are the Christians’ slaves and tributary to the emperor, while in truth they are themselves Christians with as much right as any one nowadays is Roman Emperor.  Good God, who would want to join our religion, even though he were of a meek and submissive mind, when he sees how spitefully and cruelly he is treated; and that the treatment he can expect is not only unchristian, but worse than bestial?  If hating Jews and heretics and Turks makes people Christians, we insane people would indeed be the best Christians.  But if loving Christ makes Christians, we are beyond a doubt worse than Jews, heretics, and Turks, because no one loves Christ less than we.  The rage of these people reminds me of children and fools, who, when they see a picture of a Jew on a wall, go and cut out his eyes, pretending that they want to help the Lord Christ.  Most of the preachers during Lent treat of nothing else than the cruelty of the Jews towards the Lord Christ, which they are continually magnifying.  Thus they embitter believers against them, while the Gospel aims only at showing and exalting the love of God and Christ.” (4, 927.)

The Catholic claim that the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated.  Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to:  “The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of an English monarch, the nominal head of Church of England, and the credit of any merit in this donative is due the giver, and not the recipient, of the kingly grant.”  Prof.  Fisher has called attention to another fact:  “Only two references to religion are to be found in the Maryland charter.  The first gives to the proprietary patronage and advowson of churches.  The second empowers him to erect churches, chapels, and oratories, which he may cause to be consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England.  The phraseology is copied from the Avalon patent (drawn up in England in 1623 for a portion of the colony of Newfoundland) that was given to Sir George Calvert (first Lord Baltimore) when he was a member of the Church of England.  Yet the terms were such that recognition of that Church as the established form of religion does not prevent the proprietary and the colony from the exercise of full toleration toward other Christian bodies.” (Colonial Era, p. 64.) The Maryland Colony was admittedly organized as a business venture, and its original members were largely Protestants.  It was to secure the financial interests of the proprietary that tolerance was shown the colonists.  Prof.  Fisher says:  “Any attempt to proscribe Protestants would have proved speedily fatal to the existence of the colony.  In a document which emanated partly from Baltimore himself, it is declared to be evident that the distinctive privileges ’usually