2. Liberty of Conscience. In Europe in the Middle
Ages two ideas were widely accepted: that salvation,
or union with God in an afterlife, depends not just on
leading a good life, but on holding certain beliefs about
God and his relations to man; and that there is a
church, a community of the faithful, having sole au-
thority from God to teach the beliefs (and administer
the sacraments) necessary to salvation. To most people
in medieval Europe, these two ideas may have meant
very little, for most people were illiterate and in-
capable of understanding them. No doubt, to most
people everywhere, religion has been more a matter
of ritual than of doctrine. But these ideas were impor-
tant to persons in authority, both clerical and lay.
At the Reformation the first of these ideas—that
salvation depends on holding certain beliefs— was not
challenged, and the second was challenged only up to
a point. Luther rejected the authority of the pope and
of other ecclesiastical superiors who disagreed with
him; and he taught that every Christian must interpret
for himself the Holy Scriptures containing the truths
necessary to salvation. Yet he proved in the end unwill-
ing to admit that avowed Christians whose inter-
pretations of the Scriptures differed widely from his
own should be allowed to propagate their beliefs. It
is arguable that he wanted them silenced only because
he thought their doctrines dangerous to the social order
and not because they had misinterpreted Holy Scrip-
ture. But the Lutherans after him certainly wanted
some of their opponents silenced on the ground that
their doctrines were false and not merely dangerous.
So too did the Calvinists. What is more, the idea of
a true church with sole authority to teach a faith
necessary to salvation long remained widely attractive
to Protestants, even though their beliefs about how the
faithful should be organized were sometimes incompat-
ible with this idea. So there were soon, over large parts
of Western Europe, several organized bodies of Chris-
tians, each claiming, if not a monopoly of the truth,
a privileged status in declaring it and in deciding what
false beliefs were intolerable. Most of them were intol-
erant, though some less so than others; and the more
tolerant were so often from motives of prudence, being
more liable to persecution by others than able to per-
secute them.
Nevertheless, with time, belief in toleration grew
stronger. In the wake of a growing belief that toleration
is expedient, there grew another—that it is just. Yet
toleration was mostly from motives of expediency until
quite recent times. Governments learned by experience
that they were more likely to provoke disorder by
trying to establish uniformity of religious belief by
force than by allowing diversity. Religious leaders
learned that the number of the faithful was as likely
to grow if they gave up being persecutors where they
were strong in return for not being persecuted where
they were weak.
The long period of religious conflict that started with
Luther's defiance of the papacy had two lasting effects.
It strengthened and spread more widely the belief that
“faith” is important, and it made people keener to
associate for the defense and propagation of beliefs
that they cared deeply about. These beliefs were at
first mostly religious, but they came in time to be much
more than merely religious, or ceased altogether to be
so. Beliefs about how men should live and society be
organized had long been associated with beliefs about
God and his purposes for man. As the association be-
tween these two kinds of belief weakened and for many
people (agnostics and atheists) was quite severed, be-
liefs about man, morals, and society still kept something
of the “sacred” character of religious beliefs. The idea
survived that nothing matters more about a man than
his faith, than the beliefs he cares deeply about because
they form or justify his aspirations or his way of life.
The idea that faith is important can be used to justify
either persecution and indoctrination or toleration and
freedom of speech. It was used at first much more for
the first purpose than the second, and in our day is
still used widely for both purposes. In the West it is
now more often used for the second purpose. And yet,
though it was used for this second, this “liberal,” pur-
pose later than for the first, there has been no steady
movement away from the first use to the second.
Tolerance and freedom of speech are not, of course,
peculiarly modern any more than are persecution and
indoctrination. There was a great deal of tolerance and
of this freedom, in some places at some times, in the
ancient world. But it is in the modern age and in the
West, in a part of the world where persecution and
indoctrination were for a long time peculiarly fierce
and thorough, with bitter conflicts between rival faiths,
that tolerance and freedom of speech are most highly
prized. This is not to suggest that periods of persecu-
tion and indoctrination are always followed by periods
of toleration and freedom of speech; but to suggest
only that, in a part of the world where peculiar impor-
tance was attached to faith, after a long period of
conflict between persecuting and proselytizing
churches and sects, none of which gained complete
ascendency, tolerance and freedom of speech came to
be more highly valued than they had ever been any-
where before. They were not merely practiced, as they
had been in other places and other times; they were
put forward as principles that ought to be practiced
as far as possible.
In the West until the eighteenth century, persecutors
and advocates of toleration were concerned mostly
with religious beliefs, and have since that time turned
their attention more to social and moral doctrines. Or,
rather, the beliefs that now concern them are less often
religious, as well as social and moral, than they used
to be; for religious beliefs that have attracted persecu-
tion have nearly always been closely connected with
social and moral doctrines.
So, too, since the eighteenth century, the impulse
to form associations to maintain and propagate reli-
gious beliefs and practices has broadened into a readi-
ness to form them to promote and protect any beliefs
and practices important to those who share them. The
right to associate for such purposes has been widely
asserted and recognized as one of the most precious
of all.
In the West in the Middle Ages it was the church
rather than the state that was responsible for defending
as well as teaching the true faith, the temporal magis-
trate acting rather as an auxiliary to punish persons
condemned by priests. Hence an idea more widely
accepted in the West than in other parts of Christen-
dom, that matters of faith are beyond the jurisdiction
of the state, that its business is to prevent people from
acting harmfully rather than to ensure that they hold
true beliefs. Defense of the church against the state,
even when it has not been defense of religious freedom,
has nevertheless been, or appeared to be, a defense
of faith against the state or the Temporal Power,
against organized force. For the organ of coercion has
been the state or the Temporal Power and not the
church, even when that Power has acted in defense
of the church or to promote its aims. Hence in the
West two important social functions, organized coer-
cion and organized indoctrination, have long been
separate or more nearly separate than elsewhere.
