Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688—1750. By MARK PATTISON, B.D.
Another, perhaps the only other, book of this polemical tribe which can be said to have been completely successful as an answer, is one most unlike the Analogy in all its nobler features. This is Bentley's Remarks upon a late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, 1713. Coarse, arrogant, and abusive, with all Bentley's worse faults of style and temper, this masterly critique is decisive. Not, of course, of the Deistical controversy on which the critic avoids entering. The Discourse of Freethinking was a small tract published in 1713 by Anthony Collins. Collins was a gentleman of independent fortune, whose high personal character and general respectability seemed to give a weight to his words, which assuredly they do not carry of themselves. By 'freethinking,' he means liberty of thought—the right of bringing all received opinions whatsoever to the touchstone of reason. Among, the grounds or authorities by which he supports this natural right, Collins unluckily had recourse to history, and largely, of course, to the precedent of the Greek philosophers. Collins, who had been bred at Eton and Kings, was probably no worse a scholar than his contemporary Kingsmen, and the range of his reading was that of a man who had made the classics the companions of his maturer years. But that scholarship which can supply a quotation from Lucan, or flavour the style with an occasional allusion to Tully or Seneca, is quite incompetent to apply Greek or Roman precedent properly to a modern case. Addison, the pride of Oxford, had done no better. In his Essays on the Evidences of Christianity, Addison 'assigns as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cocklane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern, puts faith in the lie about the thundering legion, is convinced that Tiberius moved the Senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of Agharus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.' (Macaulay : Essays.) But the public was quite satisfied with Addison's citations, in which a public, which had given the victory to Boyle in the Phalaris controversy, could hardly suspect anything wrong. Collins was not to escape so easily. The freethinker flounders hopelessly among the authorities he has invoked. Like the necromancer's apprentice, he is worried by the fiends he has summoned but cannot lay, and Bentley, on whose nod they wait, is there like another Cornelius Agrippa, hounding them on and enjoying the sport. Collins's mistakes, mistranslations, misconceptions, and distortions are so monstrous, that it is difficult for us now, forgetful how low classical learning had sunk, to believe that they are mistakes, and not wilful errors.
It is rare sport to Bentley, this rat-hunting in an old rick, and he lays about him in high glee, braining an authority at every blow. When he left off abruptly, in the middle of a 'Third Part,' it was not because he was satiated with slaughter, but to substitute a new excitement, no less congenial to his temper —a quarrel with the University about his fees. A grace, voted 1715, tendering him the public thanks of the University, and 'praying him in the name of the University, to finish what remains of so useful a work,' could not induce him to resume his pen. The Remarks of Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, unfinished though they are, and trifling as was the book which gave occasion to them, are perhaps the best of all Bentley's performances. They have all the merits of the Phalaris dissertation, with the advantage of a far nobler subject. They show how Bentley's exact appreciation of the value of terms could, when he chose to apply it to that purpose, serve him as a key to the philosophical ideas of past times, no less than to those of poetical metaphor. The tone of the pamphlet is most offensive, 'not only not insipid, but exceedingly bad-tasted.' We can only, say the taste is that of his age, while the knowledge is all his own. It was fair to show that his antagonist undertook 'to interpret the Prophets and Solomon without Hebrew ; Plutarch and Zosimus (Collins spells it Zezimus) without Greek ; and Cicero and Lucan, without Latin.' (Remarks, Part i. No. 3.) But the dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins will cleave to the hand that throws it. It may be worth mention that this tract of Bentley contains the original of Sydney Smith's celebrated defence of the "prizes" in the Church. The passage is a favourable specimen of the moral level of a polemic who was accusing his opponent of holding 'opinions the most abject and base that human nature is capable of.' (Letter prefixed to Remarks.) 'He can never conceive or wish a priesthood either quieter for him, or cheaper, than that of the present Church of England. Of your quietness himself is a convincing proof, who has writ this outrageous book, and has met with no punishment nor persecution. And for the cheapness, that appeared lately in one of your parliaments, when the accounts exhibited showed that 5000 of your clergy, the greater part of your whole number, had, at a middle rate one with another, not 50 pounds a year.
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It has been mentioned that Bentley does not attempt to reply to the argument of the Discourse on Free-thinking. His tactic is to ignore it, and to assume that it is only meant as a covert attack on Christianity; that Collins is an Atheist fighting under the disguise of a Deist. Some excuse, perhaps, may be made for a man nourished on pedagogic latin; and accustomed to launch furious sarcasm, at any opponent who betrayed a brutal ignorance of the difference between 'ac' and 'et.' But Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped, for the sake of a professorship. When Bentley, in the pride of academic dignity, could thus browbeat a person of Collins's consideration, it was not to be expected that the inferior fry of Deistical writers,—Toland, a writer for the press ; Tindal, a fellow of a college ; or Chubb, a journeyman glover—met with fairer treatment from their opponents. The only exception to this is the ease of Shaftesbury, to whom, as well after his death, as in his lifetime, his privileges as a peer seem to have secured immunity from hangman's usage. He is simply 'a late, noble author.' Nor was this respect inspired by the Earl's profession of Christianity. He does, indeed, make this profession with the utmost unreserve. He asserts his 'steady orthodoxy,' and 'entire submission to the truly Christian and Catholic doctrines of our holy Church, as by law established,' and that he holds 'the mysteries of our religion even in the minutest particulars.' (Characteristicks, Vol. iii. p. 315.) But this outward profession would only have brought down upon any other writer an aggravated charge of cowardly malice and concealment of Atheism. If Shaftesbury, was spared on account of his rank, the orthodox writers were not altogether wrong in fastening upon this disingenuousness as a moral characteristic of their antagonists. The excuse for this want of manliness in men who please themselves with insinuating unpopular opinions which they dare net advocate openly, is that it is an injustice perpetrated by those who have public feeling on their side. 'They make,' says Mr. Tayler, 'the honest expression of opinion penal, and then condemn men for disingenuousness. They invite to free discussion, but determine beforehand that only one conclusion can be sound and moral. They fill the arena of public debate with every instrument of torture and annoyance for the feeling heart, the sensitive imagination, and the scrupulous intellect, and then are angry that men do not rush headlong into the martyrdom that has been prepared for them.' (Religious Life of England, p..282.)
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Whatever excuse the Deistical writers might have for their insidious manner of writing, it is more to the present purpose to observe that we may draw from it the conclusion that public opinion was throughout on the side of the defenders of Christianity. It might seem almost superfluous to say this, were it not that, complaints meet us on every side, which seem to imply the very contrary; that in the words of Mr. Gregory, 'the doctrine of our Church is exploded, and our holy religion become only a name which, is everywhere spoken against.' (Pref. to Beveridge's Private Thoughts, 1709.) Thirty years later Butler writes, that 'it is come to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now, at length, discovered to be fictitious'. 'Accordingly they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.' (Advertisement to Analogy, 1730.) "However a loose kind of Deism might be the tone of fashionable circles, it is clear that distinct disbelief of Christianity was by no means the general state of the public mind. The leaders of the Low-church and Whig party were quite aware of this. Notwithstanding the universal complaints of the High-church party of the prevalence of infidelity, it is obvious that this mode of thinking was confined to a very small section of society. The Independent Whig (May 4, 1720), in the middle of its blustering and endeavours to terrify the clergy with their unpopularity, is obliged to admit that 'the High church Popish clergy will laugh in their sleeves at this advice, and think there is folly enough yet left among the laity to support their authority ; and will laugh them selves, and rejoice over the ignorance of the Universities, the stupidity of the drunken squires, the panic of the tender sex, and the never-to-be-shaken constancy, of the multitude.' A still better evidence is the confidence and success with which the writers on the side of Revelation appealed to the popular passions, and cowed their Deistical opponents into the use of that indirect and disingenuous procedure with which they then taunted them. . .
