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THE
BAMPTON LECTURES
FOR M.DCCC.LXII.

OXFORD:
PftlNTEB BV T. COMBE & CO. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

CEITICAL HISTOEY OF FEEE THOUGHT

IN EEFEEBNCE TO

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

EIGHT LEOTUEES

PEEACHED BEJOEE
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN THE YEAR M.DCCC.LXII.
ON THB FOUNDATION OP
THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, M.A.
CANON OF SALISBUET.

BY
ADAM STOREY FARRAR, M.A.
MICHEL FELLOW OP QUEEN's COLLBSE, OXEOKD.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1862.
[The right oj Translation is reserved.}

EXTRACT
FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

OP THE LATE

REV. JOHN BAMPTON,
CANON OF SALISBIJEY.

 " 1 give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the
" Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of
" Oxford for ever^ to have and to hold all and singular the
" said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and
" purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will and
" appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ox-
" ford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents,
" issues, and profits thereof^ and (after all taxes, reparations,
" and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the re-
" mainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Ser-
" monsj to be established for ever in the said University, and
" to he performed in the manner following :
" I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in
" Easter Term, a Lecturer be yeai-ly chosen by the Heads
" of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining
" to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the

VI EXTRACT PROM CANON BAMPTON S WILL.
" morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity
" Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Ox-
" ford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent
" Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term.
" Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture
" Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Sub-
" jects — to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to
" confute all heretics and schismatics' — ^upon the divine au-
" thority of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority of the
" writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and prac-
" tice of the primitive Church — ^upon the Divinity of our Lord
" and Saviour Jesus Christ — ^upon the Divinity of the Holy
" Ghost — ^upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as compre-
" hended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
" Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec-
" ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months
" after they are preached ; and one copy shall be given to the
'.' Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of
" every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of
" Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library ;
"¦ and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the
" revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the
" Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be
" paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are printed.
" Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be quali-
" fied to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath
" taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the
" two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the
" same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Ser-
" mons twice."

PREFACE.

J. HE object of this Preface is to explain the design of the
following Lectures, and to enumerate the som-ces on which
they are founded.
What is the province and mode of inquiry intended in a
" Critical History of Free Thought'' ^ ? What are the causes
which led the author into this line of study ^ ? What the
object proposed by the workf^? What the sources from
which it is drawn ^ ? — these probably are the questions which
wiU at once suggest themselves to the reader. The answers
to most of them are so fully given in the work «, that it will
only be necessary here to touch upon them briefly.
The word " free thought" is now commonly used, at least
in foreign literature f, to express the result of the revolt of the
mind against the pressure of external authority in any de
partment of life or speculation. Information concerning the
history of the term is given elsewhere ?. It wiU be sufficient
now to state, that the cognate tevm., free thinhitig, was appro
priated by Collins early in the last century h to express

a Pref. pp. vii-xii. ^ Id. pp. xiii-xv. - Id. pp. xvi-xviii.
il Id. pp. xix. ^ Lect. I. : and Lect. VIII. p. 479 seq.
I E. g. in the French expresBion la Ubrepensee. s In Note 21. p. 588.
h In 1713.

viii PREFACE.
Deism. It difiers from the modern term free thought, both
in being restricted to religion, and in convejang the idea
rather of the method than of its result, the freedom of the
mode of inquiry rather than the character of the conclusions
attained; but the same fundamental idea of independence
and freedom from authority is implied in the modern term.
Within the sphere of its application to the Christian
religion, free thought is generally used to denote three dif
ferent systems; viz. Protestantism, scepticism, and unbelief.
Its apj)lication to the first of these is unfair '. It is true that
all three agree in resisting the dogmatism of any earthly
authority; but Protestantism reposes implicitly on what it
believes to be the divine authority of the inspired writers of
the books of holy scripture; whereas the other two forms
acknowledge no authority external to the mind, no communi
cation superior to reason and science. Thus, though Pro
testantism by its attitude of independence seems similar to
the other two systems, it is really separated by a difference of
kind, and not merely of degree''. The present history is
restricted accordingly to the treatment of the two latter
species of free thought, — the resistance of the human mind to
the Christian religion as communicated through revelation,
either in part or in whole, either the scepticism which disin
tegrates it, or the unbelief which rejects it : the former
directing itself especially against Christianity, the latter
against the idea of revelation, or even of the supernatural
generally. An analogous reason to that which excludes the history of
Protestantism, excludes also that of the opposition made to
i Many of the modem French protestant critics so employ it ; e. g. A. Be-
ville, Bev. des Deux Mondes, Parker, Oct. 1 86 1 .
It Cfr. pp. 13 and 139.

PREFACE. ix
Christianity by heresy, and by rival religions ' : inasmuch as
they repose on authorities, however false, and do not profess
to resort to an unassisted study of nature and truth.
This account of the province included under free thought
will prepare the way for the explanation of the mode in
which the subject is treated.
It is clear that the history, in order to rise above a
chronicle, must inquire into the causes which have made
freedom of inquiry develope into unbelief. The causes
have usually been regarded by theologians to be of two kinds,
viz. either superhuman or human ; and, if of the latter kind,
to be either moral or intellectual. Bishop Van Mildert, in his
History of Infidelity, restricted himself entirely to the former™.
Holding strongly that the existence of evil in the world was
attributable, not only indirectly and originally, but directly
and perpetually, to the operation of the evil spirit, he re
garded every form of heresy and unbeKef to be the attempt
of an invisible evil agent to thwart the truth of God ; and
viewed the history of infidelity as the study of the results of
the operation of this cause in destroying the kingdom of
righteousness. Such a view invests human life and history
with a very solemn character, and is not without practical
value ; but it will be obvious that an analysis of this kind
must be strictly theological, and removes the inquiry from
the province of human science. Even when completed, it
leaves unexplored the whole field in which such an evil prin
ciple operates, and the agencies which he employs as his
instruments. The majority of writers on unbelief accordingly have treated

1 Cfr. p. 17, and Notes 4, 5, and 6.
¦" Boyle Lectures (1802-4). See note, p. 487.

X PREFACE.
the subject from a less elevated point of view, and have
limited their inquiry to the sphere of the operation of human
causes, the media axiomata as it were ", which express the
motives and agencies which have been manifested on the
theatre of the world, and visible in actual history. It will be
clear that within this sphere the causes are specially of two
kinds; viz. those which have their source in the will, and
arise from the antagonism of feeling, which wishes revelation
untrue, and those which manifest themselves in the intellect,
and are exhibited under the form of difi&culties which beset
the mind, or doubts which mislead it, in respect to the evi
dence on which revelation reposes. The former, it may be
feared, are generally the ground of unbelief; the latter the
basis of doubt. Christian writers, in the Mrish to refer unbelief
to the source of efficient causation in the human will, with a
view of enforcing on the doubter the moral lesson of respon
sibility, have generally restricted themselves to the former of
these two classes ; and by doing so have omitted to explore
the interesting field of inquiry presented in the natural history
of the variety of forms assumed by scepticism, and their
relation to the general causes which have operated in parti
cular ages:— a subject most important, if the inteHectual
antecedents thus discovered be regarded as causes of doubt;
and not less interesting, if, instead of being causes, they are
merely considered to be instruments and conditions made
use of by the emotional powers.
A history of free thought seems to point especially to the
study of the latter class. A biographical history of free
thinkers would imply the former; the investigation of the
moral history of the individuals, the play of their will and
1 Bacon's Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 104.

PREFACE. xi
feelings and character ; but the history of free thought points
to that which has been the product of their characters, the
doctrines which they have taught. Science however no less
than piety would decline entirely to separate the two " ; piety,
because, though admitting the possibility that a judgment
may be formed in the abstract on free thought, it would feel
itself constantly drawn into the inquiry of the moral respon
sibility of the freethinker in judging of the concrete cases ; —
science, because, even in an intellectual point of view, the
analysis of a work of art is defective if it be studied apart
from the personality of the mental and moral character of the
artist who produces it. If even the inquiry be restricted to
the analysis of inteUectual causes, a biographic treatment of
the subject, which would allow for the existence of the emo
tional, would be requisite P.
The province of the foUowing work accordingly is, the ex
amination of this neglected branch in the analysis of unbelief.
While admitting most fully and unhesitatingly the operation
of emotional causes, and the absolute necessity, scientific as well
as practical, of allowing for their operation, it is proposed to
analyse the forms of doubt or unbelief in reference mainly to
the inteUectual element which has entered into them, and the
discovery of the intellectual causes which have produced or
modified them. Thus the history, while not ceasing to belong
to church history, becomes also a chapter in the history of
philosophy, a page in the history of the human mind.
The enumeration of the causes into which the inteUectual
elements of doubt are resolvable, is furnished in the text
of the first Lectured. If the natiu-e of some of them be
obscure, and the reader be unaccustomed to the philosophical
" Cfr. pp. 19-27. P Pp. 45-48. 1 PP- 33-44-

xii PREFACE.
study necessary for fully understanding them; information
must be sought in the books to which references are elsewhere
given', as the subject is too large to be developed in the
limited space of this Preface.
The work however professes to be not merely a narrative,
but a " critical history." The idea of criticism in a history
imparts to it an ethical aspect. For criticism does not rest
content with ideas, viewed as facts, but as reaUties. It seeks
to pass above the relative, and attain the absolute ; to deter
mine either what is right or what is true. It may make this
determination by means of two difierent standards. It may
be either independent or dogmatic ; — independent if it enters
upon a new field candidly and without prepossessions, and rests
content with the inferences which the study suggests ; — dog
matic, when it approaches a subject with views derived from
other sources, and pronounces on right or wrong, truth or
falsehood, by reference to them.
It is hoped that the reader will not be unduly prejudiced,
if the confession be frankly made, that the criticism in these
Lectures is of the latter kind. This indeed might be expected
from their very character. The Bampton Lecture is an
establishment for producing apologetic treatises. The authors
are supposed to assume the truth of Christianity, and to seek
to repel attacks upon it. They are defenders, not investigators.
The reader has a right to demand fairness, but not inde
pendence; truth in the facts, but not hesitation in the
inferences. While however the writer of these Lectures takes
a definite line in the controversy, and one not adopted pro
fessionally, but with cordial assent and heartfelt conviction,
he has nevertheless considered that it is due to the cause of
scientific truth to intermingle his own opinions as little as
¦¦ PP- 3°. 34, 36-

PREFACE. xiii
possible with the facts of the history. A history without
inferences is ethically and religiously worthless : it is a
chronicle, not a phUosophical narrative. But a history
distorted to suit the inferences is not only worthless, but
harmful. It is for the reader to judge how far the author has
succeeded in the result ; but his aim has been not to allow his
opinions to warp his view of the facts. History ought to be
written with the same spirit of cold analysis which belongs to
science. Caricature must not be substituted for portrait, nor
vituperation for descriptions.
Such a mode of treatment in the present instance was the
more possible, from the circumstance that the writer, when
studying the subject for his private information, without
any design to write upon it, had endeavoured to bring his
own principles and views jperpetually to the test; and to
reconsider them candidly by the light of the new sug
gestions which were brought before him. Instead of ap
proaching the inquiry with a spirit of hostUity, he had inves
tigated it as a student, not as a partisan. It may perhaps be
permitted him without egotism to explain the causes which
led him to the study. He had taken holy orders, cordially
and heartily believing the truths taught by the church of
which he is privileged to be an humble minister. Before doing
so, he had read thoughtfully the great works of evidences
of the last century, and knew directly or indirectly the
character of the deist doubts against which they were di
rected. His own faith was one of the head as well as the
heart; founded on the study of the evidences, as well as on the
religious training of early years. But he perceived in the
English church earnest men who held a different view; and,
s Cfr. p. 488.

xiv PREFACE.
on becoming acquainted with contemporary theology, he
found the theological literature of a whole people, the Ger
mans, constructed on another basis; a literature which was
acknowledged to be so full of learning, that contemporary
EngHsh writers of theology not only perpetually referred to
it, but largely borrowed their materials from German sources.
He wished therefore fully to understand the character of these
new forms of doubt, and the causes which had produced
them. He may confess that, reposing on the affirmative
verities of the Christian faith, as gathered from the scriptures
and embodied in the immemorial teaching of Christ's church,
he did not anticipate that he should discover that which would
overthrow or even materiaUy modify his own faith; but he
wished, while exploring this field, and gratifying intellectual
curiosity, to re-examine his opinions at each point by the
light of those with which he might meet in the inquiry.
The serious wish also to fulfil his duty in the sphere in
which he might move, made him desire to understand these
new views; that if false, he might know how to refute them
when they came before him, and not be first made aware of
their existence from the harsh satire of sceptical critics. His
own studies were accordingly conducted in a spirit of fairness
— the fairness of the inquirer, not of the doubter; and a habit
of mind formed by the study of the history of philosophy,
was brought to bear upon the investigation of this chapter in
church history : first, of modern forms of doubt, and after
wards the consecutive history of unbelief generally. Accord
ingly, while he hopes that he has taken care to leave the
student in no case unguided, who may accompany him in
these pages through the history, he has wished to place him,
as he strove to place himself, in the position to see the sub
ject in its true light before drawing the inferences ; to under-

PREFACE. XV
stand each topic to a certain extent, as it appears when seen
from the opposite point of view, as well as when seen from
the Christian. And when this has been efiectedj he has cri
ticised each by a comparison with those principles which form
his standard for testing them, the truth of which the study
has confirmed to the writer's own mind. The criticism there
fore does not profess to be independent, but dogmatic ; but it
is hoped that the definite character of the results wUl not be
found to have prevented fairness in the method of inquiry.
If the student has the facts correctly, he can form his own
judgment on the inferences.
The standard of truth here adopted, as the point of view
in criticism, is the teaching of Scripture as expressed in the
dogmatic teaching of the creeds of the church ; or, if it will
facilitate clearness to be more definite, three great truths may
be specified, which present themselves to the writer's mind as
the very foundation of the Christian religion: (i) the doctrine
of the reality of the vicarious atonement provided by the pas
sion of our blessed Lord ; {%) the supernatural and miracu
lous character of the religious revelation in the book of God ;
and (3) the direct operation of the Holy Ghost in converting
and communing with the human soul. Lacking the first of
these, Christianity appears to him to be a religion without a
system of redemption ; lacking the second, a doctrine without
authority ; lacking the third, a system of ethics without spi
ritual power. These three principles accordingly are the mea
sure, by agreement with which the truth and falsehood of
systems of free thought are ultimately tested^.
The above remarks, together with those which occur in the
text, where fuller explanation is afforded, will illustrate the
s See especially Lect. VIII. p. 504 seq.

xvi PREFACE.
province of the inquiry, and the spirit in which it is con
ducted '.
The explanation also of the further question concerning the
object which the writer proposed to efiPect, by the treatment
of such a subject in a course of Bampton Lectures, is given
so fuUy elsewhere, that a few words may here suffice in refer
ence to it". Experience of the wants of students in this time
of doubt and transition, which those who are practicaUy ac
quainted with the subject wiU best understand, as well as ob
servation of the tone of thought expressed in our sceptical
literature, led him to believe that a history, natural as well
as literary, of doubt; an analysis of the forms and a statement
of the intellectual causes of it, would have a value, direct and
indirect, in many ways. His desire, he is willing to confess,
was to guide the student, rather than to refute the unbe
liever. He did not expect to furnish the combatant with
ready-made weapons, which would make him omnipotent in
conflict ; but he hoped to give him some suggestions in re
ference to the tactics for conducting the contest. The Lectures
have a polemical aspect, but they seek to obtain their end by
means of the educational. The writer has aimed at assisting
the student, in the struggle with his doubts, in the inquiry
for truth, in the quiet meditative search for light and know
ledge, preparatory to ministering to others. The survey of a
new region, which ordinary works on the history of infldelity
rarely touch, may lay bare unsuspected or undetected causes
of unbelief; and thus indirectly offer a refutation of it ; for
intellectual error is refuted, when the origin of it is referred
to false systems of thought. The anatomy of error is the first
step to its cure.
' Some valuable remarks on the proper balance of the mind in study are con
tained in a sermon, The Nemesis of Excess, recently preached at Oxford, by
Bp. Jackson. u pp. 49-52.

PREFACE. xvii
In another point of view, independently of the value of the
line of inquiry generally, and the special suitability of it to
individual minds, there is a further use, which in the present
day belongs to it in common with all inquiries into the his
tory of thought.
It is hard to persuade the students of a past generation
that the historic mode of approaching any problem is the first
step toward its successful solution. Yet a little reflection may
at least make the meaning of the assertion understood. If we
view the literary characteristic of the present, in comparison
with that of past ages, we are perhaps right in stating, that its
peculiar featm'e is the prevalence of the method of historical
criticism. If the four centuries since the Renaissance be con
sidered, the critical peculiarity of the sixteenth and seventeenth
will be found to be the investigation of ancient literature ; in
the former directed to words, in the latter to things. The
eighteenth century broke away from the past, and, emanci
pating itself from authority, tried to rebuild truth from its
foundations from present materials, independent of the judg
ment formed by' past ages. The nineteenth century unites
both methods. It ventures not to explore the universe, un
guided by the experience of the past ; but, while reuniting
itself to the past, it does not bow to it. It accepts it as a
fact, not as an authority. The seventeenth century wor
shipped the past ; the eighteenth despised it : the nineteenth
mediates, by means of criticism. Accordingly, in literary in
vestigations at present, each question is approached from the
historic side, with the belief that the historico-critical inquiry
not only gratifies curiosity, but actually contributes to the
solution of the problem. Some indeed asserf this, because
^ Cfr, pp. 43 note, 483 ; apd Note 9. pp. 560-63-
b

xviii PREFACE.
they think that the historic study of philosophy is the whole
of philosophy ; and, beUeving that aU truth is relative to its
age, are hopeless of attaining the absolute and unaltering
solution of any problem. We, on the other hand, are content
to beUeve that the history of phUosophy is only the entrance
to phUosophy. But in either case, truth is sought by means
of a phUosophical history of the past; which, tracking the
progi-ess of truth and error in any particular department, lays
bare the natural as weU as the literary history ; the causes
of the past, as weU as its form. Truth and error are thus dis
covered, not by breaking with the past, and using abstract
speculations on original data, but by tracing the growth
of thought, gathering the harvest of past investigations, and
learning by experience to escape error.
These considerations bear upon the present subject in this
manner : they show not only the special adaptation to the
passing tastes of the age, of an historic mode of approaching
a subject, but exhibit also that the mode of proof and of refu
tation must be sought, not on abstract grounds, but historic.
The position of an enemy is not to be forced, but turned ; his
premises to be refuted, not his conclusions; the antecedent
reasons which led him into his opinion to be exhibited, not
merely evidence offered of the fact that he is in error.
This view, that doubt might be refuted by the historic
analysis of its operation, by laying bare the antecedent
grounds which had produced it, wiU explain why the author
was led to believe that a chapter of mental and moral phy
siology might be useful, which would not merely carry out
the anatomy of actual forms of disease, but discover their
origin by the study of the preceding natural history of the
patients. These remarks wiU perhaps suffice for explaining the object

PREFACE. xix
which was proposed in writing this history ; and may justify
the hope that this work, thus adapted to the wants of the
time, may offer such a contribution to the subject of the
Christian evidences, as not only to possess an intellectual
value, but to coincide with the purpose contemplated by the
founder of the Lectures.
It remains to state the sources which have been used for
the literary materials of the history. Though they are suffi
ciently indicated in the notes, a general description of them
may be useful.
They may be distributed under four classes :
I. The histories which have been professedly devoted to
the subject.
3. The notices of the history of unbeUef in general histories
of the church or of literature.
3. (Which ought ind'eed to rank first in importance ;) the
original authorities for the facts, i. e. the works of the scep
tical writers themselves ; or of the contemporary authors who
have refuted them.
4. The monographs, which treat of particular writers, ages,
or schools, of sceptical thought.
In approaching the subject, a student would probably
commence with the first two classes ; and after having thus
acquired for himself a eoA'te du pays, would then explore it in
detail by the aid of the third and fourth.
I . The works which have professedly treated of the history
of infidelity, as a whole, are not of great importance.
One of the earliest was the Historia Univ. Atheismi, 1735,
of Reimannus ; and the Be Atheismo, 1737, of Buddeus. (An
explanation of the word Atheism, as employed by them, is given
in Note ai. p. 585.) They furnish, as the name implies, a
history of scepticism, as well as of sceptics ; yet, though the
ba

XX PREFACE.
labours of such dUigent and learned men can never be useless,
they afford little information now avaUable. Their date also
necessarily precluded them from knowing the more recent
forms of unbeUef. Perhaps under this head we ought also to
name the chapters on polemical theology in the great works
of bibKography of the German scholars of the same time, such
as ViaS{Hist. Litt. Theol.); Buddeus {Isagoge); Fabricius {De
lectus Argum.); Wsdch's {Bidlical Theol. Select.) ; which contain
lists of sceptical works, either directly, or indirectly by naming
the apologists who have answered them. The references to
these works will be found in Note 49. p. 616. ^
Among French writers, the only one of importance is
HouttevUle, who prefixed an Introduction to his work, la
Religion, Chretienne prouvee par des fails, 17 33, containing an
account of the writers for and against Christianity from the
earliest times. (Translated I739-) It contains Kttle informa
tion concerning the authors or the events, but a clearly and
correctly written analysis of their works and thoughts.
Among the English writers who have attempted a conse
cutive history of the whole subject was Van Mildert, after
wards bishop of Durham, who has been already named. The
first volume of his Boyle Lectures, in 1803-4, ^^^ devoted to
the history of infidelity ; the second to a general statement
of the evidences for Christianity. This work, on account of
its date, necessarily stops short before the existence of modern
forms of doubt ; and indeed evinces no knowledge concerning
the contemporary forms of literature in Germany, which had
already attracted the attention of Dr. Herbert Marsh. The
point of view of the work, as already described, almost en
tirely precludes the author from entering upon the analysis
of the causes, either emotional or intellectual, which have
produced unbelief. Its value accordingly is chiefly in the

PREFACE.

XXI

literary materials coUected in the notes ; in which respect it
bears marks of careful study. Though mostly drawn from
second-hand sources, it exhibits wide reading and thoughtful
judgment. A portion of the Bampton Lectures for 1853, by the Rev.
J. C. Riddle, was devoted to the subject of infidelity. The
author's object, as the title" impKes, was to give the natural
history of unbeHef, to the neglect of the literary. Psycho
logical rather than historical analysis was used by him for
the investigation; and his examination of the moral causes
of doubt is better than of the intellectual. The notes contain
a collection of valuable quotations, which supplement those
of Van MUdert, but are unfortunately given, for the most
part, without references.
This completes y the enumeration of the histories professedly
devoted to infidelity, with the exception of a small but very cre
ditable production published since several of these lectures were
vrntten, Befence of the Faith; Parti. Forms of Unbelief, by the
Rev. S. Robins, forming the first part of a work, of which the
second is to treat the evidences ; the third to draw the moral.
It does not profess to be a very deep work^ ; but it is in-
X The Natural History of Infidelity and Superstition im Contrast with
Christian Faith.
y A work partly on the history of unbelief, Scepticism a Retrogressive Move in
Tlieology and Philosophy, has also been lately written (1861) by the accomplished
lord Lindsay. Great learning is shown in it. Though written with a special
controversial purpose, and though the facts accordingly are briefly stated,
without literary references, it contains a useful summary and suggestive
reflections. z In a literary point of view it is incorrect, in one chapter, if the author
understands Mr. Robins rightly, where he seems to classify together, under the
same head of Pantheism, the atheism of the French school of the Encyclopae
dists in the last century and that of the German philosophers of the present. The
two indeed agree in denying or ignoring the existence of a personal God ; but
in tone, premises, and metaphysical delations, they differ diametrically. (Since
this note was written, the sad intelligence of Mr. Kobins's death has appeared.)

xxii PREFACE.
teresting; drawn generaUy from the best sources, and written
in an eloquent style and devout spirit.
3. The transition is natural from these works, which treat
of the history of unbeKef or give lists of the works of unbe
lievers, to the notices of sceptical writers contained in general
histories of the church or of literature.
In this, as in the former case, it is only in modern times
that important notices occur concerning forms of unbelief.
The circumstance that in the early ages unbelief took the
form of opposition or persecution on the part of heathens, and
that in the middle ages it was so rare, caused the ancient
church historians and mediseval church chroniclers to record
little respecting actual unbelief, though they give information
about heresy. Even in modern times, it is not till the early
part of the eighteenth century that any attention is bestowed
on the subject. The earlier histories, both Protestant, such
as the Magdeburg Centuriators, and Catholic, like Baronius,
wrote the history of the past for a controversial purpose in
relation to the contests of their own times : and in the next
period, in the one church, Arnold confined himself to the history
of heresy rather than unbeKef; and in the other, Fleury and
TiUemont wrote the history of deeds rather than of ideas,
and afford no information, except in a few allusions of the
latter writer to the early inteUectual opposition of the
heathens. But about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the
period of cold orthodoxy and solid learning which imme
diately preceded the rise of rationaKsm, as weU as in that of
incipient free thought, we meet not only with the historians of
theological literature already named above, but with historians
of thought like Brucker, and of the church like Mosheim,

PREFACE. xxiii
possessed of large taste for inquiry, and wide literary sympa
thies, who contribute information on the subject : and towards
the close of the century we find Schrockh, who, in his lengthy
and careful history of the church since the Reformation'', has
taken so extensive a view of the nature of church history,
that he has included in it an account of the struggle with
freethinkers. Among the same class, with the exception that
he differs in being marked by rationaKst sympathies, must be
ranked Henke^.
In the present century the spread of the scientific spirit,
which counts no facts unworthy of notice, together with the
attention bestowed on the history of doctrine, and the special
interest in understanding the fortunes of free thought, which
sympathy in danger created during the rationalist movement,
prevented the historians from passing lightly over so im
portant a series of facts. It may be sufficient to instance,
in proof, the notices of unbelief which occur in Neander's

''¦ OkristlicheKircJieTigeschichte, &c. 45 vols. 1768-1812. The writer of these
lectures has taken occasion elsewhere (p. 658.) to deplore the want of any com
plete history of the English church. He may here add also the want of a
history in English of European Christianity since the Keformation.
" It may offer an explanation of subsequent references to some church his
torians, to name the classification given by Schaff {Bihliotheca Sacra, 1850).
After treating of the ancient and mediseval histories, and making the obvious
subdivision of the modern into Romish and Protestant, and subdividing these
again according to their nations, he arranges the Protestant historians of Ger
many chronologically under five classes : (i) the Polemico-orthodox, such as
the Magdeburg centuriators ; (2) the Pietistio, — Arnold and Weismann ;
(3) the Pragmatioo-supematural, — Mosheim, Walch, Planck, Schrockh;
(4) the Rationalist, — Semler, Henke, Gieseler (in reference to which latter he is
perhaps hardly fair) ; (s) the Scientific, viz. (a) of the Schleiermacher school, —
Neander ; (|8) of the Hegelian, unchurchlike and heterodox, — Baur ; (7) of the
Hegelian, churchlike and orthodox, — Dorner. Concerning older church his
torians, see the late Rev. J. G. Bowling's exceUent work, Introduction to the
Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History, 1 838 ; and, on the most modern German
church historians, see North British Review, Nov. 1858.

xxiv PREFACE.
Church History. General histories also of literature, like
Schlosser's History of Literature in the Eighteenth Century, or
the more theological one of Hagenhach. {Geschichte des i8"
Jahrhunderts) incidentally afford information.
The various works just named are the chief of this class
which furnish assistance.
3. After a general preliminary idea of the history has
been obtained from these som-ces, in order to prevent being
confused with detaUs ; it is necessary to resort next to the
original sources of information, without careful study of which
the history must lack a real basis.
In reference to the early unbelievers, the direct materials
are lost; but the contemporary replies to these writings
remain. In the case of later unbelievers, both the works and
the answers to them exist. It will be presumed that in so
large a subject the writer cannot have read all the sceptical
works which have been written, and are here named. With
the exception however of Averroes and of the Paduan school'',
in which cases he has chiefly adopted second-hand informa
tion, and merely himself consulted a few passages of the ori
ginal writers, he has in all other instances read the chief works
of the sceptical writers, sufficiently at least to make himself
acquainted with their doubts, and in many cases has even
made an analysis of their works. The reader mil perceive by
the foot-notes the instances in which this applies.
It may be due to some of the historians who have made
a special study of particular periods from original sources, to
state, that so far as his limited experience extends he can bear
witness to their exactness. Leehler's work on English deism
for example", is a singular example of truthful narrative;
* Lecture III. pp. 139-145.
<= Oeschichte des Englischen Deismus, 1841.

PREFACE. xxv
and Leland's ^, though controversial, is worthy of nearly the
same praise.
4. There remains a fourth source of materials in the separate
monographs on particular men, opinions, or schools of thought.
We shall enumerate these according to the order of the lec
tures; dwelling briefly on the majority of them, as being
described elsewhere ; and describing at greater length those
only which relate to the history of the theological movements
in Germany described in Lectures VI. and VII. ; inasmuch
as references are there frequently made to these works without
a specific description of their respective characters.
In relation to the early struggle of Paganism against
Christianity^, the work of Lardner, Collection of Ancient Jewish
and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion
(1764-7) (Works, vols, vii-ix), is well known for careful
ness of treatment and the value of its references. Portions
also of the works of J. A. Fabricius, especiaUy his Bibliotkeca
GrcBca and Lux EvangeUi (1733) are useful in reference to
the lost works, and for bibliographical knowledge : also a
monograph by Kortholt, Paganus Obtrectator (1703), on the
objections made by Christians in the early ages, gathered
from the Apologies.
Among recent works it is only necessary to specify one,
viz. the second series of the Histoire de I'Eglise Chretienne,
by E. de Pressense (1861), containing La Grande LiMe du
Christianisme eontre le Paganisme, the account of the struggle
both of deeds and ideas on the part of the heathens against
Christianity, and of the apology of the Christians in reply.
d /. Leland's 'View of the Deistical Writers, 1754. An edition published in
1837 contains an account of the subsequent history of Deism by Cyrus R.
Edmonds. It is edited by Dr. W. L. Brown.
« Lecture II.

xxvi PREFACE.
The sketches of the arguments used both by the heathens, as
recovered from fragments, and by the Christian apologists, are
most ably executed. The frequent references to it in the
foot-notes will show the importance which the writer attaches
to this work '5.
The long period of the middle ages, together with early
modem *^ history, so far as the latter bears upon the present
subject, is spanned by the aid of four works; Cousin's Memoir
on Abelard (1836) ; the La Beforme of Laurent (1861), a pro
fessor at Ghent; the Averroes of E. Renan (1851), one of the
ablest among the younger writers of France ; and the Essais
de Philosophie Religieuse of E. Saisset (1859) . All these works
are full of learning; some of them are works of mind as
well as of erudition. Cousin's treatise is weU knownS, and
may be said to have reopened the study of mediaeval philoso
phy. The contents of Laurent's work are specified else
where '^. That of Renan, besides containing a sketch of the
life and philosophy of Averroes, studies his influence in the
three great spheres where it was felt, — the Spanish Jews, the
Scholastic phUosophers, and the Peripatetics of Padua. The
work of Saisset is a most instructive critical sketch on reh
gious philosophy.
The period of English Deism' is treated in two works ; the
well-known work of Leland above cited, and the one also
named above by Lechler, now general superintendent at
Leipsic ; a work full of information, and exceedingly com
plete ; one of the carefully executed monographs with which
many of the younger German scholars first bring their names

e An older work, in some respects similar to Pressensd's, is Tzchirner's
Oeschichte der Apologetik, 1805.
f Lecture III. g See p. 114, note.
>> P. 106, note. ' Lecture IV.

PREFACE. xxvK
into notice. Though the interest of the subject is limited,
it well merits a translator i<^.
There is a deficiency of any similar work on the history
of infidelity in France', treating it separately and ex
haustively. The work which most nearly deserves the de
scription is vol. vi. of Henke's Kirchengeschichte'^. This want
however is the less felt, because almost every portion of the
period has been treated in detail by French critics of various
schools ; among which some of the sketches of Bartholmess,
Histoire Critique des Boctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie
Moderne, 1855 ; and of Damiron, Memoires pour servir a I'His-
toire de Philosophic au 18^ siecle"; are perhaps the most useful
for our purpose. One portion of Mr. Buckle's History of
Civilization, the best written part of his first volume, also
affords much information, in the main trustworthy, in refer
ence to the intellectual condition of France of the same
period °.
A description of the events of a period so complex as that of
the German theological movement of the last hundred years P
would have been an object too ambitious to attempt, especiaUy
when it must necessarUy, from the size of the subject, be
grounded on an acquaintance with single writers of a school,
or single works of an author used as samples of the remainder;
if it were not that abundant guidance is suppHed in the me
moirs by German theologians of all shades of opinion, who
have studied the history of their country, and not only nar
rated &cts, but investigated causes. A few narratives of it
also exist by scholars of other comitries; but these are founded
¦t The able French critic C. R^musat has bestowed attention on some of the
English deists. A paper on Shaftesbury has appeared since Lecture IV. was
printed, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Nov. 1862.
1 In Lecture V. m Edited by Vater. ° See p. 249, note.
" See p. 231, note. P Lectures VI. and VII.

xxviii PREFACE.
on the former. We shall in the main preserve the order of
their publication in enumerating these various works.
The materials for the condition of Germany at the begin
ning of the last century, antecedently to the introduction of
the new influences which created rationalismP, are conveyed in
Weismann, Introductio in Memorabilia Eccl. Hist. (1718), and
in Schrockh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte,{i']6?)~i^i'2,). The
first distinct examination however of the peculiar character of
the movement which ensued, called Rationalism, occurred in
the discussion as to its meaning and province ; in which Titt-
mann, Rohr, Staiidlin, Bretschneider, Hahn, &c. were engaged;
an account of which, with a list of their works'!, is given under
the explanation of the word " Rationalism" in Note 31. p. 589.
The chief value of these works at present is, partly to enable
us to understand how contemporaries viewed the movement
whUe in progress; partly to reproduce the state of beKef
which existed in the older school of rationalists, and its op
ponents, before the reaction toward orthodoxy had fuUy
altered theological thought.
Whilst the dispute between rationalism and supernatural-
ism was still going on, and the latter was gradually gaining
the victory, through the reaction under Schleiermacher just
alluded to, an English writer, Mr. Hugh James Rose ¦¦, pub
lished some sermons preached at Cambridge in 1825, which
were the means of directing attention to the subject both at
home and abroad, and stimulating investigation into the
history. As this work, and especially the reply of one writer
to it, are often here quoted, it may be well to narrate the

P Lecture VI. p. 301.
1 Some of these works were subsequent to the discussion caused abroad by
the sermons of Mr. Rose, described below.
' Afterwards Principal of the King's College, London.

PREFACE. xxix
interesting literary controversy, now forgotten, which ensued
upon its publication.
Mr. Rose described the havoc made by the rationalist spe
culations, alike in dogma, in interpretation, and in church
history, and attributed the evil chiefly to the absence of an
efficient system of internal church government which would
have suppressed such a movement. He was answered (1838)
by Mr. (now Dr.) Pusey, then a junior Fellow of Oriel, who,
having visited Germany, and become acquainted with the forms
of German thought, and the circumstances which had marked
its development, conceived justly that the reasons of a moral
phenomenon like the overthrow of religious faith in Ger
many must be sought in intrinsic causes, and not merely in
an extrinsic cause, such as the absence of efficient means of
ecclesiastical repression. In this work^^ marked by great
knowledge of the subject, and characterized by just and philo
sophical reflections, the author pointed out an internal law of
development in the events of the history, and traced the ulti
mate cause of the movement to the divorce between dogma
and piety which had characterized the age preceding the rise
of rationalism. His motive for entering the contest was, not
the wish to defend the movement, for his own position was
fixed upon the faith of the creeds ; but seems to have been
partly a love of truth, which did not Kke to see an imperfect
view of a great question set forth ; and partly the wish to
prevent , attention being diverted by Mr. Rose's explanation,
from perceiving the extreme resemblance of the contem-
porai-y time in England to that of the age which preceded
rationalism.

s Historical Inquiry imto the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character
lately predominamt in the Theology of Germany.

XXX PREFACE.
To this work Mr. Rose repKed in a Letter to the Bishop of
London, misunderstanding Mr. Pusey's object, and conveying
the impression that he had made himself responsible for the
rationaKsm which it had been the object of the sermons to
condemn. He felt himself however compelled, in a second
edition of the sermons*, to enter more largely into proofs from
German literature of the position which he had assumed ; and
produced a coUection of literary facts, of value in reference to
the movement.
Mr. Pusey repKed (1830) with a triumphant vindication
aKke of his own meaning, and the truth of his own position".
The work is necessarily less interesting than the former, as it
turns more upon personal questions, and is more polemical ;
but the literary information conveyed is equally valuable.
If we may be permitted to form an opinion concerning the
controversy, it may perhaps be true to say, that Mr. Rose's
fault (if indeed we may say so of one who so worthily re
ceived honour in his generation) was, that he approached the
subject from the polemic and practical instead of the historic
side. His work is Kke the description of a battle-field, which
gives an idea of the mangled remains that strew the field,
but does not recount the causes of contest, nor the progress
of the action. The work of his opponent describes the mus
tering of the forces preparatory to the action, and the causes
which led to the struggle. Perhaps, in a few matters of
detail, the former writer has taken a truer, though a less
hopeful, view than his opponent, of certain classes of opinions,
or of certain men ; but the latter has better preserved the his
torical perspective. The former saw mainly the old forms of
rationalism, the latter descried the partial return toward the
' 1829. u Historical Inquiry, &c. part ii. 1830.

PREFACE. xxxi
faith which had already begun, and has since gone forward
so energetically ".
These works must always afford much information on the
topics which they embrace. It is proper however to add,
that Dr. Pusey, some years ago, recalled the remaining copies
of the edition of his work. On this account the writer of
these lectures, when he has had occasion to give references
to it, has taken care not to quote it for opinions, but only for
facts y.
The attack of Mr. Rose on German theology caused re-
pKes abroad as well as at home. Several German theologians
were led to a more careful study of their own history and
position, to which references will be found in Mr. Rose's
replies ^.
Previously to the publication of Dr. Pusey's treatises, a
work had been written with a purpose less directly contro
versial, by Tholuck : Abriss Einer GeschicAte der umwdlzung,
welche seit i75°j ouf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Beutschland
statt gefunden, now contained in his Vermischte Schriften, 1839,
vol. 3 *- It is valuable for the earlier history of Rationalism.
The spirit of it is very simUar to that of Dr. Pusey's work.
Indeed the latter author, though not aware of the publication
of Tholuck's work, was cognisant of his views on these ques
tions, through lectures heard from him abroad.
These works however were aU previous to the great agita
tion in German theology, which ensued in consequence of

X P. 340.
y Dr. S. Lee, of Cambridge, also appended a dissertation on some points of
German Rationalism to his Six Sermons on Prophecy, 1830.
z In the Appendix to the second edition of the State of Protestantism in
Germany, 1829.
a A brief sketch of Tholuck's views is given in the Foreign Quarterly Re
view, vol. 2g.

xxxn PREFACE.
Strauss's Leben Jesu, in 1835. After the first excitement of
that event had passed, we meet with three works, two French
and one German, in which the history is brought down to a
later period. The Fi-ench ones were, the Histoire Critique du
Bationalisme,'i%4'i, of Amand Saintes, translated 1849 ; and the
Etudes Gi-itiques sur le Bationalisme Contemporain, of the Abbe
H. de VaKoger, 1846; the latter of which works the writer
of these lectures has been unable to see. The German one
was, Ber Beutsche Protestantismus, 1847'', and is attributed to
Hundeshagen, professor at Heidelberg.
The Critical History of Amand Saintes, though thought by
the Germans 1= to be defective, in consequence of want of suf
ficiently separating between the various forms of rationalism,
is more replete than any other book with stores of information,
and extracfis arranged in a very clear form ^. It is very useful,
if the reader first possesses a better scheme into which to
arrange the materials. It is written also in a truly evangelical
spirit. The work of Hundeshagen had a political object as weU as
a religious. It was composed just before the revolution of
1848, when Germany was panting for freedom; and its object
was to defend the position of the constitutional party in
b Der Deutsche Protestantismus, seime Vergangenheit und seine heutigen Le-
bensfragen m zusammenhamg der gesam/mten rationalentuncTcelv/ng beleuchtet von
einem Deutschen. A very instructive article was written in the British Quar
terly Remew, No. 26, May 185 r, founded chiefly on this work.
c Kahnis, Internal History of German Protestantism (E. T.), p. 169, note.
d An English clergyman, Mr. E. H. Dewar, wrote a small work in 1844, on
German Protestantism; based chiefly on Amand Saintes, but in tone like that of
Mr. Rose. It was considered very unfair, and was answered by Neander in the
Jahrbiicher fur Wissensohaftliche Kritik, October 1844 ; and when Mr. Dewar
replied, was again answered by him in Antwortschreiben, 1845. It may be pro
per to name here, that Mr. B. Hawkins's work, Germany, Spirit of her His
tory, &c. 1838, contains miscellaneous information on many points of German
life, which illustrate this portion of the history.

PREFACE. xxxin
church and state ; and with a view to estabhsh the import
ance of their moral and doctrinal position, he surveyed the
recent history of his country.
Hagenbach's Bogmengeschichte (translated), which was pub
lished nearly about the same time, also contains a very in
teresting sketch, with valuable notes, of the chief writers and
works in the movement of German theology.
The view of the history given in Tholuck and Hundeshagen
is that which is taken by the school called the " Mediation
school" in German theology ^. The general cause assigned
by them for scepticism was the separation of dogma and
piety; the recovery from the rationalistic state being due to
the reunion of these elements, which Hundeshagen shows to
have been also the great feature of the German reformation.
After an interval of about ten years, when the tendencies
created by Strauss's movement had become definitely mani
fest, the history was again surveyed in two works, the one,
Geschickte des Beutschen Protestantismus, by Kahnis (trans
lated 1856), who belongs to the Lutheran reactionaiy party;
the other, GeschicAte der neuesten Theologie, li ^6, by C. Schwarz,
whose work is so candid and free from party bias, that it is
unimportant to remark the party to which he belongs''.
The narrative of Kahnis, originaUy a series of papers in a
magazine, is very fuU of facts, and generaUy fair ; but it wants
form. The author's view is, that the sceptical movement
arose from abandoning the dogmatic expression of revealed
truth, contained in the old Confessions of the Lutheran
- P. 393. Neander has also written a work, Oeschichte des Veiflossenen
hdW-Jahrhimderts. (Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1850.)
' He belongs to a new form of the historico-critical school ; see Note 41,
p. 620 ; but writes without prejudice. An article elsewhere referred to (p. 10.)
in the 'Westmmstefr Review, may convey an idea of the facts of Schwarz's work ;
but it expresses a more definite tendency and opinions than his work.
C

xxxiv PREFACE.
church ; and he considers the reaction of the Mediation school
in favour of orthodoxy to be imperfect ; the true restoration
being only found by returning to the Confessions.
The work of Schwarz is restricted to the latest forms of
German theology, and goes back no farther than the circum
stances which led to the work of Strauss. It is unequaUed
in clearness ; bearing the mark of German exactness and ful
ness, and rivalling French histories in didactic power. These
two works differ from most of those previously named, in
being histories of modern German theology generaUy, and not
merely of the rationaKst forms of it.
Such are the chief sources in which a student may learn the
view taken by the German critics of different schools, con
cerning the recent church history of their country at various
moments of its progress. The fulness of this account wiU be
excused, if it provide information concerning works to which
reference is made in the foot-notes of those lectures which
treat of this period.
In describing the doubts of the present century in Prances,
considerable help has been foimd in the Hist, de la I/itteratwre,
&c. written by Nettemenf", and in the Essais of Damiron',
as weU as in criticisms by recent French writers ; which are
cited in the foot-notes to the lecture which treats of the period.
The subject of the contemporary doubt in England'' has
been felt to be a deKcate one. It has however been thought
better to carry the history down to the present time, and to
deal frankly in expressing the writer's own opinion. Delicacy
forbade the introduction of the names' of writers into the text
s Lect. VII. p. 408 seq. h p. ^^08, note.
' Id. k Lect. VIII.
1 As the relation of the present condition of religious belief in England to
forms of philosophy may not have been made perfectly clear even by the remarks
in Lecture VIII. p. 465 seq., and Note 9, it may be well here to state the

PREFACE. XXXV
of this part of the Sermons, but they have been inserted in
the foot-notes.
The mention of one additional source of information wiU
complete the examination which was proposed.
It will be observed, that references have been very fre
quently given in the notes, to the Reviews, English and
French, and occasionaUy German, for papers which treat on
the subjects embraced in the history. When the writer
studied the subject for publication, he took care to consult
these, as affording a kind of commentary by contemporaries on
the different portions of the history. It is hoped that the
references to those written in the two former languages will
be found to be tolerably complete. The enormous number of
those which exist in German, together with the absence for
the most part of indexes to them, renders it probable that
many separate papers of great value, the special studies by dif
ferent scholars of passages in the literary history of their own
sequence intended, even at the risk of repetition. The father of the modern
philosophy is Kant. He first gave the impulse to resolve truth, which was
supposed to be objective, into subjective forms of thought. Hence, in suc
ceeding systems of phUosophy, the idea was thought to be of more im
portance than the facts ; and an & priori tendency was created. But in the
two philosophers, Schelling and Hegel, this developed in different modes.
Both sought to approach facts through ideas ; to both the ideal world was the
real : but with the former, truth was absolute ; with the latter, relative. In
the former case the mind was thrown in upon itself, and had a secure ground
of truth in the eternal truths of the reason ; in the latter it was thrown
(ultimately, though not unmediately) outward, and taught to trace the tran
sition of the ideas in the world, the growth of truth in history. Hence in
theology, while the tendency of both was to find an appeal for truth inde
pendent of revelation, the one produced au intuitional religion, the other,
proximately, an ideal, but ultimately generates scepticism : for the one clings
to the eternal ideas in the mind, the other views the fleeting, changing
aspects of truth in the world. The spirit of the former is seen in Carlyle,
Coleridge, and Cousin ; the spirit of the latter in Renan and Scherer, and is
beginning to appear in the younger writers of the English periodical litera
ture. Hence in English theology we have two broadly marked divisions ;
one doctrinal, and the other literary ; the former of which subdivides into the
two just named. C 3

xxxvi PREFACE.
nation, have been left unenumerated. The German literary
periodicals are indeed the solitary source of information which
the writer considers has not been fully worked for these lec
tures''. Among the articles in English Reviews, many bear marks
of careful study; and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity
of rescuing them from the neglect which is likely to occur to
papers written without name, and in periodicals. The free-
thinking Reviews have discussed the opinions of the friends of
free thought more frequently than the others ; but those here
cited are of all shades of opinion; and the writer has found
many to be of great use, even when differing widely from the
conclusions drawn. He is glad indeed to take this opportunity
of expressing his thanks to the unknown authors of these
various productions, which have afforded him so much in
struction, and often so much help. He trusts that he has
in aU cases candidly and fuUy acknowledged his obligations
when he has borrowed their materials, or condensed their
thoughts. If he has in any case, through inadvertence, faUed
to do so, he hopes that this acknowledgment wiU be allowed
to compensate for the unintentional omission.
The reader being now in possession both of the purpose
designed in the lectures, and of the sources of the information
used in their composition, it only remains to add a few mis-
ceUaneous remarks.
In the deKvery of the lectures, several portions were
omitted, on account of the excessive length to which they
would have run. It has not been thought necessary to indi
cate these passages by brackets; but, as those who heard
It Many references to them are given in Smith's (American) Translation of
Hagenbachs Hiit. of Doctr. 1862.

PREFACE. xxxvii
them may perhaps wish to have an enumeration, a Hst is here
subjoined 1.
The notes, it will be perceived, are placed, some at the foot
of the text, others at the end. Those are put as foot-notes
which either were very brief, or which suppKed information
that the reader might be supposed to desire in connection
with the text. Most of those which are appended are of
the same character as the foot-notes; i. e. sources of in
formation in reference to the subjects discussed in the text.
A few however supply information on collateral subjects.
The Notes 4, 5, and 49, wUl be found to contain a history
of Apologetic Literature parallel with the history of Free
Thought; and Note 31 discusses the history of some technical
terms commonly employed in the history of doubt.
The size of the subject has precluded the possibUity of
giving many extracts from other works ; but it may be per
mitted to remark, that the literary references given are de
signed to supply sources of real and valuable information on
the various points in relation to which they are cited. It can
hardly be necessary to state, that the writer must not in any
way be held responsible for the sentiments expressed in the
works to which he may have given references. In a subject
such as that which is here treated, many of the works cited
are neutral in character, and many are objectionable. But
it is right to supply complete literary materials, as well
as references to works which state both sides of the questions
considered. 1 In Lect. I. p. 23 (first half), 49, 50 : in Lect. II. p. 93 : in Lect. III. p.
Ill (last half), 112, 128, 135, 136 (part); 138, 139 (part) ; 142, 146, 147, 152,
1.56 (part) : in Lect. IV. p. 169, 172, 174 (part), 198-202 ; 204-207 ; 209 : in
Lect. V. 254-256 ; 259 ; 276-286 : in Lect. VI. p. 296, 334, 335 (part) ; 353-
366 (nearly all): in Lect. VII. p. 396 (part); 410-425 : in Lect. VIII. p. 432
(part) ; 437-479 (for which a brief analysis was substituted) ; p. 485, 486 (part);
500, 501, 506 (part).

xxxviU PREFACE.
The index appended is brief, and devoted chiefly to Proper
Names; the fulness of the Table of Contents seeming to render
a longer one unnecessary, which should contain references to
subjects. The writer wishes to express his acknowledgments to the
chief Librarian of the Bodleian, the Rev. H. O. Coxe, for his
kindness in procuring for his use a few foreign works which
were necessary. He avails himself also of this opportunity
of expressing publicly his thanks to the same individual, for
the perseverance with which he has accomplished the scheme
of providing a reading-room in connection with the Bodleian
Library, open to students in an evening. Those whose time
and strength are spent in college or private tuition during the
mornings, are thus enabled to avail themselves of the trea
sures of a library, which until this recent alteration was in a
great degree useless to many of the most active minds and
dUigent students in the university.
Thanus are aiso due to a few other persons for their
advice and courtesy in the loan of scarce books; also, in some
instances, for assistance in the verification of a reference™;
and in one case, to a distinguished scholar, for his kindness
in revising one of the Notes.
The spirit in which the writer has composed the history
has been stated elsewhere ". His work now goes forth with
no extraneous claims on public attention. If it be, by the
Divine blessing, the means of affording instruction, guidance,
or comfort, to a single mind, the writer's labour will be amply
recompensed. m His thanks are especially due to Mr. Macray, the Librarian of the Taylor
Institution, for his kindness in the last respect.
" PP- 63, 634-
Oxford, November 38, 1863.

ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES.

LECTURE L
On, ihe subject, method, emd purpose of ihe course of Leciwres.
Ihe subject stated to be the struggle of the human mind against
the Christian revelation, in whole or in part. (p. i.) Explanation of
the points which form the occasion of the conflict, (pp. 1-3.)
The mode of treatment, being that of a critical history, includes (pp. 3, 4.)
the discovery of (i) the facts, (2) the causes, and (3) the moral.
The main part of this first lecture is occupied in explaining the second
of these divisions.
Importance, if the investigation were to be fuUy conducted, of carrying
out a comparative study of religions and of the attitude of the mind
in reference to all doctrine that rests on authority, (pp. 5-8.)
The idea of causes implies,
I. The law of the operation of the causes.
II. The enumeration of the causes which act according to this
assumed law.
I. The empirical law, or formula descriptive of the action of reason on
religion, is explained to be one form of the principle of progress by
antagonism, the conservation or discovery of truth by means of

Xl ANALYSIS OV THE LECTUEES. [LECT- I.
inquiry and controversy; a merciful Providence leaving men
responsible for their errors, but ultimately overruling evil for good.
(P-9-) This great fact illustrated in the four Crises of the Christian
faith in Europe, viz. In the struggl^
(i) With heathen philosophy, about A.D. 160-360. (p. 10.)
(2) With sceptical tendencies in Scholasticism, in the middle
ages (1100-1400). (p. II.)
(3) With hterature, at the Renaissance, in Italy (1400-
1625). (p. 12.)
(4) With modern philosophy in three forms (p. 14) : viz.
English Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries (p. 15) ; French Infidelity in the eighteenth
century ; German Rationalism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth. *
Proposal to study the natural as well as literary history of these
forms of doubt. — The investigation separated from inquiries
into heresy as distinct from scepticism, (p. 17.)
II. The causes, seen to act according to the law just described,
which make free thought develope into unbeUef, stated to be
twofold (p. 18) :
)^.' Emotional causes. — Necessity for showing the relation of the
intellectual causes to the emotional, both per se, and because
the idea of a history oi thought, together with the comparative
rarity of the process here undertaken, implies the restriction
of the attention mainly to the intellectual, (p. 18.)
Influence of the emotional causes shown, both from psycho
logy and from the analysis of the nature of the evidence
ofiered in rehgion (pp. 19, 20).— Historical illustrations of
their influence, (pp. 21-23.)
Other instances where the doubt is in origin purely intel
lectual (p. 24), but where nevertheless opportunity is seen
for the latent operation of the emotional, (p. 25.)
Explanation how far religious doubt is sin. (pp. 26, 27.)

^

LECT. I.] ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. xli
2. Intellectual causes, which are the chief subject of these
lectures; the conjoint influence however of the emotional
being always presupposed.
The inteUectual causes shown to be (p. 28) :
(a) the new material of knowledge which arises from the
\.'' advance of the various sciences; viz. Criticism;
^ Physical, Moral, and Ontological science, (p. 29.)
((3) the various metaphysical tests of truth or grounds
of certitude employed, (p. 30.)
An illustration of the meaning (p. 31), drawn from litera
ture, in a brief comparison of the types of thought
shown in Milton, Pope, and Tennyson.
Statement of the exact position of this inquiry in the
subdivisions of metaphysical science (pp. 33, 34),
and detailed explanation of the advantages and
disadvantages of applying to rehgion the tests of
Sense, subjective Forms of Thought, Intuition, and
Feeling, respectively, as the standard of appeal.
(PP- 35-44-)
Advantage of a biographic mode of treatment in the inves
tigation of the operation of these causes in the history
^ of doubt, (pp. 45-48.)
Statement of the utility of the inquiry :
(i) InteUectuaUy, (a) in a didactic and polemical point of view, in
that it refers the origin of the intellectual elements in error
-s[ to false philosophy and faulty modes of judging, and thus
refutes error by analysing it into the causes which produce
it; and also O) in an indirect contribution to the Christian
evidences by the historic study of former contests, (p. 50.)
(2) MoraUy, in creating deep pity for the sinner, united with
hatred for the sin. (p. 51.)
Concluding remarks on the spirit which has influenced the writer in
these lectures, (pp. 52, 53.)

xiii ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. [lBCT. II.

LECTURE II.
The literary opposition of Heathens against^hristianity in the
early ages.
The first of the four crises of the faith, (pp. S4-103.) Agreement
and difference of this crisis with the modern, (pp. 55, 56.) — Sources for
ascertaining its nature, the original writings of unbeUevers being lost.
(PP- 57. 58-)
Preliminary explanation of four states of belief among the heathens
in reference to religion, from which opposition to Christianity would
arise : (pp. 59-166.) viz.
/ (1) the tendency to absolute disbeUef of religion, as seen in Lucian
and the Epicurean school, (pp. 59, 60.)
(2) a reactionary attachment to the national creed, — the eflFect of
prejudice in the lower orders, and of poUcy in the educated.
(pp. 63, 64.)
(3) the philosophical tendency, in the Stoics, (p. 63.) and Neo-
Platonists ; (pp. 63, 64.)
(4) the mystic inclination for magic rites, (p. 65.) '
Detailed critical history of the successive literary attacks on Christ
ianity, (p. 67 seq.)
I. that of Lucian, about A. D. 170, in the Peregrinus Proteus.
(pp. 67-70.) ''¦],^.'--
j 2. that of Celsus, about the same date. (pp. 70-77.)
3. that of Porphyry, about 270. (pp. 78-86.)
4. that of Hierocles about 303, founded on the earlier work of
Philostratus respecting the life of ApoUonius of Tyana.
(pp. 86-90.)
( 5. that of Julian, A. D. 363 ; an example of the struggle in deeds as
weU as in ideas, (pp. 90-96.)
(Account of the Philopatris of the Pseudo-Lucian. (p. 94.)
Conclusion; showing the relation of these attacks to the inteUectual
tendencies before mentioned (p. 97.), and to the general intellectual causes

LBCT. III.J ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. xKK
sketched in Lect. I. (p. 98.) — Insufficiency of these causes to explain the
whole phenomenon of unbelief, unless the conjoint action of emotional
causes be supposed, (pp. 99, 100.)
Analogy of this early conflict to the modern. Lessons from considera
tion of the means by which the early Church repeUed it. (pp. 101-103.)

LECTURE IIL
Free Thought during ihe middle ages, and at the Renaissance ;
together with its rise in modern times.
This period embraces the second and third of the four epochs of
doubt, and the commencement of the fourth. Brief outline of the
events which it includes, pp. 104, log.
Second crisis, from A.D. 1100-1400. pp. 105-128. It is a struggle
political as weU as inteUectual, Ghibellinism as weU as scepticism, p. 106.
The intellectual tendencies in this period are four :
I. The scepticism developed in the scholastic philosophy, as seen in
the NominaUsm of Abflard in the twelfth century.
Account of the scholastic philosophy, pp.107-112 : and of Aboard
as a sceptic in his treatise Sic et Non. (pp. 112-119.)
2. The mot of progress in religion in the Franciscan book caUed The
Everlasting Gospel ia the thirteenth century, (pp. 119-121.)
3. The idea of the comparative study of religion, as seen in the legend
of the book De Tribus Impostoribus in the thirteenth century ;
and in the poetry of the period, (pp. 122-124.)
4. The influence of the Mahometan phUosophy of Averroes in
creating a pantheistic disbelief of immortality, (pp. 125-127.)
Remarks on the mode used to oppose these movements ; and critical
estimate of the period, (pp. 127, 128.)
Third crisis, from 1400-1625. (pp. 129-147.) Peculiarity of this period
as the era of the Renaissance and of " Humanism," and as the transition
from mediaeval society to modern, (pp. 129, 130.)

Xliv ANALYSIS QF THE LECTURES. [LECT. IV.
Two chief sceptical tendencies in it :
(i) The literary tendency in Tuscany and Rome in the fifteenth
century ; the dissolution of faith being indicated by
(a) the poetry of the romantic epic. (pp. 131, 132.)
(J) the revival of heathen tastes, (pp. 133, 134-)
Estimate of the political and social causes likely to generate '
doubt, which were then acting, (pp- 135-137-) The unbelief
was confined to Italy.— Reasons why so vast a movement as
the Reformation passed without fostering unbelief, (p. 138.)
(2) The philosophical tendency in the university of Padua in the
sixteenth century, (p. 139 seq.)
The spirit of it, pantheism (p. 140.), in two forms; one
arising from the doctrines of Averroes ; the other seen in
Pomponatius, from Alexander of Aphrodisias (p. 141.) The
relation of other philosophers, such as Bruno and Vanini,
to this twofold tendency, (pp. 143-145.)
Remarks on the mode used to oppose doubt (p. 146.); and estimate
of the crisis, (p. 147.)
Fourth crisis ; (pp. 147-479.) commencing in the seventeenth century,
through the effects of the philosophy of Bacon and Descartes, (p. 148.)
The remainder of the lecture is occupied with the treatment of the
influence of Cartesianism, as seen in Spinoza.
Examination of Spinoza's phUosophy (pp. 149-154.) j of his criticism
in the Theohgico-PoUtieus (pp. 153-158.); and of his indirect influence.
(pp. 159, 160.)
Concluding remarks on the government of Providence, as witnessed
in the history of large periods of time, such as that comprised in this
lecture, (pp. 161, 162.)

LECTURE IV.
Deism in Enghmd previous to A. D. 1760.
This lecture contains the first of the three forms which doubt has
taken in the fourth crisis, (p. 163.)— Sketch of the chief events, political
and intellectual, which influenced the mind of England during the seven-

LECT. IV.J ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. xlv
teenth century (p. 164.) ; especial mention of the systems of Bacon and
Descartes, as exhibiting the peculiarity that they were philosophies of
method, (pp. 165, 166.)
The history of Deism studied :
I. Its rise traced, 1640-1700. (pp. 167-175.)
In this period the religious inquiry has a political aspect, as seen
(i) in Lord Herbert of Cherbury (De 'Feritate and Religio
Laid) in the reign of Charles I. (pp. 167-9.)
(2) In Hobbes's Leviathan, (pp. 170-2.)
(3) In Blount (Oracles of Reason, and Life of ApoUonius),
in the reign of Charles IL, in whom a deeper poh
tical antipathy to religion is seen. (pp. 173-5.)
IL The maturity of Deism (1700-1740.) pp. 175-202. This period in
cludes (p. 179.) :
I. The examination of the first principles of religion, on its
doctrinal side, in Toland's Christianity not Mysterious,
&c. (pp. 178-183.)
2. Ditto, on its ethical side, in Lord Shaftesbury, (pp. 183-5.)
3. An attack on the external evidences, viz.
On prophecy, by CoUins, Scheme of Literal Prophecy , &c.
(pp. 186-191.)
On miracles, by Woolston, Discourses on Miracles, (pp.
191-194.) ; and by Arnobius. (p. 202.)
4. The substitution of natural reUgion for revealed,
inTindal, Christianity as old as the Creation, (pp. 194-7.)
in Morgan, Moral Philosopher, (pp. 197-9.)
and in Chubb, MisceUaneous Works, (pp. 200, i.)
III. The decline of Deism, 1740-1760. (pp. 203-216.) :
I. in Bolingbroke, a combined view of deist objections.
(pp. 202-7.)
2. in Hume, an assault on the evidence of testimony,
which substantiates miracles, (pp. 207-16,)
Remarks on the peculiarities of Deism, the inteUectual causes which
contributed to produce it (pp. 217-19.); and a comparison of it with the
unbelief of other periods, (p. 220.)

xlvi ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. [LBCT. V.
Estimate of the whole period; and consideration of the inteUectual and
spiritual means used for repeUing unbeUef in it (pp. 221-8.); the former
in the school of evidences, of which Butler is the type, the mention of
whom leads to remarks on his Analogy (pp. 221-5.); and the latter in
spiritual labours like those of Wesley, (pp. 226-8.)

LECTURE V.
Infidelity in France in the eighteenth centv/ry ; and unbelief in
Engla/nd subsequent to 1760.
Infidelity in France (pp. 229-273). — This is the second phase of
unbeUef in the fourth crisis of faith.
Sketch of the state of France, ecclesiastical, political (pp. 231-3), and
inteUectual (partly through the philosophy of CondUlac, pp. 233, S),
which created such a mental and moral condition as to allow unbelief
to gain a power there unknown elsewhere. — The unbelief stated to be
caused chiefly by the influence of English Deism, transplanted into the
soU thus prepared (p. 286).
The history studied (i) in its assault on the Church; as seen in Vol
taire : the analysis of whose character is neces
sary, because his influence was mainly due to
the teacher, not the doctrine taught, (pp. 238-
48).
(2) in the transition to an assault on the State, in
Diderot, (pp. 251, 3) ; the philospphy of the
Encyclopaedists, (pp. 248 — 50); Helvetius
(p. 254); and D'Holbach. (p. 255, 6.) ,j,.'
(3) in the attack on the State, in Rousseau (pp. 257-
64,)— Analysis of the ErUile for his views on reli
gion, (pp. 260, i), and comparison with Voltaire
(p. 264).

LECT. VI.] ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. xlvii
(4) in the Revolution, both the political move
ment and blasphemous irreUgion (pp. 265-7);
and the intellectual movement in Volney (Ana
lysis of the Ruines, pp. 269, 70).
Estimate of the period (pp. 271-3).
Unbelief in England, from 1760 to a date a little later than the
end of the century (pp. 273-95), continued from Lecture IV.
These later forms of it stated to differ sUghtly from the former, by
being partially influenced by French thought, (p. 274.)
The foUowing instances of it examined :
(i) Gibbon viewed as a writer and a critic on religion
(pp. 275-80).
(2) T. Paine : account of his Age of Reason (pp. 280-83).
(3) The socialist philosophy of R. Owen (pp. 284, 5).
(4) The scepticism in the poetry of Byron and Shelley (pp.
286-91).
The last two forms of unbelief, though occurring in the
present centm-y, reaUy embody the spirit of the last.
Statement of the mode used to meet the doubt in England during
this period. Office of the Evidences (pp. 291-95).

LECTURE VL
Free Thought in the Theology of Germ<my,from 1750-1835.
This is the third phase of free thought in that which was called the
fourth crisis of faith. — Importance of the movement, which is called
" rationaUsm," as the theological phase of the literary movement of
Germany (pp. 296, 97). — Deviation from the plan previously adopted,
in that a sketch is here given of German theological inquiry generaUy,
and not merely of unbelief (p. 297).
Brief preliminary sketch of German theology since the Reformation.
Two great tendencies shown in it during the seventeenth century
(p. 298). (i) The dogmatic and scholastic, science without earnestness (p. 299).
(2) The pietistic, earnestness without science (p. 300).

xlviu ANALYSIS OF THE LECTURES. [LBCT. VI.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, three new influences are
introduced (p. 301), which are the means of creating rationalism in the
latter half : viz. (a) The phUosophy of Wolff, explained to be a formal
expression of Leibnitz's principles; and the evil
effect of it, accidental and indirect (pp. 301-5).
0) The works of the English deists (p. 305, 6).
(y) The influence of the colony of French infidels at the
court of Frederick II. of Prussia (p. 306).
The subsequent history is studied in three periods (p. 307): viz.
Period I. (1750-1810). — Destructive in character, inaugurated
by Semler (pp. 308-31).
Period II. (1810-1835).— Reconstructive in character, inaugu
rated by Schleiermacher (pp. 331-368).
Period III. (1835 to present time). — Exhibiting definite and
final tendencies, inaugurated by Strauss (Lect. vii).
Period I. (1750-1810), is studied under two Sub-periods:
Sub-period I. (i 750-1 790, pp. 309-321), which includes three move
ments ;
(i) Within the Church (p. 309 seq.); dogmatic; Uterary in
Michaelis and Ernesti; and freethinking in Semler (pp.
311-16), the author of the historic method of inter
pretation.
(2) External to the church (pp. 316-19); hterary deism in
Lessing, and in the Wolfenbiittel fragments of Rei-
marus (p. 318).
(3) External to the church ; practical deism, in the educa
tional institutions of Basedow (p. 320).
Sub-period II. (1790-1810, pp. 321-30); the difference caused by the
introduction of two new influences; viz.
(a) The literary, of the court of Weimar and of the great
men gathered there (p. 321, 22).
(/3) The philosophy of Kant, (the effect of which is ex
plained, pp. 323, 24); the home of both of which
was at Jena.

LBCT. VI.J ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. xKx
As the result of these new influences, three movements are visible in
the Church (p. 325); viz.
(i) The critical " rationalism " of Eichhorn and Paulus, the
inteUectual successors of Semler (pp. 326-28).
(2) The dogthatic, more or less varying from orthodoxy, seen
towards the end of this period in Bretschneider, Rbhr,
and Wegscheider (pp. 329, 30).
(3) The supernaturalism of Reinhard and Storr (p. 326).
Period II. (1810-1835.) — Introduction of four new influences
(P- 332-)> which completely altered the theological tone; viz.
(a) New systems of speculative philosophy; of Jacobi,
who followed out the material element of Kant's
phUosophy (pp. 332) ; and of Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel, who followed out the formal (p. 336).
((3) The " romantic" school of poetry (pp. 337, 38.)
(•y) The moral tone, generated by the liberation wars of
1813- (P- 339-)
(8) The excitement caused by the theses of Harms at
the tercentenary of the Reformation in 181 7.
(pp- 339» 4°-)
The result of these is seen (p. 341) in
(i) An improved doctrinal .school under Schleiermacher
(pp. 341-53); (description of his Glaubenslehre, p. 346
seq.); and under his successors, Neander, &c. (pp.
353-56-)
(2) An improved critical tone (p. 356 seq.), as seen in De
Wette and Ewald, which is iUustrated by an explana
tion of the Pentateuch controversy (p. 359-64.)
Concluding notice of two other movements to be treated in the next
lecture, (p. 366) ; viz.
(i) an attempt, different from that of Schleiermacher, in the school of
Hegel, to find a new philosophical basis for Christianity; and }
(2) the return to the biblical orthodoxy of the Lutheran church. I
Remarks on the benevolence of Providence in overruling free inquiry
to the discovery of truth, (pp. 366-8.)

ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. [lECT. VII.

LECTURE VII.
Free Thought in Germany subsequently to 1835 ; and in France
during ihe present century.
Free Thought in Germany (continued.) — History of the transition
from Period II. named in the last lecture, to Period III. (pp. 369-86.)
Explanation of the attempt, noticed pp.341, 366, of the Hegelian school
to find a philosophy of Christianity. Critical remarks on Hegel's system,
(pp. 370-75) ; its tendency to create an " ideological " spirit in religion,
(pp. 372, 373) : — the school which it at first formed is seen best in
Marheinecke. (p. 374.)
The circumstance which created an epoch in German theology was the
pubUcation of Strauss's Leben Jesu in 1835, (p. 375). Description of it
(a) in its critical aspect, (pp. 376, 380),- whch leads to an explanation
of the previous discussions in Germany concerning the origin and credi-
bUity of the Gospels (pp. 377, 378); and (/3) in its philosophical, as related
to Hegel, (p. 381) ; together with an analysis of the work, (p. 382.) State
ment of the effects produced by it on the various theological parties.
(pp. 383-85.)
Period III. As the result of the agitation caused by Strauss's work,
four theological tendencies are seen; viz.
(i) One external to the church, thoroughly antichristian, as in
Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and Stirner. (pp. 386-90.)
(2) The historico-critical school of Tubingen, founded by Chr.
Baur. (pp. 390-93.)
(3) The " mediation " school, seen in Dorner and Rothe. (pp.
393-97-)
(4) A return to the Lutheran orthodoxy, (pp. 398-402,) at first
partly created by an; attempt to unite the Lutheran and Re
formed churches, (p. 398); seen in the " Neo-Lutheranism"
of Hengstenberg and Havernick, (p. 398), and the " Hyper-
Lutheranism" of Stahl and the younger members of the
school, (pp. 399,401-)

LECT. VII.] ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. K
Mention of the contemporaneous increase of spiritual life in Germany.
(p. 402.)
Concluding estimate of the whole movement, (pp. 403-5) ; and lessons
for students in reference to it. (pp. 406, 407.)
Free Thought in France during the present century, (pp. 408-30,)
(continued from Lect. IV. p. 273.)
In its tone it is constructive of belief, if compared with that of the
eighteenth century.
From 1800-1852.
The speculative thought has exhibited four distinct forms, (p. 408.)
(i) The ideology of De Tracy, in the early part of the century.
(2) The theological school of De Maistre, &c. to re-establish the
dogmatic authority of the Romish church.
(3) SociaUst philosophy, St. Simon, Fourier, Comte.
(4) The Eclectic school (Cousin, &c.)
Remarks on the first school. — The recovery of French phUosophy
and thought from the ideas of this school, partly due to the Ute
rary tone of Chateaubriand, (pp. 409, lo.)
Influence of the Revolution of 1830 in giving a stimulus to thought.
(p. 410.)
Remarks on the third school. — Explanation of socialism as taught
by St. Simon (pp. 411-13); as taught by Fourier (pp. 413, 414);
and difference from EngUsh sociaUsm. (p. 415.)
Positivism, both as an offshoot of the last school, and in itself as
a reUgion and a phUosophy. (pp. 416-18.)
Remarks on the fourth school. — Eclecticism as taught by Cousin,
viewed as a philosophy and a reUgion. (pp. 418-21.)
Remarks on the second school ; viewed as an attempt to refute the
preceding schools, (pp. 422, 23.)
From 1 852-1 862.
New form of eclecticism under the empire (p. 425); viz. the historic
method, based on Hegel, as Cousin's was based on ScheUing. — E. Renan
the type. (pp. 426-28.)
Free thought in the Protestant church (pp. 429, 30) regarded as an
attempt to meet by concession doubts of contemporaries.
d3

lii ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. [LBCT. VIII.

LECTURE VIII.
Free Thought in England in the present century : Suanmary of the
Course of Leciwres : and Inferences in reference to f resent
dangers and duties.
Modern unbelief in England (continued from Lect. V.) : — Intro
ductory remarks on the alteration of its tone, (pp. 431-33.) — The cause of
which is stated to be a general one, the subjective tone created (p. 434) by
such influences as, (i) the modern poetry (p. 435), and (2) the two great at
tempts by Bentham and Coleridge to reconstruct philosophy, (pp. 436, 7.)
The doubt and unbelief treated in the foUowing order (p. 438) : —
(i) That which appeals to Sensational experience and to Physical
science as the test of truth; viz.
(a) Positivism among the educated (pp. 439, 40) ;
(/S) Secularism or NaturaUsm among the masses (pp. 441,
442) ; and in a minor degree,
(y) The doubts created by Physical science (p. 443.)
(2) That which appeals to the faculty of Intuition (p. 444); — ex
pressed in literature, by Carlyle, (pp. 445-47); and by the
American, Emerson, (p. 447.)
(Influence also of the modern literature of romance, (pp. 448, 449.)
(3) Direct attacks on Christianity, critical rather than phUosophical :
viz. (a) The examination of the historic problem of the develop
ment of religious ideas among the Hebrews, byR.W.
Mackay (pp. 450-52.)
(^) A summary of objections to revelation, by Mr. Greg,
The Creed of Christendom (p. 453, 4.)
(y) The examination of the psychical origin of reUgion and
Christianity, by Miss S. Hennell, Thoughts in aid
of Faith, {p. 4^5.)
(4) The deism, and appeal to the Intuitional consciousness, expressed
by Mr. Theodore Parker (p. 458^60); and Mr. F. Newman
(pp. 460-64.)

LECT. VIII.] ANALYSIS OF THB LECTUEES. Kii
(5) The traces of free thought within the Christian church (p. 465) ;
viz. (a) The philosophical tendency which originates with Cole
ridge, (pp. 465-71.)
O) The critical tendency, investigating the facts of revela
tion, (pp. 471-4.)
(7) „ „ „ the literature which
contains it. (p. 474-76.)
This completes the history of the fourth crisis of faith (p. 478), the
history of which began near the end of Lect. III. at p. 147.
Summary of the course of lectures, (pp. 479-82). — Recapitulation of
the original purpose, which is stated to have been, while assuming the
potency of the moral, to analyse the intellectual causes of doubt, which
have been generally left uninvestigated.
Refutation of objections which might be made ; such as
(i) One directed against the utility of the inquiry (p. 482.)
(2) „ „ against its uncontroversial character.
A critical history shown to be useful in the present age, (i) in an edu
cational point of view for those who are to be clergymen, and to encounter
current forms of doubt by word or by writing (pp. 483-6); and (2) in a
controversial point of view, by resolving the intellectual element in many
cases of unbelief into incorrect metaphysical philosophy; the value of
which inquiry is real, even if such intellectual causes be regarded only
as the conditions, and not the causes, of unbelief, (pp. 486, 7.)
Further objections anticipated and refuted in reference (3),'to the candour
of the mode of inquiry, and the absence of vituperation which is stated not
to be due to indifference to Christian truth, but wholly to the demands of
a scientific mode of treatment (p. 488.); (4) to the absence of an eager
advocacy of any particular metaphysical theory; which is due to the cir
cumstance that the purpose was to exhibit errors as logical corollaries
from certain theories, without assuming the necessary existence of these
corollaries in actual life. (p. 489); (5) to the insufficiency of the causes
enumerated to produce doubt without taking account of the moral causes;
which objection is not only admitted, but shown to be at once the peculiar
property which belongs to the analysis of intellectual phenomena, and
also a witness to the instinctive conviction that the ultimate cause of
belief and unbelief is moral, not inteUectual ; which had been constantly
assumed, (pp. 489, 90.)

liv ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. [LBCT. VIII.
The Lessons derived from the whole historical survey, (p. 490 seq.)
I. What has been the office of doubt in history ? (p. 490.)
Opposite opinions on this subject stated, (p. 491.) Examination
of the ordinary Christian opinion on the one hand, which regards
it as a mischief (p. 491), and of Mr. Buckle's on the other, which
regards it as a good. (p. 492.)
I . The office is shown to be, to bring aU truths to the test. (p. 492.)
Historical instances of its value in destroying the Roman
catholic errors, (p. 493.)
2. Free inquiry also shown in some cases to be forced on man
by the presentation of new knowledge, which demands consi
deration, (pp. 494, 5.) Denial of the statement that the doubts
thus created are an entire imitation of older doubt, (p. 496.)
3. The office of it in the hands of Providence to eUcit truth by
the very controversies which it creates; (p. 497.) the responsi
bility of the inquirer not being destroyed, but the overruling
providence of God made visible, (p. 498.)
II. What does the history teach, as to the doubts most likely to present
themselves at this time, and the best modes of meeting them ?
(p. 498.)
The materials shown to be presented for a final answer to these
questions, (p. 499.)
The probabUity shown from consideration of the state of the
various sciences, mechanical, physiological (p. 500), and
mental (p. 501), that no new difficulties can be suggested
hereafter, distinct in kind from the present ; nor any unknown
kinds of evidence presented on behalf of Christianity.
Analogy of the present age as a whole, in disintegration of belief,
to the declining age of Roman civihzation. (pp. 502, 3.)
The doubts which beset us in the present age stated to be chiefly
three (p. 504) ; viz.
I. The relation of the natural to the supernatural.
This doubt is sometimes expressed in a spirit of utter unbeUef;
sometimes in a tone of sadness (p. 505), arising from mental
struggles, of which some are enumerated (pp. 505, 6). The
intellectual and moral means of meeting these doubts, (p. 507.)

LECT. VIII.] ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. Iv
2. The relation of the atoning work of Christ to the human
race. (p. 508.) Explanation of the defective view which would
regard it only as reconcUing man to God, and would destroy
the priestly work of Christ; and statement of the modes in
which its advocates reconcile it with Christianity, (p. 509.)
The importance that such doubts be answered by reason, not
merely silenced by force, (p. 510.)
An answer sought by studying the various modes used in
other ages of the church (p. 511); especially by those who
have had to encounter the Uke difficulties, e. g. the Alexan
drian fathers in the third century, and the faithful in Ger
many in the present, (pp. 512, 13.)
This method shown to have been to present the philosophical
prior to the historical evidence, in order to create the sense
of religious want, before exhibiting Christianity as the
divine supply for it. (p. 513.)
In regard to the historic evidence, three misgivings of the
doubter require to be met for his full satisfaction (p. 517);
viz. (a) The literary question of the trustworthiness of the
books of the New Testament.
The mode of meeting this explained, with the possibility
of establishing Christian dogmas, even if the most
extravagant rationalism were for argument's sake con
ceded, (p. 518.)
(/3) The doubt whether the Christian dogmas, and
especially the atonement, are really taught in the New
Testament. The value of the fathers, and the progress
of the doctrine in church history, shown in reference
to this question, (p. 519.)
(y) The final difficulty which the doubter may put,
whether even apostolic and miraculous teaching is to
overrule the moral sense, (p. 520.)
The possibility shown of independent corroboration of
the apostolic teaching, in the testimony of the living
church, and the experience of reUgious men. (p. 523, 4.)
The utter improbabiUty of error in this part of scriptural
teaching, even if the existence of error elsewhere were
for argument's sake conceded, (p. 522.)

Ivi ANALYSIS OF THE LECTUEES. [LBCT. VIII.
Difference of this appeal from that of Schleiermacher to
the Christian consciousness.
3. The relation of the Bible to the church, whether it is a
record or an authority, (p. 525.)
Statement of the modes of viewing the question in different
ages. (p. 526.)
The Bible an authority; but the importance shown of using
wisdom in not pressing the difficulties of scripture on an
inquirer, so as to quench incipient faith, (p. 527, 8.)
The mention of the emotional causes of doubt conjoined with the
intellectual, a warning that, in addition to aU arguments, the help
of the divine Spirit to hallow the emotions must be sought and
expected, (pp. 529, 30.)
Final lesson to Christian students, that in all ages of peril, earnest
men have found the truth by the method of study united to
prayer, (p. 530-4.)

NOTES APPENDED.

LECTURE L

Note 1. Subdivisions of Historical Inquiry  page 537
2. The comparative study of ReUgions  539
3. Zend and Sanskrit Literature  <  540
4. The Controversy between Christians and Jews  544
5. The Contest of Christianity with Mahometanism  549
6. Unitarianism  554
7. Classification of Metaphysical Inquiries  556
8. Quotation from Guizot on Prayer  559
9. On the modern view of the historical method in Philosophy 560

LifiCTURE IL
10. Neo-Piatonism  564
II. The Pseudo-Clementine Literature  565
12. The absence of references to Christianity in Heathen writers
of the second century  5^5
13. The Peregrinus Proteus of Lucian  5^8
14. The work of Celsus   5^9

Iviii NOTES APPENDED.
Note 15. The charges against Christians, and causes of persecution,
in the second century  V^S^ 57^
16. Modern criticism on the book of Daniel  575
17. The Reply of Eusebius to Hierocles  577
18. The Philopatris of the Pseudo-Lucian  578
1 9. The work of JuUan against Christianity  579

LECTURE IIL
20. The Legendary Book "De Tribus Impostoribus"  582
LECTURE IV.
21. On some technical terms in the History of UnbeUef,
viz. Infidel, Atheist, Pantheist, Deist, Naturalist, Free
thinker, Rationalist, Sceptic  584
22. Woolston's " Discourses on Miracles"  594

'f

LECTURE V.

23. The literary coteries of Paris in the eighteenth century. . . . 596
24. The terrfi Ideology  597
25. The works of Dr. Geddes  598
26. The works of Dr. Conyers Middleton  599

LECTURE VL
27- On Pietism in Germany in the seventeenth century  600
23. Classification of Schools of Poetry'in Germany  601
29. The Wolfenbiittel Fragments  602

NOTES APPENDED. Kx
Note 30. Schleiermacher's early studies  page 605
31. Schleiermacher's works  fio6
32. On some German Critical Theologians ; De Wette, Ewald,
&c  608
33. The name Jehovah  609
34. The use of the names of Deity in the composition of Hebrew
proper names  610
LECTURE VIL
35. The Hegehan Philosophy  611
36. The Christology of Strauss  613
37. The writings of Strauss  614
38. The repUes to Strauss  615
39. The Tiibingen School  :  616
40. The Theologian Rothe  617
41. The most modern Schools of Philosophy and Theology in
Germany  619
42. Table exhibiting a classification of German Theologians . . . 621
43. The modern Theology of Switzerland and HoUand  626
44. The Eclectic School of France (Cousin)  629
45. The Catholic reactionary School of France (De Maistre). . . 631
46. The modern School of Free Thought in the Protestant
Church of France  632
LECTURE VIIL
47. Modern opinions with respect to Mythology  635
48. The office of the External and Internal branches of Evidence 636
49. The History of the Christian Evidences  637
50. On the History of the doctrine of Inspiration  667

ERRATA.
ge 64, note, for Boodhism read Buddhism.
78. 1. 13, f(yr introduction to the Organon, it would be more correct
to write, introduction to the Categories.
Ill, note, for Prolog, read Proslog.
113, and following pages, for Abelard read Abelard.
285, note, for Brough read Burgh.
299, 305, note, for Sainte's read Saintes'.
299, note, for Schroch read Schrockh.
317. 1. 12, for Mendelsohn read Mendelssohn.
358. 1. 12, for Wolfif read Wolf.

LECTURE I.
ON THE SUBJECT, METHOD^ AND PUEPOSB OF THE COUESB
OF LECTUEES.

Luke xii. 5.
oose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you,
nay; but rather division.
J. HE present course of lectures relates to one of
the conflicts exhibited in the history of the Church ;
viz. the struggle of the human spirit to free itself
from the authority of the Christian faith.
Christianity offers occasion for opposition by its"
inherent claims, independently of accidental causes.*'
For it asserts authority over rehgious belief in virtue
of being a supernatural communication from God, and
claims the right to control human thought in virtue
of possessing sacred books which are at once the
record and the instrument of this communication,
written by men endowed with supernatural inspira
tion. The inspiration of the writers is transferred to

2 ^ LECTURE I.
the books, the matter of which, so far as it forms the
subject of the revelation, is received as true because
divine, not merely regarded as divine because per
ceived to be true. The religion, together with the series
of revelations of which it is the consummation, differs
in kind from ethnic religions, and from human philoso
phy ; and the sacred Hterature differs in kind from
ofher books. Each is unique, a solitary miracle of its
class in human history. The contents also of the
sacred books bring them into contact with the efforts
of speculative thought. Though at first glance they
might seem to belong to a different sphere, that of
the soul rather than the inteUect, and to possess a
different function, explaining duties rather than dis
covering truth ; yet in deep problems of physical or
moral history, such as Providence, Sin, Reconciliation,
they supply materials for limiting belief in the very
class of subjects which is embraced in the compass of
human philosophy.
A conflict accordingly might naturally be antici
pated, between the reasoning faculties of man and a
rehgion which claims the right on superhuman
authority to impose limits on the field or manner of
their exercise ; the intensity of which at various
epochs would depend, partly upon the amount of
critical activity, and partly on the presence of causes
which might create a divergence between the current
ideas and those supphed by the sacred Hterature.
The materials are wanting for detecting traces of
this struggle in other parts of the world than Europe ;

LECTURE I 3
but the progress of it may be fuUy observed in Eu
ropean history, altering concomitantly with changes
in the condition of knowledge, or in the methods of
seeking it ; at first as an open conflict, philosophical
or critical, with the Hterary pagans, subsiding as
Christianity succeeded in introducing its own concep
tions into every region of thought ; afterwards re
viving in the middle ages, and graduaUy growing more
intense in modem times as material has been offered
for it through the increase of knowledge or the
activity of speculation ; varying in name, in form, in
degree, but referable to similar causes, and teaching
similar lessons.
It is the chief of these movements of free thought
in Europe which it is my purpose to describe, in their
historic succession and their connexion with inteUec
tual causes.
We must ascertain the facte ; discover the causes ;
and read the moral. These three inquiries, though
distinct in idea, cannot be disjoined in a critical his
tory. The facts must first be presented in place and
time : the history is thus far a mere chronicle. They
must next be combined with a view to interpretation.
¥et in making this first combination, taste guides
more than hypothesis. The classification is artistic
rather than logical, and merely presents the facts
with as much individual vividness as is compatible
with the preservation of the perspective requisite in
the general historic picture. At this point the artis
tic sphere of history ceases, and the scientific com-
B 2

4 LECTURE L
mences as soon as the mind searches for any regu
larity or periodicity in the occurrence of the facts,
such as may be the effect of fixed causes. If an em
pirical law be by this means ascertained to exist, an
explanation of it must then be sought in the higher
science which investigates mind. Analysis traces out
the ultimate typical forms of thought which are mani
fested in it ; and if it does not aspire to arbitrate on
their truth, it explains how they have become grounds
on which particular views have been assumed to be
true. The inteUect is then satisfied, and the science
of history ends. But the heart stiU craves a farther
investigation. It demands to view the moral and
theological aspects of the subject, to harmonize faith
and discovery, or at least to introduce the question of
human responsibility, and reverently to search for the
final cause which the events subserve in the moral
purposes of providence. The drama of history must
not develope itself without the chorus to interpret its
purpose. The artistic, — the scientific, — the ethical, —
these are the three phases of history. (1)
The chief portion of the present lecture wiU be de
voted to explain the mode of applying the plan just
indicated ; more especiaUy to develope the second of
these three branches, by stating the law which has
marked the struggle of free thought with Christi
anity, and illustrating the inteUectual causes which
have been manifested in it.
In searching for such a law, or such causes, we
ought not to forget that, if we wished to lay a sound

LECTURE L 5
basis for generalization, it would be necessary not to
restrict our attention to the history of Christianity,
but to institute a comparative study of reHgions,
ethnic or revealed, in order to trace the action of
reason in the coUective reUgious history of the race.
Whether the reHgions of nature be regarded as the
distortion of primitive traditions, or as the spon
taneous creation of the religious faculties, the agree
ment or contrast suggested by a comparison of them
with the Hebrew and Christian religions, which are
pretematuraUy revealed, is most important as a means
of discovering the universal laws of the human mind ;
the "exceptional character which belongs to the latter
member of the comparison increasing rather than
diminishing the value of the study. All aHke are
adjusted, the one class naturally and accidentaUy,
the other designedly and supematuraUy, to the
rehgious elemente of human nature. AU have a
subjective existence as aspirations of the heart, an
objective as institutions, and a history which is
connected with the revolutions of Hterature and
society. (2)
Comparative observation of this kind gives some
approach to the exactness of experiment ; for we
watch providence as it were executing an experi
ment for our information, which exhibits the opera
tions of the same law under altered circumstances.
If, for example, we should find that Christianity
was the only reHgion, the history of which pre
sented a struggle of reason against authority, we

6 LECTURE L
should pronounce that there must be peculiar ele
ments in it which arouse the special opposition ;
or if the phenomenon be seen to be common to all
creeds, but to vary in intensity with the activity of
thought and progress of knowledge, this discovery
would suggest to us the existence of a law of the
human mind.
Such a study would also fumish valuable data for
determining precisely the variation of form which al
teration of conditions causes in the development of
such a struggle. In the East, the history of reHgion,
for which material is suppHed by the study of the
Zend and Sanskrit Hterature, (3) would fumish ex
amples of attempts made by phUosophers to "find a
rational solution of the problems of the universe, and
to adjust the theories of speculative thought to the
national creed deposited in supposed sacred books.
And though, in a western nation such as Greece, the
separation of reHgion from phUosophy was too wide
to admit of much paraUel in the speculative aspect
of free thought, yet in reference to the critical,
many instances of the appHcation of an analogous
process to a national creed may be seen in the ex
amination made of the early mythology, the attempt
to rationalize it by searching for historical data in it,
or to moralize it by aUegory*. Again, within the
sphere of the Hebrew religion, which, though super-
a The attitude of the mind towards the national mythology in
successive ages of Greek history has been treated by Grote, History
of Greece, vol. I. ch. 1 6.

LECTURE L 7
naturaUy suggested, developed in connexion with
human events so as to admit the possibility of the
rise of mental difiiculties in the progress of its his
tory, how much haUowed truth, both theoretical and
practical, might be learned from the divine breathings
of pious inquirers, such as the sacred authors of the
seventy-third Psahn, or of the books of Job and Ec-
clesiastes, which give expression to painful doubte
about Providence, not fuUy solved by reHgion, but
which nevertheless faith was wiUing to leave unex
plained''. If in the Oriental systems free thought is
seen to operate on a national creed by adjusting it to
new ideas through phUosophical dogmatism ; if in the
Greek by explaining it away through scepticism ; in
^ See Quinet's (Euvres, t. i. c. 5., and especially § 4. On the doubts
expressed in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes respectively, see the ar
ticle Job by Hengstenberg in Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature,
(reprinted in a volume of Hengstenberg's miscellaneous works), and
the article Ecclesiastes by Mr. Plumptre in Smith's Bictionmy qf the
Bible. For the free-thinking inquiry into the two books, see the
article on Job in the Westminster Review, October 1853, founded
mainly on Hirzel ; and that on Ecclesiastes in the National Review,
No. 27, for January 1862, founded chiefly on Hitzig. E. Renan, in
his work on Job, aud others, have studied the doubts expressed in it
as an internal evidence for its date. Very full information in refer
ence to both books may be found in Dr. S. Davidson's Irvtrod. to
the Old Testament (1862), vol. ii. p. 174 seq,, 352 seq. It is deeply
interesting to observe, not merely that the difficulties concerning
Providence felt by Job refer to the very subjects which painfully
perplex the modern mind, but also that the friends of Job exhibit
the instinctive tendency which is observed in modern times to de
nounce his doubt as sin, not less than to attribute his trials to evil
as the direct cause. These two books of Scripture, together with
the seventy- third Psalm, have an increasing religious importance as
the world grows older. "¦ The things written aforetime were written
for our learning."

8 LECTURE L
the Hebrew it is hushed by the hoHer logic of the
feeUngs. The two former illustrate steps in the
inteUectual progress of free thought; the last ex
hibits the moral lesson of resignation and submission
in the soul of the inquirer.
Nor ought this method of comparison to be laid
aside even at this point. It would be requisite,
for a fuU discovery of the inteUectual causes, that
the generalization should be carried further, and the
operations of free thought watched in reference to
other subjects than reHgion *=. Reason in its action,
first on Christianity both in Europe and elsewhere,
secondly on Jewish and heathen reHgions, lastly on
any body of truth which rests on traditional au
thority, — these would be the scientific steps neces
sary for eliminating accidental phenomena, and dis
covering the real laws which have operated in this
branch of inteUectual history. The suggestion of
such a plan of study, though obviously too large to
be here pursued, may offer matter of thought to re
flective minds, and may at least help to raise the
subject out of the narrow sphere to which it is
usuaUy supposed to belong. The result of the survey
would confirm the view of the struggle now about to
be given which is suggested by European history.
c Attention, for example, should be directed to the efforts of the
mind in emancipating itself, (i) from particular forms of political
government, or social arrangements, or artificial laws, in the struggle
against the feudal system, and in the development' of political liberty
in modern times, or (2) from traditional systems of scientific teaching,
as the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy, or the Cartesian of vortices.
The absence too of such attempts in the stagnation of Eastern life is
an instructive negative instance for study.

LECTURE L 9
When any new material of thought, such as a new
reHgion which interferes with the previous standard
of behef, is presented to the human mind ; or when
conversely any alteration in the state of knowledge
on which the human mind forms its judgment, im
parts to an old estabHshed reHgion an aspect of oppo
sition which was before unperceived ; the reHgion is
subjected to the ordeal of an investigation. . Science
examines the doctrines taught by it, criticism the
evidence on which they profess to rest, and the htera
ture which is their expression. And if such an inves
tigation faU to estabhsh the harmony of the old and
the new, the result takes two forms : either the total
rejection of the particular reHgion, and sometimes
even of the supernatural generaUy, or else an eclec
ticism which seeks by means of phUosophy to dis
cover and appropriate the hidden truth to which the
reHgion was an attempt to give expression.
The attack however caUs forth the defence. Ac
cordingly the result of this action and reaction is
to produce scientific precision, either apologetic or
dogmatic, within the rehgious system, and scepticism
outside of it ; both reconstructive in purpose, but
the former defensive in its method, the latter de
structive. The elements of truth which exist on both
sides are brought to Hght by the controversy, and
after the struggle has passed become the permanent
property of the world.
These statements, which convey a general expres
sion for the influence of free - thought in relation to
reHgion, are verified in the history of Christianity.

10 LECTURE L
There are four epochs at which the straggle of
reason against the authority of the Christian reHgion
has been especiaUy manifest, each characterised by
energy and intensity of speculative thought, and ex
hibiting on the one hand partial or entire unbeHef,
or on the other a more systematic expression of Chris
tian doctrine ; epochs in fact of temporary peiil, of
permanent gain''.
In the first of these periods, extending from the se
cond to the fourth century, Christianity is seen in anta
gonism with forms of Greek or Eastern phUosophy, and
the existence is apparent of different forms of scepticism
or reason used in attack. The very attempt of the Alex
andrian school of theology to adjust the mysteries of
Christianity and of the Bible to speculative thought,
by a weU meant but extravagant use of aUegorical in
terpretation, is itself a witness of the presence or pres
sure of free thought. The less violent of the two forms
of unbeHef is seen in the Gnostics, the rationaUsts of
the early Church, who summoned Christianity to the
bar of phUosophy, and desired to appropriate the por
tion of its teaching which approved itself to their ec
lectic tastes; the more violent kind in the rejection of
* It is proper to express my obligations for a few hints in this part
of the lecture to an able historic sketch of modern German thought,
based on the Geschickte der neuesten Theologie of C. Schwartz, in the
Westminster Review, April 1857 (especially p. 333). The enume
ration of the epochs which follows nevertheless occurred to me for
the most part independently of those suggestions, and had been
previously expressed in public. A classification of a diEFerent kind
will be found in Reimannus Historia Atheismi, 1725, p. 315.

LECTURE L 11
Christianity as an unposture, or in the attempts made
to refer its origin to psychological causes, on the part
of the early enemies of Christianity, Celsus and Ju-
Han, prototypes of the positive unbehevers of later
times. 'The Greek theology, which embodied the
dogmatic statements in which the Christian Church
under the action of controversy gave expHcit expres
sion to its imphcit behef, is the example of the stunu-
lus which the pressure of free thought gave to the
use of reason in defence.
As we pass down the course of European history,
the Pagan Hterature which had suggested the first
attack disappears : but as soon as the elements of
civilization, which survived the deluge that over
whelmed the Roman empire, had been sufficiently
consoHdated to aUow of the renewal of speculation, a
repetition of the contest may be observed.
The revived study of the Greek phUosophers, and of
their Arabic commentators introduced from the Moor
ish universities of Spain, with the consequent rise of
the scholastic phUosophy in the twelfth and thir
teenth centuries, furnished material for a renewal of
the struggle of reason against authority, a second
crisis in the history of the Church. The history of it
becomes comphcated by the circumstance that free
thought, in the process of disintegrating the body of
authoritative teaching, now began to assume on several
occasions a new shape, a kind of incipient Protestant
ism. Doubting neither Christianity nor the Bible, it
is seen to chaUenge merely that part of the actual re-

12 LECTURE L
Hgion which, as it conceived, had insinuated itself from
human sources in the lapse of ages. Accordingly, the
critical independence of Nominalism, in a mind like
that of Abelard, represents the destructive action of
free thought, partly as early Protestantism, partly as
scepticism ; whUe the series of noted ReaHsts, of which
Aquinas is an example, that tried anew to adjust faith
to science, and thus created the Latin theology,
represents the defensive action of reason. The im
parting scientific definition to the immemorial doc
trines of the Church constituted the defence.
In the later middle ages, however, phUosophy gra
duaUy succeeded in emancipating itself so entirely
from theology, that when the Renaissance came, and
a large body of heathen thought was introduced into
the current of European Hfe by means of ancient
Hterature, a third crisis occurred. The independence
passed into open revolt, and, fostered by poHtical
confusion and material luxury, expressed itself in a
Hterature of unbelief
The mental awakening which had commenced in
art and extended to Hterature paved the way for a
spiritual awakening. The Reformation itself, though
the product of a deep consciousness of spiritual need,
an emancipation of soul as weU as mind, is never
theless a special instance of the savae dissolution of
mediseval Hfe, and must therefore be regarded as be
longing to the same general movement of free
thought, though not to that sceptical form of it
which comes within the field of our investigation.

LECTURE I 13
For Protestantism, though it be scepticism in respect
of the authority of the traditional teaching of the
Church, yet reposes impHcitly on an outward authority
revealed in the sacred books of holy Scripture, and
restricts the exercise of freedom within the limits
prescribed by this authority ; whereas scepticism
proper is an insurrection 'against the outward authority
or truth of the inspired books, and reposes on the un-
revealed, either on consciousness or on science. The
one is analogous to a school of art which desires to
reform itself by the use of ancient models ; the other
to one which professes to return to an unassisted
study of nature. The spiritual earnestness which
characterized the Reformation prevented the changes
in rehgious behef from developing into scepticism
proper ; and the theology of the Reformation is ac
cordingly an example of defence and reconstruction
as weU as of revulsion.
During the century which foUowed, mental ac
tivity found employment in other channels in con
nexion with the poHtical struggles which resulted
from the rehgious changes. But the seventeenth
age was another of those epochs which form crises
in the history of the human mind. The recon
struction at that time of the methods on which
science depends, by Bacon from the empirical side,
by Descartes from the inteUectual, created as great a
revolution in knowledge as the Renaissance had pro
duced in Hterature, or the Reformation in reHgion ;
and a body of materials was presented from which

14 LECTURE L
phUosophers ventured to criticise the Bible and the
dogmatic teaching of the Church. This fourth great
period of free thought, which extends to the present
time, has been marked by more striking events than
former ones". Though the movement relates to a
simUar sphere, the history is rendered more complex
by union with Hterature, and connexion as cause or
effect with social changes, as weU as by the reciprocal
operation of its influence in different countries. Lan
guage, which is always a record of opinion, popular
or scientific f, classifies the forms of this last great
movement of free thought under three names, viz.
Deism in England in the early part of the eighteenth
century ; Infidehty in France in the latter part of it ;
and Rationalism in Germany in the nineteenth ;
e The author (supposed to be Hundeshagen) of Der Deutsche Pro
testantismus thus expresses himself (§ 6.) : " In the history of the
world there are four successive periods in which open unbelief and
unconcealed enmity to Christianity made the tour in some degree
among the chief nations of Europe. Italy made the beginning in
the fifteenth and sixteenth century ; England and France followed
in the seventeenth and eighteenth ; the series closed in Germany in
the nineteenth." The first of the four crises in our text occurred in
the ancient world ; the second is mediseval; the third, at the moment
of transition into the modern history, is the Italian crisis of the
quotation just cited ; the three others therein named make up the
fourth in our enumeration.
f On the ofiice of language, and the changes to which it is liable,
consult the chapter on the " Natural History of the variations in the
meaning of terms," in J. S. Mill's Logic (vol. ii. b. 4. ch. 5.) An
explanation of many of the terms which occur in the history of
doubt, viz. Deism, Rationalism, &c. will be found in Note 21. at
the end of these Lectures.

LECTURE L 15
movements which exhibit characteristics respectively
of the tlaree nations, and .of their inteUectual and
general history. EngHsh Deism, the product of the
reasoning spirit which was stimulated by political
events, directed itself against the special revelation
of Christianity from the stand-point of the reHgion
of natural reason, and ran a course paraUel with
the gradual emancipation of the individual from the
power of the state. French infidehty, breathing the
spirit of materiaUst phUosophy, halted not tUl it
brought its devotees even to atheism, and mingled
itself with the great movements of poHtical revolu
tion, which ultimately reconstituted French society.
German Rationalism, empirical or spiritual^, in two
paraUel developments, the phUosophical and the Hte
rary, neither coldly denied Christianity with the
practical doubts of the EngHsh deists, nor ffippantly
denounced it as imposture with the trenchant and
undisciiminating logic of the French infidels ; but
appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a
poetical genius, and regarding it as one phase of the
rehgious consciousness, endeavoured, by means of
the methods employed in secular learning, to col
lect the precious ideas of eternal truth to which
Christianity seemed to it to give expression, and by
means of speculative criticism to exhibit the Hterary
and psychological causes which it supposed had over
laid them with error.
e " Empirical," as in Lessing and Paulus j " Spiritual," as in the
later schools. See Lect. VI. and VII.

16 LECTURE L
Nor has the activity of reason used in defence
been less manifest in these later movements. The
great works on the Christian evidences are the wit
ness to its presence ; and the deeper and truer ap
preciation of Christianity now shown in every coun
try, and the increasing interest felt in reHgion, are
the indirect effect, under the guidance of divine Pro
vidence, of the stirring of the religious apprehension
by controversy ''.
We have thus at once exhibited the province
which wUl be hereafter investigated in detaU, and
stated the general law observable in the conflict
between free thought and Christianity. The type
reappears, perpetuated by the fixity of mind, though
the form varies under the force of circumstances.
Christianity being stationary and authoritative,
thought progressive and independent, the causes
which stimulate the restlessness of the latter inter
rupt the harmony which ordinarily exists between
behef and knowledge, and produce crises during
which reHgion is re-examined. Disorganization is
the temporary result ; theological advance the sub
sequent. Whatever is evU is eliminated in the con
flict ; whatever is good is retained. Under the over
ruling of a beneficent Providence, antagonism is
made the law of human progress.
The restriction of our inquiry to the consideration
b A brief view of the history of the Christian evidences will be
found in Note 49 appended to these Lectures.

LECTURE L 17
of the free action of reason wUl cause our attention
to be almost entirely confined to the operation of
reason in its attack on Christianity, to the neglect
of the evidences which the other office of it has pre
sented in defence ; and wUl also exclude altogether
the study of struggles, where the opposition to
Christianity has rested on an appeal to the authority
of rival sacred books ; such for example as the con-
ffict with rival reHgions like the Jewish (4) or Ma
hometan (5) ; as weU as of heresies which, Hke the
Socinian (6), claim, however unjustly, to rest on the
authority of the Christian revelation.
The law thus sketched of this struggle needs
fuUer explanation. We must employ a more exact
analysis to gain a conception of the causes which
have operated at different periods to make free
thought develop into unbeHef
It wUl be obvious that the causes must depend,
either upon the nature of the Christian religion,
which is the subject, or of the mind of man, which
is the agent of attack. The former were touched
upon in the opening remarks of this lecture, and
may be reconsidered hereafter' ; but it is necessary
to gain a general view of the latter before treating
them in their application in future lectures.
These causes, so far as they are spiritual and dis
connected from admixture with poHtical' circum
stances, may be stated to be of two kinds, viz. intel-
i Viz. toward the close of Lect. VIU.
C

18 LECTURE L
lectual and moral; the inteUectual explainmg the
types of thought, the moral the motives which have
from time to time existed"^. The actions, and ge
neraUy the opinions of a human being, are the com
plex result arising from the union of both. Yet the
two elements, though closely intertwined in a con
crete instance, can be apprehended separately as ob
jects of abstract thought; and the forms of manifesta
tion and mode of operation peculiar to each can be
separately traced.
In a history of thought, the antagonism created
by the inteUect rather than hy the heart seems
the more appropriate subject of study, and wiU
be almost exclusively considered in these lectures.
Nevertheless a brief analysis must be here given of
the mode in which the moral is united with the
inteUectual in the formation of opinions. This is the
more necessary, lest we should seem to commit the
mistake of ignoring the existence or importance of
the emotional element, if the restriction of our point
k The moral causes of unbelief have been frequently discussed,
but the intellectual rarely. Van Mildert has collected, in his Boyle
Lectures (note to Lect. XXIV.), references to many valuable authors
where the moral sins of pride and impiety are discussed ; and J. A.
Fabricius {Delect. Argument 1725.) has devoted a chapter to the
literature of the subject (c. 36. p. 653.) Dr. Ogilvie wrote in 1783
a separate work on the causes of the recent unbelief; but the causes
alleged by him, though well treated in the details, are superficial.
A satisfactory discussion of this and cognate topics connected with
unbelief is given in a popular but instructive book, Infidelity, its
aspects, coMses, and agencies, a Prize Essay (1853) of the Evangelical
Alliance, by the Rev. T. Pearson, Eyemouth, N.B.

LECTURE L 19
of view to the inteUectual should hereafter prevent
frequent references to it.
The influence of the moral causes in generating
doubt, though sometimes exaggerated, is nevertheless
real. Psychological analysis shows that the emotions
operate immediately on the wUl, and the wUl on the
intellect. Consequently the emotion of disHke is
able through the wiU to prejudice the judgment, and
cause disbeUef of a doctrine against which it is
directed'. Nor can we doubt that experience con
firms the fact. Though we must not rashly judge
our neighbour, nor attempt to measure in any par
ticular mind the precise amount of doubt which is
due to moral causes, yet it is evident that where a
freethinker is a man of immoral or unspiritual life,
whose interests incline him to disbeUeve in the
reahty of Christianity, his arguments may reason
ably be suspected to be suggested by sins of cha
racter, and by dislike to the moral standard of the
Christian reHgion, and, though not on this account
necessarily undeserving of attention, must be watched
at every point with caution, in order that the emo
tional may be ehminated from the inteUectual causes.
It is also a pecuharity belonging to the kind of
evidence on which reHgion rests for proof, that it
offers an opportunity for the subtle influence of
moral causes, where at first sight inteUectual might
seem alone to act. For the evidence of reHgion is
• Compare some remarks on this point in Whateley's Rhetoric
(part 2. ch. I. § 2.)

20 LECTURE L
probable, not demonstrative; and it is the property of
probable evidence that the character and experience
determine the comparative weight which the mind
assigns in it to the premises™. In demonstrative
evidence there is no opportunity for the intrusion of
emotion; but ui probable reasoning the judgment
ultimately formed by the mind depends often as
much upon the antecedent presumptions brought
to the investigation of the subject, as upon the actual
proofs presented ; the state of feeling causing a
variation in the force with which a proposition
commends itself to the mind at different times. The
very subtlety of this influence, which requires careful
analysis for its- detection, causes it to be overlooked.
Accordingly, in a subject Hke reHgion, the emotions
may secretly insinuate themselves in the preliminary
step of determining the weight due to the premises,
even where the final process of inference is purely
inteUectual. We can select illustrations of this view of the
subtlety of the operation of prejudice from in-
>» Proof being of two kinds, viz. antecedent probability, (IkSs,
(Arist. Rhet. i. 2. § 15.) which shows the cause; and evidence, trqufiov,
which shows the fact ; it is clear that the latter, if of the positive
kind, TCKjiripiov, is demonstrative ; but if merely of the probable kind,
or of the nature of circumstantial evidence, avawfiov (rrnieiov, re
quires the antecedent probability in addition for the purpose of
effecting conviction. Othervrise the evidence may seem to be an
accidental concatenation of circumstances, unless explained by the
antecedent probability that existed for the occurrence of the main
fact which the accumulation of circumstances is adduced to attest.

LECTURE L 21
stances of a kind unUke the one previously named ;
in which it wiU be seen that the disinclination of the
inquirer to accept Christianity has not arisen pri
marily from the obstacle caused by the enmity of
his own carnal heart, but from antipathy toward the
moral character of those who have professed the
Christian faith.
Who can doubt, that the corrupt hves of Christians
in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice
of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the
great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman
court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and
hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the Hte
rary men of the Renaissance, which disquahfied them
for the reception of the Christian evidences ; or that
the social disaffection in the last century in France in
censed the mind against the Church that supported
aUeged pubhc abuses", untU it blinded a Voltaire from
seeing any goodness in Christianity ; or that the reh-
ligious intolerance shown within the present century
by the ecclesiastical power in Italy drove a Leopardi"
° See below, the commencement of Lect. V. ; and on the influ
ence of social disaffection in causing modem unbelief, see Pearson's
Infidelity, part 2. ch. 3. p. 373 seq.
o Giacomo Leopardi (1798 — 1837), a native of the trans-Apennine
Roman states. His works were published (1845 — 49), consisting
of philological pieces, poems, papers on - philosophy, and letters.
The Italians consider him to have been a prodigy in philological
power that might have rivalled Niehbuhr. As a poet he was one
of the finest of his country in the present century. His letters are
very classical in expression, and have been said to rival the corre-

22 LECTURE L
and a BiniP into doubt ; or that the sense of sup
posed personal wrong and social isolation deepened
the unbehef of SheUeyi and of Heinrich Heine '1
Whatever other motives may have operated in these
respective cases, the prejudices which arose from
the causes just named, doubtless created an ante
cedent impression against reHgion, which impeded
the lending an unbiassed ear to its evidence.
spondence of the best ages of Italy. His fine mind was darkened
with the deepest shades of doubt. Shelley is the nearest English
representative. A masterly sketch of his mental and literary cha
racter was given in the Qua/rterly Review (No. 172. March 1850),
generally supposed to be from the pen of an English statesman well
known for his knowledge of the Italian literature and his ^mpathy
with constitutional government.
P Carlo Bini (1806 — 1842), a native of Tuscany of less note, who
belonged to the Republican party in politics, and like Leopardi
burned with an unquenchable love of la patria. A monument with
an inscription by his friend Mazzini has been recently erected over
his grave at Livorno. The tender pathos shown in his poetry has
been compared to that of Jean Paul. One of his poems, L'Anniver-
sario delta Nascita 1833, expressive of deep and afflicting scepticism
and life-weariness, will be found in the Collection of Italian Poetry
edited by Arrivabene (i vol. i2mo. 1855.)
1 Shelley's mental character is discussed near the close of Lect. V.
•¦ Heinrich Heine (1799 — 1856), a poet who betook himself to
Paris, about 1830, in disgust with the political state of Germany.
His poetry was chiefly subsequent to this event. He had a mixture
of German imagination with French esprit. In tone he has been
compared to Byron. Vapereau {Diction, des Oontemp.) compares hia
wit to that of Swift or Rabelais. His collected works have been
published at Philadelphia ; and his poems were translated into Eng
lish by E. A. Bowring, 1861. In later life Heine laid aside the ex
treme unbelief of his earlier years. An article respecting him ap
peared in the IVestniinster Review (Jan. 1856.)

LECTURE L 23
The subtlety of the influence in these instances
makes them the more instructive. If, as we contem
plate them, our sympathies are so far enhsted on the
side of the doubters that it becomes necessary to
check ourselves in exculpating them, by the conside
ration that they were responsible for faUing to sepa
rate the essential truth of Christianity from the acci
dental abuse of it shown in the Hves of its professors,
we can imagine so much the more clearly, how
great was the danger to these doubters themselves
of omitting the introspection of their own characters
necessary for detecting the prejudice which actuaUy
seemed to have conscience on ite side ; and can
realize more vividly from these instances the secresy
and intense subtlety of the influence of the feehngs
in the formation of doubt, and infer the necessity of
most careful attention for ite discovery in others, and
watchfulness in detecting it in our own hearte.
There are other cases of doubt, however, where
the influence of the emotional element, if it operates at
aU, is reduced to a minimum, and the cause accord
ingly seems almost whoUy inteUectual. This may
happen when the previous convictions of the mind
are shaken by the knowledge of some feet newly
brought before its notice ; such as the apparent con
flict between the Hebrew record of a universal
deluge^ and the negative evidence of geology as to
8 A brief statement of the difficulties raised on this point is given
by Professor Baden Powell in the article Deluge in Kitto's Cyclo
paedia (first edition).

24 LECTURE L
its non-occurrence ; or the historical discrepancies
between the books of Kings and Chronicles*; or the
varying accounts of the genealogy and resurrection
of Christ. A doubt purely inteUectual m its origui
might also arise, as we know was the case with the
pious Bengel", in consequence of perceiving the
variety of readings in the sacred text ; or, as in many
of the German critics, from the difficulty created by
the long habit of examining the classical legends and
myths, in satisfying themselves about the reasons
why simUar criticism should not be extended to the
early national Hterature of the Hebrews. Causes
of doubt Hke these, which spring from the advance
of knowledge, necessarUy belong primarfly to the
t These discrepancies formed part of the subject of an early work
of De Wette (ueber die glaubwuerdigkeit der bueclier der Chronik
1806), and are noticed in his Einleitung ins Alt. Test. (See the
chapters which refer to these books) ; also in Dr. S. Davidson's In
troduction to the Old Testament 1862, vol. ii. Chronicles § 6 and 8.
Mr. F. Newman, in his work. The Hebrew Monarchy, has made great
use of these difficulties for destructive criticism. Movers {Unter-
suchungen ueber die Gh/ronik 1834), and C. F. Keil {Apologetischer
Versuch ueber die Chronik 1833), endeavour to remove them. Also
see the translation of the Commentary of Keil and Bertheau on
Kings and Chronicles, the former of the two being based on the work
of the same author previously named.
'^ J. A. Bengal (1689 — 1752), author of the Gnomon of ihe New
Testament (translated, with Life prefixed to vol.iv.) Cfr. also the
article by Hartmann in Herzog's Realen-Encyclopcedie and Burt's
Life of him (translated 1837.) The labour of his life, to fix the text
of the New Testament, was prompted by the alarm which his pious
mind felt at the uncertainty thrown on the sacred books, the inspira
tion of which he believed to extend to the words.

LECTURE L 2.5
inteUectual region. / The intellect is the cause and
not merely the condition of them. /' But there is room
even here for an emotional element ; and the state of
heart may be tested by noticing whether the mind
gladly and proudly grasps at them, or thoughtfuUy
weighs them with serious effort to discover the truth.
The moral causes may reinforce or may check the
inteUectual : but the distinctness of the two classes
is apparent. Though co-existing and interlocked,
they may be made subjects of independent study.
The preceding analysis of the relations of the moral
and inteUectual faculties in the formation of rehgious
opinions might enable us to criticise the ethical in
ferences drawn in reference to mans responsibflity
for his behef. Those who think that our characters,
moral and intellectual, are formed for us by circum
stances, are consistent in denying or depreciating
responsibflity''. There is a danger however among
Christian Avriters of faUing into the opposite error,
" The denial of responsibility for belief may either be a denial of
all responsibility whatever, in consequence of the opinion that our
characters are formed for us by circumstances, or else a denial of
our responsibility for our belief, as distinct from our responsibility
for the agreement of our conduct with our belief ; the moral respon
sibility, according to this view, lying in our adherence to a standard,
irrespective of the truthfulness of the standard. The former of these
views is the fatalism advocated in the system called (English) Social
ism (See Morell's History of Philosophy, i. 472 seq.); the latter has
occasionally been imputed to teachers of the utilitarian school of
Ethics, perhaps with less justice ; their assertions in reference to it
being intended to apply only to political and not to moral responsi
bility.

26 LECTURE L
of dwelling so entirely on the moral causes, in forget-
fulness of the inteUectual, as to teach not only that
unbelief of the Christian rehgion is sin, (which few
would dispute,) but that even transient doubt of it is
sinful ; and thus to repel unbeUevers by imputing to
them motives of which their consciences acquit them.
A truth however is contained in this opinion, though
obscured by being stated with exaggeration, inas
much as the fact is overlooked that .doubte may be
of many different kinds. Sinfulness cannot, for ex
ample, be imputed to the mere scepticism of inquiry,
the healthy critical investigation of methods or
results ; nor to the scepticism of despair, which, hope
less of finding truth, takes up a reactionary and mys
tical attitude >'; nor to the cases (if such can ever be,)
of painful doubt, perhaps occasionaUy even of partial
unbeHef, which are produced exclusively by inteUec
tual causes without admixture of moral ones. This
variety of form should create caution in measuring
the degree of sinfulness involved in individual cases
of doubt. Yet the inclination to condemn in such in
stances contains the fundamental truth, that the moral
causes are generaUy so intertwined with the inteUec
tual in the assumption of data, if not in the process
y Such an attitude of mind, for example, was presented in the
seventeenth century by Huet, and in the present by De Maistre.
On the former, see Bartholmess' Ze Sceptidsme Theologique (1852);
for reference to sources for the study of the latter, see Lect. VII. Con
sult Morell's History of Philosophy (vol. ii. ch. 6. § 2) for the history
of this kind of philosophical scepticism.

LECTURE L 27
of inference, that there is a ground for fearing that
the fault may be one of wiU not of inteUect, even
though undetected by the sceptic himself And a con
scientious mind wiU leam the practical lesson of exer
cising the most careful self-examination in reference
to its doubts, and especiaUy Wfll use the utmost cau
tion not to communicate them needlessly to others.
The Hebrew Psalmist, instead of teUing his painful
misgivings, harboured them in God's presence untfl
he found the solution''. The deUcacy exhibited in for-
b^ring unnecessarily to shake the faith of others is a
measure of the disinterestedness of the doubter. " If
I say, I wiU speak thus ; behold I should offend
against the generation of thy chfldren."
These remarks wfll enable us to estimate the man
ner and degree in which the emotions may, consci
ously or unconsciously, influence the operations of the
inteUect in reference to reHgion ; and wiU clear the
way for the statement of that which is to form the
special subject of study in these lectures, the nature
and mode of operation of the inteUectual causes, and
the forms of free thought in rehgion to which they
may give rise. This branch is frequently neglected,
because satisfying the inteUect rather than the heart,
indicating tendencies rather than affording means to
pronounce judgment on individuals ; yet it admits of
greater certainty, and wUl perhaps in some respects
be found to be not less fuU of instraction, than the
other.
z Psalm Ixxiii. 15 — 17.

28 LECTURE L
We must distinctly apprehend what is here intended
by the term " inteUectual cause," when appHed to a
series of phenomena like sceptical opinions. It does
not merely denote the antecedent ideas which form
previous Hnks in the same chain of thought : these
are sufficiently revealed by the chronicle which re
cords the series. Nor does it mean the uniformity of
method according to which the mind is observed to
act at successive intervals : this is the law or for
mula, the existence of which has been already indi
cated ". But we intend by " cause " two things ;
either the sources of knowledge which have from
age to age thrown their materials into the stream
of thought, and compeUed reason to re-investigate
reHgion and try to harmonize the new knowledge
with the old behefs ; or else the ultimate inteUectual
grounds or teste of truth on which the decision in such
cases has been based, the most general types of thought
into which the forms of doubt can be analysed. The
problem is this : — Given, these two terms : on the one
hand the series of opinions known as the history
of free thought in religion ; on the other the uni
formity of mode in which reason has operated. In
terpolate two steps to connect them together, which
wfll show respectively the materials of knowledge
which reason at successive moments brought to bear
on reHgion, and the ultimate standards of truth which
it adopted ui applying this material to it. It is the
» See pp. 9, 1 6.

LECTURE L 29
attempt to supply the answer to this problem that
wUl give organic unity to these lectures.
A few words wiU suffice in reference to the former
of these two subjects, inasmuch as it has already
been described to some extent^ and wfll be made
clear in the course of the history. The branches of
knowledge with which the movements of free thought
in reHgion are connected, are chiefly Hterary criticism
and science. The one addresses itself to the record
of the revelation ; the other to the matter contained
in the record. Criticism, when it gains canons of evi
dence for examining secular Hterature, appHes them
to the sacred books ; directing itself in its lower "^
form to the variations in their text ; in ite higher" to
their genuineness and authenticity. Science, physical
or metaphysical, addresses itself to the question of the
credibility of their contents. In its physical form,
when it has reduced the world to its true position in
the universe of space, human history in the cycles of
time, and the human race in the world of organic Hfe,
it compares these discoveries with the view of the
universe and of the physical history of the planet
contained in the sacred Hterature ; or it examines the
Christian doctrine of miraculous interposition and
special providence by the hght of its graduaUy in
creasing conviction of the uniformity of nature. In
its moral and metaphysical forms, science examines
*> See pp. 10-16.
<= These names for the two respective branches into which lite
rary criticism is divisible, are commonly used in all modern German
works of criticism.

30 LECTURE L
such subjects as the moral history of the Hebrew
theocracy; or ponders reverently over the mystery
of the divine scheme of redemption, and the teaching
which scripture suppHes on the deepest problems of
speculation, the relations of Deity to the universe,
the act of creation, the nature of evU, and the ad
ministration of moral providence.
There is another mode, however, in which specula
tive phUosophy has operated, wliich needs fuUer ex
planation. It has not merely, Hke the other science^,
suggested results which have seemed to clash with
Christianity, but has suppHed the ultimate grounds
of proof to which appeal has consciously been made,
or which have been unconsciously assumed : — the ul
timate types of thought which have manifested them
selves in the struggle"^.
It wUl be useful, before exhibiting this kind of
influence in reference to reHgion, to illustrate its
character by selecting an instance from some region
of thought where its effects would be least suspected.
The example shaU be taken from the history of
hterature. d The work which vvdll most clearly explain my purpose in the
following history is Mr. J. D. Morell's Historical and Critical View of
the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the nineteenth centv/ry. (1847.)
It exhibits the influence of metaphysical philosophy on various branches
of knowledge. (See sect, i and 5 of the introduction to vol. i., and
in vol. ii. ch. 9.) Also in his Lectures on the Philosophical Tenden
cies of the Age (1848), he treats the same subject with direct refer
ence to religion. Compare also on the same points Cousin's Histoire
de la Philosophic du i8« si^cle, vol. ii. legon 30 ; Pearson on Infi
delity, part ii. ch. 2. p. 340 seq.

LECTURE L 31
If we compare three poets selected from the last
three centuries, the contrast wiU exhibit at once the
change which has taken place in the literary spirit
and standard of judgment, and the correspondence
of the change with fluctuations in the predominant
phUosophy of the time. — If we commence with the
author of the Paradise Lost, we Hsten to the last
echo of the poetry which had belonged to the great
outburst of mind of the earher part of the seven
teenth century, and of the faith in the supernatural
which had characterized Puritanism. His phUosophy
is Hebrew : he hesitates not to interpret the divine
counsels ; but it is by the supposed Hght of reve
lation. Doubt is unknown to him. The anthro
pomorphic conception of Deity prevafls. Material
nature is the instrument of God's personal providence
for the objects of His care. — But if we pass to the
author of the Essay on Man, the revolution which
has given artistic precision to the form is not more
observable than the indications of a phUosophy which
has chiUed the spiritual faculties. The supernatural
is gone. Nature is a vast machine which moves by
fixed laws impressed upon it by a Creator. The soud
feels chiUed with the desolation of a universe wherein
it cannot reach forth by prayer to a loving Father.
Scripture is displaced by science. Doubt has passed
into unbeHef. The universe is viewed by the cold
materialism which arraigns spiritual subjects at the
bar of sense. — If now we tum to the work conse
crated by the great Hving poet to the memory of his

32 LECTURE I
early friend, we find ourselves in contact with a
meditative soul, separated from the age just named
by a complete inteUectual chasm ; whose spiritual
perceptions reflect a phUosophy which expresses the
sorrows and doubts of a cultivated mind of the pre
sent day, "perplext in faith but not in deeds ^." The
material has become transfigured into the spiritual.
The objective has been replaced by the subjective.
Nature is studied, as in Pope, without the assump
tion of a revelation ; but it is no longer regarded as
a machine conducted by material laws : it is a motive
soul which embodies God's presence ; a mystery to be
felt, not understood. God is not afar off, so that we
cannot reach Him : He is so nigh, that His omnipre
sence seems to obscure His personafity.
These instances wiU Ulustrate the difference which
philosophy produces in the classes of ideas on which
the mind of an age is formed. In Mflton the appeal
is made to the revelation of God in the Book ; in
Pope,' to the revelation in Nature ; in the Hving
poet, to the revelation in man's soul, the type of
the infinite Spirit and interpreter of God's universe
and God's book*^.
It is an analysis of a simUar kind which we miist
conduct in reference to sceptical opinions. The in
fluence of the first of the two classes of inteUectual
^ Tennyson's In Memoriam, § 94.
f An instructive comparison of Milton, Cowper, and Wordsworth,
which will further illustrate this subject, may be found in Macmil-
larHs Magazine for Jan. 1862.

LECTURE L 33
causes above named ff, viz. the various forms of know
ledge there described, could not exist unobserved,
for they are present from time to time as rival doc
trines in contest with Christianity ; but the kind of
influence of which we now treat, which relates to
the grounds of behef on which a judgment is con
sciously or unconsciously formed, is more subtle, and
requires analysis for its detection.
We must briefly explain its nature, and fllustrate
its influence on reHgion.
Metaphysical science is usuaUy divided into two
branches ; of which one examines the objects known,
the other the human mind, that is the organ of
knowledge. (7) When Psychology has finished its
study of the structure and functions of the mind,
it supphes the means for drawing inferences in reply
to a question which admits of a twofold aspect, viz.
which of the mental faculties, — sense, reason, feel
ing, frimishes the origin of knowledge ; and which
is the supreme test of truth ? These two questions
form the subjective or Psychological branch of Meta
physics.' According to the answer thus obtained
we deduce a corollary in reference to the objective
side. We ask what information is afforded by these
mental faculties in respect to the nature or attributes
of the objects known, — matter, mind, God, duty. The
answer to this question is the branch commonly
caUed the Ontological. The one inquiry treats of the
s See p. 29.
D

34 LECTURE L
tests of knowledge, the other of the nature of being.
The combination of the two famishes the answer on
its two sides, intemaUy and externaUy, to the ques
tion, What is truth 1
The right apphcation of them to the subject of
reHgion would give a phUosophy of reHgion ; either
objectively, by the process of constructing a theodicSe
or theory to reconcfle reason and faith ; or sub
jectively, by separating their provinces by means of
such an inquiry into the functions of the rehgious
faculty, and the nature of the truths apprehended by
it, as might furnish criteria to determine the amount
that is to be appropriated respectively from our own
consciousness and from external authority.
The influence of the Ontological branch of the
inquiry in producing a struggle with Christianity,
has been already included under the difficulties pre
viously named, which are created by the growth of
the various sciences *". It is the influence of the
Psychological branch that we are now iUustrating, by
showing that the various theories in respect of it
give their type to various forms of belief and doubt.
The weU-known threefold distribution of the facifl-
h The cause is, that whatever difficulties may be presented by it
are the statements of rival teaching opposed to the Christian ; con
clusions, not premises : whereas those which arise from the psy
chological branch are rival premises ; not difference of belief merely,
but causes of such difference. Therefore the difficulties suggested
by Ontology belong to those described above in p. 29, 30. Many illus
trations of this branch may be found in Bartholmess' Hist. Crit. des
Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophic Moderne, 1855.

LECTURE I 35
ties that form the ultimate grounds of conviction
wUl suffice for our purpose : viz., sensational consci
ousness reveahng to us the world of matter ; intuitive
reason that of mind ; and feeling that of emotion i.
These are the forms of consciousness which supply
the material from which the reflective powers draw
inferences and construct systems.
It is easy to exhibit the mental character which
each would have a tendency to generate when appHed
to a special subject like reHgion, natural or revealed.
If the eye of sense be the sole guide in looking
around on nature, we discover only a universe of
brute matter, phenomena linked together in uniform
succession of antecedents and consequents. Mind
becomes only a higher form of matter. Sin loses ite
poignancy. Immortahty disappears, God exists not,
except as a personification of the Cosmos. Materia
lism, atheism, fatalism, are the ultimate results which
are proved by logic and history -i to foUow from this
i The classification of faculties here intended, with their respective
functions, will be illustrated by referring to Morell's Hist, of Phil.,
vol. ii. p. 338 ; and his Philosophy of Religion, ch. i. and 2. The
altered scheme given in his subsequent works on Psychology
(1853 ^'id 1861,) ought also to be compared with the former one.
See also Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, i. 168 seq. The terms
Sensationalist, Idealist, and Mystic, are nearly always used in the
present lectures in the sense in which Morell, following Cousin, uses
them ; viz. to express those who place the ultimate test of truth in
sense, innate ideas, or feeling, respectively.
j E. g. in the history of the eighteenth century in France. (See
Lect.V.) Tn estimating the effects of philosophical opinions, care must
be used, to distinguish the results which may be thought by opponents
D 2

36 LECTURE I
extreme view. The idea of spirit cannot be reached
by it. For if some other form of experience than the
sensitive be regarded as the origin of knowledge ; if a
nobler view be forced on us by the very inabflity even to
express nature's phenomena without superadding spi
ritual quahties ; if regularity of succession'^ suggest
the idea of order and purpose and mind ; if adapta
tion suggest the idea of moraHty ; if movement sug
gest the idea of form and wiU ; if wiU suggest the
idea of personahty ; if the idea of the Cosmos sug
gest unity, and thus we mount up, step by step, to
the conception of a God, possessing unity, inteUigence,

to flow from such opinions by logical inference, from those which
have been proved by history to flow from them in fact. Some por
tion of Cousin's brilliant criticism, in the Hist, de la Phil. Fran-
^aise du i8* siicle, and in theEcole Sensualiste, is thought to be open
to exception on this ground. It is from a conviction of the im
portance of not attributing to a philosopher that which we merely
conceive to be a corollary, though a logical one, from his opinions,
that the writer has abstained from introducing here into the text ex
amples of the different views sketched, and has treated the subject in
this page broadly and without minuteness. The religious results here
stated to appertain to particular metaphysical opinions must ac
cordingly be regarded as logical tendencies, not as necessary effects.
The truth of opinions must not be tested merely by supposed conse
quences, though the practical value of such a test ought to be allowed
its due weight.
^ A statement of the steps of proof similar to those described here,
by which we ascend to the knowledge of a Deity, is to be found in
the Sermons of the late lamented Rev; Shergold Boone (Sermons
2 — 7 ; and especially 2 and 3 ; 1853). Compare also the steps of
proof which Rousseau gives in the Confession of the Savoyard Vicar
of the Emile, analysed in Lect. V.

LECTURE L 37
wUl, character, we reaUy transfer mto the sphere of
nature ideas taken from another region of being, viz.,
from our consciousness of ourselves, our consciousness
of spirit. It is mental association that links these
ideas to those of sense, and gives to a sensational phi
losophy properties not its own. If however sensa
tional experience can by any means arrive at the
notion of natural reHgion ; yet it wfll find a difficulty,
created by its beUef of the uniformity of nature, in
taking the further step of admitting the miraculous
interference which gives birth to revealed : and even
if this difficulty should be surmounted, the disincH-
nation to the supernatural would nevertheless have a
tendency to obHterate mystery by empirical ration-
ahsm, and to reduce piety to morahty, moraHty to
expedience', the church to a political institution, reli
gion to a ritual system, and its evidence to external
historic testimony.
The rival system of proof fovmded in intuitive con
sciousness is however not free from danger. A dif
ference occurs, according as this endowment is re
garded as merely revealing the facts of our own inner
experience, or on the other hand as possessing a power
• These charges are frequently made indiscriminately against all
who hold that expedience is a sufficient explanation of the origin of
moral ideas. They were true in a great degree against Utilitarians
of the last century, together with some of those in the early years
of the present. But when applied at the present time, they only in
dicate a tendency, not a fact ; as may be seen in the delicate manner
in which Mr. J. S. Mill has explained the doctrine of Utility, in a
series of papers in Eraser's Magazine for 1861.

38 LECTURE I
to apprehend God positively, and spirit to spirit".
The result of the former behef would be indeed an
ethical reHgion, compared with the poHtical one just
described. If it did not rise from the law to the law
giver, it would at least present moraHty as a law
obligatory on man by his mental structure, independ
ently of the consideration of reward or punishment.
The ideas of God, duty, immortality, would be esta
bHshed as a necessity of thought, if not as matters of
objective fact. Yet reHgion would be rather rational
than supernatural ; obedience to duty instead of comr
munion with Deity ; and unless the mind can find
ground for a behef in God and the divine attributes
tlirough some other faculty, the idealism must destroy
the evidence of revealed religion. Or at least, if the
mind admit its truth, it must renounce the right to
criticise the material of that which it confesses to be
beyond the hmits of its own consciousness ; and thus, by
abdicating its natural powers, bhndly submit to ex
ternal authority, and accept behef as the refuge from
its own Pyrrhonism.
If, on the other hand, instead of regarding aU at
tempts to pass beyond logical forms of thought to be
mental impotence, the mind foUows its own instincts,
and, relying upon the same natural reahsm which
justifies its belief in the immediate character of its
m The first of these two views is seen in Kant, with whom the
forms of thought are only regulatively true ; the second in Schel
ling and Cousin. Tlie references for studying Kant's religious views
will be found in a note to Lecture VI.

LECTURE L 39
sensitive perceptions, ventures to depend with equal
firmness on the reaHty of its intuitional consciousness,
rehgion, natural or revealed, wears another aspect ; and
both the advantages and the dangers of such a view are
widely different". The soul no longer regards the land
scape to be a scene painted on the windows of ite prison-
house, a subjective limit to its perceptions, but not spe
culatively true ; but it wanders forth from ite ceU unfet
tered into the universe around. God is no longer an
inference from final causes, nor a principle of thought.
He is the hving God, a real personal spirit with whom
the soul is permitted to hold direct communion.
Providence becomes the act of a personal agent.
ReHgion is the worship in spirit. Sin is seen in its
heinousness. Prayer is justified as a reaHty, as the
breathing of the human soul for communion with its
infinite Parent (8). And by the Hght of this intu
ition, God, nature, and man, look changed. Nature is
no longer a physical engine ; man no longer a moral
machine. Material nature becomes the regular ex-
" The dangers of such a view arise from those results which have
been pointed out in Sir W. Hamilton's Dissertations (Diss. I. on
Cousin). In reference to the office of the intuition in science. Dr.
Whewell's view, in the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, may
be adduced as one which appears to possess the advantage designed
by Schelling's theory, and not be open to those criticisms which
have been directed against it. Possibly a true philosophy of the
action of the intellectual faculties in reference to religion might be
obtained by transferring to it the analysis which Dr. Whewell has
given of their action in reference to science. Dr. M<=Cosh, in his
work on the Intuitions of the Mind (1859), has done much towards
effecting it.

40 LECTURE L
pression of a personal fixed wiU ; Mfracle the direct
interposition of a personal free wUl. Revelation is
probable, as the voice of God's mercy to the chfld
of His love. Inspiration becomes possible, for the
intuitional consciousness seems adapted to be used by
divine Providence as its instrument".
But the type of mind created by the use of intu
ition as a test of truth is rarely alone. It is cognate
to, if it is not connected with, that produced by the
third of the above-named tests, feeling. The emo
tions, according to a law of spiritual supply and de
mand, suggest the reality of the objects toward which
they are aspirations. The longing for help, the feel-
ling of dependence, is the justification of prayer ; the
i sense of remorse is the witness to divine judgment ;
" In Morell's Philosophy of Religion (c. 5 and 6,) are remarks on the
relation of intuition to inspiration, to which attention may be directed,
but only in a psychological point of view. Pious minds that believe
in miraculous inspiration will rightly hesitate before holding any par
ticular psychological theory of the field of its operation ; yet it would
seem, if we may hazard a conjecture, that it is the intuitive power
of the mind which is mostly the organ to which the divine revelation
is unveiled, and on which the inspiring influence acts. It is certain
that we cannot understand the modus operandi, but we may without
irreverence humbly seek to discover the field on which God's Spirit
condescends to operate. In this view inspiration would be analo
gous to natural genius psychologically, but wholly different theologi
cally, inasmuch as all who believe in its miraculous character must
hold firmly that it is due to a supernatural elevation of this mental
power by immediate operation of divine agency, whereas the disco
veries of ordinary genius are due to the unassisted and normal con
dition of the faculty. Morell, in the passage referred to, will pro
bably be thought to be right in the psychological question, and wrong
in the theological.

\ s

LECTURE L 41
the consciousness of penitence is the ground for hope
in God's merciful interference ; the ineradicable sense
of guUt is the eternal witness to the need of atone
ment ; the instinct for immortality is the pledge of a
future Hfe.
Yet the use of these tests of intuition and feeHng
in reHgion, though possessing these advantages, has
dangers. If the feehngs, instead of being used to
reinforce or check the other faculties, be rehed upon
as sole arbiters ; especiaUy if they be linked with the
imagination instead of the intuition; they may con
duct to mysticism and superstition by the very vivid
ness of their perception of the supernatural''. Like
wise the intuitive faculty, if it be regarded as giving
a noble grasp over the fact of God as an infinite
Spirit, may cause the mind to relax its hold on the
idea of the Diyine Personahty, and faU into Pan
theism, and identify God with the universe, not by
degrading spirit to matter, but by elevating matter
to spirit ¦¦. Or, instead of aUowing experience and
revelation to develop into conceptions the funda-
1 The mysticism of the Quakers of the seventeenth century, and
of Swedenborg in the eighteenth, is of this character. The excessive
self-mortification of the Franciscan order in the middle ages may be
set down to the influence, perhaps not consciously analysed, of the
same standard used for guidance. On Mysticism, see Morell's His
tory of Philosophy, ii. 332 seq. and 356 seq. ; and his Lectures on
the Philosophical Tendencies of the ^^jre (Lect. III.); on Swedenborg,
see National Review No. 1 2 ; and on mystics generally, consult the
interesting work of the lamented Rev. R. A. Vaughan, Hours with
the Mystics, 1856.
r As in Spinoza, or the school of Schelling.

42 LECTURE L
mental truth whose existence it perceives, it may
attempt to develop a reHgion whoUy a priori^, and
assert ite right to create as weU as to verify. Also,
when applying itseU to revealed religion, this type
of thought necessarUy makes its last appeal to in
ward insight. It cannot, Hke sensationahsm, or sub
jective ideaUsm, admit its own impotence, and re
ceive on authority a revelation, the contents of which
it ventures not to criticise. It must always appro
priate that which it is to beHeve. Accordingly it
wiU have a tendency to render rehgion subjective in
its character, uncertain in its doctrines, individual in
its constitution.
These general remarks, every one of which admits of
historic exemplification*, wfll suffice to Ulustrate the
kind of influence exercised by these respective tests of
truth in forming the judgment or moulding the cha
racter in relation to the belief or disbeUef of natural
and revealed reHgion. These effects are not adduced
as the necessary results, but as the ordinary tenden-
s As in Herbert in the seventeenth century, and Theodore Parker
in the nineteenth. On the intuitional theology, see M'Cosh, Divine
Government, b. iv. ch. 2. § 4. (note.)
' The above are only a very few instances, of which many will
occur hereafter ; but they will sufficiently indicate that the French
infidelity is mostly connected with the appeal to the first test of
truth, sensation ; German rationalism, the result of an appeal to an
intuitive faculty " transcending consciousness ;" English deism, and
the earlier forms of German rationalism, the appeal to the ordinary
reason, as able to create religion for itself. The separate appeal to
feeling has generally, it will be perceived, caused too much belief
instead of too little ; mysticism instead of scepticism.

LECTURE L
cies of these respective theories. The mind frequently
stops short of the conclusions logicaUy deducible from
its own principles. To measure precisely the effect of
each view would be impossible. In mental science
analysis must be quahtative, not quantitative.
It wfll hardly be expected that we should arbitrate
among these theories, inasmuch as our purpose is not
to test the comparative truthfulness of metaphysical
opinions, but to refer sceptical opinions in religion
to their true scientffic and metaphysical parentage.
Truth is probably to be found in a selection from aU;
and historical investigation is the chief means of
discovering the mode of conducting the process. It
is at least certain, that if history be the form which
science necessarily takes in the study of that which
is subject to laws of hfe and organic growth, it must
be the preliminary inquiry in any investigation in
reference to mental phenomena. The history of phi
losophy must be the approach to philosophy". The
great problem of phUosophy is method ; and if there
" This was the view presented in the teaching of Cousin and the
Eclectic school of France. Many of the younger thinkers of Europe
now consider that the history of philosophy constitutes the whole
of philosophy, and is not merely, as here maintained, the preli
minary to it. This new view is probably unconsciously derived
from Hegel, and is the residuum left by his philosophy. Two able
living French critics, Renan and Scherer, have so very clearly ex
pressed this view of the function of philosophy, that it may be well
to quote their words, (see Note 9) ; the more so, as this subject will
be named again in Lect. VII. Renan has also expressed the same
ideas in the Revue des deux Mondes (Jan. 15, i860), Z^e to Meta-
physique et de son avenir.

44 LECTURE L
be a hope that the trae method can ever be found,
it must be by uniting the historical analysis of the
development of the universal mind with the psycho
logical analysis of the individual. The history of
thought indicates not only fact but truth ; not only
shows what has been, but, by exhibiting the propor
tions which different faculties contribute toward the
construction of truth, and indicating tendencies as
weU as resulte, prepares materials to be coUated with
the decision previously made by mental and moral
science concerning the question of what ought to
be (9).
A definite conviction on this metaphysical inquiry
seems perhaps to be involved in the very idea of
criticism, and necessary for drawing the moral from
the history ; yet the independence of our historical
inquiry ought to be sacrificed as Httle as possible to
iUustrate a 'foregone conclusion. It wiU be more
satisfactory to present the evidence for a verdict,
without undue advocacy of a side in the metaphy
sical controversy".
^ It is not from any wish to evade the real question that the
writer thus avoids taking a side in the metaphysical dispute. His
object is to explain the various effects of metaphysical theories on
religious belief; and while considering that the respective evil
effects of these systems are a logical corollary from them, as well as
au historical result, he is prepared to admit, as previously remarked,
that men are sometimes better than their systems, and do not al
ways draw the logical conclusions from their own premises ; and
therefore he has not thought it right to make these lectures a direct
argument on behalf of some favourite metaphysical system, and at
tack on some rival one. In such case, the history would lose its in-

LECTURE L 45
The execution of this design of analysing the in
teUectual causes of unbelief wiU necessarUy involve
to some extent a biographical treatment of the sub
ject, both for theoretical and practical reasons, to
discover truth, and to derive instruction. This is
so evident in the history of action, that there is a
danger at the present time lest history should lose
the general in the individual, and descend from the
rank of science to mere biography y. The deeper
insight which is gradually obtained into the com
plexity of nature, together with the fuUer conviction
of human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and
ethical analysis to be substituted for historical ge
neralization. The same method however appHes to
the region of thought as weU as wiU. Thought, as
an inteUectual product, can indeed be studied apart
from the mind that creates it, and can be treated by
history as a material fact subject to the fixed suc-

dependent character. While therefore he has never concealed his
opinions on the subject of religion, he has thought it more proper
not to obtrude, except indirectly, his opinions on that of meta
physics. y This is the question at issue between modern Positivists and
their opponents. Comte declared the possibility of discovering the
fixed laws on which society depends as really as the physical ones of
matter. Mr. Mill, in his account of the logic of history {Logic, b. vi.
c. 4. (6-10.)), lays down more maturely the theory of such a pro
cess. On the contrary, Mr. Kingsley, in his inaugural lecture at
Cambridge, 1861, asserts the very opposite position; and, in his wish
to elevate the influence of individual men on the course of events,
almost reduces history to a series of biographies.

46 LECTURE L
cession of natural laws. But the exclusive use of
such a method, at least in any other subject of study
than that of the results of physical discovery, must be
defective, even independently of the question of the
action of free wUl, unless the thoughts which are
the object of study be also connected with the per
sonahty of the thinker who produces them. His
external biography is generaUy unimportant, save
when the individual character may have impressed
itself upon pubhc events ; but the intemal por
traiture, the growth of soul as known by psycho
logical analysis, is the very instrument for under
standing the expression of it in hfe or in Hterature^.
It is requisite to know the mental bias of a writer,
whether it be practical, imaginative, or reflective ; to
see the idola specus which influenced him, the action
of circumstances upon his character, and the reaction
of his character upon circumstances ; before we can
gain the clue to the interpretation of his works.
But if we wish further to derive moral instruction
from him, the biographical mode of study becomes
even more necessary. For the notion of freedom as
the ground of responsibflity is now superadded; and
z The kind of analysis here alluded to may be illustrated by
referring to one of the Essays of Mr. D. Masson, in which he has
compared in a very striking manner Shakspeare and Goethe, by
regarding their respective works as reflecting the mental pecu
liarity of each writer. He considers the meditative melancholy of
Shakspeare's youth, as expressed in his Sonnets, to be the clue
to the reflective analysis that in later life could depict the doubts
of Hamlet,

LECTURE L 47
the story of his life is the sole means for such an
apprehension of the causes of his heart-struggles as
shaU enable us to take the gauge of his moral cha
racter, and appropriate the lessons derivable from
the study of it.
Indeed biographical notices, if they could be ex
tended compatibly with the compass of the subject,
would be the most instructive and vivid mode of
presenting alike the facts relating to scepticism and
their interpretation. Such memoirs are not wanting,
and are among the most touching in literature. The
sketch which Strauss has given of his early friend
and feUow student Maerkhn*, graduaUy surrendering
one cherished trath after another, untU he doubted
aU but the law of conscience; then devoting himself
in the strength of it with unflinching industry to
education ; untU at last he died in the dark, without
behef in God or hope, cheered only by the conscious
ness of having tried to find truth and do his duty : —
the sad tale, told by two remarkable biographers, of

a Christian Maerklin (1807-1849), a fellow student of Strauss
at Tubingen, whose views were unsettled, partly by a tone like that
of the Renaissance derived from the contrast of classic and Christian
culture, and partly by the philosophical speculations of the time.
He embraced pantheism and the mythical idea of Christianity. For
ten years after 1840 he undertook ministerial work, and then left
the church, and till his death in 1849 devoted himself with assiduity
to the business of education. A short memoir of him was written
by Strauss in 1851, C. Maerhlin, ein Lebens-undrCharacter-Bild
aus der Gegenwart; a brief review of which is given in the National
Review, No. 7.

48 LECTURE L
Sterling ^ doubting, renouncing the ministry, yet
thirsting for truth, and at last solacing himself in
death by the hopes offered by the Bible, to the
eternal truths of which his doubting heart had al
ways clung : — the memoir of the adopted son of our
own university, Blanco White", a mind in which
faith and doubt were perpetuaUy waging war, tfll the
grave closed over his truth-searching and care-worn
spirit : — the confessions of one of our OAvn sons of
the successive " phases of faith" "^ through which his
soul passed from evangelical Christianity to a spi
ritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes
its place among the pathetic works of autobiography,
where individuals have unveUed their inner Hfe for
the instruction of their feUow-men : — aU these are
instances where the great moral and spiritual pro
blems that belong to the condition of our race may
be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of
individuals. They are instances of rare value for
psychological study in reference to the history of
doubt ; sad beacons of warning and of guidance.
l5 Sterling (1806-1844), a clergyman, curate to archdeacon Hare.
His works were edited, with a memoir prefixed, by the archdeacon
in 1848 ; and a life written of him by Carlyle (1851.)
e Blanco White (1775-1841), a Spanish priest, who became a
protestant, and a refugee in England. He was much respected in
Oxford, and the University gave him a degree. He afterwards
turned unitarian, and perhaps at last deist. His life was published
in 1845 ; and his mental character analysed in the Quarterly Review
No. 151, and the Christian Remembrancer vol. 10.
"J Mr. F. Newman. See Lect. VIII.

LECTURE L 49
Accordingly, in the history of free thought we must
not altogether neglect the spiritual biography of the
doubter, though only able to indicate it by a few
touches ; by an etching, not a photograph.
We have now added to the explanation before
given of the province of our inquiry, and of the law
of the action of free thought on reHgion, an account
of the moral and inteUectual causes which operate
in the history of unbeHef, and have sufficiently ex
plained the mode in which the subject wiU be
treated. The use of the inquiry wfll, it is hoped, be apparent
both in its theoretical and practical relations. It is
designed to have an inteUectual value not only as
instruction but as argument. The tendency of it will
be in some degree polemical as weU as didactic, re-
fating error by analysing it into its causes, repelling
present attacks by studying the history of former
ones. It is one pecuHar advantage belonging to the phi
losophical investigation of the history of thought,
that even the odious becomes valuable as an object
of study, the pathology of the soul as weU as its
normal action. PhUosophy takes cognisance of error
as weU as of truth, inasmuch as it derives materials
from both for discovering a theory of the grounds of
behef and disbehef Hence it foUows that the study
of the natural history of doubt combined with the
Hterary, if it be the means of affording an explana
tion of a large class of facte relating to the rehgious

60 LECTURE L
history of man and the sphere of the remedial opera
tion of Christ's church, wiU have a practical value as
weU as speculative.
Such an inquiry, if it be directed, as in the present
lectures, to the analysis of the inteUectual rather than
the emotional element of unbelief, as being that which
has been less generally and less fuUy explored, wUl
require to be supplemented by a constant reference to
the intermixture of the other element, and the conse
quent necessity of taking account of the latter in
estimating the whole phenomenon of doubt. But
within its own sphere it wiU have a practical and
polemical value, if the course of the investigation
shaU show that the various forms of unbeHef, when
studied from the inteUectual side, are coroUaries from
certain metaphysical or critical systems. The ana
lysis itself wUl have indirectly the force of an argu
ment. The discovery of the causes of a disease con
tains the germ of the cure. Error is refuted when
it is referred to the causes which produce it.
Nor wUl the practical value of the inquiry be re
stricted to its use as a page in the spiritual history
of the human mind, but wUl belong to it also as a
chapter in the history of the church. For even if in
the study of the contest our attention be ahnost
whoUy restricted to the movements of one of the
two beUigerents, and only occasionaUy directed to the
evidences on which the faith of the church in various
crises reposed, and by which it tried to repel the
invader, yet the knowledge of the scheme of attack

LECTURE L .51
cannot faU to be a valuable accompaniment to the
study of the defence ''.
Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a
chapter of human history, Hke the chapter o£-^hy-
siology which studies a disease, wfll point indirectly
to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the
causes which induce the disease ; whfle the hterary
history of it, viewed as a chapter of church history,
wUl contribute the results of experience to train the
Christian combatant.
The subject wiU however not only have an intel
lectual value in being at once didactic and polemical,
offering an explanation of the causes of unbehef and
famishing hints for their removal ; but it cannot faU
also to possess a moral value in reference to the con
science and heart of the disputant, in teaching the
lesson of mercy towards the unbehever, and deep
pity for the heart woimded with doubte. An intel-
Hgent acquaintance with the many phases of history
operates Hke foreign travel in widening the sympa
thies ; and increase of knowledge creates the modera
tion which gains the victory through attracting an
enemy instead of repeUing him. Bigotry is founded
on ignorance and fear. True learning is temperate,
because discriminating ; forbearing, because coura
geous. If we place ourselves in the position of an
opponent, and try candidly to understand the process
<^ See further remarks concerning the purpose of the course of
Lectures in Lect. VIII.
E 2

52 LECTURE L
by which he was led to form his opmions, mdigna-
tion wiU subside mto pity, and enmity into grief:
the hatred wfll be reserved for the sin, not for the
sinner ; and the servant of Jesus Christ wfll thus
catch in some humble measure the forbearing love
which his divine Master showed to the first doubting
disciple^. As the sight of suffering in an enemy
changes the feeHng of anger into pity, so the study
of a series of spiritual struggles makes us see in an
opponent, not an enemy to be crushed, but a brother
to be won. The utflity of an historic treatment of
doubt is suggested by moral as weU as inteUectual
grounds. I hope therefore that if I foUow the example of
some of my predecessors ^ in giving a course of
lectures historical rather than polemical, evincing
the critic rather than the advocate, seeking for truth
rather than victory, analysing processes of evidence
rather than refuting results, my humble contribu
tion toward the knowledge of the argument of the
Christian evidences wiU be considered to come fairly
within the design intended by the founder of the
lecture.
« John XX. 26-29.
f E. g. Mr. J. J. Conybeare (1824) on the History and Limits of
the Secondary Interpretation of Scripture ; Dr. Burton (1829), The
Heresies of the Apostolic Age; Dr. Hampden (1832), The Scholastic
Philosophy in relation to Clvristian Theology; as well as several
works which investigate doctrines historically, such as the Lectures
on the Atonement by Dr. Thomson (185,3), by Dr. Hessey on the
Sabbath (i860).

LECTURE L 63
It may weU be believed that in the execution of so
large a scheme I have felt almost overwhelmed under
a painful sense of its difficiflty. If even I may ven
ture to hope that a conscientious study in most cases
of the original sources of information may save me
from Hterary mistakes, yet there is a danger lest the
size of the subject should preclude the possibihty of
constant clearness ; or lest the very analysis of the
errors of the systems named, may produce a painful,
if not an injurious, impression. In an age too of con
troversy, those who speak on difficult questions incur
a new danger, of being misunderstood from the sensi
tiveness with which earnest men not unreasonably
watch them. The attitude of suspicion may cause
impartiality to be regarded as indifference to truth,
fairness as sympathy with error. I am not ashamed
therefore to confess, that under .the oppressive sense
of these various feelings I have been wont to go for
help to the only source where the burdened heart can
find consolation ; and have sought, in the communion
with the Father of spirits which prayer opens to
the humblest, a temper of candour, of reverence, and
of the love of truth. In this spirit I have made
my studies ; and what I have thus learned I shaU
teacL

LECTUEE II.
THE LITERAEY OPPOSITION OF HEATHENS AGAINST CHBISTiANITT
IN THl EARLY AGES.

I CoE. i. 32-24.
The Greeks seeh after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified ;
unto tAe Greeks foolisAness ; but unto them which are called,
CArist the wisdom of God.
JLT has been already stated^, that m the first great
struggle of the human mind agamst the Christian
reHgion, the action of reason in criticising its claims
assumed two forms, Gnosticism or rationalism within
the church, and unbeHef without.
The origin and history of the former of these two
Unes of thought were once discussed in an elaborate
course of Bampton Lectures'' ; and though subse
quent investigation has added new sources of infor-
a See above, p. 10.
*> By Dr. Burton in 1829, An Inquiry into the Heresies of the
Apostolic Age.

LECTURE IL 65
mation'^, and it would.be consonant to our general
object to trace briefly the speculations of the various
schools of Gnostics, — Greek, Oriental, or Egyptian, —
the want of space necessitates the omission of these
topics. In the present lecture we shaU accordingly
restrict ourselves to the history of the other Hne of
thought, and trace the grounds aUeged by the Intel
Hgent heathens who examined Christianity, for de
clining to admit ite claims, from the time of its rise
to the final downfaU of heathenism.
The truest modem resemblance to this struggle is
obviously to be found in the disbehef shown by
educated heathens in pagan countries to whom
Christianity is proclaimed in the present day. It
was not untU the establishment of Christianity as the
state reHgion by Constantino had given it poHtical
and moral victory, that it was possible for unbeHef
¦= Burton was such a careful student, that he hardly omitted any
thing on the subject which had been published up to his time.
Subsequent investigations have added little material directly for the
knowledge of Gnosticism, but much for a better appreciation of
those sources from which it sprung. The oriental philosophy, as
is shown in note 3 to Lect. I, is much better known ; in like manner
the Neo-Platonic. The Jewish Cabbala has also been made known
by A. Franck {Memoires sur la Cabbale). The speculations too of
• the new Tiibingen school, of which Baur's work on Gnosis, 1835, is
an example, have been specially directed to the study of the origines
of the Christian church and of Gnostic heresy, and however un
satisfactory in results, present much valuable research. Kurtz in
his Kirchengeschichte § 48-50, and Hase, Id. § 75-82, refer to
several other monographs of the same kind. See also the discussion
on Gnostic sects in Professor Norton's Evidences of the Genuineness
of the Gospels, vol. ii.

56 LECTURE IL
to assume ite modern aspect, of being the attempt
of reason to break away from a creed which is an
acknowledged part of the national Hfe. The first
opponente accordingly whose views we shaU study,
Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, are heathen
unbelievers. Julian is the earliest that we encounter
who rejected Christianity after having been educated
in it.
The resemblance however to this struggle is not
whoUy restricted to heathen lands. There have
been momente in the history of nations, or of indi
viduals, when a Christian standard of feeHng or of
thought has been so far obHterated that a state of
public disbehef and phUosophical attack simflar to
the ancient heathen has reappeared, and the tone
of the early unbehevers, and sometimes ever^>-heir
specffic doubts, have been either borrowed or repro
duced''. In this portion of the history we encounter a
difficulty peculiar to it, in being compefled to form
an estunate of the opinions described, from indi
rect information. The treatises of the more noted
^ Such instances are seen in the Renaissance, in the state of
France dm-ing the eighteenth century, and in some of the writings
of the English deists and German critics, as will be shown in sub
sequent lectures. A general view is given, in the introduction to
Houtteville's Le Christianisme prouve par des f aits, of "the method
of the principal authors for and against Christianity from its begin
ning," (translated 1739.) Ease also quotes a work of D. Baum-
garten-Crusius, De Scriptoribus ssec. II. qui novam relig. impugna-
rimt, 1845.

LECTURE II 57
writers that opposed Christianity have perished;
some through natural causes, but those of Porphyry
and JuHan through the special order of a Christian
emperor, Theodosius IL, in A.D. 435.
In the absence accordingly of the original writings,
we must discover the grounds for the rejection of
Christianity by the aid of the particular treatises of
evidence written by Christian fathers expressly in refu
tation of them, which occasionaUy contain quotations
of the lost works ; and also by means of the geileral
apologies written on behalf of the Christian reHgion,
together with sHght notices of it occurring in hea
then Hterature. The latter wfll inform us concerning
the misceUaneous objections current, the former con
cerning the definite arguments of the writers who ex
pressly gave reasons for disbeheving Christianity".
We possess a large treatise of Origen against
Celsus ; passages, directed against Porphyry, of Eu
sebius, Jerome, and Augustin ; a tract of Eusebius
against Hierocles ; and 'a work of Cyril of Alexandria

e There are four sources of information in reference to the
opinions of the heathens concerning Christianity ; viz. (i) the slight
notices which occur in heathen literature, on which see note 1 2 ;
(2) the works written expressly against Christianity, which are suffi
ciently analysed in the text and foot-notes ; (3) the special replies to
these attacks, on which see notes 13, 17, 19; (4) the general
treatises on evidence in the early fathers, on which see note
49. The recent publication of Pressense's work, 2e s^rie, t. 2.
where the analysis of the two latter sources is ably executed, ren
ders unnecessary the publication of an analysis of each. Several of
them are also analysed in Schramm, Analysis Patrum, 1782.

58 LECTURE IL
against JuHan. Yet it is never perfectly satisfactory
to be obhged to read an opinion through the state
ment of an opponent of it. The history of phUoso
phical controversy shows that inteUectual causes,
such as the natural tendency to answer an argument
on principles that its author would not concede,
to reply to conclusions instead of premises, or to
impute the corollaries which are supposed to be
deducible from an opinion, may lead to unintentional
mis:?fepresentation of a doctrine refuted, even where
no moral causes such as bias or sarcasm contribute
to the result. Aristotle's weU-known criticism of
Plato's theory of archetypes is a pertinent Hlustra
tion''. The sHght difficulty thus encountered, in extracting
the real opinions of the early unbehevers out of the
repHes of their Christian opponents, may . for the
most part be avoided by first reaUsing the state of
behef which existed in reference to the heathen reli
gion, which for our present purpose may be treated
as homogeneous throughout the whole Roman world.
We shall thus be enabled as it were to foresee the
hne of opinion which would be likely to be adopted
in reference to a new reHgion coming with the claims
and character of Christianity. This prefatory inquiry
wiU also coincide with our general purpose of ana-
f It has been recently made a matter of dispute whether Plato's
own description of the teaching of the Sophists is not rendered
untrustworthy by these faults. See Grote's History of Greece,
vol. viii. ch. 67.

LECTURE IL 59
lysing the influence of inteflectual causes in the pro
duction of unbelief
Four separate tendencies may be distinguished
among heathens in the early centuries in reference to
reHgion 8 : viz. the tendency, (i) to absolute unbelief,
(2) to a bigoted attachment to a national creed,
(3) to a phflosophical, and (4) a mystical theory
of reHgion.
The tendency to total disbelief of the supernatural
prevaUed in the Epicurean school. A type of 'the
more earnest spirits of this class is seen at a period
a little earher than the Christian era in Lucretius,
hving moumfuUy in the moral desert which his
doubts had scorched into barrenness *". The world is
to him a scene unguided by a Providence : death is
vmeheered by the hope of a future life. An example
of the ffippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the
second century, A. D. The great knowledge of Hfe
which travel had afforded him created a universal
ridicule for reHgion ; but his unbehef evinced no
seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type
of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which
S These tendencies are discussed so fully aud with such great
learning by Neander {Kirchengeschichte, vol. i. Introduction), and
by Pressens^, Hist, de VEglise Chretienne, (2« serie, t. ii. ch. i.),
to whom I am largely indebted, that it is unnecessary to quote the
original sources. Neander exhibits an analogous process in the
Jewish religion, in sects of the later times of the nation. See also
DoUinger's Judenthvm und Heidenthum (translated 1862.)
h The mental character of Lucretius has been well analyzed by
Mr. Sellar, in the volume of Oxford Essays, 1855.

60 LECTURE II
gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the cour
teous playfulness exhibited ui the many-sided genius
of Plato, he was a caricaturist rather than a painter :
his dialogues are farces of Hfe rather than satires.
It has been well remarked, that human society has
no worse foe than a universal scoffer. Lacking aspi
rations sufficiently lofty to appreciate reHgion, and
wisdom to understand the great crises that give
birth to it, such a man destroys not superstition
only but the very faculty of behef'. It is easy to
perceive that to such minds Christianity would be a
mark for the same jests as other creeds.
A second tendency, most widely opposed in ap
pearance to the sceptical, but which was too often
its natural product, showed itself in a bigoted attach
ment to the national rehgionJ. Among the masses
such faith was real though uninteUigent, but in edu
cated men it had become artfficial. When an ethnic
reHgion is young, faith is fresh and gives inspiration
to its art and its poetry. In a more critical age, the
historic spirit rationalizes the legends, whfle the phi
losophic aUegorizes the myths ; and thoughtful men
attempt to rise to a spiritual worship of which rites
are symbols'^. But in the decay of a religion, the
i Pressens6 (ut sup. 2^ s6rie, t. ii. 77 seq.) has ably sketched the
character of Lucian. His utter scepticism is seen in the Zeiis
rpaycobos (47—49).
j Instances, with references, may be seen in the introductory
chapter in Neander, p. 18 seq.
^ The Greek literature ofi'ers the opportunity for studying the
whole process. See Grote, i. ch. 16, previously quoted.

LECTURE IL 61
supernatural loses its hold of the class of educated
minds, 9,nd is regarded as imposture, and the support
which they lend to worship is political. They faU back
on tradition to escape their doubts, or they think it
pohticaUy expedient to enforce on the masses a creed
which they contemn in heart. Such a ground of
attachment to paganism is described in the dialogue
of the Christian apologist, Minucius Felix ^ It woifld
not only coincide with the first-named tendency in
denying the importance of Christianity, but would
join in active opposition. In truth, it marks the
commencement of the strong reaction which took
place in favour of heathenism at the close of the
second century, — twofold in its nature ; a popular re
action of prejudice or of mysticism on the part of the
lower classes, and a poHtical or phflosophical one of
the educated™. Both were in a great degree produced
by Eastern influences. The substitution which was
graduafly taking place of naturalism for humanism,
the adoration of cosmical and mystical powers instead
1 The character Csecilius, in the dialogue of Minucius Felix, is
made to express this view, (c. 8. and elsewhere.) A useful modern
edition of this dialogue is given by H. A. Holden, 1853.
"" This reaction deserves to be made the subject of special study.
Pr^ssens6 is one of the few writers who have pointed out its import
ance, (ae sSrie, t. ii. ch. i.) Also compare the remarks in Ben
jamin Constant's posthumous work Du Polytheisme Remain, 1833.
(t. ii. 1. 12, 13, 15) Kurtz refers on this subject to Tzchirner's der
Fall des Heidenthum, i. 404. (1829.); H. Kritzler' s Helden-zeiten
des Christenthnim, vol. i. (1856.), and Vogt's Neo-Platonismus und
ChristenthMm (1836.) Also Cfr. Tzchirner's Apologetik (1804.) c. a.
parts 2 and 3.

62 LECTURE II
of the human attributes of the deities of the older
creed, was the means of re-awakening popular super
stition, whfle at the same time the Alexandrian spe
culations of Neo-Platonism gave a religious aspect
to phUosophy.
Accordingly the third, or philosophical tendency
in reference to reHgion, distinct from the two already
named, of positive unbeHef in the supernatural on
the one hand, and devotion sincere or artfficial to
heathen worship on the other, comprises, in addition
to the older schools of Stoics and Platonists, the new
eclectic school just spoken of The three schools agreed
in extracting a phUosophy out of the popular reHgion,
by searching for historic or moral truth veUed iii its
symbols. The Stoic, as being the least speculative,
employed itself less with reHgion than the others. Its
doctrine, ethical rather than metaphysical, concerned
with the wfll rather than the inteUect, juridical and
formal rather than speculative, seemed especiaUy to
give expression to the Roman character, as the Pla
tonic to the Greek, or as the eclectic to the hybrid,
half Oriental half European, which marked Alex
andria. In the writings of M. AureUus, one of the
emperors most noted for the persecution of the
church, it manifests itself rather as a rule of Hfe
than a subject for belief, as moraHty rather than re
ligion"- The Stoic opposition to Christianity was the
n The Meditations of M. Aurelius were edited by Gataker (1698.)
See concerning them Fabricius, Biblioth. Grcec. v. 500. (ed. Harles) ;
Donaldson, Gr. Lat. ch. 54. § 2. ; and concerning his opinions,

LECTURE II G3
contempt of the Gaul or Roman for what was foreign,
or of ethical philosophy for religion.
The Platonic doctrine, so far as it is represented
in an impure form in the early centuries, sought, as
of oldj to explore the connexion between the visible
and invisible worlds, and to rise above the phenome
non into the spiritual. Hence in its view of heathen
rehgion it strove to rescue the ideal reHgion from the
actual, and to discover the one revelation of the
Divine ideal amid the great variety of rehgious
traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible
duahsm, separating by an impassable chasm God
from the world, and mind from matter, identifying
goodness with the one, evfl with the other, prevented
behef in a rehgion like Christianity, which was pene
trated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so
ahen both to dualism and pantheism.
The Hne is not very marked which separates this
phflosophy from the professed revival of Plato's
teaching, which received the name of Neo-Platonism,
which was the phflosophy with yhich Christianity
came most frequently into conflict or contact during
the third and two foUowing centuries (10). Fasten-
Neander's Kirchengesch. I. 177. Mr. G. Long has recently trans
lated the Meditations into English. The philosophy of the Roman
Stoics, of which M. Aurelius is one of the best types, is briefly but
excellently treated by Sir A. Grant in the Oxford Essays for 1858.
Also consult Ritter's History of Philosophy, vol. iv. b. 12. ch. 3. and
Neander's paper on the relation of Greek Ethics to Christiamty in
the Zeitschrift fiir Christliche Wissenchaft und Civristliches Leben
(1850.) translated in the American Bibliotkeca Sacra for 1853.

64 LECTURE II
ing on the more mystical parts of Plato, to the
neglect of the more practical, it probably borrowed
something also from Eastern mysticism. The object
of the school was to find an explanation of the pro
blem of existence, by tracing the evolution of the
absolute cause in the universe through a trinal mani
festation, as being, thought, and action. The agency
by which the human mind apprehended this process
lay in the attainment of a kind of insight wherein
the organ of knowledge is one with the object
known, a state of mind and feeling whereby the mind
gazes on a sphere of being which is closed to the ordi
nary faculties. ScheUing's theory of " inteUectual
intuition" is the modem parallel to this Neo-Platonic
state of eKO-Tac-ti or evdova-iaa-fjioi. This phUosophy,
though frequ.ently described in modem times as
bearing a resemblance to Christianity in method, as
being the knowledge of the one absolute Being by
means of faith, is reaUy most widely opposed in
its interior spirit. It is essentiaUy pantheism. Its
monotheistic aspect, caught by contact with Semitic
thought, is exterior only. Its deity, which seems
personal, is reaUy only the personffication of an ab
straction, a mere instance of mental reahsm. Man's
personality, which Christianity states clearly, was
lost in the universe ; religious facts in metaphysical
ideas". ReHgion accordingly woxfld be exclusive, con-
° Presseus6 even suggests (2". s^rie, t. ii. p. 62.) that the ultimate
result was almost the nirvana of Boodhism. It will be observed, that
the view taken in the text concerning the Neo-Platonic philosophy,

LECTURE IL 65
fined to an aristocracy of education ; and the existing
national cultus would be appropriated as a sensuous
rehgion suited for the masses, a visible type of the
invisible. The analogy which this phflosophy bore
to Christianity in aim and office, as weU as the
rivalry qf other schools which is imphed in its eclectic
aspect, caused it to take up an attitude of opposition
to the Christian system to which it claimed to bear
affinity. The mystical element in this phUosophy enabled
some minds to find a home for the theurgy which
had been increased by the importation of eastern
ideas p. They form as it were the connecting link with
the fourth rehgious tendency, which manifested itself
in the craving for a communication from the world
invisible, which found its satisfaction in magic and in
a spirit of fanaticism. Some of these fanatics were
doubtless also impostors i ; but some were high-minded
men struggling after truth, of whom possibly an
example is seen at an early period in ApoUonius of
Tyana ; deceived rather than deceivers. This tendency
operated in some minds to cause them to reduce
Christianity to ordinary magic and prodigies ; whUe
for which I am largely indebted to Pressense, is different from that
which regards it as monotheism, and which has been made popular
by Mr. Kingsley's novel, Hypatia, and by his lectures on the Schools
of Alexandria (Lect. 3.), 1854.
P Ritter happily calls this philosophy Neo-Pythagoreanism, as
the former was Neo-Platonism.
q E. g. the Alexander of Pontus, whom Lucian holds up to ridi
cule. On ApoUonius of Tyana, see a subsequent note.
F

66 LECTURE IL
among a few it created yearnings for a nobler satis
faction, which drew them toward Christianity, as
in the case of the Clemens, whose autobiography
professes to be given in the weU-known work of
the early ages, the Clementines. (11)
Such seem to have been the chief forms .of reh
gious thought existing among the heathen to whom
Christianity presented itself, on which were founded
the preparation of heart which led to the accep
tance of its message, or the prejudices which rejected
its claims ; — viz. among the masses, a sensuous un
inteUigent behef in polytheism ; — among the edu
cated, disorganization of belief; either materialism,
the total rejection of the supernatural, and a poHtical
attachment on the principle of expedience to existing
creeds ; or phUosophy, ethical, duahstic, pantheistic,
despising reHgions as mere organic products of na
tional thought, and trjdng to seize the central truths
of which they were the expression ; or a mystical
craving after the supernatural, degrading its victims
into fanatics. The further analysis of these tenden
cies would show their connexion with the threefold
classffication before given of the tests of truth into
sense, reason, and feeling.
V We have thus prepared the way for interpreting
the fines of argument used in opposition to Christi
anity, and shaU now proceed to sketch in chronological
succession the history of the chief intellectual attacks
made by unbehevers.
It is not until the middle of the second century

LECTURE II 67
that we find Christianity becoming the subject of
Hterary mvestigation. Incidental expressions either
of scorn or of misapprehension form the sole aUusions
in the heathen writers of earher date (12) ; but in
the reigns of the Antomnes, the Christians began to
attract notice and to meet with criticism. We read
of a work written agamst Christianity by a Cynic,
Crescens, in the reign of Antoninus Pius''; and of
another by the tutor of Marcus AureHus, Fronto of
CfrtaS in which probably the imperial persecution
was justified.
It is at this time too that we meet with an attempt
to hold the Christians up to ridicule in a satire of
Lucian', which weU exemplifies the views belonging
¦¦ Crescens is named in Justin Martyr {Apolog. II. 3), who wrote
against his attack ; Tatian {Orat adv. Grac. c. 3) ; Eusebius {Eccl.
Hist. iv. 16). The last, on the strength of Tatian, accuses him of
causing Justin's death.
s Cornelius Fronto is referred to by Minucius Felix {Octav. ch. 9.
^•id 31), as having charged incestuous banquets on the Christians.
Tzchirner {Opusc. Acad. 1829. p. 294) conjectures that his work may
have been a legal speech against some Christian, which implied a
defence of the imperial persecution. Part of Fronto's works have
been found during the present century, and edited with a disserta
tion on his life and writings by Angelo Mai. (On his work against
Christianity, see p. 57. of the dissertation.) A brief account of
them may be found in Smith's Biographical Dictionary sub Fronto.
' Lucian probably lived from about A.D. 125 to 200. Consult
the account given by Donaldson {Gr. Lit. ch. 54- § 3 and 4) of his
life, opinions, and works, where a comparison is drawn between him
and Voltaire ; also Mr. Dyer's article Luoianus in Smith's Biogra
phical Dictionary ; also Fabricius' Bihliotheca Grceca v. 340. (ed.
Harles) ; Lardner's Collection of Jewish and Heathen Testimonies,
F 2

68 ' LECTURE IL /
to the sceptical of the four classes into which we have
divided the rehgious opinions of the heat|ien. His
tract, the Peregrinus Proteus, it can hardly be doubted,
is intended as a satire on Christian martyrdoflii (13).
Peregrinus^ is a Cynic phUosopher, who aifter a Hfe
of early viUany is made by Lucian to play the hypo
crite at Antioch and join himself to the Christians,
' miserable men' (as he calls them), ' who, hoping for
immortahty in soul and body, had a foolish con
tempt of death, and suffered themselves to be per
suaded that they were brethren, because, having aban
doned the Greek gods, they worshipped the cruci
fied sophist, living according to his laws''.' Pere
grinus, when a Christian, soon rises to the dignity
of bishop, and is worshipped as a god; and when im
prisoned for his reHgion is visited by Christians from
aU quarters. Afterwards, expeUed the church, he
travels over the world ; and at last for the sake of
glory bums himself pubhcly at Olympia about A.D.
165. His end is described in a tragico-comic manner.
Works, vol. viii. ch. 1 9. The satire referred to above is entitled Ilepl ttjs
nepiypivov rfXevTTjs.
1 We learn from other writers that Peregrinus was a real charac
ter; but Aulus Gellius (xii. 11), gives a much more favourable cha
racter of him than Lucian.
" The passage (of which this is Tzchirner's paraphrase) is : Ucm-
Kaa-c yap avToiis ol KaKobaliiovts t6 p,ev oKov addvaroi eo-ecr^at Km fiiaxrea-dat
TOV del XP""""' Tap ^ ««' Karacjipovova-i tov Savdrov Kal eKdvres avrovs im-
hihoatriv oi noXKoi- emira 8e 6 vop-oOerifs 6 Trparos emicrev avrovs as dSfX-
</)0( n-dvTcs elev dXXijXiBj/, eireMv ilira^ napa^dvres eeois p.fv rovs ''E'K'KrjVi-
Koi/s dnr]pvr]<ravTat, tov 8e dvc<TKo\om<rp.cvov iKfXvov (ro^urrriv avT&v jrpocnev-
j,a(Ti Kal Kara tovs iKclvov v6px)vs ^i&cri. Pereo'. Prot. S I ^.

LECTURE II 69
and a legend is recounted that at his death he was seen
in white, and that a hawk ascended from his pyre.
Lucian has here used a real name to describe a
class, not a person. He has given a caricature paint
ing from historic elements. There seems internal
evidence to show that he was sHghtly acquainted
with the books of the early Christians y. It has even
been conjectured that he might have read and de
signed to parody the epistles of Ignatius''. With more.
probabUity we may beHeve that he had heard of and
misunderstood the heroic bearing of the Christian
martyrs in the momente of their last sufferings. Pope
Alexander VII. in 1664 placed this tract in the index
of prohibited books : yet even beneath the satire we
rather hafl Lucian as an unconscious witness to seve
ral beautiful features in the character of the Chris
tians of his time*; viz. their worship of "the crucified
sophist," who was their adorable Lord ; their gufle-
lessness ; their brotherly love ; their strict discipline ;
their common meals ; their union ; their benevolence ;
their joy in death. The points which he depicts in
y Cfr. Pereg. Prot. § 11 and 12.
^ Bp. Pearson considered ( Vindic. Ignat. part. ii. 6,) that an al
lusion is made to the death of Ignatius, (Cfr. Le Moyne, Varia Sacra
(pref.) 1694, for a somewhat similar argument in reference to Poly-
carp.) A. Planck in his Lucian und Christenthv/m (part i.) in Stud.
und Krit. 1 851., the references to which are given in note 12 of
these lectures, tries to show that Lucian alludes even to Ignatius's
letters. If he does not succeed in establishing this point, he at
least (part iii.) makes Lucian's knowledge of Christian literature
extremely probable.
a These are enumerated by A. Planck, (id. partii.)

70 LECTURE II
his satire are, their credulity in giving way to Pere
grinus; their unintelligent belief in Christ and in im
mortality ; their factiousness in aiding Peregrinus
when in prison ; their pompous vanity in martyr
dom, and possibly their tendency to beHeve legends
respecting a martyr's death. His satire is contempt,
not anger, nor dread. It is the humour of a thorough
sceptic, which discharged itself on aU religions alike ;
and indicates one type of opposition to Christianity ;
viz. the contempt of those who thought it foUy.
Very imUke to him was his weU-known contempo
rary Celsus. If the one represents the scoffer, the
other represents the phUosopher. Not despising
Christianity with scorn hke Tacitus, nor jeering at it
with humour hke Lucian, Celsus had the wisdom to
apprehend danger to heathenism, measuring Christ
ianity in its mental and not its material relations ; and
about the reign of Marcus Aurelius wrote against it
a work entitled Ao'709 a\ij6^?, which was considered of
such importance, that Origen towards the close of his
own Hfe'' wrote a large and elaborate reply to it.
We know nothing of Celsus's Hfe''. There is even
^ Huet thinks the date was subsequent to A.D. 246. {Origeniana
i. c. 3. § II. ed. 1668.)
<= There is a doubt whether the Celsus against whom Origen
wrote is the friend to whom Lucian has addressed his life of the
magician Alexander of Abonoteichus. The arguments on this
question are stated and weighed in Neander's Kirchengeschichte,
vol. i. 169, and Baur's Oeschichte der drei ersten Jah/rhunderte,
p. 371.) Both conclude that the persons were different. The
evidence of their oneness is chiefly Origen's conjecture that they

LECTURE IL 71
an uncertainty as to the school of phUosophy to which
he belonged. External evidence seems to testify that
he was an Epicurean ; but intemal would lead us to
classify him with the Platonic. Unscrupulous in argu
ment, confounding canonical gospels with apocryphal,
and Christians with heretical sects, dehghting in
searching for contradictions, incapable of understand
ing the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united
in his attack aU known objections, making use of
minute criticism, phflosophical theory, piquant sar
casm, and eloquent invective, as the vehicle of his
passionate assault.
It is impossible to recover a continuous account of
the work of Celsus from the treatise of his respon
dent ; but a careful study of the fragments embedded
in the text of Origen wfll perhaps restore the frame
work of the original sufficiently to enable us to per
ceive the points of his opposition to Christianity,
and the manner in which his phflosophy stood in
the way of the reception of it. (14)
Celsus commences by introducing a Jewish rabbi
to attack Christianity from the monotheistic stand
point of the earher faith''. The Jew is first made to
were the same person (Cont. Celsum. iv. 36.) The evidence against
it is, (i) that Lucian's friend attacked magical rites; the Celsus of
Origen seems to have believed them : (2) that Lucian's friend was
probably an Epicurean, the other Celsus a Platonist or Eclectic :
(3) that the former is praised for his mildness, the latter shows want
of moderation. Pressens^ nevertheless (ut sup. vol. ii. p. 105.) re
gards them as the same person.
d B. i. c. 28. The references are made to the chapters in the

72 LECTURE II
direct his criticism against the documents of Christ
ianity, and then the facts narrated ^ He points out
inconsistencies in the gospel narratives of the gene
alogy of Christ f; utters the most blasphemous
calumnies concernuig the incarnation s; turns the nar
rative of the infancy into ridicule *> ; imputes our
Saviour's miracles to magic*; attacks his divinityj;
and concentrates the bitterest raillery on the af
fecting narrative of our blessed Lord's most holy
passion. Each fact of deepening sorrow in that
divine tragedy, the betrayal'^, the mental anguish, the
sacred agony', is made the subject of remarks cha
racterized no less by coarseness of taste and un
fairness, than to the Christian mind by irreve
rence. Instead of his heart being touched by the
majesty of our Saviour's sorrow, ' Celsus only finds an
argument against the divine character of the adorable
sufferer™. The wonders accompanying Christ's death
are treated as legends" ; the resurrection regarded as
an invention or an optical delusion".
After Celsus has thus made the Jew the means of

Benedictine edition by De la Rue (Paris, 1733.) The earlier part
of b. i. is miscellaneous in nature and seems prefatory ; and it is
not easy to determine the relation of Origen's remarks in it to the
arrangement of Celsus's book.
e Speaking generally, B. i. ch. 27, 28, 32, may be taken as the
one, and the rest of b. i., together with b. ii. as the other.
f B. ii. § 32. g B. i. 28, 32-35. h B. i. 37, 58, 66.
i B. i. 38, 68. j B; i. 57 ; ii. 9, &c. k B. ii. 21.
1 B. ii. 24. " B. ii. 16. n B. iii. 38.
° B. iii. 59, 55, 57, 78.

LECTURE II 73
a ruthless attack on Christianity, he himself directs
a similar one against the Jewish rehgion itself". He
goes to the origin of their history ; describes the
Jews as having left Egypt in a sedition^ ; as being
trae types of the Christians in their ancient factious
ness'' ; considers Moses to be only on a level with
the early Greek legislators* ; regards Jewish rites Hke
circumcision to be borrowed from Egypt ; charges
anthropomorphism on Jewish theology', and declines
aUowing the allegorical interpretation in explanation
of it" ; examines Jewish prophecy, parallels it with
heathen oracles '', and claims that the goodness not
the truth of a prophecy ought to be considered ^ ;
points to the ancient idolatry of the Jews as proof
that they were not better than other nations'' ; and
to the destruction of Jerusalem as proof that they
were not special favourites of heaven. At last he
arrives at their idea of creation", and here reveals the
real ground of his antipathy; WhUe he objects to
details in the narrative, such as the mention of days
before the existence of the sun"*, his real hatred is
against the idea of the unity of God, and the freedom
of Deity in the act of creation. It is the struggle of
pantheism against theism.
When Celsus has thus made use of the Jew to
refute Christianity from the Jewish stand-point, and
P B. iii. § I and elsewhere. 1 B. iii. § 5. ¦¦ B. iii. § 5.
s B. i. 17, 18 ; i. 22. t B. iv. 71 ; vi. 62. " B. iv. 48.
X B. vii. 3 ; viii. 45. >" B. vii. 14. ' B. iv. 22, 23.
a B. iv. 74 ; vi. 49, &c. b B. vi. 60.

74 LECTURE IL
afterwards refated the Jew from his own, he proceeds
to make his own attack on Christianity ; in doing
which, he first examines the Hves of Christians '', and
afterwards the Christian doctrine*^ ; thus skUfoUy
prejudicing the mind of his readers against the per
sons before attacking the doctrines. He aUudes to
the quarrelsomeness shown in the various sects of
Christians ^, and repeats the calurnnious suspicion of
disloyalty f, want of patriotism s, and poHtical useless-
ness** ; and hence defends the public persecution of
them'. FUled with the esoteric pride of ancient phi
losophy, he reproaches the Christians with their care
fulness to proselytize the poor'', and to convert the
vicious' ; thus unconsciously giving a noble testimony
to one of the most divine features in our reHgion,
and testifying to the preaching of the doctrine of a
Saviour for sinners.
Having thus defamed the Christians, he passes to
the examination of the Christian doctrine, in its form,
its method, and its substance. His sesthetic sense,
ruined with the idolatry of form, and unable to ap
preciate the thought, regards the Gospels as defective
and rude through simphcity"'. The method of Chris
tian teaching also seems to him to be defective, as
lacking phflosophy and dialectic, and as denouncing the
use of reason". Lastly, he turns to the substance of the
<= B. iii. d B. V. vi. vii. e B. iii. lo. f B. iii. 5, 14.
- B. iii. § 55 ; viii. 73. h b. viiij 69. i B. viii. 69.
^ B. iii. 44, 50. 1 B. iii. 59, 62, 74. m B. iii. 55 ; viii. 37.
" B. vii. 9 ; i. 2 ; i. 9 ; iii. 39 ; vi. 10.

LECTURE II 76
dogmas themselves. He distinguishes two elements
in them, the one of which, as bearing resemblance to
phUosophy or to heathen reHgion, he regards as in
contestably true, but denies its originahty,. and en
deavours to derive it from Persia or from Platonism" ;
resolving, for example, the worship of a human being
into the ordinary phenomenon of apotheosis p. The
other class of doctrines which he attacks as false, con
sists of those which relate to creation^, the incarna
tion'', the faU^ redemption*, man's place in creation",
moral conversions", and the resurrection of the dead^.
His point of view for criticising them is derived from
the fundamental duahsm of the Platonic system ; the
eternal severance of matter and mind, of God and the
world ; and the reference of good to the region of mind,
evU to that of matter. Thus, not content with his
former attack on the idea of creation in discussion with
the Jew, he returns to the discussion from the phflo
sophical side. His Platonism wUl not aUow him to
admit that the absolute God, the first Cause, can
have any contact with matter. It leads him also to
give importance to the idea of Saifxcves, or divine
mediators, by which the chasm is fiUed between the
ideal god and the world ^ ; not being able otherwise
to imagine the action of the pure ISea of God on a
" B. vi. 15 ; vi. 22, 58, 62 ; v. 63 ; vi. i.
P B. iii. 22 ; vii. 28-30. q B. iv. 37 ; vi. 49.
r B. iv. 14; V. 2; vii. 36. s B. iv. 62, 70.
t B. V. 14 ; vii. 28, 36; vi. 78. " B. iv. 74, 76, 23.
" B. iii. 65. y B. V. 14, 15. ^ B. vii. 68; viii. (2-14) 35, 38.

76 LECTURE II
world of matter. Hence he blames Christians for
attributing an evfl nature to demons, and finds a
reasonable interpretation of the heathen worship".
The same dualist theory extinguishes the idea of the
incarnation, as a degradation of God ; and also the
doctrine of the faU, inasmuch as psychological dete
rioration is impossible if the soul be pure, and if evU
be a necessary attribute of matter •*. With the faU,
redemption also disappears, because the perfect cannot
admit of change ; Christ's coming could only be to
correct what God already knew, or rectify what ought
to have been corrected before". Further, Celsus
argues, if Divinity did descend, that it would not
assume so lowly a form as Jesus. The same rigorous
logic charges on Christianity the undue elevation of
man, as weU as the abasement of God. Celsus can
neither admit man more than the brutes to be the
final cause of the universe ; nor aUow the possibihty
of man's nearness to God''. His pantheism, destroy
ing the barrier which separates the material from the
moral, obHterates the perception of the fact that a
single free responsible being may be of more dignity
than the universe.
Such is the type of a phflosophical objector against
Christianity, a Httle later than the middle of the
second century. We meet here for the first time a
remarkable effort of pagan thought, endeavouring to

a B. viii. 2. b B. iv. 99.
<^ B. iv. 3, 7, 18. d B. iv. 74.

LECTURE II 77
extinguish the new rehgion ; the definite statements
of a mind that investigated its claims and rejected it.
Most of the objections of Celsus are sophistical ; a
few are admitted difficiflties ; but the phUosophical
class of them wiU be seen to be the coroUary from
his general principle before explained.
A century intervenes before we meet with the
next Hterary assaUant, Porphyry. In the interval
the new reactionary phUosophy had fuUy taken root,
and the fresh attack accordingly bears the impress
of the new system.
The chief objections made in the intervening period,
as we coUect them from the apologies, were such
as belong fitly to a transitional time, when Christianity
was exciting attention but was not understood" ;
and are chiefly the result of the second of the ten
dencies before named, viz., either of popular prejudice,
or of the poHtical alarm in reference to the social
disorganization Hkely to arise out of a large defection
from the reHgion of the empire, which expressed it
self in overt acts of .persecution on the part of the
state. (15) Both equaUy He beyond our field of
investigation ; the one because it does not belong
to the examination of Christianity made by inteUi-
gent thought ; the other because it is the struggle of
deeds, not of ideas, which only have an interest for
us, if, as in Julian's case hereafter, the acts were dic-
e On the alteration in the attacks, Cfr. Gerard (of Aberdeen),
Compendium of Evidences, 1828. (part ii. ch. i.)

78 LECTURE II
tated by the dehberate advice of persons who had
attentively examined Christianity.
The apprehensions of prejudice graduaUy subsided,
and objections began to be based on grounds less ab
surd in character. The poHtical opposition also was
henceforth founded on a more subtle pohcy, and on
an appreciation of the nature of Christianity. Soon
after the middle of the third century we meet with
the next attack of a purely Hterary kind, viz., by
Porphyry, the most distinguished opponent that
Christianity had yet encountered''. The pupU of
Longinus, perhaps of Origen ^j and the biographer
and interpreter of Plotinus, he is best known for his
logical writings, and for the development of the
theory of predication in his introduction to the Orga
non, which formed the text on which hung the medi
seval speculations of scholasticism''. His Syrian origin
and oriental culture perhaps prepared him for a fasion
of East and West, and for admitting a deeper admix
ture of mysticism mto the Neo-Platonic phflosophy,
of which he was a disciple. The points of his ap-
f Porphyry lived from about A. D. 233 to 305. For his life and
writings see Holstenius de Vit. Porphyr. (1630) ; Fabric. Bihl.
Grcec.Tf. 725. (ed. Harles); Lardner's Works, viii. 37 ; Donaldson's
Gr. Lit. ch. 53. § 7. For his attack on Christianity consult Nean
der's Kirchengeseh. i. 290 ; Pressense ii. 156.
S His own words, quoted in Eusebius {Eccl. Hist. iii. 1 9), have
been thought to imply this, but seem merely to state his acquaint
ance in youth with Origen. See Holsten. Vit. Porphyr. p. 1 6.
^ Cousin (Pref. to Edition of Abelard's Sic et Non, p. 6 1 . note
46.) considers that a passage which Boethius quoted from Porphyry
was the means of reviving philosophical speculation on this point.

LECTURE II. 79
proximation to Christianity are the result of those
elements in which heathen phUosophy most nearly
approached to Christian truth, the development
of which was stimulated in minds essentiaUy anti
christian by the effort to find a rival to it.. Ad
mirably prepared by his serious and spiritual tone to
embrace Christianity, he nevertheless Hved a disciple
of paganism. His feelmgs rather than his reason led
him to defend national creeds. His phUosophy
and the Christian, which seemed to be aspirations
after the same end, being designed to elevate the
spirit above the world of sense, were reaUy radically
opposed. Understanding therefore the power of the
Christian reHgion, he felt the necessity for supplant
ing it ; and hoped to do so by spiritualising the old
creeds, which he harmonized with phUosophy by
means of regarding them as symboHc '.
His opposition to Christianity was not however

' He seems especially to have felt the difficulty which was before
noticed as marking one type of religious opinion, the craving for a
theology which rested on some divine authority, or revelation from
the world invisible, (Cfr. Augustin's criticisms on him in De Civ.
Dei. X. ch. 9, 11, 26, 28) ; and hence he drew such a system from
the real or pretended answers of oracles, in his irtpl ttjs ck \oyluiv <pi-
\oa-o(t>ias, of which fragments exist in Eusebius and Augustin (Fabric.
Bibl Gr. V. 744)- Heathens, it would seem, had consulted oracles
on this very subject of Christianity ; and it is these, the genuineness
of which may be doubted, that he uses. His aim seems to have been
to support the existing religious system ; and for this jjurpose he fa
voured the alliance with the priestly system, and the institution of
religious rites. See Neander Kirchengeseh. i. 293.

so lECTURE II
based whoUy on a prejudice of feeling. He was a
man cultivated in afl the learning of his age, and of a
more generous temper than Celsus, and seems to
have exercised much critical sagacity in the investi
gation of the claims of Christianity. About the year
270, whfle in retirement in SicUy, he wrote a book
against the Christians ''. This work having been de
stroyed, we are left to gather its contents and the
opinions of its author from a few criticisms in Euse
bius and Jerome. The entire work consisted of fif
teen books ; and concerning only five of these is infor
mation afforded by them. Their remarks lead us to
conjecture that it was an assaiflt on Christianity in
many relations. The books however of which we
know the purpose, seem to have been critical rather
than phUosophical, directed against the grounds of the
reHgion rather than its character ; being in fact an
assault on the Bible. The existence of such a line of
argument, of which a trace was already observable in
Celsus, is explained by the circumstance that the
faith of Christendom was already fixed on the au
thority of the sacred books. The church had always
acknowledged the authority of the Jewish scriptures ;
and by the middle or close of the second century at
the latest, it had come to acknowledge expHcitly
the co-ordinate authority of a body of Christian Hte-

^ On this work, Kara XpKTTiavZv, see Holsten. ( Vita Porphyr. c. x.)
who quotes at length from the Fathers the principal passages in
which allusion to it is made.

LECTURE II 81
rature, historic, and epistolary'. Hence, when once
the idea of a rule of faith had grown common, the
investigation of the contents of the scriptures became
necessary on the part of heathen opponents. The
growingly critical character of Porphyry's statements,
though partly attributable to the literary culture of
his mind, is a shght undesigned evidence corrobo
rative of the authoritative nature already attributed
to the scriptures in doctrine and truthfuhiess. Por
phyry seems accordingly to have directed his critical
powers to show such traces of mistakes and incorrect
ness as might invalidate the idea of a supernatural
origin for the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and
shake confidence in their truth as an authority.
The first book of his work™ dragged to Hght some
of the discrepancies, real or supposed, in scripture ;
1 Omitting allusi9n to the references concerning the canon fur
nished in older works, e. g. of Cosin, Dupin, Jones, Lardner, Michaelis,
some of which were written iu reference to the controversy between
the Romanists and Reformed, others between the Christians and
freethinkers, we may at least name Moses Stuart's work on the
Canon of the. OU Testament, and Credner Zu/r Oeschichte des
Kanons with reference to the New ; (the former is apologetic, the
latter independent and slightly rationalistic, but full of learning ;)
and especially the work on the Canon of the New Testament by Mr.
B. F. Westcott (1855), and the article on Canon by him in Smith's
Biblical Dictionary, where references to fuller literary materials are
given. >n Hieronymi Opera, (at the end of the Proem, of the Commentary
on Galatians) vol. 4. part i. p. 223, Benedictine edition of Martianay,
1706 ; also Galat. ii. 11. (id. p. 244) ; also at the end of book xiv.,
(Isaiah liii.) vol. iii. p. 388 ; also Ep. 74 to Augustin (id. iv.
part ii. 619, 622.) G

82 LECTURE II
and the examination of the dispute between St. Peter
and St. Paul was quoted as an instance of the ad
mixture of human ingredients in the body of apo-
stohc teaching. His third book" was directed to the
subject of scripture interpretation, especially, with
some inconsistency, against the aUegorical or mystical
tendency which at that time marked the whole
church, and especiaUy the Alexandrian fathers. The
aUegorical method coincided with, if it did not arise
from, the oriental instinct of symboHsm, the natural
poetry of the human mind. But in the minds of Jews
and Christians it had been sanctffied by its use in
the Hebrew reHgion, and had become associated with
the apocryphal Hterature of the Jewish churchi It
is traceable to a more Hmited extent in the inspired
writers of the New Testament, and in most of the
fathers ; but in the school of Alexandria" it was
adopted as a formal system of interpretation. It is
this aUegorical system which Porphyry attacked.
He assaulted the writings of those who had fanci
fully aUegorised the Old Testament in the pious
° Euseb. Eccl. Hist.yi. c. 19. (ed. Gaisford, p. 414) gives a long
extract from Porphyry. Of the second book nothing is known.
" On the school of Alexandria see H. E. F. Guericke Schola qiUB
Alex, floruit, 1825. (p. 51-81); Matter's Essai sur Vecole dAlex-
andrie, 1840; Nean;'er's Kirchengeseh. II. 908 seq, 1196 seq. On
the allegorical method of interpretation adopted by Origen, see
Huet's Origeniana II. qusest. 13. (vol. i. 170) ; Conybeare's Bamp
ton Lecture for 1824 (Lect. 2-4) ; R. A.Vaughan's Essays and Re
mains (Essay I); and an article in the North British Review, No. 46,
August 1855. Also compare a note on systems of interpretation
in Lect. VI.

LECTURE II 83
desire of finding Christianity m every part of it, in
spite of historic conditions ; and he hastUy drew the
inference, with something like the feeling of doubt
which rash interpretations of prophecy are in danger
of producing at this day, that no consistent sense can
be put upon the Old Testament. His fourth book?
was a criticism on the Mosaic history, and on Jewish
antiquities. But the most important books in his
work were the twelfth i and thirteenth •¦, which were
devoted to an examination of the prophecies of Daniel,
in which he detected some of those peculiarities on
which modem criticism has employed itself, and
arrived at the conclusions in reference to its date,
revived by the EngHsh deist CoUins in the last
century, and by many German critics in the present.
It is weU known that half of the book of DanieP
P Euseb. Praep. i. 9 ; x. 9 ; which passages merely express the
hostility of Porphyry.
9 In Jerome's Proem, to Daniel are four passages. (See Works,
vol. iii. p. 1073-4.)
>¦ See Jerome. Comm. on Matt. xxiv. 15. (b. iv. vol. iv. p. 1 15.)
s As early as the time of Spinoza, from whose work, the Theolo-
gicus Politicus, Collins may perhaps have indirectly derived hints ;
doubts of the authenticity of parts were expressed ; and the inquiry
was pursued by Michaelis and Eichhorn : but the modern criticism
on it dates especially from Berthold (1806), who impugned its au
thenticity. Bleek (1822), De Wette, Von Lengerke of Konigsberg
(1835), Maurer (1838), more recently Hitzig (1850), and Liicke
(1852), followed on the same side. The English theologian, Dr.
Arnold, adopted the same view. The contrary opinion has been
maintained by Hengstenberg (1831), Havernich (1832), Keil (1853);
Delitzch (in Herzog's Encycl. 1854), Auberlen (1857), by Moses
Stuart, and by Dr. S. Davidson (Introduction to the Old Testament,
G 2

84 LECTURE II
is historic, half prophetic. Each of these parts is
distinguished from simUar portions of the Old Testa
ment by some pecuharities. Porphyry is not re
corded as noticing any of those which belong to the
historic part, unless we may conjecture, from his
theory of the book being originaUy written in Greek,
that he detected the presence of those Greek words
in Nebuchadnezzar's edicts which many modem critics
have contended could not be introduced into Chaldaea
antecedently to the Macedonian conquest*. The pe
culiarity aUeged to belong to the prophetical part is
its apocalyptic tone. It looks, it has been said, his
torical rather than prophetical. Definite events, and
a chain of definite events, are predicted with the pre-
1856). Hengstenberg, Havernich, and Auberlen are translated. The
first of these three is valuable, especially for the literary and exe-
getical questions ; the second as a controversial commentary ; the
third for tracing the organic unity of the book.
' The importance attached to the occurrence of Greek words
is much over-estimated. They can only be shown to be four,
which occur in ch. iii. 5, 7, 10; viz., Din'i: KiSapa, «jap a-ap.^vKrj,
n^jepiD crvp-flxoi'ta, jnfijpB yjfaKTrjptov ; all of which relate to musical
instruments, not unlikely to be introduced by commerce, and which
would naturally be called by their foreign names. Some of the
writers named in a preceding note have examined incidentally the
character of the Hebrew and Chaldee of Daniel, and consider that
both are similar to those of works confessedly of the age of Daniel ;
and that the Chaldee is separated by a chasm from that of the
earliest Targums. Professor Pusey delivered a lecture on the sub
ject in the university, containing the results of his own recent
studies, in the summer of the present year, which will form one of a
printed course of lectures on Daniel. See also an article by the
Rev. J. M<=Gill in the Journal of Sacred Literature, Jan. 1861.

LECTURE II 85
cision of historical narrative"; whereas most prophecy
is a moral sermon, in which general moral predictions
are given, with specffic historic ones interspersed. Nor
is this, which is shared in a less degree by occasional
prophecies elsewhere, the only pecuharity aUeged, but
it is affirmed also that the definite character ceases at
a particular period of the reign of Antiochus Epi-
phanes'', down to which the very campaigns of the
Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties are noted, but sub
sequently to which the prophetic tone becomes more
vague and indefinite. Hence the conjecture has been
hazarded that it was written in the reign of Antio
chus, by a Palestinian Jew, who gathered up the
traditions of Daniel's hfe, and wrote the recent history
of his country in eloquent language, in an apocalyptic
form ; which, after the literary fashion of his age, he
imputed to an ancient seer, Daniel ; definite up to
the period at which he composed it, indefinite as he
gazed on the future. (16) It was this peculiarity,
the supposed ceasing of the prophecies in the
book of Daniel at a definite date, which was noticed
by Porphjrry, and led him to suggest the theory of
its authorship just named >'. These remarks wfll
" E. g. the wars of the kings of the north and of the south, c. xi.
X Viz., till about B. C. 164.
y He seems also to have entered into some examination of the
specific prophecies ; for he objects to the application of the words
" the abomination of desolation" to other objects than that which
he considers its original meaning. See Hieronym. on Matt. xxiv. 15.
the reference to which is given in a preceding note.

86 LECTURE IL
give an idea of the critical acuteness of Porphyry.
His objections are not, it wiU be observed, founded
on quibbles like those of Celsus, but on instruc
tive Hterary characteristics, many of which are greatly
exaggerated or grossly misinterpreted, but stUl are
real, and suggest difficulties or inquiries which the
best modern theological critics have honourably felt to
demand candid examination and explanation^.
A period of about thirty years brings us to the
date of the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 303 ; during
the progress of which another noted attack was
made. It was by Hierocles, then president of Bithy-
nia, and afterwards prsefect of Alexandria, himself one
of the instigators of the persecution and an agent in
effecting it". His line of argument was more specffic
" A few other traces of Porphyry's views remain, which are of
less importance, and are levelled against parts of the New Testa
ment : e. g. the change of purpose in our blessed Lord (John vii.)
[Hieronym. vol. iv. partii. p. 521. {Dial adv. Pelag.); Ep. (loi) ad
Pammach. Several are given in Holsten. {Vit. Porphyr. p. 86)],
the reasons why the Old Testament was abrogated if divine,
[Augustin. Epist (102, olim 49, Benedict, ed. 1689) vol. ii. p. 274,
where six questions are named, some of which come from Porphyry:]
the question what became of the generations which lived before
Christianity was proclaimed, if Christianity was the only way of
salvation ; objections to the severity of St. Peter in the death of
Ananias ; and the inscrutable mystery of an infinite punishment
in requital for finite sin. (Aug. Retract b. ii. c. 31. vol. i. p. 53,
concerning Matt. vii. 2.)
« Hierocles' work was called Ao'yo. ^iXaX^^etf Trpbs rois Xpi^navois.
Our knowledge of it depends upon the refutation which Eusebius
wrote of it ; and upon passages in Lactantius {Instit v. 2, and
De Mort. Persecut 16.) Concerning Hierocles see Bayle's DieUon-

LECTURE II 87
than those previously named, being directed against
the evidence which was derived by Christians for
the truth of their rehgion from the character and
miraculous works of Christ ; and his aim accordingly
was to develope the character of ApoUonius of Ty
ana*', as a rival to our Saviour in piety and miraculous
power. ApoUonius was a Pythagorean phUosopher, born in
Cappadocia about four years before the Christian
era. After being early educated in the circle of phi
losophy, and in the practice of the ascetic disciphne of
liis predecessor Pythagoras, he imitated that phUo
sopher in spending the next portion of his life in
travel. Attracted by his mysticism to the farthest
East as the source of knowledge, he set out for
Persia and India ; and in Nineveh on his route met
Damis, the future chronicler of his actions. Return
ing from the East instructed in Brahminic lore, he
traveUed over the Roman world. The remainder of
his days was spent in Asia Minor. Statues and
temples were erected to his honour. He obtained
a/ry, sub voc. (notes); Fabric. Bibl. Gr. i. 792. note ; Cave's Hist
Lit. i. 131. ii. 99 ; Lardner's Works, vol. viii. ch. 39. § 1-4, and
Neander's Kirchengeseh. i. 296.
^ On ApoUonius of Tyana, see Lardner's Works, vol. viii. ch. 39.
§ 5, 6. Ritter's History of Philosophy (vol. iv. b. xii. ch. 7.), and
especially the monograph by C. Baur of Tiibingen, ApoUonius von
Tyana und Christus oder das Verhaeltniss des Pythagoreisnms zwm
Christenthvm (1832); also the Abb6 Houtteville's Essay affixed
to the Discourse on the Method of the Principal Authors for and
against Christianity, translated 1739; and the article ApoUonius
by Professor Jowett in Smith's Biographical Dictionary.

88 LECTURE II
vast influence, and died with the reputation of sanc
tity late in the century. Such is the outline of his
life, if we omit the numerous legends and prodigies
which attach themselves to ins name. He was partly
a phflosopher, partly a magician ; half mystic, half
impostor"^. At the distance of a century and a
quarter from his death, in the reign of Septimius
Severus, at the request of the wife of that emperor,
the second of the three Phflostrati dressed up Damis's
narrative of his Hfe, in a work still remaming, and
paved a way for the general reception of the story
among the cultivated classes of Rome and Greece*.
It has been thought that Phflostratus had a
polemical aim against the Christian faith % as the
memoir of ApoUonius is in so many points a parody
on the life of Christ. The annunciation of his birth
to his mother, the chorus of swans which sang
for joy on occasion of it, the casting out devfls, the
raising the dead, and healing the sick, the sudden
disappearance and re-appearance of ApoUonius, the
0 He was probably midway between Pythagoras and the Alex
ander named by Lucian.
d It was written about A.D. 210, at the request of Julia Domna,
and is entitled ra is tov Tvave'a. ATToXXaviov. On this life by Philos
tratus see Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. 541.; the above-named works of
Houtteville and Baur ; Donaldson's Gr. Lit ch. lii. § 7 ; Pressense ii.
144 seq. ; and a recent translation of Philostratus with remarks by
A. Chassang, "Le Mai-veilleux dans I'Antiquit^" (1862).
e Lardner and Ritter think that Philostratus did not write with
a polemical reference to Christianity, but Baur concludes other
wise. Dean Trench has made a few remarks in reference to this
question {Notes to Miracles, p. 62.)

LECTURE II 89
sacred voice which caUed him at his death, and his
claim to be a teacher with authority to, reform the
world, form some of the points of simUarity.
If such was the intention of PhUostratus, he was
really a controversiaUst under the form of a writer of
romance ; employed by those who at that time were
labouring (as already named) to introduce an eclecti
cism largely borrowed from the East into the region
both of phflosophy and reHgion. Without settHng this
question, it is at least certain that about the beginning
of the next century the heathen writers adopted this
line of argument, and sought to exhibit a rival ideal '.
One instance is the life of Pythagoras by lambhchus;
another that which Hierocles wrote, in part of which
he used Philostratus's untrustworthy memoir for the
purpose of instituting a comparison between Apol-
lonius and Christ. The sceptic who referred re
ligious phenomena to fanaticism would hence avaU
himself of the comparison as a satisfactory account of
the origin of Christianity ; whfle others would adopt
the same view as Hierocles, and deprive the Christian
miracles of the force of evidence, — a line of argument
which was reproduced by an EngHsh deists who
translated the work of Phflostratus at the end of the
seventeenth century. The work of Hierocles is lost,
f On lamblichus's Life of Pythagoras, see Fabricius Bibl Gr.
V. 764 ; Lardner viii. 39. § 7., who however concludes in this case,
as in that of Philostratus, that the book was not designed against
Christianity. g Charles Blount in 1680. See Lect. IV.

90 LECTURE II
but an outline of its argument, with extracts, remains
in a reply which Eusebius wrote to a portion of it (17).
Though couched in a seeming spirit of fairness, the
tone was such as would be expected from one who
ungenerously avafled himself of the very moment of
a cruel persecution as the occasion of this hterary
attack. But the time of the church's sorrow was nearly
past. The hour of dehverance was at hand. The
emperor Constantino proclaimed toleration h, and
subsequently established Christianity as the state-
rehgion. Only one moment more of perfl was per
mitted to befaU it.
After an interval in which Christian emperors
reigned, JuHan ascended the throne, and employed
his short reign of two years' in trying to restore
heathenism; and during the last winter of his hfe,
whfle halting at Antioch in the course of his Eastern
war, wrote an elaborate work against Christianity'^.
The book itself has been destroyed, but the reply re
mains which Cyril of Alexandria thought it necessary
to write more than half a century afterwards ; and by
this means we can gather JuHan's opinions, just as
from his own letters and the contemporary history
we can gather his plans. The material straggle of
i» A.D. 313. » A.D. 361-3.
It Kara XpiariavSiv. See Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vii. 738 ; Lardner viii.
46. § 2, and 4 ; Donaldson iii. 303. Fragments of it are preserved in
C3rril's reply. The Marquis d'Argens, at the court of Frederick the
Great of Prussia, translated and tried to unite them. Defense du
Paganisme par V Empereu/r Julian, 1764.

LECTURE II 91
deeds belongs in this instance to our subject, inas
much as it is the overt expression of the struggle
of ideas.
JuHan, as already observed, differed from previous
opponents of Christianity, in having been educated a
Christian'. Associating when a student at the schools
of Athens with Gregory of Nazianzum and BasU, he
had every opportunity for understanding the Christian
reHgion and measuring its claims. The first cause of
his apostasy from it remains uncertain. One tradition
states that the shock to his creed arose from some
early injury received through the fraud of a pro
fessing Christian. Something is probably due to ex
asperation at the severity endured from Constantius ;
and perhaps still more is due to the natural pecuh
arity of his character. He was swayed by the imagi
nation rather than the reason, and was kindled with
an enthusiastic admiration of the old heathen Htera
ture and the historic glories of the heathen world.
His very style exhibits traces of imitation of the old
models after which he formed himself™. With a
spirit which the Itahan writers of the Renaissance
> On the life and reign of Julian, see Gibbon (Decline and Fall,
c. 22-24) j Fabricii Lux EvangeUi, 1721, c. 14, where the edicts
which refer to Christianity are collected ; Lardner viii. 46 ; Abbe
de la Bletterie's Vie de Julien ; Neander, Kirchengeseh 'iv..^ 6. ^wd.
188, who also wrote in 181 2 a monograph on the subject; Wig-
gers in Illgen's £"««. Zeitschr. 1837 ; Milman's Hist of Christianity
iii 6. On Julian's works see Fabric. Bibl Gr. vi. 7 19 seq. ; Donald
son iii. 57. § 6.
m Wyttenbach Opusc. i. 6 ; Donaldson iii. p. 307.

92 LECTURE IL
enable us to understand, his sympathies clung round
heathens untfl they entwined in their embrace
heathenism itself To a mind of this natural bias
sufficient grounds unhappfly would easily be found
to produce aversion to Christianity, in the quarrels
among sections of the church, and in the ambition
and inconsistency of the numbers of nominal converts
who embraced the reHgion when its pubhc establish
ment had rendered it their interest to do so; and
prejudice would add arguments for rejecting it.
Accordingly he devoted his short reign to restore
the ancient heathenism. Like Constantino, having
arrived at the throne through a troublous war, he
found the religion of the state opposed to his own
convictions, and determined to substitute that which
he himself professed. The difference however was
great. The religion of Constantino was young and
progressive ; that of Julian was effete. It is in this
respect that JuHan has been compared", in his cha
racter and acte, to those who in modern times, both
in Hterature and in politics, have devoted their
lives to roU back the progress of pubhc opinion, and
reproduce the spirit of the past by giving new life to
the relics of bygone ages. If Julian had succeeded
in his attempt, the victory could not have been per
manent. The steps by which he strove to carry out his

" By Strauss, Der Romantiker avf dem Throne des Gaesaren
oder Julian der dbtruennige 1847.

LECTURE II 93
views were not unlike those of Constantino". He
first proclaimed the estabhshment of the emperor's
reHgion as the reHgion of the state, permitting
toleration for all others. He next transferred the
Christian endowments to heathens, acting on the
principle previously established by Constantino. But
beyond this point he proceeded to measures which
had the nature of persecution. He declared the
Christian laity disquahfied for office in the state, — a
measure which could only be sophisticaUy maintained
on the plea of self-defence ; and, afraid of the engine
of education, forbade Christian professors to lecture
in the public schools of science and Hterature : and
probably he at last imposed a tax on those who did
not perform sacrffice. At the same time he saw the
necessity of a total reformation in paganism, if it
was to revive as the rival of Christianity ; and
planned, as Pontifex Maximus, a scheme for effecting
it, which involved the concealment of the absurdity
of its origin by aUegorical interpretation, together
with the estabhshment of a discipline and organisa
tion similar to the Christian, and special attention
on the part of the priesthood to moraHty and to
public works of mercy p. His bitter contempt for
0 There are some good remarks on Julian in Waddington's
Church History, ch. viii.
P He also made the well-known attempt to rebuild the temple
of Jerusalem. On the alleged miracle which prevented the execu
tion of the scheme, see Warburton's works vol. iv., Lardner vol.
viii. ch. 46. § 3, and Milman's note to Gibbon (c. 23.) Warburton

94 LECTURE IL
Christianity manifested itself in a pubhc edict, which
commanded that Christians should be denominated
by the opprobrious epithet " Gahlseans ;" and in some
of his extant letters') he evinces a bitterness against
it which finds its paraUel in Voltaire and SheUey.
A work remains, the Phflopatris, (18) usuafly
falsely assigned to Lucian, but which intemal evi
dence proves to belong to the reign of JuHan, in
which the unknown author, imitating the manner
but wanting the power of Lucian, holds up to
ridicule the sermons and teaching of some Christian
preachers. This work probably conveys the creed
of the imperial party, which is simple Deism. This
however is not the only source for ascertaining the
creed of Juhan, and the nature of his objections to
Christianity. In his letters, and in the reply of Cyril
to his now lost work, we possess more exact means
for determuiing his position and sentiments. (19)
He omitted, as we might expect, the grosser and
more frivolous charges against Christianity which
had been formerly expressed by those who were
ignorant of its real character. Indeed he seems to
have been willing to recognise it as one form of
religion, but decHned to admit its monopoly of claim
to be regarded as the only trae form. Though him-
believes the miracle ; but Lardner hesitates. The original passages
which refer to it are Amm. Marcell. xxiii. ch. i ; Ambr. Ep. xi. 2 ;
Chrysost. adv. Jud. et Gent; Greg. Naz. Orat 4. adv. Jul.
q E. g. Ep. to Ecdidius (Ep. 9, Spanheim's edition, 1696); Decree
to the Alexandrians (Ep. 26, 51) ; Ep. to Arsacius (49).

LECTURE II 95
self a Theist ¦', — his view of Deity bemg more simply
monotheistic than that of his predecessors, derived
furtively from the Hebrew idea transmitted through
Christianity ; he nevertheless considered that dis
crepancy of national charjLcter required corresponding
differences in rehgion^. In his work he seems to
have repeated some of the objections of the older
assaflante, Celsus and Porphyry • ^attacking the credi-
bflity of scripture and of the Christian scheme in its
doctrines and evidences. He offered in it a criticism
on primseval and Hebrew history' ; attacking the
probabiUty of many portions of the book of Genesis " ;
objecting to the Hebrew view of Deity as too appro
priating in its character, and as making the divine
Being appear cruel". He denied the originahty of
the Hebrew moral law^, and pointed out the sup
posed defectiveness of the Hebrew pohty ; comparing
unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as
seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David,
with the great heroes of Greek history'. The Hebrew
prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in com
parison with oracles. In estimating the charac
ter of Christ, he depreciated the importance of his
miracles^; and noticing the different tone of the
fourth Gospel from those of the Synoptists, he as
serted that it was St. John who first taught Christ's
divinity''. He regarded Christianity as composed of
r Cyril, adv. Jul. B. iii and iv. « B. iv. ' B. ii.
" B. iii. " B. iii. ^ B. v.
z B. V. andwii. ^ B. vi. '' B. x.

96 IECTURE II
borrowed ingredients ; considered it to have assumed
its shape graduafly; and regarded its progress to
have been unforeseen by its founder and by St. Paul";
attacked its relation to Judaism in superseding it
whfle depending on it'' ; regarded proselytism as ab
surd ; and directed some few charges, wliich may
have been more deserved, against practices of his
day, such as Staurolatry'' and Martyrolatry^.
With the death of JuHan the hopes of heathenism
departed ; and two eloquent orations of Gregory
Nazianzen s stfll convey to us the Christian words of
triumph. Christianity progressed, protected by the
favour of the sovereigns. Heathenism no longer
expressed itself in free examination of Christianity,
and lingered only in the prejudices of the people.
In the West it is merely seen as it pleads for tolera
tion'', or makes itself heard in the murmurs which
attributed the woes of the Teutonic invasions to the
displeasure of the heathen gods at the neglect of
their worship". In the East it disappears altogether.
« B. vii. and x. d B. viii. e B. vi. f B. x.
s Greg. Naz. Op. i. Orat. 4 and 5.
h Q. Aurelius Symmachus was deputed by the senate to remon
strate with Gratian on the removal of the altar of Victory (A. D. 382)
from the council hall; and afterwards, when appointed (384) prsefect
of the city, he addressed a letter to Valentinian requiring the restor
ation of the pagan deities to their former honours. Both Symma-
chus's address and St. Ambrose's refutation are given in Cave's Lives
of Fathers (Life of Ambrose § 3. p. 576.)
• Augustin refutes this objection in several places of the first
five books in the De Civ. Dei. *

LECTURE II 97
•
Doubt there expires, because speculation ceases and
Christian thought becomes fixed; nor wifl it be
necessary in future to recur to the history of the
eastern church.
In this survey we have tried to understand the
objections aUeged by unbeUevers during the first
four centuries, successively changing in character,
from the calumnies of ignorance in the second cen
tury, to the statements of inteUigent disbelief in
the third and fourth, untU they finaUy subside in
the fifth into the murmuring of popular super
stition ; and have endeavoured to give their na
tural as weU as Hterary history, by exhibiting
them as coroUaries from the various views concerning
reHgion enumerated at the commencement of the
lecture. The blind prejudices of the uneducated
populace, and the attachment, merely poHtical, to
heathen creeds, manifested themselves in deeds rather
than words ; but each of the other lines of thought
there indicated gave expression in Hterature to its
opinion concerning Christianity ; the ffippant impiety
of Epicureanism in Lucian, the debased form then
prevalent of Platonism in Celsus, the subtle and
mystic phUosophy of the neo-Platonists in Porphyry,
the oriental Theosophy in Hierocles, the romantic
attachment to the old pagan hterature in Juhan.
If these causes be stfll further classffied for com
parison with the enumeration of inteflectual causes
stated in the previous lecture, we find only the
adumbration of some of the forms there named. The
H

98 LECTURE II
•
attack from physical science, so prevalent since the
era of modem discovery, is barely discernible m the
passing remarks on the Mosaic cosmogony in Celsus
and Juhan'. The attack from criticism is seen m
a triffing form in Celsus ; in a superior manner in
the perception which Porphyry exhibits of the
hterary characteristics of the Old Testament, and
JuHan of the New. The chief ground of the attack
was derived from metaphysical science, which acted
not so much in its modem form of a subjective
inquiry into the tests of trath, as in the shape of
rival doctrines concerning the highest problems of
Hfe and being, which preoccupied the mind against
Christianity. If the eclectic attempts to adjust such
speculations to Christianity which marked the pro
gress of Gnosticism could have been embraced in
our inquiry, the force of this class of causes would
have been made stfll more apparent.
The obvious insufficiency however of this analysis
to afford an entire explanation of the prejudices of
these early unbehevers points to the close union
before noticed'^ of the emotional with the inteUectual
causes. Whfle asserting the j)ossibflity of the inde
pendent action of the inteUectual element under

i The work of Cosmas Indicopleustes in the middle of the sixth
century is designed to show the falsehood of the Ptolemaic system
of astronomy in assuming the world to be a sphere, and proves
the continuance of speculation on the harmony of science and reve
lation. See Donaldson's Gr. Lit. III. 59. § 3.
t P. 19 — 23.

LECTURE II 99
peculiar circumstances as a cause of doubt, and
whUe thus vindicating the importance of investi
gating the history of free thought from the intel
lectual side, we admitted the necessity of taking the
probabihty of the action of the moral element into
account when we pags from the abstract study of
tendencies to form a judgment on concrete instances.
Here accordingly, in the mental history of these early
unbehevers, we already encounter cases where phflo
sophy as weU as piety requires that a very large
share in the final product be referred to the influence
of emotional causes. Christianity addresses itself to
the compound human nature, to the intellect and heart
conjoined. Accordingly the excitement of certain
forms of moral sensibffity is as much presupposed in
rehgion as the sense of colour in beholding a land
scape. The means fafl for estimating with historic
certainty the particular emotional causes which ope
rated in the instances now under consideration.
The moral chasm which separates us from heathens
is so great that we can hardly realize their feelings.
If however we cannot pronounce on the positive
presence of moral causes which produced their dis
behef, we may conjecture negatively the nature of
those, the absence of which precluded the possibflity
of faith. Christianity demands a behef in the super
natural, and a serious spirit in the investigation of re
Hgion, both of which were whoUy lacking in Lucian.
It requires a deep consciousness of guflt and of the
personality of God, which were wanting in Celsus.
H 2

100 LECTURE II
It exacts a more dehcate moral taste to appreciate
the divine ideal of Christ's character than Hierocles
manifested. Porphyry and JuHan are more difficult
cases for moral analysis. Porphyry is so earnest a
character, so spiritual in his tastes ', that we wonder
why he was not a Christian ; and except by the refer
ence of his conduct to general causes, such as phflo
sophical pride, we cannot understand his motives
without a more intimate knowledge than is now
obtainable of his personal history. The difficulty of
understanding Julian's character arises from its very
complexity. Who can divine the many motives
which must have combined with inteUectual causes
at successive moments of his life, to change the
Christian student into the apostate, to convert dis
behef into hatred, and to degrade the phUosopher
into the persecutor ? History happUy offers so few
paraUels to enable us to form ,a conjecture on the
answer, that we may be content to leave the problem
unsolved. We have now summed up the causes which ope
rated in the first great inteUectual struggle in which
Christianity was engaged. No means exist for esti
mating the amount of harm done by the writings
of unbehevers. The retributive destruction of some
of them and the indignant alarm of the Christian
apologists indicate the probabihty that these works
1 This appears from a letter of Porphyry to his wife Marcella,
discovered by Angelo Mai, and edited at Milan, 1816, in which his
personal religious aspirations are seen.

LECTURE IL loi
had excited attention. But under a merciful Pro
vidence truth has in the end gained rather than lost
by this first conffict of reason against Christianity.
The church encountered the unbehevers by apo
logetic treatises, and met the Gnostics by dogmatic
decisions. The traths brought out by the action and
reaction, and embodied in the Hterature stimulated
by Gnosticism, in the apologies created by unbeHef,
and in the creeds suggested as a protest against
heresy, are the permanent result wHch the struggle
has contributed to the world.
The contest however is not quite obsolete, and has
a practical as weU as antiquarian interest. Though
the analogy to the attacks of ancient unbehevers
must be sought in pagan countries in the objections of
modem heathens, yet some resemblance to them may
be found in the unbeHef of Christian lands. Such
paraUels are frequently hasty generahzations founded
on a superficial perception of agreement, without due
recognition of the differences which more exact ob
servation would bring to view ; for identity of cause
as weU as result is necessary in order to estabhsh
phflosophical affinity. In the present cases however
the agreement is moral if not inteUectual, in spirit
if not in form, generaUy also in condition if not in
cause. The ffippant wit of Lucian, which attributes
reHgion to imposture and craft, is repeated in the
French criticism of the last century. Some of the
doubts of Celsus reappear in the Enghsh deists.
The delicate criticism of Porphyry is reproduced in

102 LECTURE IL
the modern exegesis. The disposition to explain
Christianity as a psychological phenomenon, as
merely one form of the religious consciousness, an
organic product of human thought, unsuited for
men of superior knowledge, who can attain to the
phUosophical truth which underhes it, is the modern
paraUel to Juhan.
Accordingly the conduct of the early church during
this struggle has a Hving lesson of instruction for the
church in Christian lands, as well as in its missionary
operations to the heathen. The victory of the early
church was not due whoUy to inteUectual remedies,
such as the answers of apologists, but mainly to
moral ; to the inward perception generated of the
adaptation of Christianity to supply the spiritual
wants of human nature »». As the heathen realized
the sense of sin, they felt intuitively the suitabUity
of salvation through Christ ; as they witnessed the
transforming power of belief in Him, they felt the
inward testimony to the truth of Christianity. The
external evidence of reHgion had its office in the
early church, though the behef" in magic and in
"n See this discussed towards the close of Lect. VIII.
" It is obvious that this belief blunted in some degree the force
of arguments built upon miracles and prophecy : this circumstance
explains the comparative absence of these arguments in the early
apologies against the heathens. The reality however both of
miracles and prophecy is always implied ; and occasionally the
direct appeal to them is used. The apologists were thus com
pelled, even if no other reason founded deeper in the philosophy
of evidence had inclined them to do so, to lay stress on what would

LECTURE II 103
oracles probably prevented the fufl perception of the
demonstrative force due to the two forms of external
evidence, miracles and prophecy. But the internal evi
dences, — Christ, Christianity, Christendom, were the
most potent proofs offered, — the doctrine of an atoning
Messiah fifling the heart's deepest longings, and the
lives of Christians embodying heavenly virtues.
The modem church may therefore take comfort, and
may hope for victory. The weak things of the world
confounded the strong, not only because the Holy
Spirit granted the dew of Ms blessing, but because
the scheme and message of reconcihation which the
church was commissioned to announce, were of divine
construction. Each Christian who tries, however
humbly, to spread the knowledge of Christ by word
or by example is helping forward the Redeemer's
kingdom. Let each one in Christ's strength do his
duty, and he wfll leave the world better than he found
it ; and in the present age, as in the times of old.
Gnosticism and heathenism wiU retire before Christ
ianity ; the false wUl be dissipated, the good be ab
sorbed, by the beams of the Sun of righteousness.
now be called the argument from internal evidence for the truth
of Christianity. The Hulsean Prize Essay for 1852, by Mr. W. J.
Bolton, contains a useful account of the apologists, with extracts
from their writings. And Mr. H. A. Woodham, in the preface to
his edition of TertuUian's Apology (1843), ^*s made some very
suggestive remarks. Both writers show that the fathers use the
argument from miracles more frequently than had generally been
supposed.

LECTURE III.
FEEE THOUGHT DUEING THE MIDDLE AGES, JlND AT THE EBNAIS-
SANCE ; TOGETHER WITH ITS RISE IN MODERN TIMES.

Luke xxi. ;^^.
Heaven and earth shall pass away ; but my words shall not
pass away.
We have studied the history of unbehef down to
the faU of heathenism. A period of more than seven
himdred years elapses before a second crisis of doubt
occurs in church history. The interval was a time of
social dissolution and reconstruction ; and when the
traces of the free criticism of rehgion reappear, the
world in wMch they manifest themselves is new.
Fresh races have been introduced, institutions un
known to the ancient civilization have been mingled
with or have replaced the old ; and the ancient
language of the Roman empire has dissolved into
the Romance tongues. But Christianity has Hved
through the deluge, and been the ark of refuge in
the storm; and its claims are now tested by the

LECTURE IIL 105
young world which emerged into being when the
waters of confusion had retired. The sflence of reason
in this interval was not the result of the abundance
of piety, but of the prevalence of ignorance ; a sign of
the absence of inquiry, not of the presence of moral
and mental satisfaction". Even when speculation re
vived, and reason re-examined reHgion, the hterary
monuments in which expression is given to doubt are
so few, that it wfll be possible in the present lecture
not only to include the account of the second and
third crises which mark the course of free thought in
church history, but even to pass beyond them, and
watch the dawn of unbeheving criticism caused by
the rise of the modern phUosophy which ushers in
the fourth of the great crises named in a previous
lecture''. The former of these periods which we shaU now
examine, the second in the general scheme, may be
considered to extend from A. D. iioo to 1400. Its
commencement is fixed by the date at wffich the
scholastic phUosophy began to influence reHgion, its
close by the revival of classical learning. The history
of free thought in it is comphcated, by being to some
extent the struggle of deeds as weU as of ideas, a
social as weU as a reUgious straggle. It was the
» For the intellectual and social condition during this period,
consult Guizot's History of Civilization in France ; Hallam's His
tory of the Middle Ages, ch. ix. part i. ; and History of Literature,
ch. i. Also three works by Laurent, Les Bwrba/res et le Catholicisme,
La PapoMti et V Empire, La FiodaUte et HEglise.
^ See Lect. I. p. 10.

106 LECTURE III
period which witnessed both the dissolution of feu
dalism and the theocratic centralization in the pope
dom ; and while reason struggled on the one side
against the dogmatic system, it struggled on the
other to assert the rights of the state against the
church, and to put restraints upon the privfleges,
dominion, and wealth, of the pope and clergy. The
social struggle, to vindicate the Hberty of the state
against the undue power of the church, so far as it
is the effect of free thought, appertains to our sub
ject, in the same manner as was the case with the
early attempts of a converse character of the Roman
emperors to deny due Hberty to the church, when
ever, as in the case of Jiflian, they were the result of
a deliberate examination of rehgion. Free thought
in the middle ages is at once Protestantism, Scep
ticism, and Ghibellinism'^.
The inteUectual action in this crisis is marked by
four forms ; — (i) the criticism created by the scho
lastic phflosophy, which has been thought to mark in
Abelard the commencement of doubt ; (2) the intro-
" See Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, ch. vi. and x. ;
'h&vivevA, La Reforme, 1861. (p. 131-271.) The last-named work,
to which frequent reference will be made, is an able production by
a Professor (probably a freethinker) in the university of Ghent. It
is the eighth of a series of works, entitled, Etudes de V Histoire de
VHumanite, of which three were named in a previous note, and
contains a careful examination (i) of the reform, religious and so
cial, of the middle ages ; (2) of heterodoxy, both as free thought
and incredulity, during the same period ; (3) of the Eenaissance ;
(4) of the principles of the Reformation.

LECTURE IIL 107
duction of the idea of progress in religion, in the
sense that Christianity is to be replaced by a better
religion ; (3) the idea of the comparison of Christi
anity with other reHgions, so as to obHterate its ex
ceptional character ; (4) the traces of disbehef in the
doctrine of immortality. The two former are free
thought as doubt, the two latter as disbehef
It wfll be necessary, for illustrating the first of
these forms, to explain the nature of the scholastic
phflosophy, so far as to show how it might become
the means of producing heresy or scepticism, when
apphed to theology.
Scholasticism is the vague name which describes
the system of inquiry common in the middle ages**-
In trath it marks a period rather than a system ; a
method rather than a phflosophy. In spite of dif
ference of form, it links itself with the speculatiojis
of other ages in community of aim, in that it strove
to gain a general phflosophy of the universe, to reach
some few principles which might offer an interpreta
tion of aU difficulties.

d It has been conjectured that the name was probably derived
from the circumstance that it was the philosophy which arose in the
various Scholce which Charlemagne established throughout his em
pire ; and afterwards was that which existed in the scholse or halls of
the mediseval universities. Brucker has discussed the previous his
tory of the word {History of Critical Philosophy, iii. 'jio; and
Haureau, nearly repeating him, PMlosophie Scholastique, i. 7., with
a view to show how it was used before it became changed into the
meaning just assigned to it.) See also a few remarks by Saisset in
the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1850, vol. iii. p. 645.

108 LECTURE III
In the present age the science which attempts this
grand problem is denominated Logic, or Metaphysics,
according to the different sphere which it covers"^.
But in the middle ages these two fields were not
clearly distinguished; in the same manner as in the
AiaXeKTiK^ of Plato, method and the reaUties attamed
by method were not separated *". Yet it was mainly
in reference to the former that scholasticism wears
the aspect of a method, and to the latter the aspect
of a phUosophy. Adopting deduction as the type
of a perfect science, it assumed its data partly pn the
ground of innate ideas, partly from the truths of
revelation, partly from the metaphysical dicta of
Aristotle ; and from these principles attempted to
work out deductively a solution of universal nature.
It was the "Eocpla of Aristotle executed from a
e It is called logic, if we denote that part of it which studies the
mode of investigation, and the comparative value of evidence in the
different fields of inquiry. It is the psychological branch of meta
physics, if it explores the structure and functions of the mind, ascer
taining the subjective validity of the data employed in the method
which forms the subject matter of contemplation in logic. It is
the ontological branch, if it reaches to the still higher problem of
searching for the traces of objective reality, independent of the act
of human thought, which are involved in the data previously ex
amined. f The AiaXeKTiKfj of Plato, it is well known, was the method of
analysis by means of language, and comprised the field which his
successor Aristotle separated into two, viz. AtaXexriKTy, logic, the
inquiry concerning method; and So^ta, metaphysics, the inquiry
concerning being. See Bp. Hampden's article Aristotle in the
Encyclopcedia Britannica; Ritter, History of Philosophy (English
translation), vol. ii. b. 8. c. 2 and 3. ; and vol. iii. c. 2.

LECTURE III 109
Christian point of view. In respect to the logical
method there was a general agreement of opimon,
but difference of system arose in the metaphysical.
The form that the problem of science then assumed
was pecuHar. Instead of examining the data from
which deduction starts, with a view of finding their
subjective certainty as thoughts, the inquirers strove
to settle the problem of their objective nature as
things. The question asked was this : Are the ge
nera and species which the mind contemplates, in its
attempts to classify and interpret phenomena, real in
nature, or produced only by human thought and
speech ? A comparison with the modern mode of
investigation wiU explain the importance which the
question possessed, and the reason why it monopo
lized the entire field of inquiry.
The progress of discovery has forced upon us a
subdivision of the sciences into two classes, unknown
in the middle ages ; in one of wffich we discover
causes ; in the other, in which we are unable to find
causes, we rest content with classffication by species
and genera. In the former we discover antecedents,
in the latter types ^. But in mediseval science, as in
Greek, the latter class was regarded as the sole form
e Viz. antecedents in the mechanical class of sciences, types in
the zoological and botanical. The distinction is that which is
indicated by Mill under the names of " uniformities of causation,"
and " uniformities of coexistence." See Mill's Logic, vol. i. b. i.
ch. 7. § 4; vol. ii. b. iii. ch. 22 ; b. iv. ch. 7. Compare also Whewell's
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. b. iii. c 2. and b. viii.

110 IECTURE III
of aU perfect science. Hence the reason wUl appear
why the question as to the trae nature of genera
and species had a monopoly of the field of inquiry;
and also why the theory of predication was exalted
into the most important part of logic '^ Those who
thought that genera had a real existence as essences
apart from man's mind and from nature, were deno
minated ReaHsts : those who denied to them any real
existence, and considered them to be a common qua
lity labeUed by a common name, were NominaUsts :
those who held the intermediate view, and assumed
them to exist, not only as artfficial names but also
as general classes in the human mind, were Con-
ceptuaHsts. With the realist, classffication was not
arbitrary, but true and determined for man. With
the nominahst and conceptuahst it was created by
man, and amenable to correction.
The question, though now relegated from meta
physical to physical science, has stUl sufficient un-
portance to enable us to perceive likewise the reason
why these different theories could be the means of
dividing men into parties. The bitterness with which
a zoological mquiry of analogous character into the
perpetuity of natural species' has been lately assaUed
may enable us to realize the earnestness shown on this
pomt in the middle ages. The question, as viewed
^ This is the explanation of the fact already quoted from Cousin,
that the mediseval philosophy depended on a quotation made by
Boethius from Porphyry.
i Viz. Darwin's Inquiry into the Origin of Species, 1859.

LECTURE III 111
by the schoolmen, was reaUy the fundamental one as
respects knowledge; and the opimons on it are the
counterpart to those which relate to the tests of truth
and the nature of bemg in modern metaphysics. The
spirit of realism was essentiaUy the spirit of dogma
tism, the disposition to pronounce that truth was
already known'' : Nominahsm was essentiaUy the
spirit of progress, of inquiry, of criticism. Realism
was in spirit deductive, startmg from accepted dog
mas : Nominahsm was in spirit, though not m form,
inductive. It tested classffications, and admitted op-
portumty for the existence of doubt. " Believe, that
you may know," was the expression of the former :
" Know, that you may beheve," that of the latter'.
The two theories were of universal apphcation to
every subject of thought. An Hlustration wiU explain
their relation to theology. In the fooHsh and almost
irreverent attempts to explam by phUosophy the na
ture of the triune existence of the divine Being, the
reahst, assuming the reahty of the one genus Deity,
was prepared to aUow identity of essence in the three
species, the three members of the Divine Trinity.
The nominalist, aUowing only concrete existence, was
k Inasmuch as the realist assumed that the innate ideas of the
mind gave a knowledge of real essences in nature.
1 " Neque enim qusero intelligere ut credam, sed .credo ut intel-
ligam," are the words of the realist Anselm {Prolog. I. p. 43- ed.
Gerberon.) " Dubitando ad inquisitionem venimus ; inquirendo
veritatem percipimus," are those of the nominalist Abelard. {Sic et
Non, p. 1 6. ed. Cousin.)

112 LECTURE III
obliged either to accept unity, only in a verbal sense,
and be charged with tritheism, as Roscelin ; or diver
sity only in a verbal sense, and incur the charge of
SabeUamsm, as Abelard.
Such was Scholasticism, and such its relation to
philosophy and theology™. Existing for several cen
turies as an instinct, it became about the end of the
eleventh century an inteffigent movement". At this
period the problem was consciously proposed, and
each of the three centuries which are comprised in
our present period exffibits a different phase of the
controversy. At first the movement was in favour
of nommalism in Roscelin and Abelard, and reason
assumed an attitude of aUeged scepticism : in the
thirteenth century the victory was in the hands of
inteffigent realists like Aquinas, who used reason in
favour of orthodoxy. In the fourteenth, nominahsm
revived m Occam ; the provinces of faith and phi
losophy were severed, and the final victory on the
metaphysical question remained in the hands of the
nominahsts. The scientific position of Abelard wUl thus be
" The best modern work on scholasticism is the Mimoire Cou-
ronne, by B. Haurdau, 2 vols. 1850, in which the various authors
and schools of thought are fully treated. Among older sources,
the following are important : Brucker, iii. 709-868 ; Tennemann's
Mamml, § 237-79; Ritter's Christliche Philosophic; Ruble, Ges-
chichte der Neuern PMlosophie, i. 810 seq. ; Hampden's Bampton
Lectures (I. and II.), and the article by him on Aquinas in the
Encyolopmdia Metropolitana ; also Maurice's Mediceval Philosophy.
» Cfr. Tennemann's Manual of Philosophy, § 243.

LECTURE III 11:3
clear. We must now study his inteUectual character,
as embodying the sceptical aspect which belonged to
nominalism. Abelard's character is in many respects one of the
most curious in Mstory". The record of his trials,
bodUy and mental?, effiists the romantic sympathy
of the sentimentahst, and commands the serious at
tention of the phUosopher. His wonderful reputation
at Paris as a- public lecturer connects him with the
university life of the middle ages, and presents him
as a type of the class of great professors created by
the absence of books and consequent prevalence of
oral mstruction. It was his vast influence which made
his opimons of importance, and aroused the opposi
tion of St. Bernard. It seems to have been the ap
pHcation of the nominahst phUosophy to the doctrine
of the Trimty, contained in Abelard's works on
dogmatic theology 1, wffich excited alarm. The coun
cil cafled at Sens'" was a theological duel, wherem
these two distinguished characters were matched, the
most eloquent theologian and preacher against the
0 On Abelard's personal character, see Guizot's Lettres dAbUard
1839; S'ld Remusat's Abelard 1845, vol. i. part x., the latter of
which writers has long studied his life, philosophy, and theology ;
also Taillandier's article La Libre pensee du moyen age (Revue des
Deux Mondes, Aug. 1861.) ; Tennemann's Gesch. der Phil. viii. 170
seq. ; Tennemann's Manual, § 251.
P In his work Liber Cala/mitatum.
q In his Introductio ad Theologiam, and Theologia Christiana.
See Neander's Kirchengeschichte, viii. 505 seq.
•' In A. D. 1 121.

114 LECTURE III
most influential professor and pffilosopher ; the saint
against the critic. Bernard was right in his theology;
Abelard perhaps right in his phUosophy ^ This event
however presents the effect of scholasticism m pro-
ducmg heresy rather than scepticism.
The great work which has laid Abelard open to
the latter charge merits a brief notice. It was en
titled the Sic et Non, and remamed unpublished
in the pubhc documents of France tfll recent years'.
It is a coUection of alleged contradictions, wffich exist
on a series of topics, which range over the deepest
problems of theology, and descend to the confines
of casffistry m ethics". In the discussion of them
Abelard coUects passages from the scriptures and from
s The nature of this contest is given in Mabillon's edition of
Bernard (Prcef. § 5.), and the characters of the two disputants are
sketched in Sir J. Stephens's Lectv/res on the History of France,
ii. (163—207.) ; also in Neander's Kirchengeseh, vol. viii. p. 533 seq.
* It was published by Cousin in 1836, with an elaborate preface
relating to the literary history of Abelard's works and opinions, as
well as the character of the scholastic philosophy generally. An
edition of the text, including the passages not printed by Cousin,
has subsequently been published hy Henke and Lindenkohl, (Mar
burg, 1851.) See also Neander's Kirchengeseh. viii. p. 523 seq.
" The following are examples of the questions proposed :
No. (5.) Quod non sit Deus singularis et contra; (6) Quod sit
Deus tripartitus et contra; (14) Quod sit filius sine principio et
contra; (18) Quod seterna generatio filii narrari vel sciri vel intel-
ligi possit et non ; (28) Quod nihil fiat casu et contra ; (30) Quod
peccata etiam placeant Deo et non ; (38) Quod omnia sciat Deus et
non ; (124) Quod liceat habere concubinam et contra ; (153) Quod
nulla de causa mentiri liceat et contra ; (156) Quod liceat hominem
occidere et non.

LECTURE III 115
the fathers hi favour of two distinctly opposite so
lutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the
work, wffich ought to be taken as the explanation
of his objects He insists in it on the difficulty of
rightly understanding the scriptures or the fathers,
and refers it to eight different causes y ; advising that
when these considerations fail to explain the appa
rent contradictions of scripture, we shoifld abandon
the manuscripts as maccurate, rather than believe m
the, existence of real discrepancies. He draws also
a broad distinction between canonical scripture and
other Hterature, strongly affirmmg the authority of
the former.
Is this work sceptical 1 Is it designed under a fair
show to serve the purpose of unbehef? Or is it merely
an mstance of the awakening of the spirit of inquiry,
the free criticism exercised by nominalism, the desire
to prove all dogmas by reason ? In other words, was
the freethmking of Abelard rationahsm, or was it
merely Protestantism and theological criticism ?
These questions have met with different answers.
The Benedictme editors, viewmg ffis condemnation
by St. Bernard as paraUel to that of the bibhcal
^ Abelard's Preface is analysed and discussed in Cousin, p. 191
seq.), and Stephens, vol. ii. p. 169.
y Viz. (i) the peculiarities of their style ; (2) their use of popular
language on scientific questions ; (3) the corruption of the text ;
(4) the number of spurious books ; (5) the retractation by the fathers
of their own previous statements ; (6) their careless use of profane
learning ; (7) the describing things as they appear, not as they are ;
(8) their ambiguous use of words. I 2

116 LECTURE III
critic R. Simon ^ by Bossuet, declined to pubhsh the
manuscript of ffis work". More recent mqffirers,
especiaUy the phUosophical critic Cousm, have re
garded Abelard with a more favourable eye. They con
sider his treatise merely to be a provisional scepticism,
fortifying the mind agamst premature solutions. Some
would even claim him as an early protestant, as the
ffist of the line of men whose spirits, wffile frettmg
under the dogmatic teaching or the pohtical centrali
zation of the Westem church, have unhesitatmgly
bowed before the authority of scripture''. Possibly
these several views contain elements of truth. Abe
lard's character was complex, and the purpose of ffis
book equaUy so. He embodied a movement, and
experience had not yet taught men to distmgffish ffi
it the boundaries wffich separate the provmces of
free thought. The argument m favour of his scepti
cism drawn from the form of his work seems unfair.
The statement of a series of paradoxes is lawful, if a
^ R. Simon had published a work, Histoire Critique du Vieux
Testament, 1678, in which positions were stated which were new at
that time, but which, as Hallam observes, (Hist of Lit. iii. 299,)
" now pass without reproof." The history of the controversy con
nected with Simon is contained in Walch's Bihliotheca Theologica
Selecta, 1765, vol. iv. (251-9. See also Bp. Marsh's Lectures, parti.
p. 52.a See MartSne et Durant in Thesam/r. Nov. Anecdot {I'ji'j) vol. v.
Pref. p. 3.
^ Cousin thinks him a sceptic. So also sir J. Stephens, ii. 170.
Taillandier (Rev. des Deux Mondes quoted above) takes the view
given in the text, that his character was complex. See also Lau
rent's La Reforms, pp. 318 — 331.

LECTURE III 117
solution of them be offered, or an explanation of the
reason why a solution is impossible. The disputative,
dialectical tone which exists in the work was the
ordmary mode of instruction in the mediseval uni
versities, and finds a paraUel in the method of thought
observable in other ages. Abelard's statement of para
doxes, of an unsolved mass of contradictions, recalls,
for example, the early paradoxes on motion which Zeno
presented for the purpose of compeUmg acquiescence
in the Eleatic teachmg", or the series of antinomies
which Kant has given, as problems msoluble theo-
reticaUy, but capable of harmony when viewed on the
moral side^. In truth it is the mark, either, as m
one of these cases, of the first awakening of the mind
to curiosity ; or, as m the other, of the last hmit at
which curiosity is compeUed to pause. Abelard's
method is Hke that which is observable m Socrates,
and in those early dialogues of his disciple Plato, in
wffich the pupfl is working in his master's manner,
wherem difficffities are propounded without bemg
solved. The hearer is cross-questioned, with the
view of bemg made to feel the necessity of possessing
knowledge ; and a method is offered to him by wffich
he- is to find the solution of problems for himself*.
c See Preller's Hist Phil Gr. Rom. xxxviii. § 158. Bayle's Dic
tionary, art. Zeno (vol. iv. edition 5. p. 539 note.)
^ Kant's Kritik {Transcendent Dial b. ii. div. 2. p. 322. Engl.
transl.) The illustration is borrowed from Taillandier, to whose
article I am indebted for several other suggestions.
e Grote, vol. viii. ch. 68.

118 LECTURE III
In this view Abelard's doubt is really the inquiry
which is the first step to faith ; the criticism which
precedes the constructive process, the negation before
affirmation. WhUe its form may be regarded as an embodi
ment of the scholastic method, the manner of hand
ling marks the commencement of modem biblical criti
cism. The suggestions which he offers '^ in reference
to false readffigs of manuscripts, the spuriousness
of books, and the temporary character of the author's
sentiments, as elements m determining the reahty
of a contradiction, or the necessary rejection of a
passage on grounds of dogmatic improbabffity,
mark a sagacity which has been perfected into a
science by the growth of modern criticism. Thus
far we have only the elements of mquiry and criti
cism which enter into doubt ; yet it woffid be unfair
to deiiy that sometffing of unbelief may have been
found in a restless care-worn spirit hke that of Abe
lard ; and if any one thmks that he intended ffi his
work to leave the reader with the impression that the
solution is impossible, or that the doubter's side is
the stronger, then we may consider him to have
been an unbehever, and regard his teaching as an
example, often witnessed in later times, of a concealed
irony, wffich, whUe pretending to accept revelation, has
represented its evidence as insufficient, and its doc-
trmes as unprovable. If however he be taken to be a
f In liis Prologue.

LECTURE III 119
sceptic, it is offiy the' infancy of doubt. It is unhke
the bitter disbelief shown by the early antichristian
writers, or by the doubters of modern times. What
ever was valuable ffi the free thought of Abelard out
lived ffis time. The spirit of mquiry which spoke
through him, contmued to operate m ffis successors^.
His method was even adopted by his opponents. His
foUower, Arnold of Brescia, carried free thought from
ideas mto acts, and suffered martyrdom in a prema
ture struggle agamst the papal church''. Being
dead, Abelard yet spoke, both pohticaUy and phUo-
sopfficaUy ; and his character remains as a type of
the spirit of mffigled doubt and hope and inquiry
which is exffibited m the free thought of any of
those great epochs, when knowledge is increased,
and when earnest minds are standmg m doubt
whether the new wine can be placed m the old
bottles. The movement, which was begmning to be felt
m every branch of hfe and thought m the twelfth
century, was stffi more manifest in the course of
the thirteenth, an age wffich, whether viewed ffi its
great men or great deeds, its movements, pohtical,
ecclesiastical, or mteUectual, is the most remarkable
of the middle ages, and one of the most memorable
in history'. The activity of specffiation is evidenced
S See Cousin's Preliminary Dissertation, p. (201-3.)
•> See Laurent's La Reforme, p. 263.
' It may be sufficient to allude to names like those of Innocent
III., Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Frederick II., Cimabue, Dante; and to

120 LECTURE III
by the increasmg alarm which aUeged heresy like
the Albigensian was causmg, and by the establishment
of the system of ecclesiastical police ^ wffich developed
into the inquisition. About the middle of the century,
the ffifluence of free thought m reHgion is supposed
to have made its appearance, m a work which ori-
gffiated with one of the newly created mendicant
orders. A book which had appeared at the be
gmning of the century, entitled "the Everlastmg
Gospel," was now edited with an introduction by some
person of influence m the Franciscan order'. The
idea conveyed was, that, as there are three Persons
in the Godhead, so there must be three dispensations ;
that of the Father wffich ended at the coming of
Christ, that of the Son wffich was then about to
conclude, and that of the Spirit, of wffich the reh
gious ideal of the Franciscans was the embodiment.
The work caused immense alarm, and was con-
the great works of law (civil and canon) and philosophy, the great
works in Gothic architecture, and the revival of painting, as examples
of the intellectual character of the age ; and to the commencement
of constitutional liberty, the final settlement of Europe, and com
mencement of the present European kingdoms, as illustrations of its
advance in social government.
1' In 1229.
1 The work is attributed to Joachim, a Calabrian abbot, about A.D.
1 200, whom Dante names {Pa/radiso, xii. 140). It was edited in 1250
with an introduction probably written by John of Parma, general
of the Franciscans. Mosheim (History, cent. 13. part ii. ch. 2. § 33
note,) has carefully investigated the subject. See also Laurent's
La Reforme, pp. 295-302 ; F. Spanheim's Works, vol. i. p. 1665 ;
Neanders' Kirchengeseh. vol. viii. p. 844 seq.

LECTURE III 121
demned by the councfl of Aries"', on the ground that
it assumed that Christianity was imperfect, and was
to be replaced by a superior revelation developing
from natural causes. It is doubtful whether the
book was reaUy intended to be sceptical. More pro
bably it was mystical. Claimmg to be founded on
an- apocalyptic idea", it was a revival of the Chffiasm
which haunted the Christians of Asia Mmor in the
early centuries ; perhaps also it was the utterance
of the spiritual yearnhig which marked the rise of
the Franciscan order, and a protest agamst the world-
Imess of the times. It was connected too with the
longmgs for poHtical deliverance from the temporal
dommion of the Popedom which were now beginnmg
to be felt. In these latter aspects the idea, so far
from being false, was an advance. Christianity from
time to time admits a progress, but from within rather
than from without ; a deeper spiritual appreciation
of old truths rather than a reception of new ones.
The demand for progress becomes a ground for alarm
offiy when it implies that the world has bidden fare-
weU to Christianity, either through the mystical
expectation of a Mffiennial reign which is to super
sede it, or tffiough the sceptical belief that our
reHgion has offiy an historic value, and needs
remodeffing to meet the reqffirements of advancing
civilization. If the latter was the meaning of this
m In 1260. Labbei Condi (1671) vol. xi. part ii. p. 2361.
" Rev. xiv. 6.

122 LECTURE III
utterance of the Franciscan book, the idea was the
germ of the modern conception of the function of
Christiaffity ffi " the education of the race," the first
statement of wffich is usuaUy attributed to Lessffig".
The same century which gave birth to this mot,
expressive of progress 'in religion, created also an
other wffich embodied the idea of the comparative
study of religions. This phrase may have different
meanmgs. It may signify the comparison of Chris
tiaffity with ethnic creeds in its external and intemal
character, without sacrfficing the behef that a di-
vmely revealed element exists in it, wffich causes it
to differ from them ffi kffid as weU as degree. Or
it may mean a comparison of Christiaffity with other
religions, as equally false with them, equaUy a deh
berate and conscious ffivention of priestcraft, wffich
was the shockmg view adopted by writers like
Volney in the last century p ; or else a comparison
of it as equally true with them, as equaUy a psy
chological development of the rehgious inteffigence,
wffich is the view prevalent ffi many noted works
on the phflosophy of ffistory ffi the present i. It was
° The work so entitled passed under Lessing's name ; but its
authorship has been recently disputed. In an article in Illgen's
Zeitschrift fiir die Historische Theologie for 1839, P^rt iv-, on the life
of A. Thaer compiled by Koerte, there is evidence given that Les
sing was only the editor, Thaer having sent it to him anonymously.
See also a remark in a letter of Lessing, Works, vol. xii. p. 503.
(Lachmann's edition.)
P Les Ruines, c. 2^.
<i E. g. in Benjamin Constant's work, De La Religion, and Lau-

LECTURE IIL 123
the second of these ideas, expressive of actual incre-
duHty, which existed in the thirteenth century. It
is traceable ffi the imputation made by Gregory IX ¦¦
against the celebrated emperor Frederick II, that he
had spoken of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, as the
three great impostors who had respectively deceived
the Jews, the Christians, and the Arabs.
The very possibffity of the existence of such a
comparison presupposes mtercourse with disciples of
foreign Creeds. The Christians now no longer pos
sessed a merely vague knowledge of Jews and Maho
metans. The crusades were expiring, the danger
wffich evoked them had subsided, and the enmity
wffich supported them was decaymg. Europe had
entered into relations of commerce, if not of amity,
with Mahometan nations ; and through contact with
them had come to measure them by an altered
standard, and to acquire the idea of comparing re
Hgions. Frederick II, to whom tffis expression is
imputed, is stated to have manifested admiration of
Mahometan Hterature, and affection for ffis Maho
metan subjects who afforded ffim aid ffi carrying out
the plans of civihzation wffich his powerfffi mind had

rent's Etrndes de V Histoire de VHumianiti ; also in Hegel's Philoso
phy of History ; 'Buckle's History of Civilization ; Comte's Pliilo-
sophie Positive. It is chargeable in spirit on many others.
f The letter of Gregory IX, in which the statement is contained,
bears date July i, 1239. It is quoted in Raynald's Supplement to
Baronius. (Annal. Eccles. 17 47- vol. ii. p. 218. 13 of Greg. IX.
xxvi.)

124 LECTURE III
formed^ ; and it was ffis ffidifference to a crusade,
induced probably by other causes, which led the Pope
to impute to him the blasphemy just quoted. The
contact with the East, half a century later, in hke
manner afforded the pretext for fastenmg a charge
of unbelief on the Kmghts Templars*, Contact with
Mahometans had thus, we have reason to beHeve,
created a latitude of thought ffi many parts of Chris
tendom. The same idea of the comparison of Christianity
with other creeds reappears in a tale of Boccaccio",
ffi wffich the three great reHgions are represented
under the aUegory of tffiee rffigs which a father gave
to his chUdren, so exactly alike that the judges coffid
not decide wffich was the genuine one of the three,
and which the copies. It is also fllustrated by the
tradition of the existence of a book, entitled "De
Tribus Impostoribus," which has been attributed
almost to every great name ffi the middle ages which
was conspicuous for opposition to the claims of the
church, or for uneasffiess under the pressure of its
dogmatic teaching. The existence of the book is
legendary : no one ever saw it : and the two ffis-
tinct works wffich now bear the title can be shown
to have been composed respectively in the sixteenth
s See Renan's Averroes et I'Averroisme, pp. 292-300, an admi
rable work, to which we shall have occasion frequently to refer.
t Michelet's Hist de France, iii. 201. The charge of unbelief
against the Templars was never satisfactorily established.
" Decameron, i. 3. " Le Tre Annella.'"

LECTURE III 125
and seventeenth centuries : but the legend is a witness
to the fact of the existence of the idea wffich the
book was said to embody. (20)
It is perhaps ffi some degree to the ffifluence of
the doctrine of absorption ffi the Mahometan phflo
sophy of Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, who
was the contemporary of Abelard, that we may attri
bute the disbehef ffi immortahty to wffich we find a
tendency toward the close of the thirteenth and
during the fourteenth century''. Though it is pro
bable that the ffidirect ffifluence of the Arabic phflo
sophy was felt earher, ffi stimffiating a demand for
ffiquiry, a disposition to make dogmas submit to the
test of reason, wffich has been shown to be the
earhest form of mediseval doubt ; yet it was not
untfl the thirteenth century that the works of Aver
roes definitely ffifluenced scholasticism, through the
teachffig of Michael Scot and Alexander Hales, and by
means of the rapidity of ffiteflectual commuffication
which forms so sffigffiar a feature ffi mediseval ffis
tory, spread their influence in Italy as weU as in
France. It was at tffis time that the doctrine of
Averroes was attacked by Aqffinas ; and though the
amount of its ffifluence can hardly be estimated, we
have the means of tracffig the growth of dishke to its
author ffi Christian lands, which is an incidental proba-
» On Averroes see Ritter's Oeschichte der Christlichen Philosophie,
vol. iv. b. 1 1, c. 5 ; Tennemann's Manual, § 259 ; Laurent's La Re
forme, p. 338-45, 364-85 ; and especially Renan's Averroes,
p. 205 seq.

126 LECTURE III
bUity of the increasing danger to Christianity arisffig
from it. In the middle of the thhteenth centuiy
the Franciscans study him without evfficffig hatred.
About the end of it Dante describes ffim stffi with
out reproaches, though he places him in the Inferno
along with other heathen phUosophers ^ : but half a cen
tury later, in the pictures of the last judgment wffich
exist in several states of Italy, each a Httle ffistoric
satire with its own pecuharities, we find Averroes
depicted as the type of fficredulity and blasphemy.
In a fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, executed
about 1335, when perhaps the recent canonization of
Aqffinas as an opponent of Averroes had directed
attention to the influence of the Arabic phUosopher,
Orcagna has placed a separate bolgia, the lowest in
his heU, for three persons, — Mahomet, Antichrist,
and Averroes^.
The disbehef of immortality was however too ob
vious a temptation ffi a corrupt age, as weU as too
generaUy spread, especiaUy ffi the next century, to be
whoUy attributable to the subtle ffifluence of the doc-
trffie of absorption of the Arabic plffiosophy. A
mediseval Enghsh poet^ attributes fficredffiity to the
y Inferno iv. 144 ; " Averrois che il gran comento feo."
2 Renan enlarges in one chapter of his work in a most interesting
manner on " Le r61e d'Averrofes dans la peinture Italienne du moyen
age", pp. (301-16). The illustrations above given are borrowed
from it.
" In the poem Piers Plowman, pp. 179, 180, Wright's edition;
the doctrine of the Fall and its consequences is the subject of the
scepticism named.

LECTURE III 127
higher classes of ffis age ; and Dante, ffi that poem
which is a romantic picture of his contemporaries or
predecessors, when devoting one circle of the Inferno
to the habitation of the " more than a thousand" of
those " who make the soul ffie with the body," attri
butes the cause of the sin to Epicureanism, a moral
and not an ffiteUectual cause''. It is a sad and
humffiatffig thought to reflect also that a cause wffich
must have fficreased incredffiity, if it ffid not create
it, was to be found ffi the vices of the clergy, especi
aUy near the papal court of Avignon. Most of the
distffigffished laymen whom ffistory records as evffi
cffig unbeHef belonged to the political party, wffich
strove to repress the poHtical centralization and tem
poral authority of the church ; and it is to be feared
that the causes just named were the means of repel-
Iffig more deeply from reHgion the hearts of such
persons whose interests or whose vices already led
them to hate its promoters *=-
We have thus coUected the few traces which mark
the history of free thought ffi the several great crises
of church history, and incidentafly ffiustrated its con
nexion with social movement as wefl as rehgious, and
shown its relation to inteflectual or moral causes. On
the inteUectual side we have witnessed the scholastic
phUosophy givffig activity to the spirit of change,

^ Inferno, Canto x ; 15, 118.
" Compare Dante, Inferno, xix. 104, &c. See Laurent's Reforme,
364-70, 372-78.

128 LECTURE III
and contact with Mahometan life and opffiion im
parting the latitude to Christian thought which
passed into fficredulity. On the moral we have
noticed that the effect of social wants or of actual
viciousness gave birth respectively to rehgious rest
lessness, or to actual disbehef of the supernatural.
The church of the time was not unaware of the
movement. In part it tried to repress it, by perse
cution and by the Inqffisition ; but ffi part also by
the lawfffi weapon of spiritual contest. The grand
works of defence of the thirteenth century, wffich
adjusted scholastic phUosophy to dogmatic theology,
and the spiritual activity of the mendicant orders,
were real and lawful means of victory, appeaHng
respectively to the inteUect and heart.
The moral judgment formed on the movement
seen ffi the whole period must vary with the phase
of it viewed. The attack is not, like those of the
early unbehevers, a straggle with which the sym-
patffies of Christians cannot be effiisted. The darker
aspects of it partake indeed of the same character ;
but it embodies a better element, a nobler form of
movement, taffited perhaps with doubt, but not with
disbehef; viz. the attempt of the human mffid to assert
its rights in phUosophy, theology, and politics ; and
as the epoch closes, the great trath has made itself
felt in the world as the resffit of the contest, that
Christianity is supreme offiy withffi its own sphere,
which it is the problem of rehgious philosophy to
discover ; that freedom of inquiry is to be used

LECTURE III 129
outside the boundary, but that speculation must
expire in adoration within it.
A new crisis may be considered to commence in
the fifteenth century, ffi consequence of the intro
duction of fresh ffifluences tffiough the classical re
vival. Yet as the two periods are connected ffi time,
the transition is not sudden : the old ffifluences gra
duaUy vanish away ; the new ones had been slowly
preparing before they became distffictly evident.
The ffiteUectual and social activity of the past period
had been the means of educating the mffid of Europe
for the reception of the new forces which were now
beginnffig to operate''.
The fifteenth century was a remarkable period for
Europe, and preeminently for Italy. Durffig several
ages Italy had grown great by means of commerce
and rehgion. The crusades, wffich had impoverished
the rest of Europe, had enriched her ; and the sub
jugation of the nations to the court of Rome had
made her the treasury of Europe. Material wealth
permitted the encouragement of the study of Htera
ture, wffich relations of commerce or of conquest
with the Greek empire had been the means of re
viving. Manuscripts were coUected, and the remaffis
of monuments of classic art were studied. The love
of antiqffity gave perfection to art, and ffifluenced
d On this subject, see Laurent, b. iii., and J. D. Burchard's Die
Cultw der Renaissance in Italien, i860. K

130 LECTURE IIL
literature. The work which centuries had slowly
prepared now came to perfection. The scholastic
philosophy decHned ; the sources of ecclesiastical edu
cation and of the existffig religion were weakened ;
and by the close of the fifteenth century the tone
of the age was in afl respects changed. The devotion
which had expressed itself in the great Gothic works
of devotion of early ages was expiring, at least in
Italy, and art itself graduaUy became secffiar, and
expressed ideas more eartffiy.
When such a moment of material prosperity, com
bined with inteUectual and social change, ensues
immediately on the movement previously sketched,
we shoffid expect to find reHgion subjected to re-
examffiation, and placed in temporary peril. The
history confirms the supposition. If we regard this
crisis as embracmg about two centuries and a quar
ter % comprehending the classical revival, the opeffing
of a new geographical world, and the great rehgious
changes of the Reformation, — a period commencffig
with the Renaissance, and closed by the creation of
modem phflosophy ; — we shaU find two principal
movements of unbeHef for investigation, the one
caused by Hterature, a return to a spirit of heathen
ism analogous to that already described ffi Julian ;
the second caused by pffilosophy, a revival of pan
theism. The first belonged especiaUy to the close of
the fifteenth century, and had its seat for the most
•^ 1400-1625.

LECTURE III 131
part in Tuscany and Rome ; the second to the six
teenth, and was represented ffi the uffiversity of
Padua. In both these movements, especiaUy in the
former, the open expression of unbeHef ffi literature
is rare, though the incidental proofs of its existence
¦ are abundant. It was a time of the dissolution of
faith, not of overt attack. UnbeHef was Epicurean
ffidifference, rather than earnestness ffi destroying
the old creed.
Two of the most obvious proofs that we can select
for provffig the existence of a state of unbehef ^ are,
the ridicffie of reHgion expressed ffi the burlesque
poetry of the time, and the anticffiistian sympatffies
of several distffigffished men.
It woffid be incorrect however to attribute the
satirical aUusions in the poetry whoUy to the influ
ence of the classical revival ; for the romantic epic ffi
wffich they occur is the offshoot of the old prose
romance of mediseval cffivahy, wffich had ffi earher
ages amused the courts of prmces by directing its
banter against ecclesiastical persons and ffistitu-
tionss. But the tone of the poetry is now changed.
The satire is directed agaffist religion itself, not
merely against the abuse of it, or the eccentricities
of its adherents. Free thought is not merely poHtical
f An Essay of great value, on " the Literature of the Italian Re
vival," appeared in the British Quarterly Review, No. 42, April,
1855, from which most of the illustrations and remarks which follow
in the next two pages are taken.
g See Laurent, id. p. 364-70.
K 2

132 LECTURE III
dissatisfaction, but rehgious unbeHef And with the
alteration of the tone agrees also the increasing dis
position to carry satire mto the domain of the super
natural ; which thus witnesses to the wide-spread
unbehef in the hearers for whom it was designed.
Italian critics have doubted ffideed whether these
epics are designed to convey a caricature, or pass
beyond lawfffi satire'' : yet even when aUowance is
made for the fact that they are an historic reproduc
tion, and for the fund presented for humour by eccle
siastical pecuharities, it seems impossible to overlook
the covert satire ffitended on church behefs'. The
intermixture of a comic element would not alone prove
tffis. The miracle plays of the middle ages admitted
comedy without ffitendffig irreverence ^ ; and a gentle
humour pervades many of the Autos of Calderon,
^ Among recent critics who think so are Foscolo (Quarterly Re
view, No. 42. p. 521,), and Panizzi (Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. 203.),
and in part also 'KaWam (History of Literature, vol. i. 195, (303-5.),
and Guinguen6 (Hist Lit de I'ltalie, vol. iv. c. 3-101.)
' The view here taken is maintained with great ability by the
writer of the Review named above. One joke, which he cites as not
uncommon in these epics, is the representation of St. Peter steaming
with perspiration with the labour of opening and shutting the gates
of Paradise (Morg. Mag. 26. 91.); and, as a more allowable one,
the frequent citation of a certain archbishop Turpin as a witness
for any absurdities, (Berni Orl Innam. 18. 26.), whose existence
and pseudonymous work Pope Calixtus II. had pronounced to
be real.
k The last remnant of these miracle plays, which occurs decen
nially in a valley in Bavaria, is an actual proof of this statement.
An interesting account of the last celebration of it was written by
Dr. Stanley in Mctcmillan's Magazine for October, i860.

LECTURE III 133
which were acted on solemn festivals'. But there
exists ffi the manner in which the supernatural ele
ment is managed by such poets as Pffici, BeUu, and
Ariosto, such evident purpose to bring into ridicffie
the existence of behef, that its paraUel can offiy be
found ffi the banter used by their imitator Byron,
ffi ffis Vision of Judgment, and impHes indifference
both ffi author and reader ; the expression of con
tempt, not of anger".
The unbehef which existed ffi the courts for which
tHs poetry was written, is a specimen of the general
incredffiity, or indifference to Christiaffity, wffich
prevaUed among the educated classes, and was fos
tered by classical stuffies and tastes. It seems
strange to us, who have been long accustomed to
regard classical cffiture as the basis of general edu
cation, and who are impressed with the conviction
of the great assistance mffiistered by it to theological
study, to regard it as the producffig cause of unbelief
Tffis resffit of it however was a transitory one, ori-
gmating ffi the shock wffich arose from the novel
thoughts and tastes wffich mingled themselves
with the ancient pursuits, and altered the previ
ous ideal of Hfe. Ever since the earhest times, a
1 See Dean Trench's Introduction (ch. 3.) to his Translations
from Calderon.
™ The proof of this position must be sought in the Review already
indicated. The illustration from Byron is due to it. Pulci lived
1431-87 ; Bello, about the end of the fifteenth century, the exact
date not known ; Ariosto, i474-i533'

134 LECTURE III
chasm had unavoidably separated heathen hterature
from Christian ; and a dislike to heathen studies
existed, which found its fuU expression ffi Gregory
the Great". The result was, that the Christian civU
ization did not consciously admit the ffitroduction
of heathen thought ; and when the mffid awoke sud
denly to a perception of its beauty and depth, though
deeper spirits, hke Erasmus, regarded it with the
enlightened Christian approbation which Origen had
formerly shown, others were led, like Juhan of old,
from their admiration of it, to look with indifference
or hostflity on Christianity. Some of the brifliant
and elevated mffids that adorned the court of the
Medicis were suspected of unbelief, or of preferrffig
Platonism to Christianity"; and after the woes of the
French invasion at the end of the century had deep
ened the corruption of morals, and stamped out poH
tical liberty, the last freshness of artistic creation,
which had linked the public mffid to Christianity
through the deep ffistfficts of the taste, disappeared.
The art and literature which succeeded are an index
of the tone which prevaUed. Gaffiing perfection ffi
form by the imitation of classic models, they were
" Eichhorn's Oeschichte der Literatur, vol. ii. 443 ; Bayle's Dic
tionary, sub voc. ; Hallam's History of Literature, vol. i. 4. 21.
° Roscoe, in his works on the Medicis, is silent about these ten
dencies. In the fifteenth century, Ficinus, Poggio, Politian, Aretin ;
and at the beginning of the sixteenth, at the Roman court, Paolo
Giovio and Bembo were suspected. See Brucker's Historia Phi-
losophiw, Period iii. part i. 1. ii. c. 3.

LECTURE III 135
cold, sensuous, unspiritual p. Classical mythology
was ffitermised with gospel doctrines ; and the early
years of the sixteenth century represent the semi-
heathen tone of thought which was the transition to
the perfect fusion wffich afterwards took place of
the old learning and the new. It was an age simUar
to those of modem times ffi France and Germany,
which have been caUed periods of humaffism, when
hope suggests the inauguration of a new moral and
social era, and the pride of knowledge produces a
general behef ffi the power of civilization to become
the sole remedy for evfli.
The social conditions of the age added moral
causes to the inteUectual, which tended to fficrease
the unbeHef, especiaUy in the literary classes. One
of them is perhaps to be found ffi the fact that the
church prizes were the only reward for authorship.
By the beginffing of the sixteenth century authors
became largely appreciated through the press, and
received patronage at the courts of the various Ti;'-
pavvoi who had established themselves on the ruffis
of the old republics. In the absence of any law of
copyright there was no protection for them*", and
P The comparison of the painting of the Roman, or the later
Florentine schools of the sixteenth century, with that of the older
Florentine, or of the Umbrian of the fifteenth, will establish this
fact so far as regards art.
1 Similar periods will be hereafter described ; viz. French " Hu
manism" in Lect. V. and German in Lect. VI.
r This fact is also taken from the anonymous reviewer before
quoted.

136 LECTURE III
consequently no reward except church patronage,
which was therefore conferred indiscriminately, and
tended to foster disbehef in the very recipients of it.
A merely professional hold of religion is the surest
road to absolute disbelief It is inconceivable that
the ecclesiastical scandals which ffistory blushes to
narrate, could have been perpetrated by beUevers ;
and the unbelief imputed to persons ffi ffigh station,
such as Leo X with other popes, and cardffials such
as Bembo, was doubtless, if trae, partly the result
of the degradmg effects of professional insincerity.
Such a state of unbelief coffid not be permanent,
whether it was the resffit of a decaymg system, or
of the ffitroduction of new influences. Nor woffid we
use unnecessarfly a polemical tone ffi speaking of a
period where there is so much cause for Christian
humffiation ; yet it is worthy of notice that such
facts are a refutation of the attack which has fre
quently been made on Protestantism, as the cause
of eclecticism and unbelief The two great crises
in church history, when faith almost entirely died out,
and free thought developed ffito total disbehef of the
supernatural, have been in Romish countries ; viz.,
in Italy in this period, and ffi France during the
eighteenth century. In both the experiment of the
authoritative system of the cathohc reHgion had a
fair trial, and was found wantmg.
Other causes besides the classical revival were
operating to stimffiate activity of mffid and freedom
of inquiry. It was an age ffi which the great system

LECTURE III 137
of the middle ages was finaUy dissolving. The dis
covery of new worlds seemed at once to caU to Europe
to break connexion with the old centre of ecclesias
tical centralization ; and to ffivite to that study of
nature which shoffid elevate, and as it were emanci
pate the mind, by teaching physical trath and the
true method of discovery ^ Pohtical circumstances
too, contributed toward the creation of ecclesiastical
autonomy. The European nations had graduaUy grown
mto uffited families, and were now ready for co
operation in a system of balance of power'. The nor
thern nations, long gaUed under the power of Rome,
were pantffig for freedom ; Germany first reformffig
her reHgion, and then tffiowffig off her subjection ;
England ffist tffiowing off her subjection, and then
compeUed to reform herself The old systems of
thought were at an end. The change, like all social
ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final.
It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the
crust of error wffich had fettered thought.
s It is hardly necessary to point out that physical science has not
only made discoveries in its own sphere, but in logic also. By pre
senting a definite body of verified truth, it has rendered possible the
creation of a system of real as distinct from formal logic. In the
scientific discoveries that have been made, we can read the logic of
the process by which they were attained, and thus raise " applied
logic" to the dignity of a science, and indirectly discover a logic of
probable evidence. It is the intellectual, and not merely the mate
rial value of physical science to which allusion is made in the text.
It shows at once what man can know, and the limits where know
ledge must give place to faith, and science to revelation.
t See Guizot's Hist de la Civilisation de V Europe, ch. (9-1 1.)

138 LECTURE IIL
It is a matter of wonder that the great revolutions
just named passed with so Httle development of scep
ticism. In the nations north of the Alps there is
hardly a trace. The charge of deism, directed in the
fifteenth century agaffist Pecock", bishop of Chi
chester, appears to have been unfounded. The con
test wffich Ulrich von Hiitten carried on agaffist the
monks and schools of Cologne was literary rather
than religious'' ; HStten being the hterary and poli
tical reformer rather than the sceptic. Even the most
advanced spirits of the reformers y, Servetus and the

1 Reginald Pecock was a bishop of Chichester about the middle
of the fifteenth century ; who in his rigour against the Lollards
himself incurred the charge of deism. His work which laid him open
to it, " The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the Clergy," has
lately been edited with an instructive preface by Mr. Churchill Bab-
ington. The work appeals to reason, but is not open to the charge
of deism. In tone it may be compared to Locke's " Reasonableness
of Christianity.''
¦^ The contest in which Hutten was engaged against the monks,
with the EpistolcB Obscv/rorum Virorum, which related to it, is
treated in SirW. Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy, p. 205-240
(reprinted from Edinburgh Review, No. 53, March 1830). Strauss
has also published two works on Hiitten, the one a memoir, 1858 ;
the other translations from his work, 1861. (See National Review,
No. 12, April 1858.)
y Servetus, though a Spaniard by birth, learned his protestantism
in Italy ; Castellio, Ochino, and the Sozini were Italians. See Hal
lam's History of Literature, i. 366, 379 ; 552 seq. : for their views
Merle D'Aubign^'s " Three Discourses on ihe Authority of the Scrip
ture." On the Reformation in Italy see Quinet's (Euvres, vol. iv.
b. iii. ch. I ; and Professor Blunt's Essays, p. 89, (Essay reprinted
from Quarterly Review, January 1828.)

