The Victory

Chapter 16—Seeking Freedom in a New World

Picture: Seeking Freedom in a New World 5TC 170.1

Though the Church of England rejected the authority and creed of Rome, it welcomed into its worship many of her ceremonies. The claim circulated that things the Bible did not forbid were not evil in themselves. Observing these ceremonies tended to narrow the gulf separating the reformed churches from Rome, and some people claimed that doing so would help Catholics accept the Protestant faith. 5TC 170.2

Others did not agree. They saw these customs as badges of the slavery from which they had been delivered. They reasoned that in His Word God has established the regulations governing His worship, and that people are not free to add to these or to remove any of them. Rome began by requiring what God had not forbidden, and ended by forbidding what He had explicitly required. 5TC 170.3

Many viewed the customs of the English Church as obvious idolatry, and they could not participate in her worship. But the church, backed by civil authority, would permit no dissent. Unauthorized gatherings for worship were prohibited under penalty of imprisonment, exile, or death. 5TC 171.1

The Puritans were hunted, persecuted, and imprisoned, and they could not see any promise of better days. Some, while trying to go to Holland for refuge, were betrayed into the hands of their enemies. But their perseverance finally conquered, and they found shelter on friendly Dutch shores. 5TC 171.2

They had left their houses and their jobs. They were strangers in a strange land, forced to resort to unfamiliar occupations to earn their living. But they lost no time in idleness or complaining. They thanked God for the blessings they had and were happy that they could worship without fear. 5TC 171.3

God Overruled Events

When God's hand seemed to point them across the sea to a land where they could establish a government for themselves and leave their children the heritage of religious liberty, they went forward in the path where God was leading. Persecution and exile were opening the way to freedom. 5TC 171.4

When they first had to separate from the English Church, the Puritans made a covenant as the Lord's free people “to walk together in all His ways made known or to be made known to them.”¹ This was the vital principle of Protestantism. With this intent the Pilgrims left Holland to find a home in the New World. John Robinson, their pastor, said this in his farewell address to the exiles: 5TC 171.5

“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 you ever were to receive any truth from my ministry; for I am very confident the Lord has more truth and light yet to break forth out of His holy word.”² 5TC 171.6

“For my part, I cannot feel worse over the condition of the reformed churches, who ... now will go no farther than those who brought reformation to them. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; ... and the Calvinists, you see, stay right where they were left by that great man of God, who did not yet see all things.... Though these leaders were burning and shining lights in their time, yet they did not understand the whole counsel of God, but if they were living now, they would be as willing to embrace further light as the light they first received.”³ 5TC 172.1

“Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one another, to receive whatever light and truth shall come to you from His written word. But along with this, be careful, I beg you, about what you accept as truth, and compare it and weigh it with other scriptures of truth before you accept it, for it is not possible the Christian world would come so recently out of such thick anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge would suddenly be there.”⁴ 5TC 172.2

The desire for freedom 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 understand the principle of religious liberty. The freedom that they sacrificed so much to get for themselves, they were not ready to give to others. The doctrine that God has given the church the right to control the conscience and to define and punish heresy is one of the papacy's most deeply rooted errors. The Reformers were not entirely free from Rome's spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness that had enveloped Christendom had not completely vanished yet. 5TC 172.3

The colonists formed a kind of state church and authorized the government officials to suppress heresy. So secular power was in the hands of the church. This led to the inevitable result—persecution. 5TC 172.4

Roger Williams

Like the early Pilgrims, Roger Williams came to the New World for its religious freedom. But, unlike them, he saw what so few had yet seen—that this freedom was the absolute right of everyone. He was a devoted seeker for truth. Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government based on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience.”⁵ “The public or the government officials may decide,” he said, “our responsibilities to each other. But when they try to decree anyone's duties to God, they are out of place, and no one is safe, for it is clear that if the official had the power, he could decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and another tomorrow. This has been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman Church.”⁶ 5TC 172.5

People were required to attend the established church under penalty of fine or imprisonment. Roger Williams believed that “to compel anyone to unite with those who believed differently was an open violation of that person's natural rights. To drag the irreligious and the unwilling to public worship seemed like simply requiring them to be hypocrites.... ‘No one should be forced to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to support any kind of worship against his own will.’”⁷ 5TC 173.1

People respected Roger Williams, yet they could not tolerate his demand for religious liberty. To avoid arrest he was forced to escape into the uninhabited forest during the cold and storms of winter. 5TC 173.2

“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was in serious trouble in the bitter weather, without food or a bed.” But “the ravens fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often provided a shelter.⁸ He continued his painful escape through snow and trackless forest until he found safety with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won. 5TC 173.3

Roger Williams laid the foundation of the first modern state to recognize the right “that all people should have liberty to worship God according to the light of their own consciences.”⁹ His little state, Rhode Island, increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstones of the American Republic. 5TC 173.4

Document of Freedom

The American Declaration of Independence stated, “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 that the government may not violate a person's conscience: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” 5TC 173.5

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that a person's relationship to God is above human legislation, and the rights of conscience are not to be violated.... It is an inborn principle that nothing can eradicate.”¹⁰ 5TC 174.1

The news spread through Europe about a land where all could enjoy the fruits of their own labors and obey their own consciences. Thousands flocked to the shores of the New World. Within twenty years of the first landing at Plymouth (1620), twenty thousand Pilgrims had settled in New England. 5TC 174.2

“They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor.... They patiently endured the hardships 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.” 5TC 174.3

Surest Safeguard of National Greatness

The home, school, and church all taught Bible principles. The Bible's fruits showed clearly in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. For years one might “not see a drunkard, or hear a swear word, or meet a beggar.”¹¹ Bible principles are what most surely protect a nation's greatness. The feeble colonies grew into powerful states, and the world noticed the prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state without a king.” 5TC 174.4

But increasing numbers of people were attracted to America by motives different from those of the Pilgrims. These were people who were looking only for worldly advantage. 5TC 174.5

The early colonists permitted only members of the church to vote or to hold office in the government. They accepted this measure to preserve the purity of the state. It resulted, however, in corrupting the church. Many people joined the church without a change of heart. Even in the ministry there were people who knew nothing of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. From the days of Constantine to the present, while attempting to build up the church by the aid of the state may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, in reality it brings the church nearer to the world. 5TC 174.6

The Protestant churches of America, and those in Europe as well, failed to push forward in the path of reform. The majority, like the Jews in Christ's day or the Catholics in the time of Luther, were content to believe as their ancestors had believed. They kept their errors and superstitions. The Reformation gradually died out, until there was almost as great a need for reform in the Protestant churches as in the Roman Church in the time of Luther. The Protestant churches had the same reverence for human opinions and substitution of human theories for God's Word. People neglected to search the Scriptures, and so they continued to cling to doctrines that had no foundation in the Bible. 5TC 175.1

Pride and extravagance were encouraged under the appearance of religion, and the churches became corrupted. Traditions that would ruin millions were taking deep root. The church was upholding these traditions instead of contending earnestly for “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” 5TC 175.2

This is how the principles for which the Reformers had suffered so much were eroded. 5TC 175.3