God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
Throughout the whole century, however, and by
both parties, the question was debated in the court of reason. The
controversy was not between rationalists and those who distrusted
reason. The question was what, on rational grounds, ought to be
believed. And, as Clarke and Tillotson and, finally, Butler appealed
to reason not less than Locke and Toland and their successors did,
so, too, there was another point of agreement between the orthodox
19
E. L. IX.
CH. XI.
## p. 290 (#314) ############################################
290 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
and the leaders of the deists. The latter, also, for the most part,
and in the earlier stages of the dispute, at any rate, professed
to accept the Christian faith. The problem was as to its content:
what was its genuine meaning and the scope of its essential
doctrines? This much must be borne in mind by anyone who
would understand Toland, especially in his earliest and most
celebrated work. Toland was born near Londonderry in Ireland
in 1670 and died at Putney near London in 1722. His education
was varied. He was at school in Ireland, went to the university
of Glasgow, took his degree at Edinburgh, afterwards studied
at Leyden, and spent some time at Oxford, where he wrote
Christianity not mysterious (1696). He led a strenuous and
varied life, with somewhat uncertain means of livelihood. He
was the object of bitter attack by the controversialists opposed to
him; and they called in the aid of the civil power. After the
publication of his first book, he had to leave Ireland to escape
arrest by the Irish parliament, and in England he was for a time
in danger of prosecution. He busied himself in political as well as
in theological controversy, defended the protestant succession, took
part, though unofficially, in important missions, and became known
to the electress Sophia and her daughter the queen of Prussia, to
whom his Letters to Serena (1704) were addressed. He made some
influential friends, also, and Leibniz was among his correspondents.
Christianity not mysterious shows the influence of Locke-of
his Essay, however, rather than of his Reasonableness of Christi-
anity, which, published only a year before Toland's book, can hardly
have affected its argument. Locke's name is not mentioned by
Toland; but Locke's view of knowledge, as consisting in the agree-
ment of ideas, forms the starting-point of his argument and, in the
preliminary matter, he often adopts Locke's words. But he is more
aggressive in applying his principles. Locke's aim was to show that
Christianity was reasonable ; Toland's, to demonstrate that nothing
contrary to reason, and nothing above reason, can be part of Christian
doctrine. There are no mysteries in it. Revelation has unveiled
what was formerly mysterious. Whoever reveals anything must do
so in words that are intelligible, and the matter must be possible.
The things revealed, therefore, are no longer mysteries. This holds,
whether the revelation come from God or from man. The only
difference between the two cases is that a man may lie, and God
can not. Without ideas, neither faith nor knowledge is possible ;
and, ‘if by knowledge be meant understanding what is believed,
then I stand by it that faith is knowledge. ' The ideas may not be
## p. 291 (#315) ############################################
John Toland
291
adequate; but, in nature as well as in divinity, we have to be
content without adequate ideas; even a 'spire of grass' is not
known in its real essence; we understand only its properties or
attributes; and God and the soul are known in the same way.
Toland was a scholar, and boasted acquaintance with more
than ten languages. He was also a theologian, and could meet
his opponents on their own ground. This interest dominated his
literary career; even his political work was in the service of the
protestant religion, and his scholarship was chiefly shown in the
field of Christian origins. His own theological views went through
various modifications. He was brought up a Roman catholic;
:
at the age of sixteen, he became 'zealous against popery';
afterwards he was connected with protestant dissenters; when
Christianity not mysterious was published, he reckoned himself
a member of the church of England, his sympathies being with
the broad (or, as it was then called, low) church party. When his
book was burned at the door of the Irish house of parliament, he
may have felt his churchmanship insecure. His later works exhibit
its gradual disappearance.
In Amyntor (1699), a defence of his Life of Milton (1698), he
gave, in answer to an opponent, a long list of early apocryphal
Christian literature. His interest in researches of this kind was
shown afterwards in Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile, and
Mahometan Christianity (1718). His text, in this work, was an
Italian manuscript, with Arabic annotations, which he had dis-
covered. He took it for a translation from the Arabic and
identified it with the lost Gospel of Barnabas. In both conjectures,
later scholarship has shown that he was in error. But his discovery
led to some remarkable reflections on the differences between the
Jewish and Gentile Christians in the early church. He maintained
that the former, who kept the Jewish law themselves, but without
enforcing it on the Gentiles, represented the true original plan of
Christianity'; and he declared that he himself took 'less exception
to the name of Nazaren than to any other. ' More than a century
afterwards, the same distinction as that upon which he laid stress
was made fundamental in the explanation of early church history
offered by F. C. Baur and his followers.
Among other topics in the Letters to Serena was a discussion
of Spinoza, which, perhaps, shows the trend of Toland's speculation.
Leibniz, at any rate, in a letter of 30 April 1709, remarks that
Toland, in several of his books, refers to the opinion that there
is no other eternal being than the universe, but offers no refutation
19-2
## p. 292 (#316) ############################################
292 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
of this ‘pernicious' error. In his reply, Toland promises an answer
to this point in his next; but he does not seem to have kept his
word. Pantheism, however, was the doctrine with which he ended,
if we may trust the evidence of Pantheisticon (1720). This curious
piece was issued anonymously, with 'Cosmopolis' on the title-page
as the place of publication. But the author took no pains to
conceal his identity, for the preface is signed ‘Janus Julius Eoga-
nesius. ' Now, Inis Eogain or Inishowen was the place of Toland's
birth; and Janus Julius were the extraordinary names by which
he was christened and known, till a sensible schoolmaster changed
them to John. The little book, which is written in Latin, describes
the ritual of certain (supposed or real) pantheistic societies. It
imitates the fashion of a prayer-book, gives the responses of the
congregation and is printed with red rubrics. As a whole, it is
a clever skit, though in the very worst taste. But Toland had not
received any favours from fortune ; he had been harshly attacked
by his opponents, even when he regarded himself as a defender
of the Christian faith; and, perhaps, it gave him satisfaction to
retaliate bitterly.
Toland thus began as a liberal or rational theologian, and
ended with some form of pantheistic creed. His writings do not
enable us to trace accurately the steps in this change of view; but
there is no evidence that he ever accepted the cardinal point
of what is commonly called deism—the idea of God as an external
creator who made the world, set it under certain laws, and then
left it alone! He was a free-thinker rather than a deist. And
this, also, describes the position occupied by Anthony Collins, the
friend and disciple of Locke, in his best-known work, A Discourse
of Free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect
call's Free-thinkers (1713). Bentley's brilliant criticism of this
book, in his Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking,
gained for it an unenviable reputation. The Remarks admitted
of no answer ; but they were more successful in demolishing a
9
1 Samuel Clarke (Being and Attributes of God, 9th ed. , pp. 159 ff. ) distinguishes
four classes of Deists : (1) those who pretend to believe the existence of an eternal,
infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and. . . teach also that this Supreme Being
made the world : though at the same time. . , they fancy God does not at all concern
himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done
therein ' ; (2) those who, also, admit divine providence in nature; (3) those who,
further, have some notion of the moral perfections of God; (4) those who, in
addition, acknowledge man's duties to God, and see the need for a future state of
rewards and punishments—but all this only ‘so far as 'tis discoverable by the light of
nature. '
2 Cf. chap. xm, sec. 1, post.
## p. 293 (#317) ############################################
Collins and Tindal
293
free-thinker than in refuting free-thinking; and, perhaps, this was
Bentley's sole object in exposing the author's slipshod scholarship.
But he was not blind to an ambiguity of which Collins had taken
advantage. “Free-thinking' may mean nothing more than the
exercise of reason. If this had been all that Collins argued for,
there would have been little point in his contention, for both
parties claimed that they followed reason. So far, Tillotson would
certainly have been with him, and, indeed, Collins claims his
support. But he used the term, also, to cover the attitude or
doctrines of a 'sect of free-thinkers,' without any clear account
of their position, or any suggestion that the word had more than
one meaning. The ambiguity is connected with the duality of the
motives which seem to have determined the writings of Collins.
One of these was faith in reason faith which he had inherited
from Locke; the other was a suspicion and dislike of priestcraft.
These two motives are indicated by the titles of his earliest
works_Essay concerning the use of Reason (1707), and Priest-
craft in perfection (1709). They are combined in A Discourse
of Free-thinking, in a way which generates more heat than light.
Collins held firmly to a belief in God as established by reason;
but (though sometimes in guarded language) he was a hostile
critic of the Christian creed. His works produced a crowd of
controversial literature : his chief later work-Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724)-having
called forth no less than thirty-five replies in two years. He was
also the author of a small book called A Philosophical Inquiry
concerning Human Liberty and Necessity (1715)—an acute and
clearly-written argument in favour of the necessitarian solution of
the problem.
In some respects and these, perhaps, the most important-
the most significant work of the whole deistical movement was
Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation : or, the Gospel,
a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). It is no mere
defence of the use of reason, nor attack on Christian mysteries.
