Catalogue Entry: OTHE00050

^[1] The intention is to stress the English Republican contribution to the Enlightenment (see following chapters); this can be most readily identified in the adoption of Harringtonian civil theologies by such thinkers and actors as Rousseau and Robespierre: for a general discussion see N. Hampson, Will and Circumstance (1983). On this theme Engels has some illuminating comments, see Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 386-7, 395, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1968). See also F. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, 1959), and The Changing of the Gods, (Hanover, 1983), especially chapter 2, 'Deists on True and False Gods'; P. Hazard, The European Mind 1680-1715 (1973); C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France (The Hague, 1984); D. C. Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea: Scepticism and Faith in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1964); N. L. Torry, Voltaire and the English Deists (Yale, 1967); D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (1964); I. O. Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, 1971); L. Althusser, Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx (1982).

^[2]

See D. Hume, The Natural History of Religion, ed. A. W. Colver (Oxford, 1976); P. Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time (Chicago, 1985); D. A. Paulin, Attitudes to Other Religions (Manchester, 1984); on Hume, see for example J. C. A. Gaskin, Hume's Philosophy of Religion (1978), at 146:

Although the authorities and evidence which Hume produced for his conclusions in the N[atural H[istory of] R[eligion] are almost all drawn from the observations of ancient authors, the problem which he discusses - the psychological and anthropological causes and origins of religious belief and its effects - is, as Mossner observes, essentially modern, and to Hume should go the credit for being the first great modern to treat of it systematically. From it arises much modern thinking on the subject.

Gaskin continues to describe the Natural History of Religion as the 'first move in what might now be called the sociology of religion'. For a fine destruction of such Whiggish notions in the history of anthropology, see J. A. Boon, Other Tribes, Other Scribes (Cambridge, 1982). The origin of different attitudes to religion has been usefully explored by J. S. Preus in his recent Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud (Yale, 1987). This work is a sound study, based on the premise that (at x), 'it is not necessary to believe in order to understand, indeed that suspension of belief is probably a condition for understanding'. While the general argument of his case is persuasive, Preus prefers to emphasize the French contribution over the English, suggesting that the English investigation was essentially epistemological (following Herbert of Cherbury) while the French was sociological. This chapter intends to investigate the sociological dimensions of the English tradition.

^[3] For an important study of the legacy of the Reformation see H. Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (1984) in particular Parts II and III. For the most recent and persuasive account of Hobbes' religious thought, see R. Tuck, 'The Christian Atheism of Thomas Hobbes' in Hunter and Wootton (eds.), Atheism.

^[4] To give an exhaustive bibliographical footnote on the state of scholarship on the thought of Hobbes is impossible here. The fault with all the works detailed here is a failure to examine the explicit and implied anticlericalism of Hobbes' thought. See L. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, (Oxford, 1936); A. E. Taylor, 'The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes' in K. Brown (ed.), Hobbes Studies (Oxford, 1965); M. Oakeshott, 'Introduction' to Leviathan (Oxford, 1946); H. Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, 1957); C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962); K. Thomas, 'The Social Origins of Hobbes' Political Thought' in K. Brown, (ed.), Hobbes Studies; F. C. Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964); M. M. Goldsmith, Hobbes' Science of Politics (1966); F. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (1968); D. P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, 1969); Q. Skinner, 'History and Ideology in the English Revolution', HJ 8 (1965), and 'Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy' in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum (1972).

^[5] Hobbes, Leviathan, III, chapter 41, 'Of the Office of our Blessed Saviour' at 512-21. See J. G. A. Pocock, 'Time, History, and Eschatology in Thomas Hobbes' in Politics, Language and Time (1972); P. Springborg, 'Leviathan, the Christian Commonwealth Incorporated', Political Studies 24 (1976), 171-83; L. Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965), 86-104. Recently there has been new interest in Hobbes' religious thought, for example, E. J. Eisenach, 'Hobbes on Church, State, and Religion', History of Political Thought 3 (1982), 215-44, and D. Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton, 1986), 114-15, 117, 134, 147-50, 183. It is interesting to note that the study of Hobbes' religious thought is currently flourishing in the Soviet Union: see J. Thrower, The Marxist-Leninist Scientific Atheism (Berlin, 1983), especially chapter 6, 'The History of Atheism, Freethinking, and Humanism' at 288-308, which gives a detailed bibliography of Soviet studies, plus a list of university courses on Hobbes' anticlericalism (404, 468).

