The first of the Letters discusses the prejudices of mankind; the second,
the heathen doctrine of immortality; the third, the origin of idolatry;
while the fourth and fifth are devoted to Spinoza, the chief defect in
whose philosophy is declared to be the absence of an explanation of motion.
Motion belongs to the notion of matter as necessarily as extension and
impenetrability. Matter is always in motion; rest is only the reciprocal
interference of two moving forces. The differences of things depend on the
various movements of the particles of matter, so that it is motion which
individualizes matter in general into particular things.
As the Letters
ascribe the purposive construction of organic beings to a divine reason, so
the _Pantheisticon_ also stops short before it reaches the extreme of naked
materialism. Everything is from the whole; the whole is infinite, one,
eternal, all-rational. God is the force of the whole, the soul of
the world, the law of nature. The treatise includes a liturgy of the
pantheistic society with many quotations from the ancient poets.
Anthony Collins (1676-1729), in his _Discourse of Freethinking_, shows
the right of free thought _(i. e_., of judgment on rational grounds) in
general, from the principle that no truth is forbidden to us, and that
there is no other way by which we can attain truth and free ourselves from
superstition, and the right to apply it to God and the Bible in particular,
from the fact that the clergy differ concerning the most important matters.
The fear that the differences of opinion which spring from freethinking may
endanger the peace of society lacks foundation; on the contrary, it is
only restriction of the freedom of thought which leads to disorders, by
weakening moral zeal. The clergy are the only ones who condemn liberty of
thought. It is sacrilege to hold that error can be beneficial and truth
harmful. As a proof that freethinking by no means corrupts character,
Collins gives in conclusion a list of noble freethinkers from Socrates down
to Locke and Tillotson. Among the replies to the views of Collins we may
mention the calmly objective Boyle Lectures by Ibbot, and the sharp and
witty letter of Richard Bentley, the philologist.
Neither of these attacks
Collins's leading principle, both fully admitting the right to employ the
reason, even in religious questions; but they dispute the implication that
freethinking is equivalent to contentious opposition. On the one hand, they
maintain that Collins's thinking is too free, that is, unbridled, hasty,
presumptuous, and paradoxical; on the other, that it is not free enough
(from prejudice).
After Shaftesbury had based morality on a natural instinct for the
beautiful and had made it independent of religion, as well as served the
cause of free thought by a keenly ironical campaign against enthusiasm and
orthodoxy, and Clarke had furnished the representatives of natural religion
a useful principle of morals in the objective rationality of things, the
debate concerning prophecy and miracles[1] threatened to dissipate the
deistic movement into scattered theological skirmishes.
At this juncture
Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) led it back to the main question. His
_Christianity as Old as the Creation_ is the doomsday book of deism.
It contains all that has been given above as the core of this view of
religion. Christ came not to bring in a new doctrine, but to exhort to
repentance and atonement, and to restore the law of nature, which is as old
as the creation, as universal as reason, and as unchangeable as God,
human nature, and the relations of things, which we should respect in our
actions. Religion is morality; more exactly, it is the free, constant
disposition to do as much good as possible, and thereby to promote the
glory of God and our own welfare. For the harmony of our conduct with
the rules of reason constitutes our perfection, and on this depends our
happiness. Since God is infinitely blessed and self-sufficient his purpose
in the moral law is man's happiness alone. Whatever a positive religion
contains beyond the moral law is superstition, which puts emphasis on
worthless trivialities. The true religion occupies the happy mean between
miserable unfaith, on the one hand, and timorous superstition, wild
fanaticism, and pietistical zeal on the other. In proclaiming the
sovereignty of reason in the sphere of religion as well as elsewhere, we
are only openly demanding what our opponents have tacitly acknowledged in
practice _(e. g_.> in allegorical interpretation) from time immemorial. God
has endowed us with reason in order that we should by it distinguish truth
from falsehood.
