Benjamin du Plan. By D. Bonnefois. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— Benjamin
du Plan was "a gentleman of Alais," in the Department of Gard, and the writer of this memoir is the pastor of the Reformed Church in that town. M. du Plan began life by serving in the army ; at twenty- two years of age (he was born in 1688), he "abandoned his position in the army, to devote himself entirely to the support and diffusion of the Protestant religion." He ended his life as a refugee in England. His were indeed evil days for the faith which he held. The Roman Catholic Church then possessed in France the power of which Leo XIII. so bitterly deplores the loss. She could persecute, if not as much as she pleased (for there were some limits which she could not afford to transgress), but with considerable rigour. Lay Pro- testants were not formally condemned to death for their religion. They were crushed by an infamous system of terrorism and violence, and if the stroke of a dragoon's sword was fatal, there was no need to inquire into the matter. Or they were imprisoned for life. Thus Jacquette Vigne (a simple creature, against whom there was no pretence of political accusation) was arrested in 1726, and in 1745 her jailers had to record that "her belief was unchanged." To be a minister was a capital crime. As late as 1752, Francois 13e-nC.zet suffered death for no other reason. These cruelties led to reprisals, it is true, and we are sorry, rather than surprised, to see that du Plan abetted them ; but that there was any political necessity or even excuse for the persecu- tion, is a pretence too monstrous even for the advocacy of the new champions of liberty of conscience. This memoir shows us a page of history which it is not in the interest of this generation to close.
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