Original letters of John Locke, Alg. Sidney, and Lord Shaftesbury, with an analytical sketch of the writings and opinions of Locke and other metaphysicians

Preface

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The publisher of this volume, having obtained permission from Dr. Eorster to reprint those letters of Locke, Sidney and Shaftesbury which that gentleman published nearly twenty years ago, has added several others written by the same eminent men, and procured from the same source, namely the MSS. collection of the Eorster family. It would be unbecoming in the publisher to premise one word concerning the merits of any thing written by such illustrious men as John Locke, Algernon Sidney and the Earl of Shaftesbury : but he may be permitted to say there are two points which, particularly claim the attention of the reader to the following collection of letters. They are selected out of the correspondence of a private family, and, as containing the unreserved thoughts of the writers, and consequently never intended for publication, they possess the greatest interest for those who delight in pictures of domestic life and friendship. But the second point of attraction is peculiarly suited to invite attention : the political movements which at that time disturbed Europe were precisely the same as those vhich at the present moment are influencing its different courts. The all-engrossing question concerning the rights of the Bourbons to the crown of Spain is repeatedly alluded to and discussed in the following letters, and the same question has again, of late years, kept the courts of England and Erance in a ferment, and almost destroyed the good understanding which existed between them. It is curious to see the same causes arising after a hundred and fifty years, and again producing the same results.

A few passages of the following letters appear to be corrupt ; in these cases the only thing that could be done was to follow the Manuscript.

TO

ORIGINAL LETTERS &c. PUBLISHED A.D. 1830.

In the publication of letters written by persons long deceased, and to which any considerable degree of curiosity may be attached, the first thing necessary seems to be, to satisfy the public mind of their authenticity. In the present instance this is a very easy thing to be done, for the letters of Locke, of Algernon Sidney, and of the Earl of Shaftesbury, published in this volume, addressed to Mr. Eurley of Rotterdam, came, by the death of that gentleman, into the possession of my grandfather, Mr. Edward Eorster, of Walthamstow, inEssex, among other very curious manuscripts. At his death, which took place on the 20th of April 1812, they became the property of my father, Mr. Thomas Eurley Eorster, of Clapton; at whose death, in October 1825, they came into my hands, and were made my property by an act of his will, dated April 1824, together with a large collection of the manuscript correspondence and other works of some celebrated writers who flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.*

Perhaps the most curious object in the whole parcel of papers to which I allude, is a MS. copy of Mr. Locke V Essay concerning Human Understanding /' written in a very neat

* Among others are the correspondence of Toup, the Author of "Emendationes in Suidam," with Bishop Warburton; several very curious

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hand, in a small 12mo book, but much crossed out and. altered, and full of corrections in the author's own handwriting. There is a date 1685 to this book; but it is written in a very much blacker ink than the rest of the work, and is evidently inserted at a subsequent period, at a mere guess; for I have good reason to believe the MS. in question to be the original copy of the work, just as Mr. Locke first wrote it, and even before he ever seriously thought of sending it to the press*.

Long before I determined on the publication of Locke's Letters, and even while the manuscript remained in my father's possession, it had been suggested both to him and to me that the publication of the whole of the papers, just as they were found, would be a very acceptable present to the literary public: but I confess I hesitated about the propriety thereof, considering that the letters were of a private nature, and, independently of their not containing anything of great public interest, I questioned how far any man's familiar writings could, consistently with a strict sense of honour, be submitted to the public; considering how frequently men of genius and inquiry change their sentiments, and how much opinions on political and religious subjects are apt to get interletters of Mr. Gough the antiquary &c. &c. &c. Many of these curiosities may one day or other be confided to my friend Mr. Nichols for publication.

t Should I have leisure at some subsequent period, I hope to collate this curious Manuscript with the published editions of the " Essay on the Understanding, " and to publish some account of the variations in the text, in order to trace the workings of Locke's metaphysical mind through his various changes of sentiment or of diction ; for it seems to me that he altered, in a great measure, his opinions respecting both religion and philosophy at different parts of his life. But whatever I shall publish of Locke's or any other deceased author, will be done with this express reservation, that whatever appears of such a nature that

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woven with familiar correspondence. Mr. Edward Eorster had always entertained strong objections against the printing of letters at all, and nsed to say, that what one man believed or thought, could be no business of any other man's, and that private letters and sentiments, however ancient, ought not to be divulged to the public by posterity.

