Читать книгу The Tatler, Volume 3 - Джозеф Аддисон - Страница 22

[Steele.

Thursday, Feb. 16, to Saturday, Feb. 18, 1709-10

Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credam, libenter erro: nec mihi hunc errorem, quo delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo: sin mortuus (ut quidam minuti philosophi censent) nihil sentiam; non vereor, ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi irrideant.—Cicero, De Sen., cap. ult.

Sheer Lane, February 17

Several letters which I have lately received give me information, that some well-disposed persons have taken offence at my using the word "freethinker" as a term of reproach. To set therefore this matter in a clear light, I must declare, that no one can have a greater veneration than myself for the freethinkers of antiquity, who acted the same part in those times, as the great men of the Reformation did in several nations of Europe, by exerting themselves against the idolatry and superstition of the times in which they lived. It was by this noble impulse that Socrates and his disciples, as well as all the philosophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, Seneca, with all the learned men of Rome, endeavoured to enlighten their contemporaries amidst the darkness and ignorance in which the world was then sunk and buried. The great points which these freethinkers endeavoured to establish and inculcate into the minds of men, were, the formation of the universe, the superintendency of Providence, the perfection of the divine nature, the immortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments. They all complied with the religion of their country, as much as possible, in such particulars as did not contradict and pervert these great and fundamental doctrines of mankind. On the contrary, the persons who now set up for freethinkers, are such as endeavour by a little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very principles, for the vindication of which, freedom of thought at first became laudable and heroic.105 These apostates, from reason and good sense, can look at the glorious frame of Nature, without paying an adoration to Him that raised it; can consider the great revolutions in the universe, without lifting up their minds to that Superior Power which hath the direction of it; can presume to censure the Deity in His ways towards men; can level mankind with the beasts that perish; can extinguish in their own minds all the pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a stupid security against the terrors of it. If one were to take the word "priestcraft" out of the mouths of these shallow monsters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the help of this single term that they endeavour to disappoint the good works of the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the hearts of the ignorant against the very light of Nature, and the common received notions of mankind. We ought not to treat such miscreants as these upon the foot of fair disputants, but to pour out contempt upon them, and speak of them with scorn and infamy, as the pests of society, the revilers of human nature, and the blasphemers of a Being, whom a good man would rather die than hear dishonoured. Cicero, after having mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended this divine doctrine of the immortality of the soul, calls those small pretenders to wisdom who declared against it, certain minute philosophers,106