d Sidney; and, appropriating their mingled faith and
polity, discarded every thing that was doctrinal and not practical, and
realized, in government, their united wisdom. Nobly _in his age_, did he
declare: "I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, which are the rule of one, of a few, and of
the many, and are the three common ideas of government when men
discourse on that subject. But I choose to solve the controversy with
this small distinction, and it belongs to all three:--_any government is
free to the people under it, whatever be the frame, where the laws rule
and the people are a party to those laws; and more than this is tyranny,
oligarchy, and confusion._"[15]

In these historical illustrations, I have striven to show that Primitive
Christianity was the basis of equal rights and responsibilities. The
alleged defence of this christianity, in the land of its birth, gave
rise to "holy wars," in which Feudalism and Chivalry originated.
Feudalism was the source of the strictest military dependence, as well
as of manifold social perversions. The knight expanded into a lord,--the
subject commoner dwindled to a soldier or a serf. Thus Feudalism and a
great historical Church, grew up in aristocratic co-partnership over the
bodies and souls of mankind, until the one, by the omnipotence of its
spiritual authority, ripened into an universal hierarchy, while the
other, by the folly of its "divine right," decayed into a temporal
despotism that fell at the first blow of the heads-man's axe. The
reformation and revolution broke the enchanter's wand; and, when the
cloud passed from the bloody stage, instead of seeing before us a
magician full of the glories of his art and almost deceived himself, by
the splendor of his incantations, we beheld a meagre and pitiful
creature, who though blind and palsied, still retained for a while, the
power of witch-like mischief. But his reign was not lasting. The stern
Puritan,--the pioneer of Independence,--advanced with his remorseless
weapon,--while quietly, in his shadow, followed the calm and patient
Friend, sowing the seed of Peace and Good-Will in the furrows plowed by
the steel of his unrelenting predecessor. And thus again, after ages of
corrupt and desolating perversion, the selfish heart of man came humbly
back to its original faith that Liberal Christianity is the true basis
of enlightened freedom, and the only foundation of good and lastin