教會歷史 — 第 4 部分：三個世紀贏得良心自由 (1517–1800)

筆記： 這一段融合了大衛·鮑森《教會歷史》系列的 三場獨立講座：16 世紀（54.9 分鐘，《改革者、羅馬人與激進派》）、17 世紀（47.7 分鐘，英格蘭爭取敬拜自由的鬥爭），以及 18 世紀（54.9 分鐘，福音派復興）。我把三場講座合併成一篇文章，因為它們講述一個連貫不斷的故事：國家強制宗教的代價，以及重拾良心自由的漫長艱辛之路。我沒有臆測或添飾鮑森的任何論點。凡是我查證、對照史料或更正細節之處，都以嵌入正文的 琥珀色邊註 呈現。本次查考比前三部分更繁重，因為這段歷史的名字、日期和數字比系列其他部分都多，也最容易在講壇傳說一再轉述時被添上額外色彩。

從維滕貝格到衛斯理家的客廳

第三部分以馬丁·路德站在帝國與教會面前結束，宣稱：「我站在這裡，我別無選擇。」但宣言並不等於改革已經完成。鮑森以一個聽來很簡單的問題開始下一場講座：宗教改革與革命有什麼不同？

答案在於另外兩個問題：改變了多少，以及是誰作出改變。縱觀 16 世紀，路德的宗教改革隨著傳播逐漸變成一場革命，因為被改變的事物越來越多，不同的人也在越來越多的地方，以各自的方式推動改變。

這篇文章中的三個世紀講述一個連續的故事：教會不斷被國家「擄獲」。國王、議會和市議會運用世俗權力，把一種宗教強加於整片領土，而 代價總是戰爭、監禁，或靈性生活日漸冷淡。這三個世紀也講述那些拒絕讓國家決定自己信仰、並為此付出慘重代價的人。

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第一部：16世紀：改革者、羅馬人、激進份子

鮑森把這一晚分成三組，也就是「三個 R」：改革者、羅馬人（天主教會如何回應），以及激進派（鮑森自己的教會 戈德希爾 正是源自這一群體）。他考察三個國家的改革者：德國、瑞士，然後是英國。

德國：馬丁路德與半途而廢的人

誰改變了德國？顯然是馬丁路德。多少？鮑森回答：在最初的四、五年裡，發生了許多事。路德擺脫了教皇，擺脫了主教，擺脫了贖罪券，擺脫了煉獄，擺脫了許多其他事物，並將聖禮從七個減少到兩個。

然後危機來了：路德只好躲藏在瓦特堡城堡。當他出來時，他驚恐地發現一些朋友比他預想的更進一步、更快地推動了改變。他站在自己的講台上問：你怎麼敢這樣做？從那時起，路德基本上停止了改變事情。此後幾乎沒有任何變化。

結果：路德保留了羅馬擁有的大量東西。他在祭壇上放了蠟燭，這是聖經中肯定沒有的，但他保留了它。他保留著十字架，走進路德教會，你經常會看到一個，這可能會讓你感到驚訝。他保留了圖像和照片。最重要的是，他圍繞著聖餐和洗禮保留了自己的傳統做法：在某種意義上，他仍然相信麵包和酒實際上是基督的身體和血，但他從未完全克服這一點。他也為嬰兒舉行洗禮。當有人問洗禮是否需要信仰時，他的回答是：誰能說嬰兒沒有信仰呢？

誰進行了改變？這是一個相當令人驚訝的答案：路德依賴王子。換句話說， 這是國家驅動的變革。路德教與羅馬天主教一樣，是既定的宗教。從一開始，路德就依靠王子、公爵和薩克森選帝侯，特別是一個名叫腓特烈（Frederick）的人來「由上而下」進行改革。路德認為，誰統治了這片土地，誰就統治了教會。

結果：在施派爾舉行的帝國會議上，決定每個領土都將採納其王子的宗教信仰。如果你住在王子信奉天主教的地方，那麼你就是天主教徒。如果王子是路德教徒，那你就是路德教徒。一群人對此表示強烈反對，正是從這次「抗議」中，新教徒這個詞誕生了。

這種政教融合的結果是：到17世紀初，天主教國家聯合起來，與新教國家開戰，新教國家也聯合起來，爆發了著名的三十年戰爭。這就是這個錯誤產生的最終結果：當這裡的國家說每個人都必須信奉這種宗教，而那裡的國家又說每個人都必須信奉那種宗教時，遲早會發生宗教戰爭。這種模式從德國傳播到丹麥、瑞典和挪威，所有國家都將路德教徒作為國教，對每個公民都有約束力。

關於聖餐的爭論不只是西方的爭論。約在 1573 至 1581 年，蒂賓根的路德宗神學家把希臘文翻譯的《奧格斯堡信條》寄給君士坦丁堡宗主教 耶利米二世（Jeremias II），希望尋找共識。他回覆三封審慎的神學信，部分同意其中的觀點，卻拒絕路德關於恩典、聖禮，以及教父解釋《聖經》之權威的核心立場，最後以這句話結束通信：*「走你們自己的路，不要再寄送教義方面的信，只寄友誼的信。」*宗教改革確實抵達東方，只是東正教按自己的立場拒絕了它。

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瑞士：戰死沙場的慈運理和住一晚卻待了二十年的加爾文

路德既沒有在瑞士發起宗教改革，也沒有幫助它，它完全是自己開始的。有兩個人：一個德國瑞士人，一個法國人。

赫德里希．慈運理（Huldreich Zwingli） 是瑞士德語區一個小村莊天主教堂的普通教區牧師。他透過閱讀希臘文新約成為新教徒，這正是發生在馬丁路德身上的事情，事實上，幾年之前它發生在路德身上。慈運理受邀擔任蘇黎世大教堂（Grossmünster）的牧師。他傳播了他在這本書中發現的新真理，並與他一起席捲了蘇黎世市。

他的教導包括：教宗擁有一支由瑞士僱傭兵組成的軍隊是錯誤的。 （有趣的是，如果你今天訪問梵蒂岡，你仍然會看到瑞士衛兵保護它，而慈運理反對這種做法。）他放棄了對教皇的效忠並結婚了，這兩件事似乎常常同時發生。許多其他牧師跟隨他。

他最終說服了市議會；請注意這一點：蘇黎世的每個人如今都必須成為新教徒。悲劇性的錯誤再次發生，但這項決定仍被貫徹。蘇黎世正式成為新教城市，從蘇黎世延伸出去的山谷也一樣。問題在於，山區居民並不服從。很快，山谷居民與山地居民便彼此交戰。蘇黎世地區爆發了一場持續兩年的戰爭；在這場戰爭中，慈運理本人也在一個名叫 卡佩爾（Kappel） 的小地方陣亡。

在慈運理過世前，與路德在聖餐問題上發生了重大爭執。路德說：麵包是身體，酒是基督的血。慈運理說：那隻是麵包，只是酒，是他的身體和血液的象徵。鮑森觀察到：也許這就是德國人和瑞士人在宗教改革中從未走到一起的原因。

故事轉移到法國。一個名叫約翰·卡爾文的年輕人出生於皮卡第，是律師的兒子，他的父親讓他學習法律。他曾就讀於巴黎大學、奧爾良大學和布爾日大學，加爾文的邏輯思維就是在那裡獲得的。他至死不渝的演講、他清晰的思想、他毀滅性的論證，正是加爾文的論證說服了那麼多人成為「加爾文主義者」。

加爾文來到巴黎，研究了希臘文新約，並皈依了基督教（約1532–34）。幾個月後，他因其基督教觀點而被監禁在巴黎。獲釋後，他作為難民逃亡，四處漂泊。

他發現自己在26歲的時候來到了瑞士城市巴塞爾，並決定寫下他的基督教信仰。那本書是基督教宗教研究所，仍然被譽為世界上對新教信仰最偉大的闡釋之一，至今仍在銷售和閱讀。

他提倡週日早上去教堂，週日下午打保齡球，他自己做到了，我們欠（或責備）加爾文「歐陸式週日」。但更深層的事更重要：這個人相信上帝坐在寶座上。他相信上帝的主權，上帝的意志是決定國家和人類歷史的最終因素。正是因為對神聖主權和預定論的邏輯性的極大強調，加爾文給那些有這種想法的人起了自己的名字：加爾文主義者。但加爾文相信這一點，路德也相信，慈運理也相信，所有宗教改革家也相信：上帝坐在寶座上，絕對控制一切和所有人。

加爾文仍以難民身分四處逃亡。有一天，他試圖返回法國，卻發現原定路線上正在發生一場小規模戰爭，於是繞道而行，未能在傍晚抵達目的地。當晚他就在那裡落腳，那個地方叫作 日內瓦。他因為繞了那段路，原本只打算住一晚，結果卻留了 20 年；日內瓦也成為全世界長老會的中心。

據說，這位書籍的年輕作者加爾文來到日內瓦後，當地教區牧師、名叫威廉·法雷爾的人匆匆趕到旅館說：「加爾文，我希望你留在這裡。」他說，一年前，理事會決定日內瓦應成為新教城市，但並未成功；人們照樣酗酒、賭博，什麼都沒有改變。我們需要像你這樣的人。請留下來。加爾文同意了。

加爾文相當嚴格。他沒有什麼有趣的事。他會把一個人帶到教堂前，並把他交給地方法官，因為這樣、那樣或那樣。但他對這座城市進行了改造，直到它變得秩序井然，儘管這裡的「城市」意味著人口只有13,000。他按照嚴格的紀律，清理了這個地方，以至於三年後他不得不逃亡到斯特拉斯堡。但他離開後，這座城市就崩潰了；事情變得越來越糟。一個代表團過來請他回來。卡爾文又回來了，又待了20年。

這次他將改革推得更遠。沒有十字架。沒有蠟燭。而且，他敢說，也沒有器官；人們應該唱歌。他比馬丁路德更進一步地推進了這些變革，並建立了現在被稱為長老會的教會治理體系，在該體系中，教會由平信徒、牧師和長老團體共同管理，地方機構在代表大會中召開會議，監督更廣泛的領域。

日內瓦成為新教徒避難的地方，共有6,000 人來到那裡居住，躲避迫害。很自然地，他們接受了加爾文的想法。當安全回家後，他們帶著加爾文的信仰和加爾文管理教會的方式與他們一起。

但是，值得補充的是，加爾文反過來犯了同樣的錯誤：融合教會和國家。只是這次他沒有說國家必須管理教會。他說教會必須治理國家。如果教會成員行為不端，加爾文希望該市的地方法官來處理他。教會和國家再一次陷入了混亂。它沒有在日內瓦引發戰爭，但在其他地方引發了戰爭。

影響力從日內瓦傳到了法國。

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法國：胡格諾派，蘇格蘭：約翰·諾克斯

法國的新教徒比起路德更接近加爾文，因此被稱為胡格諾派。在法國國王統治告終時，也就是加爾文開始他的工作時，法國已有約 20,000 名胡格諾派信徒。他們持續增長，直到可怕的聖巴托羅買日，即 1572 年 8 月 24 日。你若熟悉歷史，就知道那一天約有 22,000 名法國胡格諾派信徒遭到屠殺，僅巴黎便有約 2,000 人。全法國各地，人們一批又一批遭到處決。胡格諾派逃往英國和荷蘭。若你遇到一個聽來像法國姓氏的家庭，他們的祖先很可能就是隨胡格諾派逃亡而來。也許今晚，這座教會裡就有那些逃離聖巴托羅買日大屠殺之人的後裔。

但受日內瓦影響最深的國家，是美麗的老蘇格蘭。我無法詳述蘇格蘭的全部歷史，這或許會讓蘇格蘭人失望；不過，讓我提到四位偉大的蘇格蘭人。

帕特里克·漢密爾頓是在那裡發起宗教改革的蘇格蘭人，但於 1528 年被燒死。他的工作由曾到過瑞士的 喬治．威沙特（George Wishart） 接續，可是威沙特也遭遇悲慘結局。真正完成這項工作的人，是 約翰．諾克斯（John Knox）。

他是一個豐富多彩的人物：先是格拉斯哥大學的學生，後來成為蘇格蘭軍隊駐守聖安德魯城堡的牧師。法國人佔領城堡後，把諾克斯賣作槳帆船奴隸，他便在船上划槳。英國人救了他；他來到英格蘭，後來因與瑪麗女王發生衝突而逃往歐洲大陸，並前往日內瓦與加爾文會面。諾克斯的思想在那裡成熟；回到蘇格蘭後，他下定決心要建立蘇格蘭長老教會。他曾禱告：「主啊，請把蘇格蘭賜給我，否則我就死。」

1560 年，蘇格蘭議會投票支持新教，同年舉行了第一次大會。但在 1561 年，美麗而狡猾的蘇格蘭女王瑪麗回來了，並憑藉她的美貌與機智贏得大多數新教貴族的支持。於是，蘇格蘭女王瑪麗與約翰·諾克斯正面交鋒。這是最具戲劇性的故事之一，任何對歷史稍有興趣的人都應該讀一讀。然而，內戰結束後，蘇格蘭女王瑪麗被俘，退位給年幼的兒子詹姆斯，最後又被英格蘭的伊莉莎白一世以叛國罪處死。諾克斯的教義贏得支持，蘇格蘭從此成為長老會傳統；蘇格蘭教會反映日內瓦教會，而英格蘭教會則更接近路德宗。蘇格蘭教會的一切，都歸功於約翰·諾克斯。

諾克斯去世後，領導權傳給我想提到的最後一位偉大蘇格蘭人：安德魯．梅爾維爾（Andrew Melville）。他對詹姆斯國王說：「陛下，蘇格蘭有兩位國王和兩個王國。其中一位是詹姆斯國王，我是他的忠實臣民；另一位是主耶穌基督，教會的王，而詹姆斯本人也是祂的臣民。」

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英國：「典型的英國混亂」，從亨利八世到伊麗莎白一世

現在我們回到了我們自己的國家。英國這段時間到底發生了什麼事？鮑森說得很清楚：英國宗教改革是一場典型的英國混亂。這確實是一種典型的妥協，我們敷衍了事並說「那就行了」，我們不按原則工作，我們非常務實，我們問它是否有效，無論什麼有效都被認為是正確的。這是非常英國化的，宗教改革運動就是其中的典型。

當然，這一切始於亨利八世和他想娶另一個女人。但這被嚴重誤解了，讓我給出更全面的事實。亨利八世在別人的壓力下娶了阿拉貢的凱瑟琳，這是一場非法婚姻，因為她是他兄弟的遺孀，所以他一開始就不應該娶她。但迫於各方壓力，包括教宗特別允許他非法結婚，他因政治原因被迫結婚。她所生的每個孩子都死了，除了一個小女孩瑪麗，她後來成為臭名昭著的「血腥瑪麗」。他沒有兒子可以繼承都鐸王朝的血統，他知道，當他死後，如果沒有男性繼承人，內戰就會隨之而來。當時大多數英國人認為這是上帝對婚姻的審判的標誌。

然後他遇到安妮·博林，一個他真正愛上的女人，她很可能成為一位好女王與合法妻子。（我不是在替亨利八世辯護，只是在把完整事實告訴你。）他向教宗申請廢除第一段婚姻，但此時政治局勢已經改變，教宗也因政治原因拒絕了。他於是說：「好吧，從現在起我不再服從教宗。」亨利一步步把英格蘭教會與教宗分開，就像英格蘭被英吉利海峽與歐洲大陸分隔開來一樣。

整個故事中最諷刺的部分是：作為一個年輕人，亨利八世是一位業餘神學家，他寫了一本反對馬丁·路德的書，教皇非常高興，他給了他一個頭銜「信仰的捍衛者」，我們女王今天仍然戴著這個頭銜，印在你口袋裡的硬幣上。他因攻擊馬丁路德而獲得這一稱號。你知道嗎？英國的宗教改革是多麼混亂。

亨利與安妮·博林結婚主要是因為他把他的一個朋友任命為坎特伯雷大主教，一個名叫托馬斯·克蘭默的人。克蘭麥說：我會廢除你的第一次婚姻，因為我確信它從一開始就是非法的，所以我廢除它，你可以嫁給安妮·博林，而他秘密地主持了婚禮。亨利現在是教會領袖，脫離了羅馬，也缺錢，所以他佔領了英格蘭富裕的修道院，並將其土地出售給個人，第一次創造了英格蘭的中產階級，從此對社會生活產生了影響。

但重點是：亨利八世從來不希望英格蘭成為新教。他希望一切都像以前一樣進行，除了修道院，修道院對教皇的忠誠度太高，但他自己擔任教皇。這基本上就是他想要的。但他沒有考慮到幾個因素。

他沒有想到，這本書正在被一個名叫威廉．丁道爾（William Tyndale）的人狂熱地翻譯成英文，他在英格蘭各地被追捕，被迫逃往歐洲大陸，最後被燒死在火刑柱上。但是廷代爾給了我們一本英語聖經，其他所有英語修訂版都是以此為基礎的，而且在亨利統治期間，英國的每個教堂都放置了一本《聖經》，人們第一次可以去閱讀它。亨利沒有考慮這一點。你注意到了嗎？每一次，都是這本書讓人們獲得自由。每一次，閱讀它的機會都會產生最非凡的東西。

亨利也認為，沒有像托馬斯·克倫威爾這樣的人，他是解散修道院的幕後大臣，不要與下個世紀的奧利弗·克倫威爾相混淆，他內心同情新教思想，就像克蘭麥那樣。儘管教宗仍然從英格蘭、「彼得的便士」和其他「安納特」那裡收取金錢，但人們仍然對它表示不滿，但貢品仍然在繳納。但亨利害怕變革的步伐，遺憾的是，在他統治末期，他同時處決了天主教徒和宗教改革者，他死後英格蘭陷入了騷亂，但他把王位留給了一個十歲的男孩，當時他還是一個非常嚴肅的小基督徒，深受克蘭麥的影響，同情英格蘭的持續變革。

愛德華六世。 在這位少年國王的短暫統治期間，發生了幾件事：神職人員被允許結婚；英國國教的聖餐具有新教特徵，祭壇被稱為桌子。更重要的是，禮儀首次用英語取代拉丁語，並編成一本名為《公禱書》的書。這本書供所有人使用，不只供懂拉丁語的神父使用，而是讓普通民眾也能禱告。經過第二次修訂後，它成為後世所稱的《公禱書》，基本沿用至今，仍是英國國教會禮拜使用的書。我們把這歸功於那位少年國王，或者更準確地說，歸功於他的統治。

在這位少年國王統治下引入了一條規定：每位牧師每年至少必須講道四次。你能想像當時教會的狀況嗎？竟然需要一條規定，要求人們每年講道四次？這是了解當時英國教會狀況的一個小窗口。在克蘭麥的領導下，他們還開始起草宗教條款，最多有 42 條，後來減為 39 條。在愛德華六世統治期間，新教難民也返回英國；在我以前就讀的劍橋大學，來了一位來自斯特拉斯堡的著名神學教授，名叫 馬丁．布策（Martin Bucer），向劍橋學生教授新教對基督福音的理解。

然後這位少年國王去世了，王位傳給了他同父異母的妹妹；她的母親是西班牙人的女兒，名叫 瑪麗（Mary）。瑪麗有一半西班牙血統，也完全認同西班牙立場；她嫁給西班牙的菲利普，決心把英格蘭帶回羅馬。約 1,200 名已婚神職人員失業。鐘擺又擺了回來：在瑪麗統治期間，近 300 位基督徒被處死，這為她贏得了那個可怕的綽號：血腥瑪麗。她確實當之無愧。

在牛津，在貝利奧爾學院外的主要街道上，有一座紀念碑，紀念兩名男子：拉蒂默和里德利（Latimer and Ridley），他們在瑪麗統治期間因其新教信仰而被燒死在火刑柱上。你會記得拉蒂默對雷德利說的話：「請放心，雷德利大師，扮演好人；今天，靠著上帝的恩典，我們將在英格蘭點燃這樣一支蠟燭，我相信它永遠不會被撲滅。」

在瑪麗統治期間，坎特伯雷大主教克蘭默在巨大壓力下簽署了一份文件，撤銷他曾作出的改變。但人不能輕易改變自己的良心；他心裡知道自己錯了，很快便發現自己正走向火刑柱。時候到了，他公開宣告自己對放棄新教立場深感悔恨，並把那隻簽署文件的手臂伸進火焰，看著它燒成灰燼。他說：「簽署這樣一份文件的那隻手，必須先被燒掉。」那是克蘭默和另外約 300 人的遭遇。胡珀在格洛斯特被燒死；還有許多人在火刑柱上被燒死，例如史密斯菲爾德的殉道者，你也許聽說過他們。在瑪麗統治期間，四位主教、一位大主教，以及許多其他重要傳道人被處死。

你可以想像伊莉莎白一世登基時鬆了一口氣。在教宗和許多其他人的眼中，她是個私生子。教宗認定蘇格蘭瑪麗皇后為合法繼承人，這就是蘇格蘭瑪麗女王與伊莉莎白之間叛國指控的根源。但迫害結束了，難民紛紛返回英國。

在伊莉莎白一世統治時期，我們稱之為英國國教的典型英國混亂局面才真正形成。伊莉莎白喜歡華麗的儀式、法衣和禮節，因此不願放棄這些東西。她認為愛德華的第二本祈禱書過於新教，便加以修改，把它拉回羅馬一側。她甚至停止了神職人員聚會、一起研讀聖經的做法；這項做法原本一直在這片土地上發揮積極作用。然而，她無法像瑪麗所企圖的那樣讓時光倒流，於是所謂的伊莉莎白宗教和解便落在一條中間道路上。如果你想知道為什麼今天的英國教會可以同時容納福音派和盎格魯天主教徒，就必須回到伊莉莎白一世時代：議會強加的中間立場，為這種混合敞開了大門。

《公禱書》在很大程度上仍然是新教的，雖然並非全部如此。伊莉莎白統治時期最後起草的《三十九條信綱》，是對新教信仰精彩的陳述。任何宣講《三十九條信綱》的牧師，都是在宣講福音的牧師。可悲的是，並不是每個人都這樣做；但這些內容就在書中，其中有足夠的新教信仰，足以建立一個徹底福音派的英國教會，也容許另一種後來出現的教會傳統存在。

伊莉莎白去世時並不受歡迎，但當西班牙腓力二世因蘇格蘭女王瑪麗被處決而憤怒時，她的聲望有所回升。腓力發誓要以武力入侵英格蘭，把它帶回教宗手中。他派出一支艦隊，即西班牙無敵艦隊，並集結了另一支軍隊，準備在入侵開始時渡過英吉利海峽。英國陷入絕境，沒有盟友，而歐洲集結的力量似乎正要向英吉利海峽發起衝擊。

但英格蘭有弗朗西斯·德雷克爵士，關於他的故事你可能比我更了解，無敵艦隊是如何被英國卓越的航海技術擊潰的，那天似乎連上帝都在為英格蘭而戰，因為事實證明，風對西班牙笨重的大帆船來說太強大了，它們在英國和蘇格蘭海岸被毀壞，沉船，沉船，沉船。

鮑森添加了一個個人細節：一艘在蘇格蘭北部失事的西班牙大帆船，水手們上岸並被稱為「聖克萊爾」，與當地女孩結婚並建立了辛克萊氏族。他自己的母親是辛克萊人，因此，根據他的說法，他繼承了來自無敵艦隊的西班牙血統。 （這純粹是一個家庭軼事，不是經過證實的歷史事件，而是一個迷人的細節，表明即使是鮑森也發現自己的小線索融入了這個更大的故事。）

總結宗教改革者：在德國、瑞士、英國這三個地方，宗教改革都沒有得到徹底的結束，原因是一樣的：教會和國家站得太近了。要不是國家管理教會，就是教會管理國家，其結果總是將宗教強加於整個地區，最終導致戰爭。鮑森問：還有什麼比人們為了宗教而打仗、以基督的名、以基督教的名義互相殘殺更悲慘的事嗎？

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羅馬人：反宗教改革的三個面向

那麼羅馬人一直在做什麼呢？到了路德之後的 60 年，新教已經傳播到德國大部分地區，也到達丹麥、挪威、瑞典和瑞士的大部分地區、法國相當一部分地區及英國；到了 1580 年，愛爾蘭和義大利仍然是天主教地區。奇怪的是，這一切發生在 60 年內，接下來 300 年疆界幾乎完全不變，而且基本上延續至今。為什麼新教在 60 年內傳播得如此之快，然後卻停止了？

答：當你研究羅馬人在做什麼時，你會發現一場名為反宗教改革的運動。羅馬遭受了一場襲擊，奪走了半個歐洲，羅馬不會坐視不管。發生了三件事阻止了洪水。

首先：依納修斯‧洛約拉和耶穌會士。 洛約拉是一位西班牙貴族，在戰爭中受了重傷，腿骨折了，在醫院躺了幾個月。在那段時間裡，他有了異象並改變了宗教信仰，他成為一名虔誠的天主教徒，並相信他一生的使命是阻止新教的傳播。他相信這樣做意味著以與其他軍隊截然不同的方式進行戰鬥，你幾乎可以稱他的追隨者為「羅馬救世軍」。他前往巴黎，聚集了六位貴族和一些貴族女士，成立了耶穌會，俗稱耶穌會士。洛約拉的目標是為羅馬保留歐洲並阻止新教氾濫，坦率地說，他基本上實現了這一目標。

他召集了數百人，對他們施以可以想像到最嚴格的軍事式紀律，並在一本名為《神操》的書中規定 25 天禁食、尋求異象等操練。到最後，你就準備好成為依納爵·羅耀拉的追隨者了。更重要的是，他們準備好使用不正當手段：只要能為羅馬留住人，就可以採取任何自認必要的手段，這就是為什麼英文單字 Jesuitry（耶穌會式手段） 帶有負面意義。其中一人 方濟各．沙勿略（Francis Xavier），據說使印度、東印度群島和日本的 700,000 人皈依羅馬。

第二：特倫特會議。 教宗認識到迫切需要討論，於是召集了特倫特會議。會議在 25 至 1545 年間舉行，共有 1563 次正式會期。起初，教宗考慮邀請新教徒參加，看看能否解決分歧；但樞機主教勸他不要邀請，他們也沒有出席。若他們出席，歷史或許會有所不同。

特倫特宣稱：傳統與聖經並存；次經必須是聖經的一部分；煉獄存在；贖罪券、祈求聖人、圖像和聖物都是正確而虔誠的做法；而且教宗擁有權威。這是羅馬教會第一次如此正式地說出這些話。我坦率而充滿愛意地說，這些事情至今沒有一件完全改變。若你相信大公會議不會犯錯，那麼現在怎麼能否認這些事？近代的梵蒂岡會議進行了許多清理、調整和探討，但我剛才讀到的核心內容沒有完全改變。即使羅馬表示願意接受修訂版《聖經》的標準版本，也附帶一個條件：必須包括次經。

第三：宗教裁判所復活。酷刑、監禁和死刑被用作對付新教徒的工具。他們消滅了西班牙幾乎所有新教徒，也消滅了義大利、奧地利等地的大多數新教徒。結果是，直到今天，我們所理解的基督徒在這些土地上仍然是少數。

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激進派：只有一把劍，同時對抗雙方

現在是第三組。我可以最簡短地介紹這一組，但我認為這是最重要的一組。他們被稱為激進派，因為他們是宗教改革的左翼。我最近讀過的一本書稱他們為「宗教改革的繼子」。他們是誰，又相信什麼？他們開始提出最基本的問題：誰應該進行改革？誰應該作出改變？ 他們得出羅馬人和改革者都尚未達到的重要結論：答案應該與國家完全無關。教會和國家是兩個完全不同的機構，不應該過於接近。這些激進派相信自由教會，而不是國定教會。他們甚至不滿於已確立的新教。他們說：你不能透過政府使人變善，也不能強加一種宗教；信仰必須由人自由、自願地接受。你不能說英格蘭每個人都是新教徒，也不能說西班牙每個人都必須是羅馬天主教徒。你只能使用一把劍：聖靈的劍，就是神的道。所以他們是和平主義者，拒絕參加新教徒和天主教徒之間的戰爭。他們說：我們不會用肉身的劍為福音而戰；我們只能使用聖靈的寶劍，就是神的話。

這是革命性的。他們被視為危險的革命者，破壞了維繫社會的教會與國家相互歸屬觀念。那麼他們從哪裡開始呢？他們起源於 1522 年的瑞士蘇黎世，自稱為「弟兄」；領導者是 Conrad Grebel 和 菲利克斯．曼茲（Felix Manz）。那是一座慈運理要求市議會把新教強加給所有人的城市。他們說：這不是正確做法。唯一正確的方法，是傳講神的話語，並在人們自願接受後把他們組織成教會。因此，他們正在為我們今天所說的宗教自由而戰。

現在我必須告訴你一件非常悲傷的事：不只是羅馬人攻擊了這些人，宗教改革者也攻擊了他們。有一天，馬丁·路德告訴德國諸侯，必須用劍對付這些激進派。有一天，約翰·加爾文同意把 菲利克斯．曼茲（Felix Manz） 淹死，視為再洗禮派應得的結局；但實際上，曼茲是在慈運理支持下被處死的。甚至蘇黎世的慈運理本人也讓議會通過了針對他們的殘酷法律。羅馬人使用國家，宗教改革者也使用國家，兩者都願意以基督的名義使用真正的劍；但激進派說：除了這把劍，我們不會使用其他劍。於是，羅馬人和宗教改革者的劍都轉向了他們。

但故事並沒有就此結束，鮑森還提到了激進分子中的「一些狂熱分子和極端分子，比如茨維考的托馬斯·明策爾」，儘管他說，更仔細的研究表明，他們中的大多數人不值得獲得這一聲譽。

門諾·西蒙斯，如果你曾經遇過門諾派，就會把這些偉大的基督徒功勞歸於門諾·西蒙斯。雅各布·胡特也是如此：如果你曾遇過胡特派，就應把這些歸功於雅各布·胡特。在我看來，這些人是最終的改革者。他們說：凡是不符合神話語的事，我們都要改變；我們自己就要改變它，不等待王子或教宗替我們改變。我們要以個人和團體的身分，以神的話語為生，並最大限度地遵循它。他們做到了。

我們今天在這裡，也有那些再洗禮派的功勞。我們擺脫了國定教會的束縛，因為他們的影響力和思想在伊莉莎白一世時代的英國興起，形成一個名為 Independents 的團體；他們說：我們想要一個自由的教會。因為在英國找不到這樣的教會，他們乘坐五月花號前往美洲，定居於那裡，並留下宗教自由的原則——每個人都可以遵循自己認為正確的信仰。這就是他們為之奮鬥和犧牲的遺產。

他們有一些狂熱分子和極端分子，例如茨維考的托馬斯·明澤爾。但總的來說，當你研究他們的故事時，一個故事現在才被正確地寫出來，研究剛剛出版，你會發現：直到現在人們才開始看到再洗禮派的真實地位。他們為宗教自由而戰並犧牲，但他們只是為此而戰，他們被指控為革命者，但耶穌基督也是如此。耶穌說：「我的國不屬於這個世界；如果是的話，我的僕人就會戰鬥。」 這正是再洗禮派所說的。

下週日，如果上帝願意，我將把這個故事帶入17世紀，那個宗教自由來到英國的時代，那個人們開始被允許在這片土地上遵循自己的信仰的時代。威廉·佩恩的時代。約翰·班揚的時代。還有許多上帝偉大僕人的時代。

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第二部分：17世紀，爭取信仰自由的鬥爭

鮑森的下一場講座以他所讀的一本 1607 年聖經開始，談到古英語的 long-s 拼寫，以及這個譯本在很大程度上受益於威廉·丁道爾的早期作品。他讀了保羅寫給腓立比人的信全文，因為那封信是在監獄裡寫的；而 17 世紀也在監獄中產生了其他偉大作品，最著名的是約翰·班揚的《天路歷程》。

他明確地把這個世紀定為 1600 到 1700 年。兩端的差異正是整場講座的要點：1600 年，今晚這群會眾不會被允許聚集敬拜；到了 1700 年，他們可以了。他開始展示敬拜自由如何來到這片土地；因此，在過去 200–300 年裡，人們能像這樣聚集，按照自己認為應該的方式敬拜，沒有人阻攔他們、把他們拖進監獄，或為此處決他們。正是在本世紀，這場戰鬥打響，並最終取得勝利。

英格蘭、1600 和《欽定本聖經》的冒險

本世紀初，英國有三批自稱基督徒的團體。官方上不再有羅馬天主教徒，並被法律禁止；如果還有人留下來，他們也是秘密的同情者。英國國教內部有兩個群體：英國聖公會，他們接受伊麗莎白女王制定的妥協方案；清教徒，以理查德·巴克斯特為代表，他們想要一個更加純潔的英國國教，沒有聖衣，沒有十字架，沒有，簡單的蠟燭，最重要的是以上帝的崇拜為中心話語。 基德明斯特教區的牧師巴克斯特就是一個很好的例子：除了兩三個小時的周日教學外，他還挨家挨戶地為教區的每個家庭提供自己的聖經學習，這就是他對基德明斯特產生影響的秘密。

英國教會之外還有第三個團體：獨立派（Independents），也被稱為分離主義者，或「布朗主義者」（以一個名叫布朗的人的名字命名），或公理會主義者，因為他們相信每個教會都應該在主的領導下管理自己的事務。他們的口號是：「改革不留任何停留」。意思是：我們不會等待議會或教會改變，我們現在正在我們當地的教會中繼續前進並按照聖經生活。詩人 約翰．彌爾頓（John Milton） 是本世紀初公理會流派的一個很好的例子。他們中的許多人為此付出了生命的代價，其中包括格林伍德（Greenwood）和巴羅（Barrow）。

蘇格蘭的詹姆斯六世成為英格蘭的詹姆士一世。從一開始，他就秘密地堅持國王統治宗教的神聖權利和主教統治教會的神聖權利，但他在仍然只是蘇格蘭國王時保持沉默。當他南下時，英國人希望他支持清教徒路線。他們很快就震驚了。他宣稱：「長老會與君主制的認同就如上帝與魔鬼的認同一樣。」他的口號是：「沒有主教，就沒有國王。」

1604 年，他在漢普頓宮召集基督徒領袖會議。詹姆斯在那裡毫不留情地嘲笑、侮辱清教徒：他說，若你們不喜歡週日運動，他就要把週日的體育和娛樂活動合法化，以此刺激他們。但現場有一位清教徒、著名牛津教授 Reynolds；這位彬彬有禮而聖潔的紳士沒有被嘲笑和笑聲動搖，堅持自己的立場。當詹姆斯不再謾罵時，雷諾茲博士說：「陛下，我有一個建議：我們是時候擁有一本新的英文聖經了。」幾乎出乎詹姆斯意料，這個建議獲得接受。從漢普頓宮會議開始，七年的努力產生了我們所說的欽定本聖經。它不是因為詹姆斯開始或執行翻譯而得名，而是因為完成並呈給他時，他碰巧是國王。我們稱它為「授權本」，因為他授權了它。你一生使用的《聖經》在這個國家使用了 350 年，是漢普頓宮一位清教徒提出的成果，並於 1611 年 出版。

那一年對英國很重要，還發生了其他事情：英國第一座浸信會教堂於 1611 年成立，與授權本同年。可悲的是，會議之後詹姆斯發布公告，要求每位神職人員完全服從主教。1,500 名牧師拒絕簽署，其中 300 人立即入獄。這是英國教會中的第一道裂痕；自宗教改革開始以來被取消的法衣與儀式，又從此捲土重來，並一直保留至今。

清教徒神職人員逃往愛爾蘭，當時的大主教是一位名叫 詹姆斯．厄舍（Ussher） 的人，非常適合計算日期。如果你曾看過創世記開頭印著「公元前 4004 年」的聖經——那是上帝從未寫進聖經的內容——你看到的就是大主教厄舍 放在那裡的計算：他算出亞當是在那一年 10 月 21 日上午 9 時左右誕生的。一位英國學者乾巴巴地說，作為細心的學者，Ussher 不會作出比這更精確的承諾。

其他無法憑良心敬拜的人則逃往東方，前往荷蘭。在一個名叫斯克魯比的小村莊裡，有一群獨立人士，在忠實的牧師約翰·羅賓遜的領導下，以他們自己的會眾形式聚會。但當地鄉紳帶著地方法官來威脅他們，他們決定唯一的出路就是找到一艘船，穿越到荷蘭。這是一個戲劇性的故事：一艘荷蘭船安排在波士頓附近與他們會合，分成兩個通道，一艘載著男人，一艘載著婦女和兒童，以避免被發現。載著婦女和兒童的船在泥巴裡擱淺了。這些人到達了荷蘭船，但隨後看到英國軍隊出現在岸上，向船開火，迫使其離開，將他們的妻子和孩子留在泥灘上。幸運的是，一兩年後，婦女和兒童成功前往荷蘭與他們團聚。

但阿姆斯特丹發生了一些事情：一群基督徒開始研究洗禮問題。在那之前，所有改革者都實行嬰兒洗禮，如同幾個世紀以來的慣例。但在阿姆斯特丹，一個由 Helwys 領導的團體開始重新思考這件事，得出結論：洗禮應只施行於信徒。由於沒有人有資格為他們施洗，其中兩人約定：「如果你為我施洗，我就為你施洗。」後來，他們找不到工作，只好冒險返回倫敦；在倫敦斯皮塔菲爾德，英國第一座浸信會教堂於 1611 年成立。

國王是凡人，而不是上帝，因此無權控制其臣民的凡人靈魂，為他們制定法律和法令，並在他們之上設立精神統治者。國王不會為此負責……不管他們是異教徒、土耳其人、猶太人或其他什麼人，世俗的權力都不會以最小的方式懲罰他們。 托馬斯·赫爾維斯，「罪惡之謎的簡短聲明」(1612)

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五月花號和查理一世：十一年沒有議會

另一群仍在低地國家的獨立派意識到，留在歐洲根本不切實際：不受歡迎、沒有工作，還在挨餓。他們決定做一件大事：返回英國，租一艘船，前往新世界，試圖在美洲建立一個自由的世界，讓人們不受國家規定而敬拜。他們回來後說服五月花號的船主帶走他們，並被稱為朝聖者之父。他們於 1620 年 9 月 離開普利茅斯，並於同年 11 月 在新世界的普利茅斯登陸。等待他們的是多麼艱難的經歷：第一個冬天，50% 的人因缺乏食物、寒冷和醫療而死亡。然而他們留下來了；儘管與那裡已建立的英國聖公會定居點發生衝突，這些清教徒先驅仍開始了一些事情，使今天的美國完全擺脫國家與教會的聯繫，人人都可以按照自己認為應該的方式敬拜。

查理二世暗中同情羅馬天主教會，野心是透過陰謀讓英格蘭回歸羅馬。他與法國的路易十四簽訂秘密條約，彷彿把時光倒轉 200 年，回到宗教改革之前。從 1661 年開始，一系列議會法案使時間倒流。1662 年最糟糕的是《統一法案》：不是羅馬人，而是英國聖公會；查理二世和議會說，每個人都必須如此。就在那一年，近 2,000 名神職人員離開職位，進入未知世界，沒有家、沒有工作，也沒有其他東西，因為他們拒絕遵守《統一法案》。英語中出現了一個新詞：「不墨守成規」；起初它是一個犯罪詞。當時被逐出教會的人之一，就是親愛的老理查德·巴克斯特。

15,000 名倫敦人在宮殿前遊行，向查理一世遞交了 「根與枝請願書」。如果你聽過「根與枝」這個短語，這就是它的來源：他們希望根除所有「羅馬迷信」。查理一世拒絕聽從，很快英格蘭就陷入內戰，並於 1642 年爆發。議會與國王發生衝突，這也是宗教問題：總的來說，聖公會支持國王，清教徒支持議會。總的來說，北部和西部掌握在國王手中，南部和東部掌握在議會手中；這就是為什麼今天研究自由教會時，仍會發現它們大致遵循這種模式。

議會最偉大的鬥士之一是 John Hampden，艾爾斯伯里集市廣場上有一尊他的雕像。可悲的是，這位領導人在戰爭初期便因傷去世，議會開始失勢。他們等待一位領導者，而那位領導者來自 Oliver Cromwell。克倫威爾把他們編入新模範軍，並提出著名口號：「相信上帝，保持你的火藥乾燥。」他為這片土地上為宗教自由而戰的軍隊注入新的士氣。

這場內戰期間，在威斯敏斯特，一群來自牛津和劍橋的神職人員與學者聚集，試圖制定一種人人都能接受的教會生活模式，即威斯敏斯特神學家會議；他們也邀請一些蘇格蘭人參加，其影響力深遠。他們制定了名為威斯敏斯特信條的信仰聲明，至今不僅是蘇格蘭人的信條，也是世界各地許多長老會的信條。你或許可以引用其中一句話：人的主要目的是什麼？人的主要目的是榮耀神，並永遠以祂為樂。你聽過這些話嗎？這是在內戰期間於威斯敏斯特作出的決定。但它沒有被普遍接受：蘇格蘭人接受了它，而英國人從未完全接受。

