Henry M. Baird · 154 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · The first National Synod, May, 1559.

But, whilst the enemies of the Reformation were devising new schemes of persecution, and were preparing to strike a blow at the more tolerant sentiments which had stolen into the breasts of the very judges of parliament, its friends took a step that was at once indicative of its progress and dictated by its necessities. A few days before Henry was persuaded to call for a continuation of the discussion commenced at the "Mercuriale"—on the twenty-sixth of May—the first National Synod of the French Protestants convened in the city of Paris. It was a small assemblage in comparison with some others on the list of these national councils extending down for about a century, and its sessions were held with the utmost secrecy in a house in the Faubourg St. Germain. But it performed for French Protestantism the two important services of giving an authoritative statement of its system of doctrine, and of establishing the principles of its form of government. The confession of faith was full and explicit, as well on the points in which the Protestant and the Roman churches agreed, as respecting the distinctive tenets of the reformed. The "diabolical imaginations" of Servetus were equally condemned with the gross abuses of monastic vows, pilgrimages, celibacy, auricular confession, and indulgences. The pure observance of the sacraments was established, as well against their corrupt and superstitious use in the papal church, as against the "fantastic sacramentarians" who rejected them entirely. Nor need we be surprised to find the warrant of magistrates to interfere in behalf of the truth formally recognized. The right of the individual conscience was a right for the most part ignored by thinking men on both sides during the sixteenth century—covered and hidden by the fallacious application of the principle of universal obligation to the inflexible law of right and of God. The lesson of liberty based upon order was learned only in the school of long and severe persecution. Even after thirty-seven or eight years of violent suffering, the Protestant church of France admitted as an article in her creed, that "God has placed the sword in the hand of magistrates to repress the sins committed not only against the second table of God's commandments, but also against the first!"