Toleration had two classes of advocates in the seventeenth century,--on the
one hand, the minor and persecuted sects, and, on the other, such of the
great leaders of religious opinion as Milton and Locke. The first clear
assertion of the modern idea of toleration was made by the Anabaptists of
Holland, who in 1611 put into their Confession of Faith this declaration of
the freedom of religion from all state regulation: "The magistrate is not
to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this
or that form of religion, because Christ is King, and Lawgiver of the
church and conscience." When the Baptists appeared in England, they
advocated this principle as the one which ought to control in the relations
of church and state. In 1614 there was published in London a little tract,
written by one Leonard Busher, a poor laborer, and a member of the Baptist
church that had recently been organized there. The writer addressed the
King and Parliament with a statement of his conviction "that by fire and
sword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one true religion of
the Gospel is wholly against the mind and merciful law of Christ."[6] He
went on to say that no king or bishop is able to command faith, that it is
monstrous for Christians to vex and destroy each other on account of
religious differences. The leading Protestant bodies, especially the
established churches, still held to the corporate idea of the nature of
religious institutions; and, although they had rejected the domination of
the Roman Church, they accepted the control of the state as essential to
the purity of the church. This half-way retention of the corporate spirit
made it impossible for any of the leading churches to give recognition to
the full meaning of the Protestant idea of the worth of the individual
soul, and its right to communicate directly with God. It remained for the
persecuted Baptists and Independents, too feeble and despised to aspire to
state influence, to work out the Protestant principle to its full
expression in the spirit of toleration, to declare for liberty of