they walk not; neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. O Israel, trust thou in the Lord; he is their help and their shield." The enemies were awed by the sight of so much composure; believers were confirmed in their faith; and the people, whose indignation had vented itself in the first burst of anger, were astonished and affected. After undergoing these tortures, Leclerc was burned by a slow fire in conformity to the sentence. Such was the death of the first martyr of the Gospel in France.

19. SCHUCH.

TOWARDS the end of the year 1524, information was conveyed to "Anthony the Good" that a pastor, named Schuch, was preaching the evangelical doctrine in St. Hippolyte. "Let them return to their duty," was his stern reply, "or I will march against the town, and lay it waste with fire and sword." The faithful pastor resolved to sacrifice himself for his flock, and forthwith repaired to the city of Nancy, where the duke resided. Immediately on his arrival, he was lodged in a noisome prison, under the custody of brutal and cruel men. Bonaventure, the infamous confessor of the duke, now had the heretic in his power. He presided at the tribunal before which Schuch was examined. Addressing the prisoner, he cried out, "Heretic! Judas!! Devil!!!"

Schuch, preserving the utmost tranquillity and composure, made no reply to these insults; but holding in his hand a little Bible, all covered with notes which he had written in it, he meekly and earnestly confessed Jesus Christ and him crucified. On a sudden, he assumed a more animated mien,-stood up boldly, raised his voice as if moved by the Spirit from on high,-and,

looking his judges in the face, denounced against them the fearful judgments of God.

Brother Bonaventure and his companions, inwardly appalled, yet agitated with rage, rushed upon him at once with vehement cries, snatched away the Bible, from which he read those menacing words,-and "raging like so many mad dogs," says the chronicler, "because they could not wreak their fury on the doctrine, carried the book to their convent, and burnt it there."

The whole court of Lorraine resounded with the obstinacy and presumption of the minister of St. Hippolyte; and the prince, impelled by curiosity to hear the heretic, resolved to be present at his final examination, secretly, however, and concealed from the view of the spectators. But as the interrogatory was conducted in Latin, he could not understand it; only he was struck with the steadfast aspect of the minister, who seemed to be neither vanquished nor abashed. Indignant at this obstinacy, Anthony the Good started from his seat, and said, as he retired, "Why dispute any longer? He denies the sacrament of the mass; let them proceed to execution against him." Schuch was immediately condemned to be burned alive. When the sentence was communicated to him, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and mildly made answer, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord."

On the 19th of August, 1525, the whole city of Nancy was in motion. The bells gave notice of the death of a heretic. The mournful procession set out. It must pass before the convent of the Cordeliers, and there the whole fraternity were gathered in joyful expectation before the door. As soon as Schuch made his appearance, Father Bonaventure, pointing to the carved images over the convent gateway, cried out, "Heretic, pay honour to God. his mother, and the saints."

"O hypocrites!" replied Schuch, standing erect before those pieces of wood and stone, "God will destroy you, and bring your deceits to light."

When the martyr reached the place of execution, his books were first burnt in his presence, and then he was called upon to recant: but he refused, saying, "Thou, God, hast called me, and thou wilt strengthen me to the end;" and immediately he began, with a loud voice, to repeat the fifty-first Psalm, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness!" Having mounted the pile, he continued to recite the Psalm until the smoke and flames stifled his voice.

20. THE HERMIT OF LIVRY.

In the forest of Livry, three leagues distant from Paris, and not far from the site of an ancient abbey of the order of St. Augustin, lived a hermit, who, having chanced in his wanderings to fall in with some of the men of Meaux, had received the truth of the Gospel into his heart. The poor hermit had felt himself rich indeed that day in his solitary retreat, when, along with the scanty dole of bread which public charity had afforded him, he brought home Jesus Christ and his grace. He understood from that time how much better it is to give than to receive. He went from cottage to cottage in the villages around, and as soon as he crossed the threshold, began to speak to the poor peasants of the Gospel, and the free pardon which it offers to every burdened soul,-a pardon infinitely more precious than any priestly absolution. The good hermit of Livry was soon widely known in the neighbourhood of Paris; many came to visit him at his poor hermitage, and he discharged the office of a kind and faithful missionary to the simple-minded in all the adjacent districts.

It was not long before intelligence of what was doing by the new evangelist reached the ears of the Sorbonne, and the magistrates of Paris. The hermit was seized, -dragged from his hermitage-from his forest-from the fields he had daily traversed,-thrown into a dungeon in that great city which he had always shunned,brought to judgment,-convicted,-and sentenced to "the exemplary punishment of being burnt by a slow fire."

In order to render the example the more striking, it was determined that he should be burnt in the close of Notre Dame-before that celebrated cathedral, which typifies the majesty of the Roman Catholic Church. The whole of the clergy were convened, and a degree of pomp was displayed equal to that of the most solemn festivals. A desire was shown to attract all Paris, if possible, to the place of execution. "The great bell of the church of Notre Dame swinging heavily," says an historian, "to rouse the people all over Paris." And accordingly from every surrounding avenue, the people came flocking to the spot. The deep-toned reverberations of the bell made the workman quit his task, the student cast aside his books, the shop-keeper forsake his traffic, the soldier start from the guard-room bench, ---and already the close was filled with a dense crowd, which was continually increasing. The hermit, attired in the robes appropriated to obstinate heretics, bareheaded, and with bare feet, was led out before the doors of the cathedral. Tranquil, firm, and collected, he replied to the exhortations of the confessors, who presented him with the crucifix, only by declaring that his hope rested solely on the mercy of God. The doctors of the Sorbonne, who stood in the front rank of the spectators, observing his constancy, and the effect it produced upon the people, cried aloud, "He is a man. foredoomed to the fires of hell." The clang of the great

bell, which all this while was rung with a rolling stroke, while it stunned the ears of the multitude, served to heighten the solemnity of that mournful spectacle. At length the bell was silent,-and the martyr having answered the last interrogatory of his adversaries by saying that he was resolved to die in the faith of his Lord Jesus Christ, underwent his sentence of being "burnt by a slow fire." And so, in the cathedral close of Notre Dame, beneath the stately towers erected by the piety of Louis the younger, amidst the cries and tumultuous excitement of a vast population, died peaceably, a man whose name history has not deigned to transmit to us," the hermit of Livry."

21. JOHN LAMBERT.

JOHN LAMBERT was born in Norfolk, educated at Cambridge, and became a preacher to the English merchants at Antwerp. Here he was ensnared by the minions of popery and conveyed to London about the year 1532. After undergoing an examination before the archbishop Warham, he was confined in prison, where he remained till after the death of the bishop.

In 1538, his opinion of the nature of the Lord's supper became a subject of public notoriety. Gardiner, then bishop of Winchester-a man of infamous memory -seized upon the occasion to instil into the mind of the King, Henry VIII., that he had now an opportunity to clear himself from the aspersions which his opposition to the Romish hierarchy had brought upon him, if he would proceed vigorously against John Lambert for heresy. The king hearkened to this advice, and sent out a general commission, commanding his nobles and bishops to assemble in London to assist him against heretics and heresies, upon which he himself would sit