Note 25 — Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in England Subsequent to 1760.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, free thought began to manifest itself in England under a rationalistic form, in a Roman catholic, Dr. Geddes, who lived 1737-1802. (See Life by Mason Good, 1804.) Vol. i. of his Translation of the Bible appeared in 1792; vol. ii. in 1797; and his Critical Remarks (vol. i.) in 1800. His free criticism is seen in discussing the character of Moses (pref. to vol. i. of Transl.); the slaughter of the Canaanites (pref. to vol. ii.); Paradise (Crit. Rem. p. 35); the remarks on Genesis xlix. (Id. p. 142); on the Egyptian plagues (p. 182); on the passage of the Red sea (p. 200). As soon as the first volume was published the Catholic bishops silenced him. Geddes was a believer in Christianity; but felt so strongly the deist difficulties, that he sought to defend revelation by explaining away the supernatural from the Jewish history, and inspiration from the Jewish literature. His views, so far as they were not original, were probably derived from the incipient rationalistic [pg 423] speculations of Germany, though he quoted almost none of the German except Michaelis and Herder. His position in the history of doubt is with the early rationalists, not with the deists. A writer of somewhat similar character, Mr. Evanson, a unitarian, wrote a critical attack on the Gospels, The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, in 1805.