escaped the fate that had befallen Whiston four years earlier. Clarke was a vigorous antagonist of the deists; he wrote against materialism, empiricism, and necessitarianism, and maintained the essential immortality of the soul. He taught that the fundamental truths of morals were as absolutely certain as the truths of mathematics; space and time he held to be attributes of an infinite and immaterial being. His famous Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, originally the Boyle Lectures of 1704-5, was in answer to Hobbes, Spinoza, Blount, and the freethinkers, and contained the famous demonstration of the existence of God, often, but inaccurately, called an a priori argument. He expressly says of some points in his argument that they are not easily proved a priori, and as expressly proves them a posteriori, using these terms. The main propositions in this celebrated argument as given in summary by Clarke himself

are:

(1) That something has existed from eternity; (2) That there has existed from eternity some one immutable and independent being; (3) That that immutable and independent being, which has existed from eternity, without any external cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is, necessarily existing; (4) What the substance or essence of that being, which is self-existent or necessarily existing, is we have no idea, neither is it at all possible for us to comprehend it; (5) That though the substance or essence of the self-existent being is itself absolutely incomprehensible to us, yet many of the essential attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable, as well as his existence, and, in the first place, that he must be of necessity eternal; (6) That the self-existent being must of necessity be infinite and omnipresent, (7) Must be but one, (8) Must be an intelligent being, (9) Must be not a necessary agent, but a being indued with liberty and choice, (10) Must of necessity have infinite power, (11) Must be infinitely wise, and (12) Must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme governor and judge of the world.

Clarke, who was after Locke the most notable English philosopher of the day, was opposed to Locke in the whole attitude of his mind, and might in contrast to Locke be described as an a priori philosopher. He was more decidedly a metaphysician, more inclined to speculation, more given to drawing large conclusions from abstract postulates and propositions, an intuitionalist in ethics, metaphysics, and theology. He was rather admirably skilful in the controversial handling of philosophical commonplaces than an original. thinker, a keen and powerful dialectician than a profound theologian or philosopher. But though without any gift of style other than the power of making himself as clear as the argument permitted, he was for many years the most conspicuous English writer in the domain of philosophy and theology, and in morals he ranks as founder of the intellectual school of which Wollaston and Price were exponents, affirming that the nature of good

and evil, the obligation to virtue, are evident from the principles of reason, and that immorality means a perversity or obtuseness of intelligence. Pope assailed his high priori road' in the Dunciad; Bolingbroke often attacked his views. Hoadly and other latitudinarian Churchmen were devoted disciples; Butler, Berkeley, Hutcheson, were correspondents. Clarke's keen correspondence with Leibnitz (published in 1717) dealt with space and time and their relations to God, and with moral freedom. He wrote as forcibly on the proportion of force to velocity as on the being of God, translated Newton's Optics into Latin for him, and published editions of Cæsar and of the Iliad, the latter with a Latin version mainly original, though the notes were compiled from various quarters. The following (from the great Discourse, Part II.) is a statement by Clarke on the Essential Difference between Right and Wrong.

But as

The principal thing that can with any colour of reason seem to countenance the opinion of those who deny the natural and eternal difference of good and evil . . . is the difficulty there may sometimes be to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the variety of opinions that have obtained even among understanding and learned men concerning certain questions of just and unjust, especially in political matters; and the many contrary laws that have been made in divers ages and in different countries concerning these matters. in painting two very different colours, by diluting each other very slowly and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and so run one into the other that it shall not be possible even for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may really differ as much as can be, not in degree only but entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black so though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from occurring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, just and unjust-and there may be some latitude in the judgment of different men, and the laws of divers nations-yet right and wrong are nevertheless in themselves totally and essentially different; even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no; because, every man having an absolute right in his own goods, it may seem that the members of any society may agree to transfer or alter their own properties upon what conditions they shall think fit. But if it could be supposed that a law had been made at Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part of the world, whereby it had been commanded or allowed that every man might rob by violence, and murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith should be kept with any man, nor any equitable compacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have authorised or excused, much less have justified such actions, and have made them become good because 't's plainly not in men's power to make

falsehood be truth, though they may alter the property of their goods as they please. Now if in flagrant cases the natural and essential difference between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, the difference between them must be also essential and unalterable in all, even the smallest and nicest and most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right and wrong in many perplext cases, it could truly be concluded that just and unjust were not essentially different by nature, but only by positive constitution and custom, it would follow equally that they were not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed. Which is an assertion so very absurd that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain necessary and. eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, or depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the difference of the things themselves.

See the Life by Hoadly prefixed to his collected works (4 vols. 1738-42), that by Whiston (1741), and a German one by R. Zimmermann (Vienna, 1870).

John Toland (1669-1722) was born of Catholic parents near the village of Redcastle in County Londonderry. He entered the University of Glasgow in 1687, but removing to Edinburgh, abandoned the Roman Catholic faith and passed M.A. in 1690. At Leyden, where he spent two years, he studied theology under Spanheim, and made the acquaintance of the famous Le Clerc, foremost and most accomplished of the 'advanced' theologians of Europe, and distinctly unsound' on the inspiration of the Scriptures. He resided for a time at Oxford, and in the Bodleian collected the materials of more than one of his later publications. In Christianity not Mysterious (1696) he expressly claimed to accept all the essentials of Christianity, but maintained that the value of religion could not lie in any unintelligible element, and that no part of the truth could be contrary to reason. He chose

his title with evident reference to Locke's Reason

ableness of Christianity (1695), and professed to have at heart the defence of revelation against deists and atheists. But the anti-supernatural and freethinking tendency—and disguised intention-of the work was obvious; it greatly perturbed the theological world, began the 'deistical controversy' that occupied so much of the early eighteenth century, and led to several replies (as by Stillingfleet). Locke somewhat anxiously sought to disavow community of thought. Prosecuted in Middlesex, Toland withdrew to Ireland; but when by vote of the Irish House of Commons his book was burned publicly by the common hangman, and a prosecution decided on, he fled back to London. He annoyed Shaftesbury by surreptitiously publishing his Inquiry in 1699.

In Amyntor (1699) and other works he fairly raised the question as to the comparative evidence for the canonical and apocryphal scriptures, with professed candour but unmistakably mischievous intent. A pamphlet entitled Anglia Libera, on the succession of the House of Brunswick, led to his being received with favour by the Princess Sophia when he accompanied the English ambassador to the court of Hanover; and from 1707 to 1710 he lived in Berlin and various Continental towns. His after-life was that of a literary adventurer, and fills a painful chapter in D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors. He was apparently employed as an agent by Harley, and he did some political pamphleteering-latterly against Jacobitism and High-Church views. In Nazarenus (1720) he insisted, somewhat on the lines developed by Semler and the Tübingen school, that there were two distinctly opposed parties in the early Christian Church-one Judaistic (which he identified with the Ebionites), and one Pauline or liberal. His Pantheisticon, a pantheistic liturgy for a hypothetical society of new light philosophers, was regarded as an offensive parody of the Anglican Prayer-book. He resided from the year 1718 at Putney, and there he died.

Besides the works named, and various defences, apologies, and pamphlets, he wrote a Life of Milton, prefixed to an edition of the prose works, (1698), which gave room for criticisms of Church polity and implicit commendation of unorthodoxy ; an Account of Prussia and Hanover (1705); Adeisidæmon (1709); Origines Judaicæ (1709); and a History of the Druids. Hodegus explains that the pillar of cloud and fire was not meant by the author of the Pentateuch to be taken as miraculous, but was a portable fire or ambulatory beacon carried on a proper machine on a pole, such as we know were used by the ancient Persians; and in the twenty-two short chapters of Hypatia, written when Whiston was suffering for his heresies, he finds plenty of room for assailing the pride, malice, cruelty, and unscrupulousness of the Churchmen of all ages.

