This is a vast intellectual undertaking, in some measures, comparable to Quentin Skinner's Foundations (Cambridge, 1978), which aspires to outline the historical relationship between the theory and practice of religious intolerance and intolerance in Europe in the period after the reformation and before the Enlightenment. Like Skinner's great work, it is committed to a contextual method to explain and understand the thinking of the times. The ambition of exploring the many contours and conceptual developments in beliefs about the powers of sacred and civil authorities to coerce or persuade citizens, believers and unbelievers, involves some lengthy and detailed excursions into patristic and medieval traditions of thinking about public religion, the duties and powers of the church, and the conflicting biblical injunctions (such as “obey the powers that be” and “obey God not man”). Interestingly, it also suggests that such writing—although central to the primary mode of understanding the tasks of contemporary political theory (establishing peace, creating obligations and responsibilities between the governed and the governing, and defending social order and property) was not “read off” from civil discourses. It is not possible then, Marshall argues, to suggest that a coherent theory of religious toleration was necessarily a consequence of, or even a foundation for, radical resistance theory.

The first part of the work focuses on the conflicts and intellectual struggles of the late seventeenth century, with particular interest in the communities of writers and politicians collectively described as the “republic of letters.” The section (as long as many other monographs but here less than a third of the whole), in exploring the conditions and justifications of persecution and intolerance in France, the Netherlands, and the British Isles, punctures the commonplace assumption that the story of the rise of toleration is a simple one. In place of persecuting and intolerant Roman Catholics being trumped by liberal and tolerant Protestants, Marshall paints a much more complex picture. The commonplace Whiggish metanarrative is displaced by a much more counterintuitive, but nevertheless convincing, account of a variety of orthodoxies (Catholic and Protestant) deploying a sophisticated arsenal of arguments (patristic, scriptural, politique, and ecclesiastical) to legitimate orthopraxy and coercion. Protestant minorities might develop arguments in defense of conscience against both Protestant and Catholic national churches: discourses of protestant orthodoxy were just as keen to deploy antiheretical arguments against those they conceived of as ungodly, deviant, and seditious. Pretty much every theological position took pious delight in excluding the Socinian, the atheist, and the libertine.

Arguments for, and against, intolerance were contingent to circumstances: although it is possible to argue that, as Marshall does persuasively in the third part of the book, there were communities surrounding figures like John Locke, Pierre Bayle, and Jean Le Clerc (as well as a very lengthy list of less-well-known writers who have been disinterred for careful inspection), who developed committed and reasonably consistent perspectives and arguments. As the concluding chapter establishes, however, even the most “radical” of tolerationist writers paused for thought before defending the rights of atheists and libertines (although Pierre Bayle and John Toland, here, seem to be the exception): indeed—as Marshall illustrates—many were very willing to tolerate “other” religions (Jews, Muslims, and heathens) before extending such liberties to those who escaped the carapace of religion altogether. Many of the arguments made, and objections raised against them, still persist and are rehearsed in contemporary debates about tolerating diversity.

The starting point of the case rests on the connection between ideas and practice. Marshall spends considerable, and necessary, space detailing and evidencing the widespread persecutions of minorities throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Especially in part 2 of the book he describes a series of brutal atrocity stories based on the hostile treatment of heretics, schismatics, libertines, sodomites, and many other unfortunate minorities in France, the Netherlands, and England. In this impressive synthesis of a range of historiographies, the extent of what has been called the persecuting society is displayed in its full bloodiness. Whether prompted by princes, popes, pastors, or priests, enacted by civil officers or baying mobs, or directed against minority communities, eccentric individuals, or enthusiastic martyrs, intolerance was ubiquitous and routine. As Marshall establishes, as circumstances changed, those who might defend the rights of godly conscience at one point would piously turn the sword against any they regarded as heretic or fallen. Significant and powerful Huguenot figures, like Pierre Jurieu, managed to defend tolerance for orthodox Protestants (against Roman Catholic persecution) almost in the same textual breath as promoting intolerance against the “poisonous” Socinians and pernicious writers like Bayle and Le Clerc. Both Roman Catholics, and men like Locke, vigorously pointed out the incoherence of such positions.

At the core of the book is an intention to contextualize John Locke's initial and subsequent Letters concerning toleration (1690–95). Much of the historiographical industry prompted by Locke's short text, and its subsequent reception and reputation, has described it as both foundational and forward looking. The entire cast of the volume is to place the work (and the broader project) in a more muted role—Locke was simply one among many, drawing on and refining traditions of tolerationist thinking articulated by those in his immediate fellowship and community. This adjusts the beaconlike status of the Letters concerning toleration: Locke may have been one of the most coherent and eventually consistent thinkers, but the thrust of Marshall's argument is to suggest that this commitment grew out of a broader community of intellectual practice premised upon the exchange of ideas and learning in the European Republic of Letters of the late seventeenth century. The development of such ideas, their dissemination and defense, was then embedded in a definite and precise context (the struggle to defend liberties of conscience under late Stuart monarchies) but simultaneously a profound contribution to a broader set of European principles.

This volume will prompt some necessary rethinking of current new orthodoxies driven most powerfully by Jonathan Israel's volumes on the radical and contested Enlightenment. Israel's capacious volumes marked out a trajectory for the invention of a philosophical project underpinning modernity—a program of religious toleration, philosophical materialism, and a commitment to egalitarian and democratic forms of government. Central to this vision was the unique achievement of Spinoza and a flotilla of radical Dutch thinkers. Contrary to Israel's understanding that downplayed the Lockean contribution, Marshall's volume establishes that Locke was a full and bold contributor to the ferment of European ideas, as were many other minor figures. The nature of this critical moment in the history of the collective European mind, as Marshall establishes, was a complex and contingent conversation that involved multiple voices.