Abstract
The title of Stillingfleet’s first published work, Irenicum, reveals perhaps not so much the character of the Anglican’s work as it does his own appraisal of his religious and intellectual anima motrix. As we saw in the previous chapter, what Stillingfleet considered to be irenic and moderate, others—particularly those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of his moderation—took to be morally uncharitable and socially disruptive. Stillingfleet, however, paid little heed to those who branded his intolerance as unchristian, and he never ceased considering himself to be one of the great moderates of the Church of England. But whatever the merits of his self-evaluation in the political sphere, his position as a moderate in non-political areas of religion is much less questionable. He was greatly aided, not only in enhancing his reputation, but also in reinforcing his self-appraisal as a master of the via media, by a number of religious extremists—sceptics, fideists, and enthusiasts—with vulnerable positions, at least from the point of view of the man of common-sense. It was just such a point of view that Stillingfleet claimed to take when attempting to steer a course that would avoid the excessive irrationality of the sceptics, fideists, and enthusiasts, as well as the excessive rationality of the Socinians,1 Deists, Hobbists, and Spinozists. It was as the man of common-sense, traveling the via media, attacking what was excessive and unreasonable, that Stillingfleet came to define the limits of his moderate Anglicanism and reasonable Christianity. For, his Anglicanism is undeniably colored by his reactions to what he considered to be the excesses of his opponents. His method was not without its hazards. In repelling the irrationalists there was the danger of becoming too rationalistic, of falling into the Socinian camp. And while repulsing the Socinians, there was the equally hazardous tendency to slip into a type of fideism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Throughout this chapter I shall use the term “Socinian” to indicate those Englishmen who held that Scripture is divine, that reason is the sole judge of Scripture, and that there are no mysteries in Christianity (e.g., no Trinity, Incarnation, or Transubstanti-ation). The only distinction between the English Socinians and Deists is that the latter deny the divinity of revelation.
The term “naturalism” is somewhat misleading, since it cannot be strictly opposed to supernaturalism in this context due to the fact that in what I am calling a naturalistic approach it was presupposed that there exists a Providential Deity who guaranteed the reliability of our natural faculties. Nevertheless, if we keep in mind that such supernatural or ahistorical elements as grace and the efficacy of the Holy Spirit (or illuminating faith) are excluded in what I call “naturalistic,” we shall not be misled by the use of the term.
John Sergeant, Sure-Footing in Christianity, or Rational Discourses on the Rule of Faith (London, 1665), p. 208. Cf. Stillingfleet’s criticism of Sergeant in A Reply to Mr. Serjeant’s Third Appendix (London, 1665), in Stillingfleet’s Works, IV, p. 639.
Natural law, however, did make it necessary that there be some form of Church government. See Irenicum, in Stillingfleet, Works, II, p. 213.
See Stillingfleet, Works, II, pp. 68-69, 180-81, 188-89; VI, pp. 302, 324. 6 Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 311.
See Stillingfleet, A Reply to Mr. J.S., his Third Appendix, in Works, IV, pp. 626-58.
The Rule of Faith was Tillotson’s first and last piece of controversialist writing. Reflecting on his book twenty years later he said that he found controversialist writing “irksome and unpleasant work.” Thus he decided “to turn to something more agreeable to my temper, and of a more direct and immediate tendency to the promoting True Religion, to the happiness of Human Society, and the Reformation of the World.” See The Works of the Most Revered Dr. John Tillotson, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury: containing Fifty-four Sermons and Discourses, on several occasions, together with “The Rule of Faith,” Being all that were published by his Grace Himself, and now collected into one volume, sixth ed. (London: printed for T. Goodwin, 1710), p. 583.
Cf. Van Leeuwen, Problem of Certainty, p. 41.
Veron was a Jesuit controversialist whose method had been to reduce his Protestant opponent’s position to total uncertainty by a series of sceptical objections. See Veron, La victorieuse methode pour combattre tous les ministres: par la seule Bible (Paris, 1621). Veron’s scepticism is discussed in Popkin, History of Scepticism, pp. 70-79; and in Louis I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1934), pp. 78-80, 98-107.
Stillingfleet, Works, I, p. 392.
Ibid., VI, pp. 361ff.
Ibid., p. 410. This is an obvious reference to Jean La Placette, Of the Incurable Scepticism of the Church of Rome, trans. Henry Wharton (London, 1688).
See A. Woodhead, The Guide in Controversies of Religion: Reflecting on the Later Writings of Protestants; Particularly of Archbishop Laud and Dr. Stillingfleet on this Subject (N.P., 1666); and Dr. Stillingfleet’s Principles, Giving an Account of the Faith of Protestants by N.O. (Paris, 1671).
See E. Worsley, Protestancy without Principles or, Sectaries Unhappy Fall from Infallibility to Fancy (Antwerp, 1668); and Reason and Religion, or the Certain Rule of Faith, Where the Infallibility of the Roman Catholick Church is Asserted, Against Atheists, Heathens, Jews, Turks, and All Sectaries, with a Refutation of Mr. Stilling flee f’s Many Gross Errors (Antwerp, 1672).
Worsley, Reason and Religion, p. 2.
See Bredvold, Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden.
See Edward Niles Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, editors, The Works of John Dryden, in 3 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), III, p. 351.
Their authorship has long been disputed. See The Works of John Dryden, III, p. 641.
Stillingfleet, Works, VI, p. 641.
See John Howe, A Letter out of the Country to a Person of Quality in the City who took Offense at the Late Sermon “The Mischief of Separation” (London, 1680), p. 20. There Howe writes: “We are indeed not so stupid, as not to apprehend there are Laws, the Letter whereof seems adverse to us. Nor are we so ungrateful as not to acknowledge his Majesties clemency in not subjecting us to the utmost rigour of those Laws; whom we cannot without deep regret, so much as seem not, in every thing, exactly to obey. Nor can it enter into our minds to imagine that he expects to be obeyed by us, at the expense of our salvation.” James’s clemency may best be seen by the number of pamphlets published during his reign. A bibliography of bibliographies of the pamphlets published during the years 1685-83 may be found in Bredvold, appendix.
Charles E. Ward gives a rather unconvincing argument for Dryden being the author of the papers in reply to Stillitigfleet on the Charles matters. See his Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1961), pp. 359ff.
Stillingfleet, Works, VI, pp. 656, 743.
Ibid.
Stillingfleet, Works, VI, p. 705.
Ibid., III, p. 382.
Ibid., VI, p. 705.
Stillingfleet’s good friends, Bishop Compton and Lord Clarendon, are the only two persons in England known to have gotten copies of Simon’s work in 1678. Bossuet had the bookseller destroy those copies of the first edition he had not already sold. See Bredvold, op. cit., p. 101. Cf. Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: being a Life of Henry Compton (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956), pp. 157ff.
Cited in Stillingfleet, Works, VI, p. 750.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Dryden, Works, III, pp. 122, 352n.
Ibid., p. 352n. In the Hind and the Panther Dryden portrays Socinianism and Deism as the Fox who constantly quotes from Chillingworth, Stillingfleet, Bramhall (Hobbes’s antagonist on the question of the liberty of the will), among others.
The Stillingfleet-Dryden controversy ended in 1688 with the latter’s translation of the Life of St. Xavier. See Ward, op. cit., p. 222.
Stillingfleet, Works, V, p. iii.
Lloyd succeeded Stillingfleet at Worcester. He was convinced that he could “read the prophecies as he read history,” and came to think of himself as a prophet. Wilkins, whom Lloyd had assisted in writing An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London, 1688), thought Lloyd was the most learned man he knew. Lloyd was the author of numerous anti-Catholic works, including Papists no Catholicks: Popery no Christianity (London, 1677). See DNB, art. “Lloyd, William,” XI, pp. 1315-1318.
The incidence of conversions must have been somewhat frequent, for the situation became acute enough in 1666 for Parliament to appoint a committee to receive “information of the Insolence of Popish Priests and Jesuits.” Calendar of State Papers, 21 September, 1666. Five years later, on March 10th, there was a petition in both Houses against the growth of popery. Ibid. Also, there were periodic addresses on the growth of Catholicism, and debates for securing the religion of the realm by educating the children of the royal family in the Protestant religion.
T. Seymour, Several Weighty Considerations Humbly Recommended to the Serious Perusal of All, but More Especially to the Roman Catholics … to which is prefixed an Epistle …to Dr. Stillingfleet … (London, 1679), p. 2.
Ibid., p. 3. Thomas Godden (or Gotten) (1624-1688) was most famous for his eloquent preaching in Portuguese. He was converted to Catholicism by Sergeant whom he had known at Cambridge. Hugh (Serenus) Cressy (1605-1674) was a Dominican monk who called Stillingfleet’s book on idolatry “the private Design of a malicious Brain on purpose to feed the exulcerated minds of a malevolent Party among us.” Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church by Doctor Stillingfleet: and the imputation refuted and retorted (Paris, 1672), p. 6.
Stillingfleet, Works, V, fifth page of the unpaginated Epistle Dedicatory. Sergeant, who had earlier been described as a rat was now portrayed as a mole, “a Creature blind and busy, smooth and deceitful, continually working under Ground, but now and then to be discerned by the disturbance it makes in the Surface of the Earth … ” Ibid., p. i.
