“And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.” CHARLES IX, of France, a Roman Catholic prince, laid a snare for the destruction of the Protestants, by offering his sister in marriage to a Huguenot (a Protestant) prince of Navarre. All the chief men of the Huguenots were assembled in Paris at the nuptials; when on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s day, August 24, 1572, at the ringing of a bell, the massacre commenced. An unparalleled scene of horror ensued. The Roman Catholics rushed upon the defenceless Protestants. Above five hundred men of distinction, and about ten thousand others, that night slept in Paris the sleep of death. A general destruction was immediately ordered throughout France, and a horrid carnage was soon witnessed at Rouen, Lyons, Orleans, and other cities. Sixty thousand perished—and when the news of this event reached Rome, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the most solemn rejoicing, giving thanks to Almighty God for this glorious victory over the heretics! According to the calculation of some, about two hundred thousand suffered death in seven years, under Pope Julian; no less than a hundred thousand were massacred by the French in the space of three months; the Waldenses who perished amounted to one million; within thirty years, the Jesuits destroyed nine hundred thousand; under the duke of Alva, thirty-six thousand were executed by the common hangman; a hundred and fifty thousand perished in the inquisition; and a hundred and fifty thousand by the Irish massacre; besides the vast multitude of whom the world could never be particularly informed, who were proscribed, banished, starved, burnt, buried alive, smothered, suffocated, drowned, assassinated, chained to the galleys for life, or immured within the horrid walls of the Bastile, or others of their church or state prisons. According to some, the whole number of persons massacred since the rise of Papacy, amounts to fifty millions!—Cottage Bible.