The Emergence of Modern Protestantism 1725 - 1810

1
The Emergence of Modern Protestantism1725 - 1810
Lecture 11 Grab Bag (or finishing the 18th
century)
Dr. Dave Doughty
2
Outline

• The philosophers Voltaire, Rousseau
• The French Revolution
• Orthodoxy vs. Liberalism and Infidelity, Timothy
  Dwight

3
Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)

• Nov 21, 1694 May 30, 1778
• Philosopher, Essayist, Satirist
• Known for his wit
• Prolific writer - plays, poetry, novels, essays,
  historical and scientific works, 20,000 letters
  and over 2000 books and pamphlets.
• A key influence on the American and French
  Revolutions
• Best known quote is actually not his
• I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend
  to the death your right to say it
• From Friends of Voltaire written in 1906 by
  Evelyn Beatrice Hall

4
Voltaire Quotes

• The best government is a benevolent tyranny
  tempered by an occasional assassination.
• Each player must accept the cards life deals him
  or her but once they are in hand, he or she
  alone must decide how to play the cards in order
  to win the game.
• The best is the enemy of the good.
• As long as people believe in absurdities they
  will continue to commit atrocities
• Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but
  certainty is an absurd one.
• I have lived eighty years of life and know
  nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell
  myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders
  and man to be devoured by sorrow.
• Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.
• I always made one prayer to God, a very short
  one. Here it is "O Lord, make our enemies quite
  ridiculous!" God granted it.
• "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to
  invent Him."

5
Voltaire on God

• "What is faith? Is it to believe that which is
  evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind
  that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme,
  and intelligent being. This is no matter of
  faith, but of reason.
• All philosophical sects have run aground on the
  reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains
  for us to confess that God, having acted for the
  best, had not been able to do better.
• The Eternal has his designs from all eternity.
  If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes,
  it is quite useless to ask of him what he has
  resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the
  contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying
  that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant it is
  believing that he is thus, it is to mock him.
  Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he
  must do it, the thing being done without your
  praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is
  then to distrust him or the thing is unjust, and
  then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy
  of the grace you implore if worthy, he knows it
  better than you if unworthy, you commit another
  crime by requesting what is undeserved.In a
  word, we only pray to God because we have made
  him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like
  a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.

6
Voltaire On Christianity

• If Christians want us to believe in a Redeemer,
  let them act redeemed
• Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most
  absurd, and bloody religion that has ever
  infected the world
• Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal
  service by extirpating this infamous
  superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who
  are not worthy of being enlightened and who are
  apt for every yoke I say among honest people,
  among men who think, among those who wish to
  think. ... My one regret in dying is that I
  cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the
  finest and most respectable which the human mind
  can point out.

7
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• June 28,1712 July 2, 1778
• Swiss philosopher, writer, composer of the
  Enlightenment
• Enemy of Voltaire
• Major writings
• Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750)
• Discourse on Inequality (1755)
• Of the Social Contract, Principles of Politial
  Law (1761)
• Emile (1761)

8
Rousseaus Philosophy

• A fundamental divide between society and human
  nature
• Man is good in his natural state, but is
  corrupted by society
• Societys negative influence on men centers on
  its transformation of a positive self-love to
  pride.
• Positive self-love (amour de soi) represents the
  instinctive human desire for self-preservation,
  combined with the human power of reason.
• Pride (amour-propre) is artificial and forces man
  to compare himself to others, creating
  unwarranted fear, allowing men to take pleasure
  in the pain or weakness of others.
• Sort of the noble savage although he never used
  that phrase (it was first used by John Dryden in
  1672)

9
Rousseau Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

• In 1749, Rousseau read of an essay competition,
  which asked whether the development of the arts
  and sciences had been morally beneficial
• He wrote an essay, responding in the negative,
  called Discourse on the Arts and Sciences which
  won him first prize and made him famous
• The arts and sciences had not been beneficial to
  humankind because they were not human needs, but
  rather a result of pride and vanity. Moreover,
  the opportunities they created for idleness and
  luxury contributed to the corruption of man. He
  proposed that the progress of knowledge had made
  governments more powerful and had crushed
  individual liberty. He concluded that material
  progress had actually undermined the possibility
  of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy,
  fear and suspicion.

