Thus the Jews of Holland were divided into two societies which might be called the Spanish and the German synagogues.[183] Their religious tenets were doubtless in complete harmony. But they had different usages and historical traditions, and they are said to have entertained mutual jealousies and enmities. Possibly the imposture of Rabbi Zeigler, one of the numberless adventurers who have claimed to be the Messiah, or His forerunner, may have done something to create this severance. Zeigler professed to have seen the promised deliverer at Strasburg, and assured his countrymen that, as soon as they had declared their readiness to accept him, he would appear, destroy the kingdom of Christ (as he called the supremacy of the Gentiles), and extend his own from one end of the world to the other. The Messiah was also to hold a council at Constance, which would last for twelve years, and all religious difficulties would be composed at it. As the Messiah did not appear, Zeigler’s followers were so far undeceived; but the mischief which his imposture had occasioned lasted long afterwards.
This epoch is remarkable for a demonstration of intolerant bigotry—not, as heretofore, evinced by the Christians against the Jews, but by the Jews against some of their own brethren. One would certainly have thought that they had had such convincing proof of the folly, to use no harsher term, of endeavouring to compel men by the infliction of disgrace and suffering to adopt or renounce a religious belief, that they would have abstained from such a course themselves. Yet their dealings with the two celebrities of this age, Uriel da Costa and Baruch Spinoza, exhibit an amount of harshness and injustice which their own persecutors could hardly have exceeded.
Both these men were of Portuguese extraction, and belonged to families which went by the name of New Christians. Both were remarkable for great mental activity and an unusually speculative turn of mind. This natural tendency was doubtless fostered by their own early experience—the truth or falsehood of every dogma of their belief having been, as it were, forced upon them as a matter of logical inquiry. It required little knowledge of human nature to understand that the opinions entertained by men like these could be influenced only by calm reasoning and reflection. Yet a course was pursued towards them which could only have been successful in the instance of the weakest or the most timid of men.
Uriel da Costa had belonged to a family of Maranaos, or New Christians, in Spain, where he had not only professed Christianity, but had been ordained a priest. Like so many of his countrymen, he had fled from Spain, and at Amsterdam threw off his pretended belief. But his early experiences had taught him distrust; and he was not disposed to acquiesce implicitly in the Rabbinical interpretation of the Scriptures. After a protracted controversy he composed a work, which he entitled An Examination of Pharisaical Tradition. The book does not appear to have been published, or even printed, but was circulated in manuscript among the members of the Jewish community. An eminent Rabbi, Samuel da Silva, took up the controversy, and published a reply to Da Costa’s work, which he called A Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul. To this Uriel replied by a review of his own essay, enlarged by a refutation of Da Silva’s argument. This gave great offence, and severe measures were taken. He was thrown into prison, on the charge of having denied the immortality of the soul. He was with difficulty released, on condition of paying a heavy fine, and suppressing the obnoxious writings. The effect of this harshness was, not to silence, but rather to provoke him to more determined antagonism. He was soon publicly excommunicated, and became, both in opinion and practice, a pronounced Deist. But, after fifteen years of suffering, wearied out by a controversy in which he found himself forsaken by all his friends, he twice sought a reconciliation with his synagogue. Now was the time when he might have been won from his errors. Tenderness and mercy would probably have had their effect on a nature which had much that was noble and generous intermingled with its pride and virulence. But unhappily a different course was pursued. On the second occasion he only obtained readmission to communion by consenting to undergo a public scourging in the synagogue,[184] the shame and degradation of which so affected him that a few days afterwards he destroyed himself.
Da Costa’s history has doubtless its moral lesson and its melancholy interest. But in neither particular can it compare with that of Spinoza. In a work like this, neither a lengthened biography of this man nor an analysis of his philosophy can be inserted. Nevertheless, considering the vast influence which his peculiar opinions have had on modern thought,[185] he cannot be dismissed without some notice.
He was born at Amsterdam in 1632. His father had emigrated from Lisbon some years previously, driven thence by religious persecution. Young Spinoza was instructed in Hebrew literature by Mosteira, Chief Rabbi of his synagogue, and in Latin by Van Ende, a physician, for whom he conceived a warm affection. He soon grew dissatisfied with his teachers; and, his revolt from Rabbinical authority attracting notice, remonstrances and threats followed. These failing of effect, he was publicly excommunicated,[186] and his life attempted. Thereupon he retired to Rhynsburg, where he supported himself by grinding optical glasses. Afterwards he removed to Voorburg, and again to the Hague. At all these places he led a quiet, studious, very pure and beautiful life, keeping up a correspondence with some of the greatest philosophers of the day, and more than once refusing offers of advancement. No man was more highminded or unselfish. His favourite pupil, De Vries, who knew that his own hours were numbered, proposed to make Spinoza his heir. But De Vries had a brother living, and Spinoza insisted that the money should be left to him. At his father’s death his sisters claimed the whole property, on the ground of Spinoza’s excommunication. Spinoza vindicated his right in a court of law, but voluntarily gave up the property in dispute. He died, as calmly as he had lived, of consumption, A.D. 1677, in the forty-fifth year of his age.
