History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 26

1. INFIDEL.-This word began to be restricted as a technical term, about the time of the Crusades and throughout the middle ages, to denote Mahometan; as being _par excellence_ the kind of unbelievers with which Christians were brought into contact. Perhaps the first instance of its use in the more modern sense, of disbeliever generally, is in the Collect for Good Friday, "all Jews, Turks, _infidels_, heretics;" which words were apparently inserted by the Reformers in the first Prayer Book (1547); the rest of the prayer, except these words, existing in the Latin Collect of the ancient Service-book from which it is translated. Ordinarily however, during the sixteenth century, it is found in the popular sense of _unfaithful_; a meaning which the increasing prevalence of Latin words was likely to bring into use. In writers of the seventeenth, the use of it in the sense of _unbeliever_ becomes more common: an instance from Milton is cited in Richardson's Dictionary. In the beginning of the eighteenth century it becomes quite common in theological writers in its modern sense; and toward the end of the century was frequently appropriated to express the form of unbelief which existed in France; a use which probably arose from the circ.u.mstance that the French unbelievers did not adopt a special name for their tenets, as the English did, who had a positive creed, (Deism,) and not merely, like the French, a disintegration of belief.

2. ATHEIST.-This word needs little discussion. In modern times it is first applied by the theological writers of the sixteenth century, to describe the unbelief of such persons as Pomponatius; and in the seventeenth it is used, by Bacon (Essay on Atheism), Milton, (Paradise lost, b. vi.), and Bunyan (Pilgrim), to imply general unbelief, of which the disbelief in a Deity is the princ.i.p.al sign. Toward the end of the same century it is not unfrequently found, e.g. in Kortholt's _De Tribus Impostoribus_, 1680, to include Deism such as that of Hobbes, as well as blank Pantheism like Spinoza's, which more justly deserves the name. The same use is seen in Colerus's work against Spinoza, _Arcana Atheismi Revelata_. Tillotson (serm. i. on Atheism); and Bentley (Boyle Lectures) use the word more exactly; and the invention of the term Deism induced, in the writers of the eighteenth century, a more limited and exact use of the former term.

But in Germany, Reimannus (_Historia Univ. Atheismi_, 1725, p. 437 seq.) and Buddeus (_De Atheismo et Superst.i.tione_, 1723, ch. iii. -- 2), use it most widely, and especially make it include disbelief of immortality. Also Walch, _Bibliotheca Theol. Selecta_, 1757, uses it to include the Pantheism of Spinoza, (vol. i. p. 676, &c.) This transference of the term to embrace all kinds of unbelief has been well compared with the extension of the term ??a??? by the Greeks.(1064) The wide use of the term is partly to be attributed to the doubt which Christian men had whether any one could really disbelieve the being of a G.o.d,-an opinion increased by the Cartesian notions then common concerning innate ideas; and whether accordingly the term Atheist could mean anything different from Deist.

Compare Buddeus's _Isagoge_, p. 1203, and the chapter "An dentur Athei" in his work _De Atheismo_. (ch. i.) By the time of Stapfer's work, _Inst.i.t.

Theol. Polem._ 1744, the two terms were distinguished; see vol. ii. ch.

vi. and vii. and cfr. p. 587.

The term was subsequently applied to describe the views of the French writers, such as D'Holbach, who did not see the necessity for believing in a personal first Cause. In more modern times it is frequently applied to such writers as Comte; whose view is indeed atheism, but differs from that of former times, in that it is the refusal to entertain the question of a Deity as not being discoverable by the evidence of sense and science, rather than the absolute denial of his existence. The Comtists also hold firmly the marks of order, law, mind, in nature, and not the fortuitous concurrence of atoms, as was the case with the atheists of France.

3. PANTHEIST.-One of the first uses of this word is by Toland in the _Pantheisticon_, 1720, where however it has its ancient polytheistic sense. It is a little later that it pa.s.ses from the idea of the worship of the whole of the G.o.ds to the worship of the entire universe looked at as G.o.d.

This exacter application of it is more modern. It is now used to denote the disbelief of a personal first Cause: but a distinction ought to be made between the Pantheism like that of Averroes, which regards the world as an emanation, and sustained by an _anima mundi_; and that which, like the view of Spinoza, regards the sum total of all things to be Deity. This distinction was noticed and ill.u.s.trated in p. 107. The account of the word in Krug's _Philosoph. Lexicon_ is worth consulting.

4. DEIST.-One of the first instances of the use of this word occurs in Viret, _Epistr. Dedicat. du 2. vol de l'Instruction Chretienne_, 1563, quoted by Bayle, _Dictionnaire_, (note under the word Viret.) It is appropriated in the middle of the seventeenth century by Herbert to his scheme, and afterwards by Blount (_Oracles of Reason_, p. 99), to distinguish themselves from Atheists. In strict truth, Herbert calls himself a _Theist_; which slightly differs from the subsequent term _Deist_, in so far as it is intended to convey the idea of that which he thought to be the true worship of G.o.d. It is theism as opposed to error, rather than natural religion as opposed to revealed: whereas deism always implies a position antagonistic to revealed religion. But the distinction is soon lost sight of; and Nichols (1696) ent.i.tles his work against the deists, _Conference with a Theist_. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, and in the beginning of the eighteenth, the Christian writers sometimes even use Deist as interchangeable with Atheist, as shown above.

It is also used as synonymous with one of the senses of the word _Naturalist_. See below, under the latter word; and cfr. Stapfer, _Inst.

Polem._ vol. ii. p. 742, with p. 883.

5. NATURALIST.-This word is used in two senses; an objective and a subjective. Naturalism, in the former, is the belief which identifies G.o.d with nature; in the latter, the belief in the sufficiency of natural as distinct from revealed religion. The former is Pantheism, the latter Deism. In the former sense it is applied to Spinoza and others; e.g. in Walch's _Biblioth. Theol. Select._ i. 745 seq. In the latter sense it occurs as early as 1588 in France, in the writings of J. Bodin (_Colloq.

Heptapl._ 31. Rem. 2); and towards the end of the seventeenth century both in Germany and England, e.g. in Kortholt's _De Trib. Impost._ 1680; and the Quaker, Barclay's _Apologia_, 1679, p. 28. At the end of the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth, the name was applied in England to deists, (e.g. in Nichols's _Conference with a Theist_, pref. -- 15); and in Germany it became a commonly known word, owing to the spread of the Wolffian philosophy. Stapfer (_Inst.i.t. Theol. Polem._ 1744, vol.

ii. p. 881), using Wolffian phraseology, divides this latter kind of naturalism into two kinds, viz. philosophical and theological. The philosophical kind maintains the sufficiency of natural religion, and disbelieves revealed; the theological kind holds the truth of revelation, but regards it as unnecessary, as being only a republication of natural religion. The adherent of the former is the "Naturalist" of Kant; the latter his "pure Rationalist" (_Verg. Religion Innerhalb, &c._); the former the Deist, the latter the Rationalist, of a school like that of Wegscheider, &c. (See Lect. VI.)

Cfr. Bretschneider's _Handbuch der Dogmatik_; i. 72. note. Hahn, _De Rationalismi Indole_ (quoted by Rose on Rationalism, 2d ed. Introd. p. 20) names writers who make a third kind of naturalism, viz. Pelagianism; but this is rare.

6. FREETHINKER.-This term first appears toward the close of the seventeenth century. It is used of Toland, "a candid Freethinker," by Molyneux, in a letter to Locke 1697 (_Locke's Works_, fol. ed. iii. 624); and Shaftesbury in 1709 speaks of "our modern free-writers," _Works_, vol.

i. p. 65. But it was Collins in 1713, in his _Discourse of Freethinking_, who first appropriated the name to express the independence of inquiry which was claimed by the deists. The use of the word expressed the spirit of a nation like the English, in which, subsequently to the change of dynasty, freedom to think and speak was held to be every man's charter.

Lechler has remarked the absence of a parallel word in other languages.

The French expression _Esprit fort_, the t.i.tle of a work of La Bruyere, does not convey quite the same idea as _Freethinker_. _Esprit_ expresses the French liveliness, not the reflective self-consciousness of the English mind of the eighteenth century: the _fort_ is a relic of the pride of feudalism; whilst the _free_ of the English Freethinker implies the reaction against it. The English term smacks of democracy; the French carries with it the notion of aristocracy. (Lechler, _Gesch. des Engl.

