A Letter Concerning Toleration

A letter in Latin from a political exile, arguing that no government can force anyone into belief.

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Epistola de Tolerantia
First published: 1689(aged 57)
Original language: Latin

Overview

In the winter of 1685 Locke was living in Amsterdam under a false name, a political exile whose place at his Oxford college had been taken from him on the king's order. That October Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants for nearly ninety years. Locke wrote a long letter in Latin to his friend Philipp van Limborch, a theology professor in Amsterdam, on whether a ruler may use force in matters of religion. His answer is no, on three grounds. The state exists to protect life, liberty and property, and nobody handed it the care of souls. A church is a voluntary society that people join and leave. And force could not do the work even if it were permitted, because belief is inward conviction, and a fine or a prison sentence changes behaviour without changing a mind. Locke stops short of tolerating everyone. He refuses toleration to atheists, whose oaths he thinks cannot bind them, and to churches whose members owe obedience to a foreign prince — a clause aimed at Catholics, though scholars disagree on how absolute he meant it to be. Limborch had the letter printed at Gouda in 1689 as Epistola de Tolerantia, with author and addressee hidden behind strings of initials. William Popple, a Unitarian merchant in London, put it into English the same year. Locke said in his will that the translation was made without his involvement, although he knew by June 1689 that it was under way, and Popple's English is the text he went on defending until his death. In 1690 an Oxford clergyman named Jonas Proast attacked it, and that attack drew Locke back into print.

Key concepts

Who is the “magistrate” in the Letter?

The magistrate is whoever holds the power to make and enforce laws in a state: a king, a parliament, a city council. Locke uses the word for the office, whatever its form. His question is what that office is for, and his answer is that it has the sword in order to protect people’s lives, liberty and goods, and for nothing beyond that.

What are “civil interests”?

Civil interests are the things a government exists to protect: life, liberty, bodily health and freedom from pain, and outward possessions such as money, land, houses and furniture. Locke lists them near the start of the Letter and uses the list as a boundary. Whatever does not touch these, including what a person believes about God, lies outside the reach of law.

What does Locke mean by the “care of souls”?

The care of souls is responsibility for whether a person reaches salvation. Locke argues that it was never handed to the ruler, by God or by the people, and could not be, because nobody can leave the choice of his faith to another. It stays with each person. Others may advise, teach and persuade him, as they would about his health or his estate.

What are “indifferent things” in worship?

Indifferent things are matters God has neither commanded nor forbidden, such as the hour of a service, the dress of a minister, or whether people stand or kneel. Locke’s opponents said the ruler may regulate these in church as he does elsewhere. Locke replies that once a thing is used in worship it is no longer indifferent to the worshipper, who must believe God accepts it.

What does “toleration” mean for Locke?

Toleration is a refusal to use force, not a judgment that all religions are equally true. A tolerating state leaves every church to its own worship and takes no one’s rights away over belief; a tolerating church leaves other churches and its own former members unharmed. Locke calls it the chief mark of the true church, since the Gospel teaches charity and gives no licence to persecute.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Magistrate’s Business and the Church’s

Where does a government’s business end and a church’s begin? Locke draws the line so that neither can borrow the other’s weapons, and the whole Letter depends on that line holding.

A commonwealth, on the Letter’s definition, is a society formed to secure civil interests: life, liberty, health and possessions. A church is a free and voluntary society for the public worship of God; nobody is born into one, and anyone may leave. The rest follows from the two definitions. The magistrate may punish theft and violence in a congregation exactly as he would outside it, and may forbid in worship only what is unlawful everywhere. A church may expel a member and no more. The same line sets the limits: atheists, and churches that bind their members to a foreign ruler, fall outside toleration on civil grounds.

church and state
civil government
political authority
jurisdiction
church
civil rights
church-state separation
civil authority
property

Enter a dialogue

Belief Cannot Be Forced

Can a fine, a prison or a fire make anyone believe? If conviction answers only to evidence, persecution fails at the one thing it claims to be for.

