-

1702), II, 14.

llapter 10.
evidence that Napoleon was
IDa
~ o n in Eighteenth Century
i. fix a discussion of the ways in
bolster his messianic image. I
bears the inscription "Grand
.- Bbogen, History of the Jews
:,.e 167, although the caption
- receiving the Tablets of the
lit 1806. See also Popkin, "La
II CIJristian, see David S. Katz
fWiitic:s to the End of the Second
1-.1197-8.
~
!
l
H.M. BRACKEN
7. PIERRE JURIEU: THE POLITICS OF PROPHECY
1
In a century in which invective seems to have reached new heights, or depths, it
is hard to find a more vicious exchange than that between Pierre Bayle and
Pierre Jurieu. Jurieu's name, his publications, and his views are discussed and
fiercely criticized in almost all of Bayle's writings, especially in the Dictionnaire
(1696 f). Indeed, he reserves his final attack for the penultimate article, Zuerius,
where he alleges that Jurieu had preached on the subject "thou should hate thy
neighbor"
2
before twelve hundred parishioners, and that nevertheless it proved
impossible to find agreement on the matter just three days later.
Bayle may have had the last word on the sermon, but within the Walloon
community Jurieu was largely unscathed. The crux of their disagreement was
how the members of the Walloon Church should behave. Bayle dreamed of
returning to France and hence that they should avoid politics and display
loyalty to Louis XIV Jurieu had fewer illusions. He thought it ridiculous to
think that Louis XIV would change his brutal policies toward Protestants.
Instead, he turns to an analysis of apocalyptic writings in order to show that
the biblical texts reveal that both the destruction of the papacy, i.e., the
Antichrist and the end of Louis XIV are nigh.
Jurieu, born in 1637, was Bayle's senior by ten years. He received the degree
maitre es arts in 1656 from Saumur and later moved to Sedan. He spent some
time in England where two uncles lived, one of whom was a canon at
Canterbury Cathedral. It has been said that Jurieu was ordained a priest in
the Church of England, but Knetsch, who has searched various church records,
has found no evidence.
3
On the other hand bishops were given to ordaining
priests while residing in London, or otherwise outside their home dioceses, and
records may not always have found their way back to the home cathedrals.
What is clear, however, is that Jurieu was not an enemy of the English Church.
"We have always professed the same Religion with the Church of England, on
the account of the perfect agreement of our Doctrine, notwithstanding the
difference of discipline and government. When as [sic] the Lutherans have
constantly refused to receive the Reformed into their Communion."
4
Jurieu went
on to become a spy for William III and for the English Protestants.
85
J. C. Laursen and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern
European Culture: Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics, 85-94.
2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
86 H M. Bracken
Bayle and Jurieu became friends following Bayle's appointment as professor
of philosophy at Sedan. Indeed, Jurieu seems to have taken his young colleague
under his wing and on more than one occasion Bayle praised Jurieu's brilliance
and sought to minimize the difficulties which Jurieu's stormy polemical
disposition got him into. With the suppression in 1681 of the Huguenot
university at Sedan both Bayle and Jurieu moved to Rotterdam where they
were both appointed professors in the newly founded Ecole Illustre. Jurieu, a
minister, quickly became the senior dominee at the largest Walloon church in
town. The church is now gone but at least until recently a plaque embedded on
the Hoogstraat wall of Vroom and Dreesman's department store marked its
pre-1923 location. In any case, the entire area, the very heart of Rotterdam,
was totally destroyed in the German World War II bombing. A small Walloon
church now stands on tiny Pierre Baylestraat, just off the Schiedamsedijk.
There is some irony in the fact that a bronze plaque on one side is dedicated to
Pierre Bayle, the Philosopher of Rotterdam, and on the other side is one
dedicated to Pierre Jurieu, the Theologian of Rotterdam.
Jurieu's mother was a Du Moulin and the daughter of one of the great
Huguenots, Pierre DuMoulin (professor of theology at Sedan when Jurieu was
a student there). Jurieu married his own first cousin, another DuMoulin. They
had no children. Bayle seems to have gotten on very well with Mme Du Moulin
and was a frequent guest in the Jurieu house. But the friendship became
strained. It may have been over personal matters or, more likely, over political
and religious differences. There is a story that the reason for the breakdown is
that Bayle had an affair with Mme Jurieu. So far as I know, there is no evidence
for this. But perhaps its implausibility is reduced by the fact that Bayle - in
later years - suggests that Jurieu is impotent.
