He rejected all written articles of faith, every limited idea of religious unity, and claimed within the Church, for both pastors and congregation, the greatest latitude in matters of opinion and of teaching. But when he clung closely to this view of the subject, and was pressed to indicate the extreme point to which, within the Church itself, the diversity of men's individual beliefs might be carried, his embarrassment became extreme, for he had too much sense to admit that this diversity had no limit, and that a Church, whether Protestant or not, could exist without certain articles of faith common to all its members, and recognized by them all. "Protestantism," said he himself, "must not be merely a negation; it should also have its real and positive side; it must be beyond all things a religion; that is to say, it must be in the possession of the means to endure and of the means to edify men by the propagation of a doctrine benevolent and Christian. … Christianity is the basis of ecclesiastical teaching." [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel Vincent, pp. 17, 22.]
When, after having laid down this principle, M. Samuel Vincent inquired how the Protestant Church could remain a Church, and a Christian Church, in the midst of the independence of individual beliefs, he found no other way out of the difficulty than "to determine," he said, "by conventions, oral and unwritten, a certain number of opinions that each man should, in the interest of the general peace, be entreated to keep to himself." [Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, p. 24.]
How strange a proceeding, how difficult of realization, to prescribe with once voice silence and liberty! M. Samuel Vincent did not attempt to determine what those opinions were which, in order to maintain the existence of a Christian Church in the midst of the broadest system of free inquiry, "each man should be entreated to keep to himself." As for himself, he professed his faith in the supernatural, in the revelation of the Old and of the New Testaments, in the inspiration of the Scriptures, in the divinity of Jesus Christ; in the grand historical facts as well as in the moral precepts of the Gospel; he was one of the pastors, too, who signed the remonstrance of the consistory of Nîmes, for the irregularity in preaching of which Professor Grasc had been guilty. Did M. Samuel Vincent regard every opinion contrary to these great evangelical doctrines as an opinion which each man should, in the interest of the general peace, be entreated to keep to himself? I doubt whether he would have dared to engraft upon the liberty of judgment such a reservation; but I doubt at the same time if he would have persisted in regarding as true and faithful pastors of the Protestant Church, men who should have openly deserted and combated, in its most essential foundations, that Christian faith which he himself professed. He dreaded almost equally "unity defined," and "dissent declared." He would have remained in the embarrassment into which those inevitably fall who neither accept one basis and manifesto of a common faith, nor admit the moral necessity of a separation into free and distinct Churches when a common faith does not exist. [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: The principal works of M. Samuel Vincent are: 1. Vues sur le protestantisme en France, première édition. 2 vols. 8vo. 1829. A second edition, in 1 vol. 12mo., was published in 1859 by M. Prévost-Paradol.
2. Observations sur l'unité religieuse et observations sur la voie d'autorité appliquée a la religion, (1820,) contre l'Essai sur l'indifférance en matière de religion de l'Abbé de la Mennais.
3. Meditations ou recueil de sermons, 1829.
4. Mélanges de religion de morale et de critique sacrée. A periodical published from 1820 to 1825.]
No such embarrassment was experienced by M. Daniel Encontre when he began his career to serve the movement of awakened Christianity in the bosom of French Protestantism. I will not venture here to cite the precise words, harsh and severe, employed by him on the 13th of December, 1816, at Montauban, in his capacity of "Doyen" of the faculty of Protestant Theology, respecting those termed by him "the pretended ministers of the Gospel, disbelievers in the Gospel and in the divinity of Jesus Christ." He regarded harmony of faith and language, harmony between shepherd and flock, as the first law of religious society. Born in a grotto of La Vaunage, to which his mother had fled to escape from the flames of persecution; devoted from his birth by his father, the Pastor Pierre Encontre, to the service of a "preacher in the desert," M. Daniel Encontre belonged to that class of indomitable Protestants who cling to their faith through all the perils, sufferings, and sacrifices which it entails. His first steps in life seemed to indicate in him other aptitudes, and to promise for him a different career. After having studied divinity at Lausanne and at Geneva, and been consecrated by his father himself to the ministry of the Gospel "in an assembly in the desert," he seemed to doubt his own vocation; for while performing the functions of his ministry he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the classical languages, with an enthusiasm eager to become familiar with every department of knowledge, and encountering no hinderance from, internal obstacles or from preconceived opinions. Having established himself at Montpellier, where his taste for science found subjects of gratification, he led there, during the dark days of the Revolution, a life very obscure, and at the same time most laborious; giving lessons to the master masons upon stone-cutting, imparting instruction, rendering the aids of religion to Protestants, celebrating the baptismal and marriage services, and pursuing at the same time his labors in geometry, botany, philosophy, divinity, literature, and even poetry. When order began to be re-established, he was led by his own natural tastes and the counsel of his friends to select as his career that of public instruction. He competed for and obtained, first the appointment of professor of literature at the École Centrale of Montpellier; then that of the higher mathematics, at the Lycée and in the faculty of science, of which he was nominated "Doyen." As his merits established themselves by repeated proofs, his reputation increased; the papers of learned societies were filled with his contributions, and the École Polytechnique with his pupils. "I have met in our department," said Fourcroy, "two or three heads equal to his, but not one superior." M. de Candolle gladly selected him to aid him in his "Researches respecting the Botany of the Ancients;" and M. de Fontanes has more than once spoken of him to me as one of the men who most honored the University. But in him, neither the mathematician, the botanist, nor the philologist took precedence of the Christian. At one time as expounder of Moses and of Genesis, [Footnote 18] at another as a writer defending the Apostles, accused of being a copyist of Plato. [Footnote 19] he neglected no occasion of placing his scientific attainments at the service of Christianity;
[Footnote 18: Dissertation sur le vrai système du monde comparé avec le récit que Moïse fait de la création. Montpellier, 1807.]