[103] their ancient religion.  But his toleration, though it extends beyond the Christian pale, is not complete.  He excepts in the first place Roman Catholics, not on account of their theological dogmas but because they “teach that faith is not to be kept with heretics,” that “kings excommunicated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms,” and because they deliver themselves up to the protection and service of a foreign prince—­the Pope.  In other words, they are politically dangerous.  His other exception is atheists.  “Those are not all to be tolerated who deny the being of God.  Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.  The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.  Besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion to challenge the privilege of a Toleration.”

Thus Locke is not free from the prejudices of his time.  These exceptions contradict his own principle that “it is absurd that things should be enjoined by laws which are not in men’s power to perform.  And to believe this or that to be true does not depend upon our will.”  This applies to Roman Catholics as to Protestants, to atheists as to deists.  Locke, however, perhaps thought

[104] that the speculative opinion of atheism, which was uncommon in his day, does depend on the will.  He would have excluded from his State his great contemporary Spinoza.

But in spite of its limitations Locke’s Toleration is a work of the highest value, and its argument takes us further than its author went.  It asserts unrestrictedly the secular principle, and its logical issue is Disestablishment.  A Church is merely “a free and voluntary society.”  I may notice the remark that if infidels were to be converted by force, it was easier for God to do it “with armies of heavenly legions than for any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.”  This is a polite way of stating a maxim analogous to that of the Emperor Tiberius (above, p. 41).  If false beliefs are an offence to God, it is, really, his affair.

The toleration of Nonconformists was far from pleasing extreme Anglicans, and the influence of this party at the beginning of the eighteenth century menaced the liberty of Dissenters.  The situation provoked Defoe, who was a zealous Nonconformist, to write his pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an ironical attack upon the principle of toleration.  It pretends to show that the Dissenters are at heart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests

[105] that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and all persons found attending such meetings should be banished.  This exceedingly amusing but terribly earnest caricature of the sentiments of the High Anglican party at first deceived and alarmed the Dissenters themselves.  But the High Churchmen were furious.  Defoe was fined, exposed in the pillory three times, and sent to Newgate prison.