The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His WorksBunyan, John
Religion
The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His Works
Bunyan, John
Theology, Doctrinal
But who put the thoughts of the excellencies of the things that are
eternal--I say, who put the thoughts of the excellency of those
things into thy mind in this wanton age, in an age wherein the
thoughts of eternal life and the salvation of the soul are with too
many like the Morocco ambassador [Footnote: Evelyn, who lived in the
times of Charles I., Cromwell. Charles II., and William, refers in
his "Diary" to this ambassador, named Hamet. When presented to the
king, he and his retinue were "clad in the Moorish habite, cassocks
of colored cloth or silk, with buttons and loopes; over this an
ALHAGA or white woolen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and
body; a shash or small turban; naked legg'd and armed, but with
leather socks like the Turks; rich scymeters, and large
calico-sleeved shirts. The ambassador had a string of pearls oddly
woven in the turban. Their presents were lions and estridges
(ostriches.) But the concourse and tumult of the people was
intolerable, so as the officers could keep no order."] and his men
of strange faces, in strange habits, with strange gestures and
behaviors, monsters to behold?
But where hadst thou that heart that gives entertainment to these
thoughts, these heavenly thoughts? These thoughts are like the
French Protestants, [Footnote: By the famous edict of Nantes, which
was granted the Huguenots by Henry IV., they were allowed liberty of
conscience and the free exercise of religion. Louis XIV., grandson
of Henry, after a series of arbitrary infractions of that edict by
his father and himself at the instigation of the Jesuits, at length
in 1685 abrogated it, and banished the Protestants from the kingdom
under circumstances of aggravated cruelty. Great numbers of them
were dispersed through all the countries of Europe. Evelyn, in his
Diary, says that in 1685, "there had now been numbered to passe
through Geneva onely forty thousand towards Swisserland. In Holland,
Denmark, and all Germany were dispersed some hundred thousands,
besides those in England." In the Memoirs of the Reformation in
France prefixed to Saurin's Sermons, it is stated that eight hundred
thousand were banished from France, and that they carried with them
more than twenty millions of property. The refugees charged their
sufferings on the RELIGION of Rome, for Pope Innocent XI highly
approved of this persecution. He wrote a brief to the king, assuring
him that what he had done against the heretics of his kingdom would
be immortalieied by the eulogies of the Catholic church. He
delivered a discourse in the Consistory in 1689, in which he said,
"The most Christian king's zeal and piety did wonderfully appear in
extirpating heresy." He ordered the TE DEUM to be sung. Evelyn says,
"I was show'd the harangue which the bishop of Valentia on Rhone
made in the name of the cleargie, celebrating the French king for
persecuting the poor Protestants; with this expression in it: 'His
victory over heresy was greater than all the conquests of Alexander
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