Catalogue Entry: OTHE00052

Chapter 7: From theology to ethics

Author: Justin Champion

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

[Normalized Text] [Diplomatic Text]

[1] H. Sacheverell, Political Union: A Discourse Showing the Dependence of Government on Religion (1700), 9; J. Dennis, The Danger of Priestcraft (1702), 5-8, 16.

[2] Dennis, Vice and Luxury, 22, 48, 81, 83, 85-7, 92-3. It is important to note that Harrington applauded Machiavelli repeatedly: according to Harrington, Machiavelli had designed a commonwealth that was a 'minister of God on earth, to the end that the world may be governed with righteousness'. Machiavelli had defended the 'Holy asylum' but was repaid by being 'pelted for it by sermons' (see Pocock, Works, 323, 392-3, 531).

[3] On the Traité des trois imposteurs, see G. Brunet, Le Traité des trois imposteurs (Paris, 1867), i-lvi and BL Stowe 47, 'The Famous Book Intitled De Tribus Impostoribus', folios 26r, 30v, 68r-v, 136-8.

[4] See J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution (Cambridge, 1957). Pocock, 'James Harrington and the Good Old Cause', Journal of British Studies 10 (1970), Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time (1972), chapters 3-4, Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), Part III and The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977) are the best accounts of Harrington's thought, although Pocock insists Harrington should be read in a millennarian context, a view from which I differ. See also C. Blitzer, An Immortal Commonwealth (Yale, 1970); J. C. Davies, Utopia and the Ideal Society (Cambridge, 1981), chapter 8; H. F. Russell-Smith, Harrington and His 'Oceana' (Cambridge, 1914); M. Downs, James Harrington (Boston, 1977); J. W. Gough, 'Harrington and Contemporary Thought', Political Science Quarterly 45 (1930). The work of S. B. Liljegren is a much underestimated source for Harrington studies, in particular his indispensable, footnoted edition of Oceana, published in Skrifter Vetenskaps-Societen 4 (Heidelberg, 1924); see also Liljegren Harrington and the Jews (Lund, 1932), and 'A French Draft Constitution of 1792 Modelled on James Harrington's Oceana', K. Humanistiska Vetenskapssam 17 (1932). One of the more recent important discussions of the religious elements in Harrington's thought is M. A. Goldie, 'The Civil Religion of James Harrington' which, although admirable in the logic of its arguments, operates within a Pocockian idiom. See below for my objections to Pocock's theses on Harrington's millenarianism. For a later development, see J. D. Coates, 'Coleridge's Debt to Harrington: A Discussion of Zapolya', JHI 38 (1977).

[5] For a general consideration of the role of the editor in the period, see R. Iliffe, 'Author-Mongering: "The Editor" between Producer and Consumer' (privately communicated paper: delivered at UCLA in January 1991). For a general discussion of the role of natural analogy in both political and scientific thought, see B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds.), Natural Order (1979); B. S. Turner, The Body and Society (1984); E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (1960); M. Macklem, The Anatomy of the World Relations between Natural and Moral Law from Donne to Pope (Minnesota, 1958); G. P. Conger, Theories of Macrocosm and Microcosm in the History of Philosophy (New York, 1922); for more specific discussions, see B. Williams, 'The Analogy of the City and the Soul in Plato's Republic', Phroenesis Supplement 1; P. Archambault, 'The Analogy of the "Body" in Renaissance Political Literature', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 29 (1967); J. Daly, 'Cosmic Harmony and Political Thinking in Early Stuart England', TAPS 69 (1979).

[6] Temple, Complete Works, I, 'Of Popular Discontents', 257.

[7] Toland, Works of Harrington, 'The Life of James Harrington', xvii; the Mechanics of Nature is at xlii-xliv. See also Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, III, 154: 'Now it seems to me, that the great secret in politicks is, nicely to watch and observe this fluctuation and change of natural power, and then adjust the political to it by prudent precautions and timely remedies.'

