History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 10

Protestantism was a form of free thought; but only in the sense of a return from human authority to that of scripture. It was equally a reliance on an historic religion, equally an appeal to the immemorial doctrine of the church with Roman Catholicism; but it conceived that the New Testament itself contained a truer source than tradition for ascertaining the apostolic declaration of it.(319)

But Italy was the witness of another sceptical tendency, besides that which resulted from the cla.s.sic Renaissance, in the last remnant of the influence of mediaeval philosophy. Throughout the sixteenth century, pantheism manifested itself in connexion with the philosophical studies of the university of Padua. The form in which it made itself felt was the disbelief of the immortality of the soul on speculative grounds. The cause of the disbelief was the influence of the philosophy of Averroes before noticed.(320)

It will be necessary to explain this system with a little detail. It has been already stated that Averroes was a noted commentator on Aristotle in the twelfth century. The two ground principles of his philosophy were, the eternity of matter and the impersonality of mind. On this high subject there can be only two theories; the one theistic, which declares that G.o.d is free, a personal first Cause, and the Creator of matter, and that other minds are free and personal; the other pantheistic, which a.s.serts that matter is eternal, and that individual minds are only the manifestation of the impersonal mind, into which the individual is reabsorbed. Averroes held the latter theory, claiming to derive it from Aristotle. It must be confessed however that Aristotle's views are uncertain on this point: he distinguished between mind, immortal and relative, the latter of which, being connected with body, ceased at death; the former outlived it. But he hardly stated the doctrine that all souls are part of the universal soul, and is silent about their reabsorption into it. These points were added by Averroes.(321)

The influence of the philosophy of Averroes is observable in three cla.s.ses of thinkers; viz., the Spanish Jews of his own century, the scholastic philosophers of the thirteenth, and the philosophers of the university of Padua in the fourteenth and succeeding ages. The second of these effects has been already traced: we must now notice the third.

Padua was the great medical university of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was a type of the tendency which at that time manifested itself in the north-eastern part of Italy toward material and rational studies, as in Tuscany to ideal and humanistic. It was the medical philosophy of Averroes which had first attracted attention to him. But the influence of his teaching was innocuous there until the sixteenth century, during the whole of which this university became the home of free thought.

Strict accuracy would require the separation of two tendencies in the Peripatetic school of Padua, each derived from one of Aristotle's commentators.(322) The one was the Averroist just named, which consisted in the disbelief of immortality on the ground of absorption. Man's soul, being part of the great soul which animates the universe, both emanates from it, and is again reabsorbed. The other was the Alexandrist, so called from following Alexander of Aphrodisias,(323) which consisted in a tendency to pure materialism, an absolute denial of immortality and of religion, which almost reaches the incredulity earlier expressed in the legend of the Three Impostors. Pomponatius is the declared representative of the latter view soon after the beginning of the century.(324) Frequently however the unbelief was secret, and a seeming show of orthodoxy was maintained by drawing a broad distinction between philosophy and theology; and by teaching that these views, though seen to be true in the one, were to be accounted false in obedience to the teaching of the other.

It is customary to cla.s.s along with the Averroists some philosophers of a more original turn; some of whom were only indirectly connected with Padua, but rather were examples of an attempt to subst.i.tute a philosophy in place of that which was expiring. They are said to have manifested the same kind of pantheism, and to have been led by it to similar disbelief.

Such are Cesalpini, Cardan,(325) Bruno, and Vanini. The charge is perhaps unfair against the two former, as they seem to have held the separate immortality of souls, which is more compatible with theism. The two latter represent the two schools just noticed, about the end of the sixteenth century.

Bruno(326) belonged mainly to the Averroist school, though his views were probably formed independently, and certainly extended farther. He not only held the existence of a soul pervading the universe, which is the form of Pantheism which has been already considered, but followed the earlier philosophy of the Neo-Platonists in identifying the soul with the matter which it animates; regarding the one as an emanation from the other, in the same manner as an effect is merely cause or force transferred. It is this belief which occurs in Spinoza, which is properly denominated Pantheism, where the Creator is forgotten in creation. The former line of Pantheism noticed in Averroes approaches more nearly to theism. Bruno's unbelief was not gay and flippant, but sombre and earnest. With a fantastical conceit which can hardly be explained, he travelled as the missionary to propagate his own views like a knight errant tilting at all opinions, with a soul especially embittered against the Christian priesthood.(327) On his return to Italy from his travels he fell into the hands of the church, and suffered death for his opinions.