5
There are good political reasons for their disagreement. At the most general
level, they disagreed over the prospects for the Huguenots. Bayle hoped that by
behaving in a circumspect fashion, with ample displays of their loyalty, they
might be able to persuade Louis XIV to treat his Protestant citizens in
accordance with the provisions of the Edict of Nantes and to allow the refugees
to return to the land of their birth and to practice their Reformed faith in peace.
Jurieu, on the other hand, had few illusions about the possibility that the
French Court would reverse its policies. So he set about conspiring to bring
down the French King by, for example, supporting governments which
opposed France.
As early as his Esprit de M Arnauld (1684), Jurieu argued that the
Huguenots, lest they succumb to hypocrisy, have an absolute duty to God to
meet and to worship. "Here for the first time Jurieu is approving and implicitly
advocating the use of arms by subjects for a religious cause."
6
Thus God's Truth
takes precedence over everything from the moral law to government edict. Of
course this is precisely the sort of thing that terrified Bayle. Bayle worried
about the hostages still in France, especially his own family. More generally, he
was forever fearful both of anything which might generate civil disturbances as
well as what he perceived as a drift towards anarchism. It is not entirely clear
that Bayle was the author of the Avis aux refugiez sur leur prochain retour en
professor
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Pierre Jurieu: The Politics of Prophecy 87
France (1690), a work written under the pseudonym of a Catholic, but it did
represent his sentiments. By spewing forth sedition and by conspiring with
Protestant princes, the Huguenots were jeopardizing their futures and the lives
of their relatives still in France. Moreover, the author of the Avis points out that
Protestants seem not only to ignore their own crimes against Catholics, but the
English Revolution was their fault. "The main target of the Avis was the
political side of the Protestant reversal, the theory that sovereignty resides in
the people, and only derivatively in the sovereign himself."
7
From then until the
ends of their lives Bayle and Jurieu fought, alas incessantly. It was brought to
Jurieu's attention, to no effect, that if an assembly exercises its putative right to
make laws, there is nothing to prevent it from enacting laws which might
oppress the true religion.
8
Bayle made fun of the shifts which occurred in Jurieu's theories as he moved
from an early (pre-Revocation) opinion ofletting sovereignty reside in the King
to treating him as a mere agent by which the people exercised their sovereignty.
Although it is a brilliant work, the Avis was bound to fail if it was intended as a
device for dissuading the Huguenots from their aggressive speech and
conspiratorial actions. In 1685, Louis XIV, noting that there were no more
Protestants in his realm, abrogated the Edict of Nantes.
It is difficult to understand how Bayle could have thought the King's decision
might be undone and the policy of forced conversions eliminated. Although
many tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Huguenots did flee France, they
fled at great risk. Refugees are almost always in difficult political positions and
the Huguenots were no exception. As Walter Rex has pointed out in a typically
brilliant article,
9
one had to strike a delicate balance. One had to be moderate
in criticizing Louis XIV lest one put at risk one's brethren still in France while
at the same time one had to give some sort of visible support to William, their
host. It was easy to slide from being a neutral towards William to being his
opponent, but being his opponent would hardly help one's brethren.
Unfortunately, Bayle's unease with (Stadthouder) William put him at odds
with many of his co-religionists and city leaders. This proved to be a very
serious matter and seems, even more than his religious disagreements with
Jurieu, to have been the real reason for his losing his Rotterdam teaching job.
10
Right after the Revocation, Jurieu published his monumental studies of the
Apocalypse. Part I of his Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or the
Approaching Deliverance of the Church. Proving that the Papacy is the Anti-
christian Kingdom; and that that Kingdom is not far from its Ruin. That the
present Persecution may end in Three years and half, after which the Destruction
of Antichrist shall begin ... runs over 250 pages, and Part II, almost 300 pages.
The Continuation of the Accomplishment of the Scripture-Prophecies, or a Large
Deduction of Historical Evidences; Proving, that the Papacy Is the Real Anti-
christian Kingdom ... is also about 300 pagesY Jurieu presents an infinitely
detailed, extensive, and learned analysis of the prophetic texts, Daniel and the
Book of Revelation, together with comments on and criticisms of various
commentators.
12
The occasion for these publications was clearly the Revocation and the
88 H. M. Bracken
systematic destruction of what Jurieu takes to be the true religion, the
Huguenots, in France. There are discussions of the Beast, the Vials, the
Monarchies, the plagues, the trumpets, and the meaning of days and years.
