RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
IN the third century B.C. the Indian king Asoka, a man of religious zeal
but of tolerant spirit, confronted by the struggle between two hostile
religions (Brahmanism and Buddhism), decided that both should be equally
privileged and honoured in his dominions. His ordinances on the matter
are memorable
[93] as the earliest existing Edicts of toleration. In Europe, as we
saw, the principle of toleration was for the first time definitely
expressed in the Roman Imperial Edicts which terminated the persecution
of the Christians.
The religious strife of the sixteenth century raised the question in its
modern form, and for many generations it was one of the chief problems
of statesmen and the subject of endless controversial pamphlets.
Toleration means incomplete religious liberty, and there are many
degrees of it. It might be granted to certain Christian sects; it might
be granted to Christian sects, but these alone; it might be granted to
all religions, but not to freethinkers; or to deists, but not to
atheists. It might mean the concession of some civil rights, but not of
others; it might mean the exclusion of those who are tolerated from
public offices or from certain professions. The religious liberty now
enjoyed in Western lands has been gained through various stages of
toleration.
We owe the modern principle of toleration to the Italian group of
Reformers, who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and were the fathers
of Unitarianism. The Reformation movement had spread to Italy, but Rome
was successful in suppressing it, and many heretics fled to Switzerland.
The anti-Trinitarian
[94] group were forced by the intolerance of Calvin to flee to
Transylvania and Poland where they propagated their doctrines. The
Unitarian creed was moulded by Fausto Sozzini, generally known as
Socinus, and in the catechism of his sect (1574) persecution is
condemned. This repudiation of the use of force in the interest of
religion is a consequence of the Socinian doctrines. For, unlike Luther
and Calvin, the Socinians conceded such a wide room to individual
judgment in the interpretation of Scripture that to impose Socinianism
would have been inconsistent with its principles. In other words, there
was a strong rationalistic element which was lacking in the Trinitarian
creeds.
It was under the influence of the Socinian spirit that Castellion of
Savoy sounded the trumpet of toleration in a pamphlet denouncing the
burning of Servetus, whereby he earned the malignant hatred of Calvin.
He maintained the innocence of error and ridiculed the importance which
the Churches laid on obscure questions such as predestination and the
Trinity. “To discuss the difference between the Law and the Gospel,
gratuitous remission of sins or imputed righteousness, is as if a man
were to discuss whether a prince was to come on horseback,
[95] or in a chariot, or dressed in white or in red.” [1] Religion is a
curse if persecution is a necessary part of it.
For a long time the Socinians and those who came under their influence
when, driven from Poland, they passed into Germany and Holland, were the
only sects which advocated toleration. It was adopted from them by the
Anabaptists and by the Arminian section of the Reformed Church of
Holland. And in Holland, the founder of the English Congregationalists,
who (under the name of Independents) played such an important part in
the history of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, learned the principle
of liberty of conscience.
Socinus thought that this principle could be realized without abolishing
the State Church. He contemplated a close union between the State and
the prevailing Church, combined with complete toleration for other
sects. It is under this system (which has been called jurisdictional)
that religious liberty has been realized in European States. But there
is another and simpler method, that of separating Church from State and
placing all religions on an equality. This was the solution which the
Anabaptists would have preferred. They detested the State; and the
doctrine of religious liberty was not
[96] precious to them. Their ideal system would have been an Anabaptist
theocracy; separation was the second best.
In Europe, public opinion was not ripe for separation, inasmuch as the
most powerful religious bodies were alike in regarding toleration as
wicked indifference. But it was introduced in a small corner of the new
world beyond the Atlantic in the seventeenth century. The Puritans who
fled from the intolerance of the English Church and State and founded
colonies in New England, were themselves equally intolerant, not only to
Anglicans and Catholics, but to Baptists and Quakers. They set up
theocratical governments from which all who did not belong to their own
sect were excluded. Roger Williams had imbibed from the Dutch Arminians
the idea of separation of Church from State. On account of this heresy
he was driven from Massachusetts, and he founded Providence to be a
refuge for those whom the Puritan colonists persecuted. Here he set up a
democratic constitution in which the magistrates had power only in civil
matters and could not interfere with religion. Other towns were
presently founded in Rhode Island, and a charter of Charles II (1663)
confirmed the constitution, which secured to all citizens professing
Christianity, of whatever
[97] form, the full enjoyment of political rights. Non-Christians were
tolerated, but were not admitted to the political rights of Christians.
