thus saw put into
his hands a high and holy opportunity, and made no doubt that it was
God-given. His charter, indeed, seemed to contemplate an established
church, for it gave to Baltimore the patronage of all churches and
chapels which were to be "consecrated according to the ecclesiastical
laws of our kingdom of England"; nevertheless, no interpretation of the
charter was to be made prejudicial to "God's holy and true Christian
religion." What was Christian and what was prejudicial was, fortunately
for him, left undefined. No obstacles were placed before a Catholic
emigration.

Baltimore had this idea and perhaps a still wider one: a land--Mary's
land--where all Christians might foregather, brothers and sisters in
one home! Religious tolerance--practical separation of Church and
State--that was a broad idea for his age, a generous idea for a Roman
Catholic of a time not so far removed from the mediaeval. True, wherever
he went and whatever might be his own thought and feeling, he would
still have for overlord a Protestant sovereign, and the words of his
charter forbade him to make laws repugnant to the laws of England. But
Maryland was distant, and wise management might do much. Catholics,
Anglicans, Puritans, Dissidents, and Nonconformists of almost any
physiognomy, might come and be at home, unpunished for variations in
belief.

Only the personal friendship of England's King and the tact and suave
sagacity of the Proprietary himself could have procured the signing of
this charter, since it was known--as it was to all who cared to busy
themselves with the matter--that here was a Catholic meaning to take
other Catholics, together with other scarcely less abominable sectaries,
out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, to
set them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on the
novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to all
manner of errors, and embark on mischiefs far too large for definition.
Taking things as they were in the world, remembering acts of the
Catholic Church in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might find
some color for the agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore was
known to be in correspondence with English Jesuits, and it soon appeared
that Jesuit priests were to accompany the first colonists. At that time
the Society of Jesus loomed large both politically and educationally.
Many may have thought that there threatened a Rome