will be considerably increased when God shall bless these nations with peace; so that there is just cause to fear, that unless some effectual expedient be found out to bring them into union with the Established Church, these divided congregations may be perpetuated to posterity, and that their children at least will fall in with those several Sectaries among us, who will omit no art or industry to confirm them in their separation; by which means that great charity may end in the promoting of schism in the church and faction in the state.”
With much better spirit, grammar, and logic, the refugees rejoined in a quarto pamphlet, published at Dublin in 1712, entitled, “An Apology for the French Refugees established in Ireland, addressed to all those who love the peace of the Church.” It is worthy of being reprinted entire. I must content myself with saying that it was a complete answer, representing that as to the Dissenters whom they found in their adopted country, they had formed no ecclesiastical connection with them, neither had they dabbled in any political theories that were purely English or Irish. The following spirited yet modest paragraph is a specimen of the style of the pamphlet:—
“What a medley of inconsistent accusations has been made use of to blacken a poor exiled people, and make them odious to the Queen and nation ! Fifteen years ago, to render them equally the objects of public aversion and contempt, they were represented as a people born and bred in slavery, always ready to be the instruments of the unlimited power of princes, and consequently dangerous in a government where the legislative power is mixed. But now it is asserted that they are of anti-monarchical principles, and ready to join with factious men. God be thanked, both accusations are without grounds, as their behaviour has always shewn.”
The Rev. John Armand du Bourdieu, in 1718, in an “Appeal to the English Nation,” says:—
“It will not be amiss to take a cursory view of the three distinctions in the Church of England, to shew which of them we (the refugees) belong to. 1st. There is a Papist Church of England. . . . 2d. Next to this class is the Laudean Church of England. . . . 3d. I declare we are sincere and hearty members of the Christian Protestant Church of England — which does not found the validity of its ministry on an unbroken chain of Episcopal Ordainers or a succession from Rome, but which, in concert with all its fellow Protestant Churches, builds it on its conformity and agreeableness to the great standard, the Scripture, and the revealed will of its Lord and Lawgiver, as its only solid basis and unmoveable rock — that Church which, far from raising between itself and foreign churches a particular wall of Jure Divino notions and exalted pretensions and prerogatives, as also of ceremonies of all little concern as those meats which occasioned differences in the Apostle’s time, hath constantly, since the Reformation, held a Christian and brotherly correspondence with the Protestant Churches abroad, particularly with the French Protestant Churches.”[1]
With regard to the internal affairs and feelings of the French worshippers, Misson makes some amusing remarks as to wearing hats in church. As to the worshippers, he says “they pull off their hats when they go into church, and never put them on during the reading of the Commandments, the singing of Psalms, or the saying of Prayers, but (if they please) they may cover their heads while the Scripture is reading, and all the time of the sermon.” So the preacher, when he is about to begin the sermon, puts on his hat. This was their custom in France. Englishmen, who came to the refugee churches for an occasional service, could not endure this, and threatened never to come back — a threat which “induced some Consistories of French churches, though nonconformists in other respects, to take a resolution of conforming in that one point of preaching without a hat.” Some, however, “pulled their hats over their eyes more than ever.” And one minister, being unable to get attention to his discourse, through the number of uplifted hands making signals to him, saw that these were protestations against his preaching without a hat, but hesitated as to borrowing an elder’s hat or leaving the pulpit to look for his own.
Either regularly, or occasionally, the refugees observed the anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes as a fast-day. Mr. Baynes' Bibliographical Appendix mentions a sermon preached at the Soho French Church on 22d October 1735, entitled, “Les Larmes de Refuge,” and purporting to be a sermon on the fast-day [jour de jeune] established in memory of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Rev. C. de Missy; also another sermon preached in 1750, with the following title:— “Les Dedommagements d’une injuste Persecution, ou, Sermon sur
- ↑ Quoted in Baynes’ Witnesses in Sackcloth, page 227.
