Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/230

Rh the actual God, and will one day judge all mankind." "But were they bad men?" "O, no, the best people in the whole town of Lyons—poor, earnest, devoted, kindly, sober people. They did no immoral act. They were the most benevolent men in the province. They left the little property they had to the poor of their company—they called it a church." "How did they die?" "They died, even the children, with the courage of a Roman soldier, but the gentleness of a Greek woman. But you know we must support the public worship of the state. We must not allow any change in religion, else we are ruined. This is an act of religion, which the gods command. Glory to the immortal gods!"

I come down still further to the same city of Lyons, to the anniversary of that same day—the day of the martyrdom of the celebrated martyrs of Lyons,—and I find a body of Catholic priests and bishops, with the help of the civil magistrates, with ecclesiastic ceremonies, psalms, prayers, and Scriptures, have just tortured a young woman to death, amid the plaudits of a great crowd. They held up her baby to her before they lit the tormenting fire, and said, "Repent, and your baby shall be yours," and she said, "No, I cannot;" and they dashed its brains against the stones of the street. "What has the young mother done?" I ask. The bishops reply, "She denied the infallibility of the Pope and of the Roman church. She declared that Mary, the blessed Virgin, was not the mother of God, the blessed Creator, and for such hideous blasphemy, we have just burned her in the name of the holy Catholic church of Christ, on the very day of the martyrs of Lyons. It is an act of religion. Don't look astonished. Did not God command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Did not God command Moses to stone to death a man who picked up sticks on Saturday? Did not God command Joshua to butcher millions of Canaanites? Glory to God and His blessed mother!"

I make another step, and come a little nearer our own time—the 27th of October, 1553. I find a company of Swiss preachers and magistrates burning a Spanish doctor outside the gate of Geneva. "Has he poisoned any man?" I ask. And John Calvin,—a pale thin man, with a very intellectual face, says, "Sir, he did worse than that—he