on individual character. Pope
Alexander III., A.D. 1167, writes: 'Nature having made no slaves, all
men have an equal right to liberty.' Luther, in 1524, says to the German
peasants; 'You wish to emancipate yourselves from slavery, but slavery
is as old as the world. Abraham had slaves, and St. Paul established
rules for those whom the laws of nations reduced to that state.' Many of
our modern priests reecho these sentiments! Guizot says: 'The
emancipation of the human mind and _absolute_ monarchy triumphed
simultaneously.' The truth is we want a philosophical history of the
Reformation, written neither from a Catholic, Protestant, nor infidel
point of view, that we may rightly estimate what we lost, what gained in
its wild storms. In judging this, we should not quite forget that it was
the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in
1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of
_universal toleration_, while the Puritans were persecuting in New
England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught
set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means
eternal Progress, and its path is onward.--ED. CON.]

It would, however, be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with
our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of
republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes
of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and
trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and
religious character, from and before the times of Wycliffe, down to
Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; for all through English history
it has left a broad red mark behind it, like the auroral pathway of a
conqueror. The first man who prayed without book, and denied the
authority of the church over the human soul, as the brave Loilards did,
was the pioneer of Protestantism and the father of all the births which
ushered this mighty epoch upon the stage of the world; Protestantism,
which means so much and includes so many vast emprises--establishing for
freedom so grand a battle ground, and for philosophy and learning so
wide and magnificent a dominion.

The same spirit which made nonconformists of the first seekers and
worshippers of God apart from the churches and cathedrals of Rome, in
the sublimer cathedrals of nature, when the Roman hierarchy was master
of Europe--made republicans also of the first rebels