The development of the splendid word "Protestant" was not for that day only. The principle of it was then, and always has been, a very practical thing.
"It was this noble resolution that gained for modern times liberty of thought and independence of faith."--D'Aubigne.
And in and for all modern times the liberty of thought and independence of faith--the Religious Liberty--established as a natural and unalienable right of mankind by the Constitution of the United States, is the truest expression of the principle of the Protest that there is in any organic connection in the world.
Yet it was at a great price, and only through a long and strenuous contest that in this New Nation there was gained at last for mankind this freedom.
It was not many years after the Protest was presented at Spires, before, in principle, it had to be repeated and maintained even against those who professed to be Protestants. For when the original and true Protestants had passed away, many ceased to be Protestants and became only Lutherans, Zwinglians, etc. They ceased to think only on the truth of God, and cared only for the truth of Luther or some other.
The Reformation and the Protest appealed only to the plain Word of God as it stands in the Scriptures. This Word was steadily and faithfully preached; and each one was free to believe and to preach the Word as he found it.
But ere long it came to be required that all must believe and preach the word as some one else had found it: and that none should preach except he preach this.
This renewal by professed Protestants of the same old attitude, inevitably brought renewal of the Protest by every one who would be a true Protestant.
The continuance of the Protest, against the continuance of the papacy among professed Protestants, brought again intolerance, excommunication, and persecution even by means of the civil power, on the part of those who would not advance with the ever advancing truth of God.
"The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the indispensable forms of secular government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save as it was freely given. [1]
"A church which does not claim to be infallible, is bound to allow that some part of the truth may possibly be with its adversaries. A church which permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation, has no right first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not convinced.
"But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give; the actual consequence was that religion, or rather theological creeds, began to be involved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before."
"In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the State, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based.
"It was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the several Protestant countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be co-extensive with its respective State, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants.
"It was not altogether easy to find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest. For they could not, like the old church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it may be worth, 'Securus indicat orbis terrarum.'
"But in practice these difficulties were soon got over. For the dominant party in each State, if it did not claim to be infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it was right; and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England; or the will of the majority, as in Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Scotland; imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of medieval intolerance without their justification.
"Persecution, which might be at least palliated in an infallible Catholic and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practiced by those who were not Catholic, who were no more apostolic than their neighbors, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to others.
"If union with the visible church by participation in a material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit; if saving faith be possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external forms; if the sense of the written revelation of God be ascertainable by the exercise of human reason guided by the Divine breath which bloweth where it listeth; persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly."--Bryce.
Yet, against all the principles of the Protest, in spite of consistency and justice, and in defiance of plain Christianity and common sense, that execrable crime and egregious folly persisted among professed Protestants in all their States and countries except in the one little blessed spot of Rhode Island, until the rise of the New Nation in 1776.
When, July 4, 1776, the notable Declaration proclaimed that "these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States," every one of these new-born States, except Rhode Island only, had an establishment of religion. In New England it was Congregationalism. In others it was the Church of England. In yet others it was "the Christian religion"--a sort of "general Christianity" that any religious fanatic or heathen magistrate might enforce by "the Common Law."
In Virginia was begun the Protest and the contest for Religious Liberty in this land. There the Church of England was the form of the religious establishment. All the people were taxed to support the preachers and to build the meeting-houses of that denomination. The will of that church was a part of the law of the State, to which all must conform or pay harassing and heavy fines.
No sooner had the Declaration of Independence been made than the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Presbyterians of the Presbytery of Hanover, in Virginia, presented to the General Assembly a Memorial pleading for Religious Liberty. They said in substance: We have declared ourselves free and independent of the government of England. Now let us also be free and independent of the church of England.
Their plea was heard. And after two months of what Jefferson said was the severest contest in which he was ever engaged, the cause of freedom prevailed. Dec. 6, 1776, by a legislature "of which the majority were Protestant Episcopalians," a law was enacted repealing all the laws and penalties prejudicial to dissenters, releasing them from any further compulsory contributions to the Episcopal Church, and discontinuing all State support to the clergy after Jan. 1, 1777.
