had the strength, has enacted itself and maintained itself as the religion of the state as long as it could. Luther was no tolerationist. Calvin procured the burning of Michael Servetus, and wrote a book to prove that it is lawful for the civil magistrate to punish heretics. Melancthon, the meek and gentle Melancthon, wrote a short work justifying the burning of Servetus. The Presbyterians in Scotland, led on by John Knox, resorted to the most unheard-of violence towards Catholics; and the history of the Calvinists in France and the Dutch States, as well as in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, proves that the disciples inherited the spirit of their master, whose religion, as an eminent anticatholic writer has said, was founded on hate as its principle. The Church of England stands preeminent in the annals of intolerance, and has tolerated liberty only in proportion as compelled to do so by the multiplication in the nation of dissenters, infidels, latitudinarians, and the indifferent.

No Protestant country on earth guaranties or ever has guarantied religious liberty. England does not do it, never has done it. Holland does not do it, never has done it. Prussia and the Protestant German States, though at times tolerant, do not do it, never have done it. Denmark tolerates no religion but that of the state, and prohibits by law a Protestant from renouncing his Protestant faith. The same may be said of Sweden. Protestant Switzerland has never done it, does not do it now, but seeks at the present moment, by its armed myrmidons, by fire and sword, to prevent the Catholic Cantons. from worshipping God according to the faith of their fathers, a faith which was that of William Tell, of Arnold von Winkelried, and the whole band of patriots who won and defended Swiss freedom.

In this country we are told there is an exception. Is it so? Episcopalianism established itself in Virginia, and maintained itself there till the time of the American Revolution, with its usual intolerant spirit. In Maryland it overthrew religious liberty, and made the Protestant religion the religion of the land. In Massachusetts, Puritanism was the religion of the state, bored the ears and tongues of dissenters, imprisoned, branded, exiled, hung men and women for their religious belief. In the very city in which we write, the public authorities whipped and hung the Quakers, men and women. At the breaking out of the American Revolution, there was not one of the American Colonies that fully and unequivocally guarantied religious liberty,

the full liberty of conscience, unless we must except Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. The oldest State Constitution in the Union that guaranties freedom of conscience is the Constitution of Vermont, framed by men who were not remarkable for their attachment to any form of religion. And even now there are quite a number of States which give a constitutional preference to the Protestant faith over the Catholic. We may be mistaken, but we have a very strong impression that there was not in 1775 a single Colony that gave full liberty of professing and practising their religion to Roman Catholics, or that gave Catholics and Protestants equal political rights and privileges. Up to 1776, Protestantism in this country, then, had not established religious liberty.

But has she not done it since? No: for equal religious liberty is not even yet guarantied to all, throughout the country. Congress, it is true, can pass no law establishing a religion, or touching the subject of religion; but the States can, whenever they choose, and just such laws as they choose. If religious liberty is, to a considerable extent, guarantied to us, it is not owing to the liberality of any Protestant sect, but to the multiplicity of sects, which imposes on each the necessity of tolerating the others as the condition of being itself tolerated, and to the prevalence, among the leading and distinguished statesmen and politicians, of infidelity and religious indifference. There was, at the epoch of the Revolution, no Protestant denomination that had sufficient vitality to be intolerant. Religion was not then the dominant passion. Men's minds were absorbed in the contest for national independence, and were. more intent on winning earth than heaven. Since then, the energy of the nation has taken an industrial, not a religious direction, and men have been more concerned about the conditions of making money than of serving God. The religious liberty we enjoy we do not owe to Protestantism, and if the Protestant sects could but unite and act in concert, we, as Catholics, would, before the year came round, have no longer a political or civil existence in the land of our birth. What absurdity, then, for Protestants to pretend that they are the friends and champions of religious liberty!

Every year we hear our Puritan fathers eulogized as friends of religious liberty, as having been animated with a profound conviction of the rights of conscience, and as having abandoned all, country, home, friends, and made themselves pilgrims,-crossed the boisterous ocean, braved the dangers, per

ils, hardships, privations of a savage world, that they might found a free state, and secure to man the freedom of conscience. All very fine, and sounds admirably on "Forefathers' Day," or in a fulsome Fourth of July oration from some Yankee schoolmaster, pettifogger, or demagogue, but without even a shadow of truth. Toleration, much more religious liberty, save for their own form of faith and worship, they detested. They united church and state, and one could not be a freeman unless orthodox in his faith and a church communicant. The severest laws were enacted against what these self-styled orthodox called heresy. Heavy penalties were enacted against any one who should harbour or give a meal of victuals to a Quaker, Adamite, or a priest (Roman Catholic); and a governor of Massachusetts actually set a price upon the head of Father Rasles, a Catholic missionary to the Indians, and men were found to murder him near Norridgewock, in what is now the State of Maine.

Nor was this intolerance the result of popular ebullition. It was openly avowed, was defended, adopted, and acted on with design, as a settled and incontrovertible principle. One of the old governors of the Plymouth Colony actually grows poetic on its beauties, and puts it into rhyme :

"Let men of God in court and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch,

Lest that ill bird bring forth a cockatrice,

To poison all the land with heresy and vice."

