because there were none such in the kingdom; and no
Protestant ever assumed or pretended to the right of erecting them. The
greatest well-wishers of the Puritanical sect would have condemned
a practice, which in that age was universally, by statesmen and
ecclesiastics-philosophers and zealots, regarded as subversive of civil
society. Even so great a reasoner as Lord Bacon thought that uniformity
in religion was absolutely necessary to the support of government, and
that no toleration could with safety be given to sectaries.[*]

* See his essay De Unitate Ecclesiae.

Nothing but the imputation of idolatry, which was thrown on the Catholic
religion, could justify, in the eyes of the Puritans themselves, the
schism made by the Hugonots and other Protestants who lived in Popish
countries.

In all former ages, not wholly excepting even those of Greece and Rome,
religious sects, and heresies, and schisms had been esteemed dangerous,
if not pernicious, to civil government, and were regarded as the source
of faction, and private combination, and opposition to the laws.[*]
The magistrate, therefore, applied himself directly to the cure of
this evil, as of every other; and very naturally attempted, by penal
statutes, to suppress those separate communities, and punish the
obstinate innovators. But it was found by fatal experience, and after
spilling an ocean of blood in those theological quarrels, that the evil
was of a peculiar nature, and was both inflamed by violent remedies, and
diffused itself more rapidly throughout the whole society. Hence,
though late, arose the paradoxical principle and salutary practice of
toleration.

The liberty of the press was incompatible with such maxims and such
principles of government as then prevailed, and was therefore quite
unknown in that age. Besides employing the two terrible courts of
star chamber and high commission, whose powers were unlimited, Queen
Elizabeth exerted her authority by restraints upon the press. She passed
a decree in her court of star chamber, that is, by her own will and
pleasure, forbidding any book to be printed in any place but in London,
Oxford, and Cambridge:[**] and another, in which she prohibited, under
severe penalties, the publishing of any book or pamphlet "against the
form or meaning of any restraint or ordinance, contained, or to be
contained, in any statute or laws of this realm, or in any injunction
made or set forth by her majesty or her privy