least 190, perhaps to 204. Soames, Elizabethan Religious History,
1839, p. 596-98. Under Mary there perished some 288. Durham Dunlop,
The Church under the Tudors, 1869, p. 104 and refs.
[5] Soames, as cited, pp. 213-18, and refs.
[6] Froude, Hist. of England, ed. 1870, x, 545 (ed. 1875, xi, 199),
citing MSS. Ireland.
[7] Gloss to February in the Shepherd's Calendar, Globe ed. pp. 451-52.
[8] Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Arber's reprint, pp. 140, 153. That
the reference was mainly to Oxford is to be inferred from the address
"To my verie good friends the Gentlemen Schollers of Oxford," prefixed
to the ed. of 1581. Id. p. 207.
[9] Id. p. 158.
[10] Id. pp. 161, 166.
[11] Essay Of Atheism.
[12] Lecky, Rationalism, i, 103-104. Scot's book (now made accessible
by a reprint, 1886) had practically no influence in his own day;
and King James, who wrote against it, caused it to be burned by the
hangman in the next. Scot inserts the "infidelitie of atheists" in
the list of intellectual evils on his title-page; but save for an
allusion to "the abhomination of idolatrie" all the others indicted
are aspects of the black art.
[13] "No woman ever lived who was so totally destitute of the sentiment
of religion" (Green, Short History, ch. vii, § 3, p. 369).
[14] Cp. Soames, Elizabethan Religious History, 1839, p. 225. Yet
when Morris, the attorney of the Duchy of Lancaster, introduced in
Parliament a Bill to restrain the power of the ecclesiastical courts,
she had him dismissed and imprisoned for life, being determined
that the control should remain, through those courts, in her own
hands. Heylyn, Hist. of the Reformation, ed. 1849, pref. vol. i,
pp. xiv-xv.
[15] See above, vol. i, pp. 435, 446, 459.
[16] Collier's Reprint, p. 190.
[17] Camden, Annals of Elizabeth, sub. ann. 1580; 3rd ed. 1635,
p. 218. Cp. Soames, p. 214.
[18] Hooker, Pref. to Ecclesiastical Polity, ch. iii, §
9, ed. 1850. Camden (p. 219) states that the Dutch teacher Henry
Nichalai, whose works were translated for the sect, "gave out that
he did partake of God, and God of his humanity."
[19] See above, i, 458, as to a much more pronounced heresy in 1549,
which also seems to have escaped punishment. Camden tells that the
books of the "Family of Love" were burnt in 1580, but mentions no
other penalties. Stow records that on October 9, 1580, "proclamation
was published at London for the apprehension and severe punishing
of all persons suspected to be of the family of love." Ed. 1615,
p. 687. Five of them had been frightened into a public recantation
in 1575. Id. p. 679.
[20] May 13, 1579. The burning was on the 20th.
[21] Stow's Annals, ed. 1580, pp. 1, 194-95. Ed. 1615, p. 695.
[22] Stow, ed. 1615, p. 697; David's Evidence, by William Burton,
Preacher of Reading, 1592 (?), p. 125.
[23] Stow, ed. 1615, p. 696.
[24] Burton, as cited. See below, pp. 7, 12, as to Kett's writings.
[25] Art. Matthew Hamond, in Dict. of Nat. Biog.
[26] Art. Francis Kett, in Dict. of Nat. Biog.
[27] Prof. Storojenko, Life of Greene, Eng. tr. in Grosart's
"Huth Library" ed. of Greene's Works, i, 42-50. It is quite clear
that Malone and the critics who have followed him were wrong in
supposing the unnamed instructor to be Francis Kett, who was a devout
Unitarian. Prof. Storojenko speaks of Kett as having been made an
Arian at Norwich, after his return there in 1585, by the influence
of Lewes and Haworth. Query Hamond?
[28] In Pierce's Supererogation, Collier's ed. p. 85.
[29] Rep. of Nashe's Works in Grosart's "Huth Library" ed. vol. iv,
pp. 172, 173, 178, 182, 183. etc. Ed. McKerrow. 1904, ii, 114-129.
[30] MS. Harl. 6853, fol. 320. It is given in full in the appendix
to the first issue of the selected plays of Marlowe in the Mermaid
Series, edited by Mr. Havelock Ellis: and, with omissions, in the
editions of Cunningham, Dyce, and Bullen.
[31] Act II, sc. i.
[32] Grosart's ed. in "Temple Dramatists" series, 11. 246-371. There
is plenty of "irreligion" in the passage, but not atheism, though
there is a denial of a future state (365-70). The lines in question
strongly suggest Marlowe's influence or authorship, which indeed is
claimed by Mr. C. Crawford for the whole play. But all the external
evidence ascribes the play to Greene.
[33] Tamburlaine, Part II, Act II, sc. ii, iii; V, sc. i.
[34] Writing as Andrew Philopater. See Dict. of Nat. Biog., art. Robert
Parsons, and Storojenko, as cited, i, 36, and note.
[35] Translated into Latin by Henri Estienne in 1562.
[36] Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh, ed. 1657, p. 123.
[37] Bk. i, ch. i, sec. 11.
[38] Bk. ii, ch. i, sec. 7.
[39] Essay on the Prometheus.
[40] Art. Raleigh, in Dict. of Nat. Biog., xlvii, 192.
[41] Id. pp. 200-201.
[42] Report in 1736 ed. of History of the World, p. ccxlix. "Harpool"
seems an error for Harriott. Cp. Edwards, Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,
1868, i, 432, 436. It is after naming "Harpool" that the judge says:
"Let not any devil persuade you to think there is no eternity in
heaven."
[43] Ed. cited, p. xxviii.
[44] Id. p. xxiv.
[45] Id. p. xxii.
[46] Id. p. xvi.
[47] Cp. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, 10-vol. ed. i,
132-35; iii, 150, 152.
[48] Ed. cited, p. xxii.
[49] Title of verses appended to trans. of Achilles Shield,
1598. Chapman spells the name Harriots.
[50] Pref. to complete trans. of Iliad.
[51] Bk. v, ch. ii, §§ 1-4. Works, ed. 1850, i, 432-36.
[52] Exposition upon Nehemiah (1585) in Parker Soc. ed. of Works,
1812, p. 401.
[53] Work cited, pp. 8-11, 22.
[54] Works, i, 432; ii, 762-63.
[55] Eccles. Pol. bk. i, ch. vii; bk. ii, ch. i, vii; bk. iii,
ch. viii, § 16; bk. v, ch. viii; bk. vii, ch. xi; bk. viii, § 6 (Works,
i, 165, 231, 300, 446; ii, 388, 537). See the citations in Buckle,
3-vol. ed. iii, 341-42; 1-vol. ed. pp. 193-94.
[56] Supplication of Travers, in Hooker's Works, ed. 1850, ii, 662.
[57] Answer to Travers, id. p. 693.
[58] Some typical attempts of the kind are discussed in the author's
two lectures on The Religion of Shakespeare, 1887 (South Place
Institute).
[59] Shakespeare Commentaries, Eng. tr. 1863, ii, 618-19.
[60] Id. ii, 586.
[61] In the last edition I had written to that effect; but I have
modified the opinion.
[62] The allusion to "popish ceremonies" in Titus Andronicus is
probably from his hand. See the author's work, Did Shakespeare Write
"Titus Andronicus"?, where it is argued that the play in question is
substantially Peele's and Greene's.
[63] Shakespeare Soc. rep. 1853, pp. 14, 16-17, 18, 24, 28, etc.
[64] This has been shown to be his by Fleay and Mr. Crawford.
[65] See his Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance.
[66] Compare the Jane Shore portions of his Edward IV with the close
of A Woman Killed with Kindness. Note also the conclusion of The
English Traveller.
[67] See the poem England's Elizabeth, 1631.
[68] Henslowe's Diary, ed. Greg, i, fol. 96.
[69] E.g., the lines,
The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman that ever breathed,
at the close of Part I of The Honest Whore; and the phrase, "Heaven's
great arithmetician," at the close of Old Fortunatus.
[70] Green, Short Hist. ch. vii, § 7 end. Cp. Ruskin, Sesame and
Lilies, Lect. iii, § 115.
[71] The old work of W. J. Birch, M.A., An Inquiry into the Philosophy
and Religion of Shakspere (1848), is an unjudicial ex parte statement
of the case for Shakespeare's unbelief; but it is worth study.
[72] The town paid for his bread and wine, no doubt by way of
compliment.
[73] Cp. the author's Montaigne and Shakespeare, 2nd ed. sec. viii.
[74] A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion,
1587. Reprinted in 1592, 1604, and 1617.
[75] As to the expert analysis of this play, which shows it to be in
large part Fletcher's, see Furnivall, as cited, pp. xciii-xcvi.
[76] Cp. Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakspere, 1903, ii, 189.
[77] Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion in
Gross-Britannien, Hanover, 1752, ii, 429. Alberti reads "God" at the
end of the passage; I follow Grosart's edition.
[78] Hallam, Lit. Europe, ii, 371, 376; Pattison, Isaac Casaubon,
2nd ed. p. 286 sq.
[79] Pattison, as cited, p. 290; G. W. Johnson, Memoirs of John Selden,
1835, pp. 56-70.
[80] Memoirs cited, pp. 60-61. On the whole question see the
Review appended by Selden to his History after a few copies had
been distributed.
[81] Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Grosart, 1876, i, 82, 83.
[82] Essaies Politicke and Morall, by D. T. Gent, 1608, fol. 9.
[83] Act iv, sc. 1.
[84] Act i, sc. 1. Jonson himself could have been so indicted on the
strength of certain verses.
[85] He had been offered professorships of divinity at Saumur and
Marburg.
[86] Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, 4th ed. ii,
128. Cp. Bayle, art. Vorstius, Note N. By his theological opponents and
by James, Vorstius was of course called an atheist. He was in reality
not a Socinian, but a "strict Arian, who believed that the Son of God
was at first created by the Father, and then delegated to create the
universe--a sort of inferior deity, who was nevertheless entitled to
religious homage" (James Nichols, note to App. P. on Brandt's Life
of Arminius in Works of Arminius, 1825, i, 218). Nichols gives a full
survey of the subject, pp. 202-237. Fuller (Ch. Hist. B. x, cent. 17,
sec. iv, §§ 1-5) tells the story, and pronounces the opinions of
Vorstius "fitter to be remanded to hell than committed to writing."
[87] Bayle (art. cited, Note F) says both Universities, as does
Fuller. At the Synod of Dort, however, the British representatives read
only, it seems, a decree (dated Sept. 21, 1611) of the Vice-Chancellor
of Cambridge, ordering the burning of the book there. (Nichols,
Account of the Synod of Dort, in Works of Arminius, i, 497).
[88] Gardiner, pp. 129-30. Fuller (as last cited, §§ 6-14) gives a
list of Legate's "damnable tenets." See it in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's
Penalties upon Opinion, pp. 12-14.
[89] Gardiner, as cited. Fuller is cheerfully acquiescent, though
he notes the private demurs, which he denounces. "God," he says,
"may seem well pleased with this seasonable severity."
[90] In 1580 Stow records how one Randall was put on trial for
"conjuring to know where treasure was hid in the earth and goods
feloniously taken were become"; and four others were tried "for being
present." Four were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Randall
was executed, and the others reprieved. (Ed. 1615, p. 688.)
[91] Fuller actually alleges that "there was none ever after that
openly avowed these heretical doctrines"--an unintelligible figment.
[92] All reprinted in 1816 for the Hanserd Knollys Society, with
histor. introd. by E. B. Underhill, in the vol. Tracts on Liberty of
Conscience and Persecution, 1614-1661. They do not speak of Legate
or Wightman.
[93] Atheomastix, 1622, pref. Sig. B. 3, verso. The work was posthumous
and incomplete.
[94] Bk. i, ch. i, p. 5.
[95] In the Advancement of Learning, bk. i (Routledge ed. p. 54),
he himself notes how, long before his time, the new learning had in
part discredited the schoolmen.
[96] Filum Labyrinthi--an English version of the Cogitata et Visa--§ 7.
[97] Cp. Huarte, cited above, p. 471.
[98] Nov. Org. bk. i. Aph. 62 (Works, Routledge ed. p. 271).
[99] Id. Aph. 65.
[100] Id. ib. Cp. the Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, and the De
Augmentis, bk. ix, near end. (Ed. cited, pp. 173, 634.)
[101] Nov. Org. Aph. 89. Cp. Aph. 46, 49, 96; the Valerius Terminus,
ch. xxv; the English Filum Labyrinthi, § 7; and the De Principiis
atque Originibus (ed. cited, p. 650).
[102] Valerius Terminus, cap. i. (Ed. cited, p. 188.)
[103] Id. p. 187; Filum Labyrinthi, p. 209.
[104] Bk. ix, ch. i. (Ed. cited, p. 631.) Compare Valerius Terminus,
ch. i (p. 186), and De Aug. bk. iii, ch. ii (p. 456), as to the
impossibility of knowing the will and character of God from Nature,
though (De Aug. last cit.) it reveals his power and glory.
[105] Advancement, bk. i (ed. cited, p. 45). Cp. Valerius Terminus,
ch. i (p. 187).
[106] Advancement, bk. ii; De Augmentis, bk. iii, chs. iv and v;
Valerius Terminus, ch. xxv; Novum Organum, bk. i, Aph. 48; bk. ii,
Aph. 2. (Ed. cited, pp. 96, 205, 266, 302, 471, 473.)
[107] De Principiis atque Originibus. (Ed. cited,
pp. 649-50.) Elsewhere (De Aug. bk. iii, ch. iv, p. 471) he expressly
puts it that the system of Democritus, which "removed God and mind
from the structure of things," was more favourable to true science
than the teleology and theology of Plato and Aristotle.
[108] Id. pp. 651, 657.
[109] Id. p. 648.
[110] De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. ii; bk. iv, ch. ii. (Ed. cited,
pp. 456, 482.)
[111] Id. bk. ii, ch. i. (Ed. cited, p. 428.)
[112] De Augmentis, ed. cited, p. 73.
[113] No. xviii, Diomedes. Ed. cited, p. 841.
[114] De Principiis atque Originibus, p. 664.
[115] Nov. Org. i. 89; Filum Labyrinthi, § 7; Essay 16.
[116] Francis Osborn, pref. to his "Miscellany," in Works, 7th
ed. 1673.
[117] Cp. Valerius Terminus, ch. i.
[118] This is noted by Glassford in his tr. of the Novum Organum
(1844, p. 26); and by Ellis in his and Spedding's edition of the
Works. (Routledge ed. pp. 32, 473, note.)
[119] De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. iv, end.
[120] Essay 57, Of Anger.
[121] Valerius Terminus, ch. xxv.
[122] De Principiis, ed. cited, pp. 648-49. Cp. pp. 612-43.
[123] Id. p. 648.
[124] Valerius Terminus, ch. ii; De Augmentis, bk. v,
ch. iv. Ed. cited, pp. 199, 517.
[125] Cp. Brewster, Life of Newton, 1855, ii, 400-404; Draper,
Intel. Devel. of Europe, ed. 1875, ii, 258-60; Dean Church, Bacon,
pp. 180-201; Fowler, Bacon, ch. vi; Lodge, Pioneers of Science,
pp. 145-51; Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, i, 197 sq. (Eng. tr. i,
236-37), and cit. from Liebig--as to whom, however, see Fowler,
pp. 133, 157.
[126] Novum Organum, ii, 46 and 48, § 17; De Aug. iii, 4; Thema
Coeli. Ed. cited, pp. 364, 375, 461, 705, 709. Whewell (Hist. of
Induct. Sciences, 3rd ed. i, 296, 298) ignores the second and third
of these passages in denying Hume's assertion that Bacon rejected the
Copernican theory with "disdain." It is true, however, that Bacon had
vacillated. The facts are fairly faced by Prof. Fowler in his Bacon,
1881, pp. 151-52, and his ed. of Novum Organum, Introd. pp. 30-36. See
also the summing-up of Ellis in notes to passages above cited, and
at p. 675.
[127] Aubrey, Lives of Eminent Persons, ed. 1813, vol. ii, pt. ii,
p. 383.
[128] See notes in ed. cited, pp. 50, 53, 61, 63, 68, 75, 76, 84, 110.
[129] Fowler, ed. of Nov. Org. § 14, pp. 101-104.
[130] Id. § 14, p. 108; Ellis in ed. cited, p. 643.
[131] Rawley's Life, in ed. cited, p. 9; Osborn, as above cited;
Fowler, ed. of Nov. Org. Introd. § 14; T. Martin, Character of Bacon,
1835, pp. 216, 227, 222-23.
[132] Cp. Fowler, Bacon, pp. 139-41; Mill, Logic, bk. vi, ch. v, §
5; Jevons, Princ. of Science, 1-vol. ed. p. 576; Tyndall, Scientific
Use of the Imagination, 3rd ed. pp. 4, 8-9, 42-43; T. Martin, as
cited, pp. 210-38; Bagehot, Postulates of Eng. Polit. Econ. ed. 1885,
pp. 18-19; Ellis and Spedding, in ed. cited, pp. x, xii, 22, 389. The
notion of a dialectic method which should mechanically enable any
man to make discoveries is an irredeemable fallacy, and must be
abandoned. Bacon's own remarkable anticipation of modern scientific
thought in the formula that heat is a mode of motion (Nov. Org. ii,
20) is not mechanically yielded by his own process, noteworthy and
suggestive though that is.
[133] Pref. Epistle.
[134] Works, ed. Dublin. 1766, p. 159; ed. 1910, p. 344.
[135] Kohlrausch, Hist. of Germany, Eng. tr. p. 385.
[136] Moritz Ritter, Geschichte der deutschen Union, 1867-73, ii, 55.
[137] Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, 3te Aufl. Cap. 416.
[138] Cp. Gardiner, Thirty Years' War, pp. 12-13; Kohlrausch, p. 438;
Pusey, Histor. Enq. into Ger. Rationalism, pp. 9-25; Henderson,
Short Hist. of Germany, i, ch. xvi.
[139] Kohlrausch, p. 439. A specially strong reaction set in about
1573. Ritter, Geschichte der deutschen Union, i, 19. Cp. Menzel,
Cap. 433.
[140] Cp. Gardiner, Thirty Years' War, pp. 16, 18, 21; Kohlrausch,
p. 370.
[141] As to this see Moritz Ritter, as cited, i, 9, 27; ii, 122 sq.;
Dunham, Hist. of the Germanic Empire, iii, 186; Henderson, i, 411 sq.
[142] Freytag, Bilder aus d. deutschen Vergangenheit, Bd. ii, 1883,
p. 381; Bd. iii, ad init.
[143] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 53-83.
[144] Freytag, Bilder, Bd. ii, Abth. ii, p. 378.
[145] The Pope and the Council, Eng. tr. p. 260; French tr. p. 285.
[146] De Praestigiis Daemonum, 1563. See it described by Lecky,
Rationalism, i, 85-87; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 76.
[147] By Dutch historians Wier is claimed as a Dutchman. He was born
at Grave, in North Brabant, but studied medicine at Paris and Orleans,
and after practising physic at Arnheim in the Netherlands was called to
Düsseldorf as physician to the Duke of Jülich, to whom he dedicated his
treatise. His ideas are probably traceable to his studies in France.
[148] His collected works (1632) amount to nearly 7,000 folio
pages. J. Ten Brink, Kleine Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letteren,
1882, p. 91.
[149] Ten Brink, p. 86. Jonckbloet (Beknopte Geschiedenis der
Nederl. Letterkunde, ed. 1880, p. 148) is less specific.
[150] Ten Brink, pp. 89-90.
[151] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 83.
[152] Ten Brink, p. 87.
[153] Jonckbloet, Beknopte Geschiedenis, p. 149; Ten Brink,
p. 91; Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Koornhert; Pünjer, Hist. of the
Chr. Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. p. 269; Dr. E. Gosse, art. on
Dutch Literature in Encyc. Brit. 9th ed. xii, 93.
[154] Ten Brink, p. 91.
[155] Flint, Vico, p. 142.
[156] De Jure Belli et Pacis, proleg. §§ 11, 16.
[157] Bayle, art. Voelkel.
[158] Schlegel's note on Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 862.
[159] Nelson, Life of Bishop Bull, 2nd ed. 1714, p. 392.
[160] Nicéron, Mémoires pour servir, etc., xiv (1731), 340 sq. One of
the replies is the Justa Detestatio sceleratissimi libelli Adriani
Beverlandi De Peccato Originali, by Leonard Ryssen, 1680. A very
free version of Beverland's book appeared in French in 1714 under
the title Etat de l'Homme dans le Peché Originel. It reached a sixth
edition in 1741.
[161] Nelson, Life of Bishop Bull, as cited, p. 280.
[162] Krasinski, Ref. in Poland, 1840, ii, 363; Mosheim, 16
Cent. sec. iii, pt. ii, ch. iv, § 22. Budny translated the Bible,
with rationalistic notes.
[163] Krasinski, p. 361.
[164] Mosheim, last cit. § 23, note 4.
[165] Krasinski, p. 367; Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. 1850, ii, 320.
[166] Bayle, art. Fauste Socin. Krasinski, p. 374.
[167] Krasinski, pp. 361-62. Fausto Sozzini also could apparently
forgive everybody save those who believed less than he did.
[168] Cp. the inquiry as to Locke's Socinianism in J. Milner's Account
of Mr. Lock's Religion out of his own Writings, 1706, and Lessing's
Zur Geschichte und Literatur, i, as to Leibnitz's criticism of Sonerus.
[169] Enfield's History of Philosophy (an abstract of Brucker),
ed. 1840, p. 537.
[170] In the dominions of Philip II there are said to have been 58
archbishops, 684 bishops, 11,400 abbeys, 23,000 religious fraternities,
46,000 monasteries, 13,500 nunneries, 312,000 secular priests, 400,000
monks, 200,000 friars and other ecclesiastics. H. E. Watts, Miguel
de Cervantes, 1895, pp. 67-68. Spain alone had 9,088 monasteries.
[171] Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 484; 1-vol. ed. p. 564, and refs.
[172] Cp. Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 497-99; 1-vol. ed. pp. 572-73;
La Rigaudière, Hist. des Perséc. Relig. en Espagne, 1860, pp. 220-26.
[173] Cp. Lewes, Spanish Drama, passim.
[174] "He inspires me only with horror for the faith which he
professes. No one ever so far disfigured Christianity; no one ever
assigned to it passions so ferocious, or morals so corrupt" (Sismondi,
Lit. of South of Europe, Bohn tr. ii, 379).
[175] Ticknor, Hist. of Spanish Lit. 6th ed. ii, 501; Don Quixote,
pt. ii, ch. liv; Ormsby, tr. of Don Quixote, 1885, introd. i, 58.
[176] Lafuente, Historia de España, 1856, xvii, 340. It is not quite
certain that Lafuente expressed his sincere opinion.
[177] Llorente, ii. 433.
[178] Id. p. 420.
[179] Bouterwek, Hist. of Spanish and Portuguese Literature,
Eng. tr. 1823, i, 331.
[180] Id. p. 151.
[181] Part II, ch. xxxvi.
[182] Bouterwek, whose sociology, though meritorious, is ill-clarified,
argues that the Inquisition was in a manner congenital to Spain because
before its establishment the suspicion of heresy was already "more
degrading in Spain than the most odious crimes in other countries." But
the same might have been said of the other countries also. As to
earlier Spanish heresy see above, vol. i, p. 337 sq.
[183] Despite the many fallacies retained by Copernicus from the
current astronomy, he must be pronounced an exceptionally scientific
spirit. Trained as a mathematician, astronomer, and physician,
he showed a keen and competent interest in the practical problem of
currency; and one of the two treatises which alone he published of his
own accord was a sound scheme for the rectification of that of his
own government. Though a canon of Frauenburg, he never took orders;
but did manifold and unselfish secular service.
[184] It was shielded by thirteen popes--from Paul III to Paul V.
[185] Galileo, Dialogi dei due massimi sistemi del mondo, ii (Opere,
ed. 1811, xi, 303-304).
