ENGLISH RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

In estimating the direction and the rapidity of the drift of modern thought it is necessary to have regard, not only to the present, but also to the past. Amid the multiplex currents and eddies of the moment it is not always easy to see which is the real stream. It is possible to mistake for it chance cross currents, whirls, or back flows, by which the true course of the stream appears at times to be reversed. But in taking into view at one glance a long stretch of the river, all these little confusing circumstances drop out of sight, or are merged in the great, steady, onward movement. The thoughtful and laborious work which Mr. Leslie Stephen has just published enables us in this way to obtain a wide and comprehensive view of the movements of English thought in the last century—movements in which the more strongly marked and revolutionary tendencies in the intellectual world of our own time had their origin. The book is in two volumes, the first of which deals with religious thought, and the second with moral and political philosophy, and the rise and growth of political economy. It is only with the first of these that we need concern ourselves here, and a rapid glance at some of its salient points will much aid towards the clearness and justness of our comprehension of the contemporary mental movements by which we are more immediately affected.

In his introduction, Mr. Stephen discusses the various and often imperceptible causes by which changes in thought are called into existence. There is, he observes, a correlation between the creed of a society and its political and social organisation. Each of these sets of conditions acts and re-acts upon the other. "It would not be extravagant to say that Mr. Darwin's observations upon the breeds of pigeons have had a reaction upon the structure of European society." He then proceeds to give a view of the various systems of thought competing for acceptance at the early part of the century, and shows how they were in England modified by English caution and common sense. The Protestant impulse was leading some advanced minds to rationalism, and it is observed that "If Protestantism was unintentionally acting as a screen for rationalism, rationalism naturally expressed itself in terms of Protestantism." Our author proceeds :—

" The vigour of English theology at this period—and it was the golden period of English theology—is due to the fact that, for the time, reason and Christian theology were in spontaneous alliance. The theologians of the middle and end of the seventeenth century, Taylor and Barrow and Cudworth and Leighton, were anxious to construct a philosophical religion, and they were not alive to the possibility that such a religion might cease to be Christian. If they rationalise, as the remarkable school of Cambridge Platonists rationalised, it is with a sincere belief that they are only bringing out the full meaning of the doctrine they expound ; purifying it from human accretions, and softening down the crude edges left by ignorant interpreters. Such a process is perfectly natural, as in other times it was natural to fix allegorical meanings upon texts which shocked the spiritual sense of commentators. It was not an artifice consciously adopted to evade difficulties, but the spontaneous aspiration of the free intellect labouring in all sincerity to bring out the deepest meaning of the divine teaching. So, too, men like Barrow and Cudworth undertook the dangerous task of demonstrating the fundamental tenets of theology. The deist Collins said, sarcastically, that nobody doubted the existence of the Deity until the Boyle lecturers had undertaken to prove it.

"A change, however, was slowly but inevitably approaching. Philosophy, hitherto in alliance with Christianity, began to show indications of a possible divorce. Though philosophers might use the old language, it became daily more difficult to identify the God of philosophy with the God of Christianity. How could the tutelary deity of a petty tribe be the God who ruled over all things and all men ? How could even the God of the mediæval imagination, the God worshipped by Christians when Christendom was regarded as approximately identical with the universe, be still the ruler of the whole earth, in which Christians formed but a small minority, and of the universe, in which the earth was but as a grain of sand on the sea shore? Or how, again, could the personal Deity, whose attributes and history were known by tradition, be the God whose existence was inferred by philosophers from the general order of the universe ; or regarded as a necessary postulate for the discovery of all truth ? If there was no absolute logical conflict between the two views, the two modes of conceiving the universe refused to coalesce in the imagination."

The effect of the great astronomical and geographical discoveries of the period in "enlarging men's conceptions of the Infinite" is carefully pointed out. All the moral difficulties involved in the eternal torment of millions of men who had never heard of the true faith, the ignorance of which led to everlasting punishment, very soon forced themselves on the minds and consciences of men. "The revelation, finally clenched by Newton's astonishing discovery, that the world was an atom in space, whirling round the sun, itself perhaps another atom, utterly crushed the old imaginations which still survive in Milton's poetry. The scenery had become too wide for the drama. It was possible, indeed, verbally to promote the Jewish deity to rule over the vast territory which had thus sprung into existence. . . . It was long before science was to be formally opposed to revelation, and the Mosaic cosmogony to be directly attacked. And yet it was already whispered that the first chapter of Genesis was hardly an adequate prologue to the development of the universal drama."

We need not follow very closely the review given by Mr. Stephen of the deist versus orthodox controversy. It wholly relates to a phase of thought which no longer possesses significance or interest. The deists, having first stolen all their positive faith from the other side, attacked the orthodox for the absurdities and superstitions which they contended were embodied in that system of doctrine. The defenders of religion, on the other hand, appeared to make it an object to justify the actions of the Deity by proving that they were in general conformity with the principles of the British constitution and the rights of a constitutional monarch, and for the exceptional cases they relied on the prerogative of an absolute monarch to do as he pleased with his own. "The Ruler of the universe retires into a cloud of mystery when his actions are questionable, and steps forward to claim our admiration when they are thoroughly constitutional." Says Mr. Stephen:—

"To us the whole argument has become singularly lifeless. The combatants seem to be engaged in a fencing-match, rather than in a life and death struggle with pointed weapons. To each thrust there is a recognised parry, and we are almost amazed at the gravity with which the recognised parade of action is carried through. Is it a struggle for all that is dearest to the heart of man, or a mere sham fight in which the best performers are to be rewarded with bishoprics and deaneries, rather for dexterity than for earnestness? Part of this impression is due to the change in our point of view, which makes the whole controversy unreal ; part to the singular resemblance between Christians and deists, which causes us to wonder that so much indignation should be wasted on so trifling a matter; and part, it must be added, to the genuine unadulterated dulness of most of the writers."

In fact, the controversy shows how little guidance is afforded to the difficulties and perplexities of the present by the answers of the past. Each generation has its own especial problem to solve, and no attempt to answer it by the old methods can lead to any genuine result. The deistic controversy soon died out. "The creed of deism was never really alive ; it was not rooted in the deepest convictions nor associated with the most powerful emotions of its adherents." The next phase of the discussion was critical and historical. An increasing disposition was shown to apply to the Bible the same canons of criticism that are applied to other historical records. It was against the scepticism which was thus produced that Charles Leslie published a book under the rather self-complacent title, A Short and Easy Method with the Deists. It is not necessary that we should stay to consider the arguments of a book that has ceased to possess any interest for any human mind. It is sufficient to say that in its time it had considerable success, and " the surprising circumstance is stated " that Leslie " had the almost unique honour of converting several of his antagonists." Amongst those who surrendered to his prowess was Gildon, who put forth his recantation some years afterwards in a flabby repetition of the regular commonplaces called the Deists' Manual. The pleasure of dragging a captive infidel in triumph must have been diminished by the consciousness that he was so poor a creature ; but we might turn over a long list of controversial writers without finding one who had even a Gildon to boast of." Miracles were beginning to occasion difficulties, and the question was being asked why accounts of supernatural occurrences which, when found in certain books, were to be treated with disbelief were, when found in other narratives, to be received without hesitation. Deists were also attacking the date assigned for the beginning of the world, and were quoting Egyptian and Chinese annals to invalidate that system of chronology. A remark made by Berkeley on this subject reads in the light of our later knowledge like an unkindly reductio ad absurdum by anticipation of the objections to the Darwinian theory, based on the absence of certain geological evidence which it is alleged the supporters of the theory ought, if it were true, to be able to adduce. Says Berkeley—"To any one who considers that, on digging into the earth, such quantities of shells, and in some places bones and horns of animals, are found sound and entire, after having lain there, in all probability, some thousands of years, it should seem probable that gems, medals, and implements in metal or stone might have lasted entire, buried underground, 40,000 or 50,000 years, if the world had been so old. How comes it, then," he triumphantly asks, " that no remains are found ?" At that time the relics of primeval man had not revealed the bronze and stone ages. Argument of this kind, from the absence of certain evidence, is very dangerous in the long run, though of course it often answers the temporary objects of controversy very conveniently.

