History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology Part 22

[125] _L'Opinion Nationale_, 1863.

[126] _Christian Work_, Aug., 1863.

[127] _Semaine Religieuse._ Geneva: 1864.

[128] Riggenbach, _Der Heutige Rationalismus besonders in der Deutschen Schweiz_. Basel: 1862.

CHAPTER XIX.

ENGLAND: THE SOIL PREPARED FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF RATIONALISM.

The religious lesson taught by the condition of England during the eighteenth century is this: The inevitable moral prostration to which skepticism reduces a nation, and the utter incapacity of literature to afford relief. English Deism had advantages not possessed by the Rationalism of Germany. Some of its champions were men of great political influence; and in no case was there a parallel to the abandoned Bahrdt. The Deists were steady in the pursuit of their game, for when they struck a path they never permitted themselves to be deflected. But the Rationalists were ever turning into some by-road and weakening their energies by traversing many a fruitless mile.

The literature of England, during the most of the last century, presents a picture of literary ostentation. The Deists had toiled to build up a system of natural religion which would not only be a monument to their genius, but serve as an impa.s.sable barrier to all such claims as were urged by the zealous and loud-spoken Puritans. But early Deism lacked an indispensable element of strength,--the power of adapting itself to the people. Its best priests could not leave the tripod, though many of the oracular responses were heard some distance from the temple-doors. In time, there arose a group of essayists and poets, who, with a similar coterie of novelists, dictated religion, morals, politics, and literature to the country. Their influence was so great that when they flattered the heads of government, the latter were equally a.s.siduous in playing the Maecenas to them.

The writers of the eighteenth century, viewed in a literary sense alone, have never had their superiors in English literature. The works of Addison, Pope, Gray, Thomson, Goldsmith, and Johnson will continue to be cla.s.sics wherever the English language is spoken. The British metropolis was pervaded with the atmosphere of Parna.s.sus. It was a time when literature was the El Dorado of youth and old age. Those were the days when clubs convened statedly in the neighborhood of the Strand, and when, every night, the attics of Grub street poured out their throngs of quill-heroes, who were welcomed into the parlors of the n.o.bility as cordially as to their own club-houses. The last new work engaged universal attention. Society was filled with rumors of books commenced, half finished, plagiarized, successful, or defunct. Literary respectability was the "Open Sesame" to social rank. There has never been a season when cultivated society was more imbued with the mania of book-writing and criticism than existed in England during at least three-quarters of the eighteenth century.

While many of the publications of that time were prompted by Deism, French society and literature were contributing an equal share toward poisoning the English mind. France and England were so intimately related to each other that the two languages were diligently studied in both countries. If the English adventurer in letters had not spent a few months in Paris, and could not read Corneille almost as readily as Spenser or Shakspeare, he was cashiered by certain Gallicists west of the Channel as a sorry aspirant to their coveted favor.[129] The rise of the French spirit in England was mainly due to Bolingbroke, who was as much at home in Paris as in London. He had numerous friends and admirers in the former metropolis, and at two different times made it his residence. Freely imbibing the skeptical opinions of the court of Louis XIV., he dealt them out unsparingly to his English readers. He was one of the most accomplished wits who frequented the _salon_ of Madame de Croissy, and he developed his skeptical system through the medium of the French language, in a series of letters to M. de Pouilly.[130]

Bolingbroke accused the greatest divines and philosophers of leading a great part of mankind into inextricable labyrinths of reasoning and speculation. Natural theology and religion, he held, had become corrupt.

