Note 163 — TOLERATION.

Recent writers among our sectarists assert that Dr. Owen was the first who wrote in favour of toleration, in 1648! Another claims the honour for John Goodwin, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, who published one of his obscure polemical tracts in 1644, among a number of other persons who, at that crisis, did not venture to prefix their names to pleas in favour of toleration, so delicate and so obscure did this subject then appear! In 1651, they translated the liberal treatise of Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra, under the title of “The Authority of the Highest Powers about Sacred Things.” London, 8vo, 1651. To the honour of Grotius, the first of philosophical reformers, be it recorded, that he displeased both parties!