§ 7
Of the work done by English deism thus far, it may suffice to say that within two generations it had more profoundly altered the intellectual temper of educated men than any religious movement had ever done in the same time. This appears above all from the literature produced by orthodoxy in reply, where the mere defensive resort to reasoning, apart from the accounts of current rationalism, outgoes anything in the previous history of literature. The whole evolution is a remarkable instance of the effect on intellectual progress of the diversion of a nation’s general energy from war and intense political faction to mental activities. A similar diversion had taken place at the Restoration, to be followed by a return to civil and foreign strife, which arrested it. It was in the closing years of Anne, and in the steady régime of Walpole under the first two Georges, that the ferment worked at its height. Collins’s Discourse of Freethinking was synchronous with the Peace of Utrecht: the era of war re-opened in 1739, much against the will of Walpole, who resigned in 1742. Home and foreign wars thereafter became common; and in 1751 Clive opened the period of imperialistic expansion, determining national developments on that main line, concurrently with that of the new industry. Could the discussion have been continuous—could England have remained what she was in the main deistic period, a workshop of investigation and a battleground of ideas—all European development might have been indefinitely hastened. But the deists, for the most part educated men appealing to educated men or to the shrewdest readers among the artisans, had not learned to reckon with the greater social forces; and beyond a certain point they could not affect England’s intellectual destinies.
It is worse than idle to argue that “the true cause of the decay of deism is to be sought in its internal weakness,” in the sense that “it was not rooted in the deepest convictions, nor associated with the most powerful emotions of its adherents.”[110] No such charge can be even partially proved. The deists were at least as much in earnest as two-thirds of the clergy: the determining difference, in this regard, was the economic basis of the latter, and their social hold of an ignorant population. The clergy, who could not argue the deists down in the court of culture, had in their own jurisdiction the great mass of the uneducated lower classes, and the great mass of the women of all classes, whom the ideals of the age kept uneducated, with a difference. And while the more cultured clergy were themselves in large measure deists, the majority, in the country parishes, remained uncritical and unreflective, caring little even to cultivate belief among their flocks. The “contempt of the clergy” which had subsisted from the middle of the seventeenth century (if, indeed, it should not be dated from the middle of the sixteenth) meant among other things that popular culture remained on a lower plane. With the multitude remaining a ready hotbed for new “enthusiasm,” and the women of the middle and upper orders no less ready nurturers of new generations of young believers, the work of emancipation was but begun when deism was made “fashionable.” And with England on the way to a new era at once of industrial and imperial expansion, in which the energies that for a generation had made her a leader of European thought were diverted to arms and to commerce, the critical and rationalizing work of the deistical generation could not go on as it had begun. That generation left its specific mark on the statute-book in a complete repeal of the old laws relating to witchcraft;[111] on literature in a whole library of propaganda and apology; on moral and historic science in a new movement of humanism, which was to find its check in the French Revolution.
How it affected the general intelligence for good may be partly gathered from a comparison of the common English political attitudes towards Ireland in the first and the last quarters of the century. Under William was wrought the arrest of Irish industry and commerce, begun after the Restoration; under Anne were enacted the penal laws against Catholics—as signal an example of religious iniquity as can well be found in all history. By the middle of the century these laws had become anachronisms for all save bigots.
“The wave of freethought that was spreading over Europe and permeating its literature had not failed to affect Ireland.... An atmosphere of skepticism was fatal to the Penal Code. What element of religious persecution there had been in it had long ceased to be operative” (R. Dunlop, in Camb. Mod. Hist. vi, 489). Macaulay’s testimony on this head is noteworthy: “The philosophy of the eighteenth century had purified English Whiggism of the deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the eighteenth century” (History, ch. xvii, end).
The denunciations of the penal laws by Arthur Young in 1780[112] are the outcome of two generations of deistic thinking; the spirit of religion has been ousted by judgment.[113] Could that spirit have had freer play, less hindrance from blind passion, later history would have been a happier record. But for reasons lying in the environment as well as in its own standpoint, deism was not destined to rise on continuous stepping-stones to social dominion.
