Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 2:
Never was a statement farther from the truth. The very term"Free Churches" arose from a refusal to submit toElizabeth's "Act of Uniformity in Religion" by whichshe tried to make all Englishmen submit to the Anglican Church.Protestants who refused to submit were called "Nonconformists."They would not conform to the Established Church any more thanCatholics. They wanted Churches free from Rome, but also free fromdomination by the Crown. They suffered persecution together withCatholics and, as the "Pilgrim Fathers" fled from Englandto America to escape the State-established Church of England. Thetruth, therefore, is not that the "Free Churches"withstood the onslaughts of Rome with the help of the AnglicanChurch, but that both Catholics and Nonconformists have survivedthe onslaughts of the Anglican Church in England. All that, ofcourse, is past history; but it is past history which should not beforgotten whilst such things as you have heard are being said.
Their origin can be traced back as far as 1567, when there weresmall independent congregations of religious people, stronglyProtestant, who rejected not only Catholicism, but also the veryidea of an established and national Church. In 1593 Henry Barroweand John Greenwood were put to death for denying that the nationalChurch of England was the true Church of Christ, that the Queencould make laws for the Church, and for insisting that eachparticular Church should govern itself. This idea of independentChurches gave rise to the Congregational Churches of today.