The American Sentinel 7
July 28, 1892
“As It Was Then So It Is Now” The American Sentinel 7, 29, p. 227.
LIKE the four Adventists now in the Henry County, Tenn., Jail, the subjects of persecution for conscience’ sake have always been accused of contumacy. In pagan Rome, even those governors who cared little for the worship of the gods, and had nothing to gain either in wealth or influence by persecuting the Christians, could see in their refusal to obey the laws made in aid of paganism, nothing but willful obstinacy and downright stubbornness. As related in the “Two Republics,” they regarded such willful disobedience to the law to be much more worthy of condemnation than even the disrespect to the gods. Such an one was Pliny, who said, “Let their confessions be of any sort whatever, this positiveness in inflexible obstinacy deserved to be punished.” Many of the governors “would sooner pardon in the Christians their defection from the worship of the gods, than their want of reverence for the emperors in declining to take any part in those idolatrous demonstrations of homage which pagan flattery had invented, such as sprinkling their images with incense, and swearing by their genius.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 227.1
Still others were disposed to be favorable to the Christians, to sympathize with them in their difficult positions, and to temper as far as possible the severity of the laws against them. And when the Christians were prosecuted before their tribunals, they would make personal appeals to induce them to make some concession, however slight, that would justify the governor in certifying that they had conformed to the law, so that he might release them,—not only from that particular accusation, but from any other that might be made. AMS July 28, 1892, page 227.2
Such governors would plead with the Christians to this effect, “I do not wish to see you suffer; I know you have done no real harm, but there stands the law. I am here as the representative of the empire to see that the laws are enforced. I have no personal interest whatever in this matter; therefore, I ask you for my own sake that you will do some honor to the gods, however slight, whereby I may be relieved from executing this penalty and causing you to suffer. All that is required is that you shall worship the gods. Now your God is one of the gods; therefore what harm is there in obeying the law which commands to worship the gods without reference to any particular one? Why not say, ‘The Emperor our lord,’ and sprinkle a bit of incense toward his image? Merely do either of these two simple things, then I can certify that you have conformed to the law, and release you from this and all future prosecutions of the kind.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 227.3
When the Christians replied that he could not, under any form or pretense whatever, worship any other god than the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; not honor any other by any manner or offering; nor call the emperor lord in the meaning of the statute, then the governor, understanding nothing of what the Christian called conscience, and seeing all of what he considered the kindest possible offers counted not only as of no worth but even as a reproach, his proffered mercy was often turned into wrath. He considered such a refusal only an evidence of open ingratitude and obstinacy, and that therefore such a person was unworthy of the slightest consideration. He held it then to be only a proper regard for both the gods and the State to execute to the utmost the penalty which the law prescribed. AMS July 28, 1892, page 227.4
Another thing that made the action of the Christians more obnoxious to the Roman magistrates, was not only their persistent disregard for the laws touching religion, but their assertion of the right to disregard them. And this plea seemed the more impertinent from the fact that it was made by the despised of the despised. AMS July 28, 1892, page 227.5
“Some Scraps of New England History” 1 The American Sentinel 7, 29, pp. 228, 229.
THE Puritans having planted themselves in Massachusetts, and having established there a theocracy, were not slow, as we have seen, to use their power against all dissenters from the established religion. In 1631 Roger Williams landed in Boston, and as the death of Higginson had left a vacancy in the church at Salem, the church called Williams to fill his place; but as Winthrop and his “assistants” objected, Williams went to Plymouth Colony. AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.1
The leading minister in Massachusetts Colony at this time was John Cotton. He distinctly taught the blessedness of persecution in itself, and in its benefit to the State, in the following words:—’ AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.2
But the good brought to princes and subjects by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers, is manifold. AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.3
First, it putteth away evill from among the people, and cutteth off a gangreene, which would spread to further ungodlinesse.... . AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.4
Secondly, it driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep of Christ. For false teachers be wolves, ... and the very name of wolves holdeth forth what benefit will redound to the sheep, by either killing them or driving them away. AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.5
Thirdly, such executions upon such evil doers causeth all the country to heare and feare and doe no more such wickednesse.... Yea, as these punishments are preventions of like wickednesse in some, so are they wholesome medicines, to heale such as are curable of these eviles.... AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.6
Fourthly, the punishments executed upon false prophets and seducing teachers, doe bring downe showers of God’s blessings upon the civill state .... AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.7
Fifthly, it is an honor to God’s justice that such judgments are executed.... AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.8
And Samuel Shepard, a minister of Charlestown, preached an election sermon entitled “Eye Salve,“” in which he set forth the following views:— AMS July 28, 1892, page 228.9
Men’s lusts are sweet to them, and they would not be disturbed or disquieted in their sin. Hence there be so many such as cry up tolleration boundless and libertinism so as (if it were in their power) to order a total and perpetual confinement of the sword of the civil magistrate unto its scabbard (a motion that is evidently destructive to this people, and to the publick liberty, peace, and prosperity of any instituted churches under heaven). AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.1
Let the magistrate’s coercive power in matters of religion, therefore, be still asserted, seeing he is one who is bound to God more than any other man to cherish his true religion; ... and how woful would the state of things soon be among us, if men might have liberty without controll to profess, or preach, or print, or publish what they list, tending to the seduction of others. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.2
In accordance with these principles, every inhabitant of the Colony was obliged to attend the services of the Established Church on Sunday under penalty of fine or imprisonment. The fine was not to exceed five shillings, equal to about five dollars of the present day, for every absence. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.3
About 1633 Roger Williams was called a second time to the ministry of the Salem church. This time he was allowed to take the place; but it was not long before he was again in trouble with the theocrats. He denounced their laws making church membership a qualification for office, and all their laws enforcing religious observances. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.4
He declared that the worst law in the English code was that by which they themselves when in England had been compelled to attend the parish church; and he reproved their inconsistency in counting that persecution in England, and then doing the same things themselves in New England. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.5
