Church History - Part 4

You are listening to David Porson podcasts. This is a series of 11 talks covering church history. Part 4. 16th century. Reformation becomes revolution. What is the difference between a reformation and a revolution? The answer is, found by asking two other questions, how much are you going to change and who's going to change it? And if you answer those two questions, you'll get the answer to the first. And during this 16th century, we are considering the reformation which Martin Luther started became a revolution. Because more and more was changed and different people began to change it. Now there are three groups of people I want to look at tonight with you and they are these. First of all, I want to look at the reformers. Because Martin Luther was not the only one, there were others, the reformers. Secondly, I want to look at the Romans. What were the Roman Catholics doing all this time? How did they react to all that was happening in Germany? And thirdly, I want to look at a group that have been called the radicals. They've been given other names too, but quite frankly this church here at Goldhill is descended from that third group. It certainly didn't come from the Romans and it didn't directly come from the reformers. But it did stem from that third group called the radicals. So there we have it, the three hours for tonight. When we look at the reformers, I want to look at them in three different countries. I want to look at them first in Germany, then in Switzerland and then in England. And we'll get to the Amorous Henry VIII before long. But let's look at these three areas and ask how much was changed and who changed it in each of these areas. Germany, Switzerland and then certainly England. And so we look first at the reformation in Germany. Who changed it? Well, obviously Martin Luther did and how much did he change? The answer is during the first four or five years of Martin Luther's epoch making discoveries. During the first four or five years he changed a great deal. He got rid of the Pope. He got rid of Vishops. He got rid of indulgences. He got rid of Purgatory. He got rid of a host of things and reduced the sacraments from seven to two, then came the crisis during which he had to go into hiding in the Wartburg Castle. When he came out of hiding he found to his horror that some of his friends were carrying the change much further than he intended and much more quickly. And those of you who saw the film will remember him standing in his own pulpit and saying, "How dare you do this?" And the truth is that at that point Martin Luther stopped changing things and there are very few changes made after that. Most of the changes were made in those first four or five years. And the result was that he kept a lot of things that Rome had. And he stopped changing things. For example, he kept candles on the altar, which is the thing that Rome had which the Bible certainly doesn't have, but he kept. He kept crucifixers. And if you go into a Lutheran church you will often see a crucifix which may make you wonder, but he kept crucifixers. He kept images and pictures. And above all he kept his own traditional practice in relationship to the Lord's Supper and baptism. And somehow he still believed that the bread and the wine actually were the body and blood of Christ. He never quite got over that. And he kept the practice of infant baptism. And when people said, "But surely faith is needed in baptism." His reply was, "Well, who is to say that the baby doesn't have faith?" Now you can see at this point that Martin Luther began to put the brakes on. And having changed a tremendous amount during four or five years, he put the brakes on and stopped changing. And the Lutheran churches by and large to this day have stopped at that point where he stopped. And therefore there are still many things that would surprise you if you went into a Lutheran church. Would surprise you considering that we count Lutherans among the Protestants. Now the other question, how much did he change? I've tried to answer, but who changed it? And here we come to a rather startling answer. Luther got the princes to change things. In other words, this was a state change. Lutheranism like Romanism was an established religion. And from the very beginning, Luther relied on the princes, the dukes and the electra of Saxony, particularly a man called Frederick, relied on them to reform from the top. Those who ruled the land also were regarded by Luther as ruling the church. And the upshot of this was that it had a famous diet or council at Spire. At that diet, it was decided that each area would adopt the religion of its prince. And so if you lived in an area where the prince was Roman Catholic, you were a Roman Catholic. And if you lived in an area where the prince was a Lutheran, you were a Lutheran. Now can you see the weakness in this? Can you see the point at which the reformation stopped in Germany? It stopped at the point, first of all, that not everything was changed. And it stopped at the point, instead of allowing others to be as free with their conscience as Martin Luther was, they decided that certain areas of Germany would be Protestant and certain areas would be Roman Catholic. Funnily enough, a group of people objected violently to that and they made a protest against that division and that was the origin of the word protestant. It was those who protested against splitting up and saying, "Everybody here will be this religion, everybody here will be that." But it was the state that was sacking the issue of religion. And Martin Luther carried his reformation through with the princes. The obvious result came in the beginning of the 17th century when the Roman Catholic states got together and went to war with the Protestant states who had also got together and the famous 30 years war took place. Now that's the kind of end product of that kind of mistake when the state says, "Everybody here shall be this religion and the state here says everybody here will be that religion." Sooner or later you'll have religious wars and that's what happened. Now so much for Germany