Religious Freedom.
[by J. C. W. Lindemann] (cont'd from Part 7)
In the 12th and 13th centuries, 60,000 Albigensians were murdered in France on the orders of the popes, whose whole crime was that they refused to submit to Roman tyranny. Repeatedly the pope urged the king of France and his princes to exterminate the heretics with the sword, promising indulgences to each participant, even the kingdom of heaven itself.
And how did it happen, also in the 12th century, to the Waldensians! In the year 1252, in the county of Foix, 45 Waldensians were condemned to death at once, and 18 who had already died were torn from their graves and burned. At that time they were to be completely exterminated, and nameless atrocities were perpetrated by the Pope's servants in order to force them back into the fold of the "only saving church". Even he who protected the Waldenses only in his own territory was persecuted and banished. In Savoy, when they held services at night, they were attacked and then treated with inhuman cruelty. While the preachers were slowly roasted at a fire, the women had to carry wood to and maintain the fire. — From 1601-33 all the Waldensians were forcibly exterminated in the territory of Saluzzo, for which reason a jubilee celebration was held in Rome in 1650.
A number of Waldensians who had escaped to Calabria were killed in the most horrible manner. An eyewitness recounts: "The unfortunates were crammed into a large dungeon, from which the executioner took them one by one. When he had dragged them out into the open, he blindfolded them and plunged a knife into their hearts. That's how 88 were slaughtered. In the near future another 100 wenches are to be tortured and then executed." — "Several Calabrian heretics were strangled, others sawed through the middle, or plunged from the top of a rock into deep precipices. All died a cruel death.”
From the year 1233 on, the heretic court raged in Spain, most terribly under Philip II From 1481 to 1498, under the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, 10,000 persons were burned and 97,000 sentenced to imprisonment and confiscation of property in Spain alone. Up to the year 1808 32,282 Protestants were burned alive there 17,688 only in the picture. (Cont'd in Read more below; then in Part 9)
In the same way the heretic courts raged in Portugal. — In Rome itself the Inquisition went so crazy that in 1559 the people revolted against it, slew the judges and destroyed the holy slaughterhouse with its instruments of torture.
There were many thousands of Protestants in Ireland in the first half of the seventeenth century; but the exclusive rule of the Holy Father was to be restored at any cost. Without these "apostates" having any idea of it, their downfall was decided upon, and then within a few days 50,000 men, women, and children of all ranks were slaughtered. [Wikipedia debates this as only 12,000!… and questions "on which side the balance of cruelty rests"! Another article downplays the perpetrators as Catholics, being only "dispossessed Irish". German Lutheran historians are ignored as unobjective, one-sided, giving only propaganda, allegations.] These unfortunates were put to death amid laughter. They were stripped naked, herded into the mountains, thrown from high cliffs, drowned, cut to pieces, women and girls were violated, men were murdered in front of their wives, many were whipped until they gave up the ghost!
Space does not permit the recounting of more papist outrages; but it has happened, as has been told, that in many countries of Europe only the papal church has ruled until our own time: The Holy Father in Rome has had all heretics exterminated!!!
"Janus" [?] says (p. 264), "More executions have taken place in the name and by order of the popes than in the name of any secular ruler." —
Let us now also take a brief look at the conduct of the Reformed Church, and see, at least by two examples, how it has acquired entrance and dominion. — There is not a Reformed pulpit in the whole of Germany which did not originally belong to the Lutherans, but who were driven out of the same by cunning and violence. City and state governments that had first accepted Luther's doctrine were later reformed, and then they forced the citizens to follow them. Thus Bremen was Reformed first in 1580, Anhalt in 1596, Hesse-Cassel in 1605.
The Palatinate had become almost entirely Lutheran under Elector Frederick II the Wise (1544-56) and Otto Henry the Magnanimous (1556-59). Elector Frederick III (1559-76), however, converted from the Lutheran to the Reformed Church, and now the whole country had to follow him in it (1560). Reformed preachers were brought into the pulpits, and Reformed orders of worship were to be introduced in all churches. The preachers Zach. Ursinus and Casp. Olevianus had to write the "Heidelberg Catechism" by order of the prince; this was presented to all preachers of the country for acceptance in 1562 and then generally introduced in the following year.
When Elector Frederick III died, he was succeeded by his son Louis VI (1576—83). He was Lutheran again; indeed, he was a very serious Lutheran and a zealous promoter of the Formula of Concord. It was right and good that he himself believed Luther's doctrine, and it would not be blameworthy if he had tried in a godly way, by way of conviction through preaching, [Page 23] to win every one to it; but it is to be decidedly condemned that, by his princely command, the whole church system of the country had to be restored to Lutheranism. This neither the Lord Jesus nor Luther taught, that a man should be compelled by external force to accept divine truth. God preserve us from such "reformations".
- - - - - - - - - - - - Continued in Part 9 - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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