Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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Chief among these is one we do not remember ever to have seen noticed in this connection—the curious invasion of our country by the French at the close of the seventeenth century. That cruel exodus which poured itself upon our shores in the great and even horrible persecution of the Protestants of France, when the blind bigotry of Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, was to us, as a nation, a really incalculable blessing. It is quite singular, in reading Dr. Smiles’s Huguenots, to notice the large variety of names of illustrious exiles, eminent for learning, science, character, and rank, who found a refuge here. The folly of the King of France expelled the chief captains of industry; they came hither and established their manufactures in different departments, creating and carrying on new modes of industry. Also great numbers of Protestant clergymen settled here, and formed respectable French churches; some of the most eminent ministers of our various denominations at this moment are descendants of those men. Their descendants are in our peerage; they are on our bench of bishops; they are at the bar; they stand high in the ranks of commerce. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, their ancestors were settled on English shores; in all instances men who had fled from comfort and domestic peace, in many instances from affluence and fame, rather than be false to their conscience or to their Saviour. The cruelties of that dreadful persecution which banished from France almost every human element it was desirable to retain in it, while they were, no doubt, there the great ultimate cause of the French Revolution, brought to England what must have been even as the very seasoning of society, the salt of our earth in the subsequent age of corruption. Most of the children of these men were brought up in the discipline of religious households, such as that which Sir Samuel Romilly—himself one of the descendants of an earlier band of refugees. Dr. Watts’s mother was a child of a French exile. Clusters of them grew up in many neighbourhoods in the country, notably in Southampton, Norwich, Canterbury, in many parts of London, where Spitalfields especially was a French colony. When the Revival commenced, these were ready to aid its various movements by their character and influence. Some fell into the Wesleyan ranks, though, probably, most, like the eminent scholar and preacher, William Romaine, one of the sons of the exile, maintained the more Calvinistic faith, reflecting most nearly the old creed of the Huguenot.