So far, the new State fell short of perfect liberty. But the fact that
Jews were soon admitted, notwithstanding, to full citizenship shows how
free the atmosphere was. To Roger Williams belongs the glory of having
founded the first modern State which was really tolerant and was based
on the principle of taking the control of religious matters entirely out
of the hands of the civil government.
Toleration was also established in the Roman Catholic colony of
Maryland, but in a different way. Through the influence of Lord
Baltimore an Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, notable as the first
decree, voted by a legal assembly, granting complete freedom to all
Christians. No one professing faith in Christ was to be molested in
regard to his religion. But the law was heavy on all outside this pale.
Any one who blasphemed God or attacked the Trinity or any member of the
Trinity was threatened by the penalty of death. The tolerance of
Maryland attracted so many Protestant settlers from Virginia that the
Protestants became a majority, and as soon as they won political
preponderance, they introduced an Act (1654)
[98] excluding Papists and Prelatists from toleration. The rule of the
Baltimores was restored after 1660, and the old religious freedom was
revived, but with the accession of William III the Protestants again
came into power and the toleration which the Catholics had instituted in
Maryland came to an end.
It will be observed that in both these cases freedom was incomplete; but
it was much larger and more fundamental in Rhode Island, where it had
been ultimately derived from the doctrine of Socinus. [2] When the
colonies became independent of England the Federal Constitution which
they set up was absolutely secular, but it was left to each member of
the Union to adopt Separation or not (1789). If separation has become
the rule in the American States, it may be largely due to the fact that
on any other system the governments would have found it difficult to
impose mutual tolerance on the sects. It must be added that in Maryland
and a few southern States atheists still suffer from some political
disabilities.
In England, the experiment of Separation would have been tried under the
Commonwealth, if the Independents had had their way. This policy was
overruled by Cromwell.
[99] The new national Church included Presbyterians, Independents, and
Baptists, but liberty of worship was granted to all Christian sects,
except Roman Catholics and Anglicans. If the parliament had had the
power, this toleration would have been a mere name. The Presbyterians
regarded toleration as a work of the Devil, and would have persecuted
the Independents if they could. But under Cromwell’s autocratic rule
even the Anglicans lived in peace, and toleration was extended to the
Jews. In these days, voices were raised from various quarters advocating
toleration on general grounds. [3] The most illustrious advocate was
Milton, the poet, who was in favour of the severance of Church from
State.
In Milton’s Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed
printing (1644), the freedom of the Press is eloquently sustained by
arguments which are valid for freedom of thought in general. It is shown
that the censorship will conduce “to the discouragement of all learning
and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our
abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the
discovery that might be yet further made, both in religious
[100] and civil wisdom.” For knowledge is advanced through the utterance
of new opinions, and truth is discovered by free discussion. If the
waters of truth “flow not in a perpetual progression they sicken into a
muddy pool of conformity and tradition.” Books which are authorized by
the licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, “but the language of the
times,” and do not contribute to progress. The examples of the countries
where the censorship is severe do not suggest that it is useful for
morals: “look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple
the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the
inquisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books.” Spain indeed
could reply, “We are, what is more important, more orthodox.” It is
interesting to notice that Milton places freedom of thought above civil
liberty: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely
according to conscience, above all other liberties.”
With the restoration of the Monarchy and the Anglican Church, religious
liberty was extinguished by a series of laws against Dissenters. To the
Revolution we owe the Act of Toleration (1689) from which the religious
freedom which England enjoys at present is derived. It granted freedom
of worship to Presbyterians, Congregationalists,
[101] Baptists and Quakers, but only to these; Catholics and Unitarians
were expressly excepted and the repressive legislation of Charles II
remained in force against them. It was a characteristically English
measure, logically inconsistent and absurd, a mixture of tolerance and
intolerance, but suitable to the circumstances and the state of public
opinion at the time.
