y it long; an edict of 1656 annulled, at
the same time explaining, the favorable declaration of 1652; in 1660 the
last national synod was held at Loudun. "His Majesty has resolved," said
M. de la Magdelaine, deputed from the king to the synod, "that there
shall be no more such assemblies but when he considers it expedient."
Fifteen years had rolled by since the synod of Charenton in 1645. "We
are only too firmly persuaded of the usefulness of our synods, and how
entirely necessary they are for our churches, after having been so long
with out them," sorrowfully exclaimed the moderator, Peter Daille.

For two hundred and twelve years the Reformed church of France was
deprived of its synods. God at last restored to it this corner-stone of
its interior constitution.

The suppression of the edict-chambers instituted by Henry IV. in all the
Parliaments for the purpose of taking cognizance of the affairs of the
Reformers followed close upon the abolition of national synods. Peter
du Bosq, pastor of the church of Caen, an accomplished gentleman and
celebrated preacher, was commissioned to set before the king the
representations of the Protestants. Louis XIV. listened to him kindly.
"That is the finest speaker in my kingdom," he said to his courtiers
after the minister's address. The edict-chambers were, nevertheless,
suppressed in 1669; the half and half (_mi partie_) chambers, composed of
Reformed and Catholic councillors, underwent the same fate in 1679, and
the Protestants found themselves delivered over to the intolerance and
religious prejudices of the Parliaments, which were almost everywhere
harsher, as regarded them, than the governors and superintendents of
provinces.

"It seemed to me, my son," wrote Louis XIV. in his _Memoires_ of the year
1661, "that those who were for employing violent remedies against the
religion styled Reformed, did not understand the nature of this malady,
caused partly by heated feelings, which should be passed over unnoticed
and allowed to die out insensibly, instead of being inflamed afresh by
equally strong contradiction, which, moreover, is always useless, when
the taint is not confined to a certain known number, but spread
throughout the state. I thought, therefore, that the best way of
reducing the Huguenots of my kingdom little by little, was, in the first
place, not to put any pressure upon them by any fresh rigor against them,
to see to the observance of all that they had obt