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6

Civil theology

THE HISTORY OF ROMAN RELIGION: HARRINGTON TO MOYLE

Between the 1680s and the 1720s, the Church of England was attacked by writers, as the High Church scholar Thomas Hearne noted, of 'Deistical Republican Principles'. The hierocratic form of religion was rejected: ritual and dogma were replaced by injunctions to virtue. This historical link between religious scepticism and Republican political theory is under-explored. Historians of ideas have tended to view the two categories as mutually exclusive concerns. But to separate religion from politics in this period is a false move. Writers like Toland, Waiter Moyle and John Trenchard were both anticlerical and Republican.[1] Modern scholarship has identified these theorists as operating within a secular idiom.[2] The argument of this corpus is sophisticated but straightforward. The Republicans were a collection of disaffected men who, though variant in their particular applications and refinements of models of political government, shared a collective homogeneity in employing the resources of the secular thought of antiquity. These men, disenchanted with the monarchical form of government, turned <171> to the heritage of classical Greece and Rome (presented either in their original form, or distilled through the alembic of Florentine humanism), and adapted the language and programmes of the pagan past to the pragmatic needs of the times. In stressing their debt to the 'classical republican tradition' the radicals' preoccupation with religious affairs has been sidestepped.

It might be assumed that with such a large body of excellent scholarship there would be little room for further commentary. In particular, the relationship between Republicanism and classical traditions has generated much investigation. Studies on James Harrington, on Henry Neville, on neo-Harringtonianism and on the 'Country' ideologies, have exhumed the influences of Polybius, Cicero and the general relevance of 'Ancient Prudence'. Coupled with this there has been extensive commentary on the political strategies of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Republicanism; the desire for a mixed and balanced constitution, the hostility to parliamentary corruption, the objections to the centralizing tendencies of the Bank of England, and the standing army debate have all been thoroughly documented. Let us consider just one such piece of Republican argument.

In 1700 John Toland, the pantheist, published a complete edition of the works of James Harrington, the Republican. Many churchmen reacted to this publication as a 'seditious attempt against the very being of monarchy, and that there's a pernicious design on foot of speedily introducing a Republican form of government into the Brittanic Islands'. Toland and others denied this revolutionary intent. As Pocock has pointed out, Republicanism was a language rather than a programme. While the polemics of Toland, Moyle, Trenchard and Gordon applauded the Harringtonian hostility to tyrannical and arbitrary government, they prescribed no model of legitimate political authority other than 'free government' and liberty. Toland, in defining the principles of a 'commonwealthsman' insisted that he was not against monarchy, merely its abuse. He wrote: 'Commonwealth (which is the common weal or good) whenever we use it about our own government, we take it only in this sense; just as the word Respublica in Latin is a general word for all free governments.' The intent of the commonwealthsmen was not to eliminate the monarchy but rescue both the king and country from the 'devouring laws of arbitrary power'. Toland deployed Harrington's works as an injunction to settle the monarchy, 'under such wise regulations as are most likely to continue it for ever, consisting of such excellent laws as indeed set bounds to the will of the king, but that render him thereby the more safe, equally binding up his and the subjects hands from unjustly seizing one another's prescribed rights or privileges'.[3] This denial, <172> by the neo-Harringtonians of the 1690s and 1700s, of theoretical and institutional Republicanism poses a serious historiographical problem. The root of this problem lies in the secularist premise of current work. If such men as Toland, Moyle and Trenchard, in rearticulating Harrington's thought, had abandoned the momentum for institutional and political revolution, to what form of change (political, social or religious) were they committed? In its Whiggish way modern scholarship has examined the Republicans as politicians of secularism, a strategy which ignores the practical intent of their intended reforms which were presented in a religious idiom.[4] The emphasis upon the political is, I suspect, a legacy of Victorian scholarship. It is easy for the 'modern' mind to grasp the 'realities', the 'public' nature of politics with its creeds, programmes, dogma and mundane character. 'Religion' for the rational mind, has become margliialized into the internal tabernacle of private belief, without the implications of a public profile.[5]

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The secularist analysis has posed a further scholarly lacuna. We have become comfortable with the obviousness of the connection between deism and Republicanism: men of Harrington, Moyle and Toland's ilk were anticlerical, secular and 'modern'. But the evasion of a serious examination of the relationship between deism and Republicanism renders the theorists of the 1690s and 1700s incoherent. How are we to explain the fact that Harrington and Toland, the apparently modern secularist tolerationists, consistently justify the necessary maintenance of a nationally established Church? The locus classicus of this problem is Harrington's Oceana (1656), to some the original text of modern political science, written with a 'total lack of spiritual content'.[6] However, in his utopian prescription Harrington was committed to a national Church establishment, a theme echoed in Toland and Shaftesbury almost verbatim.[7] In order to unravel this paradox we must examine the meaning of Republican anticlericalism. In this way both problems (the abandonment of programmatic Republicanism and the insistence upon a national Church) can be resolved. The general theme of my argument will be that the Republicans extended the parameters of traditional ecclesiological debate from discussing the rival claims of conflicting imperium and sacerdotium to a fusion of the state and religion, embodied in the classical idea of religio or civil religion.

POLITICAL ANTICLERICALISM: PRIESTS AND DIVINE RIGHT TYRANNY

The major radical objection levelled against the Church was the link between civil and spiritual tyranny. As Matthew Tindal commented, the slavery of the body and the mind were inseparable. A hierocratic society entailed a <174> tyrannical one.[8] Although religion was essential to the state, it could also become a corrupting factor. There was a powerful tradition of objections to clerical influence in affairs of state, epitomized in the thought of Thomas Hobbes, a resource which the Republicans drew upon while objecting to his idea of sovereignty. Hobbes attacked the 'ghostly' authority for challenging the civil power, 'working on mens minds, with words and distinctions, that of them selves signifie nothing'.[9] There was also a Republican anticlericalism found in Harrington's work. Henry Ferne, Archdeacon of Leicester, suggested that Harrington's Oceana followed the anti-Christian model of Hobbes' work. Harrington argued for a radical Erastianism. The church was created by the consent of the people. In his narration of ecclesiastical history Harrington took cause to indict the clergy for usurping this popular right. By scriptural manipulation, in particular the self-interested mistranslation of the words 'ordination' and 'church' the clergy had turned religion into a trade. It was in this context that Harrington was the first person to use the word 'priestcraft' in print.[10]

One of the severest recriminations against the clerical order was its fostering of civil tyranny. The clergy, by false 'metaphysics' and the creation of a de jure divino defence of the monarchy, had elevated tyranny into a type of divinity. This association of the clergy with the ideological defence of civil tyranny was central to the Republican indictment of contemporary religion. One of the most popular and effective discussions can be found in the collaborative work of John Trenchard (1662-1723) and Thomas Gordon (d. 1750), The Independent Whig (20 Jan 1720 to 18 June 1721) and Cato's Letters (5 November 1720 to 27 July 1723). Commentary on these works has dealt with the Machiavellian and neo-Harringtonian analyses of corruption and liberty. Indeed both works addressed contemporary political and economic issues such as the Peerage Bill and the commercial fideism of the South Sea Bubble, but there is also a more general anticlerical <175> dimension.[11] The authors of the Independent Whig and Cato's Letters agreed with Hobbes 'that religion, or the worship of a deity is natural to man', indeed religion was necessary for good government.[12] The priesthood by claiming the existence of a fairy dominion had corrupted this natural inclination. The authors countered the clergy's insistence that 'speculative atheism' was corrosive of civil society, with the charge that the institutionalized 'practical atheism' of the clerical estate was that which both 'spoil'd mens morals and made them bad subjects'.[13] The recurrent theme of both these works was that the clergy by their mysteries, dogma and theologies undermined all principles of reason, liberty and morality.

In Thomas Gordon's important later work, the prefatory discourses to his translation of Tacitus' histories (1728-34), the link between a deviant clergy and a malfunctioning civil government became more visible.[14] The issue was 'the principle of God's appointing and protecting Tyrants'. The complicity between the de jure divino claims of the monarchy and the clergy provoked Gordon's ire. He wrote: 'It is impossible for the hearts of men to contrive a principle more absurd and wicked, than that of annexing divine and everlasting vengeance to the resisting of the most flagrant mischief which can possibly befall the sons of men; yet it has found inventors and vouchers.' Commenting upon the Roman experience, Gordon insisted that the decline of virtue and prosperity was only complete with the deification of the Emperor Augustus, who became an engine of tyranny promoting superstition and 'public slavery'. Implicit within the religious devotion paid to a monarchy was the enforcement of civil servitude, 'for superstition enslaves as effectually as real power, and therefore confers it; nor is tyranny ever so complete as when the chief magistrate is chief pontiff, as were the soldats of Egypt and Bagdad'.[15] Only in a state of 'liberty' could life, property and religion be secure. The idea of religious worship, unless coupled with toleration of belief, could be

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converted into an apparent engine of tyranny and delusion, into a manifest market and commodity for deluders, who whilst they are openly engaging in nothing but gain, and fraud and domineering, and the like very selfish pursuits, all very worldly, have the conscience to preach up self denial, to preach against the world, and to claim successorship to the poor, wandering, holy and disinterested Apostles.