In the same year John Locke’s famous (first) Letter concerning
Toleration appeared in Latin. Three subsequent letters developed and
illustrated his thesis. The main argument is based on the principle that
the business of civil government is quite distinct from that of
religion, that the State is a society constituted only for preserving
and promoting the civil interests of its members —civil interests
meaning life, liberty, health, and the possession of property. The care
of souls is not committed to magistrates more than to other men. For the
magistrate can only use outward force; but true religion means the
inward persuasion of the mind, and the mind is so made that force cannot
compel it to believe. So too it is absurd for a State to make laws to
enforce a religion, for laws are useless without penalties, and
penalties are impertinent because they cannot convince.
Moreover, even if penalties could change
[102] men’s beliefs, this would not conduce to the salvation of souls.
Would more men be saved if all blindly resigned themselves to the will
of their rulers and accepted the religion of their country? For as the
princes of the world are divided in religion, one country alone would be
in the right, and all the rest of the world would have to follow their
princes to destruction; “and that which heightens the absurdity, and
very ill suits the notion of a deity, men would owe their eternal
happiness or their eternal misery to the places of their nativity.” This
is a principle on which Locke repeatedly insists. If a State is
justified in imposing a creed, it follows that in all the lands, except
the one or few in which the true faith prevails, it is the duty of the
subjects to embrace a false religion. If Protestantism is promoted in
England, Popery by the same rule will be promoted in France. “What is
true and good in England will be true and good at Rome too, in China, or
Geneva.” Toleration is the principle which gives to the true faith the
best chance of prevailing.
Locke would concede full liberty to idolaters, by whom he means the
Indians of North America, and he makes some scathing remarks on the
ecclesiastical zeal which forced these “innocent pagans” to forsake
[103] their ancient religion. But his toleration, though it extends
beyond the Christian pale, is not complete. He excepts in the first
place Roman Catholics, not on account of their theological dogmas but
because they “teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics,” that
“kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms,” and because
they deliver themselves up to the protection and service of a foreign
prince—the Pope. In other words, they are politically dangerous. His
other exception is atheists. “Those are not all to be tolerated who deny
the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of
human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God,
though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides also, those that by
their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence
of religion to challenge the privilege of a Toleration.”
Thus Locke is not free from the prejudices of his time. These exceptions
contradict his own principle that “it is absurd that things should be
enjoined by laws which are not in men’s power to perform. And to believe
this or that to be true does not depend upon our will.” This applies to
Roman Catholics as to Protestants, to atheists as to deists. Locke,
however, perhaps thought
[104] that the speculative opinion of atheism, which was uncommon in his
day, does depend on the will. He would have excluded from his State his
great contemporary Spinoza.
But in spite of its limitations Locke’s Toleration is a work of the
highest value, and its argument takes us further than its author went.
It asserts unrestrictedly the secular principle, and its logical issue
is Disestablishment. A Church is merely “a free and voluntary society.”
I may notice the remark that if infidels were to be converted by force,
it was easier for God to do it “with armies of heavenly legions than for
any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.” This
is a polite way of stating a maxim analogous to that of the Emperor
Tiberius (above, p. 41). If false beliefs are an offence to God, it is,
really, his affair.
The toleration of Nonconformists was far from pleasing extreme
Anglicans, and the influence of this party at the beginning of the
eighteenth century menaced the liberty of Dissenters. The situation
provoked Defoe, who was a zealous Nonconformist, to write his pamphlet,
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an ironical attack upon the
principle of toleration. It pretends to show that the Dissenters are at
heart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests
[105] that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and all
persons found attending such meetings should be banished. This
exceedingly amusing but terribly earnest caricature of the sentiments of
the High Anglican party at first deceived and alarmed the Dissenters
themselves. But the High Churchmen were furious. Defoe was fined,
exposed in the pillory three times, and sent to Newgate prison.
But the Tory reaction was only temporary. During the eighteenth century
a relatively tolerant spirit prevailed among the Christian sects and new
sects were founded. The official Church became less fanatical; many of
its leading divines were influenced by rationalistic thought. If it had
not been for the opposition of King George III, the Catholics might have
been freed from their disabilities before the end of the century. This
measure, eloquently advocated by Burke and desired by Pitt, was not
carried till 1829, and then under the threat of a revolution in Ireland.
In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in
1813, but they were not relieved from all disabilities till the forties.
Jews were not admitted to the full rights of citizenship till 1858.
