Mere Civility  M e r e Ci v i l i t y Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration  Teresa M. Bejan cambridge, massachusetts london, england 2017 Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bejan, Teresa M., 1984– author. Title: Mere civility : disagreement and the limits of toleration / Teresa M. Bejan. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Based on the author’s thesis (Ph. D.— Yale University, 2013). | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016021054 | ISBN 9780674545496 Subjects: LCSH: Courtesy— Political aspects. | Toleration— Political aspects. | Discussion— Political aspects. | Freedom of speech. | Forums (Discussion and debate)— History. Classification: LCC BJ1533.C9 B45 2017 | DDC 177/.1— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021054 For my parents contents Citations and Abbreviations ix Introduction: Wars of Words 1 1. “Persecution of the Tongue”: Toleration and the Rise of Religious Insult 20 2. “Silver Alarums”: Roger Williams’s Mere Civility 50 3. “If It Be without Contention”: Hobbes and Civil Silence 82 4. “A Bond of Mutual Charity”: Locke and the Quest for Concord 112 Conclusion: The Virtue of Mere Civility 144 Epilogue: Free Speech Fundamentalism 167 Notes 177 References 243 Acknowledgments 265 Index 267 Citations and Abbreviations The major works of Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke are cited frequently in the following chapters. Full bibliographical details can be found in the references, but the following abbreviations will be used for citations in the text, followed by page number, (except where otherwise noted). Williams Key Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643) in Vol. 1 of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, ed. Perry Miller. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963. BT Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644) in Vol. 3 of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963. YMB Roger Williams, The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody (1652) in Vol. 4 of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963. GF Roger Williams, George Fox Digg’d Out His Burrowes (1676) in Vol. 5 of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963. Hobbes EL Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), ed. J. C. A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. DC Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (1642), ed. Richard Tuck and trans. Mi- chael Silverthorne. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ix