Gordon's theme was that the clergy had managed to usurp a power over the minds of men, and that civil servitude was founded upon this premise.[16]

Gordon was not isolated in maintaining these thoughts. John Toland in his Anglia Libera (1701) argued that while it was 'natural' for every government to have some form of 'public and orderly way' of worshipping God, this was to be placed under the inspection of the civil magistrate. Toland proclaimed with the 'stentorian voice' of liberty, that tyranny had inevitably used religion for devious purposes. The Stuart monarchy was the most recent example: 'they found out a new device to persuade the people by the most awful impressions of religion, and under no less a penalty than eternal damnation, to a non-resistance and passive obedience to the Prince's commands of whatever nature soever.'[17] In his Art of Governing by Parties (1701) Toland continued the theme of the potentially divisive role of religion. The clergy were a persuasive institution and an effective means for the dissemination of authority, 'their being posted more commodiously than any army, one at least in every parish all over the Kingdom'.[18] Toland's complaint was that the Stuart monarchy had erected the principle of 'party' as a means to create and reinforce monarchical absolutism. Particularly effective had been the exploitation of religious differences, 'because it enters more or less into all our other divisions, and has been not only the chiefest, but also the most successful machine of the conspirators against our government, well knowing with what fury men oppose one another when they imagine they are fighting for God, and hazarding the salvation of their souls'.[19] Toland argued that divine right of kings 'was set up at first by a few aspiring clergymen, to ingratiate themselves with weak princes, who had designs inconsistent with the laws'. To conduct government upon such principle was to construct a world of 'chimeras and inconsistence'. Toland suggested that the clergy's claim to establish 'religion' was false, he explained: 'I am satisfied … that a religion which diminishes the wealth or the power of any nation, which injures their bodies or inslaves their conscience, is not the most likely to make the best provision for their souls, <177> and to procure their eternal happiness.'[20] The direct conceptual links between the motors of civil tyranny and deviant religion were forged, a religion which encouraged or provided the foundations for secular discomfort was in Toland's view by definition no religion at all.

The critic, playwright and radical polemicist John Dennis (1657-1734) refuted the claims of the High Church Henry Sacheverell in a similar manner. Sacheverell had argued for a 'political Union' of the de jure divino authorities of the monarchy and the clerical order. Dennis noted in his Danger of Priestcraft (1702) that 'the arbitrary and tyrannical power of the Prince depends upon the illegal impious power of the Priesthood'.[21] Dennis argued that since all government was both 'for and from the people', who had entered into civil society for the defence of their 'rights', that the question must be asked by what means had the people come to give up these rights and subject themselves to the arbitrary will of their rulers. The latter condition was contrary to the purpose of government, and probably a worse condition than the state of nature. The answer was straightforward. The tyrannous power of the king had prevailed upon the 'corrupt part of the clergy to trump up those wretched abominable doctrines of the Jus Divinium, non-resistance, and passive obedience upon the people'.[22]

Dennis' point was that the current practices and beliefs of the clergy were directly contrary to the principles of good government. They simultaneously usurped false rights to the sovereign, while grasping deviant authority to themselves. He exclaimed: 'They support a power in their Kings of cutting the throats of the people, they reserve to themselves the privilege of cutting the throats of their Kings.'[23] In theological terms Dennis suggested that the rule of priestcraft, with its implicit hostility to the principles of liberty and true government, was the rule of Antichrist. In Priestcraft Distinguished from Christianity (1715) Dennis made distinct the 'Priest of God from a Priest of Baal'.[24] His thesis was premised upon the great persuasive authority the clergy had; he explained, 'that the doctrines which the clergy teach to the people, and the examples they give them, have an extraordinary influence upon their thoughts and actions, is evident from experience and from the very reason of the institution of the order'.[25] Dennis' complaint was that the present clergy neither propagated the tenets of Christianity, nor any form of morality. The role of Christian institutions was to establish the rule of Christ, which was that of reason, law and liberty. The rule of Antichrist was <178> opposite to these tenets, and established the 'empire of passion and will'. Rather than following the Christian injunction of charity, the modern priests pursued the principles of self-love and spiritual pride. Thus 'spiritual tyranny' was implicitly integrated with 'temporal tyranny' to create a 'blind and impious obedience' in the people.[26]

As Dennis was certain of the necessary connection between spiritual and civil tyranny, Robert Molesworth in his influential Account of Denmark (1694) presented a similar sociological interpretation. Arbitrary authority invested in the Danish king had been facilitated by the influence the clergy held over the consciences of the people. The clergy and the monarchy had made a mutual 'contract' for their own benefit.[27] He commented: 'The clergy, who always make sure bargains, were the only gainers in this point … as the instruments that first promoted, and now keep the people in a due temper of slavery; the passive obedience principle riding triumphant in this unhappy Kingdom'.[28] Molesworth pointed out that although clerical dominance was traditionally a facet of 'popery', the Church of England also had the potential capacity to create a 'blind obedience' for deviant purposes.

The point should now be apparent. Men such as Toland, Dennis, Molesworth, Trenchard and Gordon were emphatic that secular tyranny was forged in the arena of 'religion'. The notions of de jure divino authority, whether in a secular monarch, or in the clerical order, were mutually reinforcing in their falsity. The Republicans directed their hostility against civil disorder via an assault upon the clerical manipulation of 'religion'. The intention was twofold. The primary assertion was to maintain that arbitrary government was incompatible with 'true religion'.[29] The secondary implication was that any religion which existed under an arbitrary government was deviant. What the clergy of the Church of England upheld as 'Christianity', the Republicans considered as a 'deadly engine in the hands of a tyrant to rivet his subjects in chains'.[30]

Anticlericalism was a crucial part of the radical analysis of the problems of civil government. Modern commentators have usually deduced from this the simplest of equations: that anticlericalism implied irreligion. By attacking the priesthood, men like Dennis, Toland, and Gordon (in the modern and contemporary Anglican interpretation) assaulted all religious principle. John Dennis clearly rebutted such suggestions in drawing a fundamental distinc <179> tion between the natures of 'priestcraft' and 'religion'. He objected strongly to those men who attacked religion qua religion. Even though the attempt of such men was to rid society and religion of priestcraft (which was a just design), they made no plans 'to establish any other religion in the room of that which they would destroy'. All nations and societies needed religion, 'for the religion of every country in which the natives and their forefathers have been educated, and which is antecedent or coeval to most of its laws and customs; whether true or false, is certainly the basis of that country's constitution'. It did not matter whether a national religion was true or false as long as the public doctrine and worship was established for the 'welfare and good government' of the nation.[31] John Toland similarly asserted the integrity of his own religious beliefs. He declared: 'In all the books I ever wrote, there is not one word against religion; but on the contrary, several vindications of its purity and excellency from the superstitious practices and worldly usurpations with which it has been often deform'd, but chiefly by priests'.[32] Toland's only crime was an inveterate hatred of 'priestcraft'. Toland admitted that he held certain unorthodox notions about religious issues, but saw no contradiction in claiming this theological heterodoxy, publicly professed, with a similar public confession of his membership of the established Church.[33] For the modern commentator this appears rather confusing; both Dennis and Toland acknowledged public and established religion, while insisting that it was not necessarily 'true'. Toland could do so while maintaining his opposition to many of its tenets, while Dennis could declare that it was unnecessary whether the public religion was 'true or false'.

FROM ERASTIANISM TO CIVIL THEOLOGY: THE ROMAN EXAMPLE

As an antidote to the modern marginalization of the Republicans' religious opinions it is necessary to explore how they adopted and adapted the traditional language of Erastianism in creating an idea of the national Church as a civil religion. The Reformation debate between the claims of the civil and spiritual powers can be identified in the ambiguity of the idea of the royal supremacy which placed the supervision of external ecclesiastical affairs in civil hands, but still made provision for an independent and de jure divino spiritual ordo. While non-jurors like George Hickes and Charles <180> Leslie premised their clericalist vision on a defence of an independent and superior sacerdotium, the radicals extended the originally mild language of the royal supremacy into a fully blown denial of sacerdos and the absorption of the clerical body into the civil state.

