several Months in Prison but that he purged himself and yet was silenced by a decree of the Parliament of Greneble I know nothing of the particulars of his business if you are informed of them I pray you tell me what they are Prov. You have divined him it is the same his adventure has something very singular The Hugonots of Dauthine had kept a Fast in all their Churches and the Synod that had ordered it had enjoyned all the Ministers that belonged to it assisted with their Ancients to visit Families and put them in mind of what had been promised God on the Fast day These are the terms of the Article which was Printed and Divulged This Minister did not fail to execute this Order in his District It was during the heat of the War with Holland The Religious of St. Anthony who had lain in wait for him a long time laid hold on this occasion to insinuate themselves with the Court to his Cost They writ to M. le Tellier then Secretary of State that something was contriving against the Kings Service that the Hugonots had celebrated a Fast through all Dauphinate that there was a Plot Couched under this Fast and that Devotion was only the pretext of it That the Minister of had held secret Assemblies at the Houses of the Principals of his Parish that he had prayed God for the success of the Hollanders Arms and that he had gathered great sums of Money from those of of his Party to send to the Prince of Orange Par. Good Could this come into rational Heads though all the Hugonots of the Kingdom should have contributed to this gathering it would not have been sufficient to have furnished Oats to the Cavallry of the Army the Prince of Orange Commanded They can hardly maintain the six or seven hundred Ministers they have since the Seal and Subvension Moneys were taken from them that were destined to that use without any thinking of gatherings for forreign Countries Prov. I knew very well you would also cry out upon this Yet as strange and as unlikely as the thing is it caused this Minister a great deal of trouble There came Orders from the King to seize his Person He was kept in Prison for above four Months false Witnesses were raised to maintain the Accusation and if he had not had the Address to Convince them in the Confrontation he would certainly have passed his time very ill Par. This is horrible It is rather fury than zeal But it is with our Religious as with Angels when they are Corrupted they are Devils There is no manner of ill but what they are capable of Those of St. Anthony surpass in this all the other Orders They have appropriated to themselves vast Riches of St. Lazarus under pretext of Serving the sick Monsieur de Louvois who is chief of this Order designs to make them restore these Goods and to apply them to the Hall of Mars destined to the maintenance of the maimed without doubt these Reverend Fathers to fence off this 〈◊〉 with which they were threatned and to insinuate themselves into the Kings favour bethought themselves of giving this advice to the Court and sacrificing this Minister to their Interest Prov. You have hit the mark and methinks so many Monks ought not to be suffered The Policy of France observes there are too many It would be convenient to retrench at least the two thirds of them and to apply the Revenues of their Houses which are immense to the necessities of the State and to the ease of the people And the other Thirds Wings ought likewise to be clipped and hindred from growing great by forbidding them as is done at Venice to acquire stocks and receive considerable Gifts and Legacies It is the same with their Fraternities as with the Den of Esops Lyon all goes in and nothing comes out and it is not otherwise possible but that at length they must become yet more powerful and formidable Par. I am impatient to know the issue of this Process I beg you would tell it me Prov. The false Witnesses were freed for a Years absence from the Province and the Religious for some Reprimands from the Judges As for the Minister he was fined without any Note of Infamy and condemned to pay the Charges by reason of the visits he had made which they called Assemblies and the silencing of his Ministry too happy to have thus escaped from the Snare that was laid him I saw the Sentence in Print and fixed up by Order of the Bench. You see by all these Stories that all manner of ways are tryed for the tiring out those people their ruin comes on apace consider how many Declarations there be against them within these two Years Par. Two things are the cause of this The first is the Peace while the King has less forreign Affairs he employs himself in the reforming the disorders that may be in the State and in the Religion Moreover the disputes the King has had with the Pope has obliged him to appear severe against the Hugonots Prov. What Mozeray has observed in the Life of Henry the 2d is very true that the disputes of the Kings of France with the Popes have ever cost the Hugonots dear As soon as a Prince thinks of defending himself against the enterprizes of the Court of Rome he is accused of being an Abettor of Heresie and Princes to clear themselves of this suspicion redouble their severity against the Hereticks Par. You see that the Pope in the Briefs he has written to the King praises him for his zeal