Samuel Pufendorf’s Of the Nature and  Qualification of Religion (published in Latin  in 1687) is a major work on the separation of politics  and religion. Written in response to the revocation of  the Edict of Nantes by the French king Louis XIV,  Pufendorf contests the right of the sovereign to control  the religion of his subjects, because state and religion  pursue wholly different ends. He concludes that, when  rulers transgress their bounds, subjects have a right to  defend their religion, even by the force of arms.  Pufendorf’s opposition to the French king does not  demonstrate political radicalism. Instead, like John  Locke and others who defended the concept of  toleration, Pufendorf advocates a principled, moderate  defense of toleration rather than unlimited religious  liberty.  Appearing at the dawn of the Enlightenment,  Pufendorf’s ideas on natural law and toleration were  highly influential in both Europe and the British Isles.  As Simone Zurbuchen explains in the introduction, Of  the Nature and Qualification of Religion is a  major contribution to the history and literature of  religious toleration.    Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) was one of the most important figures in early-modern political thought. An  exact contemporary of Locke and Spinoza, he transformed the natural law theories of Grotius  and Hobbes, developed striking ideas of toleration and of the relationship between church and  state, and wrote extensive political histories and analyses of the constitution of the German empire.        Jodocus Crull (d. 1713/14) was a German ?migr? to England, a medical man, and a translator and writer.    Simone Zurbuchen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.    Knud Haakonssen is Professor of  Intellectual History at the University of  Sussex, England.

Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) PDF

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