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16 - The Pilgrim Fathers - The Great Controversy · Sacred Texts Archive

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  Chapter sixteen The Pilgrim Fathers. The English Reformers, while renouncing the doctrines of
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  Romanism, had retained many of its forms. Thus, though the authority and
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  the creed of Rome were rejected, not a few of her customs and ceremonies
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  were incorporated into the worship of the Church of England. It was claimed that
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  these things were not matters of conscience, that though they were not commanded in
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  scripture and hence were non essential, yet not being forbidden, they were not
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  intrinsically evil. Their observants tended to narrow the gulf which separated the Reformed churches
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  from Rome, and it was urged that they would promote the acceptance of the
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  Protestant faith by Romanists to the conservative and compromising. These arguments seemed conclusive,
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  But there was another class that did not so judge. The fact that these
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  customs tended to bridge over the chasm between Rome and the Reformation was, in
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  their view, a conclusive argument against retaining them. They looked upon them as
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  badgets of the slavery from which they had been delivered, and to which they
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  had no disposition to return. They reasoned that God has in his word established
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  the regulations governing His worship, and that men are not at liberty to add
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  to these or to detract from them. The very beginning of the Great Apostasy
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  was in seeking to supplement the authority of God by that of the Church.
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  Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding
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  what He had explicitly enjoined. Many earnestly desired to return to the purity and
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  simplicity which characterized the primitive Church. They regarded many of the established customs of
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  the English Church as monuments of idolatry, and they could not, in conscience
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  unite in her worship. But the Church, being supported by the civil authority,
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  would permit no dissent from her forms. Attendance upon her service was required
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  by law, and unauthorized assemblies for religious worship were prohibited under penalty of imprisonment,
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  exile, and death. At the opening of the seventeenth century, the
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  monarch, who had just ascended the throne of England, declared his determination to
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  make the Puritans conform or harry them out of the land, or else worse,
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  hunted, persecuted, and imprisoned, they could decern in the future no
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  promise of better days, and many yielded to the conviction that for such as
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  would serve God. According to the dictates of their conscience, England was ceasing
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  forever to be a habitable place. They were at last determined to seek refuge
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  in Holland. Difficulties, losses, and imprisonment were encountered, their purposes were
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  thwarted, and they were betrayed into the hands of their enemies. But steadfast
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  perseverance finally conquered and they found shelter on the friendly shores of the Dutch Republic.
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  In their flight, they had left their houses, their goods, and
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  their means of livelihood. They were strangers in a strange land, among a
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  people of different language and customs. They were forced to resort to new and
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  untried occupations to in their bread. Middle aged men who had spent their lives
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  untilling the soil, had now to learn mechanical traits. But they cheerfully accepted
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  the situation and lost no time in idleness or repining. Though often pinged with
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  poverty, they thanked God for the blessings which were still granted them, and
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  found their joy in unmolested spiritual communion. They knew they were pilgrims, and
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  looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven,
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  their dearest country, and quieted their spirits. In the midst of exile and
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  hardship, their love and faith waxed strong. They trusted the Lord's promises,
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  and he did not fail them. In time of need. His angels were
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  by their side to encourage and support them. And when God's hands seemed pointing
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  them across the sea to a land where they might found for themselves estate and
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  leave to their children the precious heritage of religious liberty, they went forward without
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  shrinking, in the path of providence. God had permitted trials to come upon
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  his people to prepare them for the accomplishment of his gracious purpose toward them.
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  The Church had been brought low that she might be exalted. God was about
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  to display his power in her behalf, to give the world another evidence that
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  he will not forsake those who trust in him. He had overruled events to
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  cause the wrath of Satan and the plots of evil men to advance his glory
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  and to bring his people to a place of security. Persecution and exile were
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  opening the way to freedom. When first constrained to separate from the English Church.
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  The Puritans had joined themselves together by a solemn covenant as the Lord's free
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  people, to walk together in all His ways made known or to be made
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  known to them. Here was the true spirit of reform, the vital principle
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  of Protestantism. It was with this purpose that the Pilgrims departed from Holland to
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  find a home in the New world. John Robinson, their pastor, who
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  was providentially prevented from accompanying them, in his farewell address to the exiles,
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  said, brethren, we are now ere long to part asunder, and the
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  Lord knoweth whether I shall live ever to see your faces more. But whether
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  the Lord hath appointed it or not, I charge you, before God and
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  his blessed angels, to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ.
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  If God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be
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  as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth of my
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  ministry. For I am very confident the Lord hath more truth than light yet
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  to break forth out of His Holy Word. For my part, I cannot
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  sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period
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  in religion and will go at present no farther than the instruments of their reformation.
