Volume I Part 19 (2/2)
These were dangerous principles, the full consequence of which the early Reformers did not perceive. If it was true, as they a.s.serted, that Christ had set up no visible authority to safeguard and to expound His revelation, that for centuries Christianity had been corrupted by additions that were only the inventions of men, it might well be asked what guarantee could Luther or Calvin give that their interpretation of Christ's doctrine was correct or binding upon their followers, and what authority could they produce to warrant them in placing any dogmatic restrictions upon the freedom of human thought?
The very principles put forward by the Reformers of the sixteenth century to justify their rejection of certain doctrines were used by later generations to prepare the way for still greater inroads upon the contents of Christianity, and finally to justify an att.i.tude of doubt concerning the very foundations on which Christianity was based.
Empiricism, Sensualism, Materialism, and Scepticism in philosophy, undermined dogmatic Christianity, and prepared the way for the irreligious and indifferentist opinions, that found such general favour among the educated and higher cla.s.ses during the eighteenth century.
The movement, that owed so much of its widespread popularity on the Continent to the influence of the French rationalistic school, had its origin in England, where the frequent changes of religion during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, the quarrels between the Puritans and the High Church party, and the spread of revolutionary principles during the reign of Charles I., had contributed not a little to unsettle the religious convictions of a large section of the community. Many individuals, influenced by pantheistic teaching, did not believe in the existence of a personal G.o.d distinct from the world; others, while holding fast to the belief in a personal supreme Being, rejected the Trinity and the Incarnation, and a still larger section insisted on the subjection of Christian revelation to the judgment of reason, and as a consequence on the rejection of everything in Christianity that flavoured of the supernatural. The works of these men were imported from the Netherlands into France in spite of all restrictions that could be imposed by the police authorities, and their views were popularised by a brilliant band of /litterateurs/, until in a short time Deism and Naturalism became quite fas.h.i.+onable in the higher circles of French society.
The princ.i.p.al writers of the English school were Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), whose works tended to call in question the existence of a supernatural religion; John Hobbs (1588-1679) the apostle of absolute rule, who saw in religion only a means of keeping the people in subjection; John Locke (1632-1704), nominally a Christian himself, whose philosophy of Empiricism and Sensualism barred the way effectively against belief in a supernatural religion; Charles Blount (1630-93), who like Flavius Philostratus sought to discredit Christianity by setting up Apollonius of Tyana as a rival of Christ; Collins, the patron of free-thinkers (1676-1729); John Toland (1670-1722), who although originally a believer in Christian revelation tended more and more towards Pantheism; and Tyndal (1656- 1733), who changed from Protestantism to Catholicism and finally from Christianity to Rationalism. In England Deism and Naturalism secured a strong foot-hold amongst the better cla.s.ses, but the deeply religious temperament of the English people and their strong conservatism saved the nation from falling under the influence of such ideas.
In France the religious wars between the Catholics and Calvinists, the controversies that were waged by the Jansenists and Gallicans, the extravagances of the /Convulsionnaires/, the flagrant immorality of the court during the rule of the Duke of Orleans and of Louis XV., and the enslavement of the Church, leading as it did to a decline of zeal and learning amongst the higher clergy, tended inevitably to foster religious indifference amongst the ma.s.ses. In the higher circles of society Rationalism was looked upon as a sign of good breeding, while those who held fast by their dogmatic beliefs were regarded as vulgar and unprogressive. Leading society ladies such as Ninon de Lenclos (1615-1706) gathered around them groups of learned admirers, who under the guise of zeal for the triumph of literary and artistic ideals sought to popularise everything that was obscene and irreligious.
Amongst some of the princ.i.p.al writers who contributed largely to the success of the anti-Christian campaign in France might be mentioned Peter Bayle (1647-1706), whose /Dictionnaire historique et critique/ became the leading source of information for those who were in search of arguments against Christianity; John Baptist Rousseau (1671-1741), whose life was in complete harmony with the filthiness to which he gave expression in his works; Bernard le Boivier de Fontenelle (1657- 1757), who though never an open enemy of the Catholic Church contributed not a little by his works to prepare the way for the men of the Enclyclopaedia; Montesquieu (1689-1755), whose satirical books on both Church and State were read with pleasure not only in France but in nearly every country of Europe; D'Alembert (1717-83) and Diderot (1713-84), the two men mainly responsible for the /Encyclopedie/; Helvetius (1715-1771), and the Baron d'Holbach, who sought to popularise the irreligious views then current among the n.o.bility by spreading the rationalist literature throughout the ma.s.s of the poorer cla.s.ses in Paris.