[8] I. de Diemerbroeck, Anatomy of Human Bodies (1689), iii. See Pocock, Works of Harrington, 162, 403, 725. On Harvey, see R. G. Frank, 'The Image of Harvey in Commonwealth and Restoration England' in J. J. Bylebyl (ed.), William Harvey and his Age (Baltimore, 1979); C. Hill, 'William Harvey and the idea of Monarchy', PP 29 (1964). It is interesting to note that one of Harrington's associates in the Rota Club was William Petty, an expert anatomist who became the Tomlins Reader in Anatomy at Oxford. In his Advice to Mr Hartlib (1648), Petty had argued for the necessity of a central school of anatomical investigation, while in his later The Political Anatomy of Ireland (1691) he specifically employed anatomical analogy to discuss Irish politics and economics. The suppositious Sarpi work, The Rights of Sovereigns and Subjects, as late as 1725 proposed to examine 'the matter to the bottom, to anatomise it, to strip it of artificial disguise, and expose it naked to the whole world' (page 2). The role of 'anatomy' displays a further link between Harrington and Henry Neville's Plato Redivivus; the body-politic analogy was a common theme throughout Neville's work. Walter Moyle (Works (1727), 'Some Account of Mr Moyle', 27) argued that the English Gentleman in Neville's dialogue was supposed to represent William Harvey. The power of the anatomy analogy would repay further examination set in the context of anatomical practices. See, for example, C. Webster, The Great Instauration (1975), 247-55, 420-3, for a discussion of the connections between natural analogy and political anatomy. Note that between 1600 and 1650 some fifty works were published concerning anatomy, while between 1650 and 1700 230 pieces were written; see K. F. Russell, British Anatomy 1525-1800 (Melbourne, 1963), 6.

[9] Toland, Nazarenus, 'Appendix 1', 2, 6-7; Cicero, De Republica (Loeb edition, 211-13); see Pocock, Works of Harrington, 72, 86 on 'the millennial note' and 142-3: 'If Harrington's Mechanics of Nature is indeed a work of hermetic character, we can better understand Toland's insistence on its sanity.' On the relationship between Harrington's natural philosophy and his political beliefs, written within the Pocockian idiom, see C. Diamond, 'Natural Philosophy in Harrington's Political Thought', JHP 16 (1978). For an attack upon this analysis, see J. C. Davis, 'Pocock's Harrington: Grace, Nature, and Art in the Classical Republicanism of James Harrington', HJ 24 (1981), and Utopia and the Ideal Society, 211-12. It is here that the close connection with Winstanley can most fruitfully be made. A recurrent theme of Winstanley's theology was that divinity and reason were very similar quantities: man's relation to God is premised on freedom through reason rather than omnipotent divine power. See C. Hill, 'The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley', PP Supplement 5 (1978), and (ed.), Winstanley: The Law of Freedom and Other Writings (1973), passim. Harrington, too, insists that God can be treated as either 'Infinite love' or 'almighty power'. True religion must be based on free submission rather than command, thus God has 'prepared before his empire, his authority or proposition'. For Harrington, Christ was to be understood as proposition rather than Godhead (see Pocock, Works, 373, 421, 539).

[10] Toland, Works of Harrington, 429-34. See Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism, and Politics for a misreading of the role of analogy in Harrington's thought. C. Blitzer, An Immortal Commonwealth, 89-108, discusses the idea of political anatomy at some length, although his arguments are faulted by the Whiggish premise that the political scientist and the political anatomist are the same man. Underestimating the rhetorical power of the body-politic analogy Blitzer writes: 'These are not meant to constitute proof of Harrington's arguments. Rather they are intended as inducement.' Again my argument is that the idea of natural analogy between city and soul is not a quaint anachronism on Harrington's part, but foundational for his thought. See P. Archambault, 'The Analogy of the "Body" in Renaissance Political Literature' which stresses (see pages 21-2): 'One of our fundamental contentions, in this study, is that the analogy of the body was never used loosely. The political writers of the late medieval and Renaissance periods did not consider it as an inert, neutral literary topos, but as capable of betraying certain political implications.' That this analogy <203> was still vigorous in the early eighteenth century is confirmed by Toland's State-Anatomy (1717), a tremendously popular work: the title is a rather bad Harringtonian pun.

