History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

Tindal's object is to show that natural religion is absolutely perfect, and can admit of no increase so as to carry obligation. For this purpose he tries to establish, first, that revelation is unnecessary,[441] and secondly, that obligation to it is impossible. His argument in favour of the first of these two positions is, that if man's perfection be the living according to the constitution of human nature,[442] and God's laws with the penalties attached [pg 139] be for man's good,[443] nothing being required by God for its own sake;[444] then true religion, whether internally or externally revealed, having the one end, human happiness, must be identical in its precepts.[445] Having denied the necessity, he then disputes the possibility, of revelation, on the ground that the inculcation of positive as distinct from moral duties, is inconsistent with the good of man, as creating an independent rule.[446] Assuming the moral faculty to be the foundation of all obligation, he reduces all religious truth to moral. It is in thus showing the impossibility of any revelation save the republication of the law of nature that he notices many of the difficulties in scripture which form the mystery to the theologian, the ground of doubt to the objector. Some of these are of a literary character, such as the assertion of the failure of the fulfilment of prophecies, and of marks of fallibility in the scripture writers, like the mistake which he alleges in respect to the belief in the immediate coming of Christ.[447] Others of them are moral difficulties, points where the revealed system seems to him to contradict our instincts, such as the destruction of the Canaanites.[448] In reference to this last example, which may be quoted as a type of his assertions, he argues against the possibility of a divine commission for the act, on the principle asserted by Clarke,[449] that a miracle can never prove the divine truth of a doctrine which contravenes the moral idea of justice; or, in more modern phrase, that no supposed miracle can be a real one, if it attest a doctrine which bears this character. In the present work Tindal denied the necessity and possibility of a new revelation distinct from natural religion. He did not live to complete the concluding part of his book, wherein he intended to show that all the truths of Christianity were as old as the creation; i.e. were a republication of the religion of nature.

Tindal is an instance of those who have unconsciously kindled their torch at the light of revelation. [pg 140] The religion of nature of which he speaks is a logical idea, not an historic fact. The creation of it is analogous to the mention of the idea of compact as the basis of society, a generalization from its present state, not a fact of its original history. It is the residuum of Christianity when the mysterious elements have been subtracted. But in adopting the idea, the Deists were on the same level as the Christians. Both alike travelled together to the end of natural religion.[450] Here the Deist halted, willing to accept so much of Christianity as was a republication of the moral law. The Christian, on the other hand, found in reason the necessity for revelation, and proceeded onward to revealed doctrines and positive precepts.

The works of the two writers Morgan and Chubb in part supply the defect left in Tindal, the omission on the part of deism to show that Christian truths were a republication of natural religion; the former especially attacking the claims of the Jewish religion to be divine, the latter the claims of the Christian.

Morgan's chief work,[451] the “Moral Philosopher,” was published in 1737. Starting from the moral point of view, the sole supremacy and sufficiency of the moral law, the writer exhibits the necessity of applying the moral test as the only certain criterion on the questions of religion, and declines admitting the authority of miracles and prophecy to avail against it,[452] an investigation suggested partly by the questions just named of the ground of unbelief, and partly by the circumstance that the Christian writers were beginning to dwell more strongly on the external evidences when unbelievers professed the internal to be unsatisfactory. The adoption of this test of truth prevents the admission of an historic revelation with positive duties. He [pg 141] thinks with Tindal that natural religion is perfect in itself, but seems to admit that it is so weak as to need republication,[453] which is a greater admission than Tindal made in his extant volume. When however he passes from the decision on the general possibility of revelation to particular historic forms, the Mosaic and Christian, he discredits both. The infallibility of the moral sense is still the canon by which his judgment is determined. On this ground he disbelieves the Jewish religion,[454] selecting successive passages of the national history, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim,[455] the ceremonial religious system,[456] as the object of his attack. A degree of interest attaches to his criticism on these points, in that it was the means of calling forth the celebrated work of Warburton on the Divine Legation of Moses.