It is a masterly presentation of the prevalent philosophical ideas
of the time and a comparison of them with the rational theology
which found favour with leaders of the church. "The will of God,'
said Samuel Clarke, then the most prominent figure in British philo-
sophy and theology, 'always determines itself to act according to
the eternal reason of things,' and 'all rational creatures are obliged
to govern themselves in all their actions by the same eternal rule
of reason. ' "The religion of the Gospel,' said Sherlock, preaching
6
## p. 294 (#318) ############################################
294 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a missionary sermon, 'is the true original religion of reason and
nature,' and its precepts are 'declarative of that original religion
which was as old as the creation. These extracts Tindal prints
on his title-page; and his own aim is to show that 'natural
religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer
one another, without any other difference between them but as to
the manner of their being delivered. ' Tindal grasps firmly the
principles of natural religion, as they were taught by Clarke and
Wollaston and other theologians of the day. Reason convinces us
of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of morality;
the goodness of God makes it impossible that He should have
concealed from any of His creatures what was necessary to their
well-being. Christianity, therefore, cannot displace deism, as
Clarke held that it could : it can only confirm it. And, as reason
suffices to establish the truths of deism, it would seem that
Christianity is superfluous. Tindal, however, did not expressly
draw this conclusion : he was seventy years of age when he wrote
this book, and he retained his fellowship at All Souls, through
many changes of government and of personal creed, till his death.
The remaining deistical writers require only the briefest notice.
Thomas Woolston was an enthusiast in patristic study, and his
enthusiasm seems to have verged on insanity in his later years.
He had two passions—love of the fathers and hatred of the
protestant clergy? ' The latter was intensified by his being
deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge; the former led to his
allegorical interpretation of scripture. This method he applied
to the New Testament miracles, in his series of Discourses
(1727—30), ridiculing the ordinary view of them as actual events.
The historical occurrence of the miracles was afterwards (1729)
defended by Sherlock in The Trial of the Witnesses ; and, to this
work, Peter Annet replied in The Resurrection of Jesus examined
by a Moral Philosopher (1744), in which the expressions are
of an open, not to say scandalous, kind rare in the earlier
literature of deism. Thomas Chubb, an obscure tradesman of
Salisbury, with no pretentions to scholarship or education, published
a number of tracts in which points of the Scriptures were criticised
and views similar to those of Tindal asserted. The same doctrine
was stated once more by Thomas Morgan, a physician, in The
Moral Philosopher (1737—41). In the main, he follows Clarke
and Tindal; but he also recalls the investigations of Toland
by the prominence which he gives to the opposition between
1 Hunt, J. , Religious Thought in England, vol. II, p. 40.
## p. 295 (#319) ############################################
The Influence of Deism 295
the Judaising and the universal factors in early Christianity.
Christianity not founded on argument, a pamphlet published
in 1742 by Henry Dodwell (son of the theologian and scholar of
the same name), is one of the latest publications of this school
of thought.
Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury stand in a different relation to
the deistical movement from that of the writers already named.
Bolingbroke was not a philosopher, though various occasional
writings of his were collected and published by Mallet as Philo-
sophical Works (1752). But he illustrates the way in which the
fundamental doctrines of deism had permeated the thinking of
the men of fashion who played with ideas; and he did much
to confirm this attitude and to extend its influence. Voltaire
regarded his views as significant, and the superficial optimism of
Pope's clear-cut verse, in his Essay on Man, was directly due to
Bolingbroke. As a deist, Shaftesbury may have been coupled
with Boling
broke in the popular mind, and may, also, have lent
inspiration to Pope. But he had a far profounder view of the
problems of thought, which will receive consideration in con-
nection with the group of writers distinguished as moralists.
The line between deists and churchmen was not always drawn
very clearly. There was a good deal of common ground in the
assumptions of both parties; and there was, besides, a general
ferment of theological thought which disregarded customary
boundaries. The latter characteristic is exhibited in the works
of William Whiston, mathematician and theologian. They were
related to the controversy, but hardly belong to it. Whiston was
a man of active and original mind, which led him outside the
established church, but in a direction of his own, different from
that of Toland or Tindal. He was opposed to rationalism, and
a believer in prophecy and miracle; but he came to the conclusion
that the Arian heresy represented the true and primitive Christian
creed. His views are fully developed in Primitive Christianity
Revived (1711-12); but they had previously become notorious,
and had led, in 1710, to his being deprived of the Cambridge
professorship in which he had succeeded Newton. He founded a
society to promote the true faith, as he held it, and composed
a revised liturgy for its use; and he wrote on a variety of topics,
not all of them theological. His translation of Josephus (1737),
however, has proved of more lasting value than his original works.
Conyers Middleton, on the other hand, showed how near a clergy-
man might come to the deistical position. He was immersed in
## p. 296 (#320) ############################################
296 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
the controversy, and he did something to infuse into it a new
historical spirit. The whole tendency of his contributions, how-
ever, was critical and destructive. He separated himself from most
apologists of the day by denying verbal inspiration; and he
examined and rejected the evidence for the ecclesiastical miracles
in a manner which admitted of wider application. This argument
is contained in his most important theological work, entitled
A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed
to have existed in the Christian Church through several successive
Ages (1748). Of the content of religion, Middleton takes little
account, except as a bulwark of the social order. His work shows
that interest was drifting away from the question of content, from
which it had started, towards the question of external evidences
which suited so well the genius of the later eighteenth century.
Among the opponents of the deists, the two greatest were
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler. Their contributions to the
thought of the period are reserved for discussion in the last section
of this chapter. Of the others, some have been already referred
to; most do not call for more than bibliographical mention ; but
one name figures so largely in the controversy as to require further
notice. By his learning, but, still more, by his mental vigour and
resource, William Warburton made an impression upon his time
which is not yet forgotten. He was born in 1698 and died in
1779. Bred in a solicitor's office, he took orders without having
passed through a university, and, after other preferments, became
bishop of Gloucester in 1759. He was ready for almost any kind
of literary work-controversy preferred. He wrote The Alliance
between Church and State (1736); defended the orthodoxy of Pope's
Essay on Man; edited Shakespeare (1747); published a hostile View
of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1754), and had the courage to
issue Remarks on Hume's Natural History of Religion (1757). His
most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated
on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737—41). This vast
work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical
objection to the Old Testament scriptures——that the books of
Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An
objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the
writings of the greater deists ; but it suited Warburton's purpose
and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees
that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of
rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal
to any such belief or teach any such doctrine, although it was
## p. 297 (#321) ############################################
Samuel Clarke
297
common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this,
he argues, proves the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of
nature are an insufficient support for morality; without the belief
in a future life, government cannot be maintained-except by
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore,
taken as a proof that they were under the immediate providence
of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of
this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for display-
ing his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of
topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his
learning, Bentley said that he had a 'monstrous appetite and bad
digestion. ' His ability to get up a case and score a point has
been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed
to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features
of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy
or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
IIL. MORALISTS.
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius; but, by sheer
intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English
philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the
day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian
controversy, biblical and classical study--all occupied him. Only
as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many
problems, he never defined his position. He was born in 1675,
and died in 1729. In 1697, he published an annotated Latin
translation of the Cartesian Rohault's Traité de physique, and
thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception
of Newton's works as text-books at Cambridge ; he also translated
Newton's Optics. In 1699, his controversies with the deists began,
with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 1705, he delivered
two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A Demon-
stration of the Being and Attributes of God, and A Discourse
concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and
the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published
editions of Caesar's Commentaries (1712) and Homer's Iliad
(1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise
entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought
upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with con-
vocation. In 1715—16, he was engaged in a controversy with
Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of
a
## p. 298 (#322) ############################################
298 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
Newton's in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God,
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and
came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest
work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrange-
ment of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the
whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation
of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the
controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series
of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demon-
strate; but, otherwise, he did not imitate mathematical method, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes,
.
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from
existence, not from idea: maintaining that there must be a
self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going
on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent
being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are
among these attributes, he relies expressly on a posteriori
reasoning. The whole argument—therein resembling Locke's
belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke's system has been
represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the comparison
is superficial. One salient point of resemblance-the view of
space as an attribute of God-means something different in the
two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter.
And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition
of freedom and for a distinction of morality from nature, which
were impossible for Spinoza
Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent in-
fluence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other
doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral
relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe.
There are certain 'fitnesses of things' over and above their merely
physical relations : 'there is,' he says, “a fitness or suitableness of
certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons,
antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment
whatsoever. ' Many illustrations are given of these 'relations of
things'; but their nature is not further explained. 'Fitness,
‘agreement, 'suitableness' are the terms by which they are
described. They differ, therefore, from the causal relations with
which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different
aspect—the moral aspect
of reality. But they are known in the
6
## p. 299 (#323) ############################################
6
Rational Ethics
299
same way-by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear
to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far
as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct
by them.
God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the
will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests,
and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible
and common. For this reason, also, the obligation of virtue needs
the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that
morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe,
had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature';
Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the
nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil
are qualities which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step
further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one
thing with another—a relation as eternal as is the nature of the
things. But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond
the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very
careful statement became obvious from some of the consequences
drawn by his followers. His views were defended, against the
first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy,
in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727-8). Still earlier,
William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722),
had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory pro-
pounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called 'fitness' was inter-
preted by him as an actual existing relation or quality: a wrong
act is simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus,
“if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him,' he does not
consider him as being what he is,' namely, another man's horse ;
and 'to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of
the great law of our nature, the law of reason. ' Bentham's
criticism of this is hardly a caricature: 'if you were to murder
your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he
father. '
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by
Clarke's contemporary, the third earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself educated under
Locke's supervision. He was debarred by weak health from follow-
ing an active political career, and his life was thus mainly devoted
to intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school
а
your
was not
## p. 300 (#324) ############################################
300 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a
life at Winchester, he travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a
tutor; in early manhood he resided in Holland ; in later life
his health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent
student of the classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius, a devotee of liberty in thought and in political affairs,
and an amateur of artmat once a philosopher and a virtuoso. His
writings were published in three volumes, entitled Characteristics
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a second edition,
carefully revised and enlarged, was ready at the time of his death
in 1713. Several of the treatises comprised in these volumes had
been previously published. The most important of them, An
Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, was surreptitiously printed
from an early draft, in 1699, by Toland-whom he had befriended
and financed; The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared
in 1709; A Letter concerning Enthusiasm in 1708 ; Sensus Com-
munis: an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1709;
Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises
in later editions were posthumous : A Notion of the Historical
Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and
Miscellaneous Reflections, 1714. The style of these works is, nearly
always, clear, and it has the great merit of avoiding traditional
technicalities; but it is over-polished and often artificial-too
‘genteel,' as Lamb said. Its decorations pleased contemporary
taste ; but the rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the
modern ear, and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher.
Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and, perhaps,
not without reason, though his first publication was an introduction
to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, and he
remained a churchman to the end. His sympathies were with
that spiritual view of the world which is common to Christianity
and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. He had no taste for the
refinements of theological controversy or for modern religious
fanaticisms. He hated, still more, the method of suppressing the
latter by persecution; and this led to his suggestion that they
would be better met if their absurdities were left to ridicule. He
never said that ridicule was the test of truth ; but he did regard
it as a specific against superstition; and some of his comments
in illustration of this thesis, not unnaturally, gave offence. He
himself, however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his
concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his
devotion to his view of truth.
For him, the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, which he
## p. 301 (#325) ############################################
a
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
301
found not in Hobbes only but, also, in a more insinuating form,
in Locke. His own ethical writings were intended to show that
the system of man's nature did not point to selfishness. There
are affections in man which have regard to his own interest or
happiness; but there are also social (or, as he calls them, natural)
affections which are directed to the good of the species to which
he belongs; and he labours to prove that there is no conflict
between the two systems. But the mind of man has a still higher
reach. “The natural affection of a rational creature' will take
in the universe, so that he will love all things that have being in
the world : for, in the universal design of things, 'nothing is
supernumerary or unnecessary'; 'the whole is harmony, the
numbers entire, the music perfect. Further, the mind of man
is itself in harmony with the cosmic order. Connate in it is
a 'sense of right and wrong,' to which Shaftesbury gives the name
'the moral sense. ' And it is for his doctrine of the moral sense
that he is now most often remembered. In his own century, his
writings attained remarkable popularity : Berkeley (in Alciphron)
was one of his severest critics; Leibniz and Diderot were among
his warmest admirers.
The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate development,
especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson, a native
of Ulster, was educated at the university of Glasgow, and, in 1729,
returned there as professor of moral philosophy. Among the
more notable British philosophers, he was the first to occupy
a professor's chair; and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart
to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste for
analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, to which the world is
indebted for some of the most valuable produotions of the eighteenth century,
Before his appointment as professor, Hutcheson had published
two volumes An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue (1725), and An Essay on the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Ilustrations on the
Moral Sense (1726)-each containing two treatises. Text-books
on logic, metaphysics and ethics followed; his System of Moral
Philosophy (1755) was published after his death. The ideas of
Shaftesbury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic
form and with an increased tendency towards a psychological
interpretation of them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterested-
ness of benevolence; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments;
he elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speaking
of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain; and he identified
## p. 302 (#326) ############################################
302 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
virtue with universal benevolence: in the tendency towards
general happiness he found the standard of goodness. In this
respect, he was, historically, the forerunner of the utilitarians. In
his first work, he even used the formula—'the greatest happiness
for the greatest numbers'-afterwards, with only a slight verbal
change, made famous by Bentham? He anticipated Bentham,
also, in the attempt to form a calculus of pleasures and pains.
Hutcheson's first work was described on the title-page as a
defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable of the
Bees. In 1705, Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician resident
in London, had published a pamphlet of some four hundred lines
of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd
Honest. This was republished as a volume, in 1714, together with
'an inquiry into the original of moral virtue' and 'remarks' on
the original verses, and, again, in 1723, with further additions—the
whole bearing the title The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits. Mandeville marks a reaction against the too
facile optimism which was common with the deists and to which
Shaftesbury gave philosophical expression, and against the con-
ventions associated with popular morality. But he did not draw
nice distinctions: convention and morality are equally the objects
of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and vice
that gather round the industrial system, and perverse enough to
mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to Hobbes's selfish
theory of human nature, but was without Hobbes's grasp of the
principle of order. He looked upon man as a compound of various
passions, governed by each as it comes uppermost, and he held that
'the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot
upon pride. '
The combination of ability and coarseness with
which this view was developed led to many other answers than
Hutcheson’s. Berkeley replied in Alciphron ; and William Law,
as his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant
pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the
Bees (1723)? Law also made his mark in the deist controversy
by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in which he
1 Although Bentham thought and said (Works, 2, 46, 142) that he got the formula
from Priestley, it is not to be found in Priestley's works, and was, almost certainly,
taken from Beccaria. Beccaria's words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima
felicità divisa nel maggior numero, and these were rendered in the English translation
(1767) by 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'-the exact words which
Bentham first used in 1776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not
established.
2 Cf. chap. XII, p. 311, post.
## p. 303 (#327) ############################################
Joseph Butler
303
anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards worked out by
Butler.
Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two years
(1750—52) of his life, did not make any contributions to pure
metaphysics ; but his is the greatest name both in the theological
and in the ethical thought of the period. He published two books
only-a volume of Fifteen Sermons (1726), which (in particular,
the first three sermons, entitled 'on human nature') express his
ethical system, and The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736).
These works are without any pretentions to literary elegance; and
it is only in rare passages that the usually sombre style glows with
the fire of restrained eloquence. But they are compact of pro-
found thought. The names of other writers are rarely mentioned;
but all their arguments have been considered ; no difficulties are
slurred over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to
the bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about the
reasoning, which needs no grace of diction.
Butler's condensed and weighty argument hardly admits of
summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may be expressed
in the one word 'teleological' Human nature is a system or
.
constitution; the same is true of the world at large; and both
point to an end or purpose. This is his guiding idea, suggested
by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is given ; and it enables him
to rise from a refutation of the selfish theory of Hobbes to the
truth that man's nature or constitution is adapted to virtue. The
old argument about selfish or disinterested affections is raised
to a higher plane. He shows that the characteristic of impulse,
or the particular passions,' is to seek an object, not to seek
pleasure, while pleasure results from the attainment of the object
desired. Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there
are also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses
is judged and their value appraised. On this level, selfishness
is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle of
conduct; beside it stands the moral sense, or, as Butler preferred
to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or 'superintendency '
(a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the very nature of
conscience; and, although Butler labours to prove the harmony
of the dictates of the two principles, it is to conscience that he
assigns ultimate authority. It is true that, in an oft-quoted
sentence, he admits
that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this
6
## p. 304 (#328) ############################################
304 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
[i. e. moral rectitude) or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be
for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.
But, even if we disregard the 'let it be allowed that introduces
the admission, the single sentence is hardly sufficient to justify the
assertion that Butler held the authority of self-love to be equal to,
or higher than, that of conscience. The passage is, rather, a
momentary concession to the selfish spirit of the age; and it has
to be interpreted in the light of his frequent assertions of the
natural superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from
the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it,' he says.
‘Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world!
Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this spiritual
principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion that man is adapted
to virtue. But here his ethics may be said, almost, to stop short,
He does not explain further the nature of conscience in relation
to reason and will, or derive from it, in any systematic way, the
,
content of morality. He was distrustful of any attempt at &
complete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability as the
guide of life.