Vanini(328) similarly led a wandering life, but is a character of less seriousness: occasionally he manifested the inconsistency of indifference to his own opinions. Reverencing the memory of Pomponatius, he expressed the same disbelief of the spiritual and of immortality. He was possibly an atheist. Certainly his views were tinged with deep bitterness against religion; and after leading a restless life, he suffered a cruel martyrdom for his belief.

Bruno and Vanini were the apostles of a doctrine which the world would no longer hear. The dawn of physical knowledge was turning men to a truer study of the universe, and caused their labours to be in vain. The age of indifference was gone. The alarm caused by the Reformation had kindled a strong ecclesiastical reaction, especially in Italy, and the religious earnestness and intellectual activity of Germany had awoke an intelligent reaction on the part of the Catholic church.(329) Hence these two writers incurred a danger unknown to their predecessors. Martyrs are men who are before their age or behind it. Their sad fate throws an interest around their lives. Unbelief must always have its confessors. It is to be hoped that the inhumanity of Christendom will never again cause it to have its martyrs.

The survey is now complete of the crisis which occurred in the transition from the middle ages to modern history, forming the third of those enumerated in a former lecture, we have witnessed amidst its complexity the manifestation of the same principles as in former epochs; the restlessness of the human mind struggling to be free, intellectually, politically, religiously; and we have endeavoured to trace the operation of the influence of cla.s.sical literature and metaphysical philosophy in inducing the decay of Christian feeling and belief.

The means adopted for counteracting the movement were similar to those used in former periods, viz. an intellectual argument and a spiritual awakening. In some instances, indeed, in accordance with the spirit of the time, or more truly with the spirit of human nature, material force and cruelty were employed, and the unbeliever was silenced by martyrdom. But neither material power nor the autocratic unity of the Roman church was able to repress the growth of the human mind. Conviction must be directed, not crushed. The revival of books of evidences, as soon as printing became common, about the close of the fifteenth century, which were designed to confirm faith, was a more lawful form of warfare.(330) They were constructed however on a basis unsuited to an age when first principles were being reconsidered, being an attempt to establish the authority of the church and the duty of submission to an external form of faith, and lacked the surer basis adopted in Protestant works of evidence, which is found in the external divine authority of the Bible rather than the church. The creation of the order of the Jesuits, though directed more against Protestantism than against unbelief, was a witness, like the previous reactionary movement of the scholastic writers in the thirteenth century, to the wish to wrest the use of learning out of the hands of the opponents of the church, and to employ the weapons of reason in defence of it.

The judgment formed on this epoch of free thought, when we have separated from it the Protestantism which craves other satisfaction for the human mind than that which is implied in submission to human authority, and the scepticism which was merely transitional doubt, must be condemnatory. The unbelief was indeed a phase of the general improvement; but one which is instructive as a warning rather than as an example, ill.u.s.trating the abuse not the use of free thought. The evil nevertheless was temporary, and belongs to the past; the good was eternal: and the elements of real intellectual improvement contained in the struggle have been taken up into the const.i.tution of modern thought and society.

We have now considered three great epochs in the history of free thought, and watched Christianity in contact or conflict with the old heathen philosophy, with the thought Scholastic or Mahometan of the middle ages, and with the revival of cla.s.sical learning. It remains to enter upon the consideration of the fourth, and to observe it in relation to modern science.

The seventeenth century introduced as striking a revolution in philosophy as the corresponding ones which the two preceding ages had produced in literature and religion.

