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EATIOT^ALISM Ilf ETJEOPE, 
 
 VOL. i; 
 
HISTOEY 
 
 EISE AJ^J) INFLUEIsrOE 
 
 OF THE SPIRIT OP 
 
 RATIOIN^ALISM m EUROPE. 
 
 W. E. H. LECKT, M. A. 
 
 HKVISED EDITION. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW TOEK-: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 549 & 5 5 1^BfiOADWAT. 
 
 1872. 
 
ITsTTEODUOTIOl^. 
 
 DuBiNG the fierce theological controversies that accom- 
 pauied and followed the Reformation, while a judicial spirit 
 was as yet unknown, while each party imagined itself the 
 representative of absolute and necessary truth in opposi- 
 tion to absolute and fatal error, and while the fluctuations 
 of belief were usually attributed to direct miraculous agency, 
 it was natural that all the causes of theological changes 
 should have been sought exclusively within the circle of 
 theology. Each theologian imagined that the existence of 
 the opinions he denounced was fully accounted for by the ex- 
 ertions of certain evil-minded men, who had triumphed by 
 means of sophistical arguments, aided by a judicial blindness 
 that had been cast upon the deluded. Plis own opinions 
 on the other hand, had been sustained or revived by apos- 
 tles raised for the purpose, illuminated by special in- 
 spiration, and triumphing by the force of theological argu- 
 ments. As long as this point of view continued, the posi- 
 tion of the theologian and of the ecclesiastical historian was 
 nearly the same. Each was confined to a single province, 
 and each, recognising a primitive faith as his ideal, had to 
 indicate the successive innovations upon its purity. But 
 
6 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 when towards the close of the eighteenth century the de- 
 cline of theological passions enabled men to discuss these 
 matters in a calmer spirit, and when increased knowledge 
 produced more comprehensive views, the historical standing- 
 point was materially altered. It was observed that every 
 gi-eat change of belief had been preceded by a great change 
 in the intellectual condition of Europe, that the success of 
 any opinion depended much less upon the force of its ar- 
 guments, or upon the ability of its advocates, than upon 
 the predisposition of society to receive it, and that that 
 predisposition resulted from the intellectual type of the age. 
 As men advance from an imperfect to a higher civilisation, 
 they gradually sublimate and refine their creed. Their 
 imaginations insensibly detach themselves from those gross- 
 er conceptions and doctrines that were formerly most pow- 
 erful, and they sooner or later reduce all their opinions 
 into conformity with the moral and intellectual standards 
 which the new civilisation produces. Thus, long before the 
 Reformation, the tendencies of the Reformation were man- 
 ifest. The revival of Grecian learning, the development of 
 art, the reaction against the schoolmen, had raised society 
 to an elevation in which a more refined and less oppressive 
 creed was absolutely essential to its well-being. Luther 
 and Calvin only represented the prevailing wants, and em- 
 bodied them in a definite form. The pressure of the gene- 
 ral iutellectual influences of the time determines the pre- 
 dispositions which ultimately regulate the details of belief; 
 and though all men do not yield to that pressure with the 
 same facility, all large bodies are at last controlled. A 
 change of speculative opinions does not imply an increase 
 
INTEODUOTION. i 
 
 of the data upon which those opinions rest, but a change 
 of the habits of thought and mind which they reflect. 
 Definite arguments are the symptoms and pretexts, bul 
 seldom the caiises of the change. Their chief merit is to 
 accelerate the inevitable crisis. Tliey derive their force 
 and efficacy from their conformity with the mental habits 
 of those to whom they are addressed. Reasoning which in 
 one age would make no impression whatever, in the next 
 age is received with enthusiastic applause. It is one thiiig 
 to understand its nature, but quite another to appreciate 
 its force. 
 
 And this standard of belief, this tone and habit of 
 thought, which is the supreme arbiter of the opinions of 
 successive periods, is created, not by the influences arising 
 out of any one department of intellect, but by the combi- 
 nation of all the intellectual and even social tendencies of 
 the age. Those who contribute most largely to its for- 
 mation are, I believe, the philosophers. Men like Bacon, 
 Descartes, and Locke have probably done more than any 
 others to set the current of their age. They have formed 
 a certain cast and tone of mind. They have introduced 
 peculiar habits of thought, new modes of reasoning, new 
 tendencies of enquiry. The impulse they have given to 
 the higher literature, has been by that literature commu- 
 nicated to the more popular writers ; and the impress of 
 these master-minds is clearly visible in the writings of 
 multitudes who are totally unacquainted with their works. 
 But philosophical methods, great and unquestionable as is 
 their power, form but one of the many influences that 
 contribute to the mental habits of society. Thus the dis- 
 
6 INTEODUCTIOir. 
 
 coveries of physical science, entrenching upon the domain 
 of the anomalous and the incomprehensible, enlarging our 
 conceptions of the range of law, and revealing the connec- 
 tion of phenomena that had formerly appeared altogether 
 isolated, form a habit of mind which is carried far beyond 
 the limits of physics. Thus the astronomical discovery, 
 that our world is not the centre and axis of the material 
 universe, but is an inconsiderable planet occupying to all 
 appearance an altogether insigniiicant and subordinate po- 
 sition, and revolving with many others around a sun which 
 is itself but an infinitesimal point in creation, in as far as 
 it is realised by the imagination, has a vast and palpable 
 influence upon our theological conceptions. Thus the 
 commercial or municipal spirit exhibits certain habits of 
 thought, certain modes of reasoning, certain repugnances 
 and attractions, which make it invariably tend to one class 
 of opinions. To encourage the occupations that produce 
 this spirit, is to encourage the opinions that are most con- 
 genial to it. It is impossible to lay down a railway with- 
 out creating an intellectual influence. It is probable that 
 Watt and Stephenson will eventually modify the opinions 
 of mankind almost as profoundly as Luther or Yoltaire. 
 
 If these views be correct, they establish at once a broad 
 distinction between the province of the theologian and 
 that of the historian of opinions. The first confines his 
 attention to the question of +he truth or falsehood of par- 
 ticular doctrines, which he ascertains by examining the 
 arguments upon which they rest ; the second should en- 
 deavour to trace the causes of the rise and fall of those 
 doctrines which are to be found in the general intellectual 
 
INTEODUCTION 
 
 condition of tlie age. The first is restricted to a single 
 department of mental phenomena, and to those logical 
 connections which determine the opinions of the severe 
 reasoner ; the second is obliged to take a wide survey of 
 the intellectual influences of the period he is describing, 
 and to trace that connection of congruity which has a 
 much greater influence upon the sequence of opinions than 
 logical arguments. 
 
 Although in the present work we are concerned only 
 with the last of these two points of view, it will be neces- 
 sary to consider briefly the possibility of their coexistence ; 
 for this question involves one of the most important prob- 
 lems in history — the position reserved for the individual 
 will and the individual judgment in the great current, of 
 general causes. 
 
 It was a saying of Locke, that we should not ask 
 whether our will is free, but whether we are free ; for our 
 conception of freedom is the power of acting according to 
 our will, or, in other words, the consciousness, when pur- 
 suing a certain course of action, that we might, if we had 
 chosen, have pursued a different one. If, however, push- 
 ing our analysis still ftirther, we ask what it is that 
 determines our volition, I conceive that the highest prin- 
 ciples of liberty we are capable of attaining are to be 
 found in the two facts, that our will is a faculty distinct 
 from our desires, and that it is not a mere passive thing, 
 the direction and intensity of which are necessarily deter- 
 mined by the attraction and repulsion of pleasure and 
 pain. "We are conscious that we are capable of pursuing a 
 course which is extremely distasteful, rather than anothei 
 
iO mTEODTJCTION. 
 
 course whicb would be extremely agreeable ; that in doing 
 BO we are making a continual and painful effort ; that 
 every relaxation of that effort produces the most lively 
 pleasure ; and that it is at least possible that the motive 
 which induces us to pursiie tne path of self-abnegation, 
 may be a sense of right altogether uninfluenced by pros- 
 pects of future reward. We are also conscious that if 
 our desires act powerfully upon our will, our will can in 
 its turn act upon our desires. We can strengthen the 
 natural powers of our will by steadily exerting it. We 
 can diminish the intensity of our desires by habitually re- 
 pressing them ; we can alter, by a process of mental disci- 
 pline, the whole symmetry of our passions, deliberately 
 selecting one class for gratification and for development, 
 and crushing and subduing the others. These considera- 
 tions do not, of course, dispel the mystery which perhaps 
 necessarily rests upon the subject of free-will. They do 
 not solve the questions, whether the will can ever act 
 without a motive, or what are its relations to its motives, 
 or whether the desires may not sometimes be too strong 
 for its most developed powers ; but they form a theory of 
 human liberty which I believe to be the highest we can 
 attain. He who has realised, on the one hand, his power 
 of acting according to his will, and, on the other hand, the 
 power of his will to emancipate itself from the empire of 
 pain and pleasure, and to modify and control the current 
 of the emotions, has probably touched the limits of his 
 fi'eedom. 
 
 The struggle of the will for a right motive against the 
 pressure of the desires, is one of the chief forms of virtue; 
 
INTEODUCTIOir. H 
 
 and tlie relative position of these two influences, one of the 
 chief measures of the moral standing of each individual. 
 Sometimes, in the conflict between the will and a particu 
 lar desire, the former, either through its own natural 
 strength, or through the natural weakness of its opponent. 
 or through the process of mental discipline I have describ 
 ed, has obtained a supreme ascendency which is seldom 
 or never seriously disturbed. Sometimes, through causes 
 that are innate, and perhaps more frequently through causes 
 for which we are responsible, the two powers exhibit al- 
 most an equipoise, and each often succumbs to the other. 
 Between these two positions there are numerous grada^ 
 tions ; so that every cause that in any degree intensifies the 
 desires, gives them in some cases a triumph over the will. 
 
 The application of these principles to those constantly- 
 recurring figures which moral statistics present is not diflfi- 
 cult. The statistician, for example, shows that a certain 
 condition of temperature increases the force of a passion — 
 or, in other words, the temptation to a particular vice ; 
 and he then proceeds to argue, that the whole history of 
 that vice is strictly regulated by atmospheric changes. 
 The vice rises into prominence with the rising tempera- 
 ture; it is sustained during its continuance, it declines 
 with its decline. Year after year, the same figures and 
 the same variations are nearly reproduced. Investigations 
 in the most dissimilar nations only strengthen the proof; 
 and the evidence is so ample, that it enables ns, within 
 certain limits, even to predict the future. The rivers that 
 rise and fall with the winter torrents or the summer 
 drought ; the iiisect life that is called into being by the 
 
12 rNTEODUCTIOlT. 
 
 genial spring, and destroyed by the returning frost ; the 
 aspect of vegetation, which pursues its appointed changes 
 through the recurring seasons ; these do not reflect more 
 faithfully or obey more implicitly external influences, than 
 do some great departments of the acts of man. 
 
 This is the fact which statistical tables prove, but what 
 is the inference to be deduced from them ? Not, snrely, 
 that there is no such thing as free-will, but, what we 
 should have regarded as antecedently probable, that the 
 degree of energy with which it is exerted is in different 
 periods nearly the same. As long as the resistance is 
 unaltered, the fluctuations of our desires determine the 
 fluctuations of our actions. In this there is nothing extra- 
 ordinary. It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise 
 — strange if, the average of virtue remaining the same, or 
 nearly the same, an equal amount of solicitation did not 
 at different periods produce the same, or nearly the same, 
 amount of compliance. The fact, therefore, that there is 
 an order and sequence in the history of vice, and that 
 influences altogether independent of human control con- 
 tribute largely to its course, in no degree destroys the free- 
 dom of will, and the conclusion of the historian is per 
 fectly reconcilable with the principles of the moralist. 
 From this spectacle of regularity, we simply infer that the 
 changes in the moral condition of mankind are very slow ; 
 that there are periods when, certain desires being strength- 
 ened by natural causes, the task of the will in opposing 
 them is peculiarly arduous ; and that any attempt to write 
 a history of vice without taking into consideration exter- 
 nal influences, would be miserably deficient. 
 
INTEODrCTION. 13 
 
 Again, if we turn to a different class of phenomena, 
 nothing can be more certain to an attentive observer, than 
 that the great majority even of those who reason much 
 about their opinions have arrived at their conclusions by 
 a process quite distinct from reasoning. They may be 
 perfectly unconscious of the fact, but the ascendency of 
 old associations is upon them ; and, in the overwhelming 
 majority of cases, men of the most various creeds conclude 
 their investigations by simply acquiescing in the opinions 
 they have been taught. They insensibly judge all ques- 
 tions by a mental standard derived from education ; they 
 proportion their attention and sympathy to the degree in 
 which the facts or arguments presented to them support 
 their foregone conclusions ; and they thus speedily con- 
 vince themselves that the arguments in behalf of their 
 hereditary opinions are irresistibly cogent, and the argu- 
 ments against them exceedingly absurd. Nor are those 
 who have diverged from the opinions they have been taught 
 necessarily more independent of illegitimate influences. 
 The love of singularity, the ambition to be thought in- 
 tellectually superior to others, the bias of taste, the attrac- 
 tion of vice, the influence of friendship, the magnetism of 
 genius, — ^these and countless other influences into which it 
 is needless to enter, all determine conclusions. The num- 
 ber of persons who have a rational basis for their belief is 
 probably infinitesimal ; for illegitimate influences not only 
 determine the convictions of those who do not examine, 
 but usually give a dominating bias to the reasonings of 
 those who do. But it would be manifestly absurd to con- 
 clude from this, that reason has no part or function in tha 
 
14 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 formation ot opinions, l^o mind, it is true, was ever al- 
 together free from distorting influences ; but in tlie struggle 
 between the reason and the atfectionswhich leads to truth, 
 as in the struggle between the will and the desires which 
 leads to virtue, every eflfort is crowned with a measure of 
 success, and innumerable gradations of progress are mani- 
 fested. All that we can rightly infer is, that the process 
 of reasoning is nmch more diificult than is commonly sup- 
 posed ; and that to those who would investigate the 
 causes of existing opinions, the study of predispositions is 
 much more important than the study of arguments. 
 
 The doctrine, that the opinions of a given period are 
 mainly determined by the intellectual condition of society, 
 and that every great change of opinion is the consequence 
 of general causes, simply implies that there exists a strong 
 bias which acts upon all large masses of men, and eventu- 
 ally triumphs over every obstacle. The inequalities of 
 civilisation, the distorting influences arising out of special 
 circumstances, the force of conservatism, and the efforts of 
 individual genius, produce innumerable diversities ; but a 
 careful examination shows that these are but the eddies of 
 an advancing stream, that the various systems are being all 
 gradually modified in a given direction, and that a certain 
 class of tendencies appears with more and more prominence 
 in all departments of intellect. Individuals may resist the 
 stream ; and this power supplies a firm and legitimate stand- 
 ing-point to the theologian : but these efforts are too rare 
 and feeble to have much influence upon the general course. 
 
 To this last proposition there is, however, an important 
 exception to be made in favour of men of genius, who are 
 
INTEOD0OTION. 15 
 
 commonly at once representative and creative. They em- 
 body and reflect the tendencies of their time, but they 
 also frequently materially modify them, and their ideas 
 become the subject or the basis of the succeeding de- 
 velopments. To trace in every great movement the 
 part which belongs to the individual and the part which 
 belongs to general causes, without exaggerating either side, 
 is one of the most delicate tasks of the historian. 
 
 What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to show 
 the distinction between the sphere of the historian and the 
 sphere of the theologian. It must, however, be ac- 
 knowledged that they have some points of contact ; for it 
 is impossible to reveal the causes that called an opinion 
 into being without throwing some light upon its intrinsic 
 value. It must be acknowledged, also, that there is a 
 theory or method of research which would amalgamate the 
 two spheres, or, to speak more correctly, would entirely sub- 
 ordinate the theologian to the historian. Those who have 
 appreciated the extremely small influence of definite argu- 
 ments in determining the opinions either of an individual 
 or of a nation — who have perceived how invariably an in- 
 crease of civilisation implies a modiflcation of belief, and 
 how completely the controversialists of successive ages are 
 the puppets and the unconscious exponents of the deep un- 
 der-current of their time, will feel an intense distrust of 
 their unassisted reason, and will naturally look for some 
 guide to direct their judgment. I think it must be admit- 
 ted that the general and increasing tendency, in the pres- 
 ent day, is to seek such a guide in the collective wisdom 
 of mankind as it is displayed in the developments of history. 
 
16 INTEODUCTIOIT. 
 
 In other words, the way in which our leading thinkers, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, form their opinions, is by endeav 
 ouring to ascertain what are the laws that govern the succes- 
 sive modifications of belief; in what directions, towards 
 what conceptions, the intellect of man advances with the 
 advance of civilisation ; what are the leading characteristics 
 that mark the belief of civilised ages and nations as com- 
 pared with barbarous ones, and of the most educated as 
 compared with the most illiterate classes. This mode of 
 reasoning may be said to resolve itself into three problems. 
 It is necessary, in the first place, to ascertain what are the 
 general intellectual tendencies of civilisation ; it is then ne- 
 cessary to ascertain how far those tendencies are connected, 
 or, in other words, how far the existence of one depends upon 
 and implies the existence of the others ; and it is necessary, 
 in the last place, to ascertain whether they have been accom- 
 panied by an increase or diminution of happiness, of virtue, 
 and of humanity. 
 
 My object in the present work has been, to trace the 
 history of the spirit of nationalism ; by which I under- 
 stand, not any class of definite doctrines or criticisms, but 
 rather a certain cast of thought, or bias of reasoning, which 
 has during the last three centuries gained a marked as- 
 cendency in Europe. The nature of this bias will be ex- 
 hibited in detail in the ensuing pages, when we examine 
 its influence upon the various forms of moral and intellec- 
 tual development. At present, it will be sufficient to say, 
 that it leads men on all occasions to subordinate dogmatic 
 theology to the dictates of reason and of conscience, and, 
 as a necessarv consequence, greatly to restrict its influence 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 a])on life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all 
 kinds of phenomena to natural rather than miraculous 
 causes ; in theology, to esteem succeeding systems the ex- 
 pressions of the wants and aspirations of that religious sen- 
 timent which is planted in all men; and, in ethics, to regard 
 as duties only those which conscience reveals to be such. 
 
 It is manifest that, in attempting to write the history 
 of a mental tendency, some difficuhies have to be encoun- 
 tered quite distinct from those which attend a simple rela- 
 tion of facts. JSTo one can be truly said to understand any 
 great system of belief, if he has not in some degree realised 
 the point of view from which its arguments assume an 
 appearance of plausibility and of cogency, the habit of 
 thought which makes its various doctrines appear probable, 
 harmonious, and consistent. Yet, even in the great con- 
 troversies of the present day — even in tlie disputes between 
 the Catholic and the Protestant, it is evident that very few 
 controversialists ever succeed in arriving at this apprecia- 
 tion of the opinions they are combating. But the difficul- 
 ty becomes far greater when our research extends over 
 forms of belief of which there are no living representatives, 
 and when we have not merely to estimate the different 
 measures of probability subsisting in different societies, but 
 have also to indicate their causes and their changes. To 
 reconstruct the modes of thought which produced super- 
 stitions that have long since vanished from among us ; to 
 trace through the obscurity of the distant past that hidden 
 bias of the imagination which — deeper than any strife of 
 arguments, deeper than any change of creed — determines 
 in each succeeding age the realised belief ; to grasp the 
 
 VOL. I. — 2 
 
18 INTEODUCnON. 
 
 principle of analogy or congruity according to wliich tlie con- 
 ceptions of a given period were grouped and harmonised, 
 and then to show how the discoveries of science, or the 
 revolutions in philosophy, or the developments of indus- 
 trial or political life, introduced new centres of attraction, 
 and made the force of analogy act in new directions ; to 
 follow out the process till the period when conclusions the 
 I'eason had once naturally and almost instinctively adopted 
 seem incongruous and grotesque, and till the whole current 
 of intellectual tendencies is changed : — this is the task 
 which devolves upon every one who, not content with re- 
 lating the fluctuations of opinions, seeks to throw some 
 light upon the laws that govern them. 
 
 Prohably, the greatest difficulty of such a process of 
 investigation arises from the wide difference between pro- 
 fessed and realised belief. When an opinion that is oppos- 
 ed to the age is incapable of modification and is an ob- 
 stacle to progress, it will at last be openly repudiated ; and 
 if it is identified with any existing interests, or associated 
 with some eternal truth, its rejection will be accompanied 
 by paroxysms of painful agitation. But much more fre- 
 quently civilisation makes opinions that are opposed to it 
 simply obsolete. They perish by indifference, not by con- 
 troversy. They are relegated to the dim twilight land 
 that surrounds every living faith ; the land, not of death, 
 but of the shadow of death ; the land of the unrealised and 
 the inoperative. Sometimes, too, we find the phraseology, 
 the ceremonies, the formularies, the external aspect of 
 some phase of belief that has long since perished, connect- 
 ed with a system that has been created by the wants and 
 
rSTTEODUCTION. 19 
 
 is thrilling with the life of modern civilisation. They re- 
 semble those images of departed ancestors, which, it is said, 
 the ancient Ethiopians were accustomed to paint upon their 
 bodies, as if to preserve the pleasing illusion that those 
 could not be really dead whose lineaments were still visi- 
 ble among them, and were still associated with life. In 
 order to appreciate the change, we must translate these 
 opinions into action, must examine what would be their 
 effects if fully realised, and ascertain how far those effects 
 are actually produced. It is necessary, therefore, not 
 merely to examine successive creeds, but also to study the 
 types of character of successive ages. 
 
 It only remains for me, before drawing this introduc- 
 tion to a close, to describe the method I have employed in 
 tracing the influence of the rationalistic spirit upon opin- 
 ions. In the first place, I have examined the history and 
 the causes of that decline of the sense of the miraculous, 
 which is so manifest a fruit of civilisation. But it soon 
 becomes evident that this movement cannot be considered 
 by itself; for the predisposition in favour of miracles grows 
 out of, and can only be adequately explained by, certain 
 conceptions of the nature of the Supreme Being, and of the 
 habitual government of the universe, which invariably ac- 
 company the earlier, or, as it may be termed, the anthro- 
 pomorphic stage of intellectual development. Of the na- 
 ture of this stage we have some important evidence in the 
 history of art, which is then probably the most accurate 
 expression of the religious realisations ; while the history of 
 the encroachments of physical science upon our first notions 
 of the system of the world, goes far to explain its decay. 
 
20 INTEODUCTIOK'. 
 
 Together with the intellectual moTement, we have to con- 
 sider a moral movement that has accompanied it, which 
 has had the effect of diminishing the influence of fear as 
 the motive of duty, of destroying the overwhelming im- 
 portance of dogmatic teaching, and of establishing the su- 
 premacy of conscience. This progress involves many im- 
 portant consequences; but the most remarkable of all- is the 
 decay of persecution, which, I have endeavoured to show, 
 is indissolubly connected with a profound change in the- 
 ological realisations. I have, in the last place, sought to 
 gather fresh evidence of the operations of the rationalistic 
 spirit in the great fields of politics and of industry. In the 
 first, I have shown how the movement of secularisation has 
 passed through every department of political life, how the 
 progress of democracy has influenced and been influenced 
 by theological tendencies, and how political pursuits con- 
 tribute to the formation of habits of thought, which affect 
 the whole circle of our judgments. In the second, I have 
 traced the rise of the industrial spirit in Europe ; its colli- 
 sions with the Church ; the profound moral and intellec- 
 tual changes it effected ; and the tendency of the great 
 science of political economyj which is its expression. 
 
 I am deeply conscious that the present work can fur- 
 nish at best but a meagre sketch of these subjects, and that 
 to treat them as they deserve would require an amount 
 both of learning and of ability to which I can make no pre- 
 tension. I shall be content if I have succeeded in detect- 
 ing some forgotten link in the great chain of causes, or in 
 casting a ray of light on some of the obscurer pages of the 
 history of opinions. 
 
co]:frTEi!^TS 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 nxoDuonoH ......... Faf^ & 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DECLINING SENSE OF THE MIRACULOUS. 
 
 ON MAGIO AND "WITOHCEAFT. 
 
 'he Belief ia Satanic Miracles, haying heen nnivorsal among Protestants and Eoman 
 Catholics, passed, away by a silent and nnreasoning process under the influence of 
 Civilisation — ^Witchcraft arose from a viTid Realisation of Satanic Presence acting 
 on the Imagination — and irfterwards on the Reason — Its Existence and Importance 
 among Savages — The Christians attributed to Magic the Pagan Miracles — Constantine 
 and Constantius attempted to subvert Pi^anism by persecuting Magio— -Magical 
 Character soon attributed to Christian Rites — Miracle of St. Hilarion — ^Persecution 
 suspended under Julian and Jovian, but afterwards renewed — Not entirely due to 
 Ecclesiastical Influence — Compromise between Christianity and Paganism — Prohib- 
 ited Pagan Rites continue to be practised as Magic— From the Sixth to the Twelfth 
 Century, extreme Superstition with little Terrorism, and, consequently, little Sorcery 
 —Effects of Eclipses, Comets, and Pestilence on the Superstition — The Cabalists — 
 Psellus — The Revival of Literature in the Twelfth Century produced a Spirit of Re- 
 bellion which was encountered by Terrorism— which, acting on the Popular Creed, 
 produced a bias towards Witchcraft — The Black Death — Influence of the Reforma- 
 tion in stimulating Witchcraft — ^Luther — The Inquisitors — The Theology of Witch- 
 craft — First Evidence of a Rationalistic Spirit in Europe — Wier— answered bv 
 
22 C0J!?TENT8 OF 
 
 Bodin — Eationalistic Spirit fally manifested in Montai^e — Charron — Ka])id and 
 silent Decadence of the Belief in Witches — Opinions and Influence of La Bruydre^ 
 Bayle, Descartes, Malebranche, and Voltaire— Gradual Cessation of the Persecution 
 in Prance — In England, the First Law against Witchcraft was made under Henry 
 YIII. — Repealed in the following Eeign, but renewed under Elizabeth— Cranmer and 
 Jewel — Reginald Scott pronounced Witchcraft a delusion- The Law of James I. — 
 Opinions of Coke, Bacon, Shakespeare, Browne, and Selden— English Witchcraft 
 reached its climax in the Commonwealth— Declined immediately after the Restora- 
 tion—The Three Causes were, the Reaction against Puritanism, the Influence of 
 Hobbes, and the Baconian Philosophy as represented by the Royal Society — Charge 
 of Sir Matthew Hale — Glanvil undertakes the Defence of the Belief— Supported by 
 Henry More, Cudworth, Casaubon, &c. — Opposed by Webster and Wagstaafe— Baxter 
 vainly tries to revive the Belief by Accounts of Witch Trials in America — Rapid 
 Progress of the Scepticism — Trial of Jane Wenham — Repeal of the Laws against 
 Witchcraft — Wesley's Summary of the History of the Movement — Great Moderation 
 of the English Church as compared with Puritanism — Extreme Atrocity of the 
 Witch Persecution in Scotland, and its Causes — Slow Decline of the Belief in Scot- 
 land—Conclusion ........ Page 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DECLINING SENSE OF THE MIRACULOUS. 
 
 THE MIRACLES OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Miracles related by the Fathers and Mediaeval Writers as ordinary and undoubted Occur- 
 rences — Rapid Growth of Scepticism on the Subject since the Reformation — The 
 Sceptical Habit of Mind acts more powerfully on Contemporary than on Historical 
 Narrations — Among the early Protestants, the Cessation of Miracles supposed to 
 have'taken place when the Fathers passed away — Persecution regarded by some Eng- 
 lish Divines as a Substitute for Miracles — Opinions of Locke and Newton on the 
 Subject— Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century adverse to the Miraculous— Middle- 
 ton— Discussion of his Principles by Church, Dodwell, Gibbon, Home, Farmer, War- 
 burton, and Douglas — General Abandonment of the Patristic Miracles — Rise of 
 Tractarianism— Small Place Catholic Miracles occupied in the Discussion it evoked— 
 Weakness of the common Arguments against the continuance of Miracles — ^Devfilop- 
 ment of Continental Protestantian into Rationalism— Rationalistic Tendencies in 
 Roman Catholic Countries— Origin and Decline of the Evidential School in England 
 — ^Modification of the Conception of Miracles — Reasonableness of the Doctrine of 
 Interference — Summary of the Stages of Rationalism in its relation to the Miracu- 
 lous—Its Causes— Its Influence on Christianity .... 155 
 
THE FIRST VOLUME. 23 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 ESTHETIC, SCIENTIFIC. AND MORAL DEVELOPMENTS OP RATIONALISM. 
 
 The Expectation of Miracles grows out of the Religious Conceptions of an early Stage of 
 CiTilisation, and its Decline implies a general Modification of Religions Opinions— 
 Fetishism probably the First Stage of Religious Belief— Examples of Fetish Notions 
 in the Early Church — Patristic Opinions concerning the Cross and the Water of Bap- 
 tism — Anthropomoriihism the next Stage— Men then ascribe the Government of the 
 Universe to Beings like themselves ; but, being unable to concentrate their Attention 
 on the Invisible, they fall into Idolatry — Idolatry a Sign sometimes of Progress, and 
 sometimes of Retrogression— During its continuance, Ai*t is the most faithful Expres- 
 sion of Religious Realisation — Influence of the National Religions on the Art of Per- 
 Bia, Egypt, India, and Greece — The Art of the Catacombs altogether removed from 
 Idolatry — Its Freedom from Terrorism — Its Symbolism — Progress of Anthropomor- 
 phism — Position of the Fii-s. Person of the Trinity in Ai-t— Growing Worship of the 
 Virgin — Strengthened by Gnosticism — by Dogmatic Definitions— by Painting, Celi- 
 bacy, and the Crusades — Its Moral Consequences — Growth of Idolatrous Conceptions 
 — Stages of the Veneiation of Relics— Tendency towards the Miraculous invests 
 Images with peculiar Sanctity — The Portrait of Edessa — The Image at Paneas— Con- 
 version of the Barbarians makes Idolatry general — Decree of lUiberis— The Icono- 
 clasts — The Second Council of Nice— St. Agobard — Mahometanism the sole Example 
 of a great Religion restraining Semi-barbarians from Idolatry — Three Causes of its 
 Success — Low Condition of Art during the Period of MediiEval Idolatry — Difference 
 between tbe Religious and ^Esthetic Sentiment — Aversion to Innovation — Contrast 
 between the Pagan and Christian Estimate of the Body — Greek Idolatry faded into 
 Art — Its Four Stages— A corresponding Transition takes place in Christendom — Greek 
 Influence on Art — Iconoclatm — Tradition of the Deformity of Christ — The Byzantine 
 Style — Broken by a Study of Ancient Sculpture renewed by Nicolas of Pisa— Chris- 
 tian School of Giotto and Fra Angelico — Corresponded with the Intellectual Charac- 
 ter of the Time — Influence of Dante — Apocalyptic Subjects— Progress of Teirorism 
 In Art — Increase of Scepticism — Religious Paintings regarded simply as Studies of the 
 Beautiful — Influence of Venetian Sensuality— Sensuality favourable to Art — Parallel 
 of Titian and Praxiteles — Influence of the Pagan Sculpture — History of Greek 
 Statues after the rise of Chi-iatianity — Reaction in favour of Spiiitualism led by Savo- 
 narola — Complete Secularisation of Art by Michael Angelo — Cycle of Painting com- 
 pleted — ^A corresponding Transition took place in Architecture — Fluctuations in the 
 Estimate in which it has been held represent Fluctuations of Religious Sentiments — 
 Decline of Gothic Architecture — Brunelleschi— St. Peter's— Intellectual Importance 
 of the History of Art— The Euthanasia of Opinions— Continued Revolt against An- 
 thropomorphism — Results from the Totality of the Influences of Civilisation, but es- 
 pecially from thi Encroachments of Physical Science on the old Conceptions of the 
 Government of the Universe — In the Early Church, Science was subordinated tc 
 
24 CONTENTS OF 
 
 Systems of Scriptural Interpretation — Allegorical School of Ori^en — St. Augustine Ve 
 (renesi — Literal School — Conti'ovcrsy ahout the Antipodes— Cosmas — Virgilius — Else 
 of the Coperniean System — Condemnation of Foscarini and of Galileo — Influence of 
 Theology on the Progress of Science — Opinion of Bacon — Astronomy displaces the 
 Ancient Notion of Man''s Position in the Universe — Philosophical Importance of As- 
 trology — Ecfntation by Geology of the Doctrine of the Penal Nature of Death — In- 
 creasing Sense of Law — Reasons why apparently Capricious Phenomena were es- 
 pecially associated with Religious Ideas — On Lots — Irreligious Character attributed 
 to Scientific Explanations— Difference between the Conception of the Divinity in a 
 Scientific and Unscientific Age — Growth of Astronomy — Comets — Influence of Para- 
 celsus, Bayle, and Halley— Rise of Scientific Academies — Ascendency of the Belief in 
 Law — Ilarsher Features of Theology thereby corrected — The Morphological Theory 
 of the Universe — Its Influence on History — Illegitimate Effects of Science — Influence 
 on Biblical Interpretation — La Peyrere — Spinoza — Kant — Lessing — Moral Develop- 
 ment accompanies the Intellectual Movement — Illustrations of its Nature — Moral 
 Genius — Relations of Theology to Morals — Complete Separation in Antiquity — Origi- 
 nality of the Moral Type of Christianity — Coneeptions of the Divinity — Evanescencr 
 of Duties unconnected with our Moral Nature — History of Religious Terrorism- 
 Patristic Conception of Hell — Origen and Gregory of Nyesa — Faint Notions of the 
 Jews and Heathens on the Subject— Doctrine of Purgatory — Scotus Erigena — Ex- 
 treme Terrorism of the Fourteenth Century — ^Destruction of Natural Religion hj the 
 Conception of Hell — Its Effect in habituating Men to contemplate the kSafferings of 
 others with complacency — Illustration of this from Tertullian — and from the History 
 of Persecution — Mid from that of Torture — Abolition of Torture in France, Spain, 
 Prussia, Italy, and Russia — Relations between the prevailing Sense of the Enormity 
 of Sin and the Severity of the Penal Code — Decline of the Mediaeval Notions of Hell 
 due partly to the Progress of Moral Philosophy, and partly to that of Psychology — 
 Apparitions and the Belief in Hell the Comer-stones of the Psychology of the Fathers 
 — Repudiation of Platonism— Two Schools of Materialism— Materialism of the Middle 
 Ages — Impulse given to Psychology by Averroes — and by the Mystics of the Four- 
 teenth Century — Descartes — Swinden, "WTiiston, Horbery — Change in the Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Typo of Character— Part taken by Theologians in ameliorating the English Penal 
 Code— First Impulse due to Voltaire and Beccaria — Bentham — Elimination of the 
 Doctrine of Future Torture from Eeligious Realisations . Page 203 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 ON PERSECUTION. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE ANTECEDENTS OP PEESECTJTION. 
 
 Persecution is the result, not of the personal Character of the Persecutors, but of the 
 Principles they profess — Foundations of all Eeligious Systems are the Sense of Virtue 
 and the Sense of Sin— Political and Intellectual Circumstances determine in each 
 
THE FIEST VOLUME. 25 
 
 System their relative Importance — These Sentiments gradually converted into Dog- 
 mas, nnder the Names of Justification by "Works and Justification by Faith — Bog 
 mas unfaithful Expressions of Moral Sentiments — ^The Conception of Hereditai^ 
 Guilt — Theories to account for it — The Progress of Democratic Habits destroys it- 
 Its dogmatic Expression the Doctrine that all Men are by Nature doomed to Damna- 
 tion — Unanimity of the Fathers concerning the Non-salvability of unbaptised Tn- 
 fiints — Divergence concerning their Fate— The Greek Fathers believed in a Limbo — 
 The Latin Fathers denied this — ^Augustine, Fulgentius — Origen associates the Doc- 
 trine with that of Pre-existence — Pseudo-baptisms of the Middle Ages — The Refor- 
 mation produced conilicting Tendencies on the subject, diminishing the Sense of thn 
 Efficacy of Ceremonies, increasing that of imputed Guilt — The Lutherans and Cal 
 vinists hold a Doctrine that was less superstitious but more revolting than that of Ca- 
 tholicism — Jonathan Edward& — Dogmatic Character of early Protestantism — Ration- 
 alism appeared with Socinus — Antecedents of Italian Rationalism — Socinus rejects 
 Original Sin — as also does Zuinglius — Rationalistic Tendencies of this Reformer — 
 Rapid Progress of his View of Baptism — ^The Scope of the Doctrine of the Condem- 
 nation of all Men extends to Adults — Sentiments of the Fathers on the Damnation 
 of the Heathen — Great Use of this Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation in consolidating 
 the Power of the Church — and in abbreviating the Paroxysms of the Reformatioh— 
 The Protestants almost all accepted it — Protest of Zuinglius — Opposition between 
 Dogmatic and Natural Religion resulting from the Doctrine — Influence on Predesti- 
 narianism — Augustine — Luther De Ser^o ArMtrio — Calvin and Beza — Injurious In- 
 fluence of the Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation on Morals — ^and on the Benso of Truth 
 — ^Pious Frauds — Total Destruction in the Middle Ages of the Sense of Truth result- 
 ing from the Influence of Theology — The Classes who were most addicted to False- 
 hood proclaimed Credulity a Virtue — Doctrine of Probabilities of Pascal and Craig — 
 Revival of the Sense of Truth due to Secular Philosophers of the Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury — Causes of the Influence of Bacon, Descartes, and Locke -The Decline of Theo- 
 logical Belief a necessary Antecedent of their Success . . . Page 858 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 ON THE DEOLIOTNG SENSE OF THE MIEAOULOUS, 
 
 MAGIC AND WITCHOKAPT. 
 
 Thbeb is certainly no change in the history of the last 
 300 years more striking, or suggestive of more curious 
 enquiries, than that which has taken place in the estimate of 
 the miraculous. At present, nearly all educated men receive 
 an account of a mii-acle taking place in their own day, with 
 an absolute and even derisive incredulity which dispenses 
 with all examination of the evidence. Although they may 
 be entirely unable to give a satisfactory explanation of some 
 phenomena that have taken place, they never on that account 
 dream of ascribing them to supernatural agency, such an 
 hypothesis being, as they believe, altogether beyond the 
 range of reasonable discussion. Yet, a few centuries ago, 
 there was no solution to which the mind of man turned more 
 readily in every perplexity. A miraculous account was then 
 universally accepted as perfectly, credible, probable, and 
 ordinary. There was scarcely a village or a church that had 
 not, at some time, been the scene of supernatural interposi- 
 
28 EATIONALISM EST EUEOPK, 
 
 tion. The powers of light and the powers of darkness were 
 regarded as visibly struggling for the mastery. Saintly 
 miracles, supernatural cures, startling judgments, visions, 
 prophecies, and ].rodigies of every order, attested the activ- 
 ity of the one, while witchcraft and magic, with all their 
 attendant horrors, were the visible manifestations of the 
 other. 
 
 I propose in the present chapter to examine that vast 
 department of miracles, which is comprised under the several 
 names of witchcraft, magic, and sorcery. It is a subject 
 which has, I think, scarcely obtained the position it deserves 
 in the history of opinions, having been too generally treated 
 in the spirit of the antiquarian, as if it belonged entirely to 
 the past, and could have no voice or bearing upon the con- 
 troversies of the present. Yet, for more than fifteen hundred 
 years, it was universally believed that the Bible established, 
 in the clearest manner, the reality of the crime, and that an 
 amount of evidence, so varied and so ample as to preclude 
 the very possibility of doubt, attested its continuance and its 
 prevalence. The clergy denounced it with all the emphasis 
 of authority. The legislators of almost every land enacted 
 laws for its punishment. Acute judges, whose lives were 
 spent in sifting evidence, investigated the question on count- 
 less occasions, and condemned the accused. Tens of thou- 
 sands of victims perished by the most agonising and pro- 
 tracted torments, without exciting the faintest compassion ; 
 aiici, as they were for the most part extremely ignorant and 
 extremely poor, sectarianism and avarice had but little 
 influence on the subject.' Nations that were completely 
 
 ' The general truth of this statement can scarcely, I think, be questioned, 
 though there are, undoubtedly, a few remarkable exceptions. Thus the 
 Templars were accused of sorcery, when Philip the Beautiful wished to con- 
 
MAGIC AND WrrOHCEAFT. 29 
 
 separated by position, by interests, and by character, on tliis 
 one question were united. In almost every province of 
 Germany, but especially in those where clerical influence 
 predominated, the persecution raged with a fearful intensity. 
 Seven thousand victims are said to have been burned at 
 Treves, six hundred by a single bishop of Bamberg, and 
 eight hundred in a single year in the bishopric of Wtlrtz- 
 burg.' In France, decrees were passed on the subject by the 
 Parliaments of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rheims, Rouen, 
 Dijon, and Rennes, and they were all followed by a harvest 
 of blood. At Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four 
 hundred persons perished for sorcery at a single execution, 
 and fifty at Douay in a single year. Remy, a judge of 
 Nancy, boasted that he had put to death eight hundred 
 witches in sixteen years. The executions that took place at 
 
 fisoate their property ; and the heretical opinions of the Vaudois may possibly 
 have had something to say to the trials at Arras, in 1459 ; and, indeed, the 
 name Vauderie was at one time given to sorcery. There were, moreover, a few 
 cases of obnoxious politicians and noblemen being destroyed on the accusation ; 
 and during the Commonwealth there were one or two professional witch-findera 
 in England. We have also to take into account some cases of convent scandals, 
 such as those of Gauffridi, Grandier, and La Cadi^re; but, when all these 
 deductions have been made, the prosecutions for witchcraft will represent the 
 action of undiluted superstition more faithfully than probably any others that 
 could be named. The overwhelming majority of witches were extremely poor ; 
 they were condemned by the highest and purest tribunals (ecclesiastical and 
 lay) of the time ; and as heretics were then burnt without difficulty for their 
 opinions, there was little temptation to accuse them of witchcraft, and besides 
 all parties joined cordially in the persecution. Grillandus, an Italian inquisitor 
 of the fifteenth century, says — ' Isti sortilegi, magici, necromantici, et similes 
 sunt ceteris Ghristi fidelibus pauperiores, sordidiores, viliores, et contemptibi- 
 liores, in hoc mundo Deo permittente calamitosam vitam communiter peragunt, 
 Deum verum iiifelici morte perdunt et eetemi ignis incendio criiciantur.' (De 
 Boriilegiis, cap. iii.) We shall see hereafter that witchcraft and heresy repre- 
 sent the working of the same spirit on different classes, and, therefore, usually 
 accompanied each other. 
 
 ' Wright's Sorcery, vol. i. p. 186 ; Michelet, La Sorciefe, p. 10. 
 
30 EATIONAIISM IN ETJEOPE. 
 
 Paris in a few months were, in the emphatic words of an 
 old writer, ' almost infinite.' ' The fngitives who escaped to 
 Spain were there seized and burned by the Inquisition. In 
 that country the persecution spread to the smallest towns, 
 and the belief was so deeply rooted in the popular mind, that 
 a sorcerer was burnt as late as 1780. Torquemada devoted 
 himself to the extirpation of witchcraft as zealously as to the 
 extirpation of heresy, and he wrote a book upon the enormity 
 of the crime.'' In Italy, a thousand persons were executed in 
 
 ' On French witchcraft, see Thiers' Traiti des Superstitions, torn. i. pp. 
 134-136 ; Madden's History of Phantoamata, vol. i. pp. 306-310 ; Garinet, 
 Histoire de la Magie en France, passim, but especially the Remonstrance of 
 the Parliament of Rouen, in le'ZO, against the pardon of witches, p. 337 ; 
 Bodin's Demonomanie des Borders. The persecution raged with extreme 
 violence all through the south of France. It was a brilliant suggestion of De 
 Lancre, that the witchcraft about Bordeaux might be connected with the 
 number of orchards — the Devil being well known to have an especial power 
 over apples. (See the passage quoted in Garinet, p. 176.) We have a fearful 
 illustration of the tenacity of the belief in the fact that the superstition still 
 continues, and that blood has in consequence been shed during the present 
 century in the provinces that border on the Pyrenees. In 1807, a beggar was 
 seized, tortured, and burned alive for sorcery by the inhabitants of Mayenne. 
 In 1850, the Civil Tribunal of Tarbes tried a man and woman named Soubervie, 
 for having caused the death of a woman named Bedouret. They believed that 
 she was a witch, and declared that the priest had told them that she was the 
 cause of an illness under which the woman Soubervie was suffering. They 
 accordingly drew Bedouret into a private room, held her down upon some 
 burning straw, and placed a red-hot iron across her mouth. The unhappy 
 woman soon died in extreme agony. The Soubervies confessed, and indeed 
 exulted in their act. At their trials they obtained the highest possible charac- 
 ters. It was shown that they had been actuated solely by superstition, and it 
 was urged that they only followed the highest ecclesiastical precedents. The 
 jury recommended them to mercy ; and they were only sentenced to pay twenty- 
 five francs a year to the husband of the victim, and to be imprisoned for four 
 months. (Cordier, Legendes des Hautes-Pyrenees. Lourdes, 1855, pp. 79-88 ) 
 [n the Rituel Ausciiain, now used in the diocese of Tarbes, it is said — ' On doit 
 teconnaitre que non seulement il pent y avoir, mais qu'il y a m6me quelquefoia 
 des personnes qui sont v^ritablement possedees des esprits malins.' (Ibid, 
 p. 90.) 
 
 ' Uorente, History •>/ the Inquisition (English Translation), pp. 129-142. 
 
MAGIO AND WTTCHOEAFT. 31 
 
 a single year in the province of Como ; and in other parts of 
 the country, the severity of the inquisitors at last created an 
 absolute rebellion.' The same scenes were enacted in the 
 wild valleys of Switzerland and of Savoy. In Geneva, which 
 was then ruled by a bishop, five hundred alleged witches 
 were executed in three months; forty-eight were burnt at 
 Constance or Ravensburg, and eighty in the little town of 
 Valery, in Savoy.' In 1670, seventy persons were condemn- 
 ed in Sweden,' and a large proportion of them were burnt. 
 And these are only a few of the more salient events in that 
 long series of persecutions which extended over almost every 
 country, and continued for centuries with unabated fury. The 
 Church of Rome proclaimed in every way that was in her 
 power the reality and the continued existence of the crime. 
 
 Amongst other cases, more than thirty women were burnt at Oalahorra, in 
 ] 507. A Spanish monk, named Castanaga, seems to have ventured to question 
 the justice of the executions as early as 1529 (p. 131). See also Garinet, p. 
 176; Madden, vol. i. pp. 311-315. Toledo was supposed to be the head- 
 quarters of the magicians, probably because, in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, mathematics, which were constantly confounded with magic, flourish- 
 ed there more than in any other part of Europe. Naude, Apologiepour les 
 Grands Hommes soupfonnez de Magie (Paris, 1625), pp. 81, 82. See also 
 Buckle's History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 334, note, and Simancas, De Catlw- 
 lieis Instituiioidbus, pp. 463-468. 
 
 ■ Spina, De Strigihus (1522), cap. xii. ; Thiers, vol. i. p. 138 ; Madden, vol. 
 i. p. 305. Peter the Martyr, whom Titian has immortalised, seems to have 
 been one of the most strenuous of the persecutors. Spina, Apol., c. ix. 
 
 '•' Madden, vol. i. pp. 303, 304. Miohelet, La Sorciere, p. 206. Sprenger 
 ascribes Tell's shot to the assistance of the devil. Mall. Mai., pars ii. c. xvi. 
 Savoy has always been especially subject to those epidemics of madness which 
 were once ascribed to witches, and Boguet noticed that the principal wizards 
 he had burnt were from that country. An extremely curious account of a 
 recent epidemic of this kind in a little village called Morzines will be found in 
 Une Relation sur une Epidkiiie d^ Ilystero-Demonopaihie en 1861, par le Docteur 
 A. Constans (Paris, 1863). Two French writers, Alain Kardec and Mirville, 
 have maintained this epidemic to be supernatural. 
 
 ' Compare Plancey, Diet. Infernale, art. Blokula ; Hutchinson on Witch- 
 craft, p. 55 ; Madden, vol. i. p. 354. 
 
32 EATIONALISM JS BUEOPE. 
 
 She strained every nerve to stimulate the persecution. She 
 taught by all her organs that to spare a witch was a direct 
 insult to the Almighty, and to her ceaseless exertions is to be 
 attributed by far the greater proportion of the blood that 
 was shed. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull which 
 gave a fearful impetus to the persecution, and helt was who 
 commissioned the Inquisitor Sprenger, whose boot was long 
 the recognised manual on the subject, and who is said to 
 have condemned hundreds to death every year. Similar 
 bulls were issued by Julius II. in 1504, and by Adrian VI. in 
 1523. A long series of Provincial Councils asserted the 
 existence of sorcery, and anathematised those who resorted 
 to it. ' The universal practice of the Church was to place 
 magic and sorcery among the reserved cases, and at prones 
 to declare magicians and sorcerers excommunicated ;' ' and a 
 form of exorcism was solemnly inserted in the ritual. Almost 
 all the great works that were written in favour of the execu- 
 tions were written by ecclesiastics. Almost all the lay works 
 on the same side were dedicated to and sanctioned by eccle- 
 siastical dignitaries. Ecclesiastical tribunals condemned 
 thousands to death, and countless bishops exerted all their 
 influence to multiply the victims. In a word, for many 
 centuries it was universally believed, that the continued 
 existence of witchcraft formed an integral part of the teach- 
 ing of the Church, and that the persecution that raged 
 through Europe was supported by the whole stress of her 
 infallibility.' 
 
 ' Thiers, Superst., vol. i. p. 142. 
 
 " For ample evidence of the teaching of Catholicism on the subject, see 
 Madden's History of Fhant., Tol. i. pp. 234-248 ; Des Mousseaux, Fratiqv.es 
 des Demons (Paris, 1854), pp. 174-1 '7'? ; Thiers' Superst, torn. i. pp. 138-168. 
 The two last-mentioned writers were ardent Catholics. Thiers, who wrote in 
 16Y8 (I have used the Paris edition of IMl), was a very learned and moderate 
 
MAGIO AND ■WrrCHCEMTT. S3 
 
 Such was the attitude of the Church of Rome with ref- 
 erence to this subject, hut on this ground the Reformers had 
 no conflict with their opponents. The credulity which Lu- 
 ther manifested on all matters connected with diabolical in- 
 tervention, was amazing, even for his age; and, when speak- 
 ing of witchcraft, his language was emphatic and unhesi- 
 tating. ' I would have no compassion on these witches,' he 
 exclaimed, 'I would burn them all!" In England the es- 
 tablishment of the Reformation was the signal for an imme-, 
 diate outburst of the superstition ; and there, as elsewhere, 
 its decline was represented by the clergy as the direct con- 
 sequence and the exact measure of the progress of religious 
 scepticism. In Scotland, where the Reformed ministers ex- 
 ercised greater influence than in any other country, and 
 where the witch trials fell almost entirely into their hands, 
 the persecution was proportionately atrocious. Probably 
 the ablest defender of the belief was Glanvil, a clergyman 
 of the English Establishment ; and one of the most influen- 
 tial was Baxtej:,_the greatest of the Puritans. It spread, 
 with Puritanism, into the New World ; and the executions 
 in Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in the his- 
 
 theologian, and wrote under the approbation of ' the doctors in the facidty of 
 Paris : ' he says — ' On ne sfauroit nier qu'il y ait des magiciens ou dea soroiers 
 (car ces deux mots se prennent ordinairement dans la mSme signification) sans 
 contredire visiblement les saintes lettres, la tradition saor^e et profane, lea lois 
 cauoniques et civiles et I'experience de tons les sifecles, et sans rejeter avec 
 impudence I'autorit^ irrefragable et infaillible de I'Eglise qui lance si souvent 
 les foudres de I'exconamunication contr'eux dans ses Prunes ' (p. 132). So also 
 Garinet — 'Tous lea conciles, tous les synodes, qui se tinrent dans les seize 
 premiers sifecles de I^lise s'elfevent centre les sorciers; tous les ^crivains 
 cccUsiastiques les condamnent avec plus ou moins de sdverite ' (p. 26). The 
 bull of Innocent VIII. is prefixed to the Malleus Malificarum. 
 
 Oolloquia de FascinaUonibus. For the notions of Melanchthon on these 
 subjects, see Baxter's World of Spirits, pp. 126, 121. Calvin, also, when re- 
 modelling the laws of Geneva, left those on witchcraft intact I 
 
34 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 tory of America. The greatest religious leader of the last 
 century ' was among the latest of its supporters. 
 
 If we ask why it is that the world has rejected what waa 
 once so universally and so intensely believed, why a narra- 
 tive of an old woman who had been seen riding on a broom- 
 stick, or who was proved to have transformed herself into a 
 wolf, and to have devoured the flocks of her neighbours, is 
 deemed so entirely incredible, most persons would probably 
 be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It 
 is not because we have examined the evidence and found it 
 insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it does 
 not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of 
 absurdity is so strongly attached to such narrati^'es, that it 
 is difficult even to consider them with gravity. Yet at one 
 time no such improbability was felt, and hundreds of per- 
 sons have been burnt simply on the two grounds I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 When so complete a change takes place in public opinion, 
 it may be ascribed to one or other of two causes. It may 
 be the result of a controversy which has conclusively settled 
 the question, establishing to the satisfaction of all parties a 
 clear preponderance of argument or fact in favour of one 
 opinion, and making that opinion a traism which is accepted 
 by all enlightened men, even though they have not them- 
 selves examined the evidence on which it rests. Thus, if 
 any one in a company of ordinarily educated persons were 
 to deny the motion of the earth, or the circulation of the 
 blood, his statement would be received with derision, though 
 it is probable that some of his audience would be unable to 
 demonstrate the first truth, and that very few of them could 
 give sufficient reasons for the second. They may not them- 
 
 ' Wesley 
 
MAliHC AND WITOHCEAFT. 35 
 
 selves be able to defend their position ; but they are aware 
 that, at certain known periods of history, controversies on 
 those subjects took place, and that known writers then 
 brought forward some definite arguments or experiments, 
 which were ultimately accepted by the whole learned world 
 as rigid and conclusive demonstrations. It is possible, also, 
 for as complete a change to be effected by what is called the 
 spirit of the age. The general intellectual tendencies per- 
 vading the literature of a century profoundly modify the 
 character of the public mind. They form a new tone and 
 babit of thought. They alter the measure of probability. 
 They create new attractions and new antipathies, and they 
 eventually cause as absolute a rejection of certain old opin- 
 ions as could be produced by the most cogent and definite 
 arguments. 
 
 That the disbelief in witchcraft is to be attributed to 
 this second class of influences ; that it is the result, not of 
 any series of definite arguments, or of new discoveries, but 
 of a gradual, insensible, yet profound modification of the 
 habits of thought prevailing in Europe ; that it is, thus, a 
 direct consequence of the progress of civilisation, and of its 
 influence upon opinions ; must be evident to any one who 
 impartially investigates the question. If we ask what new 
 arguments were discovered during the decadence of the be- 
 lief, we must admit that they were quite inadequate to ac- 
 count for the change. All that we can say of the unsatis- 
 factory nature of confessions under torture, of the instances 
 of imposture that were occasionally discovered, of the ma- 
 licious motives that may have actuated some of the ac- 
 cusers, might have been said during the darkest periods of 
 the ■ middle ages. The multiplication of books and the in- 
 crease of knowledge can have added nothing to these ob- 
 
36 RATIONALISM IN ETJEOPE. 
 
 vious arffuraents. Those who lived when the evidences of 
 witchcraft existed in profusion, and attracted the attention 
 of all classes and of all grades of intellect, must surely have 
 been as competent judges as ourselves, if the question was 
 merely a question of evidence. The gra dual cessation of 
 the accusations was the consequence, and not the c aase,-of 
 the scepticism. The progress of medical knowledge may 
 have had considerable influence on the private oijinions of 
 some writers on the subject, but it was never influential 
 upon the public mind, or made the battle-ground of the con- 
 *^roversy. Indeed, the philosophy of madness is mainly due 
 to Pinel, who wrote long after the superstition had van- 
 ished ; and even if witchcraft had been treated as a dis-ease, 
 this would not have destroyed the belief that it was Satanic, 
 in an age when all the more startling diseases were deemed 
 supernatui-al, and when theologians maintained that Satan 
 frequently acted by the employment of natural laws. One 
 discovery, it is true, was made during the discussion, which 
 attracted great attention, and was much" insisted on by the 
 opponents of the laws against sorcery. It was, that the 
 word translated 'witch' in the Levitical condemnation may 
 be translated ' poisoner.' ' This discovery in itself is, how- 
 ever, obviovisly insuflicient to account for the change. It 
 does not affect the enormous mass of evidence of the work- 
 ings of witchcraft, which was once supposed to have placed 
 the belief above the possibility of doubt. It does not aflfect 
 such passages as the history of the witch of Endor, or of the 
 demoniacs in the New Testament, to which the believers in 
 
 ' This was first, I believe, asserted by Wier. In England it was much 
 maintained during the reign of Charles II. The other side of the question 
 was supported on the Continent by Bodin, and In England by Glanvil, More, 
 Casaubon. &o , , . 
 
MAGIC AND WITOHOEAFT. 61 
 
 witchcraft triumphantly appealed. Assuming the existence 
 of witches — assuming that there were really certain persons 
 who were constantly engaged in inflicting, by diabolical 
 agency, every form of evil on their neighbours, and whose 
 machinations destroyed countless lives — there can be no 
 doubt that these persons should be punished with death, 
 altogether irrespectively of any distinct command. The 
 truth is, that the existence of witchcraft was disbelieved be- 
 fore the scriptural evidence of it was questioned. A disbe- 
 lief in ghosts and witches was one of the most prominent 
 chai-acteristics of scepticism in the seventeenth century. At 
 first it was nearly confined to men who were avowedly free- 
 thinkers, but gradually it spread over a wider circle, and 
 included almost all the educated, with the exception of a 
 large proportion of the clergy. This progress, however, 
 Was not effected by any active propagandism. It is not 
 identified with any great book or with any famous writer. 
 It was not the triumph of one series of arguments over an- 
 other. On the contrary, no facts are more cleai'ly estab- 
 lished in the literature of witchcraft than that the movement 
 was mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible ; that 
 men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they 
 came gradually to look upon it as absurd ; and that this new 
 tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who were 
 least subject to theological influences, and soon spread 
 through the educated laity, and last of all took possession 
 of the clergy. 
 
 It may be stated, I believe, as an invariable truth, that, 
 whenever a religion which rests in a great measuie on a sys- 
 tem of terrorism, and which paints in dark and forcible col- 
 ours the misery of men and the power of evil spirits, is in- 
 tensely realised, it will engender the belief in witchcraft or 
 
38 RATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 magic. The panic which its teachings will create, wih 
 overbalance the faculties of multitudes. The awful images 
 of evil spirits of superhuman power, and of untiring malig- 
 nity, will continually haunt the imagination. They will 
 blend with the illusions of age or sorrow or sickness, and 
 will appear with an especial vividness in the more alarming 
 and unexplained phenomena of nature. 
 
 This consideration will account for the origin of the con- 
 ception of magic in those ages when belief is almost exclu- 
 sively the work of the imagination. At a much later period, 
 the same vivid realisation of diabolical presence will operate 
 powerfully on the conclusions of the reason. We have now 
 passed so completely out of the modes of thought which 
 predominated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 
 we are so firmly convinced of the unreality of witchcraft, 
 that it is only by a strong effort of the imagination that we 
 can realise the position of the defenders of the belief. Yet it 
 is, I think, difficult to examine the subject with impartiality, 
 without coming to the conclusion that the historical evidence 
 establishing the reality of witchcraft is so vast and so varied, 
 that it is impossible to disbelieve it without what, on other 
 subjects, we should deem the most extraordinary rashness. 
 The defenders of the belief, who were often men of great and 
 distinguished talent, maintained that there was no fact in all 
 history more fully attested, and that to reject it would be to 
 strike at the root of all historical evidence of the miraculous. 
 The belief implied the continual occurrence of acts of the 
 most extraordinary and impressive character, and of such a 
 nature as to fall strictly within human cognisance. The 
 subject, as we have seen, was examined in tens of thousands 
 of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals 
 which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 39 
 
 age, on the scene and at the time when the alleged acts had 
 taken place, and with the assistance of innumerable sworn 
 witnesses. The judges had no motive whatever to desire the 
 condemnation of the accused ; and, as conviction would be 
 followed by a fearful death, they had the strongest motives 
 to exercise their power with caution and deliberation. The 
 whole force of public opinion was directed constantly and 
 earnestly to the question for many centuries ; and, although 
 there was some controversy concerning the details of witch- 
 craft, the fact of its existence was long considered undoubted. 
 The evidence is essentially cumulative. Some cases may be 
 explained by monomania, others by imposture, others by 
 chance coincidences, and others by optical delusions ; but, 
 when we consider the multitudes of strange statements that 
 were sworn and registered in legal dociiments, it is very dif- 
 ficult to frame a general rationalistic explanation which will 
 not involve an extreme improbability. In our own day, it 
 may be said with confidence, that it would be altogether 
 impossible for such an amount of evidence to accumulate 
 round a conception which had no substantial basis in fact. 
 The ages in which witchcraft flourished were, it is true, 
 grossly credulous ; and to this fact we attribute the belief, 
 yet we do not reject their testimony on all matters of secular 
 history. If we considered witchcraft probable, a hundredth 
 part of the evidence we possess would have placed it be- 
 yond the region of doubt. If it were a natural but a very 
 improbable fact, our reluctance to believe it would have 
 been completely stifled by the multiplicity of the proofs. 
 
 Now, it is evident that the degree of improbability we 
 attach to histories of witches, will depend, in a great meas- 
 ure, upon our doctrine concerning evil spirits, and upon the 
 degree in whicn that doctrine is realised. If men lelievo 
 
40 KATIONAiISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 that invisible beings, of superhuman power, restless activity, 
 and intense malignity, are perpetually haunting the world, 
 and directing all their energies to the temptation and the 
 persecution of mankind ; if they believe that, in past ages, 
 these spirits have actually governed the bodily functions of 
 men, worked miracles, and foretold future events, — if all 
 this is believed, not with the dull and languid assent of cus- 
 tom, but with an intensely realised, living, and operative as- 
 surance ; if it presents itself to the mind and imagination as 
 a vivid truth, exercising that influence over the reason, and 
 occupying that prominence in the thoughts of men, which 
 its importance would demand, the antecedent improbability 
 of witchcraft would appear far less than if this doctrine was 
 rejected or was unrealised. When, therefore, we find a 
 growing disposition to reject every history which involves 
 diabolical intervention as intrinsically absurd, independently 
 of any examination of the evidence on which it rests, we 
 may infer from this fact the declining realisation of the doc- 
 trine of evil spirits. 
 
 These two considerations will serve, I think, to explain 
 the history of witchcraft, and also to show its great signifi- 
 cance and importance as an index of the course of civilisa- 
 tion. To follow out the subject into details would require a 
 far greater space than I can assign to it, but I hope to be 
 able to show, sufficiently, what have been the leading phases 
 through which the belief has passed. 
 
 In the ruder forms of savage life, we find the belief in 
 witchcraft universal,' and accompanied, in most instances, 
 by features of peculiar atrocity. The reason of this is ob 
 vious. Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion. 
 
 ' On the uniTersality of the belief, see Herder, Philosophy of History, b, 
 viii. c. 2 ; Maury, Histoire de M^gie, passim. 
 
MAGIC AND WITOHOEAFT. 41 
 
 The phenomena which impress themselves most forcibly on 
 the mind of the savage are not those which enter manifestly 
 into the sequence of natiiral laws and which are productive 
 of most beneficial effects, but those which are disastrous and 
 apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid than fear, and 
 the smallest apparent infraction of a natural law produces a 
 deeper impression than the most sublime of its ordinary oper- 
 ations. When, therefore, the more startling and terrible 
 aspects of nature are presented to his mind, when the more 
 deadly forms of disease or natural convulsion desolate his 
 land, the savage derives from these things an intensely 
 realised perception of diabolical presence. In the darkness 
 of the night ; amid the yawning chasms and the wild echoes 
 of the mountain gorge ; under the blaze of the comet, or the 
 solemn gloom of the eclipse ; when famine has blasted the 
 land; when the earthquake and the pestilence have slaugh- 
 tered their thousands ; in every form of disease which refracts 
 and distorts the reason ; in all that is strange, portentous, 
 and deadly, he feels and cowers before the supernatural. 
 Completely exposed to all the influences of nature, and com- 
 pletely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its 
 various parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems 
 the direct and isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them 
 continually near him, he will naturally endeavour to enter 
 into communion with them. He will strive to propitiate 
 them with gifts. If some great calamity has fallen upon 
 him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason, 
 he will attempt to invest himself with their authority ; and 
 his excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has 
 succeeded in his desire. If his abilities and his ambition 
 place him above the common level, he will find in this belief 
 the most ready path to power. By professing to hold com- 
 
42 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 munion with and to control supernatural beings, he can ex- 
 ercise an almost boundless influence over those about him _ 
 and, among men who are intensely predisposed to believe in 
 the supernatural, a very little dexterity or acquaintance with 
 natural laws will support his pretensions. By converting 
 tlie terror which some great calamity has produced into 
 anger against an alleged sorcerer, he can at the same time 
 take a signal vengeance upon those who have offended him, 
 and increase the sense of his own importance. Those whoso 
 habits, or appearance, or knowledge, separate them from the 
 multitude, will be naturally sus]3ected of communicating 
 with evil spirits ; and this suspicion will soon become a cer- 
 tainty, if any mental disease should aggravate their peculi- 
 arities. In this manner the influences of ignorance, imagina- 
 tion, and imposture will blend and cooperate in creating a 
 belief in witchcraft, and in exciting a hatred against those 
 who are suspected of its practice, commensurate with the 
 terror they inspire. 
 
 In a more advanced stage of civilisation, the fear of 
 witches will naturally fade, as the habits of artificial life 
 remove men from those influences which act upon the imagi- 
 nation, and as increasing knowledge explains some of the 
 more alarming phenomena of nature. The belief, however, 
 that it is possible, by supernatural agency, to inflict evil 
 u])on mankind, was general in ancient Greece and Rome ; 
 and St. Augustine assures us that all the sects of philoso- 
 phers admitted it, with the exception of the Epicureans, 
 who denied the existence of evil spirits. The Decemvirs 
 passed a law condemning magicians to death. A similar 
 law was early enacted in Greece; and, in the days of Demos- 
 thenes, a sorceress named Lemia was actually executed.' 
 
 \ Garinet, pp. 13, 14. 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 43 
 
 The phil osophy of PlatOj_Jbx. greatly aggrandising the 
 sphere of the spiritual, did_ much to foster the belief; and 
 we find that whenever, either before or after the Christian 
 era, that philosophy has been in the ascendant, it has been 
 accompanied by a tendency to magic. Besides this, the an- 
 cient civilisations were never directed earnestly to the inves- 
 tigation of natural phenomena ; and the progress made in 
 this respect was, in consequence, very small. On the whole, 
 however, the persecution seems to have been, in those coun- 
 tries, almost entirely free from religious fanaticism. The 
 magician was punished because he injured man, and not be- 
 cause he offended God. 
 
 In one respect, during the later period of Pagan Rome, 
 the laws against magic seem to have revived, and to have 
 taken a somewhat different form, without, however, repre- 
 senting any phase of a religious movement, but simply a po- 
 litical requirement. Under the head of magic were com- 
 prised some astrological and other methods of foretelling 
 the future ; and it was found that these practices had a 
 strong tendency to foster conspiracies against the emperors. 
 The soothsayer often assured persons that they were des- 
 tined to assume the purple, and in that wg,y stimulated them 
 to rebellion. By casting the horoscope of the reigning em- 
 peror, he had ascertained, according to the popular belief, 
 the period in which the government might be assailed with 
 most prospect of success ; and had thus proved a constant 
 cause of agitation. Some of the forms of magic had, also, 
 been lately imported into the empire from Greece ; and were 
 therefore repugnant to the conservative spirit that was 
 dominant. Several of the emperors, in consequence, passed 
 edicts against the magicians, which were executed with 
 
M RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 considerable though somewliat spasmodic energy.' But al- 
 though magicians were occasionally persecuted, it is not to 
 be inferred from this that everything that was comprised 
 under the nami^ of magic was considered morally wrong. 
 On the contrary, many of the systems of divination formed 
 an integral part of religion. Some of the more public 
 modes of foretelling the future, such as the oracles of the 
 gods, were still retained and honoured ; and a law, which 
 made divination concerning the future of the emperor high 
 treason, shows clearly the spirit in which the others were 
 suppressed. The emperors desired to monopolise the knowl- 
 edge of the future, and consequently drew many astrologers 
 to their courts, while they banished them from other parts 
 of the kingdom." They were so far from attaching the idea 
 of sacrilege to practices which enabled them to foretell 
 coming events, that Marcus Aurelius and Julian, who were 
 both passionately attached to their religion, and who were 
 among the best men who have ever sat upon a throne, were 
 among the most ardent of the patrons of the magicians. 
 
 Such was the somewhat anomalous position of the magi- 
 cians in the last days of Pagan Rome, and it acquii-es a 
 great interest from its bearing on the policy of the Christian 
 emperors. 
 
 "When the Christians were first scattered through the 
 Roman empire, they naturally looked upon this question with 
 a very different spirit from that of the heathen. Inspired 
 by an intense religious enthusiasm, which they were nobly 
 eealing with their blood, they thought much less of the civil 
 
 ' This very obscure branch of the subject has been most admirably treated 
 by Maury, Histoire de la Magie (Paris, 1860), pp. 78-85. An extremdj 
 learned and able work, from which I have derived great assistance. 
 
 ' Maury, ch. iv. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 4:5 
 
 than of the religious consequences of magic, and sacrilege 
 seemed much more terrible in their eyes than anarchy. Their 
 position, acting upon some of their distinctive doctrines, had 
 filled them with a sense of Satanic presence, which must have 
 shadowed every portion of their belief, and have predisposed 
 tliem to discover diabolical influence in every movement of 
 the pagan. The fearful conception of eternal punishment, 
 adopted in its most material form, had flashed with its full 
 intensity upon their minds. They believed that this was the 
 destiny of all who were beyond the narrow circle of their 
 Church, and that their persecutors were doomed to agonies 
 of especial poignancy. The whole world was divided be- 
 tween the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. The 
 persecuted Church represented the first, the persecuting 
 world the second. In every scofi" that was directed against 
 their creed, in every edict that menaced their persons, in 
 every interest that opposed their progress, they perceived 
 the direct and immediate action of the devil. They found a 
 great and ancient religion subsisting around them. Its gor- 
 geous rites, its traditions, its priests, and its miracles had 
 preoccupied the public mind, and presented what seemed at 
 first an insuperable barrier to their mission. In this religion 
 they saw the especial workmanship of the devil, and their 
 strong predisposition to interpret every event by a miracu- 
 lous standard, persuaded them that all its boasted prodigies 
 were real. Nor did they find any difficulty in explaining 
 them. The world they believed to be full of malignant 
 demons, who had in all ages persecuted and deluded man- 
 kind. From the magicians of Egypt to the demoniacs of the 
 N ew Testament, theii- power had been continually manifested. 
 Ill the chosen land they could only persecute and afflict; but. 
 
46 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 among the heathen, they possessed supreme power, and were 
 universally worshipped as divine. 
 
 This doctrine, which was the natural consequence of the 
 intellectual condition of the age, acting upon the belief in evil 
 spirits, and upon the scriptui-al accounts of diabolical inter- 
 vention, had been still further strengthened by those Platonic 
 theories which, in their Alexandiian form, had so profoundly 
 influenced the early teachings of the Church.' According to 
 these theories, the immediate objects of the devotions of the 
 pagan world were subsidiary spirits of finite power and 
 imperfect morality — angels, or, as they were then called, 
 demons — who acted the part of mediators ; and who, by the 
 permission of the supreme and inaccessible Deity, regulated 
 the religious government of mankind. In this manner, a 
 compromise was effected between monotheism and polythe- 
 ism. The religion of the state was true and lawful, but it 
 was not irreconcilable with pure theism. The Christians had 
 adopted this conception of subsidiary spirits ; but they main- 
 tained them to be not the willing agents, but the adversaries, 
 of the Deity ; and the word demon, which, among the pa- 
 
 ' The Alexandrian or Neo-Platonic school probably owed a great part of its 
 influence over early Christianity to its doctrine of a divine Trinity — the Unity, 
 the Logos, and the energising Spirit — which was thought by some to harmonise 
 with the Christian doctrine. Many persons have believed that Neo-Platonic 
 modes both of thought and expression are reflected in St. John's Gospel. The 
 influence which this school exercised over Christianity forms one of the most 
 remarkable pages in ecclesiasti-ial history. From it the orthodox derived a 
 great part of their metaphysics ; and, in a great measure, their doctrine con- 
 cerning the worship of demons, to which St. Paul was long thought to have 
 alluded. From it the Gnostics, the first important sect of Christian heretics, 
 obtained their central doctrine of the Jilons, which Julian endeavoured to con- 
 solidate into a rival system. On the doctrine of the demons, in its relation to 
 heathen worship, see the chapter QnNeo-Platorusm in Maury, and th^curious 
 argument, based on the Platonic theory, which occupies the greater part of the 
 eighth book of the I>e Civitate Dei. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAIT. 47 
 
 gans, signified only a spirit below the level of a Divinity, 
 among the Christians signified a devil. 
 
 This notion seems to have existed in the very earliest 
 period of Christianity ; and, in the second century, we find it 
 elaborated with most minute and detailed care. Tertullian, 
 who wrote in that century, assures us that the worlSTwas full 
 of these evil spirits, whose influence might be descried in 
 every portion of the pagan creed. Some of them belonged 
 to that band of rebels who had been precipitated with Satan 
 into the abyss. Others were the angels who, in the antedi- 
 luvian world, had become attached to the daughters of men; 
 and who, having taught them to dye wool, and to commit 
 the still more fearful offence of painting their faces, had been 
 justly doomed to eternal sufiering.' These were now seeking 
 in every way to thwart the purposes of the Almighty, and 
 their especial delight was to attract to themselves the wor- 
 ship which was due to Him alone. Not only the more 
 immoral deities of heathenism, not only such divinities as 
 Venus, or Mars, or Mercury, or Pluto, but also those who 
 appeared the most pure, were literally and undoubtedly 
 diabolical. Minerva, the personification of wisdom, was a 
 devil, and so was Diana, the type of chastity, and so was 
 Jupiter, the heathen conception of the Most High. The 
 spiiits who were worshipped under the names of departed 
 heroes, and who were supposed to have achieved so many 
 
 ' De Culiu Faminarum, lib. i. c. 2. This curious notion is given on the 
 authority of the prophecy of Enoch, which was thought by some — and Tertul- 
 lian seems to have inclined to their opinion — to be authoritative Scripture. St. 
 Augustine suggests, that the ' angels ' who were attached to the antediluviiins 
 were possibly devils — incubi, as they were called — and that the word angel, in 
 the writings attributed to Enoch, and in all parts of Scripture, signifying only 
 messenger, may be applied to any spirit, good or bad. {De Civ. Dei, lib. xv. 
 cap. 23.) This rule of interpretation had, as we shall see, an important in- 
 fluence on the later theology of witchcraft 
 
4:8 EATIONAIISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 acts of splendid and philanthropic heroism, were all devils 
 who had assumed the names of the dead. The same con 
 demnation was passed upon those bright creations of a poetic 
 fancy, the progenitors of the medijeval fairies, the nymphs 
 and dryads who peopled every grove and hallowed every 
 stream." The air was filled with unholy legions,' and the 
 traditions of every land were replete with their exploits. 
 The immortal lamp, which burnt with an unfading splendour 
 in the temple of Venus; the household gods that were 
 transported by invisible hands through the air ; the miracles 
 which clustered so thickly around the vestal virgins, the 
 oracular shrines, and the centres of Roman power, were all 
 attestations of their presence. Under the names of Sylvans 
 and Fauns, and Dusii, they had not only frequently appeared 
 among mankind, but had made innumerable women the 
 objects of their passion. This fact was so amply attested, 
 that it would be impudence to deny it.^ Persons possessed 
 
 ' Much the same notions were long after held about the fairies. A modern 
 French writer states, that till near the middle of the eighteenth century, a mass 
 was annually celebrated in the Abbey of Poissy, for the preservation of the nuns 
 from their power. (Des Mousseaux, Pratiques des Demons, p. 81.) 
 
 '^ One sect of heretics of the fourth century — the Messalians — went so far as 
 to make spitting a religious exercise, in hopes of thus casting out the devils 
 they inhaled. (Maury, p. SI"/.) 
 
 ' ' Hoc negare impudentise videatur ' (St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. xv. cap. 23). 
 The Saint, however, proceeds to say, ' Non hie aliquid audeo temere definire.' — 
 See also Justin Martyr, Ap. u. v. The same notion was perpetuated through 
 the succeeding ages, and marriage with devils was long one of the most ordi- 
 nary accusations iu the witch trials. The devils who appeared in the female 
 form were generally called succubi, those who appeared like men, incubi 
 (though this distinction was not always preserved). The former were com- 
 paratively rare, but Bodin mentions a priest who had commerce with one for 
 more than forty years, and another priest who found a faithful mistress in a 
 devil for half a century : they were both burnt ahve (^Demonomanie des Sorciers, 
 p. 10*7). Luther was a firm believer in this intercourse {Ibid.), The incubi 
 were much more common ; and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women have 
 been burnt on account of the belief in them. It was observed, that they had a 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 49 
 
 with devils were constantly liberated by the Christians, and 
 tombs of the exorcists have been discovered in the cata- 
 combs.' If a Christian in any respect deviated from the 
 path of duty, a visible manifestation of the devil sometimes 
 appeared to terrify him. A Christian lady, in a fit of 
 thoughtless dissipation, went to the theatre, and at the 
 theatre she became possessed with a devil. The exorcist 
 remonstrated with the evil spirit ou the presumption of its 
 act. The devil replied apologetically, that it had found the 
 
 peculiar attachment to women with beautiful hair ; and it was an old Catholic 
 belief, that St. Paul alluded to this in that somewhat curious passage, in which 
 he exhorts women to cover their heads, because of the ' angels ' (Sprenger, 
 Mall. Mai., Pars i. QuEest. 4 ; and Pars ii. Quaest. 2). The incubi generally 
 had no children, but there were some exceptions to this rule, for Nider the i 
 inquisitor assures us, that the island of Cyprus was entirely peopled by their 
 sons {Mall. Malifi., p. 522). The ordinary phenomenon of nightmare, as the 
 name imports, was associated with this belief (see a curious passage in Bodin, 
 p. 109). The Dusii, whose exploits St. Augustine mentions, were Celtic spirits, j 
 and are the origin of our ' Deuce ' (Maury, p. 189). For the much more cheer- 
 ful views of the Cabalists, aud other secret societies of the middle ages, con 
 oeming the intercourse of philosophers with sylphs, salamanders, &c., see that 
 very curious and amusing book, Le Oomte de Gabalis, ou Mitretienn sur les 
 Sciences Secrites (Paris, 1671). Lilith, the first wife of Adam, concerning 
 whom the Rabbinical traditions are so full, who was said to suck the blood of 
 infants, and from whose name the word lullaby (Lili Abi) is supposed by some 
 to have been derived, was long regarded as the queen of the succubi (Plancey, { 
 Diet. Inf., art. Lilith). The Greeks behoved that nightmare resulted from the 
 presence of a demon named Ephialtes. 
 
 ' There is one of these inscriptions in the Museum at the Lateran, ajid 
 another in the catacomb of St. Callista. In the Church of Rome there is an 
 order of exorcists, whose functions are confined to baptisms ; and with these 
 Mr. Spencer Northcote, in his book on the Catacombs, identifies the ancient 
 inscriptions. I have not done so, because it is quite certain that, in primitive 
 Christianity, the practice of exorcising possessed persons was general; and 
 because Sprenger asserts, that the employment of exorcising at baptisms was 
 not introduced till a later period {Mall. Mai., Pars ii. Qutest. 2). Sprenger 
 does not give his authority, but as he is usually well informed on matters of 
 tradition, aud as he treats the omission as a difficulty, I have adopted his vie^ 
 See also Neander's Hist., vol. ii. p. 370. 
 
50 EATIONALISM IN EUBOPE. 
 
 iVoman m its house.' The rites of paganism had in some 
 degree pervaded all departments of life, and all were there- 
 fore tainted with diabolical influence. In the theatre, in the 
 circus, in the market-place, in all the puhlic festivals, there 
 was something which manifested their presence. A Chris- 
 tian soldier, on one occasion, refused even to wear a festal 
 crown, because laurels had been originally dedicated to 
 Bacchus and Venus; and endured severe punishment rather 
 than comply with the custom. Much discussion was elicited 
 by the transaction, but Tertullian wrote a treatise ' maintain- 
 ing that the martyr had only complied with his strict duty. 
 
 The terror which such a doctrine must have spread among 
 the early Christians may be easily conceived. They seemed 
 to breathe an atmosphere of miracles. Wherever they turn- 
 ed, they were surrounded and beleaguered by malicious 
 spirits, who were perpetually manifesting their presence by 
 supernatural acts. Watchful iiends stood beside every altar; 
 they mingled with every avocation of life, and the Christians 
 were the special objects of their hatred. All this was uni- 
 versally believed ; and it was realised with an intensity 
 which, in this secular age, we can scarcely conceive. It was 
 realised as men realise religious doctrines, when they have 
 devoted to them the undivided energies of their lives, and 
 when their faith has been intensified in the furnace of per- 
 secution. 
 
 ' Tertullian De Speclaculis, cap. xxvi. Another woman, this writer assures 
 lis, having gone to see an actor, dreamed all the following night of a winding 
 sheet, and heard the actor's name ringing, with frightful reproaches, in her 
 ears. To pass to a, much later period, St. Gregory the Great, in the sixth 
 century, mentions a nun who, when walking in a garden, began to eat without 
 making the sign of the cross. She had a bitter cause to repent of her indecent 
 haste, for she immediately swallowed a devil in a lettuce {Dialogi, lib. i. u. 4). 
 The whole passage, which is rather long for quotation, is extremely curious. 
 
 " De Corona. 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCEAFT. 51 
 
 The bearing of this view upon the conception of magic 
 is very obvious. Among the more civilised pagans, as we 
 have seen, magic was mainly a civil, and in the last days of, 
 the empire, mainly a political crime. In periods of great po- 
 litical insecurity, it assumed considerable importance; at 
 other periods it fell completely into the background. Its 
 relation to the prevailing religion was exceedingly indeter- 
 minate, and it comprised many rites that were not regarded 
 as in any degree immoral. In the early Church, on the 
 other hand, it \yas esteemed the most horrible form of sacri- 
 lege, effected by the direct agency of evil spirits. It in- 
 cluded the whole system of paganism,' explained all its 
 prodigies, and gave a fearful significance to all its legends. 
 It assumed, in consequence, an extraordinary importance in 
 the patristic teaching, and acted strongly and continually 
 on the imaginations of the people. 
 
 When the Church obtained the direction of the civil 
 power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims 
 she had formerly inculcated ; and, in the course of a few 
 years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews 
 and against the heretics. It appears, however, that the mul- 
 titude of pagans, in the time of Constantine, was still so 
 great, and the zeal of the emperor so languid, that he 
 at first shrank fi:om directing his laws openly and avowedly 
 against the old faith, and an ingenious expedient was de- 
 vised for sapping it at its base, under the semblance of the 
 ancient legislation. Magic, as I have said, among the Ro- 
 mans, included riot only those appeals to evil spirits, and 
 those modes of inflicting evil on others, which had always 
 been denounced as sacrilegious, but also certain methods of 
 foretelling the future, which were not regarded as morally 
 wrong, but only as politically dangerous. This latter de- 
 
52 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 partment formed an offshoot of the established religiou, and 
 had never been separated from it with precision. The laws 
 had been devised for the purpose of preventing rebellions or 
 imposition, and they had been executed in that spirit. The 
 Christian emperors revived these laws, and enforced them 
 with extreme severity, but directed them against the religion 
 of the pagans." At first, that secret magic which the decem- 
 virs had prohibited, but which had afterwards come into 
 general use, was alone condemned ; but, in the course of a 
 few reigns, the circle of legislation expanded, till it included 
 the whole system of paganism. 
 
 Almost immediately after his conversion, Constantine 
 enacted an extremely severe law against secret magic. He 
 decreed that any aruspex who entered into the house of a 
 citizen, for the purpose of celebrating his rites, should be 
 burnt alive, the property of his employers confiscated, and 
 the accuser rewarded.'' Two years later, however, a procla 
 mation was issued, which considerably attenuated the force 
 of this enactment, for it declared that it was not the inten- 
 tion of the emperor to prohibit magical rites which were 
 designed to discover remedies for diseases, or to protect the 
 harvests from hail, snow, or tempests." 
 
 This partial tolerance continued till the death of Con- 
 stantine, but completely passed away under his successor. 
 Constantius appears to have been governed by far stronger 
 
 ' The history of this movement has been traced with masterly ability by 
 Maury, Sur la Magie, and also by Beuguot, Destruction de Paganisme dans 
 V Occident. 
 
 ^ Codex Tlieodosianus, lib. ix. tit. xvi. c. 1, 2. The pagan historian Zosi- 
 mus observes, that when Constantine had abandoned his country's gods ' he 
 made this beginning of impiety, that he looked with contempt on the art of 
 foreleUing' (lib. ii. c. 29;; and Eusebius classifies his prohibition of prophecy 
 with the measures directed openly against paganism. ( Vita Const., lib. i. c. 16.1 
 
 = Cod. TK lib. ix. t. xvi. 1. 3 
 
MAGIC AND "WITCHCEAFT. 53 
 
 convictions than Ms father. He had embraced the Arian 
 heresy, and is said to have been much influenced by the , 
 Arian priests ; and he directed his laws with a stern and al- 
 most passionate eagerness against the forms of magic which 
 verged most closely upon the pagan worship. At the be- 
 ginning of one of these laws, he complained that many had , 
 been producing tempests and destroying the lives of their / 
 enemies by the assistance of the demons, and he proceeded f 
 to prohibit in the sternest manner, and under pain of the 
 severest penalties, every kind of magic. All who attempted 
 to foretell the future — ^the augurs, as well as the more 
 irregular diviners — were emphatically condemned. Magi- 
 cians who were captured in Rome were to be thrown to the 
 wild beasts ; and those who were seized in the provinces to 
 be put to excruciating torments, and at last crucified. If 
 they persisted in denying their crime, their flesh was to be 
 torn from their bones with hooks of iron.' These fearful 
 penalties were directed against those who practised rites 
 which had long been universal ; and which, if they were not 
 regarded as among the obligations, were, at least, among the 
 highest privileges of paganism. It has been observed as a 
 significant fact, that in this reign the title ' enemies of the 
 human race,' which the old pagan laws had applied to the 
 
 ' Cod. Th., lib. ix. t xvi. 1. 4, 5, 6. The language is curious and very pe- 
 remptory — thus, we read in law 4 : ' Nemo haruspioem consulat, aut mathema- 
 ticum, nemo hariolum. Augurum et vatum prava confessio oontioescat. 
 Chaldsei ae magi et ceteri quos maleficos ob facinorum magnitudinem vulgus 
 appellat, neo ad hanc partem aliquid moliantur. Sileat omnibus perpetuo divi- 
 nandi curiositas : etenim supplicium, capitis feret gladio ultore prostratus qui- 
 cunque jussis obsequium denegaverit.' Another law (6) concludes : ' Si con- 
 victus ad proprium facinus detegentibus repugnaverit pernegando sit eculeo 
 deditus, ungulisque sulcantibus latera perferat poenas propiio dignas facinore.' 
 On the nature of the punishments that were employed, compare the Commen- 
 tary on the law, in Bitter's edition (Leipsic, 1788), and Beugnot. torn. i. p. 143. 
 
54 RATIONALISM IN ECEOPE. 
 
 Christians, and which proved so effectual in exasperating the 
 popular mind, was transferred to the magicians.' 
 
 The task of the Christian emperors in combating magic 
 was, in truth, one of the most difficult that can he con- 
 ceived ; and all the penalties that Roman barbarity could 
 devise, were unable to destroy practices which were the 
 natural consequence of the prevailing credulity. As long as 
 men believed that they could easily ascertain the future, it 
 was quite certain that curiosity would at length overpower 
 fear. As long as they believed that a few simple rites could 
 baffle their enemies, and enable them to achieve their most 
 cherished desires, they would most unquestionably continue 
 to practise them. Priests might fulminate their anathemas, 
 and emperors multiply their penalties ; but scepticism, and 
 not terrorism, was the one corrective for the evil. This 
 scepticism was nowhere to be found. The populace never 
 questioned for a moment the efficacy of magic. The pagan 
 philosophers were all infatuated by the dreams of Neo-Pla- 
 tonism, and were writing long books on the mysteries of 
 Egypt) t^6 hierarchy of spirits, and their intercourse with 
 men. The Fathers, jl is true, vehemently denounced magic, 
 but they never seem to have had the faintest suspicion that it 
 was a delusion. If Christianity had had nothing to oppose 
 to the fascination of these forbidden rites, it would have been 
 impossible to prevent the immense majority of the people 
 from reverting to them ; but, by a very natural process, a 
 
 ' Beugnot, torn. i. p. 148. On these laws, M. Maury well says, 'De la 
 B>rte se trouvaient atteints les minlstres du polythdisme les plus en credit, lea 
 pratiques qui inspiraieut k la superstition le plus de confianee. * « * Bien 
 des gens ne se souciaient plus de rendre aux dieux le eulte l^gal et consaore ; 
 mais les oracles, les augures, les presages, presque tous les paiens y recouraient 
 avec confianee, et leur en enlever la possibUite c'^tait leur d^pouiUer de ce qui 
 faisait lera consolation et leur joie ' (pp. IIY, 118). 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHOEAFT, 55 
 
 series of conceptions were rapidly introduced into theology, 
 which formed what may he tei-med a rival system of magic, 
 in which the talismanic virtues of holy water, and of Chris- 
 tian ceremonies, became a kind of counterpoise to the virtue 
 of unlawful charms. It is very remarkable, however, that, 
 while these sacred talismans were indefinitely multiplied, the 
 other great fascination of magic, the power of predicting the 
 future, was never claimed by the Christian clergy. If the 
 theory of the writers of the eighteenth century had been 
 . correct ; if the superstitions that culminated in medievalism 
 had been simply the result of the knavery of the clergy ; 
 this would most certainly not have been the case. The 
 Christian priests, like all other priests, would have pandered 
 to the curiosity which was universal, and something analo- 
 gous to the ancient oracles or auguries would have been in- 
 corporated into the Church. Nothing of this kind took 
 place, because the change which passed over theology was 
 the result, not of imposture, but of a normal development. 
 No part of Christianity had a tendency to develop into an 
 oracular system; and had such a system arisen, it would 
 have been the result of deliberate fraud. On the other hand, 
 there were many conceptions connected with the faiih, es- 
 pecially concerning the efficacy of baptismal water, which, 
 under the pressure of a materialising age, passed, by an easy 
 and natural, if not legitimate transition, into a kind of fe- 
 tishism, assimilating with the magical notions that were so 
 universally diffused. 
 
