Advocates of Religious Toleration & Freedom

Advocates of Religious Toleration & Freedom
Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Theology
Southwestern Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, 1978

PART TWO

Key Documents Toward the Advocacy of Religious Freedom:
From Roger Williams through Vatican Council II

PREFACE

The author was privileged to deliver the 1976 Day-Higginbotham Lectures at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas on 10‑12 February 1976. This lectureship was established in 1965 by an endowment fund donated by Mrs. Edwin M. Reardon III, of Fort Worth, as a memorial to the late Paul Clanton Higginbotham and to Mr. and Mrs. Riley Day. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mrs. Reardon and to the president and faculties of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for the opportunity to explore both the classic advocacy of and the contemporary situation concerning religious freedom.

The first and second of the three Day-Higginbotham Lectures appear here in slightly revised form. The author is especially indebted to Dr. E. Bruce Thompson, Dr. Bill L. Lanning, and Mr. Edward N. Curtis for their valuable assistance in bringing these lectures to their present form.

Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr., Baylor University, February 1978

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PART ONE -- “Key Documents in Advocacy of Religious Toleration: From Chelčickỳ to Helwys.”

PART TWO -- “Key Documents Toward the Advocacy of Religious Freedom: From Roger Williams Through Vatican Council II.”

PART THREE -- “Religious Freedom: Why and How in Today’s World,” has been published in Southwestern Journal of Theology 18 (Spring 1976): 9‑24.

Parts One and Two are shown here with permission and that their viewing is at no charge and that there is no violation of copyright, as Professor Garrett retains all copyrights to Parts One and Two. Part Three with permission from Southwestern Seminary, Fort Worth. Placed into HTML and book-marked by MG Maness.

PART TWO

Key Documents Toward the Advocacy of Religious Freedom:
From Roger Williams through Vatican Council II

Professor James Leo Garrett, Jr., 1978
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas

Simon Episcopius (1583‑1643)      Baruch de Spinoza (1634‑1677)
Roger Williams (1603‑1683)      William Penn     (1644-1718)
William Walwyn (1600-?)         John Locke       (1632‑1704)
Richard Overton (c. 1600)        Pierre Bayle     (1647‑1706)
John Robinson   (c. 1605-?)      Samuel Pufendorf (1632‑1694)
John Goodwin    (1594-1665)      Christian Thomasius (1655-1728)
    Vatican Council II Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965)
    Summary Conclusion                Top

During the period prior to Thomas Helwys, either the leading documents advocated various degrees of religious toleration or the actions of their authors in implementing their views fell considerably short of full religious freedom for all human beings. In the writings of Helwys and more elaborately in those of Roger Williams the advocacy of universal religious freedom emerged.

Simon Episcopius (1583‑1643)

Between Helwys and Williams the Dutch Arminian, Simon Episcopius (1583‑1643), who had already taken a stand for mutual toleration, wrote Apologia pro confessione Remonstrantium (1629). While retaining the idea of the magistrate’s ecclesiastical Powers and functions, he denied to the magistrate the right “to interfere with freedom of conscience” or “to suppress the freedom of public worship.” Whether he was willing to grant such freedom to Roman Catholics is not clear. He strongly refuted the arguments of Calvin and Beza for “the magistrate’s right to put heretics to death” by insisting, as had Castellio and Coornhert, that appeals to Old Testament penalties were invalid.^[1]

Roger Williams (1603‑1683)

Roger Williams (1603‑1683) was the London‑born son of a shopkeeper and was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, under the patronage of Sir Edward Coke. Having become a Puritan, he came to Boston early in 1631. Williams declined a call to become minister of the Congregational church in Boston because it had not separated from the Church of England, and subsequently, while serving the church at Salem, raised again the issue of ecclesiastical separation and contended also that civil magistrates should not administer punishments for violations of the first four commandments of the Decalogue. Sentenced to banishment by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay in 1635, Williams avoided deportation to England by fleeing to the uninhabited area to the south. There in the summer of 1636 he founded the settlement of Providence, to be later populated by other refugees, with clear-cut provision for separation of religious and civil powers. Williams, first a Baptist and later a Seeker, was sent in 1643 to England to obtain, as he did in March 1644, a parliamentary charter for the colony of Rhode Island.^[2] There in July 1644 he published anonymously a lengthy treatise, The Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed in a Conference betweene Truth and Peace, described by James Ernst as “a clear and full statement of his doctrine of religious and civil liberty and his theory of the modern state as he had worked them out in his Providence experiment.”^[3] Perry Miller called it “one of the greatest--if also one of the most gnarled and incoherent--utterances in the [English] language.”^[4] Consisting of two major divisions, The Bloudy Tenent is first a reply to John Cotton’s “Answer” to a portion of John Murton’s A Most Humble Supplication of the King’s Majesty’s Loyal Subjects . . . (1620) and second a reply to A Model of Church and Civil Power (1635?), a Massachusetts Bay document presumably written by Richard Mather and espousing the enforcement of religious uniformity by civil magistrates.^[5] The structure, then, of The Bloudy Tenent “is determined not by the logic of Williams’ own thinking but by point‑to‑point refutation of Cotton and of the Model.” The first part is actually a “three‑level debate” among the “Author” (John Murton), the “Answerer” (John Cotton), and “Peace” and “Truth” (“the protagonists of Williams”).^[6]

