" This is admirable, especially as his parenthesis about
"their own rashness" assumes that the whole thing was owing to natural
causes. The pity for the Quakers, too, implied in the "I fear," is a nice
touch. It is always noticeable how much more liberal those who deal in
God's command without his power are of his wrath than of his mercy. But
we should never understand the Puritans if we did not bear in mind that
they were still prisoners in that religion of Fear which casts out Love.
The nearness of God was oftener a terror than a comfort to them. Yet
perhaps in them was the last apparition of Faith as a wonder-worker in
human affairs. Take away from them what you will, you cannot deny them
_that_, and its constant presence made them great in a way and measure of
which this generation, it is to be feared, can have but a very inadequate
conception. If men now-a-days find their tone antipathetic, it would be
modest at least to consider whether the fault be wholly theirs,--whether
it was they who lacked, or we who have lost. Whether they were right or
wrong in their dealing with the Quakers is not a question to be decided
glibly after two centuries' struggle toward a conception of toleration
very imperfect even yet, perhaps impossible to human nature.
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