PERSECUTION BY PROTESTANTS.
By Edwin C. Stiles
Not long since, at the establishment where I was employed as a workman, I was called to witness the sufferings of a shop-mate who accidentally had his hand caught and mangled by the machinery. As nearly every hand in the shop gathered around him, some wringing their own hands at the sight, others running to bring water, cloths, &c., and others standing near with distorted faces, all making exclamations and gestures of sympathy; my mind was turned at once to the sufferings of the martyrs and the lambs of the flock of Jesus. The agonies and sufferings which they have endured, by millions, the Judgment can only reveal. As I beheld the sufferer who stood before us, I remarked to a Methodist deacon standing by, that if it should ever be my lot to be mangled in that way, my desire to God was, that it should be for his word, and the gospel of his dear Son. The remark which I made struck him like a thunder-clap; and he stared at me with an expression of astonishment which I will not attempt to describe, simply because my remark which I put forth under the impulse of the moment, betrayed the idea in my own mind, of not only the possibility, but of the entire probability, of such a state of enmity of mind obtaining in the hearts of the enlightened Protestant Christians of this country, against God's word and true Christianity, as to result in such persecutions as have obtained in the past. His argument was, there are too many Christians, men are too enlightened now to suffer it, &c.; but I pointed him to the fact that every persecution since the days of Christ had been carried on by the professed people of God; men who claimed the highest authority, and the highest standard of Christianity for themselves. But we find many ignorant professors of religion boasting confidently that Protestants never persecuted any one, Protestants were always the sufferers themselves, it is the Catholics, say they; the Catholics were always the only persecutors for religion's sake! To this false, yet often repeated assertion, is opposed the mass of historical records touching this matter. Orchard, in his history of the Foreign Baptists, says that from the restoration of Charles II, 1660, to the revolution in 1688, in a period of only twenty-eight years, eight thousand Baptists were destroyed, and seventy thousand suffered by prisons, fines, whipping, banishment, pillories, &c., and sixty millions of dollars were extorted from them in fines in Protestant England alone, because they would not conform to the established church! At this time the Conventicle act was passed, forbidding more than five persons to assemble for religious199meetings outside of the State church, and for the first and second offences against this act, they were punished with fines; for the third, banishment, and if they returned, their sentence was, "Death without benefit of clergy." The "benefit" of such a clergy, in my esteem, would be exceedingly small. And this is not all, for other Protestant countries of Europe, Switzerland, Germany, &c., were all making havoc of this same class of people about the same time, and Zuinglians, Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics were united in this work of destroying these non-conformists. Well may Mosheim lament that "so little distinction was made between the innocent and the guilty, when the sword of justice(?) was unsheathed against them," and Benedict, after speaking of the Munster affair, adds, "It is plain to be seen that other causes operated for the awful havoc of a people, who would neither fight for the government nor themselves." "In 1528 the number of martyrs was very great. Seventy are mentioned at one time, and for many years after the victims continued to increase. In 1529 three hundred and fifty were put to death in Altsey; they were confined in prison, and were literally dealt out to the executioners, like sheep to the slaughter, as fast as he could despatch them, till the magistrate at length inquired, What shall I do? the more I kill the more they increase." Balthazar Hubmer, a distinguished Baptist preacher, about this time published a book in which he complains of Zuinglius and his followers thus: "They have carried it so far as to imprison at one time, in a dark tower, twenty persons, consisting of men, women, widows and young girls; and to pass on them the following sentence: 'That they shall never see the light of the sun, nor of the moon, and shall finish their lives on bread and water. For this purpose they shall all of them remain in a dark tower, the living having to endure the noisome stench of the dead, till there be no more of them remaining.' In this condition," continues he, "some ate nothing for three days, that others might have something to eat;" and all this came upon them for receiving that which Jesus commanded believers to receive, viz., baptism. The Authorities of Aardenburg, Deventer, Berne, Zurich and Groeningen issued decrees against this people from 1601 and onward, which had for their aim and end to force them at all hazards, nolens volens, willing or unwilling, to be converted to the dominant party, attend their churches, to give up anabaptism, and adopt the infant system; and conform in all things to their faith and forms. The prison with bread and water, the lash, the stocks, various fines, and other light punishments, were provided for the first offence, banishment for the second, and death for the third. An inventory of all their property, personal and real, was required; no person was allowed to harbor, protect, or allow them to hold meetings on their estates, or in their houses; their children were deprived of being heirs at law, because unbaptized in infancy, and farther, it was decreed that no teacher should exercise any of the functions of the ministry, or administer any ordinance without license from civil authority. A refusal to engage in war, or take and administer oaths, was esteemed one of the great heresies of the times, and one edict closes with the following enactment: "We ordain that the exercise of all other religions but the Reformed is hereby prohibited." We find that under these edicts not only men, but women, in every stage of life, suffered extremely, and cases of female suffering, of which I subjoin one instance, were of frequent occurrence. Barbary Neff was driven from place to place, while in a condition which calls for all the kindness and assiduity of human friendship; and three days after her confinement, she was treacherously arrested, and conveyed four miles to prison, in the coldest season of the year. She died soon after her release. This was in 1648. "But the loss of all their earthly possessions was a light affair when compared with the vexatious, excruciating and interminable sufferings, to which they were everywhere exposed." Men, women and children were equally the victims of this Protestant intolerance. "They used the same prisons which the Catholics had formerly employed, and females in all the trying conditions peculiar to their sex, after being chased like criminals and outlaws, were doomed to long confinement in gloomy and filthy abodes, and were often loaded with chains, and made to suffer the tortures of the rack, as one of the means of grace in the process of their conversion to the religion of the Reformers." "Ample details," says the historian, "of these shocking transactions are before me; some of the sufferers who fled from the Swiss cantons, and settled in Germany, were still alive two centuries ago; and of some of the scenes described in this old book, the author was an eye witness; especially of that endured by the refugees, when seven hundred, old and young, were driven out of the department of Berne, in 1671." It is said the city of Zurich took the lead in these infamous measures, from first to last, seconded by other cities with their influence and authority, having the consent and approval of the Reformers, in their efforts to establish the reformed religion. At the commencement of the Reformation, Luther wrote and preached against war in all its forms, especially in a tract printed at Wittemberg, 1520; but he afterwards abandoned his position, and supported the claims of State authority, in these points. But the Baptists stood stiffly by the Bible principles which he had forsaken; as well in this as in other points of doctrine, which, as Mosheim says, was dearer to them than life and all its enjoyments, and from which neither the flames that were kindled to consume them, nor the ignominy of the gibbet, nor the terrors of the sword, could move them. Their opposition to bearing arms, and war in all its operations, was very decided. Whoever commanded them to the camp or field, they would not obey; whatever contingencies might arise, the weapons of death they would not wield. Their sentiments on this subject were well understood by all the world, and this made the warlike onsets of the Protestant Reformers on these weaponless Christians the more cruel, dastardly and contemptible. They had none of the modern consistency about wars of defense and aggression, but they put a solemn and perpetual veto on the whole system as incompatible with the spirit and principles of the gospel. I would not have any conclude from what I have here written, that I expect another such "tribulation as never was," either in this or any other country, prior to the advent of Jesus; but that a spirit of enmity will be developed against God's word and his children which would result in such a persecution if God would again suffer it, I have no doubt. But when the time of trouble comes such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time, every one shall be delivered whose names are written in the Book.