LECTURE III 139
Sozini, came forth from Italy, as from the centre of
free thought. Nor were they unbelievers in the reality
of a revelation ; and they met with no support from
the northern reformers. Servetus was martyred at
Geneva, and the Sozmi were banished into Poland. It
was the spiritual earnestness which mffigled with the
inteflectual movement in the Reformation, which pre
vented free thought from producing rationahsm or
unbeHef Protestantism was a form of free thought ;
but offiy in the sense of a return from human au
thority to that of scripture. It was equally a rehance
on an ffistoric reHgion, equally an appeal to the im
memorial doctrine of the church with Roman Catho-
Hcism ; but it conceived that the New Testament
itself contamed a truer source than traffition for
ascertaffiffig the apostolic declaration of it^.
But Italy was the witness of another sceptical
tendency, besides that which resffited from the classic
Renaissance, in the last remnant of the influence of
mediseval phflosophy. Throughout the sixteenth
century, pantheism manifested itself ffi connexion
with the phflosophical studies of the university of
Padua. The form ffi wffich it made itself felt was
the ffisbehef of the immortahty of the soffi on specu
lative grounds. The cause of the ffisbehef was the
^ It is important to notice that the question asked by the re
formed churches was simply, what did the inspired apostles teach 1
and the dispute between them and the Roman catholics referred to
the question, what source was most suited for supplying information
on this point ; — whether ecclesiastical tradition or the original docu
ments of the inspired teachers themselves.

140 LECTURE III
ffifluence of the phUosophy of Averroes before
noticed ".
It wfll be necessary to explain this system with a
httle detafl. It has been already stated that Aver
roes was a noted commentator on Aristotle ffi the
twelfth century. The two ground principles of his
phflosophy were, the eternity of matter and the im-
personahty of mind. On this ffigh subject there can
be offiy two theories ; the one theistic, which declares
that God is free, a personal ffist Cause, and the
Creator of matter, and that other mffids are free and
personal ; the other pantheistic, which asserts that
matter is eternal, and that individual minds are only
the manifestation of the impersonal mind, into
which the individual is reabsorbed. Averroes held
the latter theory, claiming to derive it from Aris
totle. It must be confessed however that Aristotle's
views are uncertain on this poffit : he distffigffished
between mmd, immortal and relative, the latter of
which, being connected with body, ceased at death ;
the former outlived it. But he hardly stated the
doctrine that all soffis are part of the universal soul,
and is silent about their reabsorption ffito it. These
poffits were added by Averroes''.
The influence of the philosophy of Averroes is
observable in tffiee classes of thinkers ; viz., the Span-
* See Hallam, History of Literature, i. 315. A large portion of
Renan's Averroes, viz. pp. 322-432, is devoted to this subject, and is
the source of much of the following information.
'" Renan, id. (122-8.)

LECTURE III 141
ish Jews of his own century, the scholastic phflo
sophers of the tffirteenth, and the phUosophers of
the uffiversity of Padua in the fourteenth and suc-
ceedffig ages. The second of these effects has been
already traced : we must now notice the third.
Padua was the great meffical university of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was a type of
the tendency wffich at that time manifested itseU' in
the north-eastern part of Italy toward material and
rational stuffies, as in Tuscany to ideal and human
istic. It was the meffical phflosophy of Averroes
which had first attracted attention to him. But the
influence of his teachffig was innocuous there untfl
the sixteenth century, during the whole of wffich this
university became the home of free thought.
Strict accuracy would require the separation of
two tendencies in the Peripatetic school of Padua,
each derived from one of Aristotle's commentators''.
The one was the Averroist just named, wffich con
sisted ffi the disbelief of immortality on the ground
of absorption. Man's soffi, being part of the great
soffi which animates the uffiverse, both emanates
from it, and is agaffi reabsorbed. The other was
the Alexandrist, so cafled from foUowffig Alexander
of Apffioffisias'' ; wffich consisted ffi a tendency to
pure materiahsm, an absolute deffial of immortality
and of rehgion, whidi almost reaches the incredffiity
earlier expressed in the legend of the Three Impostors.
' Renan, id. (353-67.) <l He lived about a. d. 200.

142 IECTURE III
Pomponatius is the declared representative of the
latter view soon after the beginffing of the century®.
Frequently however the unbelief was secret, and a
seeming show of orthodoxy was maintaffied by draw
ing a broad distffiction between phUosophy and theo
logy ; and by teacffing that these views, though seen
to be true ffi the one, were to be accounted false ffi
obedience to the teaching of the other.
It is customary to class along with the Averroists
some phUosophers of a more origffial tum ; some of
whom were offiy ffidirectly connected with Padua,
but rather were examples of an attempt to substitute
a phflosophy in place of that wffich was expiring.
They are said to have maffifested the same kind of
pantheism, and to have been led by it to similar ffis
behef. Such are Cesalpini, Cardan ', Bruno, and
Vanffii. The charge is perhaps unfair agaffist the two
« On Pomponatius (1462-1530), see Ritter's Gesch der Ch.
Phil.Y. pp. 390 seq.; Hallam's History qf Literature, i. 315;
Renan, Averroes, 353, &c. ; Tennemann, Manual, § 293 ; and the
Life in the Biographic UniverseUe. His theological treatise which
was chiefiy suspected was De Immortalitate ; but Brucker quotes
from his other writings to prove atheism. As early as 1512 a
Lateran council took notice of the disbelief of immortality.
f In place of the scholastic philosophy, which was disappearing,
but which lived in Padua nearly a century later than in the rest of
Europe, three tendencies manifested themselves; viz., (i) a recon
struction of metajphysical philosophy, on a new, partially Platonic
basis ; (2) a reconstruction of logic, by P. Ramus in France (see
Hallam, History of Literature, i. (388-90) ; (3) attention to expe
rimental science, which led ultimately to the experimental method
of Bacon. Telesius and Campanella belong to the first of these

LECTURE III 143
former, as they seem to have held the separate im
mortality of soffis, wffich is more compatible with
theism. The two latter represent the two schools just
noticed, about the end of the sixteenth century.
Bruno s belonged maiffiy to the Averroist school,
thotigh his views were probably formed indepen
dently, and certaiffiy extended farther. He not only
held the existence of a soffi pervaffing the uffiverse,
wffich is the form of Pantheism which has been al
ready considered, but foUowed the earher phUosophy
of the Neo-Platoffists, in identifyffig the soffi with the
matter wffich it animates; regardffig the one as an
emanation from the other, ffi the same manner as
an effect is merely cause or force transferred. It is
classes. The system of tLe former is briefly explained in Ritter's
Christliche Philosophie, p. 561 seq. ; Renouvier's Histoire de Philo
sophie, t. 2 ; and in Hallam, History of Literature, ii. 7 ; and of
the latter in Hallam, id. (372-6); Tennemann's Manual, § 317 ; and
Ritter, id. vi. 3, seq. Both systems are metaphysical rather than
theologibal. That of Cesalpini is also explained in Ritter, id. v. 653,
seq. ; in Hallam, id. ii. 5 ; that of Cardan in Brucker, period iii.
part ii. lib. i. c. 3 ; Buhle, Gesch. der Neu. Phil. ii. 857, seq. ; and
iu Morley's Life of Cardan (1853).
6 Giordano Bruno (1550-1600), Ritter's Chr. Phil. v. 595. &c.
See Hallam's Hist, of Lit. ii. (8-14.) Ruble's Oeschichte der
Phil. ii. 703. His life and opinions have been described by Mr. G.
H. Lewis in the Biogr. Hist of Phil. p. 314, seq. A list of his
works is given in Buhle Gesch. der Neu. Phil. ii. 703, seq., and more
briefly in Tennemann's Manual, § 300. They were collected and
published in 1830. One of them, the " Spacdo delta bestia trion-
fante" being very scarce, and only known by report, was formerly
thought to be a translation of the celebrated work " De Tribus
Impostoribus."

144 LECTURE IIL
this belief which recurs in Spinoza, which is properly
denominated Pantheism, where'the Creator is for
gotten in creation. The former line of Pantheism
noticed ffi Averroes approaches more nearly to theism.
Bruno's unbelief was not gay and ffippant, but
sombre and earnjest. With a fantastical cortceit
wffich can hardly be explaffied, he traveUed as the
missionary to propagate ffis own views, like a knight
errant tfltffig at aU opiffions, with a soul especiaUy
embittered against the Christian priesthood''. On
his return to Italy from ffis travels he feU ffito
the hands of the church, and suffered death for his
opiffions. Vanffii' simUarly led a wandering life, but is a
character of less seriousness : occasionally he mani
fested the inconsistency of mffifference to his own
convictions. Reverencffig the memory of Pompo
natius, he expressed the same ffisbehef of the spi
ritual and of immortality. He was possibly an
atheist. Certaiffiy ffis views were tffiged with deep
bitterness agaffist rehgion ; and after leadffig a
restless Hfe, he suffered a cruel martjTrdom for ffis
behef. ^ In his travels he reached Oxford, and was admitted to lecture
in the university.
i Lucilio Vanini (1586-16 1 9.) His chief works were " Amphi-
theatrum .^ternse Providentise," and " De Admirandis Naturse Ar-
canis.'' The latter was condemned by the Sorbonne. Full particu
lars are given in Brucker's Hist Phil, period iii. part ii. 1. i. ch. 6.
See also Buhle, Gesch. der Neu. Phil ii. 866. seq. ; and the Life in
the Biographic UniverseUe.

LECTURE III 14.5
Bruno and Vanini were the apostles of a doctrine
which the world woffid no longer hear. The dawn
of physical knowledge was turnffig men to a truer
study of the universe, and caused their labours to
be in vaffi. The age of indifference was gone. The
alarm caused by the Reformation had kffiffied a
strong ecclesiastical reaction, especiaUy ffi Italy, and
the rehgious earnestness and inteUectual activity of
Germany had awoke an ffiteUigent reaction on the
part of the Cathohc church '^ Hence these two
writers incurred a danger unknown to their prede
cessors. Martyrs are men who are before their age
or behind it. Their sad fate throws an interest
around their Hves. UnbeHef must always have its
confessors. It is to be hoped that the inhumaffity
of Christendom wiU never agaffi cause it to have its
martyrs. The survey is now complete of the crisis which
occurred ffi the transition from the midffie ages to
modern history, formffig the third of those enume
rated ffi a former lecture. We have witnessed
amidst its complexity the maffifestation of the
same principles as ffi former epochs ; the restless
ness of the human mind strugghng to be free, ffitel-
lectuaUy, politicaUy, reUgiously ; and we have endea
voured to trace the operation of the ffifluence of
classical hterature and metaphysical phflosophy in
mducing the decay of Christian feehng and behef
^ On this reaction, see Hallam, Hist of Lit i, (536-44),
L

• 146 LECTURE IIL
The means adopted for counteracting the move
ment were simflar to those used ffi former periods,
viz. an mteUectual argument and a spiritual awaken
ing. In some ffistances indeed, ffi accordance with
the spirit of the time, or more trffiy with the spirit
of human nature, material force and cruelty were
employed, and the unbehever was sUenced by mar
tyrdom. But neither material power nor the auto
cratic uffity of the Roman church was able to repress
the growth of the human mffid. Conviction must
be directed, not crushed. The revival of books of
evidences, as soon as printffig became common, about
the close of the fifteenth century, wffich were de
signed to confirm faith, was a more lawfffi form of
warfare'. They were constructed however on a basis
unsffited to an age when ffist prmciples were being
reconsidered, beffig an attempt to estabhsh the au
thority of the church and the duty of submission to
an external norm of faith, and lacked the surer basis
adopted ffi Protestant works of evidence, wffich is
found in the external ffivffie authority of the Bible
rather than the church. The creation of the order
of the Jesffits, thougffi directed more against Pro
testantism than agaffist imbehef, was a witness, Hke
' This revival is at the same time the proof of the existence of
doubt. Staiidlin, in Eichhorn's Oeschichte der Lit. vol. vi. p. 24 seq.
enumerates treatises of this kind by Ficinus, Alfonso de Spina, Sa
vonarola, .iEneas Sylvius, and Pico di Mirandola. The rare work of
Sebonde also, which has been supposed to be deistical, is really a
treatise on natural religion as an evidence of revealed. See Hal
lam's Hist of Lit. i. 139, 40 ; Tennemann's Manual, 277.

LECTURE IIL 147
the previous reactionary movement of the scholastic
writers ffi the tffirteenth century, to the wish to
wrest the use of leamffig out of the hands of the
opponents of the church, and to employ the weapon
of reason in defence of it.
The judgment formed on tffis epoch of free
thought, when we have separated from it the Pro
testantism which craves other satisfaction for the
human mffid than that which is imphed ffi submis
sion to human authority, and the scepticism wffich
was merely transitional doubt, must be condemnatory.
The unbeHef was ffideed a phase of the general
movement ; but one wffich is ffistructive as a warn-
ffig rather than as an example, ffiustratffig the abuse
not the use of free thought. The evU nevertheless
was temporary, and belongs to the past ; the good
was eternal : and the elements of real inteUectual
improvement contaffied in the straggle haye been
taken up ffito the constitution of modem thought
and society.
We have now considered tffiee great epochs in the
histoiy of free thought, and watched Cffiistianity ffi
contact or conflict with the old heathen philosophy,
with the thought Scholastic or Mahometan of the
middle ages, and with the revival of classical leam
ffig. It remaffis to enter upon the consideration of
the fourth, and to observe it in relation to modem
science. The seventeenth century ffitroduced as strikffig a
L 2

148 LECTURE III
revolution in pffilosophy as the correspondmg ones
which the two preceffing ages had produced in Htera
ture and reHgion.
Two distffict thffikers, Bacon and Descartes, from
different poffits of view, perceived the necessity for
constructing a new method of mqffiry. Their posi
tion was simflar to that of Socrates of old. They saw
that if knowledge was to be rendered sound, it must
be based on a new method "". They both alike sought
it in experience ; Bacon in sensational, Descartes in
inteUectual, the instinctive utterance of conscious
ness". The ffidirect effects on reHgion produced by
their teachffig Avffi be seen more fuUy hereafter. Our
present object is to sketch the influence exercised by
Descartes on the theological specffiations of Spmoza,
before passffig ffi succeedffig lectures to the detafled
study of those pecuharities which free thought has
presented in the different countries ffi which it has
been manifested".
™ On Socrates, see Grote's History of Greece, vol. viii. ch. 68.
n On Bacon and Descartes see Ritter, ChrisiliGhe Philosophie, v. 309
seq., and vii. 3 seq., Buhle iii. (1—86), Tennemann's Oeschichte, x. 200
seq.; and the references given in Tennemann's Manual, § 312 and
333. Among English sources, see Morell's History of Philosophy,
i. 76, 166; 'LeMves' History of Philosophy, Hallam's History of
Literature, vol. ii. part 3. ch. 3. On Descartes, see also Bouillet's
Histoire de la Revolution Cartesienne (1842) p. 95—144 ; and on
Bacon, the monograph by Kuno Fischer of Jena, translated 1857.
«• In chronological order Herbert and Hobbes ought to come
before Spinoza. Indeed their works furnished suggestions to him ;
but as the forms of scepticism which follow are arranged by nations,
it is more convenient to place Spinoza here alone previously to
treating the others.

LECTURE IIL 149
Spffioza's memory has been branded with the
stigma which attached to his character durffig hfe p.
Born ffi Hofland, of Jewish origin, his early repudia
tion of the legends of the Talmud ffi wffich he was
educated, caused his excommunication by his own
people. Fffidffig himself an outcast, he sought
society among a few sceptical friends, one of whom
was a physician named Van den Ende, whom a sense
of mjustice united to him by the bond of common
sympathy. His life was passed ffi retirement, ffi
hard, gripffig poverty. Possessing a mffid of great
originality, and a fondness for demonstrative rea
soning never surpassed, he Hved a model of chaste
P The best means of understanding Spinoza is the perusal of his
own works. It is only in modern times that he has been under
stood. The old works against him, Reimannus (de Atheismo), Mans-
veldt, Cuperus, and Kortholt (de Trib. Impostoribus), are chiefly
obsolete. A memoir exists by Colerus, 1706. Among the moderns
he has been carefully studied by E. Saisset, both in Essais de Phi
losophie Religieuse, 1859, and in a dissertation prefixed to a trans
lation of his works, 1861, and in a learned article in the Revue des
Deux Mondes for Jan. 1862 ; also by Damiron, Essai sur Spinoza.
Among English writers, see Hallam, History of Literature, iii. 344
seq., Lewes' History of Philosophy, and an article on the Theolo-
gico-Politicus in the British Qua/rterly Review, No. 16, for Nov. 1848,
referring to Spinoza's theology. In Germany his opinions have
been examined by Ritter, Chr. Phil. vii. 169 seq.; Buhle iii. 503
seq. ; Tennemann's Oeschichte, x. 462 seq. Schleiermacher in early
life expressed his opinion of him in words of extravagant eulogy,
{Reden iiber die Relig., p. 47, quoted in Lewes' History of Philo
sophy^ Consult also the various references given in Tennemann's
Manual, § 338. A volume of Spinoza's writings has lately been
found and published, which is made interesting by a photograph
from a rare portrait of him.

150 LECTURE III
submissive virtue, searching for specffiative truth ;
branded as an atheist in pffilosophy whUe Hvmg,
and regarded since his death as the parent of many
of the worst forms of rationahsm in reHgion. Yet
ffis character is one that cannot fail to excite a
certain kind of pity. Unlike the frivolous seffish
atheism, the immoral Epicureanism, of the French
unbeHef of the fbUowffig century, ffis ffivestigations.
were grave, ffis tone ffigipified, his temper gentle, ffis
spirit serious. It is to be feared that he ffid not
worsffip God ; but he at least worsffipped, at the cost
of social martyrdom, what he thought to be trath.
If he ffid not beHeve ffi revealed religion, he at least
tried to embody what he beheved to be its moral
precepts. Though we may shrffik with horror from
his teaching, we cannot, when we compare him with
other unbehevers, withhold our pity from the teacher.
His works are short, but weighty. Of ffis impor
tant treatises, the one, the Tractatus Theohgico-
PoUtieus, shows him as the Bibhcal critic ; the
other, the JEthica, exhibits his phUosophy. In the
former, written ffi early hfe, he derives his materials
and mode of handlffig from the Jewish meffiseval
theologian Maimonides ; in the latter, the product
of his riper years, from Descartes'!. But as he had
1 In the admirable article in the Revue, quoted in the last note,
Saisset discusses carefully the sources from which Spinoza derived
his theology and philosophy. Cousin in earlier life had regarded
his philosophy as borrowed from Descartes (Fragm. de Phil
Cartes., p. 428 seq.), and Ritter coincides in this opinion. More
recently, in the new edition (1861) of his Hist Gen. de la Philos.,

LECTURE III 151
undoubtedly come under the ffifluence of Descartes
before writing the former work, and it is certaffi that
the effects of it on ffis own pffilosopffical scheme are
already discerffible ffi it. We shaU therefore com
mence with the latter, and attempt to understand
ffis phUosophy, and its apphcation to reHgion, before
studyffig ffis, special criticism of Revelation.
Descartes had aimed, Hke the great thinkers of
earher times, to gain a general view of the uffiverse
of being ; but had sought it by a different mode.
Carffig rather for certitude of method, reaHty ffi the
highest prmciples, than for resffits attaffied, he had
seen that a knowledge of bemg must rest on a
knowledge of the consciousness wffich teUs us of
bemg. His principle, " Cogito, ergo sum," is the
expression of this conviction. Therefore, carryffig
analysis into the human mind, he had grasped those
ideas wffich appeal to us with irresistible clearness,
and commend themselves as axioms requirffig no
proof ; and from these ideas, or rather from the idea
of cause, the primitive of them, regarded by ffim as
innate, he had demonstrated a priori the beffig and
attributes of God, and the prfficiples which domffiate
in the great fields of knowledge ^
he regards it as bon-owed from Maimonides (p. 457)- See on Mai
monides' Philosophy, Adolph. Franck's Etudes Orientates, p. 318.
Saisset after a careful examination comes to the conclusion that
the theology was suggested by Maimonides' More Nevochim, but
that the philosophy was derived neither from the Kabbala, nor
Averroes, nor Maimonides, but from Descartes.
'' See the references given in a former note.

152 LECTURE III
Spffioza's object was simUar; but he sought to
attaffi it in a different manner : rejectffig, on the one
hand, the dualism by wffich Descartes had opposed
mffid and matter, he regarded each as a different
mode of the same primitive substance, and, on the
other, the limited idea of the divffie Being, he con
ceived that the mind of man realizes the notion of
Him as uffiimited. There are three ffifferent opiffions
in reference to our capacity of knowing the infiffity
of God. Either our knowledge of Him is only nega
tive and relative ; we know offiy what He is not, and
our positive notions of His nature are drawn from the
analogy of human personahty ; or, secondly, we have
an intuition of His ffififfity, but so bare of attributes,
that wffile. it guarantees the reaHty of our appre
hensions of Him, we are dependent on experience for
its development into a conception ; or, thirdly, the
human mffid can apprehend His infinity positively,
antecedent to the appHcation of limitations to itl
The last of these three views belonged to Spinoza,
along with the ancient Eleatics, the Neo-Platonists of
the early ages, and the prfficipal schools of modern
German pffilosophy. Accordmgly he tried to work
out with mathematical rigour in geometrical form a
pffilosophy of existence, conceivffig that the mind
grasps the idea of God as infiffite substance, and
understands its development under two modes ; viz.
extension and thought : the former the objective act
s Compare the Essay on Cousin by Sir W. Hamilton (Disserta
tions, J). 32.)

LECTURE III 153
of Deity, the latter the subjective*. The universe
therefore is nothffig but the manifestation of God :
God is the sum total of it ; the unity in its variety ;
the mfinite comprehenffing its fiffity. Cause and
effect are identical; the natura naturans, and natura
naturata. Causation is change ; but it is nothffig
but substance assumffig attributes, and attributes
assuming modes. Phenomena are only the bubbles
which arise on the bosom of the ocean and disappear,
absorbed ffi its vastness. The uffiverse is bound
in one vast chain of fatahsm, one grand and perfect
whole. Man's perfection is to know by contemplation
the universe ffi wffich he has his beffig.
Such a system has been caUed atheistic, because it
is sUent about the presence of a personal ffist Cause.
It might be more trffiy denomffiated Pantheistic,
not ffi the vague sense ffi which that term is apphed
to denote the behef in a Deity as an anima mundi,
like that explaffied in reference to the Averroists",
but to imply that the sum total of all tffings, the
uffiverse, is Deity. Its ffifluence on the question of
revealed religion wffi be obvious. It admits that
the phenomena wffich we attribute to miracle ffi the
process of revelation are facts, but it denies their
miracffious character''. They are the mere manifes
tation of some previously unknown law, turning up
accidentafly at the particular moment, some pre-
t Ethica, part ii. prop, i and 2.
" P. 140.
" Theol Polit c. vi.

154 LECTURE III
viously unknown mode in which the aU-embracffig
substance manifests itself. In this view afl reHgions
become various expressions of the great moral and
spiritual truths which they embody, and true piety
consists in risffig beyond them to the vision of the
ffigher truths wffich they typify, and the practice of
the principles which they enjom as rffies. " Dice,"
wrote Spffioza, "ad salutem non esse omffino necesse,
Christum secundum carnem noscere ; sed de setemo
ffio filio Dei, hoc est, Dei setemA sapientid quse sese
in omnibus rebus, et maxime ffi mente humana et
omffium maxime ffi Christo Jesu manifestavit, longe
ahter sentiendum "."
Spffioza, though a Jew, had examined the claims
of Christianity. Indeed the discussions, half pohtical
half rehgious, of the Dutch theology, woffid have
compeUed the investigation of it, ffidependently of
his own largeness of sympathy with the phUosophical
history of human rehgion y. His phflosophy of re
vealed reHgion is contained ffi ffis Tractatus Theo-
logico-Politicus^. This work was called forth by the
disputes of the age, and had the poHtical object of
" Ep. xxi. vol. iii. p. 195. (Lips. ed. 1846.) It will be hereafter
seen how exactly this result is parallel to the religious philosophy
and Christology developed in the Hegelian school. See Lect. VII.
y A succinct account of the contests in Holland is given in
C. Butler's ii/e of Grotius, c. 5, 6, 12. See also Amand Saintes,
Histoire de la Vie de Spinoza, p. 63 ; Ease's Church History, E. T.
§ 356 ; Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, § 235.
'¦ A good analysis for an English reader may be found in the
article quoted above from the British Quarterly Review.

LECTURE III , 155
defending Hberty of thought as necessary to the
safety both of the state and of religion. The question
of predestination had rent the Dutch church shortly
before this time ; and when the victory remained
with the Calviffistic party, the opffiions of the liberal
Remonstrants were treated as crimes. Spffioza pro
posed in this work a plan, perhaps suggested by the
perusal of Hobbes, for curing these dissensions. The
book is a critical essay, ffi wffich he surveys the
Jewish and Christian reHgions, and ends in the con
clusion that certaffity on the subject of a revelation
is impossible ; accordmgly that the remedy for theo
logical acrimony must be sought ffi a return to what
he regards to be the simple doctrffie which Christ
taught, the love of God and one's neighbour; that
phflosophy and theology ought to be severed ; the one
aimffio- at truth and resting on uffiversal ideas, the
other at obeffience and piety and restffig on ffistoric
authority and special revelation. Hence, whfle uffi-
formity of rehgious worship and practice was to be
prescribed, he clahned that unlimited Hberty of spe
culation ought to be tolerated*.
It is ffi the survey of Judaism and Christianity in
the earher part of this work that he exhibits the
views in which he has anticipated many of the spe
cffiations of rationalism. He examines first ffito the
grounds which Revelation puts forward for its claim
a Tlieol Pol ch. 19, 20. The idea here is borrowed from
Hobbes.

156 LECTURE III
to authority, viz. prophecy, the Jewish pohty, and
miracles'' ; next the principles of ffiterpretation, and
the canon of the two Testaments" ; lastly, the nature
of the ffivffie teacffing "^ ; endeavourffig to show that
the fundamental articles of fffith are given ffi natural
religion. In this way he exffibits his views on those
branches wffich are now denommated the evidences,
exegesis, and doctrines. In the ffiscussion of prophecy
he analyses the nature of prophetic foresight ffito
vividness of imagmation; and exffibits, the human
feehng and sentiment ffitertwined with it". He
regards the Hebrew idea of election as merely the
theocratic mode of representffig their own good suc
cess in that region of circumstances which was not ffi
human power ^. His explanation of miracles has been
already stated : the course of nature seems to ffim to
be fixed and immutable ; and he argues, that mteri'e-
rence with its course is not a greater proof of Provi
dence than a perpetual unchangffig administration'^.
As ffis phUosophy is seen in the treatment of the
evidences, so his criticism appears ffi the ffiscussion of
the canon.- He examines the several books of scrip
ture, and concludes from supposed marks of effitorsffip
that the Pentateuch and historical books were aU com
posed by one historian, who was, he thinks, probably
Ezra, Deuteronomy being the first composed''. The
prophetic books he resolves into a collection of frag-

b Ch. (l-5.) <= Ch. 7-12. d Ch. 13-15. e Ch.
f Ch. 3. e Ch. 6. h Ch. 8.

LECTURE III 1.57
ments. His opffiions on this department would be
rejected as immature by modern rationalist critics ;
yet they have an historic ffiterest as markffig the
rise of the searchffig ffivestigations into the sources
and construction of the Hebrew sacred Hterature,*
wffich have been pursued ffi an ffistructive manner
in modem times. His view respecting the nature
of scriptural doctrffi.es', that they can be reduced to
the teacffing of natural reason, is a coroUary from his
phUosophy, wffich cannot admit that any rehgious
truth is obligatory wffich is not self-evident, and
is analogous to the doctrffie wffich a short time
previously had been stated by Lord Herbert of
Cherbury li.
These remarks wffi suffice ffi explanation of the
criticism exffibited in tffis work. The book marks
an epoch, a new era in the critical and pffilosopffical
investigation of rehgion. Spffioza's ideas are as it
were the head waters from which flows the current
which is afterwards parted ffito separate streams. If
viewed merely as a specimen of criticism, they are
ffi many respects very defective. For this branch
was new ffi Spinoza's time. Learning had been
directed since the Renaissance rather to the acqui
sition of stores of ffiformation concerffing ancient
literature than reflective examination of the authen
ticity and critical value of the sources. Yet Spffioza's
sagacity is so great, that the book is suggestive of
i Ch. (12-14.) '' D^ Veritate. See Lect. IV.

158 LECTURE III
information, and fertfle in hffits of instruction to
readers who dissent most widely from ffis inferences'.
In Spinoza's own times the work met with unbounded
indignation. Indeed hardly any age coffid have been
less prepared for its reception. So rigorous a theory
of verbal inspiration was then held, that the question
of the date of the ffitroduction of the Hebrew vowel
poffits was discussed under the idea that ffispiration
woffid be overthrown, if the admission was made that
they were ffitroduced after the time of the closing of
the canon*". The tone of fairness ffi Spinoza's man
ner, wffich compels most n:odem readers to beheve
ffi his honesty, and which presents so strikffig a con
trast to the profaneness of subsequent scepticismj
' Great critical sagacity is evinced in describing the characteristics
of prophecy (ch. i. and ii.), and the historic peculiarities of the Pen
tateuch (ch. viii.) ; which however, it would seem, had been ob
served partially by some of the learned Dutch theologians of the
time. ™ This lay at the bottom of the opposition which Buxtorf and
Owen ofiered to the view, now universally adopted, of Capellus and
Morinus, that the vowel points were a late introduction in Hebrew,
perhaps of the sixth to the tenth centuries A. D. The history of the
controversy is given in Walch's Bibliotheca Theol Select vol. iv.
p. 244, 268. ; and Wolf's Bibliotheca Hebr. part iv. p. 7 ; part ii.
p. 25. and 270. The Formula Consensus of the Helvetic church
(1675), (on which see Schweizer in Herzog's Realen-Encyel. xi.
439 seq. ; Henke's Kirchengeschichte, vol. iv. § 34 ; Hagenbach's
Dogmengesch. § 222.), was partly designed against the views of
Capellus. On the question of the vowel points, consult ihe Pro
legomena to Walton's Polyglot, iii. 39 ; Carpzov. Crit Sacr. 242
seq. Wolf's Bibliotheca Hebraica, ii. 475. ; iv. 214 seq. ; and among
the moderns, Gesenius's Gesch. der Hebr. Sprache, § 48.

LECTURE III 159
was then regarded as latent irony. The work on
its appearance was suppressed by public authority ;
but it was frequently reprmted; and probably no
work of free thought has ever had more influence,
both on friends and foes, except the memorable work
of Strauss in the present age. Not offiy have free
thinkers been moffided by it, but it has produced
lastmg effects on those who have loved the faith of
Christ. For Spffioza's work, if it ffid not create, gave
expression to the tendency of which shght traces are
perceptible elsewhere", to recognize a large class of
facts relatffig to the personal pecuharities of the in
spired writers, and to the " human element," as it has
been frequently cafled", ffi scripture, for wffich or
thodox criticism has always subsequently had to find
a place in a theory of ffispiration ; facts wffich first
shook the mechanical or verbal theory, wffich, how
ever piously intended, reaUy had the effect of
degradffig the sacred writers almost ffito automatons,
and regarded them as the pens ffistead of the penmen
of the inspiring Spirit?. Indirectly the effect of
° E. g. in Le Clerc. See Sentimens de Quelques Theologiens
d'HoUande sur l' Histoire Critique du pere Simon, and his Five
Letters on Inspiration ; and in the French Roman catholic critic,
R. Simon, in reference to whom see note on p. ii 6.
° E. g. by Dr. Lee on Inspiration, Lect. I.
P Compare Dr. Lee's learned and valuable work on Inspiration,
ch. iv. The writer of this lecture need hardly say, that he cordially
and reverently believes in the miraculous character of scripture
inspiration ; and that the remarks here in the text are only aimed
at the extravagant views held in the seventeenth century, such as

160 LECTURE III
Spinoza's thought was seen even in the English
church. The dflficffities which, tffiough means of
the EngHsh deists, it brought before the notice of
the great apologetic writers of our own country,
created the free, but perhaps not irreverent theory
of revelation manifested ffi the churchmen of the
last century 1, wffich restricted the miracffious assist
ance of inspiration to the specffic subject of the
revealed communication, the rehgious element of
scripture, and ffid not regard it as comprehendffig
also the aUusions, scientific or historic, extraneous
to reHgion.
Nor is it merely in respect of criticism that Spi
noza's views have affected subsequent thought. The
central prfficiple of ffis philosophy, the pantheistic
disbehef of miracffious interposition, wffich has sub
sequently entered ffito so many systems, was first
clearly appHed to theology by him. Wherever the
ffisbehef ffi the supernatural has arisen from d priori
considerations, and expressed itself, not with aflega-
tions of conscious fraud agaffist the devotees of
reHgion, nor with attempts to explaffi it away as
merely mental realism, but with assertions that
miracles are impossible, and nature an unchangffig
that, above named, in reference to the Hebrew vowel points. No
Christian however ought to fail to appreciate the deep reverence
for holy scripture implied in the theory from which dissent is here
expressed. q A note, giving proof of the fact here stated, will be found at
the end of Lect. VIII.

IECTURE III 101
whole ; this disbehef, whether insinuating itself into
the defence of Christianity, or marking the attack on
it, has been a reproduction of Spffioza.
In taking a retrospect of the long period over
wffich we have traveUed in this lecture, embracffig
the twofold crisis of free thought ffi the middle ages
and the inauguration of the modem era, we cannot
faU to be impressed with the grand idea of the per
manent victory of truth, and the exquisite order
accordffig to wffich the fatherly providence of God
makes aU thffigs conduce together for good. When
the course of ffistory is viewed ffi its true perspec
tive, we perceive that Almighty love rffieth. The
period has comprised most of the great movements,
pohtical or ffiteUectual, which have occurred ffi Eu
ropean history smce the Christian era. The faU of
the Roman empire, the gradual reconstruction of
society, the revival of leamffig, the invention of
printing, the ffiscovery of a new geographical world,
the creation of modem phUosophy, embraced in it,
include the mention of almost every great event,
with the exception of the French revolution, which
has modffied the character of the human mind, or
affected the destffiy of Cffiistianity. At times it
seemed as if Cffiistiaffity was on the poffit of beffig
extffiguished by unbeHef; at other times, the church
seemed to lend itself to the extermination of aU
freedom of mvestigation. Yet Christianity has lasted
through aU the dangers, tffiowffig off, hke a healthy
system, the errors which from time to time ffisinuated
M

162 LECTURE IIL
themselves mto it, and diffasffig its blessffigs of
eternal truth into every region of Hfe and thought.
The past is the pledge of hope for the future.
Look forth ! — that stream behold.
That stream upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease, while nations have elfaced
Nations, and death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty kings : — ^look forth, my soul !
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll.
Till they have reached the eternal city — built
For the perfected spirits of the just'.
•• Wordsworth, EcclesiasticafSonnets, part ii. 47.

LECTUHE IV.
DEISM IN ENGLAND PREVIOUS TO A.D. 1760.

Isaiah lix. 19.
When tAe enemy shall come in like a flood, tAe Spirit of the
Lord sAall lift up a standard against Aim.
J. HE forms assumed by free thought in the fourth
great crisis of the Christian faith, wffich commenced
with the rise of modem phUosophy, and has con-
tffiued with shght ffitervals to the present time, have
been already stated^ to be cffiefly tffiee, correspond
mg with the tffiee nations ffi which they have been
manifested. In this lecture we shaU sketch the ffistory of one
of these forms — EngHsh Deism — by wffich name the
form of unbelief is denomffiated wffich existed during
the close of the seventeenth and the first half of the
^ See above p. 14.
M 2

164 LECTURE IV.
eighteenth century. If the dates be marked by
correspondmg political history, its rise may be placed
as early as the reign of Charles I. ; its maturity in
the period from the revolution of 1688 to the ffivasion
of the Pretender ffi 1745 ; its decay in the close of
the reign of George IL, and the early part of that
of George III. ''
This long period was marked by those great events
in inteUectual and social ffistory wffich were calcu
lated to awaken the spirit of free inquiry. It wit
nessed the dethronement of constituted authorities
— ffiteUectual, ecclesiastical, poHtical ; the constant
struggle of religious factions; and on two occasions
civU war and revolution. It was affected by the
rise of the pffilosophy of Bacon, and the positive
advances of natural science under Newton and his
coadjutors. It comprehended moments marked by
the outburst of native geffius, and others ffifluenced
by contact with the continental hterature, both with
the speculative theology of HoUand and the dramatic
and critical hterature of France =. Above aU it was
ffiumffied by the presence of such an array of great
mffids ffi all departments of ffiteUectual activity as
can rarely be matched ffi a single period. If, when
*> This computation regards lord Herbert of Cherbury as marking
the commencement, and Hume the close ; the doubters of the latter
half of the eighteenth century, such as Gibbon, being excluded, be
cause their writings are marked by the forms of French unbelief.
'^ The former in the struggle of Arminians and Calvinists in the
Puritan controversy; the latter in the revolution supposed to be
caused in our literature by the influence of Dryden.

LECTURE IV. 165
the human mind in the middle ages was warmed
into Hfe after the wffiter of its long torpor, under
the genial influence of the revival of hterature, the
renewal of its power was marked by a ffisposition to
throw off the trammels which had bound it ffi the
night of its darkness, how much more might such a
result be expected when it was baskffig under the
sunshffie of meriffian brightness, and exffitffig ffi the
consciousness of strength.
A special pecffiiarity of this period likely to pro-
duce effects on rehgion has been already mentioned.
The phflosophy of this age compared with former
ones was essentiafly a discussion of method. The
two rival phflosopffies which now arose are generally
placed ffi opposition to each other, as physical or
mental respectively, that of Bacon beffig conversant
with nature, that of Descartes with man'^- But in
truth ffi one respect both were uffited. Each was ana
lytical ; each strove to lay down a general method for
investigating the sphere of ffiquiry wffich it selected.
Both were reactions against the dogmatic assump
tions of former systems ; both assumed the indispen
sable necessity of an entire revolution ffi the method
of attainffig knowledge. Accordmgly, though differ
ing widely ffi appealing to the external senses or the
d In addition to the references given in Lect. III. (p. 148.) see
Cousin's Hist de la Phil am, 18^ si^cle (Legon 3) ; and Remusat's
Essai sur Bacon, 1857 ; but especially the sketch of the relation of
Bacon's philosophy to religion in K. Fischer's monograph on Bacon.
(c. X. and xi.)

166 LECTURE IV.
ffiternal intuitions respectively, they both buflt phflo
sophy in the criticism of first prfficiples. Hence,
ffidependently of any particffiar coroflaries from spe
cial parts of their systems, the influence of their spirit
was to beget a critical, subjective, and analytical
study of any topic. When appHed to religion, this
is the feature which subsequently characterizes ahke
the unbelief and the ffiscussion of the evidences.
Difficffities and the answers to difficffities are found
in an appeal to the functions and capacities of the
interpretmg mffid. This appeal to reason was de
nomffiated rationahsm in the seventeenth century,
prior to the present application of the term ffi a more
limited and obnoxious sense. The specific doctrine
arrived at by this process, which aUows the existence
of a Deity, and of the rehgion of the moral conscience,
but denies the specffic revelation which Christiaffity
asserts, was called theism or deism. (21)
In the period wffich we have mentioned as marking
the ffist stage of deism, extenffing from its com
mencement to the close of the seventeenth century^
the pecuharity which characterized the ffiquiry was
the pohtical aspect wffich it bore. The relation of
rehgion to pohtical toleration^ gave occasion for
examining the sphere of truth which may form the
subject of political interference.
" This inquiry was called forth in the disputes of the established
church against popery and puritanism, and led to works in favour
of toleration by Chillingworth, Bp. Jeremy Taylor (Liberty of Pro-
pliesying), and later by Milton ; and towards the close of the century
by Locke.

LECTURE IV. 167
Two writers of opposite schools are usuaUy regarded
as marking the rise of deism, both of whom belonged
to this phase of it, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and
Hobbes. Both formed their systems ffi the reign
of Charles I'. The one rejected revelation by makffig
religion a matter of individual ffitffition, the other
by makffig it a matter of poHtical convenience.
Lord Herbert^, the elder brother of the saintly
poet, if looked at as a phUosopher, must be classed
with Descartes rather than with Bacon, though chro
nology forbids the idea that he can have learned any
thing from Descartes. It is probable that whUe on
his early embassy in France he came under the same
inteUectual influences which suggested to Descartes
ffis views. Fragments of knowledge and partial
solutions derived from older phflosophies exist before
a great thinker like Descartes embodies them in a
system. Herbert may have been led by the indirect
f Hobbes's Leviat/ian was not published till 1651 ; but the
thoughts were evidently suggested by the woes of the reign of
Charles I.
g Herbert (1581— 1648). His works were, i)e Veritate, 1624, De
Causis Errorum, 1645, De Religione Laid, De Religione Gentiliwm,
1663. An autobiography was published in 1764. He was answered
by Locke (Reason, of Christianity), Baxter, Halyburton, Leland,
(Deists, lett. 1 and 2.), and Kortholt; and his philosophy was attacked
by Gassendi. On Herbert see Ritter's Christliche Philosophie, vi.
390 seq. ; Tennemann's Gesch. x. 113 seq. ; Eichhorn's Gesch. der
Lit. 6, 95 seq. ; Hallam's History of Literature, ii. 380 seq. ; and
Leehler's Oeschichte des Englischen Deismus, p. 36-54 ; Remusat
in Rev. des Deux Mondes,i854, vol. iii. His views in some respects
seein to have resembled those of Pecock or Sebonde.

168 LECTURE IV.
effect of such ffifluences to a theory of irmate ideas,
independently of Descartes ; or he may have arrived
at it by reaction agaffist the Pyrrhonism of some of
the French writers of the precedmg age, such as
Montaigne, with whose writffigs he was familiar.
His works furnish ffis views on knowledge and
on religion, both natural, heathen, and Cffiistian.
They include a treatise on truth, which suggested
another on the cause of errors. The views on religion
therein named, further suggested one on the religion
wffich could be expected in a layman, and this agaffi
a critique on heathen creeds, written to show the
uffiversality of the behefs so described ^
In discussffig truth' he surveys the powers of the
human mind, and places the ffitimate test of it ffi the
natural instincts or axiomatic behefs. These accord
ingly become the test of a rehgion. The true religion
must therefore be a universal one ; that is, one of
which the evidence commends itself to the universal
mind of man, and finds its attestation ffi truths in-
tffitively perceived. Of such truths he enumerates
five j : — the existence of one supreme God ; the duty
of worship ; piety and virtue as the means thereof ;
the efficacy of repentance ; the existence of rewards
and puffishments both here and hereafter. These
he regards as the fundamental pfllars of uffiversal
h In its mode of treatment it has been compared to Bacon's
Wisdom of the Ancients.
In the De Veritate.
j De Relig. Gentil., 15. 199. App. to Relig. Laici, 2, 3.

LECTURE IV. 169
reHgion ; and distffiguishes from these reahties the
doctrffies of what he cafls particular reHgions, one of
which is Christianity, as beffig uncertaffi, because not
self-evident ; and accordffigly considers that no assent
can be expected in a layman, save to the above-named
self-evident truths. His view however of revelation
is not very clear. Sometimes he seems to admit it,
sometimes proscribes it as uncertain. His object
seems not to have been primarfly destructive, but
merely the result of attempts to discover truth amid
the jarring opinions of the churches of ffis day''.
The ideas which his writffigs contributed to deist
speculation are two ; viz., the examffiation of the univer
sal principles of rehgion, and the appeal to an ffiternal
ffiuminatffig influence superior to revelation, " the
ffiward Hght," as the test of rehgious truth. This
was a pffiase not uncommon in the seventeenth cen
tury. It was used by the Puritans to mark the
appeal to the spiritual instfficts, the heaven-taught
feehngs ; and later by mystics, like the founder of the
Quakers, to imply an appeal to an ffiternal sense '.
But in Herbert it differs from these ffi beffig uni
versal, not restricted to a few persons, and ffi being
intellectual rather than emotional or spiritual. It
was not analysed so as to separate ffituitional from
k There is a curious /record in his journal (Autobiography,
p. i7i-3.)--of an earnest prayer for guidance on the subject of the
publication of his first book De Veritate, which he no doubt saw
was opposed to popular belief.
I Lechler, Oeschichte des E. D. p. 64.

170 LECTURE IV.
reflective elements, and seems to have been analogous
to Descartes' ffitimate appeal to the natural reason,
the self-evidencffig force of the mental axioms ™.
If it was the anxiety to find certainty ffi controver
sies concerffing theological dogmas, which suggested
Herbert's inquiries, it was the struggle of ecclesiastical
parties in connexion with political movements which
excited those of Hobbes".
In his pffilosopffical views he belonged to an oppo
site school to Herbert. A ffisciple of Bacon, he was
the first to apply ffis master's method to morals, and
to place the basis of ethical and poHtical obhgation
in experience ; and in the appHcation of these phflo-
™ Because they bear, as he thought, the great test of being self-
evident. It will be remembered that the clearness of an idea was
the test of the innate character of it in Descartes' system (Prindpia
Philosophice, § lo.) Such ideas are those which would be regarded
in Kant's system as necessary forms of thinking, and in Cousin's as
belonging to the impersonal reason.
^ Hobbes (1588-1679.) The Leviathan is a philosophy of so
ciety, studied as the development of the individual. He first treats
of the individual, book i. ; then the commonwealth, book ii. ; then
the Christian commonwealth, book iii. ; and the kingdom of error,
book iv. ; borrowing the idea from Augustin's De Civ. Dei The
brevity of the notice in the text prevents the possibility of doing
justice to the grandeur and to the good sense shown in many re
spects in Hobbes's works. He was answered by Cudworth (Intel
lectual System); Cumberland (De Leg. Nat); Dr. Seth Ward;
Bramhall (1658) ; Archbp. Tennyson, 1760; and Lord Clarendon,
in his Survey of Leviathan (1676.) For an explanation and cri
ticism on his philosophical principles, see Ritter, ch. vi. 453 seq. ;
Tennemann, b. x. 53 seq. ; Lewes' History of Philosophy ; Morell's
Id. ; Hallam, b. ii. 463 seq. ; and on his religious opinions, Leland
(ch. iii.), and Lechler (p. 67-107.)

LECTURE IV. 171
sophical principles to religion, he also represented the
contrary tendency to Herbert, state interference in
contraffistinction from private Hberty, pohtical reli
gion as opposed to personal. The contest of ffidivi-
duahsm against multitudffiism is the parallel ffi poli
tics to that of private judgment agaffist authority in
reHgion. Wffile some of the Puritans were urging
uffiimited Hcense in the matter of religion, Hobbes
wrote to prove the necessity of state control, and
the importance of a ffficrum on which individual
opiffion might repose, external to itself ; and referring
the development of society to the necessity for re-
strainffig the natural selfishness of man, and resolvffig
right into expedience as embodied in the sovereign
head, he ended with crushffig the rights of the ffidi-
vidual spirit, and defending absolute government.
The effect of the appHcation of such a sensational
and materiahst theory to religion wffi be anticipated.
He traced" the genesis of it in the inffividual, and its
expression ffi society ; findffig the origffi of it in
seffish fear of the supernatural. The same reason
which led him to assign supremacy to government
ffi other departments induced him to give it supreme
control over religion. Society beffig the check on man's
seffishness, and supreme, deciding aU questions on
grounds of general expedience ; the authority of the
commonwealth became the authority of the church p.
Though he had occasion to discuss revelation and the
" Part i. c. 12. P Part iii. c. 39.

172 LECTURE IV.
canon 1 as a rffie of faith, yet it is hard to fix on any
poffit that was actual unbeHef
The amount of thought contributed by him to
deism was smaU ; for his influence on his successors
was unimportant. The rehgious ffistfficts of the
heart were too strong to be permanently influenced
by the cold materialist tone which reduced reHgion to
state craft. With the exception of Coward ¦¦, a mate
rialist who doubted immortahty about the end of the
century, the succeedffig deists more generaUy foUowed
Herbert, ffi wisffing to elevate rehgion to a spiritual
sphere, than Hobbes, who degraded it to pohtical
expedience. A shght adffitional ffiterest however
belongs to his specffiations, from the circumstance
that his ideas, together with those of Herbert, most
probably suggested some parts of the system of
Spffioza *.
The two writers of whom we have now been treat
ing, lived prior to or durffig the Commonwealth.
From the date of the Restoration the existence of
1 Part iii. c. 33.
•' Coward (1657-1724 cire.) was a physician, who wrote in 1702
Second Thoughts on Human Souls, apparently intended to disprove
the existence of spirit and natural immortality, but not of immor
tality itself as a divine gift from God to man, though opponents
disbelieved him in this assertion. The list of answers written is
given in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary under Coward. The
house of commons in 1704 condemned the book, and caused it to
be burned.
s Spinoza's view of religion is the part suggested by Herbert, and
his view of the relation of the state to religion that suggested by
Hobbes.

LECTURE IV. 173
doubt may be accepted as an established fact.
During the reaction, political and ecclesiastical, which
ensued ffi the early part of the reign of Charles II,
it is not surprisffig that doubt concealed itself in
retirement ; but the frequent aUusions to it under
the name of atheism ^ ffi contemporary sermons and
theological books, proves its existence. Indeed the
reaction contained the very elements wffich were
hkely to foster unbehef among undiscerning mffids.
The court set a sad example of impurity ; and the
excessive claims of the churchmen, ahen to the spirit
of poHtical and rehgious liberty, were calcffiated' to
generate an antipathy to the clergy and to reHgion.
Toward the end of Charles's reign, a feeHng of this
kind expresses itself ffi the writffigs of Charles
Blount", who avafled himself of the temporary ffiter-
val ffi which the press became free, owffig to the
omission to renew the act which submitted works to
the censor''^, to pubhsh with notes a translation of Phi
lostratus's Life of ApoUonius of Tyana, with the same
t See Note 21.
" C. Blount (1654-93) wrote the Anima Mundi 1679; Life
of ApoUonius Tyana, 16S0 ; Oracles of Reason, 1695. (See Ma-
caulay. History of England, vol. iv. 352.) He was refuted by
Nichols (1723) Conference with a Theist See Lechler (i 14-124),
and Leland, ch. iv.
X The Licensing Act of 1662 concerning the press was allowed
to expire in 1679. When James II. came to the throne (1685) the
censorship was renewed for seven years ; and again in 1693 was re
vived for two years, at which time it finally expired. See North
British Review, No. 60, (May 1859.)

174 LECTURE IV.
purpose as Hierocles in the fourth century, to disgffise
the pecuHar character of Christ's miracles, and draw
an ffiviffious paraUel between the Pythagorean pffilo
sopher and the divffie founder of Christiaffity. Sub
sequently to Blount's death, ffis friend GUdon, who
lived to retract his opinions y, published a collection
of treatises, entitled " The Oracles of Reason ;" a work
which may be considered as expressffig the opimons
of a little band of unbehevers, of whom Blount was
one^ The mention of two of the papers in it wffi
explain the views intended. One is on natural re
hgion*, in which the ideas of Herbert are reproduced,
and exception is taken to revelation as partial and not
self-evident, and therefore uncertaffi ; and the ob
jections to the sufficiency and potency of natural
religion are refuted. A second is on the deist's
rehgion^, ffi which the deist creed is explained to
be the belief in a God who is to be worsffipped, not
by sacrifice, nor by mediation, but by piety. Pxmish-
y As proved by his work in 1705, The Deisis Manual.
2 The Oracles of Reason (1693) consists of sixteen papers in
several letters to Mr. Hobbes and others, by Ch. Blount, Gildon, and
others. Papers (No. 1-4) are a defence of T. Burnet's archseologyj
or on subjects cognate to it. No. 5 is concerning the deist's reli
gion ; 6 on immortality ; 7 on Arians, Trinitarians, and Councils ;
8 that felicity is pleasure ; 9 of fate and fortune ; 10 of the original
of the Jews ; 1 1 on the lawfulness of marrying two sisters succes
sively ; 1 2 of the subversion of Judaism, and the origin of the Mil
lennium ; 13 of the auguries of the ancients ; 14 of natural religion ;
1 5 that the soul is matter ; 1 6 that the world is eternal.
a No. 14.
b No.' 5.

LECTURE IV. 17.5
ment in a future world is denied as incompatible
with Divffie benevolence ; and the safety of the deist
creed is supported by showmg that a moral life is
superior to behef ffi mysteries. It wffi be seen from
these remarks that Blount hardly marks an advance
on ffis deist predecessor Herbert, save that his view
is more positive, and his antipathy to Christian wor
ship less concealed.
At the close of the seventeenth century two new
influences were in operation, the one political, the other
ffiteflectual ; viz., the civfl and rehgious hberty which
ensued on the revolution, generatffig free specffiation,
and compeffing each man to form his political creed ;
and the reconsideration of the ffist principles of
knowledge "^ imphed in the phflosophy of Locke ''-
The effect of these- new influences on rehgion is
very marked. Controversies no longer turned upon
questions in which the appeal lay to the common
ground of scripture, as in the contest which Church
men had conducted agaffist Puritans or Romaffists,
but extended to the examination of the first prfficiples
c Attention had been called a little earlier to the consideration of
the first principles of religion, by the Platonizing Cambridge party
of More and Cudworth, followers partly of Descartes. See Burnet's
Mem. of his Times, i. 187 ; and the Rev. A. Taylor's able introduction
to the edition oi Simon Patrick's Works, Oxford 1858, (p. 28-42).
d On Locke's philosophy see Ritter Chr. Phil. vii. 449-534 ;
Cousin's Hist, de Philos. au i8e siecle, ch. 15-25 ; Morell's Hist of
PM., vol. i. p. IOO seq. ; Lewes Id. ; Lechler, i54-i79- His work
the Reasonableness of Christianity typified the tone of the writers
on the Christian evidences for the next half century.

176 LECTURE IV.
of ethics or politics ; such as the foundation of govem
ment, whether it depends on hereditary right or on
compact, as ffi the controversy agaffist the nonjurors^
before the close of the century ; or the spiritual rights
of the church, and the right of every man to rehgious
Hberty and private judgment ffi rehgion, as ffi the Con
vocation and Bangorian ^ controversy, wffich marked
the early years of the next century. The very dimir
nution also of quotations of authorities is a pertinent
ffiustration that the appeal was now being made to
deeper standards.
The phflosophy of Locke, which attempted to lay
a basis for knowledge in psychology, cofficided with,
where it ffid not create, tffis general attempt to ap
peal on every subject to ffitimate principles of rea
son. This tone in truth marked the age, and actffig
in every region of thought, affected ahke the ortho
dox and the unbehevffig. Accordffigly, as we pass
away from the specffiations wffich mark the early
period of deism to those wffich belong to its maturity,
we find that the attack on Christiaffity is less sug
gested by poHtical considerations, and more entirdy
depends on an appeal to reason, intellectual or moral.

e For this and the next named controversy, see Lathbury's Non-
Jurors (1845), ch. iv., and History of Convocation, ch. 12-14.)
( On the Bangorian controversy (17 17, 18), see Hallam's Consti
tutional History (vol. ii. 408.) A list of the pamphlets which were
written during the controversy was made by the antiquarian Tho
mas Hearne, and is printed in Hoadley's works (3 vols. fol. 1773-)
See vol. ii, 381, and the continuation in vol. i. 689.

LECTURE IV. 177
The principal phases belonging to this period of
the maturity of deism, which we shaU now succes
sively encounter, are four :
(i) An examffiation of the first prfficiples of re
Hgion, on its dogmatic or theological side, with a
view of asserting the supremacy of reason to in
terpret aU mysteries, and defending absolute tolera
tion of free thought. This tendency is seen in Toland
and Coffins,
(2) An examffiation of reHgion on the ethical side
occurs, with the object of assertffig the supremacy of
natural ethics 'as a rule of conduct, and denying the
motive of reward or puffishment implied in dependent
moraHty. Tffis is seen ffi Lord Shaftesbury.
After the attack has thus been opened against re
vealed reHgion, by creatffig prepossessions against mys
tery ffi dogma and the existence of religious motives
ffi morals, there foUows a ffirect approach agaffist the
outworks of it by an attack on the evidences,
(3) In an examination, critical rather than pffilo
sopffical, of the prophecies of the Old Testament by
Coffins, and of the miracles of the New by Woolston.
The deist next approaches as it were within the
fortress, and advances agaffist the doctrffies of re
vealed reHgion ; and we find accordffigly,
(4) A general view of natural reHgion, ffi wffich
the various differences, — speculative, moral, and cri
tical, are combined, as in Tffidal ; or with a more
especial reference to the Old Testament as in Morgan,
and the New as in Chubb ; the aim of each being con-
N

178 LECTURE IV.
structive as weU as destructive ; to point out the ab
solute sufficiency of natural reHgion and of the moral
sense as religious guides, and the impossibffity of ac-
ceptffig as obhgatory that wffich adds to or contra-
fficts them ; and accorffingly they point out the ele
ments in Cffiistianity which they consider can be
retaffied as absolutely true.
The first two of these attacks occur ffi the first
two decades of the century : the two latter in the
period from 1720 to 1740, when the pubhc mffid not
beffig ffiverted by foreign war or internal sedition,
and other controversies being closed, the deist con
troversy was at its height. After examinffig these,
other tendencies wffi meet us, when we trace the
dechne of deism in Bolffigbroke and. Hume.
The first of these tendencies just noticed is seen ffi
Toland^, who directed his specffiations to the ground

g Toland (1669-1722.) He was born an Irish catholic, turned
protestant, wrote his first deist book, 1696 ; fled for refuge to the
court of Hanover, and found protection there ; wrote political |Tam-
phlets, and lived abroad till near the close of his life. His chief
theological writings are, Ciiristianify not Mysterious, 1696 ; Amyn-
tor, or Defence of the Life of Milton, 1699 (on the Canon) ; Naza-
renus, 1718 ; Tetradymus, 1720 ; Pantheisticon, 1720, sive formula
celebrandse sodalitatis Socraticse, 1720, a parody on the Christian
service books. These are collected in his Miscellaneous Works (1726.)
(Vol. i. contains his translation of the Spacdo of Bruno.) He was
answered by John Norris, Archbp. Synge, and Dr. Peter Browne ;
by S. Clarke, and by Jones in his work on the Canon. Consult
Leland's View of Deistical Writers,'Leii.\y. ; Lechler (180-210),
and (463-73), and note on p. 193.

LECTURE IV. 179
principles of revealed theology'', and slightly to the
history of the Canon'.
Possessing much origffiahty and learning, at an
early age, ffi 1696, just a year after the censorsffip
had been finaUy removed and the press of England
made permanently free, he pubHshed ffis noted work,
" Christianity not Mysterious," to show that " there
is nothffig in the Gospels contrary to reason, nor
above it; and that no Christian doctrine can properly
be called a mystery." The speculations of afl doubters
first originate in some crisis of personal or mental
history. In Toland's case it was probably the change
of reHgion from cathohc to protestant which first
unsettled his religious faith. The work just named,
ffi which he expressed the attempt to brmg rehgious
truth under the grasp of the ffiteflect, was one of
some merit as a Hterary production, and written
with that clearness wffich the influence of the French
models studied by Dryden had introduced ffito Eng
Hsh hterature. Yet it is difficffit to understand why
a sffigle work of an unknown student should attract
so much pubhc notice. The grand jury of Middle
sex was induced at once to present it as a nuisance,
and the example was foUowed by the grand jury of
Dubhn'^- Two years after its publication the Irish
parliament dehberated upon it, and, refusing to hear
l» In his Christianity not Mysterious.
' In his Amyntor.
k For these facts see the Memoir of Toland prefixed to his Mis
cellaneous Works, and also Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary.
N 2

180 LECTURE IV.
Toland in defence, passed sentence that the book
should be burnt, and its author imprisoned, — a fate
which he escaped offiy by ffight^ And ffi 1701, no
less than five years after the pubhcation of ffis work,
a vote for its prosecution passed the lower house of
the English convocation, which the legal advisers
however denied to be mthm the power of that
assembly™. Toland spent most of the remainder
of ffis life abroad, and showed in his subsequent works
a character growffig graduaUy worse, lashed into
bitterer opposition by the censure which he had re
ceived. His views, developed in his work, Christianity
not Mysterious, require fuUer statement. He opens
with an explanation of the province of reason", the
means of information, external and ffiternal, wffich
man possesses ; a part of ffis work which is valuable
to the phUosopher, who watches the ffifluence exer
cised at that time by psychological specffiations ;
and he proposes to show that the doctrines of the
gospel are neither contrary to reason nor above
it. He exffibits the impossibffity of believing state-
• This opposition increased Toland's bitterness, for, in the follow
ing year, 1698, in publishing a Life of Milton, and taking occasion
to disprove that Charles I. was the author of the Ikon Basilike, he
threw out hints of similar forgeries in works attributed to the apos
tles. The hatred of churchmen was further increased by this work.
" See Wilkins's Condlia, vol. iv. 631 ; Burnet's History of his
own Times,Yo\. iv. 521; Lathhurfs History of Convocation (1842),
p. 288 seq.
" Sect. I.

LECTURE IV. 181
ments wffich positively contraffict reason P; and con
tends that if they do not reaUy contradict it, but are
above it, we can form no inteUigible idea of them.
He tries further to show that reason is neither so
weak nor so corrupt as to be an unsafe guide i, and
that scripture itself offiy professes to teach what is
intelligible'. Having shown that the doctrffies of
the gospel are not contrary to reason, he next pro
ceeds to show that they do not profess to be above
it ; that they lay claim to no mystery ^ for that
mystery ffi heathen writers and the New Testament
does not mean sometffing fficonceivable, but some-
thffig inteffigible in itself, which nevertheless was
so veUed that it needed reveahng ' ; and that the
introduction of the popffiar idea of mystery was
attributable to the analogy of pagan rites, and did
not occur tffi several centuries after the foundation
of Christianity".
It is possible that the book may have been a mere
paradox", the effort of a young mffid going through
the process through which all young men of thought
pass, and especiaUy ffi an age Hke Toland's, of
tryffig to understand and explaffi what they beHeve.
But students who are thus forming their views

P Sect. ii. ch. I. 1 Id. ch. 4. '' Ch. i, 2.
s Sect. iii. ch. 2. t Ch. 3. " Ch. 5.
" Cfr. his Apology for Christianity not Mysterious 1697, aud also
a letter from Mr. Molyneux to Locke. (Locke's Works, ed. 1723.
vol. iii. p. 566.) quoted in the memoir (p. 17) prefixed to Toland's
Miscellaneous Works.

182 LECTURE IV.
ought to pause before they scatter their half-formed
opinions in the world. In Toland's case public
alarm judged the book to have a most dangerous
tendency ; and he was an outcast from the sympathy
of pious men for ever. If he was misunderstood, as
he contended, his fate is a warnffig against the pre
mature pubhcation of a paradox. The question
accordingly wffich Toland thus suggested for dis
cussion was the prerogative of reason to pronounce
on the contents of a revelation, the problem whether
the mind, must comprehend as well as apprehend all
that it behoves. The other question which he
opened was the vahffity of the canon >'. Here too
he claimed that his views were misunderstood. It was
supposed that the mention made by him concerning
spurious works attributed to the apostles, referred to
the canonical gospels. Accordingly, if in his former
work he has been considered to have anticipated the
older school of German rationahsts, ffi the present
he has been thought to have touched upon the
questions discussed in the modern critical school.
The controversy which ensued was the means of
opeffing up the discussion of the great question
which relates to the New Testament canon, viz.,
y In his Life of Milton (1698) pp. 91, 92, he had alluded to works
falsely attributed to Christ and the apostles. This was attacked
by Blackball as if intended against the canonical scriptures, and
was defended by Toland by the publication of the Amyntor, a cata
logue of books mentioned by the fathers as truly or falsely ascribed
to Jesus Christ, his apostles, &c. The learned Pfaff" calls it " insig-
nem Catalogum" (Diss. Grit. Nov. Test. ch. i. § 2.)

LECTURE IV. 183
whether our present New Testament books are a
selection made ffi the second century from among
early Christian writffigs, or whether the church from
the first regarded them as distffict in kffid and not
merely ffi degree from other literature ; whether the
early respect shown for scripture was reverence di-.
rected to apostoHc men, or to their inspired teachffig.
If Toland is the type of free specffiation applied
to the theoretical side of reHgion, lord Shaftesbury''
is an example of speculations on the practical side of
it, and on the questions which come under the pro
vince of ethics.
The rise of an ethical school paraUel with discus
sions on the phflosophy of religion is one of the
most mteresting features of that age, whether it be
regarded in a scientffic or a rehgious point of view.
The age was one in wffich the reflective reason or
understandffig was busy in exploring the origin of
all knowledge. The department of moral and spi
ritual truth coffid not long remaffi unexamffied. In
an earher age the sources of our knowledge con
cerffing the divffie attributes and human duty had
been supposed to depend upon revelation ; but now
the disposition to criticise every subject by the light
of common sense claimed that philosophy must in-
z A Memoir of Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), has been lately
published, (i860). His chief work was the Characteristics. On
his religious views see Leland ch. 5 and 6 ; Lechler 243-265 ;
and on his philosophical views, see Ritter vii. 535 seq. ; Eichhorn,
Oeschichte der Literatur, vi. 424 seq.

184 LECTURE IV.
vestigate them. Reason was to work out the system
of natural theology, and ethics the problem of the
nature and ground of virtue. Hence it wifl be
obvious how close a relation existed between such
speculations and theology. The Christian apologist
avafled himself of the new ethical inquiries as a
corroboration of revealed religion ; the Deist, as a
substitute for it.
Lord Shaftesbury is usuaUy adduced as a deist of
this class. He has not indeed expressed it definitely
in his writings ; and an ethical system which formed
the basis of Butler's sermons *, cannot necessarily be
charged with deism. But the charge can be sub
stantiated from his memoirs ; and his writings mani
fest that hatred of clerical ffifluence, the wish to
subject the church to the state, which wifl by some
persons be regarded as unbelief, but which was not
perhaps altogether surprisffig ffi an age when the
clergy were almost universaUy ahen to the revolu
tion, and the Convocation manifested opposition to
poHtical and religious hberty. The ground on which
the charge is generaUy founded is, that Shaftesbury
has cast reflections on the doctrine of future rewards
and punishments ^. It is to be feared that sceptical
msinuations were ffitended ; yet ffis remarks adrffit of
some explanation as a resffit of his particffiar poffit
of view.
^ On his moral system, see Mackintosh's Dissertation on Ethics,
p. 158-166; and on Butler's ethical system, and its relation to
Shaftesbury, see the same work, p. 171 seq.
^ Works, vol. ii. Inquiry concerning Virtue. Gharact ii. 272 etc.

LECTURE IV. 185
The ethical schools of his day were already two ;
the one advocating dependent, the other ffidependent
morahty ; the one grounding obhgation on self-love,
the other on natural right. Shaftesbury, though »a
disciple of Locke, belonged to the latter school. His
works mark the moment when this etffical school
was passffig from the objective ffiquiry ffito the im-
mutabflity of right, as seen in Clarke, to the sub
jective inqffiry into the reflex sense which constitutes
our obligation to do what is right, as seen in Butler.
The depreciation accordffigly of the motives of re
ward, as ffistffict from the supreme motive of lovffig
duty for duty's sake, was to be expected ffi his
system. The motives of reward and punishment
wffich form the sanctions of religious obhgation,
woffid seem to him to be analogous to the employ
ment of expedience as the foundation of moral. His
statements however appear to be an exaggeration even
in an ethical view, as wefl as calculated to insinuate
erroneous ideas ffi a theological. It is possible that
ffis motive was not polemical ; but the unchristian
character of his tone renders the hypothesis impro
bable, and explains the reason why his essays caUed
the " Characteristics" have been ranked among deist
writings. We have seen, in Toland and Shaftesbury respec
tively, a discussion on the metaphysical and ethical
basis of reHgion, together with a few traces of the
rise of criticism ffi reference to the canon. In their
successors the inquiry becomes less psychological

186 LECTURE IV.
and more critical, and therefore less elevated by the
abstract nature of the specffiative above the struggle
of theological polemic.
-Two branches of criticism were at this time com
mencffig, which were destffied to suggest difficffities
alike to the deist and to the Cffiistian ; the one the
discovery of variety of reaffings in the sacred text,
the other the doubts thrown upon the "genuffieness
and authenticity of the books. It was the large
collection of various readffigs on the New Testament,
first begun by Mffis ", which gave the impulse to the
former, which has been cafled the lower criticism,
and wffich so ffistressed the mffid of Bengel, that he
spent ffis hfe ffi aflaying the alarm of those who hke
ffimself felt alarmed at its effect on the question of
verbal inspiration. And it was the disproof of the
genffineness of the Epistles of Phalaris by the learned
Bentley^, which first threw sohd doubts on the value
attaching to traditional titles of books, and showed
the irrefragable character belongffig to an appeal to in
temal evidence ; a department wffich has been cafled
c The readings of the text had been disturbed by Courcelles
(1658), and by Walton in his Polyglot, which caused an alarm, on
which see Hody (De Bibl Text 563 seq.), but not widely till
Mills, 1707. Mills' readings were attacked by Whitby in 17 10, and
the arguments of the latter were afterwards turned by Collins
against Revelation.
d In 1699. Daill^'s criticism on the Ignatian Epistles (1666)
had shown similar sagacity to that afterwards displayed by Bentley,
and bore to his inquiries the same relation which those just named
in the text bore to those of Mills.

LECTURE IV. 187
the higher criticism. This latter branch, so abundantly
developed in German specffiation, is only hffited at
by the English deists of the eighteenth age, as by
Hobbes and Spffioza earlier ; but we shafl soon see
the use which Coflins and others made of the former
inquiry. The form, though not the spirit, of Toland and
Shaftesbury, might by a latitude of interpretation be
made compatible with Christianity ; but CoUffis and
Woolston, of whom we next treat, mark a much
further advance of free thought. They attack what
has always been justly considered to be an integral
portion of Christianity, the relation which it bore
to Jewish prophecy, and the miracles which were
wrought for its estabhshment.
Coffins" must be studied under more than one
aspect. He not only wrote on the logic of reHgion,
the method of ffiquiry in theology, but also on the
subject of scripture interpretation, and the reaHty of
prophecy '.
It was in 1 7 1 3 that he pubHshed " A discourse of
e Collins (1676— 1729). His works were on Immortality
(1707, 8) in the Dodwell controversy; Freethinking, 1713, refuted
entirely by Bentley in the Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. (See also Dr.
Ibbot's Boyle Lectures, 17 13, where the general subject is treated.)
On Necessity, 17 15. The Grounds of the Clvristian Religion, 1724.
(occasioned by Whiston's work on Prophecy) ; answered by bishop
Chandler, Samuel Chandler, T. Sherlock, and Moses Lowman ;
Scheme of . Literal Prophecy, 1727, in answer to Chandler. See
Leland, ch. vii., and Lechler, 217-240. Henke's Kirchengeschichte,
vi. s. 29.
i In the two works named below in the text.

188 LECTURE IV.
free-tffinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of
a sect caUed Free-tffinkers." This is one of the first
times that we find tffis new name used for Deists ;
and the object of his book is to defend the propriety
of uffiimited Hberty of inquiry, a proposition by
wffich he designed the unrestraffied liberty of behef,
not ffi a poHtical poffit of view merely, but ffi a
moral. His argument was not unlike more modern
ones ^, which show that civilization and improvement
have been caused by free-thffikffig ; and he adduces
the growffig ffisbehef in the reality of witchcraft, ffi
proof of the way ffi wffich the rejection of dogma
had amehorated poHtical science, which untU recently
had visited the supposed crime with the punish
ment of death'". After thus showffig the duty of
free-thinking ', he argued that the sphere of it ought
to comprehend poffits on which the right is usuaUy
deffied; such as the divine attributes, the trath of
the scriptures, and their meaning''; estabhshffig tffis
by laying a number of charges agaffist priests, to
show that their dogmatic teachffig cannot be trasted,
unchallenged by free inquiry, on account of their
discrepant' opffiions, their renderffig the canon and
text of scripture uncertaffi"", and their pious frauds";
concluffing by refutffig objections agaffist free-tffink
ing derived from its supposed want of safety °.
S E. g. that of Buckle iu History of Civilization.
''P-7I- ' P- 5-27. kp. 32, &c.
1 P. 56. m p. 86. " p. 92.
» p. IOO, &c.

LECTURE IV. 189
The book met with inteffigent and able oppo
nents ; the critical part, contaffiffig the aUegations of
uncertainty ffi the text of scripture, and the charge
of alterffig it, beffig effectuaUy refuted by Bentley.
The work is an exaggeration of a great truth.
Undoubtedly free ffiquiry is right ffi all depart
ments, but it must be restrained within the proper
limits wffich the particffiar subject-matter admits
of; — Hmits which are determined partly by the
nature of the subject studied, partly by the laws of
the thinking mffid.
Eleven years afterwards, in 1724, Coffins pub
lished his " Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons
of the Cffiistian ReHgion." This work is chiefly
critical. It does not merely contain the fficipient
doubts on the variety of readffigs, and the uncer
tainty of books, but spreads over several provinces
of theological inquiry. Under the pretence of esta
bhshffig Christiaffity on a more sohd foundation,
the author argues that our Saviour and ffis apostles
made the whole proof of Cffiistianity to rest solely
on the prophecies of the Old Testament P; that if
these proofs are valid, Christiaffity is estabHshed;
if mvahd, it is false?. Accordingly he exammes
several of the prophecies cited from the Old Tes
tament hi the New in favour of the Messiahship
of Christ, with a view of showing that they are
only aUegorical or fanciful proofs, accommodations
of the meaffing of the prophecies; and anticipates
P Part i. § 1-5. '^ I<^- § ^' 7-

190 LECTURE IV.
the objections wffich could be stated to his views ¦¦.
He asserts that the expectation of a Messiah
among ^ the Jews arose offiy a short time before
Christ's coming ' ; and that the apostles put
a new interpretation on the Hebrew books, wffich
was contrary to the sense accepted by the Jewish
nation ; that Christiaffity is not revealed ffi the Old
Testament hterally, but mysticaUy and aUegoricaUy,
and may therefore be considered as mystical Ju
daism. His ffiference is accordingly stated as an
argument ffi favour of the figurative or mystical
interpretation of scripture ; but we can hardly
doubt that ffis real object was an iroffical one, to
exhibit Christiaffity as restffig on apostoHc misffi-
terpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to create
the impression that it was a mere Jewish sect of
men deceived by fanciful interpretations. .
The work produced considerable alarm ; more from
the solemn interest and sacredness of the inquiries
wffich it opened, than from any danger arisffig from
r Id. II. s Id. (8-10.)
' Two other writers, Mandeville and Lyons, have been omitted ;
Mandeville (Fables of the Bees, 1723), because his speculations did
not bear directly on religion ; Lyons, because his work is not im
portant. In 1723 he published t'he Infallibility of Human Judg
ment, in which he analysed the mind, and applied the results of his
analysis to the first principles of natural religion, and to discredit
the evidences and doctrines of revealed. It bears more resemblance
to Toland and Chubb than to any other writers, but is a feeble
work, interesting only as showing the prevalence of psychological
inquiries, and the tendency to examine psychologically the subject
of religion.

LECTURE IV. 191
exceUence in its form, or abflity ffi the mode of put-
tmg. It anticipated subsequent speculations", by
regardffig Cffiistianity as true ideafly, not ffistori-
cally, and by ffisffiuating the incorrectness of the
apostoHc adoption of the mystical system of inter-
pretffig the ancient scripture.
A writer came forward as moderator '^ between
CoUffis and ffis opponents, who himself afterwards
became stiU more noted, by ffirecting an attack on
mfracles, simflar to that of Coffins on prophecy; —
the unhappy Woolston y. A fellow of a coUege ^ at
Cambridge, ffi holy orders, he was for many years
a dffigent student of the fathers, and imbibed from
them an extravagant attachment to the aUegorical
sense of scripture. Findffig that his views met
with no support ffi that reasoffing age, he broke
out ffito unmeasured ffisffit and contempt agaffist
his brother clergy, as slaves to the letter of scrip
ture ^ Deprived of his feUowship '', and ffistracted
" E. g. Some of those in Germany, see Lect. VI and VIL
^ In the Moderator, or controversy between the author of the
Grounds, &c. and his reverend opponents, 1727. (Woolston's Works,
vol. v.)
y Woolston, 1 669-1 7 33. His works are collected in five volumes,
with a life prefixed. His pamphlets on Miracles were refiited by
bishops Pierce, 1729, Gibson, and Smabroke, by Lardner, and by
Sherlock in the Trial of the Witnesses. On Woolston, see Leland.
(Let. 8), Lechler (289-311), Henke, vi. 49.
'¦ Sydney Sussex.
a A Free Gift to tlie Clergy, or the Hireling Priests challenged,
1722, (Works, vol. iii.).
b See Memoir prefixed to his Works, pp. 5 and 22.

192 LECTURE IV.
by penmy, he extended his hatred from the min
isters to the religion which they mffiistered. And
when, in reply to Colhns's assertion, that Cffiistianity
reposed solely on prophecy, the Cffiistian apologists
feU back on miracles, he wrote in 1727 and the
two foUowing years his celebrated Discourses on the
Miracles. (22) They were pubHshed as pamphlets ;
in each one of wffich he exammed a few of the
miracles of Christ, tryffig to show such inconsisten
cies as to make it appear that they must be regarded
as untrustworthy if taken literally ; and hence he
advocated a figurative ffiterpretation of them ; assert
ing that the ffistory of the life of Jesus is an
emblematical representation of his spiritual Hfe in
the soul of man''. The gospels thus become a
system of mystical theology, ffistead of a Hteral
history. In defence of tffis method he claimed the
example of the ancient church®, ignoring the fact
that the fathers admitted a Hteral as weU as a
figurative meanffig. Whether he really retaffied
towards the close of his life the spiritual inter
pretation f, or merely used it as an excuse for a more
secure advance to the assaffit of the historic reality
of scripture, is very uncertaffi.
The letters were written with a coarseness and
irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that
^ In Discourse iii.
« Disc. i. Div. i.
f Strauss {Leb. Jes. Introd. § 6.) thinks that his bitterness mani
fests that he did not.

LECTURE IV. 193
age, that it were well if they could be attributed
to ffisanity. They contain the most undisgffised
abuse wffich had been uttered agaffist Christiaffity
sffice the days of the early heathens. OccasionaUy,
when wishffig to utter grosser blasphemies than were
permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed
Christian stand-point, he ffitroduced a Jewish rabbi,
as Celsus had formerly done, and put the coarser
calumnies ffito his mouths, as ffifficffities to wffich
no reply coffid be famished except by figurative
ffiterpretation. The humour wffich marked these
pampffiets was so great, that the sale of them was
immense. Voltaire, who was ffi England at the
time, and perhaps imbibed thence part of his own
opiffions, states the immeffiate sale to have exceeded
thirty thousand copies''; and Swift describes them
as the food of every pohtician'. The excitement
was so great, that Gibson, then bishop of London,
thought it necessary to direct five pastorals to ffis
ffiocese in referenqp to them'', and, not content with
tffis, caused Woolston to be prosecuted ; and the
unhappy man, not able to pay the fine ffi which he
was condemned, continued in prison tUl his death '.

S Disc. iv. and Defence, sect, i .
h Voltaire, (Euvres Crit. vol. xlvii. pp. 346-356.
i Swift's Poem on his Death, Works, vol. xiv. p. 359.
"^ The later Pastorals of Gibson are not only against Woolston,
but other deists also, such as Tindal.
' His friends would have found money for the fine ; but Wool
ston could not find securities for his good behaviour if released.
O

194 LECTURE IV.
In classifying Woolston with later writers against
miracles, he may be compared ffi some cases, though
with striking differences of tone, with those German
rationahsts hke Paffius who have rationalized the
miracles, but in more cases with those who like
Strauss have idealized them. His method however
is an appeal to general probability rather than to
Hterary criticism.
The next form that Deism assumed has reference
more to the ffiternal than the external part of
Cffiistiaffity, the doctrmes rather than the evidences.
Less critical than the last-named tendency, it differs
from the earher one of Toland ffi lookffig at religion
less on the specffiative side as a revelation of dogma,
and more on the practical as a revelation of duties.
WhUe it combffied ffito a system the former ob
jections, critical or pffilosopffical, the great weapon
wffich it uses is the authority of the moral reason,
by wffich it both tests revelation and suggests a
substitute ffi natural rehgion, thus usffig it both
destructively and for construction.
Dr. Tffidal ", the first writer of tffis class, had
early given offence to the church by his writings ;
m Matthew Tindal, (1657-1733), a fellow of All Souls' college,
wrote in 1706 The Rights of the Christian Chv/rch asserted, pro
bably suggested by Spinoza's writings, to show that the absolute
subjection of the church to the state was the only safeguard for public
happiness ; and in 1730, Christianity as old as the Creation, which
was answered by Conybeare 1732, Leland 1733, and by Waterland.
The reply of the latter was attacked by Conyers Middleton. On
Tindal, see Lechler, 326-341; Leland, Lett. 9; Henke, vi. 57.

LECTURE IV. 195
but it was not tffi 1730, in his extreme old age,
that he pubHshed his celebrated dialogue, " Cffiist
ianity as old as the Creation, or, the Gospel a
Repubhcation of the Religion of Nature." This was
not offiy the most important work that deism had
yet produced, composed with care, and bearffig the
marks of thoughtful study of the chief contemporary
arguments, Christian as well as Deist, but derives
an ffiterest from the circumstance that it was the
book to wffich more than to any other single work
bishop Butler's Analogy was designed as the reply.
Tindal's object is to show that natural rehgion is
absolutely perfect, and can admit of no fficrease so
as to carry obhgation. For tffis purpose he tries to
establish, first, that revelation is unnecessary", and se
condly, that obligation to it is impossible. His argu
ment in favour of the first of these two positions is,
that if man's perfection be the Hvffig accordffig to
the constitution of human nature", and God's laws
with the penalties attached be for man's good?, no
thffig beffig required by God for its own sakei ; then
true religion, whether ffitemaUy or externally re
vealed, having the one end, human happffiess, must
be identical in its precepts'. Having denied the
necessity, he then disputes the possibffity, of revela
tion, on the ground that the inculcation of positive
as ffistffict from moral duties, is inconsistent with
the good of man, as creating an independent rffie ^
» Ch. (i-vi.) o Ch. iii. p Ch. iv. 1 Ch. V.
r Ch. vi. s Ch. ix-xii. O 2

196 LECTURE IV.
Assuming the moral facffity to be the foundation of
aU obhgation, he reduces all rehgious truth to moral.
It is in thus showffig the impossibffity of any reve
lation save the repubhcation of the law of nature
that he notices many of the difficffities ffi scripture
which form the mystery to the theologian, the
ground of doubt to the objector. Some of these are
of a hterary character, such as the assertion of the
faUure of the fulffiment of prophecies, and of marks
of faUibUity in the scripture writers, Hke the mistake
which he aUeges in respect to the behef in the
immeffiate coming of Christ*. Others of them are
moral difficffities, points where the revealed system
seems to him to contraffict our instincts, such as
the destruction of the Canaaffites". In reference
to tffis last example, wffich may be quoted as a
type of his assertions, he argues agaffist the possi
bffity of a ffivine commission for the act, on the
prfficiple asserted by Clarke^, that a miracle can
never prove the divine truth of a doctrffie which
contravenes the moral idea of justice ; or, in more
modern phrase, that no supposed miracle can be a
real one, if it attest a doctrffie wffich bears this
character. In the present work Tffidal denied the
necessity and possibihty of a new revelation distffict
from natural religion. He ffid not Hve to complete
the concludffig part of his book, whereffi he ffitended
to show that aU the truths of Christianity were as
t Ch. xiii. p. 258 seq. ^ P. 272 seq. " Ch. xiv.

LECTURE IV. 197
old as the creation ; i. e. were a repubhcation of the
religion of nature.
Tffidal is an ffistance of those who have uncon
sciously kffidled their torch at the light of revela
tion. The religion of nature of which he speaks is
a logical idea, not an ffistoric fact. The creation of
it is analogous to the mention of the idea of compact
as the basis of society, a generalization from its pre
sent state, not a fact of its original history. It is
the residuum of Cffiistiaffity when the mysterious
elements have been subtracted. But in adoptffig
the idea, the Deists were on the same level as the
Christians. Both ahke traveUed together to the
end of natural rehgion y. Here the Deist halted,
wffiffig to accept so much of Christianity as was a
repubhcation of the moral law. The Christian, on
the other hand, found in reason the necessity for
revelation, and proceeded onward to revealed doc
trffies and positive precepts.
The works of the two writers Morgan and Chubb
in part supply the defect left in Tindal, the omission
on the part of deism to show that Cffiistian truths
were a repubhcation of natural reHgion ; the former
especiaUy attacking the claims of the Jewish reHgion
to be ffivine, the latter the claims of the Christian.
Morgan's chief work'', the "Moral PhUosopher," was
pubhshed in 1737. Startmg from the moral poffit
y See the remarks in Essays and Reviews, i860, p. 272.
z Morgan died 1743. His chief work was the Moral Philosopher,
^737; ¦'^ith t-w volumes more in reply to opponents. It was refuted

198 LECTURE IV.
of view, the sole supremacy and sufficiency of the
moral law, the writer exhibits the necessity of ap-
plyffig the moral test as the offiy certaffi criterion
on the questions of reHgion, and declffies admittffig
the authority of miracles and prophecy to avaU
agaffist if' ; an investigation suggested partly by the
questions just named of the ground of unbehef, and
partly by the circumstance that the Christian writers
were beginnffig to dwell more strongly on the ex
ternal evidences when unbelievers professed the in
temal to be unsatisfactory. The adoption of this
test of truth prevents the admission of an historic
revelation with positive duties. He tffinks with
Tffidal that natural reHgion is perfect in itself,
but seems to admit that it is so weak as to need
republication^, which is a greater admission than
Tindal made ffi. his extant volume. When however
he passes from the decision on the general possi
bffity of revelation to the particular historic forms,
the Mosaic and Christian, he ffiscreffits both. The
ffifaUibffity of the moral sense is stffi the canon by.
which his judgment is determined. On tffis ground
he disbeheves the Jewish rehgion'', selectffig succes
sive passages of the national history, such as the
sacrffice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim"^, the cere-
moffial rehgious system'', as the object of his attack.
by Leland, and the controversy was carried forward in Tracts which
are described in Leland's Deists, vol. i. lett. ii and 12. See also
Lechler, 370-390 ; Henke, vi. 70.
^ Vol. i. p. 86, 96. vol. ii. § I. a P. 145 seq.
b Vol. i. c Id. p. 272, &c. ii. § 6. d Id. § 7.

LECTURE IV. 199
A degree of ffiterest attaches to his criticism on
these poffits, ffi that it was the means of cafling
forth the celebrated work of Warburton on the
Divine Legation of Moses.
The same prfficiples of criticism mislead him ffi
ffis examination of Christianity. The haUowed doc
trffie of the atonement forms a stumbhngblock to
ffim, on the ground of the transfer of merit by impu
tation •=. He regards Christianity as a Jewish gospel,
untfl it was altered by the apostles, whose authority
he ffiscredits by arguments not unlike the ancient
ones of Celsus. The method of Morgan is more
constructive than that of ffis predecessors. Not
denyffig the ffistoric element of Christianity by
ideahzffig it as Coffins, he attempts a natural ex
planation of the ffistoric facts. The central thought
wffich gffides ffim throughout is the supreme au
thority of the moral reason. His works open up
the broad question whether the moral sense is to
pronounce on revelation or to submit to it, and thus
form a fresh ffiustration of the ffitimate dependence
of particffiar sceptical opffiions and methods upon
metaphysical and ethical theories.
In the period wffich we are now examinffig, deism
was almost entirely confined to the upper classes.
It was ffi the latter part of the century that it spread
to the lower, poHtical antipathy agaffist the church
giving point to rehgious unbelief Chubb', whom we
e Id. §10.
f T. Chubb (1679-1747), of whom a brief memoir was published,

200 LECTURE IV.
next consider, is one of the few exceptions. He was
a workffig man, endowed with strong native sense ;
who manifested the same fficHnation to meddle with
the deep subject of religion which afterwards marked
the character of Thomas Paffie and others, who in
fluenced the lower orders later ffi the century. In
his general view of reHgion, Chubb denied aU pai;-
ticular providence, and by necessary consequence the
utflity of prayer, save for its subjective value as
having a reflex benefit on the human hearts. He
was undecided as to the fact of the existence of
a revelation, but seemed to allow its possibflity''.
He examined the three great forms of reHgion
which professed to depend upon a positive revela
tion, Judaism', Mahometanism, and Cffiistianity.
The claims of the first he whoUy rejected, on grounds
simflar to those explained in Morgan, as fficompatible
with the moral character of God. In reference to
the second he anticipated the modem opmions on

1747. He was the author of various tracts, of which a Hst is given
in Darling's Cyclopoedia Bibliographica, 1852. The account of
Chubb's views given in the text is brief, partly because of their
similarity to others previously named, and partly because the
author has been able to see only very few of Chubb's works. But
they are explained in Lechler, p. 343-356, and Leland, ch. 13.
Chubb's earlier writings seem to be Socinian, his later deistical. His
best known works are, A Discourse concerning Reason, 1731 ; tlie
True Gospel of Jesus Christ, 1739; and Posthumous Works, 2 vols.
1748. g Posthumous Works, i. 287.
h Id. i. 292. ' Id. ii. sect. 6.

LECTURE IV. 201
Mahometanism, by asserting that its victory was
hnpossible, if it had not contained truth which the
human spirit needed. In examffiffig the third he
attacked, like Morgan, the evidence of miracles'' and
prophecy', and asserted the necessity of moral right
and wrong as the ground of the ffiterpretation of
scripture. One of his most celebrated works was an explana
tion of "the true gospel of Jesus Christ," which is one
of the many ffistances which his works afford of the
unfairness produced by the want of moral ffisight into
the woes for wffich Christianity suppHes a remedy,
and ffito the deep adaptation of the scheme of redemp
tion to effect the object proposed by a mercifffi Pro
vidence ffi its communication"'- It wifl be per
ceived that the three last writers whose systems
have been explaffied, resemble each other so much
as to form a class by themselves. They restrict
their attack to the ffiternal character of revelation,
employ the moral rather than the historical investi
gation, embody the chief speculations of their prede
cessors, and offer, as has been already stated, a con
structive as weU as a destructive system ; morality
or natural reHgion in place of revealed".

^ Posthumous Works, ii. 152.
1 Id. 177, (fee. ^ Id. i. 22.
n Another work was published anonymously in 1742, entitled
Christianity not founded on Argument, supposed to be written by
the younger Dodwell, son of the learned nonjuror. Its aim is to
show that Christianity never propagated itself by argument, but

202 LECTURE IV.
An anonymous work was published in 1744, which
merits notice as ffidicatffig a slight alteration ffi the
mode of attack on the part of the deists. It was
entitled. The Resurrection of Jesus considered, and
is attributed to P. Annet, who died ffi the wretched
ness of poverty". It was designed ffi reply to some
of the defences of this subject wffich the writffigs of
Woolston and others had provoked. Its object was
to show that the writings which record the state
ment of Cffiist's preffiction of his own death are a
forgery ; that the narrative of the resurrection is
fficredible on ffiternal grounds, and the variety in
the various accoimts of it are evidences of fraud.
It indicates the commencement of the open aflega-
tion of Hterary imposture as ffistffict from phUo
sophical error, which subsequently marked the criti
cism of the French school of infidelity, and affected
the Enghsh unbehevers of the latter half of the
century. Deism had now reached its maximum. The
attention of the age was turned aside from religion
that the evidence of it depends upon a personal illumination of each
person who believes it. The work was supposed to be a satire on
Christianity. If earnest, it marked the truth that emotional causes
are intertwined with intellectual in the formation of belief. See
Lechler, pp. 41 1-42 1 ; Leland, Lett. xi. The book of Jasher, pub
lished in 1 75 1, is a forgery, written probably by some deist,
(Home's Introduction, vol. ii. part ii. p. 142. ed. 8.)
0 He was imprisoned in the King's Bench, and kept from starva
tion by money from the benevolent archbishop Seeker. He died
in 1768. See Lechler, pp. 313-22 ; Leland, ch. x.

LECTURE IV. 203
to poHtics by the pohtical dangers incident to the
attempts of the Pretender ; and when Hume's scepti
cism was promffigated in 1 749 it was received without
interest, and Bolffigbroke's posthumous writffigs pub
lished in 1754 feU comparatively dead. These two
names mark the period which we caUed the decline of
deism. Bolffigbroke's views "i however depict deistical
opffiions of the period when it was at its height, and
are a transition into the later form seen ffi Hume,
and therefore require to be stated first, though poste
rior ffi the date of pubhcation.
Bolffigbroke's writings command respect from their
mixture of clearness of exposition with power of
argument. They form also the transition to the
Hterature of the next age, ffi turning attention to
history. Bohngbroke had great powers of psycho
logical analysis, but he despised the study of it apart
from experience. His phflosophy was a phflosophy
of ffistory. In ffis attacks on revelation we have the
traces of the older phUosophical school of deists ; but
ffi the consciousness that an historical, not a phUo
sophical, solution must be sought to explain the rise
of an historical phenomenon such as Christianity,
he exempHfies the historic spirit wffich was risffig,
and anticipates the theological ffiquiry found in
Gibbon ; and, ffi his examffiation of the external
ffistoric evidence, both the documents by which the
q Bolingbroke (1678-1751). See Schlosser's History of the
Eighteenth Century, vol. i. ch. i. § 3 (transl.); Lechler, pp. 396-405 ;
Leland, ch. 22-34.

204 LECTURE IV.
Christian reHgion is attested, and the effects of tra
dition ffi weakening historic data, he evmces traces
of the influence of the historical criticism wffich had
arisen in France under his friend Poffifly''.
His theological writffigs^ are in the form of letters,
or of essays, the common form of didactic writffigs
ffi that age. We shaU briefly state ffis views on
deity, futurity, and revelation.
He teaches the existence of a deity, but was led,
by the sensational phflosophy wffich he adopted from
Locke, to deny the possibffity of an a priori proof of
the divffie existence', and contends strongly that the
divine attributes can only be known by observation
of nature, and not by the analogy of man's constitu
tion. He considers too that the deity whose existence
he has thus aUowed, exercises a general but not a
special providence " ; the world beffig a machffie
movffig by delegated powers without the divine
interference. The phUosophy expressed ffi Pope's
r On Pouilly, see Sir C. Lewis, Inquiry into the Credibility of
Roman History, vol. i. ch. i. p. 5, note. Pouilly published in 1722
his Dissertation sur V Incertitude et V Histoire des quatre premiers
si^cles de Rome. (See Mem. de VAcadem. des Inscr., vol. ix.)
Beaufort followed out the same line of inquiry in 1738. The two
writers are considered to have laid the basis of the modern histori
cal criticism of ancient history.
s They are chiefly, A Letter on one of Tillotson's Sermons in
vol. iii. of his works ; the Essays, in vols. iii. and iv. ; viz. Essay i
on Human Knowledge, (2) on Philosophy, (3) on the rise of Mono
theism, (4) on Authority in Religion ; and Fragments in vol. v.
* Vol. iii. Letter on Tillotson, also Letter to Pouilly.
1 Vol. V. No. 57, 58.

LECTURE IV. 205
didactic poetry gives expression to Bohngbroke's
opinions" on providence.
In his views of human duty Bohngbroke refers
conduct to self-love as a cause, and to happffiess as
an end ; and doubts a future stated, either on the
ground of materialism, or possibly because his fa
vourite principle, that " whatever is, is best," led him
to disbeheve the argument for a future Hfe adduced
from the ffiequahty of present rewards. Future
punishment is rejected, on the ground that it can
offer no end compatible with the moral object of
punishment, which is correction.
When he passes from natural religion to revealed,
he aUows the possibffity of divffie ffispiration, but
doubts the fact ; rebuking those however who doubt
thffigs merely because they cannot understand them.
In criticising the Jewish revelation", he puts no Hmits
to his words of severity. He dares to pronounce the
^ Cfr. Remusat's Angleterre au i8« Siecle i. 22. for remarks on
Bolingbroke's influence on Pope. The following lines of Pope
exactly express Bolingbroke's philosophy :
"The universal Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws.
And makes what happiness we justly call,
Subsist not in the good of one, but all." (Ep. iv. 35.)
'' Instances are to be found in Leland, who discusses his opinions
at great length. The reader who compares Leland's quotations
with Bolingbroke's works will perhaps think that he has pressed
their meaning rather far ; but further consideration will show that
he has correctly expressed Bolingbroke's spirit and purpose.
^ Letter on Tillotson.

206 LECTURE IV.
Jewish history to be repugnant to the attributes of a
supreme, aU-perfect Beffig. His attack on the records
is partly on account of the materials contained ffi them,
such as the narrative of the faU, the numerical sta
tistics, the ffivasion of the Canaaffites, the absence
of eternal rewards as sanctions of the Mosaic law;
and partly on the ground of the evidence beffig, as
he aUeges, not narrated by contemporaries. In
givffig ffis opiffion of Christiaffity, he repeats the
weak objection already used by Chubb, of a ffistffic-
tion existing between the gospel of Cffiist and of
Paffi ^ ; and tries to explain the origin of Cffiistiaffity
and of its doctrines, suggesting the derivation of the
idea of a Trffiity from the triaffic notions of other
religions. But he is driven to concede some tffings
deffied by former deists. He grants, for example,
that if the miracles reaUy occurred, they attest the
revelation '' ; and he therefore labours to show that
they ffid not occur, by attackffig the New Testament
canon '^ as he had before attacked the Old; attempt
ing to show that the composition of the gospels was
separated by an ffiterval from the aUeged occurrence
of the events ; applymg, in fact, Pouffiy's fficipient
criticism on history, which has been so freely used ffi
theology by more recent critics.
These remarks wffi exhibit Bolffigbroke's views,
both ffi their cause and then relation to those of
former deists. It wUl be observed, that they are for
the most part a direct result either of sensational
aCh. iv. 328. ^ Ch. iv. 227, 8. <¦ Ch. iv. 405, 272.

LECTURE IV. 207
metaphysics or of the incipient science of historical
criticism. The ffiquiry was now becoming more historical on
the part both of deists and Christians. Pffilosophy
was stiU the cause of rehgious controversy, but it
had changed ffi character. Tt was now criticism
weighmg the evidence of rehgion, rather than ethics
or metaphysics testing the materials of it. The ques
tion formerly debated had been, how much of the
intemal characteristics of scripture can be supported
by moral phUosophy; and when the conviction at
length grew up, that the mysteries coffid not be
solved by any analogy, but were unique, it became
necessary to rest on the miraculous evidence for the
existence of a revelation, and make the fact guarantee
the contents of it.- Inasmuch however as the reve
lation is contaffied ffi a book, it became necessary to
substantiate the ffistorical evidence of its genuffieness
and authenticity. Bolffigbroke's attacks are directed
against a portion of tffis Hterary evidence.
Historical criticism, ffi its appreciation of Hterary
evidence, may be of four kinds. It may (i) examffie
the record from a dogmatic point of view, pronouncing
on it by reference to prepossessions ffirected agaffist the
facts; or (2) make use of the same method, but direct
the attack agaffist the evidence on which the record
rests; or (3) it may examine whether the record is
contemporary with the events narrated ; or (4) con
sider its internal agreement with itself or with fact.
We have instances of each of these methods in the

208 LECTURE IV.
examffiation of the literary evidence on which mira
cles are believed. The first, the prepossession con
cerning the phflosophical impossibffity of miracles, is
seen ffi Spinoza ; the second, the impossibffity of
usffig testimony as a proof of them, ffi Hume; the
third, the question whether they were attested by
eyewitnesses, is the ground which Bolffigbroke
touches ; the fourth, the cross-examination of the
witnesses, is seen in Woolston. Of these, the first
most nearly resembles the great mass of the deist
objections to revelation, being phflosophical rather
than critical. The second forms a transition to the
two latter, beffig phflosophy appHed to criticism, and
is the form which deism now took. The two latter
are those wffich it subsequently assumed^.
These remarks wfll explain Hume's position % and
show how he forms the transition between two modes
of inquiry ; his point of view beffig critical, the cause
of it pffilosopffical. His specffiations ffi reference to
d The history of Apologetik passes through the same phases, and
when it devotes itself to the later forms, becomes of less general
interest, and is more simply literary; which illustrates the fact that
the later doubts are of a much less practical and more recondite
character than those hitherto named.
e Hume (1711-1776.] For his philosophy, see Tennemann, Oe
schichte, xi. 425 ; Ritter, Christliche Philosophie, viii. b.7. ch. ii.; Cou
sin, Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne, Legon xi. ; Morell, History
of Philosophy, i. 338 ; Lord Brougham's Preliminary Discourse to
Paley's Natural Theology, p. 248. For his religious opinions, see
Leland, Lett 16-21; Lechler, pp. 425-34. His views on mira
cles were answered by Paley, Bp. John Douglas, Campbell, and
Chalmers.

LECTURE IV. 209
reHgion are chiefly contained ffi his Essays on the
Human Understanffing. A brief explanation is ne
cessary to show the dependence of his theology on
his phflosophy.
The specffiations of Locke, as we have before had
occasion to notice, gave an impffise to psychological
investigations. He clearly saw that knowledge is
Hmited by the facffities which are its source, which
he considered to be reducible to sensation and re
flection; but while denying the existence of innate
ideas, he admitted the existence of innate facul
ties. Hartley carried the analysis stifl farther, by
mtroducing the potent instrument offered by the
doctrine of the association of ideas. Hume, adoptffig
tffis prfficiple, appHed it, ffi a manner very like the
ffidependent contemporaneous specffiations of Con-
dffiac in France, to analyse the facffities themselves
ffito sensations, and to furffish a more complete ac
count of the nature of some of our most general
ideas, such, for example, as the notion of cause. The
mteUectual element imphed in Locke's account of the
process of reflection here drops out. Facffities are
regarded as transformed sensations ; the nature of
knowledge as coextensive with sensation. Accordffig
to such a theory therefore, the idea of physical cause
can mean notffing more than the invariable con
nexion of antecedent and consequent. The notion of
force or power which we attach to causation -becomes
an unreahty; beffig an idea not given ffi sensation,
which can merely detect sequence. p

210 LECTURE IV.
Such was Hume's psychology ; an attempt to push
analysis to its ultimate limits ; valuable in its me
thod, even if defective ffi its results ; a strikffig
example of the acuteness and subtle penetration of
its author. There is another branch of his phUoso
phy, in which he is regarded as a metaphysical
sceptic, ffi reference to the passage of the mmd out
wards, by means of its own sensations and ideas, ffito
the knowledge of real being, whereffi he takes part
with Berkeley, extenffing to the inner world of soffi
the scepticism which that pffilosopher had appHed
to the outer world of matter. In the psychological
branch Hume is a sensationalist, in the ontological a
sceptic. The latter however has no relation to our
present subject. It is from the former that his views
on reHgion are deduced. In no writer is the logical
dependence of rehgious opinion on metaphysical prffi
ciples visible in a more ffistructive manner. For we
perceive that the influence adverse to reHgion ffi ffis
case was not merely the resffit of rival metaphysical
dogmas opposed to reHgion, such as were seen in
the Pantheists of Padua, or ffi Spffioza; nor even
the opposition caused by the adoption of a ffifferent
standard of truth for pronouncing on revelation, as ffi
his feUow EngHsh deists; but it sprung from the
application of the subjective psychological inquiry
ffito the limits of religious knowledge, as a means for
criticising not only the logical strength of the evi
dence of reHgion, but speciaUy the historic evidence
of testimony. We consequently see the influence

LECTURE IV. 21]
exercised by the subjective branch of metaphysical
mquiries in the discussion not only of the logic of
reHgion, but also of the logic of the historic aspect
of it.
Hume's rehgious specffiations ^ relate to tffiee
points : — to the argument for the attributes of God,
drawn from final causes ; to the doctrine of Provi
dence, and future rewards and punishments ; and to
the evidence of testimony as the proof of miracles.
Though he does not conduct an open assaffit ffi
reference to any of them, but only suggests doubts,
yet in each case his insinuations sap so completely
the very proof, that it is clear that they are in
tended as grounds not merely for doubt, but for
ffisbehef His doctrffie of sensation is the clue to
his remarks on the two former. He argues that
we can draw no sound inferences on the questions,
because the subjects he beyond the range of sen
sational experience. It is however ffi consequence
of ffis remarks on the last of the tffiee subjects in
ffis essay on Miracles that his name has become
famous ffi the history of free thought.
The essay consists of two parts. In the ffist he
shows that miracles are incapable of proof by testi
mony. Behef is ffi proportion to evidence. Evidence
rests on sensational experience. Accordffigly the tes
timony to the uniformity of nature being uffiversal,
and that wffich exists in favour of the occurrence of
a miracle, or violation of the laws of nature, being
^ Works, vol. iv. Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding;
Essay xi. on Providence and Future Life ; Essaj x. on Miracles.
P 2

212 LECTURE IV.
partial, the former must outweigh the latter. In the
second he shows, that if tffis is true, provided the
testimony be of the highest kind, much more wffi it
be so ffi actual cases ; ffiasmuch as no miracle is
recorded, the evidence for wffich reaches to tffis ffigh
standard. He explaffis the elements of weakness in
the evidence ; such as the predisposition of mankffid
to beHeve proffigies, forged miracles, the decrease of
miracles with the progress of civilization, the force of
rival testimony ffi disproof of them, which he ffius-
trates by historic examples, such as the alleged mira
cles of Vespasian, ApoUonius, and the Jansenist Abb6
Paris s. The conclusion is, that miracles cannot be
so shown to occur as to be used as the basis of proof
for a revelation; and that a revelation, if beheved,
must rest on other evidence.
The argument accordffigly is briefly, that testimony
cannot establish a fact which contrafficts a law of
nature ; the narrower ffiduction cannot ffisprove the
wider. The reasonffig has been used ffi subsequent
controversy'' with only a shght increase of force, or
alteration of statement. The great and undeffiable
ffiscoveries of astronomy had convfficed men in the
age of Hume of the existence of an order of nature ;
g The miracles connected with the Abbg Paris were defended in
La Verite des Miracles de M. Paris, by C. de Montglron, 1745.
See concerning them, C. Butler's Church of France, { Works, v.
PP- 135-142); Bp. John Douglas's "Criterion by which the true
miracles contained in the New Testament maybe distinguished from
those of Pagans and Papists;" Tholuck's Vermischte Schriften, i.
183. h E. g. by Professor Powell, in Essays and Reviews.

LECTURE IV. 213
and modern discovery has not increased the proof
of this in kffid, though it has heightened it ffi degree,
by showmg that as knowledge spreads the range
of the operation of fixed law is seen to extend more
widely ; and apparent exceptions are found to be
due to our ignorance of the presence of a law, not
to its absence. The statement of the dflficffity would
accordingly now be altered by the ffitroduction of a
slight moffification. Instead of urgffig that testi
mony cannot prove the historic reahty of the fact
which we cafl a miracle, the assertion would be made
that it can only attest the existence of it as a wonder,
and is unable to prove that it is anythffig but an
accidental resffit of an unknown cause. A miracle
differs from a wonder, ffi that it is an effect wrought
by the direct ffiterposition of the Creator and
Govemor of nature, for the purpose of revealing a
message or attesting a revelation. That testimony
can substantiate wonders, but not distinguish the
miracle from the wonder, is the modern form of
the dflficffity.
The connexion of Hume's view with his meta
physical prfficiples wifl be evident. If nature be
known offiy through the senses, cause is only the
material antecedent visible to the senses. Nature
is not seen to be the sphere of the operation of
God's regular wiU ; and the sole proof of ffiterference
with nature must be a balancmg of inductions.
It wffi be clear also that the true method of replyffig
to Hume has been rightly perceived by those who

214 LECTURE IV.
consider that the difficffity must be met by phUo
sophy, and not by ffistory.
Suppose the historic evidence sufficient to attest
the wonder, it does not prove that the wonder is
a miracle. The presumption in favour of this may
be indefinitely fficreased by the pecuharity of the
circumstances, wffich frequently forbid the idea of a
mere marvel ; but the real proof must depend upon
the previous conception which we brmg to bear upon
the question, in respect to i;he being and attributes
of God, and His relation to nature. The antecedent
probabUity converts the wonder into a miracle. It
acts in two ways. It obHterates the cold material
istic view of the regffiarity of nature which regards
materia] laws to be unalterable, and the world to
be a machffie ; and it adds logical force to the
weaker induction,, so as to allow it to outweigh
the stronger. No testimony can substantiate the
interference with a law of nature, uifless we first
believe on independent grounds that there is a God
who has the power and wfll to ffiterfere'. Philo
sophy must accorffingly estabhsh the antecedent

' This line of thought concerning the necessity of establishing the
antecedent probability of the fact, in order that the evidence may be
logically convinciiig, is adopted by two writers of very different
opinions, by Mr. Mansel (Essay in the Aids to Faith, § 18-23), and
Mr. J. S. Mill (Logic, vol. ii. b. iii. ch. 25. § 2). The distinction
between wonder and miracle is allowed by Dean Lyall (Propcedia
Prophetica) ; and Mr. Penrose ( Tlie use of Miracles in proving a
Revelation). Cfr. also Doederlin's Instit TlCSol. Christ. § 9, 10.

LECTURE IV. 215
possibihty of miracles ; the attribute of power in
God to effect the interruption, and of love in God
to prompt him to do it. The condition therefore
of attaffiffig this conception must be by holdffig to
a monotheistic conception of God as a beffig possess-
ffig a personal wifl, and regardffig mind and wUl as
the rule by which to interpret nature and law'^, and
not conversely measurffig the mental by the material.
In this manner law becomes the operation of God's
personal fixed wffi, and miracle the interposition of
ffis personal free wffi.
It wffi be perceived that ffi distffigffisffing miracle
from wonder, we also take ffito account the final
cause of the aUeged ffiterposition as a reason weighty
enough to caU forth divine interposition. As soon as
we introduce the idea of a personal inteUigent God,
we regard Him as acting with a motive, and measure
His purposes, partly by analogy to ourselves, partly
by the moral circumstances which demand the in
terposition '.
k See Aids to Faith, Mansel's Essay, § 22.
' There follows hence another peculiarity in reference to miracles ;
viz., that we require an interpreting mind to explain them. This is
the reason why so many thoughtful men believe that the outburst of
fire when JuHan tried to rebuild the Jewish temple, and the wonder
of the thorn in the history of Port Royal, were nothing more than
natural wonders. If the final cause be considered to have been sufii-
cient in these cases to warrant divine interposition, at least there was
no interpreter to explain them, nor any revealed message to be taught.
It must be conceded that this trait is wanting in some miracles re
corded in scripture, but not in those which are wrought to attest a
revelation, those which we use in proof of a special message from

216 LECTURE IV.
These remarks may furnish the solution of the
puzzle whether the miracle proves the doctrffie, or
the doctrine the miracle >". Undoubtedly the miracle
proves the particffiar doctrffie which it claims to
attest ; but a doctrffie of some kind, though not the
special one ffi point, some moral conception of the
Almighty's nature and character, must precede, in
order to give the criterion for ffistmguishing miracle
from mere wonder. Miracles prove the doctrffie
wliich they are ffitended to attest ; but doctrines of
a stffi more general character are reqffired to prove
the miracle.
This examffiation of the doctrine of Hume wffi not
offiy ffiustrate our main position, of the influence of
ffiteUectual and phUosophical causes in generating
doubt, or at least ffi directffig free thought ffito
a sceptical tendency, but wffi ffiustrate the appH
cation made of that special department of meta-
the unseen world. Werenfels (Opusc. Theol 17 18, Diss, v.) has
given tests for the discrimination of miracles which are quoted by
Van Mildert (Boyle Lect. II. p. 534).
n> Cfr. Dean Trench's remarks on the apologetic value of mira
cles, (Notes on Miracles, Introd. ch. vi). In the same work will be
found an excellent and interesting account of the various assaults
made on the argument from miracles. He classifies the assaults as
follows : (i) the Jewish, (2) the heathen (Celsus, &c.), (3) the pan
theistic (Spinoza), (4) the sceptical (Hume), (5) that which regards
miracles as such only subjectively (Schleiermacher), (6) the rational
istic (Paulus), (7) the historico-critical (Woolston, Strauss). With
Dean Trench's remarks. Compare also Pascal, Pensees, part ii, art.
^9-^9; Lyall, Proj). Propli. p.441 ; Dr. Arnold's Lectures on Modern
History, pp. 1 33; '37 ¦

LECTURE IV. 217
physics which relates to the test of truth, to ffiscredit
the literary proof of revelation as an historic system.
We have now sketched the natural history of
deism, by showing that ffi this as in former periods
the forms which free thought assumed were deter-
mmed by the plffiosophy, and, in a slighter degree,
by the critical knowledge of the age.
The inqffiry into method in the seventeenth cen
tury had led men to break with authority, and
rebufld from its foundations the temple of truth.
Locke, imbibffig this spirit, had gauged anew the
human understandffig, and had sought a new origffi
for its knowledge, and given expression to the
appeal to the reasoffing powers, wffich marked the
age. Pohtical circumstances had not offiy generated
free inquiry, but had required each man to form
ffis pohtical creed. In afl departments reason was
appealed to. Even the provffice of the imagination
was ffivaded by it, and perfection of form preferred
to freshness of conception ffi art and poetry. The
doubt of the age reflected the same spirit. Whether
its advocates belonged to the school of Descartes
or of Locke, both alike examined rehgion by the
standard of psychology and ethics. That which was
to be beheved was to be comprehended as weU as
apprehended. Yet the appeal was not made to
reason ffi its highest form ; and, with a show of
depth, phflosophy nevertheless fafled to exhibit the
deepest analysis.
We have watched the exhibition of the successive

218 LECTURE IV.
phases of the attack, and have seen reason, first ex
aminffig the method of theology, protesting agaffist
mystery ffi doctrine or morals ; next criticisffig the
historic reaHty of the evidence offered for its doc
trmes ; then denyffig the moral utflity of revelation,
or attackffig the doctrffies and ffiternal traths ; lastly
denying the valiffity of testimony for the super
natural. In the later steps the influence of the French
school of specffiation is already observable, mffighng
itself with Enghsh deism. Consequently the sub
sequent traces of unbeHef ffi England must be de
ferred tffi the nature of tffis movement has been
explained. Deism stands contrasted with the unbeHef of
other times by certain pecuharities. In its coarse
spirit of bitter hostility, and want of real ffisight into
the exceflence of the system which it opposed, it
recafls ffi some respects the attack of the ancient
heathen Celsus ; and the difficffities propounded are
frequently not dissimilar to those stated by him,
though resffitffig from a different phflosophical
school. The tenacious grasp which it maintained of
the doctrine of the uffity of God woffid cause it to bear
a closer resemblance to the system of Julian, if the
deists had not lacked the hterary tastes wffich
strengthened ffis love for heathenism. The mono
theism constitutes also a line of demarcation between
deism and more modem forms of unbelief It
restrained the deists from fafling into the forms of

LECTURE IV. 219
subtle pantheism previously noticed, and the atheism
which wfll hereafter meet us. The character of their
doubts too, selected from patent facts of mind and
heart, which appealed to common sense, and were
not taken from a mffiute literary criticism, which
removes doubt from the sphere of the orffinary
understandffig ffito the world of Hterature, separates
them from more modern critical unbeHef.
Standmg thus apart, characterised by intense at
tachment to monotheism, and placing its foundation
ffi the great facts of nature, deism errs by defect
rather than excess ; ffi that wffich it denies, not in
that wffich it asserts. It is a system of naturalism
or rationahsm ; the ffiterpretation which reason,
without attaffiffig the deepest analysis, offers of the
scheme of the world, natural and moral. Its only
paraUel is the particffiar species of German thought
derived from it which existed at the close of the
last century, and sought like it to reduce revealed
religion to natural ".
Whether emotional causes, personal moral faffits
cofficided with these inteUectual causes, and were the
obstacle wffich prevented the attainment of a deeper
insight ffito the mysteries of revelation, and made
them to halt ffi the mysteries of nature, ought to be
taken ffito account in formffig a judgment on the
concrete casfes, but does not so properly belong to
the general consideration ffi which we are now
engaged, of tracing the types of deist thought.
n E. g. Lessing, &c. Reimarus, etc. See Lect. VI.

220 LECTURE IV.
Some of the deists were very moral men, a few
immoral ; but the trath or untruth of opiffions may
be studied apart from the character of the persons
who maffitaffi them.
The movement, if viewed as a whole, is obsolete.
If the same doubts are now repeated, they do not
recur ffi the same form, but are connected with
new forms of phUosophy, and altered by contact
with more recent criticism. In the present day
sceptics woffid beHeve less than the deists, or beheve
more, both in phUosophy and ffi criticism. In pffi
losophy, the fact that the same difficffities occur in
natural religion as well as ffi revealed, woffid now
tffiow them back from monotheism ffito atheism or
pantheism ; whUe the mysteries of revelation, which
by a rough criticism were then denied, woffid be now
conceded and explaffied away as psychological pecu
liarities of races or inffividuals. In criticism, the
delicate examination of the sacred literature woffid
now prevent both the revival of the cold un-
imagmative want of appreciation of its extreme
literary beauty, and the hasty imputation of the
charge of Hterary forgery against the authors of the
documents. In the deist controversy the whole
question tumed upon the ffifferences and respective
degrees of obhgation of natural and revealed reli
gion, moral and positive duties ; the deist conceffing
the one, denying the other.
The permanent contribution to thought made by
the controversy consisted in turnffig attention from

LECTURE IV. 221
abstract theology to psychological, from metaphysical
disquisitions on the nature of God to etffical con
sideration of the moral scheme of redemption for
man. Theology came forth from the conffict, recon- '
sidered from the psychological point of view, and
readjusted to meet the doubts which the new form of
phflosophy — psychology and ethics — might suggest.
The attack of revealed religion by reason awoke
the defence ; and no period in church ffistory is so
remarkable for works on the Christian evidences, —
grand monuments of mind and industry. The works
of defenders are marked by the adoption of the same
basis of reason as their opponents ; and hence the
topics wffich they ffiustrate have a permanent philo
sophical value, though their special utffity as argu
ments be lessened by the alteration in the point of
view now assumed by free thought.
The one writer whose reputation stands out pre-
emffiently above the other apologists is bishop
Butler". His praise is in aU the churches. Though
the force of a few ffiustrations in ffis great work may
perhaps have been shghtly weakened by the modern
progress of physical science p, and though objections
° Butler, (1692-1752). The Analogy was published in 1736.
The reader s attention is invited to the excellent edition of it by
bishop Fitzgerald (ist ed. 1849), ^^^ the able memoir and criticism
which precede. Mr. Bartlett has also written a memoir of Butler.
Cfr. also Blunt's Essays, p. 490 seq.
P For example, some of the physical proofs of immortality iu
parti, ch. i. are weakened by the discoveries of physiology ; and those
in favour of the miraculous character of creation, in part ii. ch. ii.

222 LECTURE IV.
have been taken on the ground that the solutions
are not ultimate'', mere media axiomata; yet the
work, if regarded as adapted to those who start
from a monotheistic position, possesses a permanent
power of attractiveness which can offiy be explaffied
by its grandeur as a work of phUosophy, as weU as
its mere potency as an argument. The width and
fuffiess of knowledge displayed ffi the former respect,
together with the sffigffiar candour and dignffied
forbearance of its tone, go far to explaffi the secret
of its mighty influence. When viewed ffi reference
to the deist writffigs against which it was designed,
or the works of contemporary apologists, Butler's
carefffiness ffi study is manifest. Though we con
jectured that Tindal's work' was the one to wffich
would be regarded as of small value by those who hold the hypo
thesis either of the transmu.tation of species, or of their occurrence
according to a law of natural selection. Some things of a different
kind in Butler, which need correction, are pointed out in Fitzgerald's
edition. See e. g. p. 184, note.
q This is the objection taken by Tholuck (Vermischt Schrift
p. 192, 3. A somewhat similar objection is quoted by Fitzgerald
from Mackintosh, Introd. p. 49, upon both of which he offers criti
cisms. A kindred objection has been stated (probably by Mr. Mar-
tineau) in the National Review, No. 1 5. Jan. 1859, (PP- ^ " 1—214,) ^-nd
another by Miss S. Hennell in the Sceptical Tendency of Butler's
Analogy, 1857, in which she traces doubt in Butler's life as well as
teaching. Others may be found stated and examined in bishop
Hampden's Philosophical Evidence of Christianity, 1827. (pp. 229-
291.) r This conjecture is given by Fitzgerald in the life prefixed to his
edition of the Analogy (p. 36), where also two passages are quoted,
one from Foster, and the other from Berkeley, which certain pas-

LECTURE IV. 223
he intended chiefly to reply, yet not one difficffity in
the phflosophy, harffiy one ffi the critical attacks
made by the various deists, is omitted ; and the best
arguments of the various apologists are used. But
both the one and the other are so assimflated by his
own mind, that the use of them only proves his learn
ing, without diminisffing ffis originality. They are so
emboffied ffito his system, that it is ffifficffit even for
a student wefl acquaffited with the deist and apolo
getic Hterature to poffit precisely to the doubt or
paraUel argument wffich may have suggested to
ffim material of thought. And thus, though his
work as an argunient ought always to be viewed in
relation to his own times, yet the omission of aU
temporary means of defence, and the restrictffig
himself to the use of those permanent facts which
mdehbly belong to human nature, and to the scheme
of the world, have caused his work to possess an
enduring interest, and to be a KTjJ/ua e? aei. The
persuasive moderation of its tone also proves that
sages of Butler resemble. It would be interesting to know
whether the work of Dr. Peter Browne on Things Divine and
Natural conceived of by Analogy, 1733, had come under
Butler's notice. Many similar passages, as well as references
to the sources of the difiiculties which Butler answers, are given in
the notes to Fitzgerald's edition. Mr. Pattison also (Essays and
Reviews, p. 286) has exjjressed an opinion that Butler was much
assisted by the works of his predecessors. The probability is, that
in all great works their authors assimilate an amount of information
current in the age, as well as create new material. This was pro
bably the case even in works like Euclid's Geometry and Aris
totle's Natural History and Organum.

^24 LECTURE IV.
Butler had reaUy weighed the evidence. In its
absence of arrogant denunciation, and its candid
admission that the evidence of reHgion is probable,
not demonstrative ; and ffi the request that the whole
evidence may be weighed like a body of circum
stantial proofs, we can perceive that Butler had felt
the doubts as weU as understood them, and evi
dently meant ffis works for the doubter rather
than for the Christian ; to convmce foes, or support
the hesitatffig, rather than to wffi applause from
friends. The real secret of its power however Hes not
merely in its force as an argunient to refute ob
jections against revelation, but ffi its positive effect
as a phUosophy s, openffig up a grand view of the
divine government, and givffig an explanation of
revealed doctrines, by usffig analogy as the ffi-
strument for adjustffig them ffito the scheme
of the universe *. He seems himself to have
taken a broad view of God's deahngs ffi the moral
world, analogous to that which the recent physical
discoveries of his time had exffibited ffi the natural.
In the same manner as Newton ffi his Prmcipia
had, by an es:tension of terrestrial mechanics, ex
plained the movements of the celestial orbs, and
s The value of Butler's argument is fully discussed in the ad
mirable work on Butler by bishop Hampden before quoted, which
is the best existing commentary on the author : second to it are
Chalmers's Natural Religion .anA Bridgwater Treatise.
t Hampden's Phil. Evid. (131-228.)

LECTURE IV. 22.5
uffited under one grand generalization the facts of
terrestrial and celestial motion ; so Butler aimed
at exffibitffig as ffistances of one and the same set
of moral laws the moral government of God, wffich
is visible to natural reason, and the spiritual go
vernment, wffich is unveiled by revelation.
Probably no book since the begffinffig of Christ
iaffity has ever been so usefffi to the church as
Butler's Analogy, ffi solving the doubts of believers
or causffig them to ignore exceptions, as well as in
sUencing unbelievers. The office of apologetic is to
defend the church, not to buUd it up. Argument
is not the life of the church. It is therefore a proof
of the phflosophical power and trath of Butler's work
that it has miffistered so extensively to the latter
purpose, by actually reinforcffig and promotffig the
faith of professffig Cffiistians. It has acted not
offiy as an argument to the deists, but as a lesson
of ffistruction to the church.
Few efforts of free thought seemed more unpro-
misffig ffi yieldmg any usefffi results than deism ; yet
by its agitation of deep questions, which are not the
mere phantoms of a morbid mffid, but real and sohd
dflficffities and mysteries -ffi revelation, it was the
means of creatffig Butler's noble work, and is a
fresh ffiustration of the beneficent arrangement of
the Almighty, that makes knowledge progress by
antagonism, and overrffies evfl for good.
But there is another weapon for repellffig unbeHef
besides the intellectual ; just as there are two causes
Q

226 LECTURE IV.
for creating it, the one inteflectual, the other emo
tional. Thus, ffi the period that we are now consi-
derffig, though we may believe that many hearts were
cheered and many doubts hushed by the Christian
apologies, yet the revival of religion" wffich marked
the eighteenth century, and which by spreading vital
piety prepared an effectual check agamst unbeHef,
when the lower orders were afterwards ffivaded by
it, was due to the spiritual yeamffigs created by
the ministrations of men, often rude and uffiettered,
who told the wondrous story of Christ crucified,
heart speakffig to heart, with ffitffitions kffidled from
on high. The sffifffi began to feel that God was not
afar off, reposffig in the soHtude of his own blessed
ness, and abandonffig mankind to the govemment of
conscience and to the operation of general laws, but
ffigh at hand, with a heart of fatherly love to pity
and an ear of mercy to listen. The narrative of Christ
the Son of God, comffig down to seek and to save that
which was lost, awoke an echo ffi the heart which
neutralized the doubts infused by the deist. And
it is a comfort to every Cffiistian labourer to know
that if he cannot wrangle out a controversy with the
doubter, he can speak to the doubter's heart.
Few woffid compare the irregffiar missionaries of
spiritual reHgion in the last century with the great
" The revival in the early part of the century was due to the
agency of Wesley and Whitfield outside the church ; in the latter to
those of such men as Romaine, Newton, and ultimately Simeon,
within it.

LECTURE IV. 227
writers of evidence. The names of the latter are
honoured ; those of the former are unknown or too
often despised. It might seem strange, for example,
to ffistitute a comparison between the two contem
poraries, bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there
are poffits of' contrast wffich are ffistructive. Each was
one of the most marked instruments of movement and
influence in the respective fields of the argumenta
tive and the spiritual ; the one a pffilosopher writing
for the educated, the other a missionary preaching to
the poor. Butler, educated a nonconformist, turned
to the church, and in an age of unbehef consecrated
ffis great mental gifts to roU back the flood of in
fidehty ; and died early, when his unblemished
example was so much needed ffi the noble sphere
of usefffiness which Providence had given him,
leavffig a name to be honoured ffi the church for
generations. Wesley, nursed ffi the most exclusive
church principles, kffidled the flame of his piety
by the devout readmg of mystic books " ; when
our uffiversity was marked by the half-heartedness
of the time ; and afterwards, when ffistracted by
the Pietists of Germany y, devoted a long hfe to
wander over the country, despised, ffi-treated, but
stffi untired ; teacffing with ffidefatigable energy
the faith which he loved, and introducing those
irregffiar agencies of usefffiness which are now so
" E. g., W. Law's Serious Call, and Christian Perfection.
y Viz., by means of the Moravians of Hernnhut, whose founder,
Zinzendorf, himself sprang from the pietist movement.
Q 2

228 LECTURE IV.
largely adopted even in the church. He too was
an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts
of admiffistration ; but whatever good he effected,
in kffidhng the spiritual Christiaffity which checked
the spread of infidehty, was not so much by argu
ment as by stating the omffipotent doctrine of the
Cross, Christ set forth as the propitiation for sm
tffiough faith in his blood. The earnestness of the
missionary may be imitated by those who cannot
imitate the phflosophers literary labours. Gifts of
intellect are not in our own power. But industry
to improve the talents that we possess is our own ;
and the spiritual perception of ffivffie truth, and
bumffig love for Cffiist wffich wffi touch the heart,
and before which afl unhealthy doubts wifl melt
away as frost before the sun, wffi be given from on
high by the Holy Ghost freely to aU that ask.
" Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,
saith the Lord^"
z Zech. iv. 6.

LECTUHE Y.
INFIDELITY IN FRANCE IN THB EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND
UNBELIEF IN ENGLAND SUBSEQUENT TO 1760.

Isaiah xxvi. ao.
Come, my people, enter thou into lAy cAamJ}ers, and sAut thy
doors about thee : Aide tAyself as it were for a little moment,
until tAe indignation be overpast.
W E now approach the study of a period remarkable
no less ffi the ffistory of the world than in that of reh
gious thought, in which unbeHef gained the victory
ffi the empire of mffid, and obtaffied the opportunity
of reconstructffig society and education according
to its own views. The ffistory of infidehty ffi France
ffi the eighteenth century forms a real crisis ffi
history, important by its effects as well as its cha
racter. For France has always been the prerogative
nation of Europe. When wants inteUectual or poh-

230 LECTURE V.
tical have been felt there, the Hfe of other nations
has beat sympathetic with it as with the heart of
the European body. Ideas have been thrown ffito
form by it for transmission to others. It wUl be
necessary to depict the free rehgious thought, both
inteUectuaUy and in its political action ; to charac
terise its principal teachers ; to show whence it
sprung, and to what resffit it tended ; to point out
wherein lay the elements of its power and its
wickedness ; to show what it has contributed to
human woe, or perchance indirectly to human im
provement. The source of its influence cannot be understood
without recaflffig some facts of the history of French
poHtics and phflosophical speculation. What was the
cause why EngHsh deists wrote and taught their
creed ffi vain, were despised whfle livffig and con
signed to oblivion when dead, refrained almost
entirely from political intermeddUng, and left the
church in England unhurt by the struggle ; whfle
on the other hand deism in France became omni
potent, absorbed the ffiteflect of the country, swept
away the church, and remodeUed the state ? The
answer to this question must be sought ffi the ante
cedent history. It is a phenomenon political rather
than ffiteUectual. It depended upon the soU ffi
which the seed was sown, not on the ffiherent qua
lities of the seed itself*.
a The most effective sketch of the intellectual and social state of
France in the last century is given in Buckle's History of CivUisa-

LECTURE J. 231
The church and state have hardly ever possessed
more despotic power ffi any country of modem times,
or seemed to aU appearance to repose on a more
secure foundation, than ffi France at the time when
they were ffist assafled by the free criticism of the
infidels of the eighteenth century. Each had escaped
the alterations which had been effected ffi most other
countries. The clergy of France had in the sixteenth
century successfully resisted the Reformation, and
gaffied strength by the issiie of the civU wars
which supervened on it. In the seventeenth century,
though compeUed to admit toleration of their Pro
testant adversaries, they had contrived before the
end of it to obtaffi a revocation of the edict, even
though the act cost France the loss of a miUion of
her ffidustrious popffiation, and though the enforcffig
of it had to be effected by the means of the dragon-
nades, ffi which a brutal solffiery was let loose on an
ffinocent population''. Thus the church, united with
tion, vol. i. ; especially in ch. 8, ii, 12, and 14.. His narrative only
sets forth the dark side of the picture, and the Christian reader
frequently feels pained at some of his remarks ; but it is generally
correct so far as it goes, and the references are copious to the ori
ginal sources which the author used. I have therefore frequently
rested content with quoting this work without indicating further
sources. An instructive account of the centralization under Louis
XIV is given in Sir J. Stephens's Lectures on the History of France,
Lect. 21-23. The reign of Louis XV is treated in De Tocqueville's
Histoire Philosophie du Regne de Louis XV. A brief view of the
history may be seen in the works of the liberal Roman catholic, C.
Butler, vol. v. on Ghwrch of France.
^ The passages from Benoit's Histoire de VEdict de Nantes

232 LECTURE V.
rather than subjected to the state, adorned by great
names, assertffig its national ffidependence ffi the
pride of conscious strength agamst the metropohtan
see of Cffiistendom ", possessed a power which, whUe
it seemed to promise perpetuity, stood as an impedi
ment to progress and a bar to ffiteUectual develop
ment. Nor was the cause of Hberty more hopeful ffi rela
tion to the state than the church. The crown, ffi
passffig through a similar struggle agaffist the feudal
nobihty to that of other countries, had succeeded ffi
securing its victory without yielding those conces
sions to the demands of the people which in our own
country were extorted from it by the civU war.
The strength gaffied by the defeat of the nobflity ffi
the wars of the Fronde, offered the opportunity for
an able sovereign like Loffis XIV to dry up afl sources
of independent power, by centrahzffig all authority ffi
the monarchy. Proud ffi the consciousness of ffiternal
power and foreign victory, surrounded by wealth and
talent, with a court and Hterature which were the
glory of the country, he seemed hkely to transmit

vol. V. p. 887 seq., and Quick's Synodicon, i. p. 130 seq., respecting
the cruelties of the dragonnades, are quoted at length in Buckle, i.
p. 624, note.
<= This occuired in the contest concerning the Gallican liberties,
and the dispute about the Bull Unigenitus. Concerning the former
see C. Butler's Church of France (Works, vol. v.) p. 34 seq., and
Hase's Church History, § 424 ; and, on the latter, Butler ut sup.
188-149, and Hase, § 420.

LECTURE V. 233
ffis power to coming generations. But the inherent
weakness of despotism was soon apparent. Unre
straffied authority appertaffis only to the Divffie
govemment, because power is there synonymous
with goodness ; but it is always unsafe in human.
The wisdom which partly supplied the place of
goodness in Louis XIV beffig wanting ffi his succes
sor, unchecked seffishness produced the corruption
which brought inevitable rum.
These remarks on the poHtical state of France wffi
sufficiently show why a free criticism directed agaffist
either rehgion or tyranny shoffid assume revolu
tionary tendencies, and shoffid manifest an antipathy
to social and ecclesiastical ffistitutions, as weU as to
the principles on wffich they were supposed to
depend. But the forces operating ffi the world of mffid, as
weU as ffi society, must also be understood, in order
to estimate the influence of unbeHef in France. In a
previous lecture we have seen that ffi the middle of
the seventeenth century the phflosophy of Descartes
had created a complete revolution ffi modes of
thought. It was offiy ffi the pffilosophy of Spffioza
that it produced theological unbeHef; but by its
ffidirect influence it had led generaUy to an en
tire reconsideration of the first data of reasonffig,
and the method of estabhshffig truth ; and thus
had stimffiated the struggle of reason agamst faith,
of ffiquiry agamst creduhty, of progress agaffist
reaction, and of hopefulness ffi the future against re-

234 LECTURE V.
verence for the past. The activity of mffid displayed
ffi the Hterature of the reign of Loffis XIV. is itS'
first expression''. But thoughts ferment long ffi so
ciety before they fffily express themselves ffi form :
they first exist as suggestions ; then they become
doubts ; lastly, they pass ffito disbehef It was not
untfl the time of the regency", wffich ensued after
the death of Loffis, that the Hterature became im*
pressed with a thorougffiy new tone''.
Other causes of a more direct kffid cooperated.
The EngHsh phflosophy of Locke, which marked an
epoch in specffiation, was introduced at that time.
Tffis phflosophy however coffid not have resffited ffi
those specffiations wffich arose in France, if it had
not been carried farther by the analysis which Con-
dffiac employed ffi that country, analogous to that
of Hume in Scotland. In itself it expressed the
reasonffig type of mind and thought wffich reigned
tffioughout the Enghsh literature ; but the corol
laries from it which produced harm were no part of
the origffial system ». CondiUac, desiring to carry
out the analysis of the origin of knowledge, lost
sight of the ffiteUectual element ffi Locke's account
d The nature of the literature of the reign of Louis XIV, and the
alteration of position of authors in the new reign, are explained in
Buckle, i. ch. ii and 12.
e 1715-1723.
f Literature really became a political power, and exercised a
similar influence to that of the modern newspaper press.
g Professor Webb of Dublin, in his work, The Intellectualism of
Locke, has given evidence which establishes this point.

LECTURE V. 235
of the process of reflection ; deffied the existence
of innate facffities as wefl as ffinate ideas ; and at
tempted to show that man's mffid is so passive,
so dependent on the evidence of the senses for the
material of its thoughts, and on language for the
power to combine them, that its very facffities are
transformed sensations''- From these premises it was
not hard for his foUowers to draw the inferences of
materialism' ffi phUosophy, selfishness ffi morals, and
an entire deffial of those rehgious truths wffich can
not be proved by sensuous evidence. Tffis phUosophy
began to leaven the mffid of France, and was accepted
by nearly the whole of French unbehevers.
Such was the inteUectual state of France ffi re
ference to the standard of appeal contemporaneously
with the poHtical and ecclesiastical conffition before
described. In the state and church aU was authority ;
aU was of the past : in the world of literature and
phUosophy aU was criticism, activity, hope in the
future. Into a soU thus prepared the seeds of un
behef on the subject of religion were ffitroduced. We
^ On CondiUac see Cousin, Cours de la Philosophie Morale,
legon 3 ; Renouvier, Philosophie Moderne, v. 2. § 4 ; Villemain,
Cours de Literature, ii. 20; Morell's History of Philosophy, i. 148
seq. ; Lewes' History of Philosophy.
i It may prevent ambiguity to state that the term materialism,
when employed in these lectures, is not used in its modern popular
sense of mere animalism, the obedience to the lower side of human
nature ; but in its technical sense, as the kind of philosophy which
so regards spirit to be a property of matter as to produce inferences
unfavourable to the belief in immortality or moral obligation.

236 LECTURE V.
cannot deny tliat they were imported maffily from
England. Doubt had ffideed not been wholly wantmg
ffi France. In the precedffig centuries Montaigne''
and Charron', and, at the commencement of the one
of which we speak, Bayle"" and Fontenelle", were
probably harassed with disbehef, and their ffifluence
was certaiffiy productive of doubt. And free thought,
ffi the form of hterary criticism of the scriptures, had
brought down the denunciation of the French church
on Richard Simon". But undoubtedly the direct
parent of the French unbehef was EngHsh deism p.
In no age of French ffistory has Enghsh hterature
possessed so powerfffi an influence''. England had
recently achieved those Hberties of which France felt
the need. It had safely outlived civfl war and revo-
^ On the scepticism of Montaigne (1532-1592) see Tennemann's
Oeschichte der Philosophie, ix. 443 ; Vinet's Essai de Philosophie
Morale ; Sainte-Beuve Critiques et Portraits Litteraires, vol. iv. ;
Hallam's History of Literature, ii. 29; Emerson's Representative
Men ; and R. W. Church in Oxford Essays, 1857.
1 On Charron (1541-1603) see Tennemann, Id. ix. 527, Sainte-
Beuve, t. xi. ; Hallam, i. 570., ii. 362, 511 ; and the article in the
Biographie UniverseUe.
™ On Bayle (1647-1706) see Tennemann, xi. 268 seq.; Renouvier,
Phil Mod. iii. 3. § 6 ; Sainte-Beuve, iii. 392.
n On Fontenelle (1657-1757) see Sainte-Beuve, iii. and the Biogr.
Univ. Another writer, Dolet (1509-1546), was also suspected, at
an earlier period, not only of scepticism but of atheism. See his
Life, by J. Boulmier, 1857.
o On R. Simon see Lect. III. p. 116.
P See Leehler's Gesch. des Eng. Deismus, p. 445.
q On the great eagerness for English literature in France at that
time, .see the facts collected by Buckle, i. (658-670).

LECTURE V. 237
lution, and had established constitutional hberty and
rehgious toleration. Jn England the victims of the
French oppression found shelter. Beffig itself free,
it became the refuge for the exfle, the shelter for the
oppressed. It thus became the object of study to the
poHtician, and of love to the phflanthropist. Its
hterature too, in two branches, viz. political inqffiry,
and, towards the middle of the century, romance,
offered subjects for imitation. Montesquieu studied
the former ; Rousseau and Diderot the latter. But
England furnished also a series of fearless ffiquirers
on the subject of reHgion, whose works became the
subject of study and of translation •¦. Voltaire spent
three years of exile in England ^ at the time when
the ferment existed concemffig Woolston's attack on
miracles, and both knew Bohngbroke personaUy, and
translated his writffigs.
Having now explained the sources of doubt ffi
France ; we must next ffirect our attention to the
course of its specffiations, and to the chief authors.
If we estimate its course by Hterary works, or by
social and pohtical movements, we may distribute the
ffistory of it into two periods; one comprisffig the
first half of the century, whereffi it attacks the French
!¦ A list of those that are said to have been translated is given by
Lechler, Id. 446. On the' comparison of English and French deism
see Henke's Kirchengeschichte, vi. s. 131.
s 1726-1729. Cfr. Villemain, CoMrs«?eZi«. 1.(168-177). A letter
of Fleury, quoted from Schlosser by Lechler (Id. 446), proves that
his fears were excited by the influence which English literature was
producing.

238 LECTURE V.
church and Christianity; the other, the latter half,
whereffi it mffigles itself with the demand for pohtical
change, and assaults the state*, untU its effects are
seen in the anarchy of the French revolution. In the
former of these periods the unbehef is tentative and
suggestive. About the time of the transition to the
second, ffi the pride of supposed victory it becomes
dogmatic. Christianity is supposed to be exploded.
PhUosophy seeks to occupy its place in the social and
inteUectual world. The early doubters and Voltaire
mark the former of these epochs. Diderot and the
French encyclopaedists, with the ramffication of their
school at the court of Frederick II. of Prussia, form
the point of transition. Rousseau marks the openffig
of the second period, when unbeHef was attemptmg
to reconstruct society and remodel education. The
seffish phUosophy of Helvetius and ffis friends then
carries on the course of the ffistory of unbeHef, untU
in the storm of the revolution it shows itself ffi the
teaching of Volney, and the absurd acts of the theo-
phflantffiopists. The name of Voltaire, which the logical and cffio-
nological order ffitroduces first to our notice, is so
preeminent, that his character and teacffing may ex
press the ffistory of the early movement in France.
The story of his hfe, so far as we require now to
t On this charge of attack about 1750 see Buckle, i. 7 16-718; and
on the origin of the attack on the church, and the causes why it
preceded that on the state, Id. 684 seq. Also compare De Tocque
ville's Louis XV. t. ii. ch. 10.

LECTURE V. 239
be made acquaffited with it, can be briefly told".
Bom toward the close of the seventeenth century, he
maffifested, as a legend assures us, «uch a doubting
spirit, even in boyhood, that his priestly preceptor
predicted that he woffid prove a Coryphaeus of deism.
His rare precocity of ffiteUect early acquired for him
a reputation ffi the world of letters. CompeUed to
become an exUe ffi England '', he studied its poHtics,
its science, and its scepticism. On ffis return to
France, he endeavoured to introduce among ffis
countrymen the cosmical and mathematical doctrffies
of Newton ; and made himself conspicuous ffi ffistory,
in poetry, in fiction, and above aU, ffi theology,
by his attacks on revealed reHgion and the French
church. About the midffie of the century, accepting
an mvitation to the court of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, he aided thence the introduction of ffifidel
doctrines in Germany. A few years later he with
drew ffito retirement at Ferney, but was able from
ffis seclusion to wield an ffiteUectual power tffiough
out Europe.
>i Voltaire lived 1694-1778. The Life by Lord Brougham, in
Lives of Men of Letters, is not only very full of facts, but contains
some very^ble criticism, especially on the dramatic works of Vol
taire. More biographies have been given in this lecture than in others,
in accordance with the reasons explained in Lect. I. p. 46, because
in this period the infidel influence was the result of the teachers, as
much as of the ideas taught. See concerning Voltaire, Henke's Kir
chengeseh. vi. 166 ; Schlosser, Hist of Eighteenth Century, i. 2. § i,
iv. § I. Bartholmess, Hist Crit des Doctr. Relig. de la Phil Mod.
i. 2 1 1 seq. ; Bungener's Voltaire.
X In 1726.

240 LECTURE V.
It was from tffis retirement that he denounced the
acts of tyranny, or supposed injustice, ffifiicted by
the French church. His inffignant denunciations ffi
the cases of the Sirven^, of La Barrel and above aU
of the Galas", gamed for him the commendation and
sympathy of Europe, and remaffi as monuments of
the power of the pen.
Such was his Hfe. Let us search ffi it for the
secret of his power, and ffiquire what were ffis views
ffi the department wffich we are studyffig.
y Sirven was condemned in 1762, on an unjust suspicion of causing
his daughter's death, to prevent her becoming a protestant.
z La Barre was a youth of seventeen, who, on the suspicion of
having injured a crucifix on the bridge of Abbeville, was con
demned (1763) to be tortured on the rack, to have his tongue
cut out, and to be put to death ; which sentence was literally
executed. See Biographie UniverseUe, sub Voltaire, vol. xix. p. 484,
and Brougham's Life of him (94-99).
* The Calas were a family at Toulouse, the father of which was
put to death (1762) by catholic fanaticism. Voltaire investigated
the facts with care ; and, by instituting legal proceedings at Paris,
got the sentence of the Toulouse court reversed, and all the repara
tion that was possible made to the family. Money to defray the ex
penses was sent to him from all the reformed parts of Europe. The
English queen (Charlotte) and the archbishop of Canterbury (Seeker)
headed the English subscription list. The facts have lately been
reinvestigated by the accomplished A. Coquerel fits., Jean Calas et
sa Famille, 1858. ,The narrative is told in the Westminster Review,
No. 28, for Oct. 1858. See also ILe-ake's Kirchengeseh. vi. 298 seq.
On the tomb of Voltaire, now a cenotaph, in the vaults of the
Pantheon, is an inscription, " II d^fendit Calas, Sirven, De la Barre,
et Montbailly." Since the Pantheon has been converted into a
church, the side of the tomb which bears this inscription has been
concealed by a screen, so that visitors are only permitted to view
one of the other sides.

LECTURE V. 241
His character has been analysed by so many cri
tics, especiaUy by one of our own countrymen in an
essay of rare power, now become classical, that the
opportuffity of origffial ffivestigation is impossible,
and the attempt undesirable''.
In the opiffion of tffis writer, the secret of Vol
taire's strength was the tact which he displayed in ex
pressffig the wants of ffis time to his countrymen ffi
the precise mode most siiited to them'=. He belonged
to the class of those who exercise their ffifluence in
their own lifetime — men of the present, not men of
the future ; accordffigly, whether he be viewed as a
man, ffi his own personal quahties, ffi the moral and
inteflectual properties wffich constituted ffis charac
ter, or as an artist, ffi the manner in wffich he con
veyed his thoughts to the world, he wffi be foun4 to
be the loftiest exponent and type of the spirit of his
age. It was an age without origffiahty, without spi
ritual ffisight, carefffi of manners rather than morals,
corrupted by seffishness, led by ambition, dissatisfied
with the present, and anxious for dehverance ; but
unable to espy the real causes of the mischief, and to
escape confusffig principles with men ; fond of form
rather than material ; classical rather than Gotffic ;
critical rather than reverent ; proud of its own dis
coveries, without appreciation of the efforts of the
past. — Such are the quahties wffich characterised
•> Carlyle's Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii. It will be observed that
many of the following remarks are abbreviated from this source.
<= Carlyle, Id. p. 113.

242 LECTURE V.
the times of Voltaire'', and in their most striking-
form marked his mmd.
To qualities which were thus in some sense formed
ffi ffim by circumstances, he added remarkable ones
wffich were Nature's special gflt to him. His extra-
ordffiary tact and good sense, both in deahng per
sonaUy with ffiffividuals and ffi Hterary criticism ;
ffis fiery ardour, and vehement spirit of proselytism ;
ffis sffigffiar penetration of vision, and power to ar
range in the clearest mode the thoughts which he
wished to transmit ; above aU, ffis wit and wonderfffi
power of satire were qualities which, though ffi some
degree shared by his countrymen, cannot be ex
plained by mere circumstances, but are natural
gifts. These three inteUectual endowments, acute
ness, order, and satire*, are regarded by the authority
that we are takffig for our gffide, as the quahties
wffich formed the secret of ffis power as a writer,
and at the same time as the sources of ffiteUectual
temptation wffich prevented ffim from gaiffing a
deeper ffisight ffito trath, and deprived ffim of in
fluence with posterity. For ffis qffickness prevented
the exercise of the reflection, the patient meditation,
which is the offiy high road to solve the mysteries of
existence. It has been wefl said^, that Voltaire saw
so much more deeply at a glance than other men,
•) i. e. the age of Louis XV. See Id. pp. 180-185.
e On Voltaire's power of ridicule, see Id. 120, 167 ; and on his
power of order, 163 seq.
f Id. p. 161.

LECTURE V. 243
that no second glance was ever given by him. His
power of order assisting ffis qffickness, was a still
further temptation. Though far mferior in erudition
to some of his contemporaries, such as Diderot, and
ffi depth of feehng to Rousseau, lackffig origmality,
and borrowmg most of ffis pffilosophical thoughts at
second hand, he yet surpassed them aU by a match
less power of arrangement. The perfection of form
ffiverted attention from the subject matter. He pos
sessed method rather than geffius, ffiteUect rather
than imagffiation. But above aU ffis other powers,
his most singffiar gift was his power of satire. When
stimffiated by a sense of injustice, or of hatred
agamst men or systems, it made ffim omffipotent in
destruction. Tffis satirical power contributed to pre
clude the possession of depth of reflection. Rifficffie
has an office ffi criticism. It is the true puffishment
of foUy. But it has been weU observed s that it is
dangerous to him who employs it, as beffig directly
opposed to humUity. The satirist places himself
above that which he rifficffies, and makes himself
the judge : the humffity of the listener is laid aside ;
the seffish behef of his own ffifaUibihty is fostered ;
forbearance and sympathy are laid aside. The critic
argues, the satirist offiy laughs. Pity may be com
patible with humour, but offiy contempt with satire.
Voltaire was by nature a satirist ; and when his
mockery was appHed to a subject Hke Christianity
s Id. p. 119.
R 2

244 LECTURE V.
or religion, his utter want of reverence not offiy
caused him to substitute a caricature for a picture,
but prevented ffim from exercising discrimmation in
ffistinguishmg Christiaffity from its counterfeit, re
ligion from the mffiisters of it. Hence his attacks
on Christianity partake of the tone of blasphemy ;
and he maffifests ffi reference to religion, which to
most readers was the most sacred of subjects, a tone
of ffidescribable scurrffity, wffich was not offiy inex
cusable and ffisgracefffi if viewed merely ffi a Hterary
poffit of view, but constituted pohticaUy a pubhc
outrage against the dearest feehngs of others wffich
no citizen has a right to perpetrate ''. Tffis tone too
was mainly his own ; and is not to be found, except
in rare instances, in the English deists from whom
he borrowed.
We have tried to comprehend the mffid of Vol
taire, to notice ffis pecuharities and faffits, before con-
siderffig ffis opiffions ; because ffis influence was due
to ffis mental and personal character rather than
to the matter of his writffigs. It remaffis to state
ffis views on reHgion, and the grounds of ffis attack
on revelation. The cffief materials for ascertaiffing
them are the four volumes ffi the vast coflection
of his works, which contain ffis pffilosopffical and
theological writings'. They partake of every variety
^ The question of Voltaire's blasphemy is treated by lord Broug
ham (Life, p. 7).
> The four volumes are xxxii-xxxv of the (Euvres Completes, 8vo.
1785- Vol. xxxii. contains the philosophical works, of which ch. 2,

LECTURE V. 245
of form, — essays, letters, treatises, pamphlets, trans
lations, commentaries. They fficlude, besides smafler
works, a commentary on the Old Testament ; trans
lations of parts of Bolffigbroke and of Toland ; an
mvestigation concernffig the estabhshment of Cffiis
tiaffity ; deist sermons which he pretends had been
dehvered ; discourses written under false names'' ;
and doubts proposed and solved after the manner
of preceding phflosophers. Yet ffi these numerous
treatises there is no claim to originahty. His doubts
and his behefs are taken maiffiy from the Enghsh
deists ; and cffiefly from Bolffigbroke, the most French
ffi mind of any of the English school.
A few words therefore wffi suffice to charac
terise his opinions. It appears that he believed in
a God', but ffimly ffisbelieved the divine origin of
the revealed reHgion, Jewish and Christian. The

6, 7, 9, of the Traite de Metaphysique, relate to religion ; also the
Profession de Foi des Theistes ; the Homelies prononcees ct Londres.
Vol. xxxiii. contains the Fxamen de Milord Bolingbroke ; and the
Epttre aux Remains. Vol. xxxivj^ia Bible enfin Expliquee, where
the notes contain Voltaire's views fully. Vol. xxxv, Histoire de
V Etahlissement du Christianisme.
^ On the persecutions which fell on literary men, see Buckle, i.
(672-684.) ' The proof of this assertion is clear in his Traite de Metaphysique,
c. 2. {(Eumres, vol. xxxii) ; in Letter iii. of Memmius to Cicero ; in
the Profess, de Foi des Theistes; and is shown by the fact of his
opposition to the Encyclopaedists on the ground of their atheism ;
which is confirmed by the inscription on his tomb, " II combattit
les athees." It is his blasphemous tone which has, not unnaturally,
given rise to the idea, of his atheism.

246 LECTURE V.
main purpose of his hfe however was not affirmation,
but denial'". Accordingly the sole object of aU his
efforts was to destroy behef ffi the plenary inspiration
of the scriptures, and the divffie origin of revelation
which is attested by them. There is hardly a book
in scripture that he did not attack. Successively
surveying the narrative of Jewish history, the Gospels,
and statements of early church history", he tried
to show absurdities and contradictions in them aU ;
not so much Hterary differences ffi the authors as
difficffities of behef in the material revealed. In his
views of Judaism and of Christiaffity he seems to
have fluctuated between attributing them to the
fraud or mistake of their propagators, and denyffig
their origmality. The science of historical criticism
was begffinffig in ffis day, and was appHed to the
legends of Roman history. Voltaire emboffied the
spirit of this inquiry. In his histories he exemphfied
the cold, worldly, modern mode of lookffig at events,
as opposed to the providential and theocratic view
of them wffich had found expression as recently as
in the works of Bossuet". And he transferred this
ra " Ecrasez I'infame'' are the words, the initials of which, signed
at the end of his letters to infidel friends, baffled the French police.
Buckle considers them to have been designed against the French
church, but offers no proof. It is to be feared that they were rather
intended against the Christian religion, if not against the sacred
person of our blessed Lord.
" See his Commenta/ry {(Euvres, vol. xxxiv.), the Homilies
(\a\. xxxii), and the Histoire (vol. xxxiv).
° On the contrast of his historic tone to that of Bossuet, see

LECTURE V. 247
method to the treatment of holy scripture. No new
branch of ffiformation was left unused by him for
contributing to his impious purpose. The numerous
works of travels which were affording an acquaint
ance with the mythology of other nations, were made
to furnish him with the materials for hastfly apply
ing one solution to aU the early Jewish histories,
wffich he faUed to invalidate by the appHcation of
the ffistoric method just described. By an inversion
of the argument of the early Cffiistian apologists he
pretended that the early history preserved among
the Hebrews was borrowed from the heathens, ffistead
of claimmg that the heathen mythology was a trace
of Hebrew tradition ; and, with a view to sustaffi
tffis opiffion, he discreffited the integrity of the
Hebrew Hterature. In notffing is his singffiar want
of poetic taste, and of the power to appreciate the
beauties of the Hterature of young nations, and the
etffical value of moral ffistitutions, more visible, than
in denyffig the Hterary and monumental value of
the Bible, and the moral influence of Christiaffity!'.
Infidels who have hated revealed reHgion as bitterly
as Voltaire, have at least not had the meanness or
the want of taste to depreciate the literary and moral
ffiterest which attaches to it.
Such was the character of the man, and of the
efforts wffich he directed to the ffijury of revelation.
Buckle, i. 726, and Schlosser, History of ihe Eighteenth Century,
(English translation), vol. i. ch. iv. § 2. p. 273.
P Compare Carlyle's remarks, ut sup. p. 175.

248 LECTURE V.
It has been said-i that to obliterate his influence from
the history of the eighteenth century woffid be to
produce a greater difference than the absence of any
other individual ffi it would occasion ; and would
be simUar to the omission of Luther from the six
teenth. The analogy, though startHng, is true in the
particulars wffich it is intended to ffiustrate. The
influence of each was European ffi his respective
century ; and the doctrine acted not offiy on the
world of thought, but of action.
We have described Voltaire alone ; not because he
was isolated by any interval of time from a general
movement, but because his attack is more ruffi-
mentary, being directed rather to ffisffitegrate Chris
tianity than dogmatieaUy to affirm unbelief He
was perhaps rather logicaUy prior to the others
than chronologicaUy ; being reaUy connected with two
bodies of men, which formed the centres of two ffi
fidel movements, the one ffi Paris, the other at the
court of Frederick at Berlffi.
Frederick the Great surrounded himself with
French literary men"". They were mostly persons
who were exfles from France to escape persecution for
their opffiions, who had ffist found a refuge in Hol
land, and thence endeavoured by means of the Dutch
bookseUers to ffitroduce their writffigs into France.
From about 1740-60 several such teachers of infi-
1 Id. 105.
r On Frederick's entertainment of these French refugees, see Henke,
Kircliengesch. vi. 180 ; Schlosser, vol. i. 2. § 3.

LECTURE V. 249
dehty were ffivited to the Prussian court, and dis
persed their influence in Germany ; the effects of
which we shafl subsequently find. One of them was
the physician La Mettrie *, who wrote works on phy
siology marked by a low materiahsm. Such also was
De Prades', and more especiafly D'Argens". The
latter, struck with the force of "the Persian Letters"
of Montesquieu, threw his doubts into an epistolary
form, " the Jewish Letters ;" in which the traditional
opffiions and ruhng systems of the time were attacked
with great freedom. He translated also some ancient
works to serve his purpose, especially the fragments
of the abusive work of the emperor Jiffian agaffist
Christianity, written in favour of the state religion
of the Greeks and Romans.
Whfle tffis was the character of some of the
Frenchmen at the court of Frederick, whom Voltaire
subsequently joffied ; men who, imbued with the
most extravagant form of the pffilosophy of sensation,
verged upon materiahsm ; there were coteries of hte
rary persons ffi Paris, which were the raUyffig point
of sceptical mffids, and centres of irreligious influence.
s La Mettrie (1709-1751). His views are seen in the Discours
Preliminaire to his Hist Nat del dme, and in the L'homme machine
(1748). See a criticism on him in Ph. Damiron's Memoires pour
servir d, V Histoire de Philosophie au i8« siecle (vol. i. pp. 1-49); ''e-
printed from the Report of the Academie des Sciences ; also Henke,
vi. 13.
' De Prades (1720-1782). See Henke, vi. 201 ; also the article
in the Biographie UniverseUe.
11 D'Argens (1704-1771). See Damiron, Id. ii. 256-376.

250 LECTURE V.
The existence of them is due ffi part to the altered
position already named wffich Hterature assumed in
reference to the court durffig the regency. Instead
of being fostered, it was ffiscouraged ; and Fleury
maffifested an ahnost puritan spirit, and has left on
record the expression of ffis alarm at the growffig
sceptical tone of hterary works, and the imitation of
the English spirit. Owffig accordffigly to the absence
of patronage, and to the lavishment of those favours
on extravagance wffich the elder Louis had bestow
ed on the fosterffig of ffiteUect, Hterature became
disjoined from court ffifluences ; and hence there
grew up smaU centres of hterary influence, analogous
to those precedffig the time of Loffis XIV^ and
nuclei for ffiteflectual movement, where of old the
various bodies had aU moved round one central sun.
It woffid be irrelevant to enter into the de
taUs of these coteries. (28) Some were simply of
fasffion and taste; but others were undoubteffiy
gatherings of powerfffi tffinkers, imbued with ffi
fidel prfficiples, whose character belongs to French
Hterature and the mental and moral cffiture of the
time. One of the most remarkable of these cote
ries included names noted ffi French Hterature, such
as Voltafre, Diderot, D'Alembert ^ D'Holbach, Mar-
V On the old coteries of Rambouillet, &c. see Hallam's Hist of
Literature, iii. 137.
"' D'Alembert(i7i7-83). For particulars ofhis life, see Brougham's
memoir in Lives of Men of Letters. For his philosophy, see Damiron,
ii. 1-114 ; Henke, vi. 218 ; Schlosser, i. 4. § 7. His infidelity was
known to friends, but not openly avowed.

LECTURE V. 251
montel^, Helvetius, Grimm y, St. Lambert^, and
Raynal". We must notice some of them in detafl,
in order at once to appreciate the character of their
works, and to iUustrate the relation of their unbe
Hef to the phUosophy wffich they adopted''.
Diderot", next to Voltaire, was the most able of
the infidel writers, and greatly superior to the other
members of the same class. His history is one of
those narratives of struggle and suffermg which so
often have been the lot of men of letters. Those who
have been the teachers of the world have too often

" Marmontel (1723-99). See Sainte-Beuve, Poriraife, vol. iv. ;
Schlosser, ii. 2. § i.
y Grimm, 1723-1807. See Sainte-Beuve, vol. vii. The Corre-
spondance Litt. par le Baron Grimm et Diderot is the great source
for the knowledge of his character.
'"¦ St. Lambert (17 17-1803). See Damiron, ii. 144-256.
a Abb6 Raynal (17 1 1-96). See Schlosser, ii. 2. § i. Henke, vol. vi.
enumerates many more of the same class. Particulars of all are given
in the Biographie UniverseUe.
*> The following refer to places where the tendency and spirit of
this whole movement are described, as well as literary information
supplied. Henke, vi. 208, &c. ; Bartholmess, i. 11 7-2 10 ; Lermi-
nier's Influence de la Phil du 18= siecle (1833); Morell's Hist of
Phil. i. 158, &c. ; Maurice, Mod. Phil p. 527-59 ; H. Martin's Hist
de France, vol. xv. and xvi. liv. 96, 99, 100, loi ; Renouvier, Mod.
Phil. b. V. ch. 2. § 6-8 ; also Kuno Fischer's Bacon, p. 451, and the
references above given to Schlosser and to Damiron ; Tennemann
{Manual, § 378, &c.) also gives many literary references.
e Diderot (1713-84). His life and character have been sketched
by Carlyle, (Misc. Works, vol. iv.) ; also by Damiron, ii. (227-324);
St. Beuve, i. 355. Also see Villemain, Tableam, de la Litt au i8e
mich, lee. xix. 20. His novels are the parent of the impure novel of
modern times. See Schlosser, i. 4. § 5., ii. 2, § i.

252 LECTURE V.
been also its martyrs. The great pecuharity of Dide
rot, as of Johnson, was his encyclopseffic knowledge,
and ffis versatffity in comprehendffig a variety of
subjects. Less critical than Voltaire, and less phUo
sophical than Rousseau, he exceeded both as the prac
tical teacher. But ffi unbehef he unhappfly advanced
farther than either ; his temper lacked moral earnest
ness ; and in later life he was an atheist. A growth
of unbeHef may be traced ffi him : at first he was a
doubter, next he became a deist, lastly an atheist.
In the first stage he offiy translated EngHsh works,
and even condemned some of the Enghsh deists. His
views seem graduaUy to have altered, probably under
the influence of Voltaire's writings, and of the infidel
books smuggled ffito France ; and he thenceforth as
sumed a tone bolder and marked by positive dis
behef In 1746 he wrote his Pensees Philosophiques,
ffitended to be placed ffi opposition to the PensSes of
Pascal. Pascal, by a series of sceptical propositions,
had hoped to estabhsh the necessity of revelation.
Diderot tried by the same method to show that tffis
revelation must be untrue''. The first portion of
the propositions" bore upon phflosophy and natu
ral religion, but at length he came to weaken the

rf In the Essai sur le Merite et la Vertu, pp. 73, 87, he allows
deism, the God of moral order. Similarly in the Pensees Philos.
§ 4 6, but it is the God of nature. But in the Dialogue with D'Alem
bert he teaches atheism. On his theological views see Damiron, ii.
261 seq.
«" § 25, Ac.

LECTURE V. 263
proofs for the truth of Cffiistiaffity, and controverted
miracles, and the trath of any system which reposes
on mdracles ; yet even ffi this work he did not evffice
the atheism which he subsequently avowed. It was
soon after the imprisonment in which he was ffi-
volved by this book, that he projected the plan of
the magnfficent work, the^ncyclopedie, or uffiversal
ffictionary of human knowledge. Its object however
was not offiy Hterary, but also theological; for it was
designed to circffiate among afl classes new modes
of tffinkffig, which shoffid be opposed to afl that was
traditionary. Voltaire's unbehef was merely destruc
tive : this was reconstructive and systematic. The
rehgion of this great work was deism : the phflosophy
of it was sensationahst and almost materiahst ; seem
ing harffiy to aflow the existence of anythffig but
mechaffical beffigs. Soffi was absorbed ffi body ; the
inner world in the outer ;¦ — a tendency fostered by
physics. It was the view of thffigs taken by the
scientffic mind, and lacks the poetical and feeHng
elements of nature — a true type of the cold and me
chaffical age wffich produced it. Diderot's atheism
is a stffi further development of ffis unbehef It is
expressed ffi few of his writffigs, and presents no
subject of ffiterest to us ; save that it seeks to ffivali-
date the arguments for the beffig of a God, drawn
from final causes. It has been well observed, that
the lesson to be derived from himf is, that the
f See Carlyle, Misc. Works, iv. 322.

254 LECTURE V.
mechanical view of the world is essentiaUy atheistic;
that whosoever wffi admit no means of discovering
God but common logic, cannot find ffim. Diderot's
unbehef may be considered to embody that which
resffited from the abuse at once of eruffition, physical
science, and the sensational theory in metaphysics.
Among the band of friends who from connexion
with the Encyclopaedia acquired the name of Encyclo
paedists, was also Helvetius s. He was the moralist of
the sensational pffilosophy, one of those who appHed
the pffilosophy of Condffiac to morals. Each man's
tastes are so far affected by circumstances, that it is
possible that Helvetius's exclusive association with
the seffish chcles of the French society, wffich never
Hved for the good of others, together with the per
ception of the hoUowness of the respect wffich per
sons paid him for ffis wealth and influence, led him
to regard self-love as the sole motive of conduct.
His phflosophy is expressed ffi two works '' ; the one
S Helvetius (1715-1771). See C. Remusat in Rev. des Deux
Mondes, Aug. 15, 1858. On the circle of Helvetius see Carlyle
ut sup. 287 seq.; and on their atheism Buckle, i. 786 seq. Con
cerning Helvetius himself see Ritter's Christliche Philos. viii. b. ix.
ch. 2 ; Cousin's Hist, de Phil. Morale, leyon 7 ; Schlosser, i. 4. § 6.
h Viz., De r Esprit et de V Homme ((Euvres compl. 1818, vol. i.
and ii.). Both treatises are excellently analysed in the table of
contents prefixed to the work. The allusions in the text here may
be thought to fail from their brevity in showing that Helvetius's
opinions were a logical corollary from his principles ; they cannot at
least give any notion of the great power of analysis exhibited by him
in expressing his own views.

LECTURE V. 2.55
on the spirit, the other on man : the former a theo
retical view of human nature, the latter a practical
view of education and society. His primary position
is, that man owes aU his superiority over animals to
the superior organization of his body. Startmg from
tffis poffit, he argues that aU minds are origffiaUy
equal, and owe their variation to circumstances'; that
aU their facffities and emotions are derivable from
sensation; that pleasure is the only good, and self-
ffiterest the trae ground of morals and the frame
work of ffidiAT.dual and pohtical right''.
If in Diderot we have met with atheism, and ffi
Helvetius with the seffish theory of morals ; ffi the
author of "the System of Nature" we meet with
utter materiahsm, and the two former evils as co
roflaries from it. Tffis work, which was pubhshed
about 1774, though bearffig a different author's name
on the title, was probably the work of D'Holbach',
aided by Diderot and Helvetius, and other members
> In Discourse ii. ^ -Id.
• D'Holbach (1723-89). The Systeme de la Nature bears the
name of a Mirabaud, secretary to the Academy. Some have thought
it to be written by Robinet, author of a similar work. (His works
are discussed in Damiron, ii. 480 seq.). Concerning the work see
Villemain, iii. leg. 38; Damiron, i. (93-177); Ritter, Christ Philos.
viii. b. 9. eh. 3 ; Schlosser, i. 4. § i. On D'Holbach's view of God
see Damiron, Id. p. 155, &c. ; Buckle, i. 787, note. The Systeme de
la Nature is partly analysed and criticised in Brougham's Discourse
on Natural Theology, pp. 232-47. It comprised two volumes, and is
followed by a volume containing three small treatises relating to the
natural principles of morals, and social philosophy. The work was
refuted by Bergier (1771).

256 LECTURE V.
of the society which met at D'Holbach's house. It
is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in
wffich materiahsm, fatalism, and atheism, combffie to
form a view of human nature which even Voltaire
is said to have denounced.
The grand object of this work beffig to show that
there is no God, the ffist part is occupied by the
most rigorous materiahsm, and is designed to prove
that there is no such thffig as mind, nothffig beyond
the material fabric"", which is maffitaffied by simple
and invariable laws ; and that the soffi is a mode of
orgaffism", the mere action of the body under different
functions. The freedom of the wffi" and immortahty p
are accordffigly denied. The first part having been
directed to disprove the existence of mffid, the
second part is designed against rehgion. The author
attributes the idea wffich man has formed of a first
Cause to fear 'I, generated tffiough suffermg ; and at
tempts to show the ffisufficiency of the d priori
argument ffi favour of a God'', omittffig the con
sideration of the arguments derived from final causes.
Nature becomes ffi his scheme a machffie ; man an
organism ; morahty self-interest ; deity a fiction.
The work we have just named formed the crown
ing result of infidehty ^ Voltaire showed phflosophy
m Partie i"^ ch. iii. and iv. » Part ii. ch. vii.
o Part ii. ch. xi. p Part i. ch. xiii.
1 Part ii. ch. i. r xd. ch. iv. and v.
s Damiron discusses, in addition to the writers already named,
two or three others, viz., Naigeon, Sylv. Marechal, and De la Lande,
who.se names are not introduced here into the text.

LECTURE V. 257
shrinking from the hard materiahsm, morahty from .
the fatahsm, and rehgion from the atheism, to which
they afterwards attaffied. In these steps, as wit
nessed in the circle of ffiteUect just sketched, we see
the ramffications of the French sensational phflosophy
pushed to its farthest Hmits.
The writers lately described, though in some degree
emffient, do not, hke Voltaire, stand ffi the first rank
of the French Hterary writers. Amid the circle of
un"beHevers, however, another of the ffighest rank
was found, who, though he must be classed with the
others, stood so apart in taste, ffi sympathy, in pur
pose, and ffi belief, that the study of his life and
character is an ffiterruption to the series of the
materiahst writers whom we are describffig. Rous
seau* was not an atheist Hke Diderot, nor a mate
riaUst like D'Holbach, nor a morahst of the seffish
school Hke Helvetius, nor a scoffer like Voltaire..
We ffiscover ffi ffim a spirit endowed with deep
feelffig, and framed by much greater experience of
hfe and of intemal sorrow. His writings also mark
the period when French phUosophy ceased to attack
the church, and found itself strong enough to act
against the state. The greater portion of his works
t On Rousseau see Villemain ii. legon (23-24) ; Brougham's life
of him in Men of Letters ; Bartholmess, i. 233-270; Henke, vi.
232, especially p. 253, which refers to his theology; Schlosser, i. 4.
§ 4, and ii. § 2 ; St. Marc Girardin on the Emile in Rev. des Deux
Mondes, Dec. 1854 ; and an article, too favourably written, but full
of information, in the Westminster Review, Oct. 1859, which has
been of much use for this lecture. S

258 LECTURE V.
Hes out of the range of pur ffiquiry. Even ffis poh
tical writings, wffich ffidirectly injured rehgion ffi the
world of action by stimffiating the revolutionary
hatred to the church, require notice offiy so far as
they ffivolved principles fundamentaUy opposed to
the teachffig of revealed reHgion.
It was about the middle of the century" that
Rousseau commenced the " PoHtical Essays" wffich
made ffis name famous, and unhappUy afterwards
formed as it were the very bible of the French revo
lution. Retaiffing through hfe the preference for the
simple institutions of the repubHc ffi which he had
been born, he saw ffi French society the abuses which
appertaffi to civilization ; and, with somewhat of the
same feeHng wffich Tacitus exhibits ffi his portraiture
of the Germans, was led to study the comparative
advantages of a primitive and refined age, and to
maintain the paradox that the empire of corruption
and ffiequahty was to be regarded as the artificial
creation of civilization. Ignoring the natural sinful
ness and seffishness of the human race, he sought
dehverance for mankffid ffi the return to a primeval
state, ffi wffich aU shoffid be free, equal, and ffide-

n The chief facts of Rousseau's life are these : — Born 1 7 1 2 ; came
to Paris, 1741 ; wrote Sur les Sciences et les Arts, 1750; L'inegaliti
parmileshormnes, 1753; lived in the Paris coteries, 1754-60; wrote
Nouvelle Heloise, 1760; Le Contrat Social, 1761, and Emile; an
exile in Switzerland 1762, where he wrote Lettres de la Montagne;
accompanied Hume to England 17^6; wrote his Confessions; re
turned to the Continent 1767; died 1770.

LECTURE V. 2.59
pendent. The inartfficial state of society was the
beau-ideal. And from this phUosophical origin he
traced society in the historical formation of an actual
pohty, describffig how the social contract, wffile sub-
ordinatffig ffidividual hberty to the coUective wffi of
a society, recompensed men by investffig them with
rights of civUization.
His doctrffie was false theologicaUy in its view
of human nature ; false phUosophicaUy in attemptffig
to ffivestigate an historical question by means of
abstract metaphysical analysis ; and false pohticafly
in drawffig the attention of men away from practical
and possible schemes of reform to visionary ones.
It typffied the movement of the French revolution
in its extravagant hopes and its errors, in its de
stractive, not its remeffial aspect ''-
It was a few years later than the pubhcation of

" There are some good remarks on this theory in the article in
the Westminster Review before quoted, the substance of which is to
show that Rousseau's doctrine was false in its method and in its
tendencies. It marked the stage of inquiry, indicative of the last
part of the last century, when men, ignoring the teaching of history,
strove to solve problems by means of abstract speculations; the
attempt to study the origin of phenomena instead of the facts of
their progressive manifestation. The social contract is nothing but
the description of the collective development to which society tends.
The scheme was visionary : but, as a protest against unjust monopo
lies which existed in that age, it woke up a response in society (cfr.
Mill on Liberty, p. 47-50) ; and in its tendency it made Rousseau
the precursor of the French revolution ; but in typifying that move
ment it represented only its transient aspect of subversive energy,
not its work of political reformation.
S 2

260 LECTURE V.
these speculations that Rousseau wrote his celebrated
treatise on education, the Emile^, which is the chief
source for ascertaiffing his rehgious opiffions. It has
been cafled the Cyropaedia of modem times, an at
tempt to show the education wffich a phflosopher
woffid give ffis pupfl, in contraffistffiction to the reh
gious and Jesuit traffiffig common in Rousseau's time.
In examiffing the rehgious education to be given
to the young, he ffitroduces a Savoyard vicar, the
original of which his own early travels had sug
gested to him, to narrate the history of his con
victions, and explaffi the nature of his creed. This
creed is deism; and bears a very striking resemblance
to that taught by the English deists. Rejectffig
traffition and phflosophy^, the vicar grounds his
creed on reason, the ffiterior hght. Commencffig
with sensation, he shows how step by step we arrive
at the doctrine of the beffig and attributes of one
God. Though he does not reject the argument from
final causes, he seems lo lay more stress on the
metaphysical argument of the necessity of the ffivffie
existence. He ffist proves the existence of person
ahty and wffi", and uses this idea for the purpose
of explormg the outer world ; arguffig that matter
is inert and not self-active, he regards matter ffi
motion as mfficatffig force, and therefore volition;
y Emile, b. iv. (See (Ewores, vol. iv. p. 14- 119, ed. Paris, 1823,
by Musset-Pathay.) ^
'' Id. p. 17-20.
a Id. p. 22-30.

LECTURE V. 261
unifonffity ffi its motion as provffig a law, and
therefore an intelligent wflP, in which wisdom,
power, and goodness combffie^. This being is God,
to whom man is subject. The universe is universal
order. The physical evfl thereffi originates in our
vices, the moral in our free wffi''.
Havffig estabHshed the beffig of a God, he next
proceeds to give reasons for behevmg in immortality.
He bases it on the fact of the goodness of God,
which leads Him to recompense with happffiess the
suffering good ; and he ffisbeheves the eterffity of
punishment for the* bad*. Having fixed the objects
of belief, he next lays down the rule of duty ffi con
science, which he regards as an innate and infaUible
gffide^- After thus estabhshffig natural reHgion, he
proceeds to criticise revealed, arguffig its want of
irrefragable evidence^, the discrepant'' opiffions in
reference to it, the improbabffity of portions of its
ffistory i ; attacking strongly the external evidence
of prophecy and miracles ; the former on the aUeged
want of proof of agreement between prophecy and
its fuffihnent ; the latter on the ground of the al
leged circle, that miracles are made to prove doctrine,
and doctrffie miracles **- He accorffingly rejects the

'' Emile, p. 33 : "Si la matiSre mue me montre une volenti, la
matiSre mue, selon de certaines lois me montre une intelligence.
C'est mon second article de foi."
c P. 34, 36. d P. 40-49. <-' P. 50-53-
' P. 57-75. e P. 83-86. » R 75-119.
i P. 86, &c. k.p. 86.

262 LECTURE V.
idea of Christianity beffig necessary to salvation ; but
renders a tribute of praise to its moral precepts, and
regards the gospels, though partly fictitious, as con
taffiffig ffidestructible moral traths ; and concludes
with the weU-known comparison of Socrates to
Christ, showffig the stupendous superiority of the
death and example of the latter. " If the death of
Socrates," he says, " was that of a sage, that of Jesus
was that of a God'".
It woffid have been thought that such teachffig as
tffis woffid hardly have excited a legal prosecution, in
comparison with the more violent attacks that were
made on religion : but the wide reputation and fas-
cmating style of the author, the extraorffinary abffity
of the work, above all the fact that many of the
previous infidel doctrines had been published with
out the writers' names, were the means of subjecting
him to persecution wffich they escaped. Voltaire
and the ffifidel party were ffidignant at Rousseau's
partial acceptance of Christiaffity. The French clergy
were angry at his rejection of the remaffider. The
parhament ordered the book to be burned, and the
author to be imprisoned. Rousseau had to seek
refuge in Switzerland, and there defended ffis views
of Christianity and miracles in a series of celebrated
letters, which ffi their poHtical effects have been com
pared with the letters of Juffius. Driven out from
Switzerland, he found a shelter in England, with
' Emile, pp. 105-107.

LECTURE V. 263
Hume ; and, untU he coffid safely return to France,
employed his time ffi writffig his Confessions'^ ; — the
celebrated work, a mixture of romance and fact,
which takes its place ffi the first rank of autobio-
grapffies, — a sad witness to the desperate wickedness
of the human heart, and to the impotence of even
a ffigh moral creed, which we know Rousseau else
where expressed ", ffi creatffig moraHty, without
Christian motives to give practical efficacy to it.
Such was Rousseau, an enemy of artfficial society,
of Roman catholic education, and of supernatural
revelation ; yet far removed from Voltaire and the
other infidels, both in tone and literary character ".
" The comparison of the statements of the Confessions with
fragments of Rousseau lately published, shows that many statements
which they contain in reference to other persons is false. The
statement in the text is made in deference to the opinion latterly
stated (e. g. in Heine's Allemagne), that there is a general air of
romance pervading the work. If the statements in reference to
himself are untrue, the narrative is only a greater proof of the
immorality of the author. The supposition however seems ground
less. The defender of Rousseau, G. H. Morin (Essai, 1851), does
not exculpate his author by impeaching the historical truthfulness
of the Confessions.
" The high moral standard is not of course seen in the Con
fessions, which show Rousseau to have been the incarnation of
selfishness, and much worse than most of the other unbelievers,
but is exhibited in the Emile. The fact that the author of the
latter work could write the former is a sad example of a man
knowing, like the ancient heathens, how to do good and doing
it not.
o Henke (vi. p. 267 seq.) draws out the comparison of Voltaire
with Rousseau in an excellent manner. Coleridge (Friend, vol. i.
165-186) has given a comparison of Voltaire with Erasmus, and of
Rousseau with Luther.

264 LECTURE V.
While Voltaire aimed offiy to destroy, Rousseau
sought to reconstruct. Voltaire was a flippant, hasty
revfler of Christiaffity, without originahty ffi the ma
terial of his works, without depth of soul : Rousseau
was serious, fresh, fufl of pathos. Voltaire either had
no creed, or thought one uffimportant, and was ac
tuated by mahgnant hatred agaffist Judffism and
Christiaffity : Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke
with decency of the religion which he rejected. Vol
taire was devoid of taste for ancient Hterature, witty
under a mask, a seffish sycophant to the ancient po
litical regime : Rousseau never deffied the authorsffip
of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and was
the means of excitffig a love for antiqffity. FffiaUy
rejectffig to a great degree the sensational pffilo
sophy ; risffig above it ffi heart, if not in thought,
Rousseau taught a spiritual phUosophy, destffied to
bear fruit when the dreams of the revolution had
passed. He stands alone however at present in tffis
respect, like Montesquieu in poHtics p and Buffon ffi
science ; and the course of our ffistory again brings
before us men who must be classed with the mate-
riahsts that preceded ffim.
We have stated that by the middle of the century
the infidel writers tumed their attention from the
attack on the church to that on the state ; and had
already made such impression on the government,

P See Villemain, i. 14, 15., ii. 22 ; Schlosser, i. 2. § 2., 4. § 3, and
ii. ,3. § 2.

LECTURE V. 265
that it joined them ffi expeffing the Jesffits^. For
more than a quarter of a century before the revolu
tion the Hterary writers were ffifidel. At length
the evUs of the state grew incurable, and the storm
of the revolution burst.
It is possible in the present age to take a much
more dispassionate view of that vast event than
was taken by contemporaries'". It can now be ad
justed to its true historic perspective, and its
function ffi the scheme of ffistory can be clearly
perceived. The vastness of the movement con
sisted ffi tffis, that it was at once poHtical, social,
and rehgious ^ It aimed at redressing the grievances
under which France had suffered, and reconstructffig
society with guarantees for future Hberty. It sought
not merely to destroy the feudahsm wffich had out
hved its time, and to equalize the unfair ffistribution
of the pubhc burdens, as means to accommodate
society to modern wants ; but it tried to effect these
changes among a people whose mffids were fuUy per
suaded both that the privUeges of particffiar classes
and the existence of an estabHshed reHgion were the
chief causes of the pubhc misfortune. When so many
movements combined, the catastrophe was ffitensffied.
It is indeed possible now to see that in the end the
q See Buckle, i. (772-783).
'' Compare Macaulay's remarks in reference to the Revolution,
Essays (ed. 8vo. 1843), ii. 215, &c.
s For the causes of the revolution compare the statements of
Alison, Hist of Europe, i. ch. ii. and iii., and Buckle, i. (836-850).

266 LECTURE V.
sohd advantages of the revolution were reaped, wffile
the miscffief was temporary ; but the severity of the
storm whUe it lasted was increased by the infidel
views with which society had become impregnated.
For the revolution attempted to embody ffi its poH
tical aspect those poetical but wUd theories of so
ciety wffich sceptical students had taught; and was
founded on the false assumption of the perfectibffity
of man, and the perfect goodness of human nature,
except as depraved by human govemment.
At ffist, under the National Assembly, the attack
was offiy made on the property of the church*; but
on the estabhshment of the Convention, when the
nation had become frantic at the alarm of foreign
invasion, to wffich the king and clergy were sup
posed to be ffistrumental, the monarchy was over-
tffiown, and religion also was declared obsolete. The
mufficipality and many of the bishops abjured Chris
tianity; the churches were stripped; the images of
the Saviour trampled under foot; and a fete was
held ffi November 1793", in which an opera-dancer,
impersonatffig Reason as a goddess, was introduced
ffito the Convention, and then led ffi procession to
the cathedral of Notre Dime; and there, elevated
on the high altar, took the place of deity, and re
ceived adoration from the auffience. The services of
t On the incipient hostility to religion in the National Assembly,
see Alison, vol. ii. ch. v. § 46, Id. § 32-35. On the full development
of it in the Convention, see Id. iv. ch. xiv. § (45-48).
" Nov. 9.

LECTURE V. 267
reHgion were abandoned; the churches were closed;
the sabbath was aboHshed; and the calendar altered.
On aU the pubhc cemeteries the inscription was
placed, " Death is an eternal sleep." Robespierre
himself saw the necessity for the pubhc recognition
of the beffig of a God; and after the faU of the
Girondists, obtaffied an effict for that purpose shortly
before ffis death, in 1794 ; wffich event marks the
return of society from atheism and materialism back
to deism''. When the horrors of the ffictatorship of
Robespierre closed, and a regffiar government was
established under the Directory, the priests obtained
liberty to reopen the churches provided they maffi
taffied them at their own expense y. But the great
majority of the people lived whoUy without God in
the world; whfle some sought refuge ffi the extrava
gant creed of a deist sect called the Theophflantffio-
pists^. Nor was it tffi the year 1802 that Napoleon
was able, and even then amid much opposition, to
reestabHsh the Sunday". Cffiistiaffity was then re-

" Concerning this act of Robespierre, see Alison, iv. ch. xv. § 23,
24, 27.
y On the state of religion under the Directory, see Ahson, vol. v.
ch. xix. § 41, and vol. vi. ch. xxiv. § 19.
'¦ See M. Gregoire's Histoire de la Theophilanthropie, forming
part of his Histoire des Sectes Relig., and the notice of it in the
Quarterly Review, No. 56. Also the references in Alison, vi. ch.
xxiv. §19; Staiidlin, Oeschichte des Rationcdismus und Supernat
1826, (44-54).
a On the state under Napoleon, see Alison, viii. ch. xxxv. § i,
and 30-40.

268 LECTURE V.
maugurated by a pubhc ceremony'' ffi the cathedral,
pofluted eight years before by the blasphemy of the
goddess of Reason. But the total cessation of reh
gious instruction snapped asunder a chain of faith
which had descended unbroken from the first ages ;
and to this must be ascribed the irrehgious mode of
spendffig the Simday ffi French society.
The reign of atheism in reHgion was fortified by a
phflosophy ; and the works of one ffifidel writer pre
serve the expression of the view wffich it took of
Christianity and rehgion. As soon as the excitement
of the revolution aflowed leisure to return to the
study of mental facts, there arose the extreme form
of sensationahsm, which was called (ffi a different
meaffing from the present popffiar use of the term)
Ideology. (24) Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy are the
best exponents of its physiological and psychological
aspects ; and the weU-known Voffiey of its moral and
reUgious side. Startffig from the principles of Con
dUlac and Helvetius, that the very facffities as weU
as ideas are derived from sensation, and moral rales
from self-love, it almost reaches the same point as
D'Holbach. Mental science was approached from the
physiological side, and so viewed that mffid seemed
to be made a property of braffi".
The cffief work in wffich Volney expresses ffis un
behef is entitled the " Ruffis, or Meffitations on the

'' April II, 1802.
c See Morell, Hist of Phil. vol. i. ch. iv. § 2.

LECTURE V. 269
Revolutions of Empires ''." It is a poem in prose.
Voffiey imagines himself faUffig into a meffitation,
amid the ruins of Palmyra, on the faU of empires ".
The phantom of the ruffis appears, and, entering into
converse with ffim, causes him to see the kingdoms
of the world, and guides him ffi the solution of the
mysteries wffich puzzle him^. It unvefls to him the
view of nature as a system of laws, and of man as a
being gifted with self-love. It traces the origffi of
society in a manner not unlike Rousseau s, and refers
the source of evfl to self-love; states the cause of
ancient prosperity and dechne, and draws the moral
lesson from the past"". Whfle Voffiey is despondent
at the prospect of the future, a vision is unveiled to
him of a new age. It is of a nation ridding itself of
privileged classes, and arming itself when its young
liberties were tffieatened by foreign powers'. It is
an apocalyptic vision of France ffi his time. Then
suddeffiy the vision changes, and an assembly of the
nations of the world is gathered as ffi one common
arena, to ascertaffi how they may arrive at unity and
peace''. Their differences are ffiustrated by the ffis-
crepant opiffions which they utter on reHgion ; and
the origffi of each rehgion on the earth is traced '.

•i Les Ruines ou Meditations swr les Revolutions des Empires
(17 91). A similar view of religion is taken in Dupuis, Origine de
tous les Cultes, i795-
e Ch. ii. f Ch. iii. e Ch. v.
h Ch. vii-xii. i Ch. xv. ¦= Ch. xix.
' Ch. XX. &c.

270 LECTURE V.
It is here that Voffiey makes his speaker convey his
own scepticism. He tracks the origin of the reh
gious ideas'" through the worship prompted by fear
of the physical elements" and the stars" to that of
symbols or idols p, with its accompanyffig mysteries
and orders of priests ; and then onward through
duahsm 1 to the belief of an unseen world "¦; then
tffiough mythology^ and pantheism' to the behef ffi
a Creator" ; next, to Judaism'' as the worsffip of the
soffi' of the world ; and lastly, tffiough the Persian y
and Hffidu^ systems to Christiaffity"; which he at
tempts to show to be the worsffip of the sun under
the cabahstic names of Christ and Jesus. Avaflffig
himself of some of the fragments of mythology which
such writers as Eusebius have preserved, and with a
faffit perception of the nature of mythology, he tries
to resolve the narrative of the fafl of man into solar
mythology ; and, poffitffig to contact with . the Per
sians at the captivity as the source from wffich the
Jews borrowed their ideas of a symbohc system, he
regards the fficamation and Hfe of Cffiist as the mis
taken hterahzation on the part of contemporaries of
their preconceived opiffions. The conclusions to wffich
Voffiey makes his interlocutor come*" is, that nothffig
can be true, notffing be a ground of peace and union,
m Ch. xxii. p. 2i8. ¦' p. 226. o p. 232.
p p. 238. q P. 255. ' P. 262.
s P. 268. ' P. 274. " P. 277.
^ P. 285. y P. 286. z P. 287.
f P. 288. 1) Ch. xxiv. p. 320.

LECTURE V. 271
wffich is not visible to the senses. Trath is con
formity with sensations. The book is ffiterestffig as
a work of art ; but its analysis of Christianity is so
shockffig, that its absurdity alone prevents its be-
commg dangerous. It is the most unblushing attempt
to resolve the noblest of effects into the most absurd
of origins ; and embodies in the consideration of reli
gion the school of phUosophy wffich he represented.
We have now completed the ffistory of unbehef
in France durffig the eighteenth century. We have
seen how Hterature graduaUy emancipated itself
from the power of the court, and, under the influence
of a sceptical stunulus received from the importation
of EngHsh free thought, was changed into political
and ecclesiastical antipathy, and acquired a mastery
over the public mind, untfl it ffivolved the state,
the church, and Christiaffity, ffi a common rffin.
History offers no paraflel instance of the victory
of unbehef, tffiough the power of the pen, nor of the
uffion of the pohtical with the theological move
ment, and of the ffitimate connexion of both with
the current phflosophy of the time.
The theological movement has contributed nothffig
of permanent Hterary value. The few apologies
written were unimportant; and the thoughts of those
who attacked Christiaffity were neither new nor
characterised by depth. Thefr criticism was shaUow,
and was marked by the feature of which traces
were observed in a few Enghsh authors, the ffispo
sition to charge imposture on the writers of the

272 LECTURE V.
holy scriptures ; so that they not only failed to
appreciate the Hterary exceUence of the works, but
scarcely even aUowed the possibihty of uffintentional
deception on the part of the writers. The doubts
were cffiefly the reproduction of the Enghsh poffit
of view, with the adffition of a few physical diffi
cffities '^ ; protests of free thought agaffist dogma in
natural science. The view entertained concerffing
deity was eventuafly groveUffig ; the greatness of
nature seemed to ffispire no reverence. UnbeHef
graduaUy lost hold of monotheism ; and ffi doing so
never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism,
but fell ffito blank atheism. The theoretical moraHty
of the EngHsh deists, even when dependffig on ex
pedience, was noble ; but ffi place of it the French
school presented the lowest form of theory which
etffical science has ever stated, and wffich finds its
refutation with the phUosophy that gave it birth.
No age exhibits a body of sceptical writers whose
characters are so unattractive as the French un
behevers; whose coarseness of mind ffi failing to
appreciate that wffich is beautifffi in Christiaffity
is so evident, that charity coffid not forbid us to
doubt, even if there were not ffidependent proof,
that faults of character contributed very largely to
the formation of their unbelief Nevertheless, the
political aspect of the movement carries a solemn

« Such as the idea of the plurality of worlds suggested by
Fontenelle.

LECTURE V. 273
warnffig to the Christian church, not to endanger
the everlasting Gospel of the Son of God by makffig
it the buttress to support corrupt pohtical and
ecclesiastical ffistitutions. It is true that Christ wffi
not abandon his true church. Whatever is divine
and etemaUy trae wUl always as ffi tffis case sur
vive the catastrophe. But this period of ffistory
shows that Providence wffi not work a miracle to
save reHgion from a temporary eclipse, if the church
forgets that Cffiist's kffigdom is not of this world ;
and that the mission wffich he has given it is to
convert soffis to ffim; and that learning and piety
are inteUectual and moral means for effectffig tffis
object "'. The political faffits or shortcomffigs of the
church are no apology for the ffifidelity of France;
but they must be taken ffito account ffi explainffig
its ffitensity.
A theological movement so vast coffid not faU
to exercise an influence in other lands. Incidental
aUusions have already been made to its effects at
the court of Prussia e, and to the traces of its tone
in some of the later of the Enghsh deists.
The remaffider of this lecture wffi be employed
in tracffig the ffistory of free thought in England,
from the date at wffich the narrative was ffiter-
rupted to a little later than the end of the century ;
fl The apologetic literature of this period of the French church is
not powerful. See Buckle, i. 692, note ; and Alison, i. 2. § 62.
« The influence on Germany will be seen in Lect. VI.
T

274 LECTURE V.
especiaUy noticffig the mode in which it was influ
enced by the movement in France.
It wffi be remembered that we brought down
the history of it as far as Hume^- We paused
there, because deism then ends as a Hterary move
ment. PoHtics and new forms of Hterature absorbed
the mffid. Free thought continued to exist ; but it
was less frequently expressed ffi Hterature, and was
considerably modffied by foreign ffifluences. In
Gibbon, about 1776, the ancient spirit of deism, the
spirit of Bohngbroke, speaks, but the form is
changed. Instead of denyffig Cffiistianity on d
priori moral considerations, he feels bound to ex
plain facts. The attack is not so much moral as
historic. The ffiquiry ffito historical origines as weU
as logical causes has commenced. The mode of attack
too has changed, as weU as the poffit from wffich it
is made. The French influence is visible ffi the
satire and irony prevalent. There is no longer the
bitter moral ffiffignation of the early EngHsh deists,
but the sneer that marks the spirit of contempt.
Fear and hatred of Cffiistiaffity have given way to
pffilosopffical contempt. (25)
In Thomas Paffie, who wrote in France ffi the
midst of the meetffig of the French Convention, we
meet a nearer reproduction of the spirit of early
EngHsh deism, but he has even more than Gibbon
caught the spirit of the French movement. Gibbon's
f In Lect. IV.

LECTURE V. 275
scepticism is that of ffigh life ; Paine's of low. The
one Avriter sneers, the other hates. The one is a
philosopher, the other a poHtician. Paine represents
the infidel movement of England when it had spread
itseU" among the lower orders, and mingled itself
with the poHtical dissatisfaction for which unhappfly
there was supposed to be some ground. Paffie's
spirit is that of English deism animated by the poli
tical exasperation wffich had characterised the French.
His doctrffies come from Enghsh deism ; his bitter
ness from Voltaire ; his politics from Rousseau.
Withffi the limits of the present century two
other traces are found of the ffifluence of the French
school of infidehty, which therefore ought logically
to be comprised with it. The one is pohtical, the
other hterary; viz. the sociahst schemes of Owen,
which ffi some respects seem to be derived by direct
lineage from Paine, and the expression of unbeHef
ffi the poetry of Byron and SheUey.
We must briefly notice these writers in succession.
The first in the series is Gibbon «. Though he has
left an autobiography, he has not fufly unvefled the
causes which shook his faith, and made ffim tum
deist. We can however coUect that the reaction
from the doubts suggested by the perusal of Middle-
ton's work on the subject of the cessation of mira
cles, then recently brought ffito notoriety, (26) turned
him to the church of Rome ; and that his residence
g Gibbon (1737-1794)- See Autobiography (Milman's edition
1839), ch. iii. p. 73, &c.
T 2

276 LECTURE V.
abroad and familiarity with French hterature caused
him to drift afterwards mto the opposite extreme of
scepticism. He did not become an atheist, Hke some
of the French writers whom we have been studyffig :
but he seems to have given up the behef in the
divffie origffi of Cffiistiaffity ; and he maffifested the
spirit of disHke and insinuation common in the un
beHef of the time.
He ffid not write expressly agamst Christiaffity;
but the subject came across his path ffi traveUffig
over the vast space of time wffich he embraced ffi
ffis magnfficent History of the Dechne and FaU of
the Roman Empire. It is a subject of regret to be
compelled to direct hostUe remarks agamst one who
has deserved so weU of the world. That work,
though ffi the pageantry of its style' it ffi some sense
reflects the art and taste of the age ffi wffich it was
written, yet ffi its love of sohd information and deep
research it is the noblest work of history ffi the
EngHsh tongue. Grand alike ffi its subject, its
composition, and its perspective, it has a right to a
place among the ffighest works of human conception;
and sustains the relation to history wffich the works
of Michael Angelo bear to art. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth chapters of this work. Gibbon had occasion
to ffiscuss the origffi of Cffiistiaffity, and assigned five
causes for its spread ; viz. its internal doctrine, and
> Cfr. some remarks (p. 27, 28,) in an instructive paper on Gibbon
in the National Review, No. 3, on the relation of his method and
style to his age.

LECTURE V. 277
organization, miracles, Jewish zeal, and exceUence of
Christian morals. The chapters were received with
denunciations. Yet those'' who in later times have
re-examffied Gibbon's statements candidly admit that
they can find hardly any errors of fact or intentiona
mis-statement of circumstances.
The great mistake which he commits is obvious,
and the cause hardly less so. The mistake is two
fold : first, he attributes to the earliest period of
Christianity that which was only trae of a later ;
and secondly, he confounds the circumstances of
the spread of Christiaffity with the cause which gave
it force'. The po"^erfffi influence of the causes which
he specifies cannot be doubted "' ; and we may hold
it to be not derogatory to our rehgion that it admits
of union with every class of efficient causes ; and
adapts itself so fully to man's wants, as to accept the
support of ordffiary sources of influence. But the
causes wffich he aUeges operated far less strongly,
and some of them not at aU, in the primitive age
of Christianity. The discussion of tffis period lay
beyond Gibbon's purpose ; and as he dwelt whoUy on
the aspects of a later age, he has left the impression
that the earhest age partook of the same character
istics. Nor is he correct in regarding the five causes
^ Milman and Guizot.
I The first of these is explained by Dr. Milman, Preface to edition
of Gibbon, p. lo, and the article in the Quarterly Review, No. ioo.
m Cfr. Mackintosh (Life, i. 244), quoted by Milman in his edition
of Gibbon, c. xv. first note.

278 LECTURE V.
as solely efficient. There is a subtler force at work,
of the operation of which they exhibit offiy the con
ditions. They reveal the mechanism, but do not
explain the prfficiple. Without judging him as a
theologian ffi omittffig the theological cause for an
alleged supernatural power, he must be censured as
a ffistorian ffi failing to appreciate the spiritual
movement at work ffi Cffiistiaffity, the deep excite
ment of the spiritual facffity, the yeamffig of the
mffid after trath and hohness. The same faffit is
observable in his appreciation of reHgion generaUy,
and not merely of Christianity. With the want of
spiritual perception common to his age, he had not
the ethical sensibflity to appreciate the internal part
of a rehgious system ; and hence he regards un
worldly phenomena in the tone of the poHtical world
of his time.
In pointing out his errors, we have hinted at their
causes. The coldness which scepticism and sensa
tional phflosophy" had induced ffi his mffid, wffich
coffid kffidle into warmth ffi describing the greatness
either of men or of events, but not ffi depictffig the
moral exceUence of Christiaffity, was but the reflec
tion of the cold hatred of rehgious enthusiasm com
mon ffi his day. Nor would the ffistoric views of
n The remarks which follow are partly taken from the above-
named article in the National Review (pp. 33-36). Nearly the
same thing is said by Miss Hennell in the fifth Baillie Prize Essay
on the early Christian anticipation of the end of the world, i860, a
treatise which in other respects is very objectionable.

LECTURE V. 279
primitive Christianity commoffiy entertained in his
time tend to dissipate his error. For it was usual
ffi that age of evidences to regard the early converts
as cold and cautious inquirers, accustomed to weigh
evidences and suggest doubts. In attempting to
discover the doctrines and ffisciplffie of the English
church ffi apostoHc times, there was a danger of
transferrffig the notions of modern decorum to the
marveflous outburst of enthusiastic piety and 'super
natural mysteiy wffich attended the communication
of the heaven-sent message ; and therefore it is some
paffiation for Gibbon that he too fafled to perceive
that those were times of excitement, when new ideas
feU on untried mffids and yeamffig hearts. And it is
a remarkable proof of the improved general concep
tion wffich men now entertaffi of Cffiistianity, that
no apprehension of danger is now felt from Gibbon's
views. The youngest student has imbibed a reh
gious spirit so much deeper, that he cannot faU ffi-
stinctively to perceive their insufficiency as an expla
nation of the phenomena".
One of our great poets has celebrated the two
literary exfles of the Leman lake?. But how differ
ent are our feehngs ffi respect of them ffi relation to
tffis subject! Both were deists; but the one dedi
cated ffis life to a crusade agaffist Christiaffity, the
o Bp. Watson's Apology for Christianity was a reply to Gibbon,
1776. Dean Milman's notes to chapters xv. and xvi. of Gibbon are
an excellent comment and criticism.
P Byron, Childe Harold, iii. 105-108.

280 LECTURE V.
other only insffiuated a few shght hffits : the one
derived his faffits from himself, the other from his
age : the one, the type of subtlety, acted by his pen
on the world political; the other, the type of m-
dustry, sought to instruct the student. The writings
of Voltaire remaffi as works of power, but not of
mformation : Gibbon's history wffi endure as long
as the English tongue.
Paffie is a character of a very different kffid from
the freetffinker last named i. Instead of the pohshed
scholar, the polite man of letters, and the ffistorian,
like Gibbon, we see ffi ffim an active man of the world,
educated by men rather than books, of low tastes
and vffigar tone, the apostle alike of pohtical revo
lution and infidelity. Though a native of England,
his earhest Hfe was spent in America at the time of
the war of independence. Returffing to England
with the strong feehngs of Hberty and freedom which
had marked the revolt of the coloffies, he wrote at
the time of the outbreak of the French revolution a
work caUed the Rights of Man, ffi reply to Burke's
criticism on that event. Prosecuted for this work,
he fled to France, and was distffigffished by beffig
the offiy foreigner . save one'' elected to the French
Convention. Durffig its session he composed the
1 Paine (1737-1809), published Rights of Man, 1790 ; Age of
Reason, 1794. See the life by Cheetham, 1809, and Chalmers's
Biographical Dictionary. Bp. Watson's Apology for the Bible was
a reply to Paine (1796).
r Anacharsis Clootz.

LECTURE V. 281
infidel work cafled the Age of Reason, by which ffis
name has gained an unenviable notoriety ; and after
the alteration of political circumstances ffi France,
he returned to America, and there dragged out a
miserable existence, indebted ffi ffis last ilffiess for
acts of charity to ffisciples of the very reHgion that
he had opposed.
The two works, the Rights of Man, and the Age
of Reason, beffig circffiated widely in England by
the democratic societies of that period, contributed
probably more than any other books to stimffiate
revolutionary feelffig ffi poHtics and rehgion^. This,
popffiarity is owing partly to the character of the
language and ideas, partly to the state of pubhc
feeHng. Manifestffig much plebeian simphcity of
speech and earnestness of conviction, they gave ex
pression ffi coarse Saxon words to thoughts wffich
were then passing through many hearts. They were
like the address of a mob-orator ffi writffig, and feU
upon ground prepared. PoHtical reforms had been
steadfly resisted ; and accordffigly, when the success
of foreign revolution had raised men's spirits to the
highest point of impatience, the middle classes, which
wanted a moderate reform, were unfortunately
^ The danger arising from republican clubs is described in Alison,
iv. ch. xvi. § 6 ; and in W. Hamilton Reed's Rise and Dissolution of
Infidel Societies in the Metropolis, 1800. See also the Report of the
Committee of the House of Lords on them, 1801. The works of
Godwin on Political Justice, 1793, and of Mary Woolstenerafl on
the Rights of Women, are generally adduced as illustrations of the
prevalence of French political principles at that time in England.

282 LECTURE V.
thrown on the side of the wild and anarcffical
spirits that wished for utter revolution. The church,
by holdffig with the state, was partly ffivolved in the
same obloquy. Paffie's works, resemblffig Rousseau's
in purpose, though quite opposite ffi style, were as
much adapted to the lower classes of England as ffis
to the pohshed upper classes of France.
The Age of Reason, was a pampffiet admitting
of quick perusal. It was afterwards foflowed by
a second part, ffi which a defence was offered
against the replies made to the former part. The
object of the two is to state reasons for reject
ing the Bible t, and to explain the nature of the
religion of deism", wffich was proposed as a substi
tute. A portion is devoted to an attack on the
external evidence of revelation, or, as the author
blasphemously caUs it", "the three prfficipal means
of imposture," prophecy, miracles, and mystery ; the
latter of wffich he asserts may exist ffi the physical,
but not by the nature of things ffi the moral world.
A larger portion is devoted to a coUection of the
various internal difficffities of the books of the Old
and New Testament, and of the schemes of reHgion,
Jewish and Christian y. The great mass of these
objections are those which had been suggested by
EngHsh or French deists, but are stated with ex
treme bitterness. The most novel part of this work
' Part i. pp. 3-19, and part ii. pp. 8-83.
" Part i. pp. 3, 4 ; 21-50; part ii. pp. 83-93.
" P- 44- y Part ii. pp, 10-83.

LECTURE V. 283
is the use which Paffie makes of the discoveries of
astronomy' in revealffig the vastness of the uffiverse
and a plurality of globes, to discreffit the idea of
"interference on behalf of tffis insignificant planet, —
an argument which he wields especiaUy agaffist the
doctrine of incarnation. But no part of ffis work
manifests such bitterness, and at the same time such
a specious mode of argument, as ffis attack on the
doctrffie of redemption and substitutional atone
ment*. The work, ffi its satire and its blasphemous
ribaldry, is a fit paraUel to those of Voltaire. Every
Ime is fresh from the writer's mffid, and written with
an acrimony which accounts for much of its ffifluence.
The rehgion wffich Paffie substituted for Christiaffity
was the belief in one God as revealed by science, in
immortahty as the contffiuance of conscious exist
ence, in the natural equality of man, and in the
obhgation of justice and mercy to one's neighbour''.
The influence of the spirit of Paine hngered ffi
some strata of our population far ffito the present
century : by means of the views of Owen ", the
2 Part i. pp. 37-44. This difficulty, first suggested by Fontenelle,
is met in the eloquent Astronomical Discourses (1822) of Chalmers.
The controversy has been newly opened by the brilliant essay on
the Plurality of Worlds (1853), supposed to be by Dr. Whewell, and
pursued by Dr. Brewster (More Worlds than One), Professor Baden
Powell (Essays on the Order of Nature), and by Professor H. S.
Smith in the Oxford Essays, 1855.
a Page 20. '' Part i. pp. 3, 4 i P- 5°-
<= Robert Owen (1771-1858). About the year 1800 he became
known in connexion with schemes of industrial reform at the Lanark

284 LECTURE V.
founder of EngHsh socialism, wffich essentiaUy repro
duce the visionary political reforms which belonged to
the pffilospohy and to the doubt of the last century.
Beffig desirous to improve the conffition of the
mdustrial classes, Owen specffiated on the causes of
evU ; and, approaching the subject from the extreme
sensational .poffit of view, regarded the power of cir
cumstances to be so great, that he was led to regard
action as the obedience to the strongest motive.
He thus ffitroduced the idea of physical causa
tion ffito the human wffi ; and made the rule of right
to be each one's own pleasures and paffis. Foundffig
poHtical inferences on this ethical theory of circum
stantial fatahsm, he proposed the system caUed so
ciaUsm, which aimed at modifyffig temptations and
removffig two great classes of temptations, by facffi-
tatffig divorce, and proposffig equality of property,
mills; and from 1813-19 conducted them as a social experiment to
carry out his views. He attempted also to spread his opinions in Ame
rica. After his return to England, by means of lectures and his work,
The New Moral World, he taught them in the manufacturing towns ;
and they were widely spread about the time of the Chartist move
ment (1839-41). His opinions may be learned from his Essays
on the Formation of Character (1818), which explain his Lanark
system ; and especially his New Moral World, published about
1839. His religious opinions may be gathered from the Debate on
the Evidences and on Society with A. CampbeU, 1839. Hi^ auto
biography was published in 1857, and a review of his philosophy by
W. L. Sargeant, i860. An article also related to him in the West
minster Review for Oct. i860. See also Morell's History of Philo
sophy, i. 386 seq. Mr. R. Dale Owen, son of the above, published
several deist tracts in America, from about 1840-44.

LECTURE V. 285
The system is now obsolete both ffi idea and in
history, yet it has an ffiterest from the circumstance
that untU recently it deceived the minds and cor
rupted the rehgious faith of many of the manu
facturing popffiation.
The ffistory of the influence of French infidelity
on the course of EngHsh thought closes with names
of greater note''. If Owen, though belonging to the
present centuiy, represents the pohtical tone of the
past, we must also refer to the same period, moraUy
though not cffionologicaUy, the spirit of unbehef
wffich animated hterature ffi the poetry of Byron
and SheUey.
Saddened by bhghted hopes, poHtical and per
sonal, Byron affords a type of the unbeHef wffich is
marked by despair ''. If compared with the two
exUes of the Leman lake, whom the sympathy of a
common scepticism and common exUe commended
to ffis meffitation, he stands ffi many respects widely
contrasted with them ffi tone and spirit. Affied
rather to Gibbon ffi seriousness, he nevertheless
whoUy lacked ffis moral purpose and resolute spirit
of perseverance. More nearly resembUng Voltaire in
d It has been considered unnecessary to name three other unim
portant writers, Brough, Farmer, a writer on the subject of Demoniacs,
and Carlisle, who was prosecuted in 1830.
e Byron (1788-1824). The Vision of Judgment, wi-itten in
1821, has been already referred to in Lecture III. as a vehicle for
sceptical banter. For a brief comparison between the scepticism of
Byron and Shelley, see remarks in the Westminster Review, April
1841, by Mr. G. H. Lewes.

286 LECTURE V.
the nature of ffis unbeHef, he nevertheless differed
ffi the features of gloom by which ffis mffid was
characterized. His unbelief was a remnant of the
phUosopffic atheism of France ; but it received a
tmge ffi passffig through the wounded mffid of the
poet. His brother poet, of a stffi loftier geffius, is more
widely contrasted with ffim in mental quahties, than
uffited by similarity in the character of his unbehef
Both were weary of the world ; but the one was
drawn down by unbeHef to earth, the other soared
into the ideal : the one was driven to the gloom of
despair, the other was excited by the imagffiation
to the madness of enthusiasm : the one was made
sad by disappoffitment, the other was goaded by it
into frenzy.
SheUey merits more than a passffig notice, both
because his poetry is a proof of our main position
concerffing the influence of certaffi forms of phfloso
phy ffi producing unbelief, and because ffis mental
history, as learned by means of ffis works and me
moirs, is a psychological study of the ffighest value.
The infidehty wffich shows itself in him is an idolum
speeds, as wefl as an idolum^ theatric.
His life, ffis natural character, and his phflosophy,
afl contributed to form his scepticism^. His life is a
« Bacon, Nov. Org. Aph. 52, 53.
f Shelley (1792-1822). The materials are abundant for under
standing the character and works of Shelley, in biographies both
friendly and hostile. The second edition of the SheUey Memorials,

LECTURE V. 287
tale of sorrow and ruffied hopes, of geffius without
wisdom : one of the sad stories which wifl ever ex
cite the sympathy of the heart. Early sent to this
uffiversity, he seems hke Gibbon to have hved alone ;
and ffi the soHtude of that impffisive and recluse spirit
wffich formed ffis Hfe-long pecuharity, to have nursed
a spirit of atheism and wfld schemes of reform.
Charged by the authorities of his coflege with the
authorsffip of an atheistic pampffiet^, he was ex-
pefled the uffiversity. An outcast from his family,
he went forth to suffer poverty, to gather his live-
hhood as he coffid by the wonderfffi geffius which
nature had given him. Wronged as he thought by
his uffiversity and his country, his wounded spirit
imputed the supposed unkffidness wffich he received
to the reHgion wffich ffis enemies professed. In a
foreign land, brooding over his wrongs, he cherished
the bitter antipathy to priestcraft and to monarchy
wffich finds such terrific expression ffi ffis poems ''-
His end was a fit close of a tragic Hfe. A friendly
hand paid the last office of friendsffip to his remaffis ;
by lady Shelley, 1859, contains an essay on Christianity by him.
Several important articles in Reviews have been published in refer
ence to him, among which it is desirable to call attention to the
one in the National Review, No. 6, Oct. 1856, which contains a very
instructive analysis of his mental and moral character. It has been
used in the few remarks which follow.
S The pamphlet appears to have been an anonymous statement of
the weakness of the argument for the existence of deity ; negative
rather than positive. See the account of the transaction and its
results in T. J. Hogg's Life of Shelley, 1858, vol. i. pp. (269-286).
h E. g. in the Ode to Liberty (§15 and 16), written in 1820.

288 LECTURE V.
and the urn which contains the ashes of ffis pyre
rests ffi the solemn and beautiful cemetery of the
eternal city, wffich he himself had described so
strikingly in his affectffig memorial of ffis friend, the
poet Keats'.
His natural character contributed to produce ffis
scepticism not less than his life to fficrease it. He has
left us a clear dehneation of himself ffi his writffigs.
If considered on the emotional side, he was a creature
of impffises. His predomffiant passion was an enthu
siastic desire to reform the world. Filled with the
wfldest ideas of the French revolution, his impffisive-
ness hurried him on to give expression to them. His
ffiteflectual nature was analogous to the moral, and
itself received a stimffius from it. His mental pecu
liarity was ffis power of sustaffied abstraction. His
poems are not lyrics of Hfe, but of an ideal world.
His tendency was to ffisffiate quahties or feehngs,
and hold them up to the mental vision as person
alities. The words wffich he has addressed to his
own skylark fitly describe his mind as it soared in
the soHtude of its abstraction :
Higher still and higher
Prom the earth thou springest,
* -x- -x- -x- -x-
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
It has been wefl observed, that this tendency of
i In the Adonais, §49-51. For Shelley's own cremation and
burial, see the Memorials by lady Shelley, p. 201.

LECTURE V. 289
the mffid to persoffify isolated qualities or impffises,
was essentially the mythological tendency^ which had
created the rehgion and expressed itself ffi the poetry
of the Greeks, and possibly contributed to foster
SheUey 's sympatffies with heathen rehgion. His mffid
was pecuharly Greek, simple not complex, imagina
tive rather than fancifffi, abstract not concrete, ffitel-
lectual not emotional; wantffig the many-sidedness
of modem taste, partakffig of the uffity of science
rather than the mffitiformity of nature, hke scffip-
ture rather than paffitmg. This mental pecuharity
contributed to scepticism by inclffiffig ffis mffid to
the pantheistic phflosophy, wffich can never be held
save by those whose minds can give beffig to an
abstraction, and is revolting to those who are deeply
touched with the Hebrew consciousness of person
ahty and of duty. His phflosophy was at ffist a
form of naturalism, which identffied God with nature,
and made body and spirit co-essential. In tffis stage
he oscffiated between the behef of half persoffified
self-moved atoms, or a general pervadffig spirit of
nature. From this stage he passed ffito a new one,
by contact with the pffilosophy of Hume ; and, whfle
admittffig the diversity of matter and spirit, yet
denied the substantial reaHty of both. In this state
of mind he stuffied the phflosophy of Plato, wffich
was origffiaUy designed for doubters somewhat ana
logous to him ; and he readUy imbibed the theory
^ This is well put in the Review above quoted, (p 356)-
U

290 LECTURE V.
that the passing phenomena are types of eternal
archetypes, emboffiments of eternal reahties. But
it was Plato's view of the universe that he accepted,
not ffis view of man ; his metaphysics, not his etffics.
In none of these three theories is the rffie of the uni
verse ascribed to a character, but ffi each to animated
abstractions. They are a pantheistic or mythological
view of thffigs'. Nor was the effect of tffis phi
losophy merely theoretical, for the distorted view of
the physical and moral cosmos led ffim to beHeve
that both shoffid be regffiated by the same condi
tions ; that men shoffid have the unconstrained
liberty wffich he thought he saw ffi material tffings.
Like Rousseau, ascribffig moral evil to the artfficial
laws of society, SheUey proposed to substitute a new
order of thffigs, in wffich man shoffid be emancipated
from kings and priests. Tffis phUosophy also ffi
creased ffis hatred agamst the moral order of the
world, and especiaUy agamst Christianity; and led
him to regard it as the offshoot of superstition and
the impediment to progress. Yet even here, wffile
echoffig the irreverent doctrmes of the French revo
lution, he bore an unconscious witness to the majesty
of the Christian virtues, ffi that he coffid find no
nobler type with wffich to ffivest his ideal race of men.
1 The Reviewer thinks that the first stage was in tone like Lucre
tius, i. e. Epicureanism. The second and third are described here in
the text. The Queen Mab (end of first division) expressed the first
stage ; the first speech of Ahasuerus in the Hellas is a specimen of
the second ; and the Adonais (43 and 52) of the third.

LECTURE V. 291
We have dwelt long on SheUey, as a most in
structive example for observffig the various influ
ences, personal and social, intellectual and moral,
pffilosopffical and poHtical, combinffig to form unbe
hef His thoughts are the last echo of the unbehef
of the last century. The great movement of Ger
many has completely changed the scepticism of the
present. The instances that we have found of unbe
Hef in England were ffiffications of a tendency rather
than a movement. They were however of sufficient
importance to caU forth the voices of the church in
reply or ffi protest.
It has been remarked, that ffi the former half of the
eighteenth century the attack was chiefly directed
agaffist the ffiternal doctrines and narratives of reve
lation, on the assumption that they clashed with the
judgment of common sense, or of the moral faculty.
And therefore the writers on the evidences, adaptffig
their defence to the attack, employed themselves
chiefly ffi estabhshffig the internal evidences, the
moral need of a revelation generaUy, and the sffit-
abffity of the Christian ffi particular, before pro
ducffig the ffivffie testimony which authenticates it.
But about the middle of tffis century the historic
sphit arose, and the poffit of attack shifted to an
assaffit on the ffistoric value of the hterature wffich
contaffis the revelation. The question thenceforth
became a Hterary one, whether there was docu
mentary proof that a revelation had been given.
U 2

292 LECTURE V.
The defence accordmgly ceased to be phflosophical,
and became ffistorical™
Opiffions have changed with regard to the value
of evidences ffi general, and the ffistoric form of them
in particffiar. When Boyle " at the end of the seven
teenth century, and Bampton and Hulse ffi the latter
half of the eighteenth, estabHshed their respective
lectures, they looked forward to the probabffity of
the occurrence of new forms of doubt, and to the
importance of reasoffing as the weapon for meetffig
them. In more recent times evidences have been
undervalued, through the two opposite tendencies
of the present age, the churcffiy and corporate ten
dency on the one hand, which rests on church
authority, and the indifiduahsffig tendency on the
other, which rests on intffitive consciousness ". Evi
dences essentiaUy belong to a theory, which places
the test of trath objectively in a revealed book,
™ This contrast however in the evidences, though true in a general
way, must not be pressed so as to imply an absolutely defined line
of chronological separation between the two classes of evidence.
° Robert Boyle died in 1692, and founded the lecture by his last
¦will. The lectures commenced in the same year. Bampton's were
founded in 1751 ; but none delivered till 1780. Hulse died in
1790 ; but the lectures did not commence till 1820. A list of the
lectures delivered in each series may be found in Darling's Cyclo-
pcedia Bibliographica.
° The remarks on evidence in Nos. 73 and 84 of the Tracts for the
Times, and the tone assumed by the ultramontane writers of France,
are instances of the undervaluing evidences from the former causes.
The deist literature of the last century, and the writings of Carlyle
in the present, are instances of that which arises from the latter.

LECTURE V. 293
and subjectively in the reason, as the organ for
ffiscoverffig morality and ffiterpreting the book p.
Whfle evidences in general have been undervalued
for these reasons, the ffistoric branch of them has
been regarded as obsolete, because having reference
offiy to an age wffich doubts the documents and
charges the authors with beffig deceivers or deceived,
and unavailing, like an old fortification, against a
new mode of assaffit. This latter statement is
ffi substance correct. It lessens the value of this
argument as a practical weapon agaffist the doubts
wffich now assafl us, but does not detract from the
hterary value of the works in the special branch "fo
which they apply. If the progress of knowledge be
the excitffig cause of free Aought, a simflar altera
tion ffi the evidences would be expected to occur
from causes simflar to those which produce an
alteration ffi the attack, ffidependently of the change
wffich occurs from the necessity of adjusting the
one to the other.
Abstract questions Hke tffis concernffig the value
of evidences find their solution independently of
the human wffi. The human mind cannot be
chaffied. New knowledge wffi suggest new doubts ;
and if so, spirit must be combated by spirit. De
fences of Cffiistiaffity, attempts to readjust it to
new ffiscoveries, must therefore contffiue to the end
P i. e. They belong essentially to the protestant stand-point in
theology.

294 LECTURE V.
of time. In reference to the minor question of the
value of the historic evidences, it is important to
remember that these grand works are not simply
refutative ; they are indirectly instructive and ffi-
dactic. Just as miracles are a part of Christianity,
as wefl as evidences for its truth, so apologetic is a
lesson ffi Christianity, as weU as a reply to doubt ^.
It happens also that the most modern doubt of
Germany has assumed the ffistoric Hne, has become
critical instead of phUosophical ; and, though the
criticism is primarUy of a different kind, it ffiti-
mately becomes capable of refutation by the very
line of argument used ffi the eighteenth century ¦'.
We cherish therefore with devout reverence the
memory of those writers who employed the power
of the pen to defend the religion that they loved.
They joined their ffiteUectual labours to the spi
ritual earnestness which was the other weapon for
opposing unbehef. Providence blessed their work.
They sowed the seed of the ffiteUectual and spiritual
harvest which this century is reaping. " And herein
1 See above, p. 225. The view which Blunt took of the evi
dences is given in his Essays, p. 133, reprinted from the Quar
terly Review, April 1828.
>• The controversy raised by the Tiibingen school refers to the
date of books of the New Testament which testify to facts and
doctrines. Supposing this primary question settled in favour of
our commonly received view, then the further question follows con
cerning the honesty and opportunity of information of the narrators ;
and it is here that the arguments of Lyttleton, Lardner, and Paley,
in the last century, find their proper place. See below, Lect. VIII.

LECTURE V. 295
is that sayffig true. One soweth and another reapeth.
I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no
labour : other men laboured, and ye are entered into
their labours. And he that reapeth receiveth wages,
and gathereth fruit unto life eternal ; that both
he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice
together ^"
s John iv. 37, 38, 36.

LECTURE YL
FKBE THOUGHT IN THE THEOLOGY OF GEIIMANY FROM 175O-1835.

Phil. iv. 8.

Whatsoever things are true, wAatsoever tAiiigs are honest,
wAatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what
soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ;
if there le any virtue, andif there le any praise, tAink on these
things. W E are about to study the history of the move
ment ffi German theology, which is usuaUy described
by the vague name of Rationalism*, — a movement
wffich, whether viewed speciaUy in its relation to
theology, or to literature generaUy, must be regarded
as one of the most memorable efforts of human
thought. It was • one aspect of the great outburst
of mental activity ffi Germany, wffich withffi the last
hundred years has created a literature, wffich not
» On Rationalism sec Note 21.

LECTURE VL 297
offiy vies with the most renowned of those wffich
have added to the stock of human knowledge, but
holds a foremost rank among those wffich are cha
racterised by origffiahty and depth. The permanent
contribution made by it to the thought of the world
is the creation of a science of criticism, — a method
of analysis, ffi which phUosophy and ffistory are
joffitly employed ffi the investigation of every branch
of knowledge. If however it be viewed apart from
the question of utffity, the works produced during
this period, ffi poetry, specffiation, criticism, and theo
logy, must ever make it memorable for monuments
of mental power, even when they shaU have become
obsolete as sources of information.
The theological aspect of this great period of
mental activity, which we are about to sketch, has
now probably so far assumed its final shape, and
given ffidications of the tendencies permanently
created by it for good or for evfl, that it admits of
bemg viewed as a whole, and its purpose and mean
ffig observed''.
We shafl deviate sHghtly from the plan ffitherto
pursued, of selectffig offiy the sceptical form of free
thought, and shafl give an outUne' of German theo
logy generaUy; partly because the hmits that sever
orthodoxy from heresy are a matter of dispute,
partly in order that the movement may be judged
of as a whol«. The size of the subject wiU preclude
1> The sources for the knowledge of this period are briefly stated
in the Preface to these lectures.

298 LECTURE VL
the possibUity of entering so fuUy ffito biographical
notices of the writers, or ffito the analysis of their
writffigs, as ffi former lectures. We must select
such typical mffids as wffi enable us to observe the
chief tendencies of thought.
As the stages of ffistory are not arbitrarily severed,
but grow out of each other, we must briefly notice
the mental conditions of the period in Germany
which preceded the rise of rationahsm ; next mfficate
the new forces, the ffitroduction of which was the
means of generatffig the movement ; and then ex
plain the movement itself ffi its chief phases and
present results.
We have previously had occasion to imply, that
the Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century
contained both an inteflectual and a spiritual ele
ment *=. The attempt to reconcile these has been
the problem of protestant theology in Germany ever
sffice. The ffiteflectual element, so far as it was
Hterary, soon passed into the hands of lay scholars'* :
the spiritual became a life rather than a doctrffie,
and the polemic or dogmatic aspect of the mteUectual
movement alone was left. The time from the passffig

<= See p. 12, 138, Hundeshagen (Der Deutsche Prot. § 13) insists
on the prime importance of the spiritual element as the moving
force in the Reformation.
<l Melancthon and Camerarius, Calvin and Beja, represent the
union of learning with theology; the second Scaliger, the Ste-
phenses, Casaubon, and others, are instances of the great lay
scholars.

LECTURE VL 299
of the Formula of Concord and the Synod of Dort«
to the begmning of the eighteenth century, a period
nearly correspondffig with the seventeenth century,
was in Germany an age of dogmatic theology. It
was scholasticism revived, with the difference that
the offiy source for the data of argument was the
Scripture, not phUosophy. But there was an equal
absence of ffiquiry into ffist prfficiples, an equal
appeal to authority for the grounds of behef, and
equal activity withffi these prescribed limits. It
was marked, as among the contemporary puritans in
•England, by the most extreme view of bibhcal in
spiration f. Not offiy was the ffistmction of law and

s The date of the former is 1577; of the latter 1618. These are
named as the events from which the theology in the Lutheran and
Calvinistic churches respectively became fixed. Buddeus (Isagoge,
p. 239) dates it rather from the confession of Ratisbon, 160 1. On
this dogmatic period see Der Deutsche Prot. § 9 ; Hagenbach's
Dogmengesch. § 216—18; Amand Sainte's Critical History of Ra
tionalism (transl.) ch. v. and vi ; Pusey's Historical Inquiry, part i.
pp. (1-52), part ii. ch. viii. and ix. (1830). It was this period which
produced the various books of Loci Communes Theologici. The
only exception to this scholastic spirit was Calixt. and the school
of Helmstadt, which in tone was like the school of Saumur,
(Cameron, Amyrauld, and Placseus,) or like Baxter, the controversies
connected with which prove the rule. On it see Schroch, Christliche
Kirchengeschichte seit der Reformation (1804), viii. 243 seq. On
the theologians of this period see Weismann, Introd. in Memorabilia
Eccles. Hist. (17 18), p. 919 seq.
f This view of inspiration is stated in Quenstedt's Syst Theol, and
Calov's Syst Theol i. 554 seq., about the end of the seventeenth
century. Dr. Pusey (part i. 1 40) refers to passages of Semler's Lebens-
Beschreibung illustrative of these opinions in the German church of

300 LECTURE VL
gospel overlooked, and the historic and providential
development ffi revelation forgotten ; but Scripture
was supposed to be ffi aU respects a gffide for the
present, as weU as a record of the past. Infaffible
ffispiration was attributed to the authors of the
sacred books, not merely ffi reference to the rehgious
instraction wffich formed the appropriate matter
of the supernatural revelation, but ffi reference also
to the aUusions to coUateral subjects, such as natural
science, or poHtics; and not merely to the matter,
but to the smallest detafls of the language of the
books. Contemporary with tffis scholastic spirit was an
outburst of the Hvffig spiritual feelffig wffich had
formed the other element ffi the Reformation. This
rehgious movement is denomffiated Pietism (27).
Its centre was at HaUe ; and the best known name
among the band of saffits, of whom the world was
not worthy, was Spener. Soon after the time when
the miseries of the thirty years' war were closffig, he
estabHshed schools for orphans, and a system of
teachffig and of rehgious hvffig wffich stirred up
rehgious life ffi Germany. These two tendencies —
the dogmatic and the pietistic — ^marked the rehgious
life of Germany at the openffig of the eighteenth
that period. On the similar controversy which existed in the
French protestant church see note above, p. 158. This is only one
instance among many of the close analogy which exists in the
development of thought between the reformed churches in difierent
lands.

LECTURE VL 301
century. The ffiference has been frequently drawn
by the German writers, that they miffistered ffidi
rectly to the production of scepticism ; the dogmatic
strictness stimffiatffig a reaction towards latitude of
opiffion, and the unchurchlike and isolatffig character
of pietism fostering ffidividuahty of behef This in
ference is however hardly correct. Dogmatic truth
ffi the corporate church, and piety in the ffiffividual
members, are ordffiarUy the safeguard of Cffiistian
faith and life. The danger arose in this case from
the circumstance that the dogmas were emptied of
life, and so became unreal; and that the piety, beffig
separated from theological science, became ffisecure.
Durffig the ffist half of the century certain new
influences were introduced, wffich in the latter half
caused these tendencies to develope into rationahsm.
They may be classed as tffiee s ; — the spread of the
specffiative phUosophy of Wolff; the ffitroduction
of the works of the EngHsh deists ; and the influ
ence of the colony of French infidels estabHshed by
Frederick the Great ffi Prussia. We shafl explaffi
these in detafl.
The phflosophy of WoUf was an offshoot directly
from Leibnitz, ffidirectly from the Cartesian school.
It is harffiy necessary to reiterate the remark that
the revolution ffi thought wrought by Descartes
was nothffig less than a protest of the human mind
s These are the chief infiuences which the German writers enu
merate. See Tholuck, ii. § 2-5, Kahnis, History of German Protest
(transl. 1856) i. i.

302 LECTURE VL
agaffist any external authority for the first prfficiples
of its behef Two great phflosophers foflowed out
his method ffi an ffidependent manner ; Spinoza,
who attempted to exhibit with the rigour of de
duction the necessary development of the idea of
substance ffito the various modes wffich it assumes ;
and Leibnitz*', who, with less attempt at formal
precision of method, startmg with the idea of power,
endeavoured, by means of the monaffic theory, wffich
it is unnecessary here to explain, to exhibit the
nature of the uffiverse ffi itself, and the connexion
of the world of matter and of spirit. Wohf was
a disciple of Leibnitz ; great as a teacher rather
than an ffiventor, who ffi vested the system of ffis
master slightly moffified, with the precision of form
which raised it to rivalry with the perfect symmetry
of Spffioza's system. Adoptffig ffis master's two
great canons of trath, the law of contradiction as
regulative of thoughts, and the law of the sufficient
reason as regffiative of thffigs ', he attempted ffi ffis
theoretic pffilosophy to work out a regffiar system
on each of the great branches of metaphysic, — ^nature,
^ On Leibnitz and his system see Tennemann, Oeschichte xi. 93
seq. ; Ritter's Christliche Phil', viii. 47 seq. ; Renouvier, Phil. Mod.
(278-90); and especially Maine de Biran's Life of Leibnitz in the
Biographie UniverseUe. Also Morell's History of Philosophy, i.
220, and H. Rogers's Essays (Essay on Leibnitz), reprinted from
the Edinburgh Review, July 1846.
i On these canons see Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Logic, vol. i.
lect. vi ; Mansel's Prolegomena, ch. vi. ; and Mills's Logic, vol. ii. b. v.
ch. iii. § 5.

LECTURE VL 303
the mffid, and God; by deducing them from the
abstract ideas of the human mind''. The true
method of conductffig this inquiry woffid be strictly
an a posteriori one, an analytical examination of
our own consciousness, to ascertain what data the
facts of the thffikffig mind furffish with respect
to thffigs thought of But without any such
examffiation Woffi", assuming ffi reference to these
subjects the abstract ideas of the human mind
as ffis data, proceeded to reason from them with
the same confidence as the reahsts of the middle
ages, or as mathematicians when they commence
with the real intuitions of magffitude on wffich
their science is founded. Thus his whole phflosophy
was form without matter; a magnfficent idea, but
not a fact. Yet though reafly baseless, it was not
necessarfly harmful.
'^ Wolfi", 1679-1754. Professor of Philosophy at Halle ; in 1723
expelled; restored in 1741 ; Lange and Buddeus were- his great
opponents (see Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 274). His philosophy
consisted of an attempt to deduce d, priori a system of (i) cosmo
logy, (2) psychology, (3) natural theology. The latter relates to
God, His attributes in Himself and in creation. See some remarks
by Mr. Mansel on his scheme (art. Metaphysic. Encycl. Brit, 8vo. ed.
p. 603). On his philosophy see Ritter, Christ. Phil. viii. b. x. ch. i. ;
Tennemann's Manual, §(363-5); Morell, i. 228 ; Rosenkrantz, Gesch.
der Kantischen Schule, b. i. part iii. ch. i. His religious opinions
are found in the Theol. Nat. 1736, and Philos. Moralis, 1750, and
in his Vernuenftige Gedanken von Gott. 1747 (p. 604). See on them
Henke, Kirchengeseh. viii. § 3 ; Mansel's Bampton Lectures, note 3.
And on the efiects of his philosophy, and the state of theology in
Germany at the time of its influence, see Tholuck's Vermischte
Schriften, ii. § 2 and i.

304 LECTURE VL
Tffis phflosophy at first met with much opposition
from the pietistic party of HaUe'. The opposi
tion was not due to any theological fficorrectness,
for Wolff was an orthodox Christian; but arose from
the narrow and unnecessary suspicions wffich reh
gious men too often have of phflosophy, and the
sensibflity to any attempt to suggest a reconsidera
tion of the grounds of behef, even if the conclusion
adopted be the same. But the system soon became
universaUy dommant. Its orderly method possessed
the fascffiation wffich belongs to any encyclopseffic
view of human knowledge. It cofficided too with
the tone of the age. ReaUy opposed, as Cartesianism
had been in France, to the scholasticism which stffi
reigned, its dogmatic form nevertheless bore such
external simUarity to it, that it feU ffi with the old
literary tastes. The evfl effects wffich it subsequently
produced ffi reference to reHgion were due offiy to
the poffit of view wffich it ffitimately ffiduced. Like
Locke's work on the reasonableness of Christiaffity,
it stimffiated inteUectual specffiation concerffing
revelation. By suggesting attempts to deduce d
priori the necessary character of rehgious traths,
it tumed men's attention more than ever away
from spiritual reHgion to theology. The attempt to
demonstrate everythffig caused dogmas to be viewed
apart from their practical aspect ; and men being
compeUed to discard the previous method of drawing
1 In 1723, in consequence of the petition from the pietest pro
fessors, Frederick I. deposed Wolff. See Kahnis (Engl. Transl.) p. 1 1 4.

LECTURE VL 305
phUosophy out of scripture, an independent phflo
sophy was created, and scripture compared with
its ffiscoveries ¦". Phflosophy no longer rehed on
scripture, but scripture rested on phflosophy. Dog
matic theology was made a part- of metaphysical
phflosophy. This was the mode in which Wolff's
phflosophy ministered indirectly to the creation of
the disposition to make scriptural dogmas submit
to reason, wffich was denomffiated rationahsm. The
empire of it was undisputed durffig the whole of
the middle part of the century, untfl it was expelled
towards the close by the partial ffitroduction of
Locke's phUosophy ", and of the system of Kant, as
weU as by the growth of classical eruffition, and of
a native hterature.
The second cause wffich miffistered to generate
rationahsm was EngHsh deism. The connexion of
England with Hanover had cavised several of the
works of the EngHsh deists to be translated ffi Ger
many ", and the general doctrffies of natural rehgion,
™ In reference to the introduction of Wolfi"s philosophy, the
reference to Tholuck has been already given. See also Schrbch's
Gesch. viii. 26 ; Lechler, 448 ; Amand Sainte's Critical History of
Rationalism, i. oh. ix. ; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 274 ; Kahnis,
p. IIO. Kahnis (115) names Baumgarten, Canz, and Toellner, as
Wolff's pupils. Mosheim and the Walches were too exclusively
literary to be aff'ected by the new philosophy. Canz of Tiibingen
was the first to apply the system to doctrinal theology (1728). See
Pusey, part i. 116.
1 Locke's philosophy in a distorted form was introduced by the
French philosophers who lived at the court of Frederick II.
0 On the introduction of English deism, see Tholuct, § 3. A few
X

306 LECTURE VL
expressed by Herbert and Toland, were soon repro
duced, together with the difficulties put forth by
Tindal. But the direct effect of this cause has
probably been exaggerated by the eagerness of those
who, ffi the Avish to identify German rationalism
with English deism, have -ignorantly overlooked the
wide differences ffi premises, if not ffi resffits, wffich
separated them, and the regffiar ffiternal law of
logical development wffich has presided over the
German movement.
A more direct cause was found about the middle
of the century-ffi the influence of the French refugees
and others, whom Frederick the Great ffivited to ffis
court. Not only were Voltaire and Diderot visitors,
but several writers of worse fame, La Mettrie,
D'Argens, MaupertiusP, who possessed their faffits
without their mental power, were constant residents.
Their philosophy and unbeHef were the miffiature
of that which we have detafled in France. They
created an antichristian atmosphere about the court,
and ffi the upper classes of Berhn ; and even mffids
only of the deist writings were translated, (e. g. Tindal by Schmidt
in 1 7 41,) but very many of the replies ; which proves how much at
tention they excited. See the list in Lechler, p. 447. Up to 1760 no
fewer than 106 answers had been wi-itten to Tindal alone. Kortholt,
in his work De Tribus Impostoribus, (viz. Herbert, Hobbes, Spinoza,)
1680, was the first to notice English deism. The appeal to reason
in these replies had the same efiect as that noticed in the philosophy
of Wolff.
P For Maupertius see Biographie UniverseUe. The others have
been named in the notes to Lect. V.

LECTURE VL 307
that were attemptffig to create a native literature,
and to improve the critical standard of literary taste,
were partiaUy influenced by means of ifi.
We have now seen the state of the German mind
ffi reference to theology at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and the three new influences
wffich were ffitroduced ffito it in the ffiterval be
tween 1720 and 1760. The dogmatic tendency be
came transformed by the Wolffian phflosophy ; the
pietistic retired from a public movement into the
privacy of hfe ; wffile the mffids of men were
awakened to inquiry by the suggestions of the
Enghsh deists, or the restless and hopefffi tone of the
French mffid. It was a moment of transition; the
streaks of twflight before the dawn. .Yet the signs
of a change were so shght, that few coffid as yet dis
cern the comffig of a crisis, none predict its form.
We may now proceed to give the history of the
theological movement wffich sprang up, commoffiy
cafled Rationahsm. It admits of natural division
ffito three parts. The ffist, a period destractive in
its tendency, extendffig to a httle later than the end
of the century, exhibits the gradual growth of the
system, and its spread over every department of
theology. The second, reconstructive in character,
the re-establishment of harmony between faith and
reason, extends tffi the publication of Strauss's cele
brated work on the Life of Christ in 1835 ; the
q See Tholuck, § 4 and 5. He considers that the French litera
ture, with the exception of Bayle, did not affect the Germans, on
account of its shallowness ; but doubtless it did so indirectly.
X 2

308 LECTURE VL
third, contaffiffig the divergent tendencies which
have created permanent schools, reaches to the pre
sent time"'. In afl ahke the harmony of faith and
reason was sought : but in the ffist it was attained
by sacrfficffig faith to reason; ffi the second and
third, by seekffig for their uffity, or by separatffig
their spheres. A distinguished name stands at the
commencement of each period, representing the mffid
whose specffiations were most influential in givffig
form to the movements. Semler maugurated the
destructive movement ; Scffieiermacher, the con
structive; and Strauss precipitated the final forms
which theological parties have assumed. In the
present lecture we shafl treat offiy of the first two
of these movements.
The first of these periods, extenffing from about
1750 to iBio^ contaffis two sub-periods. Tffi about
1790* we find the growth of rationahsm. In the last
decade of the century we shaU meet with its fffil
development ; but at the same time the growth of
new causes wfll be perceived, wffich prepared the
way for a total alteration after the commencement of
the present century.
The sub-period extending to 1790 is one of tran
sition, ffi which we can trace three broadly marked
r This division does not essentially differ from the threefold one
adopted by Kahnis, into the illumination period, that of the renova
tion, and of the church renovating itself.
9 We place the limit at 18 10, because it is the date of the founda
tion of the university of Berlin, which was the home of the reaction.
t This date marks the spread of the Kantian philosophy, as will
be shown below.

LECTURE VL 309
tendencies ffi reHgion ; one withffi the church, two
outside of it. Such classes ffideed sHde away ffito
each other ; nature is more complex than man ; but
the use of them may be excused as facflitatffig in
struction. The movement within the church verged from
a Hterary and dogmatic orthodoxy, wffich existed
chiefly at the Saxon university of Leipsic, through
the purely hterary tendency, of which Michaelis
may be taken as a type ffi the newly formed uffi
versity of Gottffigen, to the freethinkffig method
typffied by Semler, orthodox ffi doctrffie, but ffi
criticism adopting free views of ffispiration, wffich
mingled itself with the old pietism of the university
of HaUe".
The two movements outside the church were, a
Hterary one, ffidicated by Lessffig, which found its
chief utterance in the periodical literature, then in
its infancy'' ; and a thoroughly deist one, connected
with the court of Berhn, embodied ffi the educational
institutions of Basedow y.
" There were thus three chief phases within the church ; the dog
matic at Leipsic, the critical at Gottingen, the pietistic eclecticism of
Semler at Halle. If to this we add the pietism which still reigned
at Tiibingen, as seen in Pfaff, &c., we have the condition of the four
universities which were at that time the chief centres of intellectual
activity in Germany.
^ Lessing, along with Nicholai, conducted the Allgemeine Deutsche
BibUothek from 1765.
y On the purpose and nature of these institutions, which arose
at Dessau about 1774, see Schlosser, i. 5, 3 ; ii. 3, 2 ; Kahnis,

310 LECTURE VL
The movement which we have just named as
existffig withffi the church, differed from the older
dogmatic one, in bemg a tendency toward an ffis
torical and critical study of the scriptures, ffistead
of a phUosopffical study of doctrffies. It embraced
those whose teaching was not at variance with
Christiaffity, and also those who manifested ffici
pient scepticism. Two names, Ernesti^ at Leipsic,
and Michaelis" at Gottffigen, represent the first
class ; the former applying criticism cffiefly to the
New Testament, the latter to the Old. The endea
vour of both, especiafly of Ernesti, was to revive
the grammatical and hterary mode of interpretmg
scripture, as opposed to the dogmatic previously ffi
use. Their spirit was not sceptical, but was that of
p. 47. On Basedow (1724-1790), see Rose on Rationalism, p. 66,
note (second edition), and Schroch, viii. 52.
^ J. A. Ernesti (1707-1781), was author oi Inst. Interpret. Nov.
Test 17 61 (translated by bishop Terrot). His chief labours were
the editions of several classical authors, among which the most
valuable was Cicero. See Schlosser, ii. 187 ; Kahnis, 120 ; Pusey,
132 ; Am. Saintes, part ii. ch. ii. The Rosenmiillers (the father,
J. G. Rosenmiiller, on the New Testament ; the son, E. F. Rosen-
mtiller the antiquarian on the Old,) manifest much the same spirit
as Ernesti.
a Joh. Dav. Michaelis (1716-1791). His chief works were,
Gruendliche Erklaerung des Mosaischen Rechts, and the Einleitung
in die Schrift. des Neuen Bundes. The former handled the Hebrew
legislation in a free spirit. The latter work was translated by
bishop Marsh, and led to the controversy about the composition of
the Gospels, to which allusion will be made in the notes of Lecture
VII. See Kahnis, p. 121 ; Henke, viii. partii. § 2. Jerusalem
and Spalding manifest the same spirit as Michaelis.

LECTURE VL 311
men who felt the sceptical opinions round them ;
ethical and cold, Hke that of the Armiffians of the
precedffig century.
Their system developed into rationalism ffi the
hands 'of two of their pupfls. Eichhorn was the
pupfl of Michaelis, Semler of Ernesti. The name of
Eichhorn wffi recur later ; Semler'' must be con
sidered now.
Semler was one of those mffids wffich fall short of
the highest order of originahty, but by their eruffition
and appreciation of the wants of their time ffistitute
a movement by givffig form to the current feeling of
their day. Nurtured in pietism, he always retaffied
signs of personal exceUence ; and ffis Christian
earnestness is said not to have been destroyed by
his specffiations. His autobiography furnishes us
with the means for the fffil comprehension of his
character, and shows ffim to have been keenly alive
to the difficffities which the Enghsh literature had
suggested. His labours related to criticism, to exe-
b Semler (1725-1791), Professor at Halle. His Lehens-beschrei-
bung, published 178 1, is the great source for studying his mental
development and the history of his times. His works are numerous,
consisting chiefiy of Commentaries and Ecclesiastical History. He
was one of the first to open up the study of the history of doctrine
{dogmengeschichte). The works which exliibit his rationalism are
chiefly the Frei Untersuchen des Canons, 1771 ; Versuch einer
freiern lehrart, 1777; Introduction to Baumgarten s Dogmatik;
Institutiones ad Doctrinam Christianam liheraliter docendam, 1774-
His character is discussed at length in Tholuck, § 6 ; Pusey, 138,
<fec ; Schlosser, ii. 187 ; Am. Saintes, b. ii. oh. ii. and iii. On the
successors of the writers recently named, see Am. Saintes, b. ii.
ch. iv.

312 LECTURE VL
gesis, and to doctrffie. As a critic he did not restrict
himself to the examination of texts, but investigated
the canonicity of the books of Scripture''. It is
probable that the criticism commenced by R. Simon
and Spinoza furnished hints for his views. He was
one of the first to undervalue external evidence in
the formation of the canon. The determffiation of
the canon, i. e. of the list of books which are to be
considered scripture, is a question of fact. What ffid
the early church pronounce to be such ; and does
intemal evidence bear out the idea 1 Sender under
valued the historical evidence of the church's judg
ment, and replaced it, not by carefffi study of ffi
ternal critical evidence, like later rationahsm, but by
an d priori subjective decision, that only such books
were to be received as conduced to a rehgious
object. But it is ffi exegesis that he enunciated
the prfficiples wffich have left a permanent effect.
He estabHshed what is caUed the ffistorical method
of interpretation''.
In the course of Christian history, tffiee great
methods for the interpretation of scripture have
been used ; the aUegorical, the dogmatic, and the

c In the woi-k on the Canon named in the last note.
¦1 See the historic sketch of interpretation given in Planck's
Introduction to Sacred Philology, (English translation, 168-186).
Interesting information is supplied in Credner's article Interpretation
in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopcedia ; J. J. Conybeare's Bampton Lec
ture for 1824 on the Secondary Interpretation of Scripture ; Dr. S.
Davidson's Sacred Hermeneutics (5-7); and an article in the North
British Review for August 1855 on the Alexandrian school.

LECTURE VL 313
grammatical". In the early church the tendency in
the maffi was to the aUegorical ; in the midffie ages
to the doginatic ; at the Renaissance and Reforma
tion to the grammatical, wffich however in the seven
teenth century was displaced by the aUegoricaF and
dogmatic ; and it was the work of Ernesti to restore
it. Semler added the historic ; by which is meant
the method, wffich, after discovering the grammatical
sense of the words, rests content exactly with the
meanffig wffich the circumstances of society could
permit scripture to have at that age. It dechnes
to search for mystical senses, or to use dogma as
a clue to ffiterpretation. This principle, so valuable
m itself, yet, when abused, so fruitful ffi producffig
rationahsm, was the ffiscovery of Semler.
The appHcation of this method of ffiterpretation
led ffim to the theory generaUy known by the name of
"accommodations." He felt a strong reaction agaffist
^ These tendencies must be considered only to express the average.
Thus the school of Antioch, of which Theodore of Mopsuestia is a
type, leaned to the grammatical mode ; (see some remarks on it in
Neander's Church History, vol. iv. init Germ. ed. ; vol. iii. fin.
Engl. Tr.) In the middle ages the Franciscans showed an inclina
tion to the mystical or allegorical ; and the typical system of the
Miracle Plays and of the Biblia Pauperum illustrates the allegorical
spirit of those times.
f The allegorical is seen in the school of Cocceius (i 603-1 669)
in the Dutch church. The dogmatic has been alluded to above.
e The system is called variously, in works of Hermeneutics, o-vy-
Kard^acris, condescensio, demissio, obsequium. It is developed in
Semler's Prolegomena to some of St. Paul's Epistles ; in the Vor-
bereitung zur Theol Hermeneutik, 1762 ; and in the Apparatus ad
lib. Nov. Test interpr. it6'j. Tholuck quotes many instances of it

314 LECTURE VL
the forgetfuffiess shown by the old dogmatic orthodoxy,
which had regarded the Bible as one book, instead of
a coUection or historic series of books, -and had con
founded together the Jewish and Cffiistian ffispensa-
tions and taken no cognizance of the development of
religious knowledge ffi scripture. Accordingly he
desired to remove the deist ffifficulty by separatffig
the eternal truth in scripture from what he considered
to be local and temporary. Our Lord's own decla
ration. '', that the Mosaic law of ffivorce was an adap
tation to the particffiar needs of the age, seemed to
estabhsh the vaHdity of the prfficiple that revelation
was an accommodation to be judged of by the ffis
toric circumstances of the age for which it was ffi
tended. The prfficiple had been appHed by EngHsh
theologians' : but it needed a delicate ffisight to
apply it safely. Semler ffitroduced it inffiscriminately
into prophecy, miracle, and doctrffie ; and stated his
views in a form which, though weU meant, is cer
tainly most repulsive. We may cite an ffistance in
the case of his view of the demoffiacal possessions
of the New Testament'*. Not denyffig them, Semler
in reference to him. (ii. 6i) Concerning the subject see Planck's In
troduction to Sacred Philology, (E. T.) 152-168; Wegscheider, Inst.
Theol. § 25; Bretschneider, Hist-Dogm. Auslegung des N. T. 1806.
A list of foreign works in reference to it is given at the end of the
article Accommodation, in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopcedia. For a
criticism on it see J. J. Conybeare's Bampton Lecture for 1824.
(Lect. VII.) h Mark x. 5.
j E.g. By Kidder in his Testimony of the Messias, 1694 ; NichoUs,
Conference with a Theist, 1733 ; and by Sykes, in several works
from about 1720-40.
^ 'Dr. Pusey speaks (Inquiry, p. 139, n.) of two works by Semler

LECTURE VL 315
probably considered them to be nothing but the
ffiseases of epflepsy and madness. But he did not
ridicule the narrative as a deist would, nor explaffi
the facts away as legends or myths, as is the plan of
the later schools, nor account for them by the suppo
sition that the apostles were left in ignorance about
physical science, and inspired only ffi religious know
ledge ; but he regarded the narrative as an ffiten-
tional accommodation on the part of the teachers to
their hearers, and consequently stated ffis views ffi a
form which is the more repulsive as seemffig to
impute dishonesty'. He went so far as to consider
some of the doctrines of the New Testament to be an
accommodation on the part of our Lord to the Jewish
notions ; and regarded Christ's work as the com
promise between the Mosaic and phUosophical parties
in the Jewish church, which afterwards were repre
sented in the Christian by St. Peter and St. Paffi
respectively •". Though he himself held the apostles'
creed, and was shocked at some later developments
of unbelief", yet he seems to have considered prac
tical morality to be at once the sole aim of Christi-
on Demons, (of which I have seen only the second, 1779,) the first
directed against the belief in the occurrence of possessions in the
present day ; the second to show that some of the Greek words
descriptive of such phenomena in the New Testament need not
necessarily imply superhuman agency.
1 Because it seemed to involve the notion of dissimulation on the
part of the scripture writers, or even of the divine Being.
™ Introd. ad Doctr. Christianam, b. i. See Am. Saintes, p. 107.
° E. g. The Wolfenbiittel Fragments. See Am. Saintes, p. 86,
and Niemeyer's Letzte Aesserungen ueber Religioese Gegenstaende
zwei tage von seinem tode, which he quotes.

316 LECTURE VL
anity, and the supreme rule of doctrine". He
founded no school; but his influence decidedly iffi-
tiated the rationalist movement withffi the church ;
one pecuharity of which wffi be found to be, that it
was professeffiy designed in defence of the church,
not as an attack upon it.
The tendency which we have just studied was
witffin the church. The two now about to be named
were external to it. The one, earnest and scholar
like, formed chiefly on the model of EngHsh deism,
is represented by Lessffig. The other, modefled after
Rousseau, was practical rather than inteflectual, and
aimed at remodelhng education as wefl as altering
belief
Lessing P, a name honoured ffi the ffistory of htera
ture, is little known ffi England, save by ffis exqffi-
site comparison of art and poetry, cafled the Laocooni.
He was one of those whose labours remaffi for the
benefit of other ages, like that of the coral worms,
wffich die, but leave their work. That a native
° His doctrinal views are seen in the Lebens-beschreibung, part ii.
p. 2 20, (fee.
P Lessing (1729-178 1). In 1754 he joined Nicholai and Men
delsohn in literary criticism ; in 1 757, in the BibUothek der Schonen
Wissenschaften ; and in 1765, in the Allgem. Deutsch. Biblioth.
An account of his life and literary character may be seen in the
Foreign Quarterly Review (No. 50) for 1840; and an able criticism
on him by C. DoUfus in the Revue Germanique for i860 (vol. ix.).
Consult also Menzel's Deutsch. Litt. iii. 291, &c. ; Metcalfe's work
based ou Vilmar, p. 400 seq. A separate study of his theological
opinions was made by C. Schwartz in 1854, entitled Lessing als
Tlieolog, especially c. iv ; see also Bartholmess, b. ii. ch. ii.
1 Published in 1766.

LECTURE VL 317
German Hterature exists, is the work of Lessing as
pioneer; that it is worth studying, is the resffit of
ffis criticism and influence. Findffig hterature just
arising, and the ffispute stifl ragffig between the
Saxon and Swiss schools, whether it should model
itself after reason and form hke the French hterature,
or after nature and the soffi Hke the Enghsh, (28)
he showed the true mode of uniting the two by turn
ffig attention to Greek models ; and, ffi conjunction
with Nicholai and the Jewish phUosopher Mendel
sohn, estabHshed a critical perioffical, wffich became
the agency for a hterary reformation. But the point
of ffiterest, in relation to our present subject, is ffis
influence on rehgion. Avaflffig himself of the right
wffich ffis position as Hbrarian of Wolfenbiittel, a
smaU town near Brunswick, gave him to pubhsh
manuscripts found ffi the Hbrary, he effited, in 1774
and the four foflowffig years, several fragments of
a larger work, which he professed to have found.
They are usuafly cafled the Wolfenbiittel frag
ments. (29) Tffi recently their authorship remained
a secret. They are now known to have been written
by the learned Hamburg phflosopher, Reimarus'".
They treated very nearly the same subjects, and in
much the same tone, but Avith consummate skifl, as
the EngHsh deists. Reimarus, as is now known, in
the ffitroduction'* to the larger unprinted work from
wffich they were extracted, gave ffis own ffiteflectual
' H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768). See Schlosser, ii. 26, &c., and the
article Reimarus in the Conversations-Lexicon.
» See Note 29.

318 LECTURE VL
ffistory, ffis early doubts on the doctrines of the
Trffiity, and the destruction of the heathen; and also
on the ffistory of the Old and New Testaments ; and
ends, Hke the English deists, with resting ffi natural
reHgion. The first two* fragments, pubHshed by Lessffig,
touched offiy upon the question of tolerating deists,
and on the custom of declaimffig agaffist human
reason in the pffipits. The third referred to the im
possibffity that aU men should be brought to beHeve
revelation on rational evidence. The fourth and fifth
attacked the Old Testament ffistory, such as the
passage of the Red Sea. The sixth directed an
assaffit against the New Testament ; pointing out
with imsparing severity the ffiscrepancies ffi the ac
counts of the resurrection. The concludffig one was
on the object of Christiaffity, in wffich our blessed
Lord's hfe and work were represented as a defeated
pohtical reform.
These views however were not professedly sanc
tioned by Lessffig, for he added notes in reffitation of
them, and stated his object to be merely to stimffiate
free ffiquiry". His wish was gratffied ffi the tre
mendous effect which the pubhcation produced. In
the literary controversy which ensued, and which
' The Fragments are here named according to the order of their
original publication ; not that in which they are usually printed, as,
e. g. in the Berlin edition, 1835.
» Compare Strauss's description of them in his Leben Jesu, Introd.
§ 5. Lessing's own object in their pubUcation is expressed in the
concluding pages of his edition of them.

LECTURE VL 319
embittered his few remainffig days'^, he explained
himself to be a doubter rather than a ffisbeliever;
and defended himself by urging the distinctness of
the rehgious element in scripture from the scientffic ;
asserting that, as Christianity existed before the New
Testament, so it could exist after it. The Christian
rehgion is not true, he said, merely because evange-
Hsts and apostles taught it ; but they taught it
because it is trae. And in order to restore Cffiist
iaffity to its true place in the estimation of thinkffig
men, he composed or effited a wefl-known work^ on
the Education of the World ^ which became a fertfle
source of thought for the phflosophy of ffistory, and
was designed to explam the function of the Jewish
rehgion ffi reference to the Christian, and to the
world. The theology of Lessing's coadjutors however,
if not also that of Lessing himself, ffid not rise
ffigher than that of the more serious among the
English deists ^

^ The chief opposition arose from Goze, a pastor of Hamburg,
who attacked Lessing even before the last and most obnoxious frag
ment was published ; but both Semler and Jerusalem also wrote
against him. See Boden's Lessing und Ooze, Eine Beitrag zur Lit.
und Kirchengeseh. des i8, Jahrh. 1862 ; also the references given at
the end of Note 29 ; especially Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 275,
note. y See the note on p. 122.
^ Die Erziehung des menschlichen Oeschlechts, lately partially
translated into English. It conveyed the thoughts suggested by
the perusal of some apologies for religion.
" The theologians Steinbart and Teller represented a similar spirit.

320 LECTURE VL
The other tendency, more decidedly sceptical even
than that of Lessffig, gave defiffite form to the ex
treme sceptical opffiions excited by French pffiloso
phy, which had been fermentffig ffi German society,
and had earher expressed themselves. It is best
represented by Edelmann'', and by the unhappy
Baffidt, who passed graduaUy from Semler's school
ffito this. Its religious tenets were simple natural
ism, moral as distffict from positive reHgion; and it
was connected with the attempt by Basedow "=, pa-
troffised by Frederick, to estabhsh educational ffisti
tutions on the model proposed in Rousseau's EmUe.
The name wffich it gave to the movement was,
the Period of Enhghtenment (Aufklarung-zeit) '',
which expressed the consciousness of ffiumffiation,
and the yeamffig for dehverance which was findffig
its expression ffi France ; and tffis name therefore
b On Edelmann, who died 1767, see Kahnis, p. 126; and on
Bahrdt, (1741-92), Id. pp. 136-145; and Schlosser, ii. 211. The
life of Bahrdt is a sad subject for study. Kahnis (p. 125 seq.) enu
merates other deists, some of them earlier than those whom we are
now considering, e. g. Knuzen, Dippel, (1673-1734).
c See the reference above, p. 309.
<3 The contrast of the English, French, and German periods of
illuminism is well drawn out by Kuno Fischer (Bacon, ch. xi. 2, 3,
and xiii. 3). I have been unable to discover positively whether the
term in its first use meant merely Renaissance (cfr. the Italian term
illuminati), or whether it meant the philosophy which makes its
appeal to common sense, being connected with the Cartesian prin
ciple, wahr ist, was Mar ist The former appears almost certain ;
but some of the German writers seem to favour the latter. On
its nature, see Kahnis, p. 61-53.

LECTURE VL 321
has been usuafly adopted among foreign writers to
describe tffis period of the ffistory.
Such are the historical tendencies from about 1750
tffi about 1790 — cold but learned orthodoxy ; the
commencement of critical rationalism, and open deism.
About that time new ffifluences came ffito operation,
the effects of wffich are at once evident. Without
takffig account of the excitement caused by the
pohtical events of the French revolution, we may
name two such new causes of movement — the hte
rary influence of the court of Weimar, and the pffi
losophy of Kant.
The centres of ffiteflectual activity ffi Germany
now changed. We are so apt to forget that Ger
many, especiaUy at the end of the last century,
formed a set of ffidependent prfficipahties, which
varied in taste, ffi behef, and in hterary tone, that
we fafl to reahse the ffiffividuality of the scenes of
hterary activity. At the end of the last century
there was one spot wffich became the very focus of
ffiteUectual hfe. The court of Karl Auguste at
Weimar, ffisignfficant ffi pohtical importance, was
great ffi the history of the human mffid e. There
were gathered there most of the mighty spirits of
the golden age of German Hterature, — Herder, Wie-
e A very interesting article on Weimar and its celebrities appeared
in the Westminster Review for April 1859. The illustration about
the court of Ferrara, just below, is taken from it. Mr. G. H. Lewes,
in his Life of Goethe, gives incidentally sketches of the intellectual
and moral influence of the court of Weimar.

322 LECTURE VL
land, Goethe, ScffiUer, Jean Paffi ; a consteUation of
ffiteUect unequaUed sffice the court of Ferrara in the
days of Alphonso *"- The influence made itself felt
ffi the adjacent university of Jena ; and tffis Httle
semmary became from that time for about twenty
years s, untfl the foundation of Berhn, the ffist uffi
versity ffi Germany. In it alone the phflosophy of
Kant became naturalized ''. Some of the ablest men
in Germany were its Professors ; and about tffis
time Jena and Weimar became the stronghold of free
thought. Except ffi the case of Herder', the Hterary influ
ence was not directly influential on theology. But
it gave moral support to theological movement;
though ffitimately, by ffitroducffig a truer and more
subjective appreciation of human nature, it was the
means of generatffig the deep ffisight in the critical
f Alfonso d'Este reigned from 1 505-34. He was the husband of
Lucrezia Borgia.
s i. e. from about 1790 to 1810.
h Kant's great work, Kritik der rdnen Vernunft, appeared in
178 1, but was not known out of Konigsberg until one of his
disciples, Schulze in 1784, elucidated it in a separate work. The
Jenaische Literatur-zeitung also favoured it. In 1786 Reinhold
became Professor at Jena, and began to teach Kant's system. See
Schlosser, vol. ii. p. 182-4.
i Herder did not adopt the new philosophy of Kant. His theolo
gical writings were rather earlier than 1790. They created a love
for the literature of young nations, and for the Hebrew religion, in a
literary rather than a spiritual point of view. On Herder's religious
influence, see Schlosser, ii. 278, &c. ; and the article by Hagenbach
in Herzog's Realen-E ney clop ; also Hagenbach's Gesch. des 18 Jahrh.
§ 4 and 5 ; and Quinet's (Euvres, vol. ii.

LECTURE VL 323
taste of thinkffig men which furnished the death
blow to rationahsm. The same remark is true of
the effects of the phflosophy of Kant'^. Its ffitimate
resffit was valuable in removffig the eudsemonism
common ffi etffics, and turning men's attention to the
moral law withffi. But its immeffiate effects were to
reffiforce the appeal to reason, and to destroy revela
tion by leaving nothffig to be revealed.
The nature of this system, so far as is necessary
for our purpose, may be soon told. Kant, ffissatisfied
with the distrust in the human facffities ffiduced by
the scepticism of Hume, and the one-sided sensation
ahsm of Condffiac, carried a penetratffig analysis
into the human facffities' ; attempting to perform
with more exactness the work of Locke, to measure
the human mind, which is the soundffig-Hne, before
k Kant lived 17 24-1 804. On his philosophy see Chalybaus
Hist of Speculative Philosophy (translated 1854); Am. Saintes'
Philos. de Kant, 1844 ; Cousin, Leqons de la Phil, de Kant, 1843.
A good account of it also is given in Morell's Hist, of Philosophy,
i. 233-63, in R. Vaughan's (sen.) Essays, and in a Lecture by Pro
fessor Mansel on the Philosophy of Kant, i860. See also the
references in Tennemann's Manual, § 387—94. In reference to its
theological effects, see Am. Saintes' Critical History of Rationalism,
ii. 5 and 6 ; Bartholmess, b. v. and vi. The parts of Kant's writings
which are of special importance for ascertaining his theological views
are, his work Die Religion innerhalb der Orenzen der blossen Ver
nunft 1793, and his criticism on natural theology in the Kritik der
rdnen Vernunft, b. ii. div. 3. See Strauss, Leben Jesu, introd. § 7.
Staiidlin, Ammon, and Tieftrunk, were Kantist theologians.
1 In the Kritik der rdnen Vernunft above named, which was so
called because he strove to analyse the pure reason, before it is de
filed by contact with the world through experience.
Y 2

324 LECTURE VL
fathoming the ocean of knowledge. Like Copernicus
invertffig astronomy, he reversed metaphysics,, by re-
ferrffig classes of ideas to ffiward causes wffich before
had been referred to outer.
He detected, as he supposed, innate forms of
thought"" ffi the mental structure, wffich form the
conffitions under which knowledge is possible. When
he appHed ffis system to give a phflosophy of etffics
and reHgion, he asserted nobly the law of duty
written ffi the heart", but identffied it with rehgion.
Rehgious ideas were regarded as true regffiatively,
not specffiatively. Revelation was reunited with
reason, by beffig resolved into the natural reHgion
of the heart. Accordffigly, the moral effect of tffis
philosophy was to expel the French materiahsm and
iUuminism ", and to give depth to the moral percep
tions : its rehgious effect was to strengthen the appeal
to reason and the moral judgment as the test of reh
gious truth ; to render miraculous commuffication of
moral ffistruction useless, if not absurd; and to re
awaken the attempt, wffich had been laid aside sffice
the Wolffian phflosophy, of endeavourffig to find a
phflosophy of religion P. From tffis time ffi German
m The categories, the test of the existence of which is necessity
and universality.
o This appears in his Kritik der practischen Vernunft.
o Illuminism is used as the translation of aufklaerung-zdt.
P The difference between Wolff and Kant is, that while the former
sought a philosophy of religion ontologically, the latter sought it
psychologicaUy, by first ascertaining the functions of the mind in
reference to religion.

LECTURE VL 325
theology we shaU find the existence of the twofold
movement; the critical one, the lawfffi descendant of
Semler, examiffing the ffistoric revelation ; and the
phflosopffical one, the offshoot of the system of Kant, '
seekffig for a phflosophy of reHgion.
Durffig the next twenty years, from 1790 to 181 o,
when so many ffifluences were operatffig ffi common,
it is not easy to measure the effect of the specu
lative plffiosophy upon particular mffids with such
exactness as to ascertaffi wffich ought properly to
be classed ffi the destructive tendency, and which
gave signs of the reaction. We must however be
carefffi to exclude those younger mffids 1 that were
already appearffig on the field, to become the heroes
of the subsequent history, whose tone was so deci-
deffiy affected by new influences as to belong to the
age of reaction.
In tffis sub-period we may name three tendencies :
(i) the contffiuation of the Exegesis maugurated in
the last epoch by Semler, untfl about the end of the
century it found its utmost hmit ffi Paffius ""j — the
resffit of the age of ffiumffiation ; (2) a dogmatic
tendency, more or less the growth of new influences
ffitroduced by the new phflosophy, which attempted
to reconcfle reason with the supernatural, and may
be represented ffi its nearest approach to orthodoxy,
1 Such as Schleiermacher.
" Paulus, 1761-1851 ; Professor at Jena, and from 1811 at
Heidelberg. Some of his worM' are named below.

326 LECTURE VL
at the end of this period, by Bretschneider = ; and
(3) the awakeffing of a ffistffict expression of the
appeal to the supernatural which had never quite
ffied out ffi the church, ffi the Arminianism of Rem-
hardt in the north, and of Storr ffi the south*. The
last needs no further ffivestigation ; but we shafl con
sider briefly the other two.
The exegetical method which formed the ffist was
that which is now usuaUy caUed the old or common-
sense rationalism". Tffis form of rationahsm ffiffered
from the EngHsh deism and French naturalism, in
not regardffig the Bible as fabulous ffi character, and
the device of priestcraft " ; but offiy deffied the super-
s K. G. Bretschneider, 1776-1848 ; General Superintendent at
Gotha. A short autobiography was published after his death, which
is translated in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1852-3. His best work is
the Hcmdbuch der Dogmatik, 1814, 1838. He was the writer of
the Probabilia concerning St. John's Gospel, named in Lect. VII.
' F. Reinhardt (1753-1812) of Saxony. His supernaturalism was
perhaps rather ethical than biblical. (See Kahnis, 187, Am. Saintes,
c. viii.) Storr (1746-1805) was Professor at Tiibingen. The belief
in the supernatural had never died out. A philosophical superna
turalism was seen in Flatt, Planck, Schroch, and a truly biblical
kind in Knapp. Along with Reinhardt ought perhaps to be
reckoned Morus and Doderlein ; at a little earlier period Seller, and
a little later Steudel : on this school see Am. Saintes, ch. iv.
" i. e. Rationalismus Vulgaris. On Rationalism, see Note 21. On
this particular kind see Kahnis, p. 1 69. It is distinguished from
naturalism chiefly by being connected with the church, and by the
opinion that it is the very essence of Christianity. It was repre
sented by Paulus in criticism, Wegscheider in dogma, and Rbhr in
preaching. =< As Woolston, Bolingbroke, and Voltaire. Cfr. Strauss. Leb.
Jes. Introd. § 5.

LECTURE VL 327
natural. By them the apostles had been regarded as
impostors ; and scripture was not offiy not received
as ffivffie, but not even respected as an ordffiary ffis
torical record ; whereas rationahsm was ffitended
as a defence agaffist this view. It deffied offiy the
revealed character of scripture, and treated it as an
ordmary history ; and, distffiguishmg broadly between
the fact related and the judgment on the fact, sought
to separate the two, and explained away the superna
tural element, such as miracles, as beffig orientalisms
ffi the narrative, adapted to an ffifant age, wffich an
enhghtened age must translate ffito the language of
ordmary events.
Eichhorn at Gottffigen y applied this view to the
Old Testament. Deemffig miracles impossible, he ffid
not regard them as fraud, but admitted on the con
trary that the agents or narrators honestly beheved
them. The supernatural was not imparted to deceive,
but was the resffit ' of oriental modes of speech, such
as hyperbole, parable, or effipsis, ffi wffich the steps
by which the process was performed were omitted.
The smoke of Sinai was considered a thunderstorm ;
the shming of Moses's face a natural phenomenon.
The prmciples wffich Eichhorn applied to the Old
Testament, Paffius of Jena extended to the New".
y Eichhorn (1752-1827), one of the most learned men ofhis age.
For illustrations see his Einleitung, § 435, and cfr. § 421. The
instances cited in the text, from one of his works which the writer
could not consult, are quoted from the British Quarterly Review,
No. 26 ; cfr. also Strauss, Leben-Jesu, § 6.
2 In his Exeget Handb. des Neuen Test The account will be

328 LECTURE VL
The miracffious cures were explaffied by an eUipsis
in the omission of the natural remedies ; the castmg
out of devUs as the power of a wise man over the in
sane ; the transfiguration as the confused recoUection
of sleeping men, who saw Jesus with two unknown
friends, ffi the beautifffi Hght of the momffig among
the mountains : nay, trespassffig on stffi more holy
ground, he dared impiously to explaffi away the re
surrection of our blessed Lord by the hypothesis that
ffis death was offiy apparent. These are a specimen of
the mode of exegesis adopted in this school, which is
usuaUy specfficaUy caUed Rationahsm. In tffis mode
Jesus appeared to be merely a wise and virtuous
man; and ffis miracles were merely acts of skffi or
accident. Paffius presented tffis as the original
Christianity. The theory ffid not last long, save in
the mind of its author, who lived untU a recent pe
riod, to see the entire change of critical behef. Attri-
butmg the supernatural to ignorance, it ffid not even
propose, hke the later schools, to explaffi the marvel-
lousness of the phenomena, objectively by so plausible
a theory as legends, nor subjectively by myths ^^ : it
found by referring to the respective narratives. See also his com
mentary on the miracle of the tribute money, and of the feeding the
multitudes. See Kahnis, pp.(i7i-6). Eichhorn stopped short when
he came to apply his principles to the New Testament. L. Bauer
(Hebr. Mythol), Gabler, Vater, Bertholdt, Von Lengerke, and Von
Bbhlen, though some of them were affected by later infiuences, be
longed in the main to this rationalist critical school.
»' The difference of legend and myth is now well known. " Myth
is the creation of a fact out of an idea ; legend the seeing an idea

LECTURE VL 329
was too clumsy, not to say irreverent, an explanation
of the facts to satisfy a people of deep and poetical
soffi hke the Germans.
Whfle this is a specimen of the critical side of
rationalism, its dogmatic side varied from natural
etffics to a kind of Sociffianism. But in afl ahke,
as its name woffid imply, it not only asserted that
there is offiy one universal revelation, which takes
place tffiough observation of nature and man's
reason; but that Christiaffity was not designed to
teach any mysterious truths, but only to confirm
the rehgious teachffig of reason ; and that no one
ought to recogffise as true that which cannot be
proved to him rationafly. The doctrffie of a Triffity
was necessarily ffisbeheved ; the death of Cffiist
regarded as an ffistoric event, or a symbol that
sacrffices were aboHshed. Hohness was reduced to
morahty. Extreme veneration for the Bible was
cafled Bibholatry ''. ReHgion was represented as
acting by natural motives : the ethical superseded

in a fact." Strauss, Leb. Jes. Einl. § lo. The myth is purely the'
work of imagination, the legend has a nucleus of fact.
b Henke, 1752-1809, Professor at Helmstadt, is said to have
been the first who made use of the term " Bibliolatry" in the pre
face to his Lineamenta Instit. Fidei Christiana;. He probably how
ever only brought it into use. (The writer remembers to have seen
it occur somewhere earlier, but cannot recall the reference.) He
was a church historian of great learning, whose works have been
frequently used for reference in Lect. V. Kahnis speaks with great
respect (p. 177) of his earnestness. For Henke's position as a
church historian see a note in the Preface to these Lectures.

330 LECTURE VL
the ffistoric. The early theologians of this dogmatic
branch of the school are now Httle known ; but we
may name Bretschneider" as the type of the least
heretical portion of it at the close of tffis period,
who beheved Cffiistiaffity to be a repubhcation of
natural religion, supernatural but reasonable: and,
as the literary tendency of this school contffiued to
exist ffi Roffi ^, after the movement had become ex-

c Concerning Bretschneider see a preceding note on p. 326.
Bretschneider shows in his reply to Mr. Rose, and in his Autobio
graphy, that he was much hurt at being classed with the rationalists.
In truth the dogmatic tendency which we are here describing admits,
as is shown more fully in Note 21, of a twofold subdivision, (i)
" Rationalists" proper, who are pure Socinians, but hardly believe
in the supernatural element of revelation : such were Wegscheider
and Rbhr ; also Echermann and C. F. A. Fritsche may be reckoned
with the same school (see Kahnis, 177 seq. ; Am. Saintes, ch. vii.);
and (2) " Rational Supernaturalists," like Bretschneider, Schott of
Jena (1780-1835), and Tzchirner of Leipsic (1778-1828), who be
lieved in a supernatural revelation, but held to the supremacy of
reason ; — a position not very unlike Locke's in the Reasonableness
of Christianity. The tone of opinion changed so much in Germany
after 1830, that Bretschneider, who in earlier life had been con
sidered to lean towards orthodoxy as opposed to rationalism, ap
peared in later life, though really standing still, to side with the
rationalists against the reaction which took place in favour of super
naturalism. A volume of sermons, translated by Baker in 1829,
called The German Pulint, contains, along with a few sermons of
more spiritual tone, many sermons by preachers of this school. See
on this school Am. Saintes, ch. viii. Mr. Rose also has collected
many facts in reference to this part of the subject ; also Staiidlin
in his Gesch. des Rat. und Supernat, and P. A. Stapfer (Arch, du
Christianisme, 1824,) quoted by Rose (second edition).
d J. F. Rbhr (17 7 7- 1848), Superintendent at Weimar ; noted as

LECTURE VL 331
tffict ffi other mffids, so Wegscheider*, untfl a recent
period, was the solitary instance of the dogmatic
position shghtly modffied.
This completes the history of the first of the three
movements, the destructive action of rationahsm.
The most flourishffig period of this form of it was
about the beginnffig of the present century. We
have seen it origffiatffig ffi the rational tone of
Wolff's phflosophy, and the weU-meant but ffi-judged
exegesis wffich Semler exhibited under the pressure
of sceptical ffifficffities. Stimffiated by critical inves
tigations, and by the strong wish wffich operated
on our own theologians, to find the cause of every
thffig, its adherents were led ffito a disbelief of the
supernatural, and ended ffi explainffig away the
miracffious, and reducffig Christianity to natural
rehgion. The movement, it wffi be observed, was
professedly not ffitended to be destructive of Christ
iaffity. Instead of beffig ffiirffical, it origffiated with
the clergy, and aimed at harmonizing Christianity
with reason. But it contaffied its own death. The
negative criticism is essentiaUy temporary.
The activity of thought was already producing
change. We have previously stated that even the
Kantian pffilosophy itself, though at first stimulating
the appeal to reason, fostered a deeper perception of
a preacher. His Historical Geography of Palestine has been trans
lated. « Wegscheider (1771-1848); Professor at Halle. His chief
work is Inst. Tlieol. Chr. Dogmat 181 3.

332 LECTURE VL
duty, and thus prepared the way for a moral re-
awakenffig ^.
We shafl accorffingly now proceed to state the
causes which ffitroduced new elements ffito the cur
rent of pubhc thought; and then describe the gradual
progress of the reactionary movement wffich ensued
from them.
Four causes are usually assigned. The first of
them was the ffitroduction of new systems of specu
lative phUosophy.
It is not unusual, ffi those who have no taste for
specffiation, and who understand offiy the prosaic,
though ffi some respects the truer, phUosophy of
Scotland, to despise the great systems of German
specffiation. Yet, if the series be measured as an
example of the power of the human mind, whatever
may be the opiffion formed ffi respect to its correct
ness, it stands among the most ffiteresting efforts
of thought. Though the writers can be matched by
isolated examples ffi former ages, perhaps no series
of writers exists, hardly even the Greek, certamly
not the Neo-Platoffist nor the Cartesian, wffich, in
far-reacffing penetration, ffi mffiuteness of analysis,
ffi briffiancy of imagffiation, ffi loftffiess of genius,
in poetry of expression, in grasp of ffiteUect, in
influence on every branch of thought or Hfe, approxi
mates to the series of fllustrious thinkers wffich
f Hundeshagen calls Kant a second Moses, on account of the
moral revolution which his teaching effected.

LECTURE VL 333
commenced with Kant and ended with Hegel ^.
The two phflosophers at tffis time whose teachffig
formed a new influence, were Fichte'' and Jacobi'.
Detafls ffi reference to their systems must be sought
elsewhere''. It is only possible here to indicate
their central thought, in order to notice their effects
on theological inquiry.
We have seen that Kant had reconsidered the
great problem, commenced by Descartes and Locke,
concernffig the ground of certitude, and the nature of
knowledge ; and had revolutionised phflosophy, by at-
tributffig to the natural structure of the mffid many
of those ideas which had usuaUy been supposed to be
derived from experience. In his system he had left
two elements, a formal and a material ; the formal, or
innate forms, tffiough which the mind gains know-
s i. e. Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel ; on whom see
Morell, ii. ch. v. § 2, and Chalybaiis, History of Speculative Philo
sophy. ^ J. G. Fichte (1762-1814); Professor at Jena ; deprived for the
supposed atheistic tendency ofhis philosophy (1799); afterwards
Professor at Berlin. His great work is his Wissenschafts-lehre,
1794. He was the author of the celebrated patriotic addresses to
the German people. The educational institutions of Pestalozzi were
founded on Fichte's philosophy, as Basedow's on Rousseau. See
Kahnis, p. 216.
i Jacobi (1743-1819) ; President of the academy of sciences at
Munich. •f On Fichte see Chalybaiis, ch. vi. and vii. ; Tennemann, Manual
§400-5; Morell, ii. p. 89-122; Lewes, History of Philosophy ;
Mansel's art. on Metaphydcs in Encycl. Briton, p. 607. On Jacobi
see Chalybaiis, ch. iii. ; Tennemann, § 415 ; Morell, ii. 402; Am.
Saintes, part ii. ch. xiii.

334 LECTURE VL
ledge, and the material, presented from external
sources. It was the former or ideal element which
was examined by Fichte ; the latter by Jacobi.
Fichte began to teach at Jena soon after 1790.
Grasping firmly Descartes' principle, " Cogito, ergo
sum," he conceived that, as we can only know our
selves, there is no proof that the datum supposed
to be external is anything but a form of our own
consciousness ; and thus he arrived at a subjective
idealism not unlike that of bishop Berkeley '- Under
his view God was offiy an idea or form of thought ; a
regffiative principle of human belief, the moral order
of which the mind was conscious ffi the universe ;
and, as atheism was suspected to foUow as an
inference from his views, he became the subject of
persecution. But the instincts of the heart, as weU
as the arguments of the understanding, were too
potent for him ; and when he had thus as it were
shut up man within the circle of his own finite self,
he strove to find a logical passage into a knowledge
of the infinite by a principle analogous to that of
Spffioza; viz. by regardffig both self and the outer
world, the subjective and objective, to be identified
in some absolute self-existence, of which they were
respectively phases™.
This aim was offiy partiaUy effected by Fichte,
and was completed by his distinguished successor,
1 This atheistic corollary is not deducible from Berkeley's system,
and was not designed by Fichte.
^ See Chalybaiis, ch. viii. ; and Morell, ii. ri8.

LECTURE VL 335
ScheUing". Schelling saw that the subjective ten
dency had been pushed too far ; and, relyffig on the
spiritual sense tffiough which men of afl ages have
conceived that they saw the infinite, the reality of
which accordffigly seems to be attested by a uni
versal induction, he tried to grasp the idea of the
self-existent One, who is the one absolute Reality,
the one eternal Being, the eternal Source from which
afl other light is derived, and from which afl things
develope. " InteUectual ffitffition" he thought to be
the means by which we have this knowledge of the
infinite, and are able to trace the development of
it mto its limitations in nature and in the mind.
The method is analogous to that of Spinoza, save
that the infinite is studied dynamicaUy instead of
mechanicaUy, as a movement not a substance, in
time not in space.
The roU of these great thinkers, whose speculations
were suggested by the formal side of Kant's phflo
sophy, is not yet fffil. But the two which have been
named wrote and affected thought, the one before,
the other soon after, the commencement of the pre
sent century. Hegel foflowed in the same track, but
influenced thought at a later period "- He too aimed
at solvffig the same problem as Schelling : he too
sought to transcend the conditions of object and sub
ject which limit thought ; but it was by assuming a
o Schelling (17 7 4- 1854), Professor at Munich and Berlin. See
Chalybaus, ch. ix-xii. ; Tennemann, § 406-11; Morell, ii. 122-161;
Bartholmess, Hist. Crit. des Docir. Relig. b. ix.
0 1770-1831. See Lect. VII.

336 LECTURE VL
representative or mediate faculty that transcends
consciousness, and not, as ScheUing, an intuitional
or presentative P.
Such were the phUosophers who aimed at solving
the problem of knowledge and beffig from the ffitel-
lectual side. Jacobi on the other hand attempted it
from the emotional. Perceiving the necessity of
findffig some justffication for the material element
which Kant had assumed ffi ffis phUosophy, he sought
it in faith, ffi intuition, in the direct ffiward revela
tion of truth to the human mffid. He thought that,
as sensation gives us an immeffiate knowledge of the
world, so there is an inward sense by wffich we have
a direct and immediate revelation of supernatural
truth. It is this inward revelation which gives us
access to the material of trath. His position was
analogous to that of ScheUffig, but he asserted the
element of feeHng as wefl as ffitffition.
These phflosophies, of Fichte, Scheflffig, and Jacobi,
formed one class of influences, which were operatffig
about the beginnmg of the century, and were the
means of redeeming alike German literature and
theology. -Their ffist effect was to produce exami
nation of the primary prfficiples of belief, to excite
inquiry ; and, though at ffist offiy reffiforcing the idea
of morality, they ffitimately drew men out of them
selves into aspirations after the infinite spirit, and
developed the sense of dependence, of humUity, of
P See some remarks on this point in Mr. Mansel's Lecture on ihe
Philosophy of Kant.

LECTURE VL 337
imseffishness, of spirituality. They produced indeed
evfl effects ffi pantheism and ideology i ; but the
resffits were partial, the good was general. The
problem, What is truth 1 — was through their means
remitted to men for reconsideration ; and the answers
to it elicited, from the one school, — It is that which
I can know : — from the other, — It is that which I can
intuitively feel : — tffiew men upon those unalterable
and infaUible instincts which God has set in the
human breast as the everlasting landmarks of trath,
the study of which lifts men ffitimately out of
error. These systems had even a stiU more direct effect
on the public mind. They were the means of creating
a literature, which insinuated itself into pifblic
thought, and familiarised society with spiritual
apprehensions long obliterated. The school of lite
rature commonly caUed the Romantic ¦¦, commencing
with such writers as Scffiegel and Novalis, fanciful
as it may in some respects seem to be, created the
same change in the belief and tastes of the German
mind as the contemporary school of Lake Poets in
England. The German literature bore the marks
either of the old scholasticism, or of the materialism
introduced from France, or of the classic culture

<i Lect. VIL
f The Romantic school included L. F. Stolberg, the Schlegels,
Tieck, Novalis (Hardenberg), Fouqu6. See Kahnis, p. 202 ; Mo
rell, ii. 421 ; Vilmar. (English translation), p. 500 seq. ; Carlyle's
Essay on Novalis (Misc. Works, vol. ii.) ; and Bartholmess, ii. b. xi.
Z

338 LECTURE VL
introduced by Lessing and his coadjutors. The
element now revived was the mediseval element of
chivalry, the high and lofty courage, the delicate
Eesthetic taste, which had marked the middle ages.
Herder ^ to whom Germany owes much, disgusted
with the stoical and analytic spirit of the Kan
tian philosophy, had already attempted, and not in
vain, to throw the mind back to an appreciation
of old history, and especiaUy had manifested an
enthusiastic admiration of Hebrew literature ; but
now, as if by one general movement, the public
taste was tumed to an appreciation of the freshness
of feelffig, and fine elements of character, wffich
existed ffi the Christianity of the middle ages '.
This literary movement prepared the way for and
accompanied another, which, though occurrffig a little
later, may be reckoned as the third influence which
caused a religious reaction. Indeed it is the one to
which the Germans attribute the cffief effect. It is
s Herder, 1744-1803. See a previous note. His most inter
esting works were, the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry (translated 1802),
and the Philosophy of History (translated 1800).
t The influence of the movement extended into the Roman catho
lic church ; and Hermes, Moehler, and Goerres, were affected by it.
Hermes (1775-1831) was Professor at Bonn ; and, endeavouring
to flnd a philosophy for Romish doctrines, was opposed by his own
church. Moehler, 1796-1838, author of the Symbolik, which re
vived the controversy with Protestantism, and was answered by the
most learned Protestant theologians, has been pronounced (by
Schaff) to be the ablest Romish theologian since Bellarmine and
Bossuet. Goerres (17 7 6-1 848), a mystic writer in Bavaria. See
Am. Saintes, c. xx. ; and on Goerres see Quinet, (Euvr. vi. ch. vii.

LECTURE VL 339
found in the outburst of national patriotism which
took place in the liberation wars of 1813"; the spon
taneous chivalry which made the heart of Germany
beat as the heart of one man, to endeavour to hurl
back Napoleon beyond the limits of the common
fatherland. In that moment of deep public suffer
mg, the poetry and piety of the human heart brought
back the idea of God, and a spirit of moral earnest
ness. The national patriotism ==, which stffi lives in
the poetry of the time, expeUed seffishness : sorrow
impressed men with a sense of the vanity of material
things, and made their hearts yeam after the imma
terial, the spiritual, the immortal ; the sense of
terror threw them upon the God of battles. It was
the age of Marathon and Salamis revived; and the
effect was not less wonderfffi y.
A fourth influence remains to be noticed, which
was in its nature more strictly theological, and
limited to the church. When after the return of
peace the tercentenary of the Reformation was cele
brated in 18 17, an obscure theologian at Kiel,
named Harms ^, published a set of theses as supple-
" See Hundeshagen, Der Deutsch Prot. § 12 ; Kahnis, p. 223.
* This patriotism still lives in the poetry of Koerner.
y This allusion is used by Kahnis (p. 220). He also (p. 221)
refers the great outburst of historic study which followed, to the
historic sense then awakened.
2 Harms (1778-1855). See Am. Saintes, part ii. ch. ix ; Kahnis,
p. 223 seq., where some of Harms's Theses are given. They are
founded on the doctrinal spirit of the sixteenth century, and are full
of force and hupiour. Some of them are directed against rationalism ;
Z 2

340 LECTURE VL
ments to the celebrated theses of Luther, which, by
the excitement and controversy unexpectedly occa
sioned by them, turned attention anew to the study
of the reformational and biblical theology, and
created a revival of the spiritual element which was
too much forgotten.
Such were the four influences — the phflosophical,
the literary, the political, the spiritual, — which entered
into German life, and produced or increased the
reaction that took place in German theology in the
period which we are about to sketch.
We placed the limits of this second period from
about 1810 tiU the Hterary revolution caused by
alarm at Strauss's work in 1835"'. It was in 18 10,
in the depth of Prussian humUiation, when HaUe
had passed into one of the kingdoms dependent on
France, that the university of Berhn was founded.
Scffieiermacher, Neander, and De Wette, were its
teachers. The ffist was the soul of its theological
teaching; and tffiough his agency it became the
great source of a religious reaction. It is around

others are the asseveration of high Lutheran tenets. The following
are specimens : No. 3. " With the idea of a progressive reformation,
in the manner in which it is at present understood, Lutheranism will
be reformed back into heathenism." No. 21. "In the sixteenth
century the pardon of sins cost money after all ; in the nineteenth
it may be had without money, for people help themselves to it."
See Pelt in Herzog's Realen-Encyclop. sub voc.
a On this second period, see Schwarz's Oeschichte der Neuesten
Theologie, b. i. ; and for brief notices of the whole of the German
movement, see Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte (period 5).

LECTURE VL 341
these names that our studies most centre. The
signs indeed of some other movements are traceable.
The deistic rationalism is not dead, but it is dying :
it is a thing of the past : a return to strict dogmatic
orthodoxy is also visible in the Lutheran clergy
rather than in the university ; but it is as yet in
its infancy : and a new form of gnosticism is observ
able ffi the phUosophy of Hegel, but the fuU deve
lopment of it belongs to the next period. The field
is now occupied by the partial reaction to orthodoxy,
which aimed at a reconcUiation of science and piety,
of criticism and faith''- Scffieiermacher, with his
foUower Neander, wiU typify the pffilosopffical and
more orthodox side of it ; perhaps De Wette, and
at the end of the period Ewald, the critical.
Schleiermacher" was by education and sympathy
eminently fitted to attempt the harmony of science
and faith, to which he devoted his life. Gifted with
an acute and penetratffig inteUect, capable of grap
pling with the highest problems of philosophy and
•> It has been more recently, for this reason, called the Mediation-
Theology ( Vermiftelkmgs- Theologie).
<= Schleiermacher (1768-1834). His Leben in Briefen (1858)
has been recently translated. His philosophical and religious stand
point is well discussed, and some portions of his works analysed,
in the Rev. R. A. Vaughan's Essays and Remains (reprinted from
the British Quarterly Review, No. 18). A brief explanation of his
philosophy is seen in Morell's History of Philosophy, ii. 433, and
Julius Scheller's Vorleswngen iiber Schleiermacher, 1844. His reli
gious views are criticised, with extracts, in Amand Saintes, part ii.
ch. xiv-xvi ; Kahnis, 204 seq. ; Liicke, Stud, und Krit. 1834, H. 4.
The facts of his life are given in the Westm. Rev. for July, i86i.

342 LECTURE VL
the minutest detafls of criticism, he could sympathise
with the inteflectual movement of the old rational
ism ; while his fine moral sensibility, the depth and
passionateness of his sympathy, the exquisite deh-
cacy of his taste and brflliancy of imagination, were
ffi perfect harmony with the literary and sesthetic
revival which was commencing. German to the very
soffi, he possessed an enthusiastic sympathy with the
great literary movements of his age, phflosophical,
classical, or romantic. The diligent student and
translator of Plato d his soffi was enchanted with the
mixture at once of genius, poetry, feeling, and dia
lectic, which marks that prince of thinkers, and he
was prepared by it for imderstanding the specffia
tions of his time. The dialectical process tffiough
which Plato's mind had passed (30) represents not
improbably, in some degree, the history of Scffieier-
macher's own mental development as traceable in
his works. The conviction derived from Plato's early
dialogues, that the mind, ffi traveUing outward to
study the objective, coffid not prove the highest
realities, but must have faith in its own facffities,
prepared him for imbibing the phUosophy of Jacobi.
The looking inward to the deep utterances of the soffi,
the interpretation of the objective world by means of
the ffiternal, prepared him for Fichte. The mystical
<J He joined F. Schlegel in the plan of translation, and continued
it after Schlegel had retired from it. He did not however complete
the whole of Plato. The parts finished were published at intervals
from 1804-27. The introductions to the dialogues are valuable.

LECTURE VL 343
attempt to understand the ideas themselves, to use
the archetype for creating an ontology from the ob
jective side, observable ffi Plato's latest works, found
its paraUel in ScheUffig. Scffieiermacher had large
sympathies with these three processes, but maiffiy
with the first; which was to be expected from his
purpose. Aiming at gaffiffig spiritual certitude
rather than speculating for inteUectual gratffication,
Jacobi's philosophy appeared to combffie the excel
lences of the other two systems, the subjective cha
racter of the one, and the intuitional of the other ;
with the additional advantage of seeming to give
expression to the ffistfficts of the heart, as weU as the
intuitions of the mind. Beyond aU these qualities,
Scffieiermacher inherited from his Moravian educa
tion the spirit of pietism, which, almost extinguished
by the recent activity of mind, had retired to the
quiet sphere where a Stffiing^ or an Oberlffif com
muned with God and laboured for man.
Possessffig therefore the two great elements wffich

« J. H. Jung Stilling (1740-1817), a distinguished oculist in
Westphalia, who employed himself in acts of religious usefulness.
His works were published in-i835. His Autobiography, written
by desire of Goethe, has been translated. See an article on him in
the Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xxi.
f Oberlin (1740-1826), the interesting pastor of the Vosges
mountains, who united efforts for civilization with piety, and the
temporal improvement of his people with the spiritual. His me
moir has been written in English. To the same class of saintly
men about the end of the last century belonged Hamann, Lavater,
and Claudius. See Kahnis, p. 80 seq.

344 • LECTURE VL
had been uffited in the Reformation, — endowed on
the one hand with the largest sympathy with every
department of the ffiteUectual movement, and the
mastery of its ripest erudition, and at the same time
with a soul kffidled with a hearty love for Cffiist
ianity, — he was fitted to become the Coryphaeus of a
new reformation, to attempt agaffi a final reconciha
tion of knowledge and faith. Whether we view him
ffi ffis own natufal. gifts and susceptibffities ; in the
aim of his hfe; ffi his mixture of reason and love,
of philosophy and criticism, of enthusiasm and wis
dom, of orthodoxy and heresy; or regard the transi
tory character of his work, the permanence of his
influence ; church ffistory offers no paraUel to him
sffice the days of Origen s.
His early education was received ffi the university
of Halle ; an institution which had long been the
home of pietism, and has continued with but few
intervals ll to evince much of the same Christian
spirit. He became professor there early ffi the cen-
turyi, until the town passed, as already stated, into
the power of the French. He removed to Berlffi
s Mr. R. A. Vaughan, in the Essay above cited, compares Schleier
macher with Hugo St. Victor (on whom see Ritter, Chr. Phil. viii.
9. 2). The analogy with Origen is close. Speaking technically,
the difference would be, that the Neo-Platonic school, to which
Origen belonged, was rather one of "Objective Idealism" like
Schelling ; Schleiermacher's of " Subjective Idealism" like Fichte.
h The Rationalist and Socinian element was taught by Weg
scheider. > In 1802.

LECTURE VL 345
when that university was founded J, and continued to
exercise his influence there, from the pffipit and the
professor's chair, for a quarter of a century, until his
deathk. Before the conclusion of the last century, while
stffi the literary influence of Weimar was at its
height, he wrote Discourses on Religion l, to arouse
the German mffid to self-consciousness; which pro
duced as stirring an effect in religion™ as Fichte's
patriotic addresses to the German nation subse
quently in politics ; and from them may be dated
the first movement of spiritual renovation, as from
the latter the first of German liberation from
foreign control. In successive works his views on
ethics and reHgion were graduaUy developed, until,
in his Glaubenslehre (31) he produced one of the
most important theological systems ever conceived.
We can give no idea of the compass exhibited in
that work, nor spare time to trace the growth in
Scffieiermacher's own mffid as new influences like
that of Harms, which he rejected, ffidirectly influenced
him; but we must be content to define his general
position in its destractive and constructive aspects.
The fundamental principles " were, that truth in
theology was not to be attained by reason, but by
j HaUe was taken by the French in 1806 ; the university of
Berlin was founded in 18 10.
k He died in 1834.
1 See note 31.
™ Neander's witness to the effect produced by them is quoted in
Kahnis, p. 208.
" Cfr. Glaubenslehre, § 3-6.

346 LECTURE VL
an insight, which he cafled the Cffiistian conscious
ness", wffich we should caU Cffiistian experience;
and that piety consists in spiritual feeling, not in
morality. Both were coroUaries from his philoso
phical principles.
There are two parts, both in the ffiteUectual and
emotional branches of our riature ; — in the emotional,
a feelffig of dependence in the presence of the Infi
nite, which is the seat of religion; and a conscious
ness of power, which is the source of action and seat
of morality ; — and in the inteUectual, a faith or ffitffi
tion wffich apprehends God and trath; and critical
faculties, wffich act upon the matter presented and
form science". In making these distffictions, Scffieier
macher struck a blow at the old rationalism, which
had identified on the one hand rehgion and morality,
and on the other iffiuition and reason. Hence from
this poffit of view he was led to explaffi Cffiistianity,
when contrasted with other reHgions, subjectively on
the emotional side, as the most perfect state of the
feeling of dependence ; and on the ffiteUectual, as
the intuition of Christianity and Christ's work : and
" Selbst-bewuszt-seyn.
f Schleiermacher's views are rarely put with sharpness of form ;
and as they varied in the manner shown in Note 31, it is hardly pos
sible to lay down a fixed account of his system. The following re
marks arfr rather the spirit ofhis Glaubenslehre than an analysis of it.
His psychological views are seen in §1-4 of that treatise (ed. 1842);
but the Reden, pp. 58, 59, and the introduction by his pupil Schwei
zer to the Entwurf eines systems der sittenlelire, 1835, besides his
posthumous philosophical works, ought also to be consulted. His
psychological views are nearly reproduced in Morell's Philosophy of
Religion, ch. iii.

LECTURE VL 347
the organ for truth in Cffiistianity was regarded to
be the special form of insight which apprehends
Cffiist, just as natural intuition apprehends God;
which insight was caUed the Cffiistian consciousness p.
Thus far many wiU agree with him. Perhaps no
nobler analysis of the religious facffities has ever
been given. Religion was placed on a new basis : a
home was found for it ffi the human mind ffistffict
from reason. The old rationalism was shown to be
untrue in its psychology. The distinctness of reli
gion was asserted; and the necessity of_ spiritual
ffisight and of sympathy with Christian life asserted
to be as necessary for appreciatffig Christianity, as
sesthetic insight for art.
In its reconstruction of Cffiistian truth, however,
fewer wffi cofficide. FoUowffig out the same prin
ciples ; ffi the same manner as he regarded the intui
tions of human nature to be the last appeal of truth
in art or morals, so he made the coUective Cffiistian
consciousness the last standard of appeal in "Cffiist
ianity. The dependence therefore on apostoHc teach
ing was not the appeal to an external authority, but
merely to that which was the best exponent of the
early rehgious consciousness of Cffiistendom ffi its
purest age "J. The Christian church existed before
the Cffiistian scriptures. The New Testament was
written for behevers, appeaHng to their rehgious
consciousness, not ffictatffig to it. Inspiration is not
indeed thus reduced to genius, but to the religious
P §7-10; and also § 11-14. '^ §129-131.

348 LECTURE VL
consciousness, • and is different only ffi degree, and
not ffi kind, from the pious intffitions of saffitly men.
The Bible becomes the record of religious truth, not
its vehicle ; a witness to the Christian consciousness
of apostolic times, not an external standard for aU
time. In this respect Scffieiermacher was not re-
peatffig the teaching of the reformation of the six
teenth age, but was passffig beyond it, and abandon
ing its reverence for scripture.
From this poffit we may see how his views of
doctrine as weU as his criticism of scripture were
affected by this theory. For in ffis view of funda
mental doctrffies, such as sin, and the redeeming
work of Cffiist, ffiasmuch as his appeal was made to
the coUective consciousness, those aspects of doctrme
offiy were regarded as important, or even real, which
were appropriated by the consciousness, or under
stood by if. Sffi was accordingly presented rather
as unholiness than as gffilt before God ^ ; redemp
tion, rather as sanctffication than as justification ;
Christ's death as a mere subordffiate act ffi ffis hfe
of self-sacrifice, not the one oblation for the world's
sffi ' ; atonement regarded to be the setting forth
of the uffion of God with man ; and the mode
of arriving at a state of salvation", to be a realisa
tion of the union of man with God, tffiough a
' His views on sin are given § 65-85 ; and on the work of
Christ, § 100-105.
M 68. t § 104.
" The mode of reconciliation is treated in § 106-112, and indi
rectly in the Wdhnachtsfder. Mr. Vaughan compares it with Osi-
andei''s view in the sixteenth century.

LECTURE VL 349
kind of mystical conception of the brotherhood of
Cffiist ^
Hence, as might be expected, the dogmatic reaHty
of such doctrffies as the Trffiity was weakened y. The
deity of the Son, as ffistinct from ffis superhuman
character, became uffimportant, save as the historical
embodiment of the ideal union of God with hu
manity''. The Spirit was viewed, not as a personal
agent, but as a Hving activity, having its seat ffi the
Christian consciousness of the church". The objec
tive ffi each case was absorbed ffi the spiritual, as
formerly ffi the old rationalism it had been degraded
ffito the natural. It foUowed also that the Christian
consciousness, thus able to find as it were a pffilo
sophy of rehgion, and of the material apprehended
by the consciousness of mspired men, possessed an
ffistffict to distffigffish the uffimportant from the
important ffi scripture, and valued more higffiy the
eternal ideas ffitended than the ffistoric garb under
which they were presented.
The ideological tendency, as it is now caUed'', the
natural longffig of the phflosophical mffid that tries
to rise beyond facts into their causes, to penetrate
" His views may be seen in § 50-56, especially § 54. His system
in earlier life almost resembled pantheism, as in his praise of
Spinoza. See Reden, p. 471.
y § 170-172.
^ The person of Christ is discussed § 93-99. Vaughan compares
the view with that of Justin Martyr. See also Strauss's Leben Jesu,
§148. a § 1 21-125. ^ See Note 24.

350 LECTURE VL
behind phenomena into ideas, grows up in a country,
as is seen by the example of ancient Greece, when
the popffiar creed and the scientffic have become
discordant. Suggested ffi Germauy by the old
rationalism, it had been especiafly stimffiated by
the subjective philosophy of Kant and Fichte.
Historic facts were the expression of subjective
forms of thought. The Non-ego was a form, in
which the Ego was expressffig itself This theory,
suggested to Schleiermacher from without, feU ffi
with his own views as above developed, and affected
his critical ffiquiries. When he ffivolved himself
ffi the great questions of the higher criticism, which
have been already treated in connexion with Semler,
subjective criticism" was used in an exaggerated
manner, not merely to suggest hypotheses, or to
check deductions by Cffiistian appreciation, but as
a substitute d priori for historic investigation. In
the controversy as to the composition of the Gospels,
which wffi be hereafter explained, he was led, by
his, ideological theory and his instinctive perception

>^ His critical is much less important than his philosophical po
sition. The same spirit of seriousness marks his writings in this
department. Two of his chief critical works are, his Ueber den soge-
nannten ersten Brief des Paulus an den Timotheus, 1807, and
Ueber die Schriften des Lukes, ein Kritischer Versuch, 1817, trans
lated into English 1825. The reasons given for his appreciation of
the Gospel of St. John in the Wdhnachtsfder, also his posthumous
work, Hermeneutik und Kritik, 1838, and his Einleitung ins Neue
Test. 1845, ought also to be taken into account in estimating his
exegetical views.

LECTURE VL 351
of the relative importance of doctrines in theological
perspective, to abandon the historical importance
of miracles as compared with doctrme, and also the
verity of the early ffistory of Christ's life, considered
to have been communicated by tradition; whfle he
held fast to the moral and historical reality of the
latterd. These remarks must suffice to pomt out the posi
tion of Scffieiermacher. We have seen how com
pletely he caught the influences of ffis time, absorbed
them, and transmitted them. If ffis teachffig was
defective ffi its constructive side ; if he ffid not attaffi
the firm grasp of objective verity which is imphed
in perfect doctrinal, not to say critical, orthodoxy ; he
at least gave the death-blow to the old rationalism,
wffich, either from an empirical or a rational poffit of
view, proposed to gaffi such a pffilosophy of religion
as reduced it to morahty. He rekffiffied spiritual
apprehensions ; he above aU drew attention to the
pecuHar character of Christiaffity, as sometffing more
than the repubhcation of natural reHgion, in the same
manner that the Christian consciousness offered some
tffing more than merely moral experience. He set
<i The above remarks on Schleiermacher will perhaps be considered
severe by those who know his works, and will be regarded as putting
the worst face on his system. The criticism however of the late
Mr. Vaughan, who deeply appreciated Schleiermacher, and had
devoted much patient study to his works, and who viewed him
from the stand-point of English orthodoxy, coincides with the above
estimate of him. A criticism on Schleiermacher from Bretschnei-
der's point of view may be seen in his Dogmatik, i. p. 93-1 15.

352 LECTURE VL
forth, however imperfectly, the idea of redemption,
and the personahty of the Redeemer ; and awakened
rehgious aspirations, which led his successors to a
deeper appreciation of the truth as it is ffi Jesus.
Much of ffis theology, and some part of ffis phflo
sophy, had offiy a temporary ffiterest relatively to his
times; but his influence was perpetual. The faffits
were those of his age ; the exceUencies were ffis own.
Men caught ffis deep love to a personal Cffiist, with
out imbibing ffis doctrinal opinions. His own views
became more evangehcal as ffis Hfe went on, and the
views of ffis disciples more deeply scriptural than those
of their master. Thus the Hght kffidled by ffim waxed
purer and purer. The mantle remamed after the
prophet's spirit had ascended to the God that gave it.
In strict truth he ffid not found a school. Though
ffis mffid was dialectical, he had too much poetry to
do this. Genius, as has been often observed, does
not create a school, but kindles an influence. The
university of Berlin, the very centre of ffiteflectual
greatness in every department from its foundation,
was the ffist seat of Schleiermacher's influence ; and
the political importance of the capital added impffise
to the movement. The reaction extended to other
universities e, and not offiy marked the chief theolo
gians of an orthodox tendency wffich are commonly
known to us^, — Tholuck, Twesten, Nitzch, Juhus
« Especially at Bonn, which was founded in 1818.
f The following theologians were influenced chiefly by the spirit
of Schleiermacher : Tholuck, professor at Halle, author of various

LECTURE VL 353
MuUer, Olshausen, — but even modified the extreme
rationalist party, and diffused its influence among
theologians of the church of RomeS.
It is impossible to specify the views of those
who were the chief representatives of the effects
of Scffieiermacher's teaching. One however, his
friend and cofleague, deserves mention, the weU-
known church historian Neander l^. Brought up a
well-known works, (see the expression of his views in the tract, the
Guido and Julius, or true Consecration of the Doubter, in reply to
De Wette's Theodor) ; Twesten, successor of Schleiermacher at
Berlin, author of the well-known Dogmatik ; H. Olshausen, the
commentator; Nitzch, author of the Handbook of Doctrine (trans
lated) ; Julius Miiller, writer of the able work on the Nature of
Sin; Ullmann, editor of the Studien und Kritiken, the organ of
the party. Also Sach, Stier, Tittmann, Umbreit, Ebrart, Hagen
bach, Baumgarten- Crusius, Hundeshagen, Bleek, Liicke, Lange,
belong to the same party ; and Gieseler also in the main. Their
doctrine is called the Deutsche Theologie. Bunsen must also perhaps
be classed with them, though much freer and less biblical than the
others. The writings of the late archdeacon Hare are perhaps no
inapt English parallel to the tone of these teachers.
g More especially Moehler, named above (p. 338 note), was in
fluenced. The modern Catholic theologians are to be treated in
the forthcoming (3rd) edition of C. Schwarz's Gesch. der Neuesten
Theologie. !> For Neander's life and character as a theologian and church
historian, see the interesting particulars gathered in the British
Quarterly Review, No. 24, for Nov. 1850, and in the Bibliotheca
/Sacra, vol. viii. Neander (1789-1850) was a Jew by birth. About
1805 he embraced Christianity (his life at this period is seen in his
letters to Chamisso); studied at Halle under Schleiermacher 1806 ;
at Gottingen under Planck ; was made Professor at Berlin 1 8 1 2 :
author of various early monographs ; of the Church History, 1825 ;
History of the Planting of the Church, 1832 ; Life of Christ, 1837.
His opinions may be learned from the Preface to the third edition
A a

354 LECTURE VL
Jew, he passed into Christianity, like some of the
early fathers, through the gate of Platonism ; and,
knowffig by experience that free inquiry had been
the means of his own conversion, he ever stood forth
with a noble courage as the advocate of fufl and
fair investigation, feeling confidence that Cffiistianity
coffid endure the test. More meditative and less dia
lectical than Scffieiermacher, and too original to be
an imitator, he surpassed him ffi the deeper apprecia
tion of sin and of redemption ; placffig sin rather
in alienation of wiU than in the sense of discord
ance, and holding more firmly the existence of some
objective reality in the antffiopopathic expression of
the wrath of God removed by Christ's deaths. His
great employment in life was history ; not, like his
master, philosophy and criticism. Viewing human
nature from the subjective stand-point, the central
thought of his historical works was, that Christianity
is a life restffig on a person, rather than a system
resting on a dogma. Hence he was able to find the
harmony of reason and faith from the human side in
stead of the divine, by noticing the adaptation of the
divine work to human wants. The ffispiration of
the scriptural writers was viewed as dynamical not
of his Life of Christ, and the Preface to his Church History. On
his position as a church historian, see Hagenbach in Studien vmd
Kritiken for 1851.
1 His views on sin and redemption are chiefly to be gathered from
criticisms on the Pauline doctrine in the History of the Planting of
the Church (vol. ii.) ; and on the Christian doctrine in vol. ii. of
his Church History.

LECTURE VL 355
mechanical, spiritual not literal'^ ; and Cffiistianity as
the great element of human progress, being the divine
life on earth which God had kinffied through the gift
of his Son'. The great aim accordingly of Neander
in his historical sketches was to exhibit the Christian
church as the philosophy of history, and God's work
ffi Cffiist, realised in the piety of the faithfffi, as
the phUosophy of the Cffiistian church. The his
tory of the church ffi his view is the record of the
Cffiistian consciousness in the world. The subjective
and mystical spirit engendered by such a conception,
was in danger of convertffig history into a series of
biographies ; but the deep influence which it pos
sessed in contributing to foster the reaction against
the old rationalism wifl be obvious. It becomes us
to speak with reverence of the writings of a man
whose labours have been the means of turning many
to Cffiist. Though lacking form as works of art,
yet, if they be compared with works of grander
type, where church history has been treated as an
epic, we cannot help feelffig that the depth of spiri
tual perception and of psychological analysis compen
sates for the artistic defects. We are conductied by
them from the outside to the ffiside ; from things to
thoughts ; from institutions to doctrines ; from the
accidents of Cffiistianity to the essence.
Neander's teachffig, whUe an offshoot from Scffieier
macher, marks the highest point to which the prin-
^ Introduction to the Life of Christ, § 6.
1 Preface to Church History (first edition).
A a 2

356 LECTURE VL
«
ciples of the master could be carried. It advances
farther in the hearty love for Christ and for reve
lation, and bears fewer traces of the ancient spirit
of rationalism ; being aUied to it in few respects,
save in the wish constantly exhibited to appropriate
that which is believed ; but the wants of the heart,
not the conceptions of the understanding, are made
the gauge of divine trath, and the interpreter of
the divffie volume.
We poffited out that the great reaction ffi the
present century was marked not only by the phflo^
sophical and doctrinal school just described, but by a
contemporaneous one, which employed itself on lite
rary and critical ffiquiries in reference to the Bible,
and was the contffiuation of the earlier rationahst
criticism on improved principles. The most import
ant name representffig tffis critical movement in the
beginffing of the period was De Wette. (82) Per
haps too we may without injustice mention, as a
type of it at the close of the period, a theologian
who is almost too origffial to admit of being clas
sified — the learned Ewald. (32)
De Wette was nurtured amid the old rationalism
of Jena, at the time of its greatest power, about the
begffinffig of the present century; and imbibed the
pecffiiar modification of the doctrines of Kant and
Jacobi which was presented in the phflosophy of
Fries'". It was the appeal to subjective feeling
m On Fries' philosophy see Morell, ii. 418 ; Tennemann's Marmal,
§ 122. Accepting Kant's categories, he held the existence of an

LECTURE VL 357
theilfce derived which preserved him from the cold
ness of older critics, and caused his labours to contri
bute to the reaction. His works were very various ;
but the earlier of them were especiafly devoted to
the examination of the Old Testament, and the later
to the New.
The pecffiiarity of this school generafly may be
said to be, a disposition to investigate both Testa
ments for their own sake as literature, not for the
further purpose of discovering doctrine. These
writers are primarily literary critics, not dogmatic
theologians. Like the older rationalists, they are
occupied largely with biblical ffiterpretation ; but,
perceivmg the hoUowness of their attempt to explain
away moral and spiritual mysteries by reference to
material events, they transfer to the Bible the theo
ries used in the contemporary ffives.tigations in
classical history, and explain the Biblical wonders by
the hypothesis of legends or of myths. Though
they ignore the miracffious and supernatural equaUy
with the older rationalists, they aUow the spiri
tual ffi addition to the moral and natural, and
thus take a more scholarlike and elevated view of
the Hebrew history and literature. The system of
ffiterpretation adopted is the transition from the
previous one, which admitted the facts but explained
inward faith-principle, which gives an insight into the real nature of
things ; but only as subjective truths, and as tests of truth. The
church historian Hase (see Kahnis, p. 236) is moulded by this
philosophy.

358 LECTURE VL
them away, to the succeeding one of Strauss, wtich
denies the facts, and accounts for the belief in them
by psychological causes.
The wish to give a possible basis for the exist
ence of legend, by ffiterposing a chasm between the
events and the record of them, stimffiated the pur
suit of the branch of criticism slightly touched on
by their predecessors, which investigates the origin
and date of scripture books. They transferred to
the Hebrew literature the critical method by which
Wolff had destroyed the unity of Homer, and Nie-
buhr the credibUity of Livy. Not a single book, —
history, poetry, or prophecy, — was left unexamffied.
The inquiries of this kind, instituted with reference
to the book of Daniel, were aUuded to in a former
lecture " ; and those which relate to the Gospels
wiU occur hereafter P. At present it wiU offiy be
possible to specify a single instance in ffiustration of
these inquiries — ^the celebrated one wffich relates to
the authorship and composition of the Pentateuch.
It is the one to which most labour has been devoted,
o Lect. II. p. 85. Similar discussions have arisen with regard
to the integrity and purpose of the books of Job, Zechariah, and
Isaiah. Particulars of these literary questions will be found in
Hengstenberg's articles Job and Isaiah in Kitto's Bibl. Cycl., and in
Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testomient, in the chapters con
cerning these books. The classical student need hardly be reminded
of the close analpgy between these literary investigations in the
Hebrew literature and those which were conducted by F. A. Wolff
in respect to Homer, and by other scholars in reference to various
classical authors.
!¦ Lect, VII.

LECTURE VL 359
and is an exceUent instance for exhibiting the slow
but progressive improvement and growing caution
shown in the mode of exercising them"!.
As early as the time of Hobbes and Spinoza it
was perceived that the Pentateuch contains a few
aflusions which seem to have been inserted after
the time of Moses; a circumstance which they, as
weU as R. Simon, explained, by referrffig them to the
sacred editor Ezra, who is thought to have arranged
the canon : but about the midffie of the last cen
tury a French physician, Astruc'', poffited out a
circumstance which has introduced an entirely new
element into the discussion of the question; viz. the
distffiction in the use of the two Hebrew names for
God, — Elohim and Jehovah. It wiU be necessary to
offer a brief explanation of this distinction, in order
that we may be able to perceive the line at which
fact ends and hypothesis commences, and under
stand the character of the criticism which we are
describing. It is now generaUy admitted that the word
Elohim is the name for Deity, as worshipped by
•• Perhaps the clearest account of the controversy will be found
in Michel Nicholas, Etudes Critiques sur la Bible, Essay i. 1862.
See also Hengstenberg's Authentic des Pentateuches (Die Gottesna-
men im Pentat. i. 181 seq. ; Havernick's Irvtrod. to ihe Pentateuch
(English translation), p. 56, &c. ; Keil's Lehrbuch, p. 82, ifcc. ; and
Dr. S. Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament (1862), pp.
1-135- ¦¦ Conjectures su/r les Memxiires Originaux du livre de la Gen^se,
1753-

360 LECTURE VL
the Hebrew patriarchs ; Jehovah, the conception of
Deity which is at the root of the Mosaic theocracy"^.
El, or the plural Elohim, means literaUy "the powers,"
(the plural form being either, as some unreasonably
think, a trace of early polytheism, or more prob
ably merely emphatic ^) and is connected with the
name for God commoffiy used in the Semitic nations.
Jehovah' means " self-existent," and is the name
specially communicated to the Israelites. The idea
of power or superiority ffi the object of worship
was conveyed by Elohim ; that of self-existence,
spirituality, by Jehovah. Elohim was generic, and
coffid be applied to the gods of the heathen ; Jehovah
was specffic, the covenant God of Moses. (33)
In this age, when words are separated from thffigs,
we are apt to lose sight of the importance of the
difference of names in an early age of the world.
The modem investigations however of comparative
mythology enable us to realise the fact, that ffi the
childhood of the world words implied real differ
ences in thffigs ; not merely in our conceptions, but ffi
the thing conceived". But the explanations above
"¦ See Exodus vi. 3.
" The older critics however think that the plural form relates to
the plurality of persons in the divine Being.
t Jehovah is translated in the English version, the Lord.
" Independently of comparative mythology, which is still an
hypothesis, there is evidence of the fact in the very derivations
constantly offered of words in the Old Testament, as well as in the
modern investigations concerning language. Ewald has shown in
an interesting manner the means afforded by the Hebrew proper
names for gaining a conception of Hebrew life (see his article on

LECTURE VL 361
offered wiU show that, independently of the general
law of mffid just noticed, a reaUy different moral con
ception was offered by Providence to the Hebrew
mffid through the employment of these two words.
Nor was the difference unknown or forgotten in
later ages of Jewish history. The fifty-third Psalm,
for example, is a repetition of the fourteenth with
the name Elohim altered into Jehovah. In the two
ffist of the five books into which the Psalms are
divided, the arrangement has been thought to be
not unconnected with the distinction of these
names \ In the book of Job also the name Jehovah
is used ffi the headffigs of the speeches of the dia
logues ; but ffi the speeches of Job's friends, as not
beffig Israelites, the name Elohim is used •''. In the
book of Nehemiah the name Elohim is almost always
used, and in Ezra, Jehovah; and ffi the composition
of proper names, which ffi ancient times were not
Names in Kitto's Bibl. Encycl.) ; and a similar analysis has recently
been applied to the Indo-Germanic languages in Pictet's Les Origines
Indo-Europeennes, 1859.
^ It is well known that the book of Psalms is divided, in the
Hebrew and the Septuagint, into five books ; viz. Psalms i-xli ;
xlii-lxxii ; Ixxiii-lxxxix ; xc— cvi ; cvii-cl ; each of them ending
with a doxology, which is now inserted in the text of the psalm.
In the first book the name Elohim occurs 1 5 times, and Jehovah
272 times ; in the second, Elohim 164 times, aud Jehovah 30 times.
This computation is stated on the authority of Dr. Donaldson,
Christian Orthodoxy.
> There are two exceptions, viz. i. 2 1, xii. 9, which Hengstenberg
considers to prove the rule. On this subject see Hengstenberg's
Dissertation on Job in Kitto's Bibl Cyclop, ii. 122, now reprinted
in a volume of his Miscellaneous Essays.

362 LECTURE VL
merely, as now, symbolical, the names El and Jah
respectively are employed in aU ages of the Hebrew
nation : and, though no exact law can be detected,
it seems probable that in the great regal and
prophetic age the name Jehovah was especiaUy
used. (34)
These remarks wiU both explain the difference of
conception existffig ffi the Hebrew names of Deity,
and show that the Jews were aware of the distinction
to a late period. When we advance farther, we pass
from the region of fact into conjecture.
The distinctness of conception implied in the two
names has been made the basis of an hypothesis, in
which they are used for discovermg different elements
in the Pentateuch. Throughout the book of Genesis
especiaUy, and slightly elsewhere % the critics that
we are describing have supposed that they detect
at least two distffict narratives, with pecffiiarities
of style, and differences or repetitions of statement ;
which they have therefore regarded as proofs of the
existence of different documents ffi the composition
of the Pentateuch ; an Elohistic, in which the name
Elohim, and a Jehovistic, ffi which the name Je-
't- De Wette tries to exhibit traces in other books than Genesis,
but unsuccessfully. It is in Genesis alone that the difference can
be so clearly seen, that, even if the peculiar use had no theological
meaning, which not even Hengstenberg denies, it must remain
as a literary peculiarity. A list of the passages in Genesis which
have been considered by these critics to represent the respective uses
of the two names, is given in the learned and reverently written article
Genesis, in Smith's Biblical Dictionary, by Mr. J. J. S. Perowne. .;

LECTURE VL 363
hovah was used ; upon the respective dates of which
they have formed conjectures.
Though we may object to these hazardous specula
tions, we shall perceive the alteration and increasing
caution displayed in the criticism, if we trace briefly
the successive opinions held on this particular subject.
Astruc, who first dwelt on the distinction, regarded
the separate works to be anterior to Moses, and to
have been used by him in the construction of the
Pentateuch a. Eichhorn took the same view, but
advanced the ffiquiry by a careful discrimination
of the pecuharities which he thought to belong to
each. Vater followed, and aflowed the possibility
of one coUector of the narratives, but denied that
it could be Moses. Thus far was the work of the
older critical school of rationalists. It was purely
anatomical and negative. It is at this poffit that
we perceive the alteration effected by the school
which we are now contemplatmg.
De Wette strove to penetrate more deeply into
the question of the origffi, and to attaffi a positive
resffit. His discussion was marked by minute
study ; and he changed the test for distffiguishffig
the documents from the simple use of the names to
more uncertain characteristics, which depended upon
ffiternal pecffiiarities of style and manner. The con
clusion to which he came was, that the mass of the
Pentateuch is based on the Elohistic document, with
a The references to these various authors will be found in
M. Nicholas, Essay i.

364 LECTURE VL
passages supplemented from the Jehovistic ; and he
referred the age of both to a rather late part of the
regal period. Ewald, with great learning and deli
cacy of handling, has reconsidered the question''
and, though arrivffig at a most extraordinary theory
as to the manifold documents which have supplied
the materials for the work, has thrown to a much
earlier period the authorship of the main portion ;
and the views of later critics are graduaUy tendffig
in the same direction. Both study the Pentateuch
as unffispired literature ; but De Wette absurffiy
regarded it as an epic created by the priests, in the
same manner as the Homeric epic by the rhapsodes :
Ewald on the contrary considers it to be largely
historic <>.
b Oeschichte des Hebr. Volk. i. 7 5 seq.
0 In writing the history of this dispute, as being here viewed only
iu its literary aspect, it will be seen that my object has been simply
to select it, for the purpose of exhibiting the gradual increase of
taste as well as of learning shown by the German critics in re
ference to questions of the " higher criticism." Concerning the
theological aspect of it we can all form an opinion, which would
probably be in a great degree condemnatory ; but concerning the
literary, none but a few eminent Hebrew scholars. Some of the
greatest of them, Gesenius, De Wette, Ewald, Hupfeld, Knobel,
have given in their adherence to some form of the theory above
described. The references to the works of Hengstenberg, Haver-'
nick, and Keil, who have written on the other side, are given above.
The rashness of some forms of criticism must not make us abandon
a wholesome use of it ; and a literary peculiarity such as that de
scribed, if it really exist, demands the reverent study of those who
wish to learn the mind of the divine Spirit, as it was communicated
to the ancient chosen people, or expressed in the written word.
Compare M<:Caurs Essay, Aids to Faith, p. 195.

LECTURE VL 365
This statement of mere resffits, too brief to ex
hibit the critical acumen shown at different points
of the inquiry even where it is most fffil of peril,
wiU show the fficreasing learning displayed, and the
appreciation of valuable literary characteristics. It
wffi be perceived that prepossessions stiU predo
minate over this criticism ; but they are of a dif
ferent kffid from those which existed earlier. They
are not the result of moral objections to the nar
ratives, but of the contemporary critical spirit in
secffiar literature. The discrepancy of resffit ob
taffied by the process is a fair practical argument
which proves its uncertaffity ; but its adherents
aUow that both in art and literature ffiternal evi
dence admits of few canons, and consequently that
the resffit of criticism coffid only admit of probabflity.
The general summary of the movement shows a
steady advance in criticism, as was before shown
in doctrine, toward a higher and more spiritual
standard. It is not the recognition of the ffispired
authority of scripture, but it is some approach to
it. Instead of the hasty denunciation of narratives
or of books as imposture, seen in the Wolfenbiittel
Fragments, or the merely rationalist view of Eichhorn
and Paffius, we perceive the recognition of spiritual
and psychological mysteries as subjects of examina
tion ; and even when the resffit established is alto
gether unsatisfactory, valuable materials have been
coUected for future students. If we were to abandon
our position of traditional orthodoxy, and accept that
of Scffieiermacher in doctrine, or of De Wette in

366 LECTURE VL
criticism, it would be a retrogression ; but for the
Germans of their time it was a progress from doubt
towards faith. It was not orthodoxy, but it was
the first approach to it.
This double aspect, philosophical and critical, of
the reaction, brings us to the end of the second
period in the history of German theological thought.
It has already been stated that the elements of
other movements existed, which were hereafter to
develope; and that one of these was an attempt,
origffiatffig in the philosophy of Hegel, to reconstruct
the harmony of reason and faith from the ffiteUec
tual, as distinct from the emotional side. It bore
some analogy to the gnosticism of the early church ;
and the critical side of it gave birth, to Strauss.
We have traced the antecedent causes which pro
duced rationalism, and two out of the tffiee periods
ffito which we divided the history of it. We are
haltffig before reaching the final act of the drama;
but we already begffi to see the direction in which
the plot is developffig.
It is when a great movement of mffid or of society
can be thus viewed as a whole, in its antecedents
and its consequents, that we can form a judgment
on its real nature, and estimate its purpose and use.
As in viewing works of art, so ffi order to observe
correctly the great works of God's natural pro
vidence, we must reduce them to their true per
spective. It is the pecffiiarity of great movements
of mffid, that when so viewed they do not appear to
be all shadow and formless, nor acts of meanmgless

LECTURE VL 367
impiety. They are products of inteUectual ante
cedents, and perform their function in history. In
nothing is the Divffie image stamped on humanity,
or the moral providence of God in the world, more
visible, than in the circumstance, of which we have
already had frequent proofs, that thought and honest
inquiry, if aUowed to act freely, without beffig
repressed by material or political interference, but
checked only by spiritual and moral influences,
graduafly attaffi to truth, appropriating goodness,
and rejecting evfl. Thought seems to run on un
restraffied, stimffiated by human caprice, sometimes
by sinfffi wilfiflness ; yet it is seen reafly to be re
strained by limits that are not of its own creation.
In the world of conscious mind, as in unconscious
matter, God hath set a law that shafl not be broken.
Reason, which creates the doubts, also aflays them.
It rebukes the unbelief of impiety, makffig the wrath
of man to praise God ; and guides the honest in
quirer to trath.
A period of doubt is always sad ; but it woffid be
an unmixed woe for an individual or a nation, if it
were not made, in the order of a merciful Provi
dence, the transition to a more deeply-seated faith.
It is a means, not an end.
You tell me, doubt is devil-born.
I know not; one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed.
Who touch''d a jarring lyre at first.
But ever strove to make it true :

368 LECTURE VL
Perplext in faith, but not in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubts
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts, and gathered strength.
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them : thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own<l.
Religious truth is open to those who wffi seek it
with humility and prayer.
In addition to the natural action of reason, the
fatherly pity of God is nigh, to give help to aU that
ask it, and that endeavour to sanctify their studies
to His honour. Even though the search be long, and
a large portion of life be spent in the agony of
baffled effort, the mind reaps improvement from its
heart-sorrows, and at last receives the reward of its
patient faith. "Blessed are they which hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shaU be fiUed®."
If we are thankfffi to be spared the sorrows of the
doubter, let us admire the wisdom and mercy shown
in the process by which Providence rescues men or
nations from the state of doubt. "The Lord God
omnipotent reigneth f;" and He shaU reign for ever
and ever. d Tennyson's In Memoriam, § 95.
e Matt. V. 6. i Rev. xix. 6.

LECTUEE YII.
FREE THOUGHT : IN GERMANY SUBSEQUENTLY TO 1 835 ; AND
IN ERANCE DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY.

Matt. xiii. 53.
Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven
is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth
out of his treasure things new and old.
JL HE last lecture was brought to a close before we
reached the final forms assumed by German the
ology. In the present one we must complete the
narrative; and afterwards carry on the history of
free thought in France, as affected by the influence
of German literature, from the period at which the
narrative was previously interrupted to the present
time. We have noticed the traces of the reaction in
favour of orthodoxy, which M'as produced ffi Ger
many by the influence of Scffieiermacher. We treated
B b

370 LECTURE VIL
the phflosophical side of the movement, the vffidi-
cation of the distinctness of religion and ethics ; and
also witnessed the improved tone in the critical,
tending, if not to the recognition of a supernatural
character ffi the holy scriptures, yet to a more spiri
tual appreciation of their literary characteristics, and
of the psychological pecffiiarity of the facts recorded.
We adverted also, in conclusion, to a rival phflo
sophical influence, springing from the teachffig of
Hegel, which assisted the reaction by seeking a phi
losophical reconstruction of religion, though from a
different point of view from Schleiermacher.
It was this school which gave origin to the sub
sequent movements in Germany. The sudden alter
ation in German thought induced by Strauss, which
ushers in the modem period, arose from the union
of the philosophical principles of this school with
the criticism of that of De Wette. We must there
fore endeavour to understand this movement, which
forms the turnffig poffit between the reaction before
described, which is the second of the three general
ffivisions made of this portion of history a, and the
forms which succeed constituting the third division.
Hegelb, a name almost as important in its ioflu-
'^ Lect. VI. p. 308.
b Hegel, 1770- 1 83 1, Professor at Berlin after 18 18. The rudi
ments ofhis system are in the Phenomenology, written about 1806 ;
the Logic gives the mature form of it about 1816 ; the Encyclopcedia
its completion ; the two former works being embodied in the latter.
For the sources for the study of his system, &c. see Note 35.

LECTURE VIL 371
ence on the German mind as that of Goethe, has
been already mentioned" as the last of that band
of philosophers which strove to develop the mental
as distinct from the material principle, presented in
Kant's philosophy. Kant had completed the pro
cess of turning man's search inward, which Descartes
had begun. Philosophy became psychology ; the dis
covery of the limits of knowledge, rather than of
the nature of the thing known. We have seen that
Fichte and ScheUffig, not content with this resffit,
had sought, though by opposite processes, to escape
from this limited knowledge; to attain an ontology
as weU as a psychology. AU philosophy aims at
attaining a knowledge of reality, either d posteriori
by means of generalisation, or d priori from the
data of mind. These two phUosophers strove to
attaffi it by the latter mode ; but their method either
lacked system, or failed in its results: their phUo
sophy was poetry rather than logic. Hegel foUowed
ffi their steps, but adopted a basis which admitted of
being developed ffi a formal system. The logical
rigour of his method, and the encyclopsedic grasp
which it gave over knowledge, partly accounted, as
in the case of Spffioza or of Wohf, for its popu
larity. The universe was to be interpreted from
the mffid; the laws of thought were the laws of
things. The microcosm and the macrocosm were
one ; thought, and the mind that thinks ; or, more
<= See p. 335. B b 2

372 LECTURE VIL
trffiy, both were phases of the universal mind which
was unfoldffig. The mffid of man coffid transcend
the limits of the finite and phenomenal; and, beffig
able to apprehend the idea, the vovixevov, absolutely,
without conffition, thus possessed the solution of
any branch of universal knowledge by an d priori
process. The problem of phUosophy was, to find
the laws of this evolution ffi thought, to catch the
ideal when it strives to become immanent and to
manifest itself ffi the actual.
Without attemptffig here to explain the kffid of
threefold process, (35) according to which this evolu
tion takes place, it is better, as ffi the case of the
former phUosophies named, to exhibit the influence
of the general method rather than the effects of
particffiar theories fficiflcated by it.
The method had many advantages, ffi displacmg
a low materialism, ffi stimffiatffig loftffiess of con
ception, and generating an historic study of every
subject, by its view of the univei-se as a develop
ment ; and also created a largeness of sympathy with
difiPerffig views, by regardffig all thffigs as ffi transi
tion, relative, trae offiy ffi reference to their con
tradictory ; and by considerffig aU hypotheses to con-
taffi a germ of right, and to be the resffit of partial
views of trath; but it wffi also be obvious, that the
method had its evU effects. For, when applied to
any department, it produced a disposition to seize
the principle, the idea, of wffich the concrete is the
embodiment ; to descend from the type upon the ffi-

LECTURE VIL 373
dividual. Its method was deductive and idealistic;
givffig being to abstractions, like the realism of the
midffie ages. It lost the fact in the principle; it
personffied the genus. Philosophy became a vast
mythology. When applied to Cffiistianity, for example, it did
not attempt to find a phflosophic ground for it psy
chologicaUy ffi the human aspirations, as Scffieier
macher had doned but objectively ffi the dogma.
It discovered the ideal truth ffi religion, and re
garded Christianity and Cffiist as being the maffi
festation of the effort of the great Spirit of the imi-
verse to convert the idea into act; the symbol which
expressed the specffiative truth of the essential unity
of the ideal and the real, of the divffie and the
human. Like the ancient Gnosticism, it believed in
dogmatic Christianity, because it descended upon it
from an d priori principle, in which it found the
explanation of it. Religion and philosophy were
reconciled, because religion was made a phase of i
philosophy. This system was taught by its founder at Berlin
from about 1820 to 1830, contemporary with that of

^ Schleiermacher sought it in the consciousness of dependence,
craving for an infinite object ; and regarded Christianity as supplying
the means for the perfect harmony of this principle with the op
posing one of voluntary power. Hence, the solution of difficulties
in religion would be sought in such a system by seeing the adapta
tion of the Christian scheme to human needs, not in the solution of
the mysteries themselves.

374 LECTURE VIL
Schleiermacher; and the learned theologian Marhein
ecke ^ is the name best known of those who applied it
to theology. It was regarded at that time as an in
strument of orthodoxy^. It had the advantage over
the old rationalism, in that while using similarity of
method in seeking to explain mysteries, it did not
pare them down, but absorbed them in principles of
phflosophy ; and over the school of Scffieiermacher,
in that it was less subjective, less a matter of feelffig,
supplying a doctrine and not merely a spirit ; and
therefore it satisfied the longing of the mind for dog
matic truth, and at the same time more readily linked
e Marheinecke (1780-1846), Professor of Theology at Berlin, the
author of many works, chiefly on dogmatic theology, of which his
Symbolik, 1810, and Dogmatik, 1827, are the most important. See
Bretschneider's explanation and criticism on his system (Dogmatik,
\. 1 15-140). Perhaps the name of K. Daub (1765-1836), Professor
at Heidelberg, ought also to be added. Originally Hegel's teacher,
he adopted his pupil's system. See Kahnis's remarks, p. 244 seq.,
and Amand Saintes, part ii. ch. xvii. It has been usual to classify
the followers of Hegel under the analogy of political parties in
foreign parliaments, thus : — in the extreme right, Heinrichs and
Goeschel ; in the right, Schaller, Erdmann, and Gabler ; in the
centre, Rosenkranz and Marheinecke ; in the left centre, Vatke,
Snellmann, and Michelet ; in the left, Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and
Feuerbach. See Morell, Hist, of Philosophy, ii. 199, 203. Several
of these however are philosophers rather than theologians. A simpler
classification of the Hegelian theologians is into three parties : the
first. Daub and Marheinecke, and more recently Dorner ; the second,
Chr. Baur and the Tiibingen school ; the third, Strauss, B. Bauer,
and Feuerbach.
f See the article by Scherer in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb.
1861, p. 841 ; and on the influence of Hegel see Kahnis, p. 244 seq.,
and Am. Saintes, P. II. ch. 17 ; and Bartholmess, b. xii.

LECTURE VIL 375
itself, ecclesiasticafly with churchlike and corporate
tendencies, and politically with conservative and au
tocratic ones. Yet it is easy to see that its spirit
was reaUy far less Cffiistian than Schleiermacher's.
For it not offiy confused agaffi philosophy and reli
gion, which his system had severed, but it prouffiy
claimed to explain doctrines rationaUy where his had
offiy sought to appropriate them intuitionaUy. It
verged towards pantheism. It was in danger of
losmg the historic fact in the idea; of encouraging,
as it is now sometimes cafled, the " ideological ten-
dencyg;" whereas with Scffieiermacher, the historic
belief had only been regarded as less important than
the emotional apprehension. Its d priori spirit
created also a depreciation of the investigations which
had been pursued by the critical school. It gave
encouragement to the study of history; but it was
to the history of phUosophy, not to the investiga
tions conducted by historical criticism.
Such was the system which, along with those de
scribed in the last lecture, was regarded as contri
buting to favour orthodox reaction, and was dis
puting theological preeminence with that of Scffiei
ermacher, when a work was published by one of its
disciples, which was the means, tffiough the ferment
produced, of altering completely the whole tone and
course of German thought. It was the celebrated
Life of Jesus by Strauss^i, a criticism on the four
s See Note 24. ^ Leben Jesu, 1835.

376 LECTURE VIL
biographies given in the gospels ; a work in which
the whole destructive movement was concentrated,
with such singffiar ability and clearness, that harffiy
any work of theology has subsequently been written
without some notice of the propositions there main
tained. It presented a double aspect : it was both phUo
sophical and critical. Strauss added to a general
admission of the Hegelian point of view a love for
the critical studies so much neglected by that party.
Brought up in the moderate orthodoxy of Tiibffigen,
he had studied at Berlffi under Scffieiermacher, but
caught the critical rather than the philosophical side
of that master's teaching, and especiaUy interested
himself in the solution of the question relating to
the origin and credibility of the Gospels, already
partiaUy considered in the critical inquiries of the
old rationalism, and of the school of De Wette. It
was an investigation which in its nature, ffi the
spirit in which it was decided, and in its similarity
to the contemporaneous discussions of classical criti
cism, bore a close resemblance to that before de
scribed in reference to the Pentateuch. A few words
of explanation concerning it are necessary, previous
to the statement of the nature of Strauss's worki.
i The account of this controversy may be seen iu bishop Marsh's
Dissertation, 1807 ; and a continuation of the history subsequently
to his work in the introduction to the Translation of Schleier
macher's Essay on St Luke, 1825 (by the present Bp. Thirlwall).
The controversy is also treated with great learning and reverence

LECTURE VIL 377
As early as the last century the resemblances be
tween the tffiee " synoptical" EvangeHsts had ex
cited attention; and examffiation was directed to
discover the cause. Some, as Wetsteink, supposed
that one or two of the Gospels were borrowed from
the third ; others, as Michaelis l and Eichhorn, that
the tffiee were aU derived from one common ori
gffial, now lost ; others, as Scffieiermacher, that they
were composed from many detached written narra
tives ; others, as Herder, and subsequently Gieseler,
that they were the committal to writing of the oral
tradition common ffi the church. Thus, whether the
Gospels were regarded as copies, or as being com-
by Dr. S. Davidson, Introd. to N&w Test i. (373-425). Important
references and quotations in regard to it are given in the Appendix
to Tregelles' edition of Home's Introd. roth ed. vol. iv. ; also see
Amand Saintes, Hist. p. ii. 12 ; Renan's Etudes de I'Hist Relig.
(Ess. 3) ; Hase's Leben Jesu ; Quinet's review of Strauss ((Euvres,
vol. iii.). A series of studies on the subject is in course of publica
tion in the Revue Germ. 1862, by Michel Nicholas.
^ Wetstein, with Mill, Calmet, and others, regarded St. Mark's
Gospel to be the epitome of St. Matthew's. Griesbach and Dr.
Townson thought that St. Luke as well as St. Mark had seen the
one by St. Matthew. A further list may be seen in Tregelles (as
above), p. 642 ; and Davidson (as above).
1 Michaelis regarded the Greek translator of St. Matthew to have
had access to the same Greek document as St. Mark and St Luke.
Semler and Lessing advocated a Hebrew or Syriac original. Eichhorn
adopted the theory of an Aramaic original, which was adopted with
slight alterations by bishop Marsh. (It was criticised by bishop
Randolph, by Mr. Veysie, and in Falconer's Bampton Lectures,
1810.) Schleiermacher regarded the Gospels to be pieced together
out of separate documents. Gieseler's hypothesis was put forward

378 LECTURE VIL
posed from earlier documents, or from primitive tra
dition, the effect was, that they were reduced to the
level of natural testimony, and instead of being three
witnesses they became one. The fourth Gospel also
was involved ffi uncertainty. Bretschneider added
the fffil examffiation of it, and provoked a discussion
concerning the alleged disagreement of its tone and
statements with those of the synoptists™. Thus a
chasm was ffitroduced between the events and the
record of them ; and the testimony was- reduced to
traditional evidence.
This alteration in the critical attempt to shake the
evidence of independent authorship had been accom
panied by a corresponding change ffi the interpreta
tion, as seen in the assaffits made on the credibility
of the facts narrated. In the hands of the English
deists and of Reimarus this attack had been an
aUegation against the moral character of the writer.
In Eichhorn and Paulus the imputation of coUusion
had been superseded by the rationahstic ffiterpreta
tion, wffich, without denying the historical recital,
denied the supernatural, and explained it away by
reference to the pecffiiarities of time at which the
"> Probabilia de Evangel, et Epist Joannis origine et indole,
1820. The theory suggested was, that it was written in the
second century. It was well answered by Schott, Stein, and
others. The controversy has been revived in more modern times ;
the Tiibingen school denying the authorship to St. John, Ewald
and others, asserting it. The subject is discussed in Davidson's
Introduction to the New Testament, i. 233-313. See also two arti
cles in the National Review, No. i. July 1855, and No. 9. July 1857.

LECTURE VIL 379
events were described. The next step was to transfer
the doubt to the recital itself, and to find, in the
absence of contemporary evidence for the events, the
possibility for legend, and, in the antecedent expec
tation of them, the possibility for myth.
This was the state of the critical question with
regard to the Gospels when the work of Strauss
appeared. The Hegelian philosophy gave him the
constructive side of his work, and criticism the de
structive. Setting out with the preconception which
had lain at the basis of German phUosophy and
theology since Kant, that the idea was more im
portant than the fact", the mythical interpretation
of history furnished to him the medium for applying
this conception as an engine of criticism.
The mythical system of interpretation, though
slightly suggested by his predecessors in criticism, was
Strauss's great work. The difference between aUe
gory, legend, and myth, is weU known. Our blessed
Lord's miracles woffid be aUegories, if they were, as
Woolston claimed, parables intentionaUy invented for
purposes of moral instraction, or facts which had a
mystical as weU as literal meanmg : they woffid be
legerids if, while contaffiffig a basis of fact, they were
exaggerated by tradition : they woffid be myths if,
without reaUy occurring, they were the resffit of a
general preconception that the Messiah ought to do
mighty works, which thus graduaUy became trans-
° On the spirit of Kant's philosophy in this respect, see Strauss's
own remarks, Leben Jesu, Introd. § 7.

380 LECTURE VIL
lated into fact. A legend is a group of ideas round
a nucleus of fact : a myth is an idea translated by
mental realism into fact. A legend proceeds upwards
into the past; a myth downwards ffito the future".
Strauss's peculiarity consisted in trying to show that
if a smaU basis of fact, heightened by legend, be
aUowed in the gospel history, the influence of myth
is a psychological cause sufficient to explaffi the re
maffider. The idea is regarded as prior to the fact :
the need of a deliverer, he pretends, created the idea
of a saviour : the misinterpretation of old prophecy
presented conditions which in the popular mffid must
be fuffiUed by the Messiah. The gospel history is
regarded as the attempt of the idea to realise itself
in fact.
The fundamental faUacy of the ffiquiry is apparent
from one consideration. Legends are possible ffi any
age ; myths, strictly so cafled, offiy in the earliest
ages of a nation. Comparative philology has lately
shoAvn that mythology is connected with the forma
tion of language, and restricted to an early period
0 On the contrast of myth and legend there are some good
remarks in Strauss, who quotes George's Mythus und Sage for
the explanation ; also in the Westminster Review for April 1847
(p. 149), an article which, though written in favour of Strauss, gives
an instructive account of the object and position of his work. The
history of Strauss's work, with its antecedents and consequents,
mainly based on Schwarz (b. ii.) and on Scherer, but bearing marks
of independent study, is given in Mr. F. C. Cook's Essay on Ideo
logy in the Aids to Faith, 1862. Theodore Parker has given an
accurate analysis, and of course a defence, of Strauss (Miscellaneous
Writings, p. 231).

LECTURE VIL 381
of the world's history p. But the encouragement
offered to the mythic interpretation by Hegel's phi
losophy wiU be apparent. The mythus embodying
itself in the facts of the gospel was the miniature
of the process of universal nature. Everywhere the
idea strives for realisation.
The scheme of Strauss formed the link between
philosophy and criticism. Phflosophy had explained
the doctrines of Christianity, but not the facts of
Christian history. Criticism had explained the facts
by historical examination, but not by philosophy.
Strauss attempted, for the first time, to present the
phflosophical explanation of facts as well as doctrines.
He explained them, neither by charge of fraud, nor
by historical causes, but by reference to the operation
of a psychological law, the same which the Hege
lian philosophy regarded as exemplffied universaUy.
Early Christian fiction was resolved into a psycho
logical law, regffiated by a definite law of suggestion,
of which plausible instances were traced. The gospel
history was regarded to be partly a creation out of
nothing, partly an adaptation of real facts to pre
conceived ideas. This same philosophy, which thus
contributed to the critical or destractive side of the
theory, also furnished the reconstructive. The facts
in Christianity were temporary, the ideas eternal.
Christ was the type of humanity. (36) His life and
P The new view cf the nature of myths is developed in Max
Miiller's Essay on Comparative Mythology, Oxford Essays, 1856.
See also Note 47.

382 LECTURE VIL
death and resurrection were the symbol of the life,
death, and resurrection, of humanity. The former
were unimportant, the latter eternal. An exoteric
religion for the people might exhibit the one :
the esoteric for the philosopher might retain the
other 1.
This is Strauss's system and position. The book
itself comprises three parts ; — first, an historic intro
duction, ffi which the history of previous criticism
and of Hermeneutics, and of the formation of the
mythical theory is most ably presented'' : — secondly,
the main body of the work, which consists of a criti
cal examination of the life of Christ ^ subdivided ffito
three parts; viz. an examination of the birth and
chfldhood of Jesus*, of his public life", and of his
death" ; the object of which is to poffit out ffi the nar
rative the historic or mythic elements : — and thirffiy, a
phflosophical conclusion y, in which the doctrmal signi-
f Strauss, Leben Jesu, § 152. (ii. p. 713.)
¦' § 1-16. It contains a history of the difierent explanations
of sacred legends among the Greeks ; the allegorical systems of the
Hebrews (Philo,) and Christians (Origen); the system of the Deists;
and the Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist ; the naturalist mode of Eichhorn
and Paulus, and the moral of Kant ; lastly, the rise of the mythic,
both in reference to the Old and New Testaments. Then the dis
cussion of the possibility of myths in the Gospels, and a description
of the evangelical mythus.
s. § 1-142. '§17-43. "§44-110. ''§111-142.
> § 143-152. The author gives the dogmatic import of the life
of Jesus, criticising the Christology of Orthodoxy, of Rationalism, of
Schleiermacher, the Symbolic of Kant and De Wette, the Hegelian ;
and draws his own conclusions.

LECTURE VIL 383
ficance of the life is given. As a specimen of didactic
and critical writing it is perhaps unrivafled in the
German literature. The second part is the embodi
ment of afl the difficffities which destructive criticism
had presented. If the historic sketches captivate by
their clearness, the critical do so by their surprising
acuteness and dialectical power ; and the philosophical
by the appreciation of the ideal beauty of the very
doctrines, the historic embodiment of which is denied.
It is the work of a mind endowed with remarkable
analytical power ; ffi which the force of reflective
theory has overwhelmed the intuitional perception
of the personality and originality of the sacred cha
racter which is the subject of his study.
The effect of the publication of the work was
astonishing. It produced a religious panic unequaUed
since the Wolfenbiittel fragments. The first impffise
of the Prussian government was to prevent the in
troduction of the book into the Prussian kffigdom ;
but Neander stood up to resist the proposal, with a
courage which showed his firm confidence in the per
manent victory of truth ; saying that it must be
answered by argument, not suppressed by force ; and -
forthwith wrote his own beautifffi work on the life of
Christ in reply to it. Yet neither the pecffiiarity of
Strauss's theory nor the nature of the work gave
ground for the panic. For the book was in truth not
a novelty, but merely a fffiler development of prffi-
« This idea is well brought out in Renan's critique on Strauss.
(Etudes Relig. Essai iii.)

384 LECTURE VIL
ciples already existing in Germany ; and Scffieier-
machpi', before his death, when contemplating the
tendency of religious criticism, had predicted^ the
probability of such an attempt being made. Nor was
the work irreligious and blasphemous in its spirit,
like the attacks of the last century. It professed to
be executed solely ffi the interests of science ; and,
though subversive of historic religion, to be con
servative of ideal. The critical part was offiy a
means to an end ; its real basis was specffiative. But
the literary aspect of the .question was lost sight of
in the religious. The heart spoke forth its terror at
the idea of losing its most sacred hope, the object of
its deepest trast, an historic Saviour. The alarm had
not been anticipated by the author of the attack.
He is described by a hostfle critic^ as a ' young man
fufl of candour, of sweetness, and modesty, of a spirit
almost mystical, and as it were saddened by the
disturbance which had been occasioned.' But he
became a martyr for his act, and an outcast from the
sympathy of religious men. Unable to exercise his
" One passage of this kind is quoted by Amand Saintes (p. 263)
from Liicke in Stud, und Krit. vol. ii. p. 489.
^ Edgar Quinet ((Euvres, iii. 316, reprinted from Revue des
Deux Mondes, Sept. 1838). His words are, " Un jeune homme
plein de candeur, de douceur, de modestie, une ame presque mystique
et comme attrist6e du bruit qu'elle a caus6." The unaltered view
which Strauss now takes ofhis own work, after the interval of twenty-
five years, is given in the Vorrede to his Gesprache von Hutten iiber-
setzt und erlailtert, i860. It is quoted in the National Review,
No. 23, art. 7.

LECTURE VIL 385
singffiar gifts of teachffig in any professorship, he
has continued to write from time to time hterary
monographs of more defiant tone; proofs of his abihty,
but vehicles for the expression of his opinions. (37)
The effect on the different theological critics
throughout Germany, both frienffiy and hostfle, was
so remarkable, that the year 1835, in which the book
was pubHshed, is as memorable in theology as the
year 1848 in politics. The work carried criticism
and philosophy to its farthest hmits, and demanded
from theologians of aU classes a thorough recon
sideration of the subject of the origines of Christi
affity ". The ablest theologians either wrote in refu
tation of it, or reconsidered their own opinions by
the hght of its criticisms. (38) The alarm at the loss
of the historic basis of Christianity created a strong
reaction in favour of the Lutheran orthodoxy, the
commencement of which has already been named ^ ;
" The effect which it produced is described, with details of the
answers written, in book ii. of the excellent little work of C. Schwarz
already named, Oeschichte der Neuesten Theologie, 1856. This part
of the work is translated into French, with some useful notes, in the
Rev. Germ. vol. ix. parts ii. and iii. See Note 38. The most useful
replies are those of Neander and Dorner. Dr. Beard also published
a valuable series of papers called Voices of the Church (1845),
containing translations of the Essay by Quinet above quoted, of one
by A. Cocquerel (p§re), and others. Dr. Mill's work on The Appli
cation of Pantheistic Principles to the Gospels (1840) is intended
also as a reply. The Life of Christ, contained in vol. i. of Dean
Milman's History of Christianity, also contains important remarks
on Strauss's scheme.
d P. 341. c c

386 LECTURE VIL
and gave the death-blow, not offiy to the Hegelian
school, but almost to the passion for ontological spe
cffiation in Germany. While some thus assumed a
churchly and conservative aspect, others outstripped
Strauss, and, uniting with French positivism, advanced
into utter pantheism and materialism.
The Hegelian party, to which Strauss belonged,
and which would faffi have been excused from this
reductio ad absurdum of its principles «, became
spHt ffito sections tffiough the various attempts made
to parry the blow, and reconstruct their system on
the phUosophical side. The critical tendency had
now too found a home, by means of Strauss's work,
among the Hegehans ; and this led to the creation of
a new school of historical criticism to be hereafter
described, which arose ffi Strauss's own university of
Tiibrngen^- We have now explaffied the circumstances attend
ing the change which closed the second and intro
duced the third period in German theology.
In this third period, wffich is that of contemporary
thought, we may distffigffish four broaffiy marked
tendencies ; tffiee withffi the church, and one directly
infidel in character outside of its.
e Scherer clearly brings out this relation of Strauss's work, in
§ 5 of the article before quoted.
f Accordingly it will be understood that the mention of " the
old Tiibingen school" of the last century denotes a Pietist School
like that of Bengel or Pfafi' ; the mention of " the new Tiibingen
school" means one of ultra-rationalism.
8 The materials for the following sketch have been largely sup-

LECTURE VIL 387
The last named, which we shall describe first,
started from Strauss's position, and advanced stffi
farther. It sprang from the destractive side of the
Hegehan pffilosophy, and has sometimes been named
the young Hegelian school. From the first it lacked
the air of respect toward reHgion wffich Strauss ffid
not throw aside in ffis work ; and it also extend.ed
itself from theology to poHtics.
Bruno Bauer^i, a Professor at Berlin, by turning
suddeffiy round from the most orthodox to the most
heterodox position in his school, may be classed with
Strauss in his method, though not in his spirit. He
carried out Strauss's critical examination of the
plied by the work of Schwarz, and partly by an article before cited
in the Westminster Review for April 1857. Schwarz, after devoting
the first chapter of book ii. to the Straussian contests, devotes the
second and first three chapters of book iii. to the history of these
four movements.
^ See Amand Saintes, bookii. ch. 18 ; Hase, § 450 ; Hundesha
gen, Der Deut. Prot. § 17. Bruno Bauer, born 1809, was once Pro
fessor at Bonn, and teacher at Berlin. In his first manner he showed
himself to be a disciple of Hegel, in works published from 1835 to
1839, such as a criticism on Strauss, and also on the Old Testament.
From 1839 to 1842 he exhibited a destructive tendency directed
against the sacred books ; e. g. a work on the Prussian church and
science, and a criticism on St. John's Gospel. The persecution which
he encountered stimulating his opposition, he showed in his next
works (in 1842 and 1843) a spirit of defiance in his Das Eklekte
Christenthwm. From 1843 to 1849 he connected himself with
questions of politics, and wrote largely on social science. Since
that period he has again written, both in theology, criticisms of the
Gospels and Epistles, and ou politics. A list of his works and a
sketch of his mental character may be found in Vapereau, Diet des
Contemp. 1858. C C 2

388 LECTURE VIL
Gospels with a coarse ridicffie ; and extended it by
denying the historic basis of fact, and imputing the
myth to the personal creation of the individual writer.
But his successors advanced even farther. As Bauer
developed the critical side of Strauss, Feuerbachi and
Ruge'^ developed the philosophical, and destroyed the
very idea of reHgion itself, by showing that the idea
of God or of religion is of human construction, the
giving objective existence to an idea. The aspiration,
instead of guaranteeing the existence of an object to
ward which it is directed, is represented as creating it
This was the final resffit of the subjective point of
view of the Kantian phflosophy, and of the idealism
of Hegel. Reason must, it was pretended, be foUowed,
to whatever extent it contradicts the feelmgs. Theo
logy becomes anthropology ; religion, mythology ;
pantheism, atheism ; man, coUective humaffity, be-
i On this movement see Schwarz, b. iii. ch. i ; and ou the German
political socialism see the North British Review, No. 22, for Aug.
1848. Feuerbach (see Vapereau) was author of many works on
the history of philosophy about 1833 to 1845. His chief works on
religion were Das Wesen des Ghristenthwm (1851), and Da^ Wesen
der Religion, 1845. The former work was translated in 1854, and
contains a discussion (i) of the true or anthropological essence of
religion; (2) of the false or theological. His collected works have
been published. The Hallische Jahrbiicher was his organ. Criti
cisms on his school are given by Bartholmess (Hist Crit. des Doctr.
de la Phil. Mod. b. xiii. ch. ii.), and by E. Renan (Etudes de THist.
Relig. p. 405.)
k Ruge, once a teacher at Halle ; went into voluntary exile at
Paris, like Heine, in 1843 ; was mixed in the revolutionary schemes
of 1848 ; and in 1850 became an exile in England. See Vapereau.

LECTURE VIL 389
comes the sole object of the belief and respect which
had been previously given to Deity ; religion vanishes
in morality. The love of man becomes the substitute
for the love of God. This was a position analogous
to that which positivism reached in France, but from
a mental instead of a physical point of view. This
form of thought found expression in literature through
the poetry of Heine l, and linked itself with political
theories of communism more extreme than the con
temporary ones in France.
StiU the lowest point was not reached : religion
was treated as a psychological peculiarity, and the
virtue of benevolence recogffised. But when religion
was felt to be offiy an idea, and the belief of the
supernatural to be the great obstacle to political
reform, an intense feeling of antipathy was aroused ;
and Schmidt in, under the pseudonym of Stirner,
reached the naturahstic point of view held by Volney,
the worship of self-love. This new school, which had
arisen in the few years subsequent to Strauss's work,

' See above, note on p. 22. Gutskow and Mundt belonged to
the same school. The former a dramatic poet, whose works against
religion were about 1835, in the Prefaces to Letters of F. Schlegel,
&c. ; the latter, librarian at Berlin, was noted for his political con
nexion with the party of young Germany, rather than for any assault
on religion. See Vapereau for an account of his works. The spirit
of this school was tinged with- bitterness against existing institu
tions. >" Gaspard Schmidt (i 806-1 856) wrote in 1845, under the pseu
donym of Max Stirner, Der dnsige und sein Eigenthum. His later
works were on political economy.

390 LECTURE VIL
mingled itself with the revolutionary moveffients of
Germany in 1848, and was the means of exciting the
alarm which caused the suppression of them. Since
that date the school has been extinct as a literary
movement. The tendency just described was entirely de
structive. The three others, which remaffi for con
sideration, exist withffi the church, and are ffi their
nature reconstructive, and aim at repeUing the
attacks of Strauss -and of other previous critics. The
one that we shaU describe ffist is that which is most
rationalistic, and approaches most nearly to Strauss's
views ; and is frequently caUed, from the Swabian
uffiversity which has been its stronghold, the Tiibin
gen school". It is a lineal offshoot in some slight
n As schools of thought have been occasionally named in this
narrative in connexion with universities, it may facilitate clearness
to collect together the few hints which have been given concerning
the subject. In the first period previous to 1790, we showed the
theological tendencies of the four universities, Gottingen, Leipsic,
Halle, and Tiibingen : next, in the period after 1790, the state of
Jena as the home of rationalism and of the Kantian philosophy. In
our second period we pointed out the condition of Berlin as the seat
of philosophical reaction under Schleiermacher and Hegel ; and indi
rectly of the universities which represented the school of De Wette.
In the third period, the school of Lutheran reaction has specially
existed in Berlin, Leipsic, Erlangen, Rostock, and the Russian uni
versity of Dorpat ; the school of '' Mediation " chiefiy at Berlin,
Heidelberg, Halle, and Bonn ; aud the historico-critical at Tiibingen.
It may be useful to add, for the completion of the account, that the
Tubingen school is now almost extinct- in its original home ; and
that the two universities which at the present time represent the
freest criticism are supposed to be Giessen and Jena. The latter is

LECTURE VIL 391
degree from the school of Hegel, and more decideffiy
from the critical school of De Wette, before named.
But it stands contrasted with the latter by caution,
as marked as that which separates recent critics "
of Roman history from earlier ones, like Niebuhr.
Like Strauss, it restricts its attention to the New
Testament ; but it is a direct reaction against his
inclination to undervalue the historical element. The
great problem presented to it is, to reconstruct the
history of early Christiaffity, to reinvestigate the
genesis of the gospel biographies and doctrffie. De
clining to approach the books of the New Testament
with dogmatic preconceptions, it breaks with the
past, and ffiterprets them by the historic method;
proposing for its fundamental principle to interpret
scripture exactly like any other literary work. Pre
tending that after the ravages of criticism, the
Gospels cannot be regarded as true history, but offiy
as misceUaneous materials for true history, it takes
its stand on four of the Epistles of St. Paffi, the
genuffieness of which it camiot doubt, and finds in
the straggle of Jew and GentUe its theory of
Christianity p. Christiaffity is not regarded as mira
cffious, but as an offshoot of Judaism, which received
its final form by the contest of the Petrine or Judseo-
marked by the realistic school of philosophy described in Note 41.
Hilgenfeld, the best representative of the Tubingen school, is Pro
fessor there ; see Note 39.
0 E. g. Th. Mommsen.
I' Viz. the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, and the two to
Corinth.

392 LECTURE VIL
Christian party, and the Paffiine or Gentile ; which
contest is considered by it not to have been decided
tffi late in the second century. By the aid of this
theory, constructed from the few books which it ad
mits to be of undoubted genuineness, it guides itself
in the examination of the remaffider, tracffig them to
party interests which determffied their aim, pro
nouncing on their object and date by reference to if.
In this way it arrives at most extraordinary conclu
sions in reference to some of them. Not one sffigle
book, except four of St. Paul's Epistles, is regarded to
be authentic. The Gospel cafled that of St. John is
considered as a treatise of Alexandrian philosophy,
written late in the second century to support the
theory of the Aoyos. It wiU thus be perceived that
the inquiry, though it professes to be objective, yet
has a subjective cast.
The leader of this school was Christian Baur, (39)
lately deceased ; a man of large erudition ; a wonder
of acuteness even in Germany ; distinguished for the
extraordinary ability displayed in his reply to the
attacks made on Protestantism by the celebrated
Roman catholic theologian Moehler : and though
the doctrinal resffit of the school is ethics or pure
Sociffianism and naturalism, and the critical opinions
obviously are most extravagant, the sagacity and
learning shown in the monographs pubhshed by it
make them some of the most instructive, as sources
"1 An explanation and criticism of some of these opinions are given
in Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament

LECTURE VIL 393
of information, in modern theology, to those who
know how to use them aright. From an orthodox
point of view the effect of the school is most de
structive ; but, if viewed in reference to the pre
ceding schools, it manifests a tenacious hold over the
historic side of Christianity, and has affected in a
literary way the schools formerly described, which
claim lineage from the older critics.
As the tendency just described is the modern
representative of the older critical schools; so the
next holds a similar position to the philosophical.
The school is frequently on tffis account described
by the same name, of " Mediation theology "¦," origin
ally applied to Schleiermacher, because it attempts to
unite science with faith, a true use of reason with a
belief in scripture. It comprises the chief theolo
gical names of Germany, some of whom were disci
ples of Schleiermacher, others of the orthodox portion
of the Hegelian party. Their object is not simply,
like the revivers of Lutheran orthodoxy, to surrender
the judgment to an external authority in the church,
nor to give unbounded liberty to it like the critical
school : not going back like the one to the ancient
faith of the church, nor progressing like the other
to new discoveries in religion, they seek to under
stand that which they believe, to find a philosophy
for religion and Christianity.
¦¦ Vermittellungs -Theologie, and sometimes called Deutsche Theo
logie. See Schwarz, book iii. ch. ii. The organs of this party are the
Studien und Kritiken and the Neue -Evangel. Kirchenzeitung.

394 LECTURE VIL
Two theologians stand out above the others, as
evfficing vitality of thought, and boldly attempting
to grapple with the philosophical problems ; —
Dorner ^ and Rothe \ both very original, but bearing
traces of the influence of their predecessors. The
former, moffided by the Hegelian school, investigates
the Christological problem which lies at the basis of
Christiaffity ; the latter, moffided rather by the school
of Schleiermacher, has attempted the cosmological,
which lies at the basis of religion and providence.
The work of Dorner on "the Person of Christ"
formed an epoch in German theology, by its fuffiess
of learning, its orthodoxy of tone, and its union
of speculative powers with historic erudition. The
Christian doctrine of the incarnation is, that God
and man have been united in an historic person as
the essential condition for effecting human salvation.
If the doctrine be viewed on the specffiative side, the
s Dorner, born in 1809; successively Professor in several uni
versities : he has recently gone to Berlin. It is a matter of gra
tification that his great work, described in the text, is now in
course of translation. The account of the successive steps through
which it passed may be seen in the American Bibliotheca Sacra for
1849. Also an account of it is given in Theodore Parker's Miscel
laneous Works, p. 287. Lange, author of the Leben Jesu, ought
perhaps to be named along with the two in the text, as belonging to
this school.
t Perhaps these two theologians ought to be regarded apart from
the average of the members of the Mediation school, as being of a
grander type. They approach the subject from a higher stand-point,
and also are more largely moulded by philosophy. On Rothe, see
Note 40.

LECTURE VIL 395
problem is to show d priori that this historic union
ought to exist ; if viewed on the historic, to prove
that it has existed as a fact. The great aim of the
Christology of the Hegelian system was to effect
the former ; the aim of Strauss was to destroy the
latter. Dorner strove to reconstruct the doctrine, by
making the historical study of its progress the means
of supplying the elements of information for doing
so. He commences by an examination of other
religions ", in order at once to show the existence in
them of blind attempts to realise that truth which
the incarnation supplied, and to prove the impossi
bility that the Christian doctrine can have been
borrowed from human sources, as the critical and
mythical interpreters would assume. He discovers
in aU religions the desire to unite man to God ; but
shows " that the Christian doctrine cannot have been
derived from the oriental, which humanised God ;
nor from the Greek, which deffied man; nor from
the Hebrew in its Palestinian form, which degraded
the idea of the incarnate God into a temporal Mes
siah ; nor in its Alexandrian form, which never
reached, in its theory of the A ©'709, the idea of the
distinction of person of the Son from the Father.
Thus establishing the originality of the idea in
Christianity, and exhibiting it as the fuffihnent of
the world's yearnings, he traces it in the teaching of
the apostles, and of the apostolic age, next as marking
" In the Einleitung. ^ Id. )' Vol. i. period i. ch. i.

396 LECTURE VIL
the different heretical sects ^ which respectively lost
sight of one of the two elements, tiU he finds the
church's explicit statement of the doctrine in its
fffiness a- ; and then pursues it onwards through the
course of history to the present time^. Though
the work is to an English mind difficffit, through
the air of speculation which pervades it, and perhaps
open to exception in some of its positions ; yet, viewed
as a whole, it is a magnificent argument in favour of
Christianity ; exhibiting the incarnation as the satis
faction for the world's wants, as the original and
independent treasure in Christianity; and showing
the process through which Providence in history has
caused the doctrine to be evolved and preserved.
The other great problem, the origin of thffigs, and
the relation of God to the world, which is at the
basis of religion, as the incarnation is at the basis
of Christianity, has been less frequently handled.
OriginaUy discussed, like the latter, in controversy
with the early unbelievers, it had been touched upon
in the specffiations of Averroes and Spinoza, in the
materialism of French infidelity, and in the earlier
systems of specffiative philosophy in Germany itself
It was this problem which was attempted by
Rothe. (40) Advancffig beyond this first question,
he has considered the scheme of Providence in the
development of religion, and the theory of the Christ
ian church in relation to political society. It is
' Id. ch. ii. and iii. " 2 Epoche, Abth. 2. b Vol. ii.

LECTURE VIL 397
unnecessary here to explain his system : his mind
is too original to admit of comparison without in
justice; yet the specffiations of our own Coleridge,
who on phflosophical prfficiples makes the state to be
the realisation of the church, wiU perhaps give some
imperfect conception of the character of his attempts.
This second school that we have been considering,
though approximatmg extremely nearly to orthodoxy,
and furnishing the works of most value in the mo
dem theology, yet seeks to approach religion from
the psychological or philosophical side. It specu
lates freely, and believes revelation because it finds
it to coincide with the discoveries of free thought.
But there is a third tendency, which believes reve
lation without professffig to understand it ; which
rests on the revelation in scripture as an objective
verity, and believes the Bible on the ground of evi
dence, without questionffig its material c.
The first germ of this reaction in favour of rigid
orthodoxy was observable ffi the feelffig aroused by
the theses of Harms, ffi 1817, already named, on occa
sion of the celebration of th^., tricentenary of the
Reformation ; but it was quickened by the attempts,
initiated by the Prussian kffig, between the years
" If the reader follows out the pedantic but useful mode before
named, of arranging the actual schools of theology after the fashion
of foreign assemblies, he will place in the right, the fiiends of the
confessional theology ; in the centre, those of the mediation theo
logy ; in the left, the old critical school of De Wette ; and in the
extreme left, the school of Tiibingen. The first has its chief seat in
Prussia, and the third probably in Thuringia and central Germany.

398 ' LECTURE VIL
1821 and 1830, to unite the Lutheran and Calvinistic
branches of the Protestant church'^.
The time seemed then to thoughtfffi men a fittmg
one, when doctrffies were either regarded as unim
portant or superseded by the religious consciousness,
to unite these two churches under the bond of a
common nationality, and the practice of a common
liturgy. But the old Lutheran spirit, which stfll
survived ffi the retirement of country parishes, was
aroused, and some pastors underwent deprivation and
persecution rather than submit to the union®. This
new movement at ffist caught the spirit of pietism,
just as had been the case with that of Scffieier
macher; but graduaUy abandoned it for a dogmatic
and churchhke aspect, as he for a scientific expres
sion. Its aim was to return to the Lutheranism of
the sixteenth century, and to raUy round the con
fessions of faith of that period. Hengstenberg^ at
Berlin, and Haverffick?, are the names best known
as representing this party at the period of which we
<J See Kahnis, p. 262, &c. ; Am. Saintes, partii. ch. x; Hase,
§ 453 j Schwarz, book iii. ch. iii.
e The dissenters from the union were not recognised legally by the
state till 1845. (See the references given in the last note.) The prin
cipal of those who dissented were Kellner, Scheibel, and Huschke.
f Hengstenberg, born in 1802 ; professor at Berlin. His works
are well known. His work on Christology (1B29), Introduction to
the Pentateuch (1831), Commentary on the Psalms (1842), and
several others, are translated.
g Havernick, Professor at Konigsberg ; died a few years since.
His chief works are, a Commentary on Daniel (1838); and an Intro
duction to the Old Testament, which is translated.

LECTURE VIL 399
speak. Their efforts were directed to criticism rather
than to doctrine, to reconstruct the basis for Christ
ianity in Judaism by defending the authenticity and
credibility of the ancient scriptures. In doctrine
and the canon, they reverted to the position of the
Reformation. But the alarm ensuffig upon the work
of Strauss, in 1835, invested this movement with a
more reactionary character; and the journal ^^ which
gave expression to Hengstenberg's views, graduaUy
assumed the character of an ecclesiastical censorship,
frequently marked by defiance and severity, like the
tone of Luther of old.
The panic caused by the revolutions of 1848 gave
increased stimffius, by adding a political reaction to
the religious. The extreme rationalist party had
favoured the Revolution, and the school of Scffieier
macher had supported the schemes for constitutional
government. In the suppression of liberty which
ensued for about ten years, the orthodox movement
in theology uffited itself with the reaction in poli
tical. Absolute government was not merely a fact,
but a doctrine. The theological reaction was no
longer the spiritual aspiration of Germany seek
ing repose after doubt, but a political movement
veUed under an ecclesiastical colour. The resffit
has been, the creation of a Lutheran party far more
l" The Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, the organ of his opinions,
was Pietist till about 1838 ; after which it favoured the reaction ;
especially since the theological disputes of 1845 and the political
revolution of 1848. See Hase, § 451 ; Schwarz, book i.

400 LECTURE VIL
extreme in its opinions than the one just described;
— the political leader of which in the Prussian
parliament was the jurist Stahl* ; — intolerant towards
other churches, suspicious of any independent asso
ciations for religious usefffiness in its own, disownmg
pietism because of its unchurcffiike character, and in
its principles going back beyond the Reformation, dis
carding the subjective inward principle, and reposing
on the objective authority of the church. Taking
a political view of religion, it does not so much ask
what is truth, but what the church asserts to be true.
Though not offending popffiar prejudices by the in
troduction of Romish doctrines or rites, it reaUy
reposes on the Romish principle of a visible authori
tative church with mystical powers, upholdffig a
rigid sacramental theory and the doctrine of con-
substantiation. Extending the sacramental efficacy
to the ministerial office, and denying communion
between God and the individual soffi independently
' Stahl, who died in 1861, was eminent for piety as well as
learning. His views may be learned from an address, Ueber Christ
liche Toleranz, 1855. The Kreuz Zeitung is the journal which has
supported this political reaction. The "Theology of the Con
fessions" (i. e. of Augsburg, &c.) is the name which is given to the
movement by its friends. See Kahnis, p. 311 seq. Much interest
ing information in reference to it, though occasionally expressed in
a rude manner, together with references to the German authors
from which it is drawn, will be found in the NoHh British Review,
No. 47, Feb. 1856, and British Quarterly Review, No. 46, April
1856. The extracts there quoted are the authority for several of
the statements here made. See also Schwarz, iii. 3 ; Hundeshagen,
Der Deutsche Protestantismus, § 22.

LECTURE VIL 401
of the church as the element of communication k. Yet
it contains many honoured names, and has produced
many instructive works. The movement in English
theology, which originated a generation ago in the
panic caused by the liberal acts of the government
wffich was introduced by the reform actl, offers a
paraUel; with the exception that the ecclesiastical
principles then advocated had always had supporters
in the English church, whereas they were nearly new
in the Lutheran. The Lutheran movement too, offiy
k In enumerating a few names among those that belong to this
reactionary party, it is fair to state that some of them have not taken
open part in the political aspects of it, and do not teach all that is
described in the last few lines, which rather express the teaching of
the more violent, and mark the tendencies to which the others only
approximate. Some of the best known are, Hailess, Delitzch, Keil,
as biblical investigators ; Rudelbach, Guericke, Schmid, 'Knrti,, and
Kahnis, as historical ; and Kliefoth in practical doctrine. (Kahnis
has however lately adopted free views in criticism. See Colani's
Nouvelle Revue de la Theologie, July 1862.) Vilmar in Hesse Cassel,
and Leo at Halle, belong to the most ultra section of the school.
The universities where it predominates are named at p. 390. Those
however who dissent from the views of the theologians here de
scribed ought not to forget to render a tribute to the reverent piety
and high motives of many of them. They are men who know and
love Christ, and are striving to lead men to love- him.
• It is a remarkable circumstance that the Oxford movement in
the church of England was at first an anticatholic movement. The
Catholic Emancipation Bill and the liberality of the parliament after
the Reform Bill created an alarm, which led to the study of the non-
juring divines and Anglo-catholics who had asserted the rights of the
church, and to the reproduction of their opinions. Deeper causes
were however at work ; among which was the wish to find a more
solid groundwork for church belief : but the political circumstances
contributed the stimulus, though they were not truly the cause.
Dd

402 LECTURE VIL
proposes to go back to the Reformation, the English
ecclesiastical movement professed to go back to the
early fathers. (41)
WhUe the church has thus attempted a renovation
of itself in doctrine, the value of which some wiU
dispute, aU wffi aUow thankfffily that there has been
a deep increase of spiritual life throughout the Ger
man churches. Religion indeed had never died out;
but in the retirement of country districts™ the flame
of divine love still burned with unextinguished glory.
This spiritual fire has now spread, and expressed
itself ffi acts of earnest hfe. Foreign missions have
been promoted"; an inner or home mission esta
blished for schools, and other religious agency"; and
an annual ecclesiastical diet? constituted, for pro
moting co-operation and ecclesiastical improvement i.
™ The names of Stilling and Oberlin have been already cited, as
instances of devoted Christians who realised the truth and tried to
spread it. A writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xxv. p.
132, attests from personal experience his knowledge of the existence
of earnest faith in parishes at the time when the universities were
nurseries of doubt.
" The missions existed previously, having been commenced by
the Moravians in the last century, and carried on by several de
tached missionary associations in the present. On the recent
improvement in Germany, see articles in the North British Review,
No. 31 for Nov. 1851, and No. 40 for Feb. 1854.
° Die Innere Mission, founded by Dr. Wichern.
I' The Kirchentag arose out of the Kirchenbund, and met first at
Wittenberg, in the church which contains the bones of Luther and
Melancthon, in 1848, while war and revolution were raging around.
'1 In addition to those named in the text, mention ought to be
made of the association of the " Friends of Light," founded by
Uhlich, which represents the individual principle like the Quakers,

LECTURE VIL 403
These three separate movements of the present
age, even when incorrect, have contributed something
to form a perfect theology. In the orthodox school we
see the attempt to retum to the Bible, as interpreted
by the Reformation; ffi the mediation school, as inter
preted by the religious consciousness ; in the critical
school, as interpreted by historic and critical methods.
We have now completed the history of the great
movement in German theology, in its two elements,
doctrinal and critical. Commencing in the first pe
riod, — in doctrffie, with the disbehef of positive reli
gion, replacing dogma by ethics; and in criticism,
supplying a rationalistic interpretation : in the second,
it was improved on the doctrinal side by the separa
tion of religion and ethics ; and on the critical by a spi
ritual acknowledgment of the literary characteristics
and psychological pecuharities of revelation: in the
third, by a' total reconstruction of both inquiries, ffi
a more historic and orthodox spirit ; and by the
creation of a traditionalist position in reference to
each. The solution of the problem how to reconcile
faith and reason, was attempted in the first by obli-
and has resulted in forming some free congregations in Konigsberg
and Magdeburg. (Consult Die Deutsche Theologie, p. 26 ; Hase's
Church History, § 456.) The movement was accused of rationalism
by its opponents. Also the Gustavus Adolphus Association, begun
in 1832 for the relief of all classes of protestants, was one of the
first means of promoting Christian union, and indirectly produced
the Kirchentag. An account of these two last associations may be
found in a pamphlet (1849) by C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements
of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. Kahnis notices the great
facts of this revival, but with a slight sneer (p. 276, &c.)
D d 2

404 LECTURE VIL
terating faith ; in the second by uniting them ; in
the third by separatffig them. The whole movement
stands remarkable, not offiy as beffig the most sin
gffiar ffistance in ffistory, where the action of free
thought can be watched ffi its ffiteUectual stages, dis
connected in a great degree from emotional causes,
and where the effort was exercised by the friends
of religion, not by foes ; but also in the circumstance
that though referable to the irffiuence of simUar ffitel-
lectual causes as former epochs of free thought, it is
characterised by whoUy different forms of them.
We have found, on nearer inspection, as might be
anticipated iii any great movement of mind, that
instead of being without purpose, and a mere heap
of ruins, there was a plan and method in it, It is a
history which offers much cause for sorrow and much
for joy. Though, as has been before remarked, a
period of harrowing doubt in the life of an indivi
dual or a nation is a melancholy subject for con
sideration, yet when it is not induced by immorality,
but produced, as in this instance, by the operation of
regffiar causes, and is the resffit of the attractiveness
of new modes of inquiry which ffivited appHcation
to the crflicism of old traths, to be accepted or
rejected after beffig fffily tested; there is somethffig
to reHeve the dreariness of the prospect. And when
we look to the resffit, there is abundant cause
for thankfffiness. The agitation of free thought
has produced permanent contributions to theology.
Extravagant and shocking as some of the inquiries

LECTURE VIL 405
have been, and injurious in a pastoral point of view,
being the utterance of men who had made shipwreck
of faith; yet in a scientific, hardly one has been
whofly lost, and few coffid be spared in buildffig up
the temple of truth. In criticism, in exegesis, in doc
trine, in history alike, how much more is known than
before the movement commenced : and what light
has been thrown on that which is the very foundation
problem, the just limits of inquiry in religion. Each
earnest writer has contributed some fragment of in
formation. At each point error was met by an apo
logetic literature, rivalling it in learning and depth ;
reason was conquered by reason ; and though we
cannot help rejoicing that we are able to reap the
resffits of the experience, without undergoing the
perfl of acquiring it, yet we must acknowledge that
the free and fffil discussion has in the end resffited in
truth : the very error has stimffiated discovery. So
far from being a warning against having confidence
in the exercise of inquiry, it is an unanswerable
ground for reposing confidence in it. Christianity is
not a religion that need shrink from investigation.
Christians need not tremble at every onset. Our
religion is vital, because true ; and we may place
trast in the providence of God in history, which
overrffies human errors and straggles for the per
manent good of men ; and, extricating the human
race from the follies of particffiar individuals, makes
the antagonism of free discussion the means to con
serve or to promote inteUectual truth.

406 LECTURE VIL
In concluding this sketch however it is proper to
make a few remarks, as hints to theological students,
in reference to the study of works of German theo
logy. Many such works are translated, and many
more exist in the original, which are of the highest
valued and are likely to be read, and indeed may
justly be read, by all students of large cffitivation.
The works of Scffieiermacher or Dorner in doctrine,
of De Wette or Ewald in criticism, of Neander or Baur
in history, are works of power as weU as erudition,
and contain a treasure-house of information and sug
gestion for those who know how to use them wisely,
and separate the precious from the untrue. While
I have endeavoured to present a fair history of the
whole movement, I shoffid feel inexpressible pain if
these remarks were the means of leading unwary
students to plunge unguardedly into the study of
many parts of it. Its original connexion with the
deist and ethical points of view, and the constant sense
of living ffi an atmosphere of controversy, have im
pressed even some of the more orthodox writers with
a few pecffiiarities, of which a student ought to be
made aware : — ^for example, with a slight tendency to
a kind of Christian pantheism ; a disposition to re
duce miracle to a minimum ; and in the department
of Christian doctrine to consider Christ's life as more
important than his death, and to regard the atone-
<¦ It is enough to mention Schleiermacher's Okmsbenslehre, and
the works of Ewald ; e. g. the prefaces to the poetical and prophetical
books, and his work, the Oeschichte des Hebr. Volkes.

LECTURE VIL 407
ment as an effect of the incarnation, instead of the
incarnation being the means to the atonement.
If then a young student woifld avoid a chaos of
belief, and pursue a healthy study of the German
writers, there are two conditions which he ought to
observe. First, care shoffid be taken to understand
the precise school of thought which his author repre
sents, in order to be able to aUow for the possibility
of prepossession in him ; — a remark true in reference
to aU literature, but especiaUy important in that
which marks a particffiar phase of controversy. (42)
Secondly, a student's duty to English society, and
to the church of which he is a member — as also, I
humbly venture to think, to his own soul — requires
that he shall first listen thoughtfully to the verna
cular theology of England. Let him learn the chief
affirmative verities of the Christian faith before med
dling with the negative side. Let him master the
grand thoughts or solid erudition of Hooker and
Pearson ; of Bull, and Bffigham, and Waterland ; of
Butler and Paley ; — the seven most valuable writers
probably in the English church ; — and then recon
sider his opinions by the light of foreign literature.
Each one of us is on his intellectual as well as moral
trial. None whom duty calls need be afraid to en
counter it in God's strength, and with prayer to
Christ for light and trath and love.
It remains to mark the influence produced by Ger
man theology on free thought in other countries. (43)

408 LECTURE VIL
In the remainder of this lecture we shall carry
on the history of free thought in France, from
the point at which we left it^ down to the present
time. We shall find that the open attacks on
Christianity of former times have ceased. There, as
elsewhere, the present century has been constructive
of belief in spiritual realities, not destructive ; but
the reconstruction has in some cases been so con
nected with an abnegation of revelation, that it
merits some notice in a history of free thought.
The speculative thought in France during the pre
sent century has manifested itself chiefiy under four
forms': (i) a sensational school, called in the early
part of the century Ideology, in the latter Positivism:
(2) a theological school, which has attempted to re
establish a ground for reposing on dogmatic authority :
(3) a social philosophy, which has directed itself to
the study of society and labour : and (4) the eclectic
philosophy, created by German thought, which has
sought to reconstruct truth on the basis of psycho
logy. The chronological sequence of these schools
connects itself with the political sequence of events,
and has altered with their change. We must trace
them briefly in succession, in order to understand
^ In Lecture V. (p. 273.)
*¦ See Damiron, Essai sur VHistoire de la Philosophie en France
au 19™ siecle, 1828 ; and Nettement's Hist de la Litt Franc, sous
la Restoration, 1853, and Hist, de la Litt. Franc, sous le Gouverne-
ment de Juillet, especially b. v, vi, vii, xi ; and a review of Nette-
ment in the British Quarterly Review, No. 37 ; also H. J. Rose's
Clvristian Advocate's Publication for 1832.

LECTURE VIL 409
their religious influence and tendencies. The first
has tended directly to atheism, the second to super
stition, the two last indirectly to pantheism.
When treating of Volney in a former lecture, we
noticed the philosophy which took its rise amid the
ruins caused by the revolution. Christianity was
replaced by materialism, theism by atheism, ethics
by selfishness. The philosophy of Cabanis, of
Volney, and of De Tracy", was founded so entirely
on a physical view of human nature, that it could
hardly aid in any way in instilling nobler concep
tions. Society grew up without the belief of God
or immortality ; but in this very poverty the system
met its downfall. The deep yearnings of the human
heart craved satisfaction. The inextinguishable poetry
of the soul yearned for the spiritual ; the devotional
instincts of human nature caught the first notes of
that heavenly melody to which they were naturally
fitted to be attuned.
Literature rather than religion was the source from
which the mind of France began to imbibe the
deep and spiritual conceptions which obliterated
the materialism of the revolution. The spiritual
tone of such a writer as Chateaubriand^, similar

" See Morell's Hist of Philosophy, i. 543-72, and Damiron, pp.
(1-105)- " Chateaubriand (1768-1848) wrote his Genie du Christianisme
in 1802. See Nettement, first work, quoted above, vol. i. b. x. ;
and, second work, vol. ii. p. 330 ; and the criticism by Villemain,
La Tribune Moderne, ch, v. ; and Sainte-Beuve's Portraits, vol. x.

410 LECTURE VIL
to that of the Romantic literature of Germany,
awakened in France early in the century the con
ceptions of a world of spirit, of chivalrous honour,
of immortal hope, of divine Providence ; and led
mankind to feel that there was something in them
nobler than mere material organism ; even a spirit
that yearned for the world invisible. Chateaubriand
showed J', in answer to the school of Voltaire, that
Christianity was not merely suited to a rude age,
but was the friend of art, of intellect, of improve
ment. The church as yet possessed only little influ
ence. Beginning to revive under the fostering in
fluence of Napoleon, who saw clearly the necessity
of cultivating religion, its moral usefulness was
lessened by faUing under the suspicion of opposing
the public liberty, when patronised by the govem
ment after the re-establishment of the monarchy.
The nobler conceptions just described, whether
they arose from literature or from religion, graduaUy
penetrated into the minds of thoughtfffi men ; and,
the ground being thus prepared, several rival systems
of thought gradually sprang up ffi the fifteen years
(i8 15-1830) of the restoration of the Bourbon
dynasty. Accordingly, when the revolution of 1830
gave freedom to France, there was a universal
activity of mind, and free thought assumed a bolder
attitude ; sceptical, if compared with the Christian
standard, but embodying deep moral convictions, if
y In his Genie du Christianisme.

LECTURE VIL 411
compared with the unbelief of the last century.
Among the definite schemes of phflosophy, theo
retical or practical, which were proposed for accept
ance, the first which we shall notice was So
cialism "-
It originated with St. Simon »¦. The stirring events
of the great revolutionary era, together with the
social philosophy of Rousseau which preceded it,
had directed attention to the philosophy of social
life. 'St. Simon had lived through this period, and
early in the present century devoted himself to the
sffidy of schemes of social reform ; and shortly be
fore his death in 1825, announced his ideas as a
new reHgion, a new Christiaffity. In the ferment
which followed the revolution of 1830, the opiffions
of this dreamer became suddeffiy popffiar, and, en
listing around them some distinguished minds, forced
themselves on the attention of the public during
' The sources for understanding the systems of Socialism, besides
the works of its founders, are Alfred Sudre's Histoire et Refutation
du Communisme, 1850, (especially ch. xvi-xx,) which obtained the
Monthyon prize, and gives a history of communism in all ages ;
also Nettement, second work, ii. b. vii. ; Morell's Hist of Philo
sophy, ch. vii. § 2 ; an article in the Quarterly Review, No. 90, July
1831 ; and in the Westminster Review, 1832 ; and two very valu
able articles in the North British Review, No. iB, May 1848, and
No. 20, Feb. 1849. Those who are aware how much Socialism has
influenced French philosophy and literature, as well as politics, will
see that it is at once the index of certain forms of religious thought
and the cause of subsequent ones, and will pardon the space be
stowed in the text upon these visionary schools.
'^ 1760-1825. See Morell, as above.

412 LECTURE VIL
the two foUowing years; and as the political schemes
which resulted from them have left their mark on
the theological literature of the time, they merit some
attention. St. Simonism offered itself as a system of religion,
of philosophy, and of government, which shoffid be
the perfect cure of aU the evils which existed. The
source of these evUs St. Simon conceived to be the
want of social unity ; individualism, selfishness, to
be the cause of virtual anarchy. He considered that
philosophy and religion had striven in vain to remedy
the evil, because they had not made the spiritual to
bear upon the material interests of mankind. This,
which was the true remedy, he proposed to discover
historicaUy. Borrowing the thought of the German philoso
phers, he sought it in. the elements which are to
operate on human nature in the progress of its
development. The mode of development by which
society advances to perfection he found in a supposed .
law, that society shows two great epochs, which in long
cycles alternate, — the organic and the critical; the
former, where the individual is obedient to the pur
pose of the society ; the second, where the individual
rises against it. He found two instances of them in
the ancient and modern world respectively, viz. in the
ancient pagan period and its disruption ; and again
in the Catholic centralization of the middle a^es, and
the disorganization which succeeded from the time
of the Reformation to the French revolution. He

LECTURE VIL 413
considered himself to be raised up to announce the
dawn of the third organic period, the world's miflen-
nium, a new epoch, and a new religion. It was to be
the realisation of the fraternity, which the great
moral teachers of the world had promised and pre
pared. This religion consisted ffi raising the in
dustrial classes, by a scheme which it is irrelevant to
our purpose to explain.
Contemporaneously with this socialist system was
that of Fourier l3, which, though presented more as
a scheme of social amelioration, and less as a reli
gion, implied the same abnegation of Christianity.
Starting from an avowedly pantheistic view of phi
losophy, the author of it gradually passed through
the sciences, untfl he arrived at man, and reached
the study of human history and constitutions. Exag
gerating the good elements of human nature, and
ignoring the necessity for any other than a social
power to amend the heart, he traced the source of
evil to social competition, and proposed to rearrange
society on the principle of substituting co-partnership
for competition <'. The two ideas accordingly which
these specffiations introduced were; — first, that Euro
pean society was approaching a crisis, the pecffiiarity
of which, as distinct from former ones, would be, that
^ Fourier, 1768-1818. See the same sources for information,
and Nettement's second work, ii. 30. One of the chief Fourierists
was Considerant.
" It was a system in fact which has been tried in the mode of
working the Cornish mines.

414 LECTURE VIL
it woffid be an industrial revolution ; and the indus
trial mind woffid obtain the mastery of the admini
stration ; and, secondly, that the accompaniment
woffid be a new organization of industry on the
principle of co-operation. We cannot track these
schools into their ramffications ^ and their ffidirect
expression in lighter literature®, nor notice the
levelling systein of communism or co-operative so
cialism which completed the cycle f ; but it wiU be

<i The St. Simonians separated about 1831 into two parties; one
led by Bazard, showing a logical tendency, and including Lejroux ;
and the other led by Enfantin at Menilmontant, showing an emo
tional, among whose adherents was Michel Chevalier. The source of
dispute was the emancipation of the working classes and of woman ;
Enfantin going beyond the other school in reference to these points.
In 1832 the government interfered, and dispersed his supporters.
On the relation of French journalism to the political movements,
see two articles in the British Quarterly Review, vols. iii. and ix.
« The novels of such writers as George Sand, Victor Hugo, &c.
give expression to these aspirations for social improvement, and the
disposition to attribute all evil to social disarrangement.
* The systems of St. Simon and Fourier did not demand the ab
rogation of social inequality between man and man. Both would
revolutionise the present state of things ; but the one would replace
it by a graduated scale of functionaries, the other by a more demo
cratic and less federal system of corporations. But communism is
founded on the idea of entire social equality as regards the material
advantages of life. The old schemes of Babceuf and the first French
revolution hardly existed in 1848, but were replaced by two forms
of communism ; the theoretic or " Icarian" of Cabet, and the prac
tical of Louis Blanc. On these systems, with that of Proudhon, see
the sources before described, especially Sudre and the North British
Review, No. 20, where this new phase is well described. Also
Hase's Church History, § 493.

LECTURE VIL 415
remembered, that when the revolution of 1848
ensued, the schemes for organization of labour were
one of its pecffiiarities ; the social republic of those
who regarded the democracy as a means, mixed with
the political republicans, who thought it to be an end.
It wiU be noticed that the schemes of these socialist
philosophers, though analogous as political theories,
in proposing organization of labour and consequent
monopoly, to the English socialism of Owen before
named, are uffiike it in philosophical origin and
religious tendency. In philosophical origin his sys
tem rests on sensation, theirs on feeling; his degrades
human nature, theirs elevates it. His denounces
priestcraft as imposture, and religion as obsolete ;
theirs, though identifying religion and industry, re
gards religion as the highest expression of humanity,
the great goal to wffich nature is developing : ffis
leads to deism or atheism, theirs to pantheism. Yet
theirs is not less hurtfffi, for they reject with con
tempt the dogmatic teaching of revelation, though
they appropriate the Christian virtues ; like the
German philosophy they resolve the Deity into a
law, according to which the universe evolves.
One of the minds however which was trained in
the school of St. Simon, viz. Comtek, has developed
e Comte's chief work, the Philosophie Positive, has been well
translated in an abridged form by Miss Martiueau, 1853. In refer
ence to him see Morell, History of Philosophy, i. 577, &c. and im
portant criticisms on his system in the following reviews. Revue des
Deux Mondes, by E. Saisset, 1850, vol. iii ; North British Review,

416 LECTURE VIL
a system known by the name of Positivism, which in'
its effects is not merely thus negative, but amounts to
positive and dogmatic unbelief He showed traces of
the school from which he sprang, both in considering
politics to be the highest science, in • regarding hu
manity as a progress, and ffi adducing individualism
as the sole cause of social evU and anarchy. He com
menced simUarly by takffig an estimate of the present
state of knowledge, and seizing the law which pre
sides over the progress of knowledge ii. This law he
stated as consisting of three stages, through which
each science passes as it grows to perfection ; the first,
the theological or imaginative stage, wherein the mind
inquires into final causes, and refers phenomena to
special providence ; the second, the metaphysical,
wherein the idea of supernatural or personal causes
being ffiscarded, it seeks for abstract essences ; the
tffird, the positive, wherein it rests content with
generalized facts, and does not ask for causes^. The
first in its religious phase is theistic ; the second
pantheistic ; the third atheistic. The perfection of
science consists ffi reaching the tffird stage, wherein
the knowledge is strictly generalized from sensation.
Having thus seized the law which presides over ffitel-

No. 30, Aug. 1851 ; No. 41, May 1854 ; British Quarterly Review,
No. 38, April 1854. Comte's later religious views are given in the
Cat^chisme Podtiviste, 1852, and the Culte Systematique de VHu
manite ou Calendrier Positiviste (1853).
h Introduction, ch. i. (English translation.)
i Id. ch. ii. and books i-v.

LECTURE VIL 417
lectual development, and settled the Hmits of the
human reason to be confined to phenomena, agreeing
ffi this respect with the ideologists, and opposed to
Cousin, he next offered a classification of the sciences,
commencing with the simplest, and showing that, as
the mind passes from the simple to the complex, the
methods of investigation mffitiply ; accompanyffig his
account by a delineation of the steps in each case by
which science attains perfection ; and thus graduaUy
ascending to the science of man'^ and society, to
which the preliminary investigation had been the
preface, designed to prepare the way for showing
how the science of society may be similarly brought
into the positive stage.
Such is the scheme of Comte. The very breadth
of it possesses an attraction ; and if viewed merely
as a logic of the sciences, it may justly command
attention. Many of the analyses which he supplies
of the methods and history of science are masterly;
and his generalisations, even when hasty, are fertile
in suggestion. He was a most original and power
ful thinker ; scientific rather than artistic. But his
philosophy, viewed as a whole, is a grand system
of materialism which is silent about God, spirit, per
sonal immortality; diametrically opposed to Christ
ianity, in that it makes man's social duty higher
than his individual, science the only revelation, de
monstration the only authority, nature's laws the only
providence, and obedience to them the only piety;
^ Book vi.
E e

418 LECTURE VIL
and destroys Christianity by destroying the possibility
of its proof In later life this distinguished man,
feeling the unutterable yearnings of the religious sen
timent, and the necessity that his philosophy should
afford satisfaction to them, invented the system of
religion developed in his catechism ^ ; in which, in a
manner analogous to that employed by Feuerbach or
St. Simon, he regarded the collective humanity as the
true God, the proper object of worship and rever
ence ; and marked out a church and a cult, the cari
cature of the Catholic church, in which the world's
heroes should receive canonization. The probability
of mental derangement palliates the absurdity of this
system in the originator, but throws the burden of
responsibility from the master upon those who are
insane enough to adopt it.
We have traced two of the schools which flourished
in the second .quarter of this century. Another
remaffis, which has incurred from opponents the
charge of pantheism, viz. the idealist school, com
monly called the Eclectic; (44) which was especially
dominant in France, and in the university of Paris,
during the rffie of the Orleans dynasty. Viewed as
a philosophy it is a very noble one. Implying, as its
name denotes, an attempt to reap the harvest of the
industry of all preceding schools of philosophy, it
was the chief means of restoring intellectual and
spiritual belief to France, and of creating the great
movement of historical study which marks that period
1 See note on the subject in Lecture VIII.

LECTURE VIL 419
of French literature. Commencing with a reaction
agaffist the materialist and sensationalist school, it
sought, by imitating the mode by which Reid had
refoted the philosophical scepticism of Hume, to find
a method for restoring belief ffi spiritual realities ;
and afterwards, when its chief leader Cousffi"^ had
been exiled to Germany, he brought back an ac-
quaffitance with the successive speculative schools
which existed there.
The results of the preceding efforts are expressed
ffi him. His system consisted ffi a psychological
analysis of the human consciousness, which led him
to- believe, that spiiitual truth is revealed to the
reason, or ffituitional and impersonal power, apart
from the limitations of sense, or of the ordinary
critical faculties ; that the true, the beautiful, and
the good, are perceived by it in their absolute, un
limited essence ; and that the revelation of the infinite
is the basis of all intellectual truth, of all moral
obhgation, and offers the clue to the criticism of
religion, the solution of the problems of history,
and the construction of a philosophy of the uffi
verse. Its chief effect on literature, the permanent
contribution which it has made to human improve
ment, is to encourage the historic study of every
branch of phenomena, and especially to exemplify
it ffi the history of thought. Asserting that human
society is a gradual progress of development and of
improvement, it regards every age as manifesting
™ On Cousin, see Morell's History of Philosophy, ii. 478 seq.
E e 2

420 LECTURE VIL
some phase of truth, or of error, and contributing
its portion of knowledge to the student. Humanity
is regarded as a divine revelation : its social and
intellectual changes as manifestations of the Eternal.
From this account, brief though it be, the relation
wiU be evident which such a philosophy and the
historic method of eclectic discovery woffid have
towards religion.
As a system of psychology it is potent, as a means
of reasserting the dignity of human nature against
the material and seffish ethics of a preceding age,
and of reconstructing the basis of ethics and natural
religion : but as an ontology, it is in danger of un
conscious pantheism ; of identifying God with the
universe, and regarding Him merely as a name to
describe a process, instead of a person. As a phi
losophy of humaffity, it identffies the natural reve
lation in history with the supernatural ; finds in the
psychological facffity of intuition, not merely the
basis for, but the explanation of, the phenomenon of
inspiration"; and in its view of religion is essen
tiaUy antidogmatic, regarding religion as imperfect
and progressive; the idea universal, the symbol tran
sient ; and aUows the psychological truthfffiness of
aU creeds ; and regards Christianity as offiy the most
refined species of them, as one of the transient
forms that the religious sentiment has adopted, and
" Mr. Morell, who was formerly a disciple of this school, has
brought out this thought in his work on the Philosophy of Religion,
1849, ch. vi.

LECTURE VIL 421
as destined to give place to philosophy; beneficial to
humaffity, but not constituting it
This philosophy therefore, though containing so
many noble elements, ended in the view which we
have already seen to exist in the Gnostic and German
rationalism, that Christianity was not to be final, the
one solitary and final religious utterance of God to
man". The three schools iUustrate the principal tendencies
in which unbelief manifested itself in France pre
vious to the establishment of the empire?; and show
o During the reign of Louis Philippe an attack was made on the
university of Paris by the Jesuits, on the ground that the views
taught there were pantheistic. The same view was adopted in an
article in Eraser's Magazine, No. 170, Feb. 1844, which is valuable
in giving quotations of passages which indicate the tendency of this
philosophy, though the writer fails to appreciate the value of it as
a reaction against the old Voltairism. The same charge is expressed
in the sketch which H. L. C. Maret gives of the philosophy of the
nineteenth century (in Essai sur le Panthdsme, 1845.) See also
Nettlement's second work, vol. i. book vi ; Saisset, Revue des Deux
Mondes, 1850, vol. iii ; and Damiron's Essai, pp. 105-197.
P It has not been thought necessary to name Salvador the Jew,
author oi Hist, des Institutions de Moses, 1828 ; Jesus Christ et sa
Doctrine, 1839; Paris, Rome, et Jerusalem. His writings were
criticised by Mr. J.H. Rose's, Christum, Advocate's Publication, 1831,
and have been lately reviewed by the Semitic scholar A. Franck, in a
series of papers in the Journal des Debats, Jan. 24, Feb. 12, May 29,
June 4 and 6, 1862; and by Renan in the Etudes de I'Hist. Relig.
p. 189, (fee. Salvador's view is both Jewish and sceptical. Magniiying
the Jewish system, he regards Christianity as an offshoot of it, imper
fect in its kind ; and looks to the spirit of Judaism as the future hope
for the world. He professes a creed which is called by Franck Infini-
theism. Whatever in his opposition to Christianity is not derived frora
the eclectic school is the result of his Jewish prejudices.

422 LECTURE VIL
clearly the intimate relation of particffiar kinds of
sceptical views to particffiar systems of metaphysical
philosophy*!!. In the latter years of Napoleon I. the struggle
first commenced between the Voltairian party and the
church; a middle course being taken by the eclec
tics. The constitutional tendency of this last school
gave them the moral victory during the restoration,
over the democratic tendency of the one and the
reactionist of the other. After the revolution of 1830,
the socialist struggle was superadded ; which, when
mixed with the old ideology, produced Positivism.
The catholic church had sought to restore faith in
•
Christianity, partly by the establishment of Confer
ences'', lectures to reply to the systems now de-
1 No mention has been made of several aggressive writers who
publish in the French language, mostly in Belgium, works on infi
delity resembling in tone those of the last century, such as Volney.
There are two such works by P. Larroque, viz. a destructive one,
Examen Critique des Doctrines de la Religion Chretienne, first, as
they are stated in the dogmas of the church, and secondly, in the
scriptures ; in which he makes a collection of difficulties in the
Bible, book by book : and another work, constructive in tone.
Renovation Religieuse, i860. A work of similar intention by P.
R^nand, Christianisme et Paganisme, identite de leurs origines ou
nouvelle symbolique, 1861, is a kind of reproduction of Dupuis
and Volney, modified by Feuerbach. In the preface to the last-
named work, the writer refers to works by Eenen and Proudhon,
similarly directed against Christianity.
r The Conferences originated with Frayssinous in a kind of public
catechising about 1802. Being changed into sermons in 1807,
they were transferred from the Carmes to St. Sulpice, but closed by
the government in 1809. They were resumed in 1815, and were
transferred aliout 1830, through Ozanam's intercession with the

LECTURE VIL 423
scribed; and partly by trying to satisfy the rea
son by estabhshing a rival philosophy, and stating
philosophicaUy the grounds of faith. (45) This
phflosophy, though noble in its aim, and taught by
many pious minds, is visionary. It was based on
the principle first evolved by Huet; the weakness of
human reason, and the supposed necessity of sub
mission to authority. In De Maistre, its founder,
who carried out in philosophy what Chateaubriand
did in literature, it was the suggestion of an abject
submission to the papacy, as the living authority on
earth; accompanied by a sceptical disbelief of the
value of inductive science. It has expressed itself in
different forms; but in afl it has been an attempt to
find a solution for difficffities by means of religion
instead of philosophy; an attempt analogous to that
in other lands, not merely to restrain the human
reason in matters of religion, but, to incfficate distrust
of it; fafling into the very error which Plato made
his master describe, of those who, baffled in the search
for truth, blame not their own unskilfuffiess, but
reason itself; and pass the rest of their lives in con
tempt of it ; and thus are deprived of the know
ledge that they seek.
archbishop of Paris, De Quelen, to N6tre Dame ; where Lacordaire
opened his course in 1836. He, Ravignan, and Felix, respectively
made themselves distinguished. A. Pontmartin has pointed out the
adaptation of each teacher to the phase of public thought. (Pere
Felix, 1861, pp. 26-32, quoted in the Christian Remembrancer,
Jan. 1862). These particulars are partly taken from Nettement's
works above cited.

424 LECTURE VIL
The history of thought in France, thus studied,
exhibits a general resemblance to that of Germany
in its forms and tendency. In both ahke there has
been a contest, between the school which seeks to
absorb Christianity in phflosophy, and that which
extinguishes philosophy by Christianity. There is
an absence indeed in France of the spiritual return
to a living Christian faith, the union of science and
piety, which is observable in the latter country.
But within the sphere of natural religion, in refer
ence to the belief in a spiritual world, an advance is
perceptible, if the present condition of France be
measured against that which was observable at the
period when the philosophic unbelief of the last cen
tury predominated.
Since the re-establishment of the empire, some of
the forms of philosophy which have been described
have almost disappeared. The socialist philosophy
has become extinct as a direct movement; the eclectic
school has gradually passed from philosophy to lite
rature ; and the chief tendencies, so far as mere ma
terialism does not, as in most reactions, extinguish
thought, are toward a modffication of eclecticism on
the one hand, and to ultramontism on the other ¦¦.
The difference of this new eclecticism from the
former kind seen in Cousin, lies in the fact that while
>¦ The church during the Bourbon restoration was more Galilean
than Ultramontane. See Nettement's first work, t. ii. book vii. For
a survey of French literature during the present reign, see Rey-
mond's Etudes du second Empire.

LECTURE VIL 425
that was chiefly derived from Schelling's philosophy,
this is an offshoot from Hegel. The one considered
that the mffid, by its ffitffitions, can find absolute
truth, and by the hght of these absolute ideas can
criticise ffistory, and prejudge the end toward which
society is moving. This domes the possibihty of at-
taimng absolute truth. All beffig is a state of flux :
all knowledge is relative to its age. Philosophy ex
pires ffi historical criticism; in the history of the soul
of man under its various manifestations. It rests in
what is ; it judges only from fact. The absolute is
displaced by the relative ; beffig by becoming ^
Though not positivism ffi its aspects, this system is
so ffi its scientffic results*.
The unbelief is critical, not aggressive. The grand
idea of an historical progress, of tracffig especially
the historic growth of ideas, of cffiture, of the great
unfoldffig of humanity, presides over rehgious spe
cffiations, and lends its fascinating power and its
danger. The necessity is recogffised for solvffig the
nature of the rehgious consciousness, and satisfyffig
its wants ; but the remedy is sought in other means
^ This idea is well expressed in the passages quoted in Note 9.
t One of the modern young French writers most distinguished
for power of analysis, is H. Taine, who deserves mention in connexion
with the tendency which is in a difierent manner represented by
Renan. Taine's literary character was sketched, but not with the
praise which he deserves, in the Westminster Review, July 1861 ; and
also with a special reference to his religious opinions in Scherer, Me
langes, ch. xi. He was supposed to be a positivist, but now declares
himself to favour Spinoza.

426 LECTURE VIL
than ffi Christianity. WhUe this is the conffition
of the phUosophy just described, positivism, so far
as it prevails, is wholly antichristian, and regards
religion as the product of an unscientffic age, for
which a behef in nature's laws and science is a suf
ficient substitute. Christiamty, though the ripest of
religious forms, is offiy symbolical of a ffigher truth
towards which humaffity is tendffig.
We may select the name of a writer who stands
pre-emffient ffi critical ffivestigations coimected with
reHgion, as the best representative of the tone as
sumed in reference to the Christian faith by the
most ffighly educated younger spirits of the French
nation, of whose literature he is one of the brightest
living ornaments, — Ernest Renan". Exffibitffig a
mffid of the rarest delicacy, and bearing traces of
the collective cffitivation wffich arises from de
tailed acquaintance with most varied branches of
human cffiture, he has brought his vast acquaint
ance with the Serffitic tongues to bear on the
historical criticism of portions of the Hebrew litera-
<i E. Renan, born 1823. His chief works are, Histoire Generate
et Systemes Compares des Langues Semitiques, 1845 ; De l' Origine du
Langage, 1849 ; Averroes, 1851 ; Job, 1859 ; C antique des C antiques
i860 ; and Essays collected, viz. Essais de Critique et de Morale,
1859; ^"^tl especially jE^^'Zwfes de VHistoire Religieuse, 1859, which
contains a remarkable preface on the office of modern criticism. A
true criticism on the last two works may be seen in Blackwood's
Magazine, Nov. 1861, used in these remarks; and another by
Scherer, Melanges de la Critique Religieuse, ch. xv. He is now
Writing on Les Origines du Christianisme. See Eraser's Magazine,
October 1862.

LECTURE VIL 427
ture ; and has sketched with the hand of a master
the great passages in the history of religion, — the
symboHsm of mythology; the monotheistic systems,
Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan; the fom- chief
phases of Christiaffity, the Catholic, the Protestant,
the Sociman, the rationahst'' ; and has specffiated on
the future rehgious tendencies of the age, in essays,
which those who feel most deeply pained with the
views presented must' acknowledge to be marked by
rare power and freshness. Possessffig a delicate
appreciation of the past, and a cheerful confidence
in the future ; loving the advance of the knowledge
of physical nature, yet protesting against the tend
ency to materiahsm ; dreadffig the democracy of
opinion, wffich threatens to suppress independence
of mquiry by a povs^er analogous to centralization in
the state ; the artist no less than the critic, imagina
tive as well as reflective, he may be studied as in all
respects the contrast to the French philosopher of the
last century, and as the type of the cultivated mffids
on whom Christiaffity has made its impression. His
view of pffilosophy is the one recently explaffied :
his view of religion and of Christiaffity, so far as we
" This will be seen to be the enumeration of the essays in the
Etudes de VHistoire Relig. The essay on the future prospects of
Christian churches alluded to is in the Revue des Deux Mondes for
Oct. 15, i860, where Renan examines the prospects, of the centralised
system of papacy, of the national system of the English and Russian
churches, and of the individual system of free churches ; and argues
that the tendency of society is to adopt the latter, both in freedom
of creed and of constitution.

428 LECTURE VIL
can gather it indirectly from ffis criticisms, seems to
mark a belief in the rehgious sentiment as a subjec
tive feeling, rather than in the reaHty of its external
object of worship. Its objective side seems to him to
be a symbolism, and Christian dogma to be an obsolete
form of religious philosophy ; inspiration a form of
natural consciousness; and even its highest expres
sion to be but the poetry, the art, of the imagffiative
faculties. There is audible at times an undertone of
despondency, as the sigh of one who has searched
for truth and not found it" ; and who, in despair
of discovermg it on the ffiteUectual side, has taken
refuge in the moral. Religion, vain speculatively,
is resolved by him ffito ethics. Faith expires in
conscience ; dogma in morality. And this interest
ing writer closes his speculations with the regret,
that he feels ffimself isolated from those Christian
saints whose characters he regards as the purest ffi
the worlds. Such may probably be regarded as the
type of thought of the most educated tffinkers of
France; a feeHng of partial belief, partial doubt; a
" At the close of La Chaire d'Hebreu, 1862, he has however as
sumed a view of the world and of nature, less negative and more
definite. y See the preface to Etudes Relig. especially pp. 14, 15. It is
hoped that injustice is not done to M. Renan by these statements.
Perhaps they interpret his thoughts more pointedly than he him
self would do, and attribute to him as positive conclusions what
rather are incipient tendencies. They are the result however of a
careful study of his various works, and were written before his
recent Discours d'Oumerture ; De la part des Peuples Semitiques,
which seems to confirm them.

LECTURE VIL 429
keen appreciation of the beauty of the character of
the great Founder of Christiaffity, and of the type
of Christian morality, yet mixed with an entire dis
trust ffi the reality of afl doctrines respectffig the
object of faith, from behef in which alone, as we
contend, tffis moraHty is the product.
Doubts always suggest replies ; and there are
not wanting minds ffi the Protestant church of
France (46) that fully appreciate the doubts of edu
cated minds such as these, and try to meet them by
a more persuasive method than that by which the
Catholic school sought to meet the doubters of the
earlier part of the century. By the improper con
cessions however which they have made to save the
vital part of religion, they have themselves incurred
the charge of sharing the rationalism of the country
with whose literature they are acquainted. As
suming a position somewhat like Schleiermacher's,
they are careful to distingffish between critical theo
logy and doctrinal, and endeavour to propagate the
latter rather than the former. Yet in the branch of
doctrinal theology, it must be feared that they have
either conceded some of the mysteries of Christianity
as obsolete, or at least have improperly concealed
them as likely to repel doubters. Though we must
indeed be careful wisely to divide the word of life,
and not to quench the quiverffig flame of faith by
creatffig an imnecessary repugnance ; yet, if Christ
ianity be a supernatural revelation from God, our
plain course is to present the truth as it is in Jesus,

430 LECTURE VIL
unmutilated in the mystery of its difficulties, and
leave the result with God.
There is one feature however, in which these
writers are a pattern worthy of imitation by all
Christian apologists. They preach to doubters not
Christian dogmas, but Christ. If the doubters can
be brought to appreciate Christ ; to meditate on
his life ; to think of him as one who tasted of human
suffering, and knew the poignancy of human ternp-
tation ; and whose heart of tender pity was ever open
to the petition of the needy; they will first admire,
then believe, then trust : and when they have learned
to love him as a Man of pity, it is to be hoped that
they may be brought, by the drawings of the Holy
Spirit, to worship and adore him as a God of
love. Beginning, not with history, but with feeling;
starting with a religion based on the intuitive con
sciousness of needing Divine help ; we may hope to
prepare them for receiving the historic testimony
which tells of the Divine plan for human redemption :
leading them from the sense of sin to Him who saves
from sin ; from the inward to the outward ; from
Christ to Christianity; from Christian doctrine to
the perfectness of Christian faith.

