In 1647 Leonard Calvert died. Until the Proprietary's will should be known,
Thomas Greene acted as Governor. Over in England, Lord Baltimore stood at
the parting of the ways. The King's cause had a hopeless look. Roundhead
and Parliament were making way in a mighty tide. Baltimore was marked for a
royalist and a Catholic. If the tide rose farther, he might lose Maryland.
A sagacious mind, he proceeded to do all that he could, short of denying
his every belief, to placate his enemies. He appointed as Governor of
Maryland William Stone, a Puritan, and into the Council, numbering five
members, he put three Puritans. On the other hand the interests of his
Maryland Catholics must not be endangered. He required of the new Governor
not to molest any person "professing to believe in Jesus Christ, and in
particular any Roman Catholic." In this way he thought that, right and left,
he might provide against persecution.
Under these complex influences the Maryland Assembly passed in 1649 an Act
concerning Religion. It reveals, upon the one hand, Christendom's
mercilessness toward the freethinker -- in which mercilessness, whether
through conviction or policy, Baltimore acquiesced -- and, on the other hand,
that aspiration toward friendship within the Christian fold which is even
yet hardly more than a pious wish, and which in the seventeenth century
could have been felt by very few. To Baltimore and the Assembly of Maryland
belongs, not the glory of inaugurating an era of wide toleration for men
and women of all beliefs or disbeliefs, whether Christian or not, but the
real though lesser glory of establishing entire toleration among the
divisions within the Christian circle itself.
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