Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight is my fourth message in the series of The Myth of Christian America. Many Americans have the idea if we could only have Christians, committed Christians, in the White House and in Congress. What a godly nation we would have. How wonderful things would be. Well, you know, it's not a hypothetical.
To be sure, here in the United States, we've never had a situation where we both had a very devout, spiritually minded Christian in the White House, and a majority of the members of Congress, let alone all of Congress, very fervent Bible-believing Christians. But England did have that situation in the middle of the 17th century. So tonight we're going to be talking about when Puritans ruled.
Last night we talked about the origin of the Puritans and how they wanted to purge the Church of England from all rituals and practices that they saw as popish. Tonight, I want to begin by talking about the Puritan mind. Now, I don't mean to be uncharitable towards the Puritans, because actually there's a lot about them that I do admire. But the truth is, they lived in a fantasy world. They imagined that their homeland, England, was Israel all over again.
They believe that the English people corresponded to the Israelites of the Old Testament. In turn, the Puritans saw themselves as the Gideons, the Samuels, and the Elijahs of Old. On the other hand, they saw the Roman Catholics as being the Canaanites and the Baal worshippers of the Old Testament. Kings and queens who opposed the Puritans were viewed as Ahabs and Jezebels.
The Puritans believed that with righteous rulers and religious leaders, the English people would follow the right path, just as they did in the Old Testament when they had righteous rulers. Without such leaders, they would inevitably backslide. Furthermore, to the Puritans, God's moral law was still the law of Moses. Blasphemers, idolaters, sorcerers, and witches must be put to death. I mean, after all, the Old Testament says, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
" To the Puritan, Sunday was not just a special Christian day of rest and worship. It was THE Sabbath of Old. Therefore, no travel should be allowed on the Sabbath, just as it wasn't allowed in the Old Testament. And even though the Old Testament nowhere forbids playing games or having recreation on the Sabbath, the Puritans were quite certain that God would not want this. In fact, the Puritans were certain of just about everything, including, of course, their own salvation.
They taught that God would bless England or punish it, depending on the course that its people took. If they allowed idolatrous or " popish " practices in their worship, then they would incur God's displeasure as a nation. So to the Puritans, every economic downturn, every military defeat, every drought, and every plague meant that God had a quarrel with the English people. That was a term they liked to use God having a quarrel with a particular nation or a particular section of a nation.
And the Puritan leaders always felt that they could infallibly determine the reason for God's punishment, what the people had done wrong. For example, if an illness spread through a town, the Puritan minister could be certain that this was because people were playing sports on Sunday afternoon. There was an economic recession. This was no doubt due to the vestiges of idolatrous practices in the Sunday service.
If the English lost a battle somewhere, this was certainly because the crown had entered into an alliance with a popish country like Spain, which it had done under King James. So with this Israel slash England mindset, Puritans naturally interconnected their religion and their politics. Furthermore, they believed that based on Old Testament ethics, the people of a nation had the responsibility before God to drive out or put to death rulers who were violating God's covenant with England.
And this mindset began before the English exiles ever left Geneva. They were already thinking this way when Queen Mary was still in power. For example, back in 1558, when Mary was ruling, one of the English exiles in Geneva named Christopher Goodman published a pamphlet urging the Protestants in England to overthrow Queen Mary, whom he likened to Jezebel. I'm going to read to you some excerpts from his booklet in just a minute, but I'll give you a basic summation.
His argument was that when Paul said we are to be subject to the higher powers, it wasn't just any ruler that Christians are obligated to obey, but only a ruler whom God has appointed. For example, through Samuel, God had told the Israelites to choose a king for themselves from the midst of your brethren. God didn't tell them from the midst of your sisters.
Goodman pointed out that God had never authorized a female queen for the Israelites, and therefore Queen Mary couldn't possibly be God's appointed sovereign for England. Rather, she was an imposter. Although there was never a successful revolt against Queen Mary, it's not hard to see how the language from Goodman's pamphlet could be adapted to justify the English Civil War that happened later, or the American Revolution, or just about any revolt. So let me now read from his pamphlet, which was widely circulated.
He wrote, " If our neighbor's sheep or some of his cattle were ready to be devoured in our presence by wolves, or some other wild beasts, are we not bound both in conscience and by the law of God to drive such a wild beast away and save his cattle? " Who could deny this to be our duty?
So can we be excused then in allowing the souls and bodies of the children of God, our brethren, to be most pitifully destroyed by God's enemies, through false doctrine and cruel murders, and yet not put out our hands and power to deliver our brothers? Repent! Repent, you miserable men, for your sins are at the highest. Your cup of iniquity is full.
And the hour of your heavy visitation is about to come, when it will be too late for you to flee from the great wrath of God's indignation, which shortly is likely to be sent upon you. Moreover, those who are bastards, referring to Queen Mary, should be deprived of all honor in so much as by the law of Moses, they were prohibited from having entrance into the congregation or assembly of the Lord up to the 10th generation.
So consider your ungodly proceeding in defrauding your country of a lawful king and preferring a bastard to the lawful begotten daughter that latter reference being to Elizabeth. So that now, under both God's laws and mans, Mary ought to be punished with death as an open idolatress in the sight of God, and a cruel murderer of his saints before men, and a merciless traitoress to her own native country. You all have become idolatrous hypocrites and also traitors yourselves to your own country.
You must be made true worshippers of God and faithful Englishmen. There are no other means, but to turn to God through repentance, to banish falsehood by receiving the truth, to overthrow the Antichrist, and all kinds of idolatry, by honoring Christ and His gospel, to suppress tyranny by justice, to withstand oppression and murder by defending the just and innocent, and punishing the workers of iniquity, regardless of what a state or condition they may be. As afterwards, God willing shall be proved at large.
For only by this means can God's grace be restored. Now, as the apostle writes, we confess. And so much as he speaks, we grant. That is, that all men are bound to obey such magistrates, whom God has ordained over us lawfully according to His Word, who rule in His fear according to their office, as God has appointed. For although the apostle says there is no power but of God, yet does he here mean any other powers except those that are orderly and lawfully instituted by God?
Otherwise, should He approve all tyranny and oppression, which comes to any Commonwealth by means of wicked and ungodly rulers? But where the kings or rulers have become altogether murderers of their subjects, then they should no longer be accounted for as being kings or lawful magistrates, but simply as private men, and to be examined, accused, condemned, and punished by the law of God where unto they are and ought to be subject.
And being convicted and punished by that law, it is not man's, but God's doing, whom as he does appoint such magistrates over his people by his law, so does he condemn as well those people transgressing against the law. For with God, there is no respect of persons, as hereafter follows more largely: " Repent! Repent, O you people of England, for your destruction is at hand. Forsake with speed the unlawful obedience of flesh and blood, and learn to give honor in time to the living Lord.
If you had required all mass mongers and false preachers to have been punished with death, then should you have showed the zeal of God, which was commended in Phineas, who destroyed the adulterers, and in the Israelites who destroyed the Benjaminites. No person is exempt by any law of God from this punishment. Whether he be king, queen, or emperor, if he is either openly or privately, known to be an idolater. Be he ever so near or dear unto us, he must die the death.
For God has not placed them above others to transgress His laws as they like. O London, London, you who boasted yourself to be the Jerusalem of all England, wherein Christ chiefly was preached and the truth of His gospel best known, remember how you have forsaken your godly captain and what promise you made to him. Now, the Puritans never overthrew Queen Mary, but it turned out that her reign was relatively short. She was followed by her half-sister Elizabeth.
And last night I mentioned that the Anglican Church established by Elizabeth wasn't fully to the Puritan's liking. But she was not willing to make the changes that they wanted. So they had to wait until she finally died, which, as I told you last night, turned out to be a long wait. However, Queen Elizabeth did finally die in the year 1603. Her closest living relative was King James of Scotland. So under the British laws of succession, he acceded to the throne of England.
