There were in this century a large number of writers in England and throughout Europe, who, taking the Bible as a starting-point and limitation for their philosophy, broached wonderful theories as to creation, &c, in which reason and revelation were sought to be made harmonious. Enfield, a most orthodox writer, in his "History of Philosophy" says, "Who does not perceive, from the particulars which have been related concerning these Scriptural philosophers, that their labours, however well intended, have been of little benefit to philosophy? Their fundamental error has consisted in supposing that the sacred Scriptures were intended, not only to instruct men in all things necessary to their salvation, but to teach the true principles of physical and metaphysical science." How pregnant the admission that revelation and science cannot be expected to accord—an admission which in truth declares that in all philosophical research it is necessary to go beyond the Bible, if not to go against it—an admission which involves the declaration, that so long as men are bound by the letter of the Bible, so long all philosophical progress is impossible.
In this century the English Church lost much of the political power it had hitherto wielded. It was in 1625, that William, Bishop of Lincoln, was dismissed from the office of Lord Keeper, and since his day no ecclesiastic has held the great seal of England, and to-day who even in the Church itself would dream of trying to make a bishop Lord Chancellor? The church lost ground in the conflict with Charles, but this it might perhaps have recovered, but it suffered irretrievably loss of prestige in its struggle with William.
CHAPTER IV. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The eighteenth century deserves that the penman who touches its records shall have some virility; for these records contain, not only the narrative of the rapid growth of the new philosophy in France, England, and Germany, where its roots had been firmly struck in the previous century, but they also give the history of a glorious endeavour on the part of a down-trodden and long-suffering people, weakened and degraded by generations of starvation and oppression, to break the yoke of tyranny and superstition. Eighteenth century historians can write how the men of France, after having been cursed by a long race of kings, who never dreamed of identifying their interests with those of the people; after enduring centuries of tyranny from priests, whose only Gods were power, pleasure, and Mammon, and at the hands of nobles, who denied civil rights to their serfs; at last, could endure no longer, but electrified into life by eighteenth century heresy, "spurned under foot the idols of tyranny and superstition," and sought "by the influence of reason to erect on the ruins of arbitrary power the glorious edifice of civil and religious liberty." Why Frenchmen then failed in giving permanent success to their heroic endeavour, and why France, despite the wonderful recent progress in thought, is even yet cursed with corrupt imperialism and state superstition, is not difficult to explain, when we consider that every tyranny in Europe united against that young republic to which the monarchy had bequeathed a legacy of a wretched pauper people, a people whose minds had been hitherto wholly in the hands of the priests, whose passions had revolted against wrong, but whose brains were yet too weak for the permanent enjoyment of the freedom temporarily resulting from physical effort. Eighteenth century heresy is especially noticeable for its immediate connection with political change. For the first time in European history, the great mass commenced to yearn for the assertion in government of democratic principles. The French Republican Revolution which overthrew Louis XVI. and the Bastile, was only possible because the heretical teachers who preceded it, had weakened the divine right of kingcraft; and it was ultimately unsuccessful, only because an overwhelming majority of the people were as yet not sufficiently released from the thraldom of the church, and therefore fell before the allied despotisms of Europe, who were aided by the Catholic priests, who naturally plotted against the spirit which seemed likely to make men too independent to be pious.
In Germany the liberation of the masses from the dominion of the Church of Rome was effected with the, at first, active believing concurrence of the nation; in England this was not so, Protestantism here was the result rather of the influence and interests of the King and Court, and of the indifference of the great body of the people. The Reformed Church of England, sustained by the crown and aristocracy, has generally left the people to find their own way to heaven or hell, and has only required abstinence from avowed denial of, or active opposition to, its tenets. Its ministers have usually preached with the same force to a few worshippers scattered over their grand cathedrals and numerous churches as to a thronging crowd, but in each these there has been a lack of vitality in the sermon. It is only when the material interests of the church have been apparently threatened that vigour has been shown on the part of its teachers.
It is a curious fact, and one for comment hereafter, that while in the modern struggle for the progress of heresy, its sixteenth century pages present many most prominent Italian names, when we come to the eighteenth century, there are but few such names worthy special notice; it is no longer from the extreme South, but from France, Germany, and England that you have the great array of Freethinking warriors. Those whom Italy boasts too are now nearly all in the Idealistic ranks.
We commenced the list by a brief reference to Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician, born at Dordrecht in 1670 and who died in 1733; a writer with great power as a satirist, whose fable of the "Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits," not only served as source for much of Helvetius, but had the double honour of an indictment at the Middlesex session, and an answer from the pen of Bishop Berkeley.
One of the early, and perhaps one of the most important promoters of heresy in the United Kingdom, was George Berkeley, an Irishman by birth. He was born on the 12th of March, 1684, at Kilcrin, and died at Oxford in 1753. It was this writer to whom Pope assigned "every virtue under heaven," and of whom Byron wrote:—
"When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,'
And proved it—'twas no matter what he said:
They say his system 'tis in vain to batter,
Too subtle for the airiest human head;
And yet who can believe it?"