Stillingfleet, Works, CVI, p. i.
Ibid.
Gilbert Burnet, A Relation of a Conference Held about Religion at London, by Edw. Stillingfleet with some Gentlemen of the Church of Rome (London, 1687).
See Edward Meredith, A Letter Desiring Information of the Conference at the Dean of St. Paul’s Mentioned in a Letter to Mr. Godden (London, 1687). The Stillingfleet-Godden correspondence on this subject may be found in Stillingfleet’s Works, VI, pp. 183-207.
John Sergeant, Letter to the Dean of St. Paul’s: in Answer to the Arguing Part of his First Letter to Mr. Godden … (London, 1687).
For Cressy’s account of his conversion to Catholicism and his relationship with Chillingworth, see the former’s Exomologesis (Paris, 1647). For a general account of the Stillingfleet-Cressy controversy in so far as Lord Clarendon was concerned, see B. H. G. Wormald, Clarendon (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 262ff.
H. Cressy, Fanaticism fanatically imputed, p. i.
One can often tell when an English book was printed overseas by the number of orthographic errors found in the book, as many foreign printers could not read English.
H. Cressy, op. cit., p. 8.
Cf. Wormald, op. cit., p. 264.
Cressy, op. cit., p. 169; cited in Wormald, p. 264.
Cressy, op. cit., p. 92.
E. Hyde, Animadversions upon a Book Entitled Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholic Church by Dr. Stillingfleet … (London, 1673/4), p. 205; cited in Wormald, op. cit., p. 266.
Stillingfleet, Works, I, p. 221.
John Tillotson, Works, p. 583.
See Stillingfleet, Discourse Concerning the Grounds of Certainty of Faith (henceforth noted as CF) in Works, VI, p. 410. See also his Answer to Some Papers Lately Printed Concerning the Authority of the Catholic Church in Matters of Faith, in Works, VI, p. 705.
John Sergeant, Faith Vindicated (Lovath, 1667), p. 13.
John Sergeant, Sure-Footing in Christianity, or Rational Discourses on the Rule of Faith (London, 1665), p. 68.
See Tillotson, Works, pp. 688, 694-95.
Stillingfleet, Works, VI, p. 410.
Cited in Chillingworth, Works, p. 14.
Ibid.
Hume transferred Tillotson’s argument against transubstantiation to attack the rational defense of miracles, something Tillotson never intended. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Selby-Bigge (1777; rpt. Oxford, 1963), p. 109. Richard H. Popkin argues that Hume’s “Of Miracles” can be seen as the reductio ad absurdum of Stillingfleet’s common-sense defense of the reasonableness of Christianity. See his article, “The Philosophy of Bishop Stillingfleet,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, IX, 3 (1971), pp. 303-319 at 304. Hume argued in his inimitable way that any man of common sense and reason would not believe a miracle had occurred were he to witness some event that seemed to contradict ordinary experience, nor would a reasonable man believe the reports and testimony of those who allegedly witnessed miracles. In short, Hume argued that the alleged miracles would not be taken as matters of fact by reasonable men. The Anglican historical defense of Christianity, however, largely depended upon taking miracles as matters of fact.
Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 628.
William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, in Works, p. 354.
Stillingfleet, The Certainty of Faith, in Works, VI, p. 381. References to this work will henceforth appear in the abbreviated form CF.
Chillingworth, op. cit., p. 323.
Cited in Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 226.
Ibid., pp. 224-26, 373.
Ibid., pp. 225-26.
Ibid., p. 226.
Some of Hooker’s examples of matters which we have infallible assurance of included the fact that there is a city called “Rome,” that Pope Pius V was Pope there, and other items which most seventeenth-century university trained people would have considered to be morally certain.
Stillingfleet, An Answer to Several Late Treatises, Occasioned by a Book, entitled a Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practiced in the Church of Rome … (London, 1673), in Works, V, pp. 30-31. (Note: this work is separately paginated.)
Stillingfleet, A Reply to Mr. J[ohn] S[ergeant] his Third Appendix, containing some Animadversions on the Book entitled “A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion,” (1666), in Works, IV, p. 628. Henceforth this work will be cited as RS.
Ibid.
Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 126.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Stillingfleet, RS, in Works, IV, p. 647.
Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 107.
Stillingfleet, CF, in Works, VI, p. 406.
Stillingfleet, Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, in Works, III, pp. 433-34. References to this work will henceforth be made in the abbreviated form, DT.
John Sergeant, Third Catholick Letter (1688), pp. 56ff.
Stillingfleet, CF, p. 407.
William Chillingworth, op. cit., p. 95.
Stillingfleet, Several Conferences, in Works, VI, p. ii. Henceforth references to this work will appear in the abbreviated form, SC.
