After the world had groaned for many ages under the insupportable bondage of Popish superstition and cruelty, it pleased God, in his own good Providence, to take the remedy of these evils into his own hands; and after several ineffectual attempts by men, at last to bring about a reformation of religion by his own wisdom and power. The history of this great event hath been very particularly and faithfully given by many excellent writers, to which I must here refer my readers; and it must be owned, that the persons employed by Almighty God, to accomplish this great work, were, many of them, remarkable for their great learning and exemplary piety. I am sure I have no inclination to detract from their worth and merit. One would indeed have imagined, that the cruelties exercised by the papists upon all who opposed their superstitions in worship, and their corruptions in doctrine, should have given the first reformers an utter abhorrence of all methods of persecution for conscience-sake, and have kept them from ever entering into any such measures themselves. But it must be confessed, that however they differed from the church of Rome, as to doctrines and discipline, yet, that they too generally agreed with her, in the methods to support what they themselves apprehended to be truth and orthodoxy; and were angry with the papists, not for persecuting, but for persecuting themselves and their followers; being really of opinion that heretics might be persecuted, and, in some cases, persecuted to death. And that this was their avowed principle, they gave abundant demonstration by their practice. [Illustration] SECT. I. _Luther’s opinion concerning Persecution._