Is it lawful for any man in his own house to kneel,stand,sit,or use any other posture;and to clothe himself in white or black,in short or in long garments?Let it not be made unlawful to eat bread,drink wine,or wash with water in the church.In a word,whatsoever things are left free by law in the common occasions of life,let them remain free unto every Church in divine worship.Let no man's life,or body,or house,or estate,suffer any manner of prejudice upon these accounts.Can you allow of the Presbyterian discipline?Why should not the Episcopal also have what they like?Ecclesiastical authority,whether it be administered by the hands of a single person or many,is everywhere the same;and neither has any jurisdiction in things civil,nor any manner of power of compulsion,nor anything at all to do with riches and revenues.Ecclesiastical assemblies and sermons are justified by daily experience and public allowance.These are allowed to people of some one persuasion;why not to all?If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace,it is to be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.These meetings ought not to be sanctuaries for factious and flagitious fellows.Nor ought it to be less lawful for men to meet in churches than in halls;nor are one part of the subjects to be esteemed more blamable for their meeting together than others.Every one is to be accountable for his own actions,and no man is to be laid under a suspicion or odium for the fault of another.
Those that are seditious,murderers,thieves,robbers,*****erers,slanderers,etc.,of whatsoever Church,whether national or not,ought to be punished and suppressed.But those whose doctrine is peaceable and whose manners are pure and blameless ought to be upon equal terms with their fellow-subjects.
Thus if solemn assemblies,observations of festivals,public worship be permitted to any one sort of professors,all these things ought to be permitted to the Presbyterians,Independents,Anabaptists,Arminians,Quakers,and others,with the same liberty.Nay,if we may openly speak the truth,and as becomes one man to another,neither Pagan nor Mahometan,nor Jew,ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.The Gospel commands no such thing.The Church which "judgeth not those that are without"(I Cor.5.12,13)wants it not.And the commonwealth,which embraces indifferently all men that are honest,peaceable,and industrious,requires it not.Shall we suffer a Pagan to deal and trade with us,and shall we not suffer him to pray unto and worship God?If we allow the Jews to have private houses and dwellings amongst us,why should we not allow them to have synagogues?Is their doctrine more false,their worship more abominable,or is the civil peace more endangered by their meeting in public than in their private houses?But if these things may be granted to Jews and Pagans,surely the condition of any Christians ought not to be worse than theirs in a Christian commonwealth.You will say,perhaps:"Yes,it ought to be;because they are more inclinable to factions,tumults,and civil wars."I answer:Is this the fault of the Christian religion?If it be so,truly the Christian religion is the worst of all religions and ought neither to be embraced by any particular person,nor tolerated by any commonwealth.For if this be the genius,this the nature of the Christian religion,to be turbulent and destructive to the civil peace,that Church itself which the magistrate indulges will not always be innocent.But far be it from us to say any such thing of that religion which carries the greatest opposition to covetousness,ambition,discord,contention,and all manner of inordinate desires,and is the most modest and peaceable religion that ever was.We must,therefore,seek another cause of those evils that are charged upon religion.And,if we consider right,we shall find it to consist wholly in the subject that I am treating of.It is not the diversity of opinions (which cannot be avoided),but the refusal of toleration to those that are of different opinions (which might have been granted),that has produced all the bustles and wars that have been in the Christian world upon account of religion.The heads and leaders of the Church,moved by avarice and insatiable desire of dominion,****** use of the immoderate ambition of magistrates and the credulous superstition of the giddy multitude,have incensed and animated them against those that dissent from themselves,by preaching unto them,contrary to the laws of the Gospel and to the precepts of charity,that schismatics and heretics are to be outed of their possessions and destroyed.And thus have they mixed together and confounded two things that are in themselves most different,the Church and the commonwealth.Now as it is very difficult for men patiently to suffer themselves to be stripped of the goods which they have got by their honest industry,and,contrary to all the laws of equity,both human and divine,to be delivered up for a prey to other men's violence and rapine;especially when they are otherwise altogether blameless;and that the occasion for which they are thus treated does not at all belong to the jurisdiction of the magistrate,but entirely to the conscience of every particular man for the conduct of which he is accountable to God only;what else can be expected but that these men,growing weary of the evils under which they labour,should in the end think it lawful for them to resist force with force,and to defend their natural rights (which are not forfeitable upon account of religion)with arms as well as they can?
