THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
sin can not stand, since it is irrational to believe in the exclusion from the truth of the vast majority of humanity. Tindal's position is orthodox to the extent that Judaism and Christianity are acknowledged as revelations, though revelations only of the hx naturce, which is identified with natural religion, the primitive, uncorrupted faith, consisting in " the practise of morality in obedience to the will of ( iod." An echo of the teachings of Tindal is found in Thomas Chubb (q.v.; d. 1747), whose True Gospel of Jesus Christ (1738) attempts to prove that what Jesus sought to teach his followers was but natural morality, or the law of nature.
Thomas Morgan (q.v.; d. 1743) continued Tindal's argument on its historical side in The Moral Philosopher (1737-40), displaying much 7. Morgan, originality in tracing the development ^an^d*' heathen religions, as well as of Middleton Judaism and Christianity. Abandoning the old method of deriving specific religions from priestly deception, he explains their rise through the gradual supplanting of the one Ood of the law of nature by a crowd of divinities connected with definite natural phenomena. The Ictrislation of Moses, under Egyptian influences, imposed a rigid and nationally restricted form upon the lex naturce, and the Jewish ritual and ceremonial is in essence a purely political institution. Full revelation of the law of nature came with Christ, who gave to the world in concentrated form the truth that had already been revealed to Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and Plato. The protagonist of this divinely revealed truth after Christ was Paul, who, in his form of expression, indeed, was compelled to make concessions to the influence of Judaism, and in whom, therefore, much is to be taken figuratively. Peter, on the other hand, and the author of the Apocalypse misunderstood the import of the revelation of Christ and corrupted it in the spirit of Messianic Judaism. Persecution forced the two tendencies into union in the Catholic Church, and the Reformation has only partially succeeded in separating them. Morgan's argument results, therefore, in the rejection of the formerly assumed identity between the law of Moses and the lex naturce, and the restriction of the latter, in the fulness of revelation, to Christianity. His conclusions were denied by William Warburton (q.v.) in The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-41). ^Mien the Christian apologists substituted for the argument from miracles the argument from personal witness and the credibility of Biblical evidence, Peter Annet (d. 1769), in his Resurrection of Jesus (1744), assailed the validity of such evidence, and first advanced the hypothesis of the illusory death of Jesus, suggesting also that possibly Paul shinald be regarded as the founder of a new religion. In Supernaturals Examined (1747) Annet roundly denies the possibility of miracles. Conyers Middleton (q.v.; d. 1750) in his later writings sought to bridtrc over the gulf between sacred and profane history, and to test them equally by the same method. His Imjuiry into the Miraculous Powers (174S) demonstrates that the belief in miracles is common to primitive f'hristianity and heathen creeds, and that it developed to great proportions
in the later life of the Church, so that one is there confronted with an endless succession of miracles to which Iiclongs the same degree of credibility that the apologists attributed to the miracles of the Bible. Though special reference to the New Testament was omitted, Middleton propounded a question to answer which no serious attempt was made when he asked why credence should be granted to one faith that is denied to another.
The Deistic controversy died out in England about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Deistic literature had exhausted its stock of materials, while its tenets had never obtained a strong hold on the people. The cold, inflexible, rational supernaturalism of Paley (q.v.; d. 1805) was considered as the final settlement of these long conflicts. From the beginning, however, there had been a class of critics, representatives of the old Renaissance spirit, and inimical, therefore, to the Stoic and Christian ethics, who had only partially shared the views of the Deists, and in some ways had advanced to a position far beyond them. Shaftesbury (q.v.; d. 1713), in opposition to the utilitarian and supernaturalist ethics of Locke and Clarke, developed the conception of a strictly autonomous moral code having its basis in a moral instinct in man whose 8. Sbaftes- gj^^j jg bring individual and society toury, harmonious self-perfection. Ber-
^mt^" ^^^'^ Mandeville (1733) adopted the Dodwell Epicureanism of Hobbes and Gassendi,
Boling-' studied moral problems in the skep-
laroke. tieal spirit of Montaigne and La Rochefoucauld, gave the preference to Bayle over the Deists, and developed empiricism into a sort of Agnosticism. He criticized the prevailing morality as a mere conventional lie. Christianity — which the Deists had wished, while reforming, to maintain — he declared impossible, not only as a religion, but as a system of morality. His Free Thought on Religion (172(1) has caused him to be included in the ranks of the Deists; but his real position is brought out in the Fable of the Bees (1714). Henry Dodwell (q.v.; d. 1711), in Christianity not Founded on Argument (1742), attempted to demonstrate the invalidity of the rationalistic basis for Christian truth constructed by the Deists, from the very nature of the religious impulse, which, being opposed to rational argumentation, calls for the support of tradition and mystery, and finds fascination in the attitude of credo quia absurdum. The only proof proceeds from a mystic inner enlightenment; logical demonstrations like those of Clarke or the Boyle lectures are only destructive of religion. Bolingbroke (d. 1751) voices the French influence in a capricious and dilettante manner. Despising all religions as the product of enthusiasm, fraud, and suf)orstition, he nevertheless concedes to real Christianity the possession of moral and rational truth; an advocate of freedom of thought, he supports an established church in the interest of the State and of public morals {Fetters on the Study and Use of History, 1752; Essays, 1753).
Far greater is the influence of David Hume (q.v.; d. 1776), who summarized the Deistic criticism and raised it to the level of modern scientific method