Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

24/John Locke 


upon the worshippers of God? For the greatest part of these ceremonies 
and superstitions consists in the religious use of such things as are in 
their own nature indifferent; nor are they sinful upon any other account 
than because God is not the author of them. The sprinkling of water and 
the use of bread and wine are both in their own nature and in the ordi- 
nary occasions of life altogether indifferent. Will any man, therefore, 
say that these things could have been introduced into religion and made 
a part of divine worship if not by divine institution? If any human au- 
thority or civil power could have done this, why might it not also enjoin 
the eating of fish and drinking of ale in the holy banquet as a paid of 
divine worship? Why not the sprinkling of the blood of beasts in churches, 
and expiations by water or fire, and abundance more of this kind? But 
these things, how indifferent soever they be in common uses, when they 
come to be annexed unto divine worship, without divine authority, they 
are as abominable to God as the sacrifice of a dog. And why is a dog so 
abominable? What difference is there between a dog and a goat, in re- 
spect of the divine nature, equally and infinitely distant from all affinity 
with matter, unless it be that God required the use of one in His worship 
and not of the other? We see, therefore, that indifferent things, how 
much soever they be under the power of the civil magistrate, yet cannot, 
upon that pretence, be introduced into religion and imposed upon reli- 
gious assemblies, because, in the worship of God, they wholly cease to 
be indifferent. He that worships God does it with design to please Him 
and procure His favour. But that cannot be done by him who, upon the 
command of another, offers unto God that which he knows will be dis- 
pleasing to Him, because not commanded by Himself. This is not to 
please God, or appease his wrath, but willingly and knowingly to pro- 
voke Him by a manifest contempt, which is a thing absolutely repug- 
nant to the nature and end of worship. 

But it will be here asked: “If nothing belonging to divine worship be 
left to human discretion, how is it then that Churches themselves have 
the power of ordering anything about the time and place of worship and 
the like?” To this I answer that in religious worship we must distinguish 
between what is paid of the worship itself and what is but a circum- 
stance. That is a part of the worship which is believed to be appointed 
by God and to be well-pleasing to Him, and therefore that is necessary. 
Circumstances arc such things which, though in general they cannot be 
separated from worship, yet the particular instances or modifications of 
them are not determined, and therefore they are indifferent. Of this sort