and constant-to overthrow the power of Rome, and place upon its ruins his own theories and domination, though deluding himself and his followers with the promise of a visionary and fantastic liberty, were his principle and characteristic; and if his adversaries had been careless or unmindful of their charge-if they had not been at least as brave, as nerved, and as conscientious as himself if they had not been indued with the same strength and activity of conviction and enterprise, and if their belief of his errors had not been as fervid as that of their own rectitude, his efforts, speaking upon human perceptions, would probably have had no limits but Christendom. Such characteristics did not consist with tolerance. If

it was his duty to preach his opinions, it was their right to retain their own. If it was his duty, and his duty he always construed to be his right, to blame all that they revered, and to violate all that they respected, and to desecrate all that they worshipped, it was their right to refuse to listen -to arrest his attempts, and to punish him for the disturbances he created, and the evil he did, and when the numbers at his side began to make it difficult to punish, the conflict between this constructive right on one side, and a sense of positive right on the other, was to be ended only by that argument which Richelieu expressed, when he inscribed upon the cannon to be used against La Rochelle, "ultima ratio regum," the last argument of the state.

The idea of unity of faith was (and is, and must be, however it may be disguised or forgotten) the principle of each sect, and at this time when religious doctrines disturbed the minds of all the world-when the words grace, sanctification, justification, free will, predestination, election, &c., formed the subjects of daily unintelligible conversation and unmeaning dispute among all classes of people-the doctor, the courtier, and the artisan-when conclusions of theology entered into every concern of life, and bore upon all its transactions, public and private, the conflict of opinions became insupportable as fraught with all the dangers and disquietude which the turbulence of a minority directed against the most savage of

all despotisms, that of a majority, could engender. The exclusive possession, therefore, not only of the true faith, as involving one's salvation, but of political power as preventing these envenomed discussions and public disorders, necessarily became the trait of each new sect as it successively arose, and the absolute conformity of religion, which always produces more or less conformity of public and private principle and conduct, was regarded, and not without reason, as indispensable in every community and kingdom.

Whatever, therefore, may have been the real or pretended advantages of the Reformation, (and it is not meant to deny that by its reaction it purged the Church of many evils and corruptions, not in respect of its religious faith, but of ecclesiastical practices which had heretofore defiled it,) it never can be presumed by any sane man that toleration, that is, the open profession of any religious be¦ lief, was either its avowed or accidental intention or consequence; but this toleration born of the fatigue and disgust which philosophy and men at length experienced in prolonged, innumerable, and irritating disputations, uncertainties, and violence of and concerning doctrines and mysteries, was, and is in direct and diametrical opposition to the principles and practice of its leaders and followers. Nothing can be more false to history, or more unphilosophical, more ignorant even than to contend that religious liberty was, as is daily brayed in our ears, the intention and effect of the Reformation. The liberty of opinion or of conscience, or of public worship according to conscience, was the very last thing which the first or subsequent reformers avowed or permitted, and even at this day it is difficult to perceive that the upholders of the Reformation are more inclined to allow a difference of opinion upon matters of faith, morals or conduct, than are their adversaries, or were their predecessors.

While Luther was shaking the circle which surrounded him, the contest was one between himself and the Pope-a word which, on his side, denoted an individual, and on that of his adversaries a principle. After the outbreak, the quarrel lost the sim

ple character of an attempt to correct mere abuses, and assumed that of mixed speculation and temporal dominion. The violence of the pulpit and the schools was followed by that of armies, and wherever the Reformation set its foot, civil war, and the worst of civil wars, that of religious intolerance, was found to sprout and flourish. In England it is veiled as a contest for civil rights. In Germany, in France, and in Scotland, it was avowed as religious. In all, however, it was of the same complicated character, and in each it flourished or fell according to the prepossession of the government, or the strength of the arm of flesh. In none was toleration thought of.

