Note 22 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT

The rationalistic importance of Huarte lies in his insistence on the study of “second causes” and his protest against the burking of all inquiry by a reference to deity. On this head he anticipates much of the polemic of Bacon. The explanation of all processes and phenomena by the will of God, he observes, “is so ancient a manner of talk, and the natural philosophers have so often refuted it, that the seeking to take the same away were superfluous, neither is it convenient.... But I have often gone about to consider the reason and the cause whence it may grow that the vulgar sort is so great friend to impute all things to God, and to reave them from Nature, and do so abhor the natural means.”22 His solution is the impatience of men over the complexity of Nature, their spiritual arrogance, their indolence, and their piety. For himself, he pronounces, as Middleton did in England nearly two centuries later, that “God doth no longer those unwonted things of the New Testament; and the reason is, for that on his behalf he hath performed all necessary diligence that men might not pretend ignorance. And to think that he will begin anew to do the like miracles ... is an error very great.... God speaks once (saith Job) and turns not to a second replial.”23