Interpretations of the latter are crucially important because Jurieu wants to
suggest the date on which the Papacy will come tumbling down. He concludes
that the Antichristian Empire must fall between 1710 and 1715.
13
He calculates
that the "glorious reign" of Christ on earth shall begin in 1785,
14
although
Jurieu is not dogmatic about such dates. He is greatly reassured by the fact that
the English [Protestant] Glorious Revolution occurred three and a half years
after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
15
He generally says that he has
simply worked out the calculations with great care and that others can check
out his estimates. Moreover, we can not be sure that God counts as we do.
I strongly hope, that God intends to begin [the reckoning of the three and a
half years] at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes .... I am well
content (as I have said) that my Readers should account these assertions to
be conjectures, provided that I may have the liberty to believe what I see, or
what I believe I see in the writings of the Prophets. Besides, it seems that
there is no great necessity of punishing me for this pretended rashness;
seeing if so be that I am mistaken, Time is preparing for me a mortification
sore enough. Let us leave Providence to work: it will discover who is guilty of
rashness and fond credulity.
16
After the publication of Bayle's Dictionnaire (1696), Bayle was ordered to
appear before the Consistory of the Rotterdam Walloon Church. The
Consistory decreed that Bayle correct certain matters before the appearance
of a second edition. Among the five topics which they ordered be rectified was
the article David. I accept Rex's view that Bayle's most general aim in this
article is to challenge one of the older traditional Calvinist political theories
but that his primary aim is to expose and then attack Jurieu's attempts to offer
a modern version of, as Bayle sees it, the very dangerous theory of giving
priority to Old Testament politics rather than the gentler politics developed in
the light of the New. Bayle had watched Jurieu's reputation and influence
among the Calvinists both in France and the Refuge increase. Bayle knew that
Jurieu's Lettres pastorales (1686-89) together with his writings on the
Apocalypse had tremendous impact. Bayle was both dismayed and frightened
by the air of rebellion he detected within the refugee community and to which
he believed, probably correctly, Jurieu had made a significant contribution.
Although, as Rex points out, Jurieu's name does not occur in David, itself quite
remarkable, Rex maintains that Jurieu's ideas are the primary target.
French hostility against the Huguenots began long before the Revocation
17
and I suspect that Jurieu had a much clearer eye about where things were going
than Bayle. He monitored one of the worst features of French policy towards
the Reformed: the quartering of dragoons
18
in Protestant homes in order to
force conversions to Catholicism. Having troops in one's home not only
destroyed family life, it was generally accompanied by extreme brutality. So it
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Pierre Jurieu: The Politics of Prophecy 89
is not surprising that Jurieu was among the first to cease subscribing to such
traditional Calvinist views as pacifism, royalism, passive resistance in the face
of a hostile state, and the rights of an erring conscience. Hence, after the
Revocation, Jurieu's account differed: (1) He rejected pacifism on the ground
that "the Gospel had not abrogated the law of nature."
19
(2) He held more
strongly that sovereignty derived from the people. (3) He rejected what had
become accepted doctrine, that with the New Testament, the religious and the
secular were no longer unified.
Matters are even more complicated. Jurieu's anti-rationalism takes
precedence over all other theological/religious considerations. Rationalism is
rejected for good conservative Calvinist reasons: there is nothing one human
can do for another to facilitate the acquisition of God's grace. There is no
argument such that grace is a product of our reasoning. Grace is totally a
question of God's activity, not ours. As Richard Popkin has pointed out, Jurieu
rejected the contention of
some of the liberal Protestant theologians of his day that the Cartesian
criterion of clear and distinct ideas should be applied to theology, and that
religious propositions should be accepted only insofar as they are evident or
insofar as there is evidence for them. For Jurieu this contention was an
outrageous form of the Pelagian heresy in that if belief were a function of
evidence, man could save himself, or be saved by confronting the objective
evidence.
20
Jurieu grants that some people, thanks to their different backgrounds, etc.,
claim to have truth on their side, and these people may well appeal to contrary
feelings. And we feel the truth. "L'heritique & l'orthodoxe parlent de mesme,
mais ils ne sentent pas de mesme."
