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Cambridge Historical Essays. No. XXI
THE THEORY OF
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
IN THE REIGNS OF
CHARLES II AND JAMES II
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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THE THEORY OF
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
IN THE REIGNS OF
CHARLES II AND JAMES II
BY
H. F. RUSSELL SMITH, B.A
ST John's college, Cambridge
THIRL WALL T>ISSERTATI0N, 191 1
Cambridge :
at the University Press
1911
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
{^■'r AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PREFACE
THE following Essay, which was awarded the Thirlwall
Medal for 1911, is published in the form in which
it was submitted to the Adjudicators. The subsequent
appearance of Mr Seaton's book, dealing with similar
problems, has induced me not to delay its publication.
Any attempt to expand it would lead to much un-
necessary repetition of what he has already written.
The period with which I have dealt, suggesting, as
it does, the Clarendon Code, the Test Acts, and the
Exclusion Bills, is not generally associated with the
spirit of tolerance. I have tried to show that, in spite
of the contradictory trend of legislation, there was a
definite theory of religious liberty, which was asserted
from their own points of view by the Nonconformists,
the Rational Theologians, and the Whigs. Although it
may be true that toleration was given largely from
empirical motives, the work of those who prepared the
way by forming and popularising the theory must not
be underestimated. I have therefore treated toleration
on its theoretical side, introducing other aspects only so
far as they contributed to the formation of the political
theory.
VI PREFACE
I have made more use of the pamphlet literature of
the period than of any one other source of information,
because " the bent and genius of any age is best known
by the pamphlets and papers that come daily out as the
sense of parties and sometime the voice of the nation ^"
I have added a short bibliography at the end of the
essay, to indicate the principal sources on which I have
relied. In this I have not attempted to enumerate the
pamphlets, sermons, and controversial writings which I
have consulted. I have only indicated the most im-
portant of those which were most famous at the time,
those which have an intrinsic value of their own, and
those which appear to me to represent in a typical
manner the ideas and opinions of the age.
My best thanks are due to Mr E. A. Benians of
St John's College for reading through the proofs of an
essay which was written mainly at his instigation.
^ Preface to Rennet's Register.
H. F. R. S.
St John's College,
Cambridge.
Juhj, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Toleration and the Age of the Restoration . 1
CHAPTER II
Toleration and the Secular State ... 27
CHAPTER III
Toleration and the Church .... 70
CHAPTER IV
Toleration and Locke 98
Bibliography 135
Index 141
CHAPTER I
TOLERATION AND THE AGE OF THE
RESTORATION
"A Spanish lady coming not long since to see this house,
seated in a large plaine, out of the middel of a rock, and a
river brought to the top of the mountaine, with the walks and
fountaines ; ingeniously desired those that were present not to
pronounce the name of our Saviour; lest it should dissolve the
beautiful enchantment."
Algernon Sidney, in a letter to his father.
In 1689 the Bill of " Indulgence to Dissenters " Toleration
passed both Houses of Parliament and duly received ^^'
the royal signature. This Act, generally known to
posterity as the Toleration Act, is a landmark both in
political and in ecclesiastical history. It is true that
the principle of toleration was not granted. The de-
bates in the Commons^ and the title of the Act, which
merely "exempts their Majesties Protestant Subjects,
differing from the Church of England, from the
Penalties of certain Laws" illustrate this. But what
was refused in principle, was granted in practice.
Dissenters who were willing to take the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy, subscribe to a declaration
against transubstantiation, and declare their belief
in thirty-six out of the thirty-nine Articles (omitting
1 Cf. Anchitell Grey, Debates, x. p. 261, etc.
R.-S. 1
TOLERATION
Letter on
Tolera-
tion.
The cul-
viination
of a con-
sistent
movement
toivards
Tolera-
tion.
the three which deal with the power of the Church
to regulate ceremonies, the Book of Homilies and
the Ordination Service) were given permission to
hold services for religious worship in licensed con-
venticles. Special provisions were made in favour of
Baptists and Quakers; Roman Catholics, Unitarians,
Deists and Atheists were expressly excluded. Hence-
forward a man might be a citizen of England without
being a member of the English Church. Limitations
were introduced by Statute into the medieval idea
of the State. Politics were beginning to be separated
from theology.
In the same year that the Bill of Indulgence to
Dissenters was passed, but later in that year, the
famous Epistola de Tolerantia, written by Locke to
Limborch three years previously, was translated into
English ^ The publication of this book marks a new
stage in the history of English thought no less than
the passing of the Toleration Act in English politics.
The connection between the Bill and the book was
probably not direct. It may have been that Locke
showed his youthful essay on " Toleration," of which
the famous letter is but an expansion, to his friend
and patron Lord Shaftesbury, and through such a
medium circulated his ideas in the Whig party.
But the book was written neither as an appeal for,
nor a justification of, an Act of Toleration. It was
merely published in the same year.
The Toleration Act and the Letter on Tolera-
tion were not productions of startling novelty or
1 The Bill became law on May 24th; the translation of the
letter was licensed on October 3rd.
AND THE RESTORATION 3
originality. In 1660 Charles II returned to England
pledged by the Declaration of Breda to grant ease
to tender consciences. In 1664 the Lords debated
a Bill, which would give the King power to dispense
with the Act of Uniformity in particular cases. In
1667-8 the whole question of Toleration again came
up in Parliament. In 1672 the King's famous
Declaration of Indulgence was issued, followed by
a general pardon to Quakers. In 1673 a Bill for the
" Ease of Protestant Dissenters " was passed by the
Commons, although rejected by the influence of
the Bishops in the Lords. In 1681 a Toleration
Bill passed both Houses of Parliament and only
met with rejection from the Crown. In 1687 and
1688 James II issued his two Declarations of Indul-
gence. All these measures contained proposals that
did not differ in anything but detail from the
successful Bill of 1689. In a similar fashion Williams,
Milton, Penn, Taylor, More, followed by unnumbered
pamphleteers, had long been uttering the same
arguments that Locke used. There was opposition
to both the Act and the Letter. But the Act was
in a concrete manner successful ; and after the Letter
the doctrine of toleration became sufficiently ortho-
dox in England to assure its ultimate triumph.
The Roman Catholics had to wait over a hundred
years before they obtained the same degree of
religious liberty as the Nonconformists, having in
the meantime to submit to disabilities far more
serious than had ever fallen to the lot of the Non-
conformists. The upholders of persecution and the
medieval connection between politics and theology
1—2
4 TOLERATION
were still powerful. But after 1689 there was a
definite practice and a definite theory (the one
going far beyond the other), for England to go
back upon at her risk.
The post- During the period with which we are dealing,
tioyiofthe ^^^^ supporters of toleration had a position to
oftolera- attack as well as a system to defend. To them
*^^"' this seemed preposterous because they looked upon
Liberty of Conscience as a '' natural right," and
considered it incumbent on those, who had usurped
this right, to justify their position. But as circum-
stances had imposed on them the necessity they
were prepared to accept it. They set to work to
attack the medieval system of theological politics.
It is impossible here to explain the origin of tliis
in the supposed commands of Christ to establish
His Kingdom on earth in the form of a universal
visible church ; its history from the decree of Con-
stantino, which established Christianity throughout
the Holy Roman Empire, to the transference of the
idea in miniature to a National Church of England
under Henry VIII ; its philosophy from St Thomas
Aquinas and Dante — the one emphasising the domi-
nance of the ecclesiastical, the other of the temporal
arm — through Hooker to Andrewes, Laud, Thorndike
and the other members of the Anglo-Catholic school.
The fact of importance is that this system existed in
England from the reign of Henry VIII to the Great
Rebellion and, though temporarily interrupted, was
restored in 1660 under Charles 11.
There were two possible ways of modifying the
system of a State-Church. In a letter to Limborch
AND THE RESTORATION 5
written in 1689 Locke summarised them. '' In
Parliament the question of Toleration has begun
to be discussed under two designations, Comprehen-
sion and Indulgence. By the first is meant a wide
expansion of the Church, so as by abolishing a
number of obnoxious ceremonies to induce a great
many dissenters to conform. By the other is meant
the allowance of civil rights to all, who in spite of
the broadening of the National Church, are still
unwilling or unable to become members of it\"
In other words comprehension meant a toleration
of differences within the church, and indulgence a
toleration of differences outside the church. It is
possible to have the one without the other, as
subsequent history has shown. But in the seven-
teenth century it was impossible to see on which
lines the question would be finally worked out.
Bills of Comprehension came before Parliament no
less frequently than Bills of Toleration 2. The offers
of bishoprics to many of the leading Presbyterians
at the Restoration, and the popularity of the works
of Hales, Chillingworth and Taylor might have
almost justified a prophecy that the church would
be settled on a comprehensive basis. In this un-
certainty even those, who realised that schemes of
comprehension were sometimes put forward in hope
of getting a Church sufficiently large to crush all the
more radical forms of dissent^ — in fact that compre-
hension is a weapon of attack against indulgence —
1 Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, 11. p. 150.
2 E.g., in the years 1660, 1667, 1673, 1675, 1681.
^ Cf. Penn's England's present Interest discovefd, 1675, p. 53.
6 TOLERATION
pleaded for it none the less\ This was partly, no
doubt, due to selfish motives. Every sect would
prefer to have liberty to hold its own doctrines within
a tolerant Church rather than to be proscribed for
holding them outside it. And, whoever argued
against comprehension, could hardly expect to be
included in any practical scheme of union. But
there is a more genuine connection between the
movements. Both of them represented a spirit of
breadth and tolerance and a recognition of the
impossibility of a complete uniformity, if not of
the positive right to difference of opinion. Where
they differ is that the movement for comprehension
is in itself no movement against the medieval unity
of Church and State. " Only indeed," says a modern
Avriter, " where real toleration exists can politics be
non-theological ; and vice versa only where the idea
of theocracy is abandoned, can there be a real
toleration-." A survey of subsequent history has
made it possible to make this generalisation. In the
seventeenth century it seemed equally practicable
to arrive at toleration of differences of opinion and
at the same time to maintain the territorial and
political unity of Church and State. And so the
advocates of liberty of conscience are found plead-
ing sometimes for comprehension, sometimes for,
what they call indifferently indulgence or tolera-
tion, and sometimes for both.
1 Perm's Address to Protestants upon the present conjuncture ^
1679.
2 J. N. Figgis in Cambridge Modern History, iii. p. 740.
AND THE RESTORATION 7
These four terms were not carefully distinguished. Meaning
Liberty of conscience and toleration were almost J/on Vn-^'
interchangeable, though the former term really looks diligence,
at the question from the point of vifew of the
oppressed, and the latter from the point of view
of the oppressor. There was even less distinction
between the terms toleration and indulgence.
Neither of them, like liberty of conscience, imply
that religious liberty is a natural right. But the
term indulgence, which Charles II and James II
were so fond of using, and which we have seen was
the title of the Bill of 1689, seems to carry with it
more emphatically than the term toleration, the
implication that the existing state of things is right,
but that departures from it will merely be magnani
mously connived at. Dissenters used the term
realising that it had a less obnoxious and radical
sound to the royal and parliamentary ear. In many
cases they seemed to forget that the principle for
w^hich they consciously or unconsciously stood was
one by which the terms indulgence and tolera-
tion would themselves be intolerable. The term
comprehension was naturally not confused with
the other three. Comprehension was looked on as
one of the possible ways of receiving indulgence,
toleration and the right of liberty of conscience.
The principle, for which all these expressions stand,
is one — the freedom to hold and give public ex-
pression to differences of opinion in matters which
are purely religious.
In practice this was conceded in 1689. The Degree of
11 1 1- -^ n • • • ^ toleration
corollary, that differences of opinion in matters in i689.
« TOLERATION
purely religious should have no effect on the civil
status of those who hold them, was not granted.
The Test Act and Corporation Act were left un-
repealed. But most of the members of those sects,
which were recognised by the Toleration Act, were
willing to receive the Sacrament according to the
rites of the Church of England once during the
year, and so to qualify themselves for a certain
number of public posts.
The Res- The Age in which the principle of toleration
toration . ^^ n
an age of was strugglmg lor recognition was m many ways
reaction prepared to accept it. Religious liberty had been
reflection, in no way complete under the Commonwealth.
RoQian Catholics, Anglicans and Quakers had all
been persecuted. It had been necessary for preachers
to be licensed by the famous Board of Triers. But
liberty and variations in religious beliefs had been
permitted to a degree entirely unparalleled in English
history. When once a new form of freedom has
been granted to a nation, it is very difficult to take
it back. At the Restoration the new form of freedom
was taken away. There was a strong feeling of
discontent at the sectarianism and disorder, which
had been prevalent, and the reaction was almost
inevitable. It affected both Milton and Taylor,
the two greatest writers on toleration in its two
aspects that England had produced. The few pam-
phlets that Milton published after the Restoration
show an entirely different spirit from the Areo-
pagitica. Taylor accepted a bishopric in a Church
of England that was deaf to his teachings. The
nation welcomed a return to the old order of things,
AND THE RESTORATION 9
to which it had been accustomed. But this reaction
by its nature could be but temporary. The con-
stitutional government and religious liberty, for
which the Civil War had been fought, had not been
won ; the problem for which men had bled was not
yet settled. However, men were given an oppor-
tunity to debate the whole question of tyranny in
Church and State in a calmer and more reasonable
manner. They could ask themselves why the liberty,
which had been given them under the Common-
wealth, had been a failure. They could form a
theory of toleration. There was still something
of idealism in men's attitude. There is that in
every age. But as an age of reaction the Age of
the Restoration was a practical age. It could but
postpone the return to the liberty which was still
remembered, and serve to divorce that liberty from
the licence into which it had degenerated.
After the severe and dogmatic assertiveness of Urbanity
the preceding age, an altogether lighter note was ^^g^j^^;,
struck. During the Restoration satire began to be
popular in poetry and prose alike. The theatre
again was thronged. The coffee-house became an
institution. It was the age which Pepys loved so
well, the age of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland,
Louisa, Duchess of Portland," Nellie," and Charles II's
little spaniels. The court openly laughed at reli-
gion and made pursuit of pleasure the chief object
of existence. It was an age that posterity looks
back on with an extraordinary fondness, but an age
that the more serious minds of the day regarded
with unspeakable misgiving. Dr Owen, the great
10 TOLERATION
Independent divine, writing in the year 1676 of the
irreligion, which he saw throughout the world at
that time, but dealing in particular with his own
country, deplored the combination of the more refined
love of pleasure, characteristic of the French, with
what he considered already to be the national
English vice of " sensuality in eating and drinking^'*
But prophets gave their warnings to deaf ears.
They saw with misgiving the reflection of this
spirit in the world of religion producing, as it did,
either atheism or a form of sceptical deism, or else
Roman Catholicism, the " genteel " religion, which is
indulgent to sinners'-. They did not see the othei"
side of the question, the way in which this new
spirit was humanising men's intellects and toning
down something of their harshness and uncharitable-
ness. But however unconscious of the fact they
were, this further influence was at work. It was
his sense of humour more than anything else that
made the gentle Andrew Marvell support toleration.
Smiling at the absence of humour in the bitter
attacks of the bishops on the Dissenters, he selected
one of their number, Samuel Parker, the author of
the Ecclesiastical Polity, as the butt for his gentle
satire. In the Rehearsal Transprosed he answered
the bishop. He followed through the dogmas of
what he called the " Pushpin " divinity — the idea
" that there cannot a pin be pulled out of the
1 Works, VIII. p. 207.
2 Cf. Halifax's " Character of Charles II," printed in Foxcroft's
Life and letters of Sir George Savile. Cf. also Somers' TractSy
IX. p. 47.
AND THE RESTORATION 11
Church but the State immediately totters," and
comparing the Church to the ivy that grows up
an old church tower, remarked that " there is
nothing more natural than for the ivy to be of
opinion that the church cannot stand without its
supportV His conclusion was that the intolerant
bishops only needed a little more poetry in their
natures. D'Avenant had through that medium
arrived at a truth which Parker's controversial
methods could never teach him. The four lines
fi'om Astragon
''For prayer the ocean is where diversely
Men steer their course each to a several coast,
Where all our interests so discordant lie
That half beg winds by which the rest are lost "
form the basis of a theory of toleration 2. A greater
man than D'Avenant saw the poetry in the per-
fection, where " out of many moderate varieties
and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly
disproportional arises the godly and graceful sym-
metry that commands the whole pile and structured
Marvell's book was a protest against the harsh-
ness and inhumanity in the attitude of a persecuting
religion. At the same time he did not wish to go
to the other extreme. What he wanted to show
was that "it is not impossible to be merry and
angry... without profaning and violating those things
which are and ought to be most sacred-'." His
urbanity did not lead him at once to take refuge
1 Rehearsal Transprosed, p. 132.
2 Ibid., p. 323.
2 Milton, Areopagitica.
■* Rehearsal Transprosed, p. 326.
12 TOLERATION
in atheism, scepticism or Roman Catholicism ; it
led him to the remaining alternative — toleration.
Modern writers rightly point out that the toler-
ance, which is prompted by a love of pleasure or a
sense of humour, is not the highest kind\ Neverthe-
less it maintains the essential principle of toleration,
that men have a right to differences of opinion in
religion, even though the argument be put on no
higher plane than an analogy between the treatment
of men's consciences and their stomachs. The fol-
lowing is typical of the pamphleteering of the period.
In private life men are sufficiently civil not to force
one another's stomachs, or press on anybody a thing
against which he has an antipathy. "Forasmuch
as conscience is greater than stomach... how much
more should persons, especially protestants, be thus
friendly one to another in matters of conscience-."
Such arguments were not valueless to an age that
laid great store by civility of manners. They serve
to show that some of the advocates of toleration
connected the urbanity of the age with the move-
ment for which they stood. This urbanity was one
of the little things which was preparing England
for the recognition of a great principle.
The It must not be imagined that a violent reaction
against the strictness of the Roundheads spread
over the entire land. The old Puritan ideals were
1 Phillips Brooks' Lectures on Tolerance, p. 19. The writer
describes it as "the tolerance of pure indifference, the mere
result of aimless good nature."
- Somers' Tracts, ix. p. 50. Cf. also Rehearsal Transprosed,
p. 248. Baxter remarks (vi. p. 195) "that you may as well tell
everyone to take the same size in shoes."
Whigs.
AND THE RESTORATION 13
still cherished in all their strictness by the dissenting
element within the nation. Controversy was still
as bitter and dogmatic as it had been in the
preceding age. The sectarian spirit was almost as
strong. Bat the important fact to realise is that
the reaction was widespread among the aristocracy.
The new families, enriched by Henry VIII with gifts
of land confiscated from the abbeys and monasteries,
had now achieved power, and were growing to be
the leaders of the nation. England had started
upon her period of oligarchy. Public opinion was
guided by the Court, the Church, the Universities.
The clamours of obscure sects could not be heard
except when voiced by the great. It is because
they were voiced by the great that these clamours
were heard and the movement for liberty of con-
science became the foremost question of the day.
Toleration for the sects was one of the leading items
on the programme of the nascent Whig party. The
result was that when Whiggism triumphed at the
Revolution, a certain degree of toleration could not
be withheld. Throughout the Rebellion and the
Commonwealth the movement for religious liberty
had been wrapped up in the movement for political
liberty. The rise of democracy was due more to the
doctrines of the Separatists than to any other one
thing. On the temporary downfall of the democratic
idea the movement for religious liberty became
fortunately identified with the new oligarchic move-
ment. Shaftesbury, Buckingham and Halifax (to
name the most famous of the Whig lords) were
consistent in their support of it. Such men as
14 TOLERATION
these, were, says Trevelyan, " the best characteristic
product of Restoration Society" in that they "pre-
scribed for the State the unpopular regimen of
Toleration ^"
Why did they do it ? Because they were in-
fluenced by two other great movements both of
which are inconsistent with religious persecution.
Rational- Scepticism followed almost inevitably upon the
dejicies of dogmatism of the Reformation. Nowhere was the
the age number of sects and dogmas greater than in
the England of the Rebellion, and to search for
Truth among a hundred creeds seemed a weary
task. Does Truth exist at all ? men asked, and
if so, How may she be found ? An answer to this
question had been given in France by one who
was destined to be one of the greatest forces of his
age, Descartes. He opposed a rational philosophy
to the old dogmatism, and claimed that truth is not
to be discovered in formulae but in the mind of
man. He set up Reason as the sole authority, and
maintained that religion must have a rational and
not a purely traditional basis. The Cartesian philo-
sophy quickly took root in Cambridge, where the
traditional respect for the omnipotence of Aristotle
was less strong than in Oxford, and from this centre
spread over England.
exhibit It took three forms. The so-called Latitudi-
themselves narians and the Cambridge School of Platonists
in lati-
tudina- represented by such men as Whichcote, Smith,
deism^ Cudworth and More insisted on the necessity of a
and rational use of the word of God as revealed in the
atheism
^ England under the Stuarts, p. 449.
AND THE RESTORATION 15
Bible, and asserted the vanity of dogmatising.
E-eligion was a very real thing with these men, and
atheism seemed the greatest sin. They accepted
the truth of the Bible, but saw in it a breadth and
a depth entirely incompatible with any narrow or
exclusive dogmatism.
In the second place, in such minds as those of
Charles II, Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple,
rationalism led to a sort of sceptical deism. By
reason we know that there is a God. We know
no more.
In the third place, it gave to those who desired
it a philosophical basis for an atheism to which they
had been already led by their indifference to all
forms of religion. Conformists and Nonconformists
alike agreed in condemning these " apes of wit and
pedants of gentility that would make atheism the
fashion^" Where they differed was that the one
party put it down to the religious liberty, which
had existed under the Commonwealth, and saw in
it the inevitable result of the dogmatic controversies
that ensued, a weariness and indifference to all forms
of religion. The other party argued that atheism
is the logical outcome of the hypocrisy which a
compelled conformity will produce. If membership
of the Church of England is a necessary qualification
for office or citizenship men are tempted to conform
solely for political ends. To such religion cannot
be a very real thing. French history for the next
century was to prove with unmistakable clearness
that persecution does not always achieve its own
Parker, Introduction to Ecclesiastical Polity, 1670, p. xxi.
16 TOLERATION
ends. The connection of the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes in 1685 with the universal atheism and
scepticism, which preceded the Revolution, is very
genuine. Both parties condemned the fact and
gave their own systems as the remedy. The modern
world sees that there is none, but echoes the judg-
ment of Browning that the atheism which comes
from a hypocritical conformity is the worst kind —
" He is of all men irreligiousest
Keligion's parasite."
But even those who were not attracted by lati-
tudinarianism, scepticism or atheism, were affected
by this new spirit. The new learning had put an
end once and for all to the old blind following of
authority. The liberty, which England had enjoyed
under Cromwell, had done its work. "Thougjh in
some well chosen and dearly beloved auditories
good resolute nonsense backed with authority may
prevail," said Halifax, such a state of things is the
exception and not the rule. "Now the world is
grown saucy and expecteth reasons, and good ones
too, before they give up their own opinions to other
men's dictates, though never so magisterially de-
livered to them\" There is further testimony of
Burnet that " the laity as well as the clergy were
possessed with a generous emulation of surpassing
one another in all kinds of knowledge I" And the
sermons of the time tell the same tale.
and are The teachings of the new science pointed in the
reinforced
by natural i Iq the Trhnmer, Foxcroft, ii. p. 308.