Since King James came from a country whose national church was the Presbyterian Church, the Puritans in England were hopeful that he would be friendly towards their proposed reforms, unlike Elizabeth. Because after all, the Presbyterians were essentially Scottish Puritans. Many of these Scottish Presbyterians had been in exile in Geneva, at the same time with the English exiles during the reign of Mary. And these English exiles were the ones who later formed the Puritan Party.
Being impatient to wait even a few days, while James was on his way to London to be inaugurated he hadn't even been inaugurated as king yet, the Puritans presented him with what is known as the Millenary petition, in which they set forth their proposed reforms for the Church of England. However, as it turned out, James was not too fond of the Puritans because he had been tutored and bullied by the Presbyterians in Scotland for his whole childhood. So he rejected their requests.
Nevertheless, James did appoint several Puritans to powerful positions within the Church of England. As I mentioned last night, even though we'll be talking about the Anglicans versus the Puritans, they were both members of the Church of England. In one sense, Puritans were Anglicans as well, but just for the sake of distinction, I'm using those two terms. King James also authorized a new English translation of the Bible to be made, which proved to be an enduring classic: the King James Translation.
King James, who was quite a biblical scholar himself, wanted the English people to have a Bible that they could read in the English of their day that was free from all the prejudicial marginal notes that were found in the Geneva Bible. The Puritans were using the Geneva Bible, which was like, you might say, a study Bible, slanted very much towards their view. He wanted a Bible without a lot of marginal notes, just the text of God's Word itself.
Well, King James ruled for about 22 years, and he died in the year 1625, and he was succeeded by his son, Charles. Now, James had not been an astute politician, but he was a fairly competent king, and he did manage to keep peace at home in England between the different warring factions within the Church of England. His son Charles, however, wanted to reassert the supremacy of the monarchy, without the limitations that Parliament placed on that.
Now during the reign of Charles, and also during the reign of James, the Church of England was going through quite a number of changes, none of which were welcomed by the Puritans. The Anglican Church had come to produce some of the world's leading scholars on the early Church during the 1600s, and the writings of the early Christians heavily influenced their theology.
Unfortunately, the Anglicans never embraced what the early Christians taught and practiced about the kingdom of God, about the two kingdoms and separation from the world. Rather, the Anglican Church saw the accession of Constantine and the changes that happened after him as being " progress " in the Church. Nevertheless, based on their reading of the Scriptures and from their study of the faith of the early Christians, most Anglicans came to two particular convictions. One was that humans do have free will.
We do have a fallen nature, but that has not obliterated our free will, our ability to believe in God. That was one of the convictions they came to. The second one was that God's offer of grace is available to everyone. Nobody is predestined to damnation before they're even born. Both of those doctrines were absolutely intolerable to the Puritans.
Charles I's chief advisor in state was a man named William Laud, who was a scholarly churchman, as well as being educated in many other areas, and he had been the former dean of Oxford. Well, Charles eventually made William Laud the Archbishop of Canterbury. By the way, this is William Laud, L-A-U-D, not to be confused with William Law, L-A-W, the spiritual writer of the 18th century. Archbishop Laud was conscientious, scholarly, honest, and he was as pious as any of the Puritans.
Unfortunately, he also shared the Puritans ' zeal and their intolerance. Like the Puritans, Laud was a strict disciplinarian, and he believed in using the power of the state to enforce uniformity in the Church of England. So now it was going to be the Puritans who would be on the receiving end of intolerance.
For example, one Puritan preacher who refused to conform to the norms of the Church of England, and who vocally criticized Archbishop Laud, was fined an enormous sum of money and then given a lengthy prison sentence. Well, not content with that. The archbishop had him flogged and then locked in a pillory. While he was in the pillory, both of his cheeks were branded with a hot iron with the initials SS, standing for sower of sedition.
All of that is horrible enough, but then his ears were cut off, and his nose was slit. Well, in doing that, Archbishop Laud proved that the Anglicans could be just as cruel, just as intolerant as the Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. And he made himself a hated enemy of the Puritans. And because of this repressive atmosphere, many Puritans emigrated to New England, and we'll be talking about that in a future evening.