查理一世仍在世，但最後被帶到倫敦斬首。他在Stoke Poges的莊園裡被關押了幾週，或者是幾天？如果有機會的話，可以去那裡，走進莊園，壁爐上方的灰泥牆上畫著查理一世的皇家徽章。為了打發時間，讓他不去想死刑，他在灰泥牆上畫了自己的皇家徽章。他們現在已經用玻璃覆蓋了它，但您仍然可以進入斯托克波格斯的主房間並看到它，當時查理一世在 1649 在白廳被斬首。

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班揚，「新長老不過是老牧師」，以及查理二世的統治

在與奧利佛·克倫威爾並肩作戰的士兵中，有一個年輕人，他出生在貝德福德郊外一個叫埃爾斯託的小村莊，酗酒、打架、髒話。他的名字是約翰·班揚。 （稍後將詳細介紹他。）

內戰結束後，長老會控制了英國國教，並試圖讓每個人都成為長老教會教徒。這不是很有趣嗎，當聖公會掌權時，每個人都必須是英國聖公會；當長老會得到它時，每個人都必須是長老會。這導致有人說：「新長老不過是老牧師。」 換句話說，我們剛剛用一種暴政換成了另一種暴政。

最後，我們來到了查理二世的統治時期，他缺乏原則且揮霍無度，人們很難說他有多糟糕。蘇格蘭人首先接受了他，並在斯昆為他加冕，認為他會與蘇格蘭人和英國議會一起為長老會而戰，為一個更純粹的清教教堂而戰。蘇格蘭人很快就為自己的愚蠢行為感到後悔。我無法詳細講述 盟約者 的故事，只能說 17,000 蘇格蘭盟約者在高地秘密聚會，按照他們認為應該進行的崇拜，在查理二世統治下遭受了苦難。

查理二世暗中同情羅馬天主教會，野心是透過陰謀讓英格蘭回歸羅馬。他與法國的路易十四簽訂秘密條約，彷彿把時光倒轉 200 年，回到宗教改革之前。從 1661 年開始，一系列議會法案使時間倒流。1662 年最糟糕的是《統一法案》：不是羅馬人，而是英國聖公會；查理二世和議會說，每個人都必須如此。就在那一年，近 2,000 名神職人員離開職位，進入未知世界，沒有家、沒有工作，也沒有其他東西，因為他們拒絕遵守《統一法案》。英語中出現了一個新詞：「不墨守成規」；起初它是一個犯罪詞。當時被逐出教會的人之一，就是親愛的老理查德·巴克斯特。

1665 年又出現另一項法案，因為被逐出的牧師不斷偷偷回到原來的會眾中聚會。議會通過五英里法案，不准任何被逐出的牧師在距離自己以前教會五英里內講道。這裡有一個有趣的細節：如果你去溫多弗，會在村外看到浸信會教堂，可能會想知道為什麼教堂要蓋在村外。答案是，1662 年艾爾斯伯里的牧師因拒絕服從而被逐出，卻不斷溜回艾爾斯伯里，在廚房和花園聚會；五英里法案出台後，他站在艾爾斯伯里中心，走出五英里，最後來到一片田野，在那裡開始聚會。人們從艾爾斯伯里步行五英里，建立了今日的溫多弗浸信會教堂，距離艾爾斯伯里正好五英里。

1673 年出現臭名昭著的測試法案。議會規定，任何在王室擔任公職的人，都必須接受聖公會聖餐、宣誓效忠，並否認變體論；這給良心造成極大的痛苦。

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約翰班揚、喬治福克斯和威廉佩恩：良心犯

正是在這個時期，約翰·班揚已經年長。他因偶然聽見幾位家庭主婦在後院談論信仰而悔改，後來成為貝德福德的傳道人。（家庭主婦，如果你在後院聊天，請記住：若你談對了事情，可能會產生另一個約翰·班揚。這個酗酒、說髒話、好鬥的年輕人偶然聽見她們談論耶穌，從未聽過如此甜美的話，因而確信自己有罪。）他歸向基督，成為貝德福德的傳道人，為信徒傳講福音並施行洗禮。

約翰‧班揚在查理二世統治下被關進監獄，十二年，中間只有一次休息時間，與失明的妻子和掙扎的孩子分開。但有一天，他在監獄裡做了一個夢：他看到一個人背負著一個重擔，一個想要擺脫它的人。他開始寫下這個夢想，那個夢想是天路歷程。我希望你讀過整本書，是成人版，而不是兒童版，成人版向你展示的不僅是朝聖者發生了什麼事，還有他的所想和所言。我也希望有一天你會讀到班揚的另一本重要的書，給罪人之首的恩典，描述他的轉變以及他如何成為一名傳道人。我認為《天路歷程》是僅次於《聖經》的最著名的基督教書籍。他在其中從未提及教堂。他從未提及其中的聖禮。因此，它被各個教派的基督徒所接受，直到今天，它仍然是基督教世界有史以來所寫的任何書籍中最廣泛的吸引力之一。

他死於 1688 年，埋葬在邦希爾原野（Bunhill Fields），我最近訪問過。在他生命的盡頭，人們稱他為「班揚主教」，儘管他從來不想成為主教。但當他四處旅行時，當人們向他尋求幫助時，他們說：你和其他人一樣有權利被稱為主教。所以我們就這樣稱呼你。因此，班揚主教。

班揚的故事幾乎按時間順序與主題，反映基督教世界的另一面，而鮑森敘述完全沒有觸及。尼康宗主教的禮儀改革（自 1652 年起）分裂俄羅斯教會；1666–1667 年莫斯科大公會議批准改革並咒詛舊儀式，催生「舊信徒」分裂。其核心人物大司祭阿瓦庫姆（Avvakum） 被監禁十多年，期間親自寫成《大司祭阿瓦庫姆（Avvakum） 的一生》（1672–1675），這部監獄文學描寫皈依與苦難，斯拉夫主義者常把它與班揚的恩典敘事相比。Avvakum 於 1682 年 4 月 14 日 與三位同伴被活活燒死，比班揚 1688 年自然死亡早六年。同一世紀、同一主題：國家強制統一禮儀，一部在監獄中寫成的精神經典，以及一位運動創始烈士，位於基督教世界的兩端。

在此期間，一個非常不同的人物也遭受痛苦：一位名叫喬治．福克斯（George Fox）的人，在 1646 年獲得了非常深刻的屬靈經歷。那次經歷有好的地方，也有不太好的地方。Fox 發現——或者更確切地說，重新發現——聖靈引導人進入一切真理的能力。他稱這種經驗為「內在之光」，並說：只把聖經放在你外面，甚至放在你的頭腦裡，還不夠；你也需要聖靈在你裡面。這是需要重新發現、需要說出的真理。你可以把聖經看成不合時宜，但若沒有聖靈，它就是死的，不是活的。

但可悲的是，在重新發現一些好的東西後，他又更進一步說了些不太好的話：我們今天需要的可靠預言不是聖經，而是聖靈。這句話顯出後來運動最大的弱點。他在自己周圍聚集志同道合的人，稱為朋友協會；其他人給他們起了貴格會的綽號，因為他們在聚會中在神面前顫抖。從那時起，這既是他們的力量，也是他們的弱點：他們拒絕主耶穌要他們領受的聖禮，認為那是外在形式，並傾向忽視聖經，完全依賴內心的感動。

喬治．福克斯因說出這些話而入獄。在查理二世統治下，曾有 4,000 名貴格會信徒入獄。若你能想像那是多大的數字，就能理解他們的痛苦；監獄裡沒有食物，除非朋友帶來，而當所有貴格會信徒都在監獄裡，就沒有人能給他們送食物。

一位年輕貴族說：我們在英國永遠得不到應有的敬拜自由，必須去新大陸。他的名字叫威廉．佩恩（William Penn）。佩恩和家人葬在距此不遠、喬丹會堂附近一座安靜的小墓地裡。佩恩前往新世界，越過沿海殖民地的邊界，說：「我們要擁有一個宗教自由的國家。」那就是賓夕法尼亞州，威廉．佩恩的殖民地；人在那裡可以自由敬拜，追隨聖靈的內在之光。他三、四次橫渡大西洋，最後死在那裡，葬於喬丹斯。

但這是一條鮑森本人從未連繫的線索：雖然兩個人物都出現在他的演講中，William Penn 與詹姆斯二世有真正密切的個人關係（詹姆斯的父親曾是 Penn 父親的朋友）。Penn 的影響力被認為促使國王於 1687 年 4 月 4 日 發布《赦罪宣言》，給予天主教徒和非國教者敬拜自由。換句話說，Penn 倡導普遍寬容，直接幫助實現詹姆斯自己的天主教寬容政策；該政策隨後在 1688 年革命中崩潰。

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詹姆斯二世、威廉和瑪麗以及 1700 的現狀

詹姆斯二世是一位公開承認的羅馬天主教徒，不像查理二世那樣含蓄；他完全公開地說：如果它殺了我，我就要把你帶回羅馬。為了做到這一點，他使用了一位載入史冊的殘酷人物，傑弗里斯法官（Jeffreys），作為得力助手。這對英格蘭難以承受；由於民眾反抗國王，詹姆斯二世不得不逃離。

最後，我們有了那對奇怪的夫妻：威廉和瑪麗。我們通常說「威廉國王和瑪麗」；他們一起登上英國王位，一個穩定、寬容的新時代開始，為英國教會生活的其餘部分設定模式。但有一個例外：羅馬天主教徒在這個統治時期仍不被允許完全恢復權利，還要等一百年。寬容也擴展到其他人：1689 年，非國教者至少得到部分承認，迫害開始停止。

我這裡有一本書，約翰·福克斯《烈士之書》。在我曾祖父時代，這是孩子們週日必讀的書。我不知道今天是否敢把它交給自己的孩子，否則老師可能會因我把這些內容塞進他們腦中而追究我的責任。這是對基督教殉道者最可怕的描述，從新約時代一直寫到 1682 年。我擔心作者希望，在福克斯《烈士之書》之後不再需要寫更多烈士故事，而且到本世紀末獲得的寬容會持久，不再有殉道者。某種意義上，英格蘭已經不再有這種事；但在全世界，自耶穌死在十字架上以來，從未有一個時期基督徒不為信仰而死，這種事至今仍在世界某處發生。

因此，有了《寬容法案》，非國教者第一次可以建造禮拜建築；第二年，喬丹教堂就建成了。看看喬丹教堂上的日期，就能確認寬容法案是在幾個月前通過的 1689 年。幾年後，阿默舍姆舊城浸信會開始建立；到本世紀末，非國教者已擁有一千個禮拜場所。

因此，在本講座開始時，我向你介紹了 1600 年的狀況；現在讓我介紹 1700 年的情況。英國國教當時有三個至今仍可辨識的派別：高派、寬派和低派。高派渴望羅馬式的敬拜習俗；低派承襲清教徒傳統，崇拜簡樸、沒有法衣或祭壇，只有一張桌子，也不信任主教制；寬派則代表較寬鬆、理性化的建制傾向。請把這一派別的形成視為十八世紀故事的入口，而不是把後來的名稱直接投射回 1600 年。

請問：神對這一切有何看法？魔鬼對這一切有何感想？我有一種感覺，魔鬼正在偷偷嘲笑基督徒互相殘殺；我也有一種感覺，他對他們在肉身上彼此摧毀感到興奮。但當《寬容法案》出台、他們獲准彼此自由敬拜時，魔鬼不得不想出新策略。他想出最邪惡的策略：不再從肉身上摧毀基督徒，而是從思想上摧毀他們。

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通往 18 世紀的橋樑：來自歐洲大陸的「奇異」思想

透過 17 世紀，歐洲大陸以基督教的名義產生了一些非常奇怪的想法。瑞典有一位科學家，名叫 Emanuel Swedenborg，提出令人難以置信的思想並稱其為基督教，創立了 新耶路撒冷教會。你可能沒有遇過這個教會，但我在蘭開夏郡發現了更多。大陸上還有一個人，名叫 Faustus Socinus，出生於義大利；他說聖經不是上帝的話語，只是有幫助的書；耶穌不是神的兒子，只是一位我們必須效法的偉人；耶穌不是為我們的罪而死，而是為我們樹立愛的榜樣。人們正在談論這些事情，這些思想正在跨越英吉利海峽。

荷蘭還有一位名叫 Arminius 的人提出其他想法，反對加爾文的教義。從那時起，我們有了加爾文主義和阿民念主義；這兩種差異幾乎造成了教會的精神創傷。加爾文主義強調神的主權和旨意，阿民念主義強調人的自由意志。在受歐洲大陸影響的英格蘭教會中，有一群人真心認為，只要你來教堂敬拜，持有哪一種舊信仰並不重要。

直到 17 世紀末，所有對教會秩序、主教和洗禮持不同意見的人，仍大致同意基督教信仰和福音的內容。但現在，受歐洲大陸影響的英國教會出現了一個派別，認為教義可以更加自由；換句話說，思想比舊式福音更寬泛。這就是 1730 年代幾乎從精神上掏空英國教會、削弱其權力與遺產的原因。這就是我下次想講的故事。

我告訴你這個故事，不是要給你上歷史課，而是希望你意識到：如果我們生活在 1700 年，你和我今晚就不可能在這裡相聚。我們沒有這樣自由敬拜的自由；你必須遵守由議會法案確定的國定禮拜秩序，遵守由議會法案規定的嚴格教會治理，也沒有像我們每月一次的教會聚會那樣，自由聚集來決定主要事務。現在這種自由屬於我們。為此讚美主。

有些人看到新約要求在自由國家建立自由的教會，宗教是良心的問題，那些把這一點帶到新世界的人，那些把它帶到歐洲大陸的人，但最重要的是，那些留在這裡、進監獄並奮鬥到底的人，以便你我可以在這個週日晚上來到戈德希爾浸信會教堂，按照我們良心的指示敬拜上帝。感謝上帝賜予這種自由。自由的代價是 永遠的警惕。我們可能會很容易地再次失去這種自由，就像其他人失去它一樣。我們不僅需要回顧過去，更要讚美神，在未來，祂能讓我們保持在我們應該在的地方。

我也告訴你們這個故事是為了說明這一點：儘管有所有這些爭戰，儘管有所有這些困難，神的教會仍在繼續，在每一代，聖靈都使男男女女悔改，使他們成為福音的熱心傳道人，並差遣他們出去。儘管如此，教堂仍然在那裡。基督徒還在那裡。福音仍然在那裡。聖經還在那裡。因為耶穌說：「我要建造我的教會，地獄之門不能勝過它。」

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第三部：18 世紀，冷水龍頭與熱水龍頭

這三場講座的最後一場以使徒行傳開始：保羅和西拉在帖撒羅尼迦被指控「攪亂天下」；在庇哩亞，那裡的猶太人「比帖撒羅尼迦人開明」，天天查考聖經，要知道保羅所傳的是否真實；然後來到雅典，保羅站在亞略巴古，談論「未識之神」。信徒中有一位名叫丟尼修，還有一位名叫達馬利的婦人。鮑森在庇哩亞人身上看見榜樣，告訴會眾：這正是他希望他們照著所宣講的去做——回家查考聖經，若經文不存在，就不要相信。

他講述了 18 世紀開啟前幾週的故事：1699 年 11 月，《格列佛遊記》的作者喬納森．斯威夫特（Jonathan Swift） 在愛爾蘭出生，小說中的格列佛在小人國海岸失事。《格列佛遊記》不是兒童讀物，而是對 18 世紀初英國社會的野蠻攻擊。幾年後，丹尼爾．笛福（Daniel Defoe）的《魯濱遜漂流記》讓主人公在島上遭遇海難；但當他於 1715 年 回到英國時，似乎比留在島上更不快樂。這兩本書都表達了鮑森在轉向教會之前想說的話：英格蘭正在走向崩潰。在社會方面，英格蘭的處境很糟。問題是為什麼？

鮑森用一個簡單的形象總結了整個晚上：人打開了冷水龍頭，上帝也打開了熱水龍頭，整個18世紀。人打開了我們所說的理性主義的冷水龍頭，只有智力，只有理性。神開啟了我們所說的復興主義，呼召偉人傳福音，提高了英國社會的溫度。從18世紀汲取的最大教訓：一個人的信仰影響他的行為。一個人心裡想什麼，他的外在生活就會如何。 「一個人心裡怎樣想，他就是怎樣的人」，這可能是整個晚上的主題。

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冷水龍頭：科學、自然神論與「社會的立法者」

部分原因是科學的影響。哥白尼說行星圍繞太陽旋轉，而不是地球。伽利略用他的望遠鏡證實了這一點。艾薩克·牛頓仍在透過蘋果發現萬有引力定律。但最重要的是，法蘭西斯·培根和笛卡爾說：我們生活的宇宙是由不可打破的法則支配的。如果蘋果從樹上掉下來，它一定會掉下來，這就是萬有引力定律，牢不可破。這一擊，掃除了奇蹟，也掃除了聖經中發生的大量事情，因為聖經的大部分內容似乎都違背了這樣的自然法則。培根走得更遠，你會驚訝於他聽起來多麼現代，我們多麼感謝他，他說只有透過觀察才能證明的才是真實的。如果你不能透過觀察科學地證明某件事，你就不必相信它；你不能接受任何權威的東西。這是向前或向後邁出的一大步，取決於你如何看待它。但令人驚訝的是，今天的六年級學生說出了完全相同的話：除非你能證明這一點，否則我無法相信；除非你向我展示上帝，否則我無法相信上帝。他們只是在呼應法蘭西斯·培根。坦白說，這種想法殺死了宗教，因為你無法透過觀察證明的一件事是上帝、魔鬼、天使和其他一切宗教都屬於的永恆世界。

那麼神在哪裡呢？人們在 18 世紀就不再相信上帝了嗎？不。但他們從一種我們稱為 有神論（theism） 的信仰轉變為一種我們稱為 自然神論（deism） 的信仰，這是走向無神論的一步。有神論相信上帝創造了世界並控制世界。自然神論相信上帝創造了它但無法控制它。無神論相信他甚至沒有創造它，因為沒有上帝創造它。一位主教提出的最受歡迎的形象之一：世界就像一個巨大的時鐘。一旦你給它上緊發條，你就無能為力了，它只是按照自己的規律運行。於是他們說：上帝創造了世界，又給它上緊發條，現在只能袖手旁觀。神是存在的，但他卻無能為力。那確實是一位死神。你不會向一個無能為力的上帝祈禱太多，不是嗎？這是扼殺禱告，扼殺對永生上帝仍掌管一切的信仰。

這種認為上帝離我們很遠、無能為力的想法，悄悄地潛入了教堂，在不同的地方以不同的名字命名：在英國國教，他們稱之為 自由主義；在蘇格蘭教會， 溫和主義;在浸信會中， 一神論，因為一種信念是上帝不可能在聖誕節「降臨」，而耶穌一定是一位偉人。於是，淡化的信仰開始消失。每個教派都因這種想法而遭受痛苦。一些浸信會教堂因此而關閉。敬拜變得非常正式，非常死氣沉沉。你來這裡只是為了向創造這一切的神表達敬意，但你永遠不會指望他做任何事。上帝不能。他超越了他所創造的範圍。

人們發現的不僅是「自然法則」，其他作家還認為自己發現了「人性法則」和社會法則。John Locke 撰寫有關治理社會的法則；Voltaire 活在法國「路易十四時代」；Rousseau 是另一位法國人，名言是：「人生而自由，卻無往不在枷鎖之中。」接著是蘇格蘭人Adam Smith，寫了一本探討平衡進出口與勞動分工的鉅著，內容奇異地現代；我不知道今天的財政大臣是否讀過那本書。還有Mary Wollstonecraft，為女性權利而戰，幾乎可以說是為女性的天賦權利而戰；她寫書提倡女性投票、學校操場和男女同校，這在當時是革命性的。這一切都試圖發現社會規律和人性規律，但他們都在說同一件事：社會法則像自然法則一樣，不需要上帝。自然世界在沒有上帝的情況下運作，社會世界和人性也不需要祂。正是從這些思想中產生了法國大革命，Rousseau 也被稱為法國大革命之父。

