put to death because they disturbed weaker minds.1 Trajan thought that he who refused to sacrifice to the gods should be punished with death. The Romans also burnt magicians alive, and those aiding them were crucified.2 The Christians in their turn were, in the early centuries, punished as atheists, or as sorcerers, or magicians, or as given to superstition.3

The early Christians on toleration.-Bacon says that the quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen; the reason was, because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief. This may be true as regards large bodies and sects as contrasted with isolated thinkers here and there. The code of Leviticus as to idolaters seems to have been assumed in the early ages of Christianity without any question to be applicable to all ages and circumstances. And it was considered easily adapted to those who were deemed tainted with heresies and dissent. The early Church had an instinctive notion, that there ought to be one faith only, and that variety of customs was a scandal.5 And they all agreed that attendance at church ought to be compulsory, and non-attendance to be punished. Constantine forbade heretics to meet in public or private, to perform acts of religion.7 And all heretical books were to be burnt. The first edict against the Christians ordered every one who refused to offer sacrifice to be burnt alive, and that their churches should be demolished to the foundations. This persecution was carried out with racks and scourges, with iron hooks and red-hot beds, and with all the variety of tortures which fire and steel, savage beasts, and more savage executioners, could inflict on the human body. In the fourth century the Council of Carthage had arrived at the clear conclusion, that all schismatics, who died outside of the Catholic Church, were doomed to eternal fire.10 Here and there, but only fitfully, one of the fathers showed an uncertain glimmering of the doctrine of toleration." It was not to be wondered, that, when the Church 1 Paul. Sent. 5, 23, 17. 2 Ibid. 3 Euseb. b. iv. c. 15; Suet. Nero; Tacit. Ann. b. xv. c. 44. 4 Bac. Ess. 5 Concil. Tolet. IV. c. 2. 6 Bing. Chr. Antiq. b. xvi. c. 8. 7 Euseb. Vit.

Const. iii. 64. 8 A.D. 303, Mosh. Ch. Hist. 9 Gibbon, Rome, c. 16. 10 1 Palmer on Church, 13. 11 Whitby on Heretics; Jer. Taylor's Lib. Proph.

succeeded to civil power, and obtained the ear of kings and emperors, the principle should be acted on of the burning of heretics, and at a later stage of varied penalties for nonconformity and of disabilities of many kinds. The Theodosian code by means of penalties and disabilities attacked those who worshipped with pagan rites in temples their false gods.' The great champion of the doctrine of pursuing heretics with fire and sword, and for thereby propagating Church doctrines, was St. Augustin, who is generally understood to be the chief instructor of those who considered it the duty of civil governments to compel citizens to become good churchmen. Persecution and intolerance were soon systematically enforced with unhesitating faith as the only true mode of governing men. Near the close of the fourth century bishops began publicly to preside at the execution of heretics.2 And they long felt it a point of duty and honour to deliver up heretics to be punished by the civil power. And soon after the Inquisition was established in 1208 the Fourth Council of the Lateran enjoined all rulers to swear a public oath, that they would labour earnestly to exterminate heresy. And the Bull of Innocent III. threatened with excommunication any prince, who failed in this duty. The brutality of this spirit was illustrated by the Holy Inquisition in 1568, which sentenced three millions of men, women, and children, of the Netherlands to the scaffold. And so entirely was the spirit of persecution part of the daily life of all forms of religion, that when Protestants had the power they were equally unconscious of the folly and criminality of exterminating their own heretics, forgetful of the situation they themselves had once filled. The right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy was an accepted axiom of most of the Protestant confessions. Luther, Calvin, Beza, and Knox, all treated it as an elementary axiom of faith." When Calvin burned Servetus for his opinions concerning the Trinity, the leading Reformers

1 Theod. Code de Templis. 2 3 Milman, Hist. Christ. 60.

3 It was singular that the laws of Zenghis Khan allowed perfect toleration: A.D. 1206–27.—Gibbon's Rome, c. 64.

42 Motley's Dutch Rep. 155. 5 Neal's Purit. 147; 1 Palmer on the Church, 380; C. Lewis, Infl. Auth. 292; 2 Hallam, Lit. Eur. c. i. § 29; 3 ibid. iii.; 1 Hallam, Const. H. 182.

praised his admirable wisdom and zeal.1 Zuinglius alone seemed to repudiate this favourite dogma of relentless persecution towards the unbelieving.2 The Treaty of Westphalia, after the Thirty Years' War, at last seemed to embody the conviction, that it was scarcely the business of governments to set up one form of religion. And it is usually confessed, that the received doctrine in Christian Europe, till the age of the Reformation, treated religious error as a crime and heresy to be punished like homicide and theft. Conformity-exile, or death, was the alternative.3

