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From the Berean Library —
#11
Retracing History ~~~
"RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN AMERICA",
The
Brave Stand of the Anabaptists
Chapter III ---
[1519...] . . . . . . .
THE exaltation of the Pope above Christ, the papal determination to extinguish the essence of the gospel— soul freedom — and to traffic in "the souls of men," {Revelation 18:13} the cruel persecutions of the Roman Catholic Church against those who would be free in Christ,— these ripened the world for the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century. The gospel of soul freedom proclaimed by Luther and others, together with their denial of and opposition to the principles of that freedom, ripened the world for a vigorous campaign in the interests of a free conscience. The first step out of bondage was justification by faith; the second was its logical result, religious liberty.
Two citations here must suffice to show the conditions in Reformation times. Rev. S. A. Swaine speaks thus of those conditions: — "In the same year (1519), six men and a woman were burned alive at Coventry (England) for the crime of teaching their children the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' creed, and the ten commandments in the common tongue. In 1521, the year in which Henry received the title of Defender of the Faith, the most horrible cruelties were practised on some simple folk in the diocese of Lincoln for their adhesion to evangelical doctrines." "The Religious Revolution in the Sixteenth Century," page 108. Tyndale had translated the New Testament into the speech of the common people. Concerning its reception Swaine says: — "The most energetic measures were being taken against that formidable book — formidable to the Papacy and the devil — the New Testament. The clergy everywhere inveighed against it, as containing an 'infectious poison.' The bishop of London, on the twenty-fourth of October, 1526, enjoined on his archdeacons the seizure of all English translations of the Scriptures, 'with or without glosses;' and the archbishop of Canterbury went so far as to issue a mandate against all the books which contained 'any particle of the New Testament.' So 'exceeding mad' were they against the gospel." [The Religious Revolution in the Sixteenth Century, page 113] Out of that condition, similar in all the European countries, grew the Reformation. In 1529, because of the attempt of the German ruler, at the Pope's instigation, to crush out what liberty of conscience had been achieved, there was drawn up and presented to the authorities that celebrated protest from which comes down to us the name Protestant. The Protestants refused to consent to the repeal of the liberties already secured — "Because it concerns the glory of God and the salvation of our souls, and that in such matters we ought to have regard, above all, to the commandment of God who is King of kings and Lord of lords, each of us rendering him account for himself, without caring the least in the world about majority or minority. . .Moreover, the new edict declaring the ministers shall preach the gospel, explaining it according to the writings accepted by the holy Christian church; we think that, for this regulation to have any value, we should first agree on what is meant by the true and holy church. Now, seeing there is great diversity of opinion in this respect; that there is no sure doctrine but such as is conformable to the Word of God; that the Lord forbids the teaching of any other doctrine; that each text of the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained by other and clearer texts; that this holy book is, in all things, necessary for the Christian, easy of understanding, and calculated to scatter the darkness; we are resolved, with the grace of God, to maintain the pure and exclusive teaching of his Holy Word, such as it is contained in the Biblical books of the Old and New Testaments, without adding anything thereto that may be contrary to it. This Word is the only truth; it is the sure rule of all doctrine and of all life, and can never fail or deceive US." [History of the Reformation. Vol. IV, book 13, chapter 6, pages 520, 521] That meant "the Bible, and the Bible only," as the Christian's guide, and it also meant freedom of conscience. This is in perfect keeping with Luther's declaration, already quoted, that "no man can command or ought to command the soul but God, who alone can show it the way to heaven." There were thousands of honest-hearted souls to whom that doctrine was as the bread of life and the water of life. Hungry and thirsty, their souls cried out for it; and having feasted upon it, they could never go back to the husks of papal dogmas, doctrines, traditions, and with them, the slavery of the soul. They practiced those precepts; and when, from the study of the Word, they learned new truths, long hidden under the rubbish of tradition, they began to practice their new-found freedom in believing and teaching these truths. Where these truths were beyond the leaders of the Reformation or were not understood by them, or where persons of a fanatical disposition mixed truth with error and taught that, the Reformers themselves began to feel that it was necessary to put a restriction upon religious liberty, and they did it. It was shown in the preceding chapter how dangerous it became for men and women to believe and teach contrary to the doctrines of the Reformers; how the same instruments used by the papal power to suppress the gospel were used by the Reformers to suppress teachings not in harmony with their creeds, till men and women were tortured and burned and drowned by them, or with their approval and consent, for no other crime than exercising liberty of belief and practise in things purely religious. The statue of Zwingli erected at Zurich in 1885, holding the Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, is a concrete characterization of later Reformation times when men paid with their lives for teaching what they believed to be truth.
