Part 12 (1/2)
[220] _Original Letters_, pp. 68-69.
[221] _Pastoral Letters_, III. 1. vi. p. 122.
[222] _Lettres choisies_, ii. p. 706.
[223] _Pastoral Letters_, IV. 1. xiv. p. 329.
CHAPTER VI
HUGUENOT THOUGHT IN ENGLAND
SECOND PART
The foreign land to which the Huguenot was compelled to fly acted upon him as a mental stimulus. With such an incitement, the progress of Huguenot thought after the Revocation becomes profoundly interesting. We shall examine it from the threefold point of view of theology, political speculation, and toleration, the last question being intimately connected with the two former, and all three questions being moreover inseparably related.
Most of the men of letters with whom we are now dealing being pastors or having been trained for the ministry, theology occupied a foremost place in their thoughts. In France, the Calvinistic discipline, though it had not suppressed heterodoxy, at least made its expression very guarded. When Locke was staying at Montpellier, he remarked that there was in the land room only for Roman Catholicism or Calvinism, no other creed being tolerated. A Toleration Act in the most narrow sense of the word, the Edict of Nantes recognised but one dissenting Communion. But in Holland and even in England, before the Revolution, the refugees could indulge in a certain freedom of thought. The charge of Socinianism brought against Colomies does not seem to have indisposed against him his patron, the Archbishop.
Heterodoxy spread so easily among the Huguenots in England that their orthodox brethren in Holland were alarmed: ”We have learned from the good and excellent letter addressed to us by Messieurs our dearest brethren the Pastors of the dispersion at the present moment in London, that the evil has crossed the seas and spreads in England amongst the brethren of our communion and tongue.”
These words are an extract from the debates of a Synod convened at Utrecht in 1690 to remedy the spread of heresy among the refugees. Not being backed by civil authority, its freely-distributed and strongly-worded anathemas fell flat. The efforts of the orthodox party were spent in petty intrigues like that which deprived Bayle of his Professors.h.i.+p. They endeavoured to lay a gravestone upon a living tree and were surprised to find the stone split.
This freedom in theology was exerted in two directions: the lat.i.tudinarian tenet that the Bible was the religion of the Protestants, now commonly repeated,[224] led to much regard being paid to textual criticism, and in this close study of the divine message all parties were united; the heterodox in their search after truth, the orthodox in their controversy with the Catholic doctors. It was the age when Richard Simon, the Catholic founder, according to M. Renan, of modern exegesis, flourished, and Le Clerc wrote his first book to dispute his conclusions. A more dangerous method was that of Bayle. The first to lead the life of an absolute free-thinker, whose mind is entirely severed from traditional theology, dispa.s.sionate to the verge of inhumanity, a perfect example of the abnormal development of the reasoning faculty to the detriment of sensitiveness, he must not be mistaken for a Pyrrhonist albeit he poses for one from time to time.[225] The contemporary Pyrrhonist would write in the spirit of Pascal's _Pensees_, and showing up the futility of man's effort to fathom transcendental mysteries, submit to a higher spiritual reason ”the reason of the heart that reason knoweth not.” With the subtlest dialectician's skill, Bayle merely opposes reason and faith. In every Christian dogma he delights in showing up the latent logical absurdity; not sneering, however, as Voltaire was soon to do, not even hinting at the consequences of his method. The little intellectual exercise over, he pa.s.ses on to another subject. In spite of his destructive criticism, once out of the professorial chair, he leads the life of a good Christian and a righteous Huguenot. In the outward expression of his faith he never wavered. Unlike Montaigne, a sceptic of a different stamp, he never gave undue advantage to his personal comfort. To this day he remains, Sphinx-like, a faint smile lighting up his countenance, a psychological enigma.
In 1709 the great _Dictionary_ was translated into English by J. P.
Bernard, La Roche, and others, and again in 1739-41 by Bernard, Birch, Lockman, and others; already long familiar to English readers, who were not slow in recognising a very high literary merit in its lucidity of style and its extraordinary interest, it had thus been greeted almost on its appearance by a good judge, Saint-Evremond: ”Monsieur Bayle clothes in so agreeable a dress his profound learning, that it never palls.”[226] A direct influence could be traced of Bayle upon Shaftesbury, the author of the _Characteristics_.
But the influence of the heterodox Huguenot weighed little when compared with that of the orthodox. Much led to annul the effect of the _Critical Dictionary_ on the ma.s.s of readers. For one thing, it came a little too late; then, a bomb exploding in the open does less damage than a bomb exploding in a closed room. Though looked upon as suspicious by an Archbishop who had never read them,[227] Bayle's works were allowed to circulate freely in England. On the other hand, a larger portion of the English public read treatises of devotion bearing the names of learned and ill.u.s.trious sufferers in the cause of religion. Bishop Fleetwood's translation of Jurieu's _Traite de la devotion_ went through no less than twenty-six editions, and Drelincourt's _Consolations d'une ame fidele_ was a success before Defoe appended to it as a vivid commentary the story of the ghost of Mrs. Veal. In the struggle against deism that marked the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the widespread influence of such books told against infidelity.
