CONTENTS. The Deistical Writers of the 18th century, once so famous, are now almost unknown. Course of Deism in England, France, and Germany. The Characteristic of English Deism; its Coarseness and Virulence. Stages of Deism. Toland; his relation to Locke: Locke's philosophical Error, and its theological Consequences. Collins's Discourse of Freethinking,' &c. Woolston. Bolingbroke. Parallel between the Unbelief of the last Century and that of the present. The Test and Subscription Controversy. Consequences of English Deism to the Church. Conclusion. FREETHINKING-ITS HISTORY AND TENDENCIES.* TOLAND, Collins, Tindal, Woolston, Morgan, Chubb, Annet. What kind of recollection do these names call up in the minds of English readers of the present day? Are they, to the majority, anything more than a bare catalogue of names—" Alcandrumque Haliumque Noëmonaque Prytanimque "— known, perhaps, in a general way as Deistical writers, much as the above-mentioned Virgilian, or rather Homeric, worthies are known as soldiers; but, in other respects, not much more distinguished as regards personality and individual character? Yet these were men of mark in their day, the Essayists and Reviewers of the last century, attracting nearly as much attention, and receiving nearly as many criticisms, as their successors are doing at present. Nor were some of them without confident hope of the lasting effects which their works were destined to produce. Tindal prefaces his Christianity as Old as the Creation' with the declaration that he "thinks he has laid down such plain and evident rules as may enable men of the meanest capacity to distinguish between Religion and Superstition, and has represented the former in every part so beautiful, so amiable, and so strongly affecting, that they who in the least reflect must be highly in love with it." And, towards the conclusion of the work, he sums up his estimate of its argument in terms equally flattering: "For my part, I think, there's none who wish well to mankind, but must likewise wish this hypothesis to be true; and can there be a greater proof of its truth, than that it is, in all its parts, so exactly calculated for the good of mankind, that either to add to or to take from it will be to 6 *From the Quarterly Review,' July, | 1864. 1. 'A Critical History of Free Thought in reference to the Christian Religion.' By Adam Storey Farrar, M.A. London, 1862. 2. 'Essays their manifest prejudice?" Chubb, in the preface to his 'True Gospel,' asserts that he has "rendered the Gospel of Christ defendable upon rational principles." rational principles." Annet tells his readers that his end is "to hold forth the acceptable Light of Truth, which makes men free, enables them to break the bands of creed-makers and imposers asunder, and to cast their cords from us; and to set at liberty captives bruised with their chains; to convince those that believe they see, or that see only through Faith's optics, that their blindness remaineth."* Woolston boasts that he will "cut out such a piece of work for our Boylean Lectures as shall hold them tug so long as the ministry of the letter and an hireling priesthood shall last.”† And truly, if temporary popularity were any security for lasting reputation, Woolston had good grounds for his boast. His Discourses are said to have been sold to the extent of thirty thousand copies, and to have called forth in a short time as many as sixty replies. Swift's satirical lines testify to his popularity; while in other respects they might pass for a description of a Right Reverend critic of the present day. 66 'Here's Woolston's tracts, the twelfth edition ; The country members, when in town, To all their boroughs send them down; Other authors of the same school attained to a like celebrity. Against Collins's 'Discourse of Freethinking,' according to the boast of the author himself, no less than thirty-four works were published in England alone; § and the list of antagonist publi *The Resurrection of Jesus Considered,' p. 87. +Fifth Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour,' p. 65. § Thorschmid, 'Freydenker Bibliothek,' vol. i. p. 155. In the Acta Eruditorum Lipsiens.,' A. 1714, it is said that as many as twenty answers Lechler, 'Geschichte des englischen appeared in the same year with the Deismus,' p. 294. Discourse itself. FOREIGN AND ENGLISH FREETHINKING. 295 cations enumerated by Thorschmid amounts in all to seventynine in various languages. Tindal's 'Christianity as old as the Creation' gave occasion, according to the same diligent collector, to as many as a hundred and fifteen replies. to At this time, when we are again startled by a similar phenomenon—when we once more see writings, whose literary merits, say the least, are by no means sufficient to account for the notice they have attracted and the apprehensions they have excited, pushed into an adventitious celebrity by the subject of which they treat and the circumstances under which they were written our attention is naturally drawn to the parallel furnished by the last century; and we feel an interest in asking why it is that men so celebrated and so dreaded in their own generation should be so utterly forgotten in ours. And the interest is increased when we become aware of the existence of other parallels in other countries. The same state of things which existed in England in the early part of the eighteenth century was repeated in France in the latter part of the same century, and in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth. In France, the names of La Mettrie and De Prades, and D'Argens, and D'Holbach, and Damilaville, and St. Lambert, and Raynal, are almost as much forgotten as those of their English predecessors. In Germany, those of Tieftrunk and Henke, and Eckermann, and Paulus, and Röhr, and Wegscheider, represent men who once exercised a living influence on the theology of their day, but whose works are now little more than the decaying monuments of a dead and buried rationalism. These, it may be objected, are neither the only nor the greatest names that can be cited as examples of freethinking in their respective countries; nor are they entitled to be considered as its chief representatives. Yet they are fair representatives, not indeed of the highest amount of ability or influence that has at any time been combined with freethinking tendencies, but of the class of writers whose reputation rests principally or solely upon those tendencies. Men like Hume and Gibbon, or even Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke, in England, like Voltaire and Rousseau in France, like Lessing and Wieland in Germany, may have written in the same spirit, and may have been as heterodox in their belief as their less distinguished countrymen; but they so little owe their literary reputation exclusively or |