A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

Essays, 1882, pp. 51-53. [627] Land, "In Memory of Spinoza," in Spinoza: Four Essays, pp. 57-58; Sigwart, as there cited; Pollock, Spinoza, p. 12. Cp. however, Martineau, p. 101, note. [628] Renati Des Cartes Princip. Philos. more geometrico demonstratæ, 1663. [629] Cp. Martineau, pp. 46, 57. [630] Reprinted in 1674, without place-name, and with the imprint of an imaginary Hamburg publisher. [631] Tractatus, c. 15. [632] Ep. xxiv, to Oldenburg. [633] Epp. lviii, lx, to Boxel. [634] Ep. xxiii, to Oldenburg. [635] Ep. xxiv. [636] Ep. xxxiv, to W. van Bleyenberg. [637] Ep. xlvii, to Jellis, Feb. 1671. [638] Ep. xix, 1675, to Oldenburg. [639] "Spinozism is atheistic, and has no valid ground for retaining the word 'God'" (Martineau, p. 349). This estimate is systematically made good by Prof. E. E. Powell of Miami University in his Spinoza and Religion (1906). See in particular ch. v. The summing-up is that "the right name for Spinoza's philosophy is Atheistic Monism" (pp. 339-40). [640] Ethica, pt. i, App.; pt. ii, end; pt. v, prop. 41, schol. Cp. the Letters, passim. [641] The solution is, of course, that the attitude of the will in the forming of opinion may or may not be passionally perverse, in the sense of being inconsistent. To show that it is inconsistent may be a means of enlightening it; and an aspersion to that effect may be medicinal. Spinoza might truly have said that passional perversity was at least as common on the orthodox side as on the other. In any case, he quashes his own criticism of Bacon. Cp. the author's essay on Spinoza in Pioneer Humanists. [642] Pt. iv, prop. 68, schol. [643] Ep. 1; 2 June, 1674. [644] Colerus, as cited, p. liv. Cuper appears to have been genuinely anti-Spinozist, while his opponent, Breitburg, or Bredenburg, of Rotterdam, was a Spinozist. Both were members of the society of "Collegiants," a body of non-dogmatic Christians, which for a time was broken up through their dissensions. Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii, pt. ii, ch. vii, § 2, and note. [645] Theologisch, Philosophisch, en Historisch process voor God, tegen allerley Atheisten. By Francis Ridder, Rotterdam, 1678. [646] L'Impiétié Convaincu, "par Pierre Yvon," Amsterdam, 1681. Really by the Sieur Noël Aubert de Versé. This appears to have been reprinted in 1685 under the title L'Impie convaincu, ou Dissertation contre Spinosa, ou l'on réfute les fondemens de son athéisme. [647] See Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii, 282-83, as to Locke's friendly relations with the Remonstrants in 1683-89. [648] See the summary of his argument by Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 78 sq. [649] Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 836; Martineau, pp. 327-28. The first MS. of the treatise of Spinoza, De Deo et Homine, found and published in the nineteenth century, bore a note which showed it to have been used by a sect of Christian Spinozists. See Janet's ed. 1878, p. 3. They altered the text, putting "faith" for "opinion." Id. p. 53, notes. [650] Edwards, Gangræna, as before cited. [651] Discourse of Freethinking, p. 28. [652] Colerus, as cited, p. lviii. [653] First ed. Rotterdam, 2 vols. folio, 1696. [654] Albert Cazes, Pierre Bayle, sa vie, ses idées, son influence, son oeuvre, 1905, pp. 6, 7. [655] A movement of skepticism had probably been first set up in the young Bayle by Montaigne, who was one of his favourite authors before his conversion (Cazes, p. 5). Montaigne, it will be remembered, had been a fanatic in his youth. Thus three typical skeptics of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries had known what it was to be Catholic believers. [656] Cp. the essay on The Skepticism of Bayle in Sir J. F. Stephen's Horæ Sabbaticæ, vol. iii, and the remarks of Perrens, Les Libertins, pp. 331-37. [657] Éloge de M. le Cardinal Polignac prefixed to Bougainville's translation, L'Anti-Lucrèce, 1767, i, 141. Bayle's quoted words are: "Oui, monsieur, je suis bon Protestant, et dans toute la force du mot; car au fond de mon âme je proteste contre tout ce qui se dit et tout ce qui se fait." [658] Cp. the testimony of Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, p. 55. Besides the writings above cited, note, in the Dictionnaire, art. Mahomet, § ix; art. Conecte; art. Simonide, notes H and G; art. Sponde, note C. [659] Commentaire philosophique sur la parabole: Contrains-les d'entrer, 2e ptie, vi. Cp. the Critique générale de l'histoire du Calvinisme du Père Maimbourg, passim. [660] See pref. to Eng. tr. of Hotman's Franco-Gallia, 1711. [661] Rep. at Amsterdam, 1788, under the title, Voeux d'un Patriote. Jurieu's authorship is not certain. Cp. Ch. Nodier, Mélanges tirés d'une petite bibliothèque, 1829, p. 357. But it is more likely than the alternative ascription to Le Vassor. The book made such a sensation that the police of Louis XIV destroyed every copy they could find; and in 1772 the Chancelier Maupeou was said to have paid 500 livres for a copy at auction over the Duc d'Orléans. [662] Ed. 1766, p. 7. [663] The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus had been translated into French in 1678 by Saint-Glain, a Protestant, who gave it no fewer than three other titles in succession to evade prosecution. (Note to Colerus in Gfrörer's ed. of Spinoza, p. xlix.) In addition to the work of Aubert de Versé, above mentioned, replies were published by Simon, De la Motte (minister of the Savoy Chapel, London), Lami, a Benedictine, and others. Their spirit may be divined from Lami's title, Nouvel athéisme renversé, 1706. [664] Tom. I. § ii, ch. ix (ed. 1864, i, 134. 177). [665] The destruction of Protestant liberties was not the work of the single Act of Revocation. It had begun in detail as early as