Ibid., pp. 86ff.
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jean Baptiste du Hamel, De Mente Humana (Paris, 1672), 2.7. n.4.
Stillingfleet, SC, p. 86.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Stillingfleet noted in the Certainty of Faith that “although Scripture be an Infallible Rule, yet unless every man that makes use of it be Infallible, he may mistake in the Application of it.” Works, VI, p. 381.
Stillingfleet, SC, in Works, VI, p. 86.
Stillingfleet, OS, in Works, II, pp. 146-47.
Stillingfleet, SC, p. 87.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., pp. 87-88.
As we shall see, according to Stillingfleet, it was in principle impossible for anyone to provide such evidence in post-Apostolic times.
Stillingfleet, Letter to a Deist, in Works, II, p. 124.
Ibid., p. 119.
Ibid., p. 139.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 120.
Stillingfleet, RA, in Works, IV, p. 134.
Ibid.
John Fisher, A Relation of the Conference betweene William Laud … and Mr. Fisher … (London, 1639), p. 57.
Stillingfleet, RA, pp. 134-35.
Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., p. 134.
Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., p. 135.
Ibid.
Stillingfleet, The Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome Truly Represented, in Works, VI, pp. 537-38. Henceforth this work will be referred to in the abbreviated form, DP.
Stillingfleet, OS, in Works, II, p. 106.
Ibid., p. 68.
Ibid., p. 69.
Stillingfleet, Letter to a Deist, in Works, II, p. 119.
Stillingfleet, OS, p. 160.
Stillingfleet, RA, p. 109.
Stillingfleet, The Doctrine of the Trinity and Transubstantiation Compared, in Works, VI, p. 605. References to this work will henceforth appear in the abbreviated form, TT.
Stillingfleet, DP, in Works, VI, p. 538.
Stillingfleet, OS, p. 86.
Cf. Stillingfleet, OS, p. 220. Pascal died the same year that Origines Sacrae was first published (1662), and the miracles Stillingfleet had in mind may have been those alleged to have occurred at Port Royal.
Ibid., p. 220.
Stillingfleet, Letter to a Deist, pp. 122-23.
Stillingfleet, OS, p. 86.
Ibid., p. 220.
Stillingfleet cites St. Augustine on his behalf. “Accepimus majores nostros visibilia miracula secutos esse: per quos id actum est ut necessaria non essent posteris; because the World believed by the Miracles which were wrought at the first preaching of the Gospel, therefore Miracles are no longer necessary.” Cf. De Vera Religione, chapter 25, and De Civitate Dei, XXII.viii; cited in Stillingfleet, Works, II, p. 220. It seems extremely odd that Stillingfleet would cite the particular section of De Civitate Dei where Augustine relates a couple of miracles that occurred at Milan and Carthage. Augustine did not think miracles were no longer possible because not necessary.
Stillingfleet, OS, in Works, II, p. 220.
In commenting on Stillingfleet’s account of miracles in Origines Sacrae, Samuel Coleridge wrote: “I believe in the miracles of Christ because I believe in Christ; not vice-versa. They are not the foundation of my Faith, but the result and condition of it.” See Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, ed. Roberta Florence Brinkley (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 376.
Stillingfleet, OS, p. 222.
Ibid., p. 223.
Ibid., p. 222.
“Thus it was,” said Stillingfleet, “in that early Ape of the Apostles, Simon Magus, who far out-went Apolonius Tyanaeus or any other heathen in his pretended Miracles, according to the report which is given of him by the early Christians; but we see the intent of his Miracles, was to raise an admiration of himself … ” Stillingfleet, Works, II, p. 222.
Ibid., p. 224.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 223.
Ibid., p. 225.
Dante, Paradise, Canto XXIV, 106-108; cited in Stillingfleet, Works, II, p. 219.
Stillingfleet, OS, p. 172.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 172. Stillingfleet made a similar argument concerning Moses as a reasonable man and a good historian. “If there had been anything repugnant to the common Reason in the History of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the universal Deluge, the propagation of the World by the sons of Noah, the history of the Patriarchs, had not Moses rational faculties as well as we have? nay, had he them not far better improved than any of ours are? and was not he then able to judge what was suitable to Reason, and what not? and can we think he wou’d then deliver any thing inconsistent with Reason or undoubted Tradition then, when the Aegyptian Priests might so readily and plainly have triumphed over him, by discovering the falsehood of what he wrote?” Ibid., p. 80.
Ibid., pp 172-73.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1975 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carroll, R.T. (1975). The Reasonableness of Christianity. In: The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des IdÉes/International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 77. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1598-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1598-1_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-1600-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-1598-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive