, half-naked, half- famished Catholics doom themselves to endure, rather than eat the bread of apostacy, which, to the scandal even of human nature, has so often been offered to them within late years, and he will have an impossi- bility in accounting for what he sees, if he knows nothing of that power, that supernatural power, which God has planted in the Catholic Church.'^ It is thus hardly possible, if I may be permitted the remark by the way, to withdraw our eyes from the contrast which stands before us, of the two systems, without seeing that among their many points of wide and essential difference, there is one which we cannot overlook. Politically, the establishment was never stronger in England than at the present hour. Its revenues are now as cheerfully paid by the farmer, and its fees by the poor, as any common rent, — the natural consequence of the settlement of the tithe question. The minds of the majority of the nation, and these by far the wealthiest and most influential, * What sufferings the poor people of Clifden were reduced to, and hore with a heroic fortitude, in 1846, when the potato famine, and the pestilence consequent upon that famine, broke out, may be inferred from the fact (recently communicated to me b}^ the excellent and indefatigable priest of the parish) that within a very short period of time 150 of the inhabitants were carried to the grave in one coffin. They v/ere so poor that it became necessary to convey their bodies in a common (hired) coffin, which was made with a sliding-bottom, to let them fall into a large trench which had been prepared to receive the dead in the churchyard. Yet many of these might have averted a death of starvation, and of the most frightful suf- fering, as well as this distressing kind of burial, by simply saying, with a quivering lip, I luill hecome a Protestant. The mere nominal and pre- tended assent to a religion which they disbelieved, they would not give even to purchase release from the gnawings of hunger and a yawning grave. L 146 MASSACRE OF THE CARMES. Chap. VI. are, thougli not all its warm supporters, still all so far attached to it, that they would rather have it than any other of the national sects in its place ; rather it, a thousand times, than see the Catholic Church left free to regain her ancient position. If its friends are not, except in a few instances, ardent, they are at least sincere, believing as many of them do, that its services in the cause of morality, of protestant ascendency, and general civihzation, have entitled it to their gratitude. Again, what is next best to having good friends, it has certainly at present no enemies in the political or literary world. In its presence, infidelity is silent, if it is not extinct ; her champions have had no oc- casion to unsheath their swords against any infidel assailant for these twenty or thirty years past. She has had time to restore what puritan frenzy had de- stroyed in a former generation, to increase the number of her churches and clergy by almost one half since last century began, to augment her livings, to raise the literary, if not the theological character, of her clergy, and to do many other things calculated to improve her condition. Meanwhile, notwithstanding all this, sects, whose aggregate number more than equals her own in the reign of Elizabeth, have been creeping out of her, at every part of her body, for a succession of centuries, many of them, as the Wesleyans, Unitarians, and Irvingites, gaining in numerical strength and respectability every year. She has shown what all heretical bodies show, that when her members are once lost to her, when once they have formed themselves into independent societies, they are lost to her for ever. They may dwindle out Chap. VI. THE CHURCHES COMPARED. 147 of one shallow creed into another yet more shallow, and she may see them gravitating downwards from one had state of faith and morals into a worse, yet she feels she has no power to arrest their decaying career. To retrieve the lost is a power or capacity, long expe- rience has shown, not possessed by her. In this respect she is only, however, what every other religious community out of the Catholic Church is. None of them can keep their members what they are at the outset. What between evaporation above, and leakage below, the spirituous part of their tenets is continually making its escape. If lapsed members are ever recalled, they are recalled with a diminution of their orthodoxy ; they are never reclaimed. The fol- lowers of Luther, in a very few years, broke off from the Confession of Augsburg. He tried in vain to retrieve them. He followed them up with the zeal, for a time, of a London detective in pursuit of a Bank-of- England clerk who has made off with a bag of gold. The culprit is overtaken, caught, and brought back to the place from which he started, to be identified. He is the same man, all but the pen behind his ear, he was before ; but he is minus the treasure which made him worth the pursuit. So, by running and panting, the great founder of the Lutheran schism, and his other heretical associates, laboured early and late, in the pulpit and with the pen, to keep their disciples within the inclosure they had drawn around them. But it was aU to no purpose ! Away from them (ungrateful children !) they would go. Luther ran, Calvin ran, Melancthon ran, Zuinglius ran, they all ran ; and when by some evil accident any of them fell, L 2 148 MASSACRE OF THE CARMES. Chap. YI. helped to their feet by some kind friend who stood by, they ran again. A deserter here and there was the prize. But he is not the same theological person he was before. His spiritual identity is gone. He started a Lutheran, he confesses himself a Zuinglian ; another, a disciple of Calvin, he is found a Servetus (a Unitarian) ; another, a Zuinglian, he prefers the creed of the Covenanters with John Knox ; a fourth, a warm admmer of the meek Melancthon, he is all for burning down churches, and extirpating the reli- gion of fifteen centuries with the sword. In short, among them all “ there was racing and chasing ” without end, and with pretty much the same success as that which crowned the efforts of Sir Walter Scott’s chief of Ketherby Hall to rescue his fugitive daughter out of the hands of her gallant bridegroom. Now the remark which I wish to make is this : — That the Catholic Church possesses the power which these instances show no other body, pretending to exercise spiritual functions in the name of Christ, possesses. Evil agencies and evil passions succeed continually (such does Grod permit ! ) in drawing away her members. They may fly from her for a time — a year, a number of years, even up to the last hour of an abandoned life. But she does not give them up for lost ; she keeps her maternal eye upon them ; she fasts and weeps, and prays ; and warns with a mother’s heart, and a mother’s voice. Her pity wins them back. They die or live retrieved from, as the case may be, a death of despair, or a life of sin. She sees them brought back, with the joy which is felt by the angels of heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” It is Chap. VI. THE ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS. 149 only in her that the apparent paradox is properly realised, that there is practically more rejoicing over one reclaimed member that had gone astray, than over ninety and nine just persons that had never erred. And considering the tendency there is, from the time that Adam fell to the present day, to fall away from grace already received, this power of the Catholic Church, to reclaim the fallen, and restore them to their original birthright, reinvesting them with ‘‘ the best robes,” putting a ring on their hands, and treating them in all respects as the father in the parable treated his prodigal son upon his return to him, is justly entitled perhaps to be regarded as another of the many proofs which may be adduced, that He who came to save a lost world, is, of a truth, in her, and in her alone. These pages began with the Carmes, and it is but fitting that they should end with the same. Above half a century had past away from the time of the massacre, when Paris for a short period was threatened with a partial renewal of the scenes of the close of the last century. The city was in a state of siege. The inhabitants were from one end to the other in a state of terror. The rebels were bent on the destruction of life, and ready to sacrifice their own to any extent, in accomplishing their insurrectionary designs. The streets were becoming wet with the blood of the citizens. Tumult and dismay had taken the place of peace, order, and security. No one dared to walk about, or even to draw aside his window-blinds to see what was going on outside. At this moment, dressed in his archiepiscopal robes, walked forth Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris, to stay, like another Moses, 150 MASSACRE OF THE CARMES. Chap. VI. the plague of civil war. His presence among bullets and bayonets, and men as merciless as either, without protection, arrested the fury of the mob. While attempting to dissuade them from their bloody strife, a ball from one of the rebels’ guns laid him among its victims. One who had long known him speaks thus : “ The archbishop gave a proof that the same spirit which had reigned in other martyrs reigned in him. By his death he purchased life for, we know not how many, whose death, in the very commission of crime, could not but be most terrible. Therefore it was that he fell a victim to charity. While others may be called by way of distinction, martyrs to the truth or to the faith, he is entitled to be called a martyr to charity. Often,” the Abbe goes on to say, did he go to pray in the chapel of the Carmes, where so many of the priests had shed their blood. He frequently spoke to me of the dangers which surrounded him with the greatest calm- ness.” About a month before his death, when some fear was expressed in his hearing lest the events of 1792 should be going to be repeated. “ Oh,” said the arch- bishop, “ you have nothing to fear, but I may be shot.” And when he resolved, in the middle of the conflict, to go to the rebels, and urge them to lay down their arms, he felt that he was going to his death. But that staid him not. To the entreaties of his friends around him, who strove to detain him, his only reply was, “ The Grood Shepherd giveth his hfe for the sheep.” And now the lowly place where he so often and so earnestly prayed to have the spirit and the crown of the martyrs who sacriflced their lives in that holy sanctuary sixty-two years ago has, in its connection Chap. VI. CHAPEL OF THE MAllTYPS. 151 with him, another name that may well be added to that roll of holy men whose deeds, though fatal to themselves in a temporal point of vieiv, have led to, if they have not produced, the commencement of a new era of prosperity for the Church in France, and, it may he hoped, of happiness for the nation. Those deeds have deservedly converted the humble building in which they were done into a cliapel which shall ever be known and venerated as the Chapel of the Martyrs at the Carmes. t t-w Laus Deo. P.S. — It is, I trust, needless to say, that if I thought there was a word or a sentence in the foregoing pages contrary to that charity or faith which the holy Catholic Church teaches, I should be but too glad to erase it. If there is any such, I pray it may be attri- buted to my ignorance and not to my intention. I feel too conscious of the blessing of having the Church as a guide in all things of a religious natm^e to have any other desire than that of perfect submission to her voice. THE END. London : printed by w. clowes and sons, Stamford street, AND CHARING CROSS. j^lso hy the same Author, A LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF CHICHESTER. Price Is. 6c?. C. Dolman, G1, New Bond Street. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WEGLIJ HOCKWER, A JEWESS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, BAPTIZED IN HOLY WEEK, 1853. Price Qd. C. Dolman, G1, New Bond Street. I -f