The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century

by Charles Bastide

CHAPTER VI

Huguenot Thought in England

SECOND PART

The foreign land to which the Huguenot was compelled to fly acted upon him as a mental stimulus. With such an incitement, the progress of Huguenot thought after the Revocation becomes profoundly interesting. We shall examine it from the threefold point of view of theology, political speculation, and toleration, the last question being intimately connected with the two former, and all three questions being moreover inseparably related.

Most of the men of letters with whom we are now dealing being pastors or having been trained for the ministry, theology occupied a foremost place in their thoughts. In France, the Calvinistic discipline, though it had not suppressed heterodoxy, at least made its expression very guarded. When Locke was staying at Montpellier, he remarked that there was in the land room only for Roman Catholicism or Calvinism, no other creed being tolerated. A Toleration Act in the most narrow sense of the word, the Edict of Nantes recognised but one dissenting Communion. But in Holland and even in England, before the Revolution, the refugees could indulge in a certain freedom of thought. The charge of Socinianism brought against Colomiès does not seem to have indisposed against him his patron, the Archbishop. Heterodoxy spread so easily among the Huguenots in England that their orthodox brethren in Holland were alarmed: "We have learned from the good and excellent letter addressed to us by Messieurs our dearest brethren the Pastors of the dispersion at the present moment in London, that the evil has crossed the seas and spreads in England amongst the brethren of our communion and tongue."

These words are an extract from the debates of a Synod convened at Utrecht in 1690 to remedy the spread of heresy among the refugees. Not being backed by civil authority, its freely-distributed and strongly-worded anathemas fell flat. The efforts of the orthodox party were spent in petty intrigues like that which deprived Bayle of his Professorship. They endeavoured to lay a gravestone upon a living tree and were surprised to find the stone split.

This freedom in theology was exerted in two directions: the latitudinarian tenet that the Bible was the religion of the Protestants, now commonly repeated,[224] led to much regard being paid to textual criticism, and in this close study of the divine message all parties were united; the heterodox in their search after truth, the orthodox in their controversy with the Catholic doctors. It was the age when Richard Simon, the Catholic founder, according to M. Renan, of modern exegesis, flourished, and Le Clerc wrote his first book to dispute his conclusions. A more dangerous method was that of Bayle. The first to lead the life of an absolute free-thinker, whose mind is entirely severed from traditional theology, dispassionate to the verge of inhumanity, a perfect example of the abnormal development of the reasoning faculty to the detriment of sensitiveness, he must not be mistaken for a Pyrrhonist albeit he poses for one from time to time.[225] The contemporary Pyrrhonist would write in the spirit of Pascal's Pensées, and showing up the futility of man's effort to fathom transcendental mysteries, submit to a higher spiritual reason "the reason of the heart that reason knoweth not." With the subtlest dialectician's skill, Bayle merely opposes reason and faith. In every Christian dogma he delights in showing up the latent logical absurdity; not sneering, however, as Voltaire was soon to do, not even hinting at the consequences of his method. The little intellectual exercise over, he passes on to another subject. In spite of his destructive criticism, once out of the professorial chair, he leads the life of a good Christian and a righteous Huguenot. In the outward expression of his faith he never wavered. Unlike Montaigne, a sceptic of a different stamp, he never gave undue advantage to his personal comfort. To this day he remains, Sphinx-like, a faint smile lighting up his countenance, a psychological enigma.

In 1709 the great Dictionary was translated into English by J. P. Bernard, La Roche, and others, and again in 1739-41 by Bernard, Birch, Lockman, and others; already long familiar to English readers, who were not slow in recognising a very high literary merit in its lucidity of style and its extraordinary interest, it had thus been greeted almost on its appearance by a good judge, Saint-Evremond: "Monsieur Bayle clothes in so agreeable a dress his profound learning, that it never palls."[226] A direct influence could be traced of Bayle upon Shaftesbury, the author of the Characteristics.

