The relation between a critical attitude in theology and in politics has often been noticed. A common charge brought against the early Reformers was that of sedition. Though the charge was unfounded in most cases, popular instinct sharpened by enmity was right in the main. Even Protestant writers admitted the temptation of men who had rebelled against the Church to rebel against the State. Some profound observations they made on the tendency of the human mind to extend the scope of a method of reasoning, and to evolve out of a philosophical theory a programme of political reform long before the students of political science of our own time made a similar observation. "All the subtleties," said D'Huisseau, "that are called forth in religion generally make the minds of the people inquiring, proud, punctilious, obstinate, and consequently more difficult to curb into reason and obedience. Every private man pretends to have a right to investigate those controverted matters, and, bringing his judgment to bear upon them, defends his opinion with the utmost heat. Afterwards they wish to carry into the discussion of State affairs the same freedom as they use in matters of religion. They believe that since they are allowed to exercise control over the opinions of their leaders in the Church, where the service of God is concerned, they are free to examine the conduct of those that are set over them for political government."[157] With still keener insight did Bayle, twenty years later, perceive the political import of certain tenets of the Reformation. The emphasis laid upon the divine command to "search the Scriptures," marked the beginning of a new era for humanity. Bidden as a most sacred duty to judge for themselves, men could not be withheld from wandering into the forbidden field of secular politics.
As the infallibility of the priest, so the infallibility of the ruler came to be questioned. But if the principle of free inquiry, or, as Bayle terms it, "l'examen particulier dans les matières de foi,"[158] would lead necessarily to civil liberty, another tenet led to equality. "When there was a pressing need, any one had a natural vocation for pastoral functions."[159] Universal priesthood drew no distinction between a caste of priests and the people, between the princes or magistrates and the rabble. In cases of necessity, leaders, political as well as religious, might spring from the ranks, as the prophets of Israel did, holding their commissions directly from Heaven.
But the seditious Huguenot negotiating against the King of France with Englishmen and Hollanders, and marching against the capital at the head of an army of mercenary Germans, had now disappeared as a type. The mangled remains of the great admiral, martyred for the cause of political and religious liberty, lay in the chapel of Chatillon Castle. The Condés had gone back to Roman Catholicism. With the advent of Henri de Navarre, sedition became loyalism. Though brought up upon the works of Hotman, Languet, and Du Plessis-Mornay, the Huguenot found little difficulty in bowing, with the rest of his countrymen, before the throne of absolutism.
The Synod of Tonneins condemning as early as 1614 the doctrine of Suarez, "exhorts the faithful to combat it, in order to maintain, together with the right of God, that of the sovereign power which He has established."[160] The Synod of Vitré (1617) addresses Louis xiii. in these words: "We acknowledge after God no other sovereign but Your Majesty. Our belief is that between God and the Kings, there is no middle power. To cast doubt upon that truth is among us a heresy, and to dispute it a capital crime."[161]
The Civil War in England made it imperative for the Huguenots to frame a theory of government. Readily confounded by popular malice with English Presbyterians and Independents, they were bound to be on the alert. In 1644, complaints from the Maritime Provinces of attempts on the part of "Englishmen belonging to the sect of Independents" to spread their doctrines among the people, gave the Synod of Charenton an opportunity of condemning them as "a sect pernicious to the Church" and "very dangerous enemies to the State."[162]
The relations between the Huguenots and the Puritans thus so unexpectedly revealed are still uncertainly known. As early as 1574, La Rochelle had been in close touch with the extreme Elizabethan Puritans, Walter Travers causing one of his works of controversy to be printed there.[163] In 1590 two of the Martin Marprelate tracts were issued from the presses of La Rochelle,[164] and Waldegrave, one of the factious printers, took refuge there. During the Civil War there seem to have been active negotiations going on between some of the Parliamentary leaders and the Bordeaux malcontents. These found the doctrines of the Levellers more to their taste than the more moderate schemes of Cromwell, Ireton, and the "grandees." They even sketched out for France, or at least Guyenne, a Republican Constitution. For those who have been taught to explain the French Revolution by racial theories, nothing is more disconcerting than to learn how the ancestors of the Revolutionists caught some of their most advanced ideas from their English co-religionists. They clamoured for a representative assembly, liberty of conscience, trials by jury, the abolition of privileges. "The peasant," they wrote, "is as free as a prince, coming into this world without either wooden shoes or saddle, even as the king's son without a crown on his head. So every one is by birth equally free and has the power to choose his own government."[165] If it is astounding enough to hear almost a century and a half before the fall of the Bastille the cry of liberty and equality, it is startling to think that the English had raised it.
The tragedy enacted at Whitehall on 30th January 1648-49, stirred up in Europe a horror equal only to that caused nearly a century and a half later by the execution of Louis xvi. of France. "We gave ourselves up," wrote Bochart, "to tears and afflictions, and solemnised the obsequies of your King by universal mourning."[166] One of the most distinguished laymen in the Rouen congregation, Porrée the physician, declared that "all true Protestants abhorred that execrable parricide."[167]
The Doctors of the Church delivered their opinion in emphatic terms. In 1650 two works appeared exalting the royal prerogative.[168] Amyraut, the latitudinarian professor of Saumur, was the author of one of them;[169] Bochart that of the other.[170] Their argument is mainly Biblical. The kings being God's vice-regents, are accountable only to Him. To sit in judgment upon them, to inflict them bodily injury, is heinous sacrilege. "Kings are absolute and depend only on God; it is never allowed to attempt their lives on any pretence whatsoever."[171] Yet Amyraut recorded a remarkable reservation in which the regicides could have found their justification: "Except there be an express command, proceeding from God directly, such as those given to Ehud and Jehu, nothing may be attempted against the kings without committing an offence more hateful to God than the most execrable parricide."[172] Dr. Gauden's Eikon Basiliké had a great success in France, two translations penned by Huguenots appearing, that of Denys Cailloué[173] in 1649, that of Porrée[174] a year later. Lastly, all students of English literature remember that Claude de Saumaise wrote the Defensio regia pro Carolo Primo, and Pierre Du Moulin the Clamor sanguinis regiæ ad cœlum contra parricidas Anglicanos (1652). The Huguenots showed zeal not only in condemning the King's execution and in vindicating his memory from the charges of the Commonwealthsmen, but in furthering the Restoration of his son, Charles ii., by proclaiming his title to the Crown of England.[175]
The Restoration coincided with the majority of Louis xiv. The Synod of Loudun, whose moderator was Daillé, then an old man, proclaimed the duty of passive obedience: "Kings depend immediately on God; there is no intermediate authority between theirs and that of the Almighty."[176] "Kings in this world are in the place of God, and are His true living portrait on earth, and the footstool of their throne exalts them above mankind, only to bring them nearer Heaven. Such are the fundamental principles of our creed."[177]
Significant it is to see the divine of world-wide repute, whose youth was spent with Du Plessis-Mornay, the co-author, most probably, of the Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos,[178] solemnly recalling the duty of subjects to princes on the threshold of an era of absolutism in Europe, supposed by every one except some Fifth-Monarchy men to be of long duration.