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Religious toleration first came under discussion during the period of humanism & the Reformation; after the Enlightenment, religious liberty was recognized as a universal human right. The arguments for it that were developed before the Enlightenment should be read in the context of their authors' practical goals. There were three major types: the theological/philosophical, founded on the hope for restoration of religious consensus through reduction of faith to a few essential points; the political/pragmatic, founded on the need to preserve the state from religious wars; & the economic, founded on the contribution to national prosperity of such minorities as Jews or Anabaptists. In Switzerland & Germany, toleration generally meant the coexistence of differing confessions within a federation, but not tolerance of individual dissent; such tolerance, however, emerged in a variety of other states at different times, including France, Brandenburg, the Netherlands, Poland, & England. Sebastian Castellio was the most noteworthy advocate of tolerance in the period, & a major influence on such well-known later figures as John Locke & Pierre Beyle. W. H. Stoddard.

DR KING AND PROFESSOR CRICK ARE BOTH MAINLY CONCERNED TO discuss the concept of tolerance as the deliberate acceptance of what is disapproved. They wish to reserve the use of the word 'toleration' for a variation upon this general idea, but their proposals are not quite the same. Dr King wants to use 'toleration' as 'a label for those ideas, doctrines, ideologies or movements' which have opposed specific types of intolerance. The dictionary label for this is 'tolerationism'. Toleration is what the ideas, doctrines, etc. advocate; it is not a label for the ideas and doctrines themselves. Professor Crick, at the beginning of his paper, says that he too will use the word 'toleration' for 'theories or doctrines' which advocate a form of tolerance. But his actual usage later on suggests that he did not intend the word to mean the theories or doctrines; rather that he proposed to say a doctrine was a doctrine of toleration if it advocated a certain kind of tolerance. His distinction between 'tolerance' and 'toleration' is intended to restrict 'toleration' to tolerance in general, tolerance of wide classes of action, and not to use it for tolerance of one specific type, e.g. tolerance of religious worship (which is how it is in fact used in the Act of Toleration and in Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration).

EARLY WRITINGS OF JOHN LOCKE, ARGUING THAT THE POWER OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTE, ARE CLAIMED TO HAVE LITTLE CONNECTION WITH HIS LATER WORK WHICH STRESSES LIBERAL TOLERATION. THIS ARTICLE ATTEMPTS TO CONNECT THE TWO BY RECONSTRUCTING LOCKE'S CRITIQUE OF RELIGIOUS POLITICS. THIS DEMONSTRATION IS THEN USED TO EXPLAIN LOCKE'S DEVELOPMENT AND ILLUMINATE THE FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM.