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Title: History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

Author: Adam Storey Farrar

Release Date: November 19, 2009 [Ebook #30499]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FREE THOUGHT IN REFERENCE TO THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION***

History of Free Thought

in Reference to

The Christian Religion

Eight Lectures

Preached Before The

University of Oxford, in the year M.DCCC.LXII., on the Foundation of the Late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury.

By

Adam Storey Farrar, M.A.

Michel Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.

New York:

D. Appleton And Company,

443 & 445 Broadway.

1863

Contents

• Will of Rev. John Bampton.
• Preface.
• Analysis of the lectures.
• Lecture I. On The Subject, Method, And Purpose Of The Course Of Lectures.
• Lecture II. The Literary Opposition of Heathens Against Christianity in the Early Ages.
• Lecture III. Free Thought During The Middle Ages, and At The Renaissance; Together With Its Rise in Modern Times.
• Lecture IV. Deism in England Previous to A.D. 1760.
• Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in England Subsequent to 1760.
• Lecture VI. Free Thought In The Theology Of Germany From 1750-1835.
• Lecture VII. Free Thought: In Germany Subsequently To 1835; And In France During The Present Century.
• Lecture VIII. Free Thought in England in the Present Century; Summary of the Course of Lectures; Inferences in Reference to Present Dangers and Duties.
• Notes.
• Lecture I.
• Lecture II.
• Lecture III.
• Lecture IV.
• Lecture V.
• Lecture VI.
• Lecture VII.
• Lecture VIII.
• Index.
• Footnotes

[pg iii]

Will of Rev. John Bampton.

Extract From The Last Will And Testament Of The Late Rev. John Bampton, Canon Of Salisbury.

“——I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said University, and to be performed in the manner following:

“I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term.

[pg iv]

“Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost—upon the Articles of the Christian Faith as comprehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.

“Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid nor be entitled to the revenue before they are printed.

“Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.”

[pg v]

Preface.

The object of this Preface is to explain the design of the following Lectures, and to enumerate the sources on which they are founded.

What is the province and mode of inquiry intended in a “Critical History of Free Thought”?1 What are the causes which led the author into this line of study?2 What the object proposed by the work?3 What the sources from which it is drawn?4—these probably are the questions which will at once suggest themselves to the reader. The answers to most of them are so fully given in the work,5 that it will only be necessary here to touch upon them briefly.

The word “free thought” is now commonly used, at least in foreign literature6, to express the result of the revolt of the mind against the pressure of external authority in any department of life or speculation. Information concerning the history of the term is given elsewhere.7 It will be sufficient now to state, that the cognate term, free thinking, was appropriated by Collins early in the last century8 to express Deism. It differs from the modern term free thought, both in being restricted to religion, and in conveying the idea rather of the method than of its result, the freedom of the mode of inquiry rather than the character of the conclusions attained; but the same fundamental idea of independence and freedom from authority is implied in the modern term.

[pg vi]

Within the sphere of its application to the Christian religion, free thought is generally used to denote three different systems; viz. Protestantism, scepticism, and unbelief. Its application to the first of these is unfair.9 It is true that all three agree in resisting the dogmatism of any earthly authority; but Protestantism reposes implicitly on what it believes to be the divine authority of the inspired writers of the books of holy scripture; whereas the other two forms acknowledge no authority external to the mind, no communication superior to reason and science. Thus, though Protestantism by its attitude of independence seems similar to the other two systems, it is really separated by a difference of kind, and not merely of degree.10 The present history is restricted accordingly to the treatment of the two latter species of free thought,—the resistance of the human mind to the Christian religion as communicated through revelation, either in part or in whole, neither the scepticism which disintegrates it, or the unbelief which rejects it: the former directing itself especially against Christianity, the latter against the idea of revelation, or even of the supernatural generally.

An analogous reason to that which excludes the history of Protestantism, excludes also that of the opposition made to Christianity by heresy, and by rival religions:11 inasmuch as they repose on authorities, however false, and do not profess to resort to an unassisted study of nature and truth.

This account of the province included under free thought will prepare the way for the explanation of the mode in which the subject is treated.

It is clear that the history, in order to rise above a chronicle, must inquire into the causes which have made freedom of inquiry develop into unbelief. The causes have usually been regarded by theologians to be of two kinds, viz. either superhuman or human; and, if of the latter kind, to be either moral or intellectual. Bishop Van Mildert, in his History of Infidelity, restricted himself entirely to the former.12 Holding strongly that the existence of evil in the world was attributable, not only indirectly and originally, but directly and perpetually, to the [pg vii] operation of the evil spirit, he regarded every form of heresy and unbelief to be the attempt of an invisible evil agent to thwart the truth of God; and viewed the history of infidelity as the study of the results of the operation of this cause in destroying the kingdom of righteousness. Such a view invests human life and history with a very solemn character, and is not without practical value; but it will be obvious that an analysis of this kind must be strictly theological, and removes the inquiry from the province of human science. Even when completed, it leaves unexplored the whole field in which such an evil principle operates, and the agencies which he employs as his instruments.

The majority of writers on unbelief accordingly have treated the subject from a less elevated point of view, and have limited their inquiry to the sphere of the operation of human causes, the media axiomata as it were,13 which express the motives and agencies which have been manifested on the theatre of the world, and visible in actual history. It will be clear that within this sphere the causes are specially of two kinds; viz. those which have their source in the will, and arise from the antagonism of feeling, which wishes revelation untrue, and those which manifest themselves in the intellect, and are exhibited under the form of difficulties which beset the mind, or doubts which mislead it, in respect to the evidence on which revelation reposes. The former, it may be feared, are generally the ground of unbelief; the latter the basis of doubt. Christian writers, in the wish to refer unbelief to the source of efficient causation in the human will, with a view of enforcing on the doubter the moral lesson of responsibility, have generally restricted themselves to the former of these two classes; and by doing so have omitted to explore the interesting field of inquiry presented in the natural history of the variety of forms assumed by scepticism, and their relation to the general causes which have operated in particular ages:—a subject most important, if the intellectual antecedents thus discovered be regarded as causes of doubt; and not less interesting, if, instead of being causes, they are merely considered to be instruments and conditions made use of by the emotional powers.

A history of free thought seems to point especially to the study of the latter class. A biographical history of free thinkers [pg viii] would imply the former; the investigation of the moral history of the individuals, the play of their will and feelings and character; but the history of free thought points to that which has been the product of their characters, the doctrines which they have taught. Science however no less than piety would decline entirely to separate the two;14 piety, because, though admitting the possibility that a judgment may be formed in the abstract on free thought, it would feel itself constantly drawn into the inquiry of the moral responsibility of the freethinker in judging of the concrete cases;—science, because, even in an intellectual point of view, the analysis of a work of art is defective if it be studied apart from the personality of the mental and moral character of the artist who produces it. If even the inquiry be restricted to the analysis of intellectual causes, a biographic treatment of the subject, which would allow for the existence of the emotional, would be requisite.15

The province of the following work accordingly is, the examination of this neglected branch in the analysis of unbelief. While admitting most fully and unhesitatingly the operation of emotional causes, and the absolute necessity, scientific as well as practical, of allowing for their operation, it is proposed to analyse the forms of doubt or unbelief in reference mainly to the intellectual element which has entered into them, and the discovery of the intellectual causes which have produced or modified them. Thus the history, while not ceasing to belong to church history, becomes also a chapter in the history of philosophy, a page in the history of the human mind.

The enumeration of the causes into which the intellectual elements of doubt are resolvable, is furnished in the text of the first Lecture.16 If the nature of some of them be obscure, and the reader be unaccustomed to the philosophical study necessary for fully understanding them; information must be sought in the books to which references are elsewhere given, as the subject is too large to be developed in the limited space of this Preface.

The work however professes to be not merely a narrative, but a “critical history.” The idea of criticism in a history imparts to it an ethical aspect. For criticism does not rest content with [pg ix] ideas, viewed as facts, but as realities. It seeks to pass above the relative, and attain the absolute; to determine either what is right or what is true. It may make this determination by means of two different standards. It may be either independent or dogmatic;—independent if it enters upon a new field candidly and without prepossessions, and rests content with the inferences which the study suggests;—dogmatic, when it approaches a subject with views derived from other sources, and pronounces on right or wrong, truth or falsehood, by reference to them.

It is hoped that the reader will not be unduly prejudiced, if the confession be frankly made, that the criticism in these Lectures is of the latter kind. This indeed might be expected from their very character. The Bampton Lecture is an establishment for producing apologetic treatises. The authors are supposed to assume the truth of Christianity, and to seek to repel attacks upon it. They are defenders, not investigators. The reader has a right to demand fairness, but not independence; truth in the facts, but not hesitation in the inferences. While however the writer of these Lectures takes a definite line in the controversy, and one not adopted professionally, but with cordial assent and heartfelt conviction, he has nevertheless considered that it is due to the cause of scientific truth to intermingle his own opinions as little as possible with the facts of the history. A history without inferences is ethically and religiously worthless: it is a chronicle, not a philosophical narrative. But a history distorted to suit the inferences is not only worthless, but harmful. It is for the reader to judge how far the author has succeeded in the result: but his aim has been not to allow his opinions to warp his view of the facts. History ought to be written with the same spirit of cold analysis which belongs to science. Caricature must not be substituted for portrait, nor vituperation for description.17

Such a mode of treatment in the present instance was the more possible, from the circumstance that the writer, when studying the subject for his private information, without any design to write upon it, had endeavoured to bring his own principles and views perpetually to the test; and to reconsider them candidly by the light of the new suggestions which were brought before him. Instead of approaching the inquiry with a spirit of hostility, [pg x] he had investigated it as a student, not as a partisan. It may perhaps be permitted him without egotism to explain the causes which led him to the study. He had taken holy orders, cordially and heartily believing the truths taught by the church of which he is privileged to be an humble minister. Before doing so, he had read thoughtfully the great works of evidences of the last century, and knew directly or indirectly the character of the deist doubts against which they were directed. His own faith was one of the head as well as the heart; founded on the study of the evidences, as well as on the religious training of early years. But he perceived in the English church earnest men who held a different view; and, on becoming acquainted with contemporary theology, he found the theological literature of a whole people, the Germans, constructed on another basis; a literature which was acknowledged to be so full of learning, that contemporary English writers of theology not only perpetually referred to it, but largely borrowed their materials from German sources. He wished therefore fully to understand the character of these new forms of doubt, and the causes which had produced them. He may confess that, reposing on the affirmative verities of the Christian faith, as gathered from the scriptures and embodied in the immemorial teaching of Christ's church, he did not anticipate that he should discover that which would overthrow or even materially modify his own faith; but he wished, while exploring this field, and gratifying intellectual curiosity, to re-examine his opinions at each point by the light of those with which he might meet in the inquiry. The serious wish also to fulfill his duty in the sphere in which he might move, made him desire to understand these new views; that if false, he might know how to refute them when they came before him, and not be first made aware of their existence from the harsh satire of sceptical critics. His own studies were accordingly conducted in a spirit of fairness—the fairness of the inquirer, not of the doubter; and a habit of mind formed by the study of the history of philosophy, was brought to bear upon the investigation of this chapter in church history: first, of modern forms of doubt, and afterwards the consecutive history of unbelief generally. Accordingly, while he hopes that he has taken care to leave the student in no case unguided, who may accompany him in these [pg xi] pages through the history, he has wished to place him, as he strove to place himself, in the position to see the subject in its true light before drawing the inferences; to understand each topic to a certain extent, as it appears when seen from the opposite point of view, as well as when seen from the Christian. And when this has been effected, he has criticised each by a comparison with those principles which form his standard for testing them, the truth of which the study has confirmed to the writer's own mind. The criticism therefore does not profess to be independent, but dogmatic; but it is hoped that the definite character of the results will not be found to have prevented fairness in the method of inquiry. If the student has the facts correctly, he can form his own judgment on the inferences.

The standard of truth here adopted, as the point of view in criticism, is the teaching of Scripture as expressed in the dogmatic teaching of the creeds of the church; or, if it will facilitate clearness to be more definite, three great truths may be specified, which present themselves to the writer's mind as the very foundation of the Christian religion: (1) the doctrine of the reality of the vicarious atonement provided by the passion of our blessed Lord; (2) the supernatural and miraculous character of the religious revelation in the book of God; and (3) the direct operation of the Holy Ghost in converting and communing with the human soul. Lacking the first of these, Christianity appears to him to be a religion without a system of redemption; lacking the second, a doctrine without authority; lacking the third, a system of ethics without spiritual power. These three principles accordingly are the measure, by agreement with which the truth and falsehood of systems of free thought are ultimately tested.18

The above remarks, together with those which occur in the text, where fuller explanation is afforded, will illustrate the province of the inquiry, and the spirit in which it is conducted.19

The explanation also of the further question concerning the object which the writer proposed to effect, by the treatment of such a subject in a course of Bampton Lectures, is given so fully elsewhere, that a few words may here suffice in reference to it.20 [pg xii] Experience of the wants of students in this time of doubt and transition, which those who are practically acquainted with the subject will best understand, as well as observation of the tone of thought expressed in our sceptical literature, led him to believe that a history, natural as well as literary, of doubt; an analysis of the forms and a statement of the intellectual causes of it, would have a value, direct and indirect, in many ways. His desire, he is willing to confess, was to guide the student, rather than to refute the unbeliever. He did not expect to furnish the combatant with ready-made weapons, which would make him omnipotent in conflict; but he hoped to give him some suggestions in reference to the tactics for conducting the contest. The Lectures have a polemical aspect, but they seek to obtain their end by means of the educational. The writer has aimed at assisting the student, in the struggle with his doubts, in the inquiry for truth, in the quiet meditative search for light and knowledge, preparatory to ministering to others. The survey of a new region, which ordinary works on the history of infidelity rarely touch, may lay bare unsuspected or undetected causes of unbelief; and thus indirectly offer a refutation of it; for intellectual error is refuted, when the origin of it is referred to false systems of thought. The anatomy of error is the first step to its cure.

In another point of view, independently of the value of the line of inquiry generally, and the special suitability of it to individual minds, there is a further use, which in the present day belongs to it in common with all inquiries into the history of thought.

It is hard to persuade the students of a past generation that the historic mode of approaching any problem is the first step toward its successful solution. Yet a little reflection may at least make the meaning of the assertion understood. If we view the literary characteristic of the present, in comparison with that of past ages, we are perhaps right in stating, that its peculiar feature is the prevalence of the method of historical criticism. If the four centuries since the Renaissance be considered, the critical peculiarity of the sixteenth and seventeenth will be found to be the investigation of ancient literature; in the former directed to words, in the latter to things. The eighteenth century broke away from the past, and, emancipating itself from authority, tried [pg xiii] to rebuild truth from its foundations from present materials, independent of the judgment formed by past ages. The nineteenth century unites both methods. It ventures not to explore the universe, unguided by the experience of the past; but, while reuniting itself to the past, it does not bow to it. It accepts it as a fact, not as an authority. The seventeenth century worshipped the past; the eighteenth despised it: the nineteenth mediates, by means of criticism. Accordingly, in literary investigations at present, each question is approached from the historic side, with the belief that the historico-critical inquiry not only gratifies curiosity, but actually contributes to the solution of the problem. Some indeed assert21 this, because they think that the historic study of philosophy is the whole of philosophy; and, believing that all truth is relative to its age, are hopeless of attaining the absolute and unaltering solution of any problem. We, on the other hand, are content to believe that the history of philosophy is only the entrance to philosophy. But in either case, truth is sought by means of a philosophical history of the past; which, tracking the progress of truth and error in any particular department, lays bare the natural as well as the literary history; the causes of the past, as well as its form. Truth and error are thus discovered, not by breaking with the past, and using abstract speculations on original data, but by tracing the growth of thought, gathering the harvest of past investigations, and learning by experience to escape error.

These considerations bear upon the present subject in this manner: they show not only the special adaptation to the passing tastes of the age, of an historic mode of approaching a subject, but exhibit also that the mode of proof and of refutation must be sought, not on abstract grounds, but historic. The position of an enemy is not to be forced, but turned; his premises to be refuted, not his conclusions; the antecedent reasons which led him into his opinion to be exhibited, not merely evidence offered of the fact that he is in error.

This view, that doubt might be refuted by the historic analysis of its operation, by laying bare the antecedent grounds which had produced it, will explain why the author was led to believe that a chapter of mental and moral physiology might be useful, [pg xiv] which would not merely carry out the anatomy of actual forms of disease, but discover their origin by the study of the preceding natural history of the patients.

These remarks will perhaps suffice for explaining the object which was proposed in writing this history; and may justify the hope that this work, thus adapted to the wants of the time, may offer such a contribution to the subject of the Christian evidences, as not only to possess an intellectual value, but to coincide with the purpose contemplated by the founder of the Lectures.

It remains to state the sources which have been used for the literary materials of the history. Though they are sufficiently indicated in the notes, a general description of them may be useful.

They may be distributed under four classes;

1. The histories which have been professedly devoted to the subject.

2. The notices of the history of unbelief in general histories of the church or of literature.

3. (Which ought indeed to rank first in importance;) the original authorities for the facts, i.e. the works of the sceptical writers themselves; or of the contemporary authors who have refuted them.

4. The monographs, which treat of particular writers, ages, or schools, of sceptical thought.

In approaching the subject, a student would probably commence with the first two classes; and after having thus acquired for himself a carte du pays, would then explore it in detail by the aid of the third and fourth.

1. The works which have professedly treated of the history of infidelity, as a whole, are not of great importance.

One of the earliest was the Historia Univ. Atheismi, 1725, of Reimannus; and the De Atheismo, 1737, of Buddeus. (An explanation of the word Atheism, as employed by them, is given in Note 21. p. 413.) hey furnish, as the name implies, a history of scepticism, as well as of sceptics; yet, though the labours of such diligent and learned men can never be useless, they afford little information now available. Their date also necessarily precluded them from knowing the more recent forms of unbelief. Perhaps under this head we ought also to name the chapters on [pg xv] polemical theology in the great works of bibliography of the German scholars of the same time, such as Pfaff (Hist. Litt. Thol.); Buddeus (Isagoge); Fabricius (Delectus Argum.); Walch's (Biblical Theol. Select.); which contain lists of sceptical works, either directly, or indirectly by naming the apologists who have answered them. The references to these works will be found in Note 39. p. 436.

Among French writers, the only one of importance is Houtteville, who prefixed an Introduction to his work, La Religion Chrétienne prouvée par des faits, 1722, containing an account of the writers for and against Christianity from the earliest times. (Translated 1739.) It contains little information concerning the authors or the events, but a clearly and correctly written analysis of their works and thoughts.

Among the English writers who have attempted a consecutive history of the whole subject was Van Mildert, afterwards bishop of Durham, who has been already named. The first volume of his Boyle Lectures, in 1802-4, was devoted to the history of infidelity; the second to a general statement of the evidences for Christianity. This work, on account of its date, necessarily stops short before the existence of modern forms of doubt; and indeed evinces no knowledge concerning the contemporary forms of literature in Germany, which had already attracted the attention of Dr. Herbert Marsh. The point of view of the work, as already described, almost entirely precludes the author from entering upon the analysis of the causes, either emotional or intellectual, which have produced unbelief. Its value accordingly is chiefly in the literary materials collected in the notes; in which respect it bears marks of careful study. Though mostly drawn from second-hand sources, it exhibits wide reading and thoughtful judgment.

A portion of the Bampton Lectures for 1852, by the Rev. J. C. Riddle, was devoted to the subject of infidelity. The author's object, as the title22 implies, was to give the natural history of unbelief, to the neglect of the literary. Psychological rather than historical analysis was used by him for the investigation; and his examination of the moral causes of doubt is better than [pg xvi] of the intellectual. The notes contain a collection of valuable quotations, which supplement those of Van Mildert, but are unfortunately given, for the most part, without references.

This completes23 the enumeration of the histories professedly devoted to infidelity, with the exception of a small but very creditable production published since several of these lectures were written, Defence of the Faith; Part I. Forms of Unbelief, by the Rev. S. Robins, forming the first part of a work, of which the second is to treat the evidences; the third to draw the moral. It does not profess to be a very deep work;24 but it is interesting; drawn generally from the best sources, and written in an eloquent style and devout spirit.

2. The transition is natural from these works, which treat of the history of unbelief or give lists of the works of unbelievers, to the notices of sceptical writers contained in general histories of the church or of literature.

In this, as in the former case, it is only in modern times that important notices occur concerning forms of unbelief. The circumstance that in the early ages unbelief took the form of opposition or persecution on the part of heathens, and that in the middle ages it was so rare, caused the ancient church historians and mediæval church chroniclers to record little respecting actual unbelief, though they give information about heresy. Even in modern times, it is not till the early part of the eighteenth century that any attention is bestowed on the subject. The earlier historians, both Protestant, such as the Magdeburg Centuriators, and Catholic, like Baronius, wrote the history of the past for a controversial purpose in relation to the contests of their own times: and in the next period, in the one church, Arnold confined himself to the history of heresy rather than unbelief; and in the [pg xvii] other, Fleury and Tillemont wrote the history of deeds rather than of ideas, and afford no information, except in a few allusions of the latter writer to the early intellectual opposition of the heathens.

But about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the period of cold orthodoxy and solid learning which immediately preceded the rise of rationalism, as well as in that of incipient free thought, we meet not only with the historians of theological literature already named above, but with historians of thought like Brucker, and of the church like Mosheim, possessed of large taste for inquiry, and wide literary sympathies, who contribute information on the subject: and towards the close of the century we find Schröckh, who, in his lengthy and careful history of the church since the Reformation,25 has taken so extensive a view of the nature of church history, that he has included in it an account of the struggle with freethinkers. Among the same class, with the exception that he differs in being marked by rationalist sympathies, must be ranked Henke.26

In the present century the spread of the scientific spirit, which counts no facts unworthy of notice, together with the attention bestowed on the history of doctrine, and the special interest in understanding the fortunes of free thought, which sympathy in danger created during the rationalist movement, prevented the historians from passing lightly over so important a series of facts. It may be sufficient to instance, in proof, the notices of unbelief [pg xviii] which occur in Neander's Church History. General histories also of literature, like Schlosser's History of Literature in the Eighteenth Century, or the more theological one of Hagenbach (Geschichte des 18n Jahrhunderts) incidentally afford information.

The various works just named are the chief of this class which furnish assistance.

3. After a general preliminary idea of the history has been obtained from these sources, in order to prevent being confused with details; it is necessary to resort next to the original sources of information, without careful study of which the history must lack a real basis.

In reference to the early unbelievers, the direct materials are lost; but the contemporary replies to these writings remain. In the case of later unbelievers, both the works and the answers to them exist. It will be presumed that in so large a subject the writer cannot have read all the sceptical works which have been written, and are here named. With the exception however of Averroes and of the Paduan school,27 in which cases he has chiefly adopted second-hand information, and merely himself consulted a few passages of the original writers, he has in all other instances read the chief works of the sceptical writers, sufficiently at least to make himself acquainted with their doubts, and in many cases has even made an analysis of their works. The reader will perceive by the foot-notes the instances in which this applies.

It may be due to some of the historians who have made a special study of particular periods from original sources, to state, that so far as his limited experience extends he can bear witness to their exactness. Leehler's work on English deism, for example,28 is a singular example of truthful narrative; and Leland's,29 though controversial, is worthy of nearly the same praise.

4. There remains a fourth source of materials in the separate monographs on particular men, opinions, or schools of thought. We shall enumerate these according to the order of the lectures; dwelling briefly on the majority of them, as being described elsewhere; and describing at greater length those only which relate [pg xix] to the history of the theological movements in Germany described in Lectures VI. and VII.; inasmuch as references are there frequently made to these works without a specific description of their respective characters.

In relation to the early struggle of Paganism against Christianity,30 the work of Lardner, Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion (1764-7) (Works, vols. vii.-ix.), is well known for carefulness of treatment and the value of its references. Portions also of the works of J. A. Fabricius, especially his Bibliotheca Græca and Lux Evangelii (1732) are useful in reference to the lost works, and for bibliographical knowledge: also a monograph by Kortholt, Paganus Obtrectator (1703), on the objections made by Christians in the early ages, gathered from the Apologies.

Among recent works it is only necessary to specify one, viz. the second series of the Histoire de l'Eglise Chrétienne, by E. de Pressensé (1861), containing La Grande Lutte du Christianisme contre le Paganisme, the account of the struggle both of deeds and ideas on the part of the heathens against Christianity, and of the apology of the Christians in reply. The sketches of the arguments used both by the heathens, as recovered from fragments, and by the Christian apologists, are most ably executed. The frequent references to it in the foot-notes will show the importance which the writer attaches to this work.31

The long period of the middle ages, together with early modern32 history, so far as the latter bears upon the present subject, is spanned by the aid of four works; Cousin's Memoir on Abelard (1836); the La Reforme of Laurent (1861), a professor at Ghent; the Averroes of E. Renan (1851), one of the ablest among the younger writers of France; and the Essais de Philosophie Religieuse of E. Saisset (1859). All these works are full of learning; some of them are works of mind as well as of erudition. Cousin's treatise is well known,33 and may be said to have reopened the study of medieval philosophy. The contents of Laurent's work are specified elsewhere.34 That of Renan, besides containing a sketch of the life and philosophy of Averroes, studies [pg xx] his influence in the three great spheres where it was felt,—the Spanish Jews, the Scholastic philosophers, and the Peripatetics of Padua. The work of Saisset is a most instructive critical sketch on religious philosophy.

The period of English Deism35 is treated in two works; the well-known work of Leland above cited, and the one also named above by Lechler, now general superintendent at Leipsic; a work full of information, and exceedingly complete; one of the carefully executed monographs with which many of the younger German scholars first bring their names into notice. Though the interest of the subject is limited, it well merits a translator.36

There is a deficiency of any similar work on the history of infidelity in France,37 treating it separately and exhaustively. The work which most nearly deserves the description is vol. vi. of Henke's Kirchengeschichte.38 This want however is the less felt, because almost every portion of the period has been treated in detail by French critics of various schools; among which some of the sketches of Bartholmess, Histoire Critique des Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie Moderne, 1855; and of Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Philosophie au 18esiècle;39 are perhaps the most useful for our purpose. One portion of Mr. Buckle's History of Civilisation, the best written part of his first volume, also affords much information, in the main trustworthy, in reference to the intellectual condition of France of the same period.40

A description of the events of a period so complex as that of the German theological movement of the last hundred years41 would have been an object too ambitious to attempt, especially when it must necessarily, from the size of the subject, be grounded on an acquaintance with single writers of a school, or single works of an author used as samples of the remainder; if it were not that abundant guidance is supplied in the memoirs by German theologians of all shades of opinion, who have studied the history of their country, and not only narrated facts, but investigated causes. A few narratives of it also exist by scholars [pg xxi] of other countries; but these are founded on the former. We shall in the main preserve the order of their publication in enumerating these various works.

The materials for the condition of Germany at the beginning of the last century, antecedently to the introduction of the new influences which created rationalism,42 are conveyed in Weismann, Introductio in Memorabilia Eccl. Hist. (1718), and in Schröckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte (1768-1812). The first distinct examination however of the peculiar character of the movement which ensued, called Rationalism, occurred in the discussion as to its meaning and province; in which Tittmann, Röhr, Staüdlin, Bretschneider, Hahn, &c., were engaged; an account of which, with a list of their works,43 is given under the explanation of the word “Rationalism” in Note 21, p. 416. The chief value of these works at present is, partly to enable us to understand how contemporaries viewed the movement while in progress; partly to reproduce the state of belief which existed in the older school of rationalists, and its opponents, before the reaction toward orthodoxy had fully altered theological thought.

Whilst the dispute between rationalism and supernaturalism was still going on, and the latter was gradually gaining the victory, through the reaction under Schleiermacher just alluded to, an English writer, Mr. Hugh James Rose,44 published some sermons preached at Cambridge in 1825, which were the means of directing attention to the subject both at home and abroad, and stimulating investigation into the history. As this work, and especially the reply of one writer to it, are often here quoted, it may be well to narrate the interesting literary controversy, now forgotten, which ensued upon its publication.

Mr. Rose described the havoc made by the rationalist speculations, alike in dogma, in interpretation, and in church history, and attributed the evil chiefly to the absence of an efficient system of internal church government which would have suppressed such a movement. He was answered (1828) by Mr. (now Dr.) Pusey, then a junior Fellow of Oriel, who, having visited Germany, and become acquainted with the forms of [pg xxii] German thought, and the circumstances which had marked its development, conceived justly that the reasons of a moral phenomenon like the overthrow of religious faith in Germany must be sought in intrinsic causes, and not merely in an extrinsic cause, such as the absence of efficient means of ecclesiastical repression. In this work,45 marked by great knowledge of the subject, and characterized by just and philosophical reflections, the author pointed out an internal law of development in the events of the history, and traced the ultimate cause of the movement to the divorce between dogma and piety which had characterized the age preceding the rise of rationalism. His motive for entering the contest was, not the wish to defend the movement, for his own position was fixed upon the faith of the creeds; but seems to have been partly a love of truth, which did not like to see an imperfect view of a great question set forth; and partly the wish to prevent attention being diverted by Mr. Rose's explanation, from perceiving the extreme resemblance of the contemporary time in England to that of the age which preceded rationalism.

To this work Mr. Rose replied in a Letter to the Bishop of London, misunderstanding Mr. Pusey's object, and conveying the impression that he had made himself responsible for the rationalism which it had been the object of the sermons to condemn. He felt himself however compelled, in a second edition of the sermons,46 to enter more largely into proofs from German literature of the position which he had assumed; and produced a collection of literary facts, of value in reference to the movement.

Mr. Pusey replied (1830) with a triumphant vindication alike of his own meaning, and the truth of his own position.47 The work is necessarily less interesting than the former, as it turns more upon personal questions, and is more polemical; but the literary information conveyed is equally valuable.

If we may be permitted to form an opinion concerning the controversy, it may perhaps be true to say, that Mr. Rose's fault (if indeed we may say so of one who so worthily received honour in his generation) was, that he approached the subject from the polemic and practical instead of the historic side. His work is [pg xxiii] like the description of a battle-field, which gives an idea of the mangled remains that strew the field, but does not recount the causes of contest, nor the progress of the action. The work of his opponent describes the mustering of the forces preparatory to the action, and the causes which led to the struggle. Perhaps, in a few matters of detail, the former writer has taken a truer, though a less hopeful, view than his opponent, of certain classes of opinions, or of certain men; but the latter has better preserved the historical perspective. The former saw mainly the old forms of rationalism, the latter descried the partial return toward the faith which had already begun, and has since gone forward so energetically.48

These works must always afford much information on the topics which they embrace. It is proper however to add, that Dr. Pusey, some years ago, recalled the remaining copies of the edition of his work. On this account the writer of these lectures, when he has had occasion to give references to it, has taken care not to quote it for opinions, but only for facts.49

The attack of Mr. Rose on German theology caused replies abroad as well as at home. Several German theologians were led to a more careful study of their own history and position, to which references will be found in Mr. Rose's replies.50

Previously to the publication of Dr. Pusey's treatises, a work had been written with a purpose less directly controversial, by Tholuck: Abriss Einer Geschichte der umwälzung, welche seit 1750, auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden, now contained in his Vermischte Schriften, 1839, vol. 2.51 It is valuable for the earlier history of Rationalism. The spirit of it is very similar to that of Dr. Pusey's work. Indeed the latter author, though not aware of the publication of Tholuck's work, was cognisant of his views on these questions, through lectures heard from him abroad.

These works however were all previous to the great agitation in German theology, which ensued in consequence of Strauss's [pg xxiv] Leben Jesu, in 1835. After the first excitement of that event had passed, we meet with three works, two French and one German, in which the history is brought down to a later period. The French ones were, the Histoire Critique du Rationalisme, 1841, of Amand Saintes, translated 1849; and the Etudes Critiques sur le Rationalisme Contemporain, of the Abbé H. de Valroger, 1846; the latter of which works the writer of these lectures has been unable to see. The German one was, Der Deutsche Protestantismus, 1847,52 and is attributed to Hundeshagen, professor at Heidelberg.

The Critical History of Amand Saintes, though thought by the Germans53 to be defective, in consequence of want of sufficiently separating between the various forms of rationalism, is more replete than any other book with stores of information, and extracts arranged in a very clear form.54 It is very useful, if the reader first possesses a better scheme into which to arrange the materials. It is written also in a truly evangelical spirit.

The work of Hundeshagen had a political object as well as a religious. It was composed just before the revolution of 1848, when Germany was panting for freedom; and its object was to defend the position of the constitutional party in church and state; and with a view to establish the importance of their moral and doctrinal position, he surveyed the recent history of his country.

Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte (translated), which was published nearly about the same time, also contains a very interesting sketch, with valuable notes, of the chief writers and works in the movement of German theology.

The view of the history given in Tholuck and Hundeshagen [pg xxv] is that which is taken by the school called the “Mediation school” in German theology.55 The general cause assigned by them for scepticism was the separation of dogma and piety; the recovery from the rationalistic state being due to the reunion of these elements, which Hundeshagen shows to have been also the great feature of the German reformation.

