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
§ 162.7. =Foreign Missions.=--From two sides the Reformed
church had outlets for its Christian love in the work of foreign
missions; on the one side by the cession of the Portuguese
East Indian colonies to the Netherlands in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and on the other side by the continuous
formation of English colonies in North America throughout
the whole century. In regard to missionary effort, the
Dutch government followed in the footsteps of her Portuguese
predecessors. She insisted that all natives, before getting
a situation, should be baptized and have signed the Belgic
Confession, and many who fulfilled these conditions remained as
they had been before. But the English Puritans settled in America
showed a zeal for the conversion of the Indians more worthy
of the Protestant name. John Eliot, who is rightly styled the
apostle of the Indians, devoted himself with unwearied and
self-denying love for half a century to this task. He translated
the Bible into their language, and founded seventeen Indian
stations, of which during his lifetime ten were destroyed in
a bloody war. Eliot’s work was taken up by the Mayhew family,
who for five generations wrought among the Indians. The last
of the noble band, Zacharias Mayhew, died on the mission field
in A.D. 1803, in his 87th year.[479]--Continuation, § 172, 5.
V. Anti- and Extra-Ecclesiastical Parties.
§ 163. SECTS AND FANATICS.
Socinianism during the first decades of the century made extraordinary
progress in Poland, but then collapsed under the persecution of
the Jesuits. Related to the continental Anabaptists were the English
Baptists, who rejected infant baptism; while the Quakers, who adopted
the old fanatical theory of an inner light, set baptism and the Lord’s
supper entirely aside. In the sect of the Labadists we find a blending
of Catholic quietist mysticism and Calvinistic Augustinianism. Besides
those regular sects, there were various individual enthusiasts and
separatists. These were most rife in the Netherlands, where the free
civil constitution afforded a place of refuge for all exiles on account
of their faith. Here only was the press free enough to serve as a
thoroughgoing propaganda of mysticism and theosophy. Finally the Russian
sects, hitherto little studied, call for special attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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