Then came the Reformation, and the legal establishment of certain Protestant churches. But the times were not easier for him who would enjoy for himself, and grant to others, "freedom to worship God." The follower of Christ, in the matter of soul freedom, had still two foes,---not now Jew and pagan, but Catholic and professed Protestant,---each taking toll in human lives from those who would persist in worshipping God "according to the dictates of conscience."

    We saw in the previous chapter how little came of the Edict of Milan and the proclamation of religious freedom to the peoples of the East. The course entered upon by Constans and Constantius after the death of their father, put the Christian church on the throne of Europe, and placed a ban upon freedom of worship for pagan and Christians alike. It took heroic men and women in those days to worship God in any way other than that prescribed by the state. In proof of this, note the barbarous cruelties from which the Paulicians, Albigenes, and Waldenses suffered while clinging to their belief and mode of worship. The bloodiest and cruelest of military campaigns were carried on against these and other sects. Concerning the war of extermination waged by the established church against the Albigenes, the Encyclopedia Britannica, under the title "Albigenses," says:---

    "The history of the Albigenses may be said to be written in blood. . . .As town after town was taken, the inhabitants were put to the sword without distinction of age or sex, and the numerous ecclesiastics who were in the army especially distinguished themselves by a bloodthirsty ferocity. At the taking of Beziers (1209 A.D.) the abbot Arnold, being asked how the "heretics" were to be distinguished from the faithful, made the infamous reply, 'Slay all; God will know his own.' The war was carried on under Simon de Montifort with undiminished cruelty for a number of years. . . .The establishment of an Inquisition at Languedoc in 1229 accelerated the extermination process, and a few years later the sect was all but extinct."

    The Waldenses, for tenaciously holding to their belief, for their zeal in spreading it in spite of papal malediction, for their denunciation of the Catholic church, for their appeal to Scripture instead of to the Pope, for their rejection of a definite priestly order, and for their observation of the Sabbath of the decalogue rather than the day appointed and commanded by the church [Sunday], became the special objects of the wrath of that church and the victims of its blood-mad legions. From the beginning of their history until 1848, they were regarded as a people beyond the pale even of toleration. As early as 1184 they were excommunicated by Pope Lucius III. Innocent III have them similar attention in 1215. They shared with the Albignenses in the persecutions of 1209-29. From 1316 to 1387 they suffered bitterly at the hands of Pope John XXII, Pope Urban V, and Pope Gregory XI. The Duchess of Savoy began a cruel war of extermination against them in 1475. A regular crusade was proclaimed against them by Pope Innocent VIII in 1487. They were mercilessly persecuted by the French in 1545. In 1655 such barbarities were inflicted upon them by the French, with the aid of the Irish brigade, that Cromwell intervened in their behalf. As Latin secretary under Cromwell, the poet John Milton wrote a famous protest against the barbarities then being practised upon them.  In 1686 the Duke of Savoy attempted their forcible conversion to Roman Catholicism, exiling to Geneva those who would not yield. Three years later many of them returned to their native valleys, and for a long period successfully resisted all attempts of their enemies to exterminate them or force them to conform their belief and practise to the teachings and the rituals of Rome. Finally, in the year 1848, Charles Albert, of Savoy, granted them full religious and political rights.

     While the soil of Europe was still wet with the blood of these martyrs to the cause of religious liberty, while fire and rack, dungeon and thumb-screw, were still busy "converting" the people to the Catholic faith, the work of the Reformation began. In a way it grew out of those very conditions; for, as one writer says, "the religious consciousness of Europe was aroused " by the barbarities practised by the persecutors of the Waldenses, and, no doubt, by the cruel business of the Inquisition.                                 

    We can speak here of the Reformation only in its attitude toward religious liberty. Says Henry M. King: "As there were reformers before the Reformation, so there needed to be reformers after the Reformation, to take the work, painfully incomplete, on to its full completion. As yet, men demanded liberty for themselves, not for all men. Religious freedom meant their freedom, and not their neighbors' who differed from them. They shrank from the logical conclusion of their own theses." [Religious Liberty, page 7.]