 St. Jerome, in his life of St. Hilarion, relates a miracle of 
 1,hat saint which refers to a period a few years after the death 
 of Constantius, and which shows clearly the position that 
 Christian ceremonies began to occupy with reference to 
 magic. It appears that a Christian, named Italicus, was ac- 
 
56 EATIOiSrALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 cxistomed to race horses against the pagan duumvir of Gazaj 
 and that this latter personage invariably gained the victory, 
 by means of magical rites, which stimulated his own horses, 
 and paralysed those of his opponent. The Christian, in de- 
 spair, had recourse to St. Hilarion. The saint appears to 
 have been, at first, somewhat startled at the application, and 
 rather shrank from participating actively in horse-racing ; 
 but Italicus at last psrsuaded him that the cause was worthy 
 of hi3 intervention, and obtained a bowl of water which 
 Hilarion himself had consecrated, and which was, therefore, 
 endowed with a peculiar virtue. At length the day of the 
 races arrived. The chariots were placed side by side, and 
 the spectators thronged the circus. As the signal for the 
 start was given, Italicus sprinkled his horses with the holy 
 water. Immediately the chariot of the Christian flew with 
 a supernatural rapidity to the goal; while the horses of his 
 adversary faltered and staggered, as if they had been struck 
 by an invisible hand. The circus rang with wild cries of 
 wonder, of joy, or of anger. Some called for the death of 
 the Christian magician, but many others abandoned pagan- 
 ism in consequence of the miracle,' 
 
 The persecution which Constantius directed against the 
 magicians was of course suspended under Julian, whose 
 spirit of toleration, when we consider the age he lived in, the 
 provocations he endured, and the intense religious zeal he 
 manifested, is one of the most remarkable facts in history. 
 He was passionately devoted to those forms of magic which 
 the pagan religion admitted, and his palace was always 
 
 ' Vita iSancH Hilarionis. This miracle is related by Beugnot. The whole 
 life of St. Hilarion is crowded with prodigies that illustrate the view taken in 
 Ihe text. Besides curing about two hundred persons in a little more than a 
 month, driving away serpents, &c., we find the saint producing rain with the 
 Same facility as the later witches. 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 57 
 
 thronged with magicians. The consultation of the entrails, 
 which Constantius had forbidden, was renewed at the coro- 
 nation of Julian ; and it was reported among the Christians, 
 that they presented, on that occasion, the form of a cross, 
 surmounted by a crown.' During the short reign of Jovian, 
 the same tolerance seems to have continued ; but Valentin- 
 Ian renewed the persecution, and made another law against 
 ' impious prayers and midnight sacrifices,' which were still 
 oflfered." This law excited so much discontent in Greece, 
 where it was directly opposed to the established religion, 
 that Valentinian consented to its remaining inoperative in 
 that province ; but, in other portions of the empire, fearful 
 scenes of suffering and persecution were everywhere wit 
 uessed." In the East, Valens was persecuting, with impar- 
 tial zeal, all who did rfot adopt the tenets of the Arian 
 heresy. ' The very name of philosopher,' as it has been 
 said, became ' a title of proscription ; ' and the most trivial 
 offences were visited with death. One philosopher was exe- 
 cuted, because, in a private letter, he had exhorted his wife 
 not to forget to crown the portal of the door. An old 
 woman perished, because she endeavoured to allay the parox- 
 ysms of a fever by magical songs. A young man, who im- 
 agined that he could cure an attack of diarrhcea by touching 
 alternately a marble pillar and his body, while he repeated 
 the vowels, expiated this not very alarming superstition by 
 torture and by death.* 
 
 In reviewing these persecutions, which were directed 
 by the orthodox and by the Arians again&t magicians, we 
 
 ' St. Gregory Nazianzen (3rd oration against Julian). 
 
 » Cod. Th., lib. ix. t. xvi. 1. "7, &c. 
 
 ' Maury, pp. 118, 119. 
 
 * Ammianus Marcellinns. lib. xxix. o. 1, 2. 
 
58 EATIOITALISM EST EUROPE, 
 
 must carefully guard against some natural exaggerations. It 
 would be very unfair to attribute directly to the leaders of 
 the Church the edicts that produced them. It would be still 
 more unfair to attribute to them the spirit in which those 
 edicts were executed. Much allowance must be made for the 
 personal barbarity of certain emperors and prefects ; for the 
 rapacity which made them seek for pretexts by which they 
 might confiscate the property of the wealthy ; and for the 
 alarm that was created by every attempt to discover the 
 successor to the throne. We have positive evidence that one 
 or other of these three causes was connected with most 
 of the worst outbursts of persecution ; and we know, from 
 earlier history, that persecutions for magic had taken piace 
 on political as well as on religious grounds, long before 
 Christianity had triumphed. We must not, again, measure 
 the severity of the persecution by the precise language of the 
 laws. If we looked simply at the written enactments, we 
 should conclude that a considerable portion of the pagan 
 worship was, at an early period, absolutely and universally 
 suppressed. In practice, however, the law was constantly 
 broken. A general laxity of administration had pervaded all 
 parts of the empire, to an extent which the weakest modern 
 governments have seldom exhibited. Popular prejudice ran 
 counter to many of the enactments ; and the rulers frequently 
 connived at their infraction. We find, therefore, that the 
 application of the penalties that were decreed was irregular, 
 fitful, and uncertain. Sometimes they were enforced with 
 extreme severity. Sometimes the forbidden rites were prac- 
 tised without disguise. Very frequently, in one part of the 
 empire persecution raged fiercely, while in another part it 
 was unknown. When, however, all these qualifying circum- 
 stances have been admitted, it remains clear that a series of 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 59 
 
 laws were directed against rites which were entirely innocu- 
 ous, and which had been long universally practised, as parts 
 of the pagan worship, for the purpose of sapping the religion 
 from which they sprang. It is also clear that the ecclesiasti- 
 cal leaders all believed in the reality of magic ; and that they 
 had vastly increased the popular sense of its enormity, by 
 attributing to all the pagan rites a magical character. Under 
 Theodosius, this phase of the history of magic terminated. 
 In the beginning of his reign, that emperor contented him- 
 self with reiterating the proclamations of his predecessors ; 
 but he soon cast off all disguise, and prohibited, under the 
 severest penalties, every portion of the pagan worship. 
 
 Such was the policy pursued b j_the early Church towards 
 the magicians. It exercised in^some respects a very impor- 
 tant influence upon later history. In the first place, a mass 
 of ti'adition was formed which, in later ages, placed the 
 reality of the crime above the possibility of doubt. In the 
 second place, the nucleus of fact, around which the fables of 
 the inquisitors were accumulated, was considerably enlarged. 
 By a curious, but very natural transition, a great portion of 
 the old pagan worship passed from the sphere of religion into 
 that of magic. The country people continued, in secrecy 
 and danger, to practise the rites of their forefathers. They 
 were told that, by those rites, they were appealing to power- 
 ful and malicious spirits ; and, after several generations, they 
 came to believe what they were told, without, however, 
 abandoning the practices that were condemned. It is easier 
 for superstitious men, in a superstitious age, to change all the 
 notions that are associated with their rites, than to free their 
 minds from their influence. Religions never truly perish, 
 except by a nat ural decay. In the towns, paganism had 
 arrived at the last stage of decrepitude, when Christianity 
 
60 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 arose ; and, therefore, in the towns, the victory of Christianity 
 was prompt and decisive ; but, in the country, paganism still 
 retained its vigour, and defied all the efforts of priests and 
 magistrates to eradicate it. The invasion of the harbarians 
 still further strengthened the pagan element, and at last a 
 kind of compromise was effected. Paganism, as a distinct 
 system, was annihilated, but its different elements continued 
 to exist in a transfigured form, and under new names. Many 
 portions of the system were absorbed by the new faith. 
 They coalesced with the doctrines to which they bore most 
 resemblance, gave those doctrines an extraordinary prom- 
 inence in the Christian system, and rendered them pecu- 
 liarly acceptable and influential. Antiquarians have long 
 since shown that, in almost every pai't of the Roman Catho- 
 lic faith, the traces of this amalgamation may be detected. 
 Another portion of paganism became a kind of excrescence 
 upon recognised Christianity. It assumed the form of in- 
 numerable superstitious rites, which occupied an equivocal 
 position, sometimes countenanced, and sometimes condemn- 
 ed, hovering upon the verge of the faith, associated and 
 intertwined with authorised religious practices, occasionally 
 censured by councils, and habitually encouraged by the more 
 ignorant ecclesiastics, and frequently attracting a more in- 
 tense devotion than the regular ceremonies with which they 
 were allied.' A third portion continued in the form of 
 magical rites, which were practised in defiance of persecu- 
 tion and anathemas, and which continued, after the nominal 
 suppression of paganism, for nearly eight centuries." These 
 rites, of course, only form one element, and perhaps nrit a 
 
 ' Many hundreds of these superstitions are examined by Thiers. A great 
 number also are given in Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft. 
 ' Michelet, La Sorcih'e, p. 36, note. See also Maury. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 61 
 
 very prominent one, in the system of witchcraft ; but any 
 analysis which omitted to notice them would be imperfect. 
 All those grotesque ceremonies which Shakspeare portrayed 
 in Macbeth were taken from the old paganism. In numerous 
 descriptions of the witches' sabbath, Diana and Herodias are 
 mentioned together, as the two most prominent figures ; 
 and among the articles of accusation brought against 
 witches, we find enumerated many of the old practices of 
 the augurs. 
 
 In the sixth century, the victory of Christianity over 
 paganism, considered as an external system, and the corrup- 
 tion of Christianity itself, were both complete ; and what are 
 justly termed the dark ages may be said to have begun. It 
 seems, at first sight, a somewhat strange and anomalous fact 
 that, during the period which elapsed between the sixth 
 and thirteenth centuries, when superstitions were most nu- 
 merous, and credulity most universal, the executions for 
 sorcery should have been comparatively rare. There never 
 had been a time, in which the minds of men were more 
 completely imbued and moulded by supernatural concep- 
 tions; or in which the sense of Satanic power and Satanic 
 presence was more profound and universal. Many thousands 
 of cases of possession, exorcisms, miracles, and apparitions 
 of the Evil One were recorded. They were accepted with- 
 out the faintest doubt, and had become the habitual field 
 upon which the imagination expatiated. There was scarcely 
 a great saint who had not, on some occasion, encountered a 
 visible manifestation of an evil spirit. Sometimes the devil 
 appeared as a grotesque and hideous animal, sometimes as a 
 black man, sometimes as a beautiful woman, sometimes as a 
 priest haranguing in the pulpit, sometimes as an angel of 
 
62 EATIONALISM IK EUEOPE. 
 
 light, and sometimes in a still holier form.' Tet, strange as 
 it may now appear, these conceptions, though intensely 
 believed and intensely realised, did not create any great 
 degree of terrorism. The very multiplication of supersti- 
 tions had proved their corrective. It was firmly believed 
 that the arch-fiend was for ever hovering about the Chris- 
 tian ; but it was also believed that the sign of the cross, or a 
 few drops of holy water, or the name of Mary, could put him 
 to an immediate and ignominious flight. The lives of the 
 saints were crowded with his devices, but they represent 
 him as uniformly vanquished, humbled, and contemned. 
 Satan himself, at the command of Cyprian, had again and 
 again assailed an unarmed and ignorant maiden, who had 
 devoted herself to religion. He had exhausted all the powers 
 of sophistry in obscuring the virtue of virginity, and all the 
 resources of archangelic eloquence in favour of a young and 
 noble pagan who aspired to the maiden's hand ; but the 
 simple sign of the cross exposed every sophism, quenched 
 every emotion of terrestrial love, and drove back the fiend, 
 baiBed and dismayed^ to the magician who had sent him.' 
 Legions of devils, drawn up in ghastly array, surrounded the 
 church towards which St. Maur was moving, and obstructed, 
 with menacing gestures, the progress ,of the saint ; but a few 
 words of exorcism scattered them in a moment through the 
 air. A ponderous stone was long shown, in the Church of 
 St. Sabina at Rome, which the devil, in a moment of despair- 
 
 ' On the appearances of the devil in the form of Christ, see the tract by 
 Gerson in the Malleus Male/., vol. ii. p. 11 ; and also Ignatius Lupus, in Mlrt, 
 S. Inquisitionu (1603), p. 185. 
 
 '^ See this story very amusingly told, on the authority of Nieephorus, in 
 Binsfeldius de Cofifessionibus Maleficorum (Treves, 1591), pp. 466-46'?. St. 
 Gregory Nazianzen mentions (Oration xviii.) that St. Cyprian had been a 
 magician. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 63 
 
 nig passion, had flung at St. Dominiok, vainly lioping to 
 crush a head that was sheltered hy the guardian angel. The 
 Gospel of St. John suspended around the neck, a rosary, a 
 relic of Christ or of a saint, any one of the thousand talis- 
 mans that were distributed among the faithful, suflSced to 
 baffle the utmost eflfbrts of diabolical malice. The conse- 
 quence of this teaching was a condition of thought, which is 
 so far removed from that which exists in the present day, 
 that it is only by a strong exertion of the imagination that 
 we can conceive it. What may be called the intellectual 
 basis of witchcraft, existed to the fullest extent. All those 
 conceptions of diabolical presence, all that predisposition 
 towards the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon the 
 imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed ; 
 but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity 
 with which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, 
 rendered them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a 
 little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition would 
 have been much more terrible. It was firmly believed that 
 any one who deviated from the strict line of orthodoxy must 
 soon succumb beneath the power of Satan ; but as there was 
 no spirit of rebellion or of doubt, this persuasion did not pro- 
 duce any extraordinary terrorism. 
 
 Amid all this strange teaching, there ran, however, one 
 vein of a darker character. The more terrible phenomena of 
 nature were entirely unmoved by exorcisms and sprinklings, 
 and they were invariably attributed to supernatural interposi- 
 tion. In every nation it has been believed, at an early period, 
 tliat pestilences, famines, comets, rainbows, eclipses, and other 
 rare and startling phenomena, were effected, not by the ordi- 
 nary sequence of natural laws, but by the direct intervention 
 of spirits. In this manner, the predisposition towards the 
 
64 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 miraculous, which is the characteristic of all semi-civilised 
 nations, has been perpetuated, and the clergy have also 
 frequently identified these phenomena with acts of rebellion 
 against themselves. The old Catholic priests were consum- 
 mate masters of these arts, and every rare natural event was, 
 in the middle ages, an occasion for the most intense terrorism, 
 Thus, in the eighth century, a fearful famine alHicted France, 
 and was generally represented as a consequence of the repug- 
 nance which the French people manifested to the payment 
 of tithes.' In the ninth century, a total eclipse of the sun 
 struck terror through Europe, and is said to have been one 
 of the causes of the death of a French king.'' In the tenth 
 century a similar phenomenon put to flight an entire army.' 
 More than once, the apparition of a comet filled Europe with 
 an almost maddening terror ; and, whenever a noted person 
 was struck down by sudden illness, the death was attributed 
 to sorcery. 
 
 The natural result, I think, of such modes of thought 
 would be, that the notion of sorcery should be very common, 
 but that the fear of it should not pass into an absolute mania. 
 Credulity was habitual and universal, but religious terrorism 
 was fitful and transient. We need not, therefore, be sur- 
 prised that sorcery, though very familiar to the minds of 
 men, did not, at the period I am referring to, occupy that 
 prominent position which it afterwards assumed. The idea of 
 a formal compact with the devil had not yet been formed ; but 
 most of the crimes of witchcraft were recognised, anathema- 
 tised, and punished. Thus, towards the end of the sixth 
 century, a son of Fredegonda died after a short illness ; and 
 
 ' Garinet, p. 38. ^ Ibid. p. 42. 
 
 ' Buckle's Hist. vol. i. p. 345 (note), where an immense amount of evidencs 
 on the subject is given. 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 65 
 
 numbers of -women were put to the most prolonged and 
 excruciating torments, and at last burnt or broken on the 
 wheel, for having caused, by incantations, the death of the 
 prince.' In Germany, the Codex de Mathematicis et Male- 
 ficiis '' long continued in force, as did the old Salic law on 
 the same subject in France. Charlemagne enacted new and 
 very stringent laws, condemning sorcerers to death, and 
 great numbers seem to have perished in his reign.' Hail 
 and thutiderstorms were almost universally attributed to 
 their devices, though one great ecclesiastic of the ninth 
 century—^^obard, archbishop of Lyons — had the rare merit 
 of opposing the popular belief* 
 
 There existed, too, all through the middle ages, and even 
 as late as the seventeenth century, the sect of the Cabalists, 
 who were especially persecuted as magicians. It is not easy 
 to obtain any very clear notion of their mystic doctrines, 
 which long exercised an extraordinary fascination over many 
 minds, and which captivated the powerful and daring intel- 
 lects of Cardan, Agrippa, and Paracelsus. They seem to 
 have comprised many traditions that had been long current 
 among the Jews, mixed with much of the old Platonic 
 doctrine of demons, and with a large measure of pure natu- 
 ralism. With a degree of credulity, which, in our age, 
 would be deemed barely compatible with sanity, but which 
 was then perfectly natural, was combined some singularly 
 
 ■ Gariaet, pp. 14, 16. 
 
 ^ This was the title of the Roman code I have reviewed. Mathematic-js 
 was the name given to astrologers : as a law of Diocletian put it, ' Artem geo- 
 metrise disci atque exeroeri publice interest. Ars autem mathematica damna- 
 bilis est et interdicta omnino.' 
 
 ' Garinet, p. 39. 
 
 * Garinet, p. 45. He also saved the lives of some Cabalists. He was un- 
 fortunately one of the chief persecutors of the Jews in his time. Bedarride, 
 Biit. des Juifs, pp. 83, 87. 
 VOL. I. — 5 
 
66 KATI0NALI8M IN' EUEOPE. 
 
 bold scepticism ; and, probably, a greater amount was veiled 
 under the form of allegories than was actually avowed. The 
 Cabalists believed in the existence of spirits of nature, em- 
 bodiments or representatives of the four elements, sylphs, 
 salamanders, gnomes, and ondines, beings of far more than 
 human excellence, but mortal, and not untinctured by human 
 frailty. To rise to intercourse with these elemental spirits of 
 nature was the highest aim of the philosopher. He who 
 would do so, must sever himself from the common course of 
 life. He must purify his soul by fasting and celibacy, by 
 patient and unwearied study, by deep communion with 
 nature and with nature's laws. He must learn, above all, to 
 look down with contempt upon the angry quarrels of oppos- 
 ing creeds ; to see in each religion an aspect of a continuous 
 law, a new phase and manifestation of the action of the 
 spirits of nature upon mankind. 
 
 It is not difficult to detect the conception which underlies 
 this teaching. As, however, no religious doctrine can resist 
 the conditions of the age, these simple notions were soon 
 encrusted and defaced by so many of those grotesque and 
 material details, which invariably resulted from mediaeval 
 habits of thought, that it is only by a careful examination 
 that their outlines can be traced. It was believed that it 
 was possible for philosophers to obtain these spirits in literal 
 marriage ; and that such a union was the most passionate 
 desire of the spirit-world. It was not only' highly gratifying 
 for both parties in this world, but greatly improved their 
 prospects for the next. The sylph, though she lived for 
 many centuries, was mortal, and had in herself no hope of a 
 future life ; but her human husband imparted to her his own 
 immortality, unless he was one of the reprobate, in which 
 "•ase he was saved from the pangs of hell by participating in 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 67 
 
 the mortality of Ms bride. This general conception was 
 elaborated in great detail, and was applied to the history of 
 the Fall, and to the mythology of paganism, on both of 
 ■which subjects the orthodox tenets were indignantly spurned. 
 Scarcely any one seems to have doubted the reality of these 
 spirits, or that they were accustomed to reveal themselves to 
 mankind; and the coruscations of Aurora are said to have 
 been attributed to the flashings of their wings.' The only 
 question was, cojicerning their nature. According to the 
 Cabalists, they were pure and virtuous. According to the 
 orthodox, they were the incubi who were spoken of by St. 
 Augustine ; and all who had commerce with them were de- 
 servedly burnt.' 
 
 The history of the Cabalists furnishes, I think, a striking 
 instance of the aberrations of a spirit of free-thinking in an 
 age which was not yet ripe for its reception. When the very 
 opponents of the Church were so completely carried away 
 by the tide, and were engrossed with a mythological system 
 as absurd as the wildest legends of the hagiology, it is not 
 at all surprising that the philosophers who arose in the ranks 
 of orthodoxy should have been extremely credulous, and 
 that their conceptions should have been characterised by the 
 
 • Gariiiet, p. 35. This, however, ia doubtful. Herder mentions that the 
 Greenlanders believe the Aurora to be formed by spirits dancing and playing 
 ball. 
 
 '^ On the Hebrew Cabala, see the learned work of M. Franck, and on the 
 notions in the middle ages, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Le 
 Comte de Gabalis. Plancey, Diet. Infernale, art. Cabale. All the heathen 
 goda were supposed to be sylphs or other aerial spirits. . Vesta wag the wife 
 of Noah — Zoroaster, her son, otherwise called Japhet. The sin of Adam was 
 deserting the sylph for his wife, and the story of the apple was allegorical, &c. 
 This last notion appears to have been a relic of Manichseism, and was very 
 common among the heretics of the tenth and eleventh centuries (Matter, Hist, 
 du Onosticimie, tom. iii. pp. 259, 260). Paracelsus was one of the principal 
 asserters of the existence of the sylphs, &c. 
 
68 EATIONALISM IN ETJEOPE. 
 
 coarsest materialism. Among the very few men who, in 
 some slight degree, cultivated profane literature during the 
 period I am referring to, a prominent place must be assigned 
 to Michael Psellus. This voluminous author, though he is 
 now, I imagine, very little read, still retains a certain po- 
 sition in literary history, as almost the only Byzantine -writer 
 of reputation who appeared for some centuries. Towards 
 the close of the eleventh century he wrote his dialogue on 
 ' The Operation of Demons ; ' which is, in a great measure, 
 an exposition of the old Neo-Platonic doctrine of the hie- 
 rarchy of spirits, hut which also throws considerable light on 
 the modes of thought prevailing in his time. He assures us 
 that the world was full of demons, who were very frequently 
 appearing among his countrymen, and who manifested their 
 presence in many different ways. He had himself never seen 
 one, but he was well acquainted with persons who had act- 
 ual intercourse with them. His principal authority was a 
 Grecian, named Marcus, who had at one time disbelieved in 
 apparitions ; but who, having adopted a perfectly solitary 
 life, had been surrounded by spirits whose habits and ap- 
 pearance he most minutely described. Having thus amassed 
 considerable information on the subject, Psellus proceeded 
 to digest it into a philosophical system, connecting it with 
 the teachings of the past, and unfolding the laws and opera- 
 tions of the spirit world. He lays it down as a fundamental 
 position that all demons have bodies. This, he says, is the 
 necessary inference from the orthodox doctrine that they en- 
 dure the torment of fire.' Their bodies, however, are not, 
 like those -of men and animals, cast into an unchangeable 
 mould. They are rather like the clouds, refined and subtle 
 
 ' This was a very old notion. St. Basil seems to have maintained it verj 
 strongly. Cudworth's Int. Si/stem, vol. ii. p. b48. 
 
MAGIC AND WITOHCEAFT. 69 
 
 matter, capable of assuming any form, and penetrating into 
 any orifice. The horrible tortures they endure in their place 
 of punishment have rendered them extremely sensitive to 
 suflFering ; and they continually seek a temperate and some- 
 what moist warmth in order to allay their pangs. It is for 
 this reason that they so frequently enter into men and ani- 
 mals. Possession appears to have been quite frequent, and 
 madness was generally regarded as one of its results. Psel- 
 lus, however, mentions that some physicians formed an ex- 
 ception to the prevailing opinions, attributing to physical 
 .what was generally attributed to spiritual causes, an aberra- 
 tion which he could only account for by the materialism 
 which was so general in their profession. He mentions inci- 
 dentally the exploits of incubi as not unknown, and enters 
 into a long disquisition about a devil who was said to be ac- 
 quainted with Armenian. 
 
 We find then that, all through the middle ages, most of 
 the crimes that were afterwards collected by the inquisitors 
 in the treatises on witchcraft were known ; and that many 
 of them were not unfrequently punished. At the same time 
 the executions, during six centuries, were probably not as 
 numerous as those which often took place during a single 
 decade of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the 
 twelfth century, howeveTjJihe su^ct passed into an entirely 
 new phase. The conception of a witch, as we now conceive 
 it — that is to say, of a woman who had entered into a delib- 
 erate compact with Satan, who was endowed with the power 
 of working miracles whenever she pleased, and who was con- 
 tinually transported through the air to the Sabbath, where 
 ehe paid her homage to the Evil One — first appeared.' The 
 
 ' Maury, p. 185. 
 
70 EATIOSTALISM IN ECfEOPE. 
 
 pani(3 created by the belief advanced at first slowly, but 
 after a time with a fearfully accelerated rapidity. Thou- 
 sands of victims were sometimes burnt alive in a few years. 
 Every country in Europe was stricken with the wildest 
 panic. Hundreds of the ablest judges were selected for the 
 extirpation of the crime. A vast literature was created on 
 the subject, and it was not until a considerable portion of 
 the eighteenth century had passed away, that the executions 
 finally ceased.' 
 
 I shall now endeavour to trace the general causes which 
 produced this outburst of suiDcrstition. We shall find, I, 
 think, that in this as in its earlier phases, sorcery was closely 
 connected with the prevaiUng modes of thought on religious 
 subjects ; and that its history is one of the most faithful in 
 dications of the laws of religious belief in their relation to 
 the progress of civilisation. 
 
 The more carefully the history of the centuries prior to 
 the Reformation is studied, the more evident it becomes that 
 the twelfth century forms the great turning point of the 
 European intellect. Owing to many complicated causes, 
 which it would be tedious and difiicult to trace, a general 
 revival of Latin literature had then taken place, which pro- 
 foundly modified the intellectual condition of Europe, and 
 which, therefore, implied and necessitated a modification of 
 the popular belief. For the first time for many centuries, we 
 find a feeble spirit of doubt combating the spirit of credu- 
 lity; a curiosity for purely secular knowledge replacing, in 
 some small degree, the passion for theology ; and, as a con- 
 sequence of these things, a diminution of the contemptuous 
 
 ' The last judicial execution in Europe was, I believe, in Switzerland, in 
 1'782 (Michelet'a Sordere, p. 416) ; the last law on the subject, the Irish Statute, 
 which was not repealed till 1821. "''"* 
 
MAGIC AND WITOHCEAirr. Tl 
 
 hatred with -whicli all who were external to Christianity had 
 been regarded. In every department of thought and of 
 knowledge, there was manifested a vague disquietude, a spirit 
 of restless and feverish anxiety, that contrasted strangely 
 with the preceding torpor. The long slumber of untroubled 
 orthodoxy was broken by many heresies, which, though 
 often repressed, seemed in each succeeding century to ac- 
 quire new force and consistency. Maniehaeism, which had 
 for some time been smouldering in the Church, burst into a 
 fierce flame among the Albigenses, and was only quenched 
 .by that fearful massacre in which tens of thousands were 
 murdered at the instigation of the priests. Then it was that 
 the standard of an impartial philosophy was first planted by 
 Abelard in Europe, and the minds of the learned distracted 
 by subtle and perplexing doubts concerning the leading doc- 
 trines of the faith. Then, too, the teachings of a stern and 
 uncompromising infidelity flashed forth from Seville and 
 from Cordova ; and the form of Averroes began to assume 
 those gigantic proportions, which, at a later period, over- 
 shadowed the whole intellect of Europe, and almost per- 
 suaded some of the ablest men that the reign of Antichrist 
 had begun.' At the same time, the passion for astrology, 
 and for the fatalism it implied, revived with the revival of 
 
 ' For the history of this very remarkable moTement, see the able essay of 
 Renan on Averroes. Amotig the Mahometans the panic was so great, that 
 the theologians pronounced logic and philosophy to be the two great enemiea 
 of their profession, and ordered all books on those dangerous subjects to be 
 burnt. Among the Christians, St. Thomas Aquinas devoted his genius to the 
 controversy ; and, tqc two or three centuries, most of the great works in 
 Christendom bore some marks of Averroes. M. Renan has collected some 
 curious evidence from the Italian painters of the fourteenth century, of the 
 prominence Averroes had assumed in the popular mind. The three prin. 
 cipal figures in Orcagna's picture of Hell, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, are 
 Mahometj Antichrist, and Averroes. 
 
72 EATIONALISM US EUEOPE. 
 
 pagan learning, and penetrated into the halls of nobles and 
 the palaces of kings. Every doubt, every impulse of rebel- 
 lion against ecclesiastical authority, above all, every hereti- 
 cal opinion, was regarded as the direct instigation of Satan, 
 and their increase as the measure of his triumph. Yet these 
 things were now gathering darkly all around. Europe was 
 beginning to enter into that inexpressibly painful period in 
 which men have learned to doubt, but have not yet learned 
 to regard doubt as ianocent ; in which the new mental activ- 
 ity produces a variety of opinions, while the old credulity 
 persuades them that all but one class of opinions are the sug- 
 gestions of the devil. The spirit of rationalism was yet un- 
 born ; or if some faint traces of it may be discovered in the 
 teachings of Abelard, it was at least far too weak to allay 
 the panic. There was no independent enquiry; no confi- 
 dence in an honest research ; no disposition to rise above 
 dogmatic systems or traditional teaching ; no capacity for 
 enduring the sufierings of a suspended judgment. The 
 Church had cursed the human intellect by cursing the doubts 
 that are the necessary consequence of its exercise. She had 
 cursed even the moral faculty by asserting the guilt of hon- 
 est error. 
 
 It is easy to perceive that, in such a state of thought, the 
 conception of Satanic presence must have assumed a peculiar 
 prominence, and have created a peculiar terror. Multitudes 
 were distracted by doubts, which they sought in vain to re- 
 press, and which they firmly believed to be the suggestions 
 of the devil. Their horror of pagans and Mahometans 
 diminished more and more, as they acquired a relish for the 
 philosophy of which the first, or the physical sciences of 
 which the second were the repositories. Every step in 
 knowledge increased theii- repugnance to the coarse material 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. Y3 
 
 ism which was prevalent, and every generation rendered the 
 general intellectual tendencies more manifestly hostile to the 
 Chuich. On the other hand, that Church presented an 
 aspect of the sternest inflexibility. Rehellion and doubt 
 were, in her eyes, the greatest of all crimes ; and her doc- 
 trine of evil spirits and of the future world supplied her 
 with engines of terrorism which she was prepared to employ 
 to the uttermost. Accordingly we find that, about the 
 twelfth century, the popular teaching began to assume a 
 sterner and more solemn cast, and the devotions of the 
 people to be more deeply tinctured by fanaticism. The old 
 confidence which had almost toyed with Satan, and in the 
 very exuberance of an unfaltering faith had mocked at his 
 devices, was exchanged for a harsh and gloomy asceticism. 
 The aspect of Satan became more formidable, and the aspect 
 of Christ became less engaging. Till the close of the tenth 
 century, the central figure of Christian art had been usually 
 represented as a very young man, with an expression of un- 
 troubled gentleness and calm resting on his countenance, and 
 engaged in miracles of mercy. The parable of the Good 
 Shepherd, which adorns almost every chapel in the Cata- 
 combs, was still the favourite subject of the painter ; and 
 the sterner representations of Christianity were compara- 
 tively rare. In the eleventh century, all this began to 
 change. The Good Shepherd entirely disappeared, the 
 miracles of mercy became less frequent, and were replaced 
 by the details of the Passion and the terrors of the Last 
 Judgment. The countenance of Christ became sterner, old- 
 er, and more mournful. About the twelfth century, this 
 change became almost universal. From this period, writes 
 one of the most learned of modern archreologists, ' Christ 
 appears more and more melancholy, and often truly terrible. 
 
74 EATIONAIJSM IN EUROPE. 
 
 It is, indeed, the rex tremendse luajestatis of oui Dies Irse. 
 It is almost the God of the Jews making fear the beginning 
 of wisdom.' ' In the same age, we find the scourgings and 
 the ' minutio nionachi ' — the practice of constant bleedings — ■ 
 rising into general use in the monasteries ; '' and, soon after, 
 the Flagellants arose, whose stern discipline and passionate 
 laments over prevailing iniquity directed the thoughts of 
 multitudes to subjects that were well calculated to inflame 
 their imaginations. Almost at the same time, religious per- 
 secution, which had been for many centuries almost unknown, 
 amid the calm of orthodoxy, was revived and stimulated. 
 In the beginning of the thirteenth century, Innocent III. 
 instituted the Inquisition, and issued the first appeal to 
 princes to employ their power for the suppression of heresy ; 
 and, in the course of the following century, the new tribunal 
 was introduced ; or, at least, executions for heresy had taken 
 place in several great countries in Europe. 
 
 The terrorism which was thus created by the conflict 
 between an immutable Church and an age in which there 
 was some slight progress, and a real, though faint spirit of 
 rebellion, gradually filtered down to those who were far too 
 ignorant to become heretics. The priest in the pulpit or in 
 the confessional ; the monk in his intercourse with the 
 
 ' Didron, Iconographie OhrHienne, Hutoire de Dieu (Paris, 1 843), p. 262. 
 See, however, for the whole history of this very remarkable transition, pp. 
 255-273. To this I may add, that about the thirteenth century, the represen- 
 tations of Satan underwent a corresponding change, and became both mere 
 terrible and more grotesque (Maury, Legendes Pieuses, p. 136). The more the 
 subject is examined, the more evident it becomes that, before the invention of 
 printing, painting was the most faithful mirror of the popular mind ; and that 
 there was scarcely an intellectual movement that it did not reflect. On the 
 general terrorism of this period, see Michelet, Histoire de Prance, torn. vii. pp. 
 140, 141. 
 
 ' Madden, vol. i. pp. 359-395; Cabanis, Rapports Physiques el Morale 
 toui ii. pp. 77-79. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 75 
 
 peasant ; the Flagellant, by his mournful hymns, and by the 
 spectacle of his macerations ; above all, the inquisitor, by his 
 judgments, communicated to the lower classes a sense of 
 Satanic presence and triumph, which they naturally applied 
 to the order of ideas with which they were most conversant. 
 In an age which was still grosslv ignorant and credulous, the 
 popular faith was necessarily full of grotesque superstitions, 
 ■which faithfully reflected the general tone and colouring of 
 religious teaching, though they often went far beyond its 
 limits. These superstitions had once consisted, for the most 
 part, in wild legends of fairies, mermaids, giants, and drag- 
 ons ; of miracles of saints, conflicts in which the devil took a 
 prominent part, but was invariably defeated, or illustrations 
 of the boundless efficacy of some charm or relic. About the 
 twelfth century they began to assume a darker hue, and the 
 imaginations of the people revelled in the details of the 
 witches' Sabbath, and in the awful power of the ministers of 
 Satan. The inquisitors traversed Europe, proclaiming that 
 the devil was operating actively on all sides ; and among 
 their very first victims were persons who were accused of 
 sorcery, and who were, of course, condemned.' Such con- 
 demnations could not make the belief in the reality of the 
 crime more unhesitating than it had been, but they had a 
 direct tendency to multiply the accusations. The imagina- 
 tions of the peoplejffiere riveted upon the subject. A con- 
 tagious terror was engendered. Some, whose minds were 
 thoroughly diseased, persuaded themselves that they were in 
 communion with Satan ; all had an increasing predisposition 
 to see Satanic agency around them. 
 
 To these things should be added a long series of social 
 and political events, into which it is needless to enter, for 
 
 ' Garinet, p. 16. 
 
76 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 they have very lately been painted with matchless vividness 
 by one of the greatest of living writers." A sense of inse- 
 curity and wretchedness, often rising to absolute despair, had 
 been diffused among the people, and had engendered the 
 dark imaginations, and the wild and rebellious passions, 
 which, in a superstitious age, are their ' necessary concomi- 
 tants. It has always been observed by the inquisitors that a 
 large proportion of those who werv; condemned to the flames 
 were women, whose lives had been clouded by some great 
 sorrow; and that music, which soothes the passions, and 
 allays the bitterness of regret, had an extraordinary power 
 over the possessed." 
 
 Under the influences which I have attempted to trace, 
 the notion of witchcraft was reduced to a more definite form, 
 and acquired an increasing prominence in the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries. Most of the causes that produced it 
 advanced by their very nature with an accelerating force, 
 and the popular imagination became more and more fasci- 
 nated by the subject. In the fourteenth century, an event 
 occurred which was well calculated to give a fearful impulse 
 to the terrorism; and which niay^ indeed, be justly regarded 
 as one of the most appalling in the history of humanity. I 
 allude, of course, to the Black death. A great German phy- 
 sician has lately investigated, with much skill and learning, 
 the history of that time ; and he ha,s recorded his opinion 
 that, putting aside all exaggerated accounts, the number of 
 those who died of the pestilence dujing the six years of its 
 continuance, may be estimated^by a very moderate computa- 
 tion, at twenty-five millions, or a fourth part of the inhabit- 
 ants of Europe.' Many great towns lost far more than half 
 
 ' Miehelet, La Sordere. ' Binsfeldius, p. 185. 
 
 ' Hecker's Epidemics if the Middle Ages, p. 29. Boccaccio witnessed and 
 described this pestilence. 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCEAFT. 77 
 
 their population ; many country districts were almost de- 
 populated. 
 
 It would be scarcely possible to conceive an event fitted 
 to act with a more terrific force upon the imaginations of 
 men. Even in our own day. we know how great a degree 
 of religious terror is inspired by a pestilence ; but, in an age 
 when the supernatural character of disease was universally 
 believed, an affliction of such unexampled magnitude pro- 
 duced a consternation which almost amounted to madness. 
 One of its first effects was an enormous increase of the 
 wealth of the clergy by the legacies of the terror-stricken 
 victims. The sect of the Flagellants, which had been for a 
 century unknown, reappeared in tenfold numbers, and almost 
 every part of Europe resounded with their hymns. Then, 
 too, arose the dancing mania of Flanders and Germany, when 
 thousands assembled with strange cries and gestures, overaw- 
 ing by their multitudes all authority, and proclaiming, amid 
 their wild dances and with shrieks of terror, the power and 
 the triupph of Satan.' It has been observed that this form 
 of madness raged with an especial violence in the dioceses of 
 Cologne and Treves, in which witchcraft was afterwards most 
 prevalent.^ In Switzerland and in some parts of Germany 
 the plague was ascribed to the poison of the Jews ; and 
 though the Pope made a noble effort to dispel the illusion, 
 immense numbers of that unhappy race were put to death. 
 Some thousands are said to have perished in Mayence alone. 
 More generally, it was regarded as a divine chastisement, or 
 as an evidence of Satanic power; and the most grotesque 
 
 ' Hecker, p. 82. The dancers often imagined themselves to be immersed 
 in a stream of blood. They were habitually exorcised. 
 
 " There is still an annual festival near Treves in commemoration of the 
 epidemic. Madden, vol. i. p. 420. 
 
78 EATIONALISM EST ETIEOPE. 
 
 explanations were hazarded. Boots with pointed toes had 
 been lately introduced, and were supposed by many to have 
 been peculiarly offensive to the Almighty.' "What, however, 
 we have especially to observe is, that the trials ff)r~witchcraft 
 multiplied with a :^arful rapidity.'' 
 
 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they may be said 
 to have reached their climax. The aspect which Europe 
 then presented was that of universal anarchy and universal 
 terrorism. The intellectual influences which had been long 
 corroding the pillars of the Church had done their work, 
 and a fearful moral retrogression, aggravated by the newly- 
 acquired ecclesiastical wealth, accompanied the intellectual 
 advance. Yet, over all this chaos, there was one great con- 
 ception dominating unchanged. It was the sense of sin and 
 Satan ; of the absolute necessity of a correct dogmatic sys- 
 tem to save men from the agonies of hell. The Church, 
 which had long been all in all to Christendom, was heaving 
 in what seemed the last throes of dissolution. The bounda- 
 ries of religious thought were all obscured. Conflicting 
 tendencies and passions were raging with a tempestuous vio- 
 lence, among men who were absolutely incapable of enduring 
 an intellectual suspense, and each of the opposing sects pro 
 claimed its distinctive doctrines essential to salvation. 
 Doubt was almost universally regarded as criminal, and 
 
 ' Becker, p. 82. 
 
 ^ Ennemoser, Hist, of Magic, toI. ii. p. 150. 
 
 I may here notice, by way of illustration, two facts in the history of art. 
 The first is, that those ghastly pictures of the dance of death, which wei-e after- 
 wards so popular, and which represented an imaginative bias of such a wild 
 and morbid power, began In the fourteenth century (iPeignoi sur lea Danaes de4 
 Moris, pp. 26-31). The second is, that in this same century the bas-reliefs on 
 cathedrals frequently represent men kneeling down before the devil, and 
 devoting themselves to him as his servants (llartonne, Fiite du Moym Age, 
 p. 137). 
 
MAGIO AND ■WITCHCEAFT. 79 
 
 error as damnable ; yet the first was the necessary condition, 
 and the second the probable consequence, of enquiry. To 
 tally unaccnstomed to independent reasoning, bewildered by 
 the vast and undefined fields of thought from which the op- 
 posing arguments were drawn ; with a profound sense of the 
 absolute necessity of a correct creed, and of the constant 
 action of Satan upon the fluctuations of the will and of the 
 judgment ; distracted and convulsed by colliding sentiments, 
 which an unenlightened psychology attributed to spiritual 
 inspiration, and, above all, parched with a burning longing 
 for certainty ; the minds of men drifted to and fro under the 
 influence of the wildest terror. ISTone could escape the 
 movement. It filljed all Europe with alarm, permeated with 
 its influence all forms of thought and action, absorbed every 
 element of national life into its ever-widening vortex. 
 
 There certainly never has been a movement which, in its 
 ultimate results, has contributed so largely to the emancipa- 
 tion of the human mind from all superstitious terrors as the 
 Reformation. It formed a multitude of churches, in which 
 the spirit of qualified and partial scepticism that had long 
 been a source of anarchy, might expatiate with freedom, and 
 be allied with the spirit of order. It rejected an immense 
 proportion of the dogmatic and ritualistic conceptions that 
 had almost covered the whole field of religion, and rendered 
 jiossible that steady movement by which theology has since 
 then been gravitating towards the moral faculty. It, above all, 
 diminished the prominence of the clergy, and thus prepared 
 the way for that general secularisation of the European in- 
 tellect, which is such a marked characteristic of modern civil- 
 isation. Yet, inappreciably great as are these blessings, it 
 would be idle to deny that, for a time, the Reformation ag- 
 gravated the very evils it was intended to correct. It was, 
 
80 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 for a time, merely an exchange of masters. The Protestant 
 asserted the necessity and the certainty of his distinctive 
 doctrines, as dogmatically and authoritatively as the Catho- 
 lic. He believed in his own infallibility quite as firmly as 
 his opponent believed in the infallibility of the Pope. It is 
 only by a very slow process that the human mind can 
 emerge from a system of error ; and the virtue of dogmas 
 had been so ingrained in all religious thought, by the teach- 
 ing of more than twelve centuries, that it required a long 
 and painful discipline to weaken what is not yet destroyed. 
 The nature of truth, the limits of human faculties, the laws 
 of pi'obabilities, and the conditions that are essential for an 
 impartial research, were subjects with which even the most 
 advanced minds were then entirely unfamiliar. There was, 
 indeed, much cultivation of logic, considered in its most nar- 
 row sense ; but there was no such thing as a comprehensive 
 view of the whole field of mental science, of the laws and 
 limits of the reason. There was also no conviction that the 
 reason should be applied to every department of theology, 
 with the same unflinching severity as to any other form of 
 speculation. Faith always presented to the mind the idea 
 of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or 
 suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised 
 more than this, but it always included this. It was the op- 
 posite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent 
 men called credulity, reverent men called faith ; and al- 
 though one word was more respectful than the other, yet 
 the two words were with most men strictly synonymous- 
 Some of the Protestants added other and moral ideas to the 
 word, but they firmly retained the intellectual idea. As 
 long as such a conception existed, a period of religious con- 
 vulsion was necessarily a period of extreme suffering and 
 
MAGIO AND •WITCHCEAFT. 81 
 
 terror ; and there can be little doubt that the Reformation 
 was, in consequence, the most painful of all the transitions 
 through which the human intellect has passed. 
 
 If the reader has seized the spirit of the foregoing re 
 marks, he will already have perceived their application to 
 the history of witchcraft. In order that men should believe 
 in witches, their intellects must have been familiarised with 
 the conceptions of Satanic power and Satanic presence, and 
 they must regard these things with an unfaltering belief. In 
 order that witchcraft should be prominent, the imaginations 
 of men must have been so forcibly directed to these articles 
 of belief, as to tinge and govern the habitual current of 
 their thoughts, and to produce a strong disposition to see 
 Satanic agency around them. A long train of circumstances, 
 which culminated in the Reformation, had diiFused throusrh 
 Christendom a religious terror which gradually overcast the 
 horizon of thought, creating a general uneasiness as to the 
 future of the Church, and an intense and vivid sense of Sa- 
 tanic presence. These influences were, it is true, primarily 
 connected with abstruse points of speculative belief, but they 
 acted in a twofold manner upon the grosser superstitions of 
 the people. Although the illiterate cannot follow the more 
 intricate speculations of their teachers, they can, as I have 
 said, catch the general tone and character of thought which 
 these speculations produce, and they readily apply them to 
 their own sphere of thought. Besides this, the upper classes, 
 being filled with a sense of Satanic presence, will be dis- 
 posed to believe in the reality of any history of witchcraft. 
 They will, therefore, prosecute the witches, and, as a neces- 
 sary consequence, stimulate the delusion. When the belief 
 is confined to the lower class, its existence will be languish- 
 ing and unprogressive. But when legislators denounce it in 
 
 VOL. I. — 6 
 
82 RATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 their laws, and popes in their bulls ; when priests inveigh 
 against it in their pulpits, and inquisitors burn thousands at 
 the stake, the imaginations of men will be inflamed, tne ter- 
 ror will prove contagious, and the consequent delusions be 
 multiplied. Now, popes and legislators, priests and inqtiisi 
 tors, will do these things just in proportion to the firmness 
 (if their belief in the conceptions I have noticed, and to the 
 intensity with which their imaginations have been directed 
 to those conceptions by religious terrorism. 
 
 We have a striking illustration of the influence upon 
 ' witchcraft of the modes of thought which the Reformation 
 for a time sustained in the life of Luther. No single feature 
 was more clearly marked in his character than an intense and 
 passionate sense of sin. He himself often described, in the 
 most graphic language, how, in the seclusion of his monasteiy 
 at Wittenberg, he had passed under the very shadow of 
 death, how the gates of hell seemed to open beneath his feet, 
 and the sense of hopeless wretchedness to make life itself a 
 burden. While oppressed by the keenest sense of moral un- 
 worthiness, he was distracted by intellectual doubt. He only 
 arrived at the doctrines of Protestantism after a long and dif- 
 ficult enquiry, struggling slowly through successive phases 
 of belief, uncheered for many years by one word of sym- 
 pathy, and oscillating painfully between opposing conclu- 
 sions. Like all men of vivid imagination who are so circum- 
 stanced, a t" eological atmosphere was formed about his 
 mind, and became the medium through which every event 
 WIS ccntemplated. He was subject to numerous strange 
 hallucinations and vibrations of judgment, which he in- 
 variably attributed to the direct action of Satan. Satan be- 
 came, in consequence, the dominating conception of his life. 
 In every critical event, in every mental perturbation, he r& 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 83 
 
 sognised Satanic power. In the monastery of Wittenberg, 
 he constantly heai-d the Devil making a noise in the cloisters ; 
 and became at last so accustomed to the fact, that he related 
 that, on one occasion, having been awakened by the sound, 
 he perceived that it was only the Devil, and accordingly 
 wont to sleep again. The black stain in the castle of Wart- 
 burg still marks the place where he flung an ink-bottle at 
 the Devil. In the midst of his long and painful hesitation on 
 the subject of transubstantiation, the Devil appeared to him, 
 and suggested a new argument. In such a state of mind, he 
 naturally accepted, with implicit faith, every anecdote of 
 Satanic miracles. He told how an aged minister had been 
 interrupted, in the midst of his devotions, by a devil who 
 was grunting behind him like a pig. At Torgau, the Devil 
 broke pots and basins, and flung them at the minister's head, 
 and at last drove the minister's wife and servants half crazy 
 out of the house. On another occasion, the Devil appeared 
 in the law courts, in the character of a leading barrister, 
 whose place he is said to have filled with the utmost pro- 
 priety. Fools, deformed persons, the blind and the dumb, 
 were possessed by devils. Physicians, indeed, attempted to 
 explain these infirmities by natural causes; but those physi- 
 cians were ignorant men ; they did not know all the power 
 of Satan. Every form of disease might be produced by 
 Satan, or by his agents, the witches ; and none of the infirmi- 
 ties to which Luther was liable were natural, but his ear-ache 
 was peculiarly diabolical. Hail, thunder, and plagues are all 
 the direct consequences of the intervention of spirits. Many 
 of those persons who were supposed to have committed sui- 
 cide, had in reality been seized by the Devil and strangled by 
 him, as the traveller is strangled by the robber. The Devi] 
 could transport men at his will through the air. He could be- 
 
84 EATIONAIISM EST EITEOPE. 
 
 get children, and Luther had himself come in contact with one 
 of them. An intense love of children was one of the most 
 amiable characteristics of the great Reformer ; but, on this 
 occasion, he most earnestly recommended the reputed rela- 
 tives to throw the child into a river, in order to free their 
 house from the presence of a devil. As a natural conse- 
 quence of these modes of thought, witchcraft did not present 
 the slightest improbability to his mind. In strict accordance 
 with the spirit of his age, he continually asserted the existence 
 and frequency of the crime, and emphatically proclaimed the 
 duty of burning the witches.' 
 
 I know, indeed, few stranger, and at the same time more 
 terrible pictures, than are furnished by the history of witch- 
 craft during the century that preceded and the century that 
 followed the Reformation. Wherever the conflict of opinions 
 was raging among the educated, witchcraft, like an attendant 
 shadow, pursued its course among the ignorant ; '' and Prot- 
 estants and Catholics vied with each other in the zeal with 
 which they prosecuted it. Never was the power of imagina- 
 tion — that strange faculty which casts the shadow of its 
 images over the whole creation, and combines all the phenom- 
 ena of life according to its own archetypes — more striking- 
 ly evinced. Superstitious and terror-stricken, the minds of 
 men were impelled irresistibly towards the miraculous and 
 the Satanic, and they found them upon every side. The 
 elements of imposture blended so curiously with the elements 
 of delusion, that it is now impossible to separate them. 
 Sometimes an ambitious woman, braving the dangers of her 
 
 Oolloguia Mensalia. Erasmus was an equally finn believer in witchcraft, 
 (Stewart's DUseriafion, p 57.) 
 
 ' This coexistence has been noticed by many writers ; a.ndNa,ad& (Apoloffie, 
 pp. 110, 111) observes, that nearly all the heresies previous to the Reformation 
 had been also accompanied by an outburst of sorcery. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEATT. 85 
 
 act, boldly claimed supernatural power, and the haughtiest 
 and the most courageous cowered humbly at her presence. 
 Sometimes a husband attempted, in the witch courts, to cut 
 the tie which his church had pronounced indissoluble ; and 
 numbers of wives have, in consequence, perished at the 
 stake. Sometimes a dexterous criminal availed himself of 
 the panic ; and, directing a charge of witchcraft against his 
 accuser, escaped himself with impunity. Sometimes, too, a 
 personal grudge was avenged by the accusation, or a real 
 crime was attributed to sorcery ; or a hail-storm, or a strange 
 disease, suggested the presence of a witch. But, for the 
 most part, the trials represent pure and unmingled delusions. 
 The defenders of the belief were able to maintain that multi- 
 tudes had voluntarily confessed themselves guilty of com- 
 merce with the Evil One, and had persisted in their confes- 
 sions till death. Madness is always peculiarly frequent 
 during great religious or political revolutions ; ' and, in the 
 sixteenth century, all its forms were absorbed in the system 
 of witchcraft, and caught the colour of the prevailing predis- 
 position." Occasionally, too, we find old and half-doting 
 women, at first convinced of their innocence, but soon falter- 
 ing before the majesty of justice, asking timidly whether it 
 is possible to be in connection with the Devil without being 
 conscious of the fact, and at last almost persuading themselves 
 that they had done what was alleged. Very often, the terror 
 of the trial, the prospect of the most agonising of deaths, and 
 the frightful tortures that were applied to the weak frame of 
 an old and feeble woman," overpowered her understanding; 
 
 ' Buckle's Hist, vol. i. p. 424, note. ' Calmeil. 
 
 ' Fpr a frightful catalogue of the tortures that were employed in these cases, 
 see Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft (Londpn, 1665), pp. 11, 12. All the old 
 treatises are full of the subject. Sprenger recommends the tortures to be con- 
 tinued two or three days, till the prisoner was, as he expresses it, ' decentei 
 
86 EATIONALISM m EUROPE, 
 
 her brain reeled beneatli the accumulated suffering, the con 
 sciousness of innocence disaj)peared, and the wretched victim 
 went raving to the flames, convinced that she was about to 
 sink for ever into perdition. The zeal of the ecclesiastics in 
 stimulating the persecution was unflagging. It was dis- 
 played alike in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Flanders, 
 Sweden, England, Scotland, and Ireland. An old writer who 
 cordially approved of the rigour tells us that, in the province 
 of Como alone, eight or ten inquisitors were constantly em- 
 ployed; and he adds that, in one year, the number of persons 
 they condemned amounted to a thousand ; and that during 
 several of the succeeding years, the victims seldom fell below 
 one hundred.' 
 
 It was natural that a body of learned men like the inquisi- 
 tors, whose habits of thought were eminently retrospective, 
 should have formed some general theories connecting the 
 phenomena of sorcery with past events, and reducing them 
 to a systematic form. We accordingly find that, in the 
 course of about three centuries, a vast literature was formed 
 upon the subject. The different forms of witchcraft were all 
 carefully classified and associated with particular doctrines ; 
 the whole philosophy of the Satanic was minutely investi- 
 gated, and the prevailing mode of thought embodied in count- 
 less treatises, which were once regarded as masterpieces of 
 orthodox theology. 
 
 It is very difficult for us in the present day to do justice 
 to these works, or to realise the points of view from which 
 they were written. A profound scepticism on all subjects 
 
 qusestionatus ' (Pars iii. Qu3est. 14, 15). The tortures were all the more horri- 
 ble, because it was generally believed that the witches had charms to deader 
 tlieir effect. 
 
 ' Spina, cap. xii. 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 87 
 
 connected with the Deyil underlies the opinions of almost 
 every educated man, and renders it difficult even to conceive 
 a condition of thought in which that spirit was the object of 
 jin intense and realised belief. An anecdote which involves 
 the personal intervention of Satan is now regarded as quite 
 as intrinsically absurd, and unworthy of serious attention, 
 as an anecdote of a fairy or of a sylph. When, therefore, a 
 modern reader turns over the pages of an old treatise on 
 witchcraft, and finds hundreds of such anecdotes related with 
 the gravest assurance, he is often inclined to depreciate very 
 unduly the intellect of an author who represents a condition 
 of thought so unlike his own. The cold indifference to 
 human suffering which these writers display gives an addi- 
 tional bias to his reason ; while their extraordinary pedantry, 
 their execrable Latin, and their gross scientific blunders, fur- 
 nish ample materials for his ridicule. Besides this, Sprenger, 
 who is at once the most celebrated, and, perhaps, the most 
 credulous member of his class, unfortunately for his reputa- 
 tion, made some ambitious excursions into another field, and 
 immortalised himself by a series of etymological blunders, 
 which have been the delight of all succeeding scholars.' 
 
 But when all these qualifications have been made — and, 
 with the exception of the last, they would all apply to any 
 other writings of the same period — it is, I think, impossible 
 
 ' 'Fcemina,' he assures us, is derived from Fe and minus, because women 
 have less faith than men (p. 65). Maleficiendo is from male de fides entiendo. 
 For diabolus we have a choice of most instructive derivations. It comes ' a 
 dia quod est duo, et bolus quod est morsellus, quia duo occidit, scilicet corpus 
 et .inimam. Et secundum etymologiam, licet Gra;ce, interpretetur diabolus 
 clausus ergastulo : et hoc sibi convenit cum non permittitur sibi nocere quan- 
 tum vellet. Vel diabolus quasi defluens, quia defiuxlt, id est corruit, et spe- 
 jialiter et'localiter' (p. 41). If the reader is curious in these matters, he will 
 find another astounding instance of verbal criticism, which I do not venture to 
 quote, in Bodiu, Dem, p. 40. 
 
00 H \TIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 to deny that the books m defence of the belief are not only 
 far more numerous than the later works against it, but that 
 they also represent far more learning, dialectic skill, and even 
 general ability. For many centuries, the ablest men were 
 not merely unwilling to repudiate the sujserstition ; they 
 often pressed forward earnestly, and with the most intense 
 conviction, to defend it. Indeed, during the period when 
 witchcraft was most prevalent, there were few writers of 
 real eminence who did not, on some occasion, take especial 
 pains to throw the weight of their authority into the scale. 
 Thomas Aquinas was probably the ablest writer of the thir- 
 teenth century,. and he assures us that diseases and tempests 
 are the direct agt^ of the Devil ; that the Devil can transport 
 men at his pleasure through the air ; and that he can trans- 
 form them into any shape. Gerson, t"he Chancellor of the 
 University of Paris, and, as many think, the author of ' The 
 Imitation,' is justly regarded as one of the master-intellects 
 of his age; and he, too, wrote in defence of the belief 
 Bodin was unquestionably the most original political philoso- 
 pher who had arisen since Macchia^■elli, and he devoted all his 
 learning and acuteness to crushing the rising scepticism on 
 the subject of witches. The truth is, that, in those ages, 
 ability was no guarantee against error ; because the single 
 employment of the reason was to develop and expand prem- 
 ises that were furnished by the Church. There was no 
 such thing as an uncompromising and unreserved criticism 
 of the first principles of teaching ; there was no such thing 
 as a revolt of the reason against conclusions that were strictly 
 drawn from the premises of authority. In our age, and in 
 eveiy other age of half belief, principles are often adopted 
 without being fully developed. If a conclusion is drawn 
 from them, men enquire, not merely whether the deduction 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. 89 
 
 is correct, but also whether its result seems intriusically 
 probable ; and if it does not appear so, they will reject the 
 conclusion, without absolutely rejecting the premise. In the 
 ages of witchcraft, an inexorable logic prevailed. Men were 
 so firmly convinced of the truth of the doctrines they were 
 taught, that those doctrines became to them the measure of 
 probability, and no event that seemed to harmonise with 
 them presented the slightest difficulty to the mind. They 
 governed the imagination, while they subdued the reason, 
 and secular considerations never intervened to damp their 
 assurance. The ablest men were not unfrequently the most 
 credulous ; because their ability was chiefly employed in dis- 
 covering analogies between every startling narrative and the 
 principles of their faith, and their success was a measure of 
 their ingenuity. 
 
 It is these considerations that give the writings of the 
 period I am referring to so great an importance in the his- 
 tory of opinions, and which also make it so difficult for us to 
 appreciate their force. I shall endea\our to lay before the 
 reader, in as concise a form as I am able, some of the leading 
 principles they embodied ; which, acting on the imagina- 
 tion, contributed to produce the phenomena of witchcraft ; 
 and, acting on the reason, persuaded men that the narratives 
 of witches were antecedently probable.' 
 
 It was uniA'ersally taught that innumerable evil spirits 
 
 were ranging over the world, seeking the present unhappi- 
 
 ness and the future ruin of mankind ; that these spirits were 
 
 ' The principal authority on these matters is a large collection of Latin 
 works (in great part written by inquisitors), extending over about two cen- 
 turies, and published under the title of Malleus Mdlefcarum (the title of 
 Sprenger's book). It comprises the works of Sprenger, Nider, Basin, Molitor, 
 Gerson, Murner, Spina, Laurentius, Bernardus, Vignitus, Grillandus, &c. I 
 have noticed a great many other works in their places, and the reader maj 
 find reviews of many others in Madden and Plancy. 
 
90 BaTIONALISM Ul EUEOPE. 
 
 fallen angels, who had retained many, if not all, the angelic 
 capacities ; and that they, at all events, possessed a power 
 and wisdom far transcending the limits of human faculties. 
 From these conceptions, many important consequences were 
 evolved. If these spirits are for ever hovering around us, it 
 ■H as said, it is surely not improbable that we should meet 
 some signs of their presence. If they delight in the smallest 
 misfortune that can befall mankind, and possess far more 
 than human capacities for inflicting suffering, it is not (?ur- 
 p ising that they should direct against men the energies of 
 superhuman malice. If their highest object is to secure the 
 ultimate ruin of man, we need not wonder that they should 
 offer their services to those who would bribe them by the 
 surrender ot their hopes. That such a compact can be 
 made — that it is possible for men to direct the energies of 
 evil spirits — was established by the clearest authority. 
 ' Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' was the solemn in- 
 junction which had been more than once repeated in the 
 Levitical code ; and the history of the witch of Endor fur- 
 nishes a detailed description of the circumstances of the 
 crime. The Fathers had denounced magic with a unanimous 
 and unvarying_voice, and the writings of every nation bear 
 traces of the universality of the belief. In an age which 
 was essentially retrospective, it was impossible to name a 
 tenet which could seem more probable, for there was none 
 which was more closely connected with antiquity, both 
 ecclesiastical and profane. 
 
 The popular belief, however, not only asserted the possi- 
 bility and continued existence of witchcraft, it also entered 
 into many of what we should now deem the most extrava- 
 gant and grotesque details. In the first place, one of the 
 most ordinary operations of the witch, or of the Devil acting 
 
magio and witchoeaft. 91 
 
 at her commaud, was to cause tempests, which it was said 
 frequently desolated the fields of a single person, leaving tlie 
 rest of the country entirely untouched. If any one ventured 
 to deny that Satan possessed, or was likely to exercise this 
 power, he was speedily silenced by a scriptural precedent. 
 We read in the Old Testament that the Devil, by,the Divine 
 permission, afflicted Job ; and that among the means which 
 lie employed was a tempest which destroyed the house in , 
 which the sons of the patriarch were eating. The descrip- 
 tion, in the book of Revelation, of the four angels who held 
 the four winds, and to whom it was given to afflict the earth, 
 was also generally associated with this belief; for, as St. Au- 
 gustine tells us, the word angel is equally applicable to good 
 or bad spirits. Besides this, the Devil was always spoken 
 of as the prince of the air. His immense knowledge and his 
 immense power would place the immediate causes of atmos- 
 pheric disturbances at his disposal ; and the sudden tempest 
 would, therefore, be no violation of natural laws, but simply 
 an instance of their application by superhuman power. 
 These considerations were, it was thought, sufficient to re- 
 move all sense of the antecedent improbability of the facts 
 which were alleged ; but every uncertainty was dispelled by 
 the uniform teaching of the Church. At all times, the 
 Fathers and the mediiieval saints had taught, like the teachers 
 of every other religion in the same early stage of civilisa- 
 tion, that all the more remarkable atmospheric changes re- 
 sulted from the direct intervention of spirits.' Rain seems 
 to have been commonly associated, as it still is in the Church 
 of England, with the intervention of the Deity ; but wind 
 and hail were invariably identified with the Devil. If the 
 
 ' On the universality of this behef, in an early stage of civilisation, see 
 Buckle's History, vol. i. p. 346. 
 
92 EAllONALISM Hf EDEOPE. 
 
 Devil could originate a tempest, it followed, as a necessary 
 consequence, that witches who had entered into compact 
 with him had the same power. 
 
 The same principles of argument applied to disease. 
 The Devil had afflicted Job with horrible diseases, and 
 might therefore afflict others. Great pestilences were con- 
 stantly described in the Old Testament as the acts of the 
 angels ; and the Devil, by the permission of the Deity and 
 by virtue of his angelic capacities, might therefore easily 
 produce them. The history of the demoniacs proves that 
 devils could master and derange the bodily functions ; and, 
 therefore, to deny that they could produce disease, would be 
 to impugn the veracity of these narratives ; and the later 
 ecclesiastical testimony on the subject, if not unanimous, 
 was, at least, extremely strong. As, therefore, the more 
 striking atmospheric disturbances were ascribed generally to 
 the Devil, and, when the injury was spread over a small 
 area, to witches ; so, fhe pestilences which desolated nations 
 were deemed supernatural, and every strange and unac- 
 countable disease that fell upon an individual, a result of the 
 malice of a sorcerer. If the witch could produce disease by 
 her incantations, there was no difficulty in believing that 
 she could also remove it.' 
 
 ' There can be little doubt that a considerable amount of poisoning was 
 mixed up with the witch cases. In ages when medical knowledge was scanty, 
 and post mortem examinations unknown, this crime was peculiarly dreaded 
 and appeared peculiarly mysterious. On the other hand, it is equally certain 
 that the witches constantly employed their knowledge of the property of herbs 
 for the purpose of curing disease, and that they attained, in this respect, a skill 
 which was hardly equalled by the regular practitioners. To the evidence 
 which Michelet has collected on this matter, I may add a striking passage 
 from Grillandus. ' Quandoque vero provenit febris, tussis, dementia, phthisis, 
 hydropsis, aut aliqua tumefactio camis in corpore, sive apostema extrinsecua 
 appareus : quandoque vero intrinsece apud intestina aliquod apostema sit adeo 
 terribile et incurabile quod nulla pars mediconim id sanare et removere potest, 
 
MAGIO AND WITOHOEAFT. 93 
 
 These propositions were unanimously and firmly believed. 
 They were illustrated by anecdotes, tbe countless numbers 
 of which can only be appreciated by those who have studied 
 the literature at its source. They were indelibly graven on 
 the minds of men by hundreds of trials and of executions, 
 and they were admitted by almost all the ablest men in 
 Christendom. 
 
 There were other details, however, which excited consid- 
 erable discussion. One of the most striking of these was 
 the transportation of witches through the air. That an old 
 woman could be carried some hundreds of miles in a few 
 minutes on a broomstick or a goat, or in any other way the 
 Devil might select, would, in the present day, be regarded 
 as so essentially and grotesquely absurd, that it is probable 
 that no conceivable amount of testimony would convince 
 men of its reality. At the period of which I am writing, 
 this rationalistic spirit did undoubtedly exist in a few 
 minds ; for it is noticed, though with extreme contempt, by 
 some of the writers on the subject, who treated it as a 
 manifest mental aberration; but it had not yet assumed any 
 importance. The measure of probability was still essentially 
 theological ; and the only question that was asked was, how 
 far the narratives conformed with the theological conception 
 of a spirit. On this point there seemed, at first sight, much 
 diificulty, and considei-able ingenuity was applied to eluci- 
 dating it. Satan, it was remembered, had borne Christ ■ 
 through the air, and placed him on a pinnacle of the temple- 
 and therefore, said St. Thomas Aquinas, if he could do j 
 
 nisi accedat alius malefieus, sive sortilegus, qui contrariis medelis et remediia 
 ffinritudinem ipsam melefioam toUat, quam facile et breyi tempore remorere po- 
 test cseteri vero medici qui artein ipsius medicinaj profiteutur nihil valent et iie 
 Bciunt afferre remedium.' (Mall. Mai, vol. ii. pp. 393, 394.) 
 
94 KATIONALISM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 this to one body he could do it to all. The prophet Hahak- 
 kuk had been transported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon, 
 and Philip the Evangelist had been the object of a similar 
 miracle. St. Paul had likewise been carried, perhaps in the 
 body, into the third heaven. 
 
 This evidence was ample and conclusive ; but other por- 
 plexing difficulties arose. Nothing in the witch trials w.as 
 more minutely described than the witches' Sabbath, and 
 many hundreds of women had been burnt ali'S'e for attending 
 it. Occasionally, however, it happened that, when a woman 
 had been condemned on this charge by her own confession, 
 or by the evidence of other witches, her husband came forth 
 and swore that his wife had not left his side during the night 
 in question. The testimony of so near a relative might, per- 
 haps, be explained by perjury ; but other evidence was ad- 
 duced which it was more difficult to evade. It was stated 
 that women were often found lying in a state of trance, in- 
 sensible to pain, and without the smallest sign of life ; that, 
 after a time, their consciousness returned, and that they then 
 confessed that they had been at the witches' Sabbath. These 
 statements soon attracted the attention of theologians, who 
 were much divided in their judgments. Some were of opm- 
 ion that the witch was laboring under a delusion of the Devil ; 
 but they often added that, as the delusion originated in a 
 compact, she should, notwithstanding, be burned. Others 
 suggested a bolder and very startling explanation. That 
 the same portion of matter cannot be in two places at once, 
 is a proposition which rests entirely on the laws of nature ; 
 but those laws have no existence for the miraculous ; and the 
 miracle of transubstantiation seems to destroy all the improb- 
 ability of the pluri-presence of a human body. At all events, 
 the Devil might furnish, for the occasion, a duolicate body, 
 
MAGIO AMD WITOHCEAFT 95 
 
 in order to baffle the ministers of justice. This latter opinion 
 became extremely popular among theologians ; and two fa- 
 mous Catholic miracles were triumphautly quoted in its sup- 
 port. St. Ambrose was, on one occasion, celebrating mass in 
 a church at Milan, when he suddenly paused in the midst of 
 the service. His head sank upon the altar, and he remained 
 motionless, as in a trance, for the space of three hours. The 
 congregation waited silently for the benediction. At last the 
 consciousness of the saint returned, and he assured his hear- 
 ers that he had been officiating at Tours at the burial of St. 
 Martin, a statement which was, of course, in a few days veri- 
 fied. A similar miracle was related of St. Clement. This 
 early saint, in the midst of a mass at Rome, was called away 
 to consecrate a church at Pisa. His body, or an angel who 
 had assumed its form, remained at Rome ; but the saint was 
 at the same time present at Pisa, where he left some drops of 
 blood upon the marble for a memorial of the miracle.' On the 
 whole, the most general opinion seems to have been, that the 
 witches wera sometimes transported to the Sabbath in body, 
 and sometimes in spirit ; and that devils occasionally assumed 
 their forms in order to baffle the sagacity of the judges.' 
 
 Another important and much discussed department, was 
 the connection between evil spirits and animals. That the 
 Devil could assume the form of any animal' he pleased, 
 
 ' Spina, De Strigibtis (1522), cap. xi. 
 
 ' All the phenomena of somnambulism were mixed up with the question. 
 See, e. g., Spina, cap. x. and xi., where it is ftiUy discussed. Many curious no- 
 tions were held about somnambulism. One opinion was, that the somnambu- 
 lists had never been baptised, or had been baptised by a drunken priest. 
 
 ^ This belief was probably sustained by the great use made of animals in 
 Christian symbolism as represeutatiyes of moral qualities. Indifferent district j 
 different animals were supposed to be in especial connection with spirits. 
 Delrio mentions that the ancient Irish had such a veneration for wolves that 
 they were accustomed to pray for their salvation, and to choose them as god- 
 
96 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 seems to have been generally admitted ; and it presented no 
 difficvilty to those who remembered that the first appearance 
 of that personage on ea rth wasas_a^serpent, and that on one 
 occasion a legion of devils Jiad entered into a herd of swine. 
 St. Jerome also assures us that, in the desert, St. Antony had 
 met a centaur and a faun — a little man with horns growing 
 from his forehead — who were possibly devils ; ' and, at all 
 events, at a later period, the lives of the saints represent evil 
 spirits in the form of animals as not unfrequent. Lycan- 
 thropy, however, or the transformation of witches into wolves, 
 presented more dilBculty. The history of Nebuchadnezzar, 
 and the conversion of Lot's wife, were, it is true, eagerly al- 
 leged in support of its possibility ; but it was impossible to for- 
 get that St. Augustine appeared to regard lycanthropy as a 
 fable, and that a canon of the council of Ancyra had emphat- 
 ically condemned the belief. On the other hand, there was 
 no opinion more universally held among the ancients. It had 
 
 fathers for their children (Thiers' Superst., vol. ii. p. 198). Beelzebub, as is 
 "well known, was god of flies. ' Par oe qu'il n'y avoit pas une mouehe en son 
 temple, comme on diet qu'au Palais de Venise il n'y a pas une seule mouehe et 
 au Palais de Tolfede qu'il n'y en a qu'une, qui n'est pas chose estrange ou 
 nouvelle, car nous lisons que les Cyrenaiques, apr&s avoir sacrifid au dieu 
 Acaron, dieu des mouches, et les Grecs h Jupiter, sumommS Myiodes, c'est i, 
 dire mouchard, toutes les mouches s'envolaient en une nude, comme nous lisons 
 en Pausanias In Arcadicis et en Pline au livre xsix. cap. 6.' (Bodin, Demon., 
 p. 15.) Dancing bears and other intelligent animals seem to have been also 
 connected with the Devil ; and an old council anathematised at once magicians 
 who have abandoned their Creator, fortune-tellers, and those 'qui ursas aut 
 similes bestias ad ludum et perniciem simpliciorum circumferunt ' — ' for what 
 fellowship can there be between Christ and Belial ? ' (Wier, De Prcest Deem., p. 
 567.) The ascription of intelligence to animals was general through the mid- 
 dle ages, but it was most prominent in the Celtic race. See a curious chapter 
 on mystic animals in Dalyell's Superstitions in Scotland, and also the essay of 
 Renau on Oeltic Poetry. Muratori {ATttiq. Jtal., Diss, xxix.) quotes an amusing 
 passage from a writer of the eleventh century, concerning a dog which in that 
 century was ' moved by the spirit of Pytho.' 
 ' Vita S. Pauli. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 97 
 
 been accepted by many of the greatest and most orthodox 
 theologians, by the inquisitors who were commissioned by 
 the popes, and by the law courts of most countries. The 
 evidence on which it rested was very curious and definite. 
 If the witch was wounded in the form of an animal, she 
 retained that wound in her human form, and hundreds of 
 such cases were alleged before the tribunals. Sometimes the 
 hunter, having severed the paw of his assailant, retained it as 
 a trophy ; but when he opened his bag, he discovered in it 
 only a bleeding hand, which he recognised as the hand of his 
 wife." 
 
 ' 'L' existence des loupa-garoug est attest6e par Virgile, Solin, Strabon, 
 Pomponius Mela, Dionysius Afer, Varron, et par toua les jurisconsultes et 
 d^monomanes des derniers sieoles. A peine commen9ait-on k en douter sous 
 Louis XIV.' (Plancy, Did. Infernale, Lycanthropie.) Bodin, in his chapter 
 on Lyoanthropy, and in our own day Madden (vol. i. pp. 334-368), have col- 
 lected immense numbers of additional authorities. St. Augustine notices the 
 subject with considerable hesitation, but on the whole inclines, as I have said, 
 towards incredulity {Oiv. Dei, lib. xviii. c. 17, 18). He also tells us that in his 
 time there were some imikeepers, who were said to give their guests drugs in 
 cheese, and thus to turn them into animals. [Ibid.) In the Salic laws of the 
 fifth century there is a curious enactment ' that any sorceress who has devoured 
 a man should on conviction be fined 200 sous ' (Garinet, p. 6). To come down 
 to a later period, we find St. Thomas Aquinas asserting that ' Omnes angeli 
 boni et mali, ex virtute n:iturali, habent potestatem transmutandi corpora 
 nostra ; ' and, according to Bodin, Paracelsus and Fernel, the chief physician of 
 Henry IV., held a. similar belief. There is probably no country in Europe — 
 perhaps no country in the world — in which some form of this superstition has 
 not existed. It raged however especially where wolves abounded — among the 
 Jura, in Norway, Russia, Ireland (where the inhabitants of Ossory, according to 
 Camden, were said to become wolves once every seven years), in the Pyrenees 
 and (Jreece. The Italian women usually became cats. In the East (as the 
 ' Arabian Nights' show) many forms were assumed. A French judge named 
 Boguet, at the end of the sixteenth century, devoted himself especially to the 
 subject, burnt multitudes of lyoanthropes, wrote a book about them, and drew 
 up a code in which he permitted ordinary witches to be strangled before they 
 were burnt, but excepted lycanthropes, who were to be burnt alive (Garinet, pp. 
 298-302). In the controversy about the reality of the transfoimation, Bodin 
 supported the aflSmative, and Biusfeldius the negative side. There is a form of 
 VOL. I. — 1 
 
98 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 The last class of anecdotes I shall notice is that which 
 appears to have grown out of the Catholic conception of 
 celibacy. I mean the accounts of the influence of witchcraft 
 npon the passions. 
 
 It is not difficult to conceive the order of ideas that pro- 
 duced that passionate horror of the fair sex which is such a 
 striking characteristic of old Catholic theology. Celibacy 
 was universally regarded as the highest foi'm of virtue, and 
 in order to make it acceptable, theologians exhausted all the 
 resources of their eloquence in describing the iniquity of 
 those whose charms had rendered it so rare. Hence, the 
 long and fiery disquisitions on the unparalleled malignity, 
 the inconceivable subtlety, the frivolity, the unfaithfulness, 
 the unconquerably evil propensities of women, which were 
 the terror of one age, and which became the amusement of 
 the next. It is not very easy to read these diatribes with 
 perfect gravity ; but they acquire a certain melancholy 
 significance from the fact, that the teaching they represent 
 had probably a considerable influence in predisposing men to 
 believe in witches, and also in producing the extreme callous- 
 ness with which the sufierings of the victims wei'e contem- 
 plated. The question why the immense majority of those 
 who were accused of sorcery should be women, early attract- 
 ed attention ; and it was generally answered, not by the sen- 
 sibility of their nervous constitution, and by their consequent 
 liability to religous monomania and epidemics, but by the in- 
 herent wickedness of the sex. There was no subject on which 
 
 ■uonomania under which men believe themselres to be animals, which is doubt- 
 less the nucleus aroimd which the system was formed — a striking instance of 
 the development of the miraculous. See also Bourquelot, La Lycanthropie. 
 Among the many mad notions of the Abyssinians, perhaps the maddest is their 
 belief that blacksmiths and potters can change themselves into hyaenas, and 
 jusht therefore to be excluded from the sacrament (Hecker, Epid., p. 120). 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 99 
 
 the old writers expatiated with more indignant eloquence, or 
 with more copious illustration.' Cato, they said, had declared 
 that ' if the world were only free from women, men would 
 not be without the converse of the gods.' Cicero had said, 
 that ' many motives will urge men to one crime, hut that one 
 passion will impel women to all crimes.' Solomon, whose 
 means of observation had in this respect been exceedingly 
 extensive, had summed up his experience in a long series of 
 the most crushing apophthegms. Chrysostom only inter- 
 preted the general sentiment of the Fathers, when he pro- 
 nounced woman to be ' a necessary evil, a natural temptation, 
 a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, 
 and a painted ill.' Doctor after doctor echoed the same lugu- 
 brious strain, ransacked the pages of history for illustrations 
 of the enormities of the sex, and marshalled the ecclesiastical 
 testimonies on the subject with the most imperturbable ear- 
 nestness and solemnity. Men who had most seriously formed 
 this estimate of the great majority of women; who esteemed 
 celibacy the highest of virtues, and every temptation to aban- 
 don it the direct consequence of Satanic presence ; came, by 
 a very natural process, to regard all the 'phenomena of love' 
 as most especially under the influence of the Devil. Hence, 
 those wild gleams of strange and grotesque romance which, 
 from time to time, light up the literature of witchcraft. 
 Incubi and succubi were for ever wandering among man- 
 kind, alluring by more than human charms the unwary to 
 their destruction, and laying plots which were but too often 
 successful against the virtue of the saints. Sometimes, the 
 witches kindled in the monastic breast a more terrestrial fire ; 
 and men told, with bated breath, how, under the spell of a vin- 
 dictive woman, four successive abbots in a German monastery 
 
 ' See especially the long strange chapter on the subject in Sprenger. 
 
100 EATluNALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 had been wasted away by an unholy flame.' Occasionally, 
 with a still more refined malice, the Evil One assumed the ap- 
 pearance of some noted divine, in order to bring discredit 
 upon his character ; and an astonished maiden saw, prostrate 
 at her feet, the form of one whom she knew to be a bishop, and 
 whom she believed to be a saint ! '' Nor was it only among 
 thdse who were bound to celibacy that the deadly influences 
 were exercised. The witches were continually disturbing, by 
 their machinations, the joys of wedlock ; and none can tell 
 how ma;ny hundreds have died in agonies for afflicting with 
 barrenness the marriage bed.' 
 
 ' Sprenger, Pars I. Quiest. vii. At the request of St. Rerenns and St. Eqni- 
 tius, the angels performed on those saints a counteracting surgical operation. 
 ij[Nider, Formic, de Mai., c. v.) 
 
 '^ See the curious story of St. Sylvanus, Bishop of Nazareth, in Sprenger 
 (Pars IT. Quaest. i. cap. xi.). The Devil not only assumed the appearance of 
 this holy man, in order to pay his addresses to a lady, but when discovered, 
 crept under a bed, suffered himself to be dragged out, and declared that he was 
 the veritable bishop. Happily, after a time, a miracle was wrought which clear- 
 ed the reputation of the caluminated prelate. 
 
 ' As few people realise the degree in which these superstitions were en- 
 couraged by the Church which claims infallibility, I may mention that the reality 
 of this particular crime was implied, and its perpetrators anathematised, by the 
 provincinlcouncils or synod s of T royes, Lyons, Milan, Tours, Bourges, Nar- 
 bonne, rerraraj_St. Malo, Mont Cassin, Orleans, and Grenoble ; by the rituals of 
 Autun, Chartres, Perigueux, Atun, Evreux, Paris, Angers, Arras, Ch&lons, Bo- 
 logna, Troyes, Bourges, Alet, Beauvais, Meaux, Kheims, &c. ; and by the decrees 
 of a long series of bishops (Thiers, Sup. Pop., torn. iv. ch. vii.). It was held, as 
 far as I Imow, without a single exception, by all the inquisitors who presided at 
 the witch -courts, and Sprenger gives a long account of the methods which were 
 generally employed in convicting those who were accused of the crime. Mon- 
 taigne appears to have been the first who openly denied it, ascribing to the im- 
 agination what the orthodox ascribed to the Devil ; and this opinion seems soon 
 to have become a characteristic of free-thinkers in France ; for Thiers (who 
 wrote in IGYS) complains that ' Les esprits forts et les libertins qui donneut tout 
 ^ la nature, et qui ue jugent des choses que par la raison, ne veulent pas se 
 persuader que de nouveaux-marids puissent par I'artifice et la malice du d^mon 
 8.stre emptiches de se rendre le devoir conjugal (p 667) — a ver^ wicked incredu- 
 ity — ' puisque I'Eghse, que est conduite par le SaintrEsprit, et qui par conse 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCEAFT. lOl 
 
 I make no apology for having dwelt so long on a series 
 of doctrines and arguments which the reader will probably 
 deem very puerile, because their importance depends, not on 
 their intrinsic value, but upon their relation to the history of 
 opinions. The follies of the past, when they were adopted 
 by the wisest men, are well worthy of study ; and, in the 
 case before us, they furnish, I think, an invaluable clue to 
 the laws of intellectual development. It is often and truly 
 said, that past ages were pre-eminently credulous, as com- 
 pared with our own ; yet the diffei'ence is not so much in the 
 amount of the credulity, as in the direction which it takes. 
 Men are always prepared to accept, on very slight evidence, 
 what they believe to be exceedingly probable. Their meas- 
 ure of probability ultimately determines the details of their 
 creed, and it is itself perpetually changing under the influ- 
 ence of civilisation. In the middle ages, and in the six- 
 teenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the 
 measure of probability was essentially theological. Men 
 seemed to breathe an atmosphere that was entirely unsec- 
 ular. Their intellectual and imaginative conceptions were 
 all coloured by theological associations ; and they accepted 
 with cheerful alacrity any anecdote which harmonised with 
 their habitual meditations. The predisposition to believe in 
 the miraculous was so great, that it constructed, out of a 
 small germ of reality, this vast and complicated system of 
 witchcraft ; accummulated around it an immense mass of the 
 most varied and circumstantial evidence ; persuaded all the 
 ablest men for many centuries that it was incontestably 
 true ; conducted it unshaken through the scrutiny of the 
 
 quent ne peut errer, reconnoit qu'il se fa),t par I'op^ration, du demon ' (p. 573). 
 Tlie same writer shows that the belief existed in the Church in the time of The- 
 odoiisus (p. 568). The last sorcerer who was burnt in France perished on this 
 charge (Garinet, p. 256). 
 
102 EATIONALISM DST EUROPE. 
 
 law courts of every European nation ; and consigned tens 
 of thousands of victims to a fearful and unlamented death. 
 There was not the smallest desire to explain away or soften 
 down miraculous accounts, in order to mate them harmonise 
 with experience, because the minds of men were completely 
 imbued with an order of ideas that had no connection with 
 experience. If we could perceive evil spirits, untrammelled 
 by the laws of matter, actually hovering around us ; if we 
 could observe them watching every action with a deadly 
 malignity, seeking with all the energies of superhuman 
 power the misery of mankind, and darkening with their 
 awful aspect every sphere in which we move ; if we could 
 see the angel of destruction brandishing the sword of death 
 over the Assyrian hosts, or over the streets of Jerusalem ; 
 and could behold Satan transporting Christ through the air,' 
 or the demoniacs foaming in agony beneath his grasp, we 
 should probably reason on these matters in much the same 
 spii'it as the theologians of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
 turies. Our minds would be so pervaded by these awful 
 images, that they would form a measure of probability en- 
 tirely different from that which is formed by the experience 
 of life ; a nervous consciousness of the continual presence of 
 evil spirits would accompany us for ever, and would for 
 ever predispose us to discover manifestations of their power. 
 The foregoing pages will, I trust, be suificient to eluci- 
 date the leading causes upon which witchcraft depended. 
 They will show that it resulted, not from accidental circum- 
 stances, individual eccentricities, or even scientific ignorance, 
 but from a general predisposition to see Satanic agency in 
 life. It grew from, and it reflected, the prevailing modes 
 of reUgious thought ; and it declined only when those modes 
 Were weakened or destroyed. In almost every period of the 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHOEAFT. 103 
 
 middle ages, there had been a few men who hi some degree 
 dissented from the common superstitions ; but their opinions 
 were deemed entirely incomprehensible, and they exercised 
 no appreciable influence upon their contemporaries. Indeed, 
 their doctrines, being generally veiled in a mystical form, 
 were so perverted and materialised, that they not unfre- 
 quently increased the prevailing gloom. As long as the 
 general credulity continued, as long as the minds of men 
 were directed towards the miraculous and the Satanic, no 
 efforts could eradicate the superstition. In such a condition 
 of thought, men would always be more inclined to accept 
 than to reject the evidence. They would refuse to scrutinise 
 it with jealous suspicion ; and, though they might admit the 
 existence of some imposture, they would never question the 
 substantial justice of the belief. Not until the predisposi- 
 tion was changed ; not until men began to recoil from these 
 narratives, as palpably and grossly improbable ; not until the 
 sense of their improbability so overpowered the reverence 
 for authority, as to make them seek in every way to evade 
 the evidence, and to make them disbelieve it even when they 
 were unable to disprove it, could this deadly superstition be 
 rolled away. Its decline marks the rise, and its destruction 
 the first triumph, of the spirit of rationalism in Europe. 
 
 We frequently find, in the writings of the inquisitors, 
 language which implies that a certain amount of scepticism 
 was, even in their time, smouldering in some minds. It was 
 not, indeed, sufficient to make any deep impression on public 
 opinion. It is identified with no great name,' and produced 
 
 ' I should, perhaps, make one exception to this statement — Peter of Apono, 
 a very famous physician and philosopher of Padua, who died in 1305. Ho 
 appears to have entirely denied the existence of demons and of miracles ; and 
 to have attempted, by the assistance of astrology, to construct a general philos- 
 ophy of religion, casting the horoscope of each faith, and ascribing its rise 
 
104 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 no great book ; but it was yet sufficiently evident to elicit 
 the anxiety of some theologians. ' Those men,' wrote Ger-- 
 son, 'should be treated with scorn, and indeed sternly cor- 
 rected, who ridicule theologians whenever they speak of 
 demons, or attribute to demons any effects, as if these things 
 were entirely fabulous. This error has arisen among some 
 learned men, partly through want of faith, and partly 
 through weakness and imperfection of intellect .... 
 for, as Plato says, to refer everything to the senses, and to be 
 incapable of turning away from them, is the greatest impedi- 
 ment to truth.' ' Sprenger also, in a long chapter, instructed 
 theologians how to meet a spirit of vague scepticism which 
 had arisen among certain laymen ; ' who had, indeed, no fixed 
 method of reasoning, but were blindly groping in the dark, 
 touching now on one point, and now on another.' An assem- 
 bly of doctors of the University of Cologne,' which was 
 held in 1487, lamented, and severely and authoritatively con- 
 demned, a still more startling instance of rebellion, arising 
 from a quarter in which it was least to be expected. When 
 the panic was raging most fiercely in the diocese of Cologne, 
 some priests had attempted to allay the alarm by questioning 
 the reality of the crime. About thirty years later. Spina 
 mentions ' that, in some places, the innumerable executions 
 had aroused a spirit of most acrimonious opposition. Indeed, 
 
 and destiny to the influence of the stars. He was o, disciple of Averroes^ 
 perhaps the founder of Averroism in Italy — and seems to have formed a 
 school at Padua. When he was about eighty, he was accused of magic. It 
 was said that he had acquired the knowledge of the seven liberal arts by 
 seven familiar spirits whom he kept confined in a crystal ; but he died before 
 the trial was concluded, so the inquisitors were obliged to content themselves 
 by burning bis image. He was regarded as one of the greatest of magicians. 
 Compare Naude, Apol., pp. 380-391 ; Kenan, Averroes, pp. 258, 259. 
 
 ' Mall. Mai, vol. u. p. 253. = Mall. Mai, vol. i. pp. 460-468. 
 
 ' Vol. ii. pp. 191, 299, 300. 
 
MAGIC AND ■WITCHCEATT. 105 
 
 in the north of Italy, a positive rebellion had broken out, 
 accompanied by a tone of incredulity which that theologian 
 piteously laments. 'Most imprudent, most undevout, and 
 most unfaithful men will not believe the things they ought 
 to believe ; and what is still more lamentable, they exert all 
 their influence to obstruct those who are destroying the 
 enemies of Christ.' Such a conduct. Spina justly observes, 
 was full of danger for those who were guilty of it, as they 
 might themselves be justly punished for conniving at the 
 crime ; and it was a distinct reflection upon the Church 
 which was represented by the inquisitors and upon the 
 Pope by whom the inquisitors were commissioned. We And, 
 too, the clergy claiming, in a very peremptory tone, the su- 
 preme jurisdiction of these cases, and occasionally alleging 
 the misconduct of lay judges who had sufiered witches to 
 depart unharmed. All this scepticism, however, appears to 
 have been latent and undefined ; and it was not till 1563 
 that it was thrown into a systematic form by John Wier, 
 in his treatise ' De Prsestigiis Dasmonum.' 
 
 Wier was a learned and able physician of Cloves. He 
 was convinced as a doctor that many of the victims were 
 simply lunatics, and, being a very humane man, was greatly 
 shocked at the suflerings they endured. He was a Protest- 
 ant, and therefore, perhaps, not quite as much trammelled 
 by tradition as some of his contemporaries ; though in the 
 present day his reverence for authority would be regarded as 
 an absolute infatuation. He had not the slightest wish to 
 revolt against any of the first principles of the popular 
 teaching, or even to free himself from the prevailing modes 
 of thought. He was quite convinced that the world was 
 peopled by crowds of demons, who were constantly working 
 miracles among mankind ; and his only object was to recon? 
 
106 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 cile his sense of their ubiquity, with his persuasion that 
 some of the phenomena that were deemed supernatural 
 arose from disease. He was of opinion that all the witches 
 were labouring under the delusions of the Devil. They''did 
 not make an unholy compact, or ride through the air, or 
 arouse tempests, or produce disease, or become the conci- 
 bines of Satan ; but the Devil had entered into them, and 
 persuaded them that they had done these things. The idea 
 of possession was thus so enlarged as to absorb Ihe idea of 
 witchcraft. The bewitched person was truly afflicted by 
 the Devil, but the Devil had done this directly, and not by 
 the intervention of a witch, and had then thrown suspicion 
 upon some old woman, in order that the greatest possible 
 amount of suffering might be produced. Persons, he said, 
 were especially liable to diabolical possession, when their 
 faculties were impaired by disease, and their tempers acidu- 
 lated by suffering. In an eloquent and learned chapter on 
 ' the credulity and fragility of the female sex,' he showed, 
 by the authority of the Fathers and the Greek philosophers, 
 that women were peculiarly subject to evil influences. He 
 also showed that the witches, in mental and moral infirmities, 
 were pre-eminent among their sex. He argued that the word 
 translated witch, in the Levitical law, may be translated 
 poisoner ; and that the patristic notion of the intercourse 
 between angels and the antediluvian women, was inadmissi- 
 ble. The gross improbabilities of some parts of the popular 
 belief were clearly exhibited, and illustrated with much 
 unnecessary learning ; and the treatise was prefaced by an 
 earnest appeal to the princes of Europe to arrest the effusion 
 of innocent blood. 
 
 Tlie scepticism of tjiis work cannot be regarded as au- 
 dacious. In fact, Wier stands alone in the history of witch- 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEATT. 107 
 
 craft, and differs essentially from all the later writers on the 
 subject. He forms a link connecting two periods ; he was as 
 fully pervaded by the sense of the miraculous as his oppo- 
 nents, and he never dreamed ol restricting the sphere of the 
 supernatural. Such as it was, however, this book was the 
 first attack. of any importance on the received opinions, and 
 excited among learned men considerable attention. Three 
 editions were published, in a few years, at Basle and Amster- 
 dam, which were then the centres of independent thought. 
 It was translated into French in 1569. It was supplemented 
 by a treatise ' De Lamiis,' and by a very curious catalogue 
 of the leaders, and description of the organization, of hell.' 
 Shortly after the publication of these last works, a book ap- 
 peared in reply, fro;.n the pen of Bodin, the famous author 
 of the ' Republic,' and one of the most distinguished philoso- 
 phers in Europe. 
 
 Bodin was esteemed, by many of his contemporaries, the 
 ablest man who had then arisen in France ; and the verdict 
 has been but little qualified by later writers.' Amid all the 
 
 ' ' Pseudomonarohia D^monum ' — one of the principal sources of informa- 
 tion about this subject. He gives the names of seventy-two princes, and esti- 
 mates their subjects at 7,406,926 devils. It is not quite clear how much he 
 believed on the subject. 
 
 ' A very old critic and opponent of his views on witchcraft quaintly speaks 
 of him as ' Ce premier homme de la France, Jean Bodin, qui apr&s avoir par 
 une merveilleuse vivacity d'esprit accompagn^e d'un jugement solide traict^ 
 toutes les choses divines, naturelles et civiles, se fust pent estre mescogneu pour 
 homme, et eust est6 pris infailliblement de nous pour quelque intelligence s'il 
 n'eust laisse des m.arques et vestiges de son humanite dans cette d^monomanie.' 
 (Naud^, Apol, 127 (1625). Bayle {Diet. Phil.) pronounced Bodin to have been 
 ' one of the chief advocates of liberty of conscience of his time.' In our own 
 day, Buckle (vol. i. p. 299) has placed him as an historian above Comines, and 
 on a level with Macchiavelli ; and Hallam, speaking of the ' Kepublic,' says, 
 'Bodin possessed a highly philosophical mind, united with the most ample 
 stores of history and jurisprudence. No former writer on political philosophy 
 had been either so comprehensive in his scheme, or so copious in his knowledge ; 
 
108 KATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 distractions of a dissipated and an intriguing court, and all 
 the labours of a judicial position, he had amassed an amount 
 of learning so vast and soTarious, as to place him in the very 
 first rank of the scholar's'of his nation. Hejias also the far 
 higher merit of being one of the chief founders of political 
 philosophy and p^tical history, and of having anticipated 
 on these subjects many of the conclusiona of our own day. 
 In his judicial capawty he had presided at some trials of 
 witchcraft. He had brought all the resources of his scholar- 
 ship to bear upon the subject; and he had written a great 
 part of his ' Demonomanie des Sorciers ' before the appear- 
 ance of the last wort of Wier. 
 
 The ' Demon(3mame des Sorciers ' is chiefly an appeal to 
 authority, which the author deemed on this subject so unan- 
 imous and so conclusive, that it was scarcely possible for 
 any sane man to resist it. He appealed to the popular belief 
 in all countries, in all ages, and in all religions. He cited 
 the opinions of an immense multitude of the greatest writers 
 of pagan antiquity, and of the most illustriousof the Fathers. 
 He showed how the laws of all nations recognised the exist- 
 ence of witchcraft ; and he collected hundreds of cases which 
 had been investigated before the tribunals of his own or of 
 other countries. He relates with the most minute and cir- 
 cumstantial detail, and with the most unfaltering confidence, 
 all the proceedings at the witches' Sabbath, the methods 
 which the witches employed in transporting themselves 
 through the air, their transformations, their carnal inter- 
 course with the Devil, their various means of injuring their 
 
 none, perhaps, more original, more independent and fearless in his enquiries. 
 Two men alone, indeed, could be compared with him — Aristotle and Macliiayel.' 
 {Sist. of Lit., vol. ii. p. 68.) Dugald Stewart is equally encomiastic {Disserta- 
 Hon, pp. 52-54). 
 
MAGIO ASD WTrCHCEAirT. 109 
 
 enemies, tlie signs that lead to their detection, their confes 
 sions when condemned, and their demeanour at the stake. 
 As for the treatise of Wier, he could scarcely find words to 
 express the astonishment and the indignation with which he 
 liad perused it. That a puny doctor should have dared to 
 oppose himself to the authority of all ages; that he should 
 have such a boundless confidence in his own opinions, and 
 such a supreme contempt for the wisest of mankind, as to 
 carp and cavil in a sceptical spirit at the evidence of one of 
 the most notorious of existing facts ; this was, in truth, the 
 very climax of human arrogance, the very acme of human 
 absurdity. But, extreme as was the audacity thus displayed, 
 the impiety was still greater. Wier ' had armed himself 
 against God.' His book was a tissue of ' horrible blasphe- 
 mies.' ' 'No one who is ever so little touched with the honour 
 of God, could read such blasphemies without a righteous 
 anger.' Not only had he dared to impugn the sentences of 
 so many upright judges ; not only had he attempted to save 
 those whom Scripture and the voice of the Church had 
 branded as the worst of criminals ; he had even ventured to 
 publish to the world the spells and incantations he had learn- 
 ed from a notorious sorcerer.' Who could reflect without 
 
 ' Cornelius Agrippa, who had been the master of Wier. He was advocate- 
 general at Metz, and had distinguished himself by his efforts to prevent prosecu- 
 tions for witchcraft, and by saving the life of a peasant woman whom Savin the 
 inquisitor wished to burn. He was, consequently, generally thought to be in 
 league with the Devil ;' and it is related that, on his death-bed, he drew off from 
 his neck a black dog, which was a demon, exclaiming that it was the cause of 
 his perdition (Garinet, pp. 121, 122). In his early days he had studied magic, 
 and had apparently come to the conclusion that it rested either on imposture or } 
 on a superior knowledge of the laws of nature — a conclusion which he tried to 
 enforce in a book on the vanity of science. He was imprisoned for a year at 
 Brussels on the charge of magic, and ceaselessly calumniated after his death. 
 Before Wier, probably no one had done so much to combat the persecution, 
 and his reputation was saeiificed in the cause. See Plancy's Diet. Infern., art. 
 
ilO KATIONALISM IH E0EOPE. 
 
 consternation on tlie future of Christendom after such fearful 
 disclosures ? Who could question that the knowledge thus 
 disseminated would multiply to an incalculable extent the 
 number of witches, would vastly increase the power of Satan, 
 and would be productive of countless sufferings to the inno- 
 cent ? Under these circumstances, so far from relaxing the 
 prosecutions for witchcraft and sorcery, it was necessary to 
 continue them with a redoubled energy ; and surely, no one 
 could be the object of a more just suspicion than a man who 
 had written so impious a book, and who had shown such 
 acquaintance with the secrets of so impious a profession. To 
 pardon those whom the law of God condemned to death, was 
 indeed beyond the province of princes. Those who were 
 guilty of such an act had outra^d the majest y of Hea ven. 
 They had virtually repudiated the Divine law, and pestilence 
 and famine would inevitably desolate th^ir dominions.' One 
 fatal example there had been of a king tampering with his 
 duty in this respect. Charles IX. had spared the life of the 
 famous sorcerer Trois Echelles, on the condition of his in- 
 forming against his colleagues ; and it is to this grievous sin 
 that the early death of the king is most probably to be 
 ascribed : ' For the word of God is very certain, that he who 
 suffers a man worthy of death to escape, draws the punish- 
 ment upon himself, as the prophet said to king Ahab, that he 
 should die for having pardoned a man worthy of death. 
 For no one had ever heard of pardon being accorded to 
 sorcerers.' " 
 
 Agrippa, and Thiers' Superst, vol. i. pp. 142, 143. Naude has also deroted a 
 long chapter to Agrippa. Agrippa had not the good fortune to please any 
 class of theologians. Among the Catholics he was regarded with extreme 
 horror ; and Calrai, in his work De Scandalis, treats him as one of the chief 
 contemners of the Gospel. 
 
 ' Pp. 21Y, 228. ' P. 152. 
 
MAGIC AND wrrcHCEAri. Ill 
 
 Such were the opinions which were promulgated, towards 
 the close of the sixteenth century, by one of the most ad- 
 vanced intellects of one of the leading nations of Europe ; 
 promulgated, too, with a tone of confidence and of triumph, 
 that shows how fully the writer could count upon the sympa- 
 thies of his readers. The ' Demonomanie des Sorciers ' ap- 
 peared inj_581. Only seven years afterwards, Montaigne 
 published the first great sceptical work in the French lan- 
 guage ; and, among the many subjects on which his scepti- 
 cism was turned, witchcraft occupied a prominent place. It 
 would be scarcely possible to conceive a more striking con- 
 trast, than his treatment of it presents to the works of Bodin 
 and of Wier. The vast mass of authority which those wri- 
 ters loved to array, and by which they shaped the whole 
 course of their reasoning, is cahnly and unhesitatingly dis- 
 carded. The passion for the miraculous, the absorbing 
 sense of diabolical capacities, have all vanished like a dream. 
 The old theological measure of probability has completely 
 disappeared, and is replaced by a shrewd secular common 
 sense. The statements of the witches were pronounced in- 
 trinsically incredible. The dreams of a disordered imagina- 
 tion, or the terrors of the rack, would account for many of 
 them ; but even when it is impossible to explain away the 
 evidence, it is quite unnecessary to believe it. ' There are,' , 
 he said, ' proofs and arguments that are founded on expe-' 
 rience and facts. I do not pretend to unravel them. I often 
 cut them, as Alexander did the knot. After all, it is setting 
 a high value upon our opinions, to roast men alive on ac- 
 count of them.' We may not be able to discover an ade- 
 quate solution of some statements on the subject, but we 
 sliould consider — and he here anticipated a mode of argu- 
 ment which was destined long afterwards to assume a most 
 
112 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 prominent place in theological controversy — that it is far 
 more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that 
 an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom- 
 stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses 
 should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that 
 were alleged.' 
 
 It has been justly remarked by Malebranche, that Mon- 
 taigne is an example of a writer who had no pretensions to 
 be a great reasoner, but who nevertheless exercised a most 
 profound and general influence upon the opinions of man- 
 kind. It is not, I think, difficult to discover the explanation 
 of the fact. In an age which was still spell-bound by the 
 fascinations of the past, he applied to every question a judg- 
 ment entirely unclouded by the imaginations of theologians, 
 and unshackled by the dictates of authority. His originality 
 consists, not so much in his definite opinions or in his argu- 
 ments, as in the general tone and character of his mind. He 
 was the first French author who had entirely emancipated 
 himself from the retrospective habits of thought that had so 
 long been universal ; who ventured to judge all questions by 
 a secular standard, by the light of common sense, by the 
 measure of probability which is furnished by daily expe- 
 rience. He was, no doubt, perfectly aware that ' the laws 
 of Plato, of the twelve tables, of the consuls, of the emper- 
 ors, and of all nations and legislators — Persian, Hebrew, 
 Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish, English — 
 had decreed capital penalties against sorcerers ; ' he knew 
 that ' prophets, theologians, doctors, judges, and magistrates, 
 had elucidated the reality of the crime by many thousand 
 violent presumptions, accusations, testimonies, convictions, 
 
 ' Liv. iii. c. 11. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHOEAFT. 113 
 
 repentances and voluntary confessions, persisted into death ;' ' 
 but he was also sensible of the extreme fallibility of the hu- 
 man judgment ; of the facility with which the mind discov- 
 ers, in the phenomena of history, a reflection of its precon- 
 ceived notions ; and of the rapidity with which systems of 
 fiction are formed in a credulous and undiscriminating age. 
 While Catholics, Protestants, and Deists were vying with 
 each other in their adoration of the past ; Avhile the ambition 
 of every scholar and of every theologian was to form around 
 his mind an atmosphere of thought that bore no relation to 
 the world that was about him ; while knowledge was made 
 the bond-slave of credulity, and those whose intellects were 
 most shackled by prejudice were regarded as the wisest of 
 mankind, it was the mei-it of Montaigne to rise, by the force 
 of his masculine genius, into the clear world of reality ; to 
 judge the opinions of his age with an intellect that was 
 invigorated but not enslaved by knowledge ; and to contem- 
 plate the systems of the past, without being dazzled by the 
 reverence that had surrounded them. He looked down upon 
 the broad field of history, upon its clashing enthusiasms, its 
 discordant systems, the ebb and flow of its ever-changing 
 belief, and he drew from the contemplation a lesson widely 
 dififerent from his contemporaries. He did not, it is true, 
 fully recognise those moral principles which shine with an 
 unchanging splendour above the fluctuations of speculative 
 opinions ; he did not discover the great laws of eternal de- 
 velopment which preside over and direct the progress oi' 
 belief, inftise order into the seeming chaos, and reveal in 
 every apparent aberration the traces of a superintending 
 Providence ; but he, at least, obtained an intense and real- 
 
 ' Bodin, p. 252. • 
 VOL. I. — 8 
 
114 EATIOITALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 Lsed perception of the fallibility of the human intellect ; a 
 keen sense of the absurdity of an absolute deference to the 
 past, and of the danger of punishing men with death on 
 account of opinions concerning which we can have so little 
 assurance. These things led him to suspect that witchcraft 
 might be a delusion. The bent and character of his mind 
 I(:d him to believe that witchcraft was grossly improbable. 
 He was the first great representative of the modem secular 
 and rationalistic spirit. By extricating his mind from the 
 trammels of the past, he had learned to judge the narratives 
 of diabolical intervention by a standard and with a spirit 
 that had been long unknown. The predisposition of the old 
 theologians had been to believe that the phenomena of witch- 
 craft were all produced by the Devil ; and, when some mani- 
 fest signs of madness or of imposture were exhibited, they 
 attempted to accommodate them to their supernatural theory. 
 The strong predisposition of Montaigne was to regard witch- 
 craft as the result of natural causes ; and, therefore, though 
 he did not attempt to explain all the statements which he 
 had heard, he was convinced that no conceivable improba- 
 bility could be as great as that which would be involved in 
 their reception. This was not the happy guess of ignorance. 
 It was the direct result of a mode of thought which he ap- 
 plied to all theological questions. Fifty years earlier, a book 
 embodying such conceptions would have appeared entirely 
 incomprehensible, and its author would perhaps have been 
 burnt. At the close of the sixteenth century, the minds of 
 men were prepared for its reception, and it flashed like a 
 revelation upon France. From the publication of the essays 
 of Montaigne, we may date the influence of that gifted and 
 ever enlarging rationalistic school, who gradually eiFected 
 the destruction of the belief in witchcraft, not by refuting 
 
MAGIC AUD WirCHCEAFT. 115 
 
 or explaining its evidence, but simply by making men more 
 and more sensible of its intrinsic absurdity. 
 
 Thirteen years after Montaigne, Charron wrote his famous 
 treatise on ' Wisdom.' In this work he systematised many 
 of the opinions of Montaigne ; but exhibited far less genius 
 and originality than his predecessor. Like Montaigne, he 
 looked with aversion on the miraculous ; but, like Montaigne, 
 his scepticism arose, not from any formal examination of evi- 
 dence, but from a deep sense of the antecedent improbability. 
 That which Montaigne had thrown into the form of strong 
 doubt, Charron almost threw into the form of a denial. All 
 through the seventeenth century, the same modes of thought 
 continued, slowly but steadily sapping the old belief; but, 
 though the industry of modern antiquarians has exhumed 
 two or three obscure works that were published on the subject,' 
 those works never seem to have attracted any serious atten- 
 tion, or to have had any appreciable influence in accelerating 
 the movement. It presents a spectacle, not of argument or 
 of conflict, but of a silent evanescence and decay. The priests 
 continued to exorcise the possessed, to prosecute witches, and 
 to anathematise as infidels all who questioned the crime. 
 Many of the lawyers, reverting to the innumerable enact- 
 ments in the law books, and to the countless occasions on 
 
 ' Maury, pp. 221, 222. The principal of those writers was Naud^ whose 
 Apologie pour les Orands Hommes soupfonnez de Magie contains much curi- 
 ous historical information in an extremely tiresome form. Naud^ also wrote 
 an exposure of the Kosicrucians, and a political work on Coups d^^at, em- 
 bodying the principles of Macchiarelli. He was the first librarian of the 
 Mazarin library, in the foundation of which he had a, considerable part. 
 Bayle {Peiw^es Diverses, § ccxli.) calls him ' L'homme de France qui avoit le 
 plus de lecture.' He is said to hare reconstructed some of the dances of the 
 ancients, and to have executed them in person before Queen Christina, in Swe- 
 den (Magnin, Origines du TM&tre, tom. i. p. 113). The Apologie was answer- 
 ed by a Capuchin named D'Autun, in a ponderous work called L'IncrSduUU 
 
116 EATIONALISM IK ETJEOPE. 
 
 which the subject had been investigated by the tribunals, 
 m,aintained the belief with equal pertinacity ; but outside 
 these retrospective classes, the sense of the improbability of 
 witchcraft became continually stronger, till any anecdote 
 which involved the intervention of the Devil was on that ac- 
 count generally ridiculed. This spirit was exhibited especial- 
 ly among those whose habits of thought were most secular, 
 knd whose minds were least governed by authority.' Some 
 great scholars and writers, who were fully sensible of the im- 
 probabiUty of the belief, yet regarded the evidence as irre- 
 sistible, and looked upon the subject with a perplexed and 
 timid suspension of judgment. LaBruy^re said that the prin- 
 ciples on which magic rests seem vague, uncertain, and vision- 
 ary ; but that many embarrassing facts had been attested by 
 credible eye-witnesses; that it appeared equally difficult to 
 admit or to deny them ; and that it was better to take a cen- 
 tral position between the credulous who admitted all, and the 
 free-thinkers who rejected all.' Even Bayle seems to have 
 looked upon it in a similar spirit." Descartes, though he did 
 not, as far as I am aware, ever refer directly to the subject, 
 probably exercised a considerable influence upon it, for the^ 
 tendency of his teaching was to emancipate the mind from 
 the power of tradition, to secularise philosophy, and to de- 
 stroy the material notions that had long been associated with 
 spirits. Malebranche mentions that in his time some of the 
 
 • ' Oe furent les esprits forts du commenoement du dix-septifeme sifeole qui 
 s'efforcferent lea premiers de combattre le prejuge regnant de defendre de 
 malheureux fou3 ou d'indiscrets chercheurs contre les tribunaux. II fallait 
 pour cela du courage, car on risquait, en cherchant k sauver la tfete du pr6- 
 venu, de passer soi-mfeme pour un affid6 du diable, ou ce que ne valait pas 
 mieux, pour un incr6dule. Les libres penseura, les libertins comme on let 
 ippelait alors, n'avaient que peu de credit.' (Maury, p. 221.) 
 
 ' See the passage in Maury, p. 219. ' Ibid., p. 220. 
 
MAGIC AOTJ -WrrCHCEAIT. 117 
 
 parliaments had ceased to bum witches, and that within 
 their jurisdiction the number of witches had declined. He 
 inferred from this that the contagious power of imagination 
 had created many of the phenomena. He analysed, with 
 much acuteness, the process of thought which produced ly- 
 canthropy ; but, being a priest, he found it necessary to add, 
 that real sorcerers should undoubtedly be put to death. ^ 
 Voltaire treated the whole subject with a scornful ridicule ; 
 observed that, since there had been philosophers in France, 
 witches had become proportionately rare ; and summed up 
 the ecclesiastical authorities for the belief as emphatically 
 as Sprenger or Spina, but with a very different object." 
 
 In the first half of the seventeenth century, the civil 
 power uniformly exerted its energies for the destruction of 
 witches. It was between the publication of the works of 
 Montaigne and of Charron, that Boguet was presiding at 
 the tribunal of St. Claude, where he is said to have burnt 
 eOO^persons, chiefly for lycanthropy. A few years later, the 
 fifty executions at Douay, which I have already mentioned, 
 took place ; and, in 1642, Cardinal Mazarin wrote a letter to 
 the bishop of Evreux, congratulating him warmly on the 
 successful zeal he had manifested on the subject.' Towards 
 the middle of the century, however, the growing incredulity 
 had reached those in power; the prosecutions for witchcraft 
 became more rare and languid ; and, in 1672, Colbert direct- 
 
 ' Recherche de la Vlrit$, liv. ii. p. 3, c. 6. 
 
 " He said : ' Tous les p^rea de I'^^glise sans exception crurent au pouvoir 
 de la ma^e. L'%liae condamna toujoura la magie, mats elle y crut toujoura. 
 Elle n'excommunia point lea sorciers comma des fous qui 6taieiit trompfe, maia 
 comme des hommes qui ^taient r6ellement en commerce avec lea diables.' 
 (Sid. Phil., art. Superstition.) This I beliere to be quite true, but it waa a 
 striking aign of the tiinea, that an opponent of magic could say ao without 
 ruining hia cauae. 
 
 ' Garinet, p. 328. 
 
118 EATIONALISM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 ed the magistrates to receive no accusations of sorcery, and 
 commuted in many cases the capital punishment for the 
 crime into a sentence of banishment. It was when some of 
 these commutations had been made, that the Parliament of 
 Rouen drew up an extremely remarkable address to the king, 
 protesting, in a strain of high religious fervour, against the 
 indulgence as directly contrary to the Word of God, to alJ 
 the precedents of French law, and to all the traditions ol 
 the Christian religion.' After this time but few trials foi 
 sorcery took place — that of the Marshal of Luxembourg, in 
 1681, was, perhaps, the most remarkable — for the scepticism 
 on the subject had already become very marked; an d in t he 
 last twenty yeai-s of the seventeenth century, only seven 
 sorcerers seem to have been burnt in France. Still later, in 
 1118, the Parliament of Bordeaux burnt a man upon this 
 charge. After this period there were, indeed, one or two 
 trials, but the prisoners were acquitted ; the star of Voltaire 
 had risen above the horizon, and the unsparing ridicule 
 which his followers cast upon every anecdote of witches, in- 
 timidated those who did not share in the incredulity. The 
 formularies for exorcism still continued, as they continue to 
 the present day, in Roman Catholic rituals, and they were 
 frequently employed all through the eighteenth century ; but 
 the more educated members of the clergy for the most part 
 allowed the subject 'to fall into neglect, and discouraged the 
 attempts of some of the order to revive it. Those who still 
 clung to the traditions of the past must have found much 
 dilfi(5ulty in accounting for the progress of the movement. 
 That Satan should occupy such an extremely small place in 
 the minds of men was very lamentable, but that the miraci- 
 
 ' Garinet, pp. 337, 344. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFr. 119 
 
 lous signs of his presence should have so completely disap- 
 peared, was exceedingly perplexing. At the beginning of 
 the present century, the Abhe Fiard published a work de- 
 signed to explain the difficulty. He showed that the philoso- 
 phers and revolutionists of the last century were the repre- 
 sentatives of the old sorcerers, that they acted under the 
 direct inspiration of Satan, and that their success was en- 
 tirely due to Satanic power. Lest, however, it should be 
 said that this represented rather the moral than the miracu- 
 lous influence of the Evil One, he added that many great and 
 startling miracles had accompanied the philosophic move- 
 ment, and that these miracles had not even yet ceased. The 
 cures of Mesmer and the prophecies of Cagliostro should 
 both be ascribed to supernatural agency ; but the most 
 startling of all the signs of diabolical presence was the ever- 
 increasing popularity of ventriloquism. On this last subject, 
 we are happily not left to our own unassisted conjectures, 
 for some learned divines of the fourteenth century had solemn- 
 ly determined that man was designed to speak by his mouth ; 
 and that, whenever he spoke in any other way, he did so by 
 the assistance of the Devil.' 
 
 The history of witchcraft in Protestant cotintries differs 
 so little from its history in Catholic ones, that it is not neces- 
 sary to dwell upon it at much length. In both cases, a ten- 
 dency towards the miraculous was the cause of the belief; 
 and the degree of religious terrorism regulated the intensity 
 of the persecution. In both cases, too, the rise and progress 
 of a rationalistic spirit were the origin and the measure of 
 its decline. In Engla nd, there was no regular enactment 
 against sorcerytill 1541, when the nation was convulsed by 
 
 ' Garinet, p. 280. 
 
120 EATI0NALI8M IN ECEOPE. 
 
 the first pawxysms of the Reformation. The crime had in- 
 deed been known at an earhgr period, and a few executions 
 had takenj)lace, but they were very rare ; and, in producing 
 them, other motives seem to have been generally mixed 
 with superstition. Joan of Arc, the noblest of all the victims 
 of the belief, perished by English hands, though on French 
 soil, and under the sentence of a French bishop. Some years 
 after, the Duchess of Gloucester, having been accused by the 
 Cardinal of Beaufort of attempting the king's life by sorcery, 
 was compelled to do penance, while two of her servants were 
 executed. A few other cases have come down to us ; but, 
 although the extreme imperfection of the old criminal registers 
 renders it very probable that there were others which are 
 forgotten, there can be little doubt that the superstition was 
 much less prominent in England than on the Continent.' 
 Owing partly to its insular position, and partly to the intense 
 political life that from the earliest period animated the 
 people, there was formed in England a fearless and self- 
 reliant type of character essentially distinct from that which 
 was common in Europe, eminently free from morbid and 
 superstitious terrors, and averse to the more depressing aspects 
 
 ' The most complete authority on this subject is the chronological table of 
 facts in Hutchinson's Essay on Witchcraft (lYlS). Hutchinson, who was a 
 very scrapulous writer, restricted himself for the most part to cases of which 
 he had learned precise particulars, and he carefully gives his authorities. The 
 number of executions he recounts as having taken place in 250 years, amounts 
 to many thousands. Of these only about 140 were in England. This, of 
 course, excludes those who were drowned or mobbed to death during the trial, 
 and those who were sentenced to other than capital punishments. All the 
 other writers I have seen place the English executions far higher ; and it 
 seems, I think, certain that some executions escaped the notice of Hutchinson, 
 whose estimate is, however, probably much nearer the truth than those of most 
 writers. See also Wright's Sorcery ; and an article from the Foreign Review 
 in 'A Collection of Curious Tracts on Witchcraft,' reprinted in 1838. It is 
 quite impossible to arrive at anything like precision on this subject. 
 
MAGIO AND WITOHOEAFT. 121 
 
 of religion. It was natural, however, that amid J;he conflicts 
 of the Reformation, some of the darker superstitions should 
 arise ; and we accordingly find Cranmer, in one of his articles 
 of Adsitation, directing his clergy to seek for 'any that use 
 charms, sorcery, enchantments, witchcraft, soothsaying, or 
 any like craft invented by the Devil.' We find also a very 
 Tew executions under Henry _VIII.; but in the following 
 reign the law on the subject was repealed, and vvas not 
 renewed tiU the accession of Elizabeth.' New laws were then 
 made, which were executed with severity ; and Jewell, when 
 preaching before the queen, adverting to the increase of 
 witches, expressed a hope that the penalties might be still 
 more rigidly enforced. ' May it please your .grace,' he added, 
 ' to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few 
 years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. 
 Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the death ; their 
 colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, 
 their senses are bereft. ... I pray God they never 
 practise further than upon the subject.' ' On the whole, 
 however, these laws were far milder than those on the Con- 
 tinent. For the first conviction, witches who were not 
 shown to have destroyed others by their incantations were 
 only punished by the pillory and by imprisonment, while 
 those who were condemned to death perished by the gallows 
 instead of the stake. Besides this, torture, which had done 
 
 ' The repeal was probably owing to the fact that witchcraft and pulling 
 down crosses were combined together; and the law had, therefore, a Popish 
 appearance. 
 
 " Sermons (Parker Society), p. 1028. Strype ascribes to this sermon the 
 law which was passed the following year {Annals of ihe Ref., vol. i. p. 11). 
 The multitude of witches at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth (which 
 Strype notices) was the obvious consequence of the terrorism of the preceding 
 reign, and of the religious changes acting in the way I have already described. 
 
122 EATIONAIISM IIT EUECPE. 
 
 RO mucli to multiply the evidence, had always beeu illegal in 
 England, and the witch-finders were compelled to content 
 themselves with pricking their victims all over in hopes of 
 discovering the insensible spot,' with throwing them into the 
 water to ascertain whether they would sink or swim, and 
 with keeping them during several successive nights without 
 sleep, in order to compel them to confess. These three 
 methods were habitually employed with signal success ; 
 many women were in consequence condemned, and a con- 
 siderable proportion of them were hung. But such scenes 
 did not take place without one noble protest. A layman 
 named Re ginald Sc ott published, in 1584, his 'Discovery of 
 Witchcraft, m which he unmasked the imposture and the 
 delusion of the system with a boldness that no previous 
 writer had approached, and with an ability which few sub- 
 sequent writers have equalled. Keenly, eloquently, and un- 
 flinchingly, he exposed the atrocious torments by which con- 
 fessions were extorted, the laxity and injustice of the manner 
 in which evidence was collected, the egregious absurdities 
 that filled the writings of the inquisitors, the juggling tricks 
 that were ascribed to the Devil, and the childish folly of the 
 magical charms. He also availed himself in a ^'ery dexterous 
 manner of the strong Protestant feeling, in order to discredit 
 statements that enianated from the Inquisition. If the ques- 
 tion was to be determined by argument, if it depended simply 
 or mainly upon the ability or learning of the controvei'sialists, 
 
 ' It is worthy of notice that anajsthesia is a recognised symptom of some 
 of the epidemic forms of madness. Speaking of that of Morzmes, Dr. Oon- 
 Btaussays: 'L'anesthesie ne fait jamais defaut. J'ai pu pincer, piquer aveo 
 une epingle les malades, enfoncer cette epingle sous les ongles ou de toute sa 
 longueur dans les bras, les jambes ou sur toute autre partie, sans provoquer I'ap- 
 parence d'une sensation douleureuse.' {^^pidemie d'Uysiero-Demorwpathie m 
 1861, p. 63.) 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 123 
 
 the treatise of Scott •would have had a powerful effect ; for it 
 ■was by far the ablest attack on the prevailing superstition 
 that had ever appeared, and it was written in the most 
 popular style. As a matter of fact it exercised-Ua apprecia- 
 ble influence. Witchcraft depended, upon general causes, 
 and repi'esented the prevailing modes of religious thought. 
 It was therefore entirely unaffected by the attempted refuta- 
 tion, and when James I. mounted the throne, he found the 
 nation perfectly prepared to second him in his zeal against 
 the witches. 
 
 James, although he hated the puritans, had caught in 
 Scotland much of the tone of thought concerning Satanic 
 power which the Puritans had always encouraged, and which 
 was exhibited to the highest perfection in the Scottish mind. 
 He was continually haunted by the subject. He had himself 
 written a dialogue upon it ; he had confidently ascribed his 
 stormy passage on his return from Denmark to the machina- 
 tions of the witches,' and he boasted that the Devil regarded 
 him as the most formidable of opponents. Soon after his 
 accession to the throne of England, a law was enacted which 
 
 ' This storm was the origin of one of the most horrible of the many horri- 
 ble Scotch trials on record. One Dr. Fian was suspected of haying aroused 
 the wind, and a confession was wrung from him by torture, which, however, he 
 almost immediately afterwards retracted. Every form of torture was in vain 
 employed to vanquish his obduracy. The bones of his legs were broken into 
 small pieces in the boot. All the torments that Scottish law knew of were 
 successively applied. At last, the king (who personally presided over the tor- 
 tures) suggested a new and more horrible device. The prisoner, who had been 
 removed during the deliberation, was brought in, and (I quote the contem- 
 porary narrative) ' his nailes upon all his fingers were riven and pulled off with 
 an instrument, called in Scottish a turkas, which in England wee call a payre 
 of pincers, and under everie nayle there was thrust in two needels over, even 
 up to the heads.' However, notwithstanding all this, ' so deeply had the devil 
 entered into his heart, that hee utterly denied all that which he before avouch- 
 ed,' and he was burnt unconfessed. (See a rare black-letter tract, reprinted 
 in Pitcaim's Criminal Triah of Scotland, vol. i. part ii. pp. 213, 223.) 
 
124 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 subjected witches to death on the first conviction, even 
 though they should have inflicted no injury upon their neigh 
 hours. This law was passed when Coke was Attorney- 
 General, and Bacon aTSiember of Parliament ; and twelve 
 bishops sat upon the Commission to which it was referred.' 
 The "prosecutions were rapidly multiplied throughout the 
 country, but especially in Lancashire ; and at the same time 
 the general tone of literature was strongly tinged with the 
 superstition. Sir Thomas Bi'owne declared that those who 
 denied the existence of witchcraft were not only infidels, but 
 also, by implicationTatheists." Shakspeare, like most of the 
 other dramatists" of his time, again and again referred to the 
 belief; and we owe to it that melancholy picture of Joan of 
 Arc, which is, perhaps, the darkest blot upon his genius.' 
 Bacon continually inveighed against the follies shown by 
 magicians ia their researches into nature ; yet in one of his 
 most important works he pronounced the three ' declinations 
 
 ' Madden's Phant, Tol. i. p. ii'l. 
 
 " ' I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches ; they that 
 doubt them do not only deny them but spirits, and are obliquely and upon 
 consequence a sort, not of infidels, but of atheists.' (Religio Medici, p. 24, 
 ed. 16'72.) Sir T. Browne did not, however, believe in incubi, or in lycan- 
 thropy. 
 
 ' On the extent to which the belief was reflected in the dramatic literature 
 of Elizabeth and James I., see Wright's Sorcery, vol. i. pp. 286, 296. It was 
 afterwards the custom of Voltaire, when decrying the genius of Shakspeare, 
 to dwell constantly on such characters as the witches in Macbeth. But such 
 scenes, though in modern times they may have an unreal and grotesque appear- 
 ance, did not present the slightest improbability at the time they were written. 
 It is probable that Shakspeare, it is certain that the immense majority even of 
 his most highly educated and gifted contemporaries, believed with an unfalter- 
 ing faith in the reahty of witchcraft. Shakspeare was, therefore, perfectly 
 justified in introducing into his plays personages who were, of all others, most 
 fitted to enhance the grandeur and the solenmity of tragedy, when thev faith 
 fiiUy reflected the belief of the audience. 
 
MAGIC AND WrrOHCRAFT. 125 
 
 from religion ' to be ' heresies, idolatry, and witchcraft. ' ' 
 Selden took up a somewhat peculiar and characteristic posi- 
 tion. He maintained that the law condemning women to 
 deatn for witchcraft was perfectly just, hut that it was quite 
 unnecessary to ascertain whether witchcraft was a possibility. 
 A woman might not be able to destroy the life of her neigh- 
 bour by her incantations ; but if she intended to do so, it was 
 right that she should be hung." 
 
 But, great as were the exertions made by James to extir- ; 
 pate witchcraft, they completely sink into insignificance be- 
 fore those which were made during the Commonwealth. As 
 soon as Puritanism gained an ascendency in the country, as 
 soon as its ministers succeeded in imparting their gloomy 
 tenets to the goTerning classes, the superstition assumed a 
 gigantic magnitude. During the few years of the Common- 
 wealth, there is reason to believe that more alleged witches 
 perished in England than in the whole period before and 
 after." Nor is this to be ascribed entirely to the judges or 
 the legislators, for the judges in former reigns never shrank 
 from condemning witches, and Cromwell was in most respects 
 far superior to his predecessors. It was simply the natural 
 result of Puritanical teaching acting on the mind, predis- 
 posing men to see Satanic influence in life, and consequently 
 eliciting the phenomena of witchcraft. A panic on the sub- 
 ject spread through the country; and anecdotes of Satanic 
 power soon crowded in from every side. The county 
 of Suffolk was especially agitated, and the famous witch- 
 finder, Matthew Hopkins, pronounced it to be infested 
 with witches. A commission was accordingly issued, and 
 
 ' Advancement of Learning, xxv. 22. It is true that this book was dedi 
 cated to the king, vrhose writings on the subject were commended. 
 ' Tahle-Talk. ' Hutchinson, p. 68. 
 
126 EATIONALISM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 two distinguished Presbyterian divines were selected by 
 the Parliament to accompany it. It would have been im- 
 possible to take any measure more calculated to stimulate 
 the prosecution, and we accordingly find that in Suffolk 
 sixty persons were hung for witchcraft"~in a single year.' 
 Among others, an Anglican clergymaia, named Lowes, who 
 was now verging on eighty, and who for fifty years had been 
 an irreproachable minister of his church, fell under the sus- 
 picion. The unhappy old man was kept awake for several 
 successive nights, and persecuted ' tiU he was weary of his 
 life, and was scarcely sensible of what he said or did.' He 
 was then thrown into the water, condemned, and hung. 
 According to the story which circulated among the members 
 of the Established Church, he maintained his innocence man- 
 fully to the end. If we believe the Puritanical account, it 
 would appear that his brain gave way nnder the trial, and 
 that his accusers extorted from him a wild romance, which 
 was afterwards, with many others, reproduced by Baxter 
 ' for the conversion of the Sadducee and the infidel.' ^ 
 
 We have seen that the conception of witchcraft, which 
 
 ' This is alluded to in Hudibras : — 
 
 ' Hath not this present Parliament 
 A ledger to the devil sent 
 Fully empowered to treat about 
 Finding revolted witches out ? 
 And has not he within a year 
 Hanged threescore of them in one shire,' &c. 
 
 Second part, Canto iii. 
 ' Baxter relates the whole story with evident pleasure. He says : 'Among 
 tne rest, an old reading parson named Lowis, not far from Framlingham, was 
 one that was hanged, who confessed that he had two imps, and that one of 
 them was always putting him on doing mischief, and (being near the sea) as 
 lie saw a ship under sail, it moved him to send him to sink the ship, and he 
 consented, and saw the ship sink before him.' {World of Spirits, p. 53."» Foi 
 the other view of the case, see Hutchinson, pp. 88-90. 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCEAFT. 127 
 
 had existed in England from the earliest period, assumed for 
 the first time a certain prominence amid the religious terror- 
 ism of the Reformation ; that its importance gradually in- 
 croased as the trials and executions directed public attention 
 to the subject ; and that it, at last, reached its climax under 
 the gloomy theology of the Puritans. It now only remains 
 for me to trace the history of its decline. 
 
 In pursuing this task, I must repeat that it is impossible 
 to follow the general intellectual tendencies of a nation with 
 the degree of precision with which we may review the 
 events or the arguments they produced. We have ample 
 evidence that, at a certain period of English history, there 
 was manifested in some classes a strong disposition to regard 
 witch stories as absurd ; but we cannot say precisely when 
 the idea of grotesqueness was first attached to the belief, 
 nor can we map out with exactness the stages of its pro- 
 gress. Speaking generally, however, there can be no doubt 
 that it first became prominent in that great sceptical move- 
 ment which followed the Restoration. The reaction against 
 the austere rigidity of the last Government, had produced 
 among the gayer classes a sudden outburst of the most deri- 
 sive incredulity. Fi^om mocking the solemn gait, the nasal 
 twang, and the affected phraseology of the Puritans, they 
 naturally proceeded to ridicule their doctrines ; and having 
 soon discovered in witchcraft abundant materials for their 
 satire, they made disbelief in it one of the tests of fashion. 
 At the same time the higher intel'lectual influences were 
 tending strongly to produce a similar movement among the 
 learned. Hobbes, who was the most distinguished of living 
 philosophers, had directed all the energies of his scepticism 
 against incorporeal substances, had treated with unsparing 
 ridicule the conceptions of demons and of apparitions, and 
 
128 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 had created in his disciples a predisposition to regard them 
 as below contempt.' A similar predisposition was formed 
 by the philosophy of Bacon, which had then acquired an 
 immense popularity. The Royal Society' had been just es- 
 tablished ; a passion for natural philosophy, very similar to 
 that which preceded the French Revolution, had become 
 general ; and the whole force of the English intellect was 
 directed to the study of natural phenomena, and to the dis- 
 covery of natural laws. In this manner there was formed a 
 general disposition to attribute to every event a natural 
 cause, which was soon followed by a conviction of the ab- 
 surdity of explaining phenomena by a supernatural hypoth- 
 esis, and which rapidly discredited the anecdotes of witches. 
 There does not appear to have been any very careful scrutiny 
 of their details, yet there was a growing indisposition to be- 
 lieve them, as they were discordant with the modes of 
 thought which the experimental philosophy had produced. 
 
 By the combination of these three influences, a profound 
 change was soon effected in the manner in which witchcraft 
 was regarded. The sense of its improbability became for 
 the first time general among educated laymen, and the num- 
 ber of the trials speedily diminished. In 1664, however, two 
 women were hung in Suffolk, under a sentence of Sir Mat- 
 thew Hale, who took the opportunity of declaring that the 
 reality of witchcraft was unquestionable ; ' for first, the 
 Scriptures had aflSrmed so much ; and secondly, the wisdom 
 of all nations had provided laws against such persons, 
 which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime,' 
 
 ' On the opinions of Hobbes on this subject, and on his great influence in 
 discreditmg these superstitious, see Cudworth's Intellectual System, vol. i. p. 1 '.6. 
 
 ^ The (indirect) influence of the Eoyal Society on this subject is noticed "jy 
 Hutchinson, and indeed most of the writers on witchcraft. See Casauhon on 
 Credulity, p. 191. 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCEAFT. 129 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician, as well as 
 a great writer, was called as a witness, and swore ' that he 
 was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched.' ' 
 
 Seventeen years later, the defence of the dying belief was 
 taken up by Joseph Glanvil, a divine, who in his own day; 
 was very famous, and who, I venture to think, has been sur- 
 passed in genius by few of his successors. Among his con- 
 temporaries he was especiiiUy praised as an able scholar an 1 
 dialectician, and as a writer whose style, though not untinc- 
 tured by the pedantry of his ago, often furnishes the noblest 
 examples of that glorious eloquence, so rich in varied and 
 majestic harmonies, of which Milton and the early Anglican 
 divines were the greatest masters. To us, however, who 
 look upon his career from the vantage ground of experience, 
 it assumes a far higher interest, for it occxxpies a most impor- 
 tant position in the history of that experimental philosophy 
 which has become the great guiding influence of the English 
 mind. As the works of Glanvil are far less known than they 
 should be, and as his defence of witchcraft was intimately 
 connected with his earlier literary enterprises, I shall make 
 no applogy for giving a general outline of his opinions. 
 
 To those who only know him as the defender of witch- 
 craft, it may appear a somewhat startling paradox to say, 
 that the predominating characteristic of the mind of Glanvil 
 was an intense scepticism. He has even been termed by a 
 modern critic 'the first English writer who had thrown 
 scepticism into a definite forni;'^ and if we regard this ex- 
 pression as simply implying a profound distrust of human 
 
 ' The report of this trial is reprinted in A OollecHon of Mare and Curi- 
 ous Tracts relating to Witchcraft (London, 1838). 
 
 - Siographie Universelle — an article which is also in the Eneyclopcedia 
 SHtannica. 
 
 VOL. I. — 9 
 
130 RATION ALISM IN ETJEOPE. 
 
 faculties, and not at all the rejection of any distinct dogmatic 
 system, the judgment can hardly be disputed. And certain- 
 ly, it would be difficult to find a work displaying less of the 
 credulity and superstition that are commonly attributed to 
 the belieyers in witchcraft than the treatise on 'The Vanity 
 of Dogmatising, or Confidence of Opinions," in which Glan- 
 vil expounded his philosophical views. Developing a fev 
 scattered hints of Bacon, he undertook to make a comprehen- 
 sive survey of the human faculties, to analyse the distorting 
 influences that corrode or pervert our judgments, to reveal 
 the weakness and fallibility of the most powerful intellect, 
 and to estimate the infinity of darkness that encircles our 
 scanty knowledge. Not only did he trace, with the most 
 ■\ ivid and unfaltering pen, the proneness to error that accom- 
 panies the human intellect in the moments of its greatest con- 
 fidence; not only did he paint in the darkest colours the 
 tenacity and the inveteracy of prejudice ; he even accepted 
 to the fullest extent the consequence of his doctrine, and, 
 with Descartes, enjoined a total abnegation of the opinions 
 that have been received by education as the first condition 
 of enquiry. He showed himself perfectly acquainted with 
 the diversities of intellectual tone, or as he very happily 
 termed them, the ' climates of opinion,' that belong to differ- 
 
 ' There is a good review of this book in Hailam's Hist, of Lit., vol. iii. pp. 
 358-362. It is, I think, by far the best thing Glanvil wrote, and he evidently 
 took extraordinary pains in bringing it to perfection. It first appeared as a short 
 e^ay ; it was then expanded into a regular treatise ; and still later, recast and 
 published anew under the title of ' Scepsis Scientifica.' This last edition is 
 extremely rare, the greater part of the impression having, ic is said (I do not 
 know on what autjjority), been destroyed in the fire of London. It was 
 answered by Thomas White, a ouce famous Roman Catholic controversialist 
 I cannot but think that Paley was acquainted with the works of Glanvil, for 
 their mode of treating many subjects is strikingly similar. Paley's watch 
 simile is fully developed by Glanvil, in chap. f. 
 
MAGIC AND ■WITOHCEAFT. 131 
 
 entages; and he devoted an entire chapter' to the decep- 
 tions of tbe imagination, a faculty which he treated with as 
 much severity as Butler. 
 
 On the publication of this treatise Glanvil had heen 
 elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and became one of the 
 most distinguished of the small but able minority of the 
 clergy who cordially embraced the inductive philosophy. 
 To combat the strong antipathy with which this philosophy 
 was regarded m the <JliurcC| and to bring theology into har- 
 mony with its principles, was the task to which he devoted 
 the remainder of his life. Spratt, and in a less degree one 
 or two other divines, were employed in the same noble cause; 
 but the manner in which Glanvil conducted his enterprise 
 separates him, I think, clearly from his fellow-labourers. 
 For, while his contemporaries seem to have expected as the 
 extreme consequences of the philosophy, on the one hand a 
 period of passing disturbance, arising from the discovery of 
 apparent discrepancies between science and the Bible, and 
 on the other hand increased evidence of the faith, arising 
 from the solution of those difficulties and from the increased 
 perception of superintending wisdom exhibited in 'the wheel- 
 work of creation,' Glanvil perceived very clearly that a far 
 deeper and more general modification was at hand. He 
 saw that the theological system existing in a nation, is 
 intimately connected with the prevailing modes of thought 
 or intellectual condition ; that the new philosophy was about 
 to change that condition ; and that the Church must either 
 adapt herself to the altered tone, or lose her influence over 
 the English mind. He saw that a theology which rested 
 ultimately on authority, which branded doubt as criminal, 
 and which discouraged in the strongest manner every impar- 
 
 ' Chapter xi. 
 
132 EATIONALISM U)! EUROPE. 
 
 tial investigation, could not long co- exist ■with a philosophy 
 that encouraged the opposite habits of thought as the very be- 
 ginning of wisdom. He saw that while men maintained every 
 strange phenomenon to be miraculous as long as it was unex- 
 plained, each advance of physical science must necessarily be 
 hostile to theology ; and that the passionate adoration of 
 Aristotle ; the blind pedantic reverence, which accounted the 
 simplest assertions of dead men decisive authorities ; the retro- 
 spective habits of thought the universities steadily laboured 
 to encourage, were all incomjiatible with the new tendencies 
 which Bacon represented.' In an essay on ' Anti-fanatical 
 Religion and Free Philosophy,' which was designed to be a 
 continuation of the New Atlantis of Bacon, he drew a noble 
 sketch of an ideal church constructed to meet the wants of 
 an intellectual and a critical age. Its creed was to be framed 
 on the most latitudinarian principles, because the doctrines 
 that could be defended with legitimate assurance were but 
 few and simple. Its ministers were to be much less anxious 
 to accumulate the traditions of the past than to acquire ' the 
 felicity of clear and distinct thinking,' and 'a large compass 
 in their thoughts.' They were to regard faith, not as the 
 opposite of reason, but as one of its manifestations. Pene- 
 trated by the sense of human weakness, they were to rebuke 
 
 ' He compares the leading scholars of his day to the mariner who returned 
 laden with common pebbles from the Indies, imagining that that must neces- 
 sarily be rare that came from afar ; and he accused them of asserting, on the 
 authority of Beza, that women hare no beards, and on that of St. Augustine 
 that peace is a blessing. He pronounced university education in general, and 
 that of Oxford in particular, to be almost worthless. The indignation such 
 sentiments created at Oxford is very amusingly shown in Wood's Athenm, arts. 
 Olanvil and Crosse. Crosse was a Fellow of Oxford (a D.D.), who at first 
 rehemently assailed Glanvil in prose, but at last changed his mode of attack, 
 and wrote comic ballads, which Wood assures us 'made Glanvil and his 
 Society ridiculous.' 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAIi'T. 133 
 
 the spirit of dogmatic confidence and assertion, and Miere to 
 teach men that, so far from doubt being criminal, it was the 
 duty of every man ' to suspend his full and resolved assent 
 to the doctrines he had been taught, till he had impartially 
 considered and examined them for himself.' 
 
 A religious system which is thus divested of the support 
 of authority, may be upheld upon two grounds. It may 
 be defended on the rationalistic ground, as according with 
 conscience, representing and reflecting the light that is in 
 mankind, and being thus its own justification ; or it may be 
 defended as a distinct dogmatic system by a train of eviden- 
 tial reasoning. The character of his own mind, and the very 
 low ebb to Avhich moral feeling had sunk in his age, induced 
 Glanvil to prefer the logical to the moral proof, and he be- 
 lieved that the field on which the battle must first be fought 
 was witchcraft.' 
 
 The ' Sadducismus Triumpha'tus,' which is probably the 
 ablest book ever published in defen ce o f the superstition. 
 opens with a striking picture of the rapid progress of the scep- 
 ticism in England.^ Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was 
 
 ' He thought the fact of the miracles of ■witchcraft being oontemporary, 
 would make It peculiarly easy to test them : ' for things remote or long past 
 are either not believed or forgotten ; whereas, these being fresh and new, and 
 attended with all the circumstances of credibility, it may be expected they 
 should have most success upon the obstinacy of unbelievers.' {Preface to thi 
 Sadducismus.) 
 
 ' 'Atheism is begun in Sadducism, and those that dare not bluntly say 
 there is no God, content themselves (for a fair step and introduction) to deny 
 tbere are spirits or witches, which sort of infidels, though they are not ordl 
 nary among the mere vulgar, yet are they numerous in a Uttle liigher rank of 
 understandings. And those that know anything of the world, know that most 
 of the looser gentry, and the small pretenders to philosopliy and wit, are gen- 
 erally deriders of the belief of witches and apparitions.' I need hardly say 
 that the word Atheism was, in the time of Glanvil, used in the very loosest 
 sense ; indeed, Dugald Stewart shows, that at one time the disbelievers in 
 apostolical succession were commonly denounced as A theists. (Dissert, p. 378.) 
 
134 NATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 becoming fashionable in the upper classes; but it was a 
 disbelief that arose entirely from a strong sense of its ante- 
 isedent improbability. All who were opposed to the ortho- 
 dox faith united iu discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at 
 it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and 
 ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it 
 would be a waste of time to examine it. This spirit had 
 arisen since the Restoration, although the laws were still in 
 force, and although little or no direct reasoning had been 
 brought to bear upon the subject. In order to combat it, 
 Glanvil proceeded to examine the general question of the cred- 
 ibility of the miraculous. He saw that the reason why witch- 
 craft was ridiculed was, because it was a phase of the miracu- 
 lous and the work of the devil ; that the scepticism was chief- 
 ly due to those who disbelieved in miracles and the devil ; 
 and that the instances of witchcraft or possession in the Bible, 
 were invariably placed on a level with those that were tried 
 in the law courts of England. That the evidence of the belief 
 was overwhelming, he firmly believed;' andthis, indeed, was 
 
 ' See a striking passage, pp. 3, 4 : — ' I muat premise that this, being matter 
 of fact, is only capable of the evidence of authority and of sense, and by both 
 these the being of witches and diabolical contracts is most abundantly con- 
 firmed. All histories are full of the exploits of those instruments of dark- 
 ness, and the testimony of all ages, not only of the rude and barbarous, but 
 of the most civilised and polished world, brings tidings of their strange per- 
 formances. We have the attestation of thousands of eye and ear witnesses, 
 and those not of the easily deceivable vulgar only, but of wise and grave dis- 
 cerners, and that when no interest could obUge them to agree together in a 
 common lie ; I say we have the light of all these circumstances to confirm us 
 in the beUef of things done by persons of despicable power and knowledge, 
 beyond the reach of art and ordinary nature. Standing public records have 
 been kept of these well-attested relations, and epochas made of these unwonted 
 events. Laws, in many nations, have been enacted against those vile prac- 
 tices ; those among the Jews and our own are notorious. Such cases have 
 been often determmei with us, by wise and revered judges, upon clear and 
 TOOstructive evidence ; and thousands in our own nation have suffered death foi 
 
MAGIC AND WrrCHCBAFT. 135 
 
 scarcely disputed; but, until the sense of d priori improba- 
 bility was removed, no possible accumulation of facts would 
 cause men to be ieve it. To that task he accordingly address- 
 ed himself. Anticipating the idea and almost the words of 
 modern controversialists, he urged that there was such a thing 
 as a credulity of unbelief; and that those who believed so 
 strange a concurrence of delusions as was necessary on the 
 supposition of the unreality of witchcraft, were far more cred- 
 ulous than those who accepted the belief He made his very 
 scepticism his principal weapon ; and, analysing with much 
 acuteness the d priori objections, he showed that they rested 
 upon an unwarrantable confidence in our knowledge of the 
 laws of the spirit world ; that they implied the existence of 
 some strict analogy between the faculties of men and of 
 spirits ; and that, as such analogy most probably did not 
 exist, no reasoning based on the supposition could dispense 
 men from examining the evidence. He concluded with a 
 large collection of cases, the evidence of which was, as he 
 thought, incontestable. 
 
 The ' Sadducismus Triumghatus ' had an ext raord inary 
 success. Numerous editions were issued, and several very 
 
 their vile compact with apostate spirits. All this I might largely prove in 
 their particular instances, but that it is not needful ; since those that deny the 
 being of witches do it, not out of ignorance of those heads of argument 
 which, probably, they have heard a thousand times, but from an apprehen- 
 sion that such a belief is absurd, and the things impossible.' 
 
 ' ' I think those that can believe all histories are romances ; that all the 
 wise could have agreed to juggle mankind into a common belief of ungrounded 
 fables ; that the sound senses of multitudes together may deceive them, and 
 laws are built upon chimeras ; that the gravest and wisest judges have been 
 murderers, and the sagest persons fools or designing impostors ; I say those 
 that can believe this heap of absurdities, are either more credulous than those 
 whose credulity they reprehend, or else have some extraordinary evidence of 
 their persuasion, viz., that it is absurd or impossible there should be a witch 
 or apparition.' (P. 4.) 
 
136 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 able men came forward to support its views. Henry More, 
 the famous philosopher, wrote a warm eulogium to Glanvil, 
 and drew up a long argument in the same spirit, in which he 
 related several additional witch cases, and pronounced the 
 opponents of the belief to be mere ' buflfoons, puffed up 
 with nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stujsid infidelity.' ' 
 Casaubon, the learned dean of Canterbury, wrote to the 
 same effect, but in more moderate language.^ Cudworth, 
 perhaps the most profound of all the great scholars who have 
 adorned the English church, pronounced the scepticism on 
 the subject of witches to be chiefly a consequence of the 
 influence of Hobbes ; and he added, that those who partook 
 of that scepticism might be justly suspected of Atheism.* 
 Several other divines pressed forward in the same spirit ; and 
 they made witchcraft, for a time, one of the chief subjects of 
 controversy in England. On the other side, the discussion 
 was extremely languid. No writer, comparable in ability or 
 influence to Glanvil, More, Cudworth, or even Casaubon, 
 appeared to challenge the belief; nor did any of the Avritings 
 on that side obtain any success at all equal to that of the Sad- 
 ducismus. The principal writer was a surgeon named 
 Webster, whose work is remarkable as one of the earliest 
 instances of the systematic application of a rationalistic 
 Interpretation to the magical miracles in the Bible. Accord- 
 
 ' His letters on the subject are prefixed to the 8adducismvs. 
 
 ^ On Credulity and Incredulity. This Casaubon was son of the great 
 Greek scholar. 
 
 ' ' As for wizards and magicians, persons who associate and confederate 
 themselves with these evil spirits for the gratification of their own revenge, 
 last, ambition, and other passions ; besides the Scriptures, there hath been so 
 full an attestation given to them by persons unconcerned in all ages, that those 
 our so confident exploders of them in this present age can hardly escape the 
 suspicion of having some hankering towards atheism.' (Int. Syst., vol. ii. p, 
 650. Sec also vol. i. p. 116.) 
 
MAGIC AND WirCHCEAFT. 137 
 
 mg to him, the magicians in Egypt were ordmary jugglers, 
 the witeh of Endor had dressed up an accomplice to per- 
 sonate Samuel, the word witch in Leviticus only signified 
 poisoner, the demoniacs were chiefly lunatics, and the Mag- 
 dalene had been freed from seven vices.' An unknown 
 scholar named Wagstaafe, at Oxford, also wrote two short 
 works on the subject ; ' and one or two others appeared 
 anonymously. The scepticism steadily increased. 
 
 A few years afterwards, a new and strenuous attempt 
 was made to arrest it by accounts of fresh cases of witch- 
 craft in America. The pilgrim fathers had brought to that 
 country the seeds of the superstition ; and, at the same time 
 when it was rapidly fading in England, it flourished with 
 fearful vigour in Massachusetts. Two Puritan ministers, 
 named Cotton Mather and Parris, proclaimed the frequency 
 of the crime ; and, being warmly supported by their brother 
 divines, they succeeded in creating a panic through the whole 
 country. A commission was issued. A judge named Stough- 
 ton, who appears to have been a perfect creature of the 
 clergy, conducted the trials. Scourgings and tortures were 
 added to the terrorism of the pulpit, and many confessions 
 were obtained. The few who ventured to oppose the prose- 
 cutions were denounced as Sadducees and infidels. Multi- 
 tudes were thrown into prison, others fled from the country 
 abandoning their property, and twenty-seven persons were 
 executed. An old man of eighty was pressed to death — a 
 
 ' Webster on Witches. The identification of the Scripture demoniacs with 
 lunatics had been made by Hobbes also. 
 
 ' Wagstaafe was a deformed, dwarfish scholar at Oxford, and was the 
 special butt of the Oxonian wit (which in the seventeenth century does not 
 appear to have been extremely brilliant). Poor Wagstaafe consoled himself 
 by drinking whiskej punch; and having drunk too m„ch, he died. (Wood's 
 Athena.) 
 
138 EATIONALISM IS EUEOl'E. 
 
 horrible sentence, which was never afterwards executed in 
 America. The ministers of Boston and Charlestown drew up 
 an address, warmly thanking the commissioners for the'r 
 zeal, and expressing their hope that it would never be 
 relaxed.' 
 
 In the first year of this persecution, Cotton Mather wrote 
 a history of the earliest of the trials. This history was intro- 
 duced to the English public by Richard Baxter, who declared 
 in his preface that ' that man must be a very obdurate Sad- 
 ducee who would not believe it.' Not content with having 
 thus given the weight of his great name to the superstition, 
 Baxter in the following year published his treatise on ' The 
 Certainty of the World of Spirits ; ' in which he collected^ 
 with great industry, an immense number of witch cases ; re- 
 verted in extremely laudatory terms to Cotton Mather and 
 his crusade ; and denounced, in unmeasured language, all 
 who were sceptical upon the subject. This work appeared 
 in 1691, when the panic in America had not yet reached its 
 height ; and being widely circulated beyond the Atlantic, is 
 said to have contributed much to stimulate the prosecutions.' 
 In England it produced little effect. The scepticism that was 
 already pervading all classes was steadily and silently in- 
 creasing, under the influence of an intellectual movement that 
 was too general and too powerful for any individual genius 
 1 arrest. At the time of the Restoration the belief had been 
 common among the most educated. In 1718, when Hutchin- 
 son wrote, it scarcely existed, except among the ignorant 
 and in a small section of the clergy.^ Yet, in the interval, 
 
 ' Bancroft, History of the United States, ch. xix. Hutchinson, pp. 93-119. 
 
 ° Hutchinson, pp. 95-119. 
 
 ' Mr. Buckle places the scepticism a little earlier. He says : ' This impor- 
 tant revolution in our opinion was effected, so far as the educated classes are 
 Boncerned, between the Restoration and Kevolution ; that 13 to say, in 16fiO, 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFr. 139 
 
 the vast preponderance of controversial literature had nn 
 questionably been on the coniservative side. During that 
 period no less than twenty-five works ' ai-e known to have 
 appeared in England in defence of the belief; and among 
 their authors we have seen some of the ablest men in England. 
 The work of Baxter, notwithstanding the weight of his great 
 name, and the very definite character of his statements, ap- 
 pears to have remained entii-ely unanswered till it was re- 
 viewed by Hutchinson twenty-six years after its publication. 
 Yet it could do no more to arrest, than the work of Scott had 
 done to produce, the scepticism. Three witches had been 
 executed in 1682 ; and others, it is said, endured the same 
 fate in 1712 ; but these were the last who perished judicially 
 in England.^ The last trial, at least of any notoriety, was 
 that of Jane Wenham, who was prosecuted in 1712, by 
 some Hertfordshire clergymen. The judge entirely disbe- 
 lieved in witches, and accordingly charged the jury strongly 
 in favour of the accused, and even treated with great disre- 
 spect the rector of the parish, who declared ' on his faith as a 
 clergyman ' that he believed the woman to be a witch. The 
 jury, being ignorant and obstinate, convicted the prisoner ; 
 but the judge had no difficulty in obtaining a remission of 
 her sentence. A long war of pamphlets ensued, and the 
 clergy who had been engaged in the prosecution, drew up a 
 document strongly asserting their belief in the guilt of the 
 accused, animadverting severely upon the conduct of the 
 
 tb-e majority of educated men still believed in witchcraft ; and in ]688, the 
 majority disbelieved it.' (Vol. i. p. 333.) By 1718, however, the minority 
 had become insignificant. 
 
 ' Some of them, of course, were mere pamphlets, but a large proportion 
 elaborate works. The catalogue is given by Hutchinson. 
 
 " Compare Hutchinson, p. 57, and Buckle, vol. i. p. 334. 1 sa.y judicially, 
 for in the Times of Sept. 24th, 1863, there is an account of an old man who 
 was mobbed to death in the county of Essex as a wizard. . _ , 
 
140 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 judge, and concluding witli the solemn words, ' Liberavimus 
 animas nostras.' ' 
 
 It is probable that this was an instance of somewhat ex- 
 ceptional fanaticism ; and that Hutchinson, who was himself 
 a clergyman, represented the opinions of most of the more 
 educated of his profession, when a few years later he de- 
 scribed witchcraft as a delusion. In 1736, the laws on the 
 subject were repealed, without difficulty or agitation; and 
 therearevei-y few instances of educated men regretting them. 
 In 1768, however, John Wesley prefaced an account of an ap- 
 parition that had been related by a girl named Elizabeth Hob- 
 son, by some extremely remarkable sentences on the subject. 
 ' It is true, likewise,' he wrote, ' that the English in general, 
 and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe, have 
 given up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old 
 wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take this 
 opportunity of entering my solemn protest against this violent 
 compliment which so many that believe the Bible pay to 
 those who do not believe it. I owe them no such service. I 
 take knowledge that these are at the bottom of the outcry 
 which has been raised, and with such insolence spread 
 through the land, in direct opposition, not only to the Bible, 
 but to the suffrage of the wisest and best of men in all ages 
 and nations. They well know (whether Christians know it 
 or not) that the giving up witchcraft is in effect giving up 
 the Bible.' ' 
 
 In reviewing the history of witchcraft in England, it is 
 impossible to avoid observing the singularly favourable con- 
 trast which the Anglican Church presents, both to continen- 
 tal Catholicism and to Puritanism. It is indeed true that 
 
 ' Hutchinson, pp. leS-lYl. Some noble and liberal remarks. 
 " Jouma!, 1768. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 141 
 
 her bishops contributed much to the enactment of the laws 
 against witchcraft, that the immense majority of the clergy 
 firmly believed in the reality of the crime, and that they con- 
 tinued to assert and to defend it when the great balk of edu- 
 cated laymen had abandoned it. It is also true that the 
 scepticism on the subject of witches arose among those who 
 were least governed by the Church, advanced with the de- 
 cline of the influ.enee of the clergy, and was commonly 
 branded as a phase and manifestation of infidelity. Yet, on 
 the otlier hand, it is impossible to deny that the general mod- 
 t^ration of the higher clergy was beyond all praise, and that 
 even those who were most credulous were singularly free from 
 that thirst of blood which was elsewhere so common. On the 
 Continent, every attempt to substitute a lighter punishment 
 for death was fiercely denounced as a direct violation of the 
 Divine law. Indeed, some persons went so far as to question 
 the lawfulness of strangling the witch before she was burnt. 
 Her crime, they said, was treason against the Almighty, and 
 therefore to punish it by any but the most agonizing deaths 
 was an act of disrespect to Him. Besides, the penalty in the 
 Levitical code was stoning, and stoning had been pronounced 
 by the Jewish theologians to be a still more painful death 
 than the staked Nothing of this kind was found in England. 
 There is, as far as I am aware, not a single instance of the 
 English clergy complaining of the leniency of the laws upon 
 the subject, or attempting to introduce torture into the trials. 
 Their zeal in stimulating the persecution by exorcisms and 
 fanatical preaching, was also comparatively languid. As 
 early as the reign of James I., the Convocation made a canon 
 prohibiting any clergyman from exorcising a possessed person, 
 without a license from his bishop, and such licenses were 
 
 Bodin, p. 217. 
 
142 EATIONALIBM DST EUEOPE. 
 
 scarcely ever granted.' Dr. Morton, a bishop of Lichfield, in 
 1620, employed himself with great, at.d at last successful, 
 zeal in detecting a case of imposture in a witch story which 
 was believed by a Catholic priest," and he succeeded in saving 
 the life of the accused. At a still earlier period. Dr. Hars- 
 net, who was afterwards Archbishop of York, in an attack 
 upon ' Popish impostures,' boldly enumerated among them 
 most of the forms of witchcraft,' and appears to have been 
 entirely incredulous on the subject. He was undoubtedly 
 wrong in ascribing witchcraft to Catholicism, for it flourish- 
 ed at least as vigorously under the shadow of Puritanism ; yet 
 the expression of so bold an opinion is well worthy of notice, 
 and was, I believe, at the time it was written, a unique phe- 
 nomenon among the English clergy.* Hutchinson himself 
 wrote his history befoi-e the belief was entirely extinct. 
 
 But that which shows most strikingly the moderation of 
 the Anglican clergy, is the comparatively small amount of 
 delusion which the history of English witchcraft presents. 
 On the Continent, there was undoubtedly much imposition ; 
 but, for the most part, the subject presents rather the aspect 
 of an epidemic or a mania. The religious terrorism acted on 
 diseased imaginations, coloured every form of madness, and 
 predisposed the minds of men to solve every difficulty by a 
 supernatural hypothesis. In England, on the other hand, 
 imposture appears the general characteristic. The books on 
 
 ' Hutchinson, Dedication. ' Ibid. ^ Ibid. 
 
 ' I, at least, have not been able to find any other case ; but Sir Kenelm 
 Digby, in his annotation to the passage from Sir Thomas Browne, which I have 
 before quoted, says of the belief : ' There are divines of great note, and far 
 fi'om any suspicion of being irreligious, that do not oppose it' The book of 
 Dr. Harsnet is, I believe, rare. I only know it by the copious extracts 
 in Hutchinson. There is a notice of its author in Neal's Hist, of the Puri- 
 tarn. 
 
MAGIO AHD WITCHCRAFT. 143 
 
 the subject are full of cases of jugglers' tricks ; ' and, with 
 the exception of the period when the Puritans were in the 
 ascendant, it neA'er seems to have assumed the appearance of 
 a great and general panic. Indeed, in most of its worst man- 
 ifestations, the fanaticism of Paritanism was manifested.' 
 
 In England, that fanaticism was bridled and repressed. 
 There was one country, however, in which it obtained an 
 absolute ascendancy. There was one country in which the 
 Puritan ministers succeeded in moulding alike the character 
 and the habits of the nation, and in disseminating their 
 harsh and gloomy tenets through every section of society. 
 While England was breaking loose from her most ancient 
 superstitions, aud advancing with gigantic strides along the 
 paths of knowledge, Scotland sti ll co wered in helpless sub- 
 jection before her clergy. Never was a mental servitude 
 more complete, and never was a tyranny maintained with 
 more inexorable barbarity. Supported by public opinion, the 
 Scottish ministers succeeded in overawing all opposition, in ( 
 prohibiting the faintest expression of adverse opinions, in 
 prying into and controlling the most private concerns of do- 
 mestic life ; in compelling every one to conform absolutely to 
 all the ecclesiastical regulations they enjoined; and in, at last, 
 directing the whole scope and current of legislation. They 
 maintained their ascendancy over the popular mind by a sys- 
 tem of religious terrorism, which we can now barely conceive. 
 The misery of man, the anger of the Almighty, the fearful 
 
 ' See Scott's Discovery, passim. 
 
 ' Sir W. Scott has well noticed this influence of Puritanism on English 
 ifitchcraft; and, in comparing the different sections of the Church, he says, 
 On the whole, the CalTiuists, generally s peak ing, were, of all the contending 
 sects, the most suspicious of sorcery, the most undoubting believers in its ex- 
 istence, and the most eager to follow it up with what they conceived to be the 
 due punishment of the most fearful of crimes.' [Demonology and Witchcraft, 
 Letter 8.) 
 
144: EATIONAIISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 Spower and continual presence of Satan, the agonies of hell, 
 ■^ere the constant subjects of their preaching. All the most 
 ghastly forms of human suffering were accumulated as faint 
 images of the eternal doom of the immense majority of man- 
 kind. Countless miracles were represented as taking placa 
 within the land, but they were almost all of them miracles 
 of terror. Disease, storm, famine, every awful calamity that 
 fell upon mankind, or blasted the produce of the soil, was 
 attributed to the direct intervention of spirits ; and Satan 
 himself was represented as constantly appearing in a visible 
 form upon the earth.' Such teaching produced its natural 
 effects. In a land where credulity was universal, in a land 
 where the intellect was numbed and palsied by these awful 
 contemplations,, where almost every form of amusement was 
 suppressed, and where the thoughts of men were concentrated 
 with an undivided energy on theological conceptions, such 
 teaching necessarily created the superstition of witchcraft. 
 Witchcraft was but one form of the panic it produced ; it 
 was but the reflection by a diseased imagination of the 
 popular theology. We accordingly find that it assumed the 
 most frightful proportions and the darkest character. In 
 other lands, the superstition was at least mixed with much 
 of imposture ; in Scotland it appears to have been entirely 
 undiluted." It was produced by the teaching of the clergy, 
 and it was e\ery where fostered by their persecution. Eager- 
 ly, passionately, with a thirst for blood that knew no mercy, 
 with a zeal that never tired, did they accomplish their task. 
 
 ' 1 need hardly refer to the noble description of the Scotch Kirk in Buckle's 
 History — a description the substantial justice of which will be questioned by 
 no one who is acquainted with the history of Scotch witchcraft. On the multi- 
 tude of miracles and apparitions of Satan that were believed, see pp. 349-369. 
 
 ' The very remarkable fact, that no cases of imposture hare been detected 
 in Scotch witch-trials, is noted by Buckle, vol. ii. pp. 189, 190. 
 
MAGIO AND WITOHOEAFT. 145 
 
 Assembled in solemn synod, the colleg e of Aberdeen, in 1603,. 
 enjoined every minister to take two of the elders of his parish 
 to make ' a subtle and p rivy inquisition,' and to question all 
 the parishioners u£on oath as to their knowledge of witches. ' 
 Boxes were placed in the churches for the express purpose of 
 receiving the accusations.' When a woman had fallen under 
 suspicion, the minister from the pulpit denounced her by 
 name, exhorted his parishioners to give evidence against her, 
 and prohibited any one from sheltering her." In the same 
 spiiit, he exerted the power which was given him by a paro- 
 chial organisation, elaborated perhaps more skilfully than 
 any other in Europe. Under these circumstances, the witch- 
 cases seem to have fallen almost entirely into the hands of 
 the clergy. They were the leading commissioners. Before 
 them the confessions were taken. They were the acquiescing 
 witnesses or the directors of the tortures by which those 
 confessions were elicited.' 
 
 And when we read the nature of these tortures, which 
 were worthy of an oriental imagination ; when we remember 
 that they were inflicted, for the most part, on old and feeble 
 and half-doting women, it is difficult to repress a feeling of the 
 deepest abhorrence for those men who caused an (T who encour- 
 aged them. If the witch was obdurate, the first, and it was 
 said the most effectual, method of obtaining confession was by 
 what was termed ' waking her.' An iron bridle or hoop was 
 
 ' Dalyell, Darker Supersti&ms of Scotland, p. 624. 
 
 ' Ibid. p. 623. = Ibid. p. 624, &c. 
 
 ' See on this subject Pitcaim's Criminal Trials of Scotland, a vast re- 
 pository of original documents on the subject. Pitcaim gives numbers of these 
 confessions. He adds, 'The confessions were commonly taken before presby- 
 teries, or certain special commissioners, who usually ranked among their num- 
 ber the leading clergy of" those districts where their hapless victims resided.' 
 (Vol. iii. p. 598.) 
 
 VOL. I. — 10 
 
146 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE, 
 
 bound across her face with four prongs, which were thrust 
 into her mouth. It was fastened behind to the wall by a 
 chain, ia such a manner that the victim was unable to Ue 
 down ; and in this position she was sometimes kept for several 
 days, while men were constantly with her to prevent her from 
 closing her eyes for a moment in sleep.' Partly in order to 
 effect this object, and partly to discover the insensible mark 
 which was the sure sign of a witch, long pins were thrust 
 into her body.' At the same time, as it was a saying in Scot- 
 land that a witch would never confess while she could drink, 
 excessive thirst was often added to her tortures.' Some 
 prisoners have been waked for five nights ; one, it is said, 
 even for nine.'' 
 
 The physical and mental suffering of such a process was 
 sufficient to overcome the resolution of many, and to distract 
 
 ' ' One of the most powerful incentives to confession was systematically to 
 deprire the suspected witch of the refreshment of her natural sleep. 
 Iron collars, or witches' bridles, are still preserved in various parts of Scotland, 
 which had been used for such iniquitous purposes. These instruments were so 
 constructed that, by means of a hoop which passed over the head, a piece of 
 iron having four points or prongs was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of 
 these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outwards to 
 each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back 
 of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach the witch to a staple in the 
 wall of her cell. Thus equipped, and night and day waked and watched by 
 some skUiiil person appointed by her inquisitors, the unhappy creature, after a 
 few days of such discipline, maddened by the misery of her forlorn and help- 
 less state, would be rendered fit for confessing anything, in order to be rid of 
 the dregs of her wretched life. At intervals fresh examinations took place, 
 and these were repeated from time to time until her " contumacy," as it was 
 termed, was subdued. The clergy and kirk sessions appear to have been the 
 unwearied instruments of " purging the land of witchcraft ; " and to them, in 
 the first instance, all the complaints and informaMons were made! (Pitcaim, 
 vol. i. part 2, p. 50.) 
 
 '^ Dalyell, p. 645. The ' prickers ' formed a regular profession in Scotland 
 
 ' Burt's Letters from ike North of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 227- 234. 
 
 * Dalyell, p. 645. 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 14:7 
 
 the understanding of not a few. But other and perhaps 
 worse tortures were in reserve. The three principal that 
 were habitually applied, were the pennywinkis, the boots, 
 and the caschielawis. The first was a kind of thumb-screw ; 
 the second was a frame in which the leg was inserted, and 
 in which it was broken by wedges, di-iven in by a hammer ; 
 the third was also an iron frame for the leg, which was from 
 time to time heated over a brazier.' Fire-matches were some- 
 times applied to the body of the victim.' We read, in a con- 
 temporary legal register, of one man who was kept for forty- 
 eight hours in ' vehement tortour ' in the caschielawis ; and 
 of another who remained in the same frightful machine for 
 eleven days and eleven nights, whose legs were broken daily 
 for fourteen days in the boots, and who was so scourged that 
 the whole skin was torn from his body.' This was, it is true, 
 censured as an extreme case, but it was only an excessive 
 application of the common torture. 
 
 How many confessions were extorted, and how many 
 victims perished by these means, it is now impossible to say. 
 A vast number of depositions and confessions are preserved, 
 but they were only taken before a single court, and many 
 others took cognisance of the crime. We know that in 1662, 
 more than 150 persons were accused of witchcraft ; * and that 
 in the preceding year no less than fourteen commissions had 
 been issued for the trials.* After these facts, it is scarcely 
 necessary to notice how one traveller casually mentione 
 having seen nine women burning together at Leith in 1664, 
 
 or how, in 1678, nine others were condemned in a single 
 
 « 
 
 ' Pitcaim. " Dalyell, p. 6S7. 
 
 ' Pitcaim, vol. i. part ii. p. 3'76. The two oases were in the same trial in 
 1696. 
 
 * Dalyell, p. 669 ° Pitcaim, vol. iii. p. 697. 
 
148 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 day.' The charges were, indeed, of the most comprehensive 
 order, and the wildest fancies of Sprenger and Nider were 
 defended by the Presbyterian divines." In most Catholic 
 countries, it was a grievance of the clergy that the civil 
 power refused to execute those who only employed their 
 power in curing disease. In Scotland such persons were 
 unscrupulously put to death.' The witches were commonly 
 strangled before they were burnt, but this merciful provision 
 Avas very frequently omitted. An Earl of Mar (who appears 
 to have been the only pei-son sensible of the inhumanity of 
 the proceedings) tells how, with a piercing yell, some women 
 once broke half-burnt from the slow fire that consumed them, 
 struggled for a few moments with despairing energy among 
 the spectators, but soon with shrieks of blasphemy and wild 
 protestations of innocence sank writhing in agony amid the 
 flames.* 
 
 The contemplation of such scenes as these is one of the 
 most painful duties that can devolve npon the historian ; but 
 
 ' Dalyell, pp. 669, 6'70. 
 
 '^ For a curious instance of this, see tliat strange book, ' Tlie Secret Com- 
 monwealth,^ published in 1691, by Eobert Kirk, minister of Aberfoil. He re- 
 presents evil spirits in human form as habitually hving among the Highlanders. 
 Suocubi, or, as the Scotch called them, Leannain Sith, seem to have been 
 especially common ; and Mr. Kirk (who identifies them with the ^familiar 
 spirits ' of Deuteronomy) complains very sadly of the affection of many young 
 Scotchmen for the 'fair ladies of this aerial order' (p. 35). Capt. Burt relates 
 a long discussion he had with a minister on the subject of old women turning 
 themselves into cats. The minister siid that one man succeeded in cutting off 
 the leg of a cat who attacked him, that the leg immediately turned into that 
 of an old woman, and that four ministers signed a certificate attesting the fact 
 (vol. i. pp. 271-2Y7). One of the principal Scotch writers on these matters 
 was Sinclair, who was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. • 
 
 ' Wright's Sorcery, vol. 1. pp. 165, 166. Even to consult with witches 
 was made capital. 
 
 ' Pitcairn, vol. iii. p. 698. Another Earl of Mar had been himself bled to 
 death for having, as was alleged, consulted with witches how to shorten the 
 life of James III. (Scott's Demonology, let. ix.) 
 
MAGIC AND WITCHCEAFT. 149 
 
 it is one from ■which he must not shrink, if he ■would form a 
 just estimate of the past. There are opinions that may be 
 traced from age to age by footsteps of blood ; and the inten- 
 sity of the suffering they caused is a measure of the intensity 
 with which they were realised. Scotch witchcraft was but 
 the result of Scotch Puritanism, and it faithfully reflected the 
 character of its parent. It is true that, before the Reforma- 
 tion, the people had been grossly ignorant and superstitious ; 
 but it is also true, that witchcraft in its darker forms was so 
 rare that no law was made on the subject till 1563 ; that the 
 law was not carried to its full severity till 1590; that the 
 delusion invariably accompanied the religious terrorism which 
 the Scotch clergy so zealously maintained; and that those 
 clergy, all over Scotland, applauded and stimulated the per- 
 secution." The ascendancy they had obtained was bound- 
 less, and in this respect their power was entirely undisputed. 
 One word from them might have arrested the tortures, but 
 that word was never spoken. Their conduct implies, not 
 merely a mental aberration, but also a callousness of feeUng 
 which has rarely been attained in a long career of vice. Yet 
 these were men who had often shown, in the most trying 
 circumstances, the highest and the most heroic virtues. 
 They were men whose courage had never flinched when 
 persecution was raging around ; men who had never paltered 
 with their consciences to attain the favours of a king ; men 
 
 ' Sir Walter Scott seems to think that the first great outburst of persecu- 
 tion began when James VI. went to Denmark to fetch his bride. Before his 
 departure, he exhorted the clergy to assist the magistrates, which they did, and 
 most especially m matters of witchcraft. The king was himself perfectly infat- 
 uated with the subject, and had this one bond of union with the ministers ; 
 and, as Sir W. S. says, ' during the halcyon period of union between kirk and 
 king, their hearty agreement on the subject of witchcraft failed not to heat the 
 fires against all persons suspected of such iniquity.' (Demonology, letter ix.) 
 See also Linton's Witch Stories, p. 5. 
 
150 EATIONALISM IS EUEOPE. 
 
 whose self-devotion and zeal in their sacred calling had 
 seldom been surpassed ; men who in all the private relations 
 of life were doubtless amiable and affectionate. It is not on 
 them that our blame should fall ; it is on the system that 
 made them what they were. They were but illustrations of 
 the great truth, that when men have come to regard a certain 
 class of their fellow-creatures as doomed by the Almighty to 
 eternal and excruciating agonies, and when their theology 
 directs their minds with intense and realising earnestness to 
 the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an 
 indifference to the suffering of those whom they deem the 
 enemies of their God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible for 
 human nature to attain. 
 
 In Scotland the character of theology was even more 
 hard and unpitying than in other countries where Puritanism 
 existed, on account of a special circumstance which in some 
 respects reflects great credit on its teachers. The Scotch 
 kirk was the result of a democratic movement, and for some 
 time, almost alone in Europe, it was the unflinching cham- 
 pion of political liberty. It was a Scotchman, Buchanan, 
 who first brought liberal principles into clear relief It was 
 the Scotch clergy who upheld them with a courage that can 
 hardly be overrated. Their circumstances made them liber- 
 als, and they naturally sought to clothe their liberalism in a 
 theological garb. They soon discovered precedents for their 
 rebellions in the history of the judges and captains of the 
 Jews ; and accordingly the union of an intense theological, 
 and an intense liberal feeling, made them revert to the scenes 
 of the Old Testament, to the sufferings and also the conquests 
 of the Jews, with an afiection that seems now almost incon- 
 ceivable. Their whole theology took an Old Testament cast. 
 Their modes of thought, their very phraseology, were de- 
 
MAGIO AND WITCHCEAFT. 151 
 
 vired from that source ; and the constant contemplation of the 
 massacres of Canaan, and of the provisions of the Levitical 
 code, produced its natural effect upon their minds/ 
 
 It is scarcely possible to write a history of the decline of 
 ■witchcraft in Scotland, for the change of opinions was almost 
 entirely unmarked by incidents on which we can dwell. At 
 one period we find every one predisposed to believe in 
 witches. At a later period we find that this predisposition 
 has silently passed away." Two things only can, I think, be 
 asserted on the subject with confidence — that the sceptical 
 movement advanced much more slowly in Scotland than in 
 England, and that the ministers were among the latest to 
 yield to it. Until the close of the seventeenth century, the 
 trials were sufficiently common, but after this time they 
 became rare. It is generally said that the last execjition was 
 in 1722; but Captain Burt, who visited the country in 1730, 
 speaks of a woman who was burnt as late as 1^;27.' The 
 same very keen observer was greatly struck by the extent to 
 which the belief still continued in Scotland, at a time when 
 it was quite abandoned by the educated classes in England ; 
 and he found its most ardent supporters among the Presby- 
 terian ministers. As late as 1773, ' the divines of the Asao- 1 
 ciated Presbytery ' passed a resolution declaring their belief / 
 in witchcraft, and deploring the scepticism that was general.* 
 
 ' It ia rather remarkable that Bodin had also formed his theology almost 
 exclusively from the Old Testament, his reverence for which was so great that 
 some (Grotius and Hallam among others) have questioned whether he believed 
 the New. 
 
 ' The silent unreasoning character of the decline of Scotch witchcraft has 
 been noticed by Dugald Stewart, Dissert, p. 508. 
 
 ' Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 227-234, and 271- 
 277. I suspect Burt has misdated the execution that took place in 1722, 
 placing it in 1727. 
 
 ' Macaulay, Sist., vol. iii. p. 706. 
 
152 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 I have now completed my review of tlie history of witch- 
 craft, in its relation to the theologies of Rome, of England, 
 and of Geneva. I have shown that its causes are to bo 
 sought, not within the narrow circle of doctrines and phe- 
 nomena that are comprised under the name, but in the gen- 
 eral intellectual and religious condition of the ages in which 
 it flourished. I have shown, in other words, that witchcraft 
 resulted, not from isolated circumstances, but from modes of 
 thought ; that it grew out of a certain intellectual . tempera- 
 ture acting on certain theological tenets, and reflected with 
 almost startling vividness each great intellectual change. 
 Arising amid the ignorance of an early civilisation, it was 
 quickened into an intenser life by a theological struggle 
 which allied terrorism with credulity, and it declined under 
 the influence of that great rationalistic movement which, 
 since the seventeenth century, has been on all sides encroach- 
 ing on theology. I have dwelt upon the decadence of the 
 superstition at considerable length ; for it was at once one 
 of the earliest and one of the most important conquests of 
 the spirit of rationalism. There are very few examples of a 
 change of belief that was so strictly normal, so little accele- 
 rated by sectarian passions or individual genius, and there- 
 fore so well suited to illustrate the laws of intellectual de- 
 velopment. Besides this, the fact that the belief when real- 
 ised was always followed by persecution, enables us to trace 
 its successive stages with more than common accuracy, 
 while the period that has elapsed since its destruction has, 
 in a great measure, removed the subject from the turbid at- 
 mosphere of controversy. 
 
 It is impossible to leave the history of witchcraft with- 
 out reflecting how vast an amount of sufiering has, in at 
 least this respect, been removed by the progress of a ration- 
 
MAGIO AND WrrCHCEAFT. 153 
 
 alistic civilisation. I know that when we remember the 
 frightful calamities that have from time to time flowed from 
 theological divisions ; when we consider the countless mar- 
 tyrs who have perished in the dungeon or at the stake, the 
 millions who have fallen in the religious wars, the elements 
 of almost undying dissension that have been planted in so 
 many noble nations, and have paralysed so many glorious 
 enterprises, the fate of a few thousand innocent persons who 
 were burnt alive seems to sink into comparative insignifi- 
 cance. Yet it is probable that no class of victims endured 
 sufferings so unalloyed and so intense. Not for them the 
 wild fanaticism that nerves the soul against danger, and al- 
 most steels the body against torments. Not for them the 
 assurance of a glorious eternity, that has made the martyr 
 look with exultation on the rising fl^ame as on the Elijah's 
 chariot that is to bear his soul to heaven. Not for them the 
 solace of lamenting friends, or the consciousness that their 
 memories would be cherished and honoured by posterity; 
 They died alone, hated and unpitied. They were deemed 
 by all mankind the worst of criminals. Their very kinsmen 
 shrank from them as tainted and accursed. The superstitions 
 they had imbibed in childhood, blending with the illusions 
 of age, and with the horrors of their position, persuaded 
 them in many cases that they were indeed the bond-slaves 
 of Satan, and were about to exchange their torments upon 
 earth for an agony that was as excruciating, and was eter- 
 nal. And, besides all this, we have to consider the terrors 
 which the belief must have spread through the people at 
 large ; we have to picture the anguish of the mother, as she 
 imagined that it was in the power of one whom she had of- 
 fended to blast in a moment every object of her affection ; 
 we have to conceive, above all, the awful shadow that the 
 
154 EATIOlSrALISM IN EUEOPH;, 
 
 dread of accusation must have thrown on the enfeebled 
 faculties of age, and the bitterness it must have added to 
 desertion and to solitude. All these sufferings were the re- 
 sult of a single superstition, which the spirit of rationalism 
 has destroyed. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 ON THE DECLINING SENSE OF THE MIEAOULOUS. 
 
 THE MIRACLES OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 The same habits of mind which induced men at first to 
 recoil from the belief in witchcraft with an instinctive and 
 inyoluntary repugnance as intrinsically incredible, and after- 
 wards openly to repudiate it, have operated in a very similar 
 manner, and with very similar effects, upon the belief in 
 modem miracles. The triumph, however, has not been in 
 this case so complete, for the Church of Rome still maintains 
 the continuance of miraculous powers ; nor has the decay 
 been so strictly normal, for the fact that most of the Roman 
 Catholic miracles are associated with distinctively Roman 
 Catholic doctrines has introduced much miscellaneous con- 
 troversy into the question. But, notwithstanding these con- 
 siderations, the general outlines of the movement are clearly 
 visible, and they are well deserving of a brief notice. 
 
 If we would realise the modes of thought on this subject 
 prior to the Reformation, we must quite dismiss from our 
 minds the ordinary Protestant notion that miracles were very 
 rare and exceptional phenomena, the primary object of which 
 was always to accredit the teacher of some divine truth that 
 
156 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 could not Otherwise be established. In the writings of the 
 Fathers, and especially of those of the fourth and fifth cen- 
 turies, we find them not only spoken of as existing in profu- 
 sion, but as being directed to the most various ends. They 
 were a kind of celestial charity, • alleviating the sorrows, 
 healing the diseases, and supplying the wants of the faithful. 
 They were frequent incitements to piety, stimulating the de- 
 votions of the languid, and rewarding the patience of the 
 fervent. They were the signs of great and saintly virtue, 
 securing universal respect for those who had attained a high 
 degree of sanctity, or assisting them in the performance of 
 their more austere devotions. Thus, one saint having retired 
 into the desert to lead a life of mortification, the birds daily 
 brought him a supply of food, which was just sufficient for 
 his wants ; and when a kindred spirit visited him in his re- 
 tirement, they doubled the supply ; and when he died, two 
 lions issu^ed from the desert to dig his grave, uttered a long 
 howl of mourning over his body, and knelt down to beg a 
 blessing from the survivor.' Thus, another saint, who was 
 of opinion that a monk should never see himself naked, and 
 who had, therefore, scrupulously abstained from washing 
 since his conversion, stood one day in despair upon the banks 
 of a bridgeless stream, when an angel descended to assist 
 him, and transported him in safety across the dreaded ele- 
 ment.' Besides this, the 'power of magic was, as we have 
 seen, fully recognised, both by Christians and Pagans, and 
 each admitted the reality of the miracles of the other, 
 though ascribing them to the agency of demons.' 
 
