and's famous work), which brought Locke into the most direct
collision with some of the orthodox of his day. The vehement opposition
which this little work aroused seems to have caused the author unfeigned
surprise.--'When it came out,' he writes, 'the buzz and flutter and
noise which it made, and the reports which were raised that it subverted
all morality and was designed against the Christian religion ... amazed
me; knowing the sincerity of those thoughts which persuaded me to
publish it, not without some hope of doing some service to decaying
piety and mistaken and slandered Christianity.[172] In another passage
he tells us expressly that it was written against Deism. 'I was
flattered to think my book might be of some use to the world; especially
to those who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all,
or that the revelation of Our Saviour required belief of such articles
for salvation which the settled notions and their way of reasoning in
some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon
these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most
assurance made by Deists not against Christianity, but against
Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, there needed no more to
show the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them
the doctrines of our Saviour as delivered in the Scriptures.'[173] The
truth of this is amply borne out by the contents of the book itself.

It is not, however, so much in direct statements of doctrine as in the
whole tenour and frame of his spirit, that Locke differs 'in toto' from
the Deists: for Locke's was essentially a pious, reverent soul. But it
may be urged that all this does not really touch the point at issue. The
question is, not what were Locke's personal opinions on religious
matters, but what were the logical deductions from his philosophical
system. It is in his philosophy, not in his theology, that Locke's
reputation consists. Was then the Deistical line of argument derived
from his philosophical system? and if so, was it fairly derived? The
first question must be answered decidedly in the affirmative, the second
not so decidedly in the negative.

That Locke would have recoiled with horror from the conclusions which
the Deists drew from his premisses, and still more from the tone in
which those conclusions were expressed, can scarcely be doubted.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that they _were_ so drawn. That To