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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
“One fair day in summer, my casement window being opened towards the south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book, De Veritate, in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words:—‘O thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon me, and Giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech Thee, of thine infinite goodness, to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book, De Veritate; if it be for Thy glory, I beseech Thee to give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.’ I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though yet gentle noise came from the heavens, for it was like nothing on earth, which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted and that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I resolved to print my book. And now I sent my book to be printed at Paris … without suffering it to be divulged to others than to such as I thought might be worthy readers of it.”
1 From The Autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, edited by Sidney Lee in 1886, p. 248Google Scholar. The Autobiography has been frequently published. The edition by W. D. Howells, 1872. the 1906 revision by Sir Sidney Lee, and the recent edition by C. H. Herford, 1928 have chief value.
2 The only known extant copy of the 1624 edition has recently been acquired by the British Museum. The MS of this edition is in the library of Jesus College, Cambridge.
3 Cp. as the most recent instance the use of the phrase in Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century, by J. M. Creed and J. S. Boys Smith, 1934, p. xvGoogle Scholar. Also see Orr, John's English Deism, 1934, p. 61Google Scholar on. Again, Willey, Basil, The Seventeenth Century Background, 1934, p. 121.Google Scholar
4 Cp. the poems of Herbert, Autobiography (Lee 1886) pp. 31Google Scholar on, with the “Prolusions” (especially the 7th) and the “Epistle to Diodati” in Tillyard, P. B., Milton, Private Correspondence and Academic Exercises, 1932, p. 13, p. 104Google Scholar. Channing, W. E., Milton (1826) p. 51 on.Google Scholar
5 Autobiography, p. 155.Google Scholar
6 See Preface to W. D. Howell's edition of the Autobiography, p. 10Google Scholar for evidence from his writings. He seems to have been especially fond of the sermons of a certain London preacher named Smith. Of a Latitudinarian divine of that name, Hunt, J., Religious Thought in England, p. 425Google Scholar, gives an interesting account, disclosing many resemblances to Lord Herbert's views.
7 That Lord Herbert surmised as much seems obvious from his own words: “What Père Séguerend did afterwards in the Way of performing his threat I know not; but sure I am that, had I been ambitious of worldly greatness, I might oftem have remembered his words, though, as I ever loved my book and a quiet life more than any busy preferments, I did frustrate and render vain his greatest power to hurt me.” (Autobiography, p. 246Google Scholar). Lee, whose Introduction to the work is full of inaccuracies and misinterpretations, quite overlooks this suggestion concerning the recall!
8 De Veritate, with a new preface to the “lectori integri et illibati iudicii,” was republished in 1633 (London); 1636, Paris; 1639 Paris, in a French translation, which Basil Willey and John Orr use; 1645 in London. De Causis Errorum, una cum tractatu De Religione Laici et Appendice Ad Sacerdotes et Poemata aliqua, London, 1645Google Scholar. In addition, he had composed before his death the Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil and De Religione Gentilium, both published posthumously.
9 Autobiography, p. 2.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., p. 208, p. 209: “To conclude this passage, which I unwillingly mention, I must protest again, before God, that I never delighted in that or any other sin.”
11 Ibid., pp. 59 on, e. g.: “And this I dare say, that a virtuous man may not only go securely through all the religions but all the laws in the world and whatsoever obstructions he meet, obtain both an inward peace and an outward welcome … this virtue, therefore, I recommend to my posterity as the greatest perfection he can attain to in this life and the pledge of eternal happiness thereafter; there being none that can justly hope of an union with the supreme God who doth not come to him in this life in virtue and goodness as he can; and if human frailty do interrupt this union … it will be fit, by a serious repentance, to expiate and emaculate those faults, and for the rest, trust to the mercy of God, his Creator, Redeemer, Preserver.”
12 The very audacity of the title alone is amazing, for it boldly differentiates truth and revelation, classing the latter with simple possibilities.
13 Expressions of such spiritual sympathy are numerous in his works. The first paragraph of the Address to the Reader (De Veritate, 1624Google Scholar) says: “Hinc tot sectae, Schismata, divisiones, subdivisiones, confusiones ex quibus ingenia doctorum, conscientiae indoctorum miserè torquentur. Dum modo hii, modo illi, se veros in doctrina suis, reliquos falsarios, mendaces, impostores elamitant.” (p. 3).
14 The outline of the noetic system may be found in Ueberweg and in Höffding; but clearer expositions and more acute criticisms are those of C. F. Rémusat, Histoire de la Philosophie en Angleterre, 1878, p. 212Google Scholar on; the same author's Lord Herbert de Cherbury, 1874, p. 685Google Scholar; Güttier, C., Eduard, Lord Herbert von Cherbury, Muenehen, 1897, p. 95Google Scholar on; Scholz, H., Die Religions-Philosophie von Herbert von Cherbury, 1914, p. 20Google Scholar on. Webb, C. C. J., Studies in the History of Natural Religion, 1914, p. 381Google Scholar on. Dilthey, W., Gesammelte Schriften, 1923, II, 246 on.Google Scholar
15 Cp. the comment made by Hallam, , Literature of Europe, (1886 ed.) Ill, p. 24 on.Google Scholar
16 Lord Herbert never decided upon one or the other of these phrases, hence we may regard them as synonymous. In the 1633 edition he wrote: “Probam facultatum conformitationem ex consensu universali pracipuam partem cultus divini semper habitam fuisse.” He goes to say that this holy or righteous conformity of our nature results in feelings of gratitude, faith, love, hope, and felicity. But in the 1624 edition, just discovered, the third article is “Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam optimum esse rationem cultus divini.” In the French version of 1639, that of 1633 is translated. In the 1645 Latin edition (London), the two phrasings are combined: “Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam (quae sub proba facultatum conformations hoc in opere describitur) praecipuam partem cultus divini habitam esse et semper fuisse.” In defense of this article as a catholic truth, he says, in the 1645 edition: “De ritibus, ceremoniis, traditionbus sive scriptis sive non scriptis, revelatione … minime conventum est; sed de proba conformations facultatum summus datur ubique consensus.” Does not the phrase “reverent righteousness express more concisely what he means?
17 Güttler gives the shortest form of the five articles as found in De Religione Gentilium, (p. 68): “Supremum Numen cultus evus jubet, vitae sanctitatem praecipit, poenitentiam scelerum indicit, et praemium vel poenam denunciat.” The shortest English form of the third article is found in the Dialogue, p. 7Google Scholar: “The best worship of Him consists in virtue, piety and charity, conjoined with faith in and love of God.”
18 Lord Herbert's attitude toward Christianity is difficult absolutely to determine. In De Veritate he sedulously avoided any direct reference to it. Indeed, I believe it is the first book on religion published in Europe since Boëthius that does not mention Jesus Christ! The 1633 preface adopts the evasion of the two truths: “praemittere placuit, veritates Intellectus, non Fidei, hoc in opere proponi. Quae igitur ad Fiaem attinent, propria luce conspicienda relinquimus; adeo omne novum interea istiusmodi declinamus dogma, ut sola veritatum universalium sustineat Institutum nostrum.” In De Religione Laici, the layman is advised to read his Bible in the light of the five catholic truths; in De Religione Gentilium, it is denied that any Mediator can save one from sin and its consequences without sincere repentance and amendment; “saving grace thereto will not be wanting those who do all in their power to be righteous in conduct and reverent in heart and to them Christ will be revealed at the moment of death.” (p. 5). A very significant passage in the Dialogue will be quoted later. Lord Herbert's favorite text from the Bible seems to have been the dictum of Peter: “In every nation he that f eareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” (Acts 10:35Google Scholar). Because of intimations about Moses in the Dialogue, and the blunt statement that Mahomet was an impostor, “though there are holy precepts for a good life and piety in the Alkoran,” I am inclined to believe that Lord Herbert knew the famous De Tribus Impostoribus (Moses, Mahomet, Christ), and may have been influenced by it.
19 Autobiography, p. 62Google Scholar, three pages of counsel, instancing his own rule, “where, with my honor I could forgive, I never used revenge, leaving it always to God.”