But the two writers whose works did most to undermine revealed religion in France were Francois Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694-1778), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The former of these was born at Paris, received his early education from the Jesuits, and was introduced while still a youth to the salon of Ninon de Lenclos, frequented at this time by the princ.i.p.al literary opponents of religion and morality. His earliest excursions into literature marked him out immediately as a dangerous adversary of the Christian religion. He journeyed in England where he was in close touch with the Deist school of thought, in Germany where he was a welcome guest at the court of Frederick II. of Prussia, and settled finally at Ferney in Switzerland close to the French frontiers.
Towards the end of his life (1778) he returned to Paris where he received a popular ovation. Poets, philosophers, actresses, and academicians vied with one another in doing honour to a man who had vowed to crush /L'Infame/, as he termed Christianity, and whose writings had done so much to accomplish that result in the land of his birth. The reception given to Voltaire in Paris affords the most striking proof of the religious and moral corruption of all cla.s.ses in France at this period. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva and reared as a Calvinist. Later on he embraced the Catholic religion, from which he relapsed once more into Calvinism, if indeed in his later years he was troubled by any dogmatic beliefs. His private life was in perfect harmony with the moral tone of most of his works. He had neither the wit nor the literary genius of Voltaire, but in many respects his works, especially /Le Contrat Social/, exercised a greater influence on the France of his own time and on Europe generally since that time than any other writings of the eighteenth century. His greatest works were /La Nouvelle Heloise/ (1759), a novel depicting the most dangerous of human pa.s.sions; /Emile/, a philosophical romance dealing with educational ideas and tending directly towards Deism, and /Le Contrat Social/, in which he maintained that all power comes from the people, and may be recalled if those to whom it has been entrusted abuse it. The /Confessions/ which tell the story of his shameless life were not published until after his death.
To further their propaganda without at the same time attracting the notice of the civil authorities the rationalist party had recourse to various devices. Pamphlets and books were published, professedly descriptive of manners and customs in foreign countries, but directed in reality against civil and religious inst.i.tutions in France. Typical examples of this cla.s.s of literature were the /Persian Letters/ of Montesquieu, /A Description of the Island of Borneo/ by Fontanelle, /The Life of Mohammed/ by Henri de Bouillon Villiers, and a /Letter on the English/ from the pen of Voltaire. The greatest and most successful work undertaken by them for popularising their ideas was undoubtedly the /Encyclopedie/. The professed object of the work was to give in a concise and handy form the latest and best results of scholars.h.i.+p in every department of human knowledge, but the real aim of the founders was to spread their poisonous views amongst the people of France, and to win them from their allegiance to the Catholic Church. In order to escape persecution from the government and to conceal their real purposes many of the articles were written by clerics and laymen whose orthodoxy was above suspicion, and many of the articles referring to religion from the pen of the rationalistic collaborateurs were respectful in tone, though a careful reader could see that they did not represent the real views of the author.
Sometimes references were given to other articles of a very different kind, where probably opposite views were established by apparently sound arguments. The originator of the project was D'Alembert, who was a.s.sisted by Diderot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condillac, Buffon, and D'Holbach. The work was begun in 1750, and in spite of interruptions and temporary suppressions it was brought to a successful conclusion in 1772. The reviewers and the learned world hailed it with delight as a veritable treasure-house of information. New and cheap editions of it were brought out for the general public, and in a remarkably short time the influence of the Encyclopaedists had reached the lowest strata of French society. Many of those in authority in France favoured the designs of the Encyclopaedists, and threw all kinds of obstacles in the way of those who sought to uphold the teaching of the Church, but soon they had reason to regret their approval of a campaign that led directly to revolution.
(b) The Aufklarung Movement in Germany.
See bibliography (viii. a). Tholuck, /Abriss einer geschichte der Umwalzung seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland/, 1839. Staudlin, /Geschichte des Rationalismus und Supranaturalismus/, 1826. Bruck, /Die rationalistischen Bestrebungen im Kath. Deutschland/, 1867. Weiner, /Geschichte der Kath. Theologie in Deutschland/, 1889. Wolfram, /Die Illuminantem in Bayern und ihre Verfolgung/, 1898-1900.