Later on, Mr. Stephen gives an amusing account of the battle between the infidel Woolston and Bishop Smalbroke—'"a strange conflict— a fight between clown and pantaloon —on one side learning distorted to strange ends by semi-insanity, and on the other wielded by senile incompetence." The bishop seems to have relied much on one rather curious piece of reasoning. "Arguing in defence of the miracle at Gadara, he observes that it might be very proper to terrify the inhabitants of that country for their obstinate infidelity, so that even this permission of Jesus to the evil spirits was amply compensated by casting a whole legion of devils out of one person—that is, by suffering about three of them to enter into each bog, instead of about 6,000 of them keeping possession of one man." Never, we may believe, either before or since, was the rule of three applied to so strange a problem. Are 6,000 devils in one man better or worse than three devils in each of 2,000 pigs? This bit of arithmetic seems to have earned for the bishop the sobriquet of "split-devil."

Another champion of orthodoxy was Waterland, of whom we read :—
" A sufficient instance of purely grotesque explanations is the argument that God may have kept the clouds in such a position that there were no rainbows before the Flood. This suggests some curious problems for a Cambridge authority ; but, of course, with God nothing is impossible. Waterland is still less felicitous in moral difficulties. Abraham, he says, was quite right in saying that Sarah was his sister, without adding that she was his wife. Nay, his conduct was so 'innocent and laudable,' that Isaac afterwards did the same thing with the same success. He will not altogether justify the deceit practised upon Isaac by Jacob and Rebecca, for he thinks that he can fasten upon Tindal a charge of sanctioning equally loose morality; but he works himself up to the assertion that there were 'good and laudable' circumstances in their action which might 'move a merciful God to give a blessing to it.' Esau was not prejudiced by it, for he had sold his birthright. The Jews borrowed the property of the Egyptians and did not return it; but 'God had an undoubted right to transfer the property to the Hebrews, since the whole world is His, and no one can put in any bar to His title.' . . . . All this, and more, is said, not by Voltaire in one of his most scoffing moods, but by the most renowned living defender of the faith."

We are then introduced to the formidable attack on belief in supernatural interferences made by Middleton in his Free Inquiry into Miracles, of which Mr. Stephen says :—
" Middleton's covert assault upon the orthodox dogmas was incomparably the most effective of the whole deist controversy. It indicates the approach of a genuine historical method, Middleton was the first to see, though he saw dimly, that besides the old hypotheses of supernatural interference and human imposture, a third and more reasonable alternative may be suggested. The conception is beginning to appear, though still obscured by many crude assumptions of a really scientific investigation of the history of religious developments. Middleton is thus the true precursor of Gibbon, whose immediate relation to him has already been noticed ; and yet, after Middleton comes a sudden pause in the controversy—a pause which is generally described by saying that the deists had been silenced by force of argument. It is just as true that the orthodox had been silenced. Middleton, as I have said, received no serious answer ; and thus the sceptics had the last word in the controversy, and that the most effective word which had been spoken. . . . . . . Hume replies that no evidence can prove a miracle, and Middleton that stories of miracles only prove the credulity of the narrator. One writer appeals to logic, and the other to historical evidence; and no real answer is attempted to either. And yet, at this critical point, the controversy drops."

The great but melancholy work of Butler— his Analogy—is ably discussed. Of the author it is said, that "it is a unique distinction among theologians that, whilst writhing in the jaws of a dilemma, he refrains from positively denying that any dilemma exists." Summing up his position Mr. Stephen says:—
"In the ' Analogy,' as distinctly as in the Sermons, the deification of the conscience is the beginning, middle, and end of Butler's preaching. Duty is his last word. Whatever doubts and troubles beset him, he adheres to the firm conviction that the secret of the universe is revealed, so far as it is revealed, through morality. Removing the colouring of theological dogma, his doctrine thus becomes a lofty stoicism. Whatever happens, and whatever prospects are revealed, he will hold to his creed. Read by the light of this belief, all suffering becomes punishment. The difficulty of reconciling this with the actual distribution of happiness presses upon him ; but all difficulties must be faced. The doctrine seems to imply that God is unjust. The conclusion is horrible, and, of course, 'there must be a mistake somewhere ;' but it cannot be in his original principle. The doctrines learnt from revelation increase the difficulty, but never overwhelm his faith. Men suffer here, as Butler urges, and suffer ' irremediably' for a certain amount of folly and vice. Here, however, we have the remedy of death—a remedy not available to save us from the Almighty avenger. If, then, suffering be punishment, analogy suggests that everlasting torture will punish the misdeeds of the most frail and sorely tempted. We must believe it rather than give up our moral conception. God Almighty, maker of all things and ruler of all men, came down from heaven in bodily form, and conveyed a message of unspeakable moment. He gave it only to a few, but he is always partial. The message said that God would punish the good for the crimes of the wicked. That is not surprising, for it is a matter of everyday experience : if I get drunk, my son has the gout. The message confirms our darkest forebodings of the future ; otherwise, could it be in analogy with our observations ? God, then, has said, Let there be light, and there is no light—no light, or rather darkness visible, such as 'serves only to discover sounds of woe.' Well, if nature is a riddle how should the message of the God of nature be clear?

