same of the other ministers, his brethren in your diocese, were I as well acquainted with their conditions?
“Hut it may be you will expound yourself of those who remained behind and changed their religion. And can you in conscience say that they returned peaceably to you? Does a town that holds out as long as it can, and when it is just ready to be carried by storm, then capitulates, yield itself up peaceably to the will ot the conqueror? They saw desolation everywhere surround them; the fire was come even to their very doors. The dragoons were arrived at your own city of Meaux. Before they were quartered upon the poor people, you call them for the last trial to a conference. Here you appear moderate even beyond your own Exposition, and ready to receive them upon any terms. W hat should they now do? Change they must; the deliberation was only whether they should do it a few days sooner, and prevent their ruin, or be exposed to the merciless fury of these new converters. Upon this follows the effect you mention. When the dragoons stood armed to ruin them if they did not yield, then they returned in troops and with great ease to the Church where their ancestors served God.
“And yet after all, has no one, my lord, even of these suffered violence either in his person or goods? Judge, I pray you, by the extract I will here give you of a letter which I received in answer to my particular desires of being informed how things passed in your diocese:—
“‘It is true that the dragoons were not lodged in the diocese of Meaux, but they came to their doors; and the people being just ready to be ruined, yielded to their fears insomuch that, seeing afterwards the pastoral letter, they would not give any heed to it, saying, that seeing it was so visibly false in an article of such importance, it did not deserve to be believed by them in the rest. Only one gentleman of the bishopric of Meaux, Louis Segnier, Lord of Charmois (a relation of the late Chancellor’s of the same name), had the dragoons. ’Tis true that after he had signed, he was repaired in some part of the loss he had sustained. But it happened that he did not afterwards discharge the part of a good catholic. He was therefore put in prison, first in his own country, but, (it being impossible there to deprive him of all sort of commerce), to take him absolutely from it, he has since been transferred to the Tour of Guise, where he is at present. Two other gentlemen of the same country are also prisoners on the same account.’
“But there is an answer to your pastoral letter that goes yet further:— Answer to the Pastoral Letter of my Lord of Meaux (Amsterdam, chez Pierre Savoret, 1686). He tells you of Monsieur Monceau, a man of seventy-seven years of age, shut up in a convent; of the cruelties exercised upon two orphan children of Monsieur Mirat, the one but of nine, the other of ten years old, at La Fertè-sous-Jouarre. Nay, my Lord, he adds, how even your lordship (who in the conference appeared so moderate) in the visitation of your diocese three months after threatened them that would not go to mass, that continued to read their Protestant books, or to sing their Psalms. And will you yet say there has been nothing of violence in your diocese — you are returned peaceably to us, you know it?
“I must then descend to the last sort of conviction, and out of your own mouth you shall be judged. Your lordship will easily see what it is I mean. The copies of your own letters to Monsieur U., who was forced to fly from his country, and out of your diocese, upon the account of the persecution you now deny, and which were printed last year at Berne, in Switzerland (with the title, La Seduction Eludée, ou Lettres de Monsieur L’Evêque de Meaux à un de ses diocesains qui s’est sauvé de la Persecution), have sufficiently satisfied the world of your sincerity on this point.
“Your first letter is dated at Meaux, Oct. 17, 1685. In this, after having exhorted him to return to you, by assuring him, that he should find your arms open to receive him, you tell him, ‘That people ought not to please themselves that they suffer persecution, unless they are well assured that it is for righteousness’ sake.’ (It was too much to deny the persecution to one who was just escaped out of it, and therefore you thought it better to flourish upon it.) To this he replies, Jan. 28, 1686, ‘That he pleased himself so little in the persecution, that it was to avoid those places where it reigned, that according to the precept of the Gospel he was fled into another.’ And then he goes on to testify the just scandal which the persecution had given him against your religion. Your answer to this was of April 13, 1686, or rather not so much to this as to one he had sent about the same time to his lady, and wherein he had (it seems) again declared how scandalised he was at the Persecution. And here you enter in good earnest on the argument. Instead of denying the Persecution, you defend it. You cannot (you say) find where heretics and schismatics are excepted out of the number of those evil-doers, against whom St Paul tells us that God has armed Christian Princes. (Dites-moi en quel endroit de l'Ecriture les heretiques et les schismatiques sont exceptés du nombre de ces malfaiteurs, contre lesquels St Paul a dit que Dieu même a armé les Princes.)
“And here, my lord, I shall stop and not multiply proofs in a matter so clear as this. Only let me remember you that there is but ten days’ difference between the date of this and of your Pastoral Letter — too little a while to have made so great a change. But I suppose we ought to remember here (what you told us before of the manuscript copy of your Exposition) that these private letters were designed only for the instruction of a particular person, and not to be printed; whereas that other which you addressed to your diocese was intended to be published, and therefore required another turn.
“As for the Bishops your brethren and friends, who have, you say, affirmed the same thing,