Protestant Exiles from France/Historical Introduction - section V
Section V.
CHURCH GOVERNMENT AND WORSHIP.
The designation, “The Reformed Churches of France” (Les Eglises Reformées de France), instead of “The Reformed Church of France,” must not connect the Huguenots in the reader’s mind with the Independent or Congregationalist system of Church-Government. The national title had to be avoided, partly because Protestantism was tolerated, not throughout the kingdom but only in some places, and partly because it would have needlessly offended the priest-ridden rulers of the nation.
The Reformed doctrines and rites in France were Calvinistic. The worshippers were called Calvinists, not as persons convinced by the study of theological manuals, but as the spiritual offspring of Calvin himself — an ecclesiastical vineyard planted by his own labours. Because they never had bishops or episcopal ordination, Bishop Bossuet in his Pastoral Letter (page 11) thus reproached them:— “If your pretended pastors will speak the language and attribute to themselves the authority of true pastors, let them shew us the original of their ministry and, like St Cyprian and the other orthodox bishops, let them make us see that they are descended from any Apostle. Let them show us the eminent Chair, where all the churches preserve the Unity, where principally shines the concord and succession of Episcopacy. Open yourselves, my brethren, the books which you call your Ecclesiastical History; ‘tis Beza that has composed it. Open the history of these false martyrs whose unhappy number they would have you to augment. You will find that the first who modelled the Churches in France, which you call Reformed, were laics made pastors by laics, and by consequence always laymen, who dared at all times to take the law of God in their mouth, and without power did dare to administer the holy sacraments. Call to your remembrance Pierre Le Clerc, a wool-carder; I do not speak it in scorn of his profession, or to revile an honest trade, but to tax the ignorance, the presumption and the schism of a man who, without having predecessor or pastor to ordain him, bolts out of his shop to preside in the Church. It is he who carved out the pretended Reformed Church of Meaux, the first hatched in this kingdom, in the year 1546.”
The first Reformed Synod, which met on the 28th May 1559 and following days, drew up a Confession de Foi in Forty Articles and a Discipline Ecclesiastique in Forty Precepts. From these we discover the principles and practices of the Ecclesiastical system (they are printed in the Appendix to Haag’s La France Protestante, Piéces Nos. X. and XL). The Doctrinal Articles, from the 29th to the 33d, describe the Huguenot belief as to Ecclesiastical rule and rulers. The office-bearers are of three orders, Pasteurs, Surveillans, and Diacres [(1) pastores or pastors, (2) episcopi or overseers, (3) diaconi or deacons]. Instead of Surveillans, the word used in the precepts of Discipline is Ancicns (presbyteri or elders). The duties assigned to the pasteurs are similar to those of other Presbyterian Churches. The duties of the ancicns are to assemble the congregation, and to report scandals to the consistory; while the diacres are to visit the sick, the poor and prisoners, and to catechize from house to house. The elders and deacons are not elected for life, their continuance in office being intended to be of freewill, only they must apply for permission to resign. At an ecclesiastical meeting the president should be a pasteur; but with this limitation he is to be freely chosen at each meeting, and his position as chairman terminates with the meeting.
The above rules recognize two courts, a consistory and a synod. A consistory corresponded to a Scottish Kirk-Session, and was the local court for superintendence over the members of one congregation. Between this court and a Synod, there was another “meeting,” which, though not named in the rules, is implied. A considerable number of adjacent congregations were represented by their pasteurs, and by a corresponding number of selected elders, in a higher court of superintendence over congregations, called a Colloquy, the same as a Scottish Presbytery or an English Classis. Next in the ascending scale of courts was the Provincial Synod, the boundaries of whose jurisdiction over Colloquies could be conveniently mapped out, through the geographical division of France into provinces. And the supreme court was the National Synod, composed of representatives from the Provincial Synods; it held the same position as the General Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland.
The Public Edicts, which treated the French Protestants as a foreign people, necessitated the erection of Assemblies for their secular affairs. Historians call them political assemblies, but that is only a descriptive phrase, and not a formal designation. They were called “Assemblies”; the mass of them were local, and the highest was called the General Assembly. When the cautionary towns were taken away from the Protestants, there was little business left for these assemblies to transact. There was still the payment of their pastors and deputies-general; the funds came formally from the Royal Treasury, but really from the Protestant people, who, having paid (Roman Catholic) tythes as citizens, were repaid by this provision for their own spiritual guides. Professor Leonce Anquez, the historian of the Political Assemblies of the Reformed of France, fixes the birth and death of those assemblies by the dates, 1573 to 1622. At their final dissolution the Pastoral Fund fell to be distributed by the National Synods which, when invested with that additional function, most closely resembled the present General Assemblies of the Free Church of Scotland.
