The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IV. Retributive Character of Deadly Wound

The retributive character of the French Revolution should not be forgotten. In its sheer destructive effects it was considered to constitute a judgment doubtless without a parallel in human history. ³³ It was directed primarily against Catholicism, not Protestantism, and was a reaction against her excesses. Terrible as was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus, says Guinness, it sinks to secondary place when compared with the wholesale slaughter by massacre and war that first affected France, then Italy, and other nations of Europe. “If it inflicted enormous evil, it presupposed and overthrew enormous evil.” ³⁴ PFF2 760.2

1. VISITED WITH PLAGUE OF INFIDELITY AND IMMORALITY

The France of St. Bartholomew—of the Wars of the Huguenots, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and of the suppression of the Jansenists—was visited with a retributive plague of infidelity and immorality that was fearful. The monarchy that had banished the Huguenots was overthrown and abolished in a national convulsion of revolutionary excess and crime wherein the restraints of law and order gave way. The monarchy was brought to an end on the scaffold, the aristocracy abolished, estates were confiscated, prisons crowded, rivers choked with victims, churches desecrated, priests slaughtered, religion sup pressed, and the worship of a harlot as the Goddess of Reason was substituted for the worship of the host on the altars of the Roman church. ³⁵ PFF2 760.3

2. HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE AND CHURCH CRASH TOGETHER

France, a prey to infidelity, anarchy, and the guillotine, then communicated revolution and anti ecclesiasticism to surrounding nations. Democratic revolution was succeeded by military despotism. Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Russia were invaded by the armies of France. Many Catholic nations which had ruled for centuries were crushed by Napoleon. The Holy Catholic Church and the remnant of the Holy Roman Empire were alike prostrated—the empire and the papal crown going down in the common ruin. They had stood side by side for a thousand years. The Holy Roman Empire had risen with Charlemagne, who attempted to revive the imperial power of the Caesars. He had combined Germany, Italy, and France into a single empire, which had warred against and crushed the Hussites, and had stood against Luther in the days of the Reformation, inflicting on Germany the horrors of the Thirty Years War in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. Now, stripped of Italian territory, driven back from the plains of Lombardy, the Holy Roman Empire came to be totally suppressed. PFF2 761.1

3. PIEDMONT AND SPAIN REAP BLOODSHED AND MISERY

Piedmont, which had suppressed and all but exterminated the Waldenses, turning their valleys into slaughterhouses, was in turn overrun by merciless invaders. Spain, which had crushed the Reformation within her borders and in other lands, by the horrors of the Inquisition and the auto-da-fe, was now delivered over to dreadful bloodshed and misery, and during the seven years of the Peninsular War the Inquisition was suppressed. PFF2 761.2

4. CLIMAX OF REVERSAL REACHED IN ROME

In Italy the reign of the pope of Rome was ended by a Swiss Calvinist leading the French military. Stripped of his possessions, and his temporal government abolished, the pope was carried away captive to the camp of the infidels, to die in a foreign land, where his priests had been slain and his name and office made a mockery, with Rome given up to plunder and desecration. Even as the pope was being hurried away from the scene of his dethronement —the Sistine Chapel—he was taken, ironically enough, through a hall covered with a fresco representing the bloody massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day. ³⁶ PFF2 761.3

The downfall of the papal government excited little sympathy. The oppressions and the tyranny of Rome over Christendom were remarked upon with bitterness. Many rejoiced in the overthrow of a church which they considered idolatrous, even though the overthrow was attended with the immediate triumph of infidelity. When news of the papal defeat at Rome reached Paris, Director Merlin declared that for fourteen centuries there had been cumulative demand for the destruction of this power opposed to society. And in the Court of the Ancients, Bordas actually held “a funeral oration of the Papacy,” on March 14, 1798. PFF2 762.1

5. BIBLE AND MISSIONARY SOCIETIES HAVE BIRTH

Papal hostility had been exerted in two ways: (1) By the suppression of the Scriptures, and (2) by the torture and death of its preachers and converts, which were effected by means of the Inquisition. The French Revolution ended both—French arms abolishing the Inquisition in France in 1798, and temporarily in Spain in 1808. Moreover, the extraordinary circulation of the Scriptures began during the French Revolution. Never should it be forgotten that both missionary and Bible societies had their birth at this very time, the British and Foreign in 1804, and the American in 1816. PFF2 762.2

6. TEMPEST OF WAR GAVE IT WINGS

Begun in France, the spoliation of the fallen church and its head had spread quickly to other countries of Europe, until the stroke of the sword struck at Rome. The tempest of war gave it wings, sweeping into Belgium and the Rhenish provinces of Germany, where ecclesiastical changes similar to those in France took place. PFF2 762.3

In 1796-1797 French dominion, established by Bonaparte’s victories in northern Italy, was similarly accompanied by French Democratism and infidelity and anti papalism. Then Rome itself became the goal, as the French armies urged marching forward on the papal capital. PFF2 762.4

7. LOOKED AS IF PAPACY WERE DEAD

In Rome all the cardinals were involved in the indiscriminate proscription. Eight were imprisoned, and several renounced the Roman purple and sought asylum away from Rome. It looked as if the Papacy were dead. In fact, half of Europe thought “the Papacy was dead.” ³⁷ PFF2 763.1

The blood of the saints was avenged. France had for years yielded the neck to the papal yoke, and helped to bind other nations. Now she had abolished papal tithes, suppressed her monasteries, confiscated her church lands, and despoiled her priests. ³⁸ Pennington says, “The same God who visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation had made him [the pontifical head of the church] the victim of His retributive justice.” ³⁹ PFF2 763.2