Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 5—The Church of the Revolution

by John Stoughton

CHAPTER XV.

Courses of lectures on doctrinal and devotional themes had been fashionable with the Puritans. Robert Boyle, looking at the spread of infidelity, provided, by his will, for the appointment of a lecturer, to preach eight sermons in a year upon the Evidences of Christianity; and thus set an example which has been followed by Bampton, Hulse, and others. The trustees—Tenison, then Bishop of Lincoln, and John Evelyn being two of them—selected for the first performance of the duty a rising clergyman, already known in University circles by his vast attainments, and afterwards famous throughout the world of letters. Evelyn records the appointment in his Diary, by saying “he made choice of one Mr. Bentley, chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester;” and the comparatively obscure student, so described, regarded it in after-life as the greatest honour with which he was ever invested. He determined to follow Cudworth and Cumberland without imitating them, to go down to the basis of all theology, and to confute the opinions of Hobbes and Spinoza. Bentley’s Lectures, entitled, A Confutation of Atheism, after exposing the folly of a godless belief, aimed at demonstrating the Divine existence from an inquiry into the faculties of the human soul, the structure of the body, and the frame of the world. It was a movement along the line of rational thought. The Revolution had appealed to reason in matters of government. Without throwing aside traditions—even while appealing to constitutional forms—Englishmen were seeking after fundamental political principles; and reason came now to be earnestly invoked in the service of religion. Philosophy had been employed in attacking Christian beliefs; philosophy now came to the rescue. Faith in an infinite cause, shaken by the human intellect, was to be reinforced by a more vigorous exercise of the same faculty.

Boyle, the founder of the Lecture, had collected scientific facts available for the lecturer’s purpose. Locke, by illustrating the essential difference between matter and mind, had become a pioneer in the path along which Bentley pushed parts of his argument; and Newton, by his Principia, had prepared for him methods by which to demonstrate the Creator’s providence and goodness. Thus assisted, Bentley showed himself possessed of original genius; and having at command satire as well as logic, with a style adapted to give effect to his thoughts, he produced a deep impression by his discourses. The first he delivered at St. Martin’s—the second at Bow Church; when Evelyn, ensconced in a tall-backed pew, listened with delight to the preacher, and immediately admitted him to his friendship. Before he published his work he wrote to the great philosopher, then resident in Trinity College, Cambridge. Newton corrected and modified Bentley’s opinions upon some points, but he confirmed his views respecting most, and supplied him with additional arguments.[439]

BOYLE LECTURE.

Bentley soon afterwards obtained a stall in Worcester Cathedral, probably through the influence of Stillingfleet, his patron. If we are to believe his words, he had what was a better reward, for he says: “The Atheists were silent since that time, and sheltered themselves under Deism.” It is a pity that historical justice requires it to be said that this advocate of natural theology did not possess the primary virtue of religion, and the chief ornament of all learning. A nobleman happening one day to sit near Stillingfleet at dinner, observed to him, “My Lord, that chaplain of yours is certainly a very extraordinary man.” “Yes,” he replied; “had he but the gift of humility, he would be the most extraordinary man in Europe.”[440]

According to the terms of Boyle’s will, which authorized the appointment of the same lecturer for three years, Bentley might have delivered another course of sermons; but owing, as it is said, to the favouritism of one of the trustees, and in opposition to Evelyn’s wishes, Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells, delivered the second series, entitled, A Demonstration of the Messias. Williams, afterwards made a Bishop, exhibited in his lectures A General Idea of Revealed Religion. Gastrell, subsequently Bishop of Chester, a friend to Atterbury, and one who pleaded for him in Parliament, insisted upon The Certainty and Necessity of Divine Religion. Dr. Harris refuted the objections of Atheists to the existence and attributes of God; a superfluous task, it would seem, if we are to admit what has been said of the effect of Bentley’s dissertations. Bradford, “the little ebony doctor,” as he was called—an enemy of Atterbury’s—discoursed upon the credibility of the Christian Religion. Blackall, afterwards a Bishop, established and illustrated the sufficiency and perfection of the Old and New Testaments; and Dr. Stanhope defended the truth and excellence of the Christian Religion against Jews, Infidels, and Heretics.[441]

In 1695, Locke anonymously published his Reasonableness of Christianity. Again the appeal was made, not to authority, tradition, or history, but to reason. The main object was to present the simplest and most rational form of religion. He concluded, from his study of the Gospels, that the primary requirement is, that men should believe Jesus to be the Messiah, the anointed and sent of God; that such a belief makes everyone a Christian; and that upon it the superstructure of Christian piety must ever rest. Every reader of this work must see how hardly he labours to establish his point, how he repeats over and over again his fundamental principle. He objects to the enforcement of particular creeds, and he is opposed to all Church authority in reference to religion; though he speaks in general terms of salvation through Christ, he enters into no definition whatever of evangelical doctrines, indeed such definitions he regards as foreign to his purpose.

Whilst teaching of this kind, with a continuous appeal to reason, runs through the larger part of the book, towards the close he enters upon the supernatural evidences of Christianity. Locke was an apostle of human reason as opposed to human authority, but he was no rationalist in the sense of opposing revelation. Revelation he recognized as a form of supernatural wisdom, and in advocating it he appealed to supernatural wonders. He dwelt upon the miracles of Christ as conclusive proofs of His Messianic office—a topic which he also largely treated in a distinct essay, which will be noticed hereafter.

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

The book was attacked not by infidels but by believers, not by those who objected to Christianity but by those who, attaching importance to certain truths passed over by Locke, thought that he presented an objectionable view of the Gospel. He appeared to them to be a rationalist. Dr. Edwards, a clergyman of the Church of England, son of the famous Presbyterian who wrote the Gangræna, assailed the treatise with bitterness; and so great was its unpopularity in some quarters, that a Prelate, who thought of it favourably, candidly confessed: “If I should be known to think so, I should have my lawn sleeves torn from my shoulders.” Foreign divines, however, hailed it with applause, especially Dutch friends of the Remonstrant school, Le Clerc and Limborch. It found numerous readers abroad, and a Dorsetshire rector, named Samuel Bold, though thoroughly orthodox on the subject of the Trinity—respecting which Locke laboured under some suspicion—took up his pen in defence of the lay theologian. Locke’s idea of faith, as a simple belief that Jesus is the Messiah, will be regarded by most theologians as very defective; nor is the account which he gives of Christianity one likely to afford satisfaction to any reader who has mastered the contents of the New Testament, whether he believes them or not. Absorbed in the effort to enforce his own view of the Gospel, Locke merely ignores, without disproving, certain doctrines, which by evangelical teachers of Christianity are identified with the system itself. I plainly see that with his habits of close philosophical thinking, he could not but be repelled by the manner in which those doctrines were urged by some warm-hearted divines. Yet however objectionably or offensively presented, they require to be noticed and disposed of in some way. They are true or false—if true, they must be taken into full account before any conclusion can be drawn respecting the reasonableness of revelation; if false, they need to be refuted, ere such a notion of Christian faith as is propounded by our philosopher can be placed upon a sufficient basis. But Locke’s defects or mistakes relative to the extent of faith do not invalidate his main reasoning. His proofs of the truth and divinity of the Gospel, drawn from the miracles of Jesus, and from the necessity of an authoritative revelation of truth and morals, remain the same; and I would add, that of the devout faith of the author there can be no doubt, when we are assured that “he admired the wisdom and goodness of God in the method found out for the salvation of mankind, and when he thought upon it, he could not forbear crying out, ‘O the depth of the riches of the goodness and knowledge of God.’”[442]