[11] See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, III, 150; see also III, 4.

[12] See H. Neville, Plato Redivivus (1681), 71, 75, 81, 82, 95, 158-9, 160-7, 174, and Thomas Goddard's hostile reply Plato's Demon, Or the State Physician Unmaskt (1684), 61, 144, 146, 147-51, 156; Toland, State-Anatomy, 12-13, citing Cicero: 'As our bodies cannot be manag'd without a mind, so a government cannot without a law rule its several parts, analogous to nerves, blood and other members.'

[13] Toland, Works of Harrington, 39, 448.

[14] Ibid., 44-5.

[15] Ibid., 45.

[16] Ibid., 242, 252.

[17] Ibid., 46-7, 52, 195. See Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, 293: 'He was wont to say that right reason is contemplation, is vertue in action, et vice versa, vivere secundum naturam is to live vertuously, the Divines will not have it so …' See Winstanley, The Law of Freedom: 'the great lawgiver in commonwealth government is the spirit of universal righteousness dwelling in mankind, now rising up to teach everyone to do to another as he would have another to do him', cited in Hill, 'The Religion of Winstanley', 44. On this point I would take issue with Hill's argument (at 55) that 'eighteenth century deism was so abstractly secular that it lacked the emotional appeal of Winstanley's ideas. Never again were serious revolutionary ideals to be expressed in religious forms in England.' See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, III, 193-4: 'Nothing is so much the interest of private men, as to see the publick flourish … every man's private advantage is so much wrapt up in the publick felicity, that by every step which he takes to depreciate his country's happiness, he undermines and destroys his own.' The <205> conflation of public and private interest was the central theme in Shaftesbury's An Inquiry Concerning Virtue (1699); see below, pp. 210-18. For an interesting discussion of public and private interest in Harrington, see J. A. W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (1969), 109-52. Gunn points out that many of Harrington's arguments were commonplace and conventional. Gunn's general thesis that 'Liberal or republican thought in this era was largely based upon the premise that the public good was most obviously and immediately related to the preservation of private right' (Politics and the Public Interest, 300) is certainly misapplied to Harrington (144, 151). Gunn creates problems for himself by conflating the injunctions of reason and virtue: both should be read within a neo-Stoic context, rather than rather nebulous liberal conceptions of 'individualism' and 'rational self-interest'.

[18] Toland, Works of Harrington, 499, 500. The same analogy is employed by J. Dennis in An Essay Upon Publick Spirit (1711) in Selected Works (2 volumes, 1727), I, 406-43, at 406: 'What the spirit of a man is to the body natural, that publick spirit is to the body politick.' Note that J. A. W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property (Montreal, 1983), chapter 7, 'Public Spirit to Public Opinion', uses Dennis' work without acknowledging either the Harringtonian meaning or the analogical purpose of the argument.

[19] Toland, Works of Harrington, 192, 211. See Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 76: 'Nature therefore cannot be void of reason, if art can bring nothing to perfection without it, and if the works of nature exceed those of art.' See Shaftesbury to Stanhope, 7 November 1709: 'So is architecture and its beauty the same, and founded in nature, let men's fancy be never so Gothic; for there is a Gothic architecture which is false, and ever will be so, though we should all turn Goths, and lose our relish', B. Rand, (ed.), The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (1900), 416-17. See below for a discussion of Shaftesbury's point, argued against both Hobbes and Locke, that aesthetic <206> beauty and moral truth are natural rather than conventional. For an excellent discussion of classical and Renaissance ideas of art and nature, see A. J. Close, 'Commonplace Theories of Art and Nature in Classical Antiquity and in the Renaissance', JHI 30 (1969), and 'Philosophical Theories of Art and Nature in Classical Antiquity', JHI 32 (1971).

[20] Toland, Works of Harrington, 172.

[21] Harrington explained at length: 'Diogenes seeing a young fellow drunk, told him that his father was drunk when he begat him. For thus in natural generation I must confess I see no reason; but in the political it is right. The vices of the people are from their governors; those of the governors from their laws or orders; and those of their laws or orders from their legislators. What ever was in the womb imperfect, as to their proper work, comes very rarely, or never at all to perfection afterwards; and the formation of the citizen in the womb of the commonwealth is his education' (Toland, Works of Harrington, 177; this notion is reminiscent of Marx's description of the natural determinism of society).