After an interval of about ten years, when the tendencies created by Strauss's movement had become definitely manifest, the history was again surveyed in two works, the one, Geschichte des Deutschen Protestantismus, by Kahnis (translated 1856), who belongs to the Lutheran reactionary party; the other, Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, 1856, by C. Schwarz, whose work is so candid and free from party bias, that it is unimportant to remark the party to which he belongs.56

The narrative of Kahnis, originally a series of papers in a magazine, is very full of facts, and generally fair; but it wants form. The author's view is, that the sceptical movement arose from abandoning the dogmatic expression of revealed truth, contained in the old Confessions of the Lutheran church; and he considers the reaction of the Mediation school in favour of orthodoxy to be imperfect; the true restoration being only found by returning to the Confessions.

The work of Schwarz is restricted to the latest forms of German theology, and goes back no farther than the circumstances which led to the work of Strauss. It is unequalled in clearness; bearing the mark of German exactness and fulness, and rivalling French histories in didactic power. These two works differ from most of those previously named, in being histories of modern German theology generally, and not merely of the rationalist forms of it.

Such are the chief sources in which a student may learn the view taken by the German critics of different schools, concerning the recent church history of their country at various moments of its progress. The fulness of this account will be excused, if it [pg xxvi] provide information concerning works to which reference is made in the foot-notes of those lectures which treat of this period.

In describing the doubts of the present century in France,57 considerable help has been found in the Hist. de la Littérature, &c. written by Nettement,58 and in the Essais of Damiron,59 as well as in criticisms by recent French writers; which are cited in the foot-notes to the lecture which treats of the period.

The subject of the contemporary doubt in England60 has been felt to be a delicate one. It has however been thought better to carry the history down to the present time, and to deal frankly in expressing the writer's own opinion. Delicacy forbade the introduction of the names61 of writers into the text of this part of the Sermons, but they have been inserted in the foot-notes.

The mention of one additional source of information will complete the examination which was proposed.

It will be observed, that references have been very frequently given in the notes, to the Reviews, English and French, and occasionally German, for papers which treat on the subjects embraced in the history. When the writer studied the subject for publication, he took care to consult these, as affording a kind of commentary by contemporaries on the different portions of the history. [pg xxvii] It is hoped that the references to those written in the two former languages will be found to be tolerably complete. The enormous number of those which exist in German, together with the absence for the most part of indexes to them, renders it probable that many separate papers of great value, the special studies by different scholars of passages in the literary history of their own nation, have been left unenumerated. The German literary periodicals are indeed the solitary source of information which the writer considers has not been fully worked for these lectures.62

Among the articles in English Reviews, many bear marks of careful study; and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity of rescuing them from the neglect which is likely to occur to papers written without name, and in periodicals. The freethinking Reviews have discussed the opinions of the friends of free thought more frequently than the others; but those here cited are of all shades of opinion; and the writer has found many to be of great use, even when differing widely from the conclusions drawn. He is glad indeed to take this opportunity of expressing his thanks to the unknown authors of these various productions, which have afforded him so much instruction, and often so much help. He trusts that he has in all cases candidly and fully acknowledged his obligations when he has borrowed their materials, or condensed their thoughts. If he has in any case, through inadvertence, failed to do so, he hopes that this acknowledgment will be allowed to compensate for the unintentional omission.

The reader being now in possession both of the purpose designed in the lectures, and of the sources of the information used in their composition, it only remains to add a few miscellaneous remarks.

In the delivery of the lectures, several portions were omitted, on account of the excessive length to which they would have run. It has not been thought necessary to indicate these passages by brackets; but, as those who heard them may perhaps wish to have an enumeration, a list is here subjoined.63

[pg xxviii]

The notes, it will be perceived, are placed, some at the foot of the text, others at the end. Those are put as foot-notes which either were very brief, or which supplied information that the reader might be supposed to desire in connection with the text. Most of those which are appended are of the same character as the foot-notes; i.e. sources of information in reference to the subjects discussed in the text. A few however supply information on collateral subjects. The Notes 4, 5, and 49, will be found to contain a history of Apologetic Literature parallel with the history of Free Thought; and Note 21 discusses the history of some technical terms commonly employed in the history of doubt.

The size of the subject has precluded the possibility of giving many extracts from other works; but it may be permitted to remark, that the literary references given are designed to supply sources of real and valuable information on the various points in relation to which they are cited. It can hardly be necessary to state, that the writer must not in any way be held responsible for the sentiments expressed in the works to which he may have given references. In a subject such as that which is here treated, many of the works cited are neutral in character, and many are objectionable. But it is right to supply complete literary materials, as well as references to works which state both sides of the questions considered.

The index appended is brief, and devoted chiefly to Proper Names; the fulness of the Table of Contents seeming to render a longer one unnecessary, which should contain references to subjects.

The writer wishes to express his acknowledgments to the chief Librarian of the Bodleian, the Rev. H. O. Coxe, for his kindness in procuring for his use a few foreign works which were necessary. He avails himself also of this opportunity of expressing publicly his thanks to the same individual, for the perseverance with which he has accomplished the scheme of providing a reading-room in connection with the Bodleian Library, open to students in an evening. Those whose time and strength are spent in college or private tuition during the mornings, are thus enabled [pg xxix] to avail themselves of the treasures of a library, which until this recent alteration was in a great degree useless to many of the most active minds and diligent students in the university.

Thanks are also due to a few other persons for their advice and courtesy in the loan of scarce books; also, in some instances, for assistance in the verification of a reference;64 and in one case, to a distinguished scholar, for his kindness in revising one of the Notes.

The spirit in which the writer has composed the history has been stated elsewhere.65 His work now goes forth with no extraneous claims on public attention. If it be, by the Divine blessing, the means of affording instruction, guidance, or comfort, to a single mind, the writer's labour will be amply recompensed.

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Analysis of the lectures.

Lecture I.

On the subject, method, and purpose of the course of Lectures.

The subject stated to be the struggle of the human mind against the Christian revelation, in whole or in part. (p. 1.) Explanation of the points which form the occasion of the conflict. (pp. 1-3.)

The mode of treatment, being that of a critical history, includes (p. 3) the discovery of (1) the facts, (2) the causes, and (3) the moral.

The main part of this first lecture is occupied in explaining the second of these divisions.

Importance, if the investigation were to be fully conducted, of carrying out a comparative study of religions and of the attitude of the mind in reference to all doctrine that rests on authority. (pp. 4-6.)

The idea of causes implies,

I. The law of the operation of the causes.

II. The enumeration of the causes which act according to this assumed law.

The empirical law, or formula descriptive of the action of reason on religion, is explained to be one form of the principle of progress by antagonism, the conservation or discovery of truth by means of inquiry and controversy; a merciful Providence leaving men responsible for their errors, but ultimately overruling evil for good. (p. 7.)

This great fact illustrated in the four Crises of the Christian faith in Europe, viz. In the struggle

(1) With heathen philosophy, about A.D. 160-360. (p. 8.)

(2) With sceptical tendencies in Scholasticism, in the middle ages (1100-1400). (p. 8.)

(3) With literature, at the Renaissance, in Italy (1400-1625). (p. 9.)

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(4) With modern philosophy in three forms (p. 11): viz. English Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (p. 11); French Infidelity in the eighteenth century; German Rationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth.

Proposal to study the natural as well as literary history of these forms of doubt.—The investigation separated from inquiries into heresy as distinct from scepticism. (p. 13.)

The causes, seen to act according to the law just described, which make free thought develope into unbelief, stated to be twofold. (p. 13.)

1. Emotional causes.—Necessity for showing the relation of the intellectual causes to the emotional, both per se, and because the idea of a history of thought, together with the comparative rarity of the process here undertaken, implies the restriction of the attention mainly to the intellectual. (p. 13.)

Influence of the emotional causes shown, both from psychology and from the analysis of the nature of the evidence offered in religion (pp. 14, 15).—Historical illustrations of their influence. (pp. 15-17.)

Other instances where the doubt is in origin purely intellectual (p. 17), but where nevertheless opportunity is seen for the latent operation of the emotional. (p. 18.)

Explanation how far religious doubt is sin. (pp. 19, 20.)

2. Intellectual causes, which are the chief subject of these lectures; the conjoint influence however of the emotional being always presupposed.

The intellectual causes shown to be (p. 20):

(α) the new material of knowledge which arises from the advance of the various sciences; viz. Criticism; Physical, Moral, and Ontological science. (p. 21.)

(β) the various metaphysical tests of truth or grounds of certitude employed. (p. 22.)

An illustration of the meaning (pp. 22, 23), drawn from literature, in a brief comparison of the types of thought shown in Milton, Pope, and Tennyson.

Statement of the exact position of this inquiry in the subdivisions of metaphysical science (pp. 24, 25), and detailed explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of applying to religion the tests of Sense, subjective Forms of Thought, Intuition, and Feeling, respectively; as the standard of appeal. (pp. 25-32.)

Advantage of a biographic mode of treatment in the investigation of the operation of these causes in the history of doubt. (pp. 32-34.)

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Statement of the utility of the inquiry:

(1) Intellectually, (α) in a didactic and polemical point of view, in that it refers the origin of the intellectual elements in error to false philosophy and faulty modes of judging, and thus refutes error by analysing it into the causes which produce it; and also (β) in an indirect contribution to the Christian evidences by the historic study of former contests. (p. 36.)

(2) Morally, in creating deep pity for the sinner, united with hatred for the sin. (p. 36.)

Concluding remarks on the spirit which has influenced the writer in these lectures. (pp. 37, 38.)

Lecture II.

The literary opposition of Heathens against Christianity in the early ages.

The first of the four crises of the faith. (pp. 39-74.) Agreement and difference of this crisis with the modern. (p. 40.) Sources for ascertaining its nature, the original writings of unbelievers being lost. (pp. 41, 42.)

Preliminary explanation of four states of belief among the heathens in reference to religion, from which opposition to Christianity would arise: (pp. 43-118) viz.

(1) the tendency to absolute disbelief of religion, as seen in Lucian and the Epicurean school. (p. 43.) (2) a reactionary attachment to the national creed,—the effect of prejudice in the lower orders, and of policy in the educated. (pp. 45, 46.) (3) the philosophical tendency, in the Stoics, (p. 44) and Neo-Platonists. (pp. 45, 46.) (4) the mystic inclination for magic rites. (p. 47.)

Detailed critical history of the successive literary attacks on Christianity. (p. 48 seq.)

1. that of Lucian, about A.D. 170, in the Peregrinus Proteus. (pp. 48-50.) 2. that of Celsus, about the same date. (pp. 50-55.) 3. that of Porphyry, about 270. (pp. 56-61.) 4. that of Hierocles about 303, founded on the earlier work of Philostratus respecting the life of Apollonius of Tyana. (pp. 62-64.) 5. that of Julian, A.D. 363; an example of the struggle in deeds as well as in ideas. (pp. 65-68.)

(Account of the Philopatris of the Pseudo-Lucian. (p. 67.))

Conclusion; showing the relation of these attacks to the intellectual [pg xxxiv] tendencies before mentioned (p. 69), and to the general intellectual causes sketched in Lect. I. (p. 69.)—Insufficiency of these causes to explain the whole phenomenon of unbelief, unless the conjoint action of emotional causes be supposed. (pp. 71, 72.)

Analogy of this early conflict to the modern. Lessons from consideration of the means by which the early Church repelled it. (pp. 72-74.)

Lecture III.

Free Thought during the middle ages, and at the Renaissance; together with its rise in modern times.

This period embraces the second and third of the four epochs of doubt, and the commencement of the fourth. Brief outline of the events which it includes. (pp. 75, 76.)

Second crisis, from A.D. 1100-1400. (pp. 76-92.) It is a struggle political as well as intellectual, Ghibellinism as well as scepticism. (p. 76.)

The intellectual tendencies in this period are four:

1. The scepticism developed in the scholastic philosophy, as seen in the Nominalism of Abélard in the twelfth century. Account of the scholastic philosophy, pp. 77-80; and of Abélard as a sceptic in his treatise Sic et Non. (pp. 81-85.) 2. The mot of progress in religion in the Franciscan book called The Everlasting Gospel in the thirteenth century. (pp. 86, 87.) 3. The idea of the comparative study of religion, as seen in the legend of the book De Tribus Impostoribus in the thirteenth century; and in the poetry of the period. (pp. 88, 89.) 4. The influence of the Mahometan philosophy of Averroes in creating a pantheistic disbelief of immortality. (pp. 90, 91.)

Remarks on the mode used to oppose these movements; and critical estimate of the period. (pp. 91, 92.)

Third crisis, from 1400-1625. (pp. 93-105.) Peculiarity of this period as the era of the Renaissance and of “Humanism,” and as the transition from mediæval society to modern. (p. 93.)

Two chief sceptical tendencies in it:

(1) The literary tendency in Tuscany and Rome in the fifteenth century; the dissolution of faith being indicated by (a) the poetry of the romantic epic. (p. 94.) (b) the revival of heathen tastes. (p. 95.)

Estimate of the political and social causes likely to generate doubt, which were then acting. (pp. 97, 98.) the unbelief was confined to Italy.—Reasons why so vast a movement as the Reformation passed without fostering unbelief. (p. 99.)

[pg xxxv]

2. The philosophical tendency in the university of Padua in the sixteenth century. (p. 99 seq.) The spirit of it, pantheism (p. 100), in two forms; one arising from the doctrines of Averroes; the other seen in Pomponatius, from Alexander of Aphrodisias. (p. 101.) The relation of other philosophers, such as Bruno and Vanini, to this twofold tendency. (pp. 102-104.)

Remarks on the mode used to oppose doubt (p. 104); and estimate of the crisis. (p. 105.)

Fourth crisis; (pp. 105-339) commencing in the seventeenth century, through the effects of the philosophy of Bacon and Descartes. (p. 106.)

The remainder of the lecture is occupied with the treatment of the influence of Cartesianism, as seen in Spinoza.

Examination of Spinoza's philosophy (pp. 106-110); of his criticism in the Theologico-Politicus (pp. 109-113); and of his indirect influence. (p. 113, 114.)

Concluding remarks on the government of Providence, as witnessed in the history of large periods of time, such as that comprised in this lecture. (p. 115.)

Lecture IV.

Deism in England previous to A.D. 1760.

This lecture contains the first of the three forms which doubt has taken in the fourth crisis. (p. 116.)—Sketch of the chief events, political and intellectual, which influenced the mind of England during the seventeenth century (p. 117); especial mention of the systems of Bacon and Descartes, as exhibiting the peculiarity that they were philosophies of method. (pp. 117, 118.)

The history of Deism studied:

I. Its rise traced, 1640-1700. (pp. 119-125.) In this period the religious inquiry has a political aspect, as seen (1) in Lord Herbert of Cherbury (De Veritate and Religio Laici) in the reign of Charles I. (pp. 119, 120.) (2) In Hobbes's Leviathan. (pp. 121, 122.) (3) In Blount (Oracles of Reason, and Life of Apollonius), in the reign of Charles II., in whom a deeper political antipathy to religion is seen. (pp. 123, 124.)

II. The maturity of Deism (1700-1740), pp. 125-144. This period includes (p. 127):

1. The examination of the first principles of religion, on its doctrinal side, in Toland's Christianity not Mysterious, &c. (pp. 126-130.) 2. Ditto, on its ethical side, in Lord Shaftesbury. (pp. 130, 131.) 3. An attack on the external evidences, viz. On prophecy, by Collins, Scheme of Literal Prophecy, &c. (pp. 132-136). [pg xxxvi] On Miracles, by Woolston, Discourses on Miracles. (pp. 136-138); and by Arnobius. (p. 143.) 4. The substitution of natural religion for revealed, in Tindal, Christianity as old as the Creation. (pp. 138-140.), in Morgan, Moral Philosopher. (pp. 140, 141.), and in Chubb, Miscellaneous Works. (pp. 142, 143.)

III. The decline of Deism, 1740-1760. (pp. 144-153): 1. in Bolingbroke, a combined view of deist objections. (pp. 143-147.) 2. in Hume, an assault on the evidence of testimony, which substantiates miracles. (pp. 147-153.)

Remarks on the peculiarities of Deism, the intellectual causes which contributed to produce it (pp. 154, 155); and a comparison of it with the unbelief of other periods. (p. 156.)

Estimate of the whole period; and consideration of the intellectual and spiritual means used for repelling unbelief in it (pp. 157-161); the former in the school of evidences, of which Butler is the type, the mention of whom leads to remarks on his Analogy (pp. 157-159); and the latter in spiritual labours like those of Wesley. (pp. 160, 161.)

Lecture V.

Infidelity in France in the eighteenth century; and unbelief in England subsequent to 1760.

Infidelity in France (pp. 163-194).—This is the second phase of unbelief in the fourth crisis of faith.

Sketch of the state of France, ecclesiastical, political (pp. 164, 165,) and intellectual (partly through the philosophy of Condillac, pp. 166, 167), which created such a mental and moral condition as to allow unbelief to gain a power there unknown elsewhere.—The unbelief stated to be caused chiefly by the influence of English Deism, transplanted into the soil thus prepared. (p. 203.)

The history studied (1) in its assault on the Church; as seen in Voltaire; the analysis of whose character is necessary, because his influence was mainly due to the teacher, not the doctrine taught. (pp. 169-176.) (2) in the transition to an assault on the State, in Diderot, (pp. 179, 180); the philosophy of the Encyclopædists (p. 177); Helvetius (p. 180); and D'Holbach. (p. 181.) (3) in the attack on the State, in Rousseau (pp. 183-187).—Analysis of the Emile for his views on religion, (p. 185), and comparison with Voltaire. (p. 188.) [pg xxxvii] (4) in the Revolution, both the political movement and blasphemous irreligion (pp. 188, 189); and the intellectual movement in Volney (Analysis of the Ruines, pp. 191, 192).

Estimate of the period (pp. 193, 194).

Unbelief in England, from 1760 to a date a little later than the end of the century (pp. 194-209), continued from Lecture IV.

These later forms of it stated to differ slightly from the former, by being partially influenced by French thought. (p. 195.)

The following instances of it examined:

(1) Gibbon viewed as a writer and a critic on religion (pp. 196-199). (2) T. Paine: account of his Age of Reason (pp. 199-201). (3) The socialist philosophy of R. Owen (p. 202). (4) The scepticism in the poetry of Byron and Shelley (pp. 203-207).

The last two forms of unbelief, though occurring in the present century, really embody the spirit of the last.

Statement of the mode used to meet the doubt in England during this period. Office of the Evidences (pp. 207-209).

Lecture VI.

Free Thought in the Theology of Germany, from 1750-1835.

This is the third phase of free thought in that which was called the fourth crisis of faith.—Importance of the movement, which is called “rationalism,” as the theological phase of the literary movement of Germany (p. 210).—Deviation from the plan previously adopted, in that a sketch is here given of German theological inquiry generally, and not merely of unbelief (p. 211).

Brief preliminary sketch of German theology since the Reformation. Two great tendencies shown in it during the seventeenth century (p. 211).

(1) The dogmatic and scholastic, science without earnestness (p. 212). (2) The pietistic, earnestness without science (p. 213).

In the first half of the eighteenth century, three new influences are introduced (pp. 213, 214), which are the means of creating rationalism in the latter half: viz.

(α) The philosophy of Wolff, explained to be a formal expression of Leibnitz's principles; and the evil effect of it, accidental and indirect (pp. 214-216). (β) The works of the English deists (p. 216). (γ) The influence of the colony of French infidels at the court of Frederick II. of Prussia (p. 217).

[pg xxxviii]

The subsequent history is studied in three periods (p. 218); viz.

Period I. (1750-1810).—Destructive in character, inaugurated by Semler (pp. 218-234). Period II. (1810-1835).—Reconstructive in character, inaugurated by Schleiermacher (pp. 239-261). Period III. (1835 to present time)—Exhibiting definite and final tendencies, inaugurated by Strauss (Lect. VII).

Period I. (1750-1810), is studied under two Sub-periods:

Sub-period I. (1750-1790, pp. 219-228), which includes three movements; (1) Within the church (p. 219 seq.); dogmatic; literary in Michaelis and Ernesti; and freethinking in Semler (pp. 221-224), the author of the historic method of interpretation. (2) External to the church (pp. 224-226); literary deism in Lessing, and in the Wolfenbüttel fragments of Reimarus (p. 225). (3) External to the church; practical deism, in the educational institutions of Basedow (p. 227).

Sub-period II. (1790-1810, pp. 227-234); the difference caused by the introduction of two new influences; viz,

(α) The literary, of the court of Weimar and of the great men gathered there (p. 228). (β) The philosophy of Kant, (the effect of which is explained, pp. 229, 230); the home of both of which was at Jena.

As the result of these new influences, three movements are visible in the Church (p. 230); viz,

(1) The critical “rationalism” of Eichhorn and Paulus, the intellectual successors of Semler (pp. 231, 232). (2) The dogmatic, more or less varying from orthodoxy, seen towards the end of this period in Bretschneider, Röhr, and Wegscheider (pp. 233, 234). (3) The supernaturalism of Reinhardt and Storr (p. 231).

Period II. (1810-1835.)—Introduction of four new influences (p. 235), which completely altered the theological tone; viz. (α) New systems of speculative philosophy; of Jacobi, who followed out the material element of Kant's philosophy (p. 235); and of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who followed out the formal (p. 238). (β) The “romantic” school of poetry (p. 239). (γ) The moral tone, generated by the liberation wars of 1813. (p. 240.) (δ) The excitement caused by the theses of Harms at the tercentenary of the Reformation in 1817. (pp. 240, 241.)

[pg xxxix]

The result of these is seen (p. 241) in

(1) An improved doctrinal school under Schleiermacher (pp. 241-250), (description of his Glaubenslehre, p. 245 seq.); and under his successors, Neander, &c. (pp. 250-252.) (2) An improved critical tone (p. 252 seq.) as seen in De Wette and Ewald, which is illustrated by an explanation of the Pentateuch controversy (pp. 254-258).

Concluding notice of two other movements to be treated in the next lecture (p. 259); viz.

(1) an attempt, different from that of Schleiermacher, in the school of Hegel, to find a new philosophical basis for Christianity; and (2) the return to the biblical orthodoxy of the Lutheran church.

Remarks on the benevolence of Providence in overruling free inquiry to the discovery of truth. (pp. 259-261).

Lecture VII.

Free Thought in Germany subsequently to 1835; and in France during the present century.

Free Thought in Germany (continued).—History of the transition from Period II. named in the last lecture, to Period III. (pp. 262-274.)

Explanation of the attempt, noticed pp. 242, 259, of the Hegelian school to find a philosophy of Christianity. Critical remarks on Hegel's system, (pp. 263-267-267); its tendency to create an “ideological” spirit in religion (p. 264):—the school which it at first formed is seen best in Marheinecke. (p. 265.)

The circumstance which created an epoch in German theology was the publication of Strauss's Leben Jesu in 1835 (p. 266). Description of it (α) in its critical aspect (pp. 267, 270), which leads to an explanation of the previous discussions in Germany concerning the origin and credibility of the Gospels (pp. 268, 269); and (β) in its philosophical, as related to Hegel (p. 270); together with an analysis of the work (p. 271). Statement of the effects produced by it on the various theological parties. (pp. 272, 273.)

Period III. As the result of the agitation caused by Strauss's work, four theological tendencies are seen; viz.

(1) One external to the church, thoroughly antichristian, as in Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and Stirner. (pp. 274-276.) (2) The historico-critical school of Tübingen, founded by Chr. Bauer. (pp. 277-279.) (3) The “mediation” school, seen in Dorner and Rothe, (pp. 279-282.) (4) A return to the Lutheran orthodoxy, (pp. 282-285,) at first partly created by an attempt to unite the Lutheran and Reformed churches, (p. 282); seen in the “Neo-Lutheranism” of Hengstenberg and Hävernick, (p. 282), and the “Hyper-Lutheranism” [pg xl] of Stahl and the younger members of the school. (pp. 283, 285.)

Mention of the contemporaneous increase of spiritual life in Germany. (p. 285.)

Concluding estimate of the whole movement, (pp. 286, 287); and lessons for students in reference to it. (pp. 288, 289.)

Free Thought in France during the present century (pp. 290-305), (continued from Lect. IV. p. 194.)

In its tone it is constructive of belief, if compared with that of the eighteenth century.

From 1800-1852.

The speculative thought has exhibited four distinct forms. (p. 290.)

(1) The ideology of De Tracy, in the early part of the century. (2) The theological school of De Maistre, &c. to re-establish the dogmatic authority of the Romish church. (3) Socialist philosophy, St. Simon, Fourier, Comte. (4) The Eclectic school (Cousin, &c.)

Remarks on the first school.—The recovery of French philosophy and thought from the ideas of this school, partly due to the literary tone of Chateaubriand. (pp. 290, 291.)

Influence of the Revolution of 1830 in giving a stimulus to thought. (p. 291.)

Remarks on the third school.—Explanation of socialism as taught by St. Simon (pp. 292, 293); as taught by Fourier (pp. 293, 294); and difference from English socialism. (p. 294.)

Positivism, both as an offshoot of the last school, and in itself as a religion and a philosophy. (pp. 295, 296.)

Remarks on the fourth school.—Eclecticism as taught by Cousin, viewed as a philosophy and a religion. (pp. 297-299.)

Remarks on the second school; viewed as an attempt to refute the preceding schools. (p. 300.)

From 1852-1862.

New form of eclecticism under the empire (p. 302), viz. the historic method, based on Hegel, as Cousin's was based on Schelling.—E. Renan the type. (pp. 302-304.)

Free thought in the Protestant church (pp. 304, 305) regarded as an attempt to meet by concession doubts of contemporaries.

Lecture VIII.

Free Thought in England in the present century: Summary of the Course of Lectures: and Inferences in reference to present dangers and duties.

Modern unbelief in England (continued from Lect V.):—Introductory remarks on the alteration of its tone. (pp. 306, 307.)—The cause of [pg xli] which is stated to be a general one, the subjective tone created (p. 308) by such influences as, (1) the modern poetry (p. 309), and (2) the two great attempts by Bentham and Coleridge to reconstruct philosophy. (pp. 309, 310.)

The doubt and unbelief treated in the following order (p. 311):

(1) That which appeals to Sensational experience and to Physical science as the test of truth; viz. (α) Positivism among the educated (p. 312). (β) Secularism or Naturalism among the masses (p. 313); and in a minor degree, (γ) The doubts created by Physical science (p. 314). (2) That which appeals to the faculty of Intuition (p. 315);—expressed in literature, by Carlyle, (pp. 316, 317); and by the American, Emerson. (p. 317.) Influence also of the modern literature of romance, (p. 318.) (3) Direct attacks on Christianity, critical rather than philosophical: viz. (α) The examination of the historic problem of the development of religious ideas among the Hebrews, by R. W. Mackay (pp. 319, 320). (β) A summary of objections to revelation, by Mr. Greg, The Creed of Christendom (p. 321). (γ) The examination of the psychical origin of religion and Christianity, by Miss S. Hennell, Thoughts in aid of Faith, (p. 323.) (4) The deism, and appeal to the Intuitional consciousness, expressed by Mr. Theodore Parker (pp. 325, 326), and Mr. F. Newman (pp. 326-329). (5) The traces of free thought within the Christian church (p. 330); viz.: (α) The philosophical tendency which originates with Coleridge. (pp. 330-333.) (β) The critical tendency, investigating the facts of revelation. (pp. 334-336.) (γ) The critical tendency, the literature which contains it. (pp. 336, 337.)

This completes the history of the fourth crisis of faith (p. 339), the history of which began near the end of Lect. III. at p. 105.

Summary of the course of lectures. (pp. 339-41.)—Recapitulation of the original purpose, which is stated to have been, while assuming the potency of the moral, to analyse the intellectual causes of doubt, which have been generally left uninvestigated.

Refutation of objections which might be made; such as

(1) One directed against the utility of the inquiry. (p. 342.) (2) One directed against its uncontroversial character.

A critical history shown to be useful in the present age, (1) in an educational point of view for those who are to be clergymen, and to encounter [pg xlii] current forms of doubt by word or by writing (pp. 342-345); and (2) in a controversial point of view, by resolving the intellectual element in many cases of unbelief into incorrect metaphysical philosophy; the value of which inquiry is real, even if such intellectual causes be regarded only as the conditions, and not the causes, of unbelief. (p. 345.)

Further objections anticipated and refuted in reference (3) to the candour of the mode of inquiry, and the absence of vituperation which is stated not to be due to indifference to Christian truth, but wholly to the demands of a scientific mode of treatment (p. 346); (4) to the absence of an eager advocacy of any particular metaphysical theory; which is due to the circumstance that the purpose was to exhibit errors as logical corollaries from certain theories, without assuming the necessary existence of these corollaries in actual life (p. 347); (5) to the insufficiency of the causes enumerated to produce doubt without taking account of the moral causes; which objection is not only admitted, but shown to be at once the peculiar property which belongs to the analysis of intellectual phenomena, and also a witness to the instinctive conviction that the ultimate cause of belief and unbelief is moral, not intellectual; which had been constantly assumed. (p. 347.)

The Lessons derived from the whole historical survey. (p. 348 seq.)

I. What has been the office of doubt in history? (p. 348.)

Opposite opinions on this subject stated. (p. 348.) Examination of the ordinary Christian opinion on the one hand, which regards it as a mischief (p. 348), and of Mr. Buckle's on the other, which regards it as a good. (p. 349.)

1. The office is shown to be, to bring all truths to the test. (p. 349.) Historical instances of its value in destroying the Roman catholic errors. (p. 350.)

2. Free inquiry also shown in some cases to be forced on man by the presentation of new knowledge, which demands consideration. (p. 350.) Denial of the statement that the doubts thus created are an entire imitation of older doubt. (p. 352.)

3. The office of it in the hands of Providence to elicit truth by the very controversies which it creates (p. 352); the responsibility of the inquirer not being destroyed, but the overruling providence of God made visible. (p. 353.)

II. What does the history teach, as to the doubts most likely to present themselves at this time, and the best modes of meeting them? (p. 353.)

The materials shown to be presented for a final answer to these questions. (p. 354.)

The probability shown from consideration of the state of the various sciences, mechanical, physiological (p. 355), and mental (p. 355), that no new difficulties can be suggested hereafter, distinct in kind from the present; nor any unknown kinds of evidence presented on behalf of Christianity.

Analogy of the present age as a whole, in disintegration of belief, to the declining age of Roman civilization. (p. 356.)

[pg xliii]

The doubts which beset us in the present age stated to be chiefly three (p. 357), viz.:

1. The relation of the natural to the supernatural. This doubt is sometimes expressed in a spirit of utter unbelief; sometimes in a tone of sadness (p. 358), arising from mental struggles, of which some are enumerated (p. 358). The intellectual and moral means of meeting these doubts. (p. 359.)

2. The relation of the atoning work of Christ to the human race. (p. 360.) Explanation of the defective view which would regard it only as reconciling man to God, and would destroy the priestly work of Christ; and statement of the modes in which its advocates reconcile it with Christianity. (p. 361.)

The importance that such doubts be answered by reason, not merely silenced by force. (p. 362.)

An answer sought by studying the various modes used in other ages of the church (p. 362); especially by those who have had to encounter the like difficulties, e.g. the Alexandrian fathers in the third century, and the faithful in Germany in the present. (p. 363.)

This method shown to have been to present the philosophical prior to the historical evidence, in order to create the sense of religious want, before exhibiting Christianity as the divine supply for it. (p. 364.)

In regard to the historic evidence, three misgivings of the doubter require to be met for his full satisfaction (p. 366); viz.

(α) The literary question of the trustworthiness of the books of the New Testament.

The mode of meeting this explained, with the possibility of establishing Christian dogmas, even if the most extravagant rationalism were for argument's sake conceded. (p. 367.)

(β) The doubt whether the Christian dogmas, and especially the atonement, are really taught in the New Testament. The value of the fathers, and the progress of the doctrine in church history, shown in reference to this question. (p. 368.)

(γ) The final difficulty which the doubter may put, whether even apostolic and miraculous teaching is to overrule the moral sense. (p. 369.)

The possibility shown of independent corroboration of the apostolic teaching, in the testimony of the living church, and the experience of religious men. (p. 371.)

The utter improbability of error in this part of scriptural teaching, even if the existence of error elsewhere were for argument's sake conceded. (p. 370.)

Difference of this appeal from that of Schleiermacher to the Christian consciousness.

[pg xliv]

3. The relation of the Bible to the church, whether it is a record or an authority. (p. 372.)

Statement of the modes of viewing the question in different ages. (p. 373.)

The Bible an authority; but the importance shown of using wisdom in not pressing the difficulties of scripture on an inquirer, so as to quench incipient faith. (p. 374.)

The mention of the emotional causes of doubt conjoined with the intellectual, a warning that, in addition to all arguments, the help of the divine Spirit to hallow the emotions must be sought and expected. (p. 375.)

Final lesson to Christian students, that in all ages of peril, earnest men have found the truth by the method of study united to prayer. (pp. 376-379.)

[pg 001]

Lecture I. On The Subject, Method, And Purpose Of The Course Of Lectures.

