Chapter 16 - The Pilgrim Fathers

The Pilgrim Fathers
The English Reformers, while renouncing the doctrines of Romanism,
had retained many of its forms. Thus though the authority and the
creed of Rome were rejected, not a few of her customs and ceremonies
were incorporated into the worship of the Church of England. It was
claimed that these things were not matters of conscience; that though
they were not commanded in Scripture, and hence were nonessential,
yet not being forbidden, they were not intrinsically evil. Their
observance tended to narrow the gulf which separated the reformed
churches from Rome, and it was urged that they would promote the
acceptance of the Protestant faith by Romanists.
To the conservative and compromising, these arguments seemed
conclusive. But there was another class that did not so judge. The fact
that these customs “tended to bridge over the chasm between Rome
and the Reformation” (Martyn, volume 5, page 22), was in their view
a conclusive argument against retaining them. They looked upon them
as badges of the slavery from which they had been delivered and to
which they had no disposition to return. They reasoned that God has
in His word established the regulations governing His worship, and
that men are not at liberty to add to these or to detract from them. The
very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement
the authority of God by that of the church. Rome began by enjoining [290]
what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what He
had explicitly enjoined.
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.
241
242 The Great Controversy
At the opening of the seventeenth century the monarch who had
just ascended the throne of England declared his determination to
make the Puritans “conform, or ... harry them out of the land, or else
worse.”—George Bancroft, History of the United States of America,
pt. 1, ch. 12, par. 6. Hunted, persecuted, and imprisoned, they could
discern in the future no promise of better days, and many yielded to the
conviction that for such as would serve God according to the dictates
of their conscience, “England was ceasing forever to be a habitable
place.”—J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, ch. 3, par. 43. Some
at last determined to seek refuge in Holland. Difficulties, losses, and
imprisonment were encountered. Their purposes were thwarted, and
they were betrayed into the hands of their enemies. But steadfast
perseverance finally conquered, and they found shelter on the friendly
shores of the Dutch Republic.
In their flight they had left their houses, their goods, and their
means of livelihood. They were strangers in a strange land, among a
people of different language and customs. They were forced to resort
to new and untried occupations to earn their bread. Middle-aged men,
who had spent their lives in tilling the soil, had now to learn mechanical
trades. But they cheerfully accepted the situation and lost no time in
[291] idleness or repining. Though often pinched with poverty, they thanked
God for the blessings which were still granted them and found their joy
in unmolested spiritual communion. “They knew they were pilgrims,
and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven,
their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”—Bancroft, pt. 1, ch.
12, par. 15.
In the midst of exile and hardship their love and faith waxed strong.
They trusted the Lord’s promises, and He did not fail them in time
of need. His angels were by their side, to encourage and support
them. And when God’s hand seemed pointing them across the sea, to a
land where they might found for themselves a state, and leave to their
children the precious heritage of religious liberty, they went forward,
without shrinking, in the path of providence.
God had permitted trials to come upon His people to prepare them
for the accomplishment of His gracious purpose toward them. The
church had been brought low, that she might be exalted. God was
about to display His power in her behalf, to give to the world another
evidence that He will not forsake those who trust in Him. He had
Pilgrim Fathers 243
overruled events to cause the wrath of Satan and the plots of evil men
to advance His glory and to bring His people to a place of security.
Persecution and exile were opening the way to freedom.
When first constrained to separate from the English Church, the
Puritans had joined themselves together by a solemn covenant, as the
Lord’s free people, “to walk together in all His ways made known or
to be made known to them.”—J. Brown, The Pilgrim Fathers, page 74.
Here was the true spirit of reform, the vital principle of Protestantism.
It was with this purpose that the Pilgrims departed from Holland to
find a home in the New World. John Robinson, their pastor, who was
providentially prevented from accompanying them, in his farewell
address to the exiles said:
“Brethren, we are now erelong to part asunder, and the Lord
knoweth whether I shall live ever to see your faces more. But whether
the Lord hath appointed it or not, I charge you before God and His [292]
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.”—Martyn 5:70.
“For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the
reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, and 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. This is a misery much to
be lamented; for 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.”—D. Neal, History of the Puritans 1:269.
“Remember your church covenant, in which you have agreed to
walk in all the ways of the Lord, made or to be made known unto
you. 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
244 The Great Controversy
full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.”—Martyn,
vol. 5, pp. 70, 71.
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
[293] 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.”—Ibid. 5:297. 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. While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome, they were
not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness
in which, through the long ages of her rule, popery had enveloped
all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly dissipated. 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.
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. He was an earnest seeker for truth,
with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God’s
word had yet been received. Williams “was the first person in modern
Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty
[294] of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.”—Bancroft, pt.
1, ch. 15, par. 16. He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to
Pilgrim Fathers 245
restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. “The public or the
magistrates may decide,” he said, “what is due from man to man; but
when they attempt to prescribe a man’s duties to God, they are out of
place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate
has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and
another tomorrow; as has been done in England by different kings and
queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman Church; so
that belief would become a heap of confusion.”—Martyn, vol. 5, p.
340.
Attendance at the services of the established church was required
under a penalty of fine or imprisonment. “Williams reprobated the law;
the worst statute in the English code was that which did but enforce
attendance upon the parish church. To compel men to unite with those
of a different creed, he regarded as an open violation of their natural
rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling,
seemed only like requiring hypocrisy.... ‘No one should be bound
to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to maintain a worship, against his own
consent.’ ‘What!’ exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenets, ‘is
not the laborer worthy of his hire?’ ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘from them that
hire him.’”—Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 2.
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.”—Ibid., 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.
“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was sorely tossed in a bitter
season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” But “the ravens [295]
fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served him for a
shelter.—Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 349, 350. Thus he continued his painful
flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge
with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while
endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel.
Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering,
to the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of
246 The Great Controversy
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.”—Ibid., vol. 5, 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.
In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their
bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the
Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of
conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.”
“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle
that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his
rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to
establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is
this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained
so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to
[296] God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise
no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which
nothing can eradicate.”—Congressional documents (U.S.A.), serial
No. 200, document No. 271.
As the tidings spread through the countries of Europe, of a land
where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey the
convictions of his own conscience, thousands flocked to the shores
of the New World. Colonies rapidly multiplied. “Massachusetts,
by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the public cost, to
Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic ‘to
escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.’
Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the
guests of the commonwealth.”—Martyn, vol. 5, p. 417. In twenty
years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims
were settled in New England.
Pilgrim Fathers 247
To secure the object which they sought, “they were content to earn
a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil. They asked nothing
from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor. No golden
vision threw a deceitful halo around their path.... They were content
with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They patiently
endured the privations of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty
with their tears, and with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root
in the land.”
The Bible was held as the foundation of faith, the source of wisdom,
and the charter of liberty. Its principles were diligently taught in the
home, in the school, and in the church, and its fruits were manifest
in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might be for years
a dweller in the Puritan settlement, “and not see a drunkard, or hear
an oath, or meet a beggar.”—Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 19, par. 25. It was
demonstrated that the principles of the Bible are the surest safeguards
of national greatness. The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a
confederation of powerful states, and the world marked with wonder
the peace and prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state
without a king.”
But continually increasing numbers were attracted to the shores of [297]
America, actuated by motives widely different from those of the first
Pilgrims. Though the primitive faith and purity exerted a widespread
and molding power, yet its influence became less and less as the
numbers increased of those who sought only worldly advantage.
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. This measure had been accepted as
a means of preserving the purity of the state, but it resulted in the
corruption of the church. A profession of religion being the condition
of suffrage and officeholding, 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
248 The Great Controversy
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 principle so nobly advocated by Robinson and Roger
Williams, that truth is progressive, that Christians should stand ready
to accept all the light which may shine from God’s holy word, was lost
sight of by their descendants. The Protestant churches of America,—
and those of Europe as well,—so highly favored in receiving the blessings
of the Reformation, failed to press forward in the path of reform.
Though a few faithful men arose, from time to time, to proclaim new
truth and expose long-cherished error, the majority, like the Jews in
Christ’s day or the papists in the time of Luther, were content to believe
as [298] their fathers had believed and to live as they had lived. Therefore
religion again degenerated into formalism; and errors and superstitions
which would have been cast aside had the church continued to walk
in the light of God’s word, were retained and cherished. Thus the
spirit inspired by the Reformation gradually died out, until there was
almost as great need of reform in the Protestant churches as in the
Roman Church in the time of Luther. There was the same worldliness
and spiritual stupor, a similar reverence for the opinions of men, and
substitution of human theories for the teachings of God’s word.
