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From Here to Forever

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God Overruled Events

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.”1 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.”2 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.”3 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.”4 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