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]