He knew from the Bible that God had made all things very good, and
that he loved the world, but he held that a number of people had got
in between God and his world, and made it very bad and hateful. They
were known as kings and emperors, and they had seized on the world by
fraud and force. They lived on the best of everything that the land
produced, and when they disagreed among themselves they sent their
people to kill each other on their account, while they sat at home in
peace and luxury.
These usurpers not only held sway over the possessions and lives of
men, but they decreed the exact thoughts men were to entertain
concerning God, and the exact words they were to speak concerning God;
and when men presumed to obey God rather than men they were tied to
stakes and burned to death as blasphemers. For such sentiments as
these Hugh Bronte was denounced as a socialist--a very bad and
dangerous name at the beginning of the present century.
His third negative proposition was: