Читать книгу History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion - Adam Storey Farrar - Страница 17

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Isaiah lix. 19.

When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.

The forms assumed by free thought in the fourth great crisis of the Christian faith, which commenced with the rise of modern philosophy, and has continued with slight intervals to the present time, have been already stated361 to be chiefly three, corresponding with the three nations in which they have been manifested.

In this lecture we shall sketch the history of one of these forms—English Deism—by which name the form of unbelief is denominated which existed during the close of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. If the dates be marked by corresponding political history, its rise may be placed as early as the reign of Charles I; its maturity in the period from the revolution of 1688 to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745; its decay in the close of the reign of George II, and the early part of that of George III.362

This long period was marked by those great events in intellectual and social history which were calculated [pg 117] to awaken the spirit of free inquiry. It witnessed the dethronement of constituted authorities—intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political; the constant struggle of religious factions; and on two occasions civil war and revolution. It was affected by the rise of the philosophy of Bacon, and the positive advances of natural science under Newton and his coadjutors. It comprehended moments marked by the outburst of native genius, and others influenced by contact with the continental literature, both with the speculative theology of Holland and the dramatic and critical literature of France.363 Above all it was illumined by the presence of such an array of great minds in all departments of intellectual activity as can rarely be matched in a single period. If, when the human mind in the middle ages was warmed into life after the winter of its long torpor, under the genial influence of the revival of literature, the renewal of its power was marked by a disposition to throw off the trammels which had bound it in the night of its darkness, how much more might such a result be expected when it was basking under the sunshine of meridian brightness, and exulting in the consciousness of strength.

A special peculiarity of this period likely to produce effects on religion has been already mentioned. The philosophy of this age compared with former ones was essentially a discussion of method. The two rival philosophies which now arose are generally placed in opposition to each other, as physical and mental respectively, that of Bacon being conversant with nature, that of Descartes with man.364 But in truth in one respect both were united. Each was analytical; each strove to lay down a general method for investigating the sphere of inquiry which it selected. Both were reactions against [pg 118] the dogmatic assumptions of former systems; both assumed the indispensable necessity of an entire revolution in the method of attaining knowledge. Accordingly, though differing widely in appealing to the external senses or the internal intuitions respectively, they both built philosophy in the criticism of first principles. Hence, independently of any particular corollaries from special parts of their systems, the influence of their spirit was to beget a critical, subjective, and analytical study of any topic. When applied to religion, this is the feature which subsequently characterizes alike the unbelief and the discussion of the evidences. Difficulties and the answers to difficulties are found in an appeal to the functions and capacities of the interpreting mind. This appeal to reason was denominated rationalism in the seventeenth century, prior to the present application of the term in a more limited and obnoxious sense. The specific doctrine arrived at by this process, which allows the existence of a Deity, and of the religion of the moral conscience, but denies the specific revelation which Christianity asserts, was called theism or deism. (21)

In the period which we have mentioned as marking the first stage of deism, extending from its commencement to the close of the seventeenth century, the peculiarity which characterized the inquiry was the political aspect which it bore. The relation of religion to political toleration365 gave occasion for examining the sphere of truth which may form the subject of political interference.

Two writers of opposite schools are usually regarded as marking the rise of deism, both of whom belonged to this phase of it, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Hobbes. Both formed their systems in the reign of Charles I.366 The one rejected revelation by making religion a matter [pg 119] of individual intuition, the other by making it a matter of political convenience.

Lord Herbert,367 the elder brother of the saintly poet, if looked at as a philosopher, must be classed with Descartes rather than with Bacon, though chronology forbids the idea that he can have learned anything from Descartes. It is probable that while on his early embassy in France he came under the same intellectual influences which suggested to Descartes his views. Fragments of knowledge and partial solutions derived from older philosophies exist before a great thinker like Descartes embodies them in a system. Herbert may have been led by the indirect effect of such influences to a theory of innate ideas, independently of Descartes; or he may have arrived at it by reaction against the Pyrrhonism of some of the French writers of the preceding age, such as Montaigne, with whose writings he was familiar.

