CH. III.]
SETTLEMENT OF NEW-ENGLAND.
35
own infallibility in doctrine and worship, and was eager to obtain proselytes, and denounce the errors of its opponents. If it had stopped here, we might have forgotten, in admiration of the sincere zeal for Christian truth, the desire of power, and the pride of mind, which lurked within the inner folds of their devotion. But unfortunately the spirit of intolerance was abroad in all its stern and unrelenting severity. To tolerate errors was to sacrifice Christianity to mere temporal interests. Truth, and truth alone, was to be followed at the hazard of all consequences; and religion allowed no compromises between conscience and worldly comforts. Heresy was itself a sin of a deadly nature, and to extirpate it was a primary duty of all, who were believers in sincerity and truth. Persecution, therefore, even when it seemed most to violate the feelings of humanity and the rights of private judgment, never wanted apologists among those of the purest and most devout lives. It was too often received with acclamations by the crowd, and found an ample vindication from the learned and the dogmatists; from the policy of the civil magistrate, and the blind zeal of the ecclesiastic. Each sect, as it attained power, exhibited the same unrelenting firmness in putting down its adversaries.
[1] The papist and the
- ↑ Dr. Robertson has justly observed, that not only the idea of toleration, but even the word itself in the sense now affixed to it, was then unknown.[* 1] Sir James Mackintosh, a name equally glorious in judicial and ethical philosophy, has remarked, that this giant evil (the suppression of the right of private judgment in matters of religion) had received a mortal wound from Luther, who in his warfare with Rome had struck a blow against, all human authority, and unconsciously disclosed to mankind, that they were entitled, or rather bound to form and utter their own opinions, and most of all on the most deeply interesting subjects.[* 2]
- ↑ The whole passage deserves commendation for its catholic spirit. Robertson's America, B. 10.
- ↑ Mackintosh's Dessertation on the Progress of Ethical Philisophy, (Phila. 1832,) p. 36.