and that pattern spread from Germany to Denmark to Sweden to Norway and all these countries adopted Lutheranism as a state religion. Adopted for every citizen within the country. Now the next place I want you to look at with me is Switzerland. Martin Luther didn't start the reformation in Switzerland nor did he help it. It started spontaneously on its own and there were two men who were concerned. One was a German Swiss and one was a Frenchman and the German Swiss was called Huldreich, Vinglie. Forgive me if my German pronunciation isn't very good. But funnily enough, Vinglie, who was an ordinary parish priest for the Roman Catholic Church in a small country village in Switzerland in the German part of Switzerland, became a Protestant by reading his Greek New Testament. Exactly the same thing has happened to Martin Luther, happened to him and happened to him a few years before it happened to Martin Luther. And Huldreich, Vinglie, was reading his New Testament and realized that many of the things he was teaching from his pulpit were true and the same thing happened. Now the interesting thing is that Vinglie was invited to be the priest at the Cathedral of Zurich and if ever you go to Zurich go and look at the Cathedral and Vinglie got up and he preached and he preached the new truths he'd found in this book. And he swept Zurich with him. Among other things he said it's wrong for the Pope to have an army and to staff the army with Swiss mercenaries. The interesting thing is if you go to the Vatican today you'll see the Swiss troops guarding the Vatican to this very day and Vinglie was speaking against that but of course he spoke against many other things. He finally left his allegiance to the Pope and got married. Two things often seem to go together as in recent days in England and many priests followed him. He finally persuaded the City Council now want you to notice this he persuaded the City Council to say that everybody in Zurich must now be a Protestant once again the same dreadful mistake was made. But they carried it through and they became officially Protestant and all the valleys leading from Zurich became Protestant. The trouble was that people in the mountains and the forest didn't. Very soon the valley people in the mountain people got together and fought. And a war lasting two years was fought in the Zurich district and during that war Vinglie himself who was fighting was slain at a little place called Capell. Once again the same pattern going to the state going to the secular authority to a composing religious views on a district leads to war. The story is then taken up. By the way, before he died, Zvingli, I'm afraid, had a big argument with Luther over the Lord's supper. Luther said that bread is the body, and that wine is the blood of Jesus, and Zvingli said that's just bread, and that's just wine, symbols of his body and blood. And I'm afraid that's why the Germans and the Swiss never got together in the Reformation. Now the story moves to France, a young man called John Calvin, born in Piccadilly, the son of a lawyer, and his father put him to the lawn. He went to Paris, Olyon, and Bourge universities to study law. That's where Calvin got his logical mind. He remained a lawyer to his dying day in his speech and in his clarity of thinking and in his devastating arguments, and it's Calvin's arguments that persuaded a lot of people to be what are called Calvinists, and his arguments are terribly logical. Now, funnily enough, he came to Paris, studied the Greek New Testament, and was converted in 1532. Wonder how many of you have studied the Greek New Testament? Do you know, I met recently and, oddly, a member of a church who spends all his days working with his hands, and yet who taught himself Greek so that he could read the New Testament in its original language. There was one church, started in the last century where you couldn't be a member unless you could read Greek and read the Greek New Testament. That's interesting, isn't it? Well, I commend it to you. It converted Luther, it converted Zvingli, and now it converted this man, John Calvin, and within months he was in prison for his Christian views in Paris. Finally, being let out of prison, he fled as a refuge, and he spent the days traveling around. He found himself in the Swiss city of Basel at the age of 26, and he decided at the age of 26 to write down his Christian beliefs. And I've got them here, and I'm always studying them. There they are. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, some 600 pages in each, and he wrote those at the age of 26. As still they're acclaimed as one of the greatest expositions of Protestant faith in the whole world, and they're still so, and they're still red. Mind you, there are some things in it that would raise your eyebrows. His view is unsunday. He advocated going to church on Sunday morning, playing bowls on Sunday afternoon. He did that himself, and it's to John Calvin that we owe the continental Sunday as it's been called. That's an interesting little side that on Calvin for you. He said many things that are much more important and much deeper. And above all, this man believed that God was on the throne. He believed in the sovereignty of God, and that God's will is the final factor that decides the history of nations and of men. And it's because of that tremendous logical emphasis on divine sovereignty and the doctrine of predestination that Calvin gave his name to people who think that way as Calvinists. But Calvin believed in that, and so did Martin Luther, and so did Zvinglian, so did all the reformals, that God is on the throne, and that God is in absolute control of everything and everyone. It's a mighty work for a young man of 26 to write, and it has influenced the course of history that writing. Now John Calvin was still fleeing from one place to another as a refugee. And one day, going to try to get back into France, he discovered that a minor war was going on right in this road, and so he took a detour and failed to get to his destination by the night, by the evening. And so he settled down in the place where he was for the