A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson
Introduction to the History of the Jews; a Vindication of Biblical
2625 words | Chapter 415
Chronology; two treatises on prophecy; an anti-Athanasian Essay on
Spirit (1751), which aroused much controversy; A Vindication of the
Histories of the Old and New Testament, in answer to Bolingbroke (2
vols. 1752-1754; 2nd ed. 1757; rep. with the Essay on Spirit, Dublin,
1759), which led to his being prosecuted; and other works. The offence
given by the Vindication lay in his denunciation of the Athanasian
creed, and of the bigotry of those who supported it. See pt. iii,
letters i and ii. The Essay on Spirit is no less heterodox. In other
respects, however, Clayton is ultra-orthodox.
[860] Dr. G. W. Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion
in Gross-Brittannien, Hannover, 1752, p. 440.
[861] Above, p. 180.
[862] Put by Huarte in 1575. Above, i, 472.
[863] Inquiry, p. 162.
[864] Inquiry, pref. pp. x, xxii.
[865] A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Conyers Middleton, occasioned by his
late "Free Inquiry," 1749, pp. 3-4.
[866] A Free Answer to Dr. Middleton's "Free Inquiry," by William
Dodwell [son of the elder and brother of the younger Henry], Rector
of Shottesbrook, 1749, pp. 14-15.
[867] Inquiry, p. 162.
[868] Works, 2nd ed. 1755, ii, 348.
[869] Cp. essay on Mandeville, in the author's Pioneer Humanists, 1907.
[870] As against the objections of Mr. Lang, see the author's paper
in Studies in Religious Fallacy.
[871] Cp. the summary of Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought,
pp. 177-78, which is founded on that of Pusey's early Historical
Enquiry concerning German Rationalism, pp. 124-26.
[872] Rep. same year at Dublin: 2nd ed. 1750. The first ed. was
ascribed to D'Argens--an error caused though not justified by the
publisher's notice.
[873] The point is further discussed in Dynamics of Religion,
pp. 175-76.
[874] Cp. G. B. Hertz, The Old Colonial System, 1905, pp. 4, 22,
93, 157.
[875] Letter xxxi, in Mason's Memoir.
[876] Hill Burton's Life of Hume, ii, 433, 434, 484-85, 487.
[877] Compare the verdicts of Gibbon in his Autobiography, and of
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. v, ch. i, art. 2; and see the
memoir of Smith in 1831 ed. and McCulloch's ed., and Rae's Life of
Adam Smith, p. 24. It appears that about 1764 many English people
sent their sons to Edinburgh University on account of the better
education there. Letter of Blair, in Burton's Life of Hume, ii, 229.
[878] Essays, iv, end.
[879] Present State of Polite Learning, 1765, ch. vi. His story of how
the father of St. Foix cured the youth of the desire to rationalize
his creed is not suggestive of conviction. The father pointed to a
crucifix, saying, "Behold the fate of a reformer." The story has been
often plagiarized since--e.g., in Galt's Annals of the Parish.
[880] Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century,
1878, ii, 37.
[881] Dieu et les Hommes, ch. xxxix.
[882] Cp. Bishop Law, Considerations on the Theory of Religion, 6th
ed. 1774, p. 65, note, and the Analysis of Bolingbroke's writings
(1755) there cited. Mr. Sichel's reply to Sir L. Stephen's criticism
may or may not be successful; but he does not deal with Bishop Law's.
[883] Mémoires de Diderot, ed. 1841, ii, 25.
[884] These had begun as early as 1753 (Micromégas).
[885] Works, ed. 1842, i, pp. cix, 445; ii, 628, 728. Cp. the poem
Kew Gardens, left in MS.
[886] I here take a few sentences from my paper, The Church and
Education, 1903.
[887] Short History, p. 717. The Concise Description of the Endowed
Grammar Schools, by Nicholas Carlisle, 1818, shows that schools were
founded in all parts of the country by private bequest or public
action during the eighteenth century.