" Butler has been compared to Pascal. In finitely inferior in beauty of style and greatly inferior in logical clearness and width of view, as Butler is to Pascal, there is a certain resemblance. Butler and Pascal are both sensible, as the noblest minds are alone sensible to the sad discords of the universe. To both of them it seemed to be a scene of blind misery and confusion. Pascal in despair pronounces man's intellect to be helpless and does his best to prostrate himself before an earthly idol. Butler trained in a manlier school refused to commit intellectual suicide. Reason he says is feeble. He disdains to conceal how feeble, and yet he resolves painfully and hesitatingly to grope out a path by this feeble guidance. He is as far from joyful confidence as from blank despair. He staggers out of Doubting Castle with trembling knees and wearied limbs. He puzzles out his track by such guidance as he can find, and that guidance is in substance that what ever fails, a man must try to do his duty. That belief, if nothing else, is of heavenly origin. So doubting a pilgrim could hardly guide others authoritatively ; he is no Greatheart, nor has his voice the true spirit-stirring ring of a born leader of men. Christian advocates praise him, declare his arguments to be irrefragable, and find an easier path for themselves. We can but honour him as an honest and brave man—honest enough to admit the existence of doubts, and brave enough not to be paralysed by their existence. "

We are unable, for want of space to follow the able analysis of the celebrated argument of Hume against miracles. Its author is held up to respect as the most powerful assailant of the pretentious dogmatism and the timid avoidance of ultimate difficulties characteristic of his time." We have then a characteristic account of the " feeble jointed and knock kneed giant," Warburton, who upheld orthodoxy after his own fashion against its assailants, and believed that he vanquished Hume when it is evident that he never understood him. His arguments in controversy were a compound of brutal assertion and dogmatic insolence, and his chief book, his Divine Legation, seems like a contemptuous experiment on the credulity of mankind. "To disagree with him was to be not merely a fool, but a rogue." "Probably no man who has lived in recent times has ever told so many of his fellow creatures that they were unmitigated fools and liars." "We have learned to be so polite that it occasionally suggests itself that the creeds which excite our languid sympathy or antipathy are not very firmly held. It is at least amusing in this milder epoch to meet a gentleman who proposes to cudgel his opponents into Christianity, and to thrust the Gospel down their throats at the point of the bludgeon. " We next proceed to Paley, the ingenious advocate of the argument from design, whose unconscious anthropomorphism is cleverly sketched.

It "comes out curiously in incidental expressions. The arrangement of the 146 known muscles, crossing, perforating and enveloping each other, must have required meditation and counsel.' God must have been decidedly more ingenious than Watt. The problem of making reptiles he says may be thus stated: ' Muscular action and reciprocal contraction and relaxation being given, to describe how such animal might be constructed, capable of voluntarily changing place. Something perhaps, like the organisation of reptiles might have been hit upon by the ingenuity of an artist, or might have been exhibited in an automaton by the combination of springs, spiral wires, and weights; but to the solution of the problem would not be denied, surely, the praise of invention and successful thought; least of all would it ever have been questioned whether intelligence had been employed about it or not.' Had there been a competitive examination for the construction of the best form of reptile, the Almighty artisan would have had every chance of carrying off the prize."

