No More Learning

The chapters, however, which deal more specifically with human
nature are a genuine and important contribution to the litera-
ture of mind and morals. The writer was as innocent of Hume
as was Hartley; he criticised Berkeley, though seldom with insight
and never with sympathy; and he took Locke as his master. But
he was not a slavish follower; it would be difficult to instance
finer or more exhaustive criticism than his examination of the
Lockean view that all action has for its motive the most pressing
uneasiness. His moral doctrine is, perhaps, still more remarkable


## p. 344 (#370) ############################################

344
Philosophers
for the candour and elaboration with which he discussed the
problem which faced all followers of Locke—the consistency of
an analysis of action in terms of personal pleasure and pain with
a theory of morality in which benevolence is supreme. Herein, he
provided most of the material afterwards made use of by Paley.
Into the details of his teaching it is impossible to enter. But,
perhaps, it is not too much to say that only his diffuseness has
prevented him from becoming a classic. The mere mass of the
book is deterrent. Yet he would be an unlucky reader who could
spend half-an-hour over its pages without finding something to
arrest his attention and even to enthral his interest. The author
sees mankind and the human lot with a shrewd but kindly eye;
his stores of illustration are inexhaustible and illuminate subjects
which in other hands would be dull; even the subtlest points
are made clear by a style which is free and simple and varied ;
there is never any trace of sentimentality; but there are passages
of humour and of pathos worthy of Goldsmith.
Richard Price, a native of Glamorgan, who became a unitarian
minister in London, left his mark on more than one department
of thought. His Observations on Reversionary Payments (1771) a
made a distinct advance in the theory of life assurance.
His
Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt (1771)
is said to have contributed to the reestablishment of the sinking
fund. He was drawn into the current of revolutionary politics and
became a leading exponent of their ideas. His Observations on
the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and
the Justice and Policy of the War with America made him famous
in two continents. The preface to the first edition was dated
8 February, that to the fifth edition 12 March, 1776. Additional
Observations on the same subject appeared in 1777, and a General
Introduction and Supplement to the two tracts in 1778. The
revolution in France was the occasion for A Discourse on the
Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789; and this he
closed with a Nunc dimittis: ‘After sharing in the benefits of one
Revolution, I have been spared to be a witness to two other Revo-
lutions, both glorious. ' This Discourse had the further distinction
of provoking Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
But, famous as his political partisanship made him at the time,
Price has a better title to be remembered for his first work,
A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1757; 3rd edn,
revised and enlarged, 1787).
a


## p. 345 (#371) ############################################

Price and Priestley
345
Price has the mathematician's interest in intellectual concepts
and his power of dealing with abstractions. In philosophy, he is a
successor of Cudworth and Clarke, and the theories of knowledge
of both Locke and Hume are attacked at the roots. The under-
standing or reason (he argues) has its own ideas, for which it does
not depend upon sense-impression. Necessity, possibility, identity,
cause are instances of such abstract ideas. They are 'intelligible
objects' discovered by the eye of the mind. ' Reason is thus 'the
source of new ideas'; and among them are the ideas of right and
wrong; these are simple ideas and perceived by an immediate
'intuition of the understanding: 'morality is a branch of neces-
sary truth. ' The system which Price bases on this view has become,
more than any other, the type of modern intuitional ethics.
6
6
Joseph Priestley had many points of sympathy with Price. They
belonged to the same profession--the unitarian ministry—and they
were prominent on the same side in the revolutionary politics of
the day. But, in spite of this similarity and of their personal
friendship, they represent different attitudes of mind. Price was
a mathematician, familiar with abstract ideas, and an intellectualist
in philosophy. Priestley was a chemist, busied in experiments, a
convinced disciple of the empirical philosophy and a supporter of
materialism. He was the author of The History and present State
of Electricity (1767), and, afterwards, of numerous papers and
treatises on chemical subjects, which recorded the results of his
original investigations and have established his fame as a man of
science. He came early under the influence of Hartley and pub-
lished a simplification of his book-omitting the doctrine of
vibrations and laying stress solely on the principle of the asso-
ciation of ideas; but he rejected Hartley's view of mind as an
immaterial principle and held that the powers termed mental are
the result of such an organical structure as that of the brain. '
His philosophical views were expressed and defended in Disqui-
sitions relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), in The Doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity (1777) and in A Free Discussion (1778) on
these topics with Price; and he also published (1774) An Exami-
nation of the doctrines of Reid and others of the new school of
Scottish philosophers. Of greater interest than these, however, is
the short Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768).
This forms a contrast to the a priori arguments in which Price
delighted-although its practical tendency is the same. It pro-
pounds 'one general idea,' namely, 'that all people live in
6


## p. 346 (#372) ############################################

346
Philosophers
society for their mutual advantage,' and draws the conclusion
that their happiness is 'the great standard by which every
thing relating to that state must finally be determined. ' Priestley
thus set the example, which Bentham followed, of taking utili-
tarian considerations for the basis of a philosophical radicalism,
instead of the dogmas about natural rights common with other
revolutionary thinkers of the period. He did not anticipate Bentham
in using the famous utilitarian formula (as he is often said to have
done”), but he did precede him in taking the happiness of the
majority as the test in every political question, and he made it
easier for Bentham to use the same standard in judging private
conduct.
In a somewhat similar way, the exhaustive analyses of Tucker
led to the theological utilitarianism of William Paley, sometime
fellow of Christ's college, Cambridge, and senior wrangler in 1763.
Paley was not a writer of marked originality. If, in his Principles
of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), he owed much to
Tucker, in his View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), he
depended on the Criterion (1752) of John Douglas, bishop of
Salisbury--a reply to Hume's argument against miracles—and on
Nathaniel Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History (1723—55);
and, in his Natural Theology (1804), he drew much material from
John Ray's The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the
Creation (1691), from William Derham's Physico-Theology (1713)
and from the work of the Dutchman Nieuwentyt, which had been
translated into English in 1730 as The Religious Philosopher.
His Horæ Paulino (1790) is said to be the most original, and to
have been the least successful, of his publications. These four
books form a consistent system. Probably, no English writer has
ever excelled Paley in power of marshalling arguments or in
clearness of reasoning ; and these merits have given some of his
works a longer life as academic text-books than their other
merits can justify. Paley was, essentially, a man of his time and
his views were its views, though expressed with a skill which was
all his own.
In his Moral Philosophy, there is no trace of the vacillation at
critical points which marks most of his empirical predecessors. The
only criticism to which it lies open is that morality vanishes when
reduced to a calculation of selfish interests. A man's own happiness
is always his motive; he can seek the general happiness only when
I See ante, vol. IX, p. 302 note.


