History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 32

Consequently the works which appeared were generally a recapitulation or summary of the whole arguments, often neat and judicious, (as is seen at a later time in Van Mildert's _Boyle Lectures_, vol. ii. 1805; and in a grander manner in Chalmers's works, vol. i-iv.); or in developments of particular subjects, as in Bishop Watson's replies to Gibbon and to Paine; (See p. 198, 199, note); or in Dean Graves's work on the Pentateuch, 1807.

It is only in recent years that a new phase of unbelief, a species of eclecticism rather than positive unbelief, has arisen in England, which is not the legitimate successor of the old deism, but of the speculative thought of the Continent; and only within recent years that writers on evidences have directed their attention to it. In the line of the Bampton Lectures, for example, which, as one of the cla.s.ses of annually recurring volumes of evidences, is supposed to keep pace with contemporary forms of doubt, and may therefore be taken as one means of measuring dates in the corresponding history of unbelief; it is not until about 1852 that the writers showed an acquaintance with these forms of doubt derived from foreign literature. The first course(1080) which touched upon them was that of Mr. Riddle, 1852, on the _Natural History of Infidelity_; and the first especially directed to them was that in 1858 by Dr. Thomson, on the _Atoning Work of Christ_; since which time only two courses, those of Mr.

Mansel, 1858, on _The Limits of Religious Thought_; and of Mr. Rawlinson, in 1859,(1081) on _The Historical Evidences of the Truth of Scripture_, have been directed to the subject, the one to the philosophy of religion studied on its psychological side, the other to the historical evidences.

Among isolated works on evidences not forming parts of a general series, it is hard to make a selection without unfairness. We can only cite a few, premising that silence in reference to the rest is not to be considered to be censure, nor to mark the want of a cordial and grateful acknowledgment of the utility of many smaller works of evidences in the present day, dictated by deep love for Christ; whose authors, though omitted in this humble record, have their reward in being instruments of religious usefulness by means of their works, and are doubtless not unnoticed by a merciful Saviour, who looks down with love on all who strive to spread his truth.

The following seem to merit notice. First, the arguments in favour of natural religion, drawn from physical science, stated in the Bridgewater Treatises, a.n.a.logous to the earlier works of Derham and Paley; the connection of science with revelation, in Cardinal Wiseman's Lectures delivered in Rome, 2d ed. 1842, (which are a little obsolete, but very masterly;) several works by Dr. M'Cosh, _Divine Government,-Typical Forms_, &c. in which the author takes a large view of the world, and of the province of revealed religion in the scheme of general truth, founded mainly on Butler; also a work of Dr. Buchanan, _Modern Atheism_, valuable for its literary materials as much as for its argument; and of T. Erskine on the Internal Evidences, 1821. The Bampton Lectures of Mr. Miller in 1817 also deserve to be singled out as a thoughtful and original exhibition of the argument in one branch of the internal evidence; _The Divine Authority of Scripture a.s.serted from its adaptation to the real state of human nature_; also Mr. Davison's _Warburton Lectures on Prophecy_, 1825. Among works directed to special subjects, we ought to specify, _The Restoration of Belief_, by Mr. Isaac Taylor, intended indirectly against speculations such as those of the Tubingen school; and an able and thoughtful work on the subject of the superhuman character of Christ, _The Christ of History_, by Mr. Young; also E. Miall's _Bases of Belief_; with the two Burnett Prize Essays by Thompson and Tullock; and a reply to Mr. Newman's Phases of Faith, viz. _The Eclipse of Faith_, and _Letters of E. H. Greyson_, by H. Rogers, constructed however partly on the argument of the dilemma.(1082) The replies written to _Essays and Reviews_, especially _Aids to Faith_, ought to be added.

We have reserved for separate mention one work, which ascends to the philosophy of the religious question, Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures, 1858, _The Limits of Religious Thought_, because it is a work which is valuable for its method, even if the reader differs (as the author of these lectures does in some respects) from the philosophical principles maintained, or occasionally even from the results attained.(1083) It is an attempt to reconstruct the argument of Butler from the subjective side. As Butler showed that the difficulties which are in revealed religion are equally applicable to natural; so Mr. Mansel wishes to show that the difficulties which the mind feels in reference to religion are parallel to those which are felt by it in reference to philosophy. Since the time of Kant a subjective tone has pa.s.sed over philosophy. The phenomena are now studied in the mind, not in nature; in our mode of viewing, not in the object viewed. And hence Butler's argument needed reconstructing on its psychological side. Mr. Mansel has attempted to effect this; and the book must always in this respect have a value, even to the minds of those who are diametrically opposed to its principles and results. Even if the details were wrong, the method would be correct, of studying psychology before ontology; of finding the philosophy of religion, not, as Leibnitz attempted, objectively in a theodicee, but subjectively, by the a.n.a.lysis of the religious faculties; learning the length of the sounding-line before attempting to fathom the ocean.