[186] A good study of Bruno is supplied by Owen in his Skeptics of
the Italian Renaissance. He has, however, omitted to embody the later
discoveries of Dufour and Berti, and has some wrong dates. The Life
of Giordano Bruno, by I. Frith (Mrs. Oppenheim), 1887, gives all the
data, but is inadequate on the philosophic side. A competent estimate
is given in the late Prof. Adamson's lectures on The Development
of Modern Philosophy, etc., 1903, ii, 23 sq.; also in his art. in
Encyc. Brit. For a hostile view see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii,
105-111. The biography of Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, 1846, is
extremely full and sympathetic, but was unavoidably loose as to
dates. Much new matter has since been collected, for which see the
Vita di Giordano Bruno of Domenico Berti, rev. and enlarged ed. 1889;
Prof. J. L. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 1903; Dufour, Giordano Bruno
à Génève: Documents Inédits, 1884; David Levi, Giordano Bruno, o
la religione del pensiero: l'uomo, l'apostolo e il martire, 1887;
Dr. H. Brunnhofer's Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verhängniss,
1882; and the doctoral treatise of C. Sigwart, Die Lebensgeschichte
Giordano Brunos, Tübingen, 1880. For other authorities see Owen's
and I. Frith's lists, and the final Literaturnachweis in Gustav
Louis's Giordano Bruno, seine Weltanschauung und Lebensverfassung,
Berlin, 1900. The study of Bruno has been carried further in Germany
than in England; but Mr. Whittaker (Essays and Notices, 1895) and
Prof. McIntyre make up much leeway.
[187] Cp. Bartholmèss, i, 49-53; Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i,
191-94 (Eng. tr. i, 232); Gustav Louis, as cited, pp. 11, 88.
[188] Berti, Vita di Giordano Bruno, 1889, pp. 40-41, 420. Bruno
gives the facts in his own narrative before the Inquisitors at Venice.
[189] Berti, pp. 42-43, 47; Owen, p. 265.
[190] Not to Genoa, as Berti stated in his first ed. See ed. 1889,
pp. 54, 392.
[191] Berti, p. 65. Owen has the uncorrected date, 1576.
[192] Dufour, Giordano Bruno à Génève: Documents Inédits, 1884; Berti,
pp. 95-97; Gustav Louis, Giordano Bruno, pp. 73-75. Owen (p. 269)
has overlooked these facts, set forth by Dufour in 1884. The documents
are given in full in Frith, Life, 1887, p. 60 sq.
[193] The dates are in doubt. Cp. Berti, p. 115, and Frith, p. 65.
[194] See his own narrative before the Inquisitors in 1592. Berti,
p. 394.
[195] McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 1907, pp. 21-22.
[196] Frith, Life, p. 121, and refs.; Owen, p. 275; Bartholmèss,
Jordano Bruno, i, 136-38.
[197] Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 111, note. As to Bruno's
supposed influence on Bacon and Shakespeare, cp. Bartholmèss, i,
134-35; Frith, Life, pp. 104-48; and the author's Montaigne and
Shakspere, pp. 132-38. Here there is no case; but there is much
to be said for Mr. Whittaker's view (Essays and Notices, p. 94)
that Spenser's late Cantos on Mutability were suggested by Bruno's
Spaccio. Prof. McIntyre supports.
[198] His praise of Luther, and his compliments to the Lutherans,
are in notable contrast to his verdict on Calvinism. What happened
was that at Wittemberg he was on his best behaviour, and was well
treated accordingly.
[199] As to the traitor's motives cp. McIntyre, p. 66 sq.; Berti,
p. 262 sq.
[200] Noroff, as cited in Frith, p. 345.
[201] De l'Infinito, ed. Wagner, ii, 27; Cena de la Ceneri, ed. Wagner,
i, 173; Acrotismus, ed. Gfrörer, p. 12.
[202] Cp. Berti, pp. 187-88; Whittaker, Essays and Notices, 1895,
p. 89; and Louis's section, Stellung zu Christenthum und Kirche.
[203] Berti, pp. 297-98. It takes much searching in the two poems
to find any of the ideas in question, and Berti has attempted
no collation; but, allowing for distortions, the Inquisition has
sufficient ground for outcry.
[204] Sigillus Sigillorum: De duodecima contractionis
speciae. Cp. F. J. Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa, 1847,
pp. 176, 183; and H. Brunnhofer, Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und
Verhängniss, 1882, pp. 227, 237.
[205] In the treatise De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana
(1587). According to Berti (p. 220) he is the first to employ this
phrase, which becomes the watchword of Spinoza (libertas philosophandi)
a century later.
[206] Berti, cap. iv; Owen, p. 249; Ueberweg, ii, 27; Pünjer, p. 93
sq.; Whittaker, Essays and Notices, p. 66. As to Bruno's debt to
Nicolaus of Cusa cp. Gustav Louis, as cited, p. 11; Pünjer, as cited;
Carriere, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit,
p. 25; and Whittaker, p. 68. The argument of Carriere's second edition
is analysed and rebutted by Mr. Whittaker, p. 253 sq.
[207] De Immenso, vii, c. 18, cited by Whittaker, Essays and Notices,
p. 70.
[208] As to Bruno's own claim in the Eroici Furori, cp. Whittaker,
Essays, p. 90.
[209] Documents in Berti, pp. 407-18; McIntyre, p. 75 sq.
[210] See the document in Berti, p. 398 sq.; Frith, pp. 270-81.
[211] Berti, p. 400 sq.
[212] See Berti, p. 396; Owen, pp. 285-86; Frith, pp. 282-83.
[213] The controversy as to whether Galileo was tortured leaves it
clear that torture was common. See Dr. Parchappe, Galilée, sa vie,
etc., 1866, Ptie. ii, ch. 7.
[214] Spaccio della bestia trionfante, ed. Wagner, ii, 120.
[215] Prof. Carriere has contended that a transition from pantheism
to theism marks the growth of his thought; but, as is shown by
Mr. Whittaker, he is markedly pantheistic in his latest work of all,
though his pantheism is not merely naturalistic. Essays and Notices,
pp. 72, 253-58.
[216] Italian versions differ verbally. Cp. Levi, p. 379; Berti,
p. 386. That inscribed on the Bruno statue at Rome is a close rendering
of the Latin: Majori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam
ego accipiam, preserved by Scioppius.
[217] Avviso, in Berti, p. 329; in Levi, p. 386.
[218] Levi, pp. 384-92. Levi relates (p. 390) that Bruno at the stake
was heard to utter the words: "O Eterno, io fo uno sforzo supremo per
attrarre in me quanto vi tra di più divino nell'universo." He cites
no authority. An Avviso reports that Bruno said his soul would rise
with the smoke to Paradise (p. 386; Berti, p. 330), but does not
state that this was said at the stake. And Levi accepts the other
report that Bruno was gagged.
[219] Notably his comedy Il Candelaio.
[220] Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 357. A full
narrative, from the documents, is given in R. C. Christie's essay,
"Vanini in England," in the English Historical Review of April, 1895,
reprinted in his Selected Essays and Papers, 1902.
[221] See it analysed by Owen, pp. 361-68, and by Carriere,
Weltanschauung, pp. 496-504.
[222] Amphitheatrum, 1615, Exercit. xix, pp. 117-18.
[223] Amphitheatrum, Exercit. xxvii, p. 161.
[224] Id. pp. 72, 73, 78, 113, etc.
[225] P. 35. Machiavelli is elsewhere attacked. Pp. 36, 50.
[226] Julii Cæsaris Vanini Neapolitani, Theologi, Philosophi, et juris
utriusque Doctoris, de Admirandis Naturæ Reginæque Deæque Mortalium
Arcanis, libri quatuor. Lutetiæ, 1616.
[227] Mr. Owen makes a serious misstatement on this point, by which
I was formerly misled. He writes (p. 369) that from the publisher's
preface we "learn that the Dialogues were not written by Vanini, but
by his disciples. They are a collection of discursive conversations
embodying their master's opinions." This is not what the preface
says. It tells, after a high-pitched eulogy of Vanini, that "nos
publicæ utilitatis solliciti, alia eius monumenta, quæ avarius
retinebat, per idoneos ex scriptores nancisci curavimus." In ascribing
the matter of the dialogues to Vanini's young days, Mr. Owen forgets
the references to the Amphitheatrum.
[228] "Alex. Sed in qua nam Religione verè et piè Deum coli vetusti
Philosophi existimarunt? Vanini. In unica Naturæ lege, quam ipsa
Natura, quæ Deus est (est enim principium motus)...." De Arcanis,
as cited, p. 366. Lib. iv, Dial. 50. See Rousselot's French tr. 1842,
p. 227. This passage is cited by Hallam (Lit. Hist. ii, 461) as avowing
"disbelief of all religion except such as Nature ... has planted in
the minds of men"--a heedless perversion.
[229] De Arcanis, pp. 354-60, 420-22 (Dial. 50, 56); Rousselot,
pp. 219-23, 271-73.
[230] The special reference (lib. iv, dial. 56, p. 428) is to
a story of an infant prophesying when only twenty-four hours
old. (Amphitheatrum, Ex. vi, p. 38; cp. Owen, p. 368, note.) On this
and on other points Cousin (cited by Owen, pp. 368, 371, 377) and
Hallam (Lit. Hist. ii, 461) make highly prejudiced statements. Quoting
the final pages on which the dialoguist passes from serious debate
to a profession of levity, and ends by calling for the play-table,
the English historian dismisses him as "the wretched man."
[231] Cp. Carriere's analysis of the Dialogues, pp. 505-59; and the
Apologia pro Jul. Cæsare Vanino (by Arpe), 1712.
[232] See Owen's vindication, pp. 371-74. Renan's criticism (Averroès,
pp. 420-23) is not quite judicial. See many others cited by Carriere,
p. 516.
[233] It is difficult to understand how the censor could let pass
the description of Nature in the title; but this may have been
added after the authorization. The book is dedicated by Vanini to
Marshal Bassompierre, and the epistle dedicatory makes mention of
the Serenissima Regina aeterni nominis Maria Medicæa, which would
disarm suspicion. In any case the permit was revoked, and the book
condemned to be burned.
[234] Owen, p. 395.
[235] Mercure Français, 1619, tom. v, p. 64.
[236] Gramond (Barthélemi de Grammont), Historia Galliæ ab excessu
Henrici IV, 1643, p. 209. Carriere translates the passage in full,
pp. 500-12, 515; as does David Durand in his hostile Vie et Sentimens
de Lucilio Vanini, 1717. As to Gramond see the Lettres de Gui Patin,
who (Lett. 428, ed. Reveillé-Parise) calls him âme foible et bigote,
and guilty of falsehood and flattery.
[237] Gramond, p. 210. Of Vanini, as of Bruno, it is recorded that at
the stake he repelled the proffered crucifix. Owen and other writers,
who justly remark that he well might, overlook the once received
belief that it was the official practice, with obstinate heretics,
to proffer a red-hot crucifix, so that the victim should be sure to
spurn it with open anger.
[238] Stephen Phillips, Marpessa.
[239] Cp. Owen, pp. 389, 391, and Carriere, pp. 512-13, as to the
worst calumnies. It is significant that Vanini was tried solely for
blasphemy and atheism. What is proved against him is that he and an
associate practised a rather gross fraud on the English ecclesiastical
authorities, having apparently no higher motive than gain and a free
life. Mr. Christie notes, however, that Vanini in his writings always
speaks very kindly of England and the English, and so did not add
ingratitude to his act of imposture.
[240] De Arcanis, p. 205. Lib. iii, dial. 30.
[241] Amphitheatrum, p. 17.
[242] De Arcanis, lib. iv, dial. 52, p. 379; dial. 51,
p. 373. Cp. Amphitheatrum, p. 36; and De Arcanis, p. 20.
[243] De Arcanis, dial. 50 and 56. In the Amphitheatrum he adduces
an equally skilful German atheist (p. 73).
[244] Dial. li, p. 371.
[245] Dial. liv, p. 407.
[246] Cp. Rousselot, notice, p. xi.
[247] Durand compiles a list of ten or eleven works of Vanini from
the allusions in the Amphitheatrum and the De Arcanis.
[248] Reported by Gramond, as cited.
[249] Owen, pp. 393-94.
[250] Garasse, Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits, 1623.
[251] De Arcanis, dial. vii, p. 36.
[252] Dial. iv, p. 21.
[253] Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, 1623, p. 848.
[254] Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia,
Eng. tr. 1879, pp. 36-37.
[255] This appears from the letters of Sagredo to Galileo. Gebler,
p. 37. Cp. Gui Patin, Lett. 816, ed. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, iii,
758; Bayle, art. Cremonin, notes C and D; and Renan, Averroès, 3e
édit. pp. 408-13. Patin writes that his friend Naudé "avoit été intime
ami de Cremonin, qui n'étoit point meilleur Chrétien que Pomponace,
que Machiavel, que Cardan et telles autres ... dont le pays abonde."