Though the general feeling of the country was sufficiently decided to oblige all who wished to write against Christianity, to do so under a mask, this was not the case with attacks upon the clergy. Since the days of the Lollards there had never been a time when the established ministers of religion were held in so much contempt, as in the Hanoverian period, or when satire upon churchmen was so congenial to general feeling. This too was the more extraordinary, as there was no feeling against the Church Establishment, nor was nonconformity as a theory ever less in favour. The contempt was for the persons, manners, and character of the ecclesiastics. When Macaulay brought out his portrait of the clergyman of the revolution period, his critics endeavoured to show that that portrait was not true to life. They seem to have brought out the fact that it was pretty fairly true to literature. The difficult point is to estimate how far the satirical and popular literature of any age may be taken as representative of life. Satire to be popular must exaggerate, but it must be exaggeration of known and recognised facts. Mr. Churchill Babington (Character of the Clergy, &c, considered,p. 48) sets aside two of Macaulay's authorities, Oldham and T. Wood, because Oldham was an Atheist and Wood a Deist. Admitting that an Atheist and a Deist can be under no obligation to truth, yet a satirist, who intends to be read, is under the most inevitable engagement to the probable. Satire does not create the sentiment to which it appeals. A portrait of the country parson temp. George the Second which should be drawn verbatim from the pamphlets of the day would be no more historical, than is that portrait of the begging friar of the 10th century which our historians repeat after Erasmus, and the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. History may be extracted from them, but these caricatures are not themselves history.
One inference which we may safely draw is that public feeling encouraged such representations. It is a symptom of the religious temper of the times, that the same public which compelled the Deist to wear the mask of 'solemn sneer' in his assaults upon Christian doctrine, required no such disguise or reserve when the ministers of the Church were spoken of. Nor does the evidence consist in a few, stray extracts from here and there a Deist or a cynic, it is the tone of all the popular writers of that time. The unedifying lives of the clergy are a standard theme of sarcasm, and continue to be so till a late period in the century, when a gradual change may be observed in the language of literature. This antipathy to the clergy visible in the Hanoverian period, admits of comparison with that vein which colours the popular songs of the Wickliffite era. In the 15th century, the satire is not indiscriminate. It is against the monks and friars, the bishops and cardinals, as distinct from the 'poor persoun of a toun.' Its point against the organised hypocrisy of the papal Churchmen is given it by the picture of the ideal minister of 'Christe's Gospel' which always accompanies the burlesque. In the 18th century the license of satire goes much beyond this. In the early part of the century we find clerical satire observing to some extent a similar discrimination. The Tory parson is libelled always with an ostentatious reserve of commendation for the more enlightened and liberal Hanoverian, the stanch maintainer of the Protestant Succession. This is the tone of the Independent Whig, one of the numerous weekly sheets called into being in imitation of the Tatler. It was started in 1720, taking for its exclusive theme the Clergy, whom it was its avowed object to abuse. A paper came out every Wednesday. It was not a newspaper, and does not deal in libel or personalities, hardly ever mentioning a name, very rarely quoting a fact, but dilating in general terms upon clerical ignorance and bigotry. This dull and worthless trash not only had a considerable circulation at the time, but was reprinted, and passed through several editions in a collected form. The Bishops talked of prohibiting it, but, on second thoughts, acted more wisely in taking no notice of it. The only part of the kingdom into which it could not find entrance was the Isle of Man, where the saintly Wilson combined with apostolic virtues much of the old episcopal claims over the consciences of his flock. The Independent Whig, though manifestly written by a man of no religion, yet finds it necessary to keep up the appearance of encouraging the 'better sort ' of clergy, and affecting to despise only the political priests, the meddling chaplain, the preferment hunter, the toper, who is notable at bowls, and dexterous at whist.
As we advance towards the middle of the century, and the French influence begins to mingle with pure English Deism, the spirit of contempt spreads till it involves all priests of all religions. The language now is, 'The established clergy in every country are generally the greatest enemies to all kinds of reformation, as they are generally the most narrow-minded and most worthless set of men in every country. Fortunately for the present times, the wings of clerical power and influence are pretty close trimmed, so that I do not think their opposition to the proposed reformations could be of any great consequence, more of the people being inclined to despise them, than to follow them blindly.' (Burgh, Political Disquisitions, 1774.) It was no longer for their vices that the clergy were reviled, for the philosopher now had come to understand that 'their virtues were more dangerous' to society. Strictness of life did but increase the dislike with which the clergyman was regarded ; his morality was but double-dyed hypocrisy; religious language from his mouth was methodistical cant. Nor did the orthodox attempt to struggle with this sentiment. They yielded to it, and adopted for their maxim of conduct, 'surtout point de zele.' Their sermons and pamphlets were now directed against 'Enthusiasm' which became the bugbear of that time. Every clergyman, who wished to retain any influence over the minds of his parishioners, was anxious to vindicate himself from all suspicion of enthusiasm. When he had set himself right in this respect, he endeavoured to do the same good office for the Apostles. But if he were not an 'enthusiast,' he was an 'impostor.' For every clergyman of the Church had against him an antecedent presumption as a 'priest.' It was now well understood, by all enlightened men, that the whole sacerdotal brood were but a set of impostors, who lived by deceiving the people, and who had invented religion for their own benefit. Natural religion needed no 'priests' to uphold it; it was obvious to every understanding, and could maintain itself in the world without any confraternity sworn to the secret.
