Chapter XIX · FREETHOUGHT IN THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES
Reading edition
§ 1. Holland
In 1737 was published in French a small mystification consisting of a Sermon prêché dans la grande Assemblée des Quakers de Londres, par le fameux Frère E. E., and another little tract, La Religion Muhamedane comparée à la païenne de l’Indostan, par Ali-Ebn-Omar. “E. E.” stood for Edward Elwall, a well-known Unitarian of the time, who, as we saw, was tried at Stafford Assizes in 1726 for publishing a Unitarian treatise, and who in 1742 published another, entitled The Supernatural Incarnation of Jesus Christ proved to be false ... and that our Lord Jesus Christ was the real son of Joseph and Mary. The two tracts are both by Passerano, and are on deistic lines, the text of the Sermon being (in English) “The Religion of the Gospel is the true Original Religion of Reason and Nature.” The proposition is of course purely ethical in its bearing.
The currency given in Holland to such literature tells of growing liberality of thought as well as of political freedom. But the conditions were not favourable to such general literary activity as prevailed in the larger States, though good work was done in medicine and the natural sciences. Not till the nineteenth century did Dutch scholars again give a lead to Europe in religious thought.
§ 2. The Scandinavian States
In Sweden the stimulative reign of Gustavus Vasa was followed by a long period of the strife which everywhere trod on the heels of the Reformation. The second successor of Gustavus, his son John, had married a daughter of the Catholic Sigismund of Poland, and sought to restore her religion to power, causing much turmoil until her death, whereafter he abandoned the cause. His Catholic son Sigismund recklessly renewed the effort, and was deposed in consequence; John’s brother Charles becoming king. In Denmark, meanwhile, Frederick II (d. 1588) had been a bigoted champion of Lutheranism, expelling a professor of Calvinistic leanings on the Eucharist, and refusing a landing to the Calvinists who fled from the Netherlands. On the other hand he patronized and pensioned Tycho Brahé, who, until driven into banishment by a court cabal during the minority of Christian IV, did much for astronomy, though unable to accept Copernicanism.
§ 3. The Slavonic States
§ 4. Italy
Signor Benedetto Croce, in his valuable work on Vico (The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Eng. tr. 1913, pp. 89–94), admits that Vico is fundamentally at one with the Naturalists: “Like them, in constructing his science of human society, he excludes with Grotius all idea of God, and with Pufendorf considers man as without help or attention from God, excluding him, that is, from revealed religion and its God.” Of Vico’s opposition to Grotius, Signor Croce offers two unsatisfactory explanations. First: “Vico’s opposition, which he expresses with his accustomed confusion and obscurity, turns ... upon the actual conception of religion.... Religion ... means for Vico not necessarily revelation, but conception of reality.” This reduces the defence to a quibble; but finally Signor Croce asks himself “Why—if Vico agreed with the natural-right school in ignoring revelation, and if he instead of it deepened their superficial immanental doctrine—why he put himself forward as their implacable enemy and persisted in boasting loudly before prelates and pontiffs of having formulated a system of natural rights different from that of the three Protestant authors and adapted to the Roman Church.” The natural suggestion of “politic caution” Signor Croce rejects, declaring that “the spotless character of Vico entirely precludes it; and we can only suppose that, lacking as his ideas always were in clarity, on this occasion he indulged his tendency to confusion and nourished his illusions, to the extent of conferring upon himself the flattering style and title of Defensor Ecclesiæ at the very moment when he was destroying the religion of the Church by means of humanity.”
It is very doubtful whether this equivocal vindication is more serviceable to Vico’s fame than the plain avowal that a writer placed as he was, in the Catholic world of 1720, could not be expected to be straightforward upon such an issue. Vico comported himself towards the Catholic Church very much as Descartes did. His own declaration as to his motives is surely valid as against a formula which combines “spotless character” with a cherished “tendency to confusion.” The familiar “tendency to hedge” is a simpler conception.