Note 378 — Chapter XXVI
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In 1649, the Assembly of Maryland enacted, “that no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be molested, in respect of their religion, or in the free exercise thereof, or be compelled to the belief or practice of any other religion, against their consent, so that they be not unfaithful to the proprietary, or conspire against the civil government. That persons molesting any other in respect of his religious tenets shall pay treble damages to the party aggrieved, and twenty shillings to the proprietary. That the reproaching any with opprobrious epithets of religious distinctions, shall forfeit ten shillings to the persons aggrieved. That any one speaking reproachfully against the Blessed Virgin, or the Apostles, shall forfeit five pounds, but blasphemy against God shall be punished with death.” Chalmers’ Pol. Ann. vol. i. p. 218. These latter provisions might easily be made terrible engines of persecution, in the hands of ill-disposed magistrates.