10
Rousseau Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

• Before art fashioned our manners and taught our
  passions to speak an affected language, our
  habits were rustic but natural, and differences
  in behavior announced at first glance differences
  in character.  Human nature was not fundamentally
  better, but men found their security in the ease
  with which they could see through each other, and
  this advantage, whose value we no longer feel,
  spared them many vices.
• But here the effect is certain, the depravity
  real, and our souls have become corrupted to the
  extent that our sciences and our arts have
  advanced towards perfection.

11
Rousseau Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

• "I examined the poets," he says, "and I look on
  them as people whose talent overawes both
  themselves and others, people who present
  themselves as wise men and are taken as such,
  when they are nothing of the sort."
• "From poets," Socrates continues, "I moved to
  artists.  No one was more ignorant about the arts
  than I no one was more convinced that artists
  possessed really beautiful secrets.  However, I
  noticed that their condition was no better than
  that of the poets and that both of them have the
  same misconceptions.  Because the most skillful
  among them excel in their specialty, they look
  upon themselves as the wisest of men. 
• "We do not knowneither the sophists, nor the
  orators, nor the artists, nor Iwhat the True,
  the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is
  this difference between us although these people
  know nothing, they all believe they know
  something whereas, I, if I know nothing, at
  least have no doubts about it.

12
Rousseau Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

• Astronomy was born from superstition, eloquence
  from ambition, hate, flattery, and lies, geometry
  from avarice, physics from a vain
  curiosityeverything, even morality itself, from
  human pride.  The sciences and the arts thus owe
  their birth to our vices we would have fewer
  doubts about their advantages if they owed their
  birth to our virtues.
• What false routes in an investigation of the
  sciences! How many errors, a thousand times more
  dangerous than the truth is useful, does one not
  have to get past to reach the truth?  The
  disadvantage is clear, for what is false is
  susceptible to an infinity of combinations, but
  truth has only one form of being. 
• If our sciences are vain in the objects they set
  for themselves, they are even more dangerous in
  the effects they produce.  Born in idleness, they
  nourish it in their turn.
• But these vain and futile declaimers move around
  in all directions armed with their fatal
  paradoxes, undermining the foundations of faith,
  and annihilating virtue.  They smile with disdain
  at those old words fatherland and religion and
  dedicate their talents and their philosophy to
  the destruction and degradation of everything
  which is sacred among men. 

13
Rousseau Discourse on Inequality

• The first man who, having fenced in a piece of
  land, said This is mine, and found people naive
  enough to believe him, that man was the true
  founder of civil society. From how many crimes,
  wars, and murders, from how many horrors and
  misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind,
  by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the
  ditch, and crying to his fellows Beware of
  listening to this imposter you are undone if you
  once forget that the fruits of the earth belong
  to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

14
Rousseau - The Social Contract

• "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
  chains. One man thinks himself the master of
  others, but remains more of a slave than they.
• THE Sovereign, having no force other than the
  legislative power, acts only by means of the
  laws and the laws being solely the authentic
  acts of the general will, the Sovereign cannot
  act save when the people is assembled.
• Every law the people has not ratified in person
  is null and void is, in fact, not a law.
• The legislative power belongs to the people, and
  can belong to it alone.
• The heart of the idea of the social contract may
  be stated simply Each of us places his person
  and authority under the supreme direction of the
  general will, and the group receives each
  individual as an indivisible part of the whole...

