[218] See Christianity not Founded on Argument (by Henry Dodwell, jr.), 1741, pp. 11, 34. Waterland, as cited by Bishop Hurst, treats the terms Reasonist and Rationalist as labels or nicknames of those who untruly profess to reason more scrupulously than other people. The former term may, however, have been set up as a result of Le Clerc’s rendering of “the Logos,” in John i, 1, by “Reason”—an argument to which Waterland repeatedly refers. [↑]
Chapter XV
FRENCH AND DUTCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
1. We have seen France, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, pervaded in its upper classes by a freethought partly born of the knowledge that religion counted for little but harm in public affairs, partly the result of such argumentation as had been thrown out by Montaigne and codified by Charron. That it was not the freethinking of mere idle men of the world is clear when we note the names and writings of La Mothe le Vayer (1588–1672), Gui Patin (1601–1671), and Gabriel Naudé (1600–1653), all scholars, all heretics of the skeptical and rationalistic order. The last two indeed, sided with the Catholics in politics, Patin approving of the Fronde, and Naudé of the Massacre, on which ground they are sometimes claimed as believers.[1] But though in the nature of the case their inclusion on the side of freethought is not to be zealously contended for, they must be classed in terms of the balance of testimony. Patin was the admiring friend of Gassendi; and though he was never explicitly heretical, and indeed wrote of Socinianism as a pestilent doctrine,[2] his habit of irony and the risk of written avowals to correspondents must be kept in view in deciding on his cast of mind. He is constantly anti-clerical;[3] and the germinal skepticism of Montaigne and Charron clearly persists in him.
It is true that, as one critic puts it, such rationalists were not “quite clear whither they were bound. At first sight,” he adds, “no one looks more negative than Gui Patin.... He was always congratulating himself on being ‘delivered from the nightmare’; and he rivals the eighteenth century in the scorn he pours on priests, monks, and especially ‘that black Loyolitic scum from Spain’ which called itself the Society of Jesus. Yet Patin was no freethinker. Skeptics who made game of the kernel of religion came quite as much under the lash of his tongue as bigots who dared defend its husks. His letters end with the characteristic confession: ‘Credo in Deum, Christum crucifixum, etc.; ... De minimis non curat prætor’” (Viscount St. Cyres in Cambridge Modern History, v, 73). But the last statement is an error, and Patin did not attack Gassendi, though he did Descartes. He says of Rabelais: “C’étoit un homme qui se moquoit de tout; en verité il y a bien des choses dont on doit raisonnablement se moquer ... elles sont presque tous remplies de vanité, d’imposture et d’ignorance: ceux qui sont un peu philosophes ne doivent-ils pas s’en moquer?” (Lett. 485, éd. cited, iii, 148). Again he writes that “la vie humaine n’est qu’un bureau de rencontre et un théâtre sur lesquels domine la fortune” (Lett. 726, iii, 620). This is pure Montaigne. The formula cited by Viscount St. Cyres is neither a general nor a final conclusion to the letters of Patin. It occurs, I think, only once (18 juillet, 1642, à M. Belin) in the 836 letters, and not at the end of that one (Lett. 55, éd. cited, i, 90).
Concerning his friend Naudé, Patin writes: “Je suis fort de l’avis de feu M. Naudé, qui disoit qu’il y avait quatre choses dont il se fallait garder, afin de n’être point trompé, savoir, de prophéties, de miracles, de révélations, et d’apparitions” (Lett. 353, éd. cited, ii, 490). Again, he writes of a symposium of Naudé, Gassendi, and himself: “Peut-être, tous trois, guéris de loup-garou et delivrés du mal des scrupules, qui est le tyran des consciences, nous irons peut-être jusque fort près du sanctuaire. Je fis l’an passé ce voyage de Gentilly avec M. Naudé, moi seul avec lui tête-à-tête; il n’y avait point de témoins, aussi n’y en falloit-il point: nous y parlâmes fort librement de tout, sans que personne en ait été scandalisé” (Lett. 362, ii, 508). This seems tolerably freethinking.
All that the Christian editor cares to claim upon the latter passage is that assuredly “l’unité de Dieu, l’immortalité de l’âme, l’égalité des hommes devant la loi, ces verités fondamentales de la raison et consacrées par le Christianisme, y étaient placées au premier rang” in the discussion. As to the skepticism of Naudé the editor remarks: “Ce qu’il y a de remarquable, c’est que Gui Patin soutenait que son ami ... avait puisé son opinion, en général très peu orthodoxe, en Italie, pendant le long séjour qu’il fit dans ce pays avec le cardinal Bagni” (ii, 490; cp. Lett. 816; iii, 758, where Naudé is again cited as making small account of religion).
Certainly Patin and Naudé are of less importance for freethought than La Mothe le Vayer. That scholar, a “Conseiller d’Estat ordinaire,” tutor of the brother of Louis XIV, and one of the early members of the new Academy founded by Richelieu, is an interesting figure[4] in the history of culture, being a skeptic of the school of Sextus Empiricus, and practically a great friend of tolerance. Standing in favour with Richelieu, he wrote at that statesman’s suggestion a treatise On the Virtue of the Heathen,[5] justifying toleration by pagan example—a course which raises the question whether Richelieu himself was not strongly touched by the rationalism of his age. If it be true that the great Cardinal “believed as all the world did in his time,”[6] there is little more to be said; for unbelief, as we have seen, was already abundant, and even somewhat fashionable. Certainly no ecclesiastic in high power ever followed a less ecclesiastical policy;[7] and from the date of his appointment as Minister to Louis XIII (1624), for forty years, there was no burning of heretics or unbelievers in France. If he was orthodox, it was very passively.[8]