But the influence of the heterodox Huguenot weighed little when compared with that of the orthodox. Much led to annul the effect of the Critical Dictionary on the mass of readers. For one thing, it came a little too late; then, a bomb exploding in the open does less damage than a bomb exploding in a closed room. Though looked upon as suspicious by an Archbishop who had never read them,[227] Bayle's works were allowed to circulate freely in England. On the other hand, a larger portion of the English public read treatises of devotion bearing the names of learned and illustrious sufferers in the cause of religion. Bishop Fleetwood's translation of Jurieu's Traité de la dévotion went through no less than twenty-six editions, and Drelincourt's Consolations d'une âme fidèle was a success before Defoe appended to it as a vivid commentary the story of the ghost of Mrs. Veal. In the struggle against deism that marked the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the widespread influence of such books told against infidelity.

Politics were then a part of theology. In the same way as the Revocation helped to break up the traditional Calvinistic theology, it shattered the system of politics most in accordance with the French reformer's political creed. As long as the Huguenots enjoyed the liberties granted them by Henri iv., their doctors had preached passive obedience. When the wave of persecution broke, some faltered, while others obstinately upheld the doctrine that had then become part of their Church divinity. No doubt in showing the glaring insufficiency of the old creed to meet the facts, the Revocation had a demoralising effect. To the reflective few the sudden change of doctrine of many illustrious theologians must have seemed very distressing. One bulwark of their faith, as they had been often told, passive obedience, was being swept away. What destruction might not threaten their faith itself?

Modern Protestant writers, especially in our democratic age, glory in those obscure predecessors of 1789 who asserted in the teeth of absolutism, the rights of the people; yet had the Edict of Nantes never been repealed, and the Huguenots suffered to live on, the hardy victims of petty vexations, it is highly probable that the same doctors who in Holland asserted the sovereignty of the people, would in their French Synods have hurled excommunication at any "followers of the Independents."

Jurieu's apology for his new opinion was frank and ingenuous: obedience was due to Louis xiv. as long as the Protestants were his subjects; compelled by persecution to renounce his allegiance, they obeyed another Prince who allowed them to profess other political opinions.[228] A little demoralisation must pay for every readjustment of conviction due to progress.

Up to the eve of the Revocation, the duty of passive obedience was set forth by the Huguenots. In the absence of solemn declarations issued by Synods, the last being held in 1660, we may record the individual sayings of the luminaries of the party. "Any Huguenot," Jurieu had written in 1681, "is ready to subscribe with his blood to the doctrine that makes for the safety of kings, viz., that temporally our kings depend on no one but on God, that even for heresy and schism kings may not be deposed, nor may their subjects be absolved from their oath of allegiance."[229] Acting as spokesman for his co-religionists, he added: "Our loyalty is proof against any temptation, our love for our Prince is unbounded."[230] Another pastor, Fétizon, opposing the factious doctrines of the Roman Church to the loyalty of the Huguenots, showed how they supported the King's absolute powers: "Where is it commonly taught that kings depend only on God and have a divine power that may be taken away by no ecclesiastical person, no community of people? Is it not in the Protestant religion? Where is it at least allowed to believe that royalty is only a human authority that always remains subject to the people that have granted it, or to the Church that may take it back? Is it not in the Roman Church?"[231] In his famous dispute with Bossuet, Claude maintained the divine right of kings.[232] Writing in the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres for April 1684, Bayle censures Maimbourg for charging Protestantism with sedition, and alleges the Oxford decree of the preceding year condemning Buchanan and Milton. The subject visibly haunts him; again and again he reverts to it, suggesting difficulties, arguing on both sides according to his wont, but clearly inclining to obedience. The persecution shakes his political faith a little; must the Huguenots in France go to their forbidden assemblies in "the Desert"? If it be true that it is better to obey God than man, who is to determine what the will of God is?[233] And again, the accession of James ii. is a good opportunity for Protestantism to show its true spirit; because the King frankly avows his Catholicism, his Protestant subjects are in honour bound to obey him. "The Protestants have never had so good an opportunity of showing that they are not wrong in boasting of their loyalty to their sovereign, whatever the religion he should follow."[234] The very year of the Revocation, Elie Merlat, a pastor who after suffering imprisonment had fled to Lausanne, published a treatise on the absolute power of sovereigns, written four years before, and which he, in spite of persecution, felt no disposition to cancel or modify. The subjects owe their king "civil adoration," and far from dictating to him, may not question his decisions. "If it is permitted to the subjects in certain cases to examine their rulers and ask them to render an account of their actions, the bond of public union is snapped asunder and the door opened to all kinds of sedition."[235] A faint echo is perceptible of Hobbes's teaching. All men are in the origin equal and free, but sin engendering a state of war, a few men, by God's design, have been instrumental in saving through their ambition mankind, whom they have reduced to obedience.[236] Absolute power, though not good in itself, is the supreme remedy devised by God to save man. The Calvinist's sombre teaching finds here its proper expression.

