The Covenant Line: From Eden to Independence Hall

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. (Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, ch. 1 vs. 3-6)

But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Second Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, ch. 2 vs. 13-14)

ALL through, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, the Lamp of Truth burned dimly in the sanctuary of Christendom. Its flame often sank low, and appeared about to expire, yet never did it wholly go out. God remembered His covenant with the light, and set bounds to the darkness. Not only had this heaven-kindled lamp its period of waxing and waning, like those luminaries that God has placed on high, but like them, too, it had its appointed circuit to accomplish. Now it was on the cities of Northern Italy that its light was seen to fall; and now its rays illumined the plains of Southern France. Now it shone along the course of the Danube and the Moldau, or tinted the pale shores of England, or shed its glory upon the Scottish Hebrides. Now it was on the summits of the Alps that it was seen to burn, spreading a gracious morning on the mountain-tops, and giving promise of the sure approach of day. And then, anon, it would bury itself in the deep valleys of Piedmont, and seek shelter from the furious tempests of persecution behind the great rocks and the eternal snows of the everlasting hills. Let us briefly trace the growth of this truth to the days of Wicliffe.

The spread of Christianity during the first three centuries was rapid and extensive. The main causes that contributed to this were the translation of the Scriptures into the languages of the Roman world, the fidelity and zeal of the preachers of the Gospel, and the heroic deaths of the martyrs. It was the success of Christianity that first set limits to its progress. It had received a terrible blow, it is true, under Diocletian. This, which was the most terrible of all the early persecutions, had, in the belief of the Pagans, utterly exterminated the "Christian superstition" So far from this, it had but afforded the Gospel an opportunity of giving to the world a mightier proof of its divinity. It rose from the stakes and massacres of Diocletian, to begin a new career, in which it was destined to triumph over the empire which thought that it had crushed it. Dignities and wealth now flowed in upon its ministers and disciples, and according to the uniform testimony of all the early historians, the faith which had maintained its purity and rigor in the humble sanctuaries and lowly position of the first age, and amid the fires of its pagan persecutors, became corrupt and waxed feeble amid the gorgeous temples and the worldly dignities which imperial favor had lavished upon it.

From the fourth century the corruptions of the Christian Church continued to make marked and rapid progress. The Bible began to be hidden from the people. And in proportion as the light, which is the surest guarantee of liberty, was withdrawn, the clergy usurped authority over the members of the Church.

Such an arrangement was not fitted to nourish spirituality of mind, or humility of disposition, or peacefulness of temper… The gates of the sanctuary once forced, the stream of corruption continued to flow with ever-deepening volume. The declensions in doctrine and worship already introduced had changed the brightness of the Church's morning into twilight; the descent of the Northern nations, which, beginning in the fifth, continued through several successive centuries, converted that twilight into night. The new tribes had changed their country, but not their superstitions; and, unhappily, there was neither zeal nor vigor in the Christianity of the age to effect their instruction and their genuine conversion. The Bible had been withdrawn; in the pulpit fable had usurped the place of truth; holy lives, whose silent eloquence might have won upon the barbarians, were rarely exemplified; and thus, instead of the Church dissipating the superstitions that now encompassed her like a cloud, these superstitions all but quenched her own light. She opened her gates to receive the new peoples as they were. She sprinkled them with the baptismal water; she inscribed their names in her registers; she taught them in their invocations to repeat the titles of the Trinity; but the doctrines of the Gospel, which alone can enlighten the understanding, purify the heart, and enrich the life with virtue, she was little careful to inculcate upon them. She folded them within her pale, but they were scarcely more Christian than before, while she was greatly less so.

From the sixth century down-wards Christianity was a mongrel system, made up of pagan rites revived from classic times, of superstitions imported from the forests of Northern Germany, and of Christian beliefs and observances which continued to linger in the Church from primitive and purer times. The inward power of religion was lost; and it was in vain that men strove to supply its place by the outward form. They nourished their piety not at the living fountains of truth, but with the "beggarly elements" of ceremonies and relics, of consecrated lights and holy vestments. Nor was it Divine knowledge only that was contemned; men forbore to cultivate letters, or practice virtue. Baronius confesses that in the sixth century few in Italy were skilled in both Greek and Latin. Nay, even Gregory the Great acknowledged that he was ignorant of Greek. "The main qualifications of the clergy were, that they should be able to read well, sing their matins, know the Lord's Prayer, psalter, forms of exorcism, and understand how to compute the times of the sacred festivals. Nor were they very sufficient for this, if we may believe the account some have given of them. Musculus says that many of them never saw the Scriptures in all their lives. It would seem incredible, but it is delivered by no less an authority than Amama, that an Archbishop of Mainz, lighting upon a Bible and looking into it, expressed himself thus: 'Of a truth I do not know what book this is, but I perceive everything in it is against us.'"

The Apostolicity and Independence of the Christian Church among the Waldenses
The apostasy was not universal. At no time did God leave His ancient Gospel without witnesses. When one body of confessors yielded to the darkness, or was cut off by violence, another arose in some other land, so that there was no age in which, in some country or other of Christendom, public testimony was not borne against the errors of Rome, and in behalf of the Gospel which she sought to destroy.

The country in which we find the earliest of these Protesters is Italy. The See of Rome, in those days, embraced only the capital and the surrounding provinces. The diocese of Milan, which included the plain of Lombardy, the Alps of Piedmont, and the southern provinces of France, greatly exceeded it in extent. It is an undoubted historical fact that this powerful diocese was not then tributary to the Papal chair. "The Bishops of Milan," says Pope Pelagius I. (555), "do not come to Rome for ordination." He further informs us that this "was an ancient custom of theirs." Pope Pelagius, however, attempted to subvert this "ancient custom," but his efforts resulted only in a wider estrangement between the two dioceses of Milan and Rome. For when Platina speaks of the subjection of Milan to the Pope under Stephen IX, in the middle of the eleventh century, he admits that "for 200 years together the Church of Milan had been separated from the Church of Rome." Even then, though on the very eve of the Hildebrandine era, the destruction of the independence of the diocese was not accomplished without a protest on the part of its clergy, and a tumult on the part of the people. The former affirmed that "the Ambrosian Church was not subject to the laws of Rome; that it had been always free, and could not, with honor, surrender its liberties." The latter broke out into clamor, and threatened violence to Damianus, the deputy sent to receive their submission. "The people grew into higher ferment," says Baronius; "the bells were rung; the episcopal palace beset; and the legate threatened with death." Traces of its early independence remain to this day in the Rito or Culto Ambrogiano, still in use throughout the whole of the ancient Archbishopric of Milan.

One consequence of this ecclesiastical independence of Northern Italy was, that the corruptions of which Rome was the source were late in being introduced into Milan and its diocese. The evangelical light shone there some centuries after the darkness had gathered in the southern part of the peninsula….as regards the cardinal doctrines of salvation, the faith of these men was essentially Protestant, and stood out in bold antagonism to the leading principles of the Roman creed. And such, with more or less of clearness, must be held to have been the profession of the pastors over whom they presided. And the Churches they ruled and taught were numerous and widely planted. They flourished in the towns and villages which dot the vast plain that stretches like a garden for 200 miles along the foot of the Alps; they existed in those romantic and fertile valleys over which the great mountains hang their pine forests and snows, and, passing the summit, they extended into the southern provinces of France, even as far as to the Rhone, on the banks of which Polycarp, the disciple of John, in early times had planted the Gospel, to be watered in the succeeding centuries by the blood of thousands of martyrs. Darkness gives relief to the light, and error necessitates a fuller development and a clearer definition of truth. On this principle the ninth century produced the most remarkable perhaps of all those great champions who strove to set limits to the growing superstition, and to preserve, pure and undefiled, the faith which apostles had preached.

It was the ninth century, and superstitious beliefs and idolatrous rites were overspreading the Church, when Claudius, Bishop of Turin, who was deeply imbued with the spirit of Augustine, set himself to arrest the growing corruption wiht all the fervour of a living faith, and the vigour of a courageous and powerful intellect. To the battle for the purity of doctrine he joined that for the independence of the Churches of Lombardy. Even in Claude's day they remained free, although many Churches more remote from Rome had already been subjugated by that all-conquering power. The Ambrosian Liturgy was still used in the cathedral of Milan, and the Augustinian doctrine continued to be preached from many of the pulpits of Lombardy and Piedmont. This independence of Rome, and this greater purity of faith and worship, these Churches mainly owed to the three Apostolic men whose names adorn their annals—Ambrose, Vigilantius, and Claude.

When Claude went to his grave, about the year 840, the battle, although not altogether dropped, was but languidly maintained. Attempts were renewed to induce the Bishops of Milan to accept the episcopal pall, the badge of spiritual vassalage, from the Pope; but it was not till the middle of the eleventh century (1059) under Nicholas II., that these attempts were successful. Petrus Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, and Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, were dispatched by the Pontiff to receive the submission of the Lombard Churches, and the popular tumults amid which that submission was extorted sufficiently show that the spirit of Claude still lingered at the foot of the Alps. Nor did the clergy conceal the regret with which they surrendered their ancient liberties to a power before which the whole earth then bowing down; for the Papal legate, Damianus, informs us that the clergy of Milan maintained in his presence that "The Ambrosian Church, according to the ancient institutions of the Fathers, was always free, without being subject to the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of Rome had no jurisdiction over their Church as to the government or constitution of it.”

But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A considerable body of Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of these some crossed the Alps, descended the Rhine, and raised the standard of opposition in the diocese of Cologne, where they were branded as Manicheans, and rewarded with the stake. Others retired into the valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, and there maintained their scriptural faith and their ancient independence. What has just been related respecting the dioceses of Milan and Turin settles the question of the apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys. It is not necessary to show that missionaries were sent from Rome in the fist age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to show that these Churches have existed as distinct and separate communities from early days; enough that they formed a part, as unquestionably they did, of the great evangelical Church of the North of Italy. This is the proof at once of their apostolicity and their independence. It attests their descent from apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of Churches. When their co-religionists on the plains entered within the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains, and, spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the corrupt tenets of the Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them. Rome manifestly was the schismatic, she it was that had abandoned what was once the common faith of Christendom, leaving by that step to all who remained on the old ground the indisputably valid title of the True Church. ~~ (“The History of Protestantism: History of the Waldenses, Rev. J. A. Wylie”)

The Beliefs of the Waldensians
(From “THE WALDENSES WERE INDEPENDENT BAPTISTS: An Examination of the Doctrines of this Medieval Sect By Thomas Williamson):
Numerous historians have paid tribute to the testimony of the Waldenses for the doctrine of justification by faith alone. D'Aubigne says: “From their mountain heights the Waldenses protested during a long series of ages against the superstitions of Rome. "They contend for the lively hope which they have in God through Christ - for the regeneration and interior revival by faith, hope and charity - for the merits of Jesus Christ, and the all-sufficiency of His grace and righteousness."

Edman says: “As to their doctrinal views there is little dispute: they held to . . . justification by faith, and a life of good works together with stout denial of the value of priestly absolution or intercession of saints and angels, or the existence of purgatory, or the authority of the Roman Church.”

The catechism presented by Morland and dated by him as being "written in their own language several hundreds of years before either Calvin or Luther" contains this statement which appears to teach Calvinism before Calvin:

The historian Jones cites these authorities who believed that the Waldenses were Calvinists:

Behind this rampart of mountains, which Providence, foreseeing the approach of evil days, would almost seem to have reared on purpose, did the remnant of the early apostolic Church of Italy kindle their lamp, and here did that lamp continue to burn all throught the long night which descended on Christendom. There is a singular concurrence of evidence in favour of their high antiquity. Their traditions invariably point to an unbroken descent from the earliest times, as regard their religious belief. The Nobla Leycon, which dates from the year 1100… though a poem, is in reality a confession of faith, and could have been composed only after some considerable study of the system of Chrsitianity, in contradistinction to the errors of Rome. Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), had admitted their antiquity, and stigmatised them as "the most dangerous of all heretics, because the most ancient." (Wylie, ibid.)

The Roman Persecution of the Waldensians
THE Waldenses stand apart and alone in the Christian world. Their place on the surface of Europe is unique; their position in history is not less unique; and the end appointed them to fulfill is one which has been assigned to them alone, no other people being permitted to share it with them. The Waldenses bear a twofold testimony. Like the snow-clad peaks amid which their dwelling is placed, which look down upon the plains of Italy on the one side, and the provinces of France on the other, this people stand equally related to primitive ages and modern times, and give by no means equivocal testimony respecting both Rome and the Reformation. If they are old, then Rome is new; if they are pure, then Rome is corrupt; and if they have retained the faith of the apostles, it follows incontestably that Rome has departed from it. That the Waldensian faith and worship existed many centuries before Protestantism arose is undeniable; the proofs and monuments of this fact lie scattered over all the histories and all the lands of mediaeval Europe; but the antiquity of the Waldenses is the antiquity of Protestantism. The Church of the Reformation was in the loins of the Waldensian Church ages before the birth of Luther; her first cradle was placed amid those terrors and sublimities, those ice-clad peaks and great bulwarks of rock. In their dispersions over so many lands–over France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England, Calabria, Naples–the Waldenses sowed the seeds of that great spiritual revival which, beginning in the days of Wycliffe, and advancing in the times of Luther and Calvin, awaits its full consummation in the ages to come.

In the place which the Church of the Alps has held, and the office she has discharged, we see the reason of that peculiar and bitter hostility which Rome has ever borne this holy and venerable community. It was natural that Rome should wish to efface so conclusive a proof of her apostasy, and silence a witness whose testimony so emphatically corroborates the position of Protestantism. The great bulwark of the Reformed Church is the Word of God; but next to this is the pre-existence of a community spread throughout Western Christendom, with doctrines and worship substantially one with those of the Reformation.

The Persecutions of this remarkable people form one of the most heroic pages of the Church's history. These persecutions, protracted through many centuries, were endured with a patience, a constancy, a bravery honorable to the Gospel, as well as to those simple people, whom the Gospel converted into heroes and martyrs. Their resplendent virtues illumined the darkness of their age; and we turn with no little relief from a Christendom sunk in barbarism and superstition to this remnant of an ancient people, who here in their mountain-engirdled territory practiced the simplicity, the piety, and the heroism of a better age. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Apostolicity and Independence of the Christian Church amongst the Presbyters of Iona
There is a great concurrence of testimony—scattered allusions in the classic writers, and numerous direct statements in the Christian fathers--all going to show that in the course of a few decades after the crucifixion, the "great tidings" had reached the extremities of the Roman world, and had passed beyond them. The nations had become, in a sense, of one language, and the world, in a sense, but one country, by the network of roads constructed for the passage of the legions, and which opened easy intercourse and communication from Damascus to Cadiz, and from the Tigris to the Tweed. Along these highways sped the heralds of Christianity, conquering in years nations it had taken Rome centuries to subdue.

The first indication we have that the Christian day had broken in Britain is of a touching kind. It comes from the prison of Paul and is contained in the last lines his pen ever traced. Writing to Timothy, the aged apostle, now waiting martyrdom, sends from Rome the salutations of Pudens and Claudia 2 to his former companion and fellow-labourer. Who are these two whose names Paul inscribes in his letter and lays down his pen for ever? Pudens is the son of a Roman senator, and Claudia is his wife. But of what country was the lady? It cannot be affirmed as an established fact, but there is strong grounds for believing that she was a Briton, and the daughter of a British King. The proofs that strongly lead to this conclusion are as follows. First, Marital has left us two epigrams, written at Rome at a date coinciding with Paul’s last imprisonment, in the first of which he celebrates the marriage of a Roman of rank, named Pudens, with a foreign lady named Claudia. In the later epigram, he tells us that this Claudia was a Briton. So far the information of Martial. Next comes Tacitus, who mentions that certain territories in the south of Britain were ceded to King Cogidunus as a reward for his steadfast allegiance to Rome.3 This occurred while Tiberius Claudius was emperor. But third, in 1723 a marble was dug up at Chichester, with an inscription in which mention is made of a British king, who bore the title of Tiberius Claudius Cogidunus. In the same inscription occurs the name of Pudens. According to a usage prevalent among the Romans, the daughter of this king would be named Claudia.

How interesting to think that we should have at least one British name on the page of the New Testament, and that of a lady who has won the praise of the noblest constancy in Christian friendship. When others forsook the apostle, scared away by the shadow of that doom which was now gathering over him, this daughter of Britain stood his friend to the last, and was neither ashamed of the chain of Paul nor terrified by the wrath of Nero. The incident gave happy augury of what Britain would become when the day now breaking in its sky should have fully opened upon it.

This early dawn of the Christian day in our country is borne testimony to by numerous historians. Eusebius says that "the faith of Christ began to be preached in the Roman part of Britain even in the apostles’ times."… The Christian fathers maintained openly in their writings that the light of the Gospel had travelled as far as to Britain, and that from the mountains of the farthest north had come back echoes of the song sung at midnight in the vale of Bethlehem, and not one of the many vigilant and bitter enemies of Christianity dared to contradict them. Founding on the silence of foe, as well as on the testimony of friend, we conclude that there were disciples of the Gospel in Britain certainly by the middle of the second century, and probably before the end of the first… We must be permitted to say, moreover, that it is not British writers, but early fathers of the Eastern and Western Church who have claimed as the first preacher of Christianity in our country, one of the apostolic rank.

What greatly strengthens this view is the fact that our early Christianity bore unmistakable the stamp of the East. The great church festival of those days was Easter, and the manner in which this observance was kept was the main point of distinction between the Eastern and the Western church. The Church of Asia Minor observed Easter according to a mode of reckoning which made the festival fall on the fourteenth day of the month, whatever the day of the week. The Church of Italy, on the other hand, observed Easter by a mode of reckoning which made the feast always fall on a Sabbath, whatever day of the month that might chance to be. The Christians of Britain, following another custom than that of Italy, always observed Easter on the fourteenth day of the month. On this great testing question they were ruled by the authority of the Eastern Church, and in this they plainly showed that their first christianisation came not from the City of the Caesars, but from the land which was the cradle of the Gospel and the scene of the ministry of the apostles.

Among the historical authorities who have traced British Christianity not to a Latin but an Eastern source, we can rank the great name of Neander. After setting aside the legend of King Lucius, this historian goes on to say, "The peculiarity of the later British Church is evidence against its origin from Rome; for in many ritual matters it departed from the usage of the Roman Church, and agreed much more nearly with the churches of Asia Minor. It withstood for a long time the authority of the Romish papacy. This circumstance would seem to indicate that the Britons had received their Christianity either immediately, or through Gaul, from Asia Minor--a thing quite possible and easy, by means of the commercial intercourse.

But along with the expulsion of the Britons from a country which they had occupied for five, and it may be ten centuries, before our era, there came an entire change of religion. Their conquerors were pagans. The gods whom the Anglo-Saxons worshipped were Wooden and Thor. Their hatred of the Christian faith was greater even than that of the Germanic tribes that overturned the empire, for the latter permitted themselves to be conquered by those whom they had vanquished with their swords when the consented to led to the baptismal font and conducted within the pale of the Christian church. But not so the Anglo-Saxons. Contemning the gods of the Britons, they mercilessly slaughtered the clergy, razed the churches, and on their site erected temples to Thor. England was again a pagan land.

It is the bearing of this unexpected and mysterious occurrence on Scotland that it chiefly concerns us to note. What is it we behold? It is the early Christian day of England overtaken by sudden eclipse, and a wall of heathenism drawn between Scotland and continental Europe. For a brief space, Scotland is a second time isolated from the rest of the world. For what purpose? Evidently that the pure evangelism of Iona may be shielded from the now corrupt Christianity of the Western Church. Ere this time the tide of declension in that church had begun to flow.

In truth, nothing better could have happened for British Christianity. Barbarous tribes were rushing to and fro upon the continent of Europe, giving its cities to sack, its fields to devastation, and extinguishing the lights of human learning and divine revelation. In Rome, the ancient saying was being fulfilled, "the day goeth away." The churches, now beginning to gather beneath her sceptre, sat in deep eclipse. She had wandered from the evangelical path, and could not show the true road to others. Nevertheless, in proportion as she became unfit to lead, the more ambitiously did she aspire to that high office. It was at this moment, when the prestige of her great name, and the arts she had begun to employ, might have wielded a seductive influence upon the Christians of Britain, that this partition wall of heathen barbarism suddenly rose between them and Rome. For two whole centuries they were shut in with the Bible—the book which Augustine boasted had in his day been translated into all the languages of the world. They drew their system of Christian doctrine from the Scriptures, and they framed their simple ecclesiastical polity on rules borrowed from the same divine source. They asked Rome to tell them neither what they should believe, nor how they should govern themselves. They had found a better instructor, even the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures; and they neither owed nor owned subjection to any authority on earth. Thus the Church of Scotland, placed in isolation, and growing up under native tutorship, was independent from the first. She was free born. It never occurred to her to ask right to exist from any foreign church whatever. (Rev. J.A. Wylie, “History of the Scottish Nation”)

The Culdee Presbytery of Hibernian Iona
Iona, a small island off the larger Hebridean island of Mull, was the fertile center of this system. Remote to modern eyes, Iona was at the hub of early medieval sea lanes that brought pottery and perishable goods north from France and the Mediterranean. Still, Iona was intended as a true monastery, a place set apart for Columba and his brethren.

Other island monasteries, such as one on Tiree, housed lay-folk serving out penances for their sins. Another island housed older, more experienced monks living as holy anchorites.

Iona, however, trained priests and bishops, and Columba's reputation for scholarship was great when he died (though we have little of his own work). From Iona, priests and monks ranged far and wide, founding churches in Scotland and seeking "deserts in the ocean" (lonely, distant islands). (Christianity Today, “Christian History: The Tough Dove”, Fall 1998)

Iona was the heart of Caledonia. It was the nurse of the nation. It met the successive generations of Scotchmen, as they stepped upon the stage, and taken them by the hand, lifted them up to a higher platform; and when the sons succeeded their fathers, it started them on the higher level to which it had raised their progenitors. The men of Iona were not dreamy enthusiasts, but energetic workers; and the work they did was such as the times needed. Iona was more than an evangelical church, it was an active propaganda. It was a training school of missionaries; for Iona, like Rome, aimed at making conquests though conquests of a different sort, and it was here that soldiers were provided for carrying on the war. The plans of this mission-church were wide. Her own country had of course the first claim upon her; and no long time elapsed till churches were planted in numerous districts of Scotland, supplied with pastors from the theological school of Iona, where the text-book of study was the volume of Holy Writ.

The multiplication of manuscript copies of the Bible was specially the work of the older members of the establishment. While the younger brethren were abroad on their missionary tours, the elders remained in their cells, engaged in the not less fruitful labour of multiplying copies of the Scriptures which the younger men might carry with them in their journeys, and which they might leave as the best foundation stone of the communities or churches which they formed by their preaching. The Bible thus stood at the center as the vital propelling power of the whole Columban mechanism.

Let us reflect how very much this implied, what a distinct and definite character it stamped upon the church of Iona, and how markedly different in genius and in working it proclaimed this young church to be from that great ecclesiastical body on the other side of the Alps, which was beginning to monopolize the name of church. Iona was a proclamation to the world that the BIBLE and not ROME is the one source of Truth, and the one fountain of law.

Wherever the missionaries of Iona came, they appeared not as the preachers of a new creed, elaborated and sanctioned by their leader Columba, and which till now had not been heard of beyond the precincts of their isle; they published the "common faith," as contained in Holy Scripture, which they held to be the one authoritative standard of religious belief. This was what the age needed. The theology of the Roman Church had received a large admixture from impure sources. It had become a medley of tradition, of the canons and decrees of councils, and the revelations or reveries of saints. The world needed to be shown what Christianity is as contained in its primeval fountains.

Iona, moreover, presented a public claim of Independence. The church of Iona, founding herself upon the Scriptures, had thereby the right of ruling herself by the Scriptures. Her government was within herself, and drawn from her Divine charter. An oracular Voice from the Seven Hills was then claiming the homage of all churches, and the submission of all consciences. The reply of Iona virtually was, "Christ our Head we know, and the Bible our rule we know, and to them we willingly render obedience, but this voice that speaks to us from afar is strange, and the claim of submission which it urges is one which we dare not entertain." At an hour when Rome was monopolizing all rights, and preparing for all churches a future of slavery, the flag of independence and freedom was boldly and broadly unfurled amid the seas of the north. We are accustomed to speak of Iona as a school of letters, and a nursery of art, but we fail to perceive its true significance and the mighty impulse it communicated to the national life, if we overlook the first great boon it conferred on Scotland — FREEDOM OF SOUL. (Wylie, ibid.)

Beliefs of the Presbytery of Iona
The ecclesiastical world of Rome had been shaken by violent controversies, and parted into schools. The decrees of councils were beginning to claim a higher authority than the precepts of apostles, and theological creeds had begun to be imposed upon the Church, in which truths were missing, which held a conspicuous place in Holy Writ, or tenets avowed, which were not to be read at all on the page of inspiration, much as if an astronomer should construct a map of the heavens with certain of their brightest constellations left out, and their place supplied with stars new and strange, and which were unknown to the most careful observer of the sky.

These controversies had not yet travailed so far north as the quiet world of Iona. Occupied in the study of the Scriptures, the men of that remote region heard the din only from afar. The Bible, as we shall see, was the text book of Iona.

While their brethren in the south were contending with one another for jurisdictions and precedence, the elders of Iona, gathered round the open Scriptures, were drawing water from the well, "holy and undefiled." This is, decisive as regards both the letter and the spirit of their theology. To the youth who crowded to their ocean rock in quest of instruction, we hear them say, "The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith." In these words the presbyters of Iona in the sixth century, enunciate the great formal Principle of the Reformation, while the Reformation itself was still a thousand years distant.

Even their enemies have borne them this testimony, that they made the Bible the fountain-head of their theology. "For dwelling far without the habitable globe," says Bede, "and consequently beyond the reach of the decrees of synods, . . . they could learn only those thing contained in the writings of the Prophets, the Evangelists, and the Apostles." And speaking of Aidan, who was sent to Lindisfarne from Iona, he says, "he took care to omit nothing of all the things in the evangelical, apostolical, and prophetical writings which he knew ought to be done." And yet the venerable man cannot refrain from mildly bewailing the lot of these benighted men who had only the light of the Bible to guide them, when he says again, "They had a zeal for God, but not altogether according to knowledge." Had Bede lived in our day he might have seen reason to acknowledge that, as with the man who attempts to serve two masters, so with him who thinks to walk by two lights: if he would keep in the straight path he must put out one of the two and guide himself by the other. It was the light of the Bible, not of the Church, that shone on the Rock of Iona; and by this, light did the elders walk.

Not less did the Presbyters of Iona hold the Material Principle of the Reformation, even Salvation through faith alone in Christ's righteousness. This brief formula, intelligently held, necessarily implies the recognition of the leading doctrines of Christianity. It presupposes the eternal appointment of the second Person of the Trinity as the substitute of the sinner; His work of obedience and suffering on earth in the sinner's room; the offer of a free salvation on the ground of that work, and faith as the hand by which we lay hold on that offer: all this, with the attendant doctrines, the fall, man's helplessness, renewal by the Spirit, and admission through Christ's mediation into the eternal mansions, are necessarily bound up in the brief summary of doctrine, "Justification through faith alone." Hence, it is termed the material principle, that is, the body and substance of the Reformation, even as the Bible is called its formal principle, being the rule by which it is shaped and molded. We find these two great doctrines—the two heads of the Reformation theology—in the school of Columba as really as we afterwards find then in the school of Luther and Calvin. The Reformation was in Iona before it was in Wittenberg and Geneva. The Scottish theology is not of recent times. Its sons have no reason to be ashamed of it as a novelty. It is older than the days of Knox. It flourished on the Rock of Iona a thousand years before the Reformer was born. It was waxing dim at Rome, but in proportion as the doctrine of justification by faith was being forgotten in the city where Paul had preached it in the first age, it was rising in our poor barbarous country, and after illuminating our northern land and the surrounding regions of Europe during some centuries, it lingered here all through the darkness that succeeded, and broke forth with fresh splendour in the morning of the sixteenth century.

Columba speaks through his successors. Let us listen to a few of the utterances of these men. It is Gallus who speaks, the fellow-labourer of Columbanus, and the founder of the monastery of St. Gall. "The apostle says, 'God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world," that is, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none.'' They teach the sovereignty not less than the eternity of God's purposes. "God," says Sedulius, " Hath mercy with great goodness, and hardeneth without any iniquity; so that neither can he who is saved glory of his own merits, nor he that is lost complain but of his own merits. For grace only it is that makes a difference between the redeemed and the lost, both having been framed together into one mass of perdition by a cause derived from their common original. He (God) sees all mankind condemned with so just and divine a judgment in their apostatical root."

The keenness with which the subject of free will was discussed at the period of the Reformation is well known. It is, perhaps, the deepest question in the science of supernatural theology, as both the fall and redemption hang upon it. For if the state of man's will be such that he is able to save himself, where is the need of One to redeem him? The utterances of the Columban missionaries from the sixth to the ninth century are in entire harmony with the opinions of the Reformers on this great question. Let us listen to Sedulius. "Man, by making an ill use of his Free-will, lost both himself and it. For, like a man who kills himself, is able, of course, to kill himself, because he lives, but by killing himself becomes unable to live, neither can raise himself again from the dead after he has killed himself; so when sin was committed by means of free-will, then, sin being the conqueror, free-will itself also was lost, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. But to a man thus brought into bondage and sold, whence can there be the liberty of doing good, unless He shall redeem him whose voice this is, 'if the Son make you free ye shall be free indeed." And Claudius Scotus, in the ninth century, says: "God is the author of all that is good in man; that is to say, both of good-nature and goodwill, which, unless God do work in him, man cannot do, because this good-will is prepared by the Lord in man, that, by the gift of God he may do that which by himself he could not do of his own free-will."

On the subject of the new birth, the following exposition, among others, of Sedulius, is not a little striking. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death," quoting first the words of the apostle, and then proceeding, " Observe carefully the order and sequence of these words; for the apostle having compared the death that was by Adam, to the life which is by Christ, here answers an objection, and says, "How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein, teaching us hereby, that if any one has first died to sin, he has necessarily been buried together with Christ. But if one first (i.e., before baptism), dies not to sin, he cannot be buried with Christ, for no one is ever buried while yet living. Die thou first to sin that thou mayest be able to be buried with Christ, seeing that it is to the dead only we give sepulture.'' In this teaching, which is that of a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, we can discover no trace of the opus operatum of a sacrament.