Politics were then a part of theology. In the same way as the Revocation helped to break up the traditional Calvinistic theology, it shattered the system of politics most in accordance with the French reformer's political creed. As long as the Huguenots enjoyed the liberties granted them by Henri IV., their doctors had preached pa.s.sive obedience. When the wave of persecution broke, some faltered, while others obstinately upheld the doctrine that had then become part of their Church divinity. No doubt in showing the glaring insufficiency of the old creed to meet the facts, the Revocation had a demoralising effect. To the reflective few the sudden change of doctrine of many ill.u.s.trious theologians must have seemed very distressing. One bulwark of their faith, as they had been often told, pa.s.sive obedience, was being swept away. What destruction might not threaten their faith itself?
Modern Protestant writers, especially in our democratic age, glory in those obscure predecessors of 1789 who a.s.serted in the teeth of absolutism, the rights of the people; yet had the Edict of Nantes never been repealed, and the Huguenots suffered to live on, the hardy victims of petty vexations, it is highly probable that the same doctors who in Holland a.s.serted the sovereignty of the people, would in their French Synods have hurled excommunication at any ”followers of the Independents.”
Jurieu's apology for his new opinion was frank and ingenuous: obedience was due to Louis XIV. as long as the Protestants were his subjects; compelled by persecution to renounce his allegiance, they obeyed another Prince who allowed them to profess other political opinions.[228] A little demoralisation must pay for every readjustment of conviction due to progress.
Up to the eve of the Revocation, the duty of pa.s.sive obedience was set forth by the Huguenots. In the absence of solemn declarations issued by Synods, the last being held in 1660, we may record the individual sayings of the luminaries of the party. ”Any Huguenot,” Jurieu had written in 1681, ”is ready to subscribe with his blood to the doctrine that makes for the safety of kings, viz., that temporally our kings depend on no one but on G.o.d, that even for heresy and schism kings may not be deposed, nor may their subjects be absolved from their oath of allegiance.”[229] Acting as spokesman for his co-religionists, he added: ”Our loyalty is proof against any temptation, our love for our Prince is unbounded.”[230] Another pastor, Fetizon, opposing the factious doctrines of the Roman Church to the loyalty of the Huguenots, showed how they supported the King's absolute powers: ”Where is it commonly taught that kings depend only on G.o.d and have a divine power that may be taken away by no ecclesiastical person, no community of people? Is it not in the Protestant religion? Where is it at least allowed to believe that royalty is only a human authority that always remains subject to the people that have granted it, or to the Church that may take it back? Is it not in the Roman Church?”[231] In his famous dispute with Bossuet, Claude maintained the divine right of kings.[232]
Writing in the _Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_ for April 1684, Bayle censures Maimbourg for charging Protestantism with sedition, and alleges the Oxford decree of the preceding year condemning Buchanan and Milton. The subject visibly haunts him; again and again he reverts to it, suggesting difficulties, arguing on both sides according to his wont, but clearly inclining to obedience. The persecution shakes his political faith a little; must the Huguenots in France go to their forbidden a.s.semblies in ”the Desert”? If it be true that it is better to obey G.o.d than man, who is to determine what the will of G.o.d is?[233] And again, the accession of James II. is a good opportunity for Protestantism to show its true spirit; because the King frankly avows his Catholicism, his Protestant subjects are in honour bound to obey him. ”The Protestants have never had so good an opportunity of showing that they are not wrong in boasting of their loyalty to their sovereign, whatever the religion he should follow.”[234] The very year of the Revocation, Elie Merlat, a pastor who after suffering imprisonment had fled to Lausanne, published a treatise on the absolute power of sovereigns, written four years before, and which he, in spite of persecution, felt no disposition to cancel or modify. The subjects owe their king ”civil adoration,” and far from dictating to him, may not question his decisions. ”If it is permitted to the subjects in certain cases to examine their rulers and ask them to render an account of their actions, the bond of public union is snapped asunder and the door opened to all kinds of sedition.”[235] A faint echo is perceptible of Hobbes's teaching. All men are in the origin equal and free, but sin engendering a state of war, a few men, by G.o.d's design, have been instrumental in saving through their ambition mankind, whom they have reduced to obedience.[236]
Absolute power, though not good in itself, is the supreme remedy devised by G.o.d to save man. The Calvinist's sombre teaching finds here its proper expression.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN CLAUDE]
In contradistinction with the Catholic doctrine, the Huguenot divines do not admit of an exception to the rule of obedience which they have laid down, not even that of an insurrection with religion as a motive. We have already quoted Jurieu's sweeping a.s.sertion. Like the early Christians, they wished to oppose only silent resignation to their tormentors. ”The Prince,”
