The Critique of Freethinking from Swift to Sterne

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Fiction and Religion The Critique of Freethinking from Swift to Sterne Martin C. Battestin From the tenor ofrecent studies ofheterodox writing in England during the long eighteenth century it would seem reasonable to announce, with Roger Lund, "the cultural centrality offreethinking, deism, and atheism in the Augustan Age."1 The adversaries of orthodoxy in the period were legion. Shaftesbury and Mandeville, and of course Hume, are remembered today, as well as Hobbes, whose malignant doctrines (as they appeared to the faithful) were a constant theme of the divines from the 1650s on. And a host of others swarmed: Asgill, Blount, Bolingbroke, Chubb, Collins, Cooke, Gildon, Gordon, Morgan, Tindal, Toland, Wollaston, Woolston, and others long lost to posterity. That their contemporaries should consider such minute philosophers, as Bishop Berkeley called them,2 to be of "enormous significance" is true, however, only with respect to their numbers, not to any appreciable success their program may be thought to have had. Across the Channel the cause ofscepticism that prepared the way for the Revolution was represented by writers who, compared to such as these, were giants: Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot come to mind. 1 The Margins ofOrthodoxy: Heterodox Writingand Cultwal Response, 1660-1750, ed. Roger D. Lund (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 9. 2 See George Berkeley, Alciphron: or, VieMinute Philosopliei (1732). EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION.Volume 15, Number 3-4, April-July 2003 342 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION On the contrary, in Protestant England, where a less oppressive climate of toleration and rationalism in religious matters prevailed, the ablest writers were ranged on the side oforthodoxy; and, recognizing the danger posed by Hobbes and the deists, they attacked in force. In what remains the most comprehensive and readable study of the intellectual milieu ofthe period, Leslie Stephen describes the unequal debate that raged for decades: The orthodox party had ... every advantage which could be given by ability, learning, and prestige. It would be difficult to mention a controversy in which there was a greater disparity offorce. The physiognomy of the books themselves bears marks of the difference. The deist writings are but shabby and shriveled little octavos, generally anonymous, such as lurk in the corners ofdusty shelves, and seem to be the predestined prey of moths. Against them are arrayed solid octavos and handsome quartos and at times even folios—very Goliaths among books, too ponderous for the indolence of our degenerate days, but fitting representatives of the learned dignitaries who compiled them. On the side of Christianity, indeed, appeared all that was intellectually venerable in England.' Some three hundred years later, it has proved difficult for literary historians to accept that, in England at least, great minds of the period we call the Enlightenment took their religion seriously. Newton, who mapped the universe and defined the physics of light, was an avid student oftheology; Locke, whose book TheReasonableness of Christianity was claimed for their cause by the deists, remained himself a communicant in the Church of England to the end of his life. In an excellent essay on the definitions oforthodoxy in the long eighteenth century,J.G.A. Pocock sides with the controversial work of J.C.D. Clark, who, he remarks, has "outraged many" in the profession not least by insisting on recounting the history of the eighteenth century with the established church at the centre of the stage, instead of making it a mummified presence in the wings. ... Ifwe take it for granted that an authoritative religious structure is an inherently ridiculous and repressive construct, we will ofcourse write Whig history of the kind Clark has condemned; but we write better history once we realize that there were those who did not consider it ridiculous, and both defended and endorsed it in word as well as deed.4 Leslie Stephen, llistmy ofEngUsh ThouglU in the Eigliteenth Century, intro. Crane Brinton, 2 vols (1876; reprint NewYork and Burlingame: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), 1:72. J.GA. Pocock, "Within the Margins: The Definitions of Orthodoxy," Margins o/Oithodoxy, pp. 36-37. CRITIQUE OF FREETHINKING343 Among the eighteenth-century British authors who did not consider religion either ridiculous or repressive, and who defended it in their works, were the following...