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the height of madness to which those fanatics carried their vengeance against the Protestants, that for a person to
be well received, and esteemed, and considered of importance in society, his great merit must consist in
finding out and in recommending some new mode of tormenting the few remaining Protestants, who were
unable to flee from their native home, and who had secluded and concealed themselves in caverns and in
hiding places, in order to avoid meeting the eyes of superstitious man, who boasts so much of his civilization.
This is not the vain and idle fancy of imagination, it was maturely communicated to the writer by some of the
descendants of the most respectable Protestants, during his residence in that very city of Nantz, in the year
1783, and who under the mild administration of the benevolent Louis the XVI. had ventured to return to their
native country.
The pious Livingston in his continuation said, that an unhappy dispute arose between the mother country
and this favoured land. So disposed were the hearts of the American people to cultivate the relations
of peace with their mother country, that they concluded to send humble petitions again and again,
imploring the king to hear their just complaints and redress their grievances; and notwithstanding they
received no answers to their humble petitions, and not wishing to separate themselves from that country to
which they were attached by the ties of nature, they again resolved to make another effort at reconciliation, by
sending out commissioners for the purpose of presenting in person their humble petitions to the king. But still no
answers were returned; no notice taken of them; and no alternative was left but to confide in Him who rules
in the armies of Heaven and among the children of men. - The mercenary armies, both foreign and
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domestic, were employed to crush the spirit of civil and religious liberty in this happy land; and you
all know, my dear friends, full well, the privations we have endured, the mighty contests we have been
engaged in, the fearful odds we had to contend with, and the final result which has, under the blessing
of the Almighty, placed us in this exalted station. You had been wrongfully persecuted, your country has been
desolated by a sanguinary war, your rights invaded, and you was reduced to the alternative to take up arms in
your defence: your friends have fought and bled in the cause of civil and religious liberty; your altars had been
polluted - and still, in the midst of all this desolation, we have reason to believe our prayers have been heard,
and it has pleased Almighty God, of his infinite mercies, to preserve us even unto this day: he has restored us to
our homes and to our just rights: every one is now sitting down in peace and quietness under his own vine and under
his own fig-tree, none daring to make him afraid. Oh! then, my dear friends and countrymen, what shall
we say, what language can express, what can we render unto Almighty God for such signal, such inestimable
blessings? May we not truly and emphatically say, in the language of our text, "He hath not dealt so with any
nation?" Again, hear the language of the Psalmist in his 124th Psalm, on another occasion, somewhat resembling
our present situation, when the Israelites after they had been encompassed about by the mercenary
armies of the Philistines, and remark his confidence in God: "Now may Israel say, if it had not been the
Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us, then they had swallowed us up quick, when their
wrath was kindled against us; our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is
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