Reign of Terror

"The Revolution soon followed, and the example of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for so many ages was now retorted upon them with signal vigor. The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy experienced all those woes their Church had so freely inflicted on the gentle heretics." Historical studies, p. 297

"Then came those days, when the most barbarous of all codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals ; when no man could greet his neighbors, or say his prayers, or dress his hair, -without danger of committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner ; when the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled as close as the hold of a slave-ship; when the gutters ran foaming with blood into the Seine..." The living age, Volume 1, p. 109

"On the 10th of November [a donkey], dressed out in a sacerdotal habit, was led in procession through the town by two `san culottes,' carrying a sacred cup, out of which they gave the animal drink; and when they arrived at one of the public edifices, Bibles, books of devotion, etc., were piled up in a heap, which was set on fire amidst horrid shouts from a vast concourse of people...Wherever a Bible could be found it might be said to be persecuted to death...it is a remarkable circumstance that 26 theaters in Paris were open and filled to overflowing.." An Historical Sketch of the Protestant Church of France, by John Gordon Lorimer, p. 458-459

"The Church and the Bible had been slain in France from November 1793, till June 1797. The three years and a half were expended, and the bible, so long and sternly repressed before, was placed in honour, and was openly the Book of free Protestantism!" The Apocalypse of St. John, by George Croly, p. 124

"As there were reformers before the Reformation, so there were Bible societies before the great Bible society era which coincides with the early years of the nineteenth century." The manual of the American Bible Society, p. 9