THE POLICY OF THE CLERGY of FRANCE TO Destroy the Protestants OF THAT KINGDOM Wherein is set down the Ways and Means that have been made use of for these twenty Years last past to root out the Protestant Religion In a Dialogue between two Papists Humbly offered to the Consideration of all sincere Protestants but principally of his Most Sacred Majesty and the Parliament at Oxford London Printed for R. Bentley and M. Magnes in Russel-street Covent-Garden near the Piazza MDCLXXXI THE POLICY OF THE CLERGY of FRANCE The First Conference The Parisian THIS Sir is a happy Rencounter for me who thought you were at Paris Methinks you very much neglect your ancient Friends I ought not to have been the last to whom you ought to have made known your arrival since there is no body more disposed to do you Service than my self What brings you hither Does it lye in my Power to serve you The Provincial I am infinitely obliged to you Sir for all your Civilities and Offers But I have not at present any Affair of Importance the design of diverting my self of seeing my Friends of learning what passes in the World and of losing some of the rust of the Province has brought me to Paris And I am over-joyed that my good Fortune has made me meet with the man I honour the most and whom I have ever had in my memory but out of whose thoughts I feared I had been a long time banished Par. I knew you as soon as I saw you and have ey'd you this quarter of an hour to be sure my sight had not deceived me I likewise observed you was in earnest Discourse in that Book-sellers Shop with a Gentleman I had never seen before Who is he He seems to be well bred and appears like a Person of Quality Prov. It is an old Hugonot Gentleman and a great Friend of mine We have made several Campaignes together and having found much Virtue and Sincerity in him I never repented the great engagements I have had with him Par. Have you much Commerce with People of that Religion Prov. Some The most part of my Neighbours are of it and there are few of them that I know but who are honest People Par. For my part I have no dealings with them Not but that I inform my self very particularly of their Affairs and hear them often spoken of but I have no acquaintance amongst them And besides by what I have heard say I believe that such a Commerce is dangerous Prov. I am not of your Opinion I pretend to be as good a Catholick as another but I never found in those People any thing that ought to oblige me to avoid them They are of a very grateful and easie Communication they do not act the part of Converters in the World We hardly ever discourse of Religion together and when it is mentioned it is always after a very modest manner We talk pretty often of their Affairs but without heat and passion As to the rest I have always found them good French-men brave sincere faithful in their Commerce true Friends and you know this is all that is demanded for Conversation and Civil Life For the rest I do not penetrate into their insides to know if they do their Duty towards God Par. I am very glad to hear you talk thus for I am not unwilling to have a good Opinion of all the World But if you have Friends in that Party counsel them to retire betimes it falls and those who do not quickly abandon it run the risque of being oppressed under its Ruines It is a Religion very much decryed which every where runs into decay but especially in this Kingdom Some memory that had been preserved of the Services they had done the Crown had hitherto upheld them At present this is absolutely worn out The Disgusts they meet with at every step discourages the most zealous They quit a Party that is an invincible Obstacle to their Fortune And as things go morally speaking they are not to last ten Years longer They will be brought back without doubt into the Bosome of the Church from whence the boldness of their pretended Reformers has drawn them This is a thing that is made no longer a mystery of You see how P. Maimbourg speaks of it in his Epistle to the King at the head of the History of Lutheranism I hope says he to write suddenly the Rise and Destruction of Calvinism at the same time and is mightily tickled with these hopes Prov. I am over-joyed you are fallen upon the Point It makes a great noise in the Provinces and I have spoke of it often to persons who have not intirely satisfied me You are here at the Source of Affairs and I must beg you would be so kind as to instruct me therein But we must chuse a more Convenient place than the Pavement of St. James's Street which is not much better than the Sea Shore where P. B makes Aristus and Eugenius to have so long Conferences notwithstanding the heat of the Sun You know the Author has been rallied for it and though we were not acquainted with this Story the season and hour would oblige us to seek a shade and shelter Par. Let us go to my House which is but three steps from hence and be so kind as to take part there of a mean Dinner after which we will spend the Afternoon as you shall think fit Prov. I accept the offer without more ado by which procedure I fancy you will perceive me to be still the same man without Ceremony you know I formerly was They enter the Parisian's House they Dine there and after Dinner they go into a Parlour where the Conversation is thus renewed Prov. Since you have assured me you have no business to day and that we shall see no body I demand of you this Afternoon for the instructing me with the manner that is pretended for the reducing the Hugonot-Party to the Catholick Religion This Affair holds all France in suspence The Catholicks are in great impatience to see the Success of the hopes that are given them therein The Hugonots on their part say not all they think I see them very much alarm'd They chear up themselves We hope say they that God will not abandon the Party of truth They recall into their memories what they stile their Deliverances But with all this I do not believe them very safe Par. They have certainly no great reason to think themselves so for great Designs are on foot against them Prov. But the King is he of the Party Par. Do not doubt it The King is a good Catholick and wishes the Reduction of the Hugonots to the Church with as much zeal as any of his Subjects But besides that he is more than any man possessed with that noble passion which is called the love and desire of Glory It is represented to him That after having made all Europe tremble conquer'd so fair
