THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
judgment. Toleration, even if only partial, had opened the door to wider liberty of utterance, in which one discovers the effect of Milton's great plea in Areopagitica, Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophecying, and Locke's Letters on Toleration. Profound governmental changes had compelled men to find rational ground for their political convictions. . Literary and historical criticism of the Bible was establishing positions contrary to traditional beliefs. Calvinists and Arminians were arrayed against each other, ostensibly sheltering themselves behind Scriptural proofs, but really fortifying their tenets with philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. John Toland (q.v.) in his Christianity not Mysterious recognized no revelation which is not wholly luminous to the human intelligence. Anthony Collins (q.v.) in his Discourse of Free Thinking advocated the untrammeled use of the understanding in all religious questions; and he (A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion) and Thomas Woolston (q.v.; Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour) respectively eliminate the two chief credentials of revelation — prophecy and miracle. Matthew Tindal (q.v.) in Christianity as Old as the Creation reduces revelation to reason, its content the law or light of nature or natural religion as practised by all peoples, additions to which, such as are presupposed in supernatural revelation, would be either superfluous, unintelligible, or false. Shaftesbury (d. 1713; Characteristics) and Thomas Chubb (q.v.; Posthumous Tracts) carried on a sharp polemic against the morality of the New Testament, and Thomas Morgan (q.v. ; The Moral Philosopher) against that of the Old Testament.
The deistic writers called out a series of replies in defense of the traditional beliefs of the Church.
Charles Leslie (q.v.; Short and Easy
2. Anti- Method with the Deists) laid down four
Deistic tests to prove the truth of Christianity.
Discussions. Richard Bentley (q.v.), the sharpest
critic of the time, pulverized Tindal 's claims to scholarship in the Scriptures and in the classics ( Remarks by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis). John N orris (d. 1711; Account of Reason and Truth in Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity, London, 1697) found a basis for revelation in the scholastic distinction between things above and contrary to the reason. Peter Brown (d. 1735; Procedure, Extent and Limits of Human Understanding, and Things Supernatural and Divine Conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human) maintained the utter disparity between human and divine goodness — a position carried still farther by William Law (q.v.; Works, vol. ii., " The Case of Reason "), that revelation is to be received'not from human judgment of its excellence but because God has declared it to be such; reason is thus our capacity to be instructed. John Conybeare (q.v.; A Defence of Revealed Religion) held that there may be distinctions in the divine nature and qualities of divine action of which one can be sure only by revelation, which is not from a human but from a divine source. Daniel Waterland (q.v.; Scripture Vindicated), the most learned writer in defense of the supernatural, in reply to aspersions upon the morality of the Old-
Testament actions, whether those of God or of his servants, contended that the sole question is not what we a priori think should have been done, but only what was actually done, which carries its sufficient vindication. William Warburton (q.v.; The Divine Legation of Moses) held that the absence of belief in a future life among the Hebrews, contrary to all other nations and to rational expectation, is accounted for on the ground that God substitutes immediate providential rewards and punishments to the chosen people in the present life — a proof of miraculous intervention. This group of writers must be supplemented by Bishop Butler (q.v.; The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature). Although Butler's work is a reply to Tindal and brought the deistic movement to an end, yet its method is essentially rationalistic, save where he betrays a thorough-going distrust of the reason. With the deists he accepts the doctrine of God, a providential order, and a future life of rewards and punishments grounded in reason, and, on the basis of probability, derived from reason and experience, establishes a prejudice favorable to Christianity as a supernatural religion confirmed by external evidences. The argument is purely rational in form, with little reliance on facts drawn from the redemptive order. The discussions of Hume (q.v.; Essay on Miracles, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and Natural History of Religion) were directed equally against the traditional belief, on the one hand, and, on the other, against the deistic positions. In his argument concerning miracles, ignoring the piecemeal method of Woolston, he attacks the trustworthiness of all testimony which would validate so-called exceptions to universal experience or violations of the natural order. On the question of theism, he recognizes no ultimate cause which surpasses the actual effects experienced in the world; all effects must be matched by equal causes. There is no permanent essential necessity for the existence of a Supreme Being; the ground of the natural world may be in itself. The perfect cause which is required to adjust the inequalities of the present can not be inferred from the existing imperfect conditions. Finally, the natural history of religion discloses the illusory character alike of its beginning and of its ultimate conclusions.
The numerous replies to the attack on prophecy limited prophecy to prediction, treated the Old- Testament passages in relation to those of the New as if the writers described the future
3. Pro- with equal facility and detail as the phetic and past, and in an arbitrary, uncritical, Evangelical unhistorical manner found the facts
Defense, and truths of the New Testament in the Old (cf. E. Chandler, A Defence of Christianity; T. Newton, Dissertations on Prophecy). The attack on miracles was met by the assumption that miracles are not impossible, and that testimony for them comes from reliable witnesses who suffered in behalf of their reports (cf. T. Sherlock, Trial of the Witnesses, London, 1729; N. Lardner, Vindication of Three . . . Miracles, ib. 1729; W. Paley, Evidences of Christianity, ib. 1794). In addition to the representatives of supernatural