As Hobbes argued, the logic of sovereignty entailed that all authority, both civil and sacerdotal, extended solely from the fount of civil power. Harrington, using different principles, insisted that religious authority could only originate, as did civil authority, in the consent and acclamation of the body of the people. The Republicans acknowledged Hobbes' position that religious authority originated in the lay power, but applauded Harrington's 'democratic' analysis of the nature of this power. Since religion was an issue of personal conviction and conscience, religious authority could only derive from the consent or acknowledgement of the congregation.[34] Harrington had suggested the extreme 'Erastian' position following Cranmer, that the election of officers of the Church was an action similar to the election of civil ministers.[35] As the authors of The Independent Whig argued against those who maintained the divine right of the clergy, 'your Church is a creature of the constitution, and you are creatures of the law'. The idea of sacerdos was a priestly fiction.[36] For these men there was no colour or pretence for the chimerical distinction of ecclesiastical and civil, 'in any other sense than the words, maritime and military' are used to denote different branches of the executive power.[37] These radical arguments were presented with the veneer of Reformation Erastianism.

To the orthodox Anglican this extreme Erastianism implied a cynical manipulation of religion: it was simply a tool of the civil state employed in the needs of prudence and pragmatism, rather than to tend the transcendental 'spiritual' needs of the soul. The 'clergy' were to be merely state servants selected by merit rather than sacerdotal vocation. The religious chalice was <181> drained of its divine draughts, and refilled with the new wine of secular rationalization. While it is true that the Republicans launched an assault upon the clerical order, on its wealth, on its political entanglements and corruption, and ultimately upon the very idea of a separate caste of religious experts, all this was done in the name of 'religion'. The religious nature of this enterprise has been rejected by both Anglicans and modern scholarship. The arguments of both the defenders of hierocracy and of modern commentators have been premised upon the mutually exclusive natures and claims of 'religion' and 'policy'. The position was, as Henry Fletcher suggested, how could 'policy and piety both lie in a bed, and yet not touch one another?'[38] The religious policy of the Republicans has usually been condemned as 'politick religion' in an attempt to taint their schemes with the dylogistic model of Machiavelli. The orthodox usage of the word 'religion' during this period held certain incantations: primarily it gestured towards the tenets and institutions of Christianity. The 'truth' of Christianity hegemonized the value of the word 'religion'; the social implications of this usage were the propagation of a set of divine principles by a clerical body. Implicit in the use of the word was the apparatus of sacerdotalism: religion implied priest. In its orthodox construction the meaning of religion was collapsed into the tenets of Christianity; the beliefs of the latter were based upon a notion of the 'other world', upon truths defined not in terms of the world, or society, but by a spiritual determinant. In order to appreciate the Republican meaning of the word 'religion' we have to recognize that there was (and is) no necessary connection between the persuasive content of the term 'religion' and the claims for the veracity of Christianity. It was the commonplace assumption of the complete coincidence of the meanings of the terms 'religion' and 'Christianity' that the Republicans attempted to dissolve. In a similar manner, we as modern observers have to shed our hostility to the usage of the word 'religion' within a temporal and social context.[39]

One of the best illuminations of the Republican idea of the value and function of religion can be found in the traditions, both intellectual and historical, which they promoted. Antiquity and the canons of ancient prudence provided not only political ideas, but also beliefs about religion. <182> Men such as Toland, Neville, Harrington, Molesworth and Moyle all insisted upon the importance of reading the classical works Hobbes had proscribed in Leviathan. The 'classics' were ubiquitous in the education of the literate of the period. Editions of the works of antiquity were available in both original languages and competent translations; the works of Cicero, Aristotle, Polybius, Plutarch, Tacitus and Plato were commonplace.[40] Robert Molesworth commented:

The books that are left us of the ancients (from whence as fountains, we draw all that we are now masters of) are full of doctrines, sentences, and examples exhorting to the conservation or recovery of the public liberty, which was once valued above life. The heroes there celebrated are for the most part such as had destroyed or expelled tyrants; and though Brutus be generally declaimed against by modern school boys, he was then esteemed the true pattern and model of exact vertue.[41]

Molesworth complained that the modern educators, the priests, were too concerned with elegance and style, rather 'than the matters contained within them'. He considered the education of the youth as 'the very foundation stones of the publick liberty'. To allow education to be manipulated by a caste whose interest was opposed to the public benefit was detrimental. The immediate necessity was for education to follow the ancient pattern and to be administered by the philosophers rather than the clergy.[42] John Toland reinforced this notion in his Cicero Illustratus (1712). He adduced 'that the whole, or at least the greatest part of the progress we make in eloquence and politicks, is owing to the Greek and Latin authors, whose manners in their <183> books (as it were speaking from their tombs) did formerly and do still give the universe inimitable lessons of refin'd speaking of the Art of government, and of the most polished as well as the most virtuous Regulations of manners, all illustrated and confirmed by an infinite number of examples'.[43] Toland's work attempted to raise a subscription to aid his intended publication of Cicero's complete works with a critical apparatus suitable for the general reader. He feared that the way Cicero was taught in school meant he was ill-appreciated. Toland excoriated, 'that preposterous method of putting the works of Cicero at random into the hands of raw schoolboys [which] may be counted among the reasons why many men conceive such false notion of this divine author, and almost tremble at his name remembering the many lashes they have received from their dull pedagogues upon his account'.[44]

Walter Moyle, appreciated by both Montesquieu and Edward Gibbon for his knowledge of antiquity, lauded the lessons of the classical writers. He wrote in 1698: 'I study nothing but the Roman history and the constitution of their government.' Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon were amongst the myriad of ancient writers commended for their 'wonderful sense of religion'. Moyle had read the entire corpus of classical literature in the original tongues, but had refused to study any literature after the fourth century. The stories of ancient Greece and Rome contained 'useful treasures' to be put to contemporary use.[45] The bulk of Moyle's work was either in the form of translations from, or dissertations upon, the classics; his work An Essay Upon the Roman Government is characteristic. He also translated Xenophon's discourse upon the revenue of Lacedaemon as a direct commentary upon the fiscal policies of the 1690s. The satirical works of Lucian were published as an assault upon superstition, manifest in both the absurd ceremonies of pagan religion, and such contentious Christian dogmas as the Trinity.[46]

One of the men of antiquity most consistently applauded by the Freethinkers and Republicans was Marcus Tullius Cicero.[47] Montesquieu wrote in <184> his Discours sur Cicéron (1716): 'Cicéron est, de tous les anciens, celui qui a eu le plus de merité personnel, et a qui j'aimerois mieux ressembler.' The desire to identify oneself with the orator of Rome was prevalent amongst the Republicans. Walter Moyle suggested that Andrew Fletcher was the 'Cicero' of the Country Party.[48] John Toland, writing to his patron Robert Molesworth on his decision not to serve in Parliament any longer, compared Molesworth's retirement to the seven years' inactivity of Cicero. Toland hoped that just as Cicero's seclusion from political activity had resulted in all those 'Incomparable books' that 'in the like manner, my Lord, that excellent work, wherein you have made such progress, and which seems to resemble so nearly Cicero's De Republica, will be a nobler task, and more useful to mankind, than any senatorial efforts'.[49] Locke had recommended Cicero's De Inventore and De Officiis in his treatise on education as essential to the study of ethics and oratory. Cicero was honoured in the pantheon constructed by Anthony Collins in his Discourse on Freethinking (1713). Indeed Collins had prepared his own translations of De Natura Deorum and De Divinatione. Cicero's membership of the society of Freethinkers was not uncontended. While Collins attempted to assert that Cicero held no belief in the immortality of the soul, the more orthodox men of the time, the clerics Samuel Clarke, Richard Bentley and Bishop Berkeley, attempted to integrate Cicero within a Christian framework.[50] The ancient past was not just <185> considered as an academic influence, but as a living seedbed of moral authority.

In De Natura Deorum Cicero subjected Roman religion to careful analysis presenting the various Epicurean and Stoic arguments about the nature and function of religion. One of the crucial distinctions made in the work was between the notions of religio and superstitio. Both were forms of religious worship. Superstitio was the formalistic worship premised upon the 'vain fear of the Gods', religio was devotion which resulted from a pious adoration of God.[51] The former was rejected because it performed no useful function for society, while religio was premised upon principles that supported the unity of society. During the discussion of the variant doctrines, and explanations of the gods of the Roman Republic, Cotta the Sceptic had suggested, 'totam de Diis immortalibus opinionem fictam esse ab hominibus sapientibus Republicae casa: ut quos ratio non posset eos ad officlum religio duceret'.[52] The implication was that Roman theology was a fictive system, calculated to wield an influence over those who could not be restrained from doing ill through the simple exercise of reason: religio was an invention of the politicians.