Currency has been given to a misconception of intellectual history by the authoritative statement that in the deistic controversy “all that was intellectually venerable in England” appeared “on the side of Christianity” (Sir Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 86). The same thing, in effect, is said by Lecky: “It was to repel these [deistic] attacks [‘upon the miracles’] that the evidential school arose, and the annals of religious controversy narrate few more complete victories than they achieved” (Rise and Influence of Rationalism, pop. ed. i, 175). The proposition seems to be an echo of orthodox historiography, as Buckle had before written in his note-book: “In England skepticism made no head. Such men as Toland and Tindal, Collins, Shaftesbury, Woolston, were no match for Clarke, Warburton, and Lardner. They could make no head till the time of Middleton” (Misc. Works, abridged ed. i, 321)—a strain of assertion which clearly proceeds on no close study of the period. In the first place, all the writing on the freethinking side was done under peril of Blasphemy Laws, and under menace of all the calumny and ostracism that in Christian society follow on advanced heresy; while the orthodox side could draw on the entire clerical profession, over ten thousand strong, and trained for and pledged to defence of the faith. Yet, when all is said, the ordinary list of deists amply suffices to disprove Sir L. Stephen’s phrase. His “intellectually venerable” list runs: Bentley, Locke, Berkeley, Clarke, Butler, Waterland, Warburton, Sherlock, Gibson, Conybeare, Smalbroke, Leslie, Law, Leland, Lardner, Foster, Doddridge, Lyttelton, Barrington, Addison, Pope, Swift. He might have added Newton and Boyle. Sykes,[114] Balguy, Stebbing, and a “host of others,” he declares to be “now for the most part as much forgotten as their victims”; Young and Blackmore he admits to be in similar case. It is expressly told of Doddridge, he might have added, that whereas that well-meaning apologist put before his students at Northampton the ablest writings both for and against Christianity, leaving them to draw their own conclusions, many of his pupils, “on leaving his institution, became confirmed Arians and Socinians” (Nichols in App. P to Life of Arminius—Works of Arminius, 1825, i, 223–25). This hardly spells success.[115] All told, the list includes only three or four men of any permanent interest as thinkers, apart from Newton; and only three or four more important as writers. The description of Waterland,[116] Warburton,[117] Smalbroke,[118] Sherlock, Leslie, and half-a-dozen more as “intellectually venerable” is grotesque; even Bentley is a strange subject for veneration.
On the other hand, the list of “the despised deists,” who “make but a poor show when compared with this imposing list,” runs thus: Herbert, Hobbes, Blount, Halley (well known to be an unbeliever, though he did not write on the subject), Toland, Shaftesbury, Collins, Mandeville, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Dodwell, Middleton, Hume, Bolingbroke, Gibbon. It would be interesting to know on what principles this group is excluded from the intellectual veneration so liberally allotted to the other. It is nothing to the purpose that Shaftesbury and Mandeville wrote “covertly” and “indirectly.” The law and the conditions compelled them to do so. It is still more beside the case to say that “Hume can scarcely be reckoned among the deists. He is already [when?] emerging into a higher atmosphere.” Hume wrote explicitly as a deist; and only in his posthumous Dialogues did he pass on to the atheistic position. At no time, moreover, was he “on the side of Christianity.” On the other hand, Locke and Clarke and Pope were clearly “emerging into a higher atmosphere” than Christianity, since Locke is commonly reckoned by the culture-historians, and even by Sir Leslie Stephen, as making for deism; Pope was the pupil of Bolingbroke, and wrote as such; and Clarke was shunned as an Arian. Newton, again, was a Unitarian, and Leibnitz accused his system of making for irreligion. It would be hard to show, further, who are the “forgotten victims” of Balguy and the rest. Balguy criticized Shaftesbury, whose name is still a good deal better known than Balguy’s. The main line of deists is pretty well remembered. And if we pair off Hume against Berkeley, Hobbes against Locke, Middleton (as historical critic) against Bentley, Shaftesbury against Addison, Mandeville against Swift, Bolingbroke against Butler, Collins against Clarke, Herbert against Lyttelton, Tindal against Waterland, and Gibbon against—shall we say?—Warburton, it hardly appears that the overplus of merit goes as Sir Leslie Stephen alleges, even if we leave Newton, with brain unhinged, standing against Halley. The statement that the deists “are but a ragged regiment,” and that “in speculative ability most of them were children by the side of their ablest antagonists,” is simply unintelligible unless the names of all the ablest deists are left out. Locke, be it remembered, did not live to meet the main deistic attack on Christianity; and Sir Leslie admits the weakness of his pro-Christian performance.