JEAN CLAUDE

In contradistinction with the Catholic doctrine, the Huguenot divines do not admit of an exception to the rule of obedience which they have laid down, not even that of an insurrection with religion as a motive. We have already quoted Jurieu's sweeping assertion. Like the early Christians, they wished to oppose only silent resignation to their tormentors. "The Prince," said Jurieu, "is the master of externals in religion; if he will not allow another religion besides his own, if we cannot obey, we may die without defending ourselves, because true religion must not use weapons to reign and be established."[237] "We deny," said Merlat, "that rebellion is justifiable to-day for religion's sake."[238] The same feeling of loyalty impelled the French congregation of Threadneedle Street, on 26th May 1683, to reject Lambrion, a minister at Bril, in Holland, because it was reported that he had said that "persecuting tyrants might be looked upon as wild beasts, and that any one might fall upon them."[239]

After the Revocation, a different opinion speedily obtained among the refugees. No doubt they were influenced in Holland, as Jurieu stated, by public opinion. The political education of both England and Holland was far in advance of that of France. Then the question, which before had seemed merely a theme for academic discourses, became a pressing reality. By most Huguenots the Revocation was looked upon as a temporary measure due to the intrigues of some Jesuits at the Court; the King, they repeated, would not fail to revoke his reactionary decrees when better informed about his faithful subjects; once more the refugees would be allowed to return to the homes of their childhood and enjoy their restored estates. As the months went by without bringing relief, they fell into two parties: on the one side, the peaceful men of letters and diplomatists by nature advocated temporising; on the other, the great mass of the people bearing the brunt of the persecution, the fiery ministers, the army and navy officers who had forfeited their commissions, relied only on the strength of arms and entertained wild hopes of a successful insurrection. As the fall of James ii. appeared imminent, the violent party more openly discovered their sentiments. Among them, the Prince of Orange recruited his soldiers and pamphleteers, who, like sharpshooters in front of an army, spread consternation among the upholders of arbitrary power in England a few years before the Dutch actually landed at Torbay. The advent of William iii. and the war that followed helped only to strengthen the party of resistance, insomuch that Protestantism has hitherto stood in France for a synonym of Republicanism.

On all sides the pamphleteers have received scant consideration: Bayle attacked them violently,[240] Jurieu declined to acknowledge them as allies;[241] yet their influence on the issue of the struggle carried on in England between the house of Stuart and the Whigs was far from inconsiderable. A press war was waged between the Prince of Orange and his father-in-law long before the official war broke out. "Several libels," reports Luttrell in the early spring of 1688, "and pamphlets have been lately printed and sent about; many are come over from Holland."[242] These were not the able productions of the London clergy, the Stillingfleets and Tenisons and Tillotsons, raising the standard of a holy war against the Catholic divinity that was pouring forth from the King's press. Scurrilous, libellous, violent leaflets came over from Holland to be eagerly devoured by the same credulous mob that believed both the Popish and the Presbyterian plots. Short, pithy, coarse, they may be read to-day, if not with the interest born of warfare in which one takes part, at least without wearisomeness. The most popular are issued in English and in French, so as to sting at one blow James ii. and Louis xiv. Such is the letter of Père de la Chaise, father-confessor to the French King, to Father Petre, James's notorious privy councillor (1688). A scheme being set on foot by the Jesuits to murder all the Protestants in France the same day, the King, to obtain absolution from his confessor for a horrible crime, grants the commission to execute the design. The letters duly sealed are about to be dispatched in the provinces when Louis xiv., whose conscience smites him,—because, after all, the most blood-thirsty tyrant relents where a priest remains obdurate,—confides the secret to Prince de Condé. The latter lays a trap into which the confessor falling, must needs give up the commission. Five days later, the Jesuits poison the Prince, and the Huguenots, deprived of their protector, are delivered over to the tender mercies of the dragoons. "In England," adds La Chaise by manner of conclusion, "the work cannot be done after that fashion ... so that I cannot give you better counsel than to take that course in hand wherein we were so unhappily prevented"—that is, to cut the throats of the Protestants.[243] Another production, the offspring of a kindred pen, was the Love Letters between Polydorus, the Gothic King, and Messalina, late Queen of Albion. The struggle over, and James ii. beaten, the victor, instead of lending him murderous projects against his former subjects, makes him the butt of coarse sarcasm.

To the same period belong more serious productions, due to the fact that both parties in England were anxious to appeal to some French authority. In a Catalogue of all the Discourses published against Popery during the Reign of King James ii. (1689), out of two hundred and thirty-one tracts noticed, there are no less than eleven answers to Bossuet. If Bossuet was the Catholic champion, the Protestants elected Jurieu to enter the lists against him. To the devotional works already mentioned may be added the political writings, especially the Seasonable Advice to all Protestants in Europe for uniting and defending themselves against Popish Tyranny (1689), and the Sighs of France in Slavery breathing after Liberty (1689), with the quaint information, "written in French by the learned Monsieur Juriew."

The violent party, headed by Jurieu and the moderate by Bayle, found in the fall of James ii. the occasion of fully publishing their several systems of political theology. "Formerly," said Bayle, "your writers, either in good or in bad faith, were careful not to approve of the pernicious teaching of Hubert Languet.... What are they thinking about now to publish so many books where, without circumlocution or reserve, they vent the same dogmas and push them still further?"[244] Under the same political necessities, the same doctrines, after an interval of a century, were reappearing. Religious leaders are inclined to advise their followers not to attack the secular powers, but when the inevitable conflict breaks out, a wholly different sentiment prevails. The early Christians, who had heard Saint Paul teach them to obey the Roman Emperor, soon found the denunciations of the seer of Patmos against the tyrant better suited to their feelings. In spite of Calvin, the Huguenots, when persecution became violent, were prepared to listen to the Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos. Circumstances favoured a revival of the "republican" doctrines of the sixteenth century: the English Revolution needed apologists on the Continent; the Protestant hero, William iii., although a King, held his title by the will of the English people; for once Protestantism and a liberal doctrine were confronted and impugned by Catholicism and absolutism. Apologies were accordingly written, by which must be understood abler, less scurrilous works than the productions of the hired pamphleteers, but pamphlets nevertheless, because the furtherance of a political cause was their immediate pretext. For years already had Jurieu been engaged upon the task of answering the numerous controversial works issued in France, in Pastoral Letters, the circulation of which the French police were unable to stop. Together with the controversial argument, each letter contained some new information, the account of a dragonnade, the prophecy of a shepherdess, the testimony delivered by a preacher with the halter round his neck, or a galley-slave dying under the lash. With the year 1689 new tidings came every fortnight to the Huguenots who read these letters, tidings of hope after so much gloom; under the rubric affaires d'Angleterre, their spiritual comforter recounted them the wonderful fall of the popish tyrant and the triumph of the hero of Protestantism and liberty. Yet the joy of some was not unmixed with scruples; was not James, after all, the Lord's anointed, and William the usurper? Was the deliverance only a snare and a pitfall into which the Saints must be wary of stumbling? To all which questions Jurieu had a ready answer.[245]