The achievement of religious liberty in England in the nineteenth
century has been mainly the work of Liberals. The Liberal
[106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of complete
secularization and the separation of the Church from the State— the
logical results of Locke’s theory of civil government. The
Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized this
ideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seeking
to apply the principle to Wales. It is highly characteristic of English
politics and English psychology that the change should be carried out in
this piecemeal fashion. In the other countries of the British Empire the
system of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the State
and any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society. But
secularization has advanced under the State Church system. It is enough
to mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religious
tests at Universities (1871). Other gains for freedom will be noticed
when I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism.
If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth with
that in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted with
the development in England. In England there was a great advance towards
religious liberty, in France there was a falling away. Until 1676 the
French Protestants
[107] (Huguenots) were tolerated; for the next hundred years they were
outlaws. But the toleration, which their charter (the Edict of Nantes,
1598) secured them, was of a limited kind. They were excluded, for
instance, from the army; they were excluded from Paris and other cities
and districts. And the liberty which they enjoyed was confined to them;
it was not granted to any other sect. The charter was faithfully
maintained by the two great Cardinals (Richelieu and Mazarin) who
governed France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, but when the latter
assumed the active power in 1661 he began a series of laws against the
Protestants which culminated in the revoking of the charter (1676) and
the beginning of a Protestant persecution.
The French clergy justified this policy by the notorious text “Compel
them to come in,” and appealed to St. Augustine. Their arguments evoked
a defence of toleration by Bayle, a French Protestant who had taken
refuge in Holland. It was entitled a Philosophical Commentary on the
text “Compel them to come in” (1686) and in importance stands beside
Locke’s work which was being composed at the same time. Many of the
arguments urged by the two writers are identical. They agreed, and for
the same reasons, in excluding Roman Catholics. The
[108] most characteristic thing in Bayle’s treatise is his sceptical
argument that, even if it were a right principle to suppress error by
force, no truth is certain enough to justify us in applying the theory.
We shall see (next chapter) this eminent scholar’s contribution to
rationalism.
Though there was an immense exodus of Protestants from France, Louis did
not succeed in his design of extirpating heresy from his lands. In the
eighteenth century, under Louis XV, the presence of Protestants was
tolerated though they were outlaws; their marriages were not recognized
as legal, and they were liable at any moment to persecution. About the
middle of the century a literary agitation began, conducted mainly by
rationalists, but finally supported by enlightened Catholics, to relieve
the affliction of the oppressed sect. It resulted at last in an Edict of
Toleration (1787), which made the position of the Protestants endurable,
though it excluded them from certain careers.
The most energetic and forceful leader in the campaign against
intolerance was Voltaire (see next chapter), and his exposure of some
glaring cases of unjust persecution did more than general arguments to
achieve the object. The most infamous case was that of Jean Calas, a
Protestant merchant of Toulouse, whose son committed suicide. A report
[109] was set abroad that the young man had decided to join the Catholic
Church, and that his father, mother, and brother, filled with Protestant
bigotry, killed him, with the help of a friend. They were all put in
irons, tried, and condemned, though there were no arguments for their
guilt, except the conjecture of bigotry. Jean Calas was broken on the
wheel, his son and daughter cast into convents, his wife left to starve.
Through the activity of Voltaire, then living near Geneva, the widow was
induced to go to Paris, where she was kindly received, and assisted by
eminent lawyers; a judicial inquiry was made; the Toulouse sentence was
reversed and the King granted pensions to those who had suffered. This
scandal could only have happened in the provinces, according to
Voltaire: “at Paris,” he says, “fanaticism, powerful though it may be,
is always controlled by reason.”
The case of Sirven, though it did not end tragically, was similar, and
the government of Toulouse was again responsible. He was accused of
having drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming a
Catholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death. Fortunately he and
his family had escaped to Switzerland, where they persuaded Voltaire of
their innocence. To get the sentence reversed was the work of nine
years, and this
[110] time it was reversed at Toulouse. When Voltaire visited Paris in
1778 he was acclaimed by crowds as the “defender of Calas and the
Sirvens.” His disinterested practical activity against persecution was
of far more value than the treatise on Toleration which he wrote in
connexion with the Calas episode. It is a poor work compared with those
of Locke and Bayle. The tolerance which he advocates is of a limited
kind; he would confine public offices and dignities to those who belong
to the State religion.