"It was then held inconsistent," says a Protestant writer of this day," with the sovereignty of the magistrate to permit any religion but his own, inconsistent with his duty to suffer any but the true." What was the true was a question to be solved by ministers of the gospel, universities and synods, of the same way of thinking as himself, and he who had not hit upon the true was punishable not only for the publication of the opinion, but for the opinion itself. Thus Luther, whose character, though it shows many of the coarser and more vulgar traits of sensuality, narrowness of views, and abandoned love of popularity, does not appear to possess that of actual cruelty, denounced and held to be worthy of punishment all who differed from him in opinion, and his followers thinking with him, cut off the Calvinists from all salvation, and Calvin himself, in earlier days the object of persecution by his brother reformers, (who at one time drove him from Geneva, where he afterwards re-established himself,) not a civil magistrate, nor charged with judicial authority, nor responsible for any defect of public justice, but possessed of an ecclesiastical influence so great and of power so unequalled, that all that is claimed for a Pope on the score of infallibility is insignificant as compared with what was due to him, denounced James Gruel, a learned man of those days, as heretical in the doctrines of predestination, and deficient in morals, in Calvin's opinion, and Gruel was beheaded for his ideas. He

burned Servetus, or rather condemned him to death, for he alleges that he used his influence with the magistrates to change the mode of death to decapitation, but the notion that he had done a wrong act, or one of even doubtful virtue, never disturbed him. Nay the intention to do it did not appear to him to be wrong, for knowing some time before of Servetus' wish to come to Geneva, and that his apprehension of Calvin's resentment deterred him, Calvin writing to two friends said that he would not commit himself that if Servetus came he should do so at his risk, and that he would not suffer him if he did come to go away safe, (salvus) in one letter, alive (vivus) in another. Yet Servetus was no disturber of the state-his book had been published in another country-he had never been in Geneva-he had never expressed any opinion within their jurisdiction, and he was forced to this town in flying to escape the persecution against him in Vienne where his book was printed, so that here were civil magistrates, whose power to notice offences was necessarily bounded by their own territory, justified and bound according to the opinion and judgment of Calvin and his fellow theologians, to put to death a man whose mere ideas they judged to be inconsistent with the unity and peace of their Church. So Castalio, another learned man, and author of a translation of the Bible into Latin, was banished by Calvin because he did not embrace predestination in its full extent, and also because he had peculiar ideas about the song of Solomon. Grotius, fifty years after, says of Calvin, that he placed no faith in him as he knew how "iniquitously and virulently he had treated better men than himself, Cassander Balderinus, and Castalio." Even Melancthon," tolerable mild,” who was all for humanity and benevolence, dared not to disapprove of the murder of Servetus, but was induced, in a letter to Beza, to express his approbation of the crime. It is true that Servetus' doctrines were directed equally against all religions, and against all the then sects, but this so far from giving any one a right to punish, might have been in humanity a reason why all should neglect him. Theodore de Beza, the most distinguished

of Calvin's friends, published a work (after Calvin's own justification of himself), in which contending for the propriety of the capital punishments of heretics, he laments that he has in opposition to him, not only such skeptics or academics as Castalio (who in a short tract directed against Calvin had faintly doubted the virtue of public execution for opinions), but even some pious and learned men, and in his work Beza upholds that heretical opinions, that is, opinions not accordant with Calvin's, are to be punished by death or other corporal punishment, on the ground of the excessive atrocity of the crime-the crime of differing from Calvin, and by the force of all precedents in the Jewish and Christian history. Lipsius too about 1590, published a work in which he inveighed against the toleration of more than one religion in a state, and in urging the necessity of punishment for difference of opinion, exclaims, "Burn, cut off some members that the rest may live," and when Koonhest, a man of learning dedicated to the magistrates of Leyden his courageous answer to Lipsius, against the horrid practice of visiting opinions with death, they thought fit to declare by a public act that they did not accept the dedication, so that from 1554 when Calvin vindicated the magistrates and himself for the death of Servetus down to 1590, which was eight years before the edict of Nantes, no Protestant community had any other idea than that those, who under the promise that the Bible was open to all men's construction, ventured to put upon it their own construction differing from that of the majority, were justly deserving of death for their opinions, and as is well said by an English Protestant writer of this day of great learning," At the end of the 16th century, the simple proposition that men, for holding heterodox opinions in religion, ought not to be burned alive or put to death, was in itself a heresy exposing its defender to punishment, and no one had yet pretended to assert the general right of religious worship which in fact was rarely or never conceded to the Catholics in a Protestant country, though the Huguenots in France shed oceans of blood to secure the same privilege for themselves," of the

truth of which conclusion it is not necessary to trouble you with more proofs than have been given, easily as they might be displayed.

In the seventeenth century the state of feeling was but little changed, though towards its close executions or severe corporal punishments, judicially inflicted for religious belief diminished in number in all countries, except England and Scotland, but in none were so much disused as in France, among the Catholics. Still the idea of toleration, that is, of that religious liberty by which each man was entitled publicly to worship God, according to his own tenets, and to believe what he pleased, however absurd and brainless, or wise and gifted he might be, was, it may be said, scarcely conceived; for the most strenuous and boldest of the humane and liberal had gone no further than to deny the wisdom of penal-but more especially of capital punishments for mere private peculiar religious opinions. In the beginning of that century the Arminians, denying the doctrine of predestination, first demanded a public toleration in Holland, where it prevailed, and the great Grotius, in his famous speech to the magistrates, claimed for this sect the free use of the churches upon this particular ground, itself intolerant, that mere separate toleration of sectarian establishments in the same country, rent the bosom of the Church; the result of which claim was that Alten-Barnaveldt, the greatest man and wisest patriot whom Holland had ever produced, the real cause of her independence, and a model of virtue and goodness, was put to death at the age of seventy-four, by judicial sentence, for not believing in predestination. And this same Grotius, one of the men who have most given to Holland her fame, was condemned for the same cause to perpetual imprisonment, from which he only escaped by flying into Sweden. In the same century Fuller in England laments the sympathy which the people showed for Legal and Wightman, who had been burned by James I for their opinions in 1614, which sympathy, however, does not appear in that Protestant country, to have been ever extended to Catholics.

About the middle of that century it seems to have been admitted by some men of learning, among whom was the celebrated Jeremy Taylor, in his Liberty of Prophesying, and it was the extent of their admission, that no matter of mere opinion, nor error of doctrine that was not of itself sin, was to be persecuted or punished by death or corporal suffering. In this sentiment Bayle followed at the close of the century, ridiculing the construction of the text upon which the respective dominant parties had justified their intolerance-" Compel them to come in." But between this admission of Taylor, and simple and complete toleration,-between the total indifference to mere opinions, and the permission to disseminate and uphold them, and worship according to conscience, there is a great gulf which no Protestant country in Europe passed for more than one hundred years afterwards. In some nations indeed the degree of liberality became greater as those of the majority permitted the public worship of other dissenting sects. But taking the great division to be what it always must remain between Protestants and Catholics, in no country, except in France, during the existence of the edict of Nantes, which was repealed about the close of this century, did the civil magistrate permit, nor by the intimate relation still existing between theologians and the municipal law, could he permit the public existence of an adverse religion. The Church of England was crushed by its fellow dissenters (to whom it sacrificed the little that it had in character, doctrine, and in polity), during the great rebellion of 1688, but under neither was the Catholic allowed to shew his own religious belief.

From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth down to that of the nineteenth century, a period of about two hundred and thirty years, the condition of the Catholics in England (from which country flow so many tirades about toleration, and which habitually preaches a public virtue that it does not practice) was not unlike that of the Protestants of France, during and for about fifty years next after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Thus in England the Catholic was not allowed by statutes passed

