We are not astonished that God by miracles, and the holy church by her veneration, has made this episode of the religious persecution of the Netherlands so prominent. If we will but reflect, it offers to us the most precious teaching; it presents one of those striking proofs which are sure to convince the good sense of the people. A cause which succeeds by such crimes as this is already judged; we are not called upon to condemn it. And if this is the cause of a "_reformed_ religion," what need has any honest man of any further arguments to convince him of its error? Was Christianity established in the Roman empire by overturning the government and giving up its inoffensive citizens to pillage, to outrage, and to murder? Does the "liberty of conscience" preached by the "reform" resemble the liberty that the church asked of the Caesars, and which she is asking of Protestant governments today? The champions of this modern "liberty" imposed their doctrines upon unwilling people at the point of the sword, while its opponents gave their blood in defence of their religious rights. In countries where Protestantism did not maintain itself by an unrelenting despotism, the people eagerly returned to the faith of their fathers, the very violence of the sects causing a healthful reaction. [Footnote 16] And this was also the case with the greater part of the provinces of the Netherlands, which gladly threw off the yoke of William of Orange and returned to their former allegiance--an example of a wavering faith being revived by the lawlessness of its opponents. The sectaries retained only seven of the seventeen provinces, now known as Holland, and which were inundated with the blood of faithful Catholic priests. The martyrs of Gorcum were only a little band of this vast army of Jesus Christ. In the year 1572, there were more martyrs in the Low Countries than in all the preceding centuries together: the cradle of the republic of Holland floated in a sea of Catholic blood. [Footnote 16: "France," says a Protestant historian, "after having been almost reformed, found herself, in the result, Roman Catholic. The sword of her princes, cast into the scale, caused it to incline in favor of Rome. Alas I another sword, that of the reformers themselves, insured the failure of the Reformation." (D'Aubigné, _History of the Reformation_, vol. i. p. 86.)]