History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology

by J. F. Hurst

Bekker loved to trace all spirit-stories to some plausible origin, and then to hold them up to the ridicule of the masses. To give substantial proof of his disbelief in all spiritual influence, he passed many nights in graveyards, on which occasions he manifested a sacrilegious hardihood, which, besides making him the wonder of his time, could only be accounted for by supposing that he kept up secret correspondence with the devil. "For," reasoned the Dutch theologians, "is not all this one of Satan's tricks to make us believe that he does not exist, so that he may capture us unawares?" On account of Bekker's acknowledged merit, the government took his part, and at his death, paid his salary to his family. Voltaire said of him: "He was a very good man, a great enemy of the devil and of an eternal hell.... I am persuaded that if there ever existed a devil, and he had read Bekker's World Bewitched, he would never have forgiven the author for having so prodigiously insulted him." In the library at Utrecht there are ten quarto volumes containing reviews of this book, in which Bekker's personal appearance, said to have been very unprepossessing, receives a goodly portion of the censure. His body was believed by his contemporaries to be a most excellent portrait of the devil himself.

Professor Roell, of Franeker University, started from the Cocceian principle of freedom of thought. In his inaugural address, he announced it as his opinion, that Scriptures cannot be interpreted in any safe way except by the dictates of reason; that reason is the grand instrument by which we arrive at a knowledge of all truth; and that it is the great authority for the determination of all theoretical and practical religion. This author is best known to theologians by his ideas on the sonship of Christ. He held that Christ could not be a son, for then there would be a time when he came into being from nonentity. The term "son" could not signify unity of essence with the Father. "Brother" would be a more correct word. The only sense in which Christ could be son was as the divine ambassador. These assumptions brought upon Roell the charge that he was a Socinian and an Arminian. His principal opponent was Vitringa.

Rationalistic tendencies increased in both number and force in proportion as the church decreased in the zeal which it had possessed at the close of the Cocceian and Voetian controversy by virtue of the immigration of the exiled Huguenots of France.

Van Os, of Zwolle, attacked the accepted covenantal theory, and the doctrine of immediate imputation. The latter was a mere scholastic opinion, not accepted among the doctrines of the church, but yet maintained by the people as a requisite of orthodoxy. Having gone thus far, Van Os proceeded to deny a form of infralapsarianism, which was termed "justification from eternity." Many prominent but bigoted minds, having long entertained these ultra ideas he was endeavoring to refute, and some having gone so far as to attempt their introduction into a revised edition of the confession of faith, Van Os was censured for heresy. But he took the first opportunity to preach the Protestant doctrine that every one had the right to test the church-creed by the word of God. In the opinion of the people this course amounted to a total renunciation of the creed, and he was accordingly dismissed. Another dispute, which created attention and attracted the suspicion of the watchful church, was on toleration. All who dared to defend even the word, were stigmatized as unpardonable heretics, for Voltaire had just written in its favor. Pastor De Cock placed himself in danger of excommunication because he was so rash as to advocate it. He was only rescued by the interference of the government, and by luckily publishing that he distinguished between Christian and ecclesiastical toleration.

There were controversies concerning minor points of doctrine, but amid them all, it was very perceptible that there was a well-organized disposition to break through the stringent rules of order, and escape from the control of the vigilant guardians of the church. But whoever departed a hair's breadth from the doctrinal system laid down in the confession of faith was charged with skepticism. Van der Marck's employment of a single term cost him his professorship. But he was afterwards restored, and died in 1800. Kleman wrote a book, in 1774, on the Connection between Grace and Duty, in which he held that the right use of those intellectual and spiritual gifts which God has imparted to us is the condition of his further blessings. He was compelled to retract his heresy. Ten Broek, of Rotterdam, considered only the death of Christ expiatory, while his colleagues wished the same to be said of every act of his life. Because that rash theologian ventured to use the word "world," in John iii. 16, in its broadest sense instead of circumscribing it to "the world of the elect," he had the choice either to recant or give up his office. The government interfered and saved him.

But while all these influences were at work in the church of Holland, a still stronger current was setting in from England. The impolitic ecclesiastical rigor became an enemy to truth, and contributed powerfully to the development of Rationalism. Never have church and state presented a more complete contrast. The government of Holland was the most liberal in the world, but the ecclesiastical authorities have not been surpassed in bigotry during the whole history of Protestantism. Holland was the refuge and home of the exile of every land who could succeed in planting his feet upon her dyke-shores. But the church of that country was so illiberal that the use of a term in any other than the accepted sense was a sufficient ground of excommunication.

The intimate relations in which Holland stood to England by the accession of William and Mary to the British throne afforded an opportunity for the importation of English Deism. Nowhere on the Continent was that system of skepticism so extensively propagated as among the Dutch. The Deists took particular pains to visit Holland, and were never prouder than when told that their works were read by their friends across the North Sea. On the other hand, Holland supplied England with the best editions of the classics then published in Europe, some of which are still unsurpassed specimens of typography.

The works of Hobbes appeared in Amsterdam in 1668, his De Cive having been issued as early as 1647. Locke's Epistle on Toleration was translated into Dutch in 1689, while his Essay on the Human Understanding was rendered not only into that language, but also into the French. Collins and Chubb were read scarcely less by the Hollander than by the Englishman. Locke spent seven years in Holland, and Toland studied two years in Leyden. Shaftesbury resided among the Dutch during the year 1691, and made a second visit in 1699. The adversaries of the Deists enjoyed the same privilege, and did not hesitate to improve it. Burnet became a great favorite in Holland. Lardner, who spent three years there, was well known to the reading circles, for his works were translated into their tongue. Lyttleton, Clarke, Sherlock, and Bentley received no less favor. Leland enjoyed a cordial introduction by the pen of Professor Bonnet, while Tillotson had his readers and admirers among even the boatmen in the sluggish canals of Leyden, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam. But the Deists of England gained more favor in Holland than their opponents were able to acquire. The former were bold, while the latter were timid and compromising. Consequently a brood of domestic Deists sprang up, who borrowed all their capital from their English fathers. Patot, a follower of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, referred to Christ by asking, "What do we trouble ourselves about the words of a carpenter?" He wrote his Fable of the Bees, to ridicule the doctrines of the atonement and resurrection.

But as English Deism was reinforced by the atheism of France before the invasion of Germany by either, so did the same copartnership take place in reference to Holland.

The works of the French skeptics were as copiously distributed in Holland as at home. Many of them were issued by Dutch publishing houses. Des Sandes published his Reflections on Great Men, in Amsterdam; Toussaint's Morals gained the honor of more than one edition in the same city; and De Prades, who had been condemned by the Sorbonne on account of the thesis by which he tried to gain his baccalaureate, published his Defense in Amsterdam in 1753. It was in this work that he compared the miracles of Jesus to those of Æsculapius. Hase says that it was in Holland, and not in London, that the Système de la Nature first came to light. Rousseau's Émile, which had been burned by the sheriffs in France, had the largest liberty afforded it beyond the northern frontier. The Dutch would not be sated with Volney until they had published and read three editions of his works.