conscience," the noblest innovation of modern times," 1 was of slow growth, and not till the close of the seventeenth century can it be said to have been recognised or clearly understood by any large body of people. It had to fight its way at first in the face of undisguised bitter hostility, and afterwards in the face of suspicion and of secret or openly avowed distrust. Ever since the Reformation there has been a slow and continuous progress in the direction of widened freedom, but it has been marked by this special peculiarity, that the progress has never been all along the line. It has been always the few, sometimes the one or two, that have stepped out of the line, and sounded the signal for the advance. few guiding spirits march first, and the multitude fall into line and follow after them." And even these guiding spirits have often shown themselves surprisingly backward to cast away, not merely the dregs and tatters, but the more ample habiliments of intolerance and religious bigotry. If they have struck the blow for freedom with one hand, they have helped to manacle it with the other. Of course this charge has to be brought against the various members of the vanguard with differing degrees of force, but there are very few indeed against whom it may not be to some

"A

1 "The principles of tolerance are no modern discovery," says the Bishop of Peterborough, Persecution and Tolerance, p. 97. "Men had always known that truth [that the compelling of a man to anything against his own conscience is a doing evil], but it was not always convenient to act up to their knowledge,” p. 114. Dr. Creighton does not, we think, give sufficient weight to the consideration that this truth had not only become eclipsed, but had actually been lost, through the obfuscation of men's consciences, and through the influence of inherited traditional belief, and that in the seventeenth century it was practically rediscovered.

extent preferred. It were strange indeed had it been otherwise. As in judging of the morality of the Old Testament saints we recognise the propriety of applying to them, not the standard which prevails in our age, but that which prevailed in the age in which they lived; so, in like manner, the attainments of the early pioneers of freedom may fairly claim to be judged, not by an ideal standard, but by prevalent contemporary conceptions of conscience. and liberty. Judged by this standard they were conspicuously in advance of the age in which they lived, and this honour must be ungrudgingly accorded to them. No doubt their theory of liberty was very defective, and was often vitiated by such unreasonable limitations and illusory safeguards, that, had it been logically carried out, it would have been nugatory, or even subversive of its avowed purpose. Happily the instincts of these zealots. were better than their logic, and preserved them from drawing the practical deductions of their own theory; while their heroic struggle in what to them was the most sacred of all causes, makes it a thankless task to dwell upon their inconsistencies and errors.

NOTE ON THE DUTY OF PERSECUTION

The idea of toleration was understood neither by those who espoused the cause of the Reformation nor by those who opposed it. "Both sides believed that it was necessary to punish or even to burn a man's body to save his soul." Sir James Mackintosh says: "The toleration of heresy was deemed by men of all persuasions to be as unreasonable as it would now be thought to propose the impunity of murder." From a list of authenticated trials for heresy drawn

up by Bishop Stubbs at the request of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts (1881-1883), it appears that, beginning with Wyclif, and ending with William Balowe, who was burned in 1466, more than one hundred and twenty persons were tried for heresy; and the number of those who were thus tried was probably far in excess of this. "Everywhere the dominant party, whichever it might be, forbade, and that in most cases under pain of death, the practice of any religion except that of the dominant party. Those who clave to the old religion forbade the practice of the new; and the professors of the new doctrines, the moment they had the power, forbade the practice of the old. Under Edward and Elizabeth the standard of belief was changed, so changed that only a few extreme sectaries were now in danger of the flames. But the difference simply was that the line was drawn at a different point. Those who went beyond that point were burned by those who, a few years before, might have been burned themselves."-Freeman. In the reign of Elizabeth, Hallam distinguishes five stages or degrees in restraint on religious liberty. Here is the persecutor's ladder, as it has been termed: (1) The regeneration of a test of conformity to the established religion as a condition of exercising offices of public trust. (2) Restraint of the free promulgation of opinions, especially through the press. (3) Prohibition of the open exercise of religious worship. (4) Prohibition of even private acts of devotion, or private expression of opinion. (5) Enforcement by legal penalties of conformity to the Established Church, or an abjuration of heterodox tenets." "The statutes of Elizabeth's reign," he adds, "comprehended every one of these progressive stages of restraint and persecution.”—National Rights, by D. G. Ritchie, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of St. Andrews, pp. 199, 200, Note A, "Religious Persecution and Toleration; some Historical Illustrations."

NOTE ON THE TOLERANCE OF INDIFFERENCE

What has been said in the preceding chapter on the persecution of the Quakers in Massachusetts furnishes a somewhat striking example of quasi or rather pseudo-toleration. In a tract on liberty of conscience, already referred to, written by Leonard Busher, the author says: "I read that Jews, Christians, and Turks are tolerated in Constantinople,

and yet are peaceable, though so contrary the one to the other. If this be so, how much more ought Christians not to force one another to religion! And how much more ought Christians to tolerate Christians, when as the Turks do tolerate them! Shall we be less merciful than the Turks? or shall we learn the Turks to persecute Christians?" Now the humaneness of the Turk, as compared with that of the Puritans of Massachusetts, is supposed to be illustrated by the treatment to which the Quakeress Mary Fisher was subjected. Persecuted and imprisoned both in Old and New England, she found an asylum in Turkey, and there, under the protection of the Grand Turk, she was unmolested, and left free to propagate her opinions, and enjoy the fullest liberty of prophesying. "This is one of the numerous incidents," says Mr. Fiske (Beginnings of New England, pp. 183, 184), "that on a superficial view of history might be cited in support of the opinion that there has been, on the whole, more tolerance in the Mussulman than in the Christian world. Rightly interpreted, however, the fact has no such implication. In Massachusetts the preaching of Quaker doctrines might (and did) lead to a revolution ; in Turkey it was as harmless as the barking of dogs. Governor Endicott was afraid of Mary Fisher; Mahomet III. was not."

It is said that one of the first papers laid before Charles II. after his restoration was a memorial on behalf of the oppressed Quakers in New England. The result was the despatching of a missive to Governor Endicott and the Court of Massachusetts, commanding them to desist from all further proceedings against the Quakers. Does anybody suppose that Charles cared a single straw whether the Quakers were persecuted or not? The King had the best of reasons for wishing to secure toleration for Catholics, and the securing of toleration for Quakers would, he believed, be one step towards the attaining of this object.

II

The earliest apostles of toleration. We have distinguished from among the early Separatists those who were pioneers in the struggle for religious freedom, and those who may fairly claim to be regarded as the apostles of this doctrine. The latter, at first very few, as time went on and the struggle waxed fiercer, became more and more numerous. Professor Masson thinks that the doctrine of toleration became gradually evolved from persecution and suffering, and those whose experience of the latter was most bitter, and into whose souls the iron entered most deeply, became naturally its most strenuous upholders. A common cause, says Hallam, made toleration the doctrine of the sectaries. "The plea for liberty of conscience has always come most ardently from those to whom it was denied. begged to be tolerated long before they learned to tolerate." 1

Men

Professor Masson holds that the Church of England was more tolerant than the Church of Rome, and Scottish Presbyterianism or Scottish Puritanism was more tolerant (though the reverse is usually asserted) than the Church of England prior to 1640. He adds-and the words are a weighty and most important testimony-"Not to the

1 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 353. "The meaner and more ignoble the party, the more general and comprehensive are its principles, for none but principles of universal freedom can reach the meanest condition. The serf defends the widest philanthropy, for that alone can break his bondage."Bancroft's History, vol. ii. p. 687, revised edition, p. 181.