Those Puritans who remained in England, and most of them did, formed a powerful element within the House of Commons in Parliament. Most of the Puritan members of the Commons came from the country, gentry, and the merchant class of the cities. In the year 1640, several leading Puritans presented King Charles with what is known as the root and branch petition.
Among other things, it complained about the following: " The faint-heartedness of ministers to preach the truth of God, lest they should displease the prelates, as namely the doctrine of predestination, of free grace, of perseverance, of original sin remaining after baptism, of the Sabbath, and the doctrine against universal grace.
" The petition went on to complain about the swarming of lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books and pamphlets, playbooks, and ballads; the publishing, inventing of popish, Arminian, and other dangerous books and tenets; the standing up at the Gloria Patri which was like a doxology, and at the reading of the gospel, bowing at the name of Jesus, using the sign of the cross in baptism, and kneeling for communion.
The petition went on to complain about the profanation of the Lord's Day by tolerating sports being played on that day. It went on to complain, " the pressing of the strict observation of Saints Days, where great sums of money are drawn out of men's purses for working on them (that is, you were fined if you worked on one of the state holidays, which were Saints Days).
This is a very high burden on most people who getting their living on their daily employments must either omit them and be idle or part with their money. " That's a theme that comes up quite a bit in Puritan writings of taking off holidays instead of working. They saw idleness as being one of the chief sins. Well, not only were the Puritans discontented with Charles ' rule, but so were other members of Parliament who were not Puritans.
One of the main sources of friction between King Charles and Parliament is that Charles wanted to ignore the parliamentary limitations upon his powers. And one of those is that the king could not levy taxes without the permission of Parliament. And so he tried a number of ways to get around this, forcing many wealthy persons to make " loans " to the government, things like that. Well, enmity between Parliament and King Charles continued to grow.
And finally, when Charles tried to come in and arrest some of the leaders of Parliament for sedition, it led to civil war. The English Civil War was fought over both religious and political issues. It pitched the royalists who were loyal to King Charles against the Parliamentarians. Most of the royalists were Anglican, that is, they were high churchmen, and most of the parliamentarians in this war were Puritans. Yet it wasn't a thorough divide.
Some of the Puritans fought on the royalist side, and some Anglicans fought on the parliamentary side. The early battles of the English Civil War were often inconclusive, but in general, the Royalists were gaining the upper hand. So finally, in the year 1645, Parliament passed an ordinance, relieving the existing commanders of their posts, and calling for the creation of a well-trained, professional, what was called the New Model Army. A man named Oliver Cromwell was placed second in command of this army.
Well, Cromwell himself didn't have extensive military experience, and so he brought in military officers from Sweden to train this new army. At that time, Sweden under King Gustavus Adolphus was one of the leading military powers of Europe. King Gustavus was the Protestant hero of the Thirty Years ' War that had recently ended, and he's been called the father of modern warfare. Cromwell also brought in artillery specialists from Germany and France.
Again, those two countries had been in the Thirty Years ' War and had gained much experience in the use of artillery. To enhance the professional nature of this new model army, Cromwell had his men clad in red uniforms, which began the tradition of the English redcoats. Members of the New Model Army received thorough military training and were extremely well-disciplined. It was the first truly professional army that England had ever had.
In this new model army, men were promoted solely based upon their performance in battle, not because of their rank in society. So for the first time, ordinary men from the laboring classes could become army officers based on merit. Furthermore, Cromwell insisted that his Puritan soldiers believe in what they were fighting for. They went into battle singing Psalms, feeling certain that God was on their side.
Well, the New Model Army quickly won several decisive battles in succession, and the English Civil War was soon at an end. With a typical Puritan mindset, Cromwell wrote to Parliament after his victories. I'll read you from his letter, " Do you see what the Lord has wrought for us? Can any creature ascribe anything to Himself? " " Now can we give the glory to God, and I desire that all may do so, for it is all due to Him.
" I could not riding alone about my business, but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by things that are not, bring to nothing things that are, of which I had great assurance, and God did it. " Ah, this is a game that so many Christians play. They do things through human methods, and then try to step back and say, " Oh, it's all of God. I had nothing to do with it.