He was an acute and audacious pioneer of freethought, versatile but vain, unseasonably aggressive in diffusing his new light, and widely read rather than really learned; and he wrote with point and vigour. His grasp of some of the problems of early Christian history was really remarkable, and seems to have had some influence on German rationalism. His precarious life cut him off from the chance of scholarly research, but he was quite unjustly despised by the orthodox. Defoe-not himself a model character-reflects the general attitude towards deists. Reporting the death of the late eminent or rather notorious Mr Toland,' he was sadly scandalised at Toland's character and history, 'how he has for many years employed the best parts and a great stock of reading to the worst purposes, namely, to shock the faith of Christians in the glorious person and divinity of their Redeemer, and to sap and under

mine the principles of the orthodox faith.' And he held that the premature death of one who has been so great an enemy of revealed religion, so open an opposer of orthodox principles, and had so often blasphemed the divinity of our blessed Redeemer,' confirms his own observation that 'he never knew an open blasphemer of God live to be an old man.'

From the Life of Milton.

He was never very healthy, nor too sickly; and the distemper that troubled him most of any other was the gout, of which he dyed without much pain in the year from the birth of Christ 1674, and in the six-and-sixtieth of his age. All his learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St Giles near Cripplegate, where he lies buried in the chancel; and where the piety of his admirers will shortly erect a monument becoming his worth, and the incouragement of letters in king William's reign.

Thus lived and died John Milton, a person of the best accomplishments, the happiest genius, and the vastest learning which this nation, so renowned for producing excellent writers, could ever yet shew: esteemed indeed at home, but much more honoured abroad, where almost in his childhood he made a considerable figure, and continues to be still reputed one of the brightest luminaries of the sciences. He was middle-sized and well proportioned, his deportment erect and manly, his hair of a light brown, his features exactly regular, his complexion wonderfully fair when a youth, and ruddy to the very last. He was affable in conversation, of an equal and cheerful temper, and highly delighted with all sorts of music, in which he was himself not meanly skilled. He was extraordinary temperat in his diet, which was any thing most in season or the easiest procured, and was no friend to sharp or strong liquors. His recreations, before his sight was gone, consisted much in feats of activity, particularly in the exercise of his arms, which he could handle with dexterity: but when blindness and age confined him, he played much upon an organ he kept in the house, and had a pully to swing and keep him in motion.

But the love of books exceeded all his

other passions. In summer he would be stirring at four in the morning, and in winter at five; but at night he used to go to bed by nine, partly attributing the loss of his eys to his late watching when he was a student, and looking on this custom as very pernicious to health at any time: but when he was not disposed to rise at his usual hours, he always had one to read to him by his bedside. As he looked upon true and absolute freedom to be the greatest happiness of this life, whether to societies or single persons; so he thought constraint of any sort to be the utmost misery: for which reason he used to tell those about him the intire satisfaction of his mind, that he had constantly imployed his strength and faculties in the defence of liberty, and in a direct opposition to slavery. He ever exprest the profoundest reverence to the Deity as well in deeds as words; and would say to his friends, that the divine properties of goodness, justice, and mercy were the adequate rule of human actions, nor less the object of imitation for privat advantages, than of admiration or respect for their own excellence and perfection. In his early days he was a favorer of those Protestants

then opprobriously called by the name of Puritans: In his middle years he was best pleased with the Independents and Anabaptists, as allowing of more liberty than others, and coming nearest in his opinion to the primitive practice: but in the latter part of his life, he was not a profest member of any particular sect among Christians, he frequented none of their assemblies, nor made use of their particular rites in his family. Whether this proceeded from a dislike of their uncharitable and endless disputes, and that love of dominion, or inclination to persecution, which, he said, was a piece of Popery inseparable from all churches; or whether he thought one might be a good man without subscribing to any party, and that they had all in some things corrupted the institutions of Jesus Christ, I will by no means adventure to determine: for conjectures on such occasions are very uncertain, and I never met with any of his acquaintance who could be positive in assigning the true reasons of his conduct.