as Bedlow I find he would be very Eloquent and that he would succeed admirably well in composing the Character of a Stage-Hero Let us speak seriously one must have renounced all Modesty to dare to maintain that all this great action is only a Comedy and a Fiction Par. But as concerning Father le Cheise whom your Hugonot spoke of in the affair of Coleman I have admired how the English have aspersed him by the publication of Colemans Tryal For this Father is every where therein in the middle beginning and the end and it is upon him that the most convincing proofs turn that are produced against Coleman It appears that this F. Jesuit was of the Party and that he was engaged very deep into the design of re-establishing the Roman Catholick Religion in England by fire and by the effusion of Blood Prov. My Gentleman made me that remark and told me thereupon Methinks that the King's Equity ought to move him not to hearken to such a Man in what regards the Interests of the Subjects of the Reformed Religion What may not the Protestants of France fear from a Man who has been so deeply engaged in the design of cutting the Throats of so many millions of Protestants What Counsels may not he give to the King against us who would have set whole Rivers of the Blood of our Brethren aslowing and make a St. Bartholomew beyond the Seas Though he was innocent of the Affair of England the advices he gives against us ought to be suspected For it is clear that he ought to have a great resentment of the fierce accusations that have been formed against him and that he would have the intention to revenge himself on the Protestants of France for the outrages that he might pretend to have receiv'd from the Protestants of England Wherefore it is certain that the King ought to consider him as our declared enemy and as a passionate enemy and not as a zealous Catholick However this Father Jesuit brags he is the Master of all the King's Resolutions in what concerns us It is he if he may be believed to whom the Catholick Church is indebted for all the severe Declarations that have been made against us And when the Declaration was obtained which forbids Catholicks to turn to the Reformed Religion he entred into the Assembly of the Clergy with that Declaration in his hand with a triumphing air and said Here is the piece that has been so long a solliciting it is I that have obtained it If this man be so powerful over the King's mind as he brags he is the Protestants of France could not be secure of their lives We know from good hands added he that the Members of the Council are not too well satisfied in that the affairs His Majesty was used to consult them about and believe them in are at present put into the hands of a Jesuit Par. For my part I avow to you I am not too well perswaded no more than you that this Conspiracy of the English Catholicks is a fiction But I endeavour to perswade it to others because that I wish it were so for the honour of the Catholick Religion which never ought to inspire such Designs Prov. Be it as it will my Hugonot Gentleman concluded from all this that a Protestant Prince can never be assured of the Fidelity of his Catholick Subjects On the contrary said he the Protestants are subject to their Prince out of Conscience and out of a Principle of their Religion They acknowledge no other Superiour than their King and do not believe that for the cause of Heresie it is permitted either to kill a legitimate Prince or to refuse him obedience Par. You might have asked him if what the English do at present against the Duke of York agrees well with that Divinity Because that he is said to be Catholick they would declare him uncapable of succeeding his Brother Prov. I had not time to propose to him that difficulty for he prevented it It is true said he to me that the troubles which are in England seem to tend towards the refusing Obedience to the Duke of York because he is a Catholick When a Soveraign is mounted upon the Throne by legitimate means it seems said I to him that he ought at least to have as much priviledge as his Subjects and enjoy as well as them the Liberty of Conscience That is true answered he me when he has not bound his hands by his own Laws But by the Laws of the Kingdom of England which are the Laws of the King as well as of the State the King is obliged not to suffer any other Religion in the State than the Protestant Religion These Laws cannot be repealed but by the Parliament jointly with the King because that in that Kingdom for the making or repealing Laws the King can do nothing without the Parliament nor the Parliament without the King Wherefore if the Parliament is against the Repealing of these Laws if they must subsist and while that they subsist the King has not power to establish in his Family a different Religion from that of the State You know said he to me that the people of England have great Priviledges and that the Kings have not the Right to do all that they please Particularly added he when there is a Prince to be established the States of the Kingdom who are obliged to be careful of the Preservation of the Religion are authorized to take all their Sureties that no change may be made therein Thus they must either remove from the Throne if they have the Right to do so he who would mount into it to ruin the Religion or at least they ought to bridle his Authority for the hindring him from making changes The Religion of Henry the 4th before he turned Catholick was an Obstacle to his establishment upon the Throne which he would never have surmounted though he was the legitimate Heir of the Crown Par. This man is very knowing He certainly came prepared upon the matter For extempore he could not have given to his reasons so great an air of likelihood Prov. He came without doubt prepared and I likewise perceived that he daily consulted people more knowing than himself For he cleared and argued strongly the next day upon such points as I had found him weak in the day before One of the points of which he spoke to me with the most zeal and passion was that of good Faith They oppose against us said he to me the English and Holland Catholicks But what has been promised to those people that has not been performed The United Provinces of the Low Countries are entred into the Union with this Condition of not suffering any other Religion in their States than the Protestant Though England was reformed under Edward the 6th afterwards under Elizabeth by several Acts of Parliament which are the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom it was ordered that no other Religion should
Par. I should be glad to know some of the particulars of your Conversations Prov. I waited with great impatience to impart them to you for he has very much fortified the difficulty that I intend to propose to you To speak seriously I must assure you he sometimes moved and touched me For example he told me yesterday Must so many efforts be used to force from us that French heart that God and Birth has given us What have we done to merit so many misfortunes and such severe punishments We are hunted we are drove up and down as if we were the Plagues of the Republick We are treated as the enemies of the Christian Name In places where the Jews are tolerated they have all manner of liberty they exercise Arts and Merchandize they are Physicians they are consulted the health and life of Christians is put into their hands And as for us as if we were infected we are forbidden to approach Children that come into the World we are banished from the Bars and Faculties we are removed from the King's Person we are banished from Societies our Charges are taken from us we are forbidden the use of all means that might secure us from being famished we are abandoned to the hatred of the People we are deprived of that precious liberty that we had purchased by so many Services our Children are taken from us who are a part of our selves we are made to lead a languishing life in lowness in poverty and often in dark Prisons Formerly when Declarations were made against us they were at most contented with Registring them in the Rolls They are at present fixed up they are cryed about the Streets as if they were Gazettes to inspire the People with a spirit of fury against us And they have been so successful that in the great Cities of France we expect to have our Throats cut one time or another by a popular Sedition so that we are very near the Inquisition Can it be said that there is Liberty of Conscience in a Kingdom where the People are banished lose their Honour and their Goods are confiscated for Religion's sake There needs nothing more than Fire and that terrible Tribunal of the Inquisition which France has been hitherto so much afraid of will be established there Are we Turks are we Infidels We believe in Jesus Christ we believe him the eternal Son of God we invoke him solely and we have no Idols We have a soveraign respect for the Sacred Scriptures we believe there is a Heaven and a Hell the Maxims of our Morality are of so great a purity that they dare not contradict them We have a respect for Kings we are good Subjects good Citizens faithful in Commerce Let us be tryed according to Law and it will appear if we have been engaged in any Conspiracy against the State and if we have any ways failed in our duty Thanks be to God nothing can stagger our fidelity and the stock of love we have for our Prince is not to be drain'd if it depended on our Enemies we should be Enemies of the State we make a part of they design to push us on to Crimes that the King may have a just occasion of ruining us but they have hitherto missed their aim and are like to do so still the King may see it whilst that they so successfully turn the effects of his goodness from us there is not one of us but who is ready to lose his life for his sake we are Frenchmen as well as we are Reformed Christians we would shed to the very last drop of the blood of our veins to serve our King and for the preserving our Religion even to Death Par. If your Hugonot Gentleman has studied Rhetorick he has not wholly lost his time Prov. I know not if he has studied much but I easily perceive that passion is the source of his Eloquence for he told me what I have newly related to you with a zeal and passion that would have moved you Par. But could not you have stopped that Orators Mouth with one word in telling him that if the condition of the Catholicks in Holland and England was described