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Freedom and Authority: The Ancient Faith of Locke's Letter on Toleration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

George Windstrup
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Extract

As equality has come to dominate the postliberal era, so virtue was earlier supplanted by liberty. However tentatively, events in many countries suggest a serious erosion in the consensus for equality. Critics of the egalitarian mind-set are achieving a new respectability. Conservative recommendations are hardly uniformly accepted, but they are now heard and, increasingly, countered on practical rather than theoretical grounds. Whether this marks a real revolution, it is at least temporarily popular to question equality in public.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 242 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1982

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References

1 Locke, , Epistola de Tolerantia, trans. Gough, J. W. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar, hereafter Toleration, 75 and 155. Consider also subsequent Letters on Toleration (Works [London, 1823], volume VI): 82, 154, 194, 327–28, 495, 520Google Scholar; and Toleration, 75.

On the dangers of this confusion see, for example, Toleration: 59, 63–65, 89, 95, 115, 132, 145–49; Works, VI: 134, 262, 475–76, 479; Essay Concerning Human Understanding: III, X, 12–13Google Scholar; Two Treatises: Preface; Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (Works [London, 1823], volume VII): 174Google Scholar. The agreement between church and state” favors tyranny by mixing “heaven and earth together, things most remote and opposite” (Toleration, 149 and 85–87). The very word orthodoxy is “ordinarily” used as a “pretence to domineer” (Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, Works, VII: 377).

2 Toleration, 65–67.

3 Toleration, 71.

4 Treatises, II: 35.

5 Toleration, 125 and 127, offers the most concise summary of Lockean political principle in the entire corpus.

6 Toleration, 85–87. Consider also Toleration, 125–27, 137; and Treatises, 11:42.

7 See Proast, Jonas, “The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration Briefly Considered and Answered” (Oxford, 1690), p. 2Google Scholar and “A Third Letter Concerning Toleration: In Defense of The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration, briefly Considered and Answered” (Oxford, 1691), p. 4Google Scholar. Locke objects only to the insinuation that the Letter is more concerned with business than religion (Works, VI: 62–63). He tacitly concedes the importance of worldly profit, showing the dependence of Proast's proposed penalties on this very appetite: only mercenaries can be swayed by temporal considerations. Locke turns the table on Proast by charging that it is he who puts “trade above all other considerations, and merchandise[s] with religion itself” (Works, VI: 116). Locke's considered view of the utility of Christian belief in the Letter is discussed in sections 3 and 4, below. Doubts about his own orthodoxy must await a detailed analysis of his systematic writings on Christianity.

8 Toleration, 71.

9 Toleration, 113, 81. See also the Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (Works, VII: 276–77: The “word orthodoxy … in effect signifies no more but the opinions of my party”).

10 Toleration, 59; Works, VII: 377. Consider Locke's, Postscript to the Letter, Toleration, 149–55Google Scholar.

11 Toleration, 67.

12 Proast (1691), p. 35.

13 Second Letter (Works, VI: 78). See also 101–102, 105–106, 201. Toleration, 147, refers to “the people, who are always superstitious and therefore emptyheaded.”

14 The clergy typically instruct “by a harangue or two once a week, upon any subject at a venture, which has no coherence with that which preceded or that which is to follow” (Works, VI: 201). See also VI: 86. The prefatory “Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles, By Consulting St. Paul Himself” (Works [1823], volume VIII) details some of the obstacles in the way of sensible interpretation of Scripture and suggests, by implication, the insufficiency of even thoughtful interpretations prior to Locke's own.

15 Toleration, 123. See also Toleration, 69–71 and 85. Compare Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, in Koch, and Peden, , Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1944), p. 322Google Scholar.

16 Second Letter (Works, VI: 107).

17 Consider Works, VI: 197–98 and VI: 94. Cf. Jefferson, Notes on Virginia: “The several sects perform the office of a censor morum over each other” (Koch, and Peden, , Writings of Jefferson, p. 276)Google Scholar.

18 Third Letter (Works, VI: 144). Locke always distinguishes faith from knowledge; it is never a mode of knowledge.

19 Third Letter (Works, VI: 415). Reason not only fails to verify the claims of particular Christian sects, it cannot prefer Christianity to other faiths. Proast was particularly offended that Locke begins by requesting toleration for Christians, but ends up talking about pagans, Mohammedans, and Jews (Proast [1690], p. 1; and Proast [1691], pp. 2 and 3).

