CHAPTER II.

STILLINGFLEET, BURNET, LEE, DODWELL, TURNER, BROUGHTON, LOWDE, HAMPTON, ASSHETON, BRAGGE, PLACE, BRUTHOGGE, COWARD, PHI. LOPSYCHOS, AND FLEMING.

THE metaphysical writings of Hobbes and Locke were viewed with some degree of suspicion and alarm by many learned and pious persons in England. It was imagined that such speculations contained the seeds of infidelity in religion, and general scepticism as to the fundamental principles of human knowledge. These impressions naturally give rise to controversy. The writers named above are some of the best known of those who took a part either for or against the doctrines of the new philosophy. Some of these controversial writings are of a trite and superficial character; but there are others of them which display considerable learning and ingenuity. They are all in some measure historically entitled to notice, inasmuch as they show the interest which was felt in England, on the introduction of the mental philosophy of

Hobbes and Locke, and also as pointing out those very puzzling and intricate questions, which, even at the present moment, are commonly urged, both here and on the Continent, as objectionable and defective portions of this sensational system of speculation.

STILLINGFLEET.

Stillingfleet was Bishop of Worcester, and entered very fully and warmly into Mr. Locke's doctrines unfolded in the " Essay on the Human Understanding ;" and Locke in return seems to have paid great attention to all his Lordship's strictures. Letters were first published in 1697.

His

The Bishop conceived that there were several positions laid down by Locke, which were open to serious objection on the score of religion. The principal of these were, that in Mr. Locke's account of the nature and province of reason, he appeared to countenance the doctrine, that this faculty was competent to solve all really sound and important theological principles, without the aid o faith. On this point the learned prelate maintains, in opposition to what he conceives is Mr. Locke's opinion, that we cannot have such clear and distinct ideas, by mere sensation and reflection, as are necessary for guiding our judgments in matters of doctrinal divinity. The words substance, incorporeal, existence, spirit, space, and many others, were, in the Bishop's opinion, used by Mr. Locke in a vague and unsatisfactory manner, and tended

to throw a cloudy haziness over many of the established articles of the Christian creed. The author of the "Essay" had thrown out a hint in his work, that matter might be endowed by the Creator with a power of thinking, and this the Bishop thought an unphilosophical and dangerous tenet. He says, "And although we think the separate state of the soul after death is sufficiently revealed in Scripture, yet it creates a great difficulty in understanding it, if the soul be nothing but life, or a material substance, which must be dissolved when life is ended. For if the soul be a material substance, it must be made up as others are, of the cohesion of solid and separate parts, how minute and invisible soever they be. And what is it which should keep them together, when life is gone? So that it is no easy matter to give an account, how the soul should be capable of immortality, unless it be an immaterial substance; and then we know the solution of the texture of bodies cannot reach the soul, being of a different nature.”*

The learned Bishop presses Locke rather severely relative to universals. The Nominalist theory is considered inadequate to account for our general conceptions on many important topics. Stillingfleet says, "And the reasons I go upon are these: in the first place, we are agreed, that there is a supreme, immaterial, most perfect Being; whose essential attributes do not depend upon our arbitrary ideas; nor any names or signs of honour we

Letter 1st, p. 57.

give Him, nor upon the mere enlarging the ideas of our own perfections; or such as we account to be so in ourselves; for we attribute those to God which we are not capable of, as eternity, or necessary existence, immutability, &c. Herein we take up no complex ideas from several individuals; but we form a true idea of a Divine essence from such attributes as are essential to an infinitely perfect Being, which being Infinite, is thereby incomprehensible by us.

"In the next place, we look upon this Supreme Being as the wise Creator of all things, who has ordered the several sorts and ranks of beings in the world according to his own eternal wisdom and hath given all such properties as himself thought fit, whereby they are really and essentially distinguished from one another; as appears by mankind, and brutes, and plants. And no man, that ever employs his own thoughts, can think that these are distinguished from each other only by an act of our minds.

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Among these it is evident there are some things wherein they agree, and some wherein they differ. They all agree in being real, created beings, and having a sort of life belonging to them. But they differ, that some have sense, which others have not; and some have reason and understanding, which others want. And all this is so plain and evident, that one might question, whether those had understanding or not, who could think the difference of these from each other was not in their

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natures, but only depended on their several names that we call them by.

"Among the individuals of the same kind, there is an agreement in the same essential properties ; as all men in being rational creatures; and there is a real difference from each other in the several accidents that belong to them, as to time, place, qualities, relations, &c. And no man in his senses can call this in question. For his most plain and

simple ideas will inform him of it.

"The question now is, whether that wherein they do all agree, be a mere universal name and abstract idea or not?

"It is certain, that what God created is no mere name or idea. It is certain, that God created not only individuals, but the several kinds, with the differences which they have of each other. It is certain, that these differences do not lie in mere names or ideas. How comes it then not to be certain that there is a real common essence or nature in the individuals of the same kind?

"But it comes not to us in the way of ideas. If it be so, the ways of ideas are two different ways; and I shall never forsake one for the other, unless I could see better reason for it, and even then I should not; but adhere to reason still.”*