History Of The Church
Lesson 10: Religion In The 17^th And 18^th Centuries

Speaker: John Phillis
Date: November 3^rd, 2004, Wednesday Evening Adult Bible Class

We are continuing with our study, looking at the history of the Lord’s church, and seeing what happened to the Lord’s church following it’s establishment on the Day of Pentecost, seeing how shortly after the 1^st Century and into the 2^nd Century and beyond that there was a movement away from the organization, from the doctrine—the apostolic doctrine regarding the church—and the worship of the church, and so on. We have moved up, now, to the period of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. We finished up in our last lesson looking at the period of the Reformation in the British Isles—in England, in Scotland—and that takes us up to the period that follows. As you have seen, we’re basically going along with world history, seeing the events which have taken place, and noting how that religion, in many of these events, have played very much of a key role.

Well, the great religious evils that we have examined recently in the past couple of lessons, known as the Reformation, really proved to be something of a watershed, as regards the history of what is broadly referred to as “Christendom.” The “religious unity” that existed in Western Europe through the period beginning in about the 6^th Century and going through the period of the Middle Ages—and of course, this so-called “religious unity” was based upon the development and the power that emerged known as the Roman Catholic Church; the Roman Catholic Church was “the” church, at least the church that had the predominance, that had the power politically, militarily, and so on, for many, many hundreds of years. But that was somewhat shattered with the Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church has become, now, many separate organizations. There were different religious bodies that came out of this Reformation.

So, what we are beginning to see here in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries is something of the struggle which will take place. That central organization, the Roman Catholic Church, is still there, but it is no longer, shall we say, “king of the hill” in many respects. And so, what we see are these emerging denominations, these emerging groups who are looking for their place; looking for their power base; looking for constituents; looking for how they would fit into the geography where they were. And this, we will see, is not really a period of peace and tranquility which emerges, but rather, more a period of more evil—more fighting; more warfare, and the like.

And so, what we’re going to do is to look at, not a complete history, but look at a number of key events. They are historical events, and we will see how the struggles of the day will contribute to these, and how much a part of these historical events these religious activities really were. The history of the “Christian” religion in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries deals in large measure with the struggles among several denominations, adjusting themselves to the situation in which no single one could assert its predominance as the Roman Catholics had done previously.