night, and the place was called Geneva. And because he had taken that detour and went there for one night only, he stayed 20 years, and Geneva became the center of Presbyterianism for the whole world. It's a most incredible story. Word got around that John Calvin, the young author of these books, was in Geneva, and the local parish priest, a man called William Farrell, a fine man, hastened round to the inn, said Calvin, I want you to stay here. He said a year ago, the council decided that Geneva should be Protestant. Noticed that again, by the way. And he said it just hasn't worked out. He said they're getting as drunk as ever, they're gambling as much as ever. He said nothing's happened, the people aren't changing. And so we need a man like you, John Calvin. We need you. Stay here and he pleaded with him, and John Calvin said all right, I'll stay. And John Calvin became the reformer of Geneva. Mind you, he was pretty strict. No, he wasn't having funny goings on. He would haul a man up before the church and pass into the mad just straights for doing this, that and the other. But he pulled that city round until it became a well-behaved city. Mind you, I say city, it was the population of Charleston Peter at that time. So that we must have the right idea of the size of towns in those days, 13,000 they had in Geneva. But he pulled it right round. And with a strict discipline, he cleaned up the city and became so unpopular that three years later he had to run for his life. And he fled to Strassburg. But after he departed the city collapsed and things went from bad to worse. And so they sent a deputation from the city council, please come back. And back came John Calvin. Now I became 20 years of his life in that place. And he worked out a further reformation. He went much, much further in the changes. For example, he wouldn't have crucifixes. He wouldn't have candles. But there I say it, he wouldn't have organs either. He said the people should sing. And he carried the changes further than Martin Luther ever did. And he changed so much more. And he also instituted what is now known as the Presbyterian system of church government, in which the church is governed by bodies of laymen and pastors and elders together, in which those local bodies meet together in representative assemblies and look after wider areas of churches. Now Geneva became a place to which Protestants fled for refuge. And altogether, 6,000 more came to live in Geneva who were running away from persecution. And of course, naturally they picked up Calvin's ideas. And when it was safe for them to return to their own country, they took with them Calvin's ideas of faith, Calvin's ideas of how to run the church. But once again may I add that Calvin made the mistake of putting the church and state together. Only this time he didn't say the state must govern the church. He said the church must govern the state. And if a church member misbehaved, Calvin expected the magistrates of the city to deal with him. And once again church and state were confused. He didn't lead to war in Geneva, though it did elsewhere. Now from Geneva, France was influenced, and the Protestants of France were more like Calvin than Luther in Germany. And they became known as the Huguenose, and they grew and grew until by the end of that King's reign in France, during which Calvin started his work. There were 20,000 Huguenose in France. And they grew and grew and grew and grew until that terrible Saint Bartholomew's Day, August the 24th, 1572. If you know your history, you know that on that day 22,000 French Huguenose were slaughtered. 2,000 of them in Paris alone. And person after person was put to death through the whole of France, and the Huguenose fled. They fled to England. They fled to the Netherlands. If you find a family with a French sounding name, almost certainly you'll find that they came over with the Huguenose. There are perhaps families here tonight in this church descended from those who came over, fleeing from the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. But the country most heavily influenced by Geneva was Bonne old Scotland. Now I can't go into the history of Scotland much to the disappointment of the Scots. Just let me mention four great Scotsmen. Patrick Hamilton was the Scot who started the Reformation up there north of the border, but he was burned in 1528. But his work was taken over by George Wishart, who had been to Switzerland. But he likewise came to a sticky end fairly quickly. But the man who really did it finally was a man called John Knox. He's a most colourful character, student at Blasco University. He went to be Chaplin of St Andrew's Castle for the Scottish Army. And the French took the castle and took John Knox away as a prisoner and sold him as a galleous slave, and there he was, rowing the galleous as a slave. But the English rescued him, he came to England and then got into trouble with Queen Mary and fled to the continent and he fled to Geneva to John Calvin. And John Knox was a young man just right for all these views. And he came back to native Scotland saying I'm going to make Scotland Presbyterian. At least he said something deeper than that. He prayed one night he said, "Lord, give me Scotland or I die." And the Lord gave him Scotland and John Knox began his work. Alas, in 1559 he persuaded the Scottish Parliament to become Protestant. And once again, this same church state relationship came out. Nevertheless, in 1560, they had their first general assembly. But in 1561, came back the beautiful and wildly marrying Queen of Scots. And with her beauty and her wild, she got around most of the Protestant nobles. In Scotland, and there they were, Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox face to face. It's a most dramatic story. And if you've got a sense of history, you must read it. Nevertheless, after a civil war in which Mary Queen of Scots was captured and abdicated in favor of her little infant boy James, and ultimately was beheaded for treason as you know by Elizabeth the First of England, John Knox's teaching one ground, and Scotland has become presbytear into