Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 5—The Church of the Revolution

by John Stoughton

CHAPTER XV.

Courses of lectures on doctrinal and devotional themes had been fashionable with the Puritans. Robert Boyle, looking at the spread of infidelity, provided, by his will, for the appointment of a lecturer, to preach eight sermons in a year upon the Evidences of Christianity; and thus set an example which has been followed by Bampton, Hulse, and others. The trustees—Tenison, then Bishop of Lincoln, and John Evelyn being two of them—selected for the first performance of the duty a rising clergyman, already known in University circles by his vast attainments, and afterwards famous throughout the world of letters. Evelyn records the appointment in his Diary, by saying “he made choice of one Mr. Bentley, chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester;” and the comparatively obscure student, so described, regarded it in after-life as the greatest honour with which he was ever invested. He determined to follow Cudworth and Cumberland without imitating them, to go down to the basis of all theology, and to confute the opinions of Hobbes and Spinoza. Bentley’s Lectures, entitled, A Confutation of Atheism, after exposing the folly of a godless belief, aimed at demonstrating the Divine existence from an inquiry into the faculties of the human soul, the structure of the body, and the frame of the world. It was a movement along the line of rational thought. The Revolution had appealed to reason in matters of government. Without throwing aside traditions—even while appealing to constitutional forms—Englishmen were seeking after fundamental political principles; and reason came now to be earnestly invoked in the service of religion. Philosophy had been employed in attacking Christian beliefs; philosophy now came to the rescue. Faith in an infinite cause, shaken by the human intellect, was to be reinforced by a more vigorous exercise of the same faculty.

Boyle, the founder of the Lecture, had collected scientific facts available for the lecturer’s purpose. Locke, by illustrating the essential difference between matter and mind, had become a pioneer in the path along which Bentley pushed parts of his argument; and Newton, by his Principia, had prepared for him methods by which to demonstrate the Creator’s providence and goodness. Thus assisted, Bentley showed himself possessed of original genius; and having at command satire as well as logic, with a style adapted to give effect to his thoughts, he produced a deep impression by his discourses. The first he delivered at St. Martin’s—the second at Bow Church; when Evelyn, ensconced in a tall-backed pew, listened with delight to the preacher, and immediately admitted him to his friendship. Before he published his work he wrote to the great philosopher, then resident in Trinity College, Cambridge. Newton corrected and modified Bentley’s opinions upon some points, but he confirmed his views respecting most, and supplied him with additional arguments.[439]

BOYLE LECTURE.

Bentley soon afterwards obtained a stall in Worcester Cathedral, probably through the influence of Stillingfleet, his patron. If we are to believe his words, he had what was a better reward, for he says: “The Atheists were silent since that time, and sheltered themselves under Deism.” It is a pity that historical justice requires it to be said that this advocate of natural theology did not possess the primary virtue of religion, and the chief ornament of all learning. A nobleman happening one day to sit near Stillingfleet at dinner, observed to him, “My Lord, that chaplain of yours is certainly a very extraordinary man.” “Yes,” he replied; “had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe.”[440]

According to the terms of Boyle’s will, which authorized the appointment of the same lecturer for three years, Bentley might have delivered another course of sermons; but owing, as it is said, to the favouritism of one of the trustees, and in opposition to Evelyn’s wishes, Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells, delivered the second series, entitled, A Demonstration of the Messias. Williams, afterwards made a Bishop, exhibited in his lectures A General Idea of Revealed Religion. Gastrell, subsequently Bishop of Chester, a friend to Atterbury, and one who pleaded for him in Parliament, insisted upon The Certainty and Necessity of Divine Religion. Dr. Harris refuted the objections of Atheists to the existence and attributes of God; a superfluous task, it would seem, if we are to admit what has been said of the effect of Bentley’s dissertations. Bradford, “the little ebony doctor,” as he was called—an enemy of Atterbury’s—discoursed upon the credibility of the Christian Religion. Blackall, afterwards a Bishop, established and illustrated the sufficiency and perfection of the Old and New Testaments; and Dr. Stanhope defended the truth and excellence of the Christian Religion against Jews, Infidels, and Heretics.[441]