The wide circulation of the Bible in the early part of the nineteenth
century, and the great light thus shed upon the world, was not followed
by a corresponding advance in knowledge of revealed truth, or in
experimental religion. Satan could not, as in former ages, keep God’s
word from the people; it had been placed within the reach of all; but in
order still to accomplish his object, he led many to value it but lightly.
Men neglected to search the Scriptures, and thus they continued to
accept false interpretations, and to cherish doctrines which had no
foundation in the Bible.
Seeing the failure of his efforts to crush out the truth by persecution,
Satan had again resorted to the plan of compromise which led to
the great apostasy and the formation of the Church of Rome. He had
induced Christians to ally themselves, not now with pagans, but with
those who, by their devotion to the things of this world, had proved
themselves to be as truly idolaters as were the worshipers of graven
images. And the results of this union were no less pernicious now
Pilgrim Fathers 249
than in former ages; pride and extravagance were fostered under the
guise of religion, and the churches became corrupted. Satan continued
to pervert the doctrines of the Bible, and traditions that were to
ruin millions were taking deep root. The church was upholding and
defending these traditions, instead of contending for “the faith which
was once delivered unto the saints.” Thus were degraded the principles
for which the Reformers had done and suffered so much.

Chapter 15 - The Bible and the French Revolution

The Bible and the French Revolution
In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible
to the people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe.
Some nations welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In
other lands the papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance;
and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences,
was almost wholly excluded. In one country, though the light found
entrance, it was not comprehended by the darkness. For centuries,
truth and error struggled for the mastery. At last the evil triumphed,
and the truth of Heaven was thrust out. “This is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than
light.” John 3:19. The nation was left to reap the results of the course
which she had chosen. The restraint of God’s Spirit was removed from
a people that had despised the gift of His grace. Evil was permitted to
come to maturity. And all the world saw the fruit of willful rejection
of the light.
The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries
in France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible
outbreaking was but the legitimate result of Rome’s suppression of the
Scriptures. (See Appendix.) It presented the most striking illustration
which the world has ever witnessed of the working out of the papal
policy—an illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand [266]
years the teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal
supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points
also to the terrible results that were to accrue especially to France from
the domination of the “man of sin.”
Said the angel of the Lord: “The holy city shall they tread underfoot
forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two
witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore
days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished
their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall
make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And
221
222 The Great Controversy
their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually
is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified....
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make
merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets
tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a
half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon
their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.” Revelation
11:2-11.
The periods here mentioned—“forty and two months,” and “a thousand
two hundred and threescore days”—are the same, alike representing
the time in which the church of Christ was to suffer oppression
from Rome. The 1260 years of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538,
and would therefore terminate in 1798. (See Appendix note for page
54.) At that time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a
prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward
elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been able to wield the
power which it before possessed.
The persecution of the church did not continue throughout the
entire period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His people cut short
[267] the time of their fiery trial. In foretelling the “great tribulation” to
befall the church, the Saviour said: “Except those days should be
shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those
days shall be shortened.” Matthew 24:22. Through the influence of the
Reformation the persecution was brought to an end prior to 1798.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: “These
are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the
God of the earth.” “Thy word,” said the psalmist, “is a lamp unto
my feet, and a light unto my path.” Revelation 11:4; Psalm 119:105.
The two witnesses represent the Scriptures of the Old and the New
Testament. Both are important testimonies to the origin and perpetuity
of the law of God. Both are witnesses also to the plan of salvation. The
types, sacrifices, and prophecies of the Old Testament point forward
to a Saviour to come. The Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament
tell of a Saviour who has come in the exact manner foretold by type
and prophecy.
“They shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three-score
days, clothed in sackcloth.” During the greater part of this period,
God’s witnesses remained in a state of obscurity. The papal power
Bible and the French Revolution 223
sought to hide from the people the word of truth, and set before them
false witnesses to contradict its testimony. (See Appendix.) When
the Bible was proscribed by religious and secular authority; when its
testimony was perverted, and every effort made that men and demons
could invent to turn the minds of the people from it; when those
who dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted, betrayed, tortured,
buried in dungeon cells, martyred for their faith, or compelled to flee
to mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of the earth—then the
faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their
testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest
times there were faithful men who loved God’s word and were jealous
for His honor. To these loyal servants were given wisdom, power, and [268]
authority to declare His truth during the whole of this time.
“And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth,
and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must
in this manner be killed.” Revelation 11:5. Men cannot with impunity
trample upon the word of God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation
is set forth in the closing chapter of the Revelation: “I testify unto
every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any
man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the
words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out
of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which
are written in this book.” Revelation 22:18, 19.
Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men against
changing in any manner that which He has revealed or commanded.
These solemn denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead
men to regard lightly the law of God. They should cause those to fear
and tremble who flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence
whether we obey God’s law or not. All who exalt their own opinions
above divine revelation, all who would change the plain meaning of
Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for the sake of conforming
to the world, are taking upon themselves a fearful responsibility. The
written word, the law of God, will measure the character of every man
and condemn all whom this unerring test shall declare wanting.
“When they shall have finished [are finishing] their testimony.” The
period when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in sackcloth,
ended in 1798. As they were approaching the termination of their work
224 The Great Controversy
in obscurity, war was to be made upon them by the power represented
as “the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the
nations of Europe the powers that ruled in church and state had for
[269] centuries been controlled by Satan through the medium of the papacy.
But here is brought to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome’s policy, under a profession of reverence for the
Bible, to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away
from the people. Under her rule the witnesses prophesied “clothed in
sackcloth.” But another power—the beast from the bottomless pit—
was to arise to make open, avowed war upon the word of God.
“The great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where
their dead bodies lie, is “spiritually” Egypt. Of all nations presented
in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living
God and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon
more open and highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven
than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by
Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered: “Who is
Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know
not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Exodus 5:2, A.R.V.
This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice
to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would manifest a
like spirit of unbelief and defiance. “The great city” is also compared,
“spiritually,” to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in breaking the law
of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And this sin was
also to be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that should fulfill
the specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before the year
1798 some power of satanic origin and character would rise to make
war upon the Bible. And in the land where the testimony of God’s
two witnesses should thus be silenced, there would be manifest the
atheism of the Pharaoh and the licentiousness of Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment
in the history of France. During the Revolution, in 1793, “the world
[270] for the first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in
civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the
European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn
truth which man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief
and worship of a Deity.”—Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1,
Bible and the French Revolution 225
ch. 17. “France is the only nation in the world concerning which the
authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open
rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers,
plenty of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England,
Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world’s
history as the single state which, by the decree of her Legislative
Assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire
population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well
as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement.”—
Blackwood’s Magazine, November, 1870.
France presented also the characteristics which especially distinguished
Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state
of moral debasement and corruption similar to that which brought
destruction upon the cities of the plain. And the historian presents
together the atheism and the licentiousness of France, as given in
the prophecy: “Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion,
was that which reduced the union of marriage—the most sacred
engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of
which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society—to the state
of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons
might engage in and cast loose at pleasure.... If fiends had set
themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying
whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and
of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it
was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation
to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan that
the degradation of marriage.... Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for [271]
the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as ‘the
sacrament of adultery.’”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“Where also our Lord was crucified.” This specification of the
prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of
enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country
had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the
persecution which France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel,
she had crucified Christ in the person of His disciples.
Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While
the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont
“for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ,” similar
226 The Great Controversy
witness to the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses
of France. In the days of the Reformation its disciples had been put to
death with horrible tortures. King and nobles, highborn women and
delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their
eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots,
battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred, had
poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field. The Protestants
were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads, and they
were hunted down like wild beasts.
The “Church in the Desert,” the few descendants of the ancient
Christians that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding
away in the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their
fathers. As they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely
moor, they were chased by dragoons and dragged away to lifelong
slavery in the galleys. The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent
of the French were chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers
and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22, ch. 6.) Others, more mercifully dealt
with, were shot down in cold blood, as, unarmed and helpless, they
[272] fell upon their knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless
women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth at their
place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest, where
they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find “at
every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging
suspended from the trees.” Their country, laid waste with the sword,
the ax, the fagot, “was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness.”
