The synods rapidly increased, and became more rigid against the parents, who allowed their children to be baptized in the (Roman) Catholic church, or to be married there. They also insisted upon the duty of taking part in the religious services. The synod of 1730 says: “Write to the Protestants under the Cross, that they may know the indispensable obligation they are under to attend the meetings of piety, whenever Providence shall furnish the opportunity. If after being sufficiently instructed in this duty, they refuse to fulfil it, it shall be declared that they are cut off from the Church of the Lord, and are no longer His children.”
It is interesting to observe that these men, who were denied all the rights of citizens, were so bent upon discharging all its duties, that they employed their authority in repressing contraband trade. They thus decided in 1730: “The members of our churches who, to escape paying the king’s dues, shall carry on or countenance smuggling, shall be first censured, and then, if they relapse, exposed to final excommunication. The assembly does not in this article comprise the contraband commerce in religious books, which do not anywise prejudice the king or the state.”
The re-awakening of Languedoc and Dauphiny excited a pious rivalry in other provinces. Rouergue, Guienne, Quercy, Saintonge, Aunis, and Poitou, held meetings again and demanded pastors. There were but few. Antoine Court sought the young men who appeared fitted for this holy vocation at the plough, in the trader’s warehouse, in the workman’s shop; but the instruction they derived from a wandering life was insufficient.
The restorer of French Protestantism began to reflect upon the necessity of a theological school. To open it in France was not to be dreamed of. The universities of England and Germany were too distant from the southern provinces, and did not speak their language. Geneva was too near, and its academy too severely watched. Antoine Court decided upon Lausanne. His long and urgent solicitations, his indefatigable endeavours, the liberality of Switzerland, England, and the other Protestant powers, contributed to found there a French theological seminary. Court went to establish it himself, in 1730, with the title of deputy-general of the churches, and directed this school during the thirty concluding years of his life. It was this college that sent forth all the Protestant pastors until the reign of Napoleon.
VIII.
Before we proceed to relate the events, which will conduct us beyond the year 1750, it is but a duty of justice which we owe to the refugee pastors, to follow them in their exile; they had all ceased to live in the former half of the eighteenth century. Although they died upon a foreign soil, the French Reformation has a right to claim them: they belong to it by their birth, their education, the first years of their ministry, by the language they used, and by the constancy of their sympathy for their oppressed brethren.
We shall not speak of the lay refugees, whose names are illustrious in literature, science, and industry, such as Rapin Thoyras, the learned Bayle, Denis Papin, the constructor of machines, the chemist Lémery, the traveller Chardin, and many others. We must confine ourselves to those fugitives, who exercised a direct influence upon the state of the Reformed churches of France.
It is universally acknowledged, that the majority of the fugitive pastors was composed of pious and intelligent men of irreproachable character. No Protestant clergy in Europe were superior to them. We will only mention the principal among them, arranging them according to the date of their death.
Pierre Jurieu (1637-1713) was a laborious and vehement controversialist. He has had numerous opponents among the (Roman) Catholics and the sceptics, and his memory has suffered in consequence. It must be confessed that he gave occasion to certain attacks by his venturous predictions, his assertions concerning suspected miracles, and the sharpness of his polemics. But these defects were redeemed by a host of estimable qualities; a firm attachment to his religious persuasions, an incomparable activity, a solid erudition in every branch of theological science, and a clear and ready wit. He never lacked penetration to discover error, or courage to combat it.
He did not long exercise the functions of a pastor. Nominated in 1674 professor of theology at Sédan, he made his appearance with much éclat. Bayle, who pursued him at a later period with so many invectives, at that time wrote: “He is one of the first men of his age, and if the delicacy of his constitution does not offer resistance to his ardour for study, and to his application to the functions of his office, everything may be expected of him. I tell you, and I repeat it, he is the first man of our communion, whether it be for sound judgment or for the nicety of his wit.”