§ 163. SECTS AND FANATICS.
Socinianism during the first decades of the century made extraordinary
progress in Poland, but then collapsed under the persecution of
the Jesuits. Related to the continental Anabaptists were the English
Baptists, who rejected infant baptism; while the Quakers, who adopted
the old fanatical theory of an inner light, set baptism and the Lord’s
supper entirely aside. In the sect of the Labadists we find a blending
of Catholic quietist mysticism and Calvinistic Augustinianism. Besides
those regular sects, there were various individual enthusiasts and
separatists. These were most rife in the Netherlands, where the free
civil constitution afforded a place of refuge for all exiles on account
of their faith. Here only was the press free enough to serve as a
thoroughgoing propaganda of mysticism and theosophy. Finally the Russian
sects, hitherto little studied, call for special attention.
§ 163.1. =The Socinians= (§ 148, 4).--The most important of the
Socinian congregations in =Poland=, for the most part small and
composed almost exclusively of the nobility, was that at Racau in
the Sendomir Palatinate. Founded in 1569, this city, since 1600
under James Sieninski, son of the founder, recognised Socinianism
as the established religion; and an academy was formed there
which soon occupied a distinguished position, and gave such
reputation to the place that it could be spoken of as “the
Sarmatian Athens.” But the congregation at Lublin, next in
importance to that of Racau, was destroyed as early as 1627 by
the mob under fanatical excitement caused by the Jesuits. The
same disaster befell Racau itself eleven years later. A couple of
idle schoolboys had thrown stones at a wooden crucifix standing
before the city gate, and had been for this severely punished by
their parents, and turned out of school. The Catholics, however,
made a complaint before the senate, where the Jesuits secured a
sentence that the school should be destroyed, the church taken
from “the Arians,” the printing press closed, but the ministers
and teachers outlawed and branded with infamy. And the Jesuits
did not rest until the Reichstag at Warsaw in 1658 issued decrees
of banishment against “all Arians,” and forbad the profession of
“Arianism” under pain of death.--The Davidist non-adoration party
of =Transylvanian= Unitarians (§ 148, 3) was finally overcome,
and the endeavours after conformity with the Polish Socinians
prevailed at the Diet of Deesch in 1638, where all Unitarian
communities engaged to offer worship to Christ, and to accept
the baptismal formula of Matthew xxviii. 19. And under the
standard of this so called _Complanatio Deesiana_ 106 Unitarian
congregations, with a membership of 60,000 souls, exist in
Transylvania to this day.--In =Germany= Socinianism had, even in
the beginning of the century, a secret nursery in the University
of Altdorf, belonging to the territory of the imperial city of
Nuremberg. Soner, professor of medicine, had been won over to
this creed by Socinians residing at Leyden, where he had studied
in 1597, 1598, and now used his official position at Altdorf
for, not only instilling his Unitarian doctrines by means
of private philosophical conversations into the minds of his
numerous students, who flocked to him from Poland, Transylvania,
and Hungary, but also for securing the adhesion of several German
students. Only after his death in 1612 did the Nuremberg council
come to know about this propaganda. A strict investigation was
then made, all Poles were expelled, and all the Socinian writings
that could be discovered were burned.--The later Polish Exultants
sought and found refuge in Germany, especially in Silesia,
Prussia, and Brandenburg, as well as in the Reformed Palatinate,
and also founded some small Unitarian congregations, which,
however, after maintaining for a while a miserable existence,
gradually passed out of view. They had greater success and spread
more widely in the =Netherlands=, till the states-general of 1653,
in consequence of repeated synodal protests, and on the ground
of an opinion given by the University of Leyden, issued a strict
edict against the Unitarians, who now gradually passed over to
the ranks of the Remonstrants (§ 161, 2) and the Collegiants.
Also in =England=, since the time of Henry VIII., antitrinitarian
confessors and martyrs were to be found. Even in 1611, under
James I., three of them had been consigned to the flames. The
Polish Socinians took occasion from this to send the king a
Racovian Catechism; but in 1614 it was, by order of parliament,
burned by the hands of the hangman. The Socinians were also
excluded from the benefit of the Act of Toleration of 1689, which
was granted to all other dissenters (§ 155, 3). The progress
of deism, however, among the upper classes (§§ 164, 3; 171, 1)
did much to prevent the extreme penal laws being carried into
execution.--The following are the most distinguished among the
numerous learned theologians of the Augustan age of Socinian
scholarship, who contributed to the extending, establishing, and
vindicating of the system of their church by exegetical, dogmatic,
and polemical writings: John Crell, died 1631; Jonas Schlichting,
died 1661; Von Wolzogen, died 1661; and Andr. Wissowatius,
a grandson of Faustus Socinus, died 1678; and with these must
also be ranked the historian of Polish Socinianism, Stanislaus
Lubienicki, died 1675, whose “_Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ_,” etc.,
was published at Amsterdam in 1685.
