tion and ambition of Christian priests had the most innocent manner imaginable; viz., made the Christian religion seem incompati- in mere eating and drinking."

ble with good policy." That this kind of language was not merely the expression of individual petulance, but was part of the ordinary and systematic warfare of this class of writers, will be sufficiently shown by the following passages from other authors of the

same school :

Tindal, "The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted," 1707, p. 23:

Ibid. p. 93 :

"Besides, they who have an interest to enlarge their sect and keep it united, know that nothing tends so much to its increase and union as the toleration of vice and wickedness to as great a degree as they can conveniently; for by that means they are sure to engage all the and vicious (and, by consequence, rogues the fools, who will ever be led by them) in their party. And therefore, wherever the power of the priest is at the height, they proceed so far in the encouragement of wickedness as to make all churches sanctuaries or

Woolston, "Fifth Discourse on the Miracles," 1728, p. 70:

"The tacking the priests' preferments to such opinions not only makes 'em in most nations, right or wrong, to espouse them, and to invent a thousand sophistical and knav-places of protection." ish methods of defending 'em to the infinite prejudice of truth, but is the occasion that humanity is in a manner extinct among those Christians who by reason of such articles are divided into different sects, their priests burning with implacable hatred, and stirring up the same passions in all they can influence against the opposers of such opinions."

Ibid. 103:

p.

my faith, I am so fully convinced, not only "According to the aforesaid articles of this of the error of the ministry of the letter, but of the mischiefs and inconvenience of an hireling priesthood, that having set my shoulders to the work, I am resolved, by the help of God, to endeavor to give both a lift out of "Here one's at a stand which to admire this world. This is fair and generous warnmost, the mad insolence and daring impi-ing to our clergy to sit fast and look to their ety of the clergy, or the gross stupidity and wretched abjectness of the laity; one in thus imposing and t'other in being imposed upon.

Ibid p. 235 :

"This cursed hypothesis had perhaps never been thought on with relation to civils, had not the clergy (who have an inexhaustible magazine of oppressive doctrines) contrived it first in ecclesiasticals, to gratify their insupportable itch of tyrannizing over the laity

and over one another."

Collins, "Discourse of Freethinking," 1713, p. 88

"Priests have no interest to lead me to

true opinions, but only to the opinions they have listed themselves to profess, and for the I most part into mistaken opinions. For it is manifest that all priests, except the orthodox, are hired to lead men into mistakes."

own safety, or they may find me a stronger man than they may be aware of. And tho' I don't expect long to survive the accomplishment of so great and glorious a work, yet I am delightfully ravished and transported with the forethought and contemplation of the happiness of mankind upon the extinction of ecclesiastical vermin out of God's house, when the world will return to its primogenial and paradisiacal state of nature, religion, and liberty, in which we shall be all taught contentious priest, hired to harangue us with of God, and have no need of a foolish and his noise and nonsense.'

Woolston, "Defence of his Discourses on the Miracles," 1729, p. 23 :

Church of England be turned to grass, and be "And why should not the clergy of the made to seek their fortune among the people, as well as preachers of other denominations? Where's the sense and reason of imposing parochial priests upon the people to take care Ibid. pp. 91, 92:of their souls, more than parochial lawyers to look to their estates, or parochial physi"The great charge of supporting such num-cians to attend their bodies, or parochial bers of men as are necessary to maintain impositions is a burden upon society. . . . The charge alone, therefore, of supporting such a number of ecclesiastics is a great evil to society, though it should be supposed that the ecclesiastics themselves were employed in

tinkers to mend their kettles? In secular affairs every man chooses the artist and mechanic that he likes best; so much more ought he in spirituals, inasmuch as the welfare of the soul is of greater importance than that of the body or estate. The church-lands

would go a good, if not a full, step towards paying the nation's debt."

Morgan, p. 96:

"The Moral Philosopher," 1738,

the very great hurt and damage of Christian people, and has been highly injurious to the gospel of Christ.”

"In short, this clerical religion is a new "To this I may add that the possessing thimble-and-button, or a powder-le-pimp, the clergy with wealth and power, which which may be this or that, everything or was first introduced by men's great liberality nothing, just as the jugglers please. And in giving their goods both movable and imyet all this, in their different ways, if you movable to the church, this introduced not can believe them, is divine institution and only a uscless, a superfluous, and a supernuimmediate revelation from God. All which merary, but also an injurious ministry, or a can amount to no more than this,-that the ministry which were directly and immediately several passions and interests of every party, highly injurious to the gospel of Christ and and of every man, are divinely instituted by to the souls of men. I shall not here take immediate revelation; and this is the privi-notice of the numberless evils and mischiefs lege of the orthodox faith and of being reli- and the miseries which have been brought gious in the clerical way."