 ' Paul the Hermit. See his Life by St. Jerome. The visitor of Paul was 
 St. Anthony, the first of the hermits. 
 " Ammon (Socrates, lib. iv. u. 23). 
 • See some admirable remarks on this subject in Maury, lAgendes Pieuaet, 
 
THE MIEAOLES OF THE CHUECH. 157 
 
 If we pass from the Fathers into the middle ages, we find 
 oarselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged with 
 tlie supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost 
 boundless, and the supply was equal to the demand. Men 
 of extraordinary sanctity seemed naturally and habitually to 
 obtain the power of performing them, and their lives are 
 crowded with their achievements, which were attested by the 
 highest sanction of the Church. Nothing could be more 
 common than for a holy man to be lifted up from the floor in 
 the midst of his devotions, or to be visited by the Virgin or 
 by an angel. There was scarcely a town that could not 
 show some relic that had cured the sick, or some image that 
 had opened and shut its eyes, or bowed its head to an ear- 
 nest worshipper. It was somewhat more extraordinary, but 
 not in the least incredible, that the fish should have thronged 
 to the shore to hear St. Anthony preach, or that it should be 
 necessary to cut the hair of the crucifix at Burgos once a 
 month, or that the Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, should, 
 at the prayer of one of her worshippers, have restored a leg 
 that had- been amputated.' Men who were afflicted with 
 apparently hopeless disease, started in a moment into perfect 
 health when brought into contact with a relic of Christ or of 
 the Virgin. The virtue of such relics radiated in blessings 
 
 pp. 240-244. Also iFarmer, on Demoniacs. There were exorcists, both 
 among the Christians, Pagans, and Jews ; and though they were not regularly 
 formed into an order till the middle of the third century, they seem to have 
 practised from almost the beginning. For much curious evidence on the sub- 
 ject, see Middleton, Free Enquiry, pp. SB-SY ; Bingham, Antiquities of the 
 Christian Ohwrch, book iii. c. 4. 
 
 - There is a picture of the transaction in the cathedral of Saragossa, op- 
 posite the image. A group of extremely pretty angels are represented as 
 fitting on a leg (ready made), while the patient is calmly sleeping. I believe, 
 however, that the more approved story is, that the leg gradually grew. This 
 is a miracle about which a vast amount has been written, .ind which the Span- 
 iali thftologiana are said to regard as peculiarly well established. 
 
158 EATIONAirSM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 all around them. Glorious visions heralded their discovery, 
 and angels have transported them through the air. If a mis- 
 sionary went abroad among the heathen, supernatural signs 
 confounded his opponents, and made the i)owers of darkness 
 fly before his steps. If a Christian prince unsheathed his 
 sword in an ecclesiastical cause, apostles had been known to 
 combat with his army, and avenging miracles to scatter his 
 enemies. If an unjust suspicion attached to an innocent man, 
 he had immediately recourse to an ordeal which cleared his 
 character and condemned his accusers. All this was going 
 on habitually in every part of Europe ivithout exciting the 
 smallest astonishment or scepticism. Those who know how 
 thoroughly the supernatural element pervades the old lives 
 of the saints, may form some notion of the multitude of 
 miracles that were related and generally believed, fi-om the 
 fact that M. Guizot has estimated the number of these lives, 
 accumulated in the Bollandist Collection, at about 25,000.' 
 Yet this was but one department of miracles. It does not 
 include the thousands of miraculous images and pictures that 
 were operating throughout Christendom, and the countless 
 apparitions and miscellaneous prodigies that were taking 
 place in every country, and on all occasions. Whenever a 
 saint was canonised, it was necessary to prove that he had 
 worked miracles ; but except on those occasions miraculous 
 accounts seem never to have been questioned. The most 
 
 ' Hisl. de Civilisation, Legon XVII. The Bollandist Collection was begun 
 at Antwerp by a Jesuit named BoUand, in 1643, was stopped for a time by 
 the French Revolution, but renewed under the patronage of the Belgian Cham- 
 bers. It was intended to contain a complete collection of all the original 
 documents on the subject. The saints are placed according to the calendar. 
 Fifty-five large folio volumes have been published, but they only extend to the 
 end of October. See a very beautiful essay on the subject by Rcnan, Andea 
 Religiemes. M. Renan says : ' H me semble que pour iin vrai philosophe un 
 prison ceUulaire avec ces cinquaute-cinq volumes in-folio, serai t un vrai paradis.' 
 
THE MTEACLES OF THE CHTJKCH, 159 
 
 educated, as well as the most ignorant, habitually resorted to 
 the supernatural as the simplest explanation of every dif- 
 ficulty. 
 
 All this has now passed away. It has passed away, not 
 only in lands where Protestantism is triumphant, but also in 
 those where the Roman Catholic faith is still acknowledged, 
 and where the medireval saints are still venerated. St. Jan- 
 uarius, it is true, continues to liquefy at. Naples, and the pas- 
 torals of French bishops occasionally relate apparitions of the 
 Virgin among very ignorant and superstitious peasants ; but 
 the implicit, undiscriminating acquiescence with which such 
 narratives were once received, has long since been replaced 
 by a derisive incredulity. Those who know the tone that is 
 habitually adopted on these subjects by the educated in 
 Roman Catholic countries, will admit that, so far from being 
 a subject for triumphant exultation, the very few modern 
 miracles which are related are everywhere regarded as- a 
 scandal, a stumbling-block, and a diiSculty. Most educated 
 persons speak of them with undisguised scorn and incredulity ; 
 some attempt to evade or explain them away by a natural 
 hypothesis ; a very few faintly and apologetically defend 
 them. Nor can it be said that what is manifested is merely 
 a desire for a more minute and accurate examinatioti of the 
 evidence by which they are supported. On the contrary, it 
 will, I think, be admitted that these alleged miracles are 
 commonly rejected with an assurance that is as peremptory 
 and unreasoning as that with which they would have been 
 once received. Nothing can be more rare than a serious ex- 
 amination, by those who disbelieve them, of the testimony on 
 which they rest. They are repudiated, not because they are 
 unsupported, but because they are miraculous. Men are 
 prepared to admit almost any conceivable concurrence of 
 
160 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 natural improbabilities rather than resort to the hypothesis 
 of supernatural interference ; and this spirit is exhibited, not 
 merely by open sceptics, but by men who are sincere, though, 
 perhaps, not very fervent believers in their Church. It is 
 the prevailing characteristic of that vast body of educated 
 persons, whose lives are chiefly spent in secular pursuits, and 
 who, while they receive with unen quiring faith the great 
 doctrines of Catholicism, and duly perform its leading duties, 
 derive their mental tone and colouring from the general spirit 
 of their age. If you speak to them on the subject, they will 
 reply with a shrug and with a smile ; they will tell you that 
 it is indeed melancholy that such narratives should be put 
 forth in the middle of the nineteenth century ; they will 
 treat them as palpable anachronisms, as obviously and in- 
 trinsically incredible ; but they will add that it is not neces- 
 sary for all Roman Catholics to believe them, and that it is 
 unfair to judge the enlightened members of the Church by 
 the measure of the superstitions of the ignorant. 
 
 That this is the general tone adopted by the great major- 
 ity of educated Roman. Catholics, both in their writings and 
 in their CQnversation, wiU scarcely be a matter of dispute. 
 It is also very manifest that it is the direct product and 
 measure of civilisation. The districts where an account of a 
 modern miracle is received with least derision, are precisely 
 those which are most torpid and most isolated. The classes 
 whose habits of thought are least shocked by such an account, 
 are those which are least educated and least influenced by 
 the broad current of civilisation. If we put aside the clergy 
 and those who are most immediately under their influence, 
 we find that this habit of mind is the invariable concomitant 
 of education, and is the especial characteristic of those persoc* 
 whose intellectual sympathies are mos* extended, and who, 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 161 
 
 therefore, represent most faithfully the various intellectual 
 influences of their time. If you connect a nation which has 
 long been insulated and superstitious with the general move- 
 ment of European civilisation hy means of railways or a free 
 press or the removal of protecting laws, you will most infal- 
 libly inoculate it with this spirit. 
 
 It is farther evident that this habit of thought is not a 
 merely ephemeral movement, produced by some exceptional 
 event, or by some transient literary fashion peculiar to our 
 own century. All history shows that, in exact proportion 
 as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles 
 taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at 
 last they entirely cease.' In this fact we have a clear indi- 
 cation of the decline of the old habits of thought ; for those 
 who regard these miracles as real ascribe their disappearance 
 to the progress of incredulity, while those who disbelieve 
 them mamtain that they were the results of a particular di- 
 rection given to the imagination, and of a particular form of 
 imposition created and suggested by the mediseval habits of 
 thought. In other words, the old spirit, according to one 
 class, is the condition, and according to the other class, the 
 cause of the miracles ; and, therefore, the cessation of mirac- 
 ulous narratives, when unaccompanied by an avowed change 
 of creed, implies the decay of that spirit. 
 
 If these propositions be true — and I scarcely think that 
 any candid person who seriously examines the subject can 
 
 ' This has been noticed in an extremely ingenious fashion by Bishdp 
 Sprdtt : — ' God never jet left himself without a witness in the world ; and it is 
 observable that He has commonly chosen the dark and ignorant ages wherein 
 to work miracles, but seldom or never the times when natural knowledge pre- 
 vailed : for He knew there was not so much need to make use of extraordinary 
 signs when men were diligent in the works of His hands and attentive to 
 the impressions of His footsteps in lils creatures.' {Jiist. of Royal Society, 
 p. 350.) 
 
 VOL. I. — 11 
 
162 EA.TIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 question them — they lead irresistibly to a very important 
 general conclusion. They show that the repugnance of men 
 to believe miraculous narratives is in direct proportion to 
 the progress of civilisation and the diffusion of knowledge. 
 It is not simply that science explains some things which were 
 formerly deemed supernatural, such as comets or eclipses. 
 We find the same incredulity manifested in Roman Catholic 
 countries towards alleged miracles by saints, or relics, or 
 images, on which science can throw no direct light, and 
 which contain no element of improbability, except that they 
 are miraculous. It is not simply that civilisation strength- 
 ens Protestantism at the expense of the Church of Rome. 
 We find this spirit displayed by Roman Catholics them- 
 selves, though the uniform tendency of their theology is to 
 destroy all notion of the antecedent improbability of modem 
 miracles ; and though the fact that these miracles are only 
 alleged in their own Church should invest them with a pecu- 
 liar attraction. It is not even that there is an increasing 
 repugnance to an unscrutinising and blindfold faith. Alleged 
 miracles are rejected with immediate unreasoning incredulity 
 by the members of a Church which has done everything in 
 its power to prepare the mind for iheir reception. The plain 
 fact is, that the progress of civilisation produces invariably 
 a certain tone and habit of thought, which makes men recoil 
 from miraculous narratives with an instinctive and imme- 
 diate repugnance, as though they were essentially incredible, 
 independently of any definite arguments, and in spite of 
 dogmatic teaching. Whether this habit of mind is good or 
 evil, I do not now discuss. That it exists wherever civilisa- 
 tion advances, is, I conceive, incontestable. 
 
 We may observe, however, that it acts with much greater 
 force against contemporary than against historical miraclea 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE CHURCH, 163 
 
 Roman Catholics who will reject with immediate ridicule an 
 account of a miracle taking place in their own day, will 
 speak with considerable respect of a precisely similar miracle 
 that is attributed to a mediasval saint. Nor is it at all diffi- 
 cult to discover the reason of this distinction. Events that 
 took place in a distant past, are not realised with the same 
 intense vividness as those which take place among ourselves. 
 They do not press upon us with the same keen reality, and 
 are not judged by the same measure. They come down to 
 us invested with a legendary garb, obscured by the haze of 
 /ears, and surrounded by circumstances that are so unlike 
 our own that they refract the imagination, and cloud and 
 distort its pictures. Besides this, many of these narratives 
 are entwined with the eai-liest associations of the Roman 
 Catholic child ; the belief in them is infused into his yet un- 
 developed mind, and they are thus at no period brought in 
 contact with a matured and unbiassed judgment. We find, 
 therefore, that although tliese general habits of thought do, 
 undoubtedly, exercise a retrospective influence, that is not 
 their first or their most powerful efl^ect. 
 
 In Protestant countries there has not been as complete a 
 change as that which we have been considering, for Protes- 
 tantism was only called into existence when the old habits of 
 thought had greatly declined. The Reformation was created 
 and pervaded by the modern spirit ; and its leaders were 
 compelled, by the exigencies of their position, to repudiate 
 the miraculous accounts of their time. They could not with 
 any consistency admit that the Almighty had selected as the 
 peculiar channels of His grace, and had glorified by count- 
 less miracles, devotions which they stigmatised as blasphe- 
 mous, idolatrous, and superstitious. We find, accordingly, 
 that from the very beginning. Protestantism looked upon 
 
164: EATIONALISM IN EDEOPE. 
 
 modern miracles (except those which were comprised under 
 the head of witchcraft) with an aversion and distrust that 
 contrasts remarkably with the unhesitating credulity of its 
 opponents. The history of its sects exhibits, indeed, some 
 alleged miracles, which were, apparently, the result of ig- 
 norance or enthusiasm, and a very few which were obvious 
 impositions. Such, for example, was the famous voice from 
 the wall in the reign of Queen Mary, which proclaimed the 
 mass to be idolatrous ; just as the crucifix in Christ's Church, 
 at Dublin, shed tears of blood in the following reign, be- 
 cause the Protestant service was introduced into Ireland. 
 On the whole, however, the new faith proved remarkably 
 free from these forms of deception ; and its leaders generally 
 concurred in the belief, that miracles had ceased when Chris- 
 tianity had gained a definite ascendancy in the world. The 
 Patristic writings are full of miraculous accounts ; and most 
 of the reformers, and especially those in England, treated 
 Patristic authority with great respect ; so that the line of de- 
 marcation between the miraculous and the non-miraculous 
 age, was generally drawn at about the period when the most 
 eminent of the Fathers had passed away. As this was not 
 very long after Christianity had obtained a complete com- 
 mand of the civil power, many plausible arguments could 
 be urged in support of the view, which appears, in England 
 at least, to have been universal. 
 
 When Locke was writing his famous ' Letters on Tolera- 
 tion,' he was led to a consideration of the Patristic miracles 
 by an argument which seems then to have been deemed very 
 forcible, but which, as it belongs to a different ' climate of 
 opinion ' from our own, would now be regarded as both fu- 
 tile and irreverent. It was absolutely necessary, it was con- 
 tended, under ordinary circumstances, for the well-being of 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE CHUECH. 165 
 
 Christianity, that it should he supported by persecution ; 
 that is to say, that the civil power should suppress its oppo- 
 nents. When Christianity was still unrecognised by gov- 
 ernment, it existed in an abnormal condition ; the laws of 
 nature were suspended in its favour, and continual miracles 
 ensured its triumph. When, however, the conversion of 
 Constantine placed the civil power at its disposal, the era of 
 the supernatural was closed. The power of persecuting was 
 obtained ; and, therefore, the power of working miracles was 
 withdrawn. The alliance between Church and State being 
 instituted, Christianity had arrived at its normal and final 
 position, and exceptional assistance had become unnecessary.' 
 This argument, the work of the theologians of Oxford, was 
 not likely to stagger Locke ; but the historical question 
 which it opened was well calculated to arrest that keen and 
 fearless intellect, so little accustomed to bow before unsup- 
 ported authority, and at that very time engaged in the de- 
 fence of toleration against the entire weight of ecclesiastical 
 tradition. He appears to have consulted Sir Isaac Newton ; 
 for, in one of Newton's letters, we find a somewhat hesitat- 
 ing passage upon the subject. ' Miracles,' Newton wrote, 
 ' of good credit continued in the Church for about two or 
 three hundred years. Gregorius Thaumaturgus had his 
 name from thence, and was one of the latest who was emi- 
 nent for that gift ; but of their number and frequency I am 
 not able to give you a just account. The history of those 
 
 ' This argument, in a modified form, lias been reproduced by Muzarelli (a 
 Roman theologian of some note) in his TreaHie on the Inquisition. He ciies 
 the destruction of Ananias and Sapphira, and of Simon Magus. This ola?'' r^f 
 miracles, he says, has censed ; and the Inquisition is, in consequence, required, 
 I know this very remarkable treatise by a translation in the fifth voiumo of 
 Henrion, Histoire de VEglise. 
 
166 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ages is very imperfect.' ' Locke does not appear to have 
 adopted this view. In reply to the Oxford argument, he 
 wrote a very remarkable passage, which did not, apparently, 
 attract at the time the attention it deserved ; but which, 
 long afterwards, obtained an extremely conspicuous place in 
 the discussion. ' This, I think,' he said, ' is evident, that he 
 who will build his faith or reasonings upon miracles deliv- 
 ered by Church historians, will find cause to go no further 
 than the Apostles' time, or else not to stop at Constantine's, 
 since the writers after that period, whose word we readily 
 take as unquestionable in other things, speak of miracles in 
 their time, with no less assurance than the Fathers before 
 the fourth century ; and a great part of the miracles of the 
 second and third centuries stand upon the credit of the wri- 
 ters of the fourth.' " 
 
 After this time, the subject of the miracles of the Fathers 
 seems to have slept until public attention was called to it by 
 the well-known work of Middleton. That the ' Free Inquiry' 
 was a book of extraordinary merit, that it displayed great 
 eloquence, great boldness, and great controversial dexterity, 
 and met with no opposition at all equal to its abilities, will 
 scarcely be denied. But, in order to appreciate its success, 
 we should consider, besides these things, the general charac- 
 ter of the age in which it appeared. During the half century 
 that elapsed between Locke and Middleton, many influences 
 that it would be tedious to examine, but to which Locke 
 himself by his philosophy most largely contributed, had pro- 
 foundly modified the theology of England. The charm and 
 
 ' Brewster's li/'' "/ ^(^ton, p 275. There is another letter from Newton 
 to Locke ou the subject,, hi King's lAfe of Locke^ vol. i. p. 415 ; but it is little 
 more than a catalogue of authorities 
 
 '' Third Letter on Toleration, p. 269. 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE CHUECH. 167 
 
 fascination which the early Fathers exercisea upon the 
 divines of the previous century had quite passed away. The 
 Patristic works fell rapidly into neglect, and the very few 
 who continued to study them were but little imbued with 
 their spirit. Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone 
 of the Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential 
 theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which re- 
 garded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police 
 force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, 
 but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled 
 or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an 
 authoritative system of moral philosophy. There never had 
 been a time when divines had such a keen dread of anything 
 that appeared absurd or grotesque. The spirit that, in the 
 previous century, had destroyed the belief in witchcraft, 
 passed in its full intensity into their works. Common sense 
 was the dominating characteristic of all they wrote. Gene- 
 rous sentiments, disinterested virtue, reverential faith, sub- 
 lime speculations, had passed away. Every preacher v,as 
 employed in showing that Christianity was in all respects 
 perfectly in accordance with human reason, in eliminating or 
 obscuring whatever could shock the feelings or offend the 
 judgment, in representing religion as intended to refine and 
 harmonise society, to embellish all the relations of life, to 
 give a higher sanction to the dictates of human prudence, 
 and to extend the horizon of that prudence beyond the grave. 
 As a consequence of this state of mind, there was an increas- 
 ing indisposition to accept miracles like those of the Fathers, 
 which were not included in the evidences of Christianity, 
 and a decreasing reverence for the writers on whose testi- 
 mony they rest. 
 
 It was in the midst of this movement of thought, that 
 
168 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 Middleton published his great attack upon the Patristic 
 miracles, and brought into clear relief both the difficulties 
 and the importance of the subject. The writings of the 
 Fathers contain numerous accounts of miracles which they 
 alleged to have taken place in their own 'day and under 
 their own notice, and which are of such a nature, and are 
 related in such a manner, that it seems scarcely possible to 
 avoid the conclusion that they had really taken place, or else 
 that the Fathers deliberately palmed them oif upon the cre- 
 dulity of their readers. The works of the first century that 
 have come down to us ate extremely scanty, and consist 
 almost entirely of short epistles written without any histori- 
 cal or controversial purpose, for the encouragement or edifi- 
 cation of believers ; but even in this century, the martyrdom 
 of St. Polycarp supplies an account which is clearly miracu- 
 lous. Justin Martyr, who wrote very early in the second 
 century, and it is said not more than fifty years after the 
 death of St. John, distinctly asserts the continuance of 
 miracles in his time, and from this date the evidence is ample 
 and unbroken. The Protestant theory is, that miracles be- 
 came gradually fewer and fewer, till they at last entirely 
 disappeared. The historical fact is, that, generation after 
 generation, the miraculous accounts became more nutaerous, 
 more universal, and more extraordinary. 'As far as the 
 church histoi-ians can illustrate or throw light upon anything, 
 there is not a single point in all history so constantly, ex- 
 plicitly, and unanimously confirmed by them all, as the con- 
 tinual succession of those powers through all ages, from the 
 earliest father who first mentions them down to the time of 
 the Reformation.' ' If, then, we gave even a general cre- 
 dence to the historical evidence upon the subject, we should 
 
 ' Preface to the Free Inquiry, 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE CHIIECH. 109 
 
 be carried down, without pause or chasm, into the depths 
 of the middle ages ; and we should he compelled to admit, 
 that what Protestants regard as the worst superstitions of 
 the Church of Rome, were for centuries the habitual and 
 special channels of supernatural favour. If again, in defiance 
 of all the ordinary rules of historical criticism, we believed 
 the assertions of the writers of the fourth century, but 
 refused to credit the equally positive testimony of the writers 
 of the ninth century, we should still be met by the same 
 difficulty, though in a modified form. It may be contended, 
 that the Fathers of the fourth century were not Roman Cath- 
 olics ; but it is quite certain that they were not, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word, Protestants. It is quite certain that 
 there existed among them many practices, forms of devotion, 
 and doctrinal tendencies, which may not have been actually 
 Roman Catholic, but which, at least, hung upon the extreme 
 verge of Catholicism, which inevitably gravitated to it, and 
 which were the germs and the embryos of media3\ al theology. 
 Now, it is precisely in connection with this department of 
 their theology that the miraculous accounts are most nu- 
 merous. 
 
 Such was the great difiiculty of the question, regarded 
 from the Protestant point of view. Middleton met it by an 
 attack upon the veracity of the Fathers, which was so 
 eloquent, so uncompromising, and so admirably directed, 
 that all England soon rang with the controversy. He con- 
 tended that the religious leaders of the fourth century had 
 admitted, eulogised, and habitually acted upon principles 
 that were diametrically opposed, not simply to tlie aspirations 
 of a transcendent sanctity, but to the dictates of the most 
 common honesty. He showed that they had applauded 
 falsehood, that they had practised the most wholesale for- 
 
i7C EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 gery, that they had habitually and grossly falsified history, 
 that they had adopted to the fullest extent the system of 
 pious frauds, and that they continually employed them to 
 stimulate the devotion of the people. These were the 
 charges which he brought against men, around whose brows 
 the saintly aureole had sparkled for centuries with an unfading 
 splendour ; against those great Fathers who had formed the 
 theological systems of Europe ; who had been the arbitrators 
 of so many controversies, and the objects of the homage of 
 so many creeds. The evidence he adduced was pointed 
 directly at the writers of the fourth century ; but he carried 
 his argument back to a still earlier period. ' When we re- 
 flect,' he says, ' on that surprising confidence and security 
 with which the principal Fathers of this fourth century have 
 afiirmed as true what they themselves had either forged, or 
 what they knew at least to be forged, it is natural to suspect 
 that so bold a defiance of sacred truth could not be acquired 
 or become general at once, but must have been carried 
 gradually to that height by custom and the example of for- 
 mer times, and a long experience of what the credulity and 
 superstition of the multitude would bear.' ' 
 
 It is manifest that an attack of this kind opened out 
 questions of the gravest and widest character. It shook the 
 estimate of the Fathers which had been general, not only in 
 the Church of Rome, but in a great degree among the ablest 
 of the Reformers. In the Church of England especially, the 
 Patristic writings had been virtually regarded as almost 
 equal in authority to those of the inspired writers. The first 
 great theological work of the English Reformation was 
 ' The Apology, ' in which Jewel justified the Reformers, by 
 pointing out the deviations of the Church of Rome from the 
 
 ' Introductory Chapter. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUKCH. 171 
 
 Patristic sentiments. It had ever been the pride of the 
 great divines of the seventeenth century that they were the 
 most profound students of the Patristic writings, the most 
 faithful representatives of theii' spirit, and the most loyal re- 
 specters of their authority. The unsupported assertion of 
 a Father had always been regarded as a most weighty, if not 
 a decisive, argument in controversy. But surely this tone 
 was idle and worse than idle, if the estimate of Middleton 
 was correct. If the Fathers were in truth men of the most 
 unbounded credulity and of the laxest veracity ; if the 
 sense of the importance of dogmas had, in their minds, com- 
 pletely superseded the sense of rectitude, it was absurd to 
 invest them with this extraordinary veneration. They might 
 still be reverenced as men of undoubted sincerity, and of the 
 noblest heroism ; they might still be cited as witnesses to 
 the belief of their time, and as representing the tendencies 
 of its intellect ; but their pre-eminent authority had passed 
 away. The landmarks of English theology were removed. 
 The traditions on which it rested were disturbed. It had 
 entered into new conditions, and must be defended by new 
 arguments. But beyond all this, there were other, and, per- 
 haps, graver questions suggested. Under what circumstan- 
 ces was it permitted to reject the unanimous and explicit 
 testimonj <)f all ecclesiastical historians ? What was the 
 measure of their credulity and of their veracity ? What 
 again was the degree of the antecedent improbability of 
 miracles, the criteria separating the true from the false, and 
 the amount of testimony required to substantiate them ? 
 
 These were the great questions which were evoked in 
 1748, by this Doctor of Divinity, and they were sufficient 
 for many years to attract the attention of the ablest enquir- 
 ers in England. Among the laity, the work of Middleton 
 
172 EATIONALISM EST ETJEOPE. 
 
 seems to have met with great acceptance. Among the cler» 
 gy its impetuous, uncompromising, and sceptical tone nat- 
 urally excited much alarm, and the University of Oxford 
 signalised itself in opposition ; but it is a remarkable sign of 
 the times that the Fathers found no abler defenders than 
 Church and Dodwell. Gibbon, who was then a very young 
 man, and already entangled in the arguments of Bossuet, 
 lost his remaining faith in Protestantism during the discussion. 
 He could not, he said, bring himself at that time to adopt the 
 conclusions of Middleton, and he could not resist the evi- 
 dence that miracles of good credit had continued in the 
 Church after the leading doctrines of Catholicism had been 
 introduced. He accordingly embraced those doctrines, and 
 left the University without taking his degree. Hume mves- 
 tigated the subject from a philosophical point of view ; he 
 endeavoured to frame a general doctrine, determining the 
 relation between miraculous narratives and historical testi- 
 mony, the comparative improbability of the reality of mira- 
 cles and of the unveracity of historians ; and the result was 
 his ' Essay on Miracles.' ' Farmer, reproducing an old notion 
 of Lightfoot, Webster, and Semler, and anticipating in this 
 respect the current of German rationalism, attempted to ex- 
 
 ' Hume's Essay was avowedly an application (right or wrong) of Tillotson'3 
 famous argument against transubstantiation. It is not so generally known 
 that his method of reasoning had been also anticipated by Locke, who, in a 
 very remarkable passage in his common-place book, contends that men should 
 not believe any proposition that is contrary to reason, on the authority either 
 of inspiration or of miracle, for the reality of the inspiration or of the miracle 
 can only be established by reason. ' It is harder,' he says, ' to believe that 
 God should alter or put out of its ordinary course some phenomenon of the 
 great world for once, and make things act contrary to their ordinary rule pur- 
 posely, that the mind of men might do so always after, than that this is some 
 fallacy or natural effect of which he knows not the cause, let It look ever so 
 strange ' (King, Life of Locke, vol. i. pp. 230, 231). See, too, the chapter on 
 Reason and Faith, in the Essay on the Human Understanding. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 173 
 
 plain the diabolical possessions of Scripture by the ordinary 
 phenomena of epilepsy.' Warburton and Douglas, with 
 probably most of the ablest of the clergy, abandoning the 
 Patristic miracles, proceeded to establish the peculiar charac- 
 ter and evidence of the miracles recorded by the Evangelists ; 
 and the general adoption of this tone may be said to have 
 ushered in a new phase in the history of miracles. 
 
 It has often been remarked as a singular fact, that almost? 
 every g.reat step which has been made by the English intel- 
 lect in connection with theology, has been made in spite of 
 the earnest and persistent opposition of the University of 
 Oxford. The attitude which that university preserved dur- 
 ing the Middletonian controversy, was precisely the same as 
 that which it had exhibited towards the two great questions 
 of the previous century. The advo cates of th e theory of 
 civil liberty in opposition to the theory of passive obedience, 
 and the advocates of toleration as opposedTbpersecution, had 
 found at Oxford their most unflinching and most able a^ver- 
 saries. In our own century, when the secularisatiOTToTpol- 
 itics was forced upon the public mind by the discussions on 
 the Test Act and on Catholic Emancipation, and when it had 
 become evident to all attentive observers that this question 
 was destined to be the battle-field of the contest between 
 modern civilisation and tradition, the University of Oxford 
 showed clearly that its old spirit had lost none of its intensity, 
 though it had lost much of its iniluence. Still later, in 1833, a 
 great reactionary movement emanated from the same quarter, 
 and was directed avowedly against the habits of religious 
 
 ' Farmer, who was a dissenting minister, desired to destroy the diflBculty 
 arising from the fact that miracles were generally represented as attesting both 
 truth and error. lie attempted to show that there were no such things as 
 diabolical miracles of any kind. 
 
m EATIOIfAlISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 thought which modern civilisation had everywhere produced. 
 Its supporters denounced these habits as essentially and fun- 
 damentally false. They described the history of English the- 
 ology for a century and a half as a history of uninterrupted 
 decadence. They believed, in the emphatic words of their 
 great leader, that ' the nation was on its way to give up re- 
 vealed truth.' ' After a time, the movement tended to Ca- 
 tholicism with a force and rapidity that it was impossible to 
 mistake. It produced a defection which was quite unparal- 
 leled in magnitude since that which had taken place under 
 the Stuarts ; and which, unlike the former movement, was 
 altogether uninfluenced by sordid consideiations. The point 
 which I desire to notice in connection with this defection, as 
 illustrating the tendency I am tracing in the present chapter, 
 is the extremely small place which the subject of Roman 
 Catholic miracles occupied in the controversy. 
 
 If we ask what are the grounds on which the cessation 
 of miracles is commonly maintained, they may, I suppose, 
 be summed up much as follows : — 
 
 Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an in- 
 spired messenger announcing doctrines which could not oth- 
 erwise be established. They prove that he is neither an 
 impostor nor an enthusiast ; that his teaching is neither the 
 work of a designing intellect nor of an over-heated imagina- 
 tion. From the nature of the case, this could not be proved 
 iu any other way. If the Almighty designed to reveal to 
 mankind a system of religion distinct from that which is re- 
 flected in tha works of nature, and written on the conscien- 
 ces of men, He must do so by the instrumentality of an 
 inspired messenger. If a teacher claims to be the special 
 organ of a Divine communication revealing supernatural 
 
 ' Xewman's Anglican Difficulties, p. 64. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 175 
 
 truths, he may be justly expected to authenticate his mission 
 in the only way in which it can he authenticated, by the 
 performance of supernatural acts. Miracles are, therefore, 
 no more improbable than a revelation; for a revelation 
 would be ineffectual without miracles. But, while this con- 
 sideration destroys the common objections to the Gospel 
 miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church 
 of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they 
 were absolutely necessary ; they were designed to introduce 
 a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. 
 The latter were simply means of edification ; they were di- 
 rected to no object that could not otherwise be attained ; and 
 they were represented as taking place in a dispensation that 
 was intended to be not of sight but of faith. Besides this, 
 miracles should be regarded as the most awful and impressive 
 manifestations of Divine power. To make them habitual 
 and commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their 
 character, which would be still further abased if we admit- 
 ted those which appeared trivial and puerile. The miracles 
 of the New Testament were always characterised by dignity 
 and solemnity ; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, 
 and conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the char- 
 acter of the worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contra- 
 ry, were frequently trivial, purposeless, and unimpressive ; 
 constantly verging on the grotesque, and not unfrequently 
 passing the border. 
 
 Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments 
 iu favour of the cessation of miracles; and they are undoubt- 
 edly very plausible and very cogent ; but, after all, what do 
 they prove ? Not that miracles have ceased ; but that, st:p- 
 PosiNG them to have, ceased, there is nothing surprising or 
 alarming in the fact. A man who has convinced himself of the 
 
176 RATION ALISM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 falseness of the ecclesiasticial miracles, may very fairly ad- 
 duce these considerations to prove that his conclusion does not 
 impugn the Biblical narratives, or introduce confusion or 
 incoherence into the system of Providence ; but this is the full 
 extent to which they can be legitimately carried. As an d 
 priori proof, they are far too weak to withstand the smallest 
 amount of positive testimony. Miracles, it is said, are intended 
 exclusively to accredit an inspired messenger. But, after 
 all, what proof is there of this ? It is simply an hypothesis, 
 plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported 
 by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say 
 that it is distinctly opposed to your own facts. You may re- 
 pudiate the unanimous belief of the early Christians, that 
 miracles were ordinary and commonplace events among aU 
 nations ; you may resist the strong arguments that may be 
 drawn from the unsurprised reception of^the Christian mira- 
 cles, and from the existence of the demoniacs and of the ex- 
 orcists ; but at least you must admit, that the Old Testament 
 relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. 
 The creation was a miracle, and so was the deluge, and so 
 was the destruction of the cities of the plain. The Old 
 Testament miracles are, in many respects, unlike those of the 
 New Testament : is it impossible that there should be an- 
 other class different from either ? But the ecclesiastial mira- 
 cles, it is said, are often grotesque ; they appear primd facie 
 absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance. A sufficiently 
 dangerous test in an age in which men find it more and more 
 difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dan- 
 gerous test for those who know the tone that has been long 
 adopted, over an immense part of Europe, towards such nar- 
 ratives as the deluge, or the exploits of Samson, the speak- 
 ing ass, or -the possessed pigs ! Besides this, a great pro- 
 
THE MmACLES OF THE CHUECH. 1Y7 
 
 portion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply repro- 
 ductions of those which are recorded in the Bible; and 
 if there are mingled with them some that appear mani- 
 fest impostures, this may be a very good reason for treating 
 these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is cer- 
 tainly no reason for maintaining that they are all below con- 
 tempt. The Bible neither asserts nor implies the revocation 
 of supernatural gifts ; and if the general promise that these 
 gifts should be conferred may have been intended to apply 
 only to the Apostles, it is at least as susceptible of a different 
 interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it 
 is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose that 
 they would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety ; 
 they would prove invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries la- 
 bouring among barbarous and unreasoning savages, who, 
 from their circumstances and habits of mind, are utterly inca- 
 pable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of the 
 religion they are expected to embrace. Even in Europe, the 
 results of the controversies of the last 300 years have not 
 been so entirely satisfactory as to leave no room for some 
 more decisive proofs than the ambiguous utterances of a re- 
 mote antiquity. To say that these miracles are false because 
 they are Roman Catholic, is to assume the very question at 
 issue. The controversy between Protestantism and Catholi- 
 cism comprises an immense mass of complicated and hetero- 
 geneous arguments. Thousands of minds have traversed 
 these arguments, and have found at each step their faith in 
 Protestantism confirmed. Thousands of minds have pursued 
 the same course with results that were diametrically oppo- 
 site. The question is, whether an examination of the alleged 
 miracles of Catholicism would not furnish a decisive crite- 
 rion, or at least one of the most powerful arguments, for 
 
 TOL. I. — 12 
 
178 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 cletermining the controversy. What evidence of the truth 
 of Catholicism could be stronger than that its distinctive 
 doctrines had been crowned by tens of thousands of mira- 
 cles, tliat a supernatural halo had encircled it wherever it ap- 
 peared, and had cast a glory upon all its triumphs ? ' What 
 proof of the falsehood of Catholicism could be more decisive 
 than that it was unable to establish any of the immense 
 mass of miracles which it had asserted ; that all these were 
 resolved and dissipated before a searching criticism; that 
 saints had been canonised, forms of worship established, 
 countless bulls and pastorals issued, innumerable rejoicings, 
 pageantries, processions, and pilgrimages authoritatively in- 
 stituted, public opinion all through Christendom violently and 
 continuously agitated, on account of alleged events which had 
 either no existence, or which were altogether misunderstood ? 
 Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme 
 fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypo- 
 thesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequalled 
 in the annals of the human race. If, again, you say that 
 
 ■ E. g., one of the questions of dispute is the veneration of relics. Now 
 St. Augustine, the ablest and most clear-headed of all the Fathers, and a man 
 of undoubted piety, solemnly asserts that in his own diocese of Hippo, in the 
 space of two years, no less than seventy miracles had been wrought by the 
 body of St. Stephen, and that in the neighbouring province of Calama, where 
 the relic had previously been, the number was incomparably greater. He gives 
 a catalogue of what he deems undoubted miracles, which he says he had 
 selected from a multitude so great, that volumes would be required to relate 
 them all. In that catalogue we find no less than five cases of restoration of 
 life to the dead. (De Ciii. Dei, lib. xxii. c. 8.) This statement is well known to 
 readers of Gibbon and Middleton ; but, as far as I know, the only High 
 Churchman who has referred to it is Mr. Ward {Ideal of a Christian Church, 
 pp. 138-140), who notices it merely to lament the very different tone with 
 which we now speak of the miraculous. This aspect of the Patristic writings 
 has been very clearly and honestly brought out in Isaac Taylor's AnderU 
 Christianiti) 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 179 
 
 you have formed a. definite and unhesitating opinion on the 
 subject from other arguments, I reply that, putting aside all 
 other considerations this answer might suggest, it does not 
 apply to the Tractarian movement we are considering. The 
 transition from the Church of England to the Church of 
 Rome, which was made by so many in consequence of that 
 movement, was not abrupt or unwavering. It was, on the 
 contrary, slow, painful, hesitating, and dubious. Some of 
 those who made it have described themselves as trembling 
 for months, and even years, between the opposing creeds, 
 their minds vibrating and oscillating to and fro ; countless 
 difiiculties, colliding principles, modes of reasoning the most 
 various, blending and neutralising sentiments of every hue, 
 torturing their minds with doubt, and sometimes almost 
 destroying by their conflict the very faculty of judgment. 
 Surely one might have imagined that men in such a position 
 would have gladly exchanged those shifting speculations 
 that so constantly elude the grasp and bewilder the mind, 
 and catch their colour from each changing mode of thought, 
 for the comparatively firm and definite ground of historical 
 criticism ! The men were admirably fitted for such criticism. 
 They were pre-eminently scholars and antiquarians, and in 
 its intellectual aspect the movement was essentially a resus- 
 citation of the past. Nor did the age seem at first sight less 
 suited for the enterprise. In the time of the Reformers the 
 study of evidences, and indeed all searching investigation 
 into the facts of the past, were unknown. When, however, 
 Tractarianism arose, the laws of historical criticism were de- 
 veloped to great perfection, and they were attracting an 
 immense proportion of the talent of Europe. In English 
 theology, especially, they had become supreme. The attacks 
 which Woolston and his followers had made upon the scrip- 
 
180 EATIONALISM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 tural miracles had been repelled by Lardner and Paley with 
 such unexpected vigour, with such undoubted abUity, and, 
 as it was long thought, with such unanswerable success, that 
 all theological reasoning had been directed to this channeL 
 Yet in the Tractarian movement the subject of modern mir- 
 acles can scarcely be said to have exercised a perceptible 
 influence. Gibbon, as we have seen, had gone over to Rome 
 chiefly through a persuasion of their reality. Chillingworth 
 still earlier had declared that the same reason had been one 
 of those which had induced him to take the same step. Pas- 
 cal had based his defence of Jansenism in a great measure 
 upon the miracle of the Holy Thorn. But at Oxford 
 these narratives hardly excited a serious attention. What 
 little influence they had was chiefly an influence of repul 
 sion ; what little was written in their favor was written 
 for the most part in the tone of an apology, as if to atten- 
 uate a difficulty rather than to establish a creed.' 
 
 This was surely a very remarkable characteristic of the 
 Tractarian movement, when we remember the circumstances 
 and attainments of its leaders, and the great prominence 
 which miraculous evidence had long occupied in England. 
 It was especially remarkable when we recollect that one of 
 the great complaints which the Tractarian party were making 
 against modern theology was, that the conception of the 
 supernatural had become faint and dim, and that its mani- 
 festations were either explained away or confined to a distant 
 past. It would seem as if those who were most conscious 
 of the character of their age were unable, in the very midst 
 of their opposition, to free themselves from its tendencies. 
 
 ' Dr. Newman's very able essay (prefixed to Fleury's History) is esseutially 
 an apology for the ecclesiastical miracles ; and the miracles of the English 
 saints, about which we have lately heard so much, never seem to have been 
 regarded as evidential. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE OHUEOH. 181 
 
 If we look beyond the Tractarian movement, we find a 
 Btill more startling illustration of the prevailing feeling in 
 the extraordinary strides which professed and systematised 
 Rationalism has made in most Protestant countries. The 
 extent to which Continental Protestantism has gravitated 
 towards it has been recognised on all sides, and has excited 
 the greatest hopes in some and the greatest alarm in others. 
 It is worthy too of remark, that the movement has been 
 most manifest in those countries where the leading Churches 
 are not connected with very elaborate creeds or with litur- 
 gical services, and where the reason, being least shackled by 
 tradition, is most free to follow the natural sequence of its 
 developments. It is true that the word Rationalism is some- 
 what vague, and comprises many different modifications of 
 belief. This consideration has constantly been urged by 
 those who are termed orthodox Protestants in a tone of the 
 most contemptuous scorn, but with a complete forgetfulness 
 of the fact that for 300 years Protestantism itself was invari- 
 ably assailed by the very same objection, and was invariably 
 defended on the twofold ground that variations of belief 
 form the necessary consequence of honest enquiry, and that 
 amid its innumerable diversities of detail there were certain 
 radical conceptions which gave a substantial unity to the 
 discordant sects. Much the same general unity may be found 
 among the various modifications of Protestant Rationalism. 
 Its central conception is the elevation of conscience into a 
 position of supreme authority as the religious organ, a veri- 
 fying faculty discriminating between truth and error. It 
 regards Christianity as designed to preside over the moral 
 development of mankind, as a conception which was to be- 
 come more and more sublimated and spiritualised as the 
 human mind passed into new phases, and was able to bear 
 
182 
 
 EATIONALISM IN EL'EOPE. 
 
 the splendour of a more uncloucTed light. Religion it be- 
 lieves to be no exception to the general law of progress, but 
 rather the highest form of its manifestation, and its earlier 
 systems but the necessary steps of an imperfect development. 
 In its eyes the moral element of Christianity is as the sun 
 in heaven, and dogmatic systems are as the clouds that in- 
 tercept and temper the exceeding brightness of its ray. 
 The insect whose existence is but for a moment might well 
 imagine that these were indeed eternal, that their majestic 
 columns could never fail, and that their luminous folds were 
 the very source and centre of light. And yet they shift and 
 vary with each changing breeze ; they blend and separate ; 
 they assume new forms and exhibit new dimensions ; as the 
 sun that is above them waxes more glorious in its power, 
 they are permeated and at last absorbed by its increasing 
 splendour; they recede, and wither, and disappear, and the 
 eye ranges far beyond the sphere they had occupied into the 
 infinity of glory that is above them. 
 
 This is not the place to enter into a critical examination 
 of the faults and merits of Rationalism. A system which 
 would unite in one sublime synthesis all the past forms of 
 human belief, which accepts with triumphant alacrity each 
 new development of science, having no stereotyped standard 
 to defend, and which represents the human mind as pursuing 
 on the highest subjects a path of continual progress towards 
 the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity, 
 can never fail to exercise a powerful intellectual attraction. 
 A system which makes the moral faculty of man the measure, 
 and arbiter of faith, must always act powerfully on those in 
 whom that faculty is most developed. This idea of contin- 
 ued and uninterrupted development is one that seems abso- 
 lutely to override our age. It is scarcely possible to open 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE CHUEOH. 183 
 
 any really able book on any subject without encountering it 
 in some form. It is stirring all science to its very depths ; 
 it is revolutionising all historical literature. Its prominence 
 in theology is so great that there is scarcely any school that 
 is all ogether exempt from its influence. We have seen in our 
 own day tht Church of Rome itself defended in ' An Essay 
 on Development,' and by a strange application of the laws of 
 progress. 
 
 These elements of attraction do much to explain the ex- 
 traordinary rapidity with which Rationalism has advanced 
 in the present century, in spite of the vagueness and obscurity 
 it often exhibits and the many parodoxes it has engendered. 
 But it is well worthy of notice that the very first direction 
 which these speculations invariably take — the very sign and 
 characteristic of their action — is an attempt to explain away 
 the miracles of Scripture. This is Bo emphatically the dis- 
 tinctive mark of Rationalism, that with most persons it is the 
 only conception the word conveys. Wherever it appears it 
 represents and interprets the prevailing disinclination to 
 accept miraculous narratives,' and will resort to every artifice 
 of interpretation in order to evade their force. Its preva- 
 lence, therefore, clearly indicates the extent to which this 
 aversion to the miraculous exists in Protestant countries, and 
 the rapidity with which it has of late years increased. 
 
 Every one who has paid any attention to these subjects 
 has a natural inclination to attribute the conclusions he has 
 arrived at to the efforts of his own reason, acting under the 
 
 ' A large section of German theologians, as is well known, even regard the 
 in possibility, or at all events the unreality, of miraculous accounts as axiom- 
 at'.o. Thus Strauss calmly remarks : ' We may summarily reject all miracles, 
 prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible 
 and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course 
 of events.' — Introduction to the lAfe of Jesus. 
 
184 RATIONALISM IN EBEOPE. 
 
 influence of an unbiassed will, rather than to a general pre- 
 disposition arising out of the character of his age. It is 
 probable, therefore, that the members of the rationalistic 
 school would very generally deny being influenced by any 
 other considerations than those which they allege in their de- 
 fence, and would point to that system of minute and critical 
 Biblical investigation which Germany has produced as the 
 true source of their opinions. I cannot but think that it is 
 much less the cause than the result, and that we have a clear 
 indication of this in the fact that a precisely similar tendency 
 of opinions is shown in another quarter where this criticism 
 has never been pursued. I allude to the freethinkers, who 
 are scattered in such profusion through Roman Catholic 
 countries. Anyone who has attentively examined that great 
 school, which exercises so vast an influence over the literature 
 and policy of our age, must have perceived that it is in many 
 respects widely removed from the old Voltairian spirit. It is 
 no longer exclusively negative and destructive, but is, on the 
 contrary, intensely positive, and in its moral aspect intensely 
 Christian. It clusters around a series of essentially Christian 
 conceptions — equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the 
 elevation of the poor, the love of truth, and the difiusion of 
 liberty. It revolves ar ound the ideal of Christianity, and 
 represents its spirit without its dogmat ic s yst em and its 
 supernatural narratives. From both of these it unhesitatingly 
 recoils, while deriving all its strength and nourishment from 
 Christian etchics. 
 
 Such are, I conceive, the general outlines of this move- 
 ment, which bears an obvious relationship to Pi-otestant Ra- 
 tionalism, and which has been advancing through Europe 
 with still more rapid and triumphant strides. He must in- 
 deed be wilfully blind to the course of history who does not 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 185 
 
 perceive that during the last hundred years these schools 
 have completely superseded the dogmatic forms of Protes- 
 tantism as the efficient antagonists of the Church of Rome, 
 as the centres tovi^ards which those vrho are repelled from 
 Catholicism are naturally attracted. In the sixteenth and to 
 a certain degree in the seventeenth century, Protestantism 
 exercised a commanding and controlling influence over the 
 affairs of Europe. Almost all the great questions that agi- 
 tated the minds of men were more or less connected with its 
 progress. It exhibited, indeed, many unseemly dissensions 
 and many grotesque extravagances ; but each of its sects 
 had a rigid and definite dogmatic system, and exercised a 
 powerful influence on those who were around it. Whoever 
 was dissatisfied with the teaching of the Church of Rome 
 was almost immediately attracted and absorbed by one of 
 these systems, and threw himself into the new dogmatism 
 with as much zeal as he had exhibited in the old one. Dur- 
 ing the last century all this has changed. Of the many hun- 
 dreds of great thinkers and writers, in every department, 
 who have separated from the teachings and practices of Ca- 
 tholicism, it would be difficult to name three men of real 
 eminence and unquestionable sincerity who have attached 
 themselves permanently to any of the more conservative 
 forms of Protestantism. Amid all those great semi-relisrious 
 revolutions which have unhinged the faith of thousands, 
 and have so profoundly altered the relations of Catholicism 
 and society, Protestant Churches have made no advance and 
 have exercised no perceptible influence. It has long been a 
 mere truism to say that we are passing through a state of 
 jhaos, of anarchy, and of transition. During the past cen- 
 tury the elements of dissolution have been multiplying all 
 around us. Scarcely ever before has so large a proportion 
 
186 EATI0NALI8M IN EUEOPK. 
 
 of the literatui-e of Europe exhibited an open hostility or a 
 contemptuous indifference towards Catholicism. Entire na- 
 tions have defied its censures an-1 confiscated its property, 
 and wrested every department of politics from its control. 
 But while Catholicism has been thus convulsed and agitated 
 to its very basis ; while the signs of its disintegration are 
 crowding upon us on every side ; while the languor and fee- 
 bleness it exhibits furnish a ready theme for every moralist 
 and a problem for every philosopher, the Protestant sects 
 have gained nothing by the decay of their ancient rival. 
 They have still retained their ecclesiastical organisations and 
 their ancient formularies, but the magnetism they once pos- 
 sessed has wholly vanished. Of all the innumerable forms 
 into which the spirit of dogmatism crystallised after the 
 Reformation, not one seems to have retained the power of 
 attracting those beyond its border. Whatever is lost by Ca- 
 tholicism is gained by Rationalism ; ' wherever the spirit of 
 Rationalism recedes, the spirit of Catholicism advances. To- 
 wards the close of the last century France threw off her al- 
 legiance to Christianity, endeavoured to efface all the tra- 
 ditions of her past, and proclaimed a new era in the religious 
 history of mankind. She soon repented of her temerity, and 
 retired from a position which she had found untenable. Half 
 the nation became ultramontane Roman Catholics; the other 
 half became indifferent or Rationalist.' The great majority 
 of Continental writers have repudiated the doctrines of Ca- 
 
 ' Italy since the late political changes, and as a consequence of the direc- 
 tion giren to the national sympathies by those changes, furnishes, perhaps, a 
 slight exception ; but even there the conquests of Protestantism are insignifi- 
 cant as compared with those of Freethinking, and it is said that among Prot- 
 estants the Plymouth Brethren, who are among the least dogmatic, have also 
 been among the most successful. 
 
 " J need hardly remind the reader how forcibly and eloquently this poin( 
 naa been brought out by Macaulay, in his Essay on JRanke's History. 
 
THE MIEAGLES OF THE CHUEOJI. 187 
 
 thollcism, and pursue their speculations without paying the 
 smallest deference to its authority. In the sixteenth century 
 all such persons would have attached themselves to some 
 definite form of Protestantism ; they now assume a position 
 which was then entirely unexampled, and would have ap- 
 peared entirely inexplicable. The age of heresiarchs has 
 passed.' Among very ignorant people new dogmatic sys- 
 tems, as Mormonism has shown, may still be successful ; but 
 among the educated classes they seem to have lost all their 
 attraction and power. The immense missionary organisa- 
 tions of England succeed indeed in occasionally attracting a 
 few isolated individuals in Roman Catholic countries to 
 Protestantism ; but we look in vain for the natural flow and 
 current of thought which in former times impelled vast por- 
 tions of society to its communion, and imparted an influence 
 to all the great questions in Europe. The only movements 
 which in the faintest degree reproduce the fascination of the 
 sects of the sixteenth century are philanthropic and demo- 
 cratic eiforts, like those of St. Simon or Mazzini. All the 
 great intellectual problems that convulse Europe are con- 
 nected with the rights of nationalities, the progress of de- 
 mocracy, or the dignity of labour. These have now taken 
 the place of those dogmatic questions which in the sixteenth 
 century formed the mainsprings of the policy of Christen- 
 dom, and which in the nineteenth century have become en- 
 tirely uninfluential. 
 
 ' M. de Montalembert, in his lAfe of Lacordaire, has observed of La- 
 mennais, that there is probably no instance in history of a man possessing so 
 eminently the gifts of a great heresiarch making so little impression by his 
 defection from the Church, and failing so completely to become the nucleus of 
 a, sect. After all, however, this was quite natural. The course which La- 
 mennais pursued stimulated a great intellectual movement ; but it was not, and 
 Taa never intended to be, in the direction of a sect. 
 
188 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 This is, undoubtedly, an extremely remarkable and an 
 extremely significant contrast. Honest men will hardly 
 deny its existence. Wise men will not shut their eyes to the 
 fact or refuse to look steadily at its consequences. Coupled 
 with the rationalistic movement that has taken place within 
 Protestantism, it has inclined very many writers to conclude 
 that the earlier forms of Protestantism were merely transi- 
 tional; that their continued existence depends not on any 
 life that is in them, but on the force of habit and of tradition ; 
 that perpetual progress in the domain of belief is the natu- 
 ral destiny and the inevitable lawof Protestantism ; and that 
 the fate of Lot's wife is reserved for those Churches which look 
 back on the city of dogmatism from which they fled. To as- 
 sume, however, that religious life has been extirpated in 
 Protestant Churches, because they appear to have lost the 
 power of influencing those who are around them, is to look 
 for it in only one form. It is to ignore the intense and prac- 
 tical fervour, the moralising influences, the spirit of bold and 
 earnest enquiry, that are so abundantly found within their 
 borders. To infer from this general movement that dog- 
 matic Protestantism is an imperfect development, which intel- 
 lects unshackled by its traditions will never embrace, and 
 which the current of civilisation must ultimately transform or 
 overthrow, is undoubtedly far more plausible ; yet, as an 
 argument against the truth of Protestantism, it is based en- 
 tirely upon the assumption that the general tendency of civ- 
 ilisation is necessarily towards truth rather than error. One 
 conclusion, however, we may most certainly and most safely 
 draw from the movement we are considering. It is, that the 
 general current and bias of the intellect of the age is in the 
 direction of Rationalism ; in other words, that there is a 
 strong predisposition to value the spirit and moral element of 
 
THE MIRACLES OP THE CHURCH. 189 
 
 Christianity, but to reject dogmatic systems and more espe- 
 cially miraculous narratives. 
 
 We have seen that this tendency was not uninfluential in 
 Tractarianism itself, although that system was organized aa 
 a protest and a bulwark against the tendencies of the age. 
 Among those who are usually called orthodox Protestants, it 
 has been clearly shown in the rapid decline of the evidential 
 school. The pre-eminence that school obtained in England 
 during the last century is certainly not to be attributed to 
 any general tendency towards the miraculous. Lardner and 
 Paley and their followers acted strictly on the defensive, and 
 were therefore compelled to meet their assailants on the 
 ground which those assailants had selected. The spirit of 
 scepticism, which at the Reformation extended only to the 
 authority of particular Churches or to the justice of par 
 ticular interpretations of Scripture, had gradually expanded 
 till it included the whole domain of theology, and had pro 
 duced a series of violent attacks upon the miracles. It was 
 to repel these attacks that the evidential school arose, and 
 the anrals of religious controversy narrate few more com- 
 plete y'u tories than they achieved. Of all the English deisti- 
 oal works of the eighteenth century, the influence of two 
 and only two survived the controversy. Hume's Essay on 
 Miracles, though certainly not unquestioned and unassailed, 
 cannot be looked upon as obsolete or uninfluential. Gibbon 
 remains the almost undisputed master of his own field, but 
 his great work does not directly involve, though it undoubt- 
 edly trenches on, the subject of Christian evidences. But if 
 we except these two, it would be difficult to conceive a more 
 complete eclipse than the English deists have undergone. 
 Woolston and Tindal, Collins and Chubb, have long since 
 passed into the region of shadows, and their works have 
 
190 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 mouldered in the obscurity of forgetfulness. Bolingliroke is 
 now little more than a brilliant name, and all the beauties of 
 his matchless style have been unable to preserve his philos- 
 ophy from oblivion. Shaftesbury retains a certain place as 
 one of the few disciples of i.kalism who resisted the influence 
 of Locke ; but his importance is purely historical. His cold 
 and monotonous though exquisitely polished dissertations 
 have fallen into general nesrlect, and find few readers and 
 exercise no influence. The shadow of the tomb rests upon 
 them all; a deep unbroken silence, the chill of death, sur- 
 rounds them. They have long ceased to wake any interest, 
 or to suggest any enquiries, or to impart any impulse to the 
 intellect of Engfland. This was the result of the English 
 controversies of the eighteenth century, which on the con 
 servative side consisted mainly of a discussion of miraculous 
 evidence. It is undoubtedly very remarkable in itself, but 
 much more so when we contrast it with what was taking 
 place in Roman Catholic countries. Voltaire and Rousseau 
 not only succeeded in holding their ground, but they met 
 with no opponent whom the wildest enthusiasm could place 
 upon their leveL Their works elicited not a single refutar 
 tion, I might almost say not a single argument or criticism, 
 that has come down with any authority to our own day. 
 Diderot, Raynal, and several other members of the party 
 have taken a place in French literature which is probably 
 permanent, and which is certainly far higher than was ob- 
 tained by any of their opponents. 
 
 One might have supposed from this contrast that the 
 evidential school, which had been crowned with such marked 
 success, would have enjoyed a great and permanent populari- 
 ty ; but this expectation has not been realised. In Germany, 
 Kant from the beginning pronounced this mode of reasoning 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 191 
 
 to he unphilosophical ; ' in England, Coleridge succeeded in 
 bringing it into complete disrepute ; and every year the dis- 
 inclination to stake the truth of Christianity on the proof of 
 miracles becomes more manifest. A small body of theolo- 
 gians continue, indeed, to persevere in the old plan, and no 
 one will speak of their labours with disrespect ; yet they are 
 themselves witnesses to the generality of the movement, for 
 they complain bitterly that they are labouring in a wilder- 
 ness, and that the old method has been on all sides aban- 
 doned and neglected. ° We find, everywhere, that the pre- 
 vailing feeling is to look upon the defence of Christianity as 
 a matter not external to but part of religion. Belief is re- 
 garded not as the result of an historical puzzle, the solution 
 of an extremely complicated intellectual problem which pre- 
 sents fewest difficulties and contradictions, but as the recog- 
 nition by conscience of moral truth. In other words, religion 
 in its proofs as in its essence is deemed a thing belonging 
 rather to the moral than the intellectual portion of human 
 nature. Faith and not reason is its basis ; and this faith is a 
 species of moral perception. Each dogma is the embodiment 
 and inadequate expression of a moral truth, and is worthless 
 except as it is vivified by that truth. The progress of criti- 
 cism may shift and vary the circumstances of an historical 
 faith, the advent of new modes of thought may make ancient 
 creeds lifeless and inoperative, but the spirit that underlies 
 them is eternaL The ideal and type of character will acquire 
 new fascination when detached from the material conceptions 
 of an early civilisation. The idolatry of dogmas will pass 
 away ; Christianity, being rescued from the sectarianism and 
 
 ' On Kant's influence on German Rationalism see Rose, On FrotestaiiMtm 
 in Germany, pp. 183-190. 
 
 " See, for example, the first and second Essays in Aids to FaHh. 
 
192 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 intolerance that have defaced it, will shine bj its own moral 
 S])lendour, and, sublimated above all the sphere of contro- 
 versy, will assume its rightful position as an ideal aud not a 
 system, as a person and not a creed. 
 
 We iind also, even among the supporters of the evidential 
 school, a strong tendency to meet the Rationalists, as it were, 
 halfway — to maintain that miracles are valid proofs, but that 
 they do not necessarily imply the notion of a violation of 
 natural law with which they had been so long associated. 
 They are, it is said, performed simply by the application f 
 natural means guided by supernatural knowledge. The idea' 
 of interference can present no difficulty to anyone who admits 
 human liberty ; ' for those who acknowledge that liberty 
 must hold that man has a certain power of guiding and con- 
 trolling the laws of matter, that he can of his own free will 
 produce effects which would not have been produced without 
 his intervention, and that in proportion as his knowledge of 
 the laws of nature advances his power of adapting them to 
 his purposes is increased. That mind can inffuence matter 
 is itself one of the laws of natui-e. To adapt and modify 
 general laws to special purposes is the occupation and the 
 characteristic of every intelligence, and to deny this power 
 to Divine intelligence seems but little removed from atheism. 
 It is to make the Deity the only torpid mind in the universe. 
 There is therefore, it is said, nothing improbable in the beliei 
 that Omniscience, by the selection of natural laws of which 
 we are ignorant, could accomplish all those acts which avc 
 call miraculous." According to this notion, a miracle would 
 
 ' See Hansel's ' Essay on Miracles ' in the Aids to Faith. 
 
 ' For an exposition of this yiew I cannot rlo better than refer to an article 
 on 'The Supernatural' in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1862, and to the 
 works there referred to. I select a few sentences from the article which con- 
 tain the substance of the argument : ' The reign of law in nature is indeed, as 
 
THE MIEA0LE8 OF THE CHUECH. 193 
 
 not differ, generically, from a human act, though it would 
 Btill be sti-ictly available for evidential purposes. Miracles 
 would thus be separated from a conception with which almost 
 all the controversialists of the last century had identified 
 them, and which is peculiarly repugnant to the tendencies ot 
 our age. 
 
 "We have now taken a sufficiently extensive survey of tho 
 history of miracles to enable us to arrive at a general conclu- 
 sion. We have seen that ever since that revival of learning 
 which preceded the Reformation, and dispelled the torpor 
 and ignorance in which Europe had been for centuries im- 
 mersed, the human mind has been pursuing on this subject a 
 uniform and an unvarying course. The degrees in which 
 different nations and churches have participated in the move- 
 ment have been very various, but there is no part of Europe 
 which has been uninfluenced by its progress. Reactionary 
 pai-ties have themselves reflected its character, and have at 
 last been swept away by the advancing stream. All the 
 
 far as we can observe, universal. But the common idea of the supernatural 
 is that which is at variance with natural law, above it or in violation of it. 
 . . . . Hence it would appear to follow that, to a man thoroughly pos- 
 sessed of the idea of natural law as universal, nothing ever could be admitted 
 as supernatural. , . . But then we must understand nature as including 
 every agency which we see entering, or can conceive from analogy capable of 
 entering, into the causation of the world. . . . The power of men in re- 
 spect of physical laws extends only, first, to their discovery and ascertainment, 
 and then to their use. ... A complete knowledge of all natural laws 
 would give, if not complete power, at least degrees of power immensely greater 
 than those which we now possess. . . . The relation in which God stands 
 to those rules of His government which are called laws is, of course, an in- 
 scrutable mystery ; but those who believe that His will does govern the world 
 must believe that, ordinarily at least, He does govern it by the choice and use 
 of means ; nor have we any certain reason to believe that He ever acts other- 
 wise. Signs and wonders may be wrought, for aught we know, by similar 
 instrumentality — by the selection and use of laws of which men knew nothing.' 
 That miracles were performed simply by the employment of unknown natural 
 laws was maintained long since by Malebranche, and also, I think, by Butler. 
 
 TOL. I. 13 
 
194 EATI0NALI3M IN EUROPE. 
 
 weight of tradition and of learning, all the energies of con- 
 ser^ atism of every kind, have been opposed to its progress, 
 and all have been opposed in vain. Generation after genera- 
 tion the province of the miraculous has contracted, and the 
 circle of scepticism has expanded. Of the two great divis- 
 ions of these events, one has completely perished. Witch- 
 craft and diabolical possession and diabolical disease have 
 long since passed into the region of fables. To disbelieve 
 them was at first the eccentricity of a few isolated thinkers ; 
 it was then the distinction of the educated classes in the 
 most advanced nations ; it is now the common sentiment of 
 all classes in all countries in Europe. The countless miracles 
 that were once associated with every holy relic and with 
 every village shrine have rapidly and silently disappeared. 
 Year by year the incredulity became more manifest even 
 where the theological profession was unchanged. Their 
 numbers continually lessened until they at last almost ceased; 
 and any attempt to revive them has been treated with a gen- 
 eral and undisguised contempt. The miracles of the Fathers 
 are passed over with an incredulous scorn, or with a signifi- 
 cant silence. The rationalistic spirit has even attempted to 
 explain away those which are recorded in Scripture, and it 
 has materially altei-ed their position in the systems of theol- 
 ogy. In all countries, in all churches, in all parties, among 
 men of every variety of character and opinion, we have 
 found the tendency existing. In each nation its develop- 
 ment has been a measure of intellectual activity, and has 
 passed in regular course through the different strata of 
 society. During the last century it has advanced with a 
 vastly accelerated rapidity; the old lines of demarcation 
 have been everywhere obscured, and the spirit of Rational- 
 ism has become the great centre to which the intellect of 
 
THE inEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 195 
 
 Europe is manifestly tending. If we trace the progress of 
 the moTement from its origin to the present day, we find 
 that it has completely altered the whole aspect and com- 
 plexion of religion. When, it began, Christianity was re- 
 garded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of 
 human reason : it was impious to question ; it was impious 
 to examine ; it was impious to discriminate. On the other 
 hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles 
 of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth 
 incessantly from all its parts. They excited no scepticism 
 and no surprise. The miraculous element pervaded all litera- 
 ture, explained all difRculties, consecrated all doctrines. 
 Every unusual phenomenon was immediately referred to a 
 supernatural agency, not because there was a passion for the 
 improbable, but because such an explanation seemed far more 
 simple and easy of belief than the obscure theories of science. 
 In the present day Christianity is regarded as a system 
 which courts the strictest investigation, and which, among 
 many other functions, was designed to vivify and stimulate 
 all the energies of man. The idea of the miraculous, which a 
 superficial observer might have once deemed its most prom- 
 inent characteristic, has been driven from almost all its en- 
 trenchments, and now quivers faintly and feebly through the 
 mists of eighteen hundred years.' 
 
 ' When men first grasped the truth that the tendency of the human mind 
 was from polytheism to monotheism, there were some who at once rushed on 
 to atheism, considering that to be a continuation of the same movement. The 
 disbelief in ghosts led many to materialism, and the discovery that man was 
 not the centre of all the contrivances of nature made not a few deny final 
 causes. Just so, Science having shown that the phenomena of nature do not 
 result (as everyone once supposed) from direct and isolated acts of interven- 
 tion, multitudes have passed by the impetus of the movement to the denial of 
 the possibility of miracles. To say that Omnipotence cannot reverse the laws 
 of His appointment is a contradiction in terms. To say that an Infinite mind 
 
196 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 Such has been the result of the general intellectual move- 
 ment we have been reviewing. To those who believe that 
 the highest measure of truth we possess is furnished by an 
 examination of the successive developments and tendencies 
 manifested by the collective wisdom of mankind, it will be 
 invaluabl3 as displaying one of the most unquestionably gen- 
 eral movements that history records. To those, on the other 
 hand, who separate themselves from the spirit of their age, 
 and look forward to the future as to a period of predicted 
 apostasy, it will furnish an example of one of the most subtle 
 and powerful distorting influences by which the human mind 
 is ensnared. Such persons will do well to observe that, with 
 the exception of supernatural disease and other physical phe- 
 nomena, none of these changes have been effected by the 
 action of direct arguments, but rather by a predisposition 
 arising out of the prevailing habits of thought. Scientific 
 explanations have, indeed, been given of some alleged mira- 
 
 never modifies tbose laws for special purposes, and in a manner that exceeds 
 both human c.ipacities and human comprehension, is to make an assertion that 
 is unproved and contrary to analogy. To say that the metaphysical conception 
 of Infinity precludes the notion of miracles is useless, because (as Mansel and 
 others have shown) the creation of the world is equally irreconcilable with 
 that conception, and because the e^dstence of evil throws all such reasoning 
 into hopeless confusion. To say, in fine, that there was no use in miracles ac- 
 companying a revelation in an early stage of society, is completely to ignore 
 the passion for the wonderful and the dim perception of the moral which are 
 the characteristics of such a society. All these propositions iow naturally, but 
 not legitimately, out of the reaction against the ' Government by Miracle,' in 
 which Europe once believed. The logical consequences of the movement are, 
 I think, twofold. 1. The difficulty of proving miracles satisfactorily is incal- 
 culably increased, because it is shown that, in a certain phase of civilisation, 
 ' the belief in miracles necessarily arises, and that many thousands, which are 
 now universally rejected, were then universally believed, supported by a vast 
 amount of evidence, and entirely unconnected with imposition. 2. The essen- 
 tially moral character which theology progressively acquires renders miraculous 
 evidence (except for a particular class of minds) useless. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHTJECH. 197 
 
 cles, but it is an historical fact that those explanations were 
 preceded and elicited by a deep-seated incredulity on the sub- 
 ject, an instinctive and unreasoning repugnance to the old 
 belief which had long been manifest in literature. They 
 will observe, too, that if this repugnance be due in a great 
 measure to the increasing sense of law which physical sci- 
 ences produce, it has been at least as closely connected with 
 the declining influence and realisation of dogmatic theology. 
 When theology occupies an exceedingly prominent place in 
 the affairs of life, and is the subject towards which the 
 thoughts of men are naturally and violently directed, the 
 mind will at last take a theological cast, and will judge all 
 secular matters by a theological standard. In a period, 
 therefore, when theology is almost coextensive with intellec- 
 tual exertion, when the whole scope and tendency of litera- 
 ture, policy, and art is to subserve theological interests, and 
 when the imaginations of men are habitually inflamed by the 
 subject of their continual meditations, it is not at all surpris- 
 ing that belief in existing miracles should be universal. Such 
 miracles are perfectly congenial with the mental tone and 
 atmosphere that is general. The imagination is constantly 
 directed towards miraculous events, and readily forces its 
 conceptions upon the reason. When, however, the terrestrial 
 has been aggrandised at the expense of the theological ; when, 
 in the progress of civilisation, art and literature and govern- 
 ment become in a great measure secularised ; when the mind 
 is withdrawn by ten thousand intellectual influences from 
 dogmatic considerations, and when the traces of these consid- 
 erations become confused and unrealised, a new habit of 
 thought is gradually acquired. A secular atmosphere is 
 formed about the mind. The measure of probability is 
 altere(L Men formerly expected in every event of life some- 
 
198 EATIONALISM IN EUKOPB. 
 
 tbing analogous to the theological notions on which they 
 were continually meditating; they now judge everything by 
 a secular standard. Formerly their natural impulse was to 
 explain all phenomena by miracle ; it is now to explain them 
 by science. This is simply the result of a general law of the 
 human mind, which is exemplified on countless occasions in 
 the intercourse of society. The soldier, the lawyer, and the 
 Bcholar will each obtain from his special pursuit a certain 
 cast and character of thought, which he will display on all 
 subjects, even those most remote fi-om his immediate province. 
 Just so, an age that is immersed in theology will judge 
 everything by a theological, that is to say a miraculous 
 standard; and an age that is essentially secular will judge 
 everything by a secular, that is to say a rationalistic 
 standard. It is therefore, I conceive, no chance coinci- 
 dence that the decline of the sense of the miraculous has 
 everywhere accompanied that movement of thought which 
 has banished dogmatic influence from so many depai'tments 
 of life, and so greatly restricted it in others. In the present 
 day this tendency has become so powerful that its influence 
 extends to every earnest thinker, even though he does not 
 as an individual participate in the indifierence to dogma 
 from which it sprang. Whoever succeeds in emancipating 
 himself from the special influences of education and associa- 
 tions by which his opinions are in the first instance deter- 
 mined, will find the general course and current of contempo- 
 rary literature the most powei-ful attraction to his mind. 
 There are, it is true, a few exceptions to this rule. There 
 ai-e some intellects of such a repellent character, that the sim- 
 ple fact that one class of opinions oi tendencies is dominant 
 in their neighbourhood will be sufiicieut to induce them to 
 adopt the opposite. These, however, are the excej)tions. 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 199 
 
 With most persons who really endeavour to form their 
 opinions by independent thought, contemporary literature 
 exercises an attracting and controlling influence which is 
 extr.emely powerful if it is not irresistible. Owing to cir- 
 cumstances which I shall not pause to examine, it flashes 
 upon them with a force and directness which is not possessed 
 by the literature of any earlier period. The general tone of 
 thought pei-vading it colours all their reasonings, influences 
 and, if they are unconscious of its action, determines all their 
 conclusions. In the present day this influence is essentially 
 rationalistic. ' - 
 
 There is one other subject of great importance which is 
 naturally suggested by the movement we have been consid- 
 ering. We have seen how profoundly it has altered the 
 character of Christian Churches. It has changed not only 
 the outward form and manifestations, but the habits of 
 thought, the religious atmosphere which was the medium 
 through which all events were contemplated, and by which 
 all reasonings were refracted. No one can doubt that if the 
 modes of thought now prevailing on these subjects, even in 
 Roman Catholic countries, could have been presented to the 
 mind of a Christian of the twelfth century, he would have 
 said that so complete an alteration would involve the abso- 
 lute destruction of Christianity. As a matter of fact, most 
 of these modifications were forced upon the reluctant Church 
 by the pressure from without, and were specially resisted 
 and denounced by the bulk of the clergy. They were repre- 
 sented as subversive of Christianity. The doctrine that re- 
 ligion could be destined to pass through successive phases of 
 development was pronounced to be emphatically unchristian. 
 Tlie ideal church was always in the past ; and immutability, 
 if not retrogression, was deemed the condition of life. We 
 
200 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 can now judge this resistance by the clear light of experience. 
 Dogmatic systems have, it is true, been materially weakened ; 
 they no longer exercise a controlling influence over the cur- 
 rent of affairs. Persecution, religious wars, absorbing con- 
 troversies, sacred art, and theological literature, which once 
 indicated a passionate interest in dogmatic questions, have 
 passed away or become comparatively uninfluential. Eccle- 
 siastical power throughout Europe has been everywhere 
 weakened, and weakened in each nation in proportion to its 
 intellectual progress. If we were to judge the present po- 
 sition of Christianity by the tests of ecclesiastical history, if 
 we were to measure it by the orthodox zeal of ihe great doc- 
 tors of the past, we might well look upon its prospects with 
 the deepest despondency and alarm. The spirit of the 
 Fathers has incontestably faded. The days of Athanasius 
 and Augustine have passed away never to return. The 
 whole course and tendency of thought is flowing in another 
 direction. The controversies of bygone centuries ring with 
 a strange hoUowness on the ear. But if, turning from eccle- 
 siastical historians, we apply the exclusively moral tests 
 which the New Testament so invariably and so emphatically 
 enforces, if we ask whether Christianity has ceased to pro- 
 duce the living fruits of love and charity and zeal for truth, 
 the conclusion we should arrive at would be very different. 
 If it be true Christianity to dive with a passionate charity in- 
 to the darkest recesses of misery and of vice, to irrigate every 
 quarter of the earth with the fertilising stream of an almost 
 boundless benevolence, and to include all the sections of hu- 
 manity in the circle of an intense and efficacious sympathy ; 
 if it be true Christianity to destroy or weaken the barriers 
 which had separated class from class and nation from nation, 
 to free war from its harshest elements, and to make a con- 
 
THE MIEACLES OF THE CHUECH. 201 
 
 sciousness of essential equality and of a genuino fraternity 
 dominate over all accidental differences ; if it be, above all, 
 true Christianity to cultivate a love of truth for its own sake, 
 a spirit of candour and of tolerance towards those with 
 whom we differ — if these be the marks of a true and healthy 
 Christianity, then never since the days of the Apostles has it 
 been so vigorous as at present, and the decline of dogmatic 
 systems and of clerical influence has b''en a measure if not i 
 cause of its advance. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 •ESTHETIC, 3CIENTIIT0, AND MORAL DEVELOPMENTS 
 OE RATIONALISM. 
 
 The preceding chapters will, I trust, have sufficiently 
 shown that during the last three centuries the sense of the 
 miraculous has been steadily declining in Europe, that the 
 movement has been so universal that no church or class of 
 miracles has altogether escaped its influence, and that its 
 causes are to be sought much less in bpecial arguments bear- 
 ing directly upon the question than in the general intellec- 
 tual condition of society. In this, as in all other great his- 
 torical developments, we have two classes of influences to 
 consider. There are certain tendencies or predispositions 
 resulting from causes that are deeply imbedded in the civili- 
 sation of the age which create the movement, direct the 
 stream of opinions with irresistible force in a given direction, 
 and, if we consider only great bodies of men and long pe- 
 riods of time, exercise an almost absolute authority. There 
 is also the action of special circumstances and individual 
 genius upon this general progress, retarding or accelerating 
 its advance, giving it in different countries and in difierent 
 spheres of society a peculiar character, and for a time asso- 
 ciating it with movements with which it has no natural con- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 203 
 
 nection. I have endeavoured to show, that while numerous 
 circumstances growing out of the complications of society 
 have more or less influenced the history of the decline of the 
 miraculous, there are two causes which dominate over all 
 others, and are themselves very clostly connected. One of 
 these is the increasing sense of law, produced by physical 
 sciences, which predisposes men more and more to attribute 
 all the phenomena that meet them in actual life or in history 
 to normal rather than to abnormal agencies ; the other is the 
 diminution of the influence of theology, partly from causes 
 that lie within itself, and partly from the great increase of 
 other subjects, which inclines men to judge all matters by a 
 secular rather than by a theological standard. 
 
 But, as we have already in some degree perceived, and as 
 we shall hereafter see more clearly, this history of the mi- 
 raculous is but a single part or aspect of a much wider 
 movement, which in its modern phases is usually designated 
 by the name of Rationalism. The process of thought, that 
 makes men recoil from the miraculous, makes them modify 
 their views on many other questions. The expectation of 
 miracles grows out of a certain conception of the habitual 
 government of the world, of the nature of the Supreme 
 Being, and of the manifestations of His power, which are all 
 more or less changed by advancing civilisation. Sometimes 
 this change is displayed by an open rejection of old beliefs. 
 Sometimes it appears only in a change of interpretation or 
 of realisation ; that is to say, men gradually annex new ideas 
 to old words, or they permit old opinions to become virtually 
 obsolete. Each different phase of civilisation has its pecu- 
 liar and congenial views of the system and government of 
 the universe, to which the men of that time will gravitate ; 
 and although a revelation or a great effort of human genius 
 
204 RATIONALISM m EUEOPK. 
 
 may for a time emancipate some of them from the conditions 
 of the age, the pressure of surrounding influences will soon 
 reassert its sway, and the truths that are unsuited to the 
 time will remain inoperative till their appropriate civilisation 
 has dawned. 
 
 I shall endeavour in the present chapter to trace the dif- 
 ferent phases of this development — to show how the concep- 
 tions both of the nature of the Deity and of the govern- 
 ment of the universe are steadily modified before advancing 
 knowledge, and to analyse the causes upon which those 
 modifications depend. 
 
 It has been said, by a very high authority, that fet- 
 ishism is the religion which men who are altogether uncivil- 
 ised would naturally embrace ; and, certainly, there can be 
 no question that the general characteristic of the earlier 
 stages of religious belief is to concentrate reverence upon 
 matter, and to attribute to it an intrinsic efiicacy. This fet- 
 ishism, which in its rudest form consists of the worship of a 
 certain portion of matter as matter, is shown also, though in 
 a modified and less revolting manner, in the supposition that 
 certain sacred talismans or signs possess an inherent efiicacy 
 altogether irrespective of the dispositions of men. Of this 
 nature was the system of pagan magic, which attributed a 
 supernatural power to particular herbs, or ceremonies, or 
 words, and also the many rival but corresponding supersti- 
 tions that were speedily introduced into Christianity. The 
 sign of the cross was perhaps the earliest of these. It was 
 adopted not simply as a foi-m of recognition or as a holy 
 recollection, or even as a mark of reverence, but as a weapon 
 of miraculous power ; and the writings of the Fathers are 
 crowded with the prodigies it performed, and also with the 
 many types and images that adumbrated its glory. Thus 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 205 
 
 we are reminded by a writer in tlie beginning of the second 
 century, that the sea could not be traversed without a mast, 
 which is in the form of a cross. The earth becomes fertile 
 only when it has been dug by a spade, which is a cross. The 
 body of man is itself in the same holy form. So also is his 
 face, for the eyes and nose together form a cross ; a fact to 
 which Jeremiah probably alluded when he said, ' The breath 
 of our nostrils is the anointed of the Lord.' ' 
 
 Speculations no less strange and far-fetched were directed 
 to the baptismal water. The efficacy of infant baptism, 
 which had been introduced, if not in the Apostolic age, at 
 least immediately after, was regarded as quite independent 
 of any moral virtues either in the recipient or those about 
 him ; and in the opinion of some a spiritual change was ef- 
 fected by the water itself, without any immediate cooperation 
 of the Deity, by a power that had been conferred upon the 
 element at the period of the creation.'' The incomparable 
 grandeur of its position in the universe was a theme of the 
 most rapturous eloquence. When the earth was still buried 
 in the night of chaos, before the lights of heaven had been 
 
 ' Justyn Martyr, Apnl. i. Augustine thought the wooden ark floating on 
 the Deluge a type of the cross consecrating the baptismal waters ; and Bede 
 found a similar type in the rod of Moses stretched over the Red Sea. Another 
 wise commentator suggested that Isaac had been saved from death, because, 
 when ascending the mountain, he bore the ' wood of sacrifice ' on his shoulder. 
 The cross, however, seldom or never appears in art before the vision of Con- 
 stantine. At first it was frequently represented richly ornamented with gems 
 or flowers. As St. Fortunatus writes ; — 
 
 ' Arbor decora et fulgida 
 
 Ornata regis purpura, 
 
 Electa digno stipite 
 
 Tam sancta membra tangere.' 
 The letter Tau, as representing the cross, was specially reverenced as opposed 
 to Theta, the unlucky letter — the initial of 66vaToi. 
 
 ' See the curious irguraent in TertuUian, De Bapt. c. 5, 6, 1, 8. 
 
206 RATION A1I8M IIT EUEOPE. 
 
 called into being, or any living creature had tenanted the 
 eternal solitude, water existed in all the plenitude of its per- 
 ftN'tion, veiling the unshapen earth, and glorified and sancti- 
 iied for ever as the chosen throne of the Deity. By water 
 God separated the heavens from the earth. Water became 
 instinct with life when the earth was still barren and unin- 
 habited. In the creation of man it might appear at first 
 sight as if its position was ignored, but even here a more 
 matured reflection dispelled the diificulty. For in order that 
 the Almighty should mould the earth into the human form, 
 it was obviously necessary that it should have retained some- 
 thing of its former moistui-e ; in other words, that it should 
 have been mixed with water.' 
 
 Such was the direction in which the human mind drifted, 
 with an ever-increasing rapidity, as the ignorance and intel- 
 lectual torpor became more general. The same habit of 
 thought was soon displayed in every department of theology, 
 and countless charms and amulets came- into use, the simple 
 
 ' ' Non emm ipsius quoque hominis figurandi opus sociantibus aquis abso- 
 lutum est ; de terra materia convenit, non tamen babilis nisi humeeta et succida, 
 quam scilicet ante quartum diem segregate aquse in stationem suam superstite 
 bumore, limo temperant.' (Tertullian, De Baptismo, c. iii.) From tbis notion 
 of the sanctity of water grew the custom of swimming witches — for it was 
 believed that everything tainted with diabolical presence was repelled by it and 
 unable to sink into its depths (Binsfeldius, De Confess. Mai. p. 316) — and also 
 probably the many legends of transformed men restored to their natural con- 
 dition by crossing a stream. Among the ancient philosophers, Thales had 
 esteemed water the origin of all things, which more than one Father regarded 
 as a kind of inspiration. Thus Minucius Felix ; ' Milesius Thales rerum initium 
 aquam dixit : Deum autem earn mentem quae ex aqua cuncta formaverit. 
 Vides philosophi principalis nobiscum penitus opinionem consonare.' ( Oda- 
 vius, c. xix.) The belief in the expiatory power of water was forcibly rebuked 
 by Ovid : — 
 
 ' Ah ! nimi^ faciles, qui tristia crimlna caedis 
 Flumine^ tolli posse putatis aqu4 ! ' 
 (Fast. Hb. u ) 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 207 
 
 possession of wliicu "was supposed to guarantee the owner 
 against all evils, both spiritual and temporal. Indeed, it 
 may be questioned wliether this form of fetishism was ever 
 more prominent in paganism than in mediaeval Christianity. 
 
 When men pass from a state of pure fetishism, the next 
 conception they form of the Divine nature is anthropomor- 
 phism, which is in some respects very closely connected with 
 ine preceding, and which, like it, is diffused in a more or less 
 modified form over the belief of almost all uncivilised na- 
 tions. Those who have ceased to attribute power and virtue 
 to inert matter, regard the universe as the sphere of the 
 operations of spiritual beings of a nature strictly analogous 
 to their own. They consider every unusual phenomenon the 
 direct and isolated act of an unseen agent, pointed to some 
 isolated object and resulting from some passing emotion. The 
 thunder, the famine, or the pestilence is the result of an 
 ebullition of spiritual anger ; . great and rapid prosperity is 
 the sign of spiritual satisfaction. But at the same time the 
 feebleness of imagination which in this stage makes men un- 
 able to picture the Deity other than as an unseen man, makes 
 \l also impossible for them to concentrate their thoughts and 
 emotions upon that conception without a visible representa- 
 tion. For while it is a matter of controversy whether or 
 not the innate faculties of the civilised man transcend those 
 of the savage, it is at least certain that the intellectual at- 
 mosphere of each period tells so soon and so pov^erfully upon 
 all men, that long before matured age the two classes are al- 
 most as different in their capacities as in their acquirements. 
 The civilised man not only knows more than the savage, he 
 possesses an intellectual strength, a power of stistained and 
 patient thought, of concentrating his mind steadily upon the 
 unseen, of disengaging his conceptions from the images of 
 
208 KATIONAIISM JS EUEOPE. 
 
 tlie senses, which the other is unable even to imagine. Pre- 
 sent to the savage the conception of an unseen Being, to be 
 adored without the assistance of any representation, and he 
 will be unable to grasp it. It will have no force or palpable 
 reality to his mind, and can therefore exercise no influence 
 over his life. Idolatry is the common religion of the savage, 
 simply because it is the only one of which his intellectual 
 condition will admit, and, in one form or another, it must 
 continue until that condition has been changed. ' 
 
 Idolatry may be of two kinds. It is sometimes a sign 
 of progress. When men are beginning to emerge from the 
 pure fetishism which is probably their first stage, they carve 
 iriatter into the form of an intelligent being ; and it is only 
 when it is endowed with that form, that they attribute to it 
 a divine character. They are still worshipping matter, but 
 their fetishism is fading into anthropomorphism. Sometimes, 
 again, men who have once risen to a conception of a pure 
 and spiritual Being, sink, in consequence of some convulsion 
 of society, into a lower level of civilisation. They will then 
 endeavour to assist their imaginations by representations of 
 the object of their worship, and they will very soon attrib- 
 ute to those representations an intrinsic efficacy. 
 
 It will appear from the foregoing principles that, in the 
 early anthropomorphic stages of society, visible images form 
 the channels of religious devotions ; and, therefore, as long as 
 those stages continue, the true history of theology, or at least 
 of the emotional and realising parts of theology, is to be 
 found in the history of art. Even outside the pale of Chris- 
 tianity, there is scarcely any instance in which the national 
 religion has not exercised a great and dominating influence 
 over the national art. Thus, for example, the two ancient 
 nations in which the testhetic development failed most re- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RiTIONALISM. 209 
 
 markably to keep pace witli the general civilisation were the 
 Persians and the Egyptians. The fire that was worshipped 
 by the first formed a fetish, at once so simple and so sub- 
 lime, that it rendered useless the productions of the chisel ; 
 while the artistic genius of Egypt was paralysed by a relig- 
 ion which branded all innovation as a crime, made the pro- 
 fession of an artist compulsory and hereditary, rendered the 
 knowledge of anatomy impossible by its prohibition of dis- 
 section, and taught men by its elaborate symbolism to look 
 at every natural object, not for its own sake, but as the repre- 
 sentative of something else. Thus, again, among the nations 
 that were especially distinguished for their keen sense of the 
 beautiful, India and Greece are preeminent ; but there is this 
 important difference between them. The Indian religion ever 
 soared to the terrible, the unnatural, and the prodigious ; and 
 consequently Indian art was so completely turned away from 
 nature, that all faculty of accurately copying it seems to 
 have vanished, and the simplest subject was interwoven with 
 grotesque and fanciful inventions. The Greek religion, on 
 the other hand, was an almost pure naturalism, and therefore 
 Greek art was simply nature idealised, and as such has be- 
 come the universal model.' 
 
 But it is with Christian art that we are now especially 
 concerned, and it is also Christian art which most faithfully 
 reflects the different stages of religious development, ena^ 
 
 ' See Winckelmann, Hist, of Art ; Raoul-Roohette, Oours d' Archeologie ; 
 and the lectures of Barry and Fuseli. This particular characteristic of Indian 
 art has been forcibly noticed by Mr. Ruskin in one of his Edinburgh lectures. 
 Leasing ascribes the imperfections of Persian art to its almost exclusive employ- 
 ment for military subjects ; but this was itself a consequence of the small en- 
 couragement religion gave to art. On the great difference of the ideal of 
 beamy in different nations, which has also exercised a great influence on the 
 development of art, see some curious evidence collected by Ch. Comte, Traiti 
 de legislation, liv. iii. ch. 4. 
 TOL. I. — 14 
 
210 BATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 bling us to trace, not merely successive phases of belief, but, 
 what is much more important for my present purpose, succes- 
 sive phases of religious realisation. 
 
 The constant fall of the early Jews into idolatry, in spite 
 of the most repeated commands and the most awful punish- 
 ments, while it shows clearly how irresistible is this tendency 
 in an early stage of society, famished a warning which was 
 at first not altogether lost upon the Christian Church. It is 
 indeed true that art had so long been associated with pagan- 
 ism — its subjects, its symbolism, and its very tone of beauty, 
 were so derived from the old mythology — that the Christian 
 artists, who had probably in many cases been formerly pa- 
 gan artists, introduced a considerable number of the ancient 
 conceptions into their new sphere. But, although this fact 
 is perfectly incontestable, and although the readiness with 
 which pagan imagery was admitted into the symbolism of 
 the Church forms an extremely curious and instructive con- 
 trast to the tone which most of the Fathers adopted towards 
 the pagan deities, nearly all these instances of appropriation 
 were singularly judicious, and the general desire to avoid 
 anything that might lead to idolatrous worship was very 
 manifest. 
 
 The most important and the most beneficial effect of pa- 
 gan traditions upon Christian art was displayed in its gene- 
 ral character. It had always been a strict rule among the 
 Greeks and Romans to exclude from sepulchral decorations 
 every image of sadness. The funerals of the ancients were, 
 indeed, accompanied by great displays of exaggerated and 
 ai-tificial lamentation ; but once the ashes were laid in the 
 tomb, it was the business of the artist to employ all his skill 
 in depriving death of its terror. Wreaths of flowers, Bac- 
 »hic dances, hunts, or battles, all the ex iberance of the most 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 211 
 
 buoyant life, all the images of passion or of revelry, were sculp- 
 tured around the lomh ; while the genii of the seasons 
 indicated the inevitable march of time, and the masks that 
 adorned the corners showed that life was but a player's part, 
 to be borne for a few years with honour, and cast aside with- 
 out regret. 
 
