Catalogue Entry: OTHE00049

Chapter 4: Historia monotheistica

Author: Justin Champion

Source: The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, 1660-1730 (1992).

[Normalized Text] [Diplomatic Text]

[1] The ideological significance of the Trinity is much ignored in studies of Church politics in the seventeenth century. The assaults of the 1640s and 1650s were treated as profoundly irreligious: see B. Worden, 'Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate' in W. J. Shells (ed.), Persecution and Toleration: Studies in Church History 21 (Oxford, 1984).

[2] See, for example, J. E. Force, William Whiston: Honest Newtonian (Cambridge, 1985). See also J. E. Force and R. H. Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology (The Netherlands, 1990), in particular the chapter by Popkin, 'Newton as a Bible Scholar'.

[3] H. R. Trevor-Roper, Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (1967), 193-237. See M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (Harvard, 1982) for the most cogent assertion of Calvinist radicalism. It is interesting to note that Skinner's investigation into the scholastic origins of Calvinist theories of revolution argues explicitly against Walzer's thesis. H. Davis, Worship and Theology in England from Andrewes to Baxter and Fox 1603-1690 (Princeton, 1975) and J. Redwood, Reason, Ridicule, and Religion: the Age of Enlightenment in England 1660-1750 (1976), 156-76 and passim are typical of the encyclopaedic history of theological debate. See also G. Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia, 1985); Clark, English Society, 280-2.

[4] J. G. A. Pocock, 'Post-Puritan England and the Problem of the Enlightenment' in P. Zagorin (ed.), Culture and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment (1980), 104-5. For a general discussion of the tradition of civil theology see R. I. Boss, 'The Development of Social Religion: A Contradiction of French Freethought', JHI 33 (1973); C. M. Sheroner, 'Rousseau's Civil Religion', Interpretation 8 (1979).

[5] Leslie, Theological Works, II, 313-14.

[6] See D. A. Paulin, Attitudes to Other Religions (Manchester, 1984) chapter 6, 81-103, 'The Treatment of Islam'; J. J. Saunders, 'Mohamed in Europe: A Note on Western Interpretations of the Life of the Prophet', History 39 (1954); J. Kritzeck, 'Moslem-Christian Understanding in Medieval Times', Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1961-2); G. L. Van Roosbroeke, Persian Letters Before Montesquieu (1932); B. P. Smith, Islam in English Literature (Lebanon, 1939); E. Renan, Averroes et Averroisme (Paris, 1852); P. M. Holt, Studies in the History of the Near East (1973), chapters 1-3, and 'Seventeenth-Century Arabic Studies' (unpublished D.Phil. Oxford, 1955); N. Daniel, The West and Islam (Edinburgh, 1980); also R. Southern, The Western View of Islam (Harvard 1962); S. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose (1958). For a more recent analysis, see E. Said, Orientalism (1978), 1-80; A. Hamilton, William Bedwell and the Arabists 1563-1632 (Leiden, 1985); N. O'Brown, 'The Prophetic Tradition', Studies in Romanticism 21 (1982). On the importance of travel literature, see R. W. Franz, The English Traveller and the Movement of Ideas 1660-1732 (New York, 1968); W. G. Rice, 'Early English Travellers to Greece and the Levant' in Essays and Studies (Michigan, 1939); E. K. Shaw, 'The Double-Veil: Travellers' Views of the Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries' in E. K. Shaw and C. J. Heywood (eds.), English and Continental Views of the Ottoman Empire 1500-1800 (Los Angeles, 1972). For important primary sources see Lancelot Addison, Simon Ockley and Joseph Pitts.

[7] B. Lewis, British Contributions to Arabic Studies (1937); A. J. Arberry, The Cambridge School of Arabic (Cambridge, 1948); H. R. Trevor-Roper, William Laud (1965), 273-4.

[8] The cases of Lancelot Addison, Joseph Morgan and Joseph Pitts suggest that there was first-hand knowledge of Islam through trade and pastoral endeavours. See also A. Hamilton, William Bedwell, 94.

