presses very concisely the religious side of the question. Englishmen, up to this time, had never shown much inclination for theological disputation, nor were their ideas otherworldly. Under the Stuart, and perceptibly even under the Elizabethan, régime the atmosphere was entirely transformed, and became charged with a delirium Hebraicum of most explosive potency.
It was this sudden ferment, made more violent by its connection with the practical everyday reality of political grievances, which caused the great civil convulsions of this century, and which, after rejecting the toleration of ecclesiastical com-promise, achieved in spite of many vicissitudes the experimental separation of. Church and State under Cromwell, and finally the settlement of 1689.
Again, it is to be noticed that toleration was offered by the more sceptical minds to the zealots of the generation, who in turn were forced to adopt toleration by a compliance with political necessities which ultimately led them, in spite of their zeal, to the same conclusion. The Baptists and Quakers had long cried in the wilderness for toleration, but they abjured all connection with politics.[1] The political process
- ↑ Where the Quakers became predominant, as in the colony of New Jersey, they never persecuted. The same is true of the Baptists. Yet the Quakers and the Baptists were more universally persecuted than any other sects.
