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

for conversions, and thence to a graduated series of invasions of Protestant rights, so that the formal Revocation was only the violent consummation of a process. See the recital in Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, pp. 46-52. [666] As to the loss to French industry see Bonet-Maury, as cited, p. 59, and refs. [667] See Duruy, Hist. de la France, ii, 253; Bonet-Maury, as cited, pp. 53-66. [668] As to whose attitude at this crisis see O. Douen, L'Intolérance de Fénelon, 1880. [669] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 627. [670] Id ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 468. [671] Not printed till 1743, in the Nouvelles libertés de penser; and still read in MS. by Grimm in 1754. Fontenelle was also credited with a heretical letter on the resurrection, and an essay on the Infinite, pointing to disbelief. It should be noted, however, that he stands for deism in his essay, De l'existence de Dieu, which is a guarded application of the design argument against what was then assumed to be the only alternative--the "fortuitous concourse of atoms." [672] But Voltaire and he were not at one. He is the "nain de Saturne" in Micromégas. [673] B. 1613; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no great debauchee. [674] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 172. [675] Cp. Gidel, Étude prefixed to OEuvres Choisies de Saint-Evremond, ed. Garnier, pp. 64-69. [676] Caractères (1687), ch. xvi: Les Esprits Forts. [677] "Is embarrassed" in the first edition. [678] Des ouvrages de l'esprit, near end. § 65 in ed. Walckenaer, p. 176. [679] M. Le Vassor, De la véritable religion, 1688, préf. Le Vassor speaks in the same preface of "this multitude of libertins and of unbelievers which now terrifies us." His book seeks to vindicate the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, inspiration, prophecies, and miracles, against Spinoza, Le Clerc, and others. [680] Cp. Huet, Huetiana, § 1. [681] The question is discussed in the author's Buckle and his Critics, pp. 324-42, and ed. of Buckle's Introduction. Buckle's view, however, was held by Huet, Huetiana, § 73. [682] Cp. Perrens, pp. 310-14. [683] Letter of the Duchesse d'Orléans, cited by Rocquain, L'Esprit révolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, p. 3, note. [684] As Voltaire noted, Toland was persecuted in Ireland for his circumspect and cautious first book, and left unmolested in England when he grew much more aggressive. [685] First ed. anonymous. Second ed., of same year, gives author's name. Another ed. in 1702. [686] See Dynamics of Religion, p. 129. [687] Pref. to 2nd ed. pp. vi, viii, xxiv, xxvi. [688] As late as 1701 a vote for its prosecution was passed in the Lower House of Convocation. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 180. [689] Molyneux, in Familiar Letters of Locke, etc. p. 228. [690] No credit for this is given in Sir Leslie Stephen's notice of Toland in English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 101-12. Compare the estimate of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 272-76 (Eng. tr. i, 324-30). Lange perhaps idealizes his subject somewhat. [691] In two letters published along with the Letters to Serena, 1704. [692] Letters to Serena, etc. 1704, pref. [693] De Principiis atque Originibus (Routledge's 1-vol. ed. pp. 651, 667). [694] Letters to Serena, pp. 19, 67. [695] Sir Henry Craik (cited by Temple Scott, Bohn ed. of Swift's Works, iii, 9) speaks of Toland as "a man of utterly worthless character." This is mere malignant abuse. Toland is described by Pope in a note to the Dunciad (ii, 399) as a spy to Lord Oxford. There could hardly be a worse authority for such a charge. [696] Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, 1882, p. 26. [697] Cp. Stephen, as cited, p. 115. [698] "The Christianity of many writers consisted simply in expressing deist opinions in the old-fashioned phraseology" (Stephen, i, 91). [699] Cp. Pünjer, Christ. Philos. of Religion, i, 289-90; and Dynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98. Lord Morley's reference to "the godless deism of the English school" (Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 69) is puzzling. Cp. Rosenkranz (Diderot's Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 421) on "den ungöttlichen Gott der Jesuiten and Jansenisten, dies monströse Zerrbild des alten Jehovah, diesen apotheosirten Tyrannen, diesen Moloch." The latter application of the term seems the more plausible. [700] Macaulay's description of Blount as an atheist is therefore doubly unwarranted. [701] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98. [702] Continuation des Pensées Diverses ... à l'occasion de la Comète ... de 1680, Amsterdam, 1705, i, 91. [703] Warburton, Divine Legation, vol. ii, preface. [704] Stephen, English Thought, i, 114-18. [705] This, according to John Craig, was Newton's opinion. "The reason of his [Newton's] showing the errors of Cartes's philosophy was because he thought it made on purpose to be the foundation of infidelity." Letter to Conduitt, April 7, 1727, in Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, ii, 315. Clarke, in his Answer to Butler's Fifth Letter, expresses a similar view. [706] "Three Discourses of Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty, Collected from the Works of the Learn'd Gassendi by Monsieur Bernier. Translated out of the French, 1699." [707] Cp. W. Sichel, Bolingbroke and His Times, 1901, i, 175. [708] Sir Leslie Stephen (i, 33) makes the surprising statement that a "dogmatic assertion of free-will became a mark of the whole deist and semi-deist school." On the contrary, Hobbes and Anthony Collins, not to speak of Locke, wrote with uncommon power against the conception of free-will, and had many disciples on that head. [709] Letter to the Princess of Wales, November, 1715, in Brewster, ii, 284-85. [710] Second Letter to Clarke, par. 1. [711] Abstract from the Works of John Hutchinson, 1755, pp. 149-63. [712] Clarke's Answer to Leibnitz's First Letter, end. [713] Berkeley, Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics, par. vii; and Stock's Memoir of Berkeley. Cp. Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, ii, 408. [714] In the Philosophical Transactions, 1718, No. 355, i, v, vi. [715] Brewster, More Worlds than One, 1854, p. 110. [716] Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Cent. ed. 1892, iii, 22-24. [717] The tradition of Saunderson's unbelief is constant. In the memoir prefixed to his Elements of Algebra (1740) no word is said of his creed, though at death he received the sacrament. [718] See The State of the Process depending against Mr. John Simson, Edinburgh, 1728. Simson always expressed himself piously, but had thrown out such expressions as Ratio est principium et fundamentum theologiæ, which "contravened the Act of Assembly, 1717" (vol. cited, p. 316). The "process" against him began in 1714, and dragged on for nearly twenty years, with the result of his resigning his professorship of theology at Glasgow in 1729, and seceding from the Associate Presbytery in 1733. Burton, History of Scotland, viii, 399-400. [719] Cp. the pamphlet by "A Presbyter of the Church of England," attributed to Bishop Hare, cited in Dynamics of Religion, pp. 177-78, and by Lecky, iii, 25. [720] Tatler, Nos. 12, 111, 135; Spectator, Nos. 231, 381, 389, 599; Guardian, Nos. 3, 9, 27, 35, 39, 55, 62, 70, 77, 83, 88, 120, 130,