1614. Epist. Ded.

[369] Discourse, ed. 1857, p. 226. [370] Dr. J. Brown's pref. to ed. of 1857, p. xxii. [371] More, Collection of Philosophical Writings, 4th ed. 1692, p. 95. [372] Fabricius, Delectus Argumentorum et Syllabus Scriptorum, 1725, p. 341. [373] No copy in British Museum. [374] Urwick, Life of John Howe, with 1846 ed. of Howe's Select Works, pp. xiii, xix. Urwick, a learned evangelical, fully admits the presence of "infidels" on both sides in the politics of the time. [375] Discourse Concerning Union Among Protestants, ed. cited, pp. 146, 156, 158. In the preface to his treatise, The Redeemer's Tears Wept over Lost Souls, Howe complains of "the atheism of some, the avowed mere theism of others," and of a fashionable habit of ridiculing religion. This sermon, however, appears to have been first published in 1684; and the date of its application is uncertain. [376] Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, Art. 285. [377] The preface begins: "It is neither to satisfie the importunity of friends, nor to prevent false copies (which and such like excuses I know are expected in usual prefaces), that I have adventured abroad this following treatise: but it is out of a just resentment of the affronts and indignities which have been cast on religion, by such who account it a matter of judgment to disbelieve the Scriptures, and a piece of wit to dispute themselves out of the possibility of being happy in another world." [378] See bk. ii, ch. x. Page 338, 3rd ed. 1666. [379] Cp. Glanvill, pref. Address to his Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed. 1885, pp. lv-lvii; and Henry More's Divine Dialogues, Dial. i, ch. xxxii. [380] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i. 109. [381] The Reformed Pastor, abr. ed. 1826, pp. 236, 239. [382] Work cited, ed. 1667, p. 136. The proposition is reiterated. [383] Id. p. 388. [384] Reasons of the Christian Religion, pp. 388-89. [385] Religio Stoici, Edinburgh, 1663. p. 19. The essay was reprinted in 1665, and in London in 1693 under the title of The Religious Stoic. [386] Id. p. 18. [387] Id. p. 124. [388] Id. p. 76. [389] Id. p. 69. [390] Religio Stoici, p. 116. [391] Id. p. 122. [392] This last is interesting as a probable echo of opinions he had heard from some of his older contemporaries: "Opinion kept within its proper bounds is an [ = the Scottish "ane"] pure act of the mind; and so it would appear that to punish the body for that which is a guilt of the soul is as unjust as to punish one relation for another" (pref. pp. 10-11). He adds that "the Almighty hath left no warrand upon holy record for persecuting such as dissent from us." [393] Reason: an Essay, ed. 1690, p. 21. Cp. p. 152. [394] Id. p. 82. It is noteworthy that Mackenzie puts in a protest against "implicit Faith and Infallibility, those great tyrants over Reason" (p. 88). But the essay as a whole is ill-planned and unimpressive. [395] Work cited, 2nd ed. pt. ii, pp. 106-15. [396] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 86-87, 89-90. This explanation is also given by Bishop Wilkins in his treatise on Natural Religion, 7th ed. p. 354. [397] Replying to Herbert's De Veritate, which he seems not to have read before. [398] Pref. to Obs. upon the United Prov. of the Netherlands, in Works, ed. 1814, i, 36. [399] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 87, 94-98, 111, 112. [400] As to the religious immoralism see Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii, pt. ii, ch. ii, § 23, and Murdock's notes. [401] Compare the picture of average Protestant deportment given by Benjamin Bennet in his Discourses against Popery, 1714, p. 377. [402] More, Coll. of Philos. Writings, 4th ed. 1712, gen. pref. p. 7. [403] Compare some of the extracts in Thomas Bennet's Defence of the Discourse of Schism, etc., 2nd ed. 1704, from the sermons of R. Gouge (1688). The description of men as "mortal crumbling bits of dependency, yesterday's start-ups, that come out of the abyss of nothing, hastening to the bosom of their mother earth" (work cited, p. 93) is a reminder that the resonant and cadenced rhetoric of the Brownes and Taylors and Cudworths was an art of the age, at the command of different orders of propaganda. [404] Cited by Bonnet, A Defence of the Discourse of Schism, etc., as cited, p. 41. [405] Thus Henry More's biographer, the Rev. Richard Ward, says "the late Mr. Chiswel told a friend of mine that for twenty years together after the return of King Charles the Second the Mystery of Godliness, and Dr. More's other works, ruled all the booksellers in London" (Life of More, 1710, pp. 162-63). We have seen the nature of some of More's "other works." [406] The Reasonableness of Scripture Belief, 1672, Epist. Ded. [407] Rep. 1675; 2nd ed. 1691; rep. in the Phoenix, vol. ii, 1708; 3rd ed. 1736. [408] A very hostile account of him is given in Dict. of Nat. Biog. He was, however, the friend of Cowley, and the "M. Clifford" to whom Sprat addressed his sketch of Cowley's Life. He was also a foe of Dryden--the "malicious Matt Clifford" of Dryden's Sessions of the Poets; and he attacked the poet in Notes on Dryden's Poems (published 1687), and is supposed to have had a hand in the Rehearsal. He was befriended by Shaftesbury. [409] Tract. Theol. Polit. c. 15. [410] Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ii, 381-82; Granger, Biog. Hist. of England, 5th ed. v, 293. [411] Johnson's Life of Dr. Watts, 1785, App. i. [412] Toulmin, Hist. of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, citing Johnson's Life of Dr. Watts. [413] It has been suggested that this was really written by Clifford, for posthumous publication. The humorous sketch of "His Character" at the close, suggesting that his vices seem to the writer to have outweighed his virtues, hints of ironical mystification. [414] Work cited, pp. 10, 14, 30, 55. [415] Dr. Urwick, Life of Howe, as cited, p. xxxii. [416] A Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Law of Nature and of the Christian Religion, by Samuel Parker, D.D., 1681, pref. The first part of this treatise is avowedly a popularization of the argument of Cumberland's Disquisitio de Legibus Naturæ, 1672. Parker had previously published in Latin a Disiputatio de Deo et Providentia Divina, in which he raised the question, An Philosophorum ulli, et quinam Athei fuerunt (1678). [417] Work cited, 2nd ed. 1682, pp. 32, 38-40, 45-48. [418] Id. pp. 54-55. [419] Id. p. 52. [420] Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 1692, pp. 438-39. [421] This has been ascribed, without any good ground, to Charles Blount. It does not seem to me to be in his style. [422] Premonition to the Candid Reader. [423] Hist. Nat. vii, 1. [424] Pamphlet cited, pp. 20, 21. [425] Id. p. 23. [426] Concerning whom see Macaulay's History, ch. xix, ed. 1877, ii, 411-12--a very prejudiced account. Blount is there spoken of as "one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived," and as having "stolen" from Milton, because he issued a pamphlet "By Philopatris," largely made up from the Areopagitica. Compare Macaulay's treatment of Locke, who adopted Dudley North's currency scheme (ch. xxi, vol. ii, p. 547). [427] Bayle (art. Apollonius, note), who is followed by the French translator of Philostratus with Blount's notes in 1779 (J. F. Salvemini de Castillon), says the notes were drawn from the papers of Lord Herbert of Cherbury; but of this Blount says nothing. [428] As to these see the Dict. of Nat. Biog. The statements of Anthony Wood as to the writings of Blount's father, relied on in the author's Dynamics of Religion, appear to be erroneous. Sir Thomas Pope Blount, Charles's eldest brother, shows a skeptical turn of mind in his Essays (3rd ed. 1697, Essay 7). Himself a learned man, he disparages learning as checking thought; and, professing belief in the longevity of the patriarchs (p. 187), pronounces popery and pagan religion to be mere works of priestcraft (Essay 1). He detested theological controversy and intolerance, and seems to have been a Lockian. [429] All that is known of this tragedy is that Blount loved his deceased wife's sister and wished to marry her; but she held it unlawful, and he was in despair. According to Pope, a sufficiently untrustworthy authority, he "gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died" (note to Epilogue to the Satires, i, 123). An overstrung nervous system may be diagnosed from his writing. [430] Boyle Lectures on Atheism, ed. 1724, p. 4. [431] Reflexions upon the Books of the Holy Scriptures to establish the Truth of the Christian Religion, by Peter Allix, D.D., 1688, i, 6-7. [432] As cited by Leslie, Truth of Christianity Demonstrated, 1711, pp. 17-21. [433] Characteristics, ii, 263 (Moralists, pt. ii, § 3). One of the most dangerous positions from the orthodox point of view would be the thesis that while religion could do either great good or great harm to morals, atheism could do neither. (Bk. I, pt. iii, § 1.) Cp. Bacon's Essay, Of Atheism. [434] Blount, after assailing in anonymous pamphlets Bohun the licenser, induced him to license a work entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, which infuriated the nation. Macaulay calls the device "a base and wicked scheme." It was almost innocent in comparison with Blount's promotion of the "Popish plot" mania. See Who Killed Sir Edmund Godfrey Berry? by Alfred Marks. 1905, pp. 133-35, 150. [435] See the text in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Penalties upon Opinion, pp. 19-21. Macaulay does not mention this measure. [436] The Act had been preceded by a proclamation of the king, dated Feb. 24. 1697. [437] As to an earlier monopoly of the London booksellers, see George Herbert's letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Bacon, Jan. 29, 1620. In Works of George Herbert, ed. 1841, i. 217-18. [438] See Locke's notes on the Licensing Act in Lord King's Life of Locke, 1829, pp. 203-206; Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii. 313-14; Macaulay's History, ii, 504. [439] Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, 1759, p. 120; Pünjer, i, 291, 300-301. Browne was even called an atheist. Arpe, Apologia pro Vanino, 1712, p. 27, citing Welschius. Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his introduction to his ed. of Marlowe (1885, vol. i, p. lviii), remarks that Browne, who "kept the road" in divinity, "exposed the vulnerable points in the Scriptural narratives with more acumen and gusto than the whole army of freethinkers, from Anthony Collins downwards." This is of course an extravagance, but, as Mr. Bullen remarks in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. vii, 66, Browne discusses "with evident relish" the "seeming absurdities in the Scriptural narrative." [440] Browne's Annotator points to the derivation of his skepticism from "that excellent French writer Monsieur Mountaign, in whom I often trace him" (Sayle's ed. 1904, i, p. xviii). [441] Religio Medici, i, 6. [442] Id. i, 9. [443] Id. i, 18. [444] Religio Medici, i, 20. [445] Bk. I, ch. x. [446] Here we have a theorem independently reached later (with the substitution of Nature for God) by Mary Wollstonecraft and Tennyson in turn. Browne cites yet another: "that he looks not below the moon, but hath resigned the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferior deputations"--a thesis adopted in effect by Cudworth. [447] By an error of the press, Browne is made in Mr. Sayle's excellent reprint (i, 108) to begin a sentence in the middle of a clause, with an odd result:--"I do confess I am an Atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores." The passage should obviously read: "to that subterraneous Idol (avarice) and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist," etc. [448] Hutchinson, Histor. Essay Conc. Witchcraft, 1718, p. 118; 2nd ed. 1720, p. 151. [449] Cp. Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. 1862, p. 33. [450] Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 1889, pref. p. vi; Rev. Dr. Duff, Hist. of Old Test. Criticism, R. P. A. 1910, p. 113. [451] This appears again, much curtailed and "so altered as to be in a manner new," in its author's collected Essays on Several Important Subjects in Religion and Philosophy (1676), under the title Against Confidence in Philosophy. [452] See the Humane Nature (1640), ch. iv, §§ 7-9. [453] Scepsis Scientifica, ch. 23, § 1. [454] See the passages compared by Lewes, History of Philosophy, 4th ed. ii, 338. [455] In his Blow at Modern Sadducism (4th ed. 1668), Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681; 3rd ed. 1689), and A Whip to the Droll, Fidler to the Atheist (1688--a letter to Henry