^[6]

See Hobbes' Leviathan, IV, chapter 47, 385:

First, the power of the Popes was dissolved totally by Queen Elizabeth; and before the Bishops, who before exercised their functions in right of the Pope, did afterwards exercise the same right of the Queen and her successours … And so was untied the first knot. After this the Presbyterians lately in England obtained the putting down of Episcopacy: And so was the second knot dissolved: and almost at the same time, the power was taken also from the Presbyterians: and so we are reduced to the Independency of the Primitive Christians to follow Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos, every man as he liketh best: Which if it be without contention, and without measuring the doctrine of Christ, by our affection to the Person of <136> his Minister, (the fault which the Apostle reprehended in the Corinthians) is perhaps the best.

^[7] This work has gone largely unnoticed in commentaries upon Hobbes. See H. Macdonald and M. Hargreaves, Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography (1952), 75. See also J. Aubrey's reference to the work in Remaines of Gentilism and Judaisme in J. Buchanan-Brown (ed.), Three Prose Works of John Aubrey (Sussex, 1972), 13-137, citing Hobbes, Historia Ecclesiastica, 62. Aubrey, particularly in his Brief Lives (2 volumes edited by A. Clarke, Oxford, 1898), stresses the anticlerical Hobbes: see Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, 338-9, 358, 364, 382, where he makes reference to the Ecclesiastical History in commenting on Hobbes' fear of episcopal retribution in the Restoration. He wrote: 'Which he fearing that his papers might be search't by their order, and he told me he had burnt part of them; among other things a poeme, in Latin hexameter and pentameter, of the encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and Reformed) on the Civil power.'

^[8] T. Hobbes, A True Ecclesiastical History (1722), 34-6, 89-90, 94-5, 105-6, 110-14, 150. For one example of the later influence of Books III-IV of Leviathan, see M. Tindal, Rights of the Christian Church (1706), especially chapter 6, 190-232, which indicts the 'labyrinth of words' and 'transcendent metaphysics' created by the priestly manipulation of Aristotelian 'jargon'.

^[9] It has been suggested that this work was an adaption of a Dutch Spinozist work, De jure Ecclesiasticorum published in Amsterdam 1665. See R. S. Colie, 'Spinoza and the Early English Deists', JHI 20 (1959), and 'Spinoza in England 1665-1730', Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 107 (1963). Contemporary reaction to Tindal's reputation can be gauged from the treatment of F. Littleton, Fellow of All Souls, who was refused his MA because it was known he favoured the Rights. See Hearne, Remarks and Collections, II, 94.

^[10] 'All things relating to Religion are either Means or ends; the last as carrying real worth with 'em, are to be embraced on their own Account: but the first as having no such Excellency are obligatory for the sake of the last only; and consequently are to be continued or chang'd, as serves best to promote these Ends for which they were instituted' (Tindal, Rights, 122, 80).

^[11] Ibid., 123, 84.

^[12] Ibid., 43, 98, 101.

^[13] J. Evelyn, Diary, II, 215.

^[14] R. Howard, A Twofold Vindication of the Late Archbishop of Canterbury and the Author of the History of Religion (1696), 27.

^[15] R. Howard, History of Religion (1694), 1-2.

^[16] Ibid., Preface, iv; text, 22, 43.

^[17] Ibid., 52, 28-9, 35-6.

^[18] Ibid., 53-4, 56.

^[19] Ibid., Preface, vii.

^[20] Ibid., 80, Preface, xii-xiii.

^[21] F. Atterbury, The Scorner Incapable of True Wisdom (1694), 10, 16.

^[22] Leslie, Charge of Socinianism, 'A Supplement', in Theological Works, 635-8. Note that Leslie pointed out that there was some discrepancy in the work of the two infidels, in particular over whether the priesthood or civil tyranny was the ultimate cause of idolatry. See Blount, Great is Diana, 7, and Howard, History of Religion, 6.