These remarks must suffice in reference to the history of Evidences in England. We shall now give an account of those which existed in France; which will be still more brief, because the works are considered to be of small general value, at least they have not a general reputation.

2. THE FRENCH WORKS OF EVIDENCE.-In the middle of the seventeenth century we meet with Pascal and Huet; both of them, metaphysically speaking, sceptics, who disbelieved in the possibility of finding truth apart from revelation;(1084) and with whom therefore the object of evidences was to silence doubt rather than to remove it. (On Pascal, see Rogers's _Essays_, Essay reprinted from the _Edinburgh Review_, January 1847; and on Huet, an article in the _Quarterly Review_, No. 194, September 1855, and the reference given p. 19. Also see Houtteville, introduction to _La Religion Chretienne prouvee par des Faits_, 1722.)

Among the Roman catholics, at the close of the same century, were the following: Le Va.s.sor([+]1718); the two Lamy [+] 1710 and 15, and Denyse; and in the eighteenth century, Houtteville, whose preface to his own work, an historical view of evidences and attacks to his own time, has been just named; Bonnet; D'Aguesseau, [+] 1751; and Bergier [+] 1790: and among the Protestants,-Abbadie, [+] 1727; and Jacquelot, [+] 1708; nearly all of whom are treated of by Tholuck (_Verm. Schr._ i. p. 28) and Walch (_Bibl.

Theol. Sel._ ch. v. sect. 6). Several more will be found in the _Demonstrations Evangeliques_; among which are Choiseul du Plessis, Praslin, Polignac, De Bernis, Buffier, Tournemine, and Gerdil; the Lives of several of whom are in the _Biographie Universelle_.

Though some of these were men whose works were of ordinary respectability, they were by no means a match in greatness for the intellectual giants who prost.i.tuted their powers on behalf of unbelief; and on one occasion, when a prize essay had been offered for a work in behalf of Christianity, no work was deemed worthy of it. (Alison, _History of Europe_, i. 180.) Since the beginning of the present century, however, there has been a change.

Whatever may be thought of the line of argument adopted, the skill with which it has been put forward, and the ability of the minds that have given expression to it, is undoubted. Chateaubriand may be considered as the first who, with a full appreciation of the tastes and wants of modern society, tried to show not only the compatibility of Christianity with them, but that the perfection of society was only realized in it. The work of the Christian labourers who had to bring back France to Christianity was hard. It was not the apologist, acting, as in England, from the vantage ground of a powerful church against the Deist, who was making an attack on it; but it was a weak and feeble minority acting against a powerful ma.s.s of educated intellect. The apologists were indirectly aided by philosophy. The philosophers did not aim primarily at religious truth, and we have had reason to take exception to many of their views; yet they rekindled in France the elements of natural religion, on which the Christians then proceeded to base revealed. The works of Jules Simon are the highest expression of it. (See Note 44.)

The school of evidences that has existed, has been the church school of De Maistre, already described. (See Note 45, and the references given there.) With somewhat of the spirit of the writers of the fifteenth age, they have directed their efforts to reestablish the catholic church as the condition of re-establishing the Christian religion. To this we have already taken exception, Lecture VII. p. 300; and the remarks there given may suffice in reference to the movement. Yet the literary appreciation of the line of argument used by the older apologists, is perceptible in the large publication of Migne, already named.

The other attempt in France to re-establish Christianity by Protestant apologists, noticed in Lecture VII. p. 304, of which the ablest was Vinet, is rather directed against rationalism than against full unbelief; and aims to turn the flank of the rationalist argument, and, while accepting its premises, deny its conclusions. (On Vinet, see Note 46.) The problem which is now before the apologists is, not to show that Christianity is not imposture, but rather that it is not merely philosophy. (Compare the remarks of Strauss, at the close of his work on Reimarus, alluded to in Note 29. p. 427).

There now only remains the history of Apologetic in Germany.

3. THE GERMAN WORKS OF EVIDENCE.-As early as the end of the seventeenth century, we find the attention of Kortholt directed to Spinoza; and in the early part of the eighteenth we see, in the grand attempt of Leibnitz to find a philosophy of religion; in Haller, 1705-77; in Euler, 1747, (for which see Tholuck, _V. Schr._ ii. 311-362, together with a list of others there given,) a proof of the attention which the Evidences received. The existence of works like J. A. Fabricius's _Delectus Argumentorum_, 1725; Reimannus, _Historia Atheismi_, 1725; Buddeus, _De Atheismo_, 1737; Stapfer, _Inst. Theol. Polem._ 1752; as well as the attention shown by the bibliographers, Pfaff, Walch, Fabricius, to the literature of Evidences, is a proof of the same fact.

