How we got freedom of conscience
For ages, freedom of conscience stood for impiety, immorality and anarchy. But in the 17th century, that started to change. In this article you'll read why.
Until the 17th century, freedom of conscience was often associated with impiety, immorality, violence and ungovernability. Society had to be protected against heretics, people with terrible ideas, and against religious incitement. But gradually that view changed. In this article, I list how thinkers in the 16th and 17th centuries argued for this change. Their views would have a crucial influence on our current ideals of religious freedom and freedom of expression.
I already wrote that in the 16th century theology had almost become a popular sport. Thousands of theologians, qualified or not, were at each other's throats. Topics like free will and predestination could divide even uneducated churchmen to the core. The contradictions only seemed to grow larger through the discussions, instead of smaller. Religious differences regularly resulted in scuffles, sometimes even resulting in armed conflict.
Jean Bodin on the pointlessness of religious debate
In 1561, the Poissy Colloquium took place, a last-ditch attempt by the French royals to persuade Catholics and Protestants to theological unity. This Erasmian approach to the conflict failed miserably. Similar attempts initiated by the Vatican and the German Emperor also ended in failure. After these religious conversations, the realisation dawned that further discussion was pointless.
Jean Bodin also thought so, and wrote it down in 1576 in his Six livres de la république. He already featured in an earlier article about pragmatic toleration in France. We'll never reach an agreement, and further discussion will only lead to escalation, he sighed. Meanwhile, a civil war was raging in France between Calvinist and Catholic troops that could not be averted. The war must stop, but how to do that?
Religion cannot be proven anyway, so just stop talking about it, Bodin thought. It is best if there were a national religion that cannot be disputed. The Grand Princes of Moscow had banned all sermons and discussions about religion: only the Bible was read. Bodin liked that idea: all that talk about religion only causes trouble. You'll never agree, and it only leads to arguments.
It is true that discussion often leads to improvement, but that does not mean that the monarch should allow dangerous discussions: they must be nipped in the bud, if necessary by force, especially if they aim to undermine the monarch's authority.
Dangerous discussions must be nipped in the bud.
Bodin
But the king should avoid taking harsh action if at all possible. For “the more one tries to limit man's will, the more stubborn he becomes.” In general, it is sufficient to move prudently with rioters. “The madman who cannot stop dancing and singing incessantly can only be calmed by the musician first tuning his violin to the mood of the patient and then gradually adjusting the rhythm until he has cured him.”
Bodin then drew attention to the power of populism, the power of charismatic preachers with their rhetorical violence. They are usually liars, he says, but a wise monarch takes advantage of them. It's better to have them with you than against you. Bodin advised to appease them and shower them with gifts.
Bodin’s pragmatic attitude touched upon several debates, which we will discuss below:
Is religious discord dangerous?
When should the state interfere?
What’s the point of religious coercion?
On religious discord
Coornhert and Lipsius the dangers of religious discord
Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert (1522–1590) was a versatile person. He made beautiful engravings, wrote poems and plays, he worked as a lawyer and city secretary of Haarlem. He had taught himself Latin and liked to be inspired by the stoics. He wrote about theology, morality, the penal system and the state system. As a liberal thinker, he was clearly on the side of religious toleration. Coornhert had strong views and liked to confront religious zealots in his country. He had been imprisoned in 1567 by order of the Catholic government for his relations with Wilhelm of Orange. He clashed with the authorities more often; they thought he was a nuisance. Coornhert remained Catholic all his life, out of Erasmian confidence in the unity of the church, although his criticism of the church was harsh. But the intolerant Protestants were no better, he thought.
Both Coornhert and the scholar Justus Lipsius had read Jean Bodin's book. In the religiously divided Netherlands of 1589, Lipsius published a similar advice to the monarch: Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex. A monarch must do everything he can to maintain unity of religion in the country, he believed. Anyone who endangers that unity must be brutally silenced: “burn and cut, lest any limb perish rather than the whole body.” Lipsius turned against religious fanatics on both sides who were destroying the country.
The always agitated Coornhert targeted Lipsius, much to the indignation of his victim. Lipsius was seen as one of the greatest intellectuals of his time, a kind and moderate man, a decent academic. Anyone who reads the polemic with Coornhert almost feels sorry for Lipsius. Yet Coornhert did not do that without reason. Because behind his image of distinguished scholarship, Lipsius legitimised the cruel, bloody actions of the Spanish Inquisition, which Lipsius may have hardly known about in his ivory tower, but Coornhert did.
Both gentlemen agreed that freedom of conscience applies. And that religious violence must also be punished. But Coornhert stood up for peaceful believers, heretics in Lipsius' eyes, who do nothing other than peacefully discuss matters of faith and listen to speeches, people who have religious conversations. You can't possibly punish them simply because they have different beliefs than those in power, right?
Peaceful debate should not be punished.
Coornhert, Williams
Roger Williams and the back of the tongue
Just as hot headed as Coornhert, but of a different calibre, was Roger Williams (1603–1683), the first governor of Rhode Island, a British colony in North America. Williams owed his governorship to his good relations with the local Indian tribes. He had studied their language well, and there was mutual respect, although Williams also spoke very disparagingly about their culture, even in their presence. Williams was one of those people who always showed the back of his tongue. Growing up in an English Puritan tradition, crossing to the overseas colonies was an obvious choice. But there in Massachusetts he soon made himself so impossible that he was banished from the colony for heresy. Williams was a sectarian who left every religious community with strife. Ultimately, he formed his own congregation, consisting of himself and his wife, although he did not vouch for her religious insights either.
Yet Williams' colony in Rhode Island was exceptionally tolerant in religious terms. This was due to Williams' view that as a Christian you are obliged never to keep your opinions to yourself. You can instruct each other in this way, although he harboured few illusions about this. But just as he never minced his words, everyone else had the same right to do so. As a result, the colony attracted the craziest religious sects, who, having been sent away elsewhere and denouncing each other, were still able to coexist. Williams was fine with it all, as long as taxes were paid properly, the insults did not lead to a fight, and the authority of the administration was respected.
You may like to watch this somewhat blurry 30 minute video about Roger Williams and religious freedom in Rhode Island.
What’s the point of religious discussion?
In 1582, Coornhert published Synodus van der conscientien vryheydt (Synod on the freedom of conscience). In that year, the Calvinists had already been ruling the roost in Holland for a few years. They formed the official church, but there was no coercion of faith, and they were kept short by the city regents, who did not want their cities to end up as a second Geneva. Most Dutch people religiously stayed aloof. But it was certainly not peaceful and quiet yet. There was still an armed conflict with the Spanish troops that controlled parts of the east and south of the country, and relations between the different religions were tense.
In his Synodus, Coornhert had Catholics and Calvinists at each other's throats in a series of debates about the true faith, who has a say in it, and whether people should be persecuted for their religious opinions.
As his alter ego Gamaliel, he gave his own opinion after every debate. Of course, Coornhert did not randomly call himself Gamaliel. It was a reference to a text in the New Testament, in which that Pharisee said:
Keep away from these men and let them alone, because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!
— Gamaliel, quoted in Acts 5:38–39
The truth always surfaces in the end, was the message. Religions based on truth have nothing to fear from debate.
Coornhert mainly used epistemological arguments. Where Bodin stated that theological debate is pointless, because we will never arrive at the undisputed truth, Coornhert used the same argument to encourage the debate: the absolute truth on theological issues cannot be determined by definition, but at least we can hope to get closer to the truth.
An open discussion can get us closer to the truth.
Sokrates, Coornhert, Williams, Milton, Bayle, Spinoza, Locke, D'Holbach, Jefferson, Mill
Lipsius had used another argument for the restriction of religious dissent: by allowing various sects, you also allow religions that are obviously wrong.
That was obviously a no-brainer for Coornhert. How do you know what you can and cannot claim? And what should you punish? That people wander? Everyone wanders from time to time, unintentionally. And if everyone errs from time to time, who will be the judge?
No one has a monopoly on the truth.
Coornhert, Locke, Bayle
Religious competition
Coornhert would write later against Lipsius that an open debate might also lead to religious innovation, “Why would innovations and improvements in religion be bad and punishable,” Coornhert asked. If you reasoned like Lipsius, you would also promote the execution of Jesus.
It was an interesting argument, almost viewing religious debate as a free market with competition and innovation. And Coornhert wasn’t the only one who came up with this perspective. Just as Williams maintained a society in which believers peacefully but firmly told each other the truth, there were more advocates of toleration who saw the benefits of religious rivalry.
