nor because he thinks that other opinions are as good as his own,
but because his opinions are so real to him that he would not have
anyone else hold them with less reality." — Persecution and Tolerance,
p. 123. " Tolerance is not merely a negative virtue. It is needful
on the part of the Church as an organised body. Tolerance is need-
ful to the individual, for it is the expression of that reverence for
others which forms a great part of the lesson which Christ came to
teach him. It is the means whereby he learns to curb self-conceit,
and submit to the penetrating discipline imposed by Christian love."
—Ibid. p. 137.

- Kothe. See Canon Mozley's fine sermon on " The unspoken
judgment of mankind."



TOLERATION AND KELIGTOUS LIBERTY 361

said, is not only possible, but necessary, the moment
religion is made a matter for the conscience rather than
the magistrate, but impossible the moment it becomes
an affair of the magistrate rather than the conscience.^

The best answer, however, to the assertion that
toleration is created by scepticism is that supplied by
history.

Rise and growth of toleration. — The history
of Independency is to a large extent the history of the
rise and spread of the principle of toleration. By this
it is not implied that it originated within the borders of
Independency. Its origin, strictly speaking, is indeter-
minable. Like the passion for liberty, it is universal as
the mind of man, and old as the first attempt to rivet
fetters upon it. All through the ages the forces that
have contributed to the progress and development of the
world have been making for it.

" Tlioii liast great allies,
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

Still the principle of toleration may be shown to have
had a historic beginning. During the first century, as we
should expect (for surely it may be said that the Christian
Church was founded on toleration), and before the
impulse communicated to His followers by Christ and
His apostles had passed away, toleration and charity or
love were almost synonymous terms, and constituted an

1 Dr. Fairbairn's Religion in History and in the Life of To-day, pp.
229-231.



362 PURITANISM

evidence of Christian discipleship which the heathen
aroimd were unable to resist or gainsay.^

Toleration we find expressly provided for in the Edict
of Milan put fortli by Constantine in conjunction with
Licinius, A.D. 313. This rescript contained far more
than the first edict of toleration published by the Emperor
Galerius. By the latter, Christianity was merely received
into the class of the rcligiones licitce, w^hile this new law
implied the introduction of a universal and unconditional
religious freedom and liberty of conscience — a thing, in
fact, wholly new (Neander). " The rights of man and
the law of nature," says Tertullian, " give everyone the
power of worshipping as he thinks proper, and the religion
of one man neither injures nor benefits another. Eorce is
indeed foreign to religion." So speaks Lactantius, and
Lactantius was tutor to the son of the Emperor Constan-
tine. " Eeligion cannot be compelled, it is by words
rather than wounds that you must bend the will.
Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion.
Our God is the God of all, whether they will it or no ;
but we do not desire that anyone, whether he will or no,
should be compelled to worship Him. Eeligion is the one
region in which liberty has fixed its domicile and home."
Says Athanasius : " It is an evidence that men want
confidence in their own faith when they use force, and
constrain men against their wills. It is the devil's

1 " ^ See liow these Cliristians love one another,' was the just and
striking exclamation of the heathen in the first century. ' There
are no wild beasts so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning
their faith,' was the equally striking, and probably equally just,
exclamation of the heathen in the fourtli century."— Lecky's Ration-
alism in Europe, p. 31 . See entire chajjter on " History of Persecution."



TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 363

method, because there is no truth in him, to work with
hatchet and sword."

Among the earhest advocates of religious liberty was
William of Occam, who was expelled from the Franciscan
order for maintaining, against the pretensions of the
Papacy, that " the Head of the Church and its foundation
is one — Christ alone." The De Monarclda of Dante did
much to clear the air. John Marsiglio of Padua, in 1327,
in his epoch-making book, The Defender of Peace, "advanced
and maintained tenets which, if heard for centuries in
Christendom, had been heard only from obscure and
fanatic heretics, mostly mingled up with wild and
obnoxious opinions."^ These tenets found a prepared
and fruitful soil in the mind of Wyclif, and from them
he elaborated his famous doctrine of the sovereignty of
the people, and the universal priesthood of believers.
The idea of toleration was not, perhaps, explicitly recog-
nised by these early Eeformers, but it was certainly
implied and subsumed in the position which they took up.

The earliest and most explicit statement of the doctrine
of toleration that we have come upon since the first
centuries of the Church is that contained in that first-
born of Protestant creeds, the Augsburg Confession,
which, though drawn up by Melanchthon, was doubtless
drafted under the direction of Luther, and reflects the
opinions of the great Eeformer. In his treatise on the
secular power, and how far obedience is due to it, Luther
says : " Its duty is to secure external peace and order,
and to protect men in their persons and property against

1 Milman's History of Latin CJiristianity, vol. vii. p. 406. See " The
Evolution of Tolerance" in Persecution and Tolerance, pp. 94-97.



