butcheries, except possibly Jerusalem when taken by Titus or Godfrey, or Magdeburg when taken by Tilly.  And as the bright summer sun illuminated the city on a Sunday morning the massacre had but just begun; nor for three days and three nights did the slaughter abate.  A vulgar butcher appeared before the King and boasted he had slain one hundred and fifty persons with his own hand in a single night.  For seven days was Paris the scene of disgraceful murder and pillage and violence.  Men might be seen stabbing little infants, and even children were known to slaughter their companions.  Nor was there any escape from these atrocities; the very altars which had once protected Christians from pagans were polluted by Catholic executioners.  Ladies jested with unfeeling mirth over the dead bodies of murdered Protestants.  The very worst horrors of which the mind could conceive were perpetrated in the name of religion.  And then, when no more victims remained, the King and his court and his clergy proceeded in solemn procession to the cathedral church of Notre Dame, amidst hymns of praise, to return thanks to God for the deliverance of France from men who had sought only the privilege of worshipping Him according to their consciences!

Nor did the bloody work stop here; orders were sent by the Government to every city and town of France to execute the like barbarities.  The utter extermination of the Protestants was resolved upon throughout the country.  The slaughter was begun in treachery and was continued in the most heartless cruelty.  When the news of it reached Borne, the Holy Father the Pope caused a medal to be struck in commemoration of the event, illuminated his capital, ordained general rejoicings, as if for some signal victory over the Turks; and, assisted by his cardinals and clergy, marched in glad procession to St. Peter’s Church, and offered up a solemn Te Deum for this vile and treacherous slaughter of sixty thousand Protestants.

In former lectures I have passed rapidly and imperfectly over this awful crime, not wishing to stimulate passions which should be buried, and thinking it was more the fault of the age than of Catholic bigots; but I now present it in its naked deformity, to be true to history, and to show how cruel is religious intolerance, confirmed by the history of other inhumanities in the Catholic Church,—­by the persecution of Dominican monks, by the slaughter of the Albigenses, by inquisitions, gunpowder plots, the cruelties of Alva, and that trail of blood which has marked the fairest portions of Europe by the hostilities of the Church of Borne in its struggles to suppress Protestant opinions.  I mention it to recall the fact that Protestantism has never been stained by such a crime.  I mention it to invoke gratitude that such a misguided zeal has passed away and is never likely to return.  Catholic historians do not pretend to deny the horrid facts, but ascribe the massacre to political animosities rather than religious,—­a lame and impotent defence of their persecuting Church in the sixteenth century.