Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
History
Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)
Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
Church history
§ 165.3. =Foreign Missions.=--In the accommodation controversy
(§ 156, 12), the Dominicans prevailed in A.D. 1742; but the
abolishing of native customs led to a sore persecution in
China, from which only a few remnants of the church were
saved. The Italian Jesuit Beschi, with linguistic talents of
the highest order, sought in India to make use of the native
literature for mission purposes and to place alongside of it
a Christian literature. Here the Capuchins opposed the Jesuits
as successfully as the Dominicans had in China. These strifes
and persecutions destroyed the missions.--The Jesuit state of
Paraguay (§ 156, 10) was put an end to in A.D. 1750 by a compact
between Portugal and Spain. The revolt of the Indians that
followed, inspired and directed by the Jesuits, which kept the
combined powers at bay for a whole year, was at last quelled,
and the Jesuits expelled the country in A.D. 1758.--Continuation
§ 186, 7.
§ 165.4. =The Counter-Reformation= (§ 153, 2).--Charles XII. of
Sweden, in A.D. 1707, forced the Emperor Joseph I. to give the
Protestants of =Silesia= the benefits of the Westphalian Peace
and to restore their churches. But in =Poland= in A.D. 1717,
the Protestants lost the right of building new churches, and in
A.D. 1733 were declared disqualified for civil offices and places
in the diet. In the Protestant city of Thorn the insolence of
the Jesuits roused a rebellion which led to a fearful massacre
in A.D. 1724. The Dissenters sought and obtained protection
in Russia from A.D. 1767, and the partition of Poland between
Russia, Austria, and Prussia in A.D. 1772 secured for them
religious toleration. In =Salzburg= the archbishop, Count Firmian,
attempted in A.D. 1729 a conversion of the evangelicals by force,
who had, with intervals of persecution in the seventeenth century,
been tolerated for forty years as quiet and inoffensive citizens.
But in A.D. 1731 their elders swore on the host and consecrated
salt (2 Chron. xiii. 5) to be true to their faith. This “covenant
of salt” was interpreted as rebellion, and in spite of the
intervention of the Protestant princes, all the evangelicals,
in the severe winter of A.D. 1731, 1732, were driven, with
inhuman cruelty, from hearth and home. About 20,000 of them
found shelter in Prussian Lithuania; others emigrated to America.
The pope praised highly “the noble” archbishop, who otherwise
distinguished himself only as a huntsman and a drinker, and by
maintaining a mistress in princely splendour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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