This collection is called the Prières Ecclesiastiques. In 1665 John Lauder, afterwards Lord Fountainhall, gave this account of the Huguenot Church Service at Poitiers:— “During the gathering of the congregation they sing a psalm. Then the minister coming up, by a short set form of exhortation stirring them up to join with him in prayer, reads a set form of confession of sins out of their prières ecclesiastiques or liturgie; which being ended, they sing a psalm which the minister nominates, reading the first two or three lines, after which they read no more the line as we do, but the people follow it as we do in ‘Glory to the Father.’ The psalm being ended, the minister has a conceived prayer of himself, adapted for the most part to what he is to discourse on. This being ended, he reads his text. Having preached, then reads a prayer out of their liturgy, then sings a psalm, and then the Blessing.”[1] Some pastors made less use of this Devotional Manual, and some perhaps more; while others appear to have made no use of it. In the second volume of the Memoirs of these Refugees, my readers will find a Life of the Rev. James Fontaine, who was an opponent of liturgies. In his autobiography he mentions his eldest brother, the Pasteur of Archiac, in Saintonge, who died before the Revocation, and of whom he says, “He had the infirmity of stammering when he repeated anything that he knew by heart, so he was obliged to employ another person to repeat the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer in his church; but he could preach and pray extemporaneously without any hesitation.”
The Book of Prayers was therefore no real foundation for Dr Durel’s special pleading. The theoretical Anglican system, which was rigidly enforced in those days, was more than permissive as to the reading of prayers, and it positively prohibited extemporaneous ones. Every meeting for public worship and every preaching of a sermon must be prefaced by the reading at full length of either the morning or the evening service as printed in the Book of Common Prayer. Such commands, backed by pains and penalties, are by no means in conformity with the simple offer of a few “prières ecclesiastiques” to be used at each pastor’s discretion.
If Dr Durel had meant to state no more than that the French worship was not altogether in conformity with that of the English Dissenters, his assertions would have contained much truth. The Dissenters, while full of sympathy and charity towards the refugees, admitted that there were diversities, and were quite content that their foreign brethren should keep up a separate ecclesiastical system of their own. As to active aid on their side of the English controversies, the Dissenters expected none from the French refugees, who received personal kindness from men of both parties, and whose position might be described as half-way between the two contending systems. In Gilling’s Life of the Rev. George Trosse, an eminent dissenter, it is stated (p. 105), “The French Refugees, those noble confessors, who were driven over hither by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the bloody persecution that ensued thereupon, had large supplies from his bounty; to one French minister he gave five pounds per annum.” The Rev. Matthew Henry took a lively interest in them. He says, “The French Churches usually begin their public worship by reading Ps. cxxi. 2, Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. On leaving the table, the Lord’s Supper being ended, the communicants sing, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” The fact is, that the Huguenots sanctioned the use of two hymns only — one, a paraphrase on the ten commandments, and the other, Le Cantique de Simeon,[2] which might suitably follow any Gospel sermon.
The Huguenots most strongly agreed with the Dissenters in rejecting the Apocrypha. Dr Louis Du Moulin has an impassioned outburst on this subject in one of his pamphlets; it is as follows:— “The Conformists of England have been so far from retrenching those practices and ceremonies of Rome, which the first Reformers had retained, that they have called in others more gross than some of those they had banished; they have set up again the altars which they had thrown down, re-established the reading of Bel and the Dragon, and of Toby and his dog, in the Church. This is what they did in the last Conference (which was had at the Savoy in the Strand near to Somerset House), where, after a long contest and a
- ↑ North British Review, vol. xli. p. 179.
- ↑
1. Or laissez, Createur,
En paix ton serviteur,
En suivant ta promesse;
Puis que mes yeux ont eu
Ce credit d’avoir vu
De ton salut l’adresse.2. Salut, mis au devant
De tout peuple vivant
Pour l’ouir et le croire —
Ressource des petits,
Lumière des Gentils,
Et d’Israel la gloire.Clement Marot.