and in all the Places where the Hugonots are Masters one might make a representation of their miseries much more touching than that they make of the ill Treatment the Religionaries receive in France Prov. I did not fail to lay that before his Eyes but he had a hundred things to tell me thereupon Par. You would oblige me by relating some of them Prov. I will tell you them First in regard of Holland He told me that I supposed a thing very far from truth that the Catholicks are there in oppression I know said he to me that you have been in that Country and you cannot deny but that they go there with as much liberty to Mass as at Paris Would to God added he that our Reformed had the same Conveniences there is not a City where the Catholicks are in a considerable number but that they have ten or twenty Houses wherein Mass is openly said and with an intire liberty They are seen to go in there they are seen to come out from them and no body dares say to them a word against it All that they are troubled at is that they are not Masters of the Churches and that they are obliged to do their Service in particular Houses There is in Holland a Country of small extent ten times more Ecclesiasticks than there are Ministers in all France which is very large There is a compleat Clergy and Hierarchy Amsterdam and all the other great Cities have their Bishops These Bishops have their Chapter and their Priests There are even Religious Houses It is true that all these people are something disguised but are they the less known Would it be difficult to unkennel them They are as well known as the Ecclesiasticks are in France and are not in the least insulted It is likewise true that at the sollicitation of some of the most zealous of the people the States formerly issued out Placates from time to time which forbad the exercise of the Catholick Religion but this is no longer so and it never caused one Stone to be took up against them It cost them about twenty or thirty Pistols for the Sheriff who put those Placates into his Pocket and no more talk was heard of them He added to this That it is unheard of that in that Country the Catholicks have been fatigued for the being Converted they are not at all disturbed in their Commerce They are Merchants Physicians Artizans Advocates and except the Charges of the Government of the State they are received without distinction into all Professions without so much as enquiring of what Religion they are No Body has Actions brought against them upon the account of Relapses or for having changed Religion In a word Liberty of Conscience is entire there as well as in all other places where
cost the Lives of all those who should make Information and pass Sentence Oates and Bedlow are false Witnesses They are then false Witnesses of an admirable Character false Witnesses who agree perfectly well amongst themselves and never contradict one another But for all this they are false Witnesses who have concerted their business very ill If it is a Conspiracy it is a trick invented for the dishonouring the Society of the Jesuits to hang and quarter their Companions Methinks these false Witnesses ought to understand themselves something better On the Seventeenth of December five that were Accused were brought to be Examined and have their Tryal Whitebread the Provincial of the Jesuits William Ireland John Fenwick Thomas Pickering and John Grove Oates and Bedlow were produced against them as Witnesses These two Witnesses were found to know enough and to have said enough to cause three of those persons to be condemned Ireland Pickering and Grove Oates equally charged the five but Bedlow knew not enough to cause Whitebread and Fenwick to be condemned insomuch that they were obliged to send back to Prison these two last both of them Jesuits and to put off their Tryal till farther Information This is strange these two false Witnesses are great Fools Whitebread is the chief of the Conspiracy the Provincial of the Jesuits he whom they had the most reason to ruine and they are so imprudent as not to be of intelligence to tell one another what is capable of causing him to be condemned this is not to be comprehended Oates is a false Witness he says too much to be believed as is reported It must be confessed that if the Depositions of that Man are false it is the strangest and most unheard of thing in the World All the examples of fury of past Ages wrapt together do not approach that which is observed in this false Witness Never was there a link of such terrible Crimes as that Man charges the Accused with They have says he burnt London several times they would assassinate the King the Princes the Grandees and almost two thirds of the Inhabitants of the Kingdom overturn the State destroy the Religion change the Government and to that intent set whole Rivers of blood a flowing Is it credible that there is so wicked a Man in the World as to charge those that are innocent with so many Crimes Perhaps that a passion of revenge might move a Man to lay so Infernal a train to satisfie himself for some outrage he had received But what outrage does there appear that Oates and Bedlow had received from the Roman-Catholicks The most part of those that are accused maintain that Oates and Bedlow are unkown to them If they are unknown to them they have not then done them any outrage which might more them to so prodigious a revenge Moreover by the Testimony of those amongst the accused who confess they know their Accusers it is certain that both of these Witnesses were Roman-Catholicks They had not changed their Religion had it not been for the horrour of the Plot they had not become