We already talked about Pierre Bayle in detail in the previous episode. The Catholic persecution of Protestants in France, which he had also had to deal with, and the equally intolerant attitude of the Calvinists affected him deeply. The intellectual development he underwent in his life can be interpreted as a search for the best foundation for religious toleration.
Bayle wrote that “the same harmony might exist in a state composed of ten different sects, as in a city where the different kinds of merchants contribute to each other's mutual support. The only thing that could naturally arise from it would be an honest emulation between them, which should rise in piety, in good works, and in spiritual knowledge.”
State interference
The government might want to interfere in religious strife for several reasons:
Religious discord undermines national unity. And religious strife can easily escalate, especially under the influence of fanatics.
To assist the church in the enforcement of morality of its citizens, their conscience, or in their salvation, and to protect the true faith.
Religious toleration in the 17th century Netherlands proved to work actually just fine. And in Rhode Island, Williams had proven that a state that can actually have a very diverse religious landscape. Although Rhode Island was a reservoir of sects that despised each other, it remained peaceful because the government remained strictly neutral on Williams's authority and only interfered in case of acts of violence.
So, religious discord didn’t necessarily undermine national unity or peace, as long as the government suppressed violent outbursts. But what about the dangers of hate speech, populism and public appeals to undermine the authority of the state? We’ll get to that later in this article. Let’s first discuss the supposed task of the government to make the citizens behave as good christians.
Should governments force their citizens to behave as good christians?
Is religious coercion a task of the state?
Roger Williams found religious coercion by the government not just ineffective, but also illegitimate.
John Locke (1632–1704) was an English physician who gradually became more deeply involved in politics and philosophy. Locke wrote some of his most famous works in Amsterdam, where he lived in exile since 1683, because he had temporarily fallen out of political favour. He returned to England in 1689, when the house of Stuarts had been replaced in the Glorious Revolution.
Although he played a marginal role in politics, he was known as a sympathiser of the Whigs, a political group that sought a constitutional monarchy. (The opposing camp, the tories, sought absolute kingship). Locke was regularly hired by a wealthy Whig, Earl Shaftesbury, a landowner with large colonial possessions and little desire for taxes, to express his interests eloquently.
Locke agreed with Williams. Social unrest was caused more by attempts from higher up to suppress certain religious beliefs than by clashes between different religious beliefs, as numerous thinkers had said before.
Unless the views of believers threaten state authority or social cohesion, the government should keep aloof, John Locke thought. Let alone apply coercion. There is no harm or violation of rights involved in wrong beliefs.
Because one man doesn’t violate the rights of another by his false beliefs and improper manner of worship, and one man’s perdition does no harm to another man’s affairs, the care of each man’s salvation belongs only to himself.
— John Locke, Epistola de tolerantia (1689)
Furthermore, Locke held the opinion that the state is not about salvation and conscience. God gave us that freedom, so others are not allowed to interfere. States should not interfere with the religious views of their subjects in any case. It would be wrong to follow the dictates of the state on these kinds of uncertain issues, as it can also make mistakes.
Those were convincing arguments. But other motives remained: protection of morality, conscience, salvation, truth. We’ve already dealt with morality in a previous episode, where Bayle eventually made it plausible that the church can’t claim a monopoly on morality. And no matter how Christian the citizens are, society would be riotous without the city’s finest on the streets. It is not the fear of God but the fear of the law that is decisive. So let’s talk about true faith.
Fallibilism and the certainty of true faith
Skepticism or Pyrrhonism assumes that the truth cannot be known, but approximated at best. Pyrrhonism was still a taboo until the 18th century, almost as bad as atheism; you better not be accused of that. But fallibilism was still just possible. Fallibilism is the recognition that our human knowledge is limited, that we can be wrong no matter how hard we try. Who could say he was never wrong? This risk was widely recognised, especially in theological matters. Although this was especially difficult for the Church of Rome. After all, it had a pedigree that went back to Peter and Paul, a tradition of centuries of learning and an infallible pope. Can one actually determine religious truth? That argument often came up in the discussion about religious toleration. Can we impose our religious views on others if we have to admit that we may be wrong?
