"You, O Deists! profess yourselves the enemies of Christianity, and you are so: you are also the enemies of the Human Race and of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil, and requires a new Selfhood continually, and must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy, which is a remnant of Druidism, teaches that Man is righteous in his Vegetated Spectre—an opinion of fatal and accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the entire abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw, and prophesied of Jesus." William Blake, Jerusalem
The classic story of the Enlightenment is that it was a naturalist turn towards liberalism and the individual. The illuminated philosophes threw off the shackles of priest and king to remake a world with a human face. No longer would ancient tyrannies enslave man, but reason would be unleashed to uplift and dignify. It was this new wave of philosophies which inspired the American French Revolution. The image is Jefferson sitting in the Marquis de Lafayette's parlor dictating the Rights of Man. It was the age of the hot-air balloon and electricity, an excited time of new power and ability. In terms of religion, it was the zenith for the Deist and the Lodge. It was the rational god of mankind, the one who empowered his creature to achieve mangodhood through participating in the great architectural project called Nature. With square and compass, man could build a world which made the Author and Architect of the Universe proud.
However, revisionists of many stripes, whether conservative or Marxist, deflated this self-mythologization. Instead, the Enlightenment was a time of oppression, where the bourgeoisie grasped at the reins of power. Liberalism was none other than Hobbes' Leviathan, which Lockean individualism gave a kindlier gloss. It was also hypocritical, as the brotherhood of man meant a reinscription of class-boundaries. The bourgeoisie ruled in state over a dehumanized race of proletariats, whose labors reimaged the world. The full flowering of the Enlightenment's principles would lead to socialism or communism, but its reactionary purveyors drifted back into unreason, unleashing Nazism and Fascism. Thus the Revolution was never glorious, but an ugly bloodbath. American Loyalists were ritually humiliated through tarring and feathering in what, effectively, was a civil war. The French Revolution did not accidentally slip into the Terror, but the guillotine and the Committee of Public Safety was its telos, brought back from total insanity through the caesarist, then monarchic, drift under Bonaparte. Deism was this double-movement: a drift towards enlightened reason, but a reactionary brake against its full flowering. Deism was the overthrow of priestcraft, but the immolation of atheism (as Robespierre dramatically performed in the newly "christened" Temple of Reason). Or, as it happened in the Pantheist Controversy of Lessing's Spinozist declaration of faith, Deism was none other than solipsistic madness. God was none other than the projection of so-called philosophers and arbiters of reason, idols of mud made in man's image.
However, this image of Enlightenment, progressive, regressive, or dialectical, often failed to appreciate England's experience of "Enlightening" which occurred nearly a century earlier. This has often been overlooked as England preserved its ancien regime, its aristocratic constitution which reined in monarchical absolutism as well as bridling democratic popular representation. Of course, chief Enlightener Voltaire was nothing but an Anglophile, drooling with admiration for a government which gave a stately burial to Isaac Newton. It was in England which saw a constitutional parliamentary monarchy form, in conjunction with a Whiggish Latitudinarian church. Nevertheless, the Church of England still sealed itself formally against the development of Deism or its cousin Unitarianism. While some Whig-adjacent churchmen supported the American Revolution, the French Revolution found ideological support only amongst radical Dissenters like Joseph Priestley. The unfolding of the Revolution even saw some Dissenters, like Coleridge, fold back into the Church on new terms.
However, these divergences generally lead to a useless historiographical trend of pluralization. Now there was no hegemonic Enlightenment, but "Enlightenments", each possessing their own range of unique national or local characterizations. But this trend rapidly exhausted itself, achieving little clarity of what held together the generally clerical English Enlightenment and the generally anticlerical French Enlightenment. Thus newer literature has resituated the Enlightenment within the fragmentation of the Reformation, which some have termed a European civil war. With the collapse of Christendom, confessionalization sought replacement, whether on Tridentine, Augsburg, or trifold Reformed terms. The hardening of boundaries brought about the age of orthodoxy, a powder keg which helped fuel dynastic political controversy. The French Wars of Religions, setting rival houses against one another along Roman or Huguenot lines, were a precursor of what could come. The Thirty Years War is the center-of-gravity for this confessional conflagration, but the English Civil Wars was far more revealing. While the 1648 Peace of Westphalia tempered the conflict between states, establishing the rite for states and statelets to determine their own religion, the English settlement was far more ambiguous.