We adduce the testimony of Claudius Scotus in the ninth century. "Our Savior’s pleasure," says he, "was first to deliver to His disciples the sacrament of His body and blood, and afterwards to offer up the body itself on the altar of the cross. For as bread strengthens the body, and wine works blood in the flesh, so the one is emblematically referred to Christ’s body, the other to his blood." There is here a plain distinction between the sacrament and the body The one is the sacrament of the body, that is, the sacred sign or instituted symbol of the body, the other is the body itself. Nor does the commentator leave us to mere inference: he tells us in express words that the one is the emblem of the other; even as Augustine had defined a sacrament to be "the sign of a sacred thing." Not less Protestant is the verse of Sedulius the poet. Celebrating the Supper in song, he asks, Who else is "present in it but its great Institutor, the true Melchizedeck, to whom are given gifts that are his own, the fruit of the corn, and the joys of the vine"?… About two hundred years after, when the doctrine of transubstantiation, strengthening as the darkness deepened, began to make way in Germany and France, Berengarius stood forth as its uncompromising opponent. To maintain himself in the storm of persecution which is bold defence of the truth drew upon him, he appealed to the work of Scotus, as showing that his own views of the sacrament were those of the Church of the ninth century. This drew the tempest upon the book of Scotus without diverting it from Berengarius. The work of our countryman had the honour of being committed to the flames by order of Pope Leo IX., A.D. 1050. But this title has been preserved in the records of the age, and remains to this day to witness to the orthodoxy of the Scoto-Irish Church, and of the Church universal, on the head of the sacrament, till towards the opening of the tenth century. That title runs thus: "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."

On the doctrine of Faith as the alone instrument of Justification, Sedulius thus expresses himself: — " Ye are saved by grace through faith, not through works — through faith, that is, not through works; and, lest any careless one should arrogate to himself salvation by his faith, the apostle has added, "and that not of yourselves, because faith is not from ourselves, but from Him who hath called us."

In the absence of written creed — for written symbol there was not at Iona save the Bible — we must have recourse for proof of what we have said touching the theology of Columba, and the missionaries he trained, to the sermons, commentaries, and letters which have come down to us from the evangelists which this school sent forth. We wish our space for quotation had been larger, that it might be seen how full and clear a Gospel it was which these men preached at that early day. If they were behind the moderns in respect or the appliances they possessed for criticism and explication, which the advance of knowledge has since multiplied, they were quiet abreast of their successors as regards the grand essentials of God's revelation. Their views lacked neither depth nor breadth. The Christianity preached in the Scotland of that day was the same full-orbed system, the same galaxy of glorious truths, plain yet profound, simple yet surpassingly sublime, which constitutes the Christianity of this hour. Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Missionary Expansion of the Presbytery of Iona
The Christian church and college of Iona, established by Colum Cille, were not in the Roman Catholic tradition. The Catholics have gone to great lengths in their efforts to revise history and claim them. Further, the so-called "monks" need not be celibate either. The missionaries of Iona were allowed to marry, and in fact many did marry. "The institutions of Iona were not designated to cultivate eremites (religious hermits) and solitary ascetics, but to train Christian scholars and missionaries, who would go forth as soldiers of Christ, trained to conquer and occupy the outlying territory of heathenism." (The Culdee Church by Rev. T.V. Moore, D.D.; published by the Presbyterian Committee of Publication in 1868) In fact, missionaries trained at Colum Cille's Iona did more to carry the pure Gospel to Great Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland than any other group. (“Early Building Blocks Of The English Bible In The British Isles”, February 2000 - David L. Brown, Ph.D., LogosResourcePages.org)

The seas that bounded Britain could not set limits to the enterprise of the Culdee missionaries. They crossed the Channel and boldly advanced with the evangelical torch into the darkness with which the Gothic irruption had covered France and Switzerland, and generally the nations of western Europe. It would not be easy to find in the whole history of the church a greater outburst of missionary zeal. Iona and its numerous branch colleges in Scotland, and the rich and famous schools of Ireland opened their gates and sent forth army after army for the prosecution of this great campaign. These were not coarse, fiery declaimers, who could discharge volleys of words, but nothing more. They were trained and scholarly men, who could wield "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." It was a second northern irruption, not this time to sack, and slay, and plunge realms into darkness, but to restore and build up, and say, "let the morning again visit the earth." Without doubt we should have known nothing of the Dark Ages, and we should have had instead a thoroughly evangelized and Scripturally reformed Europe all down the centuries, if it had not been that Rome, whose power was now great, and whose ambition was even greater, organised numerous orders, and sent them forth to cope with and turn back this army of light-bearers, and efface their traces in all countries by sowing broadcast dogmas and rites not very dissimilar from those which the new inhabitants of Europe hard brought with them from their native north, and which she persuaded then to accept as Christianity. (Wylie, ibid.)

Evangelistic movements and extent of the Hibernian Christianization of Northern Europe

The Roman Conquest of the Culdee Church
Gladly would we permit the curtain to descend on the Culdee Church while yet its root is firm in the soil and its boughs are stretched from Iona in the West to Bohemia on the East, and its shadow covers France and Germany besides. Gladly would we spare ourselves and our readers the melancholy recital of the tragic extirpation of this once noble vine. We must, however, pursue our subject a little further. We behold Western Europe on the point of completing its reformation. The spiritual illumination which has broke upon it from the north is year by year filling its sky with glory, when, all suddenly, its nations are thrown back again into night. What has occasioned a reversal so sad? It is the off-repeated tale of profound dissimulation on the one side, and a too credulous trust on the other. Winfrid, an Anglo-Saxon by birth, and a Benedictine monk, in 719 seeks out Willibrod, then at the head of the Culdee evangelization, and under a great show of guilelessness and much pious zeal, insinuates himself into his favour. He desires to study the methods of evangelising under the Culdee leader. "He crept in beside Willibrod," says Dr. Ebrard, "as the wolf steals in beside the shepherd," and lived for three years with him, a professed coadjutor, but in reality a spy. At the end of three years he returned to Rome, whence he had come, and where he had been instructed. Pope Gregory II. consecrated him as bishop, and changed his name to Bonifacius, the "good-doer," as if in anticipation of the services expected from him. He returned to Germany, no longer wearing the Culdee mask, but as the legate extraordinary of the Pope. He brought with him letters from the pontiff, addressed to all princes, enjoining them to assist him in ruling the churches over which he had been set. Supported by the authority of Carloman and Pepin of France, he proceeded to suppress the Culdee establishments by changing them into bishoprics subject to the authority of Rome. He founded in Germany the Sees of Wartzburg, Burabourg, Erfurt, and Aichstadt, and in 744 the monastery of Fulda.

This was the method Boniface adopted to evangelise the Germans, even metamorphosing Culdee missionaries into Benedictine monks, and Culdee colleges into Romish Sees, by fair means if possible, by force where artifice failed. It was in this way that he earned his title of "apostle of the Germans." Even historians who think him deserving of the honour do not conceal the startling vices that deformed his life. Mosheim, for instance, observes of him that his "zeal for the glory and authority of the Roman pontiff equaled, if it did not surpass, his zeal for the service of Christ and the propagation of his religion," and that he " often employed violence and terror, and sometimes artifice and fraud, in order to multiply the number of Christians," and discovered a cunning and insidious turn of mind," and "ignorance of many things appertaining to the true nature and genius of the Christian religion." The historian Ranke speaks in similar terms of this "apostle of the Germans." Nevertheless, both ascribe to him, mistakenly of course, the glory of converting the Germans from heathenism. We see the foundations of Culdeeism beginning to be sapped.

What helped, doubtless, to pave the way for the fall of the Culdee Church, was the partial apostasy of Willibrod. In his latter days he was drawn into an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope, and accepted at his hands the bishopric of Utrecht. Willibrod could plead precedents for accepting a Roman miter. Some eminent Culdees in the century before had accepted high positions in the National Church from the kings of France, though they still remained within the lines of Culdeeism. Willibrod accepted his appointment from the pontiff, a power before which, if one begins to bow, he is sure at last to fall. His locks were shorn, and though he still governed the Culdee Churches of Thuringia, it was with a diminished authority. Next, Boniface arrived from Rome as legate extraordinary, and soon to be primate of Germany. In his former pupil and colleague Willibrod now found a superior and master. The papal legate had no inclination to betake himself to the forests and break up new ground. It was not to his taste to risk his precious life amongst those of the Germans who were still heathens. He preferred to build upon the foundations that Willibrod and other Culdees had laid, and to effect a second conversion of Germany on the ruins of its first conversion.

Meanwhile, another cause hastened the downfall of the Culdean Church. The supreme political power of the West had passed from the Merovingian to the Carlovingian race. Pepin of Heristal stood up. He turned back the Moslem by his arms, and saved Europe. The Pope, seeing it for his interests, allied himself with this rising house. Thus the pontiff was able to wield the Carlovingian power against his rivals and enemies the Culdees. This turned the balance in the conflict. Boniface, the papal legate, was supported by the friendship and authority of the French monarch. Willibrod was handicapped in the struggle. He had to contend against both the papal and the royal power wielded by Boniface, now become primate of all Germany, and to whom he, as bishop of Utrecht, owed obedience. The issue was that Willibrod, after forty years labour (680-720), had to surrender this whole region to Boniface, and the battle was lost.

The transformation of these countries went on apace. It became the policy of both courts, that of Rome and that of France, to wear out the Culdees, and eventually efface every vestige of them. Where had stood a Culdee oratory or church, there rose a superb cathedral for the Roman worship. Where a Culdee abbot had ruled, there a diocesan bishop bore sway. Where a cluster of log huts, inhabited by Culdee brethren, had stood, there was erected a large stone building, in which monks of the Benedictine order sheltered. The words which Bishop Aungerville addressed to the friars of his day apply to the change we see passing on the Rhineland and the German countries with even more point: — "Now base Thersites handles the arms of Achilles; the choicest trappings are thrown away upon lazy asses; blinking night-birds lord it in the nest of eagles; and the silly kite sits on the perch of the hawk." The traveler, as he passes along the lovely valley of the Rhine, or visits the German cities, fails to reflect, it may be, that the ecclesiastical edifices that everywhere meet his eye and awaken his admiration are in truth the memorials of the great Celtic evangelization of the early centuries. These monuments of the wealth and power of Rome rise on the spots where Culdee builders were the first to rear human habitations, where Culdee agriculturists were the first to cultivate the ground, and where Culdee missionaries were the first to open the Book of Life to the eyes of the ignorant natives.

When the light of the Culdee Christianisation began to fade away, and at last went out, the shadows of the Dark Ages fell fast and thick. Who, we ask, is responsible for the loss of these ten centuries? There is no room here to hesitate. The Destroyer of the Culdee Church must answer at the bar of posterity to this terrible indictment. The fiat that decreed that the Celtic evangelization should be suppressed, also decreed that Christendom should abide for ages without light and without liberty. That decree will yet crush into dust many a marble tomb, and sweep from history's page many a name which at this hour shines brightly there. The world will not easily condone so great a crime once it has come to the clear apprehension of it. Meanwhile it is far from having attained to this. With a touch of Islam resignation it looks on the dark ages as a dispensation, so fixed and absolute that it was no more in its power to avoid passing through its darkness than it is in its power to forbid an eclipse, or stay the going down of the sun. But the world will one day come to think more rationally of it, and then it will ask why knowledge was enchained, and why so many ages were given over to wars and superstition and slavery, which, but for the suppression of the Celtic evangelization, would have been ennobled with freedom, enriched with the spoils of art, and crowned with the blessings of a pure Christianity.

Since the days of Malcolm Canmore, Columba and his church have suffered a still greater wrong. Ecclesiastical writers of the Roman and Prelatic school have, in our own day, done worse than ignore the "Elders of Iona:" they have completely metamorphosed them. They have converted them into the partisans of a cause of which they were the avowed and strenuous opponents. From the day that Columba laid the foundation-stone of the Scottish Church onward to the time that Romanism gained the ascendency by the force of the royal authority, the disciples of Columba, inheriting the spirit of their great chief, ceased not to maintain the war against Rome, at times with signal and triumphant vigour, at other times more feeble, but all throughout they retained their attitude of protest and resistance. Even after Malcolm Canmore and his queen had summoned them to lay down their arms, they did not absolutely surrender. Their submission was partial. A remnant still kept up the faith, the traditions, and the name of their country’s once famous, free, and virtually Protestant Church. They dwelt in cloisters, in islands and in remote places of the land, but they continued a distinct body; they compelled recognition and toleration, and they thus made palpable the fact that Rome was not the country of their birth; that their lineage was distinct from that of the clerics who now occupied the edifices from which they had been thrust out, and that they were the children of a more ancient and purer faith. If there is anything true in our country’s history this is true; and to go on claiming these men as professing a theology and practising a worship substantially the same as that of Rome, differing, it may be, only in a few rites and customs owing to remoteness of position, yet in heart one with Rome, loving her and obeying her, is to exhibit a marvellous clinging to a fond hallucination, and a bold but blind fight against established and incontrovertible facts. This is a method of warfare which may bring wounds and death to the assailants, but cannot bring victory save to the cause that is assailed. (Wylie, “History of the Scottish Nation”)

Against the dying of the light
Such was the constitution of Christendom as fully developed at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. The verdict of Adam Smith, pronounced on Rome, viewed as the head and mistress of this vast confederation, expresses only the sober truth: "The Church of Rome," said he, "is the most formidable combination that ever was formed against the authority and security of civil government, as well as against the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind." It is no mere scheme of ecclesiastical government that is before us, having for its aim only to guide the consciences of men in those matters that appertain to God, and the salvation of their souls. It is a so-called Superhuman Jurisdiction, a Divine Vicegerency, set up to govern men in their understandings and consciences, in their goods, their liberties, and their lives. Against such a power mere earthly force would have naught availed. Reason and argument would have fought against it in vain. Philosophy and literature, raillery and skepticism, would have shot their bolts to no purpose. A Divine assailant only could overthrow it: that assailant was PROTESTANTISM. (Wylie, “History of Protestantism”)

Hammer blows sound at Wittenberg
THE day on which the monk of Wittemberg posted up his "Theses," occupies a distinguished place among the great days of history. It marks a new and grander starting-point in religion and liberty. The propositions of Luther preached to all Christendom that God does not sell pardon, but bestows it as a free gift on the ground of the death of his Son; the "Theses" in short were but an echo of the song sung by the angels on the plain of Bethlehem fifteen centuries before – "On earth peace: good-will to men."

The world had forgotten that song: no wonder, seeing the Book that contains it had long been hidden. Taking God to be a hard task-master, who would admit no one into heaven unless he paid a great price, Christendom had groaned for ages under penances and expiatory works of self-righteousness. But the sound of Luther's hammer was like that of the silver trumpet on the day of Jubilee: it proclaimed the advent of the year of release – the begun opening of the doors of that great prison-house in which the human soul had sat for ages and sighed in chains. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Gospel thunders forth from the ringing of Luther’s hammer blows
THE eyes of the Pope and the adherents of the Papacy now began to open to the real importance of the movement inaugurated at Wittemberg. They had regarded it slightingly, almost contemptuously, as but a quarrel amongst that quarrelsome generation the monks, which had broken out in a remote province of their dominions, and which would speedily subside and leave Rome unshaken. But, so far from dying out, the movement was every day deepening its seat and widening its sphere; it was allying itself with great spiritual and moral forces; it was engendering new thoughts in the minds of men; already a phalanx of disciples, created and continually multiplied by its own energies, stood around it, and, unless speedily checked, the movement would work, they began to fear, the downfall of their system.

Every day Luther was making a new advance. His words were winged arrows, his sermons were lightning-flashes, they shed a blaze all around: there was an energy in his faith which set on fire the souls of men, and he had a wonderful power to evoke sympathy, and to win confidence. The common people especially loved and respected him. Many cheered him on because he opposed the Pope, but not a few because he dealt out to them that Bread for which their souls had long hungered.

If then man's whole nature be corrupt, said the Reformer, nothing but what is corrupt can proceed from him, till he be quickened by the Spirit of God. Antecedently to the operations of the Spirit upon his understanding and heart, he lacks the moral power of loving and obeying God, and of effecting anything that may really avail for his deliverance and salvation; and he who can do nothing for himself must owe all to God.