I shall now conclude this discourse with a character given of him by a man of unparalleled diligence and industry, who has disobliged all sides merely for telling the truth either intirely or without disguise, and who, since most men have the frailty of ingaging in factions, cannot be suspected of partiality in favor of Milton. He was a person, says Anthony Wood in the first volume of his Athena Oxonienses, of wonderful parts, of a very sharp, biting, and satyrical wit; he was a good philosopher and historian; an excellent poet, Latinist, Grecian, and Hebrician; a good mathematician and musician; and so rarely endowed by nature, that had he bin but honestly principled, he might have bin highly useful to that party against which he all along appeared with much malice and bitterness.

There is a Life by Des Maizeaux prefixed to two vols, of Toland's posthumous works (1747), and a monograph by Berthold, John Toland und der Monismus der Gegenwart (Heidelb. 1876). For Toland's partial anticipation of Semler and Baur, see an article in the Theological Review, 1877.

Matthew Tindal (1656–1733), deistical writer, born at Beerferris rectory, South Devon, was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. A Roman Catholic under James II., he reverted to Protestantism of a freethinking type, and wrote An Essay of Obedience to the Supreme Powers (1693) and Rights of the Christian Church asserted against the Romish and all other Priests (1706). The latter raised a storm of opposition; but even a prosecution failed to prevent a fourth edition in 1709. In 1730 Tindal published his Christianity as old as the Creation, which was soon known as 'The Deist's Bible;' its aim is not merely to state the case in favour of natural religion, but, less directly, to infer the superfluousness of any other. He seems to admit an actual revelation confirming natural religion, but, seeing that in this case there was nothing new revealed, the result is to eliminate the supernatural element from Christianity, and to prove that its morality is its only claim to the reverence of mankind. 'Answers' were innumerable, and the deistical controversy was an outstanding topic of interest to all educated men, to laymen as much as to those theologically educated. The note of the deistical writers was their reliance on common-sense argument rather

than on theological learning, though they freely availed themselves of all arguments they had access to. And they addressed not theologians but the general public. The form of the argument is a dialogue between A and B; it is plainly a very one-sided discussion.

From The Deist's Bible.'

A. I desire no more than to be allowed, that there's a religion of nature and reason written in the hearts of every one of us from the first creation; by which all mankind must judge of the truth of any instituted religion whatever; and if it varies from the religion of nature and reason in any one particular, nay, in the minutest circumstance, that alone is an argument which makes all things else that can be said for its support totally ineffectual. If so, must not natural religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer one another; without any other difference between them but as to the manner of their being delivered? And how can it be otherwise? Can laws be imperfect, where a legislator is absolutely perfect? Can time discover any thing to him which he did not foresee from eternity? And as his wisdom is always the same, so is his goodness; and consequently from the consideration of both these, his laws must always be the same.-Is it not from the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, that you suppose the gospel a most perfect law, incapable of being repealed, or altered, or of having additions; and must not you own the law of nature as perfect a law, except you will say, that God did not arrive to the perfection of wisdom and goodness till about seventeen hundred years since?

To plead that the gospel is incapable of any additions, because the will of God is immutable, and his law too perfect to need them, is an argument, was Christianity a new religion, which destroys itself; since from the time it commenced, you must own God is mutable; and that such additions have been made to the all-perfect laws of infinite wisdom as constitute a new religion. The reason why the law of nature is immutable is because it is founded on the unalterable reason of things; but if God is an arbitrary Being, and can command things meerly from will and pleasure; some things to-day, and others to-morrow; there is nothing either in the nature of God or in the things themselves to hinder him from perpetually changing his mind. If he once commanded things without reason, there can be no reason why he may not endlessly change such commands.