Old John Cotton, the first minister of the First Church in Boston, denounced toleration as an "invention of the devil," and the learned Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, shows manifestly enough that he was of John Cotton's way of thinking; and if any proof were necessary of a fact so notorious as the inveterate hostility of our Puritan fathers to religious liberty, we may find it in the little work the title of which stands at the head of this article, a work written by a Puritan clergyman in New England, in 1645, twenty-five years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The work is quite at curiosity in its way, and the author appears to have been a leading man during his residence in the Colony. We copy the short notice of him prefixed by Mr. Pulsifer to the edition before us.

"The Reverend Nathaniel Ward, the writer of the following work, was born at Haverhill, England, in 1570. Of this town his father was a clergyman. He was educated at Cambridge,

studied and practised law, travelled on the Continent, afterwards commenced the study of divinity, became a preacher of the Gospel, and was settled at Standon, in Hertfordshire. He was a strong friend of the early settlers of New England before the elder Winthrop's coming over. At a General Court of the Massachusetts Company, held in London, on Wednesday the 25th of November, 1629, Mr. Whyte did recomend Mr. Nathaniel Ward of Standon to be admitted to the freedom of the Company. He was ordered before the Bishop, Dec. 12, 1631, to answer for his non-conformity. Being forbidden to preach, he embarked, in April, 1634, for this country. He arrived here in June, and was settled as pastor of the church at Ipswich, or Aggawam, the same year. By reason of indisposition, he was, at his own request, in 1636, released from his engagement with the church there. However thus disengaged, he preached often during the time he remained in the Colony. The necessities of the infant commonwealth called for his time, talents, and acquirements. Nor did he refuse. Willing to do the good which he might, he lent a ready and efficient hand to the formation of our Legal Code. He was appointed by the General Court, March 12, 1638, on a committee to draw up a system of laws, for the consideration of the freemen. The same legislative authority, May 13, 1640, granted him six hundred acres of land for his service, at Pentucket, afterwards called Haverhill. He preached the election sermon, 1641, in which he advanced several things that savored more of liberty, than some of the magistrates were prepared to approve. The same year, Oct. 7, 'The Govern' and m' Hauthorne were Desired to speake to m' Ward, for a coppey of the liberties, and of the Capital lawes to bee transcribed, and sent to the severall townes.' He wrote The Simple Cobler in 1645. In this year, May 25, he was on a committee to draw up a Body of Liberties, which were published in 1648, being the first printed volume of the kind in this Colony. Though greatly assisted by Joseph Hills and others in the composition and arrangement of so important a work, yet he appears to have been a principal agent in its accomplishment. He sold his interest at Haverhill, Nov. 25, 1646, to John Eaton, for £1,200. Between this date and the 6th of January following, he returned to England. On June 30th, 1647, he preached before the House of Commons, and the same year published The Simple Cobler. He was afterwards settled in the ministry at Shenfield, near Brentwood, where he died in 1653, in his eighty-third year.

Fuller, in his Worthies of England, speaking of him, says, that he, following the counsel of the poet,

"Ridentem dicere verum

Quis vetat?"

"What doth forbid but one may smile,

And also tell the truth the while?"

hath in a jesting way, in some of his books, delivered much smart truth of the present times.' Dr. Mather, in his Magnalia, remarks of him,' He was the author of many composures full of wit and sense; among which, that entitled The Simple Cobler (which demonstrated him to be a subtil statesman) was most considered.' The same author adds, that some famous persons of old thought it a greater glory to have it enquired, why such a one had not a statue erected for him? than to have it enquired, why he had? If it be enquired, why this our St. Hilary hath among our Lives no statue erected for him? let that enquiry go for part of one.' And in the Remarkables of Increase Mather, he observes, 'An hundred witty Speeches of our Celebrated Ward, who called himself The Simple Cobler of Agawam, [and over whose Mantel-piece in his House, by the way, I have seen those three Words Engraved, SOBRIE, JUSTE, PIE, and a Fourth added, which was LÆTE:] have been reported; but he had one Godly Speech, that was worth 'em all; which was, I have only Two Comforts to Live upon; The one is in the Perfections of CHRIST; The other is in the Imperfections of all CHRISTIANS."" - pp. iii. vi.

As a specimen of the views of Puritans generally on the subject of religious toleration, we quote at some length. After some remarks on the general confusion of the times, especially as regarded England, then in a state of rebellion against the crown, and the jarring of sects and parties, the Simple Cobler proceeds :

"The next perplexed Question, with pious and ponderous men, will be: What should bee done for the healing of these comfortlesse exulcerations. J am the unablest adviser of a thousand, the unworthiest of ten thousand; yet J hope J may presume to assert what follows without just offence.

"First, such as have given or taken any unfriendly reports of us New-English, should do well to recollect themselves. We have beene reputed a Colluvies of wild Opinionists, swarmed into a remote wildernes to find elbow-roome for our phanatick Doctrines and practises: J trust our diligence past, and constant sedulity against such persons and courses, will plead better things for us. J dare take upon me, to bee the Herauld of New-England so farre, as to proclaime to the world, in the name of our Colony, that all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other Enthusiasts, shall have free Liberty to keep away from us, and such as will come to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better.

Secondly, J dare averre, that God doth no where in his word tolerate Christian States, to give Tolerations to such adversaries of his Truth, if they have power in their hands to suppresse them. "Here is lately brought us an extract of a Magna Charta, so