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

this manner ecclesiastical liberty will be preserved on all sides, and
no man will have a legislator imposed upon him but whom himself has
chosen.

But since men are so solicitous about the true church, I would
only ask them here, by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the
Church of Christ to make the conditions of her communion consist in
such things, and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the
Holy Scriptures declared, in express words, to be necessary to
salvation; I ask, I say, whether this be not more agreeable to the
Church of Christ than for men to impose their own inventions and
interpretations upon others as if they were of Divine authority, and
to establish by ecclesiastical laws, as absolutely necessary to the
profession of Christianity, such things as the Holy Scriptures do
either not mention, or at least not expressly command? Whosoever
requires those things in order to ecclesiastical communion, which
Christ does not require in order to life eternal, he may, perhaps,
indeed constitute a society accommodated to his own opinion and his
own advantage; but how that can be called the Church of Christ which
is established upon laws that are not His, and which excludes such
persons from its communion as He will one day receive into the Kingdom
of Heaven, I understand not. But this being not a proper place to
inquire into the marks of the true church, I will only mind those that
contend so earnestly for the decrees of their own society, and that
cry out continually, "The Church! the Church!" with as much noise, and
perhaps upon the same principle, as the Ephesian silversmiths did
for their Diana; this, I say, I desire to mind them of, that the
Gospel frequently declares that the true disciples of Christ must
suffer persecution; but that the Church of Christ should persecute
others, and force others by fire and sword to embrace her faith and
doctrine, I could never yet find in any of the books of the New
Testament.

The end of a religious society (as has already been said) is the
public worship of God and, by means thereof, the acquisition of
eternal life. All discipline ought, therefore, to tend to that end,
and all ecclesiastical laws to be thereunto confined. Nothing ought
nor can be transacted in this society relating to the possession of
civil and worldly goods. No force is here to be made use of upon any
occasion whatsoever. For force belongs wholly to the civil magistrate,
and the possession of all outward goods is subject to his
jurisdiction.

But, it may be asked, by what means then shall ecclesiastical laws
be established, if they must be thus destitute of all compulsive
power? I answer: They must be established by means suitable to the
nature of such things, whereof the external profession and
observation- if not proceeding from a thorough conviction and
approbation of the mind- is altogether useless and unprofitable. The
arms by which the members of this society are to be kept within