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LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. The beginnings of English Deism appear in
the seventeenth century. Its main principles are to be found in the writings
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648), who devoted the latter part of a
life spent in a military and diplomatic career to a search for a standard
and a guide in the conflicts of creeds and systems. He was a friend of
Grotius, Casaubon, and Gassendi, and during a long sojourn in France made
himself acquainted with the thought of Montaigne, of Bodin, and especially
of Charron. His works are: De Veritate (Paris, 1624); Cherbury.
De religions Gentilium errorumque apud eos causes (London, 1645);
and two minor treatises, De cause errorum and De religions laici.
The first work advances a theory of knowledge based upon the recognition
of innate universal characteristics on the object perceived, and rigidly
opposed to knowledge supernatural in its origin and determinable in only
by strife and conflict. The second work lays down the common marks by which
religious truth is recognized. These are (1) a belief in the existence
of the Deity, (2) the obligation to reverence such a power, (3) the identification
of worship with practical morality, (4) the obligation to repent of sin
and to abandon it, and, (5) divine recompense in this world and the next.
These five essentials (the so-called "Five Articles" of the English Deists)
constitute the nucleus of all religions and of Christianity in its primitive,
uncorrupted form. The variations between positive religions are explained
as due partly to the allegorization of nature, partly to self-deception,
the workings of imagination, and priestly guile.
Herbert's influence disappeared in the storms of the Puritan Revolution,
and Deism found the most important impetus supplied to its progress in
ecclesiastical circles. The learning of the Renaissance had served to incline
the clergy of the Establishment to a moderate rational theology, and in
the conflict between Puritans and Anglicans, and between Roman Catholics
and Protestants, it became common to invoke Reason as arbiter. Later Deists
could appeal to the arguments of leading theologians, as well as to those
of the Cambridge Platonists, who, in their conflict against the sensualism
of Hobbes, exalted the authority of moral intuitions. The Revolution served
to intensify the growing feeling against what was arbitrary in religion,
and emphasized the demand for subjective independence in the field of reason
and the need of unity in the realm of practical morality.
HOBBES AND OTHERS. Rejection of theological supernaturalism stands out
as the most conspicuous characteristic in Hobbes's philosophical writings
(d. 1679), which were inspired by the teachings of the new mathematical
and natural sciences. The different religions are explained as the product
of human fear interpreting natural phenomena in anthropomorphic form, or,
in their higher aspects, as the outcome of reflection on causal relation
in the universe. Miracles and revelations are in themselves improbable,
and may be most easily explained as the imaginings of the ignorant. Positive
religion is the creation of the State, and the sovereign justly possesses
unconditional power to enforce its prescriptions, for only in this way
can religious strife be avoided. Between religion thus naturally explained
and a prophetic and Christian revelation Hobbes, nevertheless, attempted
to mediate; he mentions as the means that might lead to such a reconciliation
the rational interpretation of miracles, the differentiation between the
inner moral sense of Scripture and mere figurative expression, and the
historical criticisms of Biblical sources. The entire apparatus of Rationalism
is here to be found, limited only in its application. Further, Spinoza's
Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) and Bayle's Dictionnaire
(1695-97) were effective in shaping the character of Deism. Of no small
importance, also, was the rise of a literature of comparative religion
and the publication of ethnographical studies and works of travel. China,
Arabia, Egypt, Persia, India, and primal regions, were brought within the
horizon of religious investigation. Philosophy, beginning with Locke's
theory of knowledge, and natural science, with Newton's theory of gravitation,
contributed to the opposition with which theological dogma was confronted.
Yet their attitude was not one of hostility to religions which they sought
rather to utilize for the purpose of establishing the desired universal
standard of truth. Newton and Boyle succeeded in reconciling the creed
of the Church with their mechanical metaphysics; and this union remained
characteristic of England, so that even men like Priestley and Hartley
did not shrink from supporting their materialistic theories by theological
arguments. We have here the blending of a sensualistic epistemology, a
mechanical-teleological metaphysics, a historical criticism, and an a
prioristic ethics whose product in the shape of natural religion was
destined first to undermine Christianity, then to compete with it, and
finally to supplant it.
CHARLES BLOUNT. These various tendencies could not show themselves fully
under the ecclesiastical restraint of the Restoration, yet they appear
clearly enough in the writings of Charles Blount (d. 1693), usually placed
second to Herbert in the lists of Deists. Like his predecessor, Blount
dwells on the conflict between rival religions, and finds a standard of
adjustment in a fusion of Herbert's theory of universal characteristics
with Hobbes's prescription by the State. Like Hobbes and Spinoza, he touches
serious problems of Biblical criticism at this early date. Freedom from
prejudice is his boast; he asserts the supernatural character of Christianity
on the basis of its miracles, after he has already rendered them dubious
by parallels with non-Christian miracles. His works were: Anima mundi
(London, 1679), Great is Diana of the Ephesians (1680), and The
Two First Books of Philostratus concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus,
published in English with notes (1680).
JOHN LOCKE. The Revolution of 1688, the establishment of the freedom
of the press in 1694, the political favor that was bestowed on the new
tendencies in theology, in opposition to the stricter Anglicanism which
was tainted with Stuart partizanship, were conditions favorable to the
development of the seed that had already been planted. Parallel with the
liberalization of orthodox dogma, there ran a more radical development
with the attainment of a standard for the testing of the contents of revelation.
Of surpassing importance in this direction was the influence and work of
John Locke (d. 1704), who, in the field of theology, found his starting
point, like most prominent thinkers of the age, in the conflict of systems,
doctrines, and practices. Out of his reflections on the data of experience
he developed a mechanical-teleological metaphysics and an empirical-utilitarian
ethics, the latter agreeing, with the old idea of lex naturae in
that ethical experience merely confirms the connection established by a
teleological government of the universe between certain acts and their
consequences. In spite of his supernaturalist tendencies, Locke nevertheless
maintained, in his Letters on Toleration (1689-92), that only rational
demonstration, and not compulsion or mere assertion, can establish the
validity of revelation. In the Essay concerning Human Understanding
(1690) he had investigated the conception of revelation from the epistemological
standpoint, and laid down the criteria by which the true revelation is
to be distinguished from other doctrines which claim such authority. Strict
proof of the formal character of revelation must be adduced; the tradition
which communicates it to us must be fully accredited by both external and
internal evidence; and its content must be shown to correspond with rational
metaphysics and ethics. Revelation is revelation; but, after it is once
given, it may be shown a posteriori to be rational, i.e., capable
of being deduced from the premises of our reason. Only where this is possible
is there a presumption in favor of the purely mysterious parts of revelation.
Where these criteria are disregarded the way is open to the excesses of
sects and priesthoods by which religion, the differentia of reasoning man,
has often made him appear less rational than the beasts. Locke advances
therefore the remarkable conception of a revelation that reveals only the
reasonable and the universally cognizable. The practical consequences of
the thesis are deduced in his Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered
in the Scriptures (1695), which aims at the termination of religious
strife through the recovery of the truths of primitive, rational Christianity.
From the Gospels and the Acts, as distinguished from the Epistles, he elicits
as the fundamental Christian truths the doctrine of the messiahship of
Jesus and that of the kingdom of God. Inseparably connected with these
are the recognition of Jesus as ruler of this kingdom, forgiveness of sins,
and subjection to the moral law of the. kingdom. This law is identical
with the ethical portion of the law of Moses, which in its turn corresponds
to the lex naturae or rationis. The Gospel is but the divine summary
and exposition of the law of nature, and it is the advantage of Christianity
over pagan creeds and philosophies that it offers this law of nature intelligibly,
with divine authority, and free from merely ceremonial sacerdotalism. To
do this it requires the aid of a supernatural revelation, whose message
is attainable through reason also, but only in an imperfect way.
TOLAND, COLLINS, AND OTHERS. Deducing the full consequences of Locke's
theory, John Toland (d. 1722), in his Christianity not Mysterious
(1696), maintained that the content of revelation must neither contradict
nor transcend the dictates of reason. Revelation is not the basis of truth,
but only a " means of information " by which man may arrive at knowledge,
the sanction for which must be found in reason. Primitive Christianity
knew nothing of mystery, whose sources are Judaic and Greek, and the original
Christian use of the word mysterium conveyed no idea of that which
transcended reason. The basis is thus laid for the critical study of early
Christianity. Further problems of Biblical criticism and the distinction
between the diverse parties in primitive Christianity are advanced in Toland's
Amyntor (1699) and Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile and illahometan
Christianity (1718). In like manner, Anthony Collins (d. 1729), in
his Discourse of Freethinking (1713), developed the consequences
of Locke's propositions. Revelation depends for its sanction upon its agreement
with reason, and what is contrary to reason is not revelation. Practical
morality is independent of dogma, which, on the contrary, has been the
cause of much evil in the history of the world. Christ and the Apostles,
the prototypes. of the freethinkers, never made use of supernatural authority,
but confined themselves to simple, rational demonstration. Collins's work
elicited numerous replies; but none really made answer to his main thesis.
