THE

CHRISTIAN LADY'S MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1846.

WAR WITH THE SAINTS.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM the wide battle-field so long deluged with blood, the principal combatants had passed away. Simon de Montfort mouldered on a spot defiled and devastated by his crimes; and the unburied corpse of Raymond VI., for which no efforts, no supplications, no lowliness of submission on the part of his son could obtain the privilege of burial from the vindictive Church of Rome, presented a monument of unavailing, because inconsistent, adherence to a better cause. Of the great army brought into Languedoc by the French king, it might be said, as of the Assyrians of old, that they,

untouched by the sword,

Had melted like snow at the breath of the Lord,

The monarch himself died very shortly after his parting exploit of committing to the flames the hoary head,

and palsied limbs of Christ's solitary martyr, Peter Isarn; and while another new occupant busied in settling himself on the throne of the Vatican, and a light-minded, intriguing Queen Regent took the reins of French government into her unpractised hand, it might be supposed that the drooping tree of the Lord's planting among the Provençals would once more revive, lift its head, and extend its branches. But, alas! the wild boar had wounded it too deeply for such a revival to take place ; and very few, and very feeble, and far-dispersed asunder, were the remnants of what had once formed so fair and promising a Church. The very pretext of seeking out heretics became scarcely available; and though Blanche, who now governed for the youthful son of Louis, dispatched a fresh armament against the Count of Toulouse, still nominally to extirpate heresy, it would have been difficult for them to give the semblance of a religious crusade to the expedition, had not those two veteran soldiers of the Evil One, Arnold Amalric and Fouquet, personally assisted in the campaign. The castle of Bécéde was taken; the garrison put to the sword; and Fouquet had the joy of discovering within the conquered walls a faithful Albigensic pastor, named Girard de la Mote, with a little flock gathered about him. They would have fallen undistinguished in the general slaughter, but the bishop rushed in to their rescue; and when the work of blood was finished, he proceeded to the still more congenial work of fire. The whole party were solemnly arraigned as heretics, condemned, and with every ceremonial that could give additional zest to the scene, burnt alive. Carried back in imagination to those times, and looking, as it were, on the horrible cruelties perpetrated by men who made it their brightest merit and highest glory to revel in the

death-throes of their unresisting victims, we must feel the glow of natural indignation, heightened by the knowledge that they did these things in the name, and professedly by the authority, and to the honour and praise of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they thus persecuted, and daily crucified afresh by their enormous crimes; but passing on from the past to the present, remembering the awful fact that these murderers are even now in a state of real, conscious existence, and anticipating the final doom which our own ears will hear pronounced upon them, while our own eyes survey their forms, called forth-terrible thought! to "the resurrection of damnation ;" we may well merge all other feelings in that of trembling adoration, as the question appeals to our hearts, "Who made thee to differ?" On the other hand, we know that the spirits of the martyrs are with Him who first suffered unto death for them; and while they stand rejoicing before his throne, the language of their blessed experience is, "Our light afflictions, which were but for a moment, have wrought out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

Very beautiful is the country where all these scenes of blood took place. The hand of God had decked it with mountain and valley, hill, grove, and plain. Rich vineyards mantled the graceful slopes, turning their purple clusters to the ripening sunbeam; golden harvests waved, and bright green pastures stretched away where the open plain prolonged its level, watered by rivers, of which the perpetual supplies came bubbling down the rocks, and widened as they ran into new channels. Castles of gigantic size, throwing out their fortifications to an immense extent, crowned by dark woods, while their site, frequently, was on the summit of a precipitous rock, were in keeping with the gran

deur of the natural scenery; though alas! the jealous care with which every part was rendered available for defensive warfare bespoke the constant expectation of some outburst of man's enmity against his brother man; and told how far the kingdoms of this world still were from having become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Yet, overshadowed as they were by the martial piles of their warlike lords, the simple dwellings of the lowly wore an aspect of conscious security and peace. The twining flower-stem threw its graceful arms around the rustic porch, and climbed the roof, and laughed in at the little casement; its lesser kindred spread their many-coloured forms of beauty on the ground below, intermingled with herb and vegetable, and fruit-bearing bush, with scarcely the defensive precaution of a few light stakes to mark the boundary where none were expected to intrude. Nor was the peace, in numerous cases, such as results from outward safety and tranquillity alone: in very many of those rural habitations dwelt the true son of a true peace, such as the world has not to give-such as the world can never, in life or in death, take away. That peace rested on the heads and in the hearts of the cottage dwellers, while they looked round on a landscape radiant with smiles, and undreading the approach of a hostile step. It rested there, when the land that had been as the garden of Eden became a waste wilderness; when the protecting fortress was dismantled, and turned to a heap of smoking, blackened ruins: when the soil, uptorn and trampled down again, became a pestilential admixture of corrupting flesh and congealed blood, and decomposed vegetable ruin: when the youthful son of many prayers and hopes fell a mangled corpse before the entrance of the dwelling which he vainly

sought to guard with his wounded body, and the crash of ruin bespoke the utter demolition of that frail tenement whence the son of peace was at length ejected : but how? and whither went he? Bound and fettered and scourged along the hideous road, now foul with death; his matron partner, and his blooming daughters, with raiment torn, and hair dishevelled, and shoulders laid bare to the quickening thong, dragging their bruised limbs after him, the son of peace proceeded on his way, satisfied that as was the Lord, so must His people be in this world, and neither daunted nor discouraged on his path of sorrow, sanctified as was every step thereof by the footprint of the great Forerunner.

They have reached the camp; and in a lordly tent sits the appointed vice-gerent of him who usurps a throne in the nominal temple of God. A dense company surround him, of bishops and priests, and all the ecclesiastical orders of Rome, clad after the pattern seen by John in the wilderness, in scarlet, and gold, and gems of dazzling lustre, such as their queen was decked in. An outer circle enclose this mitred and cowled company, of fierce warriors, whose burnished armour, flashing back the light amid the wild and graceful confusion of silken scarfs and waving plumage of every imaginable dye, add grandeur to the terrors of the scene. Who else is there? The son of peace is there; a most unwonted guest in that gorgeous company! The poor peasant stands before the haughty prelate who wields pontifical authority, defiled with dust and blood, and pale with the anguish that cries out from the overbur dened heart," Save me from this hour! yet, calm in the inseparable adjunct, so dear to the child of God, "Nevertheless not my will but thine be done!" Close behind him, close as wanton tyranny will permit them