Though the authority and creed of Rome were rejected, not a few of her ceremonies were incorporated into the worship of the Church of England. It was claimed that things not forbidden in Scripture 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 acceptance of the Protestant faith by Romanists.
(HF 181.1)
Another class did not so judge. They looked upon these customs as badges of the slavery from which they had been delivered. 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. Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined.
(HF 181.2)
Many regarded the customs of the English Church as monuments of idolatry, and they could not unite in her worship. But the church, supported by civil authority, would permit no dissent. Unauthorized assemblies for worship were prohibited under penalty of imprisonment, exile, or death.
(HF 181.3)
Hunted, persecuted, and imprisoned, Puritans could discern no promise of better days. Some, determined to seek refuge in Holland, were betrayed into the hands of their enemies. But steadfast perseverance finally conquered, and they found shelter on friendly shores.
(HF 181.4)
They had left their houses and their means of livelihood. They were strangers in a strange land, forced to resort to untried occupations to earn their bread. But they lost no time in idleness or repining. They thanked God for the blessings granted them and found joy in unmolested spiritual communion.
(HF 181.5)
When God’s hand seemed pointing them across the sea to a land where they might found a state and leave their children the heritage of religious liberty, they went forward in the path of providence. Persecution and exile were opening the way to freedom.
(HF 182.1)
When first constrained to separate from the English Church, the Puritans joined themselves by a covenant as the Lord’s free people “to walk together in all His ways made known or to be made known to them.” Here was the vital principle of Protestantism. With this purpose the Pilgrims departed from Holland to find a home in the New World. John Robinson, their pastor, in his farewell address to the exiles said:
(HF 182.2)
“I 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.”
(HF 182.3)
“For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who ... 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.... 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.”
(HF 182.4)
“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 would break forth at once.”
(HF 182.5)
The desire for liberty of conscience inspired the Pilgrims to cross the sea, endure the hardships of the wilderness, and lay the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves, they were not ready to grant to others. 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. The Reformers were not entirely free from Rome’s spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness in which popery had enveloped Christendom had not yet been wholly dissipated.
(HF 183.1)
A kind of state church was formed by the colonists, the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus secular power was in the hands of the church. These measures led to the inevitable result—persecution.
(HF 183.2)
Like the early Pilgrims, Roger Williams came to the New World to enjoy religious freedom. But, unlike them, he saw—what so few had yet seen—that this freedom was the inalienable right of all. He was an earnest seeker for truth. Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of 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 magistrate had 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.”6
(HF 183.3)
Attendance at the established church was required under penalty of fine or imprisonment. “To compel men to unite with those of a different creed, he [Williams] 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.’”
(HF 184.1)
Roger Williams was respected, yet his demand for religious liberty could not be tolerated. To avoid arrest he was forced to flee amid the cold and storms of winter into the unbroken forest.
(HF 184.2)
“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” But “the ravens fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served for a shelter. He continued his painful flight through snow and trackless forest until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won.
(HF 184.3)
He laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that recognized the right “that every man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience.” His little state, Rhode Island, increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstones of the American Republic.
(HF 184.4)
The American Declaration of Independence 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.” The Constitution guarantees the inviolability of conscience: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
(HF 184.5)
“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.... It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.”
(HF 185.1)
The tidings spread through Europe of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey his conscience. Thousands flocked to the shores of the New World. In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth (1620), as many thousand Pilgrims were settled in New England.
(HF 185.2)
“They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor.... 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.”
(HF 185.3)
Bible principles were taught in the home, school, and church; its fruits were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might for years “not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar.” Bible principles are the surest safeguards of national greatness. The feeble colonies grew into powerful states, and the world marked the prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state without a king.”
(HF 185.4)
But increasing numbers were attracted to America by motives different from those of the Pilgrims. The numbers increased of those who sought only worldly advantage.
(HF 185.5)
The early colonists permitted only members of the church to vote or to hold office in the government. This measure had been accepted to preserve the purity of the state; it resulted in the corruption of the church. Many united with the church without a change of heart. Even in the ministry were those who were ignorant of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. From the days of Constantine to the present, attempting to build up the church by the aid of the state, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, in reality brings the church nearer to the world.
(HF 185.6)
The Protestant churches of America, and those in Europe as well, failed to press forward in the path of reform. 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 believed. Errors and superstitions were retained. 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 reverence for the opinions of men and substitution of human theories for God’s Word. Men neglected to search the Scriptures and thus continued to cherish doctrines which had no foundation in the Bible.
(HF 186.1)
Pride and extravagance were fostered under the guise of religion, and the churches became corrupted. Traditions that were to ruin millions were taking deep root. The church was upholding these traditions instead of contending for “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
(HF 186.2)
Thus were degraded the principles for which the Reformers had suffered so much.
(HF 186.3)