His works furnish his views on knowledge and on religion, both natural, heathen, and Christian. They include a treatise on truth, which suggested another on the cause of errors. The views on religion therein named, further suggested one on the religion which could be expected in a layman, and this again a critique on heathen creeds, written to show the universality of the beliefs so described.368

In discussing truth369 he surveys the powers of the human mind, and places the ultimate test of it in the natural instincts or axiomatic beliefs. These accordingly [pg 120] become the test of a religion. The true religion must therefore be a universal one; that is, one of which the evidence commends itself to the universal mind of man, and finds its attestation in truth intuitively perceived. Of such truths he enumerates five:370—the existence of one supreme God; the duty of worship; piety and virtue as the means thereof; the efficacy of repentance; the existence of rewards and punishments both here and hereafter. These he regards as the fundamental pillars of universal religion; and distinguishes from these realities the doctrines of what he calls particular religions, one of which is Christianity, as being uncertain, because not self-evident; and accordingly considers that no assent can be expected in a layman, save to the above-named self-evident truths. His view however of revelation is not very clear. Sometimes he seems to admit it, sometimes proscribes it as uncertain. His object seems not to have been primarily destructive, but merely the result of attempts to discover truth amid the jarring opinions of the churches of his day.371

The ideas which his writings contributed to deist speculation are two; viz., the examination of the universal principles of religion, and the appeal to an internal illuminating influence superior to revelation, “the inward light,” as the test of religious truth. This was a phrase not uncommon in the seventeenth century. It was used by the Puritans to mark the appeal to the spiritual instincts, the heaven-taught feelings; and later by mystics, like the founder of the Quakers, to imply an appeal to an internal sense.372 But in Herbert it differs from these in being universal, not restricted to a few persons, and in being intellectual rather than emotional or spiritual. It was not analysed so as to separate intuitional from reflective elements, and seems to [pg 121] have been analogous to Descartes' ultimate appeal to the natural reason, the self-evidencing force of the mental axioms.373

If it was the anxiety to find certainty in controversies concerning theological dogmas, which suggested Herbert's inquiries, it was the struggle of ecclesiastical parties in connexion with political movements which excited those of Hobbes.374

In his philosophical views he belonged to an opposite school to Herbert. A disciple of Bacon, he was the first to apply his master's method to morals, and to place the basis of ethical and political obligation in experience; and in the application of these philosophical principles to religion, he also represented the contrary tendency to Herbert, state interference in contradistinction from private liberty, political religion as opposed to personal. The contest of individualism against multitudinism is the parallel in politics to that of private judgment against authority in religion. While some of the Puritans were urging unlimited license in the matter of religion, Hobbes wrote to prove the necessity of state control, and the importance of a fulcrum on which individual opinion might repose, external to itself; and referring the development of society [pg 122] to the necessity for restraining the natural selfishness of man, and resolving right into expedience as embodied in the sovereign head, he ended with crushing the rights of the individual spirit, and defending absolute government.

The effect of the application of such a sensational and materialist theory to religion will be anticipated. He traced375 the genesis of it in the individual, and its expression in society; finding the origin of it in selfish fear of the supernatural. The same reason which led him to assign supremacy to government in other departments induced him to give it supreme control over religion. Society being the check on man's selfishness, and supreme, deciding all questions on grounds of general expedience; the authority of the commonwealth became the authority of the church.376 Though he had occasion to discuss revelation and the canon377 as a rule of faith, yet it is hard to fix on any point that was actual unbelief.

The amount of thought contributed by him to deism was small; for his influence on his successors was unimportant. The religious instincts of the heart were too strong to be permanently influenced by the cold materialist tone which reduced religion to state craft. With the exception of Coward,378 a materialist who doubted immortality about the end of the century, the succeeding deists more generally followed Herbert, in wishing to elevate religion to a spiritual sphere, than Hobbes, who degraded it to political expedience. A slight additional interest however belongs to his speculations, from the circumstance that his ideas, together with [pg 123] those of Herbert, most probably suggested some parts of the system of Spinoza.379

The two writers of whom we have now been treating, lived prior to or during the Commonwealth. From the date of the Restoration the existence of doubt may be accepted as an established fact. During the reaction, political and ecclesiastical, which ensued in the early part of the reign of Charles II, it is not surprising that doubt concealed itself in retirement; but the frequent allusions to it under the name of atheism,380 in contemporary sermons and theological books, proves its existence. Indeed the reaction contained the very elements which were likely to foster unbelief among undiscerning minds. The court set a sad example of impurity; and the excessive claims of the churchmen, alien to the spirit of political and religious liberty, were calculated to generate an antipathy to the clergy and to religion.

Toward the end of Charles's reign, a feeling of this kind expresses itself in the writings of Charles Blount,381 who availed himself of the temporary interval in which the press became free, owing to the omission to renew the act which submitted works to the censor,382 to publish with notes a translation of Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, with the same purpose as Hierocles in the fourth century, to disguise the peculiar character of Christ's miracles, and draw an invidious parallel between the Pythagorean philosopher and the divine founder of Christianity. Subsequently to Blount's death, his friend Gildon, who lived to retract his opinions,383 published a collection of treatises, entitled [pg 124] “The Oracles of Reason;” a work which may be considered as expressing the opinions of a little band of unbelievers, of whom Blount was one.384 The mention of two of the papers in it will explain the views intended. One is on natural religion,385 in which the ideas of Herbert are reproduced, and exception is taken to revelation as partial and not self-evident, and therefore uncertain; and the objections to the sufficiency and potency of natural religion are refuted. A second is on the deist's religion,386 in which the deist creed is explained to be the belief in a God who is to be worshipped, not by sacrifice, nor by mediation, but by piety. Punishment in a future world is denied as incompatible with Divine benevolence; and the safety of the deist creed is supported by showing that a moral life is superior to belief in mysteries. It will be seen from these remarks that Blount hardly makes an advance on his deist predecessor Herbert, save that his view is more positive, and his antipathy to Christian worship less concealed.

At the close of the seventeenth century two new influences were in operation, the one political, the other intellectual; viz., the civil and religious liberty which ensued on the revolution, generating free speculation, and compelling each man to form his political creed; and the reconsideration of the first principles of knowledge387 implied in the philosophy of Locke.388

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The effect of these new influences on religion is very marked. Controversies no longer turned upon questions in which the appeal lay to the common ground of scripture, as in the contest which Churchmen had conducted against Puritans or Romanists, but extended to the examination of the first principles of ethics or politics; such as the foundation of government, whether it depends on hereditary right or on compact, as in the controversy against the nonjurors389 before the close of the century; or the spiritual rights of the church, and the right of every man to religious liberty and private judgment in religion, as in the Convocation and Bangorian390 controversy, which marked the early years of the next century. The very diminution also of quotations of authorities is a pertinent illustration that the appeal was now being made to deeper standards.

The philosophy of Locke, which attempted to lay a basis for knowledge in psychology, coincided with, where it did not create, this general attempt to appeal on every subject to ultimate principles of reason. This tone in truth marked the age, and acting in every region of thought, affected alike the orthodox and the unbelieving. Accordingly, as we pass away from the speculations which mark the early period of deism to those which belong to its maturity, we find that the attack on Christianity is less suggested by political considerations, and more entirely depends on an appeal to reason, intellectual or moral.

The principal phases belonging to this period of the maturity of deism, which we shall now successively encounter, are four:

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(1) An examination of the first principles of religion, on its dogmatic or theological side, with a view of asserting the supremacy of reason to interpret all mysteries, and defending absolute toleration of free thought. This tendency is seen in Toland and Collins,

(2) An examination of religion on the ethical side occurs, with the object of asserting the supremacy of natural ethics as a rule of conduct, and denying the motive of reward or punishment implied in dependent morality. This is seen in Lord Shaftesbury.

After the attack has thus been opened against revealed religion, by creating prepossessions against mystery in dogma and the existence of religious motives in morals, there follows a direct approach against the outworks of it by an attack on the evidences,

(3) In an examination, critical rather than philosophical, of the prophecies of the Old Testament by Collins, and of the miracles of the New by Woolston.

The deist next approaches as it were within the fortress, and advances against the doctrines of revealed religion; and we find accordingly,

(4) A general view of natural religion, in which the various differences—speculative, moral, and critical, are combined, as in Tindal; or with a more especial reference to the Old Testament as in Morgan, and the New as in Chubb; the aim of each being constructive as well as destructive; to point out the absolute sufficiency of natural religion and of the moral sense as religious guides, and the impossibility of accepting as obligatory that which adds to or contradicts them; and accordingly they point out the elements in Christianity which they consider can be retained as absolutely true.

The first two of these attacks occur in the first two decades of the century: the two latter in the period from 1720 to 1740, when the public mind not being diverted by foreign war or internal sedition, and other controversies being closed, the deist controversy was at its height. After examining these, other tendencies will meet us, when we trace the decline of deism in Bolingbroke and Hume.

