1. A Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to the Christian Religion. By Adam Storey Farrar, M. A. London, 1862. From The Quarterly Review. tives bruised with their chains; to convince those that believe they see, or that see only through Faith's optics, that their blindness remaineth.”* Woolston boasts that he will “cut out such a piece of work for our Boylean Lectures as shall hold them tug so long as the ministry of the letter and an hireling priesthood shall last." And truly, if temporary popularity were any security for lasting reputation, Woolston had good grounds sand copies, and to have called forth in a short time as many as sixty replies. ‡ Swift's satirical lines testify to his popularity; while in other respects they might pass for a description of a right reverend critic of the present day. "Here's Woolston's tracts, the twelfth edition. The country members, when in town, 2. Essays and Reviews-Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B. D. London, 1860. TOLAND, Collins, Tindal, Woolston, Morgan, Chubb, Annet. What kind of recollection do these names call up in the minds for his boast. His discourses are said to of English readers of the present day? Are they, to the majority, anything more than a have been sold to the extent of thirty thoubare catalogue of names,—“ Alcandrumque Haliumque Noëmonaque Prytanimque," known, perhaps, in a general way as deistical writers, much as the above-mentioned Virgilian, or rather Homeric, worthies are known as soldiers; but, in other respects, not much more distinguished as regards personality and individual character? Yet these were men of mark in their day, the essayists and reviewers of the last century, attracting nearly as much attention, and receiving nearly as many criticisms, as their successors are doing at present. Nor were some of them without confident hope of the lasting effects which their works were destined to produce. Tindal prefaces his "Christianity as Old as the Creation" with the declaration that he thinks he has laid down such plain and evident rules as may enable men of the meanest capacity to distinguish be- to a like celebrity. Against Collins's" Distween Religion and Superstition, and has rep-course of Freethinking," according to the resented the former in every part so beautiful, so amiable, and so strongly affecting, that they who in the least reflect must be highly in love with it." And towards the conclusion of the work, he sums up his estimate of its argument in terms equally flattering: "For my part, I think, there's none who wish well to mankind, but must likewise wish this hypothesis to be true; and can there be a greater proof of its truth than that it is, in all its parts, so exactly calculated for the good of mankind that either to add to or to take from it will be to their manifest prejudice?" Chubb, in the preface to his True Gospel," asserts that he has" rendered the gospel of Christ defendable upon rational principles." Annet tells his readers that his end is "to hold forth the acceptable Light of Truth, which makes men free, enables them to break the bands of creedmakers and imposers asunder, and to cast their cords from us; and to set at liberty cap Other authors of the same school attained boast of the author himself, no less than thirty-four works were published in England alone; § and the list of antagonist publications enumerated by Thorschmid amounts in all to seventy-nine in various languages. Tindal's "Christianity as Old as the Creation " gave occasion, according to the same diligent collector, to as many as a hundred and fifteen replies. At this time, when we are again startled by a similar phenomenon,-when we once more see writings, whose literary merits, to say the least, are by no means sufficient to account for the notice they have attracted and the apprehensions they have excited, * "The Resurrection of Jesus considered," p. 87. "Fifth Discourse on the Miracles of Our Sayiour," p. 65. Lechler, "Geschichte des Englischen Deismus," p. 294. § Thorschmid, "Freydenker Bibliothek," vol. i, it is said that as many as twenty answers appeared p. 155. In the Acta Eruditorum Lipsiens., A. 1714, in the same year with the discourse itself. find a closer parallel to the writers who have excited the greatest religious panic among ourselves at the present day.* These three schools of England, France, and Germany, however differing in the spirit and details of their teaching, have this feature in common,—that they are all, to a great extent, of native growth in their several countries, and sprung up under, or were modified by, the influence, rightly or wrongly understood, of a native system of philosophy. In England, in the early part of the last century, both the assailants and the defenders of Christianity borrowed their weapons from the armory of Locke. In France, the prevailing religious unbelief took much of its tone from pushed into an adventitious celebrity by the justice and injustice, in themselves, and not subject of which they treat, and the circum-in their accidental accompaniments. We stances under which they were written, our may perhaps add that by so doing we shall attention is naturally drawn to the parallel furnished by the last century; and we feel an interest in asking why it is that men so celebrated and so dreaded in their own generation should be so utterly forgotten in ours. And the interest is increased when we become aware of the existence of other parallels in other countries. The same state of things which existed in England in the early part of the eighteenth century was repeated in France in the latter part of the same century, and in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth. In France, the names of La Mettrie and De Prades and D'Argens and D'Holbach and Damilaville and St. Lambert and Raynal are almost as much forgotten as those of the philosophy of Condillac; and the rationtheir English predecessors. In Germany, those of Tieftrunk and Henke and Eckermann and Paulus and Röhr and