in the writings of Charles Blount,(381) who availed himself of the
temporary interval in which the press became free, owing to the omission
to renew the act which submitted works to the censor,(382) to publish with
notes a translation of Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, with
the same purpose as Hierocles in the fourth century, to disguise the
peculiar character of Christ’s miracles, and draw an invidious parallel
between the Pythagorean philosopher and the divine founder of
Christianity. Subsequently to Blount’s death, his friend Gildon, who lived
to retract his opinions,(383) published a collection of treatises,
entitled “The Oracles of Reason;” a work which may be considered as
expressing the opinions of a little band of unbelievers, of whom Blount
was one.(384) The mention of two of the papers in it will explain the
views intended. One is on natural religion,(385) in which the ideas of
Herbert are reproduced, and exception is taken to revelation as partial
and not self-evident, and therefore uncertain; and the objections to the
sufficiency and potency of natural religion are refuted. A second is on
the deist’s religion,(386) in which the deist creed is explained to be the
belief in a God who is to be worshipped, not by sacrifice, nor by
mediation, but by piety. Punishment in a future world is denied as
incompatible with Divine benevolence; and the safety of the deist creed is
supported by showing that a moral life is superior to belief in mysteries.
It will be seen from these remarks that Blount hardly makes an advance on
his deist predecessor Herbert, save that his view is more positive, and
his antipathy to Christian worship less concealed.
At the close of the seventeenth century two new influences were in
operation, the one political, the other intellectual; viz., the civil and
religious liberty which ensued on the revolution, generating free
speculation, and compelling each man to form his political creed; and the
reconsideration of the first principles of knowledge(387) implied in the
philosophy of Locke.(388)
The effect of these new influences on religion is very marked.
Controversies no longer turned upon questions in which the appeal lay to
the common ground of scripture, as in the contest which Churchmen had
conducted against Puritans or Romanists, but extended to the examination
of the first principles of ethics or politics; such as the foundation of
government, whether it depends on hereditary right or on compact, as in
the controversy against the nonjurors(389) before the close of the
century; or the spiritual rights of the church, and the right of every man
to religious liberty and private judgment in religion, as in the
Convocation and Bangorian(390) controversy, which marked the early years
of the next century. The very diminution also of quotations of authorities
is a pertinent illustration that the appeal was now being made to deeper
standards.
The philosophy of Locke, which attempted to lay a basis for knowledge in
psychology, coincided with, where it did not create, this general attempt
to appeal on every subject to ultimate principles of reason. This tone in
truth marked the age, and acting in every region of thought, affected
alike the orthodox and the unbelieving. Accordingly, as we pass away from
the speculations which mark the early period of deism to those which
belong to its maturity, we find that the attack on Christianity is less
suggested by political considerations, and more entirely depends on an
appeal to reason, intellectual or moral.
The principal phases belonging to this period of the maturity of deism,
which we shall now successively encounter, are four:
(1) An examination of the first principles of religion, on its dogmatic or
theological side, with a view of asserting the supremacy of reason to
interpret all mysteries, and defending absolute toleration of free
thought. This tendency is seen in Toland and Collins,
(2) An examination of religion on the ethical side occurs, with the object
of asserting the supremacy of natural ethics as a rule of conduct, and
denying the motive of reward or punishment implied in dependent morality.
This is seen in Lord Shaftesbury.
After the attack has thus been opened against revealed religion, by
creating prepossessions against mystery in dogma and the existence of
religious motives in morals, there follows a direct approach against the
outworks of it by an attack on the evidences,
(3) In an examination, critical rather than philosophical, of the
prophecies of the Old Testament by Collins, and of the miracles of the New
by Woolston.
The deist next approaches as it were within the fortress, and advances
against the doctrines of revealed religion; and we find accordingly,
(4) A general view of natural religion, in which the various
differences,—speculative, moral, and critical, are combined, as in Tindal;
or with a more especial reference to the Old Testament as in Morgan, and
the New as in Chubb; the aim of each being constructive as well as
destructive; to point out the absolute sufficiency of natural religion and
of the moral sense as religious guides, and the impossibility of accepting
as obligatory that which adds to or contradicts them; and accordingly they
point out the elements in Christianity which they consider can be retained
as absolutely true.
The first two of these attacks occur in the first two decades of the
century: the two latter in the period from 1720 to 1740, when the public
mind not being diverted by foreign war or internal sedition, and other
controversies being closed, the deist controversy was at its height. After
examining these, other tendencies will meet us, when we trace the decline
of deism in Bolingbroke and Hume.