He certainly carried his opinions respecting the confidential nature of the correspondence of celebrated men much further than is usual. My father, however, when he became possessed of the papers, entertained a different opinion; and both he and my father in law, the late Colonel Beaufoy, rather urged me in the year 1817, to undertake the publication of the best of the manuscripts of Locke, both as an entertaining mode of employing my own time, and likewise because it was thought that the public would be interested in the perusal of any thing new from the pen of such a renowned writer.

Professional avocations, the going with my family abroad and various other circumstances, prevented me from this undertaking, and it was not till the autumn of 1825, that my father again invited me to his house at Walthamstow, to revise with him the manuscripts for the press. His lamented death, which took place on the night following the festival of SS. Simon and Jude in that year, again put a stop to the work; and it was not till the winter of 1828, that, ransacking an immense collection of papers which I had carelessly laid by in a lumber room after his death, I stumbled on the case containing the curious writings in question; in which case they seem to have bee a deposited ever since they came into the possession of our family. On examining the parcel, it appear-

he, if he had lived, would have wished it kept private, shall be suppressed. I mention this,because I am of opinion that the unreserved publication of men's opinions, in posthumous works of this kind, is neither «£ ir nor honorable, and the practice prevails too much in our day.

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ed to me that the publication of an edition of the Essay concerning Understanding, from the original manuscript copy before alluded to, would be a work both of great expense and of much labour, and I therefore abandoned it, from the want of time to superintend it. But, at the wish of several friends, I have selected some of the letters for publication, and have added to them a few of Algernon Sidney, together with the correspondence of Lord Shaftesbury, which, being addressed to the same Mr. Eurley,were contained in the same box. Of what degree of interest they are possessed the public will be the best judges; but for my part, and as far as my own opinion goes, the circumstance of their being the productions of men so well known and respected in the literary world, constitute their principal claim to notice; I have therefore printed the letters verbatim.

The subjects of Mr. Locke's letters are often of an amusing family nature; those of Algernon Sidney relate mostly to business; while Lord Shaftesbury's writings,though they relate in a great measure to antient affairs, mixed with domestic concerns, nevertheless treat of events as well as of opinions, that will never entirely lose their interest with the generality of mankind. But, although the letters of all the writers, whose works are here recorded, relate here and there to the great struggle for freedom of conscience, which was then beginning to manifest itself in the minds of thinking men; who opposed themselves boldly to the tyranny of the Church of England, and corrupt legislators that supported it in those days of bigotry and oppression; yet the advance of liberal principles has been of late so rapid, compared with any thing that could have been achieved in the last century, and the establishment of the great principle of civil and religious liberty has been subsequently so complete, after a hard struggle on the part of liberal men of all religious and political creeds, that the feeble efforts of Locke,

PREFACE Xlll

Sidney, Shaftesbury, and other writers of those days, may, to superficial observers, seem to be quite lost, amidst the victories which Charles Eox and his party in England, and 0' Connell and the association in Ireland, have at length obtained under the enlightened administration of the Duke of Wellington, over the minions of a narrowminded and selfish monopoly.

I cannot help here making one curious remark, namely, that the freedom of conscience from all civil disabilities, so ardently desired by Locke and Sidney, has at length been brought about by the very party to whom those men in those days were opposed, namely, the Catholics; for, had it not been for the efforts of the liberal Catholics of Ireland, our own country would certainly not yet have been freed from those oppressive laws by which consciences till now remained shackled. And this circumstance, curious enough in itself to excite inquiry, I hold to furnish a satisfactory guarantee, that, however much Catholic policy may formerly have partaken of the persecuting spirit of the times, there is now nothing more to be apprehended from it, nor indeed, from the bigotry and oppression of any party whatever.

* Persecution appears to have been characteristic of the times in which it prevailed, rather than of any particular religion ; and perhaps the interest which tyrannical states of old took in religion, and the handle they made of it, had a greater share than any thing else in converting the mild and selfdenying spirit of Christianity into a source of pride, oppression, and cupidity. Persecution is as old as the world's history reaches: with respect to Christianity, it began with the Roman Emperors, and has prevailed more or less ever since. The pretended Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, persecuted with as much fury, as those did against whom they directed their shafts, and the mutual accusations of heresy preferred by one party against the other, rendered the religious world before and at the time of Locke a complete Babel, as he has expressed himself in more instances than one. The members of the Church of England were guilty, at the period of Locke's expul-