Williams opened The Bloudy Tenent By stating a dozen propositions basic to his debate with Massachusetts Bay. The bloody persecution of men for their religion is “not required” or “accepted” by Christ (1) and is contrary to Scripture (2, 3). Enforced religious uniformity is also not required by God (8) and mixes unduly civil and religious matters (10) and produces wars and persecutions (8). Civil states and magistrates are “essentially” civil in nature and function and hence ought not to be judges or rulers in spiritual matters (5). Modern governments should not seek a pattern or precedent in the Old Testament (7). Religious freedom for all men has been God’s will since the coming of Jesus (6). It is necessary for a secure and lasting peace (11) and allows both true citizenship and true Christianity to flourish (12). Non‑Christians, therefore, are to be resisted only with the Bible (6).^[7]

Williams appealed to Parliament to remove the “yoake” of” religious oppression, which he called “the chiefe of Englands sins,” and warned his readers to prepare for persecution and to recognize how persecution in Christ’s name hindered the Christian witness to “Jewes, Turkes and Pagans.”^[8]

Murton’s case against persecution began with the citation of certain New Testament texts: the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24‑30, 36‑43), Jesus’ saying about a blind man’s leading another blind man and their both falling into a “ditch” (Matt. 15:14), the disciples’ desire to call down fire from heaven upon Samaritan villagers who refused to receive Jesus (Luke 9:51‑56). and Paul’s admonition to Timothy that the minister should not be “quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24‑25a). Murton also pointed to Old Testament predictions (Isa. 2:4; 11:9; Mic. 4:3‑4) of the cessation of the use of “carnall” weapons under the gospel and Paul’s acknowledgment of the same (2 Cor. 10:4). Indeed Jesus’ disciples were the “persecuted” (Matt. 5:10‑12), not the persecutors. Murton contended that persecution ought to be avoided because the tares may become wheat, the blind may see, the resisters may receive Jesus, those ensnared by the devil may hereafter repent, the blasphemers and persecutors, like Paul, may believe, the idolaters may become true worshippers, nonbelievers may receive mercy, and some may indeed come at the eleventh hour.^[9]

Cotton insisted that the “tares” were “partly Hypocrites” and “Partly . . . Corrupt Doctrines or Practices” which approximate the truth. Hence the avowed heretics were excluded. But Williams countered that the “tares” are “persons,” not “doctrines or practices,” for the “good seed” are persons, and are “open and apparent” sinners, not secret hypocrites in the church.^[10] Rather the “tares” are “Idolaters, False‑worshippers, [or] Antichristians” whose eschatological doom is certain but who are not to be uprooted now. Indeed “the field” is “the world,” or the “Civill State, but not the church.^[11]

Cotton interpreted Jesus’ saying about a blind leading another blind man as having been addressed to the disciples about the Pharisee and not to civil rulers,^[12] and Williams understood it as a command not to meddle with Pharisees or seek civil help in prosecuting them. Civil authorities were never divinely ordained to be defenders of Christianity. Whereas Cotton could see blind Pharisees misguiding citizens, sinning against the state, and deserving civil punishment, Williams saw such Pharisees, if “peaceable citizens,” as not deserving the civil sword. Rather they will face spiritual punishment for offenses greater than civil offenses.^[13]

For Cotton the Samaritan villagers on whom Jesus’ disciples would seek the fire of destruction and those admonished by Paul were either outside the ranks of believers and hence could not be converted by fire or coercion, or were “carnall” ”Jewes or Gentiles in the Church” who were not yet “convinced of the errour of their Way.” Neither text refers to civil magistrates.^[14] Williams agreed with Cotton that Luke 9:54‑55 does not inhibit proper church discipline but insisted that it should inhibit a Christian magistrate from putting to death unbelievers, thus breaking by violence the peace which he is committed to preserve. Concerning the Pauline admonition he noted that only God, not the civil sword, can grant true repentance.^[15]

Cotton interpreted the prophetic texts about the end of carnal weapons as referring to gospel methodology in general but not preventing the driving of “Wolves” from the “sheepfold” or restraining them from devouring Christ’s sheep. Furthermore, he noted that Romans 13:1-7 does not deny carnal weapons to the magistrates and that by the example of Nicolaitans and Jezebel (Rev. 2:14‑15, 20) “notoriours evill doers, whether seducing teachers or scandalous livers” ought not to be tolerated.^[16] Williams, however, interpreted Cotton’s driving of the “wolves” from the “sheepfold” as dependence on the material sword and denial of the use of true spiritual weapons to achieve Christian objectives. Are not “wolves” (cf. Acts 20:29) those of other religions? Cannot Jews and Turks be peaceable, loyal citizens even though “wolves” in spiritual affairs? Is it not true that, according to the New Testament, Jesus never called upon civil magistrates to deal with spiritual “wolves”? Williams, moreover, objected that Cotton’s handling of Second Corinthians 10:4 does not close the door on the use of “carnal” weapons in religious matters. Indeed Romans 13:1-7 deals with civil, not spiritual, obedience, as even practitioners of persecution like Calvin have acknowledged, and the magistrate’s ministry from God is a civil ministry. Williams argued that Paul’s appeal to Caesar (Acts 25) has nothing to do with religious matters and that the warning against Nicolaitans and the cult of Jezebel was directed to the church, not the city, of Pergamum. It is one thing to command or approve evil; it is another to permit or endure it.^[17]

