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This volume must have been published before May, 1697, as in that month Molyneux wrote to say, "If you know the author thereof, as I am apt to surmise you may, be pleased to let him know that I think he has done Mr. Edwards too much honour in thinking him worth his notice; for so vile a poor wretch certainly never appeared in print. But, at the same time, tell him that, as this • Vindication' contains a further illustration of the divine truths in The Reasonableness of Christianity,' he has the thanks of me and all fair candid men that I converse with about it." 1

In saying that, Molyneux said nearly all that could be said in commendation of the book. Whatever useful service it may have done when it was published, it is to modern readers one of the least valuable of all Locke's writings. Some portions of it are of interest, however, as helping us to understand his system of religion and theology, and his place among the controversialists of his day.

Locke reiterated very fully and forcibly, and in one place very concisely and clearly, his scheme of Christianity: "There is a faith that makes men Christians. This faith is the believing of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah. The believing Jesus to be the Messiah includes in it a receiving him for our Lord and King, promised and sent from God, and so lays upon all his subjects an absolute and indispensable necessity of assenting to all that they can attain of the knowledge of that he taught, and of a sincere obedience to all that he commands."

Christ's teaching and commands, he emphatically declared, must be sought for in the Bible, and there only; and each honest seeker must be

1 Familiar Letters,' p. 213; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 May, 1697.

2Second Vindication,' etc., p. 385. This summary was offered, not to Edwards, but to another opponent with whom Locke dealt at the end of his book.

left to draw thence such special rules of life and such special articles of faith as he finds in them. "If the reading and study of the Scripture were more pressed than it is, and men were fairly sent to the Bible to find their religion, and not the Bible put into their hands only to find the opinions of their particular sect and party, Christendom would have more Christians, and those that are would be more knowing and more in the right than now they are. That which hinders this is that select bundle of doctrines which it has pleased every sect to draw out of the Scriptures, or their own inventions, with an omission of all the rest. These choice truths,' as the 'unmasker' calls his, are to be the standing orthodoxy of that party, from which none of that church must recede without the forfeiture of their Christianity and the loss of eternal life; but, whilst people keep firm to these, they are in the church and the way to salvation; which, in effect, what is it but to encourage ignorance, laziness, and neglect of the Scriptures? For what need they be at the pains of constantly reading the Bible, or perplex their heads with considering and weighing what is there delivered, when, believing as the church believes, or saying after or not contradicting their teacher, serves the turn? I desire it may be considered what name that mock-show of recommending to men the study of the Scriptures deserves, if, when they read it, they must understand it just as he that would be their master tells them? If they find anything in the word of God that leads them into opinions he does not allow, if anything they meet with in holy writ seems to them to thwart or shake the received doctrines, the very proposing of their doubts renders them suspected; reasoning about them and not acquiescing in what is said to them is interpreted want of due respect and deference to the authority of their spiritual guides; disrepute and censures follow; and if, in pursuance of their own light, they persist in what they think the Scripture teaches them, they are turned out of the church, delivered to Satan, and no longer allowed to be Christians. This is the consequence of men's assuming to themselves a power of declaring fundamentals, that is, of setting up a Christianity of their own making. Thus systems, the inventions of men, are turned into so many opposite gospels, and nothing is truth in each sect but just what suits with them; so that the Scripture serves but, like a nose of wax, to be turned and bent just as may fit the contrary orthodoxies of different societies."1

Locke made no scruple of his rejection of the doctrine, or rather all the diverse doctrines, of the Trinity; he indignantly repudiated the generally

1 Second Vindication,' etc., pp. 173-175.

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received notions of the atonement and predestination, of original sin and everlasting punishment; but he very properly objected to being called names, partly because he refused to acknowledge any other teacher of religion than Christ, partly because, though he agreed on many points with the members of many heretical sects, he differed from them on others, and did not choose to be pinned down to agreement with them on any. Most especially he objected to being called a Socinian, as comprehensive and insulting a term of opprobrium in his day as the term fanatic had been before, or as the term atheist was both before and after; and for this he had good reason, seeing that the epithet was applied to him with the distinct purpose of discrediting his opinions in philosophy as well as in theology, and, had he in any way acknowledged it, would have gone far to spoil the influence of all his writings. He, therefore, angrily resented the charge brought against him so persistently by Edwards. "He hopes," he said," to fright people from reading my book by crying out 'Socinianism, Socinianism!' I challenge him to show one word of Socinianism in it. But, however, is it worth while to write a book to prove me a Socinian? Truly, I did not think myself so considerable that the world need be troubled about me, whether I were a follower of Socinus, Arminius, Calvin, or any other leader of a sect among Christians. A Christian I am sure I am; because I believe Jesus to be the Messiah, the King and Saviour sent by God, and, as a subject of his kingdom, I take the rule of my faith and life from his will, declared and left upon record in the inspired writings of the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament, which I endeavour, to the utmost of my power, as is my duty, to understand in their true sense and meaning. To lead me into their true meaning I know no infallible guide but the same Holy Spirit from whom these writings at first came. If the unmasker' knows any other infallible interpreter of Scripture, I desire him to direct me to him. Till then I shall think it according to my Master's rule not to be called, nor to call any man on earth, master. No man, I think, has a right to prescribe to me my faith, or magisterially to impose his interpretations or opinions on me; nor is it material to any one what mine are any farther than they carry their own evidence with them." 1