20 Third Letter (Works, VI: 147).

21 Proast (1691), p. 47.

22 Proast (1691), pp. 47 and 48. Cf. Kraynak, , “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” American Political Science Review, 74 (03 1980), 53–69; 65–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Third Letter (Works, VI: 419).

24 “For whose is really the true religion, yours or his, being the matter in contest betwixt you, your suggesting can no more determine it on your side, than his supposing on his; unless you can think you have a right to judge in your own cause” (Works, VI: 419).

25 Toleration, 109, 143. The quote is from Toleration, 103. Cf. Treaties: II: 3 and 158.

26 Toleration, 109–111.

27 Third Letter (Works, VI: 469). See King, , Life and Letters of Locke (London: Bohn, 1858), p. 301Google Scholar, for further evidence of society's right to regulate morals in the interest of civil prosperity, regardless of possible theological implications. King, pp. 300 ff., offers a remarkable condensation of the Letters on Toleration.

28 Toleration, 115. Since the law can punishlying—spreadinguntruth—only because of its effect on society, it seems that civil proscription of public atheism is likewise grounded only in utility. Compare Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, p. 275. Jefferson denies any utility to belief in a God.

29 Compare Toleration, 125, where charity (charitable admonitions) is said to be a “Christian's greatest duty,” rather than a duty of all men. Cf. Toleration, 87. Similarly, Toleration, 79–81 speaks of “benevolence and charity” (though beyond the requirements of “bare justice”) as “enjoined” by the Gospel, but also “directed” by reason. Yet here Locke says that the charity so demanded is toward differing speculative opinions of others, which are their “own misfortune, and no injury to you.” Such charity does not demand the giving of one's own substance to the less fortunate.

30 Toleration, 131.

31 Cf. Kraynak, , “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” who holds that the Letter's denial of toleration to Catholics, atheists and the like is rooted in prudence rather than any “argument from principle” (p. 66)Google Scholar. In fact Locke's restrictions to the general rule of toleration are hardly random. They define the rule and, in so doing, suggest the bones of the Lockean public orthodoxy.

32 Toleration, 131.

33 St. Thomas, Summa Theo., II a II seques. 12, art. 2.

34 Toleration, 133. Cf. Treatises, Preface; and Toleration, 145–147.

35 Toleration, 135 (emphasis added). Cf. Torcasso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488: 1961.

36 Heresy is defined at the very end of the Letter as the denial of anything Scripture teaches “in express terms” (Toleration, 155, emphasis added). Men indifferent to religion, or silent, cannot be heretics. The Reasonableness of Christianity teaches that only faith and repentance “are the indispensable conditions of the new covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life” (Works, VII: 105).

No one's essential interests (life, liberty, or property) are jeopardized by governmental restriction of his ability to deny a God. It should not be surprising that civil authorities, who might justly direct a citizen-soldier to almost certain death (Second Treatise, section 139), might also regulate purely speculative speech in the interest of tangible peace and prosperity. The common assumption that Locke's proscription of (organized) public atheism in itself proves his own acceptance of a God bespeaks an inability to credit religion's power over human conduct. For his own part, Locke maintains that since atheism denies the “fundamental article of all religion and morality,” “it should be very warily charged on any one, by deductions and consequences, which he himself does not own, or, at least, do not manifestly and unavoidably flow from what he asserts” (Works, VII: 161).

37 Toleration, 133.

38 As atheism, for example, is said to dissolve all covenants.

39 Cf. Kraynak, who places “Security” above “Liberty” as Locke's “first principle” (Kraynak, , “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” p. 68Google Scholar).

40 Essay, II, 21, 27.

41 Toleration, 147.

42 Toleration, 135 (emphasis added). Popple's translation explicitly (if questionably) refers to a natural right to toleration here. Cf., Works, VI: 47–48.

43 Toleration, 133.

44 Toleration, 137. Lacking status by nature, any “natural right” to toleration must be vindicated by supernatural argument – i.e., by the authority of the sects themselves.

