examined with a rigour that amounts to calumny." Such was the language of Thuanus, in a letter written in 1606;[170] which indicates an approximation to _toleration_, but which term was not probably yet found in any dictionary. We may consider, as so many attempts at toleration, the great national synod of Dort, whose history is amply written by Brandt; and the mitigating protestantism of Laud, to approximate to the ceremonies of the Roman church; but the synod, after holding about two hundred sessions, closed, dividing men into universalists and semi-universalists, supralapsarians and sublapsarians! The _reformed_ themselves produced the _remonstrants_; and Laud's ceremonies ended in placing the altar eastward, and in raising the scaffold for the monarchy and the hierarchy. Error is circuitous when it will do what it has not yet learnt. They were pressing for conformity to do that which, a century afterwards, they found could only be done by _toleration_. The _secret history of toleration_ among certain parties has been disclosed to us by a curious document, from that religious Machiavel, the fierce ascetic republican John Knox, a calvinistical Pope. "While the posterity of Abraham," says that mighty and artful reformer, "were _few in number_, and while they sojourned in _different countries_, they were merely required to avoid all participation in the idolatrous rites of the heathen; but _as soon as they prospered into a kingdom_, and had obtained _possession of Canaan_, they were strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all the monuments and incentives. The same duty was _now_ incumbent on the professors of the true religion in Scotland. Formerly, when not more than _ten persons in a county_ were enlightened, it would have been _foolishness_ to have demanded of the nobility the suppression of idolatry. But _now_, when knowledge had been increased," &c.[171] Such are the men who cry out for toleration during their state of political weakness, but who cancel the bond by which they hold their tenure whenever they "obtain possession of Canaan." The only commentary on this piece of the secret history of _toleration_ is the acute remark of Swift:--"We are fully convinced that we shall always tolerate them, but not that they will tolerate us." The truth is that TOLERATION was allowed by none of the parties! and I will now show the dilemmas into which each party thrust itself.