has searched after it, though he has not found it, in some points has paid a more acceptable obedience to the will of his Maker than he that has not searched at all, but professes to have found truth when he has neither searched nor found it for he that takes up the opinions of any church in the lump, without examining them, has truly neither searched after nor found truth, but has only found those that he thinks have found truth, and so receives what they say with an implicit faith, and so pays them the homage that is due only to God." 1.

Locke certainly would not consent "to take up the opinions of any church in the lump." He did not believe in churches, save as organisations and agencies for helping each man to be a good man. That, and that alone he held, is Christianity; that, and that alone, the gospel that has to be preached, the gospel that every one can heed. "A ploughman that cannot read is not so ignorant but he has a conscience, and knows, in those few cases which concern his own actions, what is right and what is wrong. Let him sincerely obey this light of nature. It is the transcript of the moral law in the gospel, and this, even though there be errors in it, will lead him into all the truths in the gospel that are necessary for him to know. For he that in earnest believes Jesus Christ to be sent from God to be his lord and ruler, and does sincerely set upon a good life as far as he knows his duty, where he is in doubt in any matter that concerns himself, cannot fail to inquire of those better skilled in Christ's law to tell him what his lord and master has commanded concerning that duty which he finds himself concerned in for the regulation of his own actions; for, as for other men's actions, what is right or wrong as to them, that he is not

1 Lord King, pp. 281, 282.

NIA

concerned to know. His business is to live well with himself and do what is his particular duty. This is knowledge and orthodoxy enough for him, which will be sure to bring him to salvation; an orthodoxy which nobody can miss who in earnest resolves to lead a good life. And therefore I lay it down as a principle of Christianity, that the right and only way to saving orthodoxy is the sincere and steady purpose of a good life.'

Locke had his own opinions about the truths of Christianity, opinions which some may think unwarranted and others may regard as altogether incomplete. But he maintained that his own opinions and other people's opinions on all matters of faith must be separated from the plain and fundamental and sufficient rule of Christianity, "the sincere and steady purpose of a good life." "Here," he added, 66 we may see the difference between the orthodoxy required by Christianity and the orthodoxy required by the several sects or, as they are called, churches of Christians. The orthodoxy required by the several sects is a profession of believing the whole bundle of their respective articles set down in each church's system, without knowing the rules of every one's particular duty, or requiring a sincere or strict obedience to them. But"-and the sting is in this last sentence-"it is to be observed that this is much better fitted to get and retain church members than the other way, inasmuch as it is easier to make profession of believing a certain collection of opinions that one never perhaps so much as reads, and several whereof one could not perhaps understand if one did read and study (for no more is required than a profession to believe them, expressed in an aquiescence that suffers one not to question or contradict any of 1 Lord King, p. 283.

them), than it is to practise the duties of a good life in a sincere obedience to those precepts of the gospel wherein his actions are concerned-precepts not hard to be known by those who are ready and willing to obey them." 1

There can be no doubt that Locke, being in the best sense of the term a very religious man, had during these years much intercourse with many of the foremost and worthiest religious thinkers, writers and workers of his time-intercourse that must have been all the more congenial because most of these men were no less eminent for their devotion to the best literary and scientific studies of the day than to the duties of their special callings. Of this intercourse we have very few details; but the names and characters of Locke's friends are, for the most part, so well known that we can readily understand their relations without details. His old puritan connections, and his continued devotion to those principles of religious liberty of which he had truer apprehension than even the puritans themselves, appear to have maintained for him some intimacy with Richard Baxter and other leading nonconformists; and, as a representative of a very different school, Edward Pococke, hitherto and still the Oxford divine and scholar whom he most highly honoured, brought him into friendly dealings with many other exceptionally honest and liberal members of the high church party. It was with the latitudinarian churchmen, however, that he evidently had most sympathy. Bishop Wilkins, the sometime presbyterian and Cromwell's brother-in-law, had been one of his teachers at Oxford, and, till his death in 1672, had been his associate in schemes for church comprehension; Wilkins's son-in-law, Tillotson, was his friend through life; and if, as is

1 Lord King, p. 284.

reported, it was Mapletoft who introduced Tillotson to Locke, Mapletoft may also have brought him into acquaintance with other celebrated Cambridge latitudinarians, especially Simon Patrick and Isaac Barrow. On the occasion of Barrow's death in 1677, we shall find Locke speaking of him as one of his "very considerable friends." The friendship was apparently of long standing. Whether Locke was at this or even at any time personally acquainted with the now venerable leader of the Cambridge school, its leader in its theological and philosophical rather than in its scientific connections, Ralph Cudworth, is not recorded; but the influence of Cudworth and his friends had certainly reached him even while he was an Oxford student, and he was now getting beyond them.

A great haunt of the latitudinarians at that time was, strange to say, the house of Thomas Firmin. "There was hardly a divine of note," says his biographer, "but Mr. Firmin was acquainted with him. This helped him much to serve the interests of many hopeful young preachers and scholars, candidates for lectures, schools, cures, or rectories, for whom he would solicit with as much affection and diligence as other men do for their sons or near relations." 1 Mapletoft spent much time, if he did not when in London reside constantly, in Firmin's house. Many of Locke's letters to Mapletoft were addressed to him "at Mr. Firmin's, over against the George, in Lombard Street," and from allusions in some of these letters it is clear that Locke was himself very intimate with the family. And Firmin was a man worth knowing.

1 The Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin,' 1698.

2 European Magazine, vol. xiv. (1788), p. 401; Locke to Mapletoft, 10 Oct. [1671]; and other letters.

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A few months older than Locke, and the son of an extreme puritan, he was one of the most prosperous merchants in London. From a Calvinist he became an Arminian. He was the great friend of John Biddle, "the father of the unitarians," whom he helped through his persecution, and he was himself the author of some treatises to prove the unity of God. His most remarkable treatise, however, written in 1678, was entitled 'Some Proposals for the Employment of the Poor and for the Prevention of Begging,' which described and advocated a scheme of useful philanthropy put into practical operation by himself in a warehouse that he erected in Little Britain, and which to us is especially memorable as in part suggesting the system of poor-relief that Locke afterwards propounded.

But here we have chiefly to bear in mind that the excellent unitarian merchant's house in Lombard Street was a famous resort of the latitudinarian churchmen of Charles the Second's time, and that Locke was one of those who frequented it. The friends he made and met there were the friends who helped him somewhat, and whom he must have helped much more, to shake off all the shackles of bigotry, and to find out and prove by their own behaviour that Christianity is not a system of incredible creeds and debasing dogmas, that "the right and only way to saving orthodoxy is the sincere and steady purpose of a good life."

Though the letter that gives us all the details we have concerning Locke's holiday visit to France in September, 1672, was quoted in the last chapter, our review of the more general and miscellaneous incidents of his life hardly reached the beginning of the year.