Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

RELIGION AND THEOLOGY.

ENGLISH DEISM.—The religious debates and the religious wars of the seventeenth century were followed by much indifference and disbelief in the eighteenth. Weariness with sectarian struggles, and revolt against the yoke of creeds, were pushed to the extreme of a denial of revealed religion,—finally, in France, to a denial of the truths of natural religion also. In England, there appeared a school of deistical writers, beginning earlier with Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), and continued through Tindal, Morgan, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Collins, and others. On the other side, Butler, Lardner (1684-1768), Bentley, the best of England's classical scholars and critics (1662-1742), and, later, Paley (1743-1805), were among the authors who defended the divine origin of Christianity on rational and historical grounds. Of these writers, Butler was the most profound, Lardner and Bentley the most learned, and Paley the most lucid.

THE "QUAKERS."—During this period, the Society of Friends, "Quakers," was founded in England by George Fox (1624-1691), who in 1647, impelled by what he considered a divine call, began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among their many converts were William Penn, and their able and learned theologian, Robert Barclay (1648-1690). The Friends, by their Christian forbearance and patience, their purity of conduct and their philanthropy, and their tranquil piety, gradually won the respect of the other religious bodies, who were at first offended by their novel tenets and manners, and by the occasional occurrence of revolting manifestations of a half-insane enthusiasm.

METHODISM.—Of the religious movements in Protestant countries, Methodism is the most noteworthy. This movement was originated by a little group of students at Oxford, of whom John Wesley, his brother Charles, and George Whitefield were the chief. Of these, John Wesley (1703-1791) united with intellectual ability and cultivation, and religious fervor, a remarkable organizing capacity. Whitefield was an orator in the pulpit, of unrivaled eloquence. He was a Calvinist in his theology, and separated from Wesley on account of Wesley's Arminian views. They were nicknamed "Methodists," from their strictness of life in the University, and their systematic ways. Wesley and his associates preached to the common people in England, including the poor colliers and miners, with untiring ardor and surprising effect. Their converts were very numerous, and were formed into societies under a definite polity and discipline. The Wesleyan movement was much opposed in the Church of England by those who stood in dread of enthusiasm. By ordaining lay preachers and superintendents for America, and by putting its chapels under the protection of the Toleration Act,—measures which Wesley deemed necessary,—Methodism became separate from the Anglican Established Church. As a distinct body, it gained a. multitude of adherents in England and America.

MORAVIANISM.—In 1722 a company of persecuted Moravian Christians was received by Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760) on his estate, situated on the borders of Bohemia. They founded a town called Herrnkut. Zinzendorf became their bishop. The new community was distinguished for sincere piety and for missionary zeal. They did not in the least antagonize the Lutheran churches, yet had an organization of their own. Some of them settled in America. The Moravians never became a very numerous body; but their influence in promoting spiritual religion and education, and in carrying Christianity to the heathen, has been more potent than that of many larger bodies of Christians. It was specially wholesome in Germany, at a time when, under the auspices of Frederick the Great, the French type of unbelief prevailed in the higher classes of society.

PIETISM.—Prior to Zinzendorf, Spener (1635-1705), a man of devout feeling, had given rise to the "Pietists," as the promoters of a warmer type of religious experience than was approved by the current opinion were derisively named.

SWEDENBORG.—Swedenborg (1688-1772), a Swedish noble, a mathematician and naturalist of large attainments, communicated, in copious writings, what he sincerely professed to consider special revelations made to him respecting God, the unseen world, and the sense of the Scriptures. His adherents are called "The New Church," or Swedenborgians.

THE JESUIT ORDER.—Under the influences that had sway in the eighteenth century, the authority of the popes sank in the Catholic countries. The spirit of innovation was rife. One of the remarkable incidents of the time, characteristic of its tendency, was the conflict of Portugal and the Bourbon courts of France and Spain, with the Society of Jesuits. The Jesuits had secretly established, unobserved, a state under their own exclusive control in Paraguay, a part of which, by a treaty of Portugal with Spain, fell to Portugal. Other charges, some relating to interference in political affairs, and some to other and different grounds of complaint, led to the expulsion of the order from all Portuguese territory (1757); and soon after, it was suppressed in France and in Spain, and in several of the Italian states. The Jesuit order was formally abolished by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, to be again restored by papal authority in 1814.