While Cicero in De Divinatione revealed a more explicit disbelief in the ceremonies of Roman religion, this did not imply that he argued for the end of such ritual. The work dealt at length with Roman divination and augury. Cicero acting as a critic of these practices nevertheless warned against the danger of falling either into 'blasphemous impiety', or 'old women's superstition'.[53] In Cicero's opinion divination could have no basis either in art or nature. The practices were 'mere superstitious practices, wisely invented to impose on the ignorant'.[54] Cicero defended the institution of the diviners 'for the sake of their influence on the minds of the common people', and the interests of the state.[55] He argued that whilst one might criticize the science <186> of soothsaying in private 'the interest of religion and the state' required them to be publicly acknowledged.[56]

This Ciceronian notion of a civil theology or religio was consciously employed by the Republican theorists. The radical Anthony Collins had made personal translations of both works. The founder of seventeenth-century Republicanism, James Harrington, had applauded the Roman's works. In Oceana, Cicero's 'most excellent Book De Natura Deorum' is commended, even though it overthrew the validity of the national religion.[57] Harrington commended the Ciceronian model of religion above the 'modern prudence' of the clergy, which resembled more the 'shrieking of the lapwing' than the voice of truth. Cicero's work upon divination was also applauded by Harrington. He commented:

By the way it has been a maxim with legislators not to give check to the present superstition, but to make the best use of it as that which is always the most powerful with the people; otherwise tho' Plutarch was interested in the cause, there is nothing plainer than Cicero in his book De Divinatione has made it, that there was never anything such as an Oracle, except in the cunning of Priests.[58]

It is important to note that the legislator Archeon of Oceana is explicitly modelled upon the pattern of the ancient legislators Numa Pompilius, Lycurgus and Solon (who were lauded by Cicero), with the implication that religion in Oceana was to have the same functional characteristics as religio in the ancient states.[59]

WALTER MOYLE, NEO-HARRINGTONIANISM AND NUMA POMPILIUS

The most extensive and coherent commentary applauding the Roman model of religion was Walter Moyle's (1672-1721) Essay on The Roman Government, a work written and circulated in manuscript form in the late 1690s and first published posthumously in the 1726 collection of his unpublished works <187> edited by Thomas Sergeant.[60] Moyle was educated at Exeter College, Oxford although he did not sit for his degree. Between 1695 and 1698 he represented Saltash in the Commons. As a parliamentarian Moyle was identified as an 'Old Whig' being vocal upon such issues as the Place Bills, the Standing Army debates, issues on public welfare and the state of the Royal Navy. His political radicalism can be identified in his collaboration with John Trenchard on the polemical An Argument against Standing Armies (1698). Moyle, a frequenter of diverse coffee houses such as Maynwaring's in Fleet Street, the Grecian at the Temple, and Will's in Covent Garden, associated with such radicals as John Dennis, John Trenchard, Anthony Fletcher and Henry Neville, as well as the dramatists William Congreve and John Dryden. It was in this coffee house company that Moyle picked up his disgust of the clergy. Although Moyle was a staunch parliamentarian who held the liberty of his country close to his heart, he was acknowledged by his peers first and foremost as a man of extensive erudition.

From an examination of Moyle's extant correspondence it is apparent that his scholarly interests were many and varied. While he corresponded upon 'dramatical criticism' with John Dennis, or runic inscriptions, ancient monuments, Roman medals, druidical stones, ornithology and meteorological phenomena, his main interest and passion was the study of ancient history. As his friend Anthony Hammond declared: 'His thoughts were rather turned upon making the best advantages by reading, especially in history, from which he collected the forms, constitutions, and the laws of government.'[61] Moyle's reading was focused upon the history of antiquity, although later in his life he became fascinated with the history of early Christianity.[62] Although Moyle completed excellent and important translations and commentaries upon various classical themes and issues, his most important work for its commentary upon the role of religion in Republican thought is the Essay on Roman Government.[63]

<188>

Moyle has been classified as part of the neo-Harringtonian resurgence of the 1690s. The Essay on Roman Government has been noted as an important work for the transmission of 'a continuing classical tradition' to the eighteenth century.[64] Little attempt, however, has been made to examine the Essay in any detail, and in particular the nature and tenor of the Harringtonianism contained in the work.[65]

The Essay, composed in two unequal parts, was written by 1699. The context of the work is clearly Harringtonian, being concerned to discuss the causes and alterations in the Roman state from limited monarchy to oligarchy. The conceptual tool employed in this narrative was the Harringtonian notion that the balance of empire followed the balance of property. While accepting the validity of this interpretation, I wish to suggest that there was a further Harringtonian dimension contained in the Essay which deals specifically with the role of religion in the state. This discussion is found in Moyle's exposition of the actions of the legislator Numa Pompilius. This commendatory presentation of Roman state religion informs us in detail of the role religion and anticlericalism play in Republican thought.

Moyle had been encouraged in his hostility towards the clerical order by such men as Neville and Trenchard. In his Essay upon the Lacedaemonian Government (1698) he blamed infringements upon liberty on clerical manipulation; he wrote: 'I must tell you plainly, that the clergy have for a great number of years contributed chiefly to perplex the notions and muddle the brains of the people about our English constitution'.[66] In the work upon the Roman government he expanded his hostility into a fully fledged indictment of the 'modern policy' which allowed the hierocratic caste to usurp a 'supremacy, or at least an independency on the civil power over half of Europe'.[67] Moyle had referred to specifically Harringtonian vocabulary to discuss issues of religion. For the Romans, religion 'was a part of their policy, so their clergy likewise were a part of their laity, and interwoven into the general interest of the State; not a separate independent body from the rest of the community, nor any considerable balance of the civil government; but settled upon such an institution, as they could have neither interest nor power to act against the public good'. It was Moyle's purpose in Part I of the Essay to elucidate and recommend this ancient prudence.

It was the great genius of Numa Pompilius (715-673 BC) to construct a religious institution that was the 'wisest and most politic system' ever created in its efficacy and influence over the morals of the people and its application <189> to 'all the ends of civil society'.[68] Numa was able to combine a nationally established Church that was reliant upon the civil state with a liberty of individual belief and worship. For Moyle, Numa's creation was an example of the benefits of a complete Erastianism. The Senate held sway over all affairs of religion.[69] Moyle cited Cicero, one of his favourite authorities after that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 'cujus est summa potestas omnium rerum'. The priesthood was not separate from the laity, 'they were by their original constitution all chosen out of the nobility, and afterwards out of the richest and greatest men of the commonwealth: and consequently had such an interest in the civil state, as they would not sacrifice to their particular order.'[70]

One of the crucial benefits of this Erastian scheme was the provision of tolerance for diverse beliefs. Although Numa was cautious of introducing new rites and forms into the national religion this did not imply that private beliefs were to be supervised. Indeed, anyone who asked the Senate for permission might 'celebrate the mysteries in private'. There was a 'universal liberty in religion'; persecution was non-existent. This was the pattern of religion Moyle applauded and wished to see inform the practices of the Church in his day. As Moyle pointed out, the tolerance of Numa's regime had encouraged the expansion of his empire.[71]

Moyle's recommendation was of a national religion calculated to be part of state policy and 'subservient to all the great ends of government and society' with enough latitude to tolerate a diversity of privately articulated theological opinions and rites. Moyle not only presented Numa's ecclesiological prescriptions, but also applauded his theology. Numa proposed a simple and rational civil theology: it was the very simplicity of the creed that led it to be a unifying force in society rather than a divisive one. As Moyle commented: 'the common principles of religion all mankind agree in; and the belief of these doctrines a lawgiver may venture to enjoin; but he must go no further if he means to preserve a uniformity in religion.' Numa enjoined belief in no follies, absurdities or contradictions which might ultimately be the cause of schism and sedition. He instituted two simple articles of belief; '1st that the Gods were authors of all good to mankind. 2nd, that to obtain this good the gods were to be worshipped; in which worship, the chief of all was to be innocent, good and just.'[72]

In Moyle's presentation of Numa's credal minimalism we can see a direct commentary upon the theological distractions of the 1690s about the nature of the Trinity. Moyle, following the distinction between an esoteric and <190> exoteric philosophy, argued that there was a dual conception of the nature of God (a popular and a philosophical one). It was only to conform to the 'popular opinion' that men spoke of the godhead as a plurality. The notion of the 'absolute and perfect unity of the Godhead' was too refined for the people who had become accustomed to polytheistic notions due to the 'Interest of priests'. For Numa and Moyle the idea of the immortality of the soul was regarded rather as a 'problem of philosophy than an article of divinity', although (citing Polybius) Moyle argued that popular belief ought to be encouraged for its usefulness to the state. The intention of Numa's civil theology was not abstruse speculation but the promotion of virtue, justice and the love of the nation.[73]

Moyle recommended Numa's civil theology to advance the prerogatives of a civil religion against the clericalist alternative of the Church of England. It is my claim that this advocacy of a civil theology is directly indebted to James Harrington's suggestions in Oceana (1656), Pian Piano (1657) and the Prerogatives of Popular Government (1658). As I have already noted, Moyle's Essay was composed within the parameters of a specifically Harringtonian enterprise: to explain the transition from limited monarchy to oligarchy. The causal explanation for this shift in the type of government was in terms of a structural alteration in the distribution of property. This is straightforward Harringtonianism. The specific cause of this transition was, according to Moyle, the rise of priestcraft. Implicit in this description of priestcraft was the advance of the clerical order to a state of independent wealth and dominion.[74]