The first of these tendencies just noticed is seen in Toland,(391) who
directed his speculations to the ground principles of revealed
theology,(392) and slightly to the history of the Canon.(393)
Possessing much originality and learning, at an early age, in 1696, just a
year after the censorship had been finally removed and the press of
England made permanently free, he published his noted work, “Christianity
not Mysterious,” to show that “there is nothing in the Gospels contrary to
reason, nor above it; and that no Christian doctrine can properly be
called a mystery.” The speculations of all doubters first originate in
some crisis of personal or mental history. In Toland’s case it was
probably the change of religion from catholic to protestant which first
unsettled his religious faith. The work just named, in which he expressed
the attempt to bring religious truth under the grasp of the intellect, was
one of some merit as a literary production, and written with that
clearness which the influence of the French models studied by Dryden had
introduced into English literature. Yet it is difficult to understand why
a single work of an unknown student should attract so much public notice.
The grand jury of Middlesex was induced at once to present it as a
nuisance, and the example was followed by the grand jury of Dublin.(394)
Two years after its publication the Irish parliament deliberated upon it,
and, refusing to hear Toland in defence, passed sentence that the book
should be burnt, and its author imprisoned—a fate which he escaped only by
flight.(395) And in 1701, no less than five years after the publication of
his work, a vote for its prosecution passed the lower house of the English
convocation, which the legal advisers however denied to be within the
power of that assembly.(396) Toland spent most of the remainder of his
life abroad, and showed in his subsequent works a character growing
gradually worse, lashed into bitterer opposition by the censure which he
had received.
His views, developed in his work, _Christianity not Mysterious_, require
fuller statement. He opens with an explanation of the province of
reason,(397) the means of information, external and internal, which man
possesses; a part of his work which is valuable to the philosopher, who
watches the influence exercised at that time by psychological
speculations; and he proposes to show that the doctrines of the gospel are
neither contrary to reason nor above it. He exhibits the impossibility of
believing statements which positively contradict reason;(398) and contends
that if they do not really contradict it, but are above it, we can form no
intelligible idea of them. He tries further to show that reason is neither
so weak nor so corrupt as to be an unsafe guide,(399) and that scripture
itself only professes to teach what is intelligible.(400) Having shown
that the doctrines of the gospel are not contrary to reason, he next
proceeds to show that they do not profess to be above it; that they lay
claim to no mystery,(401) for that mystery in heathen writers and the New
Testament does not mean something inconceivable, but something
intelligible in itself, which nevertheless was so veiled “that it needed
revealing;”(402) and that the introduction of the popular idea of mystery
was attributable to the analogy of pagan writers, and did not occur till
several centuries after the foundation of Christianity.(403)
It is possible that the book may have been a mere paradox,(404) the effort
of a young mind going through the process through which all young men of
thought pass, and especially in an age like Toland’s, of trying to
understand and explain what they believe. But students who are thus
forming their views ought to pause before they scatter their half-formed
opinions in the world. In Toland’s case public alarm judged the book to
have a most dangerous tendency; and he was an outcast from the sympathy of
pious men for ever. If he was misunderstood, as he contended, his fate is
a warning against the premature publication of a paradox. The question
accordingly which Toland thus suggested for discussion was the prerogative
of reason to pronounce on the contents of a revelation, the problem
whether the mind must comprehend as well as apprehend all that it
believes. The other question which he opened was the validity of the
canon.(405) Here too he claimed that his views were misunderstood. It was
supposed that the mention made by him concerning spurious works attributed
to the apostles, referred to the canonical gospels. Accordingly, if in his
former work he has been considered to have anticipated the older school of
German rationalists, in the present he has been thought to have touched
upon the questions discussed in the modern critical school. The
controversy which ensued was the means of opening up the discussion of the
great question which relates to the New Testament canon, viz., whether our
present New Testament books are a selection made in the second century
from among early Christian writings, or whether the church from the first
regarded them as distinct in kind and not merely in degree from other
literature; whether the early respect shown for scripture was reverence
directed to apostolic men, or to their inspired teaching.
If Toland is the type of free speculation applied to the theoretical side
of religion, lord Shaftesbury(406) is an example of speculations on the
practical side of it, and on the questions which come under the province
of ethics.
The rise of an ethical school parallel with discussions on the philosophy
of religion is one of the most interesting features of that age, whether
it be regarded in a scientific or a religious point of view. The age was
one in which the reflective reason or understanding was busy in exploring
the origin of all knowledge. The department of moral and spiritual truth
could not long remain unexamined. In an earlier age the sources of our
knowledge concerning the divine attributes and human duty had been
supposed to depend upon revelation; but now the disposition to criticise
every subject by the light of common sense claimed that philosophy must
investigate them. Reason was to work out the system of natural theology,
and ethics the problem of the nature and ground of virtue. Hence it will
be obvious how close a relation existed between such speculations and
theology. The Christian apologist availed himself of the new ethical
inquiries as a corroboration of revealed religion; the Deist, as a
substitute for it.