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The first of these tendencies just noticed is seen in Toland,391 who directed his speculations to the ground principles of revealed theology,392 and slightly to the history of the Canon.393

Possessing much originality and learning, at an early age, in 1696, just a year after the censorship had been finally removed and the press of England made permanently free, he published his noted work, “Christianity not Mysterious,” to show that “there is nothing in the Gospels contrary to reason, nor above it; and that no Christian doctrine can properly be called a mystery.” The speculations of all doubters first originate in some crisis of personal or mental history. In Toland's case it was probably the change of religion from catholic to protestant which first unsettled his religious faith. The work just named, in which he expressed the attempt to bring religious truth under the grasp of the intellect, was one of some merit as a literary production, and written with that clearness which the influence of the French models studied by Dryden had introduced into English literature. Yet it is difficult to understand why a single work of an unknown student should attract so much public notice. The grand jury of Middlesex was induced at once to present it as a nuisance, and the example was followed by the grand jury of Dublin.394 Two years after its publication the Irish parliament [pg 128] deliberated upon it, and, refusing to hear Toland in defence, passed sentence that the book should be burnt, and its author imprisoned—a fate which he escaped only by flight.395 And in 1701, no less than five years after the publication of his work, a vote for its prosecution passed the lower house of the English convocation, which the legal advisers however denied to be within the power of that assembly.396 Toland spent most of the remainder of his life abroad, and showed in his subsequent works a character growing gradually worse, lashed into bitterer opposition by the censure which he had received.

His views, developed in his work, Christianity not Mysterious, require fuller statement. He opens with an explanation of the province of reason,397 the means of information, external and internal, which man possesses; a part of his work which is valuable to the philosopher, who watches the influence exercised at that time by psychological speculations; and he proposes to show that the doctrines of the gospel are neither contrary to reason nor above it. He exhibits the impossibility of believing statements which positively contradict reason;398 and contends that if they do not really contradict it, but are above it, we can form no intelligible idea of them. He tries further to show that reason is neither so weak nor so corrupt as to be an unsafe guide,399 and that scripture itself only professes to teach what is intelligible.400 Having shown that the doctrines of the gospel are not contrary to reason, he next proceeds to show that they do not profess to be above it; that they lay claim to no mystery,401 for that mystery in heathen [pg 129] writers and the New Testament does not mean something inconceivable, but something intelligible in itself, which nevertheless was so veiled “that it needed revealing;”402 and that the introduction of the popular idea of mystery was attributable to the analogy of pagan writers, and did not occur till several centuries after the foundation of Christianity.403

It is possible that the book may have been a mere paradox,404 the effort of a young mind going through the process through which all young men of thought pass, and especially in an age like Toland's, of trying to understand and explain what they believe. But students who are thus forming their views ought to pause before they scatter their half-formed opinions in the world. In Toland's case public alarm judged the book to have a most dangerous tendency; and he was an outcast from the sympathy of pious men for ever. If he was misunderstood, as he contended, his fate is a warning against the premature publication of a paradox. The question accordingly which Toland thus suggested for discussion was the prerogative of reason to pronounce on the contents of a revelation, the problem whether the mind must comprehend as well as apprehend all that it believes. The other question which he opened was the validity of the canon.405 Here too he claimed that his views were misunderstood. It was supposed that the mention made by him concerning spurious works attributed to the apostles, referred to the canonical gospels. Accordingly, if in his former work he has been considered to have anticipated the older school of German [pg 130] rationalists, in the present he has been thought to have touched upon the questions discussed in the modern critical school. The controversy which ensued was the means of opening up the discussion of the great question which relates to the New Testament canon, viz., whether our present New Testament books are a selection made in the second century from among early Christian writings, or whether the church from the first regarded them as distinct in kind and not merely in degree from other literature; whether the early respect shown for scripture was reverence directed to apostolic men, or to their inspired teaching.

If Toland is the type of free speculation applied to the theoretical side of religion, lord Shaftesbury406 is an example of speculations on the practical side of it, and on the questions which come under the province of ethics.

The rise of an ethical school parallel with discussions on the philosophy of religion is one of the most interesting features of that age, whether it be regarded in a scientific or a religious point of view. The age was one in which the reflective reason or understanding was busy in exploring the origin of all knowledge. The department of moral and spiritual truth could not long remain unexamined. In an earlier age the sources of our knowledge concerning the divine attributes and human duty had been supposed to depend upon revelation; but now the disposition to criticise every subject by the light of common sense claimed that philosophy must investigate them. Reason was to work out the system of natural theology, and ethics the problem of the nature and ground of virtue. Hence it will be obvious how close a relation existed between such speculations and theology. The Christian apologist availed himself of the new ethical inquiries as a corroboration of revealed religion; the Deist, as a substitute for it.