Unlike the conflagration of Rome vs. Reformer, England saw protestants fight one another over the identity and future of the Reformation. Various factions emerged, whether the establishment-Anglican Royalists, the increasingly presbyterian Parliamentarians, or the hodgepodge of puritan-radical found in the Army. The victory of Cromwell, an Independent of rather ecumenical leanings, saw the potential for a revolutionary reimagine of English Society. Nevertheless, the majority of the population became exhausted with endless reform, most of whom supported the prayerbook society of the Elizabethan Settlement. Wariness of Laudian and presbyterian reform led to outright disgust for radical Independency and its concomitant explosion into sects (Familists, Muggletonians, Baptists, Quakers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchy Men, etc.). The 1662 settlement, which re-established the Church of England on quasi-Laudian lines and ejected presbyterian-puritan reformers, set the Church of England on a clear course. But the problem was that even as most of England accepted these reforms, there still remained a solid majority of opposition (roughly 10%, with 8% being presbyterian). Additionally, England still possessed an overwhelmingly aristocratic Catholic minority. England's Enlightenment emerged from how, precisely, to deal with this plural society and on what basis.
Ironically perhaps, much of the debate depended on the serially materialist boogeyman of Hobbism. The "monster of Malmesbury", Thomas Hobbes cast a long shadow over English political thought. A defender of the monarchy, but no stranger to the challenge of this post-christendom world, Hobbes reimagined a new justifying myth for monarchical government. It was precisely in a fictive "state of nature" where man, alone and naked, clung together against the jealousy of his fellows. In a pact of self-defense, for life and property, governments were created through the primitive democratic assembly, voting its sovereignty to a representative of the nation. While this was not necessarily a monarch (Hobbes acknowledge the sovereign could become an aristocratic council or a democratic assembly), the new sovereign thus bore representation and could not be assailed without the specter of civil war (the body-politic rending itself limb from limb). Hobbes provided the terms for future English debate, with most of his interlocutors adopting bits and piece of his system. While Leviathan was likely written as an apologia for Cromwell (in a hope to return home), its basic system could justify equally a sovereign royal monarch or an increasingly institutional Parliament which exercised mighty powers through the king's presence in it. This increasingly "rational" justification, reflecting the influence of the Royal Society on English intellectual life, became increasingly important as England became a commercial society and a parliamentary government.
In terms of religion and theology, this naturalistic and rational origin of true religion became important to define the basis of English policy. Hobbes' notoriously coy and ambiguous theology, hovering between heterodox Erastian Reformed Protestant and rhetorically concealed atheist, provoked outrage. Hobbes had even countenanced a form of spiritual materialism (not unlike Tertullian), which saw God-qua-Spirit as a very refined material that permeates the universe, enraged clerical opponents. Hobbism was not simply autocratic tyranny, but irreligion and atheism. Nevertheless, Hobbes must be met, lest he take the "rational" and "scientific" high ground, which became increasingly important due to continental philosophy. Decartes cut his teeth in the Wars of Religion, and the Dutch had emerged, after the 90 Years War of Independence, in a similar position, open to naturalistic reason to justify their deactivated confessional-state. Hobbes, exiled in France with the rest of Charles II's court, had engaged the atomic theories of Gassendi and the neo-skepticism of Montaigne, among many others. In response, English philosophers and priests had to attack Hobbism head on. It was the chief opponent to overcome for a free, religious, and prosperous society.