" Interestingly, for some reason, God chose not to give the Puritans victory at the beginning of the war, when they truly needed his help in order to prevail. They were outmanned by the royalists, had less experience, and they lost their battles. But once the Puritans turned to human means and put together a professional army trained by experts, and now their army was much better trained than that of the royalists, well, now suddenly God gave them the victory. You see, this is nothing more than counterfeit faith.
A Christian's faith is unmasked as counterfeit when he takes the exact same steps as would a non-believer. And then when his efforts are successful, he proudly protests that, " Oh, his success could never have been achieved without God's help. " Well, the events that followed the Puritan victory in the English Civil War make it quite clear that their victory was not because of God's blessings on their cause.
If God had truly been on their side, if they were doing the Lord's will, well, then this would have ushered in a golden age for the English people. But that never happened. Through the Civil War, the Puritans finally gained the political and ecclesiastical power that they had craved for nearly a century. However, no sooner did they acquire this power than they began to fight among themselves. You see, the majority of Puritans in Parliament wanted to institute a national presbytery, just like the one in Scotland.
The Presbyteries were basically councils of clergymen who would then rule the Church rather than bishops. So under Parliament's plan, the Church of England would now become a National Presbyterian Church. It was at this time when the Westminster Confession was passed. These Puritans also wanted to work out a reconciliation with King Charles and put the nation back together again. They didn't want to undo centuries and centuries of English tradition, or what the English call the English Constitution.
And this was the state being ruled by a king, but with a parliament who did have real powers. Well, at first glance, that would seem like the Christian thing to do. Even though you've defeated your enemy, you make peace with him, and you bring the nation back together again. Now I've been talking about the fact that the majority of the Puritans in Parliament were Presbyterians. However, the majority of the Puritans in Cromwell's army were independents.
And they wanted the highest ecclesiastical authority to be the local congregation. No national presbyteries, no bishops. Well, now that the war was over, the Presbyterians in Parliament ordered the army to disband, even though it still owed them back pay. Well, Cromwell and the Army refused. For several months, Cromwell tried to negotiate with Parliament. After all, these were Puritans negotiating with Puritans, but to no avail. So before long, there was a second Civil War in England.
This time it was the Presbyterian Puritans, together with the royalists, against the independent Puritans. In the Second Civil War, King Charles called upon the Presbyterians in Scotland to help his cause and that of Parliament, and so they joined forces with the English Presbyterians as well. Before the Presbyterians and the Independents met in battle in this new civil war, both sides prayed earnestly to God, and they pruned their armies of any soldiers who were not fully sanctified to God.
The independents wept and groaned over having tried to reach a compromise with the " ungodly, " the ungodly being the Presbyterians. With tears, they lamented their folly for having " carnal consultations with our own wisdom, and not with the Word of the Lord. " The Word of the Lord doesn't tell you to try to make peace with your enemy. It says to go to war against them? How strange.
They repented for having tried to work things out peacefully with their political opponents, instead of immediately taking up arms and slaughtering them. Well, Cromwell was certainly a military genius, and his new model army soundly defeated their opponents. Which only convinced them the more that God was on their side. Cromwell didn't want to just defeat his enemy, he wanted to annihilate them.
So in the major battle of the Second Civil War, fought mainly against Scottish Presbyterians, he made certain to block the retreat of the enemy so that when the Presbyterians tried to retreat, they were just mowed down and slaughtered over 20,000 men. Well, with victory on their side, and again, being now absolutely convinced that God was with them, one of Cromwell's officers, a Colonel Pride, and his troops marched on Parliament.
The army stood guard outside the entrance to Parliament, and they barred anyone from entering except those who had supported the army in this Second Civil War, or those who now publicly disavowed their former position, and agreed not to accept the King's proposals for a negotiated peace. Of the 489 members of the House of Commons, all but 154 of them were either arrested, barred from entry by the soldiers, or else absented themselves in protest.
