Hobbes's radical break with the classical idea of law and his development of St. Augustine's doctrine were not taken up by his most immediate successor, John Locke. Indeed, Locke wholly repudiated Hobbes's idea of law to father the modern version of natural law theory, which has far more affinity with Cicero than with Aquinas. Locke's view of law has accordingly been treated as a model of how to escape from ancient and medieval metaphysics without succumbing to Hobbes's “extremism” or “amoralism.” However, Locke is more rightly seen as a source of the insidious modern confusion about law, which arises from combining an avowed rejection of ancient and medieval metaphysics with treating law as if there were nevertheless available a given and indisputable foundation, or even blueprint, for it.

Although Locke is taken to be a major figure in the history of the philosophy of law, he nowhere sets out a systematic account of the rule of law. He seems to have agreed with his contemporary who described the “punctilles of the law” as a subject in which “the more a man flutters the more he is entangled.” The Essays on the Law of Nature, discovered by von Leyden, were not published by Locke himself, and he never explained just how his theory of natural law is connected with the rest of his doctrine. There are many scattered observations on positive or civil law, but nothing like an extended discussion.