教會試圖用智性武器反擊。兩位主教，Butler 主教和 Berkeley 主教，試圖從理智上講道，把反對上帝的證據與支持上帝的證據放在一起，使整件事成為理性論證。坦白說，這沒有帶來太大好處。你永遠無法只靠理智論證說服一個人進入屬靈生命；你或許能消除他們的一些問題和障礙，但永遠無法只靠理智論證建立教會。

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英國隨波逐流，而美國和法國則起義

傑佛遜將洛克的哲學直接寫進了獨立宣言。先讀洛克的書，再讀宣言，你就會明白美國從哪裡得到這些思想。在法國，1789 年 7 月，所有這些新想法在法國大革命中爆發。現在理性就是女神；在巴黎聖母院的祭壇上，他們加冕了理性女神，宣告不再有上帝，恐怖統治開始了。後來，拿破崙進入羅馬，沒收教宗領土，並把教宗作為囚犯帶到法國。這就是正在發生的混亂：在美國，是殖民地起義和《獨立宣言》；在法國，是法國大革命；在英國，隨著思想混亂，發生了什麼？答案是：很少。英國只是在下滑，而其他地方卻發生革命。再說一次，這是典型的英國方式：我們只是讓事情順其自然。

所以英國是隨波逐流而不是反抗。在宗教上，人們非常不喜歡所謂的「熱情」，現在我們稱之為情感主義。人們去教會說：教會裡沒有情感主義，沒有狂熱，只有牧師的精彩演講。但沒有興奮。沒有生氣。沒有表現出任何感覺。當然，這不是一個平衡的宗教。昏昏欲睡和冷漠蔓延到會眾中。一個世紀前，他們為宗教而戰。現在他們只是坐在長凳上打哈欠。宗教恐怕已成為上層階級的宗教。工人貧窮、無知，而且根本不受歡迎。

巴特勒主教被任命為坎特伯雷大主教，據說他的回答是：「對我來說，拯救一座垂死的教堂已經太晚了。它在我有生之年就會消失。」這就是教會的狀況。精神狀態如此的地方，道德狀態就會更差。如果您想在下午的娛樂活動 18世紀，你把你的家人聚集在一起，然後去了 泰伯恩，現在的海德公園角，靠近大理石拱門，並去野餐，觀看人們被絞死。非常有趣。孩子們。女性。男人。你可能會因偷竊價值五先令或一先令的物品而被絞死。如果你想要其他娛樂，你可以去駕駛艙觀看鬥雞。當然，離開倫敦和其他工業區最快的出路是酒館，酒水非常便宜，巷子裡掛著的牌子上寫著：「一便士就醉。兩便士就醉。免費的稻草可以躺在上面。」這導致了最令人震驚的虐待行為：酗酒、賭博、打架。如果你想研究這個冷酷、理性的宗教時期的英國社會生活，請閱讀菲爾丁的著作 湯姆瓊斯，或研究霍加斯的漫畫， 耙子的進展，或閱讀博斯韋爾的 約翰遜的一生。一位當代作家總結道：「宗教的腐朽、道德的放蕩、公共的腐敗、語言的褻瀆。」那是英格蘭，最初 30–40 年的 18世紀。難怪一個人忙著寫作 羅馬帝國的衰亡，愛德華‧吉本。我很驚訝他沒有繼續寫下去 英國社會的衰落，他很容易就能做到。

那麼是什麼阻止了英國發生革命呢？窮人為何不起來？為什麼社會沒有像美國和法國那樣發生徹底的翻天覆地的變化？答：在本世紀，上帝打開了熱水龍頭。

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熱水龍頭：威爾斯、美國和馮·辛岑多夫伯爵

上帝的方法總是這樣的：選擇一個人，並用聖靈充滿那個人，使他們能夠做到這一點。這一直是神的方法。上帝很少透過委員會或更大的人群來工作。他的方法總是興起人類來完成這項工作，只要這些人保持與基督應有的關係，他的方法就永遠是這樣。

對來自威爾斯的人來說，上帝在本世紀興起了 Howell Harris、Griffith Jones 和 Daniel Rowlands，他們改變了威爾斯歷史的進程。對來自美國的人來說，正是在本世紀，上帝興起 Theodore Frelinghuysen，並透過他影響偉大的傳道人 Jonathan Edwards，以及偉大的禱告者 David Brainerd。Brainerd 在印第安人中服事了三年後，成為改變美國歷史的傳道人。據估計，在 18 世紀僅美國就有 300,000 人被帶到主面前；考慮到當時人口，這是相當大的復興，帳篷大會也在本世紀末蓬勃發展。

但我想談的兩個國家首先是德國，然後是英國，因為它們關係密切。我想告訴你關於上帝在德國興起的一個人，名叫馮·辛岑多夫伯爵。 （這裡的讚美詩集裡有他的一些讚美詩，「耶穌，仍然引領」和「耶穌，你的寶血和正義。」）親岑多夫在薩克森州有一個巨大的莊園，名為海恩胡特（Herrnhut）。有一天，一些乞丐來到了那個莊園，他們是主耶穌基督的崇拜者，是波希米亞約翰·胡斯教會的殘餘分子。即使在胡斯之後的幾個世紀裡，他們仍然只是圍繞著主耶穌基督聚會。他們被趕出了自己的國家，來到了馮·親岑多夫那裡。他不久前才皈依，他說：進來吧，你可以擁有我的莊園，在這裡蓋房子，我會保護你，我們一起建立一個基督教社區。他們做到了，稱之為摩拉維亞社區，他們成為歐洲第一個真正的傳教士協會。之前也曾嘗試過其他傳教工作，但是那一小群摩拉維亞人在他們生命的最初幾年裡派出了不少於 25 名傳教士，將基督的福音帶到了地球的最邊遠地區。

馮·親岑多夫（Von Zinzendorf）曾經說過：「我只有一種激情。那就是耶穌。」這就是他一生的總結。難怪他是個偉大的人。

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喬治．懷特菲爾德：「沙繩」

上帝所興起的第一個人是一位年輕人，他靠替其他學生擦鞋，在牛津大學求學。他的名字是：喬治．懷特菲爾德（George Whitefield）。上帝把手放在這個年輕人身上；他勤奮、自律。但神對他說：「喬治．懷特菲爾德（George Whitefield），你是個罪人，需要救贖。」經過一場偉大的屬靈爭戰，Whitefield 認識了主耶穌基督，開始傳道。皈依一年後，他開始講道；我忘了地點，但記得他的第一篇講道以保羅寫給哥林多信徒的第二封信 為經文：「若有人在基督裡，他就是新造的人。」他在格洛斯特宣講這一點。講道時，他說了一句極大冒犯多數聽眾的話：「我不在乎你是否受過洗禮，也不在乎你是否奉三位一體的名在額頭上灑過水；你必須重生。」他又說：「我已經獲得新生，希望你也能擁有它。」講完道後，17 人重生了。這就是開始。他很快向 30,000 至 40,000 人講道，不只遊歷英格蘭，也到蘇格蘭，在愛丁堡向 15,000 人講道，然後橫渡大西洋 十三次，最後死在美國。喬治．懷特菲爾德（George Whitefield） 是英格蘭有史以來最偉大的神僕之一。

可悲的是，他的大部分工作在他死後消散，因為他從未為皈依者組織後續教會。某種意義上，唯一真正催促他建立教會的人是亨廷頓伯爵夫人。如果你見過門上寫著「亨廷頓伯爵夫人」的教堂，就會想起那位支持 喬治．懷特菲爾德（George Whitefield） 的女士。但他去世時說：「我覺得我的工作像一條沙繩，很快就會消失。」事實確實如此。今天你沒有聽過任何 懷特菲爾德派；除了亨廷頓伯爵夫人聯會和另外一兩個小團體，也沒有聽過以他名字命名的團體。但即使如此，他仍帶領成千上萬人歸向主；我不是說這些人離開了基督，而是說他們找到了進入其他教會的道路。

雖然按出生日期他不是第一位，但我毫不猶豫把他列為功績上的第一位。在一百年前所有屬靈英雄中，沒有人像 Whitefield 那樣迅速看見時代的需要……如今有路德派和衛斯理派，卻沒有 懷特菲爾德派。上個世紀偉大的福音傳道者是一個簡單、樸實的人，他活著只為一件事：傳揚基督。——J. C. Ryle，《十八世紀的基督徒領袖》（1885）

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約翰·韋斯利：「從燃燒中拔出的柴」

我必須向您介紹的另一位偉人是 約翰．衛斯理（John Wesley），我的偉大英雄之一。故事開始於林肯郡的一個小村莊，我和妻子在那裡結婚了，埃普沃斯（Epworth）。我們在衛斯理紀念教堂舉行了婚禮。在那個教區長官邸裡，發生了一些事情，一些新的東西誕生了。

約翰·衛斯理的祖父母都是獨立派，這說明了許多問題；但他的父母都是英國聖公會信徒，父親是埃普沃斯的牧師。塞繆爾．衛斯理（Samuel Wesley） 是一位非凡的人，也有幾分詩人氣質，大部分時間都在寫一首關於約伯的詩；這首詩從未真正流行，卻把詩意的禮物傳給兒子們。但母親才真正令人驚嘆：老蘇珊娜·衛斯理。她生了 19 個孩子，訓練他們一歲後不要哭，五歲時教他們讀書，到第一週結束時便能讀創世記。我不知道他們理解多少，也不知道她如何做到，沒有初階字母訓練和現代玩具可幫忙。她每週給每個孩子一小時，幫助他們在屬靈上成長。研究蘇珊娜·衛斯理的一生，就是研究衛理公會的起源，因為那正是即將到來的事。

約翰（她稱他為「傑基」）七歲時，牧師住宅失火。人們把所有孩子救了出來，除了傑基，也就是小約翰。看過這部電影的人都會記得，村民從樓上窗戶看見他的戲劇性時刻，以及他們如何踩著彼此的背把他救出來。她把他抱在懷裡說：「你是從燃燒中拔出的柴。」從那時起，她相信約翰會成為她最偉大的兒子；他確實如此。

他進入查特豪斯學校，然後進入牛津大學，加入了他的兄弟查爾斯的行列。在那裡，他們組成了所謂的神聖俱樂部，天哪，它也冒犯了其他所有人，正如這個名字所暗示的那樣。他們早上四點起床祈禱，白天像普通學生一樣學習，然後參觀監獄，並為病人經營藥房。他們拼命地試圖透過行善來拯救自己。喬治懷特菲爾德是神聖俱樂部的成員之一，他們的道路就在那裡交匯。這小群學生拼命地想透過善良進入天堂。他們仍然不知道如何成為基督徒。他們起床、進監獄、做這做那、記下這一切的方式是如此有條不紊，以至於其他學生不再稱他們為「神聖俱樂部」，而是給他們起了一個綽號：衛理宗信徒（Methodists）。這是一個濫用的術語。但這個綽號一直沿用至今。

當約翰覺得自己為神所做的還不夠時，他便獻身於事工，就像父親和兄弟在他之前所做的那樣。約翰和查爾斯由坎特伯雷大主教按立，成為英國國教牧師，但仍然不是基督徒。因為他們心裡知道這一點，便覺得自己為上帝做得還不夠，自願成為喬治亞州的傳教士，前往印第安人中間，心想：如果你去當傳教士，肯定會得救。他們出去拯救自己的靈魂。如果不是基督徒，你能走到這一步嗎？當然可以；他們做到了。他們不只是牧師，也是傳道者，但仍在拼命試圖拯救自己的靈魂。

前往美洲途中，在大西洋中部他們遭遇風暴。每個人都驚慌失措，把東西扔進海裡減輕船重，以為末日到了。但船中央有一群人安靜平和地禱告，是來自 海恩胡特（Herrnhut）、認識馮·辛岑多夫伯爵的摩拉維亞難民。約翰·衛斯理穿著牧師服走到他們面前：「你們為什麼不害怕？」他們反問：「我們為什麼要害怕？」其中一人開始追問他的靈魂：「你知道耶穌是你的救主嗎？」這位牧師回答：「我知道祂是世界的救主。」但那人又問：「你知道祂是你的救主嗎？」衛斯理說是；可是當晚他在日記中承認那是謊言，寫道：「我去喬治亞州是為了拯救自己的靈魂。」他要如何拯救印第安人的靈魂？經過三年悲慘的失敗後，他回到倫敦，不知該怎麼辦；他的兄弟也同樣失敗後回來了。

但讚美上帝，祂在倫敦為他們預備了一個人：彼得．博勒（Peter Böhler；鮑森把他的發音寫成「Peter Berler」），另一位來自馮·辛岑多夫伯爵圈子的摩拉維亞人。博勒找到他們並與他們交談。還有一個永遠難忘的主日：那天早上，約翰·衛斯理到聖保羅大教堂禮拜，打開聖經讀到：「你離神的國不遠了。」那天晚上，他到阿爾德斯蓋特街，參加摩拉維亞德國人的小型聚會（如今那裡有一家巴克萊銀行，但現場有牌匾標記）。1738 年 5 月 24 日，他參加那場聚會，眾人朗讀路德《羅馬書》序言。我想知道今天有多少人會坐在教堂裡，聽幾個小時大聲朗讀神學序言。當晚九點一刻，約翰·衛斯理說：「我感到心裡異常溫暖。我覺得我確實相信基督，祂已經將我從罪中拯救出來，甚至拯救了我的罪，救我脫離罪與死的律。」

這個人曾是一名失敗的傳教士，一名被任命為英國國教會的牧師，為他人做了很多好事，但從未知道自己的罪孽得到了寬恕。這就是當你試圖拯救自己時會發生的事情，因為你相信自己所做的而不是基督所做的。這是他從未學過的一件事。

不久之後，他前往德國拜訪馮·親岑多夫，帶回許多讚美詩並翻譯成英文。但他回來後想要傳福音。他確實傳道，但講壇對他關閉了。每次他在英國國教會的建築裡講道時，他們都會事後告訴他：這是你第一次也是最後一次來這裡。於是他終於到了根本無法講道的地步。然後喬治懷特菲爾德對他說：約翰，你願意來露天傳道嗎？約翰衛斯理認為，一個被任命的牧師不站在講壇上講道是世界上最可怕的事。但隨後他想起基督親自宣講了登山寶訓。他說：如果基督能在山上講道，我也能。他下到布里斯托爾郊外的Kingswood，到礦工那裡講道。當他講道時，他在日記中描述了淚水如何「沿著他們黑色的臉頰流下白色的小河」。約翰衛斯理意識到上帝正在呼召他與喬治懷特菲爾德一起從事同樣的事工，而喬治懷特菲爾德現在正前往美國。他繼承了懷特菲爾德的講道思路。那是 1739 年 4 月，他開始露天講道。

他有時遭到反對，有時被人揪著頭髮拖過街道，例如溫斯伯里騷亂。但在 50 年裡，他騎馬走了 25 萬英里，手裡拿著一本《聖經》，兩膝之間夾著馬。他騎馬到村莊傳道，從十誡開始，宣講每個男人和女人都將受審判的律法；他持續講幾天，直到人們開始不高興、困擾。當他察覺人們開始感到自己是罪人，便在日記中說：「我開始把上帝的愛與上帝的律法結合起來。」直到最後，他才開始傳揚神愛的福音。衛斯理發現：除非你傳講律法，否則無法傳講神的愛。向從未感受自己苦難的人傳講救主沒有意義。「救世主能給從未感到悲傷的人帶來什麼安慰？」這句話貫穿他的事工。

他的三個中心是倫敦、布里斯托、紐卡斯爾，在整個三角地帶，你都可以找到韋斯利宣講的地方。他的最後一次佈道是在薩裡郡萊瑟黑德舉行的。正如他所說，他所宣揚的原則是「世界是我的教區」，而且可能有一些事實是，他的旅行受到了不幸婚姻的幫助，使他不斷遷徙。這是他一生中真正的陰影，儘管許多人對此表示感激，因為它讓他繼續前進。他旅行啊旅行，講道啊講道，一天七次是正常的。他不僅傳教，還撰寫和出版書籍和小冊子。他開設了學校、孤兒院、藥局。他是第一個使用電治療風濕病的人，今天你可以在他位於城市路的家裡看到一台機器，他們發現它產生的電力足以殺死一個人，但他用它來治療風濕病。他是一個多變的人，但顯然，他無法獨自完成這一切。

問題是很少有神職人員與他一起工作。於是他的母親想出一個主意：未經按立、留在地方服事的平信徒傳道人，能否補足這個缺口？約翰·韋斯利最早組織了這樣的團隊；他的妻子弗朗西斯·韋斯利也是早期衛理公會的重要女性人物。韋斯利對母親的答覆是：「給我一百個這樣的人，我們就能為世界點燃火焰。」他們確實做到了。

他沒有只做 喬治．懷特菲爾德（George Whitefield）所做的事，或者更準確地說，他做了 懷特菲爾德沒有做的事：人們皈依後，他把他們組織成團契，主要是因為當地教會不接納他們。他稱這些不是「教會」，而是「社團」，也就是衛理公會，並給他們設立班級領袖，職責是在屬靈上帶領會眾。當一個地區有許多社團時，他稱那個地區為一個「巡迴區」，因為當地傳教士每月騎馬繞行，逐一到各處講道。因此，他建立的是供傳教士巡迴的制度，不是道路。這套機制至今仍在使用；對馬背上的傳教士而言，確實是很好的組織方式。

請記住，約翰衛斯理一直都是英國聖公會的牧師。他們對他有何看法？我擔心他們對他的評價很不好，尤其是當他任命美國部長時。儘管他從未離開英國國教，但很明顯，一旦他去世，衛理公會就會變成衛理公會教堂。他們做到了。他一死，分裂就來了。但我認為約翰·韋斯利應該受到指責，或者至少是那個為導致分離而採取了一切必要措施的人。我喜歡有人說的一句話：約翰衛斯理就像一個划船的人。他始終面向英國國教，但每次劃槳都讓他離英國國教會更遠。他正是這麼做的。因此，在 18 世紀末，除了英國聖公會、長老會和公理會、浸信會和公誼會之外，我們還剩下下一大群衛理公會教徒。到了世紀末，羅馬天主教徒也被允許回歸。我們開始了解我們所處的情景。

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查爾斯·西蒙和復興的五個結果

現在讓我最後看看本世紀末的另一位偉人。在 1779 年（不是鮑森所說的 1799 年），一位年輕、放蕩的學生來到劍橋，名叫查爾斯·西緬；他打獵、射擊、釣魚，是個開朗的年輕人。來到劍橋後，他面對自己的生活，經歷屬靈掙扎，並得到赦免的確據。正如他所說：「我把我的罪放在耶穌的頭上。」他很快被按立為牧師，23 歲時成為聖三一教堂牧師；一個月前我有幸在那裡講道。在小禮拜室裡，你可以看到他的茶壺、雨傘和照片。他講道時教堂人頭攢動，對學生產生巨大影響。正是從他的會眾中，亨利．馬丁（Henry Martyn）這位年輕人前往波斯，成為有史以來最偉大的傳教士之一。查爾斯·西緬必須列入本世紀英雄的偉大名單。

現在讓我最後列出一些由此產生的實際結果。我清楚知道人們會說些什麼，而且他們仍然這麼說：所有這些傳福音和唱讚美詩的意義是什麼？我們需要的是那些不斷進步並讓世界變得更美好的人。所有這些熱烈的福音和咆哮對任何人都沒有任何好處。我可以說 18 世紀證明了這一點嗎？讓我給你五個結果，非常簡單。

第一，一項世人不會欣賞、但基督徒從那時起便欣賞的成果：整個世紀爆發出歌聲。我提過 艾薩克．瓦茨（Isaac Watts），想想他著名的讚美詩：「我會讚美我的創造者」、「上帝啊，我們在過去的歲月中的幫助」、「當我審視奇妙的十字架時」、「耶穌將在太陽下統治」。還有 Philip Doddridge：「聽，歡樂的聲音，救主降臨」、「伯特利的上帝啊」；Cowper：「上帝以神秘的方式行動」、「有一個充滿血的噴泉」；Newton：「耶穌的名聽起來多麼甜美」、「述說祢榮耀的事」。最重要的是 查爾斯．衛斯理（Charles Wesley）：他寫了 6,000 首讚美詩，適合每一個能想像的場合。他會在馬背上寫作，到一所房子後說：「別跟我說話，給我筆和紙，快點。」隨之而來的就是一首讚美詩。我們要以他在屬靈生命一歲時、皈依週年紀念日寫的一首詩結束這次禮拜；當時摩拉維亞人 Peter Böhler 對 Charles Wesley 說：「如果我有一千個舌頭，我要歌頌基督。」這句話化成：「哦，一千個舌頭來歌頌我偉大的救贖主。」在他的數千首詩歌中，請記住「聽，先驅天使歌唱」、「可以嗎」、「愛神聖，人人都愛卓越」、「耶穌，我靈魂的愛人」和「喜樂，主為王」。