The same principles of criticism mislead him in his examination of Christianity. The hallowed doctrine of the atonement forms a stumblingblock to him, on the ground of the transfer of merit by imputation.[457] He regards Christianity as a Jewish gospel, until it was altered by the apostles, whose authority he discredits by arguments not unlike the ancient ones of Celsus. The method of Morgan is more constructive than that of his predecessors. Not denying the historic element of Christianity by idealizing it as Collins, he attempts a natural explanation of the historic facts. The central thought which guides him throughout is the supreme authority of the moral reason. His works open up the broad question whether the moral sense is to pronounce on revelation or to submit to it, and thus form a fresh illustration of the intimate dependence of particular sceptical opinions and methods upon metaphysical and ethical theories.

In the period which we are now examining, deism was almost entirely confined to the upper classes. It was in the latter part of the century that it spread to the lower, political antipathy against the church giving [pg 142] point to religious unbelief. Chubb,[458] whom we next consider, is one of the few exceptions. He was a working man, endowed with strong native sense; who manifested the same inclination to meddle with the deep subject of religion which afterwards marked the character of Thomas Paine and others, who influenced the lower orders later in the century. In his general view of religion, Chubb denied all particular providence, and by necessary consequence the utility of prayer, save for its subjective value as having a reflex benefit on the human heart.[459] He was undecided as to the fact of the existence of a revelation, but seemed to allow its possibility.[460] He examined the three great forms of religion which professed to depend upon a positive revelation, Judaism,[461] Mahometanism, and Christianity. The claims of the first he wholly rejected, on grounds similar to those explained by Morgan, as incompatible with the moral character of God. In reference to the second he anticipated the modern opinions on Mahometanism, by asserting that its victory was impossible, if it had not contained truth which the human spirit needed. In examining the third he attacked, like Morgan, the evidence of miracles[462] and prophecy,[463] and asserted the necessity of moral right and wrong as the ground of the interpretation of scripture.

One of his most celebrated works was an explanation of “the true gospel of Jesus Christ,” which is one of the many instances which his works afford of the unfairness produced by the want of moral insight into the [pg 143] woes for which Christianity supplies a remedy, and into the deep adaptation of the scheme of redemption to effect the object proposed by a merciful Providence in its communication.[464] It will be perceived that the three last writers whose systems have been explained, resemble each other so much as to form a class by themselves. They restrict their attack to the internal character of revelation, employ the moral rather than the historical investigation, embody the chief speculations of their predecessors, and offer, as has been already stated, a constructive as well as a destructive system; morality or natural religion in place of revealed.[465]

An anonymous work was published in 1744, which merits notice as indicating a slight alteration in the mode of attack on the part of the deists. It was entitled, The Resurrection of Jesus considered, and is attributed to P. Annet, who died in the wretchedness of poverty.[466] It was designed in reply to some of the defences of this subject which the writings of Woolston and others had provoked. Its object was to show that the writings which record the statement of Christ's prediction of his own death are a forgery; that the narrative of the resurrection is incredible on internal grounds, and the variety in the various accounts of it are evidences of fraud. It indicates the commencement of the open allegation of literary imposture as distinct from philosophical error, which subsequently marked the criticism of the French school of infidelity, and affected the English unbelievers of the latter half of the century.

Deism had now reached its maximum. The attention of the age was turned aside from religion to politics by the political dangers incident to the attempts of the Pretender; and when Hume's scepticism was promulgated in 1749 it was received without interest, and Bolingbroke's posthumous writings published in 1754 fell comparatively dead. These two names mark the period which we called the decline of deism. Bolingbroke's views[467] however depict deistical opinions of the period when it was at its height, and are a transition into the later form seen in Hume, and therefore require to be stated first, though posterior in the date of publication.

Bolingbroke's writings command respect from their mixture of clearness of exposition with power of argument. They form also the transition to the literature of the next age, in turning attention to history. Bolingbroke had great powers of psychological analysis, but he despised the study of it apart from experience. His philosophy was a philosophy of history. In his attacks on revelation we have the traces of the older philosophical school of deists; but in the consciousness that an historical, not a philosophical, solution must be sought to explain the rise of an historical phenomenon such as Christianity, he exemplifies the historic spirit which was rising, and anticipates the theological inquiry found in Gibbon; and, in his examination of the external historic evidence, both the documents by which the Christian religion is attested, and the effects of tradition in weakening historic data, he evinces traces of the influence of the historical criticism which had arisen in France under his friend Pouilly.[468]