Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification

by Charles Bradlaugh

In the following extracts the reader will find the prominent features of that sensationalism which to-day has so many adherents:—"Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly, and afterwards in a train or dependence upon one another. Singly they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of a man's body, and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first totally or by parts been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original." The effect of this is to deny any possible knowledge other than as results from the activity of the sensative faculties, and is also fatal to the doctrine of a soul. "According," says Hobbes, "to the two principal parts of man, I divide his faculties into two sorts—faculties of the body, and faculties of the mind. Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the body is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum them up in these three heads—power nutritive, power generative, and power motive, Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts—cognitive, imaginative, or conceptive, and motive. For the understanding of what I mean by the power cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things without us. This imagery and representation of the qualities of the things without, is that which we call our conception, imagination, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the faculty, or power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call cognitive power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving." All the qualities called sensible are, in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. Because the image in vision, consisting of colour and shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the objects of that sense; it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion that the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves, and for the same cause that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox, and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion) passing to and fro from the object is worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall therefore endeavour to make plain these points. That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing seen. That there is nothing without us (really) which we call an image or colour. That the said image or colour is but an apparition unto us of the motion, agitation, or alteration which the object worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some internal substance of the head. That as in visions, so also in conceptions that arise from the other senses, the subject of their inference is not the object but the sentient. Strange to say Hobbes was protected from his clerical antagonists by the favour of Charles II., who had the portrait of the philosopher of Malmesbury hung on the walls of his private room at Whitehall.

Lord Herbert, of Cherbury (one of the friends of Hobbes) born 1581, died 1648, is remarkable for having written a book "De Veritate," in favour of natural—and against any necessity for revealed—religion; and yet at the same time pleading a sort of special sign or revelation to himself in favour of its publication.

Peter Gassendi, a native of Provence, born 1592, died 1655, was one of the opponents of Descartes and of Lord Herbert, and was an admirer of Hobbes; he advocated the old philosophy of Epicurus, professing to reject "from it everything contrary to Christianity." "But," asks Cousin, "how could he succeed in this? Principles, processes, results, everything in Epicurus is sensualism, materialism, atheism." Gassendi's works were characterised by great learning and ability, but being confined to the Latin tongue, and written avowedly with the intent of avoiding any conflict with the church, they gave but little immediate impetus to the great heretical movement. Arnauld charges Gassendi with overturning the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in his discussion with Descartes, and Leibnitz charges Gassendi with corrupting and injuring the whole system of natural religion by the wavering nature of his opinions. Buckle says, "The rapid increase of heresy in the middle of the seventeenth century is very remarkable, and it greatly aided civilisation in England by encouraging habits of independent thought." In February 1646, Boyle writes from London, "There are few days pass here, that may not justly be accused of the brewing or broaching of some new opinion. If any man have lost his religion, let him repair to London, and I'll warrant him he shall find it: I had almost said too, and if any man has a religion, let him but come hither now and he shall go near to lose it."

About 1655, one Isaac La Peyrere wrote two small treatises to prove that the world was peopled before Adam, but being arrested at Brussels, and threatened with the stake, he, to escape the fiery refutation, made a full recantation of his views, and restored to the world its dearly prized stain of natural depravity, and to Adam his position as the first man. La Peyrere's forced recantation is almost forgotten, the opinions he recanted are now amongst common truths.

