History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

But beyond the official region, barriers and fetters of all kinds soon reappeared, as in the reign of Charles X.; sometimes, indeed, there seemed to be a stronger desire to offer obstruction, and scarcely was one cause of litigation on account of religion settled, before another sprung up.

After the Revolution, the most zealous of the Protestants judged that the moment had arrived for multiplying their labours of proselytism. Considered from the point of view of liberty and the equality of creeds, this was their right; and considered from that of their personal convictions, it was their duty. When proselytism employs such means only as are peaceful and authorized by universal morality, no human power can legitimately interdict it.

Circumstances appeared favourable. Public opinion was deeply hostile to the clerical party; it accused them of having deceived the conscience of an aged king to make him violate his oath, and overthrow the liberties of the nation. The external signs of (Roman) Catholicism fell in every direction before the popular cry; the churches were deserted, and the priests felt so well the discredit in which they stood, that for several years they kept themselves aloof, never showing themselves except when absolutely obliged, never raising a dispute, uttering a word, or asking anything but to be forgotten at the foot of their altars.

This was not all. Philosophical systems and social theories were boldly propounded to the country under the sacred name of religion, and were preached with great applause. Saint Simonism, among others, had its journals, its public meetings, its worship, its hierarchy, its missionaries, its committees of propagandism: we mention the fact without contesting the right: the Saint Simonians were entitled to liberty, to as much liberty as the Reformed and the (Roman) Catholics, of gaining proselytes by the channel of persuasion.

It may be easily imagined that the fervent members of the Protestant faith would not consent to be shut up in their places of worship, while antichristian and vicious doctrines, in their eyes, were openly propagated. Conscience imposed upon them the imperious and holy obligation of addressing themselves immediately both to the deserters from the (Roman) Catholic church—an immense multitude, wandering hither and thither without spiritual guides—and to the disciples of the schools, who had, as it appeared to them, but the empty appearance of a religion. It was not so much an idea of aggression against (Roman) Catholicism as a testimony of sympathy for the souls which had no longer religious belief of any kind.

They had also another object in view, of secondary consequence to the religious conscience, but still important,—this was to strengthen order, threatened by the political revolutions. These Protestants believed that a vague spiritualism could not imbue a free people with those morals which must sustain the noble burthen of the laws, and that this required a strong and positive faith, the faith, which they themselves possessed.

Hence the origin, for a part of French Protestantism, of a whole series of publications, associations, and Christian institutions, in the general sense of this word. A journal, rearing alone the standard of the Gospel, the Sower, appeared in the month of September, 1831. Chapels, unsalaried by the State, were opened about the same time at Paris and elsewhere. In 1833 an evangelical society was established, with the intention of announcing to all indifferently, what they held to be the essential truths of Christianity. We might mention some other institutions conceived in the same spirit.

These labours were not trammelled in the beginning. But the (Roman) Catholic clergy having gradually recovered their strength, the government thought it expedient to make approaches to them, and endeavoured to conciliate them by favours of a nature alien to the establishment of 1830. It is not our duty to examine whether the government of Louis Philippe did not lose more than it gained by this policy. What it is important for us to say is, that it impeded the work of proselytism according to the measure of its relations with the sacerdotal body.

Considering certain acts and prosecutions, it might even have been supposed, that there was something passing analogous to what had been seen in former times. All the historians have remarked that Henry IV., on his advent to the throne, and Louis XIV., when he had disputed with the Holy See, redoubled their severity against the Protestants, because they felt it incumbent upon them to wipe away the suspicion of heresy. The same cause, in its due proportion, and allowing for the great difference of the periods, produced similar effects under the reign of Louis Philippe. This prince had to dissipate the distrust of the priests, to win their sympathies; and in one sense, he dreaded more than ever Charles X. had done, giving Protestants a free field, because the clergy would have been more prompt in accusing him of connivance with them. The marriage of the heir to the crown with a Protestant prince (a descendant, it is said, of Admiral Coligny), instead of improving matters, made them worse.

Things were now carried farther than instituting suits against those, who opened new places of worship, than invoking the restrictive articles of the penal code against them, as under the Restoration, and applying the dispositions of the law of 1834 respecting associations, although the minister of justice and public worship had solemnly promised the Chambers not to turn them against religious societies; but even the right of controversy, that was exercised under the régime of the Edict of Nantes, was called in question, and a certain prefectorial order actually assumed to fix—as in the time of Charles IX. and Catherine de Medicis—the number of persons authorized to participate in the Protestant religion. Even more, legally constituted Protestantism had to maintain contests to preserve the right of visiting its own members in the hospitals, prisons, and other public establishments; and the authorities proceeded sometimes so far as to impose arbitrary bounds to preaching among the scattered Protestants.