In addition to his biblical arguments Murton sought to refute persecution for the cause of conscience with the statements and actions of certain European kings (James I of England, Stephen of Poland, and Frederick V of Bohemia) and the writings of certain Church Fathers (Hilary, Tertullian, and Jerome) and certain Protestant Reformers (Luther and Calvin), and an early seventeenth‑century papal book.^[18] Cotton contended that the statements and actions of princes reflected the expediency of governmental policy, not “a rule of conscience.” Moreover, numerous Roman emperors did not tolerate heretics and schismatics.^[19] Williams found Cotton to be ambiguous in his attitude toward the princes and suggested that by Cotton’s own logic he ought to be subject only to magistrates agreeing with Cotton’s conscience and that magistrates should persecute all other persons with differing consciences. Williams opposed any counting of princes on either side of the persecution issue. He found Roman emperors that did not persecute but acknowledged that the “ungodly” can perform good actions. Constantine and other zealous emperors “did more hurt” to Christ’s kingdom than “the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes” with the result that Christianity “was ecclipsed” and Christians “fell Asleep.”^[20] Against Hilary, Tertullian, and Jerome, Cotton cited Augustine of Hippo Regius, who shifted from anti‑persecution to civil punishment of the Donatists; Optatus of Milevis; and Bernard of Clairvaux. Against Luther and Brenz he cited Calvin and Beza.^[21] Williams had no quarrel with the citations from Hilary, Tertullian, and Jerome but insisted that persecuting churches cannot be truly Christian and that a national church was never instituted by Christ. Augustine’s teaching about soule‑killing” must be rejected, and Optatus built upon Moses. Williams noted that Brenz had some teachings supportive of persecution and that Luther’s and Cotton’s positions are contradictory.^[22] Murton’s argument that liberty of conscience would not be hurtful to a commonwealth was, of course, accepted by Williams.^[23]

Cotton not only answered Murton but set forth four propositions of his own, built on his distinction between persecution “for Conscience rightly informed” and for “Erronious and blind Conscience.” First, to persecute any for conscience rightly informed is not lawful, for such persecution is the persecution of Christ. Second, to persecute anyone for an erroneous or blind conscience, even on “fundamentall and principall points of Doctrine or worship,” is unlawful until two admonitions have been given and resisted. Such persistence by the offender is no longer “out of Conscience” but against his Conscience; hence his punishment would be “for sinning against his Owne Conscience.” Third, to persecute one who holds to lesser errors of doctrine or in worship but “in a Spirit of Christian Meekness and Love” is not right, but such a one should be “tolerated” until “God may be pleased to manifest his Truth to him.” Fourth, to persecute one who holds an error or false practice “with a boysterous and arrogant spirit, to the disturbance of “Civill peace” is justified, and his punishment should be “according to the qualitie and measurd” of his disturbance.^[24] Williams is not convinced of the validity of Cotton’s various distinctions, i.e., between “fundamentall” and “circumstantiall” doctrines, between “weightier” and lesser practices, between “meeke and peaceable” holding of error and “arrogant or impetuous” holding of error, and between ”informed” and “blinde and erroneous” conscience. Indeed the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles were accused of being obstinate troublers, and the conscience of the persecutors will become blind. Williams agreed with the major premise of Cotton’s first proposition and also that Christ will be persecuted. Concerning Cotton’s second proposition, Williams found it strange that Titus 3:10, long the bulwark of persecutors, should become the refuge of the persecuted. “Heretic” (airetikon) in the text should not be identified as one “obstinate in Fundamentalls” but as one obstinate on “lesser Questions.” Titus was, moreover, no civil magistrate with a literal sword but a minister “armed only with Scripture and other spiritual weapons.” Respecting Cotton’s third proposition, Williams discovered confusion of church with city and of excommunication with civil punishment and rejected the idea that heretics are to be put to death to prevent their infection of the orthodox, but he nevertheless basically agreed with the proposition. Cotton’s fourth proposition Williams flatly rejected, for rejection of the worship of an established church is “no breach of Civill Peace”; rather when such a breach occurs, it is usually initiated by the persecutors.^[25] According to William , persecution falls heaviest on “the most godly,” contradicts the mind of Christ, is guilty of killing those coerced and forced to Hypocrisie in a spirituall and soule rape,” adds to the succession of the martyrs, and destroys “civill peace” and national “welfare.”^[26]

The second major division of The Bloudy Tenent is a refutation of A Model of Church and Civil Power, consisting of replies to the sixteen major divisions of the Model. The Model assumed the dual powers of church and commonwealth and the superiority of the church in spiritual matters. How can such a position, asked Williams, be conjoined with the New England position “that the Civill Magistrate must keep the first Table [of the Decalogue] set up, reforme the Church, and be Judge and Governour in all Ecclesiasticall as well as Civil causes?”^[27]

First, the Model’s position that a commonwealth tends to rise or decline according to the strength or weakness of the church that is found therein was rejected by Williams, who contended that church and commonwealth are biblically independent and that commonwealths flourish whether the church is nonexistent or weak. Second, according to the Model, in respect to church and state each is superior in its own sphere and has power over the other only by virtue of its own distinctive function; when power is wrongly exercised, the offended is to seek healing. Williams saw immediately a conflict of jurisdiction over the First Table of the Decalogue and asked how a magistrate could have “no Spirituall power” and yet “judge, punish and persecute in Spirituall causes.” Third, the Model taught that both church and state have the same goals--the glory of God and the eternal happiness of man--and that the church seeks the “internall” and “spirituall” phase and the state the “externall” and “temporall” phase. The practical consequence of such is that the magistrates are custodians of both tables of the law. Williams objected to such fusing of church and world, church and state, for if the goal is the same, why should not their powers be the same, unless the one is subordinate to the goal of the other? First Timothy 2:1-2 is no mandate for the magistrate to be keeper of both tables; nor did the Roman emperors serve as keepers of both. The church can live in a non-Christian nation or society, and there is a civil goodness apart from godliness. Fourth, the Model differentiated civil means from ecclesiastical means for the attainment of ends. Williams insisted that governments rightly deal only with “Bodies and Goods,” that civil power rest with the people, and that New England Congregationalists have taken away the divine authority over the church and replaced it with the popular authority of the commonwealth. Numerous civil states do flourish despite corrupt religion and corrupt religion does receive spiritual punishments.^[28]

Fifth, the Model insisted that civil laws be based on divine law and on reason, but Williams denied that magistrates have the power of religious restraint or constraint. Civil magistrates, the Model taught, cannot make laws respecting ecclesiastical matters which are not ordained in the New Testament, but within Christ’s institution they can. For Williams such authority smacks of the “beast” of Revelation 13, not of Christ. If magistrates wrongly interpret what Christ has ordained, then their subjects would be obligated to disobey Christ. The edict of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:23) was permissive, not mandatory. Civil rulers should be praised for sparing their persecuted subjects from violence but not for assuming responsibility for Christian worship. Sixth, according to the Model, since church members are subject to the laws of the commonwealth, those who commit sedition, heresy, blasphemy, slander, and the like shall rightly be subject to civil punishment. Williams strongly demurred concerning “heresy” and “blasphemy”; for such would logically mean putting to death all Jews and massive wars to uproot idolatry. Seventh, the Model differentiated types of magisterial punishment of church members who offend civil laws publicly and privately and defended the church’s role in both types of cases. Wiiliams took note of deeply sincere pagans, Christians captured by error, slumbering Jews, and deluded anti-christians. The church ought first to “convince” the offender, for the accused can be hardened in his view or can be forced to be a hypocrite. But can a false or dead church heal any offender?^[29]

Eighth, the Model insisted that magistrates have the triple power and duty to encourage the “gathering” or constituting of churches, to forbid “Idolatrous and corrupt Assemblies,” and to compel all citizens to hear the Word of God. Magistrates correspondingly cannot compel all citizens to become church members, for only the Word of God can make them “fit members,” and magistrates cannot force churches to admit members contrary to congregational consent. Williams denied that either the national or established church or the Christian commonwealth was instituted by Christ. Persecution is provoking to God, who has given Christians sufficient spiritual weapons. Leaven is forbidden in the church but not in the world. Magistrates ought not to compel church attendance any more than they ought to compel reception of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, forcing persons to come to worship all their lives is coercion of them to be “of no Religion” all their lives. Ninth, the Model contended that, while magistrates may not select church officers, they may insist that citizens contribute to the support of church officers and may establish and maintain schools. Williams’s refutation began with a subordinate argument of Cotton, namely, “that there is now extant no immediate Ministry from Christ, but mediate, that is, from the Church.” Williams contended at length that ministry has always preceded the constituting of churches; also, if magistrates should have “subordinate power” to gather churches, the people from whom magistrates derive their authority would also be able to gather churches. Williams denied magisterial coercion of ministerial support on the basis of the New Testament pattern of support and the spiritual nature of such support. Such support should come by voluntary gifts and by secular labor. Williams concurred with the tenth proposition in the Model, namely, that magistrates have no power to define Christian doctrine or to compel the reading of the Apocrypha or the Homilies.^[30]

Eleventh, the Model taught that magistrates have the power to reform the “corrupted” worship of the church, establish “pure worship,” and use the civil sword against corrupters. But they do not have power to enforce uniform prayers or “set” liturgies, to enforce Papal or Jewish ceremonies, or to interfere with the minister’s conduct of worship. Williams elaborately argued that Israel “as a Nationall State made up of Spirituall and Civill power” was in respect to its spiritual power a figure and type of the Christian churches consisting of both Jews and Gentiles, not of modern civil states. The holiness, the separateness, and the redemptive experience of ancient Israel are fulfilled in the Christian church. The modern civil rulers are not antitypes of the kings of ancient Israel and Judah in religious commitment, anointing, spiritual power, laws, or wars. Satan, civil magistrates (with the alliance of Prelacy, Presbyterianism, and Independency), and Separatism are “competitors” for the “deputed or Ministeriall power of the Lord Jesus.” Jesus himself refused to take a temporal kingship and hence to assume both civil and religious powers. The civil powers owe to the true Christian church approbation, submission in spiritual matters, and protection of believers and their estates from violence. The civil powers owe to false religion both permission to exist and protection of the persons of its adherents from injury. Like the prince who interferes with the orders of a ship pilot with the result that the ship is lost at sea, so the magisterial interference in spiritual matters can be disastrous.^[31]

Twelfth, magistrates, according to the Model, must not execute any ecclesiastical censure, may apply civil punishment to excommunicate persons whose deeds are “injurious to the good of the State” if the church has made formal complaint to the magistrate, may punish offenders who have not been excommunicated only if such offenses “hurt the peace of the state,” and may not punish secret sins, such as unbelief, private sins by church members, including family cases, or any offenses that do not break the civil law. Williams found in such provisions an abridgment by civil church leaders of the power already granted to the magistrates to deal with spiritual matters and charged inconsistency in application, too little reliance upon ecclesiastical censures, and too much curtailment of civil jurisdiction in family cases. Thirteenth, the Model affirmed that assemblies of churches may gather even “Without or against the consent of the Magistrate” but in times of needed reformation magistrates may convoke and give liberty to such church assemblies. For Williams this was what moderns call a double exposure, a picture of ecclesiastical independence and a picture of magisterial interference. Are so‑called heretics free to gather such general assemblies? Is the call to an ecclesiastical assembly to be addressed by the magistrate to all citizens, including non‑Christians, or only to those determined by the magistrate? Williams advocated the voluntary system. If magistrates were appointed by Christ, it would not be reasonable for Christians to break the commands of Christian magistrates more than those of heathen magistrates, as indeed happens. A believing magistrate is no more a magistrate by his belief; though he may seek to glorify God, the believing magistrate has no rightful control over the souls of his subjects.^[32]

