"A Letter Considering Toleration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Locke John)

misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in
the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in
that which is to come.

What I say concerning the mutual toleration of private persons
differing from one another in religion, I understand also of
particular churches which stand, as it were, in the same relation to
each other as private persons among themselves: nor has any one of
them any manner of jurisdiction over any other; no, not even when
the civil magistrate (as it sometimes happens) comes to be of this
or the other communion. For the civil government can give no new right
to the church, nor the church to the civil government. So that,
whether the magistrate join himself to any church, or separate from
it, the church remains always as it was before- a free and voluntary
society. It neither requires the power of the sword by the
magistrate's coming to it, nor does it lose the right of instruction
and excommunication by his going from it. This is the fundamental
and immutable right of a spontaneous society- that it has power to
remove any of its members who transgress the rules of its institution;
but it cannot, by the accession of any new members, acquire any
right of jurisdiction over those that are not joined with it. And
therefore peace, equity, and friendship are always mutually to be
observed by particular churches, in the same manner as by private
persons, without any pretence of superiority or jurisdiction over
one another.

That the thing may be made clearer by an example, let us suppose two
churches- the one of Arminians, the other of Calvinists- residing in
the city of Constantinople. Will anyone say that either of these
churches has right to deprive the members of the other of their
estates and liberty (as we see practised elsewhere) because of their
differing from it in some doctrines and ceremonies, whilst the
Turks, in the meanwhile, silently stand by and laugh to see with
what inhuman cruelty Christians thus rage against Christians? But if
one of these churches hath this power of treating the other ill, I ask
which of them it is to whom that power belongs, and by what right?
It will be answered, undoubtedly, that it is the orthodox church which
has the right of authority over the erroneous or heretical. This is,
in great and specious words, to say just nothing at all. For every
church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical. For
whatsoever any church believes, it believes to be true and the
contrary unto those things it pronounce; to be error. So that the
controversy between these churches about the truth of their
doctrines and the purity of their worship is on both sides equal;
nor is there any judge, either at Constantinople or elsewhere upon
earth, by whose sentence it can be determined. The decision of that
question belongs only to the Supreme judge of all men, to whom also
alone belongs the punishment of the erroneous. In the meanwhile, let
those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if
not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and