45 Toleration, 144.

46 Third Letter (Works, VI: 418 and 484).

47 Toleration, 79 and 85.

48 Locke characterized his own argument as “equal to all mankind,” “direct,” “hold[ing] every where” (Works, VI, 95).

49 Consider the Reasonableness of Christianity: “The most elevated understandings cannot but submit to this doctrine as divine” (Works, VII: 147).

50 Toleration, 145, 59–65.

51 Toleration, 59–65, 79, 85, 115, 125, 147. Compare the Christianand Lockean conceptions of the dangers of pride, to salvation for the Christian, to civil prosperity for Locke: Toleration, 65, 83 and 147.

52 Toleration, 153–55.

53 Toleration, 59–65, 79, 87–89. One can doubt whether Locke accepted the need for any church at all. He would go no farther than admit that his own Church of England was one of many Christian sects which included among its teachings all doctrine and worship necessary for salvation, implying that it went beyond the requirements of Scripture in many respects which could be attributed only to tradition, convenience, or subjective preference. See Works, VI: 320.

54 Toleration, 71–73.

55 Toleration, 117.

56 “Christian brethren… are all agreed on the essentials of regions” (Toleration, 93). Compare the need for strict interpretation of the literal sense of the universally acknowledged Scripture: Toleration, 75 and 153; Works, VI: 82 and 154.

57 If, for example, it can be shown that Locke's considered opinion regarding suicide differs from his rhetorical taboo, it follows that the protection of life itself is no ultimate justification for government. See my “Locke on Suicide,” Political Theory, 8, no. 2 (May 1980), 169–82. Consider also Locke's own recognition of the desire for the preservation of our own young as the “strongest Principle” of our natures (Treatises, I: 56).

58 Locke's restriction of moral education to exhortation and example is no whim. His understanding of good and evil as pleasure and pain, combined with the potential uniqueness of each individual's ultimate pleasure, meant that men can never accept a morality that they do not feel to be true. Strictly speaking, morality can be neither taught nor learned. What can be taught (but not enforced) is calculation of cause and effect.

59 Practically speaking, neither human nor divine intelligence can help men against their own will: “Laws endeavor, as far as possible, to protect the goods and health of subjects from violence of others, or from fraud, not from the negligence or prodigality of the owners themselves. No man against his will can be forced to be healthy or rich. Even God himself will not save men against their wills” (Toleration, 91). Compare Toleration, 99–101.

60 Second Letter (Works, VI: 113).

61 Toleration, 61.

62 Toleration, 95–97.

63 Compare Rousseau: Property rights became meaningful only when most men could be led to believe in them (Second Discourse, part 2, opening).

64 Second Letter (Works, VI: 78, 101, 102, 105, 106); Third Letter (Works, VI: 201); Conduct of the Understanding, , Garforth, ed. (New York: Teacher's College Press, 1966), 46 ff.Google Scholar; Reasonableness of Christianity (Works, VII, 146 and 157).

65 Toleration, 155.

66 Treatises, II: 4 and 7. It is too easy to assume that all conflict in the state of nature concerns life, liberty, and property. In fact, when men don't have immediate occasion to fight over these things, their imaginations can provoke quarrels over intangible things (First Treatise, section 58). Parallels between Locke's state of nature and the biblical Garden of Eden are often noted. But the use Locke makes of our familiarity with that story goes well beyond either illustrating or masking the true character of man's natural condition. Dramatizing our natural rights, the state of nature serves as the archetype for our secular imagination, just as Genesis establishes our conception of God's power and the possibility of otherworldly redemption.

67 Toleration, 147.

68 Treatises, I: 58.

69 The psychology of the Essay teaches that men can't help but fly from pain, once present. Unfortunately, imagination can serve to mislead as well as instruct. Proper socialization must serve as a “reality principle,” never leading men far from a clear recognition of what must eventually bring them pain or prosperity

70 He who refuses to act in accordance with the principles on which human community depends properly “declares himself to quit the Principles of Human Nature, and to be a noxious Creature.” He may be punished as would a beast, even in the state of nature prior to community (Second Treatise, section 10—see sections 8–11 generally). Bespeaking foresight, the act by which men accept this orthodoxy of human rights is a more genuine indication of their own humanity than possession of the rights themselves.

71 Essay, II: 21, 46.

72 Toleration, 125. The author acknowledges the encouragement and helpful criticism he has received from his teacher Professor Thomas Schrock.