But if Voltaire’s system of toleration is limited, it is wide compared
with the religious establishment advocated by his contemporary,
Rousseau. Though of Swiss birth, Rousseau belongs to the literature and
history of France; but it was not for nothing that he was brought up in
the traditions of Calvinistic Geneva. His ideal State would, in its way,
have been little better than any theocracy. He proposed to establish a
“civil religion” which was to be a sort of undogmatic Christianity. But
certain dogmas, which he considered essential, were to be imposed on all
citizens on pain of banishment. Such were the existence of a deity, the
future bliss of the good and punishment of the bad, the duty of
tolerance towards all those who accepted the fundamental
[111] articles of faith. It may be said that a State founded on this
basis would be fairly inclusive—that all Christian sects and many deists
could find a place in it. But by imposing indispensable beliefs, it
denies the principle of toleration. The importance of Rousseau’s idea
lies in the fact that it inspired one of the experiments in religious
policy which were made during the French Revolution.
The Revolution established religious liberty in France. Most of the
leaders were unorthodox. Their rationalism was naturally of the
eighteenth-century type, and in the preamble to the Declaration of
Rights (1789) deism was asserted by the words “in the presence and under
the auspices of the Supreme Being” (against which only one voice
protested). The Declaration laid down that no one was to be vexed on
account of his religious opinions provided he did not thereby trouble
public order. Catholicism was retained as the “dominant” religion;
Protestants (but not Jews) were admitted to public office. Mirabeau, the
greatest statesman of the day, protested strongly against the use of
words like “tolerance” and “dominant.” He said: “The most unlimited
liberty of religion is in my eyes a right so sacred that to express it
by the word ‘toleration’ seems to me itself a sort of tyranny,
[112] since the authority which tolerates might also not tolerate.” The
same protest was made in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man which appeared two
years later: “Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the
counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes itself the right
of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it.”
Paine was an ardent deist, and he added: “Were a bill brought into any
parliament, entitled ‘An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to the
Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk,’ or ‘to prohibit the
Almighty from receiving it,’ all men would startle and call it
blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption of toleration in
religious matters would then present itself unmasked.”
The Revolution began well, but the spirit of Mirabeau was not in the
ascendant throughout its course. The vicissitudes in religious policy
from 1789 to 1801 have a particular interest, because they show that the
principle of liberty of conscience was far from possessing the minds of
the men who were proud of abolishing the intolerance of the government
which they had overthrown. The State Church was reorganized by the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy (1790), by which French citizens were
forbidden to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and
[113] the appointment of Bishops was transferred to the Electors of the
Departments, so that the commanding influence passed from the Crown to
the nation. Doctrine and worship were not touched. Under the democratic
Republic which succeeded the fall of the monarchy (1792–5) this
Constitution was maintained, but a movement to dechristianize France was
inaugurated, and the Commune of Paris ordered the churches of all
religions to be closed. The worship of Reason, with rites modelled on
the Catholic, was organized in Paris and the provinces. The government,
violently anti-Catholic, did not care to use force against the prevalent
faith; direct persecution would have weakened the national defence and
scandalized Europe. They naïvely hoped that the superstition would
disappear by degrees. Robespierre declared against the policy of
unchristianizing France, and when he had the power (April, 1795), he
established as a State religion the worship of the Supreme Being. “The
French people recognizes the existence of the Supreme Being and the
immortality of the Soul”; the liberty of other cults was maintained.
Thus, for a few months, Rousseau’s idea was more or less realized. It
meant intolerance. Atheism was regarded as a vice, and “all were
atheists who did not think like Robespierre.”
[114]
The democratic was succeeded by the middle-class Republic (1795–9), and
the policy of its government was to hinder the preponderance of any one
religious group; to hold the balance among all the creeds, but with a
certain partiality against the strongest, the Catholic, which
threatened, as was thought, to destroy the others or even the Republic.
The plan was to favour the growth of new rationalistic cults, and to
undermine revealed religion by a secular system of education.
