Letters to the Bishop of Worcester

Locke's public defence of his philosophy against a bishop who thought it endangered the Trinity.

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1697(aged 65)
Original language: English

Overview

John Toland, a young Irish writer, published Christianity not Mysterious in 1696 and argued in it that the Christian religion contains nothing above reason. His account of knowledge came from Locke's Essay. Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester since 1689, was writing a defence of the Trinity that autumn, and he turned part of it against Locke as well as Toland. Locke had said that we have only a confused idea of substance, the underlying something that holds a thing's qualities together. The doctrine of the Trinity speaks of three persons in one substance, and Stillingfleet charged that a philosophy unable to say what substance is leaves the doctrine with nothing to stand on. Locke answered in January 1697 with a public letter, the bishop replied in May, and by 1699 each man had printed three pieces. Locke denies any tie to Toland and insists that he never made clear ideas the foundation of faith. He declines every invitation to state his own view of the Trinity, on the ground that the Essay is a book of philosophy and says nothing against any article of belief. Along the way he defends two of its most disputed passages: the suggestion that God could, for all we know, give matter the power to think, and the claim that Scripture says the dead are raised without saying that they rise in the same bodies. Stillingfleet died on 27 March 1699, and the exchange ended there. Locke conceded one thing in practice. The fourth edition of the Essay, in 1700, quietly reworded passages on clear and distinct ideas that the bishop had picked out.

Key concepts

What is the “way of ideas”?

It is the bishop’s name for the method of Locke’s Essay: testing every claim to knowledge by asking what ideas it is made of and where they came from. Stillingfleet called it new and dangerous. Locke answers that it is only a description of what all thinking consists in, since nobody can reason about anything without having some idea of it in mind.

What are “clear and distinct ideas” in this dispute?

A clear and distinct idea is one grasped fully and not confused with any other. The followers of Descartes made such ideas the test of certainty, and the bishop assumed Locke did too. Locke denies it: certainty lies in perceiving that two ideas agree or disagree, and that can happen when one of them is partly obscure. We are certain something supports qualities without a clear idea of what it is.

What does Locke mean by “substratum”?

A substratum is the something we suppose to lie under a thing’s qualities and hold them together. We see the red, round, sweet cherry and cannot imagine those qualities floating free, so we suppose a support for them and call it substance. Locke tells the bishop that this supposition is reasonable and that he never rejected it. He only observed that we know the support by what it does.

Why do “nature” and “person” matter in the controversy?

They are the two terms in which the Trinity is stated: one divine nature, three persons. The bishop argued that Locke’s philosophy gives no clear idea of either and so undermines the doctrine. Locke examines the bishop’s own definitions and reports that they leave him no wiser. His conclusion is that the words take their sense from common use, and that believing a revealed doctrine does not wait on defining them.

What does “superadding” a power to matter mean?

To superadd is to give a thing a power that does not follow from what it is. Matter, as we conceive it, is extended and solid, and nothing in that explains thought. Locke argues that nothing in it explains gravity either, yet bodies attract one another. So God can evidently add to matter powers beyond our idea of it, and thinking may be one of them.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Certainty, Ideas and the Grounds of Faith

Does a philosophy that places certainty in the comparison of ideas leave the mysteries of faith without support? Stillingfleet says it does, and Locke answers that faith never stood on that kind of support.

Stillingfleet’s charge is that the “new way of ideas” had been turned against the Trinity and that its author must answer for it. Locke replies on three fronts. He never said certainty requires clear and distinct ideas; it requires only perceiving that ideas agree or disagree, however obscure some of them remain. He is not answerable for conclusions another writer drew from his book. And knowledge and faith have separate grounds: an article of religion is believed because God has revealed it, and a believer needs no philosophical account of substance or person to do so. Faith made certain would stop being faith and become knowledge.

certainty
ideas
knowledge
faith
faith and reason
revelation
skepticism
religious controversy
epistemology
argumentation

Enter a dialogue

Substance, Thinking Matter and the Risen Body

How much do we know about what a soul or a body is? Locke defends the passages the bishop found most dangerous, and each time his answer is that revelation promises more than philosophy can explain.

