his reticence about them. ‘Let us,’
he writes, ’seek truth, but quietly, as well
as freely. Let us not imagine, like some who are
called Freethinkers, that every man who can think
and judge for himself, as he has a right to do, has
therefore a right of speaking any more than acting
according to freedom of thought.’ Then,
after expressing sentiments which are written in the
very spirit of Deism, he adds, ’I neither expect
nor desire to see any public revision made of the present
system of Christianity. I should fear such an
attempt, &c.’ It was accordingly not until
after his death that his theological views were fully
expressed and published. These are principally
contained in his ‘Philosophical Works,’
which he bequeathed to David Mallet with instructions
for their publication; and Mallet accordingly gave
them to the world in 1754. Honest Dr. Johnson’s
opinion of this method of proceeding is well known.
’Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel
for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality,
a coward because he had no resolution to fire it off
himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman
to draw the trigger after his death.’ This
is strong language, but it is not wholly undeserved.
There is something inexpressibly mean in a man countenancing
the persecution of his fellow creatures for heterodoxy,
while he himself secretly held opinions more heterodox
than any of those whom he helped to persecute.
No doubt Bolingbroke regarded religion simply from
a political point of view; it was a useful, nay, a
necessary engine of Government. He, therefore,
who wilfully unsettled men’s minds on the subject
was a bad citizen, and consequently deserving of punishment.
But then, this line of argument would equally tell
against the publication of unsettling opinions after
his death, as against publishing them during his life-time.
Apres moi le deluge, is not an elevated maxim;
yet the only other principle upon which his mode of
proceeding admits of explanation is, that he wrote
his last works in the spirit of a soured and disappointed
man, who had been in turn the betrayer and betrayed
of every party with which he had been connected.
What his motives, however, were, can only be a matter
of conjecture; let us proceed to examine the opinions
themselves. They are contained mainly[161] in
a series of essays or letters addressed by him to his
friend Pope, who did not live to read them; and they
give us in a somewhat rambling, discursive fashion,
his views on almost all subjects connected with religion.
Many passages have the genuine Deistical ring about
them. Like his precursors, he declares that he
means particularly to defend the Christian religion;
that genuine Christianity contained in the Gospels
is the Word of God. Like them, he can scarcely
find language strong enough to express his abhorrence
of the Jews and the Old Testament generally.
Like them, he abuses divines of all ages and their
theological systems in the most unmeasured terms.
It is almost needless to add that, in common with
his predecessors, he contemptuously rejects all such
doctrines as the Divinity of the Word, Expiation for
Sin in any sense, the Holy Trinity, and the Efficacy
of the Sacraments.