The evidences of our holy religion were more largely discussed by writers of the Latitudinarian school, as already described; and they also received pre-eminent attention from Puritan authors. Authors of that class were amongst the first keenly to discern the signs of the times in the direction of scepticism, amongst the first to combat the rising evil. Devoted to the study of the Sacred Volume, they also devoted themselves to the examination of the basis of its Divine claims. One reason why the Cambridge and Puritan Divines paid more attention to this branch of study might be, that they thought so much more of Christianity than of the Church, so much more of the former as a system of truth, than of the latter as a scheme of government; and further, which is only another particular effect of the same general cause, they were under the influence of an individualizing power, which is one of the secrets of Protestantism, and which makes each person feel so strongly his own responsibility for the creed which he adopts. In this respect especially, the Puritan differed from the Anglican, who might be said to receive his Christianity from the Church, rather than his Church from Christianity.
Two distinguished Puritan writers exhibit the proofs of natural religion,—and two others the proofs of revealed religion.
Cudworth’s great work was published in 1678; but nine years before that time, Theophilus Gale presented to the world treatises containing arguments against atheism. The Court of the Gentiles—as the expansion of the title shows—is “a discourse touching the original of human literature, both philology and philosophy, from the Scriptures and Jewish Church, in order to a demonstration of the perfection of God’s Word and Church light, the imperfection of nature’s light, and mischief of vain philosophy, the right use of human learning, and especially, sound philosophy.” The title-page describes and exhibits the whole work as a defence of religion. The author’s idea is that the philosophy of the ancients, so far as it is true, constitutes an outer court, leading to the Holy of Holies in the Word of God. All which is valuable in classic writings, according to Gale, had been derived from the chosen people. Pagan ignorance and folly arose from the obstinacy of the human mind in forsaking Divine oracles. The inventiveness of the human intellect added to the mischief, and the degradation of the heathen, proves the need of the Gospel. In this frame-work of evidence, built up in four parts, Gale inserts one book—the second of the fourth part upon Atheism, and the existence of the Deity, in which,—professedly following Plato, but often adding much to the force of his master’s reasoning,—he demonstrates the being of a God from universal consent—from a subordination of second causes to the first, from a prime Motor; from the order of the universe; from the connate idea of God in the soul; and from moral arguments founded upon conscience and a natural sense of religion. In his reasoning he anticipates Cudworth, and will bear honourable comparison with his great successor.
PURITAN WORKS ON EVIDENCES.
The first part of Howe’s Living Temple appeared in 1676. In it he proves the “existence of God and His conversableness with men.” His first argument is the same as Gale’s,[512] the consent of mankind; but Howe does not appear to be indebted to his predecessor for this mode of treating his subject. Common consent, Howe extends from God’s existence to God’s conversableness,—in other words, to religious worship; he quotes from Plutarch in proof of its universality, it being characteristic of the age to cite an ancient classic in proof of a statement of fact, which we should test by our own experience and observation. Howe anticipates the Demonstration contrived by Samuel Clarke, and engages in a strain of reasoning beyond that of either Gale or Cudworth.[513] He argues that since something exists now, something must always have existed, unless we admit, that at one period or another, something sprung out of nothing. When he proceeds to prove the intelligence of this Eternal and uncaused Being, he enters upon the à posteriori path, which Gale and Cudworth, and indeed the ancients, traversed to some extent, but in which the moderns have gone so far beyond them. It is worthy of remark, that the ingenious reference of Paley to a watch, as illustrating the indication of design in nature is found in Howe; and to him also belongs the credit of including among the proofs of Divine purpose, the constitution of the human mind, as well as the organization of matter,—a department in natural theology the neglect of which by many was lamented by Lord Brougham. I may add, that when Howe demands of the atheist, whether, if he will reject all the preceding evidence for the existence of God, there are any conceivable methods by which the fact of the Divine existence could be certified,—he opens another spring of thought on this subject, as original as it is profound. After establishing the truth of the Divine existence, Howe resumes his argument for the Divine conversableness; and after ingeniously overthrowing the Epicurean theory, he deduces from what he has said, that God is such a Being as can converse with men, and he asserts His omniscience, His omnipotence, His immensity, and His unlimited goodness.
There is another work by John Howe of singular eloquence—The Vanity of Man as Mortal—in which the author suggests arguments for the soul’s immortality, of a kind which only occur to minds of a superior order. The works just noticed relate to natural religion.
John Owen and Richard Baxter wrote upon the evidences of revealed religion.
In 1659, the former published The Divine Original of the Scriptures. He bases his argument chiefly on the light and efficacy of Divine truth,—a branch of reasoning too much neglected in after times, but vigorously renewed in our own day. Light, from its very nature, he says, not only makes other things visible, but itself manifest. So Scripture has a self-evidencing power, a power beyond that of miracles. And as there are innate arguments in the Bible of its Divine original and authority, so also it exerts an influence which confirms those arguments. Owen’s forms of expression suffice to show that, whilst as to the points and bearing of his arguments, he anticipates modern turns of thought, the details of his logic bear an unmistakeably Puritan impress. But he passes out of the range of evidence into the domains of dogmatic theology, when he proceeds to dwell upon the conviction of the Bible being the Word of God as the result of a twofold efficacy of the Spirit—that efficacy consisting in a Divine communication of spiritual light, enabling the mind to discern the majesty and authority of Revelation, and also in the Divine inspiration of a sense or taste for the truths revealed.[514]
PURITAN WORKS ON EVIDENCES.
Owen, in his book upon The Holy Spirit, published at a later period, speaks of the nature of inspiration as not leaving the sacred writers to “the use of their natural faculties, their minds or memories, to understand, and remember the things spoken by Him, and so declare them to others. But He himself acted [upon] their faculties, making use of them to express His words, not their own conceptions.” This Divine reduces the modes of revelation mentioned in Scripture to three heads—voices, dreams, and visions, with the accidental adjuncts of symbolical actions and local imitations.[515]