The English refugee congregations had a special discipline as old as the days of Calvin. John à Lasco, their superintendent, was the first author of a Book of Discipline, intended for non-prelatic Protestants (older than both the Confession de foi and the Discipline Ecclesiastique promulgated by the first French National Synod at Paris in 1559). Archbishop Parker was tolerant enough to suggest in outline some rules for the ministers of the foreigners' churches. In 1560 Calvin sent the Pasteur Nicolas Des Gallars to London, and by him a Book of Discipline was drawn up, founded upon the labours of a Lasco, the French Synod, and Parker. This Discipline was issued in 1561 under the editorship of a Lasco; and copies were multiplied in manuscript, to be lodged in the various churches, to be signed by the office-bearers, and to be presented for signature to future office-bearers in all time coming.
This code may have been from time to time amended in minor details, so as to be better adapted to the circumstances of the refugees in England. A manuscript of this kind was authoritatively consigned to the Norwich congregation on 5th April 1589, space being left for the insertion of a paragraph appropriating the book to Norwich, and for the local signatures.[1]
The one unimportant difference between the refugee and the French Discipline is that four orders of ministers are described in the English Discipline — pastors, doctors, elders, deacons — the order of doctors includes Theological Professors and ordinary schoolmasters. This Discipline requires a promise to be made by each pastor, elder, and deacon on his ordination, and forms are prescribed varying according to the respective offices, except the first clause as to loyalty, which is the same in all — “item, vous promettez de garder et de maintenir (autant qu’ en vous sera) le bien et conservation de ce royaume, procurer (en ce qui vous sera possible) le paix et union de celui, et ne consentir aucunement à ce qui y pourroit contrevenir.”
The Presbyterianism of the French Church was never doubted by any of its British correspondents. King James VI. extracted letters of advice from French pastors to Scotch ministers, on the ground that they were Presbyterian brethren. When the Westminster Assembly communicated with the foreign churches, its letter, in order to give it weight with those Presbyterian communities, was (by order) signed by each of the Scottish Commissioners, the other signatures being only those of official members. In 1660 it is true that several French pastors, having a personal friendship for our mild-spoken King Charles, and having received partial and imperfect news as to the religious state of England, were favourable, on the whole, to the Act of Uniformity, and almost seemed to wish our Presbyterians to conform to Episcopacy. But the utmost that any of these reverend men could state as to their own circumstances was that they regretted that they had no diocesan Episcopacy in their church in France.
It was, however, from the department of worship that the imagination of Episcopalianism in the French Church arose. Many excellent people value the Prayer-Book as the grand feature of English Episcopacy. From the time of Edward VI. it was well known in London and Canterbury that the worship of the French Church was Calvinistic, and not liturgical in the Anglican sense. When, owing to the distance of the City Church in Threadneedle Street from their dwellings, some of the French in Westminster wished a place of worship at their own doors, they received church accommodation from Oliver Cromwell. Thus the seed of liturgical disputes was sown, though unintentionally; for, at the Restoration, Charles II. would not allow a church for this West End congregation, unless it adopted the Anglican worship (all the older congregations, however, being tolerated in worshipping according to their home usages).
It will be remembered that Archbishop Laud attempted to force upon some of the refugees' churches a translation of the English liturgy into the French language. There was such an authorized translation from the date of the English Reformation, for the use of our sovereigns' French-speaking subjects.[2] In 1552 a new edition was contemplated to correspond with “the English new one, in all the alterations, additions, and omissions thereof.” This revision was committed “to a learned Frenchman who was a Doctor of Divinity,” under the direction of the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Thomas Goodrick, who was both Bishop of Ely and Lord Chancellor. A petition was presented to Cecil on the part of a refugee printer, that he might receive a patent for printing and publishing the new French Prayer-Book for the use of the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey. Cecil wrote to Cranmer to ascertain the necessary facts; and the Archbishop reported, first, that the first edition had been translated by command of Sir Hugh Poulet, Governor of Calais, and revised by competent persons, under the direction of the Lord Chancellor; and secondly, that, in his opinion, “the commodity that might arise by printing of the book was meet to come to them who had already taken the pains in translating the same.” The refugee printer was therefore not employed, but it was printed and published in 1553. And this was the French Prayer-Book which Archbishop Laud had in view.