[22] Toland, Works of Harrington, 75-6.

[23] Harrington here addresses one of the central issues between the claims of liberty and duty: see also Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York, 1956), 449: 'Plato in his Republic makes everything depend on the government, and makes disposition the principle of the state; on which account he lays the chief stress on education. The modern theory is diametrically opposed to this referring everything to the individual will. But here we have no guarantee that the will in question has the right disposition which is essential to the stability of the state.'

[24] Toland, Works of Harrington, 58.

[25] Toland, Works of Harrington, 89, 127, 448-51, 505-508. Harrington's hermeneutic is an important but understudied facet of Oceana. Certainly he considered scriptural interpretation as a crucial weapon in the destruction of priestcraft. As he commented (Pocock, Works, 307): 'But in the searching of the Scriptures by the proper use of our Universities, we have been heretofore blessed with greater victories and trophies against the purple hosts and golden standards of the Romish hierarchy, than any nation.'

[26] Toland, Works of Harrington, 37-8, 59; see J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1986), 66: 'What we used to think of as the age of reason may just as well be called the age of virtue.' In general on the psychological tenor of political theory of the period, see A. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, 1977); the author makes no reference to any classical tradition. An important text on the passions is Descartes' Passions of the Soul (1646) usefully discussed in R. B. Carter, Descartes' Medical Philosophy (Baltimore, 1983). See also N. O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton, 1980); A. Levi, French Moralists and the Theory of the Passions 1585-1689 (Oxford, 1964).

[27] Gordon and Trenchard, Cato's Letters, II, 47.

[28] Ibid., II, 50-51, 53-4.

[29] Ibid., II, 53.

[30] Ibid., II, 56, 67.

[31] Ibid., II, 43-6, III, 332-3, 335.

[32] Toland, Collections, II, 377. The idea of mechanistic control is neatly presented in Harrington's description of a carnival pageant he had seen in Italy. He wrote: 'At Rome I saw one which represented a kitchin, with all the proper utensils in use and action. The cooks were all cats and kitlings, set in such frames, so tied and so ordered, that the poor creatures could make no motion to get loose, but the same caused one to turn the spit, another to baste the meat, a third to skim the pot and a fourth to make the green sauce. If the frame of your commonwealth be not such as causeth everyone to perform his certain functions as necessarily as this did the cat to make the green sauce, it is not right' (Pocock, Works of Harrington, 744).

[33] Gordon and Trenchard, Independent Whig, 313.

[34] See G. Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982); G. Monsarrat, Light from the Porch: Stoicism and Early Renaissance Literature (Paris, 1984), especially chapter 2, 'Classical Stoicism: Texts, Translations, and Translators', 21-49; F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (1975); G. B. Kerferd, 'Cicero and Stoic Ethics' in J. R. C. Martyn (ed.), Cicero and Virgil Studies in Honour of Harold Hunt, 60-74; J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969). An important discussion of the links between anticlericalism and the impact of neo-Stoicism is P. L. Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser (Geneva, 1980). This focuses upon Bodin's manuscript, 'Colloquium Heptaplomeres de Rerum Sublimium Arcanis Abditis'. There is no study of the relevance of this work to the English context of the late seventeenth century. It is known that Milton possessed a copy, see C. Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1977), 109-10. Bishop John Moore also owned a copy, which was deposited in Cambridge University Library in the early eighteenth century.

[35] The second edition was 1687, and a third in 1700. Jean Leclerc was to translate portions of the work into Latin.

[36] T. Stanley, The History of Philosophy (1687), 421-91.

[37] Stanley, History of Philosophy, 462-5. For a useful account of neo-Stoicism and natural law, see M. C. Horowitz, 'The Stoic Synthesis of the Idea of Natural Law in Man: Four Themes', JHI 35 (1974).

[38] Cicero, De Divinatione, II, 1.200.

