JOHN LOCKE
Religious toleration
Outline
• Context
• Why was the restoration Church intolerant
• Why was religious toleration such a controversial issue
• Relevance to Locke’s ideas
• Toleration
• Human Understanding
• Why was a toleration act achieved in 1689
The Restoration Church
• Polemical works focused on ‘Adiaphora’
• Three conflicting groups
• Rigid Laudians: Sheldon, Thorndike, Hammond
• Moderate ‘latitude’ men: Stillingfleet, Tillotson
• Tolerators: Stubbe, Pett, Barlow
• 1662 Act of Uniformity
• ‘unfeigned assent and consent’ to Book of Common Prayer
• Importance of uniformity in adiaphorist argument
• 1685 James II
• Anglo-Dutch War
Toleration 1660- 1689
• 1660 Breda Declarations
• Charles II promised ‘a liberty to tender consciences’
• 1672 Declaration of Indulgence
• Ecclesiastical penalties against nonconformists suspended
• 1689 Toleration Act
• Christopher Hill, Century of Revolution
• ‘The Toleration Act of 1689 finally killed the old conception of a
single state Church of which all Englishmen were members’
Locke on toleration
• Written and published too early to be a response to the
Act of Toleration
• ‘I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark
of the true Church’
• Also importantly argues that Church and state are
separate because:
• the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, because
God has never given this authority to man
• the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his
power consists only in outward force
• the care of the salvation of men's souls cannot belong to the
magistrate because the rigours and penalties of law can change
mind they cannot help the soul
Locke on Human Understanding
• No innate principles
• Therefore babies are not born with principles so are formed by
upbringing, meaning that identity is also upbringing (points 1,2,3)
• Identity not innate
• No clear identity or sameness can be found or agreed on. There
cannot be multiple innate identities (points 4,5)
• Worship and God not innate
• A baby does not know what worship is. God is the closest thing to
innate knowledge since atheists (biblical and modern) were without
morals. No universal notion of God, but ‘a rational creature…
cannot miss the discovery of a Deity’ (points 7,8,9)
What this meant
• Locke saw no form of worship as absolutely correct
• Uses this idea in Epistola de Tolerentia
• Nobody is born a member of any church
• No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect
• 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
• A church, then, is a society of members voluntarily uniting to that
end.
• Therefore a Church is just a group of people seeking salvation, not
necessarily in a particular form of worship
The 1689 Act of Toleration
• Did not apply to Catholics, nontrinitarians and atheists
• Allowed freedom of worship for those who pledged oaths
of allegiance, but not comprehension into the Church
• An advancement of a bill that was proposed in 1680
which stopped the prosecution of protestant dissenters
under statutes aimed at Catholics
Conclusion
• The restoration Church was similar to the Church before
the interregnum and made only marginal moves towards
toleration before 1689
• Locke’s views on human nature justified his views on
religious toleration
• Although the act of 1689 was tolerant, it was not as much
as Locke wanted
• Locke wanted complete separation of Church and State
• Locke saw Catholics as misguided but also that they should be
persuaded into the Church
Bibliography
• Mark Goldie, 'The theory of religious intolerance in Restoration England' in
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From Persecution to Toleration: the Glorious Revolution and Religion in
England edited by Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke
(Oxford, 1991), 331-368.
Goldie, Mark, ‘The Political Thought of the Anglican Revolution’ in R. Beddard
(ed.), The Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991) pp. 102-137.
Harris, Tim, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy 1685- 1720
(London, 2006)
Hill, Christopher, The Century of Revolution: 1603- 1714 (London 1961)
Rose, Jacqueline. “John Locke, 'matters Indifferent', and the Restoration of
the Church of England”. The Historical Journal 48.3 (2005): 601–621.
Schochet, Gordon J., ‘John Locke and religious toleration’ in L.G. Schwoerer
(ed.), The Revoltiuon of 1688- 1689 (Cambridge, 1992) pp. 147- 165.
Spurr, John, 'The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act
of 1689', English Historical Review, CIV (1989), 927-946.