Moyle followed Harrington explicitly in his analysis of 'power'. He wrote: 'Power is of two kinds, imaginary or real. Imaginary power is authority founded upon opinion. Real power is founded upon dominion and property.'[75] Moyle's point was that the Roman clergy (and by implication any Church establishment) should have little 'Imaginary power' and no 'real power'. It was Moyle's use of the Harringtonian notion of 'power' based upon opinion which was to be his crucial weapon in the arraignment of priestcraft. Moyle denied any supernatural warrant for the clerical order; the authority of the priest was usually erected upon 'opinion' and 'a persuasion in the people of their divine mission and designation; or from a reverence to their mystic ceremonies and institutions; or for their pretended empire over the consciences of mankind'. Moyle thus proscribed any independent sacerdos from the mechanics of his civil religion. Moyle also denied the clergy any right to possession of 'real power'. He explained; 'Authority founded on dominion, results to the clergy either from a right of supremacy <191> over the Church, or a legal Jurisdiction and coercive power over the actions, the lives, and the conduct of the laity.'[76] But the case of the Roman Church clearly argued against clerical possession of property. Citing Cicero's De Divinatione, Moyle argued that the Roman clergy were originally from the higher social orders lest the dignity and authority of religion might be prostituted to mercenary ends. Initially the clergy were not even supported by voluntary oblations. As Moyle commented: 'It may seem strange to our age, where the appearance of Godliness is such a great gain, that the Roman clergy should serve their gods for nought.'[77] It was with the subversion of the commonwealth that the clergy became salaried, this being part of imperial policy to undermine liberty. Moyle noted that tyranny and priestcraft seemed to go hand in hand.

In the Essay on Roman Government Moyle rearticulated the Harringtonian recommendation of the civil theology of ancient Rome, proposed in Oceana (1656). It was in the development of the idea of civil theology that such men as Moyle, Toland and Tindal could syncretize the claims of a national Church with the rights of the individual conscience. The vision Moyle distilled from the patterns of ancient prudence was an extreme Erastianism: the Church was simply an instrument of the civil state employed to facilitate a rational and moral society.

Montesquieu thought Walter Moyle had understood Roman religion perfectly. In his Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion presented at the Bordeaux Academy in 1716 he echoed Moyle's work with precision. He wrote: 'Ce ne fut ni la crainte ni la piété qui établit la religion chez les Romains, mais la nécessité ou sont toutes les sociétés d'en avoir une.'[78] For Montesquieu the difference between the Romans and other peoples was 'que les Romains firent la religion pour l'état, et les autres l'état pour la religion'. Legislators such as Numa, Romulus and Tatius, 'asservirent les dieux à la politique'. The Romans established toleration as a foundation stone of civil security.[79] The appeal to the exemplar of Roman <192> religion was ubiquitous as a means to undermine the claims of the modern priesthood. The simple coda of the argument was that 'religion' was only valuable in the service of the state.

Classical notions of religion and its function were both a source and a determinant of Republican ideas about the role of religion in society. The idea of civil theology was based upon the distinction between the commonly accepted popular religion, and the 'true' set of propositions which only a community of wise men could comprehend. The truth or falsity of the state religion was to be determined not by the rectitude of its doctrines, but by its efficacy in creating a certain type of society. Supplementary to this was the attack upon superstition and priestcraft. Religion employed in the correct manner was valid regardless of its content; however religion which became the tool of private interest, either of civil or priestly tyranny, was anathema. The other side of Republican civil religion was the private worship of true pantheism neatly displayed in John Toland's personal religion.[80]

Toland was, and still is, an elusive figure; the extensive range of his work, both printed and covert manuscripts, presents bewilderment to many of his commentators. Many historians have attempted to categorize him, to assign him a particular ideology, to present a coherent description of his work. The majority have simply relapsed into asserting he was a hired hack, a pragmatist, a man intrigued by his own brilliance in search of profit and place.[81] Toland's infatuation with Cicero provides a powerful insight into his character and intentions. Throughout his work Toland makes constant reference to and citation of Cicero; extracts directly quoted form pivotal passages in many of his works. Toland's use of Cicero extends beyond the acknowledgement of intellectual influence, to a fervent evangelism to spread his mentor's philosophy. In Clito (1700), Toland, following Cicero De <193> Oratore (11.9), extolled the role of the orator and the power of language to reinstate reason in the public sphere.[82]

In his Pantheisticon (1720), one of his most unguarded works published originally in Latin, but translated into English posthumously, the ideas and words of Cicero provide the main theme of the work. Biblical text was replaced with extended citation of sacred Ciceronian scripture.[83] The Ciceronian distinction between religio and superstitio, and of the necessity for a popular religion, formed the central framework of John Toland's religious thought. The title page of Adeisdaemon (The Hague, 1709) was a citation of De Divinatione (11.57) 'Ut religio propaganda etiam, quae est juncta cum cognitione naturae; sic superstitionis omne eliciendae' declarative of Toland's intent to promote the cause of true religion and uproot superstition. In Origines Judicae a similar intention had been pronounced, again using Cicero as a source. The latter work saw Toland explicitly applauding the Ciceronian description of a state religion, he wrote; 'Errabat enim (ut alibi scribit Cicero) multis in res antiquas, quam vel usu iam, vel doctrina, vel vetustate, immortatum videmus; retinetur autem et ad opinionem vulgi, et ad magnes utilitates Reipublicae, nos, religios, disciplina, jus augurum, collegi autoritas.'[84] The paramount tribute Toland paid to the memory of Cicero was in his Cicero Illustratus (1712) where the author insisted that he held Cicero in the same regard as the latter did Plato. The work was an attempt to encourage popular interest in Cicero's thought; the obfuscations of scholarly texts were to be transcended by a vernacular translation replete with detailed biographical and explanatory notes.[85]

Toland in Clidophorus (1720) and Pantheisticon (1720) gave a succinct account of the classical idea of the distinction between a popular and a philosophical religion. Following Varro, Plutarch and Cicero, Toland maintained that for different levels of intelligence there were different types of <194> knowledge. The mass of the people could only be instructed by the use of myth and fable; the wise alone could comprehend the pure reason of philosophy. Although he feared the potential manipulation of the priests, Toland insisted upon the necessity of a public and civil religion. In Pantheisticon he presented the world with his private religion. He wrote, 'we must talk with the people, and think with the philosophers'.[86] If the public religion was overtly corrupted the wise must retire in secret to practise their worship away from the eyes of the masses.[87] The injunction of Toland's society was 'let us detest all priestcraft', the participants were to reject the popular absurdities and 'the inventions of crafty knaves' and turn to philosophy as a guide to life.[88] Cicero was cited incessantly on this point for, as Toland acknowledged, the society was completely indebted to his thought.[89] Cicero's De Officiis provided the society with a 'distinct, and exact idea of the best and most accomplished man'. Toland considered himself and his fellow pantheists to be the 'mysts and hierophants' of nature, an alternative priesthood to the contemporary clergy.[90]

Many commentators upon Toland's religious thought have dismissed his schemes as ludicrous extravagance. But these ideas were not the products of an inflamed imagination: they were the logical outcome of Toland's adherence to the tenets of classical religion. Many commentators, both contemporary and modern, have been unhappy with his continued and repeated assertion of his belief in Christianity, and the Church of England: he could only be a canting hypocrite. A man who attacked the mysteries of religion, the divinity of the priesthood and the doctrines of Christianity could surely not be credibly thought an orthodox member of the established Church. If, however, we consider Toland, as he did himself, as a Ciceronian philosopher, we can comprehend this apparent contradiction. Toland accepted the sacrament of communion as a token of the membership of the national Church; he considered it not as a canal of grace, but as a 'public sign whereby we commemorate the death of Jesus Christ, the founder of our religion, engage ourselves to obey his laws, and declare our hopes to enjoy the benefits of the same'.[91] As a Ciceronian Toland was bound to maintain the <195> established religion; similarly he had a duty to attack the encroachments of superstition. As he wrote to Leibnitz in 1714, it was important to distinguish carefully 'religion from superstition; lest the one be unwarily involv'd in the censure of the other'.[92] Working within the same framework, Toland was able to applaud the practice of occasional conformity, indicted by the High Church as indicative of the hypocrisy of dissent, as the 'most Charitable, generous and Christian practice that can be'.[93]

The overriding theme of this tradition was of the necessity 'to accommodate religion to politick affairs'.[94] The premise of this injunction was that the tenets of public religion were to be calculated in terms of the needs of human society, and the vagaries of human nature. The transcendent principles of divinity were replaced by the injunctions of temporal comfort. The clerical estate should evangelize the state ideology; the dogmas and doctrines of religion, constructed of myth and fable, were calculated for easy popular digestion. While true religion had the capacity to direct and shape the structure and mores of society towards social harmony, priestcraft introduced discontent. Since the power of religion was so effective, one had to ensure that it was employed to 'good' ends. The objection to contemporary religion was that the clergy made use of 'religion' not for social benefit, but for their own private aggrandizement.