    Luther's declared program---"the Bible, and the Bible only"---was wider than even he was willing to follow. We hear him declaring this truthful proposition: "No one can command or ought to command the soul but God, who alone can show it the way to heaven. It is futile and impossible to command, or force to compel, any man's belief. Heresy is a spiritual thing, which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown." Again: "Whenever the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it encroaches." The following words of the great Reformer show in what he trusted during the infancy of the Reformation, and furnish the key to the wonderful success of that movement in those days of its greatest trial: ---

    "The mass is a bad thing; God is opposed to it; it ought to be abolished; and I would that throughout the whole world it were replaced by the Supper of the gospel.  But let no one be torn from it by force. We must leave the matter in God's hands. His Word must act, and not we. And why so? you will ask. Because I do not hold men's hearts in my hand as the potter holds the clay. We have a right to speak; but have not the right to act. Let us preach; the rest belongs unto God. Were I to employ force, what should I gain? --- Grimace,  formality, apings, human ordinances, and hypocrisy . . . But there would be no sincerity of heart, nor  faith, nor charity. Where these three are wanting, all is wanting, and I would not give a straw for such a result. 

    "Our first object must be to win men's hearts; and for that purpose we must preach the gospel. . .  God does more by his Word alone than you and I and all the world by our united strength. God lays hold upon the heart; and when the heart is taken, all is won. . . .

    "I will preach, discuss, and write; but I will constrain none, for faith is a voluntary act. See what I  have done! I stood up against the Pope, indulgences, and papists, but without violence or tumult. I put forward God's Word; I preached and wrote---this was all I did. And yet while I was asleep, . . . the Word that I had preached overthrew popery, so that neither prince nor emperor has done it so much harm.  And yet I did nothing; the Word alone did all. If I had wished to appeal to force, the whole of Germany perhaps would have been deluged with blood. But what would have been the result?---Ruin and desolation both to body and soul. I therefore kept quiet and left the Word to run through the world alone. Do you know what the devil thinks when he sees men resort to violence to propagate the gospel through the world? Satan says: 'Ah! how wise these madmen are to play my game.'"  ["History of the Reformation," D' Aubigne, book 9, chap. 8, pages 334, 335.]

    These utterances of Martin Luther constitute as true religious liberty doctrine as any ever taught. They harmonize perfectly with the command of Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Ceasar's; and unto God the things that are God's." They seem an echo from the Edict of Milan and the proclamation to the peoples of the East, and are a justification of the course of the Paulicians, the Albigenses, and the Waldenses; but there doctrines did not characterize the acts of the early Reformers nor shape the course of the Reformation. 

    Had Luther and his coadjutors followed out the principles laid down in the above quotations, history would have told a very different story of the growth of soul freedom in Europe and America from what the record now reveals. They accomplished a great work; but they found the church in unholy wedlock with the state, and left it so. They found souls struggling for freedom of conscience, and they not only refused to help, but forged fetters of their own.     

    It is sometimes said that religious liberty grew out of the Reformation. It did grow out of it, because it was not permitted to grow in it. Says one writer: "The great Reformation movement of Europe was a case of arrested development." " Under the Reformation it was soon found that Protestant hierarchies and synods could fine and imprison and torture and burn dissenters from the state religion as vigorously as under the old names. . . .The Reformation of the sixteenth century failed to get possession of Europe, because it did not reform far enough --- [but] borrowed too much from [the] Papacy, retained too much of Rome." [Struggles and Triumphs of Virginia Baptists," page12]

    Upon the matter of religious freedom John Calvin wrote: "Godly princes may lawfully issue edicts for compeling obstinate and rebellious persons to worship the true God and to maintain the unity of the faith."  But if  "unity of the faith " had been of greater consideration than soul liberty, there would have been no excuse for the Reformation. Rome had been working industriously for "unity of the faith" and employing the same means of "persuasion" thereto as those which Calvin sanctioned --- torture and death. There are two names which can never be dissociated,--- Calvin and Michael Servetus, the latter burned for his faith, the former sanctioning the burning, and thereby endorsing the principle of persecution for conscience sake.

