And when, nearly a hundred years later, the first act of toleration was passed in modern times, it was not as a concession of justice and right, but a grudging dole extorted by clamor too instant for resistance.1

1 It is in place, as of interest, to here note that' this principle is still dominant in Europe, with but small exceptions. The only country where religious liberty in the American sense obtains, is Ireland. Up to 1869 the Church of England was established in Ireland, the people being "forced to support a religion professed only by a very small minority." In that year the Church was disestablished, the Regium Donum to the Presbyterians and Catholic endowment of Maynooth were discontinued, and all churches were put on a footing of perfect equality before the law. On the continent, Switzerland approaches nearest to the United States. The Constitution of 1874 declares the freedom of conscience and worship to be inviolable, and that no one can be compelled to accept or support a religion or be punished on account of religion. At the same time the constitution excludes Jesuits and forbids establishment of convents and religious orders, while each canton has its own established Church controlled by the civil magistrate.

(A very full statement of present European attitudes on this subject is contained in a pamphlet by Philip Schaff on "Religious Liberty," in the publications of the American Historical Association for 1886-1887.)

III

COLONIAL BEGINNINGS

It is thus evident that, at the period when American colonization began, the Church and State in Europe were substantially of one mind as to this fundamental principle, that the prosperity of both depended upon a union more or less intimate and vital. To but very few individuals had the thought of true liberty occurred, while in no country had even a grudging toleration of other than the State-Church been made the rule of law.

We need not be surprised, then, to find the most of the colonists in hearty sympathy with that principle. Some of them, indeed, had suffered through its application; but in their view that suffering was a consequence, not of a vicious principle, but of a wicked application of a principle which was very right and necessary. These men had no doubt as to the propriety of a legal insistence upon a prescribed form of worship, supposing that form to be the true form of worship. The impropriety and wrong of persecution were to be decided, not by any inherent vice of persecution itself, but by the character of the doctrine persecuted. If the doctrine were false then persecution of it were justified. If the doctrine were true, persecution became wicked. Thus, to the minds of the fathers of Massachusetts it was clear, both that the English authorities were criminal in persecuting them, and that they were right in their measures against the Brownes and Mrs. Hutchinson; because they, both as persecuted and as persecutors, represented the truth. 1

It is very true that the Pilgrim fathers, landing on the 1 Fisher, Colonial Era.

"stern and rock-bound coast" of New England, sought and obtained "freedom to worship God." But the usual understanding of Mrs. Hemans's famous lines, that they desired to establish anything like a general religious liberty, is very far from the truth. Their conscious desire was freedom for themselves, never dreaming of extending an equal freedom to such as differed from them in religious opinion; though to the honor of the Pilgrims it should be noted, that they were afterward far more lenient and tolerant toward dissentients than were their neighbors of Massachusetts, and that they never were guilty of great harshness.

To the early leaders of Massachusetts, especially the religious leaders, toleration of dissent from the "established order" of religious worship was as sedition' in the state and sin against God. John Cotton declared that "it was Toleration that made the world anti-Christian." There are many choice specimens of this repressive spirit in Nathaniel Ward's (1645) "Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America." "I take upon me," he says, "to proclaim to all Familists, Antinomians (&c.), to keep away from us; and such as will come, to be gone; the sooner the better.” Polipiety (a variety of sects) is the greatest impiety in the world." One other specimen of the Cobler's spirit should not fail of quotation, "He that is willing to tolerate any unsound opinion, that his own may be tolerated, though never so sound, will for a need hang God's Bible at the Devil's girdle."

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This sentiment showed a marvellous tenacity, very slowly yielding to the influences of more liberal thought; and so late as 1673 President Oakes, 2 of Harvard College, said in an election sermon, "I look upon unbounded Toleration as the first-born of all abominations."

There is to the mind of to-day something of amazement at the process by which these men justified their harsh measures. When Sir Richard Saltonstall, by far the broadest-minded

1 Force, Historical Tracts.

2 Felt, Ecclesiastical History of New England, II, 504-506.

among the early Puritans, remonstrated against the Boston persecutions, on the ground that by such proceedings "many are made hypocrites," Wilson and Cotton replied: "Better be hypocrites than profane persons! There is a great difference between God's inventions and men's inventions. We compel none to men's inventions." Cotton, answering Cotton. Williams's "Bloody Tenent," quite outdoes himself: "It is not right to persecute any for conscience' sake rightly informed; for in persecuting such Christ Himself is persecuted in them. For an erroneous and blind conscience (even in fundamental and weighty points) it is not lawful to persecute any, till after admonition once or twice. . . . The word of God in such things is so clear, that he cannot but be convinced in conscience of the dangerous error of his way, after once or twice admonition wisely and faithfully dispensed. If such a man, after such admonition, shall still persist in the error of his way and be punished, he is not persecuted for cause of conscience, but for sinning against his own conscience." The arrogance of spiritual inquisition and tyranny could hardly go farther than that in specious defence of its principles.

The powerful presence of such principles has to be constantly noticed in the early history of New England, operative with more or less strictness and severity in all the colonies, except Rhode Island, the corner-stone of which was the explicit denial of this very principle; indeed, without the memory of this religious attitude of the New England colonies much of their history through the first century will become an unconnected and unmeaning jumble of events. To attempt to read into that history the settled principles of a later day, or to apologize to posterity for ancestral oppressions, is absurd and confusing. These men need no apology. They stood in their lot, in their own age of the world, working out their problem, blindly and blunderingly enough at times, but surely. The issue, to the light and blessing of which their children came, was quite other than their thought, and yet

1

!irginian

the Religious Liberty of a later day owed much to the sharpcut illustrations furnished by the New England Theocracy.

A similar thing may be said of the establishments in the colonies in the South. In these, notably exhibited in the story of Virginia, the attitude of the civil government toward onformity. the Church and religion was solely due to a secular or political motive, quite different from the Puritan, whose motive was purely religious. The Puritan insisted on conformity because he wanted to make the state religious and to preserve the true religion in its purity. The Virginian insisted on conformity, because the Church was a department of the state, and all dissent was indicative of civil disorder and insubordination. This contrast is very marked; and it is among the things of special interest to note how from these two diverse grounds the question of Church and State came to simultaneous solutions in America, one religious and the other secular. On the one hand, the Puritan experiment demonstrates that the effect of the union is essentially irreligious; while on the other, the Virginian makes it clear that the law of conformity is the fruitful mother of disorder.

hree ystems.

'our groups

Indeed, there were three separate answers coming to speech and exhibition at the same time. Massachusetts set up its theocratic state with its chief interest centred in the Church; Virginia established its civil state, with the Church as a subject member, a conformity to which was the mark of a good citizen; while Rhode Island boldly denied the purposes and premises of both, placing an impassable gulf between the State and the Church, and relegating to the individual conscience and to voluntary association all concern and action touching the Church and religious matters.

These are the three extreme types about which all the other f colonies. colonies may be grouped with more or less of similarity to their several patterns. In the one group with Massachusetts are Plymouth, New Haven, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, with their Congregational establishments. Among these it will be observed that theocratic Massachusetts and New