Deism in Enlightenment England

Theology, politics, and Newtonian public science

Jeffrey Wigelsworth

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847797308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

This is the first complete study of English deists as a group in several decades and it argues for a new interpretation of deism in the English Enlightenment. While there have been many recent studies of the deist John Toland, the writings of other contemporary deists have been forgotten. With extensive analysis of lesser known figures such as Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chub, and Thomas Morgan, in addition to unique insights into Toland, Deism in Enlightenment England offers a much broader assessment of what deism entailed in the eighteenth century. Readers will see how previous interpretations of English deists, which place these figures on an irreligious trajectory leading towards modernity, need to be revised. This book uses deists to address a number of topics and themes and theme in English history and will be of particular interest to scholars of Enlightenment history, history of science, theology and politics, and the early modern era.

Chapter 1

The meaning of 1689: politics and
theology, 1694–1700

Throughout the 1690s England was a nation still struggling to interpret the turbulent political events of 1688–89 and the resulting Revolutionary Settlement. When James II was deemed by Parliament to have abdicated the crown and William, Prince of Orange, and his wife Mary Stuart, daughter of James, were installed as king and queen, many issues regarding the governance of England remained at best unsettled and at worst divisive. The immediate concern related to what form the new government would take: constitutional or divine right monarchy, Low or High Church. Even more problematic, James did not fade away quietly. He made a last stab to hold his throne in 1690 with the support of the French King Louis XIV, to whose court he had fled. The Battle of Boyne, in late August, was a decisive victory for William and marked the end of James’s best chances to retain the English crown.

Religion, and defining the Church of England, was perhaps an even more pressing issue. James’s steadfast Catholicism had thrown the country into revolution, but the securing of Protestantism under William and Mary did not end the debate. The Act of Toleration (1689) had protected some rights for Dissenters but these were few because the Test and Corporation Acts (1673, 1661), banning them from public office, remained in force. Those Tories who reluctantly had turned their backs on the Stuarts did not flinch from their demands that England enforce the terms of the Coronation Oath Act (1688), especially that portion describing the confession of England as ‘the protestant religion established by law’. Toleration would mean that Dissenters were exempted from the punishments of the Clarendon Code, although the Code would still be in effect. This uneasy peace satisfied few. Dissenters and moderate Latitudinarian Churchmen alike argued that the Church of England ought to include all Protestants and not to be used as a tool of separation and exclusion in society. This stood in strong opposition to High Churchmen, some of whom refused to participate in the new religious arrangement and would not swear allegiance to William and Mary, claiming that while James lived the oaths given to him could not be abrogated.¹ These nonjurors, though relatively small in number, will appear frequently in this history of deism. Indeed, we will see that the popular view of deism is mostly a characterisation created by them. The fear of High Churchmen that too much religious tolerance posed both political and religious threats to England was seemingly confirmed in 1693 when a young John Toland sailed for England. It was against this backdrop of religious uncertainty that our deists wrote and in their own way attempted to help England chart a new course in politics and theology.

TOLAND ATTRACTS INTEREST IN OXFORD

Before Toland returned from Leiden in August 1693, he had solicited letters of introduction to the philosopher John Locke from Philippus van Limborch, theologian at the Remonstrant seminary in Amsterdam, and Benjamin Furly, a Quaker who conducted a learned salon at his home.² These were men with whom Locke had associated during his self-imposed exile (1683–88) after the attempts to exclude James II from the crown had failed. Toland also spent time with them, though perhaps not with the closeness he claimed. Toland had ‘boast[ed] of an intimate friendship contracted with me’, as Limborch remembered in a letter to Locke sent years later; ‘I wonder what moves a man whom I have never seen, and about whom I know nothing, to boast falsely of having had familiar conversations with me.’³ Toland also declared a friendship with Jean LeClerc, theologian at the Remonstrant seminary and editor of the journal Bibliothèque universelle et historique.⁴ Limborch revealed to Locke that Toland had met LeClerc only twice and that at one of those meetings Toland had been rebuffed in his attempts at conversation. Despite some misgivings, Limborch wrote to Locke in 1693 that if Locke were to meet Toland he would find him ‘not at all a servile Character’. Furly too recommended Toland to Locke and asked if Locke knew ‘some free ingenious English Gentleman that might have occasion for a Tutor in his family’ and in this way secure employment for Toland. Locke did not. Toland then left London for Oxford, where he would spend much time in the Bodleian and surrounding coffee-houses. To many of his contemporaries Toland seemed a promising young scholar, though exhibiting some unorthodox views. However, this promise went unfulfilled because impolite behaviour coloured many of his interactions.⁵

Edmund Gibson, future Bishop of London (1720–48), kept a close eye on Toland in Oxford in early 1694 and sent frequent reports to Arthur Charlett, Master of University College, Oxford, and soon to be chaplain to William III (1697).⁶ Persistent accounts of Toland’s irreligious actions troubled Gibson, specifically reports of his ‘burning a Common-Prayer-book’.⁷ A few weeks later Gibson sent Charlett some biographical details on Toland in which he came across as anti-bishop, if not anti-priest. More curiously perhaps, Toland had reportedly performed ‘Wonders by some Secret arts, and so seduced a number of Young Students’. Gibson stated he would ‘Enquire further into’ this unsubstantiated claim of Toland’s magic and continued his narrative by outlining how as a young man, Toland had travelled from Edinburgh to London and endeared himself to the wealthy benefactor of Dissenters Dr Daniel Williams, who arranged for Toland to study in Leiden to train (unsuccessfully) as a Presbyterian minister.⁸ Toland intrigued Gibson so much that he dispatched several persons to collected information and advised Charlett that ‘What you have at present is only’ the result of ‘sudden recollection: I am encouraged to expect Several other particulars from second thoughts and a little enquiry’. What Charlett decided to do with the information and what action might be taken against Toland, Gibson left to Charlett, ‘to make what use of it and in what manner you please’.⁹

Charlett, in turn, described Toland’s conduct in Oxford to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tenison, in October 1695. As Gibson had hoped, swift action was taken against Toland, whose behaviour had become ‘so publick and notorious here, that the late Vice-Chancellor ordered him to depart this place, w^ch he accordingly promised to do, and did for some time’, but following a brief absence he returned. During his second stay in Oxford, witnesses described ‘upon Oath, of [Toland’s] Trampling on y^e Common prayer book, talking against the Scriptures, commending Commonwealths, justifying the murder of K[ing] C[harles] 1^st, [and] railing against Priests in general’. What was worse, Toland claimed friendships with ‘great men’ and ‘pretended to great Intrigues and correspondencys, and by that means abused the names of some very great Men’. This ‘insolent carriage’ left Toland ‘contemptible, both to y^e Scholars and Townsmen’. Moreover, Toland reportedly prophesied that ‘he should be a member of Parliament’.¹⁰ Thus, even before he began a career as polemical author, Toland was well known, though perhaps not in a manner he would have wanted.

Others in and outside Oxford also attempted to trace the origins of Toland, whose presence in that city was the source of much consternation. One correspondent identified only as Mr Anderson wrote to George Ashe, Bishop of Derry, in September 1694. Anderson had it on good authority that Toland was the ‘Bastard sone of Knoughton Tolan’d a priest in the Parish of Devagh [and] Left this County about ten years agoe’ and that he had a light complexion and dark hair and spoke fluent French. Regarding Toland’s religion, Anderson claimed that ‘he was a great Searcher after Religion and that he said he tried all Sorts’.¹¹ Within days of receiving this letter, Ashe passed the information to the nonjuror Henry Dodwell, whose future writings on the soul would cause great controversy. In addition to what he had been told, Ashe related to Dodwell that Toland ‘has been in Rome & Leyden & Esteamed a very airy talkative man; I can procure you several other particulars relating to him, if there be occasion’.¹² Dodwell seemed satisfied with this account and Ashe sent him no more letters regarding Toland.

TINDAL’S BELIEF IN GOD

In 1694, while Toland was causing concern and frustration, Mathew Tindal, another Oxford resident, described the conditions he believed necessary for holding any truth. Tindal was possibly born in 1653, or even as late as 1657. His parents were both wealthy, and his father, John Tindal, was a minister. Though we know little of his early life, he entered Oxford in the 1670s and studied with George Hickes, who became a nonjuror. Tindal received a law fellowship to All Souls College in 1678 (which he held until his death in 1733), and earned a BCL in 1679 before proceeding DCL in 1685. In the same year as Tindal received his doctorate, James II sent emissaries to Oxford in an attempt to convert the fellows to Catholicism. Tindal was convinced by the arguments, though critics suspected that his conversion was a matter of convenience and a means to become warden of the college. When Tindal failed in his bid to become Warden of All Souls in 1687, he also lost his Catholic enthusiasm, for he converted to Anglicanism in 1688, taking the sacrament on 15 April 1688, the earliest possible occasion. In addition to his legal responsibilities in Oxford, he had a civil law practice in London. On 7 November 1685 he was admitted one of the advocates of the Arches Court of Canterbury, an appeal court for the Archbishop of Canterbury.¹³

As part of his anti-Trinitarian writings, composed in answer to the work of the Bishop of Gloucester, who had attempted to demonstrate the reasonableness of the Trinity, Tindal argued that one cannot believe anything which is beyond one’s intellect. This condition extended to knowledge of God, about whom we cannot believe more than ‘we can conceive of him’.¹⁴ We are, Tindal noted, able to form an idea of God as a perfect and eternal being. To suggest then, however, that this notion applied simultaneously to three beings was something he viewed as blasphemous. Despite outlining these rules of belief, Tindal revealed that many orthodox theologians ‘thunder it from their Pulpits, that Matters of Faith are above Reason, and that God has a Right to require of us to believe on his Word what we do not apprehend or understand’. Tindal countered that ‘The Ideas’ we have of ‘God’s Eternity, Infinity, Omnipresence, Omniscience, and all that we are required to believe concerning them’, God has ‘made us capable of having a clear and distinct Idea’s of’.¹⁵ This stance was continued in his characterisation of God,

who is infinitely happy in himself, could have no other motive in creating man, but to make him happy in this Life, as well as that which is to come; and accordingly if mankind would follow those Rules that are prescribed by God in order to their behaviour towards one another, in what happy, blessed, and flourishing State would they be in?¹⁶

Thus God did not demand anything for Himself. This view had strong political and religious implications.

Stephen Nye, a Socinian in Oxford, reacted to Tindal’s assertions in 1695. While he supported Tindal’s unitarian leanings, he rejected Tindal’s apparent reliance on human reason because ‘there are some things which will never be explain’d while the World stands’.¹⁷ This view confirmed the opinion of Jonas Proast, High Churchman, former chaplain of All Souls, and companion of nonjurors, who claimed to have overheard Tindal once say ‘that there neither is, nor can be, any revealed religion’, implying that reason was all one needed in matters of religion.¹⁸ This one piece of supposed heresy, as we will see, is not indicative of Tindal’s view on religion, which he did not wish to eliminate from the human condition.

In addition to the theological tracts of 1694, Tindal wrote two books which outlined his political theory while articulating the duties citizens owed to one another. With An Essay Concerning the Laws of Nations, and the Rights of Soveraigns, Tindal characterised the general laws of nations as the rules ‘observed by Nations in the entercourse with one another’. These rules allowed for the mutual prosperity of nations; they were the spirit of co-operation codified. The laws had their origins in a more basic relationship because the ‘Law of Nations’ and the ‘Law of Nature’ were the same. As Tindal explained, the law of nature ‘is nothing else but that mutual Aid and Assistance, which by reason of their common Necessities one Man owes to another, without the observance of which Mankind could not well subsist’. The welfare of individuals, guarded by their government, brought forth the advancement of nations. To refer to these individuals collectively, Tinda...