Toleration | Page 4

any articles of faith, or forms of worship, by the force of

his laws. For laws are of no force at all without penalties, and penalties
in this case are absolutely impertinent, because they are not proper to
convince the mind. Neither the profession of any articles of faith, nor
the conformity to any outward form of worship (as has been already
said), can be available to the salvation of souls, unless the truth of the
one and the acceptableness of the other unto God be thoroughly
believed by those that so profess and practise. But penalties are no way
capable to produce such belief. It is only light and evidence that can
work a change in men's opinions; which light can in no manner proceed
from corporal sufferings, or any other outward penalties.
In the third place, the care of the salvation of men's souls cannot belong
to the magistrate; because, though the rigour of laws and the force of
penalties were capable to convince and change men's minds, yet would
not that help at all to the salvation of their souls. For there being but
one truth, one way to heaven, what hope is there that more men would
be led into it if they had no rule but the religion of the court and were
put under the necessity to quit the light of their own reason, and oppose
the dictates of their own consciences, and blindly to resign themselves
up to the will of their governors and to the religion which either
ignorance, ambition, or superstition had chanced to establish in the
countries where they were born? In the variety and contradiction of
opinions in religion, wherein the princes of the world are as much
divided as in their secular interests, the narrow way would be much
straitened; one country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of
the world put under an obligation of following their princes in the ways
that lead to destruction; and that which heightens the absurdity, and
very ill suits the notion of a Deity, men would owe their eternal
happiness or misery to the places of their nativity.
These considerations, to omit many others that might have been urged
to the same purpose, seem unto me sufficient to conclude that all the
power of civil government relates only to men's civil interests, is
confined to the care of the things of this world, and hath nothing to do
with the world to come.
Let us now consider what a church is. A church, then, I take to be a

voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own
accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as
they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their
souls.
I say it is a free and voluntary society. Nobody is born a member of any
church; otherwise the religion of parents would descend unto children
by the same right of inheritance as their temporal estates, and everyone
would hold his faith by the same tenure he does his lands, than which
nothing can be imagined more absurd. Thus, therefore, that matter
stands. No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect,
but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that society in which he
believes he has found that profession and worship which is truly
acceptable to God. The hope of salvation, as it was the only cause of
his entrance into that communion, so it can be the only reason of his
stay there. For if afterwards he discover anything either erroneous in
the doctrine or incongruous in the worship of that society to which he
has joined himself, why should it not be as free for him to go out as it
was to enter? No member of a religious society can be tied with any
other bonds but what proceed from the certain expectation of eternal
life. A church, then, is a society of members voluntarily uniting to that
end.
It follows now that we consider what is the power of this church and
unto what laws it is subject.
Forasmuch as no society, how free soever, or upon whatsoever slight
occasion instituted, whether of philosophers for learning, of merchants
for commerce, or of men of leisure for mutual conversation and
discourse, no church or company, I say, can in the least subsist and
hold together, but will presently dissolve and break in pieces, unless it
be regulated by some laws, and the members all consent to observe
some order. Place and time of meeting must be agreed on; rules for
admitting and excluding members must be established; distinction of
officers, and putting things into a regular course, and suchlike, cannot
be omitted. But since the joining together of