RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 



343 



statement "alter, devise, or establish nothing in re- 

 ligion otherwise than as Christ hath appointed," but 

 may "use his lawful power lawfully for the further- 

 ance of Christ's kingdom and laws. . . It is true, they 

 have no power against the laws, doctrine, and religion 

 of Christ, but for the same, if their power be of God, 

 they may use it lawfully and against tlie contrary." 

 A government holding what he thought to be the 

 truth, in his judgment, was authorized to maintain it 

 by force. Macaulay scarcely caricatured this theory 

 when he said: "The doctrine which, from the first 

 origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all 

 bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words 

 and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this : 

 I am in the right and you are in the wrong. When 

 you are the stronger you ought to tolerate me ; for it 

 is your duty to tolerate the truth. But when I am the 

 stronger, I shall persecute you ; for it is my duty to 

 persecute error." But the light was struggling with 

 the darkness. It has been claimed that Robert 

 Browne, from whom the Independents received the 

 nickname of Brownists, in 1582 affirmed the doctrine 

 of complete religious liberty. The language of 

 Browne is not so unambiguous as could be desired, 

 and he himself returned to the Established Church, 

 and his doctrine, whatever it had been, received no 

 further support from him. A more decisive and out- 

 spoken publication was issued in 1614, bearing the 

 title, Knigioia Pence: or, a flea for Lilterhi of Con- 

 tcieiice, presented In Kiiitj Jumes aitd_ the lligh Court 

 of I'trlitimrnt In/ Leonard Jiusher, citizen nf Lmntlnn. 

 ]>II>IHT was a Baptist, and in this attitude he was not 

 singular among his brethren, for already in 1011 a 

 Baptist Confession of Faith had been put forth con- 

 taining this declaration: "The magistrate is not to 

 meddle with religion or matters of conscience, nor 

 compel nien to this or that form of religion ; because 

 Christ is King and Law-giver of church and con- 

 science." 



The next representative of the principle is Roger 

 Williams, who was banished from Massachusetts in 

 1638 for maintaining it, and who has the honor of 

 being the first legislator to make it part of the funda- 

 mental law of a state. Bancroft, in his History of 

 the United Ktatex, represents him as the first asserter 

 of the doctrine, an honor which cannot be claimed for 

 him in the light of history. He was a stalwart de- 

 fender of the principle against Rev. John Cotton, who 

 assailed it. The growth of the American colonies was 

 marked by a vigorous growth of sentiment favorable 

 to the fullest civil ami religious lilierty and a pas- 

 ftionatn attachment to it. Under the lead of Franklin, 

 whose liberality in several directions placed him in ad- 

 vance of his age, and of Jefferson, who is justly 

 venerated as the father of religious liberty in Vir- 

 ginia, this became the prevailing spirit of American 



thought. 



The legislative history of religious liberty is a his- 

 tory of crimes against it, and of painfully slow con- 

 cessions to its spirit. Holland was the first of modern 

 states to establish the policy of toleration, which is 

 the nearest approach to religious liberty known to 

 Europe. Queen Mary of England, the Roman 

 Catholic, is sadly immortalized as the " Bloody Mary ' ' 

 for her ^sanguinary persecution of Protestants. But 

 Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant, made a sanguinary 

 persecution of Roman Catholics ; and she and her 

 successors until the Revolution of 16N8 Cromwell ex- 

 cepted kept the Protestant nonconformists under the 

 pressure of the most abominable penal laws. The 

 attempt to impose Episcopacy upon Presbyterian 

 Scotland more than once brouglit the kingdom to the 

 brink'of civil war. The original Toleration Act, of 

 Drudgingly passed and loaded with invidious 

 restrictions and exceptions, has been, by gradual 

 amendment, made so ample in its provisions that, 

 while its original theory is unretracted. it practically 

 amounts to entire religious freedom. On the conti- 



nent of Europe toleration is the general rule, but 

 there are some exceptions. France now tends towards 

 a complete secularization of the state. The Spanish 

 constitution provides for toleration, but the adminis- 

 tration locally falls short of redeeming the promise. 

 The same is true of Austria and of some of the Ger- 

 man states. The gloomy autocracy of Russia is as 

 severe and unbending in the ecclesiastical as in the 

 civil sphere. 



A New World was needed for the full growth of the 

 new idea. For both the theory and the practice of 

 religious liberty and of religious equality we must 

 look to these United States, of which the first to pro- 

 fess and act upon it was, as we have seen, Rhode 

 Island. Maryland was founded on a policy of liberal 

 toleration, but the charter contained no sufficient guar- 

 anty of it, and the subsequent legislation of the colony 

 at one time leaned to a contrary policy. Pennsyl- 

 vania was the next in succession to grant liberty of 

 conscience, which was essentially involved in the 

 Quaker theory of religion professed by its founder. 

 \ irginia had originally an established church with 

 some of the intolerance of the mother church of Eng- 

 land at that period, but under the combined action of 

 religious dissent and of religious indifference its power 

 was curtailed, and when the State constitution was 

 formed, its Bill of Rights became the recognized creed 

 of civil and religious liberty for all the States. It 

 was copied in other State constitutions and in the first 

 ten amendments to the Constitution of the United 

 States. Massachusetts, under her colonial charter, 

 was as intolerant as any Roman Catholic state. We 

 have seen Cotton defending a persecuting policy 

 against Roger Williams. \V hen Gov. Dudley died. 

 in 1653, there were found in his pocket some lines of 

 verse, which included the following : 



" Let men of God, in courts and churches, watch 

 O'er such as do a toleration hatch, 

 Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice, 

 To poison all with heresy and vice. 



If men lie left and otherwise combine, 

 My epitaph's, ' I died uo libertine.' " 



When Cromwell was proposing toleration in Eng- 

 land, a synod in Massachusetts protested against the 

 measure as "licentious." Nathaniel Ward, pastor at 

 Ipswich, published in England his Cobbler of Ayawam, 

 fiercely denouncing it. "I lived," he says, "in a 

 city where a Papist preached in one church, a Lu- 

 theran in another, a Calvinist in a third ; a Lutheran 

 one part of the day, and a Calvinist the other, in the 

 same pulpit. The religion of that place was but 

 motley and meagre and their affections leoparu-like." 

 He insisted on the old maxim, that religion is ignt 

 probationis a test of fire. It is an interesting study 

 to trace the successive steps by which from this condi- 

 tion of public sentiment Massachusetts became the 

 home of religious liberty and equality. The principle 

 is at length rooted in the convictions of the American 

 people. With every advance in popular government, 

 in the Old World as in the New, the emancipation of 

 the intellect and the conscience keeps rjace with the 

 general progress. 



The constitutional defences of religious liberty in 

 the United States are not as complete as they are 

 popularly supposed to be. The Constitution of the 

 United States provides (Article I. of Amendments) 

 that "Congress shall make no law respecting an estab- 

 lishment of rejigion or prohibiting the free exercise 

 thereof." This, however, imposes no restriction upon 

 the States, and it is well known that at the time of the 

 adoption of this article there were in more than one 

 State religious establishments. Connecticut, in 1818, 

 disestablished her Congregational churches. Massa- 

 chusetts followed, but not till 1833. The State consti- 

 tutions all contain provisions guarding the rights of 

 conscience and establishing religious equality. But 

 State constitutions are amended with facility, and, aa 