21
Heretics are just wrong. Their feelings are
not grounded in grace. Lest one think that Jurieu's doctrine of gout should
either generate religious pluralism or encourage toleration, he reminds us that
"le gout & le sentiment, est le privilege des ellis, & ne se donne qu'aux 6lus."
22
Conclusion: the argument for toleration based on the erring conscience fails.
As noted, Bayle had, much to Jurieu's disgust, advocated religious
toleration.
23
Roughly speaking, he argued that on the basis of clear and distinct
ideas of morality, intolerance as expressed by, e.g., the state "forcing"
consciences, was morally wrong. Bayle takes core Calvinist positions, the
inviolability of conscience plus the central role of rational examination, to
ground his defense oftoleration. It does lead to some strange consequences: the
heretic and even the criminal must be granted the right to conscience, although
always with a return to reason because of the obligation to examine. Never-
theless, to Jurieu, Bayle's extended and magnificent defense of religious
toleration in his Philosophical Commentary upon the words of Jesus Christ,
Compel them to come in [Luke 14:23] (1686) was totally anathema. Jurieu
believed that to support toleration in religious matters was to foster Socinian-
ism and other heterodox ideas and that it was the duty of a Christian
government to suppress error in the interest of truth. For Jurieu, no moral
principle takes precedence over religious truth.
90 HM. Bracken
Bayle seeks to evade crucial difficulties generated by the rooting of his
absolutist theory of toleration in freedom of conscience. But his critics
maintained that he would then be obliged to tolerate not only heterodox religious
opinions but even criminal actions and religious persecution if done on the
dictates of (even an erring) conscience. I believe Bayle was aiming to avoid this
difficulty, a difficulty which threatened his theory of toleration. Bayle had to find
a solution and I propose that he seems to have sought a way out by trying to draw
a radical distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of action, and in
turn grounding that distinction in mind/body dualism.
24
Some evidence for this
interpretation of Bayle may be found in the fact that Jurieu explicitly denies any
sort of "category distinction" between talking and doing: if the magistrate can
bind your arm he can bind your tongue.Z
5
He also vigorously rejects the
Cartesian mind/body dualism which is so much a part of Bayle's Commentaire
philosophique and on which the speech/action distinction appears to be based.
Thus Jurieu's arguments with Bayle are often rooted not only in political
differences but also in fundamental philosophical disagreements.
Bayle saw that Jurieu was reversing Calvinist political thinking. He was
using his writings on prophecy as a vehicle for binding the political with the
religious and thereby making a radical return to Old Testament thinking.
Understandably, Jurieu's writings on prophecy and thus the impending down-
fall and destruction of the Antichrist (Rome) and of the French monarch were
well received among the Huguenots. It gave them hope. But it did so at a price
which Bayle felt those remaining in France would be forced to pay. Rex takes
Bayle, in the article David, to be analyzing the Biblical text in great detail as a
means of demonstrating that Jurieu is discounting New Testament Christian
teaching in order to elevate and reconsecrate Old Testament prophecy and
again to make legitimate the role of the Old Testament prophet. Thus the aim
of Article David is to condemn the union of politics and faith, and not simply
because Bayle saw the intolerance this move would generate. He also feared
Jurieu's goal of molding the Protestants into a community prepared to arm
itself and fight to the death. Jurieu, however, had early acquired a mass
audience through his Lettres pastorales
26
and not because of displays of logic
and sound reasoning. With his more explicit prophetic writings he provided his
co-religionists with an exciting purely biblical vision of the possibility of a
divinely inspired victory of the members of the Reformed Church over their
enemies.
Rex writes: "Jurieu scarcely attempted to explain; he simply became a
prophet himself, and gave forth divine oracles of the future .... "
27
An analysis
of David's behavior as reported in the Bible gave Bayle the perfect occasion for
sorting out the difficulties of exalting "the man after God's own heart," the
Biblical line which is a constant refrain in Dictionnaire article David. What
Bayle also does is underscore the terrible things which the Bible tells us this
man "after God's own heart" does. These things, from adultery to theft and
murder, all run counter to Christian teachings and, moreover, are in violation
of the moral law. Thus Bayle puts in dramatic form his basic disagreement with
Jurieu: for Jurieu, God's word and Truth take absolute priority over moral
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Pierre Jurieu: The Politics of Prophecy 91
principles. It is a straightforward case of what Kierkegaard was later to call the
"transcendental suspension of the ethical." Antinomianism is a very
uncompromising doctrine,
28
as Bayle appreciated. He had already encountered
it earlier when spelling out and challenging the arguments for intolerance.
