History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

The most successful mode of replying to objections is not to refute the error contained in them, but to grasp the truth and build it into a system, where the doubter finds his mind and heart satisfied with the possession of that for which he was craving. If the twelfth century had not had its Abélards, its spirit of inquiry, of analysis, and of doubt; the church would never have had its champion philosopher Aquinas: but if it had not had its Aquinas, the succeeding ages would probably have produced many more Abélards. The scholastic theology accordingly must be regarded as the true rationalism, the true use of reason in defence. Like as the mind goes through the process of perceiving facts, then of classifying and generalizing, next of defining and tracing principles to practical results; so the church, in forming its theology, receives its facts as they were once for all apprehended by inspired men of old, and are corroborated by the experience of the Christian consciousness from age to age: but, after so receiving them, it exercises its office in creating a theology, by classifying and arranging them, and generalizing from them; and when new doubts or objections arise, it recompares its teaching with the faith once delivered to the saints; defines and prescribes the limits of truth and error; and thus absorbs into its own system whatever is true in the newly-presented doubts or objections. This is really the action of the church in moments of peril; and is that which was effected by the scholastic theologians,—Anselm, the two Victors, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and others. It is sufficient to refer to Ritter's Christliche Philosophie, iii. 502 seq.; iv. 257 seq.; Neander's Kirchengeschichte, vol. viii; Stein's Die Apologetic, § 7 and 8; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 150; and Hase's Church History, § 218, 277, 278; for information concerning these writers and their position.

III. At the time of the Renaissance, in the fifteenth century, which was the third period at which the Christian faith was in peril from doubt, we begin to meet with works of evidence of a more directly controversial kind. Defence is no longer a spirit, but a fact. Apologetic theology is severed from Dogmatic.

One work remains, written in the fourteenth century by Petrarch (Opp. de Otio Religiosor), which defends the truth of Christianity against Philosophers, Mahometans, and Jews: partly on the evidence of miracles, but mainly on the internal evidence of the purity and godliness of Christianity. In the early part of the fifteenth century, Raimond de Sebonde, professor of medicine at Barcelona, wrote his Theologia Naturalis, which was afterwards translated into French by Montaigne. It was charged with deism, but really was in spirit, as previously observed (p. [104]), only like Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. See Hallam's History of Literature, i. 138; Ritter's Christliche Philosophie, iv. [pg 463] 658 seq. Another exists by Æneas Sylvius; another by Ficinus, 1450, De Relig. Christianâ, in which the evidence of prophecy and miracles is adduced; the arguments from the moral character of the apostles and martyrs, the wonderful spread of Christianity, and the wisdom of the Bible, are used; and a comparison is drawn between Christianity and other creeds.

In the close of the same century, as soon as printing became common, several similar treatises occur. One exists by Alphonso de Spina, Fortalitium Fidei contra Judæos, &c. 1487; also by Savonarola, Triumphus Crucis, sive de Vera Fide, 1497; also by Pico di Mirandola; and by Ludovicus Vives, De Veritate Christianâ, 1551. A carefully written account of all these is given by Staüdlin, in Eichhorn's Geschichte der Literatur, vol. vi. p. 24 seq. See also Fabricius, Delect. Argument, ch. xxx.

The preceding works were mostly directed against the first of the two species of unbelief which belonged to this period, viz. the literary tendency (see Lecture [III]. p. [93], [94]). A few however exist which were directed against the second species, which was connected with the philosophy of Padua. They are not so much general treatises, as works written against particular opinions, of Pomponatius, Bruno, or Vanini. An account of them may be found in the memoirs respectively published concerning these writers; the references to which are given in the notes to Lecture [III]. (See pp. [101-103].) The work of Mornæus, De Veritate Religionis Christianæ adv. Atheistas, Epicureos, &c. 1580, was probably suggested by this species of philosophy.

