“A Letter Concerning Toleration is an English translation of a Latin work, the Epistola de Tolerantia , that John Locke wrote towards the end of the year 1685, while living – often in hiding – in the Dutch Republic. The Epistola was not however published until 1689, after Locke’s return to England, and the English translation followed very shortly after. It soon met with a critical reply, in a pamphlet written by the Oxford chaplain Jonas Proast, which was to launch a polemical exchange in the course of which Locke wrote three further defences of his argument for toleration. Unlike the Epistola/Letter (hereafter: Letter ), which is intense and compactly expressed, these defences are lengthy and often repetitive. But they comprise Locke’s most fully elaborated statement of his case; they are valuable, too, because the pressure of controversy led him to clarify the priorities among his arguments”–