learning had enabled him to discover the true source of Locke's error; though his inferiority to his adversary in philosophical acumen and controversial dexterity prevented him from making sufficient use of his discovery. A very few years afterwards, Locke's great philosophical rival, Leibnitz, in an argument directed, not against the intellectual dogmatism of Toland, but against the intellectual scepticism of Bayle, points out the just medium between the two, in language exactly coinciding with that already quoted from Sanderson :

'Il en est de même des autres mystères, où les esprits modérés trouveront toujours une explication suffisante pour croire, et jamais autant qu'il en faut pour comprendre. Il nous suffit d'un certain ce que c'est (ri ori), mais le comment (c) nous passe, et ne nous est point nécessaire." 班

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 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 comprehension 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 acknowledgment that Jesus is the Messiah; that all that is required beyond this consists entirely of practical duties, of repentance for sin, and obedience to the moral precepts of the Gospel. On these practical duties of Christianity, and on the new authority given by it to the truths of natural religion, Locke dwells earnestly and at length; but all points of doctrine, all distinctions between sound and unsound belief are, with the exception of his one fundamental article, either passed over without notice or expressly declared to be unessential. The teaching of the Epistles is separated from that of the Gospels. 'It is not in the Epistles,' he says, 'that we are to learn what are the fundamental articles of faith; and again: There be many truths in the Bible which a good Christian may be wholly ignorant of, and so not believe; which perhaps some lay great stress on and call fundamental articles, because they are the distinguishing 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

Théodicée, Discours de la Conformité de la Foi avec la Raison,' § 56.

necessary

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 a controversy which offered many temptations to retaliation.

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 purest condition is necessary, not only to a just judgment of the past, but to a right conduct as regards the present. The experiment of the last century is being repeated in our own day, upon the foundations of our own belief. We have a like independence of authority, a like distrust of, if not disbelief in, the supernatural, a like appeal to reason and free thought, a like hostility to definite creeds and formularies, a like desire to attain to practical comprehensiveness by the sacrifice of doctrinal distinctions. In the spirit, and almost in the language of Locke, we are told by distinguished writers of our own day, that in the early Church no subscription was required beyond a profession of service under a new Master, and of entrance into a new life;' and again that, in points of doctrine, to regard the teaching of the Epistles as an essential part of Christian doctrine, is to 'rank the authority of the words of Christ below that of Apostles and Evangelists; and in so doing to give up the best hope of reuniting 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 belief, 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

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, commenced by Toland, was carried on in a coarser strain by Collins, the personal friend and 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 (1707), 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 that such difficulties exist.

The once-celebrated Discourse of Freethinking,' by the same author, is principally taken up with abuse of priests and praise of freethinkers; but these congenial topics are 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

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 critic can hardly pronounce any other judgment than is given in a paper in the Guardian,' attributed, with some probability, to the gentle Bishop Berkeley :

'I cannot see any possible interpretation to give this work, but a design to subvert 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 deserved to be denied the common benefits of air and water, it is the author of a Discourse of Freethinking.'*

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 which the author had previously employed against its distinctive doctrines. The whole proof of Christianity, Collins maintained, rests upon the Prophecies. If this proof is valid, Christianity is established; if it is invalid, Christianity has no just foundation, and is therefore false. He does not openly deny that the Prophecies have any reference to Christ; but asserts that they can only be so referred in a mystical and allegorical sense, which is not their literal and proper meaning, nor that in which they were originally understood by the Jews; among whom, as he asserts, the expectation of a Messiah did not arise till a short time before the coming of Christ. His inference,' says Mr. Farrar, 'is

A different judgment has been given by a recent critic in the case of Bentley against Collins. The dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins,' says Mr. Pattison, will cleave to the hand that throws it.' We doubt whether any amount of dirt could be thrown which would not amalgamate sympathetically with the ingredients of Collins's own book. The Discourse 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 the impression produced by its general tone and animus. Our own impression is that a more dishonest or a more scurrilous publication has seldom issued from the press. Mr. Pattison censures Bentley for treating Collins as an Atheist fighting under the disguise of a Deist.' If we may trust an anecdote recorded, on the authority of Bishop Berkeley, in Chandler's Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D.,' p. 57, Bentley may have had some reason for suspecting that this was really the case.

6

Vol. 116.-No. 231.

stated as an argument in favour of the figurative or mystical interpretation of Scripture; but we can hardly doubt that his real object was an ironical one, to exhibit Christianity as resting on apostolic misinterpretations of Jewish prophecy, and thus to create the impression that it was a mere Jewish sect of men deceived by fanciful interpretations.' *

In the argument of Collins it is easy to trace the influence of Locke's 'Reasonableness of Christianity,' and to see how the position originally advanced in support of latitudinarianism has degenerated, in the hands of a less scrupulous disciple, into a weapon for the service of unbelief. Collins, indeed, avowedly commences his argument from Locke's thesis. The grand and fundamental article of Christianity,' he says, 'was that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messias of the Jews, predicted in the Old Testament; and how could that appear, and be proved, but from the Old Testament?' † But if his premise is an echo of Locke, his conclusion reads like an anticipation of one of the writers in 'Essays and Reviews.' The interpretation of prophecy which Dr. Williams, with the aid of Bunsen, has rendered familiar to English readers of the present day, Collins, with the aid of Surenhusius, rendered almost equally familiar to English readers of nearly a century and a half ago. If the former writer says of the early fathers, that, when, instead of using the letter as an instrument of the spirit, they began to accept the letter in all its parts as their law, and twisted it into harmony with the details of Gospel history, they fell into inextricable contradictions; the latter undertakes, with still more confidence, to assure us that 'the Prophecies cited from the Old Testament by the authors of the New do so plainly relate, in their obvious and primary sense, to other matters than those which they are produced to prove, that to pretend they prove, in that sense, what they are produced to prove, is to give up the cause of Christianity to Jews and other enemies thereof, who can so easily shew, in so many un

*

Bampton Lectures,' p. 190. A censure of this kind from Mr. Farrar has more significance than from most theological writers. His Lectures exhibit in a remarkable manner how a firm and unhesitating belief on the part of the author in the great truths of the Christian faith may be combined with a spirit of the utmost gentleness and tenderness towards those whose religious errors he is compelled to notice and 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.

+Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion,' p. 12. Essays and Reviews,' p. 64 (2nd Edition).

doubted