He had discarded the mighty fiction of the primacy; lifting his eyes above the throne that stood on the Seven Hills, with its triple-crowned occupant, he fixed them on that King whom God hath set upon the holy hill of Zion. In the living and risen Redeemer, to whom all power in heaven and in earth has been given, he recognized the one and only Head of the Church. This brought with it an expansion of view as regarded the Church herself. The Church in Luther's view was no longer that community over which the Pope stretches his scepter. The Church was that holy and glorious company which has been gathered out of every land by the instrumentality of the Gospel. On all the members of that company one Spirit has descended, knitting them together into one body, and building them up into a holy temple. The narrow walls of Rome, which had aforetime bounded his vision, were now fallen; and the Reformer beheld nations from afar who had never heard of the name of the Pope, and who had never borne his yoke, gathering, as the ancient seer had foretold, to the Shiloh. This was the Church to which Luther had now come, and of which he rejoiced in being a member. (Wylie, ibid.)

There can be no question that the Waldenses were Calvinists from the time of their earliest contacts with the great theologians of the Protestant Reformation. The 1532 confession of faith at Angrogne, which resulted from those contacts, contains these clear statements of belief:

The Angrogne confession was a direct result of the contact that the Waldenses had with the Reformers in the year 1530. The story is in many ways a thrilling one; the beleaguered, dispirited Waldenses of Savoy, fearing themselves to be the only true Christians left in the world and facing the possibility of total extermination at the hands of their Catholic enemies, suddenly began to hear accounts of a great religious movement sweeping the lands to the north of them, in which men and women were rejecting Catholic falsehoods and turning back to the truths of the Bible as the Waldenses understood them. Two representatives were sent from Piedmont to Basel to meet with the Lutheran Reformer Oecolampadius, who was astonished and pleased to learn of the existence of the faithful Waldenses who had preserved the evangelical faith from the time of the apostles, and he gave them much advice and godly counsel. (Williamson, Ibid.)

A manifold interest belongs to the meeting of these two churches. Each is a miracle to the other. The preservation of the Vaudois Church for so many ages, amid the fires of persecution, made her a wonder to the Church of the sixteenth century. The bringing up of the latter from the dead made her a yet greater wonder to the Church of the first century. These two churches compare their respective beliefs: they find that their creeds are not twain, but one. They compare the sources of their knowledge: they find that they have both of them drawn their doctrine from the Word of God; they are not two Churches, they are one. They are the elder and younger members of the same glorious family, the children of the same father. (Wylie, “History of the Waldenses”)

Protestantism finds a new Center
PROTESTANTISM has now received its completed logical and doctrinal development, and a new and more central position must be found for it. Before returning to the open stage of the great Empires of France and Germany, and resuming our narrative of the renovating powers which the Reformation had called forth, with the great social and political revolutions which came in its train, we must devote our attention to a city that is about to become the second metropolis of Protestantism.

In leaving the wide arena of empire where Protestantism is jostled by dukes, prelates, and emperors, and moves amid a blaze of State pageantries, and in shutting ourselves up in a little town whose name history, as yet, had hardly deigned to mention, and whose diminutive size is all but annihilated by the mighty mountainous masses amid which it is placed, we make a great transition. But if the stage is narrow, and if Protestantism is stripped of all that drapery and pomp which make it so imposing on the wider arena, we shall here have a closer view of the principle itself, and be the better able to mark its sublimity and power, in the mighty impulses which from this center it is to send abroad, in order to plant piety and nourish liberty in other countries.

THERE is no grander valley in Switzerland than the basin of the Rhone, whose collected floods, confined within smiling shores, form the Leman. As one looks toward sunrise, he sees on his right the majestic line of the white Alps; and on his left, the picturesque and verdant Jura. The vast space which these magnificent chains enclose is variously filled in. Its grandest feature is the lake. It is blue as the sky, and motionless as a mirror. Nestling on its shores, or dotting its remoter banks, is many a beautiful villa, many a picturesque town, almost drowned in the affluent foliage of gardens and rich vines, which clothe the country that slopes upward in an easy swell toward the mountains. In the remoter distance the eye ranges over a vast stretch of pasture-lands and corn-fields, and forests of chestnuts and pine-trees. Above the dark woods soar the great peaks, as finely robed as the plains, though after a different manner – not with flowers and verdure, but with glaciers and snows.

But this fertile and lovely land, at the time we write of, was one of the strongholds of the Papacy. Cathedrals, abbacies, rich convents, and famous shrines, which attracted yearly troops of pilgrims, were thickly planted throughout the valley of the Leman. These were so many fortresses by which Rome kept the country in subjection. In each of these fortresses was placed a numerous garrison. Priests and monks swarmed like the locusts. The land was fat, yet one wonders how it sustained so numerous and ravenous a host. In Geneva alone there were nine hundred priests. In the other towns and villages around the lake, and at the foot of the Jura, they were not less numerous in proportion. Cowls and shorn crowns, frocks and veils, were seen everywhere. This generation of tonsured men and veiled women formed the "Church;" and the dues they exacted of the lay population, and the processions, chants, exorcisms, and blows which they gave them in return, were styled "religion." The man who would go down into this region of sevenfold blackness, and attack these sons of the Roman Anak, who here tyrannised so mercilessly over their wretched victims, had indeed need of a stout heart and a strong faith.

He had need to be clad in the armor of God in going forth to such a battle. This man was William Farel. The spiritual campaigns of the sixteenth century produced few such champions. "His sermons," says D'Aubigne, "were actions quite as much as a battle is." We have already chronicled what he did in these "wars of the Lord" in the Pays de Vaud; we are now to be engaged in the narrative of his work in Geneva.

Returning from the Waldensian synod in the valley of Angrogna, in October, 1532, Farel, who was accompanied by Saunter, could not resist his long-cherished desire of visiting Geneva. His arrival was made known to the friends of liberty in that city, and the very next day the elite of the citizens waited on him at his inn, the Tour Perce, on the left bank of the Rhone. He preached twice, setting forth the glorious Gospel of the grace of God. The topic of his first address was Holy Scripture, the fountain-head of all Divine knowledge, in contradistinction to tradition of Fathers, or decree of Council, and the only authority on earth to which the conscience of man was subject. This opened the gates of a higher liberty than these men had yet understood, or aspired to. They had been shedding their blood for their franchises, but now the Reformer showed them a way by which their souls might escape from the dark dungeon in which tradition and human authority had succeeded in shutting them up. The next day Farel proclaimed to them the great pardon of God – which consisted, according to his exposition, in the absolutely free forgiveness of sinners bestowed on the footing of an absolutely full and perfect expiation of human guilt; and this he placed in studious opposition to the pardon of the Pope, which had to be bought with money or with penances. This was a still wider opening of the gates of a new world to these men. "This," said Farel, "is the Gospel; and this, and nothing short of this, is liberty, inasmuch as it is the enfranchisement of the whole man, body, conscience, and soul." The words of the Reformer did not fall on dull or indifferent hearts. The generous soil, already watered with the blood of the martyrs of liberty, now received into its bosom a yet more precious seed. The Old Geneva passed away, and in its place came a New Geneva, which the wiles of the Pope should not be able to circumvent, nor the arms of the emperor to subdue.

First came faith – faith in the free forgiveness of the Gospel – next came good works A reformation of manners followed in Geneva. The Reformed ceased to frequent those fashionable amusements in which they had formerly delighted. They banished finery from their dress, and luxury from their banquets. They made no more costly presents to the saints, and the; money thus saved they bestowed on the poor, and especially the Protestant exiles whom the rising storms of persecution in France compelled to flee to the gates of Geneva as to a harbour of refuge.

The Gospel had entered Geneva. The city was taken. How much the Reformation had gained, and how much Rome had lost, in the conquest of that little town, future years were to enable men fully to understand. Here will stand the true "Threshold of the Apostles." The doors of this shrine will open to the holy only; it will be visited by enlightened and believing hearts from every land; and its highways will be trodden and its portals thronged, not by dissolute and superstitious crowds, but by the confessors and exiles of Christ. Here Christianity, laid in its grave at Rome a thousand years before, with crowned Pontiffs and lordly hierarchs keeping watch around its corpse, shall have its resurrection. Rising from the tomb to die no more, it will attest, by the order, the liberty, the intelligence, and the virtue with which it will glorify its seat, that it has lost none of its power during its long entombment, but that, on the contrary, it returns with invigorated force for the execution of its glorious mission, which is that of making all things new. (Wylie, “History of Protestantism”)

John Calvin arrives in Geneva
ONE day, towards the end of August, 1536, a stranger, of slender figure and pale face, presented himself at the gates of Geneva. There was nothing to distinguish him from the crowds of exiles who were then arriving almost daily at the same gates, except it might be the greater brightness that burned in his eye. He had come to rest only for a night, and depart on the morrow. But as he traversed the streets on his way to his hotel, a former acquaintance — Du Tillet, say some; Caroli, say others — recognised him, and instantly hurried off to tell Farel that Calvin was in Geneva.

With startled but thankful surprise Farel received the news that the author of the Christian Institutes was in the city. God, he thought, had sent, at a critical moment, the man of all others whom he most wished to associate with himself in the work of reforming Geneva.

Farel now stands before the author of the Institutes. He beholds a man of small stature and sickly mien. Were these the shoulders on which he should lay a burden which would have tasked the strength of Atlas himself? We can well believe that Farel experienced some moments of painful misgivings. To reassure himself he had to recall to mind, doubtless, the profound wisdom, the calm strength, and the sublimity of principle displayed on every page of the Institutes. That was the real Calvin. Now Farel began to press his suit. He was here combating alone. He had to do daily battle against an atrocious tyranny outside the city, and against a licentious Libertinism within it. Come, he said to the young Reformer, and be my comrade in the campaign.

Calvin's reply was a refusal. His constructive and practical genius was then unknown even to himself. His sphere, he believed, was his library; his proper instrument of work, his pen; and to cast himself into a scene like that before him was, he believed, to extinguish himself. Panting to be at Basle or at Strasburg, where speaking from the sanctuary of a studious and laborious privacy, he could edify all the Churches, he earnestly besought Farel to stand aside and let him go on his way.

But Farel would not stand aside. Putting on something of the authority of an ancient prophet, he commanded the young traveler to remain and labor in Geneva, and he imprecated upon his studies the curse of God, should he make them the pretext for declining the call now addressed to him. It was the voice not of Farel, but of God, that now spoke to Calvin; so he felt; and instantly he obeyed. He loved, in after-life, to recall that, "fearful adjuration," which was, he would say, "as if God from on high had stretched out his hand to stop me."

If the destiny of Calvin was from that moment changed; if from a student he became a legislator and leader; if from being a soldier in the ranks he became generalissimo of the armies of Protestantism, not less was the destiny of Geneva from that moment changed. Calvin had already written a book that constituted an epoch in Protestantism, but he was to write it a second time; though not with pen and ink. He would display before all Christendom the Institutes, not as a volume of doctrines, but as a system of realised facts — a State rescued from the charnel-house of corruption, and raised to the glorious heritage of liberty and virtue — glorious in art, in letters, and in riches, because resplendent with every Christian virtue. To write Protestantism upon their banners, to proclaim it in their edicts, to install it as a worship in their Churches, Calvin and all the Reformers held to be but a small affair; what they strove above all things to achieve was to plant it as an operative moral force in the hearts of men, and at the foundations of States. (Wylie, ibid.)

Geneva established as the first Biblical Republic since the days of Moses
Its Constitution covenanted by the Free Consent of Every Single Citizen
It is necessary at this stage to refer to the Constitution — civil and ecclesiastical — of Geneva, in order that the course of affairs may be clearly intelligible. The fundamental principle of the State was, that the people are the source of power. In accordance therewith came, first, a Convention of all the citizens, termed the Council-General.

THE first act done by Calvin and the Senate and people of Geneva was to bow themselves in humiliation before the Eternal Sovereign. Only a day or two after the Reformer's arrival, the great bell Clemence rung out its deep, far-resounding peal over city, lake, and champaign. The citizens flocked to the cathedral to hear again the voice that was dearer to them than ever.

Calvin addressed them, dwelling briefly on those awful events which gave so deep a solemnity to the passing time. In the East the Turk was overrunning Hungary, and shedding Christian blood in torrents. Nearer to them the Pestilence was ravaging the cities of Germany and the towns on the Rhine. In France and England their brethren were falling by the sword of the persecutor. In Barbary, whither he had gone to fight the Moors, the emperor's fleet and army were perishing by the tempests of the sky. The Reformer called on them to see in these mingled events the hand of God, punishing the nations in his anger. The Sacrament was then dispensed, and the services of the day were closed with a solemn prayer, in which the little city, environed on every side by powerful enemies, cast itself upon the arm of the Almighty.

Without a moment's delay Calvin set about his great task. Everywhere, over the entire face of Christendom, moral ruin was at work. The feeble restraints of the Roman Church were dissolved. The power of the German Reformation was decaying, the Political element having acquired the predominance. An outburst of pantheistic doctrines was about to drown Europe in a flood of hideous immoralities and frightful disorders. What was needed was a great moral power, strong enough to awe the atheism that was lifting up its portentous head. This was the Herculean labor to which Calvin was called. He understood it. In his clear, calm judgment, and constructive skill — in his powers of memory and of logic — in a genius equally fitted for speculation or for business — in his intellectual vision which extended wide, yet penetrated deep — in his indomitable patience, inflexible conscientiousness, and profound submission to the Bible, he was the one man, of all then living, who possessed the gifts necessary for the work. He would begin by regenerating Geneva, and from Geneva as a center there would go forth a regenerating influence over the face of Christendom.

Such dispatch did Calvin and his colleagues use in this matter, that the draft of the ecclesiastical discipline was presented to the Council on the 28th of September. Its examination was begun and continued till the 27th of October. The project, as definitely amended, was, on the 9th of November, adopted by the Council of Two Hundred; and on the 20th by the Council-General, or Assembly of the People. These ecclesiastical ordinances were farther remodelled, and the final vote of the people took place on the 2nd of January, 1542. "It is," says Bungener, "from that day that the Calvinistic Republic legally dates."...in Geneva the nation was the Church, and the ecclesiastical ordinances were also the laws of the State. They had not only been enacted by the Senate, they had been twice solemnly and unanimously voted by the people. "The people could not afterwards allege," says M. Gaberel, "that they were deceived as to the bearing of the laws they were sanctioning. For several weeks they could meditate at leisure on the articles proposed; they knew the value of their decision, and when twice — on the 20th of November, 1541, and again on the 2nd of January, 1542 — they came to the Cathedral of St. Peter's, and, after each article, raised their hands in acceptance of it, the vote was an affair of conscience between God and themselves, for no human power could impose such an engagement. They were 20,000 citizens, perfectly free, and masters of their own town. The Genevese people were absolutely sovereign; they knew no other limit to their legislative power than their own will, and this people voted the ordinances from the first chapter to the last. They engaged to frequent public worship regularly, to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, to renounce all debauchery, all immoral amusements, to maintain simplicity in their clothing, frugality and order in their dwellings." ...at Geneva the supreme authority was the Constitution, which had been approved and sanctioned by the free conscience of the people. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Fortress of Christianity
Here, not in state, like a Roman cardinal, but in the lowliness of a simple pastor, dwelt, not the monarch of that empire — for monarch it has not on earth — but the presiding mind, the directing genius of Protestantism. From this center were propagated those energies and influences which, mightier than armies, were rending the shackles from the human soul, and calling nations from their tomb. Within its walls the elite of Europe was assembling; and as another and yet another illustrious stranger presented himself at its gates, and crossed its threshold, the brilliant intellectual glory of Geneva gathered an additional brightness, and its moral potency waxed stronger day by day. To it all eyes were turned, some in admiration and love, others in hatred and fear. Within it were born those great thoughts which, sent forth in letters, in pamphlets, in great tomes, were as light to roll back the darkness—bolts to discomfit the enemy, and pour confusion upon the champions of error. Protestant troops are continually passing out at its gates, girded only with the sword of the Spirit, to assail the strongholds of darkness, and add new provinces to the kingdom of the Gospel. As realm after realm is won, there goes forth from this same city a rescript for its organization and government; and that rescript meets an obedience more prompt and hearty than was ever accorded to the edicts sent forth from the proud mistress of the ancient world for the molding of those provinces which her arms had subjugated.