So in the end, less than a third of the members of Parliament were allowed to be seated. This military coup, known as Pride's Purge, effectively removed all Anglicans and all Presbyterian Puritans from the House of Commons, and left the independent Puritans in control of the nation. The residue of Parliament that was left, called the Rump Parliament by its detractors, didn't even constitute a quorum, and therefore they had no legal authority to continue to act. They certainly were not representative of the nation.
They nevertheless tried the king for treason and sentenced him to be beheaded. When the House of Lords rejected their sentence, well, they went ahead and executed the king anyway. The independents, who were now in total control of the nation, passed a series of new laws. They abolished the monarchy altogether, they abolished the House of Lords, and even the Anglican Church. They seized lands that were owned by the royal family and the Church of England, and sold them off.
The independents used the money from the sale of these lands to pay the new Model Army, which was now, as I've said, totally in control of the nation. It was the first and only time that England has been under military rule. Well, the beheading of King Charles by Cromwell and the Independent Puritans absolutely horrified the English nation. Even though Charles had not been the most popular king with them, they still held a special place in their hearts for the king.
And for the military to execute the king and then abolish the monarchy was something the English people weren't ready for. The beheading of King Charles also outraged the Scots, because Charles was also the King of Scotland. Well, the Scottish Presbyterians now rallied around Charles II, who was King Charles ' oldest son, and once again English Calvinists and Scottish Calvinists were at war with each other.
And some of the English royalists and Presbyterians joined forces with the Scots to try to defeat Cromwell and his Independents. Well, while the English were now occupied with what we might call the Third Civil War, the Roman Catholics in Ireland rose up in a bid to obtain independence for their nation. They attacked the English Protestants who had been settled in Ireland by various English monarchs through the centuries. Well, soon reports of atrocities against English Protestants in Ireland reached England.
And it didn't take Cromwell long to come to Ireland with 18,000 of his Puritan soldiers to exact a grim retribution against the Irish. Cromwell's first step in Ireland was to lay siege to the walled city of Drogheda, using heavy cannon and 12,000 of his foot soldiers. Once Cromwell's artillery breached the walls, his soldiers came rushing in only to be repulsed by the defenders. Cromwell's men regrouped and then stormed through the breaches in the walls once again.
They refused mercy to any of the defenders, putting nearly all of them to the sword. The few who did survive were sent as slaves to die working on the sugar plantations in Barbados. According to Irish accounts, the slaughter included not only soldiers, but civilians also, men, women, and children alike. Cromwell actually boasted of the slaughter in a letter he sent to Parliament. In it, he said this: " It is pleased God to bless our endeavors at Drogheda. After battery, we stormed it.
The enemy were about 3,000 strong in the town. They made a stout resistance, and nearly a thousand of our men having entered, the enemy forced them out again. But God giving a new courage to our men, they attempted again and entered, beating the enemy from their defenses. He continues, " The enemy had made three retrenchments, both to the right and left of where we entered, all of which they were forced to quit. Having thus entered, we refused them quarter. That is, we didn't allow them to surrender.
Having the day before summoned the town, I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defenders. I do not think 30 of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for Barbados. He continues, " I do not believe neither do I hear that any Irish officer escaped with his life, except only one lieutenant, who I hear upon reaching his countrymen, said that he was the only man who escaped out of all the garrison. Upon this, the enemy were filled with much terror.
And truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood through the goodness of God. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs. " Well, the House of Commons was so pleased with the news from Cromwell that they declared a National Day of Thanksgiving, saying, " The house does approve of the execution done at Drogheda as an act both of justice to them, that is, the slain, and the mercy to others who may be warned by it.
" Well, in reality, the Puritans had behaved no differently than had the pagan barbarians and Romans who had once inhabited Europe. The Puritans killed and slaughtered without hesitation. They tortured and enslaved others. The only difference is that they praised God in every other sentence of their letters and speeches, and always protested that it had all been accomplished by God, not through their own efforts.
