Abstract

This article describes the implications for religious toleration of various non-cognitive views of religious belief, especially those adopted by Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, and Pierre Bayle. It suggests that while these men were of very different philosophical outlook, they did all share a deep hostility to the combination of clerical intolerance, scholastic philosophy, and pagan superstition that Hobbes labelled the Kingdom of Darkness. They all firmly held the view that the clergy should never wield power and they only differed on the powers the civil authorities possessed over religion.