The replies were still directed against Deism, as in England or France. It is not till later in the century that rationalism appears. When however it arose, writers were not wanting who opposed it. The history of the German theology has been treated so largely in Lectures VI. and VII. that it is only necessary to indicate the steps. The early deistic rationalism of Reimarus and Lessing met its opponents in contemporary writers named in the notes to Lecture VI. The critical rationalism of Eichhorn and Paulus was really answered by the later critics, as was shown when we noticed that criticism gradually abandoned their view, and rescued itself from their extravagant opinions (p. 257 seq.), while the dogmatic rationalism which was connected with it was dispersed by the discussion on the province of the supernatural already described (p. 418). In the present century the aspect of the attack and of the defence has changed. The question had been as to the existence of the supernatural.

In the present the question has been, If the supernatural be admitted, what is the capacity of man to discover it by the light of feeling or reason respectively, without revelation? Therefore, while in the last century it was important to show that the supernatural exists, and that the religion that taught it was not deception; in the present the endeavour has been, to bring men from the supernatural to the biblical, and to make them feel that the Christian religion is not a mere mistake.

Thus they have been led from the natural to the supernatural; from the supernatural to the revealed; from the ideal to the historic.(1085) The steps of this process in the present century have been twofold:-the philosophical Christianity of Schleiermacher, and the revival of biblical religion. Neander has been already adduced (p. 364) as the type of the Christian movement which sought to unite the two: wishing to appropriate that which he believed, he strove to present Christianity as the highest form of the religious life; as a life based on a doctrine; the doctrine itself being based on a revealed history. It must suffice thus to have indicated, without tracing into detail, the apologetic literature which has been partly named in the Notes of the lectures, and may be found by consulting the references there given.

In all ages the purpose of Evidences has been conviction; to offer the means of proof either by philosophy or by fact. In arguing with the heathen in the first age, the former plan was adopted; the school of Alexandria trying to lead men to Christianity as the highest philosophy: in the middle ages the same method was adopted under the garb of philosophy, but with the alteration that the philosophy was one of form, not matter. In the later middle ages the appeal was to the Church: in the early contests with the Deists to the authority of reason, and to the Bible reached by means of this process; in the later, to the Bible reached through history and fact: in opposing the French infidelity the appeal was chiefly to authority; in the early German the appeal was the same as in England; in the later German it has been a return in spirit to that of the early fathers, or of the English apologists of the eighteenth century, but based on a deeper philosophy; an appeal to feeling or intuition, and not to reflective reason; and through these ultimately to the Bible.

Note 50. p. 373. On The History Of The Doctrine Of Inspiration.

The subject of the history of inspiration has been named both in Lect.

III. and VIII. It may be useful therefore to point out the sources for the study of it.

The history of it is briefly sketched in Hagenbach's _Dogmengeschichte_, -- 32, 121, 161, 243, 292. A valuable catena of pa.s.sages relative to the primitive doctrine of inspiration is given in Mr. Westcott's _Introduction to the Gospels_, Appendix B. second edition, 1860; and a continuation of the history to more recent periods in Dr. Lee's important work on Inspiration, especially in Appendices C and G; and in Tholuck's Doctrine of Inspiration, translated in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, July 1854.

It appears that the theories held respecting inspiration in different ages may be arranged under three cla.s.ses:

1. The belief in a full inspiration was held from the earliest times, with the few exceptions observable in occasional remarks of Origen, Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius Zigabenus (in the twelfth century).

2. Traces after a time begin to appear of a disposition, (a) to admit that the inspiration ought to be regarded as appertaining to the proper material of the revelation, viz. religion; but at the same time to maintain firmly the full inspiration of the religious elements of scripture. This view occurs in the allusions of the writers just named, and existed in the seventeenth century in the Helmstadt school of Calixt in Germany, and the Saumur school of Amyrault, Cameron, and Placaeus, in France; and is stated decidedly by a series of writers in the English church. Some of the latter go so far as to avow, () that the value of the religious element in the revelation would not be lessened if errors were admitted in the scientific and miscellaneous matter which accompanies it.

This admission increased after the speculations of Spinoza and the pressure of the Deist objections.