Luke vii. 51.

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay; but rather division.

The present course of lectures relates to one of the conflicts exhibited in the history of the Church; viz. the struggle of the human spirit to free itself from the authority of the Christian faith.

Christianity offers occasion for opposition by its inherent claims, independently of accidental causes. For it asserts authority over religious belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God, and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of possessing sacred books which are at once the record and the instrument of this communication, written by men endowed with supernatural inspiration. The inspiration of the writers is transferred to the books, the matter of which, so far as it forms the subject of the revelation, is received as true because divine, not merely regarded as divine because perceived to be true. The religion, together with the series of revelations of which it is the consummation, differs in kind from ethnic religions, and from human philosophy; and the sacred literature differs in kind from other books. Each is unique, a solitary miracle of its class in human history.

[pg 002]

The contents also of the sacred books bring them into contact with the efforts of speculative thought. Though at first glance they might seem to belong to a different sphere, that of the soul rather than the intellect, and to possess a different function, explaining duties rather than discovering truth; yet in deep problems of physical or moral history, such as Providence, Sin, Reconciliation, they supply materials for limiting belief in the very class of subjects which is embraced in the compass of human philosophy.

A conflict accordingly might naturally be anticipated, between the reasoning faculties of man and a religion which claims the right on superhuman authority to impose limits on the field or manner of their exercise; the intensity of which at various epochs would depend, partly upon the amount of critical activity, and partly on the presence of causes which might create a divergence between the current ideas and those supplied by the sacred literature.

The materials are wanting for detecting traces of this struggle in other parts of the world than Europe; but the progress of it may be fully observed in European history, altering concomitantly with changes in the condition of knowledge, or in the methods of seeking it; at first as an open conflict, philosophical or critical, with the literary pagans, subsiding as Christianity succeeded in introducing its own conceptions into every region of thought; afterwards reviving in the middle ages, and gradually growing more intense in modern times as material has been offered for it through the increase of knowledge or the activity of speculation; varying in name, in form, in degree, but referable to similar causes, and teaching similar lessons.

It is the chief of these movements of free thought in Europe which it is my purpose to describe, in their historic succession and their connection with intellectual causes.

We must ascertain the facts; discover the causes; and read the moral. These three inquiries, though distinct in idea, cannot be disjoined in a critical history. [pg 003] The facts must first be presented in place and time: the history is thus far a mere chronicle. They must next be combined with a view to interpretation. Yet in making this first combination, taste guides more than hypothesis. The classification is artistic rather than logical, and merely presents the facts with as much individual vividness as is compatible with the preservation of the perspective requisite in the general historic picture. At this point the artistic sphere of history ceases, and the scientific commences as soon as the mind searches for any regularity or periodicity in the occurrence of the facts, such as may be the effect of fixed causes. If an empirical law be by this means ascertained to exist, an explanation of it must then be sought in the higher science which investigates mind. Analysis traces out the ultimate typical forms of thought which are manifested in it; and if it does not aspire to arbitrate on their truth, it explains how they have become grounds on which particular views have been assumed to be true. The intellect is then satisfied, and the science of history ends. But the heart still craves a further investigation. It demands to view the moral and theological aspects of the subject, to harmonize faith and discovery, or at least to introduce the question of human responsibility, and reverently to search for the final cause which the events subserve in the moral purposes of providence. The drama of history must not develope itself without the chorus to interpret its purpose. The artistic,—the scientific,—the ethical,—these are the three phases of history. (1)

The chief portion of the present lecture will be devoted to explain the mode of applying the plan just indicated; more especially to develop the second of these three branches, by stating the law which has marked the struggle of free thought with Christianity, and illustrating the intellectual causes which have been manifested in it.

In searching for such a law, or such causes, we ought not to forget that, if we wished to lay a sound basis for generalization, it would be necessary not to [pg 004] restrict our attention to the history of Christianity, but to institute a comparative study of religions, ethnic or revealed, in order to trace the action of reason in the collective religious history of the race. Whether the religions of nature be regarded as the distortion of primitive traditions, or as the spontaneous creation of the religious faculties, the agreement or contrast suggested by a comparison of them with the Hebrew and Christian religions, which are preternaturally revealed, is most important as a means of discovering the universal laws of the human mind; the exceptional character which belongs to the latter member of the comparison increasing rather than diminishing the value of the study. All alike are adjusted, the one class naturally and accidentally, the other designedly and supernaturally, to the religious elements of human nature. All have a subjective existence as aspirations of the heart, an objective as institutions, and a history which is connected with the revolutions of literature and society. (2)

Comparative observation of this kind gives some approach to the exactness of experiment; for we watch providence as it were executing an experiment for our information, which exhibits the operations of the same law under altered circumstances. If, for example, we should find that Christianity was the only religion, the history of which presented a struggle of reason against authority, we should pronounce that there must be peculiar elements in it which arouse the special opposition; or if the phenomenon be seen to be common to all creeds, but to vary in intensity with the activity of thought and progress of knowledge, this discovery would suggest to us the existence of a law of the human mind.

Such a study would also furnish valuable data for determining precisely the variation of form which alteration of conditions causes in the development of such a struggle. In the East, the history of religion, for which material is supplied by the study of the Zend and Sanskrit literature, (3) would furnish examples of [pg 005] attempts made by philosophers to find a rational solution of the problems of the universe, and to adjust the theories of speculative thought to the national creed deposited in supposed sacred books. And though, in a western nation such as Greece, the separation of religion from philosophy was too wide to admit of much parallel in the speculative aspect of free thought, yet in reference to the critical, many instances of the application of an analogous process to a national creed may be seen in the examination made of the early mythology, the attempt to rationalize it by searching for historical data in it, or to moralize it by allegory.66 Again, within the sphere of the Hebrew religion which, though supernaturally suggested, developed in connexion with human events so as to admit the possibility of the rise of mental difficulties in the progress of its history, how much hallowed truth, both theoretical and practical, might be learned from the divine breathings of pious inquirers, such as the sacred authors of the seventy-third Psalm, or of the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, which give expression to painful doubts about Providence, not fully solved by religion, but which nevertheless faith was willing to leave unexplained.67 If in the Oriental systems [pg 006] free thought is seen to operate on a national creed by adjusting it to new ideas through philosophical dogmatism; if in the Greek by explaining it away through scepticism; in the Hebrew it is hushed by the holier logic of the feelings. The two former illustrate steps in the intellectual progress of free thought; the last exhibits the moral lesson of resignation and submission in the soul of the inquirer.

Nor ought this method of comparison to be laid aside even at this point. It would be requisite, for a full discovery of the intellectual causes that the generalization should be carried further, and the operations of free thought watched in reference to other subjects than religion.68 Reason in its action, first on Christianity both in Europe and elsewhere, secondly on Jewish and heathen religions, lastly on any body of truth which rests on traditional authority,—these would be the scientific steps necessary for eliminating accidental phenomena, and discovering the real laws which have operated in this branch of intellectual history. The suggestion of such a plan of study, though obviously too large to be here pursued, may offer matter of thought to reflective minds, and may at least help to raise the subject out of the narrow sphere to which it is usually supposed to belong. The result of the survey would confirm the view of the struggle now about to be given which is suggested by European history.

When any new material of thought, such as a new religion which interferes with the previous standard of belief, is presented to the human mind; or when conversely any alteration in the state of knowledge on which the human mind forms its judgment, imparts to [pg 007] an old established religion an aspect of opposition which was before unperceived; the religion is subjected to the ordeal of an investigation. Science examines the doctrines taught by it, criticism the evidence on which they profess to rest, and the literature which is their expression. And if such an investigation fail to establish the harmony of the old and the new, the result takes two forms: either the total rejection of the particular religion, and sometimes even of the supernatural generally, or else an eclecticism which seeks by means of philosophy to discover and appropriate the hidden truth to which the religion was an attempt to give expression.

The attack however calls forth the defence. Accordingly the result of this action and reaction is to produce scientific precision, either apologetic or dogmatic, within the religious system, and scepticism outside of it; both reconstructive in purpose, but the former defensive in its method, the latter destructive. The elements of truth which exist on both sides are brought to light by the controversy, and after the struggle has passed become the permanent property of the world.

These statements, which convey a general expression for the influence of free thought in relation to religion, are verified in the history of Christianity.

There are four epochs at which the struggle of reason against the authority of the Christian religion has been especially manifest, each characterized by energy and intensity of speculative thought, and exhibiting on the one hand partial or entire unbelief, or on the other a more systematic expression of Christian doctrine; epochs in fact of temporary peril, of permanent gain.69

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In the first of these periods, extending from the second to the fourth century, Christianity is seen in antagonism with forms of Greek or Eastern philosophy, and the existence is apparent of different forms of scepticism or reason used in attack. The very attempt of the Alexandrian school of theology to adjust the mysteries of Christianity and of the Bible to speculative thought, by a well meant but extravagant use of allegorical interpretation, is itself a witness of the presence or pressure of free thought. The less violent of the two forms of unbelief is seen in the Gnostics, the rationalists of the early Church, who summoned Christianity to the bar of philosophy, and desired to appropriate the portion of its teachings which approved itself to their eclectic tastes; the more violent kind in the rejection of Christianity as an imposture, or in the attempts made to refer its origin to psychological causes, on the part of the early enemies of Christianity, Celsus and Julian, prototypes of the positive unbelievers of later times. The Greek theology, which embodied the dogmatic statements in which the Christian Church under the action of controversy gave explicit expression to its implicit belief, is the example of the stimulus which the pressure of free thought gave to the use of reason in defence.

As we pass down the course of European history, the Pagan literature which had suggested the first attack disappears: but as soon as the elements of civilization, which survived the deluge that overwhelmed the Roman empire, had been sufficiently consolidated to allow of the renewal of speculation, a repetition of the contest may be observed.

The revived study of the Greek philosophers, and of their Arabic commentators introduced from the Moorish universities of Spain, with the consequent rise of the scholastic philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, furnished material for a renewal of the struggle of reason against authority, a second crisis in the history of the Church. The history of it becomes complicated by the circumstance that free thought, in the process of [pg 009] disintegrating the body of authoritative teaching, now began to assume on several occasions a new shape, a kind of incipient Protestantism. Doubting neither Christianity nor the Bible, it is seen to challenge merely that part of the actual religion which, as it conceived, had insinuated itself from human sources in the lapse of ages. Accordingly, the critical independence of Nominalism, in a mind like that of Abélard, represents the destructive action of free thought, partly as early Protestantism, partly as scepticism; while the series of noted Realists, of which Aquinas is an example, that tried anew to adjust faith to science, and thus created the Latin theology, represents the defensive action of reason. The imparting scientific definition to the immemorial doctrines of the Church constituted the defence.

In the later middle ages, however, philosophy gradually succeeded in emancipating itself so entirely from theology, that when the Renaissance came, and a large body of heathen thought was introduced into the current of European life by means of ancient literature, a third crisis occurred. The independence passed into open revolt, and, fostered by political confusion and material luxury, expressed itself in a literature of unbelief.

The mental awakening which had commenced in art and extended to literature paved the way for a spiritual awakening. The Reformation itself, though the product of a deep consciousness of spiritual need, an emancipation of soul as well as mind, is nevertheless a special instance of the same dissolution of mediæval life, and must therefore be regarded as belonging to the same general movement of free thought, though not to that sceptical form of it which comes within the field of our investigation. For Protestantism, though it be scepticism in respect of the authority of the traditional teaching of the Church, yet reposes implicitly on an outward authority revealed in the sacred books of holy Scripture, and restricts the exercise of freedom within the limits prescribed by this authority; whereas scepticism [pg 010] proper is an insurrection against the outward authority or truth of the inspired books, and reposes on the unrevealed, either on consciousness or on science. The one is analogous to a school of art which desires to reform itself by the use of ancient models; the other to one which professes to return to an unassisted study of nature. The spiritual earnestness which characterized the Reformation prevented the changes in religious belief from developing into scepticism proper; and the theology of the Reformation is accordingly an example of defence and reconstruction as well as of revulsion.

During the century which followed, mental activity found employment in other channels in connexion with the political struggles which resulted from the religious changes. But the seventeenth age was another of those epochs which form crises in the history of the human mind. The reconstruction at that time of the methods on which science depends, by Bacon from the empirical side, by Descartes from the intellectual, created as great a revolution in knowledge as the Renaissance had produced in literature or the Reformation in religion; and a body of materials was presented from which philosophers ventured to criticise the Bible and the dogmatic teaching of the Church. This fourth great period of free thought, which extends to the present time, has been marked by more striking events than former ones.70 Though the movement relates to a similar sphere, the history is rendered more complex by union with literature, and connexion as cause or effect with social changes, as well as by the reciprocal operation of its influence in different countries. Language, which is [pg 011] always a record of opinion, popular or scientific,71 classifies the forms of this last great movement of free thought under three names, viz. Deism in England in the early part of the eighteenth century; Infidelity in France in the latter part of it; and Rationalism in Germany in the nineteenth; movements which exhibit characteristics respectively of the three nations, and of their intellectual and general history. English Deism, the product of the reasoning spirit which was stimulated by political events, directed itself against the special revelation of Christianity from the stand-point of the religion of natural reason, and ran a course parallel with the gradual emancipation of the individual from the power of the state. French infidelity, breathing the spirit of materialist philosophy, halted not till it brought its devotees even to atheism, and mingled itself with the great movements of political revolution, which ultimately reconstituted French society. German Rationalism, empirical or spiritual,72 in two parallel developments, the philosophical and the literary, neither coldly denied Christianity with the practical doubts of the English deists, nor flippantly denounced it as imposture with the trenchant and undiscriminating logic of the French infidels; but appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a poetical genius, and regarding it as one phase of the religious consciousness, endeavoured, by means of the methods employed in secular learning, to collect the precious ideas of eternal truth to which Christianity seemed to it to give expression, and by means of speculative criticism to exhibit the literary and psychological causes which it supposed had overlaid them with error.

Nor has the activity of reason used in defence been less manifest in these later movements. The great [pg 012] works on the Christian evidences are the witness to its presence; and the deeper and truer appreciation of Christianity now shown in every country, and the increasing interest felt in religion, are the indirect effect, under the guidance of divine Providence, of the stirring of the religious apprehension by controversy.73

We have thus at once exhibited the province which will be hereafter investigated in detail, and stated the general law observable in the conflict between free thought and Christianity. The type reappears, perpetuated by the fixity of mind, though the form varies under the force of circumstances. Christianity being stationary and authoritative, thought progressive and independent, the causes which stimulate the restlessness of the latter interrupt the harmony which ordinarily exists between belief and knowledge, and produce crises during which religion is re-examined. Disorganization is the temporary result; theological advance the subsequent. Whatever is evil is eliminated in the conflict; whatever is good is retained. Under the overruling of a beneficent Providence, antagonism is made the law of human progress.

The restriction of our inquiry to the consideration of the free action of reason will cause our attention to be almost entirely confined to the operation of reason in its attack on Christianity, to the neglect of the evidences which the other office of it has presented in defence; and will also exclude altogether the study of struggles, where the opposition to Christianity has rested on an appeal to the authority of rival sacred books; such for example as the conflict with rival religions like the Jewish (4) or Mahometan (5); as well as of heresies which, like the Socinian (6), claim, however unjustly, to rest on the authority of the Christian revelation.

The law thus sketched of this struggle needs fuller explanation. We must employ a more exact analysis to gain a conception of the causes which have operated [pg 013] at different periods to make free thought develop into unbelief.

It will be obvious that the causes must depend, either upon the nature of the Christian religion, which is the subject, or of the mind of man, which is the agent of attack. The former were touched upon in the opening remarks of this lecture, and may be reconsidered hereafter;74 but it is necessary to gain a general view of the latter before treating them in their application in future lectures.

These causes, so far as they are spiritual and disconnected from admixture with political circumstances, may be stated to be of two kinds, viz. intellectual and moral; the intellectual explaining the types of thought, the moral the motives which have from time to time existed.75 The actions, and generally the opinions of a human being, are the complex result arising from the union of both. Yet the two elements, though closely intertwined in a concrete instance, can be apprehended separately as objects of abstract thought; and the forms of manifestation and mode of operation peculiar to each can be separately traced.

In a history of thought, the antagonism created by the intellect rather than by the heart seems the more appropriate subject of study, and will be almost exclusively considered in these lectures. Nevertheless a brief analysis must be here given of the mode in which the moral is united with the intellectual in the formation of opinions. This is the more necessary, lest we should seem to commit the mistake of ignoring the existence [pg 014] or importance of the emotional element, if the restriction of our point of view to the intellectual should hereafter prevent frequent references to it.

The influence of the moral causes in generating doubt, though sometimes exaggerated, is nevertheless real. Psychological analysis shows that the emotions operate immediately on the will, and the will on the intellect. Consequently the emotion of dislike is able through the will to prejudice the judgment, and cause disbelief of a doctrine against which it is directed.76 Nor can we doubt that experience confirms the fact. Though we must not rashly judge our neighbour, nor attempt to measure in any particular mind the precise amount of doubt which is due to moral causes, yet it is evident that where a freethinker is a man of immoral or unspiritual life, whose interests incline him to disbelieve in the reality of Christianity, his arguments may reasonably be suspected to be suggested by sins of character, and by dislike to the moral standard of the Christian religion, and, though not on this account necessarily undeserving of attention, must be watched at every point with caution, in order that the emotional may be eliminated from the intellectual causes.

It is also a peculiarity belonging to the kind of evidence on which religion rests for proof, that it offers an opportunity for the subtle influence of moral causes, where at first sight intellectual might seem alone to act. For the evidence of religion is probable, not demonstrative; and it is the property of probable evidence that the character and experience determine the comparative weight which the mind assigns in it to the premises.77 In demonstrative evidence there is no opportunity [pg 015] for the intrusion of emotion; but in probable reasoning the judgment ultimately formed by the mind depends often as much upon the antecedent presumptions brought to the investigation of the subject, as upon the actual proofs presented; the state of feeling causing a variation in the force with which a proposition commends itself to the mind at different times. The very subtlety of this influence, which requires careful analysis for its detection, causes it to be overlooked. Accordingly, in a subject like religion, the emotions may secretly insinuate themselves in the preliminary step of determining the weight due to the premises, even where the final process of inference is purely intellectual.

We can select illustrations of this view of the subtlety of the operation of prejudice from instances of a kind unlike the one previously named; in which it will be seen that the disinclination of the inquirer to accept Christianity has not arisen primarily from the obstacle caused by the enmity of his own carnal heart, but from antipathy toward the moral character of those who have professed the Christian faith.

Who can doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences; or that the social disaffection in the last century in France incensed the mind against the Church that supported alleged public abuses,78 until it blinded a Voltaire from seeing any goodness in Christianity; or that the religious intolerance shown within the present century by the ecclesiastical [pg 016] power in Italy drove a Leopardi79 and a Bini80 into doubt; or that the sense of supposed personal wrong and social isolation deepened the unbelief of Shelley81 and of Heinrich Heine?82 Whatever other motives may have operated in these respective cases, the prejudices which arose from the causes just named, doubtless created an antecedent impression against religion, which impeded the lending an unbiassed ear to its evidence.

The subtlety of the influence in these instances makes them the more instructive. If, as we contemplate them, our sympathies are so far enlisted on the side of the doubters that it becomes necessary to check ourselves in exculpating them, by the consideration that they were responsible for failing to separate the essential truth of Christianity from the accidental abuse of [pg 017] it shown in the lives of its professors, we can imagine so much the more clearly, how great was the danger to these doubters themselves of omitting the introspection of their own characters necessary for detecting the prejudice which actually seemed to have conscience on its side; and can realize more vividly from these instances the secrecy and intense subtlety of the influence of the feelings in the formation of doubt, and infer the necessity of most careful attention for its discovery in others, and watchfulness in detecting it in our own hearts.

There are other cases of doubt, however, where the influence of the emotional element, if it operates at all, is reduced to a minimum, and the cause accordingly seems wholly intellectual. This may happen when the previous convictions of the mind are shaken by the knowledge of some fact newly brought before its notice; such as the apparent conflict between the Hebrew record of a universal deluge83 and the negative evidence of geology as to its non-occurrence; or the historical discrepancies between the books of Kings and Chronicles,84 or the varying accounts of the genealogy and resurrection of Christ. A doubt purely intellectual in its origin might also arise, as we know was the case with the pious Bengel,85 in consequence of perceiving the variety [pg 018] of readings in the sacred text; or, as in many of the German critics, from the difficulty created by the long habit of examining the classical legends and myths, in satisfying themselves about the reasons why similar criticism should not be extended to the early national literature of the Hebrews. Causes of doubt like these, which spring from the advance of knowledge, necessarily belong primarily to the intellectual region. The intellect is the cause and not merely the condition of them. But there is room even here for an emotional element; and the state of heart may be tested by noticing whether the mind gladly and proudly grasps at them or thoughtfully weighs them with serious effort to discover the truth. The moral causes may reinforce or may check the intellectual: but the distinctness of the two classes is apparent. Though co-existing and interlocked, they may be made subjects of independent study.

The preceding analysis of the relations of the moral and intellectual facilities in the formation of religious opinions might enable us to criticise the ethical inferences drawn in reference to man's responsibility for his belief. Those who think that our characters, moral and intellectual, are formed for us by circumstances, are consistent in denying or depreciating responsibility.86 There is a danger however among Christian writers of falling into the opposite error, of dwelling so entirely on the moral causes, in forgetfulness of the intellectual, as to teach not only that unbelief of the Christian religion is sin, (which few would dispute,) but that even [pg 019] transient doubt of it is sinful; and thus to repel unbelievers by imputing to them motives of which their consciences acquit them.

A truth however is contained in this opinion, though obscured by being stated with exaggeration, inasmuch as the fact is overlooked that doubts may be of many different kinds. Sinfulness cannot, for example, be imputed to the mere scepticism of inquiry, the healthy critical investigation of methods or results; nor to the scepticism of despair, which, hopeless of finding truth, takes up a reactionary and mystical attitude;87 nor to the cases (if such can ever be,) of painful doubt, perhaps occasionally even of partial unbelief, which are produced exclusively by intellectual causes, without admixture of moral ones. This variety of form should create caution in measuring the degree of sinfulness involved in individual cases of doubt. Yet the inclination to condemn in such instances contains the fundamental truth that the moral causes are generally so intertwined with the intellectual in the assumption of data, if not in the process of inference, that there is a ground for fearing that the fault may be one of will, not of intellect, even though undetected by the sceptic himself. And a conscientious mind will learn the practical lesson of exercising the most careful self-examination in reference to its doubts, and especially will use the utmost caution not to communicate them needlessly to others. The Hebrew Psalmist, instead of telling his painful misgivings, harboured them in God's presence until he found the solution.88 The delicacy exhibited in forbearing unnecessarily to shake the faith of others is a measure of the disinterestedness of the doubter. “If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the generation of thy children.”

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These remarks will enable us to estimate the manner and degree in which the emotions may, consciously or unconsciously, influence the operations of the intellect in reference to religion; and will clear the way for the statement of that which is to form the special subject of study in these lectures, the nature and mode of operation of the intellectual causes, and the forms of free thought in religion to which they may give rise. This branch is frequently neglected, because satisfying the intellect rather than the heart, indicating tendencies rather than affording means to pronounce judgment on individuals; yet it admits of greater certainty, and will perhaps in some respects be found to be not less full of instruction, than the other.

We must distinctly apprehend what is here intended by the term “intellectual cause,” when applied to a series of phenomena like sceptical opinions. It does not merely denote the antecedent ideas which form previous links in the same chain of thought: these are sufficiently revealed by the chronicle which records the series. Nor does it mean the uniformity of method according to which the mind is observed to act at successive intervals: this is the law or formula, the existence of which has been already indicated.89 But we intend by “cause” two things; either the sources of knowledge which have from age to age thrown their materials into the stream of thought, and compelled reason to re-investigate religion and try to harmonize the new knowledge with the old beliefs; or else the ultimate intellectual grounds or tests of truth on which the decision in such cases has been based, the most general types of thought into which the forms of doubt can be analysed. The problem is this:—Given, these two terms: on the one hand the series of opinions known as the history of free thought in religion; on the other the uniformity of mode in which reason has operated. Interpolate two steps to connect them together, which will show respectively the materials of [pg 021] knowledge which reason at successive moments brought to bear on religion, and the ultimate standards of truth which it adopted in applying this material to it. It is the attempt to supply the answer to this problem that will give organic unity to these lectures.

A few words will suffice in reference to the former of these two subjects, inasmuch as it has already been described to some extent,90 and will be made clear in the course of the history. The branches of knowledge with which the movements of free thought in religion are connected, are chiefly literary criticism and science. The one addresses itself to the record of the revelation; the other to the matter contained in the record. Criticism, when it gains canons of evidence for examining secular literature, applies them to the sacred books; directing itself in its lower91 form to the variations in their text; in its higher92 to their genuineness and authenticity. Science, physical or metaphysical, addresses itself to the question of the credibility of their contents. In its physical form, when it has reduced the world to its true position in the universe of space, human history in the cycles of time, and the human race in the world of organic life, it compares these discoveries with the view of the universe and of the physical history of the planet contained in the sacred literature; or it examines the Christian doctrine of miraculous interposition and special providence by the light of its gradually increasing conviction of the uniformity of nature. In its moral and metaphysical forms, science examines such subjects as the moral history of the Hebrew theocracy; or ponders reverently over the mystery of the divine scheme of redemption, and the teaching which scripture supplies on the deepest problems of speculation, the relations of Deity to the universe, the act of creation, the nature of evil, and the administration of moral providence.

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There is another mode, however, in which speculative philosophy has operated, which needs fuller explanation. It has not merely, like the other sciences, suggested results which have seemed to clash with Christianity, but has supplied the ultimate grounds of proof to which appeal has consciously been made, or which have been unconsciously assumed:—the ultimate types of thought which have manifested themselves in the struggle.93

It will be useful, before exhibiting this kind of influence in reference to religion, to illustrate its character by selecting an instance from some region of thought where its effects would be least suspected. The example shall be taken from the history of literature.

If we compare three poets selected from the last three centuries, the contrast will exhibit at once the change which has taken place in the literary spirit and standard of judgment, and the correspondence of the change with fluctuations in the predominant philosophy of the time.—If we commence with the author of the Paradise Lost, we listen to the last echo of the poetry which had belonged to the great outburst of mind of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and of the faith in the supernatural which had characterized Puritanism. His philosophy is Hebrew: he hesitates not to interpret the divine counsels; but it is by the supposed light of revelation. Doubt is unknown to him. The anthropomorphic conception of Deity prevails. Material nature is the instrument of God's personal providence for the objects of His care.—But if we pass to the author of the Essay on Man, the revolution which has given artistic precision to the form is not more observable [pg 023] than the indications of a philosophy which has chilled the spiritual faculties. The supernatural is gone. Nature is a vast machine which moves by fixed laws impressed upon it by a Creator. The soul feels chilled with the desolation of a universe wherein it cannot reach forth by prayer to a loving Father. Scripture is displaced by science. Doubt has passed into unbelief. The universe is viewed by the cold materialism which arraigns spiritual subjects at the bar of sense.—If now we turn to the work consecrated by the great living poet to the memory of his early friend, we find ourselves in contact with a meditative soul, separated from the age just named by a complete intellectual chasm; whose spiritual perceptions reflect a philosophy which expresses the sorrows and doubts of a cultivated mind of the present day, “perplext in faith but not in deeds.”94 The material has become transfigured into the spiritual. The objective has been replaced by the subjective. Nature is studied, as in Pope, without the assumption of a revelation; but it is no longer regarded as a machine conducted by material laws: it is a motive soul which embodies God's presence; a mystery to be felt, not understood. God is not afar off, so that we cannot reach Him: He is so nigh, that His omnipresence seems to obscure His personality.

These instances will illustrate the difference which philosophy produces in the classes of ideas in which the mind of an age is formed. In Milton, the appeal is made to the revelation of God in the Book; in Pope, to the revelation in Nature; in the living poet, to the revelation in man's soul, the type of the infinite Spirit and interpreter of God's universe and God's book.95

It is an analysis of a similar kind which we must conduct in reference to sceptical opinions. The influence of the first of the two classes of intellectual causes above named,96 viz. the various forms of knowledge [pg 024] there described, could not exist unobserved, for they are present from time to time as rival doctrines in contest with Christianity; but the kind of influence of which we now treat, which relates to the grounds of belief on which a judgment is consciously or unconsciously formed, is more subtle, and requires analysis for its detection.

We must briefly explain its nature, and illustrate its influence on religion.

Metaphysical science is usually divided into two branches; of which one examines the objects known, the other the human mind, that is the organ of knowledge. (7) When Psychology has finished its study of the structure and functions of the mind, it supplies the means for drawing inferences in reply to a question which admits of a twofold aspect, viz. which of the mental faculties,—sense, reason, feeling, furnishes the origin of knowledge; and which is the supreme test of truth? These two questions form the subjective or Psychological branch of Metaphysics. According to the answer thus obtained we deduce a corollary in reference to the objective side. We ask what information is afforded by these mental faculties in respect to the nature or attributes of the objects known,—matter, mind, God, duty. The answer to this question is the branch commonly called the Ontological. The one inquiry treats of the tests of knowledge, the other of the nature of being. The combination of the two furnishes the answer on its two sides, internally and externally, to the question, What is truth?

The right application of them to the subject of religion would give a philosophy of religion; either objectively by the process of constructing a theodicée or theory to reconcile reason and faith; or subjectively, by separating their provinces by means of such an inquiry into the functions of the religious faculty, and the nature of the truths apprehended by it, as might furnish criteria to determine the amount that is to be appropriated respectively from our own consciousness and from external authority.

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The influence of the Ontological branch of the inquiry in producing a struggle with Christianity, has been already included under the difficulties previously named, which are created by the growth of the various sciences.97 It is the influence of the Psychological branch that we are now illustrating, by showing that the various theories in respect of it give their type to various forms of belief and doubt.

The well-known threefold distribution of the faculties that form the ultimate grounds of conviction will suffice for our purpose: viz., sensational consciousness revealing to us the world of matter; intuitive reason that of mind; and feeling that of emotion.98 These are the forms of consciousness which supply the material from which the reflective powers draw inferences and construct systems.

It is easy to exhibit the mental character which each would have a tendency to generate when applied to a special subject like religion, natural or revealed.

If the eye of sense be the sole guide in looking around on nature, we discover only a universe of brute matter, phenomena linked together in uniform succession of antecedents and consequents. Mind becomes only a higher form of matter. Sin loses its poignancy. Immortality disappears. God exists not, except as a personification of the Cosmos. Materialism, atheism, [pg 026] fatalism, are the ultimate results which are proved by logic and history99 to follow from this extreme view. The idea of spirit cannot be reached by it. For if some other form of experience than the sensitive be regarded as the origin of knowledge; if a nobler view be forced on us by the very inability even to express nature's phenomena without superadding spiritual qualities; if regularity of succession100 suggest the idea of order and purpose and mind; if adaptation suggest the idea of morality; if movement suggest the idea of form and will; if will suggest the idea of personality; if the idea of the Cosmos suggest unity, and thus we mount up, step by step, to the conception of a God, possessing unity, intelligence, will, character, we really transfer into the sphere of nature ideas taken from another region of being, viz., from our consciousness of ourselves, our consciousness of spirit. It is mental association that links these ideas to those of sense, and gives to a sensational philosophy properties not its own. If however sensational experience can by any means arrive at the notion of natural religion; yet it will find a difficulty, created by its belief of the uniformity of nature, [pg 027] in taking the further step of admitting the miraculous interference which gives birth to revealed: and even if this difficulty should be surmounted, the disinclination to the supernatural would nevertheless have a tendency to obliterate mystery by empirical rationalism, and to reduce piety to morality, morality to expedience,101 the church to a political institution, religion to a ritual system, and its evidence to external historic testimony.

The rival system of proof founded in intuitive consciousness is however not free from danger. A difference occurs, according as this endowment is regarded as merely revealing the facts of our own inner experience, or on the other hand as possessing a power to apprehend God positively, and spirit to spirit.102 The result of the former belief would be indeed an ethical religion, compared with the political one just described. If it did not rise from the law to the law-giver, it would at least present morality as a law obligatory on man by his mental structure, independently of the consideration of reward and punishment. The ideas of God, duty, immortality, would be established as a necessity of thought, if not as matters of objective fact. Yet religion would be rather rational than supernatural; obedience to duty instead of communion with Deity; and unless the mind can find ground for a belief in God and the divine attributes through some other faculty, the idealism must destroy the evidence of revealed religion. Or at least, if the mind admit its truth, it must renounce the right to criticise the material of that which it confesses to be beyond the limits of its own consciousness; [pg 028] and thus, by abdicating its natural powers, blindly submit to external authority, and accept belief as the refuge from its own Pyrrhonism.