§ 163.2. =The Baptists of the Continent.=
1. =The Dutch Baptists= (§ 147, 2). Even during Menno’s
lifetime the Mennonites had split into the _Coarse_ and
the _Fine_. The _Coarse_, who had abandoned much of the
primitive severity of the sect, and were by far the most
numerous, were again divided during the Arminian controversy
into Remonstrants and Predestinationists. The former, from
their leader, were called Galenists, and from having a lamb
as the symbol of their Church, Lambists. The latter were
called Apostoolers from their leader, and Sunists because
their churches had the figure of the sun as a symbol. The
Lambists, who acknowledged no confession of faith, were most
numerous. In A.D. 1800, however, a union of the two parties
was effected, the Sunists adopting the doctrinal position
of the Lambists.--During the time when Arminian pastors
were banished from the Netherlands, three brothers Van der
Kodde founded a sect of =Collegiants=, which repudiated
the clerical office, assigned preaching and dispensation of
sacraments to laymen, and baptized only adults by immersion.
Their place of baptism was Rhynsburg on the Rhine, and hence
they were called Rhynsburgers. Their other name was given
them from their assemblies, which they styled _collegia_.
2. =The Moravian Baptists= (§ 147, 3). The Thirty Years’ War
ruined the flourishing Baptist congregations in Moravia,
and the reaction against all non-Catholics that followed
the battle of the White Mountain near Prague, in A.D. 1620,
told sorely against them. In A.D. 1622 a decree for their
banishment was issued, and these quiet, inoffensive men
were again homeless fugitives. Remnants of them fled into
Hungary and Transylvania, only to meet new persecutions
there. A letter of protection from Leopold I., A.D. 1659,
secured them the right of settling in three counties around
Pressburg. But soon these rigorous persecutions broke out
afresh; they were beset by Jesuits seeking to convert them,
and when this failed they were driven out or annihilated.
At last, by A.D. 1757-1762, they were completely broken up,
and most of them had joined the Roman Catholic church. A few
families preserved their faith by flight into South Russia,
where they settled in Wirschenka. When the Toleration Edict
of Joseph II., of A.D. 1781, secured religious freedom to
Protestants in Austria, several returned again to the faith
of their fathers, in the hope that the toleration would be
extended to them; but they were bitterly disappointed. They
now betook themselves to Russia, and together with their
brethren already there, settled in the Crimea, where they
still constitute the colony of Hutersthal.
§ 163.3. =The English Baptists.=--The notion that infant
baptism is objectionable also found favour among the English
Independents. Owing to the slight importance attached to the
sacraments generally, and more particularly to baptism, in
the Reformed church, especially among the Independents, the
supporters of the practice of the church in regard to baptism
to a large extent occupied common ground with its opponents.
The separation took place only after the rise of the fanatical
prophetic sects (§ 161, 1). We must, however, distinguish
from the continental Anabaptists the English Baptists, who
enjoyed the benefit of the Toleration Act of William III.,
of A.D. 1689, along with the other dissenters, by maintaining
their Independent-Congregationalist constitution (§ 155, 3).
In A.D. 1691, over the Arminian question, they split up into
Particular and General, or Regular and Free Will, Baptists.
The former, by far the more numerous, held by the Calvinistic
doctrine of _gratia particularis_, while the latter rejected
it. The Seventh-Day Baptists, who observed the seventh instead
of the first day of the week, were founded by Bampfield in
A.D. 1665.[480]--From England the Baptists spread to North
America, in A.D. 1630, where Roger Williams (§ 162, 2), one
of their first leaders, founded the little state of Rhode
Island, and organized it on thoroughly Baptist-Independent
principles.[481]--Continuation, § 170, 6.
§ 163.4. =The Quakers.=--=George Fox=, born A.D. 1624, died
A.D. 1691, was son of a poor Presbyterian weaver in Drayton,
Leicestershire. After scant schooling he went to learn shoemaking
at Nottingham, but in A.D. 1643 abandoned the trade. Harassed by
spiritual conflicts, he wandered about seeking peace for his soul.
Upon hearing an Independent preach on 2 Peter i. 19, he was moved
loudly to contradict the preacher. “What we have to do with,” he
said, “is not the word, but the Spirit by which those men of God
spake and wrote.” He was seized as a disturber of public worship,
but was soon after released. In A.D. 1649 he travelled the
country preaching and teaching, addressing every man as “thou,”
raising his hat to none, greeting none, attracting thousands by
his preaching, often imprisoned, flogged, tortured, hunted like a
wild beast. The core of his preaching was, not Scripture, but the
Spirit, not Christ without but Christ within, not outward worship,
not churches, “steeple-houses,” and bells, not doctrines and
sacraments, but only the inner light, which is kindled by God in
the conscience of every man, renewed and quickened by the Spirit
of Christ, which suddenly lays hold upon it. The number of his
followers increased from day to day. In A.D. 1652 he found, along
with his friends, a kindly shelter in the house of Thomas Fell,
of Smarthmore near Preston, and in his wife Margaret a motherly
counsellor, who devoted her whole life to the cause. They called
themselves “The Society of Friends.” The name Quaker was given as
a term of reproach by a violent judge, whom Fox bad “quake before
the word of God.” After the overthrow of the hopes of the Saints
through the dissolution of the Short Parliament and Cromwell’s
apostasy (§ 155, 2), many of them joined the Quakers, and
led them into revolutionary and fanatical excesses. Confined
hitherto to the northern counties, they now spread in London
and Bristol, and over all the south of England. In January,
A.D. 1655, they held a fortnight’s general meeting at Swannington,
in Leicestershire. Crowds of apostles went over into Ireland, to
North America and the West Indies, to Holland, Germany, France,
and Italy, and even to Constantinople. They did not meet with
great success. In Italy they encountered the Inquisition, and in
North America the severest penal laws were passed against them.