It will be of interest to know what the Anabaptists believed and taught. They insisted that freedom of conscience and of worship were essential to spiritual growth; that religion should be entirely exempt from the regulation or interference of the civil power, so that "a man's religion should not work his civil disability." They held that the church "should be composed entirely of the regenerate, membership therein to be conditioned" upon "the work of grace in the heart." "In this last point," says Cobb, "they anticipated by more than two centuries that distinction by Edwards which shattered the union of church and state in America." In the plea for religious liberty written by Professor Hubmeyer, rector of the University of Ingolstadt (himself an Anabaptist), we find these declarations: — "If men cannot be convinced by appeals to reason or to the Word of God, they should be let alone. One cannot be made to see his errors either by fire or sword." [Religious Liberty, page 21] Professor Hubmeyer proclaimed these principles openly, lost the friendship of Luther and Zwingli, for doing so, and in the year 1528 suffered martyrdom, being tortured with red-hot pincers, beheaded, and his body burned. Just one year previous to his martyrdom the Swiss Anabaptists issued a confession of faith, which is said to have been the first ever published "in which Christian men claimed absolute religious freedom for themselves and granted absolute religious freedom to others." Following are some of the principles held in common by the Anabaptist body, as set forth in Heinrich Bullinger's work against the Anabaptists: — "That secular authority has no concern with religious belief; that the Christian resists no evil, and therefore needs no law courts, nor should ever make use of the tribunals; that Christians do not kill or punish with imprisonment or the sword, but only with exclusion from the body of believers; that no man should be compelled by force to believe, nor should any be slain on account of his faith; that infant baptism is of the Pope and the devil; that adult baptism is the only true baptism." [Der Wiedertaufferen Ursprung, Furgang, Secten, Wesen, etc., quoted by Bax.] On those principles they stood unflinchingly, and for doing so were tortured, drowned, burned to death, or beheaded. The whole world was arrayed against them and the principles which they espoused. A hundred years of persistent persecution succeeded in crushing out the Anabaptist movement in Germany and Switzerland. As the Waldenses fled from Catholic persecution, so fled the Anabaptists from Lutheranism and Calvinism. "They scattered all over continental Europe, and increased in numbers marvelously." Before Germany and Switzerland had extinguished the torch of this new Reformation, its adherents had kindled fresh lights in the western part of Europe and in England. In the Netherlands they became known as the Mennonites, and under Charles V more than fifty thousand persons, mostly Anabaptists, or Mennonites, paid with their lives for maintaining an unshackled conscience. But they were not exterminated. Prince William of Orange finally championed their rights, declaring to the magistrates of Middleburg: "You have no right to trouble yourself with any man's conscience so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or public scandal. We, therefore, expressly ordain that you desist from molesting these Baptists." Concerning
this prince, the historian Motley says: — "His
mind had taken higher flight than that of the most eminent Reformers.
His goal was not a new doctrine, but religious liberty. In an age when
to think was a crime, and when bigotry and a persecuting spirit
characterized Romanists, Lutherans,
It
will not be out of place here to take a glance at the conditions
prevailing in England at the time when Anabaptists principles, and
incidentally the principles of soul freedom, were being promulgated
on the Continent in the face of such bitter persecution.
Anabaptists, fleeing from the persecutions of
Catholic and Protestant alike on the Continent, crossed the England
by thousands, and settled in the eastern counties of England.
They were not received with open arms. Their doctrine, so
inoffensive, so righteous, was looked upon by the state church, by
the rulers, and by a great portion of the people, as a dangerous
and revolutionary heresy. James I declared, "I
will make them conform, or I will harry them out of England." [Religious
Liberty, page 63.] Richard, Hooker
denominated freedom of conscience "a
loose and licentious opinion of the Anabaptists." [Ibid,
page 64.]
The Westminister Confession, which was adopted in
1647, set forth the illiberal principle that "civil
government is designed to support the external worship of God, to
preserve the pure doctrine of religion, and defend the constitution
of the church." It further declared that any one
who maintains or publishes erroneous opinions, contrary to the
teachings and practises of the church, "may
be lawfully called to account, and proceeded against by the
censures of the church and the power of that civil
magistrate;" that "the
magistrate hath authority, and it is his duty to take order that
unity and peace by preserved in the church, and that the truth of
God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and
heresies by suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline
prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled,
administered, and observed."
