24: THE SABBATH. 



There is, it must be admitted, a sad logical con- 

 sistency in the mode of action deprecated by Bishop 

 Heber. As long as men hold that there is a hell to be 

 shunned, they seem logically warranted in treating 

 lightly the claims of religious liberty upon earth. They 

 dare not tolerate a freedom whose end they -believe to 

 be eternal perdition. Cruel they may be for the mo- 

 ment, but a passing pang vanishes when compared with 

 an eternity of pain. Unreligious men might call it 

 hallucination, but if I accept undoubtingly the doctrine 

 of eternal punishment, then, whatever society may think 

 of my act, I am self -justified not only in " letting " but 

 in destroying that which I hold dearest, if I believe it 

 to be thereby stopped in its progress to the fires of hell. 

 Hence, granting the assumptions common to both, the 

 persecution of Puritans by High Churchmen, and of 

 High Churchmen by Puritans, was not without a basis 

 in reason. I do not think the question can be decided 

 on a priori grounds, as Bishop Heber seemed to suppose. 

 It is not the abstract wickedness of persecution so much 

 as our experience of its results that causes us to set 

 our faces against it. It has been tried, and found the 

 most ghastly of failures. This experimental fact over- 

 whelms the plausibilities of logic, and renders persecu- 

 tion, save in its meaner and stealthier aspects, in our 

 day impossible. 



The combat over Sunday continued, the Sabbata- 

 rians continually gaining ground. In 1643 the divines 

 who drew up the famous document known as the West- 

 minster Confession began their sittings in Henry VII. 's 

 Chapel. Milton thought lightly of these divines, who, 

 he said, were sometimes chosen by the whim of members 

 of Parliament; but the famous Puritan, Baxter, extolled 

 them for their learning, godliness, and ministerial abili- 

 ties. A journal of their earlier proceedings was kept 