“These atrocities were enacted ... in no dark age, but in the brilliant
era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the
divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men,
and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity.”—Ibid., b. 22,
ch. 7.
But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible
among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St.
Bartholomew Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror
the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of
France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to
the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the
slaughter. Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes,
Bible and the French Revolution 227
trusting to the plighted honor of their king, were dragged forth without
a warning and murdered in cold blood.
As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian
bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible
work of multiplying martyrs. For seven days the massacre was continued
in Paris, the first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not
confined to the city itself, but by special order of the king was extended
to all the provinces and towns where Protestants were found. Neither
age nor sex was respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the man
of gray hairs was spared. Noble and peasant, old and young, mother
and child, were cut down together. Throughout France the butchery
continued for two months. Seventy thousand of the very flower of the
nation perished.
“When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the exultation [273]
among the clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded
the messenger with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo
thundered forth a joyous salute; and bells rang out from every steeple;
bonfires turned night into day; and Gregory XIII, attended by the
cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went in long procession
to the church of St. Louis, where the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a Te
Deum.... A medal was struck to commemorate the massacre, and in
the Vatican may still be seen three frescoes of Vasari, describing the
attack upon the admiral, the king in council plotting the massacre, and
the massacre itself. Gregory sent Charles the Golden Rose; and four
months after the massacre, ... he listened complacently to the sermon
of a French priest, ... who spoke of ‘that day so full of happiness and
joy, when the most holy father received the news, and went in solemn
state to render thanks to God and St. Louis.’”—Henry White, The
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, ch. 14, par. 34.
The same master spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew Massacre
led also in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared
to be an impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was,
“Crush the Wretch,” meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and
abominable wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of men,
the most abandoned monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly
exalted. In all this, supreme homage was paid to Satan; while Christ,
in His characteristics of truth, purity, and unselfish love, was crucified.
228 The Great Controversy
“The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war
against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical
power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of
Terror, did wage such a war against God and His holy word as the
world had never witnessed. The worship of the Deity was abolished
by the National Assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned
[274] with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was
trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The
weekly rest day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was
devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the Communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial
places declared death to be an eternal sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom
that it was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was
prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The “constitutional
bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the principal part in the
most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national
representation.... He was brought forward in full procession,
to declare to the Convention that the religion which he had taught so
many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no
foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn
and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he
had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage
of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table
his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the
president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed the
example of this prelate.”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and
make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two
prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” Infidel France had
silenced the reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The word of
truth lay dead in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and
requirements of God’s law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the
King of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried: “How doth God
know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” Psalm 73:11.
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests
of the new order said: “God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name.
I bid You defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your
Bible and the French Revolution 229
thunders. Who after this will believe in Your existence?”—Lacretelle, [275]
History 11:309; in Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe, vol. 1, ch.
10. What an echo is this of the Pharaoh’s demand: “Who is Jehovah,
that I should obey His voice?” “I know not Jehovah!”
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Psalm 14:1. And
the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the truth: “Their folly
shall be manifest unto all.” 2 Timothy 3:9. After France had renounced
the worship of the living God, “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity,” it was only a little time till she descended to degrading
idolatry, by the worship of the Goddess of Reason, in the person of
a profligate woman. And this in the representative assembly of the
nation, and by its highest civil and legislative authorities! Says the historian:
“One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivaled for
absurdity combined with impiety. The doors of the Convention were
thrown open to a band of musicians, preceded by whom, the members
of the municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn
in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship,
a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason. Being
brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed
on the right of the president, when she was generally recognized as
a dancing girl of the opera.... To this person, as the fittest representative
of that reason whom they worshiped, the National Convention of
France rendered public homage.
“This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and
the installation of the Goddess of Reason was renewed and imitated
throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to
show themselves equal to all the heights of the Revolution.”—Scott,
vol. 1, ch. 17.
Said the orator who introduced the worship of Reason: “Legislators!
Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not
endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse
has assembled beneath those gothic vaults, which, for the first time,
re-echoed the truth. There the French have celebrated the only true [276]
worship,—that of Liberty, that of Reason. There we have formed
wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the Republic. There we have
abandoned inanimate idols for Reason, for that animated image, the
masterpiece of nature.”—M. A. Thiers, History of the French Revolution,
vol. 2, pp. 370, 371.
230 The Great Controversy
When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the orator
took her by the hand, and turning to the assembly said: “Mortals, cease
to tremble before the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears
have created. Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer
you its noblest and purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only
to such as this.... Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil
of Reason!”
“The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted
on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to
the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There
she was elevated on the high altar, and received the adoration of all
present.”—Alison, vol. 1, ch. 10.
This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of
the Bible. On one occasion “the Popular Society of the Museum”
entered the hall of the municipality, exclaiming, “Vive la Raison!” and
carrying on the top of a pole the half-burned remains of several books,
among others breviaries, missals, and the Old and New Testaments,
which “expiated in a great fire,” said the president, “all the fooleries
which they have made the human race commit.”—Journal of Paris,
1793, No. 318. Quoted in Buchez-Roux, Collection of Parliamentary
History, vol. 30, pp. 200, 201.
It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was completing.
The policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social,
political, and religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers,
in referring to the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are
to be charged upon the throne and the church. (See Appendix.) In strict
justice they are to be charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned
[277] the minds of kings against the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown,
an element of discord that would be fatal to the peace and harmony of
the nation. It was the genius of Rome that by this means inspired the
direst cruelty and the most galling oppression which proceeded from
the throne.
The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the gospel was
received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast
off the shackles that had held them bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and
superstition. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it and
trembled for their despotism.
Bible and the French Revolution 231
Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the pope to
the regent of France in 1525: “This mania [Protestantism] will not only
confound and destroy religion, but all principalities, nobility, laws,
orders, and ranks besides.”—G. de Felice, History of the Protestants
of France, b. 1, ch. 2, par. 8. A few years later a papal nuncio warned
the king: “Sire, be not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil
as well as religious order.... The throne is in as much danger as the
altar.... The introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a
new government.”—D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe
in the Time of Calvin, b. 2, ch. 36. And theologians appealed to
the prejudices of the people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine
“entices men away to novelties and folly; it robs the king of the devoted
affection of his subjects, and devastates both church and state.” Thus
Rome succeeded in arraying France against the Reformation. “It was
to uphold the throne, preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws, that
the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in France.”—Wylie, b.
13, ch. 4.
Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of that fateful
policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the minds
and hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance, truth,
equity, and benevolence which are the very cornerstone of a nation’s
prosperity. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” Thereby “the throne
is established.” Proverbs 14:34; 16:12. “The work of righteousness [278]
shall be peace;” and the effect, “quietness and assurance forever.”
Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the divine law will most truly respect
and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God will honor the
king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority. But unhappy
France prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples. Century after
century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual acuteness
and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their convictions
and the faith to suffer for the truth—for centuries these men toiled as
slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeon cells.
Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continued
for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation.
“Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during the long
period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the
insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence,
the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently
232 The Great Controversy
excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in
proportion as they replenished other countries with these good gifts, did
they empty their own of them. If all that was now driven away had been
retained in France; if, during these three hundred years, the industrial
skill of the exiles had been cultivating her soil; if, during these three
hundred years, their artistic bent had been improving her manufactures;
if, during these three hundred years, their creative genius and analytic
power had been enriching her literature and cultivating her science;
if their wisdom had been guiding her councils, their bravery fighting
her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible
strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her people,
what a glory would at this day have encompassed France! What a
great, prosperous, and happy country—a pattern to the nations—would
[279] she have been!
“But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every
teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of
the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a
‘renown and glory’ in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake
or exile. At last the ruin of the state was complete; there remained no
more conscience to be proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to
the stake; no more patriotism to be chased into banishment.”—Wylie,
b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all its horrors, was the dire
result.
“With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon
France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts
returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral
declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became
one vast almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the
Revolution, two hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the
hands of the king. The Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation,
and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons
and the galleys.”
The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those
political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her
king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy
and ruin. But under the domination of Rome the people had lost the
Saviour’s blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had
been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of others.
Bible and the French Revolution 233
The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor
no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the
wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive.
For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble resulted in grinding
extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor, and the poor
hated the rich.