A more perfect uniting of civil and ecclesiastical powers and
functions could not have been presented by Roman hierarchy
itself. Whatever Rome did, the Westminister Confession
authorized the church and state officials in England to do.
Forty-two years after the adoption of the Westminster
Confession, 1689, the Toleration Act of William and Mary was passed.
Toleration is always less than  liberty;
but this toleration act was not even full toleration. Quakers and
Protestant dissenters were tolerated, but Catholics and
anti-Trinitarians were outside the scope of its beneficence. Hallam
says that the passage even of this kind of toleration was not
accomplished "without murmurs of bigoted churchmen." [Consitutional
History of England, Hallam, Volume III, page 170.]
With such a condition obtaining as late as 1689,
it can readily be seen that there was little inclination to make it
easy for the Anabaptists when they began to migrate to England, over
one hundred and fifty years before. But it is not necessary to infer
what those conditions were. The same year that henry VIII became
head of the English established church (1533), he issued two decrees
against the Anabaptists, which show, first, that the Anabaptists
were refugees from another country; and, second, that the spirit of
the times was intolerance personified. King Henry's decrees were
filled with invective and cruel purpose to rid his realm of these
dissenters, taking the harshest measures if necessary in
accomplishing it. All were to depart within ten days from the date
of the decree, "on pain to suffer death,
if they abide and be apprehended and taken." [Wilkins'
Concilia, Vol. III, page 776] Their
only crime was "wicked errors and
abominable opinions." "Cranmer
 and
eight other bishops and clerics were subsequently commanded to
proceed inquisitorially against the Anabaptists, to search for their
books, and to scrutinize with all diligence their letters.
Martyrdoms followed. The fires of Smithfield were rekindled.
'Cruelty,' it was said, 'was pastime and festivity to the king.' Yet
the religious errorists were increased by immigration, and the
king's subjects were more and more infected by them. The king's care
about religion failed to prevent 'divers great and real errors and
Anabaptistical opinions from creeping about the realm.' Threats
and executed penalty on the one hand, and offers of royal clemency
on condition of recantation on the other, were alike unavailing to
prevent the spread of these imported 'heretical' opinions, which
were the purest leaven of the Reformation."
[Religious Liberty, page 34.] A
veritable Inquisition was established as a result of the king's
intolerant decrees.
Thus was demonstrated the fact that persecution
does not depend upon what church is
established, but upon the fact that a church
is established. Church establishment and religious liberty cannot
dwell together in the same realm. Concerning the change in England
from the dominance of the Roman Church to the dominance of the
English Church, Woodrow Wilson says: — "When
the change had been made, stupendous as it looked amid the ruin of
the monastic houses which the king had promptly despoiled,
Englishmen found themselves very little more at liberty than before
to choose forms of worship or of church government for themselves.
The church had become more than ever a part of the state. The king
was its head and master, instead of the Pope. he did not insist very
much upon matters of doctrine, being himself in no case to set an
example in that kind; but he did insist upon the authority of the
church in matters of government,— upon uniformity in worship
and in discipline of the state, and part of his own
sovereignty." [History
of the American People, Wilson, Vol I., page 79.]
 In
spite of the cruel persecutions from which the Anabaptists
suffered, the principles which they held continued to be
disseminated throughout the realm. One of their principles, which
was most obnoxious to the officials of the government and of the
established church, was that "civil
government had no concern with religious matters." Strange,
is it not, that for holding such opinions and promulgating them,
Christian men should be hounded, exited, tortured, drowned, and
burned, and that by other men professing allegiance to the same
Lord? But such was the ignoble inheritance from that power which
was so ruthlessly regnant during the dark ages. It was an
inheritance difficult to outgrow,—impossible to  outgrow
entirely where the condition which fostered it was continued; and
that condition was a union of church and state. Wherever the
Anabaptists, or Mennonites, went, they found that condition; and
wherever they found it, they opposed it, and taught the opposite
principle,—the principle upon which the American government is
founded, the separation of religion from the functions of
government.
The influence of their persistent teachings in
the Netherlands resulted in the establishment of religious liberty
in that country when its independence was secured; and there is not
the least doubt that the measure of tolerance achieved in England in
the time of William and Mary was due to the diffusion of the
principles of soul freedom which the Anabaptists were promulgating
throughout the land. Some of the tracts which they published were
written in prison—not written in ink, for this was denied them;
but written in milk on white paper, which, when heated, revealed the
words of their arguments. Said one, "The
arguments were written in milk and answered in blood."
