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The English
Reformers, while renouncing the doctrines of Romanism, had retained
many of its forms. Thus though the authority and the creed of Rome
were rejected, not a few of her customs and ceremonies were
incorporated into the worship of the Church of England. It was
claimed that these things were not matters of conscience; that
though they were not commanded in Scripture, and hence were
nonessential, yet not being forbidden, they were not intrinsically
evil. Their observance tended to narrow the gulf which separated the
reformed churches from Rome, and it was urged that they would
promote the acceptance of the Protestant faith by Romanists.
To the conservative and compromising,
these arguments seemed conclusive. But there was another class that did
not so judge. The fact that these customs "tended to bridge over the
chasm between Rome and the Reformation" (Martyn, volume 5, page 22), was
in their view a conclusive argument against retaining them. They looked
upon them as badges of the slavery from which they had been delivered
and to which they had no disposition to return. They reasoned that God
has in His word established the regulations governing His worship, and
that men are not at liberty to add to these or to detract from them. The
very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement the
authority of God by
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that of the church. Rome began by
enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what
He had explicitly enjoined.
Many earnestly desired to return to
the purity and simplicity which characterized the primitive church. They
regarded many of the established customs of the English Church as
monuments of idolatry, and they could not in conscience unite in her
worship. But the church, being supported by the civil authority, would
permit no dissent from her forms. Attendance upon her service was
required by law, and unauthorized assemblies for religious worship were
prohibited, under penalty of imprisonment, exile, and death.
At the opening of the seventeenth
century the monarch who had just ascended the throne of England declared
his determination to make the Puritans "conform, or . . . harry them out
of the land, or else worse."--George Bancroft,
History of the United States of America,
pt. 1, ch. 12, par. 6. Hunted,
persecuted, and imprisoned, they could discern in the future no promise
of better days, and many yielded to the conviction that for such as
would serve God according to the dictates of their conscience, "England
was ceasing forever to be a habitable place."--J. G. Palfrey,
History of New England,
ch. 3, par. 43. Some at last determined
to seek refuge in Holland. Difficulties, losses, and imprisonment were
encountered. Their purposes were thwarted, and they were betrayed into
the hands of their enemies. But steadfast perseverance finally
conquered, and they found shelter on the friendly shores of the Dutch
Republic.
In their flight they had left their
houses, their goods, and their means of livelihood. They were strangers
in a strange land, among a people of different language and customs.
They were forced to resort to new and untried occupations to earn their
bread. Middle-aged men, who had spent their lives in tilling the soil,
had now to learn mechanical trades. But they cheerfully accepted the
situation and lost no time in idleness or repining. Though often pinched
with poverty,
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they thanked God for the blessings which
were still granted them and found their joy in unmolested spiritual
communion. "They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those
things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and
quieted their spirits."--Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 12, par. 15.
In the midst of exile and hardship
their love and faith waxed strong. They trusted the Lord's promises, and
He did not fail them in time of need. His angels were by their side, to
encourage and support them. And when God's hand seemed pointing them
across the sea, to a land where they might found for themselves a state,
and leave to their children the precious heritage of religious liberty,
they went forward, without shrinking, in the path of providence.
God had permitted trials to come upon
His people to prepare them for the accomplishment of His gracious
purpose toward them. The church had been brought low, that she might be
exalted. God was about to display His power in her behalf, to give to
the world another evidence that He will not forsake those who trust in
Him. He had overruled events to cause the wrath of Satan and the plots
of evil men to advance His glory and to bring His people to a place of
security. Persecution and exile were opening the way to freedom.
When first constrained to separate
from the English Church, the Puritans had joined themselves together by
a solemn covenant, as the Lord's free people, "to walk together in all
His ways made known or to be made known to them." --J. Brown,
The Pilgrim Fathers,
page 74. Here was the true spirit of
reform, the vital principle of Protestantism. It was with this purpose
that the Pilgrims departed from Holland to find a home in the New World.
John Robinson, their pastor, who was providentially prevented from
accompanying them, in his farewell address to the exiles said:
"Brethren, we are now erelong to part
asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether I shall live ever to see your
faces more. But whether the Lord hath appointed it or not, I
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charge you before God and His blessed
angels to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ. If God
should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as
ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth of my
ministry; for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet
to break forth out of His holy word."--Martyn, vol. 5, p. 70.
"For my part, I cannot sufficiently
bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period
in religion, and will go at present no farther than the instruments of
their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what
Luther saw; . . . and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they
were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is
a misery much to be lamented; for though they were burning and shining
lights in their time, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of
God, but were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further
light as that which they first received."--D. Neal,
History of the Puritans,
vol. 1, p. 269.
"Remember your church covenant, in
which you have agreed to walk in all the ways of the Lord, made or to be
made known unto you. Remember your promise and covenant with God and
with one another, to receive whatever light and truth shall be made
known to you from His written word; but withal, take heed, I beseech
you, what you receive for truth, and compare it and weigh it with other
scriptures of truth before you accept it; for it is not possible the
Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian
darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at
once."--Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 70, 71.
It was the desire for liberty of
conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long
journey across the sea, to endure the hardships and dangers of the
wilderness, and with God's blessing to lay, on the shores of America,
the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet honest and God-fearing
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as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet
comprehend the great principle of religious liberty. The freedom which
they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves, they were not equally
ready to grant to others. "Very few, even of the foremost thinkers and
moralists of the seventeenth century, had any just conception of that
grand principle, the outgrowth of the New Testament, which acknowledges
God as the sole judge of human faith."--
Ibid., vol. 5, p. 297. The
doctrine that God has committed to the church the right to control the
conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply
rooted of papal errors. While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome,
they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance. The dense
darkness in which, through the long ages of her rule, popery had
enveloped all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly dissipated. Said
one of the leading ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay: "It was
toleration that made the world antichristian; and the church never took
harm by the punishment of heretics."--
Ibid., vol. 5, p. 335. The
regulation was adopted by the colonists that only church members should
have a voice in the civil government. A kind of state church was formed,
all the people being required to contribute to the support of the
clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus
the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before
these measures led to the inevitable result --persecution.
Eleven years after the planting of the
first colony, Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early
Pilgrims he came to enjoy religious freedom; but, unlike them, he saw
--what so few in his time had yet seen--that this freedom was the
inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an
earnest seeker for truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all
the light from God's word had yet been received. Williams "was the first
person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the
doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before
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the law."--Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par.
16. He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime,
but never to control the conscience. "The public or the magistrates may
decide," he said, "what is due from man to man; but when they attempt to
prescribe a man's duties to God, they are out of place, and there can be
no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrates has the power, he may
decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and another tomorrow; as has
been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different
popes and councils in the Roman Church; so that belief would become a
heap of confusion."--Martyn, vol. 5, p. 340.
Attendance at the services of the
established church was required under a penalty of fine or imprisonment.
"Williams reprobated the law; the worst statute in the English code was
that which did but enforce attendance upon the parish church. To compel
men to unite with those of a different creed, he regarded as an open
violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the
irreligious and the unwilling, seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. . .
. 'No one should be bound to worship, or,' he added, 'to maintain a
worship, against his own consent.' 'What!' exclaimed his antagonists,
amazed at his tenets, 'is not the laborer worthy of his hire?' 'Yes,'
replied he, 'from them that hire him.'"-- Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par.
2.
Roger Williams was respected and
beloved as a faithful minister, a man of rare gifts, of unbending
integrity and true benevolence; yet his steadfast denial of the right of
civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for
religious liberty, could not be tolerated. The application of this new
doctrine, it was urged, would "subvert the fundamental state and
government of the country."--
Ibid., pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 10.
He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and, finally, to avoid
arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter, into
the unbroken forest.
"For fourteen weeks," he says, "I was
sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did
mean."
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But "the ravens fed me in the
wilderness," and a hollow tree often served him for a shelter.--Martyn,
vol. 5, pp. 349, 350. Thus he continued his painful flight through the
snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge with an Indian
tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while endeavoring to
teach them the truths of the gospel.
Making his way at last, after months
of change and wandering, to the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there
laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in the
fullest sense recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental
principle of Roger Williams's colony was "that every man should have
liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience."--
Ibid., vol. 5, p. 354. His
little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed, and it
increased and prospered until its foundation principles--civil and
religious liberty--became the cornerstones of the American Republic.
In that grand old document which our
forefathers set forth as their bill of rights--the Declaration of
Independence--they declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." And the Constitution guarantees, in the most
explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: "No religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust
under the United States." "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
"The framers of the Constitution
recognized the eternal principle that man's relation with his God is
above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable.
Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of
it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of
human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They
felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that
man could exercise
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no authority over their consciences. It
is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate."--Congressional
documents (U.S.A.), serial No. 200, document No. 271.
