Paris set the example. A small company of believers had been accustomed to meet in the lodging of the Sieur de la Ferriere, near the Pré-aux-Clercs. The birth of a child hastened matters. The father explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism, and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Roman Church. After prayer the company resolved to constitute themselves into a Church. Jean le Maçon was called to be the minister or pastor; elders and deacons were chosen; and the organisation was complete.[196] It seemed as if all Protestant France had been waiting for the signal, and organised Churches sprang up everywhere.
Crespin names thirteen Churches, completely organised in the manner of the Church of Paris, founded between 1555 and 1557—Meaux, Poitiers, Angers, les Iles de Saintonge, Agen, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Lyon, Orléans, and Rouen. He adds that there were others. Documentary evidence now available enables us to give thirty-six more, all dressées, or completely organised, with a consistory or kirk-session, before 1560. One hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France from Geneva before 1567. The history of these congregations during the reign of Henry II. was full of tragic and dramatic incidents.[197] They existed in the midst of a population which was for the most part fanatically Romanist, easily excited by priests and monks, who poured forth violent addresses from the pulpits of neighbouring churches. Law-courts, whether in the capital or in the provinces, the public officials, all loyal subjects of the King, were invited, commanded by the Edict of Chateaubriand, to ferret out and hunt down those suspected of Protestant sympathies. To fail to make a reverence when passing a crucifix, to speak unguardedly against an ecclesiastical ceremony, to exhibit the slightest sympathy for a Protestant martyr, to be found in possession of a book printed in Geneva, was sufficient to provoke a denunciation, an arrest, a trial which must end in torture and death. Protestants were compelled to worship in cellars, to creep stealthily to their united devotions; like the early Christians during the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian, they had to meet at midnight; and these midnight assemblies gave rise to the same infamous reports about their character which the Jews spread abroad regarding the secret meetings of the Christians of the first three centuries.[198] Every now and then they were discovered, as in the incident of the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris, and wholesale arrests and martyrdoms followed.
The organisation of the faithful into Churches had done much for French Protestantism in bestowing upon them the power which association gives; but more was needed to weld them into one. In 1558, doctrinal differences arose in the congregation at Poitiers. The Church in Paris was appealed to, and its minister, Antoine de Chandieu, went to Poitiers to assist at the celebration of the Holy Supper, and to heal the dispute. There, it is said, the idea of a Confession of Faith for the whole Church was suggested. Calvin was consulted, but did not approve. Notwithstanding, on May 25th, 1559, a number of ministers and elders, coming from all parts of France, and representing, according to a contemporary document whose authority is somewhat doubtful, sixty-six Churches,[199] met in Paris for conference. Three days were spent in deliberations, under the presidency of Morel, one of the Parisian ministers. This was the First National Synod of the French Protestant Church. It compiled a Confession of Faith and a Book of Discipline.
The Confession of Faith[200] (Confession de Foi faite d’un commun accord par les François, qui desirent vivre selon la pureté de l’évangile de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ) consists of forty articles. It was revised more than once by subsequent Synods, but may still be called the Confession of the French Protestant Church. It was based on a short Confession drafted by Calvin in 1557, and embodied in a letter to the King on behalf of his persecuted subjects. “It seemed useful,” one of the members of the Synod wrote to Calvin, “to add some articles to your Confession, and to modify it slightly on some points.” Probably out of deference to Calvin’s objection to a creed for the whole Church, it was resolved to keep it secret for some time. The resolution was in vain. The Confession was in print, and known before the end of 1559.
The Book of Discipline (Discipline ecclésiastique des églises réformées de France) regulated the organisation and the discipline of the Churches. It was that kind of ecclesiastical polity which has become known as Presbyterian, but which might be better called Conciliar. A council called the Consistory, consisting of the minister or ministers, elders, and deacons, ruled the congregation. Congregations were formed into groups, over which was the Colloquy, composed of representatives from the Consistories; over the Colloquies were the Provincial Synods; and over all the General or National Synod. Rules were laid down about how discipline was to be exercised. It was stated clearly that no Church could claim a primacy over the others. All ministers were required to sign the Confession of Faith, and to acknowledge and submit to the ecclesiastical discipline.[201]
It is interesting to see how in a country whose civil rule was becoming gradually more absolutist, this “Church under the Cross” framed for itself a government which reconciled, more thoroughly perhaps than has ever been done since, the two principles of popular rights and supreme central control. Its constitution has spread to Holland, Scotland, and to the great American Churches. Their ecclesiastical polity came much more from Paris than from Geneva.
§ 7. Reaction against Persecution.
An attentive study of the sources of the history of the period shows that the excessive severity of King and Court towards Protestants had excited a fairly widespread reaction in favour of the persecuted, and had also impelled the King to action which was felt by many to be unconstitutional. This sympathy with the persecuted and repugnance to the arbitrary exercise of kingship did much to mould the Huguenot movement which lay in the immediate future.