applying to him the following line of the Æneid :

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.",

Milton was not sparing of similar invective in his rejoinder. Du Moulin, a subsequent antagonist of Milton, scarcely yields to Salmasius in the virulence of his style. He compares Milton to a hangman, and says that his mental was of a piece with his physical vision. More or less of the same temper is observable in most of the controversies which have been prosecuted in later times. Seldom has there been wanting a studious ef fort to disparage the motives or the reputation of the adverse party. If a taunt has seemed likely to lessen the force of an argument, rarely indeed has it been withheld.

The use of nicknames is an expedient of intolerance which has proved very efficient. In general they are a condensed calumny. They are fastened upon a party with the intent of impairing its credit by enlisting against it, not reason, but prejudice. The first revolutionists in Holland were denominated by their enemies "Les Gueux," the beggars. The French Protestants, after wearing several other opprobrious designations, at last were called by the well-known nickname of Huguenots; which is supposed to have originated from their hiding themselves in secret places and appearing only at night, like king Hugon, the great hobgoblin of France. At the outset of the French Revolution, the aristocratic classes bestowed upon the discontented lower orders, the derisive epithet of " Sans Culottes."

The name of Puritans was given by way of ridicule to those stanch advocates of increased purity, the reformers of the Reformation; from whom the people of New England in general derive their origin. During the English Commonwealth the nickname of malignant was a stout weapon against the adherents of the old government. Before that time the opposing parties had been denominated cavaliers and round-heads. The former epithet sprang from the lordly bearing and romantic spirit of the royalists; the latter from the cropt hair of their fanatical opponents. The singular nicknames, Whig and Tory, which

*The word ingens in this verse thus applied involves an inconsistency with the previous epithets. There was a special appropriateness in the last part of the verse, since Milton had then lost but one of his eyes.

have undoubtedly acquired more extensive notoriety than any others recorded in history, took their rise in the reign of Charles II. of England. It is said that the name whigs, applied by the court-party to the Scotch covenanters, and those in England who sided with them, was taken from the Scotch beverage of sour milk, denominated whigg; while the republican party stigmatized the royalists with the epithet tories, which was the name of certain Irish robbers. It is doubtful whether the former epithet was given from a supposed resemblance in point of acidity between the beverage referred to and the dispositions of the whigs; or from a contemptuous allusion to the general poverty and meanness of their condition-sour milk being the common beverage of the indigent in Scotland.

Careful examination will show that both magistrates and private individuals have been sometimes prompted by honest intentions in their intolerance; and on the other hand, their tolerance has not unfrequently sprung from unworthy motives.

It is wonderful to observe how much evil is done with the best intentions; and how much good has resulted from the worst. Among the Romans intolerance was, in the main, a matter of state polity. Not that there were no bigots among them, whose intolerance sprang from real attachment to the superstitions of their ritual;-but those who wielded the national policy interwove intolerance with it from other than religious views. Most of the magistrates and patricians had no faith at all in the popular religion. Cicero expressed the sentiment of a numerous class, when he said that, on seeing two Roman augurs engaged in their ostensibly solemn rites, he had often wondered how they could keep from laughing in each other's faces. But it was supposed to be state policy to sustain a state-religion; and with this view Rome was intolerant to the extent already described.

It is probable that civil intolerance has been prompted, to a great degree, by the same principle in many modern nations. History shows that in all ages the pretext of religion has been given to measures really incited by political motives. The course of Charles V. concerning the Reformation was clearly marked out by secular policy, rather than the zeal which he alleged in behalf of the Catholic religion. The same remark may be made as to most of the European princes of the time, even of those who espoused the side of the reformers. Their adoption of this cause sprang, in general, from selfish aims.

The civil war between the Catholics and Huguenots in France sprang in reality from political motives. Those who kindled and controlled it took advantage of prevalent religious hostility to accomplish their own schemes of aggrandizement. James II. of England stoutly insisted on the principles of toleration and liberty of conscience, when he was striving to bring about the repeal of the test-act. But his real object was to give the Catholics the ascendency, and thus, in the end, annihilate liberty of conscience. From the time that religious toleration was first practised by a considerable community on a tolerably impartial basis down to the present moment, it has frequently been an instrument of selfish policy in the hands of governments and individual statesmen. Holland may be considered as the birth-place of true practical toleration. The establishment of this principle attracted multitudes of conscientious and industrious dissenters of all sorts from the various countries of Europe; and wonderfully promoted the trade and wealth of the United Provinces.

I think it may be asserted with truth, that toleration of opinion has seldom been advocated from unalloyed love for it as a principle applicable to the most dissimilar and discordant sects. In a Protestant country the Catholic argues for toleration; in a Catholic country he will have none of it. The dissenter has too often been changed by prosperity into a bigot of the most exclusive character. What he once pleaded for with earnestness will then seem to him "a cursed, intolerable toleration,”as it did to the English Presbyterians when they attained to predominance in the State.

The Protestant Reformation itself, even in the minds of its most enlightened promoters, was, to use the words of the author of Spiritual Despotism, "an assault, much rather upon the Papacy, and upon its special errors and superstitions, than upon the theory and principles of the spiritual despotism, of which the Papacy was the accidental form." It was the abuses of Popery, rather than its essential character, which led to its downfall. The worldliness of the ecclesiastics, from the highest to the lowest, the introduction of the traffic in indulgences, such were the motives which first roused Luther to war against the Papal See. The breach, of course, grew wider and wider. When the power of the Pope was brought to bear upon him and his adherents; and when the two systems came to exist side by side in most Christian countries,-sometimes one and sometimes the other

predominant,-it could not be otherwise than that some correct notions of toleration should be elicited. Thus, liberty of conscience, so far as it was attained, was rather an incidental result, than a main, definite purpose of the Reformation.

Real intolerance, the intolerance of the heart is seldom or never seen by the possessor in its true light. It is sincere, indeed; but there can be no more hurtful form of bigotry than that of deluded fanaticism. Instigated by this spirit, men are guilty of unrighteous oppression, and verily think they are doing God service. Persecutors and persecuted, in multitudes of instances, have been alike animated with sincere zeal for what they considered the right. "There can be no doubt," says the persecutor, "that my views are correct, and that he who does not adopt them endangers his spiritual welfare. It must be a benevolent act to appeal to the temporal interest of my neighbor for the good of his soul. Therefore I am bound to try, by pains and penalties, yes, if it be necessary, by the menace of death itself, to bring him from his errors into the true faith; and if the actual infliction of death upon him will deter others from injuring their own souls by the same or like errors, does not philanthropy require the stroke?" One of the popes, in a letter enjoining all true followers of the church to ferret out heretics, and punish them with death if they proved obstinate, sustains his injunction by the following argument: "The man who takes away physical life, is punished with death. Now, faith is the source of eternal life; for it is written: The just shall live by faith.' How much more guilty, then, than a common murderer, and how much more worthy of death must a heretic be, who robs people of their faith-of eternal life!"

Such is the sophistry with which intolerance has, in all ages, deceived, or sought to defend itself. Once set up in the heart as a proper principle, it is almost impossible to dislodge it. It finds nutriment in the worst passions of human nature. When we have come to call evil good, or good evil, there is but little hope of reformation. We cannot doubt that excellent and pious men have cherished a spirit of intolerance. How far, even among the Catholics themselves, it may have been prompted by genuine zeal for supposed truth, it belongs to God alone to determine. Let us not be intolerant ourselves in considering the history of intolerance. We may denounce the principle, but it does not follow that we may universally denounce those as thoroughly wicked who practised it. A good man may,

with mistaken views of duty, be actuated by this spirit of the devil. While we estimate aright the evil influence of the deed, let us always do justice to the sincere intentions of the doer. "The heart is deceitful above all things." Of many sincerely intolerant men, it may be said, no doubt with truth, that, could they have seen the real springs of their intolerance, they would have exerted themselves as sincerely to get rid of it. Could they have seen that in truth they were cherishing a criminal disregard for the rights of others, a proud spirit of infallibility, inconsistent with the meekness that Christ inculcates, -in fine, that their intolerance was a wolf in sheep's clothing,they would not have rested till they had acted in accordance with their new views of duty.

ARTICLE VII.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND.

In the number of this journal for July, 1840, we attempted to give some account of the present condition of the English established church, and particularly of the views which are now earnestly promulgated by the writers of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. It seems to be a fitting and an important inquiry: What has occasioned the rise and prevalence of these peculiar views? To what causes are we to ascribe the statement and inculcation of doctrines, against which some of the best men in the English establishment so loudly and indignantly protest? How is it, that in reformed England, in a Protestant university and in the nineteenth century, dogmas should be propounded which would lead us back, as many think, to the iron times of Papal absolutism?

One ground of the appearance, or rather re-appearance, of the doctrines in question, is, in human nature itself. The Oxford writers are the representatives of a class of men now rapidly diminishing, that worship the Past-that fall down before the graven images of antiquity-that repose on authority and precedents, and linger among the monuments of the mighty and