Introduction

        Moreover, Christianity is not merely a creed, and that a narrow creed, exclusive and intolerant in its very terms and in its spirit, but it is a stupendous fact in human history. Viewed as a fact, we see, judged by its fruits, its career, having been one of hate and wholesale bloodshed, that the tree was evil and this whether the germ was or was not in the teaching of the Old Testament and of Jesus and Paul. So long as its adherents believed without doubt that is was divine in origin and mission, so long it was a factor of discord and persecution wherever the original Roman tree or any scion of it took root. Not only was it a factor of discord and persecution, but it is a factor of discord and persecution. But so much of the strength of the old tree has gone to the numerous nurslings that, while the ancient poison is still in root and trunk and branch and still exhales from every leaf, it is more or less diluted, and so life is becoming tolerable where its shade is not too dense.
        It must not be forgotten that general and vague expressions in favour of love and peace and justice are of little worth when accompanied by specific commands to destroy those who think differently. It is so easy to love one’s neighbor and so easy to tie him to the stake when one has convinced himself that said neighbor is the enemy of one’s god. It is so easy to say that one will turn the other cheek when the first is smitten and so easy to burn the heretic alive “for his soul’s health,” as Kingdom Clifford aptly said. It is so easy to talk of universal love and so easy to manifest individual hate in the name of one’s god. Morillon quotes the Duke of Alva as saying that his sanguinary master, Philip II, had replied to a plea for mercy for Count Egmont, with the declaration that he could forgive offenses against himself, “but the crimes committed against God were unpardonable.”
        When the obsequies for Charles V took place at Brussels, by order of his son, Philip II, in December, 1558, the most conspicuous object in the procession was “a ship floating apparently upon the waves.” Her crew were three allegorical personages, Faith, Hope and Charity. These, says Motley, “were thought the most appropriate symbols for the man who had invented the edicts, introduced the inquisition, and whose last words, inscribed by a hand already trembling with death, had adjured his son, by his love, allegiance, and hope of salvation, to deal to all heretics the extreme rigor of the law, ‘without respect of persons and without regard to any plea in their favour.’” (Rise of the Dutch Republic, I., 177).
        All the commands to return good for evil and not to kill weigh less than nothing in the scales against one text, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Not smooth professions but deeds are the fruits of the tree that show the nature of the tree. Take, to illustrate, the cause of the death of the first wife of Philip II: “The Duchess of Alva, and other ladies who had charge of her during her confinement, deserted her chamber in order to obtain absolution by witnessing an auto-da-fe of heretics. During their absence the princess partook voraciously of a melon, and forfeited her life in consequence.” (Motley). Such was the atmosphere created by unadulterated Christianity that these cultured ladies of the court as naturally went to watch the slow burning to death of men and women whose only offense was unbelief or suspected unbelief as they went to their meals, only in the first instance they expected a greater reward, absolution for the sins that god would pardon - he would not have pardoned an intercession in behalf of the poor heretics. That would have been a crime as great as that against the Holy Ghost, which the Bible says in unforgivable, here and hereafter.
        The idea of equal religious liberty is a plant of slow and painful growth. All sectarists who are oppressed think they are in favour of liberty, but generally as soon as they obtain a little power they discover that it is to God’s interest to oppress some other sort of sectarists. They are incredibly stupid, for it is impossible to make them see the force of the plain, simple, and unanswerable proposition that if they are not willing to respect the liberty of others there is nowhere a valid basis for their demand for liberty themselves. This stupidity was one of the most obstinate of obstacles in the way of the Prince of Orange in his attempts to unite the Netherlands in their struggle with Spain and the Papacy. “Statesman, rather than religionist, at this epoch, he was not disposed to affect a more complete conversion than the one which he had experienced. He was, in truth, not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience. His mind was already expanding beyond any dogmas of the age. The man whom his enemies stigmatized as Atheist and renegade, was really in favour of toleration, and, therefore, the most deeply criminal in the eyes of all religious parties” (Motley, “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” Burt’s ed., I., 623). Notice how irreducible this stupidity is in the case of Philip de Marnix, Lord of Sainte Aldegonde, who had been the close friend and helper of Orange almost from the beginning. “Was he (Orange) not himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers because of his leniency to Catholics? Nay, more, was not his intimate councilor, the accomplished Sainte Aldegonde, in despair because the prince refused to exclude the Anabaptists of Holland from the rights of citizenship? At the very moment when William was straining every nerve to unite warring sects, and to persuade men’s hearts into a system by which their consciences were to be laid open to God alone - at the moment when it was most necessary for the very existence of the fatherland that Catholic and Protestant should mingle their social and political relations, it was indeed a bitter disappointment for him to see wise statesmen of his own creed unable to rise to the idea of toleration. ‘The affair of the Anapatists,’ writes Sainte Aldegonde, ‘has been renewed. The prince objects to exclude them from citizenship. He answered me sharply that their yea was equal to our oath, and that we should not press this matter, unless we were willing to confess that is was just for the papists to compel us to a divine service which was against our conscience.’ It seems hardly credible that this sentence, containing so sublime a tribute to the character of the prince, should have been indited as a bitter censure, and that, too, by an enlightened and accomplished Protestant. ‘In short,’ continued Sainte Aldegonde, with increasing vexation, ‘I don’t see how we can accomplish our wish in this matter. The prince has uttered reproaches to me that our clergy are striving to obtain a mastery over consciences. He praised lately the saying of a monk who was not long ago here, that our pot had not gone to the fire as often as that of our antagonists, but that when the time came it would be black enough. In short, the prince fears that after a few centuries the clerical tyranny on both sides will stand in this respect on the same footing’” (ibid., ii., 394).
        Hopelessly stupid Sainte Aldegonde! Sagacious monk! Wise and prophetic William of Orange! If only they could look down over the centuries and see our Sunday law tyrants, our God-in-the-constitution fanatics, our press gaggers, our children-stealers, and all the rest of the rout of meddlers and persecutors who think they are doing their god a service by making their fellow men and women miserable! But while William of Orange was far in advance of his co-religionists and also of a large proportion of more modern Christians, his expressed thoughts were not always wholly clear, and no doubt it would be too much to expect that they should have been considering his antecedents and his environments. It would seem, however, that his logical mind should have been saved from making one mistake that the theocrats of to-day continually make. Asked, in term, “to suppress the exercise of the Roman religion,” he insisted upon substituting for “Roman religion” the words, “religion at variance with the gospel.” Mr. Motley thinks that this rebuked bigotry, and “left the door open for a general religious toleration.” There does not seem to be any good ground for this optimistic opinion. Did not the question occur to the astute mind of Orange, “By what right may I determine for another that any given religion is ‘at variance with the gospel’?” And this other question: “If it be universally admitted that a certain religion is ‘at variance with the gospel,’ how can its suppression be made to harmonize with the principle of equal liberty in matters of belief for all the people of Holland?” The introduction of such a standard must lead to endless wrangling, confusion, and the persecution of every sect whose creed is determined by a majority to be “at variance with the gospel.” This position so mistakenly taken by Orange (although it may have been the most advanced that he could then take and maintain any religious liberty) is substantially the position of the theocrats of our own time and country, who expect the courts under their regime to decide in all disputes as to the Bible-regularity of a creed, or form of worship, or non-religious service.
        While quoting from the historian Motley, it may be well to use him as another example in showing how difficult it is to get even such exceptionally well informed and liberal men as he to take a sufficiently broad view of the question of freedom in matters of belief. Referring to the conditions prevailing in Holland at this time, he says: “Neither the people nor their leaders could learn that not a new doctrine, but a wise toleration of all Christian doctrines was wanted” (ii., 277). But if no doctrine was wanted, why put in the word “Christian”? Would it not need definition as much as “Catholic”, or “Calvinist”, or “Lutheran”? And would not the old wrangling continue, and the same mad fight to get on top so as to suppress the non-Christian sects? And did Mr. Motley think that at that time it would have been all right to murder Muhammadans and Jews?
        No one could call in question the religiousness of John Lothrop Motley, and yet even he gives evidence occasionally that “this sorry scheme of things” puzzled him somewhat. Once he says: “The history of Alva’s administration in the Netherlands is one of those pictures which strike us almost dumb with wonder. Why has the Almighty suffered such crimes to be perpetrated in his sacred name? Was it necessary that many generations should wade through this blood in order to acquire for their descendants the blessings of civil and religious freedom? Was it necessary that an Alva should ravage a peaceful nation with sword and flame - that desolation should be spread over a happy land, in order that the pure and heroic character of William of Orange should stand forth more conspicuously, like an antique statue of spotless marble against a stormy sky?” (ii., 89). It must indeed be startling to a sincere Theist to find his god appearing to such poor advantage beside a mere man. But Alva’s career in the Netherlands was only a brief incident in the terrible “martyrdom of man,” a martyrdom which has been going on from the beginning of man’s life, in spite of or by the decree of Mr. Motley’s God. Which?
        There is safety only in the individual decision of all question of religion and morals. This is the lesson of the ages, the lesson written on every blood-stained and flame-scorched page of human history. The safety and progress of mankind depend upon the repudiation of all priesthoods, the assertion of the right to individually pass upon every question affecting the individual who makes the examination in affairs of this life or of any other which may be assumed or thought possible.
        We cannot do better than close this Introduction with a part of a paragraph found in John Lothrop Motely’s “Rise of the Dutch Republic”: “It is not without reluctance, but still with a stern determination, that the historian should faithfully record these transactions. To extenuate would be base, to exaggerate impossible....there have been tongues and pens enough to narrate the excesses of the people, bursting from time to time out of slavery into madness. It is good, too, that those crimes should be remembered, and freshly pondered; but it is equally wholesome to study the opposite picture. Tyranny, every young and ever old, constantly reproducing herself with the same stony features, with the same imposing mask which she has worn through the ages, can never be too minutely examined, especially when she paints her own portrait, and when the secret history of her guilt is furnished by the confession of her lovers. The perusal of her traits will not make us love popular liberty the less.”