[Editor's Comment: May the reader understand that our writer, Mr. Snow, is here taking pains to show how that in history even the "reformers" of the great Protestant Reformation stopped short of exalting true & "complete" religious tolerance or liberty to the place it ought to have been exalted. We are sure that Mr. Snow was not in anyway seeking to cast a dark shadow or any "opprobrium" {as he himself later says} upon the greater influence, teachings and work of John Calvin by the specific relation of this incident of the putting to death of Michael Servetus. One only has to read the precise commentary of John Foxe regarding this incident to see that Mr. Snow's assessment of Calvin's part in the death of Michael Servetus cannot be so easily attributed to Calvin's "true will" having been done; but perhaps more so, it can be attributed to an political/religious entrapment in relation to his position as a religious sovereign caught in a dilemma of the enforcement of his own state/church dogmas, of which he was a proponent. Says Foxe, "Calvin retired to Strassburg, and established a French church in that city, of which he was the first minister: he was also appointed to be professor of divinity there. Meanwhile the people of Geneva entreated him so earnestly to return to them that at last he consented, and arrived September 13, 1541, to the great satisfaction both of the people and the magistrates; and the first thing he did, after his arrival, was to establish a form of church discipline, and a consistorial jurisdiction, invested with power of inflicting censures and canonical punishments, as far as excommunication, inclusively." Notice that the extent of Calvin's "church discipline" only went "as far as excommunication". The greater meaning of his actual benevolence and contrariness to a religious "capital punishment" {a death decree} is seen clearly as you follow the rest of Foxes analysis, --- "It has long been the delight of both infidels and some professed Christians, when they wish to bring odium upon the opinions of Calvin, to refer to his agency in the death of Michael Servetus. This action is used on all occasions by those who have been unable to overthrow his opinions, as a conclusive argument against his whole system. "Calvin burnt Servetus!- Calvin burnt Servetus!" is a good proof with a certain class of reasoners, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not true---that divine sovereignty is Anti-scriptural, and Christianity a cheat. We have no wish to palliate any act of Calvin's which is manifestly wrong. All his proceedings, in relation to the unhappy affair of Servetus, we think, cannot be defended. Still it should be remembered that the true principles of religious TOLERATION were very little understood in the time of Calvin. All the other reformers then living approved of Calvin's conduct. Even the gentle and amiable Melancthon expressed himself in relation to this affair, in the following manner. In a letter addressed to Bullinger, he says, "I have read your statement respecting the blasphemy of Servetus, and praise your piety and judgment; and am persuaded that the Council of Geneva has done right in putting to death this obstinate man, who would never have ceased his blasphemies. I am astonished that any one can be found to disapprove of this proceeding." Farel expressly says, that "Servetus deserved a capital  punishment." Bucer did not hesitate to declare, that "Servetus deserved something worse than death."  The truth is, although Calvin had some hand in the arrest and imprisonment of Servetus, he was unwilling that he should be burnt at all. "I desire," says he, "that the severity of the punishment should be remitted." "We endeavored to commute the kind of death, but in vain." "By wishing to mitigate the severity of the punishment,"says Farel to Calvin, "you discharge the office of a friend towards your greatest enemy." "That Calvin was the instigator of the magistrates that Servetus might be burned," says Turritine, "historians neither anywhere affirm, nor does it appear from any considerations. Nay, it is certain, that he, with the college of pastors, dissuaded from that kind of punishment."  It has been often asserted, that Calvin possessed so much influence with the magistrates of Geneva that he might have obtained the release of Servetus, had he not been desirous of his destruction. This however, is not true. So far from it, that Calvin was himself once banished from Geneva, by these very magistrates, and often opposed their arbitrary measures in vain. So little desirous was Calvin of procuring the death of Servetus that he warned him of his danger, and suffered him to remain several weeks at Geneva, before he was arrested. But his language which was then accounted blasphemous, was the cause of his imprisonment. When in prison, Calvin visited him, and used every argument to persuade him to retract his horrible blasphemies, without reference to his peculiar sentiments. This was the extent of Calvin's agency in this unhappy affair.  It cannot, however, be denied, that in this instance, Calvin acted contrary to the benignant spirit of the Gospel. It is better to drop a tear over the inconsistency of human nature, and to bewail those infirmities which cannot be justified. He declared be acted conscientiously, and publicly justified the act.  It was the opinion, that erroneous religious principles are punishable by the civil magistrate, that did the mischief, whether at Geneva, in Transylvania, or in Britain; and to this, rather than to Trinitarianism, or Unitarianism, it ought to be imputed." Foxe's Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, chapter: The Life of John Calvin.]

    And Luther, turning away from his declaration in behalf of religious liberty, said this: "Since it is not good that in one parish the people should be exposed to contradictory preaching, he [the magistrate] should order to be silent whatever does not consist with the Scriptures." ["Religious Liberty" page 26.] That would make the civil ruler the judge of what is Scripture truth, and would give him the right to suppress whatever did not agree with his belief. Luther, writing of the Anabaptists in 1530, said, in a letter to Menius and Myconious: "Since they [the Anabaptists] are not only blasphemous, but also seditious men, let the sword exercise its right over them; for this is the will of God, that he shall have judgment who resisteth the power." [Ibid] That declaration was purely papal in its nature.

