Note 114 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Thus, despite his many resorts to and prostrations before the Scriptures, the general effect of his writings in this regard is to set up in the minds of his readers the old semi-rationalistic equivoque of a “two-fold truth”; reminding us as they do that he “did in the beginning separate the divine testimony from the human.” When, therefore, he announces that “we know by faith” that “matter was created from nothing,”114 he has the air of juggling with his problem; and his further suggestion as to the possibility of matter being endowed with a force of evolution, however cautiously put, is far removed from orthodoxy. Accordingly, the charge of atheism—which he notes as commonly brought against all who dwell solely on second causes115—was actually cast at his memory in the next generation.116 It was of course false: on the issue of theism he is continually descanting with quite conventional unction; as in the familiar essay on atheism.117 His dismissal of final causes as “barren” meant merely that the notion was barren of scientific result;118 and he refers the question to metaphysic.119 But if his theism was of a kind disturbing to believers in a controlling Providence, as little was it satisfactory to Christian fervour: and it can hardly be doubted that the main stream of his argument made for a non-Biblical deism, if not for atheism; his dogmatic orthodoxies being undermined by his own scientific teaching.