Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/15

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Preface by the Editor.
ix

his hand in the library at Oates, where he spent the last and most agreeable part of his life in the company of lady Masham, and where his own conversation must have proved no less agreeable and instructing to that lady, since by means of it, as well as from an education under the eye of her father, Cudworth, she appears to have profited so much as to compose a very rational discourse, entitled. Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a virtuous and Christian Life, published 170-5, and frequently ascribed to Mr. Locke. [See particularly Boyer's Annals of Queen Anne, Vol. III. p. 262.] She was generally believed (as Le Clerc tells us) to be the author of another discourse on the Love of God, in answer to Mr. Norris; which has likewise been attributed to Mr. Locke, and has his name written before it in a copy now in the library of Sion College, but others give it to Dr. Whitby. Of the same excellent lady Mr. Locke gives the following character to Limborch: "Ejus [i. e. Historic Inquisitionis] lectionem sibi et utilissimam et jucundissimam fore spondet domina Cudwortha, quæ paternæ benignitatis hæres omnem de rebus religionis persecutionem maxime aversatur." Lett. June, 1691. "Hospes mea tyrannidi ecclesiasticæ inimicissima, sæpe mihi laudat ingenium et consilium tuum, laboremque huic operi tam opportune impensum, creditque frustra de religionis reformatione et Evangelii propagatione tantum undique strepitum moveri, dum tyrannis in ecclesiâ, vis in rebus religionis (uti passim mos est) aliis sub nominibus utcunque speciosis obtinet et laudatur." Id. Nov. 1691.

8. We cannot in this place forbear lamenting the suppression of some of Mr. Locke's treatises, which are in all probability not to be retrieved. His Right Method of searching after Truth, which Le Clerc mentions, is hardly to be met with; nor can a tract which we have good ground to believe that he wrote, in the Unitarian Controversy, be well distinguished at this distance of time; unless it prove to be the