    Zwingli was not free from the same intolerant spirit, and we find him virtually passing a death sentence upon his former schoolmate, Felix Mantz. Concerning this Professor Williston Walker says: "The Zurich authorities, not without the approval of Zwingli must believe, we led at least to add death to imprisonment, stripes, and banishment; and on January 5, 1527, Feliz Mantz became the first Anabaptist martyr at Zurich, meeting his death with heroic firmness, a death by drowning, in hideous parody of his doctrine of believers' baptism." [Ibid, page 27.]

    Nor can we pass by the name of Melanchthon in this connection, for it is recorded of him that in a letter to the Diet of Hamburg, written in the year 1537, he advised death by the sword to all who held Anabaptist views.

    How similar to the course of these men was that of Saul, who went to Damascus, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," determined to bring them "bound to Jerusalem." But our Lord asks, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" [Acts 9:1,2 & 4]

    We do not desire to cast opprobrium upon any of these illustrious names. Their fault lay largely in their inheritance from the past. The wicked principle was hard at work in ancient Babylon, and had been transmitted from her through her successors to spiritual Babylon. It was that spirit of intolerance in religion which put Daniel in the den of lions, and the three Hebrews in the sevenfold-heated furnace. The schooling and the example of centuries had [worked] their effect upon the Reformers themselves, as well as upon the rest of the people. We desire by these citations merely to show out of what trials of faith, what turbulence, what strife, what cruel mockings, what bitter persecutions, there have come to us the blessings of religious liberty, and how difficult is for men, even the professed followers of Jesus, to understand, appreciate, and practice its principle. Down through that dark and turbulent torrent of the centuries, from the days of Jesus to our own day, there has been flowing a small, silvery stream, pure and sweet and wholesome, sometimes almost obscured, and always threatened with complete extinction. But that little silvery streamlet has been always under the eye of God, flowing where he willed, but always flowing to bless mankind.    

    It has been one of the ever-present characteristics a power-coveting church that it has been unable to see the sad result to itself in espousing and using the temporal power. In the first place, the possession of that power has inevitably made the possessor vain and unmindful of human rights; and in the second place, the use of such power, has brought reproach to the cause of Christ and has invited the condemnation of the One whom professed to serve. Said Jesus: " It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him through who: they come! It were better for him that a millstone we: hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." [Luke 17:1,2]

    Such is the condemnation pronounced by the holy Author of our religion upon the organization or the individual who inflicts punishments or hardships upon men because of their religious convictions. "The hour cometh," said Jesus, "that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God."  But in these words the Master repudiates such service - "These things will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor me." [John 16:2,3] This is a serious indictment to bring against a professed church of Jesus Christ; but it is from the Master himself, and cannot be evaded. The church that uses the power of the state to oppress the consciences of men does not know either Christ or the Father. [It does not know GOD.] It is certain that they who do not know Christ and the  Father can have no place with them in the great regeneration. Says Thomas Clarke: "All violence in religion is irreligious;" and "whoever is wrong, the persecutor cannot be right." 

    To persecutor and persecuted alike we commend these words of our Saviour committed to John on the isle of Patmos, and through him spoken to all who must suffer for Christ's sake. - "Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer:  behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison,  that ye may be tried. . . .Be thou faithful unto  death, and I will give thee the crown of life." [Revelation 2:10]

    These things are made plain by this scripture: The devil is the instigator of persecution; the reward is to those who bear it faithfully; there is no reward promised to those who do the devil's work of oppressing their fellow men for conscience' sake. That promise of our Lord has been the strength and comfort of the oppressed children of God from the time John penned it until the present moment; for through all the cruel persecutions of the ages men and women have exercised their God-given right to believe and worship according to the dictates of  their own conscience, in spite of apostate religious powers and in spite of states dominated by established churches. The principles of religious liberty have never been obliterated since our Saviour proclaimed them. They have struggled up through the darkness of heathenism to the light of day, to maintain a consistent testimony against oppression till the end of time. It has cost much to maintain them; and if the elements of oppression that are being marshaled at the present time in this land succeed as they hope to do, it will still cost the much.

    Upon this point we commend to the reader's attention the following terse and emphatically true declaration of Thomas Clarke, in his History of Intolerance ---"Nothing is more detrimental to the honor of the Christian name and the usefulness of evangelical truth than the engrafting of a firm, uncharitable, and intolerant spirit on the doctrines, discipline, and instruction of Christian worship." [History of Intolerance, Thomas Clarke, Vol. II, page 363.]