VI.
The misfortune of the times produced, as we have already seen, great disorder in the bosom of the Reformed communion. There were no pastors or regular instructions. The preachers, who travelled about Vivarais and Cevennes, had more fervour than enlightenment, and more zeal than judgment. Supernatural inspiration or ecstasy, which had begun before the war of the Camisards, was not extinguished with it. Men and women rose in the assemblies, and uttered burning words, which influenced the mind of the audience, but did not enlighten them. It will be remarked that at the same time, the Jansenists had their fanatics and thaumaturgists. In the primitive ages of the Church, the errors of the Montanists and the Donatists had alike sprung from the source of persecution. Every oppressed communion has been perplexed by those, who supposed themselves to be inspired.
Intelligent Protestants, or those of timid character, did not go to hear these preachers; they confined themselves to domestic worship, and observed externally some of the ceremonies of (Roman) Catholicism. There was therefore a double cause of ruin at work against the French Reformation—the excesses of the fervent, and the concessions of the weak. It was necessary to provide a remedy, or everything would be lost; it was necessary to re-awaken in the souls of the religionists a living, and, at the same time, a rational piety, to renew the bonds of discipline, to increase and to multiply the assemblies by remodelling them, and to re-establish order in the churches. Such was the mission of Antoine Court.[112]
He was born at Villeneuve-de-Berg, in the province of the Vivarais, in 1696, and had followed from the age of seventeen the mission of lecturer and preacher in the meetings of the wilderness. As he belonged to a poor family, he had not received a classical education; but he supplied this defect by his natural qualities, his reflections, and knowledge of the Scriptures. Antoine Court had the capacity to learn much and quickly. In his latter years he even acquired an erudition very uncommon upon religious questions, and the history of Protestantism, the proof of which may be seen in his answer to the Bishop of Agen, published under the name of a French and Impartial Patriot.
A man, who has distinguished himself by his constant sympathies for the Reformed churches of France, M. de Végobre, has drawn the following portrait of Antoine Court. [He possessed] sound, straightforward sense, a wonderful facility of expression, both in speaking and writing; an intrepid courage, joined with consummate prudence in all his conduct; an astonishing vigour to support, without wearying or slackening, the greatest fatigues of body and mind; the most agreeable amenity in his intimate friendships, if we may judge by his familiar letters; a purity of views and an integrity of manners, which have ever been above all suspicion; and an unshaken devotion to the holy cause to which he had consecrated himself: these are the qualities which, standing in lieu of the resources of education, which he was without, enabled him to inspire the people with confidence, and to merit the name of “Restorer of the Protestantism of France.”[113]
Four conditions appeared to him to be necessary for the re-organization of the churches—regular religious assemblies; a direct and inflexible combat against the disorders of the inspired; the restoration of discipline by means of the consistories, conferences, and synods; finally, the formation of a body of pastors. The plan was vast, though judicious, but its execution involved great difficulties.
Antoine Court established in the first place prayer meetings wherever he could shelter his head. They were but scanty in the beginning. “It was a great thing,” he says in an apologetic memoir, written forty years afterwards, “when, by force of cares and solicitation, I could anywhere induce six, ten, or a dozen persons to follow me to some mountain cave, or deserted grange, or to the open country, to render homage to God and to hear the discourse I wished to address to them. What a consolation, however, it was to me to find myself, in 1744, in assemblies of ten thousand souls in the same spot where I had with difficulty gathered together, during the first meetings of my ministry, fifteen, thirty, sixty, or at most a hundred persons!”
He next, with the view of remedying the disorders caused by the inspiration, convoked the preachers of Cevennes, to whom he joined some enlightened laymen. The first of these conferences or synods assembled on the 21st of August, 1715, eleven days before the death of the king, who thought he had crushed the French Reformation. Other synods succeeded from year to year. They were held in the depth of a cavern, or in an isolated hut; for if they had been discovered, all the members, or at least the preachers, would have been capitally executed.
Antoine Court, notwithstanding his youth, was the guide and soul of these meetings, and the adhesion of the preachers proved that there was among them neither unbelief nor pride, but simply involuntary error or want of sufficient instruction. They only required to be better advised and directed.