this very day. The Church of Scotland reflects the Church of Geneva, where the Church of England is much nearer to Lutheran churches. The Church of Scotland knows everything to John Knox. When he died, the leadership was taken by the last great Scott that I want to mention Andrew Melville, who said to King James, "Sire, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is King James of whom I am a loyal subject, and there is the Lord Jesus Christ of whom James is a subject, and all who are in his church." And so that was the second great area of reformation. How much changed? Who changed it? We've looked at those two questions in Germany. We've looked at them in Switzerland. Now let's come back to our own nation. What happened in England all this time? Well now I must deal with Deer old Henry VIII. Can I say that the English reformation was a typical English model? It really was. It was a typical compromise. We muddled through and say, "Oh, that'll do." We don't work by principles. We're terribly pragmatic. We say, "Does it work?" And whatever works is right. This is typically English. We've always been this way, and the reformation is quite typical. However it worked out, I just don't know. It started of course with Henry VIII, and the fact that he wanted to marry another woman. Mind you, that's been greatly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Let me give you the facts. Henry VIII was forced by others to marry Catherine of Arrigan, and it was an illegal marriage because she was his brother's widow. And therefore he should never have married her, but under pressure from others, including the Pope, who gave him a special permission to marry illegally. He was pressed into this marriage for political reasons. Every child she had was still born except one, the little girl married who was later to become the infamous bloody Mary. And he had no son to carry on the tuteline, and he knew that when he was dead, civil war would break out unless there was a son. And most people in England took it as a sign that God's judgment was on this marriage and that it wasn't illegal marriage and he should never have been in it for God had not given him a son. Now that's the background. Then he met Anne Boleyn with whom he really fell in love, and who would have made a good queen, and who would have been a legal wife. Now you see the tingle. I'm not just defying Henry VIII, I'm giving you the full facts. He applied to the Pope for an annulment of his first illegal marriage, but by now politics had changed, and the Pope for political reasons said no, you can't have special divorce or a special annulment on the grounds of illegally marrying this woman. And so Henry VIII said all right from now on I don't obey the hope. And with one step after another Henry separated the English church from the Pope as England is separated by the English channel from the continent. For example he made himself head of the Pope of the church. It's an amazing step this when you consider that Henry VIII was a bit of a theologian. In his youth he'd written a book against Martin Luther, and the Pope was so thrilled with the book which defended the seven sacraments of Rome that he gave him a title, Defender of the Faith, a title which are queen to this day possesses, and which is on the coins in your pocket. It was given to the Henry VIII for attacking Martin Luther, did you ever know that? What a muddle, the English Reformation is. Well now Henry VIII married Anne Berlin mainly because he put a friend of his into the Archbishopric of Canterbury, a man called Thomas Krammer, and Krammer said, "I will annull your first marriage because I'm convinced it's illegal in the first place so I annull it. You can marry Anne Berlin and he secretly conducted the wedding." Henry had made himself head of the church and broken with Rome. He was now a bit needy of money, and so he seized the wealth in monasteries of England and sold their lands to other individuals thus creating the middle class for the first time in England, which has affected social life ever since. Henry did more than this, but the main point I want to make is this Henry VIII didn't want England to go Protestant. He wanted everything to carry on as normal minus the monasteries because of course their loyalty to the Pope was pretty strong, but he wanted the church of England to carry on exactly as before, only instead of the Pope he would be put. That's basically and simply what he wanted, but he reckoned without a number of factors, he reckoned without the factor that this book was feverishly being translated into English by a man called William Tindell. A man who was hounded around England and had to flee to the continent and was finally burned at the stake, but William Tindell gave us the English Bible on which every other English revised Bible has been based. And that Bible during Henry's reign was put one copy in every church in England, and for the first time people could go along and read this book. Now Henry reckoned without that. Do you see every time you notice it's this book that sets people free? Every time it's the opportunity to read this that causes the most incredible things. Henry reckoned too without such men as Thomas Krenmer who within his heart were sympathetic to Protestant ideas. He reckoned without a lot of other people. William Tindell I should have said, you remember made that famous saying that by the grace of God he would cause the boy who pushed the plough in England to know more of this book than the Pope himself. And that's precisely what began to happen. And this Bible began to be read. Furthermore there was a widespread resentment that the Pope still took money out of England, Peter's pence. It was called the tributes that were paid and other anates that were paid. He reckoned without such men as Thomas Krenmer, Krenmer, not to be confused with Oliver, without such men as Lateman. But Henry feared the speed of change. And I'm afraid he executed Romans and reformers alike towards the end of his reign and he died leaving England in a ferment. But he died leaving on the throne a boy of 10. A boy of 10 it