HUGUENOTS
535
HUGUENOTS
sons to prevent his becoming a Catholic. Arrested
and condemned on this charge by the Pariiament of
Toulouse (9 March, 1762), he was executed at the age
of sixty-eight after a trial which created great excite-
ment. His widow and children demanded justice.
Voltaire took up their cause and succeeded by his
writings in arousing the public opinion of France and
of Europe against the Parliament of Toulouse. The
Supreme Council {Grand Conseil) unanimously re-
versed the judgment of the Parliament, and another
tribunal rehabilitated the memory of Calas. The
Protestants derived great benefit from the trend of
public feeling, resulting from this rehabilitation.
Without any legislative change as yet, the modifica-
tion of public opinion incessantly tended to the im-
provement of their lot, and the Government treated
them with a tacit toleration. At last, in 1787, a de-
cided amelioration of their condition came with the
Edict of Toleration, which granted to non-Catholics
the right to practise a profession or handicraft with-
out molestation, permission to be legally married
before magistrates, and to have births officially re-
corded. In practice these liberties went even farther,
and churches were openly organized. Two years
later complete liberty and access to all employments
were recognized as belonging to them, no less than to
other citizens, by the " l5eclaration of the Rights of
Man", voted by the Constituent Assembly (August,
1789). This legislative body, which for a short period
(March, 1790) was presided over by the Protestant
pastor Rabaud, went so far as to order that the prop-
erty of those who had emigrated under the Revoca-
tion should be restored to their descendants, who
might even recover their rights as French citizens on
condition that they took up their residence in France.
Protestants had to suffer, like Catholics, though infi-
nitely less, from the sectarian and anti-religious
spirit of the Revolution; churches vanished during
the Reign of Terror; religious worship could not be
reorganized until about the year 1800.
(4) From the Revolution to the Separation (1801-1905). — When order was restored the Huguenots were included in the measures initiated by Napoleon for pacifying the nation. They received from him an entirely new organization. At this time there were in France about 430,000 Reformes. By the law of 18 Germinal, Year X (7 April, 1802), there was to be a consistorial church for every 6000 believers, and five consistorial churches were to form a synod. The consistory of each church was to be composed of a pastor and the leading elders. They were entrusted with the maintenance of discipline, the administra- tion of property, and the election of pastors, whose names had, however, to be submitted for the approval of the head of the State. Each synod was composed of a pastor and an elder from each of the churches, and had to superintend public worship and religious instruction. It could assemble only with the con- sent of the Government under the presidency of the prefect or the sub-prefect, and for not longer than six days. Its enactments had to be submitted for approval to the head of the State. There was no national synod. The churches of the Augsburg Con- fession, chiefly in Alsace, had, instead of synods, boards of inspection subordinate to three general consistories. Salaries were guaranteed to the pas- tors, who were exempt from military service. The old seminary of Lausanne was transferred to Geneva, at that time a French city, and then to Montauban (1809) and annexed to the university as a faculty of theology. For the churches of the Augsburg Con- fession, two seminaries or faculties were to be erected in the east of France. Politically, Protestantism had no further modifications to imdergo, whatever changes of government there might be. In the early days of the Restoration its members had, indeed, a certain amount of rough usage to suffer in some of the cities
of the south, but this was the work of local animosity
or of personal vengeance, and the public authorities
had no part in it. The churches laboured to adapt
themselves as well as possible to the system of organ-
ization that had been imposed on them.
In 1806, after Napoleon's conquests, there were 76 consistories with 171 pastors. The religious life of their churches was very languid ; indifference reigned everywhere. At Paris, the pastor Boistard com- plained that out of 10,000 Protestants hardly fifty or a hundred attended worship regularly — two or three hundred at most during the fine season. The pastors, hastily prepared for their work at Geneva, brought back generally with them rationalistic tendencies; they were content to fulfil the routine duties of their profession. Their preaching dwelt upon the com- monplaces of morality or of natural rehgion. Two tendencies in regard to dogma were beginning to re- veal themselves. One of the.se was represented by Daniel Encoutre, dean of the theological faculty at Montauban, and was directed towards rigid ortho- doxy, based firmly on dogmas and confessions; the other was championed especially by Samuel Vincent, one of the most respected pastors of the time, and put religious feeling above doctrine and morality, Chris- tianity being according to this view a life rather than an aggregate of facts and revealed truths. The movement known as the Reveil (Awakening) helped to accentuate this divergence. The men who consti- tuted themselves its propagators in France during the first years of the Restoration were disciples of Wesley. They insisted, in their sermons, on the absolute powerlessness of man to save himself by his own efforts, upon justification by faith alone, upon indi- vidual conversion, and were animated by a zeal for the saving of souls and the preaching of the Gospel which contrasted strangely with the indolence of the official Protestant pastors. The Reveil was ill re- ceived by the two sections into which French Prot- estantism was beginning to divide. The orthodox, while accepting its doctrines, did not sympathize with its efforts at a renewal of the spiritual life, of renun- ciation and sacrifice, and of zeal for saving souls. This they plainly showed at Lyons where they effected the removal of the pastor Adolphe Monod, who had wished to introduce Reveil practices. For the repre- sentatives of the liberal tendencies, the preaching of the Reveil was nothing but a collection of superan- nuated doctrines, in opposition alike to what they called the spirit of the Gospel and to the ideas and aspirations of modern society.
These three tendencies grew farther apart from day to day. The friends of the Rcivil, sometimes called Methodists, severed their connection with the Reformed Churches of France, and organized in 1830 in the Rue Taitbout, Paris, a free Church of which Edmond de Pressens^ soon became the most noted leader. In their profe-ssion of faith and their dis- ciplinary regulations they emphasized the individ- ual character of faith, the Church's independence of the State, and the duty of maintaining a propa- ganda. Some of them, with the periodical "L'Es- p^rance " for their organ, refused to break with the National Church. The Liberals, who were at first called Latitudinarians or Rationalists, repudiated the earlier confessions of faith, predestination by abso- lute decree and illumination by irresistible grace, and the whole body of their doctrine — according to M. Nicolas, one of their number — consisted in "avoid- ing Calvinistic and Rationalistic exaggerations". A synod held in 1848, consisting of fifty-two ministers and thirty-eight elders, increased the existing divi- sions. The Liberals obtained the presidency, and, in deference to their wishes, the question of confessions of faith was set aside by an almost unanimous vote, the synod contenting itself with drawing up an ad- dress in which the majority set forth the principles
