Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

First Letter Concerning Toleration/33 


remains to men in reference to their eternal salvation, and that is that 
every one should do what he in his conscience is persuaded to be accept- 
able to the Almighty, on whose good pleasure and acceptance depends 
their eternal happiness. For obedience is due, in the first place, to God 
and, afterwards to the laws. 

But some may ask: “What if the magistrate should enjoin anything 
by his authority that appears unlawful to the conscience of a private 
person?” I answer that, if government be faithfully administered and the 
counsels of the magistrates be indeed directed to the public good, this 
will seldom happen. But if, perhaps, it do so fall out, I say, that such a 
private person is to abstain from the action that he judges unlawful, and 
he is to undergo the punishment which it is not unlawful for him to bear. 
For the private judgement of any person concerning a law enacted in 
political matters, for the public good, does not take away the obligation 
of that law, nor deserve a dispensation. But if the law, indeed, be con- 
cerning things that lie not within the verge of the magistrate’s authority 
(as, for example, that the people, or any party amongst them, should be 
compelled to embrace a strange religion, and join in the worship and 
ceremonies of another Church), men are not in these cases obliged by 
that law, against their consciences. For the political society is instituted 
for no other end, but only to secure every man’s possession of the things 
of this life. The care of each man’s soul and of the things of heaven, 
which neither does belong to the commonwealth nor can be subjected to 
it, is left entirely to every man’s self. Thus the safeguard of men’s lives 
and of the things that belong unto this life is the business of the com- 
monwealth; and the preserving of those things unto their owners is the 
duty of the magistrate. And therefore the magistrate cannot take away 
these worldly things from this man or party and give them to that; nor 
change propriety amongst fellow subjects (no not even by a law), for a 
cause that has no relation to the end of civil government, I mean for their 
religion, which whether it be true or false does no prejudice to the worldly 
concerns of their fellow subjects, which are the things that only belong 
unto the care of the commonwealth. 

But what if the magistrate believe such a law as this to be for the 
public good? I answer: As the private judgement of any particular' per- 
son, if erroneous, does not exempt him from the obligation of law, so the 
private judgement (as I may call it) of the magistrate does not give him 
any new right of imposing laws upon his subjects, which neither was in 
the constitution of the government granted him, nor ever was in the