was a very serious little Christian, even a 10. A boy who was deeply influenced by Thomas Krenmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a boy who was sympathetic to England making changes. And during that boy's brief reign certain things happened. First, clergy were allowed to marry. Second, the Lord's Supper in the Church of England took on a Protestant character and the altar was called a table. Third and even more important, services were put into English for the first time instead of Latin. And a book was prepared called the Book of Common Prayer, meaning a book for everybody to use, not just a priest who knows Latin up the front, but a book of common prayer so that the common people could pray. And that book, after its second revision, became the book of common prayer which I have here. It's largely unchanged. If you go to a church of England today, it's that book that is used. It goes back to the era of the boy king. And it's a wonderful book and it's full of gardening, scriptural devotion. We owe that to that boy king or rather to his reign. One of the rules, now listen to this, one of the rules that was brought in under this boy king was this that every priest must preach four times a year. At least. Now can you imagine the state of the church where you had to make a rule to get people to preach four times a year? That is a little insight into the state of the Church of England at that time. Furthermore, they began to write down under Cranmer some articles of religion. They got to 42 later it was cut down to 39 but they made 42 articles statements of faith which set the Protestant tone of the Church of England. During Edward the sixth reign refugees returned from Europe and during his reign there came to Cambridge, my old university, a famous professor of theology from Strasbourg by name Martin Buser. And Martin Buser was teaching students at Cambridge the Protestant understanding of the gospel of Christ. And then the boy king died. And the throne was taken by his half-sister daughter of a Spanish mother Mary. And Mary being half-spanish in blood and holy Spanish in thought married Philip of Spain and spent more time out of the country than in and was determined to bring England back to Rome. 12, The hundred married clergy were put out of a job. The penulums swung right back and the house of lords and the house of commons were made to Neil, to a cardinal pole sent from Rome to accept again England back to the fold of the papal sea. And during Mary's reign, nearly 300 great Christians were put to death and she earned that dreadful nickname Bloody Mary. She deserved it. As I travel around England I see traces of this, go to Oxford and in the main street outside Bayneal College there's a memorial. To two men, Latimer and Ridley burned at the stake during Mary's reign because of their Protestant faith. And you'll remember Latimer's words to Ridley. He said, "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man. By God's grace we shall light such a torch in England this day, I shall never be put out." You go next time you go to Oxford and look at that monument and think of those two people. During Mary's reign, Crenma Archbishop of Canterbury under great pressure signed a paper recanting the changes he had made. But alas, you can't change that easily. And in his heart he knew he was wrong and he soon found himself going to be burned at the stake. And the time came for him to be tied to the stake. He publicly said that he had utter remorse about the recanting of his Protestant stand and he took the arm that had signed that paper and he plunged it into the flame and watched it until it was burned to a sin. He said that hand that signed such a paper has got to be burned first. That happened. And that was Crenma and 300 others, Hooper was burned at Gloucester and many and other men was burned at the stake, the fires of Smithfield you've heard of them, four bishops and one archbishop and many other leading preachers were put to death during Mary's reign. You can imagine that when Elizabeth I came to the throne everybody heave to sigh of relief. She was of course in the Pope's eyes and in many other people's eyes, an illegitimate child. The Pope said Mary Queen of Scots was the right heir to the throne and their lies, the treason between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth. However persecution ended and the refugees came flooding back to England. Now it is in the reign of Elizabeth I that the typical English model which we call the Cheshavine and really came to be. You see Mary didn't like the Scots, she didn't like John Nock, she didn't like Geneva. Mary liked ornate or Elizabeth rather, I'm sorry Elizabeth liked ornate services, she liked vestments, she liked ritual and so she was unhappy about letting these things go. She said the second book of common prayer of Edward was much too Protestant and she got a number of changes in the prayer book putting it back towards a Roman position and the poor old Elizabeth stopped the practice of clergymen meeting to study the Bible. A thing which had been doing a power of good in this land but she didn't like clergymen studying the Bible. And yet she couldn't turn the clock back as Mary had tried to and the Elizabeth, Elizabeth and settlement as we called it settled for a kind of halfway house and if you want to know why within the Cheshavine and today you can have evangelicals and Anglo Catholics, you must go back to Elizabeth the first because leaving the thing in a halfway position and imposing it from Parliament, she laid the door wide open to this kind of mixture that has resulted. A church that can be such a mixture is due to a mixture of foundation and it was Elizabeth the first to lay that mixture really. The book of common prayer is still largely Protestant not entirely but largely and the 39 articles that were finally drawn up in Elizabeth's reign are a wonderful statement of Protestant faith, a wonderful statement and any clergyman who preaches the 39 articles is a clergyman who will be preaching the gospel. Alas, not everyone does but it's there in the book and there is