In Germany the religious formularies, composed with the object of securing even an appearance of unity or at least of preventing religious chaos, were not powerful enough to resist the anti-Christian Enlightenment that swept over Europe in the eighteenth century. At best these formularies were only the works of men who rejected the authority of the Church, and as works of men they could not be regarded as irreformable. With the progress of knowledge and the development of human society it was thought that they required revision to bring them more into harmony with the results of science and with the necessities of the age. The influence of the writings imported from England and France, backed as it was by the approval and example of Frederick II. of Prussia, could not fail to weaken dogmatic Christianity among the Lutherans of Germany. The philosophic teaching of Leibniz (1646-1710), who was himself a strong upholder of dogmatic Christianity and zealous for a reunion of Christendom, had a great effect on the whole religious thought of Germany during the eighteenth century. In his great work, /Theodicee/, written against Bayle to prove that there was no conflict between the kingdoms of nature and grace, greater stress was laid upon the natural than on the supernatural elements in Christianity. His disciples, advancing beyond the limits laid down by the master, prepared the way for the rise of theological rationalism.
One of the greatest of the disciples of Leibniz was Christian Wolf (1679-1754), who was not himself an opponent of supernatural religion.
The whole trend of his arguments, however, went to show that human reason was the sole judge of the truths of revelation, and that whatever was not in harmony with the verdict of reason must be eliminated. Many of his disciples like Remiarus, Mendelssohn, and Garve developed the principles laid down by Wolf until the very mention of dogma was scouted openly, and Theism itself was put forward as only the most likely among many possible hypotheses. In the revulsion against dogmatic beliefs the party of the Pietists founded by Spener towards the end of the seventeenth century found much support, while the Conscientiarians, who maintained that man's own conscience was the sole rule of faith, and that so long as man acts in accordance with the dictates of conscience he is leading the life of the just, gained ground rapidly. Some of its princ.i.p.al leaders were Matthew Knutzen and Christian Edlemann who rejected the authority of the Bible. The spread of Rationalism was strengthened very much by the appearance of the /Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek/, founded in 1764 by Nicolai in Berlin, through the agency of which books hostile to Christianity were scattered broadcast amongst a large circle of readers.
These rationalistic principles, when applied to the Bible and the interpretation of the Bible, helped to put an end to the very rigid views regarding the inspiration of the sacred writings entertained by the early Lutherans. Everything that was supernatural or miraculous must be explained away. To do so without denying inspiration the ”Accommodation” theory, namely that Christ and His apostles accommodated themselves to the mistaken views of their contemporaries, was formulated by Semler (1725-1791). But more extreme men, as for example, Lessing (1729-1781), who published the /Wolfenb.u.t.tler Fragments/ written by Reimarus in which a violent onslaught was made upon the Biblical miracles more especially on the Resurrection of Christ, attacked directly the miracles of Christianity, and wrote strongly in favour of religious indifference.
The rationalistic dogmatism of Wolf when brought face to face with the objections of Hume did not satisfy Immanuel Kant (1720-1804), who in his /Critique of Pure Reason/ (1781) denied that it was possible for science or philosophy to reach a knowledge of the substance or essence of things as distinguished from the phenomena, and that consequently the arguments used generally to prove the existence of G.o.d were worthless. In his own /Critique of Practical Reason/ (1788), however, he endeavoured to build up what he had pulled down, by showing that the moral law implanted in the heart of every human being necessarily implied the existence of a supreme law-giver. For Kant religion was to be identified with duty and not with dogmatic definitions. Such a line of defence, attempting as it did to remove religion from the arena of intellectual discussion, thereby evading most of the objections put forward by the rationalistic school, was a dangerous one. It led gradually to the rejection of external revelation, and to dogmatic indifference. Such a theory in the hands of Herder and above all of Schleiermacher (1768-1834) meant an end to Christian revelation as generally understood. For Schleiermacher religion was nothing more than the consciousness of dependence upon G.o.d. Given this sense of dependence, variations in creeds were of no importance. Between the religion of Luther and the religion of Schleiermacher there was an immense difference, but nevertheless it was Luther who laid down the principles that led to the disintegration of dogmatic Christianity, and in doing what he did Schleiermacher was but proving himself the worthy pupil of such a master.
The unrestrained liberty of thought, claimed by so many Protestant reformers and theologians and ending as it did in the subst.i.tution of a natural for a supernatural religion, could not fail to have an influence in Catholic circles. Many Catholic scholars were close students of the philosophical systems of Wolf and Kant in Germany, and of the writings of the Encyclopaedists in France. They were convinced that Scholasticism, however valuable it might have been in the thirteenth century, was antiquated and out of harmony with modern progress, that it should be dropped entirely from the curriculum of studies, and with it should go many of the theological accretions to which it had given rise. Catholicism, it was thought, if it were to hold the field as a world-wide religion, must be remodelled so as to bring it better into line with the conclusions of modern philosophy.