In A.D. 1656 James Naylor, one of their most famous leaders,
celebrated at Bristol the second coming of Christ “in the
Spirit,” by enacting the scene of Christ’s triumphal entry into
Jerusalem. But the king of the new Israel was scourged, branded
on the forehead with the letter B as a blasphemer, had his tongue
pierced with a redhot iron, and was then cast into prison. Many
absurd extravagances of this kind, which drew down upon them
frequent persecutions, as well as the failure of their foreign
missionary enterprises, brought most of the Quakers to adopt more
sober views. The great mother Quakeress, Margaret Fell, exercised
a powerful influence in this direction. George Fox, too, out
of whose hands the movement had for a long time gone, now lent
his aid. Naylor himself, in A.D. 1659, issued a recantation,
addressed “to all the people of the Lord,” in which he made the
confession, “My judgment was turned away, and I was a captive
under the power of darkness.”
§ 163.5. The movement of Quakerism in the direction of sobriety
and common sense was carried out to its fullest extent during
the Stuart Restoration, A.D. 1660-1688. Abandoning their
revolutionary tendencies through dislike to Cromwell’s violence,
and giving up most of their fanatical extravagances, the Quakers
became models of quiet, orderly living. Robert Barclay, by his
“_Catechesis et Fidei Confessio_,” of A.D. 1673, gave a sort of
symbolic expression to their belief, and vindicated his doctrinal
positions in his “_Theologiæ vere Christianæ Apologia_” of
A.D. 1676. During this period many of them laid down their lives
for their faith. On the other side of the sea they formed powerful
settlements, distinguished for religious toleration and brotherly
love. The chief promoter of this new departure was =William Penn=,
A.D. 1644-1718, son of an English admiral, who, while a student
at Oxford, was impressed by a Quaker’s preaching, and led to
attend the prayer and fellowship meetings of the Friends. In
order to break his connexion with this party, his father sent him,
in A.D. 1661, to travel in France and Italy. The frivolity of the
French court failed to attract him, but for a long time he was
spellbound by Amyrault’s theological lectures at Saumur. On his
return home, in A.D. 1664, he seemed to have completely come back
to a worldly life, when once again he was arrested by a Quaker’s
preaching. In A.D. 1668 he formally joined the society. For a
controversial tract, _The Sandy Foundation Shaken_, he was sent
for six months to the Tower, where he composed the famous tract,
_No Cross, no Crown_, and a treatise in his own vindication,
“Innocency with her Open Face.” His father, who, shortly before
his death in A.D. 1670, was reconciled to his son, left him a
yearly income of £1,500, with a claim on Government for £16,000.
In spite of continued persecution and oppression he continued
unweariedly to promote the cause of Quakerism by speech and pen.
In A.D. 1677, in company with Fox and Barclay, he made a tour
through Holland and Germany. In both countries he formed many
friendships, but did not succeed in establishing any societies.
His hopes now turned to North America, where Fox had already
wrought with success during the times of sorest persecution,
A.D. 1671, 1672, In lieu of his father’s claim, he obtained from
Government a large tract of land on the Delaware, with the right
of colonizing and organizing it under English suzerainty. Twice
he went out for this purpose himself, in A.D. 1682 and 1699, and
formed the Quaker state of Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia as its
capital. The first principle of its constitution was universal
religious toleration, even to Catholics.[482]
§ 163.6. =The Quaker Constitution=, as fixed in Penn’s time,
was strictly democratic and congregationalist, with complete
exclusion of a clerical order. At their services any man or
woman, if moved by the Spirit, might pray, teach, or exhort,
or if no one felt so impelled they would sit on in silence.