LECTURE YIII.
FREE THOUGHT IN ENGLAND IN THB PEESBNT CENTURY:
SUMMARY OF THE COURSE OF LECTURES :
INFERENCES IN REFERENCE TO PRESENT DANGERS AND DUTIES.

Eccles. xii. 13.
Let us hear the conclusion qf the whole matter : Fear God,
and keep Ais commandments; for tAis is tAe wAole duty of

In the last lecture we brought the history of
unbelief on the continent down to the present time.
In this, the concluding one of the series, we shall
complete the history of it in our own country or
language during this century; and afterwards deduce
the moral of our whole historical sketch, and suggest
practical inferences.
In the account of unbelief in England, given in a
previous lecture », we hardly entered upon the pre-
" In Lecture V.

432 LECTURE VIIL
sent century, except so far as to observe the influence
of the philosophy of the last on works of literature,
such as those of Shelley ; or on political speculations,
such as those of Owen. Yet even here we were
already made to feel the presence of the new influ
ences, which have completely altered the tone of
unbelief Even Shelley's later works, though marked
by the outbursts of bitter passion against religion,
contain more of the spiritual perception which is
the characteristic of present thought ^ : and the
oblivion into which Owen's system soon fell, save as
it has been resuscitated in moments of political dis
affection, together with its failure to leave a permanent
impression, like the socialist systems of France, arose
from the circumstance that the one-sided survey of
man's nature, on which it was based, could not
deceive an age which was characterised by an in-
increasing depth in its moral perceptions.
r The unbelief of the present day differs from that
iof the last century in tone and character; and in
,many respects shares the traits already noticed in
'.the modem intellectualism of Germany, and the
eclecticism of France. It is not disgraced by ri
baldry; hardly at all by political agitation against
the religion which it disbelieves : it is marked by a
show of fairness, and professes a wish not to ignore
b Some remarks will be found a few pages farther, in reference
to the subjective spirit and stronger consciousness of the ethical
element in human nature, which are evinced in the literature of the
present century.

LECTURE VIIL 433
facts; nor to leave them unexplained. Conceding the
existence of spiritual and religious elements in
human nature, it admits that their subjective exist
ence as facts of consciousness, no less than their ob
jective expression in the history of religion, demands
explanation, and cannot be hastily set aside, as was
thought in the last century in France, by the vulgar
theory that the one is factitious, and the other the
result of priestly contrivance. The writers are men
whose characters and lives forbid the idea that their
unbelief is intended as an excuse for licentiousness.
Denying revealed religion, they cling the more tena
ciously to the moral instincts : their tone is one of
earnestness ; their inquiries are marked by a pro
found conviction of the possibility of finding truth :
not content with destroying, their aim is to re
construct. Their opinions are variously manifested.
Some of them appear in treatises of philosophy ;
others insinuate themselves indirectly in literature :
some of them relate to Christian doctrines ; others to
the criticism of scripture documents : but in all cases
their authors either leave a residuum which they
profess will satisfy the longings of human nature, or
confess with deep pain that their conclusions are in
direct conflict with human aspirations ; and, instead
of revelling in the rain which they have made,
deplore with a tone of sadness the impossibility of
solving the great enigma.
It is clear that writers like these offer a wholly
different appearance from those of the last century.
rf

434 LECTURE VIIL
The deeper appreciation manifested by them of
the systems which they disbelieve, and the more
delicate learning of which they are able to avail
themselves, constitute features formerly lacking in
the works of even the most serious-minded deists",
and require a difference in the spirit, if not in the
mode, in which Christians must seek to refute them.
The solution of this remarkable phenomenon is to
be found in the universal change which has passed
over every department of mental activity in England
in the present century. The peculiar feature of it
may be described by the word spirituality, if that
word be used to imply, in contrast to the utilitarian
and materialist tendencies of the last century, the
consciousness in ourselves, and appreciation in others,
of the operation of the human spirit, its rights, its
powers, and its effects. This conviction stimulates
in one the vivid consciousness of duty and moral
earnestness ; in another it hallows human labour,
and throws a blessedness around the struggles of
industry ; in another it kindles the inspiration of art,
breakffig up conventionalities of style, or expresses
itself in poetry, in soliloquies on the inner feelings
or in meditations on life, as a set of problems to be
explained by the heart. Elsewhere it lifts the man
of science above the grovelling idea that discoveries
must be sought solely for the purpose of utility.
Again, transferring its perception of the operation of
<^ Such as Herbert and Morgan.

LECTURE vm. 43.5
spirit to the world of nature, it not unfrequently
attributes a soul thereto, and induces a subtle pan
theism. Sometimes too by a singular reaction it
has a tendency, by the moral earnestness which it
stimulates, to depress intellectual speculation, and to
wear the appearance of fostering the utilitarianism
which it combats.
Such is the central principle which characterises
our literature, and which, through the diffusion of
readmg, has moulded the public judgment, and,
operating in every department of educated thought,
has even altered the form in which unbelief ex
presses itself
Probably the successive steps of the growth of this
subjective tendency in literature might admit of easy
statement. The meditative school of poetry, which
flourished early in the» century * among a few refined
minds at the English lakes; which loved to ponder
mystically on nature or on the spiritual world, or to
d On the influence of the Lake school of poetry, see D. M. Moir's
Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the past half century, 1851,
ch. i. and ii. The Lake school being a reaction against the mate
rialist school, which almost degraded spirit to matter, traced a soul
in nature, and was in danger of elevating matter to spirit. Other
branches of art besides poetry exhibit a similar change of tone.
This is remarkably manifest in the modern landscape art of Eng
land, and is developed incidentally in Mr. Ruskin's work, The Modern
Painters. We have already had occasion, in Lecture VI, to advert
to the similarity in result of the Lake school of English poetry
to the Romantic school of Germany. Both were spiritual schools ;
but the former strove to learn from the freshness of nature, the latter
from the freshness of an earlier stage of civilization.
F f 2

436 LECTURE VIIL
catch the thought excited in the mind by nature,
and follow the series of thoughts which the law of
mental association suggested ", was one means of
creating a subjective and spiritual taste among the
youth of the generation which succeeded.
Another cause was found in the philosophy which
arose. The years foUowffig the general declaration
of peace, while the public attention was directed
to the political reforms which were consummated
in the Reform act, were marked by the thorough
investigation of the first principles of every branch of
knowledge. Two minds of that period have, more
than any other, affected the succeeding generation ;
the one a utilitarian philosopher, the other an in
tuitional. Both alike carried out the system which Descartes
and Bacon had inaugurated, of finding the standard
of truth in the analysis of the powers of the human
understanding. But Bentham criticised to destroy
the past; Coleridge to rebuild it. The one asked, Is a
doctrine true 1 The other asked, what men had meant
by it who had thought it so f 1 The one overlooked
the truth previously known; the other too boldly
strove to rebuild it from his own consciousness, after
e A very able analysis of the mental character of Wordsworth,
to whom the words in the text allude, was given in the National
Review, No. 7, Jan. 1857.
f Two very valuable essays occur, on Bentham and Coleridge
respectively, in Mr. J. S. Mill's Essays and Dissertations, vol. i.
(reprinted from the Westminster Review, Aug. 1838 and March 1840).
See especially the comparison of these two philosophers at p. 395 seq.

LECTURE VIIL 437
surrendering the old proofs of it. The one, with
the practical spirit of the Englishman, looked upon
an opposing opinion only as an object suited for
attack ; the other, with a spirit caught from Germany,
felt that there was some truth everywhere latent.
But both were refoimers; both stimulated the revolt
against the cold spirit of the last century ; both con
tributed to create, the one indirectly, the other inten
tionally, a subjective spirit by their psychological
analysis. Even movements which at first sight seem most
alien to this spirit in character, have really been
affected unconsciotisly by it§". The ecclesiastical
reaction which sprang up about a quarter of a cen
tury ago, though seemingly most objective in its
nature, witnessed not less than the very opposite, or
rationalistic tendency, to the presence of this influ
ence. For both ahke were founded on the idea that
religion lacked a philosophical groundwork : both
sought a new ground of faith different from that of
the last century; the one in those utterances of con
sciousness which created a reverence for historic
tradition ; the other in those intuitions which were
supposed to rise above scripture and tradition, and to
form the basis and measure of both.
The causes just named in literature and philo-
s This is shown in a very striking manner in the National Review,
Oct. 1856, in which a comparison is instituted of the effects on the
English mind of the three teachers, J. H. Newman, Coleridge, and
Carlyle.

438 LECTURE VIIL
sophy respectively, are some of those which have
contributed to create or to foster the change in the
character of the literature, and in the spirit of the
age, which has produced the alteration of tone which
exists in the modern sceptical literature.
In passing from these remarks on the peculiarly
•subjective tone of modern unbelief, and the literary
influences which have produced the general change
in the public taste, of which it is only one example,
to an enumeration of the authors who have given
expression to doubt, and of the specffic forms of
doubt now existing, we encounter a difficulty of
classification. The most obvious arrangement would be to place
the writers in groups, according as they manifest a ten
dency toward atheism, pantheism, deism, or rational
ism l^, respectively; but the mode which more nearly
accords with our general purpose would be to adopt
a philosophical rather than a theological classffica
tion, and arrange them according to the variety in
the tests of truth employed by them, and the sources
from which their arguments start, rather than the con
clusions at which they arrive. Perhaps tho advantage
of both plans will be in a great degree combined, if
we classify them according to the branch of science,
physical, mental, or critical, from which the doubts
take their rise.
We shall commence with those writers who make
h This is the arrangement adopted in Mr. Pearson's work on
Infidelity, named on p. i8, note.

LECTURE VIIL 439
sensation to be the last appeal in belief, or whose
doubts arise either from the methods or the results
of physical science. This class of opinions varies
from positive disbelief of the supernatural, generated
by the fixed belief in the stability of nature and dis
belief of miraculous interference, to merely isolated
objections suggested by the conflict between the dis
coveries of natural science and the statements of holy
scripture. The name which most fitly describes the extreme
form of unbelief is Positi^ismi. This system of phi
losophy, already stated to have been invented by
Comte, is silent about the existence of a Deity. It
inculcates the belief in general laws, and acknow
ledges the order in Nature, which we are accustomed
to regard as the result of mind ; but declines to argue
to the existence of a designing mind, where the evi
dence cannot be verffied by proof referable to sen-
• Concerning Comte's philosophy see the note on p. 416. The
Westminster Review is the periodical which at present embodies its
spirit. The works of Mr. G. H. Lewes, his History of Philosophy,
and his exposition of Comte (Bohn 1853), may be noticed as books
in which the philosophical, and, to some extent, the theological spirit
of positivism prevails. The mind of Mr. J. S. Mill has been largely
influenced by this philosophy, to which his tastes for natural sci
ence disposed him ; though the influence on him of the philosophy
of his father, James Mill, and of Bentham, as well as his own ori
ginality of mind, prevents him from being a mere disciple of Comte.
These writers however have almost abstained from touching directly
on the subject of religion. The character of Positivism, as an intel
lectual tendency, has been sketched by Mr. Morell, in the Lectures
on the Philosophical tendencies of ihe Age, 1848.

440 LECTURE VIIL
sation. Nature's laws are in its view the only Provi
dence ; obedience to them the only piety. A few
minds may be found, which not only accept the posi
tive philosophy, but even receive the religion taught
in the positivist catechism K Unable to satisfy the
longings of their heart by this system of Cosmism,
they receive the extravagant idea of the worship of
humanity, which Comte invented in his later days.
Such a creed camiot hold the masses. But Posi
tivism in another shape, called Secularism i, is actively
^ The view of religion as a worship of the ideal of humanity, in
the form of practical ethics and social study, which is taken by the
better class of Positivists, is stated at length in the Westminster
Review for April 1858, together with an explanation of the extra
vagant views of Comte, in the Catechisme Positiviste, which has been
translated by one who was formerly highly respected as an indefati
gable teacher, in one of the public schools, and afterwards in one of
.the universities.
1 Secularism is the name adopted a few years ago by Mr. G. J.
Holyoake. See Christianity and Secularism ; Report of the Public
Discussion between the Rev. B. Grant and Mr. Holyoake ; also,
Modern Atheism, or the Pretensions of Secularism examiined ; a
course of Four Lectures, delivered in the Athenmum, Bradford, by
the Rev. J. Gregory, &c. 1852 ; Secular Tracts, by the Rev. J. H.
Hinton ; The Outcast and tlie Poor of London, Whitehall Sermons,
by the Rev. F. Meyrick, p. 91 seq. In its social aspect it is the form
of naturalism which has been Forrowed from Owen and Combe ; in
its religious, from Comte. The political tone of this system is ex
pressed in a poem. The Purgatory of Suicides ; a Prison Rhyme, by
Thomas Cooper the Chartist, 1858 ; and the religious in the Con
fessions of Joseph Barker, a Convert from Christianity, 1858. Also
in the tracts of Mr. Holyoake, e. g. The Logic of Death, written in
1849, during ^'^6 cholera. These last two writers are the chief teachers
of the system. Some small magazines are devoted to its propaga-

LECTURE VIIL 441
propagated among the lower orders. Replacing the
sensuous philosophy and political antipathies of
Owen, it is taught, unconnected with the political
agitation which marked his views, as a philosophy
of life, and a substitute for religion. It asserts three
great principles : — first, that nature is the only subject
of knowledge; the existence of a personal God being
regarded as uncertain : secondly, that science is the
only Providence : and thirdly, that the great business
of man is, as the name, secularism, implies, to attend
to the affairs of the present world, which is certain,
rather than of a future, which is uncertain. Not
content however with this negative jiosition, the
writers of this class, as was to be expected, have
directed positive attacks against the special doctrines
of Christiaffity, and regard the Bible to be the enemy
of progress ™-
tion. A criticism on these tendencies among the working classes
will be found, from the Unitarian point of view, in the National
Review, No. 15, Jan. -1859, where this class of political and religious
obstacles, encountered in dealing with the working classes, is con
trasted with the mere animalism described in Miss Marsh's English
Hearts and Hands; and from a more sceptical point of view, in the
Westminster Review for Jan. 1862, where an extract is given (p. 83)
concerning Holyoake's view of Deity. The following terrible utter
ance, taken from his Discussion with Townley (p. 68), will give an
idea of his tone : " Science has shown us that we are under the
dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence.
Nature acts with fearful uniformity : stern as fate, absolute as
tyranny, merciless as death ; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to
worship, too inexorable to propitiate ; it has no ear for prayer, no
heart for sympathy, no arm to save."
«! The chief points against which the objections have been taken

442 LECTURE VIIL
It is impossible to estimate the extent to which
these views are diffused. The statistics of the sale
of secularist tracts would doubtless give an exagge
rated idea of it. The high standard of morahty
advocated in them, so likely to attract rather than
repel, the clear writing, and the agreement of the
views with the experience afforded by the daily life
of working men, give them power among the lower
orders. The absorbing character of labour has a
^ tendency, especially in an advanced state of civiliza
tion, to depress the sense of the supernatural in man,
and fix his thoughts on the present world : and it is
generally the sense of trouble alone which can lift
men out of themselves, and recall to their remem
brance the presence of a God on whom the sorrowing
heart may lean for help.
Opinions derived from positivism, or at least from
physical science, enter into other spheres of thought
than those just named; and both affect writers who
hardly touch upon the subject of religion; and create
difficulties in the minds of Christians themselves,
either in reference to prime doctrines of religion, or
the particular teaching on physical questions implied
in the sacred books.
The diffnsion of the fundamental conception of the
perpetuity of nature's laws, has a tendency to create
are, the scriptural account of the character of Christ, the doctrine
of atonement, and the necessity of faith to salvation. See the
Report of the discussion which is referred to at the commencement
of the last note.

LECTURE VIIL 443
in literature a mode of viewffig the woiJd alien to
the providential view of the divine government im
plied in religion. The application of statistics in so
cial philosophy for the discovery of the general laws
which regulate society and create civilization, not
unfrequently leaves an impression that man as well
as matter depends upon fixed laws; which is irrecon
cileable with belief in human freedom or in divine
interference, and sometimes causes religion to be
regarded as a conservative force, which in its nature
is alien to civilization ".
Nor is the danger confined to the various branches
of secular literature : the views of even religious men
are not unfrequently modified by it, or painful
doubts are created where the head contradicts the
heait. In pioportion as phenomena are shown not
to depend on chance, the misgiving is felt as to the
reality of special providence and the value of prayer,
in reference to temporal affairs. The sphere for con
fiding petitions is felt to be narrowed; and miracles,
instead of becoming an evidence for religion, become
a difficulty. Even where fundamental difficulties,
such as these, do not sap the religious life, the belief
that the inspiration of the sacred books guarantees
the truth of the views of physical science, the cos
mogony, physiology, ethnology, and chronology, con
tained therein, creates a further body of difficulties",
o Mr. Buckle's work on the History of Civilization is an instance
to which these statements apply.
0 The difficulties alluded to are, those suggested by geology, con-

444 LECTURE VIIL
less fundaHtiental but more painful, because foimded
on the apparent want of harmony of scripture with
the progressive discoveries of natural science.
While these are the species of temptations to un
belief which appertain to one source of opinions, viz.
that which relies upon sensation as the ultimate test
of truth ; doubts similar in character, though different
in cause, manifest themselves in that portion of our
literature which appeals for its proof to the faculty
of insight, and which believes in mental sources of
information which are independent of sensation. If
the one tends towards atheism, or to a deism in
which the world is viewed as a machine; the other
tends towards pantheism or to naturalism, wherein
no opportunity for interposition by miraculous reve
lation is retained, but the inner consciousness of man
is regarded as able to create a reHgion. The former
class of views belongs to minds accustomed to ex
perimental science; this to those which are conver
sant with spiritual or aesthetic subjects : the former
expresses itself in the region of science, and tempts
men of thought; the latter expresses itself rather in
the region of literature, and tempts men of senti
ment. One writer, a prince in the region of lettersi', may
cerning the narrative of creation, the deluge, and the date of the
creation of man ; or by physiology, concerning the longevity of the
patriarchs ; or by ethnology, concerning the unity of mankind.
P T. Carlyle. The character of his writings and philosophy is
explained and criticised in Morell's History of Phihsophy, ii. 249

LECTURE VIIL 445
be adduced, many of whose works imply, directly or
indirectly, a mode of viewffig the world and society
contrary to that wffich is taught ffi Christiaffity. He
is the highest type of the antagoffist position which
literature now assumes in reference to the Christian
faith, and wffich finds some parallel ffi the contest
which occurred ffi Julian's time, and at the Renais
sance. Though possessing too much origmality to borrow
consciously from the hterature of Germany, yet it is
easy to ffiscover that the fire of his imagination has
been kindled in contact with the marvellous insight
of Goethe, the pathos of Jean Paul, and the faith
ffi eternal truth wffich marked Jacobi Their rival
rather than disciple, he hails the philosophy of his
own country as a first approximation to truth ; but
regards the German mind as havffig seen more
deeply than any other of modem times into the
mysteries of existence. Though not formal enough
to throw his philosophy into a system, he has left an
impress on the English literature of tffis century.
In every branch of literature which he has surveyed,
he has made it his mission to expose the hollow
formalism, the cold materialism, which he considers
that utilitarian philosophy had produced. " Self in
seq.; and in an able manner in the Westminster Review, Oct. 1B39 ;
both which sources have been much used in the following brief
account. The latter article would be considered probably to need a
slight alteration, in consequence of the slight change of character in
Carlyle's more recent works.

446 LECTURE VIIL
the sense of selfishness, and God as the artfficial pro
perty of a party ;" these have been said to be the two
faults which he sees in politics, in science, in law, in
literature, in religion : and, to oppose this inrush of
objective knowledge ; to call man to a recogffition *
of his better self, to the unaltering spiritual laws
stamped in the structure of the human consciousness,
and to God as the eternal, infiffite Divinity, whose
presence fills creation; this is the mission which he
has stiiven to effect.
Yet can there be no doubt that the victory of this
great truth is won at the sacrifice of others ; and that
in the general tone of his writings, and above all ffi his
memoir of the doubter Sterling i, he occupies a posi
tion opposed to the particular forms of religious truth
taught by Christianity, and one which a phUosopher
of tastes cognate to his own, Coleridge, forming him
self Under the pyschological rather than the hterary
influence of German thought, strove to retain. In
elevatmg the doctrine of the revelation ffi the soul,
he regards as unnecessary the revelation in the
book'" : his teaching tends to inculcate a worship
of earnestness, and to ignore all consideration of the
object toward which the earnestness is ffirected. In
asserting the reality of spiritual laws in the soul, he
has implied the veracity of all religions, caring only
for the subjective zeal of the believer, not for the
<i Cfr. his Life of Sterling, 1850, pp. 126, 7.
f It may be enough to refer to such a passage as Past and Present,
PP- 3°5-9'

LECTURE VIIL 447
objects of his beliefs In opposing the mechanical
view of the universe, he is so ovei'whelmed with the
mystery which belongs to it, that the soul recoils in.
the hopelessness of speculation, to rest content with
work rather than belief And his readers, attracted
by his power of satire and depth of insight, ex
pressed in a style full of force by reason of its pecu
liarity, retum to their daily life after imbibing his
teachffig, excited to greater earnestness and faithful
ness, but filled, it is to be feared, with a contempt for
objective systems, for dogmatic truth, and for the
Christian creed '-
In the master the strong and deep sense of per
sonality and of freedom obliterates the tendency to
absorb human individuality in the overpowering
mystery of the universe ; but this tendency is de
veloped in the early works of an American writer",
who has drawn from some of the same sources as the
author just described, but who also owes much ffirectly
to him. In him philosophy seems to degenerate into
pantheism. Nature is a vast whole, in which we are
parts, vibrations of a chord, raffiations of the eternal
light". Starting from a unitarian point of view,
^ Past and Present, pp. 193, 4.
t Id. pp. 271, 2.
" Mr. Emerson : it ought to be noticed however that the follow
ing remarks are applicable mainly, if not wholly, to his earlier works ;
on which there is a criticism, similar to that cited in reference to
Carlyle, in the Westminster Review, March 1840.
'^ " I am nothing — I see all — the currents of the universal being
circulate through me — I am part or particle of God." — Nature, p. 13.

448 LECTURE VIIL
Christianity appears to be resolved into natural reli
gion ; and the historic view of Christianity, and the
habit of considering the revelation as something long
ago given, are regarded as being at the bottom of the
decay of religion. In ffis admiration of genius, he
seems to imply an idolatry of mere intellect ; and
developes that tendency which has been always ob
servable in pantheism to unite the worlds of good
and evil, and teach that evil is " good in the making."
The uffiverse is God ; evil and good are equally
essential parts of it.
This pecuHar tendency to narrow the barrier be
tween the two worlds is observable, not merely in
direct admissions of writers Hke the one just adduced,
but lurks as a peculiar danger ffi the modern litera
ture of fiction. The danger in fiction, as in all art,
can arise only from the character of the subject
portrayed, or the manner employed in producing
the copy. In the present day the evil arises specially
from the latter cause. The subjective spirit, causing
a perception of the duty of exactness, has contributed
to foster a realistic taste ffi art, which requires such
minuteness of treatment, that a work of fiction so
constructed, while preservffig the freshness of nature,
may violate moral perspective, and leave the impres-

These were the words which this author formerly used. The same
tendency can probably be traced in the characters of Plato and
Goethe in his Representative Men. See also the Oration on the
Christian Teacher.

LECTURE VIIL 449
sion that good and evil are inseparably intermixed in
each character or in nature itself The very photogra
phic exactness of the modern novel copies the features
without selection or discrimination, and presents each
moral character as a mixed one, and makes evil pass
ffito good, and good ffito evil. Though it is quite true
that no character is unmixed, yet it ought not to be
forgotten that the evil is present as a disease, the
good as the normal state. If approached from the
philosophical side, the presence of evil as weU as its
origin is ffiexplicable, save by the pantheistic hypo
thesis ; if approached however from the moral, our
own instfficts tell us that it is ffiametrically opposed
to good ; and it is important to be on our guard
against the influence of modern literature, which 'in
any way imphes the contrary.
We have hitherto exhibited the systems in the
present day, which by their influence, direct or in
direct, assume a position antagonistic to Christianity.
Commencing with positivism, we explained the doubts
which, beffig built on a sensationalist basis, reject the
possibility of revelation; or, on an ideal, reject its
necessity. We now proceed to describe the works
written as direct attacks upon Christianity, founded
indeed on an ideahst basis, but in which the philo
sophy is ffi the main subordinate to the critical in
vestigation. Marked by the improved tone which
was before described, and enriched with the fruits
of the researches of German theologians, they form
at once the books which are likely to meet us in
Gg

450 LECTURE VIIL
daily life ; and equal those of past generations in
subtlety and danger. We shall commence with
those which are most openly infidel, and gra
dually pass onward to those which shade off
almost into unitarianism, until we reach the cri
tical difficulties which in the writings of avowedly
Christian professors have given ground for the charge
of rationalism.
The ffist writer to be named ^ is one who in two
works, the one " a Comparison of the InteUectual
Progress of Hebrews and Greeks in their religious
development," the other on " the Origin of Christi
anity," has made a darffig attempt, not to refute
Christianity directly, but to grapple with the historic
problem of the origin of revealed religions ; and
endeavoured to explain them by regular historic and
psychical considerations. In making this attempt
he has availed himself of the modern investigations
into mythology, and the relation which it bears at
once to the soul, to philosophy, and to religion. In
the last century mythology was either derided in a
Lucian-like spirit, or else regarded as the relic of
primitive traditions. In the present these views
have mostly disappeared ; and the theories which
exist in reference to it are chiefly two, in the one
of which myths are explained by nature-worship,
y R. W. Mackay, whose two works are, Tlie Progress of tlie Intellect
as exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews,
2 vols. 1850, and The Rise emd Progress of Christianity, 1854.
(No. 7. of Chapman's Quarterly Series.)

LECTURE VIIL 451
and sacred mysteries, and are regarded as parables
descriptive of natural processes ; in the other they
are regarded as being connected with the origin of
language, and the transfer of names from one object
to another. (47) It is the former view which this
writer has employed. Commencing with the Hebrew
Cosmogony^, he traces the origin of the metaphysical
notion of God * through personification and polythe
ism, up to theism ; and next the origin of the moral
notion of God^, regarding the notion of a fall to be a
hypothesis to account for sin ; and explains away the
idea of mediation by the absurd theory of supposing
it to be made up of the two notions, of emanation, and
of a waning deity derived from the personification of
natural processes''. Having thus used mythology,
in the manner of Volney, to illustrate the rise of
these conceptions among the Greeks and Hebrews
respectively, he enters ^ upon the religious history
of the Hebrew people, and attempts to show that
the idea of the theocracy with temporary rewards
suggested the two correlative ideas of temporary re
verse, and eventual restoration ; and thus, by the
personffication of the people's suffering, led to the
idea of a suffering Messiah e. Discussing the complex
Messianic conception, he tries to explain its origin
2 Progress of Intellect, vol. i. ch. ii. on " Mythical Geography and
Cosmogony." a Ch. iii. ^ Ch. iv.
1= Vol. ii. ch. V. § 3 and 9. He illustrates from natural processes ;
such as the decay of nature.
d Ch. vi. ^ Ch. vii.
Gg 2

452 LECTURE VIIL
by natural causes, by resolving itf into a combination
of the different types of thought, presented in the
earher history. Approaching the subject of Chris
tianity, he considers it to be one of the Jewish sects,
a lawful contffiuation of the prophetic reforms &;
therein anticipating the idea which he has developed
in the second work above named, concerning the rise
and progress of Christianity ; in wffich he has adopted
the views of the historical criticism of the school
of Tubingen. Regarding Christianity to be a reform
of Judaism mixed with Greek dogmas'^, he attributes
to St. Paul, in contrast to the Jewish apostles, the
idea of giving it universality ; and to the early
Roman church the idea of giving it unity i ; illus
trating by natural causes the gradual origffi of the
church k, and the pretended concretion of dogmas ^ by
mixture with Alexandrian philosophy.
These works, too recondite to be popular, and too
unsatisfactory to be dangerous, do not appear likely
to affect largely the English inquirer ; but the case
is different with the work which next meets us by
another author, " the Creed of Christendom^"," which,
f Ch. viii. The types of thought which he traces in it are, the
conception of prophet as taught by Moses ; the idea of a supernatural
incarnation ; the Davidic conception of a temporal sovereign ; and
the sufiering Messiah of the book of Daniel.
s Ch. ix. and x. h Rise of Christianity, parts i. and ii.
i Part iii. ^ Part iv. 1 Parts v. and vii.
^ The Creed of Christendom, its Foundation and Superstructure,
by W. Rathbone Greg, 1851. A review of it by Mr. Martiueau may
be seen in Studies on Christianity (reprinted from the Westminster
Review), and by Remusat in Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1859.

LECTURE VIIL 453
on account of its clearness of statement and variety of
material, is the most dangerous work of unbelief of
this age.
In the first part of the work the writer attacks
the idea of ffispiration", with all modifications of the
notion, as a gratuitous assumption ; and tries to dis
prove it by recapitulating the controversy respecting
the authorship of the Pentateuch, and the authority
of the Old Testament canon °, as wefl as by the pre
tended non-fulfilment of the prophetic writings p,
and the gradually progressive development of the
Theism of the Jews''. Applying a similar process to
the Gospels, he states the difficulties which attend the
hterary question of their origin'' and fidelity of the
narrative ^ ; trying to show that the apostles differed
from each other, and held views differing from those
taught by the Saviour, as recorded in the first three
Gospels*- Approaching the subject of the use of
miracles as an evidence, he contends that they cannot
prove a doctrine, and that their existence cannot
be proved by documents". In the examination of
Christianity he holds only the humanity of Christ,
and regards Christianity not to be superhuman, but
an eclecticism from the Jewish religion ; a conception,
n Ch. i. and iL ° Ch. iii. P Ch. iv.
q Ch. V. r Ch. vi. s Ch. vii.
t Ch. viii.-xii. He adopts the view of the new Tubingen school,
in exaggerating the contrast between the description of the character
and teaching of Christ in the " Synoptical " evangelists, and in the
fourth Gospel.
" Ch. xiii. ^ Ch. xiv.

454 LECTURE VIIL
not a revelation y. Successively attacking^ the most
sacred doctrines of our faith, — prayer, pardon, sffi, —
he is at last landed in the doubt of a future life, save
so far as the intuitions seem to suggest it^ ; and in
conclusion he contents himself with the religion
which consists in obedience to the physical, moral,
intellectual, and social laws ; confessing however that
the heart dictates to prayer and religion, but main
taining that the idea of general laws forbids the
possibility of their reality^.
The next writer whom we must name", has not
rested content with a literary examination of existing
religious forms, but has shown the consummation
to which the modern criticism of religion leads. The
work, " Thoughts in aid of Faith," that is, hints to
y Ch. XV. 2 Ch. xvi.
^ Ch. xvii. He quotes the beautiful lines of Wordsworth, (Ode on
Intimations of Immortality, § 5.) " Heaven lies about us in our
infancy,'' &c. as illustrative of the instinctive feeling of man in
reference to immortality.
b Page 303.
" Miss S. Hennell, whose chief writings are, Christianity and
Infidelity, a prize essay, an exposition of the arguments on both
sides, 1857; The Sceptical Tendency of Butter's Analogy, 1859;
The Early Christian Anticipation of the End of the World, i860 ;
Thoughts in Aid of Faith, gathered chiefly from recent works in
Theology and Philosophy, i860. Her views originally were the
same as those of her brother, a deceased unitarian minister, author
of a work on Theism (1852), in which the use of miracles as an
evidence was depreciated. It is hoped that it will not be considered .
improper to have named a ^vriter, whose sex might be expected to
shelter her from remark ; but her writings are too able to be unpro
ductive of influence.

LECTURE VIIL 455
advise those who have given up all other faith,
is too characteristic of a certain type of thought to
be omitted. It is an instance where the final result,
to which philosophical investigation has conducted,
bears a resemblance to that reached by Feuerbach
in Germany d. In the treatment of the subject, the
tenderness of human character has not disappeared ;
and belief in the teaching of religion is surrendered
with painful sadness. Starting at first from the
unitarian point of view, this writer has gradually
advanced, by the aid of the modern philosophy, to
the very pantheism at which philosophy stood in the
early ages of oriental speculation. In a review of
the ffistorical and psychical « origin of religion and
Christiaffity, the idea of a divine Being is regarded
as merely the giving existence to an abstraction, the
objectifying of the subjective; and Christiaffity, as the
form in which the notion of a personal God neces
sarily clothes itself : so that the idea of God becomes
a fiction created by the mind; Christianity a fiction
created by the heart. Though an appreciation is
shown of ancient forms of religion f, all are regarded
as visionary ; and, in looking forward to the future,
philosophy affords no cheering hope : nothffig re-

^ Thoughts in Aid of Faith, ch. i. This work was reviewed in
the Westminster Review, July i860, and the North British Review
for Nov. i860.
e Ch. ii.
f E. g. ch. V.

456 LECTURE VIIL
mains, save the annihilation taught by the ancient
Buddhists s.
The course of the history now brings before us
two writers, who stand distinguished from the last
group by their firm theism, and strong protest
against pantheism in every form. One of them
was an American ^ ; the other an alumnus of this
uffiversity i.
The life and work of the former, so far as they
relate to our inquiries, may soon be told ^. In early
s Ch. vi. and vii. It is a result not unlike that of positivism, but
reached from the ontological instead of the physical side.
^ Mr. Theodore Parker of Boston.
i Mr. F. Newman. The wide spread of the works of these two
writers, especially of the latter, is the reason why it is thought
desirable to exhibit their views at some length. The pathos and
eloquence which belong to their writings impart to them a fascina
tion which makes it the more necessary that readers should be on
their guard, by understanding the position which these authors hold
in relation to faith and to unbelief.
^ The particulars are obtained from the account of Mr. Parker's
ministry, prefixed to his Sermons on Theism. He was at first a
unitarian minister ; but, changing from unitarianism into deism, he
left that body, and became a preacher in Boston, until he was com
pelled to visit Europe on account of enfeebled health. He died at
Florence, i860. His doctrinal views may be learned from the
Discourse on Matters pertaining to Religion, written in 1846^ and the
Sermons on Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Tlieology, 1853 ; and
his critical and literary views, from the Introduction to the Old Testa
ment, based on De Wette ; and from his Miscellaneous Writings,
1848. A comparison of him with Strauss, which has been here
used, was given in the Westm. Rev. for April 1847. His character
and life have also been sketched in the Nat Rev. Jan. i860, and
especially by A Reville in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Oct. 1861.

LECTURE VIIL 457
Hfe a unitarian minister, he caught the spirit of
intellectual inquiry and reconsideration which Chan
ning had excited; and devoted himself with inde
fatigable industry to study the modern philosophy
and criticism of Germany, until he became one of
the most learned men of the American continent.
In his own country his fearless and uncompromising
denunciation of slavery, as well as of political and
commercial hollowness, caused him to be viewed as
a social reformer rather than a theological teacher.
In ours he is viewed as a teacher of deism. The
cause of his power is obvious. Feeling that his
mission was not merely to pull down, but to build
up, he spoke with the vigour of a dogmatist, not
with the coldness of a critic. To a burning elo
quence and native wit he united the picturesque
power of the novelist or the artist. But his vigour
of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm which
often invested the most sacred subjects with carica
ture and vffigarity ; a boundless malignity against
supposed errors. How different is the tone of his
satire from the delicate touches of the modern
French critic 1 who was named in the last lecture !
and yet, on the other hand, how changed from that
of the infidel writers of the last century. Though
he equals Paine in vulgarity, and Voltaire in sar
casm, his spirit and moral tone are higher. They
wrote, actuated by a bitter spirit against the Christian
religion, without earnestness, without religious aspi-
1 E. Renan. See p. 426.

458 LECTURE VIIL
rations, with the coldness of unbelievers : he, with
the earnestness of a preacher touched with the
deepest feelings ; and though the Christian writer
wiU shudder at his remarks as much as at theirs,
yet he sees them modffied by passages of pathetic
sentiment, in wffich, in words unrivalled in scepti
cal literature, admiration is expressed of Christ, of
Christianity, and of scripture "i.
Such was the man as a teacher. What was his
doctrine "? He sought and found in the human
faculties the test of truth, not dwelling, like Strauss,
on their tendency to deceive ; but, like Schelling, on
their certitude. He placed the ground of religion
on the emotional side of the soul, in the feeling of
dependence" ; and correlatively, on the intellectual
side, ffi the ffituitions of God, the moral law, and
immortal life.
Assuming, on the principle of spiritual supply and
demand, that capacity proves object, (the natural
realism which we attribute to the senses being thus
applied to the intellectual instincts,) he regarded the
intuitions to be real, and traced the mode in which
reasoning and experience develope them into concep
tions". But, afraid of giving too anthropomorphic
¦" In the Discourse pertaining to Matters of Religion, books ii,
iii, iv. The writer is unable to put the exact references to this
work in the remarks which follow ; having omitted to note them
down when he had the book at hand.
" Discourse, book i.
" The steps through which he considers that the idea of God is

LECTURE VIIL 459
a form to his conception of deity, he fell almost
into the abstract conception of the English deists ;
and in the notion of God's general providence, lost
the fatherlike conception of the divine Being with
which the human analogy invests Him. Few nobler
attacks however on atheism?, or defences of the
benevolent character of the divine Being*), exist, than
those which he has supplied. But at this point the
Christian must altogether part company with him;
for he next proceeded to argue against the possibility
of miracle or special providence ; identifying inspira
tion' with the utterance of human genius, and regard
ing Christianity merely as the best exponent of man's
moral nature; as one form of religion, but not the
final one. The Bible, which as a collection of literary
works, the religious literature of a Semitic people,
lie appreciated with enthusiastic admiration^ was
degraded from its position of ti final authoritative
utterance of religious truth, and was regarded as
the embodiment of the thoughts of spiritual men of
old time who were striving after truth, and spoke
according to the light which they possessed. The
reHgion which he taught was called by him "the
developed into a conception are. Fetishism, Polytheism, and Mono
theism ; Dualism and Pantheism being errors which lead astray
from Monotheism.
P Sermons on Theism, sermons i. and ii.
1 Id. sermons ix. and x.
•¦ Discourse on Religion, books ii. and iv.
s E. g. in Discourse, book iii. and several passages in the Intro
duction to the Old Testament.

460 LECTURE VIIL
absolute religion." It was merely deism, built on
a sounder basis, and spiritualized by contact with a
truer philosophy.
The other writer* to whom allusion has been
made, though superior to the one just described
in refinement and acuteness, resembles him in pos
sessing deep aspirations and serious research, and
in standing apart from the unbelief of the last
century, which manifested no loftiness of aim, nor
earnest conviction. He stands forth too in a more
interesting position, from the circumstance that his
starting-point was not unitarianism, but the creed of
t)ur own church ; and that he has given a psycho
logical autobiography, a painful and thrilling self-
portraiture " ; in which he traces step by step his
surrender of his early opinions, from the time of his
first doubts, when he was a student in this university,
to his fully developed deism.
The destructive side of his teacffing is conveyed in
the narrative of the " Phases" of his faith. Educated
in the tenets of the more spiritual section of the
church, he gradually began, as he has stated, to re
consider his opinions as his mind was awakened by
study. The moral identity of Sabbath and Sunday ;
the practice of infant baptism ; the connexion of a
spiritual effect with what he considered to be a
material cause implied ffi baptismal regeneration ;
the reasons for the superior efficacy of Christ's sacri-
t Mr. F. W. Newman. " The Phases of Faith, 1850.

LECTURE VIIL 461
fice over the Mosaic ; the discovery of gradual de
velopment in scripture ; these were the first thoughts
that agitated him''. Unable to solve them to his
satisfaction, he hesitated not to abandon, with noble
and manly self-sacrifice, the friends that he held
dear ; and to wander forth from the established
church, to seek a primitive Christianity elsewhere.
Puzzled by the difficulty of the supposed mistake of
the apostolic church, in expecting the sudden return
-of Christianity, he adopted the chiliastic hypothesis ;
and, unable to join in ministerial work in England,
went as a missionary into the East^. On his retum,
alienated from the friends of his youth and from the
new instructors with whom he had consorted, he
sought truth in the solitude of his own heart ; and
was led to throw off Calvinism and adopt Unitarian
ism ^ His fourth phase of faith led him, while
clinging to Christiaffity, to renounce the religion of
the Book. It consisted in an examination of many
of the difficulties which criticism has discovered ;
from which he was unhappily led to conclude that
the Bible was not free from error, nor above moral
criticism^ ; beheving nevertheless that the Bible was
made for man, though not man for the Bible. The
two concluding phases of his faith b consisted in ap
preciating the great law of progress which he con
siders to mark religion ; and discovering that faith
X Ch. i. y Ch. ii. '¦ Ch. iii.
a Ch. iv. ^ Ch. V. and vi.

462 LECTURE VIIL
at second hand is vain, and that the historical truth-
fuffiess of Christianity is unimportant, the ideas em
bodied in it constituting its truths.
In reading this paffiful record, we feel ourselves
in contact with a mind cultivated in miscellaneous
science and in the Semitic languages, disciplined as
well as iffibrmed; which lays bare with transparent
sincerity the history of the stages through which he
has successively passed. Hitherto we have seen only
the destructive side of his teaching ; but he also strove
to attain a detmite dogma : his truth-searching
spirit, touched by deep longings for the presence of
God, could not rest in the blank of unbelief The
nature of this attempt is developed in a work on "the
Soul**," in which the author lays bare at once his psy
chology, his ethics, and his religion ; which in sub
stance are not unlike those of the writer last named.
He lays the foundation of religion in the spiritual
faculty, the sense of the infinite personality ; show-
c To complete this account it is necessary to add, that Mr. New
man has developed some portion of the critical investigations of his
studies of Jewish history in the History of the Hebrew Monarchy,
1847. It is a treatment of the Old Testament analogous to that to
which we are accustomed in classical history ; the answer to which
would be by denying that the records of the Hebrew history are
amenable to criticism, inasmuch as they do not partake of the
ordinary conditions which appertain to human literature.
•1 The Soul, her Sorrows and her Aspirations, 1849. ^^ the
date of publication this preceded the Phases. Mr. Newman has subse
quently published, Theism, Doctrinal, Practical, or Didactic, 1858.
The most complete view of his scheme, but of course wholly favour
able to him, is in the Westminster Review, Oct. 1858.

LECTURE VIIL 463
ing the generation of the various complex feelings
which make up religion — awe, wonder, admiration,
reverence — as the attributes of this divine Person
ality successively discover themselves e. Holding
strongly the doctrine of human freedom and the
natural existence of a moral sense, he allows fully
the existence of the consciousness of sffi* and the
necessity of spiritual regeneration ; asserting the be
lief in God's sympathy and communion with the soul,
the efficacy of prayer, and the duty of encouraging
holy aspirations g.
Few more suggestive, and in many respects few
truer, specimens exist of the analysis of those facts
of human nature which concern the basis of natural
religion and of the spiritual lifel", than that which
he has offered in order to find a psychological basis
for religion. The deep spiritual longing for com
munion with God, the belief ffi prayer and in moral
renewal, are evidences of a creed which separate
him utterly from the naturalism and pantheism
before described, and place him almost on the fron
tier line between Christianity and deismA And we
may be permitted to express the belief, that philo
sophy could not have raised him to his present moral
e Ch. i. f Ch. ii. s Ch. iii. and iv.
'' Ch. i. The scheme much resembles that of Schleiermacher.
' Deism and Unitarianism are both monotheistic ; but the latter
allows the existence of a revelation, the former denies it. The
modern school of Unitarians, however, nearly approach to the position
of Mr. Newman. See end of Note 6.

464 LECTURE VIIL
standard. His spirituality is due to the fragments
of Christianity which he has retained in his system.
It has been traly said, that the defenders of natural
religion furtively kindle their torches by the light of
revealed. In the course of this sketch of contemporary unbe
lief, we have gradually advanced from the forms
most alien to faith, till we have reached the threshold
of the Christian church. The necessity for making
the narrative complete compels us to pass within its
limits, and to indicate, though it be by a brief notice
and with a delicate hand, the forms of the movement
of free thought therein which have given rise to the
charge of rationalism. This movement of thought
is separated from those just described, in that it
loyally holds that God has revealed His will to man ;
but it varies from the general view of the church of
Christ in reference to the extent and manner in
which He has been pleased to reveal Himself : and,
under the pressure of the difficulties, doctrinal or
literary, which the progress of knowledge or of spe
culation has suggested, proposes to separate in the
holy scripture, or in the immemorial teachffig of the
chiu-ch, that which it regards to be the eternal ele
ment of revealed truth from that which it ventures
to conceive to be temporary ; the heavenly trea
sure from the earthen vessels in which it is con
tained. The literary parallel to this tendency is not
to be found in the deism of the last century, but in
some of the schools of free thought in Germany and

LECTURE VIIL 465
France ffi the present. Like them it professes to be
conservative of revelation, desiring to surrender a
part ffi order to save the remainderJ^.
The movement is characterised by two forms ; the
one philosophical, the other critical. We shall indi
cate their general character, without specifying indi
vidual writings!.
It is perhaps to the influence of Coleridge, more
than to that of any other single person, that the origin

k In many respects it resembles the " Mediation school" of Ger
many, described in Lectures VI. and VII, and the modern school of
the French protestant church, described in p. 429, and in Note 46.
1 It would be more delicate perhaps to leave to the reader the
application of these tendencies, and to omit the mention of names ;
but as the practice in this work has been to give the names even in
contemporary history, fairness requires the enumeration. The ten
dencies in the text however are rather a combination from the views
of difierent modern authors, and cannot be definitely referred as
a whole to any one single writer. Probably the reader will himself
conjecture that the first tendency is meant in the main to describe
the teaching of Mr. Maurice and Mr. Kingsley ; the second, of Pro
fessor Jowett ; the third, of some of the writers in Essays and
Reviews, But if this be approximately true, it must not be sup
posed that every specific statement in the following account is in
tended to be charged upon these respective authors. The descrip
tion is meant to indicate certain tendencies of free thought, of which
their writings among others seem to exhibit instances. It is always
hard to judge of a movement which is in progress, and of which we
are ourselves spectators. The view here taken is the result of the
attempt which the writer of these lectures has made in his own
studies, to adjust the existing forms of free thought into their true
position in the history of speculation. If injustice is done, it is at
least not intended.
Hh

466 LECTURE VIIL
of this philosophical movement can be traced''. We
have alreadyi had occasion to mention the general
design of his philosophy. At a time when the world
was wishing to break with the past, in politics, in
literature, and in religion, his spirit was conservative
of older trath, while sympathetic with that which was
new. In looking backwards, he sought to discover
what mankind had meant by their beliefs ; in look
ing around, he asked what were the elements which
the present generation disapproved; and, wishing to
eliminate the error of the past and appropriate the
truth of the present, he looked inwards into the
human heart, and thought that he perceived a faculty
there which unveiled to man the eternal, absolute
trath, — the trae, the beautiful, and the good; which

^ It may be useful to draw attention to a book on the relation of
Coleridge to recent theological thought, Modern Anglican Theology,
by the Rev. J. H. Rigg, 1857. The book is by a Wesleyan minister, and
is written from that point of view. The tone of censure on the writers
criticised is in some parts severe, and has, it is understood, caused
pain to some of them. Apart from its tone, objection may perhaps
be taken to it, as discovering in their works as positive teaching, doc
trines which probably only exist as incipient tendencies. Neverthe
less it contains material suggestive of serious thought ; and certainly
gives the clue to the interpretation of many points which are usually
felt to be obscure in the systems of several of the writers described.
The author does not however appear to have distinguished sufficiently
between the two forihs of modern historical inquiry, (see Note 9 of
these lectures). He consequently makes the last of the list of writers
whom he criticises (ch.xiii.) to be a disciple of Coleridge; whereas he
rather belongs to the other form of the historico-philosophical school.
1 Page 436.

LECTURE VIIL 467
had been the object of search in all systems, the end
for which all earnest spirits had ever yearned. This
faculty, "the reason" or intuition, thus became the
guide, by the light of which he was able to thread
his way through the manifold systems of thought of
past times'". Not content with applying it to other
subjects, he carried it also into the domain of re
vealed religion. It was the engine by which he
hoped to get a view of the truth which the ancient
writers of holy scripture intended to convey. It
would become the means of interpreting their
thoughts, by raising the student to a perception of
the same objects, similar in kffid to that which they
possessed. Their inspiration was regarded as only
an elevated form of this faculty. When accordingly
tffis method was applied by ffim to the study of
Christianity, it did not lead him to pare down the
supernatural by the cold interpretation of the older
rationalism, but gave the explanation of the mys
teries by raising men to a state where mysteries
ceased to be such any longer. It did not pull down
revelation to the level of the mind, but strove

m The reference to Mr. J. S. Mill's dissertation on Coleridge has
been already given (p. 436.) See also the Essay by Mr. Hort in the
Cambridge Essays, 1856 ; the British Quarterly Review, Jan. 1854 ;
Morell's History of Philosophy, ii. 343 seq. ; and Remusat in
Revue des Deux Mondes, Oct. 1856. Coleridge's philosophy of
religion is especially to be found in his Aids to Reflection ; and his
critical views of inspiration in the Confessions of a/n Inquiring
Spirit.
H h 2

468 LECTURE VIIL
vainly" to raise the mind to a level with reve
lation. If viewed in reference to cognate schools of
Christian philosophy, it bears similitude in many
respects to some of the schools of Germany. In
the analysis offered of the human faculties, it has
much akin to Kant : ffi the deep conviction that
the highest trath is revealed to a faculty of faith,
and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions
and the conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi
and Schelling : in regarding the human reason to
be the impersonal reason, the diviffity in man, it
resembles ScheUffig or Cousffi. But it also has an
element akin to the ancient Neo-Platonic philosophy
of Alexandria". This is seen both in the view taken
of the organ of knowledge, and in the scheme of
philosophy evolved by it. The intffitive reason,
the divine faculty above described, which reveals
eternal trath, is viewed as the divine Ao'709 in man,
n The distinctness of the " reason" (vovs) from the " understand
ing" {\oyos or Sidvoia) has been allowed in these lectures ; but only
as guaranteeing the reality of the objects of intuition, not as allow
ing the mind to create a religion & priori. The objection in the
text is accordingly not so much directed against the psychological
theory as its theological application.
o The sources for studying Neo-Platonism have been given in
Note 10. Among writers influenced by Coleridge, the element of
thought which is derived from Neo-Platonism is stronger iu the
writings of Mr. Kingsley than in those of Mr. Maurice ; but it is
sufficiently observable in both to form a separation, by marked
philosophical features, between their teaching and the system of
Schleiermacher.

LECTURE VIIL 469
as was taught by the Neo-Platonists p. Inspiration is
the action of the same AJyo?. This branch of human
intellect is absorbed in divinity: a divine teacher
is considered to exist in the human mindi. And
as the view of the faculty is parallel with the teaching
of this ancient school, so the explanations suggested
of divine mysteries'' like the Trinity or Redemption
are similar. These explanations are the mystical
expressions of the thoughts apprehended by this
faculty, when it strives to raise itself to oneness
with the infinite object which it contemplates.
These remarks will explain the philosophical sys
tem taught by Coleridge, and will furnish the clue to
interpret the form of theological thought which has
originated from him. The parallel between his system
and those with which it has now been compared, will
be no less obvious in noticing the results of it. The
system of Schleiermacher was the theological corol
lary from the theories of German philosophy above
P The Adyos of Philo and of the Neo-Platonists is not to be contrasted
with the faculty called reason by Coleridge, and rails by other au
thors, but to be identified with" it. For Philo's views, see Gfrorer,
Philo, and Dahne's article Philo in Ersch and Grueber's Encyclo
pcedia : see also Jowett's Commentary on St. PcmVs Epistles, vol. i.
(Essay on Philo, § i.)
1 The existence of a divine teacher in the human mind in the
faculty of conscience would be generally allowed ; especially by
those who adopt the theory of the distinctness of the faculty of
reason from that of understanding ; but the idea implied in the
hypothesis referred to in the text is the existence of a faculty which
is supreme over revelation.
¦¦ Cfr. Biogr. Lit. p. 321. and Aids to Reflection, vol. i. 204 seq.

470 LECTURE VIIL
named; and the school of the Alexandrian fathers was
the correspondffig one which resulted from the Neo-
Platonic^ We shoifld therefore expect that, if the phi
losophy of Coleridge was a mixture of the two schools
above described, the teaching of his disciples would
combine the two theological schools which flowed
from those systems. Attentive consideration of the
philosophical side of the modern movement of free
thought in English theology will confirm this anti
cipation, and show that its chief elements are a union
of these two theological schools. The tendency to
require that the human soul shall apprehend divine
mysteries intellectually, as well as feel their saving
power emotionally ; the reduction of inspiration
theologically, as wefl as psychologically, to an elevated
but natural state* of the human consciousness ; the
inclination to regard the work of Christ as the office
of the divine teacher to humanity, and human history
as the longing for such a divine voice ; the description
of the work of Christ as a divine manifestation of a
reconciliation which previously existed, instead of
being the mode of effecting it ; the tendency to view
the death of Christ by the light of the incarnation,
instead of regarding the incarnation by the light of
s On the school of the Alexandrian fathers, see note on p. 82.
' Cfr. the note on p. 40, where we have conceded the probability
that inspiration is, if analysed psychologically, a form of the "reason ;"
but considered it, if viewed theologically, to be an elevated state of
this faculty, brought about by the miraculous and direct operation of
God's Spirit : so that in this view it difiers in kind, and not merely
in degree, frora human genius.

LECTURE VIIL 471
the atonement, the death of Christ as the solution of
the enigma of God becoming flesh ; — these seem all
to be corollaries from the philosophy of the Neo-Pla
tonists, and find their paraflel in the school of the
Alexandrian fathers : they express too, though with
some differences, which will be apparent by recaUing
the remarks in a preceding lecture", the fundamental
religious conceptions of Schleiermacher, to which we
before had occasion to object as inverting the gospel
scheme, and falling short of the dogmatic teachffig
of the revelation of God.
The causes and character of the philosophical
movement of free thought in the church will now be
clear. We stated that there had been also a critical
tendency. A stricter analysis would probably sub
divide the critical movement into two ; viz. a philo
sophical form of it which examines facts '', and a
literary one which examines documents.
This philosophical movement differs from the
former, in that it neither approaches the subject of
inquiry from a lofty speculative point of view, which
is intended to furffish a solution of the mysteries
of nature and revelation ; nor seeks by means of
the intuitive reason to penetrate beneath the doc
trines of ancient teachers, and discover the absolute
truth after which they were striving. It rather
disbelieves in the possibility of the attainment of
absolute trath by the human mind, and regards
all trath to be relative to the age in which it was
1 Lect. VI. pp.' 346-50. " Cfr. note on p. 465.

472 LECTURE VIIL
expressed^. Like the former movement it possesses
a method ; but one which is tentative and critical, not
speculative ; empirical, not d priori ; founding its
knowledge on history, not on philosophy. The mode
of investigation is probably indirectly a result of the
teaching of Hegel, as that which was before described
was the result of the rival schools contemporary with
him ; but it is the adoption of Hegel's method, and
not of his philosophy. In this respect it may be
regarded as a critical tendency rather than a philo
sophical ; but one which is critical of the traths and
religious facts of revelation, and of its doctrinal teach
ing, and not merely of the documents which record it.
Hence, when applied to revealed religion, in exa
mining the teaching of the scripture writers, it does
not attempt, as the former school, to raise the mind to
a level with that of the writers, in order to apprehend
the eternal truth which was revealed alike to their
intuition and to ours ; but it throws itself into the
circumstances of their age, so as to understand their
meaning ; and tests it by the altered - conceptions
which the progress of ages has given to the world.
Thus the inquirer not only asks what the writers
meant, but views the truth which they taught as
relative to their own age ; and regards the office of
criticism to be, to discriminate ' in it that which is
conceived to have been temporary and local, and that
which applies to all time. This school thus resembles
y Cfr. Note 9, and the remarks in the Preface on the historic
method of study.

LECTURE VIIL 473
the last, in asking what the scripture writers meant
in their own time, and what their meaning is to us ;
but it seeks the answer, by using the same methods
for the investigation which would be applied in
ordinary literature ; not by abstract speculation, apart
from literary study of actual documents. It makes
the conceptions which civilization and history have
created, to be the test for comparison, not the eternal
truths of reason which are supposed to exist irre
spective of civilization and history.
We may select one illustration. In surveying the
doctrine of the atoning work of Christ, the former
school seeks to apprehend the absolute meaning of the
atonement as the manifestation of an act previously
wrought out ; and, starting with the notion of the
dis^ine teacher of humaffity, the Aoyos of God in
Christ teaching the world, and the Aoyos in the
soul of man apprehending this teaching, it construes
the atoning work of Christ from its didactic side,
as teaching man concerffing God's love by means
of a majestic example of self-sacrifice. The second
school treats the doctrine historically; and, when it
has separated the apostolic teaching from all subse
quent additions, compares this doctrine with the age
¦in which it was expressed, in order to separate what
it conceives to be the permanent from the temporary ;
and hence comes to view the atonement, apait from
all the hallowed associations of propitiatory sacrifice
which in the minds of the early converts were insepa
rably united with it. These ideas, which the doctrine

474 LECTURE VIIL
of the church regards as integral portions of revealed
verity, it considers to be the peculiarity of the age
in which the revelation was communicated. The
revealed doctrines are handled in the same manner
as corresponding doctrines of philosophy.
The minuteness of this method, its disposition to
seek for truth in the investigation of details rather
than by approaching a subject from some gene
ral principle, connects it with the other form of
the critical tendency above named, which employs
itself in the literary criticism of the sacred records.
The main object of this movement consists in ex
amining the questions, first, of the origin of the
canon, its grounds and contents ; next, the authen
ticity and genuineness of the books ; lastly, the
credibility of their contents. It is plain that,
however objectionable may be the conclusions ar
rived at on questions such as these, they are too
recondite and literary in character to possess the
same doctrinal and pastoral importance as those of
the former kind ; though the alarm which they may
cause will often be greater, because the variation
from ordinary belief is more easily apprehended by
the mind, and, being a variation in fact, and not
only in idea, cannot be concealed by any ambiguity
in the use of theological terms, as may be the case in
the former instances. Yet ffi the third of these three
questions, this species of criticism may have a very
intimate relation to practice ; for it may so affect the
rule of faith as to overthrow the standard on which

LECTURE VIIL 475
we repose for the proof of revealed doctrines. In
truth, in this branch it becomes identical with the
critical method before described, save so far as that
examined the credibility of doctrines, this of facts.
But in spirit they are identical. It proceeds upon
the assumption, that the same critical process is
applicable in the investigation of the sacred history,
as the former assumed in the investigation of the
sacred philosophy. The attitude of both is inde
pendent : both teach that the sacred books are not to
be approached with a preconceived definition of their
character or meaning : prepossessions are not to bar
the way to the exercise of criticism. The difference
from the first method above described will be equally
obvious. We may adopt the doctrine of inspiration
as an illustration. The first view would approach
the contents of scripture with a psychological theory
of inspiration, as being a form of the intuition, which
may furnish an ffistrument for eclecticism : the second
and third would investigate the question empirically,
and, declining on the one hand to accept the psycho
logical definition just described, and on the other to
approach Scripture with the preconceived notion of
the nature of inspiration, as held by the Church,
would seek to determine the notion of inspiration
from the contents of scripture ^-
^ It is a truth indeed to which all will assent, that we must learn
from scripture what is meant by inspiration : but the difierence
between the view here described and the view of the church of Christ
is this ; the Church discovers in scripture the statements of the
writers concerning the reality and nature and authority of their

476 LECTURE VIIL
The relation to holy scripture of the critical modes
of inquiry will obviously be as intimate in reference
to the standard of faith, as that of the philosophical
in reference to doctrine. If the first of the three
methods which we enumerated^ overlays doctrine with
philosophy; the second is in danger of subtracting
from it integral elements of its system ; and the third
of disintegrating it by criticism, and introducing
uncertainty with regard to the sacred books, which
are the basis of doctrine. In questions relating to
literary criticism, like those which are made the
subject of investigation in the last-named method, it
is impossible to lay down, so absolutely as in the
two former cases, the tests to distinguish trath from
error. The creeds are a practical gauge in the
former instances which is partly wantffig in the latter.
The greater difficulty however which thus appertains
to the latter, of placing the limits to which reverent
criticism may extend without endangering faith, ought
to generate the more solemn caution in its application.
We have dwelt long upon the modern forms of
free thought which exist within the church of Christ,
because they have a living interest for us. They meet
us in life as weU as in literature ; and we must daily
form our judgment upon their truth and falsehood.
own inspiration ; and considers henceforth that the character of the
revelation is in its substance removed beyond the limits of critical
investigation ; and can only admit that an empirical inquiry can be
useful in settling the limits to which inspiration extends, and de
termining the question as to the writings to be accounted the sub
ject of it. *= Pages 465 and 471.

LECTURE VIIL 477
They are not indeed peculiar to one church, nor to one
country"; but form the theological question which is
presented to the Christian church in this age.
The result of our inquiries in reference to the free
a The existence of this movement in foreign churches is stated in
Lecture VII. and also in Notes 43 and 46. In America, besides
those instances which have occurred in this lecture, the writings of
Mr. Bushnell are thought to exhibit a free spirit. They however
deviate very slightly from traditional dogmas, and may be compared
with the writings of the late archdeacon Hare. In England, in the es
tablished church, there have been several works, besides those referred
to in p. 465. They chiefly belong to the first and third classes of
the three named in the text. The sermons of the late F. W. Robertson
of Brighton, matchless in freshness, but most unsound in questions
of vital doctrine ; the sermons, &c. of the Rev. J. L. Davies ; bishop
Colenso's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1861) ; and
the Tracts for Priests and People (1861, 62), may be considered to
be examples of the first type of thought ; but, if breathing the same
spirit as Coleridge, they express his thoughts with a clearness which
was wanting in him. The doubts of Blanco White and Sterling;
and of Mr. Macnaught, in his work on Inspiration (1856); Mr. Fox-
ton's Popular Christianity (1849) j bishop Colenso's work on the
Pentateuch (1862) ; and the Christian Orthodoxy (1857) of ^''¦
Donaldson, a name honoured by the philological student ; are in
stances of the third tendency named iu the text. A tribute of ac
knowledgment is nevertheless due to many of these writers, for the
earnest aiid truth-seeking tone which pervades their works. The
movement of free thought exists also outside the national church.
The recent work of Dr. S. Davidson, Introduction to the Old Testa
ment (second edition) is an instance. The views however of this
eminent biblical scholar met with so little sympathy in his own de
nomination, that he was made to suSer for an earlier edition (1856)
of the same work, which deviated in a much slighter degree from
received opinions. In the Unitarian body also free thought has
wrought a change. (See Note 7.) The influence of Cousin has
expelled the old utilitarianism. Mr. Martiueau and Mr. W. J. Fox
(see his Religious Ideas, 1849,) ^'"^ illustrations of the new spirit.

478 LECTURE VIIL
thought of the present time has been especially to
exhibit three main tendencies ; one, arising from Po
sitivism, a tendency to deny the possibility of revela
tion''; a second, from an opposite philosophy, to deny
its necessity c; and a third, to accept it only in part*^.
These are the three tendencies by which the world
and church of the coming generation are likely to be
influenced. Our path in life wfll be in a world
where they are operating ; and we shall have need
to be armed with the whole armour of God. If we
have in our personal history so investigated the evi
dences of our faith, as to feel that we have a well-
grounded hope, unassailable by these doubts, we may
be thankful : if we have gone safely through the
perilous test of a careful examination of them, some
times staggering perhaps in our faith, yet strug
gling after truth in prayerful trust that the Lord
would himself be our teacher, until we now are able
to feel that we have our faith grounded on a Rock,
— a faith which is the result of inquiry, not of igno
rance, — let us be still more thankful, and exemplify
our thankfulness by tryffig to assist the doubter with
our tender sympathy, and to aid him in finding
l" Cfr. p. 440, and the note to it. Positivism only differs from
Naturalism (see Note 21), in that it expresses a particular theory
concerning the limits and method of science, as well as the dis
belief in the supernatural implied by the latter term.
" Cfr. p. 446.
d An instructive sketch of the tendencies of modern thought was
given by principal TuUock, in his Inaugural Lecture at St. Andrew's,
1845.

LECTURE VIIL 479
the truth and peace which Christ has given to us.
Our attitude in moments of peril must be that of
solemn reliance on God's help ; and our behaviour
towards others ought to exhibit Christian firmness,
mingled with candour and tenderness ; evincing the
moderation of true learning, joffied to the uncompro
mising adherence to the Christian faith.
The history now given, of the doubt which is ex
pressed at present through the English language,
completes the account of the fourth great crisis of
belief in church history ^ ; and with it we bring to
an end our long survey of the history of free
thought. Since the commencement of the second lecture, we
have been so involved in the details of the investiga
tion, that, to those who have lost sight of the plan
proposed in the commencement, the lectures may
have appeared historical rather than controversial,
and hardly compatible with the purpose of the
founder of the Lecture. We have been like travellers
moving in a tangled plain, where the path at times
seems lost. Before entering upon it, we took our
stand, as it were, on an eminence ; and indicated the
plan of the route; pointed to the kind of territory
through which it would conduct us, and the direction
to which it would tend. Now, that we have at last
extricated ourselves from its windings, and rest after
0 See p. 14. This crisis has occupied our attention since the
middle of Lecture III. p. 147.

480 LECTURE VIIL
our journey, let us cast a glance backward over its
course, and see how far the result has verffied our
anticipations. Let us reconsider the purpose designed
by this course of inquiry ; notice how far the pro
mises in respect to it have been fulfilled ; show its
relation to controversial purpose ; and collect the
moral lessons which are derivable.
It will be remembered that we stated f the topic
to be, a critical history of free thought in Europe
in relation to the Christian religion. Our criticism
started from a Christian point of view, and assumed
alike the miraculous character of Christianity, the
exceptional character of the religious inspiration of
the first teachers of it, and the reality of its chief doc
trines. From this point of view we proposed to con
sider the attempts of the human mind to get free
from the authority of the Christian religion, either
by rejecting it in whole or in parts. Four great
crises of faith were enumerated in church historyli ;
the first, the struggle, literary and philosophical, of
early heathenism against Christianity i ; the second,
the reawakening of free thought in the middle ages^;
the third, that which appertained to the revival of
classical literature l ; the fourth, to the growth of
modern philosophy™ ; — a series of epochs which ex
hibit the struggle of Christianity in the great centres
*' Lect. I. page i. s Page 9.
h Page 10. i This was treated in Lecture II.
I' Lecture III. page 106 seq. 1 Lecture III. page 129 seq.
m Lectures IV. to VIII.

LECTURE VIIL 481
of thought and civilization, ancient or modern ; and
it was proposed that our investigation should not
only contain a chronicle of the facts, but explain
the causes, and teach the moral" We considered
that the causes which make thought develope into
unbelief are chiefly two, — the emotional and the
intellectual" ; and, while vindicating distinctness of
operation for the intellectual under certain circum
stances p, yet we allowed the imion of them with the
moral to be so intimate*', that not only must account
always be taken of the latter in estimating the un
belief of individuals, but the exclusive study of the
former, without allowffig for the existence of the
latter, must be regarded as likely to lead to an im
perfect and injurious idea of unbelief
The intellectual causes were however selected as the
special subject of our study'' ; partly because they have
been much neglected by Christian writers, partly
because they are the forms which for the most part
create the doubts which Christians encounter in the
present age. The prfficipal intellectual causes were
considered^ to be, either the new material of know
ledge, such as the physical or metaphysical sciences,
which may present truth antagonistic to the teaching
of the sacred literature; or new methods of criticism,
the application of which creates opinions differing
from those of the traditionary belief; and, above
all, the effects of the application of particular tests
n Page 4. ° Page i8. P Pages 23, 24.
1 Pages 19-23. >¦ Page 27. ' Page 28.
I i

482 LECTURE VIIL
of truth, — sense, reason, intuition, feeling — to the doc
trines of revealed religion.
This was our plan; and we have been employed
in tracing the influence of these causes in generating
doubt in the four great crises, with a minuteness
which may almost have been tedious ; endeavouring
to supply the natural as well as the literary history;
analysing each successive step of thought into the
causes which produced it ; searching for them when
necessary in the intellectual biography of individuals;
and, if not refuting results, at least laying bare by
criticism the processes through which they were at
tained. At the same time we have attempted to
show the grounds on which the faith of the church
has reposed in the various ages of history. A defence,
itself also twofold in its character — emotional and in
tellectual — has been generated by the attack in each
of the crises, and an example thus furnished of the
law which governs human society, — progress by anta
gonism. Permanent gaffi to truth was seen to be the
result of the various controversies ; quiet and refresh
ment after the discharge of the storm had cleared the
atmosphere from the intellectual and moral ills with
which it was charged.
The utility of the inquiry will now, it is hoped, be
apparent. Though these lectures must be regarded
as instructive for the believer, rather than polemic
against the unbeliever, yet they are intended to serve
also a controversial purpose.
There are times indeed when the mere instructive-

LECTURE vm. 483
ness of a history, independently of practical use, is 'a
sufficient justification for writing it ; — times when it
is important to take the gauge of past knowledge as
the condition of a step forward in the future. Those
who are accustomed to meditate on the present age,
on the multifarious elements which in a time of great
peace are quietly laying the basis of great changes,
and on the unity of intellectual condition wffich the
international intercourse is creating in the world of
letters, as really as in that of industry, will perhaps
think that the present is such a period, when the
knowledge of the history of the former perils of the
Cffiistian faith, the nature of the attack and of the
defence, is itself of value in regard to the prospects
of the future*. Those again also, who are accustomed
to look at the contemporary works of evidence in our
own country, will deplore the fact that in many cases,
however well meant in spirit, they are essentially
deficient in a due appreciation of the precise origin
and character of present forms of doubt, and the
natural and literary history of doubt in general" ;
reproducing arguments unanswerable against older
kinds of doubt, but unavailing against the modern,
Hke wooden walls against modern weapons of war.
We stand in the presence of forms of doubt, which
' Cfr. remarks in Note 9.
" This remark does not apply to the principal writers (named in
Note 49), nor to the literature called out by the " Essays and Re
views" controversy ; but it applies to many of the popular manuals
which are directed against old deist literature, and are not adapted
to modern critical doubts. I i 2

484 LECTURE VIIL
press us more nearly than those of former times, be
cause they do not supersede Christianity by disbehef,
but disintegrate it by eclecticism; which come in the
guise of erudition, unknown in former times, appeal
ing to new canons of truth, reposffig on new methods,
invested with a new air. In such a moment a re
consideration of the struggles of past ages becomes
ffidirectly a contribution to the evidences, by supply
ing the knowledge of similarity and contrast, which
is necessary, as a preliminary, before entering on a
new conflict.
The dangers to faith in the present day are some
times exaggerated; but there cannot be a doubt that
we live in a time when old creeds are in peril ; when
the doubt is the result not of ignorance, but of know
ledge, and acts in the minds that are pre-eminent
for intellectual influence, and advances with a firm
ness that is not to be repelled by force but by argu
ment. It is not the duty of Cffiistians to shut their
eyes to the danger, like the ostrich, which supposes
by burying her eyes ffi the sand to avoid the hunts
man's arrow. There seems accordingly special reason
why in such an age an acquaintance with the forms
• of doubt is requisite on the part of those who have to
minister the reHgion which is the subject of attack.
If accordingly a clergy is to be trained up likely
to sjipply the intellectual cravings of the pre
sent day, they must be placed on a level with its
ripest knowledge, and be acquainted with the nature
and origin of the forms of doubt which they will

LECTURE VIIL 485
encounter. The church has indeed a large field,
where work and not thought is to be the engine
which the clergy must use in their labours ; truly
a home mission, where men and women for whom
Christ died, require to be lifted out of their mere
animalism, and taught the simplest truths of Christ,
and prayer, and immortality : and noble are the
efforts that Christians have made, and are making, for
an object so religious and philanthropic; but there is
a danger lest this very energy of work, which accords
so naturally with the utilitarianism of the English
character, should lead us to forget that there is an
opposite stratum of society, to which also Christiaffity
has its message, which is only to be reached by the
delicate gifts of intellect and by the ripest learning.
If Christianity is to be presented to this class,
adapted to the demands of the age so far as they are
reasonable, but unmutilated and unaltered in its body
of revealed doctrine, preserving in its integrity the
faith delivered to the saints; so that apostles might
recognize it as being that which they themselves
taught, and for which they laid down their lives ; it
is necessary that Christian students should be trained
specially for the work, by a learned and intelligent
appreciation of truth, such as will create orthodoxy
without bigotry, and charity without latitude. If
we have to dread their going forth with hesitating
opiffions, teaching, through their very silence con
cerning the mysterious realities which constitute the
very essence of Christianity, another gospel than that

486 LECTURE VIIL
which was once for all miraculously revealed ; there
is almost equal ground for alarm if they go forth, able
only to repeat the shibboleths of a professional creed,
and unable to give a reason of the glorious hope that
is in them. In the former case they will fail to
teach historic and dogmatic Christianity, because
they do not believe it ; in the latter because they do
not understand its meaning and evidence. If they
need piety as the first requisite, they need knowledge
as the second. In certain conditions of the church,
study is second only to prayer itself as an instrument
for the Christian evangelist.
It is hoped, therefore, that a sketch of a depart
ment not previously treated as a whole, may indi
rectly be an aid to the Christian faith, if it shall per
form the humble office of supplying some elements
of instruction to the Christian student.
Such a purpose however would hardly have justi
fied the introduction of the subject here. The motive
which dictated its consideration was much more
practical. It was hoped that the answer to many
species of doubt would be found by referring them
to the forms of thought or of philosophy from which
they had sprung ; that it would be possible to per
ceive how they might be refuted, by understanding
why and how men have come to believe them*.
This is a study of mental pathology seldom under
taken. The practical aim of Christian writers has
generaUy suggested to them a readier mode of
^ See note on p. 30.

LECTURE VIIL 487
treatmg the history of unbelief, by referring its
origin to intellectual pride ; and, if any margin re
mained unaccounted for by this explanation, to refer
it to an invisible agent, the direct operation of Satan y.
Such a method, however true, commits the error,
against which Bacon utters a warning, of ascending
at once to the most general causes without interpo
lating the intermediate. It ignores the intellectual
class of causes, and omits to trace the subtlety of
their mode of manifestation ; — a problem equally
mteresting, whether they be regarded as original
causes of doubt, or only as secondary instruments,
obeying the impulse of the emotional causes. It
would have been possible to investigate the subject,
by selecting a few leading instances to illustrate the
natural history of doubt ; but the most likely mode
for exhausting the subject, as well as for presenting
it in a maimer which would fall in with the historic
tastes of the age, seemed to be, to treat it by means
of a critical history, presenting the antidote by a
running criticism ; and to ask, frankly and fully,
what have been the grounds on which Christianity
has been doubted ; and what have been those on
which the faith of Christians in their hour of peril
has reposed ; and then finally to gather up the
lessons which the history itself teaches.
The inquiry has been analogous to the study of
y Van Mildert so exclusively adopted this latter view in his Boyle
Lectures, that his opponents charged him with Manichseism. See
remarks on him in the Preface to this volume.

488 LECTURE VIIL
the histoiy of a disease ; and scientific rigour re
quired that it should be conducted with a similar
spirit of fairness towards those that manifest its
symptoms. As the physiologist, who wishes to
learn the laws of a disease, watches patiently the
symptoms in the subject of it, not reproaching the
sufferer, even if the malady be self-caused ; so in
moral diagnosis, the student of mental and religious
error must carry out his inquiries in the spirit of
cold analysis, if he would arrive at the real character
of the intricate facts which he studies. The candour
of our examination has not been prompted by any
spirit of indifference to truth, nor by sympathy with
error; but partly by the demands of historical accu
racy, partly by deep pity for those who are the
subject of spiritual doubts, even when the doubts
are of their own fault.
This view of the inquiry, as an analysis of the
intellectual causes of doubt, wUl also explain one
or two peculiarities in it, which, if left unnoticed,
might leave an impression of its inutility.
It will be seen, for example, that in the investi
gation of the natural history of doubt, and in the
explanation of the antecedent metaphysical or critical
questions which have produced it, we have indicated
the schools of thought which have created it, but have
abstained from insisting on the inherent necessity
of the relation which subsists between the metaphy
sical tests of truth and the religious conclusions
discussed. The reason is, that it seemed unfit to

LECTURE VIIL 489
assume a side eagerly in the metaphysical contro
versy ; and therefore, while showing that the use of
certain grounds of belief and methods of inquiry
has produced, both as a matter of history and logic,
certain species of doubt or disbelief; we have not
attempted to condemn the particular metaphysical
theories on the ground of the logical consequences
which are supposed to flow from them, nor to deny
that they could be so amended, as either to avoid the
sceptical conclusions to which our objections are
taken, or be rendered innocuous by the co-existence
of other causes. Science only shows the general
tendency or law of logical connection between intel
lectual causes and effects. The production of the
results in particular cases is subject to exception
from the introduction of interfering causes ^.
Another peculiarity which appertains to the ana
lysis of the intellectual sources of doubt, besides the
seeming absence of invariable necessity in their
operation, might be thought to destroy the practical
value of the inquiry; viz. the feeling of disappoint
ment excited when it is perceived that they do not
wholly explaiil the phenomenon, and are merely
antecedents or elements, not causes. Tffis arises from
the very nature of mental analysis. Being in nature
like chemical, it aims offiy at the detection of the
elements that make up the compound, and furnishes
the material or formal causes, not the efficient. This
longing of the mind to find causes, and to discover
2 Cfr. the notes on pp. 36 and 44.

490 LECTURE VIIL
the origffial motive power, is however a witness to
the ineffaceable connection of the idea of power with
that of will. And while it does not destroy the
completeness of the analysis, as the solution of the
intellectual problem proposed, it nevertheless points
to the instinctive wish of the heart to resolve the
causes of doubt into some ultimate source ffi the
will ; and is thus a witness to the truth of the
position which we have always asserted*, that the
intellectual causes selected for our special study are
only one branch, and must be united to the emotional
in order to attain a fffil explanation of the pheno
menon of doubt.
Thus the analysis offered will have, it is hoped, a
utility in the limited sphere which was claimed for
it, in supplying the account of the tangled and subtle
processes through which doubt has insinuated itseU'.
What then are the lessons which the whole history
teaches 1 To discover these was part of our original
purpose ^, as well as to learn the facts and find the
causes ; to satisfy the longings of the heart, no less
than the curiosity of the understanding.
First, What has been the office of doubt in his
tory 1 Has it been wholly an injury, a chronic dis
ease 1 or simply a gain 1 or has it operated in both
ways'? Let us find the answer, by testing each of
these theories of its office by means of the facts.
The first of the three is that Avhich has generally
a Pages 19, 99, (fee. b Page 4.

LECTURE VIIL 491
been held within the Christian church. It dates
from the first ages of the church, and witnesses to a
valuable truth. The sacred care with which the
Christians treasured the doctrine, and spurned the
attempts of heretics to explain it away, proves the
strength of the conviction that they possessed a defi
nite treasure of divine truth, ffitroduced at a definite
period. Their very want of toleration c, the tenacity
of their attachment to the faith, is a proof of their
undoubting conviction concerning the historic verity
of the facts connected with redemption, and the
definite character of the dogmas which interpreted
the facts. In later ages however, the same idea of
sacredness has been extended by the Romish church
to the mass of error which Christiaffity has taken
up into itself in the progress of ages ; and in Pro
testant countries has led to the attempt to restrain
the thoughts of men even on the secular subjects
most remote from religion, where the ancient sacred
literature seemed to suggest any indirect information.
The doubt on the part of religious men, of any pro
gress being made by free thought, has often expressed
itself too in the affirmation, that the history of un
belief shows an exact recurrence of the same doubts,
without progress from age to age, and an intimation
that new suggestions of doubt are only old foes
under new faces.
<' This is seen in their scrupulous care against heresy, and is at
tested by the very complaint of their opponent Celsus. (Orig. Contr.
Gels. i. 9, iii. 44.)

492 LECTURE VIIL
While Christians have thus generally regarded
free inquiry in religion as wholly a loss ; free
thinkers have taken the very opposite view, and
regarded it as an unmixed gain. The distinguished
writer d of our own time on the history of civilisa
tion, whose premature death will prevent the fulfil
ment of his large design, has illustrated, with the
clearness and grasp over facts which constitute some
of his excellences, the office of scepticism, in securing
for the human mind the political liberty and toleration
which he prized so dearly. His central thought was,
that civilisation depended upon the progress of intel
lect «, the emancipation of the human mind from all
authority save that of inductive science: he pointed"
out with triumphant enthusiasm, the services which
he conceived that unbelief had performed, in rescuing
Europe from degrading beliefs like witchcraft, and
from the introduction of supernatural causes for
natural events, and in securing in France, in the eigh
teenth century, the poHtical rights of the lower orders
against the claims of the church. Accordingly ffi
his opinion scepticism was an almost unmixed boon.
Those who recaU the outline of the history will
probably think that each of these views, taken alone,
is one-sided, and contains a partial truth. The review
of facts shows that free thought has had an office in
the world; and, like most human agencies permitted
d H. T. Buckle, the news of whose death, at the end of May 1862,
had just reached England when this lecture was delivered.
o History of Civilisation, vol. i. ch. iv.

LECTURE vm. 493
under the administration of a benevolent Providence,
its influence has neither been unmixed evil nor un
mixed good. It has been an evil, so far as in the
conflict of opinions it has invaded the body of essen
tial truth which forms the treasure given to the
world, in the miraculous revelation of our Lord Jesus
Christ; but it has been a good, so far as it has con
tributed, either directly to further human progress
intellectually and socially, or indirectly to bring out
into higher relief these very truths by the progress
of discussion.
When, for example. Christian doctrine has been over
laid from age to age by concretions which had gathered
round it, as was the case previously to the Refor
mation, it has been free thought wffich has attacked
the system, and, piercing the error, has removed those
elements which had been superadded. Or, when the
church has attempted to fetter human thought in
other departments than its own proper domain of
religion, as when the ecclesiastical authorities dis
graced themselves by vetoing the discoveries of Ga
lileo ?, it has been to free thought that we owe the
emancipation of the human mind. Or, when the
church linked itself in alliance with a decaying poli
tical system, as in the last century in France, it was
^ History of Civilisation, ch. xii and xiii.
g An article by a distinguished scientific writer appeared in the
North British Review for Nov. i860 ; in which the question of
Galileo's trial was discussed in reference to the recent re-examination
of the subject.

494 LECTURE VIIL
free thought that recalled to it the lesson to render to
Csesar the things that were Caesar's, and to God the
things that were God's. It is instances like these,
where free thought has been the means of making
undoubted contributions to human improvement, or
of asserting toleration, which have led writers to
describe it as almost innocuous, and hastily to regard
the ratio of the emancipation of the human mind
from the teaching of the priesthood to be the sole
measure of human improvement.
In many instances also, free thought has indirectly
contributed to intellectual good, in points where it
has run a greater risk, than in those just cited, of
trespassing upon the sacred truths of religion; in
stances, in fact, where the benefit resulting has been
owing to the overruling Providence which brings
good out of evil, rather than to any direct intention
on the part of those who have exercised it. Exam
ples are to be found in those epochs, when some
sudden outburst of knowledge compelled a recon
sideration of old truths by the light of new dis
coveries. The awakening of the mind in the mid
dle age, the Renaissance, the advance of modern
science, the birth of literary criticism, are instances
of such moments, whereffi free inquiry has been a
necessity forced on^ the mind by outward circum
stances, not self-prompted. This attitude of inquiry,
this exercise of a provisional doubt, was not, like that
described, called forth merely by the circumstance
that religion had received additions from error, but

LECTURE VIIL 495
must have arisen even if the faith once delivered
had been preserved uncorrupted. For religion being
a fixed truth, while truth in other departments is
progressive, it woffid have been impossible to avoid
the necessity of comparison of it with them from time
to time, in those spheres where it intersected the field
occupied by them.
Such examples, indeed, are not restricted to Cffiist
ian history, but are general facts of the history of
the human mind. The fifth century B.C. was such
an epoch in Greece li; when various causes, social
and intellectual, created a sudden awakening of the
human mind to reconsider its old beliefs, and find a
home for the new views of nature and of the world
which were opening. The free thought of the
Sophists was the scepticism of doubt, of distrust; the
proposal to surrender, to destroy the old : the free
thought of Socrates was the scepticism of mquiry,
the attempt to reconsider first principles, to rebuild
truth anew. In all such moments, investigation is
indirectly the means of stimulating knowledge. The
history of the progress of it, in reference to the diffi
culties which have beset the Christian church, shows
us that the epochs of doubt have not generally been
produced by unbelief taking the initiative in attack
ing old truths without some fresh stimulus, and re
peating old objections so as to exhibit perpetually
h Cfr. Grote's History of Greece, vol. viii. ch. Ixvii ; Lewes,
History of Philosophy (chapter on Sophists) ; Grant, Aristotle's
Ethics, vol. i ; essay ii.

496 LECTURE VIIL
recurring cycles of unbelief We have rather seen
that doubt is reawakened by the introduction of new
forms of knowledge; and though old doubts recur,
yet that they come arrayed in a new garb, suggested
by different motives, deduced from fresh premises,
and accompanied by doubts of a new kind before
unknown. In a practical point of view, frequently
they may be thought not to differ widely in appear
ance from old ones, and to present similar effects as
well as forms; but in a scientffic one, they ought not
to be confounded, inasmuch as they do not present
identity of cause. There has been a slow but real
progress in knowledge, and a slow but real change in
the modes of applying it to Christian religion. The
effect of the defence offered for Christianity is equally
powerful in leaving its impress on subsequent doubt,
as the progress of knowledge is in suggesting no
velty of form. The sphere is narrowed, or the direc
tion changed. If thought seems to have come round
in its revolution to the same spot in its orbit, it will
be found to be moving not on a circle, but on a
spiral; slowly but surely approaching a little nearer
to the great central truth, toward which it is uncon
sciously attracted.
The value of the free inquiry in this latter class
of cases is not in the process, but in the resffits; in
producing the branch of theology which sets forth
the evidences of revealed truth. We have previously
had occasion to imply that the Christian evidences
are too often regarded as mere weapons of defence ;

LECTURE VIIL 497
like the battle-fields of history, monuments of the
struggle of evil. Being a form of truth which would \
never have been called foith if the chmch had not
been attacked, the apologetic literature is usually re
garded, either as obsolete because controversial, or as
useless for believers. Yet truths brought to light by
it, though dearly purchased, are a real contribution
to Christian knowledge. As miracles are a part of
Christianity as well as an evidence, so apologetic
literature, while useful in argument, serves the pur
pose of instruction as well as of defencei. The con
troversy with heresy or unbelief has caused truths to
be perceived explicitly, which otherwise would have
been only implicit ; and has iUustrated features of
the Christian doctrine which might otherwise have
remained hidden. Though these good resffits have
not been designed by unbelievers, and cannot there
fore warrant the claim asserted for scepticism, that it
is always innocuous, nor be set down to the credit of
free thought as a spirit ; yet they evidence the value
of it as a method ; the free thought, that is, which is
inquiry and consideration, not that which is disbelief
While therefore fffily appreciating the reverent
wish of Christian men to defend the truth with
sacred tenacity, which leads them to regard aU doubt
with alarm ; we can frankly allow the function and
use of the phenomenon of doubt in history, when
viewed as an inteUectual fact. The use of it is to
test aU beliefs, with the view of bringing out their
i See above, Lecture IV. p. 225.
Kk

498 .LECTURE VIIL
truth and error. But the good result has often, we
perceive, been undesigned. It has frequently too been
dearly bought, attaffied at an incalcffiable spiritual
loss to the souls of those who have doubted. The
resffit accordingly leaves untouched the responsibility
of the doubter, and offiy shows the use which an all-
wise Providence makes free thought subserve ffi the
general progress of the world.
But the heart asks a further moral. Though it
derives satisfaction from perceiving that even fea
tures of history which seem the darkest, and mo
ments the most perUous, bear witness to the presence
of a benevolent Creator, who overrules all for the
improvement of man and the progress of the church ;
it still claims to know what those limits are, where
doubt must expire in awe, and speculation ffi adora
tion. It longs to exercise inquiry, and yet retain the
Cffiistian faith. It asks eamestiy what does the his
tory teach us concerning the doubts that are most
likely to meet us ffi our lifetime, and what lessons
are supplied by it in reference to the best mode at
once of maintaffiing our own faith, and of leadffig
those who doubt to the faith which we receive. The
materials are supplied for an answer to these ques
tions ; probably even the materials for the final
answer which the church can give to them.
We venture not to utter predictions in reference
to the future ; but the thought is interesting and so
lemn, that there seems some reason to believe that the
weapons which doubt on the one hand, and religion

LECTURE VIIL 499
on the other, must use in the final adjudication of
their claims, at least in reference to all ffindamental
questions, are already in men's hands. Though our
express denial that doubt perpetually recurs in cycles
might cause it to be supposed that we should be
inclined to anticipate the existence of future crises
of faith ; yet we have remarked that such crises are
always produced by the opening of some unexplored
field of knowledge, the introduction of a collection
of new ideas or of a new spirit excited by new ideas,
on subjects traversed either by the Christian religion,
or by the Christian inspired books. A survey of the
present state of knowledge would probably lea,d us to
think that no field lies unexamined from which such
new material can hereafter come. The physical sci
ences which, by the discovery of an order of nature
and general laws of causation, have heretofore sug
gested difficulties in reference to miraculous ffiterpo
sition, and, by means of the discoveries in astronomy
and geology, have come into conflict with the ancient
Hebrew cosmogony, are not likely to suggest fresh
ones ffistinct in kind from the past. If there be not
ground for discouragement in science, nor for doubt
ing that the present state of it, which seems to offer
employment for originality of mind rather in track
ing old principles into details than in ascending to
new ones^, is merely a temporary one, destined to
pass away when some happy guess shall reveal the
highest laws which now baffle ffiquiry; yet it is not
k Cfr. Mill's Logic, vol. i. book iii. ch. xiii. § 7.
K k 2

500 LECTURE VIIL
probable that such an advance will traverse the pro
vince of religion. The survey of those regions where
discovery seems most hopefol, will explain the reason
of this assumption.
If the present examffiation of some of the subtler
forms of matter or of forced, and of their existence in
other globes of the solar ^stem than our own, should
hereafter lead to a generalization which shall extend
natural philosophy as widely beyond its present
limits as the discovery made by Newton beyond those
of his predecessors, yet these discoveries can have no
bearffig, favourable or unfavourable to reHgion, dis
tinct in kind from that of present ones. If even a
still mightier stride should be taken, and physiology
be able to lay bare the subtle processes through
which mffid acts on bodyii^ ; yet the difficulty would
only be an enhanced form of that which is already
1 The allusion is to the discoveries, such as that of Kirchoff", of the
existence of some of the material elements in the solar atmosphere,
which exist in our own ; also of the connexion between the periodic
recurrence of the solar spots, and terrestrial magnetism ; and espe
cially to the discussion on "the correlation of physical forces," con
tained in Mr. Grove's work, and in Sir H. Holland's Essays (essays
i. and ii.), reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, July 1858 and
Jan. 1859.
IB The discoveries of the distinction between the sensational and
motor nerves, by sir C. Bell ; of the phenomena of reflex action, by
Dr. M. Hall ; of the connexion of the same phenomena with those
of sensation, by Dr. Carpenter ; and the identification of the centres
of conscious activity with separate departments of the cerebral
organism, by Dr. Laycock ; are instances of hints toward the solu
tion of this problem. Many continental physiologists, such as

LECTURE vm. 501
used to discredit the spirituality and immortality of
the soul.
If we pass from the physical to the moral or meta
physical sciences, there is still less ground for expect
ing progress. Trae so far as they go, they offer no
opportunity for enlargement, unless perhaps a more
careful analysis, by means of the fertile principle of
mental association", should cast light on the sensa
tional source of ideas and the physiological side of
mind ; and even this would leave the independent
evidence of the mental data, moral and intellectual,
of religion, on the same basis as at present. Critical
science agaffi has attained such perfection, that there
is no possibility of an entirely new range of critical
thought springffig up in reference to religion, such
as arose when the German mind was creating the
science of historical criticism.
Thus, though each branch of science, — physical,
metaphysical, and critical,— offers grounds of hope to
the labourer, there is no reason to fear that sceptical
difficulties will be generated by any of them, distinct
in kind from those which now exist And a similar
Miiller, Cams, Wagner, and Brown-Sequard, have worked toward
the same end. J. F. Herbart in Germany, and Mr. H. Spencer in
England, are writers who have approached the psychological problem
from the physiological side.
" Bayn's Senses and Intellect, 1855 ; Emotions emd Will, 1859 ;
and Spencer's Principles of Psychology, 1855 ; are works in which
analysis of this character is carried farther than in former works. A
popular view of past attempts of this kind is given in an article on
Mental Association, in the Edinburgh .Review for Oct. 1859.

502 LECTURE VIIL
line of argument will suggest, that there is little
¦ reason to hope, on the other hand, for enlargement of
the grounds of the evidence' of natural and revealed
religion. If this be the case, the materials are accord
ingly supplied, from which thoughtful students must
make up their minds finally on the questions at issue.
Indeed the survey of modern thought which we have
already made, will have shown that men are already
taking their place in hostile array ; and will have
revealed differences so fundamental in reference to
religion, on subjects where no further evidence can
be offered, that there can be little reason to hope for
the alteration of the state of parties to the end of time.
Never was there an age wherein Christianity had so
real, so potent an effect as the present ; yet never
was there one which, while so largely moulded by it,
was so really hostile to it". It is the hostility, not of
opposition which regards Christianity as false, but of
the criticism which views it as obsolete, and considers
it to be one phase of the world's religious thought,
the eternal traths of which may be assimilated with
out the historic and dogmatic basis under which its
originators conceived it. Though the special forms
of doubt that now exist derive their lineage, philo
sophical and historical, from the modern German and
o An example is seen in Strauss. No one can be more inimical
to the dogmatic and historical Christianity of the church than he ;
yet he asserts firmly that Christ and Christianity is the highest
moral ideal to which the world can ever expect to attain. (Solilo
quies, E. T. 1845. part ii. § 27-30.)

LECTURE VIIL 503
French sources, which we have studied in the last
two lectures ; yet it is in an older age of European
history that the nearest general parallel to the present
state of feeling may perhaps be found ; and there is a
deep trath in the analogy which the learned and
excellent critic p, who has recently made a special
study of the struggle of classical heathenism against
Christiaffity, has poffited out, between the feeling of
philosophers in the second and third centuries of the
Christian era and in the present time.
Amid very wide differences in tone and learning,
there is this fondamental agreement between the age
which was enriched with the accumulated learning
of the old civilization, and the present, enriched with
that of the new. There is the same spirit of natural
ism; the same indisposition to rise to the belief of the
interference of Deity ; the same feeling of contempt
for positive religions ; the same sensation of heart-
weariness, — the utterance as it were of the desponding
feeling, "Who will show us any good 1" the same
lofty theory of stoic morality, and disposition to find
perfection ffi obedience to nature's laws, physical and
moral ; the same approximation to the Christian
ideal of perfection, while destroying the very proof
of the means by which it is to be acquired. And if
it be true that the state of mteUectual men presents
so marked a parallel, so in like manner the study of
the arguments by which the early fathers in their
P E. de Pressense. Histoire 2" Serie, ii. 524.

504 LECTURE VIIL
apologetic treatises met the doubts of such minds, be
comes a question of great practical as well as literary
interest "1.
What then are the doubts which are most likely to
meet us, eithei: insinuating themselves into our own
minds, or offering their difficulty to those who intend
to become ministers of Christ"? and what are the means
by which they may be mqst effectually repelled 1
The main difficulties may be summed up as three : —
(i) The question of the relation of religion, and
more particularly of Christianity, to the human soul ;
whether religion is anything but morality, and Chris
tianity its highest tyjDO.
(2) The question of the relation of the work of
Christ to the human race, whether it involves a secret
mystery of redemption known only to God, and hid
den from the ken of man, except so far as revealed ;
or whether it is to be measured by the human mind,
and reduced to the proportions which can be appro
priated or understood by man.
(3) The question of the relation of the Bible to the
human mind, whether it is to be that of a friend or a
master ; and its rehgious teaching to be a record or
an oracular authority.
The history of recent doubt has brought before us
some whose mffids doubt wholly of the supernatural.
In the case of a few of these, but only of a few, the
doubt has passed into positive unbelief; their con
victions have become so fixed that they manifest a
1 Pressens6 has devoted attention to this point, (vol. iv. book iv.)

LECTURE VIIL 505
fierce spirit of proselytism, and can dare to point the
finger of scorn at those who still believe in the unseen
and supernatural relations of God to the human soul.
Between these and religious men the struggle is
internecine. We can have no sympathy with them :
we can rejoice that they retain a moral standard,
where they have rejected many of the most potent
motives which support it ; but must tremble lest their
unbelief end in thorough animalism ; lest Epicureanism
be their final philosophy. But there are many more
whose tone is that of sadness, not of scorn ; the
temper of Heracleitus, not Democritus ; whose souls
feel the longing want which nothing but communion
with a Father in heaven can supply, but who are so
clouded with doubt, and retain so faint a hold on the
thought of God's interference, and on the reality of
the supernatural, that they are unable to soar on the
wings of faith beyond the natural, either material or
spiritual, up to the throne of God.
The history of such men generally tells of some
mighty mental convulsion, which has driven them
from their anchor-ground of belief Sometimes the
study of science, as it is seen gradually to absorb
successive ranges of phenomena into the regular
operation of universal law, until it removes God far
away, and creation seems to move on without His
interference, has been the cause : — in other cases
philanthropic pity, musing on the sad catastrophes
which daily occur, when the happiness and lives
of innocent human beings are for ever destroyed

506 LECTURE VIIL
by the stern unyielding action of nature's laws,
leading the heart to doubt God's nearness, and
the fact of a special Providence: — in other cases
again, the study of the human mind in history, and
the perception of the manner in which the gradual
growth of knowledge seems to lessen the region of
the supernatural, until the mind doubts whether the
supernatural itself is not the mere idolum, tribes,
a mere giving objective being to a subjective idea,
a truth relative merely to a particular stage of civil
ization. Such causes as these, producing a convul
sion of feeling, may form the sad occasion from which
the soul dates its loss of the grasp which it has
heretofore had over the belief of God's nearness, and
of religion ; and mark the moment from which it
has gradually doubted whether anything exists save
eternal law; or whether a personal Deity, if he
exist, really communes with man ; whether, in short,
religion be anything but duty, and Christianity
anything but the noble type of it to which one
branch of the Semitic people was happy enough to
attain. Doubts like these, where they exist in a high-
prfficipled and delicate mind, are the saddest sight
in nature. The spirit that feels them does not try to
proselytise ; they are his sorrow : he wishes not others
to taste their bitterness. Any one of us who may
have ever felt chilled, as the thought insinuated it
self, of the remote possibility of the perception of the
machine-like sweep of universal law removing our

LECTURE VIIL 507
belief of the guardian care of Him to whom alone we
can fly for refoge when heart or flesh faileth, as to a
Father as infinite in tenderness as in condescension, the
friend of the friendless : — whoever has known the
bitterness of the thought of a universe unguided by
a God of justice, and without an eternity wherein the
cry of an afflicted creation shall no longer remain
unavenged, has known the first taste of the cup of
sorrow which is mournfoUy drunk by spirits such as
we are describing. And who that has known it
would grudge the labour of a life, if by example, by
exhortation, by prayer, he might be the means of
rescuing one such soul "?
Yet no task is so hard; argument well nigh fails,
because the doubts refer to those very ultimate facts
which are usually required as data for argument.
If intellectual means are sought for remedy, it is
philosophy to which we must look to supply it ; — the
philosophy which recalls man to the natural realism
of the heart, to the simple unsophisticated trust in
the reality- of the spiritual intuitions, not as derived
from sense only, nor merely as necessary forms of
thought, but as the vision of a personal God by the
human soul.
If however there is any field which requires the
presence of moral means, it is tffis : and we who
believe in a God who careth so much for man that
He spared not His own Son for our sakes, may well
look upwards for help in such instances ; in hope
that the infinite Father, whose love overlooks not one

508 LECTURE VIIL
single solitary case of sorrowing doubt, will con
descend to reveal himself to all such hearts which
are groping after Him, if haply they may find Him.
The soul of such doubters is like the clouded sky :
the warming beams of the Sun of righteousness can
alone absorb the mist, and restore the unclouded
brightness of a believing heart.
The instances however are rare, where we meet
with a chaos of faith, half pantheism, half atheism,
such as that which we have just described. The
great majority of doubters are persons who not only
retain a tenacious grasp over monotheism, but even
possess a love for Christianity. Their love is however
for a modffied form of it, different from that which
the apostles taught. They cordially believe that God
cares for man, and that He has spoken to man
through His Son. They accept the superhuman,
perhaps the divine, character of Christ ; but they
consider his life to be a mere example of unrivalled
teaching, and of marvellous self-sacrffice ; his death
the mere martyrdom that formed the crownffig act
of majestic self-devotion. God's gift of His son is
accordingly, in their view, to reconcile man to God ;
to remove the obstacle of distrust which prevented
man from comffig to God, by showing forth the love
which God already bore to the world; not to remove
obstacles, known or unknown, which prevented God
from showing mercy to man. Christ is accepted as
a teacher, and as a king, but not as a priest. His
work is viewed as having for its purpose, to incul-

LECTURE vm. 509
cate and embody a higher type of morality, not to
work out a scheme of redemption. The ethical ele
ment of Christianity becomes elevated above the dog
matic. The sermon on the mount is regarded as the
very soul of Christ's teaching. And in looking for
ward to the future of Christianity, the Christian reli
gion is considered likely to become the religion of
the world, merely because it will have ceased to be
the religion of form and dogma, and become the
highest type of ethics.
Views like these are common, and their com
patibility with Christianity is defended in different
ways: — sometimes by the bold attempt, as in the
speculations of the Tiibingen school, to prove that pri
mitive Christianity was such a religion as that just
described ; that the dogmatic Christianity of the early
fathers was the addition made by philosophy to the
first doctrine, the idola theatri, which haunted the
mffids of the early teachers; and that the books of
the New Testament, to which we appeal to prove
the contrary, belong to a later date than that usually
assigned : — sometimes, with less consistency, admit
ting the antiquity of the dogmas, by representing that
we can penetrate into the philosophy of the apostolic
doctrme, and express in modern phrase, more clearly
than in the ancient, the meaning which was intended
to be conveyed : — at other times, by regarding all
truth as relative to its age, and supposing that
Christ's work was seen by the light of the sacrificial
and Messianic ideas common in the apostolic times.

510 LECTURE VIIL
Connected with this fundamental disagreement
with the ordinary teaching of the Christian church,
on the central question of Christ's work and the
natme of Christianity, is the cognate question con
cernffig the relation of the Bible as a rule of faith.
Its superiority to ordinary books is admitted, as cor
dially as the supeiiority of Cffiist's work to that of
ordinary beings ; but the religious contents of it, not
to speak of the literary, are criticised, not indeed in
a polemical, but in an independent spirit ; and are
measured in the manner just described, and approved
or rejected in accordance with it.
Thus these two questions, — the atoning work of
Christ, and the authority of the scriptures, — are the
two forms of doubt which are most likely to meet
us in the present age.
The expression of them in the clergy of any
particular church may of course, if it be deemed
necessary, be prevented by political means. A church,
if regarded merely in a worldly point of view,
is a political as well as a spiritual institution,
where the members cede somewhat of individual
freedom for the good of the whole ; a compact where
certain privileges and remunerations are granted, in
return for the communication of certain kinds of
instruction, and the performance of certain offices :
and no one can object that the terms of a treaty be
maintained ; but the prevention .of the expression of
doubt is not the extinction of the feeling. And such
acts of repression cannot reach the laity of the

LECTURE VIIL 511
church, even if they touch the clergy. The inquiry
accordingly here intended, as to the means for re
pressing such doubts, does not descend to the poli
tical question, but is a spiritual one; viz. if these
doctrines are contrary to Christ, how can such
thinkers be directed by moral means to the truth
which we believe 1 or what reason can we give for the
hope that is in us, which leads us to decline yield
ing up one iota of dogmatic Christianity to them "?
The history of evidences offers a series of experi
ments, in which we may find an answer to these
questions, by studying the different methods adopted
in various centuries for spreading Christianity.
In the earliest age of the church, previous to the
establishment of Christiaffity as the state religion,
we observe the unaided appeal to argument, and
especially the abundant use made of the internal
evidence, or philosophical argument concerffing the
excellence of Christianity, as a means for arresting
attention, preparatory to the presentation of the
external and historic proofs In the long interval
of the middle ages, the church was able to supple
ment or supersede argument by force ; yet it must be
admitted that the political and ffiteUectual condition
of the European mffid was then, to a large extent,
such as to receive benefit from the imposition of an
external rule of religious authority and doctrine, in
the same manner that individuals, when in a state
of childhood, need a rule, not a principle ; a law,
r Cfr. Pressens6, vol. iv. book iv. i6i, 521.

512 LECTURE VIIL
not a reason ^ This method however was unsuited
when the mind of Europe awoke, and when free
thought could no longer be suppressed by force.
The history of evidences since the spread of
modem unbelief exhibits not only the return to the
ancient Christian weapon of argument instead of
force ; but not unfrequently to the ancient mode of
presenting the philosophical proof prior to the
historical. An attempt of this kind was intermingled with
the English school of evidences of the last century ;
and the argument of analogy used by Butler, if
viewed as constructive, and not refutative, may be
considered to have for its object to prepare the mind
for accepting revealed religion, by first showing the
probability of it on the ground of its similarity to
nature. (48) And in the German movement, where
the . doubt thrown by criticism over the historical
evidences even still more compelled the resort to the
philosophical argument on the part of those who strove
to defend the faith, we have seen various attempts to
reconstruct Christianity from the philosophical side *.
Both methods, the philosophical and the historical,
have had their place ; but their use has varied with
the wants of the age. In proportion as the pressure
of doubt left less opportunity for the constraining
^ This is the view at which Guizot arrives ; Hist, de la Givil
legon V, vi, x.
t E. g. in Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. See Lec
tures VI. and VII.

LECTURE VIIL 513
force of the latter, the persuasiveness of the d priori
moral argument, has been used.
The histor)'- of the means which have been suc
cessful in removing doubts lends little support to
the opinion which would save the faith by the
sacrifice of the reason, or would imperil the truth
of religion by throwing discredit on the immutability
of moral distinctions, perceived by the conscience
which Providence has placed in the human mind ;
to which the great writers on evidence have been
wont to make their appeal ; and which they have
justly perceived must He at the basis of the evidences
themselves. " If the light that is in thee be dark
ness, how great is that darkness ! "
The two periods in church history among those
here named, which offer most instruction to us in
consequence of affordffig examples of the same class
of difficffities as those which we encounter, are, the
struggle ffi the early centuries, and that in Germany
during the present. The line of argument which
was used in the former of these crises is seen in the
Alexandrian school of the fathers in the third cen
tury, and that used in the latter, in the school of
Schleiermacher. The study of the life and mental
development of Schleiermacher's disciple, Neander,
woffid be in this view one of the most valuable in
history". He was ffimself led by the mercy and
providence of God to the knowledge of Christ ; his
^ References for the study of Neander's life are given in a note
on page 353. L 1

514 LECTURE VIIL
own spirit was rescued from doubts such as we
describe ; his life was spent in trying to save others
from the like difficulties, and to plant their feet upon
the rock upon which he himself stood : and it is
only the secrets of the great day that will declare the
number of the souls that were led by his teaching to
find Christ and salvation.
In both these periods the method adopted for
recommending Christianity was, to carry out the
plan used by St. Paul at Athens '', to lay a basis for
the proof of it by developing the moral and phUo
sophical argument.
In the Alexandrian period the method used was,
to show th^ all former religions, all former philo
sophies, were not unmixed error, but contained the
germ of truth, which Christianity gathered into itself;
to exhibit Christianity as the fulfilment in the field of
history of the world's yearnings, and thus to awaken
the response of the heart to the narrative of its
message y. Reasons, to which allusion has before
been made^, may have lessened the utility at that
period of the positive evidence, which proves the
fact that a Redeemer had been given ; but we cannot
doubt that, independently of this circumstance, a
deep philosophical reason suggested the stress which
was laid on the moral argument, on account of its
^ See Acts xvii. 22-31.
y Cfr. Pressense on Clement and Origen, Hist iv. pp. 203, 360,
and the references there given.
^ Page 102.

LECTURE VIIL 515
suitability for convincing the opponent ; — a reason
indeed to which the history of some of the fathers
gave a personal force ffi the fact that it was by this
manner that they had themselves been led to accept
of Christiamty ^
In the German period the same method has been
adopted, with the corresponding alterations suggested
by modern philosophy. Not to mention the in
structive attempts of the school of Kant to find a phi
losophy from the subjective side of religion, in the
denial of its possibility if attempted on the objective,
and to exhibit the limitations of the human mind
in speculating on the subject of religious method ;
nor again to mention the bold attempt of Hegel,
to which we have previously taken exception as
opposing the simplicity that is in Christ, to work
out this forbidden problem, and find a philosophy
for Christianity on the objective side : we allude to
that which has marked the disciples of Schleier
macher to find it on the subjective as a life, and fact,
and doctrine, which fulfils the yearnings of the in
dividual heart.
In pursuing a method of this kind, the appeal
must be made to the inextinguishable feeling of guilt ;
to our personal consciousness of a personal judge ; our
terror at the sense of justice ; our penitence for our
own ill deserts ; the deep consciousness of the load of
a E. g. Justin Martyr, who gives the account of his own conversion
to Christianity in the introduction to the Dialogue with Trypho ;
and Clement of Alexandria. Ll2

516 LECTURE VIIL
sin as an insupportable burden from which we cannot
rescue ourselves ; and to the guilt of it which sepa
rates between us and God, as a bitter memory that we
are powerless to wipe away!'. When these facts are
not only established as psychological realities, but ap
propriated as personal convictions, then the way is
prepared for the reception of Christianity. The heart,
by realising the personality of God, is at once elevated
above naturalism or pantheism. It feels that in
Christ's incarnation it finds God near, the infinite
become finite, God linked to the heart of a man ;
and in his atonement it finds God merciful. Its deep
instinct leads it to reject the theories which would
pare down the marvel of that mystery. Its conscious
ness of guilt tells it of an obstacle which it cannot
believe to lie merely in itself, but attributes to the
mffid of the infinite Spirit which it wants a method
for removing. No mere example of majestic self-
sacrifice proclaiming God's love to man suffices to
solace its sorrows. Some mighty process, wrought
out between the Son and the almighty Father, is
instinctively felt to be necessary, as the means by
which God can be just and yet the justifier of the
sinful. And when philosophy has thus prepared the'
heart by its appeal to the yearnings of the soul,
and brought it to long for the very remedy which
Christianity supplies ; then the historic argument can
b Cfr. Lect. I. p. 39. Suggestions on this point are given in
Miller's Bampton Lectures, 1817. ''The Divine Authority of Holy
Scripture asserted from its adaptation to Human Nature."

LECTURE VIIL 517
be properly introduced, to afford the solid comforting
assurance that the remedy wanted has really been
given ; that miracles and prophecy are divine evi
dences, attesting the truth of the claim that certain
teachers at a particular period received superhuman
aid to reveal certain religious truths. (49)
The work of persuasion however is not yet com
pleted ; for, ere the heart can fully trust with adoring
thankfolness, there are no less than three questions
which must still be answered, if the object be to
direct doubt instead of suppressing it, and to lead a
sinner to Christ by the bands of love.
The first will be the literary one, as to the trust
worthiness of the books of the New Testament, which
are the record of this teaching.
The second, the inquiry into the fact whether the
books teach, and whether the early church taught,
dogmatic Christianity as the church now presents it.
The third, though of such a nature as in a great
degree to be suppressed by the claim of authority
already conceded to the apostolic teachers, may still
rise up to harass the mind if a further answer be not
supplied : it refers to the reason that we possess for
believing, that if these teachers asserted such truths
as dogmatic Christianity, and especially vicarious
atonement, these doctrines were a real verity, and not
merely a passing form under which the truth pre
sented itself to their mffids, to be explained away by
after ages into less mysterious and more self-evident
truths.

518 LECTURE VIIL
The first of these questions, which concerns the
trustworthffiess of the books, has been most thoroughly
tested by the historical criticism of Germany. The
data are thus presented for forming a final decision,
which iji the opinion of most persons will probably
be widely different from that which has been ar
rived at by critics in that country. Yet, supposing we
should meet with a doubter who accepted all the views
of the Tiibingen school", there are nevertheless four
books of the New Testament, the genuineness of
which the most extravagant criticism folly admits ;
viz. the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans, to the
Galatians, and the two to the Corinthians. These
four would be sufficient to establish the main articles
of dogmatic teaching as presented in the creeds of
the Christian church, and the main outline of Gospel
and Jewish history as facts on the reality of which
St. Paul and his converts relied, and for which he
was staking his life. Suppose the Gospels and the
Acts'! involved in the historic uncertainty which these
critics have attributed to them ; yet we possess in the
Galatians the outline of the life of Paul, the statement
of the reason why Paul accepted a religion which he
" See above, p. 391.
•J The question of the attacks made on the historic character of
the Acts was not noticed in Lecture VII. The statement of the
difficulties which have given rise to them may be seen in Baur's
Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, 1B45, and in an article in the
National Review, No. 20, for April i860 ; and a refutation of them
in Dr. S. Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament, vol. ii.

LECTURE VIIL 519
detested. The incomparable argument of Lyttleton e
irrefragably proves his honesty. He cannot have
been a deceiver. Let the reader of the Galatians say
if he was deceived. The two Epistles to Corinth
attest the history of the early church ; the Epistle
to the Romans its dogmatic beliefs. If there is a
doubting heart, thoroughly imbued with the most
destructive criticism, unable to find historical standing-
ground in scripture, he may surely find it in the
study of these four works of St. Paul.
The second question, whether the great features of
the dogmatic teaching which we receive, and especially
the doctrine of vicarious atonement, are taught in the
New Testament, admits of satisfactory settlement.
The negative of this position has been asserted, in
consequence of the alleged fact that this particular
doctrine is rather expressed implicitly than explicitly
¦ in the earliest fathers; which is to be accounted for
by the tendency, while contending against Jewish
monotheism, or heathen theism, to put forward the
messiahship and incarnation of Christ, in comparison
with other religions, rather than his atoning work^.
® Observations on tlie Conversion and Apostleship o/ St. Paul, by
Lord Lyttleton, 1747. Cfr. also the. note above, on p. 294.
^ The history of the doctrine of the atonement is given in Bp.
Thomson's Bampton Lectures, 1853 (lectures vi. and vii.), and in
the essay on the Atonement mAids to Faith, 1862 ; also in Hagen
bach's Dogmengeschichte, § 68, 134, 180, 268, and 300. The two
chief works on the subject are, Chr. Baur's Lehre von der Versohnung,
1838, and Dorner's Lehre von der Person Christi. The fair con
clusion in respect to the doctrine of the early church on the sub-

520 LECTURE VIIL
Careful study will soon decide a question of this
kind, if directed first to the text of scripture ; and
secondly, as is most important in all questions of the
history of doctrine, to the fathers, as the historic wit
nesses at once to the teaching of their day, and to the
traditions of the teaching of an older age than their
own&. Supposing however that the authenticity of the
books be granted, and the existence in them of
dogmatic teaching, as we now hold it, be conceded ;
how ar» we to answer the final misgiving which
might arise, that a doctrine like the atonement was
not merely truth relatively to the age in which it
was taught, to be surrendered if it conflict with the
moral sense"? If indeed miraculous attestation, the
authority of supernatural assistance, be conceded, this
doubt will be extinguished in most minds by such an
admission ; but how is it to be fully met, consistently
with our object to point out how a doubter may be
directed, who desires not to have the natural revela
tion in his heart crushed, and yet who does not claim,
ject seems to be the one stated in the text. The doctrine of the
atonement was believed and taught ; but for the reason here named
it was not drawn out into such explicit statement as in modern
times. Anselm developed it by eliciting what was already con
tained in it, not by superadding any human elements which did
not exist there before. It is Baur, to whom allusion is made in
. the text, who implies the contrary ; and some English writers have
followed him.
B The work of the late Professor Blunt on the right use of the
Fathers may be consulted for a true and right view of their value. -

LECTURE vm. 521
like the deists, that he must comprehend that which
he behoves, but only that at least he must appre
hend ith?
We concede the authority of the moral sense to
check all dogmas that are not shown to be part of
the teaching of men supernatural ly inspired ; and
we should feel surprised if there were a direct conflict
between God's voice through the apostles and God's
voice through the human conscience. Probably it
could be shown that no. such conflict exists ; but
if it did, we should be inclined to ask whether the
moral sense, infallible in what it forbids, is equally
so in what it asserts^ : whether it cannot possibly
admit of such improvement as would cause the dif
ficulty not to be felt ; or, if felt, to be cancelled by
one of those mental antinomies ^, the existence of
which is undeniable : or whether there is not still
independent and contemporary evidence, to which
appeal can be made, to corroborate the apostles'
teaching. Let us, for example, suppose that we have come to
the conclusion, that the apostles taught the doctrine of
h We apprehend a fact when we recognise its existence ; we com
prehend it when we can refer it to the cause which produces it.
' Cfr. the remarks in Dr. Whewell's preface to his edition of
Butler's first three sermons for some suggestions on the nature of
conscience. His object is to show that Butler taught only its psy
chological supremacy, not its moral infallibility. Cfr. also his Lec
ture on Moral Philosophy in England, p. 129 seq.
k Page 117. Cfr. also bishop Thomson's Bampton Lectures
(lect. V. p. 125).

522 LECTURE VIIL
the atonement ; and that our moral sense is puzzled
with the justice of the system, of the transfer of
merit implied in those analogies under which the
mysterious verity is unveiled to us, and with its
apparent incompatibility with a corrective theory
of puffishment : the thought of error, or of merely
relative truth, in the apostles' teaching in such a
matter, is forbidden to the mffid of any one who
admits the least divine inspiration in them, from the
fact that this is the innermost and most sacred truth
of their creed. We could imagine the early teachers
left unaided in all matters irrelevant to religion; nay,
by a stretch of supposition, possibly even in some un
important things appertaining to religion itself: but
a mistake on the work and office of Christ, — the very-
point which, of all others, they were commissioned to
teach ; — an ingredient of error insinuating itself here,
is utterly improbable. If even the inspired authority
were denied, the improbability would be hardly less
apparent. For this was not a doctrine of the head,
but of the feelings ; not a fact coldly believed, but ap
propriated ; the voice of the inmost consciousness. If
the story of the apostles be true, that the belief of this
doctrine, and the prayers founded upon it, had made
them changed men ; if too their history testifies to
the reality of their professions of extraordinary hoh
ness ; we could not, even if we did not know from
their writings that they were men who were accus
tomed to the careful analysis of their own feelings,
conceive a fatal falsehood to lurk here, in a point

LECTURE vm. 523
where the mixture of inference with consciousness
must have been reduced to a minimum.
In this particular case of the atonement, there is
however an independent proof of the correctness of
the apostles' teaching, through the corroboration of
it which is offered by the Christian consciousness
of the church. We have before had occasion' to ex
plain the introduction of this idea in the teaching
of Schleiermacher, and to protest against the use
which he proposed to make of it as a source of trath,
independently of the Christian consciousness of the
apostles and first teachers ; as the gradual source of
doctrffial progress, the oracular utterance to this age,
as the apostolic consciousness was to the first age.
But there is a deep truth in it, if we use the
Christian consciousness, not to supersede scripture,
but as the living corroboration and interpreter of it.
The Spirit of God still works on the hearts of men
morally, as upon the apostles of old ; not by confer
ring the intellectual gift of inspiration, but in the
moral gifts of penitence, of conversion, of pardon,
of holiness. Holy men now feel the Spirit of God
striving with them as the apostles did, and appro
priate the excellence of Christianity, and feel its
renovating power now as then. Therefore the at
testation of' these men, such as is collected by an
mduction founded on their biographies, to the fact
that when they analyse their secret feelings with
the most exact care, they recogffise that the pardon
1 Page 346 seq.

524 LECTURE VIIL
which they receive is through the mercy of Christ ;
that their moments of most hallowed communion
with the Father-spirit are when they approach the
throne of mercy through the mediation and inter
cession of another, Christ Jesus; that the victory
vouchsafed to them over temptation, is by His
merits ; that their heart finds no Father for one
moment except through him; — this evidence, if it
can be accepted, is an independent corroboration of
dogmatic truth. It may be explained away, by de
nying the truth of their analysis, or by referring
their feeling to mental association ; but it cannot
fail to have a persuasive force for those who have
faith in the instinctive utterances of the human soul :
and the reliance upon it is not more extraordinary
than that on which we depend in cognate subjects
like aesthetics, where the taste of practical skill is
trusted. Christian consciousness thus becomes a new
source of facts in theological study ; the living voice
of the church for illustrating and confirming in some
degree the utterance of men of old, who spake that
which was revealed to their souls by the inspiring
Spirit. Such are the chief steps which the history of
evidences, in the contest with early heathenism, as
well as in the recent struggle in Germany, seems to
point out as the most likely to lead a doubter to
Christ ; and such the order in which the philosophical
and historical evidences ought to be respectively pre
sented, if our object be to give due heed to the desire

LECTURE vm. 525
which an inquirer evinces to appropriate the truth
which he believes. Such too, if the opinion already
advanced concerning the future of modern doubt be
correct, seems to be the final answer which the church
can give. Without undue compromise, commencing
with the internal evidence, we thus lead men to the
external, and make philosophy as it were the school
master to lead to Christ.
The third question of those which we enumeratecl
as likely to press upon us, viz. that which refers to
the inspiration of the scriptures, requires only a few
words ; ffiasmuch as the treatment of it has already,
to some extent, been implied.
This question has been elevated, since the Reforma
tion, to an importance which it hardly possessed be
fore. Since the authority of the Bible has been
substituted for the authority of the church, it has
been usual to regard the scriptures as the mode of
leading men to Christ, instead of considering the
knowledge of Christ received through the ministra
tions of the church as the clue to interpret scripture.
Logically, the scripture is the rule of faith, the
ground of the church's teaching ; but chronologically,
the teaching of the church is the means of our know
ing the scripture"!.
A caution hence arises, that we should not be will
ing to allow preliminary difficulties, which a doubter
m Similarly, an innate law of thought is logically prior as a con
dition in attaining knowledge ; but experience is chronologically
prior.

626 LECTURE VIIL
may have in reference to the scriptures, to deter us
from leadffig him straight to Christ, and then allow
ing him by the light of this teaching to reconsider
the question of the scripture. The difficulties will
generally be found to have reference to the historical
and literary portions, rather than the doctrinal, or
those portions of the literature which contain the
doctrinal. If indeed they refer to the doctrinal, they
must be answered at the outset in the manner already
shown. If however to the literary, they will be viewed
in a different light, if the doubter has been brought
to appreciate the central traths of Christiaffity, from
that which they will bear if wrangled out on the
threshold of his approach. In the last century indeed,
the comparative importance of the doctrinal parts of
scripture over the Hterary was so perceived, when
doubts were pressed on the attention of the clergy
by the pertinacity of the deist controversialists, that
many of the eminent writers restricted the plenary
inspiration of the scripture writers to the appropriate
matter of the revelation, the supernatural communi
cation of the miraculous system of redemption; and
conceived that it was no derogation from the supreme
religious authority of the sacred writers, but rather
compatible with the loftiest idea of the providential
adaptation of means to ends, to suppose them un
assisted in literary matters, such as the transcription
of genealogies, the reference to natural phenomena,
or the literal exactitude of quotations. The jewel of
divine truth did not, in their opinion, sparkle less

LECTURE VIIL 527
brilliantly because it was handed down in a frame
of antique setting. (50) In the present day there is
a strong reaction in religious minds in favour of
the opposite view, identical with the one held in the
seventeenth century by the Puritans. The reaction
is only a special instance of the general movement in
favour of authority, political and ecclesiastical, which
has taken a sudden advance tffioughout the religious
part of Europe, in opposition to the subjective tend
ency already noticed in secular literature". This
special view however is dictated by a noble motive,
a watchful fear lest the loss of a single atom may
weaken the whole structure. Whether it be true or
not is not at present under consideration, but merely the
caution which ought to be used in pressffig it upon
doubters at the outset of an approach to the subject
of religion. If the object be really to draw them to
Christ, we must become all things to all men ; and,
while not mutilating the heavenly message, take
heed not to repel the weak believer from comffig
to the Saviour, by interposing unnecessary literary
obstacles. It is very common to hear or to read the dilemma put
before the doubter, that he must accept everything
or nothing in Christianity and the Bible". Such
an alternative, though dictated by a commendable
" It has been shown above (p. 437.) that this very reaction is
itself indirectly a result of the subjective tendency.
" E. g. in R. E. H. Greyson (H. Rogers) Correspondence. Cfr.
the remarks on it in the National Review for Oct. 1857.

528 LECTURE VIIL
motive, is likely to prove ineffectual. The Dilemma
is a form of reasoning which rarely persuades. Its ob
ject is rather to silence than to convince. It is more
a trick of rhetoric than an argument of logic. It may
make a person pause by showing him his apparent
position ; but the heart, if not the head, can always
find means to escape from an alternative which it
dislikes. And in this particular case the use of it
involves the risk of overlooking the different degrees
of importance wffich belong to different portions of
religion, and the very diffaient degrees of evidence
on which different portions of it rest. Though the
smallest circumstances in reference to it are of im
portance, yet it were less vital to doubt the miracu
lous inspiration of a genealogy than the authoritative
teaching of an epistle ; or to doubt the date of a book
than its contents. No doubt is uffimportant; but it
were merely repeating the sophistry of the Stoics, in
making all sins equal, to deny gradations of im
portance ffi doubts ; gradations which however are
not here put forward to defend eclecticism, but to
enforce the lesson, that, in dealing with a doubter,
the consideration of this fact must guide us in the
order in which we present the evidence of different
parts to his mind. It not unfrequently happens that
the perusal of the holy scripture is the means of
drawing a soul to Christ ; the volume in its solitary
majesty telling its own tale : or, to speak more re
verently, applied to the heart by the Spirit of God :
but generally, if a doubter's heart be filled with his-

LECTURE VIIL 529
torical and critical doubts, he must be led through
Christ to the Bible, rather than conversely, and
tffiough the New Testament to the Old. If once he
can be brought to the perception of a Saviour for
sinful man, his doubts will assume a new aspect, and
will adjust themselves into their true place, or per
haps find their own solution.
Yet, when we have used all methods of argument
which the survey of the history has given us reason
to believe may prove useful, it were affectation to
conceal our belief in the perpetual operation, secret
and unobserved, of an invisible monitor and per
suader, the blessed Spirit of God. Though we may
look to philosophy to prepare the way, by exciting
an appreciation of the wants which Christianity sup
plies, and an apprehension of the suitability of
Christianity as the perfection of our spiritual nature ;
we must confess that it is to the unseen leadings of
the Spirit of God that we trust, to Inake the heart
feel the truth as well as perceive it, and love as well
as appreciate it. If we accept the fact of God's
interference to effect man's salvation, and regard it
as His special will to bring men to the knowledge
of Cffiist, and trust His promise of assistance to the
church P, it is not .enthusiasm, but the most rational
faith, to expect divine assistance to attend con
stantly on the efforts made to spread the truth which
He has been pleased to reveal; not to interfere indeed
with the fixed laws of the rational faculties, but to
p Matt, xxviii. 20.
M m

530 LECTURE VIIL
remove prejudices of the heart which might blind
the apprehension, and to hallow the soul into a tem
ple for the enshrinement of His truth.
More especially if it be true, as we have per
petually insisted, that there is a large region for
the influence of emotional causes of doubt, in addi
tion to the intellectual, which have been the subject
of our special study, we may well believe that here
is a field where the Holy Spirit alone can enter, and
in which He only has the power to operate. Evidence,
as evidence, is apprehended and tested by the intel
lectual faculties; but whatever is the subtle influence,
consciously or unconsciously exercised by the emo
tions, in a matter where the evidence is probable, not
demonstrative, this offers a sphere where the help of
an all-loving God may be hoped for to ffissipate the
alienation of prejudice or indifference. Paul may
plant, and ApoUos may water; but it is God that
giveth the increase.
We have now considered the lessons taught by the
history, both as to the moral function of free thought,
the forms of it which are most likely to meet Christ
ians in the present day, and the means which seem
most useful for guiding a doubter ffito trath.
The history may teach a final lesson to us as
Christian students, not so much in reference to lead
ing others to truth, as in relation to the means by
wffich we can attain it ourselves.
In all the days of peril through which the church

LECTURE VIIL 531
has passed, the means used by those who have striven
to find the truth, and become a blessing to the world,
have been, — study and prayer. In the solitude of
their own hearts, by quiet meditation, they have
sought to understand the utterance of the inspired
volume ; and to secure by prayer the illuminating in
fluence of the divine Spirit, to cause them to behold
wondrous things in God's law*). And thus in an age
of coldness they have kept the flame of divine love
burning with unextinguished glory on the altar of
their hearts ; and in an age of questioning have been
able to burst forth from their prison-house of doubt,
and gaze with the clearness of unclouded faith on the
truth once for all delivered to the saints. If, in the
dark night of doubt or sin which has spread its veil
over the world, there have been stars that have
shown to the pilgrim steadier and clearer light than
the other luminaries of the heavens, the cause has
been that they have reflected some rays of the Divffie
glory, which had been concentrated in the sunlike
brightness of the apostolic inspiration.
If we have found that the present age offers its
peculiar intellectual trials; and if we feel ourselves
set in the midst of so many and great dangers ; let us
not be paralysed by the consciousness of them, so as
to deem the search for truth unimportant, or antici
pate that it wffi be unsuccessful ; but rather be led to
increased energy in striving to follow the example of
1 E. g. Augustin, Anselm, and in modern times such men as
Bengel and Neander.
M m 2

532 LECTURE VIIL
those who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb,
and by the word of their testimony •¦. Let us realise
the solemnity of our position as responsible and im
mortal beings. We are creatm'es of a day, soon to pass
into eternity ; placed here to prepare ourselves for that
unknown world into which we shall carry the moral
character that has been stamped upon us here ; and
capable, whilst we are here, of doing untold good
by a godly example, or of contributing to the ruin of
the souls of our fellow men. How important, both
for ourselves and others, that we should learn and
appropriate that truth which is to be the means of
our salvation ! how important for ourselves, lest we
be castaway ! how important for others, lest we help
them to build a structure of wood, hay, stubble ^
which shall be consumed in the day of the Lord !
Let us strive to use the two methods of finding
truth, — study and prayer. Let us gain more know
ledge, and consecrate it to the investigation of the
highest problems of life and of religion ; especially
applying ourselves, by the help of the ripest aid
which miscellaneous literature or church history
can afford us, to the study of the sacred scriptures.
But above all these intellectual instruments, let us
add the further one of prayer. For prayer not only
has a reflex value on ourselves, purifying our hearts,
dispersing our prejudices, hushing our troubled spirits
into peace ; but it acts really, though mysteriously,
on God. It ascends far away from earth to the spot
r Rev. xii. ii. s i Cor. iii. 12.

LECTURE VIIL 533
where He has His dwelling-place. The infinite God
condescends to enter into communion with our spirits,
as really as a man that talketh with a friend. The
Saviour of pity wifl Himself look down upon us, and
condescend to become our teacher, and give us the
purity of heart which will lead us into truth. Our
own trials, our own struggles for truth and holiness,
the desire to know Christ and to be known by Him,
will excite our deep pity for those who endure the
like temptations, and prepare us for effectually mini
stering to the good of others. And if the struggle in
our own hearts be long, and there be moments when
we seem to have our Gethsemane ; let us cleave the
closer, with the more simple trust, to our heavenly
Father; still imploring Him to grant us"in this world
knowledge of his trath, and in the world to come life
everlasting; assured that the clouds shall one day
disperse, and the vision of truth be unveiled to us
in the bright light of the eternal morning.
I shall be well content that all that I have said to
you be forgotten ; and when these lectures take their
humble place in the series of which they form a part,
deriving an honour, not their own, from the great
names with which they are associated, I shall be
wilhng that they be consigned to neglect ; if I can
only hope that this final exhortation to prayerful study
may remain fixed in the memory of any one of those
that now hear these words, or may impress the
mind of any chance student who, in traversing the
same ground, may hereafter have occasion to peruse

534 LECTURE VIIL
them, at a time perhaps when the voice that now
speaks shall be hushed in the tomb, and the spirit
shall have gone to its account.
The lectures are now ended. May God forgive the
errors, and sanctify any truth that has been uttered
to His honour ! The faults are mine : the truth is
His, not mine. To Him be the glory.

NOTES.

NOTE S.

LECTURE L
Note 1. p. 4.
SUBDIVISIONS OF HISTORICAL INQUIRY.
A FEW words may explain the distinctions intended in the
text. History has been properly distinguished by Macaulay into
two branches, the artistic or descriptive, and the scientific or
analytic. (Essays, vol. i. %, on Hallam.) If viewed in the
former aspect, history aims as far as possible to reproduce
what has been, to recover a picture of the past. Hence it is
obedient to the two conditions which rule all art, — precise
outline in details, and preservation of perspective in the com
bination. In the latter, theory in some slight degree steps
in, but theory dictated by the instinct of taste rather than
by reflection. It is in this branch, in which the historian is
the critic, that the border line lies between art and science.
For it is hard to measure the precise amount which is due in
the appreciation of facts respectively to artistic intuition and
to reflective analysis a.
Supposing the facts to be thus given, it is the province of the
science of history to ascertain their causes. Two living writers,
a In the able work on Tite Live by H. Taine, (Oouronn^, 1856,) will be
found a study of Livy as a critic and as a philosopher ; which illustrates not
only the scientific aspect of history, but the influence of science in the special
determination of the facts, which has frequently been attributed to art.

538 NOTE 1. [Lect. I.
Mr. Mill (System qf Logic), and Dr. Whewell (PhilosopAy of
Inductive Sciences), have given an account of the logic of
science. That of the latter is more suitable to the conception
which we are here forming of history ; for history is exactly
one of the class of sciences which he calls " Palsetiological."
(vol. i. b. X.) It requires first, that we recover the record of
the successive stages of facts, the narrative of the past, before
searching for the causes. The causes are then to be sought
by transferring backward for the explanation of the past those
which are at present operating. The search will probably ex
hibit three successive stages in the process of examination.
First, causes will be found which are the mere antecedents of
the events, the mere links which connect the phenomena.
Next, a cyclical law of the recurrence of the facts is perceived,
such e. g. as Vico^s well-known law concerning the develop
ment of political society. Such a law as this, supposing it to
hold good without exception within the limits of experience,
is what Mr. Mill calls an " empirical law.'"' {Logic, vol. ii. b. iii.
ch. xvi.) Next, this law must be analysed into its causes.
Mr. Mill gives three forms which this third stage of analysis
may assume in science. [Id. vol. i. b. iii. ch. xii.) Probably
in history it will generally assume the one of the three in
which the complex result is analysed into its simpler com
ponent elements. [Id. § 2.)
This inquiry would complete the study of history as a
science. But when we deal with moral as distinct from
material relations, we feel that there is a question of philo
sophy as well as science, one of ethics and metaphysics, which
rises above all lower ones. We instinctively wish to measure
the responsibility of the moral agents who have contributed
to work out the results which have been studied. We tum
to the personal and biographical question for the purpose of
the ethical lesson. The theist also asks another question.
Believing that nature and man are the work, direct or indirect,
of a personal Creator and Governor, of infinite power and
goodness, he strives to search out the purposes of Providence,
hoping to find in the drama of universal history the solution

Lect. I.] NOTE 2. 539
of the plot which he could not expect to attain by the study
of a portion of it.
Such are the ideas which are intended in the text.

Note 2. p. 5.
THE COMPAIiATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS.
The comparison of Christianity with other religions was
necessarily forced upon the Christian church by contact with
the heathen world.
We meet in the early fathers with two distinct opinions ;
the one held in the Alexandrian school, that the heathen re
ligions were imperfect but had a germ of truth, and that phi
losophy was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ ; the other
chiefly in the African school, that they were entire errors, and
an obstacle to the conversion of mankind.
In the middle ages, contact with Mahometan life (see
Lect. III. p. 123.) created a sceptical mode of comparing
Christianity with other creeds ; circumstances compelling
toleration, and toleration passing into indifierence. A similar
spirit is also seen in the hasty attempt of the FVench phi
losophers of the last century to resolve all religion into
priestcraft. It is only in still more recent times that the first scientific
conception of a comparative study of rehgion arose. Even in
Herder the comparison is sesthetical more than scientific, and
relates to the comparison of literatures more than of religious
ideas. Benjamin Constant (He la Religion Consideree dans
sa source, ses formes et ses developpements, 1824) seems to have
been the first who really suggested a serious psychological
examination ; and hence there soon arose the idea of compara
tive theology analogous to comparative anatomy. His spirit
has pervaded French literature subsequently. The religious
speculations of the eclectic school give expression to it ; e. g.
Quinet (Le Genie des Religions, vol. i.); and the mode of con
templating reUgion in Eenan (Mudes de VHistoire ReVigievse)

540 NOTE 3. [Lect. I.
is based upon it. Caution in using the method is necessary on
the part of those who believe in the unique and miraculous
character of the Jewish and Christian revelations. In Lect.
III. (p. 122.) we have given an enumeration of three modes;
the one true, the others false ; in which Christianity may be
put into comparison with other creeds.
Mr. Maurice's Boyle Lectures on the Religions of lAe World
refer to this subject; and some useful remarks exist in
Morell's PhilosopAy of Religion, (c. iii. and iv.) But the book
most full of information is the interesting CAristian Advocate's
Publication, of the late archdeacon Hardwick, Christ and other
Masters ; a work full of learning and piety, unfortunately left
unfinished by the tragedy of his premature death in August
1859. In the parts published he has compared Christianity
with the Egyptian and Persian religions (part iv.), with the
Hindoo (part ii.), and the Chinese (part iii.) ; and he was pre
paring materials for its comparison with the Teutonic, and
with those of the classic nations.

