PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION 16 9
proscribed different religions vvhere the State was founded on religious unity) and where this unity formed an integral part of its laws and administration. They had gone one step further) and punished those whom the Church con- demned as apostates; thereby vindicating) not) as in the first case, the moral basis of society) nor, as in the second, the religious foundation of the State, but the authority of the Church and the purity of her doctrine, on \vhich they relied as the pillar and buhvark of the social and political order. Where a portion of the inhabitants of any country preferred a different creed Jew) Mohammedan) heathen) or schismatic) they had been generally tolerated) with enjoyment of property and personal freedom, but not with that of political power or autonomy. But political freedom had been denied them because they did not admit the common ideas of duty which were its basis. This position, however) was not tenable, and was the source of great disorders. The Protestants, in like manner, could give reasons for several kinds of persecution. They could bring the Socinians under the category of blasphemers; and blasphemy, like the ridicule of sacred things) destroys reverence and awe, and tends to the destruction of society. The Anabaptists, they might argue, were revolutionary fanatics, whose doctrines were subversive of the civil order; and the dogmatic sects threatened the ruin of ecclesiastical unity within the Protestant community itself. But by placing the necessity of intolerance on the simple ground of religious error, and in directing it against the Church which they themselves had abandoned) they introduced a purely subjective test, and a purely revolutionary system. It is on this account that the tu quoque) or retaliatory argument, is inadmissible between Catholics and Protestants. Catholic intolerance is handed down from an age \vhen unity subsisted) and when its preservation, being essential for that of society, became a necessity of State as well as a result of cir, cumstances. Protestant intolerance) on the contrary was the peculiar fruit of a dogmatic system in con-
