CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND AND THE COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
For the last three centuries this summary may best be mainly confined to the growth of toleration in English history: in the first place because the modern separation of Church and State was first entirely achieved by an English-speaking common-wealth, and now prevails over a vast area of the modern world; secondly, because I have the authority of Dr Döllinger for thinking that the history of religious freedom is best worth studying in the records of the English-speaking race; and thirdly, because this problem, like many others, was solved far more equitably and far less violently in England than elsewhere.[1]
The interest of England in the seventeenth century lies in the fact that Englishmen, for the first and perhaps the last time in their history,
- ↑ I have not gone as thoroughly into American history as I should otherwise have done since this has been admirably covered in Mr S. H. Cobb's work "The Rise of Religious Liberty in America" (The Macmillan Company, 1902). Up to the sixteenth century Western Europe is much more of a coherent whole. After that period each nation would require separate treatment, and this treatment in itself would require volumes.
