Note 3 — REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGINS AND DESTINY OF IMPERIAL BRITAIN

The Argenis was published in 1621; but amongst the ideas on religion, carefully elaborated or obscurely suggested, which throng its pages, we find curious anticipations of the position of Locke and even of Hume, just as in politics, in the remarks on elective monarchy put in the lips of the Cardinal Ubaldini, or in the conceptions of justice and law, Barclay reveals a sympathy with principles which appealed to Algernon Sidney or were long afterwards developed by Beccaria. In the motion of the stars Barclay sees the proof of the existence of God, and requires no other. The Argenis, unfortunately for English literature, was written at a time when men still wavered between the vernacular and Latin as a medium of expression.