In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and the
laboring classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy of their [280]
landlords and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The
burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle
and lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and
by the clergy. “The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme
law; the farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors
cared.... The people were compelled at every turn to consult the
exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers
were lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if
they ever dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The
courts of justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant;
bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice
of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of
universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by
the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other,
not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the
rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who
thus impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from
taxation, and entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the
state. The privileged classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand,
and for their gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and
degrading lives.” (See Appendix.)
The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little
confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion fastened
upon all the measures of the government as designing and selfish.
For more than half a century before the time of the Revolution the
throne was occupied by Louis XV, who, even in those evil times, was
distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a
depraved and cruel aristocracy and an impoverished and ignorant lower
class, the state financially embarrassed and the people exasperated,
it needed no prophet’s eye to foresee a terrible impending outbreak.
234 The Great Controversy
To the warnings of his counselors the king was accustomed to reply:
“Try to [281] make things go on as long as I am likely to live; after my death
it may be as it will.” It was in vain that the necessity of reform was
urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the courage nor the power to
meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too truly pictured in
his indolent and selfish answer, “After me, the deluge!”
By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling classes,
Rome had influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing
that the state would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means
to fasten both rulers and people in her thrall. With farsighted policy she
perceived that in order to enslave men effectually, the shackles must
be bound upon their souls; that the surest way to prevent them from
escaping their bondage was to render them incapable of freedom. A
thousandfold more terrible than the physical suffering which resulted
from her policy, was the moral degradation. Deprived of the Bible,
and abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and selfishness, the people
were shrouded in ignorance and superstition, and sunken in vice, so
that they were wholly unfitted for self-government.
But the outworking of all this was widely different from what
Rome had purposed. Instead of holding the masses in a blind submission
to her dogmas, her work resulted in making them infidels and
revolutionists. Romanism they despised as priestcraft. They beheld the
clergy as a party to their oppression. The only god they knew was the
god of Rome; her teaching was their only religion. They regarded her
greed and cruelty as the legitimate fruit of the Bible, and they would
have none of it.
Rome had misrepresented the character of God and perverted His
requirements, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author.
She had required a blind faith in her dogmas, under the pretended
sanction of the Scriptures. In the reaction, Voltaire and his associates
cast aside God’s word altogether and spread everywhere the poison
of infidelity. Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel;
[282] and now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in their recoil from
her tyranny, cast off all restraint. Enraged at the glittering cheat to
which they had so long paid homage, they rejected truth and falsehood
together; and mistaking license for liberty, the slaves of vice exulted
in their imagined freedom.
Bible and the French Revolution 235
At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the
people were granted a representation exceeding that of the nobles and
the clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but
they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager
to redress the wrongs they had suffered, they determined to undertake
the reconstruction of society. An outraged populace, whose minds
were filled with bitter and long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved
to revolutionize the state of misery that had grown unbearable and
to avenge themselves upon those whom they regarded as the authors
of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out the lesson they had
learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of those who had
oppressed them.
Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. Terrible
were the results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome.
Where France, under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first
stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set
up its first guillotine. On the very spot where the first martyrs to
the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first
victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In repelling the gospel,
which would have brought her healing, France had opened the door to
infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God’s law were cast aside,
it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the
powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to revolt and
anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in
the world’s history as the Reign of Terror. Peace and happiness were
banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He
who triumphed today was suspected, condemned, tomorrow. Violence
and lust held undisputed sway. [283]
King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities
of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was
only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed
his death soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter
of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. The
prisons were crowded, at one time containing more than two hundred
thousand captives. The cities of the kingdom were filled with scenes
of horror. One party of revolutionists was against another party, and
France became a vast field for contending masses, swayed by the fury
of their passions. “In Paris one tumult succeeded another, and the
236 The Great Controversy
citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed intent on
nothing but mutual extermination.” And to add to the general misery,
the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with
the great powers of Europe. “The country was nearly bankrupt, the
armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving,
the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost
extinguished in anarchy and license.”
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and
torture which Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at
last had come. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust
into dungeons and dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished
or been driven into exile. Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power
of those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of blood. “The
example of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for
so many ages, was now retorted upon them with signal vigor. The
scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the
prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their
persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman
Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so
[284] freely inflicted on the gentle heretics.” (See Appendix.)
“Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was
administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man
could greet his neighbors or say his prayers ... without danger of
committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when
the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the
jails were filled as close as the holds of a slave ship; when the gutters
ran foaming with blood into the Seine.... While the daily wagonloads
of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris,
the proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had sent forth to the
departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in
the capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow
for their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed down
with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges.
Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a
speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from
Saumur to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked
corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown
to sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who
Bible and the French Revolution 237
were murdered by that execrable government, is to be reckoned by
hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike
along the Jacobin ranks.” (See Appendix.) In the short space of ten
years, multitudes of human beings perished.
All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had
been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and
his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to
deface and defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes
of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his
deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw
back the blame of his work upon God, as if all this misery were the
result of the Creator’s plan. In like manner, when those who have [285]
been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve their
freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture
of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an
illustration of the results of liberty.
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in a
different disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the first.
When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not
through this agency lead them to transgression of God’s law, he urged
them to regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and,
casting aside the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled
iniquity.
The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of
France was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom
lies within the proscriptions of the law of God. “O that thou hadst
hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river,
and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” “There is no peace,
saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” “But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall
dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” Isaiah 48:18, 22;
Proverbs 1:33.
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God’s law;
but the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is
bound up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will
not read the lesson from the book of God are bidden to read it in the
history of nations.
When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead men
away from obedience, his agency was concealed, and his work was
238 The Great Controversy
so disguised that the degradation and misery which resulted were
not seen to be the fruit of transgression. And his power was so far
counteracted by the working of the Spirit of God that his purposes
were prevented from reaching their full fruition. The people did not
trace the effect to its cause and discover the source of their miseries.
[286] But in the Revolution the law of God was openly set aside by the
National Council. And in the Reign of Terror which followed, the
working of cause and effect could be seen by all.
When France publicly rejected God and set aside the Bible, wicked
men and spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so
long desired—a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God.
Because sentence against an evil work was not speedily executed,
therefore the heart of the sons of men was “fully set in them to do
evil.” Ecclesiastes 8:11. But the transgression of a just and righteous
law must inevitably result in misery and ruin. Though not visited at
once with judgments, the wickedness of men was nevertheless surely
working out their doom. Centuries of apostasy and crime had been
treasuring up wrath against the day of retribution; and when their
iniquity was full, the despisers of God learned too late that it is a
fearful thing to have worn out the divine patience. The restraining
Spirit of God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan,
was in a great measure removed, and he whose only delight is the
wretchedness of men was permitted to work his will. Those who had
chosen the service of rebellion were left to reap its fruits until the land
was filled with crimes too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated
provinces and ruined cities a terrible cry was heard—a cry of bitterest
anguish. France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion, law,
social order, the family, the state, and the church—all were smitten
down by the impious hand that had been lifted against the law of
God. Truly spoke the wise man: “The wicked shall fall by his own
wickedness.” “Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days
be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear
God, which fear before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked.”
Proverbs 11:5; Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. “They hated knowledge, and did
not choose the fear of the Lord;” “therefore shall they eat of the fruit
of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” Proverbs 1:29,
[287] 31.
Bible and the French Revolution 239
God’s faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power that “ascendeth
out of the bottomless pit,” were not long to remain silent.
“After three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into
them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them
which saw them.” Revelation 11:11. It was in 1793 that the decrees
which abolished the Christian religion and set aside the Bible passed
the French Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding
these decrees, thus granting toleration to the Scriptures, was
adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at the enormity
of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred Oracles,
and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word as the
foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord: “Whom hast thou
reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy
voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of
Israel,” Isaiah 37:23. “Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know,
this once will I cause them to know My hand and My might; and they
shall know that My name is Jehovah.” Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: “And
they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up
hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies
beheld them.” Revelation 11:12. Since France made war upon God’s
two witnesses, they have been honored as never before. In 1804 the
British and Foreign Bible Society was organized. This was followed by
similar organizations, with numerous branches, upon the continent of
Europe. In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded. When the
British Society was formed, the Bible had been printed and circulated
in fifty tongues. It has since been translated into many hundreds of
languages and dialects. (See Appendix.)
