In my first Discourse on Miracles, I happened to treat on that of Jesus's driving the buyers and sellers out of the Temple; which, upon the authority of the Fathers, I shewed to be a figure of his future ejection of bishops, priests, and deacons out of his church for making merchandise of the gospel. The Bishop has taken me and that miracle to task; and if ever any man smiled at another's impertinence, I then heartily laughed when I read him. I begged of the Bishop before-hand not to meddle with that miracle, because it was a hot one, and would burn his fingers. But for all my caution, he has been so fool-hardy as to venture upon it, but has really touched and handled it as if it was a burning coal. He takes it up, and as soon drops it again to blow his fingers; then endeavours to throw a little water on this and that part of it to cool it, but all would not do. The most fiery part of it, viz. that of its being a type of Jesus's future ejection of mercenary preachers out of the church, he has not, I may say it, at all touched, except by calling it my allegorical invective against the Maintenance of the Clergy; which is such a piece of Corinthian effrontery in the Bishop, that was he not resolved to lye and defame at all rates, for the support of their interests, he could never have had the face to have uttered. If the Bishop had proved that that miracle (which literally was such a ———, as I dare not now call it) neither was nor could be a shadow and resemblance of Jesus's ejection of hired priests out of the church at his second Advent, and that the Fathers were not of this opinion, he had knocked me down at once. As he has done nothing of this, so he might have spared his pains in support of the letter of this story. But I shall have a great deal of diversion with the Bishop when I come, in a proper place, to defend my exposition of that miracle. In the mean time, as the Bishop has published one of the Articles of my Christian Faith, thinking to render me odious for it; so here I will insert another, viz. I believe upon the authority of the Fathers, that the spirit and power of Jesus will soon enter the church, and expel hireling priests, who make merchandise of the gospel, out of her, after the manner he is supposed to have driven the buyers and sellers out of the Temple.'

Thomas Chubb (1679–1747), deist, was born at East-Harnham near Salisbury. His father, a maltster, died early, so that the children were poorly educated and early sent to work. Thomas was first apprenticed to a glover in Salisbury, but his eyesight failing, in 1705 he became a tallow-chandler. He had already contrived to do a good deal of reading, when a perusal of the 'historical preface' to Whiston's Primitive Christianity Revived impelled him to write his own tract, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted, which Whiston helped him to publish in 1715. Encouraged by several patrons, one of whom sent him suits of clothes which had been little worn, while another gave him a money subsidy, the 'wonderful phenomenon of Wiltshire,' as Pope called him, continued to write; and a quarto volume of his tracts, published in 1730, made his name widely known. Enquiries concerning sin, justification, prayer, the justice of God; A Discourse concerning Reason; and The True Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted, were among his principal publications. His opinions drifted

from Arianism of Clarke's type nearer and nearer to deism, yet he went regularly to church, and regarded the mission of Jesus as divine, though he did not regard Christ as God. Most of his views were common to him and the other deists. He attacks the common theory of inspiration, though his own view, quoted below, does not go far beyond what is held consistent with modern orthodoxy-as is the case with many of the contentions once accounted alarmingly deistical. He denounces such Old Testament stories as the proposed human sacrifice by Abraham, insists on the sufficiency of reason and the needlessness of miracles, and argues that the true gospel of Christ consisted mainly in the necessity of morality and repentance for sin to secure the mercy of God here and hereafter. He was a modest and estimable

man.

From 'Remarks on the Scriptures.'

Amongst the many complaints made against me, occasioned by the publication of my dissertations, this I apprehend to be the principal; namely, that I have fallen foul of the Bible, and have not paid it the deference which I ought; and that, in consequence thereof, I have dug up foundations, and greatly unsettled the minds of men. So that the present questions are, how, or in what respect, have I fallen foul of the Bible? What foundations have I dug up? And what minds have I unsettled thereby? And first, how, or in what respect, have I fallen foul of the Bible? And wherein have I fallen short of paying it the deference it has a right to claim? Why, truly, I have taken the liberty to enquire into the conduct and behaviour of some of our Old-Testament saints, which stand upon record in it. I have also withheld my assent from such facts therein related, and from such propositions therein contained, as have the marks of incredibility upon them, when having no other evidence to support them than the bare authority of the writer. And is this all? To which it may, perhaps, be thought sufficient to answer, that this ministers just ground for complaint. Upon which I observe, that the Bible is held forth, and recommended to us, as a proper guide, by way of example, doctrine, and precept, to our understandings, our affections and actions; and therefore, most assuredly, the Bible of all other books ought strictly to be examined, and most carefully to be enquired into; and we ought to lend each other all the assistance we can in making the inquisition, because otherwise we are in great danger of being misled. As I am required to follow the examples of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, and as the characters of those I am required to imitate are compounded of good actions and bad; so the very nature of the thing calls upon me and obliges me diligently to examine, and carefully to distinguish and separate those men's virtues from their vices; because otherwise I am in danger of following them, as well in their bad deeds as in their good; which must render the case, without such inquisition, most hazardous to me, and to all others who have the Bible put into their hands. The Bible is a collection of books, wrote at different, and, some parts of it, at very distant times, by a variety of persons, upon many subjects; whose authors, as they plainly appear to have had very different sentiments, and sometimes, perhaps, to have differed from themselves, so it is not unlikely but

they may have had very different views, as that has been pretty much the case of writers at all times; and therefore, I think, it is not doing justice to the Deity to call it, in the gross, the revealed will and word of God, whatever some parts of it may be conceived to be. The Bible is such a composition as that the most opposite tenets are extracted from it, as the many controversies that now, and at all times past, have subsisted in the Christian church do plainly demonstrate; and by this means it has been the groundwork of most of the heresies and schisms that have taken place in Christendom, and has occasioned great confusion, each one appealing to the Bible as the standard which their pretensions are to be tryed by. And tho' the various denominations of Christians have racked their inventions or conceiving powers in order to reconcile its most disagreeing parts, yet, alas! it is as easy to make the two pole-stars meet in a point as fairly to make all the parts of this composition center in any one of the many systems that have been grounded upon it. This collection of writings has been the parent of doctrines most dishonourable to God and most inju rious to men, such as the doctrines of absolute unconditional election and reprobation, of religious persecution, and the like. This being the case, it furnishes out a reason, more than sufficient, to engage every considerate man, who would see with his own eyes, would follow the guidance of his own understanding, and thereby would act consonant to his intelligent nature, carefully to read, and attentively to consider what he reads in the Bible, thereby to prevent his being misled; and this, I presume, is a sufficient apology for my doing as I have done with relation thereto.

Besides, this book, called the holy Bible, contains many things that are greatly below and unworthy of the Supreme Deity. That God should specially interpose to acquaint men with, and to transmit to posterity, such trifling observations as that two are better than one, that which is crooked cannot be made streight, that which is wanting cannot be numbered, and the like; or that he should spirit men with, approve of, or countenance such malevolent desires as these: Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow; let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them also seek their bread out of their desolate places; let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the stranger spoil his labour; let there be none to extend mercy to him, neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children; let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. I say that such trifling observations, and such malevolent desires as these, should be considered as the offering of God is playing at hazard indeed. That the travels and adventures of Naomy and her two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, into the country of Moab (as in the book of Ruth) is true, perhaps, may not be disputed; but that God should specially interpose to transmit such an insignificant relation to posterity, when we have nothing to ground the supposition upon, seems to me to be taking too great a liberty with the character and conduct of the Deity. There are many things contained in that collection of writings commonly called the Bible that are much below and unworthy of the most perfect intelligence and boundless goodness; that these should be made the act of the Supreme Deity, should be declared to be a revelation from and the very word of God, without so much as a seeming reason or ground for so doing, any otherwise than to support the

