On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
his servant told me the Duke of Suffolk sent such word to Hooper , who was not himself ignorant what they were doing . " This passage and others which I shall quote are omitted by Fox with more
tenderness to the Reformers , as Mr , Peirce has hinted , than fidelity as an historian , in his English work . That work was certainly designed by its horrid details , assisted by the engraver ' s art , to excite a popular and unqualified odiumagainst
papists , who must not be suffered to divide with Protestants even in any proportion the guilt of persecution . Yet these bishops , who would have killed Hooper and thought they
did God service , would not surely have voluntarily contented themselves with imprisoning Bonner and Gardiner because they refused to act the farce of a Protesiont profession . Their lives could have
been spared only , because , as soon appeared on the accession of Mary , the majority of the nation were their adherents and might have become their avengers .
T here were , however , a powerless people against whom Protestant persecution might be exercised without reserve . These were the Anabaptists , who had appeared and suffered in the former reign , as I find by the following passages in StoweV Annals , ed . 1631 . 1538 . The 24 th November , four
Anabaptists , three men and one Woman , all Dutch , bare faggots at Paul ' s Cross * And on th £ 27 th of November , a man and a woman , I > utch Anabaptists , were breiit in Smith field . P * 576 .
1540 . The -3 pth , of April , one named Mandeveld , another named Colens , and one other were examined in St . Margaret ' s Church , and were condemned for Anabap-
Untitled Article
tists , and were on the 3 d of May , brent on the hi « h-way beyond Southwark towards Newington . P .
579-The effect of this persecution appears in Brandt ' s History of the Reformation in the Low Countries , where it is said that ** in 1539 , there were put to death at Delft , one and thirty Anabaptists that had fled from England , the men beheaded and the women
drowned / ' Brandt , i . 77 On the death of Henry , the Anabaptists appear to have again visited this country * where , whatever commotions some under that
name had raised in Germany , they proved themselves a pacific , suffering people * Burnet ( ii . 105 . ) says that 44 they were generally Germans , whom the revolutions there had forced to change their seats /* Those called < 6 the orentle or
moderate Anabaptists , oniy thought that baptism ought not to be given but to those who were of an age capable of instruction . This opinion they grounded on the silence of the New Testament about the
baptism of children , and they said the great decay of Christianity flowed from this way of making children Christians , before they understood what they did . But others who carried that name ,
denied almost all the principles of the Christian doctrine . " Burnet was writing his history by command of the parliament , and had the 39 articles of a parliamentary religion to support . He had
just before stated , that this most heretical class of Anabaptists agreeing with Luther , that the scripture was to be the only rule of Christians , argued ttiatthe mysteries of the trinity , ' and Christ ' s incarnation and sufferings * of the
Untitled Article
Sketch of English Protestant Persecution . —Letter 11 * 221
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1812, page 221, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1747/page/13/
-