Apostates had not they been pricked in their Consciences they had not any other reason to be pushed on by a spirit of hatred against the Catholick Religion and against those who profess it wherefore it was only the horrour of the Fact which struck them and obliged them to prevent so horrible effusion of blood Methinks that false Witnesses should not charge themselves with so great a number of Facts lest they should be exposed to contradict one another There needed no more to be said than in two or three Articles that such People have Conspired against the State and against the Religion and might have been executed after that manner But it appears that Oates 〈◊〉 â—ourscore heads of accusation and makes a History of more than fifteen years well pursued and well 〈…〉 It is requisite to have an 〈◊〉 â—â—â—…tion that has hardly the like â—â—â—…vent such a Romance so well purâ—â—â—â—… I likewise find that those Witneâ—â—s are very bold to invent such horrible Depositions against People who so well know how to make use of the Knife for the dispatching their Enemies as appears by the Death of Godfrey The good Nature of those good Fathers would be very great if they did not revenge themselves on Oats and Bedlow in case that their Depositions were true but it is hardly credible that it would reach so far as to let two Impostors live peaceably who had charged them with the most horrid Calumnies that Hell had ever imagined And if they have a design to destroy them it is hard if they do not succeed in it sooner or later The King's Safe-guards and the Protection of the Parliament will little help them Wherefore if Oates and Bedlow were false Witnesses they are great Fools to expose themselves into so great a danger in this life for the damning themselves also in the other In fine my Hugonot Gentleman told me What have we to do with Oates and Bedlow to prove the Truth of that Conspiracy Let us take them if you will from off the Scene and judge of the business by Coleman's Letters to Father le Cheise and to some others These Letters have been acknowledged the accused have not denied them There is one to the Pope's Nuncio at Brussels Dated the 9th of August 1674. which says in proper terms That their design advanced apace and that they should quickly see the ruine of the Protestant Party Is any thing of more force than what Coleman says to Father le Cheise in one of the Letters he wrote to him We have undertaken a great Work it is no less than the Conversion of three Kingdoms and the entire subversion of that pestilent Heresie which has for so long a time rul'd over this Northern part of the World And we have never had so great hopes since the Reign of Our Queen Mary And towards the end of the Letter he powerfully sollicites Father le Cheise to obtain succours of Money and Arms for putting in execution this great Design It is perhaps by the way of Preaching that Coleman pretended to Convert those three Kingdoms Arms and Money are very necessary to give efficacy to Grace and Preaching It is certainly in that spirit of Zeal and well regulated Devotion that Coleman says Though I had a Sea of Blood and a thousand Lives I would willingly lose them all for the execution of this Design and if to bring it to pass it was requisite to destroy an hundred Heretick Kings I would do it These words are pretty strong It is Bedlow who has reported them and says he heard them If he invented them in cold Blood and without being moved with Anger I find him admirable in the art of feigning Passions For it must be avowed that these expressions give us a lively image of a Man the most moved and the most concerned that has ever been seen For a Man of War
years that the Latins are in Schism with the Greeks and all the pains that the Popes and Eastern Emperours have given themselves at several times have not been able to extinguish this Schisme If Prudence Cares and Vigilance have not been able to bring to pass the ruine of Sects that were not founded upon Truth and who had violated Charity by their Separation they ought not to hope to ruin the Party of the Reformed which is supported by Truth has purged the Church of so many errours and has in no manner violated Charity in separating it self from a Church that chose rather to chase away from its bosome than suffer any Reformation The conclusion of all that great affair will make appear that those who have Sworn the ruin of the Hugonots fall upon God himself which will not be for their advantage Par. This new Preacher carries it very high but what did you answer to all this Prov. As he had more advantage over me than I had over my Gentleman I was obliged to suffer the match being unequal But I resolved to let the discourse continue and to retain the principal things he should oppose me with to be informed of by you Is any thing of these Facts false that this man laid thus as I have recited them Par. No But though the Facts that he told you be true it is not certain that the Conclusions he draws from thence are very good which we will examine at one time But for the present I will not interrupt you Prov. Since you desire it I will continue to tell you what I can remember of a Conversation which appeared to me in some places something above my Capacity I hear continued our Civil Lawyer that this Gentleman has obliged himself to prove to you that the course they take at present in France against our poor Protestants is quite contrary to the Interests of the King and State Give me leave Sir to represent you several things upon that point First is it not true that it is against the Kings Interests to depopulate the Kingdom There are still in France near two