Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/34



The concluding paragraph of the translation of 1686 is much abridged — it runs thus :—

“However, ’twill be no offence to God or good men to leave this writing to the world, as a protestation made before him and them against these violences, more especially against the Edict of 1685, containing the Revocation of that of Nants, it being in its own nature inviolable, irrevocable, and unalterable. We may, I say, complain, amongst other things, against the worse than inhumane cruelties exercised on dead bodies, when they are dragged along the streets at the horse-tails, and digged out, and denied sepulchres. We cannot but complain of the cruel orders to part with our children, and suffer them to be baiitized and brought up by our enemies. But, above all, against the impious and detestable practice, now in vogue, of making religion to depend on the king’s pleasure, on the will of a mortal prince — and of treating perseverance in the faith with the odious name of rebellion. This is to make a God of man, and to run back into the heathenish pride and flattery among the Romans, or an authorising of atheism or gross idolatry. In fine, we commit our complaints and all our interests into the hands of that Providence which brings good out of evil, and which is above the understanding of mortals whose houses are in the dust.”

The peroration of the original contained more details, and the protestation was ambassadorial both in form and in tone, thus:—

“But in the meanwhile, and till it shall please God in his mercy to bring that happy event to pass, lest we should be wanting to the justice of our cause, we desire that this Account, which contains our Just Complaints, may serve for a Protestation before heaven and earth against all the violences we have suffered in the Kingdom of France. Against all the arrests, declarations, edicts, regulations, and all other ordinances of what nature soever, which our enemies have caused to be published to the prejudice of the Edict of Nantes. Against all sort of Acts, signatures, or verbal declarations expressing an abjuration of our — and the profession of the Romish — religion, which fear, torture, and a superior power have extorted from us or from our brethren. Against the plunder that has been already, or shall hereafter be, committed of our goods, houses, effects, debts, trusts, rents, lands, inheritances, and revenues, common or private, either by way of confiscation or by any other way whatsoever, as unjust, treacherous, and violent, committed only by a superior power in full peace, contrary both to reason and the laws of nature and the rights of all society, and injurious to all mankind. But especially we protest against the edict of the 18th of October, 1685, containing the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, as a manifest abuse of the King’s justice, authority, and royal power, since the Edict of Nantes was in itself inviolable and irrevocable, above the reach of any human power, designed for a standing agreement and concordat between the Roman Catholics and us, and a fundamental law of the realm, which no authority on earth has power to infringe or annul. We protest likewise against all the consequences which may follow such a revocation, against the extinction of the exercise of our religion throughout the whole Kingdom of France, against all the ignominies and cruelties committed upon dead bodies by depriving them of Christian burial and exposing them in the fields to be devoured by ravenous beasts, or dragging them ignominiously through the streets upon hurdles — against the taking away children by force, and the orders given to fathers and mothers to cause them to be baptised and educated by Romish priests. But above all, we protest against that impious and abominable position, which is 