For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was given to
the work of foreign missions. No new societies were formed, and
there were but few churches that made any effort for the spread of [288]
Christianity in heathen lands. But toward the close of the eighteenth
century a great change took place. Men became dissatisfied with the
results of rationalism and realized the necessity of divine revelation
and experimental religion. From this time the work of foreign missions
attained an unprecedented growth. (See Appendix.)
The improvements in printing have given an impetus to the work
of circulating the Bible. The increased facilities for communication
240 The Great Controversy
between different countries, the breaking down of ancient barriers of
prejudice and national exclusiveness, and the loss of secular power by
the pontiff of Rome have opened the way for the entrance of the word
of God. For some years the Bible has been sold without restraint in
the streets of Rome, and it has now been carried to every part of the
habitable globe.
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said: “I am weary of hearing
people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I
will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it.” Generations
have passed since his death. Millions have joined in the war upon
the Bible. But it is so far from being destroyed, that where there
were a hundred in Voltaire’s time, there are now ten thousand, yes,
a hundred thousand copies of the book of God. In the words of an
early Reformer concerning the Christian church, “The Bible is an anvil
that has worn out many hammers.” Saith the Lord: “No weapon that
is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise
against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.” Isaiah 54:17.
“The word of our God shall stand forever.” “All His commandments
are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and
uprightness.” Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 111:7, 8. Whatever is built upon the
authority of man will be overthrown; but that which is founded upon
[289] the rock of God’s immutable word shall stand forever.

Chapter 14—Later English Reformers

Later English Reformers
While Luther was opening a closed Bible to the people of Germany,
Tyndale was impelled by the Spirit of God to do the same for
England. Wycliffe’s Bible had been translated from the Latin text,
which contained many errors. It had never been printed, and the cost
of manuscript copies was so great that few but wealthy men or nobles
could procure it; and, furthermore, being strictly proscribed by the
church, it had had a comparatively narrow circulation. In 1516, a
year before the appearance of Luther’s theses, Erasmus had published
his Greek and Latin version of the New Testament. Now for the first
time the word of God was printed in the original tongue. In this work
many errors of former versions were corrected, and the sense was more
clearly rendered. It led many among the educated classes to a better
knowledge of the truth, and gave a new impetus to the work of reform.
But the common people were still, to a great extent, debarred from
God’s word. Tyndale was to complete the work of Wycliffe in giving
the Bible to his countrymen.
A diligent student and an earnest seeker for truth, he had received
the gospel from the Greek Testament of Erasmus. He fearlessly
preached his convictions, urging that all doctrines be tested by the
Scriptures. To the papist claim that the church had given the Bible,
and the church alone could explain it, Tyndale responded: “Do you
[246] know who taught the eagles to find their prey? Well, that same God
teaches His hungry children to find their Father in His word. Far from
having given us the Scriptures, it is you who have hidden them from
us; it is you who burn those who teach them, and if you could, you
would burn the Scriptures themselves.”—D’Aubigne, History of the
Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, b. 18, ch. 4.
Tyndale’s preaching excited great interest; many accepted the truth.
But the priests were on the alert, and no sooner had he left the field than
they by their threats and misrepresentations endeavored to destroy his
work. Too often they succeeded. “What is to be done?” he exclaimed.
“While I am sowing in one place, the enemy ravages the field I have
204
Later English Reformers 205
just left. I cannot be everywhere. Oh! if Christians possessed the Holy
Scriptures in their own tongue, they could of themselves withstand
these sophists. Without the Bible it is impossible to establish the laity
in the truth.”—Ibid., b. 18, ch. 4.
A new purpose now took possession of his mind. “It was in the
language of Israel,” said he, “that the psalms were sung in the temple
of Jehovah; and shall not the gospel speak the language of England
among us? ... Ought the church to have less light at noonday than
at the dawn? ... Christians must read the New Testament in their
mother tongue.” The doctors and teachers of the church disagreed
among themselves. Only by the Bible could men arrive at the truth.
“One holdeth this doctor, another that.... Now each of these authors
contradicts the other. How then can we distinguish him who says right
from him who says wrong? ... How? ... Verily by God’s word.”—Ibid.,
b. 18, ch. 4.
It was not long after that a learned Catholic doctor, engaging in
controversy with him, exclaimed: “We were better to be without God’s
laws than the pope’s.” Tyndale replied: “I defy the pope and all his
laws; and if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy
that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.”—
Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, page 19.
The purpose which he had begun to cherish, of giving to the peo- [247]
ple the New Testament Scriptures in their own language, was now
confirmed, and he immediately applied himself to the work. Driven
from his home by persecution, he went to London, and there for a time
pursued his labors undisturbed. But again the violence of the papists
forced him to flee. All England seemed closed against him, and he
resolved to seek shelter in Germany. Here he began the printing of
the English New Testament. Twice the work was stopped; but when
forbidden to print in one city, he went to another. At last he made his
way to Worms, where, a few years before, Luther had defended the
gospel before the Diet. In that ancient city were many friends of the
Reformation, and Tyndale there prosecuted his work without further
hindrance. Three thousand copies of the New Testament were soon
finished, and another edition followed in the same year.
With great earnestness and perseverance he continued his labors.
Notwithstanding the English authorities had guarded their ports with
the strictest vigilance, the word of God was in various ways secretly
206 The Great Controversy
conveyed to London and thence circulated throughout the country.
The papists attempted to suppress the truth, but in vain. The bishop
of Durham at one time bought of a bookseller who was a friend of
Tyndale his whole stock of Bibles, for the purpose of destroying them,
supposing that this would greatly hinder the work. But, on the contrary,
the money thus furnished, purchased material for a new and better
edition, which, but for this, could not have been published. When
Tyndale was afterward made a prisoner, his liberty was offered him on
condition that he would reveal the names of those who had helped him
meet the expense of printing his Bibles. He replied that the bishop of
Durham had done more than any other person; for by paying a large
price for the books left on hand, he had enabled him to go on with
good courage.
Tyndale was betrayed into the hands of his enemies, and at one
time suffered imprisonment for many months. He finally witnessed
for his faith by a martyr’s death; but the weapons which he prepared
[248] have enabled other soldiers to do battle through all the centuries even
to our time.
Latimer maintained from the pulpit that the Bible ought to be read
in the language of the people. The Author of Holy Scripture, said he,
“is God Himself;” and this Scripture partakes of the might and eternity
of its Author. “There is no king, emperor, magistrate, and ruler ... but
are bound to obey ... His holy word.” “Let us not take any bywalks,
but let God’s word direct us: let us not walk after ... our forefathers,
nor seek not what they did, but what they should have done.”—Hugh
Latimer, “First Sermon Preached Before King Edward VI.”
Barnes and Frith, the faithful friends of Tyndale, arose to defend
the truth. The Ridleys and Cranmer followed. These leaders in the
English Reformation were men of learning, and most of them had been
highly esteemed for zeal or piety in the Romish communion. Their
opposition to the papacy was the result of their knowledge of the errors
of the “holy see.” Their acquaintance with the mysteries of Babylon
gave greater power to their testimonies against her.
“Now I would ask a strange question,” said Latimer. “Who is the
most diligent bishop and prelate in all England? ... I see you listening
and hearkening that I should name him.... I will tell you: it is the
devil.... He is never out of his diocese; call for him when you will,
he is ever at home; ... he is ever at his plow.... Ye shall never find
Later English Reformers 207
him idle, I warrant you.... Where the devil is resident, ... there away
with books, and up with candles; away with Bibles, and up with beads;
away with the light of the gospel, and up with the light of candles, yea,
at noondays; ... down with Christ’s cross, up with purgatory pickpurse;
... away with clothing the naked, the poor, and impotent, up with
decking of images and gay garnishing of stocks and stones; up with
man’s traditions and his laws, down with God’s traditions and His
most holy word.... O that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the
corn of good doctrine, as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel!”—Ibid.,
“Sermon of the Plough.” [249]
The grand principle maintained by these Reformers—the same
that had been held by the Waldenses, by Wycliffe, by John Huss, by
Luther, Zwingli, and those who united with them—was the infallible
authority of the Holy Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice. They
denied the right of popes, councils, Fathers, and kings, to control the
conscience in matters of religion. The Bible was their authority, and
by its teaching they tested all doctrines and all claims. Faith in God
and His word sustained these holy men as they yielded up their lives
at the stake. “Be of good comfort,” exclaimed Latimer to his fellow
martyr as the flames were about to silence their voices, “we shall this
day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall
never be put out.”—Works of Hugh Latimer 1:8.