After remaining silent for eleven years, Collins renewed the contest with
a contribution on prophecy and miracles. Setting out from Locke's proposition
that revelation was truth sanctioned by reason, he found it a simple step
to reject prophecy and miracles as non-essential characteristics of religion,
amounting at most to mere didactic devices. The mathematician William Whiston
(d. 1752) gave a new impulse to the controversy by the publication of The
True Text (1722), in which the lack of real concordance between the
New Testament interpretation of Old Testament prophecies is pointed out,
and the prevailing allegorical method of reconciling such differences summarily
rejected. The present form of the Old Testament is characterized as a forgery
perpetrated by the Jews, and an attempt is made by Whiston to restore the
original text. Collins, in his Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons
of the Christian Religion (1724), agreed with Whiston as to the discrepancies
between the two Testaments, but defended the allegorical method of interpretation.
Thomas Woolston (d. 1733) came to the support of Collins in this controversy
over the Biblical prophecies; and when his opponents shifted their appeal
from the prophecies to the miraculous acts of Jesus he applied his destructive
allegorical method to those also, in his Discourses on the Miracles
of our Saviour (1727-30).
MATTHEW TINDAL. Matthew Tindal (d. 1733), in his dialogue Christianity
as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of
Nature (1730), produced the standard text-book of Deism. Proceeding
from Locke's proposition of the identity of the truths of revelation with
those of reason, he adduces a new array of arguments in support of that
position. The goodness of God, the vast extent of the earth, the long duration
of human life on earth render it improbable that only to Jews and Christians
was vouchsafed the favor of perceiving truth. We now have brought in the
classic example of the three hundred million Chinese who surely could not
all be excluded from the truth, and Confucianism begins to be extolled
against much that is repugnant and harsh in the Mosaic law. Christianity,
to be the truth, must find the substance in all religions; it must be as
old as creation. The doctrines of the fall and of original sin can not
stand, since it is irrational to believe in the exclusion from the truth
of the vast majority of humanity. Tindal's position is orthodox to the
extent that Judaism and Christianity are acknowledged as revelations, though
revelations only of the lex naturae, which is identified with natural
religion, the primitive, uncorrupted faith, consisting in "the practise
of morality in obedience to the will of God." An echo of the teachings
of Tindal is found in Thomas Chubb (d. 1747), whose True Gospel of Jesus
Christ (1738) attempts to prove that what Jesus sought to teach his
followers was but natural morality, or the law of nature.
MORGAN, ANNET, AND MIDDLETON. Thomas Morgan (d. 1743) continued Tindal's
argument on its historical side in The Moral Philosopher (1737-40),displaying
much originality in tracing the development of heathen religions, as well
as of Judaism and Christianity. Abandoning the old method of deriving specific
religions from priestly deception, he explains their rise through the gradual
supplanting of the one God of the law of nature by a crowd of divinities
connected with definite natural phenomena. The legislation of Moses, under
Egyptian influences, imposed a rigid and nationally restricted form upon
the lex naturae, and the Jewish ritual and ceremonial is in essence
a purely political institution. Full revelation of the law of nature came
with Christ, who gave to the world in concentrated form the truth that
had already been revealed to Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and Plato.
The protagonist of this divinely revealed truth after Christ was Paul,
who, in his form of expression, indeed, was compelled to make concessions
to the influence of Judaism, and in whom, therefore, much is to be taken
figuratively. Peter, on the other hand, and the author of the Apocalypse
misunderstood the import of the revelation of Christ and corrupted it in
the spirit of Messianic Judaism. Persecution forced the two tendencies
into union in the Catholic Church, and the Reformation has only partially
succeeded in separating them. Morgan's argument results, therefore, in
the rejection of the formerly assumed identity between the law of Moses
and the lex naturm, and the restriction of the latter, in the fullness
of revelation, to Christianity. His conclusions were denied by William
Warburton in The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-41). When the Christian
apologists substituted for the argument from miracles the argument from
personal witness and the credibility of Biblical evidence, Peter Annet
(d. 1769), in his Resurrection of Jesus (1744), assailed the validity
of such evidence, and first advanced the hypothesis of the illusory. death
of Jesus, suggesting also that possibly Paul should be regarded as the
founder of a new religion. In Supernaturals Examined (1747) Annet
roundly denies the possibility of miracles. Conyers Middleton (d. 1750)
in his later writings sought to bridge over the gulf between sacred and
profane history, and to test them equally by the same method. His Inquiry
into the Miraculous Powers (1748) demonstrates that the belief in miracles
is common to primitive Christianity and heathen creeds, and that it developed
to great proportions in the later life of the Church,, so that one is then
confronted with an endless succession of miracle to which belongs the same
degree of credibility that the apologists attributed to the miracles of
the Bible. Though special reference to the New Testament was omitted, Middleton
propounded a question to answer which no serious attempt was mad when he
asked why credence should be granted to one faith that is denied to another.