Their meeting-houses had not the form or fittings of churches,
their devotional services had neither singing nor music. They
repudiated water baptism, alike of infants and adults, and
recognised only baptism of the Spirit. The Lord’s supper,
as a symbolical memorial, is no more needed by those who are
born again. Monthly gatherings of all independent members,
quarterly meetings of deputies of a circuit, and a yearly synod
of representatives of all the circuits, administered or drew up
the regulations for the several societies. =The Doctrinal Belief
of the Quakers= is completely dominated by its central dogma of
the “inner light,” which is identified with reason and conscience
as the common heritage of mankind. Darkened and weakened by the
fall, it is requickened in us by the Spirit of the glorified
Christ, and possesses us as an inner spiritual Christ, an inner
Word of God. The Bible is recognised as the outer word of God,
but is useful only as a means of arousing the inner word. The
Calvinistic doctrine of election is decidedly rejected, and also
that of vicarious satisfaction. But also the doctrines of the
fall, original sin, justification by faith, as well as that of
the Trinity, are very much set aside in favour of an indefinite
subjective theology of feeling. The operation of the Holy Spirit
in man’s redemption and salvation outside of Christendom is
frankly admitted. On the other hand, the ethical-practical
element, as shown in works of benevolence, in the battle for
religious freedom, for the abolition of slavery, etc., is brought
to the front. In regard to =life and manners=, the Quakers have
distinguished themselves in all domestic, civil, industrial,
and mercantile movements by quiet, peaceful industry, strict
integrity, and simple habits, so that not only did they amass
great wealth, but gained the confidence and respect of those
around. They refused to take oaths or to serve as soldiers, or to
engage in sports, or to indulge in any kind of luxury. In social
intercourse they declined to acknowledge any titles of rank,
would not bow or raise the hat to any, but addressed all by the
simple “thou.” Their men wore broad-brimmed hats, a plain, simple
coat, without collar or buttons, fastened by hooks. Their women
wore a simple gray silk dress, with like coloured bonnet, without
ribbon, flower, or feathers, and a plain shawl. Wearing mourning
dress was regarded as a heathenish custom.[483]--Continuation,
§ 211, 3.
§ 163.7. =Labadie and the Labadists.=--Jean de Labadie, the
scion of an ancient noble family, born A.D. 1610, was educated
in the Jesuit school at Bordeaux, entered the order, and became a
priest, but was released from office at his own wish in A.D. 1639,
on account of delicate health. Even in the Jesuit college the
principles that manifested themselves in his later life began to
take root in him. By Scripture study he was led to adopt almost
Augustinian views of sin and grace, as well as the conviction of
the need of a revival of the church after the apostolic pattern.
This tendency was confirmed and deepened by the influence of
Spanish Quietism, which even the Jesuits had favoured to some
extent. In the interest of these views he wrought laboriously
for eleven years as Catholic priest in Amiens, Paris, and other
places, amid the increasing hostility of the Jesuits. Their
persecution, together with a growing clearness in his Augustinian
convictions, led him formally to go over to the Reformed church
in A.D. 1650. He now laboured for seven years as Reformed pastor
at Montauban. In A.D. 1657, owing to political suspicions against
him spread by the Jesuits, he withdrew from Montauban, and,
after two years’ labour at Orange, settled at Geneva, where
his preaching and household visitations bore abundant fruit. In
A.D. 1666 he accepted a call to Middelburg, in Zealand. There he
was almost as successful as he had been in Geneva; but there too
it began to appear that in him there burned a fire strange to
the Reformed church. The French Reformed synod took great offence
at his refusal to sign the Belgic Confession. It was found that
at many points he was not in sympathy with the church standards,
that he had written in favour of chiliasm and the Apokatastasis,
that in regard to the nature and idea of the church and its
need of a reformation he was not in accord with the views of the
Reformed church. The synod in 1668 suspended him from office, and,
as he did not confess his errors, in the following year deposed
him. Labadie then saw that what he regarded as his lifework, the
restoration of the apostolic church, was as little attainable
within the Reformed as within the Catholic church. He therefore
organized his followers into a separate denomination, and was,
together with them, banished by the magistrate. The neighbouring
town of Veere received them gladly, but Middelburg now persuaded
the Zealand council to issue a decree banishing them from that
town also. The people of Veere were ready to defy this order,
but Labadie thought it better to avoid the risk of a civil war
by voluntary withdrawal; and so he went, in August, A.D. 1669,
with about forty followers, to Amsterdam, where he laid the
foundations of an apostolic church. This new society consisted of
a sort of monastic household consisting only of the regenerate.
They hired a commodious house, and from thence sent out spiritual
workers as missionaries, to spread the principles of the “new
church” throughout the land. Within a year they numbered 60,000
souls. They dispensed the sacrament according to the Reformed
rite, and preached the gospel in conventicles. The most important
gain to the party was the adhesion of Anna Maria von Schürman,
born at Cologne A.D. 1607 of a Reformed family, but settled
from A.D. 1623 with her mother in Utrecht, celebrated for her
unexampled attainment in languages, science, and art. When in
A.D. 1670, the government, urged by the synod, forbad attendance
on the Labadists’ preaching, the accomplished and pious
Countess-palatine Elizabeth, sister of the elector-palatine,
and abbess of the rich cloister of Herford, whose intimate friend
Schürman had been for forty years, gave them an asylum in the
capital of her little state.
§ 163.8. In Herford “the Hollanders” met with bitter opposition
from the Lutheran clergy, the magistracy, and populace, and
were treated by the mob with insult and scorn. They themselves
also gave only too good occasion for ridicule. At a sacramental
celebration, the aged Labadie and still older Schürman embraced
and kissed each other and began to dance for joy. In his sermons
and writings Labadie set forth the Quietist doctrines of the
limitation of Christ’s life and sufferings in the mortification
of the flesh, the duty of silent prayer, the sinking of the
soul into the depths of the Godhead, the community of goods, etc.
