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

there whom any Israelite, thus blindly following, had not fallen
into idolatry and thereby into destruction? Yet, nevertheless, you bid
me be of good courage and tell me that all is now safe and secure,
because the magistrate does not now enjoin the observance of his own
decrees in matters of religion, but only the decrees of the Church. Of
what Church, I beseech you? of that, certainly, which likes him
best. As if he that compels me by laws and penalties to enter into
this or the other Church, did not interpose his own judgement in the
matter. What difference is there whether he lead me himself, or
deliver me over to be led by others? I depend both ways upon his will,
and it is he that determines both ways of my eternal state. Would an
Israelite that had worshipped Baal upon the command of his king have
been in any better condition because somebody had told him that the
king ordered nothing in religion upon his own head, nor commanded
anything to be done by his subjects in divine worship but what was
approved by the counsel of priests, and declared to be of divine right
by the doctors of their Church? If the religion of any Church
become, therefore, true and saving, because the head of that sect, the
prelates and priests, and those of that tribe, do all of them, with
all their might, extol and praise it, what religion can ever be
accounted erroneous, false, and destructive? I am doubtful
concerning the doctrine of the Socinians, I am suspicious of the way
of worship practised by the Papists, or Lutherans; will it be ever a
jot safer for me to join either unto the one or the other of those
Churches, upon the magistrate's command, because he commands nothing
in religion but by the authority and counsel of the doctors of that
Church?

But, to speak the truth, we must acknowledge that the Church (if a
convention of clergymen, making canons, must be called by that name)
is for the most part more apt to be influenced by the Court than the
Court by the Church. How the Church was under the vicissitude of
orthodox and Arian emperors is very well known. Or if those things
be too remote, our modern English history affords us fresh examples in
the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, how easily
and smoothly the clergy changed their decrees, their articles of
faith, their form of worship, everything according to the
inclination of those kings and queens. Yet were those kings and queens
of such different minds in point of religion, and enjoined thereupon
such different things, that no man in his wits (I had almost said none
but an atheist) will presume to say that any sincere and upright
worshipper of God could, with a safe conscience, obey their several
decrees. To conclude, it is the same thing whether a king that
prescribes laws to another man's religion pretend to do it by his
own judgement, or by the ecclesiastical authority and advice of
others. The decisions of churchmen, whose differences and disputes are
sufficiently known, cannot be any sounder or safer than his; nor can
all their suffrages joined together add a new strength to the civil
power. Though this also must be taken notice of- that princes seldom
have any regard to the suffrages of ecclesiastics that are not