2 History of My own Time (Everyman's edition), p. 47.
AND THE RESTORATION 17
same direction. It was gradually realised that dog-
matic assertions which had been accepted for some
thousand years without a murmur were entirely
wrong. In medicine especially there was a complete
revolution of method. Harvey had not long since
discovered the circulation of the blood, and men
'like Boyle, Sydenham and Locke had broken away
from the scholastic doctrine and were forming
theories drawn not from books but from experiments.
From the time when Columbus discovered a con-
tinent that had never been dreamt of by monks
pr scholars, the old unquestioning reverence for
authority was in process of being quietly laid
aside.
Boyle, who was perhaps the greatest of all the
scientists at the time of the Restoration, illustrates
well the prevailing tendencies of scientific thought
and their bearing on religious beliefs. He never
tired of warning students of chemistry against
accepting the teachings either of the past or the
present day concerning the subject of their study.
His ideal was expressed in the title of his most
popular scientific work, The Sceptical Chymist, where
he euiphasised the value of individual research and
experiment and the comparative unimportance of
all the scholastic learning. He deliberately en-
couraged scepticism in science.
His attitude towards authority in religion was
the same as his attitude towards authority in science.
A firm believer in Christianity, he wrote a treatise
against atheism, and was one of the leaders in the
new movement for the propagation of the Gospel in
R.-S. 2
18 TOLERATION
foreign lands^ But he refused to accept blindly and
irrationally every doctrine that had been handed
down as authoritative. If he was a sceptic, he was
no more of a sceptic than were the Cambridge
Platonists. He accepted the Bible as did the
majority of the leaders of the scientific movement,
but he refused to hold dogmatic opinions upon
controversial points dealing with nothing but the
superstructures of religion, and as such was one of
the great supporters of toleration of the age. The
scientific spirit questioned dogma, not religion. In
lodging its protest against the dogmatic theology oi;i
which the persecuting spirit was nurtured, it was
paving the way for the reception of the principle of
liberty of conscience.
mill- The second great movement which first finds
tariamsm. prominence in Charles II's reign is utilitarianism.
Just as the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660
marks the establishment of the rationalist move-
ment in England, the foundation in the same year
of the permanent committee of the Privy Council
to look after the commerce of the nation illustrates
the growth of utilitarianism. " Trade " was the war-
cry of the Whigs. " Delenda est Carthago," since
Dutch competition threatens the trade of England.
Slowly the Whig doctrine began to be evolved that
government exists primarily for the security of
property. The essential duty of the State is to
preserve men's bodies and not to save their souls.
^ Excellency of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy ,
1673.
AND THE RESTORATION 19
There is not much room for persecution in such a
conception of the State.
Both rationalism and utilitarianism are eventu- The fear
ally traceable to the individualism which followed ''c<Sholi^
the liberation of the intellect from authority at the cisw.
Renaissance and Reformation. But there was still
a real danger that Europe would be once more
caught in the nets of Roman Catholicism. The
reigns of Charles II and James II are contempo-
raneous with the triumph of Louis XIV in Europe.
The Romanising tendencies of the Stuart Kings
due to their French ancestry and foreign education
were fully realised both in England and France.
The Queen of England was a Catholic, and not
a few of the great members of the royal court.
England's peril seemed almost as great as it had
been in the days of the greatness of Spain. The
Gallican Church, of which Louis XIV was the
champion, was not often in sympathy with Rome.
In 1688 the Pope was seeji allied with the Calvinist
Sovereign of the Netherlands against the Catholic
King, Louis XIV. But the Roman and the Gallican
Church alike claimed to have complete control over
the individual mind, even if they differed in the
application of their principle.
In this peril all the parties in England awoke.
Conformists vied with Nonconformists in preaching
and writing against Popery. Pamphlets on this
subject were more numerous than on any other one
theme \ The Fire of London was laid to the charge
^ Two anti-papal journals were formed The Popish Courant
and The Weekly pacqiiet of advice from Rome.
2—2
20 TOLERATION
of the Roman Catholics. The panic that passed
over England at the revelations of the infamous
Oates is almost unparalleled in English history.
The cry for a Protestant succession was taken up
by the Whigs, as that alone seemed likely to secure
the individual liberty for which their party was
beginning to stand.
Did this fear of Popery make the path easier for
the supporters of toleration? It made it difficult
to discover a principle, on which Dissent could be
allowed, while Popery was prohibited. And the
belief, which appears to have been justified, that
papists masqueraded in the clothes of dissenting
ministers, and Jesuits posed as Quakers, was used
throughout the period as an argument against the
practicability of such a toleration. The accusation
that "nonconformists, some of them at least, do
receive or have received, money from the Papists,
to act their affairs and promote their interest^" is
not uncommon. Owen is compelled to make the
following emphatic assertion. " I do avow that
never any one person in authority, dignity or power,
in the nation nor anyone that had any relation
unto public affairs, nor any from them. Papist or
Protestant, did once speak one word to me or advise
with me about any indulgence or toleration to be
granted unto Papists-." The more far-seeing of the
Nonconformists were as free from blame as Owen in
this respect. They refused to welcome with open
^ The Preface to "An enquiry into the original nature... of
evangelical churches," printed in vol. xv. of Owen's Works.
2 Ibid., p. 191.
AND THE RESTORATION 21
arms the various Declarations of Indulgence which
they saw were intended primarily for the Catholics
and incidentally for themselves. Others sent ad-
dresses of thanks at their publication. Thus,
although they did not act as a body in their
attitude towards schemes of toleration that in-
cluded the Papists, many of the Nonconformists
were found in alliance with the Church of England
in opposition to indiscriminate and illegal in-
dulgence. In this way the bitterness of their old
controversy had temporary cessations, and moderate
Churchmen together with lovers of the constitution
looked with more sympathy at the demands of their
enemies. The existence of the popish panic cut
both ways. It made for temporary persecution.
The champions of the Church of England became
stricter in their enforcement of the penal laws by
way of counteracting the royal grants of Indulgence.
Finally it made for toleration. For it gave to the
Nonconformists an opportunity to prove their loyalty
and to answer in a concrete manner the charges,
which were continually made against them, that
they were bad citizens.
In one respect further the age of the Restoration Love oj
was one suited to the acceptance of doctrines of^^-^^^^^"'
religious liberty. An intense respect for the con- liberty in
stitution, which was identified with the laws and
liberties of England, began now to be a motive
power in politics. The Whig party, which was
called into existence at this time by that force,
began to speak of it in terms of reverence. They
were preparing it for the apotheosis, to which it
22 TOLERATION
was going to be subjected by Burke. The cynic
traces the doctrines of the party to the one word
property ; but to the Whigs a respect for property
seemed but a part of the worship of the laws and
liberties of England. Liberty had not yet been
made a goddess, but all her lovers claimed her as
a "natural right," which prerogative had impaired.
There had always been in England a great respect
for the common law. The common law and the
system of centralised justice had made England a
contented and well governed country, as compared
with other European nations. Englishmen were
justly proud of it and connected their liberty with
their laws. Liberty had not yet come to represent
the absence of State interference. It meant rather
the absence of royal interference. For that reason
Magna Carta was looked on as the greatest of the
laws of England, and was ever on the lips of the
politicians of the day. The three things that the
ideal Whig must love, are law, liberty, the con-
stitution\ The ideal Whig " owneth a passion for
Liberty, yet so restrained that it doth not in the
least impair or taint his allegiance ; he thinketh it
hard for a soul that doth not love liberty ever to
raise itself to another world ; he taketh it to be the
foundation of all virtue and the only seasoning that
giveth a relish to life^." He is proud of the balance
between monarchy and democracy in the constitu-
tion, and sees that the contests of liberty and
prerogative are not signs of ill omen. They are
^ Halifax, Trimmer.
2 lUd., p. 295.
AND THE RESTORATION 23
like the winds which clear the scum off a stagnant
pool. "The whole frame instead of being torn or
disjointed cometh to be the better and closer knit
by being thus exercised ^"
The cause of religious liberty had been closely
connected wdth that of civil liberty during the
struggles that preceded the Commonwealth. It
was now being realised that this connection was
something more than a coincidence-. It was one
of Harrington's " Political Aphorisms " that " where
civil liberty is entire, it includes liberty of con-
science. Where liberty of coDscience is entire, it
includes civil liberty." The same thinker elsewhere
explains that even if instances of tyrants granting
liberty of conscience are not uncommon, there is no
security for it, where civil liberty is wanting^ The
Nonconformists realised this, who refused to welcome
open-armed the arbitrary Declarations of Indulgence
that were offered to them by the two Kings, pre-
ferring to wait for an Act of Parliament in the
indefinite future.
It is for this reason that Dissenters, though
notorious law breakers, where their religion was
concerned, were looked on as supporters of law.
As lovers of liberty they were lovers of the laws.
In the tracts and pamphlets that poured forth from
the press during the period the royal prerogative
and the dispensing power were cried down on
1 Ibid.
'^ Acton, History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 52, assigns
the discovery of this truth to the seventeenth century.
^ A word concerning the House of Peers, 1659.
24 TOLERATION
every page. It is, said Shaftesbury, the alliance of
kings and bishops, which has " truck't away the
right and liberties of the people in this and all
other countries, whenever they have had oppor-
tunity \" And so the Whig Lords had a further
connection with the cause of toleration. It was
because they posed as champions of liberty even
more than because they were sceptics and utili-
tarians that they were led into an alliance with the
Dissenters.
Toleration It is comparatively easy to arrive at toleration,
Rebellion, when it is prompted by an indifference or breadth
of view. This was the path along which the Whig
Lords travelled. In a history of the human soul
the place, which they would take, must be small
as compared with the heroes of the Eebellion, who
were ready to die for a point of theology. With an
intense desire to find truth themselves the latter
fought all who seemed to have a feebler desire.
They persecuted all who tried to search for her
with the blind eye of authority, rather than the
seeing eye of the soul. But, at the same time, all
who seemed to be seeking truth at the fountains
of truth, they tolerated. Forged with the nature
of persecutors they trained themselves to tolerate,
because they felt the greatness of truth and the
sanctity of those who sought her by paths other
than their own. It was this spirit that animated
Milton. It made him condemn the uniformity which
brought with it nothing but "gross conforming
^ Letter from a Person of quality to his friend in the country,
1675.
AND THE RESTORATION 25
stupidity." It made him glory in the England of
the Rebellion — " the eagle muing her mighty youth
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday
beam," while the nations of Europe, " the timorous
and flocking birds with those that love the twilight
flutter about amazed at what she means and when
God shakes a Kingdom with strong and healthy
commotions " merely prognosticate a year of sects
and schisms. Not a few people saw the necessity
of differences of opinion. Milton realised their
positive value. Life was to him a battle to be
fought and a race to be run — an impossibility with
no opponents.
The Whig Lords accepted the doctrines of Toleration
toleration without feeling the throes which their ^iJj^,
fathers had felt. There would have been nothing fion.
to tolerate had not this other spirit survived among
the English people as a whole. It did survive.
Differences and controversies were still acute. The
necessity for toleration was made real, and, to
those who received it, it was a more genuine thing
than to the sceptics who gave it.
But nevertheless in the history of toleration
in the age of the Restoration the rationalist and
utilitarian spirit of those who gave it plays a large
part. Progress in thought during the period was
not rapid. Much of what was written in 1689
might have been written in 1660. There was no
great climax, no chain of events leading up to
one great moment. There was a consistent and
monotonous cry for toleration from the beginning
to the end of the period. It was supported by the
26 TOLERATION AND THE RESTORATION
two great movements, which were taking root in
England. Rationalism and the idea of a free and
secular State both owe their rise to the freedom of
the intellect from authority at the Reformation.
But both the movements, which sprang from this
source, had advanced to further stages than the
movement of religious liberty, from which they had
arisen. The order was now reversed, and these two
forces helped to bring to a second birth their parent
movement.
Arguments from reason and utility were used by
all classes. Men who were primarily interested in
philosophy or commerce enlisted themselves on the
side of the Nonconformists. Finally Locke, the
great rationalist and utilitarian, gathered together
the threads which in a more or less tangled form
were wound about the whole discussion, and formu-
lated the complete theory of toleration which the
age was endeavouring to express.
CHAPTER II
TOLERATION AND THE SECULAR STATE
"I am a King of men not of consciences."
Saying of Stephen, King of Poland.
§1-
The Nonconformists of the Restoration were not Political
conscious political scientists, but succeeding as they theNon-
did to the Separatists they rendered no small service conform-
to political science. They were the most consistent
advocates of the separation of the State and the
Church. The Baptists and the Quakers were
the leaders in the movement, having met with
the heaviest persecution themselves, and holding
doctrines less easy to reconcile with those of the
Established Church than the Independents. The
Independents were more cautious, as many of them
were not unwilling, together with the Presbyterians,
to return to the Church of England, if it were
established on a broader and more liberal basis.
But with the exception of the Presbyterians, whose
system had already been established in England for
fifteen years \ all the Nonconformists stood for the
separation of Church and State.
They felt very strongly on the question of cere- The sphere
monies and condemned with the violence, which is Magistrate
1 From 1645 to 1660. inreligion.
28 TOLERATION
produced by strong feeling, any system by which
the magistrate had power to enforce, what they
considered to be superfluous ceremonies. They were
far from excluding morality from his sphere of
action. On the contrary they held that the magis-
trate was bound by his duty to God to use his
power to make men moral and religious^ But they
were ready to suffer death or persecution for the
principle that men must worship their God ac-
cording to the forms which their conscience dictates.
What is right to the strong conscience may be
wrong to the weak conscience. Men's consciences
differ no less than their bodily forms. To worship
God is right to all men, but certain forms of
worship are to some wrong.
There appear to have been two separate views
among the Nonconformists on the question of cere-
monies. To some, ceremonies in themselves seemed
sinful. They were something more than ceremonies,
something more than relics of Popery ; they were a
barrier between God and the soul of the worshipper.
Bunyan in Grace Abounding — the history of his
religious belief, the biography of his conscience —
gives a vivid and extraordinary description of the
state of mind, which his favourite occupation of
bell-ringing produced in him. As he rang the bells
a sense of sin would seize hold of him with such
violence that he would rush headlong from the
1 Cf. Owen, "Of Toleration," Works, iii. pp. 181-206. Also
III. p. 385, "If once it comes to that, that you have nothing to
do with religion as rulers of the nation, God will quickly manifest
that He hath nothing to do with you as rulers of the nation."
AND THE SECULAR STATE 29
Church tower in terror that the bells would fall on
his head and kill him for his wickedness.
What Bunyan felt aboat bell-ringing large
classes of Dissenters felt about other ceremonies.
Bunyan felt that God would be justified in slaying
him on the spot for ringing the church bells;
others felt that they must be condemned to eternal
damnation if they committed the sin of observing
certain ceremonies.
To many more of the Dissenters ceremonies in
themselves were things of indifference. They be-
came unlawful when they were enforced by the civil
magistrate. To use the Prayer Book, which was
neither good nor bad, was a sin, inasmuch as it was
an act of submission to human authority in matters
of religion \
The latter view concerning ceremonies has the
more direct bearing on the question of toleration.
Those, who like Bunyan maintained that they were
wrong in themselves would naturally object to their
enforcement. Those, who asserted that the sin con-
sisted in submitting to human authority in matters
of religion, were brought face to face with the
question at issue. What is the sphere of the
magistrate in religion ? In answering this question
they arrived at a new conception of the relations
between Church and State. The new theory was
not the invention of the Nonconformists of the
Kestoration. They inherited it from the writers of
^ Cf. Baxter's Tract, The judgment of the Nonconformists .. .of
things indifferent commanded by authority, 1676. Cf. also Grey's
Debates, i. p. 422. Cf. also Pari. Hist. iv. p. 139.
30 TOLERATION
the times of the Commonwealth. But by their
persistent assertion of it they made it none the less
their own. They added arguments applicable to
the peculiar condition of their age, and they never
rested till they had procured its recognition in a
partial degree by the Statute of 1689.
The two original Protestant systems, the Lutheran
and the Calvinistic, had both maintained the terri-
torial unity of Church and State. Each Lutheran
state was a representation in miniature of the Holy
Roman Empire of which it was a part, every citizen
being necessarily a Lutheran as much as every
citizen in the Empire had been a Christian. The
point of difference was that the Lutheran system
was what is broadly known as Erastian. That is to
say, disputes in matters of religion were settled by
the " prince " or civil head of the state, and punish-
ments for all offences were administered by his
tribunal. Lutheran priests were in theory office-
bearers in the State, rather than a class set apart
in the Church. The Calvinistic system was similar
to the Lutheran, with the positions of Church and
State reversed. Geneva was more fully theocratic
than Rome had ever been. The magistrate was
in theory an official in the Church to administer
punishment to all sorts of crime as sin.
These were the two systems which the national
Churches of England and Scotland respectively
adopted.
Although Henry VIII wrote a book against
Luther he virtually assumed the position of a
Lutheran prince in England. The Church and
AND THE SECULAR STATE 31
State were united by statute in his person ; the
King in Chancery was made the final Court of
Appeal in matters ecclesiastical ; and the sovereign
received the right to "visit" the dioceses of his
ecclesiastical dominion. The religion of the land
changed with the religion of the sovereign. With
Edward VI as King it was the statutory duty of
Englishmen to profess the Protestant religion ; with
Mary as Queen the great religious statutes of the
Reformation Parliament were repealed. Under
Elizabeth Protestantism was once more established,
and James I had it in his power to hearken to
the Hampton Court Conference with sympathy and
establish a system of a still more Puritan nature.
Although the English system was to this extent
Erastian the dependence of Church on State was
in practice less. The sovereign was always in the
habit of following the advice of the Church as
represented by the episcopate. It was the mind of
Laud that dominated the ecclesiastical movement
of his day. But the movement became tyrannical,
when his wishes were enforced by the authority of
Charles I and the civil arm.
In Scotland, so far as Presbyterianism was uni-
versal, a national theocracy was established, The
Books of Discipline became in a sense the written
constitution of the land.
In addition to these Erastian and theocratic Hobbism.
systems there was one other, which also maintained
the territorial unity of Church and State. Hob-
bism was never anything but a theory ; but it
was a theory, which profoundly influenced the age
32 TOLERATION
of the Restoration. It was really a logical exten-
sion of Erastianism, as cliurchmen themselves saw^
Starting from his two fundamental positions, (i) that
religion, whether of human or divine origin, is
only accepted because it makes men " more apt to
obedience, laws, peace, charity and civil society^";
(ii) that " the Commonwealth is but one person^ "
and therefore must have one religion, Hobbes was
compelled to put the Church in complete subordi-
nation to the State ; otherwise there would be what
seemed to him the impossible situation of a dual
sovereignty in a single commonwealths Not only
was the State to assist the Church in inflicting
punishments for spiritual offences; it was to have
the entire regulation of religious questions. A
church is nothing more than "a company of men
professing Christian religion, united in the person
of one sovereign, at whose command they ought to
assemble and without whose authority they ought
not to assembled" All other assemblies are un-
lawful.
Idea of the In Erastianism, theocracy, and Hobbism the idea
Church^^ of the National Church was upheld with equal per-
sistence. The supporters of the Church of England
denounced all three systems alike. In reality they
combined them. They believed that the civil
magistrate had authority to enforce statutes deal-
ing solely with religion ; they believed that the
1 Cf. Thorndike, Works, v. p. 99 ff.
2 Hobbes, Leviathan, edition Routledge's, London, p. 71.
3 Ibid., p. 249. 4 j^i^_^ pp. 222, 322.
5 Ibid., p. 321.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 33
magistrate must never use his power without advice
from the Church ; they believed that the sovereign
had power to dictate the religion of his subjects.
Hooker was able to say that all Englishmen are
Anglicans^ Which being so, it was the same to all
men, whether the civil magistrate had power in
matters of religion or not. It was far otherwise
in 1660, when large sections of the population of
England had broken away from the established
Church. The Churchmen of the Restoration lived
under conditions in which they could only say
that all Englishmen ought to be Anglicans because
of the supreme necessity of the national form
of Church. They recognised the existence of a
different form of worship in the Churches of the
Walloons and Huguenots, who had taken refuge in
various parts of England, and went so far as to order
collections in church for the maintenance of their
pastors^. The preface of the Prayer Book was
careful to explain that the Church of England only
claimed the allegiance of the English people.
Knox had defended the National Church of
Scotland on similar grounds. "I speak of the
people assembled together in one body of a Com-
monwealth, unto whom God has given sufficient
force, not only to resist, but also to suppress all
kmds of open idolatry.... God required one thing of
Abraham and his seed, when he and they were
strangers and pilgrims in Egypt and Canaan; and
another thing required he of them, when they were
^ Ecclesiastical Polity, viii. p. 330.
2 Camden Soc. Publications, lxxxii. p. xviii.
R.-S. 3
34 TOLERATION
delivered from the bondage of Egypt and the pos-
session of the land of Canaan granted unto them...
when God gave unto them the possession of the
land, he gave unto them this straight command-
ment. 'Beware that you make league or confederacy
with the inhabitants of this land, cut down their
groves, destroy their images, break down their altars,
and leave there no kind of remembrance of these
abominations, which the inhabitants of the land
used before ; for thou art one holy people unto the
Lord thy God. Defile not thyself therewith with
their gods^'" Where there is a nation there must
be a corresponding national form of worship.
To the majority of people religion appeared to
be the very foundation of all government. They
drew an analogy between the Church and the State
on the one hand and the soul and the body on the
other hand. The national Church being the soul
of the nation, the separation of Church and State
involves the destruction of the State. Some felt
that the Church would be destroyed no less than
the State by their separation, because the observ-
ance of the Christian law depends so much on its
statutory obligation 2.
Those who did not defend National Churches on
grounds of necessity defended them on grounds of
convenience, as being the most suitable for peoples
whose political community is nationals All alike
1 Laiug's edition of Knox's Works, 11. p. 442.
2 Cf. Thorndike, Works, v. p. 72.
3 The passage in Denton, lus Caesaris et Ecclesiae, p. 58, is
typical.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 35
followed Hooker in defending them from Scripture
and using the Jewish Kingdom as a pattern for all
time. At the Restoration the Canon still remained
unrepealed which required an oath affirming " that
the King's majesty hath the same authority in
causes ecclesiastical that the godly Kings had
among the Jews and Christian emperors of the
primitive Church."
When the Dissenters attacked the system oi The
National Churches as the first step towards ^d-thfjZsh
vocating toleration, they had to give an explanation theocracy!
of the position of Church and State among the
Jews and show that it is a false analogy to a
modern National Church. They were entirely suc-
cessful in their explanation of the position of the
Jewish Kings as heads of a united State and
Church. They pointed out that the conditions of
Palestine before Christ's doctrine of universal salva-
tion was delivered were altogether different from
those of Christian Kingdoms^. Jewish Kings were
given spiritual power by a definite divine command
as rulers of Jehovah's chosen people, and anointed
with oil as types of the Christ to come. Now Christ
Himself is the only King of the Churchy "Answer
Hooker," was the perpetual cry of the upholders of
the Church of England during the Restoration 3. In
1 Cf. Owen, Works, xiii. p. 562.
2 Roger Williams, Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, pp. 305 and
372, in the edition prepared by the Hanserd Knollys Society.
