Note 31 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

How far his rationalism was ahead of that of his age may be realized by comparing his positions with those of John Selden, the most learned and, outside of philosophy, one of the shrewdest of the men of that generation. Selden was sometimes spoken of by the Hobbists as a freethinker; and his Table Talk contains some sallies which would startle the orthodox if publicly delivered;31 but not only is there explicit testimony by his associates as to his orthodoxy:32 his own treatise, De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta disciplinam Ebræorum, maintains the ground that the “Law of Nature” which underlies the variants of the Laws of Nations is limited to the precepts and traditions set forth in the Talmud as delivered by Noah to his posterity.33 Le Clerc said of the work, justly enough, that in it “Selden only copies the Rabbins, and scarcely ever reasons.” It is likely enough that the furious outcry against Selden for his strictly historical investigation of tithes, and the humiliation of apology forced upon him in that connection in 1618,34 made him specially chary ever afterwards of any semblance of a denial of the plenary truth of theological tradition; but there is no reason to think that he had ever really transcended the Biblical view of the world’s order. He illustrates, in fact, the extent to which a scholar could in that day be anti-clerical without being rationalistic. Like the bulk of the Parliamentarians, though without their fanaticism, he was thoroughly opposed to the political pretensions of the Church,35 desiring however to leave episcopacy alone, as a matter outside of legislation, when the House of Commons abolished it. Yet he spoke of the name of Puritan as one which he “trusted he was not either mad enough or foolish enough to deserve.”36 There were thus in the Parliamentary party men of very different shades of opinion. The largest party, perhaps, was that of the fanatics who, as Mrs. Hutchinson—herself fanatical enough—tells concerning her husband, “would not allow him to be religious because his hair was not in their cut.”37 Next in strength were the more or less orthodox but anti-clerical and less pious Scripturalists, of whom Selden was the most illustrious. By far the smallest group of all were the freethinkers, men of their type being as often repelled by the zealotry of the Puritans as by the sacerdotalism of the State clergy. The Rebellion, in short, though it evoked rationalism, was not evoked by it. Like all religious strifes—like the vaster Thirty Years’ War in contemporary Germany—it generated both doubt and indifferentism in men who would otherwise have remained undisturbed in orthodoxy.