ordained; and, at any rate, he alternately performed the duties of a French Protestant pastor and an Anglican clergyman, in a way which goes far to show that the two positions were not looked upon in his day as in any way incompatible.
I will give but one other instance in the case of the son[1] of the above, another Peter du Moulin, born at Paris in 1600, and who took his degree of D.D. at Leyden. He was instituted Rector of Adisham and Staple, in Kent, 1662. The curious part of this is, that this Presbyterian minister was so instituted in succession to one Charles Nichols, who was also a Presbyterian, and was ejected as such! The difference between the two was that Nichols was an Englishman ordained by presbyters in England, Du Moulin a Frenchman ordained equally by presbyters abroad. Thus then, within a few months of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, did Charles II. take advantage of the saving clause which was, and still is in it, 'That the penalties in this Act shall not extend to the foreigners or aliens of the foreign Reformed Churches allowed or to be allowed by the King's Majesty, his heirs or successors, in England.' The same transaction also shows that the objection to Presbyterian orders in the English Church was still in 1662 what it was when Whitgift silenced Travers in 1584, namely not a theological or ecclesiastical, but purely a legal objection. I shall not refer at length to the case of the Channel Islands, in which, though they were a part of the diocese of Winchester, many of the ministers had no more than Presbyterian ordination until the year 1820, as the fact is now well known; but it seems to prove that the Bishops of Winchester, either deliberately left some hundreds of the people committed to their charge without valid Sacraments, or else did not believe in the doctrine of Apostolic succession: and this from generation to generation for a matter of 250 years.
As a commentary on some of the above, I may refer to the diary of Philip Henry, one of the ministers expelled in 1662. He says (p. 247): 'All or most of the Conformity have said they could not deny us ministers, but not ministers of the Church of England, without episcopal ordination. … Now suppose a Dutch or French Protestant minister to come into England to preach, he is not re-ordained but only licensed'; and further, in referring to the transaction which I have commented upon, he
- ↑ For the particulars above given in the case of Peter du Moulin the younger, and partly also of those of his father and of Saravia, I am indebted to 'Cantab's ' pamphlet above referred to.
