Excerpt from History Protestants of France: The Commencement of the Reformation to the Present Time

The reason of the translation of this book, is the same that actuated the Author of the original work, not the glorification of a particular creed, but the inculcation of a lesson from the pages of history, whereby the reader may learn the expediency, as well as wisdom and justness, of the great maxim, that the fullest religious liberty is the right of all men. The Illustration of this principle, so little truly recognised, yet happens in the present case, to bear against the members of the Roman Catholic Church: but all creeds and every sect may usefully perpend the moral of the narrative. To preach the duty of toleration to the members of the Reformed communions, whose chief dogma is the right of private judgment, might seem a supererogatory labour, did we not know how, in time, the best of causes may become corrupted by the mingling of the passions, until the fair tree is stifled under the baneful embrace of the insidious parasite. The necessity, then, of a frequent recurrence to first principles is obvious, and in no case can this necessity be so strong as in religious matters. To dissent from a dominant creed, has been hitherto to draw down persecution, and persecution will assuredly kindle a retaliative spirit of dogmatical oppression in the persecuted, unless these last continually bear in mind that the very ground of their difference was, in the outset, the privilege of thinking for themselves. Let us, then, guard ourselves against this error, stUl more deserving of reprobation in Protestants than in Romanists, and let these finally convince themselves how futile it is to struggle against the onward progress of the human mind, daily absorbing more essentially the Christian spirit, and thereby strengthening to the task of social improvement under the advancing banner of mental independence.

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