A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
That Locke was felt to have injured orthodoxy is further proved by the
many attacks made on him from the orthodox side. Even the first Letter
on Toleration elicited retorts, one of which claims to demonstrate
"the Absurdity and Impiety of an Absolute Toleration." [483] On his
positive teachings he was assailed by Bishop Stillingfleet; by the
Rev. John Milner, B.D.; by the Rev. John Morris; by William Carrol;
and by the Rev. John Edwards, B.D.; [484] his only assailant with a
rationalistic repute being Dr. Thomas Burnet. Some attacked him on his
Essays; some on his Reasonableness of Christianity; orthodoxy finding
in both the same tendency to "subvert the nature and use of divine
revelation and faith." [485] In the opinion of the Rev. Mr. Bolde,
who defended him in Some Considerations published in 1699, the hostile
clericals had treated him "with a rudeness peculiar to some who make a
profession of the Christian religion, and seem to pride themselves in
being the clergy of the Church of England." [486] This is especially
true of Edwards, a notably ignoble type; [487] but hardly of Milner,
whose later Account of Mr. Lock's Religion out of his Own Writings,
and in his Own Words (1700), pressed him shrewdly on the score of
his "Socinianism." In the eyes of a pietist like William Law, again,
Locke's conception of the infant mind as a tabula rasa was "dangerous
to religion," besides being philosophically false. [488] Yet Locke
agreed with Law [489] that moral obligation is dependent solely on
the will of God--a doctrine denounced by the deist Shaftesbury as
the negation of morality.
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