The French clergy justified this policy by the notorious text “Compel them to come in,” and appealed to St. Augustine.  Their arguments evoked a defence of toleration by Bayle, a French Protestant who had taken refuge in Holland.  It was entitled a Philosophical Commentary on the text “Compel them to come in” (1686) and in importance stands beside Locke’s work which was being composed at the same time.  Many of the arguments urged by the two writers are identical.  They agreed, and for the same reasons, in excluding Roman Catholics.  The

[108] most characteristic thing in Bayle’s treatise is his sceptical argument that, even if it were a right principle to suppress error by force, no truth is certain enough to justify us in applying the theory.  We shall see (next chapter) this eminent scholar’s contribution to rationalism.

Though there was an immense exodus of Protestants from France, Louis did not succeed in his design of extirpating heresy from his lands.  In the eighteenth century, under Louis XV, the presence of Protestants was tolerated though they were outlaws; their marriages were not recognized as legal, and they were liable at any moment to persecution.  About the middle of the century a literary agitation began, conducted mainly by rationalists, but finally supported by enlightened Catholics, to relieve the affliction of the oppressed sect.  It resulted at last in an Edict of Toleration (1787), which made the position of the Protestants endurable, though it excluded them from certain careers.

The most energetic and forceful leader in the campaign against intolerance was Voltaire (see next chapter), and his exposure of some glaring cases of unjust persecution did more than general arguments to achieve the object.  The most infamous case was that of Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant of Toulouse, whose son committed suicide.  A report

[109] was set abroad that the young man had decided to join the Catholic Church, and that his father, mother, and brother, filled with Protestant bigotry, killed him, with the help of a friend.  They were all put in irons, tried, and condemned, though there were no arguments for their guilt, except the conjecture of bigotry.  Jean Calas was broken on the wheel, his son and daughter cast into convents, his wife left to starve.  Through the activity of Voltaire, then living near Geneva, the widow was induced to go to Paris, where she was kindly received, and assisted by eminent lawyers; a judicial inquiry was made; the Toulouse sentence was reversed and the King granted pensions to those who had suffered.  This scandal could only have happened in the provinces, according to Voltaire:  “at Paris,” he says, “fanaticism, powerful though it may be, is always controlled by reason.”

The case of Sirven, though it did not end tragically, was similar, and the government of Toulouse was again responsible.  He was accused of having drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming a Catholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death.  Fortunately he and his family had escaped to Switzerland, where they persuaded Voltaire of their innocence.  To get the sentence reversed was the work of nine years, and this