Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
A Letter Concerning Toleration
The separation of church and state.
Introduction
Locke wrote the letter in Latin in 1685, during his exile in the Dutch Republic, shortly after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes; it was addressed to his friend, the theologian Philipp van Limborch. It was printed in Gouda in 1689, and William Popple’s English translation appeared the same year. The argument separates two spheres: the state cares for civil interests such as life, liberty and property, while a church is a voluntary society for worship, and force cannot produce genuine belief. Locke’s toleration has limits: he excludes atheists, since their oaths cannot be trusted, and churches that owe allegiance to a foreign prince, which readers took to mean Catholics.
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Connections
Taken up in
- Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism1783 · Moses Mendelssohn
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