Two distinct thinkers, Bacon and Descartes, from different points of view, perceived the necessity for constructing a new method of inquiry. Their position was similar to that of Socrates of old. They saw that if knowledge was to be rendered sound, it must be based on a new method.(331) They both alike sought it in experience; Bacon in sensational, Descartes in intellectual, the instinctive utterance of consciousness.(332) The indirect effects on religion produced by their teaching will be seen more fully hereafter. Our present object is to sketch the influence exercised by Descartes on the theological speculations of Spinoza, before pa.s.sing in succeeding lectures to the detailed study of those peculiarities which free thought has presented in the different countries in which it has been manifested.(333)

Spinoza's memory has been branded with the stigma which attached to his character during life.(334) Born in Holland, of Jewish origin, his early repudiation of the legends of the Talmud in which he was educated, caused his excommunication by his own people. Finding himself an outcast, he sought society among a few sceptical friends, one of whom was a physician named Van den Ende, whom a sense of injustice united to him by the bond of common sympathy. His life was pa.s.sed in retirement, in hard, griping poverty. Possessing a mind of great originality, and a fondness for demonstrative reasoning never surpa.s.sed, he lived a model of chaste submissive virtue, searching for speculative truth; branded as an atheist in philosophy while living, and regarded since his death as the parent of many of the worst forms of rationalism in religion. Yet his character is one that cannot fail to excite a certain kind of pity. Unlike the frivolous selfish atheism, the immoral Epicureanism, of the French unbelief of the following century, his investigations were grave, his tone dignified, his temper gentle, his spirit serious. It is to be feared that he did not wors.h.i.+p G.o.d; but he at least wors.h.i.+pped, at the cost of social martyrdom, what he thought to be truth. If he did not believe in revealed religion, he at least tried to embody what he believed to be its moral precepts. Though we may shrink with horror from his teaching, we cannot, when we compare him with other unbelievers, withhold our pity from the teacher.

His works are short, but weighty. Of his important treatises, the one, the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, shows him as the Biblical critic; the other, the _Ethica_, exhibits his philosophy. In the former, written in early life, he derives his materials and mode of handling from the Jewish mediaeval theologian Maimonides; in the latter, the product of his riper years, from Descartes.(335) But he had undoubtedly come under the influence of Descartes before writing the former work, and it is certain that the effects of it on his own philosophical scheme are already discernible in it. We shall therefore commence with the latter, and attempt to understand his philosophy, and its application to religion, before studying his special criticism of Revelation.

Descartes had aimed, like the great thinkers of earlier times, to gain a general view of the universe of being; but had sought it by a different mode. Caring rather for cert.i.tude of method, reality in the highest principles, than for results attained, he had seen that a knowledge of being must rest on a knowledge of the consciousness which tells us of being. His principle, "Cogito, ergo sum," is the expression of this conviction. Therefore, carrying a.n.a.lysis into the human mind, he had grasped those ideas which appeal to us with irresistible clearness, and commend themselves as axioms requiring no proof; and from these ideas, or rather from the idea of cause, the primitive of them, regarded by him as innate, he had demonstrated _a priori_ the being and attributes of G.o.d, and the principles which dominate in the great fields of knowledge.(336)

Spinoza's object was similar; but he sought to attain it in a different manner: rejecting, on the one hand, the dualism by which Descartes had opposed mind and matter, he regarded each as a different mode of the same primitive substance, and, on the other, the limited idea of the divine Being, he conceived that the mind of man realizes the notion of Him as unlimited. There are three different opinions in reference to our capacity of knowing the infinity of G.o.d. Either our knowledge of Him is only negative and relative; we know only what He is not, and our positive notions of His nature are drawn from the a.n.a.logy of human personality; or, secondly, we have an intuition of His infinity, but so bare of attributes, that while it guarantees the reality of our apprehensions of Him, we are dependent on experience for its development into a conception; or, thirdly, the human mind can apprehend His infinity positively, antecedent to the application of limitations to it.(337) The last of these three views belonged to Spinoza, along with the ancient Eleatics, the Neo-Platonists of the early ages, and the princ.i.p.al schools of modern German philosophy. Accordingly he tried to work out with mathematical rigour in geometrical form a philosophy of existence, conceiving that the mind grasps the idea of G.o.d as infinite substance, and understands its development under two modes; viz. extension and thought: the former the objective act of Deity, the latter the subjective.(338) The universe therefore is nothing but the manifestation of G.o.d: G.o.d is the sum total of it; the unity in its variety; the infinite comprehending its finity. Cause and effect are identical; the _natura naturans_, and _natura naturata_.

Causation is change; but it is nothing but substance a.s.suming attributes, and attributes a.s.suming modes. Phenomena are only the bubbles which arise on the bosom of the ocean and disappear, absorbed in its vastness. The universe is bound in one vast chain of fatalism, one grand and perfect whole. Man's perfection is to know by contemplation the universe in which he has his being.

Such a system has been called atheistic, because it is silent about the presence of a personal first Cause. It might be more truly denominated Pantheistic, not in the vague sense in which that term is applied to denote the belief in a Deity as an _anima mundi_, like that explained in reference to the Averroists,(339) but to imply that the sum total of all things, the universe, is Deity. Its influence on the question of revealed religion will be obvious. It admits that the phenomena which we attribute to miracle in the process of revelation are facts, but it denies their miraculous character.(340) They are the mere manifestation of some previously unknown law, turning up accidentally at the particular moment, some previously unknown mode in which the all-embracing substance manifests itself. In this view all religions become various expressions of the great moral and spiritual truths which they embody, and true piety consists in rising beyond them to the vision of the higher truths which they typify, and the practice of the principles which they enjoin as rules. "Dico," wrote Spinoza, "ad salutem non esse omnino necesse, Christum secundum carnem noscere; sed de aeterno illo filio Dei, hoc est, Dei aeterna sapientia quae sese in omnibus rebus, et maxime in mente humana et omnium maxime in Christo Jesu manifestavit, longe aliter sentiendum."(341)

Spinoza, though a Jew, had examined the claims of Christianity. Indeed the discussions, half political, half religious, of the Dutch theology, would have compelled the investigation of it, independently of his own largeness of sympathy with the philosophical history of human religion.(342) His philosophy of revealed religion is contained in his _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_.(343) This work was called forth by the disputes of the age, and had the political object of defending liberty of thought as necessary to the safety both of the state and of religion. The question of predestination had rent the Dutch church shortly before this time; and when the victory remained with the Calvinistic party, the opinions of the liberal Remonstrants were treated as crimes. Spinoza proposed in this work a plan, perhaps suggested by the perusal of Hobbes, for curing these dissensions. The book is a critical essay, in which he surveys the Jewish and Christian religions, and ends in the conclusion that certainty on the subject of a revelation is impossible; accordingly that the remedy for theological acrimony must be sought in a return to what he regards to be the simple doctrine which Christ taught, the love of G.o.d and one's neighbour; that philosophy and theology ought to be severed; the one aiming at truth and resting on universal ideas, the other at obedience and piety and resting on historic authority and special revelation. Hence, while uniformity of religious wors.h.i.+p and practice was to be prescribed, he claimed that unlimited liberty of speculation ought to be tolerated.(344)

It is in the survey of Judaism and Christianity in the earlier part of this work that he exhibits the views in which he has antic.i.p.ated many of the speculations of rationalism. He examines first into the grounds which Revelation puts forward for its claim to authority, viz. prophecy, the Jewish polity, and miracles;(345) next the principles of interpretation, and the canon of the two Testaments;(346) lastly, the nature of the divine teaching(347) endeavouring to show that the fundamental articles of faith are given in natural religion. In this way he exhibits his views on those branches which are now denominated the evidences, exegesis, and doctrines.

In the discussion of prophecy he a.n.a.lyses the nature of prophetic foresight into vividness of imagination; and exhibits the human feeling and sentiment intertwined with it.(348) He regards the Hebrew idea of election as merely the theocratic mode of representing their own good success in that region of circ.u.mstances which was not in human power.(349) His explanation of miracles has been already stated: the course of nature seems to him to be fixed and immutable; and he argues that interference with its course is not a greater proof of Providence than a perpetual unchanging administration.(350)

