shing, amid the fires
of innumerable _autos da fe_, the genius, the chivalry, and the power of
that great nation. Look at it in France, whose history it has converted
into an ever-recurring cycle of revolutions, massacres, and tyrannies.
Look at it in the blood-written annals of the Waldensian valleys,
against which it launched crusade after crusade, ravaging their soil
with fire and sword, and ceasing its rage only when nothing remained but
the crimson stains of its fearful cruelty. And now, after creating this
wide wreck,--after glutting the axe,--after flooding the scaffold, and
deluging the earth itself with human blood,--it turns to you, ye men of
England and Scotland! It menaces you across the narrow channel that
divides your country from the Continent, and dares to set its foul print
on your free shore! Will you permit it? Will you tamely sit still till
it has put its foot on your neck, and its fetter on your arm? Oh! if you
do, the Bruce who conquered at Bannockburn will disown you! The Knox who
achieved a yet more glorious victory will disown you! Cranmer, and all
the martyrs whose blood cries to heaven against it, while their happy
spirits look down from their thrones of light to watch the part you are
prepared to play in this great struggle, will disown you! Your children
yet unborn, whose faith you will thus surrender, and whose liberty you
will thus betray, will curse your very names. But I know you will not.
You are men, and will die as men, if die you must, nobly fighting for
your faith and your liberties. You will not wait till you are drawn out
and slaughtered as sheep, as you assuredly will be if you permit this
system to become dominant. But if you are prepared to die, rather than
to live the slaves of a detestable and ferocious tyranny like this, I
know that you shall not die; for I firmly believe, from the aspects of
Providence, and the revelations of the Divine Word, that, menacing as
the Papacy at present looks, its grave is dug, and that even now it
totters on the brink of that burning abyss into which it is destined to
be cast; and if we do but unite, and strike a blow worthy of our cause,
we shall achieve our liberties, and not only these, but the liberties of
nations that stretch their arms in chains to us, under God their last
hope, and the liberties of generations unborn, who shall arise and call
us blessed.

THE END.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY MILLER AND FAIRLY.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See th