Religious toleration was a recurring theme in Locke's works, an acute problem in his time. Anglicans and Catholics were the main movements in England, but there were more Protestant movements: the Anabaptists, the Quakers and a handful of other Protestant communities. Whether all of these should be tolerated was a matter of concern at the time. Locke's (first) Letter on toleration was published anonymously in 1689 and was a huge success.
It was unthinkable for the Anglicans not to respond to Locke. The Anglican theologian Jonas Proast (1640–1710) tackled this task con gusto in his The argument of the Letter concerning toleration, briefly considered and answered'd, published in 1690. He made things quite difficult for Locke. To such an extent that Locke later had to revisit or nuance a number of positions. A famous polemic arose between Locke and Proast, which would keep Locke busy until his death.
Locke's central argument was freedom of conscience due to epistemological uncertainty. No one has a monopoly on the truth in matters of faith. Therefore, everyone must try to be saved in their own way. Proast argued against Locke that for him it was established that there is only one true religion, namely his own, the Anglican. Locke of course defended himself with classical arguments. How can you be so sure? And: everyone thinks that about their own faith. And if there were one true faith, it would have to be the same everywhere in the world.
But Proast's answer got Locke into trouble. Proast assumed that Locke was a professing member of the Anglican Church. (If Locke were to deny that, he would really get into trouble.) Then you will have to assume that your own faith is the true faith. Because if you don't, you would have to abandon your own faith and claim that all other faiths are equally true, or that all faiths are false. “For the national religion is either true or false.”
Locke understood the threat behind it. Because if you do not embrace your own faith as the true faith, you are in fact an apostate, with all the social risks that entails. So he wrote a response that was over 300 pages long. In essence, his response was that in order to impose a belief on someone else, you must be very sure of your own beliefs. Religion is a faith, a belief if you like, but it is not knowledge. Coercion may be used for various reasons, but faith is not one of them.
Earlier, Pierre Bayle had already made the same point more succinctly: faith and reason are different domains that we should not try to unite.
Don’t confuse faith and reason.
Locke, Bayle
Conscience
So what was left? The argument that states should influence the conscience of their citizens. That wasn’t an outrageous idea. After all, our current governments do the same. They want us to feel guilty when we book a flight, litter or discriminate.
But this wasn’t about littering. It was about states forcing their citizens to endorse a certain christian faith, which should ultimately lead to salvation. With governments concerned with our destiny after death, we entered a different domain, namely that of theology. And it wasn’t about influencing, but about the use of force.
On forcing a conscience
Virtually all proponents of religious toleration, starting with Erasmus and Castellio, argued that tolerance is our Christian duty, because Jesus himself commanded it. Just think of the parable about the wheat and the tares. There wasn't much to argue against that.
But there was more. The problem was that, according to christian theology, the conscience is free. Forcing a conscience is worse than killing a human, Sébastien Castellio had already argued in 1562, in his Conseil à la France désolée. And if the government forces faith, this will not lead to sincere faith on the part of its subjects, but only to outward obedience, added Locke. Only choices made freely can earn us bonus points for salvation, he believed.
Our consciences are free.
Castellio, Coornhert, Bayle, Spinoza, Locke
Although the fundamental freedom of the conscience wasn’t disputed, Proast had argued against Locke that a certain degree of coercion is sometimes necessary to get people on the right track. Jean Calvin had also brought this up, following Augustinus, among others. The legitimacy of coercion was that the persecuting church was right, and their victim was not. To us that sounds preposterous, but for centuries, most religions, and the Church of Rome in particular, had said it with a straight face.
That argument was easily refuted with epistemological arguments: Would Proast also justify coercion if it were in the hands of a Lutheran or a Mohammedan? Of course he wouldn’t, because they were wrong and his religion was right. But how was Proast so sure that his religion was right? It was a belief, after all, which is not the same as knowledge.
Pierre Bayle was on the same track: anyone can claim that he is right. But that does not legitimise coercion. He brought in an impartial outsider, a fictional emperor of China, who had to decide whether the Church of Rome should be admitted to his country. The emperor would be crazy to allow the Church of Rome into his country, Bayle said. Because first, the church uses coercion to spread their religion. And secondly, according to Bayle, the church demanded privileges for itself (namely the monopoly on the truth) that it did not grant to others.
It’s unfair if a religion claims privileges for itself that it doesn’t grant others.