As his philosophy is seen in the treatment of the evidences, so his criticism appears in the discussion of the canon. He examines the several books of scripture, and concludes from supposed marks of editors.h.i.+p that the Pentateuch and historical books were all composed by one historian, who was, he thinks, probably Ezra, Deuteronomy being the first composed.(351) The prophetic books he resolves into a collection of fragments. His opinions on this department would be rejected as immature by modern rationalist critics; yet they have an historic interest as marking the rise of the searching investigations into the sources and construction of the Hebrew sacred literature, which have been pursued in an instructive manner in modern times. His view respecting the nature of scriptural doctrines,(352) that they can be reduced to the teaching of natural reason, is a corollary from his philosophy, which cannot admit that any religious truth is obligatory which is not self-evident, and is a.n.a.logous to the doctrine which a short time previously had been stated by Lord Herbert of Cherbury.(353)

These remarks will suffice in explanation of the criticism exhibited in this work. The book marks an epoch, a new era in the critical and philosophical investigation of religion. Spinoza's ideas are as it were the head waters from which flows the current which is afterwards parted into separate streams. If viewed merely as a specimen of criticism, they are in many respects very defective. For this branch was new in Spinoza's time. Learning had been directed since the Renaissance rather to the acquisition of stores of information concerning ancient literature than reflective examination of the authenticity and critical value of the sources. Yet Spinoza's sagacity is so great, that the book is suggestive of information, and fertile in hints of instruction to readers who dissent most widely from his inferences.(354) In Spinoza's own times the work met with unbounded indignation. Indeed hardly any age could have been less prepared for its reception. So rigorous a theory of verbal inspiration was then held, that the question of the date of the introduction of the Hebrew vowel points was discussed under the idea that inspiration would be overthrown, if the admission was made that they were introduced after the time of the closing of the canon.(355) The tone of fairness in Spinoza's manner, which compels most modern readers to believe in his honesty, and which presents so striking a contrast to the profaneness of subsequent scepticism, was then regarded as latent irony. The work on its appearance was suppressed by public authority; but it was frequently reprinted; and probably no work of free thought has ever had more influence, both on friends and foes, except the memorable work of Strauss in the present age.

Not only have freethinkers been moulded by it, but it has produced lasting effects on those who have loved the faith of Christ. For Spinoza's work, if it did not create, gave expression to the tendency of which slight traces are perceptible elsewhere,(356) to recognize a large cla.s.s of facts relating to the personal peculiarities of the inspired writers, and to the "human element," as it has been frequently called(357) in scripture, for which orthodox criticism has always subsequently had to find a place in a theory of inspiration; facts which first shook the mechanical or verbal theory, which, however piously intended, really had the effect of degrading the sacred writers almost into automatons, and regarded them as the pens instead of the penmen of the inspiring Spirit.(358) Indirectly the effect of Spinoza's thought was seen even in the English church. The difficulties which, through means of the English deists, it brought before the notice of the great apologetic writers of our own country, created the free, but perhaps not irreverent theory of revelation manifested in the churchmen of the last century,(359) which restricted the miraculous a.s.sistance of inspiration to the specific subject of the revealed communication, the religious element of scripture, and did not regard it as comprehending also the allusions, scientific or historic, extraneous to religion.

Nor is it merely in respect of criticism that Spinoza's views have affected subsequent thought. The central principle of his philosophy, the pantheistic disbelief of miraculous interposition which has subsequently entered into so many systems, was first clearly applied to theology by him. Wherever the disbelief in the supernatural has arisen from _a priori_ considerations, and expressed itself, not with allegations of conscious fraud against the devotees of religion, nor with attempts to explain it away as merely mental realism, but with a.s.sertions that miracles are impossible, and nature an unchanging whole; this disbelief, whether insinuating itself into the defence of Christianity, or marking the attack on it, has been a reproduction of Spinoza.

