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===Religious Toleration===

===Religious Toleration===

Locke's philosophical defence of religious liberty in the four Letters of Toleration is the most far-reaching of his contributions to social polity. He had a more modest estimate of human Religious resources for forming true judgments in religion, and a less pronounced opinion of the immorality of religious lion. error, than either the Catholic or the Puritan. The toleration which he spent his life in arguing for involved a change from the authoritative and absolute to the relative point of view, as regards man's means of knowledge and belief. It was a protest against those who in theology " peremptorily require demonstration and demand certainty where probability only is to be had." The practice of universal toleration amidst increasing religious differences was an application of the conception of human understanding which governs his Essay. Once a paradox it is now commonplace, and the superabundant argument in the Letters on Toleration fatigues the modern reader. The change is due more to Locke himself than to anyone else. Free thought and liberty of conscience had indeed been pleaded for, on various grounds, in the century in which he lived. Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Glanvill and other philosophical thinkers in the Church of England urged toleration in the state, in conjunction with wide comprehension in the church, on the ground of our necessary intellectual limitation and inability to reach demonstration in theological debates. Puritans like Owen and Goodwin, whose idea of ecclesiastical comprehension was dogmatic and narrow, were ready to accept sectarian variety, because it was their duty to allow many religions in the nation, but only one form of theology withie their own sect. The existence of separate nationalities, on the other hand, was the justification of national churches according to the latitudinarian churchmen with whom Locke associated : a national church comprehensive in creed, and thus co-extensive with the nation was their ideal. Locke went far to unite in a higher principle elements in the broad Anglican and the Puritan theories, while he recognized the individual liberty of thought which distinguishes the national church of England. A constant sense of the limits of human understanding was at the bottom of his arguments for tolerance. He had no objection to a national establishment of religion, provided that it was comprehensive enough, and was really the nation organized to promote goodness; not to protect the meta-physical subtleties of sectarian theologians. The recall of the national religion to the simplicity of the gospels would, he hoped, make toleration of nonconformists unnecessary, as few would then remain. To the atheist alone Locke refuses full toleration, on the ground that social obligation can have no hold over him, for " the taking away of God dissolves alt" He argued, too, against full toleration of the Church of Rome in England, on the ground of its unnational allegiance to a foreign sovereign. The unfitness of persecution as a means of propagating truth is copiously insisted on by Locke. Persecution can only transform a man into a hypocrite; belief is legitimately formed only by discernment of sufficient evidence; apart from evidence, a man has no right to control the understanding; he cannot determine arbitrarily what his neighbours must believe. Thus Locke's pleas for religious toleration resolve at last into his philosophical view of the foundation and limits of human knowledge.

Locke's philosophical defence of religious liberty in the four Letters of Toleration is the most far-reaching of his contributions to social polity. He had a more modest estimate of human Religious resources for forming true judgments in religion, and a less pronounced opinion of the immorality of religious lion. error, than either the Catholic or the Puritan. The toleration which he spent his life in arguing for involved a change from the authoritative and absolute to the relative point of view, as regards man's means of knowledge and belief. It was a protest against those who in theology " peremptorily require demonstration and demand certainty where probability only is to be had." The practice of universal toleration amidst increasing religious differences was an application of the conception of human understanding which governs his Essay. Once a paradox it is now commonplace, and the superabundant argument in the Letters on Toleration fatigues the modern reader. The change is due more to Locke himself than to anyone else. Free thought and liberty of conscience had indeed been pleaded for, on various grounds, in the century in which he lived. Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Glanvill and other philosophical thinkers in the Church of England urged toleration in the state, in conjunction with wide comprehension in the church, on the ground of our necessary intellectual limitation and inability to reach demonstration in theological debates. Puritans like Owen and Goodwin, whose idea of ecclesiastical comprehension was dogmatic and narrow, were ready to accept sectarian variety, because it was their duty to allow many religions in the nation, but only one form of theology withie their own sect. The existence of separate nationalities, on the other hand, was the justification of national churches according to the latitudinarian churchmen with whom Locke associated : a national church comprehensive in creed, and thus co-extensive with the nation was their ideal. Locke went far to unite in a higher principle elements in the broad Anglican and the Puritan theories, while he recognized the individual liberty of thought which distinguishes the national church of England. A constant sense of the limits of human understanding was at the bottom of his arguments for tolerance. He had no objection to a national establishment of religion, provided that it was comprehensive enough, and was really the nation organized to promote goodness; not to protect the meta-physical subtleties of sectarian theologians. The recall of the national religion to the simplicity of the gospels would, he hoped, make toleration of nonconformists unnecessary, as few would then remain. To the atheist alone Locke refuses full toleration, on the ground that social obligation can have no hold over him, for " the taking away of God dissolves alt" He argued, too, against full toleration of the Church of Rome in England, on the ground of its unnational allegiance to a foreign sovereign. The unfitness of persecution as a means of propagating truth is copiously insisted on by Locke. Persecution can only transform a man into a [[Hypocrites|hypocrite]]; belief is legitimately formed only by discernment of sufficient evidence; apart from evidence, a man has no right to control the understanding; he cannot determine arbitrarily what his neighbours must believe. Thus Locke's pleas for religious toleration resolve at last into his philosophical view of the foundation and limits of human knowledge.

==II. The Reasonableness of Christianity==

==II. The Reasonableness of Christianity==