SHAFTESBURY, MANDEVILLE, DODWELL, BOLINGBROKE. The Deistic controversy
died out in England about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Deistic
literature had exhausted its stock of materials, while its tenets had never
obtained a strong hold on the people. The cold, inflexible, rational supernaturalism
of Paley (d. 1805) was considered as the final settlement of these long
conflicts. From the beginning, however, there had been a class of critics,
representatives of the old Renaissance spirit, and inimical, therefore,
to the Stoic and Christian ethics, who had only partially shared the views
of the Deists, and in some ways had advanced to a position far beyond them.
Shaftesbury (d. 1713), in opposition to the utilitarian and supernaturalist
ethics of Locke and Clarke, developed the conception of a strictly autonomous
moral code having its basis in a moral instinct in man whose end is to
bring individual and society to harmonious self-perfection. Bernard Mandeville
(1733) adopted the Epicureanism of Hobbes and Gassendi, studied moral problems
in the skeptical spirit of Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld, gave the preference
to Bayle over the Deists, and developed empiricism into a sort of Agnosticism.
He criticized the prevailing morality as a more conventional lie. Christianity-which
the Deists had wished, while reforming, to maintain-he declared impossible,
not only as a religion, but as a system of morality. His Free Thought
on Religion (1720) has caused him to be included in the ranks of the
Deists; but his real position is brought out in the Fable of the Bees
(1714). Henry Dodwell (d. 1711), in Christianity not Founded on Argument
(1742), attempted to demonstrate the invalidity of the rationalistic basis
for Christian truth constructed by the Deists, from the very nature of
the religious impulse, which, being opposed to rational argumentation,
calls for the support of tradition and mystery, and finds fascination in
the attitude of credo quia absurdum. The only proof proceeds from a mystic
inner enlightenment; logical demonstrations like those of Clarke or the
Boyle lectures are only destructive of religion. Bolingbroke (d. 1751)
voices the French influence in a capricious and dilettante manner. Despising
all religions as the product of enthusiasm, fraud, and superstition, he
nevertheless concedes to real Christianity the possession of moral and
rational truth; an advocate of freedom of thought, he supports an established
church in the interest of the State and of public morals (Letters on
the Study and Use of History 1752; Essays, 1753).
HUME'S INFLUENCE. Far greater is the influence of David Hume (d. 1776),
who summarized the Deistic criticism and raised it to the level of modern
scientific method by emancipating it from the conception of a deity conceived
through the reason and by abandoning its characteristic interpretation
of history. He separates Locke's theory of knowledge from its connection
with a scheme of mechanical teleology and confines the human mind within
the realm of sense perception. Beginning then with the crudest factors
of experience and not with a religious and ethical norm, he traces the
development of systems of religion, ethics, and philosophy in an ascending
course through the ages. He thus overthrow the Deistic philosophy of religion
while lie developed their critical method to the extent of making it the
starting-point for the English positivist philosophy of religion. Distinguishing
between the metaphysical problem of the idea of God and the historical
problem of the rise of religions, lie denied the possibility of attaining
a knowledge of deity through the reason, and explained religion as arising
from the misconception or arbitrary misinterpretation of experience (Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, written in 1751, but not published till
1779; Natural History of Religion, 1757). Against the justification
of religion by other means than rational Hume directs his celebrated critique
of miracles, in which to the possibility of miraculous occurrences he opposes
the possibility of error on the part of the observer or historian. Human
experience, affected by ignorance, fancy, and the imaginings of fear and
hope, explains sufficiently the growth of religion. Hume's contemporaries
failed to recognize the portentous transformation which he had effected
in the character of Deism. The Scottish "common-sense school " saved for
a time the old natural theology and the theological argument from miracles
to revelation; but in reality Hume's skeptical method, continued by Hamilton
and united to French Positivism by Mill and Browne, became, in connection
with modern ethnology and anthropology, the basis of a psychological philosophy
of religion in which the data of outward experience are the main factors
(Evolutionism, Positivism, Agnosticism, Tylor, Spencer, Lubbock, Andrew
Lang). In so far as Hume's influence prevailed among his contemporaries,
it may be said to have amalgamated with that of Voltaire; the "infidels,"
as they were now called, were Voltairians. Most prominent among them was
Gibbon (d. 1794), whose Decline and Fall offers the first dignified
pragmatic treatment of the rise of Christianity. The fundamental principles
of Deism became tinged in the nineteenth century with skepticism, pessimism,
or pantheism, but the conceptions of natural religion retained largely
their old character.
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