Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/20

 The eloquence of the Rev. Robert Hall found a stirring theme in the Revocation Edict. Although the points 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, 12mo, 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.)

The Waldensian Pasteur, Jean Rodolphe Peyran (b. 1752, d. 1823), in a controversial letter, twitted the Roman Catholic clergy with La Mission Dragonne of the days of Louis XIV. His English editor (Rev. Thomas Sims) makes the following note on that phrase:—

“The persecution that followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was attended with many cruelties to compel the Protestants to renounce their faith; amongst others, the dragoons of Louis XIV. were quartered upon the inhabitants, and permitted to harass them. It is due to the character of the excellent Fenelon that, when he went as a missionary to persuade the Protestants to become Roman Catholics, he refused to allow the presence of dragoons where he exercised his mission. Ambitious as Louis XIV. was in early, and superstitious in later, life, there is reason to conclude, from original State Papers, which have been since brought to light, that the cruelties of the persecution must be chietly laid to the charge, not only of the Jesuit La Chaise, the King’s confessor, but of the Ministers of State, who instigated the commission of atrocities, of the existence of which, to the full extent, the King himself was not aware. . . . The persecution has been followed by events that should instruct all rulers in Church and State to cherish sentiments of moderation towards their fellow Christians — for, first, the immediate loss to the French nation at the emigration of those industrious Protestants who fled to England, and other Protestant kingdoms, with skill in their manufactures, was immensely great. For proofs of the losses then sustained by the French nation, see Etât de la France, extrait par M. le Comte de Boulainvilliers des memoires dressées par les Intendans du royaume par l’ordre du roi Louis XIV., à la solicitation du Duc de Bourgogne, a work published in 1727. Secondly, the intolerance that marked the conduct of the Church of Rome at that period, and in the following century, was a subject of which Deists of the school of Voltaire and D’Alembert availed themselves to diffuse the principles of infidelity, and hatred not only to the Church of Rome but to Christianity itself — a circumstance that combined with several other causes to promote the terrific event of the French Revolution.”

One of the refugees in Holland, named Migault, spoke of forced abjurations thus:—

“Undoubtedly a considerable number of Protestants [in France] have abjured their