- The Starowerzi, or Old Believers. They originated in A.D. 1652, in consequence of the liturgical reform of the learned and powerful patriarch Nikon, which called forth the violent opposition of a large body of the peasantry, who loved the old forms. Besides stubborn adhesion to the old liturgy, they rejected all modern customs and luxuries, held it sinful to cut the beard, to smoke tobacco, to drink tea and coffee, etc. The Starowerzi, numbering some ten millions, are to this day distinguished by their pure and simple lives, and are split up into three parties:
- Jedinowerzi, who are nearest to the orthodox church, recognise its priesthood, and are different only in their religious ceremonies and the habits of their social life;
- The Starovbradzi, who do not recognise the priesthood of the orthodox church; and
- the Bespopowtschini, who have no priests, but only elders, and are split up into various smaller sects.
- Under the peasant Philip Pustosiwät, a party of Starowerzi, called from their leader Philippins, fled during the persecution of A.D. 1700 from the government of Olonez, and settled in Polish Lithuania and East Prussia, where to the number of 1,200 souls they live to this day in villages in the district of Gumbinnen, engaged in agricultural pursuits, and observing the rites of the old Russian church.
- At the very opposite pole from the Starowerzi stand the Heretical Sects, which repudiate and condemn everything in the shape of external church organization, and manifest a tendency in some cases toward fanatical excess, and in other cases toward rationalistic spiritualism. As the sects showing the latter tendency did not make their appearance till the eighteenth century (§ [166, 2]), we have here to do only with those of the former class. The most important of these sects is that of the Men of God, or Spiritual Christians, who trace their origin from a peasant, Danila Filipow, of the province of Wladimir. In 1645, say they, the divine Father, seated on a cloud of flame, surrounded by angels, descended from heaven on Mount Gorodin in a chariot of fire, in order to restore true Christianity in its original purity and spirituality. For this purpose he incarnated himself in Filipow’s pure body. He commanded his followers, who in large numbers, mainly drawn from the peasant class, gathered around him, not to marry, and if already married to put away their wives, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, to be present neither at marriages nor baptisms, but above all things to believe that there is no other god besides him. After some years he adopted as his son another peasant, Ivan Suslow, who was said to have been born of a woman a hundred years old, by communicating to him in his thirtieth year his own divine nature. Ivan, as a new Christ, sent out twelve apostles to spread his doctrine. The Czar Alexis put him and forty of his adherents into prison; but neither the knout nor the rack could wring from them the mysteries of their faith and worship. At last, on a Friday, the czar caused the new Christ to be crucified; but on the following Sunday he appeared risen again among his disciples. After some years the imprisoning, crucifying, and resurrection were repeated. Imprisoned a third time in 1672, he owed his liberation to an edict of grace on the occasion of the birth of the Prince Peter the Great. He now lived at Moscow along with the divine father Filipow, who had hitherto consulted his own safety by living in concealment in the enjoyment of the adoration of his followers unmolested for thirty years, supported by certain wealthy merchants. Filipow is said to have ascended up in the presence of many witnesses, in 1700, into the seventh and highest heaven, where he immediately seated himself on the throne as the “Lord of Hosts,” and the Christ, Suslow, also returned thither in 1716, after both had reached the hundredth year of the human existence. As Suslow’s successor appeared a new Christ in Prokopi Lupkin, and after his death, in 1732, arose Andr. Petrow. The last Christ manifestation was revealed in the person of the unfortunate Czar Peter III., dethroned by his wife Catharine II. in 1762, who, living meanwhile in secret, shall soon return, to the terrible confusion of all unbelievers. With this the historical tradition of the earlier sect of the Men of God is brought to a close, and in the Skopsen, or Eunuchs, who also venerate the Czar Peter III. as the Christ that is to come again, a new development of the sect has arisen, carrying out its principles more and more fully (§ [210, 4]). Other branches of the same party, among which, as also among the Skopsen, the fanatical endeavour to mortify the flesh is carried to the most extravagant length, are the Morelschiki or Self-Flagellators, the Dumbies, who will not, even under the severest tortures, utter a sound, etc. The ever-increasing development of this sect-forming craze, which found its way into several monasteries and nunneries, led to repeated judicial investigations, the penitent being sentenced for their fault to confinement in remote convents, and the obdurate being visited with severe corporal punishments and even with death. The chief sources of information regarding the history, doctrine, and customs of the “Men of God” and the Skopsen are their own numerous spiritual songs, collected by Prof. Ivan Dobrotworski of Kasan, which were sung in their assemblies for worship with musical accompaniment and solemn dances. On these occasions their prophets and prophetesses were wont to prophesy, and a kind of sacramental supper was celebrated with bread and water. The sacraments of the Lord’s supper and baptism, as administered by the orthodox church, are repudiated and scorned, the latter as displaced by the only effectual baptism of the Spirit.They have, indeed, in order to avoid persecution, been obliged to take part in the services of the orthodox national church, and to confess to its priests, avoiding, however, all reference to the sect.[484]
§ 164. Philosophers and Freethinkers.[485]
The mediæval scholastic philosophy had outlived itself, even in the pre-Reformation age; yet it maintained a lingering existence side by side with those new forms which the modern spirit in philosophy was preparing for itself. We hear an echo of the philosophical ferment of the sixteenth century in the Italian Dominican Campanella, and in the Englishman Bacon of Verulam we meet the pioneer of that modern philosophy which had its proper founder in Descartes. Spinoza, Locke, and Leibnitz were in succession the leaders of this philosophical development. Alongside of this philosophy, and deriving its weapons from it for attack upon theology and the church, a number of freethinkers also make their appearance. These, like their more radical disciples in the following century, regarded Scripture as delusive, and nature and reason as alone trustworthy sources of religious knowledge.
