The history of the Protestant churches is enough to show the pitiable futility of the proviso for religious tolerance with which Rousseau closed his exposition.  “If there is no longer an exclusive national religion, then every creed ought to be tolerated which tolerates other creeds, so long as it contains nothing contrary to the duties of the citizen.  But whoever dares to say, Out of the church, no salvation, ought to be banished from the state.”  The reason for which Henry IV. embraced the Roman religion—­namely, that in that he might be saved, in the opinion alike of Protestants and Catholics, whereas in the reformed faith, though he was saved according to Protestants, yet according to Catholics he was necessarily damned,—­ought to have made every honest man, and especially every prince, reject it.  It was the more curious that Rousseau did not see the futility of drawing the line of tolerance at any given set of dogmas, however simple and slight and acceptable to himself they might be, because he invited special admiration for D’Argenson’s excellent maxim that “in the republic everybody is perfectly free in what does not hurt others."[258] Surely this maxim has very little significance or value, unless we interpret it as giving entire liberty of opinion, because no opinion whatever can hurt others, until it manifests itself in act, including of course speech, which is a kind of act.  Rousseau admitted that over and above the profession of civil faith, a citizen might hold what opinions he pleased, in entire freedom from the sovereign’s cognisance or jurisdiction; “for as the sovereign has no competence in the other world, the fate of subjects in that other world is not his affair, provided they are good citizens in this.”  But good citizenship consists in doing or forbearing from certain actions, and to punish men on the inference that forbidden action is likely to follow from the rejection of a set of opinions, or to exact a test oath of adherence to such opinions on the same principle, is to concede the whole theory of civil intolerance, however little Rousseau may have realised the perfectly legitimate applications of his doctrine.  It was an unconscious compromise.  He was thinking of Calvin in practice and Hobbes in theory, and he was at the same time influenced by the moderate spirit of his time, and the comparatively reasonable character of his personal belief.  He praised Hobbes as the only author who had seen the right remedy for the conflict of the spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, by proposing to unite the two heads of the eagle, and reducing all to political unity, without which never will either state or government be duly constituted.  But Hobbes was consistent without flinching.  He refused to set limits to the religious prescriptions which a sovereign might impose, for “even when the civil sovereign is an infidel, every one of his own subjects that resisteth him, sinneth against the laws of God (for such are the laws of nature), and rejecteth