their duty are exhortations, admonitions, and advices. If by these
means the offenders will not be reclaimed, and the erroneous
convinced, there remains nothing further to be done but that such
stubborn and obstinate persons, who give no ground to hope for their
reformation, should be cast out and separated from the society. This
is the last and utmost force of ecclesiastical authority. No other
punishment can thereby be inflicted than that, the relation ceasing
between the body and the member which is cut off. The person so
condemned ceases to be a part of that church.

  These things being thus determined, let us inquire, in the next
place: How far the duty of toleration extends, and what is required
from everyone by it?

  And, first, I hold that no church is bound, by the duty of
toleration, to retain any such person in her bosom as, after
admonition, continues obstinately to offend against the laws of the
society. For, these being the condition of communion and the bond of
the society, if the breach of them were permitted without any
animadversion the society would immediately be thereby dissolved. But,
nevertheless, in all such cases care is to be taken that the
sentence of excommunication, and the execution thereof, carry with
it no rough usage of word or action whereby the ejected person may any
wise be damnified in body or estate. For all force (as has often
been said) belongs only to the magistrate, nor ought any private
persons at any time to use force, unless it be in self-defence against
unjust violence. Excommunication neither does, nor can, deprive the
excommunicated person of any of those civil goods that he formerly
possessed. All those things belong to the civil government and are
under the magistrate's protection. The whole force of
excommunication consists only in this: that, the resolution of the
society in that respect being declared, the union that was between the
body and some member comes thereby to be dissolved; and, that relation
ceasing, the participation of some certain things which the society
communicated to its members, and unto which no man has any civil
right, comes also to cease. For there is no civil injury done unto the
excommunicated person by the church minister's refusing him that bread
and wine, in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which was not
bought with his but other men's money.

  Secondly, no private person has any right in any manner to prejudice
another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church
or religion. All the rights and franchises that belong to him as a
man, or as a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him. These are
not the business of religion. No violence nor injury is to be
offered him, whether he be Christian or Pagan. Nay, we must not
content ourselves with the narrow measures of bare justice; charity,
bounty, and liberality must be added to it. This the Gospel enjoins,
this reason directs, and this that natural fellowship we are born into
requires of us. If any man err from the right way, it is his own
misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in
the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in
that which is to come.

  What I say concerning the mutual toleration of private persons
differing from one another in religion, I understand also of
particular churches which stand, as it were, in the same relation to
each other as private persons among themselves: nor has any one of
them any manner of jurisdiction over any other; no, not even when
the civil magistrate (as it sometimes happens) comes to be of this
or the other communion. For the civil government can give no new right
to the church, nor the church to the civil government. So that,
whether the magistrate join himself to any church, or separate from
it, the church remains always as it was before- a free and voluntary
society. It neither requires the power of the sword by the
magistrate's coming to it, nor does it lose the right of instruction
and excommunication by his going from it. This is the fundamental
and immutable right of a spontaneous society- that it has power to
remove any of its members who transgress the rules of its institution;
but it cannot, by the accession of any new members, acquire any
right of jurisdiction over those that are not joined with it. And
therefore peace, equity, and friendship are always mutually to be
observed by particular churches, in the same manner as by private
persons, without any pretence of superiority or jurisdiction over
one another.

  That the thing may be made clearer by an example, let us suppose two
churches- the one of Arminians, the other of Calvinists- residing in
the city of Constantinople. Will anyone say that either of these
churches has right to deprive the members of the other of their
estates and liberty (as we see practised elsewhere) because of their
differing from it in some doctrines and ceremonies, whilst the
Turks, in the meanwhile, silently stand by and laugh to see with
what inhuman cruelty Christians thus rage against Christians? But if
one of these churches hath this power of treating the other ill, I ask
which of them it is to whom that power belongs, and by what right?
It will be answered, undoubtedly, that it is the orthodox church which
has the right of authority over the erroneous or heretical. This is,
in great and specious words, to say just nothing at all. For every
church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical. For
whatsoever any church believes, it believes to be true and the
contrary unto those things it pronounce; to be error. So that the
controversy between these churches about the truth of their
doctrines and the purity of their worship is on both sides equal;
nor is there any judge, either at Constantinople or elsewhere upon
earth, by whose sentence it can be determined. The decision of that
question belongs only to the Supreme judge of all men, to whom also
alone belongs the punishment of the erroneous. In the meanwhile, let
those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if
not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and