TOLEDO, an ancient and trading city of Spain in New Castile, of which it was formerly the capital. About two centuries ago it is said to have contained more than 200,000 inhabitants; but they are now diminished to 20,000, or at most to 30,000. It is advantageously seated on the river Tajo, which surrounds it on two sides; and on the land-side it has an ancient wall built by a Gothic king, and flanked with 100 towers. It is seated on a mountain, which renders the streets uneven, and which are narrow; but the houses are fine, and there are a great number of superb structures, besides 17 public squares, where the markets are kept. The finest buildings are the royal castle and the cathedral church; which last is the richest and most considerable in Spain. It is seated in the middle of the city, joining to a handsome street, with a fine square before it. Several of the gates are very large, and of bronze. There is also a superb steeple extremely high, from whence there is a very distant prospect. The Sagrario, or principal chapel, is a real treasury, in which are 15 large cabinets let into the wall, full of prodigious quantities of gold and silver vessels, and other works. There are two mitres of silver gilt, set all over with pearls and precious stones, with three collars of masly gold, enriched in like manner. There are two bracelets and an imperial crown of the Virgin Mary, consisting of large diamonds and other jewels. The weight of the gold in the crown is 15 pounds. The vessel which contains the consecrated wafer is of silver gilt, as high as a man, and so heavy, that it requires 30 men to carry it; within it is another of pure gold enriched with jewels. Here are 38 religious houses, most of which are worthy a traveller's notice, with many other sacred buildings, a great number of churches belonging to 27 parishes, and some hospitals. Without the town are the remains of an amphitheatre, and other antiquities.
Toledo is an archbishop's see, and the seat of the primate of Spain. His revenue is said to be worth 400,000 ducats, but there are large deductions to be made from it. It pays 15,000 ducats to the monks of the Escorial, besides several other pensions. Toledo has also a university.
Toleration extends upon the whole human race, that mutual love which naturally springs from the knowledge that all men are brethren. Its ultimate end being to train its votaries for heaven, it concerns itself no farther with the affairs of earth than to enforce by eternal sanctions the laws of morality; and the kingdom of its Founder not being of this world, it leaves every nation at liberty to fabricate its own municipal laws, so as best to serve its own interest in the various circumstances in which it may be placed; and denounces a curse upon all who pay not to those laws the fullest obedience, when they were not obviously inconsistent with the laws of piety and virtue, which are of prior obligation. The Christian church therefore must always remain a distinct society from the state; and tho', till the present age of hazardous innovations, it has been deemed expedient in every country, where the truth of the gospel is admitted, to give to the religion of Christ a legal establishment, and to confer immunities on its ministers, this measure has been adopted, not to secure the purity of the faith which appeals to the private judgment of each individual, but merely to preserve the peace of society, and to put a restraint upon those actions of which human laws cannot take cognizance. With religion, Christian governments have no farther concern than as it tends to promote the practice of virtue. The early Christians, however, not understanding the principle upon which penal laws were employed to preserve the purity of the Jewish religion; and, as our blessed Lord observed to two of his apostles, not knowing what spirit they were of—hastily concluded that they had a right to enforce the doctrines and worship of the New Testament, by the same means which had been used to preserve the Israelites steady to the doctrines and worship of the Old. Hence, though they had suffered the cruellest persecutions themselves (see PERSECUTION), they no sooner got the power of the state in their hands, than they persecuted the Pagans for their idolatry; and afterwards, when heresies arose in the church, persecuted one another for expressing in different phrases metaphysical propositions, of such a nature as no human mind can fully comprehend. The apostle had forewarned them that there must be heresies in the church, that they who are approved may be made manifest; but it did not occur to them that persecution for opinion is the worst of all heresies, as it violates at once truth and charity.
Hitherto these unhallowed means of bringing Christians to uniformity of faith and practice, had been only occasionally employed from their not accurately distinguishing between the spirit of the gospel and that of the law; but as soon as the bishops of Rome had brought the inhabitants of Europe to recognize their infallibility in explaining articles of faith, and deciding points of controversy, persecution became a regular and permanent instrument of ecclesiastical discipline. To doubt or to deny any doctrine to which these unerring instructors had given the sanction of their approbation, was held to be not only a resisting of the truth, but an act of rebellion against their sacred authority; and the secular power, of which, by various arts, they had acquired the absolute direction, was instantly employed to avenge both.
"Thus Europe had been accustomed, during many centuries, to see speculative opinions propagated or defended by force, the charity and mutual forbearance which Christianity recommends with so much warmth, were forgotten, the sacred rights of conscience and of private judgment were unheard of; and not only the idea of toleration, but even the word itself, in the sense now affixed to it, was unknown. A right to extirpate error by force, was universally allowed to be the prerogative of those who possessed the knowledge of truth; and though the first reformers did not arro-
gate to themselves in direct terms that infallibility which Toleration. they had refused to the church of Rome, they were not less confident of the truth of their own doctrines, and required with equal ardour the princes of their party to check such as presumed to impugn or to oppose them. To this request too many of these princes lent a willing ear. It flattered at once their piety and their pride to be considered as possessing all the rights of Jewish princes; and Henry the VIII. of England, after labouring to make his divines declare that all authority ecclesiastical as well as civil flows from the crown, persecuted alternately the Papists and Protestants. Many of his successors, whose characters were much better than his, thought themselves duly authorized, in virtue of their acknowledged supremacy over all states and conditions of men, to enforce by means of penal laws a uniformity of faith and worship among their subjects; and it was not till the revolution that any sect in England seems to have fully understood, that all men have an unalienable right to worship God in the manner which to them may seem most suitable to his nature, and the relation in which they stand to him; or that it is impossible to produce uniformity of opinion by any other means than candid disquisition and sound reasoning. That the civil magistrate has a right to check the propagation of opinions which tend only to sap the foundations of virtue, and to disturb the peace of society, cannot, we think, be questioned; but that he has no right to restrain mankind from publicly professing any system of faith, which comprehends the being and providence of God, the great laws of morality, and a future state of rewards and punishments, is as evident as that it is the object of religion to fit mankind for heaven, and the whole duty of the magistrates to maintain peace, liberty, and property, upon earth. We have elsewhere observed (see TEST), that among a number of different sects of Christians, it is not the superior purity of the system of faith professed by one of them, that gives it a right to the immunities of an establishment in preference to all its rivals; but tho' the legislature is authorized, in certain circumstances, to make a less pure system the religion of the state, it would be the height of absurdity to suppose that any man, or body of men, can have authority to prevent a purer system from being acknowledged as the religion of individuals. For propagating opinions and pursuing practices which necessarily create civil disturbance, every man is answerable to the laws of his country; but for the soundness of his faith, and the purity of his worship, he is answerable to no tribunal but that which can search the heart.
When churches are established, and creeds drawn up as guides to the preaching of the national clergy, it is obvious that every clergyman who teaches any thing directly contrary to the doctrine of such creeds violates the condition on which he holds his living, and may be justly deprived of that living, whether his obnoxious opinion be in itself true or false, important or unimportant; but his punishment should be extended no farther. To expel a Christian from private communion for teaching any doctrine which is neither injurious to the state nor contrary to the few simple articles which comprise the sum of the Christian faith, is the grossest tyranny; and the governors of that church which is guilty of it, usurp the prerogative of their blessed Lord, who commanded the apostles themselves not to be called masters in this sense; for one (says he) is your master (ὁ κύριός σου), even Christ. It is indeed a hardship to deprive a man of his living for conscientiously illustrating what he believes to be a truth of the gospel, only because his illustration may be different from that which had formerly been given by men fallible like himself; but if the establishment of human compilations of faith be necessary, this hardship cannot
cannot be removed, but by making such compilations as simple as possible, and drawing them up in Scripture language. Such a reformation, could it be effected peaceably, would serve other good purposes; for while it would sufficiently guard the purity of the faith, it would withdraw that temptation which too many establishments throw in the way of men, to subscribe to the truth of what they do not really believe; and it would effectually banish from the Christian church every thing which can be called by the name of persecution. See NONCONFORMISTS.