N13864:814
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of divinity, in a method entirely new. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New Jersey[.]
Boston: printed by Draper & Folsom, 1782
A HISTORY Of the WORK of REDEMPTION. › Period 3 › Part 2 › Section 1
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
(5) The last kind of opposition that Satan has made to the Reformation is by corrupt opinions. Satan has opposed the light of the gospel which shone forth in the Reformation with many corrupt opinions, which he has brought in and propagated in the world.
Here, in the first place, the first opposition of this kind was by raising up the sect of the Anabaptists, which began about four or five years after the Reformation itself began. This sect, as it first appeared in Germany▪ were vastly more extravagant than the present Anabaptists, are in England. They held a great many exceeding corrupt opinions. ⟨p. 229⟩One tenet of theirs was, That there ought to be no civil authority, and so that it was lawful to rebel against civil authority. On this principle, they refused to submit to magistrates, or any human laws; and gathered together in vast armies, to defend themselves against their civil rulers; and put all Germany into an uproar, and so kept it for some time.
The next opposition of this kind to the Reformation was that which was made by enthusiasts. Those are called enthusiasts who falsely pretend to be inspired by the Holy Ghost as the prophets were. These began in Germany about ten years after Luther began the Reformation; and there arose various sects of them who were exceeding wild and extravagant. The followers of these are the Quakers in England, and other parts of the British dominions.