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CHAP. X.: The same Subject continued. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. X.

The same Subject continued.

AS there are scarce any but persecuting religions that have an extraordinary zeal for being established in other places (because a religion that can tolerate others, seldom thinks of its own propagation); it must therefore be a very good civil law, when the state is already satisfied with the established religion, not to suffer the establishment of another* .

This is then a fundamental principle of the political laws in regard to religion: That when the state is at liberty to receive or to reject a new religion, it ought to be rejected; when it is received, it ought to be tolerated.

[* ]I do not mean to speak in this chapter of the Christian religion; for, as I have elsewhere observed, the Christian religion is our chief blessing. See the end of the preceding chapter, and the defence of the Spirit of Laws, part 2.