If, on the other hand, instead of regarding all attempts to pass beyond logical forms of thought to be mental impotence, the mind follows its own instincts, and, relying upon the same natural realism which justifies its belief in the immediate character of its sensitive perceptions, ventures to depend with equal firmness on the reality of its intuitional consciousness, religion, natural or revealed, wears another aspect; and both the advantages and the dangers of such a view are widely different.103 The soul no longer regards the landscape to be a scene painted on the windows of its prison-house, a subjective limit to its perceptions, but not speculatively true; but it wanders forth from its cell unfettered into the universe around. God is no longer an inference from final causes, nor a principle of thought. He is the living God, a real personal spirit with whom the soul is permitted to hold direct communion. Providence becomes the act of a personal agent. Religion is the worship in spirit. Sin is seen in its heinousness. Prayer is justified as a reality, as the breathing of the human soul for communion with its infinite Parent (8). And by the light of this intuition, God, nature, and man, look changed. Nature is no longer a physical engine; man no longer a moral machine. Material nature becomes the regular expression of a personal fixed will; Miracle the direct interposition of a personal free will. Revelation is probable, as the voice of God's mercy to the child of His love. Inspiration becomes [pg 029] possible, for the intuitional consciousness seems adapted to be used by divine Providence as its instrument.104

But the type of mind created by the use of intuition as a test of truth is rarely alone. It is cognate to, if it is not connected with, that produced by the third of the above-named tests, feeling. The emotions, according to a law of spiritual supply and demand, suggest the reality of the objects toward which they are aspirations. The longing for help, the feeling of dependence, is the justification of prayer; the sense of remorse is the witness to divine judgment; the consciousness of penitence is the ground for hope in God's merciful interference; the ineradicable sense of guilt is the eternal witness to the need of atonement; the instinct for immortality is the pledge of a future life.

Yet the use of these tests of intuition and feeling in religion, though possessing these advantages, has dangers. If the feelings, instead of being used to reinforce or check the other faculties, be relied upon as sole arbiters; especially if they be linked with the imagination instead of the intuition; they may conduct to mysticism and superstition by the very vividness of their perception of the supernatural.105 Likewise the intuitive [pg 030] faculty, if it be regarded as giving a noble grasp over the fact of God as an infinite Spirit, may cause the mind to relax its hold on the idea of the Divine Personality, and fall into Pantheism, and identify God with the universe, not by degrading spirit to matter, but by elevating matter to spirit.106 Or, instead of allowing experience and revelation to develop into conceptions of the fundamental truth whose existence it perceives, it may attempt to develop a religion wholly à priori,107 and assert its right to create as well as to verify. Also, when applying itself to revealed religion, this type of thought necessarily makes its last appeal to inward insight. It cannot, like sensationalism, or subjective idealism, admit its own impotence, and receive on authority a revelation, the contents of which it ventures not to criticise. It must always appropriate that which it is to believe. Accordingly it will have a tendency to render religion subjective in its character, uncertain in its doctrines, individual in its constitution.

These general remarks, every one of which admits of historic exemplification,108 will suffice to illustrate the kind of influence exercised by these respective tests of truth in forming the judgment or moulding the character in relation to the belief or disbelief of natural and revealed religion. These effects are not adduced as the [pg 031] necessary results but as the ordinary tendencies of these respective theories. The mind frequently stops short of the conclusions logically deducible from its own principles. To measure precisely the effect of each view would be impossible. In mental science analysis must be qualitative, not quantitative.

It will hardly be expected that we should arbitrate among these theories, inasmuch as our purpose is not to test the comparative truthfulness of metaphysical opinions, but to refer sceptical opinions in religion to their true scientific and metaphysical parentage. Truth is probably to be found in a selection from all; and historical investigation is the chief means of discovering the mode of conducting the process. It is at least certain, that if history be the form which science necessarily takes in the study of that which is subject to laws of life and organic growth, it must be the preliminary inquiry in any investigation in reference to mental phenomena. The history of philosophy must be the approach to philosophy.109 The great problem of philosophy is method; and if there be a hope that the true method can ever be found it must be by uniting the historical analysis of the development of the universal mind with the psychological analysis of the individual. The history of thought indicates not only fact but truth; not only shows what has been, but, by exhibiting the proportions which different faculties contribute toward the construction of truth, and indicating tendencies as well as results, prepares materials to be collated with the decision previously made by mental and moral science concerning the question of what ought to be (9).

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A definite conviction on this metaphysical inquiry seems perhaps to be involved in the very idea of criticism, and necessary for drawing the moral from the history; yet the independence of our historical inquiry ought to be sacrificed as little as possible to illustrate a foregone conclusion. It will be more satisfactory to present the evidence for a verdict without undue advocacy of a side in the metaphysical controversy.110

The execution of this design of analysing the intellectual causes of unbelief will necessarily involve to some extent a biographical treatment of the subject, both for theoretical and practical reasons, to discover truth and to derive instruction. This is so evident in the history of action, that there is a danger at the present time lest history should lose the general in the individual, and descend from the rank of science to mere biography.111 The deeper insight which is gradually obtained into the complexity of nature, together with the fuller conviction of human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and ethical analysis to be substituted for historical generalization. The same method however applies to the region of thought as well as will.

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Thought, as an intellectual product, can indeed be studied apart from the mind that creates it, and can be treated by history as a material fact subject to the fixed succession of natural laws. But the exclusive use of such a method, at least in any other subject of study than that of the results of physical discovery, must be defective, even independently of the question of the action of free will, unless the thoughts which are the object of study be also connected with the personality of the thinker who produces them. His external biography is generally unimportant, save when the individual character may have impressed itself upon public events; but the internal portraiture, the growth of soul as known by psychological analysis, is the very instrument for understanding the expression of it in life or in literature.112 It is requisite to know the mental bias of a writer, whether it be practical, imaginative or reflective; to see the idola specus which influenced him, the action of circumstances upon his character, and the reaction of his character upon circumstances; before we can gain the clue to the interpretation of his works. But if we wish further to derive moral instruction from him, the biographical mode of study becomes even more necessary. For the notion of freedom as the ground of responsibility is now superadded; and the story of his life is the sole means for such an apprehension of the causes of his heart-struggles as shall enable us to take the gauge of his moral character, and appropriate the lessons derivable from the study of it.

Indeed biographical notices, if they could be extended compatibly with the compass of the subject, would be the most instructive and vivid mode of presenting alike the facts relating to scepticism and their interpretation. Such memoirs are not wanting, and [pg 034] are among the most touching in literature. The sketch which Strauss has given of his early friend and fellow student Maerklin,113 gradually surrendering one cherished truth after another, until he doubted all but the law of conscience; then devoting himself in the strength of it with unflinching industry to education; until at last he died in the dark, without belief in God or hope, cheered only by the consciousness of having tried to find truth and do his duty:—the sad tale, told by two remarkable biographers, of Sterling,114 doubting, renouncing the ministry, yet thirsting for truth, and at last solacing himself in death by the hopes offered by the Bible, to the eternal truths of which his doubting heart had always clung:—the memoir of the adopted son of our own university, Blanco White,115 a mind in which faith and doubt were perpetually waging war, till the grave closed over his truth-searching and care-worn spirit:—the confessions of one of our own sons of the successive “phases of faith”116 through which his soul passed from evangelical Christianity to a spiritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes its place among the pathetic works of autobiography, where individuals have unveiled their inner life for the instruction of their fellow-men:—all these are instances where [pg 035] the great moral and spiritual problems that belong to the condition of our race may be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of individuals. They are instances of rare value for psychological study in reference to the history of doubt; sad beacons of warning and of guidance. Accordingly, in the history of free thought we must not altogether neglect the spiritual biography of the doubter, though only able to indicate it by a few touches; by an etching, not a photograph.

We have now added to the explanation before given of the province of our inquiry, and of the law of the action of free thought on religion, an account of the moral and intellectual causes which operate in the history of unbelief, and have sufficiently explained the mode in which the subject will be treated.

The use of the inquiry will, it is hoped, be apparent both in its theoretical and practical relations. It is designed to have an intellectual value not only as instruction but as argument. The tendency of it will be in some degree polemical as well as didactic, refuting error by analysing it into its causes, repelling present attacks by studying the history of former ones.

It is one peculiar advantage belonging to the philosophical investigation of the history of thought, that even the odious becomes valuable as an object of study, the pathology of the soul as well as its normal action. Philosophy takes cognisance of error as well as of truth, inasmuch as it derives materials from both for discovering a theory of the grounds of belief and disbelief. Hence it follows that the study of the natural history of doubt combined with the literary, if it be the means of affording an explanation of a large class of facts relating to the religious history of man and the sphere of the remedial operations of Christ's church, will have a practical value as well as speculative.

Such an inquiry, if it be directed, as in the present lectures, to the analysis of the intellectual rather than the emotional element of unbelief, as being that which has been less generally and less fully explored, will require to be supplemented by a constant reference to [pg 036] the intermixture of the other element, and the consequent necessity of taking account of the latter in estimating the whole phenomenon of doubt. But within its own sphere it will have a practical and polemical value, if the course of the investigation shall show that the various forms of unbelief, when studied from the intellectual side, are corollaries from certain metaphysical or critical systems. The analysis itself will have indirectly the force of an argument. The discovery of the causes of a disease contains the germ of the cure. Error is refuted when it is referred to the causes which produce it.

Nor will the practical value of the inquiry be restricted to its use as a page in the spiritual history of the human mind, but will belong to it also as a chapter in the history of the church. For even if in the study of the contest our attention be almost wholly restricted to the movements of one of the two belligerents, and only occasionally directed to the evidences on which the faith of the church in various crises reposed, and by which it tried to repel the invader, yet the knowledge of the scheme of attack cannot fail to be a valuable accompaniment to the study of the defence.117

Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a chapter of human history, like the chapter of physiology which studies a disease, will point indirectly to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the causes which induce the disease; while the literary history of it, viewed as a chapter of church history, will contribute the results of experience to train the Christian combatant.

The subject will however not only have an intellectual value in being at once didactic and polemical, offering an explanation of the causes of unbelief and furnishing hints for their removal; but it cannot fail also to possess a moral value in reference to the conscience and heart of the disputant, in teaching the lesson of mercy towards the unbeliever, and deep pity [pg 037] for the heart wounded with doubts. An intelligent acquaintance with the many phases of history operates like foreign travel in widening the sympathies; and increase of knowledge creates the moderation which gains the victory through attracting an enemy instead of repelling him. Bigotry is founded on ignorance and fear. True learning is temperate, because discriminating; forbearing, because courageous. If we place ourselves in the position of an opponent, and try candidly to understand the process by which he was led to form his opinions, indignation will subside into pity, and enmity into grief: the hatred will be reserved for the sin, not for the sinner; and the servant of Jesus Christ will thus catch in some humble measure the forbearing love which his divine Master showed to the first doubting disciple.118 As the sight of suffering in an enemy changes the feeling of anger into pity, so the study of a series of spiritual struggles makes us see in an opponent, not an enemy to be crushed, but a brother to be won. The utility of a historic treatment of doubt is suggested by moral as well as intellectual grounds.

I hope therefore that if I follow the example of some of my predecessors,119 in giving a course of lectures historical rather than polemical, evincing the critic rather than the advocate, seeking for truth rather than victory, analysing processes of evidence rather than refuting results, my humble contribution toward the knowledge of the argument of the Christian evidences will be considered to come fairly within the design intended by the founder of the lecture.

It may well be believed that in the execution of so large a scheme I have felt almost overwhelmed under a painful sense of its difficulty. If even I may venture to hope that a conscientious study in most cases of the [pg 038] original sources of information may save me from literary mistakes, yet there is a danger lest the size of the subject should preclude the possibility of constant clearness; or lest the very analysis of the errors of the systems named, may produce a painful, if not an injurious, impression. In an age too of controversy, those who speak on difficult questions incur a new danger, of being misunderstood from the sensitiveness with which earnest men not unreasonably watch them. The attitude of suspicion may cause impartiality to be regarded as indifference to truth, fairness as sympathy with error. I am not ashamed therefore to confess, that under the oppressive sense of these various feelings I have been wont to go for help to the only source where the burdened heart can find consolation; and have sought, in the communion with the Father of spirits which prayer opens to the humblest, a temper of candour, of reverence, and of the love of truth. In this spirit I have made my studies; and what I have thus learned I shall teach.

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Lecture II. The Literary Opposition of Heathens Against Christianity in the Early Ages.

1 Cor. i. 22-24.

The Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified; unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, Christ the wisdom of God.

It has been already stated120, that in the first great struggle of the human mind against the Christian religion the action of reason in criticising its claims assumed two forms, Gnosticism or rationalism within the church, and unbelief without.

The origin and history of the former of these two lines of thought were once discussed in an elaborate course of Bampton Lectures;121 and though subsequent investigation has added new sources of information,122 [pg 040] and it would be consonant to our general object to trace briefly the speculations of the various schools of Gnostics,—Greek, Oriental, or Egyptian,—the want of space necessitates the omission of these topics. In the present lecture we shall accordingly restrict ourselves to the history of the other line of thought, and trace the grounds alleged by the intelligent heathens who examined Christianity, for declining to admit its claims, from the time of its rise to the final downfall of heathenism.

The truest modern resemblance to this struggle is obviously to be found in the disbelief shown by educated heathens in pagan countries to whom Christianity is proclaimed in the present day. It was not until the establishment of Christianity as the state religion by Constantine had given it political and moral victory, that it was possible for unbelief to assume its modern aspect, of being the attempt of reason to break away from a creed which is an acknowledged part of the national life. The first opponents accordingly whose views we shall study, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, are heathen unbelievers. Julian is the earliest that we encounter who rejected Christianity after having been educated in it.

The resemblance however to this struggle is not wholly restricted to heathen lands. There have been moments in the history of nations, or of individuals, when a Christian standard of feeling or of thought has been so far obliterated that a state of public disbelief and philosophical attack similar to the ancient heathen has reappeared, and the tone of the early unbelievers, and sometimes even their specific doubts, have been either borrowed or reproduced.123

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In this portion of the history we encounter a difficulty peculiar to it, in being compelled to form an estimate of the opinions described, from indirect information. The treatises of the more noted writers that opposed Christianity have perished; some through natural causes, but those of Porphyry and Julian through the special order of a Christian emperor, Theodosius II., in A.D. 435.

In the absence accordingly of the original writings, we must discover the grounds for the rejection of Christianity by the aid of the particular treatises of evidence written by Christian fathers expressly in refutation of them, which occasionally contain quotations of the lost works; and also by means of the general apologies written on behalf of the Christian religion, together with slight notices of it occurring in heathen literature. The latter will inform us concerning the miscellaneous objections current, the former concerning the definite arguments of the writers who expressly gave reasons for disbelieving Christianity.124

We possess a large treatise of Origen against Celsus; passages, directed against Porphyry, of Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustin; a tract of Eusebius against Hierocles; and a work of Cyril of Alexandria against Julian. Yet it is never perfectly satisfactory to be obliged to read an opinion through the statement of an opponent of it. The history of philosophical controversy shows that intellectual causes, such as the natural [pg 042] tendency to answer an argument on principles that its author would not concede, to reply to conclusions instead of premises, or to impute the corollaries which are supposed to be deducible from an opinion, may lead to unintentional misrepresentation of a doctrine refuted, even where no moral causes such as bias or sarcasm contribute to the result. Aristotle's well-known criticism of Plato's theory of archetypes is a pertinent illustration.125

The slight difficulty thus encountered, in extracting the real opinions of the early unbelievers out of the replies of their Christian opponents, may for the most part be avoided by first realising the state of belief which existed in reference to the heathen religion, which for our present purpose may be treated as homogeneous throughout the whole Roman world. We shall thus be enabled as it were to foresee the line of opinion which would be likely to be adopted in reference to a new religion coming with the claims and character of Christianity. This prefatory inquiry will also coincide with our general purpose of analysing the influence of intellectual causes in the production of unbelief.

Four separate tendencies may be distinguished among heathens in the early centuries in reference to religion:126 viz. the tendency, (1) to absolute unbelief, (2) to a bigoted attachment to a national creed, (3) to a philosophical, and (4) a mystical theory of religion.

The tendency to total disbelief of the supernatural prevailed in the Epicurean school. A type of the more earnest spirits of this class is seen at a period a little earlier than the Christian era in Lucretius, living mournfully in the moral desert which his doubts had [pg 043] scorched into barrenness.127 The world is to him a scene unguided by a Providence: death is uncheered by the hope of a future life. An example of the flippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the second century, A.D. The great knowledge of life which travel had afforded him created a universal ridicule for religion; but his unbelief evinced no seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the courteous playfulness exhibited in the many-sided genius of Plato, he was a caricaturist rather than a painter: his dialogues are farces of life rather than satires. It has been well remarked, that human society has no worse foe than a universal scoffer. Lacking aspirations sufficiently lofty to appreciate religion, and wisdom to understand the great crises that give birth to it, such a man destroys not superstition only but the very faculty of belief.128 It is easy to perceive that to such minds Christianity would be a mark for the same jests as other creeds.

A second tendency, most widely opposed in appearance to the sceptical, but which was too often its natural product, showed itself in a bigoted attachment to the national religion.129 Among the masses such faith was real though unintelligent, but in educated men it had become artificial. When an ethnic religion is young, faith is fresh and gives inspiration to its art and its poetry. In a more critical age, the historic spirit rationalizes the legends, while the philosophic allegorizes the myths; and thoughtful men attempt to rise to a spiritual worship of which rites are symbols.130 But in the decay of a religion, the supernatural loses its [pg 044] hold of the class of educated minds, and is regarded as imposture, and the support which they lend to worship is political. They fall back on tradition to escape their doubts, or they think it politically expedient to enforce on the masses a creed which they contemn in heart. Such a ground of attachment to paganism is described in the dialogue of the Christian apologist, Minucius Felix.131 It would not only coincide with the first-named tendency in denying the importance of Christianity, but would join in active opposition. In truth, it marks the commencement of the strong reaction which took place in favour of heathenism at the close of the second century,—twofold in its nature; a popular reaction of prejudice or of mysticism on the part of the lower classes, and a political or philosophical one of the educated.132 Both were in a great degree produced by Eastern influences. The substitution which was gradually taking place of naturalism for humanism, the adoration of cosmical and mystical powers instead of the human attributes of the deities of the older creed, was the means of re-awakening popular superstition, while at the same time the Alexandrian speculations of Neo-Platonism gave a religious aspect to philosophy.

Accordingly the third, or philosophical tendency in reference to religion, distinct from the two already named, of positive unbelief in the supernatural on the one hand, and devotion sincere or artificial to heathen worship on the other, comprises, in addition to the older schools of Stoics and Platonists, the new eclectic school just spoken of. The three schools agreed in extracting [pg 045] a philosophy out of the popular religion, by searching for historic or moral truth veiled in its symbols. The Stoic, as being the least speculative, employed itself less with religion than the others. Its doctrine, ethical rather than metaphysical, concerned with the will rather than the intellect, juridical and formal rather than speculative, seemed especially to give expression to the Roman character, as the Platonic to the Greek, or as the eclectic to the hybrid, half Oriental half European, which marked Alexandria. In the writings of M. Aurelius, one of the emperors most noted for the persecution of the church, it manifests itself rather as a rule of life than a subject for belief, as morality rather than religion.133 The Stoic opposition to Christianity was the contempt of the Gaul or Roman for what was foreign, or of ethical philosophy for religion.

The Platonic doctrine, so far as it is represented in an impure form in the early centuries, sought, as of old, to explore the connexion between the visible and invisible worlds, and to rise above the phenomenon into the spiritual. Hence in its view of heathen religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impassable chasm God from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien both to dualism and pantheism.

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The line is not very marked which separates this philosophy from the professed revival of Plato's teaching, which received the name of Neo-Platonism, which was the philosophy with which Christianity came most frequently into conflict or contact during the third and two following centuries (10). Fastening on the more mystical parts of Plato, to the neglect of the more practical, it probably borrowed something also from Eastern mysticism. The object of the school was to find an explanation of the problem of existence, by tracing the evolution of the absolute cause in the universe through a trinal manifestation, as being, thought, and action. The agency by which the human mind apprehended this process lay in the attainment of a kind of insight wherein the organ of knowledge is one with the object known, a state of mind and feeling whereby the mind gazes on a sphere of being which is closed to the ordinary faculties. Schelling's theory of “intellectual intuition” is the modern parallel to this Neo-Platonic State of ἔκστασις or ἐνθουσιασμός. This philosophy, though frequently described in modern times as bearing a resemblance to Christianity in method, as being the knowledge of the one absolute Being by means of faith, is really most widely opposed in its interior spirit. It is essentially pantheism. Its monotheistic aspect, caught by contact with Semitic thought, is exterior only. Its deity, which seems personal, is really only the personification of an abstraction, a mere instance of mental realism. Man's personality, which Christianity states clearly, was lost in the universe; religious facts in metaphysical ideas.134 Religion accordingly would be exclusive, confined to an aristocracy of education; and the existing national cultus would be appropriated as a sensuous religion suited for the masses, a visible type [pg 047] of the invisible. The analogy which this philosophy bore to Christianity in aim and office, as well as the rivalry of other schools which is implied in its eclectic aspect, caused it to take up an attitude of opposition to the Christian system to which it claimed to bear affinity.

The mystical element in this philosophy enabled some minds to find a home for the theurgy which had been increased by the importation of eastern ideas.135 They form as it were the connecting link with the fourth religious tendency, which manifested itself in the craving for a communication from the world invisible, which found its satisfaction in magic and in a spirit of fanaticism. Some of these fanatics were doubtless also impostors;136 but some were high-minded men struggling after truth, of whom possibly an example is seen at an early period in Apollonius of Tyana; deceived rather than deceivers. This tendency operated in some minds to cause them to reduce Christianity to ordinary magic and prodigies; while among a few it created yearnings for a nobler satisfaction, which drew them toward Christianity, as in the case of the Clemens, whose autobiography professes to be given in the well-known work of the early ages, the Clementines. (11)

Such seem to have been the chief forms of religious thought existing among the heathen to whom Christianity presented itself, on which were founded the preparation of heart which led to the acceptance of its message, or the prejudices which rejected its claims;—viz. among the masses, a sensuous unintelligent belief in polytheism;—among the educated, disorganization of belief; either materialism, the total rejection of the supernatural, and a political attachment on the principle of expedience to existing creeds; or philosophy, ethical, dualistic, pantheistic, despising religions as mere organic products of national thought, and trying [pg 048] to seize the central truths of which they were the expression; or a mystical craving after the supernatural, degrading its victims into fanatics. The further analysis of these tendencies would show their connexion with the threefold classification before given of the tests of truth into sense, reason, and feeling.

We have thus prepared the way for interpreting the lines of argument used in opposition to Christianity, and shall now proceed to sketch in chronological succession the history of the chief intellectual attacks made by unbelievers.

It is not until the middle of the second century that we find Christianity becoming the subject of literary investigation. Incidental expressions either of scorn or of misapprehension form the sole allusions in the heathen writers of earlier date (12); but in the reigns of the Antonines, the Christians began to attract notice and to meet with criticism. We read of a work written against Christianity by a Cynic, Crescens, in the reign of Antoninus Pius;137 and of another by the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, Fronto of Cirta,138 in which probably the imperial persecution was justified.

It is at this time too that we meet with an attempt to hold the Christians up to ridicule in a satire of Lucian,139 which well exemplifies the views belonging to [pg 049] the sceptical of the four classes into which we have divided the religious opinions of the heathens. His tract, the Peregrinus Proteus, it can hardly be doubted, is intended as a satire on Christian martyrdom (13). Peregrinus140 is a Cynic philosopher, who after a life of early villainy is made by Lucian to play the hypocrite at Antioch and join himself to the Christians, “miserable men” (as he calls them), “who, hoping for immortality in soul and body, had a foolish contempt of death, and suffered themselves to be persuaded that they were brethren, because, having abandoned the Greek gods, they worshipped the crucified sophist, living according to his laws.”141 Peregrinus, when a Christian, soon rises to the dignity of bishop, and is worshipped as a god; and when imprisoned for his religion is visited by Christians from all quarters. Afterwards, expelled the church, he travels over the world; and at last for the sake of glory burns himself publicly at Olympia about A.D. 165. His end is described in a tragico-comic manner, and a legend is recounted that at his death he was seen in white, and that a hawk ascended from his pyre.

Lucian has here used a real name to describe a class, not a person. He has given a caricature painting from historic elements. There seems internal evidence to show that he was slightly acquainted with the books of the early Christians.142 It has even been conjectured that he might have read and designed to parody the epistles of Ignatius.143 With more probability [pg 050] we may believe that he had heard of and misunderstood the heroic bearing of the Christian martyrs in the moment of their last suffering. Pope Alexander VII. in 1664 placed this tract in the index of prohibited books: yet even beneath the satire we rather hail Lucian as an unconscious witness to several beautiful features in the character of the Christians of his time:144 viz. their worship of “the crucified sophist,” who was their adorable Lord; their guilelessness; their brotherly love; their strict discipline; their common meals; their union; their benevolence; their joy in death. The points which he depicts in his satire are, their credulity in giving way to Peregrinus; their unintelligent belief in Christ and in immortality; their factiousness in aiding Peregrinus when in prison; their pompous vanity in martyrdom, and possibly their tendency to believe legends respecting a martyr's death. His satire is contempt, not anger, nor dread. It is the humour of a thorough sceptic, which discharged itself on all religions alike; and indicates one type of opposition to Christianity; viz. the contempt of those who thought it folly.

Very unlike to him was his well-known contemporary Celsus. If the one represents the scoffer, the other represents the philosopher. Not despising Christianity with scorn like Tacitus, nor jeering at it with humour like Lucian, Celsus had the wisdom to apprehend danger to heathenism, measuring Christianity in its mental and not its material relations; and about the reign of Marcus Aurelius wrote against it a work entitled Λόγος ἀληθής, which was considered of such importance, that Origen towards the close of his own life145 wrote a large and elaborate reply to it.

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We know nothing of Celsus's life.146 There is even an uncertainty as to the school of philosophy to which he belonged. External evidence seems to testify that he was an Epicurean; but internal would lead us to classify him with the Platonic. Unscrupulous in argument, confounding canonical gospels with apocryphal, and Christians with heretical sects, delighting in searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections, making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and eloquent invective, as the vehicle of his passionate assault.

It is impossible to recover a continuous account of the work of Celsus from the treatise of his respondent; but a careful study of the fragments embedded in the text of Origen will perhaps restore the framework of the original sufficiently to enable us to perceive the points of his opposition to Christianity, and the manner in which his philosophy stood in the way of the reception of it. (14)

Celsus commences by introducing a Jewish rabbi to attack Christianity from the monotheistic stand-point of the earlier faith.147 The Jew is first made to direct his criticism against the documents of Christianity, and [pg 052] then the facts narrated.148 He points out inconsistencies in the gospel narratives of the genealogy of Christ;149 utters the most blasphemous calumnies concerning the incarnation;150 turns the narrative of the infancy into ridicule;151 imputes our Saviour's miracles to magic;152 attacks his divinity;153 and concentrates the bitterest raillery on the affecting narrative of our blessed Lord's most holy passion. Each fact of deepening sorrow in that divine tragedy, the betrayal,154 the mental anguish, the sacred agony,155 is made the subject of remarks characterized no less by coarseness of taste and unfairness, than to the Christian mind by irreverence. Instead of his heart being touched by the majesty of our Saviour's sorrow, Celsus only finds an argument against the divine character of the adorable sufferer.156 The wonders accompanying Christ's death are treated as legends;157 the resurrection regarded as an invention or an optical delusion.158

After Celsus has thus made the Jew the means of a ruthless attack on Christianity, he himself directs a similar one against the Jewish religion itself.159 He goes to the origin of their history; describes the Jews as having left Egypt in a sedition;160 as being true types of the Christians in their ancient factiousness;161 considers Moses to be only on a level with the early Greek legislators;162 regards Jewish rites like circumcision to be borrowed from Egypt; charges anthropomorphism on Jewish theology,163 and declines allowing the allegorical interpretation in explanation of it;164 examines Jewish prophecy, parallels it with heathen oracles,165 and claims that the goodness not the truth of a prophecy ought to be considered;166 points to the ancient idolatry of the Jews as proof that they were not better than [pg 053] other nations;167 and to the destruction of Jerusalem as proof that they were not special favourites of heaven. At last he arrives at their idea of creation,168 and here reveals the real ground of his antipathy. While he objects to details in the narrative, such as the mention of days before the existence of the sun,169 his real hatred is against the idea of the unity of God, and the freedom of Deity in the act of creation. It is the struggle of pantheism against theism.

When Celsus has thus made use of the Jew to refute Christianity from the Jewish stand-point, and afterwards refuted the Jew from his own, he proceeds to make his own attack on Christianity; in doing which, he first examines the lives of Christians,170 and afterwards the Christian doctrine;171 thus skilfully prejudicing the mind of his readers against the persons before attacking the doctrines. He alludes to the quarrelsomeness shown in the various sects of Christians,172 and repeats the calumnious suspicion of disloyalty,173 want of patriotism,174 and political uselessness;175 and hence defends the public persecution of them.176 Filled with the esoteric pride of ancient philosophy, he reproaches the Christians with their carefulness to proselytize the poor,177 and to convert the vicious;178 thus unconsciously giving a noble testimony to one of the most divine features in our religion, and testifying to the preaching of the doctrine of a Saviour for sinners.

Having thus defamed the Christians, he passes to the examination of the Christian doctrine, in its form, its method, and its substance. His æsthetic sense, ruined with the idolatry of form, and unable to appreciate the thought, regards the Gospels as defective and rude through simplicity.179 The method of Christian teaching also seems to him to be defective, as lacking philosophy and dialectic, and as denouncing the use of [pg 054] reason.180 Lastly, he turns to the substance of the dogmas themselves. He distinguishes two elements in them, the one of which, as bearing resemblance to philosophy or to heathen religion, he regards as incontestably true, but denies its originality, and endeavours to derive it from Persia or from Platonism;181 resolving, for example, the worship of a human being into the ordinary phenomenon of apotheosis.182 The other class of doctrines which he attacks as false, consists of those which relate to creation,183 the incarnation,184 the fall,185 redemption,186 man's place in creation,187 moral conversions,188 and the resurrection of the dead.189 His point of view for criticising them is derived from the fundamental dualism of the Platonic system; the eternal severance of matter and mind, of God and the world; and the reference of good to the region of mind, evil to that of matter. Thus, not content with his former attack on the idea of creation in discussion with the Jew, he returns to the discussion from the philosophical side. His Platonism will not allow him to admit that the absolute God, the first Cause, can have any contact with matter. It leads him also to give importance to the idea of δαίμονες, or divine mediators, by which the chasm is filled between the ideal god and the world;190 not being able otherwise to imagine the action of the pure ἰδέα of God on a world of matter. Hence he blames Christians for attributing an evil nature to demons, and finds a reasonable interpretation of the heathen worship.191 The same dualist theory extinguishes the idea of the incarnation, as a degradation of God; and also the doctrine of the fall, inasmuch as psychological deterioration is impossible if the soul be pure, and if evil be a necessary attribute of matter.192 With the fall, redemption also disappears, because the [pg 055] perfect cannot admit of change; Christ's coming could only be to correct what God already knew, or rectify what ought to have been corrected before.193 Further, Celsus argues, if Divinity did descend, that it would not assume so lowly a form as Jesus. The same rigorous logic charges on Christianity the undue elevation of man, as well as the abasement of God. Celsus can neither admit man more than the brutes to be the final cause of the universe; nor allow the possibility of man's nearness to God.194 His pantheism, destroying the barrier which separates the material from the moral, obliterates the perception of the fact that a single free responsible being may be of more dignity than the universe.

Such is the type of a philosophical objector against Christianity, a little later than the middle of the second century. We meet here for the first time a remarkable effort of pagan thought, endeavouring to extinguish the new religion; the definite statements of a mind that investigated its claims and rejected it. Most of the objections of Celsus are sophistical; a few are admitted difficulties; but the philosophical class of them will be seen to be the corollary from his general principle before explained.

A century intervenes before we meet with the next literary assailant, Porphyry. In the interval the new reactionary philosophy has fully taken root, and the fresh attack accordingly bears the impress of the new system.

The chief objections made in the intervening period, as we collect them from the apologies, were such as belongs fitly to a transitional time, when Christianity was exciting attention but was not understood;195 and are chiefly the result of the second of the tendencies before named, viz., either of popular prejudice, or of the political alarm in reference to the social disorganization likely to arise out of a large defection from the [pg 056] religion of the empire, which expressed itself in overt acts of persecution on the part of the state. (15) Both equally lie beyond our field of investigation; the one because it does not belong to the examination of Christianity made by intelligent thought; the other because it is the struggle of deeds, not of ideas, which only have an interest for us, if, as in Julian's case hereafter, the acts were dictated by the deliberate advice of persons who had attentively examined Christianity.

The apprehensions of prejudice gradually subsided, and objections began to be based on grounds less absurd in character. The political opposition also was henceforth founded on a more subtle policy, and on an appreciation of the nature of Christianity. Soon after the middle of the third century we meet with the next attack of a purely literary kind, viz., by Porphyry, the most distinguished opponent that Christianity has yet encountered.196 The pupil of Longinus, perhaps of Origen,197 and the biographer and interpreter of Plotinus, he is best known for his logical writings, and for the development of the theory of predication in his introduction to the Categories, which formed the text on which hung the mediæval speculations of scholasticism.198 His Syrian origin and oriental culture perhaps prepared him for a fusion of East and West, and for admitting a deeper admixture of mysticism into the Neo-Platonic philosophy, of which he was a disciple. The points of his approximation to Christianity are the result of those elements in which heathen philosophy most nearly approached to Christian truth, the development of which was stimulated in minds essentially anti-christian [pg 057] by the effort to find a rival to it. Admirably prepared by his serious and spiritual tone to embrace Christianity, he nevertheless lived a disciple of paganism. His feelings rather than his reason led him to defend national creeds. His philosophy and the Christian, which seemed to be aspirations after the same end, being designed to elevate the spirit above the world of sense, were really radically opposed. Understanding therefore the power of the Christian religion, he felt the necessity for supplanting it; and hoped to do so by spiritualizing the old creeds, which he harmonized with philosophy by means of regarding them as symbolic.199

His opposition to Christianity was not however based wholly on a prejudice of feeling. He was a man cultivated in all the learning of his age, and of a more generous temper than Celsus, and seems to have exercised much critical sagacity in the investigation of the claims of Christianity. About the year 270, while in retirement in Sicily, he wrote a book against the Christians.200 This work having been destroyed, we are left to gather its contents and the opinions of its authors from a few criticisms in Eusebius and Jerome. The entire work consisted of fifteen books; and concerning only five of these is information afforded by them. Their remarks lead us to conjecture that it was an assault on Christianity in many relations. The books however of which we know the purpose, seem to have been critical rather than philosophical, directed against [pg 058] the grounds of the religion rather than its character; being in fact an assault on the Bible. The existence of such a line of argument, of which a trace was already observable in Celsus, is explained by the circumstance that the faith of Christendom was already fixed on the authority of the sacred books. The church had always acknowledged the authority of the Jewish scriptures; and by the middle or close of the second century at the latest, it had come to acknowledge explicitly the co-ordinate authority of a body of Christian literature, historic, and epistolary.201 Hence, when once the idea of a rule of faith had grown common, the investigation of the contents of the scriptures became necessary on the part of heathen opponents. The growingly critical character of Porphyry's statements, though partly attributable to the literary culture of his mind, is a slight undesigned evidence corroborative of the authoritative nature already attributed to the scriptures in doctrine and truthfulness. Porphyry seems accordingly to have directed his critical powers to show such traces of mistakes and incorrectness as might invalidate the idea of a supernatural origin for the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and shake confidence in their truth as an authority.

The first book of his work202 dragged to light some of the discrepancies, real or supposed, in scripture; and the examination of the dispute between St. Peter and St. Paul was quoted as an instance of the admixture of [pg 059] human ingredients in the body of apostolic teaching. His third book203 was directed to the subject of scripture interpretation, especially, with some inconsistency, against the allegorical or mystical tendency which at that time marked the whole church, and especially the Alexandrian fathers. The allegorical method coincided with, if it did not arise from, the oriental instinct of symbolism, the natural poetry of the human mind. But in the minds of Jews and Christians it had been sanctified by its use in the Hebrew religion, and had become associated with the apocryphal literature of the Jewish church. It is traceable to a more limited extent in the inspired writers of the New Testament, and in most of the fathers; but in the school of Alexandria204 it was adopted as a formal system of interpretation. It is this allegorical system which Porphyry attacked. He assaulted the writings of those who had fancifully allegorised the Old Testament in the pious desire of finding Christianity in every part of it, in spite of historic conditions; and he hastily drew the inference, with something like the feeling of doubt which rash interpretations of prophecy are in danger of producing at this day, that no consistent sense can be put upon the Old Testament. His fourth book205 was a criticism on the Mosaic history, and on Jewish antiquities. But the most important books in his work were the twelfth206 and thirteenth,207 which were devoted to an examination of the prophecies of Daniel, in which he [pg 060] detected some of those peculiarities on which modern criticism has employed itself, and arrived at the conclusions in reference to its date, revived by the English deist Collins in the last century, and by many German critics in the present.

It is well known that half of the book of Daniel208 is historic, half prophetic. Each of these parts is distinguished from similar portions of the Old Testament by some peculiarities. Porphyry is not recorded as noticing any of those which belong to the historic part, unless we may conjecture, from his theory of the book being originally written in Greek, that he detected the presence of those Greek words in Nebuchadnezzar's edicts, which many modern critics have contended could not be introduced into Chaldæa antecedently to the Macedonian conquest.209 The peculiarity alleged to belong to the prophetical part is its apocalyptic tone. [pg 061] It looks, it has been said, historical rather than prophetical. Definite events, and a chain of definite events, are predicted with the precision of historical narrative;210 whereas most prophecy is a moral sermon, in which general moral predictions are given, with specific historic ones interspersed. Nor is this, which is shared in a less degree by occasional prophecies elsewhere, the only peculiarity alleged, but it is affirmed also that the definite character ceases at a particular period of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes,211 down to which the very campaigns of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties are noted, but subsequently to which the prophetic tone becomes more vague and indefinite. Hence the conjecture has been hazarded that it was written in the reign of Antiochus by a Palestinian Jew, who gathered up the traditions of Daniel's life, and wrote the recent history of his country in eloquent language, in an apocalyptic form; which, after the literary fashion of his age, he imputed to an ancient seer, Daniel; definite up to the period at which he composed it, indefinite as he gazed on the future. (16) It was this peculiarity, the supposed ceasing of the prophecies in the book of Daniel at a definite date, which was noticed by Porphyry, and led him to suggest the theory of its authorship just named.212 These remarks will give an idea of the critical acuteness of Porphyry. His objections are not, it will be observed, founded on quibbles like those of Celsus, but on instructive literary characteristics, many of which are greatly exaggerated or grossly misinterpreted, but still are real, and suggest difficulties or inquiries which the best modern theological critics have honourably felt to demand candid examination and explanation.213

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A period of about thirty years brings us to the date of the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 303; during the progress of which another noted attack was made. It was by Hierocles, then president of Bithynia, and afterwards præfect of Alexandria, himself one of the instigators of the persecution and an agent in effecting it.214 His line of argument was more specific than those previously named, being directed against the evidence which was derived by Christians for the truth of their religion from the character and miraculous works of Christ; and his aim accordingly was to develope the character of Apollonius of Tyana,215 as a rival to our Saviour in piety and miraculous power.

Apollonius was a Pythagorean philosopher, born in Cappadocia about four years before the Christian era. After being early educated in the circle of philosophy, and in the practice of the ascetic discipline of his predecessor Pythagoras, he imitated that philosopher in spending the next portion of his life in travel. Attracted [pg 063] by his mysticism to the farthest East as the source of knowledge, he set out for Persia and India; and in Nineveh on his route met Damis, the future chronicler of his actions. Returning from the East instructed in Brahminic lore, he travelled over the Roman world. The remainder of his days was spent in Asia Minor. Statues and temples were erected to his honour. He obtained vast influence, and died with the reputation of sanctity late in the century. Such is the outline of his life, if we omit the numerous legends and prodigies which attach themselves to his name. He was partly a philosopher, partly a magician; half mystic, half impostor.216 At the distance of a century and a quarter from his death, in the reign of Septimius Severus, at the request of the wife of that emperor, the second of the three Philostrati dressed up Damis's narrative of his life, in a work still remaining, and paved a way for the general reception of the story among the cultivated classes of Rome and Greece.217 It has been thought that Philostratus had a polemical aim against the Christian faith,218 as the memoir of Apollonius is in so many points a parody on the life of Christ. The annunciation of his birth to his mother, the chorus of swans which sang for joy on occasion of it, the casting out devils, the raising the dead, the healing the sick, the sudden disappearance and reappearance of Apollonius, the sacred voice which called him at his death, and his claim to be a teacher with authority to reform the world, form some of the points of similarity.

If such was the intention of Philostratus, he was [pg 064] really a controversialist under the form of a writer of romance; employed by those who at that time were labouring (as already named) to introduce an eclecticism largely borrowed from the East into the region both of philosophy and religion. Without settling this question, it is at least certain that about the beginning of the next century the heathen writers adopted this line of argument, and sought to exhibit a rival ideal.219 One instance is the life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus; another that which Hierocles wrote, in part of which he used Philostratus's untrustworthy memoir for the purpose of instituting a comparison between Apollonius and Christ. The sceptic who referred religious phenomena to fanaticism would hence avail himself of the comparison as a satisfactory account of the origin of Christianity; while others would adopt the same view as Hierocles, and deprive the Christian miracles of the force of evidence,—a line of argument which was reproduced by an English deist220 who translated the work of Philostratus at the end of the seventeenth century. The work of Hierocles is lost, but an outline of its argument, with extracts, remains in a reply which Eusebius wrote to a portion of it (17). Though couched in a seeming spirit of fairness, the tone was such as would be expected from one who ungenerously availed himself of the very moment of a cruel persecution as the occasion of this literary attack.

But the time of the church's sorrow was nearly past. The hour of deliverance was at hand. The emperor Constantine proclaimed toleration,221 and subsequently established Christianity as the state-religion. Only one moment more of peril was permitted to befall it.

After an interval in which Christian emperors reigned, Julian ascended the throne, and employed his short reign of two years222 in trying to restore heathenism; [pg 065] and during the last winter of his life, while halting at Antioch in the course of his Eastern war, wrote an elaborate work against Christianity.223 The book itself has been destroyed, but the reply remains which Cyril of Alexandria thought it necessary to write more than half a century afterwards; and by this means we can gather Julian's opinions, just as from his own letters and the contemporary history we can gather his plans. The material struggle of deeds belongs in this instance to our subject, inasmuch as it is the overt expression of the struggle of ideas.

Julian, as already observed, differed from previous opponents of Christianity, in having been educated a Christian.224 Associating when a student at the schools of Athens with Gregory of Nazianzum and Basil, he had every opportunity for understanding the Christian religion and measuring its claims. The first cause of his apostasy from it remains uncertain. One tradition states that the shock to his creed arose from some early injury received through the fraud of a professing Christian. Something is probably due to exasperation at the severity endured from Constantius; and perhaps still more is due to the natural peculiarity of his character. He was swayed by the imagination rather than the reason, and was kindled with an enthusiastic admiration of the old heathen literature and the historic glories of the heathen world. His very style exhibits traces of imitation of the old models after which he formed himself.225 With a spirit which the Italian writers of the Renaissance [pg 066] enable us to understand, his sympathies clung round heathens until they entwined in their embrace heathenism itself. To a mind of this natural bias sufficient grounds unhappily would easily be found to produce aversion to Christianity, in the quarrels among sections of the church, and in the ambition and inconsistency of the numbers of nominal converts who embraced the religion when its public establishment had rendered it their interest to do so; and prejudice would add arguments for rejecting it.

Accordingly he devoted his short reign to restore the ancient heathenism. Like Constantine, having arrived at the throne through a troublous war, he found the religion of the state opposed to his own convictions, and determined to substitute that which he himself professed. The difference however was great. The religion of Constantine was young and progressive; that of Julian was effete. It is in this respect that Julian has been compared,226 in his character and acts, to those who in modern times, both in literature and in politics, have devoted their lives to roll back the progress of public opinion, and reproduce the spirit of the past by giving new life to the relics of bygone ages. If Julian had succeeded in his attempt, the victory could not have been permanent.

The steps by which he strove to carry out his views were not unlike those of Constantine.227 He first proclaimed the establishment of the emperor's religion as the religion of the state, permitting toleration for all others. He next transferred the Christian endowments to heathens, acting on the principle previously established by Constantine. But beyond this point he proceeded to measures which had the nature of persecution. He declared the Christian laity disqualified for office in the state,—a measure which could only be sophistically maintained on the plea of self-defence; and, afraid of [pg 067] the engine of education, forbade Christian professors to lecture in the public schools of science and literature: and probably he at last imposed a tax on those who did not perform sacrifice. At the same time he saw the necessity of a total reformation in paganism, if it was to revive as the rival of Christianity; and planned, as Pontifex Maximus, a scheme for effecting it, which involved the concealment of the absurdity of its origin by allegorical interpretation, together with the establishment of a discipline and organisation similar to the Christian, and special attention on the part of the priesthood to morality and to public works of mercy.228 His bitter contempt for Christianity manifested itself in a public edict, which commanded that Christians should be denominated by the opprobrious epithet “Galilæans;” and in some of his extant letters229 he evinces a bitterness against it which finds its parallel in Voltaire and Shelley.

A work remains, the Philopatris, (18) usually falsely assigned to Lucian, but which internal evidence proves to belong to the reign of Julian, in which the unknown author, imitating the manner but wanting the power of Lucian, holds up to ridicule the sermons and teaching of some Christian preachers. This work probably conveys the creed of the imperial party, which is simply Deism. This however is not the only source for ascertaining the creed of Julian, and the nature of his objections to Christianity. In his letters, and in the reply of Cyril to his now lost work, we possess more exact means for determining his position and sentiments. (19)

He omitted, as we might expect, the grosser and more frivolous charges against Christianity which had [pg 068] been formerly expressed by those who were ignorant of its real character. Indeed he seems to have been willing to recognise it as one form of religion, but declined to admit its monopoly of claim to be regarded as the only true form. Though himself a Theist,230—his view of Deity being more simply monotheistic than that of his predecessors, derived furtively from the Hebrew idea transmitted through Christianity; he nevertheless considered that discrepancy of national character required corresponding differences in religion.231 In his work he seems to have repeated some of the objections of the older assailants, Celsus and Porphyry; attacking the credibility of scripture and of the Christian scheme in its doctrines and evidences. He offered in it a criticism on primæval and Hebrew history;232 attacking the probability of many portions of the book of Genesis;233 objecting to the Hebrew view of Deity as too appropriating in its character, and as making the divine Being appear cruel.234 He denied the originality of the Hebrew moral law,235 and pointed out the supposed defectiveness of the Hebrew polity; comparing unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David, with the great heroes of Greek history.236 The Hebrew prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in comparison with oracles. In estimating the character of Christ, he depreciated the importance of his miracles;237 and noticing the different tone of the fourth Gospel from those of the Synoptists, he asserted that it was St. John who first taught Christ's divinity.238 He regarded Christianity as composed of borrowed ingredients; considered it to have assumed its shape gradually; and regarded its progress to have been unforeseen by its founder and by St. Paul;239 attacked its relation to Judaism in superseding it while depending on it;240 regarded proselytism as absurd; and directed some few charges, which may have been [pg 069] more deserved, against practices of his day, such as Staurolatry241 and Martyrolatry.242

With the death of Julian the hopes of heathenism departed; and two eloquent orations of Gregory Nazianzen243 still convey to us the Christian words of triumph. Christianity progressed, protected by the favour of the sovereigns. Heathenism no longer expressed itself in free examination of Christianity, and lingered only in the prejudices of the people. In the West it is merely seen as it pleads for toleration,244 or makes itself heard in the murmurs which attributed the woes of the Teutonic invasions to the displeasure of the heathen gods at the neglect of their worship.245 In the East it disappears altogether. Doubt there expires, because speculation ceases and Christian thought becomes fixed; nor will it be necessary in future to recur to the history of the eastern church.

In this survey we have tried to understand the objections alleged by unbelievers during the first four centuries, successively changing in character, from the calumnies of ignorance in the second century, to the statements of intelligent disbelief in the third and fourth, until they finally subside in the fifth into the murmuring of popular superstition; and have endeavoured to give their natural as well as literary history, by exhibiting them as corollaries from the various views concerning religion enumerated at the commencement of the lecture. The blind prejudices of the uneducated populace, and the attachment, merely political, to heathen creeds, manifested themselves in deeds rather than words; but each of the other lines of thought there indicated gave [pg 070] expression in literature to its opinion concerning Christianity; the flippant impiety of Epicureanism in Lucian, the debased form then prevalent of Platonism in Celsus, the subtle and mystic philosophy of the neo-Platonists in Porphyry, the oriental Theosophy in Hierocles, the romantic attachment to the old pagan literature in Julian.

If these causes be still further classified for comparison with the enumeration of intellectual causes stated in the previous lecture, we find only the adumbration of some of the forms there named. The attack from physical science, so prevalent since the era of modern discovery, is barely discernible in the passing remarks on the Mosaic cosmogony in Celsus and Julian.246 The attack from criticism is seen in a trifling form in Celsus; in a superior manner in the perception which Porphyry exhibits of the literary characteristics of the Old Testament, and Julian of the New. The chief ground of the attack was derived from metaphysical science, which acted not so much in its modern form of a subjective inquiry into the tests of truth, as in the shape of rival doctrines concerning the highest problems of life and being, which preoccupied the mind against Christianity. If the eclectic attempts to adjust such speculations to Christianity which marked the progress of Gnosticism could have been embraced in our inquiry, the force of this class of causes would have been made still more apparent.

The obvious insufficiency however of this analysis to afford an entire explanation of the prejudices of these early unbelievers points to the close union before noticed247of the emotional with the intellectual causes. While asserting the possibility of the independent action of the intellectual element under peculiar circumstances as a cause of doubt, and while thus vindicating the importance [pg 071] of investigating the history of free thought from the intellectual side, we admitted the necessity of taking the probability of the action of the moral element into account when we pass from the abstract study of tendencies to form a judgment on concrete instances. Here accordingly, in the mental history of these early unbelievers, we already encounter cases where philosophy as well as piety requires that a very large share in the final product be referred to the influence of emotional causes. Christianity addresses itself to the compound human nature, to the intellect and heart conjoined. Accordingly the excitement of certain forms of moral sensibility is as much presupposed in religion as the sense of colour in beholding a landscape. The means fail for estimating with historic certainty the particular emotional causes which operated in the instances now under consideration. The moral chasm which separates us from heathens is so great that we can hardly realize their feelings.

If however we cannot pronounce on the positive presence of moral causes which produced their disbelief, we may conjecture negatively the nature of those, the absence of which precluded the possibility of faith. Christianity demands a belief in the supernatural, and a serious spirit in the investigation of religion, both of which were wholly lacking in Lucian. It requires a deep consciousness of guilt and of the personality of God, which were wanting in Celsus. It exacts a more delicate moral taste to appreciate the divine ideal of Christ's character than Hierocles manifested. Porphyry and Julian are more difficult cases for moral analysis. Porphyry is so earnest a character, so spiritual in his tastes,248 that we wonder why he was not a Christian; and except by the reference of his conduct to general causes, such as philosophical pride, we cannot understand his motives without a more intimate knowledge than is now obtainable of his personal history. The [pg 072] difficulty of understanding Julian's character arises from its very complexity. Who can divine the many motives which must have combined with intellectual causes at successive moments of his life, to change the Christian student, into the apostate, to convert disbelief into hatred, and to degrade the philosopher into the persecutor? History happily offers so few parallels to enable us to form a conjecture on the answer, that we may be content to leave the problem unsolved.

We have now summed up the causes which operated in the first great intellectual struggle in which Christianity was engaged. No means exist for estimating the amount of harm done by the writings of unbelievers. The retributive destruction of some of them and the indignant alarm of the Christian apologists indicate the probability that these works had excited attention. But under a merciful Providence truth has in the end gained rather than lost by this first conflict of reason against Christianity. The church encountered the unbelievers by apologetic treatises, and met the Gnostics by dogmatic decisions. The truths brought out by the action and reaction, and embodied in the literature stimulated by Gnosticism, in the apologies created by unbelief, and in the creeds suggested as a protest against heresy, are the permanent result which the struggle has contributed to the world.

The contest however is not quite obsolete, and has a practical as well as antiquarian interest. Though the analogy to the attacks of ancient unbelievers must be sought in pagan countries in the objections of modern heathens, yet some resemblance to them may be found in the unbelief of Christian lands. Such parallels are frequently hasty generalizations founded on a superficial perception of agreement, without due recognition of the differences which more exact observation would bring to view; for identity of cause as well as result is necessary in order to establish philosophical affinity. In the present cases however the agreement is moral if not intellectual, in spirit if not in form, generally also in condition if not in cause. The flippant wit of Lucian, [pg 073] which attributes religion to imposture and craft, is repeated in the French criticism of the last century. Some of the doubts of Celsus reappear in the English deists. The delicate criticism of Porphyry is reproduced in the modern exegesis. The disposition to explain Christianity as a psychological phenomenon, as merely one form of the religious consciousness, an organic product of human thought, unsuited for men of superior knowledge, who can attain to the philosophical truth which underlies it, is the modern parallel to Julian.

Accordingly the conduct of the early church during this struggle has a living lesson of instruction for the church in Christian lands, as well as in its missionary operations to the heathen. The victory of the early church was not due wholly to intellectual remedies, such as the answers of apologists, but mainly to moral; to the inward perception generated of the adaptation of Christianity to supply the spiritual wants of human nature.249 As the heathen realized the sense of sin, they felt intuitively the suitability of salvation through Christ; as they witnessed the transforming power of belief in Him, they felt the inward testimony to the truth of Christianity. The external evidence of religion had its office in the early church, though the belief250 in magic and in oracles probably prevented the full perception of the demonstrative force due to the two forms of external evidence, miracles and prophecy. But the internal evidences,—Christ, Christianity, Christendom, [pg 074] were the most potent proofs offered,—the doctrine of an atoning Messiah filling the heart's deepest longings, and the lives of Christians embodying heavenly virtues.

The modern church may therefore take comfort, and may hope for victory. The weak things of the world confounded the strong, not only because the Holy Spirit granted the dew of his blessing, but because the scheme and message of reconciliation which the church was commissioned to announce, were of divine construction. Each Christian who tries, however humbly, to spread the knowledge of Christ by word or by example is helping forward the Redeemer's kingdom. Let each one in Christ's strength do his duty, and he will leave the world better than he found it; and in the present age, as in the times of old, Gnosticism and heathenism will retire before Christianity; the false will be dissipated, the good be absorbed, by the beams of the Sun of righteousness.

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Lecture III. Free Thought During The Middle Ages, and At The Renaissance; Together With Its Rise in Modern Times.

Luke xxi. 33.

Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.

We have studied the history of unbelief down to the fall of heathenism. A period of more than seven hundred years elapses before a second crisis of doubt occurs in church history. The interval was a time of social dissolution and reconstruction; and when the traces of the free criticism of religion reappear, the world in which they manifest themselves is new. Fresh races have been introduced, institutions unknown to the ancient civilization have been mingled with or have replaced the old; and the ancient language of the Roman empire has dissolved into the Romance tongues. But Christianity has lived through the deluge, and been the ark of refuge in the storm; and its claims are now tested by the young world which emerged into being when the waters of confusion had retired. The silence of reason in this interval was not the result of the abundance of piety, but of the prevalence of ignorance; a sign of the absence of inquiry, not of the presence of moral and mental satisfaction.251 Even when speculation [pg 076] revived, and reason re-examined religion, the literary monuments in which expression is given to doubt are so few, that it will be possible in the present lecture not only to include the account of the second and third crises which mark the course of free thought in church history, but even to pass beyond them, and watch the dawn of unbelieving criticism caused by the rise of the modern philosophy which ushers in the fourth of the great crises named in a previous lecture.252

The former of these periods which we shall now examine, the second in the general scheme, may be considered to extend from A.D. 1100 to 1400. Its commencement is fixed by the date at which the scholastic philosophy began to influence religion, its close by the revival of classical learning. The history of free thought in it is complicated, by being to some extent the struggle of deeds as well as of ideas, a social as well as a religious struggle. It was the period which witnessed both the dissolution of feudalism and the theocratic centralization in the popedom; and while reason struggled on the one side against the dogmatic system, it struggled on the other to assert the rights of the state against the church, and to put restraints upon the privileges, dominion, and wealth, of the pope and clergy. The social struggle, to vindicate the liberty of the state against the undue power of the church, so far as it is the effect of free thought, appertains to our subject, in the same manner as was the case with the early attempts of a converse character of the Roman emperors to deny due liberty to the church, whenever, as in the case of Julian, they were the result of a deliberate examination of religion. Free thought in the middle ages is at once Protestantism, Scepticism, and Ghibellinism.253

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The intellectual action in this crisis is marked by four forms;—(1) the criticism created by the scholastic philosophy, which has been thought to mark in Abélard the commencement of doubt; (2) the introduction of the idea of progress in religion, in the sense that Christianity is to be replaced by a better religion; (3) the idea of the comparison of Christianity with other religions, so as to obliterate its exceptional character; (4) the traces of disbelief in the doctrine of immortality. The two former are free thought as doubt, the two latter as disbelief.

It will be necessary, for illustrating the first of those forms, to explain the nature of the scholastic philosophy, so far as to show how it might become the means of producing heresy or scepticism, when applied to theology.

Scholasticism is the vague name which describes the system of inquiry common in the middle ages.254 In truth it marks a period rather than a system; a method rather than a philosophy. In spite of difference of form, it links itself with the speculations of other ages in community of aim, in that it strove to gain a general philosophy of the universe, to reach some few principles which might offer an interpretation of all difficulties.

In the present age the science which attempts this grand problem is denominated Logic, or Metaphysics, according to the different sphere which it covers.255 But [pg 078] in the middle ages these two fields were not clearly distinguished; in the same manner as in the Διαλεκτικὴ of Plato, method and the realities attained by method were not separated.256 Yet it was mainly in reference to the former that scholasticism wears the aspect of a method, and to the latter the aspect of a philosophy. Adopting deduction as the type of a perfect science, it assumed its data partly on the ground of innate ideas, partly from the truths of revelation, partly from the metaphysical dicta of Aristotle; and from these principles attempted to work out deductively a solution of universal nature. It was the Σοφία of Aristotle executed from a Christian point of view. In respect to the logical method there was a general agreement of opinion, but difference of system arose in the metaphysical. The form that the problem of science then assumed was peculiar. Instead of examining the data from which deduction starts, with a view of finding their subjective certainty as thoughts, the inquirers strove to settle the problem of their objective nature as things. The question asked was this: Are the genera and species which the mind contemplates, in its attempts to classify and interpret phenomena, real in nature, or produced only by human thought and speech? A comparison with the modern mode of investigation will explain the importance which the question possessed, and the reason why it monopolized the entire field of inquiry.

The progress of discovery has forced upon us a subdivision of the sciences into two classes, unknown in [pg 079] the middle ages; in one of which we discover causes; in the other, in which we are unable to find causes, we rest content with classification by species and genera. In the former we discover antecedents, in the latter types.257 But in mediæval science, as in Greek, the latter class was regarded as the sole form of all perfect science. Hence the reason will appear why the question as to the true nature of genera and species had a monopoly of the field of inquiry; and also why the theory of predication was exalted into the most important part of logic.258 Those who thought that genera had a real existence as essences apart from man's mind and from nature, were denominated Realists: those who denied to them any real existence, and considered them to be a common quality labelled by a common name, were Nominalists: those who held the intermediate view, and assumed them to exist, not only as artificial names but also as general classes in the human mind, were Conceptualists. With the realist, classification was not arbitrary, but true and determined for man. With the nominalist and conceptualist it was created by man, and amenable to correction.

The question, though now relegated from metaphysical to physical science, has still sufficient importance to enable us to perceive likewise the reason why these different theories could be the means of dividing men into parties. The bitterness with which a zoological inquiry of analogous character into the perpetuity of natural species259 has been lately assailed may enable us to realize the earnestness shown on this point in the middle ages. The question, as viewed by the schoolmen, was really the fundamental one as respects knowledge; and [pg 080] the opinions on it are the counterpart to those which relate to the tests of truth and the nature of being in modern metaphysics. The spirit of realism was essentially the spirit of dogmatism, the disposition to pronounce that truth was already known.260 Nominalism was essentially the spirit of progress, of inquiry, of criticism. Realism was in spirit deductive, starting from accepted dogmas: Nominalism was in spirit, though not in form, inductive. It tested classifications, and admitted opportunities for the existence of doubt. “Believe that you may know,” was the expression of the former: “Know that you may believe,” that of the latter.261

The two theories were of universal application to every subject of thought. An illustration will explain their relation to theology. In the foolish and almost irreverent attempts to explain by philosophy the nature of the triune existence of the divine Being, the realist assuming the reality of the one genus Deity, was prepared to allow identity of essence in the three species, the three members of the Divine Trinity. The nominalist, allowing only concrete existence, was obliged either to accept unity, only in a verbal sense, and be charged with tritheism, as Roscelin; or diversity only in a verbal sense, and incur the charge of Sabellianism, as Abélard.

Such was Scholasticism, and such its relation to philosophy and theology.262 Existing for several centuries as an instinct, it became about the end of the [pg 081] eleventh century an intelligent movement.263 At this period the problem was consciously proposed, and each of the three centuries which are comprised in our present period exhibits a different phase of the controversy. At first the movement was in favour of the nominalism in Roscelin and Abélard, and reason assumed an attitude of alleged scepticism: in the thirteenth century the victory was in the hands of intelligent realists like Aquinas, who used reason in favour of orthodoxy. In the fourteenth, nominalism revived in Occam; the provinces of faith and philosophy were severed, and the final victory on the metaphysical question remained in the hands of the nominalists.

The scientific position of Abélard will thus be clear. We must now study his intellectual character, as embodying the sceptical aspect which belonged to nominalism.

Abélard's character is in many respects one of the most curious in history.264 The record of his trials, bodily and mental,265 enlists the romantic sympathy of the sentimentalist, and commands the serious attention of the philosopher. His wonderful reputation at Paris as a public lecturer connects him with the university life of the middle ages, and presents him as the type of the class of great professors created by the absence of books and consequent prevalence of oral instruction. It was his vast influence which made his opinions of importance, and aroused the opposition of St. Bernard. It seems to have been the application of the nominalist philosophy to the doctrine of the Trinity, contained in Abélard's works on dogmatic theology,266 which excited [pg 082] alarm. The council called at Sens267 was a theological duel, wherein those two distinguished characters were matched, the most eloquent theologian and preacher against the most influential professor and philosopher; the saint against the critic. Bernard was right in his Theology; Abélard perhaps right in his philosophy.268 This event however presents the effects of scholasticism in producing heresy rather than scepticism.

The great work which has laid Abélard open to the latter charge merits a brief notice. It was entitled the Sic et Non, and remained unpublished in the public documents of France till recent years.269 It is a collection of alleged contradictions, which exist on a series of topics, which range over the deepest problems of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.270 In the discussion of them Abélard collects passages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be taken as the explanation of his object.271 He insists in it on the difficulty of rightly understanding the scriptures or the fathers, and refers it to eight different causes;272 advising [pg 083] that when these considerations fail to explain the apparent contradictions of scripture, we should abandon the manuscripts as inaccurate, rather than believe in the existence of real discrepancies. He draws also a broad distinction between canonical scripture and other literature, strongly affirming the authority of the former.

Is this work sceptical? Is it designed under a fair show to serve the purpose of unbelief? Or is it merely an instance of the awakening of the spirit of inquiry, the free criticism exercised by nominalism, the desire to prove all dogmas by reason? In other words, was the freethinking of Abélard rationalism, or was it merely Protestantism and theological criticism?

These questions have met with different answers. The Benedictine editors, viewing his condemnation by St. Bernard as parallel to that of the biblical critic R. Simon273 by Bossuet, declined to publish the manuscript of his work.274 More recent inquirers, especially the philosophical critic Cousin, have regarded Abélard with a favourable eye. They consider his treatises merely to be a provisional scepticism, fortifying the mind against premature solutions. Some would even claim him as an early protestant, as the first of the line of men whose spirits, while fretting under the dogmatic teaching or the political centralization of the Western church, have unhesitatingly bowed before the authority of scripture.275 [pg 084] Possibly these several views contain elements of truth. Abélard's character was complex, and the purpose of his book equally so. He embodied a movement, and experience had not yet taught men to distinguish in it the boundaries which separated the provinces of free thought. The argument in favour of scepticism drawn from the form of his work seems unfair. The statement of a series of paradoxes is lawful, if a solution of them be offered, or an explanation of the reason why a solution is impossible. The disputative, dialectical tone which assists in the work was the ordinary mode of instruction in the mediæval universities, and finds a parallel in the method of thought observable in other ages. Abélard's statement of paradoxes, of an unsolved mass of contradictions, recalls, for example, the early paradoxes on motion which Zeno presented for the purpose of compelling acquiescence in the Eleatic teaching,276 or the series of antinomies which Kant has given, as problems insoluble theoretically, but capable of harmony when viewed on the moral side.277 In truth it is the mark, either, as in one of these cases, of the first awakening of the mind to curiosity; or, as in the other, of the last limit at which curiosity is compelled to pause. Abélard's method is like that which is observable in Socrates, and in those early dialogues of his disciple Plato, in which the pupil is working in his master's manner, wherein difficulties are propounded without being solved. The hearer is cross-questioned, with the view of being made to feel the necessity of possessing knowledge; and a method is offered to him by which he is to find the solution of problems for himself.278 In this view Abélard's doubt is really the inquiry which is the first step to faith; the criticism which precedes the constructive process, the negation before affirmation.

