Note 87 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

When anti-theistic thought could subsist in the ecclesiastical climate of Puritan Scotland, it must have flourished somewhat in England. In 1667 appeared A Philosophicall Essay towards an eviction of the Being and Attributes of God, etc., of which the preface proclaims “the bold and horrid pride of Atheists and Epicures” who “have laboured to introduce into the world a general Atheism, or at least a doubtful Skepticisme in matters of Religion.” In 1668 was published Meric Casaubon’s treatise, Of Credulity and Incredulity in things Natural, Civil, and Divine, assailing not only “the Sadducism of these times in denying spirits, witches,” etc., but “Epicurus ... and the juggling and false dealing lately used to bring Atheism into Credit”—a thrust at Gassendi. A similar polemic is entombed in a ponderous folio “romance” entitled Bentivolio and Urania, by Nathaniel Ingelo, D.D., a fellow first of Emanuel College, and afterwards of Queen’s College, Cambridge (1660; 4th ed. amended, 1682). The second part, edifyingly dedicated to the Earl of Lauderdale, one of the worst men of his day, undertakes to handle the “Atheists, Epicureans, and Skepticks”; and in the preface the atheists are duly vituperated; while Epicurus is described as a gross sensualist, in terms of the legend, and the skeptics as “resigned to the slavery of vice.” In the sixth book the atheists are allowed a momentary hearing in defence of their “horrid absurdities,” from which it appears that there were current arguments alike anthropological and metaphysical against theism. The most competent part of the author’s own argument, which is unlimited as to space, is that which controverts the thesis of the invention of religious beliefs by “politicians”87—a notion first put in currency, as we have seen, by those who insisted on the expediency and value of such inventions; as, Polybius among the ancients, and Machiavelli among the moderns; and further by Christian priests, who described all non-Christian religions as human inventions.