BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

[6] We see very clearly from this:
Theological-Political Treatise
(1) How pernicious it is both for religion and the state to allow ministers
of things sacred to acquire the right to make decrees or handle the business
of government. Rather everything proceeds with much more stability, we see,
if they are so tightly restricted that they may not give responses on any subject
on which questions have not been put to them, and in the meantime are
allowed to teach and practise only what is generally received and usual.
(2) How dangerous it is to refer purely philosophical questions to divine
law, and to make laws about opinions which men can or do dispute. Government
is bound to become extremely oppressive where [dissident] opinions
which are within the domain of each individual, a right which no one can
give up, are treated as a crime.Where this happens, the anger of the common
people tends to prevail. Pilate knew that Christ was innocent but ordered him
to be cruci¢ed so as to appease the fury of the Pharisees. In order to strip
those who were richer than themselves of their o⁄ces, the Pharisees aimed
to stir up controversies about religion and accuse the Sadducees of impiety.
Following the example of the Pharisees, all the worst hypocrites everywhere
have been driven by the same frenzy (which they call zeal for God’s law), to
persecute men of outstanding probity and known virtue, resented by the common
people for precisely these qualities, by publicly reviling their opinions,
and in£aming the anger of the barbarous majority against them. This aggressive
licence cannot easily be checked because it hides itself under the cloak of
religion, especially when the sovereign authorities have introduced a cult of
which they themselves are not the heads. Where that occurs, the authorities
are not regarded as the interpreters of divine law but as members of the
church, that is, as people who accept the doctors of the sect as the interpreters
226 of divine law. In this situation, the authority of the magistrates usually has
very little in£uence with the common people; rather the authority of the
theologians (to whose interpretations they think that even kings must submit),
acquires overwhelming weight. In order to avoid these di⁄culties, the
safest policy is to regard piety and the practice of religion as a question of
works alone, that is, as simply the practice of charity and justice, and to leave
everyone to his own free judgment about everything else; but we will speak
about this more fully presently. 4
(3) We see how necessary it is both for the state, and for religion, to assign
the authority to decide what is religiously right or not to the sovereign power
alone. For if authority to make this distinction in practice cannot without great
harm to both state and religion be left to God’s prophets themselves, much
4 See pp. 238¡. and 250¡.
234