Accordingly the Church was separated from the State by the Constitution
of 1795, which affirmed the liberty of all worship and withdrew from the
Catholic clergy the salaries which the State had hitherto paid. The
elementary schools were laicized. The Declaration of Rights, the
articles of the Constitution, and republican morality were taught
instead of religion. An enthusiast declared that “the religion of
Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero would soon be the religion of the
world.”
A new rationalistic religion was introduced under the name of
Theophilanthropy. It was the “natural religion” of the philosophers and
poets of the century, of Voltaire and the English deists—not the
purified Christianity of Rousseau, but anterior and superior to
Christianity. Its doctrines, briefly formulated,
[115] were: God, immortality, fraternity, humanity; no attacks on other
religions, but respect and honour towards all; gatherings in a family,
or in a temple, to encourage one another to practise morality. Protected
by the government sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, it had a certain
success among the cultivated classes.
The idea of the lay State was popularized under this rule, and by the
end of the century there was virtually religious peace in France. Under
the Consulate (from 1799) the same system continued, but Napoleon ceased
to protect Theophilanthropy. In 1801, though there seems to have been
little discontent with the existing arrangement, Napoleon decided to
upset it and bring the Pope upon the scene. The Catholic religion, as
that of the majority, was again taken under the special protection of
the State, the salaries of the clergy again paid by the nation, and the
Papal authority over the Church again recognized within well-defined
limits; while full toleration of other religions was maintained. This
was the effect of the Concordat between the French Republic and the
Pope. It is the judgment of a high authority that the nation, if it had
been consulted, would have pronounced against the change. It may be
doubted whether this is true. But Napoleon’s policy
[116] seems to have been prompted by the calculation that, using the
Pope as an instrument, he could control the consciences of men, and more
easily carry out his plans of empire.
Apart from its ecclesiastical policies and its experiments in new creeds
based on the principles of rationalistic thinkers, the French Revolution
itself has an interest, in connexion with our subject, as an example of
the coercion of reason by an intolerant faith.
The leaders believed that, by applying certain principles, they could
regenerate France and show the world how the lasting happiness of
mankind can be secured. They acted in the name of reason, but their
principles were articles of faith, which were accepted just as blindly
and irrationally as the dogmas of any supernatural creed. One of these
dogmas was the false doctrine of Rousseau that man is a being who is
naturally good and loves justice and order. Another was the illusion
that all men are equal by nature. The puerile conviction prevailed that
legislation could completely blot out the past and radically transform
the character of a society. “Liberty, equality, and fraternity” was as
much a creed as the Creed of the Apostles; it hypnotized men’s minds
like a revelation from on high; and reason had as little part in its
propagation as in the spread
[117] of Christianity or of Protestantism. It meant anything but
equality, fraternity, or liberty, especially liberty, when it was
translated into action by the fanatical apostles of “Reason,” who were
blind to the facts of human nature and defied the facts of econnomics.
Terror, the usual instrument in propagating religions, was never more
mercilessly applied. Any one who questioned the doctrines was a heretic
and deserved a heretic’s fate. And, as in most religious movements, the
milder and less unreasonable spirits succumbed to the fanatics. Never
was the name of reason more grievously abused than by those who believed
they were inaugurating her reign.
Religious liberty, however, among other good things, did emerge from the
Revolution, at first in the form of Separation, and then under the
Concordat. The Concordat lasted for more than a century, under
monarchies and republics, till it was abolished in December, 1905, when
the system of Separation was introduced again.
In the German States the history of religious liberty differs in many
ways, but it resembles the development in France in so far as toleration
in a limited form was at first brought about by war. The Thirty Years’
War, which divided Germany in the first half
[118] of the seventeenth century, and in which, as in the English Civil
War, religion and politics were mixed, was terminated by the Peace of
Westphalia (1648). By this act, three religions, the Catholic, the
Lutheran, and the Reformed [4] were legally recognized by the Holy Roman
Empire, and placed on an equality; all other religious were excluded.
But it was left to each of the German States, of which the Empire
consisted, to tolerate or not any religion it pleased. That is, every
prince could impose on his subjects whichever of the three religions he
chose, and refuse to tolerate the others in his territory. But he might
also admit one or both of the others, and he might allow the followers
of other creeds to reside in his dominion, and practise their religion
within the precincts of their own houses. Thus toleration varied, from
State to State, according to the policy of each particular prince.