^[23] Ibid., xx-xxii, 64, 102.

^[24] Howard, Twofold Vindication, 159, 162-4.

^[25] Ibid., 113-19, 122, 122-4.

^[26] On Herbert, see D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology (1972). It will be implicit in my argument that Walker's thesis that Herbert was an espouser of an ancient astral worship is misguided: to counter this argument I would suggest Herbert's anticlericalism is a much more fruitful tradition to explore. See also B. Willey, The Seventeenth-Century Background (1979), 111-23; C. J. Webb, Studies in the History of Natural Theology (Oxford, 1915), 344-59. R. Bedford, The Defence of Truth (Manchester, 1979), 258-9, has a useful discussion about whether Herbert is to be considered a man of the Renaissance or of eighteenth-century deism; note that Bedford (178-9) rejects Walker's astral thesis, but overemphasizes the epistemological, rather than anticlerical, polemics of Herbert's work. See H. R. Hutcheson (ed.), Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Religione Laici (Yale, 1944); D. A. Paulin 'Herbert of Cherbury and the Deists', The Expository Times 94 (April 1983). Note that the traditional argument that Herbert was the founding father of deism is found in John Leland's A View of the Principle Deistical Writers (1764). See D. A. Paulin, Attitudes to Other Religions (Manchester, 1984), which argues this point. Paulin does not, however, stress the anticlerical content and intention of Herbert's work. See also E. J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History (1975), especially 2-5 and 15-20; and L. Salvatorelli, 'From Locke to Reitzenstein: The Historical Investigation of the Origins of Christianity', The Harvard Theological Review 22 (1929); A. J. Kuhn 'English Deism, and the Development of Romantic Mythological Syncretism', PMLA 71 (1956).

^[27] Herbert, Antient Religion, 3.

^[28] Ibid., 5-6.

^[29] Ibid., 3, 8, 9, 79.

^[30] Vossius' work is cited throughout Herbert's work on at least forty-two occasions, in places in extenso. It is important to note that Cherbury manipulated Vossius' distinction. It had been the Dutch scholar's argument that the pagans had worshipped the stars as cultus proprius not cultus symbolicus. Cherbury's insistence on the symbolic nature of astral worship rather undermines Walker's point about his supposedly hermetic religion. On Vossius, see J. N. Wickenden, 'Early Modern Historiography as Illustrated by the work of G. J. Vossius 1577-1649' (2 volumes, unpublished Ph.D., Cambridge, 1963), and C. S. M. Rademaker, The Life and Works of Gerardus Joannes Vossius 1577-1649 (Assen, 1981).

^[31] Herbert, Antient Religion, 295.

^[32] Ibid., 44.

^[33] Ibid., 366-8.

^[34] Ibid., 274-82, 282-90, 316-20.

^[35] Ibid., 12-16, 31, 138.

^[36] Ibid., 11, 299, 316-18.

^[37] Blount's dissemination of Renaissance anticlericalism and the English reception of the thought of such men as Vanini and Pomponazzi is understudied. For general accounts, see P. O. Kristeller, 'The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and French Freethought', Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968); C. B. Schmitt, 'Renaissance Averroism Studied through the Venetian editions of Aristotle-Averroes', Atti Dei Convegni Lincei 40 (1979), 121-42; E. Cassirer, P. O. Kristeller and J. H. Randall (eds.), The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948); W. B. Fleischmann, Lucretius and English Literature 1580-1740 (Paris, 1964); J. Owens, Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance (New York, 1893); P. O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (California, 1964), chapter 5 on Pomponazzi; Anon., The Life of Lucilio Vanini … with an Abstract of His Writings (1730). See J. A. Redwood, 'Charles Blount, Deism, and English Freethought', JHI (1976), and Reason, Ridicule, and Religion (1979); Mysticus, Charles Blount, gent: His Life and Opinions (1917); U. Bonante, Charles Blount: Libertismo e Deismo nel Seicento Inglese (Florence, 1972); P. Villey, 'L'Influence de Montaigne sur Charles Blount et sur les deistes anglais', Revue du Seizième Siècle 1 (1913).