3 The sentiment expressed in Parker's Ecclesiastical Polity,
p. 200, is typical.
3—2
36 TOLERATION
this respect Roger Williams answered him. It is
true that the Puritans had substituted the authority
of the Bible for the authority of the priest, and
that some Puritans accepted the authority of stray
scriptural texts more blindly than the Roman
Catholics the authority of their priests. But
others felt the absurdity of a literal application of
the Old Testament to modern times, and gave
warnings to that effects
In their attempts to make the distinction, which
had seemed unnecessary in the Jewish theocracy,
between questions of morality and questions of
religious ceremonial, they were less successful. This
distinction must be made before toleration can be
granted. For if it can be shown that all forms of
the Christian religion contain the same doctrines of
morality and differ only in ceremonial, the necessity
of identifying the State with one particular form
of ceremonial ceases. If the two cannot be dis-
tinguished, the necessity of unity of Church and
State must still be emphasised. The line which
was taken by the Dissenters was this. The decalogue
is divided into the two tables. The first table
asserts man's duty to God, the second man's duty
to his neighbour. According to the practice of the
Anglican Church the magistrate was " custos utri-
usque tabulae." On the contrary, the Dissenters
maintained his sphere is really confined to the
second table. The question was not destined to be
worked out on these identical lines. Blasphemy is
1 Eoger Williams, Bloudy Tenent, pp. 243, 276.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 37
still a civil offence, and adultery and covetousness
are not punishable by the civil magistrate \ The
second table itself confuses sin and crime, morality
as it affects the inward soul of the individual, and
morality as it affects the community, no less than
the whole decalogue confused morality with cere-
monial. The Dissenters saw the question rather
than answered it.
The three greatest advocates of the separation Roger
of Church and State were Roger Williams, Milton ^^^"^■«"»*^-
and Penn. Roger Williams is the least well known
of the three. Although his pamphlet, The Bloudy
Tenent of persecution, gives the completest theory of
toleration, it was not widely read, to judge from the
references to it in the pamphlets of the Restoration
period. The reason is that Williams was a New
Englander, and wrote his pamphlet in answer to
another New Englander. It was, however, published
in England, and seems at any rate to have influenced
Baptist thought. The method of dialogue, which the
writer adopts, is tiresome to modern taste ; but after
the reader has accustomed himself to hearinsr the
abstract personalities, Truth and Peace, discuss
Mr Cotton, Williams' antagonist in Massachusetts,
he finds a closely reasoned inquiry into the relations
of Church and State.
Williams dissociated himself from both the
Erastian and the Presbyterian systems^ Both make
a confusion of what ought to be distinct. Church and
1 Dissenters did not fail to realise this, cf. Owen, Works, iii.
p. 169.
2 Bloudy Tenent, pp. 169, 193, 232.
38 TOLERATION
State. Like all intensely religious minds he pre-
ferred theocracy to Erastianism^ but he realised that
theocracy was inconsistent with the true personal
religion which can only be found when the mind is
free to choose its faith. Liberty of conscience seemed
to be possible only where the two spheres are com-
pletely distinguished and separated. Williams, in
his ideas of the separation of Church and State,
took the line which we shall see later takea by
Locke. He went so far as to compare a church to
a college of physicians or a company of merchants,
which would not affect the State as such, if they
broke up^. The power of the magistrate in matters
of religion stops when he has seen to the due
protection of religious assemblies from disturbance.
Doctrine is outside his jurisdiction^ For he has
"no more power than fundamentally lies in the
bodies or fountains themselves (i.e. the people from
whom he derives his power), which power, might or
authority is not religious, Christian, etc., but natural,
human and civile"
Milton. Of greater importance than Williams, as more
in the public eye, is John Milton. It is hard
to estimate his position, as it was estimated by
his contemporaries, because of the magic which
the name Milton now carries. Modern writers
give him an unique position in the history of
toleration. Matagrin places him between Castellio
1 Bloudij Tenent, p. 297.
2 Ibid., p. 46. -.
!* Ibid., p. 217.
4 Cf. ibid., pp. 214-5, 256 and 341.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 39
and Locked His fame was sufficiently great to
cause certain people to invent the rumour that he
wrote Mar veil's Rehearsal Tixinsprosed, because the
pamphlet was so well written and successful. But
this is due rather to the fact that people knew of
Marvell's friendship with Milton than to anything
else.
His fame is undeniable — especially on the con-
tinent. But allusions to his writings are less frequent
in the pamphlets of the Restoration period than
allusions to those of Hales, Chillingworth or Taylor.
Religion was for Milton as for Williams a question
for the individual soul to decide in communion with
God. Neither priest nor magistrate should stand
between. He accordingly advocated an entire
separation of Church and State^, to be brought
about by disestablishment. He proposed that all
the clergy should be ejected from their livings at
a given date without compensation, that the Church
revenues should be confiscated by the State, and
that preachers should live on the voluntary support
of their congi-egations^ A National Church was
wrong to Milton for the same reason that it was
wrong to Williams. It meant the usurpation by a
foreign power of the kingship of the conscience,
which God alone should have.
William Penn belongs more properly than either Penn.
Williams or Milton to the age of the Restoration.
1 Histoire de la Tolerance Religieuse, p. 298.
^ In the Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical causes.
s In Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove
hirelings out of the Church, 1659.
40 TOLERATION
As companion of both James II and William III he
achieved a notoriety which always attends the
friends of the Court in an aristocratic age. Penn's
prominence in politics gives him an importance
which his writings alone would not justify. The
leader of the Quakers during his age, he was led to
adopt the principle of Toleration by his belief in the
doctrine of the inner light. Mysticism makes for
toleration. The magistrate can be of little assistance
in giving the illumination of the soul, which religion
was to the Quakers.
Penn was a prolific pamphleteer, writing as
much in the cause of toleration as in the cause of
Quakerism. Many of his arguments were borrowed
from the Latitudinarians and the Whigs, but the
principle for which he stood was the same as that
of Milton and Williams — the separation of the spheres
of Church and State. He reasserted their theory in
their phraseology with but few alterations and few
additions. God may persecute, man may not. Perse-
cution necessitates the use of force in religion, which
is not only profitless, as it never alters the innermost
beliefs of a man, but is actually harmful, because it
makes men discontented, hypocritical, or atheistical.
His arguments are the arguments of the writers of
the Commonwealth period. His writings show how
indebted the advocates of toleration at the time of
the later Stuarts were to their predecessors. But
at the same time they illustrate the new factor,
which was helping to determine the controversy, the
economic interests of the England of the Restoration.
It will be shown later how the needs of commerce,
AND THE SECULAR STATE 41
to which Penn so often refers, were urged as far from
Degligible in any consideration of the advisability of
granting religious liberty.
Looking at the whole question from the point of
view of policy rather than religion he maintained that
"a man may be a very good Englishman and yet a
very indifferent churchman \" If this is realised, he
rightly saw, toleration must come. " Does his going
to a conventicle," remarks a kindred spirit, " natur-
ally qualify [a man] for a constable's staff? Or
believing Transubstantiation render him incapable
of being a good clerk ? It were as reasonable to say
that 'tis impossible for a fanatic to be a good shoe-
maker or a papist a good tailor^" The question of
a religious test for political office is a different thing.
It is conceivable that to have Roman Catholics
engaged in the diplomatic service of the nation
might have seriously prejudiced English foreign
policy. It did so in 1670. But to impose a religious
test for all the occupations of life — which is what
the coincidence of Church and State virtually did —
is, as Penn pointed out, absurd from the point of
view of the State. Penn did not distinguish clearly
enough the toleration which would allow conventicles
from the toleration which would abolish tests. This
distinction is essential in order to answer properly
what was the commonest of all arguments against
toleration, that it produced sedition.
The common method of attacking or defending '^^fj!^^
1 England's present Interest discovered, 1675, p. 32.
2 Letter from a gentleman in the country to his friend in
London, 1687, anonymous.
42 TOLERATION
argument any principle was to use arguments based on reason,
pamphlets Scripture and history. Anything that does not con-
of the tradict either the law of nature, the law of God, or
period. ' '
the law of man must be good\ This method is
based on the conception of a man in his threefold
capacity of man, Christian, and Englishman. Church-
men defended the English Church as being in accord
with both reason, the Bible, and English law. Their
opponents asserted the conflicting doctrine of liberty
of conscience on the same three grounds.
(i) From Penn is consistent in his use of this method.
Reason. -^^^^ Williams and Milton had used it in a less
systematic way. With Grotius and the Cambridge
Platonists he asserts that liberty of conscience is a
natural right 2. The law of nature leaves men free
to choose their religion. It merely shows that there
is a God. A man as a man is free to worship God
as he pleases. Bound by God's law as revealed in
the Bible the duty of a Christian may be something
more.
{ii) From What then does the Scripture say on liberty of
Scripture, conscience ? In the first place, as one writer remarks,
the phrase is not found in the Bible ^ But texts
that seem to assert the principle are innumerable.
" They that eat, eat to the Lord and give God
thanks ; they that eat not, eat not, yet still to the
Lord they eat not and give thanks." There in the
clearest terms is an instance of toleration being
1 Dr South proves gratitude a virtue by these three tests, in
one of his sermons.
2 Cf. the whole argument of The great case of Liberty of
Conscience, 1670.
3 See Die. iVaf. Biog. Art. "Dr Dove."
AND THE SECULAR STATE 43
granted in just such cases as those for which it
was claimed by the Dissenters. But, in reply to
this, countless Scriptural arguments were brought
forward by the other side. The case of the Jewish
Kings, "the nursing fathers^" of the Church, is
adduced. These were given power to uphold the
Church and enforce her ceremonies. " Remember
Uzza, he would needs support the ark, when the
oxen stumbled : but he was struck dead for his
pains" is the reply 2. Quotations from the New
Testament are naturally more numerous still. The
parable of the tares is continually cited. Timothy
and Titus are claimed by both sides as examples of
their theories with regard to the proper means of
punishing spiritual offenders. Christ's command to
Peter to found His Church on earth is answered by
his other saying, " My Kingdom is not of this world."
Arguments always conclude with the famous in-
struction of Christ "to render unto Caesar the things
which are Caesar's and unto God the things that
are God's," — a text which does not decide the point
at issue — whether the enforcement of ceremonies in
religion is Caesar's.
If it can be proved that the law of nature and the {Hi) Fn
law of God assert liberty of conscience, what is the ^^^^^y-
evidence of history ? What have great men in the
past thought on the subject ? And what do nations
do to-day ? The evidence of man must be of lesser
importance than the evidence of the Scripture. For
1 Is. xlix. 23.
2 In the anonymous pamphlet Good Advice to the Church of
England, Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, 1687.
44 TOLERATION
to the Puritans, to whom anything that is not found
in Scripture is necessarily wrong, the Bible must be
the ultimate criterion. But history may stand forth
to bear witness to the virtue and utility of what
has been proved to be a biblical principle. And to
some minds at least the consent of various men and
nations to a certain principle would have a deeper
meaning. It would prove that the principle was
one of the laws of nature, and, as one of the laws
of nature, one of the laws of God. To everyone the
examples of history would be of great interest and
importance. For it was one of the arguments of
the opponents of toleration that it had failed, when
put in practice, and resulted in sedition.
(a) Ancient, modern and English history were alike
Ancient, called upon to give their testimony. Hobbes objected
to the predominance given to classical parallels,
because he thought that a study of Greek and
Roman politics was inclined to make men of a
seditious and democratic spirits Baxter denied
this I The two men by trying to generalise on
the influence of classical studies as a whole were
employing the right method. To adopt the schol-
astic m*ethod of taking quotations apart from their
context, and facts apart from their setting is value-
less. The devil can quote history for his purpose,
as well as Scripture. As in the language of the
Bible, so in Latin and in Greek, there is no word
expressing our word " conscience." Lord Acton has
1 Leviathan, p. 221.
2 Christian Politics, ch. iii. (vi. p. 73 of the combined Works).
Cf. also Owen, iii. pp. 176-7.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 45
shown that in ancient thought, unlike Scriptural
thought, the principle of liberty of conscience is
never founds Socrates died for trying to invent it.
The existence of polytheism is proudly brought
forward by all the supporters of the theory of
toleration. Some went so far as not to accept this
merely as an assertion, but to connect it with the
cosmopolitanism of the time^. And there is no
doubt that cosmopolitanism tends to produce re-
ligious toleration. But with many writers ancient
history contributes nothing but a string of names.
In modern history the success of some measure (6)
of toleration in Germany, France, the Netherlands, ^^^^^^'*-
Bohemia, the plantations, etc., is quoted with prided
The prosperity of the Netherlands is the strongest
argument of all to many minds. In their application
of modern history the pamphleteers of the Restora-
tion were beginning to assert causes as well as to
make lists. The connection, which all parties re-
cognised, between toleration and republicanism was
very real. It was the truth which James I expressed
at the Hampton Court Conference in his epigram-
matic repartee " no bishop no King." It was em-
bodied by the tolerant Halifax in his maxims of
State. " The Monarchy and the Church of England
cannot subsist but together ; for they that endeavour
to introduce a Republican Government in one, expect
1 History of Freedom, and other Essays, p. 26.
■2 The author of Tolleration discussed in a dialogue between a
Conformist and a Nonconformist, 1670, accounts for toleration in
the Netherlands in the same way.
2 See Penn's Persuasion to moderation to Church Dissenters
for the sort of method used.
46 TOLERATION
to have it followed in t' other \" But Dissenters
were able to produce long lists of the tolerant
monarchs of history to prove that, if Presbyter and
King were incompatible, toleration and monarchy
were not. If toleration and monarchy are incompatible,
Penn argues, then the monarchical must be a lower
type of government than the republican, because
republics have survived with or without toleration^
The case of the Netherlands was no doubt brought
forward with such frequency partly for that very
reason ; it was an instance of a country possessing
a certain degree of religious liberty, which underwent
periods both of monarchy and republicanism. Not
the least valuable of the historical arguments adduced
in favour of toleration is the sentence which Penn
quotes from Grotius — "a fierce and rugged hand was
very improper for Northern countries ^" Penn him-
self gives no evidence that he sees the real truth
expressed here. Nor would the generalisation that
authority is natural to the Latin peoples and liberty
to the Teutonic, carry much weight to the English
mind, until it had been put to the test actually in
England.
(g\ For this reason English history seemed to many
English, f^r more important than either classical or European.
The definite question to be answered was — Has the
actual existence of sects caused sedition or riot in
England? English history before the Reformation
1 Maxim xl printed in The Works of George Villiers, ii. p. 253.
2 Acton, History of Freedom and other Essays, gives a list of
republics which have refused religious liberty.
=* England^s present Interest discovered, 1675, p. 47. Grotius,
like Bodin, adopted the idea from Aristotle.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 47
proves that " Church UDiformity is not a security
for Princes to depend upon." The riots which took
place in those days must have been due to the
conformist party ^ This is obvious. All subsequent
examples are in one sense valueless. Dissenters
argue that if men of their persuasion were found on
the rebels' side in the Civil War, if they took part
in Venner's Insurrection, the Rising of the North,
or the Rye House Plot, even if some of them were
found " coming in great bodies and turning people
out of the Churches and pulling the Surplice over
the Parsons' heads ^" the cause is not the existence
of the Sects, but the refusal of the government to
recognise them. With reference to the one period,
in which their existence was recognised ^ complaints
are levelled not so much at the seditious practices
of the sects as the tyrannical acts of the government.
Nevertheless it was disorder rather than tyranny
that was feared. Bearing this in mind we can
understand Samuel Parker's argument that tolera-
tion is unsafe in a country which does not support
a standing army\
It is difficult to decide to what extent the The accu-
accusations of the opponents of religious liberty ^^'^^" ^,^'"^
were justified. To break penal laws can hardly he formists
called seditious. There is a considerable difference '^g^itio^g
between sedition and passive resistance. According
1 Penn, Persuasion to moderation to Church Dissenters.
2 Pepys' entry for Feb. 27th, 1668.
2 That of the Commonwealth.
^ Ecclesiastical Polity, p. 161. Cf. also Colonel Sandys'
argument in the debate on toleration in 1667-8, Pari. Hist.,
p. 414.
48 TOLERATION
to every theory of government a man is justified in
breaking laws if he submits quietly to the punish-
ment which is attached to a breach of them. A
conventicle might very properly have been described
as illegal ; it was forbidden by statute. But to call
it " seditious," and " riotously and routously " assem-
bled, when its one object was the worship of God
and the doors were open, is an unjustified stretching
of the meaning of those terms\ ''What is religious,'*
Penn maintains, " can never be seditious 2."
The sermons of the nonconformist clergy seem
to have been evangelical and not political. This
was of course in strong contrast with their practice
under the Commonwealth or during the Rebellion.
Some of the less known preachers may have been
not guiltless ; but men like Baxter, Bunyan, Owen
and Howe, some of whose sermons have come down
to posterity, remembered the warning given by the
King in the year of his restoration that " preaching
rebellion from the pulpit is a very grave offence."
The Quakers, in order to make it impossible for
their enemies to say that they uttered words of
sedition in their meetings, on occasions assembled
for religious worship in absolute silence. The magis-
trates were by this ruse placed in a quandary.
Could such a meeting come under the legal definition
of a conventicle ? Juries readily settled that it could;
otherwise, according to Baxter, they were fined for
1 Cf. " The examination of the bishops, etc.," in Somers' Tracts,
IX. p. 139. Cf. also Delaune's Plea for Nonconformists, 1684,
p. 73.
- Great case of Liberty of Conscience, 1670, p. 54.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 49
their audacity \ Practices of this sort exasperated
the Conformist party not a little, and made it no
easier for them to connive at Dissent. They serve
to show us that Dissenters as a body under perse-
cution were very careful not to lay themselves open
to charges more serious than a breach of the
Clarendon Code.
Baxter's case illustrates the almost hopeless
position in which Dissenters sometimes found them-
selves. In James II's reign anything could pass for
sedition. The infamous Jeffries and an illiterate
jury found Richard Baxter, who was known to be
no antagonist of the episcopal form of government
or the use of liturgies, guilty of sedition, for having
published a commentary on the New Testament
containing passages which could only by innuendo be
interpreted as an attack on the prelates and services
of the Church of England. The point of importance
is not the injustice and irregularity of the trial, but
the proof afforded of the kind of language, which,
when written as w^ell as spoken, was unhesitatingly
dubbed as seditious. In Bunyan's case no "seditious"
utterances or writings were brought forward. The
mere fact of speaking to "fanatics" at a conventicle
or a meeting in the open air was sufficient to procure
his condemnation even at the hands of a sympathetic
bench.
Samuel Parker, in his preface to Bramhall's Vin-
dication, considered the attitude of the Dissenters
dangerous to the State on three grounds. He accused
them firstly of attacking the theory of the Divine
1 Life and Times, Part ii. p. 436.
R.-S. 4
50 TOLERATION
Right of Kings, secondly of combining with atheists
to laugh at the Anglican clergy, lastly of bringing
forward as their champions crafty statesmen, who
would not scruple to introduce Popery at the same
time as they secured the toleration of Dissent. The
author of the pamphlet Tolleration discussed in a
dialogue between a Gonfoi^niist and a Nonconformist,
also selected three doctrines held by the Dissenters,
which seemed to be dangerous^ He produced a list
of prominent Dissenters who had advocated resistance
to the king, a second list of those who advocated the
propagation of the gospel with the sword, and a third
list of those who advocated an appeal from the law
of the land to the law of nature.
The truth is that the doctrines of tyrannicide,
with which many Presbyterian writers, in common
with the Jesuits, had identified themselves, were urged
against Dissenters as a whole. They were not urged
against the Presbyterians themselves when schemes
of comprehension were discussed. Confusion there
was, as has been already pointed out, between the
Papist and the Nonconformist movements ; and at
a time when the peril of Popery was really great
severity was justifiable. There was a similar con-
fusion between the peaceable English Baptists and
the lawless Anabaptists of the continent, with whom
the former had no connection either in origin or
practice. The Quakers too had to suffer for the
sins of the sects which they resembled. The con-
venticles of the Ranters and Antinomians had
developed into dens of immorality. The Quakers
1 Vide ch. ix.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 51
themselves lived upright and quiet lives. They
were universally admired for their behaviour under
persecution throughout the period \ But they had
to suffer. Time was to show that the hasty generali-
sation, that sectarians are seditious, was premature.
History could only plead its falseness. More valuable
than any examples from Rome, the Netherlands or
England itself would be an unostentatious emphasis
on the part of all Dissenters of their quiet and
peaceable modes of living. In addition to attacking
an accepted position they had to outlive a bad
reputation.
Such was the theory of religious liberty, and such Extent of
the arguments used in support of it by the advocates ^advocated
of the separation of Church and State. But who byNoncon
were to receive this liberty? Turks, Jews and ^^"*** ^'
Infidels had been included by Williams. But be-
tween Williams in England and Bayle in Holland
no serious advocate of toleration was to go so far.
To-day, when there are no religious qualifications for
citizenship, Buddhists can be tolerated in a Christian
country. Reasons, which are more connected with
human nature than politics, have made it easier
for Christians to tolerate strange religions than
differences within Christianity itself. But in the
seventeenth century — even in the year 1688 — politics
had not been entirely separated from theology.
Religion, if not doctrine, was still in the sphere
of the magistrate. A toleration of Christians was
therefore not impossible ; but few could think of
tolerating heathen or atheists. After three centuries
1 Cf. Grey, Debates, i. p. 128.
4—2
52 TOLERATION
of exclusion, the Jews were permitted by Cromwell to
live in England because they were peaceable. Roman
Catholics had been refused religious liberty, because
the position of a Roman Catholic, as subject to the
Pope, with all his claims of political supremacy over
kings, was incompatible with loyalty. Those who
did not refuse toleration to Papists, along with Jews
and Mahometans, as professors of a religion not based
straight upon the Bible, refused it on grounds purely
politicals The point which the theory of toleration
had reached when Locke WTote his letters may thus
be summarised. The territorial coincidence of Church
and State has given rise to a political confusion.
Uniformity in doctrine is not essential to the unity
of the State. A Christian State is in duty bound
to promote Christianity ; but it is illegitimate to do
this by imposing a fixed ceremonial. Men may
worship God in any way they please which is con-
sistent with peace and patriotism.
Applica- Most theorists have to apply their theories to
tion in the cities built in the heavens. Plato attempted also
charters, to apply his doctrines in Syracuse; but there was
too much materialism in Sicily to make a republic,
founded on a deeper basis, acceptable or even possible.
Sir Thomas More prescribed liberty of conscience for
Utopia, but in the presence of his King he never
attempted to apply his principles to England. In
the age with which we are dealing a new world was
coming into existence on earth. The companies
that were being formed incessantly to work the
1 Milton in his last pamphlet, Of true Religion, Haeresie, Schism,
Toleration and the growth of Popery, refused it on both grounds.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 53
American plantations stood in need of charters, and
in process of time the colonies thus formed stood in
need of constitutions. The new world was being
peopled not by a new race, but by men who brought
with them all the theories and prejudices of the old
world. The people were not unbiassed, but the land
was new. Here was an opportunity for the applica-
tion of the theory of toleration on earth. It was
given to such men as Williams, Penn, Sidney and
Locke to test in America the genuine nature and
the practicability of their theories.
