History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

Some pastors, having held unlawful meetings upon the ruins of their places of worship, which had been unjustly pulled down, were condemned to do penance with a rope round their neck, and were then banished the kingdom. The demolitions spread, and were multiplied for the most trivial motives, upon the denunciations of a bishop, or of some other member of the clergy, upon the quibbles of a (Roman) Catholic commissioner, or simply, as the faithful of Saint Hippolyte experienced, upon the accusation of having manifested disrespect for a curate bearing the holy sacrament along the street.

There were in Béarn ninety-six places of worship, and forty-six churches of residence. A lawsuit, which lasted seven years, reduced the number of places of worship to twenty, and fettered these in every possible way. It was nearly the same in all the provinces of the kingdom. If the council sometimes used precaution, and imposed upon the intendants some reserve, the pastor Claude presumes, in his Plaintes des Protestants de France, that it was to induce the belief that justice was regarded, and that the condemned churches had not good titles.

The mind feels some relief, amidst these persecutions, in dwelling upon the paper wars which were fought at the same epoch between the most eminent pastors of the two religions. Here at least material violence did not intervene; here the contest was equal; and when men of great powers attacked the Reformation, it did not want solid and skilful champions for its defence.

The Jansenists were so accustomed to the strife, that they could not desist from it; and peace having been concluded between them and the Jesuits, through the intermission of Clement IX., they turned their arms against the Huguenots. They imported into the conflict all the greater zeal, that they were themselves taxed with being no more than disguised Calvinists.

Arnault and Nicole therefore published their famous Perpétuité de la Foi sur l’Eucharistie (1664-1676), in which they endeavoured to establish, from the text of the Fathers of the Church, and by certificates brought from the East, that the dogma of the real presence has been at all times admitted in Christianity. Claude replied that they had wrongly interpreted the sense of the Fathers, and certificates procured from poor Greek popes by the ambassador of France, who was their protector against the Turks, were but of little value. His answer had extraordinary success; and the Jesuits themselves did their best to disseminate it, as Arnault complains in one of his letters, because they were quite as much interested in humiliating the Jansenists as in destroying the Reformed.

Nicole re-entered the lists with his Préjugés légitimes contre les Calvinistes. His argumentation was sadly wanting in caution. He maintained that before quitting the Church of Rome, the meanest artisan is bound to assure himself of the authenticity of the holy writings, to compare the translations with the original, to examine all the various readings, to weigh all the interpretations of the texts, to compare them with the decisions of the councils, to perform in a word an immense labour that the most erudite dare hardly undertake. These arguments, every one knows, have been turned by Rousseau against (Roman) Catholicism and even against the Gospel. Claude, Jurieu, and Pajon answered Nicole.

Arnault came to the succour of his friend in a book upon the Renversement de la Morale de Jesus Christ par les Erreurs des Calvinistes. It astonished every one that a doctor who agreed with Calvin upon the dogma of predestination, had constructed all the scaffolding of his polemics upon this consequence, that grace cannot be lost; and this was judiciously objected to him, not only by Bruguier, pastor of Nismes, but by theologians of his own communion.

Bossuet’s Exposition also provoked numerous replies. La Bastide, a member of the consistory of Charenton, and David Noguier, a pastor of Languedoc, proved that this work was wanting in truth, and that the author has constructed an ideal Catholicism totally unlike the real. Pierre Jurieu proved it better than any one in his Preservatif contre le Changement de Religion, and resumed the same question in his Politique du Clergé de France. “Here is a man,” he says, “who transports us into another country. There is no worship of images, no invocation of saints in this new religion; they are only implored just as we beg the faithful on earth to pray to God for us. Until now, I had thought that the devotions to the Virgin and to the other saints was an important thing; I see that the majority of devotees think them of great consequence; and these people say they are nothing, they may be dispensed with, and that it is sufficient to invoke God and Jesus Christ!”

Claude had a celebrated conference with Bossuet in 1678, upon the invitation of Mademoiselle de Duras. The two adversaries have published the report of their debate. Bossuet had pledged himself to make Claude avow that it may happen that a simple individual, however ignorant he may be, understands the Scriptures better than all the councils and all the rest of the Church together—a proposition which he styled as absurd. Claude answered that the question was not so simple, and that before asking if an artisan may be right in spite of all the councils and the Church, it should be shown that there is a single article, upon which the Church and all the councils have constantly agreed.

Ten years afterwards, the bishop of Meaux (Bossuet) re-entered the arena with his Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes. His attacks were made upon the absentees and the proscribed, whose books of refutation were not permitted to pass from Holland into France.