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  The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, and the
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  Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great Man
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  of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much
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  to be lamented, for though they were burning and shining lights in their time,
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  yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. But were they
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  now living, would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they
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  first received. Remember your church covenant, in which you have agreed to walk
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  in all the ways of the Lord made or to be made known unto you.
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  Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one another, to receive
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  whatever light and truth shall be made known to you from His written word.
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  But withal take heed. I beseech you what you receive for truth, and
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  compare it and weigh it with other scriptures of truth before you accept it.
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  For it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such
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  thick anti Christian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at
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  once. It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to
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  brave the perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the hardships
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  and dangers of the wilderness, and with God's blessing, to lay on the
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  shores of America the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet, honest and god
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  fearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the girl great principle
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  of religious liberty, the freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves,
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  they were not equally ready to grant to others. Very few, even
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  of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century, had any just conception
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  of that grand principle. The outgrowth of the New Testament, which acknowledges God
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  as the sole judge of human faith, the doctrine that God has committed to
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  the Church the right to control the conscience and to define and punish heresy,
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  is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors. While the Reformers rejected
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  the Creed of Rome, they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance.
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  The dense darkness in which, through the long ages of her rule,
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  popery had enveloped all Christendom had not even yet been wholly dissipated, said one
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  of the leading ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. It was toleration that
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  made the world anti Christian, and the Church never took harm by the punishment
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  of heretics. The regulation was adopted by the colonists that only church members should
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  have a voice in the civil government. A kind of state church was formed,
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  all the people being required to contribute to the support of the clergy,
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  and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus the secular power was in
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  the hands of the church. It was not long before these measures led to
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  the inevitable result persecution. Eleven years after the planting of the first colony,
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  Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came
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  to enjoy religious freedom. But unlike them, he saw what so few in
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  his time had yet seen, that this freedom was the inalienable right of all,
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  whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for truth,
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  with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God's word had yet been
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  received. Williams was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on
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  the doctrine of the liberty of conscience the equality of a pinions before the law.
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  He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime,
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  but never to control the conscience. The public or the magistrates may decide,
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  he said, what is due from man to man. But when they attempt
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  to prescribe a man's duties to God, they are out of place, and
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  there can be no safety. For it is clear that if the magistrate has
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  the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs to day and
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  another tomorrow, as has been done in England by different kings and queens,
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  and by different popes and councils in the Roman Church, so that belief would
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  become a heap of confusion. Attendance at the services of the established church was
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  required under a penalty of fine or imprisonment. Williams reprobated the law. The
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  worst statute in the English Code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the
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  parish church to compel men to unite with those of a different creed. He
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  regarded as an open violation of their natural rights. To drag to public worship
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  the irreligious and the un willing seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. No one should
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  be bound to worship or, he added, to maintain a worship against his
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  own consent. What exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenants, is not
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  the laborer worthy of his hire? Yes, replied he from them that hire
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  him. Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister, a man
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  of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence. Yet his steadfast denial
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  of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand
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  for religious liberty could not be tolerated. The application of this new doctrine,
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  it was urged, would subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.
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  He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and finally, to avoid arrest,
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  he was forced to flee amid the cold and storms of winter into the
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  unbroken forest for fourteen weeks. He says, I was sorely tossed in the
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  bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean. But the ravens
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  fed me in the wilderness, and a hollow tree often served him for a
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  shelter. Thus he continued his painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest,
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  until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had
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  won while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the Gospel. Making his way
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  at last, after months of change and wandering to the shores of Narragansett Bay,
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  he there laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in
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  the fullest sense, recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of
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  Roger William's colony was that every man should have liberty to worship God according to
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  the light of his own conscience. His little state, Rhode Island, became
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  the asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles
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  civil and religious liberty became the corner stones of the American Republic. In that
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  grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights, the
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  Declaration of Independence, they declared, we hold these truths to be self evident,
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  that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
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  with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
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  of happiness, And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the
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  inviolability of conscience. No religious tests shall ever be required as a qualification to
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  any office of public trust. Under the United States Congress shall make no law
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  respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The framers of
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  the Constitution recognize the eternal principle that man's relation with his God is above human
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  legislation, and his rights of conscience Inalienable reasoning was not necessary to establish this
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  truth. We are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this
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  consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in
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  tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human
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  enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is
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  an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate. As the tidings spread through the countries
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  of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his
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  own labor and obey the convictions of his conscience, thousands flocked to the shores
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  of the New World colonies rapidly multiplied. Massachusetts, by special law, offered
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  free welcome and aid at the public cost to Christians of any nationality who might
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  fly beyond the Atlantic to escape from wars, or famine, or the oppression
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  of their persecutors. Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute made
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  the guests of the Commonwealth. In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth,
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  as many thousand pilgrims were settled in New England to secure the object which
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  they sought. They were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of
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  frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of
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  their own labor. No golden vision threw a deceitful halo around their path.
