" Thou hast great allies.
Thy friends are exultations, agonies.
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

Still the principle of toleration may be shown to have
had a historic beginning. During the first century, as we
should expect (for surely it may be said that the Christian
Church was founded on toleration), and before the
impulse communicated to His followers by Christ and
His apostles had passed away, toleration and charity or
love were almost synonymous terms, and constituted an

1 Dr. Fairbairn's Religion in History and in the Life of To-day, pp.
229-231.
362 PUHITANISM

evidence of Christian discipleship which the heathen
around were unable to resist or gainsay.^

Toleration we find expressly provided for in the Edict
of Milan put forth by Constantine in conjunction with
Liciuius, A.D. 313. This rescript contained far more
than the first edict of toleration published by the Emperor
Galerius. By the latter, Christianity was merely received
into the class of the religiones licitce, while this new law
implied the introduction of a universal and unconditional
religious freedom and liberty of conscience — a thing, in
fact, wholly new (Neander). " The rights of man and
the law of nature," says TertuUian, " give everyone the
power of worshipping as he thinks proper, and the religion
of one man neither injures nor benefits another. Force is
indeed foreign to religion." So speaks Lactantius, and
Lactantius was tutor to the son of the Emperor Constan-
tine. " Eeligion cannot be compelled, it is by words
rather than wounds that you must bend the will.
Nothing is so much a matter of free will as reKgion.
