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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
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