THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION OF BISHOP EDWARD STILLINGFLEET 1635-1699 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 77 ROBERT TODD CARROLL THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION OF BISHOP EDWARD STILLINGFLEET 1635-1699 Directors: P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis). Editorial Board: J. Aubin (paris); J. Collins (St. Louis Univ.); P. Costabel (Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); I. Dambska (Cracow); H. de la Fontaine-Verwey (Amsterdam); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier ~Paris); T. Gregory (Rome): T. E. Jessop (Hull); P. O. Kristeller (Columbia Univ.); Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); S. Lindroth (Upsala); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Orcibal (Paris); I. S. Revah t (Paris); J. Roger (Paris); H. Rowen (Rutgers Univ., N.J.); C. B. Schmitt (Warburg Inst. London); G. Sebba (Emory Univ., Atlanta); R. Shackleton (Oxford); J. Tans (Groningen); G. Tonelli (Binghamton, N.Y.). THE COMMON-SENSE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION OF BISHOP EDWARD STILLING FLEET 1635-1699 by ROBERT TODD CARROLL • MARTINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1975 To my mother and the memory of my father which she and I share, though in our own separate ways; and to Leslie, Allison, and Jennifer for their love and patience © 1975 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-J3:978-94-0JO-J600-J e-ISBN-J3:978-94-0JO-J598-J DOI:JO.J007/978-94-0JO-J598-J TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments VII Chapter One INTRODUCTION I. Reason and Religion . II. Chillingworth's Common-Sense Anglicanism 4 III. Chillingworth's Legacy 10 IV. Chillingworth's Influence 12 Two SOCIETY, POLITICS, AND RELIGION. 14 The Career of an Anglican Conservative I. Education and Ecclesiastical Career 14 II. Irenicum 18 III. Toleration . 22 IV. Glorious Revolution 32 V. Stillingfleet's Conservatism 37 Three THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 39 Part One I. The Common-Sense Defense of Religion 39 II. The Problem of Certainty 42 III. Anti-Catholic Writings 50 IV. Protestant Infallibility 57 V. Stillingfleet's Theory of Certainty 62 VI. Reasonable Faith . 67 VII. Miracles 70 VIII. Miracles (continued) 73 IX. Conclusion 77 VI CONTENTS Four THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 80 Part Two I. Divine Faith 80 II. Divine Mysteries 83 III. John Toland and John Locke 86 IV. Summary 100 Five THE DEFENSE OF NATURAL RELIGION. 102 I. Introduction 102 II. Reason and the Principles of Natural Religion 106 III. The Existence of God 114 IV. The Immortality of the Soul 135 V. Summary 149 Six CONCLUSION . 151 ApPENDIX A : An Essay on Biography 159 ApPENDIX B : Stillingfleet's Influence . 161 BIBLIOGRAPHY 163 INDEX OF NAMES 175 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Richard H. Popkin is a much easier task than to enumerate the various ways-some intangible in which he has aided and guided me in my philosophical studies. Professor Popkin's influence on my work will be obvious to all who have had the pleasure of working with him, and I shall always be indebted to him for his profound kindness, patience, and scholarly guidance. I would also like to thank Professors Thomas Mark, Andrew Wright, and Curtis Wilson for their kind and helpful criticisms which have aided in the elimination of many errors which otherwise would have found their way into this work. The errors which remain are, of course,. my own responsibility. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Stanley Moore whose demand for excellence in both teaching and critical scholarship has significantly affected the attitude with which this work was undertaken, if not the work itself. Finally, I would like to thank the librarians at the Huntington and University of California, San Diego, libraries for their assistance in obtaining much of the research material necessary for the completion of this work. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION I. Reason and Religion a "Si on soumet tout la raison, notre religion n'aura rien de mysterieux et de surnaturel; si on choque les principes de la raison, notre religion sera absurde et ridicule",l In this passage from his Pensees Pascal summarizes what is perhaps the most basic problem for the defender of the reasonableness of Christianity: the necessity of upholding beliefs which Reason is incapable of judging, while at the same time claiming that those beliefs are reasonable. Pascal does not state the problem in precisely these terms regarding the limits of Reason, yet it seems clear that the dilemma he is indicating involves the question of the relation of religious beliefs to the compass of Reason. He does not, however-at least in the passage cited-indicate that the problem is a question of either/or: either Reason and no Religion, or Religion and Irrationality. Rather, he seems to be simply stating what he perceives to be a simple matter of fact. If Reason is allowed to be the judge of all Religion, then all Religion must abandon any elements that are either contrary to reason or cannot be shown to be in accord with Reason. On the other hand, if Reason is not allowed to judge Religion at all, then Religion will be absurd and ridiculous. The solution to the dilemma, if there is one, would seem to lie in the discovery of some happy middle ground where Reason and the absurd might be reconciled, so that one might claim that regardless of the fact that one's religion involved the belief in matters that were not capable of being judged as true or false, one's religion was nevertheless reasonable. Pascal might not object, as Kierkegaard or Tertullian would not, to stating the solution in terms which do not try to disguise the irrational element in Christianity under the cover of such terms as "mystery" or "supernatural". Others, such as John Locke, would prefer to say that several of the propositions believed by most Christians to be true involve 1 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, pensee 273, in (Euvres de Blaise Pascal, ed. Leon Brunschvicg, 14 vols. (1904; rpt. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1965), XIII, p. 199. 2 INTRODUCTION matters which are "above Reason". Only those matters which could be demonstrated to be "contrary to Reason" could properly speaking be called irrational or absurd. Thus, Christianity could be reasonable-as Locke proclaimed in the titles of several works on the subject 2-even though it involved the belief in matters which Reason was not competent to judge. The question of the relationship of Reason to Religion is, of course, one that still haunts us, though it is not debated with the intensity and fervor that such questions once generated. In the seventeenth century, however, scarcely anyone in the intellectual mainstream could afford to ignore the problems associated with Religion's claim to reasonableness. Needless to say, some interesting and controversial solutions were worked out by several seventeenth century philosophers. In England an Anglican common-sense tradition developed in an attempt to defend the reason 3 ableness of Protestantism against the irrationality which, according to the Anglicans, permeated the Catholic religion. The Anglican-Catholic controversy centered around the question of the rule of faith, but the debate quickly and naturally extended to include discussions on the nature of the Church, infallibility, God, human Reason and a host of other related topics. During the course of the seventeenth century the Anglicans and Roman Catholics found little difficulty in producing a number of able and competent adversaries. Few, however, are remembered today for any contributions they might have made to the history of philosophical thought. Yet, John Locke, who towers above his contemporaries in the history of philosophy texts, had very little to say on the religious questions of the period that had not been said before by his lesser contemporaries if we may be granted the liberty of extending the term "contemporary" to include those who were writing in their mature years while Locke was still a young man with promise. In short, Locke wrote at the end of the seventeenth century as well as at the end of an Anglican common-sense tradition from which he derived a number of his opinions on Religion. And although Locke's philosophy was viewed by several of his "pious" contemporaries as having pernicious implications for Religion, it seems to me that Locke's views were in general conservative, and whatever was pernicious about them had been implicit in the mainstream of Anglican theology throughout the century. 2 The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures (1695), A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity from Mr. Edwards' Reflections (1695), and Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1697). 3 See Henry G. Van Leeuwen's study of this tradition, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought,' 1630·1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970). REASON AND RELIGION 3 It was Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), the Bishop of Worcester from 1689 until his death ten years later, who first called attention to the implications for religion inherent in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In 1696 the Bishop devoted the tenth chapter of his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity to an attack on the work of a self-proclaimed protege of Locke's: John Toland's Christianity not Mysterious (1696).4 Locke took Stillingfleet's criticisms personally and in a long letter set out to defend his religious orthodoxy. Stillingfleet replied with an equally long letter in which he attempted to persuade Locke that he did not question the philosopher's personal religious convictions and that what was actually at issue were the implications for religion in the Essay, implications which Stillingfleet believed Locke obstinately refused to admit. Locke replied with another letter, longer than the first, defending both his orthodoxy and his lack of obstinacy. Rather than being satisfied, however, with Locke's defense, Stillingfleet was now convinced that Locke's opinions-at least on the question of the relation of faith to reason-were not orthodox after all, and that Locke was actually advocating a form of fideism which left religion unreasonable and irrational. Locke replied with a five hundred page defense in which he defended his fideism both on its own grounds and through numerous appeals to Church authorities, ancient and modern. Stillingfleet's death in 1699 prevented the controversy from continuing, and one is left to wonder how many volumes Locke would have needed to reply to one more letter from the Bishop.5 The Stillingfleet-Locke controversy is interesting in its own right, as it pitted England's foremost philosopher of the day against her foremost theologian. Yet, the debate itself, in all its richness and significance, can only be partially and inadequately understood without placing it in its historical context. The issues which came to the fore in the exchange of letters between Locke and Stillingfleet at the end of the seventeenth century had been bandied about by numerous lesser luminaries throughout the century. Stillingfleet, in fact, had gained his reputation as the foremost apologist for Protestantism in England by carrying on a variety of contro versies in which he attempted to present Anglicanism as a reasonable 4 Locke denied having any but the most casual acquaintance with Toland, and he rejected as slanderous the attempt to link Toland's "Socinian" ideas with his own "orthodox Anglicanism." On Locke's claim to orthodoxy see his Letter to the Bishop of Worcester in the Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (1823 : reprinted by Scientia Aalen, Germany, 1963), IV, p. 4. The term "Socinian," as it was used in England during this period, did not refer to an organized or systematic Religion or Church (such churches did exist on the continent), but rather the term was used as an epithet for liberal theolo gians or anti-trinitarians. "Free-thinker" would be an apt synonym in most cases. 5 Locke's letters to Stillingfleet comprise volume four of his Works.