II. Awakening Of Christianity In France.
I pass without any transitional stage from the awakening of Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church to the awakening of Christianity in the Protestant Church. What need of a transition? I am not quitting the Christian Church. With respect to their claims as Christians, Protestant nations have been put to the test. They have had, like Catholic nations, to pass through violent struggles, to combat evil tendencies, to undergo perilous trials; but the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, the simultaneous action of faith and of science, of authority and liberty, has received a glorious development in the bosom of Protestant nations. England and Holland, Protestant Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States of America, have had their vices, their crimes, their sufferings, and their reverses; but, after all, these States have in the last four centuries labored with effect at the solution, in a Christian sense, of that grand problem of human society—the moral and physical progress of the masses, as well as the political guarantee of their rights and liberties. And in these days the States to which I have alluded resist effectually the shocks—now of anarchy, now of despotism, which alternately trouble the peace of Christendom. As for the Christian Faith itself, if, in Protestant countries, it does not escape the attacks elsewhere made upon it, neither is it without its powerful defenders and faithful followers. In those countries, Christian Churches are full of adherents, and the cause of Christianity finds every day valiant champions to devote to its service the arms which science and liberty supply. There is on the part of the Romanists a puerile infatuation upon this subject, which makes them absolutely close their eyes to facts; by an error fatal to themselves, they persist in imputing the fermentation in society, and the abandonment of religion, to the influence of the Protestant nations—nations among whom these two scourges are combated with at least as much resolution and effect as elsewhere. It is not my wish to institute disparaging comparisons, or to foment a rivalry opposed to the spirit of Christ's religion. Protestantism is not, in Christendom, the last, neither is it the sole bulwark of Christianity; but there exists none that is stronger, that offers fewer weak points to assailants, or that is better provided with faithful and able defenders.
At the commencement of this century, and in the years which followed the promulgation of the Concordat, the Protestants, like the Catholics in France, thought only of the re-establishment of their worship and of the liberty of their faith. A liberty the more precious in their eyes, as it followed upon two centuries of persecutions and of sufferings of which we cannot, in these days, read the accounts without mingled sentiments of astonishment, of indignation, and of sorrow. Faithfully should men guard the memory of such outrages; they would be infinitely better than they are if they had always present to their minds the vivid pictures of the iniquities and woes which fill the page of their history; and evils would not so soon recur if they were not so soon forgotten. The system of Terrorism under the Revolution had confounded Catholic and Protestant in a common oppression; it had abolished the forms of worship of each, denied all free expression of opinion to Christians; and without distinction condemned to the same scaffold the "pastors of the desert" and the bishops of the Court of Versailles—Rabaut Saint-Etienne as well as the nuns of Verdun. When this terrible regime had ceased to exist, neither party had religiously or politically any desires or pretensions that were not extremely moderate: the one thing regarded by all as the sovereign good was, the right to live without molestation and the liberty to address their prayers to God in the light of day. No other subject so seriously interested them; and they heartily wished to show their gratitude and deference to the Government, which, while it gave security to their bodies, permitted their souls to breathe freely. The condition of the Protestants was in one sense better than that of the Catholics, for the former were now experiencing the joy, not only of a deliverance but of a positive conquest; they had just escaped as well from the system of Terrorism, as from the ancient régime; they had lost nothing to regret; no revengeful feeling made them desire a reaction; their sole aspiration was for the consolidation of their rights, and of their new acquisitions. "You who lived, as we did, under the yoke of intolerance," (thus they were addressed in 1807 by M. Rabaut-Dupuy, formerly president of the legislative body, and the last surviving son of one of their most estimable pastors,) "you, the relics of so many persecuted generations, behold! compare! It is no longer in the desert and at the peril of your lives that you render to the Creator the homage which is his due. Our temples are restored to us, and every day beholds new ones erected. Our pastors are recognized as public functionaries; they receive salaries from the State; a barbarous law no longer suspends the sword over their heads. Alas! to those whom we have survived it was permitted, it is true, to ascend Mount Nebo, and to obtain thence a glimpse of the promised land, but it is we alone who have taken possession."
What wonder if, on the morrow after the Concordat, which had procured them the free exercise of their faith and the impartiality of the law, the Protestants acquiesced without difficulty in the incomplete organization with which the new system had left their Church, and that they troubled themselves little with the attacks made upon its independence and its dignity!
But this modest enjoyment of their new privileges did not render them indifferent to their ancient belief, and they returned to the open practice of Christ's faith simultaneously with the acquisition of their liberty. In 1812, in the midst of the profound silence which reigned throughout the Empire, a professor of the faculty of Protestant theology at Montauban, M. Grasc, attacked, in his teaching, the dogma of the Trinity. Earnest remonstrances were instantly made from the general body of the Protestants in France; a great number of consistories, among others those of Nîmes, of Montpellier, Montauban, Alais, Anduze, Saint Hippolyte, pastors and laity, addressed their complaints, some to the "Doyen" of the faculty of theology, others to M. Gasc himself, demanding, all of them, the maintenance of the doctrine of the Protestant Church. The grand master of the University, M. de Fontanes, "earnestly invited the professor not to depart from it," and M. Gasc himself admitted that his teaching ought to be in conformity. The spirit which had animated the Reformation in France in the sixteenth century was still living in the nineteenth; and under the new-born system of liberty, the Awakening of Christianity announced itself by a summons to the faith.
When, under the Restoration, France had regained her political liberty, it was not long before that liberty bore its natural fruits in French Protestantism; it was accompanied, both on religious and political subjects, by the manifestation of discordant ideas and discordant tendencies, which were soon to struggle for victory. As at epochs of great intellectual crises eminent men emerge who represent dominant ideas, so now M. Samuel Vincent and M. Daniel Encontre immediately appeared in the Protestant Church: both were pastors, and each worthily represented one of the two principles which naturally develop themselves in the bosom of Protestantism, faith in traditions and the right of private judgment; principles different without being contradictory; principles which may subsist in peace provided they remain respectively in their proper places, and within the limits of their rights. M. Samuel Vincent was a man of a mind remarkably comprehensive and of great versatility and fecundity; but his habits at the same time were those of a student, fitting him rather for intellectual meditation than qualifying him either for expansive sympathies or for action; he was versed in the philosophy and erudite criticism of Germany, at that time novel and rare to France; he made the essence of Christianity, according to his own expression, "to consist in the liberty of inquiry." [Footnote 14:]
[Footnote 14: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel Vincent. 2e édition, p. 15. Paris, 1859.]