English statutes of intolerance before William III. -Before 1539 the bishops and clergy by means of excommunications and other terrors sufficiently potent brought about a kind of uniformity in faith and practice, like their neighbours throughout the world. In that year, after Henry VIII. had consulted the ripest wisdom of convocation, the Act of the Six Articles, called the Bloody Statute, enacted, that those who did not believe certain doctrines laid down, of which transubstantiation, celibacy of the clergy, and auricular confession, were three, would be treated as heretics; and it subjected to imprisonment and fine all those who refused or abstained from communion; and a second offence was declared felony. Various statutes of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, still continuing to deal with the wicked and dangerous practice of seditious sectaries, ended by enacting, that those above the age of sixteen who abstained for a month from attending some church to hear divine service, or who persuaded others not to attend or receive the communion, or who by enticement or allurements, or otherwise, were present at a conventicle under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion, should, after conviction, be committed to prison, there to remain till they made open submission of their conformity, and if they were obstinate for three months more they were to abjure the realm, otherwise to be deemed felons without benefit of clergy.5 Under the Act of James I. any bishop or two justices might call upon any person above eighteen whom they met in the street, or who was passing through the county and unknown, to state on oath, whether he was

1 Mackenzie's Calvin, 79. 21 Lecky, Rat. 420. 3 C. Lewis, Infl. Auth. 292. 4 31 Hen. VIII. c. 14. 5 35 Eliz. c. 1.

a recusant, i. e. neglected to repair to church, and might commit him to prison till the assizes or quarter sessions: and he was then tried, and if he still refused to answer or to take an oath that he detested the pope and other things. he incurred a premunire, that is to say, forfeited all his property, and was liable to imprisonment for life. And to keep or harbour one who neglected to go to church was a ground of forfeiture of 207.1

The Corporation Act of 1661 made it necessary, that all who bore offices of magistracy or places of trust in a corporation should first take three oaths, and if within a year before being elected or chosen they had not taken the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, their election was to be void. 2

The Conventicle Act of 1664, passed at the instance of Lord Clarendon to stop the growing and dangerous practices of seditious sectaries, made every meeting of more than five persons (besides the family of the house) held for religious purposes, and nct in accordance with the liturgy of the Church of England, to be a seditious and unlawful conventicle, and any person taking part in it was punishable by fine or imprisonment, and on a third offence by transportation for seven years to his Majesty's plantations. And if the sheriff did not see them, or at least cause them

1 3 Jas. I. c. 4; R. v Crook, 6 St. Tr. 202; R. v Fell, ibid. 634. This statute was expressly repealed in 1846, 9 & 10 Vic. c. 59, § 1.—In 1660 Bunyan was arrested and imprisoned for seven weeks, then tried on an indictment at Bedford Quarter Sessions, charging him with devilishly and perniciously abstaining from coming to church to hear divine service, and with being a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great_disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom. He was sentenced to prison for three months, and if he did not then attend he was to be banished. The sentence of banishment was never executed, but he was detained in prison from sessions to sessions. At last he was released by the Bishop of Lincoln on taking two bail that he would conform in half a year.

So Baxter, after being in prison six months, was released owing to a flaw in the commitment.-1 Baxter, Works, 105.

2 13 Ch. II. st. 2, c. 1.-This Act was aimed at Nonconformists, whose chief strength lay in towns. After 1715 if the unqualified person entered into office without the objection being taken he must be amoved within six months, in order to void the election.-5 Geo. I. c. 4. No penalty, however, was incurred beyond avoiding the

election.

to be actually embarked for that destination, he forfeited 401. And at any moment the justices might break open the house where such conventicle was held.' A little later even to meet in a field or place was subject to the same penalty, and to preach there was to incur a penalty of 201. And every constable who did not give information of such meeting incurred a fine of 57.2 Moreover, in 1665, any person who preached in conventicles or meetings, who came within five miles of a town which sent members to Parliament, or of a parish or place where he had been once parson, and who did not take an oath abhorring the traitorous position of taking up arms against his Majesty, and binding him not to endeavour any alteration of government in Church or State, incurred a penalty of 401.3

In 1673, by the Test Act, all persons holding civil or military offices or places of trust under the Crown must take certain oaths, and also the sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England, within six months after admission to the office. And for neglect the office was avoided, and also penalties incurred; but a few inferior offices were expressly excepted. The doctrine of the law before the Toleration Act, and indeed till 1767, was, that it was one's own fault, if he could not take the sacrament, and his refusal or neglect was no excuse or defence.5 The court said, that to plead that kind of excuse was as idle as for a man to plead that he was a fool, or when he was excommunicated to plead, that that sentence disabled him instead of making it his business to remove the sentence. Thus all dissenters were treated as if they had it in their power to avoid the penalty by taking the sacrament, and were not allowed to set up their scruples as an excuse.

The Toleration Act of 1688.-During the century preceding 1688, divines and philosophers had begun more and more to reflect on the tyranny, absurdity, and impotence of all these statutes of intolerance-a result which was said to be greatly facilitated by the opportunities each rival and discordant sect of Christians had had of oppressing each other alternately. By the invaluable A.D. 1670, 22 Ch. II. c. 1. 3 17 Ch. II. c. 2. 5 (1694) R. v Larwood, 1 L. Raym. 29;

1 16 Ch. II. c. 4. 4 25 Ch. II c. 2. 4 Mod. 269.

2