In Europe, public opinion was not ripe for separation, inasmuch as the most powerful religious bodies were alike in regarding toleration as wicked indifference.  But it was introduced in a small corner of the new world beyond the Atlantic in the seventeenth century.  The Puritans who fled from the intolerance of the English Church and State and founded colonies in New England, were themselves equally intolerant, not only to Anglicans and Catholics, but to Baptists and Quakers.  They set up theocratical governments from which all who did not belong to their own sect were excluded.  Roger Williams had imbibed from the Dutch Arminians the idea of separation of Church from State.  On account of this heresy he was driven from Massachusetts, and he founded Providence to be a refuge for those whom the Puritan colonists persecuted.  Here he set up a democratic constitution in which the magistrates had power only in civil matters and could not interfere with religion.  Other towns were presently founded in Rhode Island, and a charter of Charles II (1663) confirmed the constitution, which secured to all citizens professing Christianity, of whatever

[97] form, the full enjoyment of political rights.  Non-Christians were tolerated, but were not admitted to the political rights of Christians.  So far, the new State fell short of perfect liberty.  But the fact that Jews were soon admitted, notwithstanding, to full citizenship shows how free the atmosphere was.  To Roger Williams belongs the glory of having founded the first modern State which was really tolerant and was based on the principle of taking the control of religious matters entirely out of the hands of the civil government.

Toleration was also established in the Roman Catholic colony of Maryland, but in a different way.  Through the influence of Lord Baltimore an Act of Toleration was passed in 1649, notable as the first decree, voted by a legal assembly, granting complete freedom to all Christians.  No one professing faith in Christ was to be molested in regard to his religion.  But the law was heavy on all outside this pale.  Any one who blasphemed God or attacked the Trinity or any member of the Trinity was threatened by the penalty of death.  The tolerance of Maryland attracted so many Protestant settlers from Virginia that the Protestants became a majority, and as soon as they won political preponderance, they introduced an Act (1654)

[98] excluding Papists and Prelatists from toleration.  The rule of the Baltimores was restored after 1660, and the old religious freedom was revived, but with the accession of William III the Protestants again came into power and the toleration which the Catholics had instituted in Maryland came to an end.