by his five-mile act prohibited them from approaching within five miles of their former parishes. But the rigor of Protestantism eventually relaxed its severity. Under William III. some of the disabilities which oppressed the dissenters were removed; and under that of George III. additional toleration was accorded. Still it must be admitted that the ablest agents in extorting these concessions to religious liberty were the Free Thinkers of that age. Yet the Quakers, always the most respectable body of citizens, and the professors of the most harmless of all creeds, were still punished with fines, confiscation, imprisonment and death. All who disbelieved in the holy trinity were also subject to similar persecutions. Not until 1813 did Protestant England cease to punish a belief in Unitarianism with imprisonment, and legal disabilities. John Calvin, at the head of the Consistory of Geneva, had John Guet beheaded on a charge of attempting to overthrow the doctrines of the Calvinistic church; and Micheal Servetus arrested and burnt alive for having attacked the doctrine of the holy trinity. Even in republic America, under the elevating influence of liberal institutions, the intolerant spirit of religious bigotry predominates more or less over the mind of the Christian republic. In Massachusetts Baptists and Quakers were once fined, imprisoned, and burnt alive. In Virginia all Quakers that disbelieved in the holy trinity, and all persons that refused to have their children baptized were scourged, confined, banished or put to death. In Pennsylvania, under the charter of William Penn, all Atheists were excluded from official position. In Maryland disbelief in the holy trinity was declared to be a capital offence; and not until recently was any person, who professed not to believe in Christianity, unless a Jew, eligible to any office of trust or profit in the State; nor even to this day is any person eligible who disbelieves in a God. The statute books of every Protestant country bear testimony to the same illiberality. Humboldt, Cuviert Buffon, La Place, Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume, Jefferson, and other eminent scholars and patriots would, by the provisions of almost every State constitution in the Union, be debarred from filling the lowest office that they create. In fact the history of no religious sectary indicates it to be a bond of love, union, or concord. Every Protestant creed, sectary or conclave, is a perpetual source of mutual jealousy, animosity and persecution, The same intolerant spirit breathes its malignancy over the pages of the religious press. "If we are not Christians," says the _Church Union_, "let us make no hypocritical pretensions of founding governments on Christian principles. If we are, I believe that they should predominate over our whole life; let us have them incorporated in the basis of our government, and the national policy shaped by them. Let no one hold an office of trust or profit whose life is not conformably thereto."