Page 49 - 12 The French Reformation

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