WIKILEADS FOUNDER ARRESTED. DOES IT MAKE YOU SUSPICIOUS TOO?

I find this all very suspicious.

I mean, we have governments up in arms. Why?

Because a man is accused of sexually molesting a couple of women. This has got to be a first.

Without going into the details of whether he's guilty or not, or the ethical rights or wrongs of the the things made public by Wikileaks. If governments always responded like this to petty criminals, not only would they have no time for anything else, but probably half the MPs would be arrested too.

No, it is obvious that what has narked certain powerful individuals are the leaks, which have quite plainly seriously embarrassed them.

Anyone who is interested in these things will know, that in this day and age, the one thing which unscrupulous people in authority fear most, is publicity. It brings them down; it is their greatest enemy; they are powerless against it; it makes them tremble. Hence the reaction.

Yes, many parts of the media are pretty base, but, without press freedom - and I'm afraid that has to include things like Wikileaks - we go down the slippery slope of Robert Mugabe and his henchmen and every other despicable regime we would care to mention.

They cannot simply come down on Wikileaks in an arbitrary, authoritarian manner (because of our laws which were founded in Christian principles). So, it would appear, they are using the good old "fabricated, or trumped-up charges" method.

Unless, of course, I am wrong.

FAVOURITE QUOTES

MARTYRDOM OF JAMES BAINHAM

The next day (30^th of April, 1532) Bainham was taken to the scaffold. Soldiers on horseback surrounded the pile: Master Pave, the city clerk, directed the execution. Bainham, after a prayer, rose up, embraced the stake, and was fastened to it with a chain. “Good people,” he said to the persons who stood around him, “I die for having said it is lawful for every man and woman to have God’s book. I die for having said that the true key of heaven is not that of the bishop of Rome, but the preaching of the Gospel. I die for having said that there is no other purgatory than the cross of Christ, with its consequent persecutions and afflictions.” – “ thou liest, thou heretic,” exclaimed Pave; “thou hast denied the blessed sacrament of the altar.” – “I do not deny the sacrament of Christ’s body,” resumed Bainham, “but I do deny your transubstantiation and your idolatry to a piece of bread.” – “Light the fire,” shouted Pave. The executioners set fire to a train of gunpowder, and as the flame approached him, Bainham lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and said to the city clerk: “God forgive thee! and show thee more mercy than thou showst to me! the Lord forgive Sir Thomas More…pray for me, all good people!” The arms and legs of the martyr were soon consumed, and thinking only how to glorify his saviour, he exclaimed: “Behold! you look for miracles, you may see one here; for in this fire I feel no more pain than if I were on a bed of down, but it is to me as sweet as a bed of roses.” The primitive church hardly had a more glorious martyr.

Pave had Bainham’s image continually before his eyes, and his last prayer rang day and night in his heart. In the garret of his house, far removed from noise, he had fitted up a kind of oratory, where he had placed a crucifix, before which he used to pray and shed bitter tears. He abhorred himself: half mad, he suffered indescribable sorrow, and struggled under great anguish. The dying Bainham had said to him: “May God show thee more mercy than thou hast shown to me!”But Pave could not believe in mercy: he saw no other remedy for his despair than death. About a year after Bainham’s martyrdom, he sent his domestics and clerks on different errands, keeping only one servant-maid in the house. As soon as his wife had gone to church, he went out himself, bought a rope, and hiding it carefully under his gown, went up into the garret. He stopped before the crucifix, and began to groan and weep. The servant ran upstairs. “Take this rusty sword,” he said, “clean it well, and do not disturb me.” She had scarcely left the room when he fastened the rope to a beam and hanged himself.

The maid, hearing no sound, again grew alarmed, went up to the garret, and seeing her master hanging, was struck with terror. She ran crying to the church to fetch her mistress home; but it was too late: the wretched man could not be recalled to life.

Reformation in England, by J. H. Merle d ‘Aubigne. Vol. 2. P. 101.

ARGUMENT: WILLIAM TYNDALE AND SIR THOMAS MORE

The following is an argument published in the early 16th century between the famous martyr, reformer, and translator of Scripture, William Tyndale, and Sir Thomas More, regarded by the Roman Catholic church of the day as the greatest scholar in England. In his opinion, the burning of heretics (protestants) was just and necessary. He later became a persecutor, and was himself beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the English church instead of the pope.


More: “Christ said not, the Holy Ghost shall write, but shall teach. Whatsoever the church says, it is the word of God, though it be not in Scripture.”

Tyndale: “It is not the custom of Scripture to say the Holy Ghost writeth but inspireth the writer…and it is manifest that…love compelled the apostles to leave nothing unwritten that should be necessarily required, and that, if it were left out, should hurt the soul…These are written, says St John, that ye may believe and through belief have life.”

More: “The apostles have taught by mouth many things they did not write, because they should not come into the hands of the heathen for mocking.”

Tyndale: “I pray you what thing more to be mocked by the heathen could they teach than the resurrection; and that Christ was God and Man, and died between two thieves? And yet all these things the apostles wrote. And again, purgatory, penance, and satisfaction for sin, and praying to saints, are marvellous agreeable unto the superstition of the heathen people, so that they needed not to abstain from writing of them for fear lest the heathen should have mocked them.”

More: “We must not examine the teaching of the church by Scripture, but understand Scripture by means of what the church says.”

Tyndale: “What! Does the air give light to the sun, or the sun to the air? Is the church before the gospel, or the gospel before the church? Is not the father older than the son? God begat us with his own will, with the word of truth, says James (1: 18.) If he who begetteth is before him who is begotten, the word is before the church, or, to speak more correctly, before the congregation.”

More: “Why do you say congregation and not church?”

Tyndale: “Because by that word church, you understand nothing but a multitude of shaven, shorn and oiled, which we now call the spiritualty or clergy; while the word of right is common unto all the congregation of them that believe in Christ.”

More: “The church is the pope and his sect or followers.”

Tyndale: “The pope teacheth us to trust in holy works for salvation, as penance, saints’ merits, and friars’ coats. Now, he that hath no faith to be saved through Christ, is not of Christ’s church.”

More: “The Romish church from which the Lutherans came out, was before them, and therefore is the right one.”

Tyndale: “In like manner you may say, the church of the Pharisees, whence Christ and his disciples came out, was before them, and was therefore the right church, and consequently Christ and his disciples are heretics.”

More: “No: the apostles came out from the church of the Pharisees because they found not Christ there; but your priests in Germany and elsewhere, have come out of our church, because they wanted wives.”

Tyndale: “Wrong…these priests were at first attached to what you call heresies, and then they took wives; but yours were first attached to the holy doctrine of the pope, and then they took harlots.”

More: “Luther’s books be open if ye will not believe us.”

Tyndale: “Nay, ye have shut them up, and have even burnt them…”

More: “I marvel that ye deny purgatory, Sir William, except it be a plain point with you to go straight to hell.”

Tyndale: “I know no other purging but faith in the cross of Christ; while you, for a groat, or a sixpence, buy some secret pills [indulgences] which you take to purge yourselves of your sins.”

More: “Faith, then, is your purgatory, you say; there is no need, therefore, of works – a most immoral doctrine!”

Tyndale: “It is faith alone that saves us, but not a bare faith. When a horse beareth a saddle and a man thereon, we may well say that the horse only and alone beareth the saddle, but we do not mean the saddle empty, and no man thereon.”