J.H.M. d'Aubigne's "Reformation in England:" Outline and Biography of d'Aubigne

        d’Aubigne, J.H. Merle. The Reformation in England, Vol.1. Edinburgh:  The Banner of Truth Trust, 1994.  D’Aubigne, Merle. 

        Volume 1 is available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reformation-England-Volume-1/dp/0851514863/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1375919662&sr=8-13&keywords=Merle+d%27Aubigne 

        Volume 2 is available at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reformation-England-Volume-2/dp/0851514871/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375919662&sr=8-1&keywords=Merle+d%27Aubigne . 

Introduction by S.M. Houghton

Book One: England Before the Reformation:

1.  Christ Mightiers than Druid Altars and Roman Swords (2^nd-6^th centuries)

2.  Iona versus Rome (6^th-7^th centuries)

3.  Rome Converts Britain (7^th centuries)

4.  Conflict with Papal Supremacy (7^th-11^th centuries)

5.  Iron Age of Spiritual Slavery (11^th-13^th centuries)

6.  Grossteste and Bradwardine (13^th-14^th centuries)

7.  Light Streams from Lutterworth (1329-1380)

8.  Morning Star of the Reformation (1380-1384)

9.  Lollard Burnings (15^th century)

10.  New Learning and New Dynasty (1485-1512)

11.  War, Marriage, and Preaching (1513-1515)

12.  Wolsey’s Rise to Power (1507-1518)

13.  Need for Reformation (1514-1517)

Book Two: Revival of the Church:

1.  Origin of the English Reformation (1516-1519)

2.  Greek New Testament Awakens the Dead (1516-1521)

3.  Persecutions and Intrigue (1518-1520)

4.  Storm at Sodbury Hall (1522-1523)

5.  Onslaught of Luther (1517-1521)

6.  Early Days in Lincolnshire (1521-1522)

7.  All England Closed to Tyndale (1523-1524)

8.  Bluff Hugh Latimer (1485-1524)

9.  Wolsey’s Hopes and Fears (1523-1525)

10.  Exile’s Toil for a Nation’s Life (1524-1526)

11.  Awakenings in Cambridge (1524-25)

Book Three: English New Testament and Court of Rome:

1.  Year of Grace (1526)

2.  Oxford’s Baptism of Suffering (1526-1528)

3.  Severities of Popery (1526-1528)

4.  Tempest Against the Truth (1526)

5.  Divorce Question Opens (1526-1527)

6.  Ann Boleyn (1522-27)

7.  Bilney in Strength and Weakness (1527)

8.  Campaign for Henry’s Divorce (1527)

9.  Dilemna and Duplicity of Clement VII (1527-1528)

10.    Royal Threats Counter Papal Cunning (January to March 1528)

11.    Wolsey’s Desperate Demands (April to July 1528)

Book Four: Two Divorces

1.  “A Thousands Wolseys for One Anne Boleyn” (1528)

2.  Scripture and Spreading Revival (1527-1529)

3.  Campeggio Arrives in England (July to November 1528)

4.  Search for William Tyndale (1528-1530)

5.  Pope Burns His Bull (November 1528)

6.  Wolsey Between Scylla and Charybdis (1529)

7.  More and Tyndale: Theological Duel (1528-1529)

8.  Queen’s Pleadings Convict a Court (1529)

9.  Trial Ends in Farce (July 1529)

10.  Tyndale Received in a King’s Palace (1529)

11.  Wolsey Alone and Facing Ruin (Summer 1529)

12.  To Introduce Thomas Cranmer (1489-1529)

13.  Dethronement of Wolsey (October 1529)

14.  New Leaders and New Policy (October and November 1529)

15.  “They That Will Live Godly…” (1529-1531)

16.  Wolsey Falls Like Lucifer (1530)

Introduction by S. M. Houghton, 1961

Jean Henry Merle d’Aubigne was born in a canton of Geneva in 1794. His family were Huguenot expatriates from France after the loving and tolerant Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Under divine judgment and with depraved governmental energies, 1000s of France’s finest fled.  France’s loss and other countries gains. d'Aubigne’s family was one of 1000s. In time, he studied at the University of Geneva and took his Arts degree.

Mr. d’Aubigne then entered the Theological Faculty which, by 1816, was Unitarian…probably worse than Romanism and that too from a so-called Reformed outfit. Here, he met Frederick Monod, a fellow student and future French Reformed Pastor and founder of the Free Churches of France (not state-supported). He would also meet Louis Gaussen, another famed name from this school and collaborative associations.

The trio—d’Aubigne, Monod, Gaussen—and 20-30 other theological students encountered a London born Scotsman, Robert Haldane, a Calvinist “of the old sort.”  Though not on the Faculty of Theology, he labored in Geneva.  He began to “plow and sow the barren field” in 1816 (4). He “arranged chairs on both sides of a long table” inside his apartment.  The table had copies of the English, French, and German Bibles.  He also place Greek and Hebrew Testaments on the table. They fed him questions and he provided answers.  “One of the professors” from this Reformed Geneva Faculty “paced up and down” in a high dudgeon and with displeasure “noting their names in his pocket book” (4).  One must wonder where the Devil attends Seminary.  Which ones he’s been at? Which Cathedral Churches too?  Jesus said he’d be sowing his tare-seeds in the field alongside the wheat; we should not be surprised.

Mr. Houghton offers a quote from Mr. Monod’s view of the Mr.  Robert Haldane:

What struck me most, and what struck us all, was Mr. Haldane’s solemnity of manner.  It was evident he was in earnest about our souls, and the souls of those who might be placed under our pastoral care, and such feelings were new to us.  Then his meekness, the unwearying patience with which he listened to our sophisms, our ignorant objections, our attempts now and then to embarrass him y difficulties invented for the purpose and his answers to each and all of us! But what astonished me, and made me reflect more than anything else, was his ready knowledge of the Word of God and implicit faith in its divine authority…We had never seen anything like this.   Even after this lapse of years, I still see presented to my mind’s eye his tall and manly figure, surrounded by the students; his English Bible in his hand, wielding as his only weapon that word which is the sword of the Spirit; satisfying every objection, removing every difficulty, answering every question by a prompt reference to various passages, by which objections, difficulties, and questions were all fairly met and conclusively answered. He never wasted his time in arguing against our so-called reasoning’s, but at once pointed with his finger to the bible, adding the simple words, `Look here—how readest thou?’ `There it stands written with the finger of God.’ He was, in the full sense of the word, a living concordance…He expounded to us the Epistle of Romans which several of us had probably never read, and which none of us understood…I reckon it as one of my greatest privileges to have been his interpreter…being almost the only one who knew English well enough to be thus honoured and employed” (5).

Mr. d’Aubigne was as impressed with Mr. Haldane as was Mr. Monod.  Mr. d’Aubigne says:

I met Robert Haldane and heard him read from an English Bible a chapter from Romans about the natural corruption of man, a doctrine of which I had never before heard. In fact I was quite astonished to hear of man being corrupt by nature.  I remember saying to Mr. Haldane, `Now I see that doctrine in the Bible’ `Yes,’ he replied, ‘but do you see it in our heart?’ That was but a simple question, yet it came home to my conscience.  It was the sword of the Spirit: and from that time I saw that my heart was corrupted, and knew from the Word of God that I can be saved by grace alone. So that, if Geneva gave something to Scotland at the time of the Reformation, if she communicated light to John Knox, Geneva had received something from Scotland in return in the blessed exertions of Robert Haldane”[1] (5).

Mr. d’Aubigne would graduate and attend lectures at Berlin and Leipzig, studying under Mr. Neander, the church historian.  He also travelled in the land of Luther—a man who would remain a “life-long inspiration” to Mr. d’Aubigne.

Ultimately, he started a seminary for ministers.  Louis Gaussen would join him.  Mr. d’Aubigne held his post as Professor of Church History until his death in 1872.  He visited all the chief libraries of Europe. He spoke at Queen Victoria’s invitation at the Royal Chapel of St. James in May 1862.

Vol. 1 on The Reformation in England covers the period to Cardinal Wolsey’s death in 1530.  Vol. 2 covers the period of 1530 to Henry VIII’s death in 1547.  The anticipated Vol.3 was interrupted by his unexpected death.

A few distinctives:

·        He was “an expert in the field”

·        Though an “expert” he did not write for “fellow experts but for ordinary Christian public” (4)

·        He was a “potent factor in holding thousands to Protestant and Biblical truth” in England in the 19^th century “at a time when Rome was making a fresh effort to repair the ravages of centuries” (9)

·        He was a “stimulator of interest in the mind” (10)

·        As a “Confessor” or “Confessing Churchman,” he actually believed—repeat, actually believed—in divine providence and God ruling, over-ruling, hiding His power, and openly intervening in history

·        He leaned on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments

·        He viewed the Reformation “not as a mere `act of state’ but as a movement on a great scale of the Spirit of God, a work of divine initiative, a testimony of the truth as exemplified in the lives and deaths of many 16^th century men and women” (16).

Mr. Houghton affords a detour on Mr. John Foxe, that godly Reformed, Protestant, and Evangelical Anglican, a man who “detested royal cruelty” and who was an “Anglican Puritan.”  Yet, Mr. Foxe would ever retain Queen Elizabeth’s affection; he was a gentleman and not an obnoxious Puritan; she called him “our beloved Father Foxe.” 