In view of these results of mental infirmities, he applied himself to correct all errors. He proposed "to distinguish genuine and pure theism from the profane mixtures of human imagination; and to go to the root of that error which encourages our curiosity, sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretense to delusion; to discover the true nature of human knowledge, how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical; that, the gaudy visions of error being dispelled, men may be accustomed to the simplicity of truth."[131] The Scriptures, according to Bolingbroke, are unworthy of our credence. They degrade the Deity to mean and unworthy offices and employments.[132] The New Testament consists of two distinct gospels; one by Christ, the other by St. Paul. The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is absurd, and contrary to the divine attributes.[133]

Christianity has been of no advantage to mankind. "The world hath not been effectually reformed, nor any one nation in it, by the promulgation of the gospel, even where Christianity flourished most."[134] There is a supreme All-Perfect Being, but he does not concern himself with human affairs as far as individuals are concerned. The soul is not distinct from the body, and both terminate at death. The law of nature, being sufficient for the purposes of our being, is all that G.o.d has proclaimed for our guidance.[135]

There were other members of the English n.o.bility who used their influence for the introduction of French infidelity, literature, morals, and fashions. Some did not equal Bolingbroke in repudiating the spirit of the gospel, but nearly all were willing students at the feet of their pretentious Gallic instructors. The house of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at Wickenham, was the centre whither gravitated that large cla.s.s of acknowledged chiefs in letters represented by Steele, Pope, and the Walpoles. They thought, spoke, and dressed according to the French standard, which, in respect to religion and morals, was never lower than at that very time. The attempt to rear a Paris on English soil was a complete success. The young were delighted with the result; the aged had been too ill-taught in early life to raise the voice of remonstrance.

With the exception of the Puritan opposition, the gratification was universal; and that took place in religion and literature which, had it occurred in warfare, would have kindled a flame of national indignation in every breast: England fell powerless, contented, and doomed into the arms of France.

The attacks of Hume and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of Deists, and by French taste and immorality.

Hume was a philosopher who drew his inspiration directly from his own times. Attaching himself to the Encyclopaedists, he played the wit in the _salons_ of Paris. He became fraternally intimate with Rousseau, and brought that social dreamer back with him to England as a mark of high appreciation of his talents. He was a metaphysician by nature, but he erred in speculating with theology. That was the mistake of his life. He fell into Bolingbroke's error of excessive egotism. Standing before the superstructure of theology, he carefully surveyed every part of it, and deemed no theme too lofty for his reasonings, and no mystery beyond the reach of his illuminating torch. He lamented the absence of progress in the understanding of that evidence which a.s.sures us of any real existence and matter of fact. But this difficulty did not impede him from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great service when he addressed himself to the "destruction of that implicit faith and credulity which is the bane of all reasoning and free inquiry."[136] He refused to acknowledge a Supreme Being, in the following words: "While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a particular intelligent cause, which at first bestowed and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless, because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience."[137]

The miraculous evidences of Christianity were also opposed by Hume. His _Essay on Miracles_ (1747), consists of two parts; the former of which is an attempt to prove that no evidence would be a sufficient ground for believing the truth and existence of miracles. Experience is our only guide in reasoning on matters of fact; but even this guide is far from infallible, and liable at any moment to lead us into errors. In judging how far a testimony is to be depended upon, we must balance the opposite circ.u.mstances, which may create any doubt or uncertainty. The evidence from testimony may be destroyed either by the contrariety and opposition of the testimony, or by the consideration of the nature of the facts themselves. When the facts partake of the marvelous there are two opposite experiences with regard to them, and that which is most credible is to be preferred. Now the uniform experience of men is against miracles. We should not, therefore, believe any testimony concerning a miracle, unless the falsehood of that testimony should be more miraculous than the miracle it is designed to establish. Besides, as we cannot know the attributes or actions of G.o.d otherwise than by our experience of them, we cannot be sure that he can effect miracles; for they are contrary to our own experience and the course of nature.

Therefore, it is impossible to prove miracles by any evidence.

The second part of the _Essay on Miracles_ is intended to show that, supposing a miracle capable of being proved by sufficient testimony, no miraculous event in history has ever been established on such evidence.

The witnesses of a miracle should be of such unquestionable good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves. They should also be of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of design to deceive others. Then they should be of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose if detected in any falsehood. Last of all, the facts attested by the witnesses should be performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render detection unavoidable.[138]

Now, according to Hume, these requisitions are not met in the supposed witnesses of the miracles of Christ. Consequently, we are no more obliged to believe their accounts than the reports of miracles alleged to have been wrought at the tomb of the Abbe de Paris. All must be rejected together.