Ibid. p. 100:

"The generality of the clergy of all denominations, from the very beginning, have been continually palming upon us false coin under the authority of God, and when they are convicted of it, they cry out, that this is but now and then, in a few particular instances, and only here and there a piece; and they think it hard, very hard, that they cannot have credit upon such small matters."

Ibid. p. 101:

"In the mean while, how are our political state-divines everywhere caressed and flattered; and how happy is it for them that they have an interest much superior to Truth and Reason, Religion or Conscience! And the ground of all this is certainly a clerical religion above reason and above all possibility of proof."

Chubb, “The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted, 1738, p. 170:

upon multitudes of our species by their means, by their wicked, perfidious, and barbarous practices, and by their procurement; for were all these to be entered upon record (allowing me to use the same figure of speech which St. John has used before me), I suppose the world itself would not contain the books which might be written; but this is beside my present purpose. What I observe is, that the introducing of wealth and power into Christian societies introduced with it a ministry which were directly and immediately highly injurious to the gospel of Christ and to the souls of men; for as the clergy were set upon increasing their wealth and power at all hazards, so they, in order to answer those purposes, have introduced such doctrines, and such a multitude of superstitious practices, and assumed to themselves such power, as took away the persuasive influence of the gospel, and rendered it of none effect."

Annet, "Judging for Ourselves; or, Freethinking the great Duty of Religion,” 1739, p. 8:

"If the mysteries of the spiritual craftsmen were exposed by reason, no man would buy their merchandise any more. Depend upon it, when you are hoodwinked with mysteries supernatural, there is fraud in the case; 'tis but another word for it; the Whatever is imposed

"The enlarging the revenues of the church not only introduced a useless, but also a superfluous, clergy, or a set of clergymen who, with respect to their offices in Christian societies, have answered very little or no good purpose to the gospel of Christ or the souls of men, whatever plausible pretences may have been made in their favor. These super- meaning is the same. fluous clergymen have been dignified and dis-on men to believe, which will not bear the tinguished by pompous titles and vestments, light of honest inquiry, is all craft and which have served to introduce a groundless guile." veneration and respect to their persons, whilst their principal business has been to possess great revenues, to live in pomp and grandeur, assuming and exercising dominion over their brethren, whom they have endeavored to keep under the power of ignorance and superstition, as it has been the ground and foundation of their wealth and sovereignty; whose power has been employed to

Ibid. P: 11:-.

"The Buyers and Sellers, the Bigots and Priests, will unite again: the trade is likely to continue to the end of the world; for men being born ignorant, perverted by education, prepossessed with notions before they have sense or reason to judge of them, which some never have capacities to do, and others thro'

cowardice or idleness never make use of the gious truth in the principles, or what he capacities they have, there is no fear but the supposed to be the principles, of his master. mystery-mongers will always find fools enough. The exact conformity of our ideas with to buy their sophisticated wares."

their objects," was his ground of persuasion Among many rude and some unjust things and measure of belief, the origin and nature which disfigure the controversial writings of of these ideas being explained according to Warburton, there is one remark at least the philosophy of Locke. Chubb, the jourwhich most readers of the above extracts neyman glover, was the advocate of a gospel will allow to be, not, indeed, politely ex- to be judged in all things by the uneducated pressed, but most richly and thoroughly de- intelligence of working men. With him, no served; and that is the passage in his "Ded-"historical account of matters of fact" can ication to the Freethinkers" in which he be any part of the true gospel; for a gospel describes their "scurrilities, those stink-pots preached to the poor must be plain and intelof your offensive war."

ligible, and level to the lowest understanding. Bolingbroke, the brilliant and profligate man of the world, attempted to exhibit religion in a form adapted to sinners of rank and fashion, imposing no unpleasant restraints on gentlemanly vices, by precepts to be observed in this life, or punishments to be dreaded in the next. Accordingly, the purport of his system, so far as so inconsistent a writer can be said to have a system at all, appears to be to deny the possibility of any revelation distinct from the law of nature, and to interpret the law of nature itself in the manner most favorable to the pursuit of