[256] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 183 (Eng. tr. i, 220);
Gebler, p. 25. Libri actually made the refusal; but all that is
proved as to Cremonini is that he opposed Galileo's discoveries à
priori. As to the attitude of such opponents see Galileo's letter to
Kepler. J. J. Fahie, Galileo: his Life and Work, 1903. pp. 101-102.
[257] Fahie, Galileo, p. 100.
[258] Id. p. 127.
[259] Gebler, pp. 54, 129, and passim; The Private Life of Galileo
(by Mrs. Olney), Boston, 1870, pp. 67-72.
[260] Galileo's letter to Kepler, cited by Gebler, p. 26.
[261] The Jesuits were expelled from Venice in 1616, in retaliation
for a papal interdict.
[262] See it summarized by Gebler, pp. 46-60, and quoted in the
Private Life, pp. 83-85.
[263] The measure of reverence with which the orthodox handled the
matter may be inferred from the fact that the Dominican Caccini, who
preached against Galileo in Florence, took as one of his texts the
verse in Acts i: "Viri Galilaei, quid statis aspicientes in coelum,"
making a pun on the Scripture.
[264] See this summarized by Gebler, pp. 64-70.
[265] See The Private Life of Galileo, pp. 86-87, 91, 99; Gebler,
p. 44; Fahie, pp. 169-70; Berti, Il Processo Originale de Galileo
Galilei, 1878, p. 53.
[266] Gebler (p. 101) solemnly comments on this letter as a lapse into
"servility" on Galileo's part.
[267] Gebler, pp. 112-13.
[268] Private Life, pp. 216-18; Gebler, pp. 157-62.
[269] Berti, pp. 61-64; Private Life, pp. 212-13; Gebler, p. 162.
[270] Gebler, p. 239; Private Life, p. 256.
[271] Gebler, pp. 249-63; Private Life, pp. 255-56; Marini,
pp. 55-57. The "e pur si muove" story is first heard of in 1774. As
to the torture, it is to be remembered that Galileo recanted under
threat of it. See Berti, pp. 93-101; Marini, p. 59; Sir O. Lodge,
Pioneers of Science, 1893, pp. 128-31. Berti argues that only the
special humanity of the Commissary-General, Macolano, saved him from
the torture. Cp. Gebler, p. 259, note.
[272] Gebler, p. 281.
[273] Private Life, pp. 265-60, 268; Gebler, p. 252.
[274] Berti, Il Processo di Galileo, pp. 111-12.
[275] Letter of Hobbes to Newcastle, in Report of the
Hist. Mss. Comm. on the Duke of Portland's Papers, 1892, ii. Hobbes
explains that few copies were brought over, "and they that buy such
books are not such men as to part with them again." "I doubt not,"
he adds, "but the translation of it will here be publicly embraced."
[276] Gebler, pp. 312-15; Putnam, Censorship of the Church of Rome,
i, 313-14.
[277] See Ueberweg, ii, 12, as to the conflicting types. In addition
to Cremonini, several leading Aristotelians in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were accused of atheism (Hallam, Lit. Hist. ii,
101-102), the old charge against the Peripatetic school. Hallam
(p. 102) complains that Cesalpini of Pisa "substitutes the barren
unity of pantheism for religion." Cp. Ueberweg, ii, 14; Renan,
Averroès, 3e édit. p. 417. An Averroïst on some points, he believed
in separate immortality.
[278] Gebler, pp. 37, 45. Gebler appears to surmise that Cremonini
may have escaped the attack upon himself by turning suspicion upon
Galileo, but as to this there is no evidence.
[279] Ueberweg, ii, 17.
[280] Epist. 36.
[281] See above, p. 45.
[282] Bartholmèss, Jordano Bruno, i, 49.
[283] Lange, Gesch. des Mater. i, 189-90 (Eng. tr. i, 228). Born
in Valencia and trained at Paris, Vives became a humanist teacher
at Louvain, and was called to England (1523) to be tutor to the
Princess Mary. During his stay he taught at Oxford. Being opposed to
the divorce of Henry VIII, he was imprisoned for a time, afterwards
living at Bruges.
[284] See the monograph, Ramus, sa vie, ses écrits, et ses opinions,
par Ch. Waddington, 1855. Owen has a good account of Ramus in his
French Skeptics.
[285] Scholæ math. l. iii, p. 78, cited by Waddington, p. 343.
[286] "In many respects Galileo deserves to be ranked with Descartes
as inaugurating modern philosophy." Prof. Adamson, Development of
Mod. Philos. 1903, i, 5. "We may compare his [Hobbes's] thought with
Descartes's, but the impulse came to him from the physical reasonings
of Galileo." Prof. Croom Robertson, Hobbes, 1886, p. 42.
[287] Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 327-36; 3-vol. ed. ii, 77-85. Cp. Lange,
i, 425 (Eng. tr. i, 248, note); Adamson, Philosophy of Kant, 1879,
p. 194.
[288] Cp. Lange, i, 425 (Eng. tr. i, 248-49, note); Bouillier,
Hist. de la philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 40-47, 185-86; Bartholmèss,
Jordano Bruno, i, 354-55; Memoir in Garnier ed. of OEuvres Choisies,
p. v, also pp. 6, 17, 19, 21. Bossuet pronounced the precautions of
Descartes excessive. But cp. Dr. Land's notes in Spinoza: Four Essays,
1882, p. 55.
[289] Coll. of Philos. Writings, ed. 1712, pref. p. xi.
[290] Discours de la Méthode, pties. i, ii, iii, iv (OEuvres Choisies,
pp. 8, 10, 11, 22, 24); Meditation I (id. pp. 73-74).
[291] Full details in Kuno Fischer's Descartes and his School,
Eng. tr. 1890, bk. i, ch. vi; Bouillier, i, chs. xii, xiii.
[292] Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 337-39; 3-vol. ed. ii, 94, 97.
[293] Buckle, pp. 327-30; ii, 81.
[294] Id. p. 330; ii, 82. The process is traced hereinafter.
[295] Kuno Fischer, Francis Bacon, Eng. tr. 1857, p. 74.
[296] For an exact summary and criticism of Gassendi's positions see
the masterly monograph of Prof. Brett of Lahore, The Philosophy of
Gassendi, 1908--a real contribution to the history of philosophy.
[297] Cp. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. v, ch. i (McCulloch's
ed. 1839, pp. 364-65). It is told of him, with doubtful authority, that
when dying he said: "I know not who brought me into the world, neither
do I know what was to do there, nor why I go out of it." Reflections
on the Death of Freethinkers, by Deslandes (Eng. tr. of the Réflexions
sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant), 1713, p. 105.
[298] For a good account of Gassendi and his group (founded on Lange, §
iii, ch. i) see Soury, Bréviaire de l'hist. de matérialisme, ptie. iii,
ch. ii.
[299] Voltaire, Éléments de philos. de Newton, ch. ii; Lange, i, 232
(Eng. tr. i, 267) and 269.
[300] Bayle, art. Pomponace, Notes F. and G. The complaint was made
by Arnauld, who with the rest of the Jansenists was substantially
a Cartesian.
[301] See it in Garnier's ed. of Descartes's OEuvres Choisies, p. 145.
[302] Id. pp. 158-64.
[303] Apparently just because the Jansenists adopted Descartes
and opposed Gassendi. But Gassendi is extremely guarded in all his
statements, save, indeed, in his objections to the Méditations of
Descartes.
[304] See Soury, pp. 397-98, as to a water-drinking "debauch" of
Gassendi and his friends.
[305] Rambaud, as cited, p. 154.
[306] Id. p. 155.
[307] Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV, ed. Didot, p. 366. "On ne l'eût
pas osé sous Henri IV et sous Louis XIII," adds Voltaire. Cp. Michelet,
La Sorcière, éd. Séailles, 1903, p. 302.
[308] Tr. into English in 1659, under the title The Vanity of Judiciary
Astrology.
[309] Jenkin Thomasius in his Historia Atheismi (1692) joins Herbert
with Bodin as having five points in common with him (ed. 1709, ch. ix,
§ 2, pp. 76-77).
[310] It might have been supposed that he was recalled on account
of his book; but it was not so. He was recalled by letter in April,
returned home in July, and seems to have sent his book thence to
Paris to be printed.
[311] Autobiography, Sir S. Lee's 2nd ed. p. 132.
[312] The book was reprinted at London in Latin in 1633; again at
Paris in 1636; and again at London in 1645. It was translated and
published in French in 1639, but never in English.
[313] Compare the verdict of Hamilton in his ed. of Reid, note A, §
6, 35 (p. 781).
[314] For a good analysis see Pünjer, Hist. of the Christ. Philos. of
Religion, Eng. trans. 1887, pp. 292-99; also Noack, Die Freidenker
in der Religion, Bern, 1853, i, 17-40; and Lechler, Geschichte des
englischen Deismus, pp. 36-54.
[315] See his Autobiography, as cited, pp. 133-34.
[316] De causis errorum, una cum tractate de religione laici et
appendice ad sacerdotes (1645); De religione gentilium (1663). The
latter was translated into English in 1705. The former are short
appendices to the De Veritate. In 1768 was published for the first time
from a manuscript, A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, which,
despite the doubts of Lechler, may confidently be pronounced Herbert's
from internal evidence. See the "Advertisement" by the editor of the
volume, and cp. Lee, p. xxx, and notes there referred to. The "five
points," in particular, occur not only in the Religio Gentilium, but
in the De Veritate. The style is clearly of the seventeenth century.
[317] Sir Sidney Lee can hardly be right in taking the Dialogue to be
the "little treatise" which Herbert proposed to write on behaviour
(Autobiography, Lee's 2nd ed. p. 43). It does not answer to that
description, being rather an elaborate discussion of the themes of
Herbert's main treatises, running to 272 quarto pages.
[318] See below, p. 80.
[319] More Reasons for the Christian Religion, 1672, p. 79.
[320] It is to be remembered that the doctrine of the supremacy of
the civil power in religious matters (Erastianism) was maintained by
some of the ablest men on the Parliamentary side, in particular Selden.
[321] Leviathan, ch. iv, H. Morley's ed. p. 26.
[322] Cp. his letter to an opponent, Considerations upon the
Reputation, etc., of Thomas Hobbes, 1680, with chs. xi and xii of
Leviathan, and De Corpore Politico, pt. ii, c. 6. One of his most
explicit declarations for theism is in the De Homine, c. 1, where
he employs the design argument, declaring that he who will not see
that the bodily organs are a mente aliqua conditas ordinatasque ad
sua quasque officia must be himself without mind. This ascription of
"mind," however, he tacitly negates in Leviathan, ch. xi, and De
Corpore Politico, pt. ii, c. 6.
[323] De Corpore, pt. ii, c. 8, § 20.
[324] Cp. Bentley's letter to Bernard, 1692, cited in Dynamics of
Religion, pp. 82-83.
[325] Leviathan, pt. i, ch. vi. Morley's ed. p. 34.
[326] Leviathan, pt. iii, ch. xxxiii.
[327] Above, p. 24.
[328] On this see Lange, Hist. of Materialism, sec. iii, ch. ii.
[329] Molyneux, an anti-Hobbesian, in translating Hobbes's objections
along with the Meditations (1680) claims that the slightness of
Descartes's replies was due to his unacquaintance with Hobbes's works
and philosophy in general (trans. cited, p. 114). This is an obviously
lame defence. Descartes does parry some of the thrusts of Hobbes;
others he simply cannot meet.
[330] E.g., Leviathan, pt. iv, ch. xlvii.
[331] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 232-35. Cp. Bentley,
Sermons on Atheism (i.e., his Boyle Lectures), ed. 1724, p. 8.
[332] Hobbes also was of Mersenne's acquaintance, but only as a man of
science. When, in 1647, Hobbes was believed to be dying, Mersenne for
the first time sought to discuss theology with him; but the sick man
instantly changed the subject. In 1648 Mersenne died. He thus did not
live to meet the strain of Leviathan (1651), which enraged the French
no less than the English clergy. (Croom Robertson's Hobbes, pp. 63-65.)
[333] Hobbes lived to see this law abolished (1677). There was left,
however, the jurisdiction of the bishops and ecclesiastical courts
over cases of atheism, blasphemy, heresy, and schism, short of the
death penalty.
[334] Croom Robertson, Hobbes, p. 196; Pepys's Diary, Sept. 3, 1668.
[335] Leviathan, ch. ii; Morley's ed. p. 19; chs. xiv, xv, pp. 66,
71, 72, 78; ch. xxix, pp. 148, 149.
[336] Leviathan, chs. xv, xvii, xviii. Morley's ed. pp. 72, 82, 83, 85.
[337] "For two generations the effort to construct morality on a
philosophical basis takes more or less the form of answers to Hobbes"
(Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, 3rd ed. p. 169).
[338] As when he presents the law of Nature as "dictating peace,
for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes" (Leviathan,
ch. xv. Morley's ed. p. 77).
[339] See the headings, Council, Religion, etc.
[340] G. W. Johnson, Memoirs of John Selden, 1835, pp. 348, 362.
[341] G. W. Johnson, p. 264.
[342] Above, p. 20.
[343] G. W. Johnson, pp. 258, 302.
[344] Id. p. 302. Cp. in the Table Talk, art. Trinity, his view of
the Roundheads.
[345] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. 1810, i, 181. Cp. i, 292;
ii, 44.
[346] Cp. Overton's pamphlet, An Arrow against all Tyrants and
Tyranny (1646), cited in the History of Passive Obedience since the
Reformation, 1689, i, 59; pt. ii of Thomas Edwards's Gangræna: or a
Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies,
and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, etc., 2nd
ed. 1646, pp. 33-34 (Nos. 151-53).
[347] Lords Journals, January 16, 1645-1646; Gangræna, as cited,
p. 150; cp. Gardiner, Hist. of the Civil War, ed. 1893, iii, 11.
[348] Green, Short Hist. ch. viii, § 8, pp. 551-52; Gardiner, Hist. of
the Civil War, iv, 22.
[349] Gangræna, p. 18.
[350] In 1644 he had been imprisoned at Bury St. Edmunds for
"dipping" adults, and after six months' durance had been released on a
recantation and promise of amendment. Gangræna, as cited, pp. 104-105.
[351] Rev. James Cranford, Hæreseo-Machia, a Sermon, 1646, p. 10.
[352] No. 100 in Gangræna.
[353] Cranford, as cited, p. 11 sq.
[354] See G. P. Gooch's Hist. of Democ. Ideas in England in the 17th
Century, 1898, ch. vi.
[355] Above, pp. 4 and 8.
[356] In the British Museum copy the name Richardson is penned, not in
a contemporary hand, at the end of the preface; and in the preface to
vol. ii of the Phenix, 1708, in which the treatise is reprinted, the
same name is given, but with uncertainty. The Richardson pointed at
was the author of The Necessity of Toleration in Matters of Religion
(1647). E. B. Underhill, in his collection of that and other Tracts
on Liberty of Conscience for the Hanserd Knollys Society, 1846,
remains doubtful (p. 247) as to the authorship of the tract on hell.
[357] The fourth English edition appeared in 1754.
[358] Gangræna, ep. ded. (p. 5). Cp. pp. 47, 151, 178-79; and Bailie's
Letters, ed. 1841, ii, 234-37; iii, 393. The most sweeping plea for
toleration seems to have been the book entitled Toleration Justified,
1646. (Gangræna, p. 151.) The Hanserd Knollys collection, above
mentioned, does not contain one of that title.
[359] Gangræna, pp. 152-53.
[360] Pp. 18-36.
[361] Id. p. 15. As to other sects mentioned by him cp. Tayler, p. 194.
[362] On the intense aversion of most of the Presbyterians to
toleration see Tayler, Retrospect of Relig. Life of Eng. p. 136. They
insisted, rightly enough, that the principle was never recognized in
the Bible.
[363] See the citations in Buckle, 3-vol. ed. i, 347;
1-vol. ed. p. 196.
[364] Alex. Ross, Pansebeia, 4th ed. 1672, p. 379.
[365] Cp. the present writer's Buckle and his Critics, 1895, ch. viii,
§ 2.
[366] See above, vol. i, p. 5.
[367] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, 3rd ed. i, 200.
[368] Heresiography: The Heretics and Sectaries of these Times,
1614. Epist. Ded.
[369] Discourse, ed. 1857, p. 226.
[370] Dr. J. Brown's pref. to ed. of 1857, p. xxii.
[371] More, Collection of Philosophical Writings, 4th ed. 1692, p. 95.
[372] Fabricius, Delectus Argumentorum et Syllabus Scriptorum, 1725,
p. 341.
[373] No copy in British Museum.
[374] Urwick, Life of John Howe, with 1846 ed. of Howe's Select Works,
pp. xiii, xix. Urwick, a learned evangelical, fully admits the presence
of "infidels" on both sides in the politics of the time.
[375] Discourse Concerning Union Among Protestants, ed. cited, pp. 146,
156, 158. In the preface to his treatise, The Redeemer's Tears Wept
over Lost Souls, Howe complains of "the atheism of some, the avowed
mere theism of others," and of a fashionable habit of ridiculing
religion. This sermon, however, appears to have been first published
in 1684; and the date of its application is uncertain.
[376] Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, Art. 285.
[377] The preface begins: "It is neither to satisfie the importunity
of friends, nor to prevent false copies (which and such like excuses
I know are expected in usual prefaces), that I have adventured abroad
this following treatise: but it is out of a just resentment of the
affronts and indignities which have been cast on religion, by such
who account it a matter of judgment to disbelieve the Scriptures,
and a piece of wit to dispute themselves out of the possibility of
being happy in another world."
[378] See bk. ii, ch. x. Page 338, 3rd ed. 1666.
[379] Cp. Glanvill, pref. Address to his Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's
ed. 1885, pp. lv-lvii; and Henry More's Divine Dialogues, Dial. i,
ch. xxxii.
[380] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i. 109.
[381] The Reformed Pastor, abr. ed. 1826, pp. 236, 239.
[382] Work cited, ed. 1667, p. 136. The proposition is reiterated.
[383] Id. p. 388.
[384] Reasons of the Christian Religion, pp. 388-89.
[385] Religio Stoici, Edinburgh, 1663. p. 19. The essay was reprinted
in 1665, and in London in 1693 under the title of The Religious Stoic.
[386] Id. p. 18.
[387] Id. p. 124.
[388] Id. p. 76.
[389] Id. p. 69.
[390] Religio Stoici, p. 116.
[391] Id. p. 122.
[392] This last is interesting as a probable echo of opinions he had
heard from some of his older contemporaries: "Opinion kept within its
proper bounds is an [ = the Scottish "ane"] pure act of the mind;
and so it would appear that to punish the body for that which is a
guilt of the soul is as unjust as to punish one relation for another"
(pref. pp. 10-11). He adds that "the Almighty hath left no warrand
upon holy record for persecuting such as dissent from us."
[393] Reason: an Essay, ed. 1690, p. 21. Cp. p. 152.
[394] Id. p. 82. It is noteworthy that Mackenzie puts in a protest
against "implicit Faith and Infallibility, those great tyrants
over Reason" (p. 88). But the essay as a whole is ill-planned and
unimpressive.
[395] Work cited, 2nd ed. pt. ii, pp. 106-15.
[396] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 86-87, 89-90. This explanation
is also given by Bishop Wilkins in his treatise on Natural Religion,
7th ed. p. 354.
[397] Replying to Herbert's De Veritate, which he seems not to have
read before.
[398] Pref. to Obs. upon the United Prov. of the Netherlands, in Works,
ed. 1814, i, 36.
[399] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 87, 94-98, 111, 112.
[400] As to the religious immoralism see Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii,
pt. ii, ch. ii, § 23, and Murdock's notes.
[401] Compare the picture of average Protestant deportment given by
Benjamin Bennet in his Discourses against Popery, 1714, p. 377.
[402] More, Coll. of Philos. Writings, 4th ed. 1712, gen. pref. p. 7.
[403] Compare some of the extracts in Thomas Bennet's Defence of
the Discourse of Schism, etc., 2nd ed. 1704, from the sermons of
R. Gouge (1688). The description of men as "mortal crumbling bits
of dependency, yesterday's start-ups, that come out of the abyss of
nothing, hastening to the bosom of their mother earth" (work cited,
p. 93) is a reminder that the resonant and cadenced rhetoric of
the Brownes and Taylors and Cudworths was an art of the age, at the
command of different orders of propaganda.
[404] Cited by Bonnet, A Defence of the Discourse of Schism, etc.,
as cited, p. 41.
[405] Thus Henry More's biographer, the Rev. Richard Ward, says "the
late Mr. Chiswel told a friend of mine that for twenty years together
after the return of King Charles the Second the Mystery of Godliness,
and Dr. More's other works, ruled all the booksellers in London"
(Life of More, 1710, pp. 162-63). We have seen the nature of some of
More's "other works."
[406] The Reasonableness of Scripture Belief, 1672, Epist. Ded.
[407] Rep. 1675; 2nd ed. 1691; rep. in the Phoenix, vol. ii, 1708;
3rd ed. 1736.
[408] A very hostile account of him is given in Dict. of Nat. Biog. He
was, however, the friend of Cowley, and the "M. Clifford" to whom Sprat
addressed his sketch of Cowley's Life. He was also a foe of Dryden--the
"malicious Matt Clifford" of Dryden's Sessions of the Poets; and he
attacked the poet in Notes on Dryden's Poems (published 1687), and
is supposed to have had a hand in the Rehearsal. He was befriended
by Shaftesbury.
[409] Tract. Theol. Polit. c. 15.
[410] Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ii, 381-82; Granger, Biog. Hist. of
England, 5th ed. v, 293.
[411] Johnson's Life of Dr. Watts, 1785, App. i.
[412] Toulmin, Hist. of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, citing Johnson's
Life of Dr. Watts.
[413] It has been suggested that this was really written by Clifford,
for posthumous publication. The humorous sketch of "His Character"
at the close, suggesting that his vices seem to the writer to have
outweighed his virtues, hints of ironical mystification.
[414] Work cited, pp. 10, 14, 30, 55.
[415] Dr. Urwick, Life of Howe, as cited, p. xxxii.
[416] A Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Law of Nature and
of the Christian Religion, by Samuel Parker, D.D., 1681, pref. The
first part of this treatise is avowedly a popularization of the
argument of Cumberland's Disquisitio de Legibus Naturæ, 1672. Parker
had previously published in Latin a Disiputatio de Deo et Providentia
Divina, in which he raised the question, An Philosophorum ulli,
et quinam Athei fuerunt (1678).
[417] Work cited, 2nd ed. 1682, pp. 32, 38-40, 45-48.
[418] Id. pp. 54-55.
[419] Id. p. 52.
[420] Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 1692, pp. 438-39.
[421] This has been ascribed, without any good ground, to Charles
Blount. It does not seem to me to be in his style.
[422] Premonition to the Candid Reader.
[423] Hist. Nat. vii, 1.
[424] Pamphlet cited, pp. 20, 21.
[425] Id. p. 23.
[426] Concerning whom see Macaulay's History, ch. xix, ed. 1877, ii,
411-12--a very prejudiced account. Blount is there spoken of as "one
of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived," and as having
"stolen" from Milton, because he issued a pamphlet "By Philopatris,"
largely made up from the Areopagitica. Compare Macaulay's treatment of
Locke, who adopted Dudley North's currency scheme (ch. xxi, vol. ii,
p. 547).
[427] Bayle (art. Apollonius, note), who is followed by the French
translator of Philostratus with Blount's notes in 1779 (J. F. Salvemini
de Castillon), says the notes were drawn from the papers of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury; but of this Blount says nothing.
[428] As to these see the Dict. of Nat. Biog. The statements of Anthony
Wood as to the writings of Blount's father, relied on in the author's
Dynamics of Religion, appear to be erroneous. Sir Thomas Pope Blount,
Charles's eldest brother, shows a skeptical turn of mind in his Essays
(3rd ed. 1697, Essay 7). Himself a learned man, he disparages learning
as checking thought; and, professing belief in the longevity of the
patriarchs (p. 187), pronounces popery and pagan religion to be mere
works of priestcraft (Essay 1). He detested theological controversy
and intolerance, and seems to have been a Lockian.
[429] All that is known of this tragedy is that Blount loved his
deceased wife's sister and wished to marry her; but she held it
unlawful, and he was in despair. According to Pope, a sufficiently
untrustworthy authority, he "gave himself a stab in the arm, as
pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died"
(note to Epilogue to the Satires, i, 123). An overstrung nervous
system may be diagnosed from his writing.
[430] Boyle Lectures on Atheism, ed. 1724, p. 4.
[431] Reflexions upon the Books of the Holy Scriptures to establish the
Truth of the Christian Religion, by Peter Allix, D.D., 1688, i, 6-7.
[432] As cited by Leslie, Truth of Christianity Demonstrated, 1711,
pp. 17-21.
[433] Characteristics, ii, 263 (Moralists, pt. ii, § 3). One of the
most dangerous positions from the orthodox point of view would be the
thesis that while religion could do either great good or great harm to
morals, atheism could do neither. (Bk. I, pt. iii, § 1.) Cp. Bacon's
Essay, Of Atheism.
[434] Blount, after assailing in anonymous pamphlets Bohun the
licenser, induced him to license a work entitled King William and Queen
Mary Conquerors, which infuriated the nation. Macaulay calls the device
"a base and wicked scheme." It was almost innocent in comparison
with Blount's promotion of the "Popish plot" mania. See Who Killed
Sir Edmund Godfrey Berry? by Alfred Marks. 1905, pp. 133-35, 150.
[435] See the text in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Penalties upon Opinion,
pp. 19-21. Macaulay does not mention this measure.
[436] The Act had been preceded by a proclamation of the king, dated
Feb. 24. 1697.
[437] As to an earlier monopoly of the London booksellers, see George
Herbert's letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Bacon,
Jan. 29, 1620. In Works of George Herbert, ed. 1841, i. 217-18.
[438] See Locke's notes on the Licensing Act in Lord King's Life of
Locke, 1829, pp. 203-206; Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii. 313-14;
Macaulay's History, ii, 504.
[439] Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, 1759, p. 120; Pünjer, i, 291,
300-301. Browne was even called an atheist. Arpe, Apologia pro Vanino,
1712, p. 27, citing Welschius. Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his introduction
to his ed. of Marlowe (1885, vol. i, p. lviii), remarks that Browne,
who "kept the road" in divinity, "exposed the vulnerable points in
the Scriptural narratives with more acumen and gusto than the whole
army of freethinkers, from Anthony Collins downwards." This is of
course an extravagance, but, as Mr. Bullen remarks in the Dict. of
Nat. Biog. vii, 66, Browne discusses "with evident relish" the
"seeming absurdities in the Scriptural narrative."
[440] Browne's Annotator points to the derivation of his skepticism
from "that excellent French writer Monsieur Mountaign, in whom I
often trace him" (Sayle's ed. 1904, i, p. xviii).
[441] Religio Medici, i, 6.
[442] Id. i, 9.
[443] Id. i, 18.
[444] Religio Medici, i, 20.
[445] Bk. I, ch. x.
[446] Here we have a theorem independently reached later (with the
substitution of Nature for God) by Mary Wollstonecraft and Tennyson
in turn. Browne cites yet another: "that he looks not below the moon,
but hath resigned the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferior
deputations"--a thesis adopted in effect by Cudworth.
[447] By an error of the press, Browne is made in Mr. Sayle's excellent
reprint (i, 108) to begin a sentence in the middle of a clause, with an
odd result:--"I do confess I am an Atheist. I cannot persuade myself
to honour that the world adores." The passage should obviously read:
"to that subterraneous Idol (avarice) and God of the Earth I do
confess I am an Atheist," etc.
[448] Hutchinson, Histor. Essay Conc. Witchcraft, 1718, p. 118;
2nd ed. 1720, p. 151.
[449] Cp. Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy,
ed. 1862, p. 33.
[450] Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 1889, pref. p. vi;
Rev. Dr. Duff, Hist. of Old Test. Criticism, R. P. A. 1910, p. 113.
[451] This appears again, much curtailed and "so altered as to be in
a manner new," in its author's collected Essays on Several Important
Subjects in Religion and Philosophy (1676), under the title Against
Confidence in Philosophy.
[452] See the Humane Nature (1640), ch. iv, §§ 7-9.
[453] Scepsis Scientifica, ch. 23, § 1.
[454] See the passages compared by Lewes, History of Philosophy,
4th ed. ii, 338.
[455] In his Blow at Modern Sadducism (4th ed. 1668), Sadducismus
Triumphatus (1681; 3rd ed. 1689), and A Whip to the Droll, Fidler
to the Atheist (1688--a letter to Henry More, who was zealous on the
same lines). These works seem to have been much more widely circulated
than the Scepsis Scientifica.
[456] Scepsis, ch. 20, § 3.
[457] See Glanvill's reply in a letter to a friend (1665), re-written
as Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty: in A short Reply to the
learned Mr. Thomas White in his collected Essays on Several Important
Subjects, 1676.
[458] See the reply in Plus Ultra: or, the Progress and
Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668,
Epist. Ded. Pref. ch. xviii, and Conclusion. [The re-written treatise,
in the collected Essays, eliminates the controversial matter.]
[459] First printed with Glanvill's Philosophia Pia in 1671. Rep. as
an essay in the collected Essays.
[460] Owen, pref. to Scepsis, pp. xx-xxii.
[461] Owen, pref. to ed. of Scepsis Scientifica, p. ix.
[462] Of whom, however, a high medical authority declares that,
"as a physiologist, he was sunk in realism" (that is, metaphysical
apriorism). Prof. T. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science
and Medieval Thought, 1901, p. 44.
[463] Cp. Whewell, as last cited, pp. 75-83; Hallam, Literature of
Europe, iv, 159-71.
[464] Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay I, ch. i; Hamilton's ed. of
Works, p. 226. Glanvill calls Gassendi "that noble wit." (Scepsis
Scientifica, Owen's ed. p. 151.)
[465] Poet. Works of Milton, 1874, Introd. i, 92 sq.
[466] Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed. p. 66. In the condensed version
of the treatise in Glanvill's collected Essays (1676, p. 20), the
language is to the same effect.
[467] J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of the Religious Life of England,
Martineau's ed. p. 204; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, iii,
152-53.
[468] Cp. Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 347-51; 1-vol. ed. pp. 196-99.
[469] Tayler, Retrospect, pp. 204-205; Wallace, iii, 154-56.
[470] Gangræna, pt. i, p. 38.
[471] Tayler, p. 221. As to Biddle, the chief propagandist of the sect,
see pp. 221-24, and Wallace, Art. 285.
[472] Macaulay, Essay on Milton. Cp. Brown's ed. (Clarendon Press)
of the poems of Milton, ii, 30.
[473] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, ch. v.
[474] Of Education, § 136.
[475] Essay, bk. iv, ch. xix. § 4.
[476] Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, c. 15.
[477] Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.
[478] Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his
Friends, 1708, pp. 302-304.
[479] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, 1876, ii, 34.
[480] The first Letter, written while he was hiding in Holland in 1685,
was in Latin, but was translated into French, Dutch, and English.
[481] Mr. Fox Bourne, in his biography (ii, 41), apologizes for the
lapse, so alien to his own ideals, by the remark that "the atheism
then in vogue was of a very violent and rampant sort." It is to be
feared that this palliation will not hold good--at least, the present
writer has been unable to trace the atheism in question. For "atheism"
we had better read "religion."
[482] Second Vindication of "The Reasonableness of Christianity,"
1697, pref.
[483] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 181.
[484] Son of the Presbyterian author of the famous Gangræna.
[485] Said by Carrol, Dissertation on Mr. Lock's Essay, 1706, cited
by Anthony Collins, Essay Concerning the Use of Reason, 1709, p. 30.
[486] Cited by Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 438.
[487] Whose calibre may be gathered from his egregious doctoral thesis,
Concio ad clerum de dæmonum malorum existentia et natura (1700). After
a list of the deniers of evil spirits, from the Sadducees and
Sallustius to Bekker and Van Dale, he addresses to his "dilectissimi
in Christo fratres" the exordium: "En, Academici, veteres ac hodiernos
Sadducæos! quibuscum tota Atheorum cohors amicissimè congruit; nam
qui divinum numen, iidem ipsi infernales spiritus acriter negant."
[488] Confutation of Warburton (1757) in Extracts from Law's Works,
1768, i, 208-209.
[489] Cp. the Essay, bk. i, ch. iii, § 6, with Law's Case of Reason,
in Extracts, as cited, p. 36.
[490] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 122.
[491] Fox Bourne, ii, 404-405.
[492] An ostensibly orthodox Professor of our own day has written
that Locke's doctrine as to religion and ethics "shows at once the
sincerity of his religious convictions and the inadequate conception
he had formed to himself of the grounds and nature of moral philosophy"
(Fowler, Locke, 1880, p. 76).
[493] Burnet, History of his Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 251. Burnet adds
that Temple "was a corrupter of all that came near him." The 1838
editor protests against the whole attack as the "most unfair and
exaggerated" of Burnet's portraits; and a writer in The Present State
of the Republick of Letters, Jan., 1736, p. 26, carries the defence
to claiming orthodoxy for Temple. But the whole cast of his thought
is deistic. Cp. the Essay upon the Origin and Nature of Government,
and ch. v of the Observations upon the United Provinces (Works,
ed. 1770, i, 29, 36, 170-74).
[494] Cp. Macaulay, History, ch. ii. Student's ed. i, 120.
[495] Compare his Advice to a Daughter, § 1 (in Miscellanies, 1700),
and his Political Thoughts and Reflections: Religion.
[496] See Macaulay, ch. xx. Student's ed. ii, 459.
[497] De Morgan, as cited, p. 107.
[498] See Brewster, ii, 318, 321-22, 323, 331 sq., 342 sq.
[499] Id. p. 327 sq.
[500] Id. p. 115.
[501] Cp. De Morgan, pp. 133-45.
[502] Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley, ed. 1756,
p. 25. Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 97-102.
[503] Brewster, ii, 314.
[504] Id. pp. 315-16.
[505] Id. pp. 342-46.
[506] Brewster, p. 349. See the remaining articles, and App. XXX,
p. 532.
[507] Id. p. 388.
[508] Discourse on Tillotson and Burnet, pp. 38, 40, 74, cited by
Collins, Discourse of Freethinking, 1713, pp. 171-72.
[509] The Brief Notes on the Creed of St. Athanasius (author unknown),
printed by Thomas Firmin. Late in 1693 appeared another antitrinitarian
tract, by William Freke, who was prosecuted, fined £500, and ordered
to make a recantation in the Four Courts of Westminster Hall. The book
was burnt by the hangman. Wallace, Art. 354. There had also been "two
quarto volumes of tracts in support of Unitarianism," published in 1691
(Dr. W. H. Drummond, An Explanation and Defence of the Principles of
Protestant Dissent, 1842, p. 17).
[510] "Locke's ribald schoolfellow of nearly fifty years ago" (Fox
Bourne, ii, 405).
[511] Id. ib.
[512] Tayler, Retrospect, p. 226; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography,
i, 160-69.
[513] Fox Bourne, ii, 405; Wallace, art. 353.
[514] Above, pp. 35-36.
[515] Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, 2nd ed. 1714, p. 398.
[516] "Perhaps at no period was the Unitarian controversy so actively
carried on in England as between 1690 and 1720." History, Opinions,
etc., of the English Presbyterians, 1834, p. 22.
[517] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 113-15--Tayler, Retrospect, p. 227.
[518] As to whom see Tayler, Retrospect, ch. v. § 4. They are spoken
of as "the new sect of Latitude-Men" in 1662; and in 1708 are said
to be "at this day Low Churchmen." See A Brief Account of the New
Sect of Latitude-Men, by "S. P." of Cambridge, 1662, reprinted in The
Phenix, vol. ii, 1708. and pref. to that vol. From "S. P.'s" account
it is clear that they connected with the new scientific movement, and
leant to Cartesianism. As above noted, they included such prelates as
Wilkins and Tillotson. The work of E. A. George, Seventeenth Century
Men of Latitude (1908), deals with Hales, Chillingworth, Whichcote,
H. More, Taylor, Browne, and Baxter.
[519] Toulmin, Histor. View of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, p. 270. A
main ground of the offence taken was a somewhat trivial dialogue in
Burnet's book between Eve and the serpent, indicating the "popular"
character of the tale. This was omitted from a Dutch edition at the
author's request, and from the 3rd ed. 1733 (Toulmin, as cited). It
is given in the partial translation in Blount's Oracles of Reason.
