King Gustavus Adolphus Saved Protestantism in 1631

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RamistThomist

Puritanboard Clerk
This is from the Battle of Breitenfeld. The Father of Modern Warfare Gustavus certainly was not, but he may have very well been the Father of the religious liberty. Because then at that place, at that moment when the Saxon ranks broke and the Inquisition bade fair to triumph over all of Europe, the King of Sweden stood his ground.


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Whatever might have been was not. Not because of tactics or formation or artillery…but because of a simple truth. At that instant world history pivoted on the soul of one man. His name was Gustavus Adolphus, and there were among his followers who thought him the only monarch in Europe worthy of the name. They were right, and the man was about to prove it. For one of the few times in human history, royalty was not a lie.

Had Gustavus faltered that day, the entire continent would have been plunged under the Inquisition. England was borderline Roman Catholic under Charles I, and with the tremendous pressure from an entire continent, it’s doubtful she could have long resisted.

~From a fictionalized novel on the 30 Years War.

Hans Frei's The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative and he points out that Johannes Cocceius saw the death of that great champion of Protestantism Gustavus Adolphus, as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Frei references Gottlob Schrenk's Gottesreich und Bund im alteren Protestantismus: vornehmlich bei Johannes Cocceius (Gutersloh: Bertlesmann, 1923)

Samuel Rutherford wept when he heard that the Lutheran champion died in battle. Indeed, Rutherford called him a "Latter-day Gideon" (Coffey, Politics and the British Revolution, 230, 239).
 
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