Saving religion, the Letter argues, is inward persuasion of the mind, and the understanding cannot be compelled by outward force. Penalties produce attendance and spoken words; a worship the worshipper does not believe in is, by every church’s own teaching, worthless to God. A second argument stands even if force could work. Princes disagree about religion as much as about anything, so a duty to follow the ruler’s faith would make salvation depend on where one was born. Each person is left with the care of his own soul. Locke adds a charge against persecutors: a zeal that punishes dissent and overlooks vice is no zeal for souls.

religious toleration
freedom of conscience
religious coercion
conscience
salvation
religious persecution
religious freedom
coercion
religious pluralism
individual responsibility
charity

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 80
distinct concepts: 115
by passages held, corpus-wide: #555

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “church and state” and “religious toleration”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 68 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
church and state	religious toleration	15
freedom of conscience	religious toleration	13
civil rights	religious toleration	8
religious persecution	religious toleration	7
church and state	freedom of conscience	5
religious coercion	religious toleration	5
church and state	religious authority	4
church and state	religious persecution	4
freedom of conscience	religious authority	4
religious authority	religious toleration	4
religious freedom	religious toleration	4
civil rights	religious persecution	3
church and state	civil rights	2
church and state	religious freedom	2
civil rights	religious authority	1
civil rights	religious coercion	1
freedom of conscience	religious coercion	1
freedom of conscience	religious persecution	1
religious coercion	religious freedom	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1689 A Letter Concerning Toleration (Epistola de Tolerantia) you are here EN
1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The book Locke's reputation rests on, and the one major work of 1689 that he signed. His quarrel with Bishop Stillingfleet, the unfinished Conduct of the Understanding and the letters to William Molyneux all grow out of it.
EN
1689 Two Treatises of Government
Two parts of a longer manuscript whose middle was lost before printing, as Locke's preface says. The book is his political theory, and it shares a year and a purpose with A Letter Concerning Toleration: each sets a limit on what a ruler may do.
EN
1690 Further Letters Concerning Toleration
A sequel in three parts to A Letter Concerning Toleration: Locke's second and third letters and the fragment of a fourth, each a reply to the Oxford chaplain Jonas Proast. The third is where he tests his case hardest.
EN
1693 Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Written for the household of his friend Edward Clarke and enlarged by Locke through several editions. It is his book of practical advice on raising a child, and it applies the Essay's view that the mind is formed by what it meets.
EN
1695 The Reasonableness of Christianity
His main work on religion, and the opening of the study of Scripture that occupied his last years. He defended it twice against John Edwards, a Cambridge Calvinist, and kept his name off all three books while he lived.
EN
1696 Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade
Advice written for ministers and for Parliament during the currency crisis of the 1690s, and gathered under Locke's name in 1696. The account of money behind it is sketched in the chapter on property in the Two Treatises.
EN
1697 Letters to the Bishop of Worcester
Locke's own commentary on the Essay, written under attack: three replies to Edward Stillingfleet, issued as separate pamphlets between 1697 and 1699, with a short answer to a second critic, Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charterhouse.
EN
1706 Of the Conduct of the Understanding
An unfinished draft, printed from Locke's papers two years after his death. It is the practical companion to the Essay and overlaps with his advice on education.
EN
1706 Posthumous Works
From the volume of unpublished papers that Locke's executors issued in 1706: a critique of Malebranche from the 1690s and a short discourse on miracles from 1702. Both extend arguments begun in the Essay.
EN
1708 Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of His Friends
Letters to the Molyneux brothers of Dublin — Locke's side of the correspondence — taken from a volume his publishers issued in 1708. It is the closest view of him at work on the later editions of the Essay.
EN
1720 A Collection of Several Pieces
The Carolina constitution of 1669 predates the Two Treatises by ten years or more, and the two are often set against each other. Pierre Des Maizeaux published it in 1720 together with shorter pieces left out of the collected works.
EN

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