20 Sir Thomas More and Lord Bacon were his predecessors in the royal historiography of the Tudors, undertaken to regain royal favor. Lord Herbert uses Parliament's reduction of the sacraments to Baptism and the Eucharist to lament that repentance had not been made a third sacrament (with carefully guarded absolution), for “Baptism and the Lord's Supper are particular rites only in the Christian Church, while penitence is an incontroverted sign of the operation of God's spirit in our hearts, and ought to be acknowledged as a universal sacrament of grace, of the reasonable nature of mankind.” (History, ed. of 1872, p. 590.)Google Scholar
21 The new preface of the 1633 edition claims that the author exercises free, frank, and disinterested philosophizing: “Non est igitur a larvato aliquo vel stipendioso Scriptore ut verum eonsummatum opperiaris … ingenuus et sui arbitrii ista solummodo praestabit auctor … ut lit liberé quidem philosophemur … ut veritatem sine dote queramus.” In order further to stress his high impartiality, he adds: “Hoc si impetravero, non erit, ut spero mide haec nostra vel orihodoxis vel (quidem heterodoxis displicuisse moreantur, cum non ad oontroversas excitandas sea solvendas, vel saltem climinandas editus sit liber hic.”
22 Laud's chaplain affirmed: “Nihil reperio bonis moribus aut veritati Fidei contrarium quo minus cum utilitate publica. Imprimatur.”
23 De Causis Errorum una cum tractatu de Religione Laici; Ad Sacerdotes et quibusdam poematibus; De Vita Humana disquisitio. De Vita Coelesti conjectura, 1645.Google Scholar
24 “Forasmuch as the heathens, as Holy Scriptures testify and learned divines acknowledge worshipped the same God as we do, had the same abhorrence of sin … I cannot but think that after they had led a good life they were partakers of the divine grace.” From the English version of De Rel. Gent., The Antient Religion of the Gentiles, W. Lewis, 1705, p. 7.Google Scholar
25 Not until 1768, four years after Walpole's publication of the Autobiography, an immediate success, was the Dialogue printed, and then without the authorship stated. But by that time, its skepticism was commonplace.
26 From Bk. II, The Reason of Church Government.
27 Lord Herbert had a horror of the moral laxity encouraged by lenient priestly absolution. See John Ruskin's similar views in Crown of Wild Olives, “The guilty conscience must cleanse itself.”
28 Dialogue, p. 10.Google Scholar
29 The possibility that the priests themselves might have been innocently deluded, or that the “silly superstition of the people” made rituals and ceremonials and mystagogic oracies. etc., desirable for the inculcation of personal and social morality, is not solved for us by Lord Herbert. Indeed, the aspersions upon priests, guarded and veiled in his earlier works, become unmitigated imputations of sordid villainy in De Religione Gentilium and the Dialogue. Such phrases as the following are typical: “the heathen priests themselves were the first artificers of false gods” (p. 47); “particular revelations and the offerings of sacrifices are the universal cozenages imposed on mankind”(p. 92); “The cruelty of the priests is shown by their constant reference to the slaughter of the Amalekites, in neglect of the New Testament blessing upon peacemakers” (p. 97). Yet Lord Herbert admits (Dial., p. 28Google Scholar) that their inventions might have something rational and decent in them, implicit or explicit; and (Güttler, , p. 63, 68Google Scholar) external ceremonies may have a certain practical value “for the vulgar and ignorant, who live by vivid sensation rather than philosophic reason.” But every human being of sound and honest mind is able to understand and fulfill the worship of God in virtue and piety, without external aids of any kind (De. Ver., p. 47Google Scholar), though “the most penetrating and discerning men do in some measure submit to the religions worship performed in their time, lest the lewd and debauched, following their example and not being able to distinguish truth from false appearances of it, reject all religious worship.”
30 Dialogue, p. 42Google Scholar. The whole passaee is a capital epitome of Lord Herbert's theory of religious corruption, which is the only typically Deistic element in his system.
