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Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 1


 blood, and tried to persuade his gov- ernment not to put Roman Catholics


to death for their faith, but his efforts met with no success. Foxe’s belief in religious toleration especially stands out in an incident that took place in 1575, when two Dutch Anabaptists living in England were sentenced to death for heresy by the English authorities. There was no question of these Anabaptists being a political threat, as English Catholics were held to be. Foxe became their intercessor, pleading personally with Queen Elizabeth that the lives of the two Anabaptists be spared. Cruel punishment for religious error had, he argued, been introduced into the Christian world by the popes of Rome, and now that Protestants had shaken off the yoke of the papacy, such harsh practices should be laid aside. If the authorities were deter- mined to punish these Anabaptists, at least let their lives be spared! Eliza- beth, however, rejected Foxe’s plea, and the unfortunate Anabaptists were executed. The Reformed theologian Philip Edgcumbe Hughes refers to Foxe as ‘a true pioneer in the long struggle for mildness and toleration in the treatment of religious adversaries’. It would however be another century in England before Foxe’s ideals finally triumphed, at least for Protestants of all stripes, including Anabaptists and Quakers. Roman Catholics would suffer from civil discrimination in theory and in practice until the 19th century, although no longer liable to imprisonment or death for their faith. In various ways, then, the Prot- estant Reformation scattered good


seeds of thought which in their own day were not allowed to mature and bear fruit. Thankfully a later genera- tion would provide the necessary climate to see that fruit blossom. Perhaps in that sense we can put a generous interpretation on the fa- mous words of John Robinson in his farewell address to the Mayflower pilgrims in 1620, as reported by Edward Winslow:


‘if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of His, [we must] be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry: For he was very confi- dent the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of His holy Word. He took occasion also miserably to bewail the state and condition of the reformed churches, who were come to a period [a full stop] in Religion, and would go no further than the instruments of their Reformation: As for example, the Lutherans they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of God’s will He had further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And so also, saith he, you see the Calvinists, they stick where he left them: A misery much to be lamented; For though they were precious shining lights in their times, yet God had not revealed His whole will to them: And were they now living, saith he, they would be as ready and willing to embrace fur- ther light, as that they had received.’


From an address at School of Theology


2017. Dr Nick Needham is a lecturer in church history at the Highlands Theo- logical College, minister of Inverness Reformed Baptist Church, and author of 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power (4 vols).


page 26 Great Advances Sown by the Reformation


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