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religious systems men have imbibed, or, perhaps, the schemes of worldly policy they are engaged in; this, surely, is not acting properly, nor even justly, by the common and kind parent of the universe. For men thus to father upon God whatever they please is taking such a liberty with the character and conduct of the supreme Deity as no honest upright man would take with that of his neighbour and if such practising should not come under the denomination of blasphemy, which it scarcely falls short of; yet it must, at least, be a very strange kind of piety. Yea, such is the extraordinary piety of this age (like that of doing honour and service to God by killing his servants), that if a man, in conscience of that duty he owes to his maker, takes upon him to vindicate the moral character of the Deity in opposition to the religious system in vogue, or what passes for current orthodoxy, he may be sure to fall under the imputation of being a free-thinker, a Deist (those terms being used in a bad sense), or, perhaps, an Atheist.

Upon

And as to the preceptive parts of the Bible, there is a difficulty attends them that is unsurmountable to me; viz. what is required to be done at one time, and under one dispensation, is forbid to be done under another, whilst human nature continues the same, and men's relations, and dependencies, and the obligations that arise from them, continue the same also. The Deity cannot but perceive things as they really are, at all times, whatever colouring or shading men may draw over them; and therefore, to suppose that he commands and forbids the same thing, whilst the natures, the relations, and the circumstances of men and things continue the same; this, I say, is to me an unsurmountable difficulty. Matthew v. 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said; or ye have read, Exodus xxi. 23, 24, 25, Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. which I observe, if such a retaliation of injuries as this is, in its own nature, proper to restrain men's viciated appetites and passions, and therefore was appointed under the dispensation of Moses; then, for the same reason, it ought to be appointed and executed under all dispensations, because mankind are the same, they have the same appetites and passions, and are liable to indulge them to excess at all times and under all dispensations. Whereas, Jesus Christ reversed the aforesaid law of retaliation, ver 39: But I say unto ye, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Here, we see, Christ hath not only forbid all resistance of evil, but he also requires the patient, when he has sustained a first injury, to be a volunteer with regard to a second, and to meet it half-way.

William Nicolson (1655-1727), successively Bishop of Carlyle and Londonderry, and Archbishop of Cashel, was a learned antiquary and historical writer; his Historical Libraries of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1696-1724) being detailed catalogues or lists of books and manuscripts referring to the history of each nation. He also wrote An Essay on the Border Laws, A Treatise on the Laws of the Anglo-Saxons, A Description of Poland and Denmark, a preface to Chamberlayne's Polyglot of the Lord's Prayer, and some able pamphlets on the Bangorian Controversy; and left many interesting letters.

he maintains that the very nature of man leads to the exercise of benevolent and disinterested affections in the social state. Conscience he defines as the 'moral sense,' a phrase of which he is the author, and makes this sense akin to feeling, taste, and sentiment rather than to reason.

This doctrine, left by its founder in a somewhat unsystematic shape, was taken up and developed by Hutcheson, and influenced Hume and Adam Smith. Shaftesbury was attacked in his own time both by the followers of Clarke's 'intellectual system' and by the more thorough utilitarians. The

THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

From an Engraving by Rivers, after Closterman.

gentle Berkeley railed at him, and the rugged Warburton dissented from his opinions, while warmly praising his character. Butler heartily admired Shaftesbury's support of the 'natural obligation of virtue ;' and there is in all his work evidence of sincere, warm, earnest feeling, the outcome of a generous mind. Sidgwick regards the appearance of the Characteristics as a turningpoint in English ethical speculation, and treats its author as 'the first to make psychological experience the basis of ethics;' and Hettner sees in him a power in European thought. A pronounced optimist, Shaftesbury insisted that God should be loved without fear of reward or punishment, and argued that 'religion is still a discipline and the progress of the soul towards perfection,' a thought which, contemplating not merely the individual but the race, contains the germ of Lessing's famous Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes, and may have suggested this theme to Lessing, who was a diligent student of the Characteristics. Moses Mendelssohn, Herder, and

even Kant were influenced by the English peer; Leibnitz and Diderot admired him; and so did Voltaire, though he caricatured his optimism in Candide. Gray, on the other hand, speaks scornfully of Shaftesbury's philosophy; and, oddly enough, Pope, who paraphrased Bolingbroke and was Shaftesbury's friend, told Warburton that' the Characteristics had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity put together.' Yet it is impossible not to see that Shaftesbury's philosophy was the foundation of Bolingbroke's. Mackintosh, who rightly thought Shaftesbury's ethical work had at first been admired beyond its literary or philosophical merits, and had next been too unsparingly condemned or still more unjustly neglected, somewhat extravagantly said of the first passage quoted below from The Moralists, that there is scarcely any composition in our language more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments, or more exquisitely elegant and musical in its diction.'