In principle all men are free and equal, but their sins make authority needful. They have chosen kings and governors to whom they have yielded sovereignty their birthright; not without reservations, however. In all cases a contract, either avowed or tacit, intervenes between rulers and subjects, the former swearing to govern according to law, and the latter to obey their governors. If the rulers break their word, the contract becomes void, and, sovereignty reverting to the people, the king forfeits his crown. If the king dies, the contract is void also, and the people have to choose another ruler. Monarchy, and in particular the French Monarchy, is therefore in its essence elective.

The origin of kingly right is popular, not divine; but God sanctions the popular choice, and, as long as the contract stands, it is sinful to disobey the sovereign. "The kings are the vice-regents of God, His vicars, His living images," and he goes on to use the comparisons of man who, though made in the likeness of God, is the son of man; in the same manner the king instituted by the people is God's representative upon earth.

Why, then, has James lost his crown? because he attempted to "violate consciences," usurping a power that no man could give him, since "no man hath the right to do war unto God."

With his usual impulsiveness, there is no doubt but Jurieu, had he not been chaplain to the Prince of Orange, would have become a republican. He is ever trying to give the kings with the one hand what he withholds with the other.

As early as 1682 Shaftesbury won his admiration: "He has perhaps," he said of him in an admirable character-portrait, "a soul a little too republican to live in a monarchy, but we do not think him guilty of the cowardice which is imputed to him."[246]

The Soupirs de la France esclave, published in 1690, attacks the absolute government of Louis xiv., whom he accuses of being a usurper, sovereignty belonging to the States-General. Historically such a position is untenable, but it is a significant fact that a little before the Revolution of 1789 the same book was reprinted under the title Voix d'un patriote. Jurieu proved a century in advance of his time.

Behind the chief press a band of lesser officers. Jacques Abbadie, after preaching up passive obedience in Prussia, wrote at the desire, it appears, of William iii., an apology of the Revolution. "Kings," he began, "are the lieutenants of God ... to offend them is to show no respect for the glory of God whose image they are, and for the majesty of the people in which they are clothed."[247] A subordinate's authority can never extend to a chief's. Unlike God's power, that of the king is limited. Even a conqueror, becoming the king of a conquered nation, enters upon a treaty by which he undertakes to protect their lives and property. The compact gives the king only the rights possessed by the individual free man, and these are by no means absolute. The people choose their kings, but God deposes them if they betray their trust. The desertion and abdication of James was brought about by God's Providence, and the English people freely accepting William for king, William's title is even better than that of his predecessor. Several restrictions are brought to bear upon the exercise of the right of insurrection, the most important being the denial of that right in cases of individual injustice. Limited monarchy is proclaimed the best and most perfect of governments.

The theories on which the political writers in the seventeenth century founded limited monarchy rapidly became popular among the refugees,[248] the dissentients being in small numbers. The most famous of these is Pierre Bayle, the author of the Dictionary. The development of his political theory is characteristic of his whole enigmatic mental nature. Brought up by the French Jesuits, as Voltaire was to be a few years later, afterwards a student of divinity in Geneva, and a Professor in the very orthodox Academy of Sedan, with Jurieu for colleague and friend, he accepted a chair of philosophy in a small Dutch college in Rotterdam (the schola illustris). The greater part of his life was thus spent among republicans, and under republican government; in Holland his best friends were the few republicans that piously venerated the memory of the unfortunate De Witts, so much so that the Prince of Orange suspected his loyalty. Yet his faith in absolutism remained unshaken. With the aversion of the man of letters for the mob, an incapacity of sharing the general enthusiasm for William, and a very great and genuine affection for his country, he could not sympathise with the violent party. Some imperfectly known private resentment urged him to contradict Jurieu, a leader that had the completest faith in his own infallibility. Lastly, Bayle's cast of mind lent flavour to the design of exposing the error ever lurking in accepted truths, insomuch that for any one who has carefully read Bayle, the authorship of the Avis aux réfugiés is not doubtful. The famous answer to the political doctrine of the Pastoral Letters, the last able defence of absolutism, was penned by Bayle and no other. In the number of the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres for September 1684, some words about the fiction of the decision of the majority standing for that of the whole contains in germ an important argument of the Avis aux réfugiés.[249] An English dissenter is supposed to be the author of the Philosophical Commentary, yet when speaking of sovereignty he leaves it an open question whether its origin is divine or popular; for, even under his disguise, Bayle did not care to renounce entirely his personal convictions.

