Essay: A Letter Concerning Toleration

Context and Aim
John Locke’s 1689 essay argues for broad religious toleration in the wake of Europe’s confessional conflicts, the English Civil Wars, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Addressed as a public intervention in a climate of suspicion and state-backed uniformity, it seeks to disentangle political authority from ecclesiastical control and to secure peace by limiting the reach of coercion in matters of conscience.

Civil Power and Its Limits
Locke defines the magistrate’s jurisdiction as confined to “civil interests”: life, liberty, bodily security, and the possession of outward goods. Government exists to protect these interests through impartial laws and penalties that regulate external actions. It has no commission from God to govern souls, nor any competence to judge theological truth. Coercive power, effective for curbing theft or violence, cannot produce genuine belief; faith requires inward persuasion. Because salvation depends on sincere conviction, force in religion is both ineffective and presumptuous.

The Nature and Authority of the Church
A church is a voluntary society formed by agreement among believers to worship God as they understand Scripture. Its bonds are consent and persuasion, not compulsion. The only ecclesiastical “punishments” proper to it are admonition and exclusion from fellowship. Priests have no temporal jurisdiction, and churches cannot claim dominion over property, civil offices, or political allegiance. Truth spreads by preaching and example, not by penalties.

Why Toleration Promotes Peace and Piety
Persecution breeds hypocrisy, faction, and civil strife, while toleration defuses religious rivalry and turns zeal toward charity and moral improvement. Compelled uniformity rewards the ambitious rather than the devout, and it tempts rulers to use religion as an instrument of domination. If every sect could legally persecute when in power, perpetual conflict would follow; toleration is the only stable principle all parties can accept. Moreover, if religious truth were tied to state force, salvation would depend on the chance of birthplace and the prince’s creed, a notion incompatible with divine justice.

Extent of Toleration
Locke urges toleration for all Christian denominations and, by parity of reasoning, for Jews, Muslims, and others, so long as their practices do not violate civil law or threaten public peace. Magistrates may not penalize speculative opinions, modes of worship, or religious gatherings that harm no one. Laws about “indifferent things” (such as dress, days, and ceremonies) should not be used to harass dissenters. Public order may rightly restrict practices that transgress civil rights, human sacrifice or practices that incite violence, but such restraints are grounded in civic, not theological, reasons.

Notable Limits and Contested Boundaries
Locke denies toleration to those who preach intolerance or owe allegiance to a foreign power that claims civil dominion over subjects, a concern aimed at any church asserting temporal supremacy. He also withholds toleration from those who undermine oaths and covenants, since the legal order depends on good faith. Famously, he excludes avowed atheists on the grounds that they cannot be trusted to keep promises without belief in divine judgment. These exceptions mark the edges of his program and have prompted later debate over their consistency.

Legacy
By separating salvation from sovereignty and conscience from coercion, Locke provides a liberal architecture for religious coexistence: a limited state guarding civil interests and a plural religious sphere governed by persuasion. The essay became foundational for later doctrines of church–state separation, freedom of worship, and the rights of conscience.