tirely among
themselves. We can be more sure that we have the true Protestant opinion
in a political or social question on which all the reformers are agreed,
than in a theological question on which they differ; for the concurrent
opinion must be founded on an element common to all, and therefore
essential. If it should further appear that this opinion was injurious
to their actual interests, and maintained at a sacrifice to themselves,
we should then have an additional security for its necessary connection
with their fundamental views.

The most important example of this law is the Protestant theory of
toleration. The views of the reformers on religious liberty are not
fragmentary, accidental opinions, unconnected with their doctrines, or
suggested by the circumstances amidst which they lived; but the product
of their theological system, and of their ideas of political and
ecclesiastical government. Civil and religious liberty are so commonly
associated in people's mouths, and are so rare in fact, that their
definition is evidently as little understood as the principle of their
connection. The point at which they unite, the common root from which
they derive their sustenance, is the right of self-government. The
modern theory, which has swept away every authority except that of the
State, and has made the sovereign power irresistible by multiplying
those who share it, is the enemy of that common freedom in which
religious freedom is included. It condemns, as a State within the State,
every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its
own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it
emancipates the subjects of every such authority in order to transfer
them exclusively to its own. It recognises liberty only in the
individual, because it is only in the individual that liberty can be
separated from authority, and the right of conditional obedience
deprived of the security of a limited command. Under its sway,
therefore, every man may profess his own religion more or less freely;
but his religion is not free to administer its own laws. In other words,
religious profession is free, but Church government is controlled. And
where ecclesiastical authority is restricted, religious liberty is
virtually denied.

For religious liberty is not the negative right of being without any
particular religion, just as self-government is not anarchy. It is the
right of religious communities to the prac