Nowhere is this arrogant assumption of a right to sole rule better seen than in this History of Protestantism in France; and nowhere has the resolution to attain the end been more unrelentingly pursued. To what extent a bigoted system will lead its followers, the early persecutions of the old Albigenses will show; but the renewal of the slaughter upon the inoffensive and industrious Vaudois for their adhesion to the cause of the Reformation, marks what little progress the Vatican, at whose instance it was perpetrated, had made in those Christian principles, of which it assumes to be the only veritable exponent: while the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants of France, in order to force them back into the Romish Church, continued in one form or another down to this very day, amply prove how vain it is to expect that the Church of Rome will ever abandon the notion of universal empire, that has always been its dream and aspiration. But although the incarnation of ambitious priestcraft is to be found in the prince-prelates of the Holy See, the ministry of nearly every religious community is obnoxious to the charge in a greater or less degree as its constitution liberates it from the control of the laity. That this was the conviction of the early leaders of the Reformation is evident from the organization of their respective churches; and that the leaven has tainted the majority of the Protestant clergy of France is shown by their preference to be salaried by the State rather than to be free to recur to the independence of the admirable scheme of connexional union propounded by Calvin. The ultimate right and equality of the People, who form the brotherhood of Christians, is an essential principle of a Reformed Church, and the contrary practice has more retarded the spread of Protestantism than any other cause. To use the expression of M. Félice respecting the Reformed Churches of France, it would be unjust to lay the whole blame of the disasters of religion upon the enemies of the Reformation; the Protestants themselves must bear their due proportion. Like the Established Church of England and like the Wesleyan Connexion, the Reformed communion of France is most threatened with loss from this quarter, and if one or the other fail in that energy and earnestness, which respectively characterized them in the beginning, it is to be attributable to their departure from the administrative institutions of the primitive Christians. The modern French Protestants may well deplore the sincere faith and fervid zeal of the early Calvinists, which re-acting upon their whole nature, rendered them as remarkable for their superiority in secular matters as in religious piety. If one were disposed to speculate upon the probable destinies of nations, and had certain events not happened, our imagination might picture a very different France in the present era; thus, had Henri-Quatre not apostatized,