[132] and contemplation of the order of nature, including human nature, which is subject to fixed, invariable laws.  He rejects free-will and the “superstition,” as he calls it, of final causes in nature.  If we want to label his philosophy, we may say that it is a form of pantheism.  It has often been described as atheism.  If atheism means, as I suppose in ordinary use it is generally taken to mean, rejection of a personal God, Spinoza was an atheist.  It should be observed that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries atheist was used in the wildest way as a term of abuse for freethinkers, and when we read of atheists (except in careful writers) we may generally assume that the persons so stigmatized were really deists, that is, they believed in a personal God but not in Revelation. [1]

Spinoza’s daring philosophy was not in harmony with the general trend of speculation at the time, and did not exert any profound influence on thought till a much later period.  The thinker whose writings appealed most to the men of his age and were most opportune and effective was John Locke, who professed more or less orthodox Anglicanism.  His great contribution to philosophy is equivalent to a very powerful defence

[133] of reason against the usurpations of authority.  The object of his Essay on the Human Understanding (1690) is to show that all knowledge is derived from experience.  He subordinated faith completely to reason.  While he accepted the Christian revelation, he held that revelation if it contradicted the higher tribunal of reason must be rejected, and that revelation cannot give us knowledge as certain as the knowledge which reason gives.  “He that takes away reason to make room for revelation puts out the light of both; and does much what the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.”  He wrote a book to show that the Christian revelation is not contrary to reason, and its title, The Reasonableness of Christianity, sounds the note of all religious controversy in England during the next hundred years.  Both the orthodox and their opponents warmly agreed that reasonableness was the only test of the claims of revealed religion.  It was under the direct influence of Locke that Toland, an Irishman who had been converted from Roman Catholicism, composed a sensational book, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696).  He assumes that Christianity is true and argues that there can be no mysteries in it, because mysteries, that

[134] is, unintelligible dogmas, cannot be accepted by reason.  And if a reasonable Deity gave a revelation, its purpose must be to enlighten, not to puzzle.  The assumption of the truth of Christianity was a mere pretence, as an intelligent reader could not fail to see.  The work was important because it drew the logical inference from Locke’s philosophy, and it had a wide circulation.  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met a Turkish Effendi at Belgrade who asked her for news of Mr. Toland.