[888] Collis, in Transactions of the Social Science Association,
1857, p. 126. According to Collis, 48 had been founded by James I,
28 under Charles I, 16 under the Commonwealth, 36 under Charles II,
4 under James II, 7 under William and Mary, 11 under Anne, 17 under
George I, and 7 under George II. He does not indicate their size.
[889] Green, as last cited.
[890] Gibbins, Industrial History of England, 1894, p. 151.
[891] Hist. of England under George III, ed. 1865, ii, 83.
[892] The document is given in Ritchie's Life of Hume, 1807, pp. 53-55.
[893] A reply, The World proved to be not eternal nor mechanical,
appeared in 1790.
[894] The Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incarnation of God was
published anonymously.
[895] See the Biographical Introduction to the Unitarian reprint of
Watts's Solemn Address, 1840, which gives the letters of Lardner. And
cp. Skeats, Hist. of the English Free Churches, ed. Miall, p. 240.
[896] Life of Lardner, by Dr. Kippis, prefixed to Works, ed. 1835,
i, p. xxxii.
[897] Memoirs of Priestley, 1806, pp. 30-32, 35, 37. The Letter on
the Logos was addressed by Lardner to the first Lord Barrington,
and was first published anonymously, in 1759.
[898] Memoirs of Priestley, p. 19.
[899] Pamphlet of 1778, printing the sermon, with reply to a local
attack.
[900] MS. alteration in print. See also p. 1 of Epistle Dedicatory.
[901] In criticizing whom Sir Leslie Stephen barely notices his
scientific work, but dwells much on his religious fallacies--a course
which would make short work of the fame of Newton.
[902] A Church dignitary has described Evanson's Dissonance as "the
commencement of the destructive criticism of the Fourth Gospel"
(Archdeacon Watkins's Bampton Lectures, 1890, p. 174).
[903] Williams (d. 1816), who published 3 vols. of "Lectures on
Education" and other works, has a longer claim on remembrance as the
founder of the "Literary Fund."
[904] The subject is discussed at length in the essay on Gibbon in
the author's Pioneer Humanists.
[905] Cp. Bishop Watson's Apology for Christianity (1776) as to
the vogue of unbelief at that date. (Two Apologies, ed. 1806,
p. 121. Cp. pp. 179, 399.)
[906] The panegyric on Voltaire delivered at his death by Frederick
the Great (Nov. 26, 1778) was promptly translated into English (1779).
[907] Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790, p. 131.
[908] See Hannah More's letter of April, 1777, in her Life, abridged
16mo-ed. p. 36. An edition of Shaftesbury, apparently, appeared in
1773, and another in 1790.
[909] The essays of Hume, including the Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion (1779), were now circulated in repeated editions. Mr. Rae,
in his valuable Life of Adam Smith, p. 311, cites a German observer,
Wendeborn, as writing in 1785 that the Dialogues, though a good deal
discussed in Germany, had made no sensation in England, and were at
that date entirely forgotten. But a second edition had been called
for in 1779, and they were added to a fresh edition of the essays
in 1788. Any "forgetting" is to be set down to preoccupation with
other interests.
[910] Letter to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1777, p. 3.
[911] Dr. Parr, Characters of C. J. Fox, i, 220; cited in Charles
James Fox, a Commentary, by W. S. Landor, ed. by S. Wheeler, 1907,
p. 147. Fox's secretary and biographer, Trotter, while anxious
to discredit the statement of Parr, gives such a qualified account
(Memoirs of the Latter Years of C. J. Fox, 1811, pp. 470-71) of Fox's
views on immortality as to throw much doubt on the stronger testimony
of B. C. Walpole (Recollections of C. J. Fox, 1806, p. 242).
[912] See J. L. Le B. Hammond, Charles James Fox, 1903, ch. xiii.
[913] See a letter in Bishop Watson's Life, i, 402; and cp. Buckle,
ch. vii, note 218.
[914] See his Task, bk. iii, 150-90 (1783-1784), for the prevailing
religious tone.
[915] Princ. of Moral Philos. bk. v, ch. ix. The chapter tells of
widespread freethinking.
[916] Ernest Krause, Erasmus Darwin, Eng. tr. 1879,
p. 211. Cp. pp. 193, 194.
