fact which contradicts a law of nature; the narrower induction cannot
disprove the wider. The reasoning has been used in subsequent
controversy(482) with only a slight increase of force, or alteration of
statement. The great and undeniable discoveries of astronomy had convinced
men in the age of Hume of the existence of an order of nature; and modern
discovery has not increased the proof of this in kind, though it has
heightened it in degree, by showing that as knowledge spreads the range of
the operation of fixed law is seen to extend more widely; and apparent
exceptions are found to be due to our ignorance of the presence of a law,
not to its absence. The statement of the difficulty would accordingly now
be altered by the introduction of a slight modification. Instead of urging
that testimony cannot prove the historic reality of the fact which we call
a miracle, the assertion would be made that it can only attest the
existence of it as a wonder, and is unable to prove that it is anything
but an accidental result of an unknown cause. A miracle differs from a
wonder, in that it is an effect wrought by the direct interposition of the
Creator and Governor of nature, for the purpose of revealing a message or
attesting a revelation. That testimony can substantiate wonders, but not
distinguish the miracle from the wonder, is the modern form of the
difficulty.
The connexion of Hume’s view with his metaphysical principles will be
evident. If nature be known only through the senses, cause is only the
material antecedent visible to the senses. Nature is not seen to be the
sphere of the operation of God’s regular will; and the sole proof of
interference with nature must be a balancing of inductions. It will be
clear also that the true method of replying to Hume has been rightly
perceived by those who consider that the difficulty must be met by
philosophy, and not by history.
Suppose the historic evidence sufficient to attest the wonder, it does not
prove that the wonder is a miracle. The presumption in favour of this may
be indefinitely increased by the peculiarity of the circumstances, which
frequently forbid the idea of a mere marvel; but the real proof must
depend upon the previous conception, which we bring to bear upon the
question, in respect to the being and attributes of God, and His relation
to nature. The antecedent probability converts the wonder into a miracle.
It acts in two ways. It obliterates the cold materialistic view of the
regularity of nature which regards material laws to be unalterable, and
the world to be a machine; and it adds logical force to the weaker
induction, so as to allow it to outweigh the stronger. No testimony can
substantiate the interference with a law of nature, unless we first
believe on independent grounds that there is a God who has the power and
will to interfere.(483) Philosophy must accordingly establish the
antecedent possibility of miracles; the attribute of power in God to
effect the interruption, and of love in God to prompt him to do it. The
condition therefore of attaining this conception must be by holding to a
monotheistic conception of God as a being possessing a personal will, and
regarding mind and will as the rule by which to interpret nature and
law,(484) and not conversely measuring the mental by the material. In this
manner law becomes the operation of God’s personal fixed will, and miracle
the interposition of his personal free will.
It will be perceived that in distinguishing miracle from wonder, we also
take into account the final cause of the alleged interposition as a reason
weighty enough to call forth divine interposition. As soon as we introduce
the idea of a personal intelligent God, we regard Him as acting with a
motive, and measure His purposes, partly by analogy to ourselves, partly
by the moral circumstances which demand the interposition.(485)
These remarks may furnish the solution of the puzzle whether the miracle
proves the doctrine, or the doctrine the miracle.(486) Undoubtedly the
miracle proves the particular doctrine which it claims to attest; but a
doctrine of some kind, though not the special one in point, some moral
conception of the Almighty’s nature and character, must precede, in order
to give the criterion for distinguishing miracle from mere wonder.
Miracles prove the doctrine which they are intended to attest; but
doctrines of a still more general character are required to prove the
miracle.
This examination of the doctrine of Hume will not only illustrate our main
position, of the influence of intellectual and philosophical causes in
generating doubt, or at least in directing free thought into a sceptical
tendency, but will illustrate the application made of that special
department of metaphysics which relates to the test of truth, to discredit
the literary proof of revelation as an historic system.
We have now sketched the natural history of deism, by showing that in this
as in former periods the forms which free thought assumed were determined
by the philosophy, and, in a slighter degree, by the critical knowledge of
the age.
The inquiry into method in the seventeenth century had led men to break
with authority, and rebuild from its foundations the temple of truth.
Locke, imbibing this spirit, had gauged anew the human understanding, and
had sought a new origin for its knowledge, and given expression to the
appeal to the reasoning powers, which marked the age. Political
circumstances had not only generated free inquiry, but had required each
man to form his political creed. In all departments reason was appealed
to. Even the province of the imagination was invaded by it, and perfection
of form preferred to freshness of conception in art and poetry. The doubt
of the age reflected the same spirit. Whether its advocates belonged to
the school of Descartes or of Locke, both alike examined religion by the
standard of psychology and ethics. That which was to be believed was to be
comprehended as well as apprehended. Yet the appeal was not made to reason
in its highest form; and, with a show of depth, philosophy nevertheless
failed to exhibit the deepest analysis.
We have watched the exhibition of the successive phases of the attack, and
have seen reason, first examining the method of theology, protesting
against mystery in doctrine or morals; next criticising the historic
reality of the evidence offered for its doctrines; then denying the moral
utility of revelation, or attacking the doctrines and internal truths;
lastly denying the validity of testimony for the supernatural.
In the later steps the influence of the French school of speculation is
already observable, mingling itself with English deism. Consequently the
subsequent traces of unbelief in England must be deferred till the nature
of this movement has been explained.
Deism stands contrasted with the unbelief of other times by certain
peculiarities. In its coarse spirit of bitter hostility, and want of real
insight into the excellence of the system which it opposed, it recalls in
some respects the attack of the ancient heathen Celsus; and the
difficulties propounded are frequently not dissimilar to those stated by
him, though resulting from a different philosophical school. The tenacious
grasp which it maintained of the doctrine of the unity of God would cause
it to bear a closer resemblance to the system of Julian, if the deists had
not lacked the literary tastes which strengthened his love for heathenism.
The monotheism constitutes also a line of demarcation between deism and
more modern forms of unbelief. It restrained the deists from falling into
the forms of subtle pantheism previously noticed, and the atheism which
will hereafter meet us. The character of their doubts too, selected from
patent facts of mind and heart, which appealed to common sense, and were
not taken from a minute literary criticism, which removes doubt from the
sphere of the ordinary understanding into the world of literature,
separates them from more modern critical unbelief.
Standing thus apart, characterised by intense attachment to monotheism,
and placing its foundation in the great facts of nature, deism errs by
defect rather than excess; in that which it denies, not in that which it
asserts. It is a system of naturalism or rationalism; the interpretation
which reason, without attaining the deepest analysis, offers of the scheme
of the world, natural and moral. Its only parallel is the particular
species of German thought derived from it which existed at the close of
the last century, and sought like it to reduce revealed religion to
natural.(487)
Whether emotional causes, personal moral faults coincided with these
intellectual causes, and were the obstacle which prevented the attainment
of a deeper insight into the mysteries of revelation, and made them to
halt in the mysteries of nature, ought to be taken into account in forming
a judgment on the concrete cases, but does not so properly belong to the
general consideration in which we are now engaged, of tracing the types of
deist thought. Some of the deists were very moral men, a few immoral; but
the truth or untruth of opinions may be studied apart from the character
of the persons who maintain them.
The movement, if viewed as a whole, is obsolete. If the same doubts are
now repeated, they do not recur in the same form, but are connected with
new forms of philosophy, and altered by contact with more recent
criticism. In the present day sceptics would believe less than the deists,
or believe more, both in philosophy and in criticism. In philosophy, the
fact that the same difficulties occur in natural religion as well as in
revealed, would now throw them back from monotheism into atheism or
pantheism; while the mysteries of revelation, which by a rough criticism
were then denied, would be now conceded and explained away as
psychological peculiarities of races or individuals. In criticism, the
delicate examination of the sacred literature would now prevent both the
revival of the cold unimaginative want of appreciation of its extreme
literary beauty, and the hasty imputation of the charge of literary
forgery against the authors of the documents. In the deist controversy the
whole question turned upon the differences and respective degrees of
obligation of natural and revealed religion, moral and positive duties;
the deist conceding the one, denying the other.
The permanent contribution to thought made by the controversy consisted in
turning attention from abstract theology to psychological, from
metaphysical disquisitions on the nature of God to ethical consideration
of the moral scheme of redemption for man. Theology came forth from the
conflict, reconsidered from the psychological point of view, and
readjusted to meet the doubts which the new form of philosophy—psychology
and ethics—might suggest.
The attack of revealed religion by reason awoke the defence; and no period
in church history is so remarkable for works on the Christian
evidences,—grand monuments of mind and industry. The works of defenders
are marked by the adoption of the same basis of reason as their opponents;
and hence the topics which they illustrate have a permanent philosophical
value, though their special utility as arguments be lessened by the
alteration in the point of view now assumed by free thought.
The one writer whose reputation stands out preeminently above the other
apologists is bishop Butler.(488) His praise is in all the churches.
Though the force of a few illustrations in his great work may perhaps have
been slightly weakened by the modern progress of physical science,(489)
and though objections have been taken on the ground that the solutions are
not ultimate,(490) mere _media axiomata_; yet the work, if regarded as
adapted to those who start from a monotheistic position, possesses a
permanent power of attractiveness which can only be explained by its
grandeur as a work of philosophy, as well as its mere potency as an
argument. The width and fulness of knowledge displayed in the former
respect, together with the singular candour and dignified forbearance of
its tone, go far to explain the secret of its mighty influence. When
viewed in reference to the deist writings against which it was designed,
or the works of contemporary apologists, Butler’s carefulness in study is
manifest. Though we conjectured that Tindal’s work(491) was the one to
which he intended chiefly to reply, yet not one difficulty in the
philosophy, hardly one in the critical attacks made by the various deists,
is omitted; and the best arguments of the various apologists are used. But
both the one and the other are so assimilated by his own mind, that the
use of them only proves his learning, without diminishing his originality.
They are so embodied into his system, that it is difficult even for a
student well acquainted with the deist and apologetic literature to point
precisely to the doubt or parallel argument which may have suggested to
him material of thought. And thus, though his work as an argument ought
always to be viewed in relation to his own times, yet the omission of all
temporary means of defence, and the restricting himself to the use of
those permanent facts which indelibly belong to human nature, and to the
scheme of the world, have caused his work to possess an enduring interest,
and to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί. The persuasive moderation of its tone also
proves that Butler had really weighed the evidence. In its absence of
arrogant denunciation, and its candid admission that the evidence of
religion is probable, not demonstrative; and in the request that the whole
evidence may be weighed like a body of circumstantial proofs, we can
perceive that Butler had felt the doubts as well as understood them, and
evidently meant his works for the doubter rather than for the Christian;
to convince foes, or support the hesitating, rather than to win applause
from friends.
The real secret of its power however lies not merely in its force as an
argument to refute objections against revelation, but in its positive
effect as a philosophy,(492) opening up a grand view of the divine
government, and giving an explanation of revealed doctrines, by using
analogy as the instrument for adjusting them into the scheme of the
universe.(493) He seems himself to have taken a broad view of God’s
dealings in the moral world, analogous to that which the recent physical
discoveries of his time had exhibited in the natural. In the same manner
as Newton in his Principia had, by an extension of terrestrial mechanics,
explained the movements of the celestial orbs, and united under one grand
generalization the facts of terrestrial and celestial motion; so Butler
aimed at exhibiting as instances of one and the same set of moral laws the
moral government of God, which is visible to natural reason, and the
spiritual government, which is unveiled by revelation.
Probably no book since the beginning of Christianity has ever been so
useful to the church as Butler’s Analogy, in solving the doubts of
believers or causing them to ignore exceptions, as well as in silencing
unbelievers. The office of apologetic is to defend the church, not to
build it up. Argument is not the life of the church. It is therefore a
proof of the philosophical power and truth of Butler’s work that it has
ministered so extensively to the latter purpose, by actually reinforcing
and promoting the faith of professing Christians. It has acted not only as
an argument to the deists, but as a lesson of instruction to the church.
Few efforts of free thought seemed more unpromising in yielding any useful
results than deism; yet by its agitation of deep questions, which are not
the mere phantoms of a morbid mind, but real and solid difficulties and
mysteries in revelation, it was the means of creating Butler’s noble work,
and is a fresh illustration of the beneficent arrangement of the Almighty,
that makes knowledge progress by antagonism, and overrules evil for good.
But there is another weapon for repelling unbelief besides the
intellectual; just as there are two causes for creating it, the one
intellectual, the other emotional. Thus, in the period that we are now
considering, though we may believe that many hearts were cheered and many
doubts hushed by the Christian apologies, yet the revival of religion(494)
which marked the eighteenth century, and which by spreading vital piety
prepared an effectual check against unbelief, when the lower orders were
afterwards invaded by it, was due to the spiritual yearnings created by
the ministrations of men, often rude and unlettered, who told the wondrous
story of Christ crucified, heart speaking to heart, with intuitions
kindled from on high. The sinful began to feel that God was not afar off,
reposing in the solitude of his own blessedness, and abandoning mankind to
the government of conscience and to the operation of general laws, but
nigh at hand, with a heart of fatherly love to pity and an ear of mercy to
listen. The narrative of Christ the Son of God, coming down to seek and to
save that which was lost, awoke an echo in the heart which neutralized the
doubts infused by the deist. And it is a comfort to every Christian
labourer to know that if he cannot wrangle out a controversy with the
doubter, he can speak to the doubter’s heart.
Few would compare the irregular missionaries of spiritual religion in the
last century with the great writers of evidence. The names of the latter
are honoured; those of the former are unknown or too often despised. It
might seem strange, for example, to institute a comparison between the two
contemporaries, bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there are points of
contrast which are instructive. Each was one of the most marked
instruments of movement and influence in the respective fields of the
argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the
educated, the other a missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a
nonconformist, turned to the church, and in an age of unbelief consecrated
his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity; and died
early, when his unblemished example was so much needed in the noble sphere
of usefulness which Providence had given him, leaving a name to be
honoured in the church for generations. Wesley, nursed in the most
exclusive church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout
reading of mystic books;(495) when our university was marked by the
half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the
Pietists of Germany,(496) devoted a long life to wander over the country,
despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable
energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies
of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the church. He too
was an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts of administration;
but whatever good he effected, in kindling the spiritual Christianity
which checked the spread of infidelity, was not so much by argument as by
stating the omnipotent doctrine of the Cross, Christ set forth as the
propitiation for sin through faith in his blood. The earnestness of the
missionary may be imitated by those who cannot imitate the philosopher’s
literary labours. Gifts of intellect are not in our own power. But
industry to improve the talents that we possess is our own; and the
spiritual perception of divine truth, and burning love for Christ which
will touch the heart, and before which all unhealthy doubts will melt away
as frost before the sun, will be given from on high by the Holy Ghost
freely to all that ask. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,
saith the Lord.”(497)
LECTURE V. INFIDELITY IN FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND UNBELIEF IN
ENGLAND SUBSEQUENT TO 1760.
ISAIAH xxvi. 20.
_Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors
about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the
indignation be overpast._
We now approach the study of a period remarkable no less in the history of
the world than in that of religious thought, in which unbelief gained the
victory in the empire of mind, and obtained the opportunity of
reconstructing society and education according to its own views. The
history of infidelity in France in the eighteenth century forms a real
crisis in history, important by its effects as well as its character. For
France has always been the prerogative nation of Europe. When wants
intellectual or political have been felt there, the life of other nations
has beat sympathetic with it as with the heart of the European body. Ideas
have been thrown into form by it for transmission to others. It will be
necessary to depict the free religious thought, both intellectually and in
its political action; to characterise its principal teachers; to show
whence it sprung, and to what result it tended; to point out wherein lay
the elements of its power and its wickedness; to show what it has
contributed to human woe, or perchance indirectly to human improvement.
The source of its influence cannot be understood without recalling some
facts of the history of French politics and philosophical speculation.
What was the cause why English deists wrote and taught their creed in
vain, were despised while living and consigned to oblivion when dead,
refrained almost entirely from political intermeddling, and left the
church in England unhurt by the struggle; while on the other hand deism in
France became omnipotent, absorbed the intellect of the country, swept
away the church, and remodelled the state? The answer to this question
must be sought in the antecedent history. It is a phenomenon political
rather than intellectual. It depended upon the soil in which the seed was
sown, not on the inherent qualities of the seed itself.(498)
The church and state have hardly ever possessed more despotic power in any
country of modern times, or seemed to all appearances to repose on a more
secure foundation, than in France at the time when they were first
assailed by the free criticism of the infidels of the eighteenth century.
Each had escaped the alterations which had been effected in most other
countries. The clergy of France had in the sixteenth century successfully
resisted the Reformation, and gained strength by the issue of the civil
wars which supervened on it. In the seventeenth century, though compelled
to admit toleration of their Protestant adversaries, they had contrived
before the end of it to obtain a revocation of the edict, even though the
act cost France the loss of a million of her industrious population, and
though the enforcing of it had to be effected by the means of the
dragonnades, in which a brutal soldiery was let loose on an innocent
population.(499) Thus the church, united with rather than subjected to the
state, adorned by great names, asserting its national independence in the
pride of conscious strength against the metropolitan see of
Christendom,(500) possessed a power which, while it seemed to promise
perpetuity, stood as an impediment to progress and a bar to intellectual
development.