1652
THE BLOODY TENENT OF PERSECUTION
by Roger Williams
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
The Bloody Tenent of Persecution
TRUTH. Dear Peace, our golden sand is out, we now must part
with an holy kiss of heavenly peace and love; Mr. Cotton speaks and
writes his conscience; yet the Father of Lights may please to show
him that what he highly esteems as a tenent washed white in the
Lamb's blood, is yet more black and abominable, in the most pure
and jealous eye of God.
PEACE. The blackamoor's darkness differs not in the dark from
the fairest white.
TRUTH. Christ Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, hath broke
forth, and daily will, to a brighter and brighter discovery of this
deformed Ethiopian. And for myself I must proclaim, before the most
holy God, angels, and men, that (whatever other white and heavenly
tenents Mr. Cotton holds) yet this is a foul, a black, and a bloody
tenent.
A tenent of high blasphemy against the God of Peace, the God
of Order, who hath of one blood made all mankind, to dwell upon the
face of the earth, now all confounded and destroyed in their civil
beings and subsistences by mutual flames of war from their several
respective religions and consciences.
A tenent warring against the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus,
denying his appearance and coming in the flesh, to put an end to
and abolish the shadows of , that ceremonial and typical land of
Canaan.
A tenent fighting against the sweet end of his coming, which
was not to destroy men's lives, for their religions, but to save
them by the meek and peaceable invitations and persuasions of his
peaceable wisdom's maidens.
A tenent foully charging his wisdom, faithfulness, and love,
in so poorly providing such magistrates and civil powers all the
world over, as might effect so great a charge pretended to be
committed to them.
A tenent lamentably guilty of his most precious blood, shed in
the blood of so many hundred thousands of his poor servants by the
civil powers of the world, pretending to suppress blasphemies,
heresies, idolatries, superstition, etc.
A tenent fighting with the spirit of love, holiness, and
meekness, by kindling fiery spirits of false zeal and fury, when
yet such spirits know not of what spirit they are.
A tenent fighting with those mighty angels who stand up for
the peace of the saints, against Persia, Grecia, etc., and so
consequently, all other nations, who fighting for their several
religions, and against the truth, leave no room for such as fear
and love the Lord on the earth.
A tenent, against which the blessed souls under the altar cry
loud for vengeance, this tenent having cut their throats, torn out
their hearts, and poured forth their blood in all ages, as the only
heretics and blasphemers in the world.
A tenent loathsome and ugly (in the eyes of the God of heaven,
and serious sons of men) I say, loathsome with the palpable filths
of gross dissimulation and hypocrisy. Thousands of peoples and
whole nations compelled by this tenent to put on the foul vizard of
religious hypocrisy, for fear of laws, losses, and punishments, and
for the keeping and hoping for of favor, liberty, worldly
commodity, etc.
A tenent wofully guilty of hardening all false and deluded
consciences (of whatsoever sect, faction, heresy, or idolatry,
though never so horrid and blasphemous) by cruelties and violences
practised against them; all false teachers and their followers
(ordinarily) contracting a brawny and steely hardness from their
sufferings for their consciences.
A tenent that shuts and bars out the gracious prophecies and
promises and discoveries of the most glorious Sun of Righteousness,
Christ Jesus, that burns up the holy Scriptures, and forbids them
(upon the point) to be read in English, or that any trial or
search, or (truly) free disquisition be made by them; when the most
able, diligent, and conscionable readers must pluck forth their own
eyes, and be forced to read by the (whichsoever predominant)
clergy's spectacles.
A tenent that seals up the spiritual graves of all men, Jews
and Gentiles (and consequently stands guilty of the damnation of
all men), since no preachers, nor trumpets of Christ himself may
call them out, but such as the several and respective nations of
the world themselves allow of.
A tenent that fights against the common principles of all
civility, and the very civil being and combinations of men in
nations, cities, etc., by commixing (explicitly or implicitly) a
spiritual and civil state together, and so confounding and
overthrowing the purity and strength of both.
A tenent that stunts the growth and flourishing of the most
likely and hopefulest commonweals and countries, while consciences,
the best, and the best deserving subjects are forced to fly (by
enforced or voluntary banishment) from their native countries; the
lamentable proof whereof England hath felt in the flight of so many
worthy English into the Low Countries and New-England, and from
New-England into old again and other foreign parts.
A tenent whose gross partiality denies the principles of
common justice, while men weigh out to the consciences of all
others that which they judge not fit nor right to be weighed out to
their own. Since the persecutor's rule is, to take and persecute
all consciences, only himself must not be touched.
A tenent that is but Machiavelism, and makes a religion but a
cloak or stalking horse to policy and private ends of Jeroboam's
crown and the priest's benefice, etc.
A tenent that corrupts and spoils the very civil honesty and
natural conscience of a nation.
In the sad consideration of all which (dear Peace) let heaven
and earth judge of the washing and color of this tenent. For thee,
sweet heavenly guest, go lodge thee in the breasts of the peaceable
and humble witnesses of Jesus, that love the truth in peace! Hide
thee from the world's tumults and combustions in the breasts of thy
truly noble children, who profess and endeavor to break the irony
and insupportable yokes upon the souls and consciences of any of
the sons of men.
PEACE. Methinks (dear Truth) if any of the least of these deep
charges be found against this tenent, you do not wrong it when you
style it bloody. But sincein the woful proof of all ages past,
since Nimrod (the hunter or persecutor before the Lord) these and
more are lamentably evident and undeniable. It gives me wonder that
so many and so excellent eyes of God's servants should not espy so
foul a monster, especially considering the universal opposition
this tenent makes against God's glory, and the good of all mankind.
TRUTH. There hath been many foul opinions, with which the old
serpent hath infected and bewitched the sons of men (touching God,
Christ, the Spirit, the Church, against holiness, against peace,
against civil obedience, against chastity), insomuch that even
sodomy itself hath been a tenent maintained in print by some of the
very pillars of the Church of Rome. But this tenent is so
universally opposite to God and man, so pernicious and destructive
to both (as hath been declared) that like the powder-plot, it
threatens to blow up all religion, all civility, all humanity, yea,
the very being of the world, and the nations thereof at once.
PEACE. He that is the father of lies, and a murderer from the
beginning, he knows this well, and this ugly blackamoor needs a
mask or vizard.
TRUTH. Yea the bloodiness and inhumanity of it is such, that
not only Mr. Cotton's more tender and holy breast, but even the
most bloody Bonners and Gardiners have been forced to arm
themselves with the fair shows and glorious pretences of the glory
of God, and zeal for that glory, the love of his truth, the gospel
of Christ Jesus, love and pity to men's souls, the peace of the
Church, uniformity, order, the peace of the commonweal, the wisdom
of the state, the King's, Queen's, and Parliament's proceedings,
the odiousness of sects, heresies, blasphemies, novelties,
seducers, and their infections, the obstinacy of heretics, after
all means, disputations, examinations, synods, yea, and after
conviction in the poor heretic's own conscience. Add to these the
flattering sound of those glossing titles, the godly magistrate,
the Christian magistrate, the nursing fathers and mothers of the
Church, Christian kings and queens. But all other kings and
magistrates (even all the nations of the world over, as Mr. Cotton
pleads) must suspend and hold their hands, and not meddle in mat-
ters of religion until they be informed, etc.
PEACE. The dreadful righteous hand of God, the eternal and
avenging God, is pulling off these masks and vizards, that
thousands and the world may see this bloody tenent's beauty.
TRUTH. But see (my heavenly sister and true stranger in this
sealike, restless, raging world), see here what fires and swords
are come to part us! Well; our meetings in the heavens shall not
thus be interrupted, our kisses thus distracted, and our eyes and
cheeks thus wet, unwiped. For me, though censured, threatened,
persecuted, I must profess, while heaven and earth lasts, that no
one tenent that either London, England, or the world doth harbor,
is so heretical, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous to the
corporal, to the spiritual, to the present, to the eternal good of
all men, as the bloody tenent (however washed and whited) I say, as
is the bloody tenent of persecution for cause of conscience.
THE END
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