Again came a change. As the Methodist movement gradually leavened the mass beneath, zeal came again into credit. The old Wickliffite, or Puritan, distinction is revived between, the 'Gospel-preachers' and the 'dumb dogs.' The antipathy to priests was no longer promiscuous. Popular indignation was reserved for the fox-hunter and the pluralist; the Hophni-and-Phineas generation; the men, who are described as 'careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks, preaching a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the faces of the people more than once a year.' In the well-known satire of Cowper, it is no longer irreligious mocking at sacred things under pretence of a virtuous indignation. It becomes again what it was before the Reformation—an earnest feeling, a religious sentiment, the moral sense of man; Huss or Savonarola appealing to the written morality of the Gospel against the practical immorality consecrated by the Church.
Something too of the old anti-hierarchical feeling accompanies this revival of the influence of the inferior clergy; a faint reflection of the bitter hatred which the Lollard had borne to Pope and Cardinal, or the Puritan to 'Prelacy.', The utility of the episcopal and capituler dignities continued to be questioned long after the evangelical parish pastor had re- established himself in the affections of his flock, and 1832 saw the cathedrals go down amid the general approbation of all classes. In the earlier half of the century the reverse was the case. The boorish country parson was the man whose order was despised then, and his utility questioned. The Freethinkers themselves could not deny that the bench and the stalls were graced by some whose wit, reputation, and learning would have made them considerable in any profession. The higher clergy had with them the town and the court, the country clergy sided with the squires. The mass of the clergy were not in sympathy, either politically or intellectually, with their ecclesiastical superiors. The Tory fox-hunter in the Freeholder (No. 22) thinks 'the neighbouring shire very happy for having scarce a Presbyterian in it except the Bishop;' while Hickes 'thanks God that the main body of the clergy are in their hearts Jacobites.' The bishops of George the Second deserved the respect they met with. At no period in the history of our Church has the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown been better directed than while it was secretely dispensed by Queen Caroline. For a brief period, liberality and cultivation of mind were passports to promotion in the Church. Nor were politics a hindrance; the queen earnestly pressed an English see upon Bishop Wilson. The corruption which began with the Duke of Newcastle (1740) gradually deepened in the subsequent reign, as political orthodoxy and connection were made the tests, and the borough holders divided the dignities of the Church among their adherents.
Of an age so solid and practical it was not to be expected that its theology and metaphysics would mount into the more remote spheres of abstraction. Their line of argument was, as has been seen, regulated by the necessity, they laid themselves under of appealing to sound sense and common reason. But not only was their treatment of their topic popular, the motive of their writings was an immediate practical necessity. Bishops and deans might be made for merit, but it was not mere literary merit, classical scholarship, or University distinction. The Deistical controversy did not originate, like some other controversies which have made much noise in their time, in speculative fancy, in the leisure of the cloister, or the college. It had a living practical interest in its complication with the questions of the day. The endeavour of the moralists and divines of the period to rationalise religion was in fact an effort to preserve the practical principles of moral and religious conduct for society. It was not an academical disputation, or a contest of wits for superiority, but a life and death struggle of religious and moral feeling to maintain itself. What they felt they had to contend against was moral depravity and not theological error; they wrote less in the interest of truth than in that of virtue. A general relaxation of manners, in all classes of society, is universally affirmed to be characteristic of that time; and theology and philosophy applied themselves to combat this. A striking instance of this is Bishop Berkeley, the only metaphysical writer of the time, besides Locke, who has maintained a very high name in philosophical history. He forms a solitary —it might seem a singular—exception, to what has been said of the prosaic and unmetaphysical character of this moralising age. The two peculiar metaphysical notions, which are connected with Berkeley's name, and which, though he did not originate, he propounded with a novelty and distinctness equal to originality, have always ranked as being on the extreme verge of rational speculation, if not actually within the region of unfruitful paradox and metaphysical romance. These two memorable speculations, as propounded by Berkeley in the Alciphron, come before us not as a Utopian dream, or an ingenious play of reason, but interwoven in a polemic against the prevailing unbelief. They are made to bend to a most practical purpose, and are Berkeley's contributions to the Deistical controversy. The character of the man, too, was more in harmony with the plain utilitarian spirit of his time than with his own refining intellect. He was not a closet-thinker, like his master Malebranche, but a man of the world and of society, inquisitive and well informed in many branches of practical science. Practical schemes, social and philanthropic, occupied his mind more than abstract thinking. In pushing the received metaphysical creed to its paradoxical consequences, as much as in prescribing "tar-water," he was thinking only of an immediate 'benefit to mankind.' He seems to have thought nothing of his argument until he had brought it to bear on the practical questions of the day.