After 1660, the French-speaking Englishman, Dr Durel, followed out the desires of King Charles II. as to the worship of the Westminster French Church by undertaking a new translation. And the King, on the 6th October 1662, issued a Proclamation that henceforth Dr Durel’s Version of the Book of Common Prayer should be used throughout Jersey, Guernsey, and the adjacent islands, as also in the French Church of the Savoy, and all other French Churches in the English Dominions which have conformed or shall hereafter conform to the Church of England — that is to say, as soon as the book has been printed with the approbation required by law, The License was obtained in the following year, dated from the Bishop of London’s Chambers in the Savoy, 6th April 1663.[3] This translation is an exact reproduction of the English Prayer-book, including the prefaces, “It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England,” &c, &c. The translation falls below the original in some respects, for instance, “Dearly Beloved Brethren” is rendered “Très-chers Frères;” and “our most religious and gracious king” becomes “notre Roi très-pieux et très-debonnaire.” The Psalter however is taken from “la version de la Bible des Eglises Reformées de France et de Genève.” This Prayer-Book was adopted by the Westminster Congregation, which was thenceforth accommodated within the Savoy Palace in the Strand. In the pulpit, before giving out his text, the preacher offered up a prayer, one of the petitions being for le très-reverend Père en Dieu, Gilbert, Seigneur Evéque de ce Diocese. The pasteurs and anciens retained their consistorial powers; but the congregation was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, as a judge to hear complaints from any quarter, and appeals from themselves.
I have said that the liturgical controversy arose from this Savoy Chapel affair. When the King’s terms were made known, Pasteur Hierosme (alias Jerome) advised submission, declaring that any debate or delay would be wrong in the circumstances[4] — alluding probably to the strong current in favour of liturgical uniformity which had set in. The reasons amounted to one, namely, that it could not be helped. And the nervous pasteur prevailed with the congregation accordingly. Though the result pleased Dr Durel, he was dissatisfied with the reasoning; and accordingly he published a book to prove that the Calvinistic ritual of the French Church was as liturgical as the worship of the Church of England, and that the ceremonies of the two churches were identical. This, however, was not the logic of facts. The pretext for his statements as to a French Liturgy was a small printed collection of Prayers (appended to Clement Marot’s Psalms), out of which the officiating pasteurs might, if they chose, read one or more prayers during public worship.
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.”[5] 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,[6] 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 warm dispute between the Non-Conformists and the Conformists, and these last having got the better, one of them cried aloud with a great transport of joy at his going out, Well, now the cause of Bel and the Dragon has carried it. This is what I learned from the book of that great man, Mr Andrew Marvel against Dr Parker.”
But we must not omit the subject of purity of communion. As the old English Book of Discipline (Norwich, 1589) explains, discipline against individual communicants, such as, summoning to appear before the consistory, censuring, and suspending from the sacraments, was not so much for punishment as for restoration. An interesting form of prayer was provided, to be used in the consistory at the time of an offender’s, orderly reconciliation to the church.
“Seigneur, Dieu et Pere, duquel les misericordes sont infinies, et qui ne desire point la mort du pecheur mais qu’il se convertisse et qu’il vive, puisque tu nous as donné ton fils bien aimé et [tu as] accepté le sacrifice de sa mort pour la rançon de nos pechés, suivant ce qui nous est enseigné que la joye est grande au ciel pour la repentance des pecheurs — Nous te rendons graces de ta bonté et misericorde envers notre frère ici present, te priants lui faire cette grace que de plus en plus par une vraie repentance il soit de tout converti à toi, le lavant et purifiant en sang de ton fils notre Seigneur Jesus Christ. Et lui fais cette faveur, par ta misericorde, de l’enter tellement en ton fils notre Seigneur Jesus Christ et le conserver au berçail de ton eglise, qu'il puisse avec nous tous perseverer le reste de ses jours en la crainte de ton saint nom, a l’avancement de ta gloire et edification de ton eglise. Exauce nous, Père de misericorde, au nom de ton fils notre Seigneur Jesus Christ. Amen.”
According to this refugees’ Livre de la Disiplinne, the Lord’s Supper was dispensed four times in the year, and provision was made for the public profession of their faith by young persons on the Lord’s Day before each Communion Sabbath. In the French Church of Southampton, the names of persons admitted to the Lord’s Supper were inserted in the register, thus:—
3 Juillet 1580,
Jan Vautier, jeusne fils, chez Guillaume Hersen.
2 Octobre 1580,
Suzanne Le Roy dit De Bouillon, jeusne fille.
- ↑ This manuscript was brought to light by Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith, and inserted by her, with a descriptive narrative and notes, in the Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany, Part III., 1879. But it is now a British Museum manuscript.
- ↑ Strype’s “Life of Cramner,” Book ii., chap. 33, — also Appendix of Documents, Nos. 54 and 106, — from which it appears that the offer of the French Refugee was simply to print the French Prayer-Book, and not (as Strype says) to translate the Prayer-Book into French.
- ↑ Hane Gallicam domini Joannis Durelli Liturgiae Anglicana: versionem perlegi, camque per omnia cum Originali Anglico concordem me reperisse profiteor. Geor. Stradling, S.T.P., Rev. in Christo Pat. Gilb. Episc. Lond. a sac. domesticis. Ex AEd. Sabaud. Aprile 6, 1663.
- ↑ Apologae des Puritains d’Angleterre, &c., 1663 [a book winch I have already described], page 123, &c.
- ↑ 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.