Of all the railing accusations brought against him by Edwards, Locke admitted only one-that he "everywhere struck at systems." "And I always shall," he exclaimed, "so far as they are set up by particular men or parties, as the just measure of every man's faith, wherein everything that is con

1 Second Vindication,' etc., pp. 281, 282.

tained is required and imposed to be believed to make a man a Christian. But that every man should receive from others, or make to himself, such a system of Christianity as he found most conformable to the word of God, according to the best of his understanding, is what I never spoke against, but think it every one's duty to labour for and to take all opportunities as long as he lives to perfect."1

Edwards continued to denounce Locke as a Socinian or worse, and he imported new grounds of abuse into a work that he must have written shortly before, though it was not issued till some months after, the publication of the 'Second Vindication.' This work was entitled 'A Brief Vindication of the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Faith, as also of the Clergy, Universities, and Public Schools, from Mr. Locke's Reflections upon them in his Book of Education, etc.,' and in it, as the title implies, Edwards specially, though by no means exclusively, set himself to condemn Locke's new views about teaching and his objections to the methods hitherto in vogue. In the dedication, addressed to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, he referred to Hobbes and "one Mr. Locke, who, though he infinitely comes short of the forenamed person in parts or good letters, yet hath taken the courage to tread in his old friend's steps and publicly to proclaim his dislike of university men and to remonstrate against the methods they take in bringing up of youth." He invented other connections between Hobbes and Locke. "When that writer," he went on to say, "was framing a new Christianity, he took Hobbes's 'Leviathan' for the New Testament, and the Philosopher of Malmesbury for our Saviour and the apostles."

That insolent dedication and the harmonious abuse that followed it are chiefly noteworthy as further showing

1 'Second Vindication,' etc., p. 327.

the way in which Locke was now coming to be attacked. Locke's chagrin is curiously exhibited in an indignant letter that he wrote to a very old friend, Dr. John Covell, now master of Trinity College, Cambridge.1 Edwards, being also a Cambridge man, and an acquaintance of Covell's, had induced him to join with the vice-chancellor of the university and two other dons in signing an imprimatur" for the scurrilous work. On discovering this, Locke wrote to Covell as follows:

“REVEREND SIR,-I am told the booksellers in Cambridge have made bolder than they should with the book you will herewith receive, by pasting a paper over the author's epistle to the bookseller. 'Tis pity so excellent a treatise as this is should lose the authority and recommendation your name gives to it. I therefore send you one with all its ornaments displayed as our shops here afford them, and you will do well to keep it safe that posterity may know, as well as this present age, who lent his helping hand to usher into the world so cleanly a piece of divinity, and such a just model of managing of controversy in religion, to be a pattern for the youth in his own college and in the rest of the university to imitate. This is all at present, till I have a fitter opportunity to talk with you about what the dull stationer here made bold to strike out, notwithstanding it had the warrant of your imprimatur.' 'Tis not that I pretend to be interested in the controversy wherein Mr. Edwards is a party; but, hearing he had named me in the title of his book, I thought myself concerned to read it, and, having perused it, I think it will not misbecome our old acquaintance to do you this right. I lay all those titles you have thought me worthy of at your feet, and am, reverend sir, your humble servant,

"J. LOCKE." 2

That deservedly sharp rebuke produced an answer as

1 They were in Paris together in 1678, and a frequent correspondence appears to have passed between them; but the few remains of it that are extant for the period before the date of the above letter are not of much interest. Covell was a great orientalist, and in other ways an important man in his day.

2 Additional MSS., no. 22910, fol. 468; Locke to Covell, 29 Sept.,