These things premised, I assert that, —
Non-toleration, — in the latitude which is for persons in authority enjoying the tmth (or supposing they do enjoy it) to punish in an
OF TOLERATION. 173
arbitrary way, according to what tliey sliall conceive to be condign, men who will not forsake their own convictions about any head or heads of Christian religion whatsoever, to join with what they hold out, either for belief or worship, after the using of such ways of per- suasion as they shall think fit, — is no way warranted in the gospel ; nor can any sound proof for such a course be taken from the Old Testament.
The testimonies out of the law, Avhich I can apprehend to have any colour or appearance of strength in them, Avith the examples approved of God that seem to look this way, I considered at our entrance into this discourse.
I speak of punishing in an arbitraiy way ; for all instances pro- duced to the purpose in hand, that speak of any punishment, men- tion nothing under death itself; which yet, at least m the first place, is not aimed at by those that use them in our days, as I suppose. Now, some divines of no small name maintain, that God hath not left the imposition of punishment in any measure to the wills of men.
Some arguments for the proof of the former assertion as laid down I shall in due place make use of; for the present, I desire to com- mend to the serious pondering of all Christians in general, especially of those in authority, these ensuing considerations : —
1. That it is no privilege of truth to furnish its assertors with this persuasion, that the dissenters from it ought forcibly to be opposed, restrained, punished.
No false religion ever yet in the world did enthrone itself in the minds of men enjoying a civil sovereignty over the persons of others, but it therewithal commanded them, under pain of neglect and con- tempt of itself, to crush any underling worship that would perk up in inferior consciences.
The old heathens caiTied their gods into the war (as did the Phi- listines, 1 Chron. xiv. 1 2, and the Israelites the ark, with heathenish superstition, 1 Sam. iv. 3), to whom they ascribed the success they obtained ; and in requital of their kindness, they forced the dunghill deities of the conquered nations to attend the triumph of their victo- rious idols ; and unless they adopted them into the number of their own gods, all farther worship to them was forbidden. Hence were these inventions among the old Romans, by spells and enchantments, to entice away a deity from any city they besieged (they being as expert at the getting of a devil as Tobias's Raphael, or the present Romanists at his fumigation) ; by which means they shrived into the honour of having thirty thousand unconquered idols,^ and deserved worthily that change of then- city's epithet from ''E':7iro[j.n ruxov/jAvrig to 'e-ito/my} hiGihaiiMoviac, — which it justly inherit eth to this very day. ' Varro in Augustin. de Civit. Dei.
1 74 OF TOLERATIOX.
Rabsliakeli's provocation to the example of the gods of the nations,
2 Kings x\aii. 33, 84, and the Roman senate's consultation concern- ing the admitting of Christ to a place among their idols, that he might have been freely worshipped (their consent being prevented by his almighty providence, who will not be enrolled among the vilest works of his most coniipted creatures), do both declare this thing.
Now, not to speak of Cain, who seems to me to have laid the foun- dation of that cruelty which was afterwards inserted into the church's orthodoxies by the name of Haereticidium ; we find the four famous empires of the world to have drunk in this persuasion to the iitmost, of suppressing all by force and violence that consented not to them in their way of worship.
Nebuchadnezzar, the " crown of the golden head," set up a fiimace with an image ; and a negative answer to that queiy, "Do you not serve my gods, nor worship my image?" served to cast the servants of the Hving God into the midst of the fire, Dan. iii.
Daniel's casting into the lions' den, chapter vi., shows that the Persian silver breast and arms did not want iron hands to crush or break the opposers of, or dissenters from, their religious edicts.
And though we find not miich of the short-lived founder of the Grecian dominion, yet what was the practice of the branches of that empire, especially in the S}Tian and Egj^tian sprouts, the books of the Maccabees, Josephus, and others, do abundantly manifest.
For the Romans, though then- judgment and practice — which fully and wholly are given over from the dragon to the beast and false prophet — be written in the blood of thousands of Clu-istians, and so not to be questioned; yet, that it may appear that we are not the only men in this generation, that this wisdom of punishing dissenters was not bom with us, I shall briefly give in what grovmds they pro- ceeded on, and the motives they had to proceed as they did.
(1.) First, then, they enacted it as a law, that no religious woi-ship should be admitted or practised without the consent, decree, and estabhshment of the senate. Mention is made of a formal law to this pui-pose in Tertullian, Apol., cap. v., though now we find it not. The foundation of it was doubtless in that of the twelve tables: " Separa- tim nemo habessit deos, neve uovos, sed ne advenas, nisi public^ as- cites, privatim colunto ;" — " Let none have gods to himself, neither let any privately worship new or strange deities, unless they be pub- licly owned and enrolled." And that it was then* practice, and in the counsels of the wisest amongst them, appears in that ad^^ce given by Ma3cenas to Augustus, in Dion Cassius : To /ib ^iTov rravrri Tdvrug auTos n a'ilSov, xara ra vaTfia, xal tou; aXXou; rifji,^v avdyxat^s' roi>g ds df; ^svl^ovrdg ri mf'i auro, xa/ im'kSh xot,! xo^.a^s, /J^rj /mcvov ruiv "^iSiv svsxa, cSn xu-rafpovTjeas oOS' aXXou dv rivog 'Xf'OTi[Lr,(Siiiv. aXX' or/ xccivd rivex, 8ui/J,6via