[520] See Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, 1855, ii, 315-16, for a letter
indicating Craig's religious attitude. He contributed to Dr. George
Cheyne's Philosophical Principles of Religion, Natural and Revealed,
1705. (Pref. to pt. i, ed. 1725.)
[521] See the note of Pope and Warburton on the Dunciad, iv, 462.
[522] See arts. in Dict. of Nat. Biog.
[523] Reprinted at Amsterdam, 1712.
[524] Essays as cited, p. 84.
[525] Id. p. 30.
[526] See Christianity not Founded on Argument (by Henry Dodwell,
jr.), 1741, pp. 11, 34. Waterland, as cited by Bishop Hurst, treats
the terms Reasonist and Rationalist as labels or nicknames of those
who untruly profess to reason more scrupulously than other people. The
former term may, however, have been set up as a result of Le Clerc's
rendering of "the Logos," in John i, 1, by "Reason"--an argument to
which Waterland repeatedly refers.
[527] Prof. Strowski, who is concerned to prove that the freethinkers
of the period were mostly men-about-town, claims Patin as a Frondeur
(De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 215). But Patin's attitude in this matter
was determined by his detestation of Mazarin, whom he regarded as an
arch-scoundrel. Naudé's defence of the Massacre is forensic.
[528] Lettres de Gui Patin, No. 188, édit. Reveillé-Parise, 1846,
i, 364.
[529] Cp. Reveillé-Parise, as cited, Notice sur Gui Patin,
pp. xxiii-xxvii, and Bayle, art. Patin.
[530] See the notices of him in Owen's Skeptics of the French
Renaissance; and in Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal, iii, 180, etc.
[531] De la Vertu des Payens, in t. v. of the 12mo ed. of OEuvres,
1669.
[532] Hanotaux, Hist. du Cardinal de Richelieu, 1893, i, pref. p. 7.
[533] Cp. Buckle, ch. viii, 1-vol. ed. pp. 305-10, 325-28.
[534] See the good criticism of M. Hanotaux in Perrens, Les Libertins
en France au xvii. siècle, p. 95 sq.
[535] OEuvres, ed. 1669, v, 4 sq. Bellarmin, as Le Vayer shows, had
similarly explained away Augustine. But the doctrine that heathen
virtue was not true virtue had remained orthodox.
[536] Ed. cited, iv, 125.
[537] Id. pp. 123-24.
[538] Tom. iii, 251.
[539] He wrote very many, the final collection filling three
volumes folio, and fifteen in duodecimo. The Cincq Dialogues faits
à l'imitation des Anciens were pseudonymous, and are not included in
the collected works.
[540] "On le régarde comme le Plutarque de notre siècle" (Perrault,
Les Hommes Illustres du XVIIe Siècle, éd. 1701, ii. 131).
[541] Perrault, ii, 132.
[542] Bayle, Dict. art. La Mothe le Vayer. Cp. introd. to L'Esprit de
la Mothe le Vayer, par M. de M. C. D. S. P. D. L. (i.e. De Montlinot,
chanoine de Saint Pierre de Lille), 1763, pp. xviii, xxi, xxvi.
[543] M. Perrens, who endorses this criticism, does not note that
some passages he quotes from the Dialogues, as to atheism being less
disturbing to States than superstition, are borrowed from Bacon's
essay Of Atheism, of which Le Vayer would read the Latin version.
[544] Perrens, p. 132.
[545] In French, 1631; in Latin, 1656, amended.
[546] Translated into English in 1688, and into French, under the
title Traité du Pyrrhonisme de l'église romaine, by N. Chalaire,
Amsterdam, 1721.
[547] Bouillier, Hist. de la Philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 410 sq., 420
sq.; Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, 5e édit. p. 396; Brunetière,
Études Critiques, 3e série, p. 2; Buckle, 1-vol. ed. p. 338. Bouillier
notes (i, 426) that the femmes savantes ridiculed by Molière are
Cartesians.
[548] Bouillier, i, 456; Lanson, p. 397.
[549] Bouillier, i, 411 sq.
[550] Id. p. 431 sq.
[551] Id. p. 437 sq.
[552] Id. pp. 449-50.
[553] "Il disait très souvent," said Pascal's niece:--"Je ne puis
pardonner à Descartes: il aurait bien voulu, dans toute sa philosophie,
pouvoir se passer de Dieu; mais il n'a pu s'empêcher de lui accorder
une chiquenade, pour mettre le monde en mouvement; après cela il
n'a plus que faire de Dieu." Récit de Marguerite Perier ("De ce
que j'ai ouï dire par M. Pascal, mon oncle"), rep. with Pensées,
ed. 1853. pp. 38-39.
[554] Bouillier, p. 453.
[555] Id. p. 455 sq.
[556] See Bouillier, i, 460 sq.; ii, 373 sq.; and introd. to OEuvres
philos. du Père Buffier, 1846, p. 4; and cp. Rambaud, Hist. de la
civilisation française, 6e édit. ii, 336.
[557] Bouillier, i, 465.
[558] Perrens, pp. 84-85.
[559] Cp. Perrens, pp. 68-69, and refs.
[560] Cp. Strowski, De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 141.
[561] See Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1; and Perrens,
pp. 74-80.
[562] For all that is known of Petit see the Avertissement to
Bibliophile Jacob's edition of Paris ridicule et burlesque au
17ième siècle, and refs. in Perrens, p. 153. After Petit's death,
his friend Du Pelletier defended him as being a deist; but he seems
in his youthful writings to have blasphemed at large, and he had
been guilty of assassinating a young monk. He was burned, however,
for blaspheming the Virgin.
[563] Guizot, Corneille et son temps, ed. 1880, p. 200. The circle of
the Hôtel Rambouillet were especially hostile. Cp. Palissot's note to
Polyeucte, end. On the other hand, Corneille found it prudent to cancel
four skeptical lines which he had originally put in the mouth of the
pagan Severus, the sage of the piece. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 140.
[564] Under whom he studied in his youth with a number of other notably
independent spirits, among them Cyrano de Bergerac. See Sainte-Beuve's
essay on Molière, prefixed to the Hachette edition. Molière held by
Gassendi as against Descartes. Bouillier, i, 542 sq.
[565] Constant Coquelin, art. "Don Juan" in the International Review,
September, 1903, p. 61--an acute and scholarly study.
[566] "Molière is a freethinker to the marrow of his bones" (Perrens,
p. 280). Cp. Lanson, p. 520; Fournier, Études sur Molière, 1885,
pp. 122-23; Soury, Brêv. de l'hist. du matér. p. 384. "Ginguené,"
writes Sainte-Beuve, "a publié une brochure pour montrer Rabelais
précurseur de la révolution française: c'étoit inutile à prouver sur
Molière" (essay cited).
[567] Act II, sc. iv. in OEuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by
Garnier, pp. 426-27.
[568] See Jacob's note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455.
[569] E.g. his Lettre contre un Pédant (No. 13 of the Lettres
Satiriques in ed. cited, p. 181), which, however, appears to have
been mutilated in some editions; as one of the deistic sentences
cited by M. Perrens, p. 247, does not appear in the reprint of
Bibliophile Jacob.
[570] E.g. the Histoire des Oiseaux in the Histoire Comique des états
et empires du Soleil, ed. Jacob (Garnier), p. 278; and the Fragment
de Physique (same vol.).
[571] See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248-50.
[572] Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii.
[573] Perrens, p. 302. Compare Bossuet's earlier sermon for the Second
Sunday of Advent, 1665, cited by Perrens, pp. 253-54, where he speaks
with something like fury of the free discussion around him.
[574] Cousin plausibly argues that Pascal began writing Pensées
under the influence of a practice set up in her circle by Madame de
Sablé. Mme. de Sablé, 5e édit. p. 124 sq.
[575] It is to be remembered that the work as published contained
matter not Pascal's. Cp. Brunetière, Études, iii, 46-47; and the
editions of the Pensées by Faugère and Havet.
[576] As to some of these see Perrens, pp. 158-69. They included the
great Condé and some of the women in his circle; all of them unserious
in their skepticism, and all "converted" when the physique gave the
required cue.
[577] Pensées, ed. Faugère, ii, 168-69. The "abêtira" comes from
Montaigne.
[578] Thus Mr. Owen treats Pascal as a skeptic, which philosophically
he was, insofar as he really philosophized and did not merely catch
at pleas for his emotional beliefs. "Les Pensées de Pascal," writes
Prof. Le Dantec, "sont à mon avis le livre le plus capable de renforcer
l'athéisme chez un athée" (L'Athéisme, 1906, pp. 24-25). They have
in fact always had that effect.
[579] De la Delicatesse, 1671, dial. v, p. 329, etc.
[580] Vinet, Études sur Blaise Pascal, 3e édit. p. 267 sq.
[581] Cp. the Éloge de Pascal by Bordas Demoulin in Didot ed. of
the Lettres, 1854, pp. xxii-xxiii, and cit. from Saint-Beuve. Mark
Pattison, it seems, held that the Jesuits had the best of the
argument. See the Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, 1904,
p. 207. As regards the effect of Jansenism on belief, we find De
Tocqueville pronouncing that "Le Jansenisme ouvrit ... la brêche
par laquelle la philosophie du 18e siècle devait faire irruption"
(Hist. philos. du règne de Louis XV, 1849, i, 2). This could truly
be said of Pascal.
[582] Cp. Voltaire's letter of 1768, cited by Morley, Voltaire,
4th ed. p. 159.
[583] Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762-63, 767.
[584] This was expressly urged against Huet by Arnauld. See the Notice
in Jourdain's ed. of the Logique de Port Royal, 1854, p. xi; Perrens,
Les Libertins, p. 301; and Bouillier Hist. de la philos. cartésienne,
1854, i, 595-96, where are cited the letters of Arnauld (Nos. 830,
834, and 837 in OEuvres Compl. iii, 396, 404, 424) denouncing Huet's
Pyrrhonism as "impious" and perfectly adapted to the purposes of
the freethinkers.
[585] Cp. Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, i (1888),
pp. 64-68.
[586] Huet himself incurred a charge of temerity in his handling of
textual questions. Id. p. 66.
[587] Pattison, Essays, 1889, i. 303-304.
[588] Pattison, as cited.
[589] "After all, a book [the Bible] cannot make a stand against the
wild, living intellect of man." Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1st
ed. p. 382; ed. 1875, p. 245. The same is said by Newman of religion
in general (p. 243).
[590] Pattison disparages it as colourless, a fault he charges on
Jesuit Latin in general. But by most moderns the Latin style of Huet
will be found pure and pleasant.
[591] Pattison, Essays, i, 299. Cp. Bouillier, i, 595.
[592] Fontenelle, Éloge sur Régis; Bouillier, Philos. cartés., i, 507.
[593] Réponse to Huet's Censura philosophiæ cartes., 1691; Bouillier,
i, 515.
[594] Usage de la raison et de la foi, 1704, liv. i, ptie. i, ch. vii;
Bouillier, p. 511.
[595] Bouillier, i, 521-25.
[596] Lettre de 10 août, 1677, No. 591, éd. Nodier.
[597] Bouillier, ii, 10.
[598] Méditations chrétiennes, ix, § 13.
[599] Entretiens métaphysiques, viii.
[600] Id. viii, ix.
[601] Bouillier, ii, 33. So Kuno Fischer: "In brief, Malebranche's
doctrine, rightly understood, is Spinoza's" (Descartes and his School,
Eng. tr. 1890, p. 589. Cp. p. 542).
[602] The work of Arnauld was reprinted in 1724 with a remarkable
Approbation by Clavel, in which he eulogizes the style and the
dialectic of Arnauld, and expresses the hope that the book may "guérir,
s'il se peut, d'une étrange préoccupation et d'une excessive confiance,
ceux qui enseignent ou soutiennent comme evident ce qu'il y a de plus
dangereux dans la nouvelle philosophie non-obstant les défenses faites
par le feu Roi Louis XIV à l'Université d'Angers en l'année 1675 et à
l'Université de Paris aux années 1691 et 1704 de le laisser enseigner
ou soutenir."
[603] Des vrayes et des fausses idées, ch. xxviii.
[604] Recherche de la Vérité, liv. vi, ptie. ii, ch. iii.
[605] This was the main theme of the finished Éloge of Fontenelle, and
was acknowledged by Bayle, Daguesseau, Arnauld, Bossuet, Voltaire, and
Diderot, none of whom agreed with him. Bouillier, ii, 19. Fontenelle
opposed Malebranche's philosophy in his Doutes sur le système physique
des causes occasionelles. Id. p. 575.
