Madame de Cental, who was proprietor of part of the lands thus laid waste and drenched in the blood of their quondam inhabitants, applied for redress to Henry II., who referred her to the Parliament of Paris. The solicitor-general of Provence, whose name was Guerin and who had been the principal author of these massacres, was condemned to lose his head, and was the only one who suffered on this occasion the punishment due to the other accomplices in his guilt, because, says de Thou, _aulicorum favore destituertur_, he had not friends at court. [9] Francis Gomar was a Protestant divine; he maintained, in contradiction to Arminius, his colleague, that God has, from all eternity, predestined the greatest part of mankind to burn in everlasting flames: this infernal doctrine was supported in the manner most suitable to it, by persecution. The grand pensionary Barneveldt, who was of the party which opposed Gomar, was beheaded on the 13th of May, 1619, at the age of seventy-two, “_for having_” (says his sentence) “_used his uttermost endeavors to vex the Church of God_.” [10] A pompous writer, in his apology for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, speaking of England, has these words: “These were the natural fruits of a false religion; there remained only one to be brought to perfection, which these islanders, justly the contempt of all nations, have cherished, and adapted to themselves.” Certainly this author has been a little unfortunate in choosing his time for representing the English as a people despicable and despised by all the world; for surely, when a nation gives the most signal proofs of its bravery and generosity, and when its victorious ensigns wave in the four parts of the world, no great credit is to be given to the writer who shall represent it as contemptible and contemned. But we must observe that it is in a chapter in favor of persecution that we meet with this extraordinary passage; and none but such as preach persecution can write thus. This detestable book, which seems the work of a madman, was composed by a person who has no ecclesiastical cure; for what real pastor would write in such a manner? The author has even carried his enthusiastic fury to such a length as to justify the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It might be supposed that a production full of such shocking paradoxes would be in the hands of almost every one, were it only on account of its singularity, and yet it seems to be hardly known. [11] See Ricaut. [12] See Kempfer, and all the accounts of Japan.