Of the six first subscribers to these regulations, four perished on the scaffold; there is blood upon every succeeding page of French Protestantism.
Antoine Court had not received pastoral ordination. He induced one of his fellow-labourers, Pierre Corteis, to undertake a journey to Switzerland in order to be consecrated. On his return to Languedoc, Corteis laid hands on Antoine Court in the presence of a synod. The chain of time was thus continued, and the sacraments were no longer administered by any but ministers ordained according to the rules of discipline.
In 1718, a synod, consisting of forty-five members, ministers and elders, decided that young men should be intrusted with pastoral functions after a serious examination of their doctrine and morals. Two years later, the remuneration of the pastors was fixed at seventy livres, for their clothing and entire provision. They were lodged and maintained, from house to house, by the faithful. Their salary was afterwards increased to six hundred livres, and towards the end of the century to nine hundred livres. It was not more than the pay of a workman; but it was not the appetite for money that attracted men who, by accepting the pastoral charge, devoted themselves to an almost certain martyrdom.
The churches were invited to establish consistories, in default of which they were not to be visited by the ministers, nor to receive notice of the convocation of the assemblies—a spiritual punishment for a spiritual offence. This was a return to true ecclesiastical order.
The assemblies of the wilderness, as they were called, were held in open day, when the danger was not excessive, at night when persecution was rigorous, in some wild retreat, or in rocky nooks and quarries during adverse weather. The summonses were issued only a few hours before the meeting, and by emissaries of the most trustworthy character. Sentinels were placed about the heights, but unarmed, so that they might give the signal of the approach of soldiers.
The most intelligent and courageous acted as guides to the pastors, and after the service, conducted them to a secure shelter. Rarely did a pastor remain several days following in the same asylum. Wandering from place to place, forced to assume a thousand disguises, and bearing a borrowed name, he was compelled to hide himself like a malefactor, in order to proclaim the God of the Gospel. Such also was the life of the (Roman) Catholic priest under the régime of 1793; the names of the persecutors change, but not the characters, nor the excesses of the persecution.
The worship in the desert was the same as in the times of liberty; liturgic prayers, singing of psalms, preaching, administration of the holy supper on feast-days; a simple worship, easily practicable everywhere, and which required no more preparation than that of the “upper room furnished,” in which the apostles and primitive Christians assembled at Jerusalem.
This simplicity, however, possessed a charm of nobility and grandeur, the calm of solitude suddenly broken by the voice of prayer; the songs of the faithful mounting to the invisible Being, in the presence of the magnificence of nature; the minister of Jesus Christ invoking his God, like the faithful of the primitive church, for the oppressors who raged because they had not yet led Him to the scaffold; poor peasants and humble artificers, who, laying aside their tools of labour for a day, felt anxiety for naught but the sublime interests of the faith of the life to come; the common sentiment of danger which placed their souls continually in presence of their sovereign Judge, endued all the assemblies of the wilderness with that serious majesty, which allies itself so well with the teaching of Christianity.
But whilst the French Reformation rose slowly from its ruins, a fresh blow was silently preparing to strike it anew.