enough Protestantism there to have a thoroughly evangelical and Protestant church of England but there is also the possibility of the other which came later. Elizabeth died an unpopular queen though her popularity came back when Philip II of Spain incensed at the execution of Mary Queen of Scott said we are going to invade England by force and bring it back to the Pope and he sent an armada, the Spanish armada 160 ships, 30,000 marine commando troops and he had an army massed the other side of the English channel to cross as soon as the invasion of England had taken place. England was in desperate straits, she had no friends and the massed might of Europe seemed to be coming towards her. Up the channel came the armada, across the channel was waiting the troops, the army of Philip and it seemed as if England was going to lose the day but she had Sir Francis Drake and the stories told about him you know better than I do and how the Spanish armada was routed by the superior seamanship of England and how it seemed as if even God fought for England that day because the winds were too strong for those unwieldy galleons of Spain and so they were wrecked, they were wrecked on the shores of England, on the shores of Scotland and to this day they are still searching for the wrecked galleons of the Spanish armada. Incidentally I have got Spanish blood in me due to the armada because a galleon was wrecked on the shores of Northern Scotland and the sailors came ashore and they were called by the name of St. Clair, St. Clair. They grabbed local girls and settled down in Scotland and became the Claire of St. Clair and my mother is a St. Clair so I have got blood in me from the Spanish armada that has nothing to do with the story tonight. That's why I get excited at times. Now I've looked at the reformers thus far. I've looked at the reformers in Germany. I've looked at the reformers in Switzerland. I've looked at the reformers in England. May I sum up all I've said by saying two very important things. First, in none of these places did they carry the reformation to its logical conclusion. In none of them did they go the whole hog with the Bible. In none of them did they get right back to the New Testament kind of church. The main reason was, and this is my second point, the main reason was that in every place the church and the state were too close to each other and either the state ran the church or the church ran the state, but in every case there resulted a religion that was imposed upon an area. The whole area went Protestant and a whole area was supposed to change. Now to my mind that is not the New Testament and that was the fatal error. And it led in almost every case to war and is there anything more tragic than people fighting wars over religion? Is there anything more tragic than people fighting in the name of Christ for Christianity and killing each other to do so? We know now that it's utterly wrong to do so, but where a state seeks to impose religion you're going to get this kind of thing and soon relate to this kind of travel arises and war results. Now let me ask what the Romans were doing all this time. By the year 1580, 60 years after Martin Luther, Protestantism had spread through a good deal of Germany to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, to a good deal of Switzerland, quite a bit of France to England. And by 1580, Ireland was still Catholic, a good bit of France was still Catholic, Spain was still Catholic, Italy was still Catholic, Austria was still Catholic and parts of Switzerland and Germany were Catholic. The funny thing is all that happened in 60 years and for the next 300 years the boundaries stayed the same. And still are pretty well. And we must ask the question, why is it that Protestantism spread so quickly in 60 years and then came to a line which has stayed the same until the 20th century so that Italy is still largely Catholic and Spain and Ireland and France and Austria. And the countries in the north east are Protestant, the countries in the south and west are Catholic. Why was it that after 60 years it suddenly came to a halt? The answer is when you study what the Romans were doing and come to a movement among the Romans called the counter-reformation. There had been an attack on Rome which had robbed her of half of Europe and Rome was not going to sit down under that. And three things happened which stemmed the flood and which drew the boundaries for 300 years right to our day. Now what happened? First of all there was a Roman Catholic Martin Luther, his name Ignatius Loyola. A Spanish nobleman terribly wounded in the war lay with a shattered leg in hospital for some months and while in hospital he had visions and he had a change of heart religiously. And he became a devout Roman Catholic and he believed that his call in life was to stop the spread of Protestantism and to do that he would need a Roman Catholic army but army that would fight in a very different way to other armies, I could almost call his followers the Salvation Army of Rome. Because he went to Paris and he gathered around him a group of six noblemen and some noble ladies and he started the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits. And Ignatius Loyola saw their task to keep Europe for Rome and to stop the flood of Protestantism and quite frankly he largely achieved it. He gathered around him hundreds of people and subjected them to the most rigorous military discipline you can imagine which is all set down in a book called Spiritual Exercises. For 25 days you absolutely drill yourself with fasting, with seeking visions, with many other things and for those 25 days you really go through it and by the end of that you're ready to be a Jesuit, you're ready to be a follower of Ignatius Loyola. Furthermore they were prepared to use fair means and foul and they said provided you keep somebody for Rome you can use any means that you feel you should and this is why the English word Jesuitry in the dictionary means justifying the means by the end and using any means to attain it Jesuitry. They got so bad at doing that that ultimately a Pope had