Special offence was given by the private marriage of the three
leaders, Labadie, Yvon, and Dulignon with young wealthy ladies of
society, and their views of marriage among the regenerate as an
institution for raising up a pure seed free from original sin and
brought forth without pain. The Elector of Brandenburg, hitherto
favourable, as guardian of the seminary was obliged, in answer to
the complaints of the Herford magistracy, to appoint a commission
of inquiry. Labadie wrote a defence, which was published in
Latin, Dutch, and German, in which he endeavoured to harmonize
his mystical views with the doctrines of the Reformed church. But
in A.D. 1671 the magistrates obtained a mandate from the imperial
court at Spires, which threatened the abbess with the ban if she
continued to harbour the sectaries. In A.D. 1672 Labadie settled
in Altona, where he died in A.D. 1674. His followers, numbering
160, remained here undisturbed till the war between Denmark and
Sweden broke out in A.D. 1675. They then retired to the castle of
Waltha in West Friesland, the property of three sisters belonging
to the party. Schürman died in A.D. 1678, Dulignon in A.D. 1679,
and Yvon, who now had sole charge, was obliged in A.D. 1688 to
abolish the institution of the community of goods, after a trial
of eighteen years, being able to pay back much less than he had
received. After his death in A.D. 1707 the community gradually
fell off, and after the property had gone into other hands on
the death of the last of the sisters in A.D. 1725, the society
finally broke up.
§ 163.9. During this age various =fanatical sects= sprang up. In
Thuringia, =Stiefel= and his nephew =Meth= caused much trouble
to the Lutheran clergy in the beginning of the century by their
fanatical enthusiasm, till convinced, after twenty years, of
the errors of their ways. =Drabicius=, who had left the Bohemian
Brethren owing to differences of belief, and then lived in
Hungary as a weaver in poor circumstances, boasted in A.D. 1638
of having Divine revelations, prophesied the overthrow of the
Austrian dynasty in A.D. 1657, the election of the French king as
emperor, the speedy fall of the Papacy, and the final conversion
of all heathens; but was put to death at Pressburg in A.D. 1671
as a traitor with cruel tortures. Even Comenius, the noble
bishop of the Moravians, took the side of the prophets, and
published his own and others’ prophecies under the title “_Lux in
Tenebris_.”--=Jane Leade= of Norfolk, influenced by the writings
of Böhme, had visions, in which the Divine Wisdom appeared to
her as a virgin. She spread her Gnostic revelations in numerous
tracts, founded in A.D. 1670 the Philadelphian Society in
London, and died in A.D. 1704, at the age of eighty-one. The
most important of her followers was =John Pordage=, preacher and
physician, whose theological speculation closely resembles that
of Jac. Böhme. To the Reformed church belonged also =Peter Poiret=
of Metz, pastor from A.D. 1664 in Heidelburg [Heidelberg], and
afterwards of a French congregation in the Palatine-Zweibrücken.
Influenced by the writings of Bourignon and Guyon, he resigned
his pastorate, and accompanied the former in his wanderings
in north-west Germany till his death in 1680. At Amsterdam in
A.D. 1687 he wrote his mystical work, “_L’Économie Divine_”
in seven vols., which sets forth in the Cocceian method the
mysticism and theosophy of Bourignon. He died at Rhynsburg
in A.D. 1719.--From the Lutheran church proceeded Giftheil of
Württemburg [Württemberg], Breckling of Holstein, and Kuhlmann,
who went about denouncing the clergy, proclaiming fanatical views,
and calling for impracticable reforms. Of much greater importance
was =John George Gichtel=, an eccentric disciple of Jac. Böhme,
who in A.D. 1665 lost his situation as law agent in his native
town of Regensburg, his property, and civil rights, and suffered
imprisonment and exile from the city for his fanatical ideas.
He died in needy circumstances in Amsterdam in A.D. 1710. He
had revelations and visions, fought against the doctrine of
justification, and denounced marriage as fornication which
nullifies the spiritual marriage with the heavenly Sophia
consummated in the new birth, etc. His followers called
themselves Angelic Brethren, from Matthew xxii. 20, strove
after angelic sinlessness by emancipation from all earthly lusts,
toils, and care, regarded themselves as a priesthood after the
order of Melchizedec [Melchisedec] for propitiating the Divine
wrath.--Continuation, § 170.
§ 163.10. =Russian Sects.=--A vast number of sects sprang up
within the Russian church, which are all included under the
general name =Raskolniks= or apostates. They fall into two great
classes in their distinctive character, diametrically opposed the
one to the other.
