the deserts and
snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced
to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon
perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us,
we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that
sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and
compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by
common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by
an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we
should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or
the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same
religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over
this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert
ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their
rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we
most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will
bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors
and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to
their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they
performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who
has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over
Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they
had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and
faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal
Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers
in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer
to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter
either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may
have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the
Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods,
ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and
ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their
troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done
a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and
comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will
have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed
Religion,--ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your
kindness and clemency to those poo