against Heresie and gives him joy for having destroyed so many Temples and the King on his part to appease the Pope has not failed to make him observe that in few Weeks he has made three very strong Declarations against the Hugonots Prov. Since we are fallen upon this tell me in short what were the disputes the King had with the Pope Par. There were two The first was upon the account of the Regality and the second upon the account of the Urbanists The Regality is a Right our Kings have over vacant Bishopricks upon the Decease or the Demission of those who possessed them During the vacancy the Fruits of them belong to the King and even till that the new Bishop has taken the Oath of Fidelity in Person all the Benifices which would be at the Bishops Nomination are at the Kings The most part of the Bishopricks in France have submitted to this Right However there are some who pretend not to be in the Regality and amongst others those of Guyenne and Languedock Of which kind is the Bishoprick of Pamiers near the Pyrences The King pretended he had the Right of Regality over that Bishoprick the Bishop pretended not His Temporals were seized on of which he complained to the Pope who proceeded so far in this affair as to threaten the King to make use of the Arms of the Church against him The
as Bedlow I find he would be very Eloquent and that he would succeed admirably well in composing the Character of a Stage-Hero Let us speak seriously one must have renounced all Modesty to dare to maintain that all this great action is only a Comedy and a Fiction Par. But as concerning Father le Cheise whom your Hugonot spoke of in the affair of Coleman I have admired how the English have aspersed him by the publication of Colemans Tryal For this Father is every where therein in the middle beginning and the end and it is upon him that the most convincing proofs turn that are produced against Coleman It appears that this F. Jesuit was of the Party and that he was engaged very deep into the design of re-establishing the Roman Catholick Religion in England by fire and by the effusion of Blood Prov. My Gentleman made me that remark and told me thereupon Methinks that the King's Equity ought to move him not to hearken to such a Man in what regards the Interests of the Subjects of the Reformed Religion What may not the Protestants of France fear from a Man who has been so deeply engaged in the design of cutting the Throats of so many millions of Protestants What Counsels may not he give to the King against us who would have set whole Rivers of the Blood of our Brethren aslowing and make a St. Bartholomew beyond the Seas Though he was innocent of the Affair of England the advices he gives against us ought to be suspected For it is clear that he ought to have a great resentment of the fierce accusations that have been formed against him and that he would have the intention to revenge himself on the Protestants of France for the outrages that he might pretend to have receiv'd from the Protestants of England Wherefore it is certain that the King ought to consider him as our declared enemy and as a passionate enemy and not as a zealous Catholick However this Father Jesuit brags he is the Master of all the King's Resolutions in what concerns us It is he if he may be believed to whom the Catholick Church is indebted for all the severe Declarations that have been made against us And when the Declaration was obtained which forbids Catholicks to turn to the Reformed Religion he entred into the Assembly of the Clergy with that Declaration in his hand with a triumphing air and said Here is the piece that has been so long a solliciting it is I that have obtained it If this man be so powerful over the King's mind as he brags he is the Protestants of France could not be secure of their lives We know from good hands added he that the Members of the Council are not too well satisfied in that the affairs His Majesty was used to consult them about and believe them in are at present put into the hands of a Jesuit Par. For my part I avow to you I am not too well perswaded no more than you that this Conspiracy of the English Catholicks is a fiction But I endeavour to perswade it to others because that I wish it were so for the honour of the Catholick Religion which never ought to inspire such Designs Prov. Be it as it will my Hugonot Gentleman concluded from all this that a Protestant Prince can never be assured of the Fidelity of his Catholick Subjects On the contrary said he the Protestants are subject to their Prince out of Conscience and out of a Principle of their Religion They acknowledge no other Superiour than their King and do not believe that for the cause of Heresie it is permitted either to kill a legitimate Prince or to refuse him obedience Par. You might have asked him if what the English do at present against the Duke of York agrees well with that Divinity Because that he is said to be Catholick they would declare him uncapable of succeeding his Brother Prov. I had not time to propose to him that difficulty for he prevented it It is true said he to me that the troubles which are in England seem to tend towards the refusing Obedience to the Duke of York because he is a Catholick When a Soveraign is mounted upon the Throne by legitimate