15
From The Social Contract

• The passage from the state of nature to the
  civil state produces a very remarkable change in
  man, by substituting justice for instinct in his
  conduct, and giving his actions the morality they
  had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of
  duty takes the place of physical impulses and
  right of appetite, does man, who so far had
  considered only himself, find that he is forced
  to act on different principles, and to consult
  his reason before listening to his inclinations.
  Although, in this state, he deprives himself of
  some advantages which he got from nature, he
  gains in return others so great, his faculties
  are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so
  extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole
  soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of
  this new condition often degrade him below that
  which he left, he would be bound to bless
  continually the happy moment which took him from
  it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and
  unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent
  being and a man.
• What man loses by the social contract is his
  natural liberty and an unlimited right to
  everything he tries to get and succeeds in
  getting what he gains is civil liberty and the
  proprietorship of all he possesses.

16
Voltaire and Rousseau

• Voltaire believed that through education and
  reason man could separate himself from the beasts
  while Rousseau thought that it was precisely all
  this which made men "unnatural" and corrupted.
• Rousseau sent Voltaire a copy of his "The Social
  Contract" and Voltaire wrote him the following
• "I have received your new book against the human
  race, and thank you for it. Never was such a
  cleverness used in the design of making us all
  stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk
  on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for
  more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the
  impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in
  search of the savages of Canada, because the
  maladies to which I am condemned render a
  European surgeon necessary to me because war is
  going on in those regions and because the
  example of our actions has made the savages
  nearly as bad as ourselves."

17
French Revolution - Causes

• Causes were primarily economic
• Louis XV fought many wars, Louis XVI supported
  U.S.
• Huge national debt (comparable to US after WW II)
• Inequitable taxation
• Conspicuous consumption (Let them eat cake)
• Widespread famine and malnutrition, some
  intentional starvation
• Some social and political factors
• Enlightenment ideals (realized in U.S.)
• Resentment of royal absolutism
• Resentment of nobility preferences

18
The Church in France before the revolution

• In 18th century France, 95 of the population
  were Roman Catholics
• The church was the First Estate, the nobility
  (0.5 ) was the Second Estate and the people
  (businesses) were the Third Estate
• The monarch was outside the estates
• The church was a huge factor in the life of the
  country
• Church kept track of births, deaths, marriages
• Church provided primary and secondary education
• Church provided hospitals
• Church was the largest landowner in the country
• Rent from tenants plus tithes (the dime) made the
  church very wealthy
• Note that the dime was actually a tax on crop
  earnings
• Note that in a time of fiscal trouble the
  wealthy church made a tempting target

19
French Revolution - Chronology

• To deal with the crisis, Louis XVI convoked the
  Estates General in 1789 1st time in 200 years
• Church was first estate, nobility (0.5 ) was
  second, people were third
• The third estate (bankers, industrialists, etc.)
  wanted to replace an entrenched aristocracy of
  parasitic royalty and clergy with a
  representative government
• June 29, 1789 Tennis Court Oath The Estates
  General would not disband until France had a new
  consisutition.
• They proclaimed themselves the National Assembly
• Forced king, clergy, nobility to acquiesce.
• July 14 Parisian mob storms the Bastille

20
French Revolution Chronology - II

• Aug. 27, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man
  and Citizen
• ignorance, neglect or contempt of the rights of
  man were the sole cause of public calamities
  and of the corruption of governments
• Insisted on equal rights for all
• Freedom of press and speech,
• Representative taxation
• Accountability of public servants
• Right to property
• 1791 Kings and Queen tried to flee, were
  apprehended and imprisoned

21
The Dechristianisation of France

• Dec. 2, 1789 legislation enacted which
• Abolished the Churchs authority to levy the tax
  on crops (the dime)
• Cancelled special privileges for the clergy
• Confiscated church property
• To monetize this property, a new currency
  (assignats) was introduced, which was backed by
  the confiscated property
• Feb. 13, 1790 Outlawed monastic vows
• July 12, 1790 The Civil Constitution of the
  Clergy
• Remaining clergy were employees of the State
• Ensuing years saw violent repression of the
  clergy, including imprisonment and massacre of
  priests throughout France
• Oct. 30, 1790 All clergy required to take an
  oath to obey the law and the constitution
• April 1791 Pope declared signers were heretical
  40 days to retract

