Many reformers read these Scriptures. Yet they sought to reform what they found at hand. What about going back much further, seeking to restore something much earlier? What about returning to that which existed first in he mind of God? What about returning to God’s Son, the King, and the reality He first established on earth? Those who dared to ask such questions were persecuted through the centuries. Their books and bodies were burned. Their voices were muted, but not entirely silenced.
As times changed, many were attracted to the Bible’s description of original Christianity. For example, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the Dutch “father of international law,” is quoted as saying,
I understood that Christ had willed that all named after Him and trusting in His salvation should be one with the Father, and the beauty of the primitive church did greatly please me, at that time when she was without doubt catholic [universal], since all Christians… remained in one communion.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) wrote Robinson Crusoe (1719), a novel about a European and a Caribbean man, Friday, who survive on an isolated island. Friday, having no Western preconceptions, learns Christianity directly from the Bible. Of this, Crusoe says,
The knowledge of God and the doctrine of salvation by Christ Jesus, is so plainly laid down in the word of God, so easy to be received and understood…. [The Bible alone brought Friday] to be such a Christian as I have known few equal to him in my life. As to all the disputes, ranglings, strife and contention which have happened in the world about religion… they were all perfectly useless to us, and, for all I can yet see, they have been so to the world. We had the sure guide to heaven… the word of God.