He wandered into the region of existence in The false method thus applied te the apgeneral, in search of the abstract and remote prehension of the nature of finite spirits was conception of a spirit, when the witness of his carried on by a natural transition into the own consciousness was close at hand to sup-domain of theology; and it is here that we ply him with the concrete and immediate find the connecting link which unites Locke's conception of a person. Our consciousness teaching, in effect if not in intention, with presents to us, not merely the ideas of think- that of Toland :ing, willing, and the like, but also the combination of these several mental states into one whole, as attributes of one and the same personal self. I am conscious, not of thinking merely, but of myself as thinking; not of perceiving merely, but of myself as perceiving; not of willing merely, but of myself as willing. And in this apprehension of myself as a conscious agent, is presented directly and intuitively that original idea of substance, which, had it not been given in some one act of consciousness, could never have been invented in relation to others. "It is infinity," says Locke, "which, joined to our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, etc., makes that complex idea whereby we represent to ourselves, the best we can, the Supreme Being. For though in his own essence (which certainly we do not know, not knowing the real essence of a pebble, or a fly, or of our own selves) God be simple and uncompounded, yet I think I may say we have no other idea of him but a complex one of existence, knowledge, power, happiness, etc., infinite and eternal, which are all distinct ideas, and some of them, being relative, are again compounded of others; all which being, as has been shown, originally got from sensation and reflection, go to make up the idea or notion we have of God. In neglecting the conception of a Person, whose unity is given, to seek for that of a Spirit, whose unity has to be invented as a "supposed I know not what," Locke adopted the chief error of the scholastic psychology, The argument thus left Locke's hands in the and transmitted it, modified after his own form, "We know not the real essence of manner, to his successors. The same concep- God, as we know not the real essence of a tion of the soul, not as a power manifested pebble or fly." In the hands of Toland, in consciousness, but as a substance assumed by a slight transformation, it comes out with out of it, accounts for nearly all the deficien- a positive side. We understand the attricies which critics have noticed in Butler's butes (or nominal essence) of God as clearly "Argument on a Future State; "* and, long as we do those of all things else; and, before Locke's time, the bewildered student, therefore, the Divine Being himself canin old Marston's play, owed to the same not with more reason be accounted mysterimode of investigation most of the perplexi- ous in this respect than the most contempti ties of which he so humorously complains.†ble of his creatures."† In justice to Butler, however, it should be observed that the defects in his argument arise from restrictions necessarily imposed upon him by the purpose of his work. The human consciousness is a thing sui generis, and therefore the positive evidence which it furnishes in behalf of the immortality of the soul has nothing to do with analogy. Arguments derived from a comparison of the soul with other objects must for the most part be, as Butler's are, of a merely negative character. "I was a scholar: seven useful springs Did I deflower in quotations Of crossed opinions 'bout the soul of man ; that They're at brain buffets, fell by the ears amain How completely this assertion reversed the catholic teaching of the church in all ages might be shown by a series of quotations from theologians of various ages and languages, from the second century to the sev enteenth. One such only our limits will allow us to give, from the writings of a great Pell-mell together; still my spaniel slept. Or no, Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt, For aught I know, he knew as much as I." 89, 89. English divine of the latter century; and we say, by signifying the definition which deselect it from many others because its lan- clares the essence. The ground of this guage, from the similarity of subject, is distinction was the conviction that finite peculiarly adapted to show the contrast to things cannot indicate the nature of the inwhich we refer; and because it also by an- finite God otherwise than by imperfect analticipation exactly points out the error which ogies. "The attributes of God," it was arLocke planted and Toland watered. In a gued, "must be represented to our minds, sermon on the text, "Without controversy so far as they can be represented at all, great is the mystery of godliness," Bishop under the similitude of the corresponding Sanderson says,— attributes of man. Yet we cannot conceive "Herein especially it is that this mystery them as existing in God in the same manner doth so far transcend all other mysteries. as they exist in man. In man they are Méya buoλoyovμévws μiya: a great, marvellous many; in God they must be one. In man great mystery. In the search whereof, rea- they are related to and limit each other; in son, finding itself at a loss, is forced to give God there can be no relation and no limitait over in the plain field, and to cry out, O. tion. In man they exist only as capacities altitudo! as being unable to reach the un- at times carried into action; in God, who is fathomed depth thereof. We believe and know, and that with fulness of assurance, that all these things are so as they are revealed in the Holy Scriptures, because the mouth of God, who is truth itself, and cannot lie, hath spoken them; and our own reason upon this ground teacheth us to submit ourselves and it to the obedience of faith, for When we examine the controversy between the Tù or, that so it is. But then for the TÒ T, Nicodemus his question, How can Locke and Stillingfleet, and observe the frethese things be? it is no more possible for our quent complaints of the latter against "the weak understandings to comprehend that new way of ideas," we see that Stillingfleet's than it is for the eyes of bats or owls to look theological learning had enabled him to dissteadfastly upon the body of the sun, when cover the true source of Locke's error, though he shineth forth in his greatest strength. his inferiority to his adversary in philosophiThe very angels, those holy and heavenly cal acumen and controversial dexterity prespirits, have a desire, saith St. Peter,-it is but a desire, not any perfect ability, and vented him from making sufficient use of his that but mapakuwa neither, -to peep a little discovery. A very few years afterwards, into those incomprehensible mysteries, and Locke's great philosophical rival, Leibnitz, then cover their faces with their wings, and in an argument directed, not against the inpeep again, and cover again, as being not tellectual dogmatism of Toland, but against able to endure the fulness of that glorious the intellectual scepticism of Bayle, points lustre that shineth therein."* out the just medium between the two, in language exactly coinciding with that already quoted from Sanderson : purus actus, there can be no distinction between faculty and operation. Hence the divine attributes may properly be called mysterious; for, though we believe in their co-existence, we are unable to conceive the manner of their coexistence." 66 - Sanderson's distinction between the rò or that it is, and the Tó us how it is, indicates the exact point which Locke overlooked, and Il en est de, même des autres mystères, which Toland denied. When the older the- où les esprits modérés trouveront toujours ologians declared the essence of God to be une explication suffisante pour croire, et jammysterious and incomprehensible, they were ais autant qu'il en faut pous comprendre. not thininkg of Locke's Real Essence, of Il nous suffit d'un certain ce que c'est (Ti έori) which they knew nothing, but of that logi- mais le comment (c) nous passe, et ne nous cal essence which is comprised in attributes, est point nécessaire." 't and can be expressed in a definition, and which Locke calls the Nominal Essence. This is most distinctly stated in the language of Aquinas : "The name of God," he says, "does not express the divine essence as it is, as the name of man expresses in its signification the essence of man as it is,-that is to "Sanderson's Works," vol. i. p. 233. The attitude, if not of antagonism, at least of indifference, to dogmatic theology, which was thus assumed indirectly, and perhaps unconsciously, in the philosophical positions of Locke's Essay, appears more plainly *"Summa," Pars i. Qu. xiii. Art. I. "Theodicee, Discours de la Conformite de la Foi avec la Raison," § 56. If we have dwelt somewhat at length on a dry and abstruse subject, we trust that its importance may be accepted as an excuse. The philosophy of Locke constitutes the diverging point at which the religious thought of the eighteenth century separates itself from that of the preceding ages; and to examine that thought at its source and in its and directly in the latitudinarian terms of Church Communion advocated in his "Reasonableness of Christianity." In this work, written, it is said, to promote the design entertained by William III. of a comprehen sion with the Dissenters, and published in 1695, the year before Toland's book, Locke contended that the only necessary article of Christian belief is comprised in the acknowl-purest condition is necessary, not only to a edgment that Jesus is the Messiah; that just judgment of the past, but to a right conall that is required beyond this consists en- duct as regards the present. The experiment tirely of practical duties, of repentance for of the last century is being repeated in our sin, and obedience to the moral precepts of own day, upon the foundations of our own the gospel. On these practical duties of belief. We have a like independence of auChristianity, and on the new authority giv- thority, a like distrust of, if not disbelief in, en by it to the truths of natural ́ religion, the supernatural, a like appeal to reason and Locke dwells earnestly and at length; but free thought, a like hostility to definite creeds all points of doctrine, all distinctions between and formularies, a like desire to attain to sound and unsound belief are, with the ex- practical comprehensiveness by the sacrifice ception of his one fundamental article, either of doctrinal distinctions. In the spirit, and passed over without notice or expressly de- almost in the language, of Locke, we are told clared to be unessential. The teaching of by distinguished writers of our own day, the Epistles is separated from that of the that in the early church no subscription was Gospels. "It is not in the Epistles," he required beyond "a profession of service unsays, "that we are to learn what are the der a new Master, and of entrance into a new fundamental articles of faith;" and again, life;" and again that, in points of doctrine, “There be many truths in the Bible which to regard the teaching of the Epistles as an a good Christian may be wholly ignorant essential part of Christian doctrine, is to of, and so not believe; which, perhaps," rank the authority of the words of Christ some lay great stress on and call fundamen- below that of apostles and evangelists;" and tal articles, because they are the distinguish-in so doing "to give up the best hope of reing points of their communion." And two years later, in his "Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity," Locke retorts the accusations of his antagonist Edwards, in a manner which virtually concedes the entire position contended for by Toland. "It is ridiculous," he says, "to urge that anything is necessary to be explicitly believed to make a man a Christian, because it is writ in the Epistles and in the Bible, unless he confess that there is no mystery, nothing not plain or intelligible to vulgar understandings in the Epistles or in the Bible." The reasoning by which he supports this assertion is identical in substance with that which had just before been advanced by Toland; namely, that a proposition, to be believed, must be expressed in intelligible terms; and that if the terms are intelligible, the thing signified cannot be mysterious. In this case, however, it is possible that Locke may have been driven beyond his deliberate judgment by the heat of controversy which offered many temptations to retaliation. uniting Christendom in itself and of making Christianity a universal religion.' Under these circumstances, it is no mere question of literary curiosity, but one of practical and vital interest, to ask what was the effect of Locke's influence on the generation which succeeded him, and how far the benefits arising from it were such as to warrant us in looking hopefully on a repetition of the same attempt. The tendency, if not the actual result, of Locke's philosophy, as applied to religious helief, pointed, as we have seen, in two directions: first, to a distrust of, if not to an actual disbelief in, the mysterious and incomprehensible as a part of religious belief; secondly, to a depreciation of distinctive doctrines in general, as at least unessential, and to a dislike of them, as impediments to comprehensive communion. Both these tendencies found their gradual development in the religious thought of the succeeding generation. The open denial of mysteries, menced by Toland, was carried on in a coarser com strain by Collins, the personal friend and freethinkers; but these congenial topics are warm admirer of Locke, but a man of a very different spirit. From the mysterious in doctrines the assault was extended to the supernatural in facts, in the attacks of Collins on the Prophecies, and of Woolston on the Miracles. And, finally, when the supernatural had thus been entirely eradicated from Christian belief, the authority of the teachers naturally fell with the evidences of their divine mission; and Christianity, in the hands of Tindal and Morgan, appears simply as a scheme of natural religion, to be accepted, so far as it is accepted at all, solely on the ground of its agreement with the conclusions of human reason, but having no special doctrines of its own, distinct from those discoverable by the light of nature, and no special authority of its own, as a ground on which it can lay claim to belief. Collins's earliest theological work, "An Essay concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions the Evidence whereof depends upon Human Testimony" (1701), reads almost as if it were intended as a second part to Toland's unfinished " Christianity not Mysterious," though the name of Toland is not mentioned in the book. Like Toland, Collins follows Locke, in making all knowledge to consist in a perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas; and like Toland, he differs from Locke, in making such perception the sole condition of all assent, whether in matters of science, or of opinion, or of faith. Where this perception does not exist, he regards the mind as absolutely inert and void. "That which falls not within the compass of our ideas," he says, "is nothing to us. Like Toland, also, Collins refers the belief in religious mysteries to the craft of the clergy; and as if to leave no doubt of the application of his theory, he selects, as a special instance for animadversion, Bishop Gastrell's "Considerations on the Trinity." Finally, as if to mark the work still more clearly as a sequel to Toland, Collins concludes his essay with an attempt to carry out Toland's unfulfilled promise of solving very easily" the difficulties connected with the idea of eternity; though his solution, in fact, consists in little more than a simple denial now and then agreeably diversified by an oblique sneer at the mysteries of the Christian faith. Thus he tells us, "The Bonzes of China have books written by the disciples of Fo-he, whom they call the god and saviour of the world, who was born to teach the way of salvation, and to give satisfaction for all men's sins. The Talapoins of Siam have a book of scripture, written by Sommonocodom, who, the Siamese say, was born of a virgin, and was the god expected by the universe." Of such scarcely disguised blasphemy as this, the most candid eritic can hardly pronounce any other judgment than is given in a paper in the "Guardian," attributed, with some probability, to the gentle Bishop Berkeley : to give this work, but a design to subvert "I cannot see any possible interpretation and ridicule the authority of Scripture. The peace and tranquillity of the nation, and regards even above these, are so much concerned in this matter that it is difficult to express sufficient sorrow for the offender, or indignation against him. But if ever man of air and water, it is the author of a Discourse of Freethinking." deserved to be denied the common benefits Eleven years later, when the controversy had extended itself from the doctrines to the evidences of Christianity, a third work of Collins, the "Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion," and its sequel, the "Scheme of Literal Prophecy considered," attempted, under show of an interpretation of the Old Testament Prophecies, to undermine the foundations of Christianity by a method of insinuation similar to that A different judgment has been given by a recent critic in the case of Bentley against Col"The dirt endeavored to be thrown on lins. hand that throws it." Collins," says Mr. Pattison," will cleave to the We doubt whether any amount of dirt could be thrown which would "not amalgamate sympathetically with the inThe " gredients of Collins's own book. Dis course of Freethinking" is one of those works which cannot be judged of by extracts: it must be read as a whole, and estimated according to animus. Our own impression is that a more the impression produced by its general tone and dishonest or a more scurrilous publication has seldom issued from the press. Mr. Pattison censures Bentley for treating Collins as atheist fighting under the disguise of a deist." If we may trust an anecdote recorded, on the The once-celebrated "Discourse of Free-authority of Bishop Berkeley, in Chandler's thinking," by the same author, is principally "Life of Samuel Johnson, D. D.," p. 57, Bentley may have had some reason for suspecting taken up with abuse of priests, and praise of that this was really the case. that such difficulties exist. an which the author had previously employed ment; and how could that appear, and be against its distinctive doctrines. The whole proved, but from the Old Testament?"* proof of Christianity, Collins maintained, But if his premise is an echo of Locke, rests upon the Prophecies. If this proof is his conclusion reads like an anticipation of valid, Christianity is established; if it is in- one of the writers in " Essays and Reviews." valid, Christianity has no just foundation, and The interpretation of prophecy which Dr. is therefore false. He does not openly deny Williams, with the aid of Bunsen, has renthat the Prophecies have any reference to dered familiar to English readers of the presChrist, but asserts that they can only be ent day, Collins, with the aid of Surenhusius, so referred in a mystical and allegorical sense, rendered almost equally familiar to English which is not their literal and proper mean- readers of nearly a century and a half ago. ing, nor that in which they were originally If the former writer says of the early fathers, understood by the Jews, among whom, as that, "when, instead of using the letter as he asserts, the expectation of a Messiah did an instrument of the spirit, they began to not arise till a short time before the coming accept the letter in all its parts as their law, of Christ. "His inference," says Mr. Far- and twisted it into harmony with the details rar, "is stated as an argument in favor of of Gospel history, they fell into inextricable the figurative or mystical interpretation of contradictions; "t the latter undertakes, Scripture; but we can hardly doubt that his with still more confidence, to assure us that real object was an ironical one, to exhibit" the Prophecies cited from the Old TestaChristianity as resting on apostolic misinter- ment by the authors of the New do so plainpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to ly relate, in their obvious and primary sense, create the impression that it was a mere Jew-to other matters than those which they are ish sect of men deceived by fanciful interpre- produced to prove, that to pretend they tations."* prove, in that sense, what they are produced In the argument of Collins, it is easy to to prove, is to give up the cause of Christrace the influence of Locke's "Reasonable-tianity to Jews and other enemies thereof, who ness of Christianity," and to see how the can so easily show, in so many undoubted position originally advanced in support of instances, the Old and New Testament to latitudinarianism has degenerated, in the have no manner of connection in that rehands of a less scrupulous disciple, into a spect, but to be in an irreconcilable state." は weapon for the service of unbelief. Collins, If the former enumerates among the merindeed, avowedly commences his argument its of his guide, philosopher, and friend, from Locke's thesis. "The grand and fun- that " he can never listen to any one who damental article of Christianity,' ," he says, pretends that the Maiden's Child of Isaiah was that Jesus of Nazareth was the Mes-vii, 16 was not to be born in the reign of sias of the Jews, predicted in the Old Testa- Ahaz; "§ the latter is equally sure that "the words as they stand in Isaiah, from whom *"Bampton Lectures," p. 190. of this kind from Mr. Farrar has more sig- obvious and literal sense, relate to a young A censure they are supposed to be taken, do, in their nificance than from most theological writers. His lectures exhibit in a remarkable manner woman in the reign of Ahaz, King of Juhow a firm and unhesitating belief on the part dah." If the former states it as " beyond of the author in the great truths of the Christian faith may be combined with a spirit of the fair doubt" that Daniel's " period of weeks utmost gentleness and tenderness toward those ended in the reign of Antiochus Epiphwhose religious errors he is compelled to notice anes," the latter assures us that “Dodand to deplore. Where Mr. Farrar censures, the reader may be sure that the censure is well deserved, and has been pronounced, after every allowance which the most liberal and kindly criticism can make, consistently with the interests of truth. We regret that the plan of our article will not permit us to notice these lectures as fully as they deserve. They contain a fund of learning and valuable information on one of the most important departments of church history, and afford a striking proof that a candid and honest study, in a religious spirit, of the history of free thought, is one of the best antidotes against freethinking. 66 wel, in a posthumous work, does (with the learned Sir John Marsham) refer even the famous prophecy in Daniel about the weeks to the times of Antiochus Epiphanes.”** If *"Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion," p. 12. "Essays and Reviews," p. 64 (2d edition). Grounds and Reasons," p. 41. T" Essays and Reviews," p. 69. |