The three colonies which are of direct interest
are Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Carolina. Their
constitutions were the work of Williams, Penn^ and
Locke respectively. The resemblances and not the
differences of the three charters are noticeable.
They all make the supposition that the inhabitants
will adhere to some form of Christianity, so that not
even in Rhode Island was any provision made for
heathen or atheist. But the fact of importance is
that the necessity of a belief in God is looked on
from the point of view of policy rather than religion.
The theory of religious liberty is most succinctly
expressed in one of the laws of Pennsylvania, which
was agreed on in England in the year 1682-. " That
all persons living in this province, who confess and
acknowledge the one almighty and eternal God to
be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world ;
and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to
1 In collaboration with Algernon Sidney.
2 No. XXXV. printed in Poore's Federal and State Constitutions^
Part II. p. 1526.
54 TOLERATION
live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no
ways be molested or prejudiced for their religious
persuasion or practice in matters of faith and wor-
ship, nor shall they be compelled at any time to
maintain or frequent any religious worship, place
or ministry whatever." This, taken in connection
with the passage from the charter of Rhode Island
given in 1663 ^ explaining that the "livelie experi-
ment " of religious liberty has been introduced
because it seems most conducive to civil peace and
obedience to sovereignty, and granting it to all who
do not use this liberty "to licentiousness and profane-
ness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance
of others^"; and a further passage in the first set of
fundamental constitutions of S. Carolina of the year
1669, which compels churches to make a statement
" of the external way, whereby they witness a truth
as in the presence of God^," enables us to understand
fully the common theory. The idea that the magis-
trate must establish the Kingdom of Christ on earth
is given up. Religion has become a question for
the individual conscience alone. In two respects
only is there a limitation. This religion must not
be one that induces men to be disorderly and dis-
obedient to the sovereign power which granted
them their freedom. They must profess a belief
in God, or their oaths and assurances will be invalid
and the whole basis of morality will be overthrown.
1 The charter of 1644 was the one given to Williams. But
the later charter bears no less the stamp of his ideas.
2 Poore, Part ii. pp. 1596-7.
3 Ibid., p. 1407.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 55
The existence of civil society is dependent on
religion, its peaceable continuation on toleration of
its various forms.
In New England there were inconsistencies. In
1635 membership of some congregation was made a
qualification for citizenship in Massachusetts. The
essence of Independency, that the church is a
voluntary congregation, was almost annulled in this
virtual establishment of Congregationalism. But,
as was said later, " the men of Massachusetts could
work any constitution." The way in which they
warped the principle of Independency belongs more
to American history. It was used as an argument
against giving religious liberty to the Independents
in England. The Independents on either side of
the Atlantic played a smaller part in the history
of toleration than either the Baptists or Quakers.
They asserted the fundamental fact that a church
must be a congregation formed without compulsion.
The Baptists and Quakers added the principle that
membership of such congregations should be in no
way connected with the rights of citizenship. It
was the territorial unity of Church and State that
the former destroyed. The latter tried to sever the
political connection.
The whole history of toleration in America is an
interesting subject. But it cannot be dealt with in
brief. The connection of England with New England
was in many ways less close than the connection
with the Netherlands. The ocean that separated
the two continents was too large. But by giving
to English theorists an opportunity to tabulate their
56 TOLERATION
principles, New England played no small part in
the development of the theory of toleration.
§2.
Utilitari- Many of the Nonconformists removed doctrinal
anism. questions entirely out of the sphere of the civil
authority, although they did not seek altogether to
separate religion and politics. Utilitarianism asserts
the idea of the secular State. An entirely utilitarian
theory of government had, it is true, led Hobbes
and Machiavelli to advocate the compulsion of uni-
formity in religion. But, so far from being essential
to utilitarianism, the use of compulsion in religion
is really unnatural to such a system, as the history
of utilitarianism in England has shown. Utilitari-
anism itself belongs to a later period of history than
that which is being dealt with here. But the mental
attitude which produced it is the same as the spirit
which dominated England in the reigns of Charles II
and James II. The movement began with the
attacks on the medieval idea of theological politics,
and became for that reason connected with the
movement which has just been described.
The Social The events that culminated in the execution of
Contract. Qharles I led all men to inquire with a deepened
interest into the whole question of the use of
government. The form which this inquiry naturally
took to a people still soaked in the scholastic
traditions was a question. What is the origin of
government ? Throughout the middle ages there
had been sporadic allusions to the famous theory
of the social compact, which had arisen in Greece
AND THE SECULAR STATE 57
under the influence of the Sophists. Its best ex-
ponent in England had been Hooker. Now there
were no longer solitary supporters. It was the
accepted theory of all who stood for political and
religious liberty, the answer to the theory of the
Divine Right of Kings. Not only was it the creed
of Democrats like Williams and Milton, it was
embodied in the oligarchic revolution of 1688.
The doctrine of the social contract does not lead
necessarily to a theory of toleration. In Hobbes
and Hooker it had led to something far different.
The author of the pamphlet entitled Tolleration
discussed in a dialogue between a Conformist and a
Nonconformist, writing in 1670, points out that, as
the people gave up their right to legislate for their
own individual interests, the Sovereign may make
what laws he chooses, civil and ecclesiastical alike \
The fact that civil societies antedate the foundation
of the Christian religion does not affect the question.
For since the imaginary original compact the sphere
of government has been subject to addition and
alteration by " express laws, immemorial customs,
particular oaths, which the subjects swear to their
princes-." Penn's assertion that " religion is no part
of the old English government " is in the light of
this irrelevant ^ In any case those of the contrac-
tualists who maintained that the original compact
entailed an unconditional surrender of liberty, would
1 In chh. xxi.-xxii.
2 The anonymous pamphlet, An Enquiry into the measures of
submission to the Supream authority, 1689 (probably by Burnet).
^ England's present Interest discovered, p. 32.
58 TOLERATION
not understand the plea for religious liberty. But
there were others, who, with Williams and Milton^
held that liberty of conscience was one of those
natural rights, which men had no power to depute
or surrender. Men cannot meet together and give
up their right to think. Many Anglicans agreed
with them up to a certain point. They granted
the assumption that men " can never part with the
freedom of their judgments," but they found a
loophole in the further assumption that "yet they
must part with the authority of their judgments^"
Sanctity of The majority of the contractualists added a
proper y. gQQ^^^^ compact to the original social compact. At
the same time as they agreed to form a society the
sovereign people had delegated their right to guard
the security of their individual property to an
elected government. This government forfeits its
authority, when it breaks its contract, and fails to
secure the property of the individual. The word
"property" was capable of bearing an extensive
meaning, as the following argument of Burnet
shows. "If," he says, "by the laws of any
government, the Christian religion or any form
of it, is become a part of the subjects' property,
it then falls under another consideration, not as
it is a Religion, but as it becomes one of the
principal rights of the subjects, to believe and
profess it; and then we must judge of the invasions
made on that, as we do of any other invasion that is
^ 1 Stillingfleet, Irenicon, ch. vi. Cf. also Parker, Ecclesiastical
Polity, ch. III.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 59
made on our other rights^" But to most minds the
word bore a narrower significance. The result was
that the doctrine of the social compact, when it
assumed this form, tended to confine the sphere of
government to secular matters. The State is not
intended to save men's souls but to secure their
persons and — what is the result of the labour of
their hands — their personal property. The notion
of "the Divine Right of freeholders V' was leading
to an individualistic and utilitarian conception of
government, with which persecution would be in-
compatible.
It was from this position that Penn dealt some
of his most cutting blows at the politics of the
Anglican party. It was his real contribution to
the theory which he borrowed from Williams and
Milton. He did not assert any social compact
himself, but, borrowing the doctrines about property,
which the contractualists had been led to formulate,
he applied them to the legislation of his time.
A propos of the Test and Corporation Acts it was
argued that election by freeholders is sufficient test.
For the ownership of property implies a tacit
consent to the laws of the country, which alone
give it validity ^ Penn attacked all the penal laws,
because they destroyed the security of property.
"Where property is subjected to opinion, the Church
interposes and makes something else requisite to
^ An Enquiry into the measures, etc., p. 3.
2 Acton, History of Freedom, p. 54.
^ Cf. Sidney, Discourses concerning Government, ch. viii.
Against a test for the Lords the rights of peers was the com-
monest argument.
60 TOLERATION
enjoy property than belongs to the nature of Pro-
perty." It implies " an alteration of old English
tenured" When property is exposed for religion
it means that the Prince falls down at the Prelate's
feet — theocracy ^ Protestantism may accordingly
be not unfairly defined as "protesting against
spoiling property for conscience^" In this sense
persecution is unjust and contrary to the theory
of law and government.
Persecu- With many minds motives of justice would not
^cripples weigh very much. But to all those who were in
trade. possession of ideas, as yet unsystematised, of utili-
tarian politics, the proof of its impolicy would be
a strong condemnation of persecution in any form.
Consequently the empirical politicians of the day,
followed by the whole body of the Dissenters, who
realised more and more as time went on that the
principle of toleration was not likely to be realised,
set about to prove its policy. If the penal laws
were not contrary to the theory, they might show
that they were contrary to the practice of sound
government. Many people felt with Halifax that
" circumstances must come in, and are to be made
a part of the matter, of which we are to judge ;
positive decisions are always dangerous, more
1 England's present Interest discovefd, p. 37.
•' Ibid., p. 34.
^ Ibid., p. 32. Petty, the economist, defends this form of
punishment in his " Treatise of Taxes," 1662 {Works, i. pp. 70-71)
as being the mildest form of administering necessary persecution.
Cf. the argument reported in Pari. Hist. iv. p. 311 " they would
gladly compound for liberty at any reasonable rates : and by this
means a good yearly revenue might be raised to the King."
AND THE SECULAR STATE 61
especially in politics^" The Trimmer, the empiri-
cist, the Whig, might wish for a form of religious
liberty, looking "rather like a kind omission to
enquire more strictly than an allowed toleration
of that which is against the rule established-,''
toleration in practice but not in theory — if the
attempts to enforce uniformity prove to be harmful
to the national well-being.
Such men as Shaftesbury, Buckingham and
Halifax genuinely thought that the decay of English
trade at this time was due to the penal laws against
the Nonconformists more than to anything else.
They had other reasons for being tolerant. They
all had a deep love of Liberty. None of them
being religious themselves they could not logically
enforce any form of religion on others. Halifax got
the reputation of "a confirmed atheist" because "he
let his wit run much on matters of religion I"
Buckingham " was a man of no religion, but notori-
ously and professedly lustful^" Shaftesbury's "re-
ligion was that of the deist at the best; he had
the dotage of astrology in him to a great degree,
and fancied that our souls after death lived in
stars^" Halifax was too much of a "Trimmer"
to advocate extreme methods of compulsion. Buck-
ingham was too much of a scientist and poet to
sympathise with them. Shaftesbury was too much
1 Halifax, Rough draft on a new model at sea, printed in Fox-
croft, II. 458.
2 Halifax in the The Trimmer, ibid., ii. 322.
3 Burnet's History, Everyman's edition, p. 103.
^ Baxter, Life, iii. p. 21.
5 Burnet, History, p. 34.
62 TOLERATION
afraid of popery. He saw the risk that uniformity
entailed. As long as the King remained an atheist
he had no fears, but he soon found out that
Charles II was a papist at heart. A united Pro-
testant Church with such a man at its head would
very soon become Roman Catholic. But, whatever
their ultimate motives were for advocating tolera-
tion, the arguments which they used were based
particularly on the interests of commerce. The
committee, appointed in 1669 "to consider of the
causes and grounds of the fall of rents and decay
of trade within the Kingdom," under the chairman-
ship of the Earl of Essex, inserted this clause in the
report, perhaps at the instigation of Shaftesbury,
who was a member of the committee, " That some
ease and relaxation in ecclesiastical matters will be
a means of improving the trade of this Kingdom."
This argument was never dropped by the leaders
of the movement in parliament itself. It was em-
bodied in the Declaration of 1672, which there are
grounds for believing was worded by Shaftesbury,
and it was reiterated in speeches from the beginning
to the end of Charles II's reign. The Dissenters
outside Parliament showed great skill in elaborating
the argument and keeping it before the public eye.
Their opinion in itself would not have carried much
weight, but, when supported unanimously by the
most prominent members of the newly formed
Council of Trade, it would hardly be ridiculed ^
Too much emphasis cannot be laid on this, because
1 Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Halifax, Locke, etc., were all
connected with it.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 63
the influence of commerce on politics in the seven-
teenth century was so great. It was this that led
to rivalry and wars with the one nation that had a
real sympathy with the political ideas of England.
It was in defence of our commerce as well as in
defence of our religion that we reversed our policy
and went to war with France. Even Charles II was
not solely a despot standing for prerogative and
popery. As son of a martyred father and a Catholic
mother, envious of a cousin's glorious reign in
France, he was not sympathetic with Dissent, and
posed as champion of the Church. But there is
the other side to his character. He was a man
intensely concerned in the secular interests of
England. In particular he was known to take a
passionate interest in shipping. As such he in-
clined towards the doctrines of the Whigs. This
the Dissenters of the day could realise as well as
we can now. Here was the vulnerable point in the
armour of the less prejudiced and less fanatic type
of Tory.
The stauncher supporters of the old ideas turned
a deaf ear to any argument based on commercial
interest. " Men may amuse themselves," says Thorn-
dike, " with the instances of the United Provinces ;
which they say flourish in trade and riches by
maintaining all religions. But the question is of
religion not of trade nor richest" This was the
1 Works, V. 480. Cf. Parker's Ecclesiastical Polity, intr. p.
xxxviii. Cf. the pamphlet The vanity of all Pretences for Tole-
ration, wherein... the popular arguments drawn from the practices
cf the United Netherlands are. ..shown to be weak..., 1686.
64 TOLERATION
only standpoint that could have been taken by
those, who loved the old conception of the State.
But the men of this party did not stop there. They
attempted also to answer their opponents, standing^
for Trade and Toleration, on their own grounds.
The connection of Dissent with Commerce was
very close in England during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries in particular \ The argument
that the Dissenter was the most seditious type of
man had been already well used. This was now
supplemented by a fresh generalisation, that the
trading part of the nation is notoriously the most
seditious. The whole movement seemed to be
summed up in the four words trade, dissent, de-
magogy, sedition. The crowning act of its history
seemed to be the murder of Charles I, committed
by men who had learnt commerce and Indepen-
dency but not justice in New England^. The
connection of trade, dissent and demagogy was real.
The movement was only seditious in that it was a
protest against the legislation which maintained
the old connection of Church and State. The latter
was a connection, which could only be severed at
the cost of the shedding of blood. When once the
severance had been made, the new order would be
introduced unnoticed. When once the new order
had been introduced, it would be seen that men
occupied in amassing wealth, love comfort too much
1 Bunyan saw no such connection. Christian and Faithful
were imprisoned iu Vanity Fair for being "enemies to and dis-
turbers of the trade."
2 Thorndike, v. p. 482.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 65
to rebel against a State, which gives them freedom to
enjoy it. Disorders and disruptions were destined
to come ; but these were due to the introduction of
machinery and the growth of capitalism, not to the
separation of Church and State, which the Anglican
clergy so much feared.
The facts which were brought forward were of an The
interesting and convincing nature. Huguenots and If^t^g ^
Walloons had met with a concrete form of toleration Aether-
in England since the time of Elizabeths The excuse
for the practice was that a National Church could not
embrace subjects of a foreign nation. The reason
was that their industry was useful to England. But,
while sheltering foreigners, we were driving our own
countrymen into America or the Netherlands and
helping the work, so effectively begun by the plague,
of depopulating England. The benefit of this was
reaped partly by our colonies, but also by foreign
nations, the " cloathing trade " (to take one instance)
departing from Norwich for Hollands In contrast
with England was the state of the United Nether-
lands. Holland, "that bogg of the world," had
become the most prosperous nation in the whole of
Europe. No one could deny that this was largely
due to the practice of tolerating all forms of re-
ligious belief. The most complete treatment of this
subject is found in Sir W. Temple's Observations
1 Cf. Somers' Tracts, ix. pp. 48-49.
2 This was dealt with in Tolleration discussed in a dialogue
between a Conformist and a Nonconformist, ch. xviii. Cf. also
Grey, Debates, i. p. 114, etc.
R.-S. 5
66 TOLERATION
upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands^.
Temple was ambassador at The Hagiie in 1668
and spoke with first hand knowledge. His evidence
was corroborated by all the English refugees across
the North Sea. Their friends in England were much
impressed by what was thus reported to them, and
their letters dealt largely with the subject. One of
these letters, printed in 1688 as a pamphlet, deserves
quotation 2. The author's correspondent appears to
have wished to find out " what advantages a secure
Establishment of Liberty for tender consciences in
England may be attended with in respect of the
Trade and Civil Happiness of the nation." The
author replies by describing the state of Holland
under such a system. His three general arguments
are these : (i) A large population is necessary for
prosperity. A toleration of subjects and strangers
conduces to this ; (ii) Men of " tender " consciences
are always men of sober lives; (iii) Toleration is
the only way of securing private property. He
almost apologizes for also looking upon liberty of
conscience as a matter of principle, and suggesting
that persecution is "an invasion of the Almighty's
privilege as well as a Tyranny over the souls of
men." In conclusion he gives an extensive quota-
tion from Sir W. Templet " The Happiness of these
1 The best treatment in a compact form may be found in
Patty's Political Arithmetic, in the Cambridge edition of his works,
II. pp. 262-4.
2 A letter from Holland concerning Liberty of Conscience, by
C. D. W.
3 The passage is from his Observations upon the Netherlands,
206, 7th edition.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 67
provinces in this respect I have seen elegantly ex-
pressed by an eminent statesman of yours formerly
ambassador here. — In this Commonwealth (says he)
no man having reason to complain of oppression in
conscience ; and no man having hopes by advancing
his religion to form a party or break into the State,
the differences in opinion make none in affections and
little in Conversation, where it serves but for enter-
tainment and variety. They argue without interest
or anger ; they differ without enmity or scorn ; and
they agree without confederacy ; men live together
like citizens of the world, associated by the common
ties of humanity and bonds of peace, under the im-
partial protection of indifferent laws; with equal
encouragement of all art and industry and equal
freedom of speculation and inquiry ; the power of
religion, where it is his in every man's heart ; and
when there is only the appearance, it has not how-
ever so much of the hypocrisy and nothing at all of
that fierceness as elsewhere. But rather is like a
piece of Humanity, by which everyone falls most
into the company or conversation of those, whose
customs, whose talk and dispositions they like best.
And as in other places it is in every man's choice,
with whom he will eat or lodge, with whom to go to
market or to court ; so 'tis here with whom he will
pray or go to church or associate in the service or
worship of God ; nor is any more notice taken or
more censure passed of what every one chooses in
these cases than in the other." Here is an ideal fit
to be placed beside the medieval ideal. It does
not mean " that there is nothing sacred or divine
5—2
68 TOLERATION
but trade and empire and nothing of such eternal
moment as secular interests \" It is the ideal of
Humanism in both Church and State.
Dissent was too strong to be extirpated. Trade
would receive damage in the attempt. In England's
interests it was foolish to make articles of religion
the only accessible way to civil rights. The aristo-
cracy suffered by it. They had become poor, and
they could not recover from their poverty by marry-
ing into the wealthy commercial families because
so many of these happened to be connected with
Dissents The only way out of the difficulty was
to recognise differences of religion in practice, if not
in principle, and to aim at realising the conditions,
which had brought not only happiness but prosperity
to Holland by giving security to Englishmen and
encouragement to strangers to come and live among
them^
Summary. The Dissenters had stood for a separation of
Church and State because with them liberty of
conscience was a matter of principle. The Whigs
advocated the same thing for empirical reasons.
Together they had formed a complete political theory.
By their belief in the social contract they thought
that they had found a basis for politics no less im-
mutable than the theory of Divine Right, and had
lifted the State above the considerations of mere
^ So said the atheists or sect of the Epicureans in their address
to the crown in 1688, printed in Somers' Tracts, ix. p. 47.
2 Cf. Corbet, Discourse of the religion of England, 1667, 22.
3 Cf. the wording of James II's Declaration of Indulgence,
and cf. passim in the writings of Penn.
AND THE SECULAR STATE 69
expediency, with which the Machiavellian system
had been stamped. The State seemed to them to
be a natural if not a divine institution, existinsf in
order to enable men to live in the secure enjoyment
of life and the material adjuncts which alone make
life something better than a bestial struggle. Security
is only one aspect of liberty. Liberty is the great
birthright of the human race. In the Bible they
found a basis more immutable still for what is " as
necessary to our living happily in this world as it
is to our being saved in the next," religion ^ The
piece of property that should be most inviolable is
a man's conscience. Liberty of conscience is the
most important part of a man's liberty. Without
it "he is a Slave in the midst of the greatest
liberty." If the Church is united like the State,
like the State it must secure the individual liberty
of its members. But Christianity is a religion that
can brook divisions. If there are many churches in
the State, they must be given the protection which
is given to all societies that are loyal to the State of
which they are a part. For the duty of the State is
to secure the liberty of its subjects.
1 Foxcroft, Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, ir. p. 301.
CHAPTER III
TOLERATION AND THE CHURCH
"I see not how any man can justify the making the way to
heaven narrower than Jesus Christ hath made it."
Jeremy Taylor.
§1.
Toleration WRITING On toleration Jeremy Taylor expressed
t/reU^wn. ^^^ belief that " diversity of opinions does more con-
cern public peace than religion \" In other words
he recognised that religious liberty is a political
principle. He was ready to grant that " an opinion
may accidentally disturb the public peace " ; and for
this reason it seemed to him logical that it should
be "considered on political grounds ^" But he would
not grant that opinions, in themselves harmless,
which did not create even an accidental disturbance
of the public peace, should come under the magis-
trate's jurisdiction. He felt that religion did not
require a uniformity of doctrine and the persecution
of differences of opinion which it entails. In other
words he also recognised that toleration is a religious
principle.
1 Works, VIII. p. 145. 2 j^^-^^ p, 143^
TOLERATION AND THE CHURCH 71
Williams, Milton, Sidney, Penn, Buckingham, The
Shaftesbury, Halifax had brought forward pleas for f/^go.
toleration from their various standpoints outside ^ogians.
the Church, because they were united in a common
love of liberty. By their side must now be placed
Hales, Chilling worth, Taylor, Whichcote, More, Glan-
vill, Stillingfleet and the other theologians, who,
uuited by a common religious sentiment, pleaded
for toleration from within that Church on whose
behalf the penal laws were passed. " They were,"
says their best historian, "the true authors of our
modern religious liberty \" They supplied a religious
and a philosophical basis to the political theory.
They may be divided into two schools, the earlier
Oxford school of rational theology, which based
religion no less directly on the Bible than did
the Puritans ; and the later Cambridge School of
Christian philosophy, which based religion ulti-
mately on reason. But it is less valuable to mark
the points of distinction than to find the common
principle, to which they all brought their separate
contributions. Political arguments find little place
in their writings. They were men of the Church of
England, having little to gain from the toleration
which they advocated. But their religion and
philosophy made them tolerant. Disgusted by the
sectarianism, the popery, and the atheism, which
were taking so strong a hold on the England of
their time, they tried to find an antidote for all
three in rationalism. Many of them lived before
^ Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy
England in the 11th century, ii. p. 3.
in
72 TOLERATION
the Restoration ; but it was during this period that
their views were developed and spread far and wide
through the land, so that they became a living force.