在大多數讚美詩書中，您會發現查爾斯．衛斯理（Charles Wesley） 創作的讚美詩比任何其他作家都多，艾薩克．瓦茨（Isaac Watts） 緊隨其後。最後一位讚美詩作家鮑森想提到的，蒙哥馬利，有一首他們會在那天的聖餐中唱作為虔誠的讚美詩之一。

第二，主日學。如果我問你是誰創辦主日學，我想知道你會怎麼說。若你知道，可能會說是格洛斯特的 羅伯特．雷克斯（Robert Raikes）。我告訴你，錯了。主日學是由漢娜．鮑爾（Hannah Ball）在海威科姆創辦的；她是一位葬在斯托金教堂墓地的衛理公會女士。幾週前我帶父親去看她的墳墓。透過與 約翰．衛斯理的通信，漢娜．鮑爾（Hannah Ball） 在海威科姆一間廢棄家具工廠創辦主日學。漢娜．鮑爾（Hannah Ball） 是否向 羅伯特．雷克斯（Robert Raikes） 建議「為什麼不這樣做？」尚無定論。非凡的是，格洛斯特有一座 羅伯特．雷克斯（Robert Raikes） 的雕像，上面寫著「主日學的創始人」；然而他可能只是把一位女士的想法推廣出去。這也提醒我們要對性別公平。

第三，社會正義。人們皈依後，就會糾正社會：貧民救濟開始，藥局開始發放免費藥品，孤兒院開始運作，學校開辦，監獄改革也出現；約翰．霍華德（John Howard）的監獄改革工作可以直接追溯到 18 世紀復興。最重要的例子是 威廉．威伯福斯（William Wilberforce） 反對奴隸制度的鬥爭。約翰．衛斯理寫的最後一封信就是給 Wilberforce，敦促他完成戰鬥。如果你去赫爾河畔金斯頓，就去 威廉．威伯福斯（William Wilberforce） 博物館吧；它也是這場復興的產物。

第四，優秀文學的大量傳播。宗教傳單協會是直接結果；英國及外國聖經協會也是如此。偉大的聖經教師 托馬斯．斯科特（Thomas Scott）的註釋書，同樣是這場復興的成果。

最後一項，我以此結束：傳教士團體。從此英國的影響力在世界各地傳播。早期曾有一些傳教嘗試，但直到 18 世紀末、19 世紀初，隨著屬靈溫度上升，傳教才真正開始發展。那是在 1792 年：讓我把日期說準，浸信會傳教會成立了。真正推動這一切的是浸信會信徒、北安普敦附近莫爾頓村的鞋匠威廉．克理（William Carey）。他用皮革邊角料製作地球儀，為世界、特別是印度禱告。克理受鼓勵在北安普敦郡的浸信會教會傳道；有一天，他在凱特林遇見一群人。1792 年 10 月 2 日，他們在比比．沃利斯遺孀的後客廳聚會，籌得著名的 13 英鎊 2 先令 6 便士，這在當時是相當多的錢，於是成立浸信會傳教會。一年後，他們啟程前往印度，開始偉大的傳教工作。三年後，1795 年，英國聖公會、公理會和長老會不甘落後，聚集成立 倫敦傳道會（LMS），後來派遣羅伯特．馬禮遜（Robert Morrison）到中國、大衛．利文斯通（David Livingstone）到非洲等著名傳教士。在 1796 年，衛理公會創立衛理公會總會；在 1799 年，英國聖公會決定擁有自己的傳教會，教會傳道會開始了。英國及外國聖經公會則始於 19 世紀初。這是 18 世紀福音派復興的直接結果。誰說熱切傳福音沒有結果？誰說世界不會因人們對主的熱情而改變？

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結束語：「主啊，再做一次」

今晚我想從整個世紀學到的一個教訓是：一個人相信什麼，會影響他的行為。冷酷的理性主義帶來道德敗壞；熱切的福音則使一切隨之而來。有人說，早期衛理公會像一簇純潔的雪花蓮，生長在骯髒的垃圾堆上。若要理解衛理公會為何強調不喝酒、不賭博，就必須了解這個傳統可追溯到 18 世紀的現實：他們必須堅持這些操練，才能使人接近主。但他們為此奮鬥，清理了英格蘭。

一位法國歷史學家說過，若要理解為什麼法國大革命、理性登基及隨之而來的無政府狀態沒有蔓延到英國，就必須研究約翰·衛斯理牧師的一生。這是了不起的致敬。上帝已經給了他答案：人的冷酷理性要求你證明一切，然後才准你相信，正在扼殺宗教；而扼殺宗教，就扼殺道德。上帝興起那些指向啟示的人；他們指向一位上帝，祂給我們的知識是科學既不能證明、也不能反駁的，並宣揚超自然奇蹟的福音，以及一位能介入、改變生活和社會的永生上帝。自然和人性都不受盲目法則管轄，而受上帝管轄；上帝能把兩者轉向祂永恆的目的。

這就是我今晚想帶給你的訊息。偉大的神僕再次被主燃起熱心，把耶穌基督的福音帶到這片土地。200 年甚至更久之後，我們仍受益於這次復興的影響。

結束禱告。我們的天父上帝啊，我們所有人的心中都有一個禱告：主啊，再做一次。祢仍是同一位神；祢的手臂並未縮短，並非今天就無法拯救。我們祈求，在社會衰落、到處都有令我們不安的事物之際，甚至當 18 世紀的不道德文學再次出現在銀幕上，主啊，求祢在這一切中再做一次。培養勇敢傳講基督的人；興起由福音傳道者組成的大軍，讓男男女女為主火熱，使這個國家再次響起福音的鈴聲，也讓我們再次看見這個國家向全世界發出永恆的影響。神啊，祢過去大大祝福了我們，但我們不能活在過去；我們必須活在現在。我們祈求，在我們這個時代、這一代，也能在基督耶穌裡發現罪得赦免，然後出去告訴別人，祢的愛能赦免他們。阿們。

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三個世紀，三場講座，一個連續的故事：每當教會被國家、德國諸侯、蘇黎世議會或英國議會佔領，結果總是戰爭、監獄或屬靈生活的冷漠。每次，都有人拒絕讓它發生：再洗禮派因相信信徒洗禮而被淹死；托馬斯．赫爾維斯（Helwys）因寫信給國王要求「異教徒、土耳其人和猶太人」的良心自由而死在紐蓋特監獄；班揚在牢房裡寫作《天路歷程》；衛斯理騎馬走了 25 萬英里，把福音帶到那些既有講壇對他關閉的地方。到 18 世紀末，這三個世紀的代價換來了聖經所說的良心自由；正如鮑森自始至終重複的，這種自由的代價是「永遠的警惕」，而且很容易失去，就像曾經失去的一樣。

如果上帝願意，本系列的五個部分將把故事帶入 19 世紀：從衛斯理和懷特菲爾德之後傳播的復興，到塑造教會進入 20 世紀的社會與神學劇變。

Note: This piece merges three separate lectures from David Pawson's History of the Church series: the 16th century (54.9 minutes, "Reformers, Romans, and Radicals"), the 17th century (47.7 minutes, England's fight for liberty of worship), and the 18th century (54.9 minutes, the Evangelical Revival). I've folded all three into one essay because they tell a single unbroken story, the cost of state-enforced religion, and the long, hard road back to liberty of conscience. I haven't guessed or embellished any of Pawson's arguments. Wherever I looked something up, checked it against the sources, or corrected a detail, I've left it as an amber margin note woven into the text. The fact-checking this time is heavier than in the first three parts, simply because this stretch of history has more names, dates, and numbers than any other in the series, and it's also the stretch most prone to pulpit legend picking up extra color with each retelling.

From Wittenberg to the Wesleys' parlor

Part 3 closed with Martin Luther standing before the Empire and the Church, declaring "here I stand, I can do no other." But a declaration is not a finished reformation. Pawson opens the next lecture with a question that sounds simple: what is the difference between a Reformation and a Revolution?

The answer lies in two other questions: how much changed, and who changed it. Across the 16th century, Luther's Reformation, as it spread, gradually became a Revolution, because more and more was changed, and more and more different people, in more and more places, took it upon themselves to change it their own way.

The three centuries in this piece tell one continuous story: the Church kept getting "captured" by the state. Kings, parliaments, city councils used worldly power to impose one religion on an entire territory, and the price was always war, prison, or a spiritual life gone cold. These three centuries also tell the story of those who refused to let the state decide their faith, and paid dearly for it.

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PHẦN MỘT: THẾ KỶ 16: REFORMERS, ROMANS, RADICALS

Pawson divides the evening into three groups, the "three R's": the Reformers, the Romans (how the Catholic Church reacted), and the Radicals (the group Pawson's own church, Gold Hill, actually descends from). He examines the Reformers in three countries: Germany, Switzerland, then England.

Germany: Martin Luther, and the man who stopped halfway

Who changed Germany? Obviously Martin Luther. How much? Pawson answers: in the first four or five years, a great deal. Luther got rid of the Pope, got rid of bishops, got rid of indulgences, got rid of purgatory, got rid of a host of other things, and reduced the sacraments from seven to two.

Then came the crisis: Luther had to go into hiding at Wartburg Castle. When he came out, he found to his horror that some friends were carrying the change much further and much faster than he'd intended. He stood in his own pulpit and asked: how dare you do this? And from that point, Luther largely stopped changing things. Very few changes came after that.

The result: Luther kept a great deal of what Rome had. He kept candles on the altar, something the Bible certainly doesn't have, but he kept it. He kept crucifixes, go into a Lutheran church and you'll often see one, which may surprise you. He kept images and pictures. And above all, he kept his own traditional practice around the Lord's Supper and baptism: he still believed, in some sense, that the bread and wine actually were the body and blood of Christ, he never quite got over that. And he kept infant baptism. When someone asked, but surely faith is needed for baptism, his reply was: who's to say the baby doesn't have faith?

Who carried the change out? Here's a rather startling answer: Luther relied on the princes. In other words, this was a state-driven change. Lutheranism, like Roman Catholicism, was an established religion. From the very beginning, Luther relied on princes, dukes, and the Elector of Saxony, particularly a man called Frederick, to reform "from the top." Whoever ruled the land, Luther regarded as also ruling the church.

The result: at a Diet in Speyer, it was decided that each territory would adopt the religion of its prince. If you lived where the prince was Catholic, you were Catholic. If the prince was Lutheran, you were Lutheran. A group objected violently to this, and it's from that "protest" that the word Protestant was born.

The result of this church-state fusion: by the start of the 17th century, the Catholic states banded together and went to war with the Protestant states, who had also banded together, the famous Thirty Years' War. That's the kind of end product this mistake produces: when the state here says everyone must be this religion, and the state there says everyone must be that religion, sooner or later you get religious war. And the pattern spread from Germany to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, all adopting Lutheranism as a state religion, binding on every citizen.

The debate over the Lord's Supper wasn't only a Western argument. Between roughly 1573 and 1581, Lutheran theologians at Tübingen sent the Greek-translated Augsburg Confession to Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople, hoping to find common ground. He replied with three careful theological letters, agreeing on some points but rejecting Luther's core positions on grace, the sacraments, and the Fathers' authority to interpret Scripture, then closed the correspondence with: "Go your own way, and do not send us further letters on doctrine, but only letters written for friendship's sake." The Reformation genuinely reached the East, and was declined, on Orthodoxy's own terms.

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Switzerland: Zwingli, who died on the battlefield, and Calvin, who stayed one night and ended up staying twenty years

Luther neither started the Reformation in Switzerland nor helped it, it began entirely on its own. There were two men: a German Swiss, and a Frenchman.

Huldreich Zwingli was an ordinary parish priest of the Catholic Church in a small village in German-speaking Switzerland. He became a Protestant by reading his Greek New Testament, exactly what happened to Martin Luther, in fact a few years before it happened to Luther. Zwingli was invited to be priest at Zurich Cathedral (the Grossmünster). He preached the new truths he'd found in this book, and swept the city of Zurich along with him.

Among the things he taught: it was wrong for the Pope to have an army, staffed with Swiss mercenary troops. (Interestingly, if you visit the Vatican today, you'll still see Swiss Guards protecting it, the very practice Zwingli spoke against.) He gave up his allegiance to the Pope and got married, two things that often seem to go together. Many other priests followed him.

He eventually persuaded the city council, and notice this, that everyone in Zurich must now be Protestant. Once again, the same sad mistake. But it was carried through. Zurich became officially Protestant, as did all the valleys leading out from it. The trouble was that people in the mountains and forests didn't follow. Soon the valley people and the mountain people were fighting each other. A war lasting two years broke out in the Zurich region, and during it, Zwingli himself, who was fighting, was killed at a small place called Kappel.

Before he died, Zwingli had a major dispute with Luther over the Lord's Supper. Luther said: that bread is the body, that wine is the blood of Christ. Zwingli said: that's just bread, just wine, symbols of his body and blood. And Pawson observes: perhaps that's why the Germans and the Swiss never came together in the Reformation.

The story moves to France. A young man called John Calvin, born in Picardy, the son of a lawyer, was put to the study of law by his father. He studied at the universities of Paris, Orléans, and Bourges, where Calvin got his logical mind. He remained a lawyer to his dying day in his speech, his clarity of thought, and his devastating arguments, it's Calvin's arguments that persuaded so many people to become "Calvinists."

Calvin came to Paris, studied the Greek New Testament, and was converted (around 1532–34). Within months he was imprisoned in Paris for his Christian views. Released, he fled as a refugee, wandering from place to place.

He found himself in the Swiss city of Basel at the age of 26, and decided to write down his Christian beliefs. That book was The Institutes of the Christian Religion, still acclaimed as one of the greatest expositions of the Protestant faith in the world, still sold and read today.

He advocated church on Sunday morning and playing bowls on Sunday afternoon, he did it himself, and we owe (or blame) Calvin for the "Continental Sunday." But something far deeper mattered more: this man believed God was on the throne. He believed in the sovereignty of God, that God's will is the final factor deciding the history of nations and of men. And it's because of that tremendous logical emphasis on divine sovereignty and the doctrine of predestination that Calvin gave his name to people who think that way: Calvinists. But Calvin believed it, and so did Luther, and so did Zwingli, and so did all the Reformers: that God is on the throne, in absolute control of everything and everyone.

Calvin was still fleeing from place to place as a refugee. One day, trying to get back into France, he found a minor war going on right on his route, so he took a detour and failed to reach his destination by evening. He settled for the night where he found himself, and that place was called Geneva. Because he'd taken that detour and meant to stay one night only, he stayed 20 years, and Geneva became the center of Presbyterianism for the whole world.

Word got around that Calvin, the young author of those books, was in Geneva, and the local parish priest, a man called William Farel, hurried to the inn and said: Calvin, I want you to stay here. He said: a year ago the council decided Geneva should be Protestant. But it hasn't worked out, they're getting as drunk as ever, gambling as much as ever, nothing has changed, the people aren't changing. We need a man like you. Stay. And Calvin agreed.

Calvin was fairly strict. He wasn't having any funny business. He would haul a man before the church and hand him to the magistrates for this, that, or the other. But he pulled the city around until it became well-behaved, though "city" here meant a population of just 13,000. With strict discipline, he cleaned the place up, so much so that three years later he had to flee for his life, to Strasbourg. But after he left, the city collapsed; things went from bad to worse. A deputation came asking him back. And back came Calvin, for 20 more years.

He carried the reformation much further this time. No crucifixes. No candles. And, dare he say it, no organs either; people should sing. He carried the changes further than Martin Luther ever did, and instituted what's now known as the Presbyterian system of church government, in which the church is governed by bodies of laymen, pastors, and elders together, with local bodies meeting in representative assemblies overseeing wider areas.

Geneva became a place Protestants fled to for refuge, altogether 6,000 more came to live there, escaping persecution. And naturally, they picked up Calvin's ideas. When it was safe to return home, they carried Calvin's faith and Calvin's way of running a church with them.

But, worth adding, Calvin made the same mistake in reverse: fusing church and state. Only this time he didn't say the state must govern the church. He said the church must govern the state. If a church member misbehaved, Calvin expected the city's magistrates to deal with him. Once again, church and state were confused. It didn't lead to war in Geneva, though it did elsewhere.

From Geneva, the influence reached France.

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France: the Huguenots, and Scotland: John Knox

The Protestants of France leaned closer to Calvin than to Luther, and became known as the Huguenots. By the end of the French king's reign during which Calvin began his work, there were already some 20,000 Huguenots in France. They grew and grew, until the terrible St. Bartholomew's Day, 24 August 1572. If you know your history, you know that on that day roughly 22,000 French Huguenots were slaughtered, 2,000 in Paris alone. Person after person was put to death across the whole of France. The Huguenots fled, to England, to the Netherlands. If you meet a family with a French-sounding surname, there's a good chance their ancestors came over with that Huguenot flight. Perhaps tonight, in this church, there are families descended from those who fled the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.

But the country most heavily influenced by Geneva was Bonny Old Scotland. I can't go into the whole history of Scotland, much to the disappointment of the Scots, but let me mention four great Scotsmen.

Patrick Hamilton was the Scot who started the Reformation there, but was burned in 1528. His work was taken up by George Wishart, who had been to Switzerland, but he too came to a sticky end. But the man who really finished the job was John Knox.

He's a colorful character: a student at Glasgow University, then chaplain of St. Andrew's Castle for the Scottish army; the French took the castle and sold Knox as a galley slave, there he was, rowing as a slave. The English rescued him; he came to England, then got into trouble with Queen Mary, fled to the Continent, to Geneva and Calvin. Knox was ripe for these ideas, and he came back to Scotland determined: I'm going to make Scotland Presbyterian. He once prayed: "Lord, give me Scotland, or I die."

In 1560, the Scottish Parliament voted for Protestantism. That same year, they held their first General Assembly. But in 1561, the beautiful and wily Mary, Queen of Scots, returned, and with her beauty and guile she won over most of the Protestant nobility. And so Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox stood face to face. It's a most dramatic story, and if you have any feel for history, you should read it. Nevertheless, after a civil war, Mary Queen of Scots was captured, abdicated in favor of her infant son James, and was ultimately beheaded for treason by Elizabeth I of England. Knox's teaching won the ground, and Scotland has been Presbyterian ever since, the Church of Scotland reflects the Church of Geneva, while the Church of England sits closer to the Lutheran churches. The Church of Scotland owes everything to John Knox.

When Knox died, leadership passed to the last great Scot I want to mention: Andrew Melville, who told King James: "Sire, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is King James, of whom I am a loyal subject; and there is the Lord Jesus Christ, King of the church, of whom James himself is a subject."

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England: a "typical English muddle," Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

Now we come back to our own nation. What happened in England all this time? Pawson says it plainly: the English Reformation was a typical English muddle. It really was a typical compromise, we muddle through and say "that'll do", we don't work by principles, we're terribly pragmatic, we ask does it work, and whatever works is deemed right. This is very English, and the Reformation is quite typical of it.

It started, of course, with Henry VIII and his wanting to marry another woman. But this has been badly misunderstood, let me give the fuller facts. Henry VIII was pressed by others into marrying Catherine of Aragon, and it was an illegal marriage, because she was his brother's widow, so he should never have married her in the first place. But under pressure from various quarters, including the Pope, who granted him special permission to marry illegally, he was pushed into the marriage for political reasons. Every child she bore died, except one, the little girl Mary, who later became the infamous "Bloody Mary." He had no son to carry on the Tudor line, and he knew that when he died, civil war would follow without a male heir. Most people in England at the time took it as a sign of God's judgment on the marriage.

Then he met Anne Boleyn, a woman he genuinely loved, who might well have made a good queen and a legal wife. (I'm not justifying Henry VIII, I'm giving you the full facts.) He applied to the Pope for an annulment of the first, illegal marriage, but by then politics had shifted, and for political reasons the Pope said no. So Henry VIII said: fine, from now on I don't obey the Pope. Step by step, Henry separated the Church of England from the Pope, as England is separated from the Continent by the English Channel.

The most ironic part of the whole story: as a young man, Henry VIII was something of an amateur theologian, he wrote a book against Martin Luther, and the Pope was so pleased he gave him the title "Defender of the Faith", a title our own queen still carries today, stamped on the coins in your pocket. He earned it for attacking Martin Luther. Did you ever know that? What a muddle the English Reformation is.