The same fundamental conception and the same limitation
reappear in Butler's still more famous work, The Analogy. The
world is a system-'a scheme in which means are made use of
to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws. ' It
is neglect of this truth which makes men think that particular
instances of suffering virtue or successful vice are inconsistent
with 'the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of
nature. ' In the constitution and government of the world, nature
and morality are so closely connected as to form a single scheme,
in which it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried
on merely in subserviency to the latter. ' The imperfections of
our knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail.
But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of
nature, and it can be shown that there is no difficulty in the
doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, which has not
a parallel difficulty in the principle common to both sides in the
argument. This is the analogy to the establishment of which in
detail Butler's reasonings are directed. They are so exhaustive,
so thorough and so candid, that critics of all schools are agreed in
regarding his as the final word in a great controversy.
## p. 305 (#329) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS
To speak of mystical thought in the first half of the eighteenth
century in England seems almost a contradiction in terms; for the
predominating character of that age, its outlook on life and its
mind as expressed in philosophy, religion and literature, was in
every way opposed to what is understood by mystical. In litera-
ture, shallowness of thought is often found combined with unrivalled
clearness of expression; in general outlook, the conception of a
mechanical world made by an outside Creator; in religion and
philosophy, the practically universal appeal to 'rational' evidence
as supreme arbiter. In no age, it would seem, have men written
so much about religion, while practising it so little. The one
quality in Scripture which interests writers and readers alike is
its credibility, and the impression gathered by the student of the
religious controversies of the day is that Christianity was held
to exist, not to be lived, but, like a proposition in Euclid, only
to be proved.
This view, however, of the main tendency of the time, though
representative, is not complete. There is also an undercurrent
of thought of a kind that never quite disappears and that helps to
keep the earth green during the somewhat dry and arid seasons
when rationalism or materialism gains the upper hand.
This tendency of thought is called mysticism, and it may be
described in its widest sense as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of fundamental unity, of
alikeness in all things. All mystical thought springs from this as
base. The poet mystic, looking out on the natural world, rejoices
in it with a purer joy and studies it with a deeper reverence than
other men, because he knows it is not something called 'matter'
and alien to him, but that it is as he is—spirit itself made visible.
The mystic philosopher, instead of attempting to reason or analyse
or deduce, seeks merely to tell of his vision; whereupon, words
20
а
E. L. IX,
CH. XII.
## p. 306 (#330) ############################################
306
William Law and the Mystics
generally fail him, and he becomes obscure. The religious mystic
has for goal the union of himself with God, the actual contact
with the Divine Presence, and he conceives this possible because
man is 'a God though in the germ,' and, therefore, can know God
through that part of his nature which is akin to Him.
There were many strains of influence which, in the seventeenth
century, tended to foster this type of thought in England. The
little group of Cambridge Platonists gave new expression to great
neo-Platonic ideas, the smouldering embers of which had been
fanned to flame in the ardent forge of the Florentine renascence? ;
but, in addition to this older thought, there were not only new
influences from without but, also, new conditions within which
must be indicated.
A strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam,
whither the first body of exiled separatists had gone in 1593.
Elizabeth, thinking to quell independent religious thought at
home, had planted nurseries of freedom in Holland, which waxed
strong and sent back over seas in the next century a persistent
stream of opinion and literature To this can be traced the
root-ideas which animated alike quakers, seekers, Behmenists,
anabaptists, familists and numberless other sects which em-
bodied a reaction against forms and ceremonies that, in ceasing
to be understood, had become lifeless. They all agreed in
deeming it more important to spiritualize this life than to
dogmatize about the life to come. They all believed in the 'inner
light,' in the immediate revelation of God within the soul as the
supreme and all-important experience. They all held that salvation
was the effect of a spiritual principle, a seed quickened invisibly
by God, and, consequently, they considered learning useless, or
even mischievous, in dealing with the things of the spirit. So far,
these various sects were mystical in thought; though, with the
exception of familists, Behmenists and seekers, they cannot un-
reservedly be classed as mystics. Large numbers of these three
sects, however, became children of light,' thus helping to give
greater prominence to the strong mystical element in early
quakerism.
It only needed the release from the crushing hand of Laud,
and the upheaval of the civil war, to set free the religious revival
а
6
1 See vol. VIII, chap. X.
* For an interesting detailed account of this phase of religious life, with full
references to original documents, see Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909, by Jones,
R. M. , chaps, xvi and XVII.
## p. 307 (#331) ############################################
a
6
Seventeenth Century Mysticism 307
which had long been seething, and to distract England, for a time,
with religious excitement. Contemporary writers refer with horror
to the swarm of 'sects, heresies and schisms' which now came into
being, and Milton alone seems to have understood that the
turmoil was but the outward sign of a great spiritual awakening?
Unhappily, there were few who, with him, could perceive that the
'opinion of good men is but knowledge in the making,' and that
these many sects were but various aspects of one main movement
towards freedom and individualism, towards a religion of the heart
rather than of the head. The terrible persecutions of the quakers
under Charles II% tended to withdraw them from active life, and
to throw them in the direction of a more personal and introspective
religion". It was then that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon,
Madame Guyon and Fénelon became popular, and were much read
among a certain section of thinkers, while the teachings of Jacob
Boehme, whose works had been put into English between the years
1644 and 1692, bore fruit in many ways. Whether directly or
indirectly, they permeated the thought of the founders of the
Society of Friends, they were widely read both in cottage and
study? and they produced a distinct Behmenite sects. Their
influence can be seen in the writings of Thomas Tryon, John
Pordage, George Cheyne, Francis Lee, Jane Lead, Thomas Bromley,
Richard Roach and others; in the foundation and transactions of the
1 See, for instance, Pagitt's Heresiography, 1645, dedication to the lord mayor;
or Edwards, who, in his Gangraena, 1646, names 176, and, later, 23 more, 'errors,
heresies, blasphemies. '
? Areopagitica, 1644.
3 13,562 Friends suffered imprisonment during the years 1661–97, while 198 were
transported overseas and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. See Inner Life of
the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by Barclay, pp. 474_8.
• For further observations on early quakerism in its connection with literature,
see vol. VIII, chap. iv.
6 Charles I, who, shortly before his death, read Boehme's Forty Questions, just then
translated into English, much admired it. See a most interesting MS letter in Latin
from Francis Lee to P. Poiret in Dr Williams's library, C 5. 30.
8. Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books that the Quakers bought, for there
is the Principle or Foundation of their Religion. ' A Looking Glass for George Fox,
1667, p. 5. But Boehme was not wholly approved of even among the early quakers;
see Inner Life of the Religious Societies, p. 479. For the influence of Boehme on
Fox and Winstanley, see Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 494—5; cf. , also, Fox's
Journal for 1648, 8th ed. , vol. 1, pp. 28–9, with Boehme's Three Principles, chap. xx,
88 39—42; also, life of J. B. in . Law's edition,' vol. I, p. xiii, or the Signatura Rerum.
7 See Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works, vol. VII, pp. 84, 85 ; Byrom's Journal,
vol. 1, part 2, pp. 560, 598; vol. II, part 2, pp. 193, 216, 236, 285, 310–11, 328,
377, 380.
8 See Richard Baxter's Autobiography, Reliquiae Bacterianae, 1696, part 1,
P. 77.
20-2
## p. 308 (#332) ############################################
308
William Law and the Mystics
Philadelphian society; in the gibes of satirists? ; in forgotten
tracts; in the increase of interest in alchemy”; in the voluminous
MS commentaries of Freher, or even in Newton's great discovery;
for it is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion
first reached Newton through his eager study of Boehme.
The tracing of this mystical thought, however, during the
period under discussion and later, mainly among obscure sects
and little-known thinkers, would not form part of a history of
English literature, were it not that our greatest prose mystic lived
and wrote in the same age.
William Law had a curiously paradoxical career. After
graduating as B. A. and M. A. at Cambridge, in 1708 and 1712,
and being, in 1711, ordained and elected fellow of his college
(Emmanuel), he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to
George I, and thus lost his fellowship and vocation. Though an
ardent high churchman, he was the father of methodism. Though
deprived of employment in his church, he wrote the book which,
of all others for a century to come, had the most profound and
far-reaching influence upon the religious thought of his country.
Though a sincere, and, so he believed, an orthodox Christian, he was
the classic exponent of Boehme, a thinker abhorred and mistrusted
alike by eighteenth century divines and by Wesleyan leaders.
About the year 1727, Edward Gibbon selected Law as tutor for
his only son, the father of the historian, and, in 1730, when his pupil
went abroad, Law lived on with the elder Gibbon in the 'spacious
house with gardens and land at Putney,' where he was 'the much
honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family!
During these years at Putney, Law's reputation as a writer
became assured. He was already known as the ablest defender of
nonjuror principles; the publication of A Serious Call in 1729
had brought him renown, and he was revered and consulted by
an admiring band of disciples. His later life was spent at his
birthplace, King's Cliffe, near Stamford. He settled there in 1737
or 1740, and was joined by Hester Gibbon, the historian's aunt,
and Mrs Hutcheson, a widow with considerable means.
both parties, the question was debated in the court of reason. The
controversy was not between rationalists and those who distrusted
reason. The question was what, on rational grounds, ought to be
believed. And, as Clarke and Tillotson and, finally, Butler appealed
to reason not less than Locke and Toland and their successors did,
so, too, there was another point of agreement between the orthodox
19
E. L. IX.
CH. XI.
## p. 290 (#314) ############################################
290 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
and the leaders of the deists. The latter, also, for the most part,
and in the earlier stages of the dispute, at any rate, professed
to accept the Christian faith. The problem was as to its content:
what was its genuine meaning and the scope of its essential
doctrines? This much must be borne in mind by anyone who
would understand Toland, especially in his earliest and most
celebrated work. Toland was born near Londonderry in Ireland
in 1670 and died at Putney near London in 1722. His education
was varied. He was at school in Ireland, went to the university
of Glasgow, took his degree at Edinburgh, afterwards studied
at Leyden, and spent some time at Oxford, where he wrote
Christianity not mysterious (1696). He led a strenuous and
varied life, with somewhat uncertain means of livelihood. He
was the object of bitter attack by the controversialists opposed to
him; and they called in the aid of the civil power. After the
publication of his first book, he had to leave Ireland to escape
arrest by the Irish parliament, and in England he was for a time
in danger of prosecution. He busied himself in political as well as
in theological controversy, defended the protestant succession, took
part, though unofficially, in important missions, and became known
to the electress Sophia and her daughter the queen of Prussia, to
whom his Letters to Serena (1704) were addressed. He made some
influential friends, also, and Leibniz was among his correspondents.
Christianity not mysterious shows the influence of Locke-of
his Essay, however, rather than of his Reasonableness of Christi-
anity, which, published only a year before Toland's book, can hardly
have affected its argument. Locke's name is not mentioned by
Toland; but Locke's view of knowledge, as consisting in the agree-
ment of ideas, forms the starting-point of his argument and, in the
preliminary matter, he often adopts Locke's words. But he is more
aggressive in applying his principles. Locke's aim was to show that
Christianity was reasonable ; Toland's, to demonstrate that nothing
contrary to reason, and nothing above reason, can be part of Christian
doctrine. There are no mysteries in it. Revelation has unveiled
what was formerly mysterious. Whoever reveals anything must do
so in words that are intelligible, and the matter must be possible.
The things revealed, therefore, are no longer mysteries. This holds,
whether the revelation come from God or from man. The only
difference between the two cases is that a man may lie, and God
can not. Without ideas, neither faith nor knowledge is possible ;
and, ‘if by knowledge be meant understanding what is believed,
then I stand by it that faith is knowledge. ' The ideas may not be
## p. 291 (#315) ############################################
John Toland
291
adequate; but, in nature as well as in divinity, we have to be
content without adequate ideas; even a 'spire of grass' is not
known in its real essence; we understand only its properties or
attributes; and God and the soul are known in the same way.
Toland was a scholar, and boasted acquaintance with more
than ten languages. He was also a theologian, and could meet
his opponents on their own ground. This interest dominated his
literary career; even his political work was in the service of the
protestant religion, and his scholarship was chiefly shown in the
field of Christian origins. His own theological views went through
various modifications. He was brought up a Roman catholic;
:
at the age of sixteen, he became 'zealous against popery';
afterwards he was connected with protestant dissenters; when
Christianity not mysterious was published, he reckoned himself
a member of the church of England, his sympathies being with
the broad (or, as it was then called, low) church party. When his
book was burned at the door of the Irish house of parliament, he
may have felt his churchmanship insecure. His later works exhibit
its gradual disappearance.
In Amyntor (1699), a defence of his Life of Milton (1698), he
gave, in answer to an opponent, a long list of early apocryphal
Christian literature. His interest in researches of this kind was
shown afterwards in Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile, and
Mahometan Christianity (1718). His text, in this work, was an
Italian manuscript, with Arabic annotations, which he had dis-
covered. He took it for a translation from the Arabic and
identified it with the lost Gospel of Barnabas. In both conjectures,
later scholarship has shown that he was in error. But his discovery
led to some remarkable reflections on the differences between the
Jewish and Gentile Christians in the early church. He maintained
that the former, who kept the Jewish law themselves, but without
enforcing it on the Gentiles, represented the true original plan of
Christianity'; and he declared that he himself took 'less exception
to the name of Nazaren than to any other. ' More than a century
afterwards, the same distinction as that upon which he laid stress
was made fundamental in the explanation of early church history
offered by F. C. Baur and his followers.
Among other topics in the Letters to Serena was a discussion
of Spinoza, which, perhaps, shows the trend of Toland's speculation.
Leibniz, at any rate, in a letter of 30 April 1709, remarks that
Toland, in several of his books, refers to the opinion that there
is no other eternal being than the universe, but offers no refutation
19-2
## p. 292 (#316) ############################################
292 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
of this ‘pernicious' error. In his reply, Toland promises an answer
to this point in his next; but he does not seem to have kept his
word. Pantheism, however, was the doctrine with which he ended,
if we may trust the evidence of Pantheisticon (1720). This curious
piece was issued anonymously, with 'Cosmopolis' on the title-page
as the place of publication. But the author took no pains to
conceal his identity, for the preface is signed ‘Janus Julius Eoga-
nesius. ' Now, Inis Eogain or Inishowen was the place of Toland's
birth; and Janus Julius were the extraordinary names by which
he was christened and known, till a sensible schoolmaster changed
them to John. The little book, which is written in Latin, describes
the ritual of certain (supposed or real) pantheistic societies. It
imitates the fashion of a prayer-book, gives the responses of the
congregation and is printed with red rubrics. As a whole, it is
a clever skit, though in the very worst taste. But Toland had not
received any favours from fortune ; he had been harshly attacked
by his opponents, even when he regarded himself as a defender
of the Christian faith; and, perhaps, it gave him satisfaction to
retaliate bitterly.
Toland thus began as a liberal or rational theologian, and
ended with some form of pantheistic creed. His writings do not
enable us to trace accurately the steps in this change of view; but
there is no evidence that he ever accepted the cardinal point
of what is commonly called deism—the idea of God as an external
creator who made the world, set it under certain laws, and then
left it alone! He was a free-thinker rather than a deist. And
this, also, describes the position occupied by Anthony Collins, the
friend and disciple of Locke, in his best-known work, A Discourse
of Free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect
call's Free-thinkers (1713). Bentley's brilliant criticism of this
book, in his Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking,
gained for it an unenviable reputation. The Remarks admitted
of no answer ; but they were more successful in demolishing a
9
1 Samuel Clarke (Being and Attributes of God, 9th ed. , pp. 159 ff. ) distinguishes
four classes of Deists : (1) those who pretend to believe the existence of an eternal,
infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and. . . teach also that this Supreme Being
made the world : though at the same time. . , they fancy God does not at all concern
himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done
therein ' ; (2) those who, also, admit divine providence in nature; (3) those who,
further, have some notion of the moral perfections of God; (4) those who, in
addition, acknowledge man's duties to God, and see the need for a future state of
rewards and punishments—but all this only ‘so far as 'tis discoverable by the light of
nature. '
2 Cf. chap. xm, sec. 1, post.
## p. 293 (#317) ############################################
Collins and Tindal
293
free-thinker than in refuting free-thinking; and, perhaps, this was
Bentley's sole object in exposing the author's slipshod scholarship.
But he was not blind to an ambiguity of which Collins had taken
advantage. “Free-thinking' may mean nothing more than the
exercise of reason. If this had been all that Collins argued for,
there would have been little point in his contention, for both
parties claimed that they followed reason. So far, Tillotson would
certainly have been with him, and, indeed, Collins claims his
support. But he used the term, also, to cover the attitude or
doctrines of a 'sect of free-thinkers,' without any clear account
of their position, or any suggestion that the word had more than
one meaning. The ambiguity is connected with the duality of the
motives which seem to have determined the writings of Collins.
One of these was faith in reason faith which he had inherited
from Locke; the other was a suspicion and dislike of priestcraft.
These two motives are indicated by the titles of his earliest
works_Essay concerning the use of Reason (1707), and Priest-
craft in perfection (1709). They are combined in A Discourse
of Free-thinking, in a way which generates more heat than light.
Collins held firmly to a belief in God as established by reason;
but (though sometimes in guarded language) he was a hostile
critic of the Christian creed. His works produced a crowd of
controversial literature : his chief later work-Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724)-having
called forth no less than thirty-five replies in two years. He was
also the author of a small book called A Philosophical Inquiry
concerning Human Liberty and Necessity (1715)—an acute and
clearly-written argument in favour of the necessitarian solution of
the problem.
In some respects and these, perhaps, the most important-
the most significant work of the whole deistical movement was
Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation : or, the Gospel,
a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). It is no mere
defence of the use of reason, nor attack on Christian mysteries.