The church was disestablished. Virginia was free. Yet the contest for Religious Liberty was not ended. Immediately there was a combine of all the denominations in Virginia, except the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Quakers, to secure the establishment of "the Christian religion" by law.
In the very Assembly that had disestablished the Episcopal Church, there was made a motion to levy a general tax for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." The matter was postponed to the consideration of "a future Assembly." To the next Assembly petitions were sent by the Episcopalians and the Methodists, pleading for a law levying a general tax for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion."
These petitions and associated efforts were vigorously opposed by the Presbyterians in their original memorial renewed with additions; by "the strenuous efforts of the Baptists"; and by the loyal strength of the Quakers. In 1779 the bill for the general assessment for the support of teachers of "the Christian religion" was defeated, though it had been carried to the third reading.
Then Jefferson prepared with his own hand a document entitled "An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom," and proposed that it be adopted by the General Assembly "as a part of the Revised Code" of Virginia. This proposed law was submitted to "the whole people of Virginia" for their "deliberate reflection," before the vote should be taken upon it in the Assembly.
This was in 1779; and the war for independence had now become so all-absorbing that the movement for the establishment of "the Christian Religion" had to be suspended. And Jefferson's bill for "Establishing Religious Freedom" was before the whole people for such consideration as the times might allow.
However, no sooner had peace come to the land than under the lead of "The Protestant Episcopal Church" the demand for established religion was again forced to the front. Petitions were presented to the General Assembly and a bill was framed, proposing a legal "provision for teachers of the Christian Religion." Patrick Henry was its patron; and "many others of the foremost men" supported it.
Personally Jefferson was out of the country as minister to France. But his place on the ground, in the General Assembly and everywhere, was most worthily filled by Madison as the leader in the cause of Religious Liberty.
Madison declared: "The assessment bill exceeds the functions of civil authority. The question has been stated as if it were, Is religion necessary? The true question is, Are establishments necessary to religion? And the answer is, They corrupt religion."
In spite of all opposition the bill was successfully carried to the third reading. It was certain to pass if it should come to the vote. Therefore the opposition fought for time.
Using as a base the fact that the bill "Establishing Religious Freedom" had been submitted to "the whole people," and was at that moment still before them, Madison and his associates moved that the bill "Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion" be likewise submitted to the whole people for their deliberate reflection.
This motion was so evidently just that it gained the majority and was carried. "Thus the people of Virginia had before them for their choice the bill of the revised code for 'Establishing Religious Freedom,' and the plan of desponding churchmen for supporting religion by a general assessment."
"All the State, from the sea to the mountains and beyond them, was alive with the discussion. Madison, in a Remonstrance addressed to the Legislature, embodied all that could be said against the compulsory maintenance of Christianity, and in behalf of religious freedom as a natural right, the glory of Christianity itself, the surest method of supporting religion, and the only way to produce harmony among its several sects."
Washington cast his mighty influence in behalf of Religious Liberty. The outcome of the contest was that "when the Legislature of Virginia assembled, no person was willing to bring forward the Assessment Bill; and it was never heard of more. Out of a hundred and seventeen articles of the revised code which were then reported, Madison selected for immediate action the one which related to Religious Freedom.
"The People of Virginia had held it under deliberation for six years. In December, 1785, it passed the House by a vote of nearly four to one. Attempts in the Senate for amendment produced only insignificant changes in the preamble, and on the 16th of January, 1786, Virginia placed among its statutes the very words of the original draft by Jefferson, with the hope that they would endure forever:--
"No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right'."
Of this blessed result of that splendid campaign in Virginia, Madison happily exclaimed, as he had well earned the right to exclaim, "Thus in Virginia was extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind."
Yet this grand result in Virginia did not end either the story or the campaign of Religious Liberty in this land. Before the campaign in Virginia had closed in that triumph of Religious Liberty, the first steps had been taken for the calling of a convention to consider the forming of a national government by and for the people of all the States. And out of that campaign of Religious Liberty which they had made triumphant in Virginia, Madison and Washington went directly into the campaign for the forming of a national government. And into the new campaign they carried with them and finally fixed in the National Constitution the very principles of Religious Liberty which they had carried to such a triumphant issue in Virginia.
All that was said on this subject in the Constitution as originally framed was the closing clause of Article VI:--
"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States."
The National Government being one only of delegated powers, if nothing had been said on the subject, this itself would have excluded the government from any and all connection with or cognizance of religion. But then such power might have been usurped on the plea that the subject was forgotten. The insertion of that clause proved both that the subject had been considered and that it had been decided: and that it had been decided in the way of excluding religion entirely.
Yet this did not satisfy the people. The discussion of the subject in Virginia had spread through all the other States, and had awakened there an interest that now found expression. When the Constitution was submitted to the people for ratification, objection was made everywhere that it did not fully secure Religious Liberty. Only negative expression was not enough. What was intended should be positively asserted.
Accordingly the ratification of the Constitution was with the distinct understanding that there should immediately be appended articles of the nature of a Bill of Rights. By the first Congress that ever met under the Constitution, this was done in the form of the first ten Amendments. And the very first clause of all is the one that positively assures the complete Religious Liberty that had all the time been intended:--
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Yet even that did not quite finish the story. In 1797 there was made and signed by President Washington regularly "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate" according to the Constitution, a treaty in which it was declared--
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion."
And by the Fourteenth Amendment, this Religious Liberty is extended and guaranteed to all the people in all the States: for--
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
Such is the straight and plain story of The Fact of the establishment of full and complete Religious Liberty as a natural and constitutional right in this New Nation of the United States.
It is now necessary to cite from the same sources The Principles upon which all of that was done. And herein lies the great importance to all the people of the United States and of the world, of that action of the Federal Council of Churches in repudiation of the word "Protestant": when in the Protest there was wrapped up the Reformation. For, people who are capable of repudiating the Protest are already qualified to abandon the results of it.
The men who erected this noble temple of Religious Liberty, first made clear what they meant, and what is to be understood, by the word "Religion." They said:--
"Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and is nowhere cognizable but at the tribunal of the universal Judge."
Then they distinguished and declared the Principles upon which they claimed for themselves and advocated for all, perfect Religious Liberty. They said:--
To judge for ourselves, and to engage in the exercise of religion agreeably to the dictates of our own consciences, is an unalienable right, which, upon The Principles on which The Gospel was first propagated and The Reformation from Popery carried on, can never be transferred to another."
Further they said: "In the event of a statute for the support of the Christian religion, are the courts of law to decide what is Christianity? and as a consequence to decide what is orthodoxy and what is heresy?"
"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?"
"It is impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith, without erecting a claim to infallibility which would lead us back to the Church of Rome."
Upon the principles on which the Gospel was first propagated and the Reformation carried on, they declared against any governmental recognition of any religion. And they declared specifically against any governmental recognition of "the Christian religion," expressly in order that this Nation and people should forever be kept from being led back to the Church of Rome.
Other splendid sentences from the documents of that campaign, equally show that the men who wrought for Religious Liberty had ever in mind the distinction between the principles of the papacy and those of the Reformation.
Of that "Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion," they said:
"What a melancholy mark is this bill, of sudden degeneracy! Instead of holding forth an asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution." Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other is the last in the career of intolerance."
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society! In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of civil authority. In many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people."
"Torrents of blood have been spilt in the Old World in consequence of vain attempts of the secular arm to extinguish religious discord by proscribing all differences in religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy has been found to assuage the disease.
"The American theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and complete liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If, with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds of religious freedom, we know no name which will too severely reproach our folly."
These quotations are sufficient to show that in their contention for Religious Liberty, those noble men held steadily before them the principles of the Protest and the Reformation; and that they held consistently to those principles.
And they blended in one with these, "the principles on which the Gospel was first propagated." In this too they held consistently, and were eminently correct and true to the truth.
The Lord Jesus, the Author of the Gospel as it was first propagated, proclaimed from God this perfect Religious Liberty, in the sweeping words, "If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not." John 12: 47.