 The influence of this tradition was shown in a very re- 
 markable way in Christianity. At fii"st all Christian art was 
 sepulchral art. The places that were decorated were the 
 Catacombs ; the chapels were all surrounded by the dead ; 
 the altar upon which the sacred mysteries were celebrated 
 was the tomb of a martyr.' According to medisBval or even 
 to modern ideas, we should have imagined that an art grow- 
 ing up under such circumstances would have assumed a sin- 
 gularly sombre and severe tone, and this expectation would 
 be greatly heightened if we remembered the violence of the 
 persecution. The very altar-tomb around which the Chris- 
 tian painter scattered his ornaments with most profusion was 
 often associated with the memory of sufferings of the 
 most horrible and varied character, and at the same time 
 with displays of heroic constancy that might well have in- 
 vited the talents of the artist. Passions, too, were roused to 
 the highest point, and it would seem but natural that the 
 great and terrible scenes of Christian vengeance should be 
 depicted. Yet nothing of this kind appears in the Cata- 
 combs. With two doubtful exceptions, one at least being 
 of the very latest period of art, there are no representations 
 
 ' This is the origin of the custom in the Catholic Church of placing relics 
 of the martyrs beneath the altars of the churches. It was also connected with 
 the passage in the Kevelations about the souls that were beneath the altar of 
 God. In most early churches there was a subterranean chapel below the high 
 fJlar, as a memorial of the Catacombs. A decree of the Second Council of 
 Nice (a.d. 181) forbade the consecration of any church without relics. 
 
213 EATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 of martyrdoms.' Daniel unharmed amid the lions, the wazj- 
 complished sacrifice of Isaac, the three children unscatbad 
 amid the flames, or St. Peter led to prison, are the only im- 
 ages that reveal the horrible persecution that was raging. 
 There was no disposition to perpetuate forms of suffering, no 
 ebullition of bitterness or complaint, no thirsting for ven- 
 geance. Neither the Crucifixion, nor any of the scenes of 
 the Passion, were ever represented ; nor was the day of judg- 
 ment, nor were the sufierlngs of the lost. The wreaths of 
 flowers in which paganism delighted, and even some of the 
 most joyous images of the pagan mythology, were still re- 
 tained, and were mingled with all the most beautiful em- 
 blems of Christian hopes, and with representations of many 
 of the miracles of mercy. 
 
 This systematic exclusion of all images of sorrow, sufier- 
 ing, and vengeance, at a time that seemed .beyond all others 
 most calculated to produce them, reveals the early Church 
 in an aspect that is singularly touching, and it may, I think, 
 be added, singularly sublime. The fact is also one of ex- 
 ti-eme importance in ecclesiastical history. For, as we shall 
 hereafter have occasion to see, there existed among some of 
 the theologians of the early Church a tendency that was 
 diametrically opposite to this; a tendency to dilate upon 
 such subjects as the torments of hell, the vengeance of the 
 day of judgment, and, in a word, all the sterner portions of 
 Christianity, which at last became dominant in the Church, 
 
 ' M. Raoul-Rochette thinks that there is but one direct and positive repre- 
 sentation of a martyrdom — that of the Virgin Salome, and this is of a very late 
 period of decadence {Tableau des Oatacombes, p. 18Y). The same writpr has 
 collected (pp. 191, 192) a few instances from the Fathers in vrhich representa- 
 tions of martyrdoms in the early basilicas are mentioned ; but they are very 
 fevi , and there can be no doubt whatever of the broad contrast early Christian 
 an in this respect bears to that of the tenth and following centuries. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 213 
 
 and which exercised an extremely injurious influence over 
 the affections of men. But whatever might have been the 
 case with educated theologians, it was quite impossible for 
 this tendency to be very general as long as art, which was 
 then the expression of popular realisations, took a different 
 direction. The change in art was not fully shown till lat9^in 
 the tenth century. I have already had occasion to notice 
 the popularity which i-epresentations of the Passion and of 
 the day of judgment then for the first time assumed; and it 
 may be added that, from this period, one of the main objects 
 of the artists was the invention of new and horrible tortures, 
 which were presented to the constant contemplation of the 
 faithful in countless pictures of the sufferings of the martyrs 
 on earth, or of the lost in hell.' 
 
 The next point which especially strikes us in the art of 
 the Catacombs is the great love of symbolism it evinced. 
 There are, it is true, a few isolated pictures of Christ and of 
 the Virgin, most of them of a late period ; but by far the 
 greater number of representations were obviously symbolical, 
 and were designed exclusively as a means of instruction. 
 Of these symbols many were taken without hesitation from 
 paganism. Thus, one of the most common is the peacock, 
 which in the Church, as among the heathen, was selected as 
 the emblem of immortality. Partly, perhaps, on account of 
 its surpassing beauty, and partly from__aj3elief that its flesh 
 never decayed,' it had been adopted by the ancients as the 
 nearest realisation of the conception of the phoenix, and at the 
 fimeral of an empress the bird was sometimes let loose from 
 
 ' See Raoul-Rochette, Tableau des Catacombes, pp. 192-195; Didron, 
 jconoffraphie ChrUienne. 
 
 ' Which St. Augustine said he had ascertained by experiment to be a fact, 
 and which he seemed to regard as a miracle. (-De Oiv. Dei, lib. xxjp., c. 4.) 
 
214 KATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 among the ashes of the deceased.' Orpheus drawing all 
 men to him by his music, symbolised the attractive power of 
 Christianity." The masks of paganism, and especially the 
 masks of the sun and moon, which the pagans adopted as 
 emblems of the lapse of life, continued to adorn the Christian 
 sarcophagi, the last being probably regarded as emblems ef 
 the resurrection. The same thing may be said of the genii 
 of the seasons.' Nor was this by any means the only form 
 under which the genii were represented. The ancients re- 
 garded them as presiding over every department of nature, 
 
 ' See Ciampird, Vetera Monumenta, pari? i. p. 116; and Maitland, On the 
 Catacombs. Kaoul-Roohette, however, seems to regard the peacock rather as 
 the symbol, first of all of the apotheosis of an empress, and then generally of 
 apotheosis, the peacock having been the bird of Juno, the empress of heaven. 
 
 ' Orpheus is spoken of by Eusebius as in this respect symbolising Christ. 
 The reverence that attached to him probably resulted In a great measure from 
 the fact that among the many apocryphal prophecies of Christ that circulated 
 in the Church, some of the most conspicuous were ascribed to Orpheus. See 
 on this symbol, Maitland, On the Catacombs, p. 1 10 ; Raoul-Rochette, Tab. dea 
 Oat. p. 138 ; and, for a full examination of the subject, the great work of 
 Boldetti, Osservazioni sopra i Cimiteri de' 8anH Martyri (Romse, 1720), torn, 
 i. pp. 27-29. M. Rio {Art Chretien, introd. p. 36), I think rather fancifully, 
 connects it with the descent of Orpheus to bell to save a soul. As other ex- 
 amples of the introduction of pagan gods into Christian art, I may mention 
 that there Is an obscure picture in the catacomb of St. Calixtus, which R. 
 Rochette supposes to represent Mercury leading the souls of the dead to judg- 
 ment {Tab. des Cat. pp. 148-151); and also that Hercules, though never, I 
 believe, represented in the Catacombs, appears more than once in the old 
 churches, St. Augustine having identified him with Samson. (See on this rep- 
 resentation, and generally on the connection between pagan and Christian art, 
 that very curious and learned work, Marangoni, Delle Cose Gentilesche e Pro- 
 fane Transportate ad uso delle Ohiese (Romse, 1744), pp. 50, 51.) The sphinx 
 also was believed by some of the early Christians (e. g. Clement of Alexandria) 
 to be in some degree connected with their faith ; for they supposed it to be 
 copied from the Jewish image of the Cherubim, but they never reproduced it 
 Some later antiquarians have attributed this curious combination of the Virgin 
 and the Lion to the advantages Egypt derives from these signs, through which 
 the sun passes at the period of the inundation of the Nile (Caylus, SenieS 
 d'Antiguites, t. i. p. 45). 
 
 ^ Marangoni, Delle Cose Gentilesche, p. 45. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 215 
 
 and many thought that a separate genius watched over the 
 destiny of each man. This conception very ^naturally coa- 
 lesced with that of guardian angels,' and the pagan repre- 
 sentation of the genii as young winged boys, naked, and 
 with gentle and joyous countenances, became very common 
 in early Christian art, and passed from it into the art of 
 later days. Even now, from the summit of the baldacchino 
 of St. Peter's, the genii of paganism look down on the 
 proudest ceremonies of Catholicism. Once or twice on the 
 Christian sarcophagi Christ is represented in triumph with 
 the sky, or perhaps more correctly 'the waters above the 
 firmament,' beneath his feet, in the form of a man extending 
 a veil above his head, the habitual pagan representation of 
 an aquatic deity." 
 
 In addition to these symbols, which were manifestly taken 
 from paganism, there were others mainly or exclusively pro- 
 duced by the Church itself. Thus, the fish was the usual em- 
 blem of Christ, chosen because the Greek word forms the 
 initials of His name and titles,^ and also because Christians 
 are born by baptism in water.' Sometimes, but much more 
 rarely, the stag is employed for the same purpose, because it 
 bears the cross on its forehead, and from an old notion that it 
 was the irreconcilable enemy of serpents, which it was sup- 
 posed to hunt out and destroy." Several subjects from the 
 
 ' All this is folly discussed in Marangoni. 
 
 " Ibid. p. 45 ; Raoul-Roohette, Tab. des Cat. 
 
 ' 'Xxdvg. 'J.j]aovg XpioTdg Qeov vlbg ^arrip. The initial letters of the 
 prophetic yerses of the Sibyl of Erythra (St. Aug. De Oiv. Dei, lib. xviii. cap. 
 23). The dolphin was especially selected beca'ise of its tenderness to ita 
 young 
 
 * ' Nos pisciouU secundum 'Xx^^iv nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nasci- 
 mur.' (Tertullian, De Baptismo, c. i.) 
 
 ° Maury, Legendes Pieuses, pp. 178-1Y8. This notion was, I imagine, 
 pagan. There is a bas-relief in the Vatican which seems to represent a stag 
 
216 EATIONALISM IN E0EOPE. 
 
 Bible of a symbolical character were constantly repeated. 
 Such were Noah in the attitude of prayer receiving the dove 
 into his breast, Jonah rescued from the fish's mouth, Moses 
 striking the rock, St. Peter with the wand of power, the three 
 children, Daniel in the lions' den, the Good Shepherd, the 
 dove of peace, the anchor of hope, the crown of martyrdom, 
 the palm of victory, the ship struggling through the waves 
 to a distant haven, the horse bounding onwards to the goal. 
 All of these were manifestly symbolical, and were in no de 
 gree the objects of reverence or worship. 
 
 When, however, the first purity of the Christian Church 
 was dimmed, and when the decomposition of the Roman 
 empire and the invasion of the barbarians overcast the civil- 
 isation of Europe, the character of art was speedily changed, 
 and though many of the symbolical representations still con 
 tinued, there was manifested by the artists a constantly in- 
 creasing tendency to represent directly the object of theii 
 worship, and by the people to attach a peculiar sanctity to 
 the image. 
 
 Of all the forms of anthropomorphism that are displayed 
 in Catholic art, there is probably none which a Protestant 
 deems so repulsive as the portraits of the First Person of the 
 Trinity, that are now so common. It is, however, a very re- 
 markable fact, which has been established chiefly by the re- 
 searches of some French archseologists in the present cen- 
 
 in the act of attacking a serpent. The passage in the Psahns, about the liart 
 panting for the waters,' was mixed up with this symbol. In the middle ages, 
 stags were invested with a kind of prophetic power. See also CSampini, De 
 Sacris .^Edificiis (Romse), p. 44; and the very curious chapter in Arringhi, 
 Roma Svbterranea, tom. ii. pp. 602-606. The stag was supposed to dread the 
 thunder so much, that through terror it often brought forth its young premar 
 turely ; and this was associated with the passage, ' The voice of thy thunder 
 has made me afraid.' 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 217 
 
 tury, that these portraits are all comparatively modern, and 
 that the period in which the superstition of Europe was 
 most profound, was precisely that in which they had no ex 
 istence.' In an age when the religious realisations of Chris- 
 tendom were habitually expressed by Adsible representa 
 tions — ^^'hen the nature of a spirit was so inadequately 
 cnnceived that artists never for a moment shrank from repre- 
 senting purely spiritual beings — and when that iustinctive 
 reverence which makes men recoil from certain objects as too 
 solemn and sublime to be treated, was almost absolutely un- 
 known — we do not find the smallest tendency to represent 
 God the Father. Scenes indeed in which He acted were fre- 
 quently depicted, but the First Person of the Trinity was 
 invariably superseded by the Second. Christ, in the dress 
 and with the features appropriated to Him in the representa- 
 tions of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the 
 monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, 
 condemning Adam and Eve to labour, speaking with Noah, 
 arresting the arm of Abraham, or giving the law to Moses.' 
 With the exception of a hand sometimes extended from- the 
 cloud, and occasionally encircled with a nimbus, we find in 
 this period no traces in art of the Creator. At first we can 
 easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the 
 Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Ju- 
 piter, would have discoui-aged artists from attempting such a 
 subject ; and Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influ- 
 
 ' This subject has been briefly noticed by Kaoul-Rochette in his Disconra 
 tur I' Art du Ohristianisme (1834), p. Y; and by Maury, Ligendes Pieuses ; 
 but the full examination of it was reserved for M. Didron, in his great work, 
 JcorwgrapMe Chretienne, Hist, de Dieu (Paris, 1843), one of the most im- 
 portant contributions ever made to Christian archaeology. See, too, Emerio 
 David, Hist, de la Feinturi au Moyen Age, pp. 19-21. 
 
 = Didron, pp. 17'7-182. 
 
218 EATTONALISM IN ETIROPE. 
 
 ence over Christian art, and which emphatically denied the 
 divinity of the God of the Old Testament, tended in the 
 same direction ; but it is very unlikely that these reasons 
 can have had any weight between the sixth and twelfth cen- 
 turies. For the more those centuries are studied, the more 
 evident it becomes that the universal and irresistible ten- 
 dency was then to materialise every spiritual conception, to 
 form a palpable image of everything that was reverenced, to 
 reduce all subjects within the domain of the senses. This 
 tendency, unchecked by any sense of grotesqueness or irrev- 
 erence, was shown with equal force in sculpture, painting, 
 and legends ; and all the old landmarks and distinctions that 
 bad been made between the orthodox uses of pictures and 
 idolatry had been virtually swept away by the resistless de- 
 sire to form an image of everything that was worshipped, 
 and to attach to that image something of the sanctity of its 
 object. Yet amid all this no one thought of representing the 
 Supreme Being. In that condition of society men desired a 
 human god, and they consequently concentrated their atten- 
 tion exclusively upon the Second Person of the Trinity or 
 upon the saints, and suffered the great conception of the 
 Father to become practically obsolete. It continued of 
 course in creeds and in theological treatises, but it was a 
 void and sterile abstraction, which had no place among the 
 realisations and no influence on the emotions of mankind. If 
 men turned awaj' from the Second Person of the Trinity, it 
 was only to bestow their devotions upon saints or martyrs. 
 With the exception, I believe, of a single manuscript of the 
 ninth century,' there was no portrait of the Father till the 
 twelfth century; and it was only in the fourteenth century, 
 when the revival of learning had become marked, that these 
 
 ' Eaoul-Rochette, Siscours sur les Types de I' Art ChrStien^ p. 71. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 219 
 
 portraits became common.' From that time to the age of 
 Raphael the steady tendency of art is to give an ever-in- 
 creasing preeminence to the Father. At first His position 
 in painting and sculpture had heen a subordinate one, and 
 He was only represented in the least attractive occupations," 
 and commonly, through a desire to represent the coeternity 
 of the Persons of the Trinity, of the same age as His Son. 
 Gradually, however, after the fourteenth century, we find 
 the Father represented in every painting as older, more ^■en- 
 erable, and more prominent, until at last He became the cen- 
 tral and commanding figure,' exciting the highest degree of 
 reverence, and commonly represented in diiferent countries 
 according to their ideal of greatness. In Italy, Spain, and" 
 the ultramontane monasteries of France, He was usually 
 represented as a Pope ; in Germany as an Emperor ; in Eng- 
 land and, for the most part, in France as a King. 
 
 In a condition of thought in which the Deity was only 
 realised in the form of man, it was extremely natural that the 
 number of divinities should be multiplied. The chasm be- 
 tween the two natures was entirely unfelt, and something of 
 
 ' Didron, pp. 227-230. 
 
 " See this fact worked out in detail in Didron. 
 
 ' ' On peut done relativement k Dieu le Pfere partager le moyen kge en 
 deux p^riodes. Dana la premifere, qui est anterieure au XIV" sifecle, la figure 
 du Pere se coufond aveo celle du Fils ; c'est le I'ils qui est tout-puissant et qui 
 fait son Pfere k son image et ressemblance. Dans la ssconde periode, aprSs le 
 XIII" siecle, jusqu'au XVI", Jesus-Christ perd sa force d'assimilation icono- 
 graphique er se laisse vaincre par son Pfere. C'est au tour du Fils k se rev^tir 
 dea traits du Pfere, A vieiUir et rider comme lui. . . . Enfin, depuis les 
 premiers sifecles du Christianisme jusqu'^ nos jours nous voyons le P6re croitre 
 en importance. Son portrait, d'abord interdit par les Gnostiques, se montre 
 timidement ensuite et comme deguis^ sous la figure de son Fils. Puis il rejette 
 tout accoutrement stranger et prend une figure speciale ; puis par Raphael et 
 enfin par 1' Anglais Martin, il gagne une grare et une admirable physionomie 
 qui n'appartient qu'^ lui.' (Didron, p. 226.) 
 
220 BATIONALISM IN ECEOPE. 
 
 the Divine character was naturally reflected upon those who 
 were most eminent in the Church. The most remarkable 
 instance of this polytheistic it-ndency was displayed in the 
 deification of the Virgin. 
 
 A conception of a divine person or manifestation of the 
 female sex had been one of the notions of the old Jewish 
 Cabalists ; and in the first century Simon Magus had led 
 about with him a woman named Helena, who, according to 
 the Catholics, was simply his misti-ess, but whom he pro- 
 claimed to be the incarnation of the Divine Thought.' This 
 notion, under a great many different forms, was diffused 
 through almost all the sects of the Gnostics. The Supreme 
 Beirg, whom they very jealously distinguished from and 
 usually opposed to the God of the Jews,'' they termed 'The 
 Unknown Father,' and they regarded Him as directly inac- 
 cessible to human knowledge, but as revealed in part by cer- 
 
 ' See on this subject Franck, Surla Kabhale; Maury, Groyances et Legendes 
 d'Antiquite (1863), p. 338 ; and especially Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme 
 (1734). torn. i. pp. 33-3'7. Justyn Martyr, Tertullian, Irenseus, Epiphanius, 
 and several other Fathers, notice the worship of Helena. According to them, 
 Simon proclaimed that the angels in heaven made war on account of her 
 beauty, and that the Evil One had made her prisoner to prevent her return to 
 heaven, from which she had strayed. There is some reason to think that all 
 this was an allegory of the soul. 
 
 '' Most of the Gnostics regarded the God of the Jews or the Demiurge as 
 an imperfect spirit presiding over an imperfect moral system. Many, how- 
 ever, regarded the Jewish religion as the work of the principle of Evil — the 
 god of matter ; and the Cainites made everyone who had opposed it the object 
 of reverence, while the Ophites actually worshipped the serpent. We have, 
 perhaps, a partial explanation of the reverence many of the Gnostics had for 
 the serpent in the fact that this animal, which in Christianity represents the 
 principle of Evil, had a very different position in ancient symbolism. It was 
 the general emblem of healing (because it changes its skin), and as such ap- 
 pears in the statues of iEseulapius and Isis, and it was also constantly adopted 
 as a representative animal. Thus in the Mithraic groups, that are so common 
 in later Roman sculpture, the serpent and the dog represent all living creatures 
 A serpent vvith a hawk's head was an old Egyptian symbol of a good genius. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 221 
 
 tain -lEons or emanations, of whom the two principal wero 
 Christ, and a female spirit termed the Divine Sophia or En- 
 noia, and sometimes known by the strange name of ' Prou- 
 nice.' ' According to some sects this Sophia was simply the 
 human soul, which was originally an emanation or child of 
 the Deity, but which had wandered from its parent-source, 
 had become enamoured of and at last imprisoned by matter, 
 and was now struggling, by the assistance of the unfallen 
 ^on Christ, towards its pristine purity. More commonly, 
 however, she was deemed a personification of a Divine attri- 
 bute, an individual ^on, the sister or (according to others) 
 the mother of Christ, and entitled to equal or almost equal 
 reverence. 
 
 In this way, long before Catholic Mariolatry had acquir- 
 ed its full proportions, a very large section of the Christian 
 world had been accustomed to concentrate much attention 
 upon a female ideal as one of the two central figures of de- 
 votion. This fact alone would in some degree prepare the 
 way for the subsequent elevation of the Virgin; and it 
 should be added that Gnosticism exercised a very great and 
 special influence over the modes of thought of the orthodox. 
 As its most learned historian has forcibly contended, it should 
 
 ' Prounice properly signifies lasciviousness. It seems to have been ap- 
 plied to the Sophia considered in her fallen condition, as imprisoned in matter ; 
 but there is an extreme obscurity, which has I think never been cleared up 
 banging over the subject. Prounice seems to have been confounded with 
 Beronice, the name which a very early Cliristian tradition gave to the woman 
 who had been healed of an issue of blood. This woman formed one of the 
 principal types among the G:iostios. According to the Valentinians, the 
 twelve years of her afiBiction represented the twelve ^ons, while the flowing 
 blood was the force of the oophia passing to the inferior world. See on this 
 subject, Maury, Oroyances et Ligendes, art. Veronica ; and on the Sophia 
 generally, Mutter, Hist, du Gnosticisme, tom. i. pp. 275-278. M. Franck says 
 (La Kabbah, p. 43) that some of the Gnostics painted the Holy Ghost as a 
 woman, but this I suppose only refers to the Sophia. 
 
222 EATIONAUSM IS EUEOPE. 
 
 not Ibe regarded as a Christian heresy, but rather as an inde- 
 pendent system of eclectic philosophy in which Christian 
 ideas occupied a prominent place. Nearly all heresies have 
 aroused among the orthodox a .spirit of repulsion which has 
 produced views the extreme opposite of those of the heretic. 
 Gnosticism, on the other hand, exercised an absorbing and 
 attracting influence of the strongest kind. That Neo-Pla- 
 tonio philosophy which so deeply tinctured early theology 
 passed, for the most part, through a Gnostic medium. No 
 sect, too, appears to have estimated more highly or employ- 
 ed more skilfully aesthetic aids. The sweet songs of Barde- 
 sanes and Harmonius carried their distinctive doctrines into 
 the very heart of Syrian orthodoxy, and cast such a spell 
 over the minds of the people that, in spite of all prohibitions, 
 they continued to be sung in the Syrian churches till the 
 Catholic poet St. Ephrem wedded orthodox verses to the 
 Gnostic metres.' The apocryphal gospels, which were for 
 the most part of Gnostic origin, long continued to furnish 
 subjects for painters in orthodox churches.' There is even 
 much reason to believe that the conventional cast of features 
 ascribed to Christ, which for so many centuries formed the 
 real object of the worship of Christendom, is derived from the 
 Gnostic artists.' Besides this, Gnosticism formed the high- 
 
 ' Matter, Sist. du Gnosticisme, torn. i. pp. 360-362. 
 
 ' Didron, pp. 191, 198. The apocryphal gospel, however, which exercised 
 most influence over art, was probably that of Nicodemus, which is apparently 
 of orthodox origin, and was probably written (or at least the second part of 
 it) against the ApoUinarians. We owe to it the pictures of the Descent into 
 Limbo that are so common in early Byzantine art. The same subject, derived 
 from the same source, was also prominent in the mediaival sacred plays 
 (Malone, History of the English Stage, p. 19). 
 
 '' For a full discussion of this point, see Eaoul-Kocherte's T^pes de I' Art, 
 pp. 9-26, and his Tableau des Catacombes, p. 265. The opinion that the type 
 of Christ is derived from the Gnostics (which Raonl-Eochette savs has lieeu 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM:. 223 
 
 est representation of a process of transformation or unifica- 
 tion of religious ideas which occupied a very prominent place 
 among the organising influences of the Church. Christianity 
 had become the central intellectual power in the world, but 
 it triumphed not so much by superseding rival faiths as by 
 absorbing and transforming th6m. Old systems, old rites, 
 old images were grafted into the new belief, retaining much 
 of their ancient_charas1;sr but assuming new names and a new 
 complexion. Thus in the symbolism of the Gnostics innu- 
 merable conceptions culled from the different beliefs of pa- 
 ganism were clustered around the Divine Sophia, and at least 
 some of them passed through paintings or traditional allego- 
 ries to the Virgin. The old Egyptian conception of Night, 
 the mother of day and of all things, with the diadem of stars, 
 Isis, the sister of Osiris or the Saviour; Latona, the mother of 
 Apollo; Flora, the bright goddess of returning spring, to 
 whom was once dedicated the month of May, which is now 
 
 embraced by most of the Roman antiquarians) rests chiefly on the following 
 positions : — 1. That in the earliest stage of Christianity all painting and sculp- 
 ture was looked upon with great aversion in the Church, and that as late as 
 the time of Constantine portraits of Christ were very rare. 2. That the Gnos- 
 tics from the beginning cultivated art, and that small images of Christ were 
 among the most common objects of their reverence. 3. That the Gnostics 
 were very numerous at Rome. 4. That Gnosticism exercised a great influence 
 upon the Church, and especially upon her sesthetic development. It may be 
 added that the Christians carefully abstained from deriving from paganism the 
 cast of features they ascribed to Christ ; and Theodoret relates [Hist, lib. i. 
 cap. 15) that a painter having taken Jupiter as a model in a portrait of Christ, 
 his hand was withered, but was restored miraculously by St. Gennadius, Arch- 
 bishop of Constantinople. At a later period pagan statues were frequently 
 turned into saints. St. Augustine mentions that in his time there was no 
 authentic portrait of Christ, and that the type of features was still undeter- 
 mined, so that we have absolutely no knowledge of His appearance. ' Qua 
 fiierit ille (Christus) facie nos penitus ignoramus. . . . Nam et ipsius 
 Dominicse facies camis innumerabilium cogitationum diversitate variatur et 
 fingitur, quae tamen una erat, quasoumque erat.' (De Trinitate, lib. viii. c. 4, 
 6.) The type, however, was soon after formed. 
 
224 EAnoNAMSM nsr eueope. 
 
 dedicated to the Virgin ; Cybele, the mother of the gods, 
 whose feast was celebrated on what is now Lady-day, were 
 all more or less connected with the new ideal.' 
 
 But while Gnosticism may be regarded as the pioneer or 
 precursor of Catholic Mariolatry, the direct causes are to be 
 found within the circle of the Church. If the first two or 
 three centuries were essentially the ages of moral apprecia- 
 tion, the fourth and fifth were essentially those of dogmatic 
 definitions, which were especially applied to the nature of the 
 diyinity of Christ, and which naturally and indeed necessa- 
 rily tended to the continued exaltation of one who was soon 
 regarded as, very literally, the Bride of God. During the 
 Nestorian controversy the discussions on the subject assumed 
 an almost physiological character;' and the emphasis with 
 which the Church condemned the doctrines of Nestorius, who 
 was supposed to have unduly depreciated the dignity of 
 Mary, impelled the orthodox enthusiasm in the opposite di- 
 rection. The Council of Ephesus, in a.d. 431, defined the 
 manner in which the Virgin should be represented by artists;' 
 
 ' On the relation of this to Gnosticism, see Matter, Hist, du Gnosticisme, 
 torn. i. pp. 88, 89-98. 
 
 ' The strong desire natural to the middle ages to ^ve a palpable form to 
 the mystery of the Incarnation was shown curiously in the notion of a con- 
 ception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas ^ Becket, occui- the 
 
 lines — 
 
 ' Gaude Virgo, mater Christi, 
 
 Quae per aurera conoepisti, 
 
 Gabriele nuntio.' 
 And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris, the 
 Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a dove, 
 while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which ray an infant 
 Christ is descending. — ^Langlois, Peinture sur Verre, p. IS?. 
 
 ' St. Augustine notices {De Trinitate) that in bis time there was no authen- 
 tic portrait of Mary. The Council of Ephesus wished her to be painted wHh 
 the Infant Child, and this was the general representation in the early Church. 
 Some of the Byzantine picturjes are said to have been influenced by the 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 225 
 
 and the ever-increasing importance of painting and sculpture 
 as the organs of religious realisations brought into clearer 
 and more vivid relief the charms of a female ideal, which ac- 
 quired an irresistible fascination in the monastic life of celi- 
 bacy and solitary meditation, and in the strange mixtiire of 
 gallantry and devotion that accompanied the Crusades. It 
 ■was in this last period that the doctrine of the Immaculate 
 Conception is said first to have appeared.' The lily, as the 
 symbol of purity, was soon associated with pictures of the 
 Virgin ; and a notion having grown up that women by eating 
 it became pregnant without the touch of man, a vase wreathed 
 with lilies became the emblem of her maternity. 
 
 The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never 
 has there been one which has exercised a more profound and, 
 on the whole, a more salutary influence than the mediaeval 
 conception of the Virgin. For the first time woman was 
 elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weak- 
 ness was recognised as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No 
 longer the slave or toy of man, no longer associated only with 
 
 fayourite Egyptian representations of Isis giving sucic to Horns. It has been 
 observed that in the case of Mary, as in the case of Christ, suffering and deep 
 melancholy became more and more the prevaihng expression as the dark ages 
 rolled on, which was still further increased by the black tint the mediEeval 
 artists frequently gave her, in allusion to the description in the Song of Sol- 
 omon. The iirst notice in writing of the resemblance of Christ to His mother 
 is, I believe, in Nicephorus. — See Raoul-Kochette, Types de VArt Chretien, 
 pp. 30-39 ; Pascal, Institutions de VArt ChrHien. 
 
 " Heeren, Infiiiences des Croisades, pp. 204, 205. However, St. Augustine 
 says : — ' Excepta itaque Sancta Virgine Maria, de qua, propter honorem Domini, 
 nullam prorsus cum de peecatls agitur habere volo qusestionem : Unde enim 
 scimus, quid ei plus gratis coUatum fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte pecca,- 
 lum, quae concipere ac parere meruit eum quem constat nullum habuisse peocar 
 turn.' (De NaturA et Gratid.) Gibbon notices that the notion acquired con- 
 sistency among the Mahometans some centuries before it was adopted by the 
 Christians. St. Bernard rejected it as a noveltv. (^Decline and Fall, oh. 1. 
 note.) 
 
 VOL. I. — 15 
 
226 EATIONAXISM IN EDEOPE. 
 
 ideas of degradation and of sensuality, woman rose, in the 
 person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became 
 the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity had had 
 no conception. Love was idealised. The moral charm and 
 beauty of female excellence was for the lirst time felt. A 
 new type of character was called into being; a new kind of 
 admiration was fostered. Into a harsh and ignorant and be- 
 nighted age this ideal type infused a conception of gentleness 
 .and of purity unknown to the proudest civilisations of the 
 past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monk- 
 ish writer has left in honour of his celestial patron ; in the 
 millions who, in many lands and in many ages, have sought 
 with no barren desire to mould their characters into her 
 image ; in those holy maidens who, for the love of Mary, have 
 separated themselves from all the gloiies and pleasures of 
 the, world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity 
 to render themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new 
 sense of honour, in the chivalrous respect, in the softening of 
 manners, in the refinement of tastes displayed in all the walks 
 of society ; in these and in many other ways we detect its 
 influence. All that was best in Europe clustered around it, 
 and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our 
 civilisation. 
 
 But the price, and perhaps the necessary price, of this was 
 the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of infi- 
 nite power as well as infinite condescension. The legends 
 represented her as performing every kind of prodigy, saving 
 men from the lowest abysses of wretchedness or of vice, and 
 proving at all times the most powerful and the most ready 
 refuge of the afliicted. The painters depicted her invested 
 witli the divine aureole, judging man on equal terms w ith 
 her Son, or even retaining her ascendancy over Him in 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 227 
 
 heaven. In the devotions of the people she was addressed 
 in terms identical with those employed to the Almighty.' A 
 reverence similar in kind but less in degree was soon he- 
 stowed upon the other saints, who speedily assumed the 
 position of the minor deities of paganism, and who, though 
 worshipped, like them, as if ubiquitous, like them had their 
 special spheres of patronage. 
 
 While Christendom was thus reviving the polytheism 
 which its intellectual condition required, the tendency to 
 idolatry that always accompanies that condition was no less 
 forcibly displayed. In theory, indeed, images were employed 
 exclusively as aids to worship ; but in practice, and with the 
 general assent of the highest ecclesiastical authorities, they 
 very soon became the "objects. When men employ visible 
 representations simply for the pui"pose of giving an increased 
 vividness to their sense of the presence of the person who is 
 addressed, and when the only distinction they make between 
 different representations arises from the degree of fidelity or 
 force with which they assist the imagination, these persons 
 are certainly not committing idolatry. But when they pro- 
 
 ' Even at the present day the Psalter of St. Bonaventura — an edition of the 
 Psalms adapted to the worship of the Virgin, chiefly by the substitution of the 
 word domina for the word dominus — is a popular book of devotion at Rome. 
 In a famous fresco of Orcagna at Pisa the Virgin is represented, with precisely 
 the same dignity as Christ, judging mankind ; and everyone who is acquainted 
 with mediieval art- has met with similar examples. An old bishop named Gil- 
 bert Massius had his own portrait painted between the Virgin giving suck to 
 Chiist and a Crucifixion. Underneath were the lines — 
 ' Hinc lactor ab ubere, 
 
 Hinc pascor a vulnere, 
 
 Positus in medio. 
 
 Quo me vertam nescio, 
 
 In hoc dulci dubio 
 
 Dulcis est collatio.' 
 
 Pascal, Art Chretien, tom. i. p. 2B0. 
 
228 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ceed CO attach the idea of intrinsic virtue to a partieulai 
 image, when one image is said to work miracles and confei 
 spirittial benefits that separate it from every other, when it 
 becomes the object of long pilgrimages, and is supposed by 
 its mere presence to defend a besieged city or to ward ofl 
 pestilence and famine, the difference between this conception 
 and idolatry is inappreciable. Everything is done to cast 
 the de%otion of the worshipper upon the image itself, to dis- 
 tinguish it from every other, and to attribute to it an in- 
 trinsic efficacy. 
 
 In this as in the former case the change was effected by 
 a general tendency resulting from the intellectual condition 
 of society, assisted by the concurrence of special circum- 
 stances. At a very early period the persecuted Chris- 
 tians were accustomed to collect the relics of the mar- 
 tyrs, which they regarded with much affection and not 
 a little reverence, partly, perhaps, from the popular no- 
 tion that the souls of the dead lingered fondly around 
 their tombs', and partly from the very natural and praise- 
 worthy feeling which attaches us to the remains of the 
 good. A similar reverence was speedily transferred to 
 pictures, which as memorials of the dead were closely con- 
 nected with relies ; and the tendency to the miraculous 
 that was then so powei-ful having soon associated some of 
 them with supernatural occurrences, this was regarded as a 
 
 ' Thus the Council of Illiberis in its 34tli canon forbade men to light 
 c-andles by day in the cemeteries for fear of " disquieting the souls of the 
 saints." See, too, a curious passage of Vigilantius cited by St. Jerome, Ep. 
 lii. 13. To be buried near the tomb of a martyr was one of the most coveted 
 privileges in the early Church. See a very remarkable dissertation of he 
 Blaut, " Inscriptions Chretiennes de Gaule," tom. ii., p. 219-229. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATI0NALI8M. 229 
 
 Divine attestation of their sanctity. Two of these repre- 
 sentations were especially prominent in the early controver- 
 sies. The first was a portrait which, according to tradition, 
 Christ had sent to Abgarus, king of Edessa,' and which, be- 
 sides several other miracles, had once destroyed all the be- 
 sieging engines of a Persian army that had invested Edessa. 
 Still more famous was a statue of Christ, said to have been 
 erected in a small town in Phoenicia by the woman who had 
 been healed of an issue of blood. A new kind of herb had 
 grown up beneath it, increased till it touched the hem of the 
 garment of the statue, and then acquired the power of heal- 
 ing all disease. This statue, it was added, had been broken 
 in pieces by Julian, who placed his own image on the pedes- 
 tal, from which it was speedily hurled by a thunderbolt." 
 
 In the midst of this bias the irruption and, soon after, the 
 conversion of the barbarians were effected. Vast tribes of 
 savages, who had always been idolaters, who were perfectly 
 incapable, from their low state of civilisation, of forming any 
 
 ' With a letter, which is still extant, and which Addison, in his work on 
 Christian Evidenoes, quoted as genuine. Of course it is now generally ad- 
 mitted to be apocryphal. This portrait was supposed to be miraculously im- 
 pressed (like that obtained by St. Veronica) on a handkerchief. It was for a 
 long time at Constantinople, but was brought to Rome probably about a.d. 
 1198, and deposited in the Church of St. Sylvester in Capite, where it now is. 
 See Marangoni, Istoria della Oappella di Sancta Sanctorum di Roma (Romie, 
 174*?), pp. 235-239 ; a book which, though ostensibly simply a history of the 
 Acheropita, or sacred image at the Latera'n, contains a fuller account of the 
 history of the early miraculous pictures of Christ than any other I have met 
 with. 
 
 ' On these representations, the miracles they wrought, and the great in- 
 portance they assumed in the Iconoclastic controversies, see Maimbourg 
 Histoire des Iconoclastes (1686), pp. 44-4'7 ; and on other early miracles attrib- 
 uted to images, Spanheim, Historia Imaginum (1686), pp. 417-420. The first 
 of these books is Catholic, and the second the Protestant reply. See, too, 
 Marangoni, Sancta Sanctorum ; and Arringhi, Homa Suhterranea, torn. ii. pp. 
 452^60. 
 
230 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 but anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity, or of concen 
 trating their attention steadily on any invisible object, and 
 who for the most part were converted not by individual per- 
 suasion but by the commands of their chiefs, embraced 
 Christianity in such multitudes that their habits of mind soon 
 became the dominating habits of the Church. From this 
 dme the tendency to idolatry was irresistible. The old im- 
 ages were worshipped under new names, and one of the most 
 prominent aspects of the Apostolical teaching was in prac- 
 tice ignored. 
 
 All this, however, did not pass without protest. During 
 the period of the persecution, when the dread of idolatry 
 was still powerful, everything that tended in that direction 
 was scrupulously avoided ; and a few years before the first 
 Council of Nice, a council held at Illiberis in Spain, in a 
 canon which has been very frequently cited, condemned alto- 
 gether the introduction of pictures into the churches, ' lest 
 that which is worshipped should be painted upon the walls.' ' 
 The Greeks, among whom the last faint rays of civilisation 
 still flickered, were in this respect somewhat superior to the 
 Latins, for they usually discouraged the veneration of images, 
 though admitting that of pictures." Early in the eighth 
 ceiitury, when image-worship had become general, the sect 
 of the Iconoclasts arose, whose long struggle against the pre- 
 vailing evil, though stained with great tyranny and great 
 cruelty, represents the fierce though unavailing attempts to 
 resist the anthropomorphism of the age ; and when the 
 second Council of Nice, which the Catholics now regard as 
 
 ' 'Ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur.' The Catholics 
 maintain that this was a decree elicited by the persecution, and that its object 
 was to prevent the profanation of Cliristian images by the pagans. 
 
 ' Probably because there is no reason to' believe that pictures had ever been 
 employed as idols by the ancient Greeks or Romans. 
 
DE-VELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 231 
 
 (ecumenical, censured this heresy and carried the veneration 
 of images considerably further than had before been authoi^ 
 ised, its authority was denied and its decrees contemptuously 
 stigmatised by Charlemagne and the Galilean Church.' Two 
 or three illustrious Frenchmen also made isolated efforts in 
 the same direction." 
 
 Of these efforts there is one upon which I may delay fc-r 
 a moment, because it is at once extremely remarkable and 
 extremely little known, and also because it brings us in con- 
 tact with one of the most rationalistic intellects of the mid- 
 dle ages. In describing the persecution that was endured 
 by the Cabalists in the ninth century, I had occasion to oh- 
 serve that they found a distinguished defender in the person 
 of an archbishop of Lyons, named St. Agobard. The very 
 name of this prelate has now sunk into general oblivion,' or 
 if it is at all remembered, it is only in connection with the 
 most discreditable act of his life — the part which he took in 
 the deposition of Louis le Debonnaire. Yet I question whether 
 in the whole compass of the middle ages — with, perhaps, 
 the single exception of Scotus Erigena — it would be possible 
 to find another man within the Christian Church who applied 
 himself so zealously, so constantly, and so ably to dispelling 
 the superstitions that surrounded him. To those who have 
 appreciated the character of the ninth century, but few 
 words will be required to show the intellectual eminence of 
 
 ' On the discussions connected with this Council, see Natalis Alexander, 
 Hktoria Eccl. Smculi viii. 
 
 ^ The most celebrated being Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims. Baronius 
 inyeighed violently against this prelate for terming the sacred images ' dolls,' 
 but Maimbourg contends (introduction to the Sist. des Iconocl.) that the ex- 
 pression is not to be foimd in any of the works of Hincmar. 
 
 ' There is an edition of his works in one volume (Paris, 1606), and anotha 
 m two volumes (Paris, 1616). I have quoted from the former. 
 
232 KATIONALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 an ecclesiastic who, in that century, devoted one work to dis- 
 playing the folly of those who attributed hail and thundei 
 to spiritual agencies, a second to in at least some degree at- 
 tenuating the popular notions concerning epilepsy and other 
 strange diseases, a third to exposing the absurdities of or 
 deals, and a fourth to denouncing the idolatry of image woi 
 ship. 
 
 At the beginning of this last work Agobard collected a 
 long series of passages from the fathers and early councils 
 on the legitimate use of images. As long as they were em- 
 ployed simply as memorials, they were unobjectionable. But 
 the popular devotion had long since transgressed this limit. 
 Idolatry and anthropomorphism had everywhere revived, 
 and devotion being concentrated on visible representations, 
 all faith in the invisible was declining. Men, with a sacrile- 
 gious folly, ventured to apply the epithet holy to certain im- 
 ages,' oifering to the work of their own hands the honour 
 which should be reserved for the Deity, and attributing sanc- 
 tity to what was destitute even of life. Nor was it any jus- 
 tification of this practice that the worshippers sometimes dis- 
 claimed the belief that a divine sanctity resided in the image 
 itself,'' and asserted that they reverenced in it only the person 
 who was represented ; for if the image was not divine, it 
 should not be venerated. This excuse was only one of the 
 
 ' ' Miilto autem his deteriora esse quse humana et caraalis praesumptio 
 fingit etiam stulti consentiunt. In quo genere istse quoque inveniuntur quas 
 sanctag appellant imagines, non solum sacrilegi ex eo quod divinum cultum 
 operibus manuum suarum exhibent, sed et insipientes sanctitatem eis quse sine 
 anima sunt imaginibus tribuendo.' — p. 233. 
 
 " ' Dicit forsitan aliquis non se putare imagini quam adorat aliquid inesse 
 Divinum, sed tantummodo pro bonore ejus cujus efiBgies est, tali earn venera- 
 tione donare. Cui facile respondetur, quia si imago quam adorat Deus non est 
 nequaquani veneranda est.' — p. 237. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 233 
 
 devices of Satan,^ who was ever seeking under the pretext 
 of honour to the saints to draw men back to the idols they 
 had left. No image could be entitled to the reverence of 
 those who, as the temples of the Holy Ghost, were superior 
 to every image, who were themselves the true images of the 
 Deity. A picture is helpless and inanimate. It can confer 
 no benefit and inflict no evil. Its only value is as a repre- 
 sentation of that which is least in man — of his body, and not 
 his mind. Its only use is as a memorial to keep alive the af- 
 fection for the dead ; if it is regarded as anything more, it 
 becomes an idol, and as such should be destroyed. Very 
 rightly then did Hezejtiah grind to powder the brazen ser- 
 pent in spite of its sacred associations, because it had become 
 an object of worship. Very rightly too did the Council of 
 Illiberis and the Christians of Alexandria ' forbid the intro- 
 duction of representations into the churches, for they foresaw 
 that such representations would at last become the objects of 
 worship, and that a change of faith would only be a change 
 of idols ; nor could the saints themselves be more duly 
 honoured than by destroying ignominiously their portraits, 
 • when those portraits had become the objects of superstitious 
 reverence.^ 
 
 ' ' Agit hoc nimirum versuius et callidus humani generis inimicus, ut, sub 
 praetextu honoris sanctorum, rursus idola introduoat, rursus per diversas efflgiea 
 adoretur.' — p. 252. 
 
 ■' Speaking of the conduct of some Alexandrian Christians, who only ad- 
 mitted the sign of the cross into their churches, he says : — ' quam sineera 
 religio ! crucis vexillum ubique pingebatur non aliqua vultus humani similitude. 
 (Deo sciheet hsec mirabiliter etiam ipsis forsitan nescientibus dispouente) si 
 enim sanctonim imagines hi qui dsemonum cultnm reliquerant venerari juberen- 
 tur, puto quod videretur eis non tarn idola reliquisse quam simulacra mutasse.' 
 —p. 237. 
 
 ' ' Quia si serpentem seneum quem Deus fieri praeoepit, quoniara errans 
 populus tanquam idolum colere coepit, Ezechias religiosus rex, cum magna 
 pietatis laude contrivit: multo religiosius sanctorum imagines (ipsis quoqua 
 
234 EA'nONALISM DT EtJEOPE. 
 
 It will I think be admitted that these sentiments are ex 
 ceedingly remarkable when we consider the age in which 
 they were expressed, and the position of the person who ex- 
 pressed them. No Protestant fresh from the shrines of Lo- 
 retto or Saragossa ever denounced the idolatry practised 
 under the shadow of Catholicism with a keener or more 
 incisive eloquence than did this mediaeval saint. But although 
 it is extremely interesting to detect the isolated efforts of 
 illustrious individuals to rise above the general conditions of 
 their age, such efforts have usually but little result. Idolatry 
 was so intimately connected with the modes of thought of 
 the middle ages, it was so congruous with the prevailing 
 conception of the government of the universe, and with the 
 materialising habits that were displayed upon all subjects, that 
 no process of direct reasoning could overthrow it, and it was 
 only by a fundamental change in the intellectual condition 
 of society that it was at last subverted. 
 
 It must, however, be acknowledged that there is one ex- 
 ample of a great religion, reigning for the most part over 
 men who had not yet emerged from the twilight of an early 
 civilisation, which has nevertheless succeeded in restraining 
 its votaries from idolatry. This phenomenon, which is the 
 preeminent glory of Mahometanism, and the most remarkable 
 evidence of the genius of its founder, appears so much at vari- 
 ance vrith the general laws of historic development, that it may 
 
 Sanctis faventibus, qui ob sui honorem cum divinae religionis coiitemptu eaa 
 adorari more idolorum indignantissime ferunt) omni genere conterendiB et 
 asque ad pulverem sunt eradeudse ; prassertim cum non illas fieri Deus jusaerit, 
 Bed humanus sensus excogitaverit.' — p. 244. ' Nee iterum ad sua latibula 
 fraudulenta reourrat astutia, ut dicat ae non imagines sanctorum adorare sed 
 sanctos; clamat enim Deus, "Gloriam meam alteri non dabo, nee laudem 
 meam sculptilibus." ' — pp. 254, 255. See too the noble concluding passage on 
 the exclusive worship of Christ, breathing a spirit of the purest Protestantism. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATI0NALI8M. 235 
 
 be well to examine for a moment its causes. In the first 
 place, then, it must be observed that the enthusiasm by which 
 Mahometanism conquered the world, was mainly a military- 
 enthusiasm. Men were drawn to it at once, and without 
 conditions, by the splendoui of the achievements of its dis- 
 ciples, and it declared an absolute war against all the re- 
 ligions it encountered. Its history therefore exhibits nothing 
 of the process of gradual absorption, persuasion, compromise, 
 and assimilation, that was exhibited in the dealings of Chris- 
 tianity with the barbarians. In the next place, one of the 
 great characteristics of the Koran is the extreme care and 
 skill with which it labours to assist men in realising the un- 
 seen. Descriptions the most minutely detailed, and at the 
 same time the most vivid, are mingled with powerful appeals 
 to those sensual passions by which the imagination in all 
 countries, but especially in those in which Mahometanism has 
 taken root, is most forcibly influenced. In no other religion 
 that prohibits idols was the strain upon the imagination so 
 slight." 
 
 In the last place, the prohibition of idols was extended 
 to every representation of man and animals, no matter how 
 completely unconnected they might be with religion.' Ma- 
 
 ' Some curious instances of the way in which the early fanaticism of 
 Mahometanism was thus sustained, hare been collected by Helv^tius, De 
 V Esprit. It is quite true, as Sale contends, that Mahomet did not introduce 
 polygamy, and thereforethat the fact of his permitting it could not have been 
 one of the motives urging Asiatics to embrace the new religion ; but it is also 
 true that Mahomet and his disciples, more skilfully than any other religionists, 
 blended sensual passions with religion, associated them with future rewards, 
 and converted them into stimulants of devotion. 
 
 ' Some of the early Christians appear to have wished to adopt this course, 
 which would have been the only effectual means of repressing idolatry. In an 
 a])ocryphal work, called The Voyages of St. John, which was circulated in 
 the Church, there was a legend that St. John once found his own portrait in 
 the house of a Christian, that he thought at first it was an idol, and, even 
 
233 EATIONAMSM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 horuet perceived very clearly, that in order to prevent his 
 disciples from worshipping images, it was absolutely necessa- 
 ry to prevent them from making any ; and he did this by 
 commands which were at once so stringent and so precise, 
 that it was scarcely possible to evade them. In this way 
 he preserved his religion from idolatry ; but he made it the 
 deadly enemy of art. How much urt has lost by the antag- 
 onism it is impossible to say. Certainly the wonderful pro 
 ficiency attained by the Spanish Moors in architecture, which 
 was the only form of art that was open to them, and above 
 all the ornamentation of the Alhambra, and the Alcazar of 
 Seville, in which, while the representations of animal life 
 are carefully excluded, plants and flowers and texts from the 
 Koran and geometrical figures are woven together in a trar 
 eery of the most exquisite beauty,' seem to imply the posses- 
 sion of aesthetic powers that have never been surpassed. 
 
 Mahometanism sacrificed art, but it cannot be said that 
 Christianity during the middle ages was altogether favoura- 
 ble to it. The very period when representations of Christ or 
 the saints were regarded as most sacred, was precisely that 
 in which there was no art in the highest sense of the word, 
 or at least none applied to the direct objects of worship. The 
 
 when told its true character, severely blamed the painter. (Beausobre, Ilkt. 
 du Manichiisme.) A passage in the invective of Tertullian against Her- 
 mogenes has been quoted as to the same effect : ' Pingit iUioite, nubit assidue, 
 legem Dei in libidinem defendit, in artem contemnit, bis falsarius et cauterio 
 e* stylo.' Clemens Alexandrinus was of opinion that ladies broke the second 
 commandment by using looking-glasses, as they thereby made images of them- 
 Belves. — Barbeyrac, Morale des Peres, u. v. § 18. 
 
 '■ See on this subject a striking passage from Owen Jones, quoted in Ford's 
 Spain, vol. I. p. 304. It is remarkable that, while the ornamentation derived 
 from the vegetible world in the Alhambra is unrivalled in beauty, the lions 
 which support one of the fountains, and which form, I believe, the solitary in- 
 stance of a deviation from the command of the Prophet, might rank with the 
 worst productions of the time of Nicolas of Pisa. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 237 
 
 middle ages occasionally, indeed, produced churches of great 
 beauty ; mosaic work for their adornment was cultivated 
 with considerable zeal, and in the fifth century, and again 
 after the establishment in the eleventh century of a school of 
 Greek artists at Monte Cassino, with some slight success ; ' 
 similar skill was shown in gold church irrnaments,' and in the 
 illumination of manuscripts ; ° but the habitual venei-ation oi 
 
 ' According to tradition, the earliest specimen of Christian mosaic work is 
 a portrait of Christ, preserved in the church of St. Praxede of Rome, which 
 St. Peter is said to have worn round his neck, and to have given at Eome to 
 Pudens, his host, the father of St. Praxede. The finest specimens of the 
 mosaics of the fifth and sixth centuries are at Ravenna, especially in the church 
 of St. Vitale, which was built by the Greeks, who were the great masters of 
 this art. Ciampini, who is the chief authority on this subject, thiulis ( Vetera 
 Monumenta, pars i. (Romse, 1690), p. 84) that the art was wholly forgotten in 
 Rome for the three hundred years preceding the establishment of the Monte 
 Cassino school in 1066 ; but Marangoni assigns a few wretched mosaics to that 
 period {Isi. Sand. pp. 180-182). A descriptive catalogue of those at Rome 
 has lately been published by Barbet de Jouy, and a singularly interesting ex- 
 amination of their history by M. Vitet (Etudes sur VHisioire de I'Art, torn. i.). 
 For a general review of the decUne of art, see the great history of D'Agin- 
 court. 
 
 ^ The art of delicate carving on gold and silver was chiefly preserved in 
 the middle ages by the reverence of relies, for the preservation of which the 
 most beautiful works were designed. Rouen was long famed for its manufac- 
 ture of church ornaments, but these were plundered, and for the most part 
 destroyed, by the Protestants, when they captured the city in 1562. The 
 luxurious habits of the Italian states were favourable to the goldsmiths, and 
 (Lose of Venice were very celebrated. A large proportion of them are said to 
 have been Jews. Francia, Verocchio, Perugino, Donatello, Brunelleschi, and 
 Ghiberti were all originally goldsmiths. M. Didron has published a manual of 
 this art. The goldsmiths of Limoges had the honour of producing a saint, 
 St. Eloi, who became the patron of the art. Carved ivory diptychs were also 
 very common through the middle ages, and especially after the eighth century. 
 
 ' Much curious information on the history of illumination and miniature 
 painting is given in Cibrario, Economia Politica del Medio Boo, vol. ii. pp. 
 83 7- 346. Peignot says that from the fifth to the tenth century the miniatures 
 m manuscripts exhibited an extremely high perfection, both in drawing and in 
 colouring, and that from the tenth to the fourteenth the drawing detonated, 
 but revived with the revival of painting (Essai sur VHistoire du Purchendn.^ 
 
238 EATION'AIiISM IK EUEOPE. 
 
 images, pictures, and talismans, was far from giving a general 
 impulse to art. And this fact, which may at first sight ap- 
 pear perplexing, was in truth perfectly natural. For the 
 esthetic sentiment and a devotional feeling are so entirely 
 different, that it is impossible for both to be at the same 
 moment predominating over the miad, and very unusual for 
 both to be concentrated upon the same object. The sensa- 
 tion produced by a picture gallery is not that of religious 
 reverence, and the favourite idols h;ive in no religion been 
 those which approve themselves most fully to the taste. '• 
 They have rather been pictures that are venerable from their 
 extreme antiquity, or from the legends attached to them, or 
 else representations of the most coarsely realistic character. 
 Painted wooden statues the size of life have usually been the 
 favourite idols ; but these are so opposed to the genius of true 
 art, that — with the exception of Spain, where religious feeling 
 has dominated over every other consideration, and where 
 three sculptors of very great ability, named Juni, Hernandez, 
 and Moutanes, have devoted themselves to their formation — 
 they have scarcely ever exhibited any high artistic merit, 
 and never the very highest. The mere fact, therefore, of 
 pictures or images being destined for worship, is likely to be 
 rather prejudicial than otherwise to art. Besides this, in an 
 idolatrous period the popular reverence speedily attaches to 
 
 p. 76). Glass painting and miniature painting were both common long before 
 Cimabue, and probably exercised a great influence over the early artists. 
 
 ' See on this subject, and generally on the influence of mediaeval modes of 
 thought upon art, Kaoul-Rochette, Coiirs d'Archeologie, one of the very best 
 boots ever written on art. (It has been translated by Mr. Westropp.) The 
 history of miracles strikingly confirms the position in the text. As Maran- 
 goni says : 'Anzi ella h cosa degnadi osservazione che I'Altissimo per ordinario 
 opera molto pii prodigi nelle immagini sagre uelle quali non spicca 1' eccel- 
 leuza dell' arte o alcuna cosa superiore aU' umana.' — Moria delta Capdla di 
 Sanda Sanctorum, p. 11, 
 
BEVELOPMENTS OF KATIONALISM. 239 
 
 a particular type of countenance, and even to particular ges 
 tares or dresses ; and all innovation, and therefore all im- 
 provemect, is resisted. 
 
 These, reasons apply to the art of the naiddle ages in com- 
 mon with that of all other periods of virtual or avowed idol- 
 atry. There was, however, another consideration, acting in 
 the same direction, which was peculiar to Christianity. I 
 mean the low estimate of physical beauty that characterised 
 the monastic i^ype of religion. Among the Greeks beauty of 
 every order ' was the highest object of worship. In art 
 especially no s ubject was tolerated in which deformity of any 
 kind was manifested. Even suffering was habitually ideal- 
 ised. The traces of mental anguish upon the countenance 
 were exhibited with exquisite skill, but they were never per- 
 mitted so to contort the features as to disturb the prevailing 
 beauty of the whole." The glory of the human body was 
 the central conception of art, and nakedness was associated 
 
 ' Eyen animal beauty. It is one of the most subtle, and, at the same time, 
 most profoundly just, criticisms of Wiuckelmann, that it was the custom of 
 the Greelis to enhance the perfection of their ideal faces by transfusing into 
 them some of the higher forms of animal beauty. This was especially the case 
 with Jupiter, the upper part of whose countenance is manifestly taken from 
 that of a lion, while the hair is almost always so arranged as to increase the 
 resemblance. There are many busts of Jupiter, which, if all but the forehead 
 and hair were covered, would be unhesitatingly pronounced to be images of 
 lions. Something of the bull appears in like manner in Hercules ; while in 
 Pan (though not so much with a -view to beauty as to harmony) the human 
 features always approach as near as human features can to the characteristics 
 of the brute. As M. Raoul-Kochette has well observed, this is one of the 
 great distinctive marks of Greek sculpture. The Egyptians often joined the 
 head of an animal to the body of a man without making any effort to soften 
 the incongruity; but beauty being the main object of the Greeks, in all their 
 composite statues — ^Pan, Centaurs, hermaphrodites — the two natures that are 
 conjoined are fused and blended into one harmonious whole. 
 
 ' See the Lctocoon of Lessing. It is to this that Lessing ascribes the 
 famous device of Timanthes in his sacrifice of Iphigenia — drawing the veil 
 over the face of Agamemnon — which Pliny so poetically explams. 
 
240 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 rather with dignity than with shame. The gods, it was em 
 phatically said, were naked." To represent an emperor 
 naked, was deemed the highest form of flattery, because it 
 was to represent his apotheosis. The athletic games which 
 occupied so large a place in ancient life, contributed greatly 
 to foster the admiration of physical strength, and to furnish 
 the most admirable models to the sculptors.' 
 
 It is easy to perceive how favourable such a state of feel- 
 ing must have been to the development of art, and no less 
 easy to see how contrary it was to the spirit of a religion 
 which for many centuries made the suppression of all bodily 
 passions the central notion of sanctity. In this respect phi- 
 losophers, heretics, and saints were unanimous. Plotinus, 
 one of the most eminent of the Neo-Platonic philosophers, 
 was so ashamed of the possession of a body, that he refused 
 to have his portrait taken on the ground that it would be to 
 perpetuate his degradation. Gnosticism and Manicheism, 
 which in their various modifications obtained a deeper and 
 more permanent hold in the Church than any other heretical 
 systems, maintained as their cardinal tenet the essential evil 
 of matter ; and some of the Cathari, who were among the 
 latest Gnostics, are said to have even starved themselves to 
 death in their efforts to subdue the propensities of the body.' 
 Of the orthodox saints, some made it their especial boast that ' 
 for many years they had never seen their own bodies ; others 
 mutilated themselves in order more completely to restrain their 
 passions ; others laboured with the same object by scourgings 
 and fastings, and horrible penances. All regarded the body 
 
 ' ' Deus nudus est.' — Seneca, Ep. xxxi. 
 
 " Raoul-Rochette, Cours cC ArcMologie, pp. 269, 270. See also Fortoul, 
 Chides d'Archsologie. 
 
 ^ Matter, Hist, du GnosHdsme, torn. iii. p. 264. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 241 
 
 as an unmingled evil, its passion and its beauty as the most 
 deadly of temptations. Art, while governed by such senti- 
 ments, could not possibly arrive at perfection ; ' and the pas- 
 sion for representations of the Crucifixion, or the deaths of 
 the martyrs, or the sufferings of the lost, impelled it still 
 further from the beautiful. 
 
 It appears, then, that, in addition to the generally low 
 intellectual condition of the middle ages, the special form of 
 religious feeling that was then dominant, exercised an ex- 
 ceedingly unfavourable influence upon art. This fact be- 
 comes very important when we examine the course that was 
 taken by the European mind after the revival of learning. 
 
 Idolatry, as I have said, is the natural form of worship in 
 an early stage of civilisation ; and a gradual emancipation 
 from material conceptions one of the most invariable results 
 of intellectual progress. It appears therefore natural, that 
 when nations have attained a certain point, they should dis- 
 card their images. And this is what has usually occurred. 
 Twice, however, in the history of the human mind, a dlfi'er- 
 ent course has been adopted. Twice the weakening of the 
 anthropomorphic conceptions has been accompanied by an 
 extraordinary progress In the images that were their repre- 
 sentatives, and the aesthetic feeling having dominated over 
 the religious feeling, superstition has faded into art. 
 
 ' The period in which the ascetic ideal of ugliness was most supreme in 
 art was between the sixth and twelfth centuries. Many of the Roman mosaics 
 during that period exhibit a hideousness which the inexpertness of the artists 
 was quite insufficient to account for, and which was evidently imitated froru the 
 emaciation of extreme asceticism.— See Vitet, jitudes sur VHistoire de i'Art, 
 torn. i. pp. 268-2'79. Concerning the art of the middle ages, besides the works 
 that have come down to us, we have a good deal of evidence in a book by a 
 bishop of the thirteenth century, named Durandus, called Rationale Divinonan 
 Offieiorum. A great deal of curious learning on mediEeval art is collected by 
 the Abb6 Pascal in his Institutions de I'Ari ChrHien ; but, above all, in the 
 Iconographie Chritienne of Didron. 
 VOL. I. — 16 
 
243 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 The first of ttese movernents occurred in ancient Greece 
 The information we possess concerning the aesthetic history 
 of that nation is so ample, that we can trace very clearly the 
 successive phases of its development.' Putting aside those 
 changes that are interesting only in an artistic point of view, 
 and confining ourselves to those which reflect the changes of 
 religious realisation, Greek idolatry maybe divided into four 
 distinct stages. The first was a period of fetishism, in which 
 shapeless stones, which were possibly aerolites, and were, at 
 all events, said to have fallen from heaven, were worshipped. 
 In the second, painted wooden idols dressed in real clothes 
 became common." After this, Dsedalus created a higher art, 
 but one which was, like the Egyptian and Byzantine art, at 
 the same time strictly religious, and characterised by an in- 
 tense aversion to innovation. Then came the period in which 
 increasing intellectual culture, and the prevalence of philo- 
 sophical speculations, began to tell njion the nation, in which 
 the religious reverence was displaced, and concentrated rather 
 on the philosophical conception of the Deity than upon the 
 idols in the temples, and in which the keen sense of beauty, 
 evoked by a matured civilisation, gave a new tone and as- 
 pect to all parts of religion. The images were not then 
 broken, but they were gradually regarded simply as the em- 
 bodiments of the beautiful. They began to exhibit little or no 
 religious feeling, no spirit of reverence or self-abasement, but 
 
 ' See an extremely clever sketch of the movement in Raoul-Rochette, 
 Cours d^ ArcMologie ; and Winckelmann, Hist, of Art. 
 
 '' According to Winckelmann, wooden statues with marble heads, called 
 iiKpdWoi, continued as late as the time of Phidias. From the painted wooden 
 statues was derived the custom of painting those iu marble and bronze. 
 Heyne, who has devoted a very learned essay to Greek sculpture, thinks the 
 statues of Daedalus were in wood {Opuscula Academicu, tom. v. p. 339) ; but 
 this appears very doubtful. Pausanias says he saw a statue ascribed to Dseda 
 las which was of stone. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 243 
 
 a sense of harmony and gracefulness, a conception of ideal 
 perfection, which has perhaps never been equalled in other 
 lands. The statue that had once been the object of earnest 
 prayer was viewed with the glance of the artist or the critic. 
 The temple was still full of gods, and those gods had never 
 been so beautiful and so grand ; but they -n-ere beautiful only 
 through the skill of the artist, and the devotion that once 
 hallowed them had passed away. All was allegory, poetry, 
 and imagination. Sensual beauty was typified by naked Ve- 
 nus ; unconscious loveliness, and untried or natural chastity, 
 by Diana. Minerva, with her downcast eyes and somewhat 
 stern features, represented female modesty and self-control. 
 Ceres, with her flowing robes and her golden sheaf, was the 
 type of the genial summer ; or, occasionally with dishevelled 
 hair, and a countenance still troubled with the thought of 
 Proserpine, was the emblem of maternal love. Each cast of 
 beauty, and, after a brief period of unmingled grandeur, 
 even each form of sensual frailty, was transported into the 
 unseen world. Bacchus nurtured by a girl, and with the soft 
 delicate limbs of a woman, was the type of a disgraceful 
 effeminacy. Apollo the god of music, and Adonis the lover 
 of Diana, represented that male beauty softened into some- 
 thing of female loveliness by the sense of music or the first 
 chaste love of youth, which the Christian painters long after- 
 wards represented in St. Sebastian or St. John. Hercules was 
 the chosen type of the dignity of labour. Sometimes he 
 appears in the midst of his toils for man, with every nei-ve 
 strained, and all the signs of intense exertion upon his counte- 
 nance. Sometimes he appears as a demigod in the assembly 
 of Olympus, and then his muscles are rounded and subdued, 
 and his colossal frame softened and harmonised as the emblem 
 at once of strength and of repose. In very few instances do 
 
2i4 • EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 we find any conception which can be regarded as purely 
 religious, and even those are of a somewhat Epicurean char- 
 acter. Thus .Tupiter, Pluto, and Minos are represented with 
 the same cast of countenance, and the difference is chiefly in 
 their expression. The countenance of Pluto is shadowed by 
 the passions of a demon, the brow of Minos is bent with the 
 inexorable sternness of a judge. Jupiter alone presents an 
 aspect of unclouded calm : no care can darken, and no pas- 
 sion ruffle, the serenity of the king of heaven.' 
 
 It was in this manner that the Greek mythology passed 
 gradually into the realm of poetry, and that the transition 
 was effected or facilitated by the visible representations that 
 were in the first instance the objects of worship. A some- 
 what similar change was effected in Christian art at the 
 period of the revival of learning, and as an almost immediate 
 result of the substitution of Italian for Byzantine art. 
 
 There are few more striking contrasts than are comprised 
 in the history of the influence of Grecian intellect upon art. 
 At an early period Greece had arrived at the highest point 
 of assthetic perfection to which the human intellect has yet at- 
 tained. She bequeathed to us those forms of almost passion- 
 ate beauty which have been the wonder and the delight of 
 all succeeding ages, and which the sculptors of eveiy land have 
 recognised as the ideal of their efforts. At last, however, the 
 fountain of genius became dry. Not only creative power, 
 but even the very perception and love of the beautiful, seemed 
 to have died out, and for many centuries the Greek Church, 
 the Greek empire, and the Greek artists proved the most 
 formidable obstacles to sesthetic development." It was from 
 
 ' See Winckelmann and Ottfried Miiller. 
 
 ' This influence is well noticed by M. Rio, in a book called The Poetry 
 of Chrisiian Art. An exception, however, should be made in favour of 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 245 
 
 iMs quarter that the Iconoclasts issued forth to wage their 
 fierce warfare against Christian sculpture. It was in the 
 Greek Church that was most fostered the tradition of the de- 
 formity of Christ, which was as fatal to i-eligious art as it was 
 offensive to religious feeling.' It was in Greece too that 
 
 Greek architects, to whom Italy owed its first great ecclesiastical structure, the 
 church of St. Vitale at Ravenna (which Charlemagne copied at Aix-larChapelle), 
 and at a later period St. Mark's at Venice, and several other beautiful edifices. 
 The exile of the Greek artists during the Iconoclast persecution, and the com- 
 mercial relations of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, account for the constant action 
 of Greece on Italy through the middle ages. I have already noticed the skill 
 of the Byzantine artists in mosaic work. 
 
 ' Of which Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Cyril of Alexandria were the 
 principal advocates. The last declared that Christ had been ' the ugliest of 
 the sons of men.' This theory furnished Celsus with one of his arguments 
 against Christianity. The opposite view was taken by Jerome, Ambrose, 
 Chrysostom, and John Damascene. With a view of supporting the latter 
 opinion, there was forged a singularly beautiful letter, alleged to have been 
 written to the Roman Senate by Lentulus, who was proconsul in Judaea before 
 Herod, and in which the following passage occurs : ' At this period there ap- 
 peared a man, who is still living — a man endowed with wonderful power — his 
 name is Jesus Christ. Men say that He is a mighty prophet ; but his disciples 
 call Him the Son of God. He calls the dead to life, and frees the sick from 
 every form of disease. He is tall of stature, and his aspect is sweet and full 
 of power, so that they who look upon Him may at once love and fear Him. 
 The hair of his head is of the colour of wine ; as far as the ears it is straight 
 and without glitter, from the ears to the shoulders it is curled and glossy, and 
 from the shoulders it descends over the back,, divided into two parts after the 
 manner of the Nazarenes. His brow is pure and even ; his countenance with- 
 out a spot, but adorned with a gentle glow ; his expression bland and open ; 
 his nose and mouth are of perfect beauty ; his beard is copious, forked, and 
 of the colour of his hair ; his eyes are blue and very bright. In reproving and 
 threatening He is terrible ; in teaching and exhorting, gentle and loving. The 
 grace and majesty of his appearance are marvellous. No one has ever seen 
 Him laugh, but rather weeping. His carriage is erect ; his hands well formed 
 and straight ; his arms of passing beauty. Weighty and grave in speech, He 
 is sparing of words. He is the most beautiful of the sons of men.' Nearly 
 all archseologists have inferred from the representations of the fourth century 
 'hit this description was then in existence. Dean Milman, however, argues 
 from the silence of St. John Damascene, and of the disputants at the Second 
 Oour.cil of Nice, that it is of a much later date. See on this whole subject, 
 
246 EATTONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 arose that essentially vicious, conventional, and unprogressive 
 style of painting which was uni^'ersal in Europe for manj 
 centuries, which tramraelled even the powerful genius of 
 Cimabue, and which it was reserved for Giotto and Masaccio 
 to overthrow. This was the uniform tendency of modern 
 Greece. It was the extreme opposite of that which had 
 ouce been dominant, and it is a most remarkable fact that 
 it was at last corrected mainly by the masterpieces of Greek 
 antiquity. It is now very generally admitted that the proxi- 
 mate cause of that ever-increasing course of progress which 
 was pursued by Italian art from Cimabue to Raphael, is 
 chiefly to be found in the renewed study of ancient sculpture 
 begun by Nicolas of Pisa towards the close of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, and afterwards sustained by the discoveries at Rome. 
 
 The Church of Rome, with the sagacity that has usually 
 characterised her, adopted and fostered the first efforts of re- 
 vived art, and for a time she made it essentially Christian. It 
 is impossible to look upon the pictures of Giotto and his early 
 successors without perceiving that a religious feeling per- 
 vades and sanctifies them. They exhibit, indeed, a keen sense 
 of beauty ; but this is always subservient to the religious 
 idea ; it is always subdued and chastened and idealised. 
 l^or does this arise simply' from the character of the artists. 
 Christian art had, indeed, in the angelic friar of Fiesole, one 
 saint who may be compared with any in the hagiology. 
 That gentle monk, who was never known to utter a word 
 of anger or of bitterness, who refused without a pang the 
 rich mitre of Florence, who had been seen with tears stream- 
 
 Emeric David, Hiat. de la Peinture, pp. 24-26 ; and Didron, IconograpMe 
 Chretienne, pp. 251-2'76. I may add, that as late as 1649 a curious book {J)( 
 Formd Christi) was published on this subject at Paris by a Jesuit, named 
 Vavassor. which represents the controversy as still continuing. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 247 
 
 ing from his eyes as he painted his crucified Lord, and who 
 never began a picture without consecrating it by a prayer, 
 forms one of the most attractive pictures in the whole range 
 of ecclesiastical biography. The limpid purity of his charac- 
 f;er was reflected in his works, and he transmitted to his dis- 
 ciple Gozzoli something of his spirit, with (I venture to 
 think) the full measure of his genius. 
 
 But in this, as on all other occasions, even the higher 
 forms of genius were ultimately regulated by the law of 
 supply and demand. There was a certain religious con- 
 ception abroad in the world. That conception required 
 a visible representation, and the painter appeared to sup- 
 ply the want. The revival of learning had broken upon 
 Europe. The study of the classics had given an impulse 
 to every department of intellect, but it had not yet so al- 
 tered the condition of society as to shake the old belief. 
 The profound ignorance that reigned until the twelfth cen- 
 tury had been indeed dispelled. The grossuess of taste, and 
 he incapacity for appreciating true beauty, which accom- 
 panied that ignorance, had been corrected ; but the devel- 
 opment of the imagination preceded, as it always does pre- 
 cede, the development of the reason. Men were entranced 
 with the chaste beauty of Greek literature before they were 
 imbued with the spirit of abstraction, of free criticism, and 
 of elevated philosophy, which it breathes. They learned to 
 admire a pure style or a graceful picture before they learned 
 to appreciate a refined creed or an untrammelled philosophy. 
 All through Europe, the first effect of the revival of learn- 
 ing was to produce a general efflorescence of the beautiful. 
 A general discontent with the existing forms of belief was 
 
 ' The same thing is related of the Spanish sculptor Hernandez, and of the 
 Spanish painter Juanes. — Ford's Spain, vol. ii. p. 271. 
 
248 RATIONALISM m EUROPE. 
 
 not produced till much later. A material, sensuous, and an 
 thropomorphic faith was still adapted to the intellectual con- 
 dition of the age, and therefore painting was still the special 
 organ of religious emotions. All the painters of that period 
 were strictly religious, that is to say, they invariably subor- 
 dinated considerations of art to considerations of religion. 
 The form of beauty they depicted was always religious beau- 
 ty, and they never hesitated to disfigure their works with 
 loathsome or painful images if they could in that manner 
 add to their religious effect. 
 
 To these general considerations we should add the im- 
 portant influence of Dante, who may be regarded as the 
 most faithful representative of that brief moment in which 
 the renewed study of the pagan writings served only to en- 
 noble and refine, and not yet to weaken, the conceptions of 
 theology. No other European poet realised so fully the 
 sacred character antiquity attributed to the bard. In the 
 great poems of Greece and Rome, human figures occupied 
 the foreground ; and even when supernatural machinery was 
 introduced, it seiwed only to enhance the power or evoke the 
 moral grandeur of mortals. Milton, indeed, soared far be- 
 yond the range of earth ; but when he wrote, religious con- 
 ceptions no longer took the form of palpable and material 
 imagery, and even the grandest representations of spiritual 
 beings under human aspects appeared incongruous and unreal. 
 But the poem of Dante was the last apocalypse. It exercised 
 a supreme ascendency over the imagination at a time when 
 religious imagery was not so much the adjunct as the essence 
 of belief, when the natural impulse of every man was to con- 
 *rert intellectual conceptions into palpable forms, and when 
 painting was in the strictest sense the normal expression of 
 faith. Scarcely any other single influence contributed sc 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 249 
 
 nmch, by purifying and feeding the imagination, to give 
 Christian art a grandeur and a religious perfection, and at 
 the same time a sombre and appalling aspect. ' Dipped in 
 the gloom of earthquake and eclipse,' the pencil of the great 
 poet loved to accumulate images of terror and of suffering, 
 which speedily passed into the works of the artists, enthralled 
 and fascinated the imaginations of the people, and completed 
 a transformation that had long been in progress. At first, 
 after the period of the Catacombs, the painters expatiated 
 ibr the most part upon scenes drawn from the Book of Keve- 
 lation, but usually selected in such a manner as to inspire any 
 sentiment rather than terror. The lamb, which, having been 
 for some centuries the favourite symbol of Christ, was at last 
 coodemned by a council in 707,' the mystic roll with its 
 seven seals, the New Jerusalem with its jewelled battlements, 
 or Bethlehem transfigured in its image, constantly recurred. 
 But many circumstances, of which the panic produced by the 
 beUef that the world must end with the tenth century, and 
 the increased influence of asceticism arising from the permis- 
 sion accorded to the monks of establishing their communities 
 in the cities,' were probably the chief, contributed to effect a 
 
 ' Or, according to others, 692. The object of this council (which was held 
 at Constantinople, and is known under the title 'In Trullo') was to repress the 
 love of allegory that was general ; and a very learned historian of art thinks 
 that it first produced pictures of the Crucifixion. (Emerio David, Hist, de la 
 Peinture, pp. 59-61.) Its decree was afterwards either withdrawn or neglected, 
 for lambs soon reappeared, though they never regained their former ascend- 
 ency in art. As far as I remember, there is no instance of them in the Cata- 
 combs ; but after Constantine they for nearly three centuries had superseded 
 every other symbol. (Rio, Art Ohrelien, Introd. p. 49.) Ciampini says that 
 the council which condemned them was a pseudo-council — not sanctioned by 
 the Pope. ( Vetera Monumenta, pars i. p. 28. See, too, Marangoni, Istoria 
 delta Oappella di Sancta Sanctorum, p. 159.) 
 
 ' At first they were strictly forbidden to remain in the towns. Even the 
 priest-ridden Theodosius made a law commanding all who had embraced the 
 
350 EATIONALISM IN ETIKOPB. 
 
 profound change. The churches in their ornaments, in theii 
 general aspect, and even in their forms,' became the images 
 of death, and painting was tending rapidly in the same 
 dii-ection, when the Inferno of Dante opened a new abyss of 
 terrors to the iuaaginations of the artists, and became the 
 rejiresentative, and in a measure the source, of an art that 
 was at once singularly beautiful, purely religious, and deeply 
 imbued with terrorism and with asceticism. 
 
 These were the characteristics of the first period of re- 
 vived art, and they harmonised well with the intelletual con- 
 dition of the day. After a time, however, the renewed ener- 
 gies of the European mind began to produce effects that were 
 far more important. A spirit of unshackled criticism, a capacity 
 for refined abstractions, a dislike to materialism in faith and to 
 asceticism in practice, a disposition to treat with unceremonious 
 ridicule imposture and ignorance in high places, an impatience 
 of the countless ceremonies and trivial superstitions that were 
 universal, and a growing sense of human dignity, were mani- 
 fested on all sides, and they adumbrated clearly a coming 
 change. The movement was shown in the whole tone of 
 literature, and in the repeated and passionate efforts to attain 
 a more spiritual creed that were made by the precursors of 
 the Reformation. It was shown at least as forcibly in the 
 rapid corruption of every organ of the old religion. They 
 no longer could attract religious fervour; and as their life 
 was gone, they degenerated and decayed. The monasteries, 
 once the scenes of the most marvellous displays of ascetic 
 
 profession of monks to betake themselves to ' vast solitudes ' and ' desert 
 places.' (God. Theod. lib. xvi. tit. 3, e. 1.) 
 
 * That is, by the introduction of the cross, which was the first innovation 
 on the old basilica architecture, and in many of the churches by a slight in- 
 clination of the extremity from the straight line, it is said, to represent the 
 verse, ' Jesus bowed his head and gave up the ghost.' 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 251 
 
 piety, became the seats of revelry, of licentiousness, and of 
 avarice. The sacred relics and the miraculous images, that 
 had so long thrilled the hearts of multitudes, were made a 
 source of unholy traffic, or of unblushing imposition. The 
 indulgences, which were intended to assuage the agonies of 
 a despairing conscience, or to lend an additional charm to the 
 devotions of the pious, became a substitute for all real re- 
 ligion. The Papal See itself was stained with the most de- 
 grading vice, and the Vatican exhibited the spectacle of a 
 pagan court without the redeeming virtue of pagan sincerity. 
 Wherever the eye was turned, it encountered the signs of 
 disorganisation, of corruption, and of decay. For the long 
 night of mediasvalism was now drawing to a close, and the 
 chaos that precedes resurrection was supreme. The spirit of 
 ancient Greece had arisen from the tomb, and the fabric of 
 superstition crumbled and tottered at her touch. The human 
 mind, starting beneath her influence from the dust of ages, 
 cast aside the bonds that had enchained it, and, radiant 
 in the light of recovered liberty, remoulded the structure of 
 its faith. The love of tru^th, the passion for freedom, the 
 sense of human dignity, which the great thinkers of antiquity 
 had inspired, vivified a torpid and down-trodden people, 
 blended with those sublime moral doctrines and with those 
 conceptions of enlarged benevolence, which are at once the 
 glory and the essence of Christianity, introduced a new era 
 of human development, with new aspirations, habits of 
 thought, and conditions of vitality, and withdrawing re- 
 ligious life from the shattered edifice of the past, created 
 a purer faith, and became the promise of an eternal develop- 
 ment. 
 
 This was the tendency of the human intellect, and it was 
 faithfully reflected in the history of art. As the old Catholio 
 
252 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 modes of thought began to fade, the religious idea disappeared 
 from the paintings, and they became purely secular, if not sen- 
 sual, in their tone. Religion, which was once the mistress, was 
 now the servant, of art. Formerly the painter employed his 
 skill simply in embellishing and enhancing a religious idea. 
 He now employed a religious subject as the pretext for the 
 e.vhjbition of mere worldly beauty. He commonly painted 
 his mistress as the Virgin. He arrayed her in the richest 
 attire, and surrounded her with all the circumstances of 
 splendour. He crowded his pictures with nude figures with 
 countenances of sensual loveliness, with every form and atti- 
 tude that could act upon the passions, and not unfrequently 
 with images drawn from the pagan mythology. The crea- 
 tion of beauty became the single object of his art. His work 
 was a secular work, to be judged by a secular standard. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this secularisation of art was 
 due to the genral tone of thought that had been produced 
 in Europe. The artist seeks to represent the conceptions 
 of his time, and his popularity is the proof of his success. In 
 an age in which strong religious belief was general, and in 
 which it turned to painting as to the natural organ of its 
 expression, such a style would have been impossible. The 
 profanity of the painter would have excited universal exe- 
 cration, and all the genius of Titian or Angelo would have 
 been unable to save their works from condemnation. The 
 style became popular, because educated men ceased to look 
 for religion in pictures, or in other words because the habits 
 of thought that made them demand material representations 
 of the objects of their belief had declined. 
 
 This was the ultimate cause of the entire movement. 
 There were, however, two minor causes of great importance, 
 which c<)ntributed largely to the altered tone of art, vfh.Lt 
 
DETELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 253 
 
 tliey at the same time immeasurably increased its perfeo 
 tion — one of them relating especially to colour, and the other 
 to form. 
 
 The first of these causes is to be found in the moral con- 
 dition of Italian society. The age was that of Bianca di 
 <'apello, and of the Borgias. All Italian literature and all 
 1 talian manners were of the laxest character, and the fact was 
 neither concealed nor deplored. But that which especially 
 distinguished Italian immorality is, that, growing up in the 
 midst of all the forms of loveliness, it assumed from the first 
 a kind of sesthetic character, united with the most passionate 
 and yet refined sense of the beautiful, and made art the 
 special vehicle of its expression. This is one of the peculiar 
 characteristics of later Italian painting," and it is one of the ■ 
 chief causes of its artistic perfection. For sensuality has 
 always been extremely favourable to painting,' the object of 
 
 ' German pictures are often indecent, but never sensual. It is all the dif- 
 ference between Swift and Don Juan. The nude figure as painted by Van der 
 Werfif is ivory — as painted by Titian or Correggio, it is life. Spanish art tried 
 much to be religious and respectable ; and, like the Vergognosa at Pisa, put 
 her hands before her eyes in the midst of the wickedness that surrounded her. 
 But I am afraid she sometimes looked through her fingers. This aspect of 
 Itdiau art has been most vividly exhibited in the writings of Stendhal (H. 
 Beyle). 
 
 ^ It is perhaps true, as modem critics say, that the transition of Greek art 
 from Phidias to Praxiteles was a declension. It is certainly true that that 
 transition was from the representation of manly strength, and the form of 
 beauty that is most allied to it, to the representation of beauty of a sensual 
 cast — from an art of which Minerva was the central figure, to an art of which 
 Venus was the type — or (as the German critics say) from the ascendency of 
 the Doric to the ascendency of the Ionic element. But this decadence, if it 
 leally took place, is not, I think, inconsistent with what I have stated in the 
 text ; for sculpture and painting have each their special perfections, and the 
 success of the artist will in a great degree depend upon his appreciation of the 
 peculiar genius of the art he pursues. Now sculpture is as far superior to 
 painting in its capacity for expressing strength and masculine beauty, as paint 
 ing 13 superior to sculpture in expressing warmth and passionate beauty. All 
 
254 EATIONAIISM IN EOEOPE. 
 
 tlie artist being to exhibit to the highest possible degree the 
 beauty and the attractive power of the human body. Twice 
 in the history of art national sensuality has thrown itself 
 into national art, and in each case with the same result. The 
 first occasion was in ancient Greece, at the time when 
 Apelles derived a new inspiration from the voluptuous love- 
 liness of Lais, and the goddess of beauty, glowing with the 
 fresh charms of Phryne or Theodota, kindled a transport of 
 no religious fervour in the Athenian mind. The second occa- 
 sion was in the Italian art of the sixteenth century. 
 
 The rapid progress of a sensual tone in all the schools of 
 Italian art is a fact which is too manifest to be questioned or 
 overlooked ; but there is one school which may be regarded 
 especially as its source and representative. This school was 
 that of the Venetian painters, and it reflected very visibly 
 the character of its cradle. Never perhaps was any other 
 city so plainly formed to be the home at once of passion and 
 of art. Sleeping like Venus of old upon her parent wave, 
 Venice, at least in the period of her glory, comjjrised within 
 herself all tL.j influences that could raise to the highest 
 point the aesthetic sentiment, and all that could lull the moral 
 sentiment to i-epose. Wherever the eye was turned, it was 
 met by forms of strange and varied and entrancing beauty, 
 while every sound that broke upon the ear was mellowed by 
 the Avaters that were below. The thousand lights that glit- 
 tered around the gilded domes of St. Mark, the palaces of 
 
 tUe efforts of a Grecian chisel never equalled the voluptuous power of the 
 brush of Titian ; and, on the other hand, painting has tried in vain to rival the 
 majesty and the force of sculpture. If there be an exception to this last 
 proposition, it is one which proves the rule, for it is furnished by Michael 
 Angelo, the greatest modern sculptor, in the most aculpture-hke frescoes in 
 the world. It should be added, however, that landscape painting is in no sense 
 the creature of sensuality, and Mr. Ruskin has with some force claimed it as a 
 epeuial fruit of Christianity. 
 
DEVELOl'MENTS OF EATIONALISM. 255 
 
 matchless architecture resting on their own soft shadows in 
 the wave, the long paths of murmuring W9.ter, where the 
 gondola sways to the lover's song, and where dark eyes lus- 
 trous with passion gleam from the overhanging balconies, 
 tlie harmony of blending beauties, and the languid and 
 voluptuous charm that pervades the whole, had all told 
 deeply and fatally on the character of the people. At every 
 period of their history, but never more so than in the great 
 period of Venetian art, they had been distinguished at once 
 for their intense appreciation of beauty and for their uni- 
 versal, unbridled, and undisguised licentiousness.' In the 
 midst of such a society it was very natural that a great 
 school of sensual art should arise, and many circumstances 
 conspired in the same direction. Venice was so far removed 
 from the discoveries of the ancient statues, that it was never 
 influenced by what may be termed the learned school of art, 
 which eventually sacrificed all sense of beauty to anatomical 
 studies ; at the same time the simaltaneous appearance of a 
 constellation 'of artists of the very highest order, the luxu- 
 rious habits that provided these artists with abundant 
 patrons, the discovery of oil painting,' which attained its 
 highest perfection under the skill of the Venetian colourists, 
 perhaps even the rich merchandise of the East, accustoming 
 the eye to the most gorgeous hues,' had all in different ways 
 
 ' On the amazing vice of Venice, and on the violent but unsuccessful efforts 
 of the magistrates to arrest it, see much curious evidence in Sabatier, Hisi. de 
 la Llcfulation sur les Femmes Publigues (Paris, 1828). 
 
 ' It is generally said to have been invented in the be^nning of the fifteenth 
 century by Van Eyck, who died in 1440 ; but the claim of Van Eyck is not 
 undisputed. It was introduced into Italy about 1452 by u. Sicilian painter 
 named Antonello. (Eio, Art Chretien, tom. i. p. 354.) 
 
 ' At an earlier period, oriental robes exercised an influence of a different 
 kind upon art. In the thirteenth century, when thoy began to pour into France, 
 the ornamentation, and especially the tracery, of the windows of many of the 
 
256 /EATIONALISM US' ETIEOPE. 
 
 their favourable iufluence upon art. The study of the nude 
 figure, which had been the mainspring of Greek art, and 
 which Christianity had so long suppressed, arose again, and 
 a school of painting was formed, which for subtle sensuality 
 of colouring had never been equalled, and, except by Correg- 
 gio, has scarcely been aj^proached. Titian in this as in other 
 respects was the leader of the school, and he bears to modem 
 much the same relation as Praxiteles bears to ancient art. 
 Both the sculptor and the painter precijiitated art into sensu- 
 ality, both of them destroyed its religious character, both of 
 them raised it to high aesthetio perfection, but in both cases 
 that perfection was followed by a speedy decline.' Even in 
 Venice there was one great representative of the early re- 
 ligious school, but his influence was unable to stay the 
 stream. The Virgin of Bellini was soon exchanged for the 
 Virgin of Titian — the ideal of female piety for the ideal of 
 female beauty. 
 
 A second influence which contributed to the secularisa- 
 tion, and at the same time to the perfection of art, was the 
 discovery of many of the great works of pagan sculpture. 
 
 French cathedrals is said to have been copied accurately from these patterns. 
 See a very curious essay on painted glass by Thfevenot (Paris, 18S1). I may 
 add that, at the time of Augustus, the importation of Indian dresses had told 
 powerfully on Roman art, producing the paintings known as arabesque, and 
 (as Vitruvius complains) diverting the artists from the study of the Greek 
 model. In the middle ages' both Venice and Florence were famous for their 
 dyers. 
 
 ' Praxiteles is said to have definitively given the character of sensuality to 
 Venus, who had previously floated between several ideals of beauty, and also 
 to have been the especial author of the effeminate type of Apollo. Phryne, 
 who was then the great model of voluptuous beauty — she who, having been 
 condemned to death, was absolved on account of her exceeding loveliness — 
 was his mistress. His contemporary Polycles greatly strengthened the sensual 
 movement by introducing into art the hermaphrodite. See Rio, AH Chretien, 
 Introd. pp. 17-21 ; 0. Miiller, Manuel (T Archeologie, tom. i. pp. 156, 157. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 257 
 
 The complete disappearance of these during the preceding 
 centuries may be easily explained by the religious and intel- 
 lectual changes that had either accompanied or speedily fol- 
 lowed the triumph of Christianity. The priests, and especial- 
 ly the monks, being firmly convinced that pagan idols were 
 all tenanted by demons, for some time made it one of their 
 principal objects to break them in pieces, and cupidity 
 proved scarcely less destructive than fanaticism. Among 
 the ancient Greeks, as is well known, marble had never ob- 
 tained the same ascendency in sculpture as among ourselves. 
 Great numbers of statues were made of bronze, but the mas- 
 terpieces of the most illustrious artists were of far more 
 valuable materials, usually of ivory or of gold. No features 
 are more wonderful in the history of the Greek states than 
 the immense sums they consented to withdraw from all other 
 objects, to expend upon the cultivation of beauty, and the 
 religious care with which these precious objects were pre- 
 served unharmed amid all the vicissitudes of national for- 
 tune, amid war, rebellion, and conquest. This preservation 
 was in part due to the intense sesthetic feeling that was so 
 general in antiquity, but in part also to the catholicity of 
 spirit that usually accompanied polytheism, which made 
 men regard with reverence the objects and ceremonies even of 
 worships that were not their own, and which was especially 
 manifested by the Romans, who in all their conquests re- 
 spected the temples of the vanquished as rej)resenting under 
 many forms the aspiration of man to his Creator. Both of 
 these sentiments were blotted out by Christianity. For 
 about 1,500 years the conception that there could be any- 
 thing deserving of reverence or respect, or even of tolerance, 
 m the religions that were external to the Church, was abso- 
 lutely unknown in Christendom ; and at the same time the 
 
 VOL. I. — 17 
 
258 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 ascetic theories I have noticed destroyed all perception of 
 beauty, or at least of that type of beauty which sculpture 
 represented. The bronze statues were converted into coin- 
 age, the precious metals were plundered,' the marble was 
 mutilated or forgotten. When Christianity arose, the solos- 
 sal st:..tue of Jupiter Olympus, in gold and ivory, which was 
 deemed the masterpiece of Phidias, and the greatest of all 
 the acliievements of art, still existed at Olympia. Our last 
 notice of it is during the reign of Julian. At Rome, the in- 
 vasion of the barbarians, the absolute decadence of taste that 
 followed their ascendency, and those great conflagrations 
 Wiiich more than once reduced vast distiicts to ruin, com- 
 pleted the destruction of the old traditions, while most of the 
 statues that had been transported to Constantinople, and Iiad 
 survived the fury of the monks, were destroyed by the Icon- 
 oclasts, the Crusaders, or the Mahometans. 
 
 Towards the close of the twelfth century, as we have 
 already seen, Nicolas of Pisa for the first time broke the 
 slum ber of mediseval art by the skill he had derived from the 
 works of antiquity. There was then, however, no ancient 
 model of the highest class known, and the principal subject 
 of his study is said to have been a pagan sarcophagus of third 
 or fourth rate merit, which had been employed for the burial 
 of the mother of the famous Countess Matilda, and which 
 was then in the Cathedral, and is now in the Campo Santo, 
 of Pisa. Giotto, Masaccio, and their contemporaries, all pur- 
 sued their triumphs without the assistance of any great 
 ancient model. As Flaxman has noticed, Poggio, who wrote 
 at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was only able to 
 enumerate six statues within the walls of Rome. Rienziand 
 
 ' Constautins himself set the example in this respect. See the admiring 
 remarks of Eusebii:<i, Vita Const lib. iii. caps. 5, 6. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 259 
 
 Petrarch gave some slight impulse to archaeological collec- 
 tions, and during the latter half of the fifteenth century the 
 exertions of the Medici, and of a long series of popes, sus- 
 tained by the passionate admiration for antiquity that fol- 
 h.wed the revival of learning, produced vast works of exca 
 vation, which were rewarded by the discovery of numerous 
 statues.' Art immediately rose to an unparalleled perfection, 
 and an unbounded and almost universal enthusiasm was 
 created. Paul II. indeed, in 1468, directed a fierce persecu- 
 tion against the artists at Rome ; ' but as a general rule his 
 successors were warm patrons of ai-t, and Julius II. and Leo 
 X. may even be regarded as the most munificent of their 
 munificent age. All the artists of Rome and Florence made 
 the remains of pagan antiquity their models. Michael Angelo 
 himself proclaimed the Torso Belvedere his true master.' 
 The distinctive type and tone of Christianity was thus almost 
 banished from art, and replaced by the types of paganism. 
 
 Such was the movement which was general in Italian art, 
 but it did not pass unchallenged, and it was retarded by one 
 most remarkable reaction. Under the very palace of the 
 Medici, and in the midst of the noblest collections of pagan 
 art, a great preacher arose who perceived clearly the danger- 
 ous tendency, and who employed the full force of a transcen- 
 
 ' When this impulse had ceased in Italy, it was still in some degree con- 
 tiimed by the explorations of the French in Greece, where a French consulate 
 was. formed about 1630. See Vitet, Etudes sur I'ffistoire de I'Arl, torn. i. 
 p. Si. 
 
 ' See the description in Platina. 
 
 ' And was accordingly in sculpture (as in painting) singularly unfortunate 
 in catching the moral expression of Scripture subjects. His Moses — ^half prize- 
 fighter, half Jupiter Tonans — is certainly the extreme antithesis to ' the meek- 
 est man in all the world.' His colossal statue of David after his victory over 
 Goliath (it would be as rational to make a colossal statue of a Lilliputian) 
 would be perfect as an Achilles. 
 
260 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 dent genius to arrest it. The influence of Savonarola upon 
 painting has heen so lately and so fully described by an able 
 living historian of art,' that it is not necessary to dwell upon 
 it at length. It is sufficient to say, that during the last few 
 years of the fifteenth century a complete religious revival 
 took place in Tuscany, and that Savonarola, who was much 
 more than a brilliant orator, perceived very clearly that in 
 order to make it permanent it was necessary to ally it with 
 the tendencies of the age. He accordingly, like all success- 
 ful religious revivalists of ancient and modern times, pro- 
 ceeded to identify religion with liberty and with democracy- 
 by his denunciations of the tyranny of the Medici, and by 
 the creation of great lending societies, for the purpose of 
 checking the oppressive usury that had become general. He 
 endeavoured to secure the ascendency of his opinions over 
 the coming generation by guiding the education of the chil- 
 dren, and by making them the special objects of his preach- 
 ing. He attempted above all to purify the very sources of 
 Italian life; by regenerating the sacred music, and by restor- 
 ing painting to its pristine purity. Week after week he 
 launched from the pulpit the most scathing invectives against 
 the artists who had painted prostitutes in the character of 
 the Virgin, who under the pretext of religious art had pan- 
 dered to the licentiousness of their age, and who had en- 
 tirely forgotten their true dignity as the teachers of mankind. 
 As these invectives were not inspired by the fanaticism of 
 the old Iconoclasts, but proceeded from one who possessed to 
 the highest degree the Tuscan perception of the beautiful, 
 they produced an impression that was altogether unparal- 
 leled. Almost all the leading painters of Italy were collected 
 at Florence, and almost all, under the influence of Savona 
 
 ' Eio — I think the best part of his boot. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 261 
 
 rola, attempted to revive the religious character of art. The 
 change was immediately exhibited in the painting of Italy, 
 and the impression Savonarola made upon the artists was 
 sliown by the conduct of many of them when the great re- 
 former had perished in the flames. Botticelli cast aside his 
 pencil for ever. Baceio della Porta ' retired broken-hearted 
 into a monastery. Perugino (perhaps the greatest of all the 
 purely religious painters of Catholicism) glided rapidly into 
 scepticism, and on his death-bed refused disdainfully the as- 
 sistance of a confessor. Raphael, who had derived all the 
 religious sentiment of his early paintings from Perugino, was 
 the first to vindicate the orthodoxy of Savonarola by insert- 
 ing his portrait among those of the doctors of the Church, in 
 the fresco of the Dispute of the Sacrament. 
 
 After the death of Savonarola the secularisation of art 
 was portentously rapid. Even Raphael, who exhibits the 
 tendency less than his contemporaries, never shrank from de- 
 stroying the religious character of his later works by the 
 introduction of incongruous images. Michael Angelo, that 
 great worshipper of physical force, probably represented the 
 influence to the highest degree. Scarcely any other great 
 painter so completely eliminated the religious sentiment from 
 art, and it was reserved for him to destroy the most fearful 
 of all the conceptions by which the early painters had 
 thrilled the people. By making the Last Judgment a study 
 of naked figures, and by introducing into it Charon and his 
 boat, he most efiectuallly destroyed all sense of its reality, 
 and reduced it to the province of artistic criticism. This 
 fresco may be regarded as the culmination of the movement. 
 There were of course at a later period some great pictures, 
 and even some religious painters, but painting never again 
 
 ' Better known as Fra Bartolommeo. 
 
262 EATIONAIilSM UST EUBOPE. 
 
 assumed its old position as the normal and habitual expres- 
 sion of the religious sentiments of the educated. In the first 
 period of medisevalism it had been exclusively religious, and 
 jesthetic considerations were almost forgotten. In the 
 second period the two elements coexisted. In the last period 
 the religious sentiment disappeared, and the conception of 
 beauty reigned alone. Art had then completed its cycle. 
 It never afterwards assumed a prominent or commanding in- 
 fluence over the minds of men. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that a transition very similar to 
 that we have traced in painting took place about the same 
 time in architecture. The architect, it is true, does not sup- 
 ply actual objects of worship, and in this respect his art is 
 less closely connected than that of the painter with the his- 
 tory of anthropomorphism ; but on the other hand, the period 
 in which men require a visible material object of worship, is 
 also that in which their religious tone and sentiment are most 
 dependent upon imposing sensuous displays. Christianity 
 has created three things which religious poetry has ever 
 recognised as the special types and expressions of its relig- 
 ious sentiment. These are the church bell, the organ, and 
 the Gothic cathedral. The first is said to have been invented 
 by Paulinus, a bishop of Nola in Campania, about the year 
 400.' The second appears to have been first used in the 
 Greek Church, and to have passed into the Western Empire 
 in the seventh or eighth century.' The third arose under the 
 
 ' Anderson, Ifist of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 36. There is a very curioua 
 collection of piissages from the Acts of the Saints, in which bells are alluded 
 to (but none of them appartntly earlier than the beginning of the peventh 
 century) in an out-of-the-way quarter. (Suarez, De Fide, lib. ii. u. 16.) See, 
 too, Colgan's Ada Sanctorum Hibernim, torn. i. p. 149. 
 
 ' Anderson, vol. i. p. 30. There had before been known a water organ, 
 called an hydraulicon. There was also a wind instrument which some have 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALI.iM. 263 
 
 revived sense of beauty of the twelfth century, and preceded 
 by a little the resurrection of painting. The new pictures 
 and the new churches were both the occasions of ebullitiona 
 of Ihe most passionate devotion. When Cimabue painted 
 on(; C'f his famous Virgins, the people of Florence gathered 
 arojud it as to a religious festival, they transported it with 
 pi-ayers and thanksgivings to the church, and tilled the 
 streets with hyrune of joy, because a higher realisation of a 
 n.'ligious conception had flashed upon them. Just so those 
 majestic cathedrals that arose almost simultaneously through- 
 out Europe became at once the channel of the enthusiasm of 
 Christendom ; the noblest efforts of self-sacrifice were made 
 to erect them, and they were universally regarded as the 
 purest expression of the religious feeling of the age. That 
 this estimate was correct, that no other buildings the world 
 has seen are so admirably calculated to produce a sensation 
 of blended awe and tranquillity, to harmonise or assuage the 
 qualms of passion, to lull to sleep the rebellious energies of 
 the intellect, to create around the mind an artificial, un- 
 worldly, but most impressive atmosphere, to represent a 
 Church which acts upon the imagination by obscurity and 
 terrorism, and by images of solemn and entrancing beauty, 
 will be admitted by all who have any perception of the char- 
 acter, or any knowledge of the history of art. Whenever 
 these modes of feeling have been very general, Gothic archi- 
 tecture has been the object of rapturous admiration. When- 
 placed among the antecedents of the organ, but which seems to have been 
 almost exactly the same as a Scotch bagpipe. I am sorry to say Julian had 
 the bad taste to praise it in one of his epigrams. (See Burnoy, Hist, of Music, 
 vol. ii. pp. 65-6'7.) There is a curious series of papers on the musical instru- 
 ments in the middle ages, by Coussemaker, in the Annales Archeologiqnei 
 (edited by Didron), torn. iv. They hare since, I believe, been published 
 separately. 
 
20i EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ever these modes of feeling were very rare, Gothic architec- 
 ture has sunk into neglect and disfavour.' 
 
 I do not intend to follow at length the vicissitudes of 
 architecture, or to trace the successive phases of its seculari- 
 
 ' We have a very striking example of this in both the buildings and the 
 criticiams of the eighteenth century. What (e. g.) should we now say to an 
 imaginative writer who, speaking of York Minster, assured us, as Smollett 
 does, 'that the external appearance of an old cathedral cannot but be dis- 
 pleasing to the eye of every man who has any idea of propriety and propor- 
 tion ; ' who could only describe Durham Cathedral as ' a huge gloomy pile : ' 
 and who acknowledged that he associated the idea of a church with a spire 
 especially with that of a man impaled (see Humphrey Clinker) ? Every one, 
 I should think, who was well acquainted with the literature of the eighteenth 
 century, must have been struck with the contempt for Gothic architecture per- 
 vading it ; bat the extent to which this was carried was never fully shown till 
 the publication, a few years ago, of an exceedingly curious book by the Abb^ 
 Corblet, called E Architecture du Moyen Agejugee par les Ecrivains des deux 
 derniers Siicles (Paris, 1869). The learned antiquarian has shown that, dur- 
 ing the last half of the seventeenth century, and during the whole of the 
 eighteenth century, there was scarcely a single writer, no matter what may 
 have been his religious opinions, who did not speak of Gothic architecture 
 not merely without appreciation, but with the most supreme and unqualified 
 contempt! The list includes, among others, Ftoelon, Bossuet, Molifere, Fleury, 
 RoUin, Montesquieu, La Bruyfere, Helv(5tius, Rousseau, Mengs, and Voltaire. 
 Goethe ax, one time opposed, but afterwards yielded to, the stream. Milan 
 Cathedral was the special object of ridicule. Gothic architecture was then 
 almost universally ascribed to the Goths of the fifth century, and Bishop War- 
 burton suggested that they had derived the idea from the overarching boughs 
 of their native forests. Some, however (and among others Barry), regarded it 
 «s an imperfect imitation of Greek architecture. Many of the criticisms were 
 very curious. Thus, Dupuis thought the zodiacs on the cathedrals were a rem- 
 nant of the worship of Mithra. Another critie found a connection between 
 the shapt of the ogive and the eggs of Isis. A third, named Montliiisant, 
 explained all the sculptures on the fronts of Notre Dame de Paris by the 
 science of the philosopher's stone : God the Father, holding an angel in each 
 hand, is the Deity calling into existence the incombustible sulphur and the 
 mercury of life. The flying dragon biting its tail is the philosopher's stone, 
 composed of the fixed and the volatile substances, the former of which devours 
 the latter, A;c., &c. {CEuvres de St. Foix, tom. iii. pp., 245, 246.) It is to the 
 Catholic revival of the present century that we mainly owe the revival of Gotuio 
 architectur" 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 265 
 
 sation. It is sufficient to observe, that about the time when 
 the dense ignorance that had overspread Europe was dis- 
 pelled, there arose a form of architecture which was exclu- 
 sively and emphatically Christian, which has been universally 
 admitted to be beyond all othei-s the most accordant with 
 the spirit of mediaeval religion, and in which the highest 
 sense of beauty was subordinated to the rgjigious sentiment. 
 At the time when the modern and intellectual chaos that 
 preceded the Reformation was universal, and when painting 
 had been secularised and had passed entirely into the wor- 
 ship of beauty, architecture exhibited a corresponding de- 
 cadence. The old Gothic style was everywhere discarded, 
 and it was supplanted under the influence of Brunelleschi ' by 
 a style which some persons may deem more beautiful, but 
 which is universally admitted to be entirely devoid of a re- 
 ligions character. The gorgeous, gay, and beautifully pro- 
 portioned edifices that then rose to fashion were, in fact, 
 avowedly formed from the model of the great temples of 
 antiquity, and the beauty to which they aspired was purely 
 classic. Cologne Cathedral, the last of the great mediaeval 
 works, remained unfinished while the whole energies of 
 Europe were concentrated upon the church of St. Peter at 
 Rome. The design of this great work was confided to 
 Michael Angelo, who had been the chief agent in the secu- 
 larisation of painting, and the spirit in which he undertook 
 it was clearly expressed in his famous exclamation, that he 
 would suspend the Pantheon in the air. 
 
 ' It is cme that the Greek traditions had always lingered in Italy, and 
 that pure Gothic never succeeded in gaining an ascendency there as in other 
 countries. The little church of St. Maria della Spina, at Pisa, which was 
 designed by Nicolas of Pisa, is probably the best specimen of purely Itahan 
 origin, for Milan Cathedral is said to be due to German architects ; but this 
 fact, while it accounts for Italy having been the great assailant of the Gothic, 
 did not prevent its influence from being cosmopolitan. 
 
266 EATIONALISM IK EUROPE. 
 
 Of all the edifices that have been raised by the hand of 
 man, there is none that presents to the historian of the 
 Iiuman mind a deeper interest than St. Peter's, and there is 
 certainly none that tells a sadder tale of the frustration oJ 
 human efforts and the futility of human hopes. It owes its 
 greatest splendour to a worldly and ambitious pontiff,' who 
 lias not even obtained an epitaph beneath its dome. It was 
 designed to be the eternal monument of the glory and the 
 universality of Catholicism, and it has become the most im- 
 pressi\e memorial of its decay. The most sublime associa- 
 tions that Could appeal to the intellect or the religious sen- 
 timent cluster thickly around it, but an association of which 
 none had dreamed has consecrated it, and will abide with it 
 for ever. The most sacred relics of the Catholic faith are 
 assembled within its walls. The genius of Michael Angelo, 
 Raphael, Bramante, Cellini, Thorwaldsen, and Canova has 
 adorned it. Mosaics of matchless beauty reproduce the 
 greatest triumphs of Christian painting, and mingle their 
 varied hues with those gorgeous marbles that might have 
 absorbed the revenues of a kingdom. Beneath that majestic 
 dome, which stands like the emblem of eternity, and dwarfs 
 the proudest monuments below, rest the remains of those 
 who were long deemed the greatest of the sons of men. 
 There lie those mediaeval pontiffs who had borne aloft the 
 lamp of knowledge in an evil and benighted age, who had 
 guided and controlled the march of nations, and had been 
 almost worshipped as the representatives of the Almighty. 
 There too the English traveller pauses amid many more 
 splendid objects at the sculptured slab which bears the names 
 of the last scions of a royal race, that for good or for ill liad 
 deeply influenced the destiny of his land. But inexpressi- 
 
 ' Julius IL 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 267 
 
 bly great as are these associations in the eyes of the theolo- 
 gian, the recollectiou of Luther, and the indulgences, and the 
 Reformation, will tower above them all ; while to the philo- 
 sophic historian St. Peter's possesses an interest of a still 
 higher order. For it represents the conclusion of that im- 
 pulse, growing out of the anthropomorphic habits of an early 
 civilisation, which had led men for so many centuries to ex- 
 pi-ess their religious feelings by sensuous images of grandeur, 
 of obscurity, and of terrorism. It represents the absorption 
 of the religious by the sesthetic element, which was the sure 
 sign that the religious function of architecture had termi- 
 nated. The age of the cathedrals had passed. The age of 
 the printing press had begun. 
 
 I have dwelt at considerable length upon this aspect of 
 the history of art, both because it is, I think, singularly fasci- 
 nating in itself, and because it reflects with striking fidelity 
 the religious developments of the time. When the organs 
 of a belief are entirely changed, it may be assumed that 
 there is some corresponding change in the modes of thought 
 of which they are the expression ; and it cannot be too often 
 repeated, that before printing was invented, and while all 
 conceptions were grossly anthropomorphic, the true course 
 of ecclesiastical history is to be sought much more in the 
 works of the artists than of the theologians. It is now ad- 
 mitted by most competent judges, that the true causes of the 
 Reformation are to be found in the deep change effected in 
 the intellectual habits of Europe by that revival of learning 
 which began about the twelfth century in the renewed study 
 of the Latin classics, and reached its climax after the fall 
 of Constantinople in the diffusion of the knowledge of 
 Greek and of the philosophy of Pl9,to by the Greek exiles. 
 This revival ultimately produced a condition of religious 
 
268 RATIONALISM Df ECEOPE. 
 
 feeling wliicli found its expression in some countries in Prot 
 estantism, and in other countries in the prevalence among 
 the educated classes of a diluted and rationalistic Catholicism 
 entirely different from the gross and absorbing superstition 
 of the middle ages. Which of these two forms was adopted 
 in any particular country depended upon many special polit- 
 ical or social, or even geographical considerations; but, 
 wherever the intellectual movement was strongly felt, one 
 or other appeared. It is surely a remarkable coincidence, 
 that while the literature of antiquity was thus on a large 
 scale modifying the mediaeval modes of thought, the ancient 
 sculptures should on a smaller scale have exercised a corre- 
 sponding influence upon the art that was their expression. 
 And, although the aesthetic movement was necessarily con- 
 fined to the upper classes and to the countries in which civili- 
 sation was most prominent, it represented faithfully a ten- 
 dency that in different forms was still more widely displayed. 
 It represented the gradual destruction of the ascendency which 
 the Church had once exercised over every department of in- 
 tellect, the growing difference in realised belief between the 
 educated and the ignorant, and the gradual disappearance 
 of anthropomorphic or idolatrous conceptions among the 
 former. 
 
 The aspect, however, of the subject which is peculiarly 
 significant, is, I think, to be found in the natui-e of the transi- 
 tion which religious art underwent. The sense of beauty 
 gradually encroached upon and absorbed the feeling of rev- 
 erence. This is a form of religious decay which is very far 
 from being confined to the history of art. The religion of 
 one age is often the poetry of the next. Ai-ound every liv- 
 ing and operative faith there lies a region of allegory and 
 of imagination into which opinions frequently pass, and in 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATI0NALI8M 269 
 
 which they long retain a transfigured and ideahsed existence 
 after their natural life has died away. They are, as it were, 
 deflected. They no longer tell directly and forcibly upon 
 human actions. They no longer produce terror, inspire 
 hopes, awake passions, or mould the characters of men ; yet 
 they siill exercise a kind of reflex influence, and form part 
 of the ornamental culture of the age. They are turned into 
 allegories. They are interpreted in a nou-natural sense. 
 They are invested with a fanciful, poetic, but most attractive 
 garb. They follow instead of controlling the current of 
 thought, and being transformed by far-fetched and ingenious 
 explanations, they become the embellishments of systems of 
 belief that are wholly irreconcilable with their original ten- 
 dencies. The gods of heathenism were thus translated from 
 the sphere of religion to the sphere of poetry. The grotesque 
 legends and the harsh doctrines of a superstitious faith are 
 so explained away, that they appear graceful myths fore- 
 shadowing and illustrating the conceptions of a brighter 
 day. For a time they flicker upon the horizon with a softly 
 beautiful light that enchants the poet, and lends a charm to 
 the new system with which they are made to blend; but at 
 last this too fades away. Religious ideas die like the sun ; 
 their last rays, possessing little heat, are expended in creat- 
 ing beauty. 
 
 There can be no question that the steady tendency of the 
 European mind, not merely in the period that elapsed be- 
 tween the revival of learning in the twelfth century and the 
 Reformation, but also in that between the Reformation and 
 :)ur own day, has been to disengage itself more and more 
 from all the conceptions which are connected either with 
 fetishism or with anthropomorphism. The evidence of this 
 meets us on all sides. We find it among the Catholics, in 
 
270 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 the steady increase in Catholic countries of a purely rational- 
 istic public opinion, in the vast multiplication of rationalistic 
 writings, and also in the profound difference in the degree of 
 reverence attached even by fervent Catholics to images and 
 talismans, in cities like Paris, vs^hich are in the centre of the 
 intellectual movement of the age, and in cities like Seville 
 or Naples, which have long been excluded from it. Among 
 the Protestants the same tendency is displayed with equal 
 force in the rapid destruction of what is termed the sacra- 
 mentarian principle. This is manifest in the steady and 
 almost silent evanescence of that doctnue of consubstantia- 
 tion which was once asserted with such extreme emphasis as 
 the distinctive mark of the great Lutheran sect, but which is 
 now scarcely held, or if held is scarcely insisted on ; ' in the 
 decadence of the High Church party, which in the seven- 
 teenth century comprised the overwhelming majority of the 
 Anglican clergy, but which in the nineteenth century, not- 
 withstanding a concurrence of favourable circumstances and 
 the exertions of a leader of extraordinary genius, never in- 
 cluded more than a minority ; ' in the constant alteration of 
 
 ' Indeed in Prussia, and some other parts of Germany, the Calvinists and 
 Lutherans have actually coalesced. The tendency to assimilation appears to 
 have been strongly felt as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, and 
 Bishop Bedell exerted himself strongly to promote it. (See some interesting 
 particulars iu his Life, by Usher.) On the recent amalgamation of the Luther- 
 ans and Calvinists in Germany, and on its relation to rationalism, there are 
 some remarks worth reading in Amand Saintes' Hist, de Rationalisme en 
 Allemagne. 
 
 '^ The principles of parties cuange so much more than their names, that it 
 iii not easy to get an accurate notion of their strength at different periods. 
 Shortly after the accession of William III., the Low Church clergy, according 
 to llacaulay {History of England, vol. iii. p. T41), scarcely numbered a tenth 
 part of t le priesthood. On their strength in the present controversy, see some 
 curious staiistics in Conybeare's Essay on Church Parties. The failure of 
 the movement was very candidly confessed by the leader, in his Anglican 
 
DliVELOPlIENTS OF RATIONALISM. 271 
 
 the proportion between Anglicans and Dissenters, to tho 
 detriment of the former; and in the rapid development of 
 continental Protestantism into rationalism. 
 
 The dominating cause of this movement is, as I have 
 said, to be found mainly in that process of education which 
 is effected by the totality of the influences of education, and 
 which produces both a capacity and a disposition to rise 
 above material conceptions, and to sublimate all portions of 
 belief. There is, however, one separate branch of knowledge 
 which has exercised such a deep, and at the same time such 
 a distinct, influence upon it, that it requires a separate notice. 
 I mean the progress of physical science modifying our 
 notions of the government of the universe. 
 
 In the early Church the interests of theology were too 
 absorbing to leave any room for purely secular studies. If 
 scientific theories were ever discussed, it was simply with a 
 view to elucidating some theological question, and the con- 
 troversy was entirely governed by the existing notions of 
 inspiration. On this subject two doctrines prevailed, which 
 did not by any means exclude each other, but were both 
 somewhat ditferent from those that are now professed — one 
 of them being allegorical, the other intensely literal. The 
 first, which had been extremely popular among the Jewish 
 commentators, rested upon • the belief, that besides the direct 
 and manifest meaning of a scriptural narrative, which was 
 to be ascertained by the ordinary modes of exegesis, there 
 was an occult meaning, which could be discovered only by 
 the eye of faith, or at all events by human ingenuity guided 
 by the defined doctrines of the Church. Thus, while the 
 historian was apparently relating a very simjile narrative, or 
 enforcing a very simple truth, his real and primary object 
 
272 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 might be to unfold some Christian mystery, of which all the 
 natural objects he mentioned were symbols. 
 
 This notion, which in modern times has been systematised 
 and developed with great ingenuity by Swedenborg in his 
 ' Doctrine of Correspondences,' was the origin of many of 
 those extremely far-fetched, and, as they would now appear, 
 absurd interpretations of Scripture that are so numerous in 
 the Fathers, and several of which I have already had occa- 
 sion to notice. Supposing it to be true, a very important 
 question arose concerning the comparative authority of the 
 historical and the spiritual meanings. 
 
 Origen, as is well known, made the principle of allegori- 
 cal interpretation the basis of a system of freethinking, some- 
 times of the boldest character. Manichseism having violently 
 assailed the Mosaic cosmogony, he cordially accepted the 
 assault as far as it was directed against the literal interpreta- 
 tion, turned into absolute ridicule, as palpable fables, the 
 stories of the serpent and the trees of life and of knowledge, 
 and contended that they could only be justified as allegories 
 representing spiritual truths.' Origen, however, verged far 
 
 ' See Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme, torn. i. pp. 286-288. Barbeyrac, 
 Morale des Peres, ch. vii., has collected a number of wonderful extravagances 
 of interpretation into which the lore of allegory led Origen. One of the most 
 curious writings of the ancient Church bearing on this subject has been lately 
 printed in the SpiciUgium Solesmense (curante Dom. J. B. Pitra). It is the 
 Clavis of St. Melito, who was bishop of Sardis, it is said, in the beginning of 
 the second century, and consists of a catalogue of many hundreds of birds, 
 beasts, plants, and minerals, that were symbolical of Christian virtues, doctrines, 
 and personages. 
 
 A modern High Churchman writes : ' I believe that a geologist deeply im- 
 pressed with the mystery of baptism — that mystery by which a new creature 
 is formed by means of water and fire — would never have fallen into the absur- 
 dities of accounting for the formation of the globe solely by water or solely 
 by fire. He would not have maintained a Vulcanian or a Neptunian theory. 
 He would have suspected that the truth lay in the union of both.' — Sewell, 
 Christian Morals, p. 323. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 2Y3 
 
 too closely upon heresy to be regared as a representative of 
 the Church ; and the prevailing though not veiy clearly de- 
 fined opinion among the orthodox seems to have been, that 
 the literal and the allegorical interpretations should be both 
 retained. 
 
 Perhaps the clearest illustration of this doctrine is to be 
 found in a short treatise of St. Augustine in defence of Gen- 
 esis against the Manichseans, which is very remarkable when 
 we remember that its author was not more distinguished for 
 his great abilities than for the precision and logical charac- 
 ter of his mind. In this work, St. Augustine reviews and 
 answers at length the objections which the Manichseans had 
 brought against each separate portion of the six days' work. 
 Having done this, he proceeds to lay down the principle, that 
 besides the literal meaning, there was a spiritual meaning 
 which was veiled in the form of allegory. Thus the record 
 of the six days' creation contained, not merely a description 
 of the first formation of the material world, but also a pro- 
 phetic sketch of the epochs into which the history of man- 
 kind was to be divided ; the sixth day being the Christian 
 dispensation, in which the man and woman, or Christ and 
 the Church, were to appear upon earth.' Nor did it fore- 
 shadow less clearly the successive stages of the Christian 
 life. First of all, the light of faith streams upon the mind 
 which is still immersed in the waves of sin ; then the firma- 
 ment of discipline divides things carnal from things spiritual ; 
 then the regenerated soul is raised above the things of earth, 
 and prepared for the production of virtue ; spiritual intelli- 
 gences rise like the planets in their various orders in the 
 
 ' The Church being wedded to Christ, ' bone of his bone, and flesh of hig 
 flesh,' that is to say, participating alike of his strength and of his purity. 
 (De Qeiiesi, contra Manichceos, lib. i. c. 23.) 
 VOL. I. — 18 
 
274 EATIONALISM EST EUROPE. 
 
 firmament of discipline, good works spring from the waves 
 of trial as the fish from the sea, the purified mind itself pro- 
 duces its own graces, till, sanctified thought being wedded 
 to sanctified action, as Eve to Adam, the soul is prepared for 
 its coming rest.' In the same way, when the serpent was 
 condemned to creej) along the earth, this meant that tempta- 
 tion comes commonly by pride and sensuality." When it 
 was condemned to eat earth, this probably signified the vice 
 of curiosity, plunging into the unseen. When it is related 
 that there was a time when no rain fell upon the earth, but 
 that a mist, rising from the ground, watered its face, this 
 means that prophets and apostles were once unnecessary, for 
 e\erj man bore the spring of revelation in his own breast. 
 The literal narrative was true, and so was the spiritual signi- 
 fication ; but if in the first anything was found which could 
 not be literally interpreted in a manner consonant either with 
 the doctrines of the Church or with the dignity of the Crea- 
 tor, the passage was to be treated as an enigma, and its true 
 purport was to be sought in the spiritual meaning.' Some 
 touches of description were inserted solely with a view to 
 that meaning. Thus, when in the summary of the creation 
 that is said to have been efiected in one day which was really 
 eifected in six, and when the 'green herbs' are specially 
 singled out among created things, these expressions, which, 
 taken literally, would be pointless or inaccurate, are intended . 
 merely to direct the mind to particular portions of the alle- 
 gory. 
 
 Together with the method of interpretation laid down iu' 
 
 ' Lib. V. cap. 25. This notion of marriage representing the union of the 
 two main elements of life, is very beautifully developed by Swedenborg, in a 
 Dook on Conjugal Affection. 
 
 ' The chest signifying pride, and the stomach sensuality. 
 
 • Lib. ii. cap. 2, 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM, 275 
 
 tHs and in otLer works of the early Church, there was an- 
 other different, though, as I have said, not necessarily antag- 
 onistic one, of an intensely literal character. Theologians 
 were accustomed to single out any incidental expressions 
 that might be applied in any way to scientific theories, even 
 though they were simply the metaphors of poetry or rhetoric, 
 or the ordinary phrases of common conversation, and to 
 interpret them as authoritative declarations, superseding all 
 the deductions of mere worldly science. The best known 
 example of this is to be found in those who condemned the 
 opinions of Galileo, because it had been said that the ' sun 
 runneth about from one end of heaven to the other,' and 
 that ' the foundations of the earth are so firmly fixed that 
 they cannot be moved.' It may be well, however, to give an 
 illustration of an earlier date of the extent to which this 
 mode of interpretation was carried. 
 
 Among the very few scientific questions which occupied 
 a considerable amount of attention in the early Church, one of 
 the most remarkable was that concerning the existence of the 
 Antipodes. The Manichseans had chanced to stumble on the 
 correct doctrine,' and consequently the Fathers opposed it. 
 Although, however, the leaders of the Church were appar- 
 ently unanimous in denying the existence of the Antipodes, 
 it appears that the contrary opinion had spread to a con- 
 siderable extent among the less noted Christians, and some 
 fear was entertained lest it should prove a new heresy. 
 
 About the year a.d. 535, in the reign of Justinian, there 
 was living in a monastery of Alexandria an old monk named 
 Cosmas, to whom the eyes of many were then turned. He 
 had been in his youth a merchant, and in that profession had 
 travelled much, especially in the regions of India and of 
 
 ' Beauaobre, Hist, du Mamchiisme, torn. i. p. 246. 
 
276 KATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 Ethiopia. He was also noticed for his keen and inquisitive 
 mind, and for his scientific attainn(ients, and since he had 
 embraced a religious life he had devoted himself zealously to 
 the relations between Scripture and science. At the earnest 
 request of some of the theologians of his time, he deter- 
 mined, though now somewhat broken in health, and suffer- 
 ing especially, as he tells us, from ' a certain dryness both of 
 the eyes and of the stomach,' to employ the remainder of 
 his life in the composition of a great work, which was not 
 only to refute the ' anile fable ' of the Antipodes, but was to 
 form a complete system of the universe, based upon the 
 teaching of Revelation. 
 
 This book is called the ' Topographia Christiana,' or 
 ' Christian Opinion concerning the World.' ' Independently 
 of its main interest, as probably the most elaborate work on 
 the connection between science and the Bible which the early 
 Church has bequeathed us, it is extremely curious on account 
 of its many digressions concerning life and manners in the 
 different nations Cosmas had visited. It opens with a tone 
 of great confidence. It is 'a Christian topography of the 
 universe, established by demonstrations from Divine Scrip- 
 ture, concerning which it is not lawful for a Christian to 
 doubt.' ° In a similar strain the writer proceeds to censure 
 with great severity those weak-minded Christians who had 
 allowed the subtleties of Greek fables, or the deceitful glitter 
 of mere human science, to lead them astray, forgetting that 
 Scripture contained intimations of the nature of the universe 
 of far higher value and authority than any to which uu- 
 
 ' This work is published in the Benedictine edition of the Greei: Fathers 
 (Paris, 1706), torn. ii. I have quoted the Benedictine Latin translation. In 
 his preface, Montfaucon has collected a long chain of passages from the 
 Fathers denying the existence of the Antipodes. 
 
 ^ Lib. i. prologus 2. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OP RATIONALISM. 277 
 
 assisted man could attain, and seeking to frame their concep- 
 tions simply by the deductions of their reason. Such, Cos- 
 mas assures us, is not the course he would pursue. ' To the 
 law and to the testimony ' was his appeal, and he doubted not 
 that he could evolve from their pages a system far more cor- 
 rect than any that pagan wisdom could attain. 
 
 The system of the universe of which remarks to this effect 
 form the prelude may be briefly stated. According to Cos- 
 mas, the world is a flat parallelogram. Its length, which 
 should be measured from east to west, is the double of its 
 breadth, which should be measured from north to south. In 
 the centre is the earth we inhabit, which is surrounded by 
 the ocean, and this again is encircled by another earth, in 
 which men lived before the deluge, and from which Noah 
 was transported in the ark. To the north of the world is a 
 high conical mountain, around which the sun and moon con- 
 tinually revolve. When the sun is hid behind the moun- 
 tain, it is night ; when it is on our side of the mountain, it is 
 day. To the edges of the outer earth the sky is glued. It 
 consists of four high walls rising to a great height and then 
 meeting in a vast concave roof, thus forming an immense 
 edifice of which our world is the floor. This edifice is divided 
 into two stories by the firmament which is placed between 
 the earth and the roof of the sky. A great ocean is inserted 
 in the side of the firmament remote from the earth. This is 
 what is signified by the waters that are above the firmament. 
 The space from these waters to the roof of the sky is allotted 
 to the blest ; that from the firmament to our earth to the 
 angels, in their character of ministering spirits. 
 
 The reader will probably not regard these opinions as 
 prodigies of scientific wisdom ; but the point with which we 
 are especially concerned is the manner they were arrived at. 
 
278 KATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 In order to show this, it will be necessary to give a few sam- 
 ples of the arguments of Cosmas. 
 
 In the account of the six days' creation, it will be remem- 
 bered the whole work is summed up in a single sentence, 
 ' This is the book of the generation of the heaven and the 
 earth.' These expressions are evidently intended to com- 
 prise everything that is contained in the heaven and the 
 earth. But, as Cosmas contended, if the doctrine of the An- 
 tipodes were con-ect, the sky would surround and conse- 
 quently contain the earth, and therefore it would only be 
 said, ' This is the book of the generation of the sky.' ' This 
 very simple argument was capable of great extension, for 
 there was scarcely any sacred writer who had not employed 
 the phrase 'the heaven and the earth' to include the whole 
 creation, and who had not thus implied that one of them did 
 not include the other. Abrahjim, David, Hosea, Isaiah, Zach- 
 ariah, and many others, were cited. Even Melchisedec had 
 thus uttered his testimony against the Antipodes. If we ex- 
 amine the subject a little further, we are told that the earth 
 is fixed firmly upon its foundations, from which we may at 
 least infer that it is not suspended in the air ; and we are 
 told by St. Paul, that all men are made to live upon the ' face 
 of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they do not 
 live upon more faces than one, or upon the back. With such 
 a passage before his eyes, a Chi-istian, we are told, should not 
 'even speak of the Antipodes.' 
 
 Such arguments might be considered a conclusive demon- 
 stration of the falseness of the Manichaean doctrine. It rc- 
 
 ' ' Ait, " Hie est liber generationis eoeli et terrae,'' quasi omnia iis con- 
 tineantur, et universa quae in eis sunt cum illis significentur. Nam si secun- 
 dum fucatos illoB Christianos ccelum tautummodo universa contineat, terram 
 cum coelo non nominassct, sed dixisset " Hie est liber generationis coeli." ' 
 (P. 126.) 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 279 
 
 mained to frame a correct theory to fill its place. The first 
 great point of illumination that meets us in this task, consists 
 in the fact that St. Paul more than once speaks of the earth 
 as a tabernacle. From this comparison some theologians, and 
 Cosmas among the number, inferred that the tabernacle of 
 Moses was ar exact image of our world. This being ad- 
 mitted, the paths of science were greatly simplified. The 
 tabernacle was a parallelogram twice as long from east to 
 west as from north to south, and covered over as a room. 
 Two remarkable passages, mistranslated in the Septuagint, 
 in one of which Isaiah is made to compare the heavens to a 
 vault, and in the other of which Job speaks of the sky as 
 glued to the earth, completed the argument,' and enabled 
 the writer to state it almost with the authority of an article 
 of faith.' 
 
 It is easy to perceive how fatal such systems of interpre- 
 tation must have been to scientific progress. It is indeed 
 true that Cosmas belongs to a period when the intellectual 
 decadence was already begun, that he was himself a writer 
 of no very great abilities, and that some of the more eminent 
 Fathers had treated the subject of the Antipodes with con- 
 siderable good sense, contending that it was not a matter 
 connected with salvation.' But still, from the very begin- 
 ning, the principles of which this book forms an extreme ex- 
 
 ' These were Isaiah xl. 22, and Job rxxTiii. 38. The first was translated 
 ' Qui statuit coelum sicut fomieem.' The second, ' Coelum autem in terram 
 inclinant, effiisa est vero sicut terra, calx, conglutinavi autem ipsum quasi lapi- 
 dem quadrum.' 
 
 ° ' Sic igitur et ncs quemadmodum Hesaias figuram primi coeli prima die 
 conditi emu terra facti, cum terra universum complectentis ad fornicis figuram 
 adomati atatuimus esse. Ac quemadmodum in Job dictum est coeimn cou- 
 glutinatum esse terree, ita quoque nos dioimus. Itemque cum ex Moyse didi- 
 cerimus terram magis quoad longitudinem extendi, id nos quod fatemur gnari, 
 Bcilicet ScripturiE divinse credendum.' (P. 129.) 
 
 ' This very liberal opinion had been expressed by Basil and Ambrose. 
 
280 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ample were floating through the Church. The distinction 
 between theology and science was entirely unfelt. The 
 broad truth which repeated experience has now impressed 
 on almost every unprejudiced student, that it is perfectly 
 idle to quote a passage from the Bible as a i-efutation of any 
 discovery of scientific men, or to go to the Bible for informa- 
 tion on any scientific subject, was altogether undreamed of; ' 
 and in exact proportion to the increase of European super- 
 stition did the doctrine of inspiration dilate, till it crushed 
 every department of the human intellect. Thus, when in 
 the middle of the eighth century an Irish saint, named St. 
 Virgilius, who was one of the very few men who then culti- 
 vated profane sciences, ventured in Bavaria to assert the 
 existence of the Antipodes, the whole religious world was 
 thrown into a paroxysm of indignation, St. Boniface heading 
 the attack, and Pope Zachary, at least for a time, encouraging 
 it. At last men sailed for the Antipodes, and they then 
 modified their theological opinions on the subject. But a 
 precisely similar contest recurred when the Copernican sys- 
 tem was promulgated. Although the discovery of Coperni- 
 
 ' This doctrine began to dawn upon a few minds during the Copernican 
 controversy. Those who desire to trace its history may read with interest 
 some opinions on the subject that were collected and answered by a contem- 
 porary writer on the question between Galileo and the Church (Libertus Fro- 
 mundus, Vesta, Hive Anti-Aristarchi Vindex: Antverpiae, 1634). As I shall 
 have occasion again to quote Fromundus, I may mention that he was a pro- 
 fessor and doctor of theology at Louvain ; that he was the author of a work 
 on meteorology, in which he combated very forcibly the notion that atmospheric 
 changes were the results of spiritual intervention, which Bodin had lately been 
 defending ; and that he was on the whole by no means a superstitious man, 
 except on the subject of comets, of the prophetic character of which he was, 
 I believe, a. strenuous advocate. He wrote, in conjunction with » theologian 
 named Fieni, a book about comets, which I have never been fortunate enough 
 to meet with. He was one of the principal defenders of the immobility of the 
 earth, and his works are ?ull of curious information on the theological aspect 
 of the subject. He died in 1653. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 281 
 
 ouiJ was at first uncensured, and his book — which was pub 
 lished in 1543 — dedicated to Pope Paul III., as soon as its 
 views had acquired some weight among the learned, the sus- 
 picions of the Roman theologians were aroused, and the 
 opinion of the motion of the earth was authoritatively cen- 
 sured, first of all in the persons of Copernicus and two of his 
 disciples," and seventeen years later in the condemnation and 
 imprisonment of GaUleo. 
 
 It is, indeed, marvellous that science should ever have 
 revived amid the fearful obstacles theologians cast in her 
 way. Together with a system of biblical interpretation so 
 stringent, and at the same time so capricious, that it infalli- 
 bly came into collision with every discovery that was not in 
 accordance with the unaided judgments of the senses, and 
 therefore with the familiar expressions of the Jewish writers, 
 everything was done to cultivate a habit of thought the di- 
 
 ' The first condemnation was in 1616, and was provoked by the book of a 
 Carmelite, named Foscarini, in defence of the Coperniean view. The cardinals 
 of the Congregation of the Index, whose function it is to pronounce authorita/- 
 tively in the name of the Church on the orthodoxy of new books, then issued 
 a decree, of which the following is the principal part : — ' Quia ad notitiam 
 Sancta: Congregationis pervenit falsam illam doetrinam Pythagoricam, divin«- 
 que Scripturse omnino adversantem, de mobilitate terras et imraobilitate solis, 
 quam Nicolaus Copernicus Revolutionibus orbium, cmlestium, et Didacus Astu- 
 nica in Job, etiam decent, jam divulgari et multis recipi, sicuti videre est ex 
 quadam epistola impressa cujusdam P. Carmelitae, cujus dtulus Lettera del R. 
 P. Maestro Paolo Foscarini sopra V Opinions d' i Pythagorici e del Copernico, 
 &c., in qui dictus pater ostendere oonatur praefatam doetrinam de immobilitate 
 solis in ceutro mundi et mohihtate terrse consonam esse veritati, et uon adver- 
 sari Sacrse Scripturse : ideo, ne ulterius hujusmodi opinio in perniciem Catho- 
 lic* veritatis serpat, censuit dictos hie Copemicum de Revohit. Orbium et 
 Didacum Astunicam in Job suspendehdos esse donee corrigantur. Librum 
 vero P. PauUi Foscarini Carmelitje omnino prohibendum, atque omnes alios 
 iibros pariter idem docentes prohibendos.' — Fromuudus, AntirAristarchiis, sive 
 Orbis Terrm irmnobilis. In quo Decretum S. Congregationis S. H. E. Cardi- 
 nal. 1616 adversus Pythagorieo-Copernicanos editum defcnditur (Antverpias, 
 1631), p. 18 
 
282 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 rect opposite of the habits of science. The constant exsilta- 
 tion of blind faith, the countless miracles, the chUdish le- 
 gends, all produced a condition of besotted ignorance, of 
 grovelling and trembling credulity, that can scarcely be 
 paralleled except among the most degraded barbarians. 
 Innovation of every kind was regarded as a crime ; superior 
 knowledge excited only terror and suspicion. If it was 
 shown in speculation, it was called heresy. If it was shown 
 in the study of nature, it was called magic. The dignity of 
 the Poi^edom was unable to save Gerbert from the reputa- 
 tion of a magician,' and the magnificent labours of Roger 
 Bacon were repaid by fourteen years of imprisonment, and 
 many others of less severe but unremitting persecution. 
 Added to all this, the overwhelming importance attached to 
 theology diverted to it all those intellects which in another 
 condition of society would have been employed in the inves- 
 tigations of science. When Lord Bacon was drawing his 
 great chart of the iield of knowledge, his attention was 
 
 ' Sylvester II. He wjs the first Frenchman who sat on the throne of Peter, 
 the reputed author of Gallican opinions, and it is said the ablest mathema^ 
 tician and mechanician of his time. He died 1003. Among other things, he 
 invented a kind of clock. He had also a statue, like that of Roger Bacon, 
 which answered all his questions. According to the popular legend, he was in 
 communion with the devil, who raised him successively to the sees of Eheims, 
 Ravenna, and Rome ; and promised that he should never die tiU he had been 
 at Jerusalem, which Gerbert construed as a promise of immortality. But, Uke 
 that made to Henry IV. of England, it proved to be a cheat, and the Pope felt 
 the hand of death upon him while officiating in the Chapel of Jerusalem, in 
 the Basilica of St. Oroce. The legend goes on to say that, struck by remorse, 
 he ordered his body to be cut in pieces, to be placed on a car drawn by oxen, 
 and to be buried wherever they stopped of themselves, he being unworthy to 
 rest in the church of God. But, to show that pardon may be extended even 
 to the most guilty, the oxen stopped at the door of the Lateran. Whenever, 
 it is said, a pope is about to die, the tomb 6f Sylvester grows moist, and the 
 bones of the old magician clatter below. (See Gregorovius, On the Timibs of the 
 Popes 1 and the originaJ account in Matthew of Westminster anno 998.) 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 283 
 
 forcibly drawn to the torpor of the middle ages. That the 
 mind of man should so long have remained tranced and 
 numbed, seemed, at first sight, au objection to his theories, 
 a contradiction to his high estimate of human faculties. But 
 his answer was prompt and decisive. A theological system 
 had lain like an incubus upon Christendom, and to its influ- 
 ence, more than to any other single cause, the universal pa- 
 ralysis is to be ascribed.' 
 
 At last the revival of learning came, the regeneration of 
 physical science speedily followed it, and it soon efiected a 
 series of most important revolutions in our conceptions. 
 
 The first of these was to shake the old view of the posi- 
 tion of man in the universe. To an uncivilised man, no 
 proposition appears more self-evident than that our world is 
 the great central object of the universe. Around it the sun 
 and moon appear alike to revolve, and the stars seem but in- 
 considerable lights destined to garnish its firmament. From 
 this conception there naturally followed a crowd of super- 
 stitions which occupy a conspicuous place in the belief of 
 every early civilisation. Man being the centre of all things, 
 every startling phenomenon has some bearing upon his acts. 
 The eclipse, the comet, the meteor, and the tempest, are all 
 intended for him. The whole history of the universe centres 
 upon him, and all the dislocations and perturbations it ex- 
 hibits are connected with his history.' 
 
 The science which especially corrects these notions is as- 
 tronomy, but for a considerable period it rather aggravated 
 them, for it was at first inseparably blended with astrology. 
 
 ' Novum Organon. 
 
 ° Even the sun and stars were supposed to shine with a feebler light since 
 the Fall (St. Isidore, De Ordine Grmtmrwrvim, cap. t.). On the effects of 
 man's sin on the vegetable world, see St. Augustine, De Oenesi, Ub. i. can. 13. 
 
284 EATIOITAIISM IN ETIEOPK. 
 
 It is an extremely ingenious and, at least as far as the period 
 of the revival of learning is concerned, an extremely just 
 observation of jM. Comte, that this last study marks the first 
 systematic effort to frame a philosiophy of history by re- 
 ducing the apparently capricious phenomena of human ac- 
 tions within the domain of law.' It may, however, I think, 
 be no less justly regarded as one of the last struggles of 
 human egotism against the depressing sense of insignificance 
 which the immensity of the universe must pi'oduce. And 
 certainly it would be difficult to imagine any conception 
 more calculated to exalt the dignity of man than one which 
 represents the career of each individual as linked with the 
 march of worlds, the focus towards which the influences of 
 the most sublime of created things continually converge/ 
 But, notwithstanding this temporary aberration, there can 
 be no doubt of the eventual tendency of a science which 
 proves that our world is but an infinitesimal fraction in crea- 
 tion, and which, by demonstrating its motion, shows that it 
 is as undistinguished by its position as by its magnitude. 
 The mental importance of such a discovery can hardly be 
 overrated. Those who regard our earth as the centre of the 
 
 ' I have already mentioned the bold attempt of Peter of Apono, in the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century, to construct, by the aid of astrology, a 
 philosophy of religions. Cardan, too, cast the horoscope of Christ, and 
 declared that all the fortunes of Christianity were predicted by the stars. 
 Vanini adopted a somewhat similar view. (Durand, Vie de Vamni, pp. 93- 
 99.) Pomponazzi attempted to explain the phenomena of magic by the influ- 
 ence of the stars {Mog. Univ., art. Pomponazzi) ; and Bodin, in the very 
 greatest pohtical work of the sixteenth century, having raised the question 
 whether it is possible to discover any principle of order presiding over the 
 development of societies, maintains that such a principle can only be revealed 
 by astrology. [Republique, liv. iv. u. 2.) 
 
 ' As a poet expresses it : — 
 
 ' The warrior's fate is blazoned in the skies ; 
 A world is darkened when a hero dies.' 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 285 
 
 material universe will always attribute to it a similar po- 
 sition in the moral scheme ; and when the falsehood of the 
 first position is demonstrated, the second appears incon- 
 gruous or a difficulty." 
 
 It has been reserved for the present century and for a 
 new science to supplement the discovery of Copernicus and 
 Galileo by another which has not yet been fully realised, 
 but is no doubt destined to exercise a commanding influence 
 over all future systems of belief: I mean the discoveries of 
 geology relating to the preadamite history of the globe. 
 To those who regard the indefinite as the highest conception 
 of the infinite, the revelation of eternity is written on the 
 rocks, as the revelation of immensity upon the stars. But 
 to more scientific minds the most important effect of geology 
 has not been that it throws back to an incalculable distance 
 the horizon of creation, nor yet that it has renovated and 
 transformed all the early interpretations of the Mosaic cos- 
 mogony ; but that it has conclusively disproved what was 
 once the universal belief concerning the origin of death. 
 That this fearful calamity appeared in the universe on ac- 
 count of the transgression of man, that every pang that con- 
 vulses the frame of any created being, every passion or in- 
 
 ' Whatever may be thought of its justice, there cannot be two opinions 
 about the exquisite beauty of the suggestion by which Dr. Chalmers sought to 
 meet this difficulty — that the parable of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine 
 sheep to seek that which had gone astray, is but a description of the act of 
 the Deity seeking to reclaim the single world that had revolted against Him, as 
 though it were of more importance than all that remained faithful. It may bo 
 added that astronomy itself furnishes a striking illustration of the danger of 
 trusting too implicitly to our notions of the fitness of things. The aiicient 
 astronomers unanimously maintained that the motions of the celestial bodies 
 must necessarily be circular and uniform, because they regarded that as the 
 most perfect kind of movement ; and the persistence with which this notion 
 was held, till it was overthrown by Kepler, was one of the chief obstacles to 
 astronomical progress. 
 
286 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 stinct or necessity that contribvites to tbe infliction of suffer- 
 ing, is but the fruit of the disobedience in Paradise, was 
 long believed with unfaltering assurance, and is even now 
 held by many who cannot be regarded as altogether unedu- 
 cated. And this general proposition became a great arche 
 type, a centre around which countless congenial beliefs were 
 formed, a first principle or measure of probability guiding 
 the predispositions of men in all their enquiries. If all death 
 and all pain resulted from the sin of Adam, it was natural to 
 give every particular instance of death or pain a special sig- 
 nification ; and if these the greatest of terrestrial imperfeci- 
 tions were connected with the history of man, it was natural 
 to believe that all minor evils were no less so. But geology 
 has now proved decisively that a profound error lurks in 
 these conclusions. It has proved that countless ages before 
 man trod this earth death raged and revelled among its oc- 
 cupants ; that it so entered into the original constitution of 
 things, that the agony and the infirmity it implies were 
 known as at present when the mastodon and the dinotherium 
 were the rulers of the world. To deny this is now impossi- 
 ble : to admit it is to abandon one of the root-doctrines of 
 the past. 
 
 A second kind of influence which scientific discoveries 
 have exercised upon belief, has been the gradual substitution 
 of the conception of law for that of supernatural interven- 
 tion. This substitution I have already had occasion to refer 
 to more than once ; but I trust the reader will pardon me for 
 reverting to it for a moment, in order to show with more pre- 
 cision than I have hitherto done the extent and nature of the 
 change. It is the especial characteristic of uncivilised men 
 that their curiosity and, still rdore, their religious sentiments, 
 are very rarely excited by those phenomena which fall ob- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 287 
 
 viously within the range of natural laws, while they are 
 keenly affected by all which appear abnormal. It is indeed 
 true that this expression ' natural law ' has to the uncivilised 
 man only a very vague and faint signification, that he has 
 no conception of the close connection subsisting between dif- 
 ferent classes of phenomena, and that he frequently attrib- 
 utes each department even of those which are most regular 
 to the action of special presiding spirits ; yet still certain 
 phenomena are recognised as taking place in regular se- 
 quences, while others appear capricious, and the latter are 
 associated especially with Divine intervention. Thus comets, 
 meteors, and atmospheric phenomena were connected with 
 religious ideas long after the sun and the stars. Thus, too, 
 games of chance were from a very early period prohibited, 
 not simply on account of the many evils that result from 
 them, but as a species of blasphemy, being an appeal on 
 trivial matters to the adjudication of the Deity.' Man being 
 unable to calculate how the die will fall, it was believed that 
 this is determined by a Divine interposition, and accordingly 
 the casting of lots became one of the favourite means of ap- 
 pnjaching the Deity.'' 
 
 From this habit of associating religious feelings chieily 
 with the abnormal, two very important consequences ensued, 
 one of them relating to science and the other to theology. 
 In the first place, as long as abnormal and capricious phe- 
 
 ' See a clear view of the old oplaions on this subject in Barbeyrac, De la 
 Nature du Sort (Amsterdam, 1V14), who sustained an ardent controversy on 
 the subject with a Dutch divine. The first writer, I beheve, who clearly and 
 systematically maintained that lots were governed by purely natural laws, was 
 an English Puritan minister named Gataker, in a work On the Nature and Use 
 of Different Kinds of Lots (London, 1619) — a well-reasoned and ciirious 
 book, teeming with quaint learning. 
 
 " Hence the term ' sortes ' was applied to oracles. Hence, too, such words 
 as ' sortllfci.' ' sorcerers.' 
 
288 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 nomena are deemed the direct acts of the Deity, all attempts 
 to explain them by science wiU be discouraged; for such at- 
 tempts must appear an irreverent prying into the Divine 
 acts, and, if successful, they diminish the sources of religious 
 emotion.' In the second place, it is evident that the concep 
 tion of the Deity in an early period of civilisation must be 
 essentially different from that in a later period. The con- 
 sciousness of the Divine presence in an unscientific age is 
 identified with the idea of abnormal and capricious action ; 
 in a scientific age with that of regular and unbroken law. 
 The forms of religious emotions being wholly different, the 
 conceptions of the Deity around which they centre must be 
 equally so. The one conception consists mainly of the ideas 
 of interference, of miracle, of change, and of caprice ; the 
 other of regularity, of immutability, and of prescience. The 
 one conception predisposes most to prayer, the other to rev- 
 erence and admiration. 
 
 The first science that rose to perfection at the period I 
 am referring to was astronomy, which early attained a great 
 prominence on account of the revival of astrology that had 
 been produced in the fourteenth century by the renewed 
 study of the works of pagan antiquity, and perhaps still 
 more by the profound influence the Arabian intellect then 
 exercised on Christendom. The great work of Copernicus, 
 the almost simultaneous appearance of Kepler, Galileo, and 
 
 ' Thus De Maistre, speaking of the ancients, says : — ' Leur physique est k 
 peu pr^s nulle. Car non seulement ils n'attachaient aucun prix aux experi- 
 ences physiques, mais Us les m^prisaicnt, et mfeme ils attachaient je ne sais 
 quel Idgfere id^e d'impiet^ ; et ce sentiment con/us venait de Hen haut.' 
 (Soirees de St. Petersbourg, 5me entretien.) This is the true spirit of supersti- 
 tion. Speaking of earthquakes, Cosmas says : — ' Quod vero terra moveatur id 
 non a vento fieri dicimus ; non enim fabulas comminiscimur ut illi, sed illud 
 jussu Dei fieri pronuntiamus, nee curiose rem perquirirmm, ait quippe Scriptura 
 per Davidem, " Qui respicit terram et facit earn tremere," &c.' — p. 115, 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 289 
 
 Tycho Brahe, and the invention and rapid improvement of 
 the telescope, soon introduced the conception of natural law 
 into what had long been the special realm of superstition. 
 The Theory of Vortices of Descartes, although it is now 
 known to have no scientific value, had, as has been truly 
 said, a mental value of the very highest order, for it was the 
 first attempt to form a system of the universe by natural 
 law and without the intervention of spiritual agents." Pre- 
 viously the different motions of the heavenly bodies had been 
 for the most part looked upon as isolated, and the popular 
 belief was that they as well as all atmospheric changes were 
 efifected by angels.'' In the Talmud a special angel was as- 
 signed to every star and to every element, and similar no- 
 tions were general throughout the middle ages.' The belief 
 in the existence of a multitude of isolated and capricious 
 phenomena naturally suggested the belief in angels to ac- 
 count for them ; and on the other hand, the association of 
 angels with phenomena that obtruded themselves constantly 
 on the attention produced a vivid sense of angelic presence, 
 which was shown in countless legends of angelic manifestar 
 tions. All this passed away before the genius of Descartes 
 and of Newton. The reign of law was recognised as su- 
 preme, and the conceptions that grew out of the earlier no- 
 tion of the celestial system waned and vanished. 
 
 For a long time, however, comets continued to be the 
 
 ' This was originally a remark of St. Simon, but it has been adopted and 
 made great use of by M. Comte and some of his disciples. See that very able 
 book, Littr^, Vie de Oomte. 
 
 ' Roccamora, De Cometis, p. lY ; St, Isidore, Be Ordine Creaturamm. 
 
 ' Maury, Legendes Pieuaes, pp. 17-18. Angels were sometimes represented 
 in old Christian painting and sculpture bearing along the stars (and especially 
 the Star of Bethlehem) in their hands. See, e. g., a very curious old baa 
 relief round the choir of Notre Dame at Paris. 
 TOL. I. — 19 
 
290 EATIONALISM Df EUEOPE. 
 
 rel'ugc of the dying superstition. Their rarity, the eccen- 
 tricity of their course, the difficulty of ascertaining their 
 nature, and the grandeur and terror of their aspect, had all 
 contributed to impress men with an extraordinary sense of 
 their supernatural character. From the earliest ages they 
 liad been regarded as the precursors of calamity, and men 
 being accustomed to regard them in that light, a vast masa 
 of evidence was soon accumulated in support of the belief. 
 It was shown that comets had preceded the death of such 
 rulers as Csesar, or Constantine the Great, or Charles V. 
 Comets were known to ha\'e appeared before the invasion of 
 Greece by Xerxes, before the Peloponnesian war, before the 
 civil wars of Csesar and Pompey, before the fall of Jerusa- 
 lem, before the invasion of Attila, and before a vast number 
 of the greatest famines and pestilences that have afflicted 
 mankind.' Many hundreds of cases of this kind were col- 
 lected, and they furnished an amount of evidence which was 
 quite sufficient to convince even somewhat sceptical minds, 
 at a time when the supernatural character of comets, harmo- 
 nising with the prevailing notions of the government of the 
 universe, appeared antecedently probable. Some theologians 
 indeed, while fully acknowledging the ominous character of 
 these apparitions, attempted to explain them in a somewhat 
 rationalistic manner. According to their view, comets were 
 masses of noxious vapour exhaled — some said from the 
 earth, and others from the sky, which by tainting the atmos- 
 phere produced pestilence. Kings were indeed especially 
 liable to succumb beneath this influence, but this was only 
 because their labours and their luxurious habits rendered 
 
 ' The fullest statemeni of the eTidence of the prophetic character of comets 
 r have met with, is in Raxo, De Oometis (1678). The author was a Spanish 
 •physician. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 291 
 
 them weaker than other men." Usually, however, comets 
 were simply regarded as supernatural warnings sent to prog- 
 nosticate calamity. Two or three great men made vain ef- 
 forts to shake the belief. Thus, during one of the panics oc- 
 casioned by a great comet, Paracelsus wrote forcibly against 
 the popular notions,'' which he assailed on theological 
 grounds as forming a species of fatalism, and as being incon- 
 sistent with the belief in Providence. In the midst of a 
 similar panic in 1680, Bayle made a similar effort, but, in 
 obedience to the spirit of the age, he adopted not a theologi- 
 cal but a philosophical point of view. He displayed with 
 consummate skill the weakness of a process of reasoning 
 which rested on an arbitrary selection of chance coincidences, 
 and he made the subject the text for one of the very best 
 books that have ever been written on the gradual consolida- 
 dation of superstitions.' But theology and philosophy were 
 alike impotent till science appeared to assist them. Halley 
 predicted the revolution of comets, and they were at once 
 removed to the domain of law, and one of the most ancient 
 of human superstitions was destroyed. 
 
 The process which took place in astronomy furnishes but 
 a single though perhaps an extreme example of that which, 
 m the seventeenth century, took place in every field of 
 science. Everywhere the rapid conquests of the new spirit 
 
 ' Eoccamora, Be Qometis (Koma;, 1670), pp. 238, 239. 
 
 " In a letter to Zwinglius. 
 
 ' And, flying off at a tangent from his main subject, for one of the very 
 oest dissertations on the relation between religion and morals. With the 
 greatest possible admiration for the Critical Dictionary, which will be always 
 regarded as one of the most stupendous monuments of erudition and of criti- 
 cal acumen ever bequeathed by a single scholar, I cannot but think that the 
 original genius of Bayle shines still more brightly in the Comrainx-les d'Mitrer, 
 in some of the Pens^es diverses sur les ComStes, and in two or three of his 
 Xbuvelles Lettres 
 
292 EATIOKALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 were substituting the idea of natural law for that of super- 
 natural interference, and persuading men that there must be 
 a natural solution even where they were unable to discover 
 it. The writings of Bacon, although their influence has, I 
 think, been considerably exaggerated, partly through nar 
 tional pride, and partly because men have accepted too 
 readily the very unfair judgments Bacon expressed of his 
 contemporaries,' probably contributed more than any other 
 single cause to guide the movement, and have, in England 
 at least, become almost supreme. Chemistry disengaged 
 itself from alchemy, as astronomy had done from astrology. 
 The Academy del Cimento was established in Tuscany in 
 1657, the Royal Society in London in 1660, and the Academy 
 of Sciences in Paris in 1666. The many different sciences 
 
 ' The age of Bacon was certainly not as benighted and ignorant on scien- 
 tific matters as he always represented it. On the contrary, when we remember 
 that it was the age of Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Gilbert, 
 it would be difficult to name one that was more distinguished. A large por- 
 tion of the scientific revival in Europe may be justly ascribed to these great 
 men ; and the only apology that can be offered for the representations of 
 Bacon is that, notwithstanding his great genius, he was totally unable to grasp 
 their discoveries. The Copernican system — the greatest discovery of the age — 
 he rejected to the last. The important discoveries of Gilbert about the magnet 
 he treated not only with incredulity, but with the most arrogant contempt. In 
 measuring his influence, we have to remember that it was certainly not dom- 
 inant outside England till that union between the English and French intellects 
 that immediately preceded the French Revolution. Then, indeed, his philos- 
 ophy exercised an immense and salutary influence upon the Continent ; but 
 Europe had not been sleeping till then. In Great Britain itself. Bacon pro- 
 duced no perceptible effect upon the great school of literature and science that 
 grew up beyond the Tweed ; and even in England, where he has been almost 
 omnipotent, two of the very greatest men stood apart from his disciples. The 
 whole method and mental character of Newton was opposed to that of Bacon, 
 and, as his biographer. Sir David Brewster, very forcibly contends, there is not 
 the slightest reason to believe that Newton owed anything to his predecessor ; 
 while Harvey avowedly owed his great discovery to that doctrine of final canses 
 which Bacon stigmatised as 'barren, like a virgin consecrated to God that can 
 sear no fruit.' 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 293 
 
 (hat were simultaneously cultivated not merely rescued many 
 distinct departments of nature from superstition, but also by 
 their continual convergence produced the conception of one 
 all-embracing scheme of law, taught men habitually to asso- 
 ciate the Divine presence with order rather than with mira- 
 cle, and accustomed them to contemplate with admiring 
 reverence the evidence of design displayed in the minutest 
 animalcule and in the most shortlived ephemera, and also 
 the CA'idence of that superintending care which adapts a 
 sphere of happiness for the weakest of created beings. 
 
 A very important consequence of this change was that 
 theological systems lost much of their harsh and gloomy 
 character. As long as men drew their notions of the Deity 
 from what they regarded as the abnormal, their attention 
 was chiefly concentrated upon disasters, for these are for the 
 most part exceptional, while the principal sources of happi- 
 ness are those which are most common. Besides, it is one of 
 the most unamiable characteristics of human nature that it is 
 always more impressed by terror than by gratitude. Accord- 
 ingly, the devotion of our ancestors was chiefly connected 
 with storms and pestilences and famine and death, which 
 were regarded as penal inflictions, and consequently created 
 an almost maddening terror. All parts of belief assumed a 
 congenial hue, till the miserable condition of man and the 
 frightful future that awaited him became the central ideas 
 of theology. But this, which in an early phase of civilisa- 
 tion was perfectly natural, soon passed away when modern 
 science acquired an ascendency over theological develop- 
 ments ; for the attention of men was then directed chiefly to 
 those multitudinous contrivances which are designed for the 
 wellbeing of all created things, while the terrorism once pro- 
 duced by the calamities of life was at least greatly dimiu- 
 
294: EATIONALI?M IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ished when they were shown to be the result of general laws 
 interwoven with the whole system of the glohe, and many 
 of which had been in operation before the creation of man. 
 
 Another branch of scientific progress which I may notice 
 on account of its influence upon speculative opinions, is the 
 rapid growth of a morphological conception of the universe. 
 According to the great philosophers of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, our world was a vast and complicated mechanism called 
 into existence and elaborated instantaneously in all its parts 
 by the creative fiat of the Deity. In the last century, how- 
 ever, and still more in the present century, the progress of 
 chemistry, the doctrine of the interchange and indestructi- 
 bility of forces, and the discoveries of geology, have greatly 
 altered this conception. Without entering into such ques- 
 tions as that of the mutability of species, which is still pend- 
 ing, and which the jjresent writer would be altogether in- 
 competent to discuss, it will be admitted that in at least a 
 large proportion of the departments of science, the notion 
 of constant transformation, constant progress under the in- 
 fluence of natural law from simple to elaborate forms, has 
 become dominant. The world itself, there is much reason to 
 believe, was once merely a vapour, which was gradually con- 
 densed and consolidated, and its present condition represents 
 the successive evolutions of countless ages. This conception, 
 which exhibits the universe rather as an organism than a 
 mechanism, and regards the complexities and adaptations it 
 displays rather as the results of gradual development fi-om 
 within than of an interference from without, is so novel, and 
 at first sight so startling, that many are now shrinking from 
 it with alarm, under the impression that it destroys the argu- 
 ment from design, and almost amounts to the negation of a 
 Supreme Intelligence. Bnt there can, I think, be little doiiht 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF BATIONALISM. 295 
 
 that such fears are, for the most part, unfounded.' That 
 matter is governed by mind, that the contrivances and 
 elaborations of the universe are the products of intelligence, 
 are propositions which are quite unshaken, whether we re- 
 gard these contrivances as the results of a single momentary 
 exercise of will, or of a slow, consistent, and regulated 
 evolution. The proofs of a pervading and developing intel- 
 ligence, and tlie proofs of a coordinating and combining 
 intelligence, are both untouched, nor can any conceivable 
 progress of science in this direction destroy them. If the 
 famous suggestion, that all animal and vegetable life results 
 from a single vital gei-m, and that all the different animals and 
 plants now existent were developed by a natural process of 
 evolution from that germ, were a demonstrated truth, we 
 should still be able to point to the e-\ idences of intelligence 
 displayed in the measured and progressive development, in 
 those exquisite forms so different from what blind chance 
 could produce, and in the manifest adaptation of surround- 
 ing circumstances to the living creature, and of the living 
 craature to surrounding circumstances. The argument from 
 design would indeed be changed, it would require to be 
 stated in a new form, but it would be fully as cogent as be- 
 fore. Indeed it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that the 
 more fully this conception of universal evolution is grasped, 
 the more firmly a scientific doctrine of Providence will be 
 established, and the stronger will be the presumption of a 
 future progress. 
 
 The effects of this process which physical science is now 
 undergoing are manifested very clearly in the. adjacent 
 field of history, in what may be termed the morphological 
 
 ' See the remarks on the consistence of morphological conceptions with 
 the doctrine of final causes in Whewell's History of Scientific Ideas. 
 
296 KATIONALIBM m EUEOPE. 
 
 conception of opinions — that is to say, in the belief that 
 there is a law of orderly and progressive transformation to 
 which our speculative opinions are subject, and the causes 
 of which are to be sought in the general intellectual condi- 
 tion of society. As the main object of this whole book is to 
 illustrate the nature and progress of this conception, it is not 
 necessary to dwell upon it at present, and I advert to it 
 simply for the purpose of showing its connection with the 
 discoveries of science. 
 
 It will be remarked, that in this as in most other cases 
 the influence physical sciences have exercised over specula- 
 tive opinions has not been of the nature of a direct logical 
 proof displacing an old belief, but rather the attracting in 
 fluence of a new analogy. As I have already had occasions 
 to observe, an impartial examination of great transitions of 
 opinions will show that they have been eflfected not by the 
 force of direct arguments, not by such reasons as those 
 which are alleged by controversialists and recorded in creeds, 
 but by a sense of the incongruity or discordance of the old 
 doctrines with other parts of our knowledge. Each man 
 assimilates the diflPerent orders of his ideas. There must 
 always be a certain keeping or congruity or analogy be- 
 tween them. The general measure of probability determines 
 belief, and it is derived from many departments of knowl- 
 edge. Hence it is that whenever the progress of enquiry 
 introduces a new series of conceptions into physical science, 
 which represents one aspect of the relations of the Deity to 
 man, these conceptions, or at least something like them, are 
 speedily transferred to theology, which represents another. 
 
 It must, however, be acknowledged, that there are some 
 influences resulting from physical science which are deeply 
 to be deplored, for they spring neither from logical arguments 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 297 
 
 nor from legitimate analogies, but from misconceptions that 
 are profoundly imbedded in our belief, or from fallacies into 
 which our minds are too easily betrayed. The increased 
 evidence of natural religion furnished by the innumerable 
 marks of creative or coordinating wisdom which science re- 
 \'eals, can hardly be over-estimated,' nor can it be reasonably 
 questioned that a world governed in all its parts by the in- 
 teraction of fixed natural laws implies a higher degree of de- 
 signing skill than a chaos of fortuitous influences irradiated 
 from time to time by isolated acts of spiritual intervention. 
 Yet still so generally is the idea of Divine action restricted 
 to that of miracle, that every discovery assigning strange 
 phenomena their place in the symmetry of nature has to 
 many minds an irreligious appearance ; which is still further 
 strengthened by the fact, that while physical science ac- 
 quiesces in the study of laws as the limit of its research, even 
 scientific men sometimes forget that the discovery of law is 
 not an adequate solution of the problem of causes. When 
 all the motions of the heavenly bodies have been reduced to 
 the dominion of gravitation, gravitation itself still remains 
 an insoluble problem. Why it is that matter attracts mat- 
 ter, we do not know — we perhaps never shall knov/. Science 
 can throw much light upon the laws that preside over the 
 development of life ; but what life is, and what is its ultimate 
 cause, we ai-e utterly unable to say. The mind of man, 
 which can track the course of the comet and measure the 
 
 ' Laplace, who has done more than any one else to systematise arguments 
 from probability, and who. will certainly not be accused of any desire to sub- 
 ordinate science to theology, states the argument for design derived from the 
 motions of the planetary bodies in the following almost bewildering terms : 
 ' Des ph^nomfjnes aussi extraordinaires ne aont point dus il des causes irregu- 
 liferes. En soumettaut au.calcul leur probability, on troure qu'il y a plus do 
 deux cents mille milliards k parier centre un qu'ils ne sont point I'effet du 
 hauaril.' — Systime du Monde, liv. v. c. 6. 
 
298 EATIONALISM IN EUBOPE. 
 
 velocity of light, has hitherto proved incapable of explaining 
 the existence of the minutest insect or the growth of the most 
 humble plant. In grouping phenomena, in ascertaining their 
 sequences and their analogies, its achievements have beeu 
 marvellous ; in discovering ultimate causes it has absolutely 
 failed. An impenetrable mystery lies at the root of every 
 existing' thing. The first principle, the dynamic force, the 
 vivifying power, the efficient causes of those successions 
 whicli we term natural laws, elude the utmost efforts of our 
 research. The scalpel of the anatomist and the analysis of 
 the chemist are here at fault. The microscope, which reveals 
 the traces of all-pervading, all-ordaining intelligence in the 
 minutest globule, and displays a world of organised and living 
 beings in a grain of dust, supplies no solution of the problem. 
 We know nothing or next to nothing of the relations of mind 
 to matter, either in our own persons or in the world that is 
 around us ; and to suppose that the progress of natural science 
 eliminates the conception of a first cause from creation, by 
 supplying natural explanations, is completely to ignore the 
 sphere and limits to which it is confined. 
 
 It must be acknowledged also, that as the increasing 
 sense of law appears to many the negation of the reality or 
 at all events of the continuity of the Divine action, so an in- 
 creased sense of the multiplicity of the effects of matter not 
 unfrequently leads to a negation of the existence of mind. 
 The mathematician ridiculed by Berkeley who maintained 
 that the soul must be extension, and the fiddler who was 
 convinced that it must be harmony, are scarcely exaggerated 
 representati'i es of the tendency manifested by almost every 
 one who is much addicted to a single study to explain by it 
 all the pheni'inena of existence. Nearly every science when 
 it has first arisen has had to contend with two great obstacles 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 299 
 
 — witli the unreasoning incredulity of those who regard 
 novelty as necessarily a synonyme for falsehood, and with 
 the unrestrained enthusiasm of those who, perceiving vaguely 
 and dimly a new series of yet undefined discoveries opening 
 upon mankind, imagine that they will prove a universal sol- 
 vent. It is said that when, after long years of obstinate dis- 
 belief, the reality of the great discovery of Harvey dawned 
 upon the medical world, the first result was a school of 
 medicine which regarded man simply as an hydraulic 
 machine, and found the principle of every malady in imper- 
 fections of circulation/ The same history has been contin- 
 ually reproduced. That love of symmetry which makes men 
 impatient to reduce all phenomena to a single cause, has 
 been the parent of some of the noblest discoveries, but it has 
 also, by the imperfect classifications it has produced, been 
 one of the most prolific sources of human error. In the pres- 
 ent day, when the study of the laws of matter has assumed 
 an extraordinary development, and when the relations be- 
 tween the mind and the body are chiefly investigated with a 
 primary view to the functions of the latter, it is neither sur- 
 prising nor alarming that a strong movement towards ma- 
 terialism should be the consequence. 
 
 But putting aside 'these illegitimate consequences, it ap- 
 pears that in addition to the general effects of intellectual 
 development upon theological opinions in enabling men more 
 readily to conceive the invisible, and thus rescuing them 
 from idolatry, and in enabling them to spiritualise and 
 elevate their ideal, and thus emancipating them from anthro- 
 pomorphism, that particular branch of intellectual progress 
 which is comprised under the name of physical science has 
 exercised a distinct and special influence, which has been 
 
 • Lemoine, Le Vitalisme de Stahl, p. 6. 
 
300 EATIOU'ALISM HT EUEOPE. 
 
 partly logical, but more generally the assimilating influence 
 of analogy. It has displaced man's early conception of the 
 position of his world in the universe, and of the relation of 
 the catastrophes it exhibits to his history. It has substituted 
 a sense of law for a predisposition to the miraculous, and 
 taught men to associate the Deity with the normal rather 
 than with the abnormal. It has in a great degree divested 
 calamity of its penal character, multiplied to an incalculable 
 extent the evidences of the Divine beneficence, and at the 
 same time fostered a notion of ordered growth which has ex- 
 tended from the world of matter to the world of mind. 
 
 These have been its chief effects upon belief. It has also 
 exercised a considerable influence upon the systems of Bibli 
 cal interpretation by which that belief is expressed. The 
 first great impulse to Rationalistic Biblical criticism was 
 probably given by the antagonism that was manifested be- 
 tween the discovery of Galileo and Scripture as it was in- 
 terpreted by the host of theologians who argued after the 
 fashion of Cosmas. New facts were discovered and therefore 
 a new system of interpretation was required, and men began 
 to apply their critical powers to the sacred writings for the 
 purpose of bringing them into conformity with opinions that 
 had been arrived at independently by the reason. Each new 
 discovery of science that bore upon any Scriptural question, 
 each new order of tendencies evoked by the advance of civili- 
 sation, produced a repetition of the same process. 
 
 Probably the earliest very elaborate example of this kind 
 of interpretation was furnished by a French Protestant, 
 named La Peyrere, in a book which was published in 1655.' 
 The author, who fully admitted though he endeavoured to 
 
 ' Systema Tkeologicum ex Prm-Adamitarum Hypothesi, pars i. The 
 Becond part never appeared. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATI0NALI8M. 301 
 
 reetxict the sphere of the miraculous, had been struck by 
 some difficulties connected with the ordinary doctrine of 
 Original Sin, and by some points in which science seemed to 
 clash with the assertions of the Old Testament ; and he en- 
 deavoured to meet them by altogether isolating the Biblical 
 history from the general current of human affairs. Adam, he 
 maintained, was not the father of the human race, but simply 
 the progenitor of the Jews, and the whole antediluvian his- 
 tory is only that of a single people. Thus the antiquity 
 which the Eastern nations claimed might be admitted, and 
 the principal difficulties attending the Deluge were dissolved. 
 It was altogether a mistake to suppose that death and sick- 
 ness and suffering were the consequences of the transgres- 
 sion. Adam had by this act simply incurred spiritual pen- 
 alties, which descended upon the Jews. ' In the day thou 
 eatest thou shalt die ' could not have been meant literally, 
 because it was not literally fulfilled ; nor could the curse upon 
 the serpent, because the motion of the serpent along the 
 ground is precisely that which its conformation implies. The 
 existence of men who were not of the family of Adam is 
 shadowed obscurely in many passages, but appears decisive- 
 ly in the history of Cain, who feared to wander forth lest 
 men should kill him, and who built a city at a time when, 
 according to the common view, he was almost alone in the 
 world.' The mingling of the sons of God and the daughters 
 
 ' Some of La Peyrfere's arguments on this point are curiously far-fetched. 
 Thus he asks why Abel should have kept sheep if there were no robbers to be 
 feared, and where Cain got the weapon with which he killed his brother. The 
 existence of a race of men not descended from Adam was very strenuously 
 maintained, towards the close of the last century, by an eccentric member of 
 the Irish Parliament named Dobbs, in a very strange book called A Short View 
 of Prophecy. It has also been advocated in America, with a view to the de- 
 fence of Negro Slavery. Mr. Dobbs thought there was a race resulting from 
 an intrigue of Eve with the Devil. 
 
302 EATIOITALISM Df EUROPE. 
 
 of men means the intermarriage between the two races. 
 The Deluge is an absolute impossibility if regarded as uni- 
 versal, but not at all surprising if regarded as a })artial inun- 
 dation. 
 
 Proceeding to the history of a later period, La Peyr&re in 
 the first place denies the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, 
 In defence of this position he urges the account of the death 
 of Moses, and he anticipates several of those minute criticisms 
 which in our own day have acquired so great a prominence. 
 The phrase 'These are the words which Moses spake beyond 
 Jordan,' the notice of the city which is called ' Jair to the 
 present day,' the iron bedstead of Og still shown in Rabbath, 
 the difficulties about the conquest of the Idumeans, and a few 
 other passages, seem to show that the compilation of these 
 books was long posterior to the time of Moses; while certain 
 signs of chronological confusion which they evince render it 
 probable that they are not homogeneous, but are formed by 
 the fusion of several distinct documents. It should be ob- 
 served, too, that they employ a language of metaphor and of 
 hyperbohi which has occasionally given rise to misapprehen- 
 sions, special instances of providential guidance being inter- 
 preted as absolute miracles. Thus, for example, the wool of 
 the Jewish flocks was quite sufficient to furnish materials for 
 clothing in the desert, and the assertion that the clothes of 
 the Jews waxed not old is simply an emphatic expression of 
 that extraordinary providence which preserved them from all 
 want for forty years in the wilderness. At the same time 
 La Peyrere does not deny that the Jewish history is full of 
 miracles, but he maintains very strongly that these were 
 only local, and that the general course of the universe was 
 never disturbed to effect them. The prolongation of the day 
 at the command of Joshua was not produced by any altera- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 303 
 
 tioH in the course of tlie earth or sun, but was simply an at- 
 mospheric phenomenon such as is sometimes exhibited in the 
 Arctic regions. The dartness at the Crucifixion was also 
 local; the retrogression of the shadow on the sun-dial in the 
 reign of Hezekiah did not result from a disturbance of the 
 order of the heavenly bodies ; the light that stood over the 
 cradle of Christ was a meteor, for a star could not possibly 
 mark out with precision a house. 
 
 The author of this curious book soon after its publication 
 became a Roman Catholic, and in consequence recanted his 
 opinions, but the school of Biblical interpretation of which he 
 was perhaps the first founder continues actively to the present 
 day. To trace its history in detail does not fall within the 
 plan of the present work. It will be sufficient to say that 
 there are two natural theories by which men have endeav- 
 oured to explain the rise of religions, and that each of these 
 theories has in particular ages or countries or conditions of 
 thought exercised a supreme ascendency.' The first method, 
 flrhich attributes religions to special and isolated causes, found 
 its principal ancient representative in Euhemerus, who main- 
 tained that the pagan gods were originally illustrious kings, 
 deified after death either by the spontaneous revej-ence of 
 the people or by the cunning of the rulers.^ The work of 
 Euhemerus, being translated by Ennius, is said to have con- 
 tributed largely to that diffusion of scepticism in Rome which 
 preceded the rise of Christianity ; and its theory was general- 
 ly adopted by the Fathers, who, however, added that devils 
 had assumed the names of the dead." To this class of criti- 
 
 ' See Denis's Hist, dex Idies Morales dans VAntiquite. 
 ' Locke, in his Treaiise on Government, adopts very fuUy the theory of 
 Euhemerus about the origin of the pagan divinities. 
 
 " The first Christian writer who maintained that the pagan oracles were 
 
304 EATIONALISII m EUEOPB. 
 
 cism belong also all attempts to explain miracles by impos- 
 ture, or by optical delusions, or by the misconception of some 
 natural phenomenon, or by any other isolated circumstance. 
 The other method, which is called mythical, and which was 
 adopted among the ancients by tlie Pythagoreans, the Neo- 
 Platonists, and the Gnostics, regards different dogmatic sys- 
 tems as embodying religious sentiments or great moral con- 
 ceptions that ai*e generally diffused among mankind, or as 
 giving a palpable and (so to speak) material form to the as- 
 pirations of the societies in which they spring. Thus, while 
 fully admitting that special circumstances have an i uportant 
 influence over the rise of opinions, the interpreters of this 
 school seek the true eflncient cause in the general intellectual 
 atmosphere that is prevalent. They do not pretend to ex- 
 plain in detail how different miracles came to be believed, 
 but they assert that in a certain intellectual condition phe- 
 nomena which are deemed miraculous will always appear, 
 and that the general character of those phenomena will be de- 
 termined by the prevailing predisposition. The first of these 
 schools of interpretation was general in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, and has been especially favoured by 
 nations like the ancient Romans, or like the modern English 
 and French, who are distinguished for a love of precise and 
 definite conclusions ; while the second has been most promi- 
 nent in the present century, and in Germany. 
 
 It must, however, be admitted that the energy displayed 
 in framing natural explanations of miraculous phenomena 
 bears no proportion to that which has been exhibited in a 
 
 simply impositions, unconnected with dsemons, is said to have been a Dutch 
 Anabaptist physician named Van Dale ; and the same position was afterwards 
 maintained by Fontenelle, in his Histuire des Oracles, which was answered by 
 a Jesuit named Baltus. (Durand, Vie de Vanini, pp. 170-1 72.^ 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 305 
 
 ariticism that is purely disintegrating and destructiye. 
 Spinoza, whose profound knowledge not only of the Hebrew 
 language but also of Rabbinical traditions and of Jewish 
 modes of thought and expression made him peculiarly com- 
 petent for the task, set the example in his 'Tractatus Theolo- 
 gico-Politicus,' ' and Germany soon after plunged into tlic 
 bottomless abyss from which she has not emerged. But the 
 fact which must, I think, especially strike the impartial ob- 
 server, is that these criticisms, in at least the gi'eat majority 
 of cases, are carried on with a scarcely disguised purpose of 
 wresting the Bible into conformity with notions that have 
 been independently formed. The two wi'iters who have 
 done most to supply the principles of the movement are 
 Lessing and Kant. The first emphatically asserts that no 
 doctrine should be accepted as part of Scripture which is not 
 in accordance with ' reason,' an expression which in the 
 writings of modern German critics may be not unfairly re- 
 gai-ded as equivalent to the general scope and tendency of 
 modern thought.^ The doctrine of Kant is still more explicit. 
 According to him ' every dogmatic system, or, as he expresses 
 it, every 'ecclesiastical belief,' should be regarded as the 
 
 ' Spinoza was, as far as I know, the first writer who dwelt much on the 
 possible or probable falsification of some portions of the Old Testament by the 
 insertion of wrong vowel-points, a subject which was a few years since inves- 
 tigated in a work on Hebrew Interpolations, by Dr. Wall, of Dublin University. 
 Some of the remarks of Spinoza about the Jewish habit of speaking of the 
 suggestions of their own minds as inspirations are still worth reading, but with 
 these exceptions the value of the Tractatus Theologico-Politieus seems to m(! 
 to be chiefly historical. 
 
 ' See, on Lessing's views, a clear statement in Amand Sainte's HlH. 
 Critique du Rationalisme en. Allem,agne. Strauss, in the Introduction to his 
 Life of Jesus, gives a vivid sketch of the progress of German Rationalism ; 
 and the manner in which he there treats the subject of miracles illustrates very 
 clearly the wide use made of the term ' reason ' in German criticism. 
 
 ' See his Religion leithin the Limits of the Reason. 
 VOL. I. — 20 
 
306 EATIONALI^I IN EUROPE. 
 
 vehicle or envelope of ' pure religion,' or in other words of 
 thf)se moiies of feeling which constitute natural religion. 
 Tlie ecclesiastical belief is necessary, because most men are 
 unable to accept a purely moral belief unless it is as it were 
 materialised and embodied by grosser conceptions. But 
 the ecclesiastical belief being entirely subordinate to pure 
 religion, it followed that it should be interpreted simply 
 with a view to the latter — that is to say, all doctrines and 
 all passages of Scripture should be regarded as intended to 
 conTey some moral lesson, and no interpretation, however 
 natural, should be accepted as correct which collides with 
 our sense of right. 
 
 The statement of this doctrine of Kant may remind the 
 reader that in tracing the laws of the religious development 
 of societies I have hitherto dwelt only on one aspect of the 
 subject. I have examined several important intellectual 
 agencies which have effected intellectual changes, but have 
 as yet altogether omitted the laws of moral development. 
 In endeavouring to supply this omission, we are at first met 
 by a school which admits, indeed, that the true essence of all 
 religion is moral, but at the same time denies that there can 
 be in this respect any principle of progress. Nothing, it is 
 said, is so immutable as morals. The difference between 
 right and wrong was always known, and on this subject our 
 conceptions can never be enlarged. But if by the term 
 moral be included not simply the broad difference between 
 acts which are positively virtuous and those which are posi- 
 tively vicious, but also the prevailing ideal or standard of 
 excellence, it is quite certain that morals exhibit as constant 
 a development as intellect, and it is probable that this de- 
 velopment has exercised as important an influence upon so- 
 ciety. It is one of the most familiar facts that there are 
 
DEYELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 307 
 
 certain virtues that are higher than others, and that many of 
 these belong exclusively to a highly developed civilisation." 
 Thus, that the love of truth is a virtue is a proposition 
 which, stated simply, would have heen probably accepted 
 with equal alacrity in any age ; but if we examine the extent 
 to which it is realised, we find a profound difference. We 
 find that in an early period, while all the virtues of an un- 
 compromising partisan are cordially recognised, the higher 
 virtue, which binds men through a love of conscientious 
 enquiry to endeavour to pursue an eclectic course when party 
 and sectarian passions rage fiercely around them, is not only 
 entirely unappreciated, but is almost impossible ; that it is 
 even now only recognised by a very few who occupy the 
 eminences of thought ; and that it must therefore be recog- 
 nised by the multitude in proportion as they approach the 
 condition of those few. Thus, the pursuit of virtue for its 
 own saie is undoubtedly a higher excellence than the pursuit 
 of virtue for the sake of attaining reward or avoiding punish- 
 ment ; yet the notion of disinterested virtue belongs almost 
 exclusively to the higher ranks of the most civilised ages, 
 and exactly in proportion as we descend the intellectual scale 
 is it necessary to elaborate the system of rewards and pun- 
 ishments. 
 
