Note 88 — Chapter V

About the same time that Bossuet, the most illustrious champion of the Church of Rome, was engaged in maintaining, with all the force of his overwhelming eloquence, and inexhaustible ingenuity, that the sovereign was bound to use his authority in extirpating false religions from the state, the Scotch Commissioners in London were remonstrating, in the name of their national Church, against the introduction of a ‘sinful and ungodly toleration in matters of religion;’ whilst the whole body of the English Presbyterian Clergy, in their official papers, protested against the schemes of Cromwell’s party, and solemnly declared, ‘that they detested and abhorred toleration.’ ‘My judgment,’ said Baxter, a man noted in his day for moderation, ‘I have always freely made known. I abhor unlimited liberty or toleration of all.’—‘Toleration,’ said Edwards, another distinguished divine, ‘will make the kingdom a chaos, a Babel, another Amsterdam, a Sodom, an Egypt, a Babylon. Toleration is the grand work of the Devil, his master-piece, and chief engine to uphold his tottering kingdom. It is the most compendious, ready, sure way to destroy all religion, lay all waste and bring in all evil. It is a most transcendent, catholic and fundamental evil. As original sin is the fundamental sin, having the seed and spawn of all sins in it, so toleration hath all errors in it, and all evils.’ Verplank’s Discourses, pp. 23, 24. Similar language was used in this country. The Rev. Mr. Ward, in his Simple Cobler of Agawam, written in 1647, utters his detestation of toleration, and says: “He that is willing to tolerate any religion, or decrepit way of religion, besides his own, unless it be in matters merely indifferent, either doubts of his own, or is not sincere in it.”