What an astonishing phenomenon must the sudden rise of this little town have appeared to the men of those times! How portentous to the friends of the Old religion! It had not been built up by human hands; it was not defended by human weapons; yet here it stood, a great lighthouse in the center of Christendom, a mother of Churches, a nurse of martyrs, a school of evangelists, an impregnable asylum of the persecuted, a font of civilization, an abode of letters and arts; a great moral tribunal, where the actions of all men were weighed, and in whose inexorably just and righteous awards men heard the voice of a higher tribunal, and were enabled to read by anticipation the final judgment of posterity, and even that of the great Supreme. (Wylie, ibid.)

The early years of British Reformation
Edward VI was in his tenth year when the scepter of England was committed to his hand. If his years were few, his attainments were far beyond what is usual at his early age; he already discovered a rare maturity of judgment, and a soul ennobled by the love of virtue. His father had taken care to provide him with able and pious preceptors, chief of whom were Sir Anthony Cooke, a friend of the Gospel, and Dr. Richard Cox, afterwards Bishop of Ely; and the precocity of the youthful prince, and his rapid progress in classical studies, rewarded the diligence and exceeded the expectations of his instructors. Numerous letters in Latin and French, written in his ninth year, are still extant, attesting the skill he had acquired in these languages at that tender age. Catherine Parr, the last and noblest of the wives of Henry VIII, assiduously aided the development of his moral character. Herself a lady of eminent virtue and great intelligence, she was at pains to instill into his mind those principles which should make his life pure, his reign prosperous, and his subjects happy. Nor would the watchful eye of Cranmer be unobservant of the heir to the crown, nor would his timely cooperation and wise counsel be wanting in the work of fitting him for swaying the scepter of England at one of its greatest crises. The archbishop is said to have wept for joy when he marked the rapid and graceful intellectual development, and deep piety, of the young prince.

The king's maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, was made head of the council of regency, under the title of Protector of the Realm. He was an able statesman, and a friend of the Reformed opinions. (Cranmer, in virtue of his primacy, as well as by appointment of the late king, was a member of the Council. Wriothesly, the chancellor, a man versed in intrigue, and so bigoted an adherent of the old faith that, as we have seen, he sometimes tortured with his own hands those under examination before him, had also a seat in that body. But one of the first acts of the Council was to depose him from office, and deprive him of the seals. This was no faint indication that the party which had so long clogged the wheels of the Reformation must now descend from power. Other signs of a like nature soon followed.

With Edward on the throne, the English Josiah, as he has been styled, with Protector Somerset in the Cabinet, with many tried disciples and former fellow laborers returned from prison or from beyond seas, Cranmer at last breathed freely. How different the gracious air that filled the palace of Edward from the gloomy and tyrannical atmosphere around the throne of Henry! Til now Cranmer knew not what a day might bring forth; it might hurl him from power, and send him to a scaffold. But now he could recommend measures of reform without hesitancy, and go boldly forward in the prosecution of them.

In November, 1547, Parliament sat, and a Convocation being held at the same time, the ecclesiastical reforms recommended by the royal visitors were discussed, embodied in orders, and promulgated by the Council. The clergy were enjoined to preach four times every year against the usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome; they were forbidden to extol images and relics; they were not to allow lights before images, although still permitted to have two lighted candles on the high altar, in veneration of the body of Christ, which even Cranmer still believed was present in the elements. The clergy were to admit none to the "Sacrament of the altar" who had not first undergone an examination on the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. A chapter of the New Testament, in English, was to be read at matins, or morning worship, and a chapter of the Old Testament at evensong. The portions of Scripture read at mass were enjoined to be also in English.

As regards the doctrine of the Articles, all those divines who have been the more thoroughly versed in theology, both in its history and in its substance, from Bishop Burner downwards, have acknowledged that, in the main, the Articles follow in the path of the great doctor of the West, Augustine. The archbishop in framing them had fondly hoped that they would be a means of "union and quietness in religion." To these forty-two Articles, reduced in 1562 to thirty-nine, he gave only a subordinate authority. After dethroning the Pope to put the Bible in his room, it would have ill become the Reformers to dethrone the Bible, in order to install a mere human authority in supremacy over the conscience. Creeds are the handmaids only, not the mistress; they are the interpreters only, not the judge; the authority they possess is in exact proportion to the accuracy with which they interpret the Divine voice. Their authority can never be plenary, because their interpretation can never be more than an approximation to all truth as contained in the Scriptures. The Bible alone must remain the one infallible authority on earth, seeing the prerogative of imposing laws on the consciences of men belongs only to God. (Wylie, ibid.)

Persecution of Christianity under “Bloody Mary”
The reign of Edward VI, and with it the era of Reformation under Cranmer, was drawing to a close. The sky, which had been so clear at its beginning, began now to be darkened. The troubles that distracted the Church and the State at this time arose from various causes, of which the principal were the execution of the Duke of Somerset, the disputes respecting vestments, the burning of Joan of Kent, and the question of the succession to the crown. These occurrences, which influenced the course of future events, it is unnecessary to detail at much length. The zeal of Edward for the Reformation continued unabated: his piety was not only unfeigned, but deep; but many of the noblemen of his court led lives shamefully immoral and vicious, and there was, alas, no Calvin to smite the evil-doers with the lightnings of his wrath. With the death of Edward VI, in his sixteenth year (July 6, 1553), the night again closes around the Reformation in England.

Mary was in her thirty-seventh year when she began to reign. Her person was homely, her temper morose, her understanding narrow, and her disposition gloomy and suspicious. She displayed the Spanish gravity of her mother, in union with the obstinacy of her father, but these evil qualities were not relieved by the graces of Catherine and the talents of Henry. Her training, instead of refining her character and widening her views, tended only to strengthen the unhappy conditions with which nature had endowed her. Her education had been conducted mainly by her mother, who had taught her little besides a strong attachment to the Roman Catholic faith. Thus, though living in England, she had breathed from her youth the air of Spain; and not only was the creed of that country congenial to a disposition naturally melancholy, and rendered still more so by the adverse circumstances of her early years, but her pride engaged her to uphold a religion for which her mother had lived a martyr. No sooner had she mounted the throne than she dispatched a messenger to announce her accession to the Pope. This was on the matter to say, "I am your faithful daughter, and England has returned to the Roman obedience."

Men contrasted the leniency with which the Romanists had been treated under Edward VI, with the ferocious cruelty of Mary towards the adherents of the Reformed faith. When Protestantism was in the ascendant, not one Papist had been put to death for his religion. A few priests had been deprived of their benefices; the rest had saved their livings by conforming. But now the Popery had risen to power, no one could be a Protestant but at the peril of his life. The highest and most venerated dignitaries of the Church, the men of greatest learning and most exemplary virtue in the nation, were dragged to prison and burned at stakes.

Between the 4th of February, 1555, when Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, was burned at Smithfield, and the 15th of November, 1558, when five martyrs were burned in one fire at Canterbury, just two days before the death of the queen, not fewer than 288 persons, according to the estimate of Lord Burleigh, were burned alive at the stake. Besides these, numbers perished by imprisonment, by torture, and by famine. Mary did all this with the full approval and sanction of her conscience. Not a doubt had she that in burning her Protestant subjects she was doing God service. Her conscience did indeed reproach her before her death, but for what? Not for the blood she had shed, but because she had not done her work more thoroughly, and in particular for not having made full restitution of the abbey lands and other property of the Church which had been appropriated by the crown. Her morose temper, and the estrangement of her husband, were now hastening her to the grave; but the nearer she drew to it, she but the more hastened to multiply her victims, and her last days were cheered by watching the baleful fires that lit up her realm, and made her reign notorious in English history. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Resurgence of Christianity in England
Queen Mary breathed her last on the morning of the 17th November, 1558. On the same day, a few hours later, died Cardinal Pole, who with Carranza, her Spanish confessor, had been Mary's chief counselor in those misdeeds which have given eternal infamy to her reign. The Parliament was then in session, and Heath, Archbishop of York, and Chancellor of England, notified to the House the death of the Queen. The members started to their feet, and shouted out, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" The news of Mary's decease speedily circulated through London; in the afternoon every steeple sent forth its peal of joy; in the evening bonfires were lighted, and the citizens, setting tables in the street, and brining forth bread and wine, "did eat, drink, and rejoice." Everywhere, as the intelligence traveled down to the towns and counties of England, the bells were set a-ringing, and men, as they met on the highways, clasped each other by the hand, and exchanged mutual congratulations.

The nation awoke as from a horrible nightmare; it saw the troop of dismal specters which had filled the darkness taking flight, and a future approaching in which there would no more be spies prowling from house to house, officers dragging men and women to loathsome gaols, executioners torturing them on racks, and tying them with iron chains to stakes and burning them; no more Latin Litanies, muttered masses, and shaven priests; it saw a future in which the Bible would be permitted to be read, in which the Gospel would again be preached in the mother tongue of old England, and quiet and prosperity would again bless the afflicted land.

When the great army of Protestant preachers at Zurich, at Geneva, at Strasburg, and at other foreign towns heard that Elizabeth was on the throne, they instantly prepared to return and aid in the Reformation of their native land. These men were rich in many gifts— some in genius, others in learning, others were masters of popular eloquence, and all were men of chastened spirit, ripe Christians and scholars, while their views had been enlarged by contact with foreign Protestants. Their arrival in England greatly strengthened the hands of those who were laboring in rebuilding the Protestant edifice. (Wylie, ibid.)

The Rebirth of Iona – Scotland reconquered for Christianity
The Reformation of Scotland dates from the entrance of the first Bible into the country, about the year 1525. It was only four months after Scotland had received the gift of a free Bible, that another boon was given it in the person of an eloquent preacher. We refer to George Wishart, who followed Patrick Hamilton at an interval of seventeen years. Wishart, born in 1512, was the son of Sir James Wishart of Pitarrow, an ancient and honorable family of the Mearns.

An excellent Grecian, he was the first who taught that noblest of the tongues of the ancient world in the grammar schools of Scotland. Erskine of Dun had founded an academy at Montrose, and here the young Wishart taught Greek, it being then not uncommon for the scions of aristocratic and even noble families to give instructions in the learned languages. Wishart, becoming "suspect" of heresy, retired first to England, then to Switzerland, where he passed a year in the society of Bullinger and the study of the Helvetic Confession. Returning to England, he took up his abode for a short time at Cambridge. Let us look at the man as the graphic pen of one of his disciples has painted him. "He was a man," says Tylney — writing long after the noble figure that enshrined so many sweet virtues, and so much excellent learning and burning eloquence, had been reduced to ashes — "he was a man of tall stature, polled-headed, and on the same a round French cap of the best. Judged of melancholy complexion by his physiognomy, black-haired, long-bearded, comely of personage, well-spoken after his country of Scotland, courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was well-traveled; having on him for his habit or clothing never but a mantle, frieze gown to the shoes, a black Milan fustian doublet, and plain black hosen, coarse new canvass for his shirts, and white falling bands and cuffs at the hands."

Wishart returned to Scotland in the July of 1543. Arran's zeal for the Reformation had by this time spent itself; and the astute and resolute Beaton was dominant in the nation. It was in the midst of perils that Wishart began his ministry. "The beginning of his doctrine" was in Montrose, at that time the most Lutheran town perhaps in Scotland. He next visited Dundee, where his eloquence drew around him great crowds. Following the example of Calvin at Geneva, instead of discoursing on desultory topics, he opened the Epistle to the Romans, and proceeded to expound it chapter by chapter to his audience. The Gospel thus rose before them as a grand unity. Beginning with the "one man" by whom sin entered, they passed on to the "one Man" by whom had come the "free gift."

The Reformation was the cry of the human conscience for pardon. That great movement took its rise, not in the conviction of the superstitions, exactions, and scandals of the Roman hierarchy, but in the conviction of each individual of his own sin. That conviction was wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, then abundantly poured down upon the nations; and the Gospel which showed the way of forgiveness delivered men from bondage, and imparting a new life to them, brought them into a world of liberty. This was the true Reformation. We would call it a revival were it not that the term is too weak: it was a creation; it peopled Christendom with new men, in the first place, and in the second it covered it with new Churches and States.

On leaving Dundee in the end of 1545, Wishart repaired to Edinburgh, and thence passed into East Lothian, preaching in its towns and villages. He had a deep presentiment that his end was near, and that he would fall a sacrifice to the wrath of Beaton. Apprehended at Ormiston on the night of the 16th of January, 1546, he was carried to St. Andrews, thrown into the Sea-tower, and brought to trial on the 28th of February, and condemned to the flames. It was Wishart," says Dr. Lorimer, "who first molded the Reformed theology of Scotland upon the Helvetic, as distinguished from the Saxon type; and it was he who first taught the Church of Scotland to reduce her ordinances and Sacraments with rigorous fidelity to the standard of Christ's Institutions."

It is at the stake of Wishart that we first catch sight as it were of Knox, for the parting between the two, so affectingly recorded by Knox himself, took place not many days before the death of the martyr. John Knox, descended from the Knoxes of Ranferly, was born in Gifford-gate, Haddington, in 1505. From the school of his native town he passed (1522) to the University of Glasgow, and was entered under the celebrated John Major, then Principal Regent or Professor of Philosophy and Divinity. After leaving college he passes out of view for ten or a dozen years. About this time he would seem to have taken priest's orders, and to have been for upwards of ten years connected with one of the religious establishments in the neighborhood of Haddington. He had been enamoured of the scholastic philosophy, the science that sharpened the intellect, but left the conscience unmoved and the soul unfed; but now loathing its dry crusts, and turning away from its great doctors, he seats himself at the feet of the great Father of the West. He read and studied the writings of Augustine. Rich in evangelical truth and impregnate with the fire of Divine love, Augustine's pages must have had much to do with the molding of Knox's mind, and the imprinting upon it of that clear, broad, and heroic stamp which it wore all his life long. (Wylie, ibid.)

The early Scotch reformed theology was based on the predestinarian principle. Knox had gotten his theology directly from Calvin in Geneva, and his chief theological work was his treatise on Predestination, which was a keen, forcible and unflinching polemic against loose views which were becoming widespread in England and elsewhere. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries topics such as predestination, election, reprobation, the extent and value of the atonement, the perseverance of the saints, were the absorbing interest of the Scotch peasantry. From that land those doctrines spread southward into parts of England and Ireland and across the Atlantic to the west. In a very real sense Scotland can be called the "Mother Country of modern Presbyterianism." ~~ (Beottner, “Calvinism in History”)

Knox preached in the castle, and at times also in the parish church of St. Andrews. In his first sermon in the latter place he struck the key-note of the Reformation in his native land. The Church of Rome, said he, is the Antichrist of Scripture. No movement can rise higher than its fundamental principle, and no doctrine less broad than this which Knox now proclaimed could have sustained the weight of such a Reformation as Scotland needed. Knox, though he did not possess the all-grasping, all-subduing intellect of Calvin, nor the many-toned eloquence of Luther, which could so easily rise from the humorous and playful to the pathetic and the sublime, yet, in concentrated fiery energy, and in the capacity to kindle his hearers into indignation, and rouse them to action, excelled both these Reformers. This one sermon in the parish church of St. Andrews, followed as it was by a sermon in the same place on the three consecutive days, cast the die, and determined that the Reformation of Scotland should go forward. The magistrates and townspeople assembled, and came to a unanimous resolution to set up the Reformed worship in the city. The church was stripped of its images and pictures, and the monasteries were pulled down. The example of St. Andrews was quickly followed by many other places of the kingdom. The Protestant worship was set up at Craft, at Cupar, at Lindores, at Linlithgow, at Scone, at Edinburgh and Glasgow.