Schlossberg summarizes what he takes to be the inconsistencies within both
Bayle's and Jurieu's positions. Bayle had "two absolute principles which, in
practice, tended to cancel each other out. He had to take something away from
royal power - the right to legislate over conscience - and still keep his fellow
Protestants from completely overthrowing legitimate authority." Jurieu had a
complementary inconsistency: "he wanted to preserve the right to rebel against
arbitrary, tyrannical government and, at the same time, allow the sovereign to
discriminate against religious minorities and maintain a dominant 'true'
religion."
29
As noted, although Bayle wants to separate politics from faith, he believes
the rebellious ideas Jurieu purveys can only generate an anarchy in which
everyone loses. Jurieu is apparently willing to accept a modicum of standard
Reformed policies until the early 1680s, at which time he worries that
toleration encourages Socinianism and other views which run counter to the
Truth Faith. He argues at length against Bayle on this score. On the other
hand, anti-absolutism, Knetsch writes, is "one of the great constants of
[Jurieu's] life."
30
Although a royalist in his early writings, he accords primary
sovereignty to the people, a position Bayle, ever distrustful of "the people," can
never accept. Towards the ends of their lives Bayle and Jurieu devote most of
their literary energies to trying to destroy one another. And yet, despite all the
sound and fury, the differences between Bayle and Jurieu were primarily in the
political domain, e.g., in their political theories, their analyses of the historical
situations in France, England and among the Huguenots, and their remedies,
rather than being primarily rooted in theology. They were both orthodox
Calvinists to the end.
31
Bayle's reputation later becomes secure as a hero in
the eighteenth century while Jurieu is confined to the lunatic fringe of the
Calvinist dogmatists despite his being extremely knowledgeable about
seventeenth-century philosophy, both rationalist and scholastic.
From at least 1681 until the Revocation (1685), Jurieu saw the situation of
the Huguenots in France profoundly and quickly deteriorating. As a leader of
the refugee community, Jurieu diagnosed the problem and proposed a means of
solving it. The problem was to save the entire Reformed community. To that
end, the community must be unified. But the community could hardly be
unified so long as rationalism in religious matters has a "splintering" effect.
32
The use of arguments from natural law in support of toleration, pacifism, etc.,
served only to divide the Huguenots and to sap their political strength by
generating sects and then sects of sects. Without a unified community there
could be no response to the acts of the Antichrist. That is why Jurieu went to
great lengths to show that appeals to reason must be understood as absolutely
contrary to the True Faith of the Reformed.
How can one articulate a political position if one is precluded from appeals
to reason and the natural, i.e., moral, law? The most fruitful and productive
92 H. M Bracken
model, one which would still resonate within the Reformed community, Jurieu
found in an Old Testament framework in which politics and faith are united.
Second, within that framework he accorded priority to the role of the Old
Testament prophet, a role for which, despite the obligatory denials, he virtually
anointed himself. Third, the New Testament's apocalyptic texts, properly
interpreted, provided a political program for the Huguenots. And this
messianic/millenialist program promised a future for the elect of the
community. In summary, there are thus four elements in Jurieu's "political"
doctrine: (1) anti-rationalism, (2) using Old Testament models to restore a
union of faith and politics, (3) functioning as a prophet himself, and finally ( 4)
using the prophetic texts to provide a program for the worldly salvation of the
Reformed community.
As a person, Jurieu fits into a pattern with which we are familiar: a
theoretician whose life is profoundly disrupted by external events over which
he or she has no control and who then devotes his or her time and energy to
trying to gain a measure of control over those events. I am thinking of people
who, like Karl Popper, abandon the left-wing views of their youth in the face of
(say) Hitler and Stalin and then feel obliged to spend the rest of their days
trying to come to grips with their old mistakes and the new realities.
Seventeenth-century Rotterdam, and The Netherlands generally, were full of
refugees who wondered what had happened to them and what the future held.
Jurieu told them where they had come from, and what they could do to rectify
the wrongs they had suffered. In retrospect, we can see that Bayle's dream of a
return to France was hopeless. Jurieu was far more realistic. He also
appreciated that the popular acceptance of messianism or millenialism
frequently occurs when a community undergoes extreme trauma. Jurieu and
the entire Huguenot community underwent such a trauma. In the short term
his prophetic dream, although driven by his strong religious commitment, may
have come to naught, but that dream was articulated in a context of constant
propaganda for the Protestant cause throughout Europe and in that sense it
was a success far beyond his detractors' expectations.