^[38] Blount, Religio Laici (1683), Epistle Dedicatory, Sig. A8v-A9r.

^[39] Ibid., 48, 52-4.

^[40] H. R. Hutcheson (ed.), Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Religione Laici (Yale, 1944), 48, 71-4. Note that Bedford, Defence of Truth, 189, points out that the earlier Italian scholar Rossi also doubted the authenticity of Herbert's authorship of the Dialogue.

^[41] A Dialogue, 7-8.

^[42] Ibid., 27.

^[43] Ibid., 27, 42, 53, 73; 187-8 follows Herbert, Antient Religion, 316-20.

^[44] A Dialogue, 99-100, 102.

^[45] A Dialogue, 17-18. Note that the first extended presentation of this thesis was by Thomas Burnet in his Archaeologiae Philosophicae, a text which Blount translated and defended in his Oracles of Reason (1693).

^[46] See R. H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère 1576-1676 (Brill, 1987).

^[47] A Dialogue, 68, 70; see H. Stubbe, An Account of Mahomet, 76, 153-5, 167-9. Note that this passage was also employed by Boulainvilliers in his Life of Mahomet (1731), and that the Biographia Britannicae notes Blount's design 'of writing the life of Mohammed, the Turkish Prophet'.

^[48] A Dialogue, 130-4.

^[49] Herbert, Antient Religion, 23-4; A Dialogue, 15, 29, 67-8, 247-8.

^[50] Blount, Oracles of Reason, 133-5; also Blount, Great is Diana, 38-9, on Spencer's accommodation thesis. See also J. Aubrey, 'Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme' in Three Prose Works, 131-309.

^[51] Blount, Anima Mundi, 11, 14, 17-37.

^[52] Ibid., 36-7, 46-50, 64, 85.

^[53] Ibid., 94, 97-9, 100, 104, 105-9.

^[54] Blount, Oracles of Reason, 118, 121, 124-6.

^[55] Blount, Great is Diana, 6, 14.

^[56] Ibid., 41ff.

^[57] Toland, Letters to Serena, 21-3, 28-9.

^[58] Ibid., 29-30, 33-8, 40, 42-3. Note that in referring to the druidical tradition Toland was borrowing directly from Blount's Great is Diana, 10-12. It is important to note that Toland was to conduct his own original researches into the history of the druids.

^[59] Toland, Letters to Serena, 45-52, 95.

^[60] Ibid., 53, 55, 58, 60, 67. Note that Toland uses Blount's favourite passages from Seneca ('Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil') and Pliny (Letters to Serena, 63-6 is the same passage of Pliny as Blount, Oracles of Reason, 121-3).

^[61] On Toland's borrowing from Herbert are Letters to Serena, 78ff. (on Egyptian Astrology), 93ff. (on the Philosophical worship of the four elements), 109ff. (on the 'Dii majorem gentilium, Dii Minorum gentilium').

^[62] Toland, Letters to Serena, 84, 86, 91-2, 98-102, 123, 127.

^[63] Toland, Letters to Serena, 19, 71; see Herbert, Antient Religion, 314, 'the most ancient temples amongst the Egyptians, were without Statues or images'.

^[64]

See BL Add. 4295, folio 43:

Manuscripts of Mine abroad - 'Horroke *** / Life of Jordanus Bruno / Mr Laney Revelation no Rule / Mr Robinson Piece of Ye Roman Education / Mr Hewet History of the Canon [this entry is crossed out - presumably the work had been returned] / Mr(s) Lane A Letter about Error / Mr Wrottesley A piece of Dr Chamberlain's / Mr Hewet Revelation No Rule Lord Castleton The Cloud & Pillar [crossed out] / Mr Jonvine Toland's perigrinans Mr Hewet Translation of Bruno's Assera Dialogues / Mr Lord The Creed no Apostolick My Lord Molesworth Specimen of Ye History of Ye Druids / Mr Hewet Specimen of Ye History of Ye Druids / Ld Castleton Shaftesbury's Letters [crossed out] / Lady Carmine Part of Ye History of Ye Druids [crossed out] / Rd Aylmer Bruno Sermon [crossed out].

