These are punished not as opinions, not as sentiments reached through any sort of intellectual process, but as appeals to gross passion,* which wilfully put aside. the common reason and understanding of man, as well as the sense of decency; they set out with overthrowing the primary laws of his nature, by which he is separated from the brutes, and the character as well as the tendency of this outrage is intolerable to society. Whether such legal penalties be politic or impolitic is a separate question, to be resolved according to cir cumstances. 37. With regard to coercion, applied to particular religious opinions which have specific consequences hostile to social order, this is altogether a political question; and such a practice might with entire consistency either be disavowed by a State owning religious obligation, or adopted by one renouncing it. The penalties inflicted on Romanists under Queen Elizabeth, and on the Episcopal Communion of Scotland under George II., are examples of coercion of this kind. At the same time, those who inflict suffering so as to discourage the truth of religion, though they may do it with a distinct design, or aliud agentes, have the guilt of persecution. In this, the most proper sense of the term, no one can raise a question concerning its guilt. But, together with all violent opposition offered to the truth in the persons of its professors, there is also according to common use signified under the general name of persecution a sepa * Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, b. v. ch. ix. rate idea; namely, all intentional infliction of restraint or pain on account of religious opinion. Restraint or pain, however, which may incidentally and not designedly be consequent upon political enactments, coinciding with a given state of mind in the subject, are not necessarily proofs of persecution. It is the lastnamed signification alone which is here to be considered. 38. After these explanations upon the meaning of the phrase, I observe that it is erroneous to ascribe as a consequence to the foregoing theory, either 1. That there need be persecution, or 2. That there ought to be persecution. The first, because it is not true that the function of the State is universally or of necessity coercive. Any notion of this kind is grounded upon a confusion of different conceptions. A State, indeed, coerces wherever it commands, but not wherever it encourages; and undoubtedly it sometimes encourages without commanding. The whole function of reward is in the nature of suasion or inducement. Practically the springs of government have been worked in England for a century and a half past in no small degree by the same instruments, under the form of political patronage. The entire system of titles and distinctions, of public thanks, pensions, monuments, and estates, has always been deemed a distinct department of the duties of government. The State may therefore offer as well as enforce, and give as well as impose. Its functions. must be coercive so far only as they are prohibitory, that is negative. The other is their nobler side, although the narrower in quantity of subject-matter. But it is also generally allowed, that a State should promote learning and the fine arts, as powerful engines of civilisation. No man could dream of pursuing such objects by the method of coercion. The State employs national funds to provide galleries, museums, libraries, observatories, and invites the people voluntarily to avail themselves of these advantages. It is true, indeed, that in our own country the sphere of the State's action is limited in this department. But among other and perhaps more imaginative nations, the kunstleben, the art-life, is one of the leading elements of our humanity, and the service rendered to it enters largely into the occupations of governments. But such service, whether less or more, appeals only to the free-will and the higher faculties of the subject. I also quote, by way of further illustration, the aid rendered in this country from the national funds to popular education, an assistance in no way compulsory, yet very acceptable to the general sentiment. And the testimony here borne by opinion in its present state among us is the more remarkable, because it proceeds most freely and largely from those who are either hostile to the national establishment of religion, or lukewarm in its support. may 39. Neither, again, is the charge against this theory supported by the circumstance that, according to its tenets, the State is and ought to be a discerner of truth and falsehood in religion. For the Church is far more than the State an executress of that office; nay, she discharges it with authority.* And yet (excepting with the immediate sanction of the Spirit of God, as in the case of St. Paul's command to the Corinthians†) she has never claimed to exercise the penal functions, unless under very peculiar and partial circumstances, and from savage bigotry. Her doctors have indeed been divided on the question, whether religious error ought to be repressed through civil penalty, under the sentence of any human tribunal; or whether, when incurable, it should be removed, lest it should become to the uninfected a source of corruption; but they seem ever to have taught that at least the matter did not belong to her province, and have referred the whole subject to the civil power. 40. And as there need not, in logical or moral consistency, so neither ought there, according to the principles of this work, to be such a thing as persecution. If we contemplate any ordinary case, if we suppose the tenets in question to be of secondary importance, the proposition seems so clear as not to merit a discussion. When, however, we remember, that there are many truths revealed by God, which we may not admit to be of anything less than primary moment to the soul of man, and when we recollect what the history of many centuries records, the inquiry must not Richerius, de Potestate Ecclesiæ, has a chapter entitled, 'Consensus Catholicus Patrum et Doctorum Ecclesiæ, de potestate ministeriali spirituali Ecclesiæ, vacuâ omni potestate cogendi extrinsecè per pœnas temporales.'—b. iii. ch. iii. Among his authorities he alleges Tertullian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory, Anselm, and Bernard. be overlooked. I may proceed, then, to suggest, that the State ought not to use coercion for the propagation of religious truth, or for the repression of erroneous opinion, because the employment of force by man upon man is essentially inappropriate for such a purpose. And as the principle of the theory is, that the State should aid religion by appropriate means alone, it follows that it should not employ penal measures for that end. 41. First, then, even the arguments which have been incidentally urged respecting the incompetency of a government to exercise constant and minute supervision over religious opinion, and consequently to enter into relations of co-operation with persons professing particular religious opinions upon the ground of those opinions, seem also to point out that a government exceeds its province when it comes to adapt a scale of punishments to variations in religious opinion, according to their respective degrees of deviation from the established creed. To decline affording countenance to sects, is a single and simple rule. To punish their professors according to the magnitude of their several errors (even were there no other objection), is one to arrive at which the State must assume functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which it is not intrinsically qualified.* 42. Again, it may be said, that if the government be more competent to choose than the individual, and be consequently both entitled and bound to offer to Locke's Third Letter for Toleration, ch. iv. |