They maintained, as argued by Cotton, that “persecution is not wrong in itself. It is wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood.” And, as stated by Winthrop, that “we have come to New England in order to make a society after our own model; all who agree with us may come and join that society; those who disagree may go elsewhere; there is room enough on the American continent. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.6
Roger Williams told them that to compel men to unite with those of a different faith is an open violation of natural right; and that to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling, is only to require hypocrisy. “Persons may with less sin be forced to marry whom they cannot love, than to worship where they cannot believe.” Accordingly he insisted that “no one should be bound to worship or to maintain a worship against his own consent.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.7
At this the theocrats inquired with pious amaze, “What, is not the laborer worthy of his hire?” To which Roger replied in words which they could not fail fully to understand, “Yes, from them that hire him.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.8
The view that the magistrates must be chosen exclusively from membership in the churches, he exploded with the argument that with equal propriety they should select a doctor of physic or the pilot of a ship, because of his standing in the church. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.9
Against the statements of Cotton and Shepard and the claims of the theocrats altogether, as to the right of the magistrate to forestall corrupting influences upon the minds of the people, and to punish error and heresy, he set the evident and everlasting truth that “magistrates are but the agents of the people or its trustees, on whom no spiritual power in matters of worship can ever be conferred, since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; ... the civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy; this power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.10
The theocrats raised the alarm that these principles subverted all good government. To which he replied: “There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.” “The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression, as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so it is of binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common liberty and peace.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.11
He also denied the right of the compulsory imposition of an oath. The magistrates had decided to require an oath of allegiance to Massachusetts, instead of to the king of England. Williams would not take the oath, and his influence was so great that so many others refused also that the government was compelled to drop the project. This caused them to raise a charge against him as the ally of a civil faction. The church at Salem stood by him, and in the face of the enmity of the theocrats elected him their teacher. This was no sooner done than the preachers met together and declared that any one who should obstinately assert that “the civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy,” was worthy of banishment. A committee of their order was appointed to go to Salem and deal with Williams and the church “in a church way.” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.12
Meantime the people of Salem were punished for choosing him for their teacher, by the withholding of a tract of land to which they had laid claim. Williams was ready to meet the committee at every point in expressing and defining his doctrines, and in refuting all their claims. After the committee had returned, the church by Williams wrote letters to all the churches of which any of the magistrates were members, “that they should admonish the magistrates of their injustice.” By the next general court the whole of Salem was disfranchised until they should apologize for these letters. The town and the church yielded. Roger Williams stood alone. He was able and willing to do it, and at once declared his “own voluntary withdrawing from all these churches which were resolved to continue in persecuting the witnesses of the Lord,” and “hoped the Lord Jesus was sounding forth in him the blast which should in his own holy season cast down the strength and confidence of those inventions of men.” In October, 1635, he was summoned before the chief representatives of the State. He went and “maintained the rocky strength” of his position, and declared himself “ready to be bound and banished, and even to die in New England,” rather than to renounce his convictions. AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.13
By the earnest persuasions of Cotton, the general court of 1635, by a small majority, sentenced him to exile, and at the same time attempted to justify the sentence by the flimsy plea that it was not a restrainment on freedom of conscience, but because the application of the new doctrine to their institutions seemed “to subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.” In January, 1636, a warrant was sent to him to come to Boston and take ship for England. He refused to go. Officers were sent in a boat to bring him, but he was gone. “Three days before, he had left Salem, in winter snow and inclement weather, of which he remembered the severity even in his late old age. ‘For fourteen weeks he was sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.’ Often in the stormy night he had neither fire, nor food, nor company; often he wandered without a guide, and had no house but a hollow tree. But he was not without friends. The respect for the rights of others which had led him to defend the freedom of conscience, had made him the champion of the Indians. He had learned their language during his residence at Plymouth; he had often been the guest of the neighboring sachems; and now, when he came in winter to the cabin of the chief of Pokanoket, he was welcomed by Massassoit; and ‘the barbarous heart of Canonicus, the chief of the Narragansetts, loved him as his son to the last gasp.’ ‘The ravens,’ he relates, ‘fed me in the wilderness.’” AMS July 28, 1892, page 229.14
“Back Page” The American Sentinel 7, 29, p. 232.
THOSE officers of the law who excuse themselves when persecuting men for conscience’ sake by saying, “It is the law,” would do well to ponder Revelation 1:7: “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him.” The poor soldiers acting under orders might well have pled, “It is the law;” yet God holds them to strict account for their part in the death of Christ. Nothing excuses participation in the persecution of the people of God. AMS July 28, 1892, page 232.1
THE Twentieth Century thinks that Christianity has ceased to exist, except in name, because we now hear nothing of the Father who is a “jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation;” and because there is now no burning at the stake here as a preparation for the hereafter. But Christianity has not ceased to be because of these things. There is less genuine Christianity in the world than formerly, but not because of the modified conceptions of God’s character. “God is love,” and all his dealings with his creatures are tempered with love. And it is this love implanted in the heart by the divine Spirit that transforms the nature and makes the man a Christian; for “he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” The decay of vital piety in the last days, and the reason for it, is thus foretold by the Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 3:1-4:— AMS July 28, 1892, page 232.2
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despiser of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. AMS July 28, 1892, page 232.3
The trouble is that men love themselves more than they love God. As a natural result they are “without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good.” And so while it is true that we have not now burning at the stake, we do have fines and imprisonment for conscience’ sake; and social ostracism, religious boycott, and political blackmail, all in the interests of degenerate Christianity. The more modern tortures are none the less real because more refined. AMS July 28, 1892, page 232.4