[ErikJohnson]

I wouldn’t dispute your overall point, AnthonyB, but I feel obliged to nitpick just a little (because I’m a huge fan of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress). Strictly speaking, it isn’t accurate to say, as you wrote—

with the exception of perhaps Bunyan but his stints in prison show how even mild evangelical types were treated by magisterial reformed Christians

First, Bunyan lived a full century after the “Magisterial” Reformers you mentioned. Second, he was persecuted, not by Reformed Christians (he actually was one, and you’ll find Pilgrim’s Progress very much affirms Reformed theology)—but by the largely Arminian leadership of the Church of England in concert with the government of Charles II. So in this particular example—you really have it backwards.

The Arminian faction became ascendant in the Church of England during the reign of Charles 1, and by many accounts was a contributing factor to the English Civil War, leading to the temporary overthrow of the monarchy by Oliver Cromwell (who was Reformed). Bunyan supported Cromwell, and after Cromwell died and the monarchy was reestablished under Charles’s son, Charles II, Parliament passed the “Clarendon Code” and other laws reestablishing the Church of England’s authority. It was under those laws that Bunyan was prosecuted and imprisoned—the environment in which he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress and other works.

But again, I think your overall point is a fair one. Had Joseph Smith lived in the 16th Century and traveled about denying the Trinity and recruiting followers—as he was able to do with relative freedom in 19th century America—he would have gone the way of Servetus, per your post on the previous thread. But 19th century America had new values that were sacrosanct, worth killing and dying for—enshrined in a “Bill of Rights.” You could deny the Trinity in 19th Century America and live to tell the tale—but use your position to destroy a privately owned printing press…

--Erik