[917] Letters vii, viii, ix, xix, xxii.
[918] E.g., The Ordination, the Address to the Deil, A Dedication to
Gavin Hamilton, The Kirk's Alarm, etc.
[919] See also the pieces printed between these in the Globe edition,
pp. 66-68.
[920] The benevolent Supreme Being, he writes, "has put the immediate
administration of all this into the hands of Jesus Christ--a great
personage, whose relation to Him we cannot fathom, but whose relation
to us is [that of] a guide and Saviour." Letter 86 in Globe ed. Letters
189 and 197, to Mrs. Dunlop, similarly fail to meet the requirements
of the orthodox correspondent. The poem Look up and See, latterly
printed several times apart from Burns's works, and extremely likely
to be his, is a quite Voltairean criticism of David. If the poem be
ungenuine, it is certainly by far the ablest of the unacknowledged
pieces ascribed to him, alike in diction and in purport.
[921] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Jan. 1, 1789, in Robert Burns and
Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 129. The passage is omitted
from Letter 168 in the Globe ed., and presumably from other reprints.
[922] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, July 9, 1790. Published for the first
time in vol. cited, p. 266.
[923] Epistle to a Young Friend.
[924] Lecky, writing in 1865, and advancing on Burke, has said of
the whole school, including Shaftesbury, that "the shadow of the tomb
rests on all: a deep, unbroken silence, the chill of death, surrounds
them. They have long ceased to wake any interest" (Rationalism in
Europe, i, 116). As a matter of fact, they had been discussed by Taylor
in 1853; by Pattison in 1860; and by Farrar in 1862; and they have
since been discussed at length by Dr. Hunt, by Dr. Cairns, by Lange,
by Gyzicki, by M. Sayous, by Sir Leslie Stephen, by Prof. Höffding,
and by many others.
[925] Conway, introd. to Age of Reason, in his ed. of Paine's Works,
iv, 3.
[926] Lemontey, Hist. de la régence et de la minorité de Louis XV,
1835, ii, 358, note. In 1731 there was published under the name of
Boulainvilliers (d. 1722) a so-called Réfutation de Spinoza, which was
"really a popular exposition." Pollock, Spinoza, 2nd ed. p. 363. Sir
F. Pollock assents to Voltaire's remark that Boulainvilliers "gave
the poison and forgot to give the antidote."
[927] For a brief view of the facts, usually misconceived, see Lanson,
pp. 610-11. Fénelon seems to have been uncandid, while Bossuet, by
common consent, was malevolent. There is probably truth, however,
in the view of Shaftesbury (Characteristics, ed. 1900, ii, 214),
that the real grievance of Fénelon's ecclesiastical opponents was the
tendency of his mysticism to withdraw devotees from ceremonial duties.
[928] Now remembered chiefly through the account of his intercourse
with Fénelon (repr. in Didot ed. of Fénelon's misc. works), and
Hume's long extract from his Philosophical Principles of Natural and
Revealed Religion in the concluding note to the Essays. Cp. M. Matter,
Le Mysticisme en France au temps de Fénelon, 1865, pp. 352-54.
[929] Tyssot de Patot was Professor of Mathematics at Deventer. In
his Lettres choisies, published in 1726, there is an avowal that
"he might be charged with having different notions from those of the
vulgar in point of religion" (New Memoirs of Literature, iv (1726),
267); and his accounts of pietists and unbelieving and other priests
sufficiently convey that impression (id. pp. 268-84).
[930] Towards the close of his "poem" Polignac speaks of a defence of
Christianity as a future task. He died without even completing the
Anti-Lucretius, begun half a century before. Of him are related two
classic anecdotes. Sent at the age of twenty-seven to discuss Church
questions with the Pope, he earned from His Holiness the compliment:
"You seem always to be of my opinion; and in the end it is yours that
prevails." Louis XIV gave him a long audience, after which the King
said: "I have had an interview with a young man who has constantly
contradicted me without my being able to be angry for a moment." (Éloge
prefixed to Bougainville's trans., L'Anti-Lucrèce, 1767, i. 131.)