When the Creator and Lord of all declares every man's freedom not to believe even His words, then that utterly excludes all other persons, potentates, and powers, from ever judging or condemning anybody for any dissent or variance in any matter of religion or faith.
And that is the American and Constitutional principle, from the Christian and Reformation principle.
And so says the Scripture again: "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own Master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand.
"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Rom. 14: 4, 12.
And from the Christian and Reformation principle that is the American and Constitutional principle; for Washington said: "Every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountable alone to God for his religious faith; and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his conscience."
Again Jesus said: "Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Matt. 22: 21.
When that word was spoken, in all the "civilized" world Caesar and God, religion and the State, were held to be one and inseparable. But by that word Jesus split in two that heathen and Satanic thing, and set them as far apart as are the world and Christ, and Satan and God.
And from the Christian and Reformation principle, that is the American and Constitutional principle.
In the same sense of "revolt" being "to turn away in horror or disgust, to be repelled or shocked," the Reformation was a revolt from the papacy. And it was much more than that. It was a revival of original Christianity. And in that it was the revival of the divine principle of Individuality.
In this respect also the American and Constitutional principle of Liberty is the truest expression that there is in any organic connection in all the world, of "the principles upon which the Gospel was first propagated and the Reformation from popery carried on."
"No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal, religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar's. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the Gospel for all men.
"No sooner was this religion adopted by the chief of the Roman Empire than it was shorn of its character of universality and enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy State. And so it continued, till the New Nation- -the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth century, the most general believer in Christianity of any people of that age, the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form--when it came to establish a government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State."
"The Constitution establishes nothing that interferes with equality and individuality. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, or favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside of the individual.
"No nationality of character could take form, except on the principle of individuality: so that the mind might be free, and every faculty have the unlimited opportunity for its development and culture." The rule of individuality was extended as never before. Religion was become avowedly the attribute of man, and not of a corporation.
"Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the New Nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea."
It is important especially to emphasize the fact and the truth that the American and Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty is the separation of the Christian religion and the State, the separation of Christianity and the State, and not merely the separation of Church and State.
The separation of Church and State was a question already settled, and was in the past, before there was even begun the contest that ended only in the establishment of the Religious Liberty of the Constitution.
And when that contest was begun it was not over any revival of the union of Church and State; but distinctly over an attempt to form a union of "Christianity" and the State, in the proposal to establish the legal recognition and support of "the Christian religion."
The sole question from beginning to end of the whole campaign, was as to whether "the Christian religion should have governmental recognition and support, or whether it should be excluded from all governmental support, connection, or recognition.
In all the documents that are the essential features of the issue, there is not once found the phrase "Church and State" nor any phrase of kindred import.
Throughout, the phrases are "religion"--in the abstract, "the Christian religion," "Christianity," "the legal establishment of Christianity." This is what was opposed, in the interests of Religious Liberty.
They said that the proposal for the legal recognition and support of "the Christian religion" was "entirely subversive of Religious Liberty."
They said that it was "a contradiction to the Christian religion."
They said that it was "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion"; because "Almighty God hath created the mind free," and He "being Lord both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate His religion by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do."
And the campaign ended with the whole question summed up in the plain word of Washington in the supreme law of the Nation,--
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
That and that alone is the American and Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty. And it is the Protestant and Christian principle.
That is, the Christian principle absolutely excludes Christianity from all governmental support, connection, or recognition.
Thus by the facts and essential documents of the whole record, nothing can be plainer than that the American Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty is not merely the separation of Church and State, but it is specifically the separation of Christianity and the State.
Yet plain as that is in the essential history of the Nation and the Constitution, plain as it is by Protestant and Christian principle, it is safe to say that hardly one in a thousand of the professed Protestant preachers in the United States recognizes it or will allow it.
For illustration, in the month of March, 1912, more than a hundred professed Protestant preachers of Washington City met together to adopt a resolution to be presented to President Taft against the wearing of the garb of the Roman Church by teachers in government schools. Yet in that meeting, for that purpose, and on that question, it was distinctly declared, and endorsed by the whole body with applause, that--
"We mean the separation of Church and State: not the separation of Christianity and the State."
