Bolingbroke's writings command respect from their mixture of clearness of exposition with power of argument. They form also the transition to the literature of the next age, in turning attention to history. Bolingbroke had great powers of psychological analysis, but he despised the study of it apart from experience. His philosophy was a philosophy of history. In his attacks on revelation we have the traces of the older philosophical school of deists; but in the consciousness that an historical, not a philosophical, solution must be sought to explain the rise of an historical phenomenon such as Christianity, he exemplifies the historic spirit which was rising, and anticipates the theological inquiry found in Gibbon; and, in his examination of the external historic evidence, both the documents by which the Christian religion is attested, and the effects of tradition in weakening historic data, he evinces traces of the influence of the historical criticism which had arisen in France under his friend Pouilly.468

His theological writings469 are in the form of letters, [pg 145] or of essays, the common form of didactic writings in that age. We shall briefly state his views on deity, futurity, and revelation.

He teaches the existence of a deity, but was led, by the sensational philosophy which he adopted from Locke, to deny the possibility of an à priori proof of the divine existence,470 and contends strongly that the divine attributes can only be known by observation of nature, and not by the analogy of man's constitution. He considers too that the deity whose existence he has thus allowed, exercises a general but not a special providence;471 the world being a machine moving by delegated powers without the divine interference. The philosophy expressed in Pope's didactic poetry gives expression to Bolingbroke's opinions472 on providence.

In his views of human duty Bolingbroke refers conduct to self-love as a cause, and to happiness as an end; and doubts a future state,473 either on the ground of materialism, or possibly because his favourite principle, that “whatever is, is best,” led him to disbelieve the argument for a future life adduced from the inequality of present rewards. Future punishment is rejected, on the ground that it can offer no end compatible with the moral object of punishment, which is correction.

When he passes from natural religion to revealed, he allows the possibility of divine inspiration, but [pg 146] doubts the fact; rebuking those however who doubt things merely because they cannot understand them. In criticising the Jewish revelation,474 he puts no limits to his words of severity. He dares to pronounce the Jewish history to be repugnant to the attributes of a supreme, all-perfect Being. His attack on the records is partly on account of the materials contained in them, such as the narrative of the fall, the numerical statistics, the invasion of the Canaanites, the absence of eternal rewards as sanctions of the Mosaic law; and partly on the ground of the evidence being, as he alleges, not narrated by contemporaries. In giving his opinion of Christianity, he repeats the weak objection already used by Chubb, of a distinction existing between the gospel of Christ and of Paul;475 and tries to explain the origin of Christianity and of its doctrines, suggesting the derivation of the idea of a Trinity from the triadic notions of other religions. But he is driven to concede some things denied by former deists. He grants, for example, that if the miracles really occurred, they attest the revelation;476 and he therefore labours to show that they did not occur, by attacking the New Testament canon477 as he had before attacked the Old; attempting to show that the composition of the gospels was separated by an interval from the alleged occurrence of the events; applying, in fact, Pouilly's incipient criticism on history which has been so freely used in theology by more recent critics.

These remarks will exhibit Bolingbroke's views, both in their cause and their relation to those of former deists. It will be observed that they are for the most part a direct result either of sensational metaphysics or of the incipient science of historical criticism.

The inquiry was now becoming more historical on the part both of deists and Christians. Philosophy was still the cause of religious controversy, but it had changed in character. It was now criticism weighing the evidence of religion rather than ethics or metaphysics [pg 147] testing the materials of it. The question formerly debated had been, how much of the internal characteristics of scripture can be supported by moral philosophy; and when the conviction at length grew up, that the mysteries could not be solved by any analogy, but were unique, it became necessary to rest on the miraculous evidence for the existence of a revelation, and make the fact guarantee the contents of it. Inasmuch however as the revelation is contained in a book, it became necessary to substantiate the historical evidence of its genuineness and authenticity. Bolingbroke's attacks are directed against a portion of this literary evidence.

Historical criticism, in its appreciation of literary evidence, may be of four kinds. It may (1) examine the record from a dogmatic point of view, pronouncing on it by reference to prepossessions directed against the facts; or (2) make use of the same method, but direct the attack against the evidence on which the record rests; or (3) it may examine whether the record is contemporary with the events narrated; or (4) consider its internal agreement with itself or with fact.

We have instances of each of these methods in the examination of the literary evidence on which miracles are believed. The first, the prepossession concerning the philosophical impossibility of miracles, is seen in Spinoza; the second, the impossibility of using testimony as a proof of them, in Hume; the third, the question whether they were attested by eyewitnesses, is the ground which Bolingbroke touches; the fourth, the cross-examination of the witnesses, is seen in Woolston. Of these, the first most nearly resembles the great mass of the deist objections to revelation, being philosophical rather than critical. The second forms a transition to the two latter, being philosophy applied to criticism, and is the form which deism now took. The two latter are those which it subsequently assumed.478

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These remarks will explain Hume's position,479 and show how he forms the transition between two modes of inquiry; his point of view being critical, the cause of it philosophical. His speculations in reference to religion are chiefly contained in his Essays on the Human Understanding. A brief explanation is necessary to show the dependence of his theology on his philosophy.

The speculations of Locke, as we have before had occasion to notice, gave an impulse to psychological investigations. He clearly saw that knowledge is limited by the faculties which are its source, which he considered to be reducible to sensation and reflection; but while denying the existence of innate ideas, he admitted the existence of innate faculties. Hartley carried the analysis still farther, by introducing the potent instrument offered by the doctrine of the association of ideas. Hume, adopting this principle, applied it, in a manner very like the independent contemporaneous speculations of Condillac in France, to analyse the faculties themselves into sensations, and to furnish a more complete account of the nature of some of our most general ideas, such, for example, as the notion of cause. The intellectual element implied in Locke's account of the process of reflection here drops out. Faculties are regarded as transformed sensations; the nature of knowledge as coextensive with sensation. According to such a theory therefore, the idea of physical cause can mean nothing more than the invariable connexion of antecedent and consequent. The notion of force or power which we attach to causation becomes an unreality; being an idea not given in sensation, which can merely detect sequence.

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Such was Hume's psychology; an attempt to push analysis to its ultimate limits; valuable in its method, even if defective in its results; a striking example of the acuteness and subtle penetration of its author. There is another branch of his philosophy in which he is regarded as a metaphysical sceptic, in reference to the passage of the mind outwards, by means of its own sensations and ideas, into the knowledge of real being, wherein he takes part with Berkeley, extending to the inner world of soul the scepticism which that philosopher had applied to the outer world of matter. In the psychological branch Hume is a sensationalist, in the ontological a sceptic. The latter however has no relation to our present subject. It is from the former that his views on religion are deduced. In no writer is the logical dependence of religious opinion on metaphysical principles visible in a more instructive manner. For we perceive that the influence adverse to religion in his case was not merely the result of rival metaphysical dogmas opposed to religion, such as were seen in the Pantheists of Padua, or in Spinoza; nor even the opposition caused by the adoption of a different standard of truth for pronouncing on revelation, as in his fellow English deists; but it sprung from the application of the subjective psychological inquiry into the limits of religious knowledge, as a means for criticising not only the logical strength of the evidence of religion, but specially the historic evidence of testimony. We consequently see the influence exercised by the subjective branch of metaphysical inquiries in the discussion not only of the logic of religion, but also of the logic of the historic aspect of it.

Hume's religious speculations480 relate to three points:—to the argument for the attributes of God, drawn from final causes; to the doctrine of Providence, and future rewards and punishments; and to the evidence of testimony as the proof of miracles. Though he does not conduct an open assault in reference to any [pg 150] of them, but only suggests doubts, yet in each case his insinuations sap so completely the very proof, that it is clear that they are intended as grounds not merely for doubt, but for disbelief. His doctrine of sensation is the clue to his remarks on the two former. He argues that we can draw no sound inferences on the questions, because the subjects lie beyond the range of sensational experience. It is however in consequence of his remarks on the last of the three subjects in his essay on Miracles that his name has become famous in the history of free thought.

The essay consists of two parts. In the first he shows that miracles are incapable of proof by testimony. Belief is in proportion to evidence. Evidence rests on sensational experience. Accordingly the testimony to the uniformity of nature being universal, and that which exists in favour of the occurrence of a miracle, or violation of the laws of nature, being partial, the former must outweigh the latter. In the second he shows, that if this is true, provided the testimony be of the highest kind, much more will it be so in actual cases; inasmuch as no miracle is recorded, the evidence for which reaches to this high standard. He explains the elements of weakness in the evidence; such as the predisposition of mankind to believe prodigies, forged miracles, the decrease of miracles with the progress of civilization, the force of rival testimony in disproof of them, which he illustrates by historic examples, such as the alleged miracles of Vespasian, Apollonius, and the Jansenist Abbé Paris.481 The conclusion is, that miracles cannot be so shown to occur as to be used as the basis of proof for a revelation; and that a revelation, if believed, must rest on other evidence.

The argument accordingly is briefly, that testimony cannot establish a fact which contradicts a law of nature; [pg 151] the narrower induction cannot disprove the wider. The reasoning has been used in subsequent controversy482 with only a slight increase of force, or alteration of statement. The great and undeniable discoveries of astronomy had convinced men in the age of Hume of the existence of an order of nature; and modern discovery has not increased the proof of this in kind, though it has heightened it in degree, by showing that as knowledge spreads the range of the operation of fixed law is seen to extend more widely; and apparent exceptions are found to be due to our ignorance of the presence of a law, not to its absence. The statement of the difficulty would accordingly now be altered by the introduction of a slight modification. Instead of urging that testimony cannot prove the historic reality of the fact which we call a miracle, the assertion would be made that it can only attest the existence of it as a wonder, and is unable to prove that it is anything but an accidental result of an unknown cause. A miracle differs from a wonder, in that it is an effect wrought by the direct interposition of the Creator and Governor of nature, for the purpose of revealing a message or attesting a revelation. That testimony can substantiate wonders, but not distinguish the miracle from the wonder, is the modern form of the difficulty.

The connexion of Hume's view with his metaphysical principles will be evident. If nature be known only through the senses, cause is only the material antecedent visible to the senses. Nature is not seen to be the sphere of the operation of God's regular will; and the sole proof of interference with nature must be a balancing of inductions. It will be clear also that the true method of replying to Hume has been rightly perceived by those who consider that the difficulty must be met by philosophy, and not by history.

Suppose the historic evidence sufficient to attest the wonder, it does not prove that the wonder is a miracle. The presumption in favour of this may be indefinitely [pg 152] increased by the peculiarity of the circumstances, which frequently forbid the idea of a mere marvel; but the real proof must depend upon the previous conception, which we bring to bear upon the question, in respect to the being and attributes of God, and His relation to nature. The antecedent probability converts the wonder into a miracle. It acts in two ways. It obliterates the cold materialistic view of the regularity of nature which regards material laws to be unalterable, and the world to be a machine; and it adds logical force to the weaker induction, so as to allow it to outweigh the stronger. No testimony can substantiate the interference with a law of nature, unless we first believe on independent grounds that there is a God who has the power and will to interfere.483 Philosophy must accordingly establish the antecedent possibility of miracles; the attribute of power in God to effect the interruption, and of love in God to prompt him to do it. The condition therefore of attaining this conception must be by holding to a monotheistic conception of God as a being possessing a personal will, and regarding mind and will as the rule by which to interpret nature and law,484 and not conversely measuring the mental by the material. In this manner law becomes the operation of God's personal fixed will, and miracle the interposition of his personal free will.

It will be perceived that in distinguishing miracle from wonder, we also take into account the final cause of the alleged interposition as a reason weighty enough to call forth divine interposition. As soon as we introduce the idea of a personal intelligent God, we regard Him as acting with a motive, and measure His purposes, [pg 153] partly by analogy to ourselves, partly by the moral circumstances which demand the interposition.485

These remarks may furnish the solution of the puzzle whether the miracle proves the doctrine, or the doctrine the miracle.486 Undoubtedly the miracle proves the particular doctrine which it claims to attest; but a doctrine of some kind, though not the special one in point, some moral conception of the Almighty's nature and character, must precede, in order to give the criterion for distinguishing miracle from mere wonder. Miracles prove the doctrine which they are intended to attest; but doctrines of a still more general character are required to prove the miracle.

This examination of the doctrine of Hume will not only illustrate our main position, of the influence of intellectual and philosophical causes in generating doubt, or at least in directing free thought into a sceptical tendency, but will illustrate the application made of that special department of metaphysics which relates to the test of truth, to discredit the literary proof of revelation as an historic system.

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We have now sketched the natural history of deism, by showing that in this as in former periods the forms which free thought assumed were determined by the philosophy, and, in a slighter degree, by the critical knowledge of the age.

The inquiry into method in the seventeenth century had led men to break with authority, and rebuild from its foundations the temple of truth. Locke, imbibing this spirit, had gauged anew the human understanding, and had sought a new origin for its knowledge, and given expression to the appeal to the reasoning powers, which marked the age. Political circumstances had not only generated free inquiry, but had required each man to form his political creed. In all departments reason was appealed to. Even the province of the imagination was invaded by it, and perfection of form preferred to freshness of conception in art and poetry. The doubt of the age reflected the same spirit. Whether its advocates belonged to the school of Descartes or of Locke, both alike examined religion by the standard of psychology and ethics. That which was to be believed was to be comprehended as well as apprehended. Yet the appeal was not made to reason in its highest form; and, with a show of depth, philosophy nevertheless failed to exhibit the deepest analysis.

We have watched the exhibition of the successive phases of the attack, and have seen reason, first examining the method of theology, protesting against mystery in doctrine or morals; next criticising the historic reality of the evidence offered for its doctrines; then denying the moral utility of revelation, or attacking the doctrines and internal truths; lastly denying the validity of testimony for the supernatural.

In the later steps the influence of the French school of speculation is already observable, mingling itself with English deism. Consequently the subsequent traces of unbelief in England must be deferred till the nature of this movement has been explained.

Deism stands contrasted with the unbelief of other times by certain peculiarities. In its coarse spirit of [pg 155] bitter hostility, and want of real insight into the excellence of the system which it opposed, it recalls in some respects the attack of the ancient heathen Celsus; and the difficulties propounded are frequently not dissimilar to those stated by him, though resulting from a different philosophical school. The tenacious grasp which it maintained of the doctrine of the unity of God would cause it to bear a closer resemblance to the system of Julian, if the deists had not lacked the literary tastes which strengthened his love for heathenism. The monotheism constitutes also a line of demarcation between deism and more modern forms of unbelief. It restrained the deists from falling into the forms of subtle pantheism previously noticed, and the atheism which will hereafter meet us. The character of their doubts too, selected from patent facts of mind and heart, which appealed to common sense, and were not taken from a minute literary criticism, which removes doubt from the sphere of the ordinary understanding into the world of literature, separates them from more modern critical unbelief.

Standing thus apart, characterised by intense attachment to monotheism, and placing its foundation in the great facts of nature, deism errs by defect rather than excess; in that which it denies, not in that which it asserts. It is a system of naturalism or rationalism; the interpretation which reason, without attaining the deepest analysis, offers of the scheme of the world, natural and moral. Its only parallel is the particular species of German thought derived from it which existed at the close of the last century, and sought like it to reduce revealed religion to natural.487

Whether emotional causes, personal moral faults coincided with these intellectual causes, and were the obstacle which prevented the attainment of a deeper insight into the mysteries of revelation, and made them to halt in the mysteries of nature, ought to be taken into account in forming a judgment on the concrete cases, but does not so properly belong to the general [pg 156] consideration in which we are now engaged, of tracing the types of deist thought. Some of the deists were very moral men, a few immoral; but the truth or untruth of opinions may be studied apart from the character of the persons who maintain them.

The movement, if viewed as a whole, is obsolete. If the same doubts are now repeated, they do not recur in the same form, but are connected with new forms of philosophy, and altered by contact with more recent criticism. In the present day sceptics would believe less than the deists, or believe more, both in philosophy and in criticism. In philosophy, the fact that the same difficulties occur in natural religion as well as in revealed, would now throw them back from monotheism into atheism or pantheism; while the mysteries of revelation, which by a rough criticism were then denied, would be now conceded and explained away as psychological peculiarities of races or individuals. In criticism, the delicate examination of the sacred literature would now prevent both the revival of the cold unimaginative want of appreciation of its extreme literary beauty, and the hasty imputation of the charge of literary forgery against the authors of the documents. In the deist controversy the whole question turned upon the differences and respective degrees of obligation of natural and revealed religion, moral and positive duties; the deist conceding the one, denying the other.

The permanent contribution to thought made by the controversy consisted in turning attention from abstract theology to psychological, from metaphysical disquisitions on the nature of God to ethical consideration of the moral scheme of redemption for man. Theology came forth from the conflict, reconsidered from the psychological point of view, and readjusted to meet the doubts which the new form of philosophy—psychology and ethics—might suggest.

The attack of revealed religion by reason awoke the defence; and no period in church history is so remarkable for works on the Christian evidences,—grand monuments of mind and industry. The works of defenders [pg 157] are marked by the adoption of the same basis of reason as their opponents; and hence the topics which they illustrate have a permanent philosophical value, though their special utility as arguments be lessened by the alteration in the point of view now assumed by free thought.

The one writer whose reputation stands out preeminently above the other apologists is bishop Butler.488 His praise is in all the churches. Though the force of a few illustrations in his great work may perhaps have been slightly weakened by the modern progress of physical science,489 and though objections have been taken on the ground that the solutions are not ultimate,490 mere media axiomata; yet the work, if regarded as adapted to those who start from a monotheistic position, possesses a permanent power of attractiveness which can only be explained by its grandeur as a work of philosophy, as well as its mere potency as an argument. The width and fulness of knowledge displayed in the former respect, together with the singular candour and dignified forbearance of its tone, go far to explain the secret of its mighty influence. When viewed in reference to the deist writings against which it was designed, or the [pg 158] works of contemporary apologists, Butler's carefulness in study is manifest. Though we conjectured that Tindal's work491 was the one to which he intended chiefly to reply, yet not one difficulty in the philosophy, hardly one in the critical attacks made by the various deists, is omitted; and the best arguments of the various apologists are used. But both the one and the other are so assimilated by his own mind, that the use of them only proves his learning, without diminishing his originality. They are so embodied into his system, that it is difficult even for a student well acquainted with the deist and apologetic literature to point precisely to the doubt or parallel argument which may have suggested to him material of thought. And thus, though his work as an argument ought always to be viewed in relation to his own times, yet the omission of all temporary means of defence, and the restricting himself to the use of those permanent facts which indelibly belong to human nature, and to the scheme of the world, have caused his work to possess an enduring interest, and to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί. The persuasive moderation of its tone also proves that Butler had really weighed the evidence. In its absence of arrogant denunciation, and its candid admission that the evidence of religion is probable, not demonstrative; and in the request that the whole evidence may be weighed like a body of circumstantial proofs, we can perceive that Butler had felt the doubts as well as understood them, and evidently meant his works for the doubter rather than for the Christian; [pg 159] to convince foes, or support the hesitating, rather than to win applause from friends.

The real secret of its power however lies not merely in its force as an argument to refute objections against revelation, but in its positive effect as a philosophy,492 opening up a grand view of the divine government, and giving an explanation of revealed doctrines, by using analogy as the instrument for adjusting them into the scheme of the universe.493 He seems himself to have taken a broad view of God's dealings in the moral world, analogous to that which the recent physical discoveries of his time had exhibited in the natural. In the same manner as Newton in his Principia had, by an extension of terrestrial mechanics, explained the movements of the celestial orbs, and united under one grand generalization the facts of terrestrial and celestial motion; so Butler aimed at exhibiting as instances of one and the same set of moral laws the moral government of God, which is visible to natural reason, and the spiritual government, which is unveiled by revelation.

Probably no book since the beginning of Christianity has ever been so useful to the church as Butler's Analogy, in solving the doubts of believers or causing them to ignore exceptions, as well as in silencing unbelievers. The office of apologetic is to defend the church, not to build it up. Argument is not the life of the church. It is therefore a proof of the philosophical power and truth of Butler's work that it has ministered so extensively to the latter purpose, by actually reinforcing and promoting the faith of professing Christians. It has acted not only as an argument to the deists, but as a lesson of instruction to the church.

Few efforts of free thought seemed more unpromising in yielding any useful results than deism; yet by its agitation of deep questions, which are not the mere [pg 160] phantoms of a morbid mind, but real and solid difficulties and mysteries in revelation, it was the means of creating Butler's noble work, and is a fresh illustration of the beneficent arrangement of the Almighty, that makes knowledge progress by antagonism, and overrules evil for good.

But there is another weapon for repelling unbelief besides the intellectual; just as there are two causes for creating it, the one intellectual, the other emotional. Thus, in the period that we are now considering, though we may believe that many hearts were cheered and many doubts hushed by the Christian apologies, yet the revival of religion494 which marked the eighteenth century, and which by spreading vital piety prepared an effectual check against unbelief, when the lower orders were afterwards invaded by it, was due to the spiritual yearnings created by the ministrations of men, often rude and unlettered, who told the wondrous story of Christ crucified, heart speaking to heart, with intuitions kindled from on high. The sinful began to feel that God was not afar off, reposing in the solitude of his own blessedness, and abandoning mankind to the government of conscience and to the operation of general laws, but nigh at hand, with a heart of fatherly love to pity and an ear of mercy to listen. The narrative of Christ the Son of God, coming down to seek and to save that which was lost, awoke an echo in the heart which neutralized the doubts infused by the deist. And it is a comfort to every Christian labourer to know that if he cannot wrangle out a controversy with the doubter, he can speak to the doubter's heart.

Few would compare the irregular missionaries of spiritual religion in the last century with the great writers of evidence. The names of the latter are honoured; those of the former are unknown or too often despised. It might seem strange, for example, to institute [pg 161] a comparison between the two contemporaries, bishop Butler and John Wesley. Yet there are points of contrast which are instructive. Each was one of the most marked instruments of movement and influence in the respective fields of the argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the educated, the other a missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a nonconformist, turned to the church, and in an age of unbelief consecrated his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity; and died early, when his unblemished example was so much needed in the noble sphere of usefulness which Providence had given him, leaving a name to be honoured in the church for generations. Wesley, nursed in the most exclusive church principles, kindled the flame of his piety by the devout reading of mystic books;495 when our university was marked by the half-heartedness of the time; and afterwards, when instructed by the Pietists of Germany,496 devoted a long life to wander over the country, despised, ill-treated, but still untired; teaching with indefatigable energy the faith which he loved, and introducing those irregular agencies of usefulness which are now so largely adopted even in the church. He too was an accomplished scholar, and possessed great gifts of administration; but whatever good he effected, in kindling the spiritual Christianity which checked the spread of infidelity, was not so much by argument as by stating the omnipotent doctrine of the Cross, Christ set forth as the propitiation for sin through faith in his blood. The earnestness of the missionary may be imitated by those who cannot imitate the philosopher's literary labours. Gifts of intellect are not in our own power. But industry to improve the talents that we possess is our own; and the spiritual perception of divine truth, and burning love for Christ which will [pg 162] touch the heart, and before which all unhealthy doubts will melt away as frost before the sun, will be given from on high by the Holy Ghost freely to all that ask. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”497