Rousseau’s chapter “Of Civil Religion” has perplexed readers ever since the publication of the Social Contract. For the book’s earliest readers, the chapter was a sign of its author’s theological heresy even if contemporary readers are likely to take a more benign view of Rousseau’s intention. The question I pose is why the formula for the laws and institutions set out in the earlier parts of the Social Contract requires additional support in the form of the religious beliefs examined in the penultimate chapter. I want to suggest that this chapter represents a nod in the direction of Rousseau’s political realism in his acknowledgement that civil religion remains an indispensable part of the education of republican citizens.

Chapter 7 traces the emergence of the Reformation implemented by the parliamentarian side in the Civil War. After noting the ambiguous status of the Westminster Assembly, the chapter analyses the drawing up of the Westminster Confession, the Directory for Public Worship, the Catechisms and the form of Presbyterian church government. In each case, it is argued that these represented more sweeping changes than the limited reforms originally contemplated by Parliament. But in each case, it is also demonstrated that the new formularies reflected many pre-war ideas and forms, while the orthodoxy of the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer was still partly maintained. The reform of church government reflected the continuing determination of Parliament to retain ecclesiastical control. The second half of the chapter describes how these reforms were presented and understood, noting how shared discourses of anti-Laudianism, the covenant, fellowship with the foreign Reformed churches, providentialism, and biblicism both justified the changes but also created a language that could be turned against fellow parliamentarians. It is concluded that, for all the radical changes being contemplated and (partly) implemented, the Westminster Reformation encompassed a mixture of change and continuity with the pre-war church.

The present article examines Grotius’ views on the relationship between church and state. He composed most of the works dealing exclusively with this theme in the years before 1618, but his later work is discussed as well. The historical and intellectual background to Grotius’ views is examined, such as the Dutch religious troubles, toleration, Jewish history and Erastianism. This is followed by Grotius’ general views on church and state as expressed in his works and his views on specific aspects, such as lawgiving, the right of resistance by the church, synods, ecclesiastical hierarchy, divine and natural law. It is concluded that Grotius held that there is only one, indivisible sovereign government, and that this is civil government: all external acts in the public space are subject to the sovereign. Abuse of this absolute power is restricted by the fact that the sovereign has to render account to God. Grotius’ lifelong ideal was that of a state based on these principles, with a Christian public church, where toleration of religious differences was practised.

Chapter 3 narrates the development of Locke’s theory of toleration during the early 1660s and the period of his most consequential involvement in the political circles of the earl of Shaftesbury. The critical development, for Locke as for Hobbes, was the fall of the earl of Clarendon and the rise of the so-called Cabal ministry. This development cast the conformist clergy into disfavour and elevated policies of politique religious Indulgence that were often associated with court Hobbism. Locke was immersed in the Erastian political projects of Shaftesbury’s circle during these years and produced his preliminary ‘Essay concerning Toleration’. This chapter reveals the ‘Essay’ to have been a transitional text, moving towards assertion of a right to religious exercise but still influenced, and compromised, by a striking deference to sovereignty and civil religion. Shaftesbury and Locke, by allying themselves with this mixture of policies, found themselves vulnerable to charges of Hobbism, not least in the polemics of Samuel Parker. Locke’s initial effort to escape this critique can be dated to this period.