King James -- If you are going to support him
you should know something about him.
"Monarchy is the greatest thing on
earth. Kings are rightly called gods since just like God they have power of
life and death over all their subjects in all things. They are accountable to
God only ... so it is a crime for anyone to argue about what a king can do."
(King James)
His religious policy consisted of asserting
the supreme authority and divine right of the crown. He suppressed political
rivals as well as both Puritans and Catholics who objected. In fact the last
heretics burned at the stake in England (1612) were done so under him. He even personally supervised the
torture of women accused of being witches.
His religious oppression was so bad that the “Pilgrims” set sail for America in
the Mayflower (1620). He didn’t tolerate political opposition much better and
he dissolved Parliament twice in 1610 and 1614.
As to “his” bible it is a non-entity. The "Authorized Version"
was never authorized by royal proclamation, by order of Council, by act of
Parliament or by vote of Convocation. He never even paid for it. He pleaded poverty and instead “bought off” the
bishops and translators by giving them royal positions or ecclesiastical
promotions - that is for the ones who would follow his rules. Rule number one
for translators was that the Bishops' Bible was to be followed and altered as
little as possible. Another rule was that the translation should support
“church doctrine”.
James
was big on “church doctrine”. It was second only to his authority. He forced acceptance of the five articles of
Perth (1618) as a crime if not adhered too. He even imprisoned ministers who
resisted. Among those articles were that children should be catechized and
blessed by Bishops and that Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and
Pentecost were declared as Holy days not only of the Catholic Church but of
every church.
For those that think
their bible version is “pure” they should bear in mind that the original
manuscripts have been missing since about 1655. The translation was not even
popular when it was made and it took decades for it to “catch on” - even with
imprisonment hanging over people’s heads. Hugh Broughton,
the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time, was excluded as a
translator; and, in 1611 he condemned the translation, criticizing especially
the translators' rejection of word-for-word equivalence and stated that
"he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than that this
abominable translation (KJV) should ever be foisted upon the English people”.
James was a religious tyrant and basically
acted as a protestant pope - obey or die!
NOTE: That King James was
bisexual is in little doubt by most historians. Scottish Church leaders criticized
his relationship as a teenager with fellow teenager Esmé Stuart, a young French
courtier and Earl of Lennox, who facing threats of death was forced to leave
Scotland. James did not stop there. In the 1580s he openly kissed Francis
Stewart Hepburn - the Earl of Bothwell. When James inherited the English throne
from Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 it was openly joked that “Elizabeth was King:
now James is Queen”. James was blatantly open in an intimate relationship with
George Villiers. He called Villiers his “wife” and called himself Villiers'
“husband”! After he died he was buried in the Henry VII chapel in Westminster
Abbey with one of his favorite male suitors on his right and another on his
left.
