Sodom?  Why not wash our hands in their blood?” ("The Spanish Inquisition,” Le Maistre, p. 67, ed. 1838).  Sandys, Bishop of London, wrote in defence of persecution.  Archbishop Usher, in an address signed by eleven other bishops, said:  “Any toleration to the papists is a grievous sin.”  Knox said, “The people are bound in conscience to put to death the queen, along with all her priests.”  The English Parliament said, “Persecution was necessary to advance the glory of God.”  The Scotch Parliament decreed death against Catholics as idolaters, saying “it was a religious obligation to execute them” (Ibid, pp. 67, 68).  Cranmer, A.D. 1550, condemned six anabaptists to death, one of whom, a woman, was burned alive, and in the following year another was committed to the flames; this primate held a commission with “some others, to examine and search after all anabaptists, heretics, or contemners of the book of Common Prayer” ("Students’ History of England,” D. Hume, p. 291, ed. 1868).

In Switzerland, Calvin burned Servetus.  In America, the Puritans carried on the same hateful tradition, and whipped the harmless Quakers from town to town.  Wherever the cross has gone, whether held by Roman Catholic, by Lutheran, by Calvinist, by Episcopalian, by Presbyterian, by Protestant dissenter, it has been dipped in human blood, and has broken human hearts.  Its effect on Europe was destructive, barbarising, deadly, until the dawning light of science scattered the thick black clouds which issued from the cross.  One indisputable fact, pregnant with instruction, is the extremely low rate of increase of the population of Europe during the centuries when Christianity was supreme.  “What, then, does this stationary condition of the population mean?  It means, food obtained with hardship, insufficient clothing, personal uncleanness, cabins that could not keep out the weather, the destructive effects of cold and heat, miasm, want of sanitary provisions, absence of physicians, uselessness of shrine cure, the deceptiveness of miracles, in which society was putting its trust; or, to sum up a long catalogue of sorrows, wants and sufferings in one term—­it means a high death-rate.  But, more, it means deficient births.  And what does that point out?  Marriage postponed, licentious life, private wickedness, demoralized society” (Draper’s “Conflict of Religion and Science,” p. 263).  “The surface of the Continent was for the most part covered with pathless forests; here and there it was dotted with monasteries and towns.  In the lowlands and along the river courses were fens, sometimes hundreds of miles in extent, exhaling their pestiferous miasms, and spreading agues far and wide.”  In towns there was “no attempt made at drainage, but the putrefying garbage and rubbish were simply thrown out of the door.  Men, women, and children slept in the same apartment; not unfrequently domestic animals were their companions; in such a confusion of the family it was impossible