Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
He accordingly exhorted the Protestant ministers who had left France to return to their flocks at all hazards. This advice, if acted on, was virtually condemning the pastors to death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would he like to return to France at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers in exile defended themselves.
Brousson was becoming exhausted by the fatigues and privations he had encountered during his two years' wanderings and preachings in the Cevennes; and he not only desired to give the people a relaxation from their persecution, but to give himself some absolutely necessary rest.
Sedan was ruined, and remained so until our own day, when it has begun to experience a little prosperity from the tourists desirous of seeing the place where the great French Army surrendered. When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny.
Brousson knew the danger of the office he was about to undertake. There had, as we have seen, been numerous attempts made to gather the Protestant people together, and to administer consolation to them by public prayers and preaching. The persons who conducted these services were not regular pastors, but only private members of their former churches.
The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great, and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the first an energetic member of this committee.
Shortly after his ordination, Brousson descended from the Upper Cevennes, where the hunt for Protestants was becoming very hot, into the adjacent valleys and plains. There it was necessary for him to be exceedingly cautious.
The house was soon after surrounded by soldiers, and was itself entered and completely searched. Brousson's host had only had time to make him descend into a well, which had a niche in the bottom in which he could conceal himself. The soldiers looked down the well a dozen times, but could see nothing. Brousson was not in the house; he was not in the chimneys; he was not in the outhouses.
While in Holland, Brousson took the opportunity of having his sermons and many of his pastoral letters printed at Amsterdam; after which he proceeded to make a visit to his banished Huguenot friends in England. He also wished to ascertain from personal inquiry the advisability of forwarding an increased number of French emigrants then resident in Switzerland for settlement in this country.
He visited them in their families, and also held several private meetings, after which he was induced to preach in a secluded place near Sedan at night. This assembly, however, was reported to the authorities, who immediately proceeded to make search for the heretic preacher. A party of soldiers, informed by the spies, next morning invested the house in which Brousson slept.
Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon, who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz, and was now pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier; and Abbadie, banished from Saumur all ministers of the Huguenot Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant Protestants from all the provinces of France.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking