out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never
had the curiosity to see whether other copies of the edition have been
served in the same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them
recently in _Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon_, (no date; bad
plan; about 1863, I suppose). No omissions were made, so far as I find.

I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his _sparkle_
nor his idiom. I stated my doubts even before I heard that Mr. Spedding,
one of Bacon's editors, was of the same mind. (_Athenaeum_, July 16, 1864).
I was little moved by the wide consent of orthodox men: for I knew how
Bacon, Milton, Newton, Locke, etc., were always claimed as orthodox until
almost the present day. Of this there is a remarkable instance.

LOCKE AND SOCINIANISM.

Among the books which in my younger day were in some orthodox publication
lists--I think in the list of the Christian Knowledge Society, but I am not
sure--was Locke's [301] "Reasonableness of Christianity." It seems to have
come down from the eighteenth century, when the battle was belief in Christ
against unbelief, _simpliciter_, as the {143} logicians say. Now, if ever
there was a Socinian[302] book in the world, it is this work of Locke.
"These two," says Locke, "faith and repentance, i.e., believing Jesus to be
the Messiah, and a good life, are the indispensable conditions of the new
covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life." All
the book is amplification of this doctrine. Locke, in this and many other
things, followed Hobbes, whose doctrine, in the Leviathan, is _fidem,
quanta ad salutem necessaria est, contineri in hoc articulo, Jesus est
Christus_.[303] For this Hobbes was called an atheist, which {144} many
still believe him to have been: some of his contemporaries called him,
rightly, a Socinian. Locke was known for a Socinian as soon as his work
appeared: Dr. John Edwards,[304] his assailant, says he is "Socinianized
all over." Locke, in his reply, says "there is not one word of Socinianism
in it:" and he was right: the positive Socinian doctrine has _not one word
of Socinianism in it_; Socinianism consists in omissions. Locke and Hobbes
did not dare _deny_ the Trinity: for such a thing Hobbes might have been
roasted, and Locke might have been strangled. Accordingly, the well-known
way of teaching Unitarian doctrine was the collection of the asserted
essentials of Christianity, without