Henry married Anne Boleyn mainly because he'd put a friend of his into the Archbishopric of Canterbury, a man called Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer said: I will annul your first marriage, because I'm convinced it was illegal from the start, so I annul it, you may marry Anne Boleyn, and he secretly conducted the wedding. Henry, now head of the church and broken from Rome, was also short of money, so he seized England's wealthy monasteries and sold their lands to individuals, creating, for the first time, England's middle class, with effects on social life ever since.

But the main point is this: Henry VIII never wanted England to go Protestant. He wanted everything to carry on as before, minus the monasteries, whose loyalty to the Pope ran too strong, but with himself as Pope instead. That's basically and simply what he wanted. But he reckoned without several factors.

He reckoned without the fact that this book was being feverishly translated into English by a man called William Tyndale, hounded around England, forced to flee to the Continent, and finally burned at the stake. But Tyndale gave us the English Bible on which every other English revision has been based, and that Bible, during Henry's reign, was placed, one copy, in every church in England, and for the first time people could go and read it. Henry reckoned without that. Do you notice? Every time, it's this book that sets people free. Every time, it's the chance to read it that produces the most extraordinary things.

Henry also reckoned without men like Thomas Cromwell, the minister behind the dissolution of the monasteries, not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell of the next century, sympathetic in his heart to Protestant ideas, as Cranmer was; without the widespread resentment that the Pope still drew money out of England, "Peter's pence" and other "annates," the tributes still paid. But Henry feared the pace of change, and, sadly, executed Catholics and Reformers alike toward the end of his reign, leaving England in a ferment when he died, but leaving the throne to a boy of ten, a very serious little Christian even then, deeply influenced by Cranmer, and sympathetic to England continuing to change.

Edward VI. During this boy king's brief reign, several things happened: clergy were allowed to marry; the Lord's Supper in the Church of England took on a Protestant character, and the altar was called a table; and, more importantly, services were put into English for the first time instead of Latin, and a book was prepared called the Book of Common Prayer, a book for everybody to use, not just a priest who knows Latin up front, but a book so the common people could pray. After its second revision it became the Book of Common Prayer which, largely unchanged, is still the one used in a Church of England service today. We owe that to that boy king, or rather, to his reign.

One rule brought in under this boy king: every priest had to preach at least four times a year. Can you imagine the state of the church, needing a rule to make people preach four times a year? That's a small window into the state of the Church of England at the time. Under Cranmer, they also began drafting Articles of Religion, up to 42, later cut down to 39. During Edward VI's reign, Protestant refugees also returned to England, and to Cambridge, my old university, came a famous professor of theology from Strasbourg, by the name of Martin Busser, teaching Cambridge students the Protestant understanding of the gospel of Christ.

Then the boy king died, and the throne passed to his half-sister, daughter of a Spanish mother, Mary. Mary, half Spanish by blood and wholly Spanish in outlook, married Philip of Spain and was determined to bring England back to Rome. 1,200 married clergy were put out of a job. The pendulum swung right back, and during Mary's reign nearly 300 great Christians were put to death, earning her that dreadful nickname: Bloody Mary. She deserved it.

In Oxford, on the main street outside Balliol College, there's a memorial to two men, Latimer and Ridley, burned at the stake during Mary's reign for their Protestant faith. And you'll remember Latimer's words to Ridley: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

During Mary's reign, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, under great pressure signed a document recanting the changes he'd made. But you can't change that easily, and in his heart he knew he'd been wrong, and he too soon found himself headed for the stake. When the time came to be tied to it, he publicly declared his utter remorse over recanting his Protestant stand, and thrust the arm that had signed the paper into the flame, watching it burn to a cinder. He said: that hand, which signed such a paper, must be burned first. That was Cranmer, and 300 others. Hooper was burned at Gloucester; many others burned at the stake, the fires of Smithfield, you've heard of them. Four bishops and one archbishop, and many other leading preachers, were put to death during Mary's reign.

You can imagine the sigh of relief when Elizabeth I came to the throne. In the Pope's eyes, and many others', she was an illegitimate child; the Pope held Mary Queen of Scots to be the rightful heir, and there lies the root of the treason charge between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth. But the persecution ended, and refugees came flooding back to England.

It's in Elizabeth I's reign that the typical English muddle we call the Church of England really took shape. Elizabeth liked ornate services, liked vestments, liked ritual, so she was unhappy about letting those things go. She said Edward's second Prayer Book was too Protestant, and had it revised, pulling it back toward Rome. She even stopped the practice of clergy meeting to study the Bible together, something that had been doing a power of good in this land. Yet she couldn't turn the clock back as Mary had tried to, and the Elizabethan Settlement, as it's called, settled for a kind of halfway house. And if you want to know why the Church of England today can hold both evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, you have to go back to Elizabeth I, because leaving things in a halfway position, imposed by Parliament, threw the door wide open to exactly that kind of mixture.

The Book of Common Prayer remains largely Protestant, not entirely, but largely. And the 39 Articles finally drawn up under Elizabeth's reign are a wonderful statement of Protestant faith. Any clergyman who preaches the 39 Articles is a clergyman preaching the gospel. Sadly, not everyone does, but it's there, in the book, and there's enough Protestantism in it to build a thoroughly evangelical Church of England, but also the possibility of the other, which came later.

Elizabeth died unpopular, though her popularity rebounded when Philip II of Spain, incensed at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, vowed to invade England by force and bring it back to the Pope. He sent a fleet, the Spanish Armada, 160 ships, 30,000 marine troops, with an army massed on the other side of the Channel ready to cross the moment the invasion began. England was in desperate straits, no allies, and the massed might of Europe seemingly bearing down the Channel.

But England had Sir Francis Drake, and the stories about him you probably know better than I do, how the Armada was routed by superior English seamanship, and how it seemed as if even God fought for England that day, as the winds proved too strong for Spain's unwieldy galleons, wrecking them along the English and Scottish coasts, where wreck-hunters are still searching for them to this day.

Pawson adds a personal detail: a wrecked Spanish galleon off northern Scotland, sailors coming ashore and being called "Saint Clare", marrying local girls and founding the Sinclair clan. His own mother was a Sinclair, so, by his account, he carries Spanish blood from the Armada. (This is purely a family anecdote, not a verified historical event, but a charming detail showing that even Pawson found his own small thread woven into this much larger story.)

Summing up the Reformers: in none of the three places, Germany, Switzerland, England, was the Reformation carried through to a full conclusion, for the same reason: church and state stood too close together. Either the state ran the church, or the church ran the state, and the result was always a religion imposed on an entire region, eventually leading to war. Pawson asks: is there anything more tragic than people fighting wars over religion, in the name of Christ, in the name of Christianity, killing one another?

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The Romans: three prongs of the Counter-Reformation

So what were the Romans doing all this time? By 1580, 60 years after Luther, Protestantism had spread through much of Germany, to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, a good deal of Switzerland, a fair bit of France, to England, and by 1580, Ireland and Germany remained Catholic. The odd thing is that all this happened in 60 years, and then for the next 300 years the boundaries stayed almost exactly the same, and largely still are. Why did Protestantism spread so quickly in 60 years, then come to a halt?

The answer: when you study what the Romans were doing, you find a movement called the Counter-Reformation. There had been an attack on Rome that had robbed her of half of Europe, and Rome wasn't going to sit down under that. Three things happened that stemmed the flood.

First: Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. Loyola was a Spanish nobleman badly wounded in war, lying with a shattered leg in hospital for months. During that time he had visions and a change of heart religiously, he became a devout Catholic, believing his life's calling was to stop the spread of Protestantism. He believed doing so meant fighting in a very different way than other armies, you might almost call his followers "the Salvation Army of Rome." He went to Paris, gathered around him six noblemen and some noble ladies, and started the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits. Loyola's goal was to keep Europe for Rome and stop the Protestant flood, and frankly, he largely achieved it.

He gathered hundreds of people and subjected them to the most rigorous military-style discipline imaginable, set down in a book called the Spiritual Exercises, 25 days of fasting, seeking visions, and much else. By the end you're ready to be a follower of Ignatius Loyola. What's more, they were prepared to use fair means and foul, provided you kept someone for Rome, you could use whatever means you thought necessary, which is why the English word "Jesuitry" carries a negative sense. One of them, Francis Xavier, converted 700,000 people to Rome in India, the East Indies, and Japan.

Second: the Council of Trent. The Pope, recognizing much needed discussion, called a council, the Council of Trent, meeting 25 times between 1545 and 1563. At first the Pope considered inviting the Protestants to sit down and see if the differences could be resolved, but his cardinals persuaded him not to invite them, and they never came. Had they come, history might have been different. But they weren't invited.

Trent declared: Tradition stands alongside Scripture. The Apocrypha must be part of the Bible. Purgatory exists. Indulgences, the invocation of saints, images, and relics are a right and pious practice. And the Pope has absolute authority. This was the first time the Church of Rome had said these things this formally. And, I say frankly but lovingly: not one of those things has changed to this day. And indeed it can't, if you believe councils cannot err, how could these things now be denied? The recent Vatican Council cleaned up and adjusted much, explored much, but not a single thing I've just read out has changed at all. Even when Rome says it will accept the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, it comes with the proviso: provided the Apocrypha is included.

Third: the Inquisition was revived. Torture, imprisonment, and death were used as instruments against Protestants. They wiped out almost every Protestant in Spain, most Protestants in Italy, and elsewhere like Austria. The result is that to this day, Christians as we understand them remain a tiny minority in those lands.

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The Radicals: one sword only, against both

Now the third group, the one I can be briefest about, yet the one I consider most important. They're called the Radicals because they were the extreme left wing of the Reformation. A recent book I've read calls them "the stepchildren of the Reformation." Who were they, and what did they believe? They were the ones who began asking the most fundamental question of all: who should be doing the reforming? Who should be doing the changing? And they reached a momentous conclusion neither Roman nor Reformer had reached yet: the answer, they said, is that it should have nothing to do with the state at all. That church and state are two entirely different bodies and shouldn't stand too close together. These Radicals believed in a free church, not an established one. They weren't even happy with established Protestantism. They said: you can't make people good through government. You can't impose a religion. It must be freely and voluntarily accepted by people themselves. You can't say everyone in England will be Protestant. You can't say everyone in Spain must be Roman. You can only use one sword: the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. So they were pacifists. They refused to fight in the wars between Protestants and Catholics. They said: we will not fight for the gospel; we shall only use the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.

This was revolutionary. And they were regarded as dangerous revolutionaries, destroying the very thing that held society together, the idea that church and state belonged to each other. So where did they start? They arose in 1522 in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. They called themselves, significantly, "brethren," and the leaders were two men, Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. Fine Christians, in the very city where Zwingli was getting the city council to impose Protestantism on everybody. They said: that's not the right way to do it. The only right way is to preach the Word, and when people voluntarily accept it, form them into a church. And so they were fighting for what we now call religious liberty.

And now I must tell you something very sad: it wasn't only the Romans who attacked these people, the Reformers did too. There came a day when Martin Luther told the German princes they must use the sword against these Radicals. And there came a day when John Calvin consented to Felix Manz being drowned as an appropriate end for a Baptist, and he was drowned with Calvin's support. Even Zwingli himself, in Zurich, got the council to pass cruel laws against these people. Isn't it interesting? The Romans used the state, so did the Reformers, and both were willing to use the literal sword in the name of Christ. But the Radicals said: we will use no other sword than this one. And so the sword of the Romans and the sword of the Reformers were both turned against them.

But the story doesn't stop there, Pawson also mentions "some fanatics and extremists like the Thomas Münzer of Zwickau" among the Radicals, though he says closer study shows most of them don't deserve that reputation.

Menno Simons, if you've ever come across the Mennonites, you owe those great Christians to Menno Simons. Jacob Hutter, if ever you've come across the Hutterites, you owe those to Jacob Hutter. And to my mind, these were the ultimate reformers. It was they who said: we will change everything that is not according to the Word of God, and we will change it ourselves. We will not wait for princes or popes to change it. We will live by the Word of God and follow it, as individuals and as fellowships, to the fullest degree. And this they did.

We are here today because of those Anabaptists. We are free from an established church because their influence and ideas rose up in England in Elizabeth I's time, in a group called the Independents, who said: we want a free church. Because they couldn't find it in England, they set off for America on the Mayflower, to settle there, for all time, the principle of religious liberty, the individual's freedom to follow whatever faith they feel is right. This is our heritage. And this is what they fought and died for.

They had some fanatics and extremists like the Thomas Münzer of Zwickau. But by and large, when you study their story, a story only now being properly written, the research only now coming off the press, you find: only now have people begun to see the true place of the Anabaptists. They fought and died for religious liberty, but they only fought with this, they were accused of being revolutionaries, but so was Jesus Christ. And Jesus said: "My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, my servants would fight." And that is precisely what the Anabaptists said.

Next Sunday, God willing, I'll take the story into the 17th century, the age when religious liberty came to England, the age when people began to be allowed to follow their own convictions in this land. The age of William Penn. The age of John Bunyan. And the age of many another great servant of God.

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PHẦN HAI: THẾ KỶ 17, CUỘC CHIẾN GIÀNH TỰ DO THỜ PHƯỢNG

Pawson's next lecture opens with him reading from a Bible printed in 1607, the old English long-s spelling, a translation heavily indebted to William Tyndale's earlier work, reading Paul’s letter to the Philippians in full, because that letter was written from prison, and the 17th century would produce other great writings from prison too, most famously John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

He defines the century plainly: 1600 to 1700. And the difference between the two ends is the whole point of the lecture: in 1600, this congregation would not have been allowed to meet tonight to worship as they are. By 1700, they would. He sets out to show how liberty of worship came to this land, so that for the last 200–300 years people have been able to meet like this, worshipping as they feel they ought, with no one hindering them, dragging them to prison, or executing them for it. And it's in this century that the battle was fought, and finally won.

England, 1600, and the adventure of the King James Bible

At the century's start there were three groups of professing Christians in England. Officially there were no more Roman Catholics, banned by law; if any remained, they were secret sympathizers. Within the Church of England were two groups: Anglicans, who accepted the compromise Queen Elizabeth had worked out, and Puritans, represented by Richard Baxter, who wanted a much purer Church of England, no vestments, no crucifixes, no candles, plain worship, and above all the Word of God at the center rather than ceremony. Baxter, pastor of the parish of Kidderminster, is a good case in point: besides two or three hours of Sunday teaching, he went house to house, giving each family in his parish its own Bible study, that's the secret of his effect on Kidderminster.

Outside the Church of England was a third group: the Independents, also called Separatists, or "Brownists" (after a man named Brown), or Congregationalists, because they believed each congregation should order its own affairs under the Lord. Their slogan: "Reformation without tarrying for any." Meaning: we're not waiting for Parliament or the Church to change, we're pressing ahead and living by the Bible in our own local congregation right now. The poet John Milton is a good case in point for this Congregationalist strand at the start of the century. Many of them paid for it with their lives, Greenwood and Barrow among them.

James VI of Scotland became James I of England. From the start he secretly held to the divine right of kings to rule religion, and the divine right of bishops to rule the church, but he kept that quiet while still only King of Scotland. When he came south, the English expected him to favor the Puritan line. They were quickly shocked. He declared: "presbyteries agree as well with monarchy as God and the devil." His watchword: "no bishop, no king."

In 1604 he called a conference of leading Christians to Hampton Court Palace. There James ridiculed and insulted the Puritans without mercy. You're killjoys, he said, don't like sports on Sundays? I'll make it lawful to have sports and entertainment on Sundays, goading them like that. But there was a Puritan there, a famous Oxford professor named Reynolds, a courteous, saintly gentleman, and all the ridicule and laughter didn't disturb him one bit. He stood his ground. And when James had run out of invective, Dr. Reynolds said: your majesty, I have a suggestion, it's time we had a new English Bible. The suggestion was taken up, almost to James's own surprise, and from the Hampton Court Conference, seven years of hard work followed, producing what we call the King James Version, so named not because he started or carried it out, but because he happened to be king when it was finished and presented to him. We call it the "Authorized Version" because he authorized it. The Bible you've used all your life, used in this country for 350 years, was the result of a Puritan at Hampton Court, born in the year 1611.

That year was momentous for England, something else happened too: the first Baptist church in England was founded in 1611, the same year as the Authorized Version. Sadly, after that conference, James issued a proclamation demanding every clergyman fully conform to the bishops. 1,500 vicars refused to sign, and 300 of them were thrown into jail immediately. It was the first rift in the English church, and from it, vestments and rites and ceremonies, absent since the start of the Reformation, came back, and have stayed ever since.

The Puritan clergy fled to Ireland, where the archbishop at the time was a man called Ussher, a great one for working out dates. If you've ever seen an Authorized Version with "4004 BC" printed at the head of the book of Genesis, something God never wrote into the Bible, you're looking at what Archbishop Ussher put there, having calculated that Adam was born about 9 a.m. on 21 October that year. One English scholar remarked rather dryly that, being a careful scholar, Ussher wouldn't commit himself more precisely than that.

Others who couldn't worship according to conscience fled east, to Holland. There was a group of Independents at a small village called Scrooby, under the faithful pastor John Robinson, meeting as their own congregation. But the local squire brought magistrates to threaten them, and they decided the only way out was to find a boat and cross to Holland. It's a dramatic story: a Dutch boat arranged to meet them near Boston, split into two crossings, one boat with the men, one with the women and children, to avoid detection. The boat with the women and children ran aground in the mud. The men reached the Dutch ship, but then saw English troops appear on shore, firing on the ship, forcing it to pull away, leaving their wives and children behind on the mudflat. Fortunately, a year or two later, the women and children made it out to Holland to reunite with them.

But something was happening in Amsterdam: a group of Christians began studying the question of baptism. Until then, all the Reformers practiced infant baptism as it had been practiced for centuries. But in Amsterdam, a group under a man called Helwis began to look at this, reaching the conclusion that baptism should be for believers only. Having no one qualified to baptize them, two of them agreed: I'll baptize you if you baptize me. Then, unable to find work, they risked returning to London, and in 1611, at Spitalfields, London, the first Baptist church in England was founded.

The king is a mortal man, and not God, therefore hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them, and to set spiritual Lords over them... Men's religion to God is between God and themselves; the king shall not answer for it... Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. Thomas Helwys, "A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity" (1612)

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The Mayflower, and Charles I: eleven years without a Parliament

Another group of Independents still in the Low Countries realized staying in Europe was simply impractical, unwelcome, no jobs, going hungry. They decided to do something tremendous: come back to England, get hold of a ship, and go to the New World, trying to build in America a free world where people could worship without the state dictating how. They came back and persuaded the owner of the Mayflower to take them, and were called the Pilgrim Fathers. They left Plymouth in 1620, landing at Plymouth in the New World that December. But what a hard experience awaited them, in the first winter, 50% died, from lack of food, cold, lack of medical care. Yet they stayed, and even though they had battles with established Anglican settlements there, the Pilgrim Fathers began something that means America today is entirely free of any state-church relationship, where anybody may worship as they feel they ought.

So under James, some went to Ireland, some to Holland, but in England you had to conform. He was succeeded by Charles I, who was worse than his father. He too believed in the divine right of kings and bishops, and went much further: throwing Puritans into prison, heavy fines, the pillory, cropped ears, slit noses, all this happened under Charles I. The Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, William Laud, helped Charles I "turn the clock back": the communion table in parish churches was again called the "altar," and people were made to bow to it. Parliament objected, and Charles I simply did without Parliament for eleven years. Can you imagine a king or queen today doing that? I can imagine a Parliament doing without a king or queen for eleven years, but I can't imagine a king saying, no more Parliament.

15,000 Londoners marched on the palace and presented King Charles I with the "Root and Branch Petition", if you've ever heard the phrase "root and branch," this is where it comes from, wanting all "Romish superstition" rooted out. Charles I refused to listen, and within a short time England was at civil war, breaking out in 1642. Parliament fought the king, and it was a religious issue: by and large, the Anglicans fought with the king, the Puritans with Parliament; by and large the north and west were in the king's hands, the south and east in Parliament's, which is why, if you study free churches today, you'll find they still follow that pattern.

One of the greatest fighters for Parliament was John Hampden, there's a statue of him in Aylesbury's market square. Sadly, that leader was killed very early in the war, and Parliament began to lose. They were waiting for a leader, and that leader came in Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell blended them into the New Model Army, under the famous catchphrase: "Trust in God and keep your powder dry." He put new morale into the troops fighting for religious liberty in this land.

