Indeed, toleration is quite a recent discovery. Old John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, took care to warn his hearers or readers that he did not defend "that _devil's_ doctrine, toleration." Toleration to a limited extent first began to be practised among Protestants on the acquisition of provinces whose religion was different from that of the state making the acquisition. The example was followed of the pagan Romans, who tolerated the national religion of every conquered, tributary, or allied nation, though they tolerated no religion which was not national, and for three hundred years martyred Christians because their religion was not national, but Catholic. It is only since Voltaire and the Encyclopædists preached toleration as the most effective weapon in their arsenal, as they supposed, against Christianity, or the beginnings of the French Revolution of 1789, that Protestants have taken up the strain, professed toleration, and claimed to be, and, in the face and eyes of all history, always to have been, the champions of religious liberty and the freedom of conscience. It was not till 1829 that the very imperfect Catholic Relief Bill passed in the British parliament, and the complete disestablishment of Congregationalism as the state religion in Massachusetts did not take place till 1835, though dissenters had for some time previous been tolerated. Yet in no Protestant state has complete liberty been extended to Catholics. The French Revolution, with its high-flown phrases of liberty, equality, brotherhood, and religious freedom, suppressed the Catholic religion, and imprisoned, deported, or massacred the bishops and priests who would not abandon it for the civil church it ordained. We ourselves, though very young at the time, remember the exultation of our Protestant neighbors when the first Napoleon dragged the venerable and saintly Pius VII. from his throne and held him a prisoner, first at Savona, and afterward at Fontainebleau. "Babylon is fallen," they cried; "the man-child has slain the beast with seven heads and ten horns." The revolutions, ostensibly social and political, which have been going on in the Catholic nations of Europe, and are still in process, and which everywhere are hostile to the church, have the warm sympathy of Protestants of every nation, and in Italy and Spain have been aided and abetted by Protestant associations and contributions, as part and parcel of the Protestant programme for the abolition of the papacy and the destruction of our holy religion.