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If we examine the spirit of the present times, and the actual state of religions and civil liberty in England, we shall find it to be superior to any thing that has existed since the commencement of the Eeformation. Tor, though the same differences of opinion prevail now that prevailed formerly, yet religions are now all placed on the same footing; and, as the sword can no longer support the one, nor the faggot terrify the other, while liberty is extended to all, the fairest chance is now offered for truth to prevail, since fair argument is unshackled, hypocrisy disarmed, and the equality of civil rights extended to all parties. This state of things is in reality the upshot of the principles contended for by Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury; and for the establishment of which there has been a long though frequently interrupted struggle. Although I may differ essentially from the religious opinions of the Protestant party of that bigoted period, yet I should hope that in the principles of liberty for which they contended, and which would guarantee to all men the safe and unmolested exercise of the real or imaginary duties which arise out of their particular creeds, all thinking men were at length agreed, and will be ready to acknowledge, that, since the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, the pro-

sion from Oxford, of shocking instances of persecution, and the party to whom Locke was most attached, namely the Quakers, suffered more than any other body from it, the gaols in England being full of them; an instructive history of which may be seen in Sewell's "History of the Friends." That the Catholic Church was made the instrument of persecution during many ages,cannot be doubted; but it was at a remote period ofhistoiy, and, though long established habit could not be at once broken, yet the spirit of the times gradually gave way to improvement in knowledge, and a restoration of Christianity to its primitive purity gradually supervened. The principles of St. Ignatius of Loyola gradually destroyed what persecuting and monopolizing spirit was left in the Catholic Church; while the bigotry of the Protestant establishment was subdued by the efforts of the Quakers, the Philosophers, and the Liberals.

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tection of all good subjects from the annoyance of any who may be inclined to molest them, should, as far as religion be concerned, constitute the limits of legislative interference.

I shall divide the consideration of Mr. Locke into three distinct portions: Eirst, A very short sketch of the birth, parentage, and other circumstances of the author; secondly, his religious, philosophical,and political opinions, compared with those of preceding and subsequent philosophers; and, thirdly, miscellaneous anecdotes.

§ 1. OF THE BIRTH, &C OF MR. LOCKE.

Mr. Locke's life having been amply written in several places, nothing more can be necessary here, than a very short sketch of the principal circumstances attending it, for the amusement of those readers who may not be in possession of the Biographia Britannica, and other works containing his life at greater length.

John Locke was born on the festival of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist on the 29 thdayof August, in the year 1632, at "Wrington, in Somersetshire, in a small country house, a sketch of which, copied from Mr. Kutter's "Delineations of Somersetshire" (a very pleasing topographical work), will be found at the beginning of this volume.

He received the rudiments of his classical education at Westminster, and was entered in 1651 as student of Christchurch, Oxford. Here he made great progress, but being much fonder of the works of Des Cartes than of the dry scholastic studies of the college, he took an insurmountable aversion to the course of university education as it was pursued at Oxford; and it is from this period, that, following the course of studies into which the perusal of Des Cartes led him, we may date the ultimate developement of his philosophy of the human mind, as delivered in an "Essay concerning Human Understanding."

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That Locke was expelled^from the University of Oxford by the Dean of his College, and by an order from the King, is a matter of notoriety, but the particulars of that ejection are perhaps less generally known: the fact was, that Locke had followed the then Earl of Shaftesbury in his exile intojlolland, and so great was the animosity of party at that time towards all the friends of the persecuted President of the Council, that Locke feared to return to England, and his refusal to return to his College when invited, only aggravated the anger of his enemies at Court, and led to the erasure of his name from the list of students.

On the accession of James II, Penn the Quaker, who was the friend of Locke, had nearly obtained from the king a pardon for him; but Locke, thinking his offences against the state to be only imaginary, refused it, and preferred his exile and the otium cum dignitate in retirement. Though Locke's Life has been amply written years ago, yet I mention these particulars merely to account for his long stay in Holland; as the reader will perceive that most of his familiar letters to Mr. Eurley, of Rotterdam, were dated from Amsterdam, where he contributed towards the advancement of literature in the Low Countries.

It was at this period that he, together with Limborch and Le Clerc, formed the " Litteraturische Societat von Amsterdam, " in the year 1686. It is said by some of his biographers that he finished Ins celebrated " Essay on Human Understanding" for the press, in the following year; but I have reason to think that the original MS. of that book, which I have in my possession, is a work of a much earlier period, as I have already said; and that the date affixed in a different ink has been done at random by soi'ie of his posterity.

I shaJl now pass over, for the reason before stated, the rest of the particulars of Locke's Life, and of his various publications on lleligious Toleration, &c. and proceed to some other con-

PREFACE. XVU

siderations. Suffice it therefore to say, that Mr. Locke left Holland in 1688, and took up his residence in London, and eventually at Oates near Laver in Essex, in the house of Sir Francis Masham, where, as I find recorded in a MS. account of his death, he died suddenly on St. Simon and Jude's Day [May 1.] in 1704, in the 73rd year of his age, while Lady Masham was reading to him. He was buried in the church of that village, where there is a monument with a Latin inscription erected to his memory.

§ 2. of me. locke's religious opinions.

So much has already been said of Mr. Locke's religious and political opinions, that it w T ould seem there is little left to be said on that subject. Some of his biographers have affirmed positively that he was a strict Socinian ; others have laboured to prove that he was a supporter of the Arian heresy ; and others that he was friendly to the principles of the Quakers ; while all agree that he was inimical both to the doctrines, ecclesiastical policy, and discipline of the Church of England, and was the avowed enemy of episcopalian polity in general. Of the latter fact there can be no doubt, as the whole of his religious writings testify : but I should hesitate much, from the perusal of his manuscript as well as his published writings, in describing Locke either as a Socinian or even as an Arian. With a strong and natural love of liberty, and an implacable animosity to a bigoted ecclesiastical polity as a groundwork, he seems, like other philosophers who have wandered from the Catholic Church, the common mother of Christianity, to have been versatile and wavering in his opinions, and to have partaken, at different times of his life, of the doctrines of more than one or even two of her apostate children. Eor example ; his bias towards Arianism in early life, and which he founded on the unrestrained exercise of the privilege of interpreting the Scriptures for

b

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himself, was afterwards much modified by his friendship and inter, course with the Quakers, to whose principles, in spite of his good-humoured sneers and playful sarcasms, in which he now and then indulged, T am persuaded he was much attached. Neither, indeed, could it well have been otherwise ; since, whatever may be our difference in opinion from the Society of Mends in matters of religion, no one who knows the value of sound Christian morality, can do otherwise than admire the quiet domestic habits, good conduct, and well organized discipline of the Quakers, who must be admitted on all hands to be, as a body, by far the most benevolent, if not the most learned, of all the heretical divisions of the Christian world.

It appears that Locke took great pains to inform himself of the proofs to be derived from Scripture, on points connected with the leading doctrines of the Church ; and that he pursued the same plan in elucidating them as Milton had done before him ; that is to say, he adopted a similar plan of confronting the various texts of Scripture, and drawing conclusions founded on the balance of evidence. Thus for example, if he found two passages favouring the doctrine of the Trinity, and three supporting the Unity of the Godhead, he would at once admit, ceteris paribus, the latter to be the best supported of the two. Now it is a very remarkable fact, and oue which should be deeply impressed on the minds of all theologians, but particularly on those of the orthodox members of the Church, that all the chief dissenters from orthodoxy have proceeded on this very plan, of examining texts of Scripture, and yet all of them have differed from each other : a circumstance which points out, as strongly as any thing can do, to every reasonable and reflecting mind, the fallacy of private judgment in matters confessedly above human reason ; and shews the necessity for that sort of authorized exposition of Scriptural truths which emanated from the approved Councils of the Church, and which it is the province

PREFACE. XIX

of the apostolical Vicars to maintain from age to age, for th<* purpose of useful instruction, and for maintaining the Christian unity of the people at large.

In defiance of all that liberal writers may say about the right of private judgement in matters of religion, the orthodox will always have this strong argument to throw in the teeth of the heterodox, namely, that those who have exercised this said right of private judgement on the most extended scale, have differed the most widely from each other ; and that too in essential points of doctrine. I shall just take a few examples from sectarian writers of the age of Locke, or thereabouts, in order to exhibit this discrepancy of opinion in its proper light, and to compare it with the disunion of heart and of mind that it occasioned. Locke, as has been said, using the best of his judgement, became a sort of mixture of the Arian and the Quaker ; he evidently disbelieved the Trinity, the Atonement (at least in the usual sense of that word), the Immaculate Conception, and the. divine right of ecclesiastical polity. Milton, another expounder of Scripture after the same method, has also denied the scriptural authority for the Trinity, but has added to his creed, the novel doctrine that the keeping of a Sabbath Day or Sunday was not an institution of Christianity, nor authorized by the Testament, nor does he consider it as binding on Christians to keep one day in seven holy. He, moreover, allows of polygamy, and defends on Christian principles various other innovations of a dangerous nature. Hence we infer his private judgement had a different sort of warp from that of Locke.

Newton, our great astronomer, who also wrote on religious subjects, and made abundant use of his private judgement ill spiritual things, is recorded by his biographers as being a

| See Cyclopaedia, article Newton.

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Unitarian, and yet believing in several of the most important predictions of the prophets who foretold and typified the advent of the Messiah. Clarke, who wrote on the Attributes, and was a man of considerable judgement, appears to have been a Trinitarian, but to have dissented, nevertheless, from some other important doctrines of the orthodox Church. Lord Shaftesbury was a Protestant, but of what particular persuasion does not appear.

Lord Bacon was as far from orthodox as a man could be, but he likewise has concealed his particular belief, and whether he was a Christian or a Deist cannot now be very clearly ascertained ; as he lived in times when the expression of any opinions but those received and adopted at Court was very dangerous ; and he himself was a courtier and a sycophant, in spite of all his vaunted philosophy.

These were all philosophical writers who advocated the right of private judgement ; and if to them we add the professed theological defenders of the same cause, we shall find as much discordancy. Calvin was a Predestinarian, a Trinitarian, and a believer in the Miraculous Conception, &c. Luther, an Armenian, who professed belief in consubstantiation ; Price was an Arian, and Priestley a Socinian. I shall not swell the catalogue, as almost every sectarian writter has professed something peculiar, whereby he has been distinguished, while the orthodox members of the Mother Church, including all tie early Martyrs, the Saints, and Christian Bishops, and thousand of eminently learned and pious men of every profession, and living in every age of Christianity, have been united in opinion respecting the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Trinity, the Atonement, and in short all the ether leading dogmas of the Church. Such men have composed all the great Councils of Trent, of Nice, of Lateran, &c. ; and have conferred on, agreed on, and expounded doctrines which have

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been admitted by nine tenths of the Christian world in every century since the coming of our Lord to the present day, as the necessary groundwork of human salvation. Hence I infer that the particular opinions of Mr. Locke and other philosophical writers are of very little moment, and, when considered in relation to the contradictions of the contemporary writers alluded to above, constitute no valid argument, either in favour of Arianism or of any other doctrine whatever : while the collision of contradictory opinions, which I have glanced at herein, is calculated only to confirm the notion entertained by all churchmen, Prctestant as well gs Catholic, that there must be some authorized exposition of Scripture, in order to keep the members of the Christian Church connected together in harmony of sentiment, and to bind them in the bond of peace.

Among learned and pious men the Trinitarians are to the Arians and Socinians at least as three handled to one. And though some great philosophical writers have fallen into the heretical errors of Arms, Sccinus, and Beza, and more still have become Deists, while a few, it is to be feareel, have gone on even to Atheism ; it is nevertheless a consolation to the orthodox to reflect, that all these taken together bear no manner of proportion, that is, speaking of men born Christians, to those who have believed in the Trinity, aud all the other doctrines usually connected therewith.

Again, if we examine into the talents and virtues of the contending parties respectively, we shall find that the orthodox will bear away the palm. What, for example, are the philosophy and ethics of Locke, Clarke, Bacon, and Price, combined, when compared with the erudition and power of mind possessed by St. Austin alone ? What is the learning and theology of Mosheim or of Priestley compared with that of St. Jerom, St. Epiphanius, or St. Bernard ? AY hat are the

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humane and benevolent exertions of Uaaway, of Penn, or of Howard, laudable as they may have been, when compared with the charity of St. Ignatius of Loyola, of St. Francis Xavier, or of Fenelon ?

I merely select these few facts to counteract the tendency of many writers, in their lives of our English philosophers, to depreciate old and long cherished, and I may say at least useful, opinions. Had such subjects not been broached before, I would never have been the first to introduce them here : but since it has become the fashion to publish men's opinions in their posthumous works, the evil arising therefrom, ought to be counteracted, in as much as it is possible to do it, by a just statement of collateral facts, and by arguments fairly deduced from them.

The Arian opinions of Mr. Locke, imperfectly expressed as they were, have been vaunted forth as if they constituted arguments, by many persons who, although actuated by the most honest and best intentions to do good and promote truth, have in my opinion served nevertheless to lead the rising generation into error. It is on this ground alone, that I would ever have consented to invade the sacred right of every individual to say, or to write, what he pleased, in his private correspondence with his friends, without incurring the risque of having his idle thoughts, and the careless expressions of the passing moment, overhauled and criticized by the public, and handed down to posterity as records of the particular manner in which he had participated in the numerous failings and errors of judgment which are the common lot of human nature.

I shall here close the observations which I have to offer on the religious opinions of Locke, witli observing what is of more consequence, namely, that his excellent heart and good sense m ordinary matters, amply compensate for the errors of

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his pen ; and that in every record of his life we find goodnature, humility, and the love of truth, however defective the method he adopted for its attainment.*

I shall now consider his metaphysical philosophy compared with that of others.