[Footnote 1: The chief combatant in the conflict over the argument from
prophecy, which was called forth by Whiston's corruption hypothesis,
was Collins _(A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian
Religion_, 1724). Christianity is based on Judaism; its fundamental article
is that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah of the Jews, its chief proof the
argument from Old Testament prophecy, which, it is true, depends on the
typical or allegorical interpretation of the passages in question. Whoever
rejects this cuts away the ground from under the Christian revelation,
which is only the allegorical import of the revelation of the Jews.--The
second proof of revelation, the argument from miracles, was shaken by
Thomas Woolston _(Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour_, 1727-30),
by his extension of the allegorical interpretation to these also. He
supported himself in this by the authority of the Church Fathers, and,
above all, by the argument that the accounts of the miracles, if taken
literally, contradict all sense and understanding. The unavoidable doubts
which arise concerning the literal interpretation of the resurrection of
the dead, the healing of the sick, the driving out of devils, and the other
miracles, prove that these were intended only as symbolic representations
of the mysterious and wonderful effects which Jesus was to accomplish. Thus
Jairus's daughter means the Jewish Church, which is to be revived at the
second coming of Christ; Lazarus typifies humanity, which will be raised
again at the last day; the account of the bodily resurrection of Jesus is
a symbol of his spiritual resurrection from his grave in the letter of
Scripture. Sherlock, whose _Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of
Jesus_ was long considered a cogent answer to the attacks of Woolston,
was opposed by Peter Annet, who, without leaving the refuge of figurative
interpretation open, proceeded still more regardlessly in the discovery of
contradictory and incredible elements in the Gospel reports, and declared
all the scriptural writers together to be liars and falsifiers. If a man
believes in miracles as supernatural interferences with the regular course
of nature (and they must be so taken if they are to certify to the divine
origin of the Scriptures), he makes God mutable, and natural laws imperfect
arrangements which stand in need of correction. The truth of religion is
independent of all history.]
Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a man of the people (he was a glove maker and
tallow-chandler), and from 1715 on a participant in deistic literature and
concerned to adapt the new ideas to the men of his class, preached in _The
True Gospel of Jesus Christ_ an honorable working-man's Christianity.,
Faith means obedience to the law of reason inculcated by Christ, not the
acceptance of the facts reported about him. The gospel of Christ was
preached to the poor before his death and his asserted resurrection and
ascension. It is probable that Christ really lived, because of the great
effect of his message; but he was a man like other men.
His gospel is his
teaching, not his history, his own teaching, not that of his followers--the
reflections of the apostles are private opinions.
Christ's teaching
amounts, in effect, to these three fundamental principles: (1) Conform
to the rational law of love to God and one's neighbor; this is the only
ground of divine acceptance. (2) After transgression of the law, repentance
and reformation are the only grounds of divine grace and forgiveness. (3)
At the last day every one will be rewarded according to his works. By
proclaiming these doctrines, by carrying them out in his own pure life
and typical death, and by founding religio-ethical associations on the
principle of brotherly equality, Christ selected the means best fitted for
the attainment of his purpose, the salvation of human souls. His aim was
to assure men of future happiness (and of the earthly happiness connected
therewith), and to make them worthy of it; and this happiness can only be
attained when from free conviction we submit ourselves to the natural moral
law, which is grounded on the moral fitness of things.
Everything which
leads to the illusion that the favor of God is attainable by any other
means than by righteousness and repentance, is pernicious; as, also, the
confusion of Christian societies with legal and civil societies, which
pursue entirely different aims.
Thomas Morgan _(The Moral Philosopher, a Dialogue between the Christian
Deist, Philalethes, and the Christian Jew, Theophanes, 1737 seq_.) stands
on the same ground as his predecessors, by holding that the moral truth of
things is the criterion of the divinity of a doctrine, that the Christian
religion is merely a restoration of natural religion, and that the apostles
were not infallible. Peculiar to him are the application of the first of
these principles to the Mosaic law, with the conclusion that this was not a
revelation; the complete separation of the New Testament from the Old (the
Church of Christ and the expected kingdom of the Jewish Messiah are as
opposed to each other as heaven and earth); and the endeavor to give a
more exact explanation of the origin of superstition, the pre-Christian
manifestations of which he traces back to the fall of the angels, and those
since Christ to the intermixture of Jewish elements. He seeks to solve his
problem by a detailed critique of Israelitish history, which is lacking in
sympathy but not in spirit, and in which, introducing modern relations
into the earliest times, he explains the Old Testament miracles in part as
myths, in part as natural phenomena, and deprives the heroes of the Jews of
their moral renown. The Jewish historians are ranked among the poets; the
God of Israel is reduced to a subordinate, local tutelary divinity; the
moral law of Moses is characterized as a civil code limited to external
conduct, to national and mundane affairs, with merely temporal sanctions,
and the ceremonial law as an act of worldly statecraft; David is declared
a gifted poet, musician, hypocrite, and coward; the prophets are made
professors of theology and moral philosophy; and Paul is praised as the
greatest freethinker of his time, who defended reason against authority
and rejected the Jewish ritual law as indifferent.
Whatever is spurious in
Christianity is a remnant of Judaism, all its mysteries are misunderstood
and falsely (_i.e._ literally) applied allegories. Out of regard for Jewish
prejudices Christ's death was figuratively described as sacrificial, as in
earlier times Moses had been forced to yield to the Egyptian superstitions
of his people. Morgan looks for the final victory of the rational morality
of the pure, Pauline, or deistic Christianity over the Jewish Christianity
of orthodoxy. Among the works of his opponents the following deserve
mention: William Warburton's _Divine Legation of Moses, and_ Samuel
Chandler's _Vindication of the History of the Old Testament_.
