Toleration

In some countries, where religion is established by law, certain sects who do not agree with the established religion are nevertheless permitted to exist; and this permission is called toleration. They are permitted and allowed to remain rather as a matter of favor than a matter of right. By the Toleration Act of 1 W. & M. c. 18, and subsequent statutes down to the 35 & 36 Viet, c. 26, enabling any person to take any degree (other than^a divinity degree) in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or Durham, the disabilities of the Roman Catholics, Jews, and Dissenters have been almost wholly removed; 2 Stepk. Com. 707. See Catholic Emancipation Act. In the United States there is no such thing as toleration; all men have an equal right to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences. See Chbistianiiy; Religion; Religious Test.

The allowance of religious opinions and modes of worship in a state which are contrary to or different from, those of the established church or belief. Webster.

— Toleration act. The statute 1 W. & M. St. 1, c. 18, for exempting Protestant dissenters from the penalties of certnin laws is so called. Brown.

In a strict or legal sense, seems to mean that permission to exist, which, in a state where one form of religion is established and upheld by law, may, from motives of state policy, be accorded to other forms of belief and worship. This is quite different from that equality of right which, throughout the United States, all sects enjoy. Toleration act. The Stat. 1 Wm. & M. St. I, ch. 18, passed in 1688-89. By from the church of England, except Papists, and persons denying the Trinity, were allowed freely to assemble for religious worship according to their own forms, and in places of meeting duly certified, on condition of their taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and making a declaration against transubstantiation, and (in the case of dissenting ministers) subscribing also to the Thirty-nine Articles. By subsequent statutes, the principle of the act has been extended.