Bayle, Rawls
Locke would use a similar argument, which is related to the paradox of toleration:
(Those) who grant to the faithful, religious and orthodox, that is to say, in plain terms, to themselves, any special privilege or power over other mortals, in civil matters; or who, under the pretext of religion, dispute any authority over those who are not connected with them in their ecclesiastical communion, I say that these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; nor those who will not recognize and teach the duty of tolerating all men in purely religious matters.
— John Locke, Epistola de tolerantia (1689)
Those who want to be tolerated must also be tolerant themselves
Locke, Rousseau
We can’t always know God’s intentions
Sometimes we simply don't know what is good and what is bad, Bayle stated. God's intentions sometimes fail to reveal themselves.
Bayle wrote in 1685 about a master who leaves his home for a long time; the house remains in the care of a servant. The master tells the servant not to let anyone into the house unless the visitor presents a certificate with a certain insignia. Anyone with that certificate has access; everyone else not. Now the son of the house appears at the door. The servant knows him, he is normally always welcome. But he doesn't have a certificate. Can the servant let him in? The next day a known scammer shows up at the door. He wants to get in, and he has a certificate. What should the servant do?
Bayle told this story to illustrate that sometimes we do not know God's purpose, and God keeps himself out of reach. All we can do is follow our own conscience. Even if our conscience is fallible, it is the best we can offer.
God's intentions sometimes do not reveal themselves; all we can do is follow our own conscience.
Bayle
On the fallibility of conscience
The fact that conscience is fallible was not in dispute as far as Bayle was concerned. As a young Calvinist teacher, Bayle had a traditional view that dates back to Scholasticism. What is good and what is bad flows from eternal cosmic laws that are ingrained in all people. Its application, in combination with everyone's rational, logical mind, forms the conscience. The laws of nature and rational logic are perfect and objective, conscience is subjective and fallible.
Now suppose that someone claims that he follows his conscience to the best of his ability through a combination of divine law and rational logic. Should you just trust that? How can you test whether such a person is indeed following the divine laws? Well, first of all you have to check whether such a person has pure motives and has been careful in his application of natural law and logic. But otherwise everyone must follow their own conscience. Further testing is not possible. The best thing you can do is follow your conscience. “If you ask more of people, you are clearly asking for the impossible.” If the intention was good, and no logical errors were made, you cannot question the outcome.
We cannot judge other people's conscience.
Bayle
Later, Bayle added that we cannot judge whether someone's conscience is clear. Then you enter the area of faith. Faith and reason are two separate domains that you should not try to unite. Only God can judge whether someone's conscience is clear.
Only when we recognise that our consciences are not all the same can we have a meaningful dialogue. That dialogue must take place on the basis of equality, by taking each other seriously, on the basis of arguments, not by means of power.
Those who, like the church, want to give a supreme being a role in this picture, see God as the origin of the cosmic laws and rational logic, but also as the telos of morality: all behaviour must be aimed at the good, the divine. For the young Bayle, God was still indispensable in this picture, but later he made room for the possibility that there is another metaphysical origin of our morality. Towards the end of his life, Bayle admitted that even atheists can have a conscience too; the existence of natural law, although of metaphysical origin, does not necessarily indicate the existence of a supreme being.
That did not mean that Bayle himself had become an atheist; his biggest objection was the lack of that telos: how do you distinguish between good and bad if you have no ultimate standards? Ultimately, then, every moral judgement is “just an opinion.” He was right about that, and ethicists are still struggling with that.
Is there salvation outside the true church?
The Catholic Church's classic argument for persecuting people with false views was that of salvation. It is the job of the church to get as many people into heaven as possible. “For my house must be filled,” Jesus had said.
Those who hold the wrong views do not qualify for salvation. So they had to be given a helping hand, preferably with a good conversation or a reprimand, but tougher measures were necessary for those who did not want to listen. In that sense, the punishments were for your own good, like a father beating his child, Augustine wrote.
But from the 16th century onwards this view was gradually challenged. The simple issue was: suppose you are an exemplary person, but not a Catholic, can you also get to heaven?
If the intention was good, and no logical errors were made, you cannot question the outcome, Bayle said. But does that also mean that salvation doesn’t depend on the religion one adheres to? Bayle thought so, and he wasn’t the only one.
