Nor is the Protestant understanding of religious liberty a whit more true. We have found that the basis or principle of all civil and political liberty is religious liberty, or the freedom and independence of religion—that is to say, the spiritual order; but from the point of view of Protestantism there is no religion, no spiritual order, to be free and independent. According to Protestantism, religion is a function, not a substantive existence or an objective reality. It is, as we have seen, on Protestant principles, a function of the state, of the community, or of the individual, and whatever liberty there may be in the case, must be predicated of one or another of these, not of religion, or the spiritual order. With Protestants the freedom and independence of religion or the spiritual order would be an absurdity, for it is precisely that which they began by protesting against. It is of the very essence of Protestantism to deny and make unrelenting war on the freedom and independence of religion, and the only liberty in the case it can assert is the freedom of the state, the community, or the individual from religion as law, and the right of one or another of them to adopt or reject any religion or none at all as they choose, which is irreligious or infidel, not religious liberty.
Protestantism, under its most favorable aspect, is not, even in the estimation of Protestants themselves, religion, or a religion; but the view of religion which the reformers took, or which men take or may take of religion. At best it is not the objective truth or reality, but a human doctrine or theory of it, which has no existence out of the mind that forms or entertains it. Hence, Protestants assert, as their cardinal doctrine, justification by faith alone; and which faith is not the truth, but the mind's view of it. Hence, too, they deny that the sacraments are efficacious ex opere operato, and maintain that, if efficacious at all, they are so ex opere suscipientis. They reject the Real Presence as a "fond imagination," and make every thing in religion depend on the subjective faith, conviction, or persuasion of the recipient. The church they recognize or assert is no living organism, no kingdom of God on earth, founded to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to eternal life or the spiritual end of man, but a simple association of individuals, with no life or authority except what it derives from the individuals associated, and which is not hers, but theirs.
Some Protestants go so far as to doubt or deny that there is any truth or reality independent of the mind, and hold that man is himself his own teacher and his own law-giver; but all concede, nay, maintain, that what is known or is present to the mind is never the reality, the truth, or the divine law itself, but the mind's own representation of it. Hence their Protestantism is not something fixed and invariable, the same in all times and places, but varies as the mind of Protestants itself varies, or as their views, convictions, or feelings change, and they change ever with the spirit of the age or country. One of their gravest objections to the church was, in the sixteenth century, that she had altered the faith; and in the nineteenth century is, that she does not alter it, that she remains inflexibly the same, and absolutely refuses to change her faith to suit the times. They hold their own faith and doctrine alterable at will, and are continually changing it. Evidently, then, they do not hold it to be the truth; for truth never changes: nor to be the law of God, which they are bound to obey; for if the law of God is alterable at all, it can be so only by God himself, never by man, any body of men, or any creature of God. There is no Protestant ignorant or conceited enough to maintain the contrary.
This fact that Protestantism is a theory, a doctrine, or a view of religion, not the objective reality itself, not the recognition and assertion of the rights of God, but a human view or theory of them, proves sufficiently that it is incompatible with the assertion of religious liberty. All it can do is to assert the right or liberty of the state to adopt and ordain any view of religion it may take; of the community to form and enforce its own views, convictions, or opinions; or of the individual to make a religion to suit himself, or to go without any religion at all, as he pleases. In none of these cases is there any religious liberty; and in them all religion is subjected to a purely human authority—the authority of the state, of the community, or of the individual, one as human as another. Protestantism is really in its very nature and essence an earnest and solemn protest against religious liberty, and for it to assert the freedom and independence of religion, or the spiritual order—that is, of religion as law to which all men are bound to conform—would be to commit suicide. Even the supremacy of the spiritual order, which our old Puritans asserted, was only the assertion of the authority of their interpretation of the written word against the divine authority to interpret it claimed by the church, and against the human authority of the civil magistrate claimed by Anglicanism, from which they separated, while it subjected it to the congregation, the brotherhood, or to the ministers and elders, no more spiritual than the civil magistrate himself.
In the beginning Protestantism made religion in nearly all Protestant nations a function of the state, as it is still in Great Britain, Prussia, the several Protestant German states, in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. The progress of events, and the changes of opinion, have produced a revolt among Protestant nations against this order, and Protestants now make, or are struggling to make, it a function of the community or the sect, and the more advanced party of them demand that it be made a function of the individual. This advanced party do not demand the freedom of religion, but the freedom of the individual from all religious restraints, from all obligations of obedience to any religious law, and indeed of any law at all, except the law he imposes on himself. Dr. Bellows, of this city, a champion of this party, proves that it is not the freedom of religion, nor the freedom of the individual to be of any religion he chooses; for he denies that he is free to be a Catholic, though he is free to be any thing else. He tells Catholics they are only tolerated; and threatens them with extermination by the sword, if they dare claim equal rights with Protestants, and insist on having their proportion of the public schools under their own control, or on not being taxed to support schools to which they cannot with a good conscience send their children.
