The Great Controversy - Righteousness is Love

213authority. But unhappy France prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples.Century after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectualacuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow theirconvictions and the faith to suffer for the truth–for centuries these mentoiled as slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeoncells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continuedfor two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation."Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during the long period thatdid not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the insane fury ofthe persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, theindustry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently excelled, toenrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in proportion as theyreplenished other countries with these good gifts, did they empty their ownof them. If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if,during these three hundred years, the industrial skill of the exiles had beencultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, their artistic benthad been improving her manufactures; if, during these three hundred years,their creative genius and analytic power had been enriching her literatureand cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding her councils,their bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her laws, and thereligion of the Bible strengthening the intellect and governing theconscience of her people, what a glory would at this day have encompassedFrance! What a great, prosperous, and happy country–a pattern to thenations–would she have been!"But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every teacher ofvirtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of the throne; it saidto the men who would have made their country a 'renown and glory' in theearth, Choose which you will have, a stake or exile. At last the ruin of thestate was complete; there remained no more conscience to be proscribed; nomore religion to be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to be chasedinto banishment."–Wylie, b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all itshorrors, was the dire result."With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France.Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts returned totheir native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral declension succeededa period of unwonted progress. Paris became one vast almshouse, and it isestimated that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two hundred thousandpaupers claimed charity from the hands of the king. The Jesuits alone