There comes down to us from that people a phrase that has become
familiar to American ears. They taught, says Motley, that "every
man was to worship God according to the dictates of his own
conscience." We have used that expression until we have
come to feel that it is a product of American thought; but it comes
to us out of the bitter experiences, people, who paid with their
lives for the practising it.
The relations between the immigrant Dutch
Anabaptists and the common people of England became very close in
this way: the Dutch immigrants were a people skilled in manufactur[ing],
and carried on their business in England. But it was
required of them that each manufacturer should educate a
certain number of English lads in the business which he was
conducting. The enforced apprenticeship system opened a
field for the Anabaptists, which they were not slow in
improving, and this operated perhaps as extensively as any other factor
in bringing about toleration for dissenters.
The experiences of the Anabaptists in northern
Europe and England were very similar to those of the Huguenots in
France. We read of them: —
"In 1562 the great
Huguenot civil wars broke out, to rage for more than twenty years;
and France stained her annals with St.Bartholomew's day [massacre],
1572. In driving the Huguenots forth to England and America, she
lost the flower of her industrial population." [History
of the American People, Vol. I, page 22.]
"Louis XIV, king
in France, revoked the great Edict of Nantes, forbade the
Protestants their worship in his kingdom, and so drove fifty
thousand of the best people of France—soldiers, men of letters,
craftsmen, artificers—forth from the land they had enriched, to
make Holland, England, Brandenburg, and America so much the better
off for their skill and thrifty industry." [Ibid,
page 318.]
"In France [at the
beginning of the seventeenth century] individual initiative had been
stamped out, and the authority of the church and state consolidated
to command and control every undertaking." [Ibid,
page 23.]
That has been the experience of every nation
where church and state have consolidated "to command and
control." Individual initiative has been strangled; the
brightest minds have been eclipsed by dungeon walls; and the nation
has gone backward, while the rest of the world forged onward in
enlightenment and prosperity. What was France's loss in the
persecution of the Huguenots was American's gain, and for every
other portion of the world to which the Huguenots fled.
The Dutch Anabaptists, through the means provided
them in England, planted in many English minds the idea of soul
freedom; and from a people thus educated, there came to the New
World some who would carry on the struggle for freedom to worship
God according to the dictates of conscience, untrammeled by
oppressive laws. There came others also seeking freedom to worship
God, but unwilling that those who differed from them should enjoy
the same freedom which they demanded for themselves. The attitude of
these two parties and their descendants toward freedom of conscience
constitutes the history of religious liberty in America. This
history will be traced in succeeding chapters.
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by Charles M. Snow, 1914 
Out of those times and conditions grew the Anabaptist movement.
Misrepresented by many fanatics who were called Anabaptists,
misunderstood and maligned by others, their very name (Rebaptizers) a
contemptuous title invented by their enemies, they grew in spite of
sword and fire and water, all of which were made instruments of death
to them because of their faith. From the sermons and writings of
Luther, from the famous protest to the Diet of Spires, but chiefly
from the Word of God itself, they had drunk in the doctrine of soul
freedom. This sect, "everywhere spoken
against" by Catholic and Protestant alike, and everywhere
persecuted by both with similar cruelty, became the heralds of
religious liberty not only for the Old World, but for the New as well.
Concerning them we read: — "Among
the few and scattered European voices for religious liberty, heard in
the two hundred and fifty years from the days of Luther, the place of
honor is undoubtedly to be accorded to the Anabaptists. Their doctrine
is one of the most remarkable things which appeared in that
wonderful age. It comes to speech with a clearness and fulness which
suggest a revelation, just as to Luther dawned justification, by
faith, soul-enlightening and uplifting. And no less notable, this
doctrine came at the very opening. of the Reformation, in the
year 1524, just after the famous Diet of Worms, and while Luther was
secluded in the Wartburg." [Rise of
Religious Liberty in America, page 63.]
Calvinists,
and Zwinglians, he had dared to announce freedom of conscience as the
great object for which noble natures should strive. In an age when
toleration was [regarded] a vice, he had the manhood to cultivate it
as a virtue . . .He was willing to tolerate all forms of worship, and
to leave reason to combat error." [The
Rise of the Dutch Republic, Motley, pages 407, 408]