A manuscript from a century earlier by the Catholic Jean Bodin has been preserved, the Colloquium heptaplomeres (1588), in which he described a conversation about religion between seven fictional characters: a Catholic, a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Jew, an Islamic, a follower of a natural religion, and a skeptic. The most interesting question was whether the sincere adherent of any faith qualifies for salvation even if he is unintentionally wrong. Most of those present thought so, although the Protestants objected a bit: once the believer has learned the true faith, namely their own, they should be convinced, because the truth is as clear as day. Anyone who still persists in his own religion is damned. Bodin distanced himself from this: all faiths obey the laws of nature anyway, so their followers are eligible for salvation. Bayle would later set up a similar argument, which you have already read.
Every sincere believer is eligible for salvation, regardless of his religion, even if he turns out to be wrong.
Bodin, Bayle
With this pluralistic attitude, Bodin distanced himself from the official Catholic dogma Extra ecclesiam nulla salas that was laid down in the Council of Florence in 1442: outside the church there is no salvation. This remained the official line until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. It was therefore wise that Bodin did not publish his manuscript: it would have gotten him into serious trouble.
In summary
When it came to religious coercion for the sake of people’s morality, salvation, conscience or protection of the true faith, the arguments gradually got peeled off. Nobody, let alone the state, is capable of determining true faith. There is no harm or violation of rights involved in wrong beliefs. We shouldn’t confuse faith and reason. God’s intentions are not always objectively determined. Salvation doesn’t depend on your religion. Conscience is free. We can’t judge other people’s consciences as long as their motives and their logic are faultless.
Religious toleration was pretty much about the art of letting go. In the longer term, religious suppression wasn’t tenable. In a violently religiously divided country, the only solution was to grant religious freedom with caution, while suppressing violent outbursts. Bodin, Williams and the Dutch authorities had shown how it could be done properly.
However, in the 17th century mind, there were certainly limits on the freedom of conscience. Let’s delve into them deeper now.
Limits to freedom of conscience
In theory, there has always been freedom of conscience in Christianity. You can think whatever you want. As long as you keep your thoughts to yourself, no one can stop you. The church only intervened if you shared your dangerous beliefs with others, started proselytising, or started acting on your beliefs. But where the line lay was not always clear.
Strangely enough, I can't find much literature on this. There seems to have been little controversy about it. So I have to improvise a bit. While it was about a fundamental question: where were the limits of freedom of expression in the early modern period?
There was consensus about the extremes. Everyone is allowed to have their own thoughts. For Erasmus, that was the solution to the battle over questions of conscience: think your own way, but keep your mouth shut. On the other hand, the authorities must also control themselves. As long as the heretics keep quiet, there is no reason to persecute them. Let the theologians fight it out peacefully, in a council or something, Erasmus thought.
There was also no discussion about the other extreme: the government must intervene in religious riots and uprisings. Those who use violence in religious disputes must be punished.
It was more difficult between the extremes.
Coornhert was quite radical in his plea for freedom of conscience, but it seems that he also believed that not just anyone was allowed to say anything. There should be plenty of room for qualified opinions, but “we should become afraid of our own levity in passing judgement.” It is true that “everyone must judge for himself and not for someone else what the true doctrine is or at least which doctrine has the least defects,” but by this “everyone” Coornhert meant “everyone insofar as he or she knows and understands the doctrine in question.” It is important “not to judge until one understands what one is talking about.” Unfortunately, he did not elaborate on how Coornhert envisioned this.
Coornhert placed the same kind of clause on freedom of the press. You shouldn't be too anxious about banning books. “Should one, out of fear of abuse, also | start banning good things.” The voices of people you don't expect can also be informative, just as the Roman Senate was informed about Catilina's conspiracy by a simple woman, and not by the most important people in the city. A ban on publishing books about faith is religious coercion and tyranny. Experts have plenty of opportunities to publicly debunk dangerous nonsense.
But at the same time, Coornhert considered it necessary that “the secular government strictly bans certain infamous books and attaches the strictest penalties to this ban. This applies in particular to books and other writings that incite riots and undermine public administration.”
Locke also believed that there were limits to freedom of conscience. The state must first of all take regulatory action in matters of general interest and public order. No one disagreed with that. In the spirit of his time, he also believed that religions that promote immorality and filth should also be restricted.
