ical thought.
LockeÆs Letter Concerning Toleration is also the source of JeffersonÆs concepts about what was needed to protect liberty in the new republic, concepts that were embodied in the first amendment to the Constitution. The Letter is focused on the issue of religious toleration, not only on how members of one religion should tolerate members of other religions, but also on how the state should relate to the various religions of its citizens. It looks back on the era of religious wars that ended on the continent with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and in England effectively with the death of Cromwell in 1660 and the Restoration of the Monarchy, with Charles II as the first constitutional monarch. It also serves as a commentary on the British Bill of Rights enacted by Parliament as part of the Glorious Revolution, another reason why it also pointed forward (as it would appear in retrospect) to the American Bill of Rights. It is the specific source for the American concept that church and state should be separate and for the peculiarly American concept of how they should be separate.
Locke begins his argument for toleration of differences by asserting that Christians who attempt to force others to believe and worship as they do are in fact violating the precepts that are basic to the religion, and are therefore not acting as Christians at all. Locke goes on to argue the following:
toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men . . . not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it . . . I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds between the one and the other (2).
As a first step in this task, Locke defines a commonwealth as ôa society of men constituted only for the proc...