As the tidings spread through the
countries of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of
his own labor and obey the convictions of his own conscience, thousands
flocked to the shores of the New World. Colonies rapidly multiplied.
"Massachusetts, by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the
public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the
Atlantic 'to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their
persecutors.' Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute,
made the guests of the commonwealth."--Martyn, vol. 5, p. 417. In twenty
years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims were
settled in New England.
To secure the object which they
sought, "they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of
frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable
returns of their own labor. No golden vision threw a deceitful halo
around their path. . . . They were content with the slow but steady
progress of their social polity. They patiently endured the privations
of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears, and
with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land."
The Bible was held as the foundation
of faith, the source of wisdom, and the charter of liberty. Its
principles were diligently taught in the home, in the school, and in the
church, and its fruits were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity,
and temperance. One might be for years a dweller in the Puritan
settlement, "and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a
beggar."--Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 19, par. 25. It was demonstrated that the
principles of the Bible are the surest safeguards of national greatness.
The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a confederation of powerful
states, and the world marked with wonder the peace and prosperity of "a
church without a pope, and a state without a king."
But continually increasing numbers
were attracted to the
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shores of America, actuated by motives
widely different from those of the first Pilgrims. Though the primitive
faith and purity exerted a widespread and molding power, yet its
influence became less and less as the numbers increased of those who
sought only worldly advantage.
The regulation adopted by the early
colonists, of permitting only members of the church to vote or to hold
office in the civil government, led to most pernicious results. This
measure had been accepted as a means of preserving the purity of the
state, but it resulted in the corruption of the church. A profession of
religion being the condition of suffrage and officeholding, many,
actuated solely by motives of worldly policy, united with the church
without a change of heart. Thus the churches came to consist, to a
considerable extent, of unconverted persons; and even in the ministry
were those who not only held errors of doctrine, but who were ignorant
of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Thus again was demonstrated
the evil results, so often witnessed in the history of the church from
the days of Constantine to the present, of attempting to build up the
church by the aid of the state, of appealing to the secular power in
support of the gospel of Him who declared: "My kingdom is not of this
world." John 18:36. The union of the church with the state, be the
degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to
the church, does in reality but bring the church nearer to the world.
The great principle so nobly advocated
by Robinson and Roger Williams, that truth is progressive, that
Christians should stand ready to accept all the light which may shine
from God's holy word, was lost sight of by their descendants. The
Protestant churches of America,--and those of Europe as well,--so highly
favored in receiving the blessings of the Reformation, failed to press
forward in the path of reform. Though a few faithful men arose, from
time to time, to proclaim new truth and expose long-cherished error, the
majority, like the Jews in Christ's day or the papists in the time of
Luther, were content to believe as their fathers had
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believed and to live as they had lived.
Therefore religion again degenerated into formalism; and errors and
superstitions which would have been cast aside had the church continued
to walk in the light of God's word, were retained and cherished. Thus
the spirit inspired by the Reformation gradually died out, until there
was almost as great need of reform in the Protestant churches as in the
Roman Church in the time of Luther. There was the same worldliness and
spiritual stupor, a similar reverence for the opinions of men, and
substitution of human theories for the teachings of God's word.
The wide circulation of the Bible in
the early part of the nineteenth century, and the great light thus shed
upon the world, was not followed by a corresponding advance in knowledge
of revealed truth, or in experimental religion. Satan could not, as in
former ages, keep God's word from the people; it had been placed within
the reach of all; but in order still to accomplish his object, he led
many to value it but lightly. Men neglected to search the Scriptures,
and thus they continued to accept false interpretations, and to cherish
doctrines which had no foundation in the Bible.
Seeing the failure of his efforts to
crush out the truth by persecution, Satan had again resorted to the plan
of compromise which led to the great apostasy and the formation of the
Church of Rome. He had induced Christians to ally themselves, not now
with pagans, but with those who, by their devotion to the things of this
world, had proved themselves to be as truly idolaters as were the
worshipers of graven images. And the results of this union were no less
pernicious now than in former ages; pride and extravagance were fostered
under the guise of religion, and the churches became corrupted. Satan
continued to pervert the doctrines of the Bible, and traditions that
were to ruin millions were taking deep root. The church was upholding
and defending these traditions, instead of contending for "the faith
which was once delivered unto the saints." Thus were degraded the
principles for which the Reformers had done and suffered so much.
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