If from the language of the freethinkers we turn to the matter of their teaching, we shall find something to remind us of some of the popular theories of the present day, and much more to warn us of the tendency of such theories when pursued to their natural results. The first step in the rationalism of that age was an attempt to eliminate from the doctrines of Christianity all that is above the comprehension of human reason: the second was an attempt to eliminate from the contents of Christianity all statements of facts which cannot be verified by each man's personal experience: the third was an at-pleasure. At the same time, combining the tempt to get rid of Christianity altogether, as having no proper claim to respect or obedience. "No Dogmatic Christianity," may be taken as the watchword of the first stage; "No Historical Christianity," as that of the second; "No Christianity at all," as that of the third. The representative book of the The relation of Toland to Locke is a quesfirst period was Toland's " Christianity not tion of far more than mere historical interest. Mysterious;" of the second, Chubb's "True It is a question affecting the character of EngGospel of Jesus Christ Asserted; " of the lish theology during the greater part of the third, "Bolingbroke's Essays and Frag-eighteenth century; it marks the point of dements." The first represents revealed re-parture at which the religious teaching of ligion as brought down to the level of philosophical speculation, and to be tried by philosophical tests: the second subjects it to the judgment of the rough common sense of the many the third represents it as tried and condemned by the verdict of the scorner and the profligate.

Toland, the disciple of Locke, and himself, in his own estimation, a philosopher of no mean order,* found a criterion of reli* His estimate of his own merits may be judged from his epitaph, written by himself. Molyneux, no unfriendly witness, speaks of the "tincture of vanity" which appeared in the whole course of his conversation. Bishop Browne tells us that he "gave out he would be the head of a sect before he was thirty years of age."

politician with the epicurean, he finds it convenient to recognize so much of religious obligation as may be necessary to serve as an instrument of civil government, and to act as a check on the more unruly vices of the lower orders.

that century separates from that of the preceding age; it helps to explain the difference, which no student can fail to observe, between the one and the other; it suggests some useful considerations as to the best mode of meeting similar questions at other times. For though we have spoken of the philosophy of Locke as furnishing the weapons employed alike by the deists and by their opponents, this remark is strictly applicable only to the later stages of the controversy. The earlier opponents of Toland, such as Stillingfleet, Norris, and Browne, were also direct antagonists of Locke, and combated the positions of his philosophy no less in themselves than in the conclusions which his disciple professed to

deduce from them. Afterwards, when the reflection, are the foundation of all our knowl system of Locke became the reigning philos- edge." This is the assumption which is comophy of the day, it numbered disciples among mon to Locke with Toland, and is acknowlbelievers and unbelievers alike; and the later edged to be so by Locke himself. Is this apologists were thereby enabled to contend assumption true in itself, and has Locke so with the freethinkers on their own ground and handled it as to warrant in any way the conwith their own weapons. In this, they did no sequences which Toland deduced from it? more than justice to the personal piety and sincere Christian belief of Locke: they employed his philosophy for the purpose for which he would himself have wished it to be employed; and they adopted the most effectual means of obtaining an immediate triumph over their antagonists. But they broke off, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, from that grand old catholic theology which had been the glory of the English Church in the preceding centuries; and the point of their separation, apparently minute and indifferent in itself, was in fact the leaven which has leavened the whole course of English religious thought, for good or for evil, ever since.

That we think by means of simple ideas, is true in the same sense in which it is true that we breathe by means of oxygen and azote. The simple ideas, though they are the elements of which thought is composed, are elements elicited only by an artificial analysis of objects which naturally present themselves in a compound state. "I see a horse," said Antisthenes to Plato;" but I do not see horseness." "True," replied Plato; "for you possess the eye of sense which sees the one, but not the eye of intellect which sees the other." In like manner, and with more reason, an adversary, judging with the eye of sense alone, might urge against Locke, Will our readers pardon the introduction I see a white horse, or a white sheet, or a of so much of metaphysics as may be neces- white snowball; but whiteness, apart from sary to explain this point? Small as the the horse, or the sheet, or the snowball, I change may seem at the beginning, it is an do not see." Whatever distinction may be instance of how great a matter a little fire made between our original and our acquired kindleth. It relates to a question, one of perceptions at a time before distinct conthe most important that man can ask,-that sciousness begins, at the later stage, when of the right use of reason in religious belief; sight has become a recognized fact of conand it is not wholly alien to some controver-sciousness, and we are able to give an acsies which have been raised concerning the same question in our own day.

count of what we see, the objects presented to it are presented as complex ideas, not as simple ones. We do not see color alone, but color in connection with a certain extension and a certain shape, and generally with cer

asserted that complex ideas are made by the mind out of simple ones, and that knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, he overlooked the fact that the most important of our sensitive perceptions consist of a plurality of ideas given in conjunction; and that the act of the mind is more often an analysis by which simple ideas are elicited from the compound, than a synthesis by which complex ideas are formed out of simple ones.

