Part 9 (1/2)

219.]

[Footnote 169: But Shaftesbury was bitterly opposed to one part of Locke's philosophy. 'He was one of the first,' writes Mr. Morell (_History of Modern Philosophy_, i. 203), 'to point out the dangerous influence which Locke's total rejection of all innate practical principles was likely to exert upon the interests of morality.' 'It was Mr. Locke,' wrote Shaftesbury, 'that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these (which are the same as those of G.o.d) unnatural and without foundation in our minds.' See also Bishop Fitzgerald in _Aids to Faith_.]

[Footnote 170: Locke's _Works_, vol. iv. p. 96.]

[Footnote 171: 'My lord, I read the revelation of Holy Scriptures with a full a.s.surance that all it delivers is true.'--Locke's _Works_, vol. iv.

341.]

[Footnote 172: Locke's _Works_, vol. vii. p. 166.]

[Footnote 173: Locke's _Works_, vol. vii. p. 188, Preface to the Reader of 2nd Vindication.]

[Footnote 174: Locke's _Works_, vol. iv. 259, 260.]

[Footnote 175: 'Mr. Locke, the honour of this age and the instructor of the future'.... 'That great philosopher'.... 'It was Mr. Locke's love of it [Christianity] that seems princ.i.p.ally to have exposed him to his pupil's [Lord Shaftesbury's] bitterest insults.'--Dedication of _The Divine Legation_ (first three books) to the Freethinkers.]

[Footnote 176: It is, however, not improbable that Locke contributed to some extent to foster that dry, hard, unpoetical spirit which characterised both the Deistical and anti-Deistical literature, and, indeed, the whole tone of religion in the eighteenth century. 'His philosophy,' it has been said, 'smells of the earth, earthy.' 'It is curious,' writes Mr. Rogers (_Essays_, vol. iii. p. 104, 'John Locke,'

&c.) 'that there is hardly a pa.s.sing remark in all Locke's great work on any of the aesthetical or emotional characteristics of humanity; so that, for anything that appears there, men might have nothing of the kind in their composition. To all the forms of the Beautiful he seems to have been almost insensible.' The same want in the followers of Locke's system, both orthodox and unorthodox, is painfully conspicuous. And again, as Dr. Whewell remarks (_History of Moral Philosophy_, Lecture v.

p. 74) 'the promulgation of Locke's philosophy was felt as a vast accession of strength by the lower, and a great addition to the difficulty of their task by the higher school of morality.' The lower or utilitarian school of morality, which held that morals are to be judged solely by their consequences, was largely followed in the eighteenth century, and contributed not a little to the low moral and spiritual tone of the period.]

[Footnote 177: The Calvinistic controversy was more bitter, but it belonged to the second, not the first half of the century.]

[Footnote 178: 'They attacked a scientific problem without science, and an historical problem without history.'--Mr. J.C. Morison's Review of Leslie Stephen's 'History of English Thought' in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for February 1877.]

[Footnote 179: See Bishop Butler's charge to the clergy of Durham, 1751.--'A great source of infidelity plainly is, the endeavour to get rid of religious restraints.']

[Footnote 180: Mr. Leslie Stephen, _Essays on Freethinking and Plain Speaking_. On Shaftesbury's 'Characteristics.'--'The Deists were not only pilloried for their heterodoxy, but branded with the fatal inscription of ”dulness.”' This view is amplified in his larger work, published since the above was written.]

[Footnote 181: _Aids to Faith_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 182: In a brilliant review of Mr. Leslie Stephen's work in _Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1877, Mr. James Cotter Morison remarks on the Deists' view that natural religion must be always alike plain and perspicuous, 'against this convenient opinion the only objection was that it contradicted the total experience of the human race.']

[Footnote 183: Monk's _Life of Bentley_, vol. i. See also Berkeley's _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, 107.]

[Footnote 184: Advertis.e.m.e.nt to the first edition of _The a.n.a.logy_, p.

xiv. See also Swift's description of the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, in _Last four Years of Queen Anne_, bk. i. The first and most prominent subject of Bishop Butler's 'Durham Charge,' is 'the general decay of religion,' 'which,' he says, 'is now observed by everyone, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious persons' (written in 1751).

The Bishop then instructs his clergy at length how this sad fact is to be dealt with; in fact this, directly or indirectly, is the topic of the whole Charge.]

[Footnote 185: He wrote to Courayer in 1726,--'No care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian Faith against all a.s.saults, and I believe no age or nation has produced more or better writings, &c.... This is all we can do. Iniquity in practice, G.o.d knows, abounds,' &c.]

[Footnote 186: Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293.]

[Footnote 187: _Guardian_, No. 3.]

[Footnote 188: _Guardian_, No. 88.]

[Footnote 189: _Examiner_, x.x.xix. See also Charles Leslie's _Theological Works_, vol. ii. 533.]

[Footnote 190: _Tatler_, No. 108.]