Despite attacks on them as rank Hobbists, the Christian Deism of Toland was a radical attempt to restate Christianity on "rational" grounds. Christianity, for Toland, was Nature's Religion, the pious and sincere moral commitment to the one God, who revealed his precepts through Moses and Jesus Christ. The Jews had misunderstood the temporary and symbolic nature of the Mosaic covenant, which was fundamentally about inscribing the ethics of the Ten Commandments. Nothing in Christianity was contrary to Nature, and thus all encrusted theopompic ritual and hieratic control in the Church of England was Catholic detritus. The Reformation, in contrast, was about recovery of pure religion. Thus the quasi-Socinian theology of Tolland was no mere deviation, but the telos of the Protestant Reformation, towards the individual conscience against all forms of priestcraft. Instead, a form of Roman Stoic ethics was redefined in terms of Britain's increasingly mercantile polity to promote personal and public virtue. This defined the Whiggish republican aristocracy of landed virtue and commercial prosperity, not unlike Harrington's commonwealth of Oceana and its Machiavellian civil religion. No priests, no masters, but godly gentry and nobles who would pioneer across the face of the world. Anything in Scripture which contradicted plain reason and natural science was misunderstood.
This understanding of Deism has been quite common through the literature. The common conceit is that the Church simply recoiled, turning inwards and appealing to special revelation. Of course, as most recognized, a certain kind of rationalistic philo-deism emerged within the Church of England at the end of the eighteenth century. Deacon Paley, with this famous pocket watch analogy for creation, typified this embrace of Deistic naturalism. However, not all defenders of priestcraft opted to eject these naturalistic arguments. As much as defenders of royalty and parliament retooled Hobbesian arguments against his materialist and quasi-tyrannical statist tendencies, defenders of priestcraft appealed to the same naturalistic categories. The strangest form of this came from none other than Isaac Newton, who saw his own mathematical and biblical forays as a type of priestly inquiry. Was he not examining the Heavens through the book of Nature and Scripture? He was not unlike the priests of Egypt or Babylon who gained the competency to know when/where the Star of Bethlehem would arise to see the Christ child. Newton was the kind of priest of Nature whom William Blake condemned as the scions of antichrist.
However, another kind of priest of Nature emerged. In response to John Toland, George Hickes offered his rebuttal along Non-Juror principles. The Non-Jurors arose as a schism from the Church of England (or, as they saw it, they were the mainstream had schism from them) over the establishment of the Glorious Revolution. After the crypto-Catholic policies of James II, in undermining the Anglican establishment through policies of royal absolutism similar to Louis XIV, a number of parliamentarians called upon James' nephew and son-in-law, the Dutch Stadtholder William, to check this Francophile. Though James likely had no plans to strengthen his alliance with France, he continued his brother's friendly policies even as the Continent reeled from the potential "universal monarchy" of France. The Glorious Revolution not only involved a palace coup, which sent James Stuart fleeing abroad, but saw a victory for Parliament and an unwritten English constitution. However, not all were comfortable with how these events proceeded, as James, even as he fled, never formally renounced his kingship. William, at best, was an interregnum, at least until James forfeited his rights and passed them onto his daughter (William's wife was Mary, James' eldest daughter). Instead, a constitutional parliamentary assembly was convened, recognizing William as the king in light of James' abdication. Between Whigs who were comfortable with parliamentary recognition of the monarch and Tories who rejected any interference in hereditary monarchy, England charted an ambiguous path. To strengthen his hand, William required oaths of allegiance from his subjects. For some churchmen, who not only must offer an oath but state prayers for their king and queen, this request was a bridge too far. However, schism erupted when William, to remove the recalcitrant, sacked bishops and priests who would not swear the oath. Thus the Non-Jurors were born.
The Non-Jurors called upon a radical spiritual distinction between civil and spiritual government, rejecting any interference between the two. Despite critics, this was no return to papal ecclesiology, as the Non-Jurors rejected the pope's monopolization of episcopal authority, as well as his meddling in civil affairs. Instead, the Non-Jurors drew upon half a century's frustration with how Charles II had restored the Church. Despite the Cavalier Parliament's friendly disposition to an Anglican orthodoxy against presbyterian recalcitrance, these reforms came through Parliament, not an episcopal convocation. Frustration with royal indifference and Parliamentary overreach convinced some that more was needed, but in the heady days of the Restoration, vocal opposition was quiet. Instead, the focus was to bring Dissent back in by hook or by crook. However, not in opposition to both king and parliament, the Non-Jurors defended a separation of Church from state to defend the ecclesiastical authorities of the true church's bishops. The Church of England possessed an apostolic succession, which had been tainted through papal corruption and dogma. The Reformation, rather than sola fide, was about ecclesiastical independence. The Non-Jurors stood for the fullness of the Reformation (with bishops offering to help the Continental presbyterians complete their independence through receiving Anglican ordinations).
But George Hickes wanted to defeat Toland at his own game. Yes, Christianity was Nature's religion, but Nature's religion was hieratic and ritualistic. Every human society possessed temples, priests, and sacrifices. Christianity, through the work of Jesus Christ, had overcome the need of bloody sacrifice and sacred spaces, but it nevertheless followed the same paradigm. The priest was not only the wielder of the knife, but he mediated the divine blessings and curses between God and his people. Through the liturgy, the priest effected grace and peace, forgiveness and glorification, for his congregation. This power was not his own, but as a priest of God, he had a delegated covenantal authority to bind the conscience (though one that could ultimately be overwritten in the final judgement, if poorly exercised). Such was a common notion to all peoples in all times. The Egyptian priests confected goods for the people, as did the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Germans. And this power was inviolable. Pharaohs may have ruled as gods on earth, but they had to respect the authority of the priests. The Romans may have had government over the temples, through the consul as pontifex Maximus, but the colleges of various priestly custodians remained sacrosanct in their independence. Such justified the Christian priest to remain apart from all civic government, but influential over the consciences of said government's subjects. Deists like Toland accused of Hickes of priestcraft and tyranny? Good! For what was priestcraft but good governance of man's conscience? What was the shackles of tyrannical clergy, but the chains pulling degenerated man back from the pit of hell? Hickes relished in these accusations, for they not only were true but were man's salvation. Even if Christianity was not a revealed religion, nature would show the need for such a spiritual authority.
George Hickes' apologetic, combined with Toland's natural theology, fit the Deistic cross-over of Christianity as Nature's religion on a priestly foundation. While deacon Paley would in no way countenance the high priestcraft of the Non-Jurors (if he read them), this quasi-Deistic theology depended upon clerisy as much as Toland's religion of natural virtue. It was such that William Blake so violently rejected. An apocalyptic theologian on strictly Christian (if heterodox) grounds, Christianity was not the religion as man as he was, but man as he was transformed. For any religion to treat man as he was simpliciter, that religion would promote satanism. For what was demonic than the current reign of sin that man lived under? What was naturalism than justification of man's depravity, even if it was sugar-coated along the lines of benevolence and fraternity? It is thus strange that Blake was in support of revolutionary France, even as he deplored Voltaire and Rousseau (along with Locke and Newton) as antichrists. But he saw it as the overthrow of a regime which, rather than embrace some archaic throne and altar political theology, had dabbled in so-called Enlightened philosophy. Had not Marie Antoinette masqueraded as little bo peep and gone on pilgrimage to Rousseau's tomb? The ancien regime dallied with the same forces of "reaction" which governed in England. But rather than some sort of aristocratic rearguard defense of king and church, it was nothing less than a justification of Deistic tyranny. Edmund Burke may have been rather ecumenical in his mystical defense of the Glorious Revolution, but Pitt the Younger was a rank phillistine. Toryism to him was a means of material stability and prosperity, not spiritual growth. It embraced the "vegetative" man as much as Burke rebuked him. For it was Burke's post-Rockingham Whigs which tried to hold Hastings accountable for his pseudo-Mughal imperial lordship, while Pitt helped exonerate him. For behind the man of "reason" was the man of appetite, flowing from Nature's dictate. The historical process of civility was rejected as nothing but a complex game cloaking man's love for bread, games, and sex. That was what Pitt represented in his pragmatic governance, even as he gave aid to his zealous friend and evangelical advocate, William Wilberforce.