Williams found only secondary faults with the fourteenth teaching of the Model, namely, that churches “may censure any member” who is also a civil magistrate for his sin and also for any “apparent and manifest sinne against the Morall Law of God, in their judiciall proceedings, or in the execution of their office.” Surprisingly Williams did not regard the latter as ecclesiastical interference in state affairs. But the fifteenth section urged slowness and carefulness in excommunication of magistrates for “scandalous” breaches of divine law. The sixteenth teaching of the Model was that “all Magistrates ought to be chosen” from church members and that the franchise be granted only to church members.^[33] Williams asked whether the former is a matter of usefulness or of necessity and opposed the latter. Are civil magistracies where there is no Christian church invalid? Are there enough qualified church members to fill all civil offices? Should magistrates be removed from office if they have been excommunicated by a church? Such a position, Williams warned, would uproot all civil society. Moreover, limiting the franchise to church members would only extend the wars of religion. Williams interpreted the “sword” in Luke 22:36 figuratively and denied that Revelation 17:16 means to sanction magisterial power over conscience in spiritual matters. Williams believed that God would shortly make evident that “the Doctrine of Persecution for cause of Conscience” is “lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace.”^[34]

John Cotton replied to The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience in his The Bloudy Tenent, Washed and Made White in the Bloud of the Lambe (1647), a seventy‑nine chapter refutation of Williams’s book except for Williams’s response to A Model of Church and Civil Power, for which Cotton assumed no responsibility.^[35] In 1651 William’s wrote a letter to Governor John Endicott of Massachusetts Bay concerning the persecution of John Clarke and Obadiah Holmes, Baptists, in Boston. He asked:

Are all the Thousands of millions of millions of Consciences, at home and abroad, fuell only for a prison, for a whip, for a stake, for a Gallowes?

He also defined “conscience”:

But I speake of Conscience, a persuasion fixed in the minds and heart of a man, which enforceth him to judge . . . and to doe so and so, with respect to God; his worship, etc. This Conscience is found in all mankinde, more or lesse, in Jewes, Turkes, Papists, Protestants, Pagans, etc.

He reminded the governor of the dreadful punishments which God inflicts on persecutors “even in this life.”^[36]

In 1652 Williams, while in London for his second effort in behalf of the colonial chapter, published his reply to Cotton entitled The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody: by Mr. Cottons Endeavour to Wash It White in the Blood of the Lambe,^[37] a five‑hundred page treatise which in the context of refuting Cotton repeated and expanded numerous themes of The Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution, for Cause of Conzcience. Certain themes, especially of an historical and polemical nature, were more fully developed in this second tome. First, Constantine and the Constantinian age of church history were treated in greater detail. Before Constantine Christians had no civil power. Then Christ tried the Christian church “with Liberty and ease under Constantine,” who provided “temporall, protection, munificence and bounty.” According to famous edict issued with Licinius, there was to be no forcing of conscience or persecution, but Constantine broke his own edict, against Arius, for example, and used the sword for religion with the result that the church went to sleep. Second, Williams was more explicit concerning the Roman Catholic Church. Medieval popes “with . . . proud and domineering feet . . . tread upon the necks even of the highest Kings and Emperors.”^[38] Papal persecutions are graphically summarized:

Yea . . . the Pope keeps such Dogs good store, yea Dogs of all sorts, not onely of those lesser kindes, but whom he useth as his Dogs, the Emperors, Kings, and Magistrates of the World whom he teacheth and forceth to crouch, to lie downe, to creepe, and kisse his foote, and from thence at his beck to flie upon such greedie Wolves, as the Waldenses, Wicklevists, Hussites, Hug, Lutherans, Calvinists, Protestants, Puritans, Sectaries, etc. to imprison, to whip, to banish, to hang, to head, to burne, to blow up such vile Hereticks, Apostates, Seducers, Blasphemers, etc.^[39]

The question as to whether Roman Catholics can yield true civil obedience to civil rulers received attention, and Williams seems to have anticipated a great future persecution by Roman Catholics. Williams deplored both the secular power of the popes and the assumption by Protestant monarchs of the headship of churches yet without the power of church discipline. Third, Protestant abuses were also elaborated. King Henry VIII received his title “Defender of the Faith” from the pope, but he was made Head and Governor of the Church of England by Parliament, and he too became a persecutor. Williams described at length the nature of the New England (Massachusetts) churches as “a National Church.” Last, Williams sharpened and refined certain of his concepts: the essentially voluntary character of the church, a distinction between “Restraining” consciences from what they believe to be true worship and “Constraining” consciences to the worship of the established church, and his doubt that “a turncoat in his religion” can be any more dangerous than a convinced “Jew, Turke, or Papist.”^[40]

In his Letter to the Town of Providence (1655) Williams provided an apt summary of his position under the imagery of a ship:

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth. . . . It hath fallen out sometimes, that both papists and protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm, that all the liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges--that none of the rapists, protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any. I further add, that I never denied, that not withstanding this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship’s course, yea, and also command that justice, peace and sobriety, be kept and practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers.^[41]

Williams’s two monumental treatises constituted, as Lecler has said, “a veritable Summa on freedom of conscience and on the nature, of the powers of the State.”^[42] Helwys had advocated full religious freedom for all, but Willians, explicating such freedom from virtually every conceivable angle, set it in the context of the institutional separation of the churches and the civil states.

William Walwyn (1600-?)

