In 1766, the advocate-general, Servan, maintained before the Parliament of Grenoble the rights of a wife, whose husband sought to desert her and his children, under the pretext that the marriage of the desert was null and void. “This cause,” said the eloquent lawyer, “does not strike us much at the first view. We see only a weeping woman, who interests us, without doubt; but in her cause are involved a host of other interests; her cause is that of all the other persons of her sect.... Every Protestant is aware of the misfortunes, which this female has suffered for her religion, and awaits a decision with anxiety that will perhaps influence his own destiny as well as hers. Scarcely will a decree be uttered, before it will be re-echoed among the rocks of Cevennes, and repeated from mouth to mouth, becoming a canticle of peace or an order of proscription.” The Parliament of Grenoble only granted damages and interest, the sole remedy that a deserted woman could claim; but the principle had made one further step in advance.
In the same year, Gilbert de Voisins, formerly advocate-general, and a councillor of state, drew up, at the request of Louis XV., certain memorials upon the means of restoring a civil condition to the Protestants of France. He proposed, among other things, to give some of the ministry revocable safe-conducts, and to authorize them to perform private services. The baptisms and marriages of the Reformed would thus have obtained the double sanction of a civil contract and a religious benediction, without in any way affecting the uniformity of public worship in the kingdom.
The magistracy after this never quitted the course they had adopted; and although they continued to devise strange or impracticable arrangements, in order to reconcile the civil state of the Protestants with the maintenance of external religious unity, they advanced year by year in their memorials for the legal reversal of the [laws against the] oppressed.
What line did the clergy pursue in the face of the progress of toleration? Some of their members (it is apparent that throughout the whole course of this history, we have joyfully adduced whatever was favourable to them), fell in with public opinion; and we do not speak merely of the philosophical bishops and abbés, who affected to be tolerant through bon ton or indifference, for the worthy head of the diocese which counted the greatest number of Reformed, M. de Becdelièvre, during forty-five years exhibited a praiseworthy moderation, and merited the eulogy bestowed upon him by Rabaut Saint Etienne, at his death. The abbé and doctor of theology Bourlet-Vauxelles, says in his panegyric of Saint Louis, which he pronounced before the French Academy in 1762: “The god of peace does not permit us to massacre those, who do not know Him.” The abbé Audra used his influence with the Parliament of Toulouse to legitimize a Protestant marriage. The curate Bastide opened his own house to the pastor Paul Vincent, whom soldiers were pursuing. Lastly, the bishop of Langres, M. De la Luzerne, spoke in favour of the Protestants in the assembly of Notables in 1787. “I prefer places of worship to open-air preachings,” said he, “and ministers to preachers.”
We collect all the evidence of toleration that it is possible to find in the acts of the (Roman) Catholic clergy, and doubtless many similar facts have escaped our researches. But we must add that the majority of the sacerdotal body obstinately resisted the generous views of the court, the Parliaments, and the country.
The clergy administered to Louis XVI., at his coronation, the ancient oath for the extermination of the heretics denounced by the Church, and M. Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, said to the monarch, “Sire, you will reprobate the counsels of a hollow peace, and the systems of a criminal toleration. We conjure you, sire, do not delay to dispel the hope, which error has conceived of having places of worship and altars among us.... It is reserved for you to strike the final blow against Calvinism in your dominions. Command the dissipation of the schismatic assemblies of the Protestants; exclude sectarians without distinction from all offices of the public administration, and you will insure among your subjects the unity of the true Christian religion.”
In 1780, the General Assembly of the clergy presented a long memorial to the king upon the enterprises of the Protestants. They complained that heresy lacerated the bosom of the Church, that tender and afflicted mother; and demanded that recourse should be had to the salutary means and repressive measures of the good days of Louis XIV. “Formerly,” said the priests, “the religionists were rigorously excluded from offices, public employments, and municipal places; now infractions of all kinds increase. Formerly they held no religious meetings; now the holding of assemblies is notorious. Formerly they were not allowed to dogmatize in public; now every day witnesses some fresh irreverence against our ceremonies and our mysteries.... We have felt it to be our duty to deposit these alarms in the paternal and religious breast of your majesty. The source of the evil can never be seriously attacked, unless the foreign preachers be for ever banished, and unless measures be taken to prevent the natives from assuming for the future these functions of pretended pastors.”
Thus they required the exclusion of the Protestants from all public charges, the banishment of the pastors, the dispersion of the assemblies; that is to say, the execution of the most odious ordinances of Louis XIV.; and after having preferred these requests, the prelates added: “The erring will ever be our fellow-citizens, our brothers, and even our children in the order of religion. Ever shall we love and cherish them. Far from us be the thought of the axe and the sword!”
It is difficult to comprehend how the conclusion of this memorial agreed with the premises, since it was absolutely impossible—impossible as proved by the experience of more than a century—to prevent fifteen hundred thousand of the French people from exercising their worship, unless they were all to be drowned in their own blood. But we will not let a word of bitterness escape us here. We will, on the contrary, express our commiseration and our sympathy for these bishops and these priests. Alas! how many of them were destined to perish in the storms of the Revolution. Their misfortunes excite our pity!
An ex-Jesuit, Father Lenfant, in 1787 published “A Discourse for the perusal of the Council upon the project of granting a civil condition to the Protestants.” His language was much less guarded than that of the episcopacy, and before reading this tract, we could never have imagined that even the blindest of fanatics could have heaped up in a few pages so many infamous libels. The Reformed became, under the pen of this ex-Jesuit, impious wretches, rebels, monsters, enemies of all laws, human and divine. We may deplore also the lot of this miserable madman; he was murdered in the prison of the Abbaye, on the 3rd of September, 1792, and it was not a Protestant hand that wielded the homicidal axe.