In Scotland the seeds of truth scattered by Columba and his colaborers
had never been wholly destroyed. For hundreds of years after
the churches of England submitted to Rome, those of Scotland maintained
their freedom. In the twelfth century, however, popery became
established here, and in no country did it exercise a more absolute
sway. Nowhere was the darkness deeper. Still there came rays of light
to pierce the gloom and give promise of the coming day. The Lollards,
coming from England with the Bible and the teachings of Wycliffe,
did much to preserve the knowledge of the gospel, and every century
had its witnesses and martyrs.
With the opening of the Great Reformation came the writings of
Luther, and then Tyndale’s English New Testament. Unnoticed by
the hierarchy, these messengers silently traversed the mountains and
valleys, kindling into new life the torch of truth so nearly extinguished
in Scotland, and undoing the work which Rome for four centuries of
oppression had done.
208 The Great Controversy
Then the blood of martyrs gave fresh impetus to the movement.
The papist leaders, suddenly awakening to the danger that threatened
[250] their cause, brought to the stake some of the noblest and most honored
of the sons of Scotland. They did but erect a pulpit, from which
the words of these dying witnesses were heard throughout the land,
thrilling the souls of the people with an undying purpose to cast off
the shackles of Rome.
Hamilton andWishart, princely in character as in birth, with a long
line of humbler disciples, yielded up their lives at the stake. But from
the burning pile of Wishart there came one whom the flames were not
to silence, one who under God was to strike the death knell of popery
in Scotland.
John Knox had turned away from the traditions and mysticisms of
the church, to feed upon the truths of God’s word; and the teaching of
Wishart had confirmed his determination to forsake the communion of
Rome and join himself to the persecuted Reformers.
Urged by his companions to take the office of preacher, he shrank
with trembling from its responsibility, and it was only after days of
seclusion and painful conflict with himself that he consented. But
having once accepted the position, he pressed forward with inflexible
determination and undaunted courage as long as life continued. This
truehearted Reformer feared not the face of man. The fires of martyrdom,
blazing around him, served only to quicken his zeal to greater
intensity. With the tyrant’s ax held menacingly over his head, he stood
his ground, striking sturdy blows on the right hand and on the left to
demolish idolatry.
When brought face to face with the queen of Scotland, in whose
presence the zeal of many a leader of the Protestants had abated, John
Knox bore unswerving witness for the truth. He was not to be won
by caresses; he quailed not before threats. The queen charged him
with heresy. He had taught the people to receive a religion prohibited
by the state, she declared, and had thus transgressed God’s command
enjoining subjects to obey their princes. Knox answered firmly:
“As right religion took neither original strength nor authority from
worldly princes, but from the eternal God alone, so are not subjects
[251] bound to frame their religion according to the appetites of their princes.
For oft it is that princes are the most ignorant of all others in God’s
true religion.... If all the seed of Abraham had been of the religion
Later English Reformers 209
of Pharaoh, whose subjects they long were, I pray you, madam, what
religion would there have been in the world? Or if all men in the days
of the apostles had been of the religion of the Roman emperors, what
religion would there have been upon the face of the earth? ... And so,
madam, ye may perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of
their princes, albeit they are commanded to give them obedience.”
Said Mary: “Ye interpret the Scriptures in one manner, and they
[the Roman Catholic teachers] interpret in another; whom shall I
believe, and who shall be judge?”
“Ye shall believe God, that plainly speaketh in His word,” answered
the Reformer; “and farther than the word teaches you, ye neither shall
believe the one nor the other. The word of God is plain in itself; and
if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, which is
never contrary to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other
places, so that there can remain no doubt but unto such as obstinately
remain ignorant.”—David Laing, The Collected Works of John Knox,
vol. 2, pp. 281, 284.
Such were the truths that the fearless Reformer, at the peril of his
life, spoke in the ear of royalty. With the same undaunted courage he
kept to his purpose, praying and fighting the battles of the Lord, until
Scotland was free from popery.
In England the establishment of Protestantism as the national religion
diminished, but did not wholly stop, persecution. While many
of the doctrines of Rome had been renounced, not a few of its forms
were retained. The supremacy of the pope was rejected, but in his
place the monarch was enthroned as the head of the church. In the
service of the church there was still a wide departure from the purity
and simplicity of the gospel. The great principle of religious liberty
was not yet understood. Though the horrible cruelties which Rome em- [252]
ployed against heresy were resorted to but rarely by Protestant rulers,
yet the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates
of his own conscience was not acknowledged. All were required to
accept the doctrines and observe the forms of worship prescribed by
the established church. Dissenters suffered persecution, to a greater or
less extent, for hundreds of years.
In the seventeenth century thousands of pastors were expelled
from their positions. The people were forbidden, on pain of heavy
fines, imprisonment, and banishment, to attend any religious meetings
210 The Great Controversy
except such as were sanctioned by the church. Those faithful souls
who could not refrain from gathering to worship God were compelled
to meet in dark alleys, in obscure garrets, and at some seasons in the
woods at midnight. In the sheltering depths of the forest, a temple
of God’s own building, those scattered and persecuted children of
the Lord assembled to pour out their souls in prayer and praise. But
despite all their precautions, many suffered for their faith. The jails
were crowded. Families were broken up. Many were banished to
foreign lands. Yet God was with His people, and persecution could
not prevail to silence their testimony. Many were driven across the
ocean to America and here laid the foundations of civil and religious
liberty which have been the bulwark and glory of this country.
Again, as in apostolic days, persecution turned out to the furtherance
of the gospel. In a loathsome dungeon crowded with profligates
and felons, John Bunyan breathed the very atmosphere of heaven; and
there he wrote his wonderful allegory of the pilgrim’s journey from
the land of destruction to the celestial city. For over two hundred years
that voice from Bedford jail has spoken with thrilling power to the
hearts of men. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Grace Abounding to
the Chief of Sinners have guided many feet into the path of life.
Baxter, Flavel, Alleine, and other men of talent, education, and
[253] deep Christian experience stood up in valiant defense of the faith which
was once delivered to the saints. The work accomplished by these
men, proscribed and outlawed by the rulers of this world, can never
perish. Flavel’s Fountain of Life and Method of Grace have taught
thousands how to commit the keeping of their souls to Christ. Baxter’s
Reformed Pastor has proved a blessing to many who desire a revival
of the work of God, and his Saints’ Everlasting Rest has done its work
in leading souls to the “rest” that remaineth for the people of God.
A hundred years later, in a day of great spiritual darkness, Whitefield
and theWesleys appeared as light bearers for God. Under the rule
of the established church the people of England had lapsed into a state
of religious declension hardly to be distinguished from heathenism.
Natural religion was the favorite study of the clergy, and included
most of their theology. The higher classes sneered at piety, and prided
themselves on being above what they called its fanaticism. The lower
classes were grossly ignorant and abandoned to vice, while the church
Later English Reformers 211
had no courage or faith any longer to support the downfallen cause of
truth.
The great doctrine of justification by faith, so clearly taught by
Luther, had been almost wholly lost sight of; and the Romish principle
of trusting to good works for salvation, had taken its place. Whitefield
and the Wesleys, who were members of the established church, were
sincere seekers for the favor of God, and this they had been taught was
to be secured by a virtuous life and an observance of the ordinances of
religion.
When CharlesWesley at one time fell ill, and anticipated that death
was approaching, he was asked upon what he rested his hope of eternal
life. His answer was: “I have used my best endeavors to serve God.”
As the friend who had put the question seemed not to be fully satisfied
with his answer, Wesley thought: “What! are not my endeavors a
sufficient ground of hope? Would he rob me of my endeavors? I have
nothing else to trust to.”—John Whitehead, Life of the Rev. Charles
Wesley, page 102. Such was the dense darkness that had settled down [254]
on the church, hiding the atonement, robbing Christ of His glory, and
turning the minds of men from their only hope of salvation—the blood
of the crucified Redeemer.
Wesley and his associates were led to see that true religion is
seated in the heart, and that God’s law extends to the thoughts as well
as to the words and actions. Convinced of the necessity of holiness
of heart, as well as correctness of outward deportment, they set out in
earnest upon a new life. By the most diligent and prayerful efforts they
endeavored to subdue the evils of the natural heart. They lived a life
of self-denial, charity, and humiliation, observing with great rigor and
exactness every measure which they thought could be helpful to them
in obtaining what they most desired—that holiness which could secure
the favor of God. But they did not obtain the object which they sought.
