Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/36

 A longer answer was given by Dr. Wake, the great Protestant champion, “who (says Burnet) having long been in France, chaplain to Lord Preston, brought over with him many curious discoveries that were both useful and surprising.” The French Bishop’s Pastoral was dated March 24, 1686. This man Bossuet was the chief of the authors of James II.’s era employed in drawing portraits of Popery, which, by a large amount of fabrication and of concealment, represented it as a reli gion almost identical with Protestantism. But in successive editions of Bossuet’s Fxposition some of these deceptions had to be omitted as tending to corrupt Catholics as much as to catch proselytes. When Dr. Wake called attention to these changes and contradictions, Bossuet replied that they were only literary emendations of plan and style. Accordingly the Nouvelle for June 1686 opened a sarcastic article with this sentence:— “On ecrit de Paris que M. de Meaux retranchera de la 2 Edition de sa Lettre Pastorale l’endroit ou il dit aux nouveaux Catholiques de son Dioceze qu’ils n’ont point souffert de violence en leurs biens ni en leurs personnes, et qu’il a ouï dire la même chose aux autres Evêques.” [They write from Paris that the Bishop of Meaux will retrench in the second edition of his Pastoral Letter the place where he tells the new converts of his diocese that they have not suffered any violence either in their goods or in their persons, and that he heard the other bishops say the same thing.] This ironical announcement was gravely contradicted by Bossuet himself, in a letter to his English vindicator, dated Meaux, 13th May 1687. Thereupon Dr. Wake wrote the following indignant reply, which, as setting forth the whole case, I copy for my readers’ benefit:—

“I cannot without confusion repeat what you would be thought to have written without blushing. But I must follow whither yourself have led me, and speak those things which (if you have yet any regard to your own dignity, any sense even of common Christianity itself) will certainly bring upon you the most sensible perplexity of mind and great confusion of face. In your Pastoral Letter to the new converts of your diocese you tell them, ‘I do not marvel, my dearest brethren, that you are returned in troops and with so great ease to the Church where your ancestors served God. Not one of you hath suffered violence either in his person or goods. Let them not bring you these deceitful letters (which are addressed from strangers transformed into pastors) under the title of Pastoral Letters to the Protestants of France that are fallen by the force of torments. So far have you been from suffering torments that you have not so much as heard them mentioned. You are returned peaceably to us; you know it.’

“This you now again confirm, as to what ‘has passed in the diocese of Meaux and several others, as you were informed by the Bishops your brethren and your friends (dont les evêques mes confrères et mes amis m’avoient fait le récit); and you do again assert, in the presence of God who is to judge the living and the dead, that you spoke nothing but the truth.’

“And believe me, my Lord, that God whom you call to witness has heard you; and will one day bring you to judgment for it.

“For tell me, good my Lord, — have those edicts which the king has published against the Protestants of France (and in which he involves not only his own subjects, but as far as he can, all the other Protestants of Europe) made any exception for the Diocese of Meaux? Have not their churches been pulled down — their ministers banished — their children ravished out of their bosoms — their sick forced into your hospitals, exposed to the rudeness of the magistrates and clergy — their shops shut up — their offices and employs taken from them — and all opportunities of the public service of God been precluded — there as well as in other places?

“See, my Lord, that black collection which Monsieur Le Fevre (Dr. of the Sorbonne) has lately published with the king’s privilege (Nouveau Recüeil de tout ce qui s’est fait pour et contre les Protestants en France, Paris 1686) of those edicts whereby, as he confesses, the Reformed have in effect been persecuted for these thirty years. Has your diocese escaped the rigour of but any one of these? Or is there nothing of violence either to men’s persons or goods in them?

“Your Lordship, I perceive by some of your private letters, is not a stranger to Monsieur Le Suer, and to whom I have had the honour for some years to be particularly known. Was he not driven from La Ferte, even before the Edict of Nantes was revoked? And was there nothing of violence in all this? Was that poor man forced to forsake all that he had, and seek for refuge in foreign countries, first in England, then in Holland, and did he yet (with his numerous family) suffer nothing neither in his person nor goods? And might I not say the