It maybe doubted whether Bolingbroke (died 1751; cf. p.
203) is to be
classed among the deists or among their opponents. On the one hand, he
finds in monotheism the original true religion, which has degenerated
into superstition through priestly cunning and fantastical philosophy; in
primitive Christianity, the system of natural religion, which has been
transformed into a complicated and contentious science by its weak,
foolish, or deceitful adherents; in theology, the corruption of religion;
in Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, types of untrammeled investigation. On
the other hand, he seeks to protect revelation from the reason whose
cultivation he has just commended, and to keep faith and knowledge
distinct, while he demands that the Bible, with all the undemonstrable
and absurd elements which it contains, be accepted on its own authority.
Religion is an instrument indispensable to the government for keeping the
people in subjection. Only the fear of a higher power, not the reason,
holds the masses in check; and the freethinkers do wrong in taking a bit
out of the mouth of the sensual multitude, when it were better to add to
those already there.
As Hume, the skeptic, leads empiricism to its fall, so Hume, the
philosopher of religion (see below), leads deism toward dissolution. Among
those who defended revealed Christianity against the deistical attacks we
may mention the names of Conybeare (1732) and Joseph Butler (1736). The
former argues from the imperfection and mutability of our reason to like
characteristics in natural religion. Butler (cf. p. 206) does not admit
that natural and revealed religion are mutually exclusive. Christian
revelation lends a higher authority to natural religion, in which she finds
her foundation, and adapts it to the given relations and needs of mankind,
adding, however, to the rational law of virtue new duties toward God the
Son and God the Holy Ghost. It is evident that in order to be able to deal
with their opponents, the apologetes are forced to accommodate themselves
to the deistic principle of a rational criticism of revelation.
Notwithstanding the fear which this principle inspired in the men of the
time, it soon penetrated the thought even of its opponents, and found
its way into the popular mind through the channels of the Illumination.
Although it was often defended and applied with violence and with a
superfluous hatred of the clergy, it forms the justifiable element in the
endeavors of the deists. It is a commonplace to-day that everything which
claims to be true and valid must justify itself before the criticism of
reason; but then this principle, together with the distinction between
natural and positive religion based upon it, exerted an enlightening and
liberating influence. The real flaw in the deistical theory, which was
scarcely felt as such, even by its opponents, was its lack of religious
feeling and all historical sense, a lack which rendered the idea acceptable
that religions could be "made," and priestly falsehoods become world-moving
forces. Hume was the first to seek to rise above this unspeakable
shallowness. There was a remarkable conflict between the ascription to
man, on the one hand, of an assured treasure of religious knowledge in
the reason, and the abandonment of him, on the other, to the juggling of
cunning priests and despots. Thus the deists had no sense either for the
peculiarities of an inward religious feeling, which, in happy prescience,
rises above the earthly circle of moral duties to the world beyond, or for
the involuntary, historically necessary origin and growth of the particular
forms of religion. Here, again, we find that turning away from will and
feeling to thought, from history to nature, from the oppressive complexity
of that which has been developed to the simplicity of that which is
original, which we have noted as one of the most prominent characteristics
of the modern period.
%3. Moral Philosophy.%
The watchword of deism was "independence in religion"; that of modern
ethical philosophy is "independence in morals." Hobbes had given this out
in opposition to the mediaeval dependence of ethics on theology; now it was
turned against himself, for he had delivered morality from ecclesiastical
bondage only to subject it to the no less oppressive and unworthy yoke of
the civil power. Selfish consideration, so he had taught, leads men to
transfer by contract all power to the ruler. Right is that which the
sovereign enjoins, wrong that which he forbids. Thus morality was conceived
in a purely negative way as justice, and based on interest and agreement.
Cumberland, recognizing the one-sidedness of the first of these positions,
announces the principle of universal benevolence, at which Bacon had hinted
before him, and in which he is followed by the school of Shaftesbury.
Opposition to the foundation of ethics on self-love and convention, again,
springs up in three forms, one idealistic, one logical, and one aesthetic.
Ethical ideas have not arisen artificially through shrewd calculation and
agreement, but have a natural origin. Cudworth, returning to Plato and
Descartes, assumes an innate idea of the good. Clarke and Woolston base
moral distinctions on the rational order of things, and characterize
the ethically good action as a logical truth translated into practice.
Shaftesbury derives ethical ideas and actions from a natural instinct for
judging the good and the beautiful. Moreover, Hobbes's ethics of interest
experiences, first, correction at the hands of Locke (who, along with a
complete recognition of the "legal" character of the good, distinguishes
the sphere of morality from that of mere law, and brings it under the
law of "reputation," hence of a "tacit" agreement), and then a frivolous
intensification under Mandeville and Bolingbroke. A preliminary conclusion
is reached in the ethical labors of Hume and Smith.