33
Jurieu had connections throughout Europe and he used them. He was,
paradoxically, an able politician. I say paradoxically because he also had a true
talent for antagonizing people, although it must be said that the Walloon
community seldom sought to restrain him. His political ideas were increasingly
meshed with his religious concerns as they evolved from the abstract to the
concrete. The writings he produced and the arguments he advanced were
intended to make a difference in the practical politics of the day. And because
he was continuously subjecting his theoretical ideas to the political exigencies
of the moment, they did. Richard Popkin has argued for the existence of a
Third Force in seventeenth-century thought in addition to the traditional
intellectual forces, science and scepticism. This Third Force was
millenarianism.
34
Perhaps we should think of Jurieu as providing the Third
Force with its own political theory.
Arizona State University
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Pierre Jurieu: The Politics of Prophecy 93
NOTES
1. My thanks to the members of the Clark Library conference on Continental Millenarianism for
their helpful comments and criticisms. I am especially grateful to Richard Popkin, who (many
years ago) first introduced a young graduate student to Sextus Empiricus, Bayle, and Jurieu. I
wish also to thank Walter Rex, Freek Knetsch, John Christian Laursen, and Elly van
Gelderen for their generous support and useful comments.
2. It seems that Jurieu meant one should hate the neighbor who was an enemy of God, intending,
of course, Louis XIV. But thanks to Bayle, the shorter formulation is what gained currency.
3. F.R.J. Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu: Theoloog en Politikus der Rifuge (Kampen, J.H. Kok, 1967) 20
[ This remains the definitive study of Jurieu.
4. Jurieu, Accomplishment of the Prophecies ... Part II. [English translation] (London, 1687),
chap. X, 220.
5. See Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, Vol I (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 206, n. 74.
She refers to Dictionnaire, art. Ochin. [Rem X, iv]. Hers is the definitive study of Bayle. See
also her Vol II, 1964.
6. R.J. Howells, Pierre Jurieu: Antinomian Radical (Durham: University Press, 1983), 40.
7. Herbert Schlossberg, Pierre Bayle and the Politics of the Huguenot Diaspora (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota PhD, 1965), 127. This is an extremely valuable study.
8. Cf. Guy Howard Dodge, The Political Theory of the Huguenots of the Dispersion (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1947), 68 f.
9. Walter Rex, Essays on Pierre Bayle and religious controversy (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1965); see chap. 6: Bayle's Article on David, 197-255.
10. Cf. Rex, op. cit., 234, note 126. See also page 251, note 175.
I I. L'Accomplissement ... Rotterdam: Abraham Acher, 1686. An English translation appeared in
London in the following year. La suite . . . I 687. An English translation of this second work
appeared again in London the following year. Pierre Du Moulin, Jurieu's grandfather,
published a book under a similar title in 1612. Cf. Knetsch, op.cit. 207, note 272.
12. Just to mention a few of those cited: Coccius, Forbes, Henry More, Joseph Mede (whose views
are frequently discussed), Launay, Du Moulin, Bellarmine, Testard, James Durrham,
Arnauld, Nicole, Durandus, Gabriel Biel, Burnet, Bossuet, Ussher, Maimbourg, Witsius (of
Utrecht).
13. Accomplishment, Part II. Ch. 5, 54.
14. Ibid., 59.
15. The three and a half days [Revelation I I, v. I I] usually were counted as years.
16. Accomplishment, Part II. Chap. 15, 278-9.
I 7. See Elisabeth Labrousse's prize winning book: "Unefoi, une loi, un roi?" Essay sur la revocation
de !'Mit de nantes (Paris: Payot, 1985). She does not think that the anti-Huguenot sentiment
which increased throughout the seventeenth century should count as a form of racism (cf.
I I 7). It is hard, in the present world, to decide what should count as racism. The pure Iaine of
Quebec, i.e., those descended from the original 60 000 French settlers, or the Protestants of
Belfast often seem to try to give their differences from The Others a metaphysical, if not a
biological, status (and The Others usually try to return the favor). Something of the sort seems
to have afflicted the Huguenots.
18. The tercentenary of the Revocation was marked by several conferences. For an interesting set
of papers see The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an Emigration. eds. Edric Caldicott,
Hugh Gough, Jean-Paul Pittion (Dun Laoghaire: Glendale Press, 1987). See, e.g., the
contributions by Roland Mousnier, Pittion, Patrick Kelly, and Mark Goldie.