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Lord Shaftesbury is usually adduced as a deist of this class. He has not indeed expressed it definitely in his writings; and an ethical system which formed the basis of Butler's sermons,407 cannot necessarily be charged with deism. But the charge can be substantiated from his memoirs; and his writings manifest that hatred of clerical influence, the wish to subject the church to the state, which will by some persons be regarded as unbelief, but which was not perhaps altogether surprising in an age when the clergy were almost universally alien to the revolution, and the Convocation manifested opposition to political and religious liberty. The ground on which the charge is generally founded is, that Shaftesbury has cast reflections on the doctrine of future rewards and punishments.408 It is to be feared that sceptical insinuations were intended; yet his remarks admit of some explanation as a result of his particular point of view.

The ethical schools of his day were already two; the one advocating dependent, the other independent morality; the one grounding obligation on self-love, the other on natural right. Shaftesbury, though a disciple of Locke, belonged to the latter school. His works mark the moment when this ethical school was passing from the objective inquiry into the immutability of right, as seen in Clarke, to the subjective inquiry into the reflex sense which constitutes our obligation to do what is right, as seen in Butler. The depreciation accordingly of the motives of reward, as distinct from the supreme motive of loving duty for duty's sake, was to be expected in his system. The motives of reward and punishment which form the sanctions of religious obligation, would seem to him to be analogous to the employment of expedience as the foundation of moral. His statements however appear to be an exaggeration even in an ethical view, as well as calculated to insinuate [pg 132] erroneous ideas in a theological. It is possible that his motive was not polemical; but the unchristian character of his tone renders the hypothesis improbable, and explains the reason why his essays called the “Characteristics” have been ranked among deist writings.

We have seen, in Toland and Shaftesbury respectively, a discussion on the metaphysical and ethical basis of religion, together with a few traces of the rise of criticism in reference to the canon. In their successors the inquiry becomes less psychological and more critical, and therefore less elevated by the abstract nature of the speculative above the struggle of theological polemic.

Two branches of criticism were at this time commencing, which were destined to suggest difficulties alike to the deist and to the Christian; the one the discovery of variety of readings in the sacred text, the other the doubts thrown upon the genuineness and authenticity of the books. It was the large collection of various readings on the New Testament, first begun by Mills,409 which gave the impulse to the former, which has been called the lower criticism, and which so distressed the mind of Bengel, that he spent his life in allaying the alarm of those who like himself felt alarmed at its effect on the question of verbal inspiration. And it was the disproof of the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris by the learned Bentley,410 which first threw solid doubts on the value attaching to traditional titles of books, and showed the irrefragable character belonging to an appeal to internal evidence; a department which has been called the higher criticism. This latter branch, so abundantly developed in German speculation, [pg 133] is only hinted at by the English deists of the eighteenth age, as by Hobbes and Spinoza earlier; but we shall soon see the use which Collins and others made of the former inquiry.

The form, though not the spirit, of Toland and Shaftesbury, might by a latitude of interpretation be made compatible with Christianity; but Collins and Woolston, of whom we next treat, mark a much further advance of free thought. They attack what has always been justly considered to be an integral portion of Christianity, the relation which it bore to Jewish prophecy, and the miracles which were wrought for its establishment.

Collins411 must be studied under more than one aspect. He not only wrote on the logic of religion, the method of inquiry in theology, but also on the subject of scripture interpretation, and the reality of prophecy.412

It was in 1713 that he published “A discourse of free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect called Free-thinkers.” This is one of the first times that we find this new name used for Deists; and the object of his book is to defend the propriety of unlimited liberty of inquiry, a proposition by which he designed the unrestrained liberty of belief, not in a political point of view merely, but in a moral. His argument was not unlike more modern ones,413 which show that civilization and improvement have been caused by free-thinking; and he adduces the growing disbelief in the reality of witchcraft, in proof of the way in which the rejection of dogma had ameliorated political [pg 134] science, which until recently had visited the supposed crime with the punishment of death.414 After thus showing the duty of free-thinking,415 he argued that the sphere of it ought to comprehend points on which the right is usually denied; such as the divine attributes, the truth of the scriptures, and their meaning;416 establishing this by laying a number of charges against priests, to show that their dogmatic teaching cannot be trusted, unchallenged by free inquiry, on account of their discrepant417 opinions, their rendering the canon and text of scripture uncertain,418 and their pious frauds;419 concluding by refuting objections against freethinking derived from its supposed want of safety.420

The book met with intelligent and able opponents; the critical part, containing the allegations of uncertainty in the text of scripture, and the charge of altering it, being effectually refuted by Bentley. The work is an exaggeration of a great truth. Undoubtedly free inquiry is right in all departments, but it must be restrained within the proper limits which the particular subject-matter admits of;—limits which are determined partly by the nature of the subject studied, partly by the laws of the thinking mind.