§ 164.1. Philosophy.—Campanella of Stilo in Calabria entered the Dominican order, but soon lost taste for Aristotelian philosophy and scholastic theology, and gave himself to the study of Plato, the Cabbala, astrology, magic, etc. Suspected of republican tendencies, the Spanish government put him in prison in A.D. 1599. Seven times was he put upon the rack for twenty-four hours, and then confined for twenty-seven years in close confinement. Finally, in A.D. 1626, Urban VIII. had him transferred to the prison of the papal Inquisition. He was set free in A.D. 1629, and received a papal pension; but further persecutions by the Spaniards obliged him to fly to his protector Richelieu in France, where in A.D. 1639 he died. He composed eighty-two treatises, mostly in prison, the most complete being “Philosophia Rationalis,” in five vols. In his “Atheismus Triumphatus” he appears as an apologist of the Romish system, but so insufficiently, that many said Atheismus Triumphans was the more fitting title. His “Monarchia Messiæ” too appeared, even to the Catholics, an abortive apology for the Papacy. In his “Civitas Solis,” an imitation of the “Republic” of Plato, he proceeded upon communistic principles.—Francis Bacon of Verulam, long chancellor of England, died A.D. 1626, the great spiritual heir of his mediæval namesake (§ [103, 8]), was the first successful reformer of the plan of study followed by the schoolmen. With a prophet’s marvellous grasp of mind he organized the whole range of science, and gave a forecast of its future development in his “De Augmentis” and “Novum Organon.” He rigidly separated the domain of knowledge, as that of philosophy and nature, grasped only by experience, from the domain of faith, as that of theology and the church, reached only through revelation. Yet he maintained the position: Philosophia obiter libata a Deo abducit, plene hausta ad Deum reducit. He is the real author of empiricism in philosophy and the realistic methods of modern times. His public life, however, is clouded by thanklessness, want of character, and the taking of bribes.In A.D. 1621 he was convicted by his peers, deprived of his office, sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Tower, and to pay a fine of £40,000; but was pardoned by the king.[486]—The French Catholic Descartes started not from experience, but from self-consciousness, with his “Cogito, ergo sum” as the only absolutely certain proposition. Beginning with doubt, he rose by pure thinking to the knowledge of the true and certain in things. The imperfection of the soul thus discovered suggests an absolutely perfect Being, to whose perfection the attribute of being belongs. This is the ontological proof for the being of God.—His philosophy was zealously taken up by French Jansenists and Oratorians and the Reformed theologians of Holland, while it was bitterly opposed by such Catholics as Huetius and such Reformed theologians as Voetius.[487]—Spinoza, an apostate Jew in Holland, died A.D. 1677, gained little influence over his own generation by his profound pantheistic philosophy, which has powerfully affected later ages.A violent controversy, however, was occasioned by his “Tractatus Theologico-politicus,” in which he attacked the Christian doctrine of revelation and the authenticity of the O.T. books, especially the Pentateuch, and advocated absolute freedom of thought.[488]
§ 164.2. John Locke, died A.D. 1704, with his sensationalism took up a position midway between Bacon’s empiricism and Descartes’ rationalism, on the one hand, and English deism and French materialism, on the other. His “Essay concerning Human Understanding” denies the existence of innate ideas, and seeks to show that all our notions are only products of outer or inner experience, of sensation or reflection.In this treatise, and still more distinctly in his tract, “The Reasonableness of Christianity,” intended as an apology for Christianity, and even for biblical visions and miracles, as well as for the messianic character of Christ, he openly advocated pure Pelagianism that knows nothing of sin and atonement.[489]—Leibnitz, a Hanoverian statesman, who died A.D. 1716, introduced the new German philosophy in its first stage. The philosophy of Leibnitz is opposed at once to the theosophy of Paracelsus and Böhme and to the empiricism of Bacon and Locke, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the scepticism and manichæism of Bayle. It is indeed a Christian philosophy not fully developed. But inasmuch as at the same time it adopted, improved upon, and carried out the rationalism of Descartes, it also paved the way for the later theological rationalism. The foundation of his philosophy is the theory of monads wrought out in his “Theodicée” against Bayle and in his “Nouveaux Essais,” against Locke. In opposition to the atomic theory of the materialists, he regarded all phenomena in the world as eccentricities of so called monads, i.e. primary simple and indivisible substances, each of which is a miniature of the whole universe. Out of these monads that radiate out from God, the primary monad, the world is formed into a harmony once for all admired of God: the theory of pre-established harmony. This must be the best of worlds, otherwise it would not have been. In opposition to Bayle, who had argued in a manichæan fashion against God’s goodness and wisdom from the existence of evil, Leibnitz seeks to show that this does not contradict the idea of the best of worlds, nor that of the Divine goodness and wisdom, since finity and imperfection belong to the very notion of creature, a metaphysical evil from which moral evil inevitably follows, yet not so as to destroy the pre-established harmony.Against Locke he maintains the doctrine of innate ideas, contests Clarke’s theory of indeterminism, maintains the agreement of philosophy with revelation, which indeed is above but not contrary to reason, and hopes to prove his system by mathematical demonstration.[490]—Continuation, § [171, 10].
§ 164.3. Freethinkers.—The tendency of the age to throw off all positive Christianity first showed itself openly in England as the final outcome of Levellerism (§ [162, 2]). This movement has been styled naturalism, because it puts natural in place of revealed religion, and deism, because in place of the redeeming work of the triune God it admits only a general providence of the one God. On philosophic grounds the English deists affirmed the impossibility of revelation, inspiration, prophecy, and miracle, and on critical grounds rejected them from the Bible and history. The simple religious system of deism embraced God, providence, freedom of the will, virtue, and the immortality of the soul. The Christian doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, satisfaction, justification, resurrection, etc., were regarded as absurd and irrational. Deism in England spread almost exclusively among upper-class laymen; the people and clergy stood firmly to their positive beliefs. Theological controversial tracts were numerous, but their polemical force was in great measure lost by the latitudinarianism of their authors.—The principal English deists of the century were
- Edward Herbert of Cherbury, A.D. 1581-1648, a nobleman and statesman. He reduced all religion to five points: Faith in God, the duty of reverencing Him, especially by leading an upright life, atoning for sin by genuine repentance, recompense in the life eternal.
- Thomas Hobbes, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a bellum omnium contra omnes; religion is the means of establishing order and civilization. The state should decide what religion is to prevail. Every one may indeed believe what he will, but in regard to churches and worship he must submit to the state as represented by the king. His chief work is “Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.”
- Charles Blount, who died a suicide in A.D. 1693, a rabid opponent of all miracles as mere tricks of priests, wrote “Oracles of Reason,” “Religio Laici,” “Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” and translated Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.”
- Thomas Browne, A.D. 1635-1682, a physician, who in his “Religio Medici” sets forth a mystical supernaturalism, took up a purely deistic ground in his “Vulgar Errors,” published three years later.
Among the opponents of deism in this age the most notable are Richard Baxter (§ [162, 3]) and Ralph Cudworth, A.D. 1617-1688, a latitudinarian and Platonist, who sought to prove the leading Christian doctrines by the theory of innate ideas. He wrote “Intellectual System of the Universe” in A.D. 1678.The pious Irish scientist, Robert Boyle, founded in London, in A.D. 1691, a lectureship of £40 a year for eight discourses against deistic and atheistic unbelief.[491]—Continuation, § [171, 1].
§ 164.4. A tendency similar to that of the English deists was represented in Germany by Matthias Knutzen, who sought to found a freethinking sect. The Christian “Coran” contains only lies; reason and conscience are the true Bible; there is no God, nor hell nor heaven; priests and magistrates should be driven out of the world, etc. The senate of Jena University on investigation found that his pretension to 700 followers was a vain boast.—In France the brilliant and learned sceptic Peter Bayle, A.D. 1647-1706, was the apostle of a light-hearted unbelief. Though son of a Reformed pastor, the Jesuits got him over to the Romish church, but in a year and a half he apostatised again. He now studied the Cartesian philosophy, as Reformed professor at Sedan, vindicated Protestantism in several controversial tracts, and as refugee in Holland composed his famous “Dictionnaire Historique et Critique,” in which he avoided indeed open rejection of the facts of revelation, but did much to unsettle by his easy treatment of them.—Continuation, § [171, 3].