Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/12

vi them in some of their expressions, in their quotations from scripture, and in the arrangement of our Saviour's discourses." Under each of these heads this ingenious writer has produced remarkable instances of such resemblance, but too particular and minute to be here recited: on the last he adds, that whoever reads the Treatise on the Reasonableness of Christianity with the least attention, will perceive that Mr. Locke has every where observed an exact chronological order in the arrangement of his texts, which arrangement perfectly corresponds with that of the History. It would have been very difficult to throw a multitude of citations from the four Evangelists into such a chronological series without the assistance of some Harmony, but Mr, Locke was too cautious a reasoner to depend upon another man's hypothesis; I am therefore persuaded that he compiled this Harmony, the History of Christ, for his own immediate use, as the basis of his Reasonableness of Christianity. And though the original plan of this history may have been taken from Garthwaite's Evangelical Harmony, 4to. 1633, as Dr. Doddridge supposes, yet the whole narrative and particular arrangement of facts is so very different, that Mr. Locke's History in 1705 may properly be termed a new work,

3. Select Moral Books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, paraphrased, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, in one vol. 12mo. 1706. This useful work is given by tradition to Mr. Locke, and his name often written before it accordingly. It was printed for his old booksellers A. and J. Churchill, and is thought by some good judges to bear evident marks of authenticity: of which I shall only observe farther, that by the method there taken of paraphrasing these waiters in one close, continued discourse, where the substance is laid together and properly digested, a much better connexion appears to be preserved, and the author's sense more clearly