Baruch D'Espinoza or Benedict Spinoza, was born Nov. 24,1632, in Amsterdam; an apt scholar, he, at the early age of fourteen, had mastered the ordinary tasks set him by his teacher, the Babbi Morteira, and at fifteen puzzled and affrighted the grave heads of the synagogue, by attempting the solution of problems which they themselves were well content to pass by. As he grew older his reason took more daring flights, and after attempts had been made to bribe him into submissive silence, when threats had failed to check or modify him, and when even the knife had no effect, then the fury of disappointed fanaticism found vent in the bitter curse of excommunication, and when about twenty-four years of age, Spinoza found himself outcast and anathematised. Having no private means or rich patrons, and differing in this from nearly every one whose name we have yet given our hero subsisted as a polisher of glasses, microscopes, &c., devoting his leisure to the study of languages and philosophy. There are few men as to whom modern writers have so widely differed in the description of their views, few who have been so thoroughly misrepresented. Bayle speaks of him as a systematic Atheist. Saintes says that he laid the foundations of a Pantheism as destructive to scholastic philosophy as to all revealed religion. Voltaire repeatedly writes of Spinoza as an Atheist and teacher of Atheism. Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks of Spinoza as an Atheist, and prefaces this opinion with the following passage, which we commend to more orthodox, and less acute writers:—"Little do these men know what Atheism is. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind, or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it—Not one man in a thousand has either goodness of heart, or strength of mind, to be, an Atheist." "And yet," says Froude, "both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian, a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist, which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have said something reasonable, could find no better name for him than a 'Gott trunkener mann,' a God intoxicated man; an expression which has been quoted by everybody who has since written on the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the world in a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much as attempted before? With him, as with all great men, there was no effort after sublime emotions. He was a plain, practical person; his object in philosophy, was only to find a rule by which to govern his own actions and his own judgment; and his treatises contain no more than the conclusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, with the grounds on which he rested them." Spinoza, who was wise enough to know that it was utterly useless to expect an unfettered examination of philosophical problems by men who are bound to accept as an infallible arbiter any particular book, and who knew that reasonings must be of a very limited character which took the alleged Hebrew Revelation as the centre and starting point for all inquiry, and also as the circling, limitation line for all investigation—devoted himself to the task of examining how far the ordinary orthodox doctrines as to the infallibility of the Old Testament were fairly maintainable. It was for this reason he penned his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," wherein he says—"We see that they who are most under the influence of superstitious feelings, and who covet uncertainties without stint or measure, more especially when they fall into difficulty or danger, cannot help themselves, are the persons, who, with vows and prayers and womanly tears, implore the Divine assistance; who call reason, blind, and human wisdom vain; and all, forsooth, because they cannot find an assured way to the vanities they desire." "The mainspring of superstition is fear; by fear too is superstition sustained and nourished." "Men are chiefly assailed by superstition When suffering from fear, and all they then do in the name of a vain religion is, in fact, but the vaporous product of a sorrowful spirit, the delirium of a mind overpowered by terror." He proceeds, "I have often wondered that men who boast of the great advantage they enjoy under the Christian dispensation—the peace, the joy they experience, the brotherly love they feel towards all in its exercise—should nevertheless contend with so much acrimony, and show such intolerance and unappeasable hatred towards one another. If faith had to be inferred from action rather than profession, it would indeed be impossible to say to what sect or creed the majority of mankind belong." He laid down that "No one is bound by natural law to live according to the pleasure of another, but that every one is by natural title the rightful asserter of his own independence," and that "he or they govern best who concede to every one the privilege of thinking as he pleases, and of saying what he thinks." Criticising the Hebrew prophets, he points out that "God used no particular style in making his communications; but in the same measure as the prophet possessed learning and ability, his communications were either concise and clear, or on the contrary, they were rude, prolix, and obscure." The representations of Zechariah, as we learn from the accounts themselves, were so obscure that without an explanation they could not be understood by himself; and those of Daniel were so dark, that even when explained, they were still unintelligible, not to others only, but also to the prophet himself. He argues entirely against miracles, as either contrary to nature or above nature, declaring any such to be "a sheer absurdity," "merum esse absurdum" Of the Scriptures themselves he points out that the ancient Hebrew is entirely lost. "Of the authors, or, if you please, writers, of many books, we either know almost nothing, or we entertain grave doubts as to the correctness with which the several books are ascribed to the parties whose names they bear." "Then we neither know on what occasion, nor at what time those books were indited, the writers of which are unknown to us. Further, we know nothing of the hands into which the books fell; nor of the codices which have furnished such a variety of readings, nor whether, perchance, there were not many other variations in other copies." Voltaire says of Spinoza, "Not only in the character of a Jew he attacks the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he ruins the Old." The logic of Spinoza was directed to the demonstration of one substance with infinite attributes, for which one substance with infinite attributes he had as equivalent the name "God." Some who have since followed Spinoza, have agreed in his one substance, but have denied the possibility of infinite attributes. Attributes or qualities, they urge, are attributes of the finite or conditioned, and that you cannot have attributes of substance except as attributes of its modes. You have in this distinction the division line between Spinozism and Atheism. Spinoza recognises infinite intelligence, but Atheism cannot conceive intelligence except in relation as quality of the conditioned, and not as the essence of the absolute. Spinoza denied the doctrine of freewill, as with him all phenomena are of God, so he rejects the ordinary notions of good and evil. The popular views of Spinoza in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were chiefly derived from the volumes of his antagonists; men learned his name because priests abused him, few had perused his works for themselves. To-day we may fairly say that Spinoza's logic and his biblical criticisms gave a vigour and force to the heresy of the latter half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century; a directness and effectiveness theretofore wanting.

