Critical and Historical Essays, vol 2 | Page 9

that, because a man is a Catholic, he must think it
right to murder a heretical sovereign, and that because he thinks it right,
he will attempt to do it, and then, to found on this conclusion a law for
punishing him as if he had done it, is plain persecution.
If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data, and
always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode of
dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as people
who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions, and as no
man in the world acts up to his own standard of right, there are two
enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties for opinions can
be defended. The doctrine of reprobation, in the judgment of many very
able men, follows by syllogistic necessity from the doctrine of election.
Others conceive that the Antinomian heresy directly follows from the
doctrine of reprobation; and it is very generally thought that
licentiousness and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the
fruits, as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This
chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as that which

makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it would be rather a
strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on the ground that if they
were spared, they would infallibly commit all the atrocities of Matthias
and Knipperdoling. For, reason the matter as we may, experience
shows us that a man may believe in election without believing in
reprobation, that he may believe in reprobation without being an
Antinomian, and that he may be an Antinomian without being a bad
citizen. Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible
to reason from his belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to
another.
We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the
Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought
himself justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is not
sufficient to say that the convert must have acknowledged the authority
of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull against the Queen. We
know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to
escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an
admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to
believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time
to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass,
however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth
might he lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the
business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely
to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable
consequence of making any attempt.
Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is
scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his
country and friends to preach the Gospel among savages, and who
should, after labouring indefatigably without any hope of reward,
terminate his life by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest admiration.
Yet we can doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever thought of going
on such an expedition. Why should we suppose that conscientious
motives, feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause,
should be omnipotent for evil? Doubtless there was many a jolly
Popish priest in the old manor-houses of the northern counties, who
would have admitted, in theory, the deposing power of the Pope, but
who would not have been ambitious to be stretched on the rack, even

though it were to be used, according to the benevolent proviso of Lord
Burleigh, "as charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn,
and quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen,
of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, sometimes
extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a fair time to choke
before the hangman began to grabble in his entrails.
But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the wretched
excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the cruelty was
equal, the danger, infinitely less. In fact, the danger was created solely
by the cruelty. But it is superfluous to press the argument. By no
artifice of ingenuity can the stigma of persecution, the worst blemish of
the English Church, be effaced or patched over. Her doctrines, we well
know, do not tend to intolerance. She admits the possibility of salvation
out of her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her,
aggravates the sin and the shame of those who