  Spinoza is often remembered for his contribution to the liberal tradition, due, in large part, to his defense of the freedoms of thought and speech in TTP 20. However, the tolerationism expressed in TTP 20 appears to stand in tension with the Erastian claim of TTP 19. How can Spinoza be a liberal about religious practice while also defending the view that the state maintains full right over matters of religion (TTP, Ch. 19)? There are three things worth noting here. First, unlike Locke’s tolerationism, Spinoza’s defense of civil liberties in TTP 20 is not fundamentally a defense freedom of worship (Israel 2001, 265–266). Rather, it is essentially a defense of the freedom to philosophize; freedom of worship is at best an incidental byproduct of this primary aim. Second, Spinoza distinguishes between outward expressions of faith and one’s inward worship of God. Sovereign authority over religious expression concerns only the former, leaving the latter the domain of the individual, for reasons that we will examine in a moment. Both of these positions can be understood as lending support to the Arminian cause against Calvinist Theocrats (Nadler 1999, 12). Finally, it should be mentioned that Spinoza’s denial that freedoms concerning outward religious expression must be protected points to the limited nature of his brand of toleration. The sovereign retains full discretion to determine which actions are acceptable and what forms of speech are seditious. As Lewis Feuer ruefully notes, Spinoza does not offer anything resembling Oliver Wendell Holmes’s standard of “clear and present danger” to constrain sovereign intervention (1987, 114).