Eleven years afterwards, in 1724, Collins published his “Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian religion.” This work is chiefly critical. It does not merely contain the incipient doubts on the variety of readings, and the uncertainty of books, but spreads over several provinces of theological inquiry. Under the pretence of establishing Christianity on a more solid foundation, the author argues that our Saviour and his apostles made the whole proof of Christianity to rest solely on the prophecies of the Old Testament;421 that if these proofs are valid, Christianity is established; if invalid, it is false.422 Accordingly he examines several of the prophecies cited from the Old [pg 135] Testament in the New in favour of the Messiahship of Christ, with a view of showing that they are only allegorical or fanciful proofs, accommodations of the meaning of the prophecies; and anticipates the objections which could be stated to his views.423 He asserts that the expectation of a Messiah among424 the Jews arose only a short time before Christ's coming;425 and that the apostles put a new interpretation on the Hebrew books, which was contrary to the sense accepted by the Jewish nation; that Christianity is not revealed in the Old Testament literally, but mystically and allegorically, and may therefore be considered as mystical Judaism. His inference is accordingly stated as an argument in favour of the figurative or mystical interpretation of scripture; but we can hardly doubt that his real object was an ironical one, to exhibit Christianity as resting on apostolic misinterpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to create the impression that it was a mere Jewish sect of men deceived by fanciful interpretations.

The work produced considerable alarm; more from the solemn interest and sacredness of the inquiries which it opened, than from any danger arising from excellence in its form, or ability in the mode of putting. It anticipated subsequent speculations,426 by regarding Christianity as true ideally, not historically, and by insinuating the incorrectness of the apostolic adoption of the mystical system of interpreting the ancient scripture.

A writer came forward as moderator427 between Collins and his opponents, who himself afterwards became [pg 136] still more noted, by directing an attack on miracles, similar to that of Collins on prophecy;—the unhappy Woolston.428 A fellow of a college429 at Cambridge, in holy orders, he was for many years a diligent student of the fathers, and imbibed from them an extravagant attachment to the allegorical sense of scripture. Finding that his views met with no support in that reasoning age, he broke out into unmeasured insult and contempt against his brother clergy, as slaves to the letter of scripture.430 Deprived of his fellowship,431 and distracted by penury, he extended his hatred from the ministers to the religion which they ministered. And when, in reply to Collins's assertion, that Christianity reposed solely on prophecy, the Christian apologists fell back on miracles, he wrote in 1727 and the two following years his celebrated Discourses on the Miracles. (22) They were published as pamphlets; in each one of which he examined a few of the miracles of Christ, trying to show such inconsistencies as to make it appear that they must be regarded as untrustworthy if taken literally; and hence he advocated a figurative interpretation of them; asserting that the history of the life of Jesus is an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the soul of man.432 The gospels thus become a system of mystical theology, instead of a literal history. In defence of this method he claimed the example of the ancient church,433 ignoring the fact that the fathers admitted a literal as well as a figurative meaning. Whether he really retained towards the close of his life the spiritual interpretation,434 or merely [pg 137] used it as an excuse for a more secure advance to the assault of the historic reality of scripture, is very uncertain.

The letters were written with a coarseness and irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens. Occasionally, when wishing to utter grosser blasphemies than were permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed Christian stand-point, he introduced a Jewish rabbi, as Celsus had formerly done, and put the coarser calumnies into his mouth,435 as difficulties to which no reply could be furnished except by figurative interpretation. The humour which marked these pamphlets was so great, that the sale of them was immense. Voltaire, who was in England at the time, and perhaps imbibed thence part of his own opinions, states the immediate sale to have exceeded thirty thousand copies;436 and Swift describes them as the food of every politician.437 The excitement was so great, that Gibson, then bishop of London, thought it necessary to direct five pastorals to his diocese in reference to them,438 and, not content with this, caused Woolston to be prosecuted; and the unhappy man, not able to pay the fine in which he was condemned, continued in prison till his death.439

In classifying Woolston with later writers against miracles, he may be compared in some cases, though with striking differences of tone, with those German rationalists like Paulus who have rationalized the miracles, but in more cases with those who like Strauss have idealized them. His method however is an appeal to general probability rather than to literary criticism.

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The next form that Deism assumed has reference more to the internal than the external part of Christianity, the doctrines rather than the evidences. Less critical than the last-named tendency, it differs from the earlier one of Toland in looking at religion less on the speculative side as a revelation of dogma, and more on the practical as a revelation of duties. While it combined into a system the former objections, critical or philosophical, the great weapon which it uses is the authority of the moral reason, by which it both tests revelation and suggests a substitute in natural religion, thus using it both destructively and for construction.

Dr. Tindal,440 the first writer of this class, had early given offence to the church by his writings; but it was not till 1730, in his extreme old age, that he published his celebrated dialogue, “Christianity as old as the Creation, or, the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.” This was not only the most important work that deism had yet produced, composed with care, and bearing the marks of thoughtful study of the chief contemporary arguments, Christian as well as Deist, but derives an interest from the circumstance that it was the book to which more than to any other single work bishop Butler's Analogy was designed as the reply.

Tindal's object is to show that natural religion is absolutely perfect, and can admit of no increase so as to carry obligation. For this purpose he tries to establish, first, that revelation is unnecessary,441 and secondly, that obligation to it is impossible. His argument in favour of the first of these two positions is, that if man's perfection be the living according to the constitution of human nature,442 and God's laws with the penalties attached [pg 139] be for man's good,443 nothing being required by God for its own sake;444 then true religion, whether internally or externally revealed, having the one end, human happiness, must be identical in its precepts.445 Having denied the necessity, he then disputes the possibility, of revelation, on the ground that the inculcation of positive as distinct from moral duties, is inconsistent with the good of man, as creating an independent rule.446 Assuming the moral faculty to be the foundation of all obligation, he reduces all religious truth to moral. It is in thus showing the impossibility of any revelation save the republication of the law of nature that he notices many of the difficulties in scripture which form the mystery to the theologian, the ground of doubt to the objector. Some of these are of a literary character, such as the assertion of the failure of the fulfilment of prophecies, and of marks of fallibility in the scripture writers, like the mistake which he alleges in respect to the belief in the immediate coming of Christ.447 Others of them are moral difficulties, points where the revealed system seems to him to contradict our instincts, such as the destruction of the Canaanites.448 In reference to this last example, which may be quoted as a type of his assertions, he argues against the possibility of a divine commission for the act, on the principle asserted by Clarke,449 that a miracle can never prove the divine truth of a doctrine which contravenes the moral idea of justice; or, in more modern phrase, that no supposed miracle can be a real one, if it attest a doctrine which bears this character. In the present work Tindal denied the necessity and possibility of a new revelation distinct from natural religion. He did not live to complete the concluding part of his book, wherein he intended to show that all the truths of Christianity were as old as the creation; i.e. were a republication of the religion of nature.

Tindal is an instance of those who have unconsciously kindled their torch at the light of revelation. [pg 140] The religion of nature of which he speaks is a logical idea, not an historic fact. The creation of it is analogous to the mention of the idea of compact as the basis of society, a generalization from its present state, not a fact of its original history. It is the residuum of Christianity when the mysterious elements have been subtracted. But in adopting the idea, the Deists were on the same level as the Christians. Both alike travelled together to the end of natural religion.450 Here the Deist halted, willing to accept so much of Christianity as was a republication of the moral law. The Christian, on the other hand, found in reason the necessity for revelation, and proceeded onward to revealed doctrines and positive precepts.

The works of the two writers Morgan and Chubb in part supply the defect left in Tindal, the omission on the part of deism to show that Christian truths were a republication of natural religion; the former especially attacking the claims of the Jewish religion to be divine, the latter the claims of the Christian.

Morgan's chief work,451 the “Moral Philosopher,” was published in 1737. Starting from the moral point of view, the sole supremacy and sufficiency of the moral law, the writer exhibits the necessity of applying the moral test as the only certain criterion on the questions of religion, and declines admitting the authority of miracles and prophecy to avail against it,452 an investigation suggested partly by the questions just named of the ground of unbelief, and partly by the circumstance that the Christian writers were beginning to dwell more strongly on the external evidences when unbelievers professed the internal to be unsatisfactory. The adoption of this test of truth prevents the admission of an historic revelation with positive duties. He [pg 141] thinks with Tindal that natural religion is perfect in itself, but seems to admit that it is so weak as to need republication,453 which is a greater admission than Tindal made in his extant volume. When however he passes from the decision on the general possibility of revelation to particular historic forms, the Mosaic and Christian, he discredits both. The infallibility of the moral sense is still the canon by which his judgment is determined. On this ground he disbelieves the Jewish religion,454 selecting successive passages of the national history, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim,455 the ceremonial religious system,456 as the object of his attack. A degree of interest attaches to his criticism on these points, in that it was the means of calling forth the celebrated work of Warburton on the Divine Legation of Moses.

