Given the premises of the theologians, their arguments were unanswerable. Of late the opinion has prevailed that his faith cannot be wrong whose life is in the right. But then it was believed that the creed was the all-important thing; that God would send to hell those who entertained wrong notions of his scheme of salvation. "We utterly abhor," says the Scots' Confession of 1560, "the blasphemy of those that affirm that men who live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion so ever they have professed."
[Sidenote: Tolerance]
Against this flood of bigotry a few Christians ventured to protest in the name of their master. In general, the persecuted sects, Anabaptists and Unitarians, were firmly for tolerance, by which their own position would have been improved. [Sidenote: Erasmus] Erasmus was thoroughly tolerant in spirit and, though he never wrote a treatise specially devoted to the subject, uttered many obiter dicta in favor of mercy and wrote many letters to the great ones of the earth interceding for the oppressed. His broad sympathies, his classical tastes, his horror of the tumult, and his Christ-like spirit, would not have permitted him to resort to the coarse arms of rack and stake even against infidels and Turks.
The noblest plea for tolerance from the Christian standpoint was that written by Sebastian Castellio [Sidenote: Castellio] as a protest against the execution of Servetus. He {647} collects all the authorities ancient and modern, the latter including Luther and Erasmus and even some words, inconsistent with the rest of his life, written by Calvin himself. "The more one knows of the truth the less one is inclined to condemnation of others," he wisely observes, and yet, "there is no sect which does not condemn all others and wish to reign alone. Thence come banishments, exiles, chains, imprisonments, burnings, scaffolds and the miserable rage of torture and torment that is plied every day because of some opinions not pleasing to the government, or even because of things unknown." But Christians burn not only infidels but even each other, for the heretic calls on the name of Christ as he perishes in agony.
Who would not think that Christ were Moloch, or some such god, if he wished that men be immolated to him and burnt alive? . . . Imagine that Christ, the judge of all, were present and himself pronounced sentence and lit the fire,—who would not take Christ for Satan? For what else would Satan do than burn those who call on the name of Christ? O Christ, creator of the world, dost thou see such things? And hast thou become so totally different from what thou wast, so cruel and contrary to thyself? When thou wast on earth, there was no one gentler or more compassionate or more patient of injuries.
Calvin called upon his henchmen Beza to answer this "blasphemy" of one that must surely be "the chosen vessel of Satan." Beza replied to Castellio that God had given the sword to the magistrate not to be borne in vain and that it was better to have even a cruel tyrant than to allow everyone to do as he pleased. Those who forbid the punishment of heresy are, in Beza's opinion, despisers of God's Word and might as well say that even parricides should not be chastized.
Two authors quoted in favor of tolerance more than {648} they deserve to be are Sir Thomas More [Sidenote: More] and Montaigne. In Utopia, indeed, there was no persecution, save of the fanatic who wished to persecute others. But even in Utopia censure of the government by a private individual was punishable by death. And, twelve years after the publication of the Utopia, More came to argue "that the burning of heretics is lawful and well done," and he did it himself accordingly. The reason he gave, in his Dialogue, was that heretics also persecute, and that it would put the Catholics at an unfair disadvantage to allow heresy to wax unhindered until it grew great enough to crush them. There is something in this argument. It is like that today used against disarmament, that any nation which started it would put itself at the mercy of its rivals.
[Sidenote: Montaigne]
The spirit of Montaigne was thoroughly tolerant, because he was always able to see both sides of everything; one might even say that he was negatively suggestible, and always saw the "other" side of an opinion better than he saw his own side of it. He never came out strongly for toleration, but he made two extremely sage remarks about it. The first was that it was setting a high value on our own conjectures to put men to death for their sake. The second was thus phrased, in the old English translation: "It might be urged that to give factions the bridle to uphold their opinion, is by that facility and ease, the ready way to mollify and release them; and to blunt the edge, which is sharpened by rareness, novelty and difficulty."
Had the course of history been decided by weight of argument, persecution would have been fastened on the world forever, for the consensus of opinion was overwhelmingly against liberty of conscience. But just as individuals are rarely converted on any vital question by argument, so the course of races and of civilizations is decided by factors lying deeper than {649} the logic of publicists can reach. Modern toleration developed from two very different sources; by one of which the whole point of view of the race has changed, and by the other of which a truce between warring factions, at first imposed as bitter necessity, has developed, because of its proved value, into a permanent peace.