to stop the order. But nevertheless they had their good ones and one of the outstanding characters in that army of Rome was a man called Francis Xavier who converted 700,000 people to Rome in India, the West, the East Indies and Japan. Now that was the first thing that happened in Rome, an army of dedicated men disciplined as no men had ever been disciplined who were determined to stop the rot from their point of view. The second thing that happened was what has recently happened, the Pope, realizing that there were many things that needed to be discussed called a council, the Council of Trent which met 25 times between the years 1545 and 1563. At first the Pope was thinking of inviting the Protestants to come and sit down and talk over the differences and see if they couldn't be resolved but he was persuaded by his cardinals not to invite the Protestants at all and they never came. Had they come, history might have been different but they didn't come and were not invited and it became a most reactionary council. They pronounced the curse of God upon Protestant teaching and said anybody who believes that you are just defied by faith alone, let a nathema be upon that person, the curse of God. And then in a series of statements they said these things, there are seven sacraments not to and they are necessary to be saved. Tradition must be placed alongside the Bible as the word of God. The apocryphal must be part of the Bible. Pergatory does exist. Indulgences and the invocation of saints and images and relics is a right and pious practice and the Pope has absolute authority. Now that was the first time these things had been sent by the Church of Rome. May I say very frankly and lovingly but sincerely not one of those things has changed yet. And indeed it can't if you believe that councils cannot err. Then how could these things be denied now? And the recent Vatican council has cleaned up many things and altered many things and explored many things but not a single thing that I have read out has been changed at all. Even the Roman Church saying we will now accept the revised standard version of the Bible has this proviso with it provided the apocryphal is in it. And if you want to know why they insist on that I'll tell you privately. Well now here was a statement of Orthodox faith by Rome and it had the effect of telling Roman Catholics what they really did believe and therefore enabling them to answer Protestant critics. And the third thing that happened in Rome which stopped the Protestant tides spreading, Ignatius Loyola and his Jesuits the Society of Jesus, the council of Trent and thirdly the inquisition was revived. And torture imprisonment and death were used as instruments against Protestants. They were used to wipe out almost every Protestant in Spain and most Protestants in Italy and in other parts like Austria. And the result is that to this day Christians as we understand them are in a tiny minority in those lands. The imposition, the council of Trent and Ignatius Loyola with his Catholic army of priests and laymen, Jesuits who were utterly disciplined and dedicated to stop it and those three things stopped Protestantism and they stopped it by the end of the 16th century and countries that were Catholic by the end of the 16th century, 300 years back, even more 400 years back, have stayed that way and countries that were Protestant, countries that were Roman have stayed that way too. Isn't that strange? It stopped then. Now I come to my third group and I can be most brief about these but they're the most important to my mind. They are called the radicals because they were the extreme left wing of the Reformation. They've been called the stepchildren of the Reformation in a recent book I've read. They've been called the left wing. Now who were they and what were they? They were people who began to ask the greatest fundamental question of all. And it was this who should be doing the reforming, who should be doing the changing and they came to this momentous conclusion which neither Roman nor Reformer had come to yet and the answer was it should have nothing to do with the state. That the church and state are two quite different bodies and should not get too close together and these radicals believed in a free church and not in an established one. They were not even happy with established Protestantism. They said you can't make people good through the government. You can't impose a religion. It must be freely and voluntarily accepted by people themselves. You can't say everybody in England is going to be Protestant. You can't say everybody in Spain must be Roman. You can't use the state to promote religion. You can only use one sword and that is the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. And so they were pacifists. They refused to take part in wars between Protestant and Catholics. They said we're not going to fight for the gospel. We shall only use one sword and that the sword of the spirit, the word of God. Now this was revolutionary and they were regarded as revolutionaries. They were regarded as destroying the one thing that held society together and that was the idea that church and state belong to each other. And so they were regarded as most dangerous people. Now where did they start? They arose in 1522 in the city of Zurich in Switzerland and they call themselves significantly brethren. And the leaders were two men, Conrad Grable and Felix Mence and fine Christians they were. And they were in the very city where Zwingli was causing the council of the city to make everybody Protestant. They said that's not the right way to do it. The only right way is to preach the word and when people voluntarily accepted form them into a church. And so they were fighting for what we now know as religious liberty. And they were fighting hard and the United States is what it is today because of their fight. Because their principle was never accepted in Europe. There was an established religion in Scotland. There was an established religion in England. There was an established religion in Germany. And everywhere you went you found that the state was