A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

117Id. p. 23. ↑

118 Concerning whom see Macaulay’s History, ch. xix, ed. 1877, ii, 411–12—a very prejudiced account. Blount is there spoken of as “one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived,” and as having “stolen” from Milton, because he issued a pamphlet “By Philopatris,” largely made up from the Areopagitica. Compare Macaulay’s treatment of Locke, who adopted Dudley North’s currency scheme (ch. xxi, vol. ii, p. 547). ↑

119 Bayle (art. Apollonius, note), who is followed by the French translator of Philostratus with Blount’s notes in 1779 (J. F. Salvemini de Castillon), says the notes were drawn from the papers of Lord Herbert of Cherbury; but of this Blount says nothing. ↑

120 As to these see the Dict. of Nat. Biog. The statements of Anthony Wood as to the writings of Blount’s father, relied on in the author’s Dynamics of Religion, appear to be erroneous. Sir Thomas Pope Blount, Charles’s eldest brother, shows a skeptical turn of mind in his Essays (3rd ed. 1697, Essay 7). Himself a learned man, he disparages learning as checking thought; and, professing belief in the longevity of the patriarchs (p. 187), pronounces popery and pagan religion to be mere works of priestcraft (Essay 1). He detested theological controversy and intolerance, and seems to have been a Lockian. ↑

121 All that is known of this tragedy is that Blount loved his deceased wife’s sister and wished to marry her; but she held it unlawful, and he was in despair. According to Pope, a sufficiently untrustworthy authority, he “gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died” (note to Epilogue to the Satires, i, 123). An overstrung nervous system may be diagnosed from his writing. ↑

122Boyle Lectures on Atheism, ed. 1724, p. 4. ↑

123Reflexions upon the Books of the Holy Scriptures to establish the Truth of the Christian Religion, by Peter Allix, D.D., 1688, i, 6–7. ↑

124 As cited by Leslie, Truth of Christianity Demonstrated, 1711, pp. 17–21. ↑

125Characteristics, ii, 263 (Moralists, pt. ii, § 3). One of the most dangerous positions from the orthodox point of view would be the thesis that while religion could do either great good or great harm to morals, atheism could do neither. (Bk. I, pt. iii, § 1.) Cp. Bacon’s Essay, Of Atheism. ↑

126 Blount, after assailing in anonymous pamphlets Bohun the licenser, induced him to license a work entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, which infuriated the nation. Macaulay calls the device “a base and wicked scheme.” It was almost innocent in comparison with Blount’s promotion of the “Popish plot” mania. See Who Killed Sir Edmund Godfrey Berry? by Alfred Marks. 1905, pp. 133–35, 150. ↑

127 See the text in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner’s Penalties upon Opinion, pp. 19–21. Macaulay does not mention this measure. ↑

128 The Act had been preceded by a proclamation of the king, dated Feb. 24. 1697. ↑

129 As to an earlier monopoly of the London booksellers, see George Herbert’s letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Bacon, Jan. 29, 1620. In Works of George Herbert, ed. 1841, i. 217–18. ↑

130 See Locke’s notes on the Licensing Act in Lord King’s Life of Locke, 1829, pp. 203–206; Fox Bourne’s Life of Locke, ii. 313–14; Macaulay’s History, ii, 504. ↑

131 Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, 1759, p. 120; Pünjer, i, 291, 300–301. Browne was even called an atheist. Arpe, Apologia pro Vanino, 1712, p. 27, citing Welschius. Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his introduction to his ed. of Marlowe (1885, vol. i, p. lviii), remarks that Browne, who “kept the road” in divinity, “exposed the vulnerable points in the Scriptural narratives with more acumen and gusto than the whole army of freethinkers, from Anthony Collins downwards.” This is of course an extravagance, but, as Mr. Bullen remarks in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. vii, 66, Browne discusses “with evident relish” the “seeming absurdities in the Scriptural narrative.” ↑

132 Browne’s Annotator points to the derivation of his skepticism from “that excellent French writer Monsieur Mountaign, in whom I often trace him” (Sayle’s ed. 1904, i, p. xviii). ↑

133Religio Medici, i, 6. ↑

134Id. i, 9. ↑

135Id. i, 18. ↑

136Religio Medici, i, 20. ↑

137 Bk. I, ch. x. ↑

138 Here we have a theorem independently reached later (with the substitution of Nature for God) by Mary Wollstonecraft and Tennyson in turn. Browne cites yet another: “that he looks not below the moon, but hath resigned the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferior deputations”—a thesis adopted in effect by Cudworth. ↑

139 By an error of the press, Browne is made in Mr. Sayle’s excellent reprint (i, 108) to begin a sentence in the middle of a clause, with an odd result:—“I do confess I am an Atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores.” The passage should obviously read: “to that subterraneous Idol (avarice) and God of the Earth I do confess I am an Atheist,” etc. ↑

140 Hutchinson, Histor. Essay Conc. Witchcraft, 1718, p. 118; 2nd ed. 1720, p. 151. ↑

141 Cp. Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. 1862, p. 33. ↑

142 Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 1889, pref. p. vi; Rev. Dr. Duff, Hist. of Old Test. Criticism, R. P. A. 1910, p. 113. ↑

143 This appears again, much curtailed and “so altered as to be in a manner new,” in its author’s collected Essays on Several Important Subjects in Religion and Philosophy (1676), under the title Against Confidence in Philosophy. ↑

144 See the Humane Nature (1640), ch. iv, §§ 7–9. ↑

145Scepsis Scientifica, ch. 23, § 1. ↑

146 See the passages compared by Lewes, History of Philosophy, 4th ed. ii, 338. ↑

147 In his Blow at Modern Sadducism (4th ed. 1668), Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681; 3rd ed. 1689), and A Whip to the Droll, Fidler to the Atheist (1688—a letter to Henry More, who was zealous on the same lines). These works seem to have been much more widely circulated than the Scepsis Scientifica. ↑

148Scepsis, ch. 20, § 3. ↑

149 See Glanvill’s reply in a letter to a friend (1665), re-written as Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty: in A short Reply to the learned Mr. Thomas White in his collected Essays on Several Important Subjects, 1676. ↑

150 See the reply in Plus Ultra: or, the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668, Epist. Ded. Pref. ch. xviii, and Conclusion. [The re-written treatise, in the collected Essays, eliminates the controversial matter.] ↑

151 First printed with Glanvill’s Philosophia Pia in 1671. Rep. as an essay in the collected Essays. ↑

152 Owen, pref. to Scepsis, pp. xx–xxii. ↑

153 Owen, pref. to ed. of Scepsis Scientifica, p. ix. ↑

154 Of whom, however, a high medical authority declares that, “as a physiologist, he was sunk in realism” (that is, metaphysical apriorism). Prof. T. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science and Medieval Thought, 1901, p. 44. ↑

155 Cp. Whewell, as last cited, pp. 75–83; Hallam, Literature of Europe, iv, 159–71. ↑

156 Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay I, ch. i; Hamilton’s ed. of Works, p. 226. Glanvill calls Gassendi “that noble wit.” (Scepsis Scientifica, Owen’s ed. p. 151.) ↑