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First Letter Concerning Toleration/15 


ment. Flere they can be content to spare their arguments; which yet (with 
their leave) is the only right method of propagating truth, which has no 
such way of prevailing as when strong arguments and good reason are 
joined with the softness of civility and good usage. 

Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, 
nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights 
and worldly goods of each other upon pretence of religion. Those that 
are of another opinion would do well to consider with themselves how 
pernicious a seed of discord and war, how powerful a provocation to 
endless hatreds, rapines, and slaughters they thereby furnish unto man- 
kind. No peace and security, no, not so much as common friendship, can 
ever be established or preserved amongst men so long as this opinion 
prevails, that dominion is founded in grace and that religion is to be 
propagated by force of arms. 

In the third place, let us see what the duty of toleration requires 
from those who are distinguished from the rest of mankind (from the 
laity, as they please to call us) by some ecclesiastical character and 
office; whether they be bishops, priests, presbyters, ministers, or how- 
ever else dignified or distinguished. It is not my business to inquire here 
into the original of the power or dignity of the clergy. This only I say, 
that, whencesoever their authority be sprung, since it is ecclesiastical, it 
ought to be confined within the bounds of the Church, nor can it in any 
manner be extended to civil affairs, because the Church itself is a thing 
absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The bound- 
aries on both sides are fixed and immovable. Fie jumbles heaven and 
earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these 
two societies, which are in their original, end, business, and in every- 
thing perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other. No man, 
therefore, with whatsoever ecclesiastical office he be dignified, can de- 
prive another man that is not of his church and faith either of liberty or 
of any paid of his worldly goods upon the account of that difference 
between them in religion. For whatsoever is not lawful to the whole 
Church cannot by any ecclesiastical right become lawful to any of its 
members. 

But this is not all. It is not enough that ecclesiastical men abstain 
from violence and rapine and all manner of persecution. Fie that pre- 
tends to be a successor of the apostles, and takes upon him the office of 
teaching, is obliged also to admonish his hearers of the duties of peace 
and goodwill towards all men, as well towards the erroneous as the