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

indeed, if any people congregated upon account of religion should be
desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be
prohibited by a law. Meliboeus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill
his calf at home, and burn any part of it that he thinks fit. For no
injury is thereby done to any one, no prejudice to another man's
goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a
religious meeting. Whether the doing so be well-pleasing to God or no,
it is their part to consider that do it. The part of the magistrate is
only to take care that the commonwealth receive no prejudice, and that
there be no injury done to any man, either in life or estate. And thus
what may be spent on a feast may be spent on a sacrifice. But if
peradventure such were the state of things that the interest of the
commonwealth required all slaughter of beasts should be forborne for
some while, in order to the increasing of the stock of cattle that had
been destroyed by some extraordinary murrain, who sees not that the
magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all his subjects to kill any
calves for any use whatsoever? Only it is to be observed that, in this
case, the law is not made about a religious, but a political matter;
nor is the sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby prohibited.

By this we see what difference there is between the Church and the
Commonwealth. Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth cannot be
prohibited by the magistrate in the Church. Whatsoever is permitted
unto any of his subjects for their ordinary use, neither can nor ought
to be forbidden by him to any sect of people for their religious uses.
If any man may lawfully take bread or wine, either sitting or kneeling
in his own house, the law ought not to abridge him of the same liberty
in his religious worship; though in the Church the use of bread and
wine be very different and be there applied to the mysteries of
faith and rites of Divine worship. But those things that are
prejudicial to the commonweal of a people in their ordinary use and
are, therefore, forbidden by laws, those things ought not to be
permitted to Churches in their sacred rites. Only the magistrate ought
always to be very careful that he do not misuse his authority to the
oppression of any Church, under pretence of public good.

It may be said: "What if a Church be idolatrous, is that also to
be tolerated by the magistrate?" I answer: What power can be given
to the magistrate for the suppression of an idolatrous Church, which
may not in time and place be made use of to the ruin of an orthodox
one? For it must be remembered that the civil power is the same
everywhere, and the religion of every prince is orthodox to himself.
If, therefore, such a power be granted unto the civil magistrate in
spirituals as that at Geneva, for example, he may extirpate, by
violence and blood, the religion which is there reputed idolatrous, by
the same rule another magistrate, in some neighbouring country, may
oppress the reformed religion and, in India, the Christian. The
civil power can either change everything in religion, according to the
prince's pleasure, or it can change nothing. If it be once permitted
to introduce anything into religion by the means of laws and