The readmission of the Jews and the power of the civil magistrate: Thomas Barlow on the Jews and natural law, 1655-1656

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article sheds light upon an important but neglected context in which Thomas Barlow (1608/9–1691) and his contemporaries discussed the readmission of the Jews in 1655–56. Previous studies of readmission have shown how the English perception of the Jews evolved, but few have noticed that contemporaries saw the readmission controversy as part of a larger debate on the limit of the civil magistrate’s power in religious toleration. By recovering the specific political context in 1655–56, in which the idea of natural law played a key role, this article highlights the legal and constitutional problems of admitting the Jews and Barlow’s distinctive intellectual solution to them. Adopting Hugo Grotius’ idea of natural law and Catholic jurists’ legal method, Barlow redefined the Jews’ obligation under natural law and suggested that the civil magistrate could formally admit the Jews.