John Locke: First Letter onToleration 1689
Channel: Craig Campbell
Date: 2015-04-27

John Locke 1632-1704 wrote 4 Letters on Toleration to an anonymous friend. This is a quote from his fourth letter. England had her Glorious Revolution in 1688.

Try when you please with a Bramin, a Mahometan, a Papist, Lutheran, Quaker, Anabaptist, Presbyterian, &c. you will find, if you argue with them as you do here with me, that the matter will rest here between you, and that you are no more a judge for any of them than they are for you. Men in all religions have equally strong persuasions, and every one must judge for himself; nor can any one judge for another, and you least of all for the magistrate; the ground you build upon, that  firmness and stability of persuasion in the highest degree of assurance leaves no doubt, can never be had of a false religion being false; all your talk of full assurance pointing out to the magistrate the true religion that he is obliged by force to promote, amounts to no more but his own religion, and can point out no other to him. 

This is a Librivox reading of Locke's First Letter on Toleration published the same year as the English Bill of Rights (1689).  The text for this reading can be found here.
http://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm

All four of Locke's letters can be found at the links below.
https://archive.org/details/worksjohnlocke08lockgoog
http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/locke