THE KING'S DECLARATION.
[TO TIIE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sig,—I observe in your editorial note on p.495 of your israe of April 6th the phrase, "Toleration is part of the essential spirit of English Protestantism ;" apparently defending the cry of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics for toleration when English Protestantism raises its protest against superstition and idolatry. But have you not failed to discriminate between a genuine liberal toleration of the freedom of every man to hold whatever doctrine he finds to satisfy his own conscience, and a self-indulgent, weak-kneed toleration of the doctrine, itself ? We tolerate every man's freedom, but only so far as he • does not interfere with the equal liberty of every other man. We are, nevertheless, bound by every principle of our own conscientiously and resolutely to protest against what we find ourselves justified in bolding,to be erroneous doctrine. It is the characteristic fraud of the Roman ecclesiastic to misrepresent such intolerance at if it were a persecution of the personal believer. Of his freedom our own principle is the best c a guarantee which long experience has proved that the Church casuist would never allow, if he had the opportunity of suppressing it. We might illustrate the scandal promulgated by, say, the Arch- bishop of Westminster—with the customary bluster of his hierarchy—with the identical boycott of the Unitarian who protests against the exclusive claims of Anglican clergy, or of any Evangelical Affiance, but lives in hope, by Christian principle, in time, to convert his contemptuous intolerator.—.
[As we said last week, we agree with our correspondent that Roman Catholicism is in its spirit incompatible with.tolera- tion, but that is no reason either for withholding tolerance from it or for insulting Roman Catholic feelings. Calvin was anything but tolerant, but we do not therefore publicly and officially denounce the, doctrines of Calvin. We would remind our correspondent of Cromwell's wise and noble words :—" Every sect saith, Oh, give me liberty!' But give him it and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else. Liberty of conscience is a natural right, and he that would have it ought to give it." Whether we shall ever teach Roman Catholicism tolerance in the true sense is perhaps doubtful, but we shall certainly never do so unless we set the example. As long as we insult—and insult by the State is a withholding of absolute tolerance—we rally the best elements in Roman Catholicism to a common centre. If we are absolutely tolerant we leave those elements free to leaven the mass. Vaticanism dreads Liberal Catholicism intensely, but Liberal Catholicism, which it should be the aim of all good Protestants to encOtrage, has most power when the Roman Church is not attacked as a whole.—En. Spectator.]
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