Millions of Souls of the Reformed Religion If all these persons were away their absence would certainly make a considerable Breach There is no body but knows that the force of States depends on the multitude of Inhabitants It is this that makes the United Provinces so powerful It is incredible that so little a State can resist so powerful Enemies and carry it's name to the end of the World which only proceeds from the prodigious multitude of Inhabitants which are there It is this that makes Arts flourish there Necessity being the Mother of Industry It is the cause of the Commerce because the Territory being too little to nourish so many Men they have been obliged to go seek to the very ends of the World the necessaries that their own Country could not furnish them with And in seeking wherewith to keep them alive and that they might not be famished address has made them find out immense Riches The King knows very well that the force of a Prince consists in the multitude of Subjects Wherefore he has made several Declarations in favour of those to whom God grants great Families and who thereby the more contribute to populate the Kingdom He has ordered that those Victuallars who have have two Children should enjoy exemption from all Taxes Imposts Subsidies Collects and quartering of Souldiers It is his will that the Nobles who have the same number of living Children have two thousand Livers of yearly pension out of the publick Revenues and for the exciting young people to marry themselves betimes he orders by another Declaration that the young married shall not be subject till the age of five and twenty years to any publick Charges It is to this intent that such diverse Declarations have been made by his Majesty which forbid all his Subjects to leave the Kingdom and go inhabit else-where By all these Courses the King would get and keep Subjects But his Majesty by the Declarations which have been made against the Reformed has lost twenty times more Subjects than he can have gained or kept by those other ways which his prudence or that of his Ministers had suggested to him It will be made appear to him if he pleases that within these fifteen years his Declarations against the Hugonots have drove away of them out of France above sixty or fourscore thousand All the Frontiere Provinces of England Holland and Germany as Normandy Campagne and Picardy are already sensible of this particularly the City of Amiens Since the Temple has been taken from the Hugonots of that City it is certain that the most part of their Merchants have retired themselves into forreign Countries and that they have carried with them at least twelve or fourteen hundred thousand Livers of Riches out of the Kingdom and which will never return into it In case they would but make the least attention upon this point it would appear that it is impossible but that the Kingdom will be deserted by this Course It is certain that all the Reformed who lose their Goods and Estates by what is called the disgraces of Fortune do quit the Kingdom because that their Religion hinders them from recovering themselves by any means In chacing away all those who bear the Arms of the Guards du Corps of the Musqueteers and the Gendarmes and all the Kings Household in taking the Commissions from several thousands of Commissaries who lived upon their Commssions in neglecting the Officers and refusing them advancement In a word in taking away as they do the means of subsisting from an infinite number of Hugonots who cannot subsist of themselves they are drove out of the Kingdom and all forreign Countries are seen covered with French-men who seek for employ and the means of subsisting that are refused them in their own Country I looked upon it as a certain thing that of 50 thousand that the Rigour which is exercised against us reduces into this estate there are not five hundred who turn Catholicks all the others are as many lost Subjects for the King They are much deceived if they believe that little is lost in losing people who have hardly any thing For it is certain that the Armies of a State are almost wholly composed of such sort of people It is the industry of such persons who keep up Commerce and Arts. There is a City upon the Frontiers of Champagne which formerly belonged to the Dukes of Bouillon touching which I am informed they make great brags to the King that when he took possession of it that City was almost wholly Protestants and that at present the number of the Catholicks much surpasses that of the others But they tell not the King what was told me that the severity with which they treated the Reformed has obliged them to retire that the Catholicks which they fill the City with are Beggers and
poor Wretches That of a good City they have made of it a retreat for people who have nothing and who are a charge to the Commonalty that those Catholicks the City is filled with by expelling the ancient Inhabitants come from the Burroughs and neighbouring Villages Thus the King gains no new Subjects though the City gains new Inhabitants and he loses all the good Subjects who go away and seek for repose elsewhere and carry with them what Riches they have The same thing happens in the Provinces bordering upon Swizzerland and Geneva They are not sensible yet of this diminution but they will one day find it Besides they may assure the King that all those zealous Convertours who brag to him that they increase the Catholick Church will much contribute to desart his Kingdom It is certain that of those who change Religion to become Catholicks there is not the fourth part I dare say the sixth who persevere in the Religion that