May
1862 A.D. J.H.
Merle d’Aubigne preaches in the Royal Chapel at St. James at the invitation of
Queen Victoria. Anglo-Tracto-friendly
Operatives (TFOs) groused and whined.
From Mr. d’Aubigne’s Vol. 1, The Reformation in England.
“Introduction” by S. M. Houghton, 1961. He gives a brief biography on
the historian.
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 the usual depraved governmental energies of Romanism, 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. But though a descendant of a French Reformed family, the corrosions within and advances of Unitarianism in the Swiss Reformed Churches would prove killing, chilling, and murderous. Theological defamation does that--steals and kills.
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 of students—Merle d’Aubigne, Frederick Monod, Louis Gaussen—and 20-30 other theological students encountered a London born Scotsman, Robert Haldane, a Calvinist “of the old sort.” A man who drank from deep and old wells. Though not on the Faculty of Theology, he labored in Geneva. He began to “plow and sow the barren field” in 1816 (4). He lectured from his "apartment." 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 placed Greek and Hebrew Testaments on the table (I'm still marveling over a recent conversation with a TEC cleric with zero language training, just bizarre). They fed him [Haldane] questions and he provided answers. “One of the professors” from this Reformed Geneva Faculty “paced up and down” in a high dudgeon and with high displeasure “noting their names in his pocket book” (4). One must--one really must--wonder where the Devil attends Seminary. It would be the principal places of attack! Which ones he’s been at? Which Cathedral Churches too? Jesus said he [that wicked Devil] would be sowing his tare-seeds in the field alongside the wheat; we should not be surprised.
Mr. Houghton offers a quote from Mr. Frederick 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 un-wearying patience with which he listened to our sophisms, our ignorant objections, our attempts now and then to embarrass him in 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” (5).
Mr. d’Aubigne would graduate from the Swiss school, move north, and attend lectures at Berlin and Leipzig, studying under the famed Mr. Neander, the church historian. He also travelled in the land of Luther—a man [Bruder Martin] who would remain a “life-long inspiration” to Mr. d’Aubigne.
Ultimately, he returned to Geneva and 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 read the primary documents in their original languages. At her royal invitation, he spoke at Queen Victoria’s invitation at the Royal Chapel of St. James in May 1862.
Vol. 1 on "The Reformation in England" (above) 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 in 1872.
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 19th 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” (with propositions to confess) 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 16th century men and women” (16). Right here, you can hear the groans of the Tractarians and others like Misters Iker, Ackerman, Sutton and their followers; of course, Mr. d'Aubigne is the historian of record and insight.
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, even as a "non-conformist," 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-of-vandalism 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 :
"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). Lewis, C.S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. No page given by Mr. Houghton.
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 the usual depraved governmental energies of Romanism, 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. But though a descendant of a French Reformed family, the corrosions within and advances of Unitarianism in the Swiss Reformed Churches would prove killing, chilling, and murderous. Theological defamation does that--steals and kills.
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 of students—Merle d’Aubigne, Frederick Monod, Louis Gaussen—and 20-30 other theological students encountered a London born Scotsman, Robert Haldane, a Calvinist “of the old sort.” A man who drank from deep and old wells. Though not on the Faculty of Theology, he labored in Geneva. He began to “plow and sow the barren field” in 1816 (4). He lectured from his "apartment." 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 placed Greek and Hebrew Testaments on the table (I'm still marveling over a recent conversation with a TEC cleric with zero language training, just bizarre). They fed him [Haldane] questions and he provided answers. “One of the professors” from this Reformed Geneva Faculty “paced up and down” in a high dudgeon and with high displeasure “noting their names in his pocket book” (4). One must--one really must--wonder where the Devil attends Seminary. It would be the principal places of attack! Which ones he’s been at? Which Cathedral Churches too? Jesus said he [that wicked Devil] would be sowing his tare-seeds in the field alongside the wheat; we should not be surprised.
Mr. Houghton offers a quote from Mr. Frederick 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 un-wearying patience with which he listened to our sophisms, our ignorant objections, our attempts now and then to embarrass him in 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” (5).
Mr. d’Aubigne would graduate from the Swiss school, move north, and attend lectures at Berlin and Leipzig, studying under the famed Mr. Neander, the church historian. He also travelled in the land of Luther—a man [Bruder Martin] who would remain a “life-long inspiration” to Mr. d’Aubigne.
Ultimately, he returned to Geneva and 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 read the primary documents in their original languages. At her royal invitation, he spoke at Queen Victoria’s invitation at the Royal Chapel of St. James in May 1862.
Vol. 1 on "The Reformation in England" (above) 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 in 1872.
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 19th 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” (with propositions to confess) 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 16th century men and women” (16). Right here, you can hear the groans of the Tractarians and others like Misters Iker, Ackerman, Sutton and their followers; of course, Mr. d'Aubigne is the historian of record and insight.
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, even as a "non-conformist," 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-of-vandalism 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 :
"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). Lewis, C.S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. No page given by Mr. Houghton.
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