6. Freethinker.—This term first appears toward the close of the seventeenth century. It is used of Toland, “a candid Freethinker,” by Molyneux, in a letter to Locke 1697 (Locke's Works, fol. ed. iii. 624); and Shaftesbury in 1709 speaks of “our modern free-writers,” Works, vol. i. p. 65. But it was Collins in 1713, in his Discourse of Freethinking, who first appropriated the name to express the independence of inquiry which was claimed by the deists. The use of the word expressed the spirit of a nation like the English, in which, subsequently to the change of dynasty, freedom to think and speak was held to be every man's charter. Lechler has remarked the absence of a parallel word in other languages. The French expression Esprit fort, the title of a work of La Bruyère, does not convey quite the same idea as Freethinker. Esprit expresses the French liveliness, not the reflective self-consciousness of the English mind of the eighteenth century: the fort is a relic of the pride of feudalism; whilst the free of the English Freethinker implies the reaction against it. The English term smacks of democracy; the French carries with it the notion of aristocracy. (Lechler, Gesch. des Engl. Deismus, p. 458.) There is no word to express the English idea in foreign languages, except the literal translation of the English term. Even then, in French the expression la libre pensée has changed its meaning; since it is now frequently used to describe the struggle, good as well as evil, of the human mind against authority. It thus loses the unfavourable sense which originally belonged to the corresponding English expression.
7. Rationalist.—The history of the term is hard to trace. The first technical use of the adjective rational seems to have been about the seventeenth century, to express a school of philosophy. It had probably passed out of the old sense of dialectical (cfr. Brucker's Hist. Phil. iii. 60.), into the use just named; which we find in Bacon, to express rational philosophy, as opposed to empirical, (see a quotation from Bacon's Apophthegms in Richardson's Dictionary, sub voc.); or, as in North's Plutarch, 1657, p. 984, for intellectual philosophy as opposed to mathematical and moral. The word Rationalist occurs in Clarendon, 1646 (State Papers, vol. ii. p. 40), to describe a party of presbyterians who appealed only to “what their reason dictates them in church and state.” Hahn (De Rationalismi Indole) states that Amos Comenius [pg 417] similarly used the term in 1661 in a depreciatory sense. The treatise of Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity caused Christians and Deists to appropriate the term, and to restrict it to religion. Thus, by Waterland's time, it had got the meaning of false reasoning on religion. (Works, viii. 67.) And, passing into Germany, it appears to have become the common name to express philosophical views of religion, as opposed to supernatural. In this sense it occurs as early as 1708 in Sucro, quoted by Tholuck, Vermischt. Schriften, ii. pp. 25, 26, and in Buddeus, Isagoge, 1730, pp. 213 and 1151. It is also used often as equivalent to naturalism, or adherence to natural religion; with the slight difference that it rather points to mental than physical truth.
The name has often been appropriated to the Kantian or critical philosophy, in which rationalism was distinguished from naturalism in the mode explained under the latter word. (See Kant's Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft, pp. 216, 17.) During the period when Rationalism was predominant as a method in German theology, the meaning and limits of the term were freely discussed. The period referred to is that which we have called in Lect. [VI]. p. [230] the second subdivision of the first of the three periods, into which the history of German theology is there divided; viz. from 1790-1810; occupying the interval when the Wolffian philosophy had given place to the Kantian, and the philosophy of Fichte and Jacobi had not yet produced the revival under Schleiermacher. This form of rationalism also continued to exist during the lifetime of its adherents, contemporaneously with the new influence created by Schleiermacher. (See Lect. [VI].) The discussion was not a verbal one only, but was intimately connected with facts. The rationalist theologians wished to define clearly their own position, as opposed on the one hand to deists and naturalists, and on the other to supernaturalists. The result of the discussion seemed to show the following parties: (1) two kinds of Supernaturalists, (α) the Biblical, such as Reinhardt, resembling the English divines of the eighteenth century;[1065] (β) the Philosophical, sometimes called Rational Supernaturalists, as the Kantian theologian Staüdlin: (2) two kinds of Rationalists, (α) the Supernatural Rationalists, like Bretschneider, who held on the evidence of reason the necessity of a revelation, but required its accordance with reason, when communicated; (β) the pure Rationalists, like Wegscheider, Röhr, and Paulus, who held the sufficiency of reason; and, while admitting revelation as a fact, regarded it as the republication of the religion of nature. It is this last kind which answers to the “theological naturalist,” named above, under the word Naturalist. It is also the form which is called Rationalismus vulgaris (as being opposed to the later scientific), though the term is not admitted by its adherents. This [pg 418] rationalism stands distinguished from naturalism, i.e. from “philosophical naturalism” or deism, by having reference to the Christian religion and church; but it differs from supernaturalism, in that reason, not scripture, is its formal principle, or test of truth: and virtue, instead of “faith working by love,” is its material principle, or fundamental doctrine. A further subdivision might be made of this last into the dogmatic (Wegscheider), and the critical (Paulus). Cfr. Bretschneider's Dogmatik, i. 81, and see Lect. VI. Also consult on the above account Kahnis, p. 168, and Lechler's Deismus, p. 193, note; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 279, note.
This account of the term being the result of the controversy as to the meaning of the words, it only remains to name some of the works which treated of it.
