Read A Letter Concerning Toleration Online

First Letter Concerning Toleration/7 


is to be checked by the fear of punishment, consisting of the deprivation 
or diminution of those civil interests, or goods, which otherwise he might 
and ought to enjoy. But seeing no man does willingly suffer himself to 
be punished by the deprivation of any paid of his goods, and much less 
of his liberty or life, therefore, is the magistrate armed with the force 
and strength of all his subjects, in order to the punishment of those that 
violate any other man’s rights. 

Now that the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to 
these civil concernments, and that all civil power, right and dominion, is 
bounded and confined to the only care of promoting these things; and 
that it neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salva- 
tion of souls, these following considerations seem unto me abundantly 
to demonstrate. 

First, because the care of souls is not committed to the civil magis- 
trate, any more than to other men. It is not committed unto him, I say, by 
God; because it appears not that God has ever given any such authority 
to one man over another as to compel anyone to his religion. Nor can 
any such power be vested in the magistrate by the consent of the people, 
because no man can so far abandon the care of his own salvation as 
blindly to leave to the choice of any other, whether prince or subject, to 
prescribe to him what faith or worship he shall embrace. For no man 
can, if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of another. All the life 
and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of 
the mind; and faith is not faith without believing. Whatever profession 
we make, to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully 
satisfied in our own mind that the one is true and the other well pleasing 
unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any fur- 
therance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation. For in this manner, 
instead of expiating other sins by the exercise of religion, I say, in offer- 
ing thus unto God Almighty such a worship as we esteem to be displeas- 
ing unto Flim, we add unto the number of our other sins those also of 
hypocrisy and contempt of Flis Divine Majesty. 

In the second place, the care of souls cannot belong to the civil 
magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true 
and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, with- 
out which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of 
the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything 
by outward force. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, torments, noth- 
ing of that nature can have any such efficacy as to make men change the