Hume's _History of England_ met with a cold reception on its first appearance. But he lived to see the day when, as he egotistically said, "it became circulated like the newspapers." Yet he wrote that work not as an end, but as a means. Historical writing was then the medium in which it was common to couch theology or philosophy. Hume had a profound contempt for everything Puritanic on the one hand, and hierarchical and traditional on the other. He would make every trace disappear beneath his scathing pen. He ignored the development of religious life in England, and would subject all events which indicated a deep Christian piety and purpose, to his cold system of philosophy. Writing with an inflexible adherence to his theological opinions, he cast over historical events the drapery of his own interpretation. The question with him was not, "What is the history of England during the period of which I treat?" but "Does not the history of England sustain my philosophy?" And his own answer was, "Yes; I record facts, and draw my own conclusions. Is not that a good philosophy!"

Gibbon was even more of a Frenchman than Hume. Sundering his relation to Oxford in his seventeenth year, he embarked upon a course of living and thinking which, whatever advantage it might afford to his purse, was not likely to aid his faith. By a sudden caprice he became a Roman Catholic, and afterwards as unceremoniously denied his adopted creed. In due time he found himself in Paris publishing a book in the French language. He there fell in with the fashionable infidelity, and so far yielded to the flattery of Helvetius and all the frequenters of Holbach's house that he jested at Christianity and a.s.sailed its divine character.

While residing at Lausanne, Switzerland, he cultivated the florid French style of composition, and applied it in his _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. That work has been severely censured, but despite its defects, it is one of the permanent master-pieces of English literature.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters the author gives his opinion of Christianity. He attributes the progress of the Christian religion to the zeal of the Jews, to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as stated by philosophers, to the miraculous powers claimed by the primitive church, to the virtues of the first Christians, and to the activity of the Christians in the government of the church. He attributed to outward agencies what could have been effected only by inward forces. But he did not a.s.sume the philosopher's cap, for, not being metaphysical by nature, he never did violence to his own const.i.tution. He has left much less on record against Christianity than Hume, but they must be ranked together as the last of the family of English Deists.

Gibbon made loud professions of independence and of an earnest desire for the enlargement of popular liberty. But he was less attached to principle than to expediency. At the very time the first volume of his history appeared, in which he pays lofty tributes to human freedom, he came into Parliament as an avowed abettor of the ministry of George III., in their attempts to subjugate the American colonies. He was doubtless well paid for his votes; for he was at the same time a member of the Board of Trade, a nominal office with a large salary.[139] A verse, attributed to Fox, expresses the popular sentiment concerning him;

"King George in a fright Lest Gibbon should write The story of England's disgrace, Thought no way so sure, His pen to secure, As to give the historian a place."

In addition to these evidences of religious decay we may add the most unwelcome of all: the moral prostration of the English Church. Instead of being "a city set upon a hill," she was in the valley of humiliation; and few were the faithful watchmen upon her walls. The period commencing with the Restoration, and continuing down to the time of which we speak, was one of ministerial and laic degeneracy. Bishop Burnet, writing of his own generation, said, "I am now in the seventieth year of my age, and as I cannot speak long in the world, in any sort, I cannot hope for a more solemn occasion than this of speaking with all due freedom, both to the present and to the succeeding ages. Therefore I lay hold on it to give a free vent to those sad thoughts that lie on my mind both day and night, and are the subject of many secret mournings. I cannot look on without the deepest concern, when I see the imminent ruin hanging over this church, and, by consequence, over the whole Reformation. The outward state of things is black enough, G.o.d knows, but that which heightens my fears rises chiefly from the inward state into which we are unhappily fallen.... Our ember-weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give even a tolerable account of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. This does often tear my heart. The case is not much better in many who, having got into orders, come for inst.i.tution, and cannot make it appear that they have read the Scriptures, or any one good book since they were ordained; so that the small measure of knowledge upon which they get into holy orders, not being improved, is in a way to be quite lost; and they think it a great hardship if told they must know the Scriptures and the body of divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls."[140]

