History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

The following seem to merit notice. First, the arguments in favour of natural religion, drawn from physical science, stated in the Bridgewater Treatises, analogous to the earlier works of Derham and Paley; the connection of science with revelation, in Cardinal Wiseman's Lectures delivered in Rome, 2d ed. 1842, (which are a little obsolete, but very masterly;) several works by Dr. M'Cosh, Divine Government,—Typical Forms, &c. in which the author takes a large view of the world, and of the province of revealed religion in the scheme of general truth, founded mainly on Butler; also a work of Dr. Buchanan, Modern Atheism, valuable for its literary materials as much as for its argument; and of T. Erskine on the Internal Evidences, 1821. The Bampton Lectures of Mr. Miller in 1817 also deserve to be singled out as a thoughtful and original exhibition of the argument in one branch of the internal evidence; The Divine Authority of Scripture asserted from its adaptation to the real state of human nature; also Mr. Davison's Warburton Lectures on Prophecy, 1825. Among works directed to special subjects, we ought to specify, The Restoration of Belief, by Mr. Isaac Taylor, intended indirectly against speculations such as those of the Tübingen school; and an able and thoughtful work on the subject of the superhuman character of Christ, The Christ of History, by Mr. Young; also E. Miall's Bases of Belief; with the two Burnett Prize Essays by Thompson and Tullock; and a reply to Mr. Newman's Phases of Faith, viz. The Eclipse of Faith, and Letters of E. H. Greyson, by H. Rogers, constructed however partly on the argument of the dilemma.[1082] The replies written to Essays and Reviews, especially Aids to Faith, ought to be added.

We have reserved for separate mention one work, which ascends [pg 470] to the philosophy of the religious question, Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures, 1858, The Limits of Religious Thought, because it is a work which is valuable for its method, even if the reader differs (as the author of these lectures does in some respects) from the philosophical principles maintained, or occasionally even from the results attained.[1083] It is an attempt to reconstruct the argument of Butler from the subjective side. As Butler showed that the difficulties which are in revealed religion are equally applicable to natural; so Mr. Mansel wishes to show that the difficulties which the mind feels in reference to religion are parallel to those which are felt by it in reference to philosophy. Since the time of Kant a subjective tone has passed over philosophy. The phenomena are now studied in the mind, not in nature; in our mode of viewing, not in the object viewed. And hence Butler's argument needed reconstructing on its psychological side. Mr. Mansel has attempted to effect this; and the book must always in this respect have a value, even to the minds of those who are diametrically opposed to its principles and results. Even if the details were wrong, the method would be correct, of studying psychology before ontology; of finding the philosophy of religion, not, as Leibnitz attempted, objectively in a theodicée, but subjectively, by the analysis of the religious faculties; learning the length of the sounding-line before attempting to fathom the ocean.

These remarks must suffice in reference to the history of Evidences in England. We shall now give an account of those which existed in France; which will be still more brief, because the works are considered to be of small general value, at least they have not a general reputation.

2. The French works of evidence.—In the middle of the seventeenth century we meet with Pascal and Huet; both of them, metaphysically speaking, sceptics, who disbelieved in the possibility of finding truth apart from revelation;[1084] and with whom therefore the object of evidences was to silence doubt rather than to remove it. (On Pascal, see Rogers's Essays, Essay reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, January 1847; and on Huet, an article in the Quarterly Review, No. 194, September 1855, and the reference given p. 19. Also see Houtteville, introduction to La Religion Chrétienne prouvée par des Faits, 1722.)

Among the Roman catholics, at the close of the same century, were the following: Le Vassor([+]1718); the two Lamy [+] 1710 and 15, and Denyse; and in the eighteenth century, Houtteville, whose preface to his own work, an historical view of evidences and attacks to his own time, has been just named; Bonnet; D'Aguesseau, [+] 1751; and Bergier [+] 1790: and among the Protestants,—Abbadie, [+] 1727; and Jacquelot, [+] 1708; nearly all of whom are treated of by Tholuck [pg 471] (Verm. Schr. i. p. 28) and Walch (Bibl. Theol. Sel. ch. v. sect. 6). Several more will be found in the Demonstrations Evangeliques; among which are Choiseul du Plessis, Praslin, Polignac, De Bernis, Buffier, Tournemine, and Gerdil; the Lives of several of whom are in the Biographie Universelle.

Though some of these were men whose works were of ordinary respectability, they were by no means a match in greatness for the intellectual giants who prostituted their powers on behalf of unbelief; and on one occasion, when a prize essay had been offered for a work in behalf of Christianity, no work was deemed worthy of it. (Alison, History of Europe, i. 180.) Since the beginning of the present century, however, there has been a change. Whatever may be thought of the line of argument adopted, the skill with which it has been put forward, and the ability of the minds that have given expression to it, is undoubted. Chateaubriand may be considered as the first who, with a full appreciation of the tastes and wants of modern society, tried to show not only the compatibility of Christianity with them, but that the perfection of society was only realized in it. The work of the Christian labourers who had to bring back France to Christianity was hard. It was not the apologist, acting, as in England, from the vantage ground of a powerful church against the Deist, who was making an attack on it; but it was a weak and feeble minority acting against a powerful mass of educated intellect. The apologists were indirectly aided by philosophy. The philosophers did not aim primarily at religious truth, and we have had reason to take exception to many of their views; yet they rekindled in France the elements of natural religion, on which the Christians then proceeded to base revealed. The works of Jules Simon are the highest expression of it. (See Note [44].)

The school of evidences that has existed, has been the church school of De Maistre, already described. (See Note [45], and the references given there.) With somewhat of the spirit of the writers of the fifteenth age, they have directed their efforts to reestablish the catholic church as the condition of re-establishing the Christian religion. To this we have already taken exception, Lecture [VII]. p. [300]; and the remarks there given may suffice in reference to the movement. Yet the literary appreciation of the line of argument used by the older apologists, is perceptible in the large publication of Migne, already named.

The other attempt in France to re-establish Christianity by Protestant apologists, noticed in Lecture [VII]. p. [304], of which the ablest was Vinet, is rather directed against rationalism than against full unbelief; and aims to turn the flank of the rationalist argument, and, while accepting its premises, deny its conclusions. (On Vinet, see Note [46].) The problem which is now before the apologists is, not to show that Christianity is not imposture, but rather that it is not merely philosophy. (Compare the remarks of Strauss, at the close of his work on Reimarus, alluded to in Note [29]. p. [427]).

There now only remains the history of Apologetic in Germany.

3. The German works of evidence.—As early as the end of the seventeenth century, we find the attention of Kortholt directed to Spinoza; and in the early part of the eighteenth we see, in the grand attempt of Leibnitz to find a philosophy of religion; in Haller, 1705-77; in Euler, 1747, (for which see Tholuck, V. Schr. ii. 311-362, together with a list of others there given,) a proof of the attention which the Evidences received. The existence of works like J. A. Fabricius's Delectus Argumentorum, 1725; Reimannus, Historia Atheismi, 1725; Buddeus, De Atheismo, 1737; Stapfer, Inst. Theol. Polem. 1752; as well as the attention shown by the bibliographers, Pfaff, Walch, Fabricius, to the literature of Evidences, is a proof of the same fact.