Their truth questioned by some. 2. The Jesuits had, unfortunately for themselves, no writers at that time of sufficient ability to defend them; and being disliked by many who were not Jansenists, could make little stand against their adversaries, till public opinion had already taken its line. They have since not failed to charge Pascal with extreme misrepresentation of their eminent casuists, Escobar, Busenbaum, and many others, so that some have ventured to call the Provincial Letters the immortal liars (les immortelles menteuses). It has been insinuated, since Pascal’s veracity is hard to attack, that he was deceived by those from whom he borrowed his quotations. But he has declared himself, in a remarkable passage, not only that far from repenting of these letters he would make them yet stronger if it were to be done again, but that although he had not read all the books he has quoted, else he must have spent great part of his life in reading bad books, yet that he had read Escobar twice through, and with respect to the rest, he had not quoted a single passage without having seen it in the book, and examined the context before and after, that he might not confound an objection with an answer, which would have been reprehensible and unjust[877]: it is therefore impossible to save the honour of Pascal, if his quotations are not fair. Nor did he stand alone in his imputations on the Jesuit casuistry. A book called Morale des Jesuites, by Nicolas Perrault, published at Mons in 1667, goes over the same ground with less pleasantry but not less learning.
[877] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 400.
Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium. 3. The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appeared in the English language is the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, published in 1660. This, as its title shows, treats of subjective morality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much discussed without establishing some principles of objective right and wrong, some standard by which the conscience is to be ruled. “The whole measure and rule of conscience,” according to Taylor, “is the law of God, or God’s will signified to us by nature or revelation; and by the several manners and times and parts of its communication it hath obtained several names:—the law of nature—the consent of nations—right reason—the Decalogue—the sermon of Christ—the canons of the apostles—the laws ecclesiastical and civil of princes and governors—fame or the public reputation of things, expressed by proverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty.... These being the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present book.”
Its character and defects. 4. The heterogeneous combination of things so different in nature and authority, as if they were all expressions of the law of God, does not augur well for the distinctness of Taylor’s moral philosophy, and would be disadvantageously compared with the Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker. Nor are we deceived in the anticipations we might draw. With many of Taylor’s excellencies, his vast fertility and his frequent acuteness, the Ductor Dubitantium exhibits his characteristic defects; the waste of quotations is even greater than in his other writings, and his own exuberance of mind degenerates into an intolerable prolixity. His solution of moral difficulties is often unsatisfactory; after an accumulation of arguments and authorities we have the disappointment to perceive that the knot is neither untied nor cut; there seems a want of close investigation of principles, a frequent confusion and obscurity, which Taylor’s two chief faults, excessive display of erudition and redundancy of language, conspire to produce. Paley is no doubt often superficial, and sometimes mistaken; yet in clearness, in conciseness, in freedom from impertinent reference to authority, he is far superior to Taylor.
5. Taylor seems too much inclined to side with those who resolve all right and wrong into the positive will of God. The law of nature he defines to be “the universal law of the world, or of mankind, to which we are inclined by nature, invited by consent, prompted by reason, but which is bound upon us only by the command of God.” Though in the strict meaning of the word, law, this may be truly said, it was surely required, considering the large sense which that word has obtained as coincident with moral right, that a fuller explanation should be given than Taylor has even intimated, lest the goodness of the Deity should seem something arbitrary and precarious. And, though in maintaining, against most of the scholastic metaphysicians, that God can dispense with the precepts of the Decalogue, he may be substantially right, yet his reasons seem by no means the clearest and most satisfactory that might be assigned. It may be added, that in his prolix rules concerning what he calls a probable conscience, he comes very near to the much decried theories of the Jesuits. There was indeed a vein of subtlety in Taylor’s understanding which was not always without influence on his candour.
Cudworth’s immutable morality. 6. A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, by Cudworth, was first published in 1731. This may be almost reckoned a portion of his Intellectual System, the object being what he has declared to be one of those which he had there in view. This was to prove that moral differences of right and wrong are antecedent to any divine law. He wrote therefore not only against the Calvinistic school, but in some measure against Taylor, though he abstains from mentioning any recent author except Descartes, who had gone far in referring all moral distinctions to the arbitrary will of God. Cudworth’s reasoning is by no means satisfactory, and rests too much on the dogmatic metaphysics which were going out of use. The nature or essence of nothing, he maintains, can depend upon the will of God alone; which is the efficient, but not the formal, cause of all things; a distinction not very intelligible, but on which he seems to build his theory.[878] For moral relations, though he admits that they have no objective existence out of the mind, have a positive essence, and therefore are not nothing; whence, it follows that they must be independent of will. He pours out much ancient learning, though not so lavishly as in the Intellectual System.
[878] P. 15.
Nicole—La Placette. 7. The urgent necessity of contracting my sails in this last period, far the most abundant as it is in the variety and extent of its literature, restrains me from more than a bare mention of several works not undeserving of regard. The Essais de Morale of Nicole are less read than esteemed, says a late biographer.[879] Voltaire however prophesied that they would not perish. “The chapter especially,” he proceeds, “on the means of preserving peace among men is a masterpiece to which nothing equal has been left to us by antiquity.”[880] These Essays are properly contained in six volumes; but so many other pieces are added in some editions that the collection under that title is very long. La Placette, minister of a French church at Copenhagen, has been called the Protestant Nicole. His Essais de Morale, in 1692 and other years, are full of a solid morality, rather strict in casuistry, and apparently not deficient in observation and analytical views of human nature. They were much esteemed in their own age. Works of this kind tread so very closely on the department of practical religion that it is sometimes difficult to separate them on any fixed principle. A less homiletical form, a comparative absence of scriptural quotation, a more reasoning and observing mode of dealing with the subject, are the chief distinctions. But in the sermons of Barrow and some others we find a great deal of what may be justly called moral philosophy.
[879] Biog. Univ.
[880] Siècle de Louis XIV.