THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

12

THE

REASONABLENESS

OF

CHRISTIANITY,

AS DELIVERED IN

THE SCRIPTURES.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

AN ESSAY ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES;

AND

A DISCOURSE ON MIRACLES.

BY JOHN LOCKE.

WITH A

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY, AN APPENDIX,

AND NOTES,

BY A LAYMAN.

LONDON:

John Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly;

WHITTAKER & CO. AVE-MARIA LANE; SIMPKIN & MARSHALL
STATIONERS' COURT; TALBOYS, OXFORD; DEIGHTON,
CAMBRIDGE; OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH;

CUMMING, DUBLIN;

AND T. WARDLE, PHILADELPHIA.

MDCCCXXXVI.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

THOUGH it is by no means our design to present the reader, on the present occasion, with a complete biography of Locke, it may perhaps be useful, before we come to a consideration of the Reasonableness of Christianity, to glance, in a cursory manner, at the principal circumstances of his life, which was strikingly marked by sudden vicissitudes and mutations of fortune. This distinguished philosopher, the elder of two sons, was born at Wrington, in Somersetshire, on the 29th of August, 1632. He probably imbibed from his earliest years a hatred of arbitrary power, his father having, during the civil wars, been an officer in the Republican army; which, on the Restoration, caused considerable detriment to his fortunes. Locke, received from the beginning, a very superior education; and, though treated with much strictness while a boy, was gradually, as he grew up, permitted to share the friendship of his father,

b