United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Though intensely troubled in their administration by the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists, the most intolerant of intolerants in those days, they never opposed force against the beliefs or worships of either; and when force was used against the papal powers, it was only so far as to preserve unto themselves and their fellow-confessors the inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences without molestation or disturbance.
I believe these old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that if Archbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of the town as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect in back rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spent all his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers.
We, too, may say to those who misname themselves "evangelical" and flout their new-found liberty: Have you put down the tyranny of the Pope and obtained liberty in Christ through the Anabaptists and other fanatics? Or have you obtained your freedom from us who preach faith in Christ Jesus?
At the same time, the Prince of Orange was more than ever disposed to rebuke his own Church for practising persecution in her turn. Again he lifted his commanding voice in behalf of the Anabaptists of Middelburg.
The disciples of reform poured from all quarters into the Low Countries, and made prodigious progress, with all the energy of proselytes, and too often with the fury of fanatics. The three principal sects into which the reformers were divided, were those of the Anabaptists, the Calvinists, and the Lutherans. The first and least numerous were chiefly established in Friesland.
"Sir," said the clergyman, "you are a discreet gentleman; and though I would not willingly that these heretics, schismatics, Brownists, Muggletonians, Anabaptists, and so forth, had such an opportunity of triumph, as my defeat in this matter would have afforded them, yet with you, who have been ever a faithful follower of our Church, and are pledged to the good cause by the great National League and Covenant, surely I would be more open.
Wherefore we detest the Anabaptists and all turbulent men who cast off superior dominions and magistrates, pervert laws and judgments, make all goods common, and finally abolish or confound all orders and degrees which God hath constituted for honesty's sake among men.
He was equally indisposed to grant full-powers for the same purpose to Calvinists, Lutherans, or Anabaptists.
It is however, satisfactory to reflect that the anabaptists and families of love, although discouraged and frowned upon, were not burned alive, buried alive, drowned in dungeons, and roasted at slow fires, as had been the case with them and with every other species of Protestants, by thousands and tens of thousands, so long as Charles V. and Philip II. had ruled the territory of that commonwealth.
Episcopalians ejected from New England, Puritans fleeing from the old country, Quakers and Anabaptists who were unwelcome everywhere else, met with hospitality in Maryland. Let them but believe in Jesus Christ, and all else was forgiven them. Nevertheless, Catholicism was the religion of the country.
Word Of The Day