This impartiality is not the neutrality of indifference or sloth, or of what is sometimes called impersonality. In the great struggles of Protestantism, we are on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the victims against their executioners, of right against brute force, of equality against privilege, and of liberty against despotism. The principle of the inviolability of the human conscience, which the peoples of modern times have gathered from the Gospel, is ours; and we shall esteem ourselves amply rewarded for our efforts, if the perusal of this work shall inspire, together with the sentiment of the happy effects of the Christian life, a deeper abhorrence of all religious persecution, under whatever name or pretext it may seek to cloak itself.
Liberty of thought, liberty of faith, liberty of worship, under the safeguard and within the limits of common right: complete equality of religious creeds, and even above that equality itself, charity, fraternal love, which feels for the erring while reprobating their error—these are our maxims. They have constantly guided us in our labours, and God grant that our conviction may pass in its entirety into the spirit and conscience of the reader! The generation of our day is still in too much need of teaching of this kind.
It was impossible to write this book without relating from period to period, the last excepted, deeds of frightful injustice and of terrible cruelty; for that is the history itself of Protestantism from its origin down to the eve of the Revolution of 1789. No Christian population has been so long persecuted as the Reformed people of France. The duty of the historian must be fulfilled; but wherever the task was painful, we have striven to extenuate, by insisting upon the piety and perseverance of the proscribed, much more than upon the crimes of the proscribes. In the midst of massacres, in the face of the scaffold and the stake, in the bloody expeditions against the gatherings in the wilderness, we have only glanced at the oppressors, and our eyes have dwelt upon the victims. This restraint has been of twofold benefit to us, both as a precept of charity, and as a rule of literary composition. Every work, which excites the mind without elevating it, is bad.
The old passions, besides, must be extinguished, not only among those whose forefathers underwent so many sufferings, but also in the heart of the men, who at the present time occupy the places of the most inveterate enemies of Protestantism. However the (Roman) Catholic clergy may declare itself immutable in its creeds and maxims, it is to be hoped that this immutability does not apply to the principle of persecution. The advance of public morals has penetrated more or less everywhere, and the sword of intolerance, which has, alas! in disastrous days recoiled upon the priest himself, would, doubtless, fail to find a hand to wield it again.
The Reformers of France never would become in their country a Protestant Ireland. If they have too often stood apart from the great national family, this was their misfortune—not their fault. They did not separate themselves; they were driven forth; and each time the door has been opened, though it were but half way, they could, without betraying their sacred and inviolable obligations to God, return to the bosom of the nation, and they have done so with joy and sincerity. Now that the civil law is the same for all, they form in no sense, either near or afar off, a distinct political party, and they hold it as a point of honour to be confounded in that vast unity, which is the strength and the glory of France.
Theodore de Bèze said in his day to King Henry IV.: “My desire is, that Frenchmen should love one another.” This wish of the venerable Reformer is that of all Protestants, and truly, the circumstances which surround us, render it now more than ever an imperative duty. Not that we partake of the discouragement of many estimable men; we confide in the love of God, in the power of His Spirit, in the progress of the human race. Where others discover the seeds of decay, we behold the beginnings of a new and higher life. But the transition will be wearisome, the success difficult; and to secure a happier lot, there must be the full concurrence of all sincere Christians and all good citizens.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.