Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

argument been the only weapon with which they
were assailed, argument would have been the only
weapon with which they would have sought to
defend themselves; but when a lawless power stood
up, which trampled on royal authority, annulled
laws, tore up treaties, and massacred Protestant
congregations wholesale; when to them there no
longer existed a throne, or laws, or tribunals, or
rights of citizenship; when their estates were
confiscated, their castles burned, the blood of their
wives and children spilt, their names branded with
infamy, and a price put upon their heads, why,
surely, if ever resistance was lawful in the case of
any people, and if circumstances could be
imagined in which it was dutiful to repel force by
force, they were those of the French Protestants at
that hour.
Even when it is the civil liberties only of a
nation that are menaced by the tyrant or the
invader, it is held the first duty of the subject to
gird on his sword, and to maintain them with his
blood; and we are altogether unable to understand
why it should be less his duty to do so when, in
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