The age of Christian priestcraft is dead, but its naturalistic spirit lives on. It exists in those who offer an unwavering support for "the Science" and the clerical caste of white coats. Its an unadulterated valorization of the medical drug-pushers, who stand in the light of true knowledge. Such is not revealed unto babes, but university-trained drones. The hive awaits them, as they become Nature's bees, manufacturing the honey that keeps the collective nourished. Ironically, such was what Mandeville mocked (though its misinterpreted as endorsement). But our Deist priests still walk among us. They brandish degree and certification as proof of their mediation of divine goods. The book of Nature supplants Scripture as the hermeneutic to read creation. We live under the reign of the new demons. Blake warned of these hell-mongers, sorcerers of the created, confecting miracles of technique. It was a similar caste that Jacques Ellul recognized as bearers of the "new demons", replacing the old gods of wood and river. George Hickes may have believed that he was defending the Christian priesthood, but he degenerated it into a mere type of natural religion, anymore as Tindal provoked the atheism of secular modernity. Both adhered to a vigorously religious society, but these operated along a similar axis that would mutate towards what was more purely "natural". The reality was that "nature" was what was in the eye of beholder. Naturalism and rationalism inevitably provoked nihilism, a subjectivism that became unjustifiable except by sheer will and charisma. This breakdown happens in every generation, but it is nonetheless a trap. If Tindal promotes the cult of the atheist philosopher didact, Hickes promotes the cult of the clerical guild. Ironically, Hickes' defense of the "naturalness" of the Christian priesthood would lead to its supercession into the priestly power of the CDC or other managerial public science authorities.
What is lost in this defense of Christianity is the apocalyptic break. It's not that Christianity denies creation, but reject "nature", a predictable order that subsists without an active mind governing. The norms of reality are not simply given, as if they're unchangeable or independent. Rather, what we experience as "nature" is simply one level of magic, which depends upon a "deep magic" of God's spoken Word. It it not simply as is; it is is as it is. In other words, "In the beginning was the Word". Without this supervenient grace, this gift of God's active governance, then man would simply flounder in this toxic pit of a world. But we are not simply givens, or aimless evolutionary entities that flap and flop towards some idea of betterment. Rather, the creation testifies to its incompletion and draws mankind towards glory. But whence? Through the cross of Jesus Christ. Such is anathema to Deistic theology, which Blake rightly understood as committed to crucifying the Christ upon its dead tree of "reason" again and again. I put reason in scare-quote because it is not true reason, but a false and arrogant imposition upon the term. True reason depended upon the very words of God. Hence, despite accusations that Bishop Hoadly (who fought the Non-Jurors vociferously) was a rationalist or a Lockean, he returned to the apocalyptic apostolic depot as sufficient. But beyond him, this Word of God breaks into every age to return mankind to the vision of the crucified and risen Lord. Despite Hickes' fixation on the covenanted priesthood, his attempt to defeat Toland at his own game showed up his inadequacy. For God intervenes through His word and sacrament, not through a priestly caste. The bishop has the evangelical task of publishing the words of God, just as the Levites did, not to bind the conscience through his interpretive authority (whether individually or in synod). The Enlightened priesthood of the republican Toland or monarchic-hierophant Hickes both lead to the demoniac coven which bayed to kill our Lord once again.
The Enlightenment is nothing to fear. It is the reckoning of how to survive the collapse of a unified, if corrupt and dysfunctional, political theology. The Christian apocalypse was once again recognized as opening the future to a rapidly approaching shadow of eschaton. Wait with haste! Nevertheless, the potentiality of it (realized in the otherwise opposed bishops Hoadly and Berkeley) could give way to the nihilistic deism of both Toland and Hickes. And similarly, we are still plagued with the cult of atheist personalities and the white coats. But neither reckon with the fact that the Christ redefined the nature of time. May we, with the ever heterodox William Blake, turn to the crucified Christ and drink in the forgiveness of sins. Through this glory we may begin to learn the power of His resurrection.
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