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 HUGUENOTS

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HUGUENOTS

itor the partisans of the new ideas, who were no longer Catholics and were hesitating in their choice between Luther, Zwingli, and the other chiefs of the Refor- mation. Calvin became famous; many Frenchmen flocked to him at Geneva, where he went to reside in 15:^6, making that city the home of the Reformation. Thence his disciples returned to their own country to spread his T\Titings and his ideas, and to rally old partisans or recruit new ones. Alarmed at their progress, Francis I, who had just concluded a treaty with the pope (June, 153S), thenceforward took a decidedly hostile attitude towards Protestantism, and maintained it until his death (31 March, 15-17). In 1539 and 1540 the old edicts of toleration were replaced by others which invested the tribunals and the magistrates with inquisitorial powers against the heretics and those who shielded them. .\t the in- stance of the king the Sorbonne drew up first a for- mula of faith in twenty-six articles, and then an index of prohiljited books, in which the works of Dolet, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin appeared; the parlia- ments received orders to prosecute anyone who should preach a doctrine contrary to these articles, or circu- late any of the books enumerated in the index. This unanimity of king, Sorbonne, and Parliament, it may be said, was what prevented the Reformation from gaining in France the ea.sy success which it won in Germany and England. The magistrates were every- where extremely zealous in enforcing the repressive edicts. At Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Rouen, Bor- deaux, and Angers, numbers of heretics and hawkers of prohibited books were sent to the stake. At Aix the Parliament passed a decree ordering a general massacre of the descendants of the Waldenses grouped around Merindol and de Cabrieres, its en- forcement to be suspended for five months to give them time for conversion. After withhokling his consent to this decree for five years the king allowed an authorization for its execution to be wrung from him, and about eight hundred Waklenses were mas- sacred — an odious deed which Francis I regretted bitterly until his death. His successor, Henry II, vigorously maintained the struggle against Protest- antism. In 1547 a commission — the famous Cham- hre Ardente — was created in the Parliament of Paris for the special purpose of trying heretics; then in June, 1551, the Chateaubriant Edict codified all the measures which had previously been enacted for the defence of the Faith. This legislation was enforced by the parliaments in all its rigour. It resulted in the execution of many Protestants at Paris, Bonleaux, Lyons, Rouen, and Chamb^ry, and drove the rest to exasperation. The Protestants were aided by a certam number of apostate priests and monks, by preachers from Geneva and Strasburg, by schoolmasters who disseminated the literature of the sect; they were favoured at times by bishops — such as those of Char- tres, of Uzes, of Nimes, of Troyes, of Valence, of Oloron, of Lescar, of .\ix, of Montauban, of Beauvais; they were supported and guided by Calvin, who from Geneva — where he was persecuting his adversaries (e. g. Cartel- lion), or having them burnt (e. g. Servetus) — kept up an active correspondence with his party. With these helps the Reformers penetrated lift le by "little into every part of France. Between 1547 and 1555 some of their circles began to organize themselves into chm-ches at Rouen, Troyes, and elsewhere, but it was at Paris that the first Reformed church was definitely organized in 1555. Others followed — at Meaux, Poitiers, Lyons, Angers, Orleans, Bourges, and La Rochelle. .4ll of these took as their model that of Geneva, which Calvin governed; for from him proceeded the im- pulse which stimulated them, the faith that inspired them; from him, too, came nearly all the ministers, who put the churches into communication with that of Geneva and its supreme head. It lacked only a confession of faith to ensure the union of the churches VII.— 34

and uniformity of belief. In 1559 there was held at Paris the first national sjTiod, composed of ministers and elders assembled from all parts of France; it formulated a confession of faith, drawing inspiration from the writings of Calvin.

Creed .\nd Institutions. — From this moment the French Reformation was established; it had its creed, its discipline, its organization. Of the forty articles of its creed those alone are of interest here which embody the beliefs peculiar to the Huguenots. Ac- cording to these. Scripture is the rule of faith, and con- tains all that is necessary for the service of God and our salvation. The canonical books of which it is formed (all those in the Catholic canon except Tobias, Judith, SVisdom, Ecchis., Baruch, and Machabees) are recognized as such not by the common consent of the Churches, but by the internal testimony and per- suasion of the Holy Spirit, Who causes us to dis- cern them from other ecclesiastical books. The three sjinbols of the .\postles, of Nicjea, and of St. Atha- nasius are received as conformable to Holy Scripture.

Man fallen through sin has lost his moral integrity; his nature is utterly corrupt, and his will captive to sin. From this general corruption and condemnation only those are rescued whom God has elected of His pure bounty and mercy in Jesus Christ without con- sideration of their works, leaving the others under the said condemnation in order that in them His justice may be manifested. We are reconciled with God by the one sacrifice which Jesus Christ offered on the Cross, and our justice consists entirely in the remission of our sins assured to us by the imputation of the merits of Christ. Faith alone makes us sharers in this justice, and this faith is imparted to us by the hidden grace of the Holy Spirit; it is bestowed, not once for all merely to set us upon the way, but to bring us to the goal; the good deeds done by us do not enter into the reckoning as affecting our justifi- cation. The intercession of the saints, purgatory, oral confession, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and indul- gences are human inventions. The institution of the Church is Divine; it cannot exist ^Nnthout pastors authorized to teach; no one should live apart from it. The true Church is the society of the faithful who agree to follow the word of God and the pure religion which is based thereon. It ought to be governed, in obedience to the ordinance of Christ, bj^ pastors, guardians, and deacons. All true pastors have the same authority and equal power. Their first duty is to preach the Word of God ; their second to adminis- ter the sacraments. The sacraments are outward signs and assured pledges of the grace of God. There are only two: Baptism and the Supper, in which, by the hidden and incomprehensible power of His Spirit, Jesus Christ, though He is in Heaven, spiritually nourishes and vivifies us. In Baptism, as in the Supper, God gives us that which the sacrament signifies. It is God's will that the world be governed by laws and constitutions; He has established the various governments; these therefore must be obeyed.

This profession of faith, the elements of which are borrowed from Calvin's " Institutio Christianse Re- ligionis", evidently takes for its basis Luther's princi- pal doctrines, which are however here more methodi- cally expounded and more rigorously deduced. The Huguenots added to the Lutheran theories only the belief in absolute predestination and in the certainty of salvation by reason of the inamissibility of grace. They also de\'iated from Lutheranism in the organiza- tion of their church (which is not, as with Luther, ab- sorbed in the State) and in their conception — obscure enough indeed — of the sacraments, in which they see more than the empty and inefficacious signs of the Sacramentarians, and less than ceremonies conferring grace, the Lutheran conception of a sacrament.

The discipline established by the SjTiod of 1559 was also contained in forty articles, to which others