Deismus_, p. 458.) There is no word to express the English idea in foreign languages, except the literal translation of the English term. Even then, in French the expression _la libre pensee_ has changed its meaning; since it is now frequently used to describe the struggle, good as well as evil, of the human mind against authority. It thus loses the unfavourable sense which originally belonged to the corresponding English expression.

7. RATIONALIST.-The history of the term is hard to trace. The first technical use of the adjective _rational_ seems to have been about the seventeenth century, to express a school of philosophy. It had probably pa.s.sed out of the old sense of _dialectical_ (cfr. Brucker's _Hist. Phil._ iii. 60.), into the use just named; which we find in Bacon, to express rational philosophy, as opposed to empirical, (see a quotation from Bacon's _Apophthegms_ in Richardson's _Dictionary_, _sub voc._); or, as in North's _Plutarch_, 1657, p. 984, for intellectual philosophy as opposed to mathematical and moral. The word Rationalist occurs in Clarendon, 1646 (_State Papers_, vol. ii. p. 40), to describe a party of presbyterians who appealed only to "what their reason dictates them in church and state."

Hahn (_De Rationalismi Indole_) states that Amos Comenius similarly used the term in 1661 in a depreciatory sense. The treatise of Locke on the _Reasonableness of Christianity_ caused Christians and Deists to appropriate the term, and to restrict it to religion. Thus, by Waterland's time, it had got the meaning of false reasoning on religion. (_Works_, viii. 67.) And, pa.s.sing into Germany, it appears to have become the common name to express philosophical views of religion, as opposed to supernatural. In this sense it occurs as early as 1708 in Sucro, quoted by Tholuck, _Vermischt. Schriften_, ii. pp. 25, 26, and in Buddeus, _Isagoge_, 1730, pp. 213 and 1151. It is also used often as equivalent to naturalism, or adherence to natural religion; with the slight difference that it rather points to mental than physical truth.

The name has often been appropriated to the Kantian or critical philosophy, in which rationalism was distinguished from naturalism in the mode explained under the latter word. (See Kant's _Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft_, pp. 216, 17.) During the period when Rationalism was predominant as a method in German theology, the meaning and limits of the term were freely discussed. The period referred to is that which we have called in Lect. VI. p. 230 the second subdivision of the first of the three periods, into which the history of German theology is there divided; viz. from 1790-1810; occupying the interval when the Wolffian philosophy had given place to the Kantian, and the philosophy of Fichte and Jacobi had not yet produced the revival under Schleiermacher.

This form of rationalism also continued to exist during the lifetime of its adherents, contemporaneously with the new influence created by Schleiermacher. (See Lect. VI.) The discussion was not a verbal one only, but was intimately connected with facts. The rationalist theologians wished to define clearly their own position, as opposed on the one hand to deists and naturalists, and on the other to supernaturalists. The result of the discussion seemed to show the following parties: (1) two kinds of Supernaturalists, (a) the Biblical, such as Reinhardt, resembling the English divines of the eighteenth century;(1065) () the Philosophical, sometimes called Rational Supernaturalists, as the Kantian theologian Staudlin: (2) two kinds of Rationalists, (a) the Supernatural Rationalists, like Bretschneider, who held on the evidence of reason the necessity of a revelation, but required its accordance with reason, when communicated; () the pure Rationalists, like Wegscheider, Rohr, and Paulus, who held the sufficiency of reason; and, while admitting revelation as a fact, regarded it as the republication of the religion of nature. It is this last kind which answers to the "theological naturalist," named above, under the word _Naturalist_. It is also the form which is called _Rationalismus vulgaris_ (as being opposed to the later _scientific_), though the term is not admitted by its adherents. This rationalism stands distinguished from naturalism, i.e. from "philosophical naturalism" or deism, by having reference to the Christian religion and church; but it differs from supernaturalism, in that reason, not scripture, is its formal principle, or test of truth: and virtue, instead of "faith working by love," is its material principle, or fundamental doctrine. A further subdivision might be made of this last into the dogmatic (Wegscheider), and the critical (Paulus). Cfr. Bretschneider's _Dogmatik_, i. 81, and see Lect. VI. Also consult on the above account Kahnis, p. 168, and Lechler's _Deismus_, p. 193, note; Hagenbach's _Dogmengesch_. -- 279, note.