Gibbon, the historian, next passes under review. We are told, " The fat, phlegmatic little man polished his sarcasms and sneered Christianity away with the most perfect unconsciousness that hot-blooded revolutionists were drawing strange lessons from his pages. " His chief opponent was Bishop Watson, whose " theology was of the simplest kind. So far as it meant anything more in his eyes than a qualification for a bishopric, it meant a belief that the resurrection of Christ could be proved. If we may believe De Quincey, an extremely loose reporter of facts, he talked openly as a Socinian at his own table, and ridiculed the New Testament miracles as legerdemain." In his works appear for almost the first time attempts to harmonise geology with the Scripture theology. "The weary series of accommodations of Genesis to geology was beginning."

The scene suddenly changes. A new controversialist comes upon the stage by no means inclined to cultivate the acquaintance of bishops, and caring for no disguise to his sharp savage earnestness." The reference is to Paine's Age of Reason of which it is said, "It expresses the revolt of rough common sense against tho brutal theology by which coarse preachers appeal to dull imaginations. "

" ' Who born within the last forty years,' asks Burke in 1790 'has read one word of Collins, and Toland and Tindal and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves freethinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke ? Who ever read him through ? Deep oblivion had, indeed, settled upon the deists, but the publication of the 'Age of Reason' suggested an unpleasant explanation of the phenomenon. Deism was not dead but sleeping, and the sleep was ominous of little good. The strange lethargy which had crept over the rival forces was disappearing, and Deism appeared again ferocious and menacing. Here was the end of a century of apologetic literature ! More and more, as I have attempted to show, the disposition to justify Christianity by exhibiting its spiritual excellence had declined, and divines had contented themselves with summing up in slightly varied forms the old series of evidences. Christian theology, limited to the bare statement that certain facts had happened a long time ago, was struck with sterility ; it might suit absentee bishops and professors of divinity, perfunctorily treading their mill-wheel round of duty. Respectability found in it a congenial creed, and even sceptics might regard it as a highly convenient varnish. But Paine's book announced a startling fact, against which all the flimsy collection of conclusive proofs were powerless. It amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied the instincts of rough common sense any more than the intellects of cultivated scholars. When the defenders of the old order tried to conjure with the old charms the magic had gone out of them. In Paine's brutal tones they recognised not the mere echo of coffee house gossip, but the voice of deep popular passion. Once and for ever, it was announced that for the average mass of mankind the old creed was dead. A different war-cry from that of Crusaders or of Puritans was henceforth to stir men's souls.

How was he answered ? Partly by inarticulate shrieking, and partly, too, by such serious replies as occurred to the dignified and decorous Bishop of Llandaff. Watson once more went through the regular parade of defence ; he compares the massacre of the Canaanites to an earthquake; says that the Jewish tradition for the authenticity of the Scriptures is as strong evidence as he could desire , accounts for the anachronisms in the Pentateuch by later interpolations ; and thinks that the young women reserved from the slaughter of the Midianites were not intended for debauchery, but for slavery, a custom everywhere prevalent in early times. He intersperses becoming bursts of indignation with edifying passages of Christian unction, and prays for the soul of his opponent. Nothing could be more becoming from a non-resident bishop and professor of divinity. At present the interest of the 'Apology,' which as the reviewers of the time declared, 'answered every argument or cavil in the plainest and clearest manner,' has become rather clouded.

But here on the verge of a new epoch, I close my survey of the century of controversy. Infidelity is again rampant, and old orthodoxy looking on with perplexity and affected contempt at the reviving monster. Watson was seen in the flesh by De Quincey, who survived till our own day. He talked with Coleridge, the parent of that metaphysical theology which attempted to revive the ancient religion by spiritualising it after a new fashion; before he died the leaders of new spiritual movements had already made their appearance in the world. Popular religion had revived under the influence of Wesley and his followers ; science was beginning to affect a new authority within the sphere of religious thought, and the strange revivalism of our days was faintly beginning to shadow itself forth. New issues were being raised, and new vistas were opening in every direction. How English thought was to shape itself in future, and how many old arguments were to be fought over once more under new influences, is a topic full of interest, but which falls outside my present purpose. "

* History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. By Leslie Stephen. London ; Smith, Elder,and Co. 1876.

The Argus 10 March 1877,