(75) V. That laws dealing with speculative problems are entirely useless.

(76) VI. Lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted without prejudice
to the public peace, to loyalty, and to the rights of rulers, but that it is
even necessary, for their preservation. (77) For when people try to take it
away, and bring to trial, not only the acts which alone are capable of
offending, but also the opinions of mankind, they only succeed in
surrounding their victims with an appearance of martyrdom, and raise
feelings of pity and revenge rather than of terror. (78) Uprightness and
good faith are thus corrupted, flatterers and traitors are encouraged, and
sectarians triumph, inasmuch as concessions have been made to their
animosity, and they have gained the state sanction for the doctrines of
which they are the interpreters. (79) Hence they arrogate to themselves the
state authority and rights, and do not scruple to assert that they have been
directly chosen by God, and that their laws are Divine, whereas the laws of
the state are human, and should therefore yield obedience to the laws of God
- in other words, to their own laws. (80) Everyone must see that this is not
a state of affairs conducive to public welfare. (81) Wherefore, as we have
shown in Chapter XVIII., the safest way for a state is to lay down the rule
that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice,
and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters,
should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what
he likes and say what he thinks.

(20:82) I have thus fulfilled the task I set myself in this treatise.
[20:5] (83) It remains only to call attention to the fact that I have
written nothing which I do not most willingly submit to the examination and
approval of my country's rulers; and that I am willing to retract anything
which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws, or prejudicial to the
public good. (84) I know that I am a man, and as a man liable to error, but