## p. 347 (#373) ############################################

Paley. Thomas Reid
347
that way of acting is made for his own happiness also; and this
can be done only by the rewards and punishments of a lawgiver.
Locke distinguished three different sorts of law, and Paley followed
him rather closely. But the law of honour is insufficient, as having
little regard to the general happiness; and the law of the land is
inadequate for it omits many duties as not fit objects for compulsion,
and it permits many crimes because incapable of definition; there
remains, therefore, only the law of Scripture (that is, of God) which,
alone, is obviously sufficient. Hence, the famous definition, ‘Virtue
is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and
for the sake of everlasting happiness. '
This conclusion leads up to the argument of his later works.
His Horce Paulince and Evidences have to demonstrate the credi-
bility of the New Testament writings and the truth of the Christian
revelation; and this position assumes the existence of God which,
in his Natural Theology, he proves from the marks of design in
the universe and, in particular, in the human body. In these works,
we see how complete is the shifting of interest to which reference
has been previously made'. Attention is concentrated on the
question of external evidences, and the content of religion is almost
entirely overlooked. God is the superhuman watchmaker who has
put the world-machine together with surprising skill, and inter-
venes miraculously, on rare occasions, when the works are getting
out of order. Paley developed a familiar analogy with unequalled
impressiveness; he should not be blamed for failing to anticipate
the effect upon his argument which has been produced by the
biological theory of natural selection; but he did not pause to
examine the underlying assumptions of the analogy which he
worked out; he had no taste for metaphysics; and his mind moved
easily only within the range of the scientific ideas of his own day.
a
The most powerful reply to Hume-indeed, the only com-
petent attempt to refute his philosophy as a whole-came from
a group of scholars in Aberdeen who had formed themselves
into a philosophical society. Of this group, Thomas Reid, a
professor in King's college, was the most notable member, and
he was the founder of the school of Scottish philosophy known
as the commonsense school. With him were associated George
Campbell and James Beattie', professors (the former afterwards
principal) in Marischal college, as well as other men of mark in
1 See ante, vol. IX, p. 289.
? As to Beattie's poetry of. chap. VII, pp. 154 f. , ante.


## p. 348 (#374) ############################################

348
Philosophers
their day. The earliest contribution to the controversy-Campbell's
Dissertation on Miracles (1763)-dealt with a side issue; but it is
of interest for its examination of the place of testimony in know-
ledge; whereas experience (it is argued) leads to general truths
and is the foundation of philosophy, testimony is the foundation
of history, and it is capable of giving absolute certainty. Campbell's
later work, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), contains much
excellent psychology. Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Im-
mutability of Truth (1770) is not a work of originality or of
distinction; but it is a vigorous polemic; it brought him great
temporary fame, and he has been immortalised by the art of
Reynolds as serenely clasping his book whilst Hume and other
apostles of error are being hurled into limbo. About the same
time, James Oswald, a Perthshire clergyman, published An
Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion (1766—72).
Reid, Beattie and Oswald were placed together by Priestley
for the purpose of his Examination; and the same collocation
of names was repeated by Kant; but it is entirely unjust to
Reid.
Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of
Common Sense was published in 1764 ; shortly afterwards, he
removed to Glasgow, to fill the chair vacated by Adam Smith.
His later and more elaborate works—Essays on the Intellectual
Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man-
appeared in 1785 and 1788 respectively. In his philosophical
work, Reid has the great merit of going to the root of the matter,
and he is perfectly fair-minded in his criticism. He admits the
validity of Hume's reasonings; he does not appeal to the vulgar
against his conclusions ; but he follows the argument back to its
premises and tests the truth of these premises. This is his chief
.
claim to originality. He finds that the sceptical results of Hume
are legitimate inferences from the ideal theory' which Locke took
over from Descartes, and he puts to himself the question, what
evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my
knowledge are ideas in my own mind ? ' He points out (what is
undoubtedly true) that neither Locke nor Berkeley nor Hume
produced any evidence for the assumption. They started with
.
the view that the immediate object of knowledge is something in
the mind called ideas; and they were consequently unable to
prove the existence of anything outside the mind or even of mind
itself. 'Ideas,' says Reid, seem to have something in their nature
6
6


## p. 349 (#375) ############################################

6
6
The Principles of Commonsense 349
unfriendly to other existences. ' He solves the difficulty by denying
the existence of ideas. There are no such 'images of external
‘
things' in the mind, but sensation is accompanied by an act of
perception, and the object of perception is the real external
thing.
Hume had said that his difficulties would vanish if our percep-
tions inhered in something simple and individual, or if the mind
perceived some real connection among them; and Reid proposes
a positive theory of knowledge which will give the required assur-
ance on this point. Every sensation is accompanied by a ‘natural
and original judgment' which refers the sensation to mind as its
act. We do not need, first of all, to get the two things 'mind and
'sensation and then to connect them; 'one of the related things-
to wit sensation-suggests to us both the correlate and the relation. '
Reid's terminology is not happy. The word 'suggests' is badly
.
chosen, though he distinguishes this natural suggestion' from the
suggestion which is the result of experience and habit. And his
term 'common sense' has given rise to more serious misunder-
standings, for which he is by no means blameless. Even his
doctrine of immediate perception is far from clear. But, if we
read him sympathetically, we may see that he had hold of a
truth of fundamental importance. The isolated impressions or
ideas with which Locke and Hume began are fictions; they do
not correspond to anything real in experience. The simplest
portion of our experience is not separate from its context in
this way; it implies a reference to mind and to an objective
order, and thus involves the relations which Reid ascribed to
'natural suggestion' or 'common sense. '
>


## p. 350 (#376) ############################################

CHAPTER XV
DIVINES
6
With the beginning of the eighteenth century, we reach a period
in English theological literature of which the character is not less
definite because there were individual writers who struggled against
it. The matter and the style alike were placid and unemotional,
rational rather than learned, tending much more to the common-
place than to the pedantic, and, above all, abhorrent of that
dangerous word, and thing, enthusiasm. Johnson's definition gives
a significant clue to the religious literature in which his con-
temporaries had been educated. Enthusiasm, in his Dictionary,
is (from Locke) 'a vain belief of private revelation, a vain con-
fidence of divine favour,' to which even the nonconformists, if one
may judge by the subjects of their books, had, in the early
eighteenth century, abandoned all special claim; and, also, it im-
plied, in Johnson's own view, 'heat of imagination' and 'violence
of passion. ' From this, the main current of theological writing,
for more than fifty years, ran conspicuously away. The mystics,
such as William Law, as has been shown in an earlier chapter",
were strange exceptions, rari nantes in gurgite vasto of this
decorous self-restraint or complacency. It was not till count
Zinzendorf and the Moravians completed the impression which
A Serious Call had made on the heart of John Wesley that the
literature of religion received a new impetus and inspiration ; and
the old school fought long and died hard. It was not till the word
enthusiasm could be used in their condign praise that English
theologians began to feel again something of the fire and poetry of
their subject, and, once more, to scale its heights and sound its
depths. And yet, as we say this, we are confronted by evident
1 See vol. ix, chap. XII, ante, and cf. Byrom's poem 'Enthusiasm,' with introduction
on the use of the word, in The Poems of John Byrom, ed. Ward, A. W. , vol. 11 (1895).
See, also, ibid. vol. III (1912), p. 113 and note.


## p. 351 (#377) ############################################

Samuel Johnson. Atterbury 351
exceptions. No one can deny the power of Butler’s writing, what-
ever it may be the fashion to assert as to the depth of his thought;
and, while there was fire enough in Atterbury, in Wilson there
was certainly the delicate aroma of that intimate sincerity which
has in all literature an irresistible charm. Some earlier writers
may be left aside, such as Richard Cumberland, who, though a
bishop, was rather a philosopher than a theologian, and Samuel
Johnson, the Ben Jochanan of Dryden, whose divinity was not
more than an excrescence on his fame as a whig pamphleteer who
suffered excessively for his opinions. His manner of writing was
unquestionably savage. Julian the Apostate: Being a Short
Account of his Life; the sense of the Primitive Christians about
his Succession; and their Behaviour towards him. Together with
a comparison of Popery and Paganism (1682), is more vehement
and obnoxious than most of those bitter attacks on James duke
of York with which the press groaned during the last years of
Charles II ; yet its author hardly deserved degradation from the
priesthood, the pillory and whipping from Newgate to Tyburn.
As the chaplain of Lord William Russell, Johnson might be ex-
pected to speak boldly: and his writing was full of sound and
fury, as a characteristic sentence a solitary one, be it observed
- from his Reflections on the History of Passive Obedience may
show.
I have reason to enter a just Complaint against the pretended Church-of-
England Men of the two last Reigns, who not only left me the grinning
Honour of maintaining the establish'd Doctrine of the Church all alone,
(which I kept alive, till it pleased God to make it a means of our Deliverance,
with the perpetual hazard of my own life for many years, and with suffering
Torments and Indignitys worse than Death) but also beside this, were very
zealous in running me down, and very officious in degrading me, as an
A postate from the Church of England for this very Service: While at the
same time, they themselves were making their Court with their own Renegado
Doctrine of Passive Obedience; and wearing out all Pulpits with it, as if it
had been, not only the First and Great Commandment, but the Second too;
and cramming it down the reluctant throats of dying Patriots, as the Terms
of their Salvation.
We may begin the tale with Francis Atterbury. He was born
in 1663, and his upbringing, at the quiet Buckinghamshire rectory
of Milton Keynes, by a father who had been suspect of disloyalty
for his compliance with the commonwealth and, probably, atoned
for it by an exaggerated attachment to the restored Stewarts, was
in the strictest principles of the establishment in church and state.
A Westminster boy and student of Christ Church, he became pro-
minent among the scholars of his day, and his contribution to the


## p. 352 (#378) ############################################

352
Divines
6
Phalaris controversy made him famous. He took holy orders in
1687, and, before long, reached high preferment. Soon after the
beginning of the century, he was archdeacon of Totnes and
chaplain in ordinary to queen Anne. He became dean of Carlisle
(1704), of Christ Church (1712) and of Westminster and bishop
of Rochester (1713). Seven years later, he was imprisoned in the
Tower, without much evidence against him, for having been con-
cerned in a plot to restore the Stewarts. Banishment followed,
and he definitely threw in his lot with the exiled family. He
lived till 1732. For fifty years, he was an influential, though not
a voluminous, writer. Politically, he was vehement; in religion,
he was wholehearted ; and the two interests seemed to him in-
separable. What weighed most with him in politics, truly says his
latest biographer', was 'the consequence that the Whigs' lati-
tudinarianism would have, and as a matter of fact did have, on
the Church of England. He was, indeed, from first to last, a
'church of England man,' of the type which the sunshine of queen
Anne's favour ripened. The Hanoverian type of protestantism
was uncongenial to bim : be distrusted and feared its rationalising
influence. In his view, as he said in the dedication of his sermons
to Trelawny (famous as one of the seven bishops), 'the Fears of
Popery were scarce remov'd, when Heresy began to diffuse its
Venom. ' Thus, he came to the position which Addison expressed
in an epigram, but which, perhaps, was not so inconsistent as it
seemed—that the Church of England will always be in danger
till it has a Popish king for its defender. '
If his contribution to the Phalaris controversy best exhibits
his wit, and his political writing his trenchant diction, his sermons
may, perhaps, be regarded as his permanent contributions to
English literature. There is no conspicuous merit in their style
or in their argument; but they are lucid, argumentative and,
on occasion, touched by real feeling. Perhaps, his sincerity never
appeared to more advantage than in the quiet pathos of his
Discourse on the death of the Lady Cutts (1698), the opening
passage of which gave at least a hint to Sterne for a very famous
6
sermon.
Much the same may be said of Atterbury's friend George
Smalridge, who succeeded him as dean of Christ Church.
Smalridge was a less active Jacobite and a less vehement
i See vol. ix, chap. XIII, p. 333, ante.
Beeching, H. C. , Francis Atterbury (1909), p. 263.


## p. 353 (#379) ############################################

Smalridge. Wake
353
man, and died peaceably, though in disgrace, as bishop of
Bristol. He
toasted the Pretender in the privacy of his rooms at Christ Church, but gave
him no other support; recognising, no doubt, that anything but a Platonic
affection was incompatible with the Church principles of non-resistance to
established authority, of which he and Atterbury had been among the fore-
most champions.
Some of this quietude gives tone to his sermons, which Johnson
praised for their elegant style; and Addison wrote in 1718
he is to me the most candid and agreeable of all the bishops. '
Dedicated to Caroline princess of Wales—who, as queen, had a
striking talent for the discovery of clever clergymen- and produced
in print for an extraordinarily large number of subscribers, the
sermons are more remarkable for sound sense than for eloquence
or argument. The English is pure and unaffected ; Addison, per-
haps, is the model; but his excellence is far from being attained.
Smalridge was indignant when some one thought to flatter him by
suggesting that he wrote A Tale of a Tub: a very moderate
knowledge of his style should have convinced the most obtuse
that he could not have written the Tale if he would. In truth, he
is typical of his period. The theological writings of the day had
none of the learning, or the attempt at it, which had marked
the Caroline epoch; they had no charm of language, no eloquence
or passion. The utmost they aimed at was lucidity, and, when
this was achieved, we are left wondering whether what could be
80 expressed was worth expressing at all. Atterbury had stood
alone against the benumbing influence of Tillotson.
It needed controversy to stir the placid contentment of the early
Hanoverian dignitaries. And, of controversy, vehement enough,
they had their share. If Sacheverell did not contribute anything
of value to English literature, the same cannot be said of Wake
or even, perhaps, of Hoadly. In 1715, William Wake succeeded
Tenison as archbishop. His predecessor had possessed a certain
skill in anti-Roman controversy, and he had the very rare accom-
plishment of being able to write a good collect; but Wake was
altogether his superior. In history, his translation of the Apostolic
Fathers and his very important contributions to the discussion on
the powers of convocation give him a place in the short list of
English archbishops who have been learned men. Nor was his
learning anglican only; he was better known in Germany and
France, as well as in the eastern church, than any of his successors
till quite modern times. As a controversialist, he was lucid and
E. L. X.
CH. XV.
23


## p. 354 (#380) ############################################

354
Divines
graceful; but when he hit he could hit hard. The convocation
controversy, though it employed the powers of Atterbury, Burnet,
Hody, Kennett and Matthew Hutton of Aynho, hardly belongs to
the history of literature. But it gave great opportunity for the
display of that kind of antiquarian knowledge in which many of the
English clergy of the time excelled. Few of those who joined
in it were not, at the same time, writers of eminence in their
own fields : Wake was distinguished for his studies of the
Apostolic Fathers, Hody as a Hebraist, Kennett, in that admirable
book The Parochial Antiquities of Ambrosden, a very model for
local historians.
And the convocation controversy was soon
merged in the discussion as to the orthodoxy of certain eccle-
siastics, some prominent, some undistinguished, which began with
Hoadly and his views of church authority.
Benjamin Hoadly was a clergyman in whom the objectionable
features of Gilbert Burnet were exaggerated to the verge of
caricature. He was a whig and a follower of the government
in power first of all, a controversialist in consequence, and only
after that was he an ecclesiastic. As a political writer, he opposed
Atterbury and Blackall in 1709—10; on the Hanoverian succession
being accomplished, he was rewarded by the see of Bangor,
which he hardly ever visited. In 1717, his famous sermon entitled
The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ caused the acid
controversy which was named after him; A Preservative against
the Principles and Practices of the Nonjurors, a treatise published
by him in 1716, called forth the drastic criticism of William Law;
and A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament
(1735), the massive treatise of Waterland on the doctrine of the
Eucharist. He seemed to live for dispute and preferment; and
he accepted both with the placid dignity which is inimitably
rendered in Hogarth's immortal portrait. As a writer, he carries
the sobriety of Tillotson to the extreme of pompous dulness; it is
safe to say that the volumes of his sermons and other argumen-
tative works which line many old libraries have rested for a cen-
tury and a half undisturbed by any reader's hand. Their manner,
which is devoid of any original touch, contrasts strangely with
their matter. Hoadly's theory of churchmanship reduced itself to
pure individualism tempered by toleration. He was a conscientious
advocate for the repeal of the whole range of test acts. He was,
in fact, a much better thinker in matters of state than in those
which belonged more directly to his own profession. From under


## p. 355 (#381) ############################################

Hoadly. The Nonjurors 355
the cloud of words and the skilful tangle of qualifications in which
his thought is enveloped, there emerges the certainty that he had
no coherent idea of a religious society at all. If he had points of
affinity with Thomas Arnold, he is, perhaps, not very far away from
the reforming theologians or even the theorists of the Middle
Age. Church and state are one in his mind; but it is the state
which turns church communion into something quite vague, general
and ultimately unmeaning; yet he has not risen to the idea of a
federation; he remains in a conception of essential fluidity. On
the other hand, his advocacy of toleration, on true principles, was,
if not an advance in theory on the position of several earlier
English writers, of different parties, at least one in actual prac-
tice, before whig statesmen as well as anglican bishops were pre-
pared to accept it. Hoadly became bishop of Winchester in 1734
and held the see till his death in 1761. It cannot be said that he
rendered any service to the church, and the controversies of which
he was the centre had no small share in that eclipse of her literary
glory, which was the conspicuous characteristic of the Hanoverian,
as opposed to the Stewart, age.
If Hoadly typifies the comfortable Erastianism of the leaders of
the establishment, William Law's enthusiasm and depth were
reproduced in not a few of the later nonjurors. It was some
time before the inspiring self-sacrifice of Sancroft and Hickes and
their colleagues died down into the sordid insignificance which
Johnson professed to have witnessed. The spirit of literary
audacity which had fled the established church was still to be
found among the nonjurors. The two Thomas Wagstaffes—the
father (1645—1712) nonjuring bishop of Ipswich, the son (1692–
1770) English chaplain to the banished Stewarts-were writers of
considerable power. The Vindication, by the pen of the elder,
of Charles l's authorship of Eikon Basilike, followed by A
Defence of the Vindication, is a work of considerable, though
not of convincing, force. Both were noted as antiquaries, and
belong, indeed, to the school, as we may call it, of Carte, Leslie,
Rawlinson and Hearne. Thomas Deacon, again, was a scholar
of no mean order with a range of theological knowledge unusual
in his day. By profession a physician, he was ordained by the
nonjuring bishop Gandy in 1716, and consecrated, probably
in 1733, by Archibald Campbell, bishop of Aberdeen, whom
Dr Johnson described as 'very curious and inquisitive but
credulous. The nonjurors (as has been seen in the case of
23-2


## p. 356 (#382) ############################################

356
Divines
Hickes) were close students of liturgiology, and the revised
communion office of the 'Usagers,' with the Compleat Devotions
of 1734, bear witness to the accuracy of Deacon's study and in-
fluenced the important liturgies of the Scottish and American
churches of the present day.
As may seem natural for men who found themselves compelled
to live more and more apart from the general religious and even
the social life of their day, the nonjurors turned to antiquarianism
as a solace for their seclusion as well as a support for their
doctrines. The older race of those who withdrew from com-
munion with the national church were often men of great learn-
ing as well as steadfast principle. Henry Dodwell is a typical
example. He held a fellowship at Trinity college, Dublin, but
resigned it, being unwilling to take holy orders. He then resided
in England, in London or Oxford at first, in later years in Berk-
shire. From 1688 to 1691, he was Camden professor of history at
Oxford. He was deprived because he would not take the oaths;
but William III is said to have declared that he would not
make him a martyr—'He has set his heart on being one and
I have set mine on disappointing him. ' Hearne considered him
'the greatest scholar in Europe when he died,' and even such an
opponent as White Kennett respected his learning. His writings
are partly 'occasional' and vehement, partly deliberate and
scholastic. To the former class belongs what he wrote about
the schism; to the latter, his work on Irenaeus and on ancient
history in general. It cannot be said that he left any permanent
impression on English literature or scholarship, though his writings
were long remembered and utilised by lesser men. His friends
Nelson, Hearne, Cherry and the rest preserved his memory in
their circle of devout ecclesiasticism. But the whole mass of the
nonjurors' literary output, even work so good as that of Brett and
Leslie, belongs to a backwater in English letters. One fragrant
survival, however, may be mentioned here for its exquisite and
simple pathos, A Pattern for Young Students in the University,
set forth in the Life of Mr Ambrose Bonwicke, sometime Scholar
of St John's College in Cambridge (1729)". It is the record of a
young nonjuror's life, told by his father, in an unaffected, but
deeply touching, manner which no man of letters of the day
could have surpassed. One is tempted to put beside it, for their
record of devotion to duty in circumstances very different, the
Journals of the Scottish bishop Robert Forbes (in 1762 and
· Edited by Mayor, J. E. B. , Cambridge, 1870.


## p. 357 (#383) ############################################

Bingham. Thomas Sherlock
357
1770)', a divine whose 'primitive piety' and ecclesiastical prin-
ciples were supported by the same doctrines of church obedience
as directed the life of the young Cambridge scholar. Men such
as these must in all ages live remote from public haunt. Joseph
Bingham, the greatest ecclesiastical antiquary of his time and for
long after it, was incessantly active as a writer, but (save that he
was unjustly stigmatised as a heretic and had to resign his fellow-
ship at Oxford in consequence) was entirely neglected by those
whose business it should have been to know what scholars wrote.
His Origines Ecclesiasticae, or The Antiquities of the Christian
Church (published in successive volumes from 1708 to 1722) is
a mine of learning, to which writers everywhere had recourse till
the Cambridge scholars of the later nineteenth century began
the critical rewriting of the history of the early church. Bingham,
it may be said, did for church history what Pearson did for the
creed. He showed what it meant at the time of its beginning and
he illustrated its growth by a store of learning which none in his
own time could rival, and few since have surpassed. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century it was, certainly, in learn-
ing rather than in pure letters that the clerus Angliae preserved
its reputation.
>
Returning from this interesting by-path, we find the main field
of theology in possession of writers of scarcely a single literary
merit. The Annual Register, when it commemorated Hoadly on
his death, allowed him the virtue that, in all his controversies
with his brethren (‘and no one surely ever held more'), he never
lost his equanimity of temper or descended to any railing ac-
cusation. In the same way, Thomas Sherlock, bishop of London,
was praised in that
he too had his controversies, and those carried on with warmth and spirit, but
without any injury to his temper, or any interruption to his thoughts and
mind.
He
was, indeed, an opponent of Hoadly even more persistent than
Law. He was chairman of the committee of the lower house of
convocation which considered the book that was the fons et origo
mali ; and, though, owing to the suspension of the sessions of con-
vocation, the report was never published, its substance, no doubt,
appeared in Remarks on the Bishop of Bangor's treatment of the
Clergy and Convocations, issued by him anonymously in 1717,
1 Edited by Craven, J. B. , 1876.


## p. 358 (#384) ############################################

358
Divines
and in other pamphlets. Sherlock's politics, in early life, were,
like those of his more famous father (master of the Temple and
dean of St Paul's), not above suspicion with those in power : the
wits compared the two thus :
As Sherlock the elder with jure divine
Did not comply till the battle of Boyne;
So Sherlock the younger still made it a question
Which side he should take till the battle of Preston.
But, in later life, he was a steady supporter of Walpole, and his
politics even more than his preaching brought him to high place.
He was appointed bishop of London in 1748, and it is said that he
had declined even higher preferment. Before this, nearly all his
important literary work had been done. He had engaged in the
deist controversy in 1725, and his Trial of the Witnesses of the
Resurrection of Jesus (1729) was a very notable apologetic, on
quite modern lines, in answer to Woolston. Next to Butler, he
was the most powerful opponent, and the most rational, whom the
deists encountered. His last work, which enjoyed the popularity
of a modern novel, was A Letter to the Clergy and People of
London and Westminster on occasion of the late Earthquake
(1750). Nichols, the bookseller, tells that 100,000 copies were sold
in less than a month; and the trenchant vigour of its denun-
ciation of vice and appeal for amendment make it still worthy of
perusal.
But books and pamphlets such as Sherlock's are at least on the
fringe of that sad class of writings which Lamb stigmatised as
biblia abiblia. We rise far above it when we come to the work
of men so different as bishop Wilson, bishop Butler and Daniel
Waterland. The three men were profoundly different. Wilson,
in much of his thought and life, was a survival of the early
seventeenth century and, indeed, of far earlier times. Waterland,
in many respects, was typical of the early eighteenth century.
Butler had affinities with the nineteenth-with Newman, for
example, and Gladstone. The life of Wilson was uneventful.
He took his degree from Trinity college, Dublin, and was or-
dained in the church of Ireland, served a Lancashire curacy,
became chaplain to the earl of Derby and preceptor to his son at
the salary of thirty pounds a year, to which was added the master-
ship of the Latham almshouse, twenty pounds more-whereupon
he had 'an income far beyond his expectations, far beyond his
wishes, except as it increased his ability to do good'-and, in


## p. 359 (#385) ############################################

Wilson.
Waterland
359
1697, was appointed by his patron to the bishopric of Sodor and
Man, in spite of his refusal. At Bishop's court, Kirk Michael,
he lived, for nearly sixty years, the life of a primitive saint, devoted
entirely to works of piety, the father of his people, not neglecting
to punish as well as to protect. His collected works were not
published till 1781 ; but many of them had long achieved a re-
markable popularity. Of the eight volumes, four contain sermons,
of a directness of appeal and simplicity of language unusual
for the time. The English is forcible and unaffected; there
are no pedantic expressions, or classical phrases, or lengthy words.
Everyone could understand what Wilson said, and everyone might
profit by it. He wrote, not to astonish, but to convince; yet the
simplicity of his manner avoids the pit of commonplace into which
such writers as Tillotson not rarely fall. No one could call the
good bishop a great writer ; but no one could call him a poor
In his Maxims and his Parochialia, he shows a knowledge
of human nature not very common among clergymen ; while his
Sacra Privata, which explains (to an intelligent reader) how
this knowledge was obtained, places him with bishop Andrewes
among the masters of English devotional literature.
one.
6
Very different is the ponderous solidity of Daniel Waterland.
He was a controversialist, a scholar and an archdeacon-callings
which tend to dryness and pomposity and seldom encourage literary
excellence. Master of Magdalene college, Cambridge, and vice-
chancellor, he was recommended, says his biographer, ‘to the
favour of the government' by his 'wise and moderate sentiments,'
but he did not attain to any great position in the church. He
preferred, it may well be, to remain an adept in university busi-
ness and a wielder of the cudgel against the heretics of his age,
among whom several, such as Biddle, Firmin and Gilbert Clerke
(to repeat the phrase used by bishop van Mildert nearly a century
ago) 'now scarcely retain a place in our recollection. ' Samuel
Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), amid all the
heavy literature which it evoked, had no more successful rival
than Waterland's Vindication of Christ's Divinity, which is almost
worthy to be placed beside the work of bishop Bull ; and this
was but one of the writings of the Cambridge scholar which dealt
with the subject. Waterland had long given attention to the
claims of semi-Arians to hold office in the church of England,
and, in a famous disputation, when he ‘kept a Divinity Act for his
Bachelor of Divinity, had had for his opponent (who was, of
a