means it seems said I to him that he ought at least to have as much priviledge as his Subjects and enjoy as well as them the Liberty of Conscience That is true answered he me when he has not bound his hands by his own Laws But by the Laws of the Kingdom of England which are the Laws of the King as well as of the State the King is obliged not to suffer any other Religion in the State than the Protestant Religion These Laws cannot be repealed but by the Parliament jointly with the King because that in that Kingdom for the making or repealing Laws the King can do nothing without the Parliament nor the Parliament without the King Wherefore if the Parliament is against the Repealing of these Laws if they must subsist and while that they subsist the King has not power to establish in his Family a different Religion from that of the State You know said he to me that the people of England have great Priviledges and that the Kings have not the Right to do all that they please Particularly added he when there is a Prince to be established the States of the Kingdom who are obliged to be careful of the Preservation of the Religion are authorized to take all their Sureties that no change may be made therein Thus they must either remove from the Throne if they have the Right to do so he who would mount into it to ruin the Religion or at least they ought to bridle his Authority for the hindring him from making changes The Religion of Henry the 4th before he turned Catholick was an Obstacle to his establishment upon the Throne which he would never have surmounted though he was the legitimate Heir of the Crown Par. This man is very knowing He certainly came prepared upon the matter For extempore he could not have given to his reasons so great an air of likelihood Prov. He came without doubt prepared and I likewise perceived that he daily consulted people more knowing than himself For he cleared and argued strongly the next day upon such points as I had found him weak in the day before One of the points of which he spoke to me with the most zeal and passion was that of good Faith They oppose against us said he to me the English and Holland Catholicks But what has been promised to those people that has not been performed The United Provinces of the Low Countries are entred into the Union with this Condition of not suffering any other Religion in their States than the Protestant Though England was reformed under Edward the 6th afterwards under Elizabeth by several Acts of Parliament which are the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom it was ordered that no other Religion should
concerned I know how to lay under my feet all revenge and particular interest he added that after the Assassinate committed by the League in the person of Henry the Third Henry the Fourth was ready to see himself abandoned by his most faithful Servants because of the Protestant Religion which he made profession of which appears by a Declaration that this Prince made in the form of an Harangue to the Lords of his Army on the 8th day of August 1589 in which he says that he had been informed that his Catholick Nobility set a report on foot that they could not serve him unless he made profession of the Roman Religion and that they were going to quit his Army Nothing but the firmness and fidelity of the Hugonots upheld this wavering Party He must be said my Gentleman the falsest of men who dissembles the Ardour and Zeal with which those of our Religion maintained that just Cause of the House of Bourbon against the attempts of the League And to prove said he that their interest was not the only cause of their fidelity we must see what they did when Henry the Fourth turned Roman Catholick It cannot be said but that they then strove to have a King of their Religion However there was not one who bated any thing of his Zeal and Fidelity the King was peaceable possessour of the Crown the League was beaten down he was Master in Paris he was reconciled to the Court of Rome when the Edict of Nantes was granted and published Our Hugonots were no longer armed nor in a condition of obtaining any thing by force of arms since that the Change of Religion had reduced all the Roman Catholicks to him he would have been in a State of resisting their violence It was the sole acknowledgment of the King and of good Frenchmen that obliged all France to give Peace to a Party that had shed their Blood with so much Zeal and Profession for the conserving the Crown and the restoring it to its legitimate Heirs I avow that we did our Duty but are not those to be thanked who do what they ought How is it possible that these things are at present worn out of the memory of men I am certain that if the King was made to read the History of his Grand-father he would preserve some inclination for the Children of those who sacrific'd themselves to the glory of his House Par. It cannot be denied that this Party has rendered great Services to Henry IV and to the Crown But the Question is to know whether much be owing them upon that Account Have not they been well paid by a repose of so many years which they have enjoyed since that time Prov. I said to my old Gentleman after all in the bottom you have no reason to complain All that is done is with design of Converting and Saving you You ought to consider that it is the Interest of a State to have but one Religion Every one knows that the diversity of Religions is the source of Divisions and that often it causes great troubles You need only read the History of the last Age to be assured of it He thereupon answered me You open me a great field permit me that I stop a little here and that I make you see first That that is a misunderstood Zeal which endeavours at present the Conversion of the Protestants of France in the second place That this Design can never have the success that is expected and in fine that nothing is more opposite to the true Interests of the King than the Conduct they at present hold with us When I had promised him Audience he spoke to me much to this purpose First As for the Zeal which moves at present so many People to make what they call Conversions I must tell you that I never conceived that real Conversions were to be procured by such means They would save us you say in good time but let us be saved by honest means They damn us by endeavouring to save us even though the Religion to which they would bring us were good They make us sell our Religion they make a traffick of Souls threatnings and promises are employed no employ is given no grace granted without adding to it for Condition the Change of Religion The simple are surprized the Children are taken away they lay hold on the irreligion of certain people either Libertines or Brutes who having no sense of God are ever ready to betray their Consciences for Money In effect such people are paid the King is put to great Charges to recompence the Converts that is to say for the entertaining persons who have neither Religion nor Piety It is certain that of a thousand which turn Catholicks there is perhaps not one who does it out of a motive of Conscience The one has lost his suite at Law and his Goods and knows not where to put his head another ready to lose an Employ which kept him alive and which they would have taken from him sacrifices his Conscience for the preservation of his Fortune A Child angry with its Parents who had punished it revenges it self on them by becoming of another Religion than theirs A young Woman who has lost her honour goes to seek it in the strongest Party and is willing to cover all her infamy with the vail of Conversion If the Grandees be excepted who are tempted by pleasures and invited by hopes of some considerable advancement these Converts are almost all such persons as are the dreggs of the people who are drawn in by motives worthy of the baseness of their Birth and their Courage Let the holy Writ be read and see if the Apostles and their Successours ever made use of such-like means for the Converting Pagans and Infidels And with all the pains that are taken they will never succeed in the design of reducing by these kind of ways all the Protestants of France into the Roman Church Great Progresses have been made for some late years but do they believe that that will always last A long Peace had retained in our Party a great number of the ungodly who stuck to our Religion because they did not find themselves better elsewhere Those people who never had any Religion make no difficulty now to change it But our Party will purge it sell and when it is drained of the ungodly ones and when there is none amongst us but honest people who have persevered out of Principle of Conscience it will be no longer seen that so many persons yield to promises and threatnings thus the numerous Conversions will cease Moreover you must know Sir that they take you to be very credulous when they tell you of numerous conversions There are five or six Bigots in France who have erected themselves into Converters keeping a Register of their Converts and from time to time shew the King these Registers but they fill up these Catalogues after a strange manner Besides these Gentlemen
Oath of Fidelity He who spoke for them alledged all the examples of Emperours and of Kings who had been Deposed and Excommunicated by Popes upon account of refusing Obedience to the Holy See approved them he alledged the example of St. Vrban the Second who Excommunicated Philip the First and laid an Ecclesiastical Censure upon his Kingdom because he had repudiated his Wife Bertha Daughter of a Count of Holland to Marry Bertrade Wife of Foulques Count d' Anjou then still alive He made use of the testimony of Paul Emile who said that Pope Zacharias dispensed the French from the Oath of Fidelity that they had made to Chilperick These two Princes were not Hereticks yet the Clergy of France approved their having been stript of their States by the Popes which makes appear that the Clergy in the bottom judges that the Pope has Right to lay an Ecclesiastical Consure upon the Kingdom of France and to depose its Kings for any other cause as well as that or Heresâ—e Is it not to abuse the World to confess on one side that the Temporalty of Kings does not depend on the Pope and establish on the other that the Pope may in certain occasions Interdict these Kings Excommunicate them and Absolve their Subjects from the Oath of Fidelity In sine this is the result of that famous Opinion of the Clergy of France So that if Christians are constrained to defend their Religion and