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First Letter Concerning Toleration/41 


and wars that have been in the Christian world upon account of religion. 
The heads and leaders of the Church, moved by avarice and insatiable 
desire of dominion, making use of the immoderate ambition of magis- 
trates and the credulous superstition of the giddy multitude, have in- 
censed and animated them against those that dissent from themselves, 
by preaching unto them, contrary to the laws of the Gospel and to the 
precepts of charity, that schismatics and heretics are to be outed of their 
possessions and destroyed. And thus have they mixed together and con- 
founded two things that are in themselves most different, the Church 
and the commonwealth. Now as it is very difficult for men patiently to 
suffer themselves to be stripped of the goods which they have got by 
their honest industry, and, contrary to all the laws of equity, both human 
and divine, to be delivered up for a prey to other men’s violence and 
rapine; especially when they are otherwise altogether blameless; and 
that the occasion for which they are thus treated does not at all belong to 
the jurisdiction of the magistrate, but entirely to the conscience of every 
particular man for the conduct of which he is accountable to God only; 
what else can be expected but that these men, growing weary of the evils 
under which they labour, should in the end think it lawful for them to 
resist force with force, and to defend their natural rights (which are not 
forfeitable upon account of religion) with arms as well as they can? 
That this has been hitherto the ordinary course of things is abundantly 
evident in history, and that it will continue to be so hereafter is but too 
apparent in reason. It cannot indeed, be otherwise so long as the prin- 
ciple of persecution for religion shall prevail, as it has done hitherto, 
with magistrate and people, and so long as those that ought to be the 
preachers of peace and concord shall continue with all their art and 
strength to excite men to arms and sound the trumpet of war. But that 
magistrates should thus suffer these incendiaries and disturbers of the 
public peace might justly be wondered at if it did not appeal - that they 
have been invited by them unto a participation of the spoil, and have 
therefore thought fit to make use of their covetousness and pride as 
means whereby to increase their own power. For who does not see that 
these good men are, indeed, more ministers of the government than min- 
isters of the Gospel and that, by flattering the ambition and favouring 
the dominion of princes and men in authority, they endeavour with all 
their might to promote that tyranny in the commonwealth which other- 
wise they should not be able to establish in the Church? This is the 
unhappy agreement that we see between the Church and State. Whereas