The Avis aux réfugiés falls into two divisions: in the former, the refugees are reproached with writing libellous pamphlets against the French King; in the latter, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, "that pet chimera," is confronted with some weighty arguments. From the doctrine must be inferred the right of the people to revolt against their Prince, the individual being in all cases entitled to criticise the decisions of the executive. Anarchy must necessarily ensue: "If the people reserved unto themselves the right of free inquiry and the liberty of obeying or not, according as they found just or unjust the orders of those that commanded, it would not be possible to preserve the public peace."[250] The right of the majority to overrule the minority cannot obtain if the people are sovereign; should the majority use coercion, they act unjustly; nothing can be reproached the minority if they call foreign soldiers to their aid. The oath of allegiance is a farce, since the safety of the people is the supreme law. No one can deny the force of these arguments. The liberal doctrines are two-edged swords striking the tyrant down, it is true, but not without inflicting wounds on the people. France in the nineteenth century experienced some of the evils resulting from the continual presence in the minds of the people of their right to remedy sometimes slight evil by insurrection. It remained, of course, to the Anglo-Saxon race to contradict the too general statement of Bayle by showing how masses under favourable circumstances could be taught the exercise of self-government.

Next to the general argument are some minor arguments drawn from the immediate events. Jeremy Collier, the non-juror, would have used them with great effect had he known them. Are the Irish Jacobites rebels or no? The refugees under Schomberg treat them as such, and yet the King of England is at their head. The answer, of course, is that Ireland, being a country added to England by conquest, is bound to acknowledge the sovereign chosen by England. If the Emperor in becoming a Calvinist were deposed by the Electors, would not the Protestants throughout Europe once again preach up passive obedience? History justifies the charges of this remarkable little book, to which there only lacks the proposition that large sections of mankind are constantly reshaping their political doctrines to meet the pressure of unforeseen events. As the expected advent to the throne of France of Henri de Navarre made the sovereignty of the people acceptable to Ultramontanes, so the English Revolution appeared to Huguenots a convincing argument in favour of the same doctrine.

Between Bayle and Voltaire, more than one striking analogy can be noticed. Both in respect to French internal politics held the same opinion. Persecuted by fanatical Huguenot ministers and Catholic priests, they dreamed of an impossible alliance between the King and the free-thinking tolerant men of letters. It is certain that Bayle corresponded with Pélisson, Secretary of State to Louis xiv. In the Avis aux réfugiés he probably stretched to their utmost his concessions to the French Court. Nothing short of going to Mass was deemed sufficient to allow him to reside in France, so he brushed aside the temptation. But public opinion in France treated him well. Boileau, then a kind of sovereign magistrate in the Republic of Letters, expressed high approval of the Dictionary, and the French courts of law, contrary to the King's edicts, admitted Bayle's will to be valid.

