Transforming Power of Huguenot Influence

In January, 1535, an edict was published ordering the extermination of all these “heretics” of the Reformation. While many of these godly Protestants left France for other countries, many remained to hold aloft the torch of truth. The Reformation lived and grew despite the persecutions. Indeed, before the close of the century it was claimed that the Protestants or Huguenots formed one tenth of the population of France.AGP 225.2

Describing the transformation following this rise of the Huguenots, Lawrence speaks of the city of Meaux, where the New Testament was published:AGP 225.3

“A swift and graceful transformation passed over the busy town. No profane word was any longer uttered, no ribaldry nor coarse jests were heard. Drunkenness and disorder disappeared; vice hid in the monastery or the cloister. In every factory the Gospels were read as a message from above, and the voice of prayer and thanksgiving mingled with the clamor of the shuttle and clash of the anvil. The rude and boisterous artisans were converted into refined and gentle believers, ever seeking for the pure and the true; and the sudden impulse toward a higher life awakened at Meaux by the teachings of Farel and Lefèvre stirred, like an electric shock, every portion of diseased and decaying France. A moment of regeneration seemed near, a season of wonderful advance.” “Historical Studies,” Eugene Lawrence, pp. 250, 251.

By contrast, the blighting course of Rome and her priests, and their false visions to discount the true when they appeared, are graphically pictured:AGP 225.4

“There now began a remarkable contest between the Romish Church and the Bible—between the printers and the popes. For many centuries the Scriptures had been hidden in a dead language, guarded by the anathemas of the priests from the public eye, and so costly in manuscript form as to be accessible only to the wealthy. A Bible cost as much as a landed estate; the greatest universities, the richest monasteries, could scarcely purchase a single copy. Its language and its doctrines had long been forgotten by the people, and in their place the intellect of the Middle Ages had been fed upon extravagant legends and monkish visions, the fancies of idle priests, the fables of the unscrupulous. The wonders worked by a favorite image, the virtues of a relic, the dreams of a dull abbot or a fanatical monk, had supplanted the modest teachings of Peter and the narrative of Luke. Men saw before them only the imposing fabric of the Church of Rome, claiming supremacy over the conscience and the reason, pardoning sins, determining doctrines, and had long ceased to remember that there was a Redeemer, a Bible, even a God. A practical atheism followed. The pope was often a skeptic, except as to his own right to rule.” Id., pp. 254, 255.