[9] Matthew Tindal, in his Rights of the Christian Church (1706), 328, was to use Pococke's research into this text for exactly this purpose.

[10] S. Ockley, History of Saracens, 32, 33. See A. Kararah, 'Simon Ockley' (unpublished Ph.D., Cambridge, 1955).

[11] On Whiston's use of Ockley's research, see Hearne, Remarks and Collections, III, 57, 485. Ockley's academic work is best exemplified in his History of the Saracens (2 volumes, 1708 and 1718), a magisterial work ignored now, but much applauded by Gibbon. The Improvement of Human Reason (1708) is an interesting work which needs separate and extensive examination. The work was originally translated into Latin by Edward Pococke, son of the great Arabist, in 1671. This was followed by the first English translation by the Quaker George Keith in 1674. Interestingly, Henry More commended George Keith as a man 'of a good witt and quick apprehension … very philosophically and platonically given'. More, the Cambridge Platonist, exchanged his own Enchiridion Metaphysicum for Keith's edition of the Oriental Philosophy. See M. H. Nicolson (ed.), The Conway Letters (Yale, 1930), 391-2. A further edition and translation was made by the non-juror George Ashwell in 1688. For a general history of the work, see A. S. Fulton, The History of Hayy Ibn Yockdan (1929). See also L. Kontler, 'The Idea of Toleration and the Image of Islam in Early Enlightenment English Thought' in E. H. Balazs (ed.), Sous le signe des lumlières (Budapest, 1987).

[12] See William Bedwell's Mohamedis Imposturae (1616 and 1624). This work was reported to be a true Muslim text. Its contents belie this claim. See also Isaac Barrow, 'Of the Impiety and Imposture of Paganism and Mahometanism' in A. Napier (ed.), The Theological Works of Isaac Barrow (9 volumes, Cambridge, 1859), V, 411-26.

[13] A. Ross (trans.), Du Ryer's Koran (1688), 'A Needful Caveat', Sig. D2r.

[14] Ibid., 'The Life of Mahomet', vii.

[15] Ibid., 'A Needful Caveat', Sigs. C7v, D2v; 'The Life of Mahomet', i-xviii.

[16] Ibid., 'A Caveat', Sigs. D8r-v; 'Life of Mahomet', 11; for a later translation of the Koran, see G. Sale, The Qu'ran (1734): the Preliminary Discourse of the work is pro-Unitarian. See also A. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (2 volumes, 1955) who points out that Sale introduced 'carefully italicized supplies' in his translation which were intentionally reminiscent of the authorized version of the Bible.

[17]

Throughout this chapter, I intend to use the terms 'Socinian' and 'Unitarian' as interchangeable. Both groups stressed the necessity of reason in the evaluation of Scripture, and insisted upon the unity of God undermining the deification of Christ. Stephen Nye in his Brief History of the Unitarians, also called Socinians (1687) pointed out that since the term 'Socinian' had become pejorative he preferred the name 'Unitarian'. For a simple definition of the theological distinction between Orthodox, Socinian and Arian, see D. Williams, A Vindication of the Sermons of His Grace John Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning the Divinity and Incarnation of our B. Saviour (1695), 2:

The Orthodox hold, that Christ the Word and only begotten of the Father, was truly and really God from all eternity, God by participation of the Divine nature and happiness together with the Father, and by way of derivation from him, as light from the sun; that he made all creatures, and so could no more be a creature, than it is possible for a creature to make itself … The Arians conceive, that sometime before the world was made, God generated the Son after an ineffable manner, to be his instrument and minister in making the World. And this Son is called God in Scripture, not in the most perfect sense, but with respect to the creature whom he made … Socinus held, that the Son was not in being till he was the Son of the Virgin; and that therefore he was a God, not in nature, but by way of office, mission, or representation, as Moses, and others are called God in Scripture.

[18] H. J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1951), 18; E. Wilbur, History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America (Harvard, 1952), 167-92, 193-5. On J. Biddle, see F. Kenworthy, 'The Toleration Act of 1689', Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 7 (1939-42). On Freke, see DNB and L. W. Levy, Treason Against God (New York 1981), 321-2. R. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography (3 vols., 1850). A. Gordon, Heads of Unitarian History (1856). R. M. Mongomery, 'A Note on the Acts of Parliament Dealing with the Denial of the Trinity', Transactions of the Unitarian <107> Historical Society 6 (1935-8). R. E. Florida, 'British Law and Socinianism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries' in L. Szczucki (ed.), Socinianism (Warsaw, 1983).

[19] H. J. McLachlan, 'Links between Transylvania and British Unitarians from the Seventeenth Century Onwards', Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 17 (1979-82); W. Whittaker, 'The Open Trust Myth', Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 1 (1917-18). See C. Leslie, 'Of the Socinian Controversy' in Works, II, 14, for reports of free distribution of Unitarian tracts. Leslie wrote of the Unitarians: 'They have arrived to that pitch of assurance, as to set up public meetings in our halls in London, where some preach in them who have been spewed out even by the Presbyterians for their Socinianism.' Wilbur, Unitarianism, 198-9, 212-14; McLachlan, Seventeenth-Century Socinianism, 285; on Aikenhead, see Levy, Treason Against God, 325-7. Note that Aikenhead was accused of preferring the Islamic scheme over the Christian, in particular he was charged with rejecting the canonicity of Scripture and reading atheistical texts. See T. B. Howell, (ed.), A Complete Collection of State Trials (1812), XIII, 918-39. The best account of the Aikenhead affair is the essay by M. Hunter, 'Aikenhead the Atheist: The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century' in Hunter and Wooton, Atheism. On general background, see Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion, 27-42. On Firmin, see S. Nye, Life of Firmin (1698 and reprinted 1791); H. W. Stephenson, 'Thomas Firmin 1632-1697' (3 volumes, D.Phil. Oxford, 1949), for a hostile contemporary account, see Luke Milbourne, A False Faith not Justified by Care For the Poor Prov'd in a Sermon, 28 August 1698. See also Hearne, Remarks and Collections, I, 102: 'Tho. Firmin … a rank <108> Socinian was a great man with Dr Tillotson Archbp. of Cant. and others of the same leaven promoted by K. William to some of the best dignities and preferments.'

[20] A. Bury, Naked Gospel (1690), Preface, Sig. A3r. Note, it is interesting that Bury's work was published in a double columned format - a style typical of, and identified with, the Unitarian publications such as Firmin financed The Faith of One God (1691).

[21] Bury, Naked Gospel, Preface, Sig. A3v.

[22] Ibid., 8.

[23] W. Freke, Vindication of the Unitarians (1690), 6, 26, 27.

[24] S. Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians, 10-11, in The Faith of One God (1691).

[25] S. Nye, Letter of Resolution Concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation (1695), 11, 12-14, 15-17, 17-18. It is interesting to note that Cudworth's Mosaic thesis was echoed by Charles Leslie in his Socinian Controversy Discussed (1708) in the second dialogue. On Nye's authorship of the Letter of Resolution, see H. McLachlan, 'Seventeenth-Century Unitarian Tracts', Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 2 (1919-22), 152-6.

[26] Anon., 'An Epistle Dedicatory to his Illustrious Excellency Ameth Ben Ameth', reprinted in C. Leslie, Theological Works, II, 18-20, 22, 22-23, 23-24.

[27] See J. Harrison and P. Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford, 1971), 70, which shows that Locke possessed the 1649 French translation of the Koran. See D. D. Wallace, 'Socinianism, Justification by Faith, and the Sources of John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity', JHI (1984). See de Beer, Correspondence of Locke, V, 86-7, 96, 135-42, 145-7, 172, 207-29, where Locke corresponded with Firmin, Furley and Limborch (himself another suspected Socinian), about the case of a Dutch 'damsel' who had converted to Judaism because of her opposition to the Trinity. The current research of both J. Marshall and R. Iliffe into the theologies of John Locke and Isaac Newton would suggest that Edward's accusations were broadly correct.

[28] J. Edwards, Socinianism Unmasked (1696), 53-4; Edwards also attacked The Letter of Resolution in the same terms in Socinian Creed (1697), 227-8.

[29] F. Fullwood, A Parallel, 19, 23, 25. To reinforce this connection it is worth noting that Peter Browne in his Letter in answer to … Christianity Not Mysterious (1697) commented upon John Toland's attempts, 'certainly by all these promises of so much new light in the world which hath lived in darkness so many hundred years, we can't guess he designs to be no more than head of an ordinary sect, but to be as famous an imposture as Mahomet'. See also R. South, Sermons (3 volumes, 1698), Dedication to Peter Browne, 'But on the contrary amongst [them], when a certain Mahometan Christian (no new thing of late - notorious for his blasphemous denyal of ye 'Mysteries' of our religion, and his insufferable virulence <113> against the whole Christian Priesthood', (note by Toland, BL. Birch 4465, folio 58). See also Toland's answer to Browne's accusation in the same note: 'The Reason for this odd compliment I am yet to learn, unless it be that I can't drink wine enough to pass for orthodoxy with some doctors: for I am by no means for propagating Religion by Force, in which respect the Doctor is a very good Mahometan, how ill a Christian so ever he may be' (Birch 4465, folios 63r, 64).

[30] Leslie, Theological Works, II, 39, 34, 36, 38, 53-4.

[31] Ibid., II, 295-6, 303, 304, 310-11, 314.

[32] C. Leslie, Dissertation Concerning the Use and Authority of Ecclesiastical History in Theological Works, I, 412, and A Short and Easy Method with the Deists in Theological Works, I, 3-8, 9, 10-12, 28-38.

[33] L. Addison, The First State of Mahumedism (1679), 'To the Right Honorable Sir Joseph Williamson', Sig. A2r-v, 26-30, 32, 41, 63, 67, 84, 119, 126-37.

[34] See The Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, 185-7, on the extensive demand for his work.

[35] H. Prideaux, The True Nature of Imposture (1697), xiii, 34, 16, 18-19, 137, 21, 36, 40-7, 14-15, 93, 114-16. For Prideaux's use of orientalist scholarship, see his appended An Account of the Authors Quoted in this Book, 153-80.

[36] H. Prideaux, A Discourse for the Vindication of Christianity (1697), 5, 7, 16-24, 27, 45-7, 131.

[37] Anon., Historical and Critical Reflections (1712), 156, 157, 171, 172-4, 189, 206.

[38] An interesting case of a later Unitarian espousal of Islam is that of Edward Elwall (1676-1744); see DNB. Elwall, a Wolverhampton weaver and colleague of the poet John Byrom, was vociferous in his defence of Unitarianism. He suffered trial and persecution at the hands of his Anglican adversaries. His public profession was for the Ebionite faith, and he adopted a blue mantle: 'a Turkish Habit out of respect to the Unitarian Faith of the Mahometans'. Joseph Priestly, the late eighteenth-century Unitarian, publicized Elwall's struggles. See The Memoirs of Edward Elwall (Liverpool, 1817); E. Elwall, Idolatry Discovered and Detected (1744), and Dagon Fallen Before the Ark of God, Or the Inventions of Men Not Able to Stand before the First Commandment Thou Shall Have No Other Gods But Me (1741); J. Priestly, The Triumph of Truth (1775).

[39] See R. Howard, A Twofold Vindication (1696), 47-8; 'I am certainly informed that the Unitarians in England have no ministry at all; they do not separate from the Church on account of their different opinion from the Church: they never separated in England from the common assemblies to worship; which in my opinion, is pious, charitable and prudent.'

[40] E. Stillingfleet, Mysteries of the Christian Faith Asserted, 333-4, appended to Stillingfleet, A Discourse Concerning Christ's Satisfaction (1696; CUL classmark G.13.2), xx; Fullwood, Socinian Controversy (1693), 23; Edwards, Socinian Creed, 179, and Socinianism Unmasked, 107. See Leslie, Dialogue VI: 'Of the Satisfaction Made by Christ for Our Sins' in 'Of the Socinian Controversy', Theological Works, II, 346-400, and An Answer to the Last Examination of the Last Dialogue Relating to the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ in Theological Works, II, 441-502. See also L. Milbourne, Mysteries of Religion Vindicated (1692), 'Or the Filation, Deity, and Satisfaction of Our Saviour Asserted, against Socinians and Others', especially 639-784, 'Our Lord's Satisfaction Asserted'. On Islamic notions of the role of Christ in the Koran, see G. Parrinder, Jesus in the Qu'ran (1965).

[41] Stillingfleet, Mysteries of the Christian Faith Asserted, 363; Fullwood, A Parallel, 10-11. See Toland, Collections, II, 307 commenting on Jacobite accusations of witchcraft and heresy; 'Well; if magic won't do, heresy must. I am a dangerous anti-trinitarian, for having often publickly declared that I could as soon digest a wooden, or breaden deity, as adore a created spirit or a dignified man. This Socinianism and Arianism are, one would think, very orthodox.'

[42] Leslie, Socinian Dialogues in Theological Works, II, 14, 361; Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, 33.

[43] Leslie, Theological Works, II, 377, 492; Edwards, Socinian Creed, 185; Historical and Critical Reflections, 157; for a similar analysis of the political implications of non-Trinitarian theologies, see E. Leach and A. Alcock, Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth (Cambridge, 1983), 'Melchisedech: Icons of Subversion and Orthodoxy', 67-89. In particular page 75 on the implications of the distinction between Christ as Incarnation, and Christ as Crucified.

[44] (Abdulla Mahumed Omar,) Mahomet No Impostor in T. Killigrew (ed.), Miscellanea Aurea Or the Golden Medley (1720), 164, 172, 174, 176, 179.

[45] H. Boulainvilliers, Life of Mahomet (1731), 30, passim.

[46] H. Stubbe, An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism, ed. H. M. Khan Shairani (Lahore, 1954). See also the appendix of the latter, 'Containing Early Christian Legends and Notions Concerning Islam', 209-254. On Stubbe, see J. R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), and 'The Authorship of An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism' in Notes and Queries 26 (1975), 10-11; C. Hill, The Experience of Defeat (1984); L. Kontler, 'The Idea of Toleration and the Image of Islam in Early Enlightenment English Thought' in E. H. Balazs (ed.), Sous le signe des lumières (Budapest, 1987).

[47] See J. Treglown (ed.), The Letters of Rochester (Oxford, 1980).

[48] See B.L. Add. 23215 f. 77v-82v, 'Muslim Reports'; W. Temple, 'Of Heroick Virtue', Complete Works, I, 220-6, where he applauds Mahomet's fabrication of a theology to promote virtue, and framed to Arian inclinations.

[49] Stubbe, An Account, 86-104.

[50] Stubbe, An Account, 76-87, 153-5, see 153: 'For my part I believe that he was a convert to the judaising Christians and formed his religion as far as possible in resemblance of theirs.' For an earlier and hostile interpretation of Mahomet as a 'politic' legislator, see Francis Osborne Political Reflections upon the Government of the Turks (Oxford, 1662, 3rd edition) and Sir Paul Rycaut's The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1668). See C. J. Heywood, 'Sir Paul Rycaut, a Seventeenth-Century Observer of the Ottoman State: Note for a Study' in E. K. Shaw, and C. J. Heywood (eds.), English and Continental Views (Los Angeles, 1972), 33-59.

