A History of Freedom of Thought Part 7

The theological virtue of faith, he said, consists in believing revealed truths simply and solely on G.o.d?s authority. If you believe in the immortality of the soul for

[136] philosophical reasons, you are orthodox, but you have no part in faith. The merit of faith becomes greater, in proportion as the revealed truth surpa.s.ses all the powers of our mind; the more incomprehensible the truth and the more repugnant to reason, the greater is the sacrifice we make in accepting it, the deeper our submission to G.o.d. Therefore a merciless inventory of the objections which reason has to urge against fundamental doctrines serves to exalt the merits of faith.

The Dictionary was also criticized for the justice done to the moral excellencies of persons who denied the existence of G.o.d. Bayle replies that if he had been able to find any atheistical thinkers who lived bad lives, he would have been delighted to dwell on their vices, but he knew of none such. As for the criminals you meet in history, whose abominable actions make you tremble, their impieties and blasphemies prove they believed in a Divinity. This is a natural consequence of the theological doctrine that the Devil, who is incapable of atheism, is the instigator of all the sins of men. For man?s wickedness must clearly resemble that of the Devil and must therefore be joined to a belief in G.o.d?s existence, since the Devil is not an atheist. And is it not a proof of the infinite wisdom of G.o.d that the worst criminals

[137] are not atheists, and that most of the atheists whose names are recorded have been honest men? By this arrangement Providence sets bounds to the corruption of man; for if atheism and moral wickedness were united in the same persons, the societies of earth would be exposed to a fatal inundation of sin.

There was much more in the same vein; and the upshot was, under the thin veil of serving faith, to show that the Christian dogmas were essentially unreasonable.

Bayle?s work, marked by scholars.h.i.+p and extraordinary learning, had a great influence in England as well as in France. It supplied weapons to a.s.sailants of Christianity in both countries. At first the a.s.sault was carried on with most vigour and ability by the English deists, who, though their writings are little read now, did memorable work by their polemic against the authority of revealed religion.

The controversy between the deists and their orthodox opponents turned on the question whether the Deity of natural religion ?the G.o.d whose existence, as was thought, could be proved by reason?can be identified with the author of the Christian revelation. To the deists this seemed impossible. The nature of the alleged revelation seemed inconsistent with the character

[138] of the G.o.d to whom reason pointed. The defenders of revelation, at least all the most competent, agreed with the deists in making reason supreme, and through this reliance on reason some of them fell into heresies. Clarke, for instance, one of the ablest, was very unsound on the dogma of the Trinity. It is also to be noticed that with both sections the interest of morality was the princ.i.p.al motive. The orthodox held that the revealed doctrine of future rewards and punishments is necessary for morality; the deists, that morality depends on reason alone, and that revelation contains a great deal that is repugnant to moral ideals. Throughout the eighteenth century morality was the guiding consideration with Anglican Churchmen, and religious emotion, finding no satisfaction within the Church, was driven, as it were, outside, and sought an outlet in the Methodism of Wesley and Whitefield.

Spinoza had laid down the principle that Scripture must be interpreted like any other book (1670), [2] and with the deists this principle was fundamental. In order to avoid persecution they generally veiled their conclusions

[139] under sufficiently thin disguises. Hitherto the Press Licensing Act (1662) had very effectually prevented the publication of heterodox works, and it is from orthodox works denouncing infidel opinions that we know how rationalism was spreading. But in 1695, the Press Law was allowed to drop, and immediately deistic literature began to appear.

There was, however, the danger of prosecution under the Blasphemy laws.

There were three legal weapons for coercing those who attacked Christianity: (1) The Ecclesiastical Courts had and have the power of imprisoning for a maximum term of six months, for atheism, blasphemy, heresy, and d.a.m.nable opinions. (2) The common law as interpreted by Lord Chief Justice Hale in 1676, when a certain Taylor was charged with having said that religion was a cheat and blasphemed against Christ. The accused was condemned to a fine and the pillory by the Judge, who ruled that the Court of King?s Bench has jurisdiction in such a case, inasmuch as blasphemous words of the kind are an offence against the laws and the State, and to speak against Christianity is to speak in subversion of the law, since Christianity is ?parcel of the laws of England.? (3) The statute of 1698 enacts that if any person educated in the Christian religion ?shall by

[140] writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking deny any one of the persons in the Holy Trinity to be G.o.d, or shall a.s.sert or maintain there are more G.o.ds than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or shall deny the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority,? is convicted, he shall for the first offence be adjudged incapable to hold any public offices or employments, and on the second shall lose his civil rights and be imprisoned for three years.

This Statute expressly states as its motive the fact that ?many persons have of late years openly avowed and published many blasphemous and impious opinions contrary to the doctrine and principles of the Christian religion.?

As a matter of fact, most trials for blasphemy during the past two hundred years fall under the second head. But the new Statute of 1698 was very intimidating, and we can easily understand how it drove heterodox writers to ambiguous disguises. One of these disguises was allegorical interpretation of Scripture. They showed that literal interpretation led to absurdities or to inconsistencies with the wisdom and justice of G.o.d, and pretended to infer that allegorical interpretation must be subst.i.tuted. But they meant the reader to reject their pretended

[141] solution and draw a conclusion damaging to Revelation.

Among the arguments used in favour of the truth of Revelation the fulfilment of prophecies and the miracles of the New Testament were conspicuous. Anthony Collins, a country gentleman who was a disciple of Locke, published in 1733 his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, in which he drastically exposed the weakness of the evidence for fulfilment of prophecy, depending as it does on forced and unnatural figurative interpretations. Twenty years before he had written a Discourse of Free-thinking (in which Bayle?s influence is evident) pleading for free discussion and the reference of all religious questions to reason. He complained of the general intolerance which prevailed; but the same facts which testify to intolerance testify also to the spread of unbelief.

Collins escaped with comparative impunity, but Thomas Woolston, a Fellow of Sidney Suss.e.x College, Cambridge, who wrote six aggressive Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727?1730) paid the penalty for his audacity. Deprived of his Fellows.h.i.+p, he was prosecuted for libel, and sentenced to a fine of 100 and a year?s imprisonment. Unable to pay, he died in prison. He does

[142] not adopt the line of arguing that miracles are incredible or impossible. He examines the chief miracles related in the Gospels, and shows with great ability and shrewd common sense that they are absurd or unworthy of the performer. He pointed out, as Huxley was to point out in a controversy with Gladstone, that the miraculous driving of devils into a herd of swine was an unwarrantable injury to somebody?s property. On the story of the Divine blasting of the fig tree, he remarks: ?What if a yeoman of Kent should go to look for pippins in his orchard at Easter (the supposed time that Jesus sought for these figs) and because of a disappointment cut down his trees? What then would his neighbours make of him? Nothing less than a laughing-stock; and if the story got into our Publick News, he would be the jest and ridicule of mankind.?

Or take his comment on the miracle of the Pool of Bethesda, where an angel used to trouble the waters and the man who first entered the pool was cured of his infirmity. ?An odd and a merry way of conferring a Divine mercy. And one would think that the angels of G.o.d did this for their own diversion more than to do good to mankind. Just as some throw a bone among a kennel of hounds for the pleasure of seeing them

[143] quarrel for it, or as others cast a piece of money among a company of boys for the sport of seeing them scramble for it, so was the pastime of the angels here.? In dealing with the healing of the woman who suffered from a b.l.o.o.d.y flux, he asks: ?What if we had been told of the Pope?s curing an haemorrhage like this before us, what would Protestants have said to it? Why, ?that a foolish, credulous, and superst.i.tious woman had fancied herself cured of some slight indisposition, and the crafty Pope and his adherents, aspiring after popular applause, magnified the presumed cure into a miracle.? The application of such a supposed story of a miracle wrought by the Pope is easy; and if Infidels, Jews, and Mahometans, who have no better opinion of Jesus than we have of the Pope, should make it, there?s no help for it.?

Woolston professed no doubts of the inspiration of Scripture. While he argued that it was out of the question to suppose the miracles literally true, he pretended to believe in the fantastic theory that they were intended allegorically as figures of Christ?s mysterious operations in the soul of man. Origen, a not very orthodox Christian Father, had employed the allegorical method, and Woolston quotes him in his favour.

His

[144] vigorous criticisms vary in value, but many of them hit the nail on the head, and the fas.h.i.+on of some modern critics to pa.s.s over Woolston?s productions as unimportant because they are ?ribald? or coa.r.s.e, is perfectly unjust. The pamphlets had an enormous sale, and Woolston?s notoriety is ill.u.s.trated by the anecdote of the ?jolly young woman? who met him walking abroad and accosted him with ?You old rogue, are you not hanged yet?? Mr. Woolston answered, ?Good woman, I know you not; pray what have I done to offend you?? ?You have writ against my Saviour,? she said; ?what would become of my poor sinful soul if it was not for my dear Saviour??

