for conversions, and thence to a graduated series of invasions of
Protestant rights, so that the formal Revocation was only the violent
consummation of a process. See the recital in Bonet-Maury, Histoire
de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, pp. 46-52.
[666] As to the loss to French industry see Bonet-Maury, as cited,
p. 59, and refs.
[667] See Duruy, Hist. de la France, ii, 253; Bonet-Maury, as cited,
pp. 53-66.
[668] As to whose attitude at this crisis see O. Douen, L'Intolérance
de Fénelon, 1880.
[669] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 627.
[670] Id ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 468.
[671] Not printed till 1743, in the Nouvelles libertés de penser; and
still read in MS. by Grimm in 1754. Fontenelle was also credited with
a heretical letter on the resurrection, and an essay on the Infinite,
pointing to disbelief. It should be noted, however, that he stands
for deism in his essay, De l'existence de Dieu, which is a guarded
application of the design argument against what was then assumed to
be the only alternative--the "fortuitous concourse of atoms."
[672] But Voltaire and he were not at one. He is the "nain de Saturne"
in Micromégas.
[673] B. 1613; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no
great debauchee.
[674] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 172.
[675] Cp. Gidel, Étude prefixed to OEuvres Choisies de Saint-Evremond,
ed. Garnier, pp. 64-69.
[676] Caractères (1687), ch. xvi: Les Esprits Forts.
[677] "Is embarrassed" in the first edition.
[678] Des ouvrages de l'esprit, near end. § 65 in ed. Walckenaer,
p. 176.
[679] M. Le Vassor, De la véritable religion, 1688, préf. Le Vassor
speaks in the same preface of "this multitude of libertins and of
unbelievers which now terrifies us." His book seeks to vindicate
the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, inspiration, prophecies,
and miracles, against Spinoza, Le Clerc, and others.
[680] Cp. Huet, Huetiana, § 1.
[681] The question is discussed in the author's Buckle and his Critics,
pp. 324-42, and ed. of Buckle's Introduction. Buckle's view, however,
was held by Huet, Huetiana, § 73.
[682] Cp. Perrens, pp. 310-14.
[683] Letter of the Duchesse d'Orléans, cited by Rocquain, L'Esprit
révolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, p. 3, note.
[684] As Voltaire noted, Toland was persecuted in Ireland for his
circumspect and cautious first book, and left unmolested in England
when he grew much more aggressive.
[685] First ed. anonymous. Second ed., of same year, gives author's
name. Another ed. in 1702.
[686] See Dynamics of Religion, p. 129.
[687] Pref. to 2nd ed. pp. vi, viii, xxiv, xxvi.
[688] As late as 1701 a vote for its prosecution was passed in the
Lower House of Convocation. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 180.
[689] Molyneux, in Familiar Letters of Locke, etc. p. 228.
[690] No credit for this is given in Sir Leslie Stephen's notice of
Toland in English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 101-12. Compare
the estimate of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 272-76 (Eng. tr. i,
324-30). Lange perhaps idealizes his subject somewhat.
[691] In two letters published along with the Letters to Serena, 1704.
[692] Letters to Serena, etc. 1704, pref.
[693] De Principiis atque Originibus (Routledge's 1-vol. ed. pp. 651,
667).
[694] Letters to Serena, pp. 19, 67.
[695] Sir Henry Craik (cited by Temple Scott, Bohn ed. of Swift's
Works, iii, 9) speaks of Toland as "a man of utterly worthless
character." This is mere malignant abuse. Toland is described by Pope
in a note to the Dunciad (ii, 399) as a spy to Lord Oxford. There
could hardly be a worse authority for such a charge.
[696] Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, 1882, p. 26.
[697] Cp. Stephen, as cited, p. 115.
[698] "The Christianity of many writers consisted simply in expressing
deist opinions in the old-fashioned phraseology" (Stephen, i, 91).
[699] Cp. Pünjer, Christ. Philos. of Religion, i, 289-90; and
Dynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98. Lord Morley's reference to "the
godless deism of the English school" (Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 69) is
puzzling. Cp. Rosenkranz (Diderot's Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 421) on
"den ungöttlichen Gott der Jesuiten and Jansenisten, dies monströse
Zerrbild des alten Jehovah, diesen apotheosirten Tyrannen, diesen
Moloch." The latter application of the term seems the more plausible.
[700] Macaulay's description of Blount as an atheist is therefore
doubly unwarranted.
[701] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98.
[702] Continuation des Pensées Diverses ... à l'occasion de la Comète
... de 1680, Amsterdam, 1705, i, 91.
[703] Warburton, Divine Legation, vol. ii, preface.
[704] Stephen, English Thought, i, 114-18.
[705] This, according to John Craig, was Newton's opinion. "The
reason of his [Newton's] showing the errors of Cartes's philosophy
was because he thought it made on purpose to be the foundation of
infidelity." Letter to Conduitt, April 7, 1727, in Brewster's Memoirs
of Newton, ii, 315. Clarke, in his Answer to Butler's Fifth Letter,
expresses a similar view.
[706] "Three Discourses of Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty, Collected
from the Works of the Learn'd Gassendi by Monsieur Bernier. Translated
out of the French, 1699."
[707] Cp. W. Sichel, Bolingbroke and His Times, 1901, i, 175.
[708] Sir Leslie Stephen (i, 33) makes the surprising statement that a
"dogmatic assertion of free-will became a mark of the whole deist and
semi-deist school." On the contrary, Hobbes and Anthony Collins, not
to speak of Locke, wrote with uncommon power against the conception
of free-will, and had many disciples on that head.
[709] Letter to the Princess of Wales, November, 1715, in Brewster,
ii, 284-85.
[710] Second Letter to Clarke, par. 1.
[711] Abstract from the Works of John Hutchinson, 1755, pp. 149-63.
[712] Clarke's Answer to Leibnitz's First Letter, end.
[713] Berkeley, Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics, par. vii; and
Stock's Memoir of Berkeley. Cp. Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, ii, 408.
[714] In the Philosophical Transactions, 1718, No. 355, i, v, vi.
[715] Brewster, More Worlds than One, 1854, p. 110.
[716] Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Cent. ed. 1892,
iii, 22-24.
[717] The tradition of Saunderson's unbelief is constant. In the
memoir prefixed to his Elements of Algebra (1740) no word is said of
his creed, though at death he received the sacrament.
[718] See The State of the Process depending against Mr. John Simson,
Edinburgh, 1728. Simson always expressed himself piously, but had
thrown out such expressions as Ratio est principium et fundamentum
theologiæ, which "contravened the Act of Assembly, 1717" (vol. cited,
p. 316). The "process" against him began in 1714, and dragged on for
nearly twenty years, with the result of his resigning his professorship
of theology at Glasgow in 1729, and seceding from the Associate
Presbytery in 1733. Burton, History of Scotland, viii, 399-400.
[719] Cp. the pamphlet by "A Presbyter of the Church of England,"
attributed to Bishop Hare, cited in Dynamics of Religion, pp. 177-78,
and by Lecky, iii, 25.
[720] Tatler, Nos. 12, 111, 135; Spectator, Nos. 231, 381, 389, 599;
Guardian, Nos. 3, 9, 27, 35, 39, 55, 62, 70, 77, 83, 88, 120, 130,