Subtitled On the Original of Idolatry Blount's writings caused controversy for their implicit questioning of the literalism of the Bible.

A work which embroiled Malebranche in controversy with Jacques Bossuet.

A comedy in which Fontenelle ridicules the views the ancients held about comets.

Bayle’s first published work, which, consisting of an investigation of the widespread fears aroused by the great comet, is an attack on intolerance, superstition, and current standards of philosophical and historical scholarship. It also included a discussion of the virtues of the atheist. A revised edition appeared in 1683 under the title, Pensées diverses sur la comète.

A survey of major European states that was expanded in 1684. It proved to be an influential work in the eighteenth century and was translated into many European languages.

Blount espoused a form of deism that drew upon the work of Spinoza and Hobbes.

An expanded edition appeared in 1685.

The second part of this work appeared in 1684. Dialogues, based on those of Lucian, between Socrates and Montaigne, Seneca and Scarron, amongst others, which helped to popularize new philosophical ideas. Voltaire called Fontenelle the most universal mind produced by the age of Louis XIV.

Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion was translated into English, Dutch, German and Italian.

A monthly journal Bayle published between 1684-8, which established him as one of Europe’s leading freethinkers.

Scientific journal founded by Leibniz, in which he published his independent discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, and which Newton had discovered earlier.

A plea for religious tolerance in the form of an answer to Catholic apologists who had sought to justify the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by quoting Jesus's words in St Luke, chapter XIV.

Reason “being the first Revelation of God, is first to be believed, not depending on doubtful Fact without us, but full of its own Light shining always in us”.

A best-selling and widely translated work consisting of dialogues on astronomy between a man of science and an intelligent but uneducated marquise.  The dialogues reveal  Fontenelle’s Cartesianism and include speculations on life on other planets.  They were more influential than any other work in securing popular acceptance of the Copernican system.

In setting out to discredit the supernatural origin of oracles, Fontenelle drew upon the Dutch physician Anton van Dale's Latin treatise De Oraculis Ethnicorum (1683).

The Relation curieuse appeared in Pierre Bayle's journal, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in January 1686

A critique of the work of Nicolas de Malebranche.

Leibniz completed writing the Discours in 1686

Published in 2 volumes, a translation of Limborch's Theologia Christiana ad praxin pietatis ac promotionem pacis christian nice directa

A work that drew comparisons with Locke's theories on education.

An abridgement  (“abrége”) in French and published in December in Bibliothèqueuniverselle et historique, a periodical founded by Jean Le Clerc in 1686 for scholars and men of letters.  Le Clerc was a former Calvinist divine, now liberal, and a notable publicist, whom Locke met in Amsterdam.  Locke sent copies of the extract to English friends.  He also published in the periodical an account of his method for indexing commonplace books and abstracts of several new books.

Newton began writing Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in the autumn or winter of 1684. It was published in the summer of 1687. At the time the Royal Society was in financial difficulties and the cost of publication was borne by Edmund Halley.

A response to Louis XIV dismissal of the Edict of Nantes. Pufendorf argued for a strict separation of state and religion.

A pamphlet in which Collier lends his support to James II and responds to Burnet's Enquiry into the Present State of Affairs. The pamphlet lead to a short period of imprisonment in Newgate; released without trial he was again imprisoned in November 1692 for alleged correspondence with James. He refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court and was released with ten days.

Includes the ‘Digression sur les anciens et les modernes’, in which Fontenelle places himself clearly in the camp of the moderns, even to the extent of claiming that many of Descartes ideas, though not his method, have been superseded.

A radical defence of the moderns, which shocked many of Perrault’s contemporaries.

A work in which Thomasius attempted to complete Pufendorfs project of separating natural law from theology

Critic of Cromwell's policies regarding the Spanish War, the alliance with France, relations with the Dutch, etc.

Written in 1685 and published anonymously at Gouda, by Locke’s friends abroad.  A translation of the original Latin version, A Letter Concerning Toleration made by William Popple, was published in September in London. Further editions appeared in 1690, 1692 and a fourth was published posthumously.

Locke wrote the Letter for Philippus van Limborch, the head of the Remonstrant Church in Amsterdam, a distinguished theologian and ardent believer in toleration; he became one of Locke’s closet friends. Locke argued that churches are voluntary societies and that the state has no right to interfere with them except when they break secular laws, (e.g., sacrifice is punishable as murder.) Although Locke could not ignore England at the time, the Letter was written not so much to influence English policy as to defend Protestantism, which was threatened not only in England, where James II was using toleration to established the ascendency of the Roman Catholic Church, but also in France, where Louis XIV had subjected the Protestants to the dragonnades and then deprived them of all their confessional rights by revoking the edict of Nantes, and in Holland, where the Calvinist clergy, so far as the government would permit, ruthlessly attacked dissidents, especially Unitarians.

Licensed for printing issued on the 23 August, published anonymously in October, with all copies dated 1690. A detailed refutation of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, a vindication of the divine right of kings published in 1680, but written about 40 years earlier.

The Essay was published in December, with all copies dated 1690, at the ‘George’, in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan’s Church. Locke had worked on it for sixteen years, and for the copyright he was paid thirty pounds. Locke prepared new editions of the Essay throughout his life, answered many criticisms and supervised a French translation by P. Coste, published in 1700 and which ran through 9 editions by 1760. In England it appeared in 28 or more editions by 1838. A French translation appeared in 1700 but sales were slow, unsold copies were still available twenty-five years later. Interest in Locke was aroused on the Continent with the publication of Voltaire's Lettres anglaises in 1733.