19. Presumably recollections of the dragonnades influenced the introduction into the US
Constitution of the Third Amendment (Bill of Rights). "No soldier shall, in time of peace be
quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner
to be prescribed by law."
20. Rex, op.cit., 228.
21. Richard H. Popkin, "Hume and Jurieu: Possible Calvinist Origins of Hume's Theory of
Belief," in The High Road to Pyrrhonism, eds. Richard A. Watson, James E. Force (San Diego:
94 H M Bracken
Austin Hill Press, 1980), 165. Popkin cites Jurieu, Traitte de Ia Nature et de Ia Grace. Ou Du
concours general de Ia Providence & du concours particulier de Ia Grace efficace ... (Utrecht:
Halma, 1687 [1688]), pps. 244-46 and 254-59.
22. Pierre Jurieu, Histoire de Ia doctrine universe lie de l'eglise ... (Rotterdam: Abraham Acher,
1695), 145-6; see also 267.
23. Jurieu, Le vray systeme de l'eglise ... (Dordrecht: Caspar & Goris, 1686), 426. See my Mind and
Language: Essays on Descartes and Chomsky, Chap. 5, and also for a remarkably orthodox
reading of Bayle see my: "Bayle's attack on natural theology: the case of Christian
Pyrrhonism," in Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds.
Richard H. Popkin and Atjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1993), 254-66.
24. On the larger question of Bayle's politics see Sally L. Jenkinson, "Rationality, pluralism and
reciprocal tolerance: a re-appraisal of Pierre Bayle's political thought," in Defending Politics:
Bernard Crick and Pluralism, ed. lain Hampsher-Monk (London: British Academic Press,
1993), 22-45, and also her "Two concepts of tolerance: or why Bayle is not Locke," Journal of
Political Philosophy, vo!. 4, 1996, 302-321.
25. In my Freedom of Speech: Words are not Deeds (Westport: Praeger, 1994). I argue that Bayle
draws a "category distinction" between talk and action. He introduces the notion of freedom of
speech and thus that one ought to be free to talk about torture (or religious persecution) but
not to engage freely in the act of torture. In this way the rights of an erring conscience might be
preserved.
26. Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme ... Vol. 2 (Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1683), 279. For a discussion
of Jurieu's compilation and editing methods for the Histoire, see the various papers by
Knetsch as well as !).is Pierre Jurieu ... esp. 164.
27. Widely distributed (by post) in France and elsewhere on a fortnightly basis, 1686-89.
28. Rex, op.cit. 215.
29. See again Howells, op.cit.
30. Op. cit. 251.
31. Knetsch, op. cit. 384.
32. Bayle's subscription to Orthodoxy was ignored and his claims to being religious were taken as
ridiculous on their face by most Enlightenment types. The evidence for ascribing to him an
anti-religious position is often said to be that the Dictionnaire is 'full of obscenities' and that
Bayle was obliged to answer for them. However, it is by no means obvious that Bayle's
'obscenities' prove anything about his religious sentiments. Even Calvinist theologians (and
not just authors of guidebooks for Confessors) whose orthodoxy was not questioned often
employed ribald, earthy examples. At that time and in earlier centuries the eyes of censors
were usually focussed on heresy and blasphemy rather than obscenities. Twentieth-century
commentators like Elisabeth Labrousse have been more generous to Bayle then
Enlightenment commentators. Perhaps this is in part because we are more aware (since
Kierkegaard? - certainly since Barth) of how ill equipped we are to plumb the depths of
another person's faith. David Wootton is an exception. He has sought, I think without much
success, to resurrect the eighteenth-century interpretation in his "Pierre Bayle, Libertine?" in
Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, ed. M.A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), 197-226.
33. Bayle was very aware of this fragmentation process. He seems to have seen it ultimately
leading to each sect being a "minority of one". See Dictionnaire Art 'Mammillaires.'
34. Just as Elisabeth Labrousse's superb work on Bayle has stimulated a generation of scholars to
revise and reconsider traditional readings - I have in mind the work of Walter Rex, Richard
Popkin, and Gianni Paganini - so Jurieu has also undergone major scholarly re-evaluation,
thanks in particular to the fine work of Dodge, Schlossberg, and Knetsch.
35. See Richard H. Popkin, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
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