51. The Arminian dispute led by necessary consequence to the question of public toleration. They sought at first a free admission to the pulpits, and in an excellent speech of Grotius, addressed to the magistrates of Amsterdam in 1616, he objects to a separate toleration as rending the bosom of the church. But it was soon evident that nothing more could be obtained; and their adversaries refused this. They were driven therefore to contend for religious liberty, and the writings of Episcopius are full of this plea. Against capital punishment for heresy he raises his voice with indignant severity, and asserts that the whole Christian world abhorred the fatal precedent of Calvin in the death of Servetus.[116] This indicates a remarkable change already wrought in the sentiments of mankind. Certain it is that no capital punishments for heresy were inflicted in protestant countries after this time; nor were they as frequently or as boldly vindicated as before.[117] [116] Calvinus signum primus extulit supra alios omnes, et exemplum dedit in theatro Gebennesi funestissimum, quodque Christianus orbis merito execratur et abominatur; nec hoc contentus tam atroci ficinore, cruento simul animo et calamo parentavit. Apologia pro Confess. Remonstrantium, c. 24, p. 241. The whole passage is very remarkable, as an indignant reproof of a party, who, while living under popish governments, cry out for liberty of conscience, and deny the right of punishing opinions; yet, in all their writings and actions when they have the power, display the very opposite principles. [117] De hæreticorum pœnis quæ scripsi, in iis mecum sentit Gallia et Germania, ut puto, omnis. Grot. Epist., p. 941 (1642.) Some years sooner there had been remains of the leaven in France. Adversus hæreticidia, he says, in 1626, satis ut arbitror plane locutus sum, certè ita ut hic multos ob id offenderim, p. 789. Our own Fuller, I am sorry to say, in his Church History, written about 1650, speaks with some disapprobation of the sympathy of the people with Legat and Wightman, burned by James I., in 1614; and this is the more remarkable, as he is a well-natured and not generally bigoted writer. I should think he was the latest protestant who has tarnished his name by such sentiments. James, who in some countries would have had certain reasons for dreading the fire himself, designed to have burned a third heretic, if the humanity of the multitude had not been greater than his own. |By the independents.| |And by Jeremy Taylor.|