From the time of his famous sermon in St. Andrews, Knox had been the soul of the movement. The year that followed was one of incessant and Herculean labor. His days were spent in preaching, his nights in writing letters, he roused the country, and he kept it awake. His voice like a great trumpet rang through the land, firing the lukewarm into zeal, and inspiriting the timid into courage. When the friends of the Reformation quarreled, he reconciled and united them. When they sank into despondency he rallied their spirits. He himself never desponded. Thus speedily was the work consummated at last. There are supreme moments in the life of nations, when their destiny is determined for ages. Such was the moment that had now come to Scotland. On the 17th of August, 1560, the Scotland of the Middle Ages passed away, and a New Scotland had birth — a Scotland destined to be a sanctuary of religion, a temple of liberty, and a fountain of justice, letters, and art. Intently had the issue been watched by the Churches abroad, and when they learned that Scotland had placed itself on the side of Protestant truth, these elder daughters of the Reformation welcomed, with songs of joy, that country which had come, the last of the nations, to share with them their glorious inheritance of liberty. ~~ (Wylie, ibid.)

The Jesuit Roots of Arminianism.
Throughout its history, Romanism had modified its views on salvation from the Pelagian viewpoint through centuries of scholasticism and labyrinthine discussions. Erasmus set forth the argument for free will in 1524, which was supported by the pope, only to be totally destroyed by Luther’s ‘Bondage of the Will’. The formative period for the Jesuits was the middle of the 16th century, just before Arminius began to teach his heretical ideas.

The term ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ was only coined in 1577 in the Lutheran Formula of Concord, but it quickly became associated with the theology of the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina (1535-1600). He wrote a book on the freedom of the will (Concordia) in 1588 which was well received by the Jesuits (and was later popular amongst Arminians in Laud’s party), which attempted to paper over the cracks between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism. What is interesting is that careful comparison reveals that Arminius copied Molina’s ideas. Molina taught a scientia media (‘middle knowledge’) in connection with God’s foreknowledge. This doctrine became the focus of hot debate in the 17th century between Reformed theologians and the Remonstrants (followers of Arminius). Professor Richard A. Muller, of Fuller Seminary, explains that Arminius’ doctrine of scientia media is Molinist. In fact, Molina’s work was in Arminius’ library, alongside many other Jesuit books. This idea is that there is a middle knowledge in between God’s intuitive knowledge and his decretal foreknowledge. This middle knowledge rests upon the acts of his creatures. There is no determination of God here. God’s prescience regarding a creature’s future acts, enables him to act accordingly and establish the right conditions. Muller shows that this not only affects human freedom in salvation, but destroys God’s sovereignty in the whole created order, which runs outside of God.

Arminius was also accused of recommending to his students many Romanist works and emphasising a Jesuit theology, particularly Molina and Suarez. In his printed works, Arminius refers to these Jesuit influences, but does not reference them! Deceit or what! In this way, Jesuit ideas were introduced into the Dutch Reformed Churches and so Arminianism/Semi-Pelagianism began in earnest.

The great Puritan scholar, John Owen, writing in his Display of Arminianism (1642), shows awareness of the Jesuit connection: ‘How do they (the Arminians) and their fellows, the Jesuits ...’

The Jesuit planting of the Arminian Construct into the Reformed Church
As early as 1613 the Oxford theologian Walter Browne (an associate of Laud) had a library with no English reformed writers, but contained 500 anti-Calvinist books, including the works of the leading Jesuits: Molina’s Concordia and Leonardus Lessius’ De Gratia as well as Arminius’ works. Robert Shelford, of Cambridge University, produced Five Pious and Learned Lectures which was so Arminian that it was used by the Jesuits in Ireland. The English situation was so serious that Sir Walter Earle urged Parliament to make religion the most vital issue above all other domestic matters because, ‘Popery and Arminianism [are] joining hand in hand.’

Vital testimony comes from the hand of the Archbishop Laud himself, a professed Jesuit. After his death, a letter was found in his effects which was endorsed by him and dated March 1628. The endorsement reads: 'A Jesuit letter, sent to the Rector at Bruxels, about the ensuing Parliament.' The letter gave the Superior of the Jesuits, then resident at Brussels, an account of church affairs in England. Part of it reads:

In describing the effects of this success, Tyndale described churches being adorned with images, altars, paintings etc but also: The predestinarian doctrines were forbid ... and the Arminian sense of the Articles was encouraged and propagated.' Under Laud, Calvinism became a heresy and treasonable. The fate of London lawyer, William Prynne, is typical of the time (1633). For publishing a book denouncing plays, dancing etc, he was arraigned before the Star Chamber. His sentence was to be barred from his profession, turned out of his society, fined £5000, pilloried at Westminster and Cheapside and at both places an ear was sawn off before being imprisoned for life. Such was the effects of the entrance of Arminianism into England.

The propagation of Arminianism
What is clear is that the progress of Arminianism is not due to the attraction of the ideas alone, but that, especially in England, Jesuit activity has encouraged and developed its progress. It is bad enough that Arminius took Pelagian ideas and revamped them to make them more attractive to Christians and to blur the edges between Protestants and Catholics. His teachings dishonour God’s sovereignty and cause people to shipwreck their faith. But for this to be part of a Papish plot from the start shows the insidious and evil source of the whole issue.

Modern believers who knowingly or unknowingly cling to Arminian theology (as most do) should be aware of the real roots of this deception.
(Understanding Ministries: "The Roots of Arminianism", Copyright Paul Fahy 1997, with apologies to Toplady re: excerpt)

The Arminian Regime
During the Arminian regime of Archbishop Laud, the persecutor of the Puritans and the Covenanters, zealous Arminians were promoted to the best bishoprics. A famous letter written by a Jesuit to the Rector of Brussels and endorsed by Laud himself was found in his study at Lambeth. A copy of this letter was found among the papers of a society of priests and Jesuits at Clerkenwell in 1627. The following is an extract: 'Now we have planted the Sovereign Drug Arminianism which we hope will purge the Protestants from their heresy; and it flourisheth and beareth fruit in due season.… I am at this time transported with joy to see how happily all instruments and means, as well as great or smaller, co-operate with our purposes. But to return to the main fabric: OUR FOUNDATION IS ARMINIANISM.'

The Arminian assault on Christianity in the British Isles
In reference to the Calvinistic doctrines—the doctrines of free and sovereign grace held by the Reformers in England, Toplady observes," Queen Mary and her Spanish husband well knew that Calvinism is the very life and soul of the Reformation; and that Popery would never flourish till the Calvinistic doctrines were eradicated." Her efforts to destroy by sword and fire those who upheld the Truth earned for her the unenviable appellation of 'Bloody Mary.' The charge on which many of them were burnt at the stake was that they held to the doctrine of predestination and rejected the Arminian and Popish doctrine of free-will.

In the following century the Caroline period (the reign of the Stuart kings including Charles I and Charles II) Arminianism grew to be the prevalent faith of the Church of England, according to Dr. G. P. Fisher in his 'History of the Christian Church' (p. 450). In Scotland, too, Arminianism was making serious inroads.

Christopher Ness of St. John's College, Cambridge, a Puritan divine, in his treatise "An Antidote Against Arminianism," recommended by the great Dr. John Owen, writes, "As blessed Athanasius sighed out in his day, 'The world is overrun with Arianism; so it is the sad sigh of our present times, the Christian world is overrun, yea, overwhelmed with the flood of Arminianism; which cometh as it were, out of the mouth of the serpent, that he might cause the woman (the Church) to be carried away of the flood thereof.' He quotes Mr. Rous, Master of Eton College, as saying, 'Arminianism is the spawn of Popery, which the warmth of favour may easily turn into frogs of the bottomless pit,' and Dr. Alexander Leighton who calls Arminianism 'the Pope's Benjamin, the last and greatest monster of the man of sin: the elixir of Anti-Christianism; the mystery of the mystery of iniquity; the Pope's cabinet; the very quintessence of equivocation.'"

The Persecution of Christianity under the Arminian regime
The saintly Samuel Rutherford who occupied a professor's chair at St. Andrew's University, made use of his scholarship to defend the faith by publishing a notable book against Arminianism. "It was this malicious 'spirit of Arminianism'," writes the editor of 'The Contender' (Nova Scotia) "that drove the episcopal leaders (in conjunction with the civil power of the king) to persecute the Covenanters to prison and to death. As a direct result of his book against Arminianism, Rutherford was put through the form of a 'Trial' by a group of Arminian bishops who were led by Sydserff of Galloway, deprived of his pastoral charge at Anwoth and banished to the town of Aberdeen. In a letter Rutherford wrote to a minister in Ireland, Robert Cunningham, he says: "… The cause that ripened their hatred was my book against the Arminians, whereof they accused me, on those three days I appeared before them," and in a letter from Aberdeen in 1637 to Mr. John Ferguson of Ochiltree, Rutherford refers to his trial, saying, "I was judicially accused for my book against the Arminians, and commanded by the Chancellor to acknowledge I had done a fault in writing against Dr. Jackson, a wicked Arminian." In a footnote to this letter, the editor Dr. Bonar, says: "Dr .Thomas Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, first held Calvinistic sentiments but afterwards became an Arminian, a change which recommended him to the favour and patronage of Archbishop Laud."

The character of Laud may be seen in relation to his part in the trial, sentencing, imprisonment and torturing of Dr. Alexander Leighton at London. (Dr. Leighton's views on Arminianism are quoted above). A sketch of Leighton's history is given in the preface to a letter which Rutherford wrote him while in prison. The sketch says that Leighton, because of his "zeal for Presbyterian principles and against the innovations of Laud," was arrested in 1629 and kept in an abominable cell sixteen weeks before his trial by the Star Chamber. Because of this "severe distress that had brought skin and hair almost wholly off his body," he could not attend his trial. The Star Chamber "condemned the afflicted and aged divine to be degraded as a minister, to have one of his ears cut off, and one side of his nose slit, to be branded on the face with a red-hot iron, to stand in the pillory, to be whipped at a post, to pay a fine of £1,000 and to suffer imprisonment until the fine was paid. When this inhuman sentence was pronounced, Laud took off his hat, and holding up his hands, gave thanks to God who had given the Church victory over her enemies! The sentence was executed without mercy, and Leighton lay in prison till upwards of ten years. When liberated he could hardly walk, see or hear. He died in 1649.

"In 1631, five years before he was condemned and banished to Aberdeen, Rutherford wrote to Marion McNaught from his parish at Anwoth concerning Dr. Henry Burton, whose footsteps he was later to follow. Says Rutherford in this letter, 'Know that I am in great heaviness for the pitiful case of our Lord's Kirk. I hear the cause why Dr. Burton is committed to prison is his writing and preaching against Arminians. I therefore entreat the aid of your prayers for myself, and the Lord's captives of hope, and for Zion. The Lord hath let and daily lets me see how deep furrows Arminianism and the followers of it draw upon the back of God's Israel—but our Lord cut the cords of the wicked!

Arminianism was not more rampant than it is now in England, Scotland and our own North American continent. Let us not think that the malignant spirit of persecution that moved the Arminians—led by Bishop Sydserff, Archbishop Laud and others—died at the end of the Covenanting struggles of long ago. The Arminians of today hold precisely the same false doctrines, and are just as relentlessly opposed to the absolute sovereignty of God and unconditional election as were the Arminians of old." (The Contender—Nova Scotia, April, 1955.)

Conclusion
Arminianism is the name given to the doctrines held and propagated by Arminius, a theological professor at the University of Leyden in Holland, who died in the year 1609. These doctrines are a perversion of the Truth of God and the way of salvation. They have no scriptural foundation. They were never taught by the prophets of the Old Testament Church, nor by the apostles of the Lamb in the New. Basically they are a revival of the ancient semi-Pelagian heresy condemned by the Church of God. They are not the doctrines of the Reformers—Luther, Calvin, Knox, etc. All the Confessions of the Reformed Churches in Britain and on the continent of Europe are diametrically opposed to them. The illustrious Synod of Dort, consisting of delegates from all the Reformed Churches, which met in the year 1618, exposed and condemned them. It was not for Arminianism the noble army of martyrs suffered and died. Their blood cries out against it.
(Arminianism - Another Gospel by Rev. William Maclean, M.A. 1965)

Arminian Persecution drives Calvinist colonists to the New World
We may say that it was the Marian persecution that produced the seed bed for true Reformation in England and Scotland, for when Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne, many of the English and Scottish ministers returned (from Geneva) to be pastors, well equipped with proper knowledge of Reformed doctrine and practices. When Knox returned in 1559, for example, he and others were able to write the Scottish Confession, and established the first truly Presbyterian church based on the teachings he had received at Geneva.

But in England, especially, the state-sanctioned church remained quasi-catholic. In fact, Elizabeth I herself had some inclination to Romanism and she imposed some practices which many conscientious Protestants could not accept. These became known as Puritans or Precisionists for their stance. Many remained in the Anglican Church, hopeful of further reforms, though they were inclined to Presbyterianism. Other separated themselves and form non-conformist churches.

More providential turn of events came in 1603 when James I of England became king. Although he authorised a new translation of the English Bible (KJV) in 1611, he was no friend of the Protestants. In 1604, 300 Puritan ministers were deprived of their livings. Again, large numbers emigrated. Many went to Holland, from where they would later sail the Mayflower to Massachusetts, America, and so brought the Reformation, or rather the Church, there.

In 1625, another king unsympathetic to the Reformed believers or Puritans, Charles I, became king, and three years later William Laud, a hater of Calvinism and lover of Rome like Charles I himself, became the Bishop of London (and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633). He undertook stringent measures to stamp nonconformity out of the Anglican Church. Laudian oppression was a leading contributor to Puritan migrations to America, such as the large group led by John Winthrop in 1630. ~~ ( “A BRISK TOUR OF THE REFORMATION”, Pilgrim Covenant Weekly, http://www.pilgrimcovenant.com/weeklyArticle/wklyArt_011028.htm)

The Calvinist Founding of America
When we come to study the influence of Calvinism as a political force in the history of the United States we come to one of the brightest pages of all Calvinistic history. Calvinism came to America in the Mayflower, and Bancroft, the greatest of American historians, pronounces the Pilgrim Fathers "Calvinists in their faith according to the straightest system." John Endicott, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; John Winthrop, the second governor of that Colony; Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut; John Davenport, the founder of the New Haven Colony; and Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island Colony, were all Calvinists. William Penn was a disciple of the Huguenots. It is estimated that of the 3,000,000 Americans at the time of the American Revolution, 900,000 were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, 600,000 were Puritan English, and 400,000 were German or Dutch Reformed. In addition to this the Episcopalians had a Calvinistic confession in their Thirty-nine Articles; and many French Huguenots also had come to this western world. Thus we see that about two-thirds of the colonial population had been trained in the school of Calvin. Never in the world's history had a nation been founded by such people as these. Furthermore these people came to America not primarily for commercial gain or advantage, but because of deep religious convictions. It seems that the religious persecutions in various European countries had been providentially used to select out the most progressive and enlightened people for the colonization of America. At any rate it is quite generally admitted that the English, Scotch, Germans, and Dutch have been the most masterful people of Europe. Let it be especially remembered that the Puritans, who formed the great bulk of the settlers in New England, brought with them a Calvinistic Protestantism, that they were truly devoted to the doctrines of the great Reformers, that they had an aversion for formalism and oppression whether in the Church or in the State, and that in New England Calvinism remained the ruling theology throughout the entire Colonial period. (Boettner, Calvinism in History)

The Presbyterian Rebellion
Called in latter days “The American Revolution”
In his book, "The Creed of Presbyterians," E. W. Smith asks concerning the American colonists, "Where learned they those immortal principles of the rights of man, of human liberty, equality and self-government, on which they based their Republic, and which form today the distinctive glory of our American civilization? In the school of Calvin they learned them. There the modern world learned them. So history teaches," (p. 121).