22
Chronology and Dechristianisation

• In 1792 the king was formally deposed, and the
  newly organized National Convention declared
  France a republic
• Priests who did not sign an oath to maintain
  liberty and equality were given 15 days to
  emigrate
• 40,000 left France
• September 1792 massacre of 2000 Frenchmen who
  were not enthusiastic about the Convention left
  France in control of the most extreme
  revolutionaries
• January 1793 King was beheaded, launching the
  Reign of Terror.
• 2,500 guillotined in Paris, 10,000 in the
  provinces

23
Dechristianisation - III

• the deportation of clergy and the condemnation of
  many of them to death,
• the closing, desecration and pillaging of
  churches,
• removal of the word "saint" from street names and
  other acts to banish Christian culture from the
  public sphere
• removal of statues, plates and other iconography
  from places of worship
• destruction of crosses, bells and other external
  signs of worship
• the institution of revolutionary and civic cults,
  including the Cult of Reason and subsequently the
  Cult of the Supreme Being,
• the large scale destruction of religious
  monuments,
• the outlawing of public and private worship and
  religious education,
• forced marriages of the clergy,
• forced abjurement of priesthood,
• the enactment of a law on October 21, 1793 making
  all nonjuring priests and all persons who
  harbored them liable to death on sight

24
Dechristianisation IV

• Cult of Reason
• Based on secularism and atheism
• Developed between 1792-1794
• Several Parisian churches were transformed into
  Temples of Reason
• Centered upon a young woman designated the
  Goddess of Reason
• Goddess of Reason
• Festival of Liberty Nov. 10, 1793 Notre Dame
• Extinguished by Robespierre in the Reign of
  Terror
• Cult of the Supreme Being
• Developed by Robespierre, a Deist, in opposition
  to the Cult of Reason
• Proclaimed the state religion by Robespierre in
  1794
• Did not allow freedom of religion
• When Robespierre was guillotined in 1794 (the
  Thermidorian Reaction), this cult was dead, and
  the reign of terror ended.

25
Why should we care about the French Revolution?

• The Supreme Courts shift away from the
  time-honored position of tax exemption first
  became apparent in 1970 when the court handed
  down its opinion in Walz v. Tax Commission of the
  City of New York.
• Walz had sued to enjoin the New York City Tax
  Commission from granting property tax exemption
  to religious organizations for properties used
  solely for religious worship. He argued that the
  exemptions indirectly required him to make a
  contribution to religious bodies and thereby
  violated the establishment clause of the First
  Amendment.
• In a close 5-4 decision, the court held that
  exempting church property was permissible, but
  not constitutionally required.
• the government does not transfer part of its
  revenue to churches but simply abstains from
  demanding that the church support the state. . .
  . There is no genuine nexus between tax exemption
  and establishment of religion.
• In 1983 in Regan v. Taxation with Representation,
  the court held 8-3 that tax exemption was
  equivalent to a tax subsidy.
• Both tax exemptions and tax deductibility are a
  form of subsidy that is administered through the
  tax system. A tax exemption has much the same
  effect as a cash grant to the organization of the
  amount of tax it would have to pay on its income.

26
The End of the Revolution

• 1799 Napolean became emporer in a coup detat.
• Napolean invaded Italy to wring indemnity from
  the Pope, and a retraction of all
  anti-revolutionary bulls and encyclicals.
• Napolean stabilized the French church, resumed
  paying clerical salaries, guaranteed freedom of
  worship
• But he retained the loyalty oath, and the right
  to nominate new bishops.
• Pope Pius VII agreed.

27
Liberalism vs. Orthodoxy

• As we have seen, the Massachusetts
  Congregationalist churches continually allowed
  liberal thinking (such as unitarianism Mayhew)
• Harvard , which had been attacked by Whitefield
  continued a liberal drift
• In1803 David Tappan, Hollis Professor of Divinity
  died, and in 1804 President Joseph Williard also
  died. Both were moderate Calvinists.
• Liberal Henry Ware was named Hollis professor in
  1805, and liberal Samuel Webber was elected
  president in 1806.
• In Connecticut, and Yale, by contrast, the slide
  toward liberalism was delayed, and in fact a
  counter-offensive the second great awakening
  was launched, largely due to the efforts of one
  man Timothy Dwight.