Reason The conflicts of religion and reason, which were
andReve- ^ dominate the next two centuries, had not yet
lation. . . .
assumed large proportions. The Cartesian philo-
sophy, as far as it was accepted in England, was
brought forward not in antagonism to but in support
of Christianity. Reason was placed in opposition
not to religion, but to authority — not to revelation,
but to the authoritative interpretations of the re-
vealed law. In the controversies of the seventeenth
century the truth of the Bible is never denied. We
cannot say what Hobbes really thought. He may
have believed that Christianity was a human in-
vention. But whether he did or not, he was obliged
to comply with the dominant beliefs of the age to
the extent of accepting Biblical authority as truth
for the sake of argument, if not in reality. He was
as ready with his texts and scriptural arguments as
any Puritan. The belief that the Bible is the source
of truth was as general as the belief that "the
Bible... is the religion of Protestants." Men begin
to lose truth, the rational theologians thought, when
they use Scripture merely to support a ceremony or
to confute a dogma. When men take sides their
love of a contest is too much for them. They be-
come advocates. They set up one set of articles
against another. Whether their religion is a " dog-
matic treasure," passed down through the ages and
preserved in its original " beauty of holiness " by
themselves alone, or a set of dogmas newly compiled
AND THE CHURCH 73
from Scripture, they devote all their energies to the
defence of their exclusive creed. They are like the
painter in Plutarch, who, having made a picture of
some chickens, drove away all the fowls from the
neighbourhood, that people should not realise how
bad the picture was\ So closely are they confined
in their " opinionative dungeon-" that they cannot
see the truth. Like the primitive Christians men
follow Paul or Cephas or Apolios, and measure their
doctrine by their affection to the person of their
minister^ What unity there is, is pitiful. " It's
no concord of Christians but a conspiracy against
Christ; and they that love one another for their
opinionative concurrences, love for their own sakes
and not their Lord's'*." The only remedy for this is
to realise " that the Bible and the Bible only is the
religion of Protestants ^" " Amicus Socrates, amicus
Plato, amica Synodus, sed magis amica Veritas." So
Episcopius had cried out at the end of his great
speech at the Synod of Dort in 1586.
It may seem strange at first to find men of
rationalist tendencies preaching the vanity of dog-
matising, acknowledging as they do at the same
time, that dogmas are products of the human in-
tellect imposed upon the divine basis of religion.
But the explanation is not difficult to find. These
men realised the power, which the senses have in
1 Cf. Hales' Tract concerning Schism, the opening passage.
'^ Glauvill, Vanity of Dogmatising, p. 171.
3 Cf. Hobbes, p. 488. "Non quis, sed quid" is one of the
mottoes prefixed by Simon Patrick to his Friendly Debate.
•* Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatising, p. 169.
5 ChiWmgviOxih., Religionof Protestants, Oxford edition, ii. p. 410.
74 TOLERATION
deceiving the mind, and the hopelessness of a search
for knowledge, when the mind has already been
prejudiced by education. Nothing seemed to them
certain but the central fact of the Bible, that Christ
died for the salvation of mankind. Men should start
life with this fact alone before them. The probability
is that there is some truth in each of the dogmas,
which controversy has reared about this fact; it is
extremely unlikely that the whole truth is expressed
in any of them. In any case the uncertainty is so
great that no one is justified in setting up his own
opinion as final, in the way in which the Papists and
the sects of Protestantism alike have done.
Generally known as Latitude-men or Latitu-
dinarians (a term of ridicule), these men gave a
twofold contribution to the theory of Toleration^
Tolerant In the first place they brought the spirit of
Ihe^LaUtu- ^ol^^ance into religion. Without the spread of this
dinarians. spirit it would have been very difficult to work
toleration in practice. It is true that they recog-
nised the impossibility rather than the undesirability
of unity, but, by their frank recognition of this and
the breadth of their sympathy, they made it easier
for the two sides to differ in peace. Differences
must be strong for toleration to be healthy. But
it is as necessary to insist on the common principles
as on the differences. Schemes of comprehension
may, it is true, be prompted by motives far from
tolerant. To Stillingfleet and to many others
1 Far the best contemporary account of the School is found
in Glanvill's Anti-fanatical Religion and Free Philosophy, printed
in 1676 in a collection of his essays.
AND THE CHURCH 75
proposals to unite Anglicanism with Presbyterianism
appeared acceptable, because they offered an oppor-
tunity of crushing Dissent by weight of numbers.
But the majority of the Latitudinarians called for a
comprehension because their own minds were broad
enough to comprehend differences which seemed to
some so great. In one sense they went to a point
beyond those who formed the political side of the
theory. With them they granted the right to differ
outside the Church (most of those who could not
include Baptists or Quakers in their scheme of
comprehension gave them toleration outside the
widened Church) ; but so great is the necessity of
differences that they gave also the liberty of pro-
phesying within the Church. " Opinionum varietas
et opinantium unitas " did not seem so incompatible
as the followers of Laud and the Puritans themselves
had thought.
Religion was to them an influence, which must
bring forth love and not hate, peace and not strife.
It was a thing to live for rather than a thing to die
for. The world has not much admiration for men
who refuse to be martyrs to a cause. The Latitu-
dinarians boasted that they were of such kidney.
On the one side Hales always prophesied that he
would never die a martyr's deaths On the other
side Baxter explained that he would as willingly be
a martyr for love as for any article of the creed I
Ambrose is Stillingfleet's youthful ideal. He quotes
with admiration in his youthful essay, the Irenicon,
1 Tulloch, I. p. 215.
2 Cf. Baxter, Wm-ks, i. p. 409.
76 TOLERATION
written in the latitudinarian atmosphere of Cam-
bridge, the saint's practice : " Cum Romam venio,
ieiuno sabbato ; cum hie sum, non ieiuno\" Baxter
is also in sympathy with this ideal. If he were
among Greeks, Lutherans, Independents and "yea
Anabaptists," he would hold occasional communion
with them as Christians^. This is a dangerous
doctrine to preach. It is not an easy thing to
make distinction between those who will hold oc-
casional communion from motives of charity and
those who will be occasional conformers from motives
of fear or self-advancement. The spirit of tolerance
and the spirit of time-serving are, as the enemies
of Latitude were not slow to point out, very close
akin.
They In the second place they brought back morality
assertthe ^^^^ religion. The Reformation was primarily a
importance " _ sr j
of morality protest against the belief, which had been en-
inre igion, g^^j-g^ggfj jj^ ^\^q Roman Church, that good works
could save men's souls. To Luther it had appeared
monstrous to imagine that acts of penance, sub-
scriptions to charity, or service in the Crusades
could buy salvation. "Justification by faith" was
the message which he saw the Church needed.
But this doctrine was such that it could be abused
no less than the doctrine against which it had been
issued as a protest. Many of the sects of Cromwell's
days had gone so far as to assert that works were
altogether irrelevant; for man is not under the
moral law ; it is the soul that is saved and not
1 p. 61.
^ Life and Times, i. p. 133.
AND THE CHURCH 77
the body\ But even those who did not carry the
doctrine to this extent, were apt to lay the greatest
stress on the fact of subscription to creeds, articles
and confessions, and to attach more importance to
good doctrine than to good life. The Latitudinarians
protested against this in their turn. In his sermon
before the House of Commons on March 31st, 1647,
Cudworth proclaimed the old truth afresh, that pen
and ink can never express a religion any more than
the painting of a rose its scent. Religion is no piece
of artificial mechanism but "a true impression of
Heaven upon the souls of men I" " Faith," by which
men are saved, wrote Jeremy Taylor, " is not only a
precept of doctrines but of manners and holy lifel"
*' Morals... are nineteen parts in twenty of all re-
ligion," said Benjamin Whichcote^ To all of them
the pomp of ceremonies and " the goodly inventions
of nice theologers^" seemed things of very little
importance compared with charity and the duty of
loving our neighbours as ourselves. To Hales,
Chilling worth and Taylor this was just an obvious
fact. To the Cambridge Platonists of the Restora-
tion it was something more. They felt that the
mystical union of the soul with God could not be
realised in this world except by a purity of life.
1 This was the doctrine of the " Antinomians."
2 Of. John Smith, Discourse VIII, p. 359 (1673 edition).
' Works, VII. p. 496.
4 Cf. Tulloch, II. p. 106.
5 More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 515. "Reject your
ceremonies rather than your fellow Christians " was the burden
of Bishop Croft's theme. Cf. his "Naked Truth," Somers' Tracts^
78 TOLERATION
They adapted to ChristiaDity the Platooic doctrine
that the soul can only lift itself up to the higher
world by participation in the ideas of love, justice,
goodness and all the other qualities which together
make up perfect virtue ; this participation can only
be achieved, when the rational can subdue the
irrational in man.
There was a revival of the study of ethics»
More's Enchiridion ethicum came out in 1667.
Baxter's monumental Christian Directory, with its
section on Christian Ethics, was published in 1673.
The human mind loves points of subtlety. In these
books the subtlety that had been applied to theo-
logy was transplanted to the study of ethics.
ivhich The emphasising of the importance of morality
Toleration ^^^ practical religion naturally leads to a lower
estimate of the value of theology and theoretical
religion. The attitude of mind which wants to
persecute is the attitude which wants to theorise.
Toleration comes from the mental recognition of the
vanity of dogmatising. But in finding some more
ultimate basis for their assertions about theology the
Latitudinarians put the whole question of toleration
on a deeper foundation. They had expressed their
belief in the sufficiency of Scripture again and again.
But they went behind Scripture to try to find some
" universal principles of religious sentiment," which
would prove the comparative uselessness of abstruse
points of theology, even when these claimed scrip-
tural warrant.
They recur The contractualists in order to find the meaning
to th£ law , 1 . • 1 • • • • ot- -1 1
of nature, 01 government had inquired into its origin. Similarly
AND THE CHURCH 79
the rational theologians, in order to find the meaning
of religion, inquired into the whole question of the
origin of religion in its two aspects, doctrine and
morality. The former wished to find a reason for
obeying or disobeying the positive law of the land,
the latter a reason for accepting the positive law
of God. Both these reasons were discovered in the
universal obligation of what was called rational law
or the law of nature. The accounts of the law of
nature, which were given by the various writers of
our period, are not altogether consistent. But there
is a common agreement with reference to the three
great principles which this law expresses. The first
principle, the duty of a man to himself, is to pre-
serve himself; the second, the duty of a man to his
neighbour, is to do to others as he would have them
do to him ; the third, the duty of a man to God, is
to believe in the necessity of His public worship.
The sum of these three things was called natural
law ; the second and third taken together were called
natural religion.
The doctrine of the law of nature was handed
down from the Stoics. The necessity of a moral law
to govern the rational beings seemed to them as
clear as the necessity of a physical law to govern the
stars. In the Middle Ages it had been conceived
of as subordinate to, or, in the words of the Platouist
Culverwell, "bubbling" out of the eternal law of
God\ It is the unwritten law, which binds all
rational creatures because they are rational creatures,
the original law, to which men are subject apart
1 Of. the whole of Culverwell's Light of Nature, 1662.
80 TOLERATION
from the societies or Churches, to which they may
belong. It has been codified in the positive laws of
nations and the positive law of God revealed in the
Bible. Our duties can generally be defined in re-
lation to our citizenship or religion. We generally
have to act in a certain way as Englishmen or
Christians in obedience to the law of the land or
the Scriptures. But there are cases where we have
to act purely as rational creatures, cases abstracted
from all conditions of place and circumstances. A
man is captured by thieves and given the alternative
of taking a false oath or losing his life\ He is
bound only by the law of nature and must make his
decision as his reason or conscience dictates.
examine The truth, which is meant to find expression in
the mean- ^^ doctrine of natural law, is that apart from divine
zng of con- ' ...
science, or human command there are certain principles
essential to rational beings as such. A belief in
the reality of conscience is otherwise absurd; for
conscience implies an unwritten law, which cannot
be codified to cover every possible circumstance which
may occur. " Conscience," said Samuel Parker, " is
nothing but the soul or mind of man that undergoes
various denominations from its powers and abilities ;
as, when it conceives of things, it is called under-
standing ; when it discourses, reason ; when it
determines, judgment; when it chooses, will; and
when it reflects upon itself and its own actions,
conscience^" With Owen it is "the judgment that
1 This case is imagined iu the pamphlet Tolleration discussed,
etc., ch. XXIII.
2 Continuation of Ecclesiastical Polity, ch. viii, p. 700.
AND THE CHURCH 81
a man maketh of himself and his actions with re-
ference to the future judgment of God \" According
to Bunyan it is the Recorder of the city of Mansoul ;
"as by the understanding things are let into the
soul, so by the conscience the evil and good of such
things are tried I" If then the working of conscience
is an intellectual process, notions of morality — of
good and evil — must be such as are cognisable by
the intellect. For this reason the principles of
morality must be immutable, as fixed and as capable
of demonstration as the laws of mathematics. This
is what, to the Cambridge Platonists, they were.
" The common notions of God and virtue," wrote
John Smith, " impressed upon the souls of men are
more clear and perspicuous than any else ; and if
they have not more certainty, yet have they more
evidence and display themselves with less difficulty
to our reflective faculty than any geometrical de-
monstrations ^" That is to say, in the language of
their master Plato, that there is an "idea" of justice
no less than an "idea" of triangularity. By the
light of reason men can become moral, no less than
by a knowledge of the laws of the land and the
Bible.
The question of the origin and obligation of and thus
morality was much discussed in the seventeenth ^l"^^J^^■Q,^
century. The three answers put forward were that of morality
it rests on the command of God, the command of j^^j^^
man, or the command of conscience — the obligation
1 Owen, Works, xv. p. 527.
2 Bunyan, Works, iii. p. 162.
3 Discourse, i. p. 17.
R.-S.
82 TOLERATION
of the revealed law of God, positive law, or natural
law. Hobbes was of the belief that ideas of justice,
goodness, etc., were only " theorems " of morality,
until they were made binding by positive law\ He
did not imply that there is no such thing as justice,
until the magistrate has said what it is. What he
meant, was that there is no obligation to justice
except in the command of the magistrate. The
Church as a whole held that the obligation of
morality rests on the two sets of positive com-
mands given by. God and revealed in the Bible^
the law that was given to Moses, the ratification of
this law in the Gospels. The Platonists held that
neither God nor man creates the obligation to obey
laws. The obligation to morality is in the mind
itself.
Hobbism implies the complete authority of the
State as the means for the preservation of morality
and society. The second view implies a compulsion
to membership in the Church, which has received
the positive law of God. The third view emphasises
something different. By the power of reason we
arrive at certain duties to God and our neighbours.
We know that there is a God and that God must be
honoured and worshipped in public. We also know
that, as well as aiming at self-development and self-
preservation, we must do to others as we would have
them do to us. These are the primary principles of
divinity and morality, known to every member of a
civil community by the fact of his being a rational
being. On this foundation are laid creeds, articles,
1 Leviathan, p. 104.
AND THE CHURCH 83
dogmas, theologies, dra^\al from the Bible or else-
where. Differences of opinion spring up. But
underneath remains the one common foundation.
This is what the Platonists emphasised. "The
community is bound together by moral principles,
which underlie and survive differences of opinion ^"
They were far from denying the importance of the
Bible and the positive laws of a community. On
the contrary they were, together with the Noncon-
formists, the strongest upholders of the study of the
Bible in their time ; and they got the reputation of
being time-servers because of their willing obedience
to authority. But in saying that there were motives ivhich has
that called for good life other than those of obedience ""i'^'^^*
° ^ results for
to Church or State they were putting toleration on toleration.
a new and firmer basis. By making morality a part
of natural religion they destroyed the contention of
the opponents of toleration that the safety of the
State rests upon the uniformity of doctrine among
its subjects.
Conflicts between natural and divine law were The re-
not discussed. The law of nature no less than ^^^Q^posiUve
law revealed in Scripture was conceived of as '^"^ ^o
emerging from the mind of God. By the light of /aw,
nature and the power of reason we realise the
former. The latter appears to be but the highest
amplification of the light of nature. There is no
occasion to reconcile the two. But no question was
more common than that of the conflict between the
law of nature and the positive law of the land. It
1 Creighton, Hulsean Lectures, Persecution and Tolerance,
p. 131.
6—2
84
TOLERATION
in par-
ticular to
natural
religion.
What is
natural
religion ?
was generally agreed that the object of positive law
was a codification of the unwritten laws of nature
with the specification of punishments for their non-
observance. According to this rule the duty of the
magistrate is to preserve property and to maintain
the essence of morality and religion. All the re-
quirements of the laws of nature, as they were
conceived of in the seventeenth century, may be
summed up under these three heads. Cases, when
the two systems seem to be in antagonism, have
occupied the human mind from the day when the
Antigone was written until now. This was the
excuse for the Revolution of 1688. It is the excuse
of all who break laws because they cannot con-
scientiously obey them. Reference has already been
made to the way in which the penal laws were
contrary to the law of nature as being destructive
to property. In what way do they contradict the
remaining part of the law of nature, morality and
the right to worship God, which together make up
the basis of natural religion ? No laws were brought
forward, which seemed to impose a false and un-
natural system of morals. But the whole of the
Clarendon Code, inasmuch as it put checks on the
public worship of God, was looked upon as contrary
to natural law. There was a strong belief that men
have a natural right to worship God as they think
fit. No objection was seen to measures compelling
the public worship of God, because the power of the
magistrate was held to extend as far as natural
religion extends^ How far natural religion does
1 Cf. the tract Liberty of Conscience in its order to Universal
AND THE CHURCH 85
extend, is another point. There was a common
agreement that it called for belief in the existence
of God. It was no less granted by all that men
arrive by a rational process at a belief in certain
rules for the public worship of God. But by a
rational process almost anything can be defended.
Not only can the doctrine of the Trinity be de-
fended on the grounds that Reason calls for a belief
in a Redeemer, or sacrifices asserted to be "natural"
as supplying the need, felt by the human soul, of
appeasing an angry God. Liturgies can be and were
upheld for the same reasons \ Of course there can
be no way of proving that any particular ceremony
is "natural." The book of Job was maintained to
be a treatise of natural theology 2; but a religion
that claims Reason for its basis cannot point to a
passage in a particular book, in the same way as
a religion that claims to be based on the revealed
word of God, and produce a concrete proof of its
reality. All that believers in natural religion could
do, and did, was to state that some ceremony was
right, either because it seemed " natural " to them-
selves or because it could plead antiquity and
universal acceptance among mankind at larger
Those who believed in natural religion were gene-
rally at this time upholders of instituted religion.
Peace, p. 48. The tract was written in 1681 — obviously by some
follower of the rationalist theologians.
1 Cf. Denton, lus Caesaris et Ecclesiae Vere Dictae, p. 117.
2 Liberty of Conscience in its order to Universal Peace, p. 52.
3 More makes the point that the very existence of conventicles
proves that men find public worship essential and natural. Cf.
Grand Mystery of Godliness, ch. xiv.
86
TOLEKATION
Religions
that con-
tradict
natural
law or
natural
religion
are in-
tolerable.
The revealed word of God was considered to be a
corroboration of doctrines which had been or could
be arrived at by the power of Reason alone. The
distinction between natural religion and instituted
religion was however kept. Benjamin Whichcote,
the first of the Platonists, pointed out "the moral
part of religion consists of things good in them-
selves, necessary and indispensable ; the instituted
part of religion consists of things made necessary
only by the determination of the Divine will^";
"all the differences in Christendom are about in-
stitutions not about morals^" Compulsion, although
just in natural religion, which binds all men as
rational creatures, becomes unjust in the case of
institutions, which are due to the various human
interpretations of the Divine will, and can only be
accepted by a certain number.
From this standpoint religions which promote or
countenance vice and immorality cannot be tolerated.
Religions, which compel practices directly contrary to
the principle of self-preservation, which is as "natural"
in the State as the individual, must be equally pro-
hibited. For instance, if a passion for virginity was
so much stirred up by the preachings of a church,
that it gave rise to measures resulting in the emascu-
lation of a certain number of the male children, the
State would be justified in banning that religion.
In addition to this, religions, whose very nature con-
sists in persecuting people who belong to different
forms of religion, may be rightly prohibited, because
1 See Tulloch, ii. p. 109.
2 Ibid., p. 107.
AND THE CHURCH 87
it is as " natural " for a Church to preserve itself
as it is for an individual or a Stated With these
exceptions the rationalist theologians, with their be-
lief in the sanctity of the conscience as " the candle
of the Lord," were bound to grant liberty to all
opinions based on reason and a rational interpre-
tation of Scripture. Thus they could tolerate the
Quakers, if the Quakers could give a rational account
of what appeared a mere enthusiasm^. They could
tolerate Baptists, if they renounced all connection
with the immorality and anarchical notions of govern-
ment connected with their continental namesakes^
They could tolerate Roman Catholics, as far as
their religion was based on reason and not a blind
following of authority, as far as it renounced the
civil authority of the Pope, and as far as it promised
in its turn to give religious liberty to members of
other religious bodies ^ The atheist has no tie of
conscience. He has directly shut out the light
of Nature, which reveals to all men the existence
of God. The voice of conscience, which is the
command of God, cannot be heard by him. He
has renounced natural religion, the knowledge of
right and wrong as well as the belief in God. For
that reason he has no right to the liberty of what
he does not own, conscience and religion I
^ Cf. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, ch. xiii. for the whole
of this passage.
2 Ibid., ch. XIII.
3 Cf. Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying, §§ 18 and 19.
^ Ibid., § 20. This passage and the last show the sort of
method employed,
5 More, Divine Mystery of Godliness, ch. x.
88
TOLERATION
Hohbes
really a
Latitu-
dinarian.
Latitudi-
narians
and
(a) cere-
monies,
§2.
As a utilitarian Hobbes had been led to advocate
measures of compulsion in religion. As a rationalist
he is forced entirely to change his ground and to
plead for a liberty of conscience. "Because belief
or unbelief never follow men's commands^ " he can-
not see the use of compulsion in the case of any
who believe the one essential thing " that Jesus is
the Christ." Far from asserting the necessity of
Episcopacy or Presbyterianism, he thinks that In-
dependency '* is perhaps the best^" because it frees
the reason from all authority but that of the Bible.
In this respect Hobbes is not in agreement with
other rationalist theologians. But he seems really
to have meant by Independency the individual
liberty of prophesying, which Taylor had advocated,
more than the sectarian Independency with which
that term was generally associated. He never
definitely explains his double attitude. But pro-
bably he had a conception of a Church in close
resemblance to that of the other Latitudinarians —
the combination of "varietas opinionum" and "unitas
opinantium."
The whole question of ceremonies and Church
government was treated by the Latitudinarians in
a manner entirely new to the supporters of the
national Church. In the first place they held that
the existence of many ceremonies is the sign of a
1 Leviathan, p. 345.
2 Ibid., p. 488 and the whole passage.
AND THE CHURCH 89
low type of religion ^ Believing in the necessity
of some ceremonies they formulated three criteria
by which they should be tested. In any of the
three following cases a ceremony must not be re-
jected, (i) when the reason for a ceremony ordained
in Scripture obviously still exists, (ii) when God
has expressly declared a ceremony to be binding
for all time, (iii) when a ceremony is necessary to
the existence of the Church. For all these reasons
the Sabbath is a necessary institution. There still
seems to be a reason for setting apart one day in
seven for rest and worship ; " the general consent of
nations as to the seventh part would speak fair to
the voice of nature I" There is scriptural warrant
in both the Old and the New Testament for the
perpetual observance of the Sabbath. There must
be one day in the week, on which business is
stopped to give men the opportunity to worship
God in public at Church. But if the Sabbath is
a necessary ceremony, there is no necessity to keep
it on the last day of the week. That was a tem-
porary command with a special application to the
Jews and a special reference to their deliverance
from captivity.