[39] Cicero, De Legibus, I, vii, xv, xxi.408-17, 423. Also De Republica, III, xxii, 360, 408, 412-13, 418, 423, 360.

[40] The Five Days Debate at Cicero's House at Tusculum (1683), especially Book IV, 'The Government of the Passions' 217-18, 223, 226-48, 268 and Book V, 'The Chief End of Man', 268-9, 280. Note that Toland (Pantheisticon, 72) cited this passage as crucial to the pantheist liturgy.

[41] Blount, Great is Diana, Preface, Sig. F3v; Blount, Anima Mundi, 124-5; Blount, Miscellaneous Works, 'Account of the Life and Death', Sig. A10r; Blount, Oracles of Reason, Preface, Sig. B3r-v.

[42] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks (3 volumes, 2nd edition, 1714), I, 41. See B. Rand (ed.), The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen (1900), 500; note at 494 (Shaftesbury to Coste, 5 June 1712) that Prince Eugene conveyed his enthusiasm for the recently published Characteristicks; see passim for correspondence with Bayle, Leclerc and Coste. On Shaftesbury, see R. Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury 1671-1713 (Louisiana, 1984); A. O. Aldridge, 'Shaftesbury and the Deist Manifesto', Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 12 (1951); S. Grean, Shaftesbury's Philosophy of Religion (Ohio, 1967). Note that Grean makes no reference to Shaftesbury's Harringtonianism, but is content to make anachronistic statements about Shaftesbury as a 'defender of liberal religion', and being on the 'liberal left wing of Protestantism', at 99-107, also 119, 260; see also J. A. Bernstein, Shaftesbury, Rousseau, and Kant (Toronto, 1980). For more detailed work, see E. Tiffany, 'Shaftesbury as Stoic', PMLA 37 (1923), 642-85; A. 0. Aldridge, 'Two Versions of Shaftesbury's Inquiry', Huntingdon Library Quarterly 13 (1950). On the emblems contained in the Characteristicks, see F. Paknadel, 'Shaftesbury's Illustrations of the Characteristicks', Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institute 37 (1974); W. J. Ong, 'From Allegory to Diagram in the Renaissance Mind', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 17 (1958).

[43] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I, 116, III, 143. The connection between Toland, Harrington and Shaftesbury is virtually unexplored: note that Shaftesbury sent at least two copies of Toland's edition of Harrington's works to Holland: see Russell-Smith, Harrington and His Oceana, 143. The whole of Characteristicks, at least in political and religious terms, seems to have been informed by Harringtonian ideas. The classic case is the An Inquiry Concerning Virtue. Rand, Life, Letters, {and} Private Regimen, xxiii, suggests that Shaftesbury gave Toland an annual stipend in the late 1690s.

[44] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I, 187, 311, 320, 327; see also III, 101-4, 186, 196-200.

[45] Ibid., I, 294-5.

[46] Ibid., I, 15, 32, 17-18; see also Toland, State-Anatomy, 28. Note that Shaftesbury and Toland both cite Harrington directly here: Toland, Works of Harrington, 448. On the French Prophets, see H. Schwartz, The French Prophets, (1980).

[47] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks I, 39-40.

[48] See D. Walford, (ed.), An Inquiry Concerning Virtue (Manchester, 1977), Introduction, 1-14; Rand, Life, xxii-xxiii, 385.

[49] Rand, Life, (Shaftesbury to Ainsworth) 403-5, and (Shaftesbury to Stanhope, 7 November 1709), 413-17; Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, II, 7. See Cicero, De Legibus, I, xvii.418: 'Goodness is not a mode of opinion, but of nature.' See Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, 294, <215> 'Harrington', citing Harrington's verse: 'The state of nature never was so raw / But Oakes bore acornes and ther[e] was a law / By which the Spider and the Silkworme span; / each creature had her birthright, and must man / be illegitimate! have no child's parte! / if Reason had no wit, how came in Arte?' Note also the correspondence between Shaftesbury and Gilbert Burnet (Rand, Life, 419-21), where the former attempted to gain a chaplaincy for Ainsworth in 1710. It is also interesting to note that Shaftesbury lamented that Ainsworth was in clerical orders; he wrote in 1711: 'You have been brought into the world, and come into orders, in the worst time for insolence, riot, pride, and presumption of clergymen that I ever knew or have read of, though I have searched far into the characters of high churchmen from the first centuries that they grew to be dignified with crowns and purple, to the late time of the reformation and to our present age' (Rand, Life, 434).

