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    &n& pi&ctiee of ages . No sooner had Constahtfne * he Great Embraced Christianity , than he enacted against Dissenters from the established creed the Same punishments which his pagan predecessors had inflicted on those who apostatized from the religion of their fathers . His example was frequently follpwed by succeeding emperors $ it ^ a ^ ado pted without hesitation by the princes of the Northern tribes , who after their conversion were accustomed

    to supply from the imperial constitutions the deficiencies of their own scanty legislation . Hence religious intolerance became part of the public law of Christendom : the principle was maintained , the practice enforced by the Reformers themselves , and whatever might be the predominant doctrine , the Dissenter from it invariably found himself liable to civil restrictions , perhaps to imprisonment and death . By Henry the laws against heresy were executed with equal rigour both before and after his quarrel with the Pontiff , "

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    Art * III . —Me * moire en faveur de la LibertS des Cultes ; couronni par la Socttti de la Morale ChrStienne ; par M » Alexandre Vinet , du Canton de Vaud . Paris . 8 vo . 1826 . The Canton de Vaud is a fit spot from whence a defence of the princU pies of religious liberty on the broadest scale sbould issue ; and as the work before us has been crowned by the sanction and applause of a most , respect * able religious society in France , and may therefore be reasonably supposed

    to speak to a considerable extent the sentimeftts of the friends of freedom oF opinion there , we shall give an analysis of its contents ; and that we may still further illustrate the tone adopted in France on these subjects , and the freedom in which even public journals discuss them , we designedly confine ourselves to almost literally translating this analysis from the review of the book in the " Globe , " an able and highly-interestirig newspaper published in Paris three times a week .

    The question of religious liberty , according to M . Vmet's view of it , resolves itself into the three following propositions : No temporal power , no government has a right to decide upon the merits of different systems of religious opinion , nor consequently to exercise authority over them , or to protect one or more at the expense of the rest . Supposing , however , that a government had this right , it could not , from the very nature of religiouis opinions , fairly and justly exercise it ; and finally , even if it were possible so to do , to attempt to exercise the power would be contrary to the interests both of the government and of religion .

    The two first of M . Vinet ' s propositions are of course designed to make out the title to religious liberty as a right , while the tendency of the third is to recommend toleration as a matter of policy ; that is to say , to ^ enjoin the expediency of adopting in practice what the two others established as just in theory . The arguments in support of the two first propositions are numerous . But they all resolve themselves into and are founded on this—that the free

    and honest exercise of religious conviction of every kind is and ought to be sacred and inviolable ; and that we should no longer be men or accountable beings if any one had the right of compelling us to believe what seems to us to be false , or not to believe what seems to us to be true . Religious worshi p being merely the public profession of religious conviction , is entitled to the same liberty . That cannot be refused to the consequence , which is granted to the principle : acts of conscience are , therefore , as mviolable as conscience

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    Remew .- ~ Pmet on Religious Ltitfify . $ 7 $

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 279, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/47/