ury, is an
instance how historians incorporate their passions in their works, and
view ancient facts with modern eyes.

The protestant cannot grant toleration to the catholic, unless the
catholic ceases to be a papist; and the Arminian church, which opened
its wide bosom to receive every denomination of Christians, nevertheless
were forced to exclude the papists, for their passive obedience to the
supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The catholic has curiously told us, on
this word _toleration_, that _Ce mot devient fort en usage a mesure que
le nombre des tolerans augmente_.[175] It was a word which seemed of
recent introduction, though the book is modern! The protestants have
disputed much how far they might tolerate, or whether they should
tolerate at all; "a difficulty," triumphantly exclaims the catholic,
"which they are not likely ever to settle, while they maintain their
principles of pretended reformation; the consequences which naturally
follow excite horror to the Christian. It is the weak who raise such
outcries for toleration; the strong find authority legitimate."

A religion which admits not of _toleration_ cannot be safely tolerated,
if there is any chance of its obtaining a political ascendancy.

When Priscillian and six of his followers were condemned to torture and
execution for asserting that the three persons of the Trinity were to be
considered as three different _acceptions_ of the same being, Saint
Ambrose and Saint Martin asserted the cause of offended humanity, and
refused to communicate with the bishops who had called out for the blood
of the Priscillianists; but Cardinal Baronius, the annalist of the
church, was greatly embarrassed to explain how men of real purity could
abstain from _applauding_ the ardent zeal of the _persecution_: he
preferred to give up the saints rather than to allow of toleration--for
he acknowledges that the toleration which these saints would have
allowed was not exempt from sin.[176]

In the preceding article, "Political Religionism," we have shown how to
provide against the possible evil of the _tolerated_ becoming the
_tolerators_! Toleration has been suspected of indifference to religion
itself; but with sound minds, it is only an indifference to the
logomachies of theology--things "not of God, but of man," that have
perished, and that are perishing around us!

FOOTNOTES:

[161] Bishop Barlow's "Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of
Conscience Resolv