While its form may be regarded as an embodiment [pg 085] of the scholastic method, the manner of handling marks the commencement of modern biblical criticism. The suggestions which he offers279 in reference to false readings of manuscripts, the spuriousness of books, and the temporary character of the author's sentiments, as elements in determining the reality of a contradiction, or the necessary rejection of a passage on grounds of dogmatic improbability, mark a sagacity which has been perfected into a science by the growth of modern criticism. Thus far we have only the elements of inquiry and criticism which enter into doubt; yet it would be unfair to deny that something of unbelief may have been found in a restless care-worn spirit like that of Abélard; and if any one thinks that he intended in his work to leave the reader with the impression that the solution is impossible, or that the doubter's side is the stronger, then we may consider him to have been an unbeliever, and regard his teaching as an example, often witnessed in later times, of a concealed irony, which, while pretending to accept revelation, has represented its evidence as insufficient, and its doctrines as unprovable. If however he be taken to be a sceptic, it is only the infancy of doubt. It is unlike the bitter disbelief shown by the early antichristian writers, or by the doubters of modern times. Whatever was valuable in the free thought of Abélard outlived his time. The spirit of inquiry which spoke through him, continued to operate in his successors.280 His method was even adopted by his opponents. His follower, Arnold of Brescia, carried free thought from ideas into acts, and suffered martyrdom in a premature struggle against the papal church.281 Being dead, Abélard yet spoke, both politically and philosophically; and his character remains as a type of the spirit of mingled doubt and hope and inquiry which is exhibited in the free thought of any of those great epochs, when knowledge is increased, and when earnest minds are standing in doubt whether the new wine can be placed in the old bottles.

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The movement, which was beginning to be felt in every branch of life and thought in the twelfth century, was still more manifest in the course of the thirteenth, an age, which, whether viewed in its great men or great deeds, its movements political, ecclesiastical, or intellectual, is the most remarkable of the middle ages, and one of the most memorable in history.282 The activity of speculation is evidenced by the increasing alarm which alleged heresy like the Albigensian was causing, and by the establishment of the system of ecclesiastical police283 which developed into the inquisition. About the middle of the century, the influence of free thought in religion is supposed to have made its appearance, in a work which originated with one of the newly created mendicant orders. A book which had appeared at the beginning of the century, entitled “the Everlasting Gospel,” was now edited with an introduction by some person of influence in the Franciscan order.284 The idea conveyed was, that, as there are three Persons in the Godhead, so there must be three dispensations; that of the Father which ended at the coming of Christ, that of the Son which was then about to conclude, and that of the Spirit, of which the religious ideal of the Franciscans was the embodiment.

The work caused immense alarm, and was condemned by the council of Arles,285 on the ground that it [pg 087] assumed that Christianity was imperfect, and was to be replaced by a superior revelation developing from natural causes. It is doubtful whether the book was really intended to be sceptical. More probably it was mystical. Claiming to be founded on an apocalyptic idea,286 it was a revival of the Chiliasm which haunted the Christians of Asia Minor in the early centuries; perhaps also it was the utterance of the spiritual yearning which marked the rise of the Franciscan order, and a protest against the worldliness of the times. It was connected too with the longings for political deliverance from the temporal dominion of the Popedom which were now beginning to be felt. In these latter aspects the idea, so far from being false, was an advance. Christianity from time to time admits a progress, but from within rather than from without; a deeper spiritual appreciation of old truths rather than a reception of new ones. The demand for progress becomes a ground for alarm only when it implies that the world has bidden farewell to Christianity, either through the mystical expectation of a Millennial reign which is to supersede it, or through the sceptical belief that our religion has only an historic value, and needs remodelling to meet the requirements of advancing civilization. If the latter was the meaning of this utterance of the Franciscan book, the idea was the germ of the modern conception of the function of Christianity in “the education of the race,” the first statement of which is usually attributed to Lessing.287

The same century which gave birth to this mot, expressive of progress in religion, created also another which embodied the idea of the comparative study of religions. This phrase may have different meanings. It may signify the comparison of Christianity with ethnic creeds in its external and internal character, without [pg 088] sacrificing the belief that a divinely revealed element exists in it, which caused it to differ from them in kind as well as degree. Or it may mean a comparison of Christianity with other religions, as equally false with them, equally a deliberate and conscious invention of priestcraft which was the shocking view adopted by writers like Volney in the last century,288 or else a comparison of it as equally true with them, as equally a psychological development of the religious intelligence, which is the view prevalent in many noted works on the philosophy of history in the present.289 It was the second of these ideas, expressive of actual incredulity, which existed in the thirteenth century. It is traceable in the imputation made by Gregory IX290 against the celebrated emperor Frederick II, that he had spoken of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, as the three great impostors who had respectively deceived the Jews, the Christians, and the Arabs.

The very possibility of the existence of such a comparison presupposes intercourse with disciples of foreign creeds. The Christians now no longer possessed a merely vague knowledge of Jews and Mahometans. The crusades were expiring, the danger which evoked them had subsided, and the enmity which supported them was decaying. Europe had entered into relations of commerce, if not of amity, with Mahometan nations; and through contact with them had come to measure them by an altered standard, and to acquire the idea of comparing religions. Frederick II, to whom this expression is imputed, is stated to have manifested admiration of Mahometan literature, and affection for his Mahometan subjects who afforded him aid in carrying out the plans of civilization which his powerful mind [pg 089] had formed;291 and it was his indifference to a crusade, induced probably by other causes, which led the Pope to impute to him the blasphemy just quoted. The contact with the East, half a century later, in like manner afforded the pretext for fastening a charge of unbelief on the Knights Templars.292 Contact with Mahometans had thus, we have reason to believe, created a latitude of thought in many parts of Christendom.

The same idea of the comparison of Christianity with other creeds reappears in a tale of Boccaccio,293 in which the three great religions are represented under the allegory of three rings which a father gave to his children, so exactly alike that the judges could not decide which was the genuine one of the three, and which the copies. It is also illustrated by the tradition of the existence of a book, entitled “De Tribus Impostoribus,” which has been attributed almost to every great name in the middle ages which was conspicuous for opposition to the claims of the church, or for uneasiness under the pressure of its dogmatic teaching. The existence of the book is legendary: no one ever saw it: and the two distinct works which now bear the title can be shown to have been composed respectively in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: but the legend is a witness to the fact of the existence of the idea which the book was said to embody. (20)

It is perhaps in some degree to the influence of the doctrine of absorption in the Mahometan philosophy of Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, who was the contemporary of Abélard, that we may attribute the disbelief in immortality to which we find a tendency toward the close of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century.294 Though it is probable that the indirect [pg 090] influence of the Arabic philosophy was felt earlier, in stimulating a demand for inquiry, a disposition to make dogmas submit to the test of reason, which has been shown to be the earliest form of mediæval doubt; yet it was not until the thirteenth century that the works of Averroes definitely influenced scholasticism, through the teaching of Michael Scot and Alexander Hales, and by means of the rapidity of intellectual communication which forms so singular a feature in mediæval history, spread their influence in Italy as well as in France. It was at this time that the doctrine of Averroes was attacked by Aquinas; and though the amount of its influence can hardly be estimated, we have the means of tracing the growth of dislike to its author in Christian lands, which is an incidental probability of the increasing danger to Christianity arising from it. In the middle of the thirteenth century the Franciscans study him without evincing hatred. About the end of it Dante describes him still without reproaches, though he places him in the Inferno along with other heathen philosophers:295 but half a century later, in the pictures of the last judgment which exist in several states of Italy, each a little historic satire with its own peculiarities, we find Averroes depicted as the type of incredulity and blasphemy. In a fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, executed about 1335, when perhaps the recent canonization of Aquinas as an opponent of Averroes had directed attention to the influence of the Arabic philosopher, Orcagna has placed a separate bolgia, the lowest in his hell, for three persons,—Mahomet, Anti-christ, and Averroes.296

The disbelief of immortality was however too obvious a temptation in a corrupt age, as well as too generally spread, especially in the next century, to be wholly attributable to the subtle influence of the doctrine of absorption of the Arabic philosophy. A mediæval [pg 091] English poet297 attributes incredulity to the higher classes of his age; and Dante, in that poem which is a romantic picture of his contemporaries or predecessors, when devoting one circle of the Inferno to the habitation of the “more than a thousand” of those “who make the soul die with the body,” attributes the cause of the sin to Epicureanism, a moral and not an intellectual cause.298 It is a sad and humiliating thought to reflect also that a cause which must have increased incredulity, if it did not create it, was to be found in the vices of the clergy, especially near the papal court of Avignon. Most of the distinguished laymen whom history records as evincing unbelief belonged to the political party, which strove to repress the political centralization and temporal authority of the church; and it is to be feared that the causes just named were the means of repelling more deeply from religion the hearts of such persons whose interests or whose vices already led them to hate its promoters.299

We have thus collected the few traces which mark the history of free thought in the second great crisis of church history, and incidentally illustrated its connexion with social movements as well as religious, and shown its relation to intellectual or moral causes. On the intellectual side we have witnessed the scholastic philosophy giving activity to the spirit of change, and contact with Mahometan life and opinion imparting the latitude to Christian thought which passed into incredulity. On the moral we have noticed that the effect of social wants or of actual viciousness gave birth respectively to religious restlessness, or to actual disbelief of the supernatural. The church of the time was not unaware of the movement. In part it tried to repress it by persecution and by the Inquisition; but in part also by the lawful weapon of spiritual contest. The [pg 092] grand works of defence of the thirteenth century, which adjusted scholastic philosophy to dogmatic theology, and the spiritual activity of the mendicant orders, were real and lawful means of victory, appealing respectively to the intellect and heart.

The moral judgment formed on the movement seen in the whole period must vary with the phase of it viewed. The attack is not, like those of the early unbelievers, a struggle with which the sympathies of Christians cannot be enlisted. The darker aspects of it partake indeed of the same character; but it embodies a better element, a nobler form of movement, tainted perhaps with doubt, but not with disbelief; viz. the attempt of the human mind to assert its rights in philosophy, theology, and politics; and as the epoch closes, the great truth has made itself felt in the world as the result of the contest, that Christianity is supreme only within its own sphere, which it is the problem of religious philosophy to discover; that freedom of inquiry is to be used outside the boundary, but that speculation must expire in adoration within it.

A new crisis may be considered to commence in the fifteenth century, in consequence of the introduction of fresh influences through the classical revival. Yet as the two periods are connected in time, the transition is not sudden: the old influences gradually vanish away; the new ones had been slowly preparing before they became distinctly evident. The intellectual and social activity of the past period had been the means of educating the mind of Europe for the reception of the new forces which were now beginning to operate.300

The fifteenth century was a remarkable period for Europe, and preeminently for Italy. During several ages Italy had grown great by means of commerce and religion. The crusades, which had impoverished the rest of Europe, had enriched her; and the subjugation of the nations to the court of Rome had made her the [pg 093] treasury of Europe. Material wealth permitted the encouragement of the study of literature, which relations of commerce or of conquest with the Greek empire had been the means of reviving. Manuscripts were collected, and the remains of monuments of classic art were studied. The love of antiquity gave perfection to art, and influenced literature. The work which centuries had slowly prepared now came to perfection. The scholastic philosophy declined; the sources of ecclesiastical education and of the existing religion were weakened; and by the close of the fifteenth century the tone of the age was in all respects changed. The devotion which had expressed itself in the great Gothic works of devotion of early ages was expiring, at least in Italy, and art itself gradually became secular, and expressed ideas more earthly.

When such a moment of material prosperity, combined with intellectual and social change, ensues immediately on the movement previously sketched, we should expect to find religion subjected to re-examination, and placed in temporary peril. The history confirms the supposition. If we regard this crisis as embracing about two centuries and a quarter,301 comprehending the classical revival, the opening of a new geographical world, and the great religious changes of the Reformation,—a period commencing with the Renaissance, and closed by the creation of modern philosophy;—we shall find two principal movements of unbelief for investigation, the one caused by literature, a return to a spirit of heathenism analogous to that already described in Julian; the second caused by philosophy, a revival of pantheism. The first belonged especially to the close of the fifteenth century, and had its seat for the most part in Tuscany and Rome; the second to the sixteenth, and was represented in the university of Padua. In both these movements, especially in the former, the open expression of unbelief in literature is rare, though the incidental proofs of its existence are abundant. It [pg 094] was a time of the dissolution of faith, not of overt attack. Unbelief was Epicurean indifference, rather than earnestness in destroying the old creed.

Two of the most obvious proofs that we can select for proving the existence of a state of unbelief302 are, the ridicule of religion expressed in the burlesque poetry of the time, and the antichristian sympathies of several distinguished men.

It would be incorrect however to attribute the satirical allusions in the poetry wholly to the influence of the classical revival; for the romantic epic in which they occur is the offshoot of the old prose romance of mediæval chivalry, which had in earlier ages amused the courts of princes by directing its banter against ecclesiastical persons and institutions.303 But the tone of the poetry is now changed. The satire is directed against religion itself, not merely against the abuse of it, or the eccentricities of its adherents. Free thought is not merely political dissatisfaction, but religious unbelief. And with the alteration of the tone agrees also the increasing disposition to carry satire into the domain of the supernatural; which thus witnesses to the widespread unbelief in the hearers for whom it was designed. Italian critics have doubted indeed whether these epics are designed to convey a caricature, or pass beyond lawful satire:304 yet even when allowance is made for the fact that they are an historic reproduction, and for the fund presented for humour by ecclesiastical peculiarities, it seems impossible to overlook the covert satire intended on church beliefs.305 The intermixture [pg 095] of a comic element would not alone prove this. The miracle plays of the middle ages admitted comedy without intending irreverence;306 and a gentle humour pervades many of the Autos of Calderon, which were acted on solemn festivals.307 But there exists in the manner in which the supernatural element is managed by such poets as Pulci, Bello, and Ariosto, such evident purpose to bring into ridicule the existence of belief, that its parallel can only be found in the banter used by their imitator Byron, in his Vision of Judgment, and implies indifference both in author and reader; the expression of contempt, not of anger.308

The unbelief which existed in the courts for which this poetry was written, is a specimen of the general incredulity, or indifference to Christianity, which prevailed among the educated classes, and was fostered by classical studies and tastes. It seems strange to us, who have been long accustomed to regard classical culture as the basis of general education, and who are impressed with the conviction of the great assistance ministered by it to theological study, to regard it as the producing cause of unbelief. This result of it however was a transitory one, originating in the shock which arose from the novel thoughts and tastes which mingled themselves with the ancient pursuits, and altered the previous ideal of life. Ever since the earliest times, a chasm had unavoidably separated heathen literature from Christian; and a dislike to heathen studies existed, [pg 096] which found its full expression in Gregory the Great.309 The result was, that the Christian civilization did not consciously admit the introduction of heathen thought; and when the mind awoke suddenly to a perception of its beauty and depth, though deeper spirits, like Erasmus, regarded it with the enlightened Christian approbation which Origen had formerly shown, others were led, like Julian of old, from their admiration of it, to look with indifference or hostility on Christianity. Some of the brilliant and elevated minds that adorned the court of the Medicis were suspected of unbelief, or of preferring Platonism to Christianity;310 and after the woes of the French invasion at the end of the century had deepened the corruption of morals, and stamped out political liberty, the last freshness of artistic creation, which had linked the public mind to Christianity through the deep instincts of the taste, disappeared. The art and literature which succeeded are an index of the tone which prevailed. Gaining perfection in form by the imitation of classic models, they were cold, sensuous, unspiritual.311 Classical mythology was intermixed with gospel doctrines; and the early years of the sixteenth century represent the semi-heathen tone of thought which was the transition to the perfect fusion which afterwards took place of the old learning and the new. It was an age similar to those of modern times in France and Germany, which have been called periods of humanism, when hope suggests the inauguration of a new moral and social era, and the pride of knowledge produces a general belief in the power of civilization to become the sole remedy for evil.312

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The social conditions of the age added moral causes to the intellectual, which tended to increase the unbelief, especially in the literary classes. One of them is perhaps to be found in the fact that the church prizes were the only reward for authorship. By the beginning of the sixteenth century authors became largely appreciated through the press, and received patronage at the courts of the various Τύραννοι who had established themselves on the ruins of the old republics. In the absence of any law of copyright there was no protection for them,313 and consequently no reward except church patronage, which was therefore conferred indiscriminately, and tended to foster disbelief in the very recipients of it. A merely professional hold of religion is the surest road to absolute disbelief. It is inconceivable that the ecclesiastical scandals which history blushes to narrate, could have been perpetrated by believers; and the unbelief imputed to persons in high station, such as Leo X with other popes, and cardinals such as Bembo, was doubtless, if true, partly the result of the degrading effects of professional insincerity.

Such a state of unbelief could not be permanent, whether it was the result of a decaying system, or of the introduction of new influences. Nor would we use unnecessarily a polemical tone in speaking of a period where there is so much cause for Christian humiliation; yet it is worthy of notice that such facts are a refutation of the attack which has frequently been made on Protestantism, as the cause of eclecticism and unbelief. The two great crises in church history, when faith almost entirely died out, and free thought developed into total disbelief of the supernatural, have been in Romish countries; viz., in Italy in this period, and in France during the eighteenth century. In both the experiment of the authoritative system of the catholic religion had a fair trial, and was found wanting.

Other causes besides the classical revival were operating to stimulate activity of mind and freedom of [pg 098] inquiry. It was an age in which the great system of the middle ages was finally dissolving. The discovery of new worlds seemed at once to call to Europe to break connexion with the old centre of ecclesiastical centralization; and to invite to that study of nature which should elevate, and as it were emancipate the mind, by teaching physical truth and the true method of discovery.314 Political circumstances too, contributed toward the creation of ecclesiastical autonomy. The European nations had gradually grown into united families, and were now ready for cooperation in a system of balance of power.315 The northern nations, long galled under the power of Rome, were panting for freedom; Germany first reforming her religion, and then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end. The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of error which had fettered thought.

It is a matter of wonder that the great revolutions just named passed with so little development of scepticism. In the nations north of the Alps there is hardly a trace. The charge of deism, directed in the fifteenth century against Pecock,316 bishop of Chichester, appears [pg 099] to have been unfounded. The contest which Ulrich von Hütten carried on against the monks and schools of Cologne was literary rather than religious;317 Hütten being the literary and political reformer rather than the sceptic. Even the most advanced spirits of the reformers,318 Servetus and the Sozini, came forth from Italy, as from the centre of free thought. Nor were they unbelievers in the reality of a revelation; and they met with no support from the northern reformers. Servetus was martyred at Geneva, and the Sozini were banished into Poland. It was the spiritual earnestness which mingled with the intellectual movement in the Reformation, which prevented free thought from producing rationalism or unbelief. Protestantism was a form of free thought; but only in the sense of a return from human authority to that of scripture. It was equally a reliance on an historic religion, equally an appeal to the immemorial doctrine of the church with Roman Catholicism; but it conceived that the New Testament itself contained a truer source than tradition for ascertaining the apostolic declaration of it.319

But Italy was the witness of another sceptical tendency, besides that which resulted from the classic Renaissance, in the last remnant of the influence of [pg 100] mediæval philosophy. Throughout the sixteenth century, pantheism manifested itself in connexion with the philosophical studies of the university of Padua. The form in which it made itself felt was the disbelief of the immortality of the soul on speculative grounds. The cause of the disbelief was the influence of the philosophy of Averroes before noticed.320

It will be necessary to explain this system with a little detail. It has been already stated that Averroes was a noted commentator on Aristotle in the twelfth century. The two ground principles of his philosophy were, the eternity of matter and the impersonality of mind. On this high subject there can be only two theories; the one theistic, which declares that God is free, a personal first Cause, and the Creator of matter, and that other minds are free and personal; the other pantheistic, which asserts that matter is eternal, and that individual minds are only the manifestation of the impersonal mind, into which the individual is reabsorbed. Averroes held the latter theory, claiming to derive it from Aristotle. It must be confessed however that Aristotle's views are uncertain on this point: he distinguished between mind, immortal and relative, the latter of which, being connected with body, ceased at death; the former outlived it. But he hardly stated the doctrine that all souls are part of the universal soul, and is silent about their reabsorption into it. These points were added by Averroes.321

The influence of the philosophy of Averroes is observable in three classes of thinkers; viz., the Spanish Jews of his own century, the scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth, and the philosophers of the university of Padua in the fourteenth and succeeding ages. The second of these effects has been already traced: we must now notice the third.

Padua was the great medical university of the fifteenth [pg 101] and sixteenth centuries, and was a type of the tendency which at that time manifested itself in the north-eastern part of Italy toward material and rational studies, as in Tuscany to ideal and humanistic. It was the medical philosophy of Averroes which had first attracted attention to him. But the influence of his teaching was innocuous there until the sixteenth century, during the whole of which this university became the home of free thought.

Strict accuracy would require the separation of two tendencies in the Peripatetic school of Padua, each derived from one of Aristotle's commentators.322 The one was the Averroist just named, which consisted in the disbelief of immortality on the ground of absorption. Man's soul, being part of the great soul which animates the universe, both emanates from it, and is again reabsorbed. The other was the Alexandrist, so called from following Alexander of Aphrodisias,323 which consisted in a tendency to pure materialism, an absolute denial of immortality and of religion, which almost reaches the incredulity earlier expressed in the legend of the Three Impostors. Pomponatius is the declared representative of the latter view soon after the beginning of the century.324 Frequently however the unbelief was secret, and a seeming show of orthodoxy was maintained by drawing a broad distinction between philosophy and theology; and by teaching that these views, though seen to be true in the one, were to be accounted false in obedience to the teaching of the other.

It is customary to class along with the Averroists some philosophers of a more original turn; some of whom were only indirectly connected with Padua, but rather were examples of an attempt to substitute a philosophy [pg 102] in place of that which was expiring. They are said to have manifested the same kind of pantheism, and to have been led by it to similar disbelief. Such are Cesalpini, Cardan,325 Bruno, and Vanini. The charge is perhaps unfair against the two former, as they seem to have held the separate immortality of souls, which is more compatible with theism. The two latter represent the two schools just noticed, about the end of the sixteenth century.

Bruno326 belonged mainly to the Averroist school, though his views were probably formed independently, and certainly extended farther. He not only held the existence of a soul pervading the universe, which is the form of Pantheism which has been already considered, but followed the earlier philosophy of the Neo-Platonists in identifying the soul with the matter which it animates; regarding the one as an emanation from the other, in the same manner as an effect is merely cause or force transferred. It is this belief which occurs in Spinoza, which is properly denominated Pantheism, [pg 103] where the Creator is forgotten in creation. The former line of Pantheism noticed in Averroes approaches more nearly to theism. Bruno's unbelief was not gay and flippant, but sombre and earnest. With a fantastical conceit which can hardly be explained, he travelled as the missionary to propagate his own views like a knight errant tilting at all opinions, with a soul especially embittered against the Christian priesthood.327 On his return to Italy from his travels he fell into the hands of the church, and suffered death for his opinions.

Vanini328 similarly led a wandering life, but is a character of less seriousness: occasionally he manifested the inconsistency of indifference to his own opinions. Reverencing the memory of Pomponatius, he expressed the same disbelief of the spiritual and of immortality. He was possibly an atheist. Certainly his views were tinged with deep bitterness against religion; and after leading a restless life, he suffered a cruel martyrdom for his belief.

Bruno and Vanini were the apostles of a doctrine which the world would no longer hear. The dawn of physical knowledge was turning men to a truer study of the universe, and caused their labours to be in vain. The age of indifference was gone. The alarm caused by the Reformation had kindled a strong ecclesiastical reaction, especially in Italy, and the religious earnestness and intellectual activity of Germany had awoke an intelligent reaction on the part of the Catholic church.329 Hence these two writers incurred a danger unknown to their predecessors. Martyrs are men who are before their age or behind it. Their sad fate throws an interest around their lives. Unbelief must always have its confessors. It is to be hoped that the inhumanity of [pg 104] Christendom will never again cause it to have its martyrs.

The survey is now complete of the crisis which occurred in the transition from the middle ages to modern history, forming the third of those enumerated in a former lecture, we have witnessed amidst its complexity the manifestation of the same principles as in former epochs; the restlessness of the human mind struggling to be free, intellectually, politically, religiously; and we have endeavoured to trace the operation of the influence of classical literature and metaphysical philosophy in inducing the decay of Christian feeling and belief.

The means adopted for counteracting the movement were similar to those used in former periods, viz. an intellectual argument and a spiritual awakening. In some instances, indeed, in accordance with the spirit of the time, or more truly with the spirit of human nature, material force and cruelty were employed, and the unbeliever was silenced by martyrdom. But neither material power nor the autocratic unity of the Roman church was able to repress the growth of the human mind. Conviction must be directed, not crushed. The revival of books of evidences, as soon as printing became common, about the close of the fifteenth century, which were designed to confirm faith, was a more lawful form of warfare.330 They were constructed however on a basis unsuited to an age when first principles were being reconsidered, being an attempt to establish the authority of the church and the duty of submission to an external form of faith, and lacked the surer basis adopted in Protestant works of evidence, which is found in the external divine authority of the Bible rather than the church. The creation of the order of the Jesuits, though directed more against Protestantism than against [pg 105] unbelief, was a witness, like the previous reactionary movement of the scholastic writers in the thirteenth century, to the wish to wrest the use of learning out of the hands of the opponents of the church, and to employ the weapons of reason in defence of it.

The judgment formed on this epoch of free thought, when we have separated from it the Protestantism which craves other satisfaction for the human mind than that which is implied in submission to human authority, and the scepticism which was merely transitional doubt, must be condemnatory. The unbelief was indeed a phase of the general improvement; but one which is instructive as a warning rather than as an example, illustrating the abuse not the use of free thought. The evil nevertheless was temporary, and belongs to the past; the good was eternal: and the elements of real intellectual improvement contained in the struggle have been taken up into the constitution of modern thought and society.

We have now considered three great epochs in the history of free thought, and watched Christianity in contact or conflict with the old heathen philosophy, with the thought Scholastic or Mahometan of the middle ages, and with the revival of classical learning. It remains to enter upon the consideration of the fourth, and to observe it in relation to modern science.

The seventeenth century introduced as striking a revolution in philosophy as the corresponding ones which the two preceding ages had produced in literature and religion.

Two distinct thinkers, Bacon and Descartes, from different points of view, perceived the necessity for constructing a new method of inquiry. Their position was similar to that of Socrates of old. They saw that if knowledge was to be rendered sound, it must be based on a new method.331 They both alike sought it in experience; Bacon in sensational, Descartes in intellectual, [pg 106] the instinctive utterance of consciousness.332 The indirect effects on religion produced by their teaching will be seen more fully hereafter. Our present object is to sketch the influence exercised by Descartes on the theological speculations of Spinoza, before passing in succeeding lectures to the detailed study of those peculiarities which free thought has presented in the different countries in which it has been manifested.333

Spinoza's memory has been branded with the stigma which attached to his character during life.334 Born in Holland, of Jewish origin, his early repudiation of the legends of the Talmud in which he was educated, caused his excommunication by his own people. Finding himself an outcast, he sought society among a few sceptical friends, one of whom was a physician named Van den Ende, whom a sense of injustice united to him by the [pg 107] bond of common sympathy. His life was passed in retirement, in hard, griping poverty. Possessing a mind of great originality, and a fondness for demonstrative reasoning never surpassed, he lived a model of chaste submissive virtue, searching for speculative truth; branded as an atheist in philosophy while living, and regarded since his death as the parent of many of the worst forms of rationalism in religion. Yet his character is one that cannot fail to excite a certain kind of pity. Unlike the frivolous selfish atheism, the immoral Epicureanism, of the French unbelief of the following century, his investigations were grave, his tone dignified, his temper gentle, his spirit serious. It is to be feared that he did not worship God; but he at least worshipped, at the cost of social martyrdom, what he thought to be truth. If he did not believe in revealed religion, he at least tried to embody what he believed to be its moral precepts. Though we may shrink with horror from his teaching, we cannot, when we compare him with other unbelievers, withhold our pity from the teacher.

His works are short, but weighty. Of his important treatises, the one, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, shows him as the Biblical critic; the other, the Ethica, exhibits his philosophy. In the former, written in early life, he derives his materials and mode of handling from the Jewish mediæval theologian Maimonides; in the latter, the product of his riper years, from Descartes.335 But he had undoubtedly come under the influence of Descartes before writing the former work, and it is certain that the effects of it on his own philosophical [pg 108] scheme are already discernible in it. We shall therefore commence with the latter, and attempt to understand his philosophy, and its application to religion, before studying his special criticism of Revelation.

Descartes had aimed, like the great thinkers of earlier times, to gain a general view of the universe of being; but had sought it by a different mode. Caring rather for certitude of method, reality in the highest principles, than for results attained, he had seen that a knowledge of being must rest on a knowledge of the consciousness which tells us of being. His principle, “Cogito, ergo sum,” is the expression of this conviction. Therefore, carrying analysis into the human mind, he had grasped those ideas which appeal to us with irresistible clearness, and commend themselves as axioms requiring no proof; and from these ideas, or rather from the idea of cause, the primitive of them, regarded by him as innate, he had demonstrated à priori the being and attributes of God, and the principles which dominate in the great fields of knowledge.336

Spinoza's object was similar; but he sought to attain it in a different manner: rejecting, on the one hand, the dualism by which Descartes had opposed mind and matter, he regarded each as a different mode of the same primitive substance, and, on the other, the limited idea of the divine Being, he conceived that the mind of man realizes the notion of Him as unlimited. There are three different opinions in reference to our capacity of knowing the infinity of God. Either our knowledge of Him is only negative and relative; we know only what He is not, and our positive notions of His nature are drawn from the analogy of human personality; or, secondly, we have an intuition of His infinity, but so bare of attributes, that while it guarantees the reality of our apprehensions of Him, we are dependent on experience for its development into a conception; or, thirdly, the human mind can apprehend His infinity positively, antecedent to the application of limitations [pg 109] to it.337 The last of these three views belonged to Spinoza, along with the ancient Eleatics, the Neo-Platonists of the early ages, and the principal schools of modern German philosophy. Accordingly he tried to work out with mathematical rigour in geometrical form a philosophy of existence, conceiving that the mind grasps the idea of God as infinite substance, and understands its development under two modes; viz. extension and thought: the former the objective act of Deity, the latter the subjective.338 The universe therefore is nothing but the manifestation of God: God is the sum total of it; the unity in its variety; the infinite comprehending its finity. Cause and effect are identical; the natura naturans, and natura naturata. Causation is change; but it is nothing but substance assuming attributes, and attributes assuming modes. Phenomena are only the bubbles which arise on the bosom of the ocean and disappear, absorbed in its vastness. The universe is bound in one vast chain of fatalism, one grand and perfect whole. Man's perfection is to know by contemplation the universe in which he has his being.