^[65] See Jacob, Newtonians, 228; and BL Add. 12062, 12063.

^[66] See Jacob, Newtonians, 246; BL Add. 4295 f. 43; F. H. Heinemann, 'Prolegomena to a Toland Bibliography' in Notes and Queries 185 (1943), 184.

^[67] It may have been Elizabeth I's own copy. See Daniel, Toland, 3, 10.

^[68] See Jacob, Newtonians, 231.

^[69] See Jacob, Newtonians, 245; A. D. Imerti (ed.), The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Rutgers, 1964), 22.

^[70] Jacob, Newtonians, 245; see D. W. Singer, Bruno, His Life (New York, 1950), 192n. There is a large corpus of Italian literature on Toland and in particular on his relationship with Bruno. The primary Italian work is the indispensable bibliography by Carabelli, but see also G. Aquilecchia, 'Schedu Bruniana: la traduzione 'Tolandiana' dello Spaccio' in Giornale Storico della Litteratura Italiana 152 (1975); G. Carabelli (ed.), 'John Toland e G. W. Leibnitz: otto lettere', Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosophia 29 (1974); and C. Giuntini, 'Toland e Bruno: ermetismo rivoluzionario', Rivista di Filosophia 66 (1975). Carabelli, Tolandiana (1975), 170-1, presents the evidence for William Morehead (1637-92) as translator. There are two arguments against Morehead. The first is that from the only biographical details we have of any William Morehead (in the DNB) he seems an unlikely character even to have associated with Anthony Collins, or to have translated such a subversive work. The second argument is that the ascription of Morehead's authorship comes from the testimony of a bookseller, Samuel Paterson (1728-1802), who makes the claim in a sale catalogue of 1750. Without further supporting testimony Paterson's account appears to be based on mere speculation.

^[71] Worden, Ludlow, 24: see S. Paterson (ed.), Bibliotheca Westiana (1773), 44; flyleaf of James Martineau's copy of this translation in Manchester College, Oxford; R. Watt (ed.), Bibliotheca Britannica (4 volumes, Edinburgh, 1824), I, 162.

^[72] See Toland, Collections, II, 376-81. Carabelli, the most assiduous bibliographer of Toland's works, makes no concrete reference to this letter, although he does to a close version of the piece in citing the publication of a Toland letter of 1710 in A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical (1735), III, 622-3; see the article on 'Brunus, Jordanus'. A version of the same is employed in F. H. Heinemann, 'John Toland and the Age of Enlightenment' (Oxford, 1949). Here Heinemann makes use of a 'Lettre de Mr Toland sur le Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, Paris 1584' which was printed in Nova Bibliotheca Lubencesis, VII (Lubucae, 1756), 158-62. This piece bears a close resemblance to the letter under consideration: although they share common passages they also diverge from each other in elements of composition.

^[73] Biographical details of the mysterious Dr Morelli are sparse. R. H. Popkin has established that Morelli was a close friend of Spinoza's. It is clear that Morelli left Holland in the 1670s and moved in the libertine circle of St Evremond in England. That Toland knew Morelli is <152> perhaps a significant influence upon the former's Spinozism. See J. Hayward (ed.), The Letters of Saint Evremond (1930) 322-4; R. H. Popkin, 'Serendipity at the Clark: Spinoza and the Prince of Condé', The Clark Newsletter 10 (1986); R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford 14 (Oxford, 1945); Edward Llwyd to Mr John Lloyd (3 March 1691) on Morelli as an anatomist, at 135-6. Importantly the sale-catalogue of Morelli's library survives, Bibliotheca Morelliana (1715) (BL SC.292(7)).

^[74] Toland, Collections, II, 395. The letter was probably composed after 1710.