[606] Cp. Bouillier, ii, 260-61.
[607] He is not mentioned by Ueberweg, Lange, or Lewes. His importance
in æsthetics, however, is recognized by some moderns, though he is
not named in Mr. Bosanquet's History of Æsthetic.
[608] Traité des premières vérités, 1724, §§ 521-31.
[609] Bouillier, introd. to Buffier's OEuvres philosophiques, 1846,
p. xiii.
[610] Remarques sur les principes de la metaphysique de Locke,
passages cited by Bouillier.
[611] OEuvres, éd. Bouillier, p. 329.
[612] Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés., ii, 391.
[613] Malebranche, Traité de Morale, liv. ii, ch. 10. Cp. Bouillier,
i, 582, 588-90; ii, 23.
[614] Cp. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 67 sq.
[615] Præadamitæ, sive Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 cap. 5,
Epist. D. Pauli ad Romanos, Quibus inducuntur Primi Homines ante
Adamum conditi. The notion of a pre-Adamite human race, as we saw,
had been held by Bruno. (Above, p. 46.)
[616] My copies of the Præadamitæ and Systema bear no place-imprint,
but simply "Anno Salutis MDCLV." Both books seem to have been at once
reprinted in 12mo.
[617] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Peyrere. A correspondent of Bayle's
concludes his account of "le Préadamite" thus: "Le Pereire étoit le
meilleur homme du monde, le plus doux, et qui tranquillement croyoit
fort peu de chose." There is a satirical account of him in the Lettres
de Gui Patin, April 5,1658 (No. 454, ed. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, iii,
83), cited by Bayle.
[618] See the account of his book by Mr. Lecky, Rationalism in
Europe, i, 295-97. Rejecting as he did the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, he ranks with Hobbes and Spinoza among the pioneers of
true criticism. Indeed, as his book seems to have been in MS. in 1645,
he may precede Hobbes. Patin had heard of Peyrère's Præadamitæ as
ready for printing in 1643. Let. 169, ed. cited, i, 297.
[619] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 254-68.
[620] Colerus (i.e., Köhler), Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of
the Opera, pp. xlv-xlvii.
[621] Cited by George Sinclar in pref. to Satan's Invisible World
Discovered, 1685,rep. 1871. I have been unable to meet with a copy
of Mastricht's book.
[622] "Novitates Cartesianæ multis parasangas superunt Arminianas."
[623] Nichols, Works of Arminius, 1824, i, 257 b (paging partly
duplicated).
[624] Cp. Bouillier, i, 293-94.
[625] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of Opera, p. xxv;
Martineau, Study of Spinoza, 1882, pp. 20-22; Pollock, Spinoza,
2nd ed. 1899, pp. 10-14.
[626] As set forth by Joel, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philos., Breslau,
1876. See citations in Land's note to his lecture in Spinoza: Four
Essays, 1882, pp. 51-53.
[627] Land, "In Memory of Spinoza," in Spinoza: Four Essays, pp. 57-58;
Sigwart, as there cited; Pollock, Spinoza, p. 12. Cp. however,
Martineau, p. 101, note.
[628] Renati Des Cartes Princip. Philos. more geometrico demonstratæ,
1663.
[629] Cp. Martineau, pp. 46, 57.
[630] Reprinted in 1674, without place-name, and with the imprint of
an imaginary Hamburg publisher.
[631] Tractatus, c. 15.
[632] Ep. xxiv, to Oldenburg.
[633] Epp. lviii, lx, to Boxel.
[634] Ep. xxiii, to Oldenburg.
[635] Ep. xxiv.
[636] Ep. xxxiv, to W. van Bleyenberg.
[637] Ep. xlvii, to Jellis, Feb. 1671.
[638] Ep. xix, 1675, to Oldenburg.
[639] "Spinozism is atheistic, and has no valid ground for retaining
the word 'God'" (Martineau, p. 349). This estimate is systematically
made good by Prof. E. E. Powell of Miami University in his Spinoza and
Religion (1906). See in particular ch. v. The summing-up is that "the
right name for Spinoza's philosophy is Atheistic Monism" (pp. 339-40).
[640] Ethica, pt. i, App.; pt. ii, end; pt. v, prop. 41, schol. Cp. the
Letters, passim.
[641] The solution is, of course, that the attitude of the will in
the forming of opinion may or may not be passionally perverse, in the
sense of being inconsistent. To show that it is inconsistent may be
a means of enlightening it; and an aspersion to that effect may be
medicinal. Spinoza might truly have said that passional perversity
was at least as common on the orthodox side as on the other. In any
case, he quashes his own criticism of Bacon. Cp. the author's essay
on Spinoza in Pioneer Humanists.
[642] Pt. iv, prop. 68, schol.
[643] Ep. 1; 2 June, 1674.
[644] Colerus, as cited, p. liv. Cuper appears to have been genuinely
anti-Spinozist, while his opponent, Breitburg, or Bredenburg, of
Rotterdam, was a Spinozist. Both were members of the society of
"Collegiants," a body of non-dogmatic Christians, which for a time
was broken up through their dissensions. Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii,
pt. ii, ch. vii, § 2, and note.
[645] Theologisch, Philosophisch, en Historisch process voor God,
tegen allerley Atheisten. By Francis Ridder, Rotterdam, 1678.
[646] L'Impiétié Convaincu, "par Pierre Yvon," Amsterdam, 1681. Really
by the Sieur Noël Aubert de Versé. This appears to have been reprinted
in 1685 under the title L'Impie convaincu, ou Dissertation contre
Spinosa, ou l'on réfute les fondemens de son athéisme.
[647] See Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii, 282-83, as to Locke's
friendly relations with the Remonstrants in 1683-89.
[648] See the summary of his argument by Alexandre Westphal, Les
Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 78 sq.
[649] Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 836; Martineau, pp. 327-28. The first
MS. of the treatise of Spinoza, De Deo et Homine, found and published
in the nineteenth century, bore a note which showed it to have
been used by a sect of Christian Spinozists. See Janet's ed. 1878,
p. 3. They altered the text, putting "faith" for "opinion." Id. p. 53,
notes.
[650] Edwards, Gangræna, as before cited.
[651] Discourse of Freethinking, p. 28.
[652] Colerus, as cited, p. lviii.
[653] First ed. Rotterdam, 2 vols. folio, 1696.
[654] Albert Cazes, Pierre Bayle, sa vie, ses idées, son influence,
son oeuvre, 1905, pp. 6, 7.
[655] A movement of skepticism had probably been first set up in
the young Bayle by Montaigne, who was one of his favourite authors
before his conversion (Cazes, p. 5). Montaigne, it will be remembered,
had been a fanatic in his youth. Thus three typical skeptics of the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries had known what it
was to be Catholic believers.
[656] Cp. the essay on The Skepticism of Bayle in Sir J. F. Stephen's
Horæ Sabbaticæ, vol. iii, and the remarks of Perrens, Les Libertins,
pp. 331-37.
[657] Éloge de M. le Cardinal Polignac prefixed to Bougainville's
translation, L'Anti-Lucrèce, 1767, i, 141. Bayle's quoted words are:
"Oui, monsieur, je suis bon Protestant, et dans toute la force du mot;
car au fond de mon âme je proteste contre tout ce qui se dit et tout
ce qui se fait."
[658] Cp. the testimony of Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la liberté
de conscience en France, 1900, p. 55. Besides the writings above
cited, note, in the Dictionnaire, art. Mahomet, § ix; art. Conecte;
art. Simonide, notes H and G; art. Sponde, note C.
[659] Commentaire philosophique sur la parabole: Contrains-les
d'entrer, 2e ptie, vi. Cp. the Critique générale de l'histoire du
Calvinisme du Père Maimbourg, passim.
[660] See pref. to Eng. tr. of Hotman's Franco-Gallia, 1711.
[661] Rep. at Amsterdam, 1788, under the title, Voeux d'un
Patriote. Jurieu's authorship is not certain. Cp. Ch. Nodier, Mélanges
tirés d'une petite bibliothèque, 1829, p. 357. But it is more likely
than the alternative ascription to Le Vassor. The book made such
a sensation that the police of Louis XIV destroyed every copy they
could find; and in 1772 the Chancelier Maupeou was said to have paid
500 livres for a copy at auction over the Duc d'Orléans.
[662] Ed. 1766, p. 7.
[663] The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus had been translated into
French in 1678 by Saint-Glain, a Protestant, who gave it no fewer
than three other titles in succession to evade prosecution. (Note
to Colerus in Gfrörer's ed. of Spinoza, p. xlix.) In addition to
the work of Aubert de Versé, above mentioned, replies were published
by Simon, De la Motte (minister of the Savoy Chapel, London), Lami,
a Benedictine, and others. Their spirit may be divined from Lami's
title, Nouvel athéisme renversé, 1706.
[664] Tom. I. § ii, ch. ix (ed. 1864, i, 134. 177).
[665] The destruction of Protestant liberties was not the work of
the single Act of Revocation. It had begun in detail as early as
1663. From the withholding of court favour it proceeded to subsidies
for conversions, and thence to a graduated series of invasions of
Protestant rights, so that the formal Revocation was only the violent
consummation of a process. See the recital in Bonet-Maury, Histoire
de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, pp. 46-52.
[666] As to the loss to French industry see Bonet-Maury, as cited,
p. 59, and refs.
[667] See Duruy, Hist. de la France, ii, 253; Bonet-Maury, as cited,
pp. 53-66.
[668] As to whose attitude at this crisis see O. Douen, L'Intolérance
de Fénelon, 1880.
[669] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 627.
[670] Id ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 468.
[671] Not printed till 1743, in the Nouvelles libertés de penser; and
still read in MS. by Grimm in 1754. Fontenelle was also credited with
a heretical letter on the resurrection, and an essay on the Infinite,
pointing to disbelief. It should be noted, however, that he stands
for deism in his essay, De l'existence de Dieu, which is a guarded
application of the design argument against what was then assumed to
be the only alternative--the "fortuitous concourse of atoms."
[672] But Voltaire and he were not at one. He is the "nain de Saturne"
in Micromégas.
[673] B. 1613; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no
great debauchee.
[674] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 172.
[675] Cp. Gidel, Étude prefixed to OEuvres Choisies de Saint-Evremond,
ed. Garnier, pp. 64-69.
[676] Caractères (1687), ch. xvi: Les Esprits Forts.
[677] "Is embarrassed" in the first edition.
[678] Des ouvrages de l'esprit, near end. § 65 in ed. Walckenaer,
p. 176.
[679] M. Le Vassor, De la véritable religion, 1688, préf. Le Vassor
speaks in the same preface of "this multitude of libertins and of
unbelievers which now terrifies us." His book seeks to vindicate
the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, inspiration, prophecies,
and miracles, against Spinoza, Le Clerc, and others.
[680] Cp. Huet, Huetiana, § 1.
[681] The question is discussed in the author's Buckle and his Critics,
pp. 324-42, and ed. of Buckle's Introduction. Buckle's view, however,
was held by Huet, Huetiana, § 73.
[682] Cp. Perrens, pp. 310-14.
[683] Letter of the Duchesse d'Orléans, cited by Rocquain, L'Esprit
révolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, p. 3, note.
[684] As Voltaire noted, Toland was persecuted in Ireland for his
circumspect and cautious first book, and left unmolested in England
when he grew much more aggressive.
[685] First ed. anonymous. Second ed., of same year, gives author's
name. Another ed. in 1702.
[686] See Dynamics of Religion, p. 129.
[687] Pref. to 2nd ed. pp. vi, viii, xxiv, xxvi.
[688] As late as 1701 a vote for its prosecution was passed in the
Lower House of Convocation. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 180.
[689] Molyneux, in Familiar Letters of Locke, etc. p. 228.
[690] No credit for this is given in Sir Leslie Stephen's notice of
Toland in English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 101-12. Compare
the estimate of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 272-76 (Eng. tr. i,
324-30). Lange perhaps idealizes his subject somewhat.
[691] In two letters published along with the Letters to Serena, 1704.
[692] Letters to Serena, etc. 1704, pref.
[693] De Principiis atque Originibus (Routledge's 1-vol. ed. pp. 651,
667).
[694] Letters to Serena, pp. 19, 67.