they have embraced They changed out of Interest Lightness Fear Love or some other passion which surprized them When passion is cooled reason returns those people are ashamed of their change and their Consciences become awake And as the most part have as little benefit in France as in another State it little imports them where they are and they go away to avoid the Rigour of the Edicts against Relapses At that place our Doctor stopped a little appeared pensive and thus renewed I am going to enter upon a nice Subject I have no mind to offend any one but I cannot forbear telling the truth We are all good French-men but the King has much more interest to preserve his Hugonot Subjects than all the others since it is the only Party of whose fidelity he can be secured Give me leave Sir to handle this point more particularly it is certain that the great disputes that France can have are with Spain and with the Emperour There is not a Family in Europe that can give ombrage to that of France besides the House of Austria Since Charles the 5th that House has ever aspired to the Universal Monarchy It is true that the King has brought it very low at present and made it fall very much from its High pretensions But in fine it is the Course of the world which is humbled to day to be raised again to morrow The House of Austria has raised it self from a very low Degree it still reigns in Spain Germany and Italy that is to say almost over the half of Europe and when these large territories become sensible of their force and to be animated by a great Chief they may put Fance as hard to it as they did formerly It is therefore certain that the great Interest of our State is to be always on the Guard on the side of the House of Austria and deprive it of its Allyes and weaken its Subjects and manage Alliances and form Adherences against it and extirpate out of France all that might favour it and entertain there all that is most opposite to it And this already makes appear how much interest the King has not to ruine a Party that can never enter into Intelligence with Spain The House of Austria has conserved so great a fury against the Protestants and the Protestants conserve so much resentment for the violences that they have suffered by the Princes of that House that those two Parties are absolutely irreconcilable It is not the same thing with the other Parties of the State It is true that there is some natural antipathy between a French-man and a Spaniard but you are too well acquainted with the History of our age Sir to be ignorant that notwithstanding those antipathies the Interests of the Grandees has often made such great engagements with Spain that they had like to have ruined the State The History of the League the entry of the Duke of Parma into France and the intentions that the wicked French-men then had to receive a King foom the hands of the Spaniards are Warrants for what I advance I could say something more new and add several stories of our Grandees who dissatisfied with the Court put themselves into the Spanish Party made Treaties with that Crown and would have been of very ill consequence to the Kindom if the preserving Genius of the state had not fenced off it's effects But though all the rest of France should enter into such a mind the Hugonots Party alone would be a Barriere to the State and would shed to the very last drop of its blood that it might not fall under the Dominion of Spain Par. The King in the State he is has little need of keeping measures with any one for the becoming formidable to the House of Austria he who makes all Europe tremble and carries the terrour of his Armes even into Africa Prov. That is true But wise Princes as the King is have longer prospects they do not onely consider themselves and their present State they consider Posterity and the future and take their Sureties against all that may happen Be it as it will our Civil Lawyer proceeding farther upon the matter told me Let me beg of you Sir that we may speak freely Is it not true that the Court of Rome has engagements infinitely greater with Spain and the House of Austria than with France Spain renders submissions to the See of Rome that France does not render it Spain does not talk of the Liberties of its Church as they talk in France of the Liberties of the Gallicane Church as these Liberties pass at Rome for Heresies or attempts against the Holy See Spain is submitted to the Tribunal of the Inquisition France rejects it even in what it has of Good In fine Spain keeps Faith and does Homage to the Court of Rome for one part of its States as the Kingdoms of Naples and Arragon and on the contrary the Kings of France will not depend on the Pope for Temporality and hold only their State of God and their Swords In one word these engagements between Spain and the Court of Rome are such that this Court does not at all ballance when it is to take the French or Spanish side and never kept it self neuter but when it feared the Forces of France Wherefore the Italian Party and the Spanish Party are to be looked upon as the same Party The King of Spain is Master of most part of Italy The Popes are often Spaniards by Birth and they are ever so by inclination the Spanish Faction amongst the Cardinals is ever the most numerous Thus the great Interest of the King and of France is to be ever upon the Guard against the Italian Faction which can easily become Spanish Now this Italian Party is not only in Spain and in Italy it is in Germany in France and every where else it is the Body of the Clergy One cannot be ignorant of the engagements that all the Roman Catholick Clergy has necessarily with