Locke wrote his great work, without reference to theology, and probably without any distinct thought of its theological bearings. When challenged on account of the tain other accompaniments. When Locke relation of his premises to Toland's conclusions, he expressly repudiated the connection, and declared his own sincere belief in those mysteries of the Christian faith which Toland had assailed. No one who knows anything of Locke's character will doubt for an instant the sincerity of this disclaimer; but our question does not relate to Locke's personal belief, but to the admissions which may be unconsciously involved in some of the positions of his philosophy, and which, perhaps, had they been foreseen, might have led to a modification of those positions themselves, a modification, we may add, which might easily have been made without injury, or even with benefit, to the integrity of the work as a system.

"Simple ideas, derived from sensation or

But this admission involves a further consequence. If our intuitive and spontaneous judgments are not formed by the mind out of previously existing simple ideas, but are given already formed out of ideas in combination, it follows that our natural apprehension of a thing or object is not merely that

with which we are already familiar in the fall of the apple from the tree :

"That very law which moulds a tear,

And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course."
Now the defect of Locke's philosophy in this

of an aggregate of ideas, but of ideas in a particular combination with and relation to each other. And hence the logical conception of an object, as based on and reflecting the character of this intuitive apprehension, implies not merely the enumeration of certain ideas as constituents of the object, but likewise the apprehension of their coexist-respect is, that, by representing a complex ence in a particular manner as parts of a connected whole. To conceive an object as a whole, we must know something more than that its definition may be expressed by certain words, each of which is separately intelligible and represents a known idea; we must also be able to combine those ideas into a unity of representation; we must apprehend, not merely each idea separately, but also the manner in which they may possibly exist in combination with each other.

idea merely as an accumulation of simple ones, and not as an organized whole composed in a certain manner, he leaves no room for a distinction between those groups of ideas whose mode of combination is conceivable or explicable from their likeness to other instances, and those which are inconceivable or inexplicable, as being unlike anything which our experience can present to us. Hence there is no room for a further distinction between the inconceivable or mysterious, and the absurd or self-contradictory; between ideas which may be supposed to coexist in some manner unknown to us, and those which cannot coexist, as mutually destroying each other,—in brief, between those complex ideas of which we cannot conceive how they are possible, and those of which we can conceive how they are not possible. Regarded merely as heaps of ideas in juxtaposition, any combination is possible of which the parts do not destroy each other; but, within these limits of possibility, there may be some combinations of which the mode is conceivable, as resembling others; and there may be some of which we can only say that they may possibly coexist in some manner unknown to us.

For example: I can define a triangle as a rectilinear figure of three sides. But I can also, as far as a mere enumeration of ideas is concerned, speak of a rectilinear figure of two sides, and call it by the name of a biangle. Now what is the reason that the one object is conceivable and the other inconceivable? It is not that the separate ideas in the one definition are less intelligible than in the other; for the idea of two is by itself quite as intelligible as that of three. It is because in the one case we are able, and in the other case unable, to represent to ourselves the several ideas as coexisting in that particular manner which we know to be necessary to constitute a figure. So, again, I may speak of a being who sees without eyes and hears This defect is most apparent when the without ears; and the language in each of method of Locke comes to be applied to inits separate terms is quite as intelligible as visible things,—to mental philosophy in the when I use the word with instead of without; first instance, and through that to theology. yet the nature of such seeing and hearing is The idea of an immaterial spirit, he tells us, to me inconceivable, because the manner in is gained by "putting together the ideas of which it takes place cannot be apprehended thinking and willing, or the power of moving by me as resembling any manner of seeing or or quieting corporeal motion, joined to subhearing with which I can be acquainted by stance of which we have no distinct idea," my own experience. And as it is in the sim- just as the idea of matter is gained by "putplest instances of conception, so it is in those ting together the ideas of coherent solid parts, more complicated instances in which we ex- and a power of being moved, joined with subplain a number of phenomena by reference to stance, of which likewise we have no positive a general law. When, for example, we re-idea"* In thus appealing to our obscure fer the motions of the planets to the law of apprehension of material substance, by way gravitation, we do not thereby determine of illustrating that of spiritual substance, what gravitation is, and how it acts upon bodies; we only represent to ourselves the motion as taking place in a certain known manner,—as being of the same kind as that

Locke realized the remark of his great rival Leibnitz,-" Les hommes cherchent ce qu'ils savent, et ne savent pas ce qu'ils cherchent." 'Essay," ii. 23, 15.