Contemporaneous with Williams’s The Bloudy Tenent were the various English Leveller^[43] tracts of the 1640s, some of which specifically dealt with religious toleration or freedom: William Walwyn’s The Power of Love (September 1643) and The Compassionate Samaritane (1644) and Richard Overton’s The Araignement of Mr. Persecution (1645). Both the tracts now attributed to Walwyn appeared anonymously. Walwyn (1600‑?) was a London merchant and man of books with Worcestershire roots who had been active in Anglican parish reform and “was destined to play a large part in the Leveller movement.”^[44] The opening lines of The The Power of Love can give the false impression that the author was a Familist. Essentially a theological tract on love, divine and human, the book alluded to non‑toleration of the maligned and misunderstood “Anabaptists [Baptists], Brownists, and Antinomians.” Walwyn admonished true Christians to be bold when “tryants” try to pervert both civil laws and compacts and God’s truth, “interpreting his sacred word as patron of their unjust power,” and to be “most valiant defenders of the just liberties” of England. Religious differences, said Walwyn, will continue “untill love have a more powerfull working in our hearts.” “Such opinions as are not destructive to humane society, nor blaspheme the worke of our Redemption, may be peaceabily endured, and considered in love. . . .”^[45] Presumably Walwyn did not sanction religious freedom for Jew or Muslim.

Walwyn’s The Compassionate Samaritane Unbinding the Conscience, and powring Oyle into the wounds which have been made upon the Separation . . . is an appeal chiefly to the House of Commons to remove the statutes under which Separatists, i.e., “Anabaptists,” “Brownists,” and “Antinamians,” were being persecuted. Such “oppressed” and “despised” Separatists are “wounded” and need the compassion of parliamentary Samaritans. The author, who denied being a Separatist, offered three reasons for “Liberty of Conscience” for “every man.” First, man must follow his own “self‑judgment” or “reason” and ought not to be punished for so doing. Second, there is such “uncertainty of knowing in this life” that uniformity should not be demanded and, moreover, conscience can only be persuaded not compelled. Third, since, according to Paul, “whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23b), “every man ought to be fully persuaded of the truenesse of that way wherein he servath the Lord,” and thus compulsion causes the compelled to sin. Walwyn found that Presbyterians had persecuted the Separatists even more severely than had the Anglican bishops. Presbyters had sought to preserve a distinction between ecclesiastical and civil governments while they were assuming roles in civil government. They had sought to preserve the distinction between “Clergy” and “Laity” and to insist that the Scriptures, although translated into English could not be properly understood without the “helpe and interpretation” of the learned clergy. “Anabaptists” in England, falsely accused of being opposed to all civil government, were indeed patriotic supporters of the English government. Was not Holland prospering economically? It is unlikely that “there will be an agreement of judgement [respecting religion] as longe as this World lasts.” “If ever there be, in all probability it must proceed from the power and efficacie of Truth, not fron constraint.”^[46]

Richard Overton (c. 1600)

Another Leveller tract of different format, The Araignement of Mr. Persecution,^[47] appeared under the pseudonym “Martin Marpriest,” although its true author, Richard Overton, four years later acknowledged his authorship. Overton, “anticipating the allegorical methods of Bunyan,”^[48] delineated the indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing of “Mr. Persecution. The text is replete with speeches against and for the defendant. Mr. Persecution was indicted as an enemy of God, a traitor to civil rulers, a divider of kingdoms and peoples, and a fomenter of wars and bloodshed. Defending the Separatists, the author was strongly critical of Presbyterians. Persecution destroys life, causes the weak to deny Christ, makes a nation guilty of the blood of the righteous, nullifies the gospel, serves the Devil, works contrary to the apostolic way, incites the killing of “hereticke Princes,” is the “enemy to all spirituall knowledge,” and usurps Christ’s eschatological judgment. “if God have revealed more Light of the Gospell to one then [i.e., than] to another, shall the more knowing trample the ignorant under his feet?” Overton found the persecution of Jews to be particularly odious. Persecution has “made the name of a Jew as hateful as Judas” and greatly hinders the salvation of the Jews, who are “the apple of Gods eye.”^[49]

John Robinson (c. 1605-?)

Not only Baptists and Levellers were writing on religious freedom in England in the 1640s; but also the Independents had their spokesmen‑authors, Henry Robinson and John Goodwin. Robinson (c. 1605‑?) a textile goods dealer who had spent part of his youth on the Continent and who had ties with the independents, issued Liberty of Conscience (1643).^[50] William Haller has interpreted this tract in light of Robinson’s other writings which advocated free trade and in so doing has missed its essentially theological content.^[51] Robinson pleaded for liberty of conscience, “the best of all liberties,” in behalf of Separatists and other English Nonconformists. He neither could accept the religious coercion inflicted on Roman Catholics nor favor tolerating Catholics because of their idolatry. He directed the burden of his critique and appeal to the Presbyterians. If, as Presbyterians claimed, the state’s coercive power is only to be employed by magistrates “in behalfe and benefit of the Church,” does the magistrate himself determine when such power is to be used? If so, is not the magistrate above the church? But if the magistrate cannot act until church or presbytery should require such, is not the church using the civil sword? Persecution, whether papal, episcopal, or presbyterial, is similar. Resistance to religious toleration, Robinson suggested, was one reason why the providence of God permitted the English Civil War. Whereas being persecuted is a “mark and signe of the true Church,” to persecute is “an infallible character of unsound Christians and the Church malignant.” If engaging in persecution were the sign of a true church, then the church that “most persecutes others” would be “the truest Church.” Accordingly the Roman Church would be the truest; but no Protestant would accept that conclusion. Coercion in religion, argued Robinson, is inherently evil, makes the “most conscientious” the “most afflicted,” is without a mandate in the New Testament, forces the persecuted to sin against their own consciences, is a veritable re‑crucifixion of Jesus, and inhibits the fulfilment of the Great Commission. Protestants, Robinson contended, have an obligation to seek the conversion of Roman Catholics, Jews, Turks, “Pagans, Hereticks,” and “all Infidels & misbeleevers” but without civil means or advantages. Instead many Protestants were seeking material wealth from the nations inhabited by such groups. The cases of Gallio (Acts 18:12‑17) and of Gamaliel (Acts 5:33‑39) are strongly commended as having contributed significantly to the attainment of freedom of conscience. Conceivably religious uniformity or even the Inquisition might be justified if church or state had received an infallible revelation as to the manner of the true worship of God, but the Holy Spirit is giving “new truths” or “greater measure of the same truths” and Christians are not yet perfect. Sometime in the future men may see that persecution is “a fighting against God,” a “persecuting of Christ,” and “a resisting and quenching of the Spirit.” Meanwhile, an act outlawing persecution was needed.^[52]