Were the 'corruption of mariners' merely the complaint of one party or set of writers, a cry of factious Puritanism, or of men who were at war with society, like the Nonjuring clergy, or of a few isolated individuals of superior piety, like William Law, it would he easily explicable. The 'world' at all times, and in all countries, can be described with truth as 'lying in wickedness,' and the rebuke of the preacher of righteousness is equally needed in every age. There cannot be a darker picture than that drawn by the Fathers of the 3rd century of the morals of the Christians in their time. (See, passages in Jewel's Apology) The rigorous moralist, heathen or Christian, can always point in sharp contrast the vices and the belief of mankind. But, after making every allowance for the exaggeration of religious rhetoric, and the querulousness of defeated parties, there seems to remain some real evidence for ascribing to that age a more than usual moral license and contempt of external restraints. It is the concurrent testimony of men of all parties, it is the general strain of the most sensible and worldly divines, prosperous men who lived with this very world they censure, men whose code of morals was not large, nor their standard exacting. To attempt the inquiry what specific evils were meant by the general expressions 'decay of religion' and 'corruption of manners,' —the stereotype phrases of the time—is not within the limits of this paper. No historian, as far as I am aware, has attempted this examination ; all have been content to render, without valuation, the charges as they find them. I shall content myself with producing here one statement of contemporary opinion on this point; for which purpose I select a layman, David Hartley. Observations on Man, vol. ii. p. 441.)
' There are six things which seem more especially to threaten ruin and dissolution to the present States of Christendom.
1st. The great growth of atheism and infidelity, particularly amongst the governing parts of these States.
2nd. The open and abandoned lewdness to which great numbers of both sexes, especially in the high ranks of life, have given themselves
up.
3rd. The sordid and avowed self-interest, which is almost the sole motive of action in those who are concerned in the administration of public affairs.
4th. The licentiousness and contempt of every kind of authority, divine or human, which is so notorious in inferiors of all ranks.
5th. The great worldly-mindedness of the clergy, and their gross neglect in the discharge of their proper functions.
6th. The carelessness and infatuation of parents and magistrates with respect to the education of youth, and the consequent early corruption of the rising generation.
All these things have evident mutual connections and influences ; and as they all seem likely to increase from time to time, so it can scarce be doubted by a considerate man, whether he be a religious one or no, but that they will sooner or later, bring on a total dissolution of all the forms of government that subsist at present in the Christian countries of Europe.'
Though there is entire unanimity as to the fact of the prevailing corruption, there is the greatest diversity of opinion as to its cause. Each party is found in turn attributing it to the neglect of disbelief of the abstract propositions in which it's own particular creed is expressed. The Nonjurers and High-Churchmen attribute it to the Toleration Act and the latitudinarianism allowed in high places. One of the very popular pamphlets of the year 1721 was a fast-sermon preached before the Lord Mayor by Edmund Massey, in which he enumerates the evils of the time and affirms that they 'are justly, chargeable up on the corrupt explication of those words of our Saviour, 'My kingdom is not of this world' i.e., upon Hoadly's celebrated sermon. The latitudinarian clergy divide the blame between the Freethinkers and the Nonjurers. The Freethinkers point to the hypocrisy of the clergy, who, they say, lost all credit with the people by having preached 'passive obedience' up to 1688, and then suddenly finding out that it was not a scriptural truth. The Nonconformists lay it to the enforcement of conformity and unscriptural terms of communion; while the Catholics rejoice to see in it the Protestant Reformation at last bearing its natural fruit. Warburton characteristically attributes it to the bestowal of 'preferment' by the Walpole administration. (Dedication to Lord Mansfield, Works, ii. 208.) The power of preferment was not underestimated then. George II. maintained to the last that the growth of Methodism was entirely owing to ministers not having listened to his advice, and 'made Whitefield a bishop.' Lastly, that everyone may have his say, a professor of moral philosophy in our day is found attributing the same facts to the prevalence of 'that low view of morality which rests its rules upon consequences merely.'
