John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration
Your extract:
Not even Americans, subjected unto a Christian prince, are to be punished either in body or in goods,
for not embracing our faith and worship. If they are persuaded that they please God in observing the
rites of their own country, and that they shall obtain happiness by that means, they are to be left unto
God and themselves. Let us trace this matter to the bottom. Thus it is: an inconsiderable and weak
number of Christians, destitute of every thing, arrive in a pagan country; these foreigners beseech the
inhabitants, by the bowels of humanity, that they would succor them with the necessaries of life; those
necessaries are given them, habitations are granted, and they all join together, and grow into one
people. The Christian religion by this means takes root in that country, and spreads itself; but does not
suddenly grow the strongest… Neither pagans there, nor any dissenting Christians here, can with any
right be deprived of their worldly goods by the predominating faction of a church-court.Your tasks in
this assignment are as follows:
Your five tasks:
• In this assignment, write a 600- 900 word essay in which you complete the following tasks:
•
identify the work from which the passage was drawn,
provide an overview of the historical and cultural context in which the work first appeared,
situate the passage in the context of the work from which it was drawn,
explain the importance of the passage to the work as a whole, and
critique the passage and the work.