As Cromwell told one of his officers, " Now give me leave to say how it came to pass that this work was wrought. It was set upon some of our hearts that a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God. " And is it not clearly so? That which caused your men to storm so courageously, it was the Spirit of God. He gave your men courage. But he took it away again. He gave the enemy courage. But he took it away again. And he gave your men courage again. And therefore this happy success.
And so it is good that God alone have all the glory. " Cromwell himself left Ireland after nine months of campaigning, turning the remainder of the war over to others. It's estimated that during the next ten years of bloodshed, about a third of the Irish population was either killed or died of starvation. The majority of Roman Catholic landowners in Ireland had their land confiscated, and they were forced to resettle in the barren Western province of Connacht.
Catholic boys and girls were shipped to Barbados and sold to the planters there as slaves. The lands taken from the Catholics by Cromwell were then given to the Puritan soldiers who had taken part in the campaign and to various English financers and speculators. Before the Irish Uprising, Catholics owned 59% of all the land in Ireland. The other 41% had been taken from them by the English over the years.
However, by the time the Irish uprising was over with, the proportion of Roman Catholic ownership in Ireland had shrunk to 22%. Well, I've talked about how the Puritans came into power, and the various wars they had against those who disagreed with them. Now let's look at the rule of the so-called Saints in England during this time period. Outside of the Swiss Cantons, there were never more than three Calvinist countries in Europe. You have England during the time of Cromwell's rule, Scotland, and the Netherlands.
It took these three countries only a few years to demonstrate the impossibility of serving two masters. You would think these three countries would have been close allies, being ruled not only by so-called committed Christians, but Calvinist Christians, people who believe the same things. Yet their Christian brotherhood quickly broke down, and all three of them demonstrated that their primary allegiance was to their native countries, not to their Christian brotherhood.
I've already discussed the civil wars that pitched Scottish Calvinists against English Calvinists. In fact, in the Second Civil War, English Calvinists fought against fellow English Calvinists. England had always taken an interest in the Dutch War of Independence against Spain. In fact, ever since the time of Elizabeth, there had been talk in England of making the Netherlands an English protectorate. Cromwell now sent a delegation to the Netherlands with such a proposal.
Well, the Dutch were a bit shocked by the English proposition. They had gained their complete independence from Spain in the recently ended 30 Years War. The Dutch had also gained control of the bulk of the merchant trade in both the Baltic and the Mediterranean seas. They had captured the valuable Portuguese colonies in the Far East. When Cromwell proposed that they become a protectorate of England, the Dutch were at the height of their power.
They were hardly willing to give up any of their independence, having gone through so much suffering to obtain their independence. Well, in response to this rebuff, Cromwell and the House of Commons passed the Navigation Act of 1651. It required that only English ships and ships from the originating country could import goods to England or to England's colonies. The act wasn't particularly aimed at the English colonies in America, although it certainly affected them. Rather, it was aimed at the Dutch.
Since so much of the merchandise coming into England and into English colonies was in Dutch ships. As one English general put it, " The Dutch have too much trade, and the English are resolved to take it from them. " Well, relations between England and the Netherlands grew worse when the English Navy seized 27 Dutch ships trading with the colony of Barbados, which was forbidden by the Navigation Act. During the next year, British privateers captured over a hundred other Dutch ships.
These events finally led to war between England and the Netherlands. I find it quite ironic that today, in the 21st century, now that Europe is thoroughly secular, very hard to find committed Christians anywhere, that England and the Netherlands have no trouble living together in peace. And yet, when both countries were ruled by so-called committed Christians, by Calvinists, they couldn't go a few years without fighting each other.
During all of the events I've been describing, Oliver Cromwell and his Rump Parliament were governing England. So what sort of reign did they have? Was it anything like the Kingdom of God? Of course, we've already seen that it wasn't a reign of peace, it was a reign of numerous civil wars in England. But outside the civil wars, what was this reign of the Puritan Saints like? I'm using saints with quotations around it. Well, the Rump Parliament was primarily composed of Puritan gentry, merchants, and lawyers.
