Locke’s religious conception of morality played a primary role in shaping his views on
toleration and salvation. In A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Locke excluded from
toleration atheists, whom he considered inherently immoral, and Roman Catholics, whose
morals he judged harmful to society. In The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), he
turned to Christian revelation in search of the foundations of morality. His moralist
soteriology denied the possibility of salvation to those who, like antinomians and deists,
rejected Christ’s moral and salvific message. To Locke, antinomians denied any importance
to good works, while deists relied on natural reason alone, thus neglecting the limits of
unassisted reason and the weakness of human nature. Nevertheless, Locke’s hostility to
antinomianism and deism did not lead him to invoke the civil power against antinomians
and deists, whom he judged still able to understand, albeit partially and imperfectly, the
divine law and, thus, to behave morally.
