Towns were taken and retaketj ; when the Huguenots triumphed they destroyed altars and images, and the Romanists in their turn burned all the bibles they could seize. Such were the effects of fanaticism on both sides. To assert that the excesses were only committed by one party would be untrue, and that some of our race were allied to angels ; but we hazard nothing in saying that the reformed, in almost every instance, resorted to arms from motives of self-preservation."

"Upon Sunday, August the 24th, 1572, was perpetrated the massacre of St. Bartholomew. De Thou, a Popish historian, relates that thirty thousand perished on this terrible occasion. Another estimates one hundred thousand. In Paris alone, they amoiuited to ten thousand, and among the number five hundred Huguenot lords, knights, and military officers, with several thousand gentlemen.

"This massacre which was perpetrated on St. Bartholomew's day, in the year of our Lord 1572, a year most aptly designated as infamous by Lord Clarendon, may be pronounced the foulest

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and the bloodiest of ancient or modem times. The black deed has handed down the names of Catharine de Medicis and her son Charles IX. to the universal detestation of after ages.

*'Ciiarles, by a public edict, proclaimed himself the author of it, pretending that he was forced to the measure by the Admiral Coligny and his friends. In honor of it high mass was performed by the Pope ; salvoes of artillery thundered from the ramparts of St. Angelo ; a Te Deum was snng to celebrate the atrocious event, and a medal was struck for the same purpose. If every Protestant account of this terrible transaction must encounter suspicion, we ourselves will be satisfied with the testimony of this medal alone of Gregory Xllf., at that time the Pope ; -- evidence that scatters to the winds of heaven all the excuses and attempted apologies for those who perpetrated the St.