As for the Bible, there was no longer an affected reverence for every yod or comma, church traditions were ignored wherever inconsistent with reason, and the law itself was boldly challenged when its letter was against the spirit of human progress.

One of the greatest promoters of heresy in England was Ralph Cudworth, born 1617, died 1688. He wrote to combat the atheistical tenets which were then commencing to obtain popularity in England, and was a controversialist so fair and candid in the statement of the opinions of his antagonists, that he was actually charged with heresy himself, and the epithets of Arian, Socinian, Deist, and even Atheist were freely levelled against him. "He has raised," says Dryden, "such strong objections against the being of a God and Providence, that many think he has not answered them." The clamour of bigotry seems to have discouraged Cudworth, and he left many of his works unprinted. Cousin describes him as "a Platonist, of a firm and profound mind, who bends somewhat under the weight of his erudition."

Thomas Burnet, born 1635, died 1715, a clergyman of the Church of England, who, though high in favour with King William and the famous Archbishop Tillotson, is said to have been shut out from preferment in the church chiefly, if not entirely, on account of his many heterodox views. He did not accept the orthodox notions on the Mosaic account of the creation, fall, and deluge. Regarding the account of the fall as allegorical, he argued for the ultimate salvation of everyone, and of course denied the doctrine of eternal torment.

In a curious passage relating to the equivocations of a large number of the clergy in openly taking the oath of allegiance to William III., while secretly supporting James as King, Burnet says, "the prevarication of too many in so sacred a matter contributed not a little to fortify the growing atheism of the time."

As Descartes and Spinoza had been foremost on the continent, so was Locke in England, and no sketch of the progress of heresy during the seventeenth century would be deserving serious regard which did not accord a prominent place to John Locke, whom G. H. Lewes calls "one of the wisest of Englishmen," and of whom Buckle speaks as "an innovator in his philosophy, and an Unitarian in his creed." He was born in 1632, and died 1704. Locke, according to his own fashion, was a sincere and earnest Christian; but this has not saved him from being furiously assailed for the materialistic character of his philosophy, and many have been ready to assert that Locke's principles "lead to Atheism." In politics Locke laid down, that unjust and unlawful force on the part of the government might and ought to be resisted by force on the part of the citizens. He urged that on questions of theology there ought to be no penalties consequent upon the reception or rejection of any particular religious opinion. How far those were right who regarded Locke's metaphysical reasoning as; dangerous to orthodoxy may be, judged by the following extract on the origin of ideas:—: "Follow a child from its birth and observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. After some time, it begins to know the objects, which being most familiar with it, have made lasting impressions. Thus it comes, by degrees, to know the persons it daily converses with, and distinguish them from strangers; which are instances and effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the senses convey to it; and so we may observe, how the mind, by degrees improves in these, and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these.