The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 231

saints believed. My faith has a confidence in God which will resist all
the powers of hell.”—D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe
in the Time of Calvin, b. 4, ch. 12.
Again and again the procession halted at the places of torture. Upon
reaching their starting point at the royal palace, the crowd dispersed,
and the king and the prelates withdrew, well satisfied with the day’s
proceedings and congratulating themselves that the work now begun
would be continued to the complete destruction of heresy.
The gospel of peace which France had rejected was to be only too
surely rooted out, and terrible would be the results. On the 21st of
January, 1793, two hundred and fifty-eight years from the very day that
fully committed France to the persecution of the Reformers, another
procession, with a far different purpose, passed through the streets of
Paris. “Again the king was the chief figure; again there were tumult and
shouting; again there was heard the cry for more victims; again there
were black scaffolds; and again the scenes of the day were closed by
horrid executions; Louis XVI, struggling hand to hand with his jailers
and executioners, was dragged forward to the block, and there held down
by main force till the ax had fallen, and his dissevered head rolled on the
scaffold.”—Wylie, b. 13, ch. 21. Nor was the king the only victim; near
the same spot two thousand and eight hundred human beings perished
by the guillotine during the bloody days of the Reign of Terror.
The Reformation had presented to the world an open Bible,
unsealing the precepts of the law of God and urging its claims upon
the consciences of the people. Infinite Love had unfolded to men the
statutes and principles of heaven. God had said: “Keep therefore and
do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of
the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great
nation is a wise and understanding people.” Deuteronomy 4:6. When
France rejected the gift of heaven, she sowed the seeds of anarchy and
ruin; and the inevitable outworking of cause and effect resulted in the
Revolution and the Reign o f Terror.

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