The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

STRUGGLES IN POLAND. 385greatness of their virtues or the grandeur of their cause.But not in vain did they offer themselves upon the altar oftheir faith. In the stillness that reigned throughout Europe,a solitary voice from a distant isle was heard saying," Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints !" —the first utteranceof a prayer in which a world shall yet join,and thefirst prophetic anticipation of a vengeance which, after thelapse of three centuries, God is now beginning to inflict uponthe blood-stainedsaints.dynasties and thrones which slew hisIt was the same in all the countries of Europe. WhereverProtestants existed they were assailed by arms and bytreachery, and the latter weapon was a hundred times morefatal than the former. The butcheries of Alva in the LowCountries were preceded by promises and treatiesand conciliation oft and solemnly ratified.Philip II. pledgedthe honour of Spain to his subjects in Flanders ;of peaceand thedungeons, the scaffolds, and the sanguinary troops by whichthat country was immediately thereafter inundated show howhe redeemed the faith he had plighted.In the great strugglein Poland, in which for a while it seemed an even chancewhich of the two faiths should acquire the ascendancy,Popish party kept theiropportunity of breaking them.itstheoaths only so long as they lackedWhen the struggle was atheight, Lippomani, the papal legate, arrived in Poland,and unscrupulously advised the sovereign, Sigismund Augustus,who pled that the laws of the kingdom forbade violence,to employ treachery and bloodshed to extirpate heresy.*To this policy is to be ascribed the ultimate triumph of theJesuitical party in Poland." As the laws of the country,"says Krasinski, " did not allow any inhabitant of Poland tobe persecuted on account of his religious opinions, they [theJesuits] left no means untried in order to evade thosesalutarylaws ;and the odious maxim that no faith should he Icept* Historical Sketch of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Reformationin Poland, by Count Valerian Krasinski, vol. i. p. 293 ; Lond. 1836.2 c