The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 230

own limbs spotted or infected with this detestable rottenness, I would
give it you to cut off.... And further, if I saw one of my children defiled
by it, I would not spare him.... I would deliver him up myself, and
would sacrifice him to God.” Tears choked his utterance, and the whole
assembly wept, with one accord exclaiming: “We will live and die for the
Catholic religion!”—D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe
in the Time of Calvin, b. 4, ch. 12.
Terrible had become the darkness of the nation that had rejected the
light of truth. The grace “that bringeth salvation” had appeared; but
France, after beholding its power and holiness, after thousands had been
drawn by its divine beauty, after cities and hamlets had been illuminated
by its radiance, had turned away, choosing darkness rather than light.
They had put from them the heavenly gift when it was offered them.
They had called evil good, and good evil, till they had fallen victims
to their willful self-deception. Now, though they might actually believe
that they were doing God service in persecuting His people, yet their
sincerity did not render them guiltless. The light that would have saved
them from deception, from staining their souls with bloodguiltiness, they
had willfully rejected.
A solemn oath to extirpate heresy was taken in the great cathedral
where, nearly three centuries later, the Goddess of Reason was to be
enthroned by a nation that had forgotten the living God. Again the
procession formed, and the representatives of France set out to begin
the work which they had sworn to do. “At short distances scaffolds had
been erected, on which certain Protestant Christians were to be burned
alive, and it was arranged that the fagots should be lighted at the moment
the king approached, and that the procession should halt to witness the
execution.”—Wylie, b. 13, ch. 21. The details of the tortures endured
by these witnesses for Christ are too harrowing for recital; but there was
no wavering on the part of the victims. On being urged to recant, one
answered: “I only believe in what the prophets and the apostles formerly
preached, and what all the company of

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