[50] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, II, 12-14, 34-5, 40, 44, 45, 50-1, 118-19. Shaftesbury here follows the argument proposed by Plutarch in On Superstition, a text much favoured by John Toland who intended to publish a translation and commentary entitled Superstition Unmaskt. It is important to note that in his commendation of Pierre Bayle, Shaftesbury made clear the distinction between private speculation and morality. Writing to his printer Mr Darby in February 1702, he commented on Bayle: 'Whatever his opinions might be, either in politics or philosophy (for no two ever disagreed more in these than he and I), yet we lived and corresponded as entire friends. And I must do him the justice to say that whatever he might be in speculation, he was in practice one of the best Christians, and almost the only man I ever knew who, professing philosophy, loved truly as a philosopher; with that innocence, virtue and temperance, humility, and contempt of the world and interest which might be called exemplary' (Rand, Life, 385). Shaftesbury commented on himself: 'But as in philosophy so in politics, I am but few removes from mere scepticism, and though I may hold some principles perhaps tenaciously, they are however, so very few, plain, and simple that they serve to little purpose towards the great speculations in fashion with the world' (Rand, Life, 367).

[51] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, II, 55: 'There is no more rectitude, piety, or sanctity in a creature thus reformed than there is meekness or gentleness in a tyger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under the discipline of the Whip.' See Toland, 'A Project for a Journal' in Collections, II, 201-14 at 202, on the 'beauty, harmony, and reasonableness of virtue in itself'; Toland, Clito (1700), 19: 'Virtues its own reward'; and Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, 236: 'Virtue is its own reward.'

[52] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, III, 42-59, 60; II, 64. This passage is a reference to Harrington, The Prerogative of Popular Government (Pocock, Works, 437-8), where in citing Diodorus Siculus on the Egyptian priesthood's land ownership, Harrington commented: 'Egypt by this means is the first example of a monarchy upon a nobility, at least distributed into three estates by means of a landed clergy, which by consequence came to be the greatest councellors of state and, putting religion unto their uses, to bring the people to be the most superstitious in the whole world.'

[53] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I, 120, 142, 353-4; II, 17, 66, 77-81; III, 180-1. See J. Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), 6: 'The microcosm owes the beauty and health both of its body and soul to order, and the deformity and distemper of both, to nothing but the want of order. Man was created like the rest of the creatures, regular, and as long as he remained so he continued happy; but as soon as he fell from his primitive state by transgressing order, weakness and misery were the immediate consequences of that universal disorder that immediately followed in his conceptions, in his passions and actions.'

[54] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I, 106, 109-11, 120; II, 78-81; III, 144-6.

[55] Ibid., III, 222. This argument is explicitly Harringtonian: see Toland, Works of Harrington, 46-7. Shaftesbury was certainly one route by which Harrington's ideas were carried to later thinkers, for example Rousseau: see M. Viroli, 'The Concept of Ordre and the Language of Classical Republicanism in Jean-Jaques Rousseau' in A. Pagden (ed.), Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), 160. See also M. Viroli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and 'the Well-Ordered Society' (Cambridge, 1988), 13-16, 24-5.

[56] Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, II, 83; III, 180-1.

[57] Ibid., II, 83-4, 94-6, 130-4, 135; III, 180.

[58] Ibid., III, 33, 36-40.

[59] Ibid., I, 18-19; II, 63-4, 72-3; III, 143, 224.

[60] Ibid., II, 250-4.