No man has ever been more fiercely assailed or more enthusiastically defended. He has been denounced as an Atheist, a Pantheist, a blasphemer, and a fatalist. He has been upheld as a man eminently holy, a devout lover of God and of Christ.[187] Strange as it may seem, all these statements may be said to be true, though of course in different senses of the terms employed. For his Atheism—he seems to have been repelled, from the first, by the anthropomorphism of the Scriptures. It was not merely that God was there represented as possessed of an eye, a hand, etc., but as performing human actions, and influenced by human feelings. This was, in his view, absolute falsehood,[188] and the result was that he entirely rejected the God of revelation, and with Him, of course, the whole scheme of salvation as propounded in the Bible. Thus, then, he may be styled an Atheist. But, on the other hand, he constructed a system in which he affirmed that there exists but one substance, though with infinite attributes, and that this substance is God, who is either absolutely or in some modified form everything. The man who holds this cannot, it may be said, be an Atheist.[189] He is, again, no Pantheist, for he distinguishes between God and the universe;[190] yet the Christian Pantheists, as they may be called, claim him as their own, if not their founder. For the other charges, he no doubt affirms that, as nothing can be done, either directly or indirectly, except by God, all human acts, however wicked, may be said to be done by Him. This, according to our ideas, is both blasphemy and fatalism. Yet Spinoza attributes the act only, not its moral wickedness, to God. When pressed to say whether the atrocious murder of Agrippina by Nero was due to God, he answered that it must be so due, so far as the act was concerned. But no act is good or evil in itself, and it was Nero’s evil mind, not God’s, that made the crime.[191] So with his fatalism. When he denies that man can act otherwise than as God wills, he appears to enunciate the plainest fatalism;[192] nor do I see how any other conclusion can logically be drawn from his premisses. But then Spinoza also teaches the beauty, the happiness, the necessity of holiness, of moral culture and self-discipline—things not merely inconsistent, but irreconcilable, with fatalism. He holds language which an apostle might endorse. ‘Justice and charity,’ he writes, ‘are the one infallible sign of the catholic faith, the genuine fruits of the Holy Spirit. Where they are found, there is Christ. Where they are wanting, Christ is not. For by the Spirit of Christ are we led to justice and charity.’ We are led—so, too, the Scriptures teach—led, if we will follow; not blindly driven, as the fatalist must believe.
On the whole, a wise man will hardly speak otherwise than with respect and tenderness of Spinoza. No doubt, notwithstanding the depth and acuteness of his intellect, in which respects he has never probably been exceeded by any of human kind, his system is full of inconsistencies, and has little practical value. How could it be otherwise, when he has attempted that which Revelation itself has with difficulty effected? But he was honest, patient, humble, beneficent, as few men have been; and his desire to attain to truth was earnest and unselfish. As in the case of pious heathens, like Aurelius, we cannot be sure that Christianity was ever put before him in its true aspect. The frivolities of the Talmud, the traditions of the Inquisition, the Church of Roderic Borgia and his successors—were none of them likely to lead him to Christ, as revealed in His blessed Word. Let our sentence on him be, what every good man says of those whom he respects, and yet from whom he is constrained to differ: ‘Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses.’[193]
Besides the eminent writers of this century already mentioned, Da Costa, Spinoza, Orobio da Castro, Thomas—or, as he is called by his countrymen, Isaac—de Pinedo, one of the most eminent Greek scholars of the day, deserves mention not only for his classical learning, but for the unusually mild and charitable tone he uniformly employs when speaking of the religion of Christ. To this date also belong David Lara, the lexicographer; Benjamin Musafia, the naturalist; and Isaac Uziel, Emanuel Gomez, and Enrique Enriquez, the poets.
In the earlier part of the century considerable numbers of Jews sailed for the Brazils from the various ports of Holland, under the leadership of two Rabbins, to found a Jewish colony. It throve and attained a considerable amount of prosperity until, in 1654, the Portuguese obtained possession of Brazil. Under these new masters, free exercise of their religion was not allowed the Jews. They therefore quitted the country, some returning to Holland, others settling in Cayenne or Surinam.