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ON TOLERATION.

In the year 1673, the year before that of his death, Milton published a treatise on True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery.

Heresy he here defines to be "a religion taken up and believed from the traditions of men, and additions to the Word of God." Hence it follows that Popery is the only or the greatest heresy in Christendom. The term Roman Catholic is, he says, "a mere contradiction, one of the Pope's bulls, as if he should say, universal particular, or catholic schismatic." He refuses to apply the term heresy to any portion of the Protestant church, though it may have fallen into schism, i. e. division, and therefore consist of sects.

Schism is a rent or division in the Church when it comes to the separating of congregations; and may also happen to a true church as well as to a false; yet, in the true, needs not tend to the breaking of communion, if they can agree in the right administration of that wherein they communicate, keeping their other opinions to themselves, not being destructive to faith. The Pharisees and Sadducees were two sects, yet both met together in their common worship of God at Jerusalem. But here the Papist will angrily demand, What! are Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Socinians, no heretics? I answer, all these may have some errors, but are no heretics. Heresy is in the will and choice professedly against Scripture; error is against the will in misunderstanding

the Scripture, after all sincere endeavours to understand it rightly : hence it was said well by one of the ancients, "Err I may, but a heretic I will not be." It is a human frailty to err, and no man is infallible here on earth. But so long as all these profess to set the Word of God only before them as the rule of faith and obedience, and use all diligence and sincerity of heart, by reading, by learning, by study, by prayer, for illumination of the Holy Spirit, to understand the rule and obey it, they have done what man can do; God will assuredly pardon them, as he did the friends of Job, good and pious men, though much mistaken, as there it appears, in some points of doctrine.

But some will say, With Christians it is otherwise, whom God hath promised by his Spirit to teach all things. True, all things necessary to salvation. But the hottest disputes among Protestants, calmly and charitably inquired into, will be found less than such. The Lutheran holds consubstantiation,* an error indeed, but not mortal. The Calvinist is taxed with predestination, and to make God the author of sin, not with any dishonourable thought of God, but it may be over-zealously asserting his absolute power, not without plea of Scripture. The Anabaptist is accused of denying infants their right to baptism; again, they say they deny nothing but what Scripture denies them. The Arian and Socinian are charged to dispute against the Trinity; they affirm to believe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to Scripture and the Apostolic Creed. As for terms of trinity, triniunity, co-essentiality, tripersonality, and the like, they reject them as scholastic notions, not to be found in Scripture, which, by a general Protestant maxim, is plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its own meaning in the properest words belonging to so high a matter and so necessary to be known; a mystery indeed in their sophistic subtleties, but in Scripture a plain doctrine. Their other opinions are of less moment. They dispute the satisfaction of Christ, or rather the word satisfaction, as not Scriptural, but they acknowledge him both God and their Saviour. The Arminian, lastly, is condemned for setting up free-will against free-grace, but

* As Milton was probably aware that consubstantiation and transubstantiation only differ in the first syllable, and in reality signify the same, we may perhaps infer that he would have tolerated the latter if it had been, like the former, a mere dogma, and not connected with idolatrous worship.

that imputation he disclaims in all his writings, and grounds himself largely upon Scripture only.

It cannot be denied that the authors or late revivers of all these sects or opinions were learned, worthy, zealous, and religious men, as appears by their lives written; and the same of their many eminent and learned followers, perfect and powerful in the Scriptures, holy and unblamable in their lives. And it cannot be imagined that God would desert such painful and zealous labourers in his Church, and oftentimes great sufferers for their conscience, to damnable errors and a reprobate sense, who had so often implored the assistance of his Spirit; but rather, having made no man infallible, that he hath pardoned their errors, and accepts their pious endeavours, sincerely searching all things, according to the rule of Scripture, with such direction and guidance as they can obtain of God by prayer. What Protestant then, who himself maintains the same principles and disavows all implicit faith, would persecute, and not rather charitably tolerate, such men as these, unless he mean to abjure the principles of his own religion? If it be asked how far they should be tolerated, I answer, Doubtless equally, as being all Protestants,—that is, on all occasions to give an account of their faith, either by arguing, preaching in their several assemblies, public writing, and the freedom of printing. For if the French and Polonian Protestants enjoy all this liberty among Papists, much more may a Protestant justly expect it among Protestants; and yet sometimes here among us the one persecutes the other upon every slight pretence.

As to the heresy of Popery, considering it as a union of political and ecclesiastical usurpation, he "submits it to the consideration of all magistrates, who are best able to provide for their own and the public safety," whether it should be tolerated or not, hinting his own opinion that it should not. But viewing it solely in a religious light, as a system of idolatry, he is decided that it should not be tolerated, either publicly or privately. He argues as usual from the Old Testament, and relies on the Second Commandment, though, as we have seen, he held

the Decalogue to have been abolished along with the rest of the Law.

Some years ago such an opinion as this would have been received with scorn or incredulity; but we have lived to see Popery display herself in her true form as the unrelenting foe of truth and liberty. It is however not on account of her idolatry (which is comparatively a venial offence) that Popery is to be abhorred and dreaded, but for her cruel, persecuting spirit. If we look through all the religions of ancient and modern Asia and Europe, Zoroasterism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, etc., we nowhere find any system so sanguinary as that of the Church of Rome; even the political persecutions of the Roman emperors were trifling in comparison with hers; and her spirit is unchanged and unchangeable, -her clergy are as willing to employ persecution now as in the days of St. Dominic. But her impotence is our security; the spirit of the age is against her, and she struggles, and ever will struggle, in vain, to recover her former power. The educated classes are everywhere opposed to her pretensions, and therefore she may with safety be tolerated. She will also always have votaries and maké proselytes, for weak, trifling minds will be caught with her gaudy, theatric ceremonies; the feeble worshipers of antiquity and authority will submit to her pretensions; and, as Milton observes,

There is no man so wicked but at times his conscience will wring him with thoughts of another world, and the peril of his soul. The trouble and melancholy which he conceives of true repentance and amendment he endures not, but inclines rather to some carnal superstition, which may pacify and lull his conscience with some more pleasing doctrine. None more ready and officious to offer herself than the Romish, and opens wide her

office with all her faculties to receive him: easy confession, easy absolution, pardons, indulgences, masses for him both quick and dead, Agnus Deis, and the like. And he, instead of "working out his salvation with fear and trembling," straight thinks in his heart-like another kind of fool than he in the Psalms-to bribe God as a corrupt judge, and by his proctor, some priest or friar, to buy out his peace with money, which he cannot with his repentance.

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