[Sidenote: English skeptics]
English thought followed rather than led that of Europe throughout the century. At first tolerant and liberal, it became violently religious towards the middle of the period and then underwent a strong reaction in the direction of indifference and atheism. For the first years, before the Reformation, the Utopia may serve as an example. More, under the influence {634} of the Italian Platonists, pictured his ideal people as adherents of a deistic, humanitarian religion, with few priests and holy, tolerant of everything save intolerance. They worshipped one God, believed in immortality and yet thought that "the chief felicity of man" lay in the pursuit of rational pleasure. Whether More depicted this cult simply to fulfil the dramatic probabilities and to show what was natural religion among men before revelation came to them, or whether his own opinions altered in later life, it is certain that he became robustly Catholic. He spent much time in religious controversy and resorted to austerities. In one place he tells of a lewd gallant who asked a friar why he gave himself the pain of walking barefoot. Answered that this pain was less than hell, the gallant replied, "If there be no hell, what a fool are you," and received the retort, "If there be hell, what a fool are you." Sir Thomas evidently believed there was a hell, or preferred to take no chances. In one place he argues at length that many and great miracles daily take place at shrines.
The feverish crisis of the Reformation was followed in the reign of Elizabeth by an epidemic of skepticism. Widely as it was spread there can be found little philosophical thought in it. It was simply the pendulum pulled far to the right swinging back again to the extreme left. The suspicions expressed that the queen herself was an atheist were unfounded, but it is impossible to dismiss as easily the numerous testimonies of infidelity among her subjects. Roger Ascham wrote in his Schoolmaster [Sidenote: 1563] that the "incarnate devils" of Englishmen returned from Italy said "there is no God" and then, "they first lustily condemn God, then scornfully mock his Word . . . counting as fables the holy mysteries of religion. They make Christ and his Gospel only serve civil policies. . . . They boldly laugh {635} to scorn both Protestant and Papist. They confess no Scripture. . . . They mock the pope; they rail on Luther. . . . They are Epicures in living and [Greek] atheoi in doctrine."
[Sidenote: 1569]
In like manner Cecil wrote: "The service of God and the sincere profession of Christianity are much decayed, and in place of it, partly papistry, partly paganism and irreligion have crept in. . . . Baptists, deriders of religion, Epicureans and atheists are everywhere." Ten years later John Lyly wrote that "there never were such sects among the heathens, such schisms among the Turks, such misbelief among infidels as is now among scholars." The same author wrote a dialogue, Euphues and Atheos, to convince skeptics, while from the pulpit the Puritan Henry Smith shot "God's Arrow against atheists." According to Thomas Nash [Sidenote: 1592] (Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil) atheists are now triumphing and rejoicing, scorning the Bible, proving that there were men before Adam and even maintaining "that there are no divells." Marlowe and some of his associates were suspected of atheism. In 1595 John Baldwin, examined before Star Chamber, "questioned whether there were a God; if there were, how he should be known; if by his Word, who wrote the same, if the prophets and the apostles, they were but men and humanum est errare." The next year Robert Fisher maintained before the same court that "Christ was no saviour and that the gospel was a fable."
[Sidenote: Bacon]
That one of the prime causes of all this skepticism was to be found in the religious revolution was the opinion of Francis Bacon. Although Bacon's philosophic thought is excluded from consideration by the chronological limits of this book, it may be permissible to quote his words on this subject. In one place he says that where there are two religions contending for {636} mastery their mutual animosity will add warmth to conviction and rather strengthen the adherents of each in their own opinions, but where there are more than two they will breed doubt. In another place he says:
Heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals, yea more than corruption of manners. . . . So that nothing doth so keep men out of the church and drive men out of the church as breach of unity. . . . The doctor of the gentiles saith, "If an heathen come in and hear you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are mad?" And certainly it is little better when atheists and profane persons hear of so many discordant and contrary opinions in religion.
But while Bacon saw that when doctors disagree the common man will lose all faith in them, it was not to religion but to science that he looked for the reformation of philosophy. Theology, in Bacon's judgment, was a chief enemy to philosophy, for it seduced men from scientific pursuit of truth to the service of dogma. "You may find all access to any species of philosophy," said Bacon, "however pure, intercepted by the ignorance of divines."
The thought here expressed but sums up the actual trend of the sixteenth century in the direction of separating philosophy and religion. In modern times the philosopher has found his inspiration far more in science than in religion, and the turning-point came about the time of, and largely as a consequence of, the new observation of nature, and particularly the new astronomy.