Wegscheider represent men who once exercised a living influence on the theology of their day, but whose works are now little more than the decaying monuments of a dead and buried rationalism. These, it may be objected, are neither the only nor the greatest names that can be cited as examples of freethinking in their respective countries ; nor are they entitled to be considered as its chief representatives. Yet they are fair representatives, not indeed of the highest amount of ability or influence that has at any time been combined with freethinking tendencies, but of the class of writers whose reputation rests principally or solely upon those tendencies. Men like Hume and Gibbon, or even Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke, in England, like Voltaire and Rousseau in France, like Lessing and Wieland in Germany, may have written in the same spirit, and may have been as heterodox in their belief as their less distinguished countrymen; but they so little owe their literary reputation exclusively or principally to their heterodoxy, that that reputation would now in all probability be as great or greater than it is, had their thoughts on religion never been given to the world. If we are to compare the freethinking of individuals with the teaching of the church, in respect of its permanent influence on the minds of men, we must compare them, as Plato compares alism of Germany, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, allied itself, as regards its main principles, with the system of Kant. In every case, also, the theological deductions were rather inferred from than contained in the philosophical systems with which they were connected, and, in some cases, were neither intended nor admitted by the authors of those systems. Locke, to use the words of his friend Molyneux, took an early opportunity of" shaking off" Toland. Condillac, devoting himself chiefly to philosophical speculations, carefully avoided all application of his principles to questions of morals or religion; and while he allowed no other.source of knowledge than the experience of the senses, he was at the same time so far removed from the materialism of his later followers that his system has even been regarded as logically identical with the idealism of Berkeley. In the philosophy of Kant we may discern two opposite tendencies: the rationalism which his practical philosophy encourages is refuted by his speculative phi 66 *The apologist for the "Essays and Reviews," in the Edinburgh Review of April, 1861, compares the excitement caused by that work to such admission of Dissenters to the universities in 1834, religious panics" as that on the prospect of the that on the Education Scheme in 1839, and those caused by the Hampden and Gorham controversies more just to compare it with the interest excited by and by the papal aggression. It would have been the deistical works of the last century; but such a comparison would have overthrown the reviewer's argument. See Diderot," Lettre sur les Aveugles," Euvres (1821), tom. i. p. 321. losophy; and while it must be admitted that the Kantian rationalists could find some support for their views in the later writings of their master, it must be admitted, also, that they are supported by one portion only of his philosophy, and that portion not the one on which his fame as a thinker principally rests. The English and French movements were in this distinguished from the German,-that in the former, political interests and influences were largely mingled with the religious and the philosophical. In Germany, the rationalist theories were of the closet rather than of the world. They were the production of men who applied themselves calmly, and with little more than a speculative interest, to dis• cuss as an abstract question the bearings of certain philosophical speculations on religious belief,-religion itself being little more than a branch of philosophy. In England and France, on the contrary, the philosophical speculation mingled with an existing political current, carried along in its motion and colored by its hue. The English freethinking of the eighteenth century was in part the offspring of the English Revolution: the French infidelity was one of the movements which prepared the way for the French Revolution; and this difference may go some way toward explaining the difference of temper manifested in the respective controversies. Revolutions are not made with rosewater, nor do they impart a rosewater flavor to the events which follow them while the ocean is still heaving with the scarcely-subsided storm. The German philosopher might calmly discuss his thesis as a statement of abstract truth, which, if not immediately acknowledged, had only to bide its time. In England and in France the question was one involving, or seeming to involve, immediate action, dealing with persons and institutions, not merely with theorems and proofs. In passing from the controversies of the last century to those of the present, we may note a decided improvement in the temper of the disputants; but at the same time it may be questioned whether the gain is all on one side. Our taste may be less offended by rude language and injurious imputations; yet it may be doubted whether all the coarse language which a recent writer has so severely censured in the English apologists of the last century* contained anything * Mr. Pattison allows one exception in the case of so revolting to the moral sense as the proposition which was calmly and philosophically advocated by Röhr at the close of his "Letters on Rationalism," and which has been revived in more than one quarter at the present time; namely, that a clergyman is at liberty, while retaining his office in the church, to accept the formularies of that church in a new sense, and to teach them in that sense to his congregation. The characteristic feature of English deism in the last century was, that it was not merely a promulgation of certain opinions on the subject of religion, but also an