Note 69 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

From the Origines Sacræ (1662) of Stillingfleet, nevertheless, it would appear that both deism and atheism were becoming more and more common.69 He states that “the most popular pretences of the atheists of our age have been the irreconcilableness of the account of times in Scripture with that of the learned and ancient heathen nations, the inconsistency of the belief of the Scriptures with the principles of reason; and the account which may be given of the origin of things from the principles of philosophy without the Scriptures.” These positions are at least as natural to deists as to atheists; and Stillingfleet is later found protesting against the policy of some professed Christians who give up the argument from miracles as valueless.70 His whole treatise, in short, assumes the need for meeting a very widespread unbelief in the Bible, though it rarely deals with the atheism of which it so constantly speaks. After the Restoration, naturally, all the new tendencies were greatly reinforced,71 alike by the attitude of the king and his companions, all influenced by French culture, and by the general reaction against Puritanism. Whatever ways of thought had been characteristic of the Puritans were now in more or less complete disfavour; the belief in witchcraft was scouted as much on this ground as on any other;72 and the deistic doctrines found a ready audience among royalists, whose enemies had been above all things Bibliolaters.