Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

First Letter Concerning Toleration/27 


religion. Not even Americans, subjected unto a Christian prince, are to 
be punished either in body or goods for not embracing our faith and 
worship. If they are persuaded that they please God in observing the 
rites of their own country and that they shall obtain happiness by that 
means, they are to be left unto God and themselves. Let us trace this 
matter to the bottom. Thus it is: An inconsiderable and weak number of 
Christians, destitute of everything, arrive in a Pagan country; these for- 
eigners beseech the inhabitants, by the bowels of humanity, that they 
would succour them with the necessaries of life; those necessaries are 
given them, habitations are granted, and they all join together, and grow 
up into one body of people. The Christian religion by this means takes 
root in that country and spreads itself, but does not suddenly grow the 
strongest. While things are in this condition peace, friendship, faith, and 
equal justice are preserved amongst them. At length the magistrate be- 
comes a Christian, and by that means their party becomes the most 
powerful. Then immediately all compacts are to be broken, all civil 
rights to be violated, that idolatry may be extiipated; and unless these 
innocent Pagans, strict observers of the rules of equity and the law of 
Nature and no ways offending against the laws of the society, I say, 
unless they will forsake their ancient religion and embrace a new and 
strange one, they are to be turned out of the lands and possessions of 
their forefathers and perhaps deprived of life itself. Then, at last, it 
appears what zeal for the Church, joined with the desire of dominion, is 
capable to produce, and how easily the pretence of religion, and of the 
care of souls, serves for a cloak to covetousness, rapine, and ambition. 

Now whosoever maintains that idolatry is to be rooted out of any 
place by laws, punishments, fire, and sword, may apply this story to 
himself. For the reason of the thing is equal, both in America and Eu- 
rope. And neither Pagans there, nor any dissenting Christians here, can, 
with any right, be deprived of their worldly goods by the predominating 
faction of a court-church; nor are any civil rights to be either changed or 
violated upon account of religion in one place more than another. 

But idolatry, say some, is a sin and therefore not to be tolerated. If 
they said it were therefore to be avoided, the inference were good. But it 
does not follow that because it is a sin it ought therefore to be punished 
by the magistrate. For it does not belong unto the magistrate to make 
use of his sword in punishing everything, indifferently, that he takes to 
be a sin against God. Covetousness, uncharitableness, idleness, and many 
other things are sins by the consent of men, which yet no man ever said