WHETHER TOLERATION IS DANGEROUS, AND
AMONG WHAT NATIONS IT IS PRACTISED.
Some people will have it, that if we were to make use of humanity
and indulgence towards our mistaken brethren who pray to God in bad
French, it would be putting arms into their hands, and we should see
revived the bloody days of Jarnac, Moncontour, Coutras, Dreux, St.
Denis, and others. I know not how this may be, as I have not the
gift of prophecy, but I really cannot discover the congruity of this
reasoning, “that because these men took up arms against me when I
oppressed them, they will do the same if I show them favor.”
And here I would willingly take the liberty to entreat those who have
the reins of government in hand, or are destined to fill the highest
stations, for once to examine maturely whether there is any reason
to apprehend that indulgence would occasion the same rebellions as
cruelty and oppression, and whether what has happened under certain
circumstances would happen under others of a different nature, or
whether times, opinions, and manners are always the same?
The Huguenots, it cannot be denied, have formerly given in to all
the rage of enthusiasm, and have been polluted with blood as well
as ourselves, but can it be said that the present generation is as
barbarous as the former? Have not time and reason, which have lately
made so great progress, together with good books, and that natural
softness introduced from society, found their way among those who
have the guidance of these people? And do we not clearly perceive
that almost all Europe has undergone a change within the last century?
The hands of government have everywhere been strengthened, while the
minds of the people have been softened and civilized; the general
police, supported by numerous standing armies, leave us no longer any
cause to fear the return of those times of anarchy, when Protestant
boors and Catholic peasants were hastily called together from the
labors of agriculture to wield the sword against each others’ lives.
_Alia tempora, aliæ curæ._ It would be highly absurd in the present
days to decimate the body of the Sorbonne because it formerly
petitioned for burning the _Pucelle d’Orléans_ because it declared
Henry III. to have lost his right to the throne, and because it
excommunicated and proscribed the illustrious Henry IV. We certainly
should not think of prosecuting the other public bodies of the
nation, who committed the like excesses in those times of error and
madness; it would not only be very unjust, but as ridiculous as if we
were to oblige all the inhabitants of Marseilles to undergo a course
of physic because they had the plague in 1720.
[Illustration: THE MAID OF ORLEANS AT THE STAKE]
Should we at present go and sack Rome, as the troops of Charles
the Fifth did, because Pope Sixtus the Fifth, in the year 1585,
granted a nine years’ indulgence to all Frenchmen who would take up
arms against their sovereign? No, surely it is enough if we prevent
the court of Rome from ever being guilty of such excesses in the
future.
The rage inspired by a spirit of controversy, and the abuse made
of the Christian religion from want of properly understanding it,
has occasioned as much bloodshed, and produced as many calamities
in Germany, England, and even in Holland, as in France; and yet,
at present, the difference in religion occasions no disturbances
in those countries; but the Jew, the Catholic, the Lutheran, the
Calvinist, the Anabaptist, the Socinian, the Moravian, and a
multitude of other sects live in brotherly harmony together, and
contribute equally to the good of society.
In Holland they no longer fear that the disputations of a Gomar[9]
concerning predestination should bring the head of a grand
pensionary to the block, nor in London that the quarrels between
the Presbyterians and the Episcopals about a form of prayer and
a surplice should again spill the blood of their kings upon a
scaffold.[10] Ireland, now populous and rich, will not any more
behold its Catholic inhabitants sacrificing, as an acceptable
offering, the lives of their Protestant brethren, by burying them
alive, hanging up mothers upon gibbets, and tying their daughters
round their necks to see them expire together; ripping up women with
child, taking the half-formed infant from the womb, and throwing it
to swine or dogs to be devoured; putting a dagger into the hands of
their manacled prisoners, and forcing them to plunge it into the
breasts of their fathers, their mothers, their wives, or children,
thereby hoping to make them guilty of parricide, and damn their souls
while they destroyed their bodies; all which we find related by
Rapin, who served as an officer in the English service in Ireland,
and who lived very near the time of those transactions, and confirmed
by most of the English historians. No! such cruelties as these were
never to be paralleled, so they doubtless will never be imitated.
Philosophy, the sister of religion, has herself snatched the poniard
from the hands of superstition, so long bathed in blood; and the
human understanding, recovered from its delirium, stands amazed at
the shocking brutalities into which it has been hurried by enthusiasm.
We ourselves know that in France there is a rich and populous
province where the Protestant religion prevails much more than that
of the Church of Rome. The University of Alsace consists almost
entirely of Lutherans, and they are likewise in possession of most
of the civil posts in that province; and yet the public peace has
never once been disturbed by any quarrels about religion since that
province has belonged to our kings. And what is the reason? Because
no one is persecuted there on account of his religion. Seek not to
lay a restraint upon the mind, and you may always be sure that the
mind will be yours.
I do not mean by this to insinuate that those who are of a different
faith to the prince under whose government they live should have
an equal share in the places of profits and honor with those who
are of the established religion of the state. In England the
Roman Catholics, who are in general looked upon to be friends to
the Pretender, are excluded from all civil posts, and are even
double-taxed; but then, in every other respect, they enjoy the
prerogatives of citizens.
Some of our bishops in France have been suspected of thinking
that their honor and interest is concerned in not suffering any
Protestants within their diocese, and that this is the principal
obstacle to allowing of toleration amongst us; but this I cannot
believe. The episcopal body in France is composed of persons of
quality, who think and act in a manner suitable to their high
birth; and as envy itself must confess that they are generous and
charitable, they therefore certainly cannot think that those whom
they thus drive out of their diocese would become converts in any
other country, but great honor would redound from the conversion
of them at home; nor would the prelate be any loser by it in his
temporals, seeing that the greater the number of the inhabitants, the
greater is the value of the land.
A certain Polish bishop had a farmer who was an Anabaptist, and a
receiver of his rents who was a Socinian. Some person proposed to
the bishop to prosecute the latter in the spiritual court for not
believing in transubstantiation, and to turn the other out of his
farm because he would not have his son christened till he was fifteen
years of age; the prelate very prudently replied that though he made
no doubt of their being eternally damned in the next world, yet he
found them extremely necessary to him in this.
Let us now for a while quit our own little sphere, and take a survey
of the rest of the globe. The Grand Seignior peaceably rules over
subjects of twenty different religions; upwards of two hundred
thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of Constantinople;
the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch, and presents him
to the Emperor, and, at the same time, allows the residence of a
Latin patriarch. The Sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the
Greek isles. The form used on this occasion is as follows:[11] “I
command such a one to go and reside as bishop in the Isle of Chios,
according to the ancient custom and idle ceremonies of those people.”
The Ottoman Empire swarms with Jacobins, Nestorians, Monothelites,
Cophti, Christians of St. John, Guebres, and Banians; and the Turkish
annals do not furnish us with one single instance of a rebellion
occasioned by any of these different sects.
Go into India, Persia, and Tartary, and you will meet with the same
toleration and the same tranquillity. Peter the Great encouraged all
kinds of religions throughout his vast empire; trade and agriculture
have been gainers by it, and no injury ever happened therefrom to the
body politic.
We do not find that the Chinese government, during the course of
four thousand years that it has existed, has ever adopted any other
religion than that of the Noachides, which consists in the simple
worship of one God; and yet it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and
that of a multitude of bonzes; which might be productive of dangerous
consequences did not the wisdom of the tribunals keep them within
proper bounds.
It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous
of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom;
but this was not because that prince himself was non-tolerant, but,
on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so.
They themselves, in their letters, have given us the speech the
emperor made to them on that occasion: “I know,” said he, “that
your religion admits not of toleration; I know how you have behaved
in the Manilas and in Japan; you deceived my father, but think
not to deceive me in the same manner.” And if we read the whole
of the conversation which he deigned to hold with them, we must
confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How
could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European
philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of
thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of
the blood? But what would this emperor have said had he read our
histories, and had he been acquainted with the times of the League
and the Gunpowder Plot?
It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and
indecent disputes between those Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and
secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from
one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which
they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against
one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of
foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. But with what
infinite goodness did he dismiss them! and with what paternal care
did he provide for their accommodation in their journey, and to
prevent their meeting with any insult on their way! This very act
of banishment might serve as an example of toleration and humanity.
[12] The Japanese were the most tolerant of all nations; twelve
different religions were peaceably established in their empire; when
the Jesuits came, they made the thirteenth; and, in a very little
time after their arrival, they would not suffer any other than their
own. Everyone knows the consequence of these proceedings; a civil
war, as calamitous as that of the League, soon spread destruction and
carnage through the empire; till at length the Christian religion was
itself swallowed up in the torrents of blood it had set aflowing, and
the Japanese forever shut the entrance of their country against all
foreigners, looking upon us as no better than savage beasts, such
as those from which the English have happily cleared their island.
Colbert, the minister, who knew the necessity we were in of the
commodities of Japan, which wants nothing from us, labored in vain to
settle a trade with that empire; he found those people inflexible.
Thus, then, everything on our continent shows us that we ought
neither to preach nor to exercise non-toleration.
Let us now cast our eyes on the other hemisphere. Behold Carolina!
whose laws were framed by the wise Locke; there every master of a
family, who has only seven souls under his roof, may establish what
religion he pleases, provided all those seven persons concur with him
therein; and yet this great indulgence has not, hitherto, been the
occasion of any disorders. God forbid that I should mention this as
an example to every master of a family to set up a particular worship
in his house; I have only introduced it to show that the utmost
lengths to which toleration can be carried have never yet given rise
even to the slightest dissensions.
And what shall we say of those pacific primitive Christians, who
have, by way of derision, been called Quakers; and who, though some
of their customs may perhaps be ridiculous, are yet remarkable for
the virtue and sobriety of their lives, and for having in vain
endeavored to preach peace and good-will to the rest of mankind?
There are at least a hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania;
discord and controversy are unknown in that happy spot where they
have settled; the very name of their principal city, Philadelphia, is
a continual memento to them that all men are brethren, and is at once
an example and reproach to those nations which have not yet adopted
toleration.
To conclude, toleration has never yet excited civil wars, whereas its
opposite has filled the earth with slaughter and desolation. Let any
one then judge which of the two is more entitled to our esteem, or
which we should applaud; the mother who would deliver her son into
the hand of the executioner, or she who would resign all right to him
to save his life.
In all that I have said I have had only the interest of nations in
view, and, as I pay all due respect to the doctrines of the Church,
I have in this article only considered the physical and moral
advantages of society. I therefore hope that every impartial reader
will properly weigh these truths, that he will view them in their
proper light, and rectify what may be amiss. Those who read with
attention, and reciprocally communicate their thoughts, will always
have the start of the author.[13]