The Rise and Fall of the Papacy Author:Robert Fleming Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE RISE AND FALL or THE PAPACY. " Ip we may believe historians," says a learned man, " Pope Julius was, in seven years, the occasion of the slaughter ... more »of 20(3,000 Christians. The massacre in France cut oil' 100",000 in three months. P.Perizoniusavers,thatTn the persecution of the Albigenses and Waldenscs, 1,000,000 lost their lives. From the beginning of the Jesuits till 1580, that is, thirty or forty years, 900,000 perished, saith Balduinus. The Duke Alva, by the public executioner, put 36,000 to death. Vergerius affirms, that the Inquisition, in thirty years, destroyed 150,000. To all this, I may add the Irish Rebellion, in which 300,000 were destroyed, as Lord Orrery reports, in a paper printed in the reign of Charles II." And how many have been destroyed in the late persecutions in France and Piedmont, in the Palatinate and Hungary, none I believe can fully reckon up, besides those that are or have been in tlie galleys, and that have fled. This is thatidolatrous harlot, so glutted with the blood of the saints, that a late author, in his Treatise of Convocations, sets up as a pattern to the Church of England; and that another author, in his book, entitled, The Caste of the Regale and Pontificate, (to the scandal of the Church of England, for whom they pretend such a zeal,) would so fain have us united unto, and represents, therefore, in such favourable colours. But, I hope, all true Protestants will easily see the snake in the grass. And surely, when we are in hazard of being betrayed within ourselves, we have suf- ficientreasou to awake out of our lethargic sleep, that we may do what possibly we can to save the nations we belong to from approaching desolations ; or, if that cannot be, that we may, at least, save our own souls in the day of the Lord. For seeing we are...« less