^[75] See Pierre Bayle in Nova Bibliotheca Lubecensis, 11, 149. 'Ce livre de Bruno est une traité de morale bizarrement dirigée: car on y expose la nature des vices et des vertues sous l'embleme des constellations celestes chassées du firmement pour faire place a de nouveaux astres, mais qui representent la verité, la bonté'; Bruno in Imerti (ed.), The Expulsion, 115: 'We must purify ourselves internally and externally'; see also 74-89.

^[76] See Imerti, The Expulsion, 139-45.

^[77] Ibid., 204, 236-48.

^[78] Ibid., 235, 'Natura est Deus in rebus'.

^[79] Ibid., 242ff.; consider, for example, Bruno's assault upon the Trinity, where he argues that Orion/Christ was maleficent in maintaining a bifurcation and contrariety between divinity and nature.

^[80] Ibid., 149-50, 257-8. There seems to be a Machiavellian element in these statements.

^[81] Ibid., 270ff.; Bruno continued: 'From where the altar stands let superstition, Faithlessness and impiety depart; and there let religion, which is not vain, Faith which is not foolish, and true and sincere Piety soujourn.'

^[82] See Jacob, Newtonians, 205, 226-9, 232-4, 245-6 and Radical Enlightenment, 35-40, 41, 47, 61, 87, 202.

^[83] As I argue above, the crucial influence on Toland's thought was the work of Cicero and the Stoics. Perhaps there is a similar case to be made for the influences of antiquity upon Bruno.

^[84] Jacob, Newtonians, 234; on Toland's claim see BL, Add. 4465 f. 7 and & sect. 10 of Letters to Serena.

^[85] Jacob, Newtonians, 233-8.

^[86] It is interesting to note that in both letters concerning Bruno's Spaccio, Toland makes no reference to notions of natural philosophy.

^[87] Nova Bibliotheca, 159.

^[88] Ibid., 160.

^[89] One is reminded of Toland's descriptions of his Socratic club in Pantheisticon (1720).

^[90] For a discussion of the history of philosophy, and the idea of the Egyptian origins of the philosophia perennis in the Renaissance, see: C. A. Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge, 1969), 1-42; G. Aspelin, 'Ralph Cudworth's Interpretation of Greek Philosophy', Götesborgs Hogkolas Årsskrirft 49 (1943). For an interesting and influential contemporary text, see Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy (1655-62). See also J. Godwin, Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge (1979); E. Iverson, The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Copenhagen, 1961); and L. Dieckmann, Hieroglyphs: The History of a Literary Symbol (Washington and St Louis, 1970).

^[91] J. Spencer, De Legibus Hebraeorum, I, chapter 4, sections iii-vi, 45-59, at 48. See W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (3rd edition 1927), xiv, and H. P. Smith, Essays in Biblical Interpretation (1921). M. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation (1987) discusses at length what he terms the 'ancient model' of the history of philosophy and religion which (as he shows convincingly) argued for the primacy of the Egyptians. Although the work is ambitious in both its arguments and its evidence, it is surprising to note that Bernal makes no reference to either Spencer or Marsham, two of Egypt's most scholarly defenders.

^[92] Spencer, De Legibus Hebraeorum, 519-20, 521-30, 531-3. Note that Newton in 'the Philosophical Origins of Gentile Religion' (Yahuda 17.3) wrote that Spencer's De Legibus <156> Hebraeorum 'amply shows … that the Mosaic rituals were drawn from the Egyptians'. Many thanks to R. Iliffe, who is currently working on similar themes in Newton's thought, for this reference.

^[93] W. Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses, (4 volumes, 4th edition, 1765), IV, 25. See also Bibliotheque Universelle 25 (1693), 432-3, which makes the same point. Spencer acknowledges this debt in De Legibus Hebraeorum, III, 527, where he cites the crucial passage (Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed (Chicago, 1963), III, chapter 32, 526). See also, J. Townley, The Reasons of the Laws of Moses (1827).

^[94] W. Orme, Bibliotheca Biblica (1824), 417.

^[95] Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres 5 (April, 1686), 438, 444.

^[96] Bibliotheque Universelle 24 (1693) (2nd edition, Amsterdam, 1699), 288, 291-5, 297-8, 300.