said Jurieu, ”is the master of externals in religion; if he will not allow another religion besides his own, if we cannot obey, we may die without defending ourselves, because true religion must not use weapons to reign and be established.”[237] ”We deny,” said Merlat, ”that rebellion is justifiable to-day for religion's sake.”[238] The same feeling of loyalty impelled the French congregation of Threadneedle Street, on 26th May 1683, to reject Lambrion, a minister at Bril, in Holland, because it was reported that he had said that ”persecuting tyrants might be looked upon as wild beasts, and that any one might fall upon them.”[239]
After the Revocation, a different opinion speedily obtained among the refugees. No doubt they were influenced in Holland, as Jurieu stated, by public opinion. The political education of both England and Holland was far in advance of that of France. Then the question, which before had seemed merely a theme for academic discourses, became a pressing reality. By most Huguenots the Revocation was looked upon as a temporary measure due to the intrigues of some Jesuits at the Court; the King, they repeated, would not fail to revoke his reactionary decrees when better informed about his faithful subjects; once more the refugees would be allowed to return to the homes of their childhood and enjoy their restored estates. As the months went by without bringing relief, they fell into two parties: on the one side, the peaceful men of letters and diplomatists by nature advocated temporising; on the other, the great ma.s.s of the people bearing the brunt of the persecution, the fiery ministers, the army and navy officers who had forfeited their commissions, relied only on the strength of arms and entertained wild hopes of a successful insurrection. As the fall of James II. appeared imminent, the violent party more openly discovered their sentiments. Among them, the Prince of Orange recruited his soldiers and pamphleteers, who, like sharpshooters in front of an army, spread consternation among the upholders of arbitrary power in England a few years before the Dutch actually landed at Torbay. The advent of William III. and the war that followed helped only to strengthen the party of resistance, insomuch that Protestantism has. .h.i.therto stood in France for a synonym of Republicanism.
On all sides the pamphleteers have received scant consideration: Bayle attacked them violently,[240] Jurieu declined to acknowledge them as allies;[241] yet their influence on the issue of the struggle carried on in England between the house of Stuart and the Whigs was far from inconsiderable. A press war was waged between the Prince of Orange and his father-in-law long before the official war broke out. ”Several libels,”
reports Luttrell in the early spring of 1688, ”and pamphlets have been lately printed and sent about; many are come over from Holland.”[242] These were not the able productions of the London clergy, the Stillingfleets and Tenisons and Tillotsons, raising the standard of a holy war against the Catholic divinity that was pouring forth from the King's press. Scurrilous, libellous, violent leaflets came over from Holland to be eagerly devoured by the same credulous mob that believed both the Popish and the Presbyterian plots. Short, pithy, coa.r.s.e, they may be read to-day, if not with the interest born of warfare in which one takes part, at least without wearisomeness. The most popular are issued in English and in French, so as to sting at one blow James II. and Louis XIV. Such is the letter of Pere de la Chaise, father-confessor to the French King, to Father Petre, James's notorious privy councillor (1688). A scheme being set on foot by the Jesuits to murder all the Protestants in France the same day, the King, to obtain absolution from his confessor for a horrible crime, grants the commission to execute the design. The letters duly sealed are about to be dispatched in the provinces when Louis XIV., whose conscience smites him,--because, after all, the most blood-thirsty tyrant relents where a priest remains obdurate,--confides the secret to Prince de Conde. The latter lays a trap into which the confessor falling, must needs give up the commission. Five days later, the Jesuits poison the Prince, and the Huguenots, deprived of their protector, are delivered over to the tender mercies of the dragoons. ”In England,” adds La Chaise by manner of conclusion, ”the work cannot be done after that fas.h.i.+on ... so that I cannot give you better counsel than to take that course in hand wherein we were so unhappily prevented”--that is, to cut the throats of the Protestants.[243] Another production, the offspring of a kindred pen, was the _Love Letters between Polydorus, the Gothic King, and Messalina, late Queen of Albion_. The struggle over, and James II. beaten, the victor, instead of lending him murderous projects against his former subjects, makes him the b.u.t.t of coa.r.s.e sarcasm.
To the same period belong more serious productions, due to the fact that both parties in England were anxious to appeal to some French authority. In a _Catalogue of all the Discourses published against Popery during the Reign of King James II._ (1689), out of two hundred and thirty-one tracts noticed, there are no less than eleven answers to Bossuet. If Bossuet was the Catholic champion, the Protestants elected Jurieu to enter the lists against him. To the devotional works already mentioned may be added the political writings, especially the _Seasonable Advice to all Protestants in Europe for uniting and defending themselves against Popish Tyranny_ (1689), and the _Sighs of France in Slavery breathing after Liberty_ (1689), with the quaint information, ”written in French by the learned Monsieur Juriew.”