Anthony Collins (1676-1729), deist, born near Hounslow, passed from Eton to King's College, Cambridge, and became the disciple and friend of John Locke. In 1707 he published his Essay concerning the Use of Reason; in 1709 Priestcraft in Perfection. In Holland he made the friendship of Le Clerc ; in 1713 his Discourse on Free-thinking, that to which Bentley replied in his famous Remarks, attracted much attention, and explicitly insisted on the value and necessity of unprejudiced inquiry in religious matters. One great argument for it is the mutually destructive dogmas of priests throughout the world, in all faiths and Churches. While there is no direct polemic against the truths of revealed religion,

the way the 'ever blessed Trinity' is referred to manifestly does not suggest faith in it; and there is an obvious aim to shake confidence in the canon of Scripture and its infallibility. In his Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, published in 1724, Collins argues that Christianity is founded on Judaism, and that its main support is the argument for the fulfilment of the prophecies. And yet no interpretation of them will stand a strict and non-allegorical fulfilment in the New Testament. The inference is not directly drawn, but is patent enough. In the course of the book he gives most of the arguments now held to prove that Daniel deals with past or contemporaneous events and dates from the Maccabean period.

From the 'Discourse on Free-thinking.'

The priests throughout the world differ about Scriptures, and the authority of Scriptures. The Bramins have a book of Scripture called the Shasters. The Persees have their Zundavastaw [Zend-avesta]. The Bonzes of China have books written by the disciples of Fo-he [Buddha], 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 mens sins. The Talapoins of Siam have a book of Scripture written by Sommonocodom [Sakya-muni, Buddha], who, the Siamese say, was born of a virgin, and was the God expected by the universe. Dervizes have their Alchoran. The rabbis among the Samaritans, who now live at Sichem in Palestine, receive the five books of Moses (the copy whereof is very different from ours) as their Scripture ; together with a Chronicon, or history of themselves from Moses's time, quite different from that contained in the historical books of the Old Testament. This Chronicon is lodged in the publick library of Leyden, and has never been published in print. The rabbis among the common herd of Jews received for Scripture the fourand-twenty books of the Old Testament. The priests of the Roman Church, of the English and other Protestant Churches, receive for Scripture the four-and-twenty books of the Old Testament, and all the books of the New Testament: but the Roman receives several other books, called Apocrypha, as canonical, which all the Protestant churches utterly reject, except the Church of England, which differently from all other Christian churches, receives them as half canonical, reading some parts of them in their churches, and thereby excluding some chapters of canonical Scripture from being read. . . . The priests of all Christian churches differ among themselves in each church about the copies of the same books of Scripture; some reading them according to one manuscript, and others according to another. But the great dispute of all is concerning the Hebrew and Septuagint, between which two there is a great difference; (the latter making the world 1500 years older than the former :) to name no other differences of greater or less importance.

Lastly, As the most ancient Christian churches and priests received several gospels and books of Scripture which are now lost, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Traditions of Matthias, &c., and as not one father in the two first centuries (whose works now remain) but received books of Scripture which are either lost to us, or that we

reject as Apocryphal : so the several sects of Christians in the East and in Africa receive at this day some books of Scripture, which are so far lost to us, that we know only their names, and others which we have and reject. As for instance, the Reverend Dr Grabe tells us of a book received by the Copticks, called the Secrets of Peter, of which we have no copy; and Ludolphus tells us that the Abyssinian Christians receive the Apostolick Constitutions; and Postellus brought from the East, where it was in use, the Gospel of James: both which we reject as Apocryphal.

The same books of Scripture have, among those priests who receive them, a very different degree of authority; some attributing more, and others less authority to them. The Popish priests contend that the text of Scripture is so corrupted, precarious, and unintelligible, that we are to depend on the authority of their church for the true particulars of the Christian religion. Others, who contend for a greater perfection in the text of Scripture, differ about the inspiration of those books; some contending that every thought and word are inspired; some that the thoughts are inspired, and not the words; some that those thoughts only are inspired which relate to fundamentals; and others that the books were written by honest men with great care and faithfulness, without any inspiration either with respect to the thoughts or words. In like manner, the Bramins, Persees, Bonzes, Talapoins, Dervizes, Rabbis, and all other priests who build their religion on books, must from the nature of things vary about books in the same religion, about the inspiration, and copies of those books.

