United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


There had been much wrangling between the Popish functionaries and those of the Reformed religion concerning the constitution of the burgher guard. The Calvinists could feel no security for their own lives, or the repose of the commonwealth of Holland, unless they were themselves allowed a full participation in the government of those important bands.

It was the depravation of that instinct which had in the beginning of the summer drawn Calvinists and Lutherans forth in armed bodies, twenty thousand strong, to worship God in the open fields.

It is indeed the typical old Huguenot city, conservative, discreet, with no fine art to show, with no wonderful monuments, such as make Rouen; but it is remarkable for its severe, somewhat sullen look; it is a city of obstinate fighters, a city where fanaticism might well blossom, where the faith of the Calvinists became enthusiastic and which gave birth to the plot of the 'Four Sergeants.

David's, and in 1622 he had a conference with Fisher the Jesuit, of which the printed account evinces how opposed he was to Popery; but his Arminian tenets gave offence to the Calvinists. In 1626 he was translated to the See of Bath and Wells, in 1628 to London, and in 1633 to Canterbury.

The Contra-Remonstrants in Brielle had desired that "men should see who had the hardest fists," and it would certainly have been difficult to find harder ones than those of the hero of Nieuwpoort. Besides the Jesuits coming in so skilfully to triumph over the warring sects of Calvinists, there were other engineers on whom the Spanish government relied to effect the reconquest of the Netherlands.

They had been beaten out of Holland by the Dutch Calvinists; and they could now fearlessly take their revenge out of their unarmed Huguenot fellow-countrymen. Whenever they quartered themselves in a dwelling, it was, for the time being, their own. They rummaged the cellars, drank the wines, ordered the best of everything, pillaged the house, and treated everybody who belonged to it as a slave.

It has been said that the Calvinists killed a hundred priests in this city, cutting some of them into pieces, and burning others over a slow fire. I remember very well every thing which happened upon that abominable day, and I can affirm that not a single priest was injured. The Huguenots took good care not to injure in any way the living images." This was the case every where.

In the beginning of the present century the missionary spirit among Christians was dead, and their zeal was wasted in disgraceful squabbles over inoperative and metaphysical opinions, or over modes of church government of which the Bible knows nothing. The Protestant sects were divided into two hostile camps, known as Calvinists and Arminians.

To one accustomed to the mode of spending Sunday evenings abroad, even among the French Calvinists, there seemed something Judaical, yet, at the same time striking and affecting, in this mode of keeping the Sabbath holy.

A well-behaved person had the goodness to inform me, after mass, that it was necessary to be rather more indulgent with the People of the Coast, if one wanted to live with them." This was an old euphemism for Flibustiers. The good father could expect nothing better, especially as so many of his audience may have been Calvinists, for the first habitant at Cap Francais was of that sect.