capitalism

Religion and Liberty 421
that religious freedom was defended with various theoretical
arguments and from different ideological perspectives.
Tertullian, an important figure in the early Latin church,
called freedom of conscience “a fundamental human right.”
One’s religion “neither harms nor helps another man,” so
governments should not interfere. Moreover, Tertullian
contended that “free-will and not force” is the proper basis
for religious belief. Similar arguments were proposed by
Christian apologist Lactantius, according to whom “religion
cannot be imposed by force,” but “must be carried on
by words rather than by blows, that the will may be
affected.” This argument, which maintains that religious
faith cannot be meritorious unless freely given, would later
play a major role in the Christian case for toleration.
Christian pleas for toleration became less common after
Constantine issued the Edict of Milan (313), which established
religious liberty as a fundamental principle of public
law. Constantine then bestowed special favors on the
Christian church, effectively renouncing certain sections of
the Edict. His Christian successors continued to extend a
degree of religious freedom until Theodosius totally
revoked the Edict of Milan during his despotic reign. This
emperor established orthodox Christianity as the official
religion, outlawed pagan worship and rituals, and decreed
severe penalties for heresy. Thus, in the words of Lord
Acton: “Christianity, which in earlier times had addressed
itself to the masses, and relied on the principle of liberty,
now made its appeal to the rulers, and threw its mighty
influence into the scale of authority.”
Even after the church abandoned the notion of liberty
of conscience, it sometimes functioned as a protective
buffer between the state and the people. “Render unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the
things that are God’s”—these words of Jesus suggested a
sphere in which the church reigns supreme, a sphere
immune to state power. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan from
374 to 397, fiercely defended this principle. No friend of
religious liberty, Ambrose nevertheless believed in the
independence of the church: “Palaces belong to the
emperors, churches to the priesthood.” He also believed
that the church could call secular rulers to account. “Thou
art a man,” said Ambrose to Theodosius after this despot
had ordered a brutal massacre in Thessalonica. Threatened
with excommunication, Theodosius submitted to
Ambrose’s demand for public penance. As this astonishing
story was recalled in later centuries, it did more to
limit state power than volumes of theory.
The most influential arguments for persecution were put
forward by St. Augustine, who defended “righteous persecution,”
a policy he deemed necessary “in order that men
may attain eternal life and escape eternal punishment.”
Although Augustine conceded that a person cannot be compelled
to believe something in the absence of sufficient evidence,
he contended that coercion is able to change a
heretic’s mental attitude and make him more receptive to
receive the truth by contravening the influence of bad
habits, indifference, and sloth.
Arguments for religious freedom began to reappear after
the Protestant Reformation shattered the religious unity of
Europe. Although many of the great Reformers opposed
toleration, especially for Catholics and Anabaptists, the
appearance of a bewildering array of Protestant sects generated
civil wars and other political problems that could
only be solved with pragmatic concessions to toleration.
These practical solutions were accompanied by new arguments
for toleration, which gained momentum after
Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for heresy in
1533. John Calvin, who had engineered this execution of a
fellow Protestant, was condemned by the French Protestant
Sebastian Castellio. In Concerning Heretics, Castellio
quoted extensively from church fathers and later theologians
who had defended toleration.
At this time, Basel was a center of the movement for
religious toleration, thanks largely to the influence of the
Catholic humanist Erasmus, who had lived there for 7
years. It was while living in Basel that Castellio influenced
a number of people who would later carry the torch of toleration
throughout Europe. The Italian scholar Jacobus
Acontius, who was strongly influenced by Castellio’s
views, wrote Satan’s Stratagems, a remarkable indictment
of persecution, and Mino Celso quoted liberally from
Castellio in his defense of toleration. Benardino Ochino, a
friend of Castellio’s and a former Franciscan monk, argued
that “it is not needful to use sword or violence” when driving
Satan from the hearts of men. Castellio’s writings also
influenced Faustus Socinus, a founder of Unitarianism and
a strong voice for toleration in Poland, which became the
first country to adopt an official policy of toleration during
the 1570s.
It was in 17th-century England that the theoretical case
for religious freedom was most fully developed. Various
radicals challenged the religious and political status quo
during the 1640s, a decade of religious ferment and civil
war that produced hundreds of controversial tracts. The
case for toleration was broadened and placed on firmer
ground as radicals proclaimed freedom of conscience to be
a natural right that should fall beyond the reach of government.
This libertarian trend is especially evident in the
tracts and political platforms of the Levellers, who advocated
religious freedom for everyone, including atheists
and Catholics. This proposal was so unusual that even other
proponents of toleration, such as John Milton and John
Locke, who wrote several decades later did not endorse it.
The Levellers viewed religious freedom as a corollary of
one’s “self-propriety,” or “property in one’s person,” as John
Locke later called it. This theory of self-ownership became
the foundation of later libertarian treatments of what James
Madison and many of his contemporaries dubbed “property