The priests differ about the sense and meaning of those books they receive as sacred. This is evident from the great number of sects in each religion, founded on the diversity of senses put on their several Scriptures. And tho the books of the Old and New Testament are the immediate dictates of God himself, and all other Scriptures are the books of imposters; yet are the priests of the Christian church (like the priests of all other churches) not only divided into numberless sects, on account of their different interpretations of them, but even the priests of the same sect differ endlessly in opinion about their sense and meaning.

To set this matter before you in the clearest manner, and to possess you with the justest idea of the differences among priests about the sense and meaning of their Scriptures, and to make my argument the stronger for the duty and necessity of free-thinking; I will confine myself to the most divine of all books, and by consequence the best adapted of any to prevent diversity of opinion; and will take the following method. First, I will give you an idea of the nature of our holy books; whereby you'll see the foundation therein laid for a diversity of opinions among the priests of the Christian church. And, Secondly, I will give you a specimen of the diversity of opinions among the priests of the Church of England, pretended to be deduced from them: for all their differences are too great to be enumerated. From whence you'll easily infer, that there must be an infinite number of opinions among all other sorts of priests as to the meaning of their Scriptures; since the most divine of all books lays such a foundation for difference of opinion, that priests of the same sect are not able to agree, tho neither art, nor force, nor interest are wanting to compel them to an agreement of opinion.

Thomas Woolston (1669–1731), the son of a Northampton currier, became a Fellow of Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, took orders, and was in 1697 elected ecclesiastical lecturer in the university. An enthusiastic student of Origen, in 1705 he published the Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion, affirming that the Mosaic story was allegorical, a prophetic parable of Christ. But from being a sound and dignified scholar and a popular preacher, he became gradually so aggressive in his criticism on the clergy and those who abode by the literal interpretation of Scripture that his friends thought him a little crazed. The Moderator between the Infidel and the Apostate (developed in a second series, 1721-23) was to show that the gospel miracles could not prove Christ to be the Messiah; he disputed the reality of the incarnation in a virgin and of the resurrection, and developed a facetious vein that was as offensive as his thesis; and in 1721 his college deprived him of his fellowship. In his famous six Discourses on the Miracles of Christ (1727–29, with two Defences) he maintained that the gospel narratives taken literally were a tissue of absurdities. Sixty answers were made to the Discourses; and an indictment for blasphemy was brought against Woolston. He was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £100; and unable to pay so considerable a sum, this partial anticipator of the mythical theory of Strauss died, a martyr to his convictions, within the rules of King's Bench. His works were collected in 1733 with a Life.

From the 'Defence.'

I have promised the world, what, by the assistance of God, and the leave of the Government, shall be published, a Discourse on the mischiefs and inconveniencies of an hired and established priesthood: in which it shall be shewn (I.) That the preachers of Christianity in the first ages of the church (when the gospel was far and near spread, and triumphed over all opposition of Jews and Gentiles) neither received nor insisted on any wages for their pains, but were against preaching for hire; and, as if they had been endewed with the spirit of prophecy, before an hireling priesthood was established, predicted their abolition and ejection out of Christ's church; (II.) That since the establishment of an hire for the priesthood, the progress of Christianity has not only been stopt, but lost ground; the avarice, ambition, and power of the clergy having been of such unspeakable mischief to the world, as is enough to make a man's heart ake to think, read, or write of; (III.) That upon an abolition of our present established priesthood, and on God's call of his own ministers, the profession of the gospel will again spread; and virtue, religion, and learning will more than ever flourish and abound. The clergy are forewarned of my design to publish such a Discourse; and this is the secret reason, whatever openly they may pretend, of their accusations against me for blasphemy and infidelity. Their zeal and industry will be never wanting to prevent the publication of this Discourse; neither need I doubt of persecution, if they can excite the Government to it, to that end.