attack on a body of men, and on the church of which those men were ministers. The idea which the deistical writers labored most earnestly to impress on the mind of the English nation, was that priests are knaves and their congregations fools; that the shepherds fleeced the flock for their own benefit, and the sheep were simple enough to submit to the process. The attack, it is true, was sometimes masked under the form of an attack on heathen or popish priests, sometimes coupled with an ironical exception in favor of the orthodox ministers of the establishment; but these transparent disguises were not calculated, and probably were not intended, to deceive any one as to their real purport. The words which Bishop Berkeley puts into the mouth of his Alciphron, exactly represent the general tone of the freethinkers of his age :— "Take my word for it, priests of all religions are the same; wherever there are priests there will be priestcraft; and wherever there is priestcraft there will be a persecuting spirit, which they never fail to exert to the utmost of their power against all those who have the courage to think for themselves, and will not submit to be hoodwinked and manacled by their reverend leaders. Those great masters of pedantry and jargon have coined several systems, which are all equally true, and of equal importance to the world. Shaftesbury," to whom," he 66 says, as well after his death as in his lifetime, his privileges as a peer seem to have secured immunity from hangman's usage. "-"Essays and Reviews," p. 311. It may be doubted whether the peerage had anything to do with the matter. Shaftesbury's work was not directly theological, and his occasional allusions to religious doctrines were not, like the more directly deistical publications, an open challenge to controversy. At any rate, Bolingbroke's peerage did the hands of Warburton and Leland; and Shaftesnot save him from some pretty severe treatment at bury himself fared little better under the criticism of Skelton. The contending sects are each alike fond of their own, and alike prone to discharge their fury upon all who dissent from them. Cruelty and ambition being the darling vices of priests and churchmen all the world over, they endeavor in all countries to get an ascendant over the rest of mankind; and the magistrate, having a joint interest with the priests in subduing, amusing, and scaring the people, too often lends a hand to the Hierarchy, who never think their authority and possessions secure, so long as those who differ from them in opinion are allowed to partake even in the common rights belonging to their birth or species.' A few extracts from their writings will answer this question better than any description. Toland, the leader of the band, was, after his fashion, a poet as well as a philosopher, and attacked the priests in verse as well as in prose. His earliest work was a poem entitled "The Tribe of Levi," the beginning of which is a tolerably fair specimen of his poetical powers and of his controversial temper. Since plagues were ordered for a scourge of men, And Egypt was chastised with her ten, His theological system is summed up in 66 stared." His prose is to the same effect. In his Christianity not Mysterious," which, in point of language, is one of the most mod This determined hostility to the clergy as a body was the distinguishing feature of the deistical movement from first to last; and it is necessary to bear this circumstance in mind, if we would form a just estimate of the attitude taken by the party assailed. The Church of England had but recently recovered from two political attacks, threatening her very existence. She had actually been subverted for a time by Puritanism under the Commonwealth; she had been threatened with a second subversion by Popery, under James II. When a new movement presented itself in a similar form, embodying not merely a discussion of doctrines, but an assault upon men and institutions, it was inevitable that a personal character should be imparted to the controversy; that the defenders of the church should feel that they were contend-erately written of his works, he cannot forbear telling his readers that it was through the ing, not merely against a speculative error craft and ambition of priests and philosowhich might be met by argument, but against phers" that mysteries were introduced into a political assault which was endeavoring to Christianity; * and if he does not extend the stir up all the bad passions of men against condemnation in full measure to the clergy them. A new Martin Marprelate seemed to of his own day it is only because he charihave arisen, to make war, not only against tably allows that they may be well-meaning prelacy, but against a clerical order of any dupes instead of designing knaves. † So, kind; and so far as past experience furagain, when, in 1713, he came forward as nished any augury of the future, it might the antagonist of Sacheverell, he was not well be feared that if his hostility were suf- content to deal with that hot-headed ecclesifered to reached its climax, the struggle astic on his own merits, but availed himself would not be for victory, but for existence. of the occasion to attack the clerical order That such a fear was not altogether ground-in general, prefixing to his pamphlet the less, was terribly shown at the close of the century in a neighboring country; and the tree which bore fruit in France was sown in England. The coarseness and virulence with which this attack was carried on, can be appreciated fully only by those who will take the trouble to search into the now happily forgotten publications of the period. The task 66 inflammatory title, "An Appeal to Honest People against Wicked Priests," denouncing the clergy generally as the enemies of good government, and even justifying on this ground the persecution of Christianity by the Roman emperors, because" the emula *See Christianity not Mysterious," p. 168, ed. 1696. † See "Christianity not Mysterious," p. 127. |