Though it was not till a much later period of his life that Locke published any works, his pen was at this time by no means idle. In 1661 he began a series of commonplace books, often containing long articles on the subjects which were occupying his thoughts at the time. It is, moreover, to the period immediately preceding or immediately following the Restoration, that Mr. Fox-Bourne attributes an unpublished and till recently unknown Essay, entitled "Reflections upon the Roman Commonwealth." Many of the remarks in this Essay already show what we should call liberal opinions in religion and politics, and anticipate views long afterwards propounded in the works on government and toleration. The religion instituted by Numa is idealized, as having insisted on only two articles of faith, the goodness of the gods, and the necessity of worshipping them, "in which worship the chief of all was to be innocent, good, and just." Thus it avoided "creating heresies and schisms," and "narrowing the bottom of religion by clogging it with creeds and catechisms and endless niceties about the essences, properties, and attributes of God." Of more interest, perhaps, is another unpublished treatise, written just after the Restoration, in which Locke asks, and answers in the affirmative, the following question: Whether the civil magistrate may lawfully impose and determine the use of indifferent things in reference to religious worship. This tract seems to have been intended as a remonstrance with those of the author's own party who questioned any right in the civil magistrate to interfere in religious matters, and who, therefore, were ready to reject with disdain the assurances of compromise and moderation contained in the king's declaration on ecclesiastical affairs, issued at the beginning of his reign. Locke at that time, like many other moderate men, seems to have entertained the most sanguine hopes of pacification and good government under the rule of the new monarch. "As for myself," he writes, "there is no one can have a greater respect and veneration for authority than I. I no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm, which has lasted almost hitherto, and therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm with the greatest joy and satisfaction." "I find that a general freedom is but a general bondage, that the popular asserters of public liberty are the greatest ingrossers of it too, and not unfitly called its keepers." This reaction, however, against the past, and these sanguine expectations of the future, can have lasted but a short time. The tendencies of the new government were soon apparent, and the pamphlet was never published. CHAPTER II. MEDICAL STUDIES.--PUBLIC EMPLOYMENTS.--CONNEXION WITH SHAFTESBURY.