ode Island, preached, as early as 1631, the
principles of an unlimited toleration, extending to catholics, Jews, and
even infidels. Milton stopped a long way short of this. He did not mean
'tolerated popery and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all
religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided
first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and
regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil
absolutely either against faith or manners no law can possibly permit
that intends not to unlaw itself.'

Locke, writing five-and-forty years later, somewhat widened these
limitations. His question was not merely whether there should be free
expression of opinion, but whether there should furthermore be freedom
of worship and of religious union. He answered both questions
affirmatively,--not on the semi-sceptical ground of Jeremy Taylor, which
is also one of the grounds taken by Mr. Mill, that we cannot be sure
that our own opinion is the true one,--but on the strength of his
definition of the province of the civil magistrate. Locke held that the
magistrate's whole jurisdiction reached only to civil concernments, and
that 'all civil power, right, and dominion is bounded to that only care
of promoting these things; and that it neither can nor ought in any
manner to be extended to the saving of souls. This chiefly because the
power of the civil magistrate consists only in outward force, while true
and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind,
without which nothing can be acceptable to God, and such is the nature
of the understanding that it cannot he compelled to the belief of
anything by outward force.... It is only light and evidence that can
work a change in men's opinions; and that light can in no manner proceed
from corporal sufferings, or any other outward penalties.' 'I may grow
rich by an art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of some
disease by remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by a
religion that at I distrust and a ritual that I abhor.' (_First Letter
concerning Toleration_.) And much more in the same excellent vein. But
Locke fixed limits to toleration. 1. No opinions contrary to human
society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation
of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate. Thus, to take
examples from our own day, a conservative minister would think himself
rig