¹ Mahoney, Daniel J., The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2010), xiii, 36Google Scholar.

² Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (1909) (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 190Google Scholar.

³ This is the position of Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Waldron doubts that “one can even make sense of a position like Locke's … [on] basic equality … apart from the specifically biblical and Christian teaching that he associated with it.” Later in the chapter I will show that Waldron is partly correct, although not because of Locke's Christian commitments.

⁴ Simmons, A. John, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3Google Scholar, speaks of “the theory of rights on which his philosophy rests.”

⁵ Zuckert, Michael P., Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 285–86Google Scholar, argues that the foundation of Locke's doctrine of rights, which is more fundamental than his doctrine of natural law, lies in the right of self-ownership. I will show that the law of nature is more fundamental than the self-ownership doctrine, although I agree with Zuckert that its origin is not “transcendent.”

⁶ Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. 198–209Google Scholar.

⁷ Myers, Peter C., Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998)Google Scholar, calls this the “conventionalist” position. See Miller, Eugene, “Locke on the Meaning of Political Language: The Teaching of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” Political Science Reviewer 9 (Fall 1979): 163–93Google Scholar; cf. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 250–51Google Scholar.

⁸ Locke, John, The Reasonableness of Christianity, As Delivered in the Scriptures (1695), ed. Higgins-Biddle, John C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), chap. 14, 266Google Scholar (pagination of the first edition, printed in the margin). The same pagination is found in the margin of the reprint of Higgins-Biddle, 's Reasonableness in Locke, John, Writings on Religion, ed. Nuovo, Victor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁹ Locke, , “The Preface: An Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles by Consulting St. Paul Himself,” in A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1707), ed. Wainwright, Arthur W. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1:107, 111Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 187Google Scholar. Strauss, Leoagrees in “Locke's Doctrine of Natural Law, chap. 8 ofWhat Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government (1690), 2d ed., ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. In my quotations from Locke, I have modernized capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and italics. Books I and II of the Two Treatises are commonly called (as I will call them) the First Treatise and Second Treatise, although those are not Locke's titles.

¹² Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 2, sec. 4.

¹³ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 6.

¹⁴ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 4.

¹⁵ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 67.

¹⁶ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sections 6 and 54.

¹⁷ Locke, , Of the Conduct of the Understanding (1706), in Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Grant, Ruth W. and Tarcov, Nathan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), sec. 2Google Scholar. Conduct was originally intended to be the longest chapter in an expanded edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke never found time to complete it. He left instructions for his literary executor that Conduct was to be dealt with “as you think fit.” It was published shortly after his death. See Woolhouse, Roger, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 386, 458Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Locke, , An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (4th ed., 1700), ed. Nidditch, Peter H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), bk. 4, chap. 20, sec. 5Google Scholar. Also sec. 3: “[A] great part of mankind are, by the natural and unalterable state of things in this world, and the constitution of human affairs, unavoidably given over to invincible ignorance” of the most important matters of their lives.

¹⁹ Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 72, acknowledges that Locke discerns “enormous differences in reason and rational ability among those we are accustomed to call human.” This leads Waldron to the conclusion that Locke's human beings do not clearly constitute a single species, and that there can therefore be no fundamental human equality, unless God is brought into the argument to guarantee the oneness of humanity (81 and elsewhere). Beginning with this same observation (“enormous differences in … rational ability”), my argument goes in a different direction.

²⁰ Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, sec. 6. A “natural,” in Locke's sense, is an idiot, someone grossly deficient in the usual intellectual powers.

²¹ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sections 54–55, 59, 60, 63.

²² Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 59.

²³ Ibid., chap. 2, sections 11, 12.

²⁴ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 124, my emphasis.

²⁵ Quite a few scholars have noted that Locke's law of nature is unknown in the rude state of nature, e.g., Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 274: “in the state of nature … human beings are ‘ignorant’ of the law of nature (II 124).” Fewer scholars have noticed the shockingly anti-egalitarian implications of that ignorance in light of the argument in chapter 6 for “equality … in respect of jurisdiction or dominion.”

²⁶ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 230.

²⁷ Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755), Preface, in The First and Second Discourses, ed. Masters, Roger D. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1964), 94Google Scholar.

²⁸ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 55.

²⁹ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 60.

³⁰ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 57.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Ibid., chap. 5, sec. 34.

³³ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 60.

³⁴ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 233.

³⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 14, sec. 166.

³⁶ Ibid., chap. 14, sec. 159.

³⁷ Ibid., chap. 11, sec. 136.

³⁸ Ibid., chap. 14, sec. 164.

³⁹ Ibid., chap. 14, sec. 166.

⁴⁰ Ibid., chap. 3, sec. 16.

⁴¹ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 10.

⁴² Ibid., chap. 14, sec. 166.