1. The =Starowerzi=, or Old Believers. They originated in
A.D. 1652, in consequence of the liturgical reform of the
learned and powerful patriarch Nikon, which called forth
the violent opposition of a large body of the peasantry, who
loved the old forms. Besides stubborn adhesion to the old
liturgy, they rejected all modern customs and luxuries, held
it sinful to cut the beard, to smoke tobacco, to drink tea
and coffee, etc. The Starowerzi, numbering some ten millions,
are to this day distinguished by their pure and simple lives,
and are split up into three parties:
i. _Jedinowerzi_, who are nearest to the orthodox church,
recognise its priesthood, and are different only in
their religious ceremonies and the habits of their
social life;
ii. The _Starovbradzi_, who do not recognise the
priesthood of the orthodox church; and
iii. the _Bespopowtschini_, who have no priests, but only
elders, and are split up into various smaller sects.
Under the peasant Philip Pustosiwät, a party of Starowerzi,
called from their leader Philippins, fled during the
persecution of A.D. 1700 from the government of Olonez, and
settled in Polish Lithuania and East Prussia, where to the
number of 1,200 souls they live to this day in villages in
the district of Gumbinnen, engaged in agricultural pursuits,
and observing the rites of the old Russian church.
2. At the very opposite pole from the Starowerzi stand the
=Heretical Sects=, which repudiate and condemn everything
in the shape of external church organization, and manifest
a tendency in some cases toward fanatical excess, and in
other cases toward rationalistic spiritualism. As the sects
showing the latter tendency did not make their appearance
till the eighteenth century (§ 166, 2), we have here to
do only with those of the former class. The most important
of these sects is that of the =Men of God=, or Spiritual
Christians, who trace their origin from a peasant, Danila
Filipow, of the province of Wladimir. In 1645, say they,
the divine Father, seated on a cloud of flame, surrounded
by angels, descended from heaven on Mount Gorodin in a
chariot of fire, in order to restore true Christianity in
its original purity and spirituality. For this purpose he
incarnated himself in Filipow’s pure body. He commanded
his followers, who in large numbers, mainly drawn from the
peasant class, gathered around him, not to marry, and if
already married to put away their wives, to abstain from all
intoxicating drinks, to be present neither at marriages nor
baptisms, but above all things to believe that there is no
other god besides him. After some years he adopted as his
son another peasant, Ivan Suslow, who was said to have been
born of a woman a hundred years old, by communicating to him
in his thirtieth year his own divine nature. Ivan, as a new
Christ, sent out twelve apostles to spread his doctrine. The
Czar Alexis put him and forty of his adherents into prison;
but neither the knout nor the rack could wring from them the
mysteries of their faith and worship. At last, on a Friday,
the czar caused the new Christ to be crucified; but on
the following Sunday he appeared risen again among his
disciples. After some years the imprisoning, crucifying, and
resurrection were repeated. Imprisoned a third time in 1672,
he owed his liberation to an edict of grace on the occasion
of the birth of the Prince Peter the Great. He now lived
at Moscow along with the divine father Filipow, who had
hitherto consulted his own safety by living in concealment
in the enjoyment of the adoration of his followers
unmolested for thirty years, supported by certain wealthy
merchants. Filipow is said to have ascended up in the
presence of many witnesses, in 1700, into the seventh and
highest heaven, where he immediately seated himself on
the throne as the “Lord of Hosts,” and the Christ, Suslow,
also returned thither in 1716, after both had reached the
hundredth year of the human existence. As Suslow’s successor
appeared a new Christ in Prokopi Lupkin, and after his
death, in 1732, arose Andr. Petrow. The last Christ
manifestation was revealed in the person of the unfortunate
Czar Peter III., dethroned by his wife Catharine II. in 1762,
who, living meanwhile in secret, shall soon return, to
the terrible confusion of all unbelievers. With this the
historical tradition of the earlier sect of the Men of God
is brought to a close, and in the Skopsen, or Eunuchs, who
also venerate the Czar Peter III. as the Christ that is
to come again, a new development of the sect has arisen,
carrying out its principles more and more fully (§ 210, 4).
Other branches of the same party, among which, as also among
the Skopsen, the fanatical endeavour to mortify the flesh is
carried to the most extravagant length, are the Morelschiki
or Self-Flagellators, the Dumbies, who will not, even
under the severest tortures, utter a sound, etc. The
ever-increasing development of this sect-forming craze,
which found its way into several monasteries and nunneries,
led to repeated judicial investigations, the penitent
being sentenced for their fault to confinement in remote
convents, and the obdurate being visited with severe
corporal punishments and even with death. The chief sources
of information regarding the history, doctrine, and customs
of the “Men of God” and the Skopsen are their own numerous
spiritual songs, collected by Prof. Ivan Dobrotworski of
Kasan, which were sung in their assemblies for worship with
musical accompaniment and solemn dances. On these occasions
their prophets and prophetesses were wont to prophesy, and
a kind of sacramental supper was celebrated with bread and
water. The sacraments of the Lord’s supper and baptism,
as administered by the orthodox church, are repudiated
and scorned, the latter as displaced by the only effectual
baptism of the Spirit. They have, indeed, in order to avoid
persecution, been obliged to take part in the services of
the orthodox national church, and to confess to its priests,
avoiding, however, all reference to the sect.[484]
§ 164. PHILOSOPHERS AND FREETHINKERS.[485]
The mediæval scholastic philosophy had outlived itself, even in the
pre-Reformation age; yet it maintained a lingering existence side by
side with those new forms which the modern spirit in philosophy was
preparing for itself. We hear an echo of the philosophical ferment
of the sixteenth century in the Italian Dominican Campanella, and in
the Englishman Bacon of Verulam we meet the pioneer of that modern
philosophy which had its proper founder in Descartes. Spinoza, Locke,
and Leibnitz were in succession the leaders of this philosophical
development. Alongside of this philosophy, and deriving its weapons from
it for attack upon theology and the church, a number of freethinkers
also make their appearance. These, like their more radical disciples in
the following century, regarded Scripture as delusive, and nature and
reason as alone trustworthy sources of religious knowledge.
