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

Secondly, foreigners and such as were strangers to the
commonwealth of Israel were not compelled by force to observe the
rites of the Mosaical law; but, on the contrary, in the very same
place where it is ordered that an Israelite that was an idolater
should be put to death,* there it is provided that strangers should
not be vexed nor oppressed. I confess that the seven nations that
possessed the land which was promised to the Israelites were utterly
to be cut off; but this was not singly because they were idolaters.
For if that had been the reason, why were the Moabites and other
nations to be spared? No: the reason is this. God being in a
peculiar manner the King of the Jews, He could not suffer the
adoration of any other deity (which was properly an act of high
treason against Himself) in the land of Canaan, which was His kingdom.
For such a manifest revolt could no ways consist with His dominion,
which was perfectly political in that country. All idolatry was,
therefore, to be rooted out of the bounds of His kingdom because it
was an acknowledgment of another god, that is say, another king,
against the laws of Empire. The inhabitants were also to be driven
out, that the entire possession of the land might be given to the
Israelites. And for the like reason the Emims and the Horims were
driven out of their countries by the children of Esau and Lot; and
their lands, upon the same grounds, given by God to the
invaders.*(2) But, though all idolatry was thus rooted out of the land
of Canaan, yet every idolater was not brought to execution. The
whole family of Rahab, the whole nation of the Gibeonites, articled
with Joshua, and were allowed by treaty; and there were many
captives amongst the Jews who were idolaters. David and Solomon
subdued many countries without the confines of the Land of Promise and
carried their conquests as far as Euphrates. Amongst so many
captives taken, so many nations reduced under their obedience, we find
not one man forced into the Jewish religion and the worship of the
true God and punished for idolatry, though all of them were
certainly guilty of it. If any one, indeed, becoming a proselyte,
desired to be made a denizen of their commonwealth, he was obliged
to submit to their laws; that is, to embrace their religion. But
this he did willingly, on his own accord, not by constraint. He did
not unwillingly submit, to show his obedience, but he sought and
solicited for it as a privilege. And, as soon as he was admitted, he
became subject to the laws of the commonwealth, by which all
idolatry was forbidden within the borders of the land of Canaan. But
that law (as I have said) did not reach to any of those regions,
however subjected unto the Jews, that were situated without those
bounds.

* Exod. 22, 20, 21.

*(2) Deut. 2.

Thus far concerning outward worship. Let us now consider articles of