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

worships God does it with design to please Him and procure His favour.
But that cannot be done by him who, upon the command of another,
offers unto God that which he knows will be displeasing to Him,
because not commanded by Himself. This is not to please God, or
appease his wrath, but willingly and knowingly to provoke Him by a
manifest contempt, which is a thing absolutely repugnant to the nature
and end of worship.

But it will be here asked: "If nothing belonging to divine worship
be left to human discretion, how is it then that Churches themselves
have the power of ordering anything about the time and place of
worship and the like?" To this I answer that in religious worship we
must distinguish between what is part of the worship itself and what
is but a circumstance. That is a part of the worship which is believed
to be appointed by God and to be well-pleasing to Him, and therefore
that is necessary. Circumstances are such things which, though in
general they cannot be separated from worship, yet the particular
instances or modifications of them are not determined, and therefore
they are indifferent. Of this sort are the time and place of
worship, habit and posture of him that worships. These are
circumstances, and perfectly indifferent, where God has not given
any express command about them. For example: amongst the Jews the time
and place of their worship and the habits of those that officiated
in it were not mere circumstances, but a part of the worship itself,
in which, if anything were defective, or different from the
institution, they could not hope that it would be accepted by God. But
these, to Christians under the liberty of the Gospel, are mere
circumstances of worship, which the prudence of every Church may bring
into such use as shall be judged most subservient to the end of order,
decency, and edification. But, even under the Gospel, those who
believe the first or the seventh day to be set apart by God, and
consecrated still to His worship, to them that portion of time is
not a simple circumstance, but a real part of Divine worship, which
can neither be changed nor neglected.

In the next place: As the magistrate has no power to impose by his
laws the use of any rites and ceremonies in any Church, so neither has
he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are
already received, approved, and practised by any Church; because, if
he did so, he would destroy the Church itself: the end of whose
institution is only to worship God with freedom after its own manner.

You will say, by this rule, if some congregations should have a mind
to sacrifice infants, or (as the primitive Christians were falsely
accused) lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or
practise any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate
obliged to tolerate them, because they are committed in a religious
assembly? I answer: No. These things are not lawful in the ordinary
course of life, nor in any private house; and therefore neither are
they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting. But,