[1] Hearne, Remarks and Collections, II, 94. One work which has gestured towards the connection between hostility towards the Church of England, and political radicalism is F. Venturi's excellent Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1971), 1-70; also his Italy and the Enlightenment (1972), chapter 3, 'Radicati's Exile in England and Holland', 63-103; M. A. Goldie, 'The Civil Religion of James Harrington' in A. Pagden (ed.), Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987).

[2] The canonical texts are Z. Fink, The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1945); C. Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthsmen (Harvard, 1959), and (ed.), Two English Republican Tracts (Cambridge, 1969); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), chapters 9-10, and his 'Introduction' to The Works of Harrington (Cambridge, 1977). See also B. Worden, 'Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution' in A. Lloyd-Jones, V. Pearl and B. Worden (eds.), History and Imagination (1981): here, importantly, Worden does address the relationship between religion and politics in Republican thought during the Interregnum (see especially 193-5). As Worden notes (at 195): 'A fuller study of the classical republicans would dwell on the limits, as well as on the extent, of their rationalism.' This book, in dealing with the Republicanism of the late seventeenth century intends to do just this. The most recent discussion is J. Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic 1623-1677 (Cambridge, 1988).

[3] Toland, State-Anatomy (1717), 10; Toland (ed.), Oceana of James Harrington and His Other Works, cited as The Works of Harrington (1700), Preface, vii. See also Toland, Vindicius <172> Liberius (1702), 128; 'I declare by the word commonwealth no pure democracy, nor any particular form of government, but an independent community where the commonweal or good of all indifferently is design'd and pursu'd, let the form be what it will.' Note, in State-Anatomy Toland rejected the title of 'democratick Commonwealthsman' which he identified with 'licentiousness': Toland insisted he upheld 'liberty' and a 'government of laws enacted for the common good of all the people', 12-14. Toland, Anglia Libera, 92; Toland, The Art of Governing by Parties, 31; and Robert Molesworth's translation of Francis Hotman's French treatise Francogallia (1721). See Toland's Comments (Collections, II, 339) on the biased reception of his editions of Harrington and Milton: 'This was reckon'd a public service, but rewarded only with the public applauses of such as approv'd the undertaking; while the other side had the most specious pretext imaginable to represent me, what yet in their sense I was not, a most violent republican.' Note, in general Toland's motivation was not simply political - as his biographer wrote in the 'Abstract of the Life of John Toland' in Toland's Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning (1820), 42, that it was his purpose, 'to render civil government consistent with the inalienable rights of mankind; and to reduce Christianity to that pure, simple, and unpompous system, which Christ and his Apostles established'.

[4] The term 'secularists' was not coined until the 1840s: see OED entry. Robbins described the 'Republicans' as 'anticlerical and freethinking', Two Republican Tracts, 49. J. G. A. Pocock comments: 'It is part of the intellectual transformation of the age that Toland the anticlerical and quasi-Republican was also Toland the Deist and secularist, systematic foe of the Christian prophetic structure on which typology and apocalyptic depended. The connections between deism, republicanism, and millenarianism at the beginning of the eighteenth century are complex and await unravelling' (Works of Harrington, 143).

[5] The crucial issue in contention here is the interpretation of religious belief. Modern writers have tended to draw a conceptual distinction between what they would term theology and ideology; 'Ideologies' deal exclusively with secular activities, while theology remains cloistered in multi-various private languages. Religion may have been defused in modern Western society as a coherent and dynamic force, but this is no excuse for treating it as such an anaemic quantity in past societies. Our conception of religious belief today is determined by the notion of subjectivity; religious belief is a form of private self-expression, at worst a mere hobby. Religion for the early modern period was not a question of 'belief', with its implications in modern usage as something peculiar to the individual. Religion was not an isolated opinion about the corporality of Christ, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, or the nature of ordination; it was a culturally dominant language, a co-ordinating matrix in which ideas about social reality were conceived and debated. See F. Jameson, 'Religion and Ideology' in F. Barker et al. (eds.), 1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century (Essex, 1981).

[6] G. P. Gooch and H. Laski, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge, 1954), 249, 'a markedly secular spirit may be noticed throughout his works'; C. Blitzer, An Immortal Commonwealth (Yale, 1970), 166, applauds 'the substantial correctness of Gooch's characterisations: His [Harrington's] interests, his convictions, and his habits of thought were all essentially secular. Surely the fact that these writings on religion are extensive can no more be taken as evidence of their author's alleged spirituality than can the fact that Hobbes devoted almost half of his Leviathan to the same subject'; J. Shklar, 'Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington', American Political Science Review 53 (1959), 684. See also F. Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli (1964), 204: 'The theme of this whole work has been the retreat from God in the realm of politics … a totally secular analysis of history and politics.'

[7] See Harrington, Works (1700), 58-9 on the notion of private and public religion. These phrases are cited in John Toland's State Anatomy (1717), 27-8 'for as the conviction of a mans private conscience, produces his private religion, so the conviction of the national conscience, or of the majority, must everywhere produce a National religion'. See also Toland, Vindicius Liberius (1702), 107-15 and Anglia Libera, 94; and the third Earl of Shaftesbury, A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, 16-17, in Characteristicks. See also C. Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (1972), chapter 10, 'James Harrington and the People', 189-303. Note page 298, where Hill points out that Harrington wished to combine toleration with a national Church establishment.

[8] Tindal, Rights of the Christian Church, 268, 275.

[9] Hobbes, Leviathan, 370. See also William Temple, 'Of Health and Long Life' in The Complete Works (2 volumes, 1720), I, 278: 'Now 'tis certain, that as nothing damps or depresses the spirits like great subjection or slavery, either of body or mind; so nothing nourishes, revives and fortifies them like great liberty.' For general discussions of de jure divino notions of kingship, see J. N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (New York, 1965), and Sommerville, Politics and Ideology.

[10] See Pian Piano in Pocock, Works of Harrington, 372. Note that M. Tindal, Rights of The Church, Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, and J. Toland, The Primitive Constitution of the Christian Church employ both Harrington's Erastian model of the primitive Church and his philological criticism. Harrington's works are scattered with ironic anticlerical remarks: see, for example, 'an ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of clergy', Pocock, Works (Oceana), 308-9, the same remark is in Pian Piano, 381. See also Pocock, Works, 382: 'shake the yoke of the priest' and 438, 530.

[11] J. G. A. Pocock does allude to the anticlerical tenor of these works. See Machiavellian Moment, 475-6 for a discussion of the links between Puritanism, Republicanism, and deism. My work intends to give this speculation a fuller treatment.

[12] Trenchard and Gordon, Independent Whig (1721), 321-2, citing Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 12.

[13] Trenchard and Gordon, Independent Whig, 84-6, 324, 333.

[14] These prefatory discourses were translated into French in 1794. The Independent Whig was also translated into French by the materialist Baron d'Holbach in 1767. Gordon's anticlericalism is also evident in his manuscript history of England, see BL Add. 20780. For a general discussion of Gordon, see J. M. Bullock, Thomas Gordon the Independent Whig (Aberdeen, 1918); J. A. W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property (Montreal, 1983), 7-42 has an interesting discussion of Gordon and Trenchard's work in relation to Tacitus, but eschews the anticlerical elements in their polemics. See also O. Ranum, 'D'Alembert, Tacitus, and the Political Sociology of Despotism', Transactions of the Fifth International Congress of the Enlightenment 2 (Oxford, 1981), and J. N. Shklar, 'Jean D'Alembert and the Rehabilitation of History', JHI 42 (1981).

[15] Gordon, The Works of Tacitus (4 volumes, 1737), I, 100, 104, 133, 178.

[16] Ibid., III, 6, 220. Note also that Harrington defined 'absolute monarchy' in religious terms: see Toland, Works of Harrington, 507.

[17] Toland, Anglia Libera, 95, 181-3. Note that Toland (Anglia Libera, 26) inverted the de jure divino rhetoric by insisting that popular approbation was 'the only divine right of all magistracy, for the voice of the people is the voice of God'.

[18] J. Toland, Art of Governing, 24. Note that this is to the CUL classmark Syn. 7.76.24.11

[19] Ibid., 19.

[20] Toland, State-Anatomy, II, 20.

[21] Dennis, Danger of Priestcraft, 16. On Dennis see the introduction to his Works (Baltimore, 1950); H. G. Paul, John Dennis, His Life and Criticism (New York, 1911); J. Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York, 1949).

[22] Dennis, Danger of Priestcraft, 16.

[23] Ibid., 17.

[24] Dennis, Priestcraft Distinguished, Preface, Sig. Av.

[25] Ibid., Sig. Ar.