The application of this principle to Church (6) Church
government was very fully made by Stillingfleet in l^gnt!^'
his Irenicon. The book is of no great intrinsic
value ; but it illustrates well the methods of the
rationalist theologians. In the first place Stilling-
fleet proves that a separate order of priests was a
1 Cf. Liberty of Conscience in its order to Universal Peace.
2 Stillingfleet, Irenicon, p. 13. Cf. all ch. i.
90 TOLERATION
condition meant for perpetual observation, and thus
excludes the Quakers. In the second place, he
proves that Congregationalism was due to the par-
ticular conditions existing at the time of the birth
of Christianity, and that therefore a plain biblical
defence of Independency is not sufficient. In the
third place he asserts that neither bishops nor
presbyteries can be expressly drawn from Apostolic
practice. He is of belief that either the episcopal
or the presbyterian system is the most suitable for
a Church that has grown from being the Church of
isolated cities into the established Church of a
nation. In conclusion he quotes Cranmer, Whitgift,
Hooker, James I, Hales, Chillingvvorth, Grotius,
Bacon, Melancthon, the Articuli Schmalcaldici,
Calvin, Beza, Jewell, Bancroft, Andrewes and others
who agreed with him in admitting that episcopacy
and presbyterianism are equally convenient forms
of Church government, though they had a personal
preference for the one or the other. The book was
written with the express purpose of promoting a
scheme of reconciliation between the Anglican
Church and the Presbyterians. The main conclu-
sion, that there is no divinely appointed form of
Church government but that the question rests on
considerations of convenience, is of great importance.
It alters the grounds for defending the episcopal
government of the Church of England. It implies
that Congregationalism of any form is just as toler-
able as the Episcopal or Presbyterian system, if it
can be proved useful to modern conditions. It
strikes at the roots of the Anglican system.
AND THE CHURCH 91
The division of doctrine into things fundamental dem-
and things indifferent, which was accepted by thef^,J^^^^
Anglo-Catholic no less than the broad school oi essentials.
churchmen, was pointing in the same direction.
Laud, Parker, Thorndike, without any belief in
natural theology, agreed that many of the cere-
monies of the Church of England were more con-
venient than necessary. But they deduced from
this that there can be no objection to requiring
their observance. Broad churchmen, on the other
hand, argued that there can be no objection to
tolerating differences in what are acknowledged to
be purely questions of convenience. They knew
that it was " not the text but the comment that
is disputed." The pamphleteers of the period are
never tired of quoting Charles I's advice to tolerate
variations "in the skirts and suburbs of religion."
It was recognised that orthodox Anglicans were in
agreement with the so-called " heretics " on the
fundamentals of religion. But the more violent
supporters of the Church of England could not be
induced to acknowledge that certain convenient
ceremonies had been made by circumstances incon-
venient, and that therefore it was more prudent to
refrain from making their observance compulsory.
It should not be forgotten that the rational Toleration
theologians, although willing to permit variations fiJiUJs
in ceremonial, were not advocating liberty of public «»^ tolera-
worship for separate religious bodies. Their belief sg^^s.
in the duty of Christian love and fellowship led
them to emphasise the spiritual unity of all true
Christians. As advocates both of unity and of
92 TOLERATION
individualism in religion they revolted against the
exclusiveness of the sects. But the methods which
they used to justify the doctrines of the various
sects, which they wished to bring back to unity,
could also be employed to justify the existence of
the sects themselves. If the right of individuals to
hold various doctrines is conceded, it is but one step
further to concede the same right to communities.
They acknowledged the impossibility of uniformity.
They did not acknowledge the impossibility of a
federation composed of isolated units. They made
constant allusions to the law of nature, which asserts
the natural sociability of men. They believed that
man is naturally an ecclesiastical animal as much
as he is a political animaP. But they carried the
analogy of family, city, nation, from politics to ec-
clesiastics, and concluded that the National Church
was the best. A belief in the necessity of sociability,
taken by the side of a belief in the impossibility of
uniformity, would more naturally lead to the settle-
ment of the religious question on sectarian lines.
On these lines it was actually settled. The Latitu-
dinarians up to a certain point held and helped to
popularise the views of the Dissenters on this sub-
ject. Their hatred of the dogmatism of the sects
made them actually propose a toleration not outside
but inside the Church.
Most Although the Latitudinarians emphasised so
Latitudi- strons^ly the necessity of unity, they did not all
narians . . j ^ j
support give active support to the various proposals for
^hension. comprehension. Simon Patrick did not defend the
1 Cf. Stillingfleet, Irenicon, p. 82.
AND THE CHURCH 93
Comprehension Bill of 1668. In some of them
latitude simply took the form of a strong defence
of the Episcopal Church by way of protest against
the narrowness of Calvinistic Puritanism. Lewis
du Moulin in his Appeal to all the Nonconformists
in England, written in the year 1680, for this reason
complains that it is the Broad Churchmen who have
been most responsible for the perpetuation of the
religious feud. Similarly there were some Noncon-
formists who preferred comprehension to toleration^
Corbet expressly says sol But in spite of this the
greater majority of Latitudinarians were actively
engaged in advocating schemes of comprehension
just as the greater majority of the Dissenters were
occupied in petitioning for toleration.
Taylor, More, Baxter all wrote polemical works Chilling-
against Papists, Baptists and Quakers. But none the ^!^^lll]!^^^^
less they formed schemes for comprehending them.
The attitude which they all adopted was that of
Chillingworth.
Chillingworth wrote in the Religion of Protes-
tants: "it is sufficient for any man's salvation to
believe that the Scripture is true and contains all
things necessary for any man's salvation ; and to
do his best endeavour to find and believe the true
sense of it ; without delivering any particular cata-
logue of the fundamentals of faiths" But at the
same time for the actual reunion of Christendom he
was forced to propose a catalogue of fundamentals,
1 Of. Baxter, Works, iii. p. 100.
2 Discourse of the religion of England, Pt ii. § 18.
2 Religion of Protestants, i. p. 322.
94 TOLERATION
the Apostles' creed, " the analysis (according to
Taylor) of that which S. Paul calls 'the word of
salvation whereby we shall be saved,' viz. 'that we
confess Jesus to be the Lord and that God raised him
from the dead\' " At the same time he pointed out
that the creed contains nothing more than rules of
faith — credenda, although rules of action — agenda
— are equally important. "Neither yet is this... to
take away the necessity of believing those verities
of Scripture, which are not contained in the Creeds"
His position is not inconsistent. He believes in
the unity of spirit not the uniformity of doctrine.
But there cannot be a unity of spirit without a
common basis of belief
Union The whole Latitudinarian school followed this
S^ind le^cl. The keynote to their theory is— " May that
Apostles' be rejected as an innovation, which is not as old as
Creed.
the apostles; and nothing imposed upon ministers
or people, but what hath footing or warrant in the
holy Scriptures V *'It is impertinent... to require
a man to believe anything more than is clearly
contained in Scripture," wrote Bishop Crofts " Let
some plain, general and necessary truths be laid
down in Scripture terms," added Penn in a Latitu-
dinarian frame of mind, "and let them be few^'''
Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Grecians, Lutherans,
Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers,
1 Taylor, Works, vii. p. 448.
2 Religion of Protestants, ii. p. 36.
3 A Proposal for Union — Dr Sands' last view, 1679.
4 In the "Naked Truth," Somers' Tracts, vii. p. 274.
5 An Address to Protestants upon the present conjunction.
AND THE CHURCH 95
Socinians could all unite round the Apostles' Creeds
More would let all communicate, who believe the
Scripture and the Apostles' Creeds The same pro-
posals were reiterated again and again by all who
set their hopes on unity and concord. But such
proposals were destined to come to nothing. All
the concrete schemes for uniting the Presbyterians
with the Church of England met with failure.
They were mostly based on Archbishop Ussher's
practical and sensible scheme of combining bishops
and presbyteries, and making such alterations in
the Prayer Book as such a comprehension would
necessitate. If these practical attempts at recon-
ciliation met with the same failure as had followed
all such attempts in the history of the Reformation
on the continent, how could more far-reaching ideals
ever hope to be realised ?
There are only two reasonable methods of forming Difficulties
an all-embracing scheme of comprehension. One is f^^l^acing
to collect " such points as all the true Christians of scheme.
the world are now agreed mV The other is to add
together the fundamentals of all the various forms
of the Christian religion. Difficulties are encountered
in both cases. If the Quakers are to be considered
" true Christians," the ceremonies of the new all-
comprehending Church must be very few, in fact
only those ceremonies which the Quakers admit. If
the Baptists are to be considered " true Christians,"
with their belief in adult baptism as a fundamental,
^ A Persuasive to Moderation to Church Dissenters.
2 Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 541.
3 Baxter, Works, vi. p. 187.
96 TOLERATION
some method must be found, which can reconcile
it with what is considered by other Churches a
fundamental — infant baptism. Neither scheme is
impossible on paper, much less a scheme for com-
prehending only Anglicans, Presbyterians and In-
dependents ; but paper schemes ignore the human
element in man, all the accidents and circumstances
that alter the course of every movement, great or
small.
Summary. The time that was spent in discussing Compre-
hension in the seventeenth century was not wasted.
It helped men to understand the reasonableness
of the various opinions with which they could not
agree. This by no means makes persecution im-
possible. Men persecute for opinions which they
consider reasonable but wrong. Nevertheless it
made toleration easier. Discussions of Comprehen-
sion can never make men believe in the right to
differ; but they may produce a recognition of the
reasonableness of differing. It is necessary to make
the further assumption that what is reasonable is
right. Any particular belief may not be right to
everybody; but those who believe it have a right
to retain their belief. Viewed in this light dis-
cussions on comprehension are only one step towards
a belief in toleration. That w^as their value. Com-
prehension was a great ideal. It came from within
the Church, and so was religious rather than political^
originating in the belief in the necessity of a rational
as opposed to a traditional interpretation of Scrip-
ture. The defence of the ideal in the case of the
Platonists led to a defence of natural religion and
AND THE CHURCH 97
natural law. Morality is the greater part of natural
religion, and morality is very closely connected with
social order. In this way the religious ideal was
not entirely distinct from the political theory of
toleration. It contributed suggestions which are
as valuable to a toleration without as a toleration
within the Church.
R.-S.
CHAPTER IV
TOLERATION AND LOCKE
"C'est la lutte de I'esprit scolastique et de la science moderne."
Bastide, Locke, p. 254.
§1-
The old Throughout the entire reigos of Charles II
Church ^^^ James II toleration had been advocated from
a7id State the most various quarters. The King, the Whig
destroyed. Lords and the more independent members of the
House of Commons used the same arguments as
the poor and despised sectarians whom they per-
secuted. Baptists, Quakers and Independents found
themselves in agreement with the Liberal members
of the Church, from which they had seceded. Philo-
sophers, scientists, sceptics and atheists made com-
mon cause with Roman Catholics. Even Thorndike,
the intellectual leader of the Anglo-Catholic party
in the Church of the Restoration, was forced to
grant that "certainly it may be and perhaps it is
justifiable for the secular power to grant [Dissenters]
the exercise of their religion, in private places of
their own providing, under such moderate penalties
as the disobeying of a man's country might required"
1 Works, V. p. 40.
TOLERATION AND LOCKE 99
It was not only the poor but the rich, not only
the rabble but the trading classes and the owners
of property, not only the nation but the Universities,
that proclaimed the right of liberty of conscience.
Although the medieval theory of the coincidence
of Church and State was still supposed to be the
basis of government in England, of the two brothers
who filled the throne during the period under con-
sideration and became head of Church and State, one
was not even a member of the Church of England in
name, the other was well known to be a member in
little else. James II embraced Roman Catholicism
publicly. Charles II had no religion at all during
his lifetime, and became a Roman Catholic on his
deathbed. Shaftesbury, Halifax, Buckingham, Clif-
ford, Coventry never tried to conceal the fact that
they were not orthodox believers in the established
religion of the land which they helped to govern.
At intervals conventicles were tolerated. Between
these intervals, without permission and with varying
success. Dissenters assumed the right to enjoy a
liberty no less than that which was conceded to the
Dutch and French refugees in England. It was
obvious that the system of a united Church and
State had broken down. Politicians with no other
theory than empiricism were compelled to advocate
in practice some form of the religious liberty to
which all the movements of the age pointed. None
but the most reactionary idealists continued to
proclaim the old theory. The facts no longer fitted.
It was directly contradicted by the indifference to
religion which was so unmistakable at Court, and
7—2
100 TOLERATION
the deep-rooted existence of nonconformity in the
nation at large. In addition to this a new ideal
had been spread through the land. Liberty was
a conception no less magnificent than Unity. It
would challenge the old ideal on its own ground as
an ideal. But, what was of even greater importance,
it was a little nearer to the facts.
Locke and In spite of all the arguments which individual-
l^ructioii ^^^^' rationalists, latitudinarians and utilitarians had
of the new contributed with such persistence to the new ideal,
no complete theory of toleration had been tabulated,
(a) His This work was reserved for one of the greatest and
position in jjjQg^ clear-seeing minds of the age, that of John
Locke. Locke was eminently suited for the per-
formance of this task. He was a man of the widest
interests. Most of his predecessors had been in
sympathy with more than one of the movements
which were making for toleration. This was inevit-
able because of the connection of these movements
with each other. But Locke embraced all of them
in their entirety. We may feel with Lady Masham
that a reverence for Reason is the key to all his
work ; or we may say, what comes to much the
same thing, that all the aspects of his life may be
summed up in an intense individualism. Rational-
ism is nothing more than individualism applied to
the intellectual. But, however we look at his work,
we cannot help being amazed at the breadth of
his sympathies and interests. He had received a
scientific as well as a classical education. His
future seemed to lie either in the study of medicine
or in the Church. But yielding to the advice of
AND LOCKE 101
Shaftesbury he turned to politics. The result was
that by the year 1673 Locke was no less at home
at the meetings of the Council of Trade, to which
he was appointed secretary, than at the meetings
of the infant Royal Society. His circle of friends
was as large as were his interests. William III
trusted him sufficiently to offer him an ambassador-
ship. He was loved by Algernon Sidney the re-
publican and Penn the Quaker. He developed a
friendship in later life with Newton. He was
known to Baxter, Wilkins, Tillotson, Simon Patrick,
Barrow, Cudworth and most of the broad theologians
of the day. He was bound by his sympathies with
liberty, civil, religious and intellectual, to all sorts
and conditions of men. But there are two friend-
ships which above all illustrate Locke's personality.
He occupied a peculiar position in the affections of
Shaftesbury, in w^hose family he spent much of his
early life. This friendship based on a real intellec-
tual sympathy was lifelong. Shaftesbury on his
deathbed confessed that his inspiration and religion
were drawn not from the Bible but from the tenth
chapter of his friend's great Essay on the Human
Understanding. His relations with Lady Masham,
the daughter of Cudworth, were of a still more
intimate nature. The natural affection which they
had for each other was deepened by their common
religious and philosophical views; and no part of
his life seemed to Locke more full than what was
spent at the house of the Mashams at Gates.
Locke's was a mind of such strength and indepen-
dence that he contributed more to the mental
102 TOLERATION
development of his friends than they to his. His
early writings show a remarkable consistency with
the product of his more mature genius. But his
friendships, if not of vital importance to the develop-
ment of his views, are concrete proofs of the width
of his mind. They show that there was no great
progressive movement in which he was not in-
terested. He identified himself with them all and
summed them up in a philosophy — a system of
metaphysical, ethical and political thought, which
was destined to dominate the next century.
(b) His Locke's rationalist and political views, illustrated
Holland ^^ these friendships, early led him to interest himself
in the question of toleration, as is shown by his
admirable essay on the subject, written in the year
1667. But circumstances brought him into a more
direct contact with the problem. In 1683 Locke
had to take refuge as a political exile in Holland.
His connection with Shaftesbury had been too close
to make it safe for him to remain in England after
his patron's fall. The Netherlands were at this
time the retreat for many of the oppressed sections
of the European nations, the home for all those
whose views were in advance of their times. In
practice Brandenburg enjoyed a more complete
form of religious liberty than any other country in
Europe, with the result that the number of immi-
grants was enormous^ But what was practised by
1 For the question of toleration in Brandenburg see Dr A. W.
Ward in the Cambridge Modern History, v. pp. 645-9. He
gives the number of immigrants from 1670 to 1770 as 600,000.
Cf. "Weiss, Histoire des Refugies, Book ii.
AND LOCKE 103
the government of Brandenburg was made into a
theory by active minds in the Netherlands. From
1629 to 1649 Descartes was formulating in Holland
that science which was to lead the Platonists and
Locke himself to views of religious liberty. Spinoza,
whose parents had taken refuge in Holland from
the persecution which was inflicted on the Jews in
the Spanish peninsula, spent his life in various
parts of the Netherlands, and in spite of the un-
popularity of his doctrines succeeded in getting his
famous Treatise published anonymously in 1670 ^
Basnage de Beauval wrote his pamphlet on Toler-
ance des Religions in 1684, and in 1686 his com-
patriot Bayle produced in his Gominentaire a system
of absolute religious equality. All these works were
published in Holland; and it was the presses of
Amsterdam that poured forth all the lesser exposi-
tions of the doctrines of liberty, which the Tory
censor would not permit to be printed in England-.
Geneva had been the pattern city of theocracy.
The Netherlands were the pattern State of religious
liberty.
It was here that Locke was led to tabulate in Composi-
a letter to the greatest friend of his exile, Limborch, f^p^^^,
a theologian of tolerant and latitudiuarian tempera- (^nce of
ment, his complete theory of toleration. It was
1 His connection with toleration may be seen from the title of
his work, " Tractatus Theologico-Politicus continens dissertationes
aliquot, quibus ostenditur libertatem philosophandi non tantum
salva pietate et reipublicae pace posse concedi sed eandem nisi cum
pace reipublicae ipsaque pietate tolli non posse."
2 Sir Koger I'Estrange was "surveyor of the imprimery" from
1663.
104 TOLERATION
never meant for publication, but, although only a
private letter to a personal friend, it contained
almost everything that has been said to this day
on toleration. It systematised and compressed into
a few pages all the remarks of value that had been
made in the various writings preceding its compo-
sition. But the letter must not be taken by itself.
Locke's early essays and Common Place Book (not
meant for publication either) show that it was not
to the influence of Bayle or Basnage de Beauval
but to his own philosophy that his theory of tolera-
tion is due. In them as much as in the better
known letters his views were developed. Each helps
to explam and supplement the other.
No writings of Locke were published until after
the Act of 1689. But it is impossible to resist the
conclusion that the ideas on religious liberty held
by the Whig party were largely due to the influence
of Locke. His influence with Shaftesbury was great.
His friendships were many. By private or political
conversations his unpublished ideas must have been
circulated in the intellectual circles of England
long before their publication. The Letter which was
published in 1689 does nothing more than sup-
plement the earlier writings. Together they form
a complete theory of toleration, based on Locke's
double experience in England and Holland, so for-
mulated as to be at the same time logical and
practicable. Its value is no less, because England
Locke's ^<^o^ more than a century to digest it.
statement Locke, like his predecessors, saw that the con-
ofthe . 1 . . , . ,
question, troversy about toleration is more connected with
AND LOCKE 105
politics than religion. He put the same old questions:
What is the purpose of the State? What is the
purpose of the Church? And what is the sphere of
the civil magistrates' jurisdiction in matters affecting
religion ?
If Roger Williams had clearly stated that the His con-
qualification for magistracy is capability and not J^^ ^state.
religion, the Independents had returned to the old
idea that magistrates must be "godly" above all
things. The State was still in their eyes sub-
servient to the Church, in the same way that this
world is subservient to the next. The importance
of religion loomed so large before them, that it was
bound to regulate their civil as well as their eccle-
siastical interests. Locke was firm. He made a
complete distinction of the objects of the two
societies. "The Commonwealth," he wrote, " seems
to me to be a society of men constituted only for the
procuring, the preserving and the advancing their
own civil interests. Civil interests I call life, liberty,
health and indolency of body; and the possession of
outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furni-
ture and the like^" This was Locke's main thesis.
It was attacked from all quarters. Jonas Proast,
the first antagonist whom Locke chose to answer,
set up the alternative thesis "that civil society is
instituted for the attaining of all the benefits that
it may in any way yield-." His assertion was the
very one that Locke had attempted to destroy, the
justification of all theocratic and Erastian systems,
1 Letter I, p. 5, in the 1870 reprint of the 7th edition.
2 Cf. Letter II, pp. 78 flf.
106
TOLERATION
The civil
magis-
trate's
power.
the source of all the confusions which were asso-
ciated with those systems. Locke was as ready as
anybody to grant that there are things other than
property which are beneficial to a State. A love of
art or science may make men not only happier but
better citizens than indifference to these things.
But he would not draw the conclusion that therefore
men must be compelled to attend the theatre or
lectures on mathematics. He would grant with
Halifax that religion is as "necessary to our living
happily in this world as to our being saved in the
next\" But he would not conclude that therefore
civil society has the salvation of the soul as its
primary object and may use force for its attainment.
His reasons are those which had already been urged —
the impossibility of conforming one's faith to the
dictates of another, the essence of faith itself —
"Faith is not faith without belie ving^," the con-
sequent uselessness of force. If a verbal subscription
to articles of faith was enough to save a man's soul,
there was some excuse though little need for com-
pulsion. But when it is granted that faith is an
inward thing, and "only light and evidence can work
a change in men's opinions," the use of fire and
sword becomes unintelligible.
Force is the weapon of the magistrate and
punishment his power. Punishment was not in
Locke's view reformatory. He expressly states again
and again that penalties cannot change men's
opinions. Penalties are as necessary as the laws
which they enforce ; they are as utilitarian as those
1 Trimmer, p. 301. 2 j^gf^g,. i^ p. g^
AND LOCKE 107
laws. They prevent temporarily or permanently the
repetition of ofifences; but they do not change the
mental attitude which produced them. A magis-
trate has as much right as any other member of
society to try to persuade offenders into paths of
reason. "Magistracy does not oblige him to put
off either humanity or Christianity \" But his
privilege as magistrate is to use force ; and force
is useless in questions of religion.
Just as a man "not having the power over his
own life cannot by compact or his own consent
enslave himself to any one^" so a man cannot give
up his religious liberty. No law which condones
slavery or persecution is legitimate, and magistrates
have no right to enforce it. They have been en-
trusted with definite powers by the people, to
preserve every member of society, in accordance
with the law of nature, in the enjoyment of their
life, health, liberty and possessions. They must for-
bid persecution as much as slavery. Compulsion in
matters of religion is as "unnatural" as it is useless.
The duty of the magistrate consists not in com-
pelling forms of religious belief, but in forbidding
such compulsion.
