Note 81 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Not that rationalism became extinct. The “Italianate” incredulity as to a future state, which Sir John Davies had sought to repel by his poem, Nosce Teipsum (1599), can hardly have been overthrown even by that remarkable production, which in the usual orthodox way pronounces all doubters to be “light and vicious persons,” who, “though they would, cannot quite be beasts.”81 And there were other forms of doubt. In 1602 appeared The Unmasking of the Politique Atheist, by J. H. [John Hull], Batchelor of Divinitie, which, however, is in the main a mere attempt to retort upon Catholics the charge of atheism laid by them against Protestants. Soon after, in 1605, we find Dr. John Dove producing a Confutation of Atheisme in the manner of previous continental treatises, making the word “atheism” cover many shades of theism; and an essayist writing in 1608 asserts that, on account of the self-seeking and corruption so common among churchmen, “prophane Atheisme hath taken footing in the hearts of ignorant and simple men.”82 The orthodox Ben Jonson, in his Volpone (1607), puts in the mouth of a fool83 the lines:—