The temples of the Protestants, which had been opened only the day before, were closed like the churches of the (Roman) Catholics, and the pastors were compelled to abstain from their functions under pain of being held as suspected, and consequently liable to capital punishment. The delegate of the Convention in Gard and Lozère, published, on the 16th Prairial, in the year II., a decree commanding the priests and the pastors to withdraw, within the space of eight days, to a distance of twenty leagues from the communes where they had exercised their ministry. The Terrorist had invented nothing new; he merely copied or reproduced an ordinance dictated by the Jesuits in the reign of Louis XIV.
Some of the pastors perished by the Revolutionary axe; others were imprisoned, and among them the veteran of the desert, Paul Rabaut, who was led to the citadel of Nismes upon an ass, as his age and infirmities had deprived him of the strength to travel on foot. “He had seen his eldest son die upon the scaffold, had wept over the proscription of two other children (Rabaut-Pomier and Rabaut-Dupuy), and he was in his turn incarcerated himself. We are witnesses of the resignation he displayed at this painful moment. Imperturbably calm with respect to his own fate, he showed anxiety only for his children and for his fellow-captives, whom he consoled and supported by his example.”[137]
Protestantism counted as many victims in proportion to (Roman) Catholicism, if not more, either pastors or laymen, in the days of 1793. The Dictionary of the Condemned indicates, for the department of Gard, where the Reformed did not constitute half of the whole population, forty-six Protestants, ninety-one (Roman) Catholics, and one Jew. The members of the Revolutionary tribunal of Nismes were, with one exception, all (Roman) Catholics. The French Reformation, to use the expression of M. Aignan, was never named in the mourning and terror of France, and it paid the tribute of blood twice over,—first to the intolerance of Rome, next, to that of impiety.
We find it impossible to trace the Protestant religion at this epoch. It appears that at Sainte Foy and the neighbourhood, the public exercise of religion was never completely interrupted. Doubtless the memory of the aged has also preserved other instances, but books make no mention of them. Piety, which had generally been greatly weakened, nearly everywhere secluded itself in the depth of the conscience, or in the asylum of the domestic roof.
The day of the 9th Thermidor marked the term of this oppression, for as soon as public opinion dared to raise its voice, it demanded and obtained religious freedom. A decree of the 3rd Ventose, year III. (21st February, 1795), authorized the free exercise of religious worship, leaving to the faithful the care of making a provision for it out of their own subscriptions, and prohibiting them from celebrating any worship upon the public highways. The constitution of the year III. confirmed this regulation by the following article: “No one shall be prevented from exercising the worship he has chosen, provided he conforms to the laws; no one can be forced to contribute to the expenses of any creed; the Republic salaries none.”
A police law, issued on the 7th Vendémiaire, year III. (28th September, 1795), commanded that a preliminary declaration should be made before the opening of places of worship, and obliged the ministers of the different communions to sign this formula: “I acknowledge that the universality of French citizens is supreme, and I promise submission and obedience to the laws of the Republic.” The condition of an oath to the following effect was afterwards added: “I swear hatred to royalty and to anarchy, attachment and fidelity to the Republic and to the Constitution of the year III.” The promise of obedience to purely political laws was just; the order to swear hatred to royalty was not so, and excited legitimate remonstrances.
Some Reformed churches seized the opportunity, offered by the appeasement of the public mind and the protection of the authorities, to re-establish themselves. This restoration was laborious and slow. There were but few pastors; some had died during the Revolutionary tempest; others had definitively abandoned the ministry of the Gospel; and the youths of the seminary of Lausanne were dispersed. The laity also displayed little zeal: the scandal of apostasies had produced a deplorable impression upon them, and many had given themselves up to the negations of scepticism, or to the chimeras of theo-philanthropy.
In the midst of this painful re-establishment of Protestantism, Paul Rabaut gave up his soul to God. He had been set at liberty after the 9th Thermidor; but the weight of his years no longer permitted him to participate in the reconstruction of the sanctuary. He died at the age of seventy-six years, on the 26th of September, 1795, invoking the name of the Lord, whom he had confessed before four generations of Christians.