“The care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men.”

What does it mean?

The usual reading is a limit on government: the state is not in charge of saving souls, because that care was not given to rulers any more than to private people, and force cannot produce the inward persuasion belief requires. A competing reading takes the line as indifference to religion, but the Letter argues for toleration among churches while still excluding, in Popple's English, opinions thought to destroy civil society. It comes once Locke has separated the business of civil government from the business of religion. The magistrate's tools are penalties. Penalties do not save.

Did John Locke really say this?

The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Locke wrote the Letter in Latin. This sentence is from William Popple's 1689 English, the text English readers have usually met. Popple expands in places. This claim tracks Locke's own argument that the magistrate's power is outward force and belief cannot be forced.

Where it comes from

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), William Popple's English translation

Approximate date: 1689.

How to use it

A council in Leicester can regulate noise, safety, and fraud at a place of worship without thereby acquiring a brief to decide which sermon is true. The sentence is used badly when it is quoted to mean that religious reasons may never be mentioned in public. He is drawing a line around coercion, not around speech. Rates, planning, and the fire door are still the council's.

A mindset reading

Ask whether the tool you are reaching for can actually produce the result you name. If the result is inward conviction, a fine is the wrong kind of cause. The habit is also a check on citizens who would like the state to finish their theological arguments. Not committed to the magistrate means not committed to your magistrate either.

Understand the philosophy

The Letter, written in exile and addressed in its Latin form as a reply about mutual toleration, separates commonwealth from church. The key terms are the civil magistrate and the care of souls. Locke argues that God has not given one person authority to compel another's religion, that punishment cannot create belief, and that the magistrate's own religion may be the false one. Popple's English became the public text. It is a translation with a translator, which is why the badge is not 'well attested' as Locke's own English.

Related

• “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.”

  Well attested

• “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

  Well attested

• “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.”

  Well attested

Related fallacy. False dilemma. A false dilemma pretends there are only two options when others are available, or treats the options as if you must take one extreme. Sometimes the pair is real. The fallacy is forcing a pair that has not been shown to be complete.

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