In vain were their endeavors to free themselves from the condemnation
of sin or to break its power. It was the same struggle which Luther had
experienced in his cell at Erfurt. It was the same question which had
tortured his soul—“How should man be just before God?” Job 9:2.
The fires of divine truth, well-nigh extinguished upon the altars
of Protestantism, were to be rekindled from the ancient torch handed
down the ages by the Bohemian Christians. After the Reformation,
Protestantism in Bohemia had been trampled out by the hordes of
212 The Great Controversy
Rome. All who refused to renounce the truth were forced to flee.
Some of these, finding refuge in Saxony, there maintained the ancient
faith. It was from the descendants of these Christians that light came
to Wesley and his associates.
John and Charles Wesley, after being ordained to the ministry,
were sent on a mission to America. On board the ship was a company
of Moravians. Violent storms were encountered on the passage, and
John Wesley, brought face to face with death, felt that he had not
the assurance of peace with God. The Germans, on the contrary,
[255] manifested a calmness and trust to which he was a stranger.
“I had long before,” he says, “observed the great seriousness of
their behavior. Of their humility they had given a continual proof, by
performing those servile offices for the other passengers which none
of the English would undertake; for which they desired and would
receive no pay, saying it was good for their proud hearts, and their
loving Saviour had done more for them. And every day had given
them occasion of showing a meekness which no injury could move. If
they were pushed, struck, or thrown about, they rose again and went
away; but no complaint was found in their mouth. There was now an
opportunity of trying whether they were delivered from the spirit of
fear, as well as from that of pride, anger, and revenge. In the midst
of the psalm wherewith their service began, the sea broke over, split
the mainsail in pieces, covered the ship, and poured in between the
decks as if the great deep had already swallowed us up. A terrible
screaming began among the English. The Germans calmly sang on. I
asked one of them afterwards, ‘Were you not afraid?’ He answered,
‘I thank God, no.’ I asked, ‘But were not your women and children
afraid?’ He replied mildly, ‘No; our women and children are not afraid
to die.’”—Whitehead, Life of the Rev. John Wesley, page 10.
Upon arriving in Savannah, Wesley for a short time abode with the
Moravians, and was deeply impressed with their Christian deportment.
Of one of their religious services, in striking contrast to the lifeless
formalism of the Church of England, he wrote: “The great simplicity
as well as solemnity of the whole almost made me forget the seventeen
hundred years between, and imagine myself in one of those assemblies
where form and state were not; but Paul, the tentmaker, or Peter, the
fisherman, presided; yet with the demonstration of the Spirit and of
power.”—Ibid., pages 11, 12.
Later English Reformers 213
On his return to England, Wesley, under the instruction of a Moravian
preacher, arrived at a clearer understanding of Bible faith. He
was convinced that he must renounce all dependence upon his own
works for salvation and must trust wholly to “the Lamb of God, which [256]
taketh away the sin of the world.” At a meeting of the Moravian society
in London a statement was read from Luther, describing the change
which the Spirit of God works in the heart of the believer. As Wesley
listened, faith was kindled in his soul. “I felt my heart strangely
warmed,” he says. “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation:
and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins,
even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”—Ibid., page
52.
Through long years of wearisome and comfortless striving—years
of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation—Wesley had
steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had
found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win
by prayers and fasts, by almsdeeds and self-abnegation, was a gift,
“without money and without price.”
Once established in the faith of Christ, his whole soul burned with
the desire to spread everywhere a knowledge of the glorious gospel of
God’s free grace. “I look upon all the world as my parish,” he said;
“in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden
duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of
salvation.”—Ibid., page 74.
He continued his strict and self-denying life, not now as the ground,
but the result of faith; not the root, but the fruit of holiness. The grace
of God in Christ is the foundation of the Christian’s hope, and that
grace will be manifested in obedience. Wesley’s life was devoted to
the preaching of the great truths which he had received—justification
through faith in the atoning blood of Christ, and the renewing power of
the Holy Spirit upon the heart, bringing forth fruit in a life conformed
to the example of Christ.
Whitefield and the Wesleys had been prepared for their work by
long and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition; and
that they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ, [257]
they had been subjected to the fiery ordeal of scorn, derision, and persecution,
both in the university and as they were entering the ministry.
They and a few others who sympathized with them were contemp214
The Great Controversy
tuously called Methodists by their ungodly fellow students—a name
which is at the present time regarded as honorable by one of the largest
denominations in England and America.
As members of the Church of England they were strongly attached
to her forms of worship, but the Lord had presented before them in His
word a higher standard. The Holy Spirit urged them to preach Christ
and Him crucified. The power of the Highest attended their labors.
Thousands were convicted and truly converted. It was necessary that
these sheep be protected from ravening wolves. Wesley had no thought
of forming a new denomination, but he organized them under what
was called the Methodist Connection.
Mysterious and trying was the opposition which these preachers
encountered from the established church; yet God, in His wisdom, had
overruled events to cause the reform to begin within the church itself.
Had it come wholly from without, it would not have penetrated where
it was so much needed. But as the revival preachers were churchmen,
and labored within the pale of the church wherever they could find
opportunity, the truth had an entrance where the doors would otherwise
have remained closed. Some of the clergy were roused from their moral
stupor and became zealous preachers in their own parishes. Churches
that had been petrified by formalism were quickened into life.
In Wesley’s time, as in all ages of the church’s history, men of
different gifts performed their appointed work. They did not harmonize
upon every point of doctrine, but all were moved by the Spirit of God,
and united in the absorbing aim to win souls to Christ. The differences
between Whitefield and the Wesleys threatened at one time to create
[258] alienation; but as they learned meekness in the school of Christ, mutual
forbearance and charity reconciled them. They had no time to dispute,
while error and iniquity were teeming everywhere, and sinners were
going down to ruin.
The servants of God trod a rugged path. Men of influence and
learning employed their powers against them. After a time many of the
clergy manifested determined hostility, and the doors of the churches
were closed against a pure faith and those who proclaimed it. The
course of the clergy in denouncing them from the pulpit aroused the
elements of darkness, ignorance, and iniquity. Again and again did
John Wesley escape death by a miracle of God’s mercy. When the
rage of the mob was excited against him, and there seemed no way of
Later English Reformers 215
escape, an angel in human form came to his side, the mob fell back,
and the servant of Christ passed in safety from the place of danger.
Of his deliverance from the enraged mob on one of these occasions,
Wesley said: “Many endeavored to throw me down while we were
going down hill on a slippery path to the town; as well judging that if I
was once on the ground, I should hardly rise any more. But I made no
stumble at all, nor the least slip, till I was entirely out of their hands....
Although many strove to lay hold on my collar or clothes, to pull me
down, they could not fasten at all: only one got fast hold of the flap
of my waistcoat, which was soon left in his hand; the other flap, in
the pocket of which was a bank note, was torn but half off.... A lusty
man just behind, struck at me several times, with a large oaken stick;
with which if he had struck me once on the back part of my head, it
would have saved him all further trouble. But every time, the blow
was turned aside, I know not how; for I could not move to the right
hand or left.... Another came rushing through the press, and raising
his arm to strike, on a sudden let it drop, and only stroked my head,
saying, ‘What soft hair he has!’ ... The very first men whose hearts
were turned were the heroes of the town, the captains of the rabble
on all occasions, one of them having been a prize fighter at the bear [259]
gardens....
“By how gentle degrees does God prepare us for His will! Two
years ago, a piece of brick grazed my shoulders. It was a year after
that the stone struck me between the eyes. Last month I received one
blow, and this evening two, one before we came into the town, and
one after we were gone out; but both were as nothing: for though one
man struck me on the breast with all his might, and the other on the
mouth with such force that the blood gushed out immediately, I felt no
more pain from either of the blows than if they had touched me with a
straw.”—John Wesley, Works, vol. 3, pp. 297, 298.
The Methodists of those early days—people as well as preachers—
endured ridicule and persecution, alike from church members and from
the openly irreligious who were inflamed by their misrepresentations.
They were arraigned before courts of justice—such only in name, for
justice was rare in the courts of that time. Often they suffered violence
from their persecutors. Mobs went from house to house, destroying
furniture and goods, plundering whatever they chose, and brutally
abusing men, women, and children. In some instances, public notices
216 The Great Controversy
were posted, calling upon those who desired to assist in breaking the
windows and robbing the houses of the Methodists, to assemble at
a given time and place. These open violations of both human and
divine law were allowed to pass without a reprimand. A systematic
persecution was carried on against a people whose only fault was that
of seeking to turn the feet of sinners from the path of destruction to
the path of holiness.
Said John Wesley, referring to the charges against himself and his
associates: “Some allege that the doctrines of these men are false,
erroneous, and enthusiastic; that they are new and unheard-of till of
late; that they are Quakerism, fanaticism, popery. This whole pretense
has been already cut up by the roots, it having been shown at large
that every branch of this doctrine is the plain doctrine of Scripture
[260] interpreted by our own church. Therefore it cannot be either false
or erroneous, provided the Scripture be true.” “Others allege, ‘Their
doctrine is too strict; they make the way to heaven too narrow.’ And this
is in truth the original objection, (as it was almost the only one for some
time,) and is secretly at the bottom of a thousand more, which appear
in various forms. But do they make the way to heaven any narrower
than our Lord and His apostles made it? Is their doctrine stricter than
that of the Bible? Consider only a few plain texts: ‘Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy strength.’ ‘For every idle word which men shall
speak, they shall give an account in the day of judgment.’ ‘Whether ye
eat, or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’
“If their doctrine is stricter than this, they are to blame; but you
know in your conscience it is not. And who can be one jot less strict
without corrupting the word of God? Can any steward of the mysteries
of God be found faithful if he change any part of that sacred depositum?
No. He can abate nothing, he can soften nothing; he is constrained to
declare to all men, ‘I may not bring down the Scripture to your taste.
You must come up to it, or perish forever.’ This is the real ground of
that other popular cry concerning ‘the uncharitableness of these men.’
Uncharitable, are they? In what respect? Do they not feed the hungry
and clothe the naked? ‘No; that is not the thing: they are not wanting
in this: but they are so uncharitable in judging! they think none can be
saved but those of their own way.’”—Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 152, 153.
Later English Reformers 217
The spiritual declension which had been manifest in England just
before the time of Wesley was in great degree the result of antinomian
teaching. Many affirmed that Christ had abolished the moral law and
that Christians are therefore under no obligation to observe it; that a
believer is freed from the “bondage of good works.” Others, though
admitting the perpetuity of the law, declared that it was unnecessary [261]
for ministers to exhort the people to obedience of its precepts, since
those whom God had elected to salvation would, “by the irresistible
impulse of divine grace, be led to the practice of piety and virtue,”
while those who were doomed to eternal reprobation “did not have
power to obey the divine law.”
Others, also holding that “the elect cannot fall from grace nor
forfeit the divine favor,” arrived at the still more hideous conclusion
that “the wicked actions they commit are not really sinful, nor to be
considered as instances of their violation of the divine law, and that,
consequently, they have no occasion either to confess their sins or to
break them off by repentance.”—McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia,
art. “Antinomians.” Therefore, they declared that even one of the vilest
of sins, “considered universally an enormous violation of the divine
law, is not a sin in the sight of God,” if committed by one of the elect,
“because it is one of the essential and distinctive characteristics of the
elect, that they cannot do anything that is either displeasing to God or
prohibited by the law.”
These monstrous doctrines are essentially the same as the later
teaching of popular educators and theologians—that there is no unchangeable
divine law as the standard of right, but that the standard of
morality is indicated by society itself, and has constantly been subject
to change. All these ideas are inspired by the same master spirit—by
him who, even among the sinless inhabitants of heaven, began his
work of seeking to break down the righteous restraints of the law of
God.
The doctrine of the divine decrees, unalterably fixing the character
of men, had led many to a virtual rejection of the law of God. Wesley
steadfastly opposed the errors of the antinomian teachers and showed
that this doctrine which led to antinomianism was contrary to the
Scriptures. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to [262]
all men.” “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of
218 The Great Controversy
the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all.” Titus
2:11; 1 Timothy 2:3-6. The Spirit of God is freely bestowed to enable
every man to lay hold upon the means of salvation. Thus Christ, “the
true Light,” “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” John 1:9.
Men fail of salvation through their own willful refusal of the gift of
life.
In answer to the claim that at the death of Christ the precepts of the
Decalogue had been abolished with the ceremonial law, Wesley said:
“The moral law, contained in the Ten Commandments and enforced
by the prophets, He did not take away. It was not the design of His
coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be
broken, which ‘stands fast as the faithful witness in heaven.’ ... This
was from the beginning of the world, being ‘written not on tables of
stone,’ but on the hearts of all the children of men, when they came
out of the hands of the Creator. And however the letters once wrote
by the finger of God are now in a great measure defaced by sin, yet
can they not wholly be blotted out, while we have any consciousness
of good and evil. Every part of this law must remain in force upon all
mankind, and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or
any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God,
and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.
“‘I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.’ ... Without question, His
meaning in this place is (consistently with all that goes before and
follows after),—I am come to establish it in its fullness, in spite of
all the glosses of men: I am come to place in a full and clear view
whatsoever was dark or obscure therein: I am come to declare the
true and full import of every part of it; to show the length and breadth,
[263] the entire extent, of every commandment contained therein, and the
height and depth, the inconceivable purity and spirituality of it in all
its branches.”—Wesley, sermon 25.
Wesley declared the perfect harmony of the law and the gospel.
“There is, therefore, the closest connection that can be conceived,
between the law and the gospel. On the one hand, the law continually
makes way for, and points us to, the gospel; on the other, the gospel
continually leads us to a more exact fulfilling of the law. The law, for
instance, requires us to love God, to love our neighbor, to be meek,
humble, or holy. We feel that we are not sufficient for these things;
Later English Reformers 219
yea, that ‘with man this is impossible;’ but we see a promise of God to
give us that love, and to make us humble, meek, and holy: we lay hold
of this gospel, of these glad tidings; it is done unto us according to our
faith; and ‘the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us,’ through faith
which is in Christ Jesus....
“In the highest rank of the enemies of the gospel of Christ,” said
Wesley, “are they who openly and explicitly ‘judge the law’ itself,
and ‘speak evil of the law;’ who teach men to break (to dissolve, to
loose, to untie the obligation of) not one only, whether of the least
or of the greatest, but all the commandments at a stroke.... The most
surprising of all the circumstances that attend this strong delusion, is
that they who are given up to it, really believe that they honor Christ by
overthrowing His law, and that they are magnifying His office while
they are destroying His doctrine! Yea, they honor Him just as Judas did
when he said, ‘Hail, Master, and kissed Him.’ And He may as justly
say to every one of them, ‘Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?’
It is no other than betraying Him with a kiss, to talk of His blood, and
take away His crown; to set light by any part of His law, under pretense
of advancing His gospel. Nor indeed can anyone escape this charge,
who preaches faith in any such a manner as either directly or indirectly
tends to set aside any branch of obedience: who preaches Christ so as
to disannul, or weaken in any wise, the least of the commandments of
God.”—Ibid. [264]
To those who urged that “the preaching of the gospel answers all
the ends of the law,” Wesley replied: “This we utterly deny. It does
not answer the very first end of the law, namely, the convincing men
of sin, the awakening those who are still asleep on the brink of hell.”
The apostle Paul declares that “by the law is the knowledge of sin;”
“and not until man is convicted of sin, will he truly feel his need of the
atoning blood of Christ.... ‘They that be whole,’ as our Lord Himself
observes, ‘need not a physician, but they that are sick.’ It is absurd,
therefore, to offer a physician to them that are whole, or that at least
imagine themselves so to be. You are first to convince them that they
are sick; otherwise they will not thank you for your labor. It is equally
absurd to offer Christ to them whose heart is whole, having never yet
been broken.”—Ibid., sermon 35.
Thus while preaching the gospel of the grace of God, Wesley,
like his Master, sought to “magnify the law, and make it honorable.”
220 The Great Controversy
Faithfully did he accomplish the work given him of God, and glorious
were the results which he was permitted to behold. At the close of his
long life of more than fourscore years—above half a century spent in
itinerant ministry—his avowed adherents numbered more than half a
million souls. But the multitude that through his labors had been lifted
from the ruin and degradation of sin to a higher and a purer life, and
the number who by his teaching had attained to a deeper and richer
experience, will never be known till the whole family of the redeemed
shall be gathered into the kingdom of God. His life presents a lesson of
priceless worth to every Christian. Would that the faith and humility,
the untiring zeal, self-sacrifice, and devotion of this servant of Christ
[265] might be reflected in the churches of today!