As elsewhere, so in Germany, considerations of political expediency
promoted the growth of toleration, especially in Prussia; and as
elsewhere, theoretical advocates exercised great influence on public
opinion. But the case for toleration was based by its German defenders
chiefly on legal, not, as in
[119] England and France, on moral and intellectual grounds. They
regarded it as a question of law, and discussed it from the point of
view of the legal relations between State and Church. It had been
considered long ago from this standpoint by an original Italian thinker,
Marsilius of Padua (thirteenth century), who had maintained that the
Church had no power to employ physical coercion, and that if the lay
authority punished heretics, the punishment was inflicted for the
violation not of divine ordinances but of the law of the State, which
excluded heretics from its territory.
Christian Thomasius may be taken as a leading exponent of the theory
that religious liberty logically follows from a right conception of law.
He laid down in a series of pamphlets (1693–1697) that the prince, who
alone has the power of coercion, has no right to interfere in spiritual
matters, while the clergy step beyond their province if they interfere
in secular matters or defend their faith by any other means than
teaching. But the secular power has no legal right to coerce heretics
unless heresy is a crime. And heresy is not a crime, but an error; for
it is not a matter of will. Thomasius, moreover, urges the view that the
public welfare has nothing to gain from unity of faith, that it makes no
[120] difference what faith a man professes so long as he is loyal to
the State. His toleration indeed is not complete. He was much influenced
by the writings of his contemporary Locke, and he excepts from the
benefit of toleration the same classes which Locke excepted.
Besides the influence of the jurists, we may note that the Pietistic
movement—a reaction of religious enthusiasm against the formal theology
of the Lutheran divines—was animated by a spirit favourable to
toleration; and that the cause was promoted by the leading men of
letters, especially by Lessing, in the second half of the eighteenth
century.
But perhaps the most important fact of all in hastening the realization
of religious liberty in Germany was the accession of a rationalist to
the throne of Prussia, in the person of Frederick the Great. A few
months after his accession (1740) he wrote in the margin of a State
paper, in which a question of religious policy occurred, that every one
should be allowed to get to heaven in his own way. His view that
morality was independent of religion and therefore compatible with all
religions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen—the only thing
which the State was entitled to demand—whatever faith he might profess,
led to the logical consequence of complete religious liberty. Catholics
[121] were placed on an equality with Protestants, and the Treaty of
Westphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all the
forbidden sects. Frederick even conceived the idea of introducing
Mohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm. Contrast England under
George III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes.
It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been duly
emphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in any
country in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, the
friend of the great “blasphemer” Voltaire.
The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the Prussian
Territorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of conscience
was guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, the
Reformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyed
the same privileges. The system is “jurisdictional”; only, three
Churches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church alone
occupies in England. The rest of Germany did not begin to move in the
direction pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of the
Holy Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified.
Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was established
throughout Germany.
[122]
In Austria, the Emperor Joseph II issued an Edict of Toleration in 1781,
which may be considered a broad measure for a Catholic State at that
time. Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to the
enlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and his
edict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had not
inspired the English Act of 1689. It extended only to the Lutheran and
Reformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had entered
into union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind. Religious liberty
was not established till 1867.
The measure of Joseph applied to the Austrian States in Italy, and
helped to prepare that country for the idea of religious freedom. It is
notable that in Italy in the eighteenth century toleration found its
advocate, not in a rationalist or a philosopher, but in a Catholic
ecclesiastic, Tamburinni, who (under the name of his friend
Trautmansdorf) published a work On Ecclesiastical and Civil Toleration
(1783). A sharp line is drawn between the provinces of the Church and
the State, persecution and the Inquisition are condemned, coercion of
conscience is declared inconsistent with the Christian spirit, and the
principle is laid down that the sovran should only exercise coercion
where
[123] the interests of public safety are concerned. Like Locke, the
author thinks that atheism is a legitimate case for such coercion.