Less attention should be paid to dogma and to polemical discussions, and more to the ethical and natural principles contained in the Christian revelation.
The spread of Gallicanism and Febronianism and the adoption of these views by leading rulers and politicians, thereby weakening the authority of the Pope and of the bishops, helped to break down the defences of Catholicity, and to make it more easy to propagate rationalistic views especially amongst those who frequented the universities. As a rule it was only the higher and middle cla.s.ses that were affected by the /Aufklarung/. Everywhere throughout Europe, in France, in Spain, in Portugal, in Germany, and in Austria this advanced liberalism made itself felt in the last half of the eighteenth century, particularly after the suppression of the Jesuits had removed the only body capable of resisting it successfully at the time, and had secured for their opponents a much stronger hold in the centres of education.
It was in Germany and Austria that the /Aufklarung/ movement attracted the greatest attention. The Scholastic system of philosophy had been abandoned in favour of the teaching of the Leibniz-Wolf school and of Kant. The entire course of study for ecclesiastical students underwent a complete reorganisation. Scholasticism, casuistry, and controversy were eliminated. Their places were taken by Patrology, Church History, Pastoral Theology, and Biblical Exegesis of the kind then in vogue in Protestant schools.
The plan of studies drawn up by Abbot Rautenstrauch, rector of the University of Vienna (1774), for the theological students of that inst.i.tution meant nothing less than a complete break with the whole traditional system of clerical education. In itself it had much to recommend it, but the principles that underlay its introduction, and the cla.s.s of men to whom its administration was entrusted, were enough to render it suspicious. The director of studies in Austria, Baron von Swieten, himself in close contact with the Jansenists and the Encyclopaedists, favoured the introduction of the new plan into all the Austrian universities and colleges, and took good care, besides, that only men of liberal views were appointed to the chairs. In the hands of professors like Jahn and Fischer, Scriptural Exegesis began to partake more and more of the rationalism of the Protestant schools; Church History as expounded by Dannenmayr, Royko, and Gmeiner, became in great part an apology for Gallicanism; the Moral Theology taught by Danzer and Reyberger was modelled largely on a purely rational system of ethics, and the Canon Law current in the higher schools was in complete harmony with the views of Febronius and Joseph II.
The Prince-bishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne spared no pains to propagate these liberal views amongst those who were to be the future priests in their territories. In the University of Mainz Isenbiehl's views on Scripture brought him into conflict with the Church; Blau, the professor of dogma, denied the infallibility of the Church and of General Councils; while Dorsch, the professor of philosophy, was an ardent disciple of Kant. A similar state of affairs prevailed at the University of Trier, at Bonn which was established for the express purpose of combatting the ultramontanism and conservatism of Cologne, and to a more or less degree at Freiburg, Wurzburg, Ingolstadt, and Munich. By means of the universities and by the publication of various reviews these liberal theories were spread throughout Germany. An attempt was made to reform the discipline and liturgy of the Church so as to bring them into harmony with the new theology. Many advocated the abolition of popular devotions, the subst.i.tution of German for the Latin language in the missal and in the ritual, and the abolition of clerical celibacy.
In Bavaria matters reached a crisis when Weishaupt, a professor of canon law in Ingolstadt, founded a secret society known as the /Illuminati/ for the overthrow of the Church and the civil authority, to make way for a universal republic in which the only religion would be the religion of humanity. His speculative views were borrowed largely from the Encyclopaedists, and his plan of organisation from the Freemasons. At first the society was confined to students, but with the accession of the Freiherr von Knigge it was determined to widen the sphere of its operations. Every effort was made to secure recruits. The Freemasons gave it strong support, and Ferdinand of Brunswick became one of its members. It had its statutes, ritual, and decrees. Fortunately the members quarrelled, and were foolish enough to carry their controversies into the public press. In this way the Bavarian government became acquainted with the dangerous character of the sect of the /Illuminati/, and a determined effort was made to secure its suppression (1784-1785).
(c) Freemasonry.
Gould, /History of Freemasonry/, 3 vols., 1883-87. Findel, /Geschichte der Freimaurer/, 3 auf., 1870 (Eng. Trans.). Claudio Jannet, /Les precurseurs de la Franc-maconnerie au XVIe et au XVIIe siecle/, 1887. Deschamps et Jannet, /Les societes secretes et la societe/, 1882. Kloss, /Geschichte der Freimaurer in England, Ireland und Schottland/, 1847. Hughan, /Origin of the English Rite of Freemasonry/, 1884.
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