3. A third theory was suggested by Maimonides, which was revived by Spinoza, and has been held among many of the rationalists in Germany, and has lately appeared in English literature: this theory is, that the book does not, even in its religious element, differ in kind from other books, but only in degree. It will be observed that a wide chasm separates this view from either of those named under the second head; the only point in common being, that in all alike the writers agree that the nature of inspiration must be learned from experience, and not be determined antecedently by our own notions of optimism, without examining the real contents of revelation. Coleridge would by many be considered to give expression to this third theory in his _Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit_. Perhaps however he hovered between it and the one previously named; being anxious rather to identify inspiration psychologically with one form of the ???? or "Reason," than theologically to confound the material of revelation with truth acquired by natural means.

It is not the purpose of this note to discuss the true view of inspiration; but merely to state the historic facts. The writer may however be allowed to repeat what has been already implied in the preface, that he dissents entirely from the third of these views. To him there seems evidence for believing that the dogmatic teaching implied on religious subjects in holy scripture is a communication of supernatural truth, miraculously revealed from the world invisible. Cfr. p. 29.

On the subject of inspiration, in addition to the works above named, instruction will be derived from the sources indicated in the Essay on Inspiration in Bp. Watson's Tracts, 1785, vol. iv. pp. 5 and 469; and from Dean Harvey Goodwin's Hulsean Lectures, first course, lectures vii. and viii. The first of the above-named views is stated in Gaussen's work on _Theopneustie_, and on the Canon; the third in Morell's [_Philosophy of Religion_], c. iv; and in the first three essays of Scherer's _Melanges de Crit. Religieuse_.

A list of those theologians who have held the second cla.s.s of views above named, together with the extracts from their writings, is given by Dr. S.

Davidson in his _Facts, Statements, &c. concerning_ vol. ii. of ed. x. _of Horne's Introduction_, 1857; and Mr. Stephen, in his defence of Dr. R.

Williams, 1862, has quoted some of the same pa.s.sages, and added a few more (_Def._ pp. 127-160.(1086)) As the reader was referred hither from Lecture III. p. 114. for the proof of the a.s.sertion there made, that this theory had been largely held in the last century in England, it seems fair here to add the references. At the same time this list is not given with the view of endorsing the views of these writers, but merely to prove the accuracy of the a.s.sertion in the text of Lectures III. and VIII.

Among English divines, those who have a.s.serted the form of the theory named above as No. 2 _a_, are, Howe (_Div. Author. of Scripture_, lecture viii. and ix.); Bishop Williams (_Boyle Lect._ serm. iv. pp. 133, 4); Burnet (Article vi. p. 157. Oxford ed. 1814); Lowth (_Vind. of Dir. Auth.

and Inspir. of Old and New Testament_, p. 45 seq.); Hey (_Theol. Lect._ i.

90); Watson (_Tracts_, iv. 446); Bishop Law (_Theory of Religion_); Tomline (_Theology_, i. 21); Dr. J. Barrow (_Dissertations_, 1819, fourth Diss.); Dean Conybeare (_Theolog. Lect._ p. 186); Bishop Hinds (_Inspir.

of Script._ pp. 151, 2); Bishop Daniel Wilson (lect. xiii. on _Evidences_, i. 509); Parry (_Inq. into Nat. of Insp. of Apost._ pp. 26, 27); Bishop Blomfield (_Lect. on Acts_ v. 88-90).

Among those who have gone so far as to hold the form of the theory above given as No. 2 b, are, Baxter (_Method. Theol. Chr._ part iii. ch. xii. 9.

4.); Tillotson (_Works_, fol. iii. p. 449. serm. 168); Doddridge (_on Inspir._); Warburton (_Doctr. of Grace_, book i. ch. vii); Bishop Horsley (serm. 39 on Ecc. xii. 7. vol. iii. p. 175); Bishop Randolph (_Rem. on Michaelis Introd._ pp. 15, 16); Paley (_Evidences of Christianity_, part iii. ch. ii); Whately (_Ess. on Diff. in St. Paul_, Ess. i. and ix; Sermons on Festivals, p. 90; _Pecul. of Christianity_, p. 233); Hampden (_Bampton Lect._ pp. 301, 2); Thirlwall (Schleiermacher's _Luke_, Introd.

p. 15); Bishop Heber (_Bampt. Lect._ viii. p. 577); Thomas Scott (_Essay on Inspir._ p. 3); Dr. Pye Smith (_Script. and Geol._ 276, 237. third ed.); Dean Alford (_Proleg. to Gosp._ ed. 1859) vol. i. ch. i. -- 22.(1087)

It will be observed however, that both these cla.s.ses of writers are separated by a chasm from those which belong to the third cla.s.s above named; inasmuch as they hold inspiration to be not only miraculous in origin, but different in kind from even the highest forms of una.s.sisted human intelligence.