The same principles of criticism mislead him in his examination of Christianity. The hallowed doctrine of the atonement forms a stumblingblock to him, on the ground of the transfer of merit by imputation.457 He regards Christianity as a Jewish gospel, until it was altered by the apostles, whose authority he discredits by arguments not unlike the ancient ones of Celsus. The method of Morgan is more constructive than that of his predecessors. Not denying the historic element of Christianity by idealizing it as Collins, he attempts a natural explanation of the historic facts. The central thought which guides him throughout is the supreme authority of the moral reason. His works open up the broad question whether the moral sense is to pronounce on revelation or to submit to it, and thus form a fresh illustration of the intimate dependence of particular sceptical opinions and methods upon metaphysical and ethical theories.

In the period which we are now examining, deism was almost entirely confined to the upper classes. It was in the latter part of the century that it spread to the lower, political antipathy against the church giving [pg 142] point to religious unbelief. Chubb,458 whom we next consider, is one of the few exceptions. He was a working man, endowed with strong native sense; who manifested the same inclination to meddle with the deep subject of religion which afterwards marked the character of Thomas Paine and others, who influenced the lower orders later in the century. In his general view of religion, Chubb denied all particular providence, and by necessary consequence the utility of prayer, save for its subjective value as having a reflex benefit on the human heart.459 He was undecided as to the fact of the existence of a revelation, but seemed to allow its possibility.460 He examined the three great forms of religion which professed to depend upon a positive revelation, Judaism,461 Mahometanism, and Christianity. The claims of the first he wholly rejected, on grounds similar to those explained by Morgan, as incompatible with the moral character of God. In reference to the second he anticipated the modern opinions on Mahometanism, by asserting that its victory was impossible, if it had not contained truth which the human spirit needed. In examining the third he attacked, like Morgan, the evidence of miracles462 and prophecy,463 and asserted the necessity of moral right and wrong as the ground of the interpretation of scripture.

One of his most celebrated works was an explanation of “the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” which is one of the many instances which his works afford of the unfairness produced by the want of moral insight into the [pg 143] woes for which Christianity supplies a remedy, and into the deep adaptation of the scheme of redemption to effect the object proposed by a merciful Providence in its communication.464 It will be perceived that the three last writers whose systems have been explained, resemble each other so much as to form a class by themselves. They restrict their attack to the internal character of revelation, employ the moral rather than the historical investigation, embody the chief speculations of their predecessors, and offer, as has been already stated, a constructive as well as a destructive system; morality or natural religion in place of revealed.465

An anonymous work was published in 1744, which merits notice as indicating a slight alteration in the mode of attack on the part of the deists. It was entitled, The Resurrection of Jesus considered, and is attributed to P. Annet, who died in the wretchedness of poverty.466 It was designed in reply to some of the defences of this subject which the writings of Woolston and others had provoked. Its object was to show that the writings which record the statement of Christ's prediction of his own death are a forgery; that the narrative of the resurrection is incredible on internal grounds, and the variety in the various accounts of it are evidences of fraud. It indicates the commencement of the open allegation of literary imposture as distinct from philosophical error, which subsequently marked the criticism of the French school of infidelity, and affected the English unbelievers of the latter half of the century.

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Deism had now reached its maximum. The attention of the age was turned aside from religion to politics by the political dangers incident to the attempts of the Pretender; and when Hume's scepticism was promulgated in 1749 it was received without interest, and Bolingbroke's posthumous writings published in 1754 fell comparatively dead. These two names mark the period which we called the decline of deism. Bolingbroke's views467 however depict deistical opinions of the period when it was at its height, and are a transition into the later form seen in Hume, and therefore require to be stated first, though posterior in the date of publication.

Bolingbroke's writings command respect from their mixture of clearness of exposition with power of argument. They form also the transition to the literature of the next age, in turning attention to history. Bolingbroke had great powers of psychological analysis, but he despised the study of it apart from experience. His philosophy was a philosophy of history. In his attacks on revelation we have the traces of the older philosophical school of deists; but in the consciousness that an historical, not a philosophical, solution must be sought to explain the rise of an historical phenomenon such as Christianity, he exemplifies the historic spirit which was rising, and anticipates the theological inquiry found in Gibbon; and, in his examination of the external historic evidence, both the documents by which the Christian religion is attested, and the effects of tradition in weakening historic data, he evinces traces of the influence of the historical criticism which had arisen in France under his friend Pouilly.468