More human comedy "Why Were the Quakers Persecuted?"
http://www.hallvworthington.com/Persecutions/whypersecutions.html
Reminds me of the hippie movement in the 1960's without drugs, someone was feeling threatened ----> "England Love It or Leave It" !! ;o)
The Quakers were persecuted because paying members of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalist Puritans were quitting and joining the Quakers.
From the Word of the Lord within: "The Christians feared the early Quakers, just as the Jews feared Jesus;" because in a few short years, entire Christian churches were emptied of listeners to preachers repeating the words of the Bible, to become listeners of Christ in Quaker silent meetings. The ministers and priests then ran to the courts, suing any Quaker who stopped paying tithes to them. Because the Quakers could not swear in court, being forbidden by Jesus and James, they went to jail. When the Lord sent the Quaker men and women into their churches to preach the true hope and true faith, the ministers and priests ran to the magistrates and courts still more. The success of the early Quakers movement eventually emptied many churches throughout England, and the oppostion's violence intensified, with Parliament passing laws against any Quaker meeting, the penalty being fines, imprisonment, and finally banishment to the remote colonies in the Carribean. |