Atheists could not be trusted anyway, we already knew that. Papists should not be tolerated for political reasons: they are dangerous to the state and loyal to a foreign power. Furthermore, Locke believed that intolerant religions themselves should not appeal to tolerance. Jews and other non-christians are okay, as long as they meet the conditions stated here.
Even Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) had no need for unlimited freedom of conscience. If someone says in a reasonable tone that the state's policy should be different, and in the meantime does nothing illegal, he does not deserve punishment but the gratitude of the state as an exemplary citizen. But if he stirs up unrest against or undermines the government, the government must take action against him.
But it cannot be denied that treason can be committed by words as well as by deeds. While it is impossible to completely take away this freedom of expression from nationals, it would be very dangerous to grant it completely. Let us consider how far that liberty should be granted to all, that is to say, how far can it be granted without injuring the peace of the state and the authority of the sovereign. (...)
For example, if a man thinks that a law should be repealed because it is unwise, and submits his opinion to the judgement of the supreme power, and meanwhile does nothing contrary to the law, he deserves the gratitude of the State as one of its best citizens. But if he does this as a way to accuse the government of dishonesty and make the people hate the government, or if he wants to get rid of that law, against the will of the government, he is just a troublemaker and a rebel.
— Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670)
So, in summary, amongst progressive thinkers in the 17th century there was consensus that the religious domain was basically free for all. But when it came to the undermining of the state, there were definitely limits. Additionally, Locke thought that the promotion of immorality should be suppressed.
Spinoza will speak again in the next episode, when it comes to the discussion about the right to freedom of conscience.
And in a separate series of articles I will later discuss the secular development of free speech, including the question of how far our right goes to insult, lie, incite violence and sow hatred.
For further reading
Jean Bodin, Six livres de la République (1576), ook online beschikbaar in het Engels
Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Synodus vander conscientien vryheydt (1582), hertaald en heruitgegeven als Synode over gewetensvrijheid (2008)
Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert, Verantwoordinghe van't proces van den ketteren niet te dooden (geschreven in 1590, gepubliceerd in 1631)
Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), ook online beschikbaar in het Engels
Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles lettres de l'auteur de la Critique générale de l’histoire du calvinisme du Père Maimbourg (1685),
Pierre Bayle, Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Chrit: contrains les d'entrer (1686), translated as: A philosophical commentary on these words of the gospel, Luke 14.23, ‘Compel Them to Come In, That My House May Be Full’
John Locke, Second treatise of government (1689)
John Locke, Epistola de tolerantia (1689), online in het Engels beschikbaar als A letter concerning toleration
Jonas Proast, The argument of the Letter concerning toleration, briefly consider'd and answer'd (1690)
Joseph Lecler, Histoire de la tolérance au siècle de la Réforme (1958)
Francine de Nave, De polemiek tussen Justus Lipsius en Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert (1590): hoofdoorzaak van Lipsius' vertrek uit Leiden (1591), De Gulden Passer (1970)
Susan Mendus, Toleration and the limits of liberalism (1989)
Martin van Gelderen, The political thought of the Dutch revolt 1555–1590 (1992)
Gary Remer, Humanism and the rhetoric of toleration (1996)
Jonathan Israel, Radical enlightenment. Philosophy and the making of modernity 1650–1750 (2001)
Rainer Forst, Toleranz im Konflikt. Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs (2003), translated as: Toleration in conflict: past and present (2013)
Paul Strohm, Conscience, a very short introduction (2011)
Hélène Suzanne, Conscience in the Early Renaissance: the case of Erasmus, Luther and Thomas More, Moreana (2014)
Richard Sorabji, Moral conscience through the ages: Fifth Century BCE to the present (2014)
Steve Clarke, The justification of religious violence (2014)
Teresa Bejan, Mere civility: disagreement and the limits of toleration (2017)
Michael Hickson, Pierre Bayle and the secularization of conscience, Journal of the History of Ideas (2018)
Gilles Beauchamp, Mapping the epistemic arguments for religious toleration, Religious Studies (2020)
This was the nineteenth newsletter in a long series: toleration and christianity. An overview of all articles in this series can be found in the overview article Toleration in the history of Christianity.
The next episode in this series will be about the right to freedom of conscience.