Archbishop Secker, who wrote at a later period, testifies to the same state of religious petrification: "In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age; that this evil is grown to a great height in the metropolis of the nation; is daily spreading through every part of it; and, bad in itself as any can be, must of necessity bring in others after it. Indeed it hath already brought in such dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the higher part of the world, and such profligate intemperance, and fearlessness of committing crimes, in the lower, as must, if this impiety stop not, become absolutely fatal. And G.o.d knows, far from stopping, it receives, through the ill designs of some persons, and the inconsiderateness of others, a continual increase. Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at, with very little reserve; and the teachers of it, without any at all."[141]

The Church had not the moral power or purity to a.s.sert her own authority. She had lost the respect of the world because she had no respect for herself. She was therefore enervated at a time when all her power was needed to resist the skeptical and immoral tendencies of the day. But a new religious power, from an unexpected source, began to influence the English mind. We refer to the movement inaugurated by the Wesleys and Whitefield, who were fellow-students in Oxford University.

They were appalled at the dissoluteness of the students, the frigid preaching of the day, and the universal religious dest.i.tution of the nation. These themes burdened the hearts of the "Holy Club" at Oxford from day to day, and sent them from their cloisters to visit prisons, preach in surrounding towns, and impart religious truth wherever a willing recipient could be found. No sooner had John Wesley returned from his missionary voyage to Georgia than there were unmistakable evidences of the adaptation of the new preaching to the wants of the people. The ma.s.ses, long affected by a deplorable indifference to religious truths and pious living, heard the earnest preaching of the Methodists with profound attention and in such large numbers that no impartial observer could doubt the peculiar fitness of Methodism to the existing state of society, morals, literature, and philosophy. As a result, the number of converts multiplied. The Established Church was aroused to activity. Dissenters began to hope for the return of the good days of Bunyan and Baxter and Howe.

Isaac Taylor says of the new influence, that "it preserved from extinction and reanimated the languishing nonconformity of the last century, which just at the time of the Methodist revival, was rapidly in course to be found nowhere but in books." But the Wesleyan movement made little impression on the literary circles to whom Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon had communicated their gospel of nature. The poets continued to sing, the essayists to write, and the philosophers to speculate, in a world peculiarly their own. They shut themselves quite in from the itinerant "helpers" of Wesley. The large cla.s.s of English minds which stood aloof from all ecclesiastical organizations, and failed to see any higher cause of the revival than mere enthusiasm, were the persons whom those writers still influenced. But it was plain to both the masters and their disciples that their principles were in process of transition.

They were therefore ready for the reception of whatever plausible type of skepticism might present itself for their acceptance.

History is the ill.u.s.tration of cause and effect. The fountain springs up in one period, and generations often pa.s.s before it finds its natural outlet. The issue of the final efforts of English Deism, of the impure French taste, and of the works of the grosser cla.s.s of literary men living in the last century, is now manifested in that spirit which welcomes the _Essays and Reviews_, and the criticism of Colenso. It is not true that these and similar publications have created a Rationalistic taste in Great Britain. The taste was already in existence, and has been struggling for satisfaction ever since the closing decades of the eighteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] For an excellent view of the relation of France and England in the eighteenth century, vid. _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 Dec., 1861.

[130] Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. i., p. 98.

[131] _Works_, vol. iii., p. 328. London Edition of 1754. 5 vols., quarto.

[132] Ibid. p. 304.

[133] Ibid. vol. v., p. 356.

[134] Ibid. p. 258.

[135] Leland, _View of Deistical Writers of England_, pp. 307-308.

London Edition of 1837, with Appendix and Introduction, by Brown and Edmonds.

[136] _Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding_, p. 49.

London Edition, 1750.

[137] _Philosophical Essays, &c._, p. 224.

[138] Leland, _View of Deistical Writers_, pp. 230-250.

[139] Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii., p.

85-86.

[140] _Pastoral Care._

[141] _Works_, vol. v., p. 306.