Such a system has been called atheistic, because it is silent about the presence of a personal first Cause. It might be more truly denominated Pantheistic, not in the vague sense in which that term is applied to denote the belief in a Deity as an anima mundi, like that explained in reference to the Averroists,339 but to imply that the sum total of all things, the universe, is Deity. Its influence on the question of revealed religion will be obvious. It admits that the phenomena which we attribute to miracle in the process of revelation are facts, but it denies their miraculous character.340 They are the mere manifestation of some previously unknown law, turning up accidentally at the particular moment, some previously unknown mode in which the all-embracing substance manifests itself. In [pg 110] this view all religions become various expressions of the great moral and spiritual truths which they embody, and true piety consists in rising beyond them to the vision of the higher truths which they typify, and the practice of the principles which they enjoin as rules. “Dico,” wrote Spinoza, “ad salutem non esse omnino necesse, Christum secundum carnem noscere; sed de æterno illo filio Dei, hoc est, Dei æternâ sapientiâ quæ sese in omnibus rebus, et maxime in mente humana et omnium maxime in Christo Jesu manifestavit, longe aliter sentiendum.”341

Spinoza, though a Jew, had examined the claims of Christianity. Indeed the discussions, half political, half religious, of the Dutch theology, would have compelled the investigation of it, independently of his own largeness of sympathy with the philosophical history of human religion.342 His philosophy of revealed religion is contained in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.343 This work was called forth by the disputes of the age, and had the political object of defending liberty of thought as necessary to the safety both of the state and of religion. The question of predestination had rent the Dutch church shortly before this time; and when the victory remained with the Calvinistic party, the opinions of the liberal Remonstrants were treated as crimes. Spinoza proposed in this work a plan, perhaps suggested by the perusal of Hobbes, for curing these dissensions. The book is a critical essay, in which he surveys the Jewish and Christian religions, and ends in the conclusion that certainty on the subject of a revelation is impossible; accordingly that the remedy for theological acrimony must be sought in a return to [pg 111] what he regards to be the simple doctrine which Christ taught, the love of God and one's neighbour; that philosophy and theology ought to be severed; the one aiming at truth and resting on universal ideas, the other at obedience and piety and resting on historic authority and special revelation. Hence, while uniformity of religious worship and practice was to be prescribed, he claimed that unlimited liberty of speculation ought to be tolerated.344

It is in the survey of Judaism and Christianity in the earlier part of this work that he exhibits the views in which he has anticipated many of the speculations of rationalism. He examines first into the grounds which Revelation puts forward for its claim to authority, viz. prophecy, the Jewish polity, and miracles;345 next the principles of interpretation, and the canon of the two Testaments;346 lastly, the nature of the divine teaching347 endeavouring to show that the fundamental articles of faith are given in natural religion. In this way he exhibits his views on those branches which are now denominated the evidences, exegesis, and doctrines. In the discussion of prophecy he analyses the nature of prophetic foresight into vividness of imagination; and exhibits the human feeling and sentiment intertwined with it.348 He regards the Hebrew idea of election as merely the theocratic mode of representing their own good success in that region of circumstances which was not in human power.349 His explanation of miracles has been already stated: the course of nature seems to him to be fixed and immutable; and he argues that interference with its course is not a greater proof of Providence than a perpetual unchanging administration.350

As his philosophy is seen in the treatment of the evidences, so his criticism appears in the discussion of the canon. He examines the several books of scripture, and concludes from supposed marks of editorship that the Pentateuch and historical books were all composed [pg 112] by one historian, who was, he thinks, probably Ezra, Deuteronomy being the first composed.351 The prophetic books he resolves into a collection of fragments. His opinions on this department would be rejected as immature by modern rationalist critics; yet they have an historic interest as marking the rise of the searching investigations into the sources and construction of the Hebrew sacred literature, which have been pursued in an instructive manner in modern times. His view respecting the nature of scriptural doctrines,352 that they can be reduced to the teaching of natural reason, is a corollary from his philosophy, which cannot admit that any religious truth is obligatory which is not self-evident, and is analogous to the doctrine which a short time previously had been stated by Lord Herbert of Cherbury.353

These remarks will suffice in explanation of the criticism exhibited in this work. The book marks an epoch, a new era in the critical and philosophical investigation of religion. Spinoza's ideas are as it were the head waters from which flows the current which is afterwards parted into separate streams. If viewed merely as a specimen of criticism, they are in many respects very defective. For this branch was new in Spinoza's time. Learning had been directed since the Renaissance rather to the acquisition of stores of information concerning ancient literature than reflective examination of the authenticity and critical value of the sources. Yet Spinoza's sagacity is so great, that the book is suggestive of information, and fertile in hints of instruction to readers who dissent most widely from his inferences.354 In Spinoza's own times the work met with unbounded indignation. Indeed hardly any age could have been less prepared for its reception. So rigorous a theory of verbal inspiration was then held, that the [pg 113] question of the date of the introduction of the Hebrew vowel points was discussed under the idea that inspiration would be overthrown, if the admission was made that they were introduced after the time of the closing of the canon.355 The tone of fairness in Spinoza's manner, which compels most modern readers to believe in his honesty, and which presents so striking a contrast to the profaneness of subsequent scepticism, was then regarded as latent irony. The work on its appearance was suppressed by public authority; but it was frequently reprinted; and probably no work of free thought has ever had more influence, both on friends and foes, except the memorable work of Strauss in the present age. Not only have freethinkers been moulded by it, but it has produced lasting effects on those who have loved the faith of Christ. For Spinoza's work, if it did not create, gave expression to the tendency of which slight traces are perceptible elsewhere,356 to recognize a large class of facts relating to the personal peculiarities of the inspired writers, and to the “human element,” as it has been frequently called357 in scripture, for which orthodox criticism has always subsequently had to find a place in a theory of inspiration; facts which first shook the mechanical or verbal theory, which, however piously intended, really had the effect of degrading [pg 114] the sacred writers almost into automatons, and regarded them as the pens instead of the penmen of the inspiring Spirit.358 Indirectly the effect of Spinoza's thought was seen even in the English church. The difficulties which, through means of the English deists, it brought before the notice of the great apologetic writers of our own country, created the free, but perhaps not irreverent theory of revelation manifested in the churchmen of the last century,359 which restricted the miraculous assistance of inspiration to the specific subject of the revealed communication, the religious element of scripture, and did not regard it as comprehending also the allusions, scientific or historic, extraneous to religion.

Nor is it merely in respect of criticism that Spinoza's views have affected subsequent thought. The central principle of his philosophy, the pantheistic disbelief of miraculous interposition which has subsequently entered into so many systems, was first clearly applied to theology by him. Wherever the disbelief in the supernatural has arisen from à priori considerations, and expressed itself, not with allegations of conscious fraud against the devotees of religion, nor with attempts to explain it away as merely mental realism, but with assertions that miracles are impossible, and nature an unchanging whole; this disbelief, whether insinuating itself into the defence of Christianity, or marking the attack on it, has been a reproduction of Spinoza.

In taking a retrospect of the long period over which we have travelled in this lecture, embracing the twofold crisis of free thought in the middle ages and the inauguration of the modern era, we cannot fail to be impressed [pg 115] with the grand idea of the permanent victory of truth, and the exquisite order according to which the fatherly providence of God makes all things conduce together for good. When the course of history is viewed in its true perspective, we perceive that Almighty love ruleth. The period has comprised most of the great movements, political or intellectual, which have occurred in European history since the Christian era. The fall of the Roman empire, the gradual reconstruction of society, the revival of learning, the invention of printing, the discovery of a new geographical world, the creation of modern philosophy, embraced in it, include the mention of almost every great event, with the exception of the French revolution, which has modified the character of the human mind, or affected the destiny of Christianity. At times it seemed as if Christianity was on the point of being extinguished by unbelief; at other times, the church seemed to lend itself to the extermination of all freedom of investigation. Yet Christianity has lasted through all these dangers, throwing off, like a healthy system, the errors which from time to time insinuated themselves into it, and diffusing its blessings of eternal truth into every region of life and thought. The past is the pledge of hope for the future.

Look forth!—that stream behold,

That stream upon whose bosom we have passed

Floating at ease, while nations have effaced

Nations, and death has gathered to his fold

Long lines of mighty kings:—look forth, my soul

(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)

The living waters, less and less by guilt

Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,

Till they have reached the eternal city—built

For the perfected spirits of the just.360

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Lecture IV. Deism in England Previous to A.D. 1760.

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

[pg 125]

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

His theological writings469 are in the form of letters, [pg 145] or of essays, the common form of didactic writings in that age. We shall briefly state his views on deity, futurity, and revelation.

He teaches the existence of a deity, but was led, by the sensational philosophy which he adopted from Locke, to deny the possibility of an à priori proof of the divine existence,470 and contends strongly that the divine attributes can only be known by observation of nature, and not by the analogy of man's constitution. He considers too that the deity whose existence he has thus allowed, exercises a general but not a special providence;471 the world being a machine moving by delegated powers without the divine interference. The philosophy expressed in Pope's didactic poetry gives expression to Bolingbroke's opinions472 on providence.

In his views of human duty Bolingbroke refers conduct to self-love as a cause, and to happiness as an end; and doubts a future state,473 either on the ground of materialism, or possibly because his favourite principle, that “whatever is, is best,” led him to disbelieve the argument for a future life adduced from the inequality of present rewards. Future punishment is rejected, on the ground that it can offer no end compatible with the moral object of punishment, which is correction.

When he passes from natural religion to revealed, he allows the possibility of divine inspiration, but [pg 146] doubts the fact; rebuking those however who doubt things merely because they cannot understand them. In criticising the Jewish revelation,474 he puts no limits to his words of severity. He dares to pronounce the Jewish history to be repugnant to the attributes of a supreme, all-perfect Being. His attack on the records is partly on account of the materials contained in them, such as the narrative of the fall, the numerical statistics, the invasion of the Canaanites, the absence of eternal rewards as sanctions of the Mosaic law; and partly on the ground of the evidence being, as he alleges, not narrated by contemporaries. In giving his opinion of Christianity, he repeats the weak objection already used by Chubb, of a distinction existing between the gospel of Christ and of Paul;475 and tries to explain the origin of Christianity and of its doctrines, suggesting the derivation of the idea of a Trinity from the triadic notions of other religions. But he is driven to concede some things denied by former deists. He grants, for example, that if the miracles really occurred, they attest the revelation;476 and he therefore labours to show that they did not occur, by attacking the New Testament canon477 as he had before attacked the Old; attempting to show that the composition of the gospels was separated by an interval from the alleged occurrence of the events; applying, in fact, Pouilly's incipient criticism on history which has been so freely used in theology by more recent critics.

These remarks will exhibit Bolingbroke's views, both in their cause and their relation to those of former deists. It will be observed that they are for the most part a direct result either of sensational metaphysics or of the incipient science of historical criticism.

The inquiry was now becoming more historical on the part both of deists and Christians. Philosophy was still the cause of religious controversy, but it had changed in character. It was now criticism weighing the evidence of religion rather than ethics or metaphysics [pg 147] testing the materials of it. The question formerly debated had been, how much of the internal characteristics of scripture can be supported by moral philosophy; and when the conviction at length grew up, that the mysteries could not be solved by any analogy, but were unique, it became necessary to rest on the miraculous evidence for the existence of a revelation, and make the fact guarantee the contents of it. Inasmuch however as the revelation is contained in a book, it became necessary to substantiate the historical evidence of its genuineness and authenticity. Bolingbroke's attacks are directed against a portion of this literary evidence.

Historical criticism, in its appreciation of literary evidence, may be of four kinds. It may (1) examine the record from a dogmatic point of view, pronouncing on it by reference to prepossessions directed against the facts; or (2) make use of the same method, but direct the attack against the evidence on which the record rests; or (3) it may examine whether the record is contemporary with the events narrated; or (4) consider its internal agreement with itself or with fact.

We have instances of each of these methods in the examination of the literary evidence on which miracles are believed. The first, the prepossession concerning the philosophical impossibility of miracles, is seen in Spinoza; the second, the impossibility of using testimony as a proof of them, in Hume; the third, the question whether they were attested by eyewitnesses, is the ground which Bolingbroke touches; the fourth, the cross-examination of the witnesses, is seen in Woolston. Of these, the first most nearly resembles the great mass of the deist objections to revelation, being philosophical rather than critical. The second forms a transition to the two latter, being philosophy applied to criticism, and is the form which deism now took. The two latter are those which it subsequently assumed.478

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These remarks will explain Hume's position,479 and show how he forms the transition between two modes of inquiry; his point of view being critical, the cause of it philosophical. His speculations in reference to religion are chiefly contained in his Essays on the Human Understanding. A brief explanation is necessary to show the dependence of his theology on his philosophy.

The speculations of Locke, as we have before had occasion to notice, gave an impulse to psychological investigations. He clearly saw that knowledge is limited by the faculties which are its source, which he considered to be reducible to sensation and reflection; but while denying the existence of innate ideas, he admitted the existence of innate faculties. Hartley carried the analysis still farther, by introducing the potent instrument offered by the doctrine of the association of ideas. Hume, adopting this principle, applied it, in a manner very like the independent contemporaneous speculations of Condillac in France, to analyse the faculties themselves into sensations, and to furnish a more complete account of the nature of some of our most general ideas, such, for example, as the notion of cause. The intellectual element implied in Locke's account of the process of reflection here drops out. Faculties are regarded as transformed sensations; the nature of knowledge as coextensive with sensation. According to such a theory therefore, the idea of physical cause can mean nothing more than the invariable connexion of antecedent and consequent. The notion of force or power which we attach to causation becomes an unreality; being an idea not given in sensation, which can merely detect sequence.

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Such was Hume's psychology; an attempt to push analysis to its ultimate limits; valuable in its method, even if defective in its results; a striking example of the acuteness and subtle penetration of its author. There is another branch of his philosophy in which he is regarded as a metaphysical sceptic, in reference to the passage of the mind outwards, by means of its own sensations and ideas, into the knowledge of real being, wherein he takes part with Berkeley, extending to the inner world of soul the scepticism which that philosopher had applied to the outer world of matter. In the psychological branch Hume is a sensationalist, in the ontological a sceptic. The latter however has no relation to our present subject. It is from the former that his views on religion are deduced. In no writer is the logical dependence of religious opinion on metaphysical principles visible in a more instructive manner. For we perceive that the influence adverse to religion in his case was not merely the result of rival metaphysical dogmas opposed to religion, such as were seen in the Pantheists of Padua, or in Spinoza; nor even the opposition caused by the adoption of a different standard of truth for pronouncing on revelation, as in his fellow English deists; but it sprung from the application of the subjective psychological inquiry into the limits of religious knowledge, as a means for criticising not only the logical strength of the evidence of religion, but specially the historic evidence of testimony. We consequently see the influence exercised by the subjective branch of metaphysical inquiries in the discussion not only of the logic of religion, but also of the logic of the historic aspect of it.

Hume's religious speculations480 relate to three points:—to the argument for the attributes of God, drawn from final causes; to the doctrine of Providence, and future rewards and punishments; and to the evidence of testimony as the proof of miracles. Though he does not conduct an open assault in reference to any [pg 150] of them, but only suggests doubts, yet in each case his insinuations sap so completely the very proof, that it is clear that they are intended as grounds not merely for doubt, but for disbelief. His doctrine of sensation is the clue to his remarks on the two former. He argues that we can draw no sound inferences on the questions, because the subjects lie beyond the range of sensational experience. It is however in consequence of his remarks on the last of the three subjects in his essay on Miracles that his name has become famous in the history of free thought.

The essay consists of two parts. In the first he shows that miracles are incapable of proof by testimony. Belief is in proportion to evidence. Evidence rests on sensational experience. Accordingly the testimony to the uniformity of nature being universal, and that which exists in favour of the occurrence of a miracle, or violation of the laws of nature, being partial, the former must outweigh the latter. In the second he shows, that if this is true, provided the testimony be of the highest kind, much more will it be so in actual cases; inasmuch as no miracle is recorded, the evidence for which reaches to this high standard. He explains the elements of weakness in the evidence; such as the predisposition of mankind to believe prodigies, forged miracles, the decrease of miracles with the progress of civilization, the force of rival testimony in disproof of them, which he illustrates by historic examples, such as the alleged miracles of Vespasian, Apollonius, and the Jansenist Abbé Paris.481 The conclusion is, that miracles cannot be so shown to occur as to be used as the basis of proof for a revelation; and that a revelation, if believed, must rest on other evidence.

The argument accordingly is briefly, that testimony cannot establish a fact which contradicts a law of nature; [pg 151] the narrower induction cannot disprove the wider. The reasoning has been used in subsequent controversy482 with only a slight increase of force, or alteration of statement. The great and undeniable discoveries of astronomy had convinced men in the age of Hume of the existence of an order of nature; and modern discovery has not increased the proof of this in kind, though it has heightened it in degree, by showing that as knowledge spreads the range of the operation of fixed law is seen to extend more widely; and apparent exceptions are found to be due to our ignorance of the presence of a law, not to its absence. The statement of the difficulty would accordingly now be altered by the introduction of a slight modification. Instead of urging that testimony cannot prove the historic reality of the fact which we call a miracle, the assertion would be made that it can only attest the existence of it as a wonder, and is unable to prove that it is anything but an accidental result of an unknown cause. A miracle differs from a wonder, in that it is an effect wrought by the direct interposition of the Creator and Governor of nature, for the purpose of revealing a message or attesting a revelation. That testimony can substantiate wonders, but not distinguish the miracle from the wonder, is the modern form of the difficulty.

The connexion of Hume's view with his metaphysical principles will be evident. If nature be known only through the senses, cause is only the material antecedent visible to the senses. Nature is not seen to be the sphere of the operation of God's regular will; and the sole proof of interference with nature must be a balancing of inductions. It will be clear also that the true method of replying to Hume has been rightly perceived by those who consider that the difficulty must be met by philosophy, and not by history.

Suppose the historic evidence sufficient to attest the wonder, it does not prove that the wonder is a miracle. The presumption in favour of this may be indefinitely [pg 152] increased by the peculiarity of the circumstances, which frequently forbid the idea of a mere marvel; but the real proof must depend upon the previous conception, which we bring to bear upon the question, in respect to the being and attributes of God, and His relation to nature. The antecedent probability converts the wonder into a miracle. It acts in two ways. It obliterates the cold materialistic view of the regularity of nature which regards material laws to be unalterable, and the world to be a machine; and it adds logical force to the weaker induction, so as to allow it to outweigh the stronger. No testimony can substantiate the interference with a law of nature, unless we first believe on independent grounds that there is a God who has the power and will to interfere.483 Philosophy must accordingly establish the antecedent possibility of miracles; the attribute of power in God to effect the interruption, and of love in God to prompt him to do it. The condition therefore of attaining this conception must be by holding to a monotheistic conception of God as a being possessing a personal will, and regarding mind and will as the rule by which to interpret nature and law,484 and not conversely measuring the mental by the material. In this manner law becomes the operation of God's personal fixed will, and miracle the interposition of his personal free will.

It will be perceived that in distinguishing miracle from wonder, we also take into account the final cause of the alleged interposition as a reason weighty enough to call forth divine interposition. As soon as we introduce the idea of a personal intelligent God, we regard Him as acting with a motive, and measure His purposes, [pg 153] partly by analogy to ourselves, partly by the moral circumstances which demand the interposition.485

These remarks may furnish the solution of the puzzle whether the miracle proves the doctrine, or the doctrine the miracle.486 Undoubtedly the miracle proves the particular doctrine which it claims to attest; but a doctrine of some kind, though not the special one in point, some moral conception of the Almighty's nature and character, must precede, in order to give the criterion for distinguishing miracle from mere wonder. Miracles prove the doctrine which they are intended to attest; but doctrines of a still more general character are required to prove the miracle.

This examination of the doctrine of Hume will not only illustrate our main position, of the influence of intellectual and philosophical causes in generating doubt, or at least in directing free thought into a sceptical tendency, but will illustrate the application made of that special department of metaphysics which relates to the test of truth, to discredit the literary proof of revelation as an historic system.

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We have now sketched the natural history of deism, by showing that in this as in former periods the forms which free thought assumed were determined by the philosophy, and, in a slighter degree, by the critical knowledge of the age.

The inquiry into method in the seventeenth century had led men to break with authority, and rebuild from its foundations the temple of truth. Locke, imbibing this spirit, had gauged anew the human understanding, and had sought a new origin for its knowledge, and given expression to the appeal to the reasoning powers, which marked the age. Political circumstances had not only generated free inquiry, but had required each man to form his political creed. In all departments reason was appealed to. Even the province of the imagination was invaded by it, and perfection of form preferred to freshness of conception in art and poetry. The doubt of the age reflected the same spirit. Whether its advocates belonged to the school of Descartes or of Locke, both alike examined religion by the standard of psychology and ethics. That which was to be believed was to be comprehended as well as apprehended. Yet the appeal was not made to reason in its highest form; and, with a show of depth, philosophy nevertheless failed to exhibit the deepest analysis.

We have watched the exhibition of the successive phases of the attack, and have seen reason, first examining the method of theology, protesting against mystery in doctrine or morals; next criticising the historic reality of the evidence offered for its doctrines; then denying the moral utility of revelation, or attacking the doctrines and internal truths; lastly denying the validity of testimony for the supernatural.

In the later steps the influence of the French school of speculation is already observable, mingling itself with English deism. Consequently the subsequent traces of unbelief in England must be deferred till the nature of this movement has been explained.

Deism stands contrasted with the unbelief of other times by certain peculiarities. In its coarse spirit of [pg 155] bitter hostility, and want of real insight into the excellence of the system which it opposed, it recalls in some respects the attack of the ancient heathen Celsus; and the difficulties propounded are frequently not dissimilar to those stated by him, though resulting from a different philosophical school. The tenacious grasp which it maintained of the doctrine of the unity of God would cause it to bear a closer resemblance to the system of Julian, if the deists had not lacked the literary tastes which strengthened his love for heathenism. The monotheism constitutes also a line of demarcation between deism and more modern forms of unbelief. It restrained the deists from falling into the forms of subtle pantheism previously noticed, and the atheism which will hereafter meet us. The character of their doubts too, selected from patent facts of mind and heart, which appealed to common sense, and were not taken from a minute literary criticism, which removes doubt from the sphere of the ordinary understanding into the world of literature, separates them from more modern critical unbelief.

Standing thus apart, characterised by intense attachment to monotheism, and placing its foundation in the great facts of nature, deism errs by defect rather than excess; in that which it denies, not in that which it asserts. It is a system of naturalism or rationalism; the interpretation which reason, without attaining the deepest analysis, offers of the scheme of the world, natural and moral. Its only parallel is the particular species of German thought derived from it which existed at the close of the last century, and sought like it to reduce revealed religion to natural.487

Whether emotional causes, personal moral faults coincided with these intellectual causes, and were the obstacle which prevented the attainment of a deeper insight into the mysteries of revelation, and made them to halt in the mysteries of nature, ought to be taken into account in forming a judgment on the concrete cases, but does not so properly belong to the general [pg 156] consideration in which we are now engaged, of tracing the types of deist thought. Some of the deists were very moral men, a few immoral; but the truth or untruth of opinions may be studied apart from the character of the persons who maintain them.

The movement, if viewed as a whole, is obsolete. If the same doubts are now repeated, they do not recur in the same form, but are connected with new forms of philosophy, and altered by contact with more recent criticism. In the present day sceptics would believe less than the deists, or believe more, both in philosophy and in criticism. In philosophy, the fact that the same difficulties occur in natural religion as well as in revealed, would now throw them back from monotheism into atheism or pantheism; while the mysteries of revelation, which by a rough criticism were then denied, would be now conceded and explained away as psychological peculiarities of races or individuals. In criticism, the delicate examination of the sacred literature would now prevent both the revival of the cold unimaginative want of appreciation of its extreme literary beauty, and the hasty imputation of the charge of literary forgery against the authors of the documents. In the deist controversy the whole question turned upon the differences and respective degrees of obligation of natural and revealed religion, moral and positive duties; the deist conceding the one, denying the other.

The permanent contribution to thought made by the controversy consisted in turning attention from abstract theology to psychological, from metaphysical disquisitions on the nature of God to ethical consideration of the moral scheme of redemption for man. Theology came forth from the conflict, reconsidered from the psychological point of view, and readjusted to meet the doubts which the new form of philosophy—psychology and ethics—might suggest.

The attack of revealed religion by reason awoke the defence; and no period in church history is so remarkable for works on the Christian evidences,—grand monuments of mind and industry. The works of defenders [pg 157] are marked by the adoption of the same basis of reason as their opponents; and hence the topics which they illustrate have a permanent philosophical value, though their special utility as arguments be lessened by the alteration in the point of view now assumed by free thought.

The one writer whose reputation stands out preeminently above the other apologists is bishop Butler.488 His praise is in all the churches. Though the force of a few illustrations in his great work may perhaps have been slightly weakened by the modern progress of physical science,489 and though objections have been taken on the ground that the solutions are not ultimate,490 mere media axiomata; yet the work, if regarded as adapted to those who start from a monotheistic position, possesses a permanent power of attractiveness which can only be explained by its grandeur as a work of philosophy, as well as its mere potency as an argument. The width and fulness of knowledge displayed in the former respect, together with the singular candour and dignified forbearance of its tone, go far to explain the secret of its mighty influence. When viewed in reference to the deist writings against which it was designed, or the [pg 158] works of contemporary apologists, Butler's carefulness in study is manifest. Though we conjectured that Tindal's work491 was the one to which he intended chiefly to reply, yet not one difficulty in the philosophy, hardly one in the critical attacks made by the various deists, is omitted; and the best arguments of the various apologists are used. But both the one and the other are so assimilated by his own mind, that the use of them only proves his learning, without diminishing his originality. They are so embodied into his system, that it is difficult even for a student well acquainted with the deist and apologetic literature to point precisely to the doubt or parallel argument which may have suggested to him material of thought. And thus, though his work as an argument ought always to be viewed in relation to his own times, yet the omission of all temporary means of defence, and the restricting himself to the use of those permanent facts which indelibly belong to human nature, and to the scheme of the world, have caused his work to possess an enduring interest, and to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί. The persuasive moderation of its tone also proves that Butler had really weighed the evidence. In its absence of arrogant denunciation, and its candid admission that the evidence of religion is probable, not demonstrative; and in the request that the whole evidence may be weighed like a body of circumstantial proofs, we can perceive that Butler had felt the doubts as well as understood them, and evidently meant his works for the doubter rather than for the Christian; [pg 159] to convince foes, or support the hesitating, rather than to win applause from friends.

The real secret of its power however lies not merely in its force as an argument to refute objections against revelation, but in its positive effect as a philosophy,492 opening up a grand view of the divine government, and giving an explanation of revealed doctrines, by using analogy as the instrument for adjusting them into the scheme of the universe.493 He seems himself to have taken a broad view of God's dealings in the moral world, analogous to that which the recent physical discoveries of his time had exhibited in the natural. In the same manner as Newton in his Principia had, by an extension of terrestrial mechanics, explained the movements of the celestial orbs, and united under one grand generalization the facts of terrestrial and celestial motion; so Butler aimed at exhibiting as instances of one and the same set of moral laws the moral government of God, which is visible to natural reason, and the spiritual government, which is unveiled by revelation.

Probably no book since the beginning of Christianity has ever been so useful to the church as Butler's Analogy, in solving the doubts of believers or causing them to ignore exceptions, as well as in silencing unbelievers. The office of apologetic is to defend the church, not to build it up. Argument is not the life of the church. It is therefore a proof of the philosophical power and truth of Butler's work that it has ministered so extensively to the latter purpose, by actually reinforcing and promoting the faith of professing Christians. It has acted not only as an argument to the deists, but as a lesson of instruction to the church.

Few efforts of free thought seemed more unpromising in yielding any useful results than deism; yet by its agitation of deep questions, which are not the mere [pg 160] phantoms of a morbid mind, but real and solid difficulties and mysteries in revelation, it was the means of creating Butler's noble work, and is a fresh illustration of the beneficent arrangement of the Almighty, that makes knowledge progress by antagonism, and overrules evil for good.

But there is another weapon for repelling unbelief besides the intellectual; just as there are two causes for creating it, the one intellectual, the other emotional. Thus, in the period that we are now considering, though we may believe that many hearts were cheered and many doubts hushed by the Christian apologies, yet the revival of religion494 which marked the eighteenth century, and which by spreading vital piety prepared an effectual check against unbelief, when the lower orders were afterwards invaded by it, was due to the spiritual yearnings created by the ministrations of men, often rude and unlettered, who told the wondrous story of Christ crucified, heart speaking to heart, with intuitions kindled from on high. The sinful began to feel that God was not afar off, reposing in the solitude of his own blessedness, and abandoning mankind to the government of conscience and to the operation of general laws, but nigh at hand, with a heart of fatherly love to pity and an ear of mercy to listen. The narrative of Christ the Son of God, coming down to seek and to save that which was lost, awoke an echo in the heart which neutralized the doubts infused by the deist. And it is a comfort to every Christian labourer to know that if he cannot wrangle out a controversy with the doubter, he can speak to the doubter's heart.

Few would compare the irregular missionaries of spiritual religion in the last century with the great writers of evidence. The names of the latter are honoured; those of the former are unknown or too often despised. It might seem strange, for example, to institute [pg 161] a comparison between the two contemporaries, bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there are points of contrast which are instructive. Each was one of the most marked instruments of movement and influence in the respective fields of the argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the educated, the other a missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a nonconformist, turned to the church, and in an age of unbelief consecrated his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity; and died early, when his unblemished example was so much needed in the noble sphere of usefulness which Providence had given him, leaving a name to be honoured in the church for generations. Wesley, nursed in the most exclusive church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout reading of mystic books;495 when our university was marked by the half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the Pietists of Germany,496 devoted a long life to wander over the country, despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the church. He too was an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts of administration; but whatever good he effected, in kindling the spiritual Christianity which checked the spread of infidelity, was not so much by argument as by stating the omnipotent doctrine of the Cross, Christ set forth as the propitiation for sin through faith in his blood. The earnestness of the missionary may be imitated by those who cannot imitate the philosopher's literary labours. Gifts of intellect are not in our own power. But industry to improve the talents that we possess is our own; and the spiritual perception of divine truth, and burning love for Christ which will [pg 162] touch the heart, and before which all unhealthy doubts will melt away as frost before the sun, will be given from on high by the Holy Ghost freely to all that ask. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”497

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Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in England Subsequent to 1760.

Isaiah xxvi. 20.

Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

We now approach the study of a period remarkable no less in the history of the world than in that of religious thought, in which unbelief gained the victory in the empire of mind, and obtained the opportunity of reconstructing society and education according to its own views. The history of infidelity in France in the eighteenth century forms a real crisis in history, important by its effects as well as its character. For France has always been the prerogative nation of Europe. When wants intellectual or political have been felt there, the life of other nations has beat sympathetic with it as with the heart of the European body. Ideas have been thrown into form by it for transmission to others. It will be necessary to depict the free religious thought, both intellectually and in its political action; to characterise its principal teachers; to show whence it sprung, and to what result it tended; to point out wherein lay the elements of its power and its wickedness; to show what it has contributed to human woe, or perchance indirectly to human improvement.

The source of its influence cannot be understood [pg 164] without recalling some facts of the history of French politics and philosophical speculation. What was the cause why English deists wrote and taught their creed in vain, were despised while living and consigned to oblivion when dead, refrained almost entirely from political intermeddling, and left the church in England unhurt by the struggle; while on the other hand deism in France became omnipotent, absorbed the intellect of the country, swept away the church, and remodelled the state? The answer to this question must be sought in the antecedent history. It is a phenomenon political rather than intellectual. It depended upon the soil in which the seed was sown, not on the inherent qualities of the seed itself.498

The church and state have hardly ever possessed more despotic power in any country of modern times, or seemed to all appearances to repose on a more secure foundation, than in France at the time when they were first assailed by the free criticism of the infidels of the eighteenth century. Each had escaped the alterations which had been effected in most other countries. The clergy of France had in the sixteenth century successfully resisted the Reformation, and gained strength by the issue of the civil wars which supervened on it. In the seventeenth century, though compelled to admit toleration of their Protestant adversaries, they had contrived before the end of it to obtain a revocation of the edict, even though the act cost France the loss of a million of her industrious population, and though the enforcing [pg 165] of it had to be effected by the means of the dragonnades, in which a brutal soldiery was let loose on an innocent population.499 Thus the church, united with rather than subjected to the state, adorned by great names, asserting its national independence in the pride of conscious strength against the metropolitan see of Christendom,500 possessed a power which, while it seemed to promise perpetuity, stood as an impediment to progress and a bar to intellectual development.

Nor was the cause of liberty more hopeful in relation to the state than the church. The crown, in passing through a similar struggle against the feudal nobility to that of other countries, had succeeded in securing its victory without yielding those concessions to the demands of the people which in our own country were extorted from it by the civil war. The strength gained by the defeat of the nobility in the wars of the Fronde, offered the opportunity for an able sovereign like Louis XIV to dry up all sources of independent power, by centralizing all authority in the monarchy. Proud in the consciousness of internal power and foreign victory, surrounded by wealth and talent, with a court and literature which were the glory of the country, he seemed likely to transmit his power to coming generations. But the inherent weakness of despotism was soon apparent. Unrestrained authority appertains only to the Divine government, because power is there synonymous with goodness; but it is always unsafe in human. The wisdom which partially supplied the place of goodness in Louis XIV being wanting in his successor, unchecked selfishness produced the corruption which brought inevitable ruin.

These remarks on the political state of France will [pg 166] sufficiently show why a free criticism directed against either religion or tyranny should assume revolutionary tendencies, and should manifest an antipathy to social and ecclesiastical institutions, as well as to the principles on which they were supposed to depend.

But the forces operating in the world of mind, as well as in society, must also be understood, in order to estimate the influence of unbelief in France. In a previous lecture we have seen that in the middle of the seventeenth century the philosophy of Descartes had created a complete revolution in modes of thought. It was only in the philosophy of Spinoza that it produced theological unbelief; but by its indirect influence it had led generally to an entire reconsideration of the first data of reasoning, and the method of establishing truth; and thus had stimulated the struggle of reason against faith, of inquiry against credulity, of progress against reaction, and of hopefulness in the future against reverence for the past. The activity of mind displayed in the literature of the reign of Louis XIV is its first expression.501 But thoughts ferment long in society before they fully express themselves in form: they first exist as suggestions; then they become doubts; lastly, they pass into disbelief. It was not until the time of the regency,502 which ensued after the death of Louis, that the literature became impressed with a thoroughly new tone.503

Other causes of a more direct kind cooperated. The English philosophy of Locke, which marked an epoch in speculation, was introduced at that time. This philosophy however could not have resulted in those speculations which arose in France, if it had not been carried farther by the analysis which Condillac employed in that country, analogous to that of Hume in Scotland. [pg 167] In itself it expressed the reasoning type of mind and thought which reigned throughout the English literature; but the corollaries from it which produced harm were no part of the original system.504 Condillac, desiring to carry out the analysis of the origin of knowledge, lost sight of the intellectual element in Locke's account of the process of reflection; denied the existence of innate faculties as well as innate ideas; and attempted to show that man's mind is so passive, so dependent on the evidence of the senses for the material of its thoughts, and on language for the power to combine them, that its very faculties are transformed sensations.505 From these premises it was not hard for his followers to draw the inferences of materialism506 in philosophy, selfishness in morals, and an entire denial of those religious truths which cannot be proved by sensuous evidence. This philosophy began to leaven the mind of France, and was accepted by nearly the whole of French unbelievers.