as early as the reign of Elizabeth, and invigorated by those of William and Mary about 1695, to depart five miles from his own dwelling; and in France the Protestant was forbidden to fly his country. In each country the one and the other were both forbidden by public acts to appear at court, to practice law or physic, or bear any public office or charge. In England, in the reign of Charles II, Catholic noblemen were deprived of their seats in the house of lords; and in France the very few who remained, were excluded from all military or civil employment. In England Catholics could not rise in the army, the navy, or the law, and those who married otherwise than according to the laws of the establishment, were deprived of their rights in each other's estate, and both incurred a heavy fine, while in France Protestants could not marry except according to the Catholic rite. French children were bribed to be educated by Catholics, and taken from their father's care, if he relapsed into Protestantism. And Catholic English children sent beyond sea to be educated, forfeited all their rights and estates, if they did not renounce their religion in six months after their return. A Catholic who in England would not take the oath against transubstantiation, that is, abjure his religion, was forbidden to keep, under penalty of seizure, any arms, or gunpowder, or a horse above the value of five pounds, was moreover to suffer, by his mere refusal, as a recusant convict, thereby incurring the loss of all his estate and means of life, and being out of the protection by the law, a fate which might consign him to a violent death, and often did consign him to endless imprisonment. But this has no parallel in France. Protestant schools in France, however, were not to be kept within six leagues of any town, and in England a Catholic who kept school was to be condemned to perpetual imprisonment. In England the inheritance of an educated Papist was to be taken from him to pass to his next Protestant relation, but in France no deprivation was allowed for religious differences. Louvois, the savage minister of Louis XIV, wrote to the governors that the troops in the Protestant districts were to be quartered

upon the Huguenots doubly; twenty upon him for ten upon a Catholic. And in 1723, in addition to the double taxes which in England were at all times laid upon Catholics, an act of parliament levied upon them, exclusive of all the rest of the nation, one hundred thousand pounds, equal to about one million five hundred thousand pounds of this day, to pay the expenses of prosecutions for conspiracies, in which, as Catholics merely, they had no concern, and in which those who were implicated were involved with all the Jacobite Protestant party. At any time a Catholic not having lands of twenty marks a year, nor worth forty pounds, must abjure the realm or his religion, and it was felony to remain after a justice of the peace had ordered him to depart. While the baptism of his children by any but a minister of the Church of England, incurred a penalty of one hundred pounds; not participating at communion service once a year, and not attending the established Church service once a month, were visited with the heavy penalty of forty pounds, doubling themselves for each omission. In France the Huguenot meeting-houses were torn down, and the flock was forbidden to worship in public; but in England, in the reign of Elizabeth, to be present at mass, was worth two hundred pounds, and in that of William III, in the year 1700, it cost the same sum; the priest who celebrated it was liable to perpetual imprisonment, and he who detected him received a reward of one hundred pounds. In both countries those who, having once conformed, relapsed, were subject to heavy punishments; and the Catholic who brought into England any thing blessed by the Pope, was liable to a præmunire, that is, to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

In France the Huguenots began to return in about 1740, and no notice was afterwards taken of them by the government, of which Cardinal Henry, the head, checked one or two attempts to revive the ancient quarrels, as is admitted, even by the bigoted Sismondi. Their position in the world did not often induce them to aspire to any offices of state, but they passed their lives in civil security, relieved of vexations, and dis

creetly veiling their worship from such observation as might have excited disturbance, a prudence more owing to their weakness than their disposition. Since the re-establishment of religion by the Emperor Napoleon, they have equal rights in all respects, though just after the restoration they were involved in some transient difficulties to which they have given the name of a persecution, and which their adversaries deny to have been even ill-treatment. Their number is about a million, as it was at the revocation; their churches are where they choose to place them, and when they require others, which has not happened, except to rebuild those dilapidated by time, they are entitled to the same aid as Catholics, and receive it from the government. Their preachers are also partly supported by the national revenues, as are the Catholics, and whatever new Christian sect arises. But it cannot be said that they increase, that they attract attention, make proselytes, or are popular.

Towards the close of the last century many of the most odious laws in force in England and Ireland against Catholics, were repealed after great and violent opposition. The repeated efforts made by liberal men to revoke their exclusion from high public offices and seats in the houses, were unavailing and defeated until 1828, when the same ministers who had always led the opposition against their emancipation, as it was called, were driven by political combinations to make a voluntary abandonment of their own prejudices, and a vicarious sacrifice of the consciences of their own supporters. The Catholics were then admitted to equal political rights, and the incredulous Englishman, to his own surprise and discomfiture, still finds himself alive, the Inquisition not yet at work, the island unconquered by the forces of the Pope, and her gracious majesty, the de- ¦ fender of the faith, still the head of the Church, and the teeming happy mother of other scarcely less divine offspring.

While, therefore, there existed in England, for the last one hundred years the first Protestant nation of the world, from the year 1570 down to the year 1828, such bitterness as compelled not only the enact