But, back on point: Mr. Houghton in his detour draws attention to Mr. Foxe’s victimization by some historians.  Mr. (Sir) S.R. Maitland, a librarian at Lambeth, poured scorn on Foxe in 1837. J.S. Brewer and James Gardiner followed suit, but Mr. J.F. Mozley successfully rebutted the Maitland-school and Foxe emerged “as a man of undoubted integrity and was of immense value” (13).

Mr. Houghton brings in a quote from Mr. (Prof.) C.S. Lewis who reviewed Mr. Mozley’s scheme of rehabilitation (and thereby rehabilitation of Mr. d’Aubigne indirectly who gets his stream of criticism also).  Here’s Mr. Lewis on Mozley’s Foxe[2]:

Maitland had many successors, and the nineteenth-century traditions represents Foxe as an unscrupulous propagandist who records what he knows to be false, suppresses what he knows to be true, and clams to have seen documents he has not seen.  In 1940, however, Mr. J.f. Mozley reopened the whole question and defended Foxe’s integrity, as it seems to me, with complete success.  From his examination, Foxe emerges, not indeed as a great historian, but as an honest man. For early Church history he relies on the obvious authorities and is of very mediocre value.  For the Marian persecution his sources are usually the narratives of eyewitnesses…There seems no evidence that Foxe ever accepted what he did not himself believe or ever refused to correct what he had written in the light of fresh evidence.  The most horrible of all his stories, the Guersney martyrdoms, was never refuted, though violently assailed; in some ways the defence may be thought scarcely less damaging than the charge.  And in one respect—in his hatred of cruelty—Foxe was impartial to a degree hardly paralleled in that age” (14).

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[1] Haldane, Alexander. Lives of Robert and James Haldane. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 398-407.  Written by an "Evangelical Anglican." Alexander Haldane writes of his father and his famous uncle, Robert Haldane; the latter was responsible for "planting and sowing" the omnipotent seed of the Word of God amongst dead men at the Theological School of the University of Geneva in 1816. Little did Mr. Robert Haldane foresee from his faithful exposition of the perspicuous and regeneratively-powerful Scriptures. Mr. Merle d'Aubigne, though a seminarian and dead in his sins and trespasses, was "made alive together with Christ" (Eph. 2.1-4ff.).

Mr. d'Aubigne's academic work would influence 1000s of English Protestant, Reformed, and Evangelical Anglicans when the 2.0 Anglicans, the Tractarians, were making their fresh bids for power, influence, and dominion in England. Queen Victoria had Mr. d'Aubigne preach at the St. James Royal Chapel to the groans of the Non-Papal Roman Anglicans--ever-greedy from Roman dominionism, then, like now in the ACNA. As Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) James Packer called the 2.0ers or Tractarians in 1977, they are "Roman Trojan Horses."

Here is a quote from the webpage about Alexander Haldane's "Lives of Robert and James Haldane."

"Written by one of the Anglican evangelical leaders of the last century, this volume tells the remarkable story of the author's father, James Haldane and uncle, Robert Haldane. Members of the Scottish aristocracy, James was a captain with the East India Company and Robert the owner of Gleneagles and other estates in Perthshire when they were converted in the last decade of the 18th century. Thereafter the two brothers became identified for the next fifty years with many of the foremost evangelical enterprises. After selling a major part of his lands in 1798, Robert Haldane was prevented by the East India Company from proceeding with his hope of a mission in Bengal. Instead he gave himself to the spread of the gospel in Scotland and in Europe. His remarkable visit to Geneva in 1816 led to a widespread awakening and, ultimately, to the publication of his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. A director of the British and Foreign Bible Society at the time when it was split by controversy, it was due to Robert Haldane 'more than to any man' )in the opinion of Principal John MacLeod) that the Apocrypha 'was ousted from our English Bible'. James Haldane, pre-eminently a preacher, was an itinerant evangelist and, through 52 years, an influential pastor in Edinburgh. Both men believed that the blessing of God on their labours 'was designed as an encouragement to those who should cast away worldly policy, and setting before them nothing but the glory of God, rest boldly on the blessing promised, both to the written and spoken word'. These pages open up a little-known but important era and introduce the reader to many of the foremost Christian leaders of the early 19th Century. it is not, however, wholly a story of success. The brothers secession from the Church of Scotland and their consequent struggle to recover a church life more faithful to the New Testament is frankly, and at times critically, told. Firm adherence to different views of church government brought some tensions and divisions. How these dangers were faced as both men grew in grace and wisdom is a valuable part of this inspiring book."

[2] Lewis, C.S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. No page given by Mr. Houghton.