ation continued in America.] The history of the
Reformation does not close, as many European authors have imagined, in a
balanced and final distribution of the north and south between the
Protestant and the Catholic. The predestined issue of sectarian
differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as
there was one vast, overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man
must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it
instructed him to do. As soon as dissenting confessions gathered
sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence--as soon
as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration
became not only possible, but inevitable, and that is perhaps as far as
the movement has at this time advanced in Europe. But Macaulay and
others who have treated of the Reformation have taken too limited a view
of it, supposing that this was its point of arrest. [Sidenote:
Separation of Church and State.] It made another enormous stride when,
at the American Revolution, the State and the Church were solemnly and
openly dissevered from one another. Now might the vaticinations of the
prophets of evil expect to find credit; a great people had irrevocably
broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have been
expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and passions of
men would have dragged everything into the abyss of anarchy. Yet what do
we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the event to
be? Sectarian decomposition, passing forward to its last extreme, is the
process by which individual mental liberty is engendered and maintained.
A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny to the individual;
the increasing emergence of sects gives him increasing latitude of
thought--with their utmost multiplication he gains his utmost liberty.
In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one
diminishes, the other increases. [Sidenote: Emergence of liberty of
thought.] The Reformation broke down unity; it gave liberty to masses of
men grouped together in sufficient numbers to insure their position; it
is now invisibly, but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed
until there is an absolute mental emancipation for man.

[Sidenote: The American clergy.] Great revolutions are not often
accomplished without much suffering and many crimes. It might have been
supposed before the event, perhaps it is supposed by ma