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Pierre Viret (1511-1571), known as “the Angel of the Reformation,” a worthy epithet for a man about whom his friend Farel wrote, “I can say that never have I found in him anything but a sincere affection for Christ and His Gospel, a character devoid of all harshness, a truly Christian soul, walking in love and seeking peace.”1 He has also been called the “forgotten Reformer,” and inasmuch as we have, it is to our loss. Viret was born in Orbe, Switzerland, a city of Vaud, the region in which he principally worked. When a young man, he was delivered...

Bloodshed. That one word sums up the history of the Reformation in France. In Luther’s Germany and Calvin’s Geneva, most princes and civil leaders supported the Reformation. In France, most opposed it. The French kings often tried to exterminate the movement by killing Reformed believers. At one point, Reformed believers in France also shed blood, taking up the sword to defend their cause, with many of them dying as a result. These Reformed believers in France are known as Huguenots. The story of the French Reformation is the story of Jesus Christ gathering these Huguenots into His church and defending...

In the morning of August 24, 1572, the body of a Frenchman fell lifeless from the window of the Paris residence where he was staying. It was neither suicide nor accident. His name was Gaspard de Coligny, the nobleman who took charge of the Protestant cause in France. Moments before his body was dumped out the window, Coligny was killed in cold blood by assassins, triggering the brutal campaign of persecution known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The Reformation in France struggled against vehement persecution from the beginning. John Calvin was among many Frenchman who lived as a refugee,...

The church in Geneva, Switzerland had a significant place in the formation and continuation of the Reformed churches in France. Geneva supported and nurtured the work of the French Reformed churches “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ” in France to the glory of the God of grace (Eph. 4:12). The Reformed in France recognized and appreciated the place God gave Geneva in their history and development.   Three Frenchmen in Geneva The influence of Geneva upon the Reformation in France and the French Reformed churches is...

When the leading theologians at the Synod of Dordt are spoken of, Pierre Du Moulin’s name is not mentioned. While Du Moulin was not allowed to attend the Synod, God did use him to promote the Canons and to preserve the truth that has been passed to us. In the early 1600s, the Calvinist-Arminian controversy spread throughout Europe. The controversy was over predestination and related topics, such as free will and the extent of Christ’s atonement. The debate began in the Netherlands as a result of the teachings of Jacob Arminius. After Arminius died, his supporters summarized his views in...

Moïse Amyraut (1596-1664) intended to study law, but Philippe de Mornay, who had founded the Huguenot university and seminary L’Académie de Saumur in 1593, persuaded him to study theology. Amyraut was appointed by the provincial synod of Anjou to the chair of theology in 1633, where he remained until his death in 1664. Amyraut’s life was largely uneventful, as he labored as a pastor and theological professor in the city of Saumur for some thirty years; but his theology engendered intense controversy within French Protestantism and weakened the Reformed Church in France. The controversy began with the publication in 1634...

The Reformation penetrated France along with the rest of Europe as the writings of Luther were distributed far and wide. Many a Frenchman, as well as their families, was converted from Catholicism to the biblical, apostolic faith. The outstanding case, of course, was the conversion of the young Jean Calvinus himself in the 1520s to the “Calvinistic” faith, by which we mean, to confessing salvation by grace alone, sovereign and irresistible, and the Scriptures as the final authority in all matters of doctrine and life. The papal mass was to be condemned as an accursed idolatry and meritorious work-righteousness rejected...

The foregoing article on this subject contained a list of those sins that could not be atoned by the typical sacrifice. It was found that there were only three classes of sins of which it is declared that they could be atoned. The one class was comprised of sins committed unwittingly or through carelessness or oversight. The other class for which the sacrifice could avail was comprised of sins done under the influence of passion or temptation and thus not characterized by that settled and deliberate malice that marked the presumptuous sins. There was still a third class of sins...

Relentlessly we have maintained the doctrine of the particular atonement. And rightly so, for it is just as relentlessly being attacked in these present days. It should not be necessary in Reformed circles to have to prove that Christ, according to the intention of God’s decrees, died, not for all, but only for the elect. But it has often become, and gradually more often becomes, necessary to have to maintain that redemption is particular. And therefore we with unabated force have to maintain that the blood of the cross went no further and was intended to reach no further than...

Hath God cast away His people? Thus the apostle Paul begins the eleventh chapter of his epistle to the Romans. And this indeed is a very important question. And seemingly there are good reasons to raise this question. For, is it not true, when we look round about us that we see the ungodly prosper? And on the other hand, is it not a fact, that the righteous have only a very little of the riches and the abundance of this world? Yea, is it not so that one of God’s dearest children complained, “All the day long I have...