This account of the term being the result of the controversy as to the meaning of the words, it only remains to name some of the works which treated of it.

The dispute on the word _Rationalism_ is especially seen at two periods, (1) about the close of the last century, when the supernaturalists, such as Reinhardt and Storr, were maintaining their position against rationalism. One treatise, which may perhaps be considered to belong to this earlier period, is J. A. H. t.i.ttmann's _Ueber Supernaturalismus, Rationalismus, und Atheismus_, 1816; (2) in the disputes against the school of Schleiermacher, when supernaturalism was no longer thrown on the defensive. This was marked by several treatises on the subject, such as Staudlin's _Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus_ 1826, (see the definitions given in it, pp. 3 and 4;) Bretschneider's remarks in his _Dogmatik_ (i. pp. 14, 71, 80 ed. 1838); and _Historische Bemerkungen Ueber den Gebrauch der Ausdrucke Rational. und Supernat._ (_Oppositions-Schrift._ 1829. 7. 1); A. Hahn, _De Rationalismi qui dicitur Vera Indole_, 1827, in which he reviews the attempts of Bretschneider and Staudlin to give the historic use of the word; Rohr's _Briefe Ueber Rationalismus_, pp. 14-16; Paulus's _Resultate aus den Neuesten Versuch des Supernat. Gegen den Rationalismus_, 1830; Wegscheider's _Inst. Theol.

Christianae Dogmaticae_ (7th ed. 1833. ---- 11, 12, pp. 49-67), which is full of references to the literature of the subject. The controversy was aggravated and in part was due to the translation of Mr. H. J. Rose's _Sermons on Rationalism_. He was answered by Bretschneider in a tract, in which that theologian entered upon the defence of the rationalist position. Mr. Rose (_Introd._ to 2d ed. 1829, p. 17) enters briefly upon the history of the name. Krug (_Philos. Lexicon_) also gives many instances of its use in German theology.

To complete the account it is only necessary to add, that it is made clear by Lectures VI. and VII. that if subsequent theological thought in Germany to the schools now described, be called Rationalism for convenience by English writers, the term is then used in a different sense from that in which it is applied in speaking of the older forms.

8. SCEPTIC.-This term was first applied specifically to one school of Greek philosophers, about B.C. 300, followers of Pyrrho of Elis (see Ritter's _Hist. of Phil._ E. T. iii. 372-398; Staudlin's _Geschichte des Scepticismus_, vol. i; Tafel's _Geschichte und Kritik des Skepticismus_, 1836; Donaldson's _Greek Lit._ ch. xlvii. -- 5); and also to a revival of this school about A.D. 200. (See Ritter. Id. iii. 258-357; Donaldson, ch.

lvi. -- 3.) The tenet was a general disbelief of the possibility of knowing realities as distinct from appearances. The term thus introduced, gradually became used in the specific sense of theological as distinct from philosophical scepticism, often with an indirect implication that the two are united. Walch restricts the name Sceptic to the latter kind.

Writing about those who are called Indifferentists (_Bibl. Theol. Select._ i. 976), he subdivides them into two cla.s.ses; viz. those who are indifferent through liberality, and those who are so through unbelief. The former are the "Lat.i.tudinarians," the latter the Sceptics above named.

Cfr. also Buddeus, _Isagoge_, pp. 1208-10. In more recent times the term has gained a still more generic sense in theology, to express all kinds of religious doubt. But its use to express philosophical scepticism as distinct from religious has not died out. In this sense Montaigne, Bayle (cfr. Staudlin's _Gesch. des Scept._ p. 204), Huet, Berkeley, Hume, and De Maistre, were Sceptics; i.e. sceptical of the cert.i.tude of one or more branches of the human faculties. Sometimes also it is used to express systems of philosophy which teach disbelief in the reality of metaphysical science; e.g. the positive school of Comte; but this is an ambiguous use of the term. For philosophical scepticism may be of two kinds; viz. the disbelief in the possibility of the attainment of truth by means of the natural faculties of man; and the disbelief of the possibility of its attainment by means of metaphysical, as distinct from physical, methods.

The former is properly called Philosophical Scepticism, the latter not so.

Pyrrho in ancient times, and Hume in modern, represent the former; the Positivists of modern times, and perhaps the Sophists of the fifth century B.C., represent the latter. It is hardly necessary to repeat that the philosophical scepticism proper of Berkeley and Hume must not be confounded with religious. They may be connected, as in Hume, or disconnected, as in Berkeley or De Maistre. See on this subject Morell's _Hist. of Philos._ i. p. 68, ii. ch. vi.

On the subject of the words explained in this note see, besides the works referred to, Walch's _Bibl. Theol. Select._ i. ch. v. sect. 5, 6, 7, 11, and iii. ch. vii. sect. 10. -- 4. 1757: Pfaff's _Introd. in Hist. Theol._ lib. ii. b. iii. -- 2. 1725: Stapfer's _Inst. Theol. Polem._ ii. ch. vi, vii, x; iv. ch. xiii. 1744: Reimannus' _Hist. Univ. Ath._ sectio i. 1725: J. F. Buddeus's _De Atheismo_, 1737, ch. i. and ii: J. F. Buddeus's _Isagoge_, 1730, pp. 1203-1211: Lechler's _Gesch. des Deismus_, 1841; _Schlussbemerkungen_, p. 453 seq.: J. Fabricius, 1704, _Consid. Var.

Controv._ p. 1: Staudlin's _Gesch. des Skepticismus vorzuglich in Rucksicht auf. Moral. und Religion_. 1794: J. F. Tafel's _Gesch. und Kritik des Skepticismus und Irrationalismus_, with reference to Philosophy, 1834.

Note 22. p. 136. Woolston's Discourses On Miracles.

In addition to the notice of these Discourses given in the text, it may be well to give a brief account of their contents.

In Discourse I. Woolston aims at showing (a) that healing is not a proper miracle for a Messiah to perform, and that the fathers of the church understood the miracles allegorically: () that a literal interpretation of miracles involves incredibility, as shown in the miracle of the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the temple, the casting out devils from the possessed man of the tombs, the transfiguration, the marriage of Cana, the feeding the mult.i.tudes: (?) the meaning of Jesus when he appeals to miracles. In Discourse II. he selects for examination the miracle of the woman with the issue of blood, and also her with the spirit of infirmity; also the narrative of the Samaritan woman, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the temptation, the appearance of the spirits of the dead at the resurrection. In Discourse III. he selects the cursing of the fig-tree, and the miracle of the pool of Bethesda. It may be allowable to give one ill.u.s.tration of the coa.r.s.e humour with which he rationalizes the sacred narrative in his explanation of this last miracle.

He says of the healed man, "The man's infirmity was more laziness than lameness; and Jesus only shamed him out of his pretended idleness by bidding him to take up his stool and walk off, and not lie any longer like a lubbard and dissemble among the diseased." It will be perceived, that if the coa.r.s.eness be omitted, the system of interpretation is the naturalist system afterwards adopted by the old rationalism (_rationalismus vulgaris_). In Discourse IV. he selects the healing with eye-salve of the blind man, the water made into wine at Cana; where he introduces a Jewish rabbi to utter blasphemy, after the manner of Celsus; and the healing of the paralytic who was let down through the roof, which, as being one of the most characteristic pa.s.sages of Woolston, Dean Trench has selected for a.n.a.lysis. (_Notes on Miracles_, Introduction, p. 81.) In Discourse V. he discusses the three miracles of the raising of the dead; and in Discourse VI. the miracle of Christ's own resurrection.

His conclusion (in Disc. I.) is, that "the history of Jesus, as recorded in the evangelists, is an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the soul of man; and his miracles figurative of his mysterious operations;" that the four Gospels are in no part a literal story, but a system of mystical philosophy or theology.

Lecture V.

Note 23. p. 178. The Literary Coteries Of Paris In The Eighteenth Century.