From 'Advice to an Author.'

One who aspires to the character of a man of breeding and politeness is careful to form his judgment of arts and sciences upon right models of perfection. If he travels to Rome, he inquires which are the truest pieces of architecture, the best remains of statues, the best paintings of a Raphael or a Carache [Caracci]. However antiquated, rough, or dismal they may appear to him at first sight, he resolves to view them over and over, till he has brought himself to relish them, and finds their hidden graces and perfections. He takes particular care to turn his eye from every thing which is gaudy, luscious, and of a false taste. Nor is he less careful to turn his ear from every sort of musick besides that which is of the best manner and truest harmony.

'Twere to be wished we had the same regard to a right taste in life and manners. What mortal being once convinced of a difference in inward character, and of a preference due to one kind above another, would not be concerned to make his own the best? If civility and humanity be a taste; if brutality, insolence, riot, be in the same manner a taste, who, if he could reflect, would not chuse to form himself on the amiable and agreeable rather than the odious and perverse model? Who would not endeavour to force nature as well in this respect as in what relates to a taste or judgment in other arts and sciences? For in each place the force on nature is used only for its redress. If a natural good taste be not already formed in us, why should not we endeavour to form it, and become natural?

'I like! I fancy! I admire! How? By accident : or as I please. No. But I learn to fancy, to admire, to please, as the subjects themselves are deserving and can bear me out. Otherwise, I like at this hour, but dislike the next. I shall be weary of my pursuit, and, upon experience, find little pleasure in the main, if my choice and judgment in it be from no other rule than that single one, because I please. Grotesque and monstrous figures often please. Cruel spectacles and barbarities are also found to please, and, in some tempers, to please beyond all other subjects. But is this pleasure right? And shall I follow it if it presents? Not strive with it, or endeavour to prevent its growth or prevalency in my

temper?-How stands the case in a more soft and flattering kind of pleasure?—Effeminacy pleases me. The Indian figures, the Japan-work, the enamel strikes my eye. The luscious colours and glossy paint gain upon my fancy. A French or Flemish style is highly liked by me, at first sight; and I pursue my liking. But what ensues?-Do I not for ever forfeit my good relish? How is it possible I should thus come to taste the beauties of an Italian master, or of a hand happily formed on nature and the antients? 'Tis not by wantonness and humour that I shall attain my end, and arrive at the enjoyment I propose. The art itself is severe : the rules rigid. And if I expect the knowledge should come to me by accident, or in play, I shall be grossly deluded, and prove myself, at best, a mock-virtuoso, or mere pedant of the kind.'

Here therefore we have once again exhibited our moral science in the same method and manner of soliloquy as above. To this correction of humour and formation of a taste, our reading, if it be of the right sort, must principally contribute. Whatever company we keep, or however polite and agreeable their characters may be with whom we converse or correspond, if the authors we read are of another kind, we shall find our palate strangely turned their way. We are the unhappier in this respect for being scholars if our studies be ill chosen. Nor can I, for this reason, think it proper to call a man well-read who reads many authors, since he must of necessity have more ill models than good, and be more stuffed with bombast, il fancy, and wry thought, than filled with solid sense and just imagination.