^[97] J. Edwards, Complete History of Religion (2 volumes, 1699), I, 250, see also 247-9.

^[98] See Holmes and Jones, The London Diaries, 271, entry for 5 January 1705, where Nicolson describes dining at Woodward's and perusing his manuscript where 'he takes occasion to run down the Egyptians, as mistaken masters of ancient learning'. See also Anon. to Woodward, 12 July (?), CUL Add. 7647.145.

^[99] J. Woodward, 'Of the Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians', Archaeologia 4 (1777), 271, 280-1.

^[100] Ibid., 238-260, 262, 264-8, 282.

^[101] Fontenelle, The History of Oracles, Preface, Sigs. A6r, A7v. Aphra Behn also translated Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds. Note that Toland in Letters to Serena also referred to the Dutch scholar's works with admiration.

^[102] Anon., An Answer to Fontenelle, 'A Letter written by Dr George Hickes', Sig. A3r.

^[103] Fontenelle, The History of Oracles, 82-3.

^[104] Ibid., 112, 161-95, 223.

^[105] Ibid., 173, 194. The last efforts of paganism were terminated under the reigns of the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius.

^[106] Anon. An Answer to Fontenelle, 159, 169.

^[107] Ibid., 71, 78, 186. This very theme was to form the subject of a work written by William Warburton in the mid-eighteenth century to justify the authority of the Church.

^[108] Ibid., 195.

^[109] Anon. Averroeana (1695), 102.

^[110] Hobbes, Leviathan, 168-9, 172-3. On Hobbes' psychological notions see M. V. Deporte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift, Sterne and Augustan Ideas of Madness (San Marillo, 1974).

^[111] Spinoza, Treatise Partly Theological, 2-6.

^[112] Trenchard, Natural History of Superstition, 9; Howard, A History of Religion (1696); Blount, The Life of Apollonius (1680), 23, 30, 151. Note that d'Holbach translated portions of the Natural History as La Contagion sacrée (1767), II, chapters 12-13.

^[113] Trenchard, Natural History of Superstition, 9-10.

^[114] Ibid., 10, 12-14, 16.

^[115] Toland, Letters to Serena, Preface, Sig. B4r, 2; Trenchard, Natural History, 25.

^[116] Toland, Letters to Serena, 2-3, 6, 7, 11.

^[117] Blount, Religio Laici, 58-9; and Great is Diana, 22.

^[118] Blount, Life of Apollonius, 19, 22; Fontenelle, Oracles, 77; Trenchard, Natural History, 33; Toland, Serena, 12-13. One of the 'prejudices' that received attention was the belief in miracles. Blount's work Miracles No Violation of the Laws of Nature (1683) is of especial interest as it represents a confluence of the thought of Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza and Thomas Burnet. The work was a combination of extracts from Spinoza's Treatise Partly Theological and Hobbes' Leviathan, with a preface lifted from Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra. Blount's Anglican adversary, Thomas Browne, replied in the same year with his Miracles Works Above and Contrary to Nature deriding the work as a proponent of deism and atheism. See also J. Spink, French Freethought from Gassendi to Voltaire (1961) for a discussion of Pierre Bayle's Pensées sur la comete (1683) which proposes a similar analysis.

^[119] The history of the origins of seventeenth-century biblical hermeneutics is sparse, and there are many areas that need further detailed investigation. The reception and usage of the French work of Richard Simon is in need of examination. General works are H. Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (1984); W. G. Kummel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems (Nashville, 1972) and G. Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia, 1985). There are interesting accounts of radical biblical criticism in L. Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965), in particular 66-77 on Isaac La Peyrère, and 251-68, and 311-27 on Spinoza's sources. See also R. H. Popkin, 'The Development of Religious Scepticism and the Influences of Isaac La Peyrère's Pre-Adamism and Bible Criticism' in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture AD 1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976), and 'Some New Light on the Roots of Spinoza's Science of Bible Study' in M. Grene (ed.), Spinoza and the Sciences, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 91 (1986). Toland's research on the canon in The Life of John Milton (1698) and Amyntor: Or a Defence of Milton's Life (1699), especially 25-78, was received with great hostility by the Anglican orthodoxy. A similar reaction was directed against the Arian conclusion of William Whiston's research, which argued that the Apostolic Constitutions was the oldest Christian document, see Primitive Christianity Reviv'd (5 volumes, 1711). On Whiston, see 0. C. Krabbe, The Apostolic Constitutions (New York, 1848); E. Duffy, 'Whiston's Affair: The trial of a Primitive Christian 1709-1714', Journal of Ecclesiastical History (1976); J. E. Force, William Whiston: Honest Newtonian (Cambridge, 1985). Further study should focus upon John Mill's edition of the New Testament of 1707 and its hostile reception. See Hearne, Remarks and Collections, I, 22, 28 and II, 20, 25, 186; and A. Fox, John Mill and Richard Bentley (Oxford, 1954).