Benjamin Franklin said that "he who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world."
Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and the people of the United States did introduce into public affairs in this Nation the principles of primitive Christianity that are specially for the guidance of States and nations as such-- the principle of the exclusive jurisdiction of God alone in all affairs of religion, the principle of the exclusion of the government from all things pertaining to religion, the principle of freedom of conscience, the principle of Individuality, the principle of perfect Religious Liberty.
And this has changed the face of the world.
Not till the planting of this newest nation did these principles ever find any place of recognition in government--except always upon the little theatre of Rhode Island. The principles had always been in the Bible for recognition by every government. The principles were ordained of God for the recognition of governments and of men everywhere. But to this New Nation alone of all the world befell the splendid distinction of taking the divinely ordained way of genuine Religious Liberty as a fundamental governmental principle.
When this great thing had been done by this New Nation, there was not another nation in the world that would consent that it was in any wise a sound or safe thing to do. But now every nation in the world has accepted and officially proclaimed Religious Liberty as a governmental principle. It is not in all of them practically applied in its true measure; but it has in all of them been adopted and proclaimed as a governmental principle.
And thus by making these principles of primitive Christianity, and of primitive Christianity revived in the Reformation, a fundamental fixture in public affairs--by this one thing alone this New Nation has wrought a revolution of this whole world. She has changed the face of the world.
But Rome never wanted the face of the world thus to be changed. It meant to her, weakening of influence and loss of power. It was all done in spite of her, and against all her principles and interest. And now that it has been done, she is determined to reverse it. And since by the New Nation it was done, upon this Nation Rome centres all her energies for the reversal of it.
Accordingly, as far back as 1892, in a letter direct from the Vatican, there was published in the United States the will and hope of the papacy concerning this Nation. The following are some of the expressive sentences of that letter:
"What the church has done in the past for others, she will do for the United States."
"That is the reason the Holy See encourages the American clergy to guard jealously the solidarity, and to labor for the fusion, of all the foreign and heterogeneous elements into one vast national family."
"Like all intuitive souls, he [Leo XIII] hails in the united American States and in their young and flourishing church the source of new life for Europeans."
"He wants America to be powerful, in order that Europe may regain strength from borrowing a rejuvenated type."
"What can we borrow, what ought we to borrow, from the United States for our social, political, and ecclesiastical, reorganization?"
"If the United States succeed in solving the many problems that puzzle us, Europe will follow her example, and this outpouring of light will mark a date in the history not only of the United States, but of all humanity."
In 1893, by his "apostolic delegate" in this country the same pope sent to the Catholics of America the special message and command--
"Bring your fellow-countrymen, bring your country into immediate contact with that great secret of blessedness-- Christ and his Church."
"For here in America do we have, more than elsewhere, the key to the future."
To that ambitious and pernicious end, all since has been and ever is most diligently worked. The chief stroke so far was the appointing in 1912 of three American cardinals all at once. And if the sinking of the Titanic had not put the etiquette of the thing at the bottom of the sea, the American cardinals would even now be parading their papal pomp as "princes of the blood" in precedence of every official, native or foreign, in this land.
And to all that papal program for marring the now fair face of the world, the Federal Council of Churches in America--in America, think of it!--swings her influence, by that public repudiation of the word and idea of "Protestant."
For to Rome herself in her wicked encroachments what greater encouragement could be given; and on principle what greater favor could be shown to the papacy in every way; than in the fact that there are thirty-one denominations-- "more than seventeen millions" of people--who are thus distinctly pledged to silence, whatever Rome may do?!
No worse betrayal of a nation and people was ever played in the world than in that blind and thoughtless action of the Federal Council of the Churches in America, in repudiating that splendid word "Protestant."
Note:
1. The sources of the quotations, facts, and dates, in this chapter are, Bancroft's "History of the United States," Vol. V, epoch iv, chap. ix, xvii, xxi; Vol. VI, Book II, chap. v; Book IV, chap iii; Book V, chap. i. Baird's "History of Religion in America," Book III, chap. iii. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire," chap. xix.