erroneous.

In the meanwhile let those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and arrogantly take upon them to misuse the servants of another master who are not at all accountable to them. Nay, further, if it could be manifest which of these two dissenting churches were in the right way, there would not accrue thereby unto the orthodox any right of destroying the other. For churches have neither any jurisdiction in worldly matters, nor are fire and sword any proper instruments wherewith to convince men's minds of error and inform them of the truth. Let us suppose, nevertheless, that the civil magistrate inclined to favour one of them, and to put his sword into their hands, that, by his consent, they might chastise the dissenters as they pleased. Will any man say that any right can be derived unto a Christian church over its brethren from a Turkish emperor? An infidel, who has himself no authority to punish Christians for the articles of their faith, cannot confer such an authority upon any society of Christians, nor give unto them a right which he has not himself. This would be the case at Constantinople. And the reason of the thing is the same in any Christian kingdom. The civil power is the same in every place; nor can that power in the hands of a Christian prince confer any greater authority upon the church than in the hands of a heathen; which is to say, just none at all."

All interference with people's religious opinions and worship Locke regarded as altogether unreasonable as well as unjustifiable. "If I be marching on with my utmost vigour," he said, in one quaint illustration, "in that way which, according to the sacred geography, leads straight to Jerusalem, why am I beaten and ill-used because perhaps I wear not buskins, because my hair is not of the right cut, because perhaps I have not been dipped in the right fashion, because I eat flesh upon the road or some other food which agrees with my stomach, because I avoid certain byeways which seem unto me to lead into briars or precipices, because amongst the several paths that are in the same road I choose that to walk in which seems to be the straightest and cleanest, because I avoid to keep company with some travellers that are less grave and others that are more sour than they ought to be, or, in fine, because I follow a guide that either is or is not clothed in white and crowned with a mitre ? Certainly, if we consider right, we shall find that for the most part they are such frivolous things as these that, without any prejudice to religion or the salvation of souls, if not accompanied with superstition or hypocrisy, might either be observed or omitted, I say they are such like things as these which

breed implacable enmities amongst Christian brethren who are all agreed in the substantial and fundamental part of religion."

Whether Locke was right in here implying that there was wide agreement among Christians as to the substantial and fundamental part of religion, whether even he on sober reflection really thought so himself, must be doubted. His own canon was tolerably broad. "He that denies not anything that the holy scriptures teach in express words, nor makes a separation upon occasion of anything that is not manifestly contained in the sacred text, however he may be nicknamed by any sect of Christians, and declared by some or all of them to be utterly void of Christianity, cannot be either a heretic or schismatic."

Only a few illustrations of Locke's views as expressed in this long letter to Limborch are here given. To set forth the whole argument would require the repetition of nearly the whole treatise. The gist of it all, however, can be very briefly stated. Every one, urged Locke, should be entirely free to worship God as he likes. If he chooses to join with others in forming a church, or to attach himself to one of the churches already formed, so much the better. A church, moreover, is as free to excommunicate those of its members who rebel against its rules, endorsed by the great body of the members, as it is to accept candidates for admission; but it must not ask the state to enforce its rules, nor must the state allow it to adopt any rules or customs that are injurious to the civil interests of society. The state is responsible for the peace and well-being of the community in its civil concerns; but it has nothing at all to do with religion, beyond seeing that no individual or body, from religious motives, injures or attempts to injure any other individual or body, or the nation at large.

That last consideration suggests the limits of toleration as defined by Locke.

"First," he said, "no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate.

"Another more secret evil, but more dangerous to the commonwealth, is when men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community. Those who attribute unto the faithful, religious and orthodox-that is, in plain terms, unto themselves—any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals in civil concernments, or who, upon pretence of religion, do challenge any manner of authority over such as are not associated with them in their

ecclesiastical communion,-I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate; as, neither, those that will not own and teach the duty of tolerating all men in matters of mere religion. For what do these signify but that they may and are ready upon any occasion to seize the government and possess themselves of the estates and fortunes of their fellow-subjects, and that they only ask to be tolerated by the magistrate so long until they may find themselves strong enough to effect it?

"Again; that church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince; for by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government.

"Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides, also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration."

We may regret that Locke should have admitted into his eloquent plea for toleration such an intolerant doctrine as those last sentences contain. But, in his excuse, it must be remembered that the atheism then in vogue was of a very violent and rampant sort. He rightly held that no man has a claim to the privileges of society who does not recognise the necessity of compliance with the fundamental law of society-the law of good faith. The low morality of people in his day unfortunately led him to think that no one could be expected to keep faith with another unless he believed in a God who would punish him if he failed to do so. "Promises, covenants, and oaths," he thought, "can have no hold upon an atheist." An atheist cannot be a good citizen. Therefore an atheist has no claim to the rights of citizen

Locke, as we have seen, read Jean le Clerc's 'Sentiments de Quelques Théologiens de Hollande sur l'Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament" while he was at Cleve, and sent thence, through Limborch, some queries to its author. In the winter of 1685-6, soon after his return to Amsterdam, Limborch introduced him to Le Clerc. This new friendship had very memorable results.

Locke had been an author for now more than a quarter of a century. During more than fifteen years he had, at intervals, been working out the arguments to be embodied in the Essay concerning Human Understanding,' and he seems to have all along intended to publish that work if, when completed, his modesty would allow him to consider it worth publishing. He had collected notes and materials, moreover, ready to be converted into at least half a dozen other works, if he could bring himself to give them to the world. But it may almost be doubted whether, but for his acquaintance with Le Clerc, he would ever have given anything to the world.

His hesitation in this regard is illustrated by the history of a small, though interesting, tract, which appears to have been the first thing actually published by him, with the exception of a few complimentary verses that have already been referred to.

Soon after their friendship began in Paris in 1677, Locke had explained to Nicolas Thoynard the very ingenious plan for keeping a common-place book which he had himself adopted ever since 1661. Thoynard, following and highly commending the plan, as did every one else who tried it, urged that it should be made public, and Locke consented; but eight years passed before this was done. "Since you are always of the same opinion that myMethod of a Common-Place Book' would be

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generally useful, and since you still press me to print it, I shall obey you," he wrote to Thoynard from Amsterdam, in the autumn of 1684. "If I have let so many years pass without doing this, it was not because I grudged the public such a small service"-as Thoynard appears to have complained-" but because I was ashamed to have it thought that I considered such a bagatelle worth giving out. But you insist upon it, and that is enough." A later letter shows, however, that he was still in doubt on the subject, and it would seem that the Method was at last only published because Limborch also commended it and Le Clerc insisted upon issuing it in his Bibliothèque Universelle.'

The Bibliothèque Universelle' has a special interest in connection with Locke, in addition to the general interest attaching to it as almost the earliest literary magazine and review. Really the earliest was the 'Journal des Sçavans,' started by Denis de Sallo, in Paris, in 1665, and this had been to some extent imitated in the same year by the Philosophical Transactions' of our Royal Society; but the former hardly aimed at giving more than epitomes of new books, supplemented by as much scientific, academical and other news and gossip as its editors could collect, and the latter only now and then added short notices of books to its copious reports of the proceedings of the Royal Society. Pierre Bayle, who after abjuring Romanism had settled down as professor of philosophy and history at Rotterdam, in 1681, when he was thirty-four, must be honourably remembered as having, among other good work, produced the first

1 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, [18-] 23 Nov., 1684.

Ibid.; Locke to Thoynard, [14-] 24 Feb., 1684-5.