About the same time, Matthew Tindal (a Fellow of All Souls) attacked Revelation from a more general point of view. In his Christianity as old as the Creation (1730) he undertook to show that the Bible as a revelation is superfluous, for it adds nothing to natural religion, which G.o.d revealed to man from the very first by the sole light of reason. He argues that those who defend Revealed religion by its agreement with Natural religion, and thus set up a double government of reason and authority, fall between the two. ?It ?s an odd jumble,? he observes, ?to prove the truth of a book by the truth

[145] of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude those doctrines to be true because contained in that book.? He goes on to criticize the Bible in detail. In order to maintain its infallibility, without doing violence to reason, you have, when you find irrational statements, to torture them and depart from the literal sense. Would you think that a Mohammedan was governed by his Koran, who on all occasions departed from the literal sense? ?Nay, would you not tell him that his inspired book fell infinitely short of Cicero?s uninspired writings, where there is no such occasion to recede from the letter??

As to chronological and physical errors, which seemed to endanger the infallibility of the Scriptures, a bishop had met the argument by saying, reasonably enough, that in the Bible G.o.d speaks according to the conceptions of those to whom he speaks, and that it is not the business of Revelation to rectify their opinions in such matters. Tindal made this rejoinder:?

?Is there no difference between G.o.d?s not rectifying men?s sentiments in those matters and using himself such sentiments as needs be rectified; or between G.o.d?s not mending men?s logic and rhetoric where ?t is defective and using such himself; or between G.o.d?s

[146] not contradicting vulgar notions and confirming them by speaking according to them? Can infinite wisdom despair of gaining or keeping people?s affections without having recourse to such mean acts??

He exposes with considerable effect the monstrosity of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. Must we not consider, he asks, whether one can be said to be sent as a Saviour of mankind, if he comes to shut Heaven?s gate against those to whom, before he came, it was open provided they followed the dictates of their reason? He criticizes the inconsistency of the impartial and universal goodness of G.o.d, known to us by the light of nature, with acts committed by Jehovah or his prophets. Take the cases in which the order of nature is violated to punish men for crimes of which they were not guilty, such as Elijah?s hindering rain from falling for three years and a half. If G.o.d could break in upon the ordinary rules of his providence to punish the innocent for the guilty, we have no guarantee that if he deals thus with us in this life, he will not act in the same way in the life to come, ?since if the eternal rules of justice are once broken how can we imagine any stop?? But the ideals of holiness and justice in the Old Testament are strange indeed. The holier men

[147] are represented to be, the more cruel they seem and the more addicted to cursing. How surprising to find the holy prophet Elisha cursing in the name of the Lord little children for calling him Bald- pate! And, what is still more surprising, two she-bears immediately devoured forty-two little children.

I have remarked that theologians at this time generally took the line of basing Christianity on reason and not on faith. An interesting little book, Christianity not founded on Argument, couched in the form of a letter to a young gentleman at Oxford, by Henry Dodwell (Junior), appeared in 1741, and pointed out the dangers of such confidence in reason. It is an ironical development of the principle of Bayle, working out the thesis that Christianity is essentially unreasonable, and that if you want to believe, reasoning is fatal. The cultivation of faith and reasoning produce contrary effects; the philosopher is disqualified for Divine influences by his very progress in carnal wisdom; the Gospel must be received with all the obsequious submission of a babe who has no other disposition but to learn his lesson. Christ did not propose his doctrines to investigation; he did not lay the arguments for his mission before his disciples and give them time to consider

[148] calmly of their force, and liberty to determine as their reason should direct them; the apostles had no qualifications for the task, being the most artless and illiterate persons living. Dodwell exposes the absurdity of the Protestant position. To give all men liberty to judge for themselves and to expect at the same time that they shall be of the Preacher?s mind is such a scheme for unanimity as one would scarcely imagine any one could be weak enough to devise in speculation and much less that any could ever be found hardy enough to avow and propose it to practice. The men of Rome ?shall rise up in the judgment (of all considering persons) against this generation and shall condemn it; for they invented but the one absurdity of infallibility, and behold a greater absurdity than infallibility is here.?