Lord Shaftesbury is usually adduced as a deist of this class. He has not
indeed expressed it definitely in his writings; and an ethical system
which formed the basis of Butler’s sermons,(407) cannot necessarily be
charged with deism. But the charge can be substantiated from his memoirs;
and his writings manifest that hatred of clerical influence, the wish to
subject the church to the state, which will by some persons be regarded as
unbelief, but which was not perhaps altogether surprising in an age when
the clergy were almost universally alien to the revolution, and the
Convocation manifested opposition to political and religious liberty. The
ground on which the charge is generally founded is, that Shaftesbury has
cast reflections on the doctrine of future rewards and punishments.(408)
It is to be feared that sceptical insinuations were intended; yet his
remarks admit of some explanation as a result of his particular point of
view.
The ethical schools of his day were already two; the one advocating
dependent, the other independent morality; the one grounding obligation on
self-love, the other on natural right. Shaftesbury, though a disciple of
Locke, belonged to the latter school. His works mark the moment when this
ethical school was passing from the objective inquiry into the
immutability of right, as seen in Clarke, to the subjective inquiry into
the reflex sense which constitutes our obligation to do what is right, as
seen in Butler. The depreciation accordingly of the motives of reward, as
distinct from the supreme motive of loving duty for duty’s sake, was to be
expected in his system. The motives of reward and punishment which form
the sanctions of religious obligation, would seem to him to be analogous
to the employment of expedience as the foundation of moral. His statements
however appear to be an exaggeration even in an ethical view, as well as
calculated to insinuate erroneous ideas in a theological. It is possible
that his motive was not polemical; but the unchristian character of his
tone renders the hypothesis improbable, and explains the reason why his
essays called the “Characteristics” have been ranked among deist writings.
We have seen, in Toland and Shaftesbury respectively, a discussion on the
metaphysical and ethical basis of religion, together with a few traces of
the rise of criticism in reference to the canon. In their successors the
inquiry becomes less psychological and more critical, and therefore less
elevated by the abstract nature of the speculative above the struggle of
theological polemic.
Two branches of criticism were at this time commencing, which were
destined to suggest difficulties alike to the deist and to the Christian;
the one the discovery of variety of readings in the sacred text, the other
the doubts thrown upon the genuineness and authenticity of the books. It
was the large collection of various readings on the New Testament, first
begun by Mills,(409) which gave the impulse to the former, which has been
called the lower criticism, and which so distressed the mind of Bengel,
that he spent his life in allaying the alarm of those who like himself
felt alarmed at its effect on the question of verbal inspiration. And it
was the disproof of the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris by the
learned Bentley,(410) which first threw solid doubts on the value
attaching to traditional titles of books, and showed the irrefragable
character belonging to an appeal to internal evidence; a department which
has been called the higher criticism. This latter branch, so abundantly
developed in German speculation, is only hinted at by the English deists
of the eighteenth age, as by Hobbes and Spinoza earlier; but we shall soon
see the use which Collins and others made of the former inquiry.
The form, though not the spirit, of Toland and Shaftesbury, might by a
latitude of interpretation be made compatible with Christianity; but
Collins and Woolston, of whom we next treat, mark a much further advance
of free thought. They attack what has always been justly considered to be
an integral portion of Christianity, the relation which it bore to Jewish
prophecy, and the miracles which were wrought for its establishment.
Collins(411) must be studied under more than one aspect. He not only wrote
on the logic of religion, the method of inquiry in theology, but also on
the subject of scripture interpretation, and the reality of prophecy.(412)
It was in 1713 that he published “A discourse of free-thinking, occasioned
by the rise and growth of a sect called Free-thinkers.” This is one of the
first times that we find this new name used for Deists; and the object of
his book is to defend the propriety of unlimited liberty of inquiry, a
proposition by which he designed the unrestrained liberty of belief, not
in a political point of view merely, but in a moral. His argument was not
unlike more modern ones,(413) which show that civilization and improvement
have been caused by free-thinking; and he adduces the growing disbelief in
the reality of witchcraft, in proof of the way in which the rejection of
dogma had ameliorated political science, which until recently had visited
the supposed crime with the punishment of death.(414) After thus showing
the duty of free-thinking,(415) he argued that the sphere of it ought to
comprehend points on which the right is usually denied; such as the divine
attributes, the truth of the scriptures, and their meaning;(416)
establishing this by laying a number of charges against priests, to show
that their dogmatic teaching cannot be trusted, unchallenged by free
inquiry, on account of their discrepant(417) opinions, their rendering the
canon and text of scripture uncertain,(418) and their pious frauds;(419)
concluding by refuting objections against freethinking derived from its
supposed want of safety.(420)
The book met with intelligent and able opponents; the critical part,
containing the allegations of uncertainty in the text of scripture, and
the charge of altering it, being effectually refuted by Bentley. The work
is an exaggeration of a great truth. Undoubtedly free inquiry is right in
all departments, but it must be restrained within the proper limits which
the particular subject-matter admits of;—limits which are determined
partly by the nature of the subject studied, partly by the laws of the
thinking mind.
Eleven years afterwards, in 1724, Collins published his “Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian religion.” This work is chiefly
critical. It does not merely contain the incipient doubts on the variety
of readings, and the uncertainty of books, but spreads over several
provinces of theological inquiry. Under the pretence of establishing
Christianity on a more solid foundation, the author argues that our
Saviour and his apostles made the whole proof of Christianity to rest
solely on the prophecies of the Old Testament;(421) that if these proofs
are valid, Christianity is established; if invalid, it is false.(422)
Accordingly he examines several of the prophecies cited from the Old
Testament in the New in favour of the Messiahship of Christ, with a view
of showing that they are only allegorical or fanciful proofs,
accommodations of the meaning of the prophecies; and anticipates the
objections which could be stated to his views.(423) He asserts that the
expectation of a Messiah among(424) the Jews arose only a short time
before Christ’s coming;(425) and that the apostles put a new
interpretation on the Hebrew books, which was contrary to the sense
accepted by the Jewish nation; that Christianity is not revealed in the
Old Testament literally, but mystically and allegorically, and may
therefore be considered as mystical Judaism. His inference is accordingly
stated as an argument in favour of the figurative or mystical
interpretation of scripture; but we can hardly doubt that his real object
was an ironical one, to exhibit Christianity as resting on apostolic
misinterpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to create the impression
that it was a mere Jewish sect of men deceived by fanciful
interpretations.
The work produced considerable alarm; more from the solemn interest and
sacredness of the inquiries which it opened, than from any danger arising
from excellence in its form, or ability in the mode of putting. It
anticipated subsequent speculations,(426) by regarding Christianity as
true ideally, not historically, and by insinuating the incorrectness of
the apostolic adoption of the mystical system of interpreting the ancient
scripture.
A writer came forward as moderator(427) between Collins and his opponents,
who himself afterwards became still more noted, by directing an attack on
miracles, similar to that of Collins on prophecy;—the unhappy
Woolston.(428) A fellow of a college(429) at Cambridge, in holy orders, he
was for many years a diligent student of the fathers, and imbibed from
them an extravagant attachment to the allegorical sense of scripture.
Finding that his views met with no support in that reasoning age, he broke
out into unmeasured insult and contempt against his brother clergy, as
slaves to the letter of scripture.(430) Deprived of his fellowship,(431)
and distracted by penury, he extended his hatred from the ministers to the
religion which they ministered. And when, in reply to Collins’s assertion,
that Christianity reposed solely on prophecy, the Christian apologists
fell back on miracles, he wrote in 1727 and the two following years his
celebrated _Discourses on the Miracles_. (22) They were published as
pamphlets; in each one of which he examined a few of the miracles of
Christ, trying to show such inconsistencies as to make it appear that they
must be regarded as untrustworthy if taken literally; and hence he
advocated a figurative interpretation of them; asserting that the history
of the life of Jesus is an emblematical representation of his spiritual
life in the soul of man.(432) The gospels thus become a system of mystical
theology, instead of a literal history. In defence of this method he
claimed the example of the ancient church,(433) ignoring the fact that the
fathers admitted a literal as well as a figurative meaning. Whether he
really retained towards the close of his life the spiritual
interpretation,(434) or merely used it as an excuse for a more secure
advance to the assault of the historic reality of scripture, is very
uncertain.
The letters were written with a coarseness and irreverence so singular,
even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be
attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had
been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens.
Occasionally, when wishing to utter grosser blasphemies than were
permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed Christian stand-point,
he introduced a Jewish rabbi, as Celsus had formerly done, and put the
coarser calumnies into his mouth,(435) as difficulties to which no reply
could be furnished except by figurative interpretation. The humour which
marked these pamphlets was so great, that the sale of them was immense.
Voltaire, who was in England at the time, and perhaps imbibed thence part
of his own opinions, states the immediate sale to have exceeded thirty
thousand copies;(436) and Swift describes them as the food of every
politician.(437) The excitement was so great, that Gibson, then bishop of
London, thought it necessary to direct five pastorals to his diocese in
reference to them,(438) and, not content with this, caused Woolston to be
prosecuted; and the unhappy man, not able to pay the fine in which he was
condemned, continued in prison till his death.(439)