Such was the intellectual state of France in reference to the standard of appeal contemporaneously with the political and ecclesiastical condition before described. In the state and church all was authority; all was of the past; in the world of literature and philosophy all was criticism, activity, hope in the future. Into a soil thus prepared the seeds of unbelief on the subject of religion were introduced. We cannot deny that they were imported mainly from England. Doubt had indeed not been wholly wanting in France. In the preceding [pg 168] centuries Montaigne507 and Charron,508 and, at the commencement of the one of which we speak, Bayle509 and Fontenelle,510 were probably harassed with disbelief, and their influence was certainly productive of doubt. And free thought, in the form of literary criticism of the scriptures, had brought down the denunciation of the French church on Richard Simon.511 But undoubtedly the direct parent of the French unbelief was English deism.512 In no age of French history has English literature possessed so powerful an influence.513 England had recently achieved those liberties of which France felt the need. It had safely outlived civil war and revolution, and had established constitutional liberty and religious toleration. In England the victims of the French oppression found shelter. Being itself free, it became the refuge for the exile, the shelter for the oppressed. It thus became the object of study to the politician, and of love to the philanthropist. Its literature too, in two branches, viz. political inquiry, and, towards the middle of the century, romance, offered subjects for imitation. Montesquieu studied the former; Rousseau and Diderot the latter. But England furnished also a series of fearless inquirers on the subject of religion, whose works became the subject of study and of translation.514 Voltaire spent three [pg 169] years of exile in England,515 at the time when the ferment existed concerning Woolston's attack on miracles, and both knew Bolingbroke personally, and translated his writings.

Having now explained the sources of doubt in France; we must next direct our attention to the course of its speculations, and to the chief authors.

If we estimate its course by literary works, or by social and political movements, we may distribute the history of it into two periods; one comprising the first half of the century, wherein it attacks the French church and Christianity; the other, the latter half, wherein it mingles itself with the demand for political change, and assaults the state,516 until its effects are seen in the anarchy of the French revolution. In the former of these periods the unbelief is tentative and suggestive. About the time of the transition to the second, in the pride of supposed victory it becomes dogmatic. Christianity is supposed to be exploded. Philosophy seeks to occupy its place in the social and intellectual world. The early doubters and Voltaire mark the former of these epochs. Diderot and the French encyclopædists, with the ramification of their school at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, form the point of transition. Rousseau marks the opening of the second period, when unbelief was attempting to reconstruct society and remodel education. The selfish philosophy of Helvetius and his friends then carries on the course of the history of unbelief, until in the storm of the revolution it shows itself in the teaching of Volney, and the absurd acts of the theophilanthropists.

The name of Voltaire, which the logical and chronological order introduces first to our notice, is so preeminent, [pg 170] that his character and teaching may express the history of the early movement in France.

The story of his life, so far as we require now to be made acquainted with it, can be briefly told.517 Born toward the close of the seventeenth century, he manifested, as a legend assures us, such a doubting spirit, even in boyhood, that his priestly preceptor predicted that he would prove a Coryphæus of deism. His rare precocity of intellect early acquired for him a reputation in the world of letters. Compelled to become an exile in England,518 he studied its politics, its science, and its scepticism. On his return to France, he endeavoured to introduce among his countrymen the cosmical and mathematical doctrines of Newton; and made himself conspicuous in history, in poetry, in fiction, and above all, in theology, by his attacks on revealed religion and the French church. About the middle of the century, accepting an invitation to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, he aided thence the introduction of infidel doctrines in Germany. A few years later he withdrew into retirement at Ferney, but was able from his seclusion to wield an intellectual power throughout Europe.

It was from this retirement that he denounced the acts of tyranny, or supposed injustice, inflicted by the French church. His indignant denunciations in the cases of the Sirven,519 of La Barre,520 and above all of the [pg 171] Calas,521 gained for him the commendation and sympathy of Europe, and remain as monuments of the power of the pen.

Such was his life. Let us search in it for the secret of his power, and inquire what were his views in the department which we are studying.

His character has been analysed by so many critics, especially by one of our own countrymen in an essay of rare power, now become classical, that the opportunity of original investigation is impossible, and the attempt undesirable.522

In the opinion of this writer, the secret of Voltaire's strength was the tact which he displayed in expressing the wants of his time to his countrymen in the precise mode most suited to them.523 He belonged to the class of those who exercise their influence in their own lifetime—men of the present, not men of the future; accordingly, whether he be viewed as a man, in his own personal qualities, in the moral and intellectual properties which constituted his character, or as an artist, in the manner in which he conveyed his thoughts to the world, he will be found to be the loftiest exponent and type of the spirit of his age. It was an age without [pg 172] originality, without spiritual insight, careful of manners rather than morals, corrupted by selfishness, led by ambition, dissatisfied with the present, and anxious for deliverance; but unable to espy the real causes of the mischief, and to escape confusing principles with men; fond of form rather than material; classical rather than Gothic; critical rather than reverent; proud of its own discoveries, without appreciation of the efforts of the past.—Such are the qualities which characterised the times of Voltaire,524 and in their most striking form marked his mind.

To qualities which were thus in some sense formed in him by circumstances, he added remarkable ones which were Nature's special gift to him. His extraordinary tact and good sense, both in dealing personally with individuals and in literary criticism; his fiery ardour, and vehement spirit of proselytism; his singular penetration of vision, and power to arrange in the clearest mode the thoughts which he wished to transmit; above all, his wit and wonderful power of satire were qualities which, though in some degree shared by his countrymen, cannot be explained by mere circumstances, but are natural gifts. These three intellectual endowments, acuteness, order, and satire,525 are regarded by the authority that we are taking for our guide, as the qualities which formed the secret of his power as a writer, and at the same time as the sources of intellectual temptation which prevented him from gaining a deeper insight into truth, and deprived him of influence with posterity. For his quickness prevented the exercise of the reflection, the patient meditation, which is the only high road to solve the mysteries of existence. It has been well said,526 that Voltaire saw so much more deeply at a glance than other men, that no second glance was ever given by him. His power of order assisting his quickness, was [pg 173] a still further temptation. Though far inferior in erudition to some of his contemporaries, such as Diderot, and in depth of feeling to Rousseau, lacking originality, and borrowing most of his philosophical thoughts at second hand, he yet surpassed them all by a matchless power of arrangement. The perfection of form diverted attention from the subject matter. He possessed method rather than genius, intellect rather than imagination. But above all his other powers, his most singular gift was his power of satire. When stimulated by a sense of injustice, or of hatred against men or systems, it made him omnipotent in destruction. This satirical power contributed to preclude the possession of depth of reflection. Ridicule has an office in criticism. It is the true punishment of folly. But it has been well observed,527 that it is dangerous to him who employs it, as being directly opposed to humility. The satirist places himself above that which he ridicules, and makes himself the judge: the humility of the listener is laid aside; the selfish belief of his own infallibility is fostered; forbearance and sympathy are laid aside. The critic argues, the satirist only laughs. Pity may be compatible with humour, but only contempt with satire. Voltaire was by nature a satirist; and when his mockery was applied to a subject like Christianity or religion, his utter want of reverence not only caused him to substitute a caricature for a picture, but prevented him from exercising discrimination in distinguishing Christianity from its counterfeit, religion from the ministers of it. Hence his attacks on Christianity partake of the tone of blasphemy; and he manifests in reference to religion, which to most readers was the most sacred of subjects, a tone of indescribable scurrility, which was not only inexcusable and disgraceful if viewed merely in a literary point of view, but constituted politically a public outrage against the dearest feelings of others which no citizen has a right to perpetrate.528 This tone too was mainly his own; [pg 174] and is not to be found, except in rare instances, in the English deists from whom he borrowed.

We have tried to comprehend the mind of Voltaire, to notice his peculiarities and faults, before considering his opinions; because his influence was due to his mental and personal character rather than to the matter of his writings. It remains to state his views on religion, and the grounds of his attack on revelation. The chief materials for ascertaining them are the four volumes in the vast collection of his works, which contain his philosophical and theological writings.529 They partake of every variety of form,—essays, letters, treatises, pamphlets, translations, commentaries. They include, besides smaller works, a commentary on the Old Testament; translations of parts of Bolingbroke and of Toland; an investigation concerning the establishment of Christianity; deist sermons which he pretends had been delivered; discourses written under false names;530 and doubts proposed and solved after the manner of preceding philosophers. Yet in these numerous treatises there is no claim to originality. His doubts and his beliefs are taken mainly from the English deists; and chiefly from Bolingbroke, the most French in mind of any of the English school.

A few words therefore will suffice to characterise his opinions. It appears that he believed in a God,531 [pg 175] but firmly disbelieved the divine origin of the revealed religion, Jewish and Christian. The main purpose of his life however was not affirmation, but denial.532 Accordingly the sole object of all his efforts was to destroy belief in the plenary inspiration of the scriptures, and the divine origin of revelation which is attested by them. There is hardly a book in scripture that he did not attack. Successively surveying the narrative of Jewish history, the Gospels, and statements of early church history,533 he tried to show absurdities and contradictions in them all; not so much literary differences in the authors as difficulties of belief in the material revealed. In his views of Judaism and of Christianity he seems to have fluctuated between attributing them to the fraud or mistake of their propagators, and denying their originality. The science of historical criticism was beginning in his day, and was applied to the legends of Roman history. Voltaire embodied the spirit of this inquiry. In his histories he exemplified the cold, worldly, modern mode of looking at events, as opposed to the providential and theocratic view of them which had found expression as recently as in the works of Bossuet.534 And he transferred this method to the treatment of holy scripture. No new branch of information was left unused by him for contributing to his impious purpose. The numerous works of travels which were affording an acquaintance with the mythology of other nations, were made to furnish him with the materials for hastily applying one solution to all the early Jewish histories, which he failed to invalidate by the application of the historic method just described. [pg 176] By an inversion of the argument of the early Christian apologists, he pretended that the early history preserved among the Hebrews was borrowed from the heathens, instead of claiming that the heathen mythology was a trace of Hebrew tradition; and, with a view to sustain this opinion, he discredited the integrity of the Hebrew literature. In nothing is his singular want of poetic taste, and of the power to appreciate the beauties of the literature of young nations, and the ethical value of moral institutions, more visible, than in denying the literary and monumental value of the Bible, and the moral influence of Christianity.535 Infidels who have hated revealed religion as bitterly as Voltaire, have at least not had the meanness or the want of taste to depreciate the literary and moral interest which attaches to it.

Such was the character of the man, and of the efforts which he directed to the injury of revelation. It has been said536 that to obliterate his influence from the history of the eighteenth century would be to produce a greater difference than the absence of any other individual in it would occasion; and would be similar to the omission of Luther from the sixteenth. The analogy, though startling, is true in the particulars which it is intended to illustrate. The influence of each was European in his respective century; and the doctrine acted not only on the world of thought, but of action.

We have described Voltaire alone; not because he was isolated by any interval of time from a general movement, but because his attack is more rudimentary, being directed rather to disintegrate Christianity than dogmatically to affirm unbelief. He was perhaps rather logically prior to the others than chronologically; being really connected with two bodies of men, which formed the centres of two infidel movements, the one in Paris, the other at the court of Frederick at Berlin.

Frederick the Great surrounded himself with [pg 177] French literary men.537 They were mostly persons who were exiles from France to escape persecution for their opinions, who had first found a refuge in Holland, and thence endeavoured by means of the Dutch booksellers to introduce their writings into France. From about 1740-60 several such teachers of infidelity were invited to the Prussian court, and dispersed their influence in Germany; the effects of which we shall subsequently find. One of them was the physician La Mettrie,538 who wrote works on physiology marked by a low materialism. Such also was De Prades,539 and more especially D'Argens.540 The latter, struck with the force of “the Persian Letters” of Montesquieu, threw his doubts into an epistolary form, “the Jewish Letters;” in which the traditional opinions and ruling systems of the time were attacked with great freedom. He translated also some ancient works to serve his purpose, especially the fragments of the abusive work of the emperor Julian against Christianity, written in favour of the state religion of the Greeks and Romans.

While this was the character of some of the Frenchmen at the court of Frederick, whom Voltaire subsequently joined; men who, imbued with the most extravagant form of the philosophy of sensation, verged upon materialism; there were coteries of literary persons in Paris, which were the rallying point of sceptical minds, and centres of irreligious influence.

The existence of them is due in part to the altered position already named which literature assumed in reference to the court during the regency. Instead of being fostered, it was discouraged; and Fleury manifested an almost puritan spirit, and has left on record the [pg 178] expression of his alarm at the growing sceptical tone of literary works, and the imitation of the English spirit. Owing accordingly to the absence of patronage, and to the lavishment of those favours on extravagance which the elder Louis had bestowed on the fostering of intellect, literature became disjoined from court influences; and hence there grew up small centres of literary influence, analogous to those preceding the times of Louis XIV,541 and nuclei for intellectual movement, where of old the various bodies had all moved round one central sun.

It would be irrelevant to enter into the details of these coteries. (23) Some were simply of fashion and taste; but others were undoubtedly gatherings of powerful thinkers, imbued with infidel principles, whose character belongs to French literature and the mental and moral culture of the time. One of the most remarkable of these coteries included names noted in French literature, such as Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert,542 D'Holbach, Marmontel,543 Helvetius, Grimm,544 St. Lambert,545 and Raynal.546 We must notice some of them in detail, in order at once to appreciate the character of their works, and to illustrate the relation of their unbelief to the philosophy which they adopted.547

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Diderot,548 next to Voltaire, was the most able of the infidel writers, and greatly superior to the other members of the same class. His history is one of those narratives of struggle and suffering which so often have been the lot of men of letters. Those who have been the teachers of the world have too often been also its martyrs. The great peculiarity of Diderot, as of Johnson, was his encyclopædic knowledge, and his versatility in comprehending a variety of subjects. Less critical than Voltaire, and less philosophical than Rousseau, he exceeded both as the practical teacher. But in unbelief he unhappily advanced farther than either; his temper lacked moral earnestness; and in later life he was an atheist. A growth of unbelief may be traced in him: at first he was a doubter, next he became a deist, lastly an atheist. In the first stage he only translated English works, and even condemned some of the English deists. His views seem gradually to have altered, probably under the influence of Voltaire's writings, and of the infidel books smuggled into France; and he thenceforth assumed a tone bolder and marked by positive disbelief. In 1746 he wrote his Pensées Philosophiques, intended to be placed in opposition to the Pensées of Pascal. Pascal, by a series of sceptical propositions, had hoped to establish the necessity of revelation. Diderot tried by the same method to show that this revelation must be untrue.549 The first portion of the propositions550 bore upon philosophy and natural [pg 180] religion, but at length he came to weaken the proofs for the truth of Christianity, and controverted miracles, and the truth of any system which reposes on miracles; yet even in this work he did not evince the atheism which he subsequently avowed. It was soon after the imprisonment in which he was involved by this book, that he projected the plan of the magnificent work, the Encyclopédie, or universal dictionary of human knowledge. Its object however was not only literary, but also theological; for it was designed to circulate among all classes new modes of thinking, which should be opposed to all that was traditionary. Voltaire's unbelief was merely destructive: this was reconstructive and systematic. The religion of this great work was deism: the philosophy of it was sensationalist and almost materialist; seeming hardly to allow the existence of anything but mechanical beings. Soul was absorbed in body; the inner world in the outer;—a tendency fostered by physics. It was the view of things taken by the scientific mind, and lacks the poetical and feeling elements of nature—a true type of the cold and mechanical age which produced it. Diderot's atheism is a still further development of his unbelief. It is expressed in few of his writings, and presents no subject of interest to us; save that it seeks to invalidate the arguments for the being of a God, drawn from final causes. It has been well observed, that the lesson to be derived from him551 is, that the mechanical view of the world is essentially atheistic; that whosoever will admit no means of discovering God but common logic, cannot find him. Diderot's unbelief may be considered to embody that which resulted from the abuse at once of erudition, physical science, and the sensational theory in metaphysics.

Among the band of friends who from connexion with the Encyclopædia acquired the name of Encyclopædists, was also Helvetius.552 He was the moralist of [pg 181] the sensational philosophy, one of those who applied the philosophy of Condillac to morals. Each man's tastes are so far affected by circumstances, that it is possible that Helvetius's exclusive association with the selfish circles of the French society, which never lived for the good of others, together with the perception of the hollowness of the respect which persons paid him for his wealth and influence, led him to regard self-love as the sole motive of conduct. His philosophy is expressed in two works;553 the one on the spirit, the other on man: the former a theoretical view of human nature, the latter a practical view of education and society. His primary position is, that man owes all his superiority over animals to the superior organization of his body. Starting from this point, he argues that all minds are originally equal, and owe their variation to circumstances;554 that all their faculties and emotions are derivable from sensation; that pleasure is the only good, and self-interest the true ground of morals and the framework of individual and political right.555

If in Diderot we have met with atheism, and in Helvetius with the selfish theory of morals; in the author of “the System of Nature” we meet with utter materialism, and the two former evils as corollaries from it. This work, which was published about 1774, though bearing a different author's name on the title, was probably the work of D'Holbach,556 aided by Diderot and Helvetius, [pg 182] and other members of the society which met at D'Holbach's house. It is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in which materialism, fatalism, and atheism, combine to form a view of human nature which even Voltaire is said to have denounced.

The grand object of this work being to show that there is no God, the first part is occupied by the most rigorous materialism, and is designed to prove that there is no such thing as mind, nothing beyond the material fabric,557 which is maintained by simple and invariable laws; and that the soul is a mode of organism,558 the mere action of the body under different functions. The freedom of the will559 and immortality560 are accordingly denied. The first part having been directed to disprove the existence of mind, the second part is designed against religion. The author attributes the idea which man has formed of a first Cause to fear,561 generated through suffering; and attempts to show the insufficiency of the à priori argument in favour of a God,562 omitting the consideration of the arguments derived from final causes. Nature becomes in his scheme a machine; man an organism; morality self-interest; deity a fiction.

The work we have just named formed the crowning result of infidelity.563 Voltaire showed philosophy shrinking from the hard materialism, morality from the fatalism, and religion from the atheism, to which they afterwards attained. In these steps, as witnessed in the circle of intellect just sketched, we see the ramification of the French sensational philosophy pushed to its farthest limits.

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The writers lately described, though in some degree eminent, do not, like Voltaire, stand in the first rank of the French literary writers. Amid the circle of unbelievers, however, another of the highest rank was found, who, though he must be classed with the others, stood so apart in taste, in sympathy, in purpose, and in belief, that the study of his life and character is an interruption to the series of the materialist writers whom we are describing. Rousseau564 was not an atheist like Diderot, nor a materialist like D'Holbach, nor a moralist of the selfish school like Helvetius, nor a scoffer like Voltaire. We discover in him a spirit endowed with deep feeling, and trained by much greater experience of life and of internal sorrow. His writings also mark the period when French philosophy ceased to attack the church, and found itself strong enough to act against the state. The greater portion of his works lies out of the range of our inquiry. Even his political writings, which indirectly injured religion in the world of action by stimulating the revolutionary hatred to the church, require notice only so far as they involved principles fundamentally opposed to the teaching of revealed religion.

It was about the middle of the century565 that Rousseau commenced the “Political Essays” which made his name famous, and unhappily afterwards formed as it were the very bible of the French revolution. Retaining through life the preference for the simple institutions of the republic in which he had been born, he saw in [pg 184] French society the abuses which appertain to civilization; and, with somewhat of the same feeling which Tacitus exhibits in his portraiture of the Germans, was led to study the comparative advantages of a primitive and refined age, and to maintain the paradox that the empire of corruption and inequality was to be regarded as the artificial creation of civilization. Ignoring the natural sinfulness and selfishness of the human race, he sought deliverance for mankind in the return to a primeval state, in which all should be free, equal, and independent. The inartificial state of society was the beau-ideal. And from this philosophical origin he traced society in the historical formation of an actual polity, describing how the social contract, while subordinating individual liberty to the collective will of a society, recompensed men by investing them with rights of civilization.

His doctrine was false theologically in its view of human nature; false philosophically in attempting to investigate an historical question by means of abstract metaphysical analysis; and false politically in drawing the attention of men away from practical and possible schemes of reform to visionary ones. It typified the movement of the French revolution in its extravagant hopes and its errors, in its destructive, not its remedial aspect.566

It was a few years later than the publication of these speculations that Rousseau wrote his celebrated treatise [pg 185] on education, the Emile,567 which is the chief source for ascertaining his religious opinions. It has been called the Cyropædia of modern times, an attempt to show the education which a philosopher would give his pupil, in contradistinction to the religious and Jesuit training common in Rousseau's time.

In examining the religious education to be given to the young, he introduces a Savoyard vicar, the original of which his own early travels had suggested to him, to narrate the history of his convictions, and explain the nature of his creed. This creed is deism, and bears a very striking resemblance to that taught by the English deists. Rejecting tradition and philosophy,568 the vicar grounds his creed on reason, the interior light. Commencing with sensation, he shows how step by step we arrive at the doctrine of the being and attributes of one God. Though he does not reject the argument from final causes, he seems to lay more stress on the metaphysical argument of the necessity of the divine existence. He first proves the existence of personality and will,569 and uses this idea for the purpose of exploring the outer world; arguing that matter is inert and not self-active, he regards matter in motion as indicating force, and therefore volition; uniformity in its motion as proving a law, and therefore an intelligent will,570 in which wisdom, power, and goodness combine.571 This being is God, to whom man is subject. The universe is universal order. The physical evil therein originates in our vices, the moral in our free will.572

Having established the being of a God, he next proceeds to give reasons for believing in immortality. He bases it on the fact of the goodness of God, which leads Him to recompense with happiness the suffering [pg 186] good; and he disbelieves the eternity of punishment for the bad.573 Having fixed the objects of belief, he next lays down the rule of duty in conscience, which he regards as an innate and infallible guide.574 After thus establishing natural religion, he proceeds to criticise revealed, arguing its want of irrefragable evidence,575 the discrepant576 opinions in reference to it, the improbability of portions of its history;577 attacking strongly the external evidence of prophecy and miracles; the former on the alleged want of proof of agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment; the latter on the ground of the alleged circle, that miracles are made to prove doctrine, and doctrine miracles.578 He accordingly rejects the idea of Christianity being necessary to salvation; but renders a tribute of praise to its moral precepts, and regards the gospels, though partly fictitious, as containing indestructible moral truths; and concludes with the well-known comparison of Socrates to Christ, showing the stupendous superiority of the death and example of the latter. “If the death of Socrates,” he says, “was that of a sage, that of Jesus was that of a God.”579

It would have been thought that such teaching as this would hardly have excited a legal prosecution, in comparison with the more violent attacks that were made on religion: but the wide reputation and fascinating style of the author, the extraordinary ability of the work, above all the fact that many of the previous infidel doctrines had been published without the writers' names, were the means of subjecting him to persecution which they escaped. Voltaire and the infidel party were indignant at Rousseau's partial acceptance of Christianity. The French clergy were angry at his rejection of the remainder. The parliament ordered the book to be burned, and the author to be imprisoned. Rousseau had to seek refuge in Switzerland, [pg 187] and there defended his views of Christianity and miracles in a series of celebrated letters, which in their political effects have been compared with the letters of Junius. Driven out from Switzerland, he found a shelter in England, with Hume; and, until he could safely return to France, employed his time in writing his Confessions;580—the celebrated work, a mixture of romance and fact, which takes its place in the first rank of autobiographies,—a sad witness to the desperate wickedness of the human heart, and to the impotence of even a high moral creed, which we know Rousseau elsewhere expressed,581 in creating morality, without Christian motives to give practical efficacy to it.

Such was Rousseau, an enemy of artificial society, of Roman catholic education, and of supernatural revelation; yet far removed from Voltaire and the other infidels, both in tone and literary character.582 While Voltaire aimed only to destroy, Rousseau sought to reconstruct. Voltaire was a flippant, hasty reviler of Christianity, without originality in the material of his works, without depth of soul: Rousseau was serious, fresh, full of pathos. Voltaire either had no creed, or thought one unimportant, and was actuated by malignant [pg 188] hatred against Judaism and Christianity: Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke with decency of the religion which he rejected. Voltaire was devoid of taste for ancient literature, witty under a mask, a selfish sycophant to the ancient political régime: Rousseau never denied the authorship of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and was the means of exciting a love for antiquity. Finally rejecting to a great degree the sensational philosophy; rising above it in heart, if not in thought, Rousseau taught a spiritual philosophy, destined to bear fruit when the dreams of the revolution had passed. He stands alone however at present in this respect, like Montesquieu in politics583 and Buffon in science; and the course of our history again brings before us men who must be classed with the materialists that preceded him.

We have stated that by the middle of the century the infidel writers turned their attention from the attack on the church to that on the state; and had already made such impression on the government, that it joined them in expelling the Jesuits.584 For more than a quarter of a century before the revolution the literary writers were infidel. At length the evils of the state grew incurable, and the storm of the revolution burst.

It is possible in the present age to take a much more dispassionate view of that vast event than was taken by contemporaries.585 It can now be adjusted to its true historic perspective, and its function in the scheme of history can be clearly perceived. The vastness of the movement consisted in this, that it was at once political, social, and religious.586 It aimed at redressing the grievances under which France had suffered, and reconstructing society with guarantees for future liberty. It sought not merely to destroy [pg 189] the feudalism which had outlived its time, and to equalize the unfair distribution of the public burdens, as means to accommodate society to modern wants; but it tried to effect these changes among a people whose minds were fully persuaded both that the privileges of particular classes and the existence of an established religion were the chief causes of the public misfortune. When so many movements combined, the catastrophe was intensified. It is indeed possible now to see that in the end the solid advantages of the revolution were reaped, while the mischief was temporary; but the severity of the storm while it lasted was increased by the infidel views with which society had become impregnated. For the revolution attempted to embody in its political aspect those poetical but wild theories of society which sceptical students had taught; and was founded on the false assumption of the perfectibility of man, and the perfect goodness of human nature, except as depraved by human government.

At first, under the National Assembly,587 the attack was only made on the property of the church; but on the establishment of the Convention, when the nation had become frantic at the alarm of foreign invasion, to which the king and clergy were supposed to be instrumental, the monarchy was overthrown, and religion also was declared obsolete. The municipality and many of the bishops abjured Christianity; the churches were stripped; the images of the Saviour trampled under foot; and a fête was held in November 1793,588 in which an opera-dancer, impersonating Reason as a goddess, was introduced into the Convention, and then led in procession to the cathedral of Notre Dâme; and there, elevated on the high altar, took the place of deity, and received adoration from the audience. The services of religion were abandoned; the churches were closed; the [pg 190] sabbath was abolished; and the calendar altered. On all the public cemeteries the inscription was placed, “Death is an eternal sleep.” Robespierre himself saw the necessity for the public recognition of the being of a God; and after the fall of the Girondists, obtained an edict for that purpose shortly before his death, in 1794; which event marks the return of society from atheism and materialism back to deism.589 When the horrors of the dictatorship of Robespierre closed, and a regular government was established under the Directory, the priests obtained liberty to reopen the churches provided they maintained them at their own expense.590 But the great majority of the people lived wholly without God in the world; while some sought refuge in the extravagant creed of a deist sect called the Theophilanthropists.591 Nor was it till the year 1802 that Napoleon was able, and even then amid much opposition, to reestablish the Sunday.592 Christianity was then reinaugurated by a public ceremony593 in the cathedral, polluted eight years before by the blasphemy of the goddess of Reason. But the total cessation of religious instruction snapped asunder a chain of faith which had descended unbroken from the first ages; and to this must be ascribed the irreligious mode of spending the Sunday in French society.

The reign of atheism in religion was fortified by a philosophy; and the works of one infidel writer preserve the expression of the view which it took of Christianity and religion. As soon as the excitement of the revolution allowed leisure to return to the study of mental facts, there arose the extreme form of sensationalism, which was called (in a different meaning from the present [pg 191] popular use of the term) Ideology, (24). Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy are the best exponents of its physiological and psychological aspects; and the well-known Volney of its moral and religious side. Starting from the principles of Condillac and Helvetius, that the very faculties as well as ideas are derived from sensation, and moral rules from self-love, it almost reaches the same point as D'Holbach. Mental science was approached from the physiological side, and so viewed that mind seemed to be made a property of brain.594

The chief work in which Volney expresses his unbelief is entitled the “Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires.”595 It is a poem in prose. Volney imagines himself falling into a meditation, amid the ruins of Palmyra, on the fall of empires.596 The phantom of the ruins appears, and, entering into converse with him, causes him to see the kingdoms of the world, and guides him in the solution of the mysteries which puzzle him.597 It unveils to him the view of nature as a system of laws, and of man as a being gifted with self-love. It traces the origin of society in a manner not unlike Rousseau,598 and refers the source of evil to self-love; states the cause of ancient prosperity and decline, and draws the moral lesson from the past.599 While Volney is despondent at the prospect of the future, a vision is unveiled to him of a new age. It is of a nation ridding itself of privileged classes, and arming itself when its young liberties were threatened by foreign powers.600 It is an apocalyptic vision of France in his time. Then suddenly the vision changes, and an assembly of the nations of the world is gathered as in one common arena, to ascertain how they may arrive at unity and peace.601 Their differences are illustrated [pg 192] by the discrepant opinions which they utter on religion; and the origin of each religion on the earth is traced.602 It is here that Volney makes his speaker convey his own scepticism. He tracks the origin of the religious ideas603 through the worship prompted by fear of the physical elements604 and the stars605 to that of symbols or idols,606 with its accompanying mysteries and orders of priests; and then onward through dualism607 to the belief of an unseen world;608 then through mythology609 and pantheism610 to the belief in a Creator;611 next, to Judaism612 as the worship of the soul of the world; and lastly, through the Persian613 and Hindu614 systems to Christianity,615 which he attempts to show to be the worship of the sun under the cabalistic names of Christ and Jesus. Availing himself of some of the fragments of mythology which such writers as Eusebius have preserved, and with a faint perception of the nature of mythology, he tries to resolve the narrative of the fall of man into solar mythology; and, pointing to contact with the Persians at the captivity as the source from which the Jews borrowed their ideas of a symbolic system, he regards the incarnation and life of Christ as the mistaken literalization on the part of contemporaries of their preconceived opinions. The conclusions to which Volney makes his interlocutor come616 is, that nothing can be true, nothing be a ground of peace and union, which is not visible to the senses. Truth is conformity with sensations. The book is interesting as a work of art; but its analysis of Christianity is so shocking, that its absurdity alone prevents its becoming dangerous. It is the most unblushing attempt to resolve the noblest of effects into the most absurd of origins; and embodies in the consideration of religion the school of philosophy which he represented.

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We have now completed the history of unbelief in France during the eighteenth century. We have seen how literature gradually emancipated itself from the power of the court, and, under the influence of a sceptical stimulus received from the importation of English free thought, was changed into political and ecclesiastical antipathy, and acquired a mastery over the public mind, until it involved the state, the church, and Christianity, in a common ruin. History offers no parallel instance of the victory of unbelief, through the power of the pen, nor of the union of the political with the theological movement, and of the intimate connexion of both with the current philosophy of the time.

The theological movement has contributed nothing of permanent literary value. The few apologies written were unimportant; and the thoughts of those who attacked Christianity were neither new nor characterised by depth. Their criticism was shallow, and was marked by the feature of which traces were observed in a few English authors, the disposition to charge imposture on the writers of the holy scriptures; so that they not only failed to appreciate the literary excellence of the works, but scarcely even allowed the possibility of unintentional deception on the part of the writers. The doubts were chiefly the reproduction of the English point of view, with the addition of a few physical difficulties;617 protests of free thought against dogma in natural science. The view entertained concerning deity was eventually grovelling; the greatness of nature seemed to inspire no reverence. Unbelief gradually lost hold of monotheism; and in doing so never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism, but fell into blank atheism. The theoretical morality of the English deists, even when depending on expedience, was noble; but in place of it the French school presented the lowest form of theory which ethical science has ever stated, and which finds its refutation with the philosophy that gave it birth.

No age exhibits a body of sceptical writers whose [pg 194] characters are so unattractive as the French unbelievers; whose coarseness of mind in failing to appreciate that which is beautiful in Christianity is so evident, that charity could not forbid us to doubt, even if there were not independent proof, that faults of character contributed very largely to the formation of their unbelief. Nevertheless, the political aspect of the movement carries a solemn warning to the Christian church, not to endanger the everlasting Gospel of the Son of God by making it the buttress to support corrupt political and ecclesiastical institutions. It is true that Christ will not abandon his true church. Whatever is divine and eternally true will always as in this case survive the catastrophe. But this period of history shows that Providence will not work a miracle to save religion from a temporary eclipse, if the church forgets that Christ's kingdom is not of this world; and that the mission which he has given it is to convert souls to him; and that learning and piety are intellectual and moral means for effecting this object.618 The political faults or shortcomings of the church are no apology for the infidelity of France; but they must be taken into account in explaining its intensity.

A theological movement so vast could not fail to exercise an influence in other lands. Incidental allusions have already been made to its effects at the court of Prussia,619 and to the traces of its tone in some of the later of the English deists.