§ 164.1. =Philosophy.=--=Campanella= of Stilo in Calabria
entered the Dominican order, but soon lost taste for Aristotelian
philosophy and scholastic theology, and gave himself to the
study of Plato, the Cabbala, astrology, magic, etc. Suspected
of republican tendencies, the Spanish government put him in
prison in A.D. 1599. Seven times was he put upon the rack for
twenty-four hours, and then confined for twenty-seven years in
close confinement. Finally, in A.D. 1626, Urban VIII. had him
transferred to the prison of the papal Inquisition. He was set
free in A.D. 1629, and received a papal pension; but further
persecutions by the Spaniards obliged him to fly to his protector
Richelieu in France, where in A.D. 1639 he died. He composed
eighty-two treatises, mostly in prison, the most complete being
“_Philosophia Rationalis_,” in five vols. In his “_Atheismus
Triumphatus_” he appears as an apologist of the Romish system,
but so insufficiently, that many said _Atheismus Triumphans_ was
the more fitting title. His “_Monarchia Messiæ_” too appeared,
even to the Catholics, an abortive apology for the Papacy. In
his “_Civitas Solis_,” an imitation of the “Republic” of Plato,
he proceeded upon communistic principles.--=Francis Bacon of
Verulam=, long chancellor of England, died A.D. 1626, the great
spiritual heir of his mediæval namesake (§ 103, 8), was the
first successful reformer of the plan of study followed by the
schoolmen. With a prophet’s marvellous grasp of mind he organized
the whole range of science, and gave a forecast of its future
development in his “_De Augmentis_” and “_Novum Organon_.”
He rigidly separated the domain of _knowledge_, as that of
philosophy and nature, grasped only by experience, from the
domain of _faith_, as that of theology and the church, reached
only through revelation. Yet he maintained the position:
_Philosophia obiter libata a Deo abducit, plene hausta ad Deum
reducit_. He is the real author of empiricism in philosophy and
the realistic methods of modern times. His public life, however,
is clouded by thanklessness, want of character, and the taking of
bribes. In A.D. 1621 he was convicted by his peers, deprived of
his office, sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Tower, and
to pay a fine of £40,000; but was pardoned by the king.[486]--The
French Catholic =Descartes= started not from experience, but from
self-consciousness, with his “_Cogito, ergo sum_” as the only
absolutely certain proposition. Beginning with doubt, he rose
by pure thinking to the knowledge of the true and certain in
things. The imperfection of the soul thus discovered suggests
an absolutely perfect Being, to whose perfection the attribute
of being belongs. This is the ontological proof for the being of
God.--His philosophy was zealously taken up by French Jansenists
and Oratorians and the Reformed theologians of Holland, while
it was bitterly opposed by such Catholics as Huetius and such
Reformed theologians as Voetius.[487]--=Spinoza=, an apostate
Jew in Holland, died A.D. 1677, gained little influence over his
own generation by his profound pantheistic philosophy, which has
powerfully affected later ages. A violent controversy, however,
was occasioned by his “_Tractatus Theologico-politicus_,” in
which he attacked the Christian doctrine of revelation and the
authenticity of the O.T. books, especially the Pentateuch, and
advocated absolute freedom of thought.[488]
§ 164.2. =John Locke=, died A.D. 1704, with his sensationalism
took up a position midway between Bacon’s empiricism and
Descartes’ rationalism, on the one hand, and English deism and
French materialism, on the other. His “Essay concerning Human
Understanding” denies the existence of innate ideas, and seeks
to show that all our notions are only products of outer or
inner experience, of sensation or reflection. In this treatise,
and still more distinctly in his tract, “The Reasonableness of
Christianity,” intended as an apology for Christianity, and even
for biblical visions and miracles, as well as for the messianic
character of Christ, he openly advocated pure Pelagianism
that knows nothing of sin and atonement.[489]--=Leibnitz=,
a Hanoverian statesman, who died A.D. 1716, introduced the new
German philosophy in its first stage. The philosophy of Leibnitz
is opposed at once to the theosophy of Paracelsus and Böhme and
to the empiricism of Bacon and Locke, the pantheism of Spinoza,
and the scepticism and manichæism of Bayle. It is indeed a
Christian philosophy not fully developed. But inasmuch as at
the same time it adopted, improved upon, and carried out the
rationalism of Descartes, it also paved the way for the later
theological rationalism. The foundation of his philosophy is the
theory of monads wrought out in his “_Theodicée_” against Bayle
and in his “_Nouveaux Essais_,” against Locke. In opposition to
the atomic theory of the materialists, he regarded all phenomena
in the world as eccentricities of so called monads, _i.e._
primary simple and indivisible substances, each of which is
a miniature of the whole universe. Out of these monads that
radiate out from God, the primary monad, the world is formed
into a harmony once for all admired of God: the theory of
pre-established harmony. This must be the best of worlds,
otherwise it would not have been. In opposition to Bayle, who
had argued in a manichæan fashion against God’s goodness and
wisdom from the existence of evil, Leibnitz seeks to show that
this does not contradict the idea of the best of worlds, nor that
of the Divine goodness and wisdom, since finity and imperfection
belong to the very notion of creature, a metaphysical evil from
which moral evil inevitably follows, yet not so as to destroy the
pre-established harmony. Against Locke he maintains the doctrine
of innate ideas, contests Clarke’s theory of indeterminism,
maintains the agreement of philosophy with revelation, which
indeed is above but not contrary to reason, and hopes to prove
his system by mathematical demonstration.[490]--Continuation,
§ 171, 10.
