Note 1215 — Chapter XIX · (continued 2)

Gaberel, ii. 325. The author of the really able and learned article on the massacre, in the North British Review for October, 1869, conveys an altogether unfounded and cruel impression, not only with regard to Beza, but respecting his fellow Protestants, in these sentences: "The very men whose own brethren had perished in France were not hearty or unanimous in execrating the deed. There were Huguenots who thought that their party had brought ruin on itself, by provoking its enemies and following the rash counsels of ambitious men. This was the opinion of their chief, Theodore Beza, himself," etc. The belief of Beza that the French Protestants had merited even so severe a chastisement as this at the hands of God, by reason of the ambition of some and the unbelief or lack of spirituality of others, was a very different thing from failing to execrate the deed with heartiness. If the words of Bullinger to Hotman, quoted in support of the first sentence ("sunt tamen qui hoc factum et excusare et defendere tentant") really referred to Protestants at all, it can only have been to an insignificant number who took the position from a love of singularity, and who were below contempt. The execration of the deed was pre-eminently unanimous and hearty.