[26] Ibid., 4, 5, 19, 23.

[27] R. Molesworth, Account of Denmark, 55, passim.

[28] Ibid., 74.

[29] See Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, 290-303.

[30] Trenchard and Gordon, Cato's Letters, II, 265. Religion under the rule of tyranny was the epitome of superstition, it was 'wild whimsies, delusive phantoms, and ridiculous dreams'. The human soul under such a system was degraded and defaced with 'slavish and unmanly fears; to render it a proper object of fraud, grimace, and imposition; and to make mankind the ready dupes of gloomy impostors, and the tame slaves of raging tyrants. For, servitude established in the mind is best established' (Cato's Letters, II, 291).

[31] Dennis, Vice and Luxury Publick Mischiefs, 78, 103. See also Harrington, A System of Politics: 'As not this language, nor that language, but some language; so not this religion, nor that religion, yet some religion is natural to every nation' (Pocock, Works of Harrington, 838).

[32] Toland, State-Anatomy, 21.

[33] Ibid., 22-3; see also Anglia Libera, 99. For Toland's credo see Collections, II, 302. See also Toland's definition of 'faith', 'which is the internal participation of the divine nature, irradiating the soul; and externally benefiting in beneficence, justice, sanctity, and those other virtues by which we resemble God, who is himself all goodness' (Nazarenus, v-vi).

[34] See Harrington, Pian Piano (1657), and Part II of The Prerogative of Popular Government (1658): for a discussion of this debate, see Pocock, 'Introduction', Works of Harrington, 67-90. See also Tindal's Rights, passim.

[35] Pocock, Works of Harrington, 519: 'And why is not ordination in the Church or Commonwealth of Christ as well a political thing as it was in the Churches or Commonwealths of the Jews or of the Heathens? Why is not the election of officers in the Church as well a political thing as election of officers in the State?'

[36]

Trenchard and Gordon, Independent Whig, xxix, 43, 45. The authors of The Independent Whig were vociferous in their Erastianism, citing Erastus at length:

that every state had the same authority of modelling their ecclesiastical as civil government; that the Gospel gave no preheminance, or authority to Christians over one another, but that everyman alike (who had suitable abilities) was qualified to execute all the duties and offices of their most Holy religion; and that it is a matter of prudence and convenience to appoint particular persons to officiate for the rest, with proper rewards and encouragements, which persons would be intitled to no more power than they themselves gave them. (Independent Whig, I, 91)

[37] Ibid., 105-6.

[38] Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli, 79.

[39] It should be made clear that someone like Toland or Dennis believed in the truth of religion, and (to some extent) in the truth of Christianity, but that the criteria for truth were very different from orthodox descriptions of Christian truth. As argued in chapter 4, Toland's notion of true religion was broad enough to encompass Judaism, Islam and Christianity. One suspects that, for example, people like Toland and Stillingfleet used the words 'truth' and Christianity' in radically incommensurable ways. The issue over whether the radicals were 'atheistic' is to some extent an anachronism: for the Anglican hierarchy they most certainly were, while for the modern historian to attempt to assess the 'truth' value of past religious beliefs both methodologically naive and unacceptable. The task is to understand, not to indict or arbitrate.

[40] See E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (3 volumes, Oxford, 1930); H. S. Bennett, English Books and their Readership 1603-1640 (Cambridge, 1970), 133-4. The appeal of classical antiquity to the Republicans could be viewed as a further strand of the 1690s dispute between the ancients and the moderns, inspired by Fontenelle: see W. Temple, Essay Upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1692), who firmly applauds the lessons of ancient prudence: 'For political institutions, that tend to the preservation of Mankind, by civil governments; 'tis enough to mention those of Cyrus, Theseus, Licurgus, Solon, Zalencus, Charondas, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, besides the more ancient institutions of the Assyrian and Aegyptian governments and laws, wherein it may be observed such a reach of thought, such depth of wisdom, and such force of genius, as the presumption, and flattery itself of our age, will hardly pretend to parallel, by any of our modern institutions' (Complete Works, I, 302). Temple was so enamoured with the principles of ancient prudence that he even applauded non-Western models such as Chinese and Peruvian legislators who 'in practice … excell the very speculation of other men, and all those imaginary schemes of the European wit, the institutions of Xenophon, the Republick of Plato, the Utopias, or Oceanas of our modern writers' (see 'Of Heroick Virtue', Complete Works, I, 204-10); arguing against Temple, see W. Wotton, Reflections Upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694); for a useful and witty summary of the dispute, see J. Swift, A Full and True Account of the Battle Fought Last Friday between the Antient and Modern Books in St James Library (1704).

[41] Molesworth, An Account of Denmark, Preface, xxvi.

[42] Ibid., xx-xxv. See also Tindal, Rights, 84-5, 128, 268, 295-6, on the superiority of Greek education. See also Independent Whig, 'Of Education', 215-30; Toland, State-Anatomy, 'Of Universities and Pulpits', 69-70; and 'Letter Concerning the Roman Education' in Toland, Collections, II, 1-17.

[43] Toland, Cicero Illustratus (1712), a portion of which was translated and published in the preface to Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (1715), xii-xiii.

[44] Toland, Cicero Illustratus in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (1715), xviii.

[45] W. Moyle, Works (1727/Hammond, ed.) 17, 10-11, 33, 245.

[46] See W. Moyle, An Essay on the Lacedaemonian Government, (1698). Also Translations from Lucian for satires on the clergy, idolatry and ritual in 'Of Sacrifices', 'Dialogue with Hesiod' and 'A Dissertation upon the Age of the Philopatris, A Dialogue commonly attributed to Lucian'. See also Thomas Gordon's (d. 1750) important editions of Tacitus' Annals and Histories (1728-34) which were accompanied by valuable introductory discourses.

[47] For the most recent discussion of Ciceronianism, see R. Browning, The Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Court Whigs (Louisiana, 1982). Browning suggests that Ciceronianism was a Court Whig development to counter the radical Catonic ideology of the <184> Republicans. My suggestion is that within a religious context there was already a radical usage of Cicero.

[48] Montesquieu, 'Discours sur Cicéron' in Œuvres completes (3 volumes, Paris, 1950), III, 15. Moyle, Works (1727/Hammond, ed.), 284.

[49] Toland, Collections, II, 492. Toland had also referred to John Locke as a modern Cicero, (Life of Milton (1761), 136).

[50] The same debate, and attempted assimilation, was continued between Samuel Clarke and the 'apostle' of deism, Matthew Tindal. Clarke insisted that Cicero, although confident of the existence of a natural religion, had pointed out the necessity of revelation. Tindal on the contrary held that Cicero's philosophy indicated the sufficiency of natural religion to lead men to perfection. The apotheosis of Cicero worship can be found in Conyers Middleton's History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (1741). The work was a popular success, having over 3,000 subscribers. Middleton, the Keeper of the University Library at Cambridge, argued that the role of history was to be both entertaining and instructive. Middleton's complaint was that too many of the Lives published concentrated upon military heroes, rather than the 'pacific and civil character'. His remedy was to supply the public with the Life of Cicero. The latter was virtue embodied; the De Officiis was an almost perfect moral system. Middleton cited Erasmus who considered that Cicero was inspired by the deity. Middleton, The Life of Cicero, I, Preface, xv-xvii and II, 560. For a further discussion of Cicero's influence see: M. E. Neilson, 'Cicero's De Officiis in Christian thought 300-1300' in Essays and Studies in English and Comparative Literature (Michigan, 1933); G. Gawlick, 'Cicero and the Enlightenment', 657-82 in SVEC 25 (1963); G. A. Burnett, 'The Reputation of Cicero among the English Deists 1660-1776' (unpublished Ph.D., California, 1947). Cicero's influence can be best appreciated from examining the Wing Catalogue. The editions of his works are countless. For example, Opera quae extant Omnia (1681); De Officiis (1648-95), eleven editions; Tully's Offices (1680), five editions. On Collins, see J. O'Higgins, Anthony Collins the Man and His Work (The Hague, 1970) at 35, which shows that <185> Collins had seventy-four entries in his library catalogue under Cicero which included three copies of De Divinatione and nine of De Natura Deorum.

[51] See C. D. Yonge (ed.), The Treatise of Marcus Tullius Cicero (1853) in De Natura Deorum, I, xlii.41. Hereafter all references to Cicero's works are contained in this volume, unless otherwise stated. For a general discussion of Roman religion and its relationship with the state see: A. Wardman, Religion and Statecraft among the Romans (1982); Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (Baltimore, 1980); R. J. Goar, Cicero and the State Religion (Amsterdam, 1972); for more detailed discussions see: D. Grodynski, 'Superstitio' in REA 76 (1974), especially 40-3; G. Szemler, 'Religio, Priesthood, and Magistrates in the Roman Republic' in Numen 18 (1971), especially 121, 123, 126-7; T. A. Dorey (ed.), Cicero (1965), 135-214; Myrto Dragona-Monachou, The Stoic Arguments and the Providence of the Gods (Athens, 1976). See also J. Thrower, The Alternative Tradition: Religion and the Rejection of Religion in the Ancient World (The Hague, 1980), 203-31.

