The real and sufficient extenuation for the conduct of the Massachusetts leaders is found in the character and standards of the age. A few obscure and contemned sectaries--Brownists, Anabaptists, and despised Familists--in Holland and England had spoken more or less clearly in favor of religious liberty before the rise of Roger Williams, but nobody of weight or respectable standing in the whole world had befriended it. All the great authorities in church and state, Catholic and Protestant, prelatical and Puritan, agreed in their detestation of it. Even Robinson, the moderate pastor of the Leyden Pilgrims, ventured to hold only to the "toleration of tolerable opinions." This was the toleration found at Amsterdam and in some other parts of the Low Countries. Even this religious sufferance which did not amount to liberty was sufficiently despicable in the eyes of that intolerant age to bring upon the Dutch the contempt of Christendom. It was a very qualified and limited toleration, and one from which Catholics and Arminians were excluded. It seems to have been that practical amelioration of law which is produced more effectually by commerce than by learning or religion. Outside of some parts of the Low Countries, and oddly enough of the Turkish Empire, all the world worth counting decried toleration as a great crime. It would have been wonderful indeed if Massachusetts had been superior to the age. "I dare aver," says Nathaniel Ward, the New England lawyer-minister, "that God doth no where in his word tolerate Christian States to give tolerations to such adversaries of his Truth, if they have power in their hands to suppress them." To set up toleration was "to build a sconce against the walls of heaven to batter God out of his chair," in Ward's opinion. XVI. [Sidenote: The casuistry of Cotton.] [Sidenote: Note 20.] [Sidenote: Hutchinson Papers, 496.] [Sidenote: Note 21.] [Sidenote: Controversie concerning Liberty of Conscience.] [Sidenote: Character of Puritanism.] [Sidenote: Note 22.] [Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 211-214.]