During this civil war, at Westminster, a group of clergymen and scholars from Oxford and Cambridge met to try to work out a pattern of church life everyone could accept, the Westminster Assembly of Divines, with a few Scots invited to attend, whose influence, as Scots often do, ran deep. They produced a statement of faith called the Westminster Confession, and to this day it remains the confession not only of the Scots but of most Presbyterians worldwide. You could probably quote one line from it: what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever. Have you heard those words? That was decided at Westminster, during the civil war. But it wasn't generally accepted, the Scots accepted it, the English never did.

Charles I was still around, but was finally brought to London to be beheaded. He was held for a few weeks, or was it days?, in the manor house at Stoke Poges. If you ever get the chance, go there, go into the manor house, and above the fireplace, painted on the plaster wall, is the royal coat of arms of Charles I. To while away the hours and keep his mind off his execution, he painted his own royal coat of arms on the plaster. They've covered it with glass now, but you can still go into the main room at Stoke Poges and see it, before Charles I was beheaded in Whitehall in 1649.

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Bunyan, "New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large," and the reign of Charles II

Among the soldiers who fought with Oliver Cromwell was a young man, hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-swearing, born at a little village called Elstow, just outside Bedford. His name was John Bunyan. (More about him shortly.)

After the civil war, the Presbyterians got control of the Church of England and tried to make everybody Presbyterian. Isn't it funny, when the Anglicans are in control, everybody must be Anglican; when the Presbyterians get it, everybody must be Presbyterian. Which caused someone to say: "New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large." In other words, we've just traded one tyranny for another.

Finally we come to the reign of Charles II, a man about whom one could hardly say things bad enough, for his lack of principle and profligacy. The Scots accepted him first, crowning him at Scone, thinking he'd fight with the Scots and the English Parliament for Presbyterianism, for a purer Puritan Church. The Scots soon regretted their folly. I can't go into the story of the Covenanters, only to say that 17,000 Scottish Covenanters, meeting in secret in the highlands to worship as they felt they ought, suffered under Charles II.

Charles II was secretly sympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church, and his ambition, through intrigue, was to bring England back to it. He made a secret treaty with Louis XIV of France to turn the clock back 200 years, to the pre-Reformation days. How did he do it? From 1661, a series of Acts of Parliament turned the clock back. 1662 was the worst, the Act of Uniformity. Not Roman yet, but Anglican, with Charles II and Parliament saying: everybody must be this. In that very year, 1662, nearly 2,000 clergymen left their livings, out into the unknown, with no home or job or anything else, because they refused to conform to the Act of Uniformity. And into the English language came a new word: "nonconformist", and at first, it was a criminal word. One of those turned out at the time was dear old Richard Baxter.

In 1665, another Act came, because these ejected clergymen kept creeping back secretly to meet their old congregations, Parliament passed an Act that no clergyman was allowed within five miles of his former church, called the Five Mile Act. Here's an interesting detail: if you go to Wendover, you'll see the Baptist Church on the right-hand side of the road, a good five minutes' walk outside the village, and you may have wondered why build a church outside a village. The answer is simple: in 1662, the Vicar of Aylesbury was turned out for refusing to conform, but kept creeping back into Aylesbury, holding meetings in kitchens and gardens. Then the Five Mile Act came out. Do you know what he did? He stood in the middle of Aylesbury and started walking out five miles, pacing it out, and five miles brought him to a field, where he started meeting. People walked five miles from Aylesbury, and they put up a place of worship, which is now the Baptist Church of Wendover, exactly five miles out.

In 1673 came the notorious Test Act, Parliament saying there must be neither Roman Catholics nor nonconformists in England, everybody must worship this way. This caused a great deal of suffering for conscience's sake.

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John Bunyan, George Fox, and William Penn: prisoners of conscience

It was during this period that John Bunyan, now older, converted, converted through overhearing some housewives gossiping in a backyard, became a preacher at Bedford. (Housewives, if you gossip in a backyard, bear in mind: you might produce another John Bunyan, if you're gossiping about the right things, because this hard-drinking, hard-swearing, hard-fighting young man overheard some housewives talking about Jesus in a backyard, and had never heard anything so sweet, and it convicted him of his sin.) He was converted, became a preacher at Bedford, was baptized as a believer, and preached the gospel wherever he could.

John Bunyan was thrown into prison under Charles II, twelve years, with only one break in between, separated from his blind wife and struggling children. But one day in jail he had a dream: he saw a man with a burden on his back, and a man who wanted to be rid of it. He began writing the dream down, and that dream is Pilgrim's Progress. I hope you've read the whole book, in the adult version, not the children's version, the adult version shows you not just what happened to Pilgrim, but what he thought and what he said. And I hope too that someday you'll read another important book by Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, describing his conversion and how he became the preacher he was. I suppose Pilgrim's Progress is the best-known Christian book next to the Bible. He never mentioned the church in it. He never mentioned the sacraments in it. And so it was accepted by Christians of every churchmanship, and to this day has one of the widest appeals of any book ever written in the Christian world.

He died in 1688, buried at Bunhill Fields, which I visited recently. By the end of his life, people called him "Bishop Bunyan", though the one thing he never wanted to be was a bishop. But as he traveled around, as people came to him for help, they said: you have as much right to be called a bishop as those who are. So we're going to call you that. Hence, Bishop Bunyan.

Bunyan's story has an almost exact chronological and thematic mirror on the opposite side of the Christian world, entirely absent from Pawson's account. Patriarch Nikon's liturgical reforms (from 1652) split the Russian Church; the Great Moscow Synod of 1666–67 ratified the reforms and anathematized the old rites, birthing the "Old Believer" schism. Its central figure, Archpriest Avvakum, was imprisoned over a decade, during which he wrote The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, by Himself (1672–75), a prison-written spiritual autobiography of conversion and suffering that Slavists routinely compare to Bunyan's Grace Abounding. Avvakum was burned alive with three companions on 14 April 1682, six years before Bunyan's natural death in 1688. Same century, same theme, state-enforced liturgical uniformity, a prison-written spiritual classic, a movement's founding martyr, at opposite ends of Christendom.

A very different kind of character also suffered during this time: a man called George Fox, who had a very deep spiritual experience in the year 1646. There was something very good about that experience, and something not so good. George Fox discovered, or rather, rediscovered, the power of the Holy Spirit to guide into all truth. He called this experience the "inner light," and he said: it's no use just having Scripture outside you, or even in your head, you need the Holy Spirit inside you too. That was something that needed rediscovering, needed saying. You can have Scripture off pat, but without the Holy Spirit it's dead, not alive.

But, sadly, having rediscovered something good, he then went one step further and said something not so good: that the sure word of prophecy we need today is not the Scriptures but the Holy Spirit alone. From that statement comes the greatest weakness of the movement that followed. He gathered around him a group of like-minded people, called the Society of Friends; others nicknamed them Quakers, because they quaked and trembled before God in their meetings. This has been both their strength and their weakness ever since, their strength, that they believe God can speak inwardly through the Holy Spirit; their weakness, that they reject the sacraments the Lord Jesus meant them to have, being outward things, and also tend to disregard Scripture, relying entirely on inner thoughts.

George Fox was imprisoned for saying that, and at one time there were 4,000 Quakers in prison under the reign of Charles II. If you can imagine what proportion that was, you can understand their suffering, especially when you consider that in prison you got no food unless friends brought it to you, and if all the Quakers were in prison, there'd be nobody left to bring them food.

A young aristocrat said: we will never get freedom in England to worship as we ought, we must go to the New World. His name was William Penn, and Penn lies buried not a mile from this spot, with his family, in the quiet little burial ground of Jordans meeting house. Penn went out to the New World, pressed beyond the frontiers of the coastal colonies, and said: we'll have a state of religious liberty, and it became Pennsylvania, William Penn's colony, where people could be free to worship, following the inner light of the Holy Spirit. He crossed the Atlantic three or four times, but finally died back here, and was buried at Jordans.

But, and here's a thread Pawson himself never connects, even though both figures appear in his own lecture, William Penn had a genuinely close personal relationship with James II (James's father had been friends with Penn's own father). Penn's influence is credited with having "induced the king to issue" the 4 April 1687 Declaration of Indulgence, granting liberty of worship to Catholics and Dissenters alike. In other words, Penn's advocacy for universal toleration directly helped enable James's own Catholic-toleration policy, which then collapsed in the Revolution of 1688.

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James II, William and Mary, and the state of play in 1700

James II, an avowed Roman Catholic, not in any subtle way like Charles II, but completely openly, said: I'll get you back to Rome if it kills me. To do this he used a man who has gone down in history as brutal, Judge Jeffreys, James II's right-hand man. It was too much for England, and as a result of a popular rising against the king, James II had to flee.

Finally we have that strange pair, William and Mary, we tend to say "King William and Mary", who came to the throne of England together, and a new era of stability and tolerance began, setting the pattern for the rest of English church life, with one exception: Roman Catholics weren't allowed back in this reign, and they'd wait another hundred years. But tolerance was extended to others: in 1689, nonconformists were at least partially recognized, and the persecutions began to cease.

I have here a book, Fox's Book of Martyrs. It was required Sunday reading for children in the time of my great-grandfather. I don't know that I'd dare give it to my own children now, or I'd have their teacher after me for filling their heads with such things. It's the most horrible account of Christian martyrs, from New Testament times through to 1682. I fear the author hoped no more stories of martyrdom would need writing after Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and that the toleration gained by the end of that century would be lasting, with no more martyrs. In a sense, there haven't been any more in England. But across the world, there has not been a period of ten years since Jesus died on the cross when Christians have not died for the faith, and it still goes on somewhere in the world.

So with the Toleration Act, for the first time nonconformists could put up buildings of worship, and in the very next year, Jordans meeting house was erected, you can date that tolerance if you look at the date on Jordans meeting house, just months after the 1689 Toleration Act. A few years later, Amersham Old Town Baptist Church began, and by the end of the century, nonconformists had a thousand places of worship.

So, at the start of this lecture I gave you the state of play in 1600; now let me give you the state of play in 1700. There are now three parties in the Church of England, still here today: High, Broad, and Low. The High party still hankers after Romish practices in worship. The Low party belongs to the few Puritans who managed to stay in somehow, with very simple, unadorned worship, no vestments, no altar, just a table, worshipping much like the Church of Scotland, and doubtful about having bishops at all. Then there's the Broad party, the one I want to leave you thinking about, because it's the start of the 18th-century story.

Let me ask: what did God think about all this? What did the devil think about all this? I have the feeling the devil was laughing up his sleeve at Christians killing each other. I have the feeling he was thrilled that they were physically destroying one another. But when the Toleration Act came, and they allowed each other to worship freely, the devil had to think up a new tactic, and he thought up a most devilish one: instead of destroying Christians physically, he would think up something that would destroy them mentally.

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The bridge to the 18th century: "queer" ideas from the Continent

Through the 17th century, some very queer ideas had been produced on the Continent, in the name of Christianity. In Sweden there was a scientist called Swedenborg, producing incredible ideas and calling them Christianity, founding the New Jerusalem Church. You may not have come across them, I found more of them in Lancashire. On the Continent was a man called Sosinius, in Italy, saying things like: the Bible is not the word of God, it's helpful, but not simply the word of God as such; and Jesus was not the Son of God, he was simply a great man of God we must imitate; and Jesus didn't die for our sins, he died to give us an example of love. These things were being said, and these ideas were crossing the English Channel.

There were other ideas from a man called Arminius in Holland, who opposed the teaching of Calvin. Ever since, we've had Calvinism and Arminianism, and they came almost to mental blows over this difference. Calvinism emphasized the sovereignty and will of God; Arminianism emphasized the free will of men. And into the Church of England, from the Continent, came a party who really felt that as long as you came to church and worshipped, it didn't much matter whether you held the old beliefs.

Until the end of the 17th century, all the people who disagreed about church order, about bishops, about baptism, agreed about Christian belief and what the gospel was. But now there came into the Church of England, from the Continent, a party who believed you could be much more latitudinarian in your doctrine, in other words, wider, broader in your thinking than the old-fashioned gospel. And this was to kill the Church of England almost dead, by the 1730s, spiritually robbing it of its power and heritage. And that's the story I want to take up next time.

I've told you this story not to give you a history lesson, but because I want you to realize: if we were living in 1700, you and I could not have met here tonight. We were not free to do so. You would have to conform to a set order of service, settled by act of Parliament; you would have to conform to a rigid church government, settled by act of Parliament; and there would be no freedom for you to meet as we do once a month in a church meeting, to decide what the Lord would have us do. Now this liberty is ours. Praise the Lord for that.

There were those who saw that the New Testament demanded a free church in a free state, that religion was a matter of conscience, those who carried this to the New World, those who carried it to the Continent, but above all, those who stayed here and went to prison and fought it out, that you and I might come to Gold Hill Baptist Church this Sunday evening and worship God as our conscience dictates. Thank God for this liberty. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We could lose that liberty again, very easily, as others have lost it. And we need not only to look back into the past, but to praise God that in the future, he can keep us where we ought to be.

I've also told you this story to say this: in spite of all these battles, in spite of all these difficulties, the church of God goes on, and in every generation the Holy Spirit converts men and women and makes them blazing preachers of the gospel, and sends them out. Even in spite of all this, the church was still there. Christians were still there. The gospel was still there. The Bible was still there. For Jesus said: "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

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PHẦN BA: THẾ KỶ 18, VÒI NƯỚC LẠNH VÀ VÒI NƯỚC NÓNG

The final lecture in this trio opens with Acts 17, Paul and Silas at Thessalonica, accused of "turning the world upside down"; at Berea, where the Jews were "more noble," examining the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul preached was true; then Athens, Paul standing in the Areopagus, preaching about "the unknown God", among the believers there was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus council itself. Pawson lingers on the Bereans to tell his own congregation: that's exactly what he hopes they'll do with what he preaches, go home, check the Scriptures, and if it's not there, don't believe it.

He tells how, just weeks before the 18th century opened, in November 1699, "Master Gulliver" was wrecked on the land of Lilliput, Gulliver's Travels was born, written by Jonathan Swift, an Irishman who tried many times to settle in England, failed, and finally died insane in Dublin. It's not a children's book, it's a savage attack on English society at the start of the 18th century. A few years later, Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on his island, and seems much happier there than when he returns to England in 1715. Both books introduce what Pawson wants to say before turning to the church: England was going to pieces. Socially, England was in a bad way. And the question is why?

Pawson sums up the whole evening in a simple image: man was turning on the cold tap, and God was turning on the hot tap, throughout the 18th century. Man turning the cold tap of what we call rationalism, the intellect alone, reason alone. God turning the hot tap of what we call revivalism, calling great men to preach the gospel, raising the temperature of English society. The biggest lesson to draw from the 18th century: a man's beliefs affect his behavior. What a man thinks in his heart, so he will be in his outward life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he", that might be the text for the whole evening.

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The cold tap: science, deism, and the "lawgivers of society"

Part of this was the influence of science. Copernicus said the planets revolve around the sun, not the earth. Galileo, with his telescope, confirmed it. Isaac Newton was still discovering the law of gravity through apples. But above all, Francis Bacon and Descartes said: the universe we live in is governed by laws that can't be broken. If an apple comes off a tree, it must fall, that's the law of gravity, unbreakable. This, with one blow, swept out miracle, and swept out a great deal of what happens in the Bible, since much of the Bible seems to run against such natural laws. Bacon went further, and you'd be amazed how modern he sounds, how much we're indebted to him, saying that only what you can prove by observation is true. If you can't prove something scientifically by observation, you needn't believe it; you mustn't accept anything on authority. That was a tremendous step forward, or backward, depending how you look at it. But it's astonishing how a sixth-former today says exactly the same thing: I can't believe it unless you can prove it; I can't believe in God unless you demonstrate him to me. They're just echoing Francis Bacon. And frankly, that idea kills religion dead, because the one thing you cannot prove by observation is the eternal world to which God, the devil, the angels, and everything else religious, belong.

So where does God fit in? Did people stop believing in God in the 18th century? No. But they switched from a belief we call theism to a belief we call deism, one step on the way to atheism. Theism is the belief that God created the world and controls it. Deism is the belief that God created it but can't control it. Atheism is the belief he didn't even create it, because there's no God to create it. One of the most popular images, propounded by a bishop: the world is like a gigantic clock. Once you've wound it up, there's nothing more you can do, it just runs according to its own laws. So they said: God made the world, wound it up, and now can only sit back. There is a God, but he can't do anything. And that's really a dead sort of God. You wouldn't pray much to a God who couldn't do anything, would you? And this was killing prayer, killing belief in a living God still in control of everything.

This kind of thinking, that God is far away and can't do much, crept right into the churches, under different names in different places: in the Church of England they called it latitudinarianism; in the Church of Scotland, moderatism; and among the Baptists, unitarianism, because one belief was that God couldn't possibly have "come down" at Christmas, and Jesus must simply have been a great man. And so watered-down faith began to disappear. Every denomination suffered from this thinking. Some Baptist churches closed because of it. Worship became very formal, very dead. You came only to pay respects to the deity who made it all, but you were never to expect him to do anything. God couldn't. He was outside what he had made.

It wasn't only "laws of nature" being discovered. Other writers thought they'd discovered "laws of human nature," laws of society. John Locke wrote about the laws governing society. Voltaire, living in "the age of Louis XIV" in France. Rousseau, another Frenchman, with his famous saying: "man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Then there was the Scotsman Adam Smith, writing a very big book on balancing imports and exports and the division of labor, strangely modern, I wonder if today's chancellors have read Adam Smith. And Mary Wollstonecraft, fighting for the rights, you might almost say divine rights, of women, writing a book advocating women voting, playgrounds at schools, co-education, revolutionary in its day. All these were trying to discover laws of society, laws of human nature. But they were all saying the same thing: the laws of society, like the laws of nature, don't need God. The natural world runs without God. The social world, human nature, runs without him too. And it was from these ideas that things like the French Revolution came, Rousseau has been called the father of the French Revolution.

The church tried to fight back with the weapons of the intellect. Two bishops, Bishop Butler and Bishop Barclay, really tried to preach intellectually, matching the evidence against God with evidence for God, making the whole thing something of an intellectual argument. Quite frankly, that never yet did much good. You can never argue a person into spiritual life. You might remove some of their questions and barriers. But you'll never build a church on intellectual argument alone.

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England drifts, while America and France revolt

Jefferson wrote Locke's philosophy straight into the Declaration of Independence. Read Locke's book first, then the Declaration, and you'll see where America got it from. In France, July 1789, all these new ideas burst into the French Revolution. Now reason was to be the goddess. And on the very altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, they enthroned a goddess of reason, declared no more God, and the reign of terror began. Later, Napoleon entered Rome, confiscated the papal territories, and brought the Pope as a prisoner to France. That was the kind of turmoil going on. In America, the revolt of the colonies and the Declaration of Independence. In France, the French Revolution. And in England, with all this turmoil of ideas, what happened? The answer: precious little. England just drifted downward, while everywhere else had a revolution. Again, quite typically English, we just let things slide.

So England drifted rather than revolted. Religiously, there was a hearty dislike of what was called "enthusiasm", nowadays we'd say emotionalism. People went to church and said: no emotionalism in church, no fanaticism, just a nice intellectual talk from the vicar. But no getting excited. No getting worked up. No showing any feeling. And of course that's not a balanced religion. Lethargy and apathy crept into the congregations. A century earlier they went to fight for religion. Now they just sat in a pew and yawned. Religion, I'm afraid, became very much the religion of the upper class. The working man was poor, ignorant, and simply not welcome.

Bishop Butler was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and is said to have replied: "it's too late for me to save a dying church. It will have disappeared in my lifetime." That was the state of the church. And where the spiritual state is like that, the moral state will be worse. If you wanted an afternoon's entertainment in the 18th century, you got your family together and went up to Tyburn, now Hyde Park Corner, near Marble Arch, and took a picnic, to watch people being hanged. It was great fun. Children. Women. Men. You could be hanged for stealing five shillings' worth of goods, or a single shilling. If you wanted other amusement, you went to a cockpit and watched cock-fighting. And of course the quickest way out of London and the other industrial areas was the public house, drink was so cheap the signs hanging in the lanes simply read: "Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for tuppence. Free straw to lie on." This led to the most appalling abuses, heavy drinking, heavy gambling, heavy fighting. If you want to study English social life in this cold, intellectual religious period, read Fielding's Tom Jones, or study Hogarth's cartoons, The Rake's Progress, or read Boswell's Life of Johnson. One contemporary writer summed it all up: "Decay in religion, licentiousness in morals, public corruption, and profaneness of language." That was England, in the first 30–40 years of the 18th century. No wonder a man was busy writing Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon. I'm surprised he didn't go on to write Decline and Fall of English Society, he easily could have.