§ 164.3. =Freethinkers.=--The tendency of the age to throw off
all positive Christianity first showed itself openly in England
as the final outcome of Levellerism (§ 162, 2). This movement
has been styled naturalism, because it puts natural in place of
revealed religion, and deism, because in place of the redeeming
work of the triune God it admits only a general providence of the
one God. On philosophic grounds the English deists affirmed the
impossibility of revelation, inspiration, prophecy, and miracle,
and on critical grounds rejected them from the Bible and history.
The simple religious system of deism embraced God, providence,
freedom of the will, virtue, and the immortality of the soul. The
Christian doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, satisfaction,
justification, resurrection, etc., were regarded as absurd and
irrational. Deism in England spread almost exclusively among
upper-class laymen; the people and clergy stood firmly to their
positive beliefs. Theological controversial tracts were numerous,
but their polemical force was in great measure lost by the
latitudinarianism of their authors.--The principal English deists
of the century were
1. =Edward Herbert of Cherbury=, A.D. 1581-1648, a nobleman
and statesman. He reduced all religion to five points: Faith
in God, the duty of reverencing Him, especially by leading
an upright life, atoning for sin by genuine repentance,
recompense in the life eternal.
2. =Thomas Hobbes=, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical
and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental
phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy
and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a
_bellum omnium contra omnes_; religion is the means of
establishing order and civilization. The state should decide
what religion is to prevail. Every one may indeed believe
what he will, but in regard to churches and worship he must
submit to the state as represented by the king. His chief
work is “Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a
Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.”
3. =Charles Blount=, who died a suicide in A.D. 1693, a rabid
opponent of all miracles as mere tricks of priests, wrote
“Oracles of Reason,” “_Religio Laici_,” “Great is Diana
of the Ephesians,” and translated Philostratus’ “Life of
Apollonius of Tyana.”
4. =Thomas Browne=, A.D. 1635-1682, a physician, who in his
“_Religio Medici_” sets forth a mystical supernaturalism,
took up a purely deistic ground in his “Vulgar Errors,”
published three years later.
Among the opponents of deism in this age the most notable are
Richard Baxter (§ 162, 3) and Ralph Cudworth, A.D. 1617-1688,
a latitudinarian and Platonist, who sought to prove the leading
Christian doctrines by the theory of innate ideas. He wrote
“Intellectual System of the Universe” in A.D. 1678. The pious
Irish scientist, Robert Boyle, founded in London, in A.D. 1691,
a lectureship of £40 a year for eight discourses against deistic
and atheistic unbelief.[491]--Continuation, § 171, 1.
§ 164.4. A tendency similar to that of the English deists was
represented in Germany by =Matthias Knutzen=, who sought to found
a freethinking sect. The Christian “Coran” contains only lies;
reason and conscience are the true Bible; there is no God, nor
hell nor heaven; priests and magistrates should be driven out of
the world, etc. The senate of Jena University on investigation
found that his pretension to 700 followers was a vain boast.--In
France the brilliant and learned sceptic =Peter Bayle=,
A.D. 1647-1706, was the apostle of a light-hearted unbelief.
Though son of a Reformed pastor, the Jesuits got him over to the
Romish church, but in a year and a half he apostatised again. He
now studied the Cartesian philosophy, as Reformed professor at
Sedan, vindicated Protestantism in several controversial tracts,
and as refugee in Holland composed his famous “_Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique_,” in which he avoided indeed open
rejection of the facts of revelation, but did much to unsettle
by his easy treatment of them.--Continuation, § 171, 3.