Note 33 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

In a general sense “free thoughts” was a natural expression, and we have it in Ben Jonson: “Being free master of mine own free thoughts.”33 But not till about the year 1700 did the phrase begin to have a special application to religious matters. The first certain instance thus far noted of the use of the term “freethinker” is in a letter of Molyneux to Locke, dated April 6, 1697,34 where Toland is spoken of as a “candid freethinker.” In an earlier letter, dated December 24, 1695, Molyneux speaks of a certain book on religion as somewhat lacking in “freedom of thought”;35 and in Burnet’s Letters36 occurs still earlier the expression “men ... of freer thoughts.” In the New English Dictionary a citation is given from the title-page of S. Smith’s brochure, The Religious Impostor ... dedicated to Doctor S-l-m-n and the rest of the new Religious Fraternity of Freethinkers, near Leather-Sellers’ Hall. Printed ... in the first year of Grace and Freethinking, conjecturally dated 1692. It is thought to refer to the sect of “Freeseekers” mentioned in Luttrell’s Brief Historical Relation (iii, 56) under date 1693. In that case it is not unbelievers that are in question. So in Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue (first ed. 1699) the expression “freethought” has a general and not a particular sense;37 and in Baker’s Reflections upon Learning, also published in 1699, in the remark: “After the way of freethinking had been lai’d open by my Lord Bacon, it was soon after greedily followed”;38 the reference is, of course, to scientific and not to religious thought.