The Socinian confession of faith breathed an entirely different spirit. It began by the flat statement that it was not the intention of those who had signed this document to quarrel with anybody else. “With good reason,” it continued, “many pious people complain that the various confessions and catechisms which have hitherto been published and which the different churches are now publishing are apples of discord among the Christians because they all try to impose certain principles upon people’s conscience and to consider those who disagree with them as heretics.” Thereupon it denied in the most formal way that it was the intention of the Socinians to proscribe or oppress any one else on account of his religious convictions and turning to humanity in general, it made the following appeal: “Let each one be free to judge of his own religion, for this is the rule set forth by the New Testament and by the example of the earliest church. Who are we, miserable people, that we would smother and extinguish in others the fire of divine spirit which God has kindled in them? Have any of us a monopoly of the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures? Why do we not remember that our only master is Jesus Christ and that we are all brothers and that to no one has been given power over the souls of others? It may be that one of our brothers is more learned than the others, yet in regard to liberty and the relationship with Christ we are all equal.” All this was very fine and very wonderful, but it was said three hundred years ahead of the times. Neither the Socinians nor any of the other Protestant sects could in the long run hope to hold their own in this turbulent part of the world. The counter-reformation had begun in all seriousness. Veritable hordes of Jesuit fathers were beginning to be turned loose upon the lost provinces. While they worked, the Protestants quarreled. Soon the people of the eastern frontier were back within the fold of Rome. Today the traveler who visits these distant parts of civilized Europe would hardly guess that, once upon a time, they were a stronghold of the most advanced and liberal thought of the age. Nor would he suspect that somewhere among those dreary Lithuanian hills there lies a village where the world was for the first time presented with a definite program for a practical system of tolerance. Driven by idle curiosity, I took a morning off recently and went to the library and read through the index of all our most popular text-books out of which the youth of our country learns the story of the past. Not a single one mentioned Socinianism or the Sozzinis. They all jumped from Social Democrats to Sophia of Hanover and from Sobieski to Saracens. The usual leaders of the great religious revolution were there, including Oecolampadius and the lesser lights. One volume only contained a reference to the two great Siennese humanists but they appeared as a vague appendix to something Luther or Calvin had said or done.