For reasons different from Bayle, Basnage kept shy of the liberal doctrines. Although Jurieu's son-in-law, he was essentially for moderate courses. Saumaise, Amyraut, Claude, he thought, had gone too far in extolling divine right,[251] but Bayle was right in the main. Held in high esteem by the States-General, Basnage exerted himself in different diplomatic missions to wring some concessions from the French Court. Wishing his co-religionists to return to France, he thought it expedient to publish his thoughts on the subject of obedience. Like his father-in-law, he wrote, but in a less heroic strain, Pastoral Letters to the Huguenots remaining in France. "Remember," he said, "only the teachings of the Gospel and the principles that we derive from Holy Scripture, and that we shall inculcate till the end of our life without change, that loyalty to the sovereign must be inviolable, not only through fear, but for conscience sake."[252] He warns them against holding large noisy assemblies in the "desert," advising family prayers in the stead: "Do not call down upon yourselves by tumultuous assemblies and indiscreet zeal, fresh misfortunes which in the present time would appear to be due to justice rather than to hatred and difference of religion." On no account are they to bear arms: "You ought to be alive to the honour of your religion ... that never authorises any one to bear and use arms for his preservation."[253]

Those diplomatic words do not reflect the general feeling of the refugees; in England they adopted, as we have seen, current Whig theories; for them the French and the Tory interest coincided. Later on, they supported the house of Hanover. In an address presented to the King a little before the rebellion of 1745 by the merchants of the City of London, out of 542 names, Rev. D. Agnew identified no less than 99 refugees. The Tories, feeling the danger accruing to them from this active Whig element, brought against them several measures. The Act of Settlement passed by a Tory administration had a clause that, ostensibly directed against the Dutch favourites of the King, was detrimental to the refugees. In 1705, the Tory majority in the Commons rejected a Naturalization Bill, for fear the new-made subjects should return Whig members.[254]

The problem of toleration interests politics as well as religion. For the refugees who, driven from France, settled in England or Holland, civil toleration was in question only in so far as it referred to the French King's policy. But in the French churches abroad, the question of ecclesiastical toleration arose from the intolerance displayed by the Synods to the heterodox preachers. From those various discussions two dissimilar theories presently took shape, in which once more Bayle and Jurieu were pitted together.

Bayle, hearing how his brother had died for his religion in a French prison, dashed off against the persecutors a virulent pamphlet[255] out of which there soon grew a theory of toleration. The chief argument of the Catholic clergy was Christ's words in the parable: "Compel them to come in." Bayle set to work to show how the literal meaning of the words must be rejected, because force cannot give faith; it is contrary to Christ's meekness, it confounds justice and injustice, and is the cause of civil wars; it makes Christianity hateful in the eyes of the pagans, and is a temptation to sin, the dragoons losing their souls in carrying out their master's commands; it makes the persecution of the early Christians justifiable, and entitles every sect to persecute in the name of truth, which to their belief they possess.

After that preliminary passage of arms, comes the capital argument in the book. Conscience in each individual is the sovereign judge whom he is bound to obey. Since invincible causes often prevent us from discovering truth, all that God asks of us is sincerity. If a pagan is guilty before Heaven, it is not because he is an idolater, but for crimes committed against the dictates of his conscience. The greatest crime is to disobey one's conscience, to be insincere. A heretic of good faith is entitled from a human point of view to the same respect as a sincere believer. Persecution being contrary to the order of things established by God, is not only criminal but absurd.[256]

A reply to the Commentary was dashed off by Jurieu, who always wrote at white-heat.[257] When there is, as often happens, a conflict between the revealed law of God and the dictates of the individual conscience, if our conscience is the sovereign judge, God's word is in vain. Justice, equity depending on individual caprice, the responsibility of the criminal logically disappears. A murderer like Ravaillac, who, in stabbing Henri IV., obeys his conscience, must not in strict justice be put to death. No happier state there is, according to the Commentary, than that of a cannibal innocent, because his conscience is not enlightened, and free to follow the lowest instincts of man's nature. Erring conscience to Jurieu's mind has the power, not the right, to command; the fountain-head of right is justice and truth, not their counterfeit.

In a supplement to the Commentary, published in 1687, Bayle met Jurieu's attack. On the question of toleration no distinction can be drawn between orthodoxy and heresy. Suppose that, in obedience to Christ's command to give alms, a man relieves a fellow-creature feigning to be poor, he has none the less obeyed the command; therefore a heretic compelling an orthodox to renounce his belief obeys Christ's command "compel them to come in." The Protestant has the same right as the Catholic to persecute, the Pagan as the Christian, and the whole argument of the upholders of intolerance rests on worthless distinctions.

