Bury was a unitarian who was excommunicated and persecuted as a result of publishing The Naked Gospel.

Published anonymously in June. Both the Second and Third Letters were replies to the controversy aroused after publication in London of A Letter Concerning Toleration.

Temple upheld the superiority of the Ancients.

Descartes, according to Baillet, was "a paradigm of virtue, piety, heroism and genius". Baillet was an ascetic priest later published a book on the lives of the saints. His account of Descartes's life was published in two volumes in Paris.

Bekker was a Dutch theologian and Paster of Amsterdam between 1679 and 1692. He was accused of supporting Cartesianism and was deposed in 1692 from his Pastership. Following the publication of De betooverte Wereld which set out to condemn belief in witchcraft, the devil, and magical powers.

An Appendix to an edition of a Greek chronicle of uncertain date by one John of Antioch.

Art of Knowing Oneself was popular at the time and was translated into German, Italian, Dutch and English.

Bentley delivered the first series of Boyle lectures in 1692 and they were published as the Confutation of Atheism. Bentley was a follower of Newton and used the Principia in these lectures to demonstrate God's providential design for the universe.

A condemnation, which went further than that given by his friend Locke in his Letter of 1689, of all religious persecution as unchristian.

A work on theology influenced by the writings of Spinoza.

A study on the relative merits of ancient and modern art and science. Boileau, poet and critic, was the leading representative of neoclassicism in the eighteenth century.

Written after Locke had been consulted in Holland by his friend Edward Clarke about the education of his son. Clarke was then managing Locke’s English affairs and was a member of parliament between 1690 and 1710. The work was aimed originally at the the sons of the English country gentry, but it became more widely popular in both England and on the Continent, where it was translated into French in 1695, and is regarded as a classic of educational theory. For example, in the Preface to Émile Rousseau remarks that education has made no progress since Locke.

“I think, I may say, that, of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.” (para. 1)

Published anonymously as the work of “a Lover of Her Sex”, the Proposal called for the establishment of an Anglican sisterhood. Four editions of the work appeared by 1701. Astell has been called “the first English feminist”.  With the help of patrons, especially William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, Astell was able to live independently in London.  She believed in the equality of the sexes in spite of her conservative politics.  A wife relationship with her husband should be founded on a voluntary contract, but: “It may be any Man’s Business and Duty to keep Hogs; he was not Made for this, but if he hires himself out to such an Employment, he ought conscientiously to perform it”.  Astell was attacked in the Tatler under the name of Madonella.

Rousseau, in his Confessions, stated that he had used Entretiens sur les sciences as his “guide” and had been introduced to mathematics through Lamy's arithmetic and geometry. Montesquieu was also heavily indebted to Lamy, whose works were published throughout the eighteenth century

Published in 5 volumes between 1694 and 1698.

"From Bayle the philosophy of the Enlightenment learned to formulate its own problems; in his  Dictionary it found already forged the weapons required for the emancipation of historical thinking". (Cassirer).

The influence of the Dictionary was felt throughout Europe for the next hundred years. Wishing to correct and amplify Moreri’s encyclopaedia, Bayle soon proceeded far beyond his original intention and overwhelmed his entries with annotations and illustrative quotations. He challenged the assumptions and the reverence for authority which had characterized almost all his predecessors in the field.  Through painstaking research into the lives and thought of hundreds of biblical and historical figures, he subjected countless philosophical and religious doctrines to critical scrutiny, and demonstrated, with scathing wit and dialectical virtuosity, that none of them had any legitimate claim to the status of final truth.  Bayle argued that reason was too feeble an instrument to be relied upon in the truth.

An English translation appeared between 1734-41 in ten volumes under the title A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical: In which a new and accurate Translation of that of the Celebrated Mr. Bayle, with the Corrections and Observations printed in the late Edition at Paris, is included; and interspersed with several thousand Lives never before published. The whole containing the History of the most Illustrious Persons of all Ages and Nations, particularly those of Great Britain and Ireland, distinguished by their Rank, Actions, Learning and other Accomplishments. With reflections on such Passages of Mr. Bayle, as seem to favour Scepticism and the Manichee System. By the Reverend Mr. John Peter Bernard; the Reverend Mr. Thomas Birch; Mr. John Lockman; and other hands. And the Articles relating to Oriental History by George Sale, Gent. London: printed by James Bettenham, for G. Strahan, J. Clarke, T. Hatchet [etc].

Leibniz completed The New System in 1695

Published anonymously, Locke’s last major work, in which he defends and emphasizes the rational element in the Gospels. Although he remained an Anglican, the book appealed to Unitarians and Deists and brought him into fresh controversy.

“Mr. Lock’s reasonableness of Christian religion is really a new religion” (Voltaire, Notebooks, 45)

Nieuwentijt was one of the first Continental adherents of Newton's law of gravity. Analysis infinitorum contains a fully developed system of infinitesimal calculus. After 1695 Nieuwentijt engaged in debate with Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli in the foundation of the calculus.

Published anonymously but probably authored by Judith Drake.

A work in which Edwards accused John Locke of heresy because of his silence on the Trinity.

Written in 1686

A seminal work in both free thought and Irish philosophy.  Toland abandoned Catholicism at 15 - by “his own reason and such as made use of theirs” - and moved from latitudinarianism to deism and finally to a materialist form of pantheism, coining the term ‘pantheist’ in 1705.  Christianity initiated the deist controversy and was burned by the Middlesex justices.  Toland went to Dublin, but the Irish parliament condemned the book and ordered his arrest, whereupon he returned to England. Locke was embarrassed by its similarity to Reasonableness of Christianity.

In defending rationalism and a naturalistic reading of the Bible, combined with anticlericalism in order to reject all historical forms of Christianity except the basic teaching of the historical figure of Jesus, Toland claimed the mysteries that have obscured Christianity have not been part of the divine plan or proof of man’s poor understanding but have been intentional mystifications; without the “Pretence” of mystery, “we should never hear of the Transubstantiation, and other ridiculous Fables of the Church of Rome; nor of any of the Eastern Ordures, almost all receiv’d into this Western Sink”.

Translated into Spanish, Dutch, German and also English, Venette's sex manual remained a best seller until 1900 by which time it became known as the "Bible of the French peasantry". Venette was a doctor in La Rochelle.

Whiston was one of the leading exponents of Arianism. He worked under Newton at Cambridge, succeed Newton as Lucasian professor of mathematics in 1703 and was expelled from the university in 1710 for his Arian views.
In A New Theory of the Earth Whiston attempted to show that the biblical account of the earth's genesis could be reconciled with scientific reason.

A satire on the Jacobites.

Text prompted by the "Quietist" debate with Bishop Bossuet

Published posthumously the Bibliothèque orientale became the standard work on the Islamic world in the eighteenth century.

Between 1696 and 1699 Locke was involved in one of the most memorable controversies in the history of philosophy.  Bishop Stillingfleet, a learned divine, but no great philosopher, had attacked Locke in his Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity of 1696, having read a pamphlet by the Irish pantheist Toland, who had argued that there was nothing mysterious in Christianity, which he had based on Locke’s Essay.  Stillingfleet accused Locke’s philosophy of materialism. Locke answered this attack promptly with A Letter to .... the Bishop of Worcester ....

Locke’s answer to Stillingfleet’s charges, in which he defends himself against the dangerous inferences with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity which Stillingfleet had drawn from his theory of ideas; Stillingfleet was not satisfied and wrote a reply which was published in 1697 (although title-page dated 1698). The 7-page appendix is entitled An Answer to Remarks upon an Essay concerning Humane Understanding.

Solid Philosophy Asserted occupies pp.1-112, and the remainder of the text is taken up with twenty-two Reflexions on Locke’s Essay.  “Concerning this treatise Locke writes in a letter to Molyneux: ‘Mr. Sergeant, a Popish priest, whom you must needs have heard of has bestowed a thick octavo upon my Essay’.  It was Sergeant’s intention to restore the Aristotelian philosophy and to undermine the doctrines of Descartes and Locke. He treats of these two modern philosophers equally and indifferently and charges their way of certainty by ideas with scepticism: ideas are mere fancies. Sergeant will show a new way to truth, a method built on things as they are in nature, not on ideas or similitudes.”  Christophersen, p.43. Locke annotated his copy of this work; the notes were published in Locke’s unpublished marginal replies to John Sergeant by John W. Yolton in ‘Journal of the History of Ideas,’ 1951.

Sergeant was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1650 and in 1652 he was sent to Lisbon to defend the Catholic cause. In 1675 he lived in France with Bossuet. He published 34 works, mainly pamphlets, in which he engaged in controversies with Bishop Stillingfleet, Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Tillotson and Archbishop Peter Talbot.

The play was written between 1690 and 1692 but was produced for the stage in 1697.

Bentley was Professor of Divinity and Master of Trinity, Cambridge.   Phalaris, which arose from the controversy on the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns, marked “a new epoch in Greek studies, as Newton’s Principia had done in physical science only a dozen years before”.

“The figurative is not false and metaphor has its truth, just as fiction does”.

Grammarian and critic, Bouhours was a linguistic purist who demanded extreme exactness in sentence construction and choice of words. Influential in his time, he taught the Jesuits who were later to edit the Journal de Trévoux

Famous attack on the works of Wycherley, Dryden, Congreve, Vanburgh and D'Urfey for indecency, profanity and for undermining public morality. In the ensuing pamphlet war which lasted until 1726, Congreve, Vanburgh, and D'Urfey, with Charles Gildonm, John Dennis, Edward Filmer and James Drake, were pitted against Collier, Arthur Bedford, William Law, Whitelocke Bulstrode, Josiah Woodward and J. Field. Collier rejoinders included Defence (1699), the Second Defence (1700), the Dissuasive (1703), and the Further Vindication (1708); The Conduct of the Stage Consider'd (1721) was probably also written by Collier.

Leslie defence of the factual truth of the Bible included an attack on the writings on Charles Blount.

The Life of Milton, with its reference to “the numerous suppositious works under the name of Christ and His apostles”, caused an outcry by its apparent doubts concerning the authenticity of the New Testament.

Published between 1698 and 1709. Ward called Ned, was an English tavern keeper and humorist.

Basnage was Pastor in Rouen; he was exiled in Holland after revocation of Edict of Nantes (1685)and aided diplomatically in arranging the Triple Alliance at The Hague (1717).

A work, incorporating Basnage’s earlier Histoire de la religion des églises réformées (1690), in which he argued against Bossuet’s attack on Protestantism in Histoire des variations des églises protestantes (1688).

Bradford was the bishop of Rochester

Shaftesbury’s education was supervised by Locke, who was secretary to his grandfather, the first earl (1621-83), a leading Whig.  The Inquiry represents a break with Locke’s philosophy; Shaftesbury defends a theism which proclaims that everything that exists is for the best and which leaves nothing to chance - a natural religion in which virtue, concerned with the good of the whole, is as basic to human nature as self-interest: one is morally good only when the good of the whole is the “immediate object of some passion of affection moving him”, without any thought of reward or punishment. 

“To have the natural, kindly, or generous affections strong and powerful towards the good of the public is to have thechief means and power of self-enjoyment.”

“The Admiration and Love of Order, Harmony and Proportion, in whatever kind, is naturally improving to the Temper, advantageous to social Affection, and highly assistant to Virtue; which is itself no other than the Love of Order and Beauty in Society.”

A description of Telemachus's search for his father, Ulysses, Les aventures de Télémaque remained until late in the eighteenth century the most widely read literary work in France and elsewhere.

Basnage was Pastor in Rouen; he was exiled in Holland after revocation of Edict of Nantes (1685)and aided diplomatically in arranging the Triple Alliance at The Hague (1717).

A work, incorporating Basnage’s earlier Histoire de la religion des églises réformées (1690), in which he argued against Bossuet’s attack on Protestantism in Histoire des variations des églises protestantes (1688).

An attempt to reconcile Spinoza's philosophy with Christianity.

“Much has been writ of late, pro and con, about the stage, yet the subject admits of more, and that which has not been hetherto toucht upon; not only what that is, but what it was, about which some people have made such a busle. What it is we see, and I think it has been sufficiently display’d in Mr. Collier’s book; what it was in former ages, and how used in this kingdom, so far back as one may collect any memorialls, is the subject of the following dialogue. Old plays will always be read by the curious, if it were only to discover the manners and behaviour of several ages, and how they alter’d. For plays are exactly like portraits drawn in the garb and fashion of the time when painted. You see one habit in the time of King Charles I, another quite different from that, both for men and women, in Queen Elizabeth’s time; another under Henry the Eight different from both; and so backward all various.”