They have
found it more difficult than they fancied to separate the man from
his opinions; to hate the sin and love the sinner: and so they have
begun to persecute; and, finding brute force, or at least the
chichane of law, far more easy than either convincing their opponents
or allowing themselves to be convinced by them, they have fined,
imprisoned, tortured, burnt, exterminated; and, like the Roman
conquerors of old, 'made a desert, and called that peace.'
And all the while the words stood written in the Scriptures which
they professed to believe: 'Nay: lest while ye root up the tares,
ye root up the wheat also.'
They had been told, if ever men were told, that the work was beyond
their powers of discernment: that, whatever the tares were, or
however they came into God's field the world, they were either too
like the wheat, or too intimately entangled with them, for any mortal
man to part them. God would part them in his own good time. If they
trusted God, they would let them be; certain that he hated what was
false, what was hurtful, infinitely more than they; certain that he
would some day cast out of his kingdom all things which offend, and
all that work injustice, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie; and
that, therefore, if he suffered such things to abide awhile, it was
for them to submit, and to believe that God loved the world better
than they, and knew better how to govern it.
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