cannot become converts simply by deciding to do so because the judgments and
movements of the will that constitute the essence of religion are not under their direct
voluntary control. But even if this is the case, compelling outward practice may in the
long run be an effective means to the end of inducing those inner acts of the mind.
Compulsion may after all be indirectly capable of forming in the soul the judgments and
motions of the will essential to religion. Like Locke, Bayle is vulnerable to empirical
refutation on this point. And what we know about brainwashing counts as evidence
against their views on the powerlessness of compulsion to produce mental acts.
However, Bayle has the resources to bypass the question of whether compulsion is an
effective means to establishing a religion. He can appeal directly to moral considerations.
Early in the book he announces that he is “relying upon this single principle of natural
light, that any literal interpretation which carries an obligation to commit iniquity is
false” (1686/1987, 28). As the allusion to natural light indicates, he is working within a
Cartesian epistemology in which the epistemic status of deliverances of the natural light
is high enough to guarantee their truth. Though he grants that the literal interpretation of
the words “Compel them to come in” supports the practice of forced conversion, it is
open to him to hold that it is morally wrong to use compulsion to produce the inner acts
that are essential to religion. So the following argument, which would be responsive to
Waldron's second objection, is available to Bayle. According to the literal interpretation
of Luke 14:23, Jesus has commanded the use of compulsion to produce the inner acts
essential to religion. This command carries with it an obligation to use compulsion for
that purpose, because commands of Jesus are divine commands. But the obligation to
make such a use of compulsion is an obligation to commit an iniquity, because it is
morally wrong to use compulsion for this purpose. Hence, by Bayle's principle, the literal
interpretation of Luke 14:23 is false, and so Jesus has not commanded the use of
compulsion to produce the inner acts essential to religion.
But what is the epistemic status of the moral principle that it is wrong to use compulsion
to produce the inner acts essential to religion? Is it a deliverance of
end p.403
the natural light? Probably not. I think even Bayle himself could not consistently hold
that it is true unless it is subject to an important qualification. This is because he allows
for special dispensations from divine moral laws. Indeed, he believes that God can and
sometimes does dispense people from the Decalogue's prohibition on homicide. There
are, he affirms, circumstances that “change the nature of homicide from a bad action into
a good action, a secret command of God, for example” (1686/1987, 171). The cases he
has in mind are, of course, the biblical stories in which God commands homicide, the
most famous of them being the akedah, the binding of Isaac, recounted in Genesis 22. So
Bayle has left a loophole open to the advocates of religious persecution. He cannot
consistently deny that they may be correct if they claim they have been dispensed by God
from the principle that it is morally wrong to use compulsion to make converts or claim
they have received a secret divine command to employ compulsion for this purpose. One
might think that the possibility of such individual dispensations or secret commands is
enough to preclude the principle that it is always wrong to use compulsion to make
converts from being a deliverance of the natural light.