Note 38 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

When, however, we turn from the higher literary propaganda to the verbal and other transitory debates of the period of the Rebellion, we realize how much partial rationalism had hitherto subsisted without notice. In that immense ferment some very advanced opinions, such as quasi-Anarchism in politics38 and anti-Scripturalism in religion, were more or less directly professed. In January, 1646 (N.S.), the authorities of the City of London, alarmed at the unheard-of amount of discussion, petitioned Parliament to put down all private meetings;39 and on February 6, 1646 (N.S.), a solemn fast, or “day of publique humiliation,” was proclaimed on the score of the increase of “errors, heresies, and blasphemies.” On the same grounds, the Presbyterian party in Parliament pressed an “Ordinance for the suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies,” which, long held back by Vane and Cromwell, was carried in their despite in 1648, by large majorities, when the royalists renewed hostilities. It enacted the death penalty against all who should deny the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible, a day of judgment, or a future state; and prescribed imprisonment for Arminianism, rejection of infant baptism, anti-Sabbatarianism, anti-Presbyterianism, or defence of the doctrine of Purgatory or the use of images.40 And of aggressive heresy there are some noteworthy traces. In a pamphlet entitled “Hell Broke Loose: a Catalogue of the many spreading Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of these Times, for which we are to be humbled” (March 9, 1646, N.S.), the first entry—and in the similar Catalogue in Edwards’s Gangræna, the second entry—is a citation of the notable thesis, “That the Scripture, whether a true manuscript or no, whether Hebrew, Greek, or English, is but humane, and not able to discover a divine God.”41 This is cited from “The Pilgrimage of the Saints, by Lawrence Clarkson,” presumably the Lawrence Clarkson who for his book The Single Eye was sentenced by resolution of Parliament on September 27, 1650, to be imprisoned, the book being burned by the common hangman.42 He is further cited as teaching that even unbaptized persons may preach and baptize. Of the other heresies cited the principal is the old denial of a future life, and especially of a physical and future hell. In general the heresy is pietistic or antinomian; but we have also the declaration “that right Reason is the rule of Faith, and that we are to believe the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, Incarnation, Resurrection, so far as we see them to be agreeable to reason and no further.” Concerning Jesus there are various heresies, from simple Unitarianism to contemptuous disparagement, with the stipulation for a “Christ formed in us.” But though there are cases of unquotable or ribald blasphemy there is little trace of scholarly criticism of the Bible, of reasoning against miracles or the inconsistencies of Scripture, as apart from the doctrine of deity. Nonetheless, it is very credible that “multitudes, unsettled ... have changed their faith, either to Scepticisme, to doubt of everything, or Atheisme, to believe nothing.”43