Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 12 - Section XI
La Roche.
Michel de La Roche, editor of “Memoirs of Literature,” and “A Literary Journal,” has, by his volumes, filled up a gap in literary history. In volume iii. of the “Literary Journal,” page 290, he writes — “I was very young when I took refuge in England, so that most of the little learning I have got is of an English growth. I might compare myself to a foreign plant early removed into the English soil, where it would have improved more than it has done, under a benign influence. As I had imbibed no prejudices in France against the Church of England and Episcopacy, I immediately joined with that excellent church, and have been a hearty member of it ever since. I was not frighted in the least, neither by a surplice, nor by church music, nor by the litany, nor by anything else. I did not cry out, This is Popery. I cannot say that I have learned in England to be a moderate man in matters of religion, for I never approved any sort of persecution one moment of my life. But ’tis in this country that I have learned to have a right notion of religion — an advantage that can never be too much valued. Being a studious man, it was very natural for me to write some books, which I have done, partly in English and partly in French, for the space of twenty years. The only advantage I have got by them is that they have not been unacceptable, and I hope I have done no dishonour to the English nation by those French books printed beyond sea, in which I undertook to make our English learning better known to foreigners than it was before. I have said just now that I took refuge in England. When I consider the continual fear I was in, for a whole year, of being discovered and imprisoned to force me to abjure the Protestant religion, and the great difficulties I met with to make my escape, I wonder I have not been a stupid man ever since.” (Dated April, May, June, 1731).
De la Roche felt such a revulsion against cruel and unreasoning Popery, that he yielded to the temptation of disparaging every doctrinal system, however scriptural, confining himself to the watchword, “Honesty is Religion.” We must admit that Christianity (or acquaintance with Christ) promotes godliness, and that godliness promotes honesty, and that the advancement of honesty is one of the grand and intentional effects of implanting Christian faith in a human soul; but under the plausible motto, “Honesty is religion,” the scriptural partnership of “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” might be renounced, in defiance of the warning contained in the Thirteenth Article of the Reformed Churches of France, “Nous croyons qu’ en celui Jesus Christ tout ce qui etoit requis à notre salût nous a été offert et communiqué. Lequel, nous étant donné à salût, nous a été quant à quant fait sapience, justice, sanctification, et redemption, en sort qu’en declinant de Lui on renonce à la misericorde du Père, ou il nous convient avoir notre refuge unique.”
The society which De la Roche frequented was unfriendly to Bible religion. He tells us[1] —
“Mr. Bayle was a friend of mine; I was personally acquainted with him; he was a not positive Atheist. A person of great probity told me that he died an Atheist; I had rather say at most that he died with doubts about the existence of God. And I own that ’tis a deplorable thing to have doubts about such an important article. Once I spoke to him of the phenomena of nature, whereupon he told me that it was impossible for an Atheist to answer the arguments for the existence of God, taken from those phenomena. From whence, then, proceeded his doubts? — He could not apprehend that a Being infinitely just and holy should permit all the disorders, all the crimes and wickedness, that have prevailed at all times among men. Political wars, and persecutions on account of religion which have been so frequent, appeared to him to be insurmountable objections. It does not appear to me that the disorders of mankind can elude the argument for the existence of God, which the phenomena of nature afford us. Yet it must be owned that those disorders have chiefly contributed to Atheism. And therefore preachers (and also men in power) should use their utmost endeavouts in all countries to make virtue and honesty more universal than they are.”
Another of his unstable companions was Dr. Samuel Clarke, on whom he wrote a panegyric in the Literary Journal (vol. iii. art. 13), concluding thus:—
“What I have said of Dr. Clarke does not proceed from any great favours received or expected from him. And what can a layman expect from a clergyman, especially considering that I knew well enough that Dr. Clarke would die rector of St. James’s, because he followed the doctrine of the primitive Fathers, for whom we have a due veneration? I never was of Dr. Clarke’s opinion about the Trinity, and I told him so, more than once. He never was displeased with it in the least. Let us bear with one another in theological matters, and always remember that Honesty is Religion.”
At the same time our author expresses his disapprobation of signing, without believing, doctrinal articles, in the following allusion to Vossius: “A clergyman, well acquainted with Isaac Vossius, told me that one day he asked that Prebendary of Windsor, what was become of a certain person; he has taken Orders, replied Vossius; he has got a living in the country, sacrificulus decipit populum, Did Vossius take holy orders for no other reason but to live an easy life? Is it not a deplorable thing that a man, who believes nothing, should subscribe Thirty-nine Articles of Faith?”
De la Roche compiled several chapters in his Memoirs of Literature by culling from the Minutes of the French Synods all the decisions that might provoke a smile, and also by digging up anecdotes of scenes in those assemblies of the Church of his fathers which were not for edification. But the suggestion that deliberative Church-courts should be abolished for such reasons implies a similar suggestion as to free parliaments, business associations, and benevolent committees, and even as to juries, from whose proceedings many ridiculous passages might be extracted.
