manifest superiority over these Port-royal champions. Dr. Arnaud had great advantages over Claude in procuring troops from the Greek pappas. Ambassadors, consuls, missionaries, all were employed to hire forces, and poor venal Greek bishops were glad to furnish what they wanted at a proper price. Claude had neither conscience, commission, treasure, nor inclination for this kind of traffick, and it was glorious to his cause to be superior to the want of it. Ye infallible, irrefragable, angelical, seraphical doctors! ye sons of the morning! Must your vanity bow down to an illiterate, paltry Greek pappa! Shall he have the glory of selling syllogisms at so much a score, and you the shame of buying them! Why, this is a fanciful import of ivory, apes, and peacocks!*

Dr. Nicolle proceeded to harrass the reformed again by another work, entitled,-Well grounded Prejudices against the Calvinists. A base design of exciting a spirit of persecution, concealed under a crafty policy, and tending to ruin Christianity itself for the sake of involving the reformed in the catastrophe, distinguishes this bitter book. The Romanists, however, gained nothing by it; on the contrary, they lost much by Mr. Claude's answer, entitled,-A Defence of the Reformation, allowed by all to be a master-piece, the best defence of our separation from Rome, that either he,

* See Bayle, Arnaud, Rem. O. S.-Spanheim Strict. in Expos. Episc. Condomens.

or any other protestant minister had ever published.

Mr. Claude's next work is entitled The Parable of the Wedding-Feast. It consists of five Sermons on Mat. xxii. 1, &c. which he had preached with great acceptance at Charenton the year before the publication. This work at this time proved, that our pastor was not so intent on defending the outworks of religion as to forget the interior glory of it, for the sake of which the outworks stand.

About this time, Mr. Claude's only son, Isaac, returned from studying in the best academies in France, to his father, under whose tuition he might be prepared for the pulpit. For this purpose Mr. Claude drew up his Essay on the composition of a Sermon, of which I shall say no more in this place, than that it answered all his wishes on his son. The synod at Sedan examined him in September 1678, and the following October, his father enjoyed the pleasure of ordaining him to the church of Clermont Beauvoisis about fourteen leagues from Paris.

Mr. Claude, in this year of singular pleasure met with some mortifying circumstances. He saw the court apply every imaginable artifice to weaken the reformed churches. He found some of his own flock either imposing on themselves the papal yoke, or submitting at a certain price to have it imposed on them by others. He was not surprized at their pretended conversions; but he was extremely affected at the impiety of conducting them under a shew of argument and rational conviction. One day Mademoiselle de Duras, a

member of the church of Charenton, paying a visit to Mr. Claude, informed him, that she was under some scruples on account of her religion, and taking a paper out of her pocket, in which were contained some extracts from St. Augustine concerning the Eucharist, begged her pastor's assistance. Mr. Claude met this lady the next day at the Countess de Roye's, and was then informed, that she wished for a conference between her pastor and some divine of the church of Rome. Great pains were taken by Mr. Claude, and by several persons of quality, and piety, to dissuade Mademoiselle de Duras from desiring such a conference. Nothing could divert her from it.-She was sorry to say, she was deserted in her distress -this was what she had often been upbraided with, the catholicks had frequently told her, the reformed ministers durst not shew their heads before the Roman doctors. Her dear sister the Countess knew, as did the Marquis of Miremont, and Marshal de Lorge, the distress of her mind.She had no doubt of the ability of her pastor,and she had always found him a gentleman of finished complaisance, and affectionate sympathy with the sorrows of his people.--Did he know what good a conference would do her, he would not deny her this great act of charity. Thus the young enchantress pleaded, shedding all the time abundance of tears. Mr. Claude, who knew her conversion was predetermined, and that the whole was intended only to give an air of plausibility to her return to popery, was case-hardened

against all her compliments and all her tears. However, the tears of a young lady were irresistible arguments to the rest of the company, as they are to almost all mankind. Our pastor, therefore, was obliged to grant that to their joint opinions, which he had refused to the discourse of Miss Duras, and to agree to a conference. Were the conversion of souls to be effected by human power, juvenile female orators would be the proper missionaries. A delicate negligence of air, the soft suasion of a silver tongue, bedewed with the insinuating eloquence of a fluent eye, carried away all this circle against their own judgments; the grave pastor himself was forced along with the

stream.

Before we attend the conference between Claude and Bossuet (for the bishop of Condom was the papal champion,) it is absolutely necessary to investigate the then present state of religious liberty in four contending communions. Thus we shall come clearly to the true springs of action, and be enabled to reprobate the favourite project of reunion, adopted by Bossuet, the pride of popery, and discover the inefficacy of those means, which Claude, the glory of presbyterian reformers, applied to destroy it. I should not hesitate, were Mr. Claude alive, humbly to lay the following thoughts at his feet; for, as Monsieur de Deveze rightly observes, this great man followed new discoveries, occasioned by new objections, which time enabled 'the christian world to make. Duration would be ill bestowed on the world, were the last

of mankind to govern themselves wholly by the reveries of the first.

The union of all christian congregations in one grand corporate body is a godlike design. The author of Christianity professed to aim at making all his followers one fold under one shepherd; and, had officious human folly let divine wisdom alone, union had been effected long ago. The idea has struck all mankind. Princes and prelates, civilians and divines have all attempted to produce union. Not a soul of them has succeeded; and, we will venture to affirm, the man will never be born, who can succeed on their principles. They have retained the end; but lost sight of the original means of effecting it. All other means, soft or sanguinary, papal, episcopal and synodical, controversial or pecuniary, all have divided christians more and more, and widened those breaches, which they pretended to heal. This rage of union was the soul of the seventeenth century, and it convulsed and distorted the body, as souls agitated by violent conflicting passions transform the features of an incarnate angel into the face of a fiend.*

LI

The true original remedy for all these ills is the restoration of that PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS BERTY, which the Saviour of the world bestowed on his first followers. It was equal and universal. Church power was vested in the people, and the

* See Moshiem, cent. xvii. sect. i. part 1. 12. &c. This celebrated historian has assembled here Roman, German, French, Dutch, and English peace-makers, and affirms the substance of what is said above.