'The reverence which,' says Dr. Whewell, 'handed down by the tradition of ages of moral and religious teaching, had hitherto protected the accustomed forms of moral good, was gradually removed. Vice, and crime, and sin, ceased to be words that terrified the popular speculator. Virtue, and goodness; and purity were no longer things which he looked up to with mute respect. He ventured to lay a sacrilegious hand even upon these hallowed shapes. He saw that when this had been dared by audacious theorists, those objects, so long venerated, seemed to have no power of punishing the bold intruder. There was a scene like that which occurred when the barbarians broke into the Eternal City. At first, in spite of themselves, they were awed by the divine aspect of the ancient magistrates; but when once their leader had smitten one of these venerable figures with impunity, the coarse and violent mob rushed onwards, and exultingly mingled all in one common destruction' (Moral Philosophy in England, p. 79.)
The actual sequence of cause and effect seems, if it be not presumptuous to say so, to be nearly as possible inverted in this eloquent statement. The licentiousness of talk and manners was not produced by the moral doctrines promulgated; but the doctrine of moral consequences was had recourse to by the divines and moralists as the most likely remedy of the prevailing licentiousness. It was an attempt, well-meant but not successful, to arrest the wanton proceedings of the coarse and violent mob.' Good men saw with alarm almost with despair, that what they said in the obsolete language of religious teaching was not listened to, and tried to address the age in plain and unmistakable terms. The new theory of consequences was not introduced by 'men of leisure' to supplant and overthrow a nobler and purer view of religion and morality, it was a plain fact of religion stated in plain language, in the hope of deterring the wicked from his wickedness. It was the address of the Old Testament prophet, 'Why will ye die, O house of Israel?' That there is a God and moral Governor, and that obedience to His commands is necessary to secure our interests in this world and the next—if any form of rational belief can control the actions of a rational being, it is surely this. On the rationalist hypothesis, the morality of consequences ought to produce the most salutary effects on the general behaviour of mankind. This obligation of obedience, the appeal to our desire of our own welfare, was the substance of the practical teaching of the age. It was stated with great cogency of reasoning, and enforced with every variety of illustration. Put its proof at the lowest, let it be granted that they did not succeed in removing all the objections of the Deistical writers, it must, at least, be allowed that they showed, to the satisfaction of all prudent and thinking men, that it was safer to believe Christianity true than not. The obligation to practice in point of prudence was as perfect as though the proof had been demonstrative. And what was the surprising result? That the more they demonstrated the less people believed. As the proof of morality was elaborated and strengthened, the more it was disregarded, the more ungodliness and profaneness flourished and grew. This is certainly not what we should antecedently expect. If, as Dr. Whewell assumes, and the whole doctrinaire school with him, the speculative belief of an age determines its moral character, that should be the purest epoch where the morality of consequences is placed in the strongest light—when it is most convincingly set before men that their present and future welfare depends on how they act; that 'all we enjoy, and great part of what we suffer, is placed in our own hands.'