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  They were content with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They
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  patiently endured the privations of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their
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  tears and with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in
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  the land. The Bible was held as the foundation of faith, the source
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  of wisdom, and the charter of liberty. Its principles were diligently taught in
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  the home, in the school, and in the church, and its fruits
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  were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might be
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  for years a dweller in the Puritan settlements and not see a drunkard, or
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  hear an oath, or meet a beggar. It was demonstrated that the principles
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  of the Bible are the surest safeguards of national greatness. The feeble and isolated
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  colonies grew to a confederation of powerful states, and the world marked with wonder
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  the peace and prosperity of a church without a pope and a state without a
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  king. But continually increasing numbers were attracted to the shores of America, actuated
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  by motives widely different from those of the first pilgrims. Though the primitive faith
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  and purity exerted a widespread and molding power, yet its influence became less and
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  less as the numbers increased of those who sought only worldly advantage. The regulation
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  adopted by the early colonists of permitting only members of the church to vote or
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  to hold office in the civil government led to most pernicious results. This measure
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  had been accepted as a means of preserving the purity of the state, but
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  it resulted in the corruption of the church, a profession of religion being the
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  condition of suffrage and officeholding. Many actuated solely by motives of worldly policy,
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  united with the Church without a change of heart. Thus the churches came to
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  consist to a considerable extent of unconverted persons, and even in the ministry were
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  those who not only held errors of doctrine, but who were ignorant of the
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  renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Thus again was demonstrated the evil results so
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  often witnessed in the history of the Church, from the days of Constantine to
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  the present, of attempting to build up the church by the aid of the
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  state, of appealing to the secular power in support of the gospel of Him
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  who declared, My Kingdom is not of this world. The union of the
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  Church with the State be the degree never so slight. While it may appear
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  to bring the world nearer to the Church, does in reality but bring the
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  Church nearer to the world. The great principle so nobly advocated by Robinson and
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  Roger Williams, that truth is progressive, that Christians should stand ready to accept
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  all the light which may shine from God's Holy Word was lost sight of by
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  their descendants. The Protestant churches of America and those of Europe as well,
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  so highly favored in receiving the blessings of the Reformation, failed to press forward
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  in the path of reform. Though a few faithful men arose from time to
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  time to proclaim new truth and expose long cherished error, the majority, like
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  the Jews in Christ's day or the Papists in theas time of Luther, were
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  content to believe as their fathers had believed and to live as they had lived.
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  Therefore, religion again degenerated into formalism, and errors and superstitions which would
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  have been cast aside had the Church continued to walk in the light of God's
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  Word were retained and cherished. Thus the spirit inspired by their reformation gradually died
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  out, until there was almost as great need of reform in the Protestant churches
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  as in the Roman Church. In the time of Luther. There was the
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  same worldliness and spiritual stupor, a similar reverence for the opinions of men and
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  substitution of human theories for the teachings of God's Word. The wide circulation of
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  the Bible in the early part of the nineteenth century, and the great light
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  thus shed upon the world was not followed by a corresponding advance in knowledge of
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  revealed truth or in experimental religion. Satan could not, as in former ages,
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  keep God's word from the people. It had been placed within the reach
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  of all, But in order still to accomplish his object he led many to
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  value it, but lightly men neglected to search the scriptures, and thus they
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  continued to accept false interpretations and to cherish doctrines which had no foundation in the
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  Bible. Seeing the failure of his efforts to crush out the truth by persecution,
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  Satan had again resorted to the plan of compromise, which led to the
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  Great Apostasy and the formation of the Church of Rome. He had induced Christians
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  to ally themselves, not now with pagans, but with those who, by
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  their devotion to the things of this world, had proved themselves to be as
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  truly idolaters as were the worshipers of graven images. And the results of this
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  union were no less pernicious now than in former ages. Pride and extravagance were
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  fostered under the guise of religion, and the churches became corrupted. Satan continued
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  to pervert the doctrines of the Bible, and traditions that were to ruin millions
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  were taking deep root. The Church was upholding and defending these traditions in instead
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  of contending for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. Thus were
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  degraded the principles for which the reformers had done and suffered so much. End
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  of Chapter sixteen,