Richard Cumberland _(De Legibus Naturae_, 1672) turns to experience with
the questions, In what does morality consist? Whence does it arise? and
What is the nature of moral obligation? and finds these answers: Those
actions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, which
promote the common good _(commune bonum summa lex)_.
Individual welfare
must be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part. The
psychological roots of virtuous action are the social and disinterested
affections, which nature has implanted in all beings, especially in those
endowed with reason. There is nothing in man more pleasing to God than
love. We recognize our obligation to the virtue of benevolence, or that God
commands it, from the rewards and punishments which we perceive to follow
the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the law,--the subordination of
individual to universal good is the only means of attaining true happiness
and contentment. Men are dependent on mutual benevolence. He who labors
for the good of the whole system of rational beings furthers thereby the
welfare of the individual parts, among whom he himself is one; individual
happiness cannot be separated from general happiness.
All duties are
implied in the supreme one: Give to others, and preserve thyself. This
principle of benevolence, advanced by Cumberland with homely simplicity,
received in the later development of English ethics, for which it pointed
out the way, a more careful foundation.
The series of emancipations of morality begins with the Intellectual System
of Ralph Cud worth _(The Intellectual System of the Universe_, 1678; _A
Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_, 1731). Ethical ideas
come neither from experience nor from civil legislation nor from the will
of God, but are necessary ideas in the divine and the human reason. Because
of their simplicity, universality, and immutability, it is impossible for
them to arise from experience, which never yields anything but that which
is particular and mutable. It is just as impossible that they should spring
from political constitutions, which have a temporal origin, which are
transitory, and which differ from one another. For if obedience to positive
law is right and disobedience wrong, then moral distinctions must have
existed before the law; if, on the other hand, obedience to the civil law
is morally indifferent, then more than ever is it impossible that this
should be the basis of the moral distinctions in question. A law can bind
us only in virtue of that which is necessarily, absolutely, or _per se_
right; therefore the good is independent, also, of the will of God. The
absolutely good is an eternal truth which God does not create by an act of
his will, but which he finds present in his reason, and which, like the
other ideas, he impresses on created spirits. On the _a priori_ ideas
depends the possibility of science, for knowledge is the perception of
necessary truth.
In agreement with Cudworth that the moral law is dependent neither on human
compact nor on the divine will, Samuel Clarke (died 1729) finds the eternal
principles of justice, goodness, and truth, which God observes in his
government of the universe, and which should also be the guide of human
action, embodied in the nature of things or in their properties, powers,
and relations, in virtue of which certain things, relations, and modes
of action are suited to one another, and others not.
Morality is the
subjective conformity of conduct to this objective fitness of things; the
good is the fitting. Moral rules, to which we are bound by conscience and
by rational insight, are valid independently of the command of God and of
all hope or fear in reference to the life to come, although the principles
of religion furnish them an effective support, and one which is almost
indispensable in view of the weakness of human nature.
They are not
universally observed, indeed, but universally acknowledged; even the
vicious man cannot refrain from praising virtue in others. He who is
induced by the voice of passion to act contrary to the eternal relations
or harmony of things, contradicts his own reason in thus undertaking to
disturb the order of the universe; he commits the absurdity of willing that
things should be that which they are not. Injustice is in practice that
which falsity and contradiction are in theoretical affairs. In his
well-known controversy with Leibnitz, Clarke defends the freedom of the
will against the determinism of the German philosopher.
In William Wollaston (died 1724), with whom the logical point of view
becomes still more apparent, Clarke found a thinker who shared his
convictions that the subjective moral principle of interest was
insufficient, and, hence, an objective principle to be sought; that
morality consists in the suitableness of the action to the nature and
destination of the object, and that, in the last analysis, it is coincident
with truth. The highest destination of man is, on the one hand, to know the
truth, and, on the other, to express it in actions. That act is good whose
execution includes the affirmation (and its omission the negation) of a
truth. According to the law of nature, a rational being ought so to conduct
himself that he shall never contradict a truth by his actions, _i. e_., to
treat each thing for what it is. Every immoral action is a false judgment;
the violation of a contract is a practical denial of it.
The man who is
cruel to animals declares by his act that the creature maltreated is
something which in fact it is not, a being devoid of feeling. The murderer
acts as though he were able to restore life to his victim. He who, in
disobedience toward God, deals with things in a way contrary to their
nature, behaves as though he were mightier than the author of nature. To
this equation of truth and morality happiness is added as a third identical
member. The truer the pleasures of a being the happier it is; and a