Original Letters of Locke Author:John Locke Subtitle: Algernon Sidney; and Anthony, Lord Shaftsbury. With an Analytical Sketch of the Writings and Opinions of Locke and Other Metaphysicians, by T. Forster General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1830 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or mi... more »ssing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: I mention this, merely because I have often heard Mr. Locke's heterodox opinions, both in matters of moral philosophy and of religion, quoted by superficial persons in opposition to older and better established dogmas. This is the abuse, and not the use of authority. Any talented individual, without much vanity, might say, "Why is not my opinion on speculative questions as good as Locke's or Milton's, or Des Cartes, or fifty more such, considering that they all differed from each other?" But it would be arrogance in any man to place his private judgment in competition to that of a body of learned men, all agreeing together. Such, for example, as the great Councils of Trent, of N ice, or of Lateran ! To return from this digression, to Platouism, I say that though to a superficial mind, who confounds religion with its externals, there may seem to be no great similitude between Christianity and the Platonic Philosophy ; yet to a contemplative mind, who regards God, as some of our learned authors have expressed it, in the light of a boundless ocean of creative intelligence, from whence all creatures come as from their source, and to whom they all return; who considers personal organization as a contrivance for dividing off minds from the great parent mind, and giving to each a separate individual existence, and placing them in a certain relation to the external world, and to other beings similar to themselves, during a limited term of life, wherei...« less