We shall now pass on to consider the influence which the Presbyterian Church as a Church exerted in the formation of the Republic. "The Presbyterian Church," said Dr. W. H. Roberts in an address before the General Assembly, "was for three-quarters of a century the sole representative upon this continent of republican government as now organized in the nation." And then he continues: "From 1706 to the opening of the revolutionary struggle the only body in existence which stood for our present national political organization was the General Synod of the American Presbyterian Church. It alone among ecclesiastical and political colonial organizations exercised authority, derived from the colonists themselves, over bodies of Americans scattered through all the colonies from New England to Georgia. The colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is to be remembered, while all dependent upon Great Britain, were independent of each other. Such a body as the Continental Congress did not exist until 1774. The religious condition of the country was similar to the political. The Congregational Churches of New England had no connection with each other, and had no power apart from the civil government. The Episcopal Church was without organization in the colonies, was dependent for support and a ministry on the Established Church of England, and was filled with an intense loyalty to the British monarchy. The Reformed Dutch Church did not become an efficient and independent organization until 1771, and the German Reformed Church did not attain to that condition until 1793. The Baptist Churches were separate organizations, the Methodists were practically unknown, and the Quakers were non-combatants.”

There were practically no Methodists in America at the time of the Revolution; and, in fact, the Methodist Church was not officially organized as such in England until the year 1784, which was three years after the American Revolution closed. John Wesley, great and good man though he was, was a Tory and a believer in political non-resistance. He wrote against the American "rebellion," but accepted the providential result. McFetridge tells us: "The Methodists had hardly a foothold in the colonies when the war began. In 1773 they claimed about one hundred and sixty members. Their ministers were almost all, if not all, from England, and were staunch supporters of the Crown against American Independence. Hence, when the war broke out they were compelled to fly from the country. Their political views were naturally in accord with those of their great leader, John Wesley, who wielded all the power of his eloquence and influence against the independence of the colonies. (Bancroft, Hist. U.S., Vol. VII, p. 261.) He did not foresee that independent America was to be the field on which his noble Church was to reap her largest harvests, and that in that Declaration which he so earnestly opposed lay the security of the liberties of his followers."

Presbyterian Delegates met every year in the General Synod, and as Dr. Roberts tells us, the Church became "a bond of union and correspondence between large elements in the population of the divided colonies." "Is it any wonder," he continues, "that under its fostering influence the sentiments of true liberty, as well as the tenets of a sound gospel, were preached throughout the territory from Long Island to South Carolina, and that above all a feeling of unity between the Colonies began slowly but surely to assert itself? Too much emphasis cannot be laid, in connection with the origin of the nation, upon the influence of that ecclesiastical republic, which from 1706 to 1774 was the only representative on this continent of fully developed federal republican institutions. The United States of America owes much to that oldest of American Republics, the Presbyterian Church."

It is, of course, not claimed that the Presbyterian Church was the only source from which sprang the principles upon which this republic is founded, but it is claimed that the principles found in the Westminster Standards were the chief basis for the republic, and that "The Presbyterian Church taught, practiced, and maintained in fulness, first in this land that form of government in accordance with which the Republic has been organized." (Roberts).

The opening of the Revolutionary struggle found the Presbyterian ministers and churches lined up solidly on the side of the colonists, and Bancroft accredits them with having made the first bold move toward independence. The synod which assembled in Philadelphia in 1775 was the first religious body to declare openly and publicly for a separation from England. It urged the people under its jurisdiction to leave nothing undone that would promote the end in view, and called upon them to pray for the Congress which was then in session.

The Episcopalian Church was then still united with the Church of England, and it opposed the Revolution. A considerable number of individuals within that Church, however, labored earnestly for independence and gave of their wealth and influence to secure it. It is to be remembered also that the Commander-in-Chief of the American armies, "the father of our country," was a member of her household. Washington himself attended, and ordered all of his men to attend the services of his chaplains, who were clergymen from the various churches. He gave forty thousand dollars to establish a Presbyterian College in his native state, which took his name in honor of the gift and became Washington College.

N. S. McFetridge has thrown light upon another major development of the Revolutionary period. For the sake of accuracy and completeness we shall take the privilege of quoting him rather extensively. "Another important factor in the independent movement," says he, "was what is known as the 'Mecklenburg Declaration,' proclaimed by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina, May 20, 1775, more than a year before the Declaration (of Independence) of Congress. It was the fresh, hearty greeting of the Scotch-Irish to their struggling brethren in the North, and their bold challenge to the power of England. They had been keenly watching the progress of the contest between the colonies and the Crown, and when they heard of the address presented by the Congress to the King, declaring the colonies in actual rebellion, they deemed it time for patriots to speak. Accordingly, they called a representative body together in Charlotte, N. C., which by unanimous resolution declared the people free and independent, and that all laws and commissions from the king were henceforth null and void. In their Declaration were such resolutions as these: 'We do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us with the mother-country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown' .... 'We hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under control of no power other than that of our God and the general government of Congress; to the maintenance of which we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual cooperation and our lives, our fortunes and our most sacred honor.' ... That assembly was composed of twenty-seven staunch Calvinists, just one-third of whom were ruling elders in the Presbyterian Church, including the president and secretary; and one was a Presbyterian clergyman. The man who drew up that famous and important document was the secretary, Ephraim Brevard, a ruling elder of the Presbyterian Church and a graduate of Princeton College. Bancroft says of it that it was, 'in effect, a declaration as well as a complete system of government.' (U.S. Hist. VIII, 40). It was sent by special messenger to the Congress in Philadelphia, and was published in the Cape Fear Mercury, and was widely distributed throughout the land. Of course it was speedily transmitted to England, where it became the cause of intense excitement.

"The identity of sentiment and similarity of expression in this Declaration and the great Declaration written by Jefferson could not escape the eye of the historian; hence Tucker, in his Life of Jefferson, says: 'Everyone must be persuaded that one of these papers must have been borrowed from the other.' But it is certain that Brevard could not have 'borrowed' from Jefferson, for he wrote more than a year before Jefferson; hence Jefferson, according to his biographer, must have 'borrowed' from Brevard. But it was a happy plagiarism, for which the world will freely forgive him. In correcting his first draft of the Declaration it can be seen, in at least a few places, that Jefferson has erased the original words and inserted those which are first found in the Mecklenberg Declaration. No one can doubt that Jefferson had Brevard's resolutions before him when he was writing his immortal Declaration."

This striking similarity between the principles set forth in the Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church and those set forth in the Constitution of the United States has caused much comment. "When the fathers of our Republic sat down to frame a system of representative and popular government," says Dr. E. W. Smith, "their task was not so difficult as some have imagined. They had a model to work by."

With this background we shall not be surprised to find that the Presbyterians took a very prominent part in the American Revolution. Our own historian Bancroft says: "The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster." So intense, universal, and aggressive were the Presbyterians in their zeal for liberty that the war was spoken of in England as "The Presbyterian Rebellion." An ardent colonial supporter of King George III wrote home: "I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchial spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere." When the news of "these extraordinary proceedings" reached England, Prime Minister Horace Walpole said in Parliament, "Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson" (John Witherspoon, president of Calvinist Presbyterian Princeton, signer of Declaration of Independence).

J. R. Sizoo tells us: "When Cornwallis was driven back to ultimate retreat and surrender at Yorktown, all of the colonels of the Colonial Army but one were Presbyterian elders. More than one-half of all the soldiers and officers of the American Army during the Revolution were Presbyterians." (Boettner, ibid.)

The Gift of Calvinism to the Modern World
Says Motley: "In England the seeds of liberty, wrapped up in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last destined to float over land and sea, and to bear the largest harvests of temperate freedom for great commonwealths that were still unborn. The Calvinists founded the commonwealths of England, of Holland, and America." And again, "To Calvinists more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of England, Holland and America are due."

The testimony of another famous historian, the Frenchman Taine, who himself held no religious faith, is worthy of consideration. Concerning the Calvinists he said: "These men are the true heroes of England. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded the United States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonizing the world."

"If the average American citizen were asked, who was the founder of America, the true author of our great Republic, he might be puzzled to answer. We can imagine his amazement at hearing the answer given to this question by the famous German historian, Ranke, one of the profoundest scholars of modern times. Says Ranke, 'John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.'"

D'Aubigne, whose history of the Reformation is a classic, writes: "Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics. The Pilgrims who left their country in the reign of James I, and landing on the barren soil of New England, founded populous and mighty colonies, were his sons, his direct and legitimate sons; and that American nation which we have seen growing so rapidly boasts as its father the humble Reformer on the shore of Lake Leman."

Dr. E. W. Smith says, "These revolutionary principles of republican liberty and self-government, taught and embodied in the system of Calvin, were brought to America, and in this new land where they have borne so mighty a harvest were planted, by whose hands? — the hands of the Calvinists. The vital relation of Calvin and Calvinism to the founding of the free institutions of America, however strange in some ears the statement of Ranke may have sounded, is recognized and affirmed by historians of all lands and creeds."

All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."

The testimony of Emilio Castelar, the famous Spanish statesman, orator and scholar, is interesting and valuable. Castelar had been professor of Philosophy in the University of Madrid before he entered politics, and he was made president of the republic which was set up by the Liberals in 1873. As a Roman Catholic he hated Calvin and Calvinism. Says he: "It was necessary for the republican movement that there should come a morality more austere than Luther's, the morality of Calvin, and a Church more democratic than the German, the Church of Geneva. The Anglo-Saxon democracy has for its lineage a book of a primitive society — the Bible. It is the product of a severe theology learned by the few Christian fugitives in the gloomy cities of Holland and Switzerland, where the morose shade of Calvin still wanders . . . And it remains serenely in its grandeur, forming the most dignified, most moral and most enlightened portion of the human race."

When we remember that two-thirds of the population at the time of the Revolution had been trained in the school of Calvin, and when we remember how unitedly and enthusiastically the Calvinists labored for the cause of independence, we readily see how true are the above testimonies.

History is eloquent in declaring that American democracy was born of Christianity and that that Christianity was Calvinism. The great Revolutionary conflict which resulted in the formation of the American nation, was carried out mainly by Calvinists, many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian College at Princeton, and this nation is their gift to all liberty loving people.

In England and America the great struggles for civil and religious liberty were nursed in Calvinism, inspired by Calvinism, and carried out largely by men who were Calvinists. And because the majority of historians have never made a serious study of Calvinism they have never been able to give us a truthful and complete account of what it has done in these countries. Only the light of historical investigation is needed to show us how our forefathers believed in it and were controlled by it. We live in a day when the services of the Calvinists in the founding of this country have been largely forgotten, and one can hardly treat of this subject without appearing to be a mere eulogizer of Calvinism. We may well do honor to that Creed which has borne such sweet fruits and to which America owes so much. (Boettner, ibid.)

Conclusion
We have now examined the Calvinistic system in considerable detail, and have seen its influence in the Church, in the State, in society, and in education. We have also considered the objections which are commonly brought against it, and have considered the practical importance of the system. It now remains for us to make a few general observations in regard to the system as a whole.

A sure test of the character of individuals or of systems is found in Christ's own words: "By their fruits ye shall know them." By that test Calvinists and Calvinism will gladly be judged. The lives and the influences of those who have held the Reformed Faith is one of the best and most conclusive arguments in its favor. Smith refers to "that divinely vital and exuberant Calvinism, the creator of the modern world, the mother of heroes, saints and martyrs in number without number, which history, judging the tree by its fruits, crowns as the greatest creed of Christendom." The impartial verdict of history is that as a character builder and as a proclaimer of liberty to men and nations Calvinism stands supreme among all the religious systems of the world. In calling the roll of the great men of our own country the number of Presbyterian presidents, legislators, jurists, authors, editors, teachers and business men is vastly disproportionate to the membership of the Church. Every impartial historian will admit that it was the Protestant revolt against Rome which gave the modern world its first taste of genuine religious and civil liberty, and, that the nations which have achieved and enjoyed the greatest freedom have been those which were most fully brought under the influence of Calvinism.

A brief examination of Church history, or of the historic creeds of Protestantism, readily shows that the doctrines which today are known as Calvinism were the ones which brought about the Reformation and preserved its benefits. He who is most familiar with the history of Europe and America will readily agree with the startling statement of Dr. Cunningham that, "next to Paul, John Calvin has done most for the world." And Dr. Smith has well said: "Surely it should stop the mouths of the detractors of Calvinism to remember that from men of that creed we inherit, as the fruits of their blood and toil, their prayers and teachings, our civil liberty, our Protestant faith, our Christian homes. The thoughtful reader, noting that these three blessings lie at the root of all that is best and greatest in the modern world, may be startled at the implied claim that our present Christian civilization is but the fruitage of Calvinism."

We do but repeat the very clear testimony of history when we say that Calvinism has been the creed of saints and heroes. "Whatever the cause," says Froude, "the Calvinists were the only fighting Protestants. It was they whose faith gave them courage to stand up for the Reformation, and but for them the Reformation would have been lost." During those centuries in which spiritual tyranny was numbering its victims by the thousands; when in England, Scotland, Holland and Switzerland, Protestantism had to maintain itself with the sword, Calvinism proved itself the only system able to cope with and destroy the great powers of the Romish Church. Its unequalled array of martyrs is one of its crowns of glory. In the address of the Methodist Conference to the Presbyterian Alliance of 1896 it was graciously said: "Your Church has furnished the memorable and inspiring spectacle, not simply of a solitary heroic soul here and there, but of generations of faithful souls ready for the sake of Christ and His truth to go cheerfully to prison and to death. This rare honor you rightly esteem as the most precious part of your priceless heritage." "There is no other system of religion in the world," says McFetridge, which has such a glorious array of martyrs to the faith. "Almost every man and woman who walked to the flames rather than deny the faith or leave a stain on conscience was the devout follower, not only, and first of all, of the Son of God, but also of that minister of God who made Geneva the light of Europe, John Calvin." To the Divine vitality and fruitfulness of this system the modern world owes a debt of gratitude which in recent years it is slowly beginning to recognize but can never repay.

From freedom and responsibility in the Church it was only a step to freedom and responsibility in the State; and historically the cause of freedom has found no braver nor more resolute champions than the followers of Calvin.

"Calvinism," says Warburton, "is no dreamy, theoretical creed. It does not, — despite all the assertions of its adversaries, — encourage a man to fold his arms in a spirit of fatalistic indifference, and ignore the needs of those around him, together with the crying evils which lie, like putrifying sores, upon the open face of society." Wherever it has gone marvelous moral transformations have followed in its wake. For purity of life, for temperance, industry, and charity, the Calvinists have stood without superiors.