## p. 360 (#386) ############################################

360
Divines
course, merely assuming the post of advocatus arianismi) Thomas
Sherlock,
one of the greatest ornaments of the Church, and finest writers of the age,
who gave full play to his abilities, and called forth,' says a contemporary,' all
that strength of reason of which he was the master. '
Here, in spite of a certain favour which royalty was inclined
to bestow upon Arianism, Waterland was safe from censure
by great personages of the day. His moderation appears less
favourably in his abstention from action throughout the long
period during which Bentley was unjustly suspended. His learn-
ing, on the other hand, in his treatise on the Athanasian creed, a
vindication of that much-contested symbol, which is even now not
out of date, appears in its most favourable aspect, and the book de-
served the eulogy of archbishop Dawes of York, a prelate who did
not fear, even when suspected of Jacobitism, to express his opinions :
"With great pleasure I read it,' wrote the primate of England, ‘both on
account of the subject matter of it, and the manner in which you have treated
it; the one, of the greatest importance to the Christian faith; the other, a
pattern to all writers of controversy in the great points of religion. '
In 1727, he became canon of Windsor; in 1730, vicar of Twickenham
and archdeacon of Middlesex; and he enjoyed his retirement at
Twickenham,' his visits to Cambridge and the honour of being
prolocutor of the lower house of the convocation of Canterbury,
till his death in 1740, when an opponent offered the curious testi-
mony to his merits that
notwithstanding his being a contender for the Trinity yet he was a benevolent
man, an upright Christian and a beautiful writer; exclusive of his zeal for
the Trinity, he was in everything else an excellent clergyman and an admirable
scholar.
But the most famous of his writings is, undoubtedly, his Review
of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, which was for long regarded as
the classic work of anglican theology on its subject. It is only
necessary to say of the doctrine, as stated by Waterland, that it
does not proceed beyond the qualified statement of the judicious
Hooker and would not have satisfied Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, or
Cosin-not to mention so typical an anglican as George Herbert-
among his predecessors; still less does it rise to the views which
found expression in the notable work of John Johnson, The Un-
bloody Sacrifice. In his own words, Waterland advocates not a
sacrificial, but a federal, view of the Eucharist. As a writer, he is
lucid without being commonplace and learned without being
pedantic. His prose is better than Tillotson's, easier than Butler's;
a


## p. 361 (#387) ############################################

Butler
361
but no one would quote it for its excellence, as, in his day, men
quoted the archbishop, or remember it for its massive power, as
Butler must always be remembered.
Joseph Butler is, indeed, even as a master of English, con-
spicuously the greatest of the three writers whom we have chosen
to illustrate the character of English theology during this period.
The explanation is that Butler was, what the others were not, a
great writer and a great man. His prose has a massive force,
a sheer weight, to which no English writer of his time approaches.
Under its severe restraint burns the fire of a deep and intense
conviction. He has been but poorly understood by those who
have regarded him as a convincing critic, a master of logical
acuteness. He was far more; and what he was is revealed in
every paragraph of his writing. On the one hand, his view of life
and thought was synthetical, not merely inquisitive or analytic:
on the other, he was inspired with a supreme belief, a mastering
optimism, a triumphant faith. In the cold marble of his prose,
there are veins of colour, touches of rich crimson, caerulean blue,
or sunny gold, such as one sees on some beautiful ancient sarco-
phagus. He is a master of calm exposition, as well as of irony; but
he is, even more notably, a writer of profound and unquenchable
passion. His heart no less than his head is in what he has
written; and it is this which gives him his place among the
masters of English prose. Butler has enriched English literature
with many a striking apophthegm; but his use of the language
can only be adequately tested by long passages. It is difficult to
select from him; he has no purple patches ; page after page
shines with the same massive splendour. The manner of the
Sermons is as admirable as the matter: it is typical of the prose
of his age at its very best. The style of the Analogy is more
difficult, more compressed and concise, so that it seems at first
sight to be stiff and involved; but a little study of it shows
that it is intentionally, and admirably, adapted to its matter.
The steps, as Gladstone said, are as carefully measured out as
if we were climbing the hill of the Purgatorio; and each single
sentence has been well compared to 'a well-considered move in
chess. ' From another point of view, we may again adopt the
statesman's quaint retort to the criticism of Matthew Arnold:
The homely fare, upon which Butler feeds us, cannot be so gratifying to the
palate as turtle, venison, and champagne. But it has been found wholesome
by experience: it leads to no doctor's bills; and a perusal of this . failure' is
admitted to be a most valuable exercise for the mind. '


## p. 362 (#388) ############################################

362
Divines
No religious book of the eighteenth century, save only Law's
Serious Call, had so much influence as the Analogy, and the
influence of each, different though they were, has proved abiding
in English literature as well as English religion. It came without
question from the same source. It has been said of Joseph Butler,
that he was known to be given to religious retirement and to
reading the biographies of holy persons; and, though the one was
a bishop and the other a nonjuror, the words are equally applicable
to William Law.
>
The work of Butler is the high watermark of English theology
in the middle of the eighteenth century. The descent from it is
almost abrupt. Two names only remain to be specially noticed
before we pass to a new period—those of Thomas Herring and
Thomas Secker, both archbishops of Canterbury, who were born in
the same year 1693, and died, the former in 1757, the latter in 1768.
Archbishop Herring was a complete contrast to the leading prelates
of his day. His sermons at Lincoln's inn gave him fame, and he
passed, in a career of unemotional benevolence, from the deanery
of Rochester to the sees of Bangor, York and Canterbury. He
did not contend with deists or Arians, and the Athanasian con-
troversy had for him no charms. He was prepared to revise the
Prayer-Book and the Articles, and to exchange pulpits with
dissenters. He befriended the Jews, and Hume tells us, in his
Essays, that the archbishop praised him for his History. He
raised a large sum for the government during the '45. But his
literary work, save his rather pleasing letters, is uninteresting
and ineffective. His successor at York and Canterbury, Matthew
Skelton, was little thought of and soon forgotten. But with
Thomas Secker, bishop in turn of Bristol and of Oxford, and
archbishop of Canterbury for ten years, from 1758, we reach a
higher grade. Like Butler, with whom he had been at school, and
like not a few in the list of English primates, he was not till man-
hood converted to the English church, and, to the delicate taste of
Horace Walpole, he seemed to retain to the last something of the
'tone of fanaticism' which had belonged to his early training.
Yet the beginning of methodism filled him with alarm : what-
ever he may have shown of 'fanaticism, he was certainly no
'enthusiast. ' On his sermons, which, with his Lectures on the
Church Catechism, were his chief work, the opinion of his
1 Cf. , as to Butler's Fifteen Sermons and Analogy, ante, vol. IX, pp. 303 f.
to Law, see ibid. chap. XII.
6
1
As


