Locke's Letter on Toleration: Church and State

Extract

[...] As a result, the Church can excommunicate him without using force. Force belongs to the magistrates who must ensure the enjoyment of civil goods and ensure that the laws are respected. For Locke, there is a separation between these two institutions, on the one hand in their goals and on the other hand in their means of action. But each of the two institutions has in common the fact of acting for tolerance and through tolerance. Respect for this would lead to civil peace. [...]

[...] Furthermore, the removal of material possessions falls within the realm of judicial decision, to which it does not have access. Just as the use of force is contradictory to the mission of the church, which is peaceful. In order to illustrate this idea, it is possible to look back at Locke and focus on the feudal period. The Pope had almost absolute power, which erased the Kings in the exercise of their function. It is not a question of this with Locke, but rather of a fair distribution of powers in areas that are specific to different societies. [...]

[...] These two societies therefore have nothing in common. As a result, tolerance stems from the separation of church and state. If each power respects its domain and does not exceed its boundaries, its functions, as is the case, for example, with absolute monarchies of divine right whose monarch possesses the spiritual and the temporal, peace can then take place in society. It is in the sense of Locke's theory that the theory of the two swords is inscribed, as the Gregorian reform initiated it. [...]

[...] To this, he responds that the church is the source of its own authority. In other words, it is through its natural authority, which resides in the person of God, who entrusted this power to the ecclesiastics, that the church exercises a means of pressure on its members (lines 16 to 20). Being people of God, their means of ensuring that spiritual laws are respected is by transmitting a discourse on moral conduct (moralia) and a discourse on the hope of being happy in another world, which would encourage each individual present in the religious society not to leave their duty (lines 20 to 23). [...]

[...] The Role of the Church. In this passage from the Letter on Toleration, Locke revisits the purpose of the religious society (societatis religiosae) and the definition he has made of it (lines 1 and in order to set a framework for the Church's intentions and means. The ecclesiastical society arises from the need to publicly express its beliefs, to serve, to honor the God one has chosen, without disturbing public order. It is in this end that every religious society must flourish: to fulfill its duty to God in order to obtain eternal life. [...]