Now, what has Dr. Farrar to urge _per contra?_ Simply this: that the "early Christians" pleaded for toleration. "Force," they said, "is hateful to God." "It is no part of religion," said Tertullian, "to _compel_ religion." But suppose all this be admitted--and there is much to be said by way of qualification--what does it amount to? The "early Christians" were in a minority. They did not yet command the sword of the magistrate. They could not persecute except by holding no fellowship with unbelievers, by shaking off the dust of their feet against those who rejected their Gospel, and by other harmless though detestable exhibitions of bigotry. They had to plead for their own existence, and in doing so they were obliged to appeal to the principle of general toleration. But the moment they triumphed, under Constantine, they began to flout the very principle to which they had formerly appealed. The humility of their weakness was more than equalled by the pride of their power. And what was the result? "From Augustine's days down to those of Luther," Dr. Farrar says, "scarcely one voice was raised in favor, I will not say of _tolerance_, but even of abstaining from fire and bloodshed in support of enforced uniformity." Dr. Farrar denounces in creditable language the frightful butcheries of Alva in the Netherlands, for which the Pope presented him with a jewelled sword bearing a pious inscription. He is properly horrified at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in honor of which Pope Gregory XIII. struck a triumphant medal, and went in procession to sing a Te Deum to God, while the cannon thundered from the Castle of St. Angelo and bonfires blazed in the streets of Rome. He is bitter against the Church of Rome for its vast shedding of innocent blood. He reminds us that the infamous Holy Inquisition is still toasted by Catholic professors at Madrid; and that intolerance, having lost its power, has not lost its virulence, nor "ceased to justify its burning hatred by Scripture quotations." And he cites Manning's successor at Westminster, the truculent Cardinal Vaughan, as declaring with perfect approval that "the Catholic Church has never spared the knife, when necessary, to cut off rebels against her faith and authority."