In his second letter on toleration Locke told a
small story which brings the use of compulsion down
to an absurdity. There were two brothers of the
name of Reynolds of scholarly disposition. One was
a Catholic, and one a Protestant. On giving to each
other the apologies for their religious beliefs each
1 Letter I, p. 6.
2 Of Civil Government, ch. vi.
108 TOLERATION
converted the other. The Protestant brother adopted
Catholicism and the Catholic brother adopted Pro-
testantism \ The absurdity of punishing the one
brother without the other is too obvious to need com-
ment. In view of such possibilities persecution is
as unreasonable as it is useless and unnatural. The
only method which can avoid inconsistencies, is to
leave the question of religion, no less than the
question of arts and sciences, to the individual to
decide in connection with the particular societies,
which have been formed for the regulation of these
things.
Locke's If "the end of civil society is civil peace and
conception . . • /. i • i
of the prosperity, or the preservation or the society and
Church, every member thereof in a free and peaceable enjoy-
ment of all the good things of this life that belong
to each of them; but beyond the concernment of
this life, this society has nothing to do at all-,'' what
is a Church and what is the end of religious society?
Locke defines a Church as "a voluntary society of
men joining themselves together of their own accord
in order to the public worshipping of God, in such
a manner as they may judge acceptable to him and
effectual to the salvation of their souls^" "The end
of religious society," he writes, *' is the attaining
happiness after this life in another worldV These
definitions presume an entire system of toleration.
^ Letter II, p. 51.
2 "On the difference between civil and ecclesiastical power,"
printed in King's Life of Locke, ii. p. 109.
3 Letter I, p. 7.
■* King, Life, ii. p. 109.
AND LOCKE 109
If a Church is a "voUmtary society," it alters its
nature when placed on any other footing. The
Independents on theological grounds had explained
carefully the connection of the "particular church"
with the "church general visible" and the "church
catholic \" Locke, regarding only the political aspect
of the ecclesiastical question, confined himself to the
definition of the "particular church," adapting that
given by the Independents, "Wheresoever two or
three are gathered together in my name, I will be
in the midst of them I" This promise, sanctifying
the natural instinct to public worship, formed the
basis of Locke's ecclesiastical theory.
The idea that the religion of parents descends
to their children by a system akin to that of land
tenure seemed irreligious and irrational. "Nobody
is born a member of any churchy" A deliberate
effort of the mind is essential to membership.
A religious society must have officers and regu- Church
lations no less than any other human society. It is ^we7,
natural to such a society apart from any direct
command from God. But the power of its officers
is of a nature altogether different from the power
of the civil magistrate. Corporal punishment or
a distraint upon property are justified in a society
whose object is utilitarian, pretending to nothing else
but a preservation of these things to those who keep
the peace. Justice of the Peace is a very good
title for the civil magistrate. For a religious society,
whose end is the enjoyment of eternal happiness
1 Cf. Owen, "Of Schism," Works, xiii. p. 206.
2 Cf. Letter I, p. 8. 3 jn^., p. 7.
110 TOLERATION
in the future, a different theory of punishment must
be found. Punishment must be reformatory, aiming
always at producing an inward change in the soul.
This is not produced by corporal punishment or
distraint upon property, but by "exhortations, admo-
nitions and advice \" As a last resort, if persuasion
fails, the Church must be given a right to cut off or
excommunicate the offender for the sake of the rest of
the members. There her power stops. Such a man
retains all his rights of citizenship, his property and
his franchise, because his offence in no way concerns
the life, health, liberty or property of his fellow
citizens.
These are the broad distinctions between the
spheres of Church and State, civil and ecclesiasti-
cal authority, which Locke draws with absolute
certainty. The Church has no business with the
affairs of this world, the State has no concern in the
salvation of souls. The officer of State punishes
offence against person or property in kind; the officers
of the Church use intellectual processes in dealing
with what the Church considers to be intellectual
errors. So far the path is easy.
The civil ''Speculative opinions and divine worship^" (to
onlrel^^^ use the words of his early essay) have an absolute
gious cere- and universal right to toleration. No one is disturb-
ing his fellow's liberty by disbelieving in the Trinity
any more than by being sceptical as to the truth of
the antipodes. He is as much at liberty to hold what
1 Letter I, p. 9.
2 Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, i. p. 176 (where the essay is
printed).
AND LOCKE 111
views he likes in a civil society as if he were alone
on a desert island. His faith damages no rights or
property. Reason requires the public worship of
God. But it does not affect the community in
what way public worship is held. One day's rest in
seven is essential to the well-being of the nation ;
but it is irrelevant on what day the Sabbath is
observed. It is a matter of equal indifference, what
posture is adopted at the Communion, whether a
liturgy is used, or at what age a man is baptized.
Of themselves all doctrines and ceremonies are
harmless.
The officers of the Church may enforce the cere-
monies which they consider essential to their own
form of worship. That is the chief reason for their
existence. But they must never forget that the
raison d'et7'e of a Church is to obtain the favour
of God. They must not "impose any ceremonies
unless positively and clearly by revelation enjoined,
any farther than anyone who joins in the use of
them is persuaded in his conscience they are ac-
ceptable to God\" The civil magistrate ought to
enforce no ceremony. Andrew Marvell had drawn
a parallel betw^een secular and religious ceremonies.
He had shown the result of Alexander the Great's
attempt to make the wearing of Persian dress com-
pulsory among his Greek followers ; he had told the
story of Gessler's hatl Compulsion in matters of
ceremony of all kinds is usually dangerous and
conducive to sedition. But this is not the point
1 From the Common Place Book, King, ii. p. 100.
2 Rehearsal Transprosed, pp. 244 ff.
112 TOLERATION
that Locke wanted to emphasise. A law that made
baptism compulsory for the enjoyment of civil rights
would be not only dangerous but wrong. A magis-
trate may compel washing as a preventive to
disease; but to compel baptism as a means to
salvation is not within his jurisdiction ^ His duty
with regard to doctrines and ceremonies is securing
toleration for them. Any further interference is an
encroachment on the sphere of the officer of the
Church.
The civil In addition to doctrines and ceremonies the
Znd^^^^^^ whole question of morality has to be considered in
morality, treating the problem of liberty of conscience. It is
true that the disputes of the period under con-
sideration had been about theology more than
morality. The necessity of a uniform code of morals
was accepted by all. But, in order to put the theory
of toleration on its proper ground, Locke saw as
well as the Latitudinarians, that the question of
the magistrate's sphere in morality must be also
threshed out. /Morality is the connecting link be-
tween theology and politics. It is here that the
separate spheres of Church and State can be most
clearly seen, because morality can have as direct an
influence on the civil society as on the individual
soul.
In the sphere of morality Locke made a dis-
tinction between things of indifference and things
good or bad in their own nature, both of which
concern society. Divorce in itself is a question
^ Letter I, p. 20. We should now use the vaccination laws
as an analogy.
AND LOCKE 113
on which men entertain various opinions. These
opinions have an a priori right to toleration. But
as the question of divorce affects the community at
large some fixed rules must be made. If laws which
make divorce an easy matter are considered to be
beneficial to the moral and physical welfare of the
nation the magistrate must act in accordance with
them, although he himself may think it a sin to
countenance the marriage of a woman who has been
divorced. Cases of this nature are not infrequent
with laws connected with religious questions. It
was necessary for Locke to draw attention to them
because of the discussions which were common at
the time about the duty of both magistrate and
subject, when their "personal conscience" seemed to
contradict their "public" or "political conscience ^"
The duty of the magistrate with regard to things
good or bad in themselves, the second table of the
decalogue, the "virtues" of the ancient philosophers,
was to Locke perfectly clear. He realised that as
a matter of fact vice is always forbidden by law.
fiut in the very fact he saw a source of confusion.
The Nonconformists had used no uncertain terms
about the duty of the State to enforce morality and
the privilege of the godly to rule the ungodly. The
Cambridge Platonists had given to the magistrate
a complete control over morality, because they re-
garded morality as a branch of natural religion and
they considered the sphere of the civil magistrate
1 Cf. ToUeration discussed in a dialogue, etc., p. 251. Liberty
of Conscience in its relation to Universal Peace, pp. 50, 43, etc.
Parker, Ecclesiastical Polity, p. 308.
R.-S. 8
114 TOLERATION
coextensive with the sphere of natural religion.
Locke felt that morality in itself was outside the
jurisdiction of the State, although it incidentally
became included. "The lawmaker hath nothing to
do with moral virtues and vices, nor ought to enjoin
the duties of the second table any otherwise than
barely as they are subservient to the good and
preservation of mankind under government. For
could public societies well subsist or men enjoy
peace or safety without the enforcing of those duties
by the injunctions and penalties of laws, it is certain
the law maker ought not to prescribe any rule about
them but leave the practice of them entirely to the
discretion and consciences of his peopled" What
Locke meant is that murder and theft only come
under the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate because
they imply damage to life and property. The State
sees these things as crimes not as sins. As criminals,
thieves and murderers are punished ; as sinners, they
can only be shown the evil of their ways and left to
their consciences and their God. Locke takes John
Stuart Mill's favourite instance of drunkenness^
For the sin of losing self-control the drunkard may
not be punished, as a disorderly citizen he is rightly
put in prison. The distinction cannot always be
made in practice, but nevertheless it remains in
theory. Actions and opinions which affect the peace
and order of society in this world must be judged
by the civil magistrate; actions and opinions which
1 The early Essay, Fox Bourue, i. p. 181.
2 See the extract from Locke's Common Place Book in King,
II. pp. 94-5.
AND LOCKE 115
affect the salvation of souls in the next world must
be settled in another tribunal.
Cases may occur where a. positive virtue is re-
stricted by the magistrate. ' Charity is a virtue.
But the lawmaker may for the good of the State
forbid the giving of alms to beggars ^ The lawmaker
does not and may not compel men to renounce
charity as a virtue. All that he does is to dissuade
men from the outward practice of it. They still
have their liberty of conscience, they are still subject
to, or (in Locke's language) "free of," the law of
nature, although they obey a law which seems
externally contradictory to that law.
This is Locke's answer to those who expressed
the fear that liberty of conscience, being liberty of
the reason and so liberty of the individual man, was
merely a cloak for licence, a doctrine undermining
the very foundations of society. His predecessors
had seen the difficulty which was involved in the
theory that the magistrate had jurisdiction over all
the laws of the second table. They had expressed
the belief that covetousness would ultimately be
punished no less than murder. But they never
tabulated a theory to explain why the one sin was
punishable by an earthly magistrate, and the other
not. Locke's theory explained this. Instead of
saying that positive law was a codification and en-
forcement of the law of nature as a whole, he said
that it was the enforcement of that part of natural
law which affects the preservation of life and
property.
1 Fox Bourne, i. p. 182.
8—2
116
TOLERATION
Principles "Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal
f^^V\- and impartial liberty, is the thing that we stand in
in its need of\" "Liberty is to be free from restraint
latthTe^- ^^^ violence from others, which cannot be where
Ugious there is no law ^" " The public good is the measure
of all law-making^" These three sentences are the
sum of Locke's political philosophy. What then are
the laws which are to secure this liberty in matters
of religion? Locke's solution of this problem is his
most valuable contribution to the theory of tolera-
tion. The principle of legislation touching the
control of religious assemblies suggested by him
remains in force to-day. Roger Williams had already
made an incidental comparison of religious and secu-
lar assemblies. Locke laid it down as a fixed rule
that legislation affecting religious societies should
be exactly the same as legislation affecting any other
society. Human sacrifice, if performed in a church,
is as criminal as an ordinary murder in civil lifel
If for the preservation of cattle the slaughter of
calves were made illegal, it would be as criminal to
offer up calves in the process of religious worship
as to kill them for food. If a man may take bread
and wine in any posture at his home, as far as the
State is concerned he may do likewise in Churchy
If a man may use the Latin language in the market-
place, he ma}^, if he wishes, use it in the worship of
God. A crime is a crime, wherever it is committed.
1 Preface to the Letter on Toleration.
2 Of Civil Government, ch. vi.
4 Ibid., p. 22.
3 Letter I, p. 19.
s Ibid., p. 34.
AND LOCKE 117
What is not criminal cannot be made criminal by
being committed inside a religious assembly \
Locke realised as well as Hobbes that associa-
tions of citizens are apt to be dangerous to the State.
He therefore considered that the magistrate had a
right to dissolve any society that was prejudicial
to peace or productive of disorder. In 1676 coffee
houses were prohibited no less than conventicles.
Locke would see no injustice in this. But, when
cofifee houses and claret clubs that permitted doubt-
ful practices were left free from interruption, while
conventicles keeping the peace and observing the
civil laws of the land were forbidden, if nominally
for political, really for doctrinal reasons, Locke con-
sidered that the true principles of legislation were
being broken. Like all the apologists for the prac-
tices of dissenters, he urged that, if ever they were
disorderly, it was only because they were persecuted.
"Some enter into company for trade and profit:
others for want of business have their clubs for
claret. Neighbourhood joins some, and religion
others. But there is one only thing which gathers
people into seditious commotions, and that is
oppression 2."
1 Cf. Dicey, The Laio of the Constitution, p. 305, note: "A
clergyman of the National Church, like a soldier of the National
Army, is subject to duties and to Courts to which other English-
men are not subject. He is bound by restrictions, as he enjoys
privileges peculiar to his class, but the clergy are no more than
soldiers exempt from the law of the land. Any deed which
would be a crime or wrong, when done by a layman, is a crime
or wrong when done by a clergyman, and is in either case dealt
with by the ordinary tribunals."
2 Letter I, p. 33.
118 TOLERATION
Conse- According to this principle all sects formed
toleration solely for the sake of religious worship must be left
of all undisturbed. "If solemn assemblies, observation of
religions. „ . , , ,. , • i • i
festivals, public worship, be permitted to any one
sort of professors ; all these things ought to be
permitted to the Presbyterians, Independents, Ana-
baptists, Arminians, Quakers and others, with the
same liberty. Nay, if we may openly speak the
truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither
Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be ex-
cluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth
because of his religion. The Gospel commands no
such thing.... And the commonwealth which em-
braces indifferently all men that are honest, peace-
able and industrious requires it not\" The State
has control of men as citizens. Disbelief in a
doctrine does not make bad citizens. The one
connection of doctrine is with the salvation of the
soul. The Cambridge Platonists had held that
"orthodoxness" was a word unnecessary in religion 2.
Locke held that it was a word irrelevant in politics.
"Every church is orthodox to itself ^" None is
orthodox to the magistrate, because doctrine is not
in his sphere. Thus Locke was led to a theory
of absolute religious liberty. No Englishman but
Roger Williams had extended toleration to religions
other than Christian. They had all insisted on the
necessity of holding the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity. Their refusal to extend toleration to
1 Letter I, p. 35.
2 More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, p. 494.
3 Letter I, p. 11.
AND LOCKE 119
all had been frequently used as an argument against
toleration \ It seemed only right that a principle
claiming Reason as its basis should be extended
to its logical conclusion. Locke answered this argu-
ment by forming a theory which was logically con-
sistent, and bound to be accepted by all who would
grant his original premise that the State has nothing
to do with the world to come.
There were two exceptions in this system oi Excep-
religious liberty, both of them defended on logical u^^jloinan
grounds. Locke was careful to point out that the Catholi-
dogmas of the Roman Catholic religion are as Mahomet-
tolerable as any other dogmas. " If a Roman (^nism.
Catholic believe that to be really the body of Christ,
which another man calls bread, he does no injury
thereby to his neighbour^." Unlike Milton he did
not pretend to sit as judge upon the truth of the
Roman Catholic religion. All that he did was to
point to the political doctrines of the Papists, and
those doctrines only. As they are treasonable and
destructive to the security of all Protestant kingdoms
they are intolerable. In the commonwealth of the
Jews all idolatry was treason, because the govern-
ment was an absolute theocracy ^ In the kingdom
of England any religion is treasonable which ne-
cessitates the acknowledgement of the supremacy
of a foreign potentate, whether in Rome or Con-
stantinople. Both Papists and Mahometans for this
^ Cf. the opening passage in the Tract Some queries concerning
liberty of conscience directed to William Fenn and Henry Care ;
and passim in the pamphlets.
2 Letter I, p. 26.
^ Ibid., p. 25.
120 TOLERATION
reason come under the civil law of treason. Locke
has been much blamed for refusing to include Papists
in his scheme of toleration. If More could advo-
cate a toleration for all Papists, who made a public
promise not to disturb the existing state of society i;
if Halifax could tolerate lay Papists, and advocate
a general connivance at popery in England, bidding
people genuinely to try "not to smell the match that
was to have blown up the King and both Houses in
the Gunpowder Treason 2," if William of Orange, the
European champion of Protestantism, "readily con-
sented to a toleration of popery as well as of the
dissenters provided it were proposed and passed in
parliamentV' although he firmly defended the reten-
tion of the tests for office as providing a genuine
security; could not Locke have fouud an excuse to
do likewise? Locke's attitude is generally taken in
connection with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
which had taken place in 1685. But the fear of the
Catholic revival must have been just as lively in
the minds of Halifax or of William. Nor does this
explanation account for the equally uncompromising
attitude to Papists in Locke's early essay ^ Further-
more it passes over the refusal to tolerate Mahoriiet-
anism. Locke could have made a proposal similar
to that of either More, Halifax or William III, and
still maintained the logical consistency of his theory.
^ In Grand Mystery of Godliness, ch. xi.
2 See his Trimmer and Letter to a Dissenter, Foxcroft, 11.
pp. 317 and 322.
3 Cf. Burnet, pp. 251, 257, 264, also Fagel's letter to James
Stewart in Somers' Tracts, ix. p. 184.
4 Fox Bourne, i. p. 183.
AND LOCKE 121
But it did not suit his purpose. Locke's theory
rested upon the recognition of the absolute and
entire separation of Church and State, religion and
politics, inward and outward concerns of life. In the
two cases where these things were undeniably con-
fused. Popery and Mahometanism, Locke was bound
to emphasise the harmfulness of the confusion rather
than the harmlessness of these religions in them-
selves. He put down all the disorders of society,
the bloodshed, and the turmoil to the failure to
distinguish secular from religious affairs. To make
his attitude as clear as possible he advocated the
exclusion from religious liberty of Mahometans,
whom he knew to be practically negligible in English
politics, as well as Papists, whom he knew to be
far from negligible, not so much because they were
dangerous, but because they were professors of a
political religion.
Locke's refusal to tolerate atheists, though not (&)
difficult to explain, is less easy to justify. He was
of opinion that every rational creature must by a
process of reason arrive at a belief in God. His
belief in natural religion was closely akin to that of
the Platonist, Cudworth, and his daughter, Lady
Masham. Like the Platonists he held that it was
necessary to have an antecedent belief in the exist-
ence of God in order to make the acceptance of His
revealed word possible. For this reason a belief in
God is something more than a doctrine. But even
so, purely as a matter of inward interest to the
individual, belief or disbelief is permissible. But
Locke like all the thinkers of his age attached an
122 TOLERATION
outward importance to a belief in God. Contractua-
lists laid a special stress on oaths and covenants as
being the instruments which make life in society
possible. Oaths and promises are contracts or agree-
ments made between man and man before God. A
promise to do something implied " may God punish
me if I do not do it." For this reason Locke in his
draft of the laws of Carolina had made it necessary
for all sects to make a statement of " the external
way, whereby they witness a truth as in the presence
of God." Hobbes had devoted parts of two chapters
of the Leviathan^ to the question of covenants.
He had explained that the two things which induce
men to keep their contracts and restrain them from
evil-doing, are the fear of God and the fear of man.
It was discovered that the fear of future punishment
was not enough to keep men in the paths of justice.
Therefore commonwealths were formed in order to
force men to keep their contracts. " The validity of
covenants begins not but with the constitution of a
civil power sufficient to compel men to keep them I'*
Locke, in his turn, accepted these views of Hobbes.
But, if it is the fear of present punishment more
than the fear of future punishment which makes
men keep their oaths and observe their contracts,
it seems unnecessary to consider a belief in God
essential to the existence of society. Locke had
particularly divided moral actions into those which
affect the community and those which affect only
the individual. To avoid immediate punishment at
the hands of the civil magistrate, a man is bound to
1 Chh. XIV. and xv. 2 Leviathan, p. 94.
AND LOCKE 123
lead a life outwardly moral and to refraia from all
forms of vice which have a deleterious effect on the
State. The existence of God and the fear of eternal
punishment are only relevant to his personal morality,
which, it has been granted, has no political influence.
Therefore the State will be safe as long as it enforces
the laws of the external morality, which maintains
it in peace and order.
But Locke believed that atheism contradicted
the broader principle of government itself. Every
citizen by remaining under the protection of the
State gives a tacit consent to the original contract,
on which the commonwealth was formed. However
utilitarian this contract was in spirit, it presumed a
confidence in the justice of natural law, which is the
eternal unrevealed law of God. A tacit consent to
the original contract given by all members of society,
also implies a confidence in this divine law. This
consent is impossible, if the existence of God is
denied. From this point of view atheism is a re-
jection of the principle of order and reason in the
universe. Atheism is not inconsistent with the
utilitarian view of the State at which Locke was
arriving. It is inconsistent with the view of a
utilitarian State claiming an immutable foundation
on a system of natural right.
This was the complete and consistent theory of Origin of
Locke's
toleration that Locke formed. Much of Locke's theory in
theory can be found in Williams, Milton, Penn, ^*^'« powfti-
More, Cud worth, Taylor, Halifax — to say nothing rational-
of the numberless pamphleteers. But as handled by ^^"\^J^^,
^ _ ^ *^ utilitari-
these writers toleration was never welded into a anism.
124 TOLERATION
compact theory. Locke performed this task. He
had a strong belief in the power of reason and the
rational element which alone distinguishes man
from the animals. Because of this belief he felt no
less strongly that each individual must have the
liberty to use his power of reason. An implicit
faith, a vicarious employment of reason, was to
him unintelligible. Liberty of conscience seemed
in the deepest sense a "natural rights" the essential
possession of a rational creature.
But none the less Locke emphasised the other
side of man's nature. Medicine and economics in-
terested him no less than religion, the safety of
men's bodies no less than the salvation of their
souls. He was never tired of emphasising the sanctity
of property, the natural right which a man has to
preserve his life and enjoy the labour of his hands.
Locke, It was the combination of these two views that
HobbeT^ produced a belief in toleration. Sir William Petty,
the economist and contemporary of Locke, had the
same admiration of the religious liberty in the
Netherlands, as had all others interested in commerce.
He was able to give a ver}^ good account of their
theory 2. But having no rationalistic belief in the
rights of conscience he was not a genuine advocate
of toleration. He saw the economic advantages.
That was all. Consequently, although he gave the
same grounds as Locke for punishing Dissenters,
guilty of a breach of the civil peace, and atheists,
who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul, he
added a third ground. He believed that the
1 Letter I, p. 32. - Works, ii. pp. 262-4.
AND LOCKE 125
magistrate had a right to punish any "false believers"
for no other reason than their heterodoxy \ Hobbes,
it is true, combined rationalism and utilitarianism.
The reason why he failed to arrive at the same
result as Locke is different. He believed that
conscience was free, but he believed more strongly
still in the danger of any departure from unity in
the State. He upheld the doctrine of individual
liberty of conscience, but he could not reconcile the
existence of sects with the safety of society. Locke
answered Hobbes' objections by his definition of the
legal position of all the subordinate societies in a
State and his insistence on refusing to tolerate popery
or atheism.
