We are all brothers in Christ, servants of one Lord, members of one body; and therefore we are, or at least should be, dearly loved, inseparably joined in the closest bond of love and intimacy. United, we should not merely share the same cross but assist, comfort and help one another at all times and on every occasion. So they did in the early Church: in Acts 5 they sold their inherited property and laid it at the apostles’ feet. We have many such memorable examples of mutual love during the ten general persecutions, and many since. Yet on the other side are unparalleled examples of discord: as our Saviour says, he came into the world to set father against son, and so on.

Apparently in imitation of him, the Devil—for “superstition has crept in as an imitator of true religion”; superstition always apes religion, in this as in everything else—so binds and glues his superstitious followers together in love and affection that they will live and die together. And what deeply rooted hatred he has always inspired against any rival superstition! The ten persecutions bear witness to the temper of those ancient Romans, as does that cruel executioner in Eusebius: “Either sacrifice or die”—sacrifice or die. In every age there has been no greater hatred, no more persistent and bitter faction, war or persecution than that over religion; no such savage conflict of father against son, mother against daughter, husband against wife, city against city, kingdom against kingdom—as long ago at Tentira and Combos:

Undying hatred, a wound that can never be healed; Hence the people’s fury: the neighbours’ gods Are hated by each town, since each believes that only The gods it worships should be held as gods. —

It breeds undying hate, a wound beyond all cure, And fury that the common people must endure: One city mocks the other’s gods as vain, And holds that its own gods alone are good.

The Turks today think no better of us than of dogs. They commonly call us Gaures, infidels, unbelievers, and make this their chief grievance and reason for persecuting Christians. If a man will become a Turk, he will be welcomed as a brother and held in esteem as a Muselman, or believer—a bond stronger to them than any relationship by marriage or blood.

The Jews cling together like burrs; but the rest, whom they call Gentiles, they hate and abhor. They cannot bear that their Messiah should be a common Saviour to us all; and, as Luther writes, rather than allow those who now mock, curse, persecute and revile them to become their fellow heirs and brothers, or to share in any fellowship with their Messiah, they would crucify their Messiah ten times over, and God himself, his angels and all his creatures, if that were possible, though they should suffer a thousand hells for it. Such is their malice towards us.

As for Papists, our traitors and false Catholics show us what they will endure in a common cause to advance their religion. As evidence of their bitterness and violent hostility towards their opponents, let Mary’s reign stand on record, along with the miserable massacres at Mérindol and Cabrières, the Spanish Inquisition, the Duke of Alba’s tyranny in the Low Countries, and the French massacres and civil wars.

Such great evils could religion persuade people to commit.

Not only there, but throughout Europe, we read of bloody battles, racks and breaking wheels, rebellions, factions and conflicts:

—— standards confronting Standards, matching eagles, spears threatening spears,

Invective and strife. They would rather shake hands with a Jew or a Turk, or, as the Spaniards do, allow Moors and Jews to live among them rather than Protestants. “My name,” says Luther, “is more hateful to them than any thief or murderer.”

So it is with all heretics and schismatics whatsoever. None are so passionate and violent in their beliefs and opinions, so obstinate, wilful, defiant, perverse, factious, self-willed and rigid in defending them. They not only persecute and hate but pity all other religions, counting their followers damned and blind, as though they alone were the true Church. They are the true heirs; they own heaven outright by a special grant, and it is entailed upon them and their descendants. Their doctrine is sound—doctrine let down from heaven by a golden rope—and they alone will be saved.

The Jews today are “so incomprehensibly proud and surly,” says Luther, “that they wish to be saved alone, and alone to be hailed as lords of the earth.” And, as Buxtorf adds, “so ignorant and self-willed besides, that among their most learned rabbis you will find nothing but gross foolishness, dreadful hardness of heart and stupendous obstinacy in all their actions, opinions and conduct; yet so zealous that no one alive could be more so, claiming for themselves the title of God’s chosen people.”

So it is with all other superstitious sects: Muslims; pagans in China and Tartary; our ignorant Papists, Anabaptists and Separatists; and the particular churches of Amsterdam. They alone, and no one else, can be saved. Zealous, as Paul says in Romans 10:2, “without knowledge,” they will endure any misery or trouble, suffer and do things that the sun’s rays cannot bear to see. Driven by the Furies of religion, they face every extremity, loss and danger, take any pains, fast, pray, vow chastity and voluntary poverty, abandon everything to follow their idols, and die a thousand deaths,

as some Jews did when facing Pilate’s soldiers in a similar situation, “offering their bared throats and plainly showing,” as Josephus puts it, “that the observance of their ancestral law was dearer to them than life.” Rather than renounce or deny the smallest part of the religion their fathers profess and in which they themselves were brought up, however absurd or ridiculous it may be, they will embrace it. Without further inquiry or examination of its truth, though it be monstrously false, they will believe it. They will take much more trouble to go to hell than we shall to go to heaven.