Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/303

 previous reign by the late King to effect a general measure of toleration: efforts which had been defeated by the Parliamentary action of the Church and State party, in their blind hatred of the Protestant Nonconformists. Then had come the passage of the Test Act, when the popular fury had turned against the Roman Catholics; and by this Act the political position was further complicated, for it at once divided the advocates of religious liberty between those who simply desired to see the free exercise of religion, whether in private or in public, guaranteed by law, and those who wished also for the repeal of the civil disabilities imposed by the Act. This second party again was itself divided between those who desired to repeal the tests altogether, and those who would still have maintained the tests against the Roman Catholics, not as holders of unsound theological opinions, but as the champions of tenets inconsistent with the maintenance of the free institutions and the existing government of the country.

'By liberty of conscience,' Sir William said, 'is meant the liberty of professing any opinion concerning God, angels, good and bad, the souls of men and beasts, rewards and punishments after death, immense space and eternity; concerning the Scriptures, the truth of their copies and translations; as also of their history; with the authority of their doctrines, precepts and examples; as also concerning the will of God revealed in any other ways. But not concerning the lives, limbs, liberties, rights and properties of men in this world; nor extending to punish or reward any man for sin or not sin against God; leaving offences against the peace and commonwealth of the nation to the civil magistrate, God's visible vicar and lieutenant and true representative of the people, whether the same be in one or more persons.'

In regard to England he saw no difficulty; but in the existing condition of affairs in Ireland, the free admission of Roman Catholics to power was, he thought, too dangerous an experiment to be tried as an isolated measure. His wish, therefore, was that 'England and Ireland should be united by one Common Council, or Parliament, at the