5 62
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
sacred immunities of conscience he had no clearer vision than Dante. But he opposed persecution in the shape in \vhich he knew it, and the patriarchs of European emanci- pation have not done more. He never says that there is no case in which a religion may be proscribed; but he speaks of none in which a religion may be imposed. He discusses, not intolerance, but the divine authority to per- secute, and pleads for a secular law. I t does not appear how he would deal with a Thug. " N emo quantumcumque peccans contra disciplinas speculativas aut operativas quas- cumque punitur vel arcetur in hoc saeculo praecise in quan- tum huiusmodi, sed in quantum peccat contra praeceptum humanae legis. . . . Si humana lege prohibitum fuerit haereticum aut aliter infidelem in regione manere, qui talis in ipsa repertus fuerit, tanquam legis humanae transgressor, poena vel supplicio huic transgressioni eadem lege statutis, in hoc saeculo debet arceri." The difference is s1ight be- tween the t\VO readings. One asserts that MarsiIius was tolerant in effect; the other denies that he was tolerant in principle. Mr. Lea does not love to recognise the existence of much traditional toleration. Fe\v lights are allowed to deepen his shadows. If a stream of tolerant thought descended from the early ages to the time when the companion of Vespucci brought his improbable tale from U tapia, then the vie\vs of Bacon, of Dante, of Gerson cannot be accounted for by the ascendency of a unanimous persuasion. I t is because all men were born to the same inheritance of enforced conformity that we glide so easily towards the studied increase of pain. If some men were able to perceive what lay in the other scale, if they made a free choice, after deliberation, between well-defined and \vell-argued opinions, then \vhat happened is not assignable to invincible causes, and history must turn from general and easy explanation to track the sinuosities of a tangled thread. In Mr. Lea's acceptation of ecclesiastical history intolerance was handed down as a rule of life from the days of St. Cyprian, and the few who shrank half-hearted from the gallows and the flames \vere exceptions, were
