Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/17

 

The eloquence of the Rev. Robert Hall found a stirring theme in the Revocation Edict. Although the ])oints on which he fixed were almost the same on each of the two occasions on which he alluded to it, both passages are worthy of quotation:—

“The Gallican Church, no doubt, looked upon it as a signal triumph, when she prevailed on Louis the Fourteenth to repeal the edict of Nantes, and to suppress the protestant religion. But what was the consequence? Where shall we look, after this period, for her Fenelons and her Pascals, where for the distinguished monuments of piety and learning which were the glory of her better days? As for piety, she perceived she had no occasion for it, when there was no lustre of christian holiness surrounding her; nor for learning, when she had no longer any opponents to confute, or any controversies to maintain. She felt herself at liberty to become as ignorant, as secular, and as irreligious as she pleased; and, amidst the silence and darkness she had created around her, she drew the curtains and retired to rest. The accession of numbers she gained by suppressing her opponents was like the small extension of length a body acquires by death; the feeble remains of life were extinguished, and she lay a putrid corpse, a public nuisance, filling the air with pestilential exhalations.” — (Hall’s Works, 12 mo, vol. ii., p. 284.)

“It will not be thought a digression from the present subject [Toleration], to remark the consequences which followed in France from the repeal of the edict of Nantes. By that event France deprived herself of a million of her most industrious subjects, who carried their industry, their arts, and their riches into other countries. The loss which her trade and manufactures sustained by this event was, no doubt, prodigious. But it is not in that view my subject leads me to consider the ill consequences of that step. She lost a people whose simple frugal manners and whose conscientious piety were well adapted to stem the growing corruption of the times, while the zeal and piety of their pastors were a continual stimulus to awaken the exertions of her national clergy. If France had never had her Saurins, her Claudes, her Du Plessis Mornays, her national church had never boasted the genius of Bossuet and the virtues of Fenelon. From the fatal moment she put a period to the toleration of the protestants, the corruptions of the clergy, the abuses of the Church, the impiety of the people, met with no check, till infidelity of the worst sort pervaded and ruined the nation. When the remote as well as immediate effects of that edict, which suppressed the protestants are taken into the account; when we consider the careless security and growing corruption which hung over the Gallican Church in consequence of it; it will not be thought too much to affirm, that to that measure may be traced the destruction of the monarchy and the ruin of the nation.” — (Hall’s Works, 12mo, vol. vi., p. 378).

  II., (pages 8 to 11). The Refugees in the Reigns of Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James I., and their Churches. This Section, containing historical notes, begins with an explanation that memoirs of refugees before the reign of Louis XIV. did not come within the scope of my two volumes. In this new volume, however, Memoirs of Refugees in former reigns will be found as a supplementary section, following the Analysis of the Historical Introduction.

The reign of Edward VI. witnessed the founding of Churches for Protestant Refugees. John a Lasco, (page 9) a refugee Polish nobleman and pastor at Embden in East Friesland,