it may arbitrate, but these sentences it can enforce only by spiritual inducements. Coercive jurisdiction it has none; and if any such jurisdiction be assigned it, it be- comes so far a minister of the civil authority which makes the assignation ; and so far it leaves its own . sphere and becomes a temporal power. Temporal pains and penalties belong only to the temporal power, which moves in the external sphere of overt acts, and does not deal with the will and conscience. The cause of this is that, inasmuch as Almighty God has put man's life into man's keeping, and intrusted him with goods, the soci- ety which is to have power over life and goods is not formed without man's concurrence. The Church, on the other hand, is not formed by man's consultation, nor can it be modified at man's pleasure. Man joins it by voluntary submission, without any power of altering its constitution. The Church, therefore, has no power over life and goods; for the power over these which God has once given he will not take away. The concurrence of men in the formation of civil society is properly consid- ered by holding up the ideal of a social contract, a con- tract perpetually forming and modifying, as the mind of a nation expresses itself in law; and such ordinances of man are ratified by God's providence, which has worked also in their formation. Whence it is said, " Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." Such compact, then, according to the re- ligious state of those who make it, may be (1) a com- plete identity of the members of the Church and State; (2) or an established and preferred Church, with toler- ation in different degrees for other religious bodies (Jeremy Taylor, e. g., advocated toleration for all those who accept the Apostles' Creed) ; (3) or complete equal- ity of all religious bodies. Any one of these positions the Church of Christ may hold. In any case it ought to retain distinctly its proper position as a society of divine institution in the world, but not of the world. Especially it ought not to usurp in the name of relig- ion the powers and aims of the state law. There can- not be a greater mistake in statesmanship than to con- found the temporal and spiritual estates and jurisdic- tions. The Church as a spiritual body has nothing to do with the state. It continues its own course, neither intruding into the sphere of the state nor refusing to aid the state, but ever rejecting an alliance with the state. See Ciiuncii and State. It is from dogmatism in- vested with political power, and authorized to use that power for the inculcation of its dogmas, that persecution is sure to spring, aye, really springs. The first commu- nity based on freedom of conscience was the Koman Catholic colony of Maryland; yet Roman Catholicism in Maryland was as dogmatic as in Spain. Tlie great consequence from the principles we have tried to es- tablish is that the temporal penalties spoken of can be inflicted only for overt acts. The compact of society does not profess to touch the mind. It leaves the will and conscience to the divine institution of the Church. Consequently for matters of opinion, for belief privately held, there can be no temporal penalty at all. The tem- poral penalty is outside the power of the Church ; the private belief is outside the supervision of the state. We may therefore define persecution thus: the inflic- tion of temporal penalties by the spirituality as the spirituality, or by the civil power for other than overt acts, Koger Williams has the honor of being the first in modern times who took the right ground in regard to liberty of conscience. It was he who, in 1G42, cleared the subject from the subtleties of a thousand years of darkness, and held up to Christian abhorrence in all its forms the " Bloody Tenet" (as he justly called it) of per- secution for conscience' sake. John Owen, John Milton, John Locke, and a host of later writers have followed in liis steps. " Persecution for conscience' sake," says Dr. Doddridge, "is every way inconsistent; because, 1. It is founded on an absurd supposition that one man has a right to judge for another iu matters of religion. 2. It is evidently opposite to that fundamental principle of
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morality that we should do to others as we could reason- ably desire they should do to us. 3. It is by no means calculated to answer the end which its patrons profess to intend by it. 4. It evidently tends to produce a great deal of miscliief and confusion in the world. 5. The Cliristian religion must, humanly speaking, be not only obstructed, but destroyed, should persecuting principles universally prevail. G. Persecution is so far from being required or encouraged by the Gospel, that it is most directly contrary to many of its precepts, and indeed to the whole of it." See Keligious Libkuty ; Tolera- tion.