More, who was zealous on the same lines). These works seem to have been much more widely circulated than the Scepsis Scientifica. [456] Scepsis, ch. 20, § 3. [457] See Glanvill's reply in a letter to a friend (1665), re-written as Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty: in A short Reply to the learned Mr. Thomas White in his collected Essays on Several Important Subjects, 1676. [458] See the reply in Plus Ultra: or, the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668, Epist. Ded. Pref. ch. xviii, and Conclusion. [The re-written treatise, in the collected Essays, eliminates the controversial matter.] [459] First printed with Glanvill's Philosophia Pia in 1671. Rep. as an essay in the collected Essays. [460] Owen, pref. to Scepsis, pp. xx-xxii. [461] Owen, pref. to ed. of Scepsis Scientifica, p. ix. [462] Of whom, however, a high medical authority declares that, "as a physiologist, he was sunk in realism" (that is, metaphysical apriorism). Prof. T. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science and Medieval Thought, 1901, p. 44. [463] Cp. Whewell, as last cited, pp. 75-83; Hallam, Literature of Europe, iv, 159-71. [464] Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay I, ch. i; Hamilton's ed. of Works, p. 226. Glanvill calls Gassendi "that noble wit." (Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed. p. 151.) [465] Poet. Works of Milton, 1874, Introd. i, 92 sq. [466] Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed. p. 66. In the condensed version of the treatise in Glanvill's collected Essays (1676, p. 20), the language is to the same effect. [467] J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, Martineau's ed. p. 204; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, iii, 152-53. [468] Cp. Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 347-51; 1-vol. ed. pp. 196-99. [469] Tayler, Retrospect, pp. 204-205; Wallace, iii, 154-56. [470] Gangræna, pt. i, p. 38. [471] Tayler, p. 221. As to Biddle, the chief propagandist of the sect, see pp. 221-24, and Wallace, Art. 285. [472] Macaulay, Essay on Milton. Cp. Brown's ed. (Clarendon Press) of the poems of Milton, ii, 30. [473] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, ch. v. [474] Of Education, § 136. [475] Essay, bk. iv, ch. xix. § 4. [476] Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, c. 15. [477] Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. [478] Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his Friends, 1708, pp. 302-304. [479] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, 1876, ii, 34. [480] The first Letter, written while he was hiding in Holland in 1685, was in Latin, but was translated into French, Dutch, and English. [481] Mr. Fox Bourne, in his biography (ii, 41), apologizes for the lapse, so alien to his own ideals, by the remark that "the atheism then in vogue was of a very violent and rampant sort." It is to be feared that this palliation will not hold good--at least, the present writer has been unable to trace the atheism in question. For "atheism" we had better read "religion." [482] Second Vindication of "The Reasonableness of Christianity," 1697, pref. [483] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 181. [484] Son of the Presbyterian author of the famous Gangræna. [485] Said by Carrol, Dissertation on Mr. Lock's Essay, 1706, cited by Anthony Collins, Essay Concerning the Use of Reason, 1709, p. 30. [486] Cited by Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 438. [487] Whose calibre may be gathered from his egregious doctoral thesis, Concio ad clerum de dæmonum malorum existentia et natura (1700). After a list of the deniers of evil spirits, from the Sadducees and Sallustius to Bekker and Van Dale, he addresses to his "dilectissimi in Christo fratres" the exordium: "En, Academici, veteres ac hodiernos Sadducæos! quibuscum tota Atheorum cohors amicissimè congruit; nam qui divinum numen, iidem ipsi infernales spiritus acriter negant." [488] Confutation of Warburton (1757) in Extracts from Law's Works, 1768, i, 208-209. [489] Cp. the Essay, bk. i, ch. iii, § 6, with Law's Case of Reason, in Extracts, as cited, p. 36. [490] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 122. [491] Fox Bourne, ii, 404-405. [492] An ostensibly orthodox Professor of our own day has written that Locke's doctrine as to religion and ethics "shows at once the sincerity of his religious convictions and the inadequate conception he had formed to himself of the grounds and nature of moral philosophy" (Fowler, Locke, 1880, p. 76). [493] Burnet, History of his Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 251. Burnet adds that Temple "was a corrupter of all that came near him." The 1838 editor protests against the whole attack as the "most unfair and exaggerated" of Burnet's portraits; and a writer in The Present State of the Republick of Letters, Jan., 1736, p. 26, carries the defence to claiming orthodoxy for Temple. But the whole cast of his thought is deistic. Cp. the Essay upon the Origin and Nature of Government, and ch. v of the Observations upon the United Provinces (Works, ed. 1770, i, 29, 36, 170-74). [494] Cp. Macaulay, History, ch. ii. Student's ed. i, 120. [495] Compare his Advice to a Daughter, § 1 (in Miscellanies, 1700), and his Political Thoughts and Reflections: Religion. [496] See Macaulay, ch. xx. Student's ed. ii, 459. [497] De Morgan, as cited, p. 107. [498] See Brewster, ii, 318, 321-22, 323, 331 sq., 342 sq. [499] Id. p. 327 sq. [500] Id. p. 115. [501] Cp. De Morgan, pp. 133-45. [502] Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley, ed. 1756, p. 25. Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 97-102. [503] Brewster, ii, 314. [504] Id. pp. 315-16. [505] Id. pp. 342-46. [506] Brewster, p. 349. See the remaining articles, and App. XXX, p. 532. [507] Id. p. 388. [508] Discourse on Tillotson and Burnet, pp. 38, 40, 74, cited by Collins, Discourse of Freethinking, 1713, pp. 171-72. [509] The Brief Notes on the Creed of St. Athanasius (author unknown), printed by Thomas Firmin. Late in 1693 appeared another antitrinitarian tract, by William Freke, who was prosecuted, fined £500, and ordered to make a recantation in the Four Courts of Westminster Hall. The book was burnt by the hangman. Wallace, Art. 354. There had also been "two quarto volumes of tracts in support of Unitarianism," published in 1691 (Dr. W. H. Drummond, An Explanation and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent, 1842, p. 17). [510] "Locke's ribald schoolfellow of nearly fifty years ago" (Fox Bourne, ii, 405). [511] Id. ib. [512] Tayler, Retrospect, p. 226; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, i, 160-69. [513] Fox Bourne, ii, 405; Wallace, art. 353. [514] Above, pp. 35-36. [515] Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, 2nd ed. 1714, p. 398. [516] "Perhaps at no period was the Unitarian controversy so actively carried on in England as between 1690 and 1720." History, Opinions, etc., of the English Presbyterians, 1834, p. 22. [517] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 113-15--Tayler, Retrospect, p. 227. [518] As to whom see Tayler, Retrospect, ch. v. § 4. They are spoken of as "the new sect of Latitude-Men" in 1662; and in 1708 are said to be "at this day Low Churchmen." See A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men, by "S. P." of Cambridge, 1662, reprinted in The Phenix, vol. ii, 1708. and pref. to that vol. From "S. P.'s" account it is clear that they connected with the new scientific movement, and leant to Cartesianism. As above noted, they included such prelates as Wilkins and Tillotson. The work of E. A. George, Seventeenth Century Men of Latitude (1908), deals with Hales, Chillingworth, Whichcote, H. More, Taylor, Browne, and Baxter. [519] Toulmin, Histor. View of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, p. 270. A main ground of the offence taken was a somewhat trivial dialogue in Burnet's book between Eve and the serpent, indicating the "popular" character of the tale. This was omitted from a Dutch edition at the author's request, and from the 3rd ed. 1733 (Toulmin, as cited). It is given in the partial translation in Blount's Oracles of Reason. [520] See Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, 1855, ii, 315-16, for a letter indicating Craig's religious attitude. He contributed to Dr. George Cheyne's Philosophical Principles of Religion, Natural and Revealed,