INTOLERANCE. [1533]
The principle of intolerance has been charged upon Chaps. XXIII. (Of the Civil Magistrate), XXX. (Of Church Censures), XXXI. (Of Synods and Councils), and the last clause of Ch. XX. (Of Christian Liberty, viz., the words 'and by the power of the civil magistrate'). The same charge applies to a few words in the 109th question of the Larger Catechism, where 'tolerating a false religion' is included among the sins forbidden in the Second Commandment with reference to some passages of the Old Testament and of the Book of Revelation (ii. 2, 16, 20; xvii. 16, 17).
There is no doubt that these passages assume a professedly Christian government, or the union of Church and State as it had come to be established in all Christian countries since the days of Constantine, and as it was acknowledged at that time by Protestants as well as Roman Catholics. [1534] It is on this ground that the Confession claims for the civil magistrate (of whatever form of government) the right and duty not only legally to protect, but also to support the Christian Church, and to prohibit or punish heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy.
The power to coerce and punish implies the principle of intolerance and the right of persecution in some form or other, though this right may never be exercised. For just as far as a civil government is identified with a particular Church, an offense against that Church becomes an offense against the State, and subject to its penal code. All acts of uniformity in religion are necessarily exclusive, and must prohibit the public manifestations of dissent, whatever may be the private thoughts and sentiments, which no human government can reach.
It is a fact, moreover, that the Westminster Assembly was called for the purpose of legislating for the faith, government, and worship of three kingdoms, and that by adopting the Solemn League and Covenant it was pledged for the extirpation of popery and prelacy and all heresy. [1535]
The few Independents demanded a limited toleration, and were backed by Cromwell and his army, which was full of Independents, Baptists, Antinomians, Socinians, New Lights, Familists, Millenarians, and other 'proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries' (as Baxter calls them). All these sectaries, who sprung up during the great religious excitement of the age, but mostly subsided soon afterwards, were of course tolerationists in their own interest. But for this very reason the prevailing sentiment in the Assembly was stoutly opposed to toleration, as the great Diana of the Independents and supposed mother and nurse of all sorts of heresies and blasphemies threatening the overthrow of religion and society. [1536] The Scottish delegation was a unit on the subject, and Baillie wrote a Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time (1645) against toleration, and attacked it in his Letters. [1537] Innumerable pamphlets were published on both sides. The advocates of toleration were defeated, and could only exact from the Assembly the important declaration that God alone is Lord of the conscience.
And yet, if we judge the Westminster standards from the stand point of the seventeenth century, and compare them with similar documents, they must be pronounced moderate.
1. They go no further on the subject of intolerance than the Belgic Confession, [1538] the Gallican Confession, [1539] the English Articles, [1540] and the Irish Articles. [1541] They teach less than is implied in the Anglican doctrine of the royal supremacy, which puts the religion of a whole nation in the hands of the temporal sovereign, and which was employed for the severest measures against all dissenters, Roman Catholic and Protestant.
2. The Presbyterians, during the fifteen years of their domination, [1542] used their power very moderately, with the exception of a wholesale ejectment of a large number of prelatists from office (allowing them, however, one fifth of their income). This was a folly and a crime (viewed from our standpoint), but not nearly as cruel as the hanging and burning, the imprisonment, torture, and mutilation so freely exercised against themselves and other non-conformists before 1640 and after 1661. During the disgraceful period of the Restoration, which they unwisely brought about without exacting any pledges from the faithless Stuart, they suffered for their loyalty to the Westminster standards as much hardship and displayed as much heroism, both in England and Scotland, as any Church or sect in Christendom ever did. [1543]
3. The Confession expresses for the first time among the confessions of faith, whether consistently or not, the true principle of religious liberty, which was made the basis of the Act of Toleration, in the noble sentiment of Ch. XX. 2: 'God alone is Lord of the conscience (James iv. 12; Rom. xiv. 4), and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship (Acts iv. 19; v. 29; 1 Cor. vii. 23; Matt. xxiii. 8-10; xxv. 9; 2 Cor. 1, 24). So that to believe such doctrines or to obey such commandments out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also' (Isa. viii. 20; Acts xvii. 11).
4. The objectionable clauses in the Confession and Larger Catechism have been mildly interpreted and so modified by the Presbyterian Churches in Europe as to disclaim persecuting sentiments. [1544] The Presbyterian Churches in the United States have taken the more frank and effective course of an entire reconstruction of those chapters, so as to make them expressly teach the principle of religious freedom, and claim no favor from the civil magistrate but that protection which it owes to the lives, liberties, and constitutional rights of all its citizens. [1545]