 Humanity again, in theory, appears to be an unchange- 
 able virtue ; but if we examine its applications, we find it 
 constantly changing. Bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, and 
 cock-fighting, and countless amusements of a similar kind, 
 were once the favourite pastimes of Europe, were pursued by 
 all classes, even the most refined and the most humane, and 
 were universally regarded as perfectly legitimate.'' Men of 
 
 ' This has been well noticed by Archbishop Whately — I think in hia 
 dnnotafions to Bacon. 
 
 ' For a full view of the extent to which these amusements were carried on 
 
808 EATIOITALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 the most distinguished excellence are known to have de 
 lighted in them. Had anyone challenged them as barbarous, 
 his sentiments would have been regarded not simply as 
 absurd but as incomprehensible. There was, no doubt, no 
 controversy upon the subject.' Gradually, however, by the 
 silent pressure of civilisation, a profound change passed over 
 
 and diversified in England, see Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the English 
 People. Sir Thomas More was accustomed to boast of Ms skill in throwing 
 the ' cock stele ; ' and, to the very last, buU-baitiug was defended warmly by 
 Canning, and with an almost passionate earnestness by Windham. 
 
 ' As Macaulay, with characteristic antithesis, says : ' If the Puritans sup- 
 pressed bull-baiting, it was not because it gave pain to the bull, but because it 
 gave pleasure to the spectators.' The long unsuccessful warfare waged by the 
 Popes against Spanish bull-fighting forms a very curious episode in ecclesiasti- 
 cal history ; but its origin is to be found in the number of men who had been 
 killed. An old theologian mentions that, in the town of Concha, a bull that 
 had killed seven men became the object of the highest reverence, and the 
 people were so gratified that a painting representing the achievement was 
 immediately executed for the public square (Coucina, De Spectaculis, p. 283). 
 The writers who denounced Spanish bull-fighting contrasted it specially with 
 that of Italy, in which the bull was bound bv a rope, and which was therefore 
 innocent [Ibid. p. 285). Bull-fighting was prohibited under pain of excom- 
 munication by Pius v., in 156Y. In 1515 Gregory XIII. removed the prohibi- 
 tion except as regards ecclesiastics, who were still forbidden to frequent bull- 
 fights, and as regards festal days, on which they were not to be celebrated. 
 Some Spanish theologians having agitated much on this subject, Sixtus V., in 
 1586, confirmed the preceding bull. At last, in 1596, Clement VIII., moved 
 by the remonstrance of the Spanish king and the discontent of the Spanish 
 people, removed all prohibitions (in Spain) except those which rested on the 
 monks, only enjoining caution. At present bull-fights are usually performed 
 on festal days, and form part of most great religious festivals, especially those 
 in honour of the Virgin ! On this curious subject full details are given in 
 Thesauro, De Pcenis Ecclesiasticis (Romse, 1640), and in Concina, De iSpeeta- 
 cutis (Eomse, 1752). Among the Spanish opponents of bull-fighting was the 
 great Jesuit Mariana. It is curious enough that perhaps the most sanguinary 
 of all bull-fights was in the Coliseum of Rome, in 1333, when the Roman 
 nobles descended into the arena and eighteen were killed (Cibrario, Econonda 
 Politica, vol. i. pp. 196, 197); but the Pope was then at Avignon. Michelet 
 has noticed that while bull-fighting was long extremely popular in Rome, the 
 Eomagna, and Spoleto, it never took root in Naples, notwithstanding the long 
 domination of the Spaniards. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 309 
 
 public opinion. It was effected, not by any increase of 
 knowledge, or by any process of definite reasoning, but 
 simply by the gradual elevation of the moral standard. 
 Amusements that were once universal passed from the women 
 to the men, from the upper to the lower classes, from the 
 virtuous to the vicious, till at last the Legislature interposed 
 to suppress them, and a thrill of indignation is felt whenever 
 it is discovered that any of them have been practised. The 
 history of the abolition of torture, the history of punish- 
 ments, the history of the treatment of the conquered in war, 
 the history of slavery — all present us with examples of prac- 
 tices which in one age were accepted as perfectly right and 
 natural, and which in another age were repudiated as palpa- 
 bly and atrociously inhuman. In each case the change was 
 effected much less by any intellectual process than by a cer- 
 tain quickening of the emotions, and consequently of the 
 moral judgments; and if in any country we find practices at 
 all resembling those which existed in England a century ago, 
 we infer with certainty that that country has not received the 
 fuU amount of civilisation. The code of honour which first 
 represents and afterwards reacts upon the moral standard of 
 each age is profoundly difierent. The whole type of virtue in 
 a rude warlike people is distinct from that of a refined and 
 peaceful people, and the character which the latter would 
 admire the former would despise. So true is this, that each 
 successive stratum of civilisation brings with it a dislinctive 
 variation of the moral type. In the words of one of the 
 very greatest historians of the nineteenth century, 'If the 
 archaeologist can determine the date of a monument by the 
 form of its capital, with much greater certainty can the 
 psychological historian assign to a specific period a moral 
 fact, a predominating passion, or a mode of thought, and can 
 
310 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 pronounce it to have been impossible in the ages that pre- 
 ceded or that followed. In the chronology of art the same 
 forms have sometimes been reproduced, but in the moral life 
 such a recurrence is impossible : its conceptions are fixed in 
 their' eternal place in the fatality of time.' ' 
 
 Thej-e is, however, one striking exception to this law in 
 the occasional appearance of a phenomenon which may be 
 termed moral genius. There arise from time to time men 
 who bear to the moral condition of their age much the same 
 relations as men of genius bear to its intellectual condition. 
 They anticipate the moral standard of a later age, cast abroad 
 conceptions of disinterested virtue, of philanthropy, or of 
 self-denial that seem to have no relation to the spirit of their 
 time, inculcate duties and suggest motives of action that 
 appear to most men altogether chimerical. Yet the magnet- 
 ism of their perfections tells powerfully upon their contem- 
 poraries. An enthusiasm is kindled, a group of adherents is 
 formed, and many are emancipated from the moral condition 
 of their age. Yet the full effects of such a movement are 
 but transient. The first enthusiasm dies away, surrounding 
 circumstances resume their ascendency, the pure faith is 
 materialised, encrusted with conceptions that are alien to its 
 nature, dislocated, and distorted, till its first features have 
 almost disappeared. The moral teaching, being unsuited to 
 the time, becomes inoperative until its appropriate civilisation 
 lias dawned ; or at most it faintly and imperfectly filters 
 through an accumulation of dogmas, and thus accelerates in 
 some measure the arrival of the condition it requires. 
 
 From the foregoing considerations it is not difficult to 
 infer the relations of dogmatic systems to moral principles. 
 In a semi-barbarous period, when the moral faculty or the 
 
 Michelet. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 311 
 
 sense of right is far too weak to be a guide of conduct, dog- 
 matic systems interpose and supply men with motives of 
 action that are suited to their condition, and are sufficient to 
 sustain among them a rectitude of conduct that would other- 
 wise be unknown. But the formation of a moral philosophy 
 is usually the first step of the decadence of religions. Theol- 
 ogy, then ceasing to be the ground woi-k of morals, sinks into 
 a secondary position, and the main source of its power is 
 destroyed. In the religions of Greece and Rome this separa- 
 tion between the two parts of religious systems was carried 
 so far, that the inculcation of morality at last devolved avow- 
 edly and exclusively upon the philosophers, while the priests 
 were wholly occupied with soothsaying and expiations. 
 
 In the next place, any historical faith, as it is interpreted 
 by fallible men, will contain some legends or doctrines that 
 are contrary to our sense of right. For our highest concep- 
 tion of the Deity is moral excellence, and consequently men 
 always embody their standard of perfection in their religious 
 doctrines ; and as that standard is at first extremely imperfect 
 and confused, the early doctrines will exhibit a corresponding 
 imperfection. These doctrines being stereotyped in received 
 formularies for a time seriously obstruct the moral develop- 
 ment of society, but at last the opposition to them becomes 
 BO strong that they must give way : they are then either 
 violently subverted or permitted to become gradually ob- 
 solete. 
 
 There is but one example of a religion which is not 
 naturally weakened by civilisation, and that example is 
 Christianity. In all other cases the decay of dogmatic con- 
 ceptions is tantamount to a complete annihilation of religion; 
 for although there may be imperishable elements of moral 
 truth mingled with those conceptions, they have nothing 
 
312 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 distinctive or peculiar. The moral truths coalesce "with new 
 systems, the meu who uttered them take their place with 
 many others in the great pantheon of history, and the re- 
 ligion having discharged its functions is spent and withered. 
 But the great characteristic of Christianity, and the great moral 
 proof of its divinity, is that it has been the main source of 
 the moral development of Europe, and that it has discharged 
 this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of 
 ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive 
 influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind 
 can never cease to be distinctively and intensely Christian as 
 long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character 
 of the Christian Founder. There is, indeed, nothing more 
 wonderful in the history of the human race than the way in 
 which that ideal has traversed the lapse of ages, acquiring a 
 new strength and beauty with each advance of civilisation, 
 and infusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of 
 thought and action. At first men sought to grasp by minute 
 dogmatic definitions the di\inity they felt. The controver- 
 sies of the Homoousians or Monophysites or Nestorians or 
 Patripassians, and many others whose veiy names now 
 sound strange and remote, then filled the Church. Then 
 came the period of visible representations. The handker- 
 chief of Veronica, the portrait of Edessa, the crucifix of 
 Nicodemus, the paintings of St. Luke,' the image traced by 
 an angel's hand which is still venerated at the Lateran, the 
 
 " As Lami and Lanzi have shown, this legend probably resulted from a 
 confusion of names ; a Florentine monk, named Luca, of the eleventh century, 
 being, there is much reason to believe, the chief author of the ' portraits by St, 
 Duke.' They are not, however, all by the same hand, or of exactly the same 
 age, though evidently copied from the same type. Others think they are 
 Byzantine pictures brought to Italy during the time of the Iconoclasts and of 
 the Crusades. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 313 
 
 countless visions narrated by the saints, show the ea.gvJrness 
 with which men sought to realise as a palpable and living 
 image their ideal. This age was followed by that of his- 
 torical evidences, the age of Sebonde and his followers. 
 Tet more and more with advancing years the moral idea 
 stood out from all dogmatic conceptions ; its divinity was 
 recognised by its perfection; and it is no exaggeration to 
 say, that at no former period was it so powerful or so uni- 
 versally acknowledged as at present. This is a phenomenon 
 altogether unique in history; and to those who recognise 
 in the highest type of excellence the highest revelation 
 of the Deity, its importance ,is too manifest to be over- 
 looked. 
 
 I trust the reader will pardon the tedious length to which 
 this examination, which I would gladly have abridged, has 
 extended. For the history of rationalism is quite as much 
 a history of moral as of intellectual development, and any 
 conception of it that ignores the former must necessai'ily be 
 mutilated and false. Nothing, too, can, as I conceive, be 
 more erroneous or superficial than the reasonings of those 
 who maintain that the moral element of Christianity has in 
 it nothing distinctive or peculiar. The method of this school, 
 of which Bolingbroke may be i-egarded as the type, is to col- 
 lect from the writings of diiferent heathen writers certain 
 isolated passages embodying precepts that are inculcated by 
 Christianity ; and when the collection had become very large, 
 the task was supposed to be accomplished. But the true 
 originality of a system of moral teaching depends not so much 
 upon the elements of which it is composed, as upon the man- 
 ner in which they are fused into a symmetrical whole, upon 
 the proportionate value that is attached to different qualities, 
 or, to state the same thing by a single word, upon the type 
 
314 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 of character that is formed. N"o-w it is quite certain that the 
 Christian type differs not only in degree, but in kind, from 
 the Pagan one. 
 
 In applying the foregoing principles to the history of 
 Christian transformations, we should naturally expect three 
 distinct classes of change. The first is the gradual evanes- 
 cence of doctrines that collide with our moral sense. The 
 second is the decline of the influence of those ceremonies, or 
 purely speculative doctrines, which, without being opposed 
 to conscience, are at Kast wholly beyond its sphere. The 
 third is the substitution of the sense of right for the fear of 
 punishment as the main motive to virtue. 
 
 I reserve tht; consideration of the first of these three 
 changes for the ensuing chapter, in which I shall examine 
 the causes of religious persecution, and shall endeavour to 
 trace the history of a long series of moral anomalies in specu- 
 lation which prepared the way for that great moral anomaly 
 in practice. The second change is so evident, that it is not 
 necessary to dwell upon it. No candid person who is ac- 
 quainted with history can fail to perceive the difference be- 
 tween the amount of reverence bestowed in the present day, 
 by the great majority of men, upon mere speculative doctrines 
 or ritualistic observances, and that which was once general. 
 If we examine the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 we find it almost exclusively occupied with minute questions 
 concerning the manner of the co-existence of the two natures 
 in Christ. If we examine it in the middle ages, we find it ab- 
 sorbed in ritualism and pilgrimages. If we examine it at the 
 Reformation, we find it just emerging beneath the pressure of 
 civilisation from this condition ; yet still the main speculative 
 test was the doctrine concerning the Sacrament, which had no 
 relation to morals; and the main practical test on the 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 315 
 
 Continent, at least, was the eating of meat on Fridays.' In 
 the present day, with the great body of laymen at least, such 
 matters appear simply puerile, because they have no relation 
 to morals. 
 
 The third change is one which requires more attention, for 
 it involves the hist ory of religi o us terro rism — a hislory of the 
 deepest but most painful interest to all who study the intel- 
 lectual and moral development of Europe. 
 
 It would be difficult, and perhaps not altogether desira- 
 ble, to attain in the present day to any realised conception 
 of the doctrine of future punishment as it was taught by the 
 early Fathers, and elaborated and developed by .the medieval 
 priests. That doctrine has now been thrown so much into 
 the background, it has been so modified and softened and 
 explained away, that it scarcely retains a shadow of its an- 
 
 ' In France especially the persecution on this ground was frightful. Thus, 
 Bodin tell us that in 1539 the magistrates of Angers burnt alive those who 
 were proved to have eaten meat on Friday if they remained impenitent, and 
 hung them if they repented. [Demon, des Sorners, p. 216.) In England the 
 subject was regarded in a very peculiar light. Partly because Anglicanism 
 clung closely to the Fathers, and partly because England was a maritime 
 country, fasting was not orJy encouraged, but strictly enjoined ; and a long 
 series of laws and proclamations were accordingly issued between 1548 and the 
 Restoration enjoining abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays, and throughout 
 Lent ; ' considering that due and godly abstinence is a mean to virtue, and to 
 subdue men's bodies of their souls and spirits ; and considering, also, especially 
 that fishers, and men using the trade of fishing in the sea, may thereby the 
 rather be set on work.' See a list of these laws in Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. i. 
 A homily also enjoins fasting on the same complex ground. There are some 
 very good remarks on the tendency of theologians to condemn more severely 
 error than immorality, and in condemning different errors to dwell most 
 severely on those which are purely speculative, in Bayle, Pens^es Diverges, 
 cxcix. He says : ' Si un docteur de Sorbonne avoit la hardiesse de chanceler 
 (ant solt pen sur le mystfere de I'lncamation, . . . il couroit risque du feu 
 Je la Gr6ve ; mais s'il se oontentoit d'avaucer quelques propositions de morale 
 relichee, comme le fameux Escobar, on se contenteroit de dire que cela n'est 
 pas bien, et peut-tee on verroit la censure de son Uvre.' 
 
316 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 cient repulsiveness. It is sufficient to say, that it was gener- 
 ally maintained that eternal damnation was the lot which 
 the Almighty had reserved for an immense proportion of his 
 creatures ; and that that damnation consisted not simply of 
 the privation of certain extraordinary blessings, but also of the 
 endurance of the most excruciating agonies. Perhaps the most 
 acute pain the human body can undergo is that of fire ; and 
 this, the early Fathers assure us, is the eternal destiny of the 
 mass of mankind. The doctrine was stated with the utmost 
 literalism and precision. In the two first apologies for the 
 Christian faith it was distinctly asserted. Philosophy, it was 
 said, had sometimes enabled men to look with contempt upon 
 torments, as upon a transient evil ; but Christianity presented 
 a prospect before which the stoutest heart must quail, for its 
 punishments were as eternal as they were excruciating.' Ori- 
 gen, it is true, and his disciple Gregory of Nyssa, in a some- 
 what hesitating manner, diverged from the prevailing opinion, 
 and strongly inclined to a figurative interpretation, and to 
 the belief in the ultimate salvation of all; ' but they were alone 
 in their opinion. With these two exceptions, all the Fathers 
 proclaimed the eternity of torments, and all defined those tor- 
 ments as the action of a literal fire upon a sensitive body.' 
 
 " ' Sic et Epicuras omnem cruciatum doloremque depretiat modicum qui- 
 dem contemptibilem pronuntiando magnum vero non diuturnum. Enimvero 
 DOS qui sub Deo omnium speculatore dispungimur, quique seternam ab eo 
 poenam providemus merito soli imiocentiiE occurrimus et pro scientia) plenitu- 
 dine et pro magnitudine cruciatus non diutumi varum sempitemi.' (Tertullian, 
 Apol,, cap. xlv.) 
 
 " The opinions of this last Father on the subject, which are very little 
 known, are clearly stated in that learned book, Dallajus, De Pan: t et SaHi- 
 factionibus (Amsterdam, 1649), lib. iv. c. T. For Origen's well-known opin- 
 ions, see Ihid. lib. iv. c. 6. 
 
 ' A long chain of quotations establishing this will be found in Swinden, 
 On the Fire of fie?? (London, 1'72'7); and in yiovbeitfs Miujuiry concerning 
 Future Pumslinwnt (London, 1744). 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIOlirALISM. 317 
 
 WTien the pagans argued that a hody could not remain for 
 ever unconsumed in a material flame, they were answered ' 
 by the analogies of the salamander, the asbestus, and the 
 volcano ; and by appeals to the Divine Omnipotence, which 
 was supposed to be continually exerted to prolong the tor- 
 tures of the dead/ 
 
 We may be quite sure that neither in the early Church, 
 nor in any other period, was this doctrine universally 
 realised. There must have been thousands who, believing, 
 or at least professing, that there was no salvation except in 
 the Church, and that to be excluded from salvation meant 
 to be precipitated into an abyss of flames, looked back 
 nevertheless to the memory of a pagan mother, who had 
 passed away, if not with a feeling of vague hope, at least 
 without the poignancy of despair. There must have been 
 thousands who,, though they would perhaps have admitted 
 with .g^ather that the noblest actions of the heathen were ! 
 but ' splendid vices,' read nevertheless the pages of the great ^ 
 historians of their country with emotions that were very little 
 in conformity with such a theory. Nor, it may be added, 
 were these persons those whose moral pei'ceptions had been 
 least developed by contemplating the gentle and tolerant 
 character. of the Christian Founder. Yet still the doctrine 
 was stamped upon the theology of the age, and though it 
 had not yet been introduced into art, it was realised to a 
 
 ' See the long argument based on these grounds in St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, 
 lib. xxi. cc. 1-9. Minutius Felix treats the same subject in a somewhat fero- 
 cious passage : ' Ipse rex Jupiter per torrentes ripas et atram voraginem jurat 
 religiose : destinatam enim sibi cum suis cultoribus poenam prasscius perhor- 
 lescit: neo tormentis aut modus uUus aut terminus. Illic sapiens ignis mem- 
 bra urit et reficit : carpit et nutrit sieut ignes fulminum corpora tangunt nee 
 absumunt : siout ignes JJtnae et Vesuvii et ardentium ubique terrarum flagrant 
 nee erogantur : ita poenale illud incendium non damnis ardentium pascitur sed 
 inexesa corporum laceratione nutritur.' (_Oclavkis, cap. xxxv.) 
 
318 EATIOKAIISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 degree whicli we at least can never reproduce ; for it was 
 taught in the midst of persecution and conflict, and it flashed 
 upon the mind with all the vividness of novelty. Judaism 
 had had nothing like it. It seems now to be generally ad- 
 mitted that the doctrine of a future life, which is often 
 spoken of as a central conception of religion, was not included 
 in the Levitical revelation, or at least was so faintly intimated 
 that the people were unable to perceive it.' During the 
 captivity, indeed, the Jews obtained from their masters 
 some notions on the subject, but even these were very vague ; 
 and the Sadducees, who rejected the new doctrine as an inno- 
 vation, were entirely uncondemned. Indeed, it is probable 
 that the chosen people had less clear and correct knowledge 
 of a future world than any other tolerably civilised nation 
 of antiquity. Among the early popular traditions of the 
 pagans, there were, it is true, some faint traces of a doctrine 
 of hell, which are said to have been elaborated by Pytha- 
 goras,' and especially by Plato, who did more then any other 
 ancient philosopher to develop the notion of expiation ; ° but 
 
 ' This fact had been noticed by several early English divines (Barrow ana 
 Berkeley among the number) ; but it was brought into especial relief by War- 
 burton, who, as is well known, in his Divine Legation, based a curious argu- 
 ment in favour of the divine origin of the Levitical religion upon the fact that 
 it contained no revelation of a future world. Archbishop Whately, who 
 strongly took up the view of Warburton concerning the fact, has, in one of his 
 Essays on the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion, applied it very skilfully 
 to estibUshing the divine origin, not indeed of Judaism, but of Christianity, 
 because Christianity does contain a revelation of the future world. Both these 
 writers contend that the well-known passage in Job does not refer to the resur- 
 rection. The subject has been dwelt on from another point of view by Chubb, 
 Voltaire, Strauss, and several other writers. On the growth of the doctrine 
 among the Jews, see Mackay's Religious Development of the Cheeks and 
 Hehrern, vol. ii. pp. 286-29V. 
 
 ^ Denis, Hktoire des Idees Morales dans V Antiquity, torn. i. pp. 18, 19. 
 
 ' Ibid. pp. 104-106. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 319 
 
 these, at the period of the rise of Christianity, had little or 
 no influence upon the minds of men ; nor had they ever pre- 
 sented the same characteristics as the doctrine of the Church. 
 For among the pagans future tortui'e was supposed to be 
 reserved exclusively for guilt, and for guilt of the most 
 extreme and exceptional character. It was such culprits as 
 Tantalus, or Sisyphus, or Ixion, that were selected as exam- 
 ples, and, excepting in the mysteries,' the subject never 
 seems to have been brought very prominently forward. It 
 was the distinctive doctrine of the Christian theologians, that 
 sufferings more excruciating than any the imagination could 
 conceive were reserved for millions, and might be the lot of 
 the most benevolent and heroic of mankind. That religious 
 error was itself the worst of crimes, was before the Reforma- 
 tion the universal teaching of the Christian Church. Can 
 we wonder that there were some who refused to regard it as 
 an Evangel ? 
 
 If we pursue this painful subject into the middle ages, we 
 find the conception of punishment by literal fire elaborated 
 with more detail. The doctrine, too, of a purgatory even for 
 the saved had grown up. Without examining at length the 
 origin of this last tenet, it may be sufficient to say that it 
 was a natural continuation of the doctrine of penance ; that 
 the pagan poets had had a somewhat similar conception, 
 which Virgil introduced into his famous description of the 
 regions of the dead ; that the ManichsBans looked forward to 
 a strange process of purification after death ;" and that some 
 
 ' On the place representations of Tartarus had in the mysteiies, see Ma- 
 giiin, Origines du Thiutre, torn. i. pp. 81-84. 
 
 ' The Manichaeans are said to have believed that the souls of the dead were 
 purified in the sun ; that they were then borne in the moor to the angels ; and 
 that the phases of the moon were caused by the increase or diminution of the 
 freight. (Beausobre, Hist. Oritiqiie du ManichHsme, torn. i. pp. 243, 244.) 
 
320 KATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 of the Fathers appear to have held that at the day of judg- 
 ment all men must pass through a fire, though apparently 
 rather for trial than for purification, as the virtuous and 
 orthodox were to pass unscathed, while bad people and peo- 
 ple with erroneous theological opinions were to be burnt.' 
 Besides this, the doctrine perhaps softened a little the terror- 
 ism of eternal punishment, by diminishing the number of 
 those who were to endure it ; though, on the other hand, it 
 represented extreme suffering as reserved for almost all men 
 after death. It may be added, that its financial advantages 
 are obvious and undeniable. 
 
 There was in the tenth century one striking example of a 
 theologian following in the traces of Origen, and, as far as I 
 know, alone in the middle ages, maintaining the figurative 
 interpretation of the fire of hell. This was John Scotus 
 Erigena, a very remarkable man, -who, as his name imports,' 
 and as his contemporaries inform us, was an Irishman, and 
 who appears to have led, for the most part, that life of a wan- 
 dering scholar for which his countrymen have always been 
 famous. His keen wit, his great and varied genius, and his 
 knowledge of Greek, soon gained him an immense reputation. 
 This last acquirement was then extremely rare, but it had 
 been kept up in the Irish monasteries some time after it had 
 disappeai-ed from the other seminaries of Europe. Scotus 
 
 ' Dallaeus, De Pcenis et Satisfactionibns, lib. iv. c. 9. Some of the ancients 
 had a notion about fire being the portal of the unseen world. Herodotus (lib. 
 V, e. 92) tells a curious story about Periander, a tyrant of Corinth, who in- 
 voked the shade of his wife ; but she refused to answer his questions, alleging 
 that she was too cold ; for though dresses had been placed in her tomb, they 
 were of no use to her, as they had not been burnt. 
 
 " Scoti was at first the name of the Irish ; it was afterwards shared and 
 finally monopolised by the inhabitants of Scotland. Erigena means, bom in 
 Erin — the distinctive name of Ireland. There is an amusing notice of Scotus 
 Erigena in Matthew of Westminster (An. 880). 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 321 
 
 threw himself with such ardour into both of the great sys- 
 tems of Greek philosophy, that some have regarded him 
 principally as the last representative of Neoplatonism, and 
 others as the founder of Scholasticism.' He displayed on all 
 questions a singular disdain for authority, and a spirit of the 
 boldest free thought, which, like Origen, with whose works 
 he was probably much imbued, he defended by a lavish em- 
 ployment of allegories. Among the doctrines he disbelieved, 
 and therefore treated as allegorical, was that of the fire of hell." 
 Scotus, however, was not of his age. The material con- 
 ceptions of medisevalism harmonised admirably with the ma- 
 terial doctrine ; and after the religious terrorism that follow- 
 ed the twelfth century, that doctrine attained its full elabo- 
 ration. The agonies of hell seemed then the central fact of 
 religion, and the perpetual subject of the thoughts of men. 
 The whole intellect of Europe was employed in illustrating 
 them. All literature, all painting, all eloquence, was concen- 
 trated upon the same dreadful theme. By the pen of Dante 
 and by the pencil of Orcagna, by the pictures that crowded 
 every church, and the sermons that rang from every pulpit, 
 the maddening terror was sustained. The saint was often per- 
 mitted in visions to behold the agonies of the lost, and to re- 
 count the spectacle he had witnessed. He loved to tell how by 
 the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had §een millions writh- 
 ing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs roll- 
 ing with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and muti- 
 
 ' He is regarded in the first light by M. Guizot in his lEstory of Civilisa- 
 tion; and in the second by M. St. Rene Taillandier, in his able and learned 
 treatise on Scotus. 
 
 ' On the doctrines of Scotus, and especially on that about hell, see Tail- 
 
 landier, 8cot Erig^ne, pp. 176-180; Ampfere, Hist. UMeraire de la JiVnnce, 
 
 torn. iii. p. 95 ; Alexandri, Nist. EccUs., torn. vi. pp. 361-363. According to 
 
 this last writer, Scotus admitted Hteral torments for the devil, but not for man 
 
 VOL. I. — 2 1 "^ 
 
322 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE, 
 
 latcd and quivering witb pain, tortured by pangs that seemed 
 ever keener by the recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mer- 
 cy to an unpitying heaven. Hideous beings of dreadful as- 
 pect and of fantastic forms hovered around, mocking them 
 amid their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling 
 brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and more 
 refined. Amid all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, 
 feeding and intensifying the waves of fire. There was no 
 respite, no alleviation, no hope. The tortures were ever 
 vai-ied in their character, and they never palled for a moment 
 upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while re- 
 taining their intensity withheld their light. A shroud of 
 darkness covered the scene, but a ceaseless shriek of anguish 
 attested the agonies that were below." 
 
 It is useless to follow the subject into detail. We may 
 reproduce the ghastly imagery that is accumulated in the 
 sermons and in the legends of the age. We may estimate 
 the untiring assiduity with which the Catholic priests sought 
 in the worst acts of human tyranny, and in the dark recesses 
 of their own imaginations, new forms of torture, to ascribe 
 them to the Creator. We can never conceive the intense 
 vividness with which these conceptions were realised, or the 
 madness and the misery they produced. For those were 
 ages of implicit and unfaltering credulity ; they were ages 
 when none of the distractions of the present day divided the 
 intellect, and when theology was the single focus upon which 
 the imagination was concentrated. They were ages, too, 
 when the modern tendency to soften or avoid repulsive im- 
 
 ' The details of many of these visions are given in their full force in Swin- 
 den ; and in Plancy, DicHonnaire InfernaU, art Enfer. Dean Milman, in his 
 Hist, of Latin Christianity, has noticed this passion for detailed pictures of 
 hell (which seems to date from St. Gregory the Great) with his usual force and 
 justice. 
 
DETELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 323 
 
 ages was altogether tinknown, and -when, in the general pa- 
 ralysis of the reason, every influence was exerted to stimulate 
 the imagination. Wherever the worshipper turned, he was 
 met by new forms of torture, elaborated with such minute 
 detail, and enforced with such a vigour and distinctness, that 
 they must have clung for ever to the mind, and chilled eveiy 
 natural impulse towards the Creator. How, indeed, could it 
 be otherwise ? Men were told that the Almighty, by the 
 fiat of his uncontrolled power, had called into being count- 
 less millions whom He knew to be destined to eternal, excru- 
 ciating, unspeakable agony ; that He had placed millions in 
 such a position that such agony was inevitable ; that He had 
 prepared their place of torment, and had kindled its undying 
 flame ; and that, prolonging their lives for ever, in order that 
 they might be for ever wretched, He would make the con- 
 templation of those sufferings an essential element of the 
 happiness of the redeemed.' No other religious teachers had 
 ever proclaimed such tenets, and as long as they were real- 
 ised intensely, the benevolent precepts and the mild and 
 gentle ideal of the New Testament could not possibly be in- 
 fluential. The two things were hopelessly incongruous. 
 The sense of the Divi ne goodness being destroyed, the whole 
 fabric of natur al religi on crumbled in the dust. From that 
 time religion was necessarily diverted from the moral to the 
 dogmatic, and became an artificial thing of relics and cere- 
 monies, of ci'edulity and persecution, of asceticism and terror- 
 ism. It centred entir ely upon the priests, who supported it 
 mainly by intimidation. 
 
 I have already, when examining the phenomena of witch- 
 
 ' St. Thomas Aquinas says, ' Beati in regno coelesti videbunt poenas damna- 
 torum, UT BEATixuDO iLLis MASis COMPLACEAT.' {Summa Suppl., qusest. xeir. 
 art. 1.) 
 
B24 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 craft, noticed the influence of this doctrine upon the imagina" 
 tion, which it has probably done more to disease than almost 
 all other moral and intellectual %encies combined. 1 shall 
 hereafter touch upon its effects upon the intellectual history 
 of Europe — upon the timidity and disingenuousness of en- 
 quiry, the distrust and even hatred of intellectual honesty, 
 it encouraged. There is, however, a still more painful effect 
 to be noticed. That the constant contemplation of suffering, 
 especially when that contemplation is devoid of passion, has 
 a tendency to blunt the affections, and thus destroy the emo- 
 tional part of humanity, is one of the most familiar facts of 
 common observation. The law holds good even in men, like 
 surgical operators, who contemplate pain solely for the bene- 
 fit of others. The first repulsion is soon exchanged for indif- 
 ference, the indifference speedily becomes interest, and the 
 interest is occasionally heightened to positive enjoyment. 
 Hence the anecdotes related of surgeons who have derived 
 the most exquisite pleasure from the operations of their pro- 
 fession, and of persons who, being unable to suppress a mor- 
 bid delight in the contemplation of suffering, have deter- 
 mined to utilise their defect, and have become the most 
 unflinching operators in the hospitals. Now it is sufficiently 
 manifest that upon this emotional part of humanity depends 
 by far the greater number of kind acts that are done in the 
 world, and especially the prevailing ideal and standard of 
 humanity. There are, no doubt, persons who are exceedingly 
 benevolent through a sense of duty, while their temperament 
 remains entirely callous. There are even cases in which the 
 callousness of temperament increases in proportion to the 
 active benevolence, for it is acquired in contemplating suffer- 
 ing for the purpose of relieving it, and, as Bishop Butler re- 
 minds us, ' active habits are strengthened, while passive im- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIOlirALISM. 325 
 
 pressions are weakened, by repetition.' But the overwlielm- 
 ing majority are in these matters governed by their emotions. 
 Their standard and their acts depend upon the liveliness of 
 their feelings. If this be so, it is easy to conceive what 
 must have been the result of the contemplations of medise- 
 valism. There is a fresco in the great monastery of Pavia 
 which might be regarded as the emblem of the age. It rep- 
 resents a monk with clasped hands, and an expression of 
 agonising terror upon his countenance, straining over the 
 valley of vision where the sufferings of the lost were dis- 
 played, while the inscription above reveals his one harrowing 
 thought, ' Quis sustinebit ne descendam moriens ? ' 
 
 In such a state of thought, we should naturally expect 
 that the direct and powerful tendency of this doctrine would 
 be to produce a general indifference to human sufferings, or 
 even a bias towards acts of barbarity. Yet this only gives 
 an inadequate conception of its effects. For not only were 
 men constantly expatiating on these ghastly pictures, they 
 were also constantly associating them with gratitude and 
 with joy. They believed that the truth of Christianity im- 
 plied the eternal torture of a vast proportion of their fellow- 
 creatures, and they believed that it would be a gross impiety 
 to wish that Christianity was untrue. They had collected 
 with such assiduity, and had interpreted with such a revolt- 
 ing literalism, every rhetorical passage in the Bible that 
 could be associated with their doctrine, that they had firmly 
 persuaded themselves that a material and eternal fire formed 
 a central truth of their faith, and that, in the words of an 
 Anglican clergyman, ' the hell described in the Gospel is not 
 with the same particularity to be met with in any other re- 
 ligion that is or hath been in the whole world.' ' Habitually 
 
 ' Swiuden, p. 129. 
 
dZb EATIOlirALISM IN EtJEOPE. 
 
 treating the language of parable as if it was the language of 
 history, they came to regard it as very truly their ideal of 
 happiness, to rest for ever on Abraham's bosom, and to con- 
 template for ever the torments of their brother in hell. They 
 felt with St. Augustine that ' the end of religion is to be- 
 come like the object of worship,' and they represented the 
 Deity as confining his affection to a small section of his crea- 
 tures, and inflicting on all others the most horrible and eter- 
 nal suffering. 
 
 Now it is undoubtedly true, that when doctrines of this 
 kind are intensely realised, they will prove most efficacious 
 in dispelling the apathy on religious subjects which is the 
 common condition of mankind. They will produce great 
 earnestness, great self-sacrifice, great singleness of purpose. 
 Loyola, who had studied with profound sagacity the springs 
 of enthusiasm, assigned in his spiritual exercises an entire 
 day to be spent in meditating upon eternal damnation, and 
 in most great religious revivals the doctrine has occupied a 
 prominent place. It is also undoubtedly true, that in a few 
 splendid instances the effect of this realisation has been to 
 raise up missionary teachers of such heroic and disinterested 
 zeal, that their lives are among the grandest pages in the 
 whole range of biography. But although this may be its 
 effect upon some singularly noble natures, there can be little 
 question that in the vast majority of cases its tendency will 
 be to indurate the character, to diffuse abroad a callousness 
 and insensibility to the suffering of others that will pro- 
 foundly debase humanity. If you make the detailed and 
 exquisite torments of multitudes the habitual object of the 
 thoughts and imaginations of men, you will necessarily pro- 
 duce in most of them a gradual indifference to human suffer- 
 ing, and in some of them a disposition to regard it with 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 327 
 
 positive delight. If you further assure men that these suf- 
 ferings form an integral part of a revelation which they are 
 bound to regard as a message of good tidings, you will in- 
 duce them to stifle every feeling of pity, and almost to en- 
 courage their insensibility as a virtue. If you end your 
 teaching by telling them that the Being who is the ideal'of 
 their lives confines His afiection to the members of a single 
 Church, that He_^ill torture for ever all who are not found 
 within it^_pale, and that His children will for ever contem- 
 plate those tortures in a state of unalloyed felicity, you will 
 prepare the way for every form of persecution that can be 
 directed against those who'are without. He who most fully 
 realised these doctrines, would be the most unhappy or the 
 most unfeeling of mankind. No possible prospect of indi- 
 vidual bliss could reconcile a truly humane man, who followed 
 the impulse of his humanity, to the thought that those who 
 were external to his faith were destined to eternal fire. No 
 truly humane man could avoid wishing, that rather than this 
 should be the case, he and all others should sleep the sleep of 
 annihilation. When the doctrine was intensely realised and 
 implicitly believed, it must, therefore, have had one or other 
 of two effects. It must have produced an intensity of com- 
 passion that would involve an extreme unhappiness and 
 would stimulate to extreme heroism, or it must have pro- 
 duced an absolute callousness and a positive inclination to 
 inflict suffering upon the heretic. It does not require much 
 knowledge of human nature to perceive that the spirit of 
 Torquemada must be more common than that of Xavier. 
 
 That this was actually the case must be evident to any 
 one who is not wilfully blind to the history of Christendom. 
 I have mentioned that writer who in the second century 
 dilated most emphatically on the doctrine of eternal punish- 
 
328 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 ment by fire as a means of intimidation. In another of his 
 works he showed very clearly the influence it exercised upon 
 his own character. He had written a treatise dissuading the 
 Ghristiaus of his day from frequenting the public spectacles. 
 He had collected on the subject many arguments, some of 
 them very powerful, and others extremely grotesque ; but he 
 perceived that to make his exhortations forcible to the 
 majority of his readers, he must point them to some counter- 
 attraction. He accordingly proceeded — and his style as- 
 sumed a richer glow and a more impetuous eloquence as he 
 rose to the congenial theme — to tell them that a spectacle 
 was reserved for them, so fascinating and so attractive that 
 the most joyous festivals of earth faded into insignificance by 
 the comparison. That spectacle was the agonies of their 
 fellow-countrymen, as they writhe amid the torments of hell. 
 ' What,' he exclaimed, ' shall be the magnitude of that scene ! 
 How shall I wonder ! How shall I laugh ! How shall I 
 rejoice ! How shall I triumph when I behold so many and 
 such illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into 
 heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest dark- 
 ness of hell ! Then shall the soldiers who had persecuted the 
 name of Christ burn in more cruel fire than any they had 
 kindled for the saints. . . . Then shall the tragedians pour 
 forth in their own misfortune more piteous cries than those 
 with which they had made the theatre to resound, while the 
 comedian's powers shall be better seen as he becomes more 
 flexible by the heat. Then shall the driver of the circus 
 stand forth to view all blushing in -his flaming chariot, and 
 the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by darts of fire. 
 . . . Compared with such spectacles, with such subjects 
 of triumph as these, what can praetor or consul, quaestor or 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 329 
 
 pontiff, afford ? And even now faitli can bring them near, 
 imagination can depict them as present.' ' 
 
 I have quoted this very painful passage not so much as 
 an instance of the excesses of a morbid disposition embit- 
 tered by persecution, as because it furnishes a striking illus- 
 tration of the influence of a certain class of realisations on 
 the affections. For in tracing what may be called the 
 psychological history of Europe, we are constantly met by a 
 great contradiction, which can only be explained by sucli 
 considerations. By the confession of all parties, the Chris- 
 tian religion was designed to be a religion of philanthropy, 
 and love was represented as the distinctive test or chai-ac- 
 teristic of its true members. As a matter of fact, it has 
 probably done more to quicken the affections of mankind, to 
 promote pity, to create a pure and merciful ideal, than any 
 
 ' ' Qua? tunc spectacuU latitudo ! Quid admirer ! Quid rideam ! ubi 
 gaudeam ! ubi exultem, spectans tot et tautos reges, qui in coelum recepti 
 nuntiadantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis suis testibus in imis tenebris congemes- 
 ceutes ! Item prajsides persecutores dominici nominis ssevioribus quam ipsi 
 flammis ssevierunt insultautibus contra Chrlatianos liquescentes ! quos priBteroa 
 sapientes illos philoaophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrationibus erubes- 
 centes, quibus nihil ad Deum pertinere suadebant, quibus animas aut nullas 
 aut non in pristina corpora redituras affirmabant ! Etiam poetas non ad Rhiada- 
 manti nee ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi tribmial palpitantes. Tunc magis 
 tragoedi audiendi magis scilicet vocales in sua propria calamitate. Tunc his- 
 triones oognoscendi solutiores multo per ignem. Tunc spectandus auriga in 
 flammea rota totus rubens ; tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis sed in 
 igne jaoulati ; nisi quod ne tunc quidcm illos velim vises, ut qui malim ad eos 
 potius conspeetum insatiabilem conferre qui in dominum desaevierunt. Hie 
 est ille dicam fabri aut qusestuariaj filius, sabbati destructor, Samaritea et 
 diemonium habons. Hie est quem a Juda redemistis, hie est ille arundine et 
 colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis dedecoratus, ielle et aceto potatus. Hie est 
 quem clam discentes subripuerunt ut resurrexisse dieatur, vel hortulanus de- 
 traxit ne laotucas suas freiuentia oommeantium sederentur. Ut talia spectes, ut 
 talibus exultes quis tibi praetor, aut consul, aut qucestor, aut sacerdos de sufl 
 jberalitate prsestabit ? Kt tamen haic jam quodammodo habemus per fidem 
 spiritu imaginante repKEsentata.' (Tertullian, Be Spectac, cap. xxx.) 
 
330 KATIONAIISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 Other influence that has ever acted on the world. But while 
 the marvellous influence of Chiistianity in this respect has 
 been acknowledged by all who have mastered the teachings 
 of history, while the religious minds of every land and of 
 every opinion haye recognised in its Founder the highest 
 conceivable ideal and embodiment of compassion as of purity, 
 it is a no less incontestable truth that for many centuries the 
 Christian priesthood pursued a policy, at least towards those 
 who differed from their opinions, implying a callousness and 
 absence of the emotional part of humanity whicu has seldom 
 been paralleled, and perhaps never surpassed. From Julian, 
 who observed that no wild beasts were so ferocious as angry 
 theologians, to Montesquieu, who discussed as a psychologi- 
 cal phenomenon the inhumanity of monks, the fact has been 
 constantly recognised. The monks, the Inquisitors, and in 
 general the mediaeval clergy, present a type that is singularly 
 well defined, and is in many respects exceedingly noble, but 
 which is continually marked by a total absence of mere 
 natural afiection. In zeal, in courage, in perseverance, in 
 self-sacrifice, they towered far above the average of mankind ; 
 but they were always as ready to inflict as to endure suffer- 
 ins. These were the men who chanted their Te Deums over 
 the massacre of the Albigenses or of St. Bartholomew, who 
 fanned and stimulated the Crusades and the religious wars, 
 who exulted over the carnage, and strained every nerve to 
 prolong the struggle, — and, when the zeal of the warrior had 
 begun to flag, mourned over the languor of faith, and con- 
 templated the sufiferings they had caused with a satisfaction 
 that was as pitiless as it was unselfish. These were the men 
 who were at once the instigators and the agents of that 
 horrible detailed persecution that stained almost every 
 province of Europe with the blood of Jews and heretics, and 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 331 
 
 w'ftich exhibits an amount of cold, passionless, studied, and 
 deliberate barbarity unrivalled in the history of mankind." 
 
 Now, when a tendency of this kind is habitually exhibited 
 among men who are unquestionably actuated by the strongest 
 sense of duty, it may be assumed that it is connected with 
 some principle they have adopted, or with the moral atmos- 
 phere they breathe. It must have an intellectual or logical 
 antecedent, and it must have what may be tei-med an 
 emotional antecedent. By the first I understand certain 
 principles or trains of reasoning which induce men to believe 
 that it is their duty to persecute. By the second I under- 
 stand a tendency or disposition of feeling that harmonises 
 with persecution, removes the natural reluctauce on the sub- 
 ject, and predisposes men to accept any reasoning of which 
 persecution is the conclusion. The logical antecedents of 
 persecution I shall examine in the next chapter. The most 
 important emotional antecedent is, I believe, to be found in 
 the teaching concerning the future world. It was the natu- 
 ral result of that teaching, that men whose lives present in 
 many respects examples of the noblest virtue, were never- 
 theless conspicuous for ages as prodigies of barbarity, and 
 proved absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of all who 
 dissented from their doctrines. Nor was it only towards the 
 heretic that this inhumanity was displayed ; it was reflected 
 
 ' We shall have ample evidence of this in the next chapter. At present it 
 is sufficient to say that the use of the slow fire in burning heretics was in many 
 districts habitual. In that curious book, the Scaligerana (a record of the con- 
 versation of Joseph Scaliger, by an intimate friend who hved in his house), we 
 have a horrible description of one of these executions in Guienne : ' J'avois 
 environ seize ans que je vis brusler un Jacobin qui fermoit la bouche aux 
 Papistcs ; on le d^grada et on le brusla k petit feu, le llant avec des cordea 
 mouiU^es par les aisselles prfes la potenoe, et U on mettoit le feu dessous tene- 
 ment qu'il estoit demy consume avant qu'il fut mort.' (Art. Heretici. See, 
 too, art. Sorciers.) See, too, Cousin's account of the execution of Vanini. 
 
332 EATIONAXISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 iriore or less in the ■vrhole penal system of the time. We 
 have a striking example of this in the history of torture. In 
 ancient Greece, torture was never employed except in cases 
 of treason. In the best days of ancient Rome, notwithstand- 
 ing the notorious inhumanity of the people, it was exclusive- 
 ly confined to the slaves. In mediaeval Christendom it was 
 made use of to an extent that was probably unexampled in 
 any earlier period, and in cases that fell under the cogni- 
 sance of the clergy it was applied to every class of the com- 
 munity.' .And what strikes us most in considering the me- 
 diaeval tortures, is not so much their diabolical barbarity, 
 which it is indeed impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordi- 
 nary variety, and what may be termed the artistic skill, they 
 displayed. They represent a condition of thought in which 
 men had pondered long and carefully on all the forms of suf- 
 fering, had compared and combined tte different kinds of 
 torture, till they had become the most consummate masters 
 of their art, had expended on the subject all the resources of 
 the utmost ingenuity, and had pursued it with the ardour of 
 a passion. The system was matured under the mediaaval 
 habit of thought, it was adopted by the inquisitors, and it 
 received its finishing touches from their ingenuity.' In every 
 
 ' In cases of heresy and treason, but the first were of course by far the 
 most common. As one of the old authorities on the subject says : ' In crimine 
 hasresis omnes illi torquendi sunt qui in crimine Isesaa majestatis humanEe tor- 
 queri, possunt ; quia longe grayius est divinum quam temporalem laedere 
 majestatem, ac proinde nobiles, milites, decuriones, doctores, et omnes qui 
 quantaiibet prserogativa, praefulgent in crimine hseresis et in crimine Isesse 
 majestatis humanae torqueri possunt . . . quo fit quod minores vigintl 
 quinque annis propter suspicionem hseresis et Isesse majestatis torqueri possunt, 
 minores etiam quatuordecem annis terreri et habenS, vel ferula CEedi.' (Suarez 
 de Paz, Praxis Ecclesiastica et Sweularis [1619], p. 1&8.) 
 
 ' The extraordinary ingenuity of the medisBTal tortures, and the extent to 
 which they were elaborated by the clergy, is well shown in an article on tor- 
 .ure by Villegille, in Lacroix, Xe Moyen Age et la Menaissance (Paris, 1848), 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALIBM. 333 
 
 prison the crucifix and the rack stood side by side, and in al- 
 most every counliy the abolition of torture was at last ef- 
 fected by a movement which the Church opposed, and by 
 men whom she had cursed. In England, it is true, torture 
 had always been illegal, though it had often been employed, 
 especially in ecclesiastical cases ; ' but almost every other 
 country illustrates the position I have stated. In France, 
 probably the first illustrious opponent of torture was Mon- 
 taigne, the first of the French sceptics ; the cause was 
 soon afterwards taken up by Charron and by Bayle ; it 
 was then adopted by Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the En- 
 cyclopsedists ; and it finally triumphed when the Church 
 had been shattered by the Revolution.' In Spain, tor- 
 
 tom. iii. The original works on the subject are very numerous, and possess a 
 great but painful interest. Perhaps the fullest is Marsilius' (a lawyer of 
 Bologna) Tractatus de QumsHonihts (1529 and 1537 — both editions in black 
 letter). Marsilius boasted that he was the inventor of the torture that con- 
 sisted of depriving the prisoner of all sleep — a torture which was especially 
 used in the States of the Church : ' In Statu Ecclesiastico hi duo modi magis 
 in usu sunt, ut et tormentum taxillorum, et vigilias per somni subtractionem, 
 quem modum invenisse assent Marsilius.' {Chartarm Praxis Interrogandum 
 Reorum [RomjE, 1618], p. 198.) Besides these works, there are full accounts 
 of the nature of the tortures in Simancas' De Catholicis InstUutionibits, 
 Eymericus' Directorium Inguisiiorvm, and many other works to which they 
 refer. 
 
 ' On the extent to which it was employed by the Catholics, under Mary, in 
 the trials of Protestants, see Strutt's Manners of the En.glish People, vol. iii. 
 p. 46 ; and on the extent to which it was employed by Protestants in the trials 
 of Catholic priests, see "Ballam, Const. Hist. (ed. 1827), vol. i. p. 159 ; and the 
 evidence collected in Milner's Letters to a Prebendary. Bishops Grindal and 
 Coxe suggested the application of torture to the Catholic priests. (Froude, 
 Hut., vol. vii. pp. 418, 419.) See, too, Barrington On the Statutes, pp. 80, and 
 440, 441. X 
 
 ^ The suppression of one department of torture was effected in France as 
 early as 1780, and was one of the measures of reform conceded to the revolu- 
 tionary party. All torture, however, was not abolished till the Kevolution waa 
 actually triumphant, and the abolition was one of the first acts of the demo- 
 crats. (See Loiseleur, 8ur les Peines.) Besides the essays of Montaigne, 
 
334: EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 ture began to fall into disuse under Charles III., on one of 
 the few occasions when the Government was in direct oppo- 
 sition to the Church.' In Italy the great opponent of tor- 
 ture was Bfeccaria, the friend of Helvetius and of Holbach, 
 and the avowed exponent of the principles of Rousseau.' 
 Translated by Morellet, commented on by Voltaire and 
 Diderot, and supported by the whole weight of the French 
 philosophers, the work of Beccaria flew triumphantly over 
 Europe, and vastly accelerated the movement that produced 
 it. Under the influence of that movement, the Empress of 
 Russia abolished torture in her dominions, and accompanied 
 the abolition by an edict of toleration. Under the same 
 influence Frederick of Prussia, whose adherence to the phil- 
 osophical principles was notorious, took the same step, and 
 his example was speedily followed by Duke Leopold of Tus- 
 cany. Nor is there, upon reflection, anything surprising in 
 this. The movement that destroyed torture was much less 
 an intellectual than an emotional movement. It represented 
 
 torture was denounced in the Sac/esse of Charron, in tlie Conirains-les Entrer 
 of Bayle, and in many parts of the writings of Voltaire (see, e. g., art. Torture, 
 in Phil. Diet.) and his contemporaries. 
 
 ' Buckle's Hist, vol. ii. p. 140, note. Luis Vives, a rather famous Spanish 
 philosopher, in his Annotations to St. Augustine, had protested against torture 
 as early as the first half of the sixteenth century. His opinions on this sub. 
 ject were vehemently denounced by a bishop named Simancas, in a very re- 
 markable book called De Catholicis Institutionihus ad prmcavendas et extir- 
 vand'is ffcereses (1569), to which I shaU have occasion hereafter to refer. 
 Simancas observes that ' Inquisitorea Apostolici ssepissime reos torquere so- 
 lont ; ' he defends the practice with great energy, on the authority of theolo- 
 gians ; and he gives a very vivid description of different modes of torture the 
 Inquisitors employed in their deaUngs with heretics (pp. 297-309.) See also, 
 on this horrible subject, Llorente, Hist, of the Inquisition. Siraanacas notices 
 that, in other countries, criminals were in his day tortured in public, but in 
 Spain in secret (p. 305). 
 
 ' On the inSuenoe of Beccaria, see Loiseleur, pp. 335-338. Morellet'3 
 translation passed through seven editions in six months. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM, 335 
 
 much less a discovery of the reason than an increased in 
 tensity of sympathy. If we asked what positive arguments 
 can he adduced on the subject, it would he difficult to cite 
 any that was not perfectly familiar to all classes at every 
 period of the middle ages.' That hrave criminals sometimes 
 escaped, and that timid persons sometimes falsely declared 
 themselves guilty ; that the guiltless frequently underwent 
 a horrible punishment, and that the moral influence of legal 
 decisions was seriously weakened f — these arguments, and 
 such as these, were as much truisms in the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries as they are at present. Nor was it by 
 such means that the change was elBFected. Torture was 
 abolished because in the progress of civilisation the sympa- 
 thies of men became more expansive, their perceptions of 
 the sufierings of others more acute, their judgments more 
 indulgent, their actions more gentle. To subject even a 
 guilty man to the horrors of the rack seemed atrocious and 
 barbarous, and therefore the rack was destroyed. It was 
 part of the great movement which abolished barbarous amuse- 
 ments, mitigated the asperities and refined the manners of all 
 classes. Now it is quite certain that those who seriously 
 regarded eternal sufiering as the just punishment of the fret- 
 fulness of a child, could not possibly look upon torture with 
 the same degree and kind of repulsion as their less orthodox 
 neighbours. It is also certain, that a period in which religion, 
 
 • There is, perhaps, one exception to this. Beccaria grounded much of his 
 reasoning on the doctrine of the social compact. I cannot, however, think 
 that this argument had much influence in producing the change. 
 
 " It is worthy of notice that St. Augustine perceived very clearly the evil 
 of torture, and stated the case against it with his usual force and terseness : 
 ' Cum quseritur utrum sit nooens eruciatur et innooens luit pro incerto scelere 
 certissimas poenas ' (De Oiv. Dei, lib. xix. cap. 6) ; but he concluded that it 
 was necessary. 
 
336 KATIOSTALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 by dwelling incessantly on the legends of the martyrs, or on 
 the agonies of the lost, made the combination of new and 
 horrible forms of suffering the habitual employment of the 
 imagination, was of all others that in which the system of 
 torture was likely to be most atrocious. It may be added, 
 that the very frame of mind that made men assail the practice 
 of torture, made them also assail the mediajval doctrine of 
 future punishment. The two things grew out of the same 
 condition of society. They flourished together, and they de- 
 clined together. 
 
 The truth is, that in every age the penal code will in a 
 great degree vary with the popular estimate of guilt. Phi- 
 losophers have written much on the purely preventive char- 
 acter of legal punishments; but it requires but little knowl- 
 edge of history, or even of human nature, to show that a code 
 constructed altogether on such a principle is impossible. It 
 is indeed true, that all acts morality condemns do not fall 
 within the province of the legislator, and that this fact is 
 more fully appreciated as civilisation advances.' It is true, 
 too, that in an early stage, the severity of punishment results 
 in a great measure from the prevailing indifference to the 
 infliction of sufiering. It is even true that the especial prom- 
 inence or danger of some crime will cause men to visit it for 
 a time with penalties that seem to bear no proportion to its 
 moral enormity. Yet it is, I think, impossible to examine 
 penal systems without perceiving that they can only be 
 efficient during a long period of time, when they accord sub 
 stantially with the popular estimate of the enormity of guilt. 
 
 ' The tendency of all penal systems constructed under the influence of the 
 clergy to make the legal code coextensive with the moral code, and to make 
 punishments as much as possible of the nature of expiation, is well known. 
 As a modem instance of this, Sweden is perhaps the most remarkable. Sec 
 the striking book of Mr. Laing, upon its present condition. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF BATIONALISM. 337 
 
 Every system, by admitting extenuating circumstances and 
 graduated punishments, implies this, and eveiy judgment 
 that is passed by the public is virtually an appeal to an ideal 
 standard. When a punishment is pronounced excessive, it is 
 meant that it is greater than was desei-ved. When it is pro- 
 nouncod inadequate, it is meant that it is less than was de- 
 served. Even regarding the law simply as a prev(mtive 
 measure, it is necessary that it should thus reflect the prevail- 
 ing estimate of guilt, for otherwise it would come into col- 
 lision with that public opinion which is essential to its 
 operation. Thus, towards the close of the last century, both 
 murder and horse-stealing were punished by death. In the 
 first case, juries readily brought in verdicts, the public 
 sanctioned those verdicts, and the law was eificacious. In 
 the second ease, the criminals were almost usually acquitted ; 
 and when they were executed, public opinion was shocked 
 and scandalised. The reason of this was, that men looked 
 upon death as a punishment not incommensurate with the 
 guilt of murder, but exceedingly disproportionate to that 
 of theft. In the advance of civilisation, there is a con- 
 stant tendency to mitigate the severity of penal codes, for 
 men learn to realise more intensely the suffering they are 
 inflicting ; and they at the same time become more sensible 
 of the palliations of guilt. When, however, such a doctrine 
 concerning the just reward of crime as I have noticed is be- 
 lieved and realised, it must inevitably have the effect of re- 
 tarding the progress. 
 
 Such, then, were the natural effects of the popular teach- 
 .ng on the subject of future punishment which was universal 
 during the middle ages, and during the sixteenth and the 
 greater part of the seventeenth century. How completely 
 that teaching has passed away must be evident to any one 
 VOL. I.— 22 
 
338 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 who will take the pains of comparing old theological litera- 
 ture with moflern teaching. The hideous pictures of ma- 
 terial fire and of endless torture which were once so careful- 
 ly elaborated and so constantly enforced, have been replace.l 
 by a few vague sentences on the subject of ' perdition,' or by 
 the general assertion of a future adjustment of the inequalities 
 of life ; and a doctrine which grows out of the moral faculty, 
 and is an element in every truly moral religion, has been 
 thus silently substituted for a doctrine which was the great- 
 est of all moral difficulties. The eternity of punishment is, 
 indeed, still strenuously defended by many; but the nature 
 of that punishment, which had been one of the most promi- 
 nent points in every previous discussion on the subject, has 
 now completely disappeared from controversy. The ablest 
 theologians once regarded their doctrine as one that might 
 be defended, but could not possibly be so stated as not at 
 first sight to shock the feelings. Liebnitz argued that of- 
 fences against an infinite Being acquired an infinite guilt, 
 and therefore deserved an infinite punishment. Butler ar- 
 gued that the analogy of nature gave much reason to suspect 
 that the punishment of crimes may be out of all proportion 
 with our conceptions of their guilt. Both, by their very de- 
 fences, implied that the doctrine was a grievous difficulty. 
 As, however, it is commonly stated at present, the doctrine 
 is so far from being a difficulty, that any system that was 
 without it would be manifestly imperfect, and it has accord- 
 ingly long since taken its place as one of the moral evidences 
 of Christianity. 
 
 This gradual and silent transformation of the popular 
 conceptions is doubtless chiefly due to the habit of educing 
 moral and intellectual truths from our own sense of right, 
 rather than from traditional teaching, which has accompa- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATTOITALISM. 339 
 
 med the decline of dogmatic theology, and which first became 
 conspicuous in the seventeenth century. Descartes, who 
 was the chief reviver of moral philosophy, may be regarded 
 as its leading originator ; for the method which he applied 
 to metaphysical enquiries was soon applied (consciously or 
 unconsciously) to moral subjects. Men, when seeking for 
 just ideas of right and wrong, began to interrogate their 
 moral sense much more than the books of theologians, and 
 they soon proceeded to make that sense or faculty a supreme 
 arbiter, and to mould all theology into conformity with its 
 dictates. At the same time the great increase of similar in- 
 fluences, and the rapid succession of innovations, made theo- 
 logians yield with comparative facility to the pressure of 
 their age. 
 
 But besides this general rationalistic movement, there 
 was another tendency which exercised, I think, a real though 
 minor infl.uence on the movement, and which is also associ- 
 ated with the name of Descartes. I mean the development 
 of a purely spiritual conception of the soul. The different 
 effects which a spiritual or a material philosophy has exer- 
 cised on all departments of speculation, form one of the 
 most interesting pages in history. The ancients — at least 
 the most spiritual schools — seem to have generally regarded 
 the essence of the soul as an extremely subtle fluid, or sub- 
 stance quite distinct from the body ; and, according to their 
 view, and according to the views that were long afterwards 
 prevalent, this excessive subtlety of essence constituted imma- 
 teriality. For the soul was supposed to be of a nature to- 
 tally different from surrounding objects, simple, incapable of 
 disintegration, and emancipated from the conditions of mat- 
 ter. Some of the Platonists verged very closely upon, and 
 perhaps attained, the modem idea of a soul whose essence 
 
340 EATIONAIilSM.Itr EUROPE. 
 
 is purely intellectual ; but the general opinion was, I think, 
 that which I have described. The distinct and, as it was 
 called, immaterial nature of the soul was insisted on by the 
 ancients with great emphasis as the chief proof of its im- 
 mortality. If mind be but a function of matter, if thought 
 be but ' a material product of the brain,' it seems natural 
 that the dissolution of the body should be the annihilation 
 of the individual. There is, indeed, an instinct in man 
 pointing to a future sphere, where the injustices of life shall 
 be rectified, and where the chain of love that death has sev- 
 ered shall be linked anew, which is so closely connected with 
 our moral nature that it would perhaps survive the rudest 
 shocks of a material philosophy ; but to minds in which the 
 logical element is most prominent, the psychological argu- 
 ment will always appear the most satisfactory. That there 
 exists in man an indivisible being connected with, but essen- 
 tially distinct from the body, was the position which Socrates 
 dwelt upon as one of the chief foundations of his hopes in 
 the last hours of his life, and Cicero in the shadow of age ; 
 and the whole moral system of the school of Plato was based 
 upon the distinction. Man, in their noble imagery, is the 
 horizon line where the world of spirit and the world of mat- 
 ter touch. It is in his power to rise by the wings of the 
 soul to communion with the gods, or to sink by the gravita- 
 tion of the body to the level of the brute. It is the destiny 
 of the soul to pass from state to state ; all its knowledge is 
 but remembrance, and its future condition must be deter- 
 mined by its present tendency. The soul of that man who 
 aspires only to virtue, and who despises the luxury and the 
 passions of earth, will be emancipated at last from the thral- 
 dom of matter, and, invisible and unshackled, will drink in 
 perfect bliss in the full fruition of wisdom. The soul of that 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 34:1 
 
 man who seeks his chief gratification in the body, will after 
 death be imprisoned in a new body, will be punished by 
 physical suffering, or, visible to the human eye, will appear 
 upon earth in the form of a ghost to scare the survivors amid 
 their pleasure,' 
 
 Such were the opinions that were held by the school of 
 Plato, the most spiiitual of all the philosophers of antiquity. 
 When Christianity appeared in the world, its first tendency 
 was very favourable to these conceptions, for it is the effect 
 of every great moral enthusiasm to raise men above the ap- 
 petites of the body, to present to the mind a supersensual 
 ideal, and to accentuate strongly the antagonism by which 
 human nature is convulsed. We accordingly find that in its 
 earlier and better days the Church assimilated especially with 
 the philosophy of Plato, while in the middle ages Aristotle 
 was supreme ; and we also find that the revival of Platonism 
 accompanied the spiritualising movement that preceded the 
 Reformation. Yet there were two doctrines that produced 
 an opposite tendency. The pagans assei-ted the immateriality 
 of the soul, because they believed that the body must perish 
 for ever ; and some of the Christians, in denying this latter 
 position, were inclined to reject the distinction that was based 
 upon it. But above all, the firm belief in pujiishment by 
 fire, and the great prominence the doctrine soon obtained, 
 became the foundation of the material view. The Fathers 
 were early divided upon the subject." One section, compris- 
 
 • This theory is deyeloped in the Phmdon. The Greeks had an extreme 
 fear of the dead, and consequently a strong predisposition to see ghosts. 
 
 ° ' Not one of them (the early Fathers) entertained the same opinion as the 
 majority of Christians do at the present day, that the soul is perfectly simple, 
 and entirely destitute of all body, figure, form, and extension. On the con- 
 trary, they all acknowledge it to contain something corporeal, although of a 
 different kind and nature from the bodies of this mortal sphere. But yet they 
 
342 RATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 ing the ablest and the best, maintained that there existed in 
 man an immaterial soul, but that that soul was invariably 
 associated with a thin, flexible, but sensitive body, visible to 
 the eye. Origen added that the Deity alone could exist as a 
 pure spirit unallied with matter.' The other school, of which 
 Tertullian may be regarded as the chief, utterly denied the 
 existence in man of any incorporeal element, maintained that 
 the soul was simply a second body, and based this doctrine 
 chiefly on the conception of future punishment.^ Appa- 
 ritions were at that time regarded as frequent. Tertullian 
 mentions a woman who had seen a soul, which she described 
 as ' a transparent and lucid figure in the perfect form of a 
 man.' ' St. Antony saw the soul of Ammon carried up to 
 heaven. The soul of a Libyan hermit named Marc was 
 borne to heaven in a napkin. Angels also were not unfre- 
 
 are divided into two opinions. For some contend that there are two things in 
 the soul — spirit, and a very thin and subtle body in which this spirit is clothed. 
 . . . Those who follow Plato and the Platonists (i. e. Clement, Origen, and 
 their disciples), adopt the Platonic doctrine respecting the soul also, and pro- 
 nounce it to be most simple in itself, but yet always invested with a subtle 
 body. But the others, who keep far aloof from Plato, and consider his philos- 
 ophy to be prejudicial to Christian principles, repudiate this doctrine of his as 
 well, and maintain that the soul altogether is nothing more than a most subtle 
 body. . . . They very frequently assail the Platonists with bitter invec- 
 tives, for inculcating that the soul is of a nature most simple, and devoid of 
 all concretion.' — Note by Mosheim to Cudworth's Intell. System (Harrison's 
 ed.), vol. iii. p. 326. Mr. Hallam says : ' The Fathers, with the exception, 
 perhaps the single one, of Augustine, had taught the corporeity of the think- 
 ing substance.' {Hist, of Lit.) 
 
 ' Cudworth, vol. iii. p. 318. The same Father based his doctrine of the 
 • soul in a great measure on apparitions. (Ibid. p. 330.) 
 
 ^ ' Corporalitas animse in ipso evangelio relucebit. Dolet apud inferos 
 anima eujusdam, et punitur in tlammS, et cruoiatur in lingu4 et de digito animas 
 felicioris implorat solatium roris.' — Tertullian, Be Anima, cap. vii. 
 
 " Ibid. cap. ix. I 'should mention that this book was written aftei Tertul- 
 lian had become a Montanist, but there is no reason to believe that this had 
 anything to say to his psychology. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 343 
 
 quently seen, and were universally believed to have cohabited 
 with the daughters of the antediluvians. 
 
 Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every 
 spiritual conception was materialised ; and what at an earliei 
 ar.d a later period was generally deemed the language ol 
 metaphor, was universally regarded as the language of fact. 
 The realisations of the people were all derived from painting, 
 sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and all 
 subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images.' The 
 angel in the Last Judgment was constantly represented 
 weighing the souls in a literal balance, while devils clinging 
 to the scales endeavoured to disturb the equilibrium. Some- 
 times the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising out 
 of the mouth of the corpse.'' But above all, the doctrine of 
 purgatory arrested and enchained the imagination. Every 
 church was crowded with pictures representing the souls of 
 those who had just died as literal bodies writhing with hor- 
 rible contortions in a literal fire. The two doctrines were 
 strictly congruous, and each supported the other. Men who 
 believed in a ' physical soul,' readily believed in a physical 
 punishment. Men who materialised their view of the pun- 
 ishment, materialised their view of the sufferers. 
 
 We find, however, some time before the Reformation, 
 e\ident signs of a desire on the part of a few writers to rise to 
 a purer conception of the soul. The pantheistic writings that 
 flowed from the school of Averroes, reviving the old Stoical 
 notion of a soul of nature, directed attention to the great 
 problem of the connection between the worlds of matter and 
 
 ' See on this subject Maury, Legendes Pieuses, pp. 125-1 27. 
 
 " Maury, Legendes Pieuses, p. 124. There is an example of this in the 
 Triumph of Death, by Oreagna, at Pisa. In the Greek churches the souls of 
 the blessed were sometimes represented as little children clasped in the mightj 
 hand of God. (Didron, Iconographie, p. 216.) 
 
344 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 of mind. The conception of an all-pervading spirit, which 
 
 ' sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal, and wakes in the 
 
 man;" the belief that the hidden vital principle which 
 
 produces the varied forms of organisation, is but the thrill of 
 
 the Divine essence that is present in them all — this belie£ 
 
 which had occupied so noble a place among the speculations 
 
 of antiquity, reappeared, and was, perhaps, strengthened by 
 
 the rapid progress of mysticism, which may be regarded as 
 
 the Christian form of pantheism. Coalescing at iirst with 
 
 some lingering traditions of Gnosticism, mysticism appeared 
 
 in the thirteenth century in the sect of the Regards, and 
 
 especially in the teachings of David de Dianant, Ortlieb, and 
 
 Ama-jry de Bfene ; and in the following century, under the 
 
 guidance of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek, it acquired 
 
 in Germany an extraordinary popularity, to which the strong 
 
 religious feeling elicited by the black death, and the reaction 
 
 that had begun against the excessive aridity of scholasticism, 
 
 both coi.tributed.'' The writings ascribed to Dionysius the 
 
 Areopagite, which have always been the Bible of mysticism, 
 
 and which had been in part translated by Scotus Erigena, 
 
 and also some of the works of Scotus himself, rose to sudden 
 
 favour, and a new tone was given to almost all classes of 
 
 theological reasoners. As the philosophical aspect of this 
 
 tone of thought, an order of investigation was produced, 
 
 which was shown in curious enquiries about how life is first 
 
 generated in matter. The theory of spontaneous generation, 
 
 which Lucretius had made the basis of a great portion of his 
 
 system, and on which the philosophers of the eighteenth 
 
 century laid so great stress, was strongly asserted,' and all 
 
 ' Schelling. 
 
 ' See Schmidt, Audes sur le Mi/sticisme Allemand du XI V' Slide, in the 
 Memoires des SMnces Morales et Poliiiques de I'Institut de France, torn. ii. 
 ' The foUowkiig passage from Vives is interesting both as giving a concise 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. 345 
 
 the mj'steries of generation treated with a confidence that 
 elicits a smile,' not unmixed with melancholy when we think 
 how completely these great questions of the nature and 
 origin of life, which may be almost said to form the basis of 
 all real knowledge, have eluded our investigations, and how 
 absolutely the fail- promise of the last century has in this 
 respect been unfulfilled. From enquiries about the genesis 
 of the soul, it was natural to proceed to examine its nature. 
 Such enquiries were accordingly earnestly pursued, with the 
 assistance of the pagan writers ; and the conclusions arrived 
 at on this point by different schools exercised, as is always 
 the case, a very wide influence upon their theological con- 
 ceptions. I cannot doubt, that when at last Descartes 
 maintained that thought is the essence of the soul, and that 
 the thinking substance is therefore so wholly and generically 
 different from the body, that none of the forms or properties 
 of matter can afford the faintest image of its nature, he con- 
 tributed much to that frame of mind which made men 
 naturally turn with contempt from ghosts, visible demons, 
 
 view of the notions prevailing about spontaneous generation, and on account 
 of the very curious notion in it about mice ; ' De viventibus alia generationem 
 habent spontaueum, ut muscse, culices, formicae, apes : quce nee sexum uUum 
 habent. Alia ex commixtione sexuum prodeunt, ut homo, equus, canis, leo. 
 Sunt quas ambiguam habent procreationem, ut mures ; nam eorum alii ex sordi- 
 bus sine concubitu, alii ex conouhitu proveniunt.' {De Anima, lib. i.) Van 
 Helmont, as is well known, gave a receipt for producing mice. St. Augustine, 
 after taking great pains to solve different objections to the goodness of Provi- 
 dence, oddly enough selects the existence of mice as an impenetrable one 
 which faith alone can grasp : ' Ego vero fateor me nescire mures et ranaj quare 
 crcati sunt, ant muscse, aut vermiculas.' {J)e Genesi contra Manichceos, c. xvi.) 
 ' Thus, Melanchthon deals, in a tone of the most absolute assurance, with 
 the great question of the cause of the difference of sex : ' Mares nascuntur 
 magis in dextrS parte matricis, et a semiue quod magis a dextro testiculo 
 oritur. Foemellae in sinistra matricis parte nascuntur.' Melanchthon, Se Ani- 
 ma, p. 420. 
 
346 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 and purgatorial fires.' It is true that the Cartesian cloctriue 
 was soon in a measure eclifised, but it at least destroyed for 
 ever the old notion of an inner body.' 
 
 From the time of Descartes, the doctrine of a material fire 
 may indeed be said to have steadily declined.' The sceptics 
 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries treated it with 
 great contempt, and in England, at least, the last great con- 
 troversy on the subject in the Church seems to have taken 
 place during the first half of the eighteenth century. Swin- 
 den, "Whiston, Horberry, Dodwell, and in America Jonathan 
 Edwards, discussed it from different points of view,' and at- 
 
 ' The sharp line Descarles tried to draw between the body and the soul ex- 
 plains his doctrine of animals, which has often been grossly misunderstood. 
 Thought, he contended, is the essence of the soul, and all that is not thought 
 (as life and sensibility) is of the body. In denying that brutes had souls, he 
 denied them the power of thought, but left them all besides. This distinction 
 in its full rigidity would now be maintained by very few ; and Stahl gave 
 psychology an impulse in quite another direction by his doctrine (which seems 
 to hare been that of Aristotle), that the soul includes the vital principle — all 
 that separates living from dead bodies. He thus founded the psychology of 
 animals, and in a great measure fused psychology and medicine. There is a 
 clear statement on this point in Maine de Birau, Nouveaux Rapports Physiques 
 et Morales. There is at present a remarkable revival of the doctrine of Stahl 
 in France in the writings of Tissot, Boullier, Charles, and Lemoine. 
 
 " A doctrine, however, something like that of the old F,athers, but applied 
 to the bodies of the blessed, has been lately advocated in two very ingenious 
 American books — Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, and Lectures on the Sea- 
 tons. The author has availed himself of Reichenbach's theories of 'odio 
 light,' &c. 
 
 ^ Descartes himself gives us the opinion of his contemporaries on the sub- 
 ject ; ' Bien que la commune opinion des th^ologiens soit que les damnes sont 
 tourment^s par le feu des enfers, n^anmoins leur sentiment n'est pas pour cela 
 qu'ils sont de^us par une fausse idfe que Dieu leur a imprim6e, d'un feu qui 
 les consume, mais plutOt qu'ils sont v^ritablement tourment^s par le feu ; par- 
 oeque " comme I'esprit d'un homme vivant, bien qu'il ne soit pas corporel, est 
 n^anmolns detenu dans le corps, ainsi Dieu par sa toute-puissanoe pent ais6- 
 ment faire qu'il souffre les atteintes du feu corporel apres la mort." ' {Re- 
 ponses aux Bixiiine Objections.') 
 
 * This was, as far as I know, the last of the great controversies oonoeming 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF EATIONALISM. SIT 
 
 tested the rapid progress of the scepticisra. Towards the 
 alose of the century the doctrine had passed away, for though 
 there was no formal recantation or change of dogmas, it was 
 virtually excluded from the popular teaching, though it even 
 now lingers among the least educated Dissenters, and in the 
 Roman Catholic manuals for the poor. 
 
 I have dwelt at length upon this very revolting doctrine, 
 because it exercised, I believe, an extremely important in- 
 fluence on the modes of thought and types of character of the 
 past. I have endeavoured to show how its necessary effect 
 was to chill and deaden the sympathies, to predispose men to 
 inilict suffering, and seriously to retard the march of civilisa- 
 tion. It has now virtually passed away, and with it the type 
 of character that it did so much to form. Instead of the old 
 stern Inquisitor, so unflinching in his asceticism, so heroic iu 
 his enterprises, so remorseless in his persecution — instead of 
 the men who multiplied and elaborated the most hideous tor- 
 tures, who wrote long cold treatises on their application, who 
 stimulated and embittered the most ferocious wars, and who 
 watered every land with the blood of the innocent — instead 
 of this ecclesiastical type of character, we meet with an 
 almost feminine sensibility, and an almost morbid indisposi- 
 tion to inflict punishment. The preeminent characteristic of 
 modern Christianity is the boundless philanthropy it displays. 
 Philanthropy is to our age what asceticism was to the middle 
 
 the locality of hell — a question which had once excited great attention. The 
 common opinion, which St. Thomas had sanctioned, was that it was in the 
 centre of the earth. Whiston, however, who denied the eternity of punish- 
 ment, contended that it was the tail of a comet ; while Swinden (whose book 
 seems to have made a considerable sensation, and was translated into French) 
 strenuously contended that it was the sun. According to Planey {Diet. Infer- 
 nal, art Enfer), some early theologians not only held this, but explained the 
 spots in the sun by the multitude of the souls. 
 
348 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 ages, and what polemical discussion was to the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. The emotional part of humanity, the 
 humanity of impulse, was never so developed, and its de- 
 velopment, in Protestantism at least, where the movement 
 has been most strikingly evinced, has always been guided 
 and represented by the clergy. Indeed, this fact is recog- 
 nised quite as much by their opponents as by their admirers. 
 A certain weak and eifeminate sentimentality, both intel- 
 lectual and moral, is the quality which every satirist of the 
 clergy dwells upon as the most prominent feature of their 
 character. Whether this quality, when duly analysed, is as 
 despicable as is sometimes supposed, may be questioned ; at 
 all events, no one would think of ascribing it to the ecclesias- 
 tics of the school of Torquemada, of Calvin, or of Knox. 
 
 The changes that take place from age to age in the types 
 of character in different professions, though they are often 
 very evident, and though they form one of the most sugges- 
 tive branches of history, are of course not susceptible of direct 
 logical proof. A writer can only lay the general impressions 
 he has derived from the study of the two periods before the 
 judgments of those whose studies have resembled his own. 
 It is more, therefore, as an illustration than as a proof, that I 
 may notice in conclusion the striking contrast which the 
 history of punishments exhibits in the two periods of theo- 
 logical development. We have seen that the popular esti- 
 mate of the adequacy of the penalties that are affixed to dif- 
 ferent crimes must in a great measure vary with the popular 
 realisations of guilt. We have seen, too, that the abolition 
 of torture was a movement almost entirely due to the oppo- 
 nents of the Church, and that it was effected much less by 
 any process of reasoning than by the influence of certain 
 modes of feeling which civilisation produced. Soon, how- 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OP EATIONALISM. 349 
 
 ever, we find that the impulse which was communicated hy 
 Voltaire, Beccaria, and the Revolution, passed on to the or- 
 thodox, and. it was only then it acquired its full intensity. 
 The doctrine of a literal fire having almost ceased to be a 
 realised conception, a growing sense of the undue severity 
 of punishments was everywhere manifested ; and in most 
 countries, but more especially in England, there was no sin- 
 gle subject on which more earnestness was shown. The first 
 step was taken by Howard. Nowhere perhaps in the annals 
 of philanthropy do we meet a picture of more unsullied and 
 fruitful beneficence than is presented by the life of that great 
 dissenter, who, having travelled over more than 40,000 miles 
 in works of mercy, at last died on a foreign soil a martyr to 
 his cause. Not only in England, but over the whole of 
 Europe, his exertions directed public opinion to the condition 
 of prisons, and effected a revolution the results of which can 
 never be estimated. Soon after followed the mitigation of 
 the penal code. In England the severity of that code had 
 long been unexampled ; and as crimes of violence were es- 
 pecially numerous, the number of executions was probably 
 quite unparalleled in Europe. Indeed, Fortescue, who was 
 chief justice under Henry VI., notices the fact with curious 
 complacency, as a plain proof of the superiority of his coun- 
 trymen. ' More men,' he tells us, ' are hanged in Englonde 
 in one year than in Fraunce in seven, because the English 
 have better hartes. The Scotchmenne, likewise, never dare 
 rob, but only commit larcenies.' ' In the reign of Henry 
 VIII., when an attempt was made to convert the greater 
 part of England into pasture land," and when the suppression 
 
 ' Barringtou, On the Statutes (London, 1769), p. 461. 
 
 ' Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia (book i.), gives a frightful description of 
 the misery and the crimes resulting from the ejectments necessitated by this 
 change. He speaks of twenty men hung on one gibbet. 
 
350 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 of the monasteries had destroyed the main source of charity 
 and had cast multitudes helplessly upon the world, Holinshed 
 estimates the executions at the amazing number of 72,000, or 
 2,000 a year.' The poor law of Elizabeth to a certain extent 
 mitigated the evil, yet at the end of her reign the annual ex- 
 ecutions were still about 400." In the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century, however, though the population had greatly 
 increased, they had fallen to less than one hundred.' A little 
 before this time Bishop Berkeley, following in the steps that 
 had been traced by More in his ' Utopia,' and by Cromwell 
 in one of his speeches, raised his voice in favour of substitut- 
 ing other punishments for death.* But all through the reign 
 of George III. the code was aggravated, and its severity was 
 carried to such a point, that when Romilly began his career, 
 the number of capital offences was no less than 230.' It was 
 only at the close of tlie last and in the beginning of the 
 present century, that this state of things was changed. The 
 reform in England, as over the rest of Europe, may be ulti- 
 mately traced to that Voltairian school of which Beccaria 
 was the representative, for the impulse created by the 
 treatise ' On Crimes and Punishments ' was universal, and 
 it was the first great effort to infuse a spirit of philanthropy 
 into the penal code, making it a main object of legislation to 
 inflict the smallest possible amount of suffering. Beccaria is 
 especially identified with that great cause of the abolition of 
 capital punishment, which is slowly but steadily advancing 
 
 ■ Barrington, pp. 461, 462. = Ibid. 
 
 ' Barrington says this was the case when he wrote, which was in 1766. 
 
 ' He asks ' whether we may not, as well as other nations, contrive employ- 
 ment for our criminals ; and whether serritude, chains, and hard labour for a 
 term of years, would not be a more discouraging as well as a more adequate 
 punishment for felons than even death itself.' ( Querist, No. 54.) 
 
 ' See Komilly's Zd/e for many statistics on the subject. 
 
DEVELOPMENTS OF RATIONALISM. 351 
 
 towards its inevitable triumph. In England the philosophi- 
 cal element of the movement was nobly represented by Ben- 
 tham, who in genius was certainly superior to Beccaria, and 
 whose influence, though perhaps not so great, was also Eu- 
 ropean. But while conceding the fullest merit to these great 
 thinkers, there can be little doubt that the enthusiasm arid 
 the support that enabled Romilly, Mackintosh, Wilberforce, 
 and Brougham to carry their long series of reforms through 
 Parliament, was in a very great degree owing to the untii-ing 
 exertions of the Evangelicals, who, with a benevolence that 
 no disappointment could damp, and with an indulgence 
 towards crime that sometimes amounted even to a fault, 
 cast their whole weight into the cause of philanthropy. The 
 contrast between the position of these religionists in the de- 
 struction of the worst features of the ancient codes, and the 
 precisely opposite position of the mediaeval clergy, is very 
 remarkable. Sectarians will only see in it the difference be- 
 tween rival churches, but the candid historian will, I think, 
 be able to detect the changed types of character that civilisa- 
 tion has produced ; while in the difference that does undoubt- 
 edly in this respect exist between Protestantism and Cathol- 
 icism, he will find one of the results of the very different 
 degrees of intensity with which those religions direct the 
 mind to the debasing and indurating conceptions I have re- 
 viewed. 
 
 It has been said that the tendency of religious thought 
 in the present day 'is all in one direction — towards the iden- 
 tification of the Bible and conscience.' It is a movement 
 (hat may be deplordd, but can scarcely be overlooked or 
 denied. Generation after generation the power of the moral 
 faculty becomes more absolute, the doctrines that oppose it 
 wane and vanish, and the various elements of theology are 
 
352 EATI0NALI8M IN EUEOPE. 
 
 absorbed and recast by its influeiice. The indifference of 
 most men to dogmatic theology is now so marked, and 
 the fear of tampering with formularies that are no longer 
 based on general conviction is with some men so intense, 
 that general revisions of creeds have become extremely rare ; 
 but the change of belief is not the less profound. The old 
 words are indeed retained, but they no longer present the 
 old images to the mind, or exercise the old influence upon the 
 life. The modes of thought, and the types of character 
 which those modes produce, are essentially and universally 
 transformed. The whole intellectual atmosphere, the whole 
 tenor of life, the prevailing enthusiasms, the conceptions of 
 the imagination, are all changed. The intellect of man 
 moves onward under the influence of regular laws in a given 
 direction ; and the opinions that in any age are realised and 
 operative, are those which harmonise with its intellectual 
 condition. I have endeavoured in the present chapter to 
 exhibit the nature of some of these laws, the direction in 
 which some of these successive modifications are tending. 
 If the prospect of constant change such an enquiry exhibits 
 should ajipear to some minds to remove all the landmarks of 
 the past, there is one consideration that may serve in a meas- 
 ure to reassure them. That Christianity was designed to 
 produce benevolence, affection, and sympathy, being a fact 
 of universal admission, is indefinitely more certain than that 
 any particular dogma is essential to it ; and in the increase 
 of these moral qualities we have therefore the strongest evi- 
 dence of the triumph of the conceptions of its Founder. 
 
OHAPTEE IV. 
 ON PEESECUTION. 
 
 Paet I. 
 
 THE ANTECEDENTS OF PERSECUTION. 
 
 When it is remembered that the Founder of Christianity 
 summed up human duties in the two precepts of love to God 
 and love to man, and illustrated the second precept by a 
 parable representing the sentiment of a common humanity 
 destroying all the animosities of sectarianism, the history of 
 persecution in the Christian Church appears as startling- as it 
 is painful. In the eighteenth century, when the minds of 
 men were for the first time very sensible of the contrast, it 
 was commonly explained by imputing interested motives to 
 the clergy, and in all the writings of Voltaire and his school 
 hypocrisy was represented as the usual concomitant of per- 
 secution. This notion may now be said to have quite passed 
 away. While it is undoubtedly true that some persecutions, 
 and even some that were very atrocious, have sprung from 
 purely selfish motives, it is almost universally admitted that 
 these are far from furnishing any adequate explanation for 
 the facts. The burnings, the tortures, the imprisonments, 
 the confiscations, the disabilities, the long wars and still 
 
 longer animosities that for so many centuries marked the 
 VOL. I.— 23 
 
354 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 conflicts of great theological bodies, are chiefly due to men 
 whose lives were spent in absolute devotion to what they 
 believed to be true, and whose characters have passed un- 
 scathed through the most hostile and searching criticism. 
 Ill their worst acts the persecutors were but the exponents 
 and representatives of the wishes of a large section of the 
 community, and that section was commonly the most earnest 
 and the most uuseltish. It has been obserired too, since the 
 subject has been investigated with a passionless judgment, 
 that persecution invariably accompanied the realisation of a 
 particular class of doctrines, fluctuated with their fluctua- 
 tions, and may therefore be fairly presumed to represent 
 their action upon life. 
 
 In the last chapter I have, I trust, done something to- 
 wards the solution of the difiioulty. I have shown that the 
 normal effect of a certain class of realisations upon the char- 
 acter would be to produce an absolute indifference to the 
 sufiferings of those who were external to the Church, and 
 consequently to remove that reluctance to inflict pain which 
 is one of the chief preservatives of society. I have now to 
 trace the order of ideas which persuaded men that it was 
 their duty to persecute, and to show the process by which 
 those ideas passed away. The task is a painful one, for the 
 doctrines I must refer to are those which are most repugnant 
 to our moral sense, and in an age in which they are not re- 
 alised or believed the bare statement of them is sufiicient to 
 shock the feelings of many : at the same time a clear view 
 of their nature and influence is absolutely essential to an un- 
 derstanding of the past. 
 
 There are two moral sentiments which seem uni^■e^sally 
 diffused throiigh the human race, and which may be regarded 
 as the nuclei around which all religious systems are formed. 
 
ON PEE8ECTJTI0N. 355 
 
 They are the sense of virtue, leading men to attach the idea 
 of merit to certain actions which they may perform ; and tlie 
 sense of sin, teaching men that their relation to the Deity ik 
 not that of claimants but of suppliants. Although in some 
 degree antagonistic, thei-e probably never was a religious 
 mind in which they did not coexist, and they may be traced 
 as prominent elements in the moral development of every 
 age and creed, but at the same time their relative importance 
 is far from being the same. There are certain ages in which 
 the sense of .virtue has been the mainspring of religion ; 
 there are other ages in which this position is occupied by the 
 sense of sin. This may be partly owing to the diiferences in 
 the original constitutions of different races, or to those influ- 
 ences of surrounding nature which act so early upon the 
 mind that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them from 
 natural tendencies ; but it is certainly in a great measure due 
 to the political and intellectual circumstances that are dom- 
 inant. When prosperity and victory and dominion have 
 long continued to elate, and when the virtues that contribute 
 most to political greatness, such as fortitude and self-reli- 
 ance, are cultivated, the sense of human dignity will become 
 the chief moral principle, and every system that opposes it 
 will be distasteful. But when, on the other hand, a religious 
 system emanates from a suffering people, or from a people 
 that is eminently endowed with religious sentiment, its char- 
 acter will be entirely different. It will reflect something of 
 the circumstances that gave it birth ; it will be full of pathos, 
 of humility, of emotion ; it will lead men to aspire to a lofty 
 ideal, to interrogate their conscience with nervous anxiety, 
 to study with scrupulous care the motives that actuate them, 
 to distrust their own powers, and to throw themselves upor. 
 external help. 
 
356 EATIONAIIBM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 Now, of all systems the world has ever seen, the philos- 
 ophies of ancient Greece and Rome appealed most strongly 
 to the sense of virtue, and Christianity to the sense of sin. 
 The ideal of the first was the majesty of selt-relying human- 
 ity ; the ideal of the other was the absorption of the man- 
 hood into God. It is impossible to look upon the awful 
 beauty of a Greek statue, or to read a page of Plutarch, 
 without perceiving how completely the idea of excellence 
 was blended with that of pride. It is equally impossible to 
 examine the life of a Christian saint, or the painting of an 
 early Christian artist, without perceiving that the dominant 
 conception was self-abnegation and self-distrust. In the 
 earliest and purest days of the Church this was chiefly mani- 
 fested in the devotional frame of mind which was habitual, 
 and in the higher and more delicate moral perception that 
 accompanied it. Christianity was then strictly a religion ; 
 that is to say, it consisted of modes of emotion and not of 
 intellectual propositions. It was not till about the third cen- 
 tury that the moral sentiments which at first constituted it 
 were congealed into an elaborate theology, and were in con- 
 sequence necessarily perverted. I say necessarily perverted, 
 because a dogma cannot be an adequate or faithful represent- 
 ative of a mode of feeling. Moral sentiments do not possess 
 the logical precision and rigidity which belong to the articles 
 of a creed, and to convert the former into the latter invari- 
 ably leads to the most fatal consequences. Thus, while the 
 sense of virtue and the sense of sin have always coexisted, 
 though in diiferent degrees, in every religious mind, when 
 expressed in a dogmatic form, under the names of Justifica- 
 tion by Faith and Justification by Works, they became 
 directly opposed to one another ; and while each doctrine 
 grew in the first instance out of the moral faculty, each was 
 
ON PEKSECUTIO]Sr. 357 
 
 at last developed to consequences from wHoli that faculty 
 indignantly revolts. As the result of one doctrine, men con 
 structed a theory in which the whole scheme of religion was 
 turned into a system of elaborate barter; while that attitude 
 of self-distrust and humility which was produced by the 
 sensitiveness of an awakened conscience was soon trans- 
 formed into a doctrine according to which all the virtues and 
 all the piety of the heathen contained nothing that was 
 pleasing to the Almighty, or that could ward off the sen- 
 tence of eternal damnation. 
 