[61] Gordon and Trenchard, Independent Whig, 8. See also page xlviii: 'Morality is a social virtue, or rather the mother of social virtues: it wishes and promotes unlimited and universal happiness to the whole world; it regards not a Christian more than a Jew or an Indian, any further than he is a better citizen; and not so much if he is not.' This argument clearly has continuities with Leveller polemics in favour of 'practical Christianity'; see, for example, J. C. Davis, 'The Levellers and Christianity' in B. Manning (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (1973), and 'The Levellers and Religion' in J. F. McGregor and B. Reay, Radical Religion.

[62] Moyle, Works (1726), I, 'Mr Moyle's Charge to the Grand Jury at Liscard April 1706', 156-7.

[63] T. Gordon, The Spirit of Ecclesiasticks, 2. See R. Tuck, Natural Right Theories (Cambridge, 1979), especially 156, 158-9, 174-6 on Barbeyrac and the history of morality. Tuck makes no reference to this early Republican translation of Barbeyrac's work. Note that Gordon's translation received a hostile reply in the form of Z. Grey's The Spirit of Infidelity Detected (1723 and enlarged in 1735). S. B. Liljegren in 'A French Draft Constitution of 1792', 37-8, discusses the favourable reception of Gordon's works in France.

[64] Gordon, Spirit of Ecclesiasticks, 3: 'To give these ideas all the force they are capable of, to make them able to keep their grounds against the passions, and private interests; it is necessary there should be a superior being, a being more powerful than we are, which may compel us to conform ourselves to them invariably in our conduct, that may bind us so, that it may not be in our power to disengage ourselves at pleasure; in a word, that it may lay us under an obligation, properly so called, to follow the light of our Reason. This fear of a divinity, that punishes vice, and rewards virtue, has so great an efficacy.'

[65] Ibid., 3-4, 5-8, 13-15.

[66] Gordon and Trenchard, Independent Whig, xlix, xlv, xlviii, 312-13.

[67] Toland, Nazarenus, v, 67; see also Blount, Oracles of Reason, 199.

[68] Anon., Averroeana, 128, 129, 130, 133; Toland, Primitive Constitution of the Christian Church in Collections, II, 138-9, 140.

[69] Gordon and Trenchard, Cato's Letters, IV, 265-6; Blount, Oracles of Reason, 88-9, 91-3.

[70] Toland, The Second Part of State-Anatomy, 76-8.

[71] Gordon and Trenchard, Cato's Letters, IV, 24-5.

[72] Ibid., II, 113, 291-4.

[73] Gordon and Trenchard, Independent Whig, 58-62, 344-5, 429-439, 440.

[74] Dunn, 'From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: The Break Between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment' in Rethinking Modern Political Theory (Cambridge, 1985), 66-7.

[75] Gordon, Works of Tacitus, III, 222, 224-6, 226-7, 228-30, 245-55. The argument between Anglican and radical over who were the correct and legitimate promoters of virtue extended into the dispute between the High Church Jeremy Collier and John Dennis over the immorality (or not) of the stage. See J. Collier, A Short View of the Immorality of the Stage (1698), which vilifies the corruption of the theatre, and Dennis' reply, The Usefulness of the Stage (1698), which defends the stage as a competent propagator of virtue. Dennis extended this thesis in his The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) which called for a rebirth of poetic virtue. See also Dennis, An Essay on the Operas (1706) in Selected Works, I, 444-71 and C. Gildon in An Apology for Poetry written for Walter Moyle: 'The Ancients termed poesie a more excellent king of philosophy, which should from our childhood inform our lives, and teach us with pleasure, what our manners, our passions, and our actions ought to be' (Miscellaneous Letters and Essays (1694), 20-1).

[76] Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, III, 65. It seems then that the English radicals of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century pre-empted the ideas of the 'high' Enlightenment: see D. Beales, 'Christians and "Philosophes": The Case of the Austrian Enlightenment' in D. Beales, and G. Best (eds.), History, Society and the Churches (Cambridge, 1985), 171-2, citing Diderot: 'Reason is in respect to the philosophe what grace is in respect to the Christian … Civil society is, so to speak, a divinity on earth for [the philosophe]; he worships it …'

[77] J. G. A. Pocock, 'Virtue, Rights and Manners' in Virtue, Commerce and History, 45; see on the juristic tradition, Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, passim.

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