33 Cp. the discussion anent the revelation to Isaac to sacrifice his son (p. 78–82), and the responsibility of the theologians for the doctrines of the vicarious, sacrificial atonement, etc.
32 p. 18. These ironical rasgar es are numerous. Cp. p. 84. 97, etc. Milton, we recall, felt much as did Lord Herbert, about covetous and crafty priests: “such as, for their bellies' sakes. creep and intrude and climb into the fold … and shove away the worthy bidden guest.” (Lycidas, 1638).Google Scholar
33 p. 198 on.
34 Dialogue, pp. 211–214.Google Scholar
35 In this connection it is worthy of note that Richard Baxter, equally hostile to mercenary and crafty priests and prelates, pays Lord Herbert's De Veritate, which be criticized more acutely than ever before or since, a high tribute: “I must give the author the credit of his great learning and strength of wit. Secondly, I must confess that the teachers of the church have been too often such as have given him the scandal which he so often expresseth, as more regarding their interest than truth … and often wronging it by their omissions or additions or unsound applications. I am so far from writing against his whole book that I take most of his rules and notions in De Veritate to be of singular use … as he was too low for us, who number not our divine revelations with the verisimilia but with the certain verities, so he was too high for the atheistical sensualists of his age; and I would that they would learn of him that the being and perfections of God, the duty of worshipping Him, and particularly the Ten Commandments, the necessity of true repentance and the rewards and nunishments of the life to come with the soul's immortality, are all … such natural certainties that the denial of them doth unman them.” More Reasons for the Christian Religion, pp. 521–2.Google Scholar
36 See Dilthey, W., Gesammelte Schiften, II, p. 253Google Scholar. Also Brie, F., Deismus und Atheismus in der englischen Renaissance, Anglia, Bd. 48, pp. 54Google Scholar on, Halle, 1924.
37 Buckley, G. T., Atheism in the English Renaissance, 1932, chaps. 1, 2, 11.Google Scholar
38 Autobiography, p. 246.Google Scholar
39 Cp. the translation, On Wisdom, by Stanhope, London, 1729, vol. II, p. 721Google Scholar on, especially the chapter, “The Study of True Piety.” Charron also agrees with Lord Herbert that disease may annul or suspend moral responsibility—a later Stoic tenet; but he could not concede to human nature any faculty for the exact distinction between truth and error. See also Owen, J., Skeptics of the French Renaissance, 1893, p. 559Google Scholar on. The best treatise on French free-thinking of this period is that of Busson, H., Les Sources et le développement du Rationalisme dans la littérature francaise de la Renaissance, 1533–1601, 1922. p. 456 on.Google Scholar
40 See Bussen, , op. cit., p. 542Google Scholar, for a critique of the Colloquy. The best recent account and analysis of this striking work is that by Gr. H. Sabine, in Persecution ana Liberty, p. 271 on.Google Scholar
41 Autobiography, p. 246.Google Scholar
42 Cp. Book II, see. 11, and Bk. III, sec. 12 of De Veritate Christianae Fidei with Lord Herbert's beliefs.
43 Grotius received the first copies in November. For the underlying philsophy of De Jure see White, Andrew D., Seven Great Statesmen, p. 78Google Scholar on, and Knight, W. S. M., Hugo Grotius, 1925, p. 101, 167Google Scholar on. Also, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. by A. N. Campbell, 1901Google Scholar, See. 45, “True Religion.”
44 In his Second Defense, Milton mentions the fact that “during the interval of uninterrupted leisure which I entirely devoted to the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics, I occasionally visited the metropolis, either for the sake of purchasing new books …” Haller edition, 1927, p. 90.
45 Torrey, N. L., Voltaire ana the English Deists, 1930, pp. 12, 13.Google Scholar
46 Lee's casual classification of Lord Herbert as belonging by affinity with the Cambridge Platonists is absurd. They were officially and expressly Christian. Was it not Nathaniel Culverwel who first and fiercely denounced him in The Light of Nature (1652) “as one that hath a powder plot against the Gospel and would compendiously behead our Christian religion at one blow—a device which old and ordinary heretics were never acquainted with.”