In taking a retrospect of the long period over which we have travelled in this lecture, embracing the twofold crisis of free thought in the middle ages and the inauguration of the modern era, we cannot fail to be impressed with the grand idea of the permanent victory of truth, and the exquisite order according to which the fatherly providence of G.o.d makes all things conduce together for good. When the course of history is viewed in its true perspective, we perceive that Almighty love ruleth. The period has comprised most of the great movements, political or intellectual, which have occurred in European history since the Christian era. The fall of the Roman empire, the gradual reconstruction of society, the revival of learning, the invention of printing, the discovery of a new geographical world, the creation of modern philosophy, embraced in it, include the mention of almost every great event, with the exception of the French revolution, which has modified the character of the human mind, or affected the destiny of Christianity. At times it seemed as if Christianity was on the point of being extinguished by unbelief; at other times, the church seemed to lend itself to the extermination of all freedom of investigation. Yet Christianity has lasted through all these dangers, throwing off, like a healthy system, the errors which from time to time insinuated themselves into it, and diffusing its blessings of eternal truth into every region of life and thought. The past is the pledge of hope for the future.

Look forth!-that stream behold, That stream upon whose bosom we have pa.s.sed Floating at ease, while nations have effaced Nations, and death has gathered to his fold Long lines of mighty kings:-look forth, my soul (Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust) The living waters, less and less by guilt Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll, Till they have reached the eternal city-built For the perfected spirits of the just.(360)

LECTURE IV. DEISM IN ENGLAND PREVIOUS TO A.D. 1760.

ISAIAH lix. 19.

_When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him._

The forms a.s.sumed by free thought in the fourth great crisis of the Christian faith, which commenced with the rise of modern philosophy, and has continued with slight intervals to the present time, have been already stated(361) to be chiefly three, corresponding with the three nations in which they have been manifested.

In this lecture we shall sketch the history of one of these forms-English Deism-by which name the form of unbelief is denominated which existed during the close of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. If the dates be marked by corresponding political history, its rise may be placed as early as the reign of Charles I; its maturity in the period from the revolution of 1688 to the invasion of the Pretender in 1745; its decay in the close of the reign of George II, and the early part of that of George III.(362)

This long period was marked by those great events in intellectual and social history which were calculated to awaken the spirit of free inquiry.

It witnessed the dethronement of const.i.tuted authorities-intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political; the constant struggle of religious factions; and on two occasions civil war and revolution. It was affected by the rise of the philosophy of Bacon, and the positive advances of natural science under Newton and his coadjutors. It comprehended moments marked by the outburst of native genius, and others influenced by contact with the continental literature, both with the speculative theology of Holland and the dramatic and critical literature of France.(363) Above all it was illumined by the presence of such an array of great minds in all departments of intellectual activity as can rarely be matched in a single period. If, when the human mind in the middle ages was warmed into life after the winter of its long torpor, under the genial influence of the revival of literature, the renewal of its power was marked by a disposition to throw off the trammels which had bound it in the night of its darkness, how much more might such a result be expected when it was basking under the suns.h.i.+ne of meridian brightness, and exulting in the consciousness of strength.

A special peculiarity of this period likely to produce effects on religion has been already mentioned. The philosophy of this age compared with former ones was essentially a discussion of method. The two rival philosophies which now arose are generally placed in opposition to each other, as physical and mental respectively, that of Bacon being conversant with nature, that of Descartes with man.(364) But in truth in one respect both were united. Each was a.n.a.lytical; each strove to lay down a general method for investigating the sphere of inquiry which it selected. Both were reactions against the dogmatic a.s.sumptions of former systems; both a.s.sumed the indispensable necessity of an entire revolution in the method of attaining knowledge. Accordingly, though differing widely in appealing to the external senses or the internal intuitions respectively, they both built philosophy in the criticism of first principles. Hence, independently of any particular corollaries from special parts of their systems, the influence of their spirit was to beget a critical, subjective, and a.n.a.lytical study of any topic. When applied to religion, this is the feature which subsequently characterizes alike the unbelief and the discussion of the evidences. Difficulties and the answers to difficulties are found in an appeal to the functions and capacities of the interpreting mind. This appeal to reason was denominated rationalism in the seventeenth century, prior to the present application of the term in a more limited and obnoxious sense. The specific doctrine arrived at by this process, which allows the existence of a Deity, and of the religion of the moral conscience, but denies the specific revelation which Christianity a.s.serts, was called _theism_ or _deism_. (21)

In the period which we have mentioned as marking the first stage of deism, extending from its commencement to the close of the seventeenth century, the peculiarity which characterized the inquiry was the political aspect which it bore. The relation of religion to political toleration(365) gave occasion for examining the sphere of truth which may form the subject of political interference.

