Reformed Pastoral Theology under the Cross: John Quick and Claude Brousson

Abstract

The Huguenot pastor Claude Brousson (1647–98) is little known in the English speaking world. His ministry and martyrdom were first documented by an equally little-known English Puritan, John Quick (163–1706), himself no stranger to persecution. Broussons’s itinerant labours probably have no parallel in the seventeenth century. At a time when English Nonconformity was becoming moribund, Brousson displayed the zeal of purer times. While Reformed theology’s reputation for sterile orthodoxy has its origins in the seventeenth century, Brousson’s experiences of the Holy Spirit reveal a higher dimension. Fifty years before Anglo-Saxon Methodism, Brousson’s career anticipated those of Whitefield and the Wesleys, the Huguenot’s being pursued in far more hostile conditions. Like the English Puritans and the Scottish Covenanters, the French Huguenots had their militant episodes. Seen in the context of cruel persecution, graphically depicted in Quick’s little known narrative, Brousson’s teaching and example possess a unique challenge for today.