Locke’s work in epistemology and personal identity secures his reputation. His excursion into political philosophy seems to have been guided by his patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury, to make a case for mixed government, in which Parliament is supreme and the monarch a Protestant. Locke argued for toleration among Protestant sects but excluded atheists and Roman Catholics. Locke’s argument for limited government describes the state of nature as one in which each has an equal right to punish infractions of natural law. Civil society comes into being when any number of people agree to surrender this “natural executive right,” on the condition that others do so as well. But, Locke says, contrary to Hobbes, submission to an absolute Sovereign is worse than a condition of civil war.