I have still to speak of the (Third) Earl of Shaftesbury, whose style has rescued his writings from entire neglect. His special interest was ethics. While the valuable work of most of the heterodox writers of this period lay in their destructive criticism of supernatural religion, they clung, as we have seen, to what was called natural religion? the belief in a kind and wise personal G.o.d, who created the world, governs it by natural laws, and desires our happiness. The idea

[149] was derived from ancient philosophers and had been revived by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his Latin treatise On Truth (in the reign of James I). The deists contended that this was a sufficient basis for morality and that the Christian inducements to good behaviour were unnecessary. Shaftesbury in his Inquiry concerning Virtue (1699) debated the question and argued that the scheme of heaven and h.e.l.l, with the selfish hopes and fears which they inspire, corrupts morality and that the only worthy motive for conduct is the beauty of virtue in itself. He does not even consider deism a necessary a.s.sumption for a moral code; he admits that the opinion of atheists does not undermine ethics. But he thinks that the belief in a good governor of the universe is a powerful support to the practice of virtue. He is a thorough optimist, and is perfectly satisfied with the admirable adaptation of means to ends, whereby it is the function of one animal to be food for another. He makes no attempt to reconcile the red claws and teeth of nature with the beneficence of its powerful artist. ?In the main all things are kindly and well disposed.? The atheist might have said that he preferred to be at the mercy of blind chance than in the hands of an autocrat who, if he pleased Lord Shaftesbury?s sense

[150] of order, had created flies to be devoured by spiders. But this was an aspect of the universe which did not much trouble thinkers in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the character of the G.o.d of the Old Testament roused Shaftesbury?s aversion. He attacks Scripture not directly, but by allusion or with irony. He hints that if there is a G.o.d, he would be less displeased with atheists than with those who accepted him in the guise of Jehovah. As Plutarch said, ?I had rather men should say of me that there neither is nor ever was such a one as Plutarch, than they should say ?There was a Plutarch, an unsteady, changeable, easily provokable and revengeful man.? ? Shaftesbury?s significance is that he built up a positive theory of morals, and although it had no philosophical depth, his influence on French and German thinkers of the eighteenth century was immense.

In some ways perhaps the ablest of the deists, and certainly the most scholarly, was Rev. Conyers Middleton, who remained within the Church.

He supported Christianity on grounds of utility. Even if it is an imposture, he said, it would be wrong to destroy it. For it is established by law and it has a long tradition behind it. Some traditional religion is necessary and it would

[151] be hopeless to supplant Christianity by reason. But his writings contain effective arguments which go to undermine Revelation. The most important was his Free Inquiry into Christian miracles (1748), which put in a new and dangerous light an old question: At what time did the Church cease to have the power of performing miracles? We shall see presently how Gibbon applied Middleton?s method.

The leading adversaries of the deists appealed, like them, to reason, and, in appealing to reason, did much to undermine authority. The ablest defence of the faith, Bishop Butler?s a.n.a.logy (1736), is suspected of having raised more doubts than it appeased. This was the experience of William Pitt the Younger, and the a.n.a.logy made James Mill (the utilitarian) an unbeliever. The deists, argued that the unjust and cruel G.o.d of Revelation could not be the G.o.d of nature; Butler pointed to nature and said, There you behold cruelty and injustice. The argument was perfectly good against the optimism of Shaftesbury, but it plainly admitted of the conclusion?opposite to that which Butler wished to establish?that a just and beneficent G.o.d does not exist. Butler is driven to fall back on the sceptical argument that we are extremely ignorant; that all things

[152] are possible, even eternal h.e.l.l fire; and that therefore the safe and prudent course is to accept the Christian doctrine. It may be remarked that this reasoning, with a few modifications, could be used in favour of other religions, at Mecca or at Timbuctoo. He has, in effect, revived the argument used by Pascal that if there is one chance in any very large number that Christianity is true, it is a man?s interest to be a Christian; for, if it prove false, it will do him no harm to have believed it; if it prove true, he will be infinitely the gainer. Butler seeks indeed to show that the chances in favour amount to a probability, but his argument is essentially of the same intellectual and moral value as Pascal?s. It has been pointed out that it leads by an easy logical step from the Anglican to the Roman Church. Catholics and Protestants (as King Henry IV of France argued) agree that a Catholic may be saved; the Catholics a.s.sert that a Protestant will be d.a.m.ned; therefore the safe course is to embrace Catholicism. [3]

I have dwelt at some length upon some of the English deists, because, while they occupy an important place in the history of

[153] rationalism in England, they also supplied, along with Bayle, a great deal of the thought which, manipulated by brilliant writers on the other side of the Channel, captured the educated cla.s.ses in France. We are now in the age of Voltaire. He was a convinced deist. He considered that the nature of the universe proved that it was made by a conscious architect, he held that G.o.d was required in the interests of conduct, and he ardently combated atheism. His great achievements were his efficacious labour in the cause of toleration, and his systematic warfare against superst.i.tions. He was profoundly influenced by English thinkers, especially Locke and Bolingbroke. This statesman had concealed his infidelity during his lifetime except from his intimates; he had lived long as an exile in France; and his rationalistic essays were published (1754) after his death. Voltaire, whose literary genius converted the work of the English thinkers into a world-force, did not begin his campaign against Christianity till after the middle of the century, when superst.i.tious practices and religious persecutions were becoming a scandal in his country. He a.s.sailed the Catholic Church in every field with ridicule and satire. In a little work called The Tomb of Fanaticism (written 1736,

