KG

Epistola de tolerantia; A letter on toleration, ed. Raymond Klibansky, trans. J. G. Gough, Oxford 1968

MG

John Locke, A letter concerning toleration and other writings, ed. Mark Goldie, Indianapolis 2010

MM

John Locke, A letter concerning toleration, ed. Mario Montuori, The Hague 1963

RVMS

Locke on toleration, ed. Richard Vernon, trans. Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge 2010.

Over the past three centuries Locke's Epistola de tolerantia (written in 1685, published in English and Latin in 1689) has worn well. Its plea for the rational necessity of coexistence rather than authoritarianism as a solution to religious conflict, the effective rhetoric of the English translation, and – in all likelihood – its brevity make it one of the most accessible texts of the canon. Despite the plethora of editions already available there is, it seems, still a market for two new ones, each of which approaches the Letter from a different, and revealing, stance.

Currently, the most widely used edition is probably James Tully's of 1983.Footnote ¹ Mark Goldie's new edition follows the Tully tradition in reproducing William Popple's translation of 1689. It is published in the Liberty Fund's Thomas Hollis Library series, intended to present texts of ‘intellectual power’, contemporary impact, or with a distinct approach to liberty, which may be ‘salutary and influential today’ (pp. vii–viii). Goldie's introduction opens with a concise encapsulation of late seventeenth-century European intolerance, briefly notes the circumstances of publication, and then surveys Locke's main arguments and changing views over time. He ends by cautiously suggesting the Letter to be a contribution to Enlightenment anti-religious writing. Richard Vernon's edition, which offers a new translation by Michael Silverthorne, forms part of Cambridge University Press's Texts in the History of Philosophy. Vernon's introduction has an effective summary of the toleration question under Charles ii and notes the European dimensions of the Letter before analysing Locke's argument, particularly in response to Jonas Proast. Proast, a High Church Oxford don who defended uniformity on Augustinian principles, was rare in provoking Locke to defend his ideas – a debate which rumbled on until the end of Locke's life (he died with his third refutation of Proast unfinished).

Both Vernon and Goldie identify three main strands of Locke's argument, but they disagree on what those are. Goldie offers (1) the nature of Christianity as a peaceful religion; (2) the separation of Church and State; and (3) that subjects cannot consent to cede questions of conscience to the ruler. Goldie's third is Vernon's first point. Vernon suggests (1) that rational subjects do not mandate the state to govern religion; (2) a rational ruler would not impose belief, which is an internal decision; and (3) that the ruler is likely to get such decisions wrong. Vernon's list reflects the greater attention that his introduction pays to Locke's exchanges with Proast, where the focus shifted. The relatively limited role that scepticism played in Locke's argument is described by Vernon as ‘political scepticism’ (a suspicion about the ability of governments to find the truth) – deemed by Goldie a ‘calculus of prudence’ about persecution.Footnote ² Both note in passing Locke's comments on the dangers of imposing rites and ceremonies of religion (adiaphora), a policy which he himself had once endorsed. The amount of attention that Locke gives to the ‘aesthetics of belief’ in the Letter reminds us that the debate on toleration was one within Protestantism, especially in England, in which the ‘sartorial became soteriological’.Footnote ³ Stimulated to write by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685, Locke remained preoccupied with the minutiae of English Dissent. This is an English and European text, not a British and Irish one.

Neither of these editions of the Letter contains a detailed enough account of Popple, whose words are those familiar to us. Indeed, no edition of the Letter exists which includes Locke's Latin Epistola, a modern translation, and Popple's translation of 1689 (perhaps the Clarendon Edition of Locke's Works will offer such).Footnote ⁴ But a near equivalent can be constructed by putting Silverthorne's translation alongside Popple's. Although individual scholars should mine the comparisons for their own purposes, the following discussion offers a preliminary survey. For, while Goldie does most to footnote differences, he by no means references all of the substantive ones, while Vernon concentrates on ambiguities in Latin words. In his ‘Notes on the Texts’, Goldie mentions Popple's use of more intensive and emotive language and his tendency to particularise Locke's abstract references, most characteristically converting persecution in a general sense to Louis xiv's dragooning of Huguenots.Footnote ⁵ Popple's intensifiers are too frequent to analyse them all here, but Goldie notes as an illustrative example that Locke comments on the religion ‘prout patriis legibus statutum est’, translated by Silverthorne as that which ‘the laws of their country required’ but which Popple renders as ‘Religion, which either Ignorance, Ambition, or Superstition had chanced to establish’.Footnote ⁶

What does a comparison of the translations tell us? On occasion, there are divergences because Locke's Latin is itself ambiguous. The magistrate bringing (‘cogendas’) subjects into the church is translated as ‘gathering’ by Popple and ‘compelling’ by Silverthorne; the latter echoing the biblical passage supporting intolerance: ‘compel them to come in’ (Luke xiv.23).Footnote ⁷ ‘Bona civilia’ is rendered ‘Civil Rights’ by Popple and ‘civil goods’ by Silverthorne; that the way to salvation is ‘ambigitur’ means ‘it is still doubted’ for Popple and ‘it is not self evident’ for Silverthorne.Footnote ⁸ That the Mosaic Law punishes idolaters is ‘recte quidem Mosaica’: ‘True indeed, by the Law of Moses’ (Popple); ‘the Law of Moses is right to command this’ (Silverthorne).Footnote ⁹ The ‘malo’ of Catholic allegiance to a foreign power is an ‘Inconvenience’ for Popple, a ‘disastrous situation’ for Silverthorne; the church which the governor ‘fovet’ is that ‘favoured’ for Silverthorne and ‘indulges’ for Popple – perhaps a deliberate parody of royal declarations of indulgence to Dissenters.Footnote ¹⁰ The Latin has the magistrate giving ‘ipsorum opiniones’ to the Bible, whose express words are accepted ‘omnium consensu’. For Popple ‘additional Opinions’ are added to the Scripture ‘acknowledged by all Christians’; for Silverthorne ‘idiosyncratic and adventitious’ views to texts accepted by ‘universal consent’.Footnote ¹¹ For those acquainted with seventeenth-century language, a logical modern English translation seems almost jarringly unfamiliar: ‘the Rights and Franchises that belong to him as a Man’ versus ‘human rights’ for ‘humanitatis quam civitatis jura’, and ‘Order, Decency, and Edification’ versus ‘the end of edification, with order and grace’ for ‘ordine et decore aedificationi’ – Popple's translation of the last capturing the echo of 1 Corinthians xiv.40, the ur-text for defenders of ceremonial conformity.Footnote ¹² There is only one apparent instance of possible misunderstanding by Popple: translation of ‘in Indiis’ as ‘in India’.Footnote ¹³ Generally, Popple seems to have reflected Locke's language well: ‘every particular man's Goods and Person’ captures the double meaning of ‘bonorum cujus’ which Silverthorne fairly translates as ‘property’, famously defined in the Second Treatise as ‘Lives, Liberties, and Estates’. And Locke would surely have endorsed ‘honest industry’, given his belief that ‘God gave the World … to the use of the Industrious and Rational’.Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed, on one occasion Popple ironically sounds more Lockean than Locke himself does.Footnote ¹⁵

Some changes reflect Popple's more individualist and radical suggestions: the famous plea in the (wholly new) preface for ‘absolute liberty’ and his call for toleration of individuals as well as churches.Footnote ¹⁶ While his translation of ‘diem dominicam’ as the ‘First, or the Seventh Day’ nods in a Sabbatarian direction, his rendering of ‘tibi’ and ‘a te’ as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ may reflect his contacts with the Quaker merchant Benjamin Furly.Footnote ¹⁷ That there was no division of the Jewish Church and commonwealth Popple faithfully translates; that this changed ‘uti post Christum natum’ he omits.Footnote ¹⁸ He omits Locke's admission that all allow the magistrate to determine adiaphora (‘quae ad omnibus conceditur’). (Peculiarly, Silverthorne cuts the comment that toleration ‘might have been granted’ to dissenters, although this is present in Locke's Latin and included by Popple.)Footnote ¹⁹ Some of Popple's alterations may be biographically influenced. He personalises the example of a non-religious club as one for claret – Goldie notes his own role as a wine merchant.Footnote ²⁰ Others are unexpected, such as the less aggressive complaints about the arbitrary nature of the magistrate and the Church.Footnote ²¹ Matters indifferent ‘cannot, by any human Authority [A], be made any part of the Worship of God … in those things human Authority [B] has [no] place’ – where at [A] Locke has ‘auctoritate et arbitrio’ and at [B] ‘arbitrium vel auctoritas humana’.Footnote ²² Similarly, the magistrate cannot remove property from one group without public reason – or, Locke includes, ‘on a whim’.Footnote ²³

Omission, interpolation and adaptation are all in evidence. Nevertheless, it would be an oversimplification to see Popple as translating the Letter into an English argument as well as the English language. On occasion, he does: in altering ‘assemblies’ to ‘conventicles’ and in parochialising Locke's list of European religious groups.Footnote ²⁴ But the dragoons were a European phenomenon; and in the postscript Popple retains the list of European denominations.Footnote ²⁵ He is less nationally specific than Locke when he complains of punishments of ‘Gallies, Prisons, Confiscations, and Death’ where Locke has ‘ergastulum, carcer, capitis imminutio, bonorum sectio’ – ‘forced labour, prison, loss of rights, and forcible auction of their property’. If galleys recall France, auction of Dissenters’ property expropriated for their inability to pay purposely extortionate fines was a feature of Restoration English persecution.Footnote ²⁶ Silverthorne further localises Locke's statement that it should be as lawful to meet ‘in templo quam in curia magis’ as ‘in a dissenting chapel than … in a church favoured by the court’; Popple has ‘in Churches than in Halls’.Footnote ²⁷

Throughout, Popple's English blurs some of Locke's classicising and scholastic language. Goldie footnotes the occasional use of classical phrases; Vernon makes the important point that Locke's Epistola was written in part in the style of a university disputation: ‘you may say’ is constantly abstracted by Popple into ‘it may be said’.Footnote ²⁸ Popple obscures what is probably a deliberately scholastic phrase: Church and State are different ‘in their Original, End, Business’ – for ‘origine, fine, materia’, while Locke's classicising ‘church of the court’ (‘ecclesiam aulicam’) is (perhaps understandably) rendered by Popple ‘National Church’.Footnote ²⁹ Finally, on two occasions there are substantive changes to Locke's Latin, the reasons behind which are hard to fathom.The first is the statement that those of the ruler's religion are free and favoured: ‘his liberorum conditio est, quibus indulgetur usque ad lasciviam’ – followed closely in Silverthorne's ‘the condition of his own people is a condition of free men, and he indulges them to the point of permissiveness’, and altered by Popple's ‘these he treats like Children, and indulges them even to Wantonness’.Footnote ³⁰ The second is the plea that ‘magistratusque civilis de sua ad legem Dei conformanda multum’: ‘may civil rulers be punctilious in conforming their law to God's law’ (Silverthorne), versus Popple's ‘Civil Magistrates growing more careful to conform their own Consciences to the Law of God’.Footnote ³¹

Both editions reviewed here reflect the pleasingly increasing trend in Locke scholarship towards awareness of Locke's non-canonical works and his voluminous papers. Again, they differ on strategies, Goldie favouring some of Locke's reflections on religion and toleration before the Letter, and Vernon extracts from Locke and Proast (with short passages from the Essay concerning human understanding and the Second treatise). Selecting material from the prolix (and extremely repetitive) exchange with Proast is hard, but Vernon's extracts give a good flavour of the argument, reflecting debate on the efficacy of force, the nature of punishment and the purposes of government. One potentially telling statement is excluded: Locke saying that he presumes Proast to be a member of the Church of England, for ‘I suppose no worse of you, than I confess of myself’.Footnote ³² Editorial preferences are made strikingly manifest in the different extracts which Vernon and Goldie print from Locke's Third letter for toleration. Both reproduce discussions from the second and fifth chapters on the nature of the commonwealth and how Dissenters may be converted. But Vernon's selections lean towards the abstract and philosophical – who judges religious error, types of punishment and impositions on conscience. Goldie's tend to be more particular reflections of specifically early modern English questions – on penal laws, reformation of manners and the Test Acts – although he also includes passages on idolatry and toleration of Jews. This variance is most prominent in the sections from chapter ix, ‘of the usefulness of force in matters of religion’, with Vernon choosing theoretical analysis and Goldie comment on English penal laws. Locke's ability to fascinate, but also segregate, philosophers and historians is apparent here.

Locke's commitment both to his Letter's argument and to Popple's translation of itFootnote ³³ was shown in his lengthy replies to Proast's defence of uniformity – it was rare for Locke to respond to a critic. Adam Wolfson's Persecution or toleration is an extended essay on the quarrel, joining previous accounts by Vernon, Goldie and Wolfson himself.Footnote ³⁴ Attacking the notion that Locke's tolerationism is deeply imbued with Christian values,Footnote ³⁵ Wolfson surveys Locke's three main claims – consent, the futility of force and scepticism. His insistence that Locke moves outside a Christian viewFootnote ³⁶ is not quite convincing – Locke's account is suggestive of a broader shift from an Augustinian conversionary meaning of charity to a peaceful forbearing one. Conversely, Wolfson offers a valuable reminder that Locke was more willing to allow someone's belief to be informally influenced by another than was Proast (pp. 52–5). He is also keen to insist that scepticism does have a major role to play in Locke's argument,Footnote ³⁷ because Locke separates belief and knowledge. While toleration manifests itself politically in disestablishment, it requires all citizens to distinguish belief (however assured) from demonstrable knowledge (p. 76). At his best when executing close textual analysis – Locke's omission of ‘heresy’ in a passage from Galatians (pp. 85–8) – Wolfson sometimes misses the bigger picture. He depicts Lockean toleration as inclusive, even of Catholics and atheists. It is true that Locke would tolerate non-Christian groups, but there was a long Christian tradition of being more forbearing (at least in theory) to Jews, Muslims and pagans than to heretics, apostates and schismatics.Footnote ³⁸ Wolfson says that Locke rarely defended the exclusion of atheists in his lengthy rebuttals of Proast, but since Proast was hardly arguing for their toleration, Locke had no need to do so.

Overall, Wolfson's account provides a valuable reminder of the need for toleration to assert itself as a value – a liberal neutral state is not enough, for a ‘debilitating relativism’Footnote ³⁹ would eventually erode the case for privileging toleration. But while the trend towards considering Locke and Proast is to be welcomed, the scholarship on it would benefit from probing Proast in more depth. Vernon, in his edition of the Letter, says that Proast's Articles of visitation and enquiry are his ‘only other extant work’.Footnote ⁴⁰ This is not quite true, for much can be gleaned from Proast's career in Oxford. For example, his complaints about James ii's policy of promoting Catholicism by the dispensing power hint at a fear that toleration was a route to popery, which may have continued after the Revolution.Footnote ⁴¹

As Vernon reminds us, Locke mirrors ‘some political circumstances specific to his time’ as well as ‘theological concerns that are no part of the conventions of public debate’.Footnote ⁴² The most commonly cited example of this is Locke excluding certain groups from toleration – Catholics, antinomians and atheists, although he includes pagans, Muslims and Jews. (Sometimes these arguments seem to boil down just to Catholics.)Footnote ⁴³ It is possible to read these arguments against the grain of Locke's conclusions – if Catholics can prove their loyalty, then they may be tolerated, however ‘false and absurd’ their theology.Footnote ⁴⁴ Indeed, according to Goldie, eighteenth-century Catholics ‘took succor’ (sic, p. xix) from Locke's political case against toleration – an assertion which badly needs a footnote. Both Wolfson and both editors (one may infer) think that reading Locke (and Proast) can help our own considerations on toleration. It is certainly useful to inform ourselves of where modern western notions of toleration originated, although Locke alone is not enough: Bayle supports much better a claim of the primacy of individual sincerity, and Spinoza of freedom of non-religious thought.Footnote ⁴⁵ But Bayle is lengthy, and Spinoza hard to fathom. Ultimately, of course, none of these thinkers can answer our questions and solve our problems.

As István Bejczy has pointed out, ‘toleration’ for many today is a weaker notion than in the medieval and early modern periods, when it required a supreme effort to accept the existence of a belief clearly considered ‘wrong’.Footnote ⁴⁶ In societies where religion is an individual choice, and the Augustinian assumption of a single truth – one path to salvation – has dissipated, toleration occurs in a wholly different intellectual framework. Indeed, for all the accessibility and power of Locke's (or Popple's) rhetoric over the centuries, we may learn more about how to negotiate disputes today from the rich historiography which is developing on the practical co-existence of people of different faiths in early modern Europe. How early modern men and women managed to live, work and pray in the new circumstances of religious division, and how their cooperative strategies survived and broke down under pressure, has been the great discovery of the latest generation of social historians of toleration.Footnote ⁴⁷ While recent studies of theories of toleration have stressed their limits in the 1650s and their halting and unpopular nature in the later seventeenth century,Footnote ⁴⁸ a new optimism about popular tolerance has emerged. The forbearance of the anonymous now sits uneasily with the intransigent intolerance of officialdom. The next development must be to bring these strands together and dissect their interaction. One crucial moment where Locke may help in this was his experiences of religious diversity in Cleves in the mid-1660s. Witnessing practical coexistence jolted Locke out of his sense that uniformity was the only solution to religious warfare. Thus Locke and his papers might usefully bridge the intellectual and social history of toleration. By uniting these, historians and political thinkers today may further understanding of how countless unnamed people might, as Locke put it, ‘quietly permit one another to choose their way to heaven’.Footnote ⁴⁹