[51] Stubbe, An Account, 93, 101-2, 168, 177, 164, 180-3. It is interesting to note that Boulainvilliers' later work Life of Mahomet (1731) applauded Mahomet unreservedly as a Machiavellian legislator. As I have noted above, this text was translated into English in 1731. The introductory remarks commented on Boulainvilliers' effort, 'he has wiped of the aspersion that deformed his [Mahomet's] character; set him in the fairest point of light; and described this hero, and this orator, with an eloquence equal to his own'. Life of Mahomet (1731), Sig. A2v. Montesquieu used the Life of Mahomet when he applauded Mahomet's institution of polygamy and abstention from pork as laudable civil policy adapted to the conditions of the East. See R. Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961); P. Kra, 'Religion in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes', SVEC 52 (1970). For a later manifestation of this tradition, see E. S. Shaffer, Kubla Khan and the Fall of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1975), 56-8.

[52] Stubbe, An Account, 16, 26-7. Note also that Toland makes explicit reference to Selden's work in Nazarenus (1718), 30. He wrote, Selden 'has asserted Christianity to be no more than Reformed Judaism'.

[53] Stubbe, An Account, 20.

[54] Stubbe, An Account, 29, 33, 35-48. For anti-Pauline notions, see also Toland, Nazarenus 23-4, 25 on St Paul as an 'apostate from the law'. On Nazarenes, see H. Conzelmann, History of the Primitive Church (1973) (trans. J. Steely), 134-9, Chapter 13 'Jewish Christianity after the Jewish War'; H. Chadwick, The Early Church (1968), 9-32; J. W. C. Wand, A History of the Early Church (1937); see S. Pines, 'The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity According to a New Source', Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 (1968); R. A. Pritz, 'The Jewish Christian Sect of the Nazarenes' (Ph.D., Hebrew University, 1981).

[55] Stubbe, An Account, 164, 192-205.

[56] See Toland, Amyntor (1699), 20 ff., note at 40; Toland points out that the Gospel of Barnabas is lost; see also Collections, I, 350-403, where Toland updates this earlier catalogue. In this later work Toland proudly (at 355-6) noted that his work was well received by Continental scholars like Fabricius and Pfassius. The intention of the later update was to defend the original discussion from the more orthodox rebuttals like S. Nye, An Historical Account. A Defence of the Canon of the New Testament (1700) and J. Richardson, The Canon of the New Testament Vindicated (1699) (note that I have used the 3rd edition of 1719). Interestingly, both Nye and Richardson objected to Toland's aside (Amyntor, 64) that the 'Nazarenes or Ebionites' were the 'oldest Christians'.

[57] See Amyntor, 57-8. Note that Toland was up to his old tricks again in citing the High Church Dodwell in favour of this argument (see Amyntor, 69-78, where Toland cites and translates Dodwell, Dissertationes Irenicum, paragraphs 38-9). Dodwell was forced to rebut the association in an appended letter to Richardson's attack on Toland.

[58] See Nazarenus, 111; Carabelli Tolandiana, 207-9. Rumours of Toland's discovery were rife; note the alarm occasioned by Francis Hare in 1713; 'as if a new Gospel were to be foisted, I know not how, into the room of the four old ones', Nazarenus, xxv.

[59] J. Cramer (ed.), Opera Varia Selecta De G. M. Bruto (Berlin, 1698). See L. Cirillo and M. Fremaux L'Evangile de Barnabé: recherches sur la composition et l'origine (Paris, 1977), 50-1, where it is suggested that Bruto, 'Grand dénicheur des manuscrits anciens', may have been responsible for the dissemination or conservation of the Gospel of Barnabas. Bruto was Historiographer Royal to King Etienne Bathary of Transylvania.

[60] See L. L. Ragg, The Gospel of Barnabas (Oxford, 1907). W. E. A. Axon, 'On the Mohamedan Gospel of Barnabas' in The Journal of Theological Studies 3 (1901-2), 441-51; L. L. Ragg, 'The Mohamedan Gospel of Barnabas', The Journal of Theological Studies 6 (1904-5), 424-33; J. Fletcher, 'The Spanish Gospel of Barnabas', Novum Testamentum 18 (1976); J. Slomp, 'The Gospel in Dispute', Islamochristiana 4 (1978); D. Sox, The Gospel of Barnabas (1984).

[61] See L. Cirillo and M. Fremaux, L'Evangile de Barnabé, passim.

[62] See Nazarenus, 16, 17-18.

[63] Toland, Nazarenus, III, 5, 6, 9, 13; for a similar analysis of the role of the Gospel of Barnabas, see G. Sale 'Preliminary Discourse' in his translation of the Qu'ran of 1734. See BL Birch 4465 folio 20. Letter to Toland dated 20 June 1720 from Martin Eagle 'a true Ebionite' of Silver Street Cambridge (possibly a lecturer in oriental languages), which complimented Toland on the excellence and 'heroick spirit' of Nazarenus. The impact of Toland's work on the Gospel of Barnabas can perhaps be best considered by comparison with the twentieth-century reception of the work of M. Baigent, R. Leigh and H. Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), and the recent (1987) The Messianic Legacy. Interestingly, the first part of the most recent work deals in detail with early Nazarene Christianity, suggesting Islamic connections, echoing Toland's arguments, see 132-60.

[64] T. Mangey, Remarks upon Nazarenus (1718), 46, 47. See J. Richardson, The Canon of the New Testament Vindicated, 71-8; also the hostile remarks appended to Toland's Collections, II, 'Critical Remarks upon … Nazarenus', which attacked Toland's use of patristic sources, in particular his manipulations of Irenaeus and Epiphanius. Toland defended himself in Mangoneutes: Being a Defence of Nazarenus (1720): again he noted that scholars of the class of Fabricius had acknowledged his work, (at 141, he notes that Fabricius, Apocryphal Code of the New Testament, 3rd volume, 387-94, 'Inserted the whole historical part of Nazarenus without altering or omitting a word').

[65] Mangey, Remarks Upon Nazarenus, 43. Toland (BL. Birch 4465 folios 63-64) compiled a collection of passages to show 'that I am not the first who put Christian and Mahometan together'.

[66] Stubbe and Toland both discuss the paraclete - John 16.7 - as either Isa or the comforter (Stubbe, An Account, 172-4, and Toland, Nazarenus, 13). Both use Epiphanius and Irenaeus (Stubbe, An Account, 18, and Toland, Nazarenus, 78-9). Both have anti-Pauline passages (Stubbe, An Account, 57-61, and Toland, Nazarenus, 25-36). Perhaps Stubbe is more radically Islamic in referring to Jesus throughout his work as Isa - the Qu'ranic phrase.

[67] See D. Patrick, 'Two English Forerunners of the Tübingen School: Thomas Morgan and John Toland', Theological Review 14 (1877). See also Graf Reventlow, 'Judaism and Jewish Christianity in the Works of John Toland', Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies 3 (1977); M. Wiener, 'John Toland and Judaism', Hebrew Union College Annual 16 (Cincinnati, 1941); R. S. Wolper, 'Circumcision as Polemic in the Jew Bill of 1753', Eighteenth Century Life 7 (1982); for Toland's later influence, see Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) in A. Jospe (ed.), Jerusalem and other Jewish Writings (New York, 1969), 124-6; and M. Pelli, 'The Impact of Deism on the Hebrew Literature of the Enlightenment in Germany' Eighteenth Century Studies 6 (1972-3).

[68] Toland, Nazarenus, Preface, vii-viii.

[69] Ibid., 31-6, 37-40.

[70] Mangey, Remarks upon Nazarenus, 64, 71, 73-84, 95.

[71] J. Tillotson, Sermons (4 volumes, 1704), IV, 85ff., 113ff.

