American Academe has a really bad case of truth decay

 

 

 

 

 They think, that whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it, and truth too were liable to mould and rottenness.

 

-- John Locke

 

 

 

 

The perplexed losers of politics

 One or two rules, on which their conclusions depend, in most men have governed all their thoughts; take these from them and they are at a loss, and their understanding is perfectly at a non-plus.

-- John Locke

Idle hands are the devil's workshop

 

Children generally hate to be idle;

all the care then is,

that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.

 

-- John Locke

 

 

 

Youth employment in the United States peaked at almost 5% of population in 1978

Abraham Lincoln's ancient faith was human equality, his touchstone for it the Declaration of Independence more than the Bible

 

This is the point of view pioneered by Harry Jaffa in a nutshell, a Jew who saw Lincoln as a restorer of the principles of the Declaration, which go back to Aristotle, starting from John Locke.

Not mentioned by the Christians here:

And yet Lincoln emphasized the Declaration of Independence far more than the Bible in building his case against human bondage. He described the assertion that “all men are created equal” as his “ancient faith.” He argued pointedly that the immorality of slavery could be proved “without reference to revelation.” In sum, without penetrating Lincoln’s heart, it’s hard to know whether he viewed the Bible as morally authoritative, as Leidner claims, or selectively cited it when it corroborated what he already believed.     

The many are trusting, lazy-minded followers

 Most take things upon trust, and misemploy their assent by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates of others.

-- John Locke

Locke against the right of primogeniture

 In scripture there is no such thing as an heir that was, by right of nature, to inherit all, exclusive of his brethren.

-- John Locke

Labour tempereth greed

 As a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of.

-- John Locke

On the priority of philology

 The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes, which have so laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing more than to the ill use of words.

-- John Locke

Punishment must reach the mind and bend the will

 

 

If punishment reaches not the mind, and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

-- John Locke

They are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame

 

 

 

 Had the upper part, to the middle, been of human shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it?

-- John Locke

John Locke, no New Testament scholar, correctly understood 350 years ago that St. Paul's religion was entirely a matter of private interpretation

Saint Paul was miraculously called to the ministry of the gospel, and had the whole doctrine of the gospel from God by immediate revelation; and was appointed the apostle of the Gentiles for propagating it in the heathen world.

-- John Locke

That he accepted this enthusiasm as a miracle is beside the point, making him but a child of his time and therefore not the radical he is sometimes made out to be.

There's no rush, there will be plenty of time for unity . . . in death

All things past are equally and perfectly at rest:

and to this way of consideration of them are all one,

whether they were before the world, or yesterday.

-- John Locke

They say there's safety in numbers, but that's about it

 

I do not remember where ever God delivered his oracles by the multitude, or nature truth by the herd.

-- John Locke

An infinite number is absurd

∞

How clear soever this idea of the infinity of number be, there is nothing more evident than the absurdity of the actual idea of an infinite number.

-- John Locke

Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited

 

 

 

 

The Caribbees were wont to geld their children,

on purpose to fat and eat them.

-- John Locke

Lockean liberalism is in the final analysis a creature of Christianity as universal but benign religion, without which it stands to reason it will not survive

The wonder is that Locke seemed blissfully unaware, or unconcerned, that Islam was not benign and was therefore incompatible with political liberalism because it was a political religion which spread by the sword, not by the dictates of conscience.

The Need for a Revival of Lockean Liberalism:

A manuscript titled “Reasons for Tolerating Papists Equally with Others,” written in Locke’s hand in 1667 or 1668, has just been published for the first time, in The Historical Journal of Cambridge University Press. The document challenges the conventional view that Locke shared the anti-Catholicism of his fellow Protestants. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the radical quality of his political liberalism, which so influenced the First Amendment and the American Founding. “If all subjects should be equally countenanced, & imployed by the Prince,” he wrote, “the Papist[s] have an equall title.” ...

In his first major treatise supporting religious liberty, An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667), Locke constructs an argument, a defense of the rights of conscience, that he will build upon for the rest of his life. He argues that magistrates have no right interfering in religious beliefs that pose no obvious threat to the social order: “In speculations & religious worship every man hath a perfect uncontrolled liberty, which he may freely use without or contrary to the magistrate’s command.” The challenge of accommodating different religious traditions, including Roman Catholicism, is front and center. “If I observe the Friday with the Mahumetan, or the Saturday with the Jew, or the Sunday with the Christian, . . . whether I worship God in the various & pompous ceremonies of the papists, or in the plainer way of the Calvinists,” he wrote, “I see no thing in any of these, if they be done sincerely & out of conscience, that can of itself make me, either the worse subject to my prince, or worse neighbor to my fellow subject.” ...

What Locke found intolerable was not Catholic theology per se but rather the agents of political subversion operating under the guise of religious obedience. As he put it in the newly discovered manuscript: “It is not the difference of their opinion in religion, or of their ceremonys in worship; but their dangerous & factious tenets in reference to the state . . . that exclude them from the benefit of toleration.” On this point, Locke could be as tough on Protestants as he was on Catholics. ...

Political philosopher Greg Forster insightfully observes that Locke “towers over the history of liberalism precisely because virtually everything he wrote was directed at coping with the problem that gave birth to liberalism — religious violence and moral discord.” ...

America’s experiment in human liberty and equality is profoundly Lockean. It is also, in some important respects, deeply Christian. Locke believed that the gospel message of divine mercy — intended for all — implied political liberalism. The founder of Christianity, he wrote, “opened the kingdom of heaven to all equally, who believed in him, without any the least distinction of nation, blood, profession, or religion.”

It would be hard to conceive of a better doctrine on which to build a more just and humane society. A revival of Lockean liberalism would do much to tame the hatreds now afflicting the soul of the West.

Even mathematical computation has its limits for preserving sanity

When the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it uses the ideas and repetition of numbers, which are so many distinct ideas, kept best by number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself.

-- John Locke

The way of the many is the servile way

He that will know the truth must leave the beaten track, which none but servile minds trudge continually in.

-- John Locke

Look where my hand was, time isn't holding up, time isn't after us

As the mind itself is thought to take up no space, so its actions seem to require no time; but many of them seem to be crowded into an instant.

-- John Locke (1632-1704)

Locke on transubstantiation

 

 

How is a Romanist prepared easily to swallow, not only against all probability, but even the clear evidence of his senses, the doctrine of transubstantiation?

-- John Locke (1632-1704)