So what stopped England from having a revolution? Why didn't the poor rise up? Why wasn't there a complete turning-upside-down of society, as in America, as in France? The answer: during this century, God turned on the hot tap.

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The hot tap: Wales, America, and Count von Zinzendorf

God's method is always this: to choose a personality, and fill that personality with his Holy Spirit, enabling them to do it. This has always been God's method. It's very rarely that God has worked through committees or larger groups of people. His method is always to raise up men to do the job, and it always will be, as long as those men remain in the relationship to Christ they should be.

For those of you from Wales, he raised up Howell Harris, Griffith Jones, and Daniel Rowlands, who changed the course of Welsh history. For those from America, it was in this century that he raised up Theodore Frelinghuysen, and through him influenced the great preacher Jonathan Edwards, and that great man of prayer David Brainerd, who went as a missionary to the Indians and died after only three years, but changed American history. It's estimated that in the 18th century, in America alone, 300,000 people were led to the Lord, considering the population then, that's quite a revival, with camp meetings flourishing at the end of the century.

But the two countries I want to talk about are first Germany, then England, because they're closely related. I want to tell you about a man God raised up in Germany, called Count von Zinzendorf. (You have some of his hymns in the hymn book here, "Jesus, Still Lead On" and "Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness.") Zinzendorf had a huge estate in Saxony called Herrnhut. And to that estate one day came some beggars, worshippers of the Lord Jesus Christ, remnants of the church of John Huss in Bohemia. Even centuries after Huss, they still met simply around the Lord Jesus Christ. They'd been turned out of their own country, and they came to von Zinzendorf. He'd been converted not long before, and he said: come in, you can have my estate, build houses here, I'll protect you, and together we'll build a Christian community. And they did, calling it the Moravian Community, and they became the first real missionary society in Europe. There had been other attempts at missionary work before, but that little group of Moravians sent out no fewer than 25 missionaries in the first few years of their life, taking the gospel of Christ to the utmost parts of the earth.

Von Zinzendorf once said: "I have only one passion. It is Jesus." And that sums up his life. No wonder he was the great man he was.

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George Whitefield: "rope of sand"

The first man God laid his hand on was a young man working his way through Oxford by cleaning the shoes of the other students. His name: George Whitefield. God laid his hand on that young man, going places, hard-working, disciplined. But God said: George Whitefield, you're a sinner and you need salvation. Through a great spiritual struggle, George Whitefield came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. He began to preach. A year after his conversion he was preaching, I forget where, but I remember his first text: Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." He preached it at Gloucester. And when he preached that sermon, he said something that mortally offended most of his hearers: "I do not care if you've been baptized. I do not care if you've had water on your forehead in the name of the Trinity." He said: "You must be born again." He said: "I've got the new birth. And I want you to have it." When he finished preaching, 17 people were born again. That was the beginning. He was soon preaching to 30,000 and 40,000 at once. He not only traveled England, he went to Scotland, preaching to 40,000 in Edinburgh, then crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, dying in America at the end. But he preached everywhere he could go. George Whitefield was one of the greatest servants of God England has seen.

The tragedy is that most of his work disappeared after his death, because he never organized follow-up for his converts. The only person who really urged him to start churches, in a sense, was the Countess of Huntingdon. If you've ever seen a church with "The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion" over the door, you're looking back to the days of that lady, who supported George Whitefield. But when he died, he said: "I feel my work has been a rope of sand, and will disappear very quickly." And in fact it has. You don't hear of any Whitefieldites today. You don't hear of any groups bearing his name today, except that Countess of Huntingdon connexion, and one or two other small groups. But nevertheless, he led thousands to the Lord. I don't mean they fell away, I mean they found their way into other churches.

Though not the first in order if we look at the date of his birth, I place him first in the order of merit, without any hesitation. Of all the spiritual heroes of a hundred years ago, none saw so soon as Whitefield what the times demanded... There are Lutherans and Wesleyans in the present day, but there are no Whitefieldites. The great evangelist of last century was a simple, guileless man, who lived for one thing only, and that was to preach Christ., J. C. Ryle, "Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century" (1885)

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John Wesley: "a brand plucked from the burning"

The other great man I must tell you about, and here I'll take more time, because he deserves it, is John Wesley, one of my great heroes. The story begins in a little village in Lincolnshire, where my wife and I were married, Epworth. We were married in the Wesley Memorial Church. And in that rectory, something happened, something new was born.

John Wesley's grandparents had been Independents, which explains a great deal. But his parents were both Anglican by conviction, serving as vicar and vicar's wife of that little town of Epworth. Samuel Wesley, the father, was quite an amazing man, a bit of a poet, spending most of his years writing a poem on Job that was never really popular, but he passed on to his sons a poetic gift. But the mother was the truly amazing one: old Susanna Wesley. She had 19 children, trained them not to cry after they were a year old, and when they turned five, taught them to read, by the end of their first week, they could read the book of Genesis. How much they understood, I don't know, and how she did it, I don't know, no initial training alphabet, none of your modern toys to help. She gave one hour a week to each child, to help them grow spiritually. And when you study the life of Susanna Wesley, you've studied the beginning of Methodism, for that's what was to come.

When John, or "Jackie" as she called him, was seven years old, the rectory caught fire. They got all the children out, bar one, Jackie, little John. Those who've seen the film will remember the dramatic moment when they saw him at the upstairs window, and how the villagers climbed on each other's backs to rescue him. She clutched him to her bosom and said: you're a brand plucked from the burning. And from then she believed John would be her greatest son. And so he was.

He went to Charterhouse School, then Oxford, joining his brother Charles. There they formed what they called the Holy Club, and my, it offended everybody else too, as such a name might suggest. They got up at four in the morning to pray, did their studies as ordinary students during the day, then visited the jail, and ran a dispensary for the sick. And they were trying desperately to save themselves by being good. One member of the Holy Club was George Whitefield, that's where their paths crossed. This little group of students were desperately trying to get to heaven by being good. They still hadn't learned how you become a Christian. They were so methodical in the way they got up, and went to the jail, and did this and that, keeping accounts of it all, that other students stopped calling them the Holy Club and gave them a nickname: Methodists. It was a term of abuse. But the nickname stuck, and has stuck to this very day.

The time came when John felt he still wasn't doing enough for God, so he offered for the ministry, as his father had before him, as his brother had before him. John and Charles were ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury, priests of the Church of England, and still not Christians. And because they knew this in their hearts, they felt they weren't doing enough for God, so they volunteered as missionaries to Georgia, to the Red Indians, thinking: surely if you go as a missionary, you get saved. And they went out to save their own souls. Could you get that far without being a Christian? Of course you can. And they did. They were not only priests, they were missionaries. And they hadn't saved their own souls, desperately trying to.

On the way out, in the middle of the Atlantic, they struck a storm. Everyone panicked, threw things overboard to lighten the ship, thought the end had come. But in the middle of the ship were a group of people, quiet, calm, praying. Moravian refugees, from Hanhut, who knew Count von Zinzendorf. John Wesley went up to them afterward, in his clergyman's garb: why weren't you afraid? They said: why should we be? And one of them began asking about his soul: do you know that Jesus is your savior? This clergyman, John Wesley, replied: I know he is the savior of the world. But do you know that he is your savior? Wesley said yes. But in his diary that night he admitted it was a lie, writing: I go to Georgia to save my own soul. How can I save the souls of the Indians? He came back to London after three miserable years of failure, wondering what to do. His brother came back too, an equal failure.

But praise God, God had someone waiting for them in London: a man called Peter Böhler (Pawson pronounces it "Peter Berler"), another Moravian, from Count Zinzendorf. Peter Böhler got hold of them, talked to them. And there was one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday: John Wesley went to St Paul's Cathedral to worship that morning. Reading his Bible that morning, he opened it and read: "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." And that night he went to a little meeting of the Moravian Germans on Aldersgate Street. (There's a Barclays Bank there now, but they've put a plaque marking where it happened.) In Aldersgate Street, on 24 May 1738, he went to the meeting, and they read aloud Luther's preface to Romans. (I wonder how many people today would sit through a theological preface being read aloud for hours in church.) But when the clock struck a quarter to nine that night, John Wesley says this: "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, that he had saved me from my sins, even mine, saved me from the law of sin and death." And an assurance was given him in that moment that he really was a forgiven sinner.

Here was a man who'd been a failed missionary, an ordained priest of the Church of England, who'd done so much good for other people, and yet had never known his own sins forgiven. That's what happens when you try to save yourself, because you're putting your trust in what you do instead of what Christ does. And this was the one thing he'd never learned.

Soon after, he went to Germany to visit von Zinzendorf, coming back with many hymns which he translated into English. But he came back wanting to preach the gospel. Preach he did, but the pulpits closed to him. Every time he preached in a Church of England building, they told him afterward: that's your first and last visit here. And so he finally reached a point where he couldn't preach at all. Then George Whitefield said to him: John, will you come and preach in the open air? John Wesley thought it the most dreadful thing in the world, an ordained clergyman not preaching from a pulpit. But then he remembered that Christ himself preached the Sermon on the Mount. And he said: if Christ could preach on a mountain, so can I. He went down to Kingswood, outside Bristol, to the miners, and preached. As he preached, he describes in his journal how the tears made "little white rivers down their black cheeks." John Wesley realized God was calling him to the same ministry as George Whitefield, who was now leaving for America. He took up the threads of Whitefield's preaching. That was April 1739, when he began open-air preaching.

He met opposition, dragged by the hair through the streets at times, as in the Wednesbury riots. But in 50 years he traveled a quarter of a million miles on horseback, with a Bible in his hand and a horse between his knees. He'd ride into a village and preach, and this is how he preached: he'd begin with the Ten Commandments, preaching the law, the law by which every man and woman will be judged, and he'd go on preaching the law for days, until people began to look unhappy, began to look troubled. Then, when he realized they were beginning to feel themselves sinners, he says in his diary: "I began to mix a bit of the love of God with the law of God." And a bit more. And a bit more. Until finally I was preaching the gospel of the love of God. Wesley discovered: you cannot preach the love of God until you preach the law. There's no point preaching a Savior to those who never felt their own misery. "What comfort can a Savior bring to those who never felt their woe?", that was written all over his ministry.

His three centers were London, Bristol, Newcastle, and all across that triangle you'll find places Wesley preached. His last sermon was preached at Leatherhead, Surrey. He preached on the principle, as he said, that "the world is my parish", and there may be some truth that he was helped in his travels by an unhappy marriage, keeping him on the move. That was the one real shadow over his life, though many are grateful for it, since it kept him traveling. He traveled and traveled, preached and preached, seven times a day was normal. He didn't only preach, he wrote and published books and pamphlets. He opened schools and orphanages, dispensaries. He was the first to use electric treatment for rheumatism, with a machine you can still see at his house on City Road today, and they've discovered it produces enough electricity to kill a man, but he used it for rheumatism. He was the most varied man, but obviously, he couldn't do it all himself.

The trouble was he had few clergy to work with him. So his mother came up with an idea: what about unordained preachers? Local lay preachers, who wouldn't travel everywhere as he did, but preach locally? One of the very first team of six was John Pawson, and his wife, Frances Pawson, was one of the leading Methodist women of that day. (I suppose our tribal association goes back to that.) With a team like that, John Wesley's reply to his mother was: give me a hundred such men, we're setting them on fire. And they did. When he died, there were 80,000 people meeting in fellowship as a result of his travels.

He didn't do what George Whitefield did, or rather, he did what Whitefield didn't do: when they were converted, he built them into fellowships, largely because the local churches wouldn't have them. He called these not "churches" but "societies," Methodist societies, giving them class leaders whose job it was to lead them spiritually. Then he had, we could say, so many societies in a district, and he called that district a "circuit", because a local preacher could go around it on horseback once a month and preach in every place. So he built horse circuits the local preachers traveled around. This kind of machinery is still used today, though I think it's ill-adapted to the 20th century, but for horseback, it was a very good idea, ideal organization for the setting he was in.

Bear in mind, all this time, John Wesley was a Church of England clergyman. What did they think about him? I'm afraid they thought very badly of him, especially when he ordained ministers for America. And though he never left the Church of England, it was quite obvious that as soon as he died, the Methodist societies would become Methodist churches. And this they did. The split came as soon as he died. But I think John Wesley was to blame, or at least was the man who did all that needed to be done to bring about the separation. I like the remark of someone who said: John Wesley was like a man rowing a boat. He kept his face towards the Church of England, but every pull of his oars took him further from it. That's precisely what he did. And so we're left at the end of the 18th century with a very large group of Methodists, in addition to the Anglicans, in addition to the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, the Baptists and the Friends. And by century's end, Roman Catholics were allowed back in too. We're beginning to get the kind of picture we live in.

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Charles Simeon, and five results of the Revival

Now let me finally look at one other great man of this century, right at the end of it. In 1799 (as Pawson tells it), there came a young, dissolute student to Cambridge, by the name Charles Simeon, hunting, shooting, fishing, a gay young man. When he came to Cambridge, he came face to face with his own life, went through a spiritual struggle, and out of it came to a sense of forgiveness. As he put it: "I laid my sins on the head of Jesus." He was shortly ordained to the ministry, and at the early age of 23, went as vicar to Holy Trinity Church, where it was my privilege to preach a month ago. In the vestry, you can see his teapot, his umbrella, pictures of him, Charles Simeon. He preached, and the church was thronged, with a tremendous influence on the students. It was from his congregation that that young man, Henry Martyn, went out to die in Persia as one of the greatest missionaries there's ever been. Charles Simeon must be put in the great list of heroes of this century.

Now let me finally list some of the practical things that came out of this. I know exactly the kind of thing people say, and they still say it: what's the point of all this gospel preaching and hymn singing? What we need is people who get on and make the world a better place. All this hot gospeling and ranting doesn't do anybody any good. May I say the 18th century gives the lie to that, let me give you five results, very simply.

The first, one the world won't appreciate, but which Christians have appreciated ever since: the century burst into song. I've mentioned Isaac Watts, think of his famous hymns: "I'll Praise My Maker," "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun." What about Philip Doddridge? "Hark the Glad Sound, the Saviour Comes," "O God of Bethel." What about Cowper? "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." What about Newton? "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds," "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken." And above all, Charles Wesley. Charles Wesley wrote 6,000 hymns, for every conceivable occasion. He'd write them on horseback, arrive at a house and say: don't speak to me, give me a pen and paper, quick. And out would come a hymn. We'll finish this service with one he wrote when he was one year old spiritually, on the anniversary of his conversion, when Peter Böhler, the Moravian German, said to Charles Wesley: if I had a thousand tongues, I'd want to sing the praise of Christ. And down it came: "Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing My Great Redeemer's Praise." Among his thousands of others, remember "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," "And Can It Be," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and "Rejoice, the Lord Is King."

In most hymn books, you'll find more hymns by Charles Wesley than any other writer, with Isaac Watts a close second. And the last hymn writer Pawson wants to mention, Montgomery, has one they'd sing at communion that day as one of the devotional hymns.

Second, Sunday schools. If I asked you who started Sunday schools, I wonder what you'd say. If you know anything, you'd probably say Robert Raikes in Gloucester. And I tell you, you're wrong. Sunday schools were started by Hannah Ball in High Wycombe, a Methodist lady who lies buried in Stokin Church graveyard. I took my father to see her grave a few weeks ago. Hannah Ball started Sunday schools in a disused furniture factory in High Wycombe, as the result of correspondence with John Wesley. And it was Hannah Ball who suggested to Robert Raikes: why don't you do the same? And the extraordinary thing is there's a statue of Robert Raikes in Gloucester that says "founder of Sunday schools." Well, he copied the idea from a woman. That's one for the fairer sex.

Third, social righteousness. When people get converted, they put society right. Poor relief began. Dispensaries distributing free medicine began. Orphanages began. Schools began. Prison reform, John Howard's work in prison reform goes directly back to the 18th-century revival. And above all, the outstanding example: William Wilberforce and his fight against slavery. The last letter John Wesley ever wrote was to William Wilberforce, urging him to complete the fight. If you ever go to Kingston-upon-Hull, go to the William Wilberforce Museum, that too came out of the revival.

Fourth, the tremendous spread of good literature. The Religious Tract Society was a direct result. So was the British and Foreign Bible Society. So were the commentaries of the great Bible teacher Thomas Scott.

And the final one, with which I close: missionary societies began, and the influence of Britain on the world for good spread. There had been some earlier attempts at missionary work, but it was at the end of the 18th century, as a result of that rising temperature, that it really got going. It was in 1792, let me get the date right, that the Baptist Missionary Society was formed. It was a Baptist who really set it going, a cobbler from Northampton, constructing a globe of the world out of offcuts of leather, praying for that world, particularly for India. That Northampton cobbler, converted, encouraged to preach in the Baptist churches of Northamptonshire, met with a group of others one day in Kettering in 1792, took a collection, the famous 13 pounds, two shillings and sixpence, quite a lot in those days, and started the Baptist Missionary Society. A year later they were on their way to India, beginning the great missionary work that followed. That was 1792. Three years later, 1795, the Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, not to be outdone, got together and started the London Missionary Society (LMS), which sent out Morrison to China, Livingstone to Africa, and many other famous missionaries. In 1796, not to be left behind, the Methodists founded the General Methodist Missionary Society. In 1799, the Anglicans decided to have one of their own, and the Church Missionary Society was started. And it was just in this period that the British and Foreign Bible Society began, all at the end of the century. This was the direct result of the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century. Who says that hot gospeling has no results? Who says the world isn't changed because people get excited about the Lord?

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Closing: "do it again, Lord"

The one lesson I want to draw out of the whole century, for tonight, is this: what a man believes will affect his behavior. Cold intellectualism, bad morals; hot gospel, and all this follows. Somebody has said that the early Methodists were like a cluster of chaste snowdrops growing on a foul rubbish heap. If you want to understand the Methodist emphasis on not drinking or gambling, you must understand the tradition goes back to the reality of the 18th century, they had to insist on it to get a man anywhere near the Lord. But they fought for it, and they cleaned England up.

A historian in France has said that if you want to understand why the French Revolution, and the enthronement of reason, and the anarchy that followed, did not spread to England, you must study the life of the Reverend John Wesley. That's an amazing tribute. God had his answer. Where man's cold reason, saying you've got to prove everything before you believe it, was killing religion dead, and when you kill religion, you kill morals, God raised up men who pointed to revelation, who pointed to a God giving us knowledge that science can neither prove nor disprove, and preached a gospel of supernatural miracle and a living God who could step in and change a life, and change a society. That neither nature nor human nature was governed by blind laws, but that both were governed by God, and that God could turn both to his eternal purposes.

That's the message I wanted to bring you tonight. Great men of God were warmed up again, and brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to this land. And we still benefit from the effects of that revival, 200 years and more later.

Closing prayer. O God our Father, there is one prayer in all our hearts. Do it again, Lord. You are still the same God. Your arm is not shortened that you are not able to save today. We pray that in the decline of our society, with things on every hand that disturb us, with the revival even of that immoral literature of the 18th century again on the screen, with all this, Lord, do it again. Raise up men who will be fearless to preach Christ. Raise up such an army of evangelists, and men and women on fire for the Lord, that this country again may resound to the ring of the gospel, and we may see again an influence go out from this nation for good, in the whole of the rest of the world. O God, you have blessed us greatly in the past, but we cannot live in the past. We must live now, and we pray that in our day and generation we too may discover the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, and then go out to tell others of the love that can forgive them. Amen.

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Three centuries, three lectures, one continuous story: every time the Church was captured by the state, by German princes, by the Zurich council, by the English Parliament, the result was always war, prison, or a spiritual life gone cold. And every time, there were those who refused to let it happen: Anabaptists drowned for believing in voluntary baptism; Helwys dying in Newgate prison for writing the king to demand liberty of conscience for "heretics, Turks, and Jews"; Bunyan writing Pilgrim's Progress in a cell; Wesley riding a quarter of a million miles to carry the gospel to places the established pulpits had shut against him. By the close of the 18th century, the price of those three centuries had purchased what Scripture calls liberty of conscience, a freedom whose price, as Pawson repeats throughout, "is eternal vigilance," and one that can be lost as easily as it was once lost.

Part 5 of this series, God willing, will carry the story into the 19th century: from the revival that spread after Wesley and Whitefield, through the social and theological upheavals that would shape the Church heading into the 20th century.