Monday 16 January 2012

Government Laws Discriminated Against Evangelicals

The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was the occasion that led to the great ejection of many of England's greatest preachers and pastors from their charges.  This Act demanded that every minister within the Church of that time accept completely the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in every jot and title. While ministers had no real objection to the contents of the Book of Common Prayer, they did object to the imposition of this Book of Prayer for use in the churches. 

Whether the ministers, more than 2,00 of them, were ejected by the church authorities, or, as Prof. A. M. Renwick states, "heroically resigned their livings," is a matter to be researched.  But the fact remains, that 2,000 and more ministers of the Gospel found themselves outside the national church because of sheer pig-headedness of the church authorities.  Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist minsters were nolnger welcome in the English church.

In addition, the Corporation Act (1661), the Five Mile Act (1665), and the Test Act (1673), placed every Englishman who was not also an Anglican churchman, including the servants of the Gospel, under serious disability.  This ecclesiastical discrimination paved the way for even greater errors to enter the church, and ushered in the great apostasy that has bedevilled that church ever since.

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