On substance, Locke insists he never denied that something supports a thing’s qualities; he said only that our idea of it is obscure, and the bishop’s own account is no clearer. On the soul, he had written that God could, for all we know, give suitably arranged matter the power to think. He defends this from Newton: matter attracts matter in a way nobody can conceive, so our conceptions set no limit on God. Immortality rests on God’s promise, whatever the soul is made of. On the resurrection, Scripture says the dead shall rise and does not say they rise with the particles they were buried in.

substance
matter
mind-body problem
resurrection
bodily identity
personal identity
metaphysics
theology

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 735
distinct concepts: 411
by passages held, corpus-wide: #90

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “certainty” and “ideas”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
certainty	ideas	103
certainty	epistemology	55
certainty	knowledge	54
ideas	knowledge	54
argumentation	certainty	44
epistemology	ideas	34
ideas	substance	34
argumentation	interpretation	33
argumentation	ideas	26
ideas	language	25
argumentation	epistemology	21
certainty	substance	17
knowledge	substance	15
certainty	interpretation	14
argumentation	language	13
epistemology	knowledge	13
ideas	interpretation	13
epistemology	substance	12
argumentation	substance	10
certainty	language	10
interpretation	language	8
knowledge	language	8
argumentation	knowledge	6
epistemology	interpretation	5
interpretation	knowledge	3
interpretation	substance	3
language	substance	3
epistemology	language	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1689 A Letter Concerning Toleration (Epistola de Tolerantia)
The one statement of his case for religious freedom that Locke made briefly and to a friend. Everything else he printed on the subject defends this text against one of its critics, Jonas Proast.
EN
1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The book Locke's reputation rests on, and the one major work of 1689 that he signed. His quarrel with Bishop Stillingfleet, the unfinished Conduct of the Understanding and the letters to William Molyneux all grow out of it.
EN
1689 Two Treatises of Government
Two parts of a longer manuscript whose middle was lost before printing, as Locke's preface says. The book is his political theory, and it shares a year and a purpose with A Letter Concerning Toleration: each sets a limit on what a ruler may do.
EN
1690 Further Letters Concerning Toleration
A sequel in three parts to A Letter Concerning Toleration: Locke's second and third letters and the fragment of a fourth, each a reply to the Oxford chaplain Jonas Proast. The third is where he tests his case hardest.
EN
1693 Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Written for the household of his friend Edward Clarke and enlarged by Locke through several editions. It is his book of practical advice on raising a child, and it applies the Essay's view that the mind is formed by what it meets.
EN
1695 The Reasonableness of Christianity
His main work on religion, and the opening of the study of Scripture that occupied his last years. He defended it twice against John Edwards, a Cambridge Calvinist, and kept his name off all three books while he lived.
EN
1696 Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade
Advice written for ministers and for Parliament during the currency crisis of the 1690s, and gathered under Locke's name in 1696. The account of money behind it is sketched in the chapter on property in the Two Treatises.
EN
1697 Letters to the Bishop of Worcester you are here EN
1706 Of the Conduct of the Understanding
An unfinished draft, printed from Locke's papers two years after his death. It is the practical companion to the Essay and overlaps with his advice on education.
EN
1706 Posthumous Works
From the volume of unpublished papers that Locke's executors issued in 1706: a critique of Malebranche from the 1690s and a short discourse on miracles from 1702. Both extend arguments begun in the Essay.
EN
1708 Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of His Friends
Letters to the Molyneux brothers of Dublin — Locke's side of the correspondence — taken from a volume his publishers issued in 1708. It is the closest view of him at work on the later editions of the Essay.
EN
1720 A Collection of Several Pieces
The Carolina constitution of 1669 predates the Two Treatises by ten years or more, and the two are often set against each other. Pierre Des Maizeaux published it in 1720 together with shorter pieces left out of the collected works.
EN

— or open another of their works