An Example Of An 'A' Paper - History 451 (Page 3 of 4) in pdf

While in prison, Penn authored tracts which proposed that a religious "invisible hand"

would guarantee peace in the state despite the presence of many different religions: the diverse

beliefs which would result from people following their own consciences would make for secure

interests all around. Penn's Quakerism, especially the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light, shines

through this idea. Quakers believed that each person, through the piece of divinity all possess,

could encounter the sacred without the mediation of clergy or sacrament. Penn was willing to

extend this theology of individual empowerment to the state, yielding a body of citizens whose

own individual pursuits would nonetheless make them part of a community. In practice, political

self-determinism meant that “no person or persons shall be bound by the Act or Acts, Vote or

Votes of any Majority but only by his or her own free consent” (Penn, 16).

[his English Whiggery

had something to do with this position too]

However, as the self-directed Quakers united themselves via a few central beliefs, so

Penn had to articulate certain religious characteristics of the citizenry in the interests of peace

(Frost 11). He drew up a series of laws that betrayed the limits of toleration in Pennsylvania.

Over several years, these laws were revised several times. At first, they required that citizens be

monotheists, then theists, and finally trinitarians. Along the way, these laws mandated that the

Sabbath be observed on the first day of the week, that voters profess faith in Christ, that only

Christians serve in the executive and legislative branches of government, that citizens

acknowledge the divine inspiration of holy scripture, and that state officials honor the Act of

Toleration, whether by oath or affirmation (Cohen 9/30). Together, these legal codes comprise

the limits imposed upon liberty of conscience by William Penn, founder of the Quaker colony of

Pennsylvania.

Maryland

Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, founded the colony of Maryland, and the Catholic majority in

the colonial government drafted the “Act Concerning Religious Tolerance”

[Act Concerning

Religion]

in 1649. Unlike Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, Maryland was not so much a haven

for dissenters, sectarians, or religious anomalies as an experiment in Catholic/Protestant

cohabitation. Catholics occupied high governmental posts, but had to share any rights they

desired with their Protestant constituents in order to insure political stability—or, as they put it,

“for the more quiett and peaceable government of this Province, and the better to preserve

mutuall Love and amity amongst the inhabitants thereof” (Stone 246)., Tthus asserting that

[ensuring Catholic uniformity?]

Catholicism was not as important as pleasing

[word choice -

preserving Catholic worship was certainly important]

the

Protestants,

who would then support

Catholic rule. To that end, the General Assembly of Maryland stipulated a handful of Christian

behaviors and beliefs as the minimum requirements for Maryland religionus. They were, for the

most part, held in common by Catholics and Protestants. The Act forbade the blasphemy or

denial of the Holy Trinity in any permutation, the blasphemy of the name of the Virgin Mary, the

Apostles, the Evangelists, and the like; and the labeling of anyone as a “heritick, Scismatick,

Idolator, puritan, Independent, Prespiterian popish prest, Jesuite, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Cal-

venist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist or any other name

or terme ... relating to the matter of Religion” (Stone 245). It also mandated the observance of the

Sabbath and the profession of faith in Jesus Christ. To venture any further in religious

stipulations

[word choice]

would mean confronting such touchy issues as sacraments and divine

An Example Of An 'A' Paper - History 451 Page 3

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