narchies after the French pattern,
majority takes the place of authority; an irresistible power is
substituted for an idolatrous principle, and all private rights are
equally insecure. The true theory of freedom excludes all absolute power
and arbitrary action, and requires that a tyrannical or revolutionary
government shall be coerced by the people; but it teaches that
insurrection is criminal, except as a corrective of revolution and
tyranny. In order to understand the views of the Protestant reformers on
toleration, they must be considered with reference to these points.

While the Reformation was an act of individual resistance and not a
system, and when the secular Powers were engaged in supporting the
authority of the Church, the authors of the movement were compelled to
claim impunity for their opinions, and they held language regarding the
right of governments to interfere with religious belief which resembles
that of friends of toleration. Every religious party, however exclusive
or servile its theory may be, if it is in contradiction with a system
generally accepted and protected by law, must necessarily, at its first
appearance, assume the protection of the idea that the conscience is
free.[194] Before a new authority can be set up in the place of one that
exists, there is an interval when the right of dissent must be
proclaimed. At the beginning of Luther's contest with the Holy See
there was no rival authority for him to appeal to. No ecclesiastical
organism existed, the civil power was not on his side, and not even a
definite system had yet been evolved by controversy out of his original
doctrine of justification. His first efforts were acts of hostility, his
exhortations were entirely aggressive, and his appeal was to the masses.
When the prohibition of his New Testament confirmed him in the belief
that no favour was to be expected from the princes, he published his
book on the Civil Power, which he judged superior to everything that had
been written on government since the days of the Apostles, and in which
he asserts that authority is given to the State only against the wicked,
and that it cannot coerce the godly. "Princes," he says, "are not to be
obeyed when they command submission to superstitious errors, but their
aid is not to be invoked in support of the Word of God."[195] Heretics
must be converted by the Scriptures, and not by fire, otherwise the
hangman would be the greatest doctor.[196] At the