the true Church. "Therefore," he says, "we
ought to condemn the rage of some Christians--if they really deserve to
be called Christians--who think that they are doing God a service by
persecuting the Jews in the most hateful manner, imagining all manner of
evil about them, proudly and haughtily mocking them in their pitiful
misery. According to the statement in this Psalm (Ps. 14, 7) and the
example of the Apostle Paul in Rom. 9, 1, we ought rather to feel a
profound and cordial pity for them and always pray for them. . . . By
their tyrannical bearing these wicked people, who are nominally
Christians, cause not a little injury, not only to the cause of
Christianity, but also to Christian people, and they are responsible
for, and sharers in, the impiety of the Jews, because by their cruel
bearing toward them they drive them away from the Christian faith
instead of attracting them with all possible gentleness, patience,
pleading, and anxious concern for them. There are even some theologians
so unreasonable as to sanction such cruelty to the Jews and to encourage
people to it; in their proud conceit they assert that the Jews are the
Christians' slaves and tributary to the emperor, while in truth they are
themselves Christians with as much right as any one nowadays is Roman
Emperor. Good God, who would want to join our religion, even though he
were of a meek and submissive mind, when he sees how spitefully and
cruelly he is treated; and that the treatment he can expect is not only
unchristian, but worse than bestial? If hating Jews and heretics and
Turks makes people Christians, we insane people would indeed be the best
Christians. But if loving Christ makes Christians, we are beyond a doubt
worse than Jews, heretics, and Turks, because no one loves Christ less
than we. The rage of these people reminds me of children and fools, who,
when they see a picture of a Jew on a wall, go and cut out his eyes,
pretending that they want to help the Lord Christ. Most of the preachers
during Lent treat of nothing else than the cruelty of the Jews towards
the Lord Christ, which they are continually magnifying. Thus they
embitter believers against them, while the Gospel aims only at showing
and exalting the love of God and Christ." (4, 927.)

The Catholic claim that the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts
became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has
been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to en