their lives against Heretick Princes or Apostates from their Fidelity to whom they have been Absolved the Politick Christian Laws does not permit them any thing more than what is permitted by Military Laws and by the Right of Nations to wit open War and not Assassination and Clandestine Conspiracies that is to say that when a Pope has declâ—â—ed a Prince deprived of his â—tates his Subjects may set up the Standard of Rebellion declare War against him refuse him Obedience and kill him if they can meet him provided it be with arms in their hand and by the ordinary course of War I cannot comprehend how one can be secured of the Fidelity of those who hold such like Maximes For in fine Kings are not insallible and if they happen to do any thing that the Court of Rome judges worthy of Excommunication and Interdiction they are Kings without Kingdoms and Subjects according to our Clergy of France as well as according to the Divines of Italy But perhaps that the Sorbonne which is the Depository of the French Divinity does not receive these Maximes so fatal to the safety of Kings Let us see what it has done In the Month of December 1587 because that Henry the Third for the security of his Person and of his State made a Treaty with the Resisters or the German Protestants the Sorbonne without staying for the Decisions of Rome made a secret Result which said That the Government might be taken from Princes who were not found such as they ought to be as the administration from a suspected Tutour This was known by the King he sent for the Sorbonne some days after and complained of it After the death of the Princes of Guise which happen'd at Blois the Sorbonne did much worse they declared and caused to be published in all parts of Paris That all the People of that Kingdom were Absolved from the Oaths of Fidelity that they had sworn to Henry of Valois heretofore their King they razed his name out of the publick Prayers and made known to the People that they might with safe Conscience unite arm and contribute to make War against him as a Tyrant If I would add to that the Story that I know this Gentleman told you concerning the Death of the late King of England we should find that the Sorbonne has ever been of the same Opinion Let things be told as they are every time that our Kings shall have assairs that will carry them to extremity against the Court of Rome the Clergy of France will suppress the discontents while that affairs go well for the Court of France but if things turn otherways the dictates of our Divines against the King will not fail to break out Every sincere person will allow that it has never been otherwise than so and that it will be always thus which may be observed in the very least disputes By example in that the King has now lately had with the Pope upon the account of the Regality and of the Vrbanists the publick has seen a Letter from the Clergy Addressed to the King when he departed to visit the Frontiers of the Low-Countries In that Letter these Gentlemen promise the King let whatever be the issue of his Disputes with the Pope they will be always inviolably fixed to his Majesties Interests But we know from good hands that the Archbishop of Paris and the Sieur Rose Secretary of the Cabinet are the sole Authors of that Letter the Bishops have almost openly disavowed it And this makes it apparent enough that in this Dispute they were of the Popes side Must it not then be confessed that it is the King's Interest to preserve the only Party that makes Oath of Fidelity to him without exception and without reserve that can never have engagements contrary to his Service either with Spain or the Court of Rome or with the revolted Clergy favouring the Enemies of the State And it is well known that in the time of Henry the Third while that all the Corporations of the Kingdom were in an actual Rebellion against their Prince the Hugonot was the only one which remained Loyal If it was necessary to add any thing more pursued our Civil Lawyer for to prove that it is the King's Interest to protect the Reformed in his States one might say that the Alliances that have been made with Foreign Protestants have not been disadvantageous to the State Since the year 1630 its engagements with England Holland Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg have been a great help towards its humbling the House of Austria Cardinal Richlieu successfully employed the King of Sweden for to punish the pride to which that House was mounted after the defeat of the Palatine House that had accepted the Crown of Bohemia And it is well enough known that the Protection that the King gave the Protestants in his Territories facilitated those Foreign Engagements and Alliances Thus our Orator ended and made a pause at this place Par. He has forgot a great Article That which is against the Peace of a State is ever against his Interests who governs it Nothing is more incompatible with Peace than diversity of Religions Prov. He did not forget it but he thought he had said enough for one time and referred what he had more to say till the next day This morning sour Gentleman returned and as what was said is fresher in my memory perhaps I shall give you a more exact account I know very well continued our Hugonot Civil Lawyer that I am to