IV. The fourth great period, marked by the unbelief connected with the activity of modern speculation and the influence of modern discovery, commenced in the sixteenth century. The works of defence are so numerous that we can only give a brief notice of the principal writers and writings. A list may be collected, down to the respective dates of their publication, from J. A. Fabricius's De Veritate Rel. Christ. c. 30; Pfaff's Hist. Litt. Theol. ii. § 2; Buddeus's Isagoge, pp. 856-1237; Walch's Biblioth. Theol. Select. vol. i. ch. v. § 5-7: and the principal arguments are summed up in Stapfer's Instit. Theol. Polem. 1744, vol. i. ch. iii. and vol. ii. Tholuck also has written a history of modern apologetic, Ueber Apologetik und ihre Litteratur (Vermischte Schriften, i. pp. 150-376), and the Abbe Migne has published a most important collection of the principal treatises on apologetic in all ages, arranged in chronological order. It is contained in twenty vols. 4to. 1843. The title of the work is given below.[1077]

The work of Grotius, De Veritate Religionis Christianæ, is the one which opens the period of evidences which we are now considering; of which a notice may be found in Hallam's History of Literature, ii. 364, and in Tholuck, Verm. Schr. i. 158; but no very definite cause can be pointed out why it was written. It was merely indeed one of the class of treatises already described (Notes [4] and [5]), which devoted a portion of space to the controversy with the Jews and Mahometans. It is when a new standpoint had been assumed by scepticism, and the causes, intellectual or moral, which have been pointed out in these lectures, had begun to create a real peril, that writings on the evidences begin to derive a new value and assume a new form.

We shall give an account of them according to countries. The English works of evidence.—Those which were called forth in England by Deism were of several kinds. Perhaps they may be arranged under four heads.

The first class consists of specific answers to certain books, published from time to time; of which kind are most of those which are named in the foot-notes to Lecture [IV]. Waterland's reply to Tindal is a type of this class. Occupied with tracking the opponent from point to point of his work, such replies, though important while the sceptical book is operating for evil, become obsolete along with the war of which they are a part, and henceforth are only valuable in literary history, unless, as in the special instance of Bentley's Phileleutherus Lipsiensis in reply to Collins, they are such marvellous instances of dialectical ability and literary acuteness that they possess a philosophical value as works of power, when their instructiveness has ceased.

A second kind consisted of homilies rather than arguments; sermons to Christian people, warning them against forms of unbelief, [pg 465] and regarding unbelief from a practical point of view rather than a speculative; and discussing, as would appropriately belong to such an object, the moral to the exclusion of the intellectual causes of doubt. Some of Tillotson's sermons are an example of the highest of this kind of works. The value of this class is twofold: in a purely pastoral point of view, the suggestions which they contain concerning the moral causes of doubt being founded on the real facts of the human heart, and on the declarations of scripture, have a lasting value; and in a literary point of view, these works contribute to the knowledge of the state of public feeling of the time. This is seen in this instance. Until about the end of the seventeenth century, there is no clear perception, except among the very highest of this class of writers, of the particular character of the forms of doubt against which their remarks are directed. The general name, Atheism, is used vaguely, to describe every form of unbelief. This fact tells its tale. It witnesses to the consciousness that they lived in an age of restlessness, when change of creed was going on, and doubt was prevalent; but when unbelief had not shaped itself into form, and found as yet few organs of expression. We are reminded of the works before named of the fifteenth century (p. [93] seq. 104.) At that time doubt and restlessness prevailed, as we learn from the frequent references to it; yet the works which transmit the knowledge of it to us are few, and the allusions to it vague: while the works of evidence then written are directed against antiquated forms of it,—Mahometan, Jewish, or philosophical. In like manner, in the seventeenth age, we see, as we look back, that the Christian sermons were mostly directed against older forms of unbelief,—the atheism of the ancients, or of the Paduan school; and that the contemporary unbelief had not become definite enough to enable the Christian writers to apprehend its nature. This fact too explains another circumstance. The preachers evince a bitterness, which is not merely the rudeness common in that age on all subjects, nor the indignation which arises from solicitude for souls, common in all ages on a subject so momentous as salvation; but it is the bitterness of alarm. There is a margin in their expression of vituperation, which is only to be explained by the fact, that the absence of a clear statement of the grounds of doubt, such as was subsequently given in the eighteenth century, deprived the preachers of the means of understanding the alleged excuse for the prevailing doubt. They appear not to be conscious of the causes which could create in the minds of others a restlessness which they did not feel themselves. They seem like persons living in a state of political society, who are conscious of a vast amount of general dissatisfaction, and a suspicion of a plot against society, the authors of which are unknown, as well as the causes of their supposed grievances; and where the danger is necessarily heightened from the very absence of knowledge as to its precise amount.