In 1695, Locke anonymously published his Reasonableness of Christianity. Again the appeal was made, not to authority, tradition, or history, but to reason. The main object was to present the simplest and most rational form of religion. He concluded, from his study of the Gospels, that the primary requirement is, that men should believe Jesus to be the Messiah, the anointed and sent of God; that such a belief makes everyone a Christian; and that upon it the superstructure of Christian piety must ever rest. Every reader of this work must see how hardly he labours to establish his point, how he repeats over and over again his fundamental principle. He objects to the enforcement of particular creeds, and he is opposed to all Church authority in reference to religion; though he speaks in general terms of salvation through Christ, he enters into no definition whatever of evangelical doctrines, indeed such definitions he regards as foreign to his purpose.

Whilst teaching of this kind, with a continuous appeal to reason, runs through the larger part of the book, towards the close he enters upon the supernatural evidences of Christianity. Locke was an apostle of human reason as opposed to human authority, but he was no rationalist in the sense of opposing revelation. Revelation he recognized as a form of supernatural wisdom, and in advocating it he appealed to supernatural wonders. He dwelt upon the miracles of Christ as conclusive proofs of His Messianic office—a topic which he also largely treated in a distinct essay, which will be noticed hereafter.

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

The book was attacked not by infidels but by believers, not by those who objected to Christianity but by those who, attaching importance to certain truths passed over by Locke, thought that he presented an objectionable view of the Gospel. He appeared to them to be a rationalist. Dr. Edwards, a clergyman of the Church of England, son of the famous Presbyterian who wrote the Gangræna, assailed the treatise with bitterness; and so great was its unpopularity in some quarters, that a Prelate, who thought of it favourably, candidly confessed: “If I should be known to think so, I should have my lawn sleeves torn from my shoulders.” Foreign divines, however, hailed it with applause, especially Dutch friends of the Remonstrant school, Le Clerc and Limborch. It found numerous readers abroad, and a Dorsetshire rector, named Samuel Bold, though thoroughly orthodox on the subject of the Trinity—respecting which Locke laboured under some suspicion—took up his pen in defence of the lay theologian. Locke’s idea of faith, as a simple belief that Jesus is the Messiah, will be regarded by most theologians as very defective; nor is the account which he gives of Christianity one likely to afford satisfaction to any reader who has mastered the contents of the New Testament, whether he believes them or not. Absorbed in the effort to enforce his own view of the Gospel, Locke merely ignores, without disproving, certain doctrines, which by evangelical teachers of Christianity are identified with the system itself. I plainly see that with his habits of close philosophical thinking, he could not but be repelled by the manner in which those doctrines were urged by some warm-hearted divines. Yet however objectionably or offensively presented, they require to be noticed and disposed of in some way. They are true or false—if true, they must be taken into full account before any conclusion can be drawn respecting the reasonableness of revelation; if false, they need to be refuted, ere such a notion of Christian faith as is propounded by our philosopher can be placed upon a sufficient basis. But Locke’s defects or mistakes relative to the extent of faith do not invalidate his main reasoning. His proofs of the truth and divinity of the Gospel, drawn from the miracles of Jesus, and from the necessity of an authoritative revelation of truth and morals, remain the same; and I would add, that of the devout faith of the author there can be no doubt, when we are assured that “he admired the wisdom and goodness of God in the method found out for the salvation of mankind, and when he thought upon it, he could not forbear crying out, ‘O the depth of the riches of the goodness and knowledge of God.’”[442]