The bases of Sir Leslie Stephen’s verdict may be tested by his remarks that “Collins, a respectable country gentleman, showed considerable acuteness; Toland, a poor denizen of Grub Street, and Tindal, a Fellow of All Souls, made a certain display of learning, and succeeded in planting some effective arguments.” Elsewhere (pp. 217–227) Sir Leslie admits that Collins had the best of the argument against his “venerable” opponents on Prophecy; and Huxley credits him with equal success in the argument with Clarke. The work of Collins on Human Liberty, praised by a long series of students and experts, and entirely above the capacity of Bentley, is philosophically as durable as any portion of Locke, who made Collins his chosen friend and trustee, and who did not live to meet his anti-Biblical arguments. Tindal, who had also won Locke’s high praise by his political essays, profoundly influenced such a student as Laukhard (Lechler, p. 451). And Toland, whom even Mr. A. S. Farrar (Bampton Lectures, p. 179) admitted to possess “much originality and learning,” has struck Lange as a notable thinker, though he was a poor man. Leibnitz, who answered him, praises his acuteness, as does Pusey, who further admits the uncommon ability of Morgan and Collins (Histor. Enq. into German Rationalism, 1828, p. 126). It is time that the conventional English standards in these matters should be abandoned by modern rationalists.
The unfortunate effect of Sir Leslie Stephen’s dictum is seen in the assertion of Prof. Höffding (Hist. of Modern Philos. Eng. tr. 1900, i, 403), that Sir Leslie “rightly remarks of the English deists that they were altogether inferior to their adversaries”; and further (p. 405), that by the later deists, “Collins, Tindal, Morgan, etc., the dispute as to miracles was carried on with great violence.” It is here evident that Prof. Höffding has not read the writers he depreciates, for those he names were far from being violent. Had he known the literature, he would have named Woolston, not Collins and Tindal and Morgan. He is merely echoing, without inquiring for himself, a judgment which he regards as authoritative. In the same passage he declares that “only one of all the men formerly known as the ‘English deists’ [Toland] has rendered contributions of any value to the history of thought.” If this is said with a knowledge of the works of Collins, Shaftesbury, and Mandeville, it argues a sad lack of critical judgment. But there is reason to infer here also that Prof. Höffding writes in ignorance of the literature he discusses.
While some professed rationalists thus belittle a series of pioneers who did so much to make later rationalism possible, some eminent theologians do them justice. Thus does Prof. Cheyne begin his series of lectures on Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893): “A well-known and honoured representative of progressive German orthodoxy (J. A. Dorner) has set a fine example of historical candour by admitting the obligations of his country to a much-disliked form of English heterodoxy. He says that English deism, which found so many apt disciples in Germany, ‘by clearing away dead matter, prepared the way for a reconstruction of theology from the very depths of the heart’s beliefs, and also subjected man’s nature to stricter observation.’[119] This, however, as it appears to me, is a very inadequate description of the facts. It was not merely a new constructive stage of German theoretic theology, and a keener psychological investigation, for which deism helped to prepare the way, but also a great movement, which has in our own day become in a strict sense international, concerned with the literary and historical criticism of the Scriptures. Beyond all doubt, the Biblical discussions which abound in the works of the deists and their opponents contributed in no slight degree to the development of that semi-apologetic criticism of the Old Testament of which J. D. Michaelis, and in some degree even Eichhorn, were leading representatives.... It is indeed singular that deism should have passed away in England without having produced a great critical movement among ourselves.” Not quite so singular, perhaps, when we note that in our own day Sir Leslie Stephen and Lecky and Prof. Höffding could sum up the work of the deists without a glance at what it meant for Biblical criticism.