Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

4/John Locke 


heartily apply themselves to make other people Christians, who have 
not really embraced the Christian religion in their own hearts. If the 
Gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian 
without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by 
love. Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, 
destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it 
out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? And I shall then 
indeed, and not until then, believe they do so, when I shall see those fiery 
zealots correcting, in the same manner, their friends and familiar ac- 
quaintance for the manifest sins they commit against the precepts of the 
Gospel; when I shall see them persecute with fire and sword the mem- 
bers of their own communion that are tainted with enormous vices and 
without amendment are in danger of eternal perdition; and when I shall 
see them thus express their love and desire of the salvation of their souls 
by the infliction of torments and exercise of all manner of cruelties. For 
if it be out of a principle of charity, as they pretend, and love to men’s 
souls that they deprive them of their estates, maim them with corporal 
punishments, starve and torment them in noisome prisons, and in the 
end even take away their lives — I say, if all this be done merely to make 
men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer 
whoredom, fraud, malice, and such-like enormities, which (according 
to the apostle) 4 manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predomi- 
nate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people? These, and 
such-like things, are certainly more contrary to the glory of God, to the 
purity of the Church, and to the salvation of souls, than any conscien- 
tious dissent from ecclesiastical decisions, or separation from public 
worship, whilst accompanied with innocence of life. Why, then, does 
this burning zeal for God, for the Church, and for the salvation of souls — 
burning I say, literally, with fire and faggot — pass by those moral vices 
and wickednesses, without any chastisement, which are acknowledged 
by all men to be diametrically opposite to the profession of Christianity, 
and bend all its nerves either to the introducing of ceremonies, or to the 
establishment of opinions, which for the most paid are about nice and 
intricate matters, that exceed the capacity of ordinary understandings? 
Which of the parties contending about these things is in the right, which 
of them is guilty of schism or heresy, whether those that domineer or 
those that suffer, will then at last be manifest when the causes of their 
separation comes to be judged of Fie, certainly, that follows Christ, 
embraces His doctrine, and bears His yoke, though he forsake both fa-