Two writers of opposite schools are usually regarded as marking the rise of deism, both of whom belonged to this phase of it, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Hobbes. Both formed their systems in the reign of Charles I.(366) The one rejected revelation by making religion a matter of individual intuition, the other by making it a matter of political convenience.

Lord Herbert,(367) the elder brother of the saintly poet, if looked at as a philosopher, must be cla.s.sed with Descartes rather than with Bacon, though chronology forbids the idea that he can have learned anything from Descartes. It is probable that while on his early emba.s.sy in France he came under the same intellectual influences which suggested to Descartes his views. Fragments of knowledge and partial solutions derived from older philosophies exist before a great thinker like Descartes embodies them in a system. Herbert may have been led by the indirect effect of such influences to a theory of innate ideas, independently of Descartes; or he may have arrived at it by reaction against the Pyrrhonism of some of the French writers of the preceding age, such as Montaigne, with whose writings he was familiar.

His works furnish his views on knowledge and on religion, both natural, heathen, and Christian. They include a treatise on truth, which suggested another on the cause of errors. The views on religion therein named, further suggested one on the religion which could be expected in a layman, and this again a critique on heathen creeds, written to show the universality of the beliefs so described.(368)

In discussing truth(369) he surveys the powers of the human mind, and places the ultimate test of it in the natural instincts or axiomatic beliefs. These accordingly become the test of a religion. The true religion must therefore be a universal one; that is, one of which the evidence commends itself to the universal mind of man, and finds its attestation in truth intuitively perceived. Of such truths he enumerates five:(370)-the existence of one supreme G.o.d; the duty of wors.h.i.+p; piety and virtue as the means thereof; the efficacy of repentance; the existence of rewards and punishments both here and hereafter. These he regards as the fundamental pillars of universal religion; and distinguishes from these realities the doctrines of what he calls particular religions, one of which is Christianity, as being uncertain, because not self-evident; and accordingly considers that no a.s.sent can be expected in a layman, save to the above-named self-evident truths. His view however of revelation is not very clear. Sometimes he seems to admit it, sometimes proscribes it as uncertain. His object seems not to have been primarily destructive, but merely the result of attempts to discover truth amid the jarring opinions of the churches of his day.(371)

The ideas which his writings contributed to deist speculation are two; viz., the examination of the universal principles of religion, and the appeal to an internal illuminating influence superior to revelation, "the inward light," as the test of religious truth. This was a phrase not uncommon in the seventeenth century. It was used by the Puritans to mark the appeal to the spiritual instincts, the heaven-taught feelings; and later by mystics, like the founder of the Quakers, to imply an appeal to an internal sense.(372) But in Herbert it differs from these in being universal, not restricted to a few persons, and in being intellectual rather than emotional or spiritual. It was not a.n.a.lysed so as to separate intuitional from reflective elements, and seems to have been a.n.a.logous to Descartes' ultimate appeal to the natural reason, the self-evidencing force of the mental axioms.(373)

If it was the anxiety to find certainty in controversies concerning theological dogmas, which suggested Herbert's inquiries, it was the struggle of ecclesiastical parties in connexion with political movements which excited those of Hobbes.(374)

In his philosophical views he belonged to an opposite school to Herbert. A disciple of Bacon, he was the first to apply his master's method to morals, and to place the basis of ethical and political obligation in experience; and in the application of these philosophical principles to religion, he also represented the contrary tendency to Herbert, state interference in contradistinction from private liberty, political religion as opposed to personal. The contest of individualism against mult.i.tudinism is the parallel in politics to that of private judgment against authority in religion. While some of the Puritans were urging unlimited license in the matter of religion, Hobbes wrote to prove the necessity of state control, and the importance of a fulcrum on which individual opinion might repose, external to itself; and referring the development of society to the necessity for restraining the natural selfishness of man, and resolving right into expedience as embodied in the sovereign head, he ended with crus.h.i.+ng the rights of the individual spirit, and defending absolute government.