Evidently, then, the pretension that the Reformation has founded or favored religious liberty is as worthless as we have seen is the pretension that it has founded or favored civil and political liberty. It has, on the contrary, uniformly opposed it, and asserted only the liberty of its contradiction. To assert the liberty of the state, the people, or the individual to control religion, or to assert the liberty of infidelity or no-religion, surely is not to assert the liberty of religion. Protestantism yields always to the spirit of the age, and asserts the right of that spirit to modify, alter, or subject religion to itself. There can be no religious liberty where religion must follow the spirit of the times, and change as it changes. Religion, if any thing, is the supreme law of conscience, and conscience is a mere name if obliged to obey as its supreme law the dominant passion or tendency of the age or nation. The freedom of conscience is not in the emancipation of conscience from all law, for that were its destruction; but in its being subjected to no law but the law of God, promulgated by divine authority, and declared to the understanding by God himself, or a court appointed, enlightened, and assisted by the Holy Spirit. Under Protestantism there is and can be no freedom of conscience; for under it conscience is either destroyed by being subjected to no law, or enslaved by being subjected to another law than the law of God.
This conclusion, which we obtain by a simple analysis of Protestantism, is confirmed by all the facts in the case. Every student of the history of Protestantism knows that the reformers never made the pretension now put forth in their name. No man was ever farther from proposing the emancipation of the mind from what is called spiritual thraldom than Martin Luther, and no man ever showed less respect for human reason. His aim was to emancipate the church from the authority of the pope; and in this laudable work he engaged the princes of the empire, who were ready to assist him, because in doing so they could also emancipate themselves, make themselves pontiffs as well as princes, and enrich themselves with the spoils of the church. But Luther substituted for the authority of the pope and councils that of the written word, as amended and interpreted by himself. He never recognized the so-called right of private judgement, and never asserted the right of every man to interpret the written word for himself. The Bible as interpreted by himself, Martin Luther, was to be taken in all cases as the supreme and only authority, and he would tolerate no dissent from his interpretation. He assumed for himself more than papal authority; for he confessedly assumed authority to alter the written word, which assuredly no pope ever did. He never admitted any right of dissent from his dicta, and wherever he could, he suppressed it by the strong arm of power.
John Calvin was not more tolerant, as the burning of Michael Servetus over a slow fire made of green wood, and his pamphlet justifying the burning of heretics, amply prove. Henry VIII. of England put to death Catholics and Lollards, beheaded Cardinal Fisher and Sir Thomas More, because they refused to take the oath of the royal supremacy, except with the qualification, "as far as the law of Christ permits." In Sweden, the peasants were entrapped into the support of the Reformation by the infamous Gustavus Vasa, under pretence of recovering and reëstablishing the national independence; and after the prince had regained by their aid his throne and been crowned king, were massacred by thousands because they wished still to adhere to the Catholic Church, and resisted its abolition. In Geneva, Protestantism gained a footing in much the same way. Protestants came from Berne and other places to assist the citizens in a political rebellion against their prince, who was also their bishop, and afterward drove out the Catholics who could not be forced to accept the Reformation.
We need not pursue the history of the establishment of Protestantism, which is written in blood. Suffice it to say, that in no country was the Reformation introduced but by the aid of the civil power, and in no state in which it gained the mastery did it fail to be established as the religion of the state, and to obtain the suppression by force or civil pains and penalties of the old religion, and of all forms even of Protestant dissent. The state religion was bound hand and foot, and could move only by permission of the temporal sovereign, and no other religion was tolerated. We all know the penal laws against Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland, reënacted with additional severity under William and Mary, almost in the eighteenth century. James II., it is equally well known, lost the crown of his three kingdoms by an edict of toleration, which, as it tolerated Catholics, was denounced as an act of outrageous tyranny. The penal laws against Catholics were adopted by the Episcopalian colony of Virginia, and the Puritan colony of Massachusetts made it an offence punishable with banishment from the colony for a citizen to harbor a Catholic priest for a single night, or to give him a single meal of victuals. It was only in 1788 that the Presbyterian Assembly of the United States expunged from their confession of faith the article which declares it the duty of the civil magistrate to extirpate heretics and idolaters—an article still retained by their brethren in Scotland, and by the United Presbyterians in this country.
Indeed, toleration is quite a recent discovery. Old John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, took care to warn his hearers or readers that he did not defend "that devil's doctrine, toleration." Toleration to a limited extent first began to be practised among Protestants on the acquisition of provinces whose religion was different from that of the state making the acquisition. The example was followed of the pagan Romans, who tolerated the national religion of every conquered, tributary, or allied nation, though they tolerated no religion which was not national, and for three hundred years martyred Christians because their religion was not national, but Catholic. It is only since Voltaire and the Encyclopædists preached toleration as the most effective weapon in their arsenal, as they supposed, against Christianity, or the beginnings of the French Revolution of 1789, that Protestants have taken up the strain, professed toleration, and claimed to be, and, in the face and eyes of all history, always to have been, the champions of religious liberty and the freedom of conscience. It was not till 1829 that the very imperfect Catholic Relief Bill passed in the British parliament, and the complete disestablishment of Congregationalism as the state religion in Massachusetts did not take place till 1835, though dissenters had for some time previous been tolerated.