This objection Jurieu had foreseen by expounding a bold uncompromising theory. The right to persecute is a right granted by God to the Christian magistrate. No Church of Christ can hold its own in the struggle going on in this world against darkness and sin without the use of force. Early Christianity would never have won ascendancy without the help of the Christian Emperors who destroyed the Pagan temples and forbade the worship of the false deities. "It is God's will that the Kings of the world should despoil the Beast and smite down its image." The King of France has no right to persecute the Huguenots, they being Christians "confessing God and Jesus Christ according to the three Creeds." Bossuet had already flung into his adversary's face the fate of Servetus. Servetus, Jurieu readily answered, was no Christian: professing "damnable errors," he was justly burned at the stake.

A complete account of the battle that raged round these two treatises it is unnecessary to give here.[258] The drift of the argument is sometimes hard to follow, as civil toleration and ecclesiastical toleration are constantly confounded. The discussion must have unsettled the convictions of the refugees. One of the best instances of the difficulties which beset a sincere believer when examining the question, is a treatise written by a minister at Utrecht, Elie Saurin,[259] who endeavoured to steer a middle course between Jurieu and Bayle. The magistrate, he urged, has received a commission from God to procure eternal happiness to his people and promote the interests of religion. But the religion thus promoted must be the true religion and none but legitimate means employed to further it. Some of these he proceeds to enumerate: the true Church is more or less a State Church, the magistrate assists the Church in carrying out her decisions, particularly in depriving heretical ministers. And, further, the magistrate exterminates atheism and immoral religions. But he has no right to the individual conscience. The most honest men in the world entertain errors impossible to eradicate, they may be tolerated. "The magistrate," sums up Saurin, "must do, to establish and propagate the true doctrine and extinguish error, all that he can without offering violence to the conscience, or depriving his subjects of their natural or civil rights." A hard programme to carry out![260]

An influence might be traced of these debates on the minds of the contemporary English political writers. But Bayle's Commentary had a greater influence on French thought. While its philosophical argument appealed to Frenchmen, its lack of a political basis robbed it of popularity in England. That these refugees, with their unmistakable Gallic love for general ideas irrespective of any practical application, should end in gaining regard in their own country is not to be wondered at, but it is surprising that their opinions became popular in France only after Voltaire's visit to England. A few conversations at the Rainbow Coffee-House revealed to him what France had given up with the Edict of Nantes. The originality stamped upon the refugees' works showed that their political teaching was not entirely due to England or Holland. In truth, they either stopped short of English liberty or overstepped the bounds that the prudent Whigs had set to the sovereignty of the people. While Bayle pretty accurately represented the yet to come French eighteenth-century gentleman, a cultured free-thinking monarchist, an enemy to the priests and a conservative Gallican, with a dangerous tendency to allow seductive reasoning to run away with his judgment, Jurieu strangely anticipated the fanatical Jacobin. Under Louis xiv. France was a country in which Bayle would have chosen to live. In 1793, in the Public Safety Committee, Jurieu might have been considered by Robespierre as a trustworthy patriot.

LOUIS XIV DESTROYS HERETICAL BOOKS

And withal, these refugees are practically unknown in France. Lacking the needed passport to fame—the graces of style—they are forgotten; and the melancholy impression one feels in unearthing in the great public libraries their dust-eaten pamphlets, is that of disturbing the dead. The men that live in French literature are the contemporary prose-writers, Bossuet, La Bruyère; but turn to England, compare the influence of those men with that of Bayle or Jurieu, or even Drelincourt. After 1688 the influence in England of French official literature sinks to nothing, while that of the refugee literature is immense. No better justification there is of the necessity of comparative literature to discover the errors of familiar assertions, and dispel common optical illusions.