But notwithstanding this hazard of our taste from a multiplicity of reading, we are not, it seems, the least scrupulous in our choice of subject. We read whatever comes next us. What was first put into our hand when we were young, serves us afterwards for serious study and wise research, when we are old. We are many of us, indeed, so grave as to continue this exercise of youth through our remaining life. The exercising authors of this kind have been above described, in the beginning of this treatise. The manner of exercise is called meditation, and is of a sort so solemn and profound, that we dare not so much as thorowly examine the subject on which we are bid to meditate. This is a sort of task-reading, in which a taste is not permitted. How little soever we take of this diet, 'tis sufficient to give full exercise to our grave humour, and allay the appetite towards further research and solid contemplation. The rest is holiday, diversion, play, and fancy. We reject all rule: as thinking it an injury to our diversions to have regard to truth or nature: without which, however, nothing can be truly agreeable or entertaining, much less instructive or improving. Through a certain surfeit taken in a wrong kind of serious reading, we apply ourselves, with full content, to the most ridiculous. The more remote our pattern is from any thing moral or profitable, the more freedom and satisfaction we find in it. We care not how Gothick or barbarous our models are; what illdesigned or monstrous figures we view; or what false proportions we trace, or see described in history, romance, or fiction. And thus our eye and ear is lost. Our relish or taste must of necessity grow barbarous whilst barbarian customs, savage manners, Indian wars, and wonders of the terra incognita employ our leisure hours, and are the chief materials to furnish out a library.

These are in our present days what books of chivalry

were in those of our forefathers. I know not what faith our valiant ancestors may have had in the stories of their giants, their dragons, and St Georges. But for our faith indeed, as well as our taste, in this other way of reading, I must confess I can't consider it without astonishment.

It must certainly be something else than incredulity which fashions the taste and judgment of many gentle. men, whom we hear censured as atheists for attempting to philosophize after a newer manner than any known of late. For my own part, I have ever thought this sort of men to be in general more credulous, though after another manner, than the mere vulgar. Besides what I have observed in conversation with the men of this character, I can produce many anathematized authors who, if they want a true Israelitish faith, can make amends by a Chinese or Indian one. If they are short in Syria or the Palestine, they have their full measure in America or Japan. Histories of Incas or Iroquois written by friars and missionaries, pirates and renegades, sea-captains and trusty travellers, pass for authentick records, and are canonical, with the virtuosos of this sort. Though Christian miracles may not so well satisfy them, they dwell with the highest contentment on the prodigies of Moorish and pagan countries. They have far more pleasure in hearing the monstrous accounts of monstrous men and manners, than the politest and best narrations of the affairs, the governments, and lives of the wisest and most polished people.

'Tis the same taste which makes us prefer a Turkish history to a Grecian or a Roman, an Ariosto to a Virgil, and a romance or novel to an Iliad. We have no regard to the character or genius of our author: nor are so far curious as to observe how able he is in the judg ment of facts, or how ingenious in the texture of his lies. For facts unably related, though with the greatest sincerity and good faith, may prove the worst sort of deceit and mere lies, judiciously composed, can teach us the truth of things beyond any other manner. But to amuse ourselves with such authors as neither know how to lie nor tell truth, discovers a taste which methinks one should not be apt to envy. Yet so enchanted we are with the travelling memoirs of any casual adventurer, that, be his character or genius what it will, we have no sooner turned over a page or two than we begin to interest ourselves highly in his affairs. No sooner has he taken shipping at the mouth of the Thames, or sent his baggage before him to Gravesend or buoy in the Nore, than strait our attention is earnestly taken up. If in order to his more distant travels he takes some part of Europe in his way, we can with patience hear of inns and ordinaries, passage-boats and ferries, foul and fair weather; with all the particulars of the author's diet, habit of body, his personal dangers and mischances on land and sea. And thus full of desire and hope we accompany him till he enters on his great scene of action, and begins by the description of some enormous fish or beast. From monstrous brutes he proceeds to yet more monstrous men. For in this race of authors he is ever completest and of the first rank who is able to speak of things the most unnatural and monstrous.

This humour our old tragick poet seems to have discovered. He hit our taste in giving us a Moorish hero, full fraught with prodigy: a wondrous story-teller! But for the attentive part, the poet chose to give it to woman