 In considering, however, the attitude which mankind oc- 
 cupied towards the Almighty in the early theology of the 
 Church, we have another important element to examine : I 
 mean the conception of hereditary guilt. To a civilised 
 man, who regards the question abstractedly, no proposition 
 can appear more self-evident than that a man can only be 
 guilty of acts in the performance of which he has himself 
 had some share. The misfortune of one man may fall upon 
 another, but guilt appears to be entirely personal. Yet, on 
 the other hand, there is nothing more certain than that the 
 conceptions both of hereditary guilt and of hereditary merit 
 pervade the belief and the institutions of all nations, and 
 have under the most varied circumstances clung to the mind 
 with a tenacity which is even now but beginning to relax. 
 We find them in every system of early punishment which 
 involved children in the destruction, of a guilty parent, in 
 every account of curses transmitted through particular fami- 
 lies or particular nations, in every hereditary aristocracy, and 
 in every legend of an early -fall. All these rest upon the 
 idea that there is something in the merit or demerit of one 
 man that may be reflected upon his successors altogether irre- 
 spectively of their own acts. It would perhaps be rash to 
 
358 KATIONALISM Df EUROPE, 
 
 draw with much confidence any law concerning the relations 
 of this idea to different conditions of society from the history 
 of Christendom, but, as far as we may judge, it seems to be 
 strongest in ages when civilisation is very low, and on the 
 whole to decline, but not by r-ny means steadily and continu- 
 ously, with the intellectual advance. There seems to be a 
 period in the history of every nation when punishments in- 
 volving the innocent child with the guilty parent are acqui- 
 esced in as perfectly natural, and another period when they 
 arc repudiated as manifestly unjust. We find, however, 
 that in a portion of the middle ages when the night of bar- 
 barism was in part dispelled, a vast aristocratical system was 
 organised which has probably contributed more than any 
 other single cause to consolidate the doctrine of hereditary 
 merit. For the essence of an aristocracy is to transfer the 
 source of honour from the living to the dead, to make the 
 merits of living men depend not so much upon their own 
 character and actions as upon the actions and position of 
 their ancestors ; and as a great aristocracy is never insulated, 
 as its ramifications penetrate into many spheres, and its so- 
 cial influence modifies all the relations of society, the minds 
 of men become insensibly habituated to a standard of judg- 
 ment from which they would otherwise have recoiled. If in 
 the sphere of religion the rationalistic doctrine of personal 
 merit and demerit should ever completely supersede the theo- 
 logical doctrine of hereditary merit or demerit, the change 
 wUl, I believe, be mainly effected by the triumph of demo- 
 cratic principles in the sphere of politics. 
 
 The origin of this widely diffused habit of judging men 
 by the deeds of their ancestors is one of the most obscure 
 and contested points in philosophy. Some have seen in it a 
 dim and distorted tradition of the Fall : others have atlrib- 
 
ON PEESECTTTION. 359 
 
 uted it to that confusion of misfortune with guilt which is so 
 prominent in ancient beliefs. Partly in consequence of the 
 universal conviction that guilt deserves punishment, and 
 partly from the notion that the events which befall mankind 
 are the results not of general laws but of isolated acts di- 
 rected to special purposes, men imagined that whenever they 
 saw suffering they might infer guilt. They saw that the ef- 
 fects of an unrighteous war will continue long after those 
 who provoked it have passed away ; that the virtue or vice, 
 the wisdom or folly, of the parent will often detei-mine the 
 fortunes of the childi-en ; and that each generation has proba- 
 bly more power over the destiny of that which succeeds it 
 than over its own. They saw that there was such a thing as 
 transmitted suffering, and they therefore concluded that 
 there must be such a thing as transmitted guilt. Besides 
 this, patriotism and Church feeling, and every influence that 
 combines men in a corporate existence, makes them live to a 
 certain degree in the past, and identify themselves with the 
 actions of the dead. The patriot feels a pride or shame in 
 the deeds of his forefathers very similar to that which 
 springs from his own. Connected with this, it has been ob- 
 served that men have a constant tendency, in speaking of 
 the human race, to forget that they are employing the lan- 
 guage of metaphor, and to attribute to it a real objective 
 existence distinct from the existence of living men. It may 
 be added too that that retrospective imagination which is so 
 strong in some nations, and which is more or less exhibited 
 m all, leads men to invest the past with all the fascination 
 of poetry, to represent it as a golden age incomparably su- 
 perior to their own, and to imagine that some great catas- 
 trophe must have occurred to obscure it. 
 
 These considerations, and such as these, have often been 
 
360 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 urged by those who have written on the genesis of the notion 
 of hereditary guilt. Fortunately, however, their examination 
 is unnecessary for my present purpose, which is simply to 
 ascertain the expression of this general conception in dog- 
 matic teaching, and to trace its influence upon practice. The 
 expression is both manifest and emphatic. According to the 
 unanimous belief of the early Church, all who were external 
 to Christianity were doomed to eternal damnation, not only 
 on account of their own transgression, but also on account 
 of the transmitted guilt of Adam ; and therefore even the new- 
 born infant was subject to the condemnation until baptism 
 had united it to the Church. 
 
 The opinion which was so graphically expressed by the 
 theologian who said 'he doubted not there were infants not 
 a span long crawling about the floor' of hell,' is not one of 
 those on which it is pleasing to dilate. It is one, however, 
 which was held with great confidence in the early Church, 
 and if in times of tranquillity it became in a measure un- 
 realised, whenever any heretic ventured to impugn it, it was 
 most unequivocally enforced. At a period which is so early 
 that it is impossible to define it, infant baptism was intro- 
 duced into the Church; it was adopted by all the heretics, as 
 well as by the orthodox ; it was universally said to be for 
 ' the remission of sins ; * and the whole body of the Fathers, 
 without exception or hesitation, pronounced that all infants 
 who died unbaptized were excluded from heaven. In the 
 case of unbaptized adults a few exceptions were admitted,' 
 
 ' Martyrdom, or, as it was termed, the baptism of blood, being the chief. 
 Some, however, relying on the case of the peaitent thief, admitted a ' baptism 
 of perfect love,' when a baptism by water could not be obtained. This con- 
 sisted, of course, of extraordinary exercises of faith. Catechumens also, who 
 died during the preparation for baptism, were thought by some to be saved. 
 See Lamet et Fromageau, Diet, des Cos de Conscience, tom. i. p. 208. 
 
ON PEESECUTION. 361 
 
 bat the sentence on infants was inexorable. The learned 
 English historian of Infant Baptism states that, with the ex- 
 ception of a contemporary of St. Augustine, named Vinoen- 
 tius, who speedily recanted his opinion as heretical, he has 
 been unable to discover a single instance of an orthodox 
 member of the Church expressing the opposite opinion before 
 Hincmar, who was Archbishop of Rheims in the ninth cen- 
 tury.' In the time of this prelate, a bishop who had quar- 
 relled with his clergy and people ventured to prohibit baptism 
 in his diocese ; and Hincmar, while severely condemning the 
 act, expressed a hope that it would not be visited on the 
 infants who died when the interdict was in force. With this 
 exception the unanimity seems to have been unbroken. Some 
 of the Greek Fathers, indeed, imagined that there was a special 
 place assigned to infants, where there was neither suffering 
 nor enjoyment, while the Latins inferred from the hereditary 
 guilt that they must descend into a place of torment ; but 
 both agreed that they could not be saved. The doctrine was 
 so firmly rooted in the Church, that even Pelagius, who was 
 one of the most rationalistic intellects of his age, and who 
 entirely denied the reality of hereditary guilt, retained in- 
 fant baptism, acknowledged that it was for the remission of 
 sins, and did not venture to deny its necessity. It was on 
 this point that he was most severely pressed by his oppo- 
 nents, and St. Augustine says that he was driven to the 
 somewhat desperate resource of maintaining that baptism 
 was necessary to wash away the guilt of the pettishness of 
 the child!' Once, when severely pressed as to the conse- 
 
 ' -Wall's Hutori of Infant Baptism, vol. ii. p. 211. St. Thomas Aquinas 
 afterwards suggestorl the possibility of the infant being saved who died within 
 the womb : ' God may have ways of saving it for aught we know.' 
 
 ' Wall, vol. i. pp. 282, 283. It is gratifying to know that St. Augustine. 
 
362 EATIONAUSM IN ETTROPE. 
 
 qucnces of the doctrine, St. Augustine was compelled to 
 acknowledge that he was not pi-epared to assert dogmati- 
 cally that it wonld have been better for these children not to 
 have been born ; but at the same time he denied emphatically 
 that a separate place was assigned them, and in one of his 
 sermons against the Pelagians he distinctly declared that 
 they descended into ' everlasting fire.' ' Origen and many of 
 the Egyptians explained the doctrine by the theory of pre- 
 existence.' Augustine associated it mth that of imputed 
 righteousness, maintaining that guilt and virtue might be 
 alike imputed ; " and this view seems to have been generally 
 adopted. Among the writings of the Fathers there are few 
 which long possessed a greater authority than a short treatise 
 ' De Fide,' which is one of the clearest and most forcible ex- 
 tant epitomes of the Patristic faith, and which till the time 
 of Erasmus was generally ascribed to St. Augustine, though 
 It is now known to have been written, in the beginning of 
 the sixth century, by St. Fulgentius.' In this treatise we 
 find the following very distinct statement of the doctrine : — 
 'Be assured,' writes the saint, 'and doubt not that not only 
 men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also little 
 children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and 
 have there died, or who, having been just born, have passed 
 away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism, 
 administered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, must be punished by the eternal torture of undying 
 fire; for although they have committed no sin by their own 
 
 in answering this argument, distinctly declared that the crying of a baby is not 
 Binful, and therefore does not deserve eternal damnation. 
 
 ' Ihid. vol. ii. pp. 192-206, — a full view of St. Augustine's sentiments on 
 ie subject. 
 
 ' Hieronym., Epht. lib. ii. ep. 18. " Epiiif- 28. 
 
 ' He was born about a.d. 467. (Biog. Jlniv.^ 
 
ON PEE8ECUTI0N. 363 
 
 will, they have nevertheless drawn with them the condemna- 
 tion of original sin, by their carnal conception and nativity." 
 It will be remembered that these saints, while maintaining 
 that infants whose existence was but for a moment descended 
 into eternal fire on account of an apple that was eaten four 
 thousand years. before they were born, maintained also that 
 the creation and the death of those infants were the direct, 
 personal, and uncontrolled acts of the Deity. 
 
 All through the middle ages we trace the influence of 
 this doctrine in the innumerable superstitious rites which were 
 devised as substitutes for regular baptism. Nothing indeed 
 can be more curious, nothing can be more deeply pathetic, 
 than the record of the many ways by which the terror- 
 stricken mothers attempted to evade the awful sentence of 
 their Church. Sometimes the baptismal water was sprinkled 
 upon the womb ; sometimes the stillborn child was baptised, 
 in hopes that the Almighty would antedate the ceremony ; 
 
 ' ' Firmissime tene, et nuUatenus dubites, non solum homines jam ratione 
 utentes, verum etiam parvulos, qui, sive in uteris matrum vivere incipiunt et 
 ibi moriuntar, sive jam de matribus nati sine Sacramento sancti baptismatis 
 quod datur in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti de hoc sseculo transeunt, 
 ignis setemi sempitemo supplicio puniendos; quia etsi pecoatum proprise 
 actionis nullum habuerunt, originalis tamen peccati damnationem carnali con- 
 ceptione et nativitate traxerunt.' — De Fide, § YO. So also St. Isidore : ' Pro 
 soli originali reatu iuunt in inferno nuper nati infantuli poenas, si renovati per 
 lavacrum non fuerint' {De Sentent. lib. i. c. 22.) St. Avitus, being of 
 poetical turn of mind, put the doctrine into verse : — 
 
 ' Omnibus id vero gravius, si fonte lavacri 
 Divini expertem tenerum mors invida natum 
 Praecipitat, duri generatum sorte, gehennse, 
 Qui mox ut matris cessarit filius esse 
 Perditionis erit : tristes tunc edita nolunt 
 QusB flammis tantum genuerunt pignora matres.' 
 
 Ad Fusdnam Sororem. 
 
 For several other testimonies of the later Fathers to the same effect, see Natalis 
 Alexander, Historia Scclesiastica (Paris, 1699), torn. v. pp. 130, 131. 
 
364 RATIONALISM IN EUEOIE. 
 
 sometimes the mother invoked the Holy Spirit to purify by 
 His immediate power the infant that was to be born ; some- 
 times she received the Host or obtained absolution, and ap- 
 plied them to the benefit of her child. These and many 
 similar practices ' continued all through the middle ages in 
 spite of every efibrt to extirpate them, and the severest cen- 
 sures were unable to persuade the people that they were en- 
 tirely ineffectual. For the doctrine of the Church had wrung 
 the mother's heart with an agony that was too poignant even 
 for that submissive age to bear. Weak and superstitious 
 women, who never dreamed of rebelling against the teaching 
 of their clergy, could not acquiesce in the perdition of their 
 offspring, and they vainly attempted to escape from the di- 
 lemma by multiplying superstitious practices, or by attribut- 
 
 ' For a very full account of these curious superstitions, see the chapter on 
 'Baptism' in Thiers' Superstitions, and also a striking memoir in the first 
 volume of Xe Mot/en Age, by Lacroix. We can now hardly realise a condi- 
 tion of thought ia which the mind was concentrated so strongly upon the 
 unborn foetus ; but we should remember that, besides the doctrine of baptism, 
 there were two subjects much discussed in the early Church which tended to 
 produce an order of realisations to which we are not accustomed. Some of 
 the early writers, and especially the Nestorians, had agitated questions con- 
 cerning the time when the divinity of Christ was united to the foetus in the 
 womb, that had filled the Church with curious physiological speculations. Be- 
 sides this, one of the earliest struggles of the Church was for the suppression 
 of the custom of destroying the offspring in the womb, which was extremely 
 common among the pagans, and which they scarcely regarded a crime. Ter- 
 tuliian {Apol. c. 9) and the author of the Epistle ascribed to St. Barnabas 
 appear to have been among the first to denounce this pagan practice. Another 
 illustration of the estimate in which baptism was held is furnished by the 
 notion that bodily distempers followed irregular baptism. I have already re- 
 ferred to the belief that somnambulists had been baptised by a drunken 
 priest ; but perhaps the most curious example was in a great epidemic attack 
 of St. Vitus's dance, which appeared in the Netherlands in ISIS. The com- 
 mon people then believed that the disease resulted from unchaste priests hav- 
 ing baptised the children, and their fury was so great that it was with diffi- 
 culty that the lives of the ecclesiastics were saved. (Hecker, Epidemics of 
 the Middle Ages, pp. 153, 154.) 
 
ON PEESEOUTION. 365 
 
 ing to them a more than orthodox efficacy. But the vigilance 
 of the theologians was untiring. All the methods by which 
 these unhappy mothers endeavoured to persuade themselves 
 that their children might have been saved are preserved in 
 the decrees of the Councils that anathematised them. , 
 
 At last the Reformation came. In estimating the charac- 
 ter of that great movement, we must carefully distinguish its 
 immediate objects from its ultimate effects. The impulse of 
 which it was in part the cause, and in part the consequence, 
 at last issued in a diffusion of a rationalistic spirit which no 
 Church, however retrograde or dogmatic, has been able to 
 exclude. The essence of that spirit is to interpret the articles 
 of special creeds by the principles of universal religion — by 
 the wants, the aspirations, and the moral sentiments which 
 seem inherent in human nature. It leads men, in other 
 words, to judge what is true and what is good, not by the 
 teachings of tradition, but by the light of reason and of con- 
 science ; and where it has not produced an avowed change of 
 creed, it has at least produced a change of realisations. Doc- 
 trines which shock our sense of right have been allowed grad- 
 ually to become obsolete, or if they are brought forward they 
 are stated in language which is so colourless and ambiguous, 
 and with so many qualifications and exceptions, that their origi- 
 nal force is almost lost. This, however, was the ultimate, not 
 the immediate effect of the Reformation, and most of the Re- 
 formers were far from anticipating it. They designed to con- 
 struct a religious system which should be as essentially dog- 
 matic, distinct, and exclusive as that which they assailed, but 
 which should represent more faithfully the teachings of the first 
 four centuries. The Anabaptist movement was accompanied 
 by so many excesses, and degenerated so constantly into 
 anarchv. that it can scarcely be regarded as a school of reli- 
 
366 EATIONAMSM EST EUEOPE. 
 
 gious thought; but it had at least the effect of directing the 
 minds of theologians to the subject of infant baptism. The 
 Council of Trent enunciated very clearly the doctrine of 
 Rome. It declared the absolute necessity of baptism for 
 salvation ; it added, to guard against every cavil, that bap- 
 tism must be by literal water,' and it concluded with the 
 usual formxilary of a curse. Among the Protestants two 
 opposite tendencies were manifest. One of the first objects 
 of the Reformers was to oppose or restrict the doctrine that 
 ceremonies possessed an intrinsic merit independently of the 
 disposition of the worshipper, and it was not difficult to per- 
 ceive that this doctrine had been favoured by infant baptism 
 more than by any other single cause. On the other hand, 
 the Protestant taught even more clearly than the Cath- 
 olic the doctrine of imputed righteousness, and was there- 
 fore more disposed to dwell upon the doctrine of imputed 
 guilt. The Lutherans, in the Confession of Augsburg, assert- 
 ed the absolute necessity of baptism quite as emphatically as 
 the Tridentine theologians,' and in one respect many of the 
 Protestants went beyond the Roman Catholics ; for they 
 taught explicitly that the penalty due to original sin was 
 '■ eternal fire,' whereas the Church of Rome had never for- 
 mally condemned the notion of a third place which the 
 Greek Fathers had originated, which some of the schoolmen 
 had revived, and which about the time of the Reformation 
 was very general among the Catholics." Calvin was in some 
 
 ' A great deal of controversy had been excited in tlie middle ages about a 
 Jew, who, being converted to Christianity in u, desert, where there was no 
 water, and being as was supposed in a dying state, was baptised with sand. 
 There were also some cases of women b.iptisiag their children with wine. For 
 full details about these, see Thiers' TraH'e des Superstitionx. 
 
 ' Arts. ii. and ix. 
 
 = Wall. The notion of a limbo had been so widely diffused that Sarpi 
 
ON PEESECUTIOlir. 367 
 
 respects more favourable to unbaptised infants than the dis- 
 ciples of Luther, for he taught that the children of believers 
 were undoubtedly saved, that the intention to baptise was 
 as elficacious as the ceremony, and that, although infant bap- 
 ism should be retained, the passage in the discourse to Mco- 
 dcnius which had previously been universally applied to it, 
 was susceptible of a different interpretation." But these 
 doctrines arose simply from the reluctance of Calvin and his 
 followers to admit the extraordinary efficacy of a ceremony, 
 and not at all from any moral repugnance to the doctrine of 
 transmitted guilt. No school declared more constantly and 
 more emphatically the utter depravity of human nature, the 
 sentence of perdition attaching to the mere possession of 
 such a nature, and the eternal damnation of the great 
 majority of infants. A few of the enthusiastic advocates 
 of the doctrine of reprobation even denied the universal sal- 
 vation of baptised infants, maintaining that the Almighty 
 
 Bays the Tridentine Fathers at one time hesitated whether they should not 
 condemn as heretical the Lutheran proposition that unbaptised infants went 
 into ' eternal fire.' We find Pascal, however, stating the doctrine in a very 
 repulsive form : ' Qu'y a-t-il de plus contraire aux rfegles de notre miserable 
 justice que de damner etemellement un enfant incapable de volenti pour un 
 peche oil il paroit avoir eu si peu de part qu'il est commls six mille ans avant 
 qu'il fut en fetre ? Certainement rien ne nous heurte plus rudemeut que cette 
 doctrine, et cependant sans ce myst^re le plus incomprehensible de tons nous 
 sommes incompr^hensiblea k nous-mfemes.' {Pensees, cap. iii. § 8.) I have 
 little doubt, however, that the more revolting aspect of the doctrine was nearly 
 obsolete in the Church at the time of the Reformation. In the twelfth cen- 
 tury, St. Bernard had said : 'Nihil ardet in inferno nisi propria voluntas.' 
 
 ' According to Wall, Calvin was the very first theologian who denied that 
 ho passage, ' Except a man be bom of water and of the spirit,' &o., applied 
 to baptism. (Vol. ii. p. 180.) Jeremy Taylor strongly supported Calvin's view : 
 ' The water and the spirit in this place signify the same thing ; and by water is 
 meant the effect of the spirit cleansing and purifying the soul, as appears in its 
 parallel place of Christ baptising with the spirit and with fire.' (Liberty of 
 Prophesying, § 18.) 
 
368 EATIOKALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 might have predestinated some of them to destruction. All 
 of them maintained that the infants who were saved were 
 saved on account of their connection with Christianity, and 
 not on account of their own innocence. All of them declared 
 that the infant came into the world steeped in guilt, and 
 under the sentence of eternal condemnation. Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, who was probably the ablest as he was one of the 
 most anflinching of the defenders of Calvinism, has devoted 
 to this subject all the resources of his great ingenuity. No 
 previous writer developed more clearly the arguments which 
 St. Augustine had derived from the death of infants, and 
 from the pangs that accompany it ; but his chief illustrations 
 of the relations of the Deity to His creatures are drawn from 
 those scenes of massacre when the streets of Canaan were 
 choked with the multitude of the slain, and when the sword 
 of the Israelite was for ever bathed in the infant's blood.' 
 
 So far, then, the Reformation seems to have made little 
 or no change. The doctrine of Catholicism, harsh and re- 
 pulsive as it appears, does not contrast at all unfavourably 
 with those of the two great founders of dogmatic and con- 
 servative Protestantism. At a period when passions ran 
 high, and when there was every disposition to deepen the 
 chasm between Catholicity and the Reformed Churches — 
 at a period therefore when any tendency to rebel against the 
 Catholic doctrine of transmitted guilt would have been 
 clearly manifested, that doctrine was in all essentials fully 
 accepted. Questions concerning the nature of the sacra- 
 ments, the forms of Church government, the meaning of 
 particular passages of Scripture, the due order and subor- 
 dination of different portions of theological systems, were 
 
 ' See Jonathan Edwards on Original Sin — one of the most revolting books 
 that have ever proceeded from the pen of man. 
 
ON PEESECUTIOK. 369 
 
 discussed with the most untiring and acrimonious zeal. All 
 Europe was convulsed with controversy, and the most pas 
 sionate enthusiasm was evoked. But the whole stress and 
 energy of this enthusiasm flowed in a dogmatic channel. 
 It was not the revolt of the reason claiming a supreme 
 authoiity in the domain of thought ; it was not the rebellion 
 of the moral faculty against doctrines that collided with its 
 teaching : or if such elements existed, they were latent and 
 unavowed, and their position in the first ebullitions of Prot- 
 estantism was entirely subordinate. The germ of Ration- 
 alism had indeed been cast abroad, but more than a century 
 was required to develop it. There was no subtlety of inter- 
 pretation connected with the eucharistic formularies that did 
 not excite incomparably more interest than the broad ques- 
 tions of morality. Conscience was the last tribunal to which 
 men would have referred as the supreme authority of their 
 creed. There was much doubt as to what historical authori- 
 ties were most valuable, but there was no doubt that the 
 ultimate basis of theology must be historical. 
 
 To this statement there were, however, two eminent ex- 
 ceptions. Two theologians, who differed widely in their 
 opinions and in their circumstances, were nevertheless act- 
 uated by the same rationalistic spirit, were accustomed to 
 form their notions of truth and goodness by the decisions 
 of their own reason and conscience, and, disregarding all the 
 intei-pretations of tradition, to mould and adapt their creed 
 to their ideal. These theologians were Socinus and Zuia- 
 glius, who may be regarded as the representatives of Ration- 
 alism in the first period of Protestantism. 
 
 The school of thought which Lselius Socinus contributed 
 
 to plant at Vicenza, and which his more illustrious nephew, 
 
 in conjunction with other Italians, spread through the greatei 
 VOL. I. — 24 
 
370 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 part of Europe, was the natural result of a long train of cir- 
 camstances ttat had been acting for centuries in Italy. The 
 great wealth of the Italian republics, their commercial rela- 
 tions with men of all nations and of all creeds, the innumer- 
 able memorials of paganism that are scattered over the land, 
 and the high sesthetic development that was general, had all 
 ill different ways and degrees contributed to produce in Italy 
 a very unusual love of intellectual pursuits and a very un- 
 usual facility for cultivating them. Upon the fall of Constan- 
 tinople, when the Greek scholars were driven into exile, 
 bearing with them the seeds of an intellectual renovation, 
 Italy was more than any other country the centre to which 
 they were attracted. In the Italian princes they found the 
 most munificent and discerning patrons, and in the Italian 
 universities the most congenial asylums. Padua and Bologna 
 were then the great centres of free thought. A series of 
 professors, of whom Pomponatius appears to have been the 
 most eminent, had pursued in these universities speculations 
 as daring as those of the eighteenth century, and had habit- 
 uated a small but able circle of scholars to examine theo- 
 logical questions with the most fearless scrutiny. They 
 maintained that there were two sphei-es of thought, the 
 sphere of reason and the sphere of faith, and that these 
 spheres were entirely distinct. As philosophers, and under 
 the guidance of reason, they elaborated theories of the bold- 
 est and most unflinching scepticism ; as Catholics, and under 
 the impulse of faith, they acquiesced in all the doctrines of 
 their Church.' The fact of their accepting certain doctrines 
 
 ' See, oti the career of Pomponatius, Matter, Hutoire d^ Doctrines Morales 
 des trois Derniers Siecles, torn. i. pp. 51-67. Pomponatius was bom at Man- 
 tua in 1462, and died in 1624. His principal work is on The Immortality of 
 the Soul. He was protected by Leo X. (Biog. Univ.) Vanini said that the 
 
ON PERSECUTION. 371 
 
 as a, matter of fliitli clicl not at all prevent them from repu- 
 diating tliem on the ground of reason; and the complete 
 separation of the two orders of ideas enabled them to pursue 
 their intellectual speculations by a method which was purely 
 seculai", and with a courage that was elsewhere unknown. 
 Even in Catholicism a dualism of this kind could not long 
 continue, but it was manifestly incompatible with Protest- 
 antism, which at least professed to make private judgment 
 the foundation of belief. Faith considered as an unreasoning 
 acquiescence disappeared from theology, and the order of 
 ideas which reason liad established remained alone. As a 
 consequence of all this, the Reformation in Italy was almost 
 confined to a small group of scholars, who preached its jjrin- 
 ciplos to their extreme limits, with an unflinching logic, with 
 a disregard for both tradition and consequences, and above 
 all with a secular spirit that was elsewhere unequalled. With 
 the peculiar tenets connected with the name of Socinus we 
 are not now concerned, for the question of theological 
 metliod is distinct from that of theological doctrines. It is, 
 liowevcr, suiRciently manifest that although Socinus laid a 
 far greater stress on the authority of Revelation than his fol- 
 lowers, the prevailing sentiment which actuated him was a 
 
 soiil of Averroes had passed into Pomponatius. The seventeenth century fur/- 
 nishes some striking examples of this separation of the philosophical and 
 ilioologieal points of view. Thus Charron, who as a philosopher wrote one of 
 tlio most sceptical books of his age, was a priest, and author of a treatise on 
 Christian Evidences. Pascal too, in whose great mind scepticism and faith 
 were strangely interwoven, accepted with delight the Pyrrhonism of Montaigne 
 as representing the ultimate fruits of reason, while firmly grasping Catholicism 
 by faith. Luther himself had maintained that a proposition may be- true in 
 theology and false in philosophy — an opinion which the Sorbonne condemned : 
 'Sorbona pessime definivlt idem esse verum in philosophia et theologia, impie- 
 que damuavit eos qui contrarium docueriut.' (Amand Saintes, Hist du Rii- 
 Konaliiime en Allemagne, p. 29.) 
 
372 EATIOITALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 desire to subordinate traditional tenets to the dictates of 
 reason and of conscience, and that his entire system of inter- 
 pretation was due to this desire. It is also evident that it 
 was this spirit that induced him to discard with unqualified 
 severity the orthodox doctrines of the sinfulness of error and 
 of the transmission of guilt." 
 
 It may appear at first sight a strange paradox to repre- 
 sent the career of Zuinglius as in any degree parallel to that 
 of Socinus. Certainly the bold and simple-minded pastor of 
 Zurich, who bore with such an unflinching calm the blaze of 
 popularity and the storms of controversy, and perished at 
 last upon the battle-field, forms in most respects a glaring 
 contrast to the timid Italian who spent his life in passing from 
 court to court and from university to university, shrinking 
 with nervous alarm from all opposition and notoriety, and 
 instilling almost furtively into the minds of a few friends 
 whom his gentle manners had captivated the great prin- 
 ciples of religious toleration. Certainly, too, nothing could 
 be further from the mind of Zuinglius than the doctrines 
 which are known as Socinianism, nor did the antecedents of 
 the two Reformers bear any resemblance. Tet there can, I 
 think, be no doubt that the dominant predisposition of Zuin- 
 glius also was to interpret all tenets according to the d priori 
 conceptions of reason and conscience. Though a man of much 
 more than common ability, he had but slight pretensions to 
 learning, and this, in an age when men are endeavouring to 
 break loose from tradition, has sometimes proved a positive 
 and a most important advantage. The tendency of his mind 
 was early shown in the position he assumed on the eucharis- 
 tic controversy. There was no single subject in which the 
 leading Reformers wavered so much, none on which they 
 
 ' Neander, Hist, of Dogmas, vol. ii. pp. 657, 658. 
 
ON PEESEOUTIOlf. 373 
 
 found so great a difficulty in divesting themselves of their 
 old l)elief. The A'oice of reason was clearly on one side, the 
 weight of tradition inclined to the other, and the language 
 of Scripture was susceptible of either interpretation. Luther 
 never advanced beyond consubstantiation ; Calvin only ar- 
 rived at his final views after a long series of oscillations ; the 
 English Reformers can scarcely be said to have ever arrived 
 at any definite conclusions. Zuinglius alone, from the very 
 beginning, maintained with perfect confidence the only doc- 
 trine which accords with the evidence of the senses, stated it 
 in language of transparent precision, and clung to it with 
 unwavering tenacity. The same tendency was shown still 
 more clearly in his decisions on those points in which tra- 
 dition clashes with conscience. It is surely a most remarta- 
 ble fact that in the age of such men as Luther and Calvin, 
 as Melanchthon and Erasmus, Zuinglius, who in intellectual 
 power was far inferior to several of his contemporaries, 
 should almost alone have anticipated the rationalistic doc- 
 trine of the seventeenth century concerning the innocence of 
 error, and the tolerance that should be accorded to it. On 
 the subject of original sin he separated himself with equal 
 boldness from the other leaders of the Reformation, maintain- 
 ing that it was nothing more than a malady or evil tendency, 
 and that it did not in any degree involve guilt.' 
 
 ' Neaader, Eist. of Dogmas, vol. ii. pp. 658, 659. Bossuet made a violent 
 attack upon this notion of Zuinglius, which he regarded with extreme horror, 
 because, as he plaintively observes, supposing it to be true, then ' le p6che 
 originel ne damne personne, pas mtoe les pnfants des paiens.' ( Variations 
 Prolestards, liv. ii. c. 21.) The remarks of Bossuet are especially worthy of 
 attention on account of the great clearness with which he maintains the nni- 
 versality of the belief in the damnable nature of original sin in all sections of 
 the Christian CJhurch. He has, however, slightly overstated the doctrine of 
 Zuinglius. The Keformer distinctly declared original sin to be simply a dis- 
 ease, and not properly a sin. From his language in his Treatise on Saptiein, . 
 
374 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 It was thus that two of the leaders of the Reformatior 
 were induced by the rationalistic character of their minds to 
 abandon the notion of transmitted guilt, and the doctrine 
 concerning unbaptised infants which was connected with it. 
 If the current of opinions has since then been flowing in the 
 same direction, this is entirely due to the increased diffusion 
 of a rationalistic spirit, and not at all to any active propa- 
 gandism or to any definite arguments. Men have come 
 instinctively and almost unconsciously to judge all doctrines 
 by their intuitive sense of right, and to reject or explain 
 away or throw into the background those that will not bear 
 the test, no matter how imposing may be the authority that 
 uthenticates them. This method of judgment, which was 
 once very rare, has now become very general. Every gener- 
 ation its triumph is more manifest, and entire departments 
 of theology have receded or brightened beneath its influence.' 
 How great a change has been effected on the doctrine con- 
 cerning unbaptised children must be manifest to any one 
 who considers how completely the old doctrine has dis- 
 
 it was inferred that he asserted the salvation of pagan infants. However, in 
 1526, he wrote a short treatise On Original Sin, in which he said that his for- 
 mer work had been misrepresented ; that he maintained indeed that the word 
 ' sin ' was only applied to our original malady by a figure of speech ; that he 
 was quite sure that that malady never in itself damned Christian children, but 
 that he was not equally sure that it never damned pagan children. He in- 
 clined, however, strongly to the belief that it did not : ' De Christiauorum natis 
 certi sumus eos peocato original! non damnari, de aliorum non itidem ; quam- 
 vis, ut ingenue fateor, nobis probabilior videtur sententia quam doculmus, non 
 temere pronunciandum esse de gentilium quoque natis et eis qui opus legia 
 faciunt ex lege intus digito Dei scripta.' (P. 28.) 
 
 ' Chillingworth treated the subject with his usual admirable good sense : 
 ' This is certain, that God will not deal unjustly with unbaptised infants ; but 
 how in particular He will deal with them concerns not us, and so we need not 
 much regard it.' (Religion of Protestantx, chap, vii.) Jeremy Taylor strongly 
 rejected both original sin, in the sense of transmitted guilt, and the damnation 
 of infants that was inferred from it. 
 
ON PERSECUTION. 375 
 
 appeared from popular teaching, and what a general and 
 intense repugnance is excited by its simple statement. It 
 was once deemed a mere truism ; it would now be viewed 
 with horror and indignation : and if we desired any further 
 proof of the extent of this change, we should find it in the 
 l^osition which the Quakers and the Baptists have assumed 
 in Christendom. It is scarcely possible to conceive any 
 sects which in the early Church would have been regarded 
 with more unmingled abhorrence, or would have been 
 deemed more unquestionably outside the pale of salvation. 
 It is no exaggeration to say that the feeling of repugnance 
 with which men now look upon the polygamy of the Mor- 
 mons presents but a very faint image of that which the 
 Fathers would have manifested towards those who system- 
 atically withheld from their children that baptism which was 
 unanimously pronounced to be essential to their salvation. 
 Yet the Quakers and the Baptists have now obtained a place 
 among the most respected sections of the Churcli, and in the 
 eyes of very many Protestants the peculiarities of the second, 
 at least, are iiot sufficiently serious to justify any feeling of 
 repulsion or to prevent the most cordial cooperation. For a 
 great change has silently swept over Christendom : without 
 controversy and without disturbance, an old doctrine has 
 passed away from among the realisations of mankind. 
 
 But the scope of the doctrine we are considering was not 
 confined to unbaptised children ; it extended also to all 
 adults who were external to the Church. If the whole 
 liuman race existed under a sentence of condemnation whicli 
 could only be removed by connection with Christianity, and 
 if this sentence was so stringent that even the infant was not 
 exempt from its effects, it was natural that the adult heathen 
 who added his personal transgressions to the guilt of Adam 
 
37G EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 should be doomed at last to perdition. Nor did the Fathers 
 who constructed the early systems of theology at all shrink 
 from the consequence. At a time when the Christian Church 
 formed but an infinitesimal fraction of the community, at a 
 time when almost all the members who composed it were 
 themselves converts from paganism, and reckoned among the 
 pagans those who were bound to them by the closest ties of 
 gratitude and affection, the great majority of the Fathers de- 
 liberately taught that the entire pagan world was doomed 
 to that state of punishment which they invariably described 
 as literal and undying fii-e. In any age and under any cir- 
 cumstances such a doctrine must seem inexpressibly shocking, 
 but it appears most peculiarly so when we consider that the 
 convert who accepted it, and who with a view to his own 
 felicity proclaimed the system of which he believed it to form 
 a part to be a message of good tidings, must have acquiesced 
 in the eternal perdition of the mother who had borne him, of 
 the father upon whose knees he had played, of the friends 
 who were associated with the happy years of childhood and 
 early manhood, of the immense mass of his fellow-country- 
 men, and of all those heroes and sages who by their lives or 
 precepts had first kindled a moral enthusiasm within his 
 breast. All these were doomed by one sweeping sentence. 
 Nor were they alone in their condemnation. The heretics, 
 no matter how trivial may have been their error, were re- 
 served for the same fearful fate. The Church, according to 
 the favourite image of the Fathers, was a solitary ark floating 
 upon a boundless sea of ruin. Within its pale there was 
 salvation; without it salvation was impossible. 'If any 
 one out of Noah's ark could escape the deluge,' wrote St. 
 Cyprian, 'he who is out of the Church may also escape.' 
 ' Without this house ' said Origen, ' that is, without the 
 
ON PEESECUTIOU. 377 
 
 Ohursh, no one is saved.' 'No one,' said St. Augustine, 
 ' Cometh to salvation and eternal life except he who hath 
 Chiist for his head ; but no one can have Christ for his head 
 except he that is in His body the Church.' ' ' Hold most 
 firmly,' added St. Fulgentius, ' and doubt not that not only 
 all pagans, but also all Jews, heretics, and schismatics who 
 depart from this present life outside the Catholic Church, are 
 about to go into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his 
 angels.' '^ So prominent and so unquestionable was this doc- 
 trine deemed, that the Council of Carthage, in the fourth 
 century, made it one of the test-questions put to every bishop 
 before ordination.' 
 
 This doctrine has had a greater influence than perhaps 
 any other speculative opinion upon the history of mankind. 
 How different it is from the conceptions to which the great 
 teachers of antiquity had arrived must be evident to any one 
 who knows how fondly they cherished the doctrine of the 
 
 ' I take these refereuoes from Palmer On the Church (vol. i. pp. H-13, 
 3d ed.), where there is much evidence on the subject collected. Mr. Palmer 
 contends that the Fathers are unanimous on the subject, but Barbeyrac shows 
 that at least two, and those of the earliest (Justin Martyr and Clemens Alex- 
 andrinus), admitted the possible salvation of the pagans {Morale dee Pires, 
 oh. xi. § 11), and that the first expressly said that Socrates and Ileraclitus in 
 the si<rht of God were Christians. I am afraid, however, there is no doubt 
 that the great majority of the Fathers took the other view. Minueius Felix 
 thought the daemon of Socrates was a devil. ( Octavius, oh. xxvi.) 
 
 " De Mde, § 81 ; and again, still more explicitly: 'Omni enim homini qui 
 Beolesiae CathoUcse non tenet unitatem, neque baptismus neque eleemosyna 
 quamlibet oopiosa, neque mors pro nomine Christ! suscepta proficere poterit ad 
 Balutem, quamdiu eo vel hieretica vel schismatica pravitas perseverat qua; ducit 
 ad mortem.' (§ 22.) 
 
 ' Palmer, On the Church, vol. i. p. 13. And again the Synod of Zerta in 
 ».D. 412 : ' Whosoever is separated from the Catholic Church, however inno- 
 cently he may think he lives, for this crime alone that he is separated from 
 the unity of Christ will not have life, but the wrath of God remaineth on him.' 
 This statement is said to have been drawn up by St. Augustine. See Haward- 
 en's Chariti, and Truth, pp. 39, 40 (Dublin, 1809). 
 
37S EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 Lnimortality of the soul, liow calmly they contemplated the 
 approach of death,' and how hopefully they looked forward 
 to the future. Never can men forget that noble Greek who. 
 struck down by an unrighteous sentence, summoned around 
 him his dearest disciples, and having reasoned with them on 
 Ihe immortality of the soul and the rewards of virtue and the 
 goodness of the gods, took with a gentle smile the cup of 
 death, and passed away thanking the god of healing who 
 had cured him of the disease of life. That 'the just man 
 should take confidence in death," that he who has earnestly, 
 though no doubt imperfectly, tried to do his duty has noth- 
 ing to fear beyond the grave, had been the consoling faith of 
 all the best minds of antiquity. That the bold, unshackled, 
 and impartial search for truth was among the noblest and, 
 therefore, among the most innocent employments of man- 
 kind, was the belief which inspired aU the philosophies of 
 the past. Nor was it merely or mainly in the groves of 
 Athens that this spirit was manifested. It should never be 
 
 ' I know nothing in the world sadder than one of the sayings of Luther 
 on this matter. I quote it from that beautiful old translation of TJie Table 
 Talk by Bell : ' It were a light and an easy matter for a Christian to suifer 
 and overcome death if he knew not that it were God's wrath ; the same title 
 maketh death bitter to us. But an heathen dieth securely away ; he neither 
 seeth nor feeleth that it is God's wrath, but meaneth it is the end of nature 
 and is natural The epicurean says it is but to endure one evil hour.' A dis- 
 tinguished living antiquarian, comparing the heathen and the mediseval rep- 
 resentations of death, observes : ' Dans la society paienne, toute compos^e du 
 sensualisme et de licence, on se gardait bien de representor la mort comme 
 quelque chose de hideux ; il ne parait m6me point que le squelette ait et6 alors 
 Ic symbole de I'impitoyable divinite. Mais quand le Christianisme eut conquis 
 le monde, quand une etemite malheureuse dut etre la pimition des fautes com- 
 mises ici bas, la mort qui avait semble si indiff6rente aux anciens devint une 
 chose dont les consequences furent si tcrribles pour le chretien qu'il fallut les. 
 lui rapporter h, chaque inftaut en frappant ses yeux des images ftuifebres.' 
 (Jubinal, Siir les I>inses des Marts, p. 8.) 
 
ON PEESECDTION. 379 
 
 forgotten that the rationalist has always found the highest 
 expression of his belief in the language of the prophet, who 
 declared that the only service the Almighty required was a 
 life of justice, of mercy, and of humility; of the wise man, 
 who summed up the whole duty of man in the fear of God 
 and the ohseiwance of His commandments; of the apostle, 
 who described true religion as consisting of charity and of 
 purity; and of that still greater Teacher, who proclaimed 
 true worship to be altogether spiritual, and who described 
 the final adjudication as the separation of mankind according 
 to their acts and not according to their opinions. 
 
 But, however this may be, the doctrine of salvation in the 
 Church alone was unanimously adopted when Christianity 
 passed from its moral to its first dogmatic stage, and on two 
 occasions it conferred an inestimable benefit upon mankind. 
 At a time when Christianity was struggling against the most 
 horrible persecutions, and also against the gross conceptions 
 of an age that could obtain but a very partial idea of its 
 elevated purity, the terrorism of this doctrine became an 
 auxiliary, little in harmony indeed with the spirit of a 
 philanthropic religion, but admirably suited to the time, and 
 powerful enough to nerve the martyr with an unflinching 
 courage, and to drive the doubter speedily into the Church, 
 Again, when the ascendency of the new faith had become 
 manifest, it seemed for a time as if its administrative and 
 organizing function would have been destroyed by the 
 countless sects that divided it. The passion for allegory and 
 the spirit of eclecticism that characterised the Eastern con- 
 verts, the natural subtlety of the Greek mind, and still more 
 the disputatious philosophy of Aristotle, which the Greek 
 heretics introduced into the Church, and which Nestorianism 
 
380 EATIONALISM IN ECEOPE. 
 
 planted in the great school of Edessa,' had produced so many 
 and such virulent controversies that the whole ecclesiastical 
 fabric seemed dislocated, and intellectual anarchy was im- 
 minent. The conception of an authoritative Church was not 
 yet fully formed, though men were keenly sensible of the 
 importance of dogma. It is computed that there were about 
 ninety heresies in three centuries." Such questions as the 
 double procession of the Holy Ghost, the proper day for cele- 
 brating Easter, the nature of the light upon Mount Tabor, or 
 the existence in Christ of two independent but perfectly co- 
 incident wills, were discussed with a ferocity that seems 
 almost to countenance the suggestion of Butler, that com- 
 munities, like individuals, may be insane. But here again 
 the doctrine of exclusive salvation exercised a decisive 
 influence. As long as it was held and realised, the diver- 
 sities of private judgment must have waged a most unequal 
 warfare with the unity of authority. Men could not long 
 rest amid the conflict of opposing arguments ; they could not 
 endure that measure of doubt which is the necessary accom- 
 paniment of controversy. All the fractions of Christianity 
 soon gravitated to one or two great centres, and a spiritual 
 despotism was consolidated which alone could control and 
 temper the turbulent elements of medisBval society, could 
 impose a moral yoke upon the most ferocious tyrants, could 
 accomplish the great work of the abolition of slavery in 
 Europe, and could infuse into Christendom such a measure of 
 
 ' It is remarkable that Aristotle, whom the schoolmen placed almost on a 
 level with the Fathers, owes his position entirely to the early heretics ; that 
 the introduction of his philosophy was at first invariably accompanied by an 
 increase of heresy ; and that the Fathers, with scarcely an exception, unequiv- 
 ocally denounced it. See much curious evidence of this in AUemand-Lavi- 
 gerie, &oU Chretienne (T^desse. (Thfeae presentee k la Faeultd des Lettrea 
 de Paris, 1850.) 
 
 " Middleton'a M-ee Enguiry, Introd. p. 86. 
 
ON PEESECDTIOIT. 381 
 
 pure and spiritual truth as to prepare men for the better 
 phase that was to follow it. 
 
 All this was done by the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 
 At the Reformation, when the old Church no longer har- 
 monised with the intellectual condition of Europe, and when 
 the spirit of revolt was manifested on all subjects and in all 
 countries, the doctrine was for the most part unchallenged ; 
 and although it undoubtedly produced an inconceivable 
 amount of mental suffering, it had at least the effect of 
 terminating rapidly the anarchy of transition. The tenacity 
 with which it was retained by the Reformers is of course 
 partly due to the difficulty of extricating the mind from old 
 theological modes of thought ; but it was, I think, still more 
 the result of that early tendency to depreciate the nature and 
 the works of man which threw them naturally upon dogma- 
 tic systems. There were, indeed, few subjects on which they 
 were so unanimous. 'The doctrine of salvation in the 
 Church,' writes a learned living author, ' was held by all the 
 Lutherans and Reformed, and by the sects which separated 
 from them, as well as by the Romish and other Churches. 
 Luther teaches that remission of sins and sanctification are 
 only obtained in it ; and Calvin says, " Beyond the bosom of 
 the Church no remission of sins is to be hoped for, nor any 
 salvation." The Saxon Confession, presented to the Synod 
 of Trent a.d. 1551, the Helvetic Confession, the Belgic, the 
 Scottish, all avow that salvation is only to be had in the 
 Church. The Presbyterian divines assembled at West- 
 minster, A.D. 164:1, in their "Humble Advice concerning a 
 Confession of Faith" (c. 25), declare that "the visible Church, 
 which is also Catholique and universal under the Gospel 
 (not confined to one nation, as before under tlie Law), eon- 
 Gists of all those throughout the world that profess the true 
 
382 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE, 
 
 religion . . . out of which there is no ordinary possibility of 
 salvation." The Indejjendents admitted the same.' ' Nor 
 was the position of the Anglican Church at all different. 
 The Athanasian Creed was given an honoured place among 
 her formularies, and the doctrine which that creed distinctly 
 asserts was implied in several of the services of the Church, 
 and was strongly maintained by a long succession of her 
 divines." Among the leading Reformers, Zuinglius, and 
 Zuinglius alone, openly and unequivocally repudiated it. In 
 a Confession of Faith which he wrote just before his death, 
 and which marks an important epoch in the history of the 
 human mind, he described in magnificent language that 
 future ' assembly of all the saintly, the heroic, the faithful, 
 and the virtuous,' when Abel and Enoch, Noah and Abra- 
 ham, Isaac and Jacob, will mingle with ' Socrates, Aristides, 
 and Antigonus, with Numa and Camillus, Hercules and 
 Theseus, the Scipios and the Catos,' and when every upright 
 and holy man who has ever lived will be present with his 
 God.' In our age, when the doctrine of exclusive salvation 
 seldom excites more than a smile, such language appears but 
 natural; but when it was first written it excited on all sides 
 amazement and indignation. Luther on reading it said he 
 despaired of the salvation of Zuinglius. Bossuet quotes the 
 passage as a climax to his charges against the Swiss Reformer, 
 and quotes it as if it required no comment, but was in itself 
 sufficient to hand down its author to the contempt and 
 indignation of posterity. 
 
 I shall now proceed to examine the more remote conse- 
 
 ' Palmer, On the Church, vol. i. p. 13. 
 
 " See a great deal of evidence of this in Palmer. 
 
 ' This passage i3 given in full by Bossuet, Variations Frotesfantes, liv. ii. 
 c. 19. The original Confesssion was published by BuIIinger in 1536, with a 
 very laudatory preface. 
 
ON PEESECtTTION 383 
 
 quences of the doctrine of exclusive salvation, in order to 
 trace the connection between its decline and some other 
 remarkable features of rationalistic development. In the iirst 
 place, it is manifest that the conceptions I have reviewed are 
 so directly opposed to our natural sense of what is right and 
 just, to all the conclusions at which those great teachers 
 arrived who evolved their doctrines from their own moral 
 nature, that they must establish a permanent opposition 
 between dogmatic theology and natural religion. When the 
 peace of the Church has long been undisturbed, and when 
 the minds of men are not directed with very strong interest 
 to dogmatic questions, conscience will act insensibly upon 
 the belief, obscuring or effacing its true character. Men will 
 instinctively endeavour to explain it away, or to dilute its 
 force, or to diminish its prominence. But when the agitation 
 of controversy has brought the doctrine vividly before the 
 mind, and when the enthusiasm of the contest lias sileticed 
 the revolt of conscience, theology will be developed more 
 and more in the same direction, till the veiy outlines of 
 natural religion are obliterated. Thus we find that those 
 predestinarian theories which are commonly identified with 
 Calvin, though they seem to have been substantially held by 
 St. Augustine, owe their reception mainly to the previous 
 action of the doctrine of exclusive salvation upon the mind. 
 For the one objection to the metaphysical and other argu- 
 ments the Calvinist can urge, which will always appear con- 
 elusive to the great majority of mankind, is the moral objec- 
 tion. It is this objection, and this alone, which enables men 
 to cut through that entangling maze of arguments concerning 
 freewill, foreknowledge, and predetermination, in which the 
 greatest intellects both of antiquity and of modern days have 
 been hopelessly involved, and which the ablest metaphysi- 
 
884 RATIONALISM IN EHEOPE. 
 
 cians have pronounced inextvicable. Take away the moral 
 argument : persuade men that when ascribing to the Deity 
 justice and mercy they are speaking of qualities generically 
 distinct from those which exist among mankind — qualities 
 which we are altogether unable to conceive, and which may 
 be compatible with acts that men would term grossly unjust 
 and unmerciful : tell them that guilt may be entirely uncon- 
 nected with a personal act, that millions of infants may be 
 called into existence for a moment to be precipitated into a 
 place of torment, that vast nations may live and die, and 
 then be raised again to endure a never-ending punishment, 
 because they did not believe in a religion of which they had 
 never heard, or because a crime was committed thousands of 
 years before they were in existence : convince them that all 
 this is part of a transeendentally perfect and righteous moral 
 scheme, and there is no imaginable abyss to M'hich such a 
 doctrine will not lead. You will have blotted out those 
 fundamental notions of right and wrong which the Creator 
 has engraven upon every heart; you will have extinguished 
 the lamp of conscience; you will have taught men to stifle 
 the inner voice as a lying witness, and to esteem it virtuous 
 to disobey it. But even this does not represent the full 
 extent of the evil. The doctrine of exclusive salvation not 
 only destroys the moral objection to that ghastly system of 
 religious fatalism w^hich Augustine and Calvin constructed ; 
 it directly leads to it by teaching that the ultimate destiny 
 of the immense majority of mankind is determined entirely 
 irrespectively of their will. Millions die in infancy ; millions 
 live and die in heathen lands ; millions exist in ranks of 
 society where they have no opportunities for engaging in 
 theological research ; millions are so encumbered by the 
 prejudices of education that no mental efibrt can emancipate 
 
ON PEESEctriTOJsr. 385 
 
 them from the chain. We accordingly find that predestina- 
 rianisra was in the first instance little more than a develop- 
 ment of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. St. Augustine 
 illustrated it by the case of a mother who had two infants. 
 Each of these is but ' a lump of pei-dition ;' neither has ever 
 perfoi-med a moral act. The mother overlies one, and it 
 perishes unbaptised ; the other is baptised, and is saved. 
 
 But the doctrine of Augustine and Ambrose never seems 
 to have been pushed in the early Church to the same ex- 
 tremes, or to have been stated with the same precision, as it 
 afterwards was by the Reformers.' The mild and sagacious 
 Erasmus soon perceived in this one of the principal evils of 
 the Refoi-mation, and he wrote a treatise in defence of free- 
 will, which elicited from Luther one of the most unequivocal 
 declarations of fatalism in the whole compass of theology, 
 and certainly one of the most revolting. ' The human will,' 
 said Luther, 'is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it 
 wishes and goes as God wills ; if Satan mounts it, it wishes 
 and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose the rider it 
 would prefer, or betake itself to him, but it is the riders who 
 contend for its possession.' ' ' This is the acme of faith, to be- 
 
 ' The doctrine of double predRStination was, however, maintained in the 
 ninth century by a monk named Gottefchalk, who was opposed by Hincmar, 
 Archbishop of Rheims, in the spirit of a theologian, and by Scotus Erigena in 
 the spirit of » freethinker. For' an account of this once-famous controversy 
 Bee the learned work of M. St. Rene Taillandier, Scot Erigbne et la Philosoplm 
 Scholastique (Strasbourg; 1843), pp. 51-58 ; and for a contemporary view of 
 the opinions of Gotteschalk, see a letter by Amnio, Archbishop of Lyons (the 
 immediate successor of Agobard), printed with the works of Agobard (Paris, 
 1666). According to Amulo, Gotteschalk not only held the doctrines of repro- 
 bation and particular rejiemption, but even declared that the Almighty rejoiced 
 and exulted over the destruction of those who were predestinated to damna- 
 tion. Gotteschalk was condemned to • be degraded from the priesthood, to be 
 imprisoned, and to be scourged. (Llorente, Hist, de Vlnguisitiun, torn, i 
 p. 20.) 
 
 ' ' Sic humana voluntas in medio posita est ecu jumentum. Si iusederit 
 TOL. I. — 25 
 
386 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 lieve that He is merciful who saves so few and who condemns 
 30 many ; that He is just who at His own pleasure has made 
 us necessarily doomed to damnation ; so that, as Erasmus 
 says, He seems to delight in the tortures of the wretched, 
 and to be more deserving of hatred than of lo'S'e. If by any 
 effort of reason I could conceive how God could be merciful 
 and just who shows so much anger and iniquity, there 
 would be no need for faith.' ' ' God foreknows nothing sub- 
 ject to contingencies, but He foresees, foreordains, and accom- 
 plishes all things by an unchanging, eternal, and efficacious 
 will. By this thunderbolt freewill sinks shattered in the dust.' " 
 Such were the opinions of the greatest of the Reformers. 
 The doctrine of Calvin and his school was equally explicit. 
 According to them, the Fall, with all its consequences, was 
 predetermined ages before the Creation, and was the neces- 
 
 Deus, Tult et vadit quo Tult Deus, ut Psalraus dicit : " Faotus sum sicut jumen- 
 tum et ego semper tecum." Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit quo vult Satan. 
 Nee est in ejus arbitrio ad utrum sessorem eurrere aut eum quaerere, sed ipsi 
 sessores certant ob ipsum obtinendum et possidendum.' [De Servo Arbitrio, 
 pars i. sec. 24.) 
 
 ' 'Hie est fidei summus gradus, credere ilium esse clementem qui tam 
 paucos salvat tam multos damnat ; credere justum qui suii voluntate nos neces- 
 Bario damnabiles facit ; ut videatur, referente Erasmo, delectari cruciatibus 
 miserorum, et odio potius quam amore dignus. Si igitur possem uUa ratione 
 comprehendere quomodo is Deus misericors ct Justus, qui tantum iram et 
 iniquitatem ostendit, non esset opus fide.' (Ibid. sec. 23.) 
 
 ^ ' Est itaque et hoc imprimis necessarium et salutare Christiano nosse, 
 quod Deus idhil prfescit contingiter, sed quod omnia incommuiabilia et setpma, 
 .nfallibiliquo voluntate et praevidet et praponit et facit. Hoc fulmine sternitur 
 et conteritur penitus liberum arbitrium.' (Sec. 10.) I give these sections 
 according to Yaughan's translation (1823), for in the original edition (1526) 
 \here are no divisions, and the pages are not numbered. Melanchthon, in the 
 edition of his Commonplaces, expressed extreme predestinarian views, but 
 omitted them in later editions. Luther, in his old age, said he could not re- 
 view with perfect satisfaction any of his works except, perhaps, his Catechism 
 aud his Se Servo Arbitrio (Vaughan's Preface, p. 57). There is a full notice 
 »f this book in one of Sir W. Hamilton's tssajs. 
 
ON PEESECUTION. 387 
 
 sary consequence of that predetermination. The Almighty, 
 they taught, irrevocably decided the fate of each individual 
 long Ibefore He called him into existence, and has predesti- 
 nated millions to His hatred and to eternal damnation. 
 With that object He gave them being — with that ohject He 
 , withholds from them the assistance that alone can con-ect 
 the perversity of the nature with which He created them. 
 He will hate them during life, and after death He will cast 
 them into the excruciating torments of undying fire, and will 
 watch their agonies without compassion through the count- 
 less ages of eternity.' 
 
 It is needless to comment upon such teaching as this. 
 That it makes the Deity the direct author of sin," that it sub- 
 verts all our notions of justice and of mercy, that the simple 
 
 ' On Calvin's views, see especially his De JEterna Dei Pradestinaiione, 
 and his histitwt. Christ, lib. iii. c. 21-23. But perhaps their clearest and most 
 emphatic statement is in a work of Beza, De .^erna Dei Prcedesiinaiione, 
 contra Sebastianum Castellionem (published in the Opusmla of Beza, Genevae, 
 1658). The pointed objections on the score of moral rectitude of his rational- 
 istic opponent brought the enormities of the Calvinistic doctrine into the fullest 
 relief. There is a curious old translation of this work, under the title of 
 Besa's Display of Popish Practices, or Patched PeXagiamsm, translated by 
 W. Hopkinson (London, 1578). Beza especially insists on the unfairness of 
 accusing Calvinists of asserting that God so hated some men that He predes- 
 tinated them to destruction ; the truth being that God of His free sovereignty 
 predestinated them to destruction, and therefore to His hatred ; so that ' God 
 is not moved with the hatred of any that He should drive him to destruction, 
 but He hath hated whom He hath predestinated to destruction.' Another 
 point on which Jonathan Edwards especially has insisted (in his Freedom of 
 Wilt) is that there can be no injustice in punishing voluntary transgression, 
 and that the transgressions of the reprobate are voluntary ; men having been 
 since Adam created with wills so hopelessly corrupt that without Divine assist- 
 ance they must inevitably be damned, and God having in the majority of cases 
 resolved to withhold that assistance. The fatality, therefore, does not consist 
 in man being compelled to do certain things whether he wishes it or not, but 
 in his being brought into the world with such a nature that his wishes neces- 
 isarily tend in a given direction. 
 
 ' Calvinists, indeed, often protest against this conclusion ; but it is almost 
 
388 EATIONALISM m EUEOPE. 
 
 statement of it is inexpressibly shocking and revolting, can 
 scarcely be denied by its warmest supporters. Indeed, when 
 we combine this teaching with the other doctrines I have 
 considered in the present chapter, the whole may be regarded 
 as unequalled in the reUgious history of mankind. In our 
 age such tenets have retired from the blaze of day; they are, 
 found only in the obscure writings of obscure men. Since 
 Jonathan Edwards they have had no exponent of undoubted 
 genius, and no distinguished writer could venture without 
 a serious loss of reputation openly to profess them. Such 
 language as was employed on this subject by men like 
 Luther, Calvin, and Beza, while in the zenith of their popu- 
 larity, would not now be tolerated for a moment outside a 
 small and uninfluential circle. The rationalistic spirit has so 
 pervaded all our habits of thought, that every doctrine 
 which is repugnant to our moral sense excites an intense 
 and ever-increasing aversion ; and as the doctrine of ex- 
 clusive salvation, which prepared the mind for the doctrine 
 of reprobation, is no longer reaUsed, the latter appears pecu- 
 liarly revolting. 
 
 Another very important subject upon which the doctrine 
 of exclusive salvation has exercised great influence, is the 
 relation between dogmas and morals. The older theologians 
 invariably attributed to dogmas an intrinsic efficacy which 
 was entirely independent of their efiect upon life. Thus we 
 
 self-evident, and the ablest writer of the school admits it in a sense which is 
 qnite sufBciently large for his opponents : ' If by the author of sin is meant 
 the permitter or not hinderer of sin, and at the same time a disposer of the 
 state of events in such a manner for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and 
 purposes that sin, if it be permitted or not hindered, will most certainly and 
 infalUbly follow ; I say, if this be all that is meant, I do not deny that God is 
 the author of sih.' (Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of Will, p. 369.) The pre- 
 destination of the fall of Adam, whose will was not hopelessly corrupt, has of 
 course its own pecuUar difficulties. 
 
ON PEESECUTION. 389 
 
 have already had occasion to observe, that in the early 
 Church no controversies were deemed so important as those 
 "which concerned the connection between the two natures in 
 Christ, and that at the Reformation the acceptance or rejec- 
 tion of transubstantiation was made the habitual test of or- 
 thodoxy. On the other hand, the politician, in a secular age, 
 is inclined to value religious systems solely according to 
 their influence upon the acts of mankind. He sees that re- 
 ligious controversies have often dislocated the social system, 
 have presented an insuperable obstacle to the fusion of the 
 different elements of a nation, have produced long and san- 
 guinary wars, and have diverted a large proportion of intel- 
 lect and energy from enterprises that are conducive to the 
 welfare of society. These he considers the evils of theology, 
 which are compensated for by the control that it exercises 
 over the passions of mankind, by the high sense of duty it 
 diffuses, and by the intensity of the philanthropy it in- 
 spires. His object therefore is to encourage a system in 
 which the moral restraint shall be as great as possible, and 
 the dogmatic elements shall be few and torpid. The rational- 
 ist occupies a central position between the two. Like the 
 early theologian, he denies that the measure of theological . 
 excellence is entirely utilitarian ; like the politician, he de- 
 nies that dogmas possess an intrinsic eificacy. He believes 
 that they are intended to act upon and develop the affective 
 or emotional side of human nature, that they are the vehicles 
 by which certain principles are conveyed into the mind 
 wliich would otherwise never be received, and that when 
 they have discharged their functions they must lose their 
 importance. In the earlier phases of society men have never 
 succeeded in forming a purely spiritual and moral conception 
 of the Deity, and they therefore make an image which they 
 
390 EATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 worship. By this means the conception of the Deity is falsi- 
 fied and debased, bnt the moral influence of worship is re- 
 tained: a great evil is the price of an inestimable benefit. 
 As, however, men obtain with increasing civilisation a ca- 
 pacity for forming purer and more moral conceptions, idola- 
 try becomes an unmingled evil, and is in consequence at la^t 
 abandoned. Just in the same way a purely moral religion, 
 appealing to a disinterested sense of duty and perception of 
 excellence, can never be efficacious in an early condition of 
 society. It is consequently materialised, associated with in- 
 numerable ceremonies, with elaborate creeds, with duties 
 that have no relation to moral sentiments, with an ecclesias- 
 tical framework, and with a copious legendary. Through 
 all this extraneous matter the moral essence filters down to 
 the people, prepai-ing them for the higher phases of develop- 
 ment. Gradually the ceremonies drop away, the number of 
 doctrines is reduced, the ecclesiastical ideal of life and char- 
 acter is exchanged for the moral ideal ; dogmatic conceptions 
 manifest an increased flexibility, and the religion is at last 
 transfigured and regenerated, radiant in all its parts with the 
 puie spirit that had created it. 
 
 It is manifest that according to this view there exists a 
 perpetual antagonism between the dogmatic and the moral 
 elements of a religious system, and that their relative influ- 
 ence will depend mainly on the degree of civilisation ; an 
 amount of dogmatic pressure which is a great blessing in one 
 age being a great evil in another. Now one of the most ob- 
 vious consequences of the doctrine of exclusive salvation is, 
 that it places the moral in permanent subordination to tlie 
 dogmatic side of religion. If there be a Catholic faith ' which 
 except a man believe he cannot be saved,' it is quite natural 
 "hat men should deem it 'before all things' necessary to 
 
ON PERSECUTION. 391 
 
 hold it. If the purest moral life cannot atone for error, while 
 a true religion has many means of effacing guilt, the mind 
 will naturally turn to the doctilnal rather than to the practi- 
 cal side. The extent to which this tendency has been mani- 
 fested in the Church of Rome is well known. Protestant 
 controTersialists have often drawn up long and perfectly 
 authentic lists of celebrated characters who were stained 
 with every crime, and who have nevertheless been among 
 the favourites of the Church, who have clung to her ordinan- 
 ces with full orthodox tenacity, who have assuaged by her 
 absolution e\ery qualm of conscience, and who have at last, 
 by endowing a monastery or undergoing a penance or direct- 
 ing a persecution against heretics, persuaded thenaselves that 
 they had effaced all the crimes of their lives. In Protestant- 
 ism this combination of devotion and immorality, which is 
 not to be confounded with hypocrisy, is I think more rare. 
 Lives like that of Benvenuto Cellini, in which the most 
 atrocious crimes alternate with ecstasies of the most raptu- 
 rous and triumphant piety, are scarcely ever to be met with, 
 yet it would be rash to say that the evil is unknown. The 
 two countries which are most thoroughly pervaded by Prot- 
 estant theology are probably Scotland and Sweden ; and if we 
 measure their morality by the common though somewhat de- 
 fective test that is furnished by the number of illegitimate 
 births, the first is well known to be considerably below the 
 average morality of European nations, while the second, in this 
 as in general criminality, has been pronounced by a very able 
 and impartial Protestant witness, who has had the fullest 
 means of judging, to be very far below every other Christian 
 nation.' 
 
 ' See Laing's Sweden, pp. 108-141, where this question is minutely eX' 
 amiiied. This is a mere question of figures. The following passage frono 
 
392 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 These are the contradiotions that result from the doctrine 
 of exclusive salvation among those who do not belong to a 
 high order of sanctity, and who gladly purchase a licence for 
 the indulgence of their passions by an assiduous cultivation 
 of what they deem the more important side of their faith. 
 A very much more general tendency, and one which has 
 exercised a far more pernicious influence upon the history of 
 mankind, is displayed by those whose zeal is entirely unself- 
 ish. Being convinced that no misfortune can be so great as 
 heresy, and that the heretic is doomed to eternal misery, 
 they have habitually supported their creed by imposture and 
 falsehood. That they should do this is quite natural. What- 
 ever may be the foundation of the moral law, it is certain 
 that in the eyes of the immense majority of mankind there 
 are some overwhelming considerations that will justify a 
 breach of its provisions. If some great misfortune were to 
 befall a man who lay on a sickbed, trembling between life 
 and death; if the physician declared that the knowledge 
 
 aQOther work of tbe same writer is less susceptible of decisive proof, and is, 
 I am inclined to think, somewhat overstated, but is nevertheless very sugges- 
 tive : ' The Swiss people present to the political philosopher the unexpected 
 and most remirkable social phenomenon of a people eminently moral in con- 
 duct, yet eminently irreligious : at the head of the moral state in Europe, not 
 merely for absence of numerous or great crimes, or of disregard of right, but 
 for ready obedience to law, for honesty, fidelity to their engagements, for fair- 
 dealing, sobriety, industry, orderly conduct, for good government, useful pub- 
 lic institutions, general wellbeing, and comfort ; yet at the bottom of the scale 
 for religious feeling, observances, or knowledge, especially in the Protestant 
 cantons, in which prosperity, wellbeing, and morality seem to be, as compared 
 to the Catholic cantons, in an inverse ratio to the influence of religion on the 
 people. . . . It is a very remarkable social state, similar, perhaps, to that 
 of the ancient Romans, in whom morality and social virture were also sus- 
 tained without the aid of religious influences.' (Laing's Notes of a Traveller, 
 pp. 146, 147.) Dr. Arnold said, I think truly, that the popular notion about 
 the superior prosperity of the Protestant over the CathoUc cantons is greatly 
 exaggerated : it exists in some cases and not in others. 
 
ON PEESECTJTION. 393 
 
 of that misfortune would be cerftain death to the patient; 
 and if concealment was only possible by a falsehood, there 
 are very few moralists who would condemn that falsehood. 
 If the most ardent denouncer of ' pious fi'auds ' were to meet 
 an assassin in pursuit of an innocent man, and were able by 
 misdirecting the pursuer to save the fugitive, it may be safely 
 predicted that the lie would be unscrupulously uttered. It 
 is not very easy to justify these things by argument, or to 
 draw a clear line between criminal and innocent falsehood ; 
 but that there are circumstances which justify untruth has 
 always been admitted by the common sentiment of mankind, 
 and has been distinctly laid down by the most eminent 
 moralists.' When therefore a man believes that those who 
 adopt an erroneous opinion will be consigned to perdition ; 
 when he not only believes this, but realises it as a living and 
 operative truth ; and when he perceives that it is possible 
 either by direct falsehood or by the suppression or distortion 
 of truth to strengthen tlie evidences of his faith, he usually 
 finds the temptation irresistible. But there are two very 
 important distinctions between the hypothetical cases I have 
 mentioned and the pious frauds of theologians. The first are 
 the results of isolated moral judgments, while the latter are 
 systematised and raised to the dignity of a regular doctrine. 
 The first, again, spring from circumstances that are so 
 extremely rare and exceptional that they can scarcely have 
 any perceptible influence upon the general veracity of the 
 person who utters them, while the second induce a habit of 
 continual falsehood. The Fathers laid down as a distinct 
 proposition that pious frauds were justifiable and even 
 
 ' Thus, not to quote Roman Catholic authorities, Jeremy Taylor, in tha 
 Ductm- J)nbitanlmm, lib. lii. c. 2, lays down several cases of justifiable false- 
 hood. 
 
394 EATIOITALISM IN EDEOPE. 
 
 laudable ; ' and if they had not laid this down, they would 
 nevei'theless have practised them as a necessary consequence 
 of their doctrine of exclusive salvation. Immediately all 
 ecclesiastical literature became tainted with a spirit of the 
 most unblushing in?ndacity. Heathenism was to be com- 
 bated, and therefore prophecies of Christ by Orpheus and 
 the Sibyls were forged, lying wonders were multiplied, and 
 ceaseless calumnies poured upon those who, like Julian, 
 opposed the faith. Heretics were to be convinced, and 
 therefore interpolations of old writings or complete forgeries 
 were habitually opposed to the forged Gospels. The venera- 
 tion of relics and the monastic system were introduced, and 
 therefore innumerable miracles were attributed to the bones 
 of saints or to the prayers of hermits, and were solemnly 
 asserted by the most eminent of the Fathers.' The tendency 
 
 ' See on this subject the evidence collected in Middleton's Free Enquiry ; 
 the curious panegyric on the habit of telling lies in St. Chrysostom On the 
 Priesthood ; the remarks of Coleridge in Tlie Friend, and of Maury, Croy- 
 ances et Ligendes, p. 268. St. Augustine, however, is in this respect an ex- 
 ception. In his treatise Contra Mendaeium he strongly denounces the ten- 
 dency, and especially con demns the Priscillianists, among whom it appears to 
 have been very common, and also certain Catholics who thought it justifiable 
 to pretend to be Priscillianists for the purpose of discovering the secrets of 
 that sect. The most revolting aspect of this subject is the notion that heretics 
 are so intensely criminal as to have no moral rights — a favourite doctrine in 
 Catholic countries where no Protestant or sceptical public opinion exists. Thus 
 the Spanish Bishop Simancas — ' Ad pcenam quoque pertinet et hEeretieormn 
 oJium, quod fides illis data servanda non est. Nam si tyrannis, piratis, et 
 CEEteris prsedonibus quia corpus occidunt fides servanda non est, longe minus 
 hiereticis pertinacibus qui occidunt anlmas.' {De Catholicii Jn^tttuHonib-us, 
 p. S66.) 
 
 ■ Since the last note was written, this subject has been discussed at some 
 length by Dr. Newman, in his Apologia pro Vita sua. I do not, however, find 
 anything to alter in what I have stated. Dr. Newman says (Appendix, p. '11) : 
 ' The Greek Fathers thought that, when there was a jiista causa, an untruth 
 need not be a lie. St. Augustine took another view, though with great mis- 
 giving, and, whether he is rightly interpreted or not, is the doctor of the great 
 and common view that all untruths are Ues, and that there can be no just 
 
ON PEESECUTION. 395 
 
 was not confined to those Eastern nations which had been 
 always almost destitute of the sense of truth ; it triumphed 
 wherever the supreme importance of dogmas was held. 
 Generation after generation it became more universal ; it 
 continued till the very sense of truth and the very lovo of 
 truth seemed blotted out from the minds of men. 
 
 That this is no exaggerated picture of the condition at 
 which the middle ages arrived, is known to all who have any 
 acquaintance with its literature; for during that gloomy 
 period the only scholars in Europe were priests and monks, 
 who conscientiously believed that no amount of falsehood 
 was reprehensible which conduced to the edification of the 
 people. Not only did they pursue with the grossest calumny 
 every enemy to their faith, not only did they encircle every 
 saint with a halo of palpable fiction, not only did they invent 
 tens of thousands of miracles for the purpose of stimulating 
 devotion — they also very naturally carried into all other 
 subjects the indifierence to truth they had acquired in the- 
 ology. All their writings, and more especially their histories, 
 became tissues of the wildest fables, so grotesque and at the 
 same time so audacious, that they were the wonder of suc- 
 ceeding ages. And the very men who scattered these 
 fictions broadcast over Christendom, taught at the same time 
 that credulity was a virtue and scepticism a crime. As long 
 as the doctrine of exclusive salvation was believed and 
 realised, it was necessary for the peace of mankind that they 
 should be absolutely certain of the truth of what they 
 believed ; in order to be so certain, it was necessary to sup- 
 cause of untruth. . . . Now, as to the just cause, the Greek Fathers 
 make them such as these— self-defence, charity, zeal for God's honour, and 
 the like.' It is plain enough that this last would include all of what are con* 
 monly termed pious frauds. 
 
396 RATIONALISM IN EtTEOPE. 
 
 press adverse arguments ; and in order to effect this object, 
 it was necessary that there should be no critical or sceptical 
 spirit in Europe. A habit" of boundless credulity was there- 
 fore a natural consequence of the doctrine of exclusive salva- 
 tion; and not only did this habit necessarily produce a 
 luxuriant crop of falsehood, it was itself the negation of the 
 spirit of truth. For the man who really loves truth cannot 
 possibly subside into a condition of contented credulity. He 
 will ]3ause long before accepting any doubtful assertion, he 
 will carefully balance opposing arguments, he will probe 
 every anecdote with scrupulous care, he will endeavour to 
 divest himself of every prejudice, he will cautiously abstain 
 from attributing to probabilities the authority of certainties. 
 These are the essential characteristics of the spirit of truth, 
 and by their encouragement or suppression we can judge how 
 far a system of doctrine coincides with that spirit. 
 
 We have seen that there were three ways in which the 
 indissoluble association of salvation with a particular form 
 of belief produced or promoted the absolute indifference to 
 truth and the boundless credulity that characterised the ages 
 in which theology was supreme. It multiplied to an enor- 
 mous extent pious frauds, which were perpetrated without 
 scruple because they were supposed to produce inestimable 
 benefits to mankind. It rendered universal that species of 
 falsehood which is termed misrepresentation, and which con- 
 sists mainly of the suppression of all opposing facts ; and it 
 crushed that earnestness of enquiry which is at once the 
 essential characteristic of the love of truth, and the sole 
 bulwark against the encroachments of error. There was, 
 however, yet another way, which, though very closely con- 
 nected with the foregoing, is sufficiently distinct to claim a 
 separate consideration. 
 
ON PEESECUTIOSr. 397 
 
 A love of truth, by the very definition of the terms, implies 
 a resolution under all circumstances to approach as nearly as 
 possible to its attainment ; or in other words, when demon- 
 stration is impossible, to adopt the belief which seems most 
 probable. In this respect there is an important difference 
 between speculative and practical life. He who is seeking 
 for truth is bound always to follow what appears to his mind 
 to be the stress of probabilities ; but in action it is some- 
 times wise to shape our course with a view to the least prob- 
 able contingency ; because we have to consider not merely 
 the comparative probabilities of success afforded by different 
 courses, but also the magnitude of the results that would 
 ensue. Thus, a man is justly regarded as prudent who in- 
 sures his house against fire, though an absolute and unre- 
 quited loss is the most probable consequence of his act ; be- 
 cause the loss he would suffer in the more probable contin- 
 gency is inconsiderable, and the advantage he would derive 
 from the insurance in the less probable contingency is very 
 great. From this consideration Pascal — who with Fermat 
 was the founder of what may be termed the scientific treat- 
 ment of probabilities — derived a very ingenious argument 
 in defence of his theological opinions, which was afterwards 
 adopted by an English mathematician named Craig.' They 
 contended, that when a religious system promises infinite 
 rewards and threatens infinite punishments, it is the part of 
 a wise man to sacrifice the present to embrace it, not merely 
 if he believes the probabilities to preponderate in its favour, 
 but even if he regards its truth as extremely improbable, 
 provided the probabilities against it are not infinite. ISTow, 
 as long as such an argument is urged simply with a view of 
 
 ' In a very carious book called Tluolngim Ohristianm Prindpia Malliema 
 tica. (Londini, 1699.) 
 
398 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 inducing men to adopt a certain course of action, it has no 
 necessary connection with morals, and should be judged upon 
 prudential grounds.' But the case becomes widely different 
 when to adopt the least probable course means to acknowl- 
 edge a Church which demands as the first condition of 
 allegiance an absolute and heartfelt belief in the truth of 
 what it teaches. When this is the case, the argument of 
 Pascal means, and only can mean, that men should by the 
 force of will compel themselves to believe what they do not 
 believe by the force of reason ; that they should exert all 
 their efforts, by withdrawing their attention from one side 
 and concentrating it upon the other, and by the employment 
 of the distorting influences of the affections, to disturb the 
 results of their judgment. Nor is this merely the specula- 
 tion of some isolated mathematicians ; it is a principle that 
 is constantly acted on in every society which is governed by 
 the doctrine we are considering." Mere sophisms or imper- 
 fect reasonings have a very small place in the history 
 
 ' The reader may find » review of it made on those grounds in Laplace, 
 Tlieorie des Probabilitis. It is manifest that, if correct, obedience would be 
 due to any impostor who said he dreamed that he was a Dirine messenger, 
 provided he put his promises and threatenings sufficiently high. 
 
 " Thus in the seventeenth century the following was a popular Catholic 
 argument. Protestants admit that Catliolics may be saved, but Catholics deny 
 'hat Protestants can ; therefore it is better to become a Catholic. Considering 
 that this argument was designed, by playing on superstitious terrors, and by 
 obscuring the sense of the Divine goo Jness, to induce men to tamper with 
 their sense of truth, and considering too that its success depended mainly on 
 the timidity, self-distrust, and modesty of the person to whom it was addressed, 
 it may probably be regarded as thoroughly base and demoralising as any that 
 it is even possible for the imagination to conceive. Yet it was no doubt very 
 effective, and was perfectly in harmony with Ihe doctrine we are considering. 
 Selden aslced, ' Is their Church better than ours, because it has less charity ? ' 
 and Bedell, in a passage which Coleridge justly pronounced one of the most 
 beautiful in English prose, compared the two churches in this respect to the 
 rival motliers before Solomon. 
 
ON PERSECUTION. 399 
 
 of human error; the intervention of the will has always 
 been the chief cause of delusion. Under the hest cii-cum- 
 stances we can but imperfectly guard against its influence ; 
 but wherever the doctrine of exclusive salvation is held, it 
 is reduced to a system and regarded as a virtue. 
 
 Certainly, whatever opinion may be held concerning the 
 general tendencies of the last three centuries, it is impossible 
 to deny the extraordinary diffusion of a truthful spirit, as 
 manifested both in the increased intolerance of what is false 
 and in the increased suspicion of what is doubtful. This 
 has been one of the general results of advancing civilisation 
 to which all intellectual influences have converged, but the 
 improvement may be said to date more especially from the 
 writings of the great secular philosophers of the seventeenth 
 century. These philosophers destroyed the old modes of 
 thought, not by the force of dii'ect polemical discussion, but 
 by introducing a method of enquiry and a standard of ex- 
 cellence incompatible with them. They taught men to 
 esteem credulity discreditable, to wage an unsparing war 
 against their prejudices, to distrust the verdicts of the past, 
 and to analyse with cautious scrutity the foundation of their 
 belief They taught them, above all, to cultivate that love 
 of truth for its own sake which is perhaps the highest attri- 
 bute of humanity ; which alone can emancipate the mind 
 fi'om the countless influences that enthral it, and guide the 
 steps through the labyrinth of human systems; which shrinks 
 from the sacrifice of no cherished doctrine, and of no ancient 
 tio ; and which, recognising in itself the reflex of the Deity, 
 Cuds in itself its. own reward. 
 
 The conspicuous place which Bacon, Descartes, and 
 Locke have obtained in tha history of the human mind, 
 depends much less on the originality of their doctrines or 
 
4:00 EATIOITAl-ISM IN ETjEOPE. 
 
 their met, ods than on the skill with which they developed 
 and diffustid them. Long before Descartes, St. Augustine 
 had anticipated the ' cogito ergo sum ; ' but that which St. 
 Augustine had thrown out as a mere truism, or, at best, as a 
 passing suggestion, Descartes converted into the basis of a 
 great philosophy. Half a century before Bacon, Leonardo 
 da Vinci had discovered the superiority of the inductive 
 method, and had clearly stated its principles ; but even if 
 Leonardo had published his work, it may be safely asserted 
 that the magnificent development of Bacon was necessary 
 to make that method supreme in science. Each of these 
 great men attacked with vast ability and marvellous success 
 some intellectual vice which lay at the very root of the old 
 habits of thought. Descartes taught that the beginning of 
 all knowledge was the rejection of every early prejudice, 
 and a firm resolution to bring every opinion to the test of 
 individual judgment. Locke taught the necessity of map- 
 ping out the limits of human faculties, and by his doctrine 
 concerning innate ideas, and above all by his masterly 
 analysis of Enthusiasm, he gave the deathblow to the opin- 
 ions of those who would remove a certain class of mental 
 phenomena altogether from the jurisdiction of the reason.' 
 Bacon, whose gigantic intellect made excursions into every 
 field, was pre-eminently noted for his classification of the 
 idola or distorting influences that act on the mind, and for 
 
 ' It has been observed by a very able French critic (M. Littre) that the 
 increasing tendency, as civilisation advances, to substitute purely psychological 
 for miraculous solutions is strikingly illustrated by a comparison of Orestes 
 with Hamlet. The subject of both pieces is essentially the same — a murdered 
 king, a guilty wife, a sou distractea between his duty to his dead father and to 
 his living mother ; but while the Greek found it necessary to bring the Furies 
 upon the scene to account for the mental paroxysms of Orestes, the English- 
 man deemed the natural play and conflict of the emotions amply sufficient to 
 account for the sufferings of Hamlet. 
 
ON PEESECTJTION. 401 
 
 his constant injunction to correct theory by confronting it 
 with facts. Descartes also, in addition to the vast intrinsic 
 value of his works, had the immense merit of doing more 
 than any previous writer to divorce philosophy from erudi- 
 tion, and to make it an appeal to the reasoning powers of 
 ordinary men. The schoolmen, though they had carried 
 philosophical definition almost to the highest conceivabU 
 point of perfection, had introduced a style of disquisition so 
 pedantic and monotonous, so full of subtle distinctions and 
 endless repetitions, that all but the most patient students 
 were repelled by their works ; while their constant appeal 
 to authority, and the fact that they wrote only in Latin, ex- 
 cluded those who were but little learned from the discussion. 
 The great prominence academic prselections obtained about 
 the time of the Reformation contributed, I imagine, largely 
 to introduce a simpler and more popular style. Rather more 
 than sixty years before ' The Method ' of Descartes, Ramus, 
 in his ' Dialectics,' had set the example of publishing a 
 philosophical work in French, and Bruno had thrown some 
 of his dreamy speculations iilto Italian ; but neither of these 
 men was sufficiently able to form a new epoch in the his- 
 torv of philosophy, and their ends were not calculated to en- 
 courage imitators — the first having been murdered by the 
 Catholics on the night of St. Bartholomew, and the second 
 burnt alive at Rome by the Pope. Descartes more than 
 any one else was the author of what may be called the demo- 
 cratic character of philosophy, and this is not the least of 
 his merits. The influence of Locke and Bacon, again, was 
 especially powerful as a corrective of the old tendency to 
 fiction, on account of a certain unimaginative character that 
 was exhibited by the philosophies of both — a character that 
 was perfectly congenial to the intellect of Locke, but very 
 VOL. I.— 26 
 
402 EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 remarkable in the case of Bacon, among whose great facul- 
 ties imagination occupied an almost disproportionate promi- 
 nence. That this feature of the Baconian philosophy is at 
 present exercising a decidedly prejudicial influence on the 
 English intellect, by producing an excessive distaste for the 
 liigher generalisations, and for all speculations that do not 
 lead directly to practical results, has been maintained by 
 many Continental writers, and by at least three of the most 
 eminent English ones.' It is, indeed, quite true that Bacon 
 never went in this respect so far as some of his disciples. 
 He certainly never made utility the sole object of science, or 
 at least never restricted utility to material advantages. He 
 asserted in the noblest language the superiority of abstract 
 truth to all the fruits of invention," and would neA'er have 
 called those speculations useless which form the intellectual 
 character of an age. Yet, on the other hand, it must be 
 acknowledged that the general tone of his writings, the 
 extraordinary emphasis which he laid upon the value of ex- 
 periments, and above all upon the bearing of his philosophy 
 on material comforts, represents a tendency which was very 
 naturally developed into the narrowest utilitarianism. Those 
 who regarded natural science simply as the minister to the 
 material comforts of mankind were the disciples of Bacon, 
 in much the same sense as Condillac and his followers were 
 the disciples of Locke : they did not accurately represent the 
 
 ' Coleridge, Buckle, and Mill. 
 
 ' ' And yet (to speak the whole truth), just as we are deeply indebted to 
 light because it enables us to enter on our way, to exercise arts, to read, to 
 distinguish one another, and nevertheless the sight of light is itself more ex- 
 cellent and beautiful than the manifold uses of it ; so, assuredly, the very con- 
 templation of things as they are, without superstition or imposture, without 
 error or confusion, is in itself more worthy than all the produce of discoveries. 
 {yovum Organon.) 
 
ON PERSECUTION. 403 
 
 doctrines of their master, but they represented the general 
 tendency of his teaching. 
 
 But, whatever may be thought of the influence which the 
 inductive philosophy now exercises on the English mind, 
 there can be no doubt that both that philosophy and the 
 essay of Locke were peculiarly fatal to the mediaeval modes 
 of thought on account of the somewhat plodding character 
 they displayed. By enlarging the domain of the senses, by 
 making experience the final test of truth, and by greatly 
 discouraging the excursions of theorists, they checked the 
 exuberance of the European imagination, imparted an air of 
 grotesqueness to the wild fictions that had so long been re- 
 ceived, and taught men to apply tests both to their tradi- 
 tions and to their emotions which divested them of much of 
 their apparent mystery. It was from the writings of Locke 
 and Bacon that Voltaire and his followers drew the prin- 
 ciples that shattered the proudest ecclesiastical fabrics of 
 Europe, and it is against these philosophers that the ablest 
 defenders of mediaeval theology have exhibited the most 
 bitter animosity.' 
 
 ' Thus De Maistre, the great apostle of modem Ultramontanism, assures us 
 that ' dans I'etude de la philosophie, le mepris de Locke est le commencement 
 de la sagease ; ' and that ' VEssai sur V Entertdemeni Humain est trfes-certaine- 
 ment, et soit qu'on le nie ou qu'on en convienne, tout oe que le defaut absolu 
 ie gillie et de style peut enfanter de plus assommant.' {Soirees de M. Piters- 
 '■'ourg, 6"°" Entretien.) Bacon he calmly terms ' un charlatan,' and, speaking 
 of his greatest works, says : ' Le livre De la DigniU et de rAccroissement des 
 Sciences est done un ouvrage parfaitement nul et meprisable. . . . Quant 
 au Novvm, Organon, il eat bien plus condamnable encore, puisque, ind^pen- 
 damment des erreurs partiouIiSres dont il fourmille, le but g^n^ral de I'ouvrage 
 le rend digne d'un Bedlam.' (^Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon.) In the 
 same way, though in very different language, the Tractarian party, and espe- 
 cially Dr. Newman (both before and after his conversion), have been cease- 
 lessly carping at the psychology of Locke and the inductive philosophy of 
 Bacon 
 
404 EATIONILISM m EUROPE. 
 
 It was thus that the great teachers of the seventeenth 
 century, who were themselves but the highest representa- 
 tives of the tendencies of their age, disciplined the minds of 
 men for impartial enquiry, and, having broken the spell that 
 so long had bound them, produced a passionate love of truth 
 which has revolutionised all departments of knowledge. It 
 is to tlie impulse which was then communicated that may be 
 traced the great critical movement which has renovated all 
 history, all science, all theology — which has penetrated into 
 the obscurest recesses, destroying old prejudices, dispelling 
 illusions, rearranging the various parts of our knowledge, 
 and altering the whole scope and character of our sympa- 
 thies. But all this would have been impossible but for the 
 diffusion of a rationalistic spirit obscuring or destroying the 
 notion of the guilt of error. For, as we have seen, whenever 
 the doctrine of exclusive salvation is generally believed and 
 realised, habits of thought will be formed around it that are 
 diametrically opposed to the spirit of enquiry and absolutely 
 incompatible with human progress. An indifference to truth, 
 a spirit of blind and at the same time wilful credulity, will 
 be encouraged, which will multiply fictions of every kind, 
 will associate enquiry with the ideas of danger and of guilt, 
 will make men esteem that impartiality of judgment and 
 study which is the very soul of truth, an unholy thing, and 
 will so emasculate their faculties as to produce a general 
 torpor on every subject. For the different elements of our 
 knowledge are so closely united that it is impossible to di- 
 vide them into separate compartments, and to make a spirit 
 of credulity preside over one compartment while a spirit of 
 enquiry is animating the others. In the middle ages theol- 
 ogy was supreme, and the spirit of that theology was abso- 
 lute credulity, and the same spirit was speedily diffused 
 
ON PEESECUTTON. 405 
 
 through all forms of thought. In the seventeenth century 
 the preeminence of theology was no longer decisive, and the 
 great secular writers introduced a love of impartiality and 
 of free research which rapidly passed from natural science 
 and metaphysics into theology, and destroyed or weakened 
 all those doctrines which were repugnant to it. It was be- 
 tween the writings of Bacon and Locke that Chillingworth 
 taught, for the first or almost for the first time in England, 
 the absolute innocence of honest error. It was between the 
 writings of Bacon and Locke that that latitudinarian school 
 was formed which was irradiated by the genius of Taylor, 
 Glanvil, and Hales, and which became the very centre and 
 seedplot of religious liberty. It was between the same 
 writings that the writ De Soeretico comburendo was ex- 
 punged from the Statute Book, and the soil of England for 
 tht last time stained with the misbeliever's blood ! 
 
 BNn OP THE PIEST VOLUME.