Note 54 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

From Hooker’s account also it is clear that, at least with comparatively patient clerics like himself, the freethinkers would at times deliberately press the question of theism, and avow the conviction that belief in God was “a kind of harmless error, bred and confirmed by the sleights of wiser men.” He further notes with even greater bitterness that some—an “execrable crew”—who were themselves unbelievers, would in the old pagan manner argue for the fostering of religion as a matter of State policy, herein conning the lesson of Machiavelli. For his own part Hooker was confessedly ill-prepared to debate with the atheists, and his attitude was not fitted to shake their opinions. His one resource is the inevitable plea that atheists are such for the sake of throwing off all moral restraint54—a theorem which could hardly be taken seriously by those who knew the history of the English and French aristocracies, Protestant and Catholic, for the past hundred years. Hooker’s own measure of rationalism, though remarkable as compared with previous orthodoxy, went no further than the application of the argument of Pecock that reason must guide and control all resort to Scripture and authority;55 and he came to it under stress of dispute, as a principle of accommodation for warring believers, not as an expression of any independent skepticism. When his pious antagonist Travers cited him as saying that “his best author was his own reason”56 he was prompt to reply that he meant “true, sound, divine reason; ... reason proper to that science whereby the things of God are known; theological reason, which out of principles in Scripture that are plain, soundly deduceth more doubtful inferences.”57 Of the application of rational criticism to Scriptural claims he had no idea. The unbelievers of his day were for him a frightful portent, menacing all his plans of orthodox toleration; and he would have had them put down by force—a course which in some cases, as we have seen, had in that age been actually taken, and was always apt to be resorted to. But orthodoxy all the while had a sure support in the social and political conditions which made impossible the publication of rationalistic opinions. While the whole machinery of public doctrine remained in religious hands or under ecclesiastical control, the mass of men of all grades inevitably held by the traditional faith. What is remarkable is the amount of unbelief, either privately explicit or implicit in the higher literature, of which we have trace.