A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern 89

A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern 89

and in Holland we shall see, in the rise of Arminianism,

a similar surrender on the Protestant side to the general pressure

of Catholicism upon the ethical weaknesses of Predestinarianism. On

that point, however, the original Catholic doctrine of predestination

was revived by the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina (1535-1600; not to be

confused with the later Quietist, Miguel de Molinos), who in his

treatise Liberi Arbitrii concordia cum gratiæ donis (1588) set it

forth as consequent upon God's foreknowledge of man's free use of his

will. As a result of the dispute between the Thomists and Molina's

followers, known as the Molinists, the Pope in 1607 pronounced that

the views of both sides were permissible--a course which had already

been taken twenty years before with the controversy on predestination

aroused by the doctrines of Michael Baius at the University of

Louvain. [2108] Thus the dissensions of Catholics in a manner kept

in countenance the divided Protestants; but the old confidence of

affirmation and formulation was inevitably sapped by the constant play

of controversy; and from this Protestantism necessarily suffered most.

 

Intellectually, there was visible retrogression in the Protestant

world. It is significant that throughout the sixteenth century most of

the great scientific thinkers and the freethinkers with the strongest

bent to new science lived in the Catholic world. Rabelais and Bruno

were priests; Copernicus a lay canon; Galileo had never withdrawn

from the Church which humiliated him; even Kepler returned to the

Catholic environment after professing Protestantism. He was in fact

excommunicated by the Tübingen Protestant authorities in 1612 [2109]

for condemning the Lutheran doctrine that the body of Christ could be

in several places at once. The immunity of such original spirits as

Gilbert and Harriott from active molestation is to be explained only

by the fact that they lived in the as yet un-Puritanized atmosphere

of Elizabethan England, before the age of Bibliolatry. It would

seem as if the spirit of scripturalism, invading the very centres

of thought, were more fatal to original intellectual life than the

more external interferences of Catholic sacerdotalism. [2110] In

the phrase of Arnold, Protestantism turned the key on the spirit,

where Catholicism was normally content with an outward submission to

its ceremonies, and only in the most backward countries, as Spain,

destroyed entirely the atmosphere of free mental intercourse. It was

after a long reaction that Bruno and Galileo were arraigned at Rome.

 

The clerical resistance to new science, broadly speaking, was more

bitter in the Protestant world than in the Catholic; and it was merely

the relative lack of restraining power in the former that made possible

the later scientific progress. The history of Lutheranism upon this

side is an intellectual infamy. At Wittemberg, during Luther's life,

Reinhold did not dare to teach the Copernican astronomy; Rheticus

had to leave the place in order to be free to speak; and in 1571

the subject was put in the hands of Peucer, who taught that the

Copernican theory was absurd. Finally, the rector of the university,

Hensel, wrote a text-book for schools, entitled The Restored Mosaic

System of the World, showing with entire success that the new doctrine

was unscriptural. [2111] A little later the Lutheran superintendent,

Pfeiffer, of Lübeck, published his Pansophia Mosaica, insisting on the

literal truth of the entire Genesaic myth. [2112] In the next century

Calovius (1612-1686), who taught successively at Königsberg, Dantzic,

and Wittemberg, maintained the same position, contending that the

story of Joshua's staying the sun and moon refuted Copernicus. [2113]

When Pope Gregory XIII, following an impulse abnormal in his world,

took the bold step of rectifying the Calendar (1584), the Protestants

in Germany and Switzerland vehemently resisted the reform, and in some

cities would not tolerate it, [2114] thus refusing, on theological

grounds, the one species of co-operation with Catholicism that lay

open to them. And the anti-scientific attitude persisted for over

a century in Switzerland as in Scotland. At Geneva, J.-A. Turretin

(1671-1737), writing after Kepler and Newton had done their work,

laboriously repeated the demonstration of Calovius, and reaffirmed

the positions of Calvin. So far as its ministers could avail, the

Sacred Book was working the old effect.

 

 

 

 

§ 2. ENGLAND

 

Freethought gained permanently as little in England as elsewhere

in the process of substituting local tyranny for that of Rome. The

secularizing effect of the Reformation, indeed, was even more

marked there than elsewhere. What Wolsey had aimed at doing with

moderation and without revolution was done after him with violence

on motives of sheer plunder, and a multitude not only of monasteries

but of churches were disendowed and destroyed. The monastic churches

were often magnificent, and "when the monasteries were dissolved,

divine service altogether ceased in ninety out of every hundred of

these great churches, and the remaining ten were left ... without any

provision whatever" for public worship. [2115] All this must have had

a secularizing effect, which was accentuated by the changes in ritual;

and by the middle of the century it was common to treat both churches

and clergy with utter irreverence, which indeed the latter often

earned by their mode of life. [2116] Riots in churches, especially in

London, were common; there was in fact a habit of driving mules and

horses through them; [2117] and buying and selling and even gaming

were often carried on. But with all this there was no intellectual

enlightenment, and in high places there was no toleration. Under Henry

VIII anti-Romanist heretics were put to death on the old Romanist

principles. In 1532, again, was burned James Bainham, who not only

rejected the specially Catholic dogmas, but affirmed the possible

salvation of unbelievers.

 

Under the Protectorate which followed there was indeed much religious

semi-rationalism, evidently of continental derivation, which is

discussed in the theological literature of the time. Roger Hutchinson,

writing about 1550, repeatedly speaks of contemporary "Sadducees and

Libertines" who say (1) "that all spirits and angels are no substances,

but inspirations, affections, and qualities"; (2) "that the devil

is nothing but nolitum, or a filthy affection coming of the flesh";

(3) "that there is neither place of rest nor pain after this life;

that hell is nothing else but a tormenting and desperate conscience;

and that a joyful, quiet, and merry conscience is heaven."

 

 

See The Image of God, or Layman's Book, 1550, ch. xxiv: Parker

Society's rep. 1842, pp. 134, 138, 140. Cp. p. 79 and Sermon

II, on The Lord's Supper (id. p. 247), as to "Julianites" who

"do think mortal corpo, mortal anima." To the period 1550-60

is also assigned the undated work of John Veron, A Frutefull

Treatise of Predestination and of the Divine Providence of God,

with an Apology of the same against the swynishe gruntinge of

the Epicures and Atheystes of oure time. There was evidently a

good deal of new rationalism, which has been generally ignored

in English historiography. Its foreign source is suggested by

the use of the term "Libertines," which derives from France and

Geneva. See below, p. 473. The above-cited tenets are, in fact,

partly identical with those of the libertins denounced at Geneva

by Calvin.

 

 

Such doctrine, which we shall find in vogue fifty years later, cannot

have been printed, and probably can have been uttered only by men

of good status, as well as culture; and even by them only because of

the weakness of the State Church in its transition stage. Yet heresy

went still further among some of the sects set up by the Anabaptist

movement, which in England as in Germany involved some measure

of Unitarianism. A letter of Hooper to Bullinger in 1549 tells of

"libertines and wretches who are daring enough in their conventicles

not only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world,

but also to call that blessed Seed a mischievous fellow and deceiver

of the world." [2118] This must have been said with locked doors, for

much milder heresy was heavily punished, the worst penalties falling

upon that which stood equally with orthodoxy on Biblical grounds.

 

 

In 1541, under Henry VIII, were burned three persons "because they

denied transubstantiation, and had not received the sacrament at

Easter." See the letter of Hilles to Bullinger, Original Letters,

as cited, i, 200. The case of Jean Bouchier or Bocher, burned in

1550, is well known. It is worth noting that the common charge

against Cranmer, of persuading the young king to sign her death

warrant, is false, being one of the myths of Foxe. The warrant

was passed by the whole Privy Council, Cranmer not being even

present. See the Parker Society's reprint of Roger Hutchinson,

1812, introd. pp. ii-5. Hutchinson apparently approved; and it

is significant of the clerical attitude of the time that he calls

(Image of God, ch. xxx, p. 201) for the punishment of Anabaptists

by death if necessary, but does not suggest it for "Sadducees

and Libertines."

 

 

The Elizabethan archbishops and the Puritans were equally intolerant;

and the idea of free inquiry was undreamt of. That there had been much

private discussion in clerical circles, however, is plain from the 13th

and 18th of the Thirty-nine Articles (1562), which repudiate natural

morality and hold "accursed" those who say that men can be saved

under any creed. [2119] This fulmination would not have occurred had

the heresy not been pressing; but the "curse" would thenceforth set

the key of clerical and public utterance. The Reformation, in fact,

speedily over-clouded with fanaticism what new light of freethought

had been glimmering before; turning into Bibliolaters those who had

rationally doubted some of the Catholic mysteries, and forcing back,

either into silence or, by reaction, into Catholic bigotry, those more

refined spirits who, like Sir Thomas More, had before been really

in advance of their age intellectually and morally, and desired a

transmutation of the old system rather than its overthrow. Nothing

so nearly rational as the Utopia (1515-16) appeared again in English

literature for a century; it is indeed, in some respects, a lead

to social science in our own day. More, with all his spontaneous

turn for pietism, had evidently drunk in his youth or prime [2120]

at some freethinking source, for his book recognizes the existence

of unbelievers in deity and immortality; and though he pronounces

them unfit for political power, as did Milton, Locke, and Voltaire

long after him, he stipulates that they be tolerated. [2121] Broadly