The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 252

according to the appetites of their princes. For oft it is that princes are
the most ignorant of all others in God’s true religion.... If all the seed of
Abraham had been of the religion of Pharaoh, whose subjects they long
were, I pray you, madam, what religion would there have been in the
world? Or if all men in the days of the apostles had been of the religion
of the Roman emperors, what religion would there have been upon the
face of the earth? ... And so, madam, ye may perceive that subjects are
not bound to the religion of their princes, albeit they are commanded to
give them obedience.”
Said Mary: “Ye interpret the Scriptures in one manner, and they [the
Roman Catholic teachers] interpret in another; whom shall I believe, and
who shall be judge?”
“Ye shall believe God, that plainly speaketh in His word,” answered
the Reformer; “and farther than the word teaches you, ye neither shall
believe the one nor the other. The word of God is plain in itself; and if
there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, which is never
contrary to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other places,
so that there can remain no doubt but unto such as obstinately remain
ignorant.”—David Laing, The Collected Works of John Knox, vol. 2, pp.
281, 284.
Such were the truths that the fearless Reformer, at the peril of his
life, spoke in the ear of royalty. With the same undaunted courage he
kept to his purpose, praying and fighting the battles of the Lord, until
Scotland was free from popery.
In England the establishment of Protestantism as the national
religion diminished, but did not wholly stop, persecution. While many
of the doctrines of Rome had been renounced, not a few of its forms
were retained. The supremacy of the pope was rejected, but in his
place the monarch was enthroned as the head of the church. In the
service of the church there was still a wide departure from the purity
and simplicity of the gospel. The great principle of religious liberty was
not yet understood. Though the

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