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and is dedicated by the father to his two daughters. The
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Catechism rises above the common run of its species in that it is really a dialogue, in which the rôles are at times reversed, and the catechumen is permitted to think and speak for himself. The exposition is entirely unevangelical. Right religion is declared to consist in right conduct; and while the actuality of the Christian record is maintained on argued grounds, on the lines of Grotius and Parker, the doctrine of salvation by faith is strictly excluded, future happiness being posited as the reward of good life, not of faith. There is no negation, the author's object being avowedly peace and conciliation; but the Epistle Dedicatory declares that religious reasoners have hitherto
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We have here in effect the position taken up by Toland ten years later; and, in germ, the principle which developed deism, albeit in connection with an affirmation of the truth of the Christian records. Of the central Christian doctrine there is no acceptance, though there is laudation of Jesus; and reprints after 1695 bore the motto, from Locke: [474]
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As the foundation of virtue, there ought very earnestly to be imprinted on the mind of a young man a true notion of God, as of the independent supreme Being, Author, and Maker of all things: And, consequent to this, instil into him a love and reverence of this supreme Being.
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while
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[475] This compromise appears to be borrowed from Spinoza, who had put it with similar vagueness in his great Tractatus, [476] of which pre-eminent work Locke cannot have been ignorant, though he protested himself little read in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza,