both writers in
publishing in foreign places, however, indicates the prudence which it
was deemed necessary to observe in writing in favour of toleration.

These were the first _philosophical_ attempts; but the earliest
advocates for toleration may be found among the religious
controversialists of a preceding period; it was probably started among
the fugitive sects who had found an asylum in Holland. It was a blessing
which they had gone far to find, and the miserable, reduced to humane
feelings, are compassionate to one another. With us the sect called "the
Independents" had, early in our revolution under Charles the First,
pleaded for the doctrine of religious liberty, and long maintained it
against the presbyterians. Both proved persecutors when they possessed
power. The first of our respectable divines who advocated this cause
were Jeremy Taylor, in his "Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying,"
1647, and Bishop Hall, who had pleaded the cause of _moderation_ in a
discourse about the same period.[163] Locke had no doubt examined all
these writers. The history of opinions is among the most curious of
histories; and I suspect that Bayle was well acquainted with the
pamphlets of our sectarists, who, in their flight to Holland, conveyed
those curiosities of theology, which had cost them their happiness and
their estates: I think he indicates this hidden source of his ideas by
the extraordinary ascription of his book to _an Englishman_, and fixing
the place of its publication at _Canterbury_!

Toleration has been a vast engine in the hands of modern politicians. It
was established in the United Provinces of Holland, and our numerous
non-conformists took refuge in that asylum for disturbed consciences; it
attracted a valuable community of French refugees; it conducted a colony
of Hebrew fugitives from Portugal; conventicles of Brownists, quakers'
meetings, French churches, and Jewish synagogues, and (had it been
required) Mahometan mosques, in Amsterdam, were the precursors of its
mart, and its exchange; the moment they could preserve their consciences
sacred to themselves, they lived without mutual persecution, and mixed
together as good Dutchmen.

The excommunicated part of Europe seemed to be the most enlightened, and
it was then considered as a proof of the admirable progress of the human
mind, that Locke and Clarke and Newton corresponded with Leibnitz, and
others of the learned in France and Italy. Some were asto