The Parliament of Bordeaux (it is true that Montesquieu was there no longer), reprinted the declaration of 1724, sent it to all the curates of the district to be publicly read, and in the month of November, 1757, passed a decree commanding all those who had been married by ministers, or even by any other ecclesiastics than their own curates, to separate immediately; prohibiting them from conversing under pain of exemplary punishment; branding their cohabitation with the name of concubinage; declaring their children illegitimate, and, as such, incapable of direct succession; lastly, commanding fathers, mothers, and guardians to send their children to the (Roman) Catholic schools, and to be catechized until they were fourteen years old, and to the Sunday and feast-day teachings until the age of twenty.[125]
To crown these tyrannical proceedings, this decree was published for several days on the Exchange of Bordeaux, where the most eminent of the Protestants were met: “a circumstance,” says a petition which we have before us, “that materially injured their credit in their commercial transactions on one hand; and that, on the other, tended to make them an object of hatred or of contempt to the lower orders of the people, always extreme in their opinions and heedless in their proceedings.”
The petitioners further said, “We do not regret either office or honours; it is with your majesty to dispense them to whomsoever you please; but we claim the rights that we derive from nature, and which every religion should hold sacred. It must be no longer hidden from you: there are, sire, more than fifty thousand marriages that will fall within the scope of the decree of the Parliament of Bordeaux; and among these marriages, there are some of so old a date as to have given birth to ten or twelve children. Behold, sire, what a multitude of citizens are reduced in one instant to despair!”
Lastly, the Protestants took up the political question: “When a neighbouring state, jealous of the prosperity of our armies, vainly sought, last September, to penetrate into Saintonge and Aunis, what class of your subjects showed more zeal than the Protestants to repel the presumptuous enemy? Your generals did them justice in this respect. Are not your armies and your navy at this present moment filled with soldiers, officers, and sailors of the Reformed religion, distinguished not less for their unshaken fidelity than for their bravery?” (3rd January, 1758.)
This petition did not prevent the decree of the Parliament of Bordeaux from being followed by cruel iniquities. The seneschal of Nérac condemned five Protestants to the galleys, one of whom was an old man of eighty. Numbers of others were thrust into the prisons of Guienne, Périgord, and Agenois. The Reformed of Sainte Foy and Bergerac had to pay upwards of forty thousand livres, besides the losses they sustained through the soldiers billeted upon them. And yet the authorities had not the courage to execute the decree in its entirety; the rich merchants of Bordeaux had pronounced the word “emigration” in their complaints, and the interest of the treasury procured for them that which had been refused by the fanatic bigotry of the priests and the despotism of the court.
XIII.
Until now we have delayed to mention the venerable pastor Paul Rabaut, because he belongs to two epochs, and his long career connects him both with the times of persecution and those of toleration. During half a century, Paul Rabaut has afforded the most elevated, and the most perfect type of a true servant of Jesus Christ. He was firm and courageous, yet cautious, and as inflexible in matters of religion as he was submissive in purely civil affairs; and this rare union of qualities justly entitled him to the greatest influence over the churches of the desert.
Paul Rabaut was born on the 9th of January, 1718, at Bédarieux, near Montpellier, of an honest family of traders, who delighted in sheltering the proscribed pastors. It was in his conversations with them that he felt himself animated with a desire for the evangelical ministry, or, as Antoine Court would have said, for the vocation of martyrdom. He was grave, studious, and, beyond all, pious, which procured him the surname of “the minister of Charenton” from his schoolmaster.
From the age of sixteen he became, with his friend Jean Pradel, the companion of the desert ministers. He shared their labours, and imitated their patience. Rejoiced that he suffered with them for the sake of his Divine Master, he undertook, without having the title or the office of pastor, to instruct his brethren, reading the Bible at the meetings, exhorting the faithful in their domestic circles, encouraging some, comforting others, and setting an example to all.