The new States which Napoleon set up in Italy exhibited toleration in
various degrees, but real liberty was first introduced in Piedmont by
Cavour (1848), a measure which prepared the way for the full liberty
which was one of the first-fruits of the foundation of the Italian
kingdom in 1870. The union of Italy, with all that it meant, is the most
signal and dramatic act in the triumph of the ideas of the modern State
over the traditional principles of the Christian Church. Rome, which
preserved those principles most faithfully, has offered a steadfast, we
may say a heroic, resistance to the liberal ideas which swept Europe in
the nineteenth century. The guides of her policy grasped thoroughly the
danger which liberal thought meant for an institution which, founded in
a remote past, claimed to be unchangeable and never out of date. Gregory
XVI issued a solemn protest maintaining authority against freedom, the
mediaeval against the modern ideal, in an Encyclical Letter (1832),
which was intended as a rebuke to some young French Catholics (Lamennais
and his friends) who had conceived the promising idea of transforming
the Church by the Liberal spirit
[124] of the day. The Pope denounces “the absurd and erroneous maxim, or
rather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured and
guaranteed to every one. The path to this pernicious error is prepared
by that full and unlimited liberty of thought which is spread abroad to
the misfortune of Church and State and which certain persons, with
excessive impudence, venture to represent as an advantage for religion.
Hence comes the corruption of youth, contempt for religion and for the
most venerable laws, and a general mental change in the world—in short
the most deadly scourge of society; since the experience of history has
shown that the States which have shone by their wealth and power and
glory have perished just by this evil— immoderate freedom of opinion,
licence of conversation, and love of novelties. With this is connected
the liberty of publishing any writing of any kind. This is a deadly and
execrable liberty for which we cannot feel sufficient horror, though
some men dare to acclaim it noisily and enthusiastically.” A generation
later Pius IX was to astonish the world by a similar manifesto—his
Syllabus of Modern Errors (1864). Yet, notwithstanding the fundamental
antagonism between the principles of the Church and the drift of modern
civilization, the Papacy survives,
[125] powerful and respected, in a world where the ideas which it
condemned have become the commonplace conditions of life.
The progress of Western nations from the system of unity which prevailed
in the fifteenth, to the system of liberty which was the rule in the
nineteenth century, was slow and painful, illogical and wavering,
generally dictated by political necessities, seldom inspired by
deliberate conviction. We have seen how religious liberty has been
realized, so far as the law is concerned, under two distinct systems,
“Jurisdiction” and “Separation.” But legal toleration may coexist with
much practical intolerance, and liberty before the law is compatible
with serious disabilities of which the law cannot take account. For
instance, the expression of unorthodox opinions may exclude a man from
obtaining a secular post or hinder his advancement. The question has
been asked, which of the two systems is more favourable to the creation
of a tolerant social atmosphere? Ruffini (of whose excellent work on
Religious Liberty I have made much use in this chapter) decides in
favour of Jurisdiction. He points out that while Socinus, a true friend
of liberty of thought, contemplated this system, the Anabaptists, whose
spirit was intolerant, sought Separation. More important
[126] is the observation that in Germany, England, and Italy, where the
most powerful Church or Churches are under the control of the State,
there is more freedom, more tolerance of opinion, than in many of the
American States where Separation prevails. A hundred years ago the
Americans showed appalling ingratitude to Thomas Paine, who had done
them eminent service in the War of Independence, simply because he
published a very unorthodox book. It is notorious that free thought is
still a serious hindrance and handicap to an American, even in most of
the Universities. This proves that Separation is not an infallible
receipt for producing tolerance. But I see no reason to suppose that
public opinion in America would be different, if either the Federal
Republic or the particular States had adopted Jurisdiction. Given legal
liberty under either system, I should say that the tolerance of public
opinion depends on social conditions and especially on the degree of
culture among the educated classes.
From this sketch it will be seen that toleration was the outcome of new
political circumstances and necessities, brought about by the disunion
of the Church through the Reformation. But it meant that in those States
which granted toleration the opinion of
[127] a sufficiently influential group of the governing class was ripe
for the change, and this new mental attitude was in a great measure due
to the scepticism and rationalism which were diffused by the Renaissance
movement, and which subtly and unconsciously had affected the minds of
many who were sincerely devoted to rigidly orthodox beliefs; so
effective is the force of suggestion. In the next two chapters the
advance of reason at the expense of faith will be traced through the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
[1] Translated by Lecky.
[2] Complete toleration was established by Penn in the Quaker Colony of
Pennsylvania in 1682.
[3] Especially Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants (1637), and
Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying (1646).
[4] The Reformed Church consists of the followers of Calvin and Zwingli.