Although they were devoutly religious men, they surprisingly had little interest in tackling the various matters of social injustice in England. Instead, these Puritan men scrambled for property and privileges for the gentry. They vied with their fellow Calvinists, the Dutch, to unseat the Dutch as the dominant merchant power of Northern Europe. And as we just talked about, they eventually went to war with the Dutch to end their power, and they succeeded in doing that.
And in order to pay for the endless wars while they were in power, the Rump Parliament had to heavily tax the English people. Finally, in 1653, Cromwell expelled the Rump Parliament altogether and called for a new parliament that would be comprised only of genuine " saints. " Now, rather than being a parliament elected by the people of England, Cromwell called for this new parliament to be composed of godly Puritans who would be selected by the churches.
Well, when this new Parliament of the Saints first met on July 4th, 1653, Cromwell delivered an exalted speech to it. He was certain that he finally had a parliament of godly men who would pass just and wise laws for the nation. However, within just six months, the highly organized element of radical Puritans had taken complete control of Parliament. This was a religio-political movement known as the Fifth Monarchy.
The term fifth monarchy referred to the reign of Jesus Christ Himself, which these men were certain he was about to establish on earth at that time. This Church-elected Parliament of the Saints was also known as the Bare Bones Parliament, named after one of its members whose name was " Praise God Bare Bones. " While panic-stricken by the radical proposals of the Fifth Monarchists, the majority of the members of Parliament all of these were Puritans went to Cromwell and surrendered their authority back to him.
However, the radicals refused to resign their commissions. So finally, Cromwell had to bring in the army and expel them by force. The bare bones parliament proved to be the most humiliating of Cromwell's many failures. Finally, in desperation, in December of 1653, the Army decided that Cromwell should become England's new ruler. Cromwell refused to take the title of king, since he had outlawed the use of that term, and instead he took the title " Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.
" Of course, Cromwell had as much power as had any king in the past. In fact, he had even more because this was a military dictatorship. He had the power of the army behind him, and nobody could oppose that. For example, just two years after naming Cromwell as the Lord Protector, Cromwell closed down the House of Commons because they opposed some of his policy. Here, just a decade or so earlier, Cromwell and the Puritans had been outraged when the king tried to close down Parliament.
And now Cromwell had done the very same thing, not just once, but several times. And even though he wouldn't accept the title of King, Cromwell did have people address him as " Your Highness. " Well, Cromwell now imposed just direct military rule in England. He divided the country into 11 districts, and each district was governed by a Puritan Major General. The responsibility of these generals included maintaining order, collecting taxes, granting poor relief, and imposing Puritan moral discipline.
The Puritan Parliaments alienated the English people far more than anything that King Charles had ever done, as incompetent as he had been. They closed down the theaters, they prohibited church festivals, and they outlawed many forms of entertainment that most English Christians saw as fairly innocuous. The Puritans turned Sundays into a gloomy Old Testament Sabbath. The people had always been happy to be free from work on Sunday, to have a day of rest and a day of worship.
But the Puritans prohibited most leisure activities, including even hiking. In fact, a person had to obtain a formal legal permit to even travel at all on a Sunday. Cromwell himself bristled at some of the strict laws that his Puritan parliaments passed. Finally, in 1658, Cromwell was struck by a sudden bout of malarial fever and died. And to a large degree, Puritanism died with him. By the time Cromwell died, Puritanism had become nothing more than a loose confederation of various discordant sects.
Although Oliver Cromwell was succeeded by his son Richard, the English people had had their fill of rule by the quote " saints. " So in 1660, Parliament invited Charles II to return and sit on the throne of England. The Restoration was not just a restoration of the King, but of Parliament as well, and of the Anglican Church.
Both King and Parliament declared all legislation, null and void, that had been passed during the years since the death of King Charles I, because none of it had gone through the constitutional channels of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the King. For the vast majority of people in England, the rule of the saints during the Puritan Revolution was a bad memory that they all wanted to forget. Puritanism lost all the power it once had as a political, social, and religious force.
And the Puritans now disappeared into a scattering of non-conformist sects and churches. The next great spiritual movement in England didn't arise from the remnants of the Puritans, but rather from two zealous Anglican preachers, George Whitefield and John Wesley.