We will recount some of the dispositions, which were adopted in these new synods. Elders were intrusted with the duty of watching over the flocks, of convoking assemblies in suitable places, of providing for the safety of the pastors, and of making collections for prisoners and the poor. Women were prohibited from speaking in the meetings of the faithful. The Bible was enjoined as the sole rule of faith, and individual revelations were rejected as anti-Scriptural and dangerous. (Synod of 1715.)
Fathers of families were exhorted to celebrate worship at home three times a day, and to consecrate at least two hours to devotions on Sunday. Those, who committed grave offences, were to be censured in public, after three admonitions in private. The pastors were recommended carefully to explain all the articles of religion, to procure information respecting vices most common in each district, with a view to their correction, and to assemble every six months for the purpose of intercommunication. If any pastor caused scandal to his brethren, or endangered them by his hasty zeal, he was to be immediately deprived of his appointment. An engagement was entered into to succour those, who had suffered in the cause of religion, but to give no assistance to any, who exposed themselves to persecution by their rashness. (Synods of 1716 and 1717.)
Of the six first subscribers to these regulations, four perished on the scaffold; there is blood upon every succeeding page of French Protestantism.
Antoine Court had not received pastoral ordination. He induced one of his fellow-labourers, Pierre Corteis, to undertake a journey to Switzerland in order to be consecrated. On his return to Languedoc, Corteis laid hands on Antoine Court in the presence of a synod. The chain of time was thus continued, and the sacraments were no longer administered by any but ministers ordained according to the rules of discipline.
In 1718, a synod, consisting of forty-five members, ministers and elders, decided that young men should be intrusted with pastoral functions after a serious examination of their doctrine and morals. Two years later, the remuneration of the pastors was fixed at seventy livres, for their clothing and entire provision. They were lodged and maintained, from house to house, by the faithful. Their salary was afterwards increased to six hundred livres, and towards the end of the century to nine hundred livres. It was not more than the pay of a workman; but it was not the appetite for money that attracted men who, by accepting the pastoral charge, devoted themselves to an almost certain martyrdom.
The churches were invited to establish consistories, in default of which they were not to be visited by the ministers, nor to receive notice of the convocation of the assemblies—a spiritual punishment for a spiritual offence. This was a return to true ecclesiastical order.
The assemblies of the wilderness, as they were called, were held in open day, when the danger was not excessive, at night when persecution was rigorous, in some wild retreat, or in rocky nooks and quarries during adverse weather. The summonses were issued only a few hours before the meeting, and by emissaries of the most trustworthy character. Sentinels were placed about the heights, but unarmed, so that they might give the signal of the approach of soldiers.
The most intelligent and courageous acted as guides to the pastors, and after the service, conducted them to a secure shelter. Rarely did a pastor remain several days following in the same asylum. Wandering from place to place, forced to assume a thousand disguises, and bearing a borrowed name, he was compelled to hide himself like a malefactor, in order to proclaim the God of the Gospel. Such also was the life of the (Roman) Catholic priest under the régime of 1793; the names of the persecutors change, but not the characters, nor the excesses of the persecution.
The worship in the desert was the same as in the times of liberty; liturgic prayers, singing of psalms, preaching, administration of the holy supper on feast-days; a simple worship, easily practicable everywhere, and which required no more preparation than that of the “upper room furnished,” in which the apostles and primitive Christians assembled at Jerusalem.
This simplicity, however, possessed a charm of nobility and grandeur, the calm of solitude suddenly broken by the voice of prayer; the songs of the faithful mounting to the invisible Being, in the presence of the magnificence of nature; the minister of Jesus Christ invoking his God, like the faithful of the primitive church, for the oppressors who raged because they had not yet led Him to the scaffold; poor peasants and humble artificers, who, laying aside their tools of labour for a day, felt anxiety for naught but the sublime interests of the faith of the life to come; the common sentiment of danger which placed their souls continually in presence of their sovereign Judge, endued all the assemblies of the wilderness with that serious majesty, which allies itself so well with the teaching of Christianity.
But whilst the French Reformation rose slowly from its ruins, a fresh blow was silently preparing to strike it anew.