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

by John Stoughton

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Locke, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, enters at large upon the question of the boundaries between reason and revelation—a question involved in what he says on the Reasonableness of Christianity. He asserts most plainly the principle, that revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of reason, but then, immediately afterwards, he adopts the distinction between things contrary to reason and things above reason—citing, as examples of the latter, the fall of angels and the resurrection of the dead. Anything not contrary to reason, he contends, is to be believed if taught by revelation; “whatever proposition,” he says, “is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.” Revelation in such matters “ought to be hearkened unto.” Indeed, Locke goes so far as to say, that in those things concerning which the mind “has but an uncertain evidence, and so is persuaded of their truth only upon probable grounds, which still admit a possibility of the contrary to be true, without doing violence to the certain evidence of its own knowledge and overturning the principles of all reason: in such probable propositions, I say, an evident revelation ought to determine our assent, even against probability.” Afterwards dwelling upon the evils of enthusiasm, of which he had a great horror, he goes on to remark: “Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything;” which, strictly taken, would mean that no revelation can be a final authority; but he proceeds in the next sentence to tell us: “I do not mean that we must consult reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it, but consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God, or no. And if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for it, as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates.”[443] This explanation restricts the office of reason to an inquiry into evidence, as to whether what is thought to be revealed is really such, and leaves faith to rest ultimately, not in the apparent truth of a doctrine, but on the revelation making it known. To some, Locke in all this will not appear to have diverged from an orthodox treatment of evidences; to others, he will seem to have vacillated a little, leaning now in a rationalistic, and then in an opposite direction; by none, I think, can he be fairly regarded as holding the modern doctrine of a verifying faculty—a doctrine based on a philosophy different from his, and leading to conclusions at variance with his belief. Whatever might be Locke’s abstract opinions, it is quite clear that he had no sympathy with the Socinian party, of whom he speaks as “positive and eager in their disputes;” “forward to have their interpretations of Scripture received for authentic, though to others in several places they seem very much strained;” impatient of contradiction, treating their opponents with “disrespect and roughness.” “May it not be suspected,” he asks, “that this so visible a warmth in their present circumstances, and zeal for their orthodoxy, would (had they the power) work in them as it does in others? They, in their turn, would, I fear, be ready with their set of fundamentals, which they would be as forward to impose on others, as others have been to impose contrary fundamentals on them.”[444]

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Bentley and Locke added what was of the highest value to the literature of the Evidences. On a far lower intellectual level appeared Leslie, the Nonjuror, who, eschewing paths of reason, prepared to enter the path of history, and addressed himself to those of his countrymen who have little time for study and less capacity for reflection. In 1696 he published A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, in which are laid down certain rules as to the truth of historical statements; and he contends that when they all meet, statements cannot be false. The rules are: “That the matter of fact be such, as that men’s outward senses, their eyes and ears, may be judges of it; that it be done publicly, in the face of the world; that not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions to be performed; that such monuments and such actions or observances be instituted and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done.” These rules, Leslie insists, could be successfully applied to the facts connected with the origin of the religion of Moses and the religion of Christ, pointing to the institution and observance of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper as memorials of the latter. Mohammedanism, he said, lacks such evidence, and he challenged Deists to show any action that is fabulous, in support of which all the four marks can be alleged. The work is of a very slight description, and is composed in a loose and inaccurate style. It could not meet the case of any who have adopted the principles of historical inquiry laid down by Voltaire and developed by Niebuhr, and by them applied to classical annals; nor could the method be applied by any critical student without great modification, and at the expense of an amount of learning, which would render the argument useless for popular purposes.

Charles Blount, after a side thrust at Christianity in his Notes on Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius Tyanæus, left behind him papers, which were published in a book, entitled, The Oracles of Reason, containing desultory attacks on revelation, chiefly in a covert form. Indeed, Blount quaintly observes: “Undoubtedly, in our travels to the other world, the common road is the safest; and though Deism is a good manuring of a man’s conscience, yet certainly, if sowed with Christianity, it will produce the most plentiful crop.” It is a curious fact that the editor and publishers of these posthumous essays afterwards became convinced of their true character, and, with a view to counteracting their effect, issued the Deist’s Manual.

John Toland—who, after being educated a Roman Catholic, whilst still a boy rushed out of gross superstition into what was to him the more congenial region of scepticism—began his career as an author by writing his Christianity not Mysterious, a discourse showing that there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to reason nor above it, and that no Christian doctrine can be properly called a mystery. In this work he does not appear as an antagonist of Christianity; perhaps he had not yet begun to regard himself otherwise than as a Christian; yet the tendency of his opinions is to undermine the authority of revelation. His book, which attracted wide attention, and was, as we have seen, condemned by the Lower House of Convocation, engaged the pen of the Bemerton Rector, John Norris, whose extraordinary metaphysical genius found scope for its exercise in examining Toland’s lucubrations. His Account of Reason and Faith, in Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity, is one of the ablest books of the period, and displays a power of analysis, and a determination to reduce the powers of the human mind to their simplest form, such as reminds one of the subtle originality of Dr. Thomas Browne.

WORKS ON CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

Metaphysics are made to do duty in the service of orthodoxy. Norris dwells upon the distinction of things contrary to reason and above it, showing that there is a valid ground for the distinction, that human reason is not the measure of truth; that, therefore, a thing being incomprehensible by reason, is of itself no conclusive argument of its being untrue; that if the incomprehensibility of a thing were an argument against it, human reason would become the measure of truth; and, therefore, he concludes that incomprehensibility should not militate against faith. Of course the terms of a proposition must be intelligible and not contradictory, for no man can accept what is plainly nonsensical or obviously false; but the mysterious nature of a fact asserted in a proposition, Norris proves to be no valid objection to the veracity of the proposition. His mode of handling this subject, though extremely skilful and effective, is not always such as to bear a very close scrutiny; and some modification of his argument is required, in order to a safe entrenchment against inimical attacks. But he successfully establishes this point—the fundamental one throughout the controversy—that it is perfectly reasonable and perfectly consonant with the laws and constitution of the human mind, to believe upon the authority of revelation, in other words, upon the authority of infinite wisdom. Norris does not treat Toland’s doctrine as a form of Deism; his particular application of the principles laid down in this account of reason and faith is to the Socinian system, but much of the reasoning is strictly applicable to a form of Deism very prevalent in the present day. A great deal of what he says goes to the heart of certain modern theories, and several pages upon the nature and degrees of mental assent deserve careful study in connection with existing controversies.[445]

It will be sufficient to complete this sketch if I observe that Toland made a decided attack on the New Testament Canon in his Amyntor, published in 1698; and that the formidable controversialist, Samuel Clark, the next year commenced his polemical career by a successful encounter in defence of the canonicity of the Gospels.

In the course of this work I have had repeated occasions for noticing the theological literature of the period—dogmatical, practical, and polemical. It will not be impertinent, as we wind up the subject, to remark respecting its form and style.