Calvinism was revolutionary. It taught the natural equality of men, and its essential tendency was to destroy all distinctions of rank and all claims to superiority which rested upon wealth or vested privilege. The liberty-loving soul of the Calvinist has made him a crusader against those artificial distinctions which raise some men above others.

Politically, Calvinism has been the chief source of modern republican government. Calvinism and republicanism are related to each other as cause and effect; and where a people are possessed of the former, the latter will soon be developed. Calvin himself held that the Church, under God, was a spiritual republic; and certainly he was a republican in theory. James I was well aware of the effects of Calvinism when he said: "Presbytery agreeth as well with the monarchy as God with the Devil." Bancroft speaks of "the political character of Calvinism, which with one consent and with instinctive judgment the monarchs of that day feared as republicanism." Another American historian, John Fiske, has written, "It would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owes to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell, must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy .... The promulgation of this theology was one of the longest steps that mankind has ever taken toward personal freedom."

The theology of the Calvinist exalted one Sovereign and humbled all other sovereigns before His awful majesty. The divine right of kings and the infallible decrees of popes could not long endure amid a people who place sovereignty in God alone. But while this theology infinitely exalted God as the Almighty Ruler of heaven and earth and humbled all men before Him, it enhanced the dignity of the individual and taught him that all men as men were equal. The Calvinist feared God; and fearing God he feared nobody else. Knowing himself to have been chosen in the counsels of eternity and marked for the glories of heaven, he possessed something which dissipated the feeling of personal homage for men and which dulled the lustre of all earthly grandeur. If a proud aristocracy traced its lineage through generations of highborn ancestry, the Calvinists, with a loftier pride, invaded the invisible world, and from the book of life brought down the record of the noblest enfranchisement, decreed from eternity by the King of kings. By a higher than any earthly lineage they were heaven's noblemen because God's sons and priests, joint heirs with Christ, kings and priests unto God, by a divine anointing and consecration. Put the truth of the sovereignty of God into a man's mind and heart, and you put iron in his blood. The Reformed Faith has rendered a most valuable service in teaching the individual his rights.

In striking contrast with these democratic and republican tendencies which are found to be inherent in the Reformed Faith we find that Arminianism has a very pronounced aristocratic tendency. In the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches the elder votes in Presbytery or Synod or General Assembly on full equality with his pastor; but in Arminian churches the power is largely in the hands of the clergy, and the laymen have very little real authority. Episcopacy stresses rule by the hierarchy. Arminianism and Roman Catholicism (which is practically Arminian) thrive under a monarchy, but there Calvinism finds its life cramped. On the other hand Romanism especially does not thrive in a republic, but there Calvinism finds itself most at home. An aristocratic form of church government tends toward monarchy in civil affairs, while a republican form of church government tends toward democracy in civil affairs. Says McFetridge, "Arminianism is unfavorable to civil liberty, and Calvinism is unfavorable to despotism. The despotic rulers of former days were not slow to observe the correctness of these propositions, and, claiming the divine right of kings, feared Calvinism as republicanism itself."

The enemies of Calvinism are not able honestly to confront the testimony of history. Certainly a glorious record belongs to this system in the history of modern civilization. None more noble can be found anywhere. "It has ever been a mystery to the so-called liberals," says Henry Ward Beecher, "that the Calvinists, with what they have considered their harshly despotic and rigid views and doctrines, should always have been the staunchest and bravest defenders of freedom. The working for liberty of these severe principles in the minds of those that adopted them has been a puzzle. But the truth lies here: Calvinism has done what no other religion has ever been able to do. It presents the highest human ideal to the world, and sweeps the whole road to destruction with the most appalling battery that can be imagined.

"It intensifies, beyond all example, the individuality of man, and shows in a clear and overpowering light his responsibility to God and his relations to eternity. It points out man as entering life under the weight of a tremendous responsibility, having on his march toward the grave, this one sole solace — of securing heaven and of escaping hell.

"Thus the Calvinist sees man pressed, burdened, urged on, by the most mighty influencing forces. He is on the march for eternity, and is soon to stand crowned in heaven or to lie sweltering in hell, thus to continue for ever and ever. Who shall dare to fetter such a being? Get out of his way! Hinder him not, or do it at the peril of your own soul. Leave him free to find his way to God. Meddle not with him or with his rights. Let him work out his own salvation as he can. No hand must be laid crushingly upon a creature who is on such a race as this — a race whose end is to be eternal glory or unutterable woe for ever and ever."

James Anthony Froude has been recognized as one of England's most able historians and men of letters. For a number of years he was professor of History at Oxford, England's greatest university. While he accepted another system for himself, and while his writings are such that he is often spoken of as an opponent of Calvinism, he was free from prejudice, and the ignorant attacks upon Calvinism which have been so common in recent years aroused in him the learned scholar's just impatience.

"I am going to ask you," says Froude, "to consider how it came to pass that if Calvinism is indeed the hard and unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment declares it to be, it has possessed such singular attractions in past times for some of the greatest men that ever lived; and how — being as we are told, fatal to morality, because it denies free will — the first symptom of its operation, wherever it established itself, was to obliterate the distinction between sins and crimes, and to make the moral law the rule of life for States as well as persons. I shall ask you, again, why, if it be a creed of intellectual servitude, it was able to inspire and sustain the bravest efforts ever made by man to break the yoke of unjust authority. When all else has failed, — when patriotism has covered its face and human courage has broken down, — when intellect has yielded, as Gibbon says, 'with a smile or a sigh,' content to philosophize in the closet, and abroad worship with the vulgar, — when emotion, and sentiment, and tender imaginative piety have become the handmaids of superstition, and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is any difference between lies and truth, — the slavish form of belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation."

Frankly, Rev, if your belief system is not true, warning you so is the most Christian thing a person can do.

I rejoice your passion in faith runs so high, I suggest though it instead be placed in Jesus. Your self righteousness merely proves to everyone here you are a wilfull soul, and that (my brother in Christ) is no Christian attitude despite your amirable intent to open the eyes of others. I worry someone new in faith may find your demeanor repugnant, and that would not be effective in winning souls for Christ. With prayer and Christs grace, you will mature in this aspect .

That minority of Arminians and Roman Catholics who are Saved and are Christians, are Christians despite their Arminianism and Catholicism. These belief systems do not aid the progress of the Gospel; they subvert it. These belief systems do not assist a man in attaining salvation; they hinder him.

Are you making the assertion that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is THE body catholic? - I respectfully disagree. RNmomof7 - what are your thoughts, do you feel the same? and is this tenor typical of Presbyterians or just the 1611 Orthodoxy crowd?

They will indeed whine and cry and hit abuse..and if they have their way silence the gospel..and then they will blame it on us...They are Pathetic crybabies and Christ haters. #2740 posted on 3/22/02 1:57 PM Eastern by RnMomof7

Mom tried to say that it wasn't directed at the Arminians when it was a clear response to OPs post regarding Arminians. The last thing I saw on the thread was when Mom told me I made OP a prophet - I guess because I complained about her calling us "Christ haters." Who could've predicted we'd object to that?

Ergo, the vast majority of Arminians are not saved, and are not Christians. #2730 posted on 3/22/02 1:07 PM Eastern by OrthodoxPresbyterian

Rnmomof7 is this accurate - do you consider me a "Christ Hater" or have you been misinterpreted by WS? -

Frankly, Rev, if your belief system is not true, warning you so is the most Christian thing a person can do. ~~ I rejoice your passion in faith runs so high, I suggest though it instead be placed in Jesus. Your self righteousness merely proves to everyone here you are a wilfull soul, and that (my brother in Christ) is no Christian attitude despite your amirable intent to open the eyes of others. I worry someone new in faith may find your demeanor repugnant, and that would not be effective in winning souls for Christ. With prayer and Christs grace, you will mature in this aspect.

Nope. Uprooting doctrinal error is not self-righteousness, no matter how much ecumenists who oppose the idea of absolute truth would like it to be.

The modern church is addicted to that doctrinal poison, the "soveraigne drugge Arminianisme" (and remember, this is how the arminians described their theological construct). Judgment falls first upon the house of the Lord; the church must break her addiction to lies.

Telling a crack addict he should overcome his addiction is neither judgmental nor self-righteous. You can say it's judgmental and self-righteous, of course; but reproving a man of his addiction to poisons remains the morally right thing for a Christian to do.

I am simply making the assertion that "Calvinism is the Gospel, and nothing else" (Charles Spurgeon). I don't mind a bit that such statement was made by a Calvinist Baptist; I am no "pure partisan" of the OPC (although obviously, I am OPC partly because I adjudge them to be the most doctrinally correct denomination around, but that is a very different thing from saying the OPC is the only game in town).

My interest is more broadly in the Doctrine of Sovereign Grace, whether preached by Orthodox Presbyterian, Calvinist Baptist, or Reformed Episcopalian, etc... this is the Gospel, and nothing else, whether it be preached in a Presbyterian church, or another; the "master narcotic" of Arminianism must be reproved and cast out of the churches.

RnMomof7 has repeatedly stated that she made those comments specifically in regard to those Arminians who deliberately attempt to silence religious discussion on FR, having threads pulled and so forth, and who are thereby working to prevent the peresentation of the Gospel.

RN has made her intent known via freepmail - your assertion they are trying to prevent the gospel is sadly off the mark. What it appears is that they are trying to stifle un-charitable, un-Christlike demeanors that waft strongly of bigotry, further advancing the wrong notion of Presby/wasp elitism - Was that your goal ? - because that was the outcome, and that is unfortunate as there is a unawakened lurker somewhere in flyover country reading these posts, shaking thier head saying - "man, thats nothing I want to be a part of." - youll win more souls with Gods truth, than prideful boasts. Blessings to you

I am OPC partly because I adjudge them to be the most doctrinally correct denomination around

merely reaffirming the notion that wisdom is by the grace of God and knowledge in the hand of a young man is often wielded like a sword. Wisdom and knowledge are distinctly different as you have shown us. You can certainly swing it around in an impressive manner, yet lack the maturity and grace (wisdom) to effectively utilize the tool of evangelism.

Child, I will pray for your prideful talk

God's truth is that Arminianism was a deliberate fabrication of counter-reformationist Jesuits, artificially constructed from the beginning for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Biblical Doctrine of Grace in the Protestant Church. Not the kind of "gospel" anyone should want to see souls "won" to, when even its own adherents have described it as a drug which was planted into the bloodstream of the church.

Any true Christian must not be a party to this doctrinal pollution of the Church. They must reprove the unfruitful Arminian works of darkness, not aid them.

Evangelism requires as a prerequisite, among other things, that you are actually preaching the Real Gospel. How can the church hope for consistent efficacy in evangelism, when her "gospel" has been infested with Arminianism?

The problem here is that you are simply assuming that Arminianism is true. But the facts of history establish beyond question that Arminianism was always a fabricated construct, at the root, from the beginning of its appearance upon the world stage. AND IF THESE FACTS ARE TRUE (and they are irrefutable), then the Church must reprove the evil works of Arminianism. She cannot blithely tolerate this "soveraigne drugge" which every day poisons her doctrinal life-blood.

This is Divine Providence. My dear Roman Catholic wife, bless her heart, and I were watching Alan Keyes last night and she was making comments about the One True Church (by which she meant the church at Rome) and she about threw a conniption fit when I informed her with my big mouth something to the effect that there were Christians from the beginning who never asked the church at Rome what they should believe or how they should govern themselves. I asked her if she wanted me to prove it (I don't think she does) but now this morning I think I have the background that I need. Fear not, I tread very carefully!:^)

Cordially,

Delighted to be of assistance, I just hope you don't end up sleepin' on the couch on my account!!

this is by no means "evangelism" leading me to ask who is being served. Comments? 51 posted on 3/26/02 8:37 AM Pacific by Revelation 911

As I already stated -- to have confidence in the efficacy of your evangelism, you have to start by preaching the Real Gospel.
False Gospel makes for False Converts. Pew-warming Pod People -- damned through the Church

Until we expunge the spiritual poison of "that soveraigne drugge arminianisme" from the doctrinal bloodstream of the Church, congregants who have been fed a False Gospel will continue to be "damned through the church".

Your link: "Anti-Semitism of the "Church Fathers"

Huh... do you really believe that the Church Fathers were Anti-Semites? Honestly? And yet, you pretend yourself to be a Christian??

In fact, observations on God's punishment of the Jewish Nation for their rejection of the Messiah have been offered by many a commentator:

As this imprecation was dread fully answered in the ruin so quickly brought on the Jewish nation, and the calamities which have ever since pursued that wretched people, so it was peculiarly fulfilled by Titus the Roman general, on the Jews whom he took during the siege of Jerusalem. So many, after having been scourged in a terrible manner, were crucified all round the city, that in a while there was not room near the wall for the crosses to stand by each other. Probably this befell some of those who now joined in this cry, as it certainly did many of their children: the very finger of God thus pointing out their crime in crucifying his Son. -- John Wesley

But we have no intention of reading into such exegeses, any kind of imaginary "anti-semitism" on Wesley's part. We need not fabricate into Wesley's writings attributions of anti-semitism, and thereby hope to indict his theology; no, rather, it is enough that the foundational crux of Wesley's theology itself was nothing more than a deliberate fabrication, constructed by the Jesuits for the express purpose of perverting and subverting the Gospel of Grace amongst the Reformed Church -- that "soveraigne drugge arminianism", a theological poison which was conceived from the beginning as a Counterfeit, and a Lie.

THAT is what we truly hold against Wesley's theology.

False Gospel makes for False Converts. Until we expunge the spiritual poison of "that soveraigne drugge arminianisme" from the doctrinal bloodstream of the Church, congregants who have been fed a False Gospel will continue to be "damned through the church".

I didnt hold Wesley up as an Idol - whereas you have done so with Calvin -

Tsk, tsk. What simpering bulverism.

Please indicate exactly where I advocate the worship of Messr. Calvin.
If (and when) you can't, then it will be evident that you are a Liar, a Bearer of False Witness, and a Willful and Deliberate Breaker of God's Law.

Sins for which you must repent.

your refutation is weak and by this point redundant. Can I have your first name so I can pray for you?

But if you pray to the "god" of Arminianism, a "god" which is nowhere found in the Bible and was constructed by Jesuits for the express purpose of perverting and subverting the Gospel, then you will be committing Idolatry, Rev.

For to pray to a False God, is Idolatry.

And the Arminian Construct's fabricated "god" is a False God. How could it be otherwise, when their entire theological system was conceived and birthed as a deliberate fraud which was always intended to pervert the Gospel, as indeed it has?

I will not provide the occasion of further Idolatry on your part. Instead, I will warn you that you must repent all false, Arminian-fabricated false notions of God, and worship the true and living God -- who is correctly apprehended by the theology of the Reformers, as unperverted by the "master narcotic" of Arminianism (the poison of the church).

Oh - how dense of me, I finally figured out this is one of those immature last word pissing contests - go ahead my child. I will pray for you to Jesus Christ 57 posted on 3/26/02 1:50 PM Pacific by Revelation 911

Nothing of the sort.

It is an earnest effort to bring one who professes to be a "christian" to face the historical facts that the core fundamentals of his Arminian belief system are and have always been a satanic Counterfeit, deliberately fabricated by spiritual Wolves.

But it is a difficult effort, for Arminians are deeply mired in spiritual blindness; they cherish their Jesuit-constructed System far more than the Authority of history, or that of Scripture, or that of the Christ!! Hence their unwillingness even to face the irrefutable testimony of historical facts which are utterly damning to Arminian beliefs; for how shall they come into the light, who are so accustomed to loving darkness?

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