It is only fair to add, that De la Roche shews sympathy with the French Protestants. For instance, he makes this observation: “Christ ordered his disciples to celebrate the memory of his death by eating some bread and drinking some wine. Who in the Apostolical age would have thought that such a plain ceremony would in time be transformed into a mass, and that thousands of people would be burnt alive on account of that bread and of that wine?” He gives this useful extract from the French Synods (which, and indeed everything valuable, had already been given to English readers in Quick’s Synodicon) —
“1612. The Deputies-General are enjoined most humbly to beseech their Majesties to free them from the necessity imposed upon them (with greater severity than has been done heretofore, and even against the liberty of conscience granted them) call themselves of the pretended Reformed Religion, rather choosing to undergo the greatest punishments than to condemn their religion with their own mouth.”
He relates the following interesting anecdote:—
“In the time of the persecution of the French Protestants a friend of mine was apprehended in a maritime province, when he was ready to take shipping for England. The famous Abbé Flechier, who happened to be there (he was afterwards Bishop of Nismes), sent for him and discoursed with him in a very polite manner to persuade him to turn Catholic. The young gentleman told him, Sir, you have expressly declared in your History of the Emperor Theodosius the Great that no violence ought to he used for the conversion of heretics. The Abbé being sensible of the consequence of such an observation, especially at such a time, turned immediately the discourse another way, and spoke of something else to a gentleman who sat by him.”
He also introduces to his readers a Huguenot book, reviewing it favourably and heartily thus:—
“Lettres à un Protestant François touchant la Declaration du Roi concernant la Religion donné à Versailles le 14 Mai 1724. A Londres, chez Thomas l’Etonne, 1725.” [Letters to a French Protestant about the King’s Declaration concerning Religion, given at Versailles, 24th May 1724. London, 1725, 2 tomes in 12mo., pp. 246 and 221.]
This work contains eleven letters with these titles:— I. General Reflections. II. and III. Pretended mitigations in the Declaration. IV. Proofs of Severity from the preface. V. The Severity of the Articles of the Declaration taken from the old Edicts, and reflections upon forced communions [one of the most valuable parts of this book]. VI. Articles of the Declaration more severe than the former Arrets. VII. Persecution gives no right to take up arms against the Sovereign. VIII. Dissimulation is a crime in point of religion. IX. The necessity of running away in the time of persecution. X. and XL Reasons for running away taken from the Declaration. One may boldly challenge the most violent Divines of the Church of France, and even all the Jesuits and Dominicans of that kingdom, to confute what the Author says against the persecution of the French Protestants. Nothing can be more deplorable than the state of Christianity in the Church of Rome. Men are taught to believe such things as are most inconsistent with reason, and to act against natural humanity.”
In addition to what I formerly quoted, he says with regard to his own literary labours:— “Unnecessary abridgements are a public nuisance in the commonwealth of learning. I never printed any Abridgement but that of Gerard Brandt’s History of the Reformation in the Low Countries; and I hope nobody will say that it was unnecessary” [it is in two octavo volumes].
De La Roche’s Autograph may be seen in the British Museum in the collection of letters to Des Maizeaux, to whom he writes:—
“London, 19th October 1717. — I pray you very humbly not to mention in your performance that it was I who translated the controversy between Mr. Clark and Monsieur Leibnitz.”
*⁎* The following is an exact account of his periodical publications:— The first volume of his Memoirs of Literature was in folio, 1710-11. Vols, two, three, and four followed at various intervals from 1712 to September 1714, and these were quartos. He then transferred his publications to Holland, where he issued from 1714 to 1725 the Bibliotheque Angloise ou Histoire Literaire de la Grande Bretagne, in five vols, 12mo, and a continuation entitled Memoires Literaire de la Grande Bretagne, in eight vols. 12mo. He published, by subscription, in 1722, at London, a second edition of his former Memoirs of Literature, 350 copies, in eight vols, octavo; to the new preface he signed his name, Michael de la Roche; the only apparent Huguenot names among the subscribers are Isaac Diserote, Rev. Dr. La Croze, Charles de Maxwel, Esq., and James Rondeau. Next he brought out “New Memoirs of Literature,” from 1725 to 1727, in six volumes. And finally, “A Literary Journal, or a Continuation of the Memoirs of Literature by the same author,” — this lasted during 1730 and 1731, and extended to three volumes. The third volume (which is the most interesting and contains the author’s own miscellaneous observations) begins in January 1731. In the opening advertisement he says, “If my readers knew the history of this Journal and what crosses and disappointments it has met with, they would pity me.” The concluding advertisement, June 1731, is in these words:— “My readers know that I print this Literary Journal upon my own account. I give them notice that it will be discontinued, till I have sold a certain number of my copies; and then I shall go on with it.”
- ↑ Literary Journal (1731), vol. iii. p. 116. I have taken the liberty to abridge this article.