Experience, however, the testimony of history, displays to us a result the very reverse. The experiment of the 18th century may surely be considered as a decisive one on this point. The failure of a prudential system of ethics as a restraining force upon society was perceived, or felt in the way of reaction, by the Evangelical and Methodist generation of teachers who succeeded the Hanoverian divines. So far their perception was just. They went on to infer that, because the circulation of one system of belief had been inefficacious, they should try the effect of inculcating a set of truths as widely remote from the former as possible. Because legal preaching, as they phrased it, had failed, they would essay Gospel preaching. The preaching of justification by works had not the power to check wickedness, therefore justification by faith, the doctrine of the Reformation, was the only saving truth. This is not meant as a complete account of the origin of the Evangelical school. It is only one point of view—that point which connects the school with the general line of thought this paper has been pursuing. Their doctrine of conversion by supernatural influence must on no account be forgotten. Yet it appears that they thought that the channel of this supernatural influence was, in some way or other, preaching:—preaching, too, not as rhetoric, but as the annunciation of a specific doctrine—the Gospel. They certainly insisted on the heart being touched, and that the Spirit only had the power savingly to affect the heart; but they acted as though this were done by an appeal to the reason, and scornfully rejected the idea of religious education.
It should also be remarked that even the divines of the Hanoverian school were not wholly blind to some flaw in their theory, and to the practical inefficacy of their doctrine. Not that they underrated the force of their demonstrations. As has been already said, the greater part of them over-estimated their convincingness; but they could not but see that they did not, in fact, convince. When this was forced upon their observation, when they perceived that an a priori demonstration of religion might be placed before a man, and, that he did not see its force, then, inconsequent with their own theory, they had recourse to the notion of moral culpability. If a person refused to admit the evidence for revelation, it was because he did not examine it with a dispassionate mind. His understanding was biassed by his wishes; some illicit passion he was resolved on gratifying, but which prudence, forsooth, would not have allowed him to gratify so long as he continued to believe in a future judgment. The wish that there were no God suggested the thought that there is not. Speculative unbelief is thus asserted to be a consequence of a bad heart: it is the ground upon which we endeavour to prove to ourselves and others that the indulgence of our passions is consistent with a rational prudence. As levelled against an individual opponent, this is a poor controversial shift. Many of the Deists were men of worth and probity; of none of them is anything known which would make them worse men than the average of their class in life. Mr. Chichester (Deism compared with Christianity,1821, Vol: iii: p. 220) says 'Tindal was infamous for vice in general;' but I have not been able to trace his authority for the assertion. As an imputation, not against individual unbelievers, but against the competency of reason in general, it may be true, but is quite inconsistent with the general hypothesis of the school of reasoners who brought it. If reason be liable to an influence which warps it, then there is required some force which shall keep this influence under, and reason alone is no longer the all-sufficient judge of truth. In this way we should be forced back to the old orthodox doctrine of the chronic impotence of reason, superinduced upon it by the Fall; a doctrine which the reigning orthodoxy had tacitly renounced.
In the Catholic theory the feebleness of Reason is met half-way and made good by the authority of the Church. When the Protestants threw off this authority, they did not assign to Reason what they took from the church, but to Scripture. Calvin did not shrink from saying that Scripture 'shone sufficiently by its own light.' As long as this could be kept to, the Protestant theory of belief was whole and sound. At least it was as sound as the Catholic. In both, Reason aided by spiritual illumination, performs the subordinate function of recognising the supreme authority of the Church, and of the Bible, respectively. Time, learned controversy, and abatement of zeal drove the Protestants generally from the hardy but irrational assertion of Calvin. Every foot of ground that Scripture lost was gained by one or other of the three substitutes: Church authority, the Spirit, or Reason. Church-authority was essayed by the Laudian divines, but was soon found untenable, for on that footing it was found impossible to justify the Reformation and the breach with Rome. The Spirit then came into favour along with Independency. But it was still more quickly discovered that on such a basis only discord and disunion could be reared. There remained to be tried Common Reason, carefully distinguished from recondite learning, and not based on metaphysical assumptions. To apply this instrument to the contents of Revelation was the occupation of the early half of the eighteenth century; with what success has been seen. In the latter part of the century the same Common Reason was applied to the external evidences. But here the method fails in a first requisite—universality; for even the shallowest array of historical proof requires some book-learning to apprehend. Further than this, the Lardner and Paley school could not complete their proof satisfactorily, inasmuch as the materials for the investigation of the first and second centuries of the Christian era were not at hand.
Such appears to be the past history of the Theory of Belief in the Church of England. Whoever would take the religious literature of the present day as a whole, and endeavour to make out clearly on what basis Revelation is supposed by it to rest, whether on Authority, on the Inward Light, on Reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or some of them, and in what proportions, would probably find that he had undertaken a perplexing but not altogether profitless inquiry.
Empire 12 June 1861,
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