[931] Cp. Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i. Rivarol (Lettres à Necker,
in OEuvres, ed. 1852, p. 138) wrote that under Louis XV there began a
"general insurrection" of discussion, and that everybody then talked
"only of religion and philosophy during half a century." But this
exaggerates the beginnings, of which Rivarol could have no exact
knowledge.
[932] La verité de la religion chrétienne prouvée par les faits:
précédée d'un discours historique et critique sur la méthode des
principaux auteurs qui ont écrit pour et contre le christianisme
depuis son origine, 1722. Rep. 1741, 3 vols. 4to., 4 vols. 12mo.
[933] Nouveau Dictionnaire historique portatif, 1771, art. Houteville,
tom. ii.
[934] Whose Considérations sur les Moeurs (1751) does not seem to
contain a single religious sentiment. Historiographer of France,
he had not escaped the suppression of his Histoire de Louis XI, 1745.
[935] See above, p. 130. Buffier seems to have begun an attempt at
spelling reform (by dropping doubled letters), followed in 1725 by
Huard and later by Prémontval.
[936] 7 vols. 4to., 10 vols. 12mo. Rep. with corrections 1733. Seconde
partie, 1753, 8 vols. 12mo.
[937] A reprint in 1735 bears the imprint of London, with the note
"Aux dépens de la Compagnie."
[938] Lanson, p. 702. The Persian Letters, like the Provincial Letters
of Pascal, had to be printed at Rouen and published at Amsterdam. Their
freethinking expressions put considerable difficulties in the way
of his election (1727) to the Academy. See E. Edwards, Chapters
of the Biog. Hist. of the French Academy, 1864, pp. 34-35, and
D. M. Robertson, Hist. of the French Academy, 1910, p. 92, as to the
mystification about the alleged reprint without the obnoxious passages.
[939] Lettre 86.
[940] "Au point de vue religieux, Montesquieu tirait poliment son coup
de chapeau au christianisme" (Lanson, p. 714). E.g. in the Esprit
des Lois, liv. xxiv, chs. i, ii, iii, iv, vi, and the footnote to
ch. x of liv. xxv. Montesquieu's letter to Warburton (16 mai, 1754),
in acknowledgment of that prelate's attack on the posthumous works of
Bolingbroke, is a sample of his social make-believe. But no religious
reader could suppose it to come from a religious man.
[941] Also of E. Edwards, as cited above.
[942] See the notes cited on pp. 405, 407 of Garnier's variorum ed. of
the Esprit des Lois, 1871. La Harpe and Villemain seem blind to irony.
[943] The flings at Bayle (liv. xxiv, chs. ii, vi) are part of a subtly
ironical vindication of ideal as against ecclesiastical Christianity,
and they have no note of faith.
[944] Paul Mesnard, Hist. de l'académie française, 1857, pp. 61-63.
[945] Pensées Diverses: De la religion.
[946] Lanson, p. 714, note.
[947] Tr. in English, 1753. It is noteworthy that Cataneo formally
accepts Montesquieu's professions of orthodoxy.
[948] Correspondance littéraire de Grimm et Diderot, ed. 1829-31,
i, 273. See the footnote for an account of the indecent efforts of
the Jesuits to get at the dying philosopher. The curé of the parish
who was allowed entry began his exhortation with: "Vous savez,
M. le Président, combien Dieu est grand." "Oui, monsieur," returned
Montesquieu, "et combien les hommes sont petits."
[949] Mesnard, Hist. de l'académie française, p. 63.
[950] A full analysis is given by Strauss in the second Appendix to
his Voltaire: Sechs Vorträge, 2te Aufl. 1870.
[951] The details are dubious. See the memoir compiled by "Rudolf
Charles" (R. C. D'Ablaing van Giessenburg), the editor of the
Testament, Amsterdam, 3 tom. 1861-64. It draws chiefly on the Mémoires
secrets de Bachaumont, under date Sept. 30, 1764.
[952] Testament, as cited, i, 25.
[953] iii, 396.
[954] First published in 1762 [or 1764? See Bachaumont, Oct. 30],
with the date 1742; and reprinted in the Évangile de la Raison,
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