Note 3. p. 6.
ZEND AND SASTSKRIT LITERATURE.
The purpose of this note is to indicate the sources of in
formation in reference to (i) the Zend and (2) the Sanskrit
literature, for illustrating the comparative history of religion.
I. It was about the middle of the last eentmy (1762) that
Anquetil du Perron brought manuscripts to Europe from
Guzerat, written in the Zend or ancient Persian tongue. For
some time the relation of the language to the Sanskrit was
not understood. The great scholar to whom are due both the
study of the tongue and the editing of the Yagna, was Eugene
Burnouf. The work just named is the first of the three works
which make up the Vendidad Sade ; parts of which possibly
go back to a period almost coeval with Zoroaster, i. e. perhaps
the sixth century B. C. Two other works exist for the study
of the Persian theology, though much more modern in date,

Lect. I.] NOTE 3. 541
— the Desatir of the ninth century A. D., and the Babistan
of the seventeenth, — which both contain fragments of ancient
traditions embedded in their texts. The Avesta, of which the
Vendidad is one of the oldest parts, has been edited by Spiegel.
References to the older literature concerning it may be found
in Heeren's History of the Asiatic Nations, vol. i. ch. ii.
An account of the present results of comparative philology
in reference to Persian is given by professor Max Miiller in
Bunsen's PAilosopAy of History, vol. i. p. no. E. T. The
Persian theology brought to hght by these investigations is
discussed by A. Franck, in a paper, Les Doctrines Religieuses et
PhilosopAiques de la Perse, in his Etudes Orientales, 1861 ,- also
in Dr. John Wilson's Parsi Religion, 1843; Martin Haug's
Essays on the Parsis, 1861, founded on Burnouf's researches;
and in archdeacon Hardwick's CArist and otAer Masters, part
iv. ch. iii. (Hyde's Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers. 1700, is obsolete.)
2. The Sanskrit literature has been the subject of still more
careful study by a series of learned men. See Donaldson's
Cratylm, b. i. ch. ii. § '^6. 3d ed. Nearly the whole of the
literature indirectly ofi'ers materials for a history of the altera
tion and deterioration of religious and ethical ideas, and of
the relation of schools of philosophy to a national creed pre
served by the priesthood and deposited in books esteemed
sacred. The literary works can be placed in their relative
order, though the absence of all chronological dates from the
time of the contact of the Indians with the Greeks (third
century B. C), down to the visits of the Chinese Buddhist
pilgrims in the fourth and seventh centuries A. D., whose
works have been translated into French by A. Remusat and
Stanislas Jvilieu ^, and the Mahometan histories, renders the
determination of absolute dates impossible. The following are
the dates approximately given for the chief works of Sanskrit
literature. The Vedas, especially the oldest, date from B. C.
1200 to 600. The Epic Poems, the Rdmdyana and Mahdhhdrata,
b Voyage dans VInde par C. FaJcian traduit par A. Remusat, 18.57, ^"d
Hist, de la 'Vie de Hiouen Thsang, being vol. i. of Memoires sur les Oontries
Oecidentales, 1858, by Stan. Julien. The former travelled about A.D. 400;
the latter in the seventh century.

542 NOTE 3. [Lect. I.

are perhaps of the third century B. C. ; the laws of
or more truly of the family which claimed descent from the
mythical Manu, contain materials dating from several cen
turies B. C, but were put into their present form probably
several centuries A. D. ; the BAagavat Gild, an episode in
the Mahdbhdrata bearing traces of a Christian influence, dates
some centuries A. D. The Hindu drama is perhaps subsequent
to 500 A. D. The Purdnas carry on the literature to mediseval
times. Several of the systems of philosophy were probably
constructed anterior to the Christian era ; but the date at which
they were put into their present form is undetermined.
The earlier literature is regarded as the most valuable for
the study of the growth of religious ideas and institutions.
The development or deterioration may be traced from the
simple nature-worship of the Vedas, to the accumulation of
legends which disgrace the modern creed. The causes which
gave birth to mythology are no longer a matter of conjecture;
the study of the Sanskrit language and literature having ex
hibited an historical instance of it. In this way the early
Sanskrit literature becomes one of the most precious treasures
to the mental philosopher who approaches his subject from
the historical side.
The earliest Veda is in course of pubhcation by Professor
Max Miiller. It has been partly translated by the late pro
fessor H. H. Wilson, and wholly by Langlois. Mr. M. Miiller
has given the results of his studies of this early literature in
his admirable work, the History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,
1859; which is full of instruction for the philosopher who
is inquiring concerning intellectual and rehgious history.
Most of the other works named above have also been translated
into European languages, viz. the Epic Poems, — the Rdmdyana,
in ItaHan by Gorresio, and in French by H. Fauche, 1854;
and Episodes from the Mahdbhdrata by P. E. Foucaux, 1862;
— also the Laws of Manu'', in English by Sir W. Jones, and in
French by A. Loiseleur Des-Lonchamps ; the Bhagavat Gitd
by Wilkins, 1809, the text of which was edited by Schlegel,
" The abbe Mign^ is publishing in French, Livres Sacrgs de toutes les Religions
sanfla Religion Chritienne.

Lect. L] NOTE 3. 543
1823; the 2d ed. by C. Lassen, 1846. One of the Purdnas
(the Vishnu) has been translated by Wilson ; and part of the
BAagavat by Burnouf, who has also edited the text.
Concerning the systems of Hindu philosophy ; see Ritter's
History of PAilosopAy, E. T. vol. iv. b. xii. ch. v ; Archer
Butler's Lectures on PAilosopAy, vol. i. p. 243 seq. ; Cole-
brooke's Essays on tAe PhilosopAy of tAe Hindus, 1 837 ; Apho
risms of Hindu PAilosopAy, printed under the care of Dr.
BaUantyne for the Benares government college ; and Dr. R.
WilUams's Christianity and Hinduism, 1856. The work of the
late archdeacon Hardwick, CArist and other Masters, also con
tains a brief account of three of the systems of philosophy,
the Veddnta, founded on the sacred books, the SdnkAya or
atheistic, and the Yoga or mystic, together with a compari
son of them with Christianity (part ii.). An explanation of
a part of the Nydya or Logical Philosophy, is given by Max
Miiller in the Appendix to Dr. Thomson's Outlines of the Laws
of TAougAt, 3d ed.
On the system of thought in Buddhism, on which the study
of the Pali has thrown light, consult E. Burnouf's Introduc
tion a I' Historic du BuddAisme Indien ; and Spence Hardy's
Manual qf BudAism, 1853. Also archdeacon Hardwick's
work above named. The Hindu history, exhibiting its
double movement, of philosophy on the one hand and of the
Buddhist reformation on the other, has been thought to offer
a distant analogy to the mental history of Europe in the
double movement of the scholastic philosophy and the refor
mation. The celebrated works of C. Lassen, Indische Alterthum-
skunde, 1844-47, ^'^'^ -^- Weber, Indische Studien, 1850, are
well known as sources of information in reference to the
general subject. Also Dr. J. Muir has lately published (1858)
Sanskrit Texts on tAe Origin and Progress of the Religion and
Institutions of India. Several articles in reviews have appeared
which contain much popular information ; e. g. in the NortA
BritisA Review, Nov. 1858; Westminster - Review , April i860;
EdinburgA Review, Oct. i860. On the general subject of this
note compare also Quinet, (Euvres, t. i. 1. 2, 3.

544 NOTE 4. [Lect. I.
Note 4. p. 17.
THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN CHRISTIANS AND JEWS.
The history of the controversy of Christianity with Judaism
is so connected iu the writings of the early apologists with the
contemporaneous one directed against Paganism, and in recent
times so related in one of its aspects to rationalism, that these
reasons seem sufiicient, independently of the literary interest,
to justify the insertion of a brief notice of it, and of the
sources of information with respect to it.
The controversy with the Jew varies in different ages.
We can distinguish three separate phases ; (i) that which- is
seen in the early centuries, (2) in the middle ages, and early
modern times, (3) the position which is taken up by the
educated Jew at the present day. The sources for under
standing the contest are, partly the Jewish writings, and
partly those of Christians who have written against them.
I. In the early ages the controversy merely turned upon
the question whether Jesus was the Christ. The Jews did
not deny the fact of the Christian miracles, but explained
them away ; and the controversy accordingly turned on the
interpretation of Jewish prophecy. This phase of the contest
is seen in the New Testament, in the Apology of Justin
Martyr against Trypho, to which a new kind of objection
expressive of prejudice is added in the discourse which Celsus,
as preserved in Origen (Contr. Cels. b. i. and ii.), puts into the
mouth of the Jew whom he introduces. In reference to it,
the commentators on these fathers, and especially Semisch's
work on Justin Martyr (translated), and the works on the
Jewish Talmudic literature and philosophy, may be consulted.
The contest is continued at intervals in treatises by inferior
writers ; an account of which may be found in the sources of
information hereafter given, and in HagenbacA's Dogmengesch.
§ 144- 2. The second phase of the contest is seen in the middle
ages, and in modern times till about 1700 A. D. It is marked

Lect. L] NOTE 4.

545

by two lines of thought on the part of the Jewish writers ;
a system of defence of their own tenets by a method of
scriptural interpretation; and the attack of calumny or of
argument against Christianity. The former existed especially
in Moorish Spain about the twelfth century, the golden age
of Jewish literature. For a brief account of the theological
literature of the Jewish nation at that time, and in the period
which had intervened since the early ages, the writer may be
permitted to refer to one of his own Sermons, and the re
ferences there given (Science in TAeology, 1859, Sermon IV.) ;
to which references add Beugnot's Les Juifs d' Occident, 1820,
and the new work of De Los Rios on SpanisA Literature.
The movement included both a philosophical side in Mai
monides, and a critical in Jarchi, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, &c.
The other movement, which was hostile to Christianity,
was marked by a series of works, written by Jews for their
own nation, and carefully hidden firom the sight of Christians,
probably for fear of persecution and sufiering ; which were
given to the world by the learning of the foreign Hebrew
scholars of the seventeenth century. The chief of these works
are, the NizzacAon Vetus of the twelfth century, first pub
lished in Wagenseil's Tela Ignea Satance, 1681. In the
thirteenth, the Disputatio JecAielis cum NicAolao, Disputatio
NacAmanidis cumfratre Paolo, and the celebrated Toldos JescAu
or Jewish view of Christ's life. About 1399 the Rabbin
Lipmann wrote the second book Nizzachon, which was pub
lished by Hackspan, 1644; and also the Carmen Memoriale;
and about 1580 <l the Rabbin Isaac wrote the noted

d In the work quoted above. Science in Tlieology, the date of this Eabbin
was erroneously given as the seventeenth century (p. T23). This was the date
when Wagenseil by great good fortune obtained a copy of his work, and first
made it public. The writer avails himself of this opportunity, in which he has
occasion to name his own volume, to correct <* few mistakes, and make a few
alterations where subsequent study has convinced him that he was in error.
E. g. In Sermon IV the illustration from Indian history (p. 1 11) is based on
the view, now known to be wrong, that Buddhism preceded Brahminism in
origin. Also the view (p. 109) of the date of the introduction of the Chaldee
character has been rendered doubtfiil by the arguments which Hupfeld has
directed to the subject (Ausfiihrliche Hebraiaehe Qrammatik), in which he
N n

546 NOTE 4. [Lect. I.
Eniuna, or Munimen Fidei. All these (with the exception of
the second Nizzachon) are contained in Wagenseil. During
the period one important defence of Christianity against the
Jews appeared, the Pugio Fidei by Raymund Martin, in
Arragon, about 1278, which has been edited with an intro
duction by De Voisin 1651, and by Carpzov. Another defence
was by Alphonso de Spina. Eortalitium Fidei contra Judaos,
Saracenos, 1487. In Eichhorn's GeschicAte der Literatur, vol. vi.
26, another treatise is named by a writer called Hieronymus,
During the period just considered the contest with the
Jews was carried on chiefly in Spain, or the few Jewish settle
ments of Lithuania. Henceforth it is chiefly seen in Germany
and Holland, where the learned Dutch and German theolo
gians of the seventeenth century were brought into contact
with them, or were attracted to the study of the controversy by
an interest in the newly awakened taste for Hebrew learning.
This age supplies works of great value in gaining a know
ledge of Jewish literature, some of which will be named
below, and a few treatises, such as, one by Micrselius (Be
Messid, 1647) ; a brief notice by Hoornbeek, Summa Controv.
shows that the corruption of the language was gradual, and that the adoption
of the square Chaldee character did not take place till after Christ. (See a
brief account ofhis views in Davidson's Introd. to Old Test. 1856, ch. ii.) Also,
p. 1 2 1, the use of the word ' sumamed' for Jarchi disguises the origin of the name.
In Sermon I. (2d div.) the order of chronology is not sufficiently observed in
the quotations from the Old Testament. In Serm. VIII. (p. 244.) the apologetic
worth of miracles (suggested by a remarkable speech of Bp. Wilberforce in
the Town Hall, Oxford, Nov. 28, 1S46. See Oxford Herald oi 'Dec. 5. )is perhaps
hardly sufficient. In Serm. VI. the view that the early church held the
doctrine of atonement implicitly rather than explicitly, in life rather than
dogma, till Auselm's time, is insufficient, and liable to convey an erroneous
impression. (See Bp. Thomson's restatement of the historic question in Aids
to Faith, pp. 339—352). The revelation of God in the New Testament is
most express on the subject of substitutional atonement. Of this the writer
of these Sermons never had any doubt ; but he now thinks that there are
clearer evidences of it in the fathers than he had stated. Reasons are perceiv
able in the circumstance of the constant struggle against heathen religions, in
which the fathers were involved, which led them to dwell on the incarnation
rather than ou the atonement. Anselm only gave expression to the doctrine
which the apostles had clearly taught.

Lect. I.] NOTE 4. 547
1653 (p. 65) ; an unfinished treatise by Hulsius, TAeologia
Judaica, 1653 ; and one by Cocceius, Jud. Respons. Consid.
1662. The activity of the Jews is seen in the fact that
an unfair attack by Bentz, 1614, was answered in the Theriaca
Judaica of the Jew Salomo Zebi, Hanover 1615, which again
met with a Christian respondent in Wulferus, 1681. Also
Limborch had a dispute with a Jew in his Arnica Collatio cum
E-udito JudcBO (Dr. Orobrius), 1687. The controversy con
tinued through the eighteenth century, probably outlasting
its cause ; for defences on the side of the Jews ceased. We
meet with two works by Difenbach, Judmus convertendus, 16^6,
and JudcBUS Conversus, 1709; Calvoer's Gloria Christi, 17 10;
Mornseus' De Verit. Relig. CAristianm, 1707 ; and, in England,
Bp. Kidder's and Dr. Stanhope's Boyle Lectures, the former of
which was the basis of the treatise, The Demonstration of the
Messias, 1700 ; and C. Leslie's Short MelAod wilA tAe Jews.
Catalogues of the writings, of which the above are the best
known, may be found in J. A. Fabricius's BibliotA. Grac.
(ed. 1715), vii. 125; and Be Verit. Relig. CAristiance, 1725,
ch. xxxi ; and BlaspAemia Judaorum, Id. ch. xxxvii ; Walch's
BibliotA. -PAeol. Selecta, vol. i. c. v. sect. 8. (1757); also in
BartoUocci's Dictionary of Jewish Authors, 1678, and Imbo-
pati's Bictionary of CAristian Writers concerning tAe Jews,
1694; and especially in WolflF's Biblioth. Hebr. 17 15, and De
Rossi's Bizionario degli Autori Ebrei, 1802. For information
concerning sources of Jewish theology and hterature, it is
enough to cite Hettinger's Historia Orientalis, Carpzov's
Introductio, and Owen's Prelim. Exereitationes.
3. In the third phase of the controversy, viz. that which
exists with the modern Jew, the controversy is a little
changed. The old prejudices against Christianity are in a
great degree made obsolete by the freedom of commercial
intercourse, and the enjoyment of protection and civil liberty ;
and hence the contest takes two forms ; either the continuation
of the argument concerning the meaning of Jewish prophecy,
or a discussion on the function of the Jewish religion in
history. Sources for the former are found in the older books of
N n 2

548 NOTE 4. [Lect. I.
evidence. A digest of the arguments concerning it is given in
J. Fabricius (not the celebrated Fabricius), Consideratio Varia-
rum Controversiarum, 1704, p. 41, and in Stapfer's Institut.
TAeolog. Polemic, vol. iii. 1-288, 1752 ; or in the modern
works, Greville Ewing's Essays addressed to tAe Jews, and
Dr. M<=Caul's Old Paths, 1837, and his Warburton Lectures,
1846. The condition of Jewish hfe and thought may be
seen in Allen's Modern Judaism. The system of intei-pretation
on which the controversy is conducted is either the ancient
Messianic and allegorical of the Targums and Talmud, or
the literal and grammatical introduced by the Spanish medi
seval commentators".
The other form of Jewish argument which Christians have
to encounter is more novel, and, being confined to educated
Jews, its influence is less wide, and does not actuate the
stratum of Jewish life vnth which missionaries generally
come into contact. It is based on modern rationalist specula
tions, and is seen in a work of Dr. Philippsohn, late rabbin
at Magdeburg, Bevelopment of the Religioiis Idea in Judaism,
Christianity, and Mahometanism, (translated both into English
1855, and also into French,) and in the writings of Salvador.
Dr. Philippsohn regards the mission of Judaism to be, from
flrst to last, to teach to the world the lesson of monotheism.
He traces the struggle in the Jewish church between priestism
and prophetism; and regards Christianity as an abnormal
form of the latter, which has led the world away to Tritheism :
and, so far from regarding the office of Judaism to be extinct,
he considers that its mission is still to restore monotheism to
the world. A comparison with the statement of the views of
the Tiibingen school in Lect. VII. or the speculations of Mr.
e There are congregations of reformed Jews in some countries who reject the
Talmud as a system of interpretation. They are Jewish protestants. Their
stand-point only diflfers from that of the old Jews in laying stress on the ethical
aspect of religion. Sermons by one of them, the Rabbin Marks, have lately
been published in England. It will be understood from the above account
that the modern Jews include three parties ; the orthodox Jews, the reformed,
aud the rationalistic.

Lect. L] NOTE 5. 549
Mackay in Lect. VIII. will show how completely this argu
ment is borrowed from the later forms of German historical
criticism. The views of Salvador in France (see p. 421.) are too original
to be regarded as typical of the views of a party. They
reproduce the critical difficulties of Maimonides and Spinoza,
which seem never to have found favour with the Jews ; but
the general similarity of the doctrinal part of Salvador's
system to that just described is very observable.
Note 5. p. 17.
the CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH MAHOMETANISM.
The contest of Christianity with Mahometanism, so far
as it has been a struggle of argument and not of the sword,
offers few remarkable points. In the first sweep of the
Mahometan conquest, when the Christian nations succumbed
both in the east and west, there was no field for a question of
truth. It was only in Christian nations which were removed
from peril, and yet sufficiently in contact to entertain the
question of the claims of the Mahometan religion, that a
consideration of its nature, regarded as a system of doctrine,
could arise. Accordingly it is in Constantinople, or in Spain
and the other parts of western Europe which came into con
nexion with the Moors, that works of this character appear.
The history may be conveniently arranged in three periods,
each of which is marked by works of defence, some called
forth by danger, a real demand, but subsiding into or con
nected with inquiries prompted only by literary tastes. The
first is from the twelfth to the middle of the sixteenth century ;
the second during the seventeenth and eighteenth ; the third
during the present century.
I. A notice of the Mahometan religion exists in a work of
J. Damascenus, in the eighth century ; and Euthymius Ziga-
benus, a Byzantine writer of the twelfth : but the first
important treatise written directly against it was in 12 10,
BicAardi Confutatio, edited in 1543 by Bibhander from a

550 NOTE 5. [Lect. I.
Greek copy. The refutation of Averroes by Aquinas, about
1250, can hardly be quoted as an instance of a work against
the Mahometan religion, being rather against its philosophy.
A treatise exists by John Cantacuzene, vpritten a little after
1350; which is to be explained probably by the circumstance
that the danger from Mahometan powers in the east directed
the attention of a literary man to the religion and institu
tions which they professed. Thus far the works were called
forth by a real demand.
A series of treatises however commences about the time
of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the cause of the
existence of which is not so easy of explanation. Such are
those in Spain by Alphonso de Spina, 1487, and by Turre-
cremata (see Eichhorn's GescA. der Lit. vi.) ; by Nicholas de
Cuza, published in 1543 ; in Italy about 1500 by Ludovicus
Vives, and Volterranus ; one by Philip Melancthon in refer
ence to the reading of the Koran ; and a collection of treatises,
including those of Richardus, Cantacuzene, Vives, and Me
lancthon, pubhshed by Bibliander in 1543. Probably the
first two of this list may have been the relic of the crusade of
Christianity against the Moorish religion; the next two
possibly were called forth by the interest excited in reference
to Mahometans by reason of their conquests, or less probably
by the influence of their philosophy at Padua (see Lect. IIL
p. 139 seq.). The two last are hardly to be explained, except
by supposing them to be an offshoot of the Renaissance, and
called forth by the largeness of literary taste and inquny
excited by that event.
2. When we pass into the seventeenth century, we find a
series of treatises on the same subject, which must be ex
plained by the cause just named, the newly acquired interest
in Arabic and other eastern tongues. We meet however with
others, called forth by the missionary exertions which had
brought the Christians into contact with Mahometans in the
east. The treatise by Bleda, Befensio Fidei CAristiana, 1610,
stands alone, unconnected with any cause. It was partly a

Lect. I.] NOTE 5. 551
defence of the conduct of Christians towards the Mahometans.
A real interest however belongs to the work of Guadagnoh in
1 63 1. A catholic missionary, Hieronymo Xavier, had com
posed in 1596 a treatise in Persian against Mahometanism,
in which the general principle of theism was laid down as
opposed to the Mahometan doctrine of absorption ; next the
peculiar doctrines of Christianity stated ; and lastly, a contrast
drawn between the two religions. See Lee's Tracts on CArist-
ianity and Mahometanism (below, ^re/". p. 5 seq.).
This work was answered in 1621 by a Persian nobleman
named Ahmed Ibn Zain El^bidin. The line adopted by
him was, (i) to show that the coming of Mahomet was pre
dicted in the Old Testament (Hab. iii. 3.) ; (2) to argue that
Mahomet's teaching was not more opposed to Christ's than
his was to that of Moses, and that therefore both ought to be
admitted, or both rejected; (3) to point out critically the dis
crepancies in the Gospels ; (4) to attack the doctrines of the
Trinity and Christ's deity. (Lee, pref. 41 seq.)
This work was answered (1631) by a treatise in Latin by
P. Guadagnoh, dedicated to Pope Urban VIII. It is divided
into four parts; (i) respecting the objections about the
Trinity ; (2) the Incarnation ; (3) the authority of Scripture ;
(4) the claims of the Koran and of Mahomet. (Lee, pref. 108
seq. who also gives references (p. 113.) to a few other writers,
chiefly in the seventeenth century.)
The further works of defence produced in this century
arose as it were accidentally. The lengthy summary of the
Mahometan controversy in Hoornbeek's Summa Controver
siarum, 1653, p. 75 seq. was either introduced merely to give
completeness to the work as a treatise on polemic, or was
called forth by considerations connected with missions^ as is
made probable by his work Be Conversione Gentilium et In-
dorum. Le Moyne's pubUcation on the subject in the Varia
Sacra, vol. i. 1685, arose from the accidental discovery of an
old treatise, BartAolomcei Edess. Confutatio Hagareni. A third
work of this kind, Maracci's Criticism on the Koran, 1698,
arose from the circumstance that the pope would not allow

552 NOTE 5. [Lect. 1.
the publication of an edition of the Koran, without an ac
companying refutation of each part of it. The work of
Hettinger (Hist. Orient, b. i.), Pfeiffer's TAeol. Judaica et Ma-
Aom. and Kortholt's Be Relig. MaAom. j66^, form the transi
tion into an independent literary investigation ; which is seen
in the literary inquiries concerning the life of Mahomet, as
well as his doctrine, in Pocock, Prideaux 1697, Reland 1707,
BoulainviUiers 1730, and the translation of the Koran by
Sale 1734. A slightly controversial tone pervades some of
them. The materials collected by them were occasionally
used by deist and infidel writers (e. g. by Chubb), for in
stituting an unfavourable comparison between Christ and
Mahomet. The great literary historians of that period give lists of the
previous writers connected with the investigation. See J. A.
Fabricius, BibliotA. Grcec. ed. 1715, vol. vii. p. 136; Walch,
BibliotA. TAeol. &^. vol. i. ch. v. sect. 9. A summary of the
arguments used in the controversy is given in J. Fabricius,
Delectus Argumentorum, p. 41, &c. and Stapfer's Inst. TAeol.
Polem. iii. p. 289, &c.
3. In the present century the literature in reference to Ma
hometanism is, as in the former instances, twofold in kind.
Part of it has been called forth by missionary contests in the
east ; part by literary or historic tastes, and the modern love
of carrying the comparative method of study into every branch
of history.
The first class is illustrated by the discussions at Shiraz in
1 81 1, between the saintly Henry Martyn and some Persian
Moollas. The controversy was opened by a tract, sophistical
but acute, written by Mirza Ibrahim ; (Lee, pp. 1-39.) ; the
object of which was to show the superiority of the standing
miracle seen in the excellence of the Koran, over the ancient
miracles of Christianity. Martyn rephed to this in a series
of tracts (Lee, p. 80 seq.), and was again met by Mohammed
Ruza of Hamadan, in a much more elaborate work, in which,
among other arguments, the writer attempts to show predic
tions of Mahomet in the Old Testament, and in the New ap-

Lect. L] NOTE 5. 553
plying to him the promise of the Paraclete (Lee, pp. 161-450) .
These tracts were translated in 1824, with an elaborate preface
containing an account of the preceding controversy of Guadag
noh, by Professor S. Lee of Cambridge, Controversial Tracts
on CAristianity and MaAometanism, which is the work so
frequently cited above. To complete the history it is neces
sary to add, that a discussion was held a few years ago be
tween an accomplished Mahometan and Mr. French, a learned
missionary at Agra.
The literary aspect of the subject,' not however wholly free
from controversy, was opened by White, in the Bampton
Lectures for 1784; and abundant sources have lately been
furnished. Among thein are, Sprenger's Life of MaAomet,
1851, and Muir'Sj 1858. Also a new translation of the Koran
by the Rev. J. M. Rodwell, where the Suras are arranged
chronologically. The foUowing ought also to be added. Dr.
Macbride's Mahometan Religion Explained, 1857; Arnold on
Mahoirietanism,i859; Tholuck's VermiscAte ScAriften,i. (1—27);
Die Wunder MoAammed's und der CAaracter des Religionstif-
ters ; Dr. Stanley's Lectures on tAe History of tAe Eastern
CAurcA, lect. viu, and the references there given; Maurice's
Religions of the World ; and Renan's Etudes d' Histoire Reli
gieuse. (Ess. iv.) The modern study has been directed more
especially to attain a greater knowledge of Mahomet's life,
character, and writings ; the antecedent religious condition of
Arabia £; and the characteristics of Mahometanism, when
put into comparison with other creeds, and when viewed
psychologically in relation to the human mind.
The materials also for a study of the Mahometan form
of philosophy, both in itself and in its relation to the rehgion,
have been fiirnished by Aug. Schmoelders, Essai sur les Ecoles
Philosophiques cAez les Arabes, 1842. See also Ritter's Chr.
PAH. iii. 665 seq; iv. 1-181.
<= Cfr. Havernick's Introd. to Old Test. (E.T.) § 23, 24.

554 NOTE 6. [Lect. 1.

Note 6. p. 17.
UNITARIANISM.
It may be useful to indicate the chief stages of the history
of Unitarianism, and the sources of information with regard
to it, as it bears a close analogy to some forms of free
thought, such as deism f, and connects itself more or less
nearly with forms of rationalism wliich oqcur in the course of
the history.
The first instance of it is in the early ages, either as a
Jewish Gnostic sect, Ebionitism, or in some of the other
forms of Gnosticism ; passing in the east into Arianism, which
lowered God, and in the west into Pelagianism, which elevated
man. For this period see F. Lange, Geschichte und Lehrbegriff
d. Unitarier vor d. NicaeniscAen Synode, 1 83 1 ; Hagenbach's
Dogmengeschichte, § 23 ; and the church histories which treat
of this period.
In the middle ages the tendency may be considered to be
mainly represented by Mahometanism, and hardly exists at
all in the Christian church.
Its modern form arises at the time of the Reformation.
I. Originating in Italy, it exists as a doctrine in Switzer
land and Germany from 1525-1560. See F. Trechsel's Die
Protest. Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socinus, 1844. The best
known names are Servetus, Lelio Sozini, and Ochino.
2. It exists as a church at Racow in Poland, where the *
exiles found a refuge. Here Faustus Sozinus (1539-1603),
nephew of LeUo, and J. Crellius, are the best known names.
In 1609 Schmelz drew up the Socinian Formula, the Racovian
Catechism. It was also here that the collection of Socinian
writers, the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 162,6, was pub
lished. The history of the sect up to this point may be
f Cfr. Bp. Horsley's Letters against Priestley, Lett, xvi, p. 264.

Lect. I.] NOTE 6. 555
found in the Introduction to Rees's Translation of the Racovian
Catechism, 1818. Also see HaUam's History of Literature,
i. 554. ii. 335 ; Mosheim's Church History, sixteenth century,
§ 2. P.ii. ch. iv; Hase's Church History (Engl. Transl.), § 371, 2.
The Socinians were driven out of Poland in 1658, by the in
fluence of the Jesuits; and, passing into Holland, became
absorbed in the church of the Remonstrants or Arminians.
3. The next stage of Socinianism is, as a doctrine, in Eng
land in the seventeenth century. In 161 1 two persons, Ham-
mont and Lewis, suffered martyrdom for it; and it spread
widely during the Long Parliament. See Dr. Owen's Vind.
Evangel, pref.) The chief teacher was J. Biddle (1615-1662).
The interest of it arises from its supposed parallelism to the
Arminianism of Hales in the time of Charles I, and to the
latitudinarian party of Whichcote and More in that of
Charles IL But the parallel is not quite correct. The study
of Arminius's writings (see J. NichoUs's translation, 1825.)
shows that he was not a Pelagians, if even his successors
were. But even Episcopius and Limborch hardly reached
this point. Hales resembled Episcopius. Nor is the parallel
much nearer with " the latitude men ;" for Socinianism lacked
their Platonizing tendency. The Arian tendency, which com
menced at the end of the century, both in the church, in such
writers as Whiston and Clarke, and among the presbyterians,
offers a nearer parallel, in being, Uke Socinianism, Unitarian in
tendency. On this period see Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. (Notes
to § 234.)
4. Its next form, was as a set of congregations in England
in the eighteenth century, chieffy arising out of the presby
terians ; marked by great names, such as Lardner, Lowman,
Priestleyli. Shortly before the close of the century it was
introduced into America.
e The nearest English parallel to the teaching of Arminius personally (as
distinct from that of his successors), on the quinquartioular controversy, is the
doctrine of John Wesley. The nearest parallel to the general views of Episco
pius and Limborch was Hey of Cambridge at the close of the last century.
1> A sketch of Priestley is given in Mr. Martineau's Miscellanies.

556 NOTE 7. [Lect. I.
5. Its last form is a modification of the old Socinian view,
formed under the pressure of evangelical religion on tho one
side and rationalist criticism on the other. The accomplished
writers, Channing in America and Mr. J. Martiueau in Eng
land, are the best types of this form. Priestley, Channing,
and Martiueau, are the examples of the successive phases of
modern Unitarianism : Priestley, of the old Socinianism build
ing itself upon a sensational philosophy; Channing, of the
attempt to gain a larger development of the spiritual element ;
Martiueau, of the elevation of view induced by the philosophy
of Cousin, and the introduction of the idea of historical pro
gress in religious ideas. In reference to this part of the
history see E. Renan's Essay on Channing, Etudes de I'Hist.
Relig. p. 357 ; E. Ellis's Half Century of Unitarian Controversy
(in America), 1858 ; J. J. Taylor's Retrospect qf Religious Life
in England, 1845 j f^'- Beard's Unitarianism in its 'Actual State ;
and other references given in the notes to H. B. Smith's
translation of Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. New York, 1862.
ii. p. 441.
In addition to the above references, materials for the history
will be found in Sandius, Biblioth. Antitrin. 1684; Bock's
Hist. Antitrin. 1774; Otto Foch's Der Socinianismus, &c.
1 847 ; aud an article in the NortA British Review, No. 60, for
May 1859. The history of the controversial literature on
the subject is given in Pfaif's Introd. in Hist. Theol. Lit.
vol. ii. p. 320 seq. ; and more fully in Walch's BibliotA. TAeol.
Select, vol. i. p. 902 seq. For a digest of the arguments used
in the controversy, see Hoornbeek's Summa Controv. 16^^,
p. 440; J. Fabricius, Consid. far. Controv. pp. 99-208; and
Stapfer's Inst. Theol. Polem. vol. iii. c. 12.

Note 7. p. ^'^.
CLASSIFICATION OF M RTAPHYSICAL INQUIRIES.
The foUowing scheme will perhaps facilitate the reading of
the text : —

EhO

The Science of
Metaphysics contains

I. Psychological or
Subjective In--
quiry (a)

r I. Examines the structure r Intellectual (Presentative J Perceptional (Sensational)
and functions of the j consciousness Representative (d) i "I^^ason or intuition (Su-
mind, and classifies 1 Emotional, L persensuous). (e)
thus : (b) (.Volitional (c)
(a) The origin of knowledge, which it places in one of the above-named faculties.

2. Explores

(Sensational, Ideal,Mystic,Sceptic,Eclectic.

r Matter, the ground of Physical Science.
I 2. Ontological or Ob- /Examines the inferences derivable from the pre- J ^^'J*^' ~ ^®°^*^ ¦ ,"~
jective Inquiry 1 ceding investigations, in reference to (g) 1 ij"^' ~ iheological -

Duty,
L Beauty,

Ethical
jEsthetical •

o
1-^

558 NOTE 7. ^ [Lect. 1.
The writer is perfectly aware of the many objections which
may be directed against particular parts of this scheme. It is
merely introduced here that the reader may be put iu posses
sion of his meaning. The foUovring notes may further con
tribute to the same end.
(a) This first subdivision of Metaphysics into Psychology
and Ontology is very neatly stated by Professor
Mansel (art. MelapAysics iu Encycl. Britann. 8th ed.
p. 555, aud p. 23 in the reprint of the article, i860) ;
Cfr. also Archer Butler's Lect. on PAH. vol. i. lect.
i-iii.
(b) It must be understood, that when we pass here from a
division of the inquiries concerning the mind to a
supposed division of the mind itself, we imply only
a division of states of consciousness or mental
functions, not au absolute and real division of the
mind itself. Distinctness of structure is only the
inference ; distinctness of function is a fact, given iu
the act of consciousness.
(c) The distinctness of the Will, as a faculty, froih the
emotions will be disputed by many. It is main
tained by Maine de Biran, and the Eclectic school of
France. Mr. Mill, Logic, vol. ii. b. vi. ch. ii, implies
the contrary, and regards Will to be a particular
state of feeling.
(d) The difference of the presentative from the repre
sentative conciousness is now generally understood,
since the arguments of Sir W. Hamilton have been
commonly known. See his edition of Reid, note B.
p. 804; Discussions, Ess. ii. and Lect. on Metaphysics ;
Mansel's work above cited, p.. 560, 584 ; Morell's
Phil, of Relig. ch. ii.
(e) The separation of Intuition from Perception is a point
much disputed. It is maintained by Schelling and
by Cousin, and made familiar by Coleridge, Aids to
Reflection, i. p. 168 seq. See also Morell's PAilos. of

Lect. L] NOTE 8. 559
Relig. ch. ii; Hist, of PAH. ii. p. 487 seq. Among
Enghsh psychologists however, intuition is identified
with perception ; or if sUghtly distinguished, as by
Mr. Mansel, it is made sj'uonymous with every
"presentative" act of consciousness, and thus in
cludes the consciousness of our own minds, as weU
as the sensational consciousness usually denoted by
the word " perception." With reference to the view
intended on this subject in these lectures, see a note
on p. 39.
(f) With reference to these schools, see Morell's Hist, of
PAilosopAy (^o\. i. Introduction) ; and Cousin's Cours
de la Philosophie du 18""^ Siecle.
(g) This subdivision of the subject matter of Ontology
is well stated by Mansel in the Encyc. Britann.
above cited, 603, 613 seq. This work of Mr. Mansel
is on the whole the clearest exposition of Psychology,
studied from the side of consciousness, which has
appeared. Mr. Morell's recent work on Psychology
presents a view diiferent from his former ones, and
unites the physiological treatment of the inquiry;
being borrowed partly from the recent speculations
which the teaching of Herbert has induced iu Ger
many. See Note 41.
Note 8. p. 39.
QUOTATION FROM GUIZOT ON PRAYER.
The foUowing eloquent remarks seem worth quoting, as illus
trative of the instinct in the soul of man to perform the act
of prayer ; the natural outgoing of the human soul after the
infinite Being. They are taken fi-om Guizot, L' Eglise et la
Societe Chretienne, 1861.
" Seul eutre tous les etres ici-bas l'homme prie. Parmi ses
instincts moraux, U n'y en a point de plus uaturel, de plus
universel, de plus invincible que la priere. L'enfant s'y porte

560 NOTE 9. -. [Lect. I
avec une docilite empressee. Le vieillard s'y replie comme
dans un refuge centre la decadence et I'isolement. La priere
moute d'eUe-meme sur les jeunes levres qui balbutieut a peine
le nom de Dieu et sur les levres mourantes qui n'ont plus la
force de le prouoncer. Chez tous les peuples, celebres ou
obseurs, civilises ou barbares, on rencontre k chaque pas des
actes et des formules d'invocation. Partout on vivent des
hommes, dans certaines circoustances, a certaines heures, sous
I'empire de certaines impressions de I'ame, les yeux s'elevent,
les mains se joigneut, les genoux flechis^eut, pour implorer
ou pour rendre graces, pour adorer ou pour apaiser. Avec
transport ou avec tremblement, publiquement ou dans le
secret de son cceur, c'est a la priere que l'homme s'adresse, en
dernier recours, pour combler les vides de sou ame ou porter
les fardeaux de sa destinee ; c'est dans la priere qu'il cherche,
quand tout lui manque, de I'appui pour sa faiblesse, de la
consolation dans ses douleurs, de I'esperance pour sa vertu."
(p. 22.)
" H y a, dans I'acte naturel et universel de la priere, une
foi naturelle et uuiverselle dans cette action permaneute, et
toujours libre, de Dieu sur l'homme et sur sa destinee." (p. 24.)
" ' Les voies de Dieu ue sent pas nos voies : nous y
. marchons sans les connaitre; croire sans voir et prier sans
prevoir, c'est la condition que Dieu a faite k l'homme en ce
monde, pour tout ce qui en depasse les limites." (p. 25.)
Note 9. p. 44.
ON the modern view OF THE HISTORICAL METHOD IN
PHILOSOPHY.
It has been implied in the text, at this place, and also in
the preface, that the " historic method of study" is the great
feature of this century. The term is ambiguous. The mean
ing of it however is, that each problem ought to be approached
from the historic side. Whether the problem be a fact 'of
society, or of thought, or of morals, in each case the questions

Lect. I.J NOTE 9- 561
are asked — What are its antecedents? how did it happen?
How came it that men accepted it ? — This is a method exactly
the reverse of that which was common iu the last century.
The question theu was, Is a thing true ? The question now
is a preliminary one. How came it that it was thought to be
true ? It is probable that iu many minds there is a slight
tendency to pantheism in this method of study. The universe
is looked at as ever in course of development ; evil as " good
in the making ;" no fact as wholly bad ; no thought as wholly
false. But, without involving such a tendency, whatever is
true in the method may be appropriated. It starts only with
the assumption that the human race is iu a state of move
ment; and that Providence has lessons to teach us if we
watch this movement. It is the method of learning by ex
perience of the past, a lesson for conduct iu the future.
The method thus explained, however, is used for two differ
ent purposes. Either it is intended to be the preliminary
process preparatory to discovery, or it is designed to take the
place of discovery. In the former case, we ask why men have
thought a thing true, for the purpose of afterwards discover
ing, by the use of other methods, what is true ; in the latter
we rest content with the historical investigation, and con
sider the attempt to discover absolute truth to be impossible ;
and regard the problem of philosophy to be, to gather up the
elements of truth in the past. In the former case truth is
absolute, though particular ages may have blindly groped
after it ; iu the latter it is relative. In the former, the history
of philosophy is the preliminary to philosophy ; in the latter
it is philosophy. In the former, philosophy is a science ; in
the latter it is a form of criticism. The former view is held
by the school of Schelling and Cousin ; the latter is an off
shoot of that of Hegel. The former marked French literature
until recent years ; the latter is expressed in it at the present
time ; and is stated by uo one so clearly as by Renan and
Scherer. Most English writers wiU justly prefer the former
view; but the explanation of the latter, given in the two
passages which follow, is expressed with such clearness, and
o 0

562 NOTE 9. [Lect. I.
will be of so much use in explaining subsequent allusions in
these lectures (especially Lect. VII. and VIIL), that it is
desirable to print it here.
" Le trait caracteristique du 19= siecle est d'avoir sub-
stitue la methode historique a la methode dogmatique, dans
toutes les etudes relatives k I'esprit humain. La critique
litteraire n'est plus que I'expose des formes diverses de la
beaute, c'est a dire des manieres dout les differentes famUles
et les differentes ages de I'humanite out resolu le probleme
esthetique. La philosophie n'est que le tableau des solutions
proposees pour resoudre le probleme philosophique. La the
ologie ue doit plus etre que I'histoire des efforts spontanes
tentes pour resoudre le probleme divin. L'histoire, en effet,
est la forme necessaire de la science de tout ce qui est soumis
aux lois de la vie changeante et successive. La science des
langues, c'est l'histoire des langues ; la science des litteratures
et des philosophies, c'est I'histoire des litteratures et des
philosophies; la science de I'esprit humain c'est, de m^me,
I'histoire de I'esprit humain, et non pas seulement I'analyse
des rouages de I'ame individuelle. La psychologic n'euvisage
que I'individu, et elle I'envisage d'une maniere abstraite, ab-
solue, comme un sujet permanent et toujours identique a lui-
meme; aux yeux de la critique la conscience se fait dans
I'humanite comme I'individu ; elle a son histoire. Le grand
progres de la critique a ete de substituer la categorie du
devenir a la categorie de I'etre, la conception du relatif a la
conception de I'absolu, le mouvement a I'immobilite. Autre
fois, tout etait considere comme etant; on parlait de phUo-
sophie, de droit, de politique, d'art, de poesie, d'une maniere
absolue ; maiutenant tout est considere comme en voie de se
faire. ******* Ace point de vue de la science critique,
ce qu'on recherche dans I'histoire de la philosophie, c'est
beaucoup moins de la philosophie proprement dite que de
I'histoire." — (E. Renan, Pref. to Averroes, p. vi.)
" Tout n'est que relatif, disious-nous tout a I'heure ; il faut
ajouter maiutenant : tout n'est que relation. Verite impor
tune pour l'homme qui, dans le fatal courant ou il est plonge,

Lect. I.] NOTE 9. 563
voudrait trouver un point fixe s'arreter un instant, se faire
illusion sur la vanite des choses ! Verite feconde pour la
science, qui lui doit une intelligence nouvelle de la realite,
une intuition infiniment plus penetrante du jeu des forces
qui composent le monde. C'est ce~ principe qui a fait de
I'histoire une science et de toutes les sciences une histoire.
C'est en vertu de ce principe qu'il n'y a plus de philosophie
mais des phUosophies qui se succ^dent, qui se completent en
se succedaut, et dont chacune represeute avec un element du
vrai, une phase du developpement de la pensee uuiverselle.
Ainsi la science s' organise elle-meme et porte en soi sa
critique. La classification rationnelle des systemes est leur
succession, et le seul jugement equitable et utile qu'on puisse
passer sur eux est celui qu'ils passent sur eux-memes en se
transformant. Le vrai n'est plus vrai en soi. Ce n'est plus
une quantite fixe qu'il s'agit de degager, un objet roud ou
carre qu'on puisse tenir dans la main. Le vrai, le beau, le
juste meme se font perpetuellement ; ils sont a jamais en
train de se constituer, parce qu'ils ne sont autre chose que
I'esprit humain, qui, en se deployant, se retrouve et se re-
eonnait." — E. Scherer, (article on Hegel in Revue des Deux
s, Feb. 15, 1 861.)

002

LECTURE II.
Note 10. p. 6^.
neo-platonism.
On the nature and history of Neo-Platonism, see Ritter's
History of Philosophy, E. T. vol. iv. b. xiii ; Creuzer's Prole
gomena to Plotinus ; Tennemann's Manual of Philosophy , § 200-
222 ; Hase's Church History, § 50, with the references which
the two latter supply ; Jules Simon's and Vacherot's works ou
the Ecole d'Alexandrie ; B. Constant's Du Polytheisme, b. xv.
Among English works, see Archer Butler's Lectures on Phi
losopAy, vol. ii. 348 seq. ; Lewes' History of PAilosopAy ;
Maurice's History of Philosophy (part ii.) ; Donaldson's
History of Greek Literature, ch. ^^ and 57 ; and an essay in
R. A. Vaughan's Essays and Remains, 1858.
The mystic and oriental tendency which Neo-PIatouism
embodied is seen as early as Philo iu the middle of the first
century; but it was Ammonius Saccus (A. D. 163-243) who
developed the new system about A. D. 200. The chief
teachers of it were Plotinus (born 203), who introduced it at
Rome; Porphyry (233-305), who however manifested more
of the mystic Pythagorean spirit and less of the dialectical
Platonic ; lambhchus, a generation later, who also inclined
to theurgy ; aud in the fifth century Hypatia, killed 415 ;
and Proclus (412-485), who taught at Athens. A grovdih of
thought is perceptible in the successive members of the school.
The sketches of several of the above-named writers iu Smith's
Biographical Dictionary are full of information, and furnished
with useful references.

Lect. II.] NOTES 11, 12. 565

Note 11. p. 66.
THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE LITERATURE.
The Pseudo-Clementine literature consists of Homilies and
Recognitions ; the latter being in a Latin translation by
Rufinus. It is published iu Cotelerius's Sancti Patres, 1698,
vol. i.
A noble Roman, harassed by his doubts and eager for truth,
travels to the east, and there learns Christian truth, which
makes him happy. It is the former part of the narrative,
viz. the doubts of Clemens before becoming a Christian, which
is aUuded to iu the text, aud is adduced by Neander, Kirchen
geschichte, i. pp. 54-5*5., as an instance of the preparation for
the reception of Christianity made by a sense of want in many
hearts. But it is the latter part which is valuable in a literary
point of view, on account of the light which the exposition of
Christian doctrine contained in it throws upon the Judaizing
Gnostics, being au attempt to reconcile Ebionitism with the
teaching of St. Paul. Its interest in this point of view has
caused it to be made the subject of several monographs by
German theologians. A list of them, with an account of the
phases of doctrine described, is given iu Kurtz's Church
History, E. T. § 48, aud in Hase's Church History, § 35, 75,
and 80. One of the most important of them is Schliemauu's
Die Clementinen, 1844. Note 12. p. 67.
THE ABSENCE OF REFERENCES TO CHRISTIANITY IN HEATHEN
WRITERS OF THB SECOND CENTURY.
Tzchirner has investigated this subject in an interesting
dissertation, Grmci et Romani Scriptores cur rerum Christian-
arum raro meminerint ; Opusc. Acad. p. 283. Lips. 1829, (trans
lated in the Journal of Sacred Literature, Jan. 1853 ;) and has

566 NOTE 12. [Lect II.
discussed the passages where mention is made of Christianity.
The following is the substance of his inquiries.
Though the notices concerning Christianity in heathen
writers are scanty, the silence of Eusebius gives good ground
for inferring, that not many further notices existed concerning
it in the works which are lost, than have been preserved to us.
Perhaps a few passages may have beeu erased in which Christ
ianity was blasphemed, even in that which is preserved.
The silence concerning Christianity during the first century
is not surprising ; because the Christians, if known at aU,
would be regarded as a Jewish sect, as iu Acts xviii. 15; xxiii.
29 ; xxv. 19. In the third century they are both noticed and
attacked. The inquiry therefore with regard to the sUeuce about
them, refers only to the period from about A.D. 80—180.
During this period, among the Greek writers who omit all
mention of Christianity, are Dio Chrysostom; Plutarch (for the
passage, Qucest. iv. 4. § 3, about happiness consisting in hope,
probably does not refer to them) ; CEuomaus, who wrote ex
pressly to ridicule religion ; Maximus Tyrius ; aud Pausanias :
and among Latin ones, Juvenal, who several times mentions
the Jews, but only indirectly refers to the Christians (Sat. i.
185-7), Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius; (for the opinion of
Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. § 4, that an allusion is intended, is
now rejected', unless one perhaps exists in Met. ix. ed. Panck.
ii. 195.)
Among those who name Christians we find, —
In Trajan's reign, Tacitus, who describes their persecution
by Nero (Ann. xv. 44) ; Suetonius, who names them, Vit.
Neron. ch. 16, and describes them as seditious, Vit. Claud. 25,
if indeed the word CAresto in the paragraph is intended for
CAristo ; and Pliny the younger, in the well-known letter to
Trajan (Ep. x. 96) .
In the reign of Hadrian we find, in a fragment of Hadrian's
works in Vopiscus's Life of Saturuiuus (ch. viii.), a mention of
them, comparing them with Seraphid worshippers; and one
quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. iv. 9, addressed to a proconsul
' But see Pressens^, Hist, de VEglise, 2'' Ser. t. ii. p. 154.

Lect. IL] NOTE 12. 567
of Asia. Also Arrian names them in two passages, iu one
describing them as obstinate. Diss. Epictet. b. iv. ch. vii. and in
the other speaking either of them or of the Jews as fiairrKTraL
(b. ii. ch. ii.)
In the reign of the Autonines we find Galen stigmatising
them for obstinacy (De Pulsuum Diff. b. iii. ch. iii.), and for
believing without proof (b. ii. ch. iv.) ; and Marcus Aurelius
himself inquires (Comment, b. xi. ch. iii.), what can be the
cause of their inflexibility. His two epistles which contain
allusions to Christianity, one of them attributing his victory
over the Marcomanui to the thundering legion, and the other
stating that it is the business of the gods and not men to
punish, are rejected as spurious.
In the same reign we find Crescens and Fronto, who are
treated of elsewhere, Lect. II. p. 67 ; and Lucian (p. 68.)
Tzchirner denies the allusions supposed to lurk in many
passages of Lucian examined by Krebsius and Eichstadt ; but,
independently of those iu the Peregrinus, ch . xi-xiv, ou which
see Lect. II. and note 13, there remains one where Alex
ander the magician is said to exclude Christians and Epicureans
from his magical rites. In the same reign we meet with
Celsus ; after which time the notices of Christianity are fre
quent ; the account of which will be found in Lardner's
Works, vol. viii.
If now we pass from the facts to the cause, and ask why
the notices are so few, Tzchirner very properly answers, that
the silence in the first century is explained, partly by the
general poverty and retirement of the Christians, and partly
by the circumstance named above, that they were included
among Jews. But iu the second century, when Christianity
was so far known that several learned men abandoned
heathenism for it, such as Quadratus, Melito, Justin, Tatian,
Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix; Tzchirner refers
the silence chiefly to the fact that the opinions and position of
the Christians prevented them from being considered worthy
of attention by members of any of those schools of philosophy
whose probable opinions in reference to it have been already

568 NOTE 13. [Lect. II.
explained in Lect. II. Celsus alone had the far-sightedness
to apprehend danger from them, both phUosophicaUy and
politically. Note 13. p. 68.
THE PEREGRINUS PEOTEUS OF LUCIAN.
The question of Lucian's intention to injure Christianity
has been discussed and maintained by Krebsius iu a Disserta
tion, DeMalitioso Luciani Consilio Religionem CAristianam scur-
rili dicacitate vanam et ridiculam reddendi, Opusc. Acad. p. 308
seq. The contrary view is maintained by Eichstadt in a
dissertation, Lucianus num scriptis suis adjuvare voluerit Reli
gionem CAristianam, Jena, 1822.. Krebsius is extravagant in
interpreting many unimportant references in Lucian as relat
ing to Christianity. See Tzchirner, Opusc. Acad. p. 296.
Neander also states his opinion ou the question, KircAengescA.
i. 269 seq.
The same subject has been discussed with great care aud
learning by Adolph Planck, dean of Heidenheim in Wurtem-
burgj Lucian und CAristentAum, a contribution to the church
history of the second century; originally published in the
Studien und Kritiken, 1851, aud translated in the American
Bibliotkeca Sacra, April aud July, 1853. He there studies
Lucian's tract, tAe Peregrinus, (i) in the character which it
offers of Peregrinus as a Cynic, for the purpose of examining
the probability of his death being a parody ou Christian
martyrdom; (2) in his character as a Christian, in order to
exhibit Lucian's opinion of Christianity and of the traits of
Christian life brought out ; (3) with a view to ascertain the
sources and amount of Lucian's knowledge of Christianity ;
discussing fully, by means of quotations, the evidence of
Lucian's acquaintance with the early Christian literature.
The analysis of the Peregrinus Proteus is as follows : It
professes to be a letter from Lucian to Cromius narrating
Peregrinus's death. Peregrinus had gone to Olympia, with the
pompous design of displaying his death before the assembly

Lect. IL] NOTE 14. 569
at the games. Lucian lets us hear the speeches, descrip
tive of Peregrinus's Ufe, delivered before the decisive act. A
certain Theageues, an admirer of Peregrinus, delivers a bom
bastic eulogy, § 3-7, repelling the charge of vanity imputed to
him, aud comparing his proposed death with that of Hercules,
&c. Lucian opposes to this some invectives delivered by an
other, whose name he professes to have forgotten, which refer,
§ 7-30, to the history of Peregrinus to which Theageues had
alluded ; tracing his crimes, his journeys from land to laud,
his turning Christian in Syria, his expulsion for disobedience,
his subsequent wanderings aud crimes, aud the universal
contempt which he had brought upon himself. Theageues
replies to this speech ; but Lucian preferred to go to see the
wrestling-match. Afterwards however he heard Peregrinus
pronounce his own eulogy, and boast of his sufferings ou
behalf of philosophy. Then, after most of the guests had left
Elis, § 35, &c, Peregrinus proceeded to erect his own funeral
pile, and consumed himself ou it. Lucian after seeing the
end went away, aud added a legend about the appearance of a
hawk; which story he soon afterwards found had already gained
credence. The moral which he draws is, that Cromius ought to
despise such people, and impute their conduct to love of fame.
The passages of the work which have specific reference to
Christianity are, § 11-13, which describe Peregrinus's inter
course with the Christians ; and § 35-41, which describe his
martyrdom. The references are to Diudorf's ed. Paris 1840.

Note 14. p. 71.
THE WORK OF CELSUS.
It is difficult to obtain au exact conception of the work of
Celsus. This is due partly perhaps to its original form ; for
Origen himself complains (Cont. Cels. i. 40.) of the want of
order in Celsus ; and partly to the fact that a mind like that of
Origen did not follow his opponent step by step, but frequently
grasped a general principle which enabled him to meet a

570 NOTE 14. [Lect. IL
group of objections dispersed through different parts of Celsus's
work. As it was desirable for the object of the lecture to present
Celsus's views rather than analyse Origen's treatise, the writer
endeavoured, when preparing it, to select materials from Origen
for drawing out a sketch in systematic form, somewhat iu
the manner of Neander's remarks (CAurcA History, i. 274), of
Celsus's views, concerning (i) God and creation; (2) man's
moral state; (3) the Hebrew and Christian religious iu their
sacred books and doctrines. But ou the publication of Pros-
sense's work [Hist, de I'Eglise, 2^ serie, ii. pp. 104-142), he
perceived the plan of arrangement there suggested to possess
so much more life, that he adopted it iu the text. Pressense
considers that, by a careful study of the fragments of Celsus
quoted by Origen, he is able to reproduce a picture of the whole
work, as well as to gather his opinions. Such an arrange
ment must necessarily be hypothetical, like Niebuhr's treat
ment of Roman history, though extremely probable. It will
be observed however, by noticing the references to Origen's
work in the foot-notes of Pressense's text, and of Lecture II.
iu this volume, that the arrangement suggested for Celsus's
treatise does not always coincide with the order iu which
Origen has quoted the parts of it. Also the references to the
later books of Origen will be seen to be fewer than to the
earlier ; a circumstance which arises from the quotations from
Celsus's work being fewer in those books, and from the
thoughts of Origen in "them being a continuation of those
presented earlier. Pressense's arrangement has the disad
vantage too of leaving out many of the critical difficulties
which Celsus alleges iu the scriptures ; but he rightly points
out that they are all corollaries from, a philosophical prin
ciple. The reader may accordingly consult Neander for a
systematic view of Celsus's opinions, and Pressense for a
theory of the arrangement of his work.
It may be useful to give a brief statement of the order in
which Celsus's objections occur in Origen's treatise, so as to
show the manner in which the subject is there developed.

Lect. IL] NOTE 15. 571
The first half of book i. is prefatory (ch. i-xl.) ; the second
half, together with b. ii, contains the attack by the Jew on
Christianity given iu Lect. II. The early part of b. iii. (1-9.)
contains Origen's refutation of the Jew. The subsequent
parts and remaining books give Origen's refutation of Celsus's
own attack on Christianity. First, Celsus attacks the cha
racter of Christians in the remainder of b. iii. In b. iv. he
returns to his attack ou Judaism, aud ou the scriptures of
the Old Testament, especially on many of the narratives;
either regarding them as false, or as borrowed ; and object
ing to their anthropomorphic character ; also objecting to
the account of man's place in creation, and of divine inter
ference. In b. V. he continues his attack on the doctrines
of both religions, chieffy so far as he considers them to be
untrue ; and iu b. vi. so far as he considers them to be bor
rowed, dragging to light the difference which existed between
Judaism aud Christianity. In b. vii. the subject of prophecy
and some other doctrines, as well as the ethics of Christianity,
are examined ; and in b. viii, when the attack on Christianity
is mainly over, a defence of paganism is offered by Celsus.
A detailed analysis of Origen's treatise, which is intricate,
will be found iu Schramm's Analysis Patrum, vol. iv. 1782.
Pressense's view of Origen's arguments is ^Yen, Hist. 2° Serie,
t.ii. pp. 281-361. See also Lardner's Works, viii. 19. Hase
(ChurcA History, § 51.) refers to several German works which
relate to Celsus. Note 15. p. 77.
THE CHARGES AGAINST CHRISTIANS, AND CAUSES OF PER
SECUTION, IN THE SECOND CENTURY.
The learned Kortholt, Professor at Kiel, iu his work, the
Paganus Obtrectator, sive Liber de Calumniis Gentilium in Vete^-es
Chrislianos (1703), has carefully collected references _ to the
objections raised by the Pagans against Christianity. He has
arranged them according to the subjects, irrespective of the
chronological order in which they were respectively suggested ;

572 NOTE 15. [Lect. II.
viz. (i) those which relate to the origin aud nature of Chris
tianity, such as its novelty, its alleged w^ant of originahty,
&c. ; (2) false charges about public worship ; (3) false charges
about life and morals. If we exclude ou the one hand those
charges which are gathered out of Celsus (iu Origen), and ou
the other those from apologists later than the date of Porphyry,
the charges between these limits, which are learned from the
apologists Minucius Felix, TheophUus (ad Autolychum), and
TertuUian, exhibit the objections which were encountered
in Rome, Syria, aud North Africa, respectively. They chiefly
belong to the prejudices adduced iu the second and third of
the classes made by Kortholt. Among the more inteUigible
objections which belong to his first class, are found the charges
of the novelty of Christianity (ch. i. in his book), the super
stitious character of it (ix. and x.), and the want of cultivation
iu its supporters (xi.). Among the prejudices about public
worship (class 2) in his work, we meet with the charge of
ass-worship (in TertuUian aud Minucius Felix, ch. xi.) ; sky
and sun worship (ii. and iii.) ; priest and cross worship (iv. and
vi.) ; aud secret sacred rites (ix.) . Among the false charges
about life and morals (which form class 3), we meet with
that of private and nocturnal meetings forbidden by law, aud
the Agapse (v.) ; Thyestean banquets (Theoph. and TertuU.
ix.) ; secret insignia (xvi.) ; treason (vii.) ; and hatred of hu
manity (viii.).
AU these charges wUl be seen to be such as mark the tran
sition from a state of indifference to Christianity to that more
distinct comprehension of its nature which afterwards existed.
Their character indicates a moment when the new religion
was forcing itself ou public attention as a secret organization
ramifying through the Roman world. In the main they re
solved themselves into two heads ; (i) the vulgar prejudices
arising from ignorance; aud (2) the alarm at the poUtical
danger arising from a vast secret society. The latter charges
reappear in the works of later apologists ; but the former are
peculiar to this special period, between the time of Celsus and
of Porphyry.

Lect. IL] NOTE 15. 573
Among the vulgar prejudices thus named, the only two
that need further mention are the charges of priest-worship
and ass-worship. The former charge, named by Minucius
Felix, ch. ix, aud thus described here by a euphemism, may be
seen in Kortholt, b. ii. ch. iv. p. 319; it probably arose from
the homage paid to the bishop ou bended knee at ordination.
The latter, taken out of Minucius Felix (ch. ii.), and TertuUian
(Apol. 16), is more singular and puzzling even after the dis
cussions by older authors which Kortholt cites, b. ii. ch. i.
p. 256, &c. But the fact of the charge has been corroborated
by the recent discovery iu excavations made in some sub
structions on the Palatine hill, of a graffito or pencil-scratching,
in which a person is worshipping toward a cross, ou which
hangs suspended a human figure with the head of a horse, or
perhaps wild ass, and underneath is the inscription " Alexa-
menus is worshipping God," AKe^afXivos aejSere [sic for o-eySerat]
®eov. It can hardly be doubted that it is a pagan caricature
of Christian worship, embodying the absurd prejudice which
Minucius names. A brief account of it maj^ be seen iu the
EdinburgA Review, No. 224, for October, 1859, p. 436, and
more fully in Un Graffito Blasfemo nel Palazzo dei Cesari
(Civilta Cattolica, serie iii. vol. iv. Roma, 1856.) The diffi
culty that the inscription is in Greek, will be explained by the
fact that the church of Rome was Greek as late as the time of
the writings of the so-called Hippolytus.
The other great class of objections to Christianity, which
consisted in imputing the charge of treason, expressed itself in
deeds as well as words, and was made the ground of the
public persecution of them.
We cannot wonder that the profession of Christianity ex
posed persons to the suspicion of treason. When we add
the fact that Christians decUned obstinately to conform to
the practice which had grown up, of performing sacrifice to
the honour of the reigning emperors as the impersonation
of the dignity of the state ; and when we consider the organ
ization among Christians, the league of purpose which was
evident among them, we can understand how fuUy they laid

574 NOTE 15. [Lect. II.
themselves open to the charge of treason, the " crimen lasffi
raajestatis." Perhaps too at particular moments they were
in danger of giving real ground for suspicion iu reference to
this point. The warnings of St. Paul aud St. Peter give
ground for inferring that there was danger of this even in
their times. (Rom. xiii. i seq. ; i Pet. ii. 13 seq.)
A greater difficulty than discovering plausible grounds
which may have created the suspicion of treason is, to fiud
the causes why a people so tolerant as the Romans should
exhibit so persecuting a spirit against Christianity ; but we
must remember, first, that the idea as distinct from the prac
tice of toleration was unknown ; and secondly, that the prac
tice of toleration was only supposed to be obhgatory when
the particular religion had been licensed.
The idea of man's universal rights, of universal religious
freedom and liberty of conscience, was alien to the views of
the whole ancient world. Indeed it is of quite modern intro
duction. It was not known even iu Christendom, not even
in the protestant part of it, till the seventeenth century. It
was Milton who first enunciated the principle in its breadth.
The idea of individualism, though long in spreading, was
created iu germ by two causes ; viz. the free spirit of inde
pendence introduced by the Teutonic system ; and the idea of
the sacredness of the individual soul introduced through Chris
tianity. If the highest end of man be to live for eternity, not
to live for society, the individual is invested with a new
dignity ; and we feel the impropriety of trespassing upon the
sphere for which each man is personally responsible. In the
ancient world however, where this idea was unknown, all
the elements of life, religion, aud morals, were made sub
ordinate to the political. The state was supreme. Looked
at accordingly from the ancient point of view, a defection
from the religion of the state could not appear othermse
than as a crime against the state. The Romans did certainly
exercise religious toleration to the religions of nations which
they conquered ; and in this way the rehgion of the Jews was
a tolerated creed, a religio licita ; but it was such for the

Lect. IL] NOTE 16. 575
Jews alone; and deviation from the state religion was, as
we know from the great lawyers, unlawful. Though doubt
less from the abundance of foreigners who crowded to Rome,
many foreign religious practices became common, yet a special
decree of the senate was necessary before any Roman citizen
could be allowed to join in the observance of any such foreign
rites. When we consider the free use made by the Christ
ians, for the purposes of worship and burial, of the cata
combs, by which the plain in the neighbourhood of Rome is
honeycombed, we may conjecture that the vigilance of the
imperial police cannot have beeu strictly exercised ; yet occa
sionally severe laws were passed to repress the evil of the
introduction of foreign sacred rites. We may thus accord
ingly understand the causes of the persecution of Christians,
as we before understood the grounds of the prejudice against
them.

Note 16. p. 85.
MODERN CRITICISM ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL.
Some account of the modern criticism on the book of Daniel
has beeu introduced into the text of Lect. II. (see pp. 84, 85,)
and the chief recent writers on it have beeu enumerated (p.
' 83, note 5). Also the refutation of one argument used
against the authenticity of the book, viz. that drawn from
the occurrence of Greek words in it, was given in a note
on p. 84.
The other arguments which have been advanced against it,
in addition to those there named, are, (i) that the angelology
and ascetic doctrines are too recent to be of the time of
Daniel ; (2) that the miracles are of a " grotesque" character,
like those which belong to the apocryphal books ; (3) that
the measure of the golden statue of Dura, sixty cubits by six,
is irreconcileable with any theory of proportion suited to the
human figure, and stUl more so with the canon of Assyrian art,
as seen iu their sculpture, aud can apply only to an obelisk ;

576 NOTE 16. Lect. II.
(4) that Daniel has made honourable mention of himself;
(5) that the position of the book in the third part of the
Jewish canon, the Cethubim or Hagiographa, shows that it
was written later than the captivity.
The replies made to these objections are as follows : In
reference to No. (i), it is denied that the angelology and
asceticism necessarily prove a late period, by referring to traces
of them in earlier Hebrew literature : No. (2) that the difficulty
which has reference to the character of the miracles is only
one of degree ; aud that the greatness of a miracle is no ab
solute ground for disbelief if miracles be once admitted : (3)
the inferences about the statue are conceded, but reconciled
with the text. As the word chv (i"- i-) ^°^^ ^^^ neces
sarily mean a statue (see Buxtorf 's Lexicon, sub voc.), it
is possible to conceive it to apply to an obelisk, the exist
ence of which in Assyria is confirmed by recent excavations.
(4) Daniel's honourable mention of himself is not improper
when taken in its connexion. (5) The argument which relates
to the third division of the canon is a difficulty common to
several other books, and depends on the theory that the prin
ciple of arrangement of the three parts of the canon was
founded on the date of composition, aud not ou the subject
matter, which is disputed.
In reference to the definite character of the predictions in the
book of Daniel, the difliciUty stated in the text (p. 85.), reply
is easy. If the miraculous character of prophecy be admitted,
the definite character, though a pecuharity, cannot be a
difficulty. The definiteuess too in this instance does not differ
iu kind, hardly even iu degree, from the case of other prophe
cies, but must be admitted to be paralleled elsewhere, if the
objector does not assail those equally by the same process.
The pretence that the definite character ends at the reign of
Antiochus is shown to be incorrect, by proving (i) that the
prophecy about the Messiah (ix. 24-26) cannot refer to the
Maccabean deliverers; and (2) that the fourth empire pre
dicted is the Roman, which thus would be equally future
even to a writer of the Maccabean era.

Lect. IL] NOTE 17. 577
The further argument used in defence of the book, that the
New Testament authenticates the authorship of Daniel, is
necessarily only of value to those who admit, first, the au
thority of the New Testament, and who, secondly, aUow that
the New Testament writers never accommodate themselves on
questions of criticism to the mental state of their hearers.
. The opponents of this view on the contrary assert, that the
quotations iu the New Testament only affirm the predicate,
not the subject ; the truth of the theological sentiment quoted,
not the Uterary question of the authorship of the book from
which it is quoted.
An instructive paper on the book of Daniel by Mr. Westcott
appeared in Smith's Biblical Dictionary, from which a few of
the references to authors on Daniel (p. 83, note ^) were taken ;
and another in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopcedia by the lamented
Havernick.

Note 17. p. 90.
THE REPLY OF EUSEBIUS TO HIEROCLES.
In his book against Hierocles, Eusebius states (b. i.), that
he refutes only that portion of the work which related to
ApoUonius of Tyana ; referring to Origen's answer to Celsus
for a reply to the remainder of it; and discusses only the
paraUel of ApoUonius aud Jesus Christ. In b. i. he gives au
outline of the argutoeut of his opponent, with quotations, and
states his own opinion about ApoUonius ; throwing discredit
on the veracity of the sources of the memoirs ; and proceeds
to criticise the prodigies attributed to him, arguing that the
statements are incredible, or borrowed, or materially contra
dictory. Discussing each book in succession^ he replies in
b. i. to the statements respecting the early part of ApoUonius's
life ; iu b. ii. to that which concerned the journey into India ;
in b. iu. to that which related to his intercourse with the
Brahmins ; iu b. iv. to his journey in Greece ; iu b. v. to his
pp

578 NOTE 18. [Lect. II.
introduction to Vespasian in Egypt; in b. vi. and vii. to his
miracles; and in b. viii. to his pretence to foreknowledge.
He adds remarks on his death, and on the necessity of
faith; and repeats his opinion respecting the character of
ApoUonius. Note 18. p. 94.
THE PHILOPATRIS OF THE PSEUDO-LUCIAN.
This dialogue was held to be genuine by Fabricius ; but
Gesner disproved it, De Philopatride Lucianeo Dialogo Disser-
tatio, ij^o. See also Neander's Church History, E. T. (Bohn)
iii. 127, note.
The work hardly merits an analysis. Critias, looking ill, is
met by Triepho. After a little banter, iu which Triepho makes
fun of the gods by whom Critias swears, aud of their history
(§ 2-1 8) , Critias confesses that the cause that has made him
pale is the hearing bad news at au assembly of Christians.
Having first heard two Christian sermons, the one by a
coughing preacher, who was proclaiming release from debt,
the other by a threadbare mountaineer preaching a golden
age, he had afterwards been persuaded to go to a private
Christian meeting ; and it was the prediction which he there
heard of woes to the state which had so much frightened
him, § 20-27. Triepho has not patience to hear him narrate
the particulars. Another person enters, and the curtain faUs.
The theology of the dialogue is, if viewed on its negative
side, the ridicule of heathen mythology aud of Christian doc
trines aud habits ; and on its positive, the proclamation of one
God as the object of worship. The work exhibits internal
evidence of a knowledge of Christian practices, § 20, &c, and
Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity, § i2; uses Christian
phraseology, § 18 ; and calls Christians by the name given
by Julian, Galilaean, § 12.

Lect. II.] NOTE 19. 579

Note 19. p. 94.
THE WORK OF JULIAN AGAINST CHRISTIANITY.
It has been already stated that our knowledge of the con
tents of Julian's lost book is obtained from Cyril's reply to it ;
the text of which is accordingly given iu Spanheim's edition of
Julian. It is supposed to have consisted of seven books ; but
CyrU replies only to three.
In the brief account given iu the text of Lect. II. uo
attempt was made to form a hypothetical restoration of
Julian's work from the fragments, such as that which Pres
sense has attempted with regard to Celsus ; but only a few
of Julian's principles were presented concerning the foUowing
subjects: (i) on God; (2) on the Hebrew, aud (3) the Christ
ian reUgion. A few hints however toward such a scheme
may not be uninteresting. If, as seems probable, Cyril took
the statements of JuUau iu the order iu which they stood in
the now lost work, the plan of Julian's work may have been
somewhat as foUows.
He proposed to institute a comparison between the Hebrew
and Christian religions and literature on the one hand, and
the Greek on the other. If we may judge from the purport
of b. i. of Cyiil's work, Julian laid himself open to an attack
by maintaining the superior antiquity of heathenism, forget
ting that the Hebrew system was older than the Greek. At
least CyrU establishes this elaborately, and argues the direct
derivation of many parts of the heathen system from the
Jews. The argument on JuUan's part seems to have beeu
conducted by au examination of successive points in the
Hebrew history and system. In the beginning the Hebrew
cosmogony suggested an argument for the superiority of the
Platonic theory over the Mosaic. (Cyril, b. U.) Next he suc
cessively attacked the account of Paradise as a fable ; entering
p p 2

580 NOTE 19. [Lect. II.
upon both the probability of the story (Id. b. iii.) aud the
moral features of the Deity brought out in the narrative.
He seems also to have passed from the idea of creation to
that of providence, aud to have dwelt ou the inferiority of
the Hebrew scheme as a theory of providence, in having an
absence of inferior deities beneath the supreme one; and
resists the idea of the obligation of all men to embrace one
creed, inasmuch as they do not possess one character. (Id. b.
iv.) Next, turning to the Mosaic moral, law, he argued
against its originality, except iu relation to the sabbath ;
and passing through several of the narratives of Jewish
history, he pointed out characteristics of anget iu the Jewish
conception of Deity ; aud compared by instances the Greek
legislators and kings with Jewish. (Id. b. v.) Next he seems
to have passed from Judaism to Christianity, and attacked the
miracles, and the Christian morals and practices ; challenged
the reasons for prophecy ; and rallied the Christians on ac
cepting a religion derived from so insignificant a nation as
the Jews. (Id. b. vi.) He seems next to have returned to
the comparison of Greek and Hebrew warriors, and of Greek
and Jewish science, aud the educational value of the two
literatures ; and reverted to the subject of Christianity, by re
presenting it as a deviation from the very religion ou which
it depended. (Id. b. vii.) He continued this argument by
the special example of prophecy, examining several instances
wherein he contended that Christians had abandoned the
Jewish sense of them. (Id. b. vin.) Next he seems to have
continued a similar argument with regard to the Jewish
typical system, and the utter dissimilarity of the Christian
ideas from its purpose (Id. b. ix.) ; next to have assaUed
Christianity, by trying to show that there had been a simUar
development in Christianity itself, aud a departure from its
primitive form analogous to that which Christianity bore to
Judaism, alleging, incorrectly, that St. John was the first to
teach the divinity of Christ; and instanced examples, objec
tionable in practice, such as the worship of martyrs' tombs ;
and alleged against Christianity an eclectic spirit which had

Lect. II.] NOTE 19. 581
appropriated parts of the Jewish system but not the whole.
(Id. b. X.)
The reader must however be apprised that the above
scheme is entirely hypothetical. The objections of Julian are
facts ; the lacunm are filled up by conjecture.
The general spirit of Cyril's answer is the argumentum ad
hominem; showing that the same faults, even if true, are
equally true of the Greek scheme of religii)n.

LECTURE III,
Note 20. p. 125.
ON THE legendary WORK, ENTITLED " DE TRIBUS IMPOSTORIBUS.'^
Full particulars concerning the chapter iu literary history
which relates to this work, will be found in Prosper Marchand's
Dictionnaire Historique, 1758 (vol. i. pp. 312-319), aud more
briefly in F. W. Genthe's De Imposturis Religionum breve
Compendium, 1833. Both give lists of the earlier writers who
have treated of the subject; among which the most useful
will be found to be B. G. Struve, Dissertatio de Doctis Im-
postoribtis, 1703 (§ 9-23) ; De La Monnaie, Lettre sur le
Pretendu Livre ; aud Calmet, Dictionnaire, article Imposteur.
The rumours concerning the existence of a book w^th the
title " De Tribus Impostoribus " commence in the thirteenth
century. About the sixteenth, more definite but stiU un
satisfactory statements appear respecting its existence. Its
authorship has been attributed to above twenty distinguished
persons ; such as Frederick II, Boccaccio, Pomponatius,
Bruno, Vanini, &c.; the reasons for which in each case are
explained in Marchand. De La Monnaie however wrote,
questioning the existence of the book. A reply to his letter
respecting it was published in French at the Hague iu 17 16,
which pretended to offer an analysis of the ancient work ;
the falsehood of which however is shown by the Spinozist
phUosophy contained in it. Genthe in his tract, besides a
Uterary introduction in German, republishes the French
tract just named ; and also a second tract iu Latin, equally a
fabrication, bearing a sUghtly different title, De Imposturis

Lect. IIL] NOTE 20. 583
Religionum, Lucianlike in its tone, which, by an allusion to
Loyola (§ 20), cannot be older than the sixteenth century,
and is probably of German origin. Both writers conclude
that the existence of the book in the middle ages was legen
dary. Renan (Averroes, pp. 280, and 272-300,) and Laurent
(La Reforme, pp. 345-8,) coincide in this conclusion. The
title was a nwt, not a fact.
It is hardly necessary to state that the numerous writers
who, like Kortholt, have adopted the title " De Tribus Im
postoribus" for their books, have merely used the name in
irony, and do not profess to give transcripts of the old work.

LECTURE IV.
Note 21. p. 166.
ON SOME TECHNICAL TERMS IN THE HISTORY OF UNBELIEF.
There are a few terms^ which are frequently used iu refer
ence to unbelief, of which it would be interesting to trace
the. meaning and history. A few notes in reference to this
subject may both prevent ambiguity and throw some light
on a chapter in the history of language. The words alluded
to are the following : i. Infidel; 2. Atheist; 3. Pantheist;
4. Deist; 5. Naturalist; 6. Freethinker; 7. Rationalist;
8. Sceptic.
I. Infidel. — This word began to be restricted as a tech
nical term, about the time of the Crusades and throughout
the middle ages, to denote Mahometan ; as hemgpar excellence
the kind of unbelievers with which Christians were brought
into contact. Perhaps the first instance of its use in the
more modern sense, of disbeliever generaUy, is in the Collect
for Good Friday, " all Jews, infidels, Turks, heretics ;" which
words were apparently inserted by the Reformers in the first
Prayer Book (1547) ; the rest of the prayer, except these
words, existing in the Latin Collect of the ancient Service-
book from which it is translated. Even here, the position of
it may be taken to indicate the transition, as if infidel were
becoming a generic term, and Turk, i. e. Mahometan, were
becoming separated as one species of it. Ordinarily however,
during the sixteenth century, it is found in the popular sense

Lect. IV.] NOTE 21. 585
of unfaithful ; a meaning which the increasing prevalence of
Latin words was likely to bring into use. In wi-iters of the
seventeenth, the use of it in the sense of unbeliever becomes
more common : an instance from Milton is cited in Richard
son's Dictionary. In the beginning of the eighteenth century
it becomes quite common in theological writers iu its modern
sense; and toward the end of the century was frequently
appropriated to express the form of unbelief which existed
in France ; a use which probably arose from the circumstance
that the French unbelievers did not adopt a special name for
their tenets, as the English did, who had a positive creed,
(Deism,) and not merely, like the French, a disintegration
of belief.
2. Atheist. — This word needs little discussion. In modern
times it is first applied by the theological writers of the
sixteenth century, to describe the unbelief of such persons as
Pomponatius ; aud iu the seventeenth it is used, by Bacon
(Essay on Atheism), Milton (Paradise Lost, b. vi.), and
Bunyau (Pilgrim), to imply general unbelief, of which the
disbelief in a Deity is the principal sign. Toward the end
of the same century it is not unfrequently found, e. g. in
Kortholt's De Tribus Impostoribus, i68o, to include Deism
such as that of Hobbes, as well as blank Pantheism like
Spinoza's, which more justly deserves the name. The same
use is seen in Colerus's work against Spinoza, Arcana Atheismi
Revelata. Tillotson (serm. i. on Atheism) ; and Bentley (Boyle
Lectures) use the word more exactly ; and the invention
of the term Deism induced, in the writers of the eighteenth
century, a more limited and exact use of the former term.
But iu Germany, Reimannus (Historia Univ. Atheismi, 1725,
p. 437 seq.) and Buddeus (De AlAeismo et Super stitione, 1723,
ch. iii. § 2), use it most widely, and especially make it include
disbeUef of immortality. Also Walch, BibliotAeca TAeol.
Selecta, 1757, uses it to include the Pantheism of Spinoza.
(vol. i. p. 676, &c.) This transference of the term to embrace

586 NOTE 21. [Lect. IV.
all kinds of unbehef has been well compared with the exten
sion of the term ^dpjiapos by the Greeks'^. The wide use of
the term is partly to be attributed to the doubt which Christ
ian men had whether any one could really disbelieve the being
of a God, — an opinion increased by the Cartesian notions
theu common concerning innate ideas ; and ^vhether accord
ingly the term Atheist could mean anything different from
Deist. Compare Buddeus's Isagoge, p. 1203, and the chapter
" Au dentur Athei " in his work De AlAeismo. (ch. i.) By the
time of Stapfer's work, Instit. Theol. Polem. 1744, the two terms
were distinguished; see vol. ii. ch. vi. aud vii, and cfr. p. 587.
The term was subsequently applied to describe the views of
the French writers, such as D'Holbach, who did not see the
necessity for believing in a personal first Cause. In more
modern times it is frequently applied to such writers as
Comte ; whose view is indeed atheism, but differs from that
of former times, in that it is the refusal to entertain the
question of a Deity as not being discoverable by the evidence
of sense and science, rather than the absolute denial of his
existence. The Comtists also hold firmly the marks of order,
law, mind, in nature, and not the fortuitous concurrence of
atoms, as was the case with the atheists of France.
3. Pantheist. — One of the first uses of this word is by Toland
in the PantAeisticon, 1720, where however it has its ancient
polytheistic sense. It is a little later that it passes from the
idea of the worship of the whole of the gods to the worship
of the entire universe looked at as God.
This exacter application of it is more modern. It is now
used to denote the disbelief of a personal first Cause : but a
distinction ought to be made between the Pantheism like that
k The transition of the word miscreant from its original meaning of mis
believer (mdcroyant, misoredente), to its modern use as a mark of opprobrium,
is a similar instance. This change is a proof of the instinctive association
of the dependence of right conduct on right belief It is about the time of
Shakspeare that the change of meaning begins to appear. See Richardson's
Dictionary, sub voc.

Lect. IV.] NOTE 21. 587
of Averroes, which regards the world as an emanation, and
sustained by au anima mundi ; and that which, like the view
of Spinoza, regards the sum total of all things to be Deity.
This distinction was noticed and illustrated in p. 149. The
account of the word in Krug's Philosoph. Lexicon is worth
consulting. 4. Deist. — One of the first instances of the use of this
word occurs in Viret, Epistr. Dedicat. du %. vol de I' Instruction
Chretienne, 1563, quoted by Bayle, Dictionnaire, (note under the
word Viret) It is appropriated in the middle of the seven
teenth century by Herbert to his scheme, and afterwards by
Blount (Oracles of Reason, p. 99), to distinguish themselves
from Atheists. In strict truth, Herbert calls himself a Theist ;
which slightly differs from the subsequent term Deist, in so
far as it is intended to convey the idea of that which he
thought to be the true worship of God. It is theism as
opposed to error, rather than natural religion as opposed to
revealed : whereas deism always implies a position antago
nistic to revealed religion. But the distinction is soon lost
sight of; and Nichols (1696) entitles his work against the
deists, Conference with a Theist. Towards the close of the seven
teenth centui-y, and in the beginning of the eighteenth, the
Christian writers sometimes even use Deist as interchangeable
with Atheist, as shown above. It is also used as synonymous
with one of the senses of the word Naturalist. See below,
under the latter word ; and cfr. Stapfer, Inst. Polem. vol. ii.
p. 742, with p. 883.
5. Naturalist. — This word is used in two senses ; an ob
jective and a subjective. Naturalism, in the former, is the
belief which identifies God with nature; in the latter, the
behef in the suflSiciency of natural as distinct from revealed
religion. The former is Pantheism, the latter Deism. In the
former sense it is applied to Spinoza and others ; e. g. in
Walch's Biblioth. Theol. Select, i. 745 seq. In the latter sense
it occurs as early as 1588 iu France, in the writings of J. Bodin

588 NOTE 21. [Lect. IV.
(Colloq. Hetapl. 31. Rem. 2.) ; and towards the end of the
seventeenth century both in Germany and England, e. g. in
Kortholt's De Trib. Impost. 1680; and the Quaker, Barclay's
Apologia, 1679, p. 28. At the end of the seventeenth century,
and in the eighteenth, the name was applied iu England to
deists, e. g. iu Nichols's Conference with a Theist, pref. § 15) ;
and in Germany it became a commonly known word, owing
to the spread of the Wolffian philosophy. Stapfer {Instil.
Theol. Polem. 1744, vol. ii. p. 881.), using Wolffian phrase
ology, divides this latter kind of naturalism into two kinds,
viz. philosophical and theological. The philosophical kind
maintains the sufficiency of natural religion, aud disbelieves
revealed ; the theological kind holds the truth of revelation,
but regards it as unnecessary, as being only a republication
of natural religion. The adherent of the former is the
" Naturalist" of Kant ; the latter his "pure Rationalist" ( Verg.
Religion Innerhalb, 8fc.) ; the former the Deist, the latter the
Rationalist, of a school like that of Wegscheider, &c. (See
Lect. VI.)
Cfr. Bretschneider's Handbuch der Dogmatik, i. 72. note.
Hahn, De Rationalismi Indole (quoted by Rose on Rationalism,
2d ed. Introd. 'p. 20.) names writers who make a third kind of
naturalism, viz. Pelagianism ; but this is rare.
6. Freethinker. — This term first appears toward the close
of the seventeenth century. It is used of Toland, " a candid
Freethinker," by Molyneux, iu a letter to Locke 1697 (Lockers
Works, fol. ed. iii. 624) ; and Shaftesbury in 1709 speaks of
" our modern free- writers," Works, vol. i. p. 65. But it was
Collins in 17 13, in his Discourse of Freethinking, who first
appropriated the name to express the independence of inquiry
which was claimed by the deists. The use of the word ex
pressed the spirit of a nation like the English, in which,
subsequently to the change of dynasty, freedom to think aud
speak was held to be every man's charter. Lechler has
remarked the absence of a parallel word iu other languages.
The French expression Esprit fort, the title of a work of La

Lect. IV.] NOTE 21. 589
Bruyere, does not convey quite the same idea as Freethinker.
Esprit expresses the French liveliness, not the refieetive self-
consciousness of the English mind of the eighteenth century :
the/by^ is a relic of the pride of feudalism ; whilst the free
of the EngUsh Freethinker implies the reaction against it.
The English term smacks of democracy ; the French carries
with it the notion of aristocracy. (Lechler, Gesch. des Engl.
Deismus, p. 458.) There is uo word to express the English
idea in foreign languages, except the literal translation of the
English term. Even then, in French the expression la libre
pensee has changed its meaning ; since it is now frequently
used to describe the struggle, good as well as evil, of the
human mind against authority. It thus loses the unfavour
able sense which originally belonged to the corresponding
English expression.
7. Rationalist. — The history of the term is hard to trace.
The first technical use of the adjective rational seems to have
been about the seventeenth century, to express a school of
philosophy. It had probably passed out of the old sense of
dialectical (cfr. Brucker's Hist. Phil. iii. 60.), into the use
just named; which we find in Bacon, to express rational
philosophy, as opposed to empirical, (see a quotation from
Bacon's Apophthegms in Richardson's Dictionary, sub voc.) ; or,
as in North's P^wferc/^, 1657, p. 984, for intellectual philosophy
as opposed to mathematical and moral. The word Rationalist
occurs in Clarendon, 1646 (State Papers, vol. ii. p. 40.), to
describe a party of presbyterians who appealed only to " what
their reason dictates them in church aud state." Hahn (De
Rationalismi Indole) states that Amos Comenius similarly used
the term in 1661 in a depreciatory sense. The treatise of
Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity caused Christians
and Deists to appropriate the term, and to restrict it to reU
gion. Thus, by Waterland's time, it had got the meaning of
false reasoning on religion. (Works, viii. 6'j .) And, passing
into Germany, it appears to have become the common name
to express philosophical views of religion, as opposed to super-

590 NOTE 21. [Lect. IV.
natural. In this sense it occurs as early as 1708 in Sucre,
quoted by Tholuck, Vermischt. Schriften, ii. pp. 25, 26, and iu
Buddeus, Isagoge, 1730. pp. 213 aud 1151. It is also used
often as equivalent to naturalism, or adherence to natural
religion; with the slight difference that it rather points to
mental than physical truth.
The name has often been appropriated to the Kantian or
critical philosophy, in which rationalism M^as distinguished
from naturalism in the mode explained under the latter word.
(See Kant's Religion Innerhalb der Ch-enzen der Blossen Vernunft,
pp. 216, 17.) During the period when Rationalism was pre
dominant as a method in German theology, the meaning aud
limits of the term were freely discussed. The period referred
to is that which we have called in Lect. VI. p. 325 the second
subdivision of the first of the three periods, into which the
history of German theology is there divided; viz. from 1790-
18 10; occupying the interval when the Wolffian philosophy
had given place to the Kantian, and the philosophy of Fichte
and Jacobi had not yet produced the revival under Schleier
macher. This form of rationaUsm also continued to exist
during the lifetime of its adherents, contemporaneously with
the new influence created by Schleiermacher. (See Lect. VI.)
The discussion was not a verbal one only, but was intimately
connected with facts. The rationalist theologians wished to
define clearly their own position, as opposed on the one hand
to deists and naturalists, and on the other to supernaturalists.
The result of the discussion seemed to show the following
parties : (i) two kinds of Supernaturalists, (a) the Biblical,
such -as Reinhardt, resembling the English divines of the
eighteenth century m ; (/3) the Philosophical, sometimes caUed
Rational Supernaturalists, as the Kantian theologian Staiidlin :
(2) two kinds of Rationalists, (a) the Supernatural Rationalists,
like Bretschneider, who held on the evidence of reason the
m It is hardly necessary to state, that when the tone of the English theolo
gical writers of the eighteenth century is described as rationalism, it is used
in a good sense. (E. g. Essays and Reviews, Ess. vi.) The writers of that
century would be classified under the school of supernaturalists here named.

Lect. IV.] NOTE 21. 59I
necessity of a revelation, but required its accordance with rea
son, when communicated ; (/3) the pure Rationahsts, like Weg
scheider, Rohr, aud Paulus, who held the sufficiency of reason ;
and, whUe admitting revelation as a fact, regarded it as the
repubhcation of the reUgion of nature. It is this last kind
which answers to the " theological naturaUst," named above,
under the word Naturalist. It is also the form which is called
Rationalismus vulgaris (as being opposed to the later scientific),
though the term is not admitted by its adherents. This
rationahsm stands distinguished from naturahsm, i. e. from
" phUosophical naturalism" or deism, by having reference to
the. Christian religion and chm-ch ; but it differs from super
naturalism, in that reason, not scripture, is its formal principle,
or test of truth; and virtue, instead of "faith working by
love," is its material principle, or fundamental doctrine. A
further Subdivision might be made of this last into the
dogmatic (Wegscheider), and the critical (Paulus). Cfr.
Bretschneider's Dogmatik, i. 8 1, and see Lect. VI. Also consult
on the above account Kahnis, p. 168, and Leehler's Deismus,
p. 193, note ; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch. § 279, note.
This account of the term being the result of the contro
versy as to the meaning of the words, it only remains to name
some of the works which treated of it.
The dispute on the word Rationalism is especiaUy seen at
two periods, (i) about the close of the last century, when the
supernaturalists, such as Reinhardt and Storr, were main
taining their position against rationalism. One treatise, which
may perhaps be considered to belong to this earlier period, is
J. A. H. Tittmann's Ueber Supernaturalismzis, Rationalismus,
und AtAeismus, 1816 ; (2) in the disputes against the school of
Schleiermacher, when supernaturalism was no longer thrown
on the defensive. This was marked by several treatises on the
subject, such as Staiidlin's GescAicAte des Rationalismus und
Supernaturalismus, 1826 (see the definitions given in it, pp. 3-
and 4.) ; Bretschneider's remarks in his Dogmatik (i. pp. 14,
71,80. ed. 1838.); and HistoriscAe Bemerkungen Ueber den
GebraucA der Ausdrilcke Rational, und Supernat. (Oppositions-

592 NOTE 21. [Lect. IV.
Schrift. 1829. 7. I.) ; A. Hahn, De Rationalismi qui dicitur
Vera Indole, 1827, in which he reviews the attempts of
Bretschneider and Staiidlin to give the historic use of the
word; Hohr's Brief e Ueber Rationalismus, -pTp. 14-16 ; Paulus's
Resultate aus den Neuesten VersucA des Supernat. Gegen den
Rationalismus, 1830; Wegscheider's Inst. Theol. Christiance
DogmaticcR (7th ed. 1833. §§ 11, 12. pp. 49-67), which is fuU
of references to the literature of the subject. The controversy
was aggravated and in part was due to the translation of
Mr. J. H. Rose's Sermons on Rationalism. He was answered
by Bretschneider in a tract, in which that theologian entered
upon the defence of the rationalist position. Mr. Rose (Introd.
to 2d ed. 1829. p. 17.) enters briefly upon the history of the
name. Krug (Philos. Lexicon) also gives many instances of
its use iu German theology.
To complete the account it is only necessary to add, that it
is made clear by Lectures VI. and VII. that if subsequent
theological thought in Germany to the schools now described,
be called Rationalism for convenience by English writers, the
term is then used iu a different sense from that in which it is
applied in speaking of the older forms.
8. Sceptic. — This term was first applied specifically to one
school of Greek philosophers, about B. C. 300, foUowers of
Pyrrho of Ehs (see Ritter's Hist, of Phil. E. T. in. 372-398;
StaiidUn's GescAicAte des Scepticismus, vol. i ; Tafel's Geschichte
und Kritik des Skepticismus, 1836; Donaldson's Greek Lit.
eh. xlvii. § 5.) ; and also to a revival of this school about
A. D. 200. (See Ritter, Id. in. 258-357 ; Donaldson, ch. Ivi.
§ 3.) The tenet was a general disbeUef of the possibUity of
knowing reahties as distinct from appearances. The term
thus introduced, gradually became used in the specific sense
of theological as distinct from philosophical scepticism, often
with an indirect imphcation that the two are united. Walch
restricts the name Sceptic to the latter kind. Writing about
those who are caUed ludifferentists (Bibl. Theol. Select, i. 976.),
he subdivides them into two classes ; viz. those who are in-

Lect. IV.] NOTE 21. 593
different through liberahty, and those who are so through
unbehef The former are the " Latitudiuarians," the latter the
Sceptics above named. Cfr. also Buddeus, Isagoge, pp. 1208-
10. In more recent times the term has gained a stiU more
generic sense in theology, to express aU kinds of religious
doubt. But its use to express philosophical scepticism as
distinct from religious has not died out. In this sense
Montaigne, Bayle (cfr. Staiidlin's Gesch. des Scept. p. 204.),
Huet, Berkeley, Hume, and De Maistre, were Sceptics ; i. e.
sceptical of the certitude of one or more branches of the
human faculties. Sometimes also it is used to express systems
of philosophy which teach disbelief in the reahty of meta
physical science ; e.g. the positive school of Comte ; but this
is an ambiguous use of the term. For philosophical scepticism
may be of two kinds ; viz. the disbelief in the possibility of
the attainment of truth by means of the natural faculties of
man ; and the disbehef of the possibUity of its attainment by
means of metaphysical, as distinct from physical, methods.
The former is properly called PhUosophical Scepticism, the
latter not so. Pyrrho in ancient times, aud Hume iu modern,
represent the former ; the Positivists of modern times, and
perhaps the Sophists of the fifth century B. C, represent the
latter. It is hardly necessary to repeat that the phUosophical
scepticism proper of Berkeley and Hume must not be con
founded with religious. They may be connected, as iu Hume,
or disconnected, as in Berkeley or De Maistre. See on this
subject Morell's Hist, of Philos. i. p. 68, ii. ch. vi.
On the subject of the words explained iu this note see,
besides the works referred to, Walch's Bibl. Theol. Select, i.
ch. V. sect. 5, 6, 7, II, and iii. ch. vii. sect. 10. § 4. 1757 :
Pfaff's Introd. in Hist. Theol. lib. ii. b; iii. § 2. 1725 : Stapfer's
Inst. Theol. Polem. ii. ch. vi, vii, x; iv. ch. xiu. 1744: Rei
mannus' Hist. Univ. Ath. sectio i. 1725 : J. F. Buddeus's De
Atheismo, 1737, ch. i. and ii : J. F. Buddeus's Isagoge, 1730,
pp. 1203-1211 : Leehler's GescA. des Deismus, 1841; Schluss-
bemerkungen, p. 453 seq. : J. Fabricius, 1704.. Consid. Var.
Controv. p. i : Staiidlin's GescA. des Skepticismus vorzilglicA in

594 NOTE 22. [Lect. IV.
RiicksicAt auf. Moral, und Religion. 1794 : J. F. Tafel's GescA.
und Kritik des Skepticismus und Irrationalismus, with reference
to Philosophy, 1834.

Note 22. p. 192.
woolston's DISCOURSES ON MIRACLES.
In addition to the notice of these Discourses given iu the
text, it may be well to give a brief account of their contents.
In Discourse I. Woolston aims at shovsdug, (a) that healing
is not a proper miracle for a Messiah to perform, and that the
fathers of the church understood the miracles aUegoricaUy :
(/3) that a literal interpretation of miracles involves incredi
bility, as shown in the miracle of the expulsion of the buyers
aud sellers from the temple, the casting out devils from the
possessed man of the tombs, the transfiguration, the marriage
of Cana, the feeding the multitudes : (y) the meaning of
Jesus when he appeals to miracles. In Discourse II. he selects
for examination the miracle of the woman with the issue
of blood, and also her with the spirit of infirmity ; also the
narrative of the Samaritan woman, the triumphal entry into
Jerusalem, the temptation, the appearance of the spirits of
the dead at the resurrection. In Discourse III. he selects
the cursing of the fig-tree, and the miracle of the pool of
Bethesda. It may be allowable to give one iUustration of
the coarse humour with which he rationalizes the sacred
narrative iu his explanation of this last miracle. He says of
the healed man, "The man's infirmity was more laziness
than lameness ; and Jesus only shamed him out of his pre
tended idleness by bidding him to take up his stool and walk
off, and not lie any longer like a lubbard and dissemble among
the diseased." It will be perceived, that if the coarseness be
omitted, the system of interpretation is the naturalist system
afterwards adopted by the old rationalism (rationalismus vul
garis) . In Discourse IV. he selects the healing with eye-salve
of the bUnd man, the water made into wine at Cana ; where

Lect. IV.] NOTE 22. 595
he introduces a Jewish rabbi to utter blasphemy, after the
manner of Celsus ; aud the healing of the paralytic who was
let doMHi through the roof, which, as being one of the most
characteristic passages of Woolston, Dean Trench has selected
for analysis. (Notes on Miracles, Introduction, p, 8i.) In
Discourse V. he discusses the three miracles of the raising of
the dead ; aud in Discourse VI. the miracle of Christ's own
resurrection. His conclusion (iu Disc. I.) is, that " the history of Jesus,
as recorded in the evangelists, is au emblematical representa
tion of his spiritual life in the soul of man ; and his miracles
figurative of his mysterious operations;" that the four Gospels
are in no part a literal story, but a system of mystical philo^
sophy or theology.

qq 2

LECTURE V.

Note 23. p. 250.
THE literary COTERIES OF PARIS IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
An account of these coteries may be seen in Schlosser's
Hist, of EigAteenth Century, (E.T.) vol. i. ch. ii. § 4; the par
ticulars of which chapter he has gathered largely from the
Autobiography of Marmontel, aud from Grimm's Correspond
ence. See also Sainte-Beuve's Papers (Portraits, vol. U.) on
Espiuasse aud Geoffriu. These coteries were specially four :
viz. (i) that of Madame de Tencin, mother of D'Alembert,
which included Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Helvetius,
Marivaux, and Astruc ; (2) of Madame Geoffriu, who took
the place of De Tencin. It included, besides some of the
above, Poniatowsky, Frederick the Great when in France,
the Swedish Creutz, and Kaunitz, the whole of the Voltaire
school, and at first Rousseau; (3) of Madame Du Deffaut, con
temporary with Geoffriu. This was less a coterie of fashion,
aud more entirely of intellect; and included Voltaire, D'Alem
bert, HenaiUt, and Horace Walpole when in Paris. Later
Mile. Espiuasse took the place of Deffant, and this became
the union-point for all the philosophical reformers, D'Alem
bert, Diderot, Turgot, and the Encyclopsedists ; (4) of D'Hol
bach, consisting of the most advanced infidels.

Lect. v.] NOTE 24. 597

Note 24. p. 268.
THE TERM IDEOLOGY.
As the term Ideology has lately been employed in a novel
theological sense, (e. g. Essays and Reviews, Ess. iv.), and as
it is employed in these lectures in its ordinary sense, as
known in metaphysical science, it may prevent ambiguity to
state briefly the history of the term.
The word Ideology, as denoting the term to express meta
physical science, seems to have arisen in the French school of
De Tracy at the close of the last century. Cfr. Krug's PAilos.
Lexicon, sub voc.
As early as Plato's time metaphysics was the science of
Ihiai, i. e. oi forms ; but the word Ihia implied the objective
form in the thing, not the subjective conception in the mind.
It was Descartes who first appropriated the word Idea in the
subjective sense of notion. This arose from the circumstance
that in his philosophy he sought for the idea in the mind,
instead of the essence iu the thing contemplated, as had beeu
the case in mediseval philosophy. In the following century
Locke's inquiries, together with Berkeley's speculations, caused
metaphysics to become the science of ideas. The representative
theory of perception which was held, increased, if it did not
cause, the confusion : all knowledge was restricted to ideas.
The subsequent attempts of CondiUac and others to carry
forward the analysis of the formation of our ideas still farther,
caused metaphysics to be restricted to them alone. This
apparently was the reason why De Tracy gave the name of
Ideology to the science of metaphysics in the Elemens d'ldeo-
logie'^. It was the sceptical notion of the unreality of the objects
n In the time of Napoleon I. the circumstance that the ideological philoso
phers sympathised with the Eevolution, in opposition to his r^ime, led to au
application of the term as synonymous with Eepublican.

598 NOTE 25. [Lect. V.
as distinct from the ideas, partly the offshoot of a sensational
philosophy, Uke that of De Tracy, partly of the spiritual
philosophy of Germany, which farther caused the term Ideo
logical to slide into the sense of ideal ; a meaning of the term
which the employment of it in English iu recent theological
controversy seems likely to make common.

Note 25. p. 274.
the works of dr. geddes.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, free thought
began to manifest itself in England under a rationaHstic form,
in a Roman catholic. Dr. Geddes, who lived 1 737-1 802. (See
Life by Mason Good, 1804.) Vol. i. ofhis Translation of the
Bible appeared in 1792; vol. u. iu 1797; aud his Critical
Remarks (vol. i.) in 1800. His free criticism is seen in dis
cussing the character of Moses (pref. to vol. i. of Transl) ;
the slaughter of the Canaanites (pref. to vol. ii.) ; Paradise
(Orit. Rem. p. 35.) ; the remarks ou Genesis xlix. (Id. p. 142.) ;
on the Egyptian plagues (p. 182.) ; on the passage of the Red
sea (p. 200.). As soon as the first volume was published the
Catholic bishops silenced him. Geddes was a believer in
Christianity ; but felt so strongly the deist difficulties, that he
sought to defend revelation by explaining away the super
natural from the Jewish history, and inspiration from the
Jewish literature. His views, so far as they were not original,
were probably derived from the incipient rationalistic specu
lations of Germany, though he quoted almost none of the
German except Michaelis and Herder. His position in the
history of doubt is with the early rationalists, not with the
deists. A writer of somewhat similar character, Mr. Evanson,
a unitarian, wrote a critical attack ou the Gospels, TAe Dis
sonance oflAe Four generally received Evangelists, in 1805.

Lect. V.] NOTE 26. 599
Note 26. p. 275.
THE works op conyers MIDDLETON.
Dr. Conyers Middleton Uved from 1683 to 1750. In 1749
he published A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the
Early Church ; " by which it is shown that we have no suffi
cient reason to beUeve, upon the authority of the primitive
fathers, that any such powers were continued to the church
after the days of the apostles." He was attacked by Dodwell,
Church, and Chapman, who described the work as discrediting
miracles. The object of it was to place the church iu the
predicament of denying altogether the authority of the fathers,
or else of admitting the truth of the Romish doctrine of
miracles. Gibbon, when young, chose the latter horn of the
dilemma. A list of Middleton's works iu chronological order
will be found in vol. i. of his Miscellaneous Works (1752).
The one which created disputes iu theology besides the above
was. An Anonymous Letter to Waterland, 1731, in reference to
his reply to Tindal's work ; which was answered by bishop
Pearce. His posthumous work ou The Variations or Incon
sistencies wAicA are found among tAe Four Evangelists, (Works,
vol. ii. p. 22.) ; his essay ou The Allegorical Interpretation of
the Creation and FaU (ii. 122.) ; aud his criticism iu 1750 ou
bishop Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy, may cause Middleton
to be regarded as a rationahst. See his Works, ii. 24, 131,
and iii. 183.

LECTURE VL
Note 27. p. 300.
ON PIETISM IN GERMANY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
The person who commenced the religious movement after
wards caUed Pietism, was Johu Arndt (1555-1621), who
wrote TAe True CAristian, a work as useful religiously, as
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or Doddridge's Religion in the
Soul. Spener followed (1635-1705). The private religious meet
ings which he established about 1675, Collegia Pietatis, were
the origin of the application of the name Pietism to the
movement. One of his pupils was the saintly A. H. Fraucke,
whose memoir was translated 1837. Paul Gerhardt, the well
known author of the German hymns, also belonged to the
same party. The university of Halle became the home of
pietism ; and the orphan-house established in that town was
renowned over Europe. The opposition of the old Lutheran
party of other parts of Germany produced controversies which
continued till about 1720 ; for an account of which, see Weis
mann, Mem. Eccl. Hist. Sacr. 1745, p. 1018 seq.
Pietism propagated its infiuence by means of Bengel in
Wurtemburg and the university of Tiibingen, and in Moravia
through Zinzendorf. Arnold and Thomasius belonged to this
party at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (Etinger
at Tiibingen, Crusius at Leipsic, and, to a certain extent,
Buddeus also, partook of the spirit of Pietism. It manifested
a tendency to religious isolation ; and iu its nature combined

Lect. VL] " NOTE 28. 601
the analogous movements subsequently carried out in Eng
land by Wesley and by Simeon respectively.
A brief account of it is given in Hase's Church History,
§ 409 : and for a fuller account, see Schrockh, Chr. Kirchen
geseh. vol. viii. pp. 255-91 j Pusey on German TAeology, part i.
(67-113); part ii. ch. x ; Amand Saintes, Crit. Hist, of
Rationalism, E. T. ch. vii. Spener's character and life may
be seen iu Caustein's memoir of him ; and in Weismann, pp.
966-72. A philosophical view of Pietism, as a necessary
stage iu the development of German religious life, is given by
Dorner iu the Studien und Kritiken, 1840, part. ii. 137, Ueber
den Pietismus. Kahnis, who himself quotes it, (Hist, of Germ.
Prot) E. T. p. 102, regards Pietism as ministering indirectly
to rationalism ; much in the same way as bishop Fitzgerald
criticised the similar evangelical movement of England, Aids
to FaitA, p. 49, &c.

Note 28. p. 317.
CLASSIFICATION OF SCHOOLS OF POETRY IN GERMANY.
The materials for understanding the awakening of literary
tastes in the last century iu Germany, through Lessing's in
fluence, are furnished by Schlosser, History of tAe EigAteenth
Century. See vol. i. ch. iii. E. T. for the period from the
Pietists to Lessing ; aud ch. v. in reference to the Deutsche
Bibhothek, aud also vol. ii. ch. ii. § 3. See also VUmar's
History of German Literature (translated and abridged by
Metcalfe). It may facilitate clearness to name the classification of
schools of German poetry and taste, which is given in the last-
named work. They are divided into five classes : viz. I. that
which was antecedent to Lessing, which is subdivided into (i)
the Saxon school of Gottsched ; and (2) the Swiss school of
Bodmer, and of Wieland in his early manner ; which was
connected with the Gottingen school of Haller, Hagedorn,
aud Klopstock, together with the Stolbergs and Voss. II.

602 NOTE 29. [Lect. VI.
Lessing, and writers infiueuced by him, such as (i) Kleist and
the Prussian group ; (2) Wieland in his second manner, and
J. Paul Richter; (3) Kotzebue, who was a mixture of Wieland
and Lessing. In these two periods Klopstock, Wieland, and
Lessing, were the inteUectual triumvirs. III. The " Sturm
and Drange" period; the Weimar school with its second
literary triumvirate, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. IV. The later
schools : (i) the romantic, viz. the two Schlegels, Novalis,
Tieck, Uhland, Fouque ; (2) the patriotic of the liberation
wars, Arndt and Koerner. V. The modern school of disap
pointment and uneasy reaction against the absolute govern
ment, H. Heine and Griin.
It is an interesting psychological problem to trace the close
analogy between the schools of poetical taste and the corre
sponding character in the contemporary criticism of ancient
literature, the speculative philosophy, and the theology.

Note 29. p. 317.
THE WOLFENBiJTTEL FRAGMENTS.
It has been stated iu the text that these were Fragments,
which Lessing published in 17 74 ^nd the following years, of
a larger work which he professed to have found iu the library
of Wolfenbiittel, where he was librarian. They were published
in the third of the series of works, Beitrdge zur Geschichte
und Literatur aus den Sohdtzen der Herzoglichen BibUothek zu
Wolfenbiittel, under the title, Fragmente Eines Ungenannten
Ilerausgegeben von G. E. Lessing.
After Lessing's death, C. A. E. Schmidt published further
Fragments, under the title Uebrige noch Ungedruckte Werke des
Wolfenbiittelschen Fragmentisten. Ein Nachlass von G. E.
Lessing. The authorship of the Fragments was suspected- at the time
by Hamann ; but it remained generally unliuowu, and became
as great a secret as the authorship of the Letters of Junius,
until 1827, when the question was discussed by Gurlitt in

Lect. VL] NOTE 29. 603
the Leipziger Literatur-Zeitung , N". 55, and proof was offered
that the author was Reimarus of Hamburg.
The result of this aud subsequent investigations is as fol
lows. The original work of Reimarus, from which the Frag
ments were taken, remains in MS. in the public library of
Hamburg. It was entitled Apologie oder Schutz-Schrift fiir
die vernunftigen Verehrer Gottes. When written, it was shown
only to intimate friends. Lessing was aUowed to take a copy,
and showed the MS. to Mendelssohn in 177 1. Lessing wished
to publish it entire; but the censorship would not give the
imprimatur. Consequently it came out in fragments among
the series of contributions from the Wolfenbiittel library,
which were free from the censorship. The pretended dis
covery of them in the library was a mere excuse ; and there
is proof in Lessing's remains that he admitted the fact. See
the statement of these facts in Lessing's Leben, by Guhrauer,
(of which, vol. i. is by Danzel ; vol. ii. by Guhrauer,) vol. ii.
b. iii. ch. iv. p. 133, note 3, and b. iv. p. 141 °.
Several writers, subsequently to Gurlitt's examination of
the question of authorship, have written, either on the ques
tion of the authorship of the Fragments, or ou the contents
of the larger work from which they are selections. In the
Zeitschr ft fiir die Historische Theologie for 1839, part iv. is
an article composed from W. Korte's life of Thaer, in refer
ence to the former question. Also Dr. W. Klose examined
the original MS. iu the Hamburg library, and published au
account of it, with considerable extracts, iu several of the
numbers of the same journal, Nieduer's Zeitschrift, 1850,
(partiv; 1851, part iv; 1852, part iii.) It is iu the pre
face (Vorbericht) to the first of these parts that the account of
Reimarus's own mental history is given, to which allusion
was made in the text of Lecture VI. (p. 318.)
During the last year the question has been made the subject
of a monograph by the celebrated Strauss. He had heard of
° These references to Guhrauer were kindly suggested by the Rev. E. H.
Hansen, Praelector of Theology in Magdalen College, who studied the Frag
ments a few years ago for lectures which he delivered on Lessing,

604 NOTE 29. [Lect. VI.
the existence of a copy of the original MS. in private hands
at Hamburg, and proceeded to collate it with the view of
publication. He found it to differ in some respects from the
Fragments published by Lessing and Schmidt. He did not
consider the hitherto unpublished parts of the work suffi
ciently important, either in a literary or historical point of
view, to merit publication in extenso ; but contented himself
with stating the results of his study of it in a small work,
H. S. Reimarus und seine Schutz-schrift, 8fc. 1861. It contains
a brief account of the literary question of the Fragments, aud
of Reimarus's life and stand-point; also an analysis of the
unpublished parts of the work, written with the clearness
which characterises all Strauss's didactic works. It would
appear from the analysis that the pieces printed by Lessing
were not only some of the ablest, but some of the least offen
sive of the whole work. The concluding pages contain some
very interesting remarks, in which Strauss contrasts the
criticism of the eighteenth century with that of the present
day; the characteristics of the former being, that it charges
imposture ou the scripture writers; that of the latter, that
it admits their honesty, but explains away their statements
and opinions by reference to psychological and historical
phenomena. In addition to the sources given above, information is con
tained in the following works: Schrockh's Christ. Kirchengeseh.
vi. 275 ; Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century, E. T.
vol. ii. 266 seq. ; Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte, § 275 notes,
(where reference is made to Guhrauer's Bodin' s Heptaplomeres,
1 841, p. 257 seq.;) Conversations-Lexicon, art. Reimarus;
Amand Saintes' History of Rationalism, E. T. p. 84; Kahnis,
Id. p. 145 seq. ; K. Schwarz, Lessing als Theolog, of which
ch. iv. is on the Fragmeyiten-streit ; Strauss's Kleine Schriften,
1 861; Lessing's Werke, xu. 503. (ed. Laehmann.)

Lect. VL] NOTE 30. 605

Note 30. p. 342.
schleiermacher's EARLY STUDIES.
It may be interesting to trace more fully the parallel
noticed in the text between the development of Plato's
thoughts aud Schleiermacher's early studies.
Though it is impossible to arrange the dialogues of Plato
in the chronological order iu which they were composed, so
as to be able to study the master in his successive styles, yet
several systems of arrangement, founded on different principles,
seem to coincide so far as to render it probable that Plato's
great theory of ideas or forms grew upon him through these
stages : viz. (i) it was viewed as a fact of mind, au innate
conception of forms (e. g. in Meno) ; (2) as useful in guiding
perplexed minds to truth, and sifting philosophical doctrines
by means of the dialectical process, e. g. in the Thesetetus and
Parmenides; (3) as representing an objective reality, a true
cause in nature external to the mind, as well as an hypothesis in
science (e. g. iu the Republic) ; (4) as having a mystical con
nexion with divinity, and furnishing a cosmogony. Whether
this passage, from the subjective conception to the objective
reality, be really or only logically the order of development in
Plato's ideal theory, it is clear that the growth of Schleier
macher's mind admits of comparison with this supposed order
of development in Plato ; though there is a slight variation
in the steps of the process. Schleiermacher went through
three stages, (i) the philosophy of Jacobi, (2) of Fichte, and
probably (3) of ScheUing; from which he learned respectively
(i) to have faith in our intuitions, (2) to construe the outward
by the inward, (3) to believe in the power of the mind to pass
beyond the inward, aud apprehend absolute truth. If the
resemblance to the above account of Plato were exactly perfect,
the love of a phUosophy Hke Fichte's ought to have preceded
that of Jacobi. Schelling's influence, it ought to be noted,

606 NOTE 31. [Lect. VL
is very slight on Schleiermacher, compared with that of the
others. The traces of it which appear are perhaps resolvable
into a similarity to Jacobi's system.

Note 31. p. 345.
schleiermacher's THEOLOGICAL WORKS.
The theological works of Schleiermacher are doctrinal,
critical, aud pastoral. The latter consist chiefly of the ser
mons which he delivered in Berlin. The critical works are
mentioned in a foot note to p. 350 ; but it may be useful to
give a brief notice of his doctrinal works, of which some are
referred to in the text.
The earliest was the Reden iiber die Religion an die Gebil-
deten unter iAren VerdcAtern, 1799, (Discourses on Religion
addressed to the educated among its despisers,) which ought
not to be read in earlier editions than the fourth (1829), the
notes of which contain explanations. The object of these
discourses was to direct attention away from the study of
religion in its outward manifestations, to its inward essence ;
which he showed to lie neither iu knowledge nor in action,
but in feehng. See especially Discourse II. Uber das
Wesen der Religion. For the effect which the discourses
created, see Neander's testimonjr, quoted by Kahnis, Hist, of
Prot. E. T. p. 208.
The works which succeeded the Reden were the following :
in 1800, the Monologen (Soliloquies); iu 1803, Grundlinien einer
Kritik der bisAerigen SittenleAre (Critique on previous Ethical
teaching) ; in 1 806, Die Weinachtsfeier (Christmas Eve) ;
in 181 1, the Kurze Darstellung des Theologischen Studiums
(Plan of Theological Study ; — lately translated), which gave
rise to the branch now common in German universities, called
Theologische EncyclopddieV ; iu 1821, Der Christliche Olaube
V For a description of the division of Theological study implied by this term,
see Credner's Introduction to Kitto's Bihl. Cyclop. ; and the translation of
Tliohu'k'a Lectures, given in the American Biblioth. Sacra. 1844.

Lect. VL] NOTE 31. 607
nach den Grundsdtzen der Evangelischen Kirche (the Christian
Faith on the principles of the Evangehcal Church), which
was improved in the subsequent editions.
As the Reden breathed the spirit of Jacobi, the Monologen
breathed that of Fichte. They study the ethical, as the former
the rehgious side of man ; the action of the personal will as
distinct from the feehngs of dependence. The dialogue of
the WeiAnacAtsfeier showed Christ as the means of effecting
that oneness with the absolute which the two former works
had shown to be necessary.
In the Glaubens-lehre, Schleiermacher gives a general view
of dogmatic theology, viewed from the psychological side, i. e.
its appropriation by the Christian consciousness. He studies
(i) man's consciousness of God, prior to experience of the
opposition of sin and grace ; next, after being aware of such
an opposition, as (2) the subject of sin, and (3) the subject of
grace ; or, in theological language, the states of innocence, of
sin, and of grace. Each of these is subdivided in spirit, even
when not in form, in a threefold manner ; describing respec
tively the condition of man, the attributes of God, and the
constitution of the world, as they relate to the above three
named states. The subjective and psychological character of
the inquiry is 'seen iu the fact, that when treating the second
of these subdivisions, — the Divine attributes, — he does not
study them as peculiarities of God's nature, but as modifica
tions of the mode in which we refer to God our own feeling
of dependence. This subjective tendency Ulustrates the in
fluence of Fichte and Jacobi on Schleiermacher.
The contrast is an interesting one between a dogmatic
treatise of the schoolmen, of the reformers, and of Schleier
macher. The first commences with the Deity and his attri
butes, and passes to man : the second generally begins with
the rule of faith, the Bible ; aud then, passing to the Deity,
proceeds mainly after the scholastic fashion : the third begins
aud ends with the human consciousness, and its contents.

608 NOTE 32. [Lect. VI.

Note 32. p. 356.
ON SOME GERMAN CRITICAL THEOLOGIANS. (dE WETTE,
EWALD, ETC.)
Some of the theologians of the critical school which is
described in the text, deserve a more full notice than was
possible in the foot notes to the Lecture.
De Wette (1780-1849,) was educated at Jena, under
Griesbach. He was made Professor at Berlin iu 1810, but was
deprived in 181 9, iu consequence of the Prussian government
having opened a letter of condolence written by him to the
mother of Sand, the assassin of the dramatist Kotzebue. (Por
the history of the excited state of the German students at this
time, see K. Raumer's Pddagogik, vol. iv. translated.) In 1826
he was made Professor at Basle. An interesting life of him ¦
is given in the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1850. His most im
portant works are, his Einleitung ins Alt. und Neu. Test.;
Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 1819; his New Translation of the
Bible (1839) ; and Commentaries ou several parts of Scrip
ture. On his doctrinal views see Kahnis, p. 231 seq. He
is said to have been a man of sweet aud amiable character;
and indeed he appears to be so in his writings. It has been
remarked, as a proof of his singular fairness, that he not only
candidly states the opinions of an opponent, but even some
times confesses his inability fully to refute them.
Along with De Wette ought to be classed a great number
of distinguished men, most of whom wrote parts of the Com
mentary which he designed under -the name of Exegetisches
Handbuch. They were mostly critics rather than writers on doc
trine, aud represent the modified state of thought of his later
life ; but still maintain, for the most part, his critical stand
point in reference to the scriptures ; and therefore, though eon-
temporary with the new Tiibingen and other schools described
in Lecture VII, which have arisen since Strauss's criticism, in

Lect. VL] NOTE 33. 609
that which we called the third period of our sketch, they really
belong to the school of critics of the older or second period.
Such are, or were, Gesenius, Knobel, Hirzel, Hitzig, Credner,
Tueh, E. Meier, Hupfeld, aud Stahelin. See Am. Saintes,
part ii. ch. xi.
H. Ewald, born 1803, became Professor at Gottingen 1831.
In 1837 he was one of the seven professors who sacrificed
their position when the new king of Hanover, Ernest, in
terfered with the constitution. From 1838 to 1848 he was
professor at Tiibingen: since 1848 at Gottingen. His works
are partly ou the oriental languages, and partly on theology.
Among the latter the chief are, Die Poetischen Biicher des
Allen Test. 1835; Die PropAeten des Allen Bundes, 184c;
and the GescAicAte des Volkes Israel, 1842-50; a work which,
whatever may be thought of the theological aspects of it, if
regarded iu respect of scholarship, poetic appreciation, and
grandeur of generalization, is one of the most remarkable
books ever produced even in Germany. (Renan has based
upon it the most brilliant of his essays, ess. ii. in the Etudes
d'Hist. Religieuse) His works on the New Testament are
partly directed against the views of the new Tiibingen school.
He differs from the older critical school of De Wette, in ap
plying himself more exclusively to the Semitic literature ; and
cannot be classed vrith them in any other way than that he
represents the effort of independent criticism, linguistic and
historic ; removed from the dogmatic school, and also from
the later forms of critical. Note 33. p. 360.
THE NAME JEHOVAH.
The name mrT^ is written JeAovaA, by transferring to it
the vowel points of the word Adonai, 12'1N , which the pious
scruples of the Jews led them to substitute for it. It was
probably read Yahveh. In reference to the meaning of El,
and Jehovah, see Gesenius's Lexicon on the words 7« (p. 45-
R r

610 NOTE 34. [Lect. VI.
Engl. Transl.), and n^T]^ (p. 337-) ; also the word AaJeA,
n'TT (p. 221.) See likewise Hengstenberg's AutAentie. des
PentateucAes, i. 222 seq.; especially p. 230, where he shows that
jaAveA, mn"", is derived by regular analogy from the future
of the verb hajeh, rvr\ (= haveh, iTjrT). See also M. Nicho
las's Etudes Grit, sur la Bible, pp. 115, 163; and the article
Jehovah in Smith's Biblical Dictionary.
Note 34. p. 362.
THE USE OF THE NAMES OF DEITY IN THE COMPOSITION OF
HEBREW PROPER NAMES.
A curious hst of these is given by Dr. Donaldson. (CArist
ian OrtAodoxy, pp. 235, 6.)
Examples of names before the age of Saul, compounded
with El, are seen iu ^Wcanah, El-i, Samu-el, Abi-el. When
Saul reigns we find the name Jah or Jehovah appear, in JeAo-
nathan, Ahi.^'a^, Jedid-«flA ; and during the regal period iu
the list of kings, 3os-iaA, JeAo-ahaz, JeAo-i-akira, Zeiek-iaA ;
and among the prophets, Isa-iaA, Jerem.-iaA, Mica-m^, JeAo-
sheah. After the fall of Judah we find the name El reappear;
e. g. Ezeki-e^ (= Hezek-iaA), Dani-el, Micha-e^, Gabri-e^,
.E'i?-iashib, Shealti-e^. After the captivity the name Jah
recurs ; e. g. Nehem-««^, Ze^han-iaA, Zechar-iaA, Malach-iai.
The name El-i-jaA (= my God is Jah) is an instance of a
word compounded with both names.
Donaldson tries to generalize from the above to the effect,
that, previously to the age of the early kings, proper names
compounded -with El were prevalent; and in the regal and
prophetic age, those compounded with Jah; again, after the fall
of Judah, aud in the captivity, those with El ; and after the
captivity, with JaA. But the selection is too limited to admit of
such a generalization being satisfactory. It does however
prove the knowledge of the twofold conception imphed by the
use of the names.

LECTURE vn.
Note 35. p. 372.
THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY.
The purpose of this note is to supply references to sources
for the study of Hegel's philosophy ; and also to point out
the paraUel aud contrast in the central thought aud tendency
of the phUosophies of ScheUing and Hegel.
The most inteUigible account of Hegel's system is given
by Morell, History of Philosophy, u. 161-196; and the best
general view of its tendencies, especiaUy in reference to
theology, is contained in an instructive article by E. Scherer,
in the Rev. des Deux Mondes for Feb. 15, 1861, from which
assistance has beeu derived in this lecture. The student will
also find great help in Chalybaiis's Hist, of Spec. PJiilos. ch.
xi-xvii (translated 1854.) ; and A. Vera's Introduction a la
PAH. de Hegel, 1855 ; together with his Fi-ench translation of
Hegel's Logic. (Vera is one of the few Italians who under
stand Hegel.) The PAHosophie der GescAicAte, and GescAicAte
der PAHosophie are the two most intelligible of Hegel's works ;
the former of which is translated into English ; but the study
of his Logic is indispensable, for seeing the applications of his
method, as well as for appreciating his metaphysical ability
and real position.
Schelling aud Hegel both seek to solve the problems of
philosophy, by starting a priori with the idea of the absolute ;
but in Schelhng's case it is perceived by a presentative power
(intellectual intuition), and iu Hegel's by a representative. The
R r 2

612 NOTE 35. [Lect. VIL
former faculty perceives the absolute object; the latter the abso
lute relation, if such a term be not a contradiction. In each case
the percipient power is supposed to be " above consciousness ;"
i. e. not trammelled by those limitations of object aud subject
which are the conditions of ordinary consciousness. In both
systems a kind of threefold process is depicted, as the law or
movement according to which the absolute manifests itself".
Sir W. HamUton has shown the inconsistencies of ScheUing's
system, in criticising that of Cousin, who was his great expo
nent; see Dissertations, ess. i. (reprinted from the EdinburgA
Review, 1829); aud Mr. Mansel has extended a simUar analysis
to Fichte aud Hegel. (Bampton Lectures, ii. aud iii ; aud article
Metaphysic in Encyclop. Britann. loth ed. p. 607, &c.) See also
Remusat De la Philosophie Allemande, Introduction.) Yet a
grand thought, even though, psychologically speaking, it be
an unreal one, lies beneath the awkward terminology of the
systems of Schelling and Hegel ; and their method has influ
enced many who do not consciously embrace their philosophy.
The effect produced by ScheUing is the desire to seize the prime
idea, the beau ideal of any subject, and trace its manifesta
tions in the field of history ; a method which is seen in the
French historic and critical literature of the followers of Cousin
in the reign of Louis Philippe. (See Note 9. aud the references
given in Note 44.) The spirit produced by Hegel, is the
desire to realise the truth contained in opposite views of the
same subject ; to view each as a half truth, and error itself as
a part of the struggle toward truth. This spirit and method
are seen iu such a writer as Renan, aud is clearly described
in the passages quoted from Scherer aud others in Note 9.
° Hegel used to claim that his doctrine was merely giving expression to the
ancient speculations of Heracleitus concerning the union of opposites. It is
probable that the fundamental idea was the same ; but Hegel supplied an
interpretation and application of the principle which the ancient philosopher
could not contemplate. Both in truth committed the same fundamental
mistake, of making the mind the measure of things. The union of opposites
is an act of thought, not a fact relating to things.

Lect. VIL] NOTE 36. 613
Note 36. p. 381.
THE CHRISTOLOGY OF STRAUSS.
The foUowing extract from Strauss's work conveys his
Christology. " This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as sub
ject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we
place, instead of an individual, an idea ; but an idea which has
an existence in reality, not in the mind only, like that of
Kant. In au individual, a God-man, the properties and func
tions which the church ascribes to Christ contradict them
selves ; in the idea of the race they perfectly agree. Humanity
is the union of the two natures ; — God become man ; the
infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit
remembering its infinitude : it is the child of the visible
mother and the invisible father. Nature and Spirit : it is the
worker of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history
the spirit more and more completely subjugates nature, both
within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert
matter on which he exercises his active power : it is the
sinless existence, for the course of its development is a blame
less one, poUution cleaves to the individual only, and does not
touch the race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises,
and ascends to heaven ; for, from the negation of its phenomenal
life, there ever proceeds a higher spiiitual Ufe ; from the sup
pression of its mortality as a personal, rational, and terrestrial
spirit, arises its union with the infinite spirit of the heavens.
By faith in this Christ, especiaUy in his death and resurrec
tion, man is justified before God ; that is, by the kindling
within him of the idea of humanity, the individual man par
ticipates in the divinely human life of the species. Now the
main element of that idea is, that the negation of the merely
natural and sensual Ufe, which is itself the negation of the

614 NOTE 37. [Lect. VII.
spirit, is the sole way to true spiritual life. This alone is the
absolute sense of Christology. That it is annexed to the
person and history of one individual is a necessary result of
the historical form which Christology has taken." Leben Jesu,
vol. U. § 151. (pp. 709, 10. 4th ed. 1840.) ; in the English
translation, vol. iii. p. 433-

Note 37. p. 385.
STRAUSS.
A few facts concerning the life and writings of Strauss
may be interesting.
He was born in 1808, and was educated at Tiibingen and
Berlin. He was Repetiteur at Tiibingen in 1 835, when he pub
lished his Leben Jesu, described in the text of Lect. VII. In
1837 he published his Streit-schriften, or replies to his critics.
In 1839 he was elected Professor of theology at Zurich, an
appointment which produced such popular indignation that
it was cancelled, and a change of government was caused
by it. In 1840 he published Die Christliche Glaubens
lehre im Kampfe mil der modernen WissenscAaft dargestellt ;
iu which, after an introduction concerning the history of
opinions on the relation of the two, he discussed the prin
ciples of Christian doctrine, such as the Bible, Canon, Evi
dences, &c, and next the doctrines themselves; viz. (part i.)
on the divine Being and His attributes, as an abstract con
ception ; (part ii.) ou the same, as the object of empirical
conceptions in its manifestation in creation, &c. See Foreign
Quart. Rev. No. 54. 1841 ; aud C. Schwarz's GescA. der
n. TAeol. b. ii. ch. i. He published also Monologen in dem Frei-
hafen, translated 1848 ; Soliloquies on the Christian Religion,
its Errors, and Everlasting Truth.
In 1848, the revolutionary year, he was elected to the
Wurtemburg parliament ; and took the conservative side,
to the surprise of his constituents. He has subsequently
lived chiefly at Heilbronn, engaged iu literary labours ; mostly

Lect. VIL] NOTE 38. 615
writing the lives of sceptics, or persons connected with free
thought whose fate has been like his own. Among these
have been, a sketch of JuUan, 1847, intended probably as a
satire on the romantic reaction conducted by the late king of
Prussia ; a Life of Schubart, 1 849, a Swabian poet of the last
century; one of Maerklin 1851, his own early friend; one of
N. Frischlin, 1856, a learned German of the sixteenth century ;
a life of Ulric von Hiitten, 1858 ; and Gesprache von Hiitten,
1861 ; also Kleine ScAriften, 1861 ; aud a work on Reimarus,
1862, concerning which see Note 29. Some of these works
are reviewed in the Nat. Rev. Nos. 7. and 12.

Note 38. p. 385.
THE REPLIES TO STRAUSS.
Schwarz gives an interesting account of the various
replies to Strauss, and of the works written by various theo
logians to support their own point of view against his criti
cisms. Gesch. der n. Theol. p. 113 seq.
The work was criticised, —
I. From the old school of orthodoxy, (a) by Steudel,
Strauss's own teacher, in a work called Vorlaiifig zu Beherzig-
enden zur BeruAigung der Gemiithen. (/3) From the new
orthodoxy, by Hengstenberg, in the Evangelische KircAen-
zeitung. (y) From the school which formed the transition
between this and that of Schleiermacher, by Tholuck, in
Qlaubwilrdigkeit der Evangelischen GeschicAte, 1837.
II. From the school of Schleiermacher, (a) in Neander's
Leben Jesu, (/3) in UUmann's Studien und Kritiken, 1836,
part iii. reprinted as Historisch oder Mythisch.
III. By the Hegelians ; i . from the " right" of the party
(using the illustration drawn from the distribution of pohtical
parties in the foreign parliaments), (a) by Goschel in the
work Von Gott, dem MenscAen und dem GottmenscAen, 1 838 ;
{/3) by Dorner in the GescAicAte der Person Christi, 1839.
(y) by Gabler and Bruno Bauer^ who at that time was on

616 NOTE 38. [Lect. VII.
the side of orthodoxy: 2. from the Hegelian "centre"
in SchaUer's Der HistoriscAer CAristus und die PAilosopAie,
1838; 3. from the "left/' (a) by Vfeisse, Die Evangelische
Geschichte kritisch und philosophisch bearbeitet, 1838: (ff) by
WUke, Der Ur-evangelist ; both of whom regard St. Mark's as
the primitive evangUe ; and (y) by Bruno Bauer, Kritik der
Synoptiker, 1842, when he had changed to the opposite side
of the Hegehan school: (8) by Luetzelberger ; (e) by A.
Schweizer; both of whom wrote on St. John's Gospel. Se
veral of the latter were not intended to be replies to Strauss,
but attempts to reconsider their own position in relation to
him. This was particularly the case in reference to the
works which were written by the Tiibingen school, (see next
note,) of which Schwarz gives a description, p. 153 seq.

Note 39. p. 392.
THE TUBINGEN SCHOOL.
The leader of the historico-critical school which bears this
name, was C. Baur (1792-1860), author of various works on
the history of doctrine, and on church history both doctrinal
and critical. His work against the Roman catholic theologian
Moehler, which first made him noted, was Gegensatz des
Protestantismus und KatAolicismus nacA den principien und
Haupt-dogmen der beiden LeArbegriffe, 1833. An account of
his works is given in C. Schwarz's GescA. der neuest. Theol.
p. 165. The following maybe here specified: his work on
the history of the doctrine of the atonement. Die LeAre von
der Versohnung, 1838; also Lehrbuch der Christlichen Dogmen
geschichte, 1845, and Die Christliche Kirche der drei ersten
Jahrhunderte, 1853 ; the last part of which has been published
since his death. Some interesting remarks, comparing him
with Strauss aud Schleiermacher, (though hardly fair to the
last,) appeared in the National Rev. Jan. 1861.. See also the
sketch by Nefftzer in the Revue Germanique, vol. xiii.
parts I and 2.

Lect. VIL] NOTE 40. 617
The other members of the school besides Baur have been
Schwegler, the commentator on Aristotle's Metaphysics,
and author of a Roman history (died 1857) ; Zeller, also a
writer on Greek philosophy, now Professor of philosophy at
Marburg; whose appointment to Berne in 1847 has been
elsewhere stated (Note 42) to have caused a similar excite
ment to that of Strauss to Zurich : Koestlin, Professor of
Eesthetics at Tiibingen ; and Hilgenfeld, Professor of theology
at Jena, who is the best living representative of the modified
form which the school has now assumed. Respecting these
theologians, see the notes which Stap has affixed, in the
Revue Germanique, vol. ix. p. 560, &c. to a French translation
of a part of Schwarz's Geschichte.
Concerning this school see Baur's Die Tubinger Schule,
1859. The organ of it from 1842-57 was the Theologische
JahrbiicAer, edited by Baur. Since it ceased to be published,
HUgeufeld has created a new journal, the ZeitscArift fiir Wis-
senscAaftlicAe TAeologie, which receives the support of critics
not directly of the Tiibingen school, such as Hitzig and
Knobel. Perhaps Schneckenbiirger ought to be ranked with
the same school; and Gfrorer also, author of a work on
Philo, 1 831; but he differed iu holding the authenticity of
St. John's Gospel; and in 1846 became a Roman catholic,
and Professor at Freiberg. See also a paper in Von Sybel's
Hist. ZeitscAr. for i860, part iv. translated in BibliotA. Sacr.
Jan. 1862. The Tiibingen school has met with able oppo
nents, e. g. Thiersch, Dorner, Ewald, Bleek, Reuss, and Hase.

Note 40. p. 396.
THE GERMAN THEOLOGIAN ROTHE.
Concerning this theologian, now Professor at Heidelberg,
see C. Schwarz's GescAicAte der neuesten TAeologie, p. 279 seq.
The cause why the remarks in the text are so brief in regard
to Rothe is, that the writer has not been able to see his more

618 NOTE 40. [Lect. VII.
important works, which are out of print; and accordingly
he derives his knowledge of him at second hand.
Rothe's two most important works are. Die Anfdnge der
Christlichen Kirche, 1837, and Theologische Ethic, 1845. An
account of the former is given iu the often-quoted article by
Scherer (Rev. des Deux Mondes, 'Eeh. 15. 1861), pp. 848-860.
It appears to view the Christian church from its ideal side,
to absorb the individual in the constitution, to show that
Christendom is the object of Christianity, an institution the
great means of embodying the doctrines ; but that, as society
becomes fermented by its spirit, the office of Christianity is
fulfilled by the state, and the beau ideal would be a society
where the church is the state. It is a view similar to that of
Coleridge in his Church and State, or of Dr. Arnold in his
work on the Church. Mr. F. C. Cook, in Aids to Faith (p. 159),
has given some interesting illustrations of this point.
The second of Rothe's works, the Ethic, is briefly described
in a previously-cited article iu the Westminster Review for April,
1857. Like the former it starts with the idea of the identity
of ethics and religion. Regarding personality or the moral
relations as the central fact of existence, it surveys material
creation under this aspect. Next it discusses the moral and
religious history of man, as means of enabling the personal
being to subordinate to himself all the forces without or
within him. The object apparently is to show, that the
spiritual element is not an intrusion, but the normal develop
ment of nature or providence; aud the moral society, the
State, the normal development of the religious society, the
Church. Rothe's later views have hardly been developed m
system. According to him theology is theosophy ; philosophy
can work out a theology from the consciousness.
It is probable that the writer of these lines is unintention
ally doing injustice, through having to trust to secondhand
information, to one who is regarded in Germany as belonging
to the highest order of scientific theologians ; though perhaps
the interesting account of C. Schwarz leaves little to be desired.
Rothe, in accordance mth his wish to strengthen orthodox

Lect. VIL] NOTE 41. 619
theology by an independent philosophy, and not to support
it by material agency, has lately taken part politically on the
liberal side, in some questions connected with the church
constitution of Baden. (See Colani's Nouvelle Revue de la
Theologie, Aug. 1862.)

Note 41. p. 402.
the MOST MODERN SCHOOLS OP PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
IN GERMANY.
The object of this note is to carry ou the history of philo
sophy and theology to a more recent date than was necessary
in the text.
The ideahst school of philosophy reached its highest point
with Hegel; and subsequently there has been as great a
reaction against this mode of speculation, as the contempo
raneous theological one in religion.
The philosopher who was directly or indirectly the cause of
the realist tendency was Herbart (1776-1841), who suc
ceeded Kant at Konigsberg, and afterwards was Professor at
Gottingen. Concerning his system, see MoreU's History of
Philosophy, ii. 206, &c. Chalybaiis, ch. iv. and v. He fol
lowed out the material, as distinct from the formal, system
of the Kantian philosophy, and strove to develope it.
The schools of modern Germany may be reckoned as
four : —
(i.) The young Hegelian school; e.g. of the younger Fichte,
which, though professedly idealistic, and adopting Hegel's
method, is reaUy affected largely by realistic tendencies, and
seeks for a philosophy of matter as well as form. See Tail
landier iu Revue des Deux Mondes for 1853, vol. iii. p. 6'3,o^;
and also Oct. 1858; Morell's History of Philosophy, ii. 216,
&c. Kahnis, p. 252. This school manifests decidedly realistic
tendencies in Kuno Fischer, Weisse, and Branis.
(2.) That which shows a tendency to approach the subject
of mental phenomena from the physiological side, in Drobisch,

620 NOTE 41. [Lect. VII.
Waitz, and Volkmann, somewhat in the manner of the
English writer Herbert Spencer.
(3.) A school decidedly materiahst, e. g. Vogt, Moleschott,
aud Biichuer. See Taillandier, Rev. des Deux Mondes, Oct.
1858. These three tendencies form a gradation from the ideal,
aud approach the real, until at last the ideal itself is de
stroyed. The other tendency, if such it may be caUed,
stands apart, and is akin to the older ideal ones. It is
(4.) that of Schopenhauer (1788-1860), aud tries to solve
the problem of existence from the side of the will, instead of
the intellect, and bears a remote resemblance to that of
Maine de Biran. His system has long been before the public,
but since his death has been much discussed. It has been
explained by Fraueustadt. It is also well described iu the
Westminster Review, April, 1853.
We now pass from the schools of philosophy to theology.
We have implied that there are three great schools -of it in
Germany; the Neo-Lutheran, the Mediation school, and the
Tiibingen; and have seen that they are each in course of
transition into slightly new forms in younger hands. The
" Neo- Lutheranism" has assumed a more ecclesiastical posi
tion, which has been called " Hyper-Lutheranism." The
" Mediation" school of Schleiermacher is replaced by a newer
form, modified by Hegelianism iu Dorner. It remains to
add, that the Tiibingen school is giving place to another, of
which C. Schwarz himself is a representative — a kind of de
rivation from the Tiibingen school and that of De Wette.
Its organ is the Protestantische Kirchenzeitung ; and to it are
saidP to belong Dr. Dittenberger, court preacher at Weimar, C.
Schwarz, who holds the same position at Gotha; EUester of
Potsdam, Sydow of Berlin, aud Schweizer of Zurich. Their
position seems to be more ethical and less evangelical than the
members of the party of free thought in the protestant church
of France.
P This statement is taken from n, paper on the history of German Theology,
in the Spectator, May 24, 1S62.

Lect. VIL] NOTE 42. 621

Note 42. p. 407.
TABLE EXHIBITING A CLASSIFICATION OP GERMAN
THEOLOGIANS.
The following Classification of the tendencies of German
theological thought, and of the chief theological writers, is
merely a tabular arrangement of the statements already made
in the text and notes of Lectures VI. and VII. A systematic
view, in addition to the description given in the Table of
Contents, is likely to be useful to the student ; and this must be
the excuse for the apparent boldness shown in attempting such
a scheme. The list is not offered as a complete arrangement ;
but it is hoped that it includes nearly aU the important
writers. It is based mainly on the account which German
writers themselves have given of their fellow-countrymen ;
the references to which were given iu the Preface, and in
the notes to Lectures VI. and VII. Particulars respecting
the lives and works of the various theologians may be found
also in Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte, part v. notes ; in Vape-
reau's Diet, des Contemp. ; and some notices of the older ones
are given in Mr. Rose's work on German Protestantism, 2d ed. ;
and in Winer's Handbuch der Theologischen Literatur.

Pbeliminakt Condition of Geeman Theology. 1600-1750.
1600-1730. I. The Dogmatic tendency

Old Lutheran School.
Calov.Quenstedt, &c.

Mosheim.

Helmstadt School.
Calixt, &c.

1730-1750.

[New influences ia-
troduced; viz. i. Wolff's PkUosophy ;
which inttuenoed,
Baumgarten. Canz.Toellner.

1. The Pietistic.
J. Arndt.
Spener.
A. H. Francke.
Paul Gerhardt.
Thomasius.Arnold. Bengel.
Weismann.Buddeus.Lange. Pfaff.

2. English Deism.

French Infidelity at the
court of Fred. II.]
La Mettrie.
D'Argens.Maupertuis.

Oi2«

o 1-3
I*'

fef

<!

lOD I. 1750-
Sub-period I.

1810- 1 750-1 790.
In the Church

Dogmatic. Crusius.

Literary.
Michaelis.Ernesti.
The EosenmuUers.
Jerusalem.
Spalding.

Freethinking. Semler.

Outside the Church

Sub-period II. 1790-1810.
[New Influences introduced ; viz.
I. Supernaturalism.

Biblical.
Knapp. Storr.Stilling. Oberlin.

Philosophical. Reinhardt. Seller.
Flatt.Planch.
Schrockh. Morus.
Doderlin.Steudel.

Illuminism, like the English Deism. Illuminism, Kk^ the French.
Lessing. (Wolfenbiittel Fr.) Knuzen
Nicholai. Dippel. '
Mendelssohn. Basedow.
Eeimarus. Edelmann.
Steinbart. Bahrdt.
Teller.

I. The Literary Influence of Weimar. 2. the Kantian Philosophy.]
2. Eationalism. (Dogmatic and Critical.)

Kantist.
Staudlin.
Tieftrunk.Ammon. ,

Supernatural Eationalism.

Bretschneider.Tzchirner.

Eationalism (proper.)
Eichhorn.
Paulus. Wegscheider.Ebhr.
Eckermann.C. F. A. Fritsche.
Vater.L. Bauer.
Von Lengerke.
Von Bohlen.
Henke.

oh3
I*'JO

Oi

Period II. 1810-1835.

[New influences introduced :
I. New Systems of Speculative Philosophy ; Jacobi, Fichte, Fries, ScheUing, and Hegel.
2. The Eomantic School of Poetry : L. F. Stolberg, the Schlegels, Tieck, Novalis, Fonqu^.
3. The Moral Tone of the Liberation War.
4. T^e Lutheran and Biblical feeling indicated by Harm's Theses.]
Doctrinal School.

Critical School.

1 . Eevival of
Biblical and
LutheranTheology.
Developed in
the next pe
riod.

2. Influenced by Fichte and Jacobi.
Schleiermacher.
Neander and Tholuck

3. Derived from Hegel.
Developed chiefly in next Period.

TwestenH. Olshausen
Sack
Tittmann EbrardJul. MiiUer
LangeLiicke

Nitzch
TJllmann Hundeshagen
Umbreit Stier Hagenbach
Baumgarten-Crusius
GieselerBleek.

Eight.
Goeschel, &c.
Gabler.

 1 
Centre.
Daub. Marheinecke SchaUer.

Left.

Extreme Left.

Influenced by
Fries.
De Wette.
Hase.

Vatke.Weisse.WUke. Strauss.
Ltitzelberger.

Gesenius.Knobel.Hirzel. Hitzig. Credner.
Tuch. Stahelin.

Ewald.

Somm Catholic Tlieologiam during the same period : Alber, Jahn, Liebner; Hug, SaUer, Staudenmeier; Hermes, Goerres, Moehler; Dollinger.

Oi

O 1-3

o

Period III. 1835-1862.
Prior to 1848.

Within the Church.

I. Neo-Lutheranism.
Hengstenberg. Havernick.

2. The Mediation School.
Dorner.
Bothe.

3. The Tiibingen School.
C. Baur.
Schwegler.
ZeUer.Hilgenfeld.Koestlin.

Subsequent to 1848.
[New Influences : — i. The Political Eeaction.
2. The New HegeUan Philosophy.
3. The Empirical Philosophy resulting irom Herbart,]

Lerbs

I. "Hyper-Lutheranism." 2. The Mediation School 3. New Eclectic School.
continues.

Stahl and Guericke.
Harless " Rudelbach.
Delitzch " KeU.
Baumgarten " Schmid.
Kurtz " Kahnis.
Kliefoth

Dittenberger.C. Schwarz.
EUester. Sydow.
A. Schweizer.

External to the Church.
4. UnbeUef.
Strauss.B. Bauer.
Feuerbach and Euge.
Stirner (Schmid),

4. Materialist Philosophy.
(See Note 41. p. 620.)

o

OiOl

626 NOTE 43. [Lect. VII.
Note 43. p. 407.
THE MODEUN THEOLOGY OF SWITZERLAND AJfD HOLLAND.
It vdll be observed, that uo notice has been taken in the
text, of the modern theology of Switzerland aud Holland. It
may be desirable therefore to suggest an outline here.
The Theology op Switzerland. — The materials for the
account of it are scanty aud disjointed. Since the reform of
the Swiss universities during the present century, theological
thought has chiefly taken the colour of the adjacent coun
tries, Germany or France, in the respective universities where
those languages are spoken. In the church of Geneva, about
a quarter of a century ago, there seem to have been two parties,
similar to those in the French protestant church: one profess
ing the old Calvinistic orthodoxy, which had degenerated into
semi-Socinianism; the other, the result of a revival of biblical
truth and spiritual religion, under such pastors as D'Aubigne,
the historian of the Reformation, and recently Gaussen, the
writer on Theopneustie. A movement was commenced under
Vinet of Lausanne, which may be considered to be the only na
tive school which Switzerland has produced. It was a mixture
of science and earnestness, founded chiefly on a combination of
Pascal and Schleiermacher. Concerning Vinet, see a very
just article in the North British Review, No. 4a, August 1854;
and see below. Note 46. Scherer was a friend of Vinet, but
has since changed his views, or, as some would think, deve
loped logically their results, and has long left his professor
ship at Geneva, and acts with the new liberal school in the
French protestant church. See Note 46.
German Switzerland has been connected with Germany
rather than France. The teaching at the university of Basle
was moulded by De Wette, who was made professor there in
1 826, a few years after his removal from Berlin. Its character,
however, expressed the more orthodox and moderate views
of his later years. The instructive writer Hagenbach, pro-

Lect. VII.] NOTE 43. 627
fessor there, Jjelongs to the " mediation school" of theology,
and is a worthy representative of its learned and devout spirit.
Zurich possessed a teacher, Usteri, belonging to the school
of Schleiermacher ; and others, whose tone rather resembled
that of the critical school of De Wette, or of the Tiibingen
school. The well-known critics Hitzig and Knobel, were for
merly its professors; and at present Schweizer is there, con
cerning whom see Note 41. A few years after Strauss had
pubhshed his noted work, he was elected, as stated before,
theological professor at Zurich, but the appointment was can
celled by a revolution of the people. See the Address of Orelli
(translated 1844). The appointment of Zeller of the Tii
bingen school to Berne, created a similar excitement. In the
proceedings of the Evangehcal Alhance at Geneva, 1861, pro
fessor Riggenbach, of Basle, stated that some of the journals
of eastern Switzerland adopt sceptical principles. (News of the
Churches, Oct. 1861.) He named the Zeit-stimmen aus der
Reformirten Kirche der Schweiz, which is edited at Winter-
thur by Lang, a pupil of Baur. In German Switzerland,
however, as well as French, there exists a biblical school of
theology ; of which professor Riggenbach of Basle is an ex
ample. The Theology op Holland. — The sources were given above
(p. 154.) for the study of Arminianism and Calvinism in the
seventeenth century. The subsequent history is soon told.
We omit, of course, the history of the Romish church in Hol
land, and of the Jansenist secession from it, which took place
in 1705.
The Protestant church continued to exist in two branches ;
viz. the Calvinists, or established church, who professed the
creed of the synod of Dort ; and the Remonstrants, who pro-
fessed the moderate Arminianism of Episcopius ; similar to
that which was taught by our own Hales and Cliillingworth
The studies in the estabhshed church were specially devoted to
exegesis, in reference to which the name of Schultens of Ley
den, in the last century, is well known ; manifesting a shght
inclination to free inquiry in Van der Palm (i 763-1 838).
S S 2

628 NOTE 43. [Lect. VII.
About 1830, the condition of the church was a cold ortho
doxy, much like that of the " moderate" party in the church
of Scotland before the rupture of 1843. The stronghold of
this party was the university of Utrecht. Living isolated, and
resembhng the Enghsh in not easily admitting foreign influ
ences, the Dutch read little of German literature. A period
ical existed, the Theological Contributions, which used to bestow
praises on the school of Bretschneider.
A little before 1830, a movement of evangelical piety had
been kindled in the church, through the influence of the
poet Bilderdyk (who died 1831), and of his two disciples, the
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam, Da Costa (who died in i860),
and Cappadose. Their position however was, a return to
the rigid decrees of the synod of Dort and the theology of
Calvin. They resembled very nearly the party in the church
of Scotland which formed the free chui-ch. They acquainted
themselves with German theology for the purpose of refuting
it; and Da Costa wrote a work. The Four Witnesses, on the
four Evangelists, in reply to Strauss ; which has been trans
lated. In 1834 they separated from the national church
under two parties, De Cock and Scholte, and endured much
persecution. The Voices of the Netherlands was the period
ical which expressed their views. Van Oosterze, pastor at
Rotterdam, belonged to them; This party has been repre
sented in the Dutch parliament by Groen van Printsterer. It
has lost its political influence in some degree in recent years,
by opposing political reforms.
Almost simultaneously with this Calvinistic revival, a school
arose in the university of Groningen, a " mediation" school,
modelled upon Schleiermacher, under the influence of the
Platonist Van Heusde (i 778-1 839), led by Hofstede de Groot,
Pareau, and Muurling. Its organ was Truth in Charity. The
views held were a spiritual Arianism. They may be seen in a
novel pubhshed recently (1861) at Cape Town, for the Dutch
colonists, entitled. The Pastor of Vliethuizen, or Conversations
about the Groningen School, translated by Dr. Lorgiau.
These three parties were the chief in Holland, until about

Lect. VIL] NOTE 44. 629
1 850. Since then a more decided movement of free thought
has begun in the university of Leyden. Up to that time the
venerable Van Hengel remained there, the example of the old
philological orthodoxy of Holland. Two professors have now
created au independent movement, more nearly resembling that
of the Tiibingen school; J. H. Scholten, in dogma; and, with
rather more advanced views, the orientalist H. Kuenen in
philology. (A list of some of Scholten's publications may be
seen in the Westminster Review for July, 1 862, page 43, note.
His Hist, comparee de la Philos. et de la Relig. was translated
by Reville, in the Nouvelle Rev. de la Theologie, April i860.)
Busker Huet has asserted still more advanced views than
these, apparently simple naturalism. The Positivist philo
sophy has found an advocate in Opzoomer, one of the pro
fessors at Utrecht.
The sources of this account are chiefly found in UU
mann's paper in the Studien und Kritiken, 1840, part iii.
translated by professor Edwards, with additions, in the
American Bibliotheca Sacra for 1 845 ; and in an interesting
article by A. Reville of Rotterdam, himself one of the liberal
school of the French protestant church, in the Revue des Deux
Mondes for June 15, i860. Chautepie de la Saussure, pastor of
the Walloon church at Leyden, formerly of the Groningen
school, has also written in French, La Crise Religieuse en Hol-
lande, 1859; but it is chiefly devoted to personal questions.
A sketch of the Dutch universities and their intellectual
characteristics was given by Esquiros in the Revue des Deux
Mondes, 1 856, vol. iii.

Note 44. p. 418.
THE eclectic SCHOOL OF FKANCE.
The Eclectic School is sketched in Morell's History of Phi
losophy, YQ\.ii.c.\iii; Damiron's Essai sur I' Histoire de la Phi
losophie en France au igeme siecle, i8a8, pp. 280-385; Nette
ment's Histoire de la Litt. Frang. sous la Restoration, 1853,

630 NOTE 44. [Lect. VII
vol. i. b. ii. p. 127 seq.j vol. ii. b. viii. p. 290 seq.; , and Hist, de
la Litt. Frang. sous le Gouvernement de Juillet, vol. i. b. vi: also
in Taine's PAHosophie Frangaise du igeme siecle. The last
writer is wholly unfavourable to the school, on the ground of
the uselessness of metaphysical philosophy.
The eclectic school was the means of uniting together the
philosophy of Scotland and Germany, which had previously
been running in separate streams. The leading minds of the
school have been four, — Royer Collard, Maine de Biran, Cou
sin, and Joufiroy.
The founder of it, R. Collard (i 763-1 845), was a disciple of
the Scotch school, who about 181 a commenced an attack on
the philosophy of CondiUac, very similar to that of Reid on
Hume. He devoted himself to the analysis of the intellectual
and moral parts of men, in order to assert the existence of
a world within, independent of sensational impressions. The
next writer, Maine de Biran (1766— 1824), devoted himself
especially to the examination of the will and the notion of
cause, and reproduced the ideas of Leibnitz. The third, Cou
sin (born 179a), succeeded Collard in 1815 as professor at
Paris; and in his early lectures followed the Scotch school.
When the conservative reaction occurred in i8aa, consequent
on the assassination of the duke de Berri, the constitutional
party was thrown into disgrace ; and Cousin therefore retired
into Germany, and there imbibed the spirit of the great
schools of philosophy, especially of Schelling and Jacobi. He
has given his own history in the preface to Fragments Philo
sophiques, vol. ii. Lastly came Joufiroy, the translator of
Dugald Stewart, who improved upon the Scotch school. See
Sainte-Beuve's criticism on Joufiroy. (Orit. Litt. vol. i.)
Damiron was an admirable exponent of the eclectic school;
Benjamin Constant, Degerando, and Lerminier, partially be
longed to the same school. Its efiects are ably stated in
Morell. The delicate hand of E. Renan also has sketched the
influence of Cousin el I' ecole S2nritualiste, in the Revue des Deux
Mondes, April, 1858; reprinted in his Essais de Morale et de
Critique.

Lect. VII. NOTE 45. 631
Note 45. p. 423.
the catholic BEACTIONAHY school op FRANCE.
Concerning this school, see Morell's History of PAilosopAy,
vol. ii. pp. 274-318; Damiron (as iu the last note), pp. 105-
197 ; Nettement (second work), vol. i. b. v.
The members of this school all agree in reposing upon the
principle of aulAority ; but differ in the source in which they
place it. Their philosophy accordingly does not aim at dis
covering truth, but only the authority on which we may rely
as the oracle of truth.
The founder of the movement was De Maistre (1753-1821),
the bitter opponent of the Baconian philosophy, whose doc
trine, about the time of his death, was absolute submission to
the catholic church. See concerning him C. Remusat in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, May 1857; and E. Scherer's Me
langes de la Critique Religieuse. Lamennais belonged to the
same movement. In his early manner, as expressed in his
Essai sur I' Indifference , 1821, he found the test of truth in
primitive revelations transmitted by testimony ; in his later,
he abandoned this school, and strove to work out philosophy,
in part independently of authority. The next writer, De
Bonald, sought for truth in the same source, viz. fragments
of divinely communicated knowledge, transmitted in the lan
guages of mankind. On Bonald see C. Remusat (Revue, as
quoted above) . The Abbe Bautain improved upon this system
by placing the ground of certitude in the authority of Reve
lation, and considered the oflice of philosophy to end when it
has shown the necessity of a revelation. Next to him came
D'Eckstein, who sought the test of truth in authority based
on researches into the catholic beliefs of mankind. The two
latter views, it will be perceived, are far nobler than the for
mer. Maret, whose writings have been before cited, also be
longs to this reactionary school.

632 NOTE 46. [Lect. VII.

Note 46. p. 429.
THE modern school OP FREE THOUGHT IN THE PROTESTANT
CHURCH OF FRANCE.
The object of this note is to enumerate some of the chief
of those theologians to whom allusion is made in the text,
and to exhibit their relations to each other.
One of the best known is Colaui, a pastor at Strasburg, the
able editor of the Nouvelle Revue de la Theologie, and author of
several volumes of sermons : also A. Reville, pastor of the Wal
loon church at Rotterdam, a frequent writer in the same Review,
and in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; Reuss, a professor at
Strasburg, author of a history of the early church, in French,
and Beitrdge zu den Theologischen Wissenschaften, in German;
Scherer, the friend of Vinet, once professor at Geneva, author
of Melanges de Critique Religieuse, reprinted mostly from Co
lani's Review, of which the first four papers give his theo
logical views on Inspiration, the Bible, and Sin^.
The able critic, Michel Nicholas, professor at Montauban,
author of Etudes Critiques sur la Bible, and Des Doctrines Re
ligieuses des Juifs pendant les deux siecles anterieurs d I' ere
Chretienne, probably may be classed with the same ; but he
has not written on doctrine. A. Coquerel _^^«, pastor at Paris,
also is connected with Colani's Review, and is considered to
possess the same sympathies;
The difference of the point of view of these writers from
that of the Eclectic school would be, that while the latter
would regard the human race as able to pass beyond Christ
ianity, the former would only wish to get rid of the dogmas
which they think have been superadded in the course of ages,
and to return to the simple teaching of the sermon on the
mount. One writer more has been reckoned with the same party
» His work on Dogmatique is in his earlier manner.

Lect. VIL] NOTE 46. 633
by the English pubhc, E. De Pressense, a pastor in the free
protestant church at Paris, author of the Church History so
often referred to in this volume, and of sermons on the Sau-
veur, and editor of the Revue Chretienne ; but he appea;rs to
possess an evangehcal and more orthodox tone than some of
the above.
In truth there are two distinct parties in the movement
which we are describing, each of which stands in a different
relation to the older parties of the protestant church. At the
beginning of the century the French protestant church held
an unpietistic kind of supernaturalism, not very unlike that
of Reinhard in Germany, of which the best living type is
the eloquent and learned A. Cocquerel jB^/e. About 1820 an
awakening of the spiritual life of the church took place, under
the action of the Spirit of God primarily, and through the
agency of such ministrations as those of Adolphe Monod in
strumentally. From the former school has arisen the move
ment seen in Colaui and Reville ; from the latter, that seen
in Vinet and Pressense. The former is a change which has
passed over the old Latitudinarian school, much like those
which in Germany have taken the place of the teaching of
such men as Reinhard and Bretschneider. Of the pastors
named above, who belong to this class, A. Cocquerel _/f^* is
the least removed from the ordinary creed. His stand-point
may be compared to that of Schleiermacher, or of the school
'of Groningen. (See Note 41.) Reville and Colaui advance
very much farther. The other movement, of which Vinet of
Lausanne was the cause, has sprung from the application of
science to the newly-spreading views of evangelical religion.
Vinet tried to harmonize religion and knowledge, by present
ing. Christianity on the ground of its internal rather than its
external evidence, and proclaimed it as ethics built on doc
trine; which doctrine he held to be built on historic fact.
His position may be best compared with Neander's in Ger
many, or perhaps in some respects with that of Tholuck.
Nearly the same position is assumed by Pressense at Paris,
and Astie at Lausanne. Pressense rests upon the Bible as

634 NOTE 46. [Lect. VII.
the " formal principle" of theology, and the work of Christ as
the " material."
The writer feels much hesitation in venturing to classify
these authors, which nevertheless seemed desirable on account
of the spread of their writings in England. The above de
scription, founded on personal study of their works, is con
firmed by two criticisms on them ; one by C. Remusat, in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1 86a ; the other in the British
Quarterly Review, Oct. i86a. But care ought to be used in
describing the actors in a movement which is not complete ;
and in making the attempt, to distinguish especially those
who are conceived to deviate from vital truth in doctrine, from
those who may differ in questions of literature or criticism.
It is due to these writers to express admiration for their ge
nuine love of intellectual and political liberty, much as we
may be compelled to difler from their theological opinions.

LECTURE VIII.
Note 47. p. 451.
MODERN OPINIONS WITH RESPECT TO MYTHOLOGY.
In the last century the opinions on the nature of mythology
were two. That which taught that myths are distortions of
traditions derived from the early Hebrew hterature, was put
forward in the seventeenth century, as early as philosophy
was applied to the subject, by Huet and Bossuet, and retained
its hold throughout the last century, and is advocated in the
present by Mr. Gladstone (Work on Homer, vol. ii. ch. ii.) The
opposite theory interpreted myths by an Euemeristic process, or
allegorized them by regarding them as originally descriptions
of the physical processes of nature. In the present century
Creuzer (Symbolik, 1810) applied the method of comparison,
and, studying Greek mythology in correlation with that of
other countries, taught in a Neo-Platonic sense that myths are
a second language, the echo of nature in the consciousness.
Creuzer's system was opposed by Lobeck about 1824, Voss,
and G. Hermann, who objected to the excess of symbolism
and the sacerdotal ideas implied in it; and by Ottfried
Miiller, and Welcker, on the narrower ground of assert
ing the independence of Greek mythology from foreign in
fluence. More recently the careful study of the Sanskrit
language and early literature by Max Miiller, Kuhn, &c. has
thrown new light upon the subject; and the solution of the
problem is now approached from the side of language, and
not merely from that of tradition or monuments. The distinc
tion of myth and legend is now clear ; the family relationship

636 NOTE 48. [Lbct.VIIL.
between the myths of different nations is made apparent ; the
date in human history of their creation; and the cause of them
is sought in the attempt to express abstract ideas by means of
the extension of concrete terms. See the Essay on Comparative
Mythology by Max Miiller, in the Oxford Essays for 1856.
See also the Journal for Comp. Phil, of Kuhn and Aufrecht.
And for a criticism on Creuzer, see E. Renan's Etudes d'Hi-
stoire Religieuse (Ess. i.)

Note 48. p. 512.
THE EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL BRANCHES OF EVIDENCE.
It may be almost superfluous to name that the evidences
are usually divided into i. external, and 2. internal. Each
of these requires a subdivision into (a) the divine, and (/3) the
human. The external divine are miracles and prophecy; the external
human are the historical proof as to the authenticity and
genuineness of the literature which contains the narrative of
the miracles and the prophecy. The internal divine are sought
in the accordance of the materials of the Revelation, the
character of Christ, the scheme of Redemption, &e. with the
moral sense of man, and with the expectations which we should
form antecedently of the contents of a revelation; the in
ternal human, in the critical evidence of undesigned coincidence.
Looked at logically, the second is like the corroboration of
the testimony of a witness ; the fourth, like cross-examining
him. The first two may amount almost to demonstration,
being what Aristotle (Rhet. i. 2.) woidd call TeKixrjpia : the
two latter have only the force of probability ; the third being
antecedent probability, eixo's; the fourth, the avdw/xov (Tr)jxeiov,
or circumstantial evidence. The argument of analogy used bv
Butler, which may be regarded as almost^ one form of Ari-
1 The strict difference would be, that analogy is the resemblance of ratios,
where the objects, in which the ratios are perceived, are not known to be refer
able to the same general class ; Trapaiuyixa on the contrary where they are so.

Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 637
stotle's irapabfiyixa (Rhet. ii. 20.), (if looked at on its positive
side, and not merely its negative, as disproof of objections,)
comes under the third, inasmuch as it ofi'ers a series of prin
ciples obtained by generalization from the natural and moral
world, which furnish an antecedent presumption of the cha
racter of any revealed scheme. The remarks in the text relate
to the comparative weight to be given to the first and third
of the four classes named above. The advantage of Butler's
argument over the other eases of internal a priori evidence is,
that it is founded on previous careful induction; the other
kinds of anticipations are founded only on hasty empirical
generalizations. For this view of the evidences, see Hamp
den's Introduction to the Philosophical Evidences of Christ
ianity; J)a\ison's Lectures on Prophecy (Introductory Lecture);
and W. D. Conybeare's Lectures on Theology, eh. i.

Note 49. p. 517.
THE HISTORY OP THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.
As frequent references have been made to the subject of
apologetic in connexion with the history of free thought, it
seems desirable to give a brief literary history of the Evi
dences, and to- indicate the works where further information
may be obtained with regard to them.
There are two methods of studying the subject; either to
classify the Evidences in the manner of the last Note », and
proceed to notice the ages in which, and the authors by whom,
each portion of them has been developed, together with the
causes which have called them forth; or else, to adopt the
historic plan, and trace their gradual growth through the
course of ages. By the latter method (if we exclude all that
a A plan of arrangement of this kind is used by Mr. Bolton in the Hulsean
Prize Essay for 1852, The Evidences of Christianity, as exhibited in the wriiings
of the Apologists dmon to Augustine.

638 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
strictly belongs to the province of polemic as distinct from
apologetic,) we find the following controversies : — in the early
centuries, the double contest against the Jews and against the
Pagans ; in the early middle ages,, against the Mahometans
without, and Freethinkers within, the hmits of Christendom ;
at the Renaissance, against unbelief within the church : in
more modern times, whilst the argument against the Jew
has been called forth by contact with the Jewish denizens
scattered through Europe, and the Mahometan has been oc
casionally excited by missionary labours ; there has been the
contemporaneous struggle within the church, against deism,
atheism, and rationalism.
This history, it will be observed, is so complex, that it
would be necessary to study each branch of the contest sepa
rately. Accordingly, we have treated in distinct notes the
contests with the Jew (Note 4), and the Mahometan (Note 5) ;
and there remain for study those which existed with the
Pagan in the early ages, and vdth the various forms- of scep
ticism in the later.
It will be convenient to classify the inquiry, under the four
epochs according to which we have studied the history of
imbelief in the preceding lectures ; viz. (i) the contest of
Christianity with Paganism ; (2) with the incipient free
thought of the middle ages ; (3) with the unbelief of the
Renaissance ; and (4) with the subsequent forms of unbelief,
which it may be useful to classify according to the countries
where they have respectively appeared, — England, France,
and Germany.
I. The apology or defence of Christianity against Pagans
commences with the apostolic age''. Its first form is seen
in the missionary speech of St. Paul at Athens. The first
chapter of his Epistle to the Romans also may be regarded
as expressing the same ideas. The defence consisted in an
appeal to the heart as well as to fact; to show the heathen
the need of Christianity before presenting the statement of its
¦¦ Cfr Gerard, Compendium of Evidences, 1828, part u. ch. i.

Lect. VIIL] NOTE 49. 639
nature, and the evidence of its divine character. In the second
century, when it became gradually understood that Christianity
was not a mere Jewish sect; and when the attack consisted
in calumnies and persecutions, as stated in Lect.II. pp.67, 77,
the apologies especially were directed to repel the charges, or
to demand toleration: (see Note 15.) In the third and fourth
centuries the attack was more intelligent, and the statement
of objections more definite; and the character of the apologies
altered correspondiugly.
There is some difiiculty in arranging the early Apologies.
A recent writer, Pressense, who has made a special study of
them, has used, as his fundamental principle of classification, the
view which the authors took of the relation of the soul of man to
Christianity; according to which he makes three classes ; the
first, comprising those who thought that the soul of man was
fitted for truth, and acknowledged the heathen religions as a
preparation for Christianity; the second, those who, taking
the same view of human nature, regarded the heathen reli
gions as corruptions, and wholly injurious ; and the third,
those who took such a desponding view of human nature as to
regard it as possessing no truth without revelation (Hist. vol. ii.
ser. ii. p. 164-5.) ^^ examples of the first class, he cites
Origen and most of the earlier fathers ; of the second, Ter
tuUian; of the third, Arnobius. He thinks, but perhaps
hardly rightly, that the chronological order in which the
three views occurred, coincides also with this mode of ar
rangement. It will be evident that the first two classes show
an attempt to approach Christianity a priori, by arousing the
sense of want ; the last by " crushing the human soul" by
authority : the first of the three trying to open the way for
the reception of Christianity, by describing it as the highest
philosophy aud rehgion; the second as the substitute for
both; but both schools agreeing in describing it as the satis
faction of the world's yearnings. It will be also appa
rent why the presentation of the a priori internal Evidences
should precede the external. When the world had been
impressed with the necessity of a new rehgion, then the

640 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
opportunity came for employing the cogent power of the ex
ternal and historic evidence which authenticates Christianity.
A less artificial manner however of studying the Apologies
would be to view them in time, and in space ; i. e. according
to their date, and the churches from which they emanate,
whether Syrian, Alexandrian, Roman, or African; with the
view of witnessing at once the alteration in the attack and
the character of the apology which existed in different coun
tries at one and the same time.
It appears worthy of notice however, that the attempt
to find difference of treatment according to difference of coun
try almost entirely fails. If applied as a principle of classifying
manuscripts, or modes of exegesis, or liturgical uses, sufiicient
variety is exhibited to prove that the Christian church was a
collection of provincial churches, each possessing its national
peculiarity, each contributing to swell the general harmony
by uttering its own appropriate note ; but, when applied to
the subject of apologetic, the method fails to show a difference
in the method of defence which was simultaneously used in
the great Christian army ; which forms a proof of the facility
of intercourse between diflFerent churches, and of the uniformity
in the character of the attack directed simultaneously on the
church in different lands. The change in the character of the
Evidences with the growth of time, according to the alteration
of attack described above, is apparent, but not the vaiiation at
the same date in different parts of the world. We shall there
fore merely present a list, in which the apologists are arranged
according to place and date, without attempting to draw in
ferences which cannot be supported.
The recent publication of Pressense's work, where the spirit
of the apologies is given, together with an analysis of their
contents, renders it unnecessary to offer here a full analysis
of them, as had been intended. Other works indeed partially
supplied the need previous to his. Such, for example,
were Houtteville's Introduction to La Religion Chretienne
prou,vee par des Fails, containing an account of the authors
for and against Christianity (translated 1739) "' Schramm's

Lect. VIIL] NOTE 49. 641
Analysis Patrum, 1780; Scultetus's Medullce. Pair. Syntagma,
1631 ; and for the Apostolic Fathers, the Introduction to Mr.
Woodham's edition of TertuUian's Apology.
It wiU be sufiicient accordingly to give a list of the writers,
with a very brief mention of the object of their treatises '^, and
to enumerate the literary sources from which further informa
tion may be obtained in respect to them.
c Notes 14, 15, 17, 19, afibrd illustrations bearing upon the same subject.

Tt

Table of the Early Apologists according to Date and Place.

Oi

Rome and

A.D.
Western Proiances.
Africa.
Athens.
Alexandria.
Syria.
Heathen Assailants.
[Aristides 130]
[Quadratus]
150
[Justim? 150J
Tatian
Athenagoras Hermias ?
Clement 190
Theophilus 180
Celsus ;
answered by Origen.
200
Tertulliam,
Minucius Felix ? 230
Cyprian
Commodian
Origen 240
Porphyry ;
answered by Methodius, Je
300
Jul. Firmicus
Ambrose
Prudentius
Arnobius
Lactamtius
Athanasius
[Methodius] Eu¬sebius
Chrysostom
rome, Eusebius, & Augustin.
Hierocles ;
answered by Eusebius.
Julian ;
answered by Apollinaris
and Cyril.
400
OrosiusSalvian
Augustin
Cyril
Jerome ?
Theodoret
o
o
Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 643
N.B. The names in brackets are of authors whose ajjologies
are almost' wholly lost; those in italics are the ones which alone
are usually mentioned in a list of apologists. To the above
ought perhaps to have been added for completeness, Maternus,
A.D. 350; Ephraim the Syrian ; and Apollinaris of Asia Minor,
who replied to Julian. The names marked with a note of
interrogation denote those in reference to which the reader
may demur to the classification. Justin Martyr wrote at
Rome; but he wrote in Greek, and was a Greek philosopher
in spirit. Of Hermias little is known. Jerome lived much in
Syria, and leaned to the Syrian school of exegesis, so that he
has been classed with the Syrian church, though his intimacy
with Augustin and his writing in Latin might rather have
caused him to be classed with the western. Also Minucius
Felix ought perhaps rather to be classed with the Roman
than the African church.
We shall next state the purpose of the treatises of those
Apologists, whose names are printed in italics in the table.
The fijst group consists of Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras,
Hermias, and Theophilus; the first three of whom may be
considered to express the defence of Christian philosophers,
who were striving to explain the nature of Christianity,
partly with a view to plead for toleration, partly to make
converts. Justin has left two apologies ; one against the Jews, the
other against the heathens ; (a second against the heathens is
a fragment.) In both he adopted the same plan, of first re
peUing prejudices, and then assaulting his opponent. That
which is directed against the Jews is analysed in Kaye's
Justin, c. xi. In that which was directed against the hea
thens, he first repelled the charges made against Christians,
such as atheism, Thyestean banquets, and treason against the
state; and next, those made against Christianity, especially
those which related to its late introduction, the person of
Christ, and the doctrine of the resurrection. In proceeding
to assault heathenism, he endeavoured to show that it did not
possess religious truth, and claimed that the points of agree-
T t 2

644 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
ment with Christian truth were borrowed ; and after having
thus shown the superiority of Christianity to heathenism, he
endeavoured to show its divinity, by the internal evidence of
its doctrines and effects, and by the external evidence of
miracles and prophecies.
Tatian's treatise in substance was an invective against the
pagans, on the absurdity and iniquity of the pagan theology
and its recent origin, with a running comparison between it
and Christianity.
The object of Athenagoras was to plead for toleration ; and
consequently he employed himself in vindicating the Christ
ians from various charges, such as incest, Thyestean banquets ;
and retaliated the charges on the heathen.
The little work of Hermias, the date of which is uncertain,
(see Lardner, Cred. ch. xxv. and Cave, Hist. Lit. Ixxxi.) is a
kind of sermon on St. Paul's words, "The wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God." In an amusing manner, not
unhke Lucian, he criticised the heathen philosophy, arguing
its falsehood from the contradictory opinions held in it.
The form of Theophilus's work Ad Autolycum is not unlike
some of those which have preceded. Indeed the form was
suggested by circumstances ; being a defence of Christianity
against particular charges, and the retaliation of similar ones
on the heathens. He drew out the attributes of the true
God, b. i ; and afterwards exhibited the falsehood of the
heathen religion and history, b. ii ; defending Christians from
the absurd charges made against them; and attempting to
show the originality and antiquity of the Hebrew history and
chronology, b. iii.
The next group of Apologists, which comprises the writers
of the African church, TertuUian and Minucius Felix, differs
from the last in spirit, though resembling them in purpose.
It is the defence made by rhetoricians instead of philosophers.
The purpose too, like that of the preceding Apologists, is partly
to effect conviction, partly to obtain toleration ; but there is a
consciousness of the presence of danger, hardly perceivable in
the former writers. We feel, as we read these early African

Lect. vm.] NOTE 49. 645
writers, that they write hke men who felt themselves in the
presence of persecution, and who were brought more nearly
than the former writers into the face of their foe.
Tertulhan's Tract, which is analysed both by Mr. Woodham
in his edition of it, and by Mr. T. ChevaUier in his translation
of it, is chiefly defensive. He claims toleration, ch. i-vh; re
futes the miscellaneous charges against Christianity, ch. x-
xxvii ; and the charge of treason (xxviii-xxxvh) ; explains the
nature of Christianity (xvii-xxiii) ; and compares it with phi
losophy, ch. xlv-xlvii.
The work of Minucius FeHx is a dialogue between a hea
then, Cfficihus, and a Christian, Oetavius. The heathen opens
by denying a Providence ; next inveighs against the Christ
ians, by a series of charges such as were named in Note 15 ;
and then attacks the Christian doctrines and condition. The
Christian Oetavius is made to answer each point successively.
In passing now from the African school of Apologists to
the Alexandrian, we leave the rhetoricians, and meet with
the philosophers, Clement and Origen. Clement precedes
TertuUian by a few years ; Origen succeeds Minucius Felix.
Clement, in part of his Stromata, and in his Cohortatio, has
expressed the spirit of his apologetic ; which resembles those
of the first group, in admitting the value of heathen philo
sophy as a preparation for Christianity, and claims that the
Hebrews are the source of philosophy, and that Christianity
is the full satisfaction for those who sought knowledge.
The spirit and details of Origen's defence have been so fully
given in Lecture II. and Note 14, that it is unnecessary to
enlarge upon the subject. His apology marks a further step.
TertuUian replied to the prejudices of the vulgar, and M.
Felix to the scepticism of the educated, which formed two
elements in the heathen reaction of the second century.
Origen furnished the reply to the attack made by the heathen
philosophy. It is in reply to Celsus, who possessed a competent
knowledge of Christianity ; and who, though writing earlier
than the time when the charges which TertuUign afterwards
refuted were common, was too well informed to have believed

646 NOTE 49. [Lbct.VIIL
them, and opposed Christianity on deeper grounds. Celsus
stands later logically, though not chronologically, than the
authors of those frivolous charges, and midway between them
and the educated assailants of Christianity of the third cen
tury, such as Porphyry. Origen's defence too marks a similar
advance, and, by exhibiting sympathy with the very philo
sophy which Porphyry and others adopted, shows the kind
of defence which was thought likely to attract philosophic
minds. The chronology compels us to return to the African
church, and introduces us to two Apologists; — Arnobius
and Lactantius ; one of whom seems to have written a little
before Christianity had become a tolerated religion ; the latter
a little afterwards.
The work of Arnobius is taken up, partly in repelling charges
made against the Christians, such as that the Christians
do not worship, which ar6 no longer charges of the absurd
kind made a century before; partly in comparing Chris
tianity and heathenism; and partly in offering the evidence
for Christianity. It is in this point that we find the pecu
liarity which belongs to Arnobius. He is the first writer
who lays firm stress on the demonstrative character of the
evidence of fact. In previous writers Christianity had been
proved by probability : he makes it to rest on the evidence of
certainty; and considers the fact of the revelation to guarantee
the contents of it.
The large work of Lactantius, the Institutiones Divince, is a
work of ethics as well as of defence. Christians have obtained
protection, and defence is becoming didactic : apology is
expiring in instruction : all that is now needed for the spread
of Christianity is, that its nature should be understood. The
work is partly a work of religion, partly of philosophy, partly
of ethics; the object in each case being to show that
Christianity supplies the only true form in each department
of thought.
The remaining Apologists may be grouped together, though

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 49. 647
they have no point of union, except that their arguments
are directed to the special condition of heathenism ; when,
being no longer triumphant, it was standing on the defen
sive, and, at the time of the two latter of the group, was
fast declining. They are, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, and
Augustin. If Origen is the metaphysical philosopher of the early
Apologists ;¦ if Augustin is the political ; Eusebius is the man
of erudition. He has left, besides the small work against
Hierocles (see Note 17), two works of defence; the first the
Evangelica Prccparatio, against the Gentiles; the second the
Evangelica Demonstratio, more suited for the Jews. The
former work is to show that Christianity has not been ac
cepted without just cause ; which he attempts to prove by a
very elaborate discussion (valuable to us in a literary point
of view, on account of the quotations which he has preserved,)
of the various religions, Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and
of the various types of Greek thought and belief; and, by
a comparison of them with the Hebrew, he shows the supe
riority of the last. The other work, the Evangelica Demon
stratio, is designed to prove that Christ and Christianity
fulfil the ancient prophecies. His apology marks the tran-
sitionary time when Christianity was becoming the religion
of the Roman world, and men hesitated as to its truth,
looking back with regret to the past, with uneasiness to the
future. The other two Apologists are nearly a century later ; when
Christianity had been long established.
Cyril has already come before us as the respondent to
Julian. It is enough to refer to Lecture II. and Note 19, in
relation to him. It is worthy of observation, that the cir
cumstance that he should consider it necessary to reply to
Julian's work, at so long a period after the death of the
author, and the frustration of his schemes, seems to show the
continued existence of a wavering in the faith of Christians,
of which we seldom have the opportunity of finding the traces
at so late a period.
If Cyril marks the apology of the Alexandrian church at

648 NOTE 49. [Lbct.VIIL
the commencement of the fifth century, Augustin similarly
exhibits that of the African in presence of the new woes
which were bursting upon the world. Christianity had long
lived down the charges made against it by prejudice, and
shown itself to be the philosophy which the educated craved.
The charges of treason too had ceased, for it had become the
established religion ; but one prejudice still remained. Victo
rious with man; triumphant over the prejudices of the vulgar,
the opinions of the philosophers, and the power of the state ;
it still was not, it seemed, victorious in heaven ; and at last
the heathen gods were arousing themselves to take vengeance
on the earth for the overthrow of their worship, by a series
of terrible calamities. Apprehensions like these haunted
the imagination ; and it was the object of Augustin, in his
work, De Civitate Dei, to remove them. That work was a
philosophy of society ; it was the history of the church and of
the world, viewed in presence of the dissolution, social and
political, which seemed impending.
These brief remarks will sufiice to give a faint idea of the
line of argument adopted by the early Apologists. Further
information in regard to them may be found in the following
sources : —
In a history of this period written by Tzchirner, Geschichte
der ApolQgetik, 1805; also another by Van Senden, 1831,
translated into German from the Dutch, 184J ; Clausen,
ApologetcB Ecc. Chr. ante-Theodosiani, 181 7; and a brief account
in Stein, Die Apologetik des Christenthum, § 6. p. 13. Other
references may be found in Hase's Church History, E. T. § 52 ;
Hagenbach's Bogmengeschichte, § 29, 117; and in J. A. Fa
bricius, Belectus Argument, ch. i. In the same work (ch. ii-v.)
is an account of the chief Apologists, and of the fragments of
their lost writings. In reference to the character of the
apologetic works of the early fathers, information may also
be obtained in Walch's Biblioth. Patristic, (ed. Danz. 1834.)
§ 97-100. ch. x; and concerning some of them in P. G.
Lumper's Hist. Theol.-Crit. de Sand. Pair. 1785; Moehler's
Patrologie, 1840; Ritter's CAr. Phil, i and ii; Neander's
KircAengescAicAle, i. 242 seq.; ii. 411 seq.; Kaye's works on

Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 649
Justin, Clement, and TertuUian; and Dr. A. Clarke's Sue
cession of Ecclesiastical Literature, 1832.
On a review of these early apologies, some pecuharities are
observable. First, with the exception of Origen's treatise, and some
parts of Eusebius, they are inferior as works of mind to many
of modern times k. This was to be expected from the
character of the age ; the hterature of that period being poor
in tone, compared with the earlier and with the modern. In
works of encyclopsedic history and geography, and in a
reconsideration of philosophy by the hght of the past, it had
indeed some excellences ; but the literature as a whole, not
only the Latin, but even the Greek, was debased by the
substitution of rhetoric for the healthy freshness of thought
and poetry of older times : and the apologetic literature
partakes of the tone of its age. The Christian writers, when
looked at in a literary point of view, must be compared with
authors of their own times. The Alexandrian apologies rise
sometimes to philosophy; but those of the Greek nation
sink to rhetoric. In later times, men who were giants in
mind and learning have written on behalf of Christianity ;
and it would be unfair to the apologetic fathers to compare
them with these.
Secondly, we cannot fail to remark the abundant use of
what is now called the philosophical argument for Chris-
k This remark is only intended to apply to the apologetic writings, which
are not the best works, of the fathers. In the fourth century we meet with a
group of fathers of a higher type of mind than those of the first three ; e. g.
Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, the Grcgories, Ambrose, and Jerome. Speaking
generally however, the three writers, Origen, Chrysostom, and Augustin, are
probably the only ones who had minds of the highest class', and who thoroughly
exceed the contemporary heathen writers of their day in mental penetration,
freshness, and compass, respectively. If we have compared Origen in mind
with Hugo St. Victor, and Schleiermacher, as a Christian philosopher, (Lect.
VI. ) we might also venture to compare Augustin with Aquinas or Calvin, in
power to grasp systematic truth ; and Chrysostom with Bernard, and in some
respects with Bossuet, in eloquence, learning, and vigour. Eusebius perhaps
almost demands «¦ place with these three ; but he was a raan of knowledge
rather than originality.

650 NOTE 49. [Lbct.VIIL
tianity, the conviction that prejudice must be removed, and
antecedent probabilities be suggested, before the hearer could
be expected to submit to Christianity. The just inference from
this is not that which some would draw, the depreciation of
the argument from external evidence, but rather a corrobo
ration of the importance of the emotional element, as an ingre
dient in the judgment formed on religion. The only practical
inference that can be drawn in reference to ourselves is, that
if it be true that our age resembles theirs, as has been sug
gested by Pressense, (see Lecture VIII. p. 503,) we must
adopt the same plan ; not because we admit that tiie external
evidence is uncertain or unreal, but because the other kind
of evidence is best adapted, from philosophical reasons, to
such a state of society as ours.
Several centuries pass before we again meet with works of
evidence. In the dark ages, the pubhc mind and thought
were nominally Christian; and at least were not sufiiciently
educated to admit of the generation of doubts which might
create a demand for apologetic works. Accordingly we pass
over this interval, and proceed at once to the middle ages.
II. The scepticism of the second period of free thought
possessed so largely the character of a tendency rather than
an attitude of fixed antagonism, that it gave no opportunity
for direct works of refutation. But the spirit of apologetic
is seen in two respects; in the special refutation of parti
cular points of teaching, as in Bernard's controversy with
Abelard, and more especially in the works of the scholastic
theology. This theology, especially as seen in the works of the great
realist Aquinas, and of others who took their method from
him, was essentially, as has been before said (pp. 12 and ia8),
a work of defence. In the two centuries before his time we
already find the spirit of reverent inquiry working. Auselm's
two celebrated works, the Monologium and Proslogium,, a kind
of soliloquy on the Trinity, and the Cur Deus Homo, or
theory of the Atonement, are the work of a mind that was

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 49. 651
reconsidering its own beliefs, and restating the grounds of the
immemorial doctrines of the church. (See J. A. Hasse, Anselm,
1843, 5a.) In the following century (viz. the twelfth), the
work of Peter Lombard, called the Sententice, marks an age
when inquiry was active ; and the material was supplied for
its satisfaction by means of searching amid the opinions of the
past for the witness of authority. But in the thirteenth cen
tury, the grand advance made by Aquinas in his Summa, is no
less than the result of the conviction that religion admitted of
a philosophy; that theological truth was a science; and so,
commencing with the plan of first discussing God; then man;
then redemption ; then ethics ; he created a method, which
had been indeed suggested by his predecessors, but was more
fully displayed by him, for arranging the truths of theology
in a systematic form, in which their reasonableness might
appear, and through which they might commend themselves
to the judgment of a phUosophical age.
The most successful mode of replying to objections is not to
refute the error contained in them, but to grasp the truth and
build it into a system, where the doubter finds his mind and heart
satisfied with the possession of that for which he was craving.
If the twelfth century had not had its Abelards, its spirit of
inquiry, of analysis, and of doubt ; the church would never have
had its champion philosopher Aquinas : but if it had not had its
Aquinas, the succeeding ages would probably have produced
many more Abelards. The scholastic theology accordingly
must be regarded as the true rationalism, the true use of
reason in defence. Like as the mind goes through the process
of perceiving facts, then of classifying and generalizing, next
of defining and tracing principles to practical results; so the
church, in forming its theology, receives its facts as they were
once for aU apprehended by inspired men of old, and are cor
roborated by the experience of the Christian consciousness
from age to age : but, after so receiving them, it exercises its
ofiice in creating a theology, by classifying and arranging
them, and generalizing from them ; and when new doubts or
objections arise, it recompares its teaching with the faith

652 NOTE 49. [Lbct.VIIL
once delivered to the saints ; defines and prescribes the limits
of truth and error; and thus absorbs into its own system
whatever is true in the newly- presented doubts or objections.
This is really the action of the church in moments of peril ;
and is that which was effected by the scholastic theologians, —
Anselm, the two Victors, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and others.
It is sufficient to refer to Ritter's CAristliche Philosophic, iii.
502 seq.; iv. 257 seq.; Neander's Kirchengeschichte, vol. viii;
Stein's Die Apologetic, § 7 and 8 ; Hagenbach's Dogmengesch.
§ 150; and Hase's Church History, § 218, 277, 278; for in
formation concerning these writers and their position.
III. At the time of the Renaissance, in the fifteenth
century, which was the third period at which the Christian
faith was in peril from doubt, we begin to meet with works
of evidence of a more directly controversial kind. Defence is
no longer a spirit, but a fact. Apologetic theology is severed
from Dogmatic.
One work remains, written in the fourteenth century by
Petrarch (Opp. de Otio Religiosor), which defends the truth of
Christianity against Philosophers, Mahometans, and Jews;
partly on the evidence of miracles, but mainly on the internal
evidence of the purity and godliness of Christianity. In the
early part of the fifteenth century, Raimond de Sebonde, pro
fessor of medicine at Barcelona, wrote his Theologia Naturalis,
which was afterwards translated into French by Montaigne.
It was charged with deism, but really was in spirit, as pre
viously observed (p. 146), only like Locke's Reasonableness of
Christianity. See Hallam's History of Literature, i. 138 ;
Ritter's CAristlicAe PAilosopAie, iv. 658 seq. Another exists by
.iEneas Sylvius ; another by Ficinus, 1450, De Relig. Chris
tiana, in which the evidence of prophecy and miracles is ad
duced ; the arguments from the moral character of the apostles
and martyrs, the wonderful spread of Christianity, and the
wisdom of the Bible, are used ; and a comparison is drawn
between Christianity and other creeds.
In the close of the same century, as soon as printing be-

Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 653
came common, several simUar treatises occur. One exists by
Alphonso de Spina, Fortalitium Fidei contra Judceos, S,-c. 1487 ;
also by Savonarola, Triumphns Crueis, sive de Vera Fide, 1497;
also by Pico di Mirandola; and by Ludovicus Vives, De Veritate
Christiana, 1551. A carefully written account of all these is
given by Staiidhn, in Eichhorn's Geschichte der Literatur,
vol. vi. p. 24 seq. See also Fabricius, Delect. Argument.
ch. XXX.
The preceding works were mostly directed against the first
of the two species of unbeUef which belonged to this period,
viz. the literary tendency (see Lecture III. p. 130, 131). A
few however exist which were directed against the second
species, which was connected with the philosophy of Padua.
They are not so much general treatises, as works written against
particular opinions, of Pomponatius, Bruno, or Vanini. An
account of them may be found in the memoirs respectively
published concerning these writers ; the references to which
are given in the notes to Lecture III. (See pp. 142-144.)
The work of Morneeus, De Veritate Religionis Christiana adv.
Atheistas, Epicureos, Sfc. 1580, was probably suggested by this
species of philosophy.
IV. The fourth great period, marked by the unbelief con
nected with the activity of modern speculation and the influ
ence of modern discovery, commenced in the sixteenth cen
tury. The works of defence are so numerous that we can
only give a brief notice of the principal ^^Titers and writings.
A hst may be collected, down to the respective dates of their
pubhcation, from J. A. Fabricius's Be Veritate Rel. Christ.
c. 30; Pfaff's Hist. Lift. Theol. u. § 2; Buddeus's Isagoge, pp.
856-1237 ; Walch's Biblioth. Theol. Select, vol. i. ch. v. § 5-7 :
and the principal arguments are summed up in Stapfer's
Instif. Theol. Polem. 1744, vol. i. ch. in. and vol. n. Tholuck
also has written a history of modern apologetic, Ueber Apolo
getik und ihre Litteratur (Vermischte Schriften, i. pp. 150-376),
and the Abbe Migne has published a most important collec
tion of the principal treatises on apologetic in aU ages, ar-

654 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII-
ranged in chronological order. It is contained in twenty vols.
4to. 1843. ^^^ title of the work is given below^.
The work of Grotius, Be Veritate Religionis CAristiance, is
the one which opens the period of evidences which we are
now considering ; of which a notice may be found in Hallam's
History , of Literature, ii. 364, and in Tholuck, Verm. Schr. i.
158; but no very definite cause can be pointed out why it
was written. It was merely indeed one of the class of trea
tises already described (Notes 4 and 5), which devoted a por-
a Demonstrations Evangeliques : (tome i.) de Tertullien, Origine, Eusibe
(Praep. Ev.); (2.) Eusihe (Dem. Ev.), S. Augustin, Montaigne, Bacon, Grotius,
Descartes; (3.) Richelieu, Arnauld, De Choiseul du Plessis-Praslin, Pascal,
Pilisson, Nicole; (4.) Boyle, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Locke, Lami, Burnet, Male-
branche, Lesley, Leibnitz, La Bruyire, Fgndon ; (5.) Huet, Clarke; (6.) Duguet,
Stanhope, Bayle, Leclerc, DuPin; (7.) Jacquelot, Tillotson, De Haller, Sherlock,
Le Moine, Pope, Lelamd ; (8.) L. Racine, Massillon, Ditton, Derhami, D^Agues-
seau, De Polignac; (9.) Sanrin, Puffier, Warburton, Tournemine, Bentley, Lit
tleton, Seed, Fabricius, Addison, De Bemis, J.J. RousseoM ; (10.) Para du
Phanjas, Le roi Stanislas, Turgot, Stattler, West, BeauzSe ; (11.) Bergier,
Oerdil, Thomas, Bownet, De Crillon, Eider, Delamarre, Caraccioli, Jennings ;
(12.) Duhamel, S. Liguori, Butler, Bullet, Vauvenargues, GuSnard, Blair,
De Pompignan, De Luc, Porteus, Gerard ; (13.) Diessbach, Jacques, Lamourette,
Laharpe, Le Ooz, Du Voisin, De la Luzerne, Schmitt, Pointer ; (14.) Moore,
Silvio Pellico, Lingard, Brwnati, Manzoni, Paley, Perrone, Lamhruschini,
DorUans, Campien, Fr. Plrennis ; (15.) Wiseman, Bucklomd, Marcel de Serres,
Keith, Chalmers; (16.) Dupin Aing, Grigoire XVI ; (17.) Cattet, Milner,
Sabatier ; (iS.) Bolgeni, Morris, Chassay, Lombroso et Consoni — contenant les
apologies de 11'; aittewrs, repandues dans 180 vol. ; traduites pour la plupart
des diverses langues dans lesquelles elles avaient itg 4crites ; rept oduites integrale-
ment non par extraits. Ouvrage Sgalement nScessaire a ceux qui ne croient pas,
& ceux qui doutent, et a ceux qui croient, 20 vol. in 4to. Prix : 120 fr. Chaque
volume se vend s^par^ment, 7 fr. The references in the above title are to the
volumes of the work.
There is an important article on the literature of Apologetics in the North
British Review, No. 30, August 1851, the writer of which says that the claim
that the above works are translated " integralement " is not literally coirect;
passages which assault the church of Rome being omitted. He considers that
among the works of the above-named series which are not known in England,
the most important are, Stattler, Certitude de la Religion rMUe par Jesus Christ ;
Beauzee, Exposition des Preuves Historiques de la ReUgion Chretienne ; Abb^
Para du Phanjas, Les Principes de la Sainte Philosophie conciliSs avec ceux de
la Religion; Cardinal de Vernis, La Religion Vengee.; Cardinal Polignac,
Anti- Lucretius.

Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 655
tion of space to the controversy with the Jews and Maho
metans. It is when a new stand-point had been assumed by
scepticism, and the causes, intellectual or moral, which have
been pointed out in these lectures, had begun to create a real
perU, that writings on the evidences begin to derive a new
value and assume a new form.
We shall give an account of them according to countries.
The English works of evidence.— Those which were called
forth in England by Deism were of several kinds. Perhaps
they may be arranged under four heads.
The first class consists of specific answers to certain books,
published from time to time; of which kind are most of those
which are named in the foot-notes to Lecture IV. Water-
land's reply to Tindal is a type of this class. Occupied with
tracking the opponent from point to point of his work, such
replies, though important whUe the sceptical book is operating
for evil, become obsolete along with the war of which they
are a part, and henceforth are only valuable in literary
history, unless, as in the special instance of Bentley's Phile-
leutAerus Lipsiensis in reply to Collins, they are such marvel
lous instances of dialectical ability and literary acuteness that
they possess a philosophical value as works of power, when
their instructiveness has ceased.
A second kind consisted of homilies rather than arguments ;
sermons to Christian people, warning them against forms of
unbelief, and regarding unbelief from a practical point of view
rather than a speculative ; and discussing, as would appropri
ately belong to such an object, the moral to the exclusion of
the intellectual causes of doubt. Some of Tillotson's sermons
are an example of the highest of this kind of works. The value
of this class is twofold : in a purely pastoral point of view, the
suggestions which they contain concerning the moral causes
of doubt being founded on the real facts of the human heart,
and on the declarations of scripture, have a lasting value ; and
in a literary point of view, these works contribute to the know
ledge of the state of public feeling of the time. This is seen
in this instance. Until about the end of the seventeenth

656 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
century, there is no clear jiercejition, except among the very
highest of this class of writers, of the particular character of
the forms of doubt against which their remarks are directed.
The general name, Atheism, is used vaguely, to describe every
form of unbelief. This fact tolls its tale. It witnesses to the
consciousness that they lived in an age of restlessness, when
change of creed was going on, and doubt was prevalent ; but
when unbelief had not shaped itself into form, and found as yet
few organs of expression. We are reminded of the works before
named of the fifteenth century (p. 130 seq. 146). At that time
doubt and restlessness prevaUed, as we learn from the frequent
references to it ; yet the works which transmit the knowledge
of it to us are few, and the allusions to it vague : while the
works of evidence then written are directed against anti
quated forms of it, — Mahometan, Jewish, or philosophical.
In like manner, in the seventeenth age, we see, as we look
back, that the Christian sermons were mostly directed against
older forms of unbelief, — the atheism of the ancients, or of the
Paduan school ; and that the contemporary unbelief had not
become definite enough to enable the Christian writers to ap
prehend its nature. This fact too explains another circum
stance. The preachers evince a bitterness, which is not merely
the rudeness common in that age on all subjects, nor the in
dignation which arises from solicitude for souls, common in
all ages on a subject so momentous as salvation ; but it is the
bitterness of alarm. There is a margin in their expression of
vituperation, which is only to be explained by the fact, that
the absence of a clear statement of the grounds of doubt, such
as was subsequently given in the eighteenth century, deprived
the preachers of the means of understanding the alleged ex
cuse for the prevailing doubt. They appear not to be con
scious of the causes which could create in the minds of others
a restlessness which they did not feel themselves. They seem
like persons living in a state of pohtical society, who are con
scious of a vast amount of general dissatisfaction, and a sus
picion of a plot against society, the authors of which are
unknown, as well as the causes of their supposed grievances ;

Lect. VIII.] NOTE 49. 657
and where the danger is necessarily heightened from the very
absence of knowledge as to its precise amount.
A third class of the Enghsh apologies consists of works
which have neither the speciality of the first class, nor
the vagueness of the second. They were directed against
special writers and particular books; but instead of being
adapted as a detailed reply, chapter by chapter, to the special
work, the authors of them seized hold of the central errors
of the unbeliever, or the central truths by which he was to
be refuted. The works of the two Chandlers against CoUins,
and Leland's work on the deists, rise into this tone at times.
Bishop Gibson's later Pastorals against Woolston are a good
type of it ; and still better, many of the courses of Boyle
Lectures ; and above all, Warburton's Bivine Legation of
Moses. There is a fourth class of works, of a grander type, which
resemble the one just named, in discussing subjects rather
than books; but differ in that they are not directed against
particular books or men, but take the largest and loftiest
view of the evidences of Christianity. The first of this class,
though a smaU one, is Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity.
The best examples are. Things Bivine and Human conceived of
by Analogy, by Dr. Peter Browne, 1733; and the Analogy of
Bishop Butler, in reference to the PhUosophical Evidence of
Christianity; with the works of Lardner and Paley in reference
to the Historical. Books of this class are elevated above what
is local or national, and are in some sense a kt-tj/mo es ad.
After this description of the different classes of works of
evidence, it remains to give a brief notice of a few of the
more important writers, especially of the two latter cksses, iu
chronological order.
Omitting the repetition of those books named in the foot
notes of Lect.IV. which were directed against Herbert, Hobbes,
and Blount, and which, as already remarked, belonged to the
first of the four classes just named, and also the enumeration
of the various sermons which belong to the second, we meet
with the foUowing writers: —Robert Boyle (1626-1691), an in-
u u

658 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
telligent ]>hUosopher and devout Christian, who wrote works
to reconcile reason and religion, suggested by the growth of
new sciences; and with Ray, who first supplied materials for
the argument for natural religion, drawn from final causes,
1691 ; and Stillingfleet, who investigated religion from the
literary side, as the two just named from the scientific.
Boyle not only wrote himself on the Evidences, but founded
the Boyle Lectures'', a series which was mainly composed of
works written by men of real ability, and contains several
¦> In naming the Boyle Lectures, it may be permitted to the writer of these lec
tures to express the regret which he has often felt, that there is no history written
of the various apologetic Lectures, and of the works which they called forth ;
such, e, g. as the Boyle (1692), Lady Moyer (1719), Warburton (1772), Bamp
ton (1780), Donnellan (1794), and Hulsean Lectures (1S20), in the Church; and
the Lime Street (1730), Berry Street (1733), Coward (1739), and Congregational
Lectm'es (1833), among the Dissenters; and more generally that there is no
history of English theology and of English theological literature. Much as we
need a fair account of the English Church, viewed in its external and its con
stitutional history, we still more need a history which would enter into the
inner life, and give its intellectual and spiritual history. Such a work would
not only give -a, detailed account of the various works on evidence and of the
other literature, but would enter into the causes and character of the various
schools of thought which have existed in' each age ; — e. g. of the struggle of
semi-Eomanist and Calvinistic principles in Elizabeth's reign; — in the next
age, the reproduction of the teaching of the Greek as distinct from the Latin
Fathers in Andrewes and Laud ; the Arminianism of Hales and ChOlingworth ;
the Calvinism of the Puritans : again, later, the rise of the philosophical latitu-
dinarianism of Whichcote, More, and Cudworth ; the theological position of the
non-jurors ; the Arian tendencies of Clarke and Whiston ; the cold want of
spirituality of divines of the type of Hoadley ; the reasoning school of Butler ;
the evangelical revival of Wesley and Simeon ; and, in the nineteenth centiu-y,
the philosophical revival under Coleridge, and the ecclesiastical in the Tracts
for the Times. Subjects like these, if treated not only in a literary manner,
but in connection with their philosophical relations, would lift the history above
a merely national purpose, and make it a lasting contribution to the history ot
the hiunan mind. If executed worthily, such a work might take a rank along
with the gi'and works on literature of Hallam. Much as the present taste
for documentary history is to be commended, and the publication of ancient
historic documents to be desired, it is to be hoped that it will not lead to the
divorce of history from philosophy. History becomes mere antiquarianism,.if
the plulosopher is not at hand to build its parts into the general history of
humanity. Philosophy becomes an hypothesis, if it is disconnected from the
actual exempliiioation of its principles on the theatre of the world.

Lect. VIIL] NOTE 49. 659
treatises of value, as works of mind, as well as instruction.
Among the series may be named those of Bentley (1693);
Kidder, 1694; Bp. WUliams, 1695; Gastrell, 1697; Dean
Stanhope, 1701 ; Dr. Clarke, 1794, 5; Derham, 171 1 ; Ibbot,
1713; Gurdon, 1721; Berriman, 1730; Worthington, 1766;
Owen, 1769 : aU of which belong to the third of the classes
named above, whUe one or two approach to the grandeur of
the fourth.
Among separate treatises, the popular ones by the Non
juror Charles Leslie (ti722). Short Method u-'ith the Beists ;
Jenkins's Reasonableness of Christ'ianity, 1721; Foster's Use
fulness and Truth of Chr'ist'ian'ity , against Tindal; and Bp. Sher
lock's Trial of the Witnesses, against Woolston ; Lyttelton on
St. Raid's Conversion; Comybeaie's Defence of Revelation, 1732;
WavhnTton's Divine Legation of Moses ; are the best known.
A complete list of the respective replies to deist writers
may be found under the criticism of each writer, in Leland's
Deists, and Leehler's Gesch. des Engl. Deismus. The great
work of Bishop Butler, which appeared in 1736, has been
sufficiently discussed in Lect. IV. p. 321 seq. It was the re
capitulation and condensation of all the arguments that had
been previously used ; but possessed the largeness of treat
ment and originality of combination of a mind which had not
so much borrowed the thoughts of others as been educated by
them. Balguy's works also, though brief, are scarcely inferior.
(See his Discourse on Reason a^id Faith, vol. i. serm. i-vii;
vol. ii. serm. ii, iii, iv ; vol. iv. serm. u. and iii.
We have already pointed out (p. 291), that in the latter
half of the century, the historical rather than the moral evi
dences were developed. The phUosophical argument preceded
in time, as in logic. First, the religion of nature was proved :
at this point the deist halted; the Christian advanced far
ther. The chasm between it and revealed religion was bridged
at first by probabUity; next by Butler's argument from ana
logy, put as a dUemma to sUence those who objected to
revelation, but capable, as shown in Lect. IV. of being used
as a direct argument to lead the mind to revelation ; thirdly,
u u 3

660 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
by the historic method, which asserted that miracles attested
a revelation, even without other evidence. The argument in
all cases however, whether philosophical or historical, was an
appeal to reason; either evidence of probability or of fact; and
was in no case an appeal to the authority of the church.
Accordingly, the probability of revelation having been
shovsm, and the attacks on its moral character parried, the
question became in a great degree historical, and resolved
itself into an examination either of the external evidence
arising from early testimonies, which could be gathered, to
corroborate the facts, and to vindicate the honesty of the
writers, or of the internal critical evidence of undesigned co
incidences in their writings. (See Note 48.) The first of these
occupied the attention of Lardner (1684-1768). His Credi
bility was published 1727-57. The Collection of Ancient
Jewish and Heathen Testimonies (1764—7.) The second and
.third branches occupied the attention of Paley; the one in
the Evidences, the other in the Horee Paulinsec.
Before the close of the century the real danger from deism
had passed, and the natural demand for evidences had there
fore in a great degree ceased. Consequently the works which
appeared were generaUy a recapitulation or summary of the
whole arguments, often neat and judicious, (as is seen at a
later time in Van Mildert's Boyle Lectures, vol. ii. 1805 ; and
in a grander manner in Chalmers's works, vol. i.-iv.) ; or in
developments of particular subjects, as in Bishop Watson's
replies to Gibbon and to Paine ; (See p. 279, 280, note) ; or
in Dean Graves's work on the Pentateuch, 1807.
It is only in recent years that a new phase of unbelief,
a species of eclecticism rather than positive unbelief, has arisen
in England, which is not the legitimate successor of the old
deism, but of the speculative thought of the Continent ; and
only within recent years that writers on evidences have directed
their attention to it. In the line of the Bampton Lectures,
c Paley's argument has been extended to the Gospels and other parts of
Scripture by the lamented Professor Blunt. (Cfr. also his Essay on Paley, re
printed from the QuaHerl/y Review, Oct. 1828.)

Lect. VIIL] NOTE 49. v 661
for example, which, as one of the classes of annually recurring
volumes of evidences, is supposed to keep pace with contempo
rary forms of doubt, and may therefore be taken as one means
of measuring dates in the corresponding history of unbelief;
it is not until about 1852 that the writers showed an ac
quaintance with these forms of doubt derived from foreign
literature. The first course<i which touched upon them was
that of Mr. Riddle, 185a, on the Natural History qf Infidelity ;
and the first especially directed to them was that in 1853 by
Dr. Thomson, on the Atoning Work of Christ; since which
time only two courses, those of Mr. Mansel, 1858, on The
Limits of Religious Thought; and of Mr. Rawlinson, in 1859^,
on The Historical Evidences of the Truth of Scripture, have been
directed to the subject, the one to the philosophy of religion
studied on its psychological side, the other to the historical
evidences. Among isolated works on evidences not forming parts of a
general series, it is hard to make a selection without unfairness.
We can only cite a few, premising that silence in reference
to the rest is not to be considered to be censure, nor to mark
the want of a cordial and grateful acknowledgment of the
utility of many smaller works of evidences in the present day,
dictated by deep love for Christ; whose authors, though
omitted in this humble record, have their reward in being
instruments of religious usefulness by means of their works,
and are doubtless not unnoticed by a merciful Saviour, who
looks dovra with love on all who strive to spread his truth.
The foUowing seem to merit notice. First, the arguments
in favour of natural religion, drawn from physical science,
stated in the Bridgewater Treatises, analogous to the earher
works of Derham and Paley ; the connection of science with
revelation, in Cardinal Wiseman's Lectures dehvered in Rome,
d The course for 1849, on the Evidences, by Mr. Michell, marked the com
mencement of the consciousness of the spread of free thought ; but was not di
rected to' the novel foreign forms of it.
e The Lectures however of Dr. Hessey in i860, though directed to a different
subject, evince a knowledge of the Uterary studies of foreign theologians.

662 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
2d ed. 1842, (which are a httle obsolete, but very masterly;)
several works by Dr. M'Cosh, Divine Government, — Typical
Forms, &c. in which the author takes a large view of the
world, and of the province of revealed religion in the scheme
of general truth, founded mainly on Butler ; also a work of
Dr. Buchanan, Modern Atheism, valuable for its literary ma
terials as much as for its argument ; and of T. Erskine on the
Internal Evidences, 1831. The Bampton Lectures of Mr.
Miller in 1817 also deserve to be singled out as a thoughtful
and original exhibition of the argument in one branch of the
internal evidence; The Divine AulAority of Scripture asserted
from ils adaptation to tAe real state of human nature ; also
Mr. Davison's Warburton Lectures on PropAecy, 1825. Among
works directed to special subjects, we ought to specify.
The Restoration of Belief , by Mr. Isaac Taylor, intended in
directly against speculations such as those of the Tiibingen
school; and an able and thoughtful work on the subject of
the superhuman character of Christ, TAe Christ of History,
by Mr. Young ; also E. Miall's Bases of Belief ; with the two
Burnett Prize Essays by Thompson and TuUock ; and a reply
to Mr. Newman's Phases of Faith, viz. The Eclipse of FaitA,
and Letters of E. H. Greyson, by H. Rogers, constructed how
ever partly on the argument of the dilemmag. The replies
written to Essays and Reviews, especially Aids to Faith, ought
to be added.
We have reserved for separate mention one work, which as
cends to the philosophy of the religious question, Mr. Mansel's
Bampton Lectures, 1858, The Limits of ReUgious Thought, be
cause it is a work which is valuable for its method, even if the
reader differs (as the author of these lectures does in some
respects) from the philosophical principles maintained, or occa
sionally even from the results attained''. It is an attempt to
e The writer hopes that the note on p. 527 will not be considered an un
generous censure of Mr. Rogers, who is selected because he is the ablest and
wisest of those writers who have used this argument.
h It is hardly necessary to state, that Mr. Maurice and Mr. Goldwin Smith,
besides others, have criticised this work in distinct publications.

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 49. 663
reconstruct the argument of Butler from the subjective side.
As Butler showed that the difficulties which are in revealed
religion are equaUy applicable to natural; so Mr. Mansel
wishes to show that the difficulties which the mind feels in
reference to religion are parallel to those which are felt by it in
reference to philosophy. Since the time of Kant a subjective
tone has passed over philosophy. The phenomena are now
studied in the mind, not in nature ; in our mode of viewing,
not in the object viewed. And hence Butler's argument
needed reconstructing on its psychological side. Mr. Mansel
has attempted to effect this; and the book must always in this
respect have a value, even to the minds of those who are dia
metrically opposed to its principles and results. Even if the
detaUs were wrong, the method would be correct, of studying
psychology before ontology ; of finding the philosophy of re
ligion, not, as Leibnitz attempted, objectively in a theodicee,
but subjectively, by the analysis of the rehgious faculties ;
learning the length of the sounding-line before attempting to
fathom the ocean.
These remarks must sufiice in reference to the history of
Evidences in England. We shall now give an account of
those which existed in France ; which will be stUl more brief,
because the works are considered to be of small general value,
at least they have not a general reputation.
2. The French works of evidence. — In the middle of the
seventeenth century we meet with Pascal and Huet; both
of them, metaphysically speaking, sceptics, who disbelieved in
the possibihty of finding truth apart from revelation''; and
with whom therefore the object of evidences was to silence
doubt rather than to remove it. (On Pascal, see Rogers's
Essays, Essay reprinted from the EdinburgA Review, January
1847; and on Huet, an article in the Quarterly Review, No.
194, September 1855, and the reference given p. 26. Also
see HoutteviUe, introduction to La Religion Chretienne prouvee
par des Fails, 1732.)
Among the Roman catholics, at the close of the same cen
tury, were the following: Le Vassor (ti7i8); the two Lamy
k EUis's work on The Knowledge of Divine TMvg,, xSii, breathes a similar
spirit in modern times. Cfr. Note 44,

664 NOTE 49. [Lbct.VIIL
ti7io and 15, and Denyse; and in the eighteenth century,
Houtteville, whose preface to his own work, an historical
view of evidences and attacks to his own time, has been just
named; Bonnet; D'Aguesseau, ti75i; and Bergier 1 1790 :
and anaongthe Protestants, — Abbadie, ti7a7; and Jacquelot,
ti7o8; nearly all of whom are treated of by Tholuck (Verm.
Schr. i. p. 28) and Walch (Bibl. Theol. Set. ch. v. sect. 6).
Several more will be found in the Demonstrations Evangeliques;
among which are Choiseul du Plessis, Praslin, Polignac, De
Bernis, Buffier, Tournemine, and Gerdil; the Lives of several
of whom are in the Biographie UniverseUe.
Though some of these were men whose works were of
ordinary respectability, they were by no means a match in
greatness for the intellectual giants who prostituted their
powers on behalf of unbelief; and on one occasion, when a
prize essay had been offered for a work in behalf of Christ
ianity, no work was deemed worthy of it. (Alison, History of
Europe, i. 180.) Sirjce the beginning of the present centuiy,
however, there has been a change. Whatever may be thought
of the line of argument adopted, the skill with which it has
been put forward, and the ability of the minds that have
given expression to it, is undoubted. Chateaubriand may be
considered as the first who, with a full appreciation of the
tastes and wants of modern society, tried to show not only
the compatibility of Christianity with them, but that the per
fection of society was only realized in it. The work of the
Christian labourers who had to bring back France to Christ
ianity was hard. It was not the apologist, acting, as in
England, from the vantage ground of a powerful church
against the Deist, who was making an attack on it; but it
was a weak and feeble minority acting against a powerful
mass of educated intellect. The apologists were indirectly
aided by philosophy. The philosophers did not aim primarily
at religious truth, and we have had reason to take exception
to many of their views; yet they rekindled in France the
elements of natural religion, on M'hich the Christians then
proceeded to base revealed. The works of Jules Simon are
the highest expression of it. (See Note 44.)

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 49- 665
. The school of evidences that has existed, has been the
church school of De Maistre, already described. (See Note 45,
and the references given there.) Wifli somewhat of the spirit
of the writers of the fifteenth age, they have directed their
efforts to re-estabhsh the catholic church as the condition of
re-estabhshing the Christian religion. To this we have
already taken exception. Lecture VII. p. 423 ; and the re
marks there given may suffice in reference to the movement.
Yet the literary appreciation of the hne of argument used by
the older apologists, is perceptible in the large publication of
Migne, already named.
The other attempt in France to re-establish Christianity by
Protestant apologists, noticed in Lecture VII. p. 439, of which
the ablest was Vinet, is rather directed against rationahsm
than against full unbehef ; and aims to turn the flank of the
rationalist argument, and, while accepting its premises, deny
its conclusions. (On Vinet, see Note 46) . The problem which
is now before the apologists is, not to show that Christianity
is not imposture, but rather that it is not merely philosophy.
(Compare the remarks of Strauss, at the close of his work on
Reimarus, alluded to in Note 29. p. 604).
There now only remains the history of Apologetic in
Germany. 3. The German works of evidence. — As early as the end
of the seventeenth century, we find the attention of Kortholt
directed to Spinoza ; and in the early part of the eighteenth
we see, in the grand attempt of Leibnitz to find a philosophy
of religion; in Haller, 1705— 77; in Euler, 1747, (for which see
Tholuck, V. Schr. ii. 311-362, together with a list of others
there given,) a proof of the attention which the Evidences
received. The existence of works like J. A. Fabricius's Delectus
Argumentorum, 1']%^; Reimannus, Historia Atheisrni, i']2^;
Buddeus, De Atheism/), 1737; Stapfer, Inst. Theol. Polem. I'j^o:,;
as well as the attention shown by the bibliographers, Pfaff,
Walch, Fabricius, to the literature of Evidences, is a proof
of the same fact.
The replies were still directed against Deism, as in England

666 NOTE 49. [Lect. VIII.
or France. It is not till later in the century that rationalism.
appears. When however it arose, writers were not wanting
who opposed it. The history of the German theology has
been treated so largely in Lectures VI and VII that it is only
necessary to indicate the steps. The early deistic rationalism
of Reimarus and Lessing met its opponents in contemporary
writers named in the notes to Lecture VI. The critical ra
tionalism of Eichhorn and Paulus was really answered by the
later critics, as was shown when we noticed that criticism
gradually abandoned their view, and rescued itself from their
extravagant opinions (p. 363 seq.), while the dogmatic ra
tionalism which was connected with it was dispersed by the
discussion on the province of the supernatural already de
scribed (p. 591)- ^^ *^® present century the aspect of the
attack and of the defence has changed. The question had
been as to the existence of the supernatural.
In the present the question has been. If the supernatural be
admitted, what is the capacity of man to discover it by the light
of feeling or reason respectively, without revelation? Therefore,
while in the last centuryit was important to show that the super
natural exists, and that the religion that taught it was not
deception; in the present the endeavour has been, to bring men
from the supernatural to the biblical, and to make them feel
that the Christian religion is not a mere mistake. Thus they
have been lead from the natural to the supernatural; from the
supernatural to the revealed ; from the ideal to the historic '.
The steps of this process in the present century have been
twofold : — the philosophical Christianity of Schleiermacher,
and the revival of biblical religion. Neander has been already
adduced (p. 513) as the type of the Christian movement which
sought to unite the two : wishing to appropriate that which
he believed, he strove to present Christianity as the highest
form of the rehgious life ; as a life based on a doctrine ; the
doctrine itself being based on a revealed history. It must
suffice thus to have indicated, without tracing into detail, the
' The anti-Straussian Literature described in Note 38 is an illustration of the
German apologetic.

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 50. 667
apologetic literature which has been partly named in the
Notes of the lectures, and may be found by consulting the
references there given.
In all ages the purpose of Evidences has been conviction; to
offer the means of proof either hy philosophy or by fact. In
arguing with the heathen in the first age, the former plan
was adopted ; the school of Alexandria trying to lead men to
Christianity as the highest philosophy : in the middle ages
the same method was adopted under the garb of philosophy,
but with the alteration that the philosophy was one of form,
not matter. In the later middle ages the appeal was to the
Church : in the early contests with the Deists to the authority
of reason, and to the Bible reached by means of this process ;
in the later, to the Bible reached through history and fact : in
opposing the French infidelity the appeal was chiefly to au
thority ; iu the early German the appeal was the same as in
England; in the later German it has beeu a return in spirit to
that of the early fathers, or of the English apologists of the
eighteenth century, but based on a deeper philosophy; an
appeal to feeling or intuition, and not to reflective reason ;
and through these ultimately to the Bible.

Note 50. p. 537.
ON the history of the DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION.
The subject of the history of inspiration has been named
both in Lect. III. and VIII. It may be useful therefore to
point out the sources for the study of it.
The history of it is briefly sketched in Hagenbach's Dogmen
geschichte, § 32, 121, 161, 243, 293. A valuable catena of
passages relative to the primitive doctrine of inspiration is
given in Mr. Westcott's Introduction to the Gospels, Appendix
B. second edition, i860; and a continuation of the history to
more recent periods in Dr. Lee's important work on Inspira-

668 NOTE 50. [Lbct.VIIL
tion, especially in Appendices C and G; and in Tholuck's
Doctrine of Inspiration, translated in the Journal of Sacred
Literature, July 1854.
It appears that the theories held respecting inspiration in
different ages may be arranged under three classes :
I. The belief in a full inspiration was held from the earliest
times, with the few exceptions observable in occasional remarks
of Origen, Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius
Zigabenus (in the twelfth century) .
2. Traces after a time begin to appear of a disposition,
(a) to admit that the inspiration ought to be regarded as
appertaining to the proper material of the revelation, viz.
religion; but at the same time to maintain firmly the full
inspiration of the religious elements of scripture. This
view occurs in the allusions of the writers just named, and
existed in the seventeenth century in the Helmstadt school
of Calixt in Germany, and the Saumur school of Amyrault,
Cameron, and Placseus, in France; and is stated decidedly
by a series of writers in the English church. Some of the
latter go so far as to avow, (/3) that the value of the religious
element in the revelation would not be lessened if errors were
admitted in the scientific and miscellaneous matter which
accompanies it. This admission increased after the specula
tions of Spinoza and the pressure of the Deist objections.
3. A third theory was suggested by Maimonides, which
was revived by Spinoza, and has been held among many of
the rationalists in Germany, and has lately appeared in
English literature : this theory is, that the book does not,
even in its rehgious element, differ in kind from other books,
but only in degree. It will be observed that a wide chasm
separates this view from either of those named under the
second head; the only point in common being, that in all
alike the writers agree that the nature of inspu-ation must be
learned from experience, and not be determined antecedently
by our own notions of optimism, without examining the real
contents of revelation. Coleridge would by many be con
sidered to give expression to this third theory in his Con-

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 50. 669
fessions of an Inquiring Sjnrif. Perhaps however he hovered
between it and the one previously named ; being anxious
rather to identify inspiration psychologically with one form
of the NoSs or " Reason," than theologically to confound
the material of revelation with truth acquired by natural
means. It is not the purpose of this note to discuss the true view
of inspiration; but merely to state the historic facts. The
writer may however be allowed to repeat what has been
already implied in the preface, that he dissents entirely from
the third of these views. To him there seems evidence for
believing that the dogmatic teaching implied on religious
subjects in holy scripture is a communication of supernatural
truth, miraculously revealed from the world invisible. Cfr.
p. 40.On the subject of inspiration, in addition to the works
above named, instruction will be derived from the sources
indicated in the Essay on Inspiration in Bp. Watson's Tracts,
1785. vol. iv. pp. 5 and 469; and from Dean Harvey Good
win's Hulsean Lectures, first course, lectures vii. and viii. The
first of the above-named views is stated in Gaussen's work on
Theopneustie, and on the Canon; the third in Morell's Philo
sophy of Religion, c. iv ; and in the first three essays of
Scherer's Melanges de Crit. Religieuse.
A list of those theologians who have held the second class
of views above named, together with the extracts from their
writings, is given by Dr. S. Davidson in his Facts, State
ments, 8fc. concerning vol. ii. of ed. x. of Dome's Introduction,
1 857 ; and Mr. Stephen, in his defence of Dr. R. WUhams,
1862, has quoted some of the same passages, and added a
few more (i)g/". pp. 127-160'.) As the reader was referred
hither from Lecture III. p. 160. for the proof of the assertion
there made, that this theory had been largely held in the last
century in England, it seems fair here to add the references.
• Dr. Pusey also, in his Hist. Inq. on German Theol. p. 2. ch. v, quoted
many passages illustrative of the history of the same fact. He has however
subsequently disavowed all concurrence in the opinions of the writers cited.

670 NOTE 50. [Lbct.VIIL
At the same time this list is not given with the view of
endorsing the views of these writers, but merely to prove the
accuracy of the assertion in the text of Lectures III and
VIII. Among English divines, those who have asserted the form
of the theory named above as No. 2 a, are, Howe (Div. Author.
of Scripture, lect. viii. and ix.) ; Bishop Williams (Boyle Lect.
serm. iv. pp. 133, 4) ; Burnet (Article vi. p. 157. Oxford ed.
1 814); Lowth (Vind. of Div. Auth. and Inspir. of Old and
New Testament, p. 45 seq.) ; Hey (Theol. Lect. i. 90) ; Watson
(Tracts, iv. 446); Bishop Law (Theory of Religion) ; Tomline
(Theology, i. 21); Dr. J. Barrow (Dissertations, 1819, fourth
Diss.) ; Dean Conybeare (Theolog. Lect. p. 186) ; Bishop Hinds
(Inspir. of Script, pj). 151, 2); Bishop Daniel Wilson (lect. xiii.
on Evidences, i. 509) ; Parry (Inq. into Nat. of Insp. of Apost.
pp. 26, 27) ; Bishoj) Blomfield (Lect. on Acts v. 88-90.)
Among those who have gone so far as to hold the form of
the theory above given as No. 2 b, are, Baxter (Method. Theol.
CAr. part iii. ch. xii. 9. 4.) ; Tillotson (Works, fol. iii. p. 449.
serm. 168); Doddridge (on Inspir); Warburton (Z>oc^r. of
Grace, book i. ch. vii.); Bishop Horsley (serm. 39. on Ecc. xii. 7.
vol. iii. p. 175) ; Bishop Randolph (Rem. on MicAaelis Introd.
pp. 15, 16); Paley (Evidences of Christianity, part iii. ch. ii.);
Whately (Ess. on Diff. in St. Paul, Ess. i. and ix; Sermons on
Festivals, p. 90; Pecul. of Christianity, p. 233); Hampden
(Bampton Lect. Y^. "ii:^!, 2.); Thirlwall (Schleiermacher's Luke
Introd. p. 15); Bishop Heber (Bampt. Lect. \iii. p. ^'J'j);
Thomas Scott (Essay on Inspir. p. 3) ; Dr. Pye Smith (Script.
and Geol. 276, 237. third ed.) ; Dean Alford (Proleg. to Gosp.
ed. 1859.) vol. i. ch. i. § 22 ".
"' Among writers who lived earlier than the periods alluded to in the pas-
."lages of Lectures III. and VIII., the following are also cited in the works
before named : Origen (Comm in Joan. ii. 151. ed. Huet.) ; Jerome (Comm. in
Gal. iii. vol. iv.) ; Augustin. (wi Joan. iv. i.); Zuinglius (Schrift .-von Usteri, ii.
247) ; Calvin (Comm. on Hebr. ii. 21. Eom. iii. 4. Rom. ii. 8) ; Bullinger (on
I Cor. X. 8) ; Castellio (Dial. ii. de Elect, on Rom ix.) ; Erasmus (on Matt, ii.) ;
Grotius {Vot pro Pac. art. de Can. Script.) ; Episcopius (Inst. Theol. iv. §> i.)
Passages of Hooker and Chillingworth were also cited by Mr. Stephen.

Lbct.VIIL] NOTE 50. 671
It will be observed however, that both these classes of
writers are separated by a chasm from those which belong to
the third class above named ; inasmuch as they hold inspi
ration to be not only miraculous in origin, but different in
kind from even the highest forms of unassisted human intel
ligence.

INDEX.
The figures refer to the pages, wHAotit distinction of text
from foot-notes.

Ah\>& Paris, miracles of, 212.
Abelard ; a nominalist, 1 2 ; character
of, 113; works of, 11.^ ; Sic et Non,
114-117; different opinions con
cerning his scepticism, 116 ; a Bib
lical critic, 118.
Accommodation, principle of, 313,314;
used by English divines, .^14.
Acts, book of, controversy in Germany
concerning, 518.
.'Vhmed Ibn Zain Elebedin, a Maho
metan writer against Christianity,
SSI-
Alexander Hales (Alesius), a scho
lastic, 125.
Alexander of Aphrodisias, Pantheism
at Padua derived irom, 141.
Alexander of Pontus, named by Lu
cian, 65, 70.
Alexander VII. pope, prohibits Lu
cian's Peregrinus, 6g.
Alexandi'ian school of Fathers, 82;
opinions held concerning the rela
tion of Christianity to other reli
gions, S39-
AUegoi-y, distinguished from myth and
parable, 379.
Allen's Modern Judaism, 548.
Alphonso de Spina, treatise against
Mahometans, 550.
Amyntor of Toland, 182.
Angelo Mai, edition by, of Fronto, 67;
of Porphyry's letter to Marcella, 100.
Annet Paul, a Deist writer, 202,
Anselm, view of the Atonement, 520,
.i;46 ; works of, 650.
Apollinaris, 642, 3.
ApoUonius of Tyana, 65, 87 seq. .577.
Apologetic, office of, 225, 497.
Apologetic Lectures. See Lectures.
Apologies of early fathers, 639 ; Pres
sense's mode of classifying, 639;
sources for studying, 640, 648 ;

table of, 642 ; African school of,
644 ; Alexandrian school of, 645 ;
peculiarity of and inferiority to mo
dern, 649.
Apprehenil, how distinguished from
comprehend, 521.
Aquinas, his dogmatic position defen
sive, 12, 651.
Argens. See D'Argens.
Arian tendency in English church, 555.
Ariosto, sceptical jests in, 133.
Aristotle, criticism on Plato by, ^,8.
Arminius, jS.s ; Arminians, ib.
Arndt, J. a Pietist, 600.
Arnobius's Apology, 646.
Arnold of Brescia, 119.
Arnold, German church historian, pref.
xxiii.
Ass, worship of, imputed to Chi'istians,
573-
Association mental, works on, 501.
Astruc, first to distinguish documents
in Genesis, 359.
Atheism, causes of in modern times,
505 ; history of the uses of the term ,
.S85.
Athenagoras, apology of, 644.
Atonement, 473, 508, 516, 522, 546;
literary history of, 519.
Aufkldrung-zeit, 330.
Augustin on Porphyry, 86 ; De Civ.
Bd, 648 ; comparison with Aqui
nas, 649.
Aurelius, Marcus, views of, 62.
Averroes, influence of, 125 ; altered
tone of Christians towards, 126;
pantheism derived from, 140; three
fold influence of, 141.
Avesta Zend, 541- B.
Bacon, influence of, 1 3 ; works respect
ing, 148 ; his philosophy of method.
.65. X X

674.

INDEX.

Bahrdt, disciple of Semler, 320.
Balguy, Dr. works on the Christian
evidences, 659.
Bampton, John, 292.
Bampton Lectures, 52, 54; 516, 519,
546, 661, 685.
Bangorian Controversy, 176.
Baronius, the church historian, pref. xxii.
Barre. See La Barre.
Bartholmess, le Scept. Theol. 26 ; Hist.
Crit. 34.
BartoUocci, Lexicon, 547.
Basedow, institutions of, 309, 320.
Basle, theology of the university of, 626.
Bauer, Bruno, 387.
Bauer, L. 623.
Baumgarten-Crusius, 56, 624.
Baur, Chr. of Tubingen, work on
Gnosis, 55 ; on Celsus, 70 ; on Apol-
lonius, 87; theological position, 392 ;
life and works, 616.
Bautain, abb^, 63 1.
Bayle, 236.
Bazard, the Simonian, 414.
Beard's Voices of the Chu/rch, 385.
Beaufort, critic of Roman history, 204.
BeUo, Italian poet, 133.
Bembo, cardinal, 134.
Benedictines on Abelard's Sic et Non,
"5-
Bengel, 24, 186.
Bentham, Jeremy, remarks on by J. S.
Mill, 436.
Bentley, Phalaris, 186 ; Phileleuthe
rus Lipsiensis, 655.
Berkeley, Bp. 210, 334.
Berhn, university of, 308, 340, 345.
Bernard, St. contest of with Abelard,
113, 114.
Berry Stieet Lecture, 658.
Beugnot, I,es Juifs, 545.
Bhagavat Glt4 542.
Bible, statement of modern difficulty
on, 525.
Biblia Pauperu/m, 313.
Bibliander, collection of works against
Mahometanism, 549, 550.
Bibliolatry, origin of the term, 329.
Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 554.
Bibliotheca Sacra, 63, 3.S3, 394, 617,
621, pref. xxiii.
Biddle, J. the English unitarian, 555.
Bilderdyk, Dutch poet, 629.
Bini Carlo, ItaUan poet, 22.
Biographical treatment of doubt, use
of, 45 seq.
Biran, see De Biran.
Blackball, against Toland, 182.
Blackwood's Magazine on Renan, 426.
Bleda's Defensio Fidei, 550.

Blount, C. the deist, 89, 173, 174.
Blount, Prof, works of, .S20, 657.
Boccaccio, Le Tre Annella, 124.
Boethius quotes Porphyry on predica
tion, 79, no.
Bolingbroke, works and opinions, 203
seq.
Bolton, Hulsean Prize Essay, 102, 637.
Bonald, 631.
Boone, Shergold, argument on divine
attributes, 36.
Boulmier, Life of Bayle, 236.
Boyle, Robert, 292, 657.
Boyle Lectures, 658; list of several, 659.
Bretschneider, German theologian,
326, 3.^0, 378.
Bridgewater Treatises, 661.
British Quarterly Review, on Italian
Renaissance, 131 ; on Spinoza, 149 ;
on German theology, 327 ; on
Schleiermacher, 341 ; on the Vedas,
543 ; on modern German theology,
400; on Comte, 416.
Browne, Dr. Peter, 657.
Brucher on Scholastic philosophy, 107.
Bruno Giordano, 143.
Buchanan on Atheism, 661.
Buckle, on the state of France in the
eighteenth century, 231 ; on office of
free thought, 492.
Buddeus, 593.
Buddhism, 64, 543, 546.
Buddhist pilgrims, 541.
Bunsen, Chevalier, 553.
Burgh, reputed a deist, 285.
Burnouf, Eugene on Zend, 540.
Burton, Dr. on Gnostics, 54, .S5.
Butler, Bp. relation to Shaftesbury,
184; account ofhis works, 221 seq.;
points in his Analogy weakened,
221; attacks on the Analogy, 222;
his originality, 223 ; his position,
512; Whewell on his Ethics, 521;
value of, 636, 657, 659.
Butler,Charles, works of, 1 54, 231, 232.
Buxtorf, on Hebrew vowel points, 158.
Byron, Vision of Judgment, 133 ; his
scepticism, 285. C.
Cabanis, 268, 409.
Cabbala, Franck on, 55.
Calas, the family of, 240.
Calderon, 133.
Campanella, 143.
Canon, date when fixed, 80 ; works
on, 81; Toland on, 182.
Cantacuzene, 550.
Canz of Tubingen, 305.
Capellus, on Hebrew vowel points,i58.

INDEX.

675

Cappadose, 628.
Cardan, 143.
Carlisle, an unbeliever in the present
century, 285.
Carlyle, T. bis works and influence,
445 seq.
Carmen Memoriale, 545.
Causes in Christianity for a struggle
with free thought, i, 2 ; in the na
ture of man for ditto, 17-44 ; moral
causes of doubt, pref. X ; 18, 19-25,
490, 65s ; intellectual of ditto, 28-
44 ; instances of, 24 ; why selected
for study, pref., 487; peculiarity of
analysis of them, 488 ; of unbelief
in old heathens, 99 ; of ditto in the
present age, 505; why the work is
written, pref. xvi.
Celsus, named, 1 1 ; character and life,
70, 99 ; work of, analysed, 70 seq. ;
discussed, 569 ; Pressens^ on, 570.
Century, nineteenth, comparison of
with third century, A. D. 502, 503.
Chaldee letters, when introduced into
Judsea, 545.
Chalmers's works, 660.
Chandlers, the, against Colhns, 657.
Change of tone in modern doubt, 433.
Channing, 556.
Charron, 236.
Chateaubriand, 409.
Chissuk Emii/na, 546.
Christianity not Mysterious, of Toland,
179; ditto as old as Creation, of
Tindal, 195.
Christianity, peculiarities in it which
are the ground of attack by free
thought, I, -.i. See Cause.
Christian Remembrancer, on French
preachers, 423.
Christology of Strauss, 613.
Chronicles, Books of, works on, 24.
Chrysostom, compared to Bernard, 649.
Chubb, T. the deist, 200.
Church, see History, English, French.
Classification of German theologians,
621.
Claudius, 343.
Clement, the apology of, 645.
Clementines, tlie, 66, 565.
Clergy, education of in reference to
doubt, 485.
Cocceius, allegorical interpretation of,
313-
Cocquerel, the two, 633.
Colani, 430, 632.
Coleridge, 35, 446 ; Mill on, 436 ; his
system described, 466 seq. ; litera-
tiire concerning, 467 ; on inspira
tion, 669.

Collard, Royer, 630.
Collins, the Deist, on Daniel, 83; views
of explained, 187 seq.
Combe, 440.
Communism, French, 411, 414.
Comparative study of religions, see Re
ligion.
Comte, 45 ; system explained, 415 seq.
439-
CondiUac, 209, 235.
Conferences in Paris, history of, 422.
Congregational Lectures, 658.
Consciousness, the Christian, 345, 524.
Constant, Benjamin, Polytheisme 61,
I2i ; De la Religion, .^39, 630.
Convocation, proceedings of against
Toland, 180.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 98.
Costa, see Da Costa.
Coteries in Paris in eighteenth century,
254, .596-
Courcelles, disturbs readings of the
Text, 186.
Cousin, 30, 36, 38 ; on Spinoza, 150;
system explained, 418 seq. 561, 630.
Coward, a materialist, 172.
Coward Lecture, 658.
Crescens, attack of on Christianity, 67.
Creuzer, on mythology, 635.
Criticism, two kinds of, pref. xii. 5
standard for in this work, pref. xv. ;
science of created by the Germans,
297.
Cyril, work of against Julian, 580, 647.

Da Costa, converted Jew at Amster
dam, 628.
Dailie, on Ignatian Epistles, 186.
D'Alembert, 250.
Damascenus, J. 549.
Damiron, pref. xxvii. ; 269.
Daniel, Book of. Porphyry's attack on,
83 seq.; commentators on, 83; Greek
words in, 84 ; peculiarities of, 84 ;
difficulties concerning it stated, 575.
Dante on Averroes, 126.
D'Argens, work on Julian, 90,
249.
Darwin's theory of species, no.
Daub, German theologian, 374.
D'Aubign^ of Geneva, 626.
Davidson, Dr. S. on Job, 7 ; on Inspi
ration, 669.
De Biran, 558, 630.
De Bonald, 631.
D'Eckstein, 631.
Deism, iu England, 15 ; division of,
164, 177, 203; name explained,
166; peculiarities of English, 218;
X X 2

676

INDEX.

introduced into Germany, 302, 305,
306, 477, 587 ; compared with
unitarianism, 463.
De la Monnaie, on the De Tribus Im
postoribus, 582.
Deluge, difficulties on, 23.
De Maistre, 26, 423, 631.
Demoniacs, Semler on, 314.
Demonstrations Evcmgeliques, a col
lection of works on Evidences, 654.
De Prades, 249.
De Pressens^, see Pressense.
Descartes, 13 ; works on, 148; method
of, 164.
De Tracy, 268.
Dewar on German theology, pref. xxxii.
De Wette, 24, 356; 608.
D'Holbach, 255 seq.
AiaXeKTiK^ of Plato, 108.
Diderot, Ufe and works, 251 seq.
Difenbach's Jud. Convert, and Jud.
Convers. 547.
Difficulties, chief in the present day,
504, 517 seq.
Disputatio Jechielis, 545.
DodweU, a deistical pamphlet of, 201.
Dogmatic theology in Germany in
seventeenth century, 299.
Dolet, 236.
DoUinger's Judenthutn, 59.
Donnellan Lecture, 658.
Dorner's Person Chriiti, 394 ; pref.
Dort, synod of, 299.
Doubt, causes of, see Cause, Biogra
phic, Change, XJtility.
Douglas, Bp. J. Criterion, 212.
Dragonnades, 23 r .
Dura, image of, 575. E.
Ecclesiastes, book of, 7-
Eclectic school in France, 418, 629;
new school of, 425 .
Ecrasez I'imfwme, explained, 246.
Edelmann, 320.
Edinburgh Review on Correlation of
Force, 500; on mental association,
501.
Education of the clergy at the present
time, 485.
Edmcation of the World, Lessing not
the real author of, 122.
Eichhorn, rationalism of, 327.
El, in composition of proper names,
610.
Eleatic school, 1x7.
Ellis on Divine Things, 66^.
Elohim, 360.
Emerson, remarks on, 447.
Encyclopsedists in France, 254.

Enfantin, the St. Simonian, 414.
England, unbelief in, Lect. IV. and V. ;
modem forms of, Lect. VIII. and
464 seq.; books of, 477.
EngUsh church, subdivisions of the
history of, 658.
English divines, seven chief, 407.
EngUsh, works of Evidences in, 655
seq.
 works on Inspiration, 670.
Epicureans, opinions of on reUgion, 59.
Episcopius, 555.
Ernesti, 3 10.
Brskine's Evidences, 661.
Esprit fort, compared with freethinker,
588.
Essays and Reviews, 465, 474,475.
Este, Alphonso de, 322.
Ethical school, rise of in England, 18.?.
Eusebius on Porphyry, 78 seq.; reply
to Hierocles, 677, 647, 649.
Euthymius Zigabenus, 549.
Evanson on the Gospels, 598.
Everlasting Gospel, FranciscantSi book
so called, 120 seq.
Evidences, history of, 5 1 1 ; in early
church, 640, 642 ; in the Alexan
drian school, 514; alteration in, ac
cording to time and place, 57, 648 ;
in the middle age, 650 ; at the Re
naissance, 652 ; in France in eight
eenth century, 273, 291, 663; in
Germany, 515, 665 ; in England,
655; Butler, 221; modem books
on, 484, 613 ; subdivision of history
of, 638; two modes of studying,
637 ; external, 102, 636, 639 ; why
less used in early church, 102, 639 ;
internal, 626; value of in eighteenth
century, 521; instances of value,
511, 313; logical force of, 20, 636;
opposition to, whence, 292.
Ewald, 356, 364, 609.
Ewing, Greville, on Jews, 548.
F.
Fabricius, J. A. 18; works ou Jewish
controversy, 547.
Fabricius, J. Consid. Var. Controv. 548.
Fairness necessary in the inquiry, 488.
Farmer on Demons, 285.
Fathers of the fourth century, 649.
Feeling used as a test of truth, 40, 41.
F^lix, Pfere, 423.
Ferrara, court of, 322.
Feuerbach, 388.
Fichte, 333, 334.
Ficinus, De Rel. Christ. 652.
Fiction modem, pantheistic character
of, 448, 9.

INDEX.

677

Fleury, the historian, pref. xxii.
Fleury, opinion on EngUsh literature,
237.
Fontenelle, 236, 272, 283.
Foreign Quarterly Review on Tholuck,
402.
Formula Concordise, 299.
Formula Consensus, 158.
Foscolo on Romantic epic, 132.
Foster, 659.
Fourier, 413.
Fox, W. J. Religious Ideas, 477.
Foxton, Popular Christiamity, 477.
France, state of when infidelity arose
in eighteenth century, 230; sources
of freethinking in, 251 ; school at
beginning of century, 408 ; evidences
in, 663.
Franck on Cabbala, 55, 541 ; on Sal
vador, 421.
Francke, A. H. the Pietist, 600.
Eraser's Magazine, on utilitarianism,
37; on pantheism in the university
of Paris, 421 ; on Renan, 425.
Frederick II. blasphemy concerning
three impostors, 123.
 II. of Prussia, 248, 306.
Freethinker explained, 588.
Freethought, critical history of, pref.
xii. ; three kinds of, pref. vii. ;
law expressing the mode of its ope
ration, 9-16 ; four epochs of its
action, 10-16 ; office of in history,
490, 491, 496 ; poUtical character of
in middle ages, 106, 127 ; change
in modern forms of it, 432, 496 ;
use of inquiry into, 49 seq. 482 ;
causes which made it turn into un
beUef, 17 seq.
French church under Bourbons, 424.
French protestant church. See Pro-
testamt.
French revolution, religious aspects of,
265.
Fries, German philosopher, 356.
Fronto's attack on Christianity, 67.
G.
Galen, speaks of Christianity, 567.
Galileo, 493.
Gallican Uberties, 232.
Gaussen, writer on Theopneustie, G26,
669.
Geddes, Dr. works of, 598.
GelUus Aulus, remark on Peregrinus,
68.
Genesis, De Wette on, 362.
Genthe, T.'W.De Impost. Relig. 583.
Geology, difficulties arising from, 444.
Gerard on evidences, 77, 638.

Gerhardt, German hymn-writer, 600.
Germany ; works of evidence in, 66 5
literature of, 297 ; patriotism in li-
berative war, 339 ; philosophy of,
332 seq; theology of, subdivision of,
298 ; three periods in its history,
308 ; sources of, 62 i ; classification
of, 622.
Gfrorer, 617.
Gibbon, works criticised, 275 seq.
Gibson, Bp. Pastorals of against Wool
ston, 193, 657.
Gildon's Oracles of Reason, 174.
Gnostics, 10, 55.
Godwin, Political Justice, 281.
Goerres, German mystical philosopher,
338.
Gottingen, university of, 309.
Goze, opponent of Reimarus, 3iq.
Gospels, controversy on explained, 376,
377-
Graffito blasfemo, 573.
Grant, sir A. on stoics, 63, 495.
Graves, on Pentateuch, 660.
Greece, state of in fifth century B. C.
495-
Greek words in the book of Daniel,
84. *
Greg, W. R. Creed of Christendom of,
453-
Gregory IX pope, remark on Fred.
IL 123.
Grimm, baron, 251.
Groen Van Printsterer. See Printsterer.
Groningen party in Dutch church, 628.
Grote on Greek mythology, 6 ; on
sophists, 58 ; on state of Greece in
fifth century B. C. 495.
Grotius, De Ver. Chr. Relig. 654.
Grove on correlation of force, 500.
Guadagnoli, a writer against Maho-
metanism, 551.
Guhrauer, on Lessing, 603.
Guizot on Prayer, 559.
Gurlitt on Wolfenbiittel Fragments,
603.
Gustavus Adolphus association, 403.
Gutskow, 389. H.
Hadrian, mention of Christianity, 566.
Havernick, 398.
Hagenbach, pref xxxiii. 627.
Hallam, subdivision of historical in
quiry by, 537.
Halle, pietistic opposition to Wolff at,
304 ; university of, 309, 345 ; orphan-
house at, 600.
HamUton, sir W. criticism on Cousin,
39, 612.

678

INDEX.

Hampden, Bp. Philosophical Evidences
of Christianity on Butler, 222.
Hardwick, Christ and other Masters,
54°, 54r-
Harms's Theses, 340.
Hartley, 209.
Haureau on scholasticism, 112.
Heathens, ancient, opposition to Chris
tianity, Lect. II. ; religious tenden
cies among, 59 seq. ; reaction in fa
vour of, 61; parallel to the struggle
with, 55, 102 ; few references to
Christianity among, 565.
Hebrew monarchy, F. Newman on,
460 ; people, Ewald's history of,
609.
Hegel, 335, 370; compared with He-
raclitus, 612.
Hegelian philosophy, 371; contrasted
with that of Schleiermacher, 373.
Hegelian school, subdivided, 374 ;
young school of, 619.
Heine, H. the poet, 22, 389.
Helvetius, works, 254 seq.
Hengstenberg, 398 ; on Joh, 7 ; on
Pentateuch, 359.
Henke, pref. xxiii. ; 329.
"HenneU, S. 278, 454, 455. ,
Herbart, German philosopher, creator
of a realistic tendency, 619.
Herbert of Cherbury, works, 167 seq.
Herder, 322, 338.
Hermes, professor at Bonn, 338.
Hermias, apology of, 644.
Herzog's Real-Encycl.24., 322, 340.
Hey, professor at Cambridge, 555.
Hierocles, 86; Eusebius's work against,
577-
Hieronymus, see Jerome.
Hieronymus Xavier, see Xavier.
Hilgenfeld, professor at Jena, 617.
Hindu, literature, 542 ; philosophy,
54'-
Historic evidences of Christianity, 207.
Historic method of study in philosophy,
43. 537. 538, 5fil;.the pecuharity
of this age, pref. xvii.
History, threefold phase of, 3, 4, 537.
History of church, writers on, pref. xxiii.
Hobbes, works, 170 seq.
HoUand, sir H. on force, 500.
Holland, modem theology of, 627 ;
remonstrants, 154.
Holsten, Vita Porphyrii, 78.
Holyoake, G. J. 440.
Hoornbeek, iSf«nim« Controv. 417, 541,
546, 556.
Hottinger, Historia Orientalis, 547,
552.
Houtteville, pref. xx. ; 56, 87, 663.

Huet, 26, 82, 635, 663.
Hutten, Ulric von, 138.
Hulse, founder of the Lecture, 292,
658.
Hulsius, 547.
Hume, 208 seq. ; Essay on miracles,
211.
Hundeshagen, 14, pref. xxxii.
Hyper-Lutheranism, 400.

lambUchus, life of Pythagoras by, 89.
Idea, first used in a subjective sense by
Descartes, 597.
Idealism, difficulties arising from school
of, 440.
Ideology explained, 260, 597.
Ignatian epistle, 69.
Illgen's Zeitschrift, 122 ; on Reimarus,
603.
Illuminism, name explained, 320.
Imbonati, 547.
Impostoribus, De Tribus, legendary
book so called, 124, 582.
Infidel, word discussed, 584.
Infidelity in France, 15 ; division of,
238 ; summary of, 271 seq. ; in
England after the French revolu
tion, 281.
Infinity, different theories on our
knowledge of, 152.
Inspiration, psychological analysis of,
40 ; view of in Germany in the se
venteenth century, 159, 299, 470,
476, 526, 527 ; history of, 667 ;
opinions of English divines concern
ing, 670 ; hterature of, 670.
Interpretation, history of, 312 ; Sem
ler's historic method, 312 ; methods
of, 3^3 ', Strauss's account of, 382.
Intuition, relation of to reUgion as
a test of truth, 37-40, 408, 558 ;
compared with voCj, 468.
Isaac, Rabbin, 545. J.
Jacobi, German phUosopher, 333, 336.
Jehovah, discussion on name, 360,
609 ; used in composition of Hebrew
proper names, 610.
Jena, university of, 322.
Jenkins, writer on evidences, 659,
Jerome, passages of about Porphyry,
81 seq.
Jemsalem, temple of, Julian's attempt
to rebuild, 93.
Jerusalem, German theologian, 319.
Jewish controversy against Christian
ity, 17, 544 seq.
Jews, reformed, 548.

INDEX.

679

Joachim, author of Everlasting Gospel,
1 20.
Job, Book of, 7.
John of Parma, author of the preface
to Everlasting Gospel, 120.
Joufiroy, French philosopher, 630.
Journal, Kitto's on Daniel, 14 ; on in
spiration, 667.
JournaUsm, French, 414.
Jowett, Professor, 87, 465, 469.
Julia Domna, 88.
Julian, 11; life of, 90, 91, 100; acts
of, 93 ; book against Christians by,
95. 579 ; rebuUding of temple by,
93-
Justin Martyr, 515, 544 ; apologies,
643. K.
Kahnis, work on German protestant
ism, pref xxxui. ; 308.
Kant, relation of his view to reUgion,
•38; compared with Abelard, 117;
spread ofhis phUosophy, 322; spirit
of it, 379; theology of, 323 seq. ;
division of rationaUsts by, 588.
KeU on Chronicles, 24.
Kidder, Demonstration of Messias,
547-
Kmgsley, C. 45, 65, 465.
Kirchenbund, and Kirchentag, 402.
Kirchoff, discoveries on contents of
solar atmosphere, 500.
Kitto's Biblical Cyclopcedia, on
Job, 7 ; on Isaiah, 358 ; on inter
pretation, 312 ; on accommodation,
314; on Daniel, 577.
Klose on Reimarus, 603.
Koerner, the poet, 339.
KoestUn, 617.
Kortholt, De Relig. Mahom. 522;
De Tribus Impost. 583, 585 ; Pa-
gomus Obtrectator, 571.
Krebsius on Lucian, 56S.
Kuenen, professor at Leyden, 629.
L.
Labarre, 240.
Labbeus, Concilia, 121.
Lactantius, Divin. Instit. 646.
Lake school of poetry, 337, 435.
Lambert, St. 251.
Lamennais, 631.
La Mettrie, 249.
Landscape art of England, 435.
Lardner's works, Lect. II. passim;
pref. xxv. ; 657, 660.
Larroque, sceptical works of, 422.
Latitude party in the EngUsh church
in time of Charles II. 175, 555.
Laurent's works, 105, 106.

Lavater, 343.
Laws of contradiction and sufficient
reason, 303.
Lay scholars among reformers, 298.
Lechler, Gesch. des Engl. Deismus,
pref. xxvi.
Leclerc on inspiration, 159.
Lectures apologetic, Boyle, &c. 658.
Lee, Dr. S. tracts on Mahometanism,
553 ; on German theology, pref.
Lee, Dr. W. on inspiration, 159, 667.
Leibnitz, philosophy of, 302.
Leipsic, school of, 309.
Leland on Deism, pref. xxv.
Leman lake, exiles of, 279.
Le Moyne, Varia Sacra, 551.
Leopardi, Italian poet, 2 1 .
Lerminier, De Vivfluence, &c. 630.
Leslie, C. Method with Deists, 659.
Lessing, works, 316, 602, 603; au
thorship of his Education of the
World, 122.
Libre pensie, pref. vii. ; 589.
Limborch, Arnica Collatio, 547, 555.
Lime Street Lecture, 658.
Lindsay, lord. Scepticism a retrogres
sion, pref. xxi.
Lippmann, Rabbin, 545.
Literature in France, new tone of in
eighteenth century, 234; Fleury' s
opinion of, 237.
Lobeck on Mythology, 635.
Locke, 175, 209 ; Webb on, 234.
Logic, Metaphysics, &c. distinguished,
108; method of, taught by physical
science, 137.
Logical and chronological priority dis
tinguished, 525.
A6yos of Philo, 469.
Lombard, Peter, 651.
Louis XIV. 234.
Lucian, a sceptic, 59 ; Peregr. Prot.
67 seq. 568, 569; life, 67; Philo
patris, 94, 578.
Lucretius, 59.
Lutheran reaction . See Neo and Hyper
Lutheranism.
LyaU, Propced. Prophet. 214.
Lyons, Infallibility of Humcm Judg
ment, 190.
Lyttleton, on St. Paul, 294, 519, 659.
M.
Mabillon's Bernard, 114.
Macaulay, subdivision of history, 537.
Mackay, R. W. works of, 450 seq.
MacmUlan's Magazine on Cowper, &c.
32 ; on Miracle Plays, 132.
Maerklin, 47.
Magdeburg Centuries, pref. xxxiii.

680

INDEX.

Mahdbhdrata, 542.
Mahomet, 553.
Mahometans, controversy with, 17, 549,
55.?-
Maimonides, 151.
Maine de Biran, Eclectic philosopher,
558, 630.
Mandeville, 190.
Mansel, Bampton Lect. 662 ; on Kant,
323; on Fichte, 612.
Maracci, Koran, 551.
Marchand's Dictiormaire de Imposto
ribus, 582.
Mai'et, 421.
Marheinecke, Hegelian theologian, 374.
Marmontel, 251.
Martiueau, J. 452, 477, 556 ; on But
ler, 222.
Martyn, H. pamphlets on Mahomet
anism, 552.
Masson, Essays, 46.
Materiahsm defined, 235 ; in Ger
many, 620.
Maternus, 643.
Maupertius, 306.
Maurice's Boyle Lectures, 465, 540.
M'Caul's works on Judaism, 548.
M'Cosh, works, 39, 661.
M'GiU on the Chaldee of Daniel, 84.
Mediation school of theology, 341, 393.
Mendelssohn the philosopher, 3 r 7.
Metaphysics, 33 ; tests of truth in, 35
seq ; subdivision of, 557.
Mettrie, La, 249.
Miall, E. Bases of Belief , 662.
Michaelis, 310.
Michael Scot, 125.
Micrselius, 546.
Middleton, Conyers, 599.
Mign4 Livres Sacrgs, 542 ; Demon
strations Evangeliques, 654.
Mill, Dr. oh Strauss, 335.
MiU, J.S. on variation of terms, 14 ;
on laws, 45, 439,538; on utility,
37 ; on society, 65 ; on Bentham
and Coleridge, 436.
MiUer' s Bampton Lectures, 516, 661.
MUls, various readings, 186.
Milman on Gibbon, 276.
Milton, compared with Pope and Ten
nyson, 31.
Minucius FeUx, apology, 6 1 , 644.
Miracle Plays, 132, 313.
Miracles, Hume on, 214 seq ; how dis-
tingui3hedfromwonder,2 1 5 ; Trench's
classification of attackson, 217.
Miscreant, name explained, 586.
Missions in Germany, 402.
Modern English theology, tendencies
in, 464 seq.

Moehler, 338, 353.
Monnaie, de la, 582.
Montaigne, 236.
Montesquieu, 237.
Montg&on on tlie miracles of Abb^
Paris, 212.
Moral causes of doubt. See Cause.
Moral sense, 513, 521.
Moravians, 227, 402.
MoreU's works on tests of truth, 26,
30, 35 ; on Inspiration, 40.
Morgan's works, 198 seq.
Morinus on Hebrew vowel points, 158.
Mornseus, De Ver. 547, 653.
Mosheim on Everlasting Gospel, 1 20.
Moyer, lady, lecture on Arianism, 658.
Miiller, Julius, 353.
Miiller, Max, on myths, 381, 635 ; on
Sanskrit, 543.
MilUer, Ottfried, on mythology, 635.
Mundt, 389.
Mysticism, instances of, 41.
Myth distinguished from parable and
legend, 328, 379, 380.
Mythology, Grote on, 6 ; altered opin
ion on in present century, 451, 635.
N.
Names proper, in Hebrew, 360, 610.
National Review on Ecclesiastes, 7 ;
on Swedenborg, 41 ; on Gibbon,
276; on SheUey, 287; on Strauss,
384; on J. H. Newman, 437 ; on
the working classes, 441 ; on Theo
dore Parker, 457 ; on the Acts, 518.
Natural history of doubt, pecuharity of
inquiry, 488-490.
Naturalism, term explained, 587; com
pared with positivism, 478.
Neander, Lect. II. passim; Ufe and
views, 353-355, 513; opposed pro
hibition of Strauss's book, 383.
Neo-Lutheranism, 399.
Neo-Platonism, explained, 64; works
on, 564 ; teachers of, 564 ; in Eng
lish theology, 468.
Nettement's works on French Uterary
history, 408, 629.
New Testament, questions on, 517.
Newman, F. 24, 48; works, 456, 460
seq.; Phases, 46 1; Hebr. Mon. 462.
Nicholai, 309, 316, 317.
Nicholas, Michel, 359, 609, 632.
Nieduer's Zeitschrift, on Reimarus,
603.
Nitzch, 353.
Nizzachon, the two, 545.
NominaUsm, 12, no, in.
North British Review, on Alexandrian
school, 312; on sociaUsm, 388,411,

INDEX.

681

414; on German theology, 400 ; on
Comte, 416 ; on Galileo, 493; on'
S. HenneU, 455 ; on Vedas, 543 ; on
Socinianism, 556 ; on Vinet, 626 ;
on apologetic literature, 654.
' Norton on Gospels, 55.
NovaUs, 337.
Novel, modern, tendency of, 448.
O.
Oberlin, 343.
Ochino, a unitarian, 138.
Ogilvie, Dr. on doubt, 18.
Olshausen, H. 353.
Ontology explained, 34.
Oracles of Reason of Blount, 1 74.
Oracles on Christianity, 80.
Orcagna, Averroes in his fresco, 160.
Origen against Celsus, 70, 71, 571,
645 ; comparison of with Schleier
macher, 401, 64Q.
Osiander, comparison of his views
with Schleiermacher's, 348.
Oxford movement in church, 601. See
Reaction.
Owen, R. 283 seq. 432.
Owen, R. D. 284.

Padua, university of, philosophy at,"i 39.
Paine, T. 210 seq.
Painting, early Italian schools of, 1 35.
Paley, 657.
Panizzi on Romantic Epic, 132.
Pantheism at Padua, 139; two kinds
of, 141, 153 ; name explained, 586.
Paolo Giovio, 134.
Para du Phanjas, 654.
Parable, distinguished from myth, 379.
Paris, abbe, miracles of, 212.
Parker, Theodore, life and writings of,
456-458.
Pascal, 663.
Patriotism in Germany, .^39.
Paulus, German theologian, 327 seq.
Pearson on infidelity, 1 8, 30, 438.
Pecock, Reginald, 138.
Pentateuch controversy, 359 seq.
Peregrinus Proteus of Lucian, 68 seq.
568, 569.
Persecution, cause of, 571 seq.
Pestalozzi, 338.
Peter, St. joke on in Romantic Epic,
132.
Petrarch on Evidences, 652.
Pfaff, 593.
Phases of Faith, of F.W. Newman, 461.
PhUippsohn on Judaism, 548.
Philopatris of Pseudo-Lucian, 94, 378.

Philosophy, scholastic, 1 08 seq. ; Ger
man, 332 seq. 619.
PhUostratus's Life of ApoUonius, 88
seq.
Physics, difficulties derived from, 493 ;
teaches logical method, 137.
Physiology, modern discoveries in, 500 ;
mode of approaching psychology
through, 619.
Piers Plowman, the poem, on contem
porary scepticism, 126.
Pietism, 300, 600.
Planck, A. on Lucian, 69, 568.
Planck's Sacred Philology, 312.
Plato on Sophists, 58 ; doctrines on
religion, 63 ; Platonic dialectic, 108 ;
Platonic party at Cambridge in the
seventeenth century, 175, 555.
Plurality of worlds, 283.
Poetry in Germany, schools of, 601.
Pomponatius, 142.
Pope, compared with Milton and Ten
nyson, 3 1 ; influence of Bolingbroke
on, 205.
Porphyry, life and character, 78 seq.
99 ; references for studying, 78 ; view
of oracles, 79; work against Christ
ians, 80 seq.; attack on Daniel, 83
seq. ; other views of, 85, 86 ; on pre
dication, 79; letter to Marcella, 100.
Port Royal, miracle of the thorn, 215.
Positivism, described, 417; in Eng
land, 439 ; religion of, 440 ; com
pared with Naturalism, 478.
Pouilly, critic on Roman history, 204.
Powell, Baden, on Deluge, 23.
Prayer, extract from Guizot on, 559.
Prejudices of heathens against Christ
ianity, 572.
Presentative consciousness, 558.
Press, freedom of in England, 173.
Pressense, pref. XXV., 59, 503; 570; 632,
633, 637, 639.
Priestley, 566.
Printsterer, Groen van, 62S.
Progress in reUgion, 121.
Protestant church in France, free-
thought in, 429, 632.
Protestantism distinguished fi'om scep
ticism, pref. viii.; 13; 139.
Providence, Holyoake on, 441.
Psalms: the seventy-third named, 7, 27;
the division of into books, 361.
Pseudo-Clementines, 565.
Pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, 578.
Psychology explained, 33 ; MoreU on,
559-
Pugio Fidei, 545-
Pulci, 133.

uinet, E. on comparison of religions,
7, 540 ; on Strauss, 384.
R.
acovian Catechism, 555.
llmiyana, 541.
ambouillet, 250.
amus, P. 142.
ationaUsm in Germany, 15, 326, 330;
subdivided, 308, 590; compared with
Deism, 326; explained, 589 seq.;
Uterary dispute on, 591; in English
church, 465-479.
atisbon, confession of, 299.
¦ay, 658.
Raymond, Martin, 546.
laynal, 251.
Reaction among heathens, 61 ; Catho
lic in France, 423, 632 ; in Italy, 145 ;
in Oxford, 401, 437.
[ladings, variety of in sacred texts,
186.
Realism explained, 12, tig seq.
I,ees, translation of Racovian Cate
chism, 555.
reformation, twofold element in, 298 ;
not sceptical, 12,139; pref. viii; 298;
in Italy, 138.
Reformed Jews, 548.
leimannus, 10.
leimarus, 317, 603.
leinhard, 326.
leinhold, 322.
leligion, comparative study of, 5, 539 ;
Greek, 6 ; eastern, 6.
lemonstrants in Dutch church, 154,
627.
lenaissance, 1 29 seq. ; literature at,
134; unchristian sympathy at, 134;
evidences at, 652.
leuan, E. 7, 43, 426 seq. ; 562 ;
Averroes. I2<t: Lect. iii. nassim.

Richardi Confutatio, 549.
Riddle's Bampton Lectures, pref. xxi
661.
Rigg, J. H. Anglican theology, 466.
Riggenbach, 627.
Robespierre, 267.
Robins, S. pref. xxi.
Rogers, H. 527, 662.
Rohr, 330.
Romaine, 226.
Roman catholic theology in Germany
624.
Romantic Epic, iji seq. ; school i;
Germany, 337, ^o.
Roscelin on "Trinity, in.
Rose, H. J. on German theologj
pref. xxviU.
RosenmiiUer, 310.
Rothe, German theologian, 394, 396
617.
Rousseau, sources for study of, 257
life, 258 ; works, 258 seq. ; Contra
social, 259; Emile, 240; Confessioni
263 ; compared with Voltaire, 264.
Ruge, 388. S.
Saintes-Amand, pref. xxxii.
Saisset, E. on Spinoza, 151.
Salomo Zebi, 547.
Salvador, 421, 549.
Sanskrit literature, 541.
Saumur, school of, 299, 668.
Saussure, Ch. de la, 629.
Scepticism explained, 592 seq.; kin(
of, 593-
ScheUing, 38, 64, 335, 612.
Scherer, 43, 562, 632, 669.
Schlegel, F. 337.
Schleiermacher, 341 seq.; critical worl
of, 350; translates Plato, 342 ; the
loeiral wnrks of. ^aC. ftnfi sen

INDEX.

683

Schools of German poetry, 60 1.
Schopenhauer, 620.
Schramm, Anal. Patr. 57, 640.
Schrockh, pref. xxiii.
Schultens, 628.
Schulze, 322.
Schwarz, C. Gesch. pref. xxxiu.
Schwegler, 617.
Schweizer, 620, 627.
Science, anticipations of the future
condition of, 499 seq.
Science in theology, 545.
Scriptures", doubts of, 510.
Sebonde on natural religion, 146, 652.
Seeker, Abp. relieves Annet, 202 ; sub
scribes to Voltaire, 240.
Secularism, explained, 440, 441.
Semler, works and system, 309 seq.
Sensation, as a test of truth, 35.
Sensationalism, meaning of, 35.
Servetus, 138.
Severus, Sept. 88.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 183 seq.
Shelley, 22 ; 286 seq. ; works, 290.
Sherlock, 659.
Sic et Non, 1 14.
Silence of heathens on Christianity,
569 seq.
Simeon of Cambridge, 226, 555.
Simon Jules, 664.
Simon, Richard, 1 16, 236.
Sirven, 240.
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, on
Ecclesiastes, 7 ; Canon, 81 ; Gene
sis, 362; Daniel, 577; Jehovah,
609.
SociaUsm, EngUsh, 283 ; French, 411;
in 1848, 414 ; compared with Eng
lish, 415.
Socinianism, 17, 138, 554.
Socrates, 117, 495.
'So<pia, of Aristotle, 108.
Sophists of Greece, 495.
Sources of information for the attacks
of heathens, 57.
 for lectures, pref.
Spener, the Pietist, 300, 600.
Spinoza, 83 ; sources of information
on, 149; phUosophy of, 150; Theolo-
gicus Politicus, 154 ; effects of, 158.
Stahl, 400.
Stanhope's Boyle Lectures, 547.
Statistics, difficulties from, 443.
Stattler, 654.
Stephen, list of writers on inspiration,
669.
Sterling, 48.
StiUing, Jung, 343, 402.
StiUingfleet, 658.

Stirner, 389.
St. Lambert, see Lambert.
Stoics, religious opinions of, 62.
Storr, 326.
Strauss, 47 ; on JuUan, 92 ; life and
writings, 376, 614; life of Christ,
375. 382 ; Christology, 381, 613 ;
view of Christ's ideal, 502 ; replies
to, 385, 615 ; effects of, 383 seq. ;
view of his own work, 384 ; on Rei
marus, 604.
St. Simon, life and sect, 41 1, 414.
Subjective character of modern un
belief, 434.
^vyKard&atTts, 313.
Suetonius on Christianity, 566.
Supernatural, tendency of labour to
depress the sense of, 442.
Swedenborg, 41.
Swift, on Woolston, 193.
Switzerland, modern theology of, 626.
Symmachus, 96. T.
Tacitus on Christianity, 566.
Taillandier on Abelard, 113, 116.
Taine on Livy, 425, 537.
Tatian, 67, 644.
Taylor A. on Latitudiuarians, 175.
Taylor, J. 661.
Technical, see Terms.
Telesius, 142.
Templars, unbelief of, 1 24.'
Tendencies, religious, among ancient
heathens, 55 seq.
Tennyson, compared with Pope and
Milton, 32 ; quoted, 367.
Terms, technical, 584; literature of, 593.
TertuUian's Apology, 644.
Tests of truth, effects of various theo
ries of, 34-42.
Thaer, author of Lessing's Education
of the World, 122.
Theodore of Mopsuestia. 312.
Theodosius IX. destroyer of heathen
works against Christianity, 57.
Theologians, German ; classification of,
622 seq. See Modem English.
Theophilanthropists, 267.
Theophilus, apologist, 644.
Tholuck, 352; on evidences, 654; pref.
xxxi ; on inspiration, 667 ; attack on
Butler's Analogy, 222.
Thomson's, Bp. Bampton Lectures,
519, 546, 661 ; see Atonement.
TiUemont, pref. xxu.
Tindall, M. works, 195 seq. ; sug
gestive of Butler's Analogy, 222.
Toland, works, 1 78 seq.
Toldos Jeschu, 545.

684

INDEX.

Toleration, works on, and principle of,
1 66, 574.
Treason, charge of against early Chris
tians, 573.
Trench's Calderon, 133.
Truth, see Tests.
Tubingen school, 294, 386, 390, 518 ;
university of, 309.
TuUock's Inaugural Address, 478 ; Bur
nett prize, 662.
Turpin, Abp. joke on in Romantic
Epic, 132.
Twelfth century, great minds in, 1 19.
Twesten, 352.
Tzchirner's Essay, 565 ; Apologetik,
pref. xxvi. U.
Ullmann, 353.
UnbeUef, see Cause, Subjective.
Uniformities of Causation and Co-ex
istence, 109.
Unigenitus Bull, 232.
Union of German churches, 398.
Unitarianism, history of, and works
on. 555 seq.
Universities, German, 309, 322 ; that
of Paris attacked for Pantheism, 421.
Usteri, 6.^7.
Utility of the inquiry into doubt, pref.
xvii; 482 seq. V.
Van den Ende, 149.
Vanini, 144.
Van Mildert, pref. ix, xx; on moral
causes of doubt, 18; 487.
Vaughan, R.A. on mystics, 41; essays,
82.
Vedas, 541.
Vendidad Sade, 540.
Vilmar, classification of German poetry,
601.
Vinet, 626, 632.
Vituperation in books of evidence of
seventeenth century, 656.
Volney, Les Ruines, 268 seq ; 409.
Voltaire, on Woolston, 193; hfe of,
239 ; character of, 241 seq. ; Car
lyle on, 239 ; theological works of,
245; opinions of, 246; ridicule, 242.
Vowel points in Hebrew, controversy
on, 158. W.
Wagenseil, Tela Ignea Satance, 545.
Walch, 593, 648.
Walton's Polyglott, various readings
in, 186.

Warburton, Divine Legation, 657, 659.
Waterland, reply to Tindal, 194, 655.
Watson, Bp. 279, 660. ¦,¦
Webb on Locke, 234. V,
Wegscheider, 331.
Weimar, court of, 321.
Welcker on mythology, 635.
Werenfels, tests for miracles, 216.
Wesley, 227, 555.
Westcott on canon 81; on Daniel, 577;
on Inspiration, 667.
Westminster Review ; on Job, 7 ;
Heine, 22; Rousseau, 257; German
theology, 10; Byron and Shelley;
285; Owen, 285; Weimar, 321;
Vedas, 543 ; Bentham, 436 ; Posi
tivism, 440 ; Carlyle, 445 ; Emerson,
447 ; S. Hennell, 455 ; Parker and
Strauss, 457; F. Newman, 462;
SociaUsm, 6n ; Taine, 425; Scho
penhauer, 620.
Whateley's Rhetoric, 19.
Whewell, 39, 58, 109, 521.
White, Blanco, 48.
Whitfield, 226.
Wichern's Inner JMission, 402.
Will distinct from Emotion, 558.
Wiseman, Cardinal, Lectures, 661.
Wolfenbiittel Fragments, 317, 318,
602 seq.
Wolf, J. A. on Homer, 358.
Wolff's BibUotheca Hebraica, 547.
Wolff, philosophy of, 301 seq ; life of,
303, 305 ; sources for studying, 303 ;
effects of, 304.
Woodham, 103, 641.
Woolstencraft, 281.
Woolston, 191 seq. 594, 595.
Wordsworth quoted, 162; 436.
Wulferus, 547. X.
Xavier, Hieronimo, a writer against
the Mahometans, 417.
Y.
Yayna, 540.
Young's Christ of History, 661.
Z.
Zeitstimmen, &c. 627.
ZeUer, 617, 627.
Zend Literature, 540.
Zeno of Elea, 127.
Zinzendorf, 227.
Zoroaster, 540.
Zurich, university of, 627.

¦',0

EERATA.

Pref. xxii. 1. 16.

for histories,

read historians.

Page 19. and 684.

— ¦ Whateley

—

Whately

31.

— Niehbuhr



Niebulir

24, IJ8, 322, 340,

— Realen-Enc.



Real. Enc.

68.

— nepty.

—

ricpey.

—

— a.irr\pvTqfr.

—

awapvTijtr.

84.

— Kidapa

—>

KtOapa.

112. 1.4.

— Sabellanism

—

Sabellianism.

127. 1. 31.

— several great crises

—

second great crisis

170.

— Tenuyaon

—

Tenison

223, 6^7.

— KT^jita

—

KTrifi-a.

376. i. 19.

dele it.

306 (twice), 680.

— Maupertius

—

Maupertuis

321. 1. 21.

— Auguste

—

August

372.

— VOVfJ-eVOV

—

voovjU.ei'oi'.

421,592.

— J. H. Rose

»

H. J. Rose

542, 653, 665.

— Mignj;

—

Migne

543- I. 29.

— Alterthum-slc

—

Alterthums-k

547. 1.8.

— Orobrius

__

Orobius

Si)6, (sfrompnd)

. — Seraphid

—

Serapid

568, 600.

— Wurtemburg

—

Wurtemberg

572. 1. 8.

— Autolychum

—

Autolycum

584. 1. 18.

— Infidels, Turlis



Turks. Infidels, which change

necessitates the withdrawal of the inference from

the collocation of the words.
588. 1. 1.
— Hetapl.
—
Heptapl.
602, 1. 6.
— and Drange
—
urid Diung.
610. 1, i.
— hajeh (twice) , haveh —
hajah, havah
625.
dele Baumgarten
628. 1. 21.
— parties
_
pastors
635. l-ii.
— Euemeristic
—
Euhemeristic
636, 7.
— Trapafietyjiia
—
Trapafieiyjua
674.
— Bunsen 553,
—
Bunsen 353
08844 6902

^r. -k

Wa

t^t-<»

e *

S^^

?•** »*

tfi.