28
Timothy Dwight

• May 14, 1752 Jan 11, 1817
• Mother was daughter of Jonathan Edwards
• Graduated from Yale in 1869
• Was a chaplain in the Continental Army
• Pastor from 1783 1795 in Fairfield Ct.
• Leader of evangelical New Divinity school
• Honorary degrees from Princeton and
• Harvard
• President of Yale College 1795 death
• As President of Yale, Dwight was also pastor of
  the college church, and preached twice each
  Sunday.
• He preached a four-year cycle of doctrinal
  sermons.

29
Timothy Dwight - author

• A prominent writer
• The Conquest of Canaan (1774, published 1785)
• the first American epic poem (10,000 lines of
  heroic couplets)
• (loosely based on Joshua, but includes folks from
  Ct.)
• Theology Explained and Defended (5 vols.,
  1818-1819)
• Sermons by Timothy Dwight (2 vols., 1828)
• large circulation both in the United States and
  in England.
• Travels in New England and New York (4 vols.,
  1821-1822)
• first reference to Cape Cod house is in this book
• Also a hymn-writer
• Best known I love thy kingdom, Lord (353 in
  the red Trinity)

30
Timothy Dwight defender of orthodoxy

• In 1793 Dwight preached a sermon to the General
  Association of Connecticut entitled a "Discourse
  on the Genuineness and Authenticity of the New
  Testament" which when printed the next year
  became an important tract defending the orthodox
  faith against Deists and other skeptics.
• An address to the candidates for the
  baccalaureate in Yale College called "The Nature
  and Danger of Infidel Philosophy, Exhibited in
  Two Discourses, Addressed to the Candidates for
  the Baccalaureate, In Yale College" was delivered
  on September 9, 1797.
• Published by George Bunce in 1798.
• This book is credited as one of the embers of the
  Second Great Awakening.
• a somewhat ponderous and solemn satire, The
  Triumph of Infidelity (1788), directed against
  David Hume, Voltaire and others
• The Duty of Americans at the Present Crisis
  (1798)
• A Discourse, on Some Events of the last
  Century, delivered in the Brick Church in New
  Haven on Wednesday, January 7, 1801

31
Dwight A Discourse, on Some Events of the last
Century (On Infidelity)

• The American war increased these evilsTo the
  depravation still remaining was added a long
  train of immoral doctrines and practicesThe
  profanation of the Sabbath, before unusual,
  profaneness of language, drunkeness, gambling,
  and lewdness, were exceedingly increasedand a
  light, vain method of thinking concerning sacred
  things, a cold, contemptuous indifference toward
  every moral and religious subject.
• At this period Infidelity began to obtain, in
  this country , and extensive currency and
  reception.
• Infidelity has been frequently supposed to be
  founded on an apprehended deficiency of the
  evidence, which supports a divine Revelation. No
  opinion can be more erroneous than this. That
  solitary instances may have existed, in which men
  did not believe the scriptures to be the word of
  God, because they doubted of the evidence in
  their possession, I am ready to admit but that
  this has been the common fact, is, at least, in
  my view, a clear impossibility.

32
Dwight Infidelity - II

• Our Savior informs us, that This is
  condemnation, that light is come into the world,
  and men loved darkness rather than light, because
  their deeds were evil and subjoins, that he
  who doth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to
  the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
  Here one of the two great causes of Infidelity is
  distinctly and exactly alleged, viz. The
  opposition of a heart, which loves sin, and
  dreads the punishment of it, to that truth,
  which, with infinite authority, and under an
  immense penalty, demands of all men a holy life.
  The other great cause of Infidelity is frequently
  mentioned by the inspired writers, particularly
  St. Paul, St. Peter , and St. JudeThere shall
  come in the last days scoffers, walking after
  their own lusts, and saying, Where is the
  promise of his coming? For, since the fathers
  fell asleep, all things continue as they were
  from the beginning of the creation.