The dispute on the word Rationalism is especially seen at two periods, (1) about the close of the last century, when the supernaturalists, such as Reinhardt and Storr, were maintaining their position against rationalism. One treatise, which may perhaps be considered to belong to this earlier period, is J. A. H. Tittmann's Ueber Supernaturalismus, Rationalismus, und Atheismus, 1816; (2) in the disputes against the school of Schleiermacher, when supernaturalism was no longer thrown on the defensive. This was marked by several treatises on the subject, such as Staüdlin's Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus 1826, (see the definitions given in it, pp. 3 and 4;) Bretschneider's remarks in his Dogmatik (i. pp. 14, 71, 80 ed. 1838); and Historische Bemerkungen Ueber den Gebrauch der Ausdrücke Rational. und Supernat. (Oppositions-Schrift. 1829. 7. 1); A. Hahn, De Rationalismi qui dicitur Verâ Indole, 1827, in which he reviews the attempts of Bretschneider and Staüdlin to give the historic use of the word; Röhr's Briefe Ueber Rationalismus, pp. 14-16; Paulus's Resultate aus den Neuesten Versuch des Supernat. Gegen den Rationalismus, 1830; Wegscheider's Inst. Theol. Christianæ Dogmaticæ (7th ed. 1833. §§ 11, 12, pp. 49-67), which is full of references to the literature of the subject. The controversy was aggravated and in part was due to the translation of Mr. H. J. Rose's Sermons on Rationalism. He was answered by Bretschneider in a tract, in which that theologian entered upon the defence of the rationalist position. Mr. Rose (Introd. to 2d ed. 1829, p. 17) enters briefly upon the history of the name. Krug (Philos. Lexicon) also gives many instances of its use in German theology.
To complete the account it is only necessary to add, that it is made clear by Lectures [VI.] and [VII.] that if subsequent theological thought in Germany to the schools now described, be called Rationalism for convenience by English writers, the term is then used in a different sense from that in which it is applied in speaking of the older forms.
8. Sceptic.—This term was first applied specifically to one school [pg 419] of Greek philosophers, about B.C. 300, followers of Pyrrho of Elis (see Ritter's Hist. of Phil. E. T. iii. 372-398; Staüdlin's Geschichte des Scepticismus, vol. i; Tafel's Geschichte und Kritik des Skepticismus, 1836; Donaldson's Greek Lit. ch. xlvii. § 5); and also to a revival of this school about A.D. 200. (See Ritter. Id. iii. 258-357; Donaldson, ch. lvi. § 3.) The tenet was a general disbelief of the possibility of knowing realities as distinct from appearances. The term thus introduced, gradually became used in the specific sense of theological as distinct from philosophical scepticism, often with an indirect implication that the two are united. Walch restricts the name Sceptic to the latter kind. Writing about those who are called Indifferentists (Bibl. Theol. Select. i. 976), he subdivides them into two classes; viz. those who are indifferent through liberality, and those who are so through unbelief. The former are the “Latitudinarians,” the latter the Sceptics above named. Cfr. also Buddeus, Isagoge, pp. 1208-10. In more recent times the term has gained a still more generic sense in theology, to express all kinds of religious doubt. But its use to express philosophical scepticism as distinct from religious has not died out. In this sense Montaigne, Bayle (cfr. Staüdlin's Gesch. des Scept. p. 204), Huet, Berkeley, Hume, and De Maistre, were Sceptics; i.e. sceptical of the certitude of one or more branches of the human faculties. Sometimes also it is used to express systems of philosophy which teach disbelief in the reality of metaphysical science; e.g. the positive school of Comte; but this is an ambiguous use of the term. For philosophical scepticism may be of two kinds; viz. the disbelief in the possibility of the attainment of truth by means of the natural faculties of man; and the disbelief of the possibility of its attainment by means of metaphysical, as distinct from physical, methods. The former is properly called Philosophical Scepticism, the latter not so. Pyrrho in ancient times, and Hume in modern, represent the former; the Positivists of modern times, and perhaps the Sophists of the fifth century B.C., represent the latter. It is hardly necessary to repeat that the philosophical scepticism proper of Berkeley and Hume must not be confounded with religious. They may be connected, as in Hume, or disconnected, as in Berkeley or De Maistre. See on this subject Morell's Hist. of Philos. i. p. 68, ii. ch. vi.
On the subject of the words explained in this note see, besides the works referred to, Walch's Bibl. Theol. Select. i. ch. v. sect. 5, 6, 7, 11, and iii. ch. vii. sect. 10. § 4. 1757: Pfaff's Introd. in Hist. Theol. lib. ii. b. iii. § 2. 1725: Stapfer's Inst. Theol. Polem. ii. ch. vi, vii, x; iv. ch. xiii. 1744: Reimannus' Hist. Univ. Ath. sectio i. 1725: J. F. Buddeus's De Atheismo, 1737, ch. i. and ii: J. F. Buddeus's Isagoge, 1730, pp. 1203-1211: Lechler's Gesch. des Deismus, 1841; Schlussbemerkungen, p. 453 seq.: J. Fabricius, 1704, Consid. Var. Controv. p. 1: Staüdlin's Gesch. des Skepticismus vorzüglich in Rücksicht auf. Moral. und Religion. 1794: J. F. [pg 420] Tafel's Gesch. und Kritik des Skepticismus und Irrationalismus, with reference to Philosophy, 1834.