⁴³ Again, the point is well known to scholars, e.g., Simmons, Lockean Theory, 17: “The law [of nature] binds us, we are told, because we are all God's ‘workmanship’, although no real explanation of that claim is offered.”

⁴⁴ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sections 52–54.

⁴⁵ Locke, Essay, bk. 4, chap. 10, sections 1, 4, and 5.

⁴⁶ Bluhm, William T., Wintfeld, Neil, and Teger, Stuart H., “Locke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?” Journal of Politics 42, no. 2 (1980): 414–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁷ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 2, sections 4, 6.

⁴⁸ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 56.

⁴⁹ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 6.

⁵⁰ Scholars sometimes neglect or underemphasize the passages in the Second Treatise where Locke speaks of positive duties to other men and of parents to children. For example, Forde, Steven, “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (April 2001): 401–2, 408CrossRefGoogle Scholar (“Locke's rights … entail duties on the part of others…. [T]hese are purely negative, duties to do no harm…. The Second Treatise appeals to very little beyond immediate self-interest.”) In his long discussion of Lockean natural law in Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, 187–288, Zuckert similarly focuses almost exclusively on Locke's doctrine of natural rights as opposed to the duty of everyone to preserve others and of parents to care for their children. If the objection is raised that Locke's duty to others is conditional—only “when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind” (Second Treatise, chap. 2, sec. 6)—one may respond that no major classical or medieval philosopher teaches, as a natural right or natural law duty, that one is obliged to sacrifice one's own life to preserve another's.

⁵¹ Locke's use of the technique of esoteric writing—concealing things from inattentive readers through the use of various literary devices such as the use of deliberately inadequate arguments, and indicating his real meaning “between the lines”—has been well documented by Strauss, Natural Right and History, 206–9; Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 137–38; Zuckert, Michael P., Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 82–106Google Scholar.

⁵² Mansfield, Harvey C., “On the Political Character of Property in Locke,” in Kontos, Alkis, ed., Powers, Possessions, and Freedom: Essays in Honor of C.B. Macpherson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 29Google Scholar.

⁵³ Locke, , A Letter to the Right Rev. Edward Lord Bishop of Worcester, in The Works of John Locke in Ten Volumes (1801) (Elibron Classics, 1991), 4: 53–54Google Scholar, my emphasis.

⁵⁴ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 3, sec. 16; Locke, , Some Thoughts Concerning Education (5th ed., 1705, but corrected on the basis of earlier editions), ed. , John W. and Yolton, Jean S. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), sec. 116Google Scholar, emphasis added.

⁵⁵ Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, “Epistle to the Reader,” 6–7.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 7, 9.

⁵⁷ Locke, Essay, bk. 4, chap. 20.

⁵⁸ Locke, Essay, “Epistle to the Reader,” 9.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 8.

⁶⁰ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 2, sec. 7, my emphasis.

⁶¹ Locke, Essay, bk. 3, chap. 10, sec. 34.

⁶² Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 86.

⁶³ Accordingly, Locke uses the phrase “God and nature” twice in the pages immediately following the passage quoted here (ibid., chap. 9, sections 90 and 93).

⁶⁴ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 86.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 88.

⁶⁷ Ibid., chap. 9, sections 88, 97

⁶⁸ Ibid., chap. 9, sections 86, 88, 92.

⁶⁹ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 90.

⁷⁰ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 91.

⁷¹ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 88.

⁷² Aristotle, , The Politics, trans. Lord, Carnes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), bk. 1, chap. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷³ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Bartlett, Robert C. and Collins, Susan D. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), bk. 9, chap. 7, 1168a7–9Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 97.

⁷⁵ Ibid., chap. 11, sec. 106.

⁷⁶ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 104.

⁷⁷ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 86.

⁷⁸ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 92, my emphasis.

⁷⁹ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 8, sec. 111; First Treatise, chap. 11, sec. 106; Second Treatise, chap. 3, sec. 16;

⁸⁰ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 57.

⁸¹ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 56.

⁸² Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 58, quoting Psalm 106:38.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 59.

⁸⁵ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 56.

⁸⁶ Ibid., chap. 6, sec. 58. This aspect of Locke's analysis of human nature is well analyzed by Myers, Our Only Star and Compass, chap. 4.

⁸⁷ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 90.

⁸⁸ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 58.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 97.

⁹¹ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 8, sec. 107.

⁹² Ibid., chap. 2, sections 4, 6, 7.

⁹³ Ibid., chap. 3, sec. 19.

⁹⁴ Ibid.

⁹⁵ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 123.

⁹⁶ Becker, Carl L., The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Knopf, 1948), 60–61Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ In ibid., 62–73, Becker argues that Locke is in substantial agreement with the “eighteenth century.”

⁹⁸ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 56.

⁹⁹ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 248–51. The mis-paraphrase is from Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 5, sec. 43.

¹⁰⁰ Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, chap. 8, and Strauss, , Liberalism: Ancient and Modern (New York: Free Press, 1968), chap. 2Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 251; What Is Political Philosophy?, 49. Strauss treats Locke and Hegel as if they are in agreement in Natural Right and History, 250–51: “labor is, in the words of Hegel, a negative attitude toward nature…. [F]reedom is negativity.”

¹⁰² Locke, , Epistola de Tolerantia (“Letter on Toleration”) (Gouda, Netherlands: Justum ab Hoeve, 1689), 73Google Scholar, my translation.

¹⁰³ Strauss presents the deliberately exaggerated teaching sketched in the last two paragraphs in What Is Political Philosophy? chap. 1, part III. It is no accident that this chapter of that book, because of its title, is one of the first things that Strauss's readers are likely to encounter. It was in my case.

¹⁰⁴ Manent, Pierre, Modern Liberty and Its Discontents, ed. Mahoney, Daniel J. and Seaton, Paul (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 105, 99Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 51. The entire First Treatise is a refutation of the doctrine that will should take the place of reason. See especially chap. 6, sec. 58 (“reason, his only star and compass”).

¹⁰⁶ Lawler, Peter Augustine, “Natural Law, Our Constitution, and Our Democracy,” in Pestritto, Ronald J. and West, Thomas G., ed., Modern America and the Legacy of the Founding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 213Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 59; Second Treatise, chap. 7, sec. 78.

¹⁰⁸ Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, sec. 6.

¹⁰⁹ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 92.

¹¹⁰ Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, chap. 14, p. 253.

¹¹¹ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 7, sec. 3.

¹¹² Franklin D. Roosevelt, Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, June 27, 1936, in Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu; repeated in State of the Union Message to Congress, January 11, 1944, ibid.

¹¹³ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 5, sec. 32, 35.

¹¹⁴ Locke, Essay, bk. 4, chap. 20, sec. 4. Compare the philosophic poet Virgil: God “willed that our way be hard,” but the harshness of nature had the beneficial effect of compelling us to undertake “pitiless hard labor,” leading to the invention of “the various arts one by one.” Georgics, bk. 1, lines 119–67, trans. Karl Maurer, in an email from the translator.

¹¹⁵ The Laws of Plato, trans. Pangle, Thomas L. (New York: Basic Books, 1980), bk. 3, 677a–678b, 679cGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Locke, Conduct of the Understanding, sec. 4.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., sec. 6.

¹¹⁸ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 5, sec. 42.

¹¹⁹ Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, 247–48: a writer sometimes puts something in the center of a list in order to indicate its importance. Locke's example is the Biblical letter of Paul to the Hebrews: “This description of faith (that we might not mistake what he means by that faith, without which we cannot please God, and which recommended the saints of old) St. Paul places in the middle of the list of those who were eminent for the faith.”

¹²⁰ Locke, , Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691), in Works of John Locke, 5: 41Google Scholar.

¹²¹ Strauss, to Karl Löwith, June 23, 1935, in Strauss and Löwith, “Correspondence Concerning Modernity,” Independent Journal of Philosophy vol. 5/6 (1988): 183Google Scholar.

¹²² Locke, First Treatise, chap. 5, sec. 47.

¹²³ Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince (1513), trans. de Alvarez, Leo Paul S., 2d ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1989), chap. 25, 146–47Google Scholar.

¹²⁴ Two such comedies are Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice.

¹²⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 57.

¹²⁶ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 6.

¹²⁷ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 92.

¹²⁸ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 36.

¹²⁹ Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 206, argues that the Essay's “emphasis on the pursuit of happiness” and not self-preservation is to be contrasted with the emphasis in the Two Treatises on “self-preservation and property” and corresponding de-emphasis on the pursuit of happiness. So far I agree. But Pangle draws a conclusion that the evidence does not support: that there is “a clear ascent from the former [Essay] to the latter [Two Treatises].” In the end, Pangle maintains, “preservation is the regulatory principle for happiness” in Locke's argument. My argument is the opposite: happiness is the regulatory principle for preservation, because happiness is the end of human life, and preservation is only part of the means.

¹³⁰ Locke, Essay, bk. 1, chap. 3, sec. 3.

¹³¹ Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 43.

¹³² Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 143.

¹³³ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 20, sec. 2.

¹³⁴ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 63.

¹³⁵ Ibid. In the rest of this section, I will put all references to Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, in the text, where I will provide only the section number.

¹³⁶ Locke, First Treatise, sec. 58.

¹³⁷ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, ch. 21, sec. 55.

¹³⁸ Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 21, sec. 51.

¹³⁹ Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 574 (2003)Google Scholar (majority opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy).

¹⁴⁰ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 55. The context of Locke's remark is the assumption, which he verbally denies in the passage in question, that there is no pleasure or pain in a life after death. My argument in the text does not depend on the existence or nonexistence of an afterlife, because Locke's contrast holds good either way.

¹⁴¹ Locke, Essay, “Epistle to the Reader,” 6.

¹⁴² Locke, Essay, “Epistle Dedicatory,” 3.

¹⁴³ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 43.

¹⁴⁴ Ibid.

¹⁴⁵ Machiavelli, , letter to Vettori, Dec. 10, 1513, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Gilbert, Allan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 2: 929Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ Locke, Reasonableness, chap. 14, 266.

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., chap. 14, 279–80.

¹⁴⁸ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 58.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid., sec. 70.

¹⁵⁰ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, chap. 5, 1095b14–1096a5.

¹⁵¹ Locke, Essay, “Epistle to the Reader,” 6.

¹⁵² Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 101–2, 87.

¹⁵³ Locke, Conduct, sec. 2.

¹⁵⁴ The Republic of Plato, trans Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic Books, 1968), bk. 6, 503c–dGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁵ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 151.

¹⁵⁶ Aristotle, Politics, bk. 1, chap. 2.

¹⁵⁷ Locke, Essay, bk. 4, chap. 12, sec. 11.

¹⁵⁸ Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 52.

¹⁵⁹ Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 21, sec. 53.

¹⁶⁰ Lawrence v. Texas, 574.

¹⁶¹ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 117.

¹⁶² Locke uses the expression “common good” in Second Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 131; the equivalent phrase “public good” appears more frequently, e.g., chap. 1, sec. 3; chap. 7, sec. 89.

¹⁶³ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 92.

¹⁶⁴ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 57.

¹⁶⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 4, sec. 23.

¹⁶⁶ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 116.

¹⁶⁷ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 9, sec. 86.

¹⁶⁸ Ibid., chap. 9, sec. 88.

¹⁶⁹ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 3, sec. 17.

¹⁷⁰ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, end of “Epistle Dedicatory” and sec. 96.

¹⁷¹ Ibid., sec. 135.

¹⁷² Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 9, chap. 4, 1166b25–29.

¹⁷³ Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 206, quoted in note 129 above.

¹⁷⁴ Locke, Essay, bk. 3, chap. 6, sections 30, 37.

¹⁷⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 57.

¹⁷⁶ Ibid., chap. 2, sec. 6.

¹⁷⁷ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 20, sec. 5.

¹⁷⁸ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 7, sections 77–81.

¹⁷⁹ Locke, First Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 59.

¹⁸⁰ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 116.

¹⁸¹ Locke, Epistola de Tolerantia (“Letter on Toleration”), 68–69, my translation.

¹⁸² Locke, First Treatise, sec. 58.

¹⁸³ Locke, Essay, bk. 4, chap. 20, sections 2, 5.

¹⁸⁴ Ibid., sec. 6.

¹⁸⁵ Ibid., sections 9, 11, 17.

¹⁸⁶ Ibid., sec. 18.

¹⁸⁷ Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, chap. 14, 265–66.

¹⁸⁸ Ibid., chap. 14, 270–71.

¹⁸⁹ Ibid., chap. 14, 276, 269; chap. 1, 2; chap. 14, 288, 279.

¹⁹⁰ Ibid., chap. 3, 18–19.

¹⁹¹ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 6, sec. 58.

¹⁹² Locke, Essay, bk. 1, chap. 3, sec. 6, my emphasis.

¹⁹³ I leave aside the question of whether there are significant conflicts between the commandments of Jesus in the New Testament and the law of nature. Locke's general procedure, following the example of Thomas Aquinas, is to write as if there is a complete agreement, while occasionally allowing the attentive reader to notice that this is not always the case. Locke indicates several such conflicts in Reasonableness, chap. 12, most obviously on 218–19. See Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 151–58. To the extent that there is a conflict, it seems that Christianity stands in need of being understood in light of reason.

¹⁹⁴ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 28, sec. 8.

¹⁹⁵ Ibid., sec. 12.

¹⁹⁶ Locke, Second Treatise, chap. 8, sec. 122; chap. 11, sections 136–37; chap. 11, sec. 138 (government cannot take “property,” i.e., life, liberty, or estate, without the consent of the people in person or through elected representatives: Locke implies that laws imprisoning or fining criminals—depriving them of “estate” or life—must receive this consent).

¹⁹⁷ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 28, sections 10, 12.

¹⁹⁸ Ibid., sec. 12.

¹⁹⁹ Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Preface.

²⁰⁰ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, “Epistle Dedicatory.”

²⁰¹ Locke, Essay, bk. 2, chap. 28, sec. 12.

²⁰² Locke, First Treatise, chap. 2, sec. 9.