364 purjTANiSM

ill-cloers. . . . But God cannot, and will not, allow any
one but Himself to rule the soul. Whenever, therefore,
the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it
encroaches. No one can or shall force another to
believe. Thoughts are toll-free. Heresy is a spiritual
thing which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no
water drown. Body, gold, and goods God has given over
to the emperor ; the heart He has reserved to Himself.
The Church is to be governed with the spoken sword,
the rod of the mouth, which alone touches the conscience.
The civil authority has nothing else than the sword of
the fist and a rod of wood. They differ both as to
ends and means. The end and aim of the Church
is the peace of eternity ; that of the State is peace
on earth."

Hallam rebukes Southey for having declared, in lan-
guage which at least dates after the year of the Spanish
Armada, that " no Church, no sect, no individual even, had
yet professed the principle of toleration," by citing the
Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the harangues of the
Chancellor I'Hospital of France. Hallam calls Jeremy
Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying the first famous plea in
England for toleration in religion. But as we have seen
already the idea had a much earlier origin than this.
" Who shall say," asks Professor Masson, " in the heads
of what stray and solitary men scattered through Europe
in the sixteenth century, nantes rari in gurgite vasto,
some form of the idea, as a purely speculative conception,
may have been lodged ? " Notwithstanding the suc-
cessive struggles which have been waged on its behalf,
religious toleration, or, as it is often called, liberty of



TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 365

conscience, " the noblest innovation of modern times," ^
was of slow growth, and not till the close of the seven-
teenth 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 Eefor-
niation 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. " A
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

^ " The principles of tolerance are no modern discovery," says the
Bishop of Peterborougli, Persecution and Tolerance, p. 97. "Men
had always known that truth [that the compelhng of a man to any-
thing against his own conscience is a doing evil], but it was not
always convenient to act up to their knowledge," p. 114. Dr. Creigli-
ton does not, we think, give sufficient weight to the consideration
that this truth had not only become eclij^sed, but had actually been
lost, through the obfuscation of men's consciences, and through the
influence of inherited traditional belief, and that in the seven-
teenth century it was practically rediscovered.



366 PUKITANISM

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 free-
dom 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 con-
spicuously 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
w^ere better than their logic, and preserved them from
drawing the x^ractical 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



TOLERATION AND RELICIIOUS LIBERTY 367

up by Bishop Stiibbs at tlie re(|uest 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, which-
ever 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 draAvn
at a different point. Those who went beyond that point were burned
by those Avho, a few years before, might have been burned them-
selves." — 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 exer-
cising 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 Churcli, or an abjura-
tion 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, i^p. 199,
200, Note A, " Religious Persecution and Toleration ; some His-
torical Illustrations."



NOTE ON THE TOLERANCE OF INDIFFERENCE

What has been said in the preceding chaj^ter 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,



368 PURITANISxM

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 Cliristians 1 " 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 inci-
dents," says Mr. Fiske {Beginnings of Neio 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. Eightly interpreted, how-
ever, 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.



TOLERATION AND IlELIGIOUS LIBERTY 369

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 ex-
perience 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 ahvays come
most ardently from those to whom it w^as denied. Men
begged to be tolerated long before they learned to
tolerate." ^

Professor Masson holds that the Church of England
was more tolerant than the Church of Eome, 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

^Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 353. "The
ineaiier and more igiioljle the party, the more general and comi)re-
liensive are its principles, for none hut principles of universal
freedom can reach the meanest condition. Tlie serf defends the
widest philanthropy, for that alone can hreak his bondage."—
Bancroft's History, vol. ii. p. 687, revised edition, p. 181.
24



370 PURITANISM

Church of England, however, nor to English Puritanism
at large, does the honour of the first perception of the
full principle of liberty of conscience, and its first asser-
tion in English speech, belong. That honour has to be
assigned, I believe, to the Independents generally and to
the Baptists in particular." -^ The first organised Baptist
Church was that formed by Smyth and Helwys at Am-
sterdam in 1611. It consisted of forty-two members,
and the Declaration of Faith which they put forth
is truly remarkable, not less for its advanced position
in regard to religious liberty, than for the Arminiau
and anti-Calvinistic character of its doctrines. In a
revised and fuller confession published afterwards by
Smyth, the position is taken up : " That the magis-
trate, by virtue of his office, is not to meddle with
religion or matters of conscience, nor to compel men
to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but to
leave the Christian religion to the free conscience of
everyone, and to meddle only with political matters,
— namely, injustice and wrong of one against another,
such as murder, adultery, theft, and the like ; because
Christ alone is the King and Lawgiver of the Church
and of the conscience." It is believed, says Pro-
fessor Masson, that this is the first expression of the
absolute principle of liberty of conscience in the public
articles of any body of Christians. The first formulated
expression in a confession adopted and put forth by

1 Masson's Milton, vol. iii. p. 99. We think that the Bishop of
Peterborough scarcely exhibits his usual candour when {Persecution
and Tolerance, p. 114) he says : "Tolerance was not the doctrine of
any sect or party." It certainly was the doctrine of the In-
dependents.



TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 371

a particular Church it may be, and probably is, but
we have evidence that places it beyond a doubt that
this principle was apprehended and acted upon by a
body of Christians long anterior to the period here
referred to.

This was the poor and despised sect of Dutch
Anabaptists, which first appeared in Holland about
the year 1522. Afterwards they became known as
Mennonites, after Menno Simons, of Friesland, a leader
who acquired great influence over them ; but the name
Anabaptist still survived, and the name Mennonites
gradually disappeared. They contended resolutely for
the right to enjoy perfect liberty of conscience, and
held that there ought to be no alliance between the
Church and the State. But even in Holland, where
religious freedom was cradled, and realised and enjoyed
as in no other country, these poor Mennonites did not
escape persecution. They were fortunate enough,
however, to obtain the protection of William of Orange.
This broad-minded ruler wrote to the magistrates of
Middelburg : " We declare to you that you have no
right to trouble yourselves with any man's conscience
so long as nothing is done to cause private harm or
scandal. We thereupon expressly ordain that you desist
from molesting these Baptists, from offering hindrance
to their handicraft and daily trade by which they can
earn bread for their wives and children, and that you
permit them henceforth to open their shops and to do
their work according to the custom of former days. Be-
ware, therefore, of disobedience and of resistance to the
ordinance which we now establish." This had the effect



372 PURITANISM

of quelling the persecution of Anabaptists in the Dutch
Eepublic. About the year 1575a number of Anabaptists
— about twenty-seven — who had made their way to
England, were apprehended in a private house in London,
where they had assembled for worship, and tried for
heresy before the Bishop's Court. Nine of them were \
banished, and two were publicly burned alive at Smith-
field.-^ Allusion has been already made to the church at
Norwich which Eobert Browne succeeded in gathering,
the main part of which was composed of refugees from
the Netherlands, who at that time formed the majority
of the population of Norwich. Among them were many
Anabaptists,

The judgment of Professor Masson, that the honour of
the first perception of the full principle of liberty of con-
science has to be assigned to the Independents generally,
and to the Baptists in particular, calls, we think, for some
measure of revision in the light of what has been said
about the Anabaptists of Holland. But it needs also to
be modified in view of another person, who Professor
Masson, indeed, mentions with honour in this con-
nection, but whose real position he seems scarcely
to apprehend. Yet it is a fact that the full prmciple of
liberty of conscience had found a strenuous defender and
advocate in the erratic and notorious founder of the
Brownist sect.^ Dr. Dexter holds that Kobert Browne

1 Motley's Rise of the Dutch liepvMir, vol. iii. p. 206; ]3rau(lt's
History of the Reformation, bk. xi. i)p. 588, 589 ; Need, vol. i. p. 228 ;
Froude, vol. xi. p. 43, ^Qeante, p. 19.

2 Ante, pp. 128, 192, Mr. Taylor Innes, in liis valuable Historical
Handbook on Church and State, p. 173, says : "The only controversialists
>vho held the modern doctrines of toleration were the Brownists and



TOLERATION AND EELIGIOUS LIBEIITY 373

is entitled to the proud pre-eminence of having been the
first writer claiming to state and defend, in the English
tongue, the true and now accepted doctrine of the relation
of the magistrate to the Church. This he s[>eaks of, but
more doubtfully, as " the true modern doctrine of tolera-
tion and of liberty of conscience."

The principle of religious liberty is almost logically
bound up with the theory of the independency of parti-



cular Churches. Hallam says : '' The Congregational
scheme leads to toleration as the National Church
scheme is adverse to it, for manifold reasons which the
reader will discover." " This being the principle of some
of the early Protestant movements that went beyond
Luther, Zwinglius, or Calvin, and perplexed these Ee-
formers, little w^onder that flashes of the fullest doctrine
of liberty of conscience should be found among the records
of those movements, whether on the Continent or in
England. Little wonder, either, that the principle of
toleration should be discernible in the writings of Eobert
Browne, the father of the crude English Independency
of Elizabeth's reign." - But it is one thing, says Professor
Masson, to hold a principle vaguely or latently, as impli-
cated in a principle already avowed, and another thing to
extricate the implied principle, and kindle it, as on the
top of a lighthouse, on its own account.^ He shows that

Barrowists, so called from their founders, whose position was like that
afterwards known as Independents." Bail He, tlie famous chronicler
of the doings of the Westminster Assenddy of Divines, makes it a
re2)roach against Browne that he held the toleration doctrine.

1 Hallam's Constitutional History of England, vol. ii. p. 102n.

2 Masson's Milton, vol. iii. p. 100.

^ The difference which Professor Masson here notes is a very im-



374 PURITANISM

the early Separatists, as a whole, lagged behind Browne,
and looked with lively fear on the conclusions he had
reached. They wanted toleration for themselves, and
perhaps a general mildness in the administration of
religious affairs, but they could not rid themselves of the