Note 602 — Chapter VIII

The reconciliation between the statements of the text (in which I have followed the unimpeachable authority of the Hist. ecclés. des églises réformées) and the assertion of the equally authoritative life of Coligny by Francis Hotman (Latin ed., 1575, p. 18, Eng. tr. of D. D. Scott, p. 70). that Coligny's "love for true religion and vital godliness, and his desire to worship God aright," dated from the time of his captivity after the fall of St. Quentin (1557), and the opportunity he then enjoyed for reading the Holy Scriptures, is to be found probably in the view that, having previously been convinced of the truth of the reformed doctrines, he was not brought until then to their bold confession and courageous espousal—acts so perilous in themselves and so fatal to his ambition and to his love of ease. Respecting Villegagnon's promise to establish the "sincere worship of God" in his new colony, see the rare and interesting "Historia navigationis in Braziliam, quæ et America dicitur. Qua describitur autoris navigatio, quæque in mari vidit memoriæ prodenda: Villegagnonis in America gesta, etc. A Joanne Lerio, Burgundo, etc., 1586." Jean l'Hery or Léry was a young man of twenty-two, who accompanied the ministers and skilled workmen whom Villegagnon invited to Brazil, partly from pious motives, partly, as he tells us, from curiosity to see the new world (page 6). Despite his sufferings, the adventurous author, in later years, longed for a return to the wilderness, where among the savages better faith prevailed than in civilized France: "Ita enim apud nos fides nulla superest, resque adeo nostra tota Italica facta est," etc. (page 301).