R&I – TxPat
When The Religious Persecuted Became The Persecutors.
Today, we look at the United States as a fragmented nation and a society at odds with itself. Ripped apart by a world virus pandemic, racial tensions, political and religious sectarianism, an inept president, riots, looting and general anti-law protests. So what is new? Not much has changed in 400 years since the days of the early colonies. When Christians communities made-up there own laws such as the Laws And Liberties Of Massachusetts Colony enacted in 1641 (revised in 1672). It was god-help those that did not comply with the religious edicts!
The Mayflower (1620) was still fresh in the minds of the new colonists, just 20 years previous when 102 persecuted Christians Pilgrims (Puritan) sailed from England to the New World to have the freedom to worship their god in their chosen way. Which was short-lived as by 1641 the persecuted became the persecutors in the new land. This new law in the colony with its capital punishment was not a fiendish act of a devilish king and government some 3,500 miles across the sea to the East! It was the work of a zealot Christian priest and pedagogue.
The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts served as the basis for civil and criminal law in the colony until the eighteenth century. This code was a revision of a 1641 code known as The Body of Liberties, which was written by Nathaniel Ward, a Puritan minister and teacher.
https://law.jrank.org/pages/11666/Laws-Liberties-Massachusetts.html#ixzz6UtDGkmsW
The Laws and Liberties reflect the Puritans’ concern that members of the community should live a Christian life true to the principles of the sect. Laws were meant to guide the righteous and punish the wicked, but they were also to be administered fairly. Religious heresy was severely punished as were fornication, adultery, and other behaviour that violated the moral teachings of the colonists. Nevertheless, the code mandated that individuals could not be punished or penalized without Due Process of Law. [Ibid]
However, if you are innocent of any of these crimes we see today as being ludicrous, whether through due process of law or tried by twelve just men, it would be hell for the victim. When you think that the lawmaker of this law still believed in monsters, devil, demons and evil spirits, as well as fairies at the bottom of the garden, let alone believing in Witches!
On Witches, Europe alone executed up to 500,000 witches, 85% of whom were women. There is no need to elaborate on the Witch-Hunt migrating to the Americas, the Americans are well aware of the Salem Massachusetts incident or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which I mean facetiously!
Religious ideology on witches, witchcraft, was conceived as an antithesis to “true” Christianity. Christians have a lot to answer for their past Hatred and crimes against Humanity. A religion that saw boogiemen behind every tree, corner or in the shadows especially in the dark of night! The self-denying minds of these puritanic Christians had not changed in 1,200 years, from the time of Agustine of Hippo to that of Nathaniel Ward. The act of human nature was seen by these ascetic Christians as immoral. Fornication is what makes the world go round and the survival of all animal species on earth.
Augustine, a well-known liar for embellishing the Christian faith. Famous for saying that he saw headless men and women with two great eyes in their breasts in Ethiopia. Still further south he saw people who had but one eye in their foreheads. However, this is what he said on women and demons, which is apt for the Christian colonists.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), De civitate Dei (The City of God) 15.23: One often hears talk, the reliability of which must not be doubted, since it is confirmed by a number of people who know from their own or others’ experience, that Silvani and Pans, commonly called incubi, have often appeared to women as wicked men, trying to sleep with them and succeeding. These same demons, whom the Gauls name Dusii, are relentlessly committed to this defilement, attempting and achieving so many things of such a kind that to deny it would seem brazen. Based on this, I dare not risk a definitive statement as to whether there might be some spirits, aerial in substance (for this substance, when it is set in motion by a fan, is perceived as sensation within the body and as touch), who take bodily form and even experience this sexual desire, so that, by any means they can, they mingle with women sensually. But that the holy angels of God in no way fell in like manner during that era — that I would believe….[Augustine, The City of God, bk. xv, ch. xxiii]
Be nice and comment on any part of this post or all of it?
Cofion
Jero Jones
Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/