The work may be considered a response to the political position as it existed in England at the clock of the exclusion controversy—the consider over whether a law could be passed to forbid ( bar ) the sequence of James, the Roman Catholic buddy of King Charles II ( reigned 1660–85 ), to the English throne—though its message was of much more survive meaning. Locke strongly supported exclusion. In the precede to the bring, composed at a subsequently date, he makes clear that the arguments of the two treatises are continuous and that the whole constitutes a justification of the Glorious Revolution, which deposed James ( who reigned, as James II, from 1685 to 1688 ) and brought the Protestant William III and Mary II to the throne .
John Locke John Locke, coloured stipple engraving by James Godby after G.B. Cipriani .Wellcome Library, London (no. V0003673)
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John Locke : Two Treatises of Government
When Shaftesbury failed to reconcile the interests of the king and Parliament, he was dismissed ; in 1681 he was arrested, tried, and last …
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It should be noted that Locke ’ s political doctrine was guided by his deeply held religious commitments. Throughout his life he accepted the universe of a creating God and the impression that all humans are God ’ s servants in virtue of that relationship. God created humans for a certain purpose, namely to live a life sentence according to his laws and frankincense to inherit ageless redemption ; most importantly for Locke ’ s philosophy, God gave humans just those cerebral and other abilities necessary to achieve this end. Thus, humans, using the capacity of reason, are able to discover that God exists, to identify God ’ s laws and the duties they entail, and to acquire sufficient cognition to perform their duties and thereby to lead happy and successful lives. They can come to recognize that some actions, such as failing to care for one ’ mho offspring or to keep one ’ second contracts, are morally condemnable and contrary to natural law, which is identical to the law of God. early specific moral laws can be discovered or known alone through disclosure. The basically Protestant Christian framework of Locke ’ s philosophy entail that his position toward Roman Catholicism would constantly be hostile. He rejected the call of papal infallibility ( how could it always be proved ? ), and he feared the political dimensions of Catholicism as a terror to English autonomy, specially after King Louis XIV of France in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted religious liberty to the Protestant Huguenots.
