CLARKE, SAMUEL
367
CLARKE, SAMUEL
tawan treatises. He now went through a diligent scone of Biblical reading in the origioal languages, n the course of which he carefully studied the early Christiaii £^hers. On his ordination he was intro- lueed to Dr. More, bishop of Norwich, by Whiston, irfaom he succeeded as domestic chaplain to that bish- ip for twelve years. In 1699 he published three es- mj9 on Confirmatumf BapUam, and KepetUance, togeth- sr with Bejtectiong on Tokmd's Amyntor, concerning the nncanonical Gospels. Two years afterwards fol- lowed his Paraphrase on the Four GotpeU, which in- Inced Bishop More to present him with the living of Drayton, near Norwich. In 1704 he was lippointed to preait^ the Boyle leetnre at Oxford, when he chose fbr \aA wbj^eX The Bamgoftd Attributes of God, The sat- B&ction which he gave on this occasion led to his re- jection the following year, when he read a series of lectures on the Evidences of natural and revealed Re^ K^Mf». Theee discourses passed through several edi- tions. Clarke's argument for the being of God ^* rests upon the &Gt that we have the conceptions of time and QMHX, expiessive of certain attributes or qualities — ^the one eternal, the other illimitable in its nature. But every quality must have a coexistent subject to which it belongs, and therefore, he argues, there must exist i hdmg who possesses these attributes of infinity— that is, there must be a God. The similarity between Darke's argument and that of Spinoza, in many points, is at once evident They both started with the idea of necessary existence^ showing that if any thing exist worn, something must have exiated from eternity. The dirtinction between the two arguments arises from dieb different determination of the absolute idea from vhich our reasoning must commence. Clarke affirm- ed the idea of infinite attributes to be fundamental, and then inferred an infinite substance. Spinoca be- gan with the infinite substance, and inferred the at- tributes. The result was that the latter rested finally in the notion of substance as identical with God, and reduced the common theism to pantheism ; the former, reasoning from the attributes, was open upon other evidence to conceiTe of them as existing in a divine personality— hi the God of Christianity. The clear- ness, however, with which both grasped the idea of the m/kiitej as one of the necessary conceptions of the hu- Btn inind, is in either case abundantly manifest" (Morell, History of Modem Philosophy, chap, ii, ^ 2).
Nomerous replies and objections to this h pnori ar- gmnent appeared at the time of its first publication. (See a list in Kippis's Biog, BritanmcOj and the corre- spondence between Butler, afterwards bishop of Dur- ham, and Clai^ printed at the end of Bishop Butler's Works.) One ot the principal was * An Inquiry into the Ideas of Space, Time,' etc., by Bishop Law. The EsUenees also met with strong opposition. See God ; NAirnsAL Theoloot. The foundation of morality, accordiiig to Clarke, consists in the immutable differ- cnoes, lelations, and eternal fitness of things. The bst expression, being of frequent occurrenoe in this fiscovrse, acquired a ftshionable usage in the ethical vocabularies of tibe day. Begardless of moral senti- iMBt, so folly developed since by Shaftesbury, Hntch- «soii, and Adam Sm^ Clarke faisists solely upon the {ttodple that the criterion of moral rectitude is in the OQolbrmity to, or deviation from, the natural and eter- nsl fitness of things ; in other words, that an immoral act is an irrational act — ^that is, an act in violation of the actual ratios of existent things. The endeavor to reduce moral philosophy to mathematical certainty vas characteristic of that age, and led to the forma- tioD of theories remarkable perhaps more for their in- genuity than utility. Dr. Price is an apologist for the moral theory of Clarke, and among its oppugners we may instance Sir James Mackintosh, Progress of Eth- ical PhUooopbg, p. 78 sq. ; see also Whewell, Hi$t. qf Moral PhUosoflhff, leet. v.
In 1706 Clazke obtahied the rectory of St Bennett's,