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France’s Reign of Terror: Its True Cause
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his associates cast aside God’s Word altogether and spread infidelity.
Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel; and now
the masses cast off all restraint. Enraged, they rejected truth and
falsehood together.
At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king,
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the people were granted representation exceeding that of nobles and
clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but
they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. An
outraged populace resolved to revenge themselves. The oppressed
wrought out the lesson they had learned under tyranny and became
the oppressors of those who had oppressed them.
France reaped in blood the harvest of her submission to Rome.
Where France, under Romanism, had set up the first stake at the
opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first
guillotine. On the spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant
faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were
guillotined in the eighteenth. When the restraints of God’s law were
cast aside, the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy. The war against
the Bible stands in world history as the Reign of Terror. He who
triumphed today was condemned tomorrow.
King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atroc-
ities of a maddened people. Those who decreed the death of the
king soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all
suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. France
became a vast field for contending masses, swayed by the fury of
passions. “In Paris one tumult succeeded another, and the citizens
were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed intent on noth-
ing but mutual extermination. ... The country was nearly bankrupt,
the armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were
starving, the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization
was almost extinguished in anarchy and license.”
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and
torture which Rome had so diligently taught. It was not now the
disciples of Jesus that were dragged to the stake. Long ago these had
perished or been driven into exile. “The scaffolds ran red with the
blood of the priests. The galleys and the prisons, once crowded with
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Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors. Chained to the
bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy experienced