deciding the religion. But in America the ideas of these radicals took root and in America there is no established religion. You can believe what you feel you ought to believe. And there is no religion attached to the state. The president of America may be a Roman Catholic as Kennedy was or a Baptist as Truman was. It is his conscience alone that decides. Now that is what these radicals fought for. And the other thing they said was this not only should a church not be identified with the state but listen to this carefully. They said the church should not be identified with the community. And therefore and here comes the crunch and they were the first to say this. Therefore a person should not be baptized into the Christian church until they believe. And they turned from infant baptism to believers baptism. And they got a nickname they were called the twice baptizers. Only it wasn't quite like that. They were called the anabaptists. Anabaptists were the left wing of the Reformation. The anabaptists were the radicals. The anabaptists were those who said we are not just going to change bits and pieces. We are going right back to the original days. to a church that is not identified or connected with the state, to a church that's made up of believers only in a church that only baptizes people when they are old enough to have faith in Jesus and therefore belong to the body of Christ by faith. And I must tell you very sadly that not only the Romans attacked these people, but the Reformers did too. There came a day when Martin Luther said to the German princes, "You must use the sword against these radicals." And they came a day when John Calvin consented to the death by drowning of Felix Men's as being an appropriate end for a Baptist. And he was drawn with Calvin's support and even Zwingni himself in Zurich got the council to pass cruel laws against these people. Now isn't it interesting? The Romans used the states so did the Reformers and both were prepared to use the literal sword in the name of Christ. But the radicals said, "We will use no other sword but this." And so the sword of the Romans and the sword of the Reformers was used against them. It's a tragic story and you ought to read it sometime, but we are here today because of those enabaptists. We are here today free to be free from the established church because their influence and their ideas popped up in England in the time of Elizabeth I in a group of people called Independence who said we want a free church. We believe that religious liberty is the answer. And as I'll tell you next Sunday evening because they couldn't find it in England, they set off from America in the Mayflower to settle there the principle for all time of religious liberty of the individual to follow whatever faith he feels is right. This is our heritage and this they fought and died for. They had some fanatics and extremists like the Thomas Munter of Zvikau. But by and large when you study their story a story that's only just now being written, the research is only just coming off the press now. Only now have people begun to see the place of the enabaptists. They fought and died for religious liberty but they only fought with this. They were accused of being revolutionist, but so was Jesus Christ. And Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. I swore my servants fight and that's precisely what the enabaptist said. There were men like Menos Simons and if you've ever come across the menonites, you owe those great Christians to Menos Simons. There was a man called Jacob Hutter and if ever you've come across the Hutterites, you owe those to Jacob Hutter and these to my mind were the ultimate reforms. It was they who said, "We will change everything that is not according to the Word of God and we will change it. We will not expect princes or popes to change it. We will change it. We will live by the Word of God and follow that Word as individuals and as fellowships to the nth degree and this they did. Next Sunday evening, God willing, I shall take the story into the 17th century. The age when religious liberty came to England. The age when people began to be allowed to follow their own convictions in this land of ours. The age of William Penn, the age of John Bunyan, and the age of many another great servant of God. Let us meanwhile thank God that there were those who carried the Reformation further than the reforms and said, "Let us separate church and state. Let us have a free church made up of believers who are baptized into Christ Jesus by faith and in water." That's what they said. And by God's grace, their principles came to this land of us. And by God's grace, this church here in 1774 began and it began on the basis of those principles. Let us pray. Oh God, I have never father we have entered into a rich heritage. We thank you for every one of these people whom we have mentioned. We thank you for those who faithfully lived up to the light that they had received. We pray that in our day we may be equally courageous and conscientious to follow whatever light you give us from your word. We thank you that we are in a free church. We thank you that we can come as believers. We thank you that we need you's no other weapon to spread the gospel but the sword of the spirit which is your word. We pray that you will help us to be true to what we can learn from this history. And we thank you that one day when the saints are gathered in, we shall meet these people and rejoice with them and see some of them wearing martyrs crowns and meet a host of men and women who paid the greatest price that can be paid for conviction even their own lives. Lord make us worthy. Help us to be worthy members of this nobleme of martyrs. This great company of apostles and prophets. This glorious fellowship of the saints marching through the ages as those who are pilgrims in a land of promise as those who look forward to a city whose builder and maker is God as those who have a better possession. And therefore are not troubled by the loss of their earthly possessions as those who lived and died in Jesus Christ. We ask it for his name's sake. Amen.