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Locke, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, enters at large upon the question of the boundaries between reason and revelation—a question involved in what he says on the Reasonableness of Christianity. He asserts most plainly the principle, that revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of reason, but then, immediately afterwards, he adopts the distinction between things contrary to reason and things above reason—citing, as examples of the latter, the fall of angels and the resurrection of the dead. Anything not contrary to reason, he contends, is to be believed if taught by revelation; “whatever proposition,” he says, “is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.” Revelation in such matters “ought to be hearkened unto.” Indeed, Locke goes so far as to say, that in those things concerning which the mind “has but an uncertain evidence, and so is persuaded of their truth only upon probable grounds, which still admit a possibility of the contrary to be true, without doing violence to the certain evidence of its own knowledge and overturning the principles of all reason: in such probable propositions, I say, an evident revelation ought to determine our assent, even against probability.” Afterwards dwelling upon the evils of enthusiasm, of which he had a great horror, he goes on to remark: “Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything;” which, strictly taken, would mean that no revelation can be a final authority; but he proceeds in the next sentence to tell us: “I do not mean that we must consult reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it, but consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God, or no. And if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for it, as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates.”[443] This explanation restricts the office of reason to an inquiry into evidence, as to whether what is thought to be revealed is really such, and leaves faith to rest ultimately, not in the apparent truth of a doctrine, but on the revelation making it known. To some, Locke in all this will not appear to have diverged from an orthodox treatment of evidences; to others, he will seem to have vacillated a little, leaning now in a rationalistic, and then in an opposite direction; by none, I think, can he be fairly regarded as holding the modern doctrine of a verifying faculty—a doctrine based on a philosophy different from his, and leading to conclusions at variance with his belief. Whatever might be Locke’s abstract opinions, it is quite clear that he had no sympathy with the Socinian party, of whom he speaks as “positive and eager in their disputes;” “forward to have their interpretations of Scripture received for authentic, though to others in several places they seem very much strained;” impatient of contradiction, treating their opponents with “disrespect and roughness.” “May it not be suspected,” he asks, “that this so visible a warmth in their present circumstances, and zeal for their orthodoxy, would (had they the power) work in them as it does in others? They, in their turn, would, I fear, be ready with their set of fundamentals, which they would be as forward to impose on others, as others have been to impose contrary fundamentals on them.”[444]

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Bentley and Locke added what was of the highest value to the literature of the Evidences. On a far lower intellectual level appeared Leslie, the Nonjuror, who, eschewing paths of reason, prepared to enter the path of history, and addressed himself to those of his countrymen who have little time for study and less capacity for reflection. In 1696 he published A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, in which are laid down certain rules as to the truth of historical statements; and he contends that when they all meet, statements cannot be false. The rules are: “That the matter of fact be such, as that men’s outward senses, their eyes and ears, may be judges of it; that it be done publicly, in the face of the world; that not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions to be performed; that such monuments and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done.” These rules, Leslie insists, could be successfully applied to the facts connected with the origin of the religion of Moses and the religion of Christ, pointing to the institution and observance of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper as memorials of the latter. Mohammedanism, he said, lacks such evidence, and he challenged Deists to show any action that is fabulous, in support of which all the four marks can be alleged. The work is of a very slight description, and is composed in a loose and inaccurate style. It could not meet the case of any who have adopted the principles of historical inquiry laid down by Voltaire and developed by Niebuhr, and by them applied to classical annals; nor could the method be applied by any critical student without great modification, and at the expense of an amount of learning, which would render the argument useless for popular purposes.

Charles Blount, after a side thrust at Christianity in his Notes on Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius Tyanæus, left behind him papers, which were published in a book, entitled, The Oracles of Reason, containing desultory attacks on revelation, chiefly in a covert form. Indeed, Blount quaintly observes: “Undoubtedly, in our travels to the other world, the common road is the safest; and though Deism is a good manuring of a man’s conscience, yet certainly, if sowed with Christianity, it will produce the most plentiful crop.” It is a curious fact that the editor and publishers of these posthumous essays afterwards became convinced of their true character, and, with a view to counteracting their effect, issued the Deist’s Manual.

John Toland—who, after being educated a Roman Catholic, whilst still a boy rushed out of gross superstition into what was to him the more congenial region of scepticism—began his career as an author by writing his Christianity not Mysterious, a discourse showing that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to reason nor above it, and that no Christian doctrine can be properly called a mystery. In this work he does not appear as an antagonist of Christianity; perhaps he had not yet begun to regard himself otherwise than as a Christian; yet the tendency of his opinions is to undermine the authority of revelation. His book, which attracted wide attention, and was, as we have seen, condemned by the Lower House of Convocation, engaged the pen of the Bemerton Rector, John Norris, whose extraordinary metaphysical genius found scope for its exercise in examining Toland’s lucubrations. His Account of Reason and Faith, in Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity, is one of the ablest books of the period, and displays a power of analysis, and a determination to reduce the powers of the human mind to their simplest form, such as reminds one of the subtle originality of Dr. Thomas Browne.

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Metaphysics are made to do duty in the service of orthodoxy. Norris dwells upon the distinction of things contrary to reason and above it, showing that there is a valid ground for the distinction, that human reason is not the measure of truth; that, therefore, a thing being incomprehensible by reason, is of itself no conclusive argument of its being untrue; that if the incomprehensibility of a thing were an argument against it, human reason would become the measure of truth; and, therefore, he concludes that incomprehensibility should not militate against faith. Of course the terms of a proposition must be intelligible and not contradictory, for no man can accept what is plainly nonsensical or obviously false; but the mysterious nature of a fact asserted in a proposition, Norris proves to be no valid objection to the veracity of the proposition. His mode of handling this subject, though extremely skilful and effective, is not always such as to bear a very close scrutiny; and some modification of his argument is required, in order to a safe entrenchment against inimical attacks. But he successfully establishes this point—the fundamental one throughout the controversy—that it is perfectly reasonable and perfectly consonant with the laws and constitution of the human mind, to believe upon the authority of revelation, in other words, upon the authority of infinite wisdom. Norris does not treat Toland’s doctrine as a form of Deism; his particular application of the principles laid down in this account of reason and faith is to the Socinian system, but much of the reasoning is strictly applicable to a form of Deism very prevalent in the present day. A great deal of what he says goes to the heart of certain modern theories, and several pages upon the nature and degrees of mental assent deserve careful study in connection with existing controversies.[445]

It will be sufficient to complete this sketch if I observe that Toland made a decided attack on the New Testament Canon in his Amyntor, published in 1698; and that the formidable controversialist, Samuel Clark, the next year commenced his polemical career by a successful encounter in defence of the canonicity of the Gospels.

In the course of this work I have had repeated occasions for noticing the theological literature of the period—dogmatical, practical, and polemical. It will not be impertinent, as we wind up the subject, to remark respecting its form and style.

The Renaissance had been at work in art and poetry, and had gradually supplanted the old romantic school. Gothic churches disappeared in the fire of London; those built on their ruins were classical reproductions. A new St. Paul’s arose on Ludgate Hill, in contrast with old St. Peter’s on Thorney Island. Multiplicity of parts, angularity of form, picturesqueness of detail, brilliancy of hue, gave place to regularity of outline, a mathematical exactness of proportion, smoothness of ornament, and absence of colour. No more pointed arches, no more niches, no more finials and crockets, no more richly-stained windows;—all became round, uniform, pale, cold.

LITERARY STYLE.

A similar change came over poetry. It were an indignity to the great bard of the seventeenth century to compare him with any other than the great bard of the sixteenth. Milton’s name is linked with Shakespeare’s, but in the way of contrast, just as St. Paul’s Cathedral is associated with Westminster Abbey. The poet of the Renaissance succeeds the poet of romance. The architectural character of the two buildings symbolize the characteristic differences of the two masters of English song. And this same Renaissance spirit worked its way into theological literature. Taylor and Bunyan, indeed, all the great religious writers of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, appear more or less romancists in the style of their thoughts, regarded from a literary point of view. Divisions, pointedness, quaint expression, warmth of sentiment, such as arrests us in mediæval buildings, are reproduced in the books of that picturesque age. The two authors just mentioned belong to the class of romancist prose poets. But all is changed when we turn to the theological literature of King William’s days—Tillotson, Burnet, Bentley, Locke. We miss Anglican and Puritan sweep of thought, minuteness of detail, intensity of utterance, and glow of passion. There is no depth of colour, all is pale; no flash of fire, all is cold. We meet with regularity, order, smoothness. It is the age of Renaissance in Divinity.