Religious toleration

“ There still, however, remains this question in connection with religious toleration and religious qualifications—Does a religion one element of which is absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons assigned, assume a relation to the State more or less political? ”

“ Indeed, how should the principle of religious toleration have been acknowledged at first?—It would require stronger arguments than any which I have heard as yet, to prove that men in authority have not a right, involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition. ”

“ Growth of Religious Toleration.—There is no greater evidence of the progress of human society than the growth of religious toleration. In the first hundred years of the Reformation, religious toleration was practically unknown. Indeed, the last fifty years has seen a more rapid growth in this respect than in the previous three hundred. Luther and his followers could not tolerate Calvinists any more than they could {448} Catholics, and Calvinists, on the other hand, could tolerate no other religious opinion. ”

“ This letter contains sentiments, on the subject of religious toleration, which would be highly ornamental, if placed in golden characters, upon the walls of all our churches—“Our fault is, we are apt to be mighty hot upon speculative errors, and break all bounds in our resentments; but we let practical ones pass without remark, if not without repentance! as if a mistake about an obscure proposition of faith were a greater evil, than the breach of an undoubted precept. ”

“ Religious toleration has become a more general article of creed than any other dogma. Besides, I always think, as I have already remarked, of the future cult of all regenerated nations as being different in form from the present religious cults, which have come down to us from a time when folk individualities were repressed. And finally I must emphasize it again, our future religious worship, like those of other nations, will not precede the regeneration but follow it. ”

“ The Reformation and post-Reformation period was marked by that intensity of religious conviction which so often leads to intolerance and religious bigotry. Even those who had suffered persecution themselves followed the very example one would have expected them to avoid as soon as the opportunity occurred. That our spiritual forefathers had an immense influence upon that age, in bringing about a greater spirit of religious toleration, cannot be [67] doubted by any who read carefully the religious history of that time. ”

“ Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. ”

“ But the ground was prepared for the reception of the teachings of such men by the conflicts of men who desired nothing of tolerance and equality and liberty. This is best illustrated by the history of religious toleration. As I said before, religion is essentially conservative and intolerant of heresies. The first effect on religion of that revival and liberation of the spirit of inquiry which we call the Renascence, was to produce not religious toleration, but rather a bitter conflict of mutually intolerant sects. ”

“ For undoubtedly all persecution and oppression of weak consciences, on the score of religious persuasions, are highly unjustifiable upon every principle of natural reason, civil liberty, or sound religion. But care must be taken not to carry this indulgence into such extremes, as may endanger the national church. There is always a difference to be made between toleration and establishment. ”

“ The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor. ”

“ As it was, the Toleration Act established a group of religious bodies whose religious opposition to the Church forced them to support the measures of progress which the Church opposed. With religious forces on the one side and on the other England has escaped the great stumbling-block in the way of nations where the cause of religion has become identified with that of political reaction. ”

“ The Jew and the Unitarian who deny the divinity of Christ are to be put to death. Only so much toleration is granted as is needful to the occasion. And even this toleration is not put upon any other ground than public policy; the forcing of conscience in religion "hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence"; therefore this law is made "to preserve mutual love and amity amongst the inhabitants." The provisions against such offences as blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking and religious disputes precede those for toleration. ”

“ When, in the name of God, he resists education and science, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he robs, tortures, and kills those who differ from him, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes the equal rights of all, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he preaches content to the poor and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful, and makes religious tyranny the handmaiden of political privilege, he blasphemes. ”

“ And yet no religion is preferable to a cruel religion; a religion that curses and oppresses toleration, which is a principle inseparable from Christianity; a religion which buries the Bible, or burns it, and all that read it, and damns all meekness and mercy; a religion that defaces the Creation, cheats, impoverishes, oppresses, and exhausts the human race, and arms its apostles with jails, tortures, gibbets, impostures, and a bloody knife.
Every other complaint of the conspirators might with the same facility and truth be turned upon them. ”

“ Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? ”

“ Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. ”

“ The cause of the atrocities would be gone. The cause is religion.
Why is religious intolerance so much more fierce and bitter than political intolerance? Just because it is religious. It is the supernatural element that breeds the fury. It is the feeling that their religion is divine and all other religions wicked: it is the belief that it is a holy thing to be "jealous for the Lord," that drives men into blind rage and ruthless savagery.
We have to regard two things at once, then: the good influences of Christ's ethics, and the evil deeds of those who profess to be His followers. ”

