surrender of his umlerstanding to the Church, of his conscience to the priest, of his will to the prince. . . . The policy of Calvin was a vigorous ellbrt to sup|ily what tlie revolutionary movement wanted — a positive education of the individual soul. The power thus generated was too expansive to be conlined to tJeneva. It went forth into all coun- tries. From every part of Protestant Kurope eager hearts tlocked liilner to catch something of the in- spiration. . . . Valfiniini .saved Europe. * Among the eager spirits who flocked to Geneva and came under the spell of Calvin's teaching were men from our own laiul, and they returned with their souls aglow with the inspiration of this new moral direc- tion which Calvin gave to religion. The I'mitans were disciples of Calvin in their thcologj-, in their Church polity, and in their insistence on vital religion ; and in this moral and social interpreta- tion of Christianity lies, perhaps, their greatest service to their country.
As in the case of Savonarola, Calvin was much more concerned with the right of the religious cle- ment to dominate the secular or political than with the right of conscience to be free from the sway of the secular authority. The leading spirits of the Reformation started with something more stable and positive than the right of private judgment or even liberty of conscience. The Reformation was a revolt from the religion of the 15th cent, in favour of the religion of the Gospels and Epistles. It was a repudiation of the authority of Lateian Councils and the athrmation of the authority of the Bible. It was a shifting of the seat of authority. There was no inconsistency between Calvin's Pro- testantism and his intolerance of views which did not coincide with his own. He had construcved his system of theology and his conception of the nature and function of the Church by means of careful biblical exegesis. He believed he had understood the mind of the Master. It was to him a matter of supreme urgency that the will of God as declared in His Word should prevail.
A grave wrong is committed when it is thrown in the face of Calvin and other Reformers that they preached the right of private judgment and liberty of conscience, while as a matter of fact they were guilty of brutal intolerance. The Reformation was not due to the prevalence of the right of private judgment or of liberty of conscience. The Reformers would not have gathered together a single church if they had had nothing more stable and reliable than private judgment to oppose to the authority of Rome in the i)erson of tlie Pope. They appealed from Synods to the Scriptures, and their belief in the Scriptures was absolute. To the Reformers the authority of conscience was the authority of the Word of God. Many of them would have listened w ith disdain to the contention that conscience was free ; to them conscience was master. Their creed was not so much the liberty, as the supremacy, of conscience. To them the language of conscience was not simply, ' I w^ill not submit,' but rather, 'I must enforce.' We have observed above that the religious conviction that makes the martyr tends also to make the perse- cutor, unless along with this conviction there is a clear recognition of the fact that coercion is opposed to the very nature of religion. 'Intense and real- ising faith' finds it extremely diilieult to be toler- ant. The leading spirits of the Reformation possessed the proiiliets' conviction of the truth of their message. The prophetic attitude presupposes something more than the assent of the understand ing to a proposition or dogma. It implies that some truth has seized the soul of the prophet. The conviction is more moral than intellectual ; it
* Mark PattJBOn. quoted by J. Heron, in A Short Hittory of Pitritanism, Edinburgh, 1908, p. 5 f.
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lias more to do witli conscience tlian with reason. The pro|iliefs creed is not a proposition which the theoretical understanding accoplB.lmt a trutli wliich lias captured the practical undcrstandint:. Tlie Reforiiiers were akin to the prophets in Ihcir over- powering conviction of the truth of their iiicssaj;e, but instead of the propliets' 'Thus saith tlie Lord,' the Kcforiuers said 'Thus saitli tlie Scripture.' \Vhat the Reformers meant by a matter of con- scieii<-e was precisely this — what was tauiiht in God's Word. Conscience is proverbially intolerant. ' Had it,' wrote Joseph Butler, ' strength, as it has right; had it power, as it has manifest authority, it wouldabsolutely govern the world.'* Calvin was anxions to invest conscience, i.e. the Word of God, with strength equal to its right, power equal to its authority, so that it might govern. The Reformera were intolerant in the name of conscience ; they were intractable in the name of God's Word. It may be impossible to justify the martyrdom of Servetus, but we must not look upon it as if it were a .solitary occurrence in those troublous days.
Reformers who had come under the inlluence of Calvin accepted his ideal of a theocratic State or a kingdom of saints. The Pilgrim Fathers did not cross the Atlantic in order to enjoy the right of private judgment or religious liberty. They wanted freedom to believe what they deemed to be true, and to worship God in the way which they deemed right. They wanted freedom to make the Bible their sole guide and law book. They were not prepared to grant liberty of worship and liberty of tliought in their own province. Their aim was the establishment of a State where their own Christianity would be the State religion. They did not believe in the separation of the Church from the State ; they were anxious to found a community in which their Puritanism would be supreme. The Bible was to be the nation's law book, and to its teaching every member of tlie community must subscribe. The Pilgrim Fathers believed too much in their own view of Christianity to tolerate any other and conflicting views. Nothing is more flagrantly unjust than the indictment that the men of the Mayflower preached tolerance when they left the shores of Great I'.ritain, and practised intolerance when they landed on Plymouth Rock. Tolerance did not come from (ieneva, or from those who had come under the influence of Geneva, but from the Socinians of Italy and the Anabaptists of Holland. The founder of the first State where toleration was practised was Roger Williams, who emigrated to America in 1631 and welcomed to Providence all who were prepared to extend to all the religious liberty which they claimed for them- selves.