John Goodwin (1594-1665)

Another significant Independent tract in sermonic form was Theomachia (1644)^[53] by the pastor of the Coleman Street Church in London, John Goodwin (1594‑1665). Taking his theme from Gamaliel’s words, “lest you be found even fighters against God” (Acts 5:39b), Goodwin warned the contemporary practitioners of religious coercion, especially the Presbyterians, of the special sin of putting to death religious dissenters and of the wisdom of heeding the advice of Gamaliel. Goodwin differentiated opposing “a Doctrine or way of God, per modum Doctoris” and “per modum Judicis.” The former is “a mistake or weakness of judgement” such as “may befall the best and faithfullest of men.” The latter is the deliberate assumption of ecclesiastical or civil power to suppress a given doctrine or way. Religious coercion is opposition to God, according to Goodwin, for it opposes God’s will and God’s glory and ignores the fact that the doctrine is resident in teaching sent from God. Such “fighting against God” is “the greatest imprudence . . . under heaven,” “extreme madnesse,” and tragedy for a nation. To Presbyterian objections, actual or potential, Goodwin was ready with answers. Would not liberty of conscience delay the progress of the Reformation? There should be a choice of ministers other than by choosing houses and hence parishes. Would not such liberty bring civil unrest and family troubles? No more so than by the dominance of Presbyterianism. Would not such liberty open the door to “errors, heresies, [and] unsound opinions” so as to displease God and endanger the “peace and safetie of the Nation”? Heresies existed in the pre-Constantinian age. The only effective approach to error is the use of “the sword of the Spirit,” or excommunication, not “Prisons and Swords.” But time is needed for the restorative effects of excommunication, and persecution unto death prevents such. Would not such liberty mean that Independents would upset the work of many Presbyterian ministers? Loss of new converts need not arouse envy, but a steady stream of such may say something about Presbyterianism. Could Independency be “the way of God” since it has only a small body of uneducated followers? God is free to work with whom He wills, including “the babes,” and not necessarily among synods and councils. Was not Independency ambitiously setting up an ecclesiastical dictatorship that would undermine civil authority? This is a mistaken fear. Should the lion be afrald of the lamb? Independents only resist the wrong mixture of civil and ecclesiastical powers and seek to differentiate loyalty to God and loyalty to Caesar. Do not be ensnared into fighting against God and hence be not guilty of sin!^[54]

Three of Goodwin’s later tracts also pertained to religious freedom. A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A.S. [Adam Steuart] . . . (1644) was a rejection of the “directive power” of civil magistrates in religious matters and an indication that liberty of conscience, for Goodwin, extended to Roman Catholics, Jews, and Turkes. In Hagiomastix (1646) Goodwin rejected Old Testament texts as a basis for civil coercion in religion and accepted “the secular character of the State.” Βασανισταί [meaning Tormentors] (1657) denied that the state was qualified to define the Christian fundamentals and articulated “the democratic theory of the origin of [political] power.” According to Joseph Lecler, it “would be difficult to find many Independents in middle of the seventeenth century who based religious freedom as definitely as Goodwin on the separation of Church and State.”^[55]

Baruch de Spinoza (1634‑1677)

Simon Episcopius (1583‑1643)      Baruch de Spinoza (1634‑1677)
Roger Williams (1603‑1683)      William Penn     (1644-1718)
William Walwyn (1600-?)         John Locke       (1632‑1704)
Richard Overton (c. 1600)        Pierre Bayle      (1647‑1706)
John Robinson   (c. 1605-?)      Samuel Pufendorf (1632‑1694)
John Goodwin    (1594-1665)      Christian Thomasius (1655-1728)
    Vatican Council II Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965)
    Summary Conclusion                Top

Between the tracts of the Puritans and the tracts of the Quaker William Penn stood the anonymously published Tractatus Theologico‑Politicus (1670)^[56] of Baruch de Spinoza (1634‑1677), the Dutch philosopher of Portuguese or Spanish ancestry who had been excommunicated by the Amsterdam synagogue in 1656 and who had had some association with the Collegiants or Rhynsburgers, although he never received Christian baptism or joined any Christian communion.^[57] Chapters sixteen through twenty of this twenty‑chapter book were devoted to aspects of civil government. The state is, according to Spinoza, obligated to divine law not by nature or reason but by historic covenant. What, he asked, should a citizen do if “the sovereign commands anything contrary to religion”? The response should be obedience if the rule be a Christian prince; but if he be “heathen.” the citizen should be prepared to suffer martyrdom or should obey the ruler except when God has specially promised his aid against tyranny, as in the case of the three Jewish youths in Babylon. Spinoza did not see the viability of a Hebrew‑type theocracy in the seventeenth century but conceded that the civil ruler should have regulatory authority concerning religious rites and should set the limits of duty to one’s neighbor. Ministers of religion should not have any civil offices or powers. For government to seek to control human minds is tyranny, because man cannot “abdicate his freedom of judgment and feeling.” Freedom of thought, according to Spinoza, can be obtained through obeying the laws within civil peace and tranquility and by not committing sedition. Government cannot “impose uniformity of speech,” and the “best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of religious belief.” Spinoza recognized the evils of persecution, from which one can learn only “to flatter the persecutor, or else to imitate the victim.” Citing the example of Amsterdam, he called for a high degree of toleration and declared that “true schismatics are those who condemn other men’s writings.”^[58]

William Penn (1644-1718)

Simon Episcopius (1583‑1643)      Baruch de Spinoza (1634‑1677)
Roger Williams (1603‑1683)      William Penn     (1644-1718)
William Walwyn (1600-?)         John Locke       (1632‑1704)
Richard Overton (c. 1600)       Pierre Bayle     (1647‑1706)
John Robinson   (c. 1605-?)      Samuel Pufendorf (1632‑1694)
John Goodwin    (1594-1665)      Christian Thomasius (1655-1728)
    Vatican Council II Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965)
    Summary Conclusion                Top

William Penn (1644‑1718), “far and away the best-known Quaker who ever lived,”^[59] wrote prolifically about freedom of conscience and unquestionably occupies a major niche in the story of the struggle for religious freedom. Mary Maples Dunn has recently contended that about one‑half of Penn’s fifty tracts written as a Quaker were “connected . . . with his crusades for liberty of conscience” and that of these, one‑half are “of primary importance.” “From these works there comes an elaborate theory of liberty.”^[60] That Penn owed something to previous advocates of toleration may be seen in the not unjustified label applied to him by a contemporary critic: “‘new Broacher of old Heresies.’”^[61] Probably the “basis” for Penn’s “attachment to the concept of religious liberty” was his “belief in the ultimate persuasiveness of the truth where the conscience is free.”^[62] Three of Penn’s tracts which obviously pertain to liberty of conscience deserve analysis.^[63]

The Great Case of Libertv of Conscience (1670), “the most systematic and compendious”^[64] of his tracts on liberty of conscience, was written three years after he had become a Quaker and, although begun in Ireland, was completed shortly after the beginning of his six‑month incarceration in Newgate prison.

In the preface Penn asserted that external coercion cannot “convince the understanding of the poorest ideot [sic]” and lamented that those who “have defended a separation from the Papacy, should now become such earnest persecutors for it,” thus failing to realize that enactment of laws that encourage persecution “is but a knotting whipchord to lash their own posterity, whom they can never promise to be conformed to a national religion.” Finding an analogy between persecution in England and Athens’s treatment of Socrates, he warned that, “if England should persist in ignoring the sufferings of its persecuted, the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah would “hasten to make desolate this wanton land, and not leave a hiding‑place for the oppressor.” Penn defined “liberty of conscience” as the “free and uninterrupted exercise of our consciences in that way of worship we are most clearly persuaded God requires us to serve him in . . . , which being matter of Faith, we sin if we omit; and they cannot do less that shall endeavour it.” Hence for Penn liberty of conscience involved not only freedom respecting doctrines to be affirmed, but also and especially freedom in the manner of worship.^[65]

Penn’s basic question was whether “imposition, restraint, and persecution . . . be not to impeach the honour of God, the meekness of the Christian religion, the authority of Scripture, the privilege of nature, the principles of common reason, the well being of government, and apprehensions of the greatest personages of former and latter ages.”^[66] Such a question provided Penn his outline.

Persecution, Penn argued, invades God the Creator’s “right of government over conscience,” enthroning “man as King over conscience” and enabling Caesar to take all “God’s share.” It “defeats” the working of God’s grace and God’s Spirit, who alone can “beget faith,” usurps the eschatological judgment by Christ, and causes persecutors mistakenly to “imagine” that they serve God by persecuting. Protestant persecutors thus claim for themselves an infallibility which formerly they asserted vis-à-vis the Church of Rome belongs only to God. Furthermore, persecution overthrows the Christian religion itself, for true Christianity “intreats all, but compels none,” and has suffered but has not inflicted martyrdom. Coercion hinders “the promotion of the Christian religion,” for persecutors are poor witnesses, and prevents many of the coerced from receiving “eternal rewards.” Among the fourteen biblical texts quoted by Penn were the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31), the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:27‑29), Jesus’ saying about Gentile princes (Matt. 20:25‑26) and about rendering to Caesar and to God (Luke 20:25), the disciples’ desire for destruction to come upon certain Samaritans (Luke 9:54‑55), the promise of the leading of “the Spirit of truth” (John 16:8, 13), the Pauline warning against vengeance (Rom. 12:19‑21), and Paul’s word about non‑carnal weapons (2 Cor. 10:3).^[67]

But the case against persecution, Penn argued, rests on natural and rational as well as on theological and biblical considerations. Coercion respecting faith “exalts” the oppressor, “enslaves” the oppressed by restricting their liberty, and thus “perverts the whole order of nature.” It robs man of “the use and benefit of that instinct of a Deity, which is so natural to him,” destroys all “natural affection,” and is injurious to fellow creatures. Persecutors “are uncertain of the truth and justifiableness of their actions” and hence cannot be infallible; they unjustly “impose an uncertain faith” on others. Involuntary religion is invalid, for faith presupposes willing, willing presupposes judging, and judging presupposes understanding. If human beings have liberty in marriage, conversation, commerce, eating, and sleeping, should they not also in faith? Most cruelly persecution demands that persons “suffer for not doing what they cannot do?” Persecution affords no proper relation between “ends” and “means.”