[52] Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, xliii.41.

[53] Cicero, De Divinatione, I, iv.145.

[54] Ibid., I, xlvii.188.

[55] Ibid., II, xxviii-v.229-31.

[56] Ibid., II, xii.211.

[57] Toland, Works of Harrington (Oceana), 211. See also Toland, Serena, 117; M. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation (1731), iv.

[58] Toland, Works of Harrington (Oceana), 209.

[59] Cicero was not the only source for the history of classical civil religion: for example one of the most frequently cited works was Polybius' (206-124 BC) Histories. Editions of the work had been translated in 1634 by Edward Grimeston, and in 1698 by Henry Sheeres. The crucial passage, cited, for example, by Walter Moyle, Conyers Middleton and the Traité des trois imposteurs, discussed the role of religion in the Roman Republic. See Moyle in Robbins, Two Republican Tracts, 212; C. Middleton, Life, II, 552; Traité des trois imposteurs, BL Sloane 2039, folio 64r. It was popular civil theology that preserved the Roman Republic. Since the populace were 'fickle and full of ill managed passions; as likewise easie to be worked into heats and animosities', the legislators constructed 'specious dreads, and these sorts of fictions' to restrain them (Polybius, Histories translated H. Sheeres, 72-3; see F. W. Walbank Polybius (1972), 59).

[60] It is important to note that a manuscript copy of the first part of the Essay exists in the Shaftesbury Papers in the PRO: reference PRO/30/24/47/4. Fox-Bourne in his two-volume Life of Locke mistakenly attributed the work to Locke. H. R. Russell-Smith rightly argued that the work came from Moyle's pen. This still leaves unresolved the genesis and authorship of the particular manuscript in the Shaftesbury collection. It is apparent from examination of the text that the handwriting is not John Locke's. The connection between Locke and the manuscript is not entirely shattered as the handwriting is almost certainly that of Locke's amanuensis, Sylvanus Brownover. Many thanks to J. Marshall for identifying the latter's script.

[61] Moyle, Works (1727/Hammond, ed.), 'Some account of Mr Moyle and his writings', 28, and passim.

[62] See, in particular, his controversy with Humphrey Prideaux over the issue of the Thundering Legion in Works (1726/Sergeant, ed.), II, 1-390, and with Mr Naylor and William Whiston on the origin of Christian Churches in Works (1726/Sergeant, ed.), I 376-98.

[63] For example his dissertation upon the origins of the Philopatris in Works (1726/Sergeant, ed.), I, 285-364, An Essay on the Lacedaemonian Government in Works (1727/Hammond, ed.), 47-77, and various translations of Lucian in Works (1727/Hammond, ed.).

[64] See Robbins, Two Republican Tracts. This is the edition employed in general, although I have compared it with the first printed edition of 1726 and the manuscript referred to above.

[65] M. A. Goldie, 'The Civil Religion of James Harrington' has dealt with some of the religious dimensions of Harrington's work; he omits, however, any consideration of the influence of Oceana on later Harringtonians such as Toland and especially Moyle.

[66] Moyle, Works (1727/Hammond, ed.), 62.

[67] Robbins, Tracts, 216.

[68] Ibid., 215, 209-10.

[69] Ibid., 214: 'All innovations in the National worship, such as the adoption of new gods, and the institution of new forms and ceremonies in religion, were appointed by the authority of the Senate.'

[70] Ibid., 216.

[71] Ibid., 213.

[72] Ibid., 210-11.

[73] Ibid., 212.

[74] For a similar Harringtonian analysis, see Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, III, 42-60, of a 'landed hierarchy' swallowing the civil state in the ancient Egyptian and Hebrew states.

[75] Robbins, Tracts, 217.

[76] Ibid., 217-18.

[77] Ibid., 220-3.

[78] Montesquieu, Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion in Œuvres, III, 38; On Montesquieu, see R. Shackleton, Montesquieu (Oxford, 1960); L. Althusser, Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Marx (1982); P. Kra, 'Religion in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes', SVEC 52 (1970); R. Oake, 'Montesquieu's Religious Ideas', JHI 14 (1953); G. L. Van Roosbroecke, Persian Letters before Montesquieu (1932).

[79] Montesquieu, Dissertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion, 45. In his Reflections upon the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans, translated into English in 1734, the religious theme was again prominent. Montesquieu ascribed one of the major causes of Rome's decline to the corruption of the civil theology of the city. With the subversion of the ancient altars came the collapse of the Roman state. First Stoicism, then Christianity, undermined the coherence of the original establishment. The end of toleration and Justinian's attempt to establish a religious uniformity weakened the foundations of the state. Montesquieu argued that the Christian theology was incompatible with the requirements of virtue and justice. With the advance of monkish religion, the rage of disputation and <192> the hydra of controversy dissolved the unity of the state. This degenerate model was compared with the virtue of the Roman priesthood of the earlier empire; see Montesquieu, Reflections on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans, 95, 200, 221, 229, 237, 242-3, 247, 252.

[80] Note that Rousseau also made a distinction between private truth and public fable; he wrote in an early draft of the Social Contract: 'The social virtues of pure souls, which constitute the true cult that God desires from us, will never be those of the multitude. It will always believe in Gods as senseless as itself' (cited in N. Hampson, Will and Circumstance (1983), 34).

[81] The classic denigration of Toland is seen in L. Stephens, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 volumes, 1949). B. Worden in his Edmund Ludlow: A Voyce from the Watchtower (Camden Society, 1978) also treats Toland with distaste. More recent sympathetic studies have been executed by M. Jacob in her Radical Enlightenment, and by R. Sullivan in John Toland and the Deist Controversy (Harvard, 1982). The latter, in particular, is a detailed and useful work. Contemporaries, too, found it difficult to classify Toland's thought: see A. Boyer, The Political State of Great Britain, XXIII (1722), 340, 'as for religion … it is more easy to guess what he was not, than to tell what he was! 'Tis certain, he was neither Jew, nor Mahometan: but whether he was a Christian, a Deist, a Pantheist, an Hobbist, or a Spinozist, is the question?'

[82] See Toland, Collections, II, 325-6, on the 'divine volumes of Cicero', and Cicero as 'the most eminent philosopher, politician, and orator in the world'.

[83] See Toland, Pantheisticon (1751), citations from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, To the Reader, 43, 72; De Divinatione, To the Reader, 67, 71, 86-7; De Natura Deorum, 97-8; De Republica, 85; De Legibus, 102-8. Note (page 80) that prayers are offered to Socrates, Plato, Cato and Cicero. Other classical figures so honoured are Selomo, Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Theano, Ocellus, Democratus, Parmenides, Dicaearchus, Confucius, Cleobulina, Pamphila and Hypatia. See also Toland, Adeisdaemon Sive Titus Livius a Superstitione Vindicatus … Annexae sunt ejusdem Origines Judicae (The Hague, 1709), passim. Note that Elisha Smith sent Thomas Hearne a manuscript copy of Toland's Adeisdaemon in 1707. See Hearne, Remarks and Collections, I, 319: note that Smith rather mistakenly thought Toland to be a 'man of Religion, & of ye faith of ye Church of Eng[lan]d'. Hearne was to complete and publish his own edition of Livy in 1708. See also Carabelli, Tolandiana, 140.

[84] Toland, Origines Judicae, 101-2.

[85] Note the potential ambivalence of the use and relevance of classical literature for scholarship and polemic. Thomas Hearne, the High Church academic who haunted Oxford, made similar proposals for a complete edition of Cicero's works. See Hearne, Remarks and Collections, II, 128-9, 186, 192, 207, 269-70.

[86] Toland, Pantheisticon, 57.

[87] This was for two reasons. First, the philosopher might be subject to the persecution of the populace if they were considered to be undermining their beliefs. Secondly, the philosopher ought not to devalue the persuasive potency of the public religion since this could become a source of civil instability.

[88] Toland, Pantheisticon, 65, 67-71.

[89] Ibid., iii, 65, 67, 72, 84, 86, 96-7.

[90] Ibid., 95, 102-6.

[91] Toland, Collections, II, 375. Worden, Edmund Ludlow, 40, argues that the Republicans of the 1690s were split into two camps, the Roman Whigs (centred on the Grecian Club and epitomized by Walter Moyle), and the Calves-head group. Toland is portrayed as straddling the two groups. It is apparent that Toland as a Ciceronian should be firmly placed in the Roman tendency, or perhaps that the distinction between Roman and Calves-head should be re-evaluated.

[92] Toland, Collections, II, 391.

[93] Toland, State-Anatomy, 71.

[94] G. Naudé, Political Considerations (1711), 156.

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