An account of these coteries may be seen in Schlosser's _Hist. of Eighteenth Century_, (E. T.) vol. i. ch. ii. -- 4; the particulars of which chapter he has gathered largely from the Autobiography of Marmontel, and from Grimm's Correspondence. See also Sainte-Beuve's Papers (_Portraits_, vol. ii.) on Espina.s.se and Geoffrin. These coteries were specially four: viz. (1) that of Madame De Tencin, mother of D'Alembert, which included Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Helvetius, Marivaux, and Astruc; (2) of Madame Geoffrin, who took the place of De Tencin. It included, besides some of the above, Poniatowsky, Frederick the Great when in France, the Swedish Creutz, and Kaunitz, the whole of the Voltaire school, and at first Rousseau; (3) of Madame Du Deffant, contemporary with Geoffrin. This was less a coterie of fashion, and more entirely of intellect; and included Voltaire, D'Alembert, Henault, and Horace Walpole when in Paris.

Later Mlle. Espina.s.se took the place of Deffant, and this became the union-point for all the philosophical reformers, D'Alembert, Diderot, Turgot, and the Encyclopaedists; (4) of D'Holbach, consisting of the most advanced infidels.

Note 24. p. 198. The Term Ideology.

As the term _Ideology_ has lately been employed in a novel theological sense, (e.g. _Essays and Reviews_, Ess. iv.), and as it is employed in these lectures in its ordinary sense, as known in metaphysical science, it may prevent ambiguity to state briefly the history of the term.

The word _Ideology_, as denoting the term to express metaphysical science, seems to have arisen in the French school of De Tracy at the close of the last century. Cfr. Krug's _Philos. Lexicon_, sub voc.

As early as Plato's time metaphysics was the science of ?d?a?, i.e. of _forms_; but the word ?d?a implied the objective form in the thing, not the subjective conception in the mind. It was Descartes who first appropriated the word Idea in the subjective sense of _notion_. This arose from the circ.u.mstance that in his philosophy he sought for the idea in the mind, instead of the essence in the thing contemplated, as had been the case in mediaeval philosophy. In the following century Locke's inquiries, together with Berkeley's speculations, caused metaphysics to become _the science of ideas_. The representative theory of perception which was held, increased, if it did not cause, the confusion: all knowledge was restricted to ideas. The subsequent attempts of Condillac and others to carry forward the a.n.a.lysis of the formation of our ideas still farther, caused metaphysics to be restricted to them alone. This apparently was the reason why De Tracy gave the name of Ideology to the science of metaphysics in the _Elemens d'Ideologie_.(1066)

It was the sceptical notion of the unreality of the objects as distinct from the ideas, partly the offshoot of a sensational philosophy, like that of De Tracy, partly of the spiritual philosophy of Germany, which farther caused the term Ideological to slide into the sense of _ideal_; a meaning of the term which the employment of it in English in recent theological controversy seems likely to make common.

Note 25. p. 195. The Works Of Dr. Geddes.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, free thought began to manifest itself in England under a rationalistic form, in a Roman catholic, Dr.

Geddes, who lived 1737-1802. (See Life by Mason Good, 1804.) Vol. i. of his _Translation_ of the Bible appeared in 1792; vol. ii. in 1797; and his _Critical Remarks_ (vol. i.) in 1800. His free criticism is seen in discussing the character of Moses (pref. to vol. i. of _Transl._); the slaughter of the Canaanites (pref. to vol. ii.); Paradise (_Crit. Rem._ p.

35); the remarks on Genesis xlix. (Id. p. 142); on the Egyptian plagues (p. 182); on the pa.s.sage of the Red sea (p. 200). As soon as the first volume was published the Catholic bishops silenced him. Geddes was a believer in Christianity; but felt so strongly the deist difficulties, that he sought to defend revelation by explaining away the supernatural from the Jewish history, and inspiration from the Jewish literature. His views, so far as they were not original, were probably derived from the incipient rationalistic speculations of Germany, though he quoted almost none of the German except Michaelis and Herder. His position in the history of doubt is with the early rationalists, not with the deists. A writer of somewhat similar character, Mr. Evanson, a unitarian, wrote a critical attack on the Gospels, _The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists_, in 1805.