^[120] Woodward, 'Egyptians', 262, 277.

^[121] Spinoza, Treatise Partly Theological, 23.

^[122] Ibid., 30, 34, 40-1, 53, 55, 140-4.

^[123] T. Burnet, Archaeologiae Philosophicae, 41-2.

^[124] Ibid., 5-7, 8-9, 11, 23.

^[125] Spinoza, Treatise Partly Theological, 99. William Whiston, in his Discourse Concerning the Nature, Stile and Extent of the Mosaick History of the Creation which prefaced his New Theory of the Earth (1696), took issue with Burnet's notion. He considered those who have 'been so sensible of the wildness and unreasonableness of That (Scripture), that they have ventured to exclude it from any just sense at all; asserting it to be a meer Popular, Parabolick, or Mythological relation; in which the plain letter is no more to be accounted for or believ'd, than the fabulous representations of Aesop, or at best the Mistical Parables of our Saviour', were executing a mischievous design. Whiston's argument with Burnet's interpretation of Scripture is convoluted and in some ways contradictory.

^[126] For a similar analysis of the notion of the 'expert', but in the area of scientific knowledge, see. S. Schaffer, 'The Political Theology of Seventeenth-Century Natural Science' in Ideas and Production (1983).

^[127] Toland, CNM, II, 68-9, 72-3, 158-70.

^[128] Blount, Life of Apollonius, 64; Toland, Serena 56, 57, and Two Essays (1695), 30, 31, 37.

^[129] Cherbury, Antient Religion, 381, 382, 384-5. M. Terentius Varro (116-27 BC), described by Augustine as 'the greatest of Roman scholars, the weightiest authority', was a writer of enormous output, most of which is now lost. Varro's notions were, however, available via Augustine's commentary on his thought in The City of God; see D. Knowles (ed.), Book VI, 229-35.

^[130] Burnet, Archaeologiae, vii, 24, 61, 63-5, 72-4, 74-5. C. Ginsburg, 'High and Low Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries', PP 73 (1976), 28-41; Walker, Ancient Theology, 186-8.

^[131] On the 'history' of Druids, see Toland's A Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning, published in his Collections, but originally written in letter form to Robert Molesworth. See also Toland's relationship with John Aubrey and the 'history' of Druids in M. Hunter, John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (1975), 59, 205n, 212; and S. Piggott, The Druids (1974), 120, 124, 127, 134, 157. J. M. S. Tomkins, 'In Yonder Grave a Druid Lies', The Review of English Studies 22 (1946), 1-16; A. L. Owen, The Famous Druids. A Survey of Three Centuries of English Literature on Druids (Oxford, 1962), 108-9, 112-17, 121. See also BL Add. 4295, folio 27, A letter from J. Chamberlayne to Toland 21 June 1718: 'I saw my Lord Chanc. yesterday, who among other papers gave me your project of a History of the Druids, which he told me he did not understand, but which he suspected to be level'd agst Christian Priests.'

^[132] Toland, Clidophorus, 68, 71, 72, 82, 88, 94-5, 96. See Toland, the history of Hypatia (1720) and Toland, Pantheisticon (1751), 93-110, 'Of a Twofold Philosophy of the Pantheists'. It is important to note that the eso/exoteric distinction also informs Toland's Letters to Serena.