Locke's rationalism gave him the principle of (^on-
religious liberty. His Whiggism afforded the ex- Locke's
ceptions. Some of the champions of liberty of^*^^*-
conscience had been led to introduce exceptions on
rational grounds. The conscience of a Roman Catholic
was in Milton's judgment no conscience, because he
has given up the right to think for himself and to
listen to the voice of God and Reason ; and " New
Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The con-
sciences of all Nonconformists were in the judgment
of the Latitudinarians and Platonists no consciences,
in so far as their religion was based on their affection
for themselves and their ministers. Those, who
have chosen not to use their reason, cannot expect
1 "That the magistrate may punish false believers if he
believe he shall offend God in forbearing it, is true ; for the same
reasons that men give for Liberty of Conscience and universal
toleration." Petty, Works, i. p. 70.
126 TOLERATION
to receive the privilege of rational creatures, liberty.
Locke held these views himself; but, believing as
he did that the magistrate has no right to inflict
punishment or " change property amongst fellow-
subjects, no not even by a law, for a cause that has
no relation to the end of civil government S" he
could only give political reasons for refusing religious
liberty. It was nothing more than a coincidence that
popery and atheism were the two religions, which
were attacked on the double ground that they set
no value on reason in addition to being politically
unsafe. But this coincidence gave rise to confusion.
So Locke is careful to explain that his reasons for
excluding them from toleration are solely political.
Toleration is a political principle. Politics are con-
cerned with the material welfare of a state. It does
not matter from this point of view if a man does
neglect his rational faculties, provided that he is a
peaceable citizen.
There is no poetry in Locke's conception. It is
stern logic. He had no Miltonic love of battle and
no common-place love of peace. He looked to no
millennium, no state, where men glory in " mutual
forbearance and bearing up one another as living
stones of that Temple, where there is not to be
heard the noise of either axe or hammer, no squabble
or clamour about forms or opinions, but a peaceable
study and endeavour of provoking one another to
love and good works-." He stripped the question of
all its poetry, and separating it, as far as he could,
1 Letter I, p. 29.
2 Quoted from More in Tulloch, ii. p. 363.
AND LOCKE 127
from all subordinate controversies, left a naked
scientific theory. He passed over the question of
Comprehension as being a matter for Churches to
decide among themselves. He just emphasised the
one fact that a Church is nothing more than a civil
association in its relation to the State.
Things had been moving in this direction through
the period under discussion. The days were long
gone when the clergy were exempt from the civil
jurisdiction of the land. After 1664 they no longer
claimed a separate system of taxation. Convocation
was in a dying condition. The idea was already
beginning to grow that the Church should enjoy no
peculiar constitutional position. Locke extended -.*
this tendency and established once and for all the
doctrine that religious societies must be subject to
no greater legal restrictions than secular societies.
This is the only logical basis for toleration.
§2.
In the ancient world the relations of Church and Summai-y
State were of a simple nature. Among the Jews relations
and amonpr the Greeks and Romans the idea of a ^-^ Church
. ° , and State.
double life, in Church and State, was unthous^ht of. Theiriden-
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was in a [jf ^;^f ^'^
sense a political God. It was He that led the Jews ancient
out of Egypt and won their battles, conquering the
gods of the Philistines and the heathen nations that
dwelt in and about the Land of Promise. It was the
gods of Athens, whose images were carried on the
ships at Marathon, that beat the Persian host. In
the one case the State was the Church, in the other
128 TOLERATION
case the Church was tlie State. The Jews considered
themselves to be the chosen people of Jehovah,
living in a peculiar sense under His government.
That was all their political philosophy. The author
of the book of Job, alone of the writers of the Old
Testament, had a different conception of the ways
of God. The Greeks found their religion in serving
the State. Their gods were their selves idealised.
By glorifying their State with sculpture, architecture,
poetry, they felt that they were performing acts of
worship. In their philosophy there is no belief that
the State exists merely for the sake of life, that the
Church is necessary for the good life. Aristotle
emphatically stated that the village was enough for
existence ; the State was formed in order to make it-
possible for men to lead the good life. In other
words religion and politics were entirely identified
in both these systems. There was no movement for
their separation. The Sophists tried to neglect
religion, and the Stoics bade their followers avoid
politics and live, as it were, apart from the world.
But neither Sophists nor Stoics advocated a dual
system, making a separation of politics and religion
into two distinct spheres, and retaining both.
Their Christianity introduced a new conception of
apparently society to the world. The definite command of
assertedby Christ, "Render unto Caesar the things which are
anity hut Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's,'*
Tellised enunciated what has been one of the greatest
in the problems of political science. It divided human
Ages. ^ activity into two definite spheres, it separated poli-
tics and theology, it distinguished Church and State.
AND LOCKE 129
Throughout the Middle Ages, Europe struggled to
avoid all that this entailed. With a Pope supreme in
matters spiritual and an Emperor supreme in matters
temporal it retained the form of government which
suggested this separation; but it witnessed a struggle
that was never finished and a battle that was never
won between this Pope and Emperor, each in his
turn asserting his supremacy over the other and
each encroaching on the other's sphere. There was
little attempt to keep apart matters temporal and
matters spiritual. The Emperor no less than the
Pope was considered to be the direct representative
of God on earth, and no matter whether the Pope or
the Emperor succeeded in establishing himself as
executive sovereign of Europe, the Holy Roman
Empire was a great religious commonwealth, an
extension based upon the New Testament of the
old theocracy, under which the Jews had lived in
accordance with the old covenant.
The idea of unity had a magical attraction in
the Middle Ages. Not only did Christianity glory
in the conception of one great State coextensive
with the one true religion. Many Christians went
further than this. They felt like the Stoics that
there can be no unity in a life that is devoted to
politics as well as to religion. And so some fled to
the woods and rocks, and lived the lives of hermits ;
others shut themselves off from worldly concerns in
monasteries. The majority of men, feeling that
religion and politics were not incompatible but
had a common end and object, were contented with
the single purpose of the theocratic system under
R.-8. 9
130 TOLERATION
which they lived, and found in it the unity they
desired.
The Re- Schisms and heresies there were under the
formation, j^uedieval system, but it was reserved for Luther to
shatter once and for all the unity of the catholic
church, the foundation on which the Holy Roman
Empire was built, and to bequeath to Europe a
second religion.
(a) Luther After the peace of Augsburg in 1555, two dis-
Duther- ^i^^t forms of Christianity were tolerated, not it is
anism. true by the Pope, but by the secular head of the
and state Catholic religion, the Emperor, who had received
still from Christ the power of the sword to defend it.
identified. . iifi^- • ii
fjutheranism had fought for its existence with the
sword and had triumphed. Charles V as imperial
sovereign of both Lutheran and Catholic States
occupied the peculiar position of being the one
man in Europe pledged to toleration, forced by
circumstances officially to permit variation in re-
ligion among his subjects.
The Lutheran and the Catholic princes subject
to him were not bound to permit variety of religion
in their State. Lutheran Churches, no less than
the Church from which they dissented, were State
Churches, and the subjects of a Lutheran State had
to be members of the Lutheran Church or leave the
State. Luther broke the unity of religion in the
Empire, and did away in fact with the dual sove-
reignty which the Middle Ages had retained in
form. He did not break the connection of Church
and State. Their union was emphasised more clearly
than ever in the principle of " cuius regio eius
AND LOCKE 131
religio " ; and the connection of religion and politics
in the Lutheran system was clearly shown in the
duties of the magistrate. The absolute necessity of
internal unity was expressed in the same two ways :
(i) There can only be one religion in a State, (ii) The
subjects of a State must not be made to "see double^"
by having a separate civil and ecclesiastical authority,
to both of which they are to give their allegiance.
Luther, like Hobbes and Machiavelli, was a
strong believer in the State, but he could do no
more than substitute an Erastian for a theocratic
system. There is less difference in practice between
these systems than may be supposed. Both presume
a, connection of the Church with politics. In the
theocratic system the Church commands, in the
Erastian system the Church advises.
Thus the Reformation had destroyed the idea of
a universal dual sovereignty and had substituted in
some quarters Erastianism for theocracy. In England
a similar result was realised.
The Church of Henry VIII, the island Church
of England, was like the Lutheran churches in
Germany a State Church based on a uniformity
of doctrine.
But the spirit which Luther had awakened was (6) Other
not satisfied with Lutheranism. Doctrine was ^Existence
bound to follow doctrine, and sect sect. Men were ofreiigious
bound to revolt at a system by which they were connected
compelled to follow an artificial principle and conform ^''*^ ^^^
their religion to that of the sect established in the
place of their birth. The Reformation really killed
^ The phrase is Hobbes' : Leviathan, p. 322.
9—2
132 TOLERATION
the system of compulsory State Churches. In a
unitary State like England the form of religious
liberty which was given in the Empire by the peace
of Augsburg was impossible \ In a federal State
like the United Netherlands this solution was not
accepted. The sects fought for their existence, as
Lutheranism had done. They were recognised in the
Netherlands by William the Silent, and in England
by Cromwell, but not on the Augsburg lines. The
sects were too numerous and some of them too small
to be identified with separate territories. The ex-
periment of having churches on a basis other than
territorial was tried with success. The new system
survived uninterrupted in the Netherlands. In
England it was interrupted at the Restoration.
With the return of Charles II the old system was
restored, but not for long. The sects fought a second
war for their existence, a war of words, in which life
was lost on one side only ; and this second time
their victory was permanent.
Locke's The origin of the new system is to be seen in
justifica- ^i^g ^^g^ idea, of the Church, which was held by
tionojthis. ' ^ ^ -^
Robert Browne and the Separatists in Elizabeth's
reign and handed on to the Independents who suc-
ceeded them^. The political theory, which justified
the existence of independent churches, was a long
time in being developed. Althusius in Holland formed
the theory of the State as a " consociatio consocia-
tionum," a civil society composed of subordinate
1 It was tried without success with the Huguenots in France.
2 Cf. the account of the meaning of a Church in the Savoy
declaration of faith.
AND LOCKE 133
societies, social, political and religious, which owed
allegiance to a common governments Locke in
England did the same thing. He accepted the
Independents' idea of a Church and raised upon the
basis of a Hobbist utilitarianism a theory of the
State which would fit it. He gave up the second
medieval unity. He encouraged the haVjit of
" seeing double," which Hobbes had deprecated. He
separated entirely politics from religion. He con-
ceived of a State which could exist without a Church,
and gave it a raison d'etre. He left religion under
the care of the various religious societies, which the
State embraced, and defined the relation of these
bodies with the State. Cromwell shattered the
theory that one uniform religion is necessary to
the existence of the State, but left the idea that
the magistrate must be a godly man, who can ad-
minister the law of God with knowledge through
the land. Locke exposed this second idea, and,
taking all duties from the magistrate but the pre-
servation of life and property, left the theory of a
State giving liberty and protection to all societies
that observe its laws and are not dangerous to its
existence.
With the territorial coincidence of Church and Toiera-
State toleration is obviously impossible except in
the sense meant by Jeremy Taylor in his conception
of the liberty of prophesying. While the spheres of
religion and politics are confused, the civil magistrate
is justified in imposing the established religion of
1 Cf. the account of Althusius in J. N. Figgis, From Gerson to
Grot ills.
134 TOLERATION AND LOCKE
the land. When the territorial coincidence of Church
and State is broken and the existence of sects is
established, the one thing requisite for the intro-
duction of religious liberty is the recognition of the
separation of the spheres of politics and religion.
If the State ceases to claim the regulation of religion
within its territories, the persecution that is coun-
tenanced by Act of Parliament ceases also. The
subtler forms of social persecution can never be
checked until the principle, which is neither natural
nor obvious, that every man has a positive right to
hold his own opinion and, if necessary, to differ from
his fellows is recognised in its deepest significance
by an entire people.
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Routledge's edition.)
Hooker, Richard : The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593).
(The references are to Keble's edition of Hooker's works.)
Knox, John : History of the Reformation in Scotland. Laing's
edition of Knox's collected works.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 137
Laud, William : Worh. In the Library of Anglo-Catholic
Theology. ■•
Marvell, Andrew : Rehearsal Transprosed. 1672.
Milton, John : Prose Works ; especially :
Areopagitica. 1644.
A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. 1659.
Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hire-
lings out of the Church. 1659.
Of true Religion, Haeresie, Schism., Toleration and what
best Means may he used against the growth of Popery.
1673.
More, Henry : An explanation of the Grand Mystery of God-
liness. 1660.
Owen, John : Works. Collected edition by W. H. Goold,
1850, especially :
Of Schism. 1659.
The power of the magistrate about Religion. 1659.
Discourse on Christian Love and Peace. 1662.
A Peace-offering or Plea for Indulgence. 1667.
Lndulgence and Toleration considered. 1670.
A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church Peace
and Unity. 1672.
Nature and Causes of Apostacy from the Gospel. 1676.
An Inquiry into the Original Nature of Evangelical
Churches. 1681.
Parker, Samuel : A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, etc. 1670.
Continuation of Ecclesiastical Polity. 1671.
Patrick, Simon : A Friendly Debate between a Conformist and
a Nonconformist. 1669.
Penn, William : The great case of Liberty of Conscience once
more debated, etc. 1670.
England^ s present Interest discover'' d... 1675.
A Persuasive to Moderation to Church Dissenters. 1686.
The Reasonableness of Toleration. 1687.
Good Advice to the Church of England, Roman
Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. 1687.
And other less important pamphlets.
138 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Petty, Sir William : Treatise on Taxes. 1662.
Political Arithmetic. 1687.
(The references are to the Cambridge edition of his works,
1899.)
Pepys, Samuel : Diary.
Sidney, Algernon : Discourses concerning Government. 1698
(written about 1680).
Smith, John : Select Discourses (1660). (The references are
to the edition of 1673.)
Stillingfleet, Edward : Irenicon. 1659.
Taylor, Jeremy : Works. Edited by Heber, 1822 ; especially :
Liberty of Prophesying. 1646.
Temple, Sir William : Observations upon the United Provinces
of the Netherlands. 1674.
Thorndike, Herbert : Works. In the Library of Anglo-
Catholic Theology.
Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham : Miscellaneous Works.
Published in 1704-5.
Williams, Roger : The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. 1644.
In the Hanserd KnoUys Society's publications.
The fugitive literature on the subject is enormous. But
the pamphlets repeat each other both in manner and matter
to an extraordinary extent. In addition to those already
mentioned, the following four are typical and important.
Tolleration discussed in a dialogue between a Conformist and a
Nonconformist. .. 1670.
Liberty of Conscience in its order to Universal Peace. 1681,
A Letter from Holland concerning Liberty of Conscience. 1688.
An Enquiry into the measures of submission to the Supream
authority. 1689. (Probably by Burnet.)
The Tracts on Liberty of Conscience published by the
Hanserd Knollys Society are valuable as a collection of
pamphlets tracing the doctrine down to the Restoration
period. Of collections of pamphlets relating to the period
under consideration the Somers Collection is the only one of
importance which is catalogued.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 139
Later Writers.
In addition to the Dictionary of National Biography and
the standard works on English History and English Church
History the following books are of importance :
Acton: History of Freedom and other Essays. 1907.
Bastide, Charles : John Locke: ses theories politiques et leur
influence en Angleterre. Paris, 1907.
Blakey, R. : The History of Political Literature. 1855.
Bourne, Fox : Life of John Locke. 1876.
Brooks, Phillips : Tolerance. 1887,
Buckle, H. T. : History of Civilisation in England. 1857-61.
Christie, W. D. : A life of Antony Ashley Cooper. 1871.
Creighton, Mandell : Persecution and Tolerance. Hulsean
Lectures, 1893-4.
Cunningham, W. : Alien Immigrants in England. 1897.
Dale, R. W. : History of English Congregationalism. 1907.
Figgis, J. N. : From Gerson to Grotius. 1907.
The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings. 1892.
Cambridge Modern History^ Vol. iii., Chap. xxii.
Foxcroft, H. C. : The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, etc.
1838.
Geffcken, F. IL : Church and State. Taylor's translation,
1877.
Gooch, C. P. : English democratic ideas in the 17 th century.
1898.
Gwatkin, H. M. : Cambridge Modern History, Vol. v.,
Chap. XI.
Hallam, H. : Introduction to the Literature of Europe. 1837-9.
Hunt, J. H. : History of Religious Thought in England. 1870.
Janet, Paul : Histoire de la Science Politique. Paris, 1872.
Kaufifmann, M. : Cambridge Modern History, Vol. v.. Chap.
XXIV.
King, Lord : Life of John Locke. 1830.
Lecky, W. E. H. : History of Rationalism. 1865.
Martyn, B. : Life of Antony Ashley Cooper. 1836.
Masson, David : Life of John Milton. 1881.
140 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Matagrin, A. : Histoire de la Tolerance Religieuse. Paris,
1905.
Mullinger, J. B. : Cambridge characteristics in the 11 th century.
1867.
Shaw, W. A. : A history of the English Church during the
Civil War and under the Commonwealth. 1900.
Tulloch, J. : Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in
England in the 17 th century. 1874
INDEX
Althusius, 132
American colonies, 37, 52-6, 64,
65
Anabaptists, 50, 76, 94, 118
Andrewes, 90
Anglicans, 8, 94, 96
Antinomians, 50, 76-77
Arminians, 118
Articuli Schmalcaldici, 90
Bacon, 90
Bancroft, 90
Baptists, 50, 95
— assert doctrines of tolera-
tion, 27, 55
— are included in proposals
for toleration, 2, 75, 87, 93, 98
— See also Roger Williams,
Bunyan, etc.
Barrow, Isaac, 101
Basnage de Beauval, 103, 104
Baxter, 12 n., 29 n., 44, 48, 49,
75, 76, 78, 93, 95, 101
Bayle, 51, 103, 104
Beza, 90
Boyle, 17-18
Brandenburg, 102-3
Browne, Robert, 132
Browning quoted, 16
Buckingham, Duke of, 13, 61,
71 99
Bunyan, 28-9, 48, 49, 64 n.,
81
Burke, 22
Burnet, 16, 57 n., 58
Calvin, 90
Charles I, 91
Charles II, 15, 62-3, 99
Charles V, 130
Chillingworth, 5, 39, 71, 73,
77, 90, 93-4
Chfford, 99
Corbet, 68 n., 93
Corporation Act, 8, 59
Cotton, 37
Coventry, Sir William, 99
Cranmer, 90
Croft, 77 n., 94
Cromwell, 52, 132, 133
Cudworth, 14, 77, 101, 121,
123
Culverwell, 79 n.
D'Avenant, 11
Deists, 2, 10, 15, 98
Delaune, 48 n.
Denton, 34 n., 85 n.
Descartes, 14, 72, 103
Dove, Dr, 42 n.
Du Moulin, Lewis, 93
Episcopius, 73
Erastianism, 30-1, 37, 105,
131
Fagel, 120 n.
Glanvill, 71, 73, 74 n.
Greek Church, 76, 94
Grotius, 42, 46, 90
Hales, 5, 39, 71, 73, 75, 77, 90
Halifax, Marquis of, 10 n., 13,
16, 22-3, 45, 60-1, 69, 71,
99, 106, 120, 123
142
INDEX
Harrington, 23
Harvey, 17
Hobbes, 31-2, 44, 57, 72, 73 n.,
82, 88, 117, 122, 125, 131,
133
Hooker, 33, 35, 57, 90
Howe, 48
Huguenots in England, 33, 65,
99
Independents, 88, 90, 109, 132
— assert doctrines of tolera-
tion, 27, 55, 98
— are included in proposals
for toleration, 76, 94, 118
— See also Owen, Milton,
etc.
James I, 90
James II, 99
Jewell, 90
Jews, 51, 52, 103, 118
Knox, 33-4
Latitudinarians, 14, 40, 70-97
Laud, 91
Law of Nature, 78-87
L'E strange. Sir Eoger, 50, 57,
65 n., 103 n., 113 n.
Limborch, 2, 4, 103
Locke, 2, 5, 17, 26, 38, 53,
62 n., 98-127, 133
Luther, 76, 130-1
Lutherans, 30, 76, 94, 130-1
Machiavelli, 131
Mahometans, 51, 52, 118, 119-
121
Marvell, Andrew, 10-12, 39,
111
Masham, Lady, 100, 101, 121
Melancthon, 90
Mill, John Stuart, 114
Milton, 3, 8, 11, 24-5, 37, 38-9,
40, 52 n., 57, 71, 119, 128,
125
More, Henry, 3, 14, 71, 77, 78,
85 n., 87 n., 93, 95, 118, 120,
123, 126
More, Sir Thomas, 52
Netherlands, 45, 51, 55, 63-8,
102-3, 132
Newton, Isaac, 101
Gates, Titus, 20
Owen, 9-10, 20, 28 n., 35 n.,
37 n., 44 n., 48, 80-1, 109 n.
Parker, Samuel, 10, 15, 35 n.,
47, 49, 58 n., 63 n., 80, 91,
113 n.
Patrick, Simon, 73 n., 92
Penn, 3, 5 n., 6 n., 37, 39-48,
53, 57, 59-60, 68 n., 71, 94,
101, 123
Pepys, 47
Petty, Sir William, 60 n., 66 n.,
124, 125 n.
Platonists, 14, 42, 70-97, 112-
113, 125
Presbyterians, 27, 31, 37, 50,
96
— included in proposals for
toleration, 75, 90, 94, 118
Proast, 105
Quakers, 8, 20, 48, 50, 90, 95
— assert doctrines of tolera-
tion, 27, 40, 55, 98
— are included in proposals
for toleration, 2, 75, 87, 93,
94, 118
— See also Penn
Banters, 50
Kising of the North, 47
Koman Catholics, 10, 19-21,
41, 125, 126
refusal to tolerate, 2, 3,
8, 119-121
included in proposals
for toleration, 87, 93, 94
Koyal Society, 101
Rye House Plot, 47
Sands, Dr, 94
Separatists, 13, 132
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 2, 13, 15,
24, 61, 62, 71, 99, 101, 102
Sidney, Algernon, 53, 59 n., 71,
101
INDEX
143
Smith, Johu, 14, 77 n., 81
Social Contract, 56-8
Socinians, 95
South, Dr, 42 n.
Spinoza, 103
StiUingfleet, 58, 74, 75, 89-90,
92 n.
Sydenham, 17
Taylor, Jeremy, 3, 5, 8, 39, 70,
71, 77, 87n., 93, 94, 123, 133
Temple, Sir William, 15, 65-8
Test Act, 8, 59
Thorndike, 32 n., 34 n., 63,
64 n., 91, 98
Tillotson, 101
Toleration Act, 1-4, 7-8, 104
Triers, Board of, 8
Unitarians, 2
Ussher, 95
Utilitarianism, 18-19, 56
Venner's Insurrection, 47
Walloons in England, 33, 65,
99
Whichcote, 14, 71, 77, 86
Whigs, The, 13, 18, 21-6, 40,
60-3, 68-9, 98
Whitgift, 90
Wilkins, 101
William III, 101, 120
Williams, Roger, 3, 35 n., 36 n.,
37-8, 40, 51, 53, 54, 57, 71,
105, 116, 118, 123
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1911
Russell-
Smith, h
[ugh Francis.
The theory
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liberty
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reigns of
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