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 right on this principle in suppressing the Land and Labour League; a catholic minister in dissolving the Education League; and any minister in making mere membership of the Mormon sect a penal offence. 2.  No tolerance ought to be extended to ’those who attribute unto the faithful, religious, and orthodox, that is in plain terms unto themselves, any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals, in civil concernments; or who, upon pretence of religion, do challenge any manner of authority over such as are not associated with them in their ecclesiastical communion.’  As I have seldom heard of any sect, except the Friends, who did not challenge as much authority as it could possibly get over persons not associated with it, this would amount to a universal proscription of religion; but Locke’s principle might at any rate be invoked against Ultra-montanism in some circumstances. 3.  Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God.  The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all society; and promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, have no hold on such.  Thus the police ought to close Mr. Bradlaugh’s Hall of Science, and perhaps on some occasions the Positivist School.

Locke’s principles depended on a distinction between civil concernments, which he tries to define, and all other concernments.  Warburton’s arguments on the alliance between church and state turned on the same point, as did the once-famous Bangorian controversy.  This distinction would fit into Mr. Mill’s cardinal position, which consists in a distinction between the things that only affect the doer or thinker of them, and the things that affect other persons as well.  Locke’s attempt to divide civil affairs from affairs of salvation, was satisfactory enough for the comparatively narrow object with which he opened his discussion.  Mr. Mill’s account of civil affairs is both wider and more definite; naturally so, as he had to maintain the cause of tolerance in a much more complex set of social conditions, and amid a far greater diversity of speculative energy, than any one dreamed of in Locke’s