[154] published 1767), he begins by observing that a man who accepts his religion (as most people do) without examining it is like an ox which allows itself to be harnessed, and proceeds to review the difficulties in the Bible, the rise of Christianity, and the course of Church history; from which he concludes that every sensible man should hold the Christian sect in horror. ?Men are blind to prefer an absurd and sanguinary creed, supported by executioners and surrounded by fiery f.a.ggots, a creed which can only be approved by those to whom it gives power and riches, a particular creed only accepted in a small part of the world?to a simple and universal religion.? In the Sermon of the Fifty and the Questions of Zapata we can see what he owed to Bayle and English critics, but his touch is lighter and his irony more telling.

His comment on geographical mistakes in the Old Testament is: ?G.o.d was evidently not strong in geography.? Having called attention to the ?horrible crime? of Lot?s wife in looking backward, and her conversion into a pillar of salt, he hopes that the stories of Scripture will make us better, if they do not make us more enlightened. One of his favourite methods is to approach Christian doctrines as a person who had just heard of the existence of Christians or Jews for the first time in his life.

[155]

His drama, Saul (1763), which the police tried to suppress, presents the career of David, the man after G.o.d?s own heart, in all its naked horror.

The scene in which Samuel reproves Saul for not having slain Agag will give an idea of the spirit of the piece. SAMUEL: G.o.d commands me to tell you that he repents of having made you king. SAUL: G.o.d repents! Only they who commit errors repent. His eternal wisdom cannot be unwise. G.o.d cannot commit errors. SAMUEL: He can repent of having set on the throne those who do. SAUL: Well, who does not? Tell me, what is my fault?

SAMUEL: You have pardoned a king. AGAG: What! Is the fairest of virtues considered a crime in Judea? SAMUEL (to Agag): Silence! do not blaspheme. (To Saul). Saul, formerly king of the Jews, did not G.o.d command you by my mouth to destroy all the Amalekites, without sparing women, or maidens, or children at the breast? AGAG: Your G.o.d?gave such a command! You are mistaken, you meant to say, your devil. SAMUEL: Saul, did you obey G.o.d? SAUL: I did not suppose such a command

[156] was positive. I thought that goodness was the first attribute of the Supreme Being, and that a compa.s.sionate heart could not displease him. SAMUEL: You are mistaken, unbeliever. G.o.d reproves you, your sceptre will pa.s.s into other hands.

Perhaps no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than Voltaire. He was looked on as a sort of anti-Christ. That was natural; his attacks were so tremendously effective at the time. But he has been sometimes decried on the ground that he only demolished and made no effort to build up where he had pulled down. This is a narrow complaint.

It might be replied that when a sewer is spreading plague in a town, we cannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it may fairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was a poisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and therefore civilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as by construction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attack with effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, if there are any social duties, to use it.

For constructive thinking we must go to the other great leader of French thought,

[157] Rousseau, who contributed to the growth of freedom in a different way. He was a deist, but his deism, unlike that of Voltaire, was religious and emotional. He regarded Christianity with a sort of reverent scepticism. But his thought was revolutionary and repugnant to orthodoxy; it made against authority in every sphere; and it had an enormous influence. The clergy perhaps dreaded his theories more than the scoffs and negations of Voltaire. For some years he was a fugitive on the face of the earth. emile, his brilliant contribution to the theory of education, appeared in 1762. It contains some remarkable pages on religion, ?the profession of faith of a Savoyard vicar,? in which the author?s deistic faith is strongly affirmed and revelation and theology rejected. The book was publicly burned in Paris and an order issued for Rousseau?s arrest. Forced by his friends to flee, he was debarred from returning to Geneva, for the government of that canton followed the example of Paris. He sought refuge in the canton of Bern and was ordered to quit. He then fled to the princ.i.p.ality of Neufchatel which belonged to Prussia. Frederick the Great, the one really tolerant ruler of the age, gave him protection, but he was persecuted and calumniated by the local clergy, who but for Frederick would

[158] have expelled him, and he went to England for a few months (1766), then returning to France, where he was left unmolested till his death.