WILLIAM AND MARY.

87

solemnly declared liis assent to the Anglican doctrine touchingthe Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects the Eucharist, -is at perfect liberty to preach without making any declarationwhatever on the subject.

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike everyperson who examines the Toleration Act by that standard ofjust reason which is the same in all countries and in all ages.But these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, when wetake into consideration the passions and prejudices of those forwhom the Toleration Act was framed. This law, aboundingwith contradictions which every smatterer inpolitical philosophycan detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of thegreatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do.That the provisions which havebeen recapitulated are cumbrous,puerile, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the truetheory of religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All thatcan be said in their defence is this; that they removed a vastmass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice; thatthey put an end, at once and for ever, without one divisionin either House of Parliament, without one riot in the streets,with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes mostdeeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had ragedduring four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts,which had made innumerable firesides desolate, which had filledthe prisons with men of whom the world was not worthy, whichhad driven thousands of those honest, diligent and god-fearingyeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation,to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of redIndians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, howeverweak it may appear to some shallow speculators, wall probablybe thought complete by statesmen.

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admitthe doctrine that religious error ought to be left unpunished.

CHAP.

XI.

1689 .