stly mediator. This was counted by the
Catholic Church a horrible blasphemy, and the Diet of
Worms was called, and Luther was commanded to appear
before it and recant. Presiding over this Diet was Charles
V., Emperor of Germany; here were Electors, Princes and
crowned heads, popish priests, bishops and cardinals,
together with the principal nobility of Catholic
Europe--these all came together to compel the recantation
of Friar Martin Luther. But Luther said; "Unless I be
convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare
retract anything for my conscience is a captive to God's
Word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against
conscience," and a great multitude of men in Germany,
France, Switzerland, and Great Britain stood beside Luther
and protested that they were amenable to the Lord alone,
and that they could do nothing against conscience. But
these Protestant governments stopped midway between popery
and Protestantism; for each of these nations, while
renouncing the Pope of Rome, assumed that it was the
business of the king to instruct the people what to
believe; and so instead of having one pope they had many
popes, consequently many Protestant sects; and these took
the place of that one apostolic church originally
established by the apostles. Notwithstanding, there were
some, in all lands that remained steadfast to the
principle enunciated by Martin Luther: "Unless I be
convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare
retract"; and so it came to pass that there were
Protestant persecutions as well as Catholic persecutions;
and so also it came to pass that men became wearied with
this intolerance, and determined to seek beyond the
Atlantic Ocean a place where they could worship God
according to the dictates of their own consciences, with
none to molest them or make them afraid. It was for such
cause that the Puritans settled in New England, the
Quakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Scotch and
Irish Presbyterians in North Carolina; and it was for this
cause that the French Huguenots, driven out of France by
the French king, came to South Carolina. The most notable
cause that induced the planting of the thirteen original
colonies here in North America was religious persecution
in the Old World. And as the oak grows out of the acorn,
so out of these colonies has grown this nation of which we
are so proud.

Great Britain became more Lutheran than Germany, the
native land of Luther, and