6 113 OPINION OF ADDISON, STEELE, AND JOHNSON. eighteenth century. Hobbes, Toland, Collins, Wollaston, Bolingbroke, and Hume successively appeared, and the foundations of a new and soul-withering era were laid. The 'Leviathan' of Hobbes was published in 1650, the middle of the seventeenth, and the infidel essays of Hume appeared about the middle of the eighteenth, century. David Hume not only breathed upon us his spirit-benumbing virus in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' 1752, and his Natural History of Religion' soon after, but he brought to bear upon his age that of Spinoza, by his translation of that great sceptic's Tractatus-theologico-politicus,' without either his own name or that of the author, in 1765. There were above a hundred years of steady attack on Christianity, and the public faith suffered a growing and most obvious eclipse. Some few of our great literary leaders made a sort of last stand in defence of the miraculous. Warburton, Douglas, and a host of others took the field against Hume, but it was only to defend miracles accepted because they were old. De Foe was amongst the earliest, and Sir 6 Blackstone amongst the latest, who took a broad stand. Richard Steele, Addison, and Dr. Johnson gave their testimony; but it was only incidentally and regarding one single department of the marvellous-that of apparitions. Addison's evidence occurs in the Spectator,' and after ridiculing some of the absurd omens of the day, he then says, At the same time, I think a person who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the report of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless. Could I not give myself up to this general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact. I might here add, that not only the historians, to whom we may join the poets, but likewise the philosophers of antiquity have favoured this opinion.' 6 Johnson was one of the few persons who were not persuaded that the Cock-Lane ghost was a clever trick, and the evidence shows that he was quite right. In his Rasselas,' he also ventilates his opinion that ghosts were substantive and a thousand-time proved facts: That the dead,' he says, are seen no more, I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and universal testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails, as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those who never heard of one another, would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience could render credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.' Boswell, in his Life of Johnson,' also introduces the subject of apparitions on the occasion of a dinner at General Oglethorpe's, April 10, 1772, in which Johnson said that Mr. Cave, the publisher of the Gentleman's Magazine,' assured him that he had seen a ghost. Goldsmith, who was present, stated that his brother, the Rev. Mr. Goldsmith, had seen one, and General Oglethorpe, that Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, told his brother officers, that Sir John Friend, who was executed for high treason, had appeared to him, and told him that he would die on a certain day. On that day a battle took place, but when it was over and Prendergast was alive, his brother officers rallied him and asked him where was his prophecy now? Prendergast replied gravely, 'I shall die notwithstanding;' and soon after there came a shot from a French battery, to which the order for the cessation of firing had not reached, and killed him on the spot. Oglethorpe added that Colonel Cecil, who took possession of Prendergast's effects, found in his pocket-book a memorandum containing the particulars of the intimation of his death on the day specified, and that he was with Cecil when Pope came to enquire into PROGRESS OF SCEPTICISM.. 115 the facts of the case, which had made a great noise, and that they were confirmed by the colonel. To so fine a point had the belief in the miraculous, or supernatural, descended towards the end of the eighteenth century. Literary men could just, and upon instant and unquestionable evidence, conceive the actuality of a ghost. The poison of Spinoza, Hobbes, Toland, and Hume, had been, and was widely materializing the human mind, and there had arisen, or were about to arise, three Christian champions of the miraculous, so far as it was venerably old and mouldy, who, under the plea of defending this ancient faith, did more to destroy the faith in miracles altogether, than the whole oneeyed tribe of infidels whoever wrote. They welded weapons on the anvil of orthodoxy, which the infidels have wielded with many an exulting Io Pean! and dipped them in a poison bearing the name of a patent antidote to all former poisons, which has become the demon-life of that old monster infidelity in his new sleek skin of Rationalism. These three champions, dextrous in back strokes, were Middleton, Farmer, and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, who inaugurated the last and culminating period of disbelief in everything that cannot be felt and handled and carried to market that in which we live. CHAPTER VII. PRESENT MATERIALISED CONDITION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND OF GENERAL OPINION. The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the law; for they stumbled at that stumbling-block. Romans ix. 32. Au reste, c'est une grave erreur de croire que ces miracles bibliques sont des phénomènes tout à fait exceptionnels: les miracles ont eu lieu plus souvent qu'on ne pense; mais les hommes de nos jours, plongés dans le matérialisme, ont perdu le sens, la faculté de les observer. LE BARON DE GULDENSTUBBE, Pneumatologie Positive. In the sciences that also is looked upon as a property which has been handed down or taught at the universities, and if anyone advance anything new which contradicts, perhaps threatens to overturn, the creed which we for years respected, and have handed down to others, all passions are raised against him, and every effort is made to crush him. People resist with all their might; they act as if they neither heard nor could comprehend: they speak of the new view with contempt, as if it were not worth the trouble of even so much as an investigation or a regard; and thus a new truth may wait a long time before it can make its way.-GOETHE, Conversations with Eckermann. THE HEFree Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earliest Ages through several centuries,' by Dr. Conyers Middleton, was published in 1749. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' had preceded it eleven years, and may be supposed to have greatly influenced its tone. In this work Dr. Middleton undertakes what he justly calls DR. MIDDLETON ON MIRACLES. 6 117 an attempt, not only new, but contrary to the general opinion of the Christian world: namely, that miracles ceased with the apostles, and were only occasional amongst them. It was an attempt, in fact, not only in a single man to contradict the opinion of the Christian church in all ages, but the evidence of all mankind. It was, to say the least of it, an unrivalled specimen of human conceit. The declarations of Christ that His followers should do greater works than He did; that it should be the test of real belief in His church that signs should follow that belief; and that this His power and presence should attend His followers alway to the end of the world, went with this singular Christian for nothing. As to the universal testimony of the Fathers, and so downward of the different branches of the Christian church, Dr. Middleton at once and boldly declared all these Fathers, and all their successors who asserted the existence of miracles in their different ages, as downright liars. He declares the Fathers, one and all, to have been credulous, crafty, or designing men: men of such character, that nothing could be expected from them that was candid and impartial, nothing but what a crafty understanding could supply towards confirming those prejudices with which they happened to be possessed, especially when religion happened to be the subject.' As to all pagan nations, he included them in the same sweeping denunciation, and declared all the statements regarding the oracles, the prophecies, and miracles occurring amongst them, to have been forged, and imposed on the public! In a word, all mankind were declared liars, all the greatest philosophers, saints, martyrs, heroes, and worthies of every age and nation in the world-and Dr. Middleton was the only man deserving of belief. That was outspokenly his assertion. Many a madman has said as preposterous things before, but then they were treated as madmen. Middleton and Hume, who asserted the same thing-namely, that no amount of evidence would satisfy him of what he did not want to believe-alone were allowed, though holding the language of insanity, to pass for sane men. To such a pitch |