Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

40/John Locke 


for the fault of another. Those that are seditious, murderers, thieves, 
robbers, adulterers, slanderers, etc., of whatsoever Church, whether 
national or not, ought to be punished and suppressed. But those whose 
doctrine is peaceable and whose manners are pure and blameless ought 
to be upon equal terms with their fellow-subjects. Thus if solemn as- 
semblies, observations of festivals, public worship be permitted to any 
one sort of professors, all these things ought to be permitted to the Pres- 
byterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Arminians, Quakers, and others, 
with the same liberty. Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as 
becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, 
ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because 
of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing. The Church which 
“judgeth not those that are without” 9 wants it not. And the common- 
wealth, which embraces indifferently all men that are honest, peaceable, 
and industrious, requires it not. Shall we suffer a Pagan to deal and 
trade with us, and shall we not suffer him to pray unto and worship 
God? If we allow the Jews to have private houses and dwellings amongst 
us, why should we not allow them to have synagogues? Is their doctrine 
more false, their worship more abominable, or is the civil peace more 
endangered by their meeting in public than in their private houses? But 
if these things may be granted to Jews and Pagans, surely the condition 
of any Christians ought not to be worse than theirs in a Christian com- 
monwealth. 

You will say, perhaps: “Yes, it ought to be; because they are more 
inclinable to factions, tumults, and civil wars.” I answer: Is this the fault 
of the Christian religion? If it be so, truly the Christian religion is the 
worst of all religions and ought neither to be embraced by any particular 
person, nor tolerated by any commonwealth. For if this be the genius, 
this the nature of the Christian religion, to be turbulent and destructive 
to the civil peace, that Church itself which the magistrate indulges will 
not always be innocent. But far be it from us to say any such thing of 
that religion which carries the greatest opposition to covetousness, am- 
bition, discord, contention, and all manner of inordinate desires, and is 
the most modest and peaceable religion that ever was. We must, there- 
fore, seek another cause of those evils that are charged upon religion. 
And, if we consider right, we shall find it to consist wholly in the subject 
that I am treating of. It is not the diversity of opinions (which cannot be 
avoided), but the refusal of toleration to those that are of different opin- 
ions (which might have been granted), that has produced all the bustles