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Descent into Apostasy (Part 2)
Seeking the Aid of Secular Government
Another area in which Protestantism quickly slid back into
the ways of its “mother” church was that of utilizing the power of civil
government to punish those whose faith differed from that of the majority. This
problem was clearly demonstrated in the Church of England:
The Church of England
Many earnestly desired to return to the purity and simplicity
which characterized the primitive church. They regarded many of the established
customs of the English Church as monuments of idolatry, and they could not in
conscience unite in her worship. But the church, being supported by the civil
authority, would permit no dissent from her forms. Attendance
upon her service was required by law, and unauthorized
assemblies for religious worship were prohibited, under penalty of
imprisonment, exile, and death.
The Great Controversy, p. 290
Whenever the church has obtained secular power, she has employed
it to punish dissent from her doctrines. Protestant churches
that have followed in the steps of Rome by forming alliance with worldly powers
have manifested a similar desire to restrict liberty of conscience. An
example of this is given in the long-continued persecution of dissenters by the
Church of England. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thousands of
nonconformist ministers were forced to flee from their churches, and many, both
of pastors and people, were subjected to fine, imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom.
The Great Controversy, p. 443
The Pilgrims
The example of the pilgrims has also been well documented:
It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the
Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the
hardships and dangers of the wilderness, and with God’s blessing to lay, on the
shores of America, the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet honest and
God-fearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the great
principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed so much to
secure for themselves, they were not equally ready to grant to others.
“Very few, even of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth
century, had any just conception of that grand principle, the outgrowth of the
New Testament, which acknowledges God as the sole judge of human
faith.”—Martyn, The Great Reformation, vol. 5 (The Pilgrim Fathers of
New England: a history), p. 297. . . . Said one of the leading
ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay: “It was toleration that made the
world antichristian; and the church never took harm by the punishment of
heretics.”—Ibid., vol. 5, p. 335. The regulation was adopted by the colonists
that only church members should have a voice in the civil government. A kind of
state church was formed, all the people being required to contribute to the
support of the clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy.
Thus the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before
these measures led to the inevitable result—persecution.
The Great Controversy, pp. 292-293
The regulation adopted by the early colonists, of permitting
only members of the church to vote or to hold office in the civil government,
led to most pernicious results.. . . Many, actuated solely by
motives of worldly policy, united with the church without a change of heart.
Thus the churches came to consist, to a considerable extent, of unconverted
persons; and even in the ministry were those who not only held errors of
doctrine, but who were ignorant of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Thus
again was demonstrated the evil results, so often witnessed in the history of
the church from the days of Constantine to the present, of attempting to build
up the church by the aid of the state, of appealing to the secular power in
support of the gospel of Him who declared: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
John 18:36. The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so
slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in
reality but bring the church nearer to the world.
The Great Controversy, p. 297
Roger Williams and Rhode Island
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger
Williams came to the New World. Like the early Pilgrims he came to enjoy
religious freedom; but, unlike them, he saw—what so few in his time had yet
seen—that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be
their creed. . . . Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom
to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the
equality of opinions before the law.”— George Bancroft, History of the
United States of America, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 16. . . .
Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister,
a man of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence; yet his
steadfast denial of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the
church, and his demand for religious liberty, could not be tolerated. The
application of this new doctrine, it was urged, would “subvert the fundamental
state and government of the country.”—George Bancroft, History of the United
States of America, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 10. He was sentenced to banishment
from the colonies, and, finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid
the cold and storms of winter, into the unbroken forest. . . .
Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering, to
the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of the first state
of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized the right of religious
freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger Williams’s colony was “that every
man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own
conscience.”—Martyn, ibid, p. 354. His little state, Rhode Island, became the
asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation
principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstones of the American
Republic.
The Great Controversy, pp. 293-295
Another characteristic that marks
Protestantism’s descent into apostasy, is that she is looking with
increasing favor toward the church against which
they once protested.
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