“ Why not, indeed, amnesty the poor Catholics, who can no longer be dangerous to the national sovereign, or interfere with the policy of the state?
For ourselves, we do not pretend that the church is or ever has been tolerant. She is undeniably intolerant in her own order, as the law, as truth is intolerant, though she does not necessarily require the state to be intolerant. She certainly is opposed to what the nineteenth century calls religious liberty, which, we have seen, is simply the liberty of infidelity or irreligion. ”

“ Intolerance has been the greatest hindrance to true progress in every period of time; yet under the sable cloak of perverted zeal for religion, nations while boasting of their civilization, and professed ministers of the gospel of Christ, have stained the pages of the world's history with the record of such unholy deeds of persecution as to make the heavens weep. In this respect, so-called Christianity ought to bow its head in shame before the record of even pagan toleration. ”

“ It should be the fervent prayer of all good men that the evil spirit of religious hatred and intolerance, which on the one hand prompted the gunpowder plot, and which on the other has ever since made it the occasion of reproach and persecution of an entire sect of professing Christians, may be no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclusiveness and intolerance, none of the older sects can safely reproach each other ”

“ A somewhat careful study of the rise and progress of all religions, and of all religious sects, convinces us that bigotry, intolerance, and persecution are alike common to all whenever they hold absolute power, and that in this respect the Catholics are no worse than others. ”

“ Over the course of the subsequent fifteen centuries, the simple, indubitable and evident truth, that the professing of Christianity is incompatible with readiness to commit any kind of violence, even murder, at the will of others, has been so concealed from people, and has so weakened the sincerity of the Christian religious sentiment, that for generation after generation people, nominally professing Christianity, have lived and died, permitting murders, participating in murders, committing them and profiting by them. ”

“ When religion has been dwarfed into these inanities the men who deem themselves its only orthodox votaries, and scorn all others as "lax" and "latitudinarian," are not only ready to [Pg 474] persecute every genuine teacher of righteousness, but even to murder the Christ Himself. They come to think that falsehood and cruelty cease to be criminal when practised in the cause of religious intolerance.
Against all such dwarfing perversion of the conceptions of the essential service which man owes to God the prophets were called forth to be in age after age the energetic remonstrants. ”

“ Nor are intolerance and persecution to be laid exclusively at the door of any one religion. In Protestant countries, in England and Scotland, the persecution and torture of alleged witches is one of the most painful instances of the cruelties into which men can be led by loyalty to their religious convictions. And Mohammedanism vividly taught men how a faith might be spread by fire and sword. ”

“ Those who forged the blade of this counterfeit jihad could not temper it in the flame of religious fervour, and it shattered against the shield of religious tolerance and good faith: we make mistakes, but can honestly claim those two virtues. ”

“ Toleration is the vital spark of religion: arm the latter with the whips of persecution, and you convert her into a fiend scattering terror and dismay! In your own country you enjoy a liberty of sentiment beyond every other on the face of the globe. ”

“ Religious Tolerance.—It would do no harm if Christians who are disposed to judge harshly of each other, were to read occasionally the accounts handed down to us of enormities committed some centuries ago, and even in later years, in the name of religion, upon those of differing creeds ”

“ The distinction between civil toleration and theological toleration is vain and childish. These two kinds of toleration are inseparable, and we cannot accept one without the other. Even the angels could not live at peace with men whom they regarded as the enemies of God. ”

“ Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man.
The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. ”

“ But, surely, the fact that our religion is divine does not imply that it should rule by hatred, fury, exile, the confiscation of goods, imprisonment, torture, murder, and thanksgiving to God for murder? The more divine the Christian religion is, the less it is the place of man to command it; if God is its author, he will maintain it without your aid. You know well that intolerance begets only hypocrites or rebels. Fearful alternative! Would you, indeed, sustain by executioners the religion of a God who fell into the hands of executioners, and who preached only gentleness and patience? ”

“ But independently of the influence of the Old Testament teachings, the Christian system makes persecution inevitable in proportion as the system is believed. Intolerance and persecution are a natural result of the doctrine that certain religious opinions involve moral guilt. The Bible declares, ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.’ This makes unbelief and heresy a crime, and unbelievers and heretics criminals. It makes it the religious duty of Christians to legislate for the extirpation of the former and the punishment of the latter. ”

“ Thus, although liberation from false religious forms is taking place ever more frequently, the people of our time, having rejected belief in dogmas, sacraments, miracles, the sanctity of the Bible and other institutions of the Church, are nevertheless unable to free themselves from those false teachings of the State, founded on a perverted Christianity and hiding the true one. ”

“ The tragedy of the situation of the people of the Christian world consists in the fact that, owing to an unavoidable misunderstanding, the Christian nations adopted as their own a religious teaching which in its true meaning most clearly negated and destroyed the whole social structure of life by which they were living and without which they could not imagine life. ”