Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

26/John Locke 


of beasts should be forborne for some while, in order to the increasing 
of the stock of cattle that had been destroyed by some extraordinary 
murrain, who sees not that the magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all 
his subjects to kill any calves for any use whatsoever? Only it is to be 
observed that, in this case, the law is not made about a religious, but a 
political matter; nor is the sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby 
prohibited. 

By this we see what difference there is between the Church and the 
Commonwealth. Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth cannot be 
prohibited by the magistrate in the Church. Whatsoever is permitted 
unto any of his subjects for their ordinary use, neither can nor ought to 
be forbidden by him to any sect of people for their religious uses. If any 
man may lawfully take bread or wine, either sitting or kneeling in his 
own house, the law ought not to abridge him of the same liberty in his 
religious worship; though in the Church the use of bread and wine be 
very different and be there applied to the mysteries of faith and rites of 
Divine worship. But those things that are prejudicial to the commonweal 
of a people in their ordinary use and are, therefore, forbidden by laws, 
those things ought not to be permitted to Churches in their sacred rites. 
Only the magistrate ought always to be very careful that he do not mis- 
use his authority to the oppression of any Church, under pretence of 
public good. 

It may be said: “What if a Church be idolatrous, is that also to be 
tolerated by the magistrate?” I answer: What power can be given to the 
magistrate for the suppression of an idolatrous Church, which may not 
in time and place be made use of to the ruin of an orthodox one? For it 
must be remembered that the civil power is the same everywhere, and 
the religion of every prince is orthodox to himself. If, therefore, such a 
power be granted unto the civil magistrate in spirituals as that at Geneva, 
for example, he may extiipate, by violence and blood, the religion which 
is there reputed idolatrous, by the same rule another magistrate, in some 
neighbouring country, may oppress the reformed religion and, in India, 
the Christian. The civil power can either change everything in religion, 
according to the prince’s pleasure, or it can change nothing. If it be once 
permitted to introduce anything into religion by the means of laws and 
penalties, there can be no bounds put to it; but it will in the same manner 
be lawful to alter everything, according to that rule of truth which the 
magistrate has framed unto himself. No man whatsoever ought, there- 
fore, to be deprived of his terrestrial enjoyments upon account of his