The European Union in Prophecy The EU in Prophecy I | Página 229

The European Union in Prophecy
It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the
perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the hardships and dangers of the
wilderness, and with God's blessing to lay, on the shores of America, the foundation
of a mighty nation. Yet honest and Godfearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet
comprehend the great principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed
so much to secure for themselves, they were not equally ready to grant to others. "Very
few, even of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century, had any
just conception of that grand principle, the outgrowth of the New Testament, which
acknowledges God as the sole judge of human faith."-- Ibid., vol. 5, p. 297.
The doctrine that God has committed to the church the right to control the
conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply rooted of papal
errors. While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome, they were not entirely free
from her spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness in which, through the long ages of
her rule, popery had enveloped all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly
dissipated. Said one of the leading ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay: "It
was toleration that made the world antichristian; and the church never took harm by
the punishment of heretics."-- Ibid., vol. 5, p. 335. The regulation was adopted by the
colonists that only church members should have a voice in the civil government. A
kind of state church was formed, all the people being required to contribute to the
support of the clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus
the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before these
measures led to the inevitable result --persecution.
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the
New World. Like the early Pilgrims he came to enjoy religious freedom; but, unlike
them, he saw --what so few in his time had yet seen--that this freedom was the
inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for
truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God's word had yet
been received. Williams "was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil
government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before
the law."--Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 16. He declared it to be the duty of the
magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. "The public or the
magistrates may decide," he said, "what is due from man to man; but when they
228