## p. 363 (#389) ############################################

The Methodist Movement
363
contemporaries, for once, very fairly represents what would be
thought today. Hurd, the favourite bishop of George III, said that
they had 'a certain conciliatory calmness, propriety, and decency
of language, with no extraordinary reach of thought, vigour of
sentiment, or beauty of expression. ' And Christopher Pitt, when,
in The Art of Preaching, he advises young preachers, describes
the impression made by the archbishop, in words that no doubt
sum up his merits :
Speak, look, and move with dignity and ease
Like mitred Secker, you'll be sure to please.
Secker, however, did not wear a mitre—he only wore a wig, and
the literary style in which he excelled has passed away with his
headgear. It was the methodist movement which swept away
what seemed to it to be solemn trifling. From the middle of the
eighteenth century, the new influence which passed over English
religion had its effect, gradual and much contested, upon English
literature also. The age of Wesley and Whitefield introduced what
may be called a new romanticism in religion, just as the Lake
school, half a century later, may be said to have destroyed the
classic tradition of the older poetry. A word is needed as to the
historical setting of this new departure in English theology.
The methodist movement was a reaction against the calmness
with which English theologians had accepted, and suppressed,
many of the vital elements of the Christian creed. Divinity is the
most progressive of the sciences, and no literature becomes so
rapidly out of date as theology-all but the highest. Admirably
straightforward though much of the writing of English divines in
the early eighteenth century was, it had fewer of the elements of
permanence than any of the systems that had preceded it; to
appropriate words of Johnson, it had not sufficient vitality to
preserve it from putrefaction. A new theology, or, at least, a
revival of the old, was needed, which should base its appeal on
the verities of the Christian life. The young Oxford students who
founded methodism were, above all things, anxious to rule their
daily doings by the standard, ascetic and devotional, of the English
church. It has been, in recent years, generally believed that the
tendency of the movement was from the first towards separation.
This is hardly true. In practice, no doubt, much that Wesley did
tended to separatism ; but, in theory, never. The movement
which now bears his name was at first, distinctly, a church move-
ment, owing its impetus to long neglected doctrines of the church;


## p. 364 (#390) ############################################

364
Divines
and Wesley's own first direction of life came from Jeremy Taylor.
The story of the movement, during the period now under survey,
may be briefly told. John Wesley, son of the rector of Epworth,
went to Charterhouse in 1713 and to Christ Church in 1720, and
became a fellow of Lincoln college in 1726. The society founded,
very soon after, by his brother Charles, a student of Christ Church,
was composed of a few pious young men who desired to live by
the church's rules of fasting, almsgiving and prayer, and received
the holy communion weekly. Southey, writing nearly a century
later, thought that 'such conduct would at any time have attracted
observation in an English university. ' Unpopular, these beginnings
certainly were, but it was not long before they passed beyond the
petty criticisms of Oxford. John Wesley joined this ‘Holy Club'
on his return to college in 1729, and he remained at Oxford for
some years, actively engaged in works of piety.
Among the earlier members of the society were two destined
for great public fame. The first was George Whitefield, perhaps
the greatest popular orator of the eighteenth century. He
had traced in himself, he tells, from cradle to manhood, nothing
but 'a fitness to be damned'; but the fiery enthusiasm of
his nature seems always to have been turned toward the light,
and, from his entrance into the methodist company, he became
a devoted worker and preacher. John Wesley went to America
in 1735, Charles in 1736, Whitefield in 1738. The freedom
of missionary work rendered each of them disposed to new
religious influences, and John Wesley and George Whitefield
gradually drifted apart from each other and from the accepted
theology of the English church. Wesley was greatly influenced
by the Moravians and especially by their very attractive apostle
count Zinzendorf, Whitefield by the Calvinism which seemed to
be dying a natural death in the church of England till his influence
revived it. Wesley dated his conversion from 24 May 1738; and,
soon afterwards, he began his wonderful journeys, which lasted
almost to his death. During the half-century, he preached forty
thousand sermons, and travelled (it is said) a quarter of a million
of miles. His brother Charles equalled him in devotion, if not
in tireless health, and Whitefield in enthusiasm. In 1740, Wesley
severed his connection with the Moravians, and, in 1743, the fol-
lowers of Whitefield became distinguished as Calvinistic methodists.
In 1764, the separation between the two methodist bodies became
permanent, and, from that time, perhaps, it may be correct to date
the creation, from the original movement, of a newly organised


## p. 365 (#391) ############################################

Whitefield. Hervey
365
dissent. Though Wesley himself passionately desired, to the end,
to belong to the church of his baptism and ordination and
vigorously denounced all who separated from it, in 1784 (when
his brother Charles, who deeply regretted the act, thought him to
be in his dotage) he ordained ministers, and, from that moment, the
separation was complete. Whitefield, who was the founder of the
Calvinistic methodists, Lady Huntingdon's connection, died in
1770. At that date, it may be well to conclude our brief survey.
The prominent names which belong especially to this earlier
period, when what came to be called evangelicalism was hardly
distinguishable from methodism, are those of the two Wesleys,
Whitefield, Hervey, Toplady and Fletcher of Madeley. The in-
fluence of Newton, Venn, Romaine and others, more definitely
evangelical than methodist, belongs chiefly to a later period.
Whitefield was not a man of letters, but an orator. His literary
work is negligible, though not uninteresting ; but it marks more
decisively than that of any of his contemporaries the earliest
reaction against the commonsense religious writing of the age.
Whitefield wrote plain English, the vernacular of his day, with a
touch of the university added, just as Latimer did two hundred
years before. But he was not nearly so great a writer as was the
reformer, probably because of his being a far greater preacher.
To quote from his sermons or his controversial writings would be
useless : he began a venture rather than led a school. And not
all his friends followed his style.