Originally posted by alexgb00
I searched for the text you used, and that is a letter from the Pastor to Jefferson.
No, it is not. It is from Jefferson, to the Pastor. Here is the reference, if you would like to research it:
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. (Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 369)
"Total, absolute NONSENSE. There was no such law in England. Christians were perfectly free to practice their faith."
The idea of an establishment is seen in England, when the Anglican Church was the "best" Christian denomination. I don't know what their exact beliefs were, but they didn't let other Christians, like Puritans, practice their faith.
You are still flat wrong. England merely prevented the Puritans from enforcing their will on the whole country. that is not the same as stopping them from practicing their faith.
Have you heard of John Bunyan? The man who wrote "The Pilgrim's Progress?" He suffered for preaching in England and not being an Anglican. He two terms in prison, where he wrote this story on scraps of paper that came from his lunch.
Looks like you need another history lesson. First, read the section from Britannica, about Bunyan's church (which he joined in 1655):
The Bedford community practiced adult Baptism by immersion, but it was an open-communion church, admitting all who professed "faith in Christ and holiness of life." Bunyan soon proved his talents as a lay preacher. Fresh from his own spiritual troubles, he was fitted to warn and console others: "I went myself in Chains to preach to them in Chains, and carried that Fire in my own Conscience that I persuaded them to beware of." He was also active in visiting and exhorting church members, but his main activity in 1655-60 was in controversy with the early Quakers, both in public debate up and down the market towns of Bedfordshire and in his first printed works, Some Gospel Truths Opened (1656) and A Vindication of Some Gospel Truths Opened (1657). The Quakers and the open-communion Baptists were rivals for the religious allegiance of the "mechanics," or small tradesmen and artificers, in both town and country. Bunyan soon became recognized as a leader among the sectaries.
And here's another section:
Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems always to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a remarkable fact that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions: his practice was to write, not November or December, but eleventh month and twelfth month.
He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in gaol; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the alehouse. The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, and defended against some Arminian clergymen who had signed them. The most acrimonious of all his works is his answer to Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the taint of Pelagianism.
Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did not consider that tenet as one of high importance, and willingly joined in communion with pious Presbyterians and Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the original combatants. In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical writer has ever surpassed.
The first thing to note is all the different denominations that are listed here in this text - contrary to your wild claim that "England was a country where most Christians couldn't practice their faith."
If you're correct, then what were all these other denominations doing in England at that time? Hmmm??
Let's continue from
Britannica:
The Restoration[/URL] of Charles II brought to an end the 20 years in which the separated churches had enjoyed freedom of worship and exercised some influence on government policy. On Nov. 12, 1660, at Lower Samsell in South Bedfordshire, Bunyan was brought before a local magistrate and, under an old Elizabethan act, charged with holding a service not in conformity with those of the Church of England. He refused to give an assurance that he would not repeat the offense, was condemned at the assizes in January 1661, and was imprisoned in the county jail. In spite of the courageous efforts of his second wife (he had married again in 1659) to have his case brought up at the assizes, he remained in prison for 12 years. A late 17th-century biography, added to the early editions of Grace Abounding, reveals that he relieved his family by making and selling "long Tagg'd laces"; prison conditions were lenient enough for him to be let out at times to visit friends and family and to address meetings.
What we gather from this is that things changed in 1660 for him.
And finally, from
Britannica:
Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in physical diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been five years a preacher, when the Restoration put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the country to oppress the Dissenters; and, of all the Dissenters whose history is known to us, he was perhaps the most hardly treated. In November 1660, he was flung into Bedford gaol; and there he remained, with some intervals of partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years.
So what does this tell us?
First, the Puritans arrived to Massachusetts (via the Mayflower) in 1620. That was way before the Restoration mentioned above. In other words, when the Puritans first arrived to Massachusetts, they were not being persecuted in England at all. Same for the Puritans in Virginia - they settled in 1607. So your claim that the Pilgrims / Puritans came over here for religious liberty is totally false. In fact, two-thirds of those making the trip aboard the Mayflower were non-Pilgrims; they were hired to proctect the London stock company's interest.
Second, the situation of oppression you are describing was specific to the Restoration period in England, and was not part of the establishment Church of England's practice;
Thrid, John Bunyan is the worst (most extreme) example you could select of someone being persecuted. You cannot make your entire argument on the worst case.
About the Pilgrims, don't act like you know so much.
I don't. I just know more than you, because I bothered to educate myself on them.
They had no political power, nor did they have influence on the government.
Yes. I know. That is what frustrated them. They wanted the political power to enforce their will in England, and in the English Church. When that failed, they left.
They wanted freedom of speech and to exercise their faith.
No, they wanted to run England according to their own religious views. When that failed, they left. Then they set up colonies in the New World, where they oppressed anyone who disagreed with them. They weren't interested in religious freedom. They were interested in setting up a strict religious society that followed THEIR beliefs, and no one else's.
Notice that none of the Puritan colonies included freedom of religion in their charters - if they really wanted freedom of religion, how come they didn't extend that right to anyone else?
I don't understand why you think you're so much educated than me.
Because of the total nonsense that you posted. Anyone who had studied the topic would know better than to post the things you did.
Anyway, what was your objection? What did i say incorrectly to move you to correct me?
I was objecting to the mistakes and historical nonsense in your post.