33
Dwight Infidelity III

• The Infidels, here referred to, are plainly
  philosophists, the authors of vain and deceitful
  philosophy of science falsely so called, always
  full of vanity in their discourses Scoffers,
  walking after their own lusts, and alluring
  others, through the same lusts, to follow
  themPhilosophistical pride, and the love of
  sinning in security and peace, are, therefore,
  the two great causes of Infidelity, according to
  the scriptures.
• A more exact account of this subject, as existing
  in fact, could not even now be given. Infidelity
  has been assumed because it was loved, and not
  because it was supported by evidence and has
  been maintained and defended, to quiet the mind
  in sin, and to indulge the pride of talents and
  speculation.

34
Dwight Infidelity IV

• The form, which is has received, has varied in
  the hands of almost every distinguished Infidel.
  It was first Theism, or natural Religion, then
  mere Unbelief, then Animalism, then Scepticism,
  then partial, and then total Atheism. Yet it
  has, in three things at least, preserved a
  general consistency opposition to Christianity,
  devotion to sin and lust, and a pompous
  profession of love to Liberty.
• The war has been the desultory attack of a
  barbarian, not of a civilized soldier and onset
  of passion, pride, and wit a feint of
  conjectures and falsified facts and incursion of
  sneers, jests, gross banter and delicate
  ridicule a parade of hints and
  insinuationsThese were never the weapons of
  sober conviction this was never the conduct of
  honest men.

35
Dwight Infidelity V

• The excessive wealth of that division of the
  eastern Continent has generated an enormous
  luxury, the multiplied enjoyments of which have
  become not only the ruling objects of desire, and
  the governing motives of action, but, in the view
  of a great part of the inhabitants, the necessary
  means of even a comfortable existence. On these
  life is employed, ambition fastened, ardour
  exhaused, and energy spentTo glitter with
  diamonds, to roll in pomp , to feast on dainties,
  to wanton in amusements, to build palaces, and to
  fashion wildernesses of pleasure are the supreme
  objects of millions, apparently desinedd to the
  graveScience toils, ingenuity is stretched on
  the rack, and art is wearied through all here
  refinements, to satisfy the universal demand for

36
Dwight Infidelity VI

• Of this universal devotion to pleasure and show,
  modern Infidels have availed themselves to the
  utmost. To a mind, to a nation, dissolved in
  sloth, enervated by pleasure, and fascinated with
  splendor, the Gospel is preached, and heaven
  presented, in vain. The eye is closed, the ear
  stopped, and the heart rendered gross and
  incapable of healing. The soul is of course,
  unconscious of danger, impatient of restraint,
  and insensible to the demand of moral obligation.
  It is therefore, prepared to become an Infidel,
  without research and without conviction.

37
Dwight Infidelity VII

• In the mean time, let me solemnly warn you, that
  if you intend to accomplish anything, if you mean
  not to labour in vain, and to spend your strength
  for nought, you must take your side. There can
  be here no halting between two opinions. You
  must meet face to face the bands of disorder, of
  falsehood, and of sin. Between them and you
  there is, there can be, no natural, real, or
  lasting harmony. What communion hath light with
  darkness?...Will you copy their practices? Will
  you teach your children, that death is an eternal
  sleep? That the end sanctifies the means? That
  moral obligation is a dream? Religion a farce?
  And your Saviour the spurious offspring of
  pollution?...Will you make marriage the mockery
  of a registerss office? Will you become the
  rulers of Sodom, and the people of Gomorrha?
  Will you enthrone a Goddess of Reason before the
  table of Christ?...Will you deny your God?

38
In Closing Lets Sing

• Red Trinity p 353 I Love Thy Kingdom Lord
• All six verses
• Note the references to the church means a lot
  more when you realize how hard he fought to keep
  the church doctrinally pure

39
Next Week Last Class

• Michael Holloway Immanuel Kant