[72] Toland, Nazarenus, 30, 38, 65-7. Toland's political analysis of Jewish law formed the basis for his liberal arguments for naturalizing the Jews in his Reasons for Naturalising the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland (1714). It is to be noted here that Toland was echoing the proposition of his Republican mentor Harrington who argued in Oceana that the Jews should be allowed to resettle Ireland while retaining their own religion and rituals. S. B. Liljegren in 'Harrington and the Jews', K. Humanisticka Vetenskapssam 4 (1931-2), argues that this was indicative of Harrington's liberal tolerationist ideals. The recent work of D. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Re-admission of the Jews to England (Oxford, 1982) in discussing the millennarian and conversionist schemes of the 1650s portrays Harrington as arguing for readmission on economic grounds (31, 240). Harrington's deliberate eschewal of converting the Jewish nation seems to fit uneasily with Pocock's millennarian interpretation.

[73] Toland, Nazarenus, Appendix 1; see also Toland, Collections, II, 392, Toland to Leibnitz, 14 February 1710, on Toland's intention to write a large study of the Republica Mosaica; and Toland, Hodegus (1720) as an extract of this larger work.

[74] Toland, Nazarenus, Appendix 8. Note that Harrington placed Moses firmly in the same tradition of politic legislators, and saw nothing wrong in doing so: see Toland Works of Harrington (1700), 178, 407. For Harrington human prudence was at the same time both natural and divine. Note that this was contrary to orthodox Hebraic scholarship such as Peter Cunaeus, Of the Commonwealth of the Hebrews (1653) - a work which Harrington had read - which insists, at pages 2-3, 'that the Greek Legislators, compared to Moses are but of yesterday'. Importantly Rousseau in the Social Contract, II, chapter 7, 'The Legislator', recommends the model of Moses to the 'true political theorist', at 197.

[75] Toland, Collections, II, (S*** R*** to Toland, 10 July 1720), 448-52. Note the passage S*** R*** recommends Chapter 3 of Spinoza's work.

[76] Toland, Collection, II, 452.

[77] B. Spinoza, Treatise Partly Theological and Partly Political (1689), chapter 3, 64-6.

[78] Ibid., chapter 5, 104-5.

[79] Ibid., 103, 105, 115-17.

[80] Ibid., 357, 382. Spinoza commented (79-80) 'that only the sign of circumcision may be able to perpetuate the nation'. See J. Schwartz, 'Liberalism and the Jewish Connection: A Study of <131> Spinoza and the Young Marx', Political Theory 13 (1985); P. Slyomovics, 'Spinoza: Liberal Democratic Religion', Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985).

[81] W. Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses (4 vols., 4th edition, 1765), II, 219.

[82] Toland, Collections, II (Leibnitz to Toland, April 30 1709), 383.

[83] Ibid., II, 401.

[84] Ibid., II, 390, Toland to Leibnitz, 14 February 1710.

[85] J Toland, Origines Judicae (The Hague, 1709), 104, 117. For a general discussion, see D. B. Sailor, 'Moses and Atomism', JHI 25 (1964).

[86] Toland, Origines Judicae 140, 146-7 citing Tacitus, Histories, V, which is also used in C. Blount's Oracles of Reason (1693), 'Letter to Major A Concerning the Origins of the Jews', 129-32.

[87] Toland, Origines Judicae, 155.

[88] There is a later development of this radical interpretation of Islam which needs further treatment elsewhere. The important works are: J. Morgan, Mahometanism Fully Explain'd … Written in Spanish and Arabick in the Years MDCIII for the Instruction of Moriscoes in Spain (2 volumes, 1723-5). This purported to be a literal translation of a manuscript composed by Mahomet Rabadan and deposited in Harley's collection. It is most likely a forgery. The list of subscribers includes Anthony Collins and Barnham Goode. The first volume was perceived by the public as a 'burlesque upon Scripture'. Morgan also composed a two-volume history of Algiers (1728). Other important works are 'Zelim Musulman' (A. Radicati), A Parallel Between Mahumed and Sosem (1732) and Reflections on Mohamedism, and the Conduct of Mohamed (1735). Note that J. S. Mill in On Liberty in M. Warnock (ed.), Utilitarianism (1979), 177-8, applauds the moral precepts of the Koran over the New Testament. See for a later discussion J. Rendell, 'Scottish Orientalism from Robertson to James Mill', HJ 25 (1982).

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