It is a masterly presentation of the prevalent philosophical ideas
of the time and a comparison of them with the rational theology
which found favour with leaders of the church. "The will of God,'
said Samuel Clarke, then the most prominent figure in British philo-
sophy and theology, 'always determines itself to act according to
the eternal reason of things,' and 'all rational creatures are obliged
to govern themselves in all their actions by the same eternal rule
of reason. ' "The religion of the Gospel,' said Sherlock, preaching
6
## p. 294 (#318) ############################################
294 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a missionary sermon, 'is the true original religion of reason and
nature,' and its precepts are 'declarative of that original religion
which was as old as the creation. These extracts Tindal prints
on his title-page; and his own aim is to show that 'natural
religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer
one another, without any other difference between them but as to
the manner of their being delivered. ' Tindal grasps firmly the
principles of natural religion, as they were taught by Clarke and
Wollaston and other theologians of the day. Reason convinces us
of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of morality;
the goodness of God makes it impossible that He should have
concealed from any of His creatures what was necessary to their
well-being. Christianity, therefore, cannot displace deism, as
Clarke held that it could : it can only confirm it. And, as reason
suffices to establish the truths of deism, it would seem that
Christianity is superfluous. Tindal, however, did not expressly
draw this conclusion : he was seventy years of age when he wrote
this book, and he retained his fellowship at All Souls, through
many changes of government and of personal creed, till his death.
The remaining deistical writers require only the briefest notice.
Thomas Woolston was an enthusiast in patristic study, and his
enthusiasm seems to have verged on insanity in his later years.
He had two passions—love of the fathers and hatred of the
protestant clergy? ' The latter was intensified by his being
deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge; the former led to his
allegorical interpretation of scripture. This method he applied
to the New Testament miracles, in his series of Discourses
(1727—30), ridiculing the ordinary view of them as actual events.
The historical occurrence of the miracles was afterwards (1729)
defended by Sherlock in The Trial of the Witnesses ; and, to this
work, Peter Annet replied in The Resurrection of Jesus examined
by a Moral Philosopher (1744), in which the expressions are
of an open, not to say scandalous, kind rare in the earlier
literature of deism. Thomas Chubb, an obscure tradesman of
Salisbury, with no pretentions to scholarship or education, published
a number of tracts in which points of the Scriptures were criticised
and views similar to those of Tindal asserted. The same doctrine
was stated once more by Thomas Morgan, a physician, in The
Moral Philosopher (1737—41). In the main, he follows Clarke
and Tindal; but he also recalls the investigations of Toland
by the prominence which he gives to the opposition between
1 Hunt, J. , Religious Thought in England, vol. II, p. 40.
## p. 295 (#319) ############################################
The Influence of Deism 295
the Judaising and the universal factors in early Christianity.
Christianity not founded on argument, a pamphlet published
in 1742 by Henry Dodwell (son of the theologian and scholar of
the same name), is one of the latest publications of this school
of thought.
Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury stand in a different relation to
the deistical movement from that of the writers already named.
Bolingbroke was not a philosopher, though various occasional
writings of his were collected and published by Mallet as Philo-
sophical Works (1752). But he illustrates the way in which the
fundamental doctrines of deism had permeated the thinking of
the men of fashion who played with ideas; and he did much
to confirm this attitude and to extend its influence. Voltaire
regarded his views as significant, and the superficial optimism of
Pope's clear-cut verse, in his Essay on Man, was directly due to
Bolingbroke. As a deist, Shaftesbury may have been coupled
with Boling
broke in the popular mind, and may, also, have lent
inspiration to Pope. But he had a far profounder view of the
problems of thought, which will receive consideration in con-
nection with the group of writers distinguished as moralists.
The line between deists and churchmen was not always drawn
very clearly. There was a good deal of common ground in the
assumptions of both parties; and there was, besides, a general
ferment of theological thought which disregarded customary
boundaries. The latter characteristic is exhibited in the works
of William Whiston, mathematician and theologian. They were
related to the controversy, but hardly belong to it. Whiston was
a man of active and original mind, which led him outside the
established church, but in a direction of his own, different from
that of Toland or Tindal. He was opposed to rationalism, and
a believer in prophecy and miracle; but he came to the conclusion
that the Arian heresy represented the true and primitive Christian
creed. His views are fully developed in Primitive Christianity
Revived (1711-12); but they had previously become notorious,
and had led, in 1710, to his being deprived of the Cambridge
professorship in which he had succeeded Newton. He founded a
society to promote the true faith, as he held it, and composed
a revised liturgy for its use; and he wrote on a variety of topics,
not all of them theological. His translation of Josephus (1737),
however, has proved of more lasting value than his original works.
Conyers Middleton, on the other hand, showed how near a clergy-
man might come to the deistical position. He was immersed in
## p. 296 (#320) ############################################
296 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
the controversy, and he did something to infuse into it a new
historical spirit. The whole tendency of his contributions, how-
ever, was critical and destructive. He separated himself from most
apologists of the day by denying verbal inspiration; and he
examined and rejected the evidence for the ecclesiastical miracles
in a manner which admitted of wider application. This argument
is contained in his most important theological work, entitled
A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed
to have existed in the Christian Church through several successive
Ages (1748). Of the content of religion, Middleton takes little
account, except as a bulwark of the social order. His work shows
that interest was drifting away from the question of content, from
which it had started, towards the question of external evidences
which suited so well the genius of the later eighteenth century.
Among the opponents of the deists, the two greatest were
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler. Their contributions to the
thought of the period are reserved for discussion in the last section
of this chapter. Of the others, some have been already referred
to; most do not call for more than bibliographical mention ; but
one name figures so largely in the controversy as to require further
notice. By his learning, but, still more, by his mental vigour and
resource, William Warburton made an impression upon his time
which is not yet forgotten. He was born in 1698 and died in
1779. Bred in a solicitor's office, he took orders without having
passed through a university, and, after other preferments, became
bishop of Gloucester in 1759. He was ready for almost any kind
of literary work-controversy preferred. He wrote The Alliance
between Church and State (1736); defended the orthodoxy of Pope's
Essay on Man; edited Shakespeare (1747); published a hostile View
of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1754), and had the courage to
issue Remarks on Hume's Natural History of Religion (1757). His
most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated
on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737—41). This vast
work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical
objection to the Old Testament scriptures——that the books of
Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An
objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the
writings of the greater deists ; but it suited Warburton's purpose
and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees
that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of
rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal
to any such belief or teach any such doctrine, although it was
## p. 297 (#321) ############################################
Samuel Clarke
297
common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this,
he argues, proves the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of
nature are an insufficient support for morality; without the belief
in a future life, government cannot be maintained-except by
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore,
taken as a proof that they were under the immediate providence
of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of
this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for display-
ing his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of
topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his
learning, Bentley said that he had a 'monstrous appetite and bad
digestion. ' His ability to get up a case and score a point has
been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed
to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features
of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy
or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
IIL. MORALISTS.
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius; but, by sheer
intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English
philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the
day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian
controversy, biblical and classical study--all occupied him. Only
as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many
problems, he never defined his position. He was born in 1675,
and died in 1729. In 1697, he published an annotated Latin
translation of the Cartesian Rohault's Traité de physique, and
thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception
of Newton's works as text-books at Cambridge ; he also translated
Newton's Optics. In 1699, his controversies with the deists began,
with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 1705, he delivered
two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A Demon-
stration of the Being and Attributes of God, and A Discourse
concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and
the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published
editions of Caesar's Commentaries (1712) and Homer's Iliad
(1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise
entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought
upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with con-
vocation. In 1715—16, he was engaged in a controversy with
Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of
a
## p. 298 (#322) ############################################
298 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
Newton's in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God,
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and
came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest
work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrange-
ment of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the
whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation
of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the
controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series
of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demon-
strate; but, otherwise, he did not imitate mathematical method, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes,
.
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from
existence, not from idea: maintaining that there must be a
self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going
on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent
being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are
among these attributes, he relies expressly on a posteriori
reasoning. The whole argument—therein resembling Locke's
belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke's system has been
represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the comparison
is superficial. One salient point of resemblance-the view of
space as an attribute of God-means something different in the
two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter.
And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition
of freedom and for a distinction of morality from nature, which
were impossible for Spinoza
Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent in-
fluence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other
doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral
relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe.
There are certain 'fitnesses of things' over and above their merely
physical relations : 'there is,' he says, “a fitness or suitableness of
certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons,
antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment
whatsoever. ' Many illustrations are given of these 'relations of
things'; but their nature is not further explained. 'Fitness,
‘agreement, 'suitableness' are the terms by which they are
described. They differ, therefore, from the causal relations with
which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different
aspect—the moral aspect
of reality. But they are known in the
6
## p. 299 (#323) ############################################
6
Rational Ethics
299
same way-by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear
to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far
as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct
by them.
God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the
will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests,
and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible
and common. For this reason, also, the obligation of virtue needs
the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that
morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe,
had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature';
Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the
nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil
are qualities which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step
further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one
thing with another—a relation as eternal as is the nature of the
things. But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond
the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very
careful statement became obvious from some of the consequences
drawn by his followers. His views were defended, against the
first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy,
in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727-8). Still earlier,
William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722),
had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory pro-
pounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called 'fitness' was inter-
preted by him as an actual existing relation or quality: a wrong
act is simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus,
“if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him,' he does not
consider him as being what he is,' namely, another man's horse ;
and 'to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of
the great law of our nature, the law of reason. ' Bentham's
criticism of this is hardly a caricature: 'if you were to murder
your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he
father. '
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by
Clarke's contemporary, the third earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself educated under
Locke's supervision. He was debarred by weak health from follow-
ing an active political career, and his life was thus mainly devoted
to intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school
а
your
was not
## p. 300 (#324) ############################################
300 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a
life at Winchester, he travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a
tutor; in early manhood he resided in Holland ; in later life
his health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent
student of the classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius, a devotee of liberty in thought and in political affairs,
and an amateur of artmat once a philosopher and a virtuoso. His
writings were published in three volumes, entitled Characteristics
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a second edition,
carefully revised and enlarged, was ready at the time of his death
in 1713. Several of the treatises comprised in these volumes had
been previously published. The most important of them, An
Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, was surreptitiously printed
from an early draft, in 1699, by Toland-whom he had befriended
and financed; The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared
in 1709; A Letter concerning Enthusiasm in 1708 ; Sensus Com-
munis: an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1709;
Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises
in later editions were posthumous : A Notion of the Historical
Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and
Miscellaneous Reflections, 1714. The style of these works is, nearly
always, clear, and it has the great merit of avoiding traditional
technicalities; but it is over-polished and often artificial-too
‘genteel,' as Lamb said. Its decorations pleased contemporary
taste ; but the rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the
modern ear, and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher.
Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and, perhaps,
not without reason, though his first publication was an introduction
to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, and he
remained a churchman to the end. His sympathies were with
that spiritual view of the world which is common to Christianity
and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. He had no taste for the
refinements of theological controversy or for modern religious
fanaticisms. He hated, still more, the method of suppressing the
latter by persecution; and this led to his suggestion that they
would be better met if their absurdities were left to ridicule. He
never said that ridicule was the test of truth ; but he did regard
it as a specific against superstition; and some of his comments
in illustration of this thesis, not unnaturally, gave offence. He
himself, however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his
concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his
devotion to his view of truth.
For him, the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, which he
## p. 301 (#325) ############################################
a
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
301
found not in Hobbes only but, also, in a more insinuating form,
in Locke. His own ethical writings were intended to show that
the system of man's nature did not point to selfishness. There
are affections in man which have regard to his own interest or
happiness; but there are also social (or, as he calls them, natural)
affections which are directed to the good of the species to which
he belongs; and he labours to prove that there is no conflict
between the two systems. But the mind of man has a still higher
reach. “The natural affection of a rational creature' will take
in the universe, so that he will love all things that have being in
the world : for, in the universal design of things, 'nothing is
supernumerary or unnecessary'; 'the whole is harmony, the
numbers entire, the music perfect. Further, the mind of man
is itself in harmony with the cosmic order. Connate in it is
a 'sense of right and wrong,' to which Shaftesbury gives the name
'the moral sense. ' And it is for his doctrine of the moral sense
that he is now most often remembered. In his own century, his
writings attained remarkable popularity : Berkeley (in Alciphron)
was one of his severest critics; Leibniz and Diderot were among
his warmest admirers.
The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate development,
especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson, a native
of Ulster, was educated at the university of Glasgow, and, in 1729,
returned there as professor of moral philosophy. Among the
more notable British philosophers, he was the first to occupy
a professor's chair; and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart
to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste for
analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, to which the world is
indebted for some of the most valuable produotions of the eighteenth century,
Before his appointment as professor, Hutcheson had published
two volumes An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue (1725), and An Essay on the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Ilustrations on the
Moral Sense (1726)-each containing two treatises. Text-books
on logic, metaphysics and ethics followed; his System of Moral
Philosophy (1755) was published after his death. The ideas of
Shaftesbury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic
form and with an increased tendency towards a psychological
interpretation of them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterested-
ness of benevolence; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments;
he elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speaking
of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain; and he identified
## p. 302 (#326) ############################################
302 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
virtue with universal benevolence: in the tendency towards
general happiness he found the standard of goodness. In this
respect, he was, historically, the forerunner of the utilitarians. In
his first work, he even used the formula—'the greatest happiness
for the greatest numbers'-afterwards, with only a slight verbal
change, made famous by Bentham? He anticipated Bentham,
also, in the attempt to form a calculus of pleasures and pains.
Hutcheson's first work was described on the title-page as a
defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable of the
Bees. In 1705, Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician resident
in London, had published a pamphlet of some four hundred lines
of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd
Honest. This was republished as a volume, in 1714, together with
'an inquiry into the original of moral virtue' and 'remarks' on
the original verses, and, again, in 1723, with further additions—the
whole bearing the title The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits. Mandeville marks a reaction against the too
facile optimism which was common with the deists and to which
Shaftesbury gave philosophical expression, and against the con-
ventions associated with popular morality. But he did not draw
nice distinctions: convention and morality are equally the objects
of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and vice
that gather round the industrial system, and perverse enough to
mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to Hobbes's selfish
theory of human nature, but was without Hobbes's grasp of the
principle of order. He looked upon man as a compound of various
passions, governed by each as it comes uppermost, and he held that
'the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot
upon pride. '
The combination of ability and coarseness with
which this view was developed led to many other answers than
Hutcheson’s. Berkeley replied in Alciphron ; and William Law,
as his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant
pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the
Bees (1723)? Law also made his mark in the deist controversy
by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in which he
1 Although Bentham thought and said (Works, 2, 46, 142) that he got the formula
from Priestley, it is not to be found in Priestley's works, and was, almost certainly,
taken from Beccaria. Beccaria's words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima
felicità divisa nel maggior numero, and these were rendered in the English translation
(1767) by 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'-the exact words which
Bentham first used in 1776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not
established.
2 Cf. chap. XII, p. 311, post.
## p. 303 (#327) ############################################
Joseph Butler
303
anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards worked out by
Butler.
Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two years
(1750—52) of his life, did not make any contributions to pure
metaphysics ; but his is the greatest name both in the theological
and in the ethical thought of the period. He published two books
only-a volume of Fifteen Sermons (1726), which (in particular,
the first three sermons, entitled 'on human nature') express his
ethical system, and The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736).
These works are without any pretentions to literary elegance; and
it is only in rare passages that the usually sombre style glows with
the fire of restrained eloquence. But they are compact of pro-
found thought. The names of other writers are rarely mentioned;
but all their arguments have been considered ; no difficulties are
slurred over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to
the bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about the
reasoning, which needs no grace of diction.
Butler's condensed and weighty argument hardly admits of
summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may be expressed
in the one word 'teleological' Human nature is a system or
.
constitution; the same is true of the world at large; and both
point to an end or purpose. This is his guiding idea, suggested
by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is given ; and it enables him
to rise from a refutation of the selfish theory of Hobbes to the
truth that man's nature or constitution is adapted to virtue. The
old argument about selfish or disinterested affections is raised
to a higher plane. He shows that the characteristic of impulse,
or the particular passions,' is to seek an object, not to seek
pleasure, while pleasure results from the attainment of the object
desired. Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there
are also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses
is judged and their value appraised. On this level, selfishness
is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle of
conduct; beside it stands the moral sense, or, as Butler preferred
to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or 'superintendency '
(a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the very nature of
conscience; and, although Butler labours to prove the harmony
of the dictates of the two principles, it is to conscience that he
assigns ultimate authority. It is true that, in an oft-quoted
sentence, he admits
that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this
6
## p. 304 (#328) ############################################
304 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
[i. e. moral rectitude) or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be
for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.
But, even if we disregard the 'let it be allowed that introduces
the admission, the single sentence is hardly sufficient to justify the
assertion that Butler held the authority of self-love to be equal to,
or higher than, that of conscience. The passage is, rather, a
momentary concession to the selfish spirit of the age; and it has
to be interpreted in the light of his frequent assertions of the
natural superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from
the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it,' he says.
‘Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world!
Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this spiritual
principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion that man is adapted
to virtue. But here his ethics may be said, almost, to stop short,
He does not explain further the nature of conscience in relation
to reason and will, or derive from it, in any systematic way, the
,
content of morality. He was distrustful of any attempt at &
complete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability as the
guide of life.
The same fundamental conception and the same limitation
reappear in Butler's still more famous work, The Analogy. The
world is a system-'a scheme in which means are made use of
to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws. ' It
is neglect of this truth which makes men think that particular
instances of suffering virtue or successful vice are inconsistent
with 'the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of
nature. ' In the constitution and government of the world, nature
and morality are so closely connected as to form a single scheme,
in which it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried
on merely in subserviency to the latter. ' The imperfections of
our knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail.
But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of
nature, and it can be shown that there is no difficulty in the
doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, which has not
a parallel difficulty in the principle common to both sides in the
argument. This is the analogy to the establishment of which in
detail Butler's reasonings are directed. They are so exhaustive,
so thorough and so candid, that critics of all schools are agreed in
regarding his as the final word in a great controversy.
## p. 305 (#329) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS
To speak of mystical thought in the first half of the eighteenth
century in England seems almost a contradiction in terms; for the
predominating character of that age, its outlook on life and its
mind as expressed in philosophy, religion and literature, was in
every way opposed to what is understood by mystical. In litera-
ture, shallowness of thought is often found combined with unrivalled
clearness of expression; in general outlook, the conception of a
mechanical world made by an outside Creator; in religion and
philosophy, the practically universal appeal to 'rational' evidence
as supreme arbiter. In no age, it would seem, have men written
so much about religion, while practising it so little. The one
quality in Scripture which interests writers and readers alike is
its credibility, and the impression gathered by the student of the
religious controversies of the day is that Christianity was held
to exist, not to be lived, but, like a proposition in Euclid, only
to be proved.
This view, however, of the main tendency of the time, though
representative, is not complete. There is also an undercurrent
of thought of a kind that never quite disappears and that helps to
keep the earth green during the somewhat dry and arid seasons
when rationalism or materialism gains the upper hand.
This tendency of thought is called mysticism, and it may be
described in its widest sense as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of fundamental unity, of
alikeness in all things. All mystical thought springs from this as
base. The poet mystic, looking out on the natural world, rejoices
in it with a purer joy and studies it with a deeper reverence than
other men, because he knows it is not something called 'matter'
and alien to him, but that it is as he is—spirit itself made visible.
The mystic philosopher, instead of attempting to reason or analyse
or deduce, seeks merely to tell of his vision; whereupon, words
20
а
E. L. IX,
CH. XII.
## p. 306 (#330) ############################################
306
William Law and the Mystics
generally fail him, and he becomes obscure. The religious mystic
has for goal the union of himself with God, the actual contact
with the Divine Presence, and he conceives this possible because
man is 'a God though in the germ,' and, therefore, can know God
through that part of his nature which is akin to Him.
There were many strains of influence which, in the seventeenth
century, tended to foster this type of thought in England. The
little group of Cambridge Platonists gave new expression to great
neo-Platonic ideas, the smouldering embers of which had been
fanned to flame in the ardent forge of the Florentine renascence? ;
but, in addition to this older thought, there were not only new
influences from without but, also, new conditions within which
must be indicated.
A strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam,
whither the first body of exiled separatists had gone in 1593.
Elizabeth, thinking to quell independent religious thought at
home, had planted nurseries of freedom in Holland, which waxed
strong and sent back over seas in the next century a persistent
stream of opinion and literature To this can be traced the
root-ideas which animated alike quakers, seekers, Behmenists,
anabaptists, familists and numberless other sects which em-
bodied a reaction against forms and ceremonies that, in ceasing
to be understood, had become lifeless. They all agreed in
deeming it more important to spiritualize this life than to
dogmatize about the life to come. They all believed in the 'inner
light,' in the immediate revelation of God within the soul as the
supreme and all-important experience. They all held that salvation
was the effect of a spiritual principle, a seed quickened invisibly
by God, and, consequently, they considered learning useless, or
even mischievous, in dealing with the things of the spirit. So far,
these various sects were mystical in thought; though, with the
exception of familists, Behmenists and seekers, they cannot un-
reservedly be classed as mystics. Large numbers of these three
sects, however, became children of light,' thus helping to give
greater prominence to the strong mystical element in early
quakerism.
It only needed the release from the crushing hand of Laud,
and the upheaval of the civil war, to set free the religious revival
а
6
1 See vol. VIII, chap. X.
* For an interesting detailed account of this phase of religious life, with full
references to original documents, see Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909, by Jones,
R. M. , chaps, xvi and XVII.
## p. 307 (#331) ############################################
a
6
Seventeenth Century Mysticism 307
which had long been seething, and to distract England, for a time,
with religious excitement. Contemporary writers refer with horror
to the swarm of 'sects, heresies and schisms' which now came into
being, and Milton alone seems to have understood that the
turmoil was but the outward sign of a great spiritual awakening?
Unhappily, there were few who, with him, could perceive that the
'opinion of good men is but knowledge in the making,' and that
these many sects were but various aspects of one main movement
towards freedom and individualism, towards a religion of the heart
rather than of the head. The terrible persecutions of the quakers
under Charles II% tended to withdraw them from active life, and
to throw them in the direction of a more personal and introspective
religion". It was then that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon,
Madame Guyon and Fénelon became popular, and were much read
among a certain section of thinkers, while the teachings of Jacob
Boehme, whose works had been put into English between the years
1644 and 1692, bore fruit in many ways. Whether directly or
indirectly, they permeated the thought of the founders of the
Society of Friends, they were widely read both in cottage and
study? and they produced a distinct Behmenite sects. Their
influence can be seen in the writings of Thomas Tryon, John
Pordage, George Cheyne, Francis Lee, Jane Lead, Thomas Bromley,
Richard Roach and others; in the foundation and transactions of the
1 See, for instance, Pagitt's Heresiography, 1645, dedication to the lord mayor;
or Edwards, who, in his Gangraena, 1646, names 176, and, later, 23 more, 'errors,
heresies, blasphemies. '
? Areopagitica, 1644.
3 13,562 Friends suffered imprisonment during the years 1661–97, while 198 were
transported overseas and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. See Inner Life of
the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by Barclay, pp. 474_8.
• For further observations on early quakerism in its connection with literature,
see vol. VIII, chap. iv.
6 Charles I, who, shortly before his death, read Boehme's Forty Questions, just then
translated into English, much admired it. See a most interesting MS letter in Latin
from Francis Lee to P. Poiret in Dr Williams's library, C 5. 30.
8. Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books that the Quakers bought, for there
is the Principle or Foundation of their Religion. ' A Looking Glass for George Fox,
1667, p. 5. But Boehme was not wholly approved of even among the early quakers;
see Inner Life of the Religious Societies, p. 479. For the influence of Boehme on
Fox and Winstanley, see Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 494—5; cf. , also, Fox's
Journal for 1648, 8th ed. , vol. 1, pp. 28–9, with Boehme's Three Principles, chap. xx,
88 39—42; also, life of J. B. in . Law's edition,' vol. I, p. xiii, or the Signatura Rerum.
7 See Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works, vol. VII, pp. 84, 85 ; Byrom's Journal,
vol. 1, part 2, pp. 560, 598; vol. II, part 2, pp. 193, 216, 236, 285, 310–11, 328,
377, 380.
8 See Richard Baxter's Autobiography, Reliquiae Bacterianae, 1696, part 1,
P. 77.
20-2
## p. 308 (#332) ############################################
308
William Law and the Mystics
Philadelphian society; in the gibes of satirists? ; in forgotten
tracts; in the increase of interest in alchemy”; in the voluminous
MS commentaries of Freher, or even in Newton's great discovery;
for it is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion
first reached Newton through his eager study of Boehme.
The tracing of this mystical thought, however, during the
period under discussion and later, mainly among obscure sects
and little-known thinkers, would not form part of a history of
English literature, were it not that our greatest prose mystic lived
and wrote in the same age.
William Law had a curiously paradoxical career. After
graduating as B. A. and M. A. at Cambridge, in 1708 and 1712,
and being, in 1711, ordained and elected fellow of his college
(Emmanuel), he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to
George I, and thus lost his fellowship and vocation. Though an
ardent high churchman, he was the father of methodism. Though
deprived of employment in his church, he wrote the book which,
of all others for a century to come, had the most profound and
far-reaching influence upon the religious thought of his country.
Though a sincere, and, so he believed, an orthodox Christian, he was
the classic exponent of Boehme, a thinker abhorred and mistrusted
alike by eighteenth century divines and by Wesleyan leaders.
About the year 1727, Edward Gibbon selected Law as tutor for
his only son, the father of the historian, and, in 1730, when his pupil
went abroad, Law lived on with the elder Gibbon in the 'spacious
house with gardens and land at Putney,' where he was 'the much
honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family!
During these years at Putney, Law's reputation as a writer
became assured. He was already known as the ablest defender of
nonjuror principles; the publication of A Serious Call in 1729
had brought him renown, and he was revered and consulted by
an admiring band of disciples. His later life was spent at his
birthplace, King's Cliffe, near Stamford. He settled there in 1737
or 1740, and was joined by Hester Gibbon, the historian's aunt,
and Mrs Hutcheson, a widow with considerable means.
