Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/83

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Dr. Stiggins:

At any rate, if you search history you will find no justification for this very curious theory of yours. I don't think there was much "tolerance" about Bluff King Hal when he had to deal with recalcitrant abbots and friars; Queen Elizabeth, unless I am mistaken, stamped out Popery without much hesitation, as Tyburn Tree could bear witness, and the triumphant and glorious Puritans of the seventeenth century (sturdy followers of good old John Knox), suppressed the idolatrous worship of Rome and Canterbury under the sanctions of death and transportation